"When Jupiter had Hercules by Alcmena, who was mortal, he wished to make him partaker of immortality; and he laid him to Juno's breast, when she was asleep, while he was in the state of infancy; and the infant being satisfied with milk, turned away from the breast, but the milk spewed copiously when the infant was removed-; and what was difused in the sky made what is called the milky-way; and what flowed on the earth and tinged its surface, produced the lily, which is like milk in respect of colour." (Geoponika Book 11, XIX -CONCERNING THE LILY)

"High on the top the calyx full of seed   Grows with white leaves, tinged in the heart with gold,   Which some call krina, others leiria,   Others ambrosia, but those who love   The fittest name, call them Aphrodite's joy;   For in their complexion they rival Aphrodite,   And, it is said, an object of shame,   The braying ass's member, springs up in the middle." (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists Book 15)

"… but even Phorcys, second to Neptune her own father, in ruling the sea, feared Medusa, as did her mother, Ceto, and her sister Gorgons; she had power to threaten sea and sky with rare paralysis, and clothe the world with stone." (Lucan, Pharsalia Book 9)

"I wil woo Artemis, who wants me-- she does not run from me as she did from Phoibos, the wooer of her maidenhood, because she feared blame for wedding with a brother. " (Nonnos, Dionysiaca book 44)

Wait whaaat?! This is not quite as bad as Apollo supposedly ravishing Artemis beside an altar, but still… what? Why?

"… he [Zeus] left the house of Hera, he refused the bed of Dione, he threw away the love of Deo, he fled from Themis, he deserted Leto - no charm was left for him but only in union with Persephoneia." (Nonnos, Dionysiaca Book 5)

When your harem of adult women doesn't do it for you, only your young virgin daughter does.

"Themis’ appearance at the birth of Apollo, accordingly, has more to do with her particular affiliation to Zeus’ regime than it does to her status as a Titan: Apollo will be his father’s mouthpiece, and Themis’ role as nurse is therefore thematically crucial for aligning the young god with his father and the order instantiated by his regime, in contrast to the opposition to Zeus embodied in Typhon, the son of Hera and nursling of the she-dragon. The opposition of the two groups animates the hymn: the conflict between Hera and Zeus revolves around the children they have independent of one another. Hera’s anger at Zeus derives from the birth of Athena, and her response at that time was to produce Typhon, who embodied her anger and constituted a threat to Zeus’ order. The contrast is deepened by the identities of the children’s respective nurses: the joint facts that the she-dragon nurses Typhon and that the two will be slain by Apollo and Zeus, respectively, reflect their opposition to the father-son pair, while the fact that Themis nurses Apollo aligns her both with the two monster-slayers and the order they safeguard.

But not only does the hymn contrast Themis with the she-dragon as the nurse of the infant Apollo, it also sets her against Hera. For compare how Hera’s withdrawal from Zeus’ court during the gestation of Typhon is characterized in the same language as elsewhere describes Themis’ role as an intimate of Zeus. οὔτε ποτ’ εἰϲ θῶκον πολυδαίδαλον ὡϲ τὸ πάροϲ περ αὐτῷ ἐφεζομένη πυκινὰϲ φραζέϲκετο βουλάϲ (345-6). Nor did [Hera], as she had previously, regularly devise detailed boulai while sitting with him at his well-wrought throne. ὃϲ τε Θέμιϲτι ἐγκλιδὸν ἑζομένῃ πυκινοὺϲ ὀάρουϲ ὀαρίζει (h. Zeus 2-3). [Zeus], who converses intimately with Themis as she sits leaning in toward him. The Homeric Hymn to Zeus makes no mention of the boulê Dios, but the similarity of αὐτῷ ἐφεζομένη πυκινάϲ / ἐγκλιδὸν ἑζομένῃ πυκινούϲ suggests that formulaic language of close and well-worked counsel underlies both. Counsel of this sort is appropriate to intimates: in the first Book of the Iliad, Hera complains at being left out of Zeus’ decision-making process (1.540-3), and the collusion she suspects is very much framed as a kind of infidelity. In the Hymn to Apollo, Hera’s opposition goes hand in hand with the complaint that she is not mother of Zeus’ children (313-5), and her withdrawal from his confidence mirrors her absence at the birth of Apollo. Themis’ presence in the assembly of goddesses attending to Leto and Apollo, in contrast, underlies the link between herself, Zeus’ will and Apollo. Cosmic order is at stake in the hymn’s references to Themis and Hera: although Themis is a Titan, the irony in the Hymn to Apollo is that the “threat to Zeus’s rule arises not from the old gods as in the Theogony, but from within the Olympian family itself, in fact, at its very center.” In essence, Themis’ role in the hymn is therefore bound up with her traditional mythological affiliation with Zeus’ will and the orderly operation of the cosmos: there is nothing at this point in the hymn to suggest a direct connection between Themis and the oracle."

- Themis in Sophocles by Christopher Michael Sampson

"Eunomia is extremely popular in Greek literature (Rudhardt, 1999: 97-104; Ostwald, 1969: 62-65). Her earliest appearance is as one of the Horai (Seasons), along with Dike and Eirene, in Hesiodos’ Theogonia (901-902). While several fifth century lyric poets followed this genealogy (Bakkhylides 14.59; Pindaros, Olympionike 9.22-24, 13.6-8), in the sixth century, Alkmanos referred to Eunomia (along with Peitho and Tykhe) as the daughter of Promatheia (Forethought) (Alkmanos fr. 64 Davies, PMGF). The noun eunomia, εὐνομία, stems from the verb εὐνομέομαι, meaning to have good laws (LSJ9 s.v. εὐνομέομαι; Rosler 2005, 233-236). Eunomia refers not just to the condition of having good laws, but adherence to those laws. In Sophokles’ Aias, for example, eunomia means loyalty to divine law (Sophokles, Aias 713; see also Homeros, Odysseia 487). In the seventh century, the elegiac poet Tyrtaios of Sparta connected this divine law with human law, when he eulogised eunomia as the divine right by which kings rule (Tyrtaios frs. 1-4 West, IE2).

In a democratic polis, such as Athens, eunomia also refers to the citizen’s obeisance to the laws (nomos), which creates good order (Ostwald, 1969: 62-65; Andrewes, 1938: 90). At the beginning of the sixth century, the Athenian statesman Solon (fr. 4.31-38 West, IE2) eulogised Eunomia as a civic virtue: My soul calls on me to teach these things to the Athenians: that Disnomia (Lawlessness) brings countless evils to the city, while Eunomia makes all things appear well ordered and proper, and often locks up the feet of criminals. She softens the rough, shrinks excess, lessens pride, withers the budding flowers of sin, sets straight crooked judgments, and soothes the actions of the arrogant. She shrinks the effects of discord and the troubling wrath of quarrel; it is through her that all affairs of men are proper and prudent.

Perhaps as a result of her Spartan roots, eunomia retained an aristocratic connotation at Athens. Pindaros invoked her as the guardian of Aitna (Pindaros, Nemeonike 9.29) , Korinthos (Olympionike 13.6), Opos (Olympionike 9.16, where Eunomia Soteira [Saviour] is connected with Themis), and Aigina (Isthmionike 5.22), all cities in which oligarchic systems prevailed. The fifth century Athenian conception of aristocratic eunomia as the opposite of democratic isonomia (equality of rights: Raaflaub, 1996) may have also derived from Eunomia’s monarchical Spartan background, through the influence of the pro-Spartan oligarchs at Athens (Ostwald, 1969: 65). … Yet the role of Eunomia as a virtue that gave rise to civic prosperity is equally applicable to monarchic and democratic poleis. This nonpartisan virtue is invoked in the 7th-century Hymnos Homerikos eis Gen (30.11-15): Such men with Eunomia command a city of beautiful women. Much prosperity and Ploutos (Wealth) accompany them; their sons bear themselves proudly with youthful joy; and their daughters, with cheerful hearts in blossoming dances, play and frisk over soft flowers.In the early fifth century Bakkhylides said that Eunomia received Thaleia (Bounty) as her lot (Bakkhylides 13.186-187).

Not surprisingly, it is this prosperous Eunomia who is found on Meidian vases. On a squat lekythos, once in Paris, VP 43, dated to the last decade of the fifth century, Eunomia is actually shown with Thaleia. The hope for prosperity and other joys that come with good order is also reflected in Meidian vase paintings that picture Eunomia with Eudaimonia or Eutykhia (both of whom represent Prosperity) as well as Paidia (Play): … One might have expected Eunomia, who brings prosperity, to have been connected here with Eirene (Peace) and Opora (Harvest), personifications of (agricultural) prosperity in the circle of Dionysos. Hesiodos had joined Eunomia and Eirene together as Horai, along with Dike (Hesiodos, Theogonia 901-902). … Eunomia and Eirene never appear together, however, in the last quarter of the fifth century. In the fourth century, however, Eunomia and Dike shared an altar with Aidos (Reverence) (Pseudo-Demosthenes 25.35). The law court speech that mentions this altar emphasises Eunomia’s importance to the polis: “You must magnify Eunomia who loves what is right and preserves every city and every land” (Pseudo-Demosthenes 25.10-11). This speech is, in fact, the earliest evidence for the cult of Eunomia at Athens."

- Polis and personification in classical Athenian art by Amy C. Smith

"Eukleia represents the personal qualities that brought a person a good reputation, as well as the reputation itself. Mythic genealogies for her come late: Ploutarkhos (Aristides 20.5) mentions she was the child of Herakles and Myrto, but Euripides notes that Ponos (Labour) was her father (fr. 474 N2): … In earlier Greek literature, eukleia refers to the glory and fame that results from military victories (Homeros, Ilias 8.285 and Odysseia 14.402). Eukleia’s meaning as the good reputation of private individuals becomes more prominent in the literature of the second half of the fifth century, and is particularly prominent in the works of Euripides (for eukleia in Hippolytos see Braund, 1980: 84-85). She is personified in Classical Athenian literature to the degree that she owns, holds, or bestows a wreath or crown, as in Sophokles’ Aias (462-465), produced in 442 or 441, when Aias bemoans his bad fortune: And how shall I present myself and appear to the eye of my father, Telamon? How will he bear it when he sees me naked, without the prize of the best and the bravest, for which he himself held the great crown of Eukleia? Sophokles’ ‘crown of Eukleia’ (στέφανος εὐκλείας), also worn by Theseus (Euripides, Hiketides 315), is recalled in the words of Bakkhylides, who calls Eukleia’ φιλοστεφάνος, ‘lover of the wreath’ (Bakkhylides, Epinikoi 13.183; see also Bakkhylides, Epinikoi 1.184 and Dithyramboi 15.54; and Pindaros, Isthmionike 5.22). With or without a wreath, Eukleia could bestow a good reputation on someone, through birth and/or marriage, as well as victory. In regard to ancestry, eukleia therefore takes on aristocratic connotations (Metzler, 1980). She was involved in marriage preparations, at least in Boiotia, Athens’ neighbour and long-term rival, where she was worshipped as an epithet of Artemis (Shapiro, 72 chapter six 1993: 70-78; Kossatz-Deissmann, 1988c). Ploutarkhos notes that Artemis Eukleia had an altar in each Boiotian marketplace (see also Sophokles, Oidipous Tyrannos 161; Schachter, 1981: 102), and that boys and girls who had become engaged would make sacrifices to Eukleia in preparation for their weddings (Ploutarkhos, Aristides 20.5-6)."

- Polis and personification in classical Athenian art by Amy C. Smith

"Tethys is similarly included with Dionysos in a scene on a bell krater in London that depicts Hermes handing him, as a baby, over to his nurses (fig. 3.3). Here Tethys is one of the maenads who nurses Dionysos. Her surprising presence suggests the cosmopolitan importance of Dionysos. Tethys appears elsewhere as a maenad, for example on VP 20 (fig. 3.11), and is part of a broader trend of showing local personifications as maenads, which I will discuss at the end of this chapter."

- Polis and personification in classical Athenian art by Amy C. Smith

"As one can see from the wide variety of uses of themis in epic poetry, the term has a wide semantic range that covers the ideas of norm and order from the natural and cosmic levels to the social, political, judicial, and religious. As a concept, themis is integral to the mindset of the archaic world; whatever happens in accordance with a norm or in striving to realize a norm falls under the rubric of themis, and those which do not or which deviate from it are said to violate or pervert themis. The variously broad or specific significance of the term reveals a Chinese-box structure of thought in the archaic world: since the order of the cosmos itself—whether in the rule of Zeus (via his marriage to Themis), or of nature (via their offspring the Fates and the Seasons)—accords with themis, there is a precedent for order at the most universal level. This sense of order is passed down: Themis is also a figure in the divine community, and her affiliation with Zeus and with the rule he engenders characterizes the operations of the divine as occurring within set norms and in an orderly fashion.

As a principle, themis is omnipresent in the archaic worldview, whether considered as cosmic order, the divine principle of order, or the everyday norms of human life from sex and family interactions to politics and legal matters, ritual and religion. At no point can its semantic range be fixed on any of them individually: at the most basic level of animal instinct and nature, themis denotes the biological urge to procreation (Il. 9.134=9.276). Moving beyond the sphere of animal urges, it describes human interaction at the level of the family, the most basic social bond: it is themis for sons to greet fathers (Od. 11.451), and for wives to lament their lost husbands (Od. 14.130). Already, the line between themis as a fact of nature and themis as a social norm is becoming fuzzy. Progressing further still to more developed forms of human interaction, themis governs the bonds of philia and xenia, and is even at work (via the themistes) in formal political or legal interactions.

The categories of natural, religious, social, and political are at this point of little service: such interactions are not simply social or political but are also natural and religious. For in addition to xenia, ritual observation, oaths, and prayer are all classified as themis. Then, at an even more universal level, themis is also involved in the hierarchy of gods and the arrangement of mortal fate. As a principle of order and organization, themis is nearly universally applicable: … Even amongst divine figures it can denote a larger, cosmic norm which is not to be violated. Themis can mean a number of things in a number of situations, and the categories describing it, because they mask semantic overlap by distinguishing usages, generally inhibit a more complete understanding of its nuances. In the end, all that the various individual uses share is a common reference to the concepts of norm or order, and by taking recourse to these instead of other, more specific categories, the term’s broad semantic range persists."

- Themis in Sophocles by Christopher Michael Sampson

"The best way to discuss ancient literature’s survival is to contemplate the dark side of the moon first: i.e., what we know for certain did not survive, and how this affects our understanding of ancient culture. Perhaps the most dramatic example (no pun intended) is ancient drama, since we can quantify lost plays as units analogous to existing ones, which produces a simple ratio. We have seven of Aeschylus’ estimated 70 to 90 plays, and short quotations and fragments of others; seven of Sophocles’ 120-plus plays, again with sound bites and bits of others, including extensive fragments of the satyr play The Trackers (only made public in 1912); and 18 (19 with the disputed Rhesus) of Euripides’ estimated 90, with two volumes of intriguing shards ( TrGF 5.1–2). The survival rates of complete works for these pillars of Western drama are then roughly: 10 per cent to 7 per cent (Aeschylus), 5.8 per cent (Sophocles), and 20 per cent (Euripides). … What of the other great dramatists of the Classical age? We would certainly like to read more of early tragedy to understand the evolution of the genre, but we have none of Choerilus’ alleged 160 plays or of Pratinas’ 50, nor are we sure who voted them off the island of posterity. I would love a look at Phrynichus’ Fall of Miletus, which so upset the Athenians they fined him and outlawed its further production – setting a lasting precedent against tragedies written from contemporary events (Herodotus, Histories 6.21). Agathon was a significant enough poet to be portrayed in works by both Plato (Protagoras and Symposium) and Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae), and later gossip claimed Euripides wrote the Chrysippus out of infatuation for him (Aelian, Var. Hist. 2.21); but of his work we have less than 50 lines.

While we get by on an appallingly low percentage of known tragedies, we had up to 1912 a single satyr play – Euripides’ Cyclops – to represent that whole genre, one that was a part of every tragedian’s output at the dramatic festivals (the normal entry was three tragedies and one satyr play). Now we have a fair amount of one by Sophocles, and much less from two by Aeschylus; this is still far from enough to get a feel for the genre and its relation to comedy and tragedy. Similarly scanty are the remains of the dithyramb, a choral genre that was a major part of several Athenian festivals, with wide participation from among the men and boys of Athens’ tribes. It is largely represented by fragments of Pindar, Bacchylides and Timotheus, in spite of centuries of competitive output. Some 20 dithyrambic compositions a year were produced for the City Dionysia alone, not to mention the other festivals in Athens and beyond (Hordern 2002, 22). All of Old Comedy is represented to us by 11 plays of Aristophanes (we know of an additional 32 titles for him); … Most of Middle Comedy is in shreds, though we know the names of 50 working poets and Athenaeus attributes more than 800 plays to the period. For New Comedy, we know of nearly 80 playwrights active between 325 and 200 BCE, and 50 working beyond then. …

We read Homer with little else to compare it to, since so much of the epic cycle is missing, as is the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. We concentrate heavily on 44 extant plays, but we are unable to reconstruct the complete line-up for a single year of the City Dionysia. We accept Plato’s caricatures of the sophists as valid (hence the pejorative meaning of “sophistry” and “sophistic”), and may assume all philosophy is a footnote to him because what came before is so scanty. Our entire view of Greek culture is decidedly skewed toward Athens. We don’t get to read the 50 odd plays of Theodectes of Lycia, whose Lynceus and Tydeus were admired by Aristotle (Poet. 1452a27, 1455a9, b29), or the comedies of Epicharmus, who wrote in Sicilian Doric (PCG 1, 9–137). We don’t get to read five whole books of Tyrtaeus of Sparta or nine of Sappho of Lesbos, or five of Corinna of Tanagra, as the ancients reportedly did. We sadly lack most of the mimes of Sophron of Syracuse, which, we are told, Plato first brought to Athens and actively imitated in his dialogues, loving them so much he kept a copy under his pillow (Diog. Laer. 3.18). … We would gain a good deal of information on Athens’ famous rival had the works of Sosibius of Sparta (fl. mid-third century BCE) survived. … What remains of the great commentaries of Aristarchus or the alleged 3,500-plus works of Didymus must be gleaned from the scholia in the margins of medieval manuscripts of Homer. Imagine what we would at least know about our losses had Callimachus’ vast bibliographical work, the Pinakes, survived, which detailed the holdings of the library of Alexandria? The work’s full title, Lists of Those Eminent in All Areas of Learning and Their Writings, shows the amplitude of his bibliographical ambitions, and its reported 120 bookrolls attest to the scope of his achievement. The fragmentary remains of 58 entries can only serve to torment us about its loss."

- A Wound, not a World: Textual Survival and Transmission by Richard H. Armstrong, in A Companion to Greek Literature

"It has been plausibly argued that Hesiod’s account of Aphrodite’s motherless birth (Theog. 188–200) combines Greek elements, especially in the etymological aetiology, with Near Eastern ones—the descent from Uranus and the birth as a result of castration. In this view, Hesiod’s genealogy is decidedly more ‘orientalizing’ than Homer’s. Given Hesiod’s choice of such an aetiology for Aphrodite’s birth, it is not surprising to find Dione relegated to the catalogue of the many daughters of Oceanus (353).40 Crucially, nevertheless, when the Muses sing about many of the most important deities in the Theogony’s proem, no daughter of Oceanus is recalled in their short catalogue, but Dione does find her place there, quite close to Aphrodite and, unsurprisingly, to ‘another matron’ (so West), Leto (16–18). Dione’s stable and traditional place among the senior goddesses as well as her connection with Leto are confirmed by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where Dione is the first among the caring company of goddesses (ὅσσαι ἄρισται ἔσαν) who help Leto have a safe birth-giving, Hera’s enmity notwithstanding (Hymn. Hom. Ap. 92–6). …

Within the surviving corpus of early Greek epic, Dione’s motherly connection to Aphrodite is exploited only in the Iliad, but the love-goddess’ widespread epithet Διὸς θυγάτηρ indirectly attests to the pre-Homeric character of this nexus—or, at the very least, to a different genealogy than Hesiod’s. … The opaque remains of Orphic theogonies shed further light on Dione. In one fragment listing the female Titans (Orph. fr. 179 Bernabé), Dione stands among all the goddesses mentioned by Hesiod, Theog. 135–6 (where she is absent). Our source, Proclus, probably read these lines in the so-called Orphic Rhapsodies, a collection put together sometime in the Christian era, or shortly before, which undoubtedly contained much older material. This catalogue’s relative antiquity, including the presence of Dione, is warranted by the occurrence of an almost identical sequence in Apollodorus and in his source, possibly the Cyclic Theogony. Moreover, the Orphic Rhapsodies seem to have featured two births of Aphrodite. The first (Orph. fr. 189 Bernabé), similar to Aphrodite’s birth in Hesiod, was from castration, the second is from the semen of Zeus, who ejaculates from desire (πόθος) for Dione (fr. 260).49 According to West’s reconstruction, in the ‘Eudemian Theogony’ supposedly known to Eudemus, Aristotle and Plato, Aphrodite was born from Zeus and Dione, and this was also the version in the Cyclic Theogony mentioned above. …

It is in the realm of cult that we find further evidence of Dione’s position. An inscription dated to 409–408 B.C. attests to a βωμός of Dione in Athens’ acropolis. Her association with Zeus in his sanctuary and oracle at Dodona is well known, and Zeus Δωδωναῖος is known to Homer (Il. 16.223). Burkert refers to Strabo (7.7.12), who explains a change in the cult as due to a later introduction of Dione, but the geographer’s theory is rejected by modern scholarship. In W.H. Parke’s words, the evidence shows ‘no support for a post-Homeric introduction of the cult of Dione’, and it is very likely that Dione ‘had been present at Dodona as Zeus’s female consort since time immemorial’. Indeed, the Dodoneian pair has been connected to the feminine theonym diwija/diuja attested in Mycenaean tablets, since this is the feminine counterpart of Zeus’s name (Myc. *diweus), and the name Διώνη ‘is the Ionic outcome of an earlier *ΔιϜ–ώνα–, where ΔιϜ– is the zero grade of the root of Ζεύς and –ώνᾱ is a suffix made up of Indo-European ingredients’. A direct relation between diwija/diuja and Dione, though widely maintained, is not supported by these (different) name formations. One should however note that a possible reading of pe-re-*82, close to diuja in tablet PY Tn 316 and likely a theonym, is pe-re-ja2/wja = πέλεια ‘dove-goddess’, matching the πέλεια (‘dove’), typically associated with Dodona, and Aphrodite. Yet there is no agreement on how to read phonograph *82. Thus, while it is perhaps incautious to state that ‘Zeus’s first wife was Dione’, there is certainly no dearth of evidence for Dione’s integration in the divine system of early Greek epic poetry, nor in cult nor, indeed, in aspects of the Orphic tradition which probably reach back well into the Archaic period."

- Bernardo Ballesteros, On Gilgamesh and Homer: Ishtar, Aphrodite and the Meaning of A Parallel

"There was another woman, Alkmene, daughter of Elektryon who was his people’s champion. She left home and hearth for Thebes, this bride of warlike Amphitryon. Unrivaled in all the land for her beauty and stature, she was second to no mortal woman whose child was sired by a god, in the sharpness of her wit. Her face and dark eyelids wafted the charms of Aphrodite the golden; she honored her husband from the depths of her heart, and honored him as no other woman of equal beauty." - (Pseudo-)Hesiod, The Shield of Herakles, trans. Athanassakis

Supremely beautiful, tall, intelligent and loyal? Damn!

"Themis is untranslatable. A gift of the gods and a mark of civilized existence, sometimes it means right custom, proper procedure, social order, and sometimes merely the will of the gods (as revealed by an omen, for example) with little of the idea of right. … custom, tradition, folk-ways, mores, whatever we may call it, the enormous power of 'it is (or is not) done.'"

- The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley

"And Zeus as sovereign male appropriates a quality that the text has attributed to him from the start. For just as Odysseus alone is πολύμητις “he of much mêtis” from the start of his epic, so Zeus is μητίετα “endowed with mêtis” from the start of the Theogony, and just as Odysseus wove a mêtis for himself before Athena wove one for him, so Zeus outwits the goddess Metis with his own mêtis … Zeus “attacks Metis with her own weapons,” the αἱμύλιοι λόγοι “wily words” (Theogony 890), and the text calls him μητίετα even before his defeat of the goddess. Such chronological or causal inconsistency is a typical feature of mythic expression, but here it also contributes to the goal of the text to validate Zeus’ rule: Zeus is able to acquire mêtis and the sovereignty it brings because he has already always possessed it, and to a greater degree than his rival, Κρόνος ἀγκυλομήτις “Cronus of the crooked-mêtis.” In fact, the need to appropriate mêtis through prior possession of mêtis is, as Detienne and Vernant show, characteristic of several myths of conquering heroes. This “inconsistency” is, therefore, at the heart of the “myth” of valid sovereignty or the “right to rule”: the ruler takes what has always been inherently his own."

- Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought by Ann Bergren

"In the myth first attested in Panyassis, by way of Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.14.4), Adonis dies twice—once in the underworld when possessed by Persephone, and also gored by a boar. The tale of the joint possession of the handsome youth by two powerful goddesses and Adonis’s annual stay in the underworld became popular during the fifth century and held lasting appeal. After Panyassis, the first reference to the sharing of Adonis by two deities comes from Athenian comedy, in a fragment of Plato Comicus (PCG vii fr. 3). In a twist on Panyassis’s narrative, a speaker explains that two divinities will lead to the youth’s demise, not the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone, but rather an unnamed female and male deity: O Kinyras, king of the hairy-assed Cypriots, Your child is by nature most beautiful and most marvelous Of all humans, but two divinities will destroy him, She being rowed by secret oars, and he rowing them. (fr. 3) The two divinities that will destroy the youth are modified by a passive and active participle (one “being rowed,” ἐλαυνομένη, the other “rowing,” ἐλαύνων) used in a sexual sense. Athenaeus (Deipn. 456a–b) reports that the two divinities are none other than Aphrodite and Dionysus, who both desired Adonis, and the Hellenistic Phanocles (fr. 3 Powell) confirms that Dionysus is the male divinity to whom Plato Comicus alludes. The fragment highlights Adonis’s ambiguous sexual status, as he is figured as both an active lover of a goddess and a passive beloved of a male god."

- The Athenian Adonia in Context: The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice by Laurialan Reitzammer

"Art suggests a stronger congruence between the imperfect, monstrous forms of Hera's two sons than literature does, for in return to Olympus scenes Hephaestus is often depicted with severely twisted feet, which accordingly recall Typhon's anguipede form. An ancient variant of Hephaestus' myth, already in the Iliad, tells that he was lamed rather when Zeus hurled him from heaven for helping Hera against him. And in this he parallels Typhon who, the Theogony tells, crashes to earth lamed when overcome by Zeus, and is then hurled down again into Tartarus. In his final confinement too Typhon is associated with Hephaestus: the Theogony compares him to the tin melted in the mountains under the guidance of Hephaestus, whilst, according to Pindar, he 'sends up the most terrible fountains of Hephaestus'. But Aeschylus and Nicander co-opt Hephaestus to serve as guard over Typhon and as confiner of him at this point, setting his anvils over him and working his metals on top of his body."

- Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden