Classics and the Western Canon discussion

The lessons to learn from these myths are pretty clear, aren't they? Do NOT mess with the gods -- they are jealous, and when they get mad, they get more than even.

Challenge one to a contest, and even if you win, you lose. But one has to wonder, did the myth cause the Greeks to have more appreciation for spiders than most of us do? (Of course, they didn't have baths for the spiders to be in.)

And do NOT lord your fertility over a goddess's. Bad, bad, bad.

Some of the myth messages evade me. These ones for sure don't!

"A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body, (150)
Like Niobe, all tears: -- why she, even she --..."

I case you wondered just what Hamlet was referring to here, you need wonder no longer.

Another instance of an Ovid Shakespeare sighting.

I'm reminded of the famous anecdote:

After attending a recital by Heifetz, George Bernard Shaw sent a letter to the violinist:

My dear Heifetz,

Your recital has filled me and my wife with anxiety. If you provoke a
jealous God by playing with such super-human perfection, you will die
young. I earnestly advise you to play something badly every night before
going to bed instead of saying your prayers. No mortal should presume to
play faultlessly.

That's an interesting anecdote. A lot of Ovid's myths seem to try to explain why bad things happen to good people. Sometimes the people are prideful or actively defying the gods, but a fair amount of people were just living their lives until some god gets a bee in their bonnet and changes them into a bird.

(What's with all the birds, anyway? Change me into a cat or something cool like a shark.)

Arachne, possibly too proud of her own weaving accomplishments given the ultimate consequence, goads the god, Minerva, into a contest. Surprise, surprise, the gods judge Minerva the winner and Arachne is turned into a spider. There's a saying: "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" -- is Arachne a fool? Surely Arachne knows enough about the gods to know that she can't win the contest and that there will be consequences -- very unpleasant ones? This all reminds me of people who try the beat the system: they gamble large amounts of money in Las Vegas hoping to win big, or they indulge in drugs, thinking that they won't become addicted. There's a character trait associated with these types of people, but I can't put a name to it!

It's also very interesting to me to see how the names of gods and mortals in these myths end up being part of our language, as in the case of Arachne.

I've been thinking about Niobe and trying to think of examples of how her thoughts relate to today's world. Her opinion of herself and her family seems to be related to her promotion of her own status - vanity. For this the gods put her in her place. But, what if the gods are considered as metaphors for laws of nature rather than having the character traits of human beings. If we did this, then Niobe would know the consequences, which would make her a very stupid person. Sort of like knowing that if you step off the edge of a very tall building you will die when you hit the ground. Or, as my mother used to day, "People who put their hands in the fire are going to get burned.!"

Thoughts, anyone?

Elizabeth wrote: "There's a character trait associated with these types of people, but I can't put a name to it!..."

Hubris?

It always strikes me how easy it often is to recognize traits in others, but strain to see, let alone acknowledge, our own personal variety of them. Still, I like the idea that stories are one of the ways we develop our senses of the ambiguities and the differences.

On his excellent Metamorphoses pages* Larry Brown suggests that there is an important change halfway book 6. Up to (and including) the story of Niobe humans suffer at the hands of the gods - sometimes mistreated, at other times rightfully punished. Starting with the drama of Procne & Tereus however, the gods take a step back, from here on humans suffer mainly at their own hands.

* http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/f...

Wendel wrote: "On his excellent Metamorphoses pages* Larry Brown suggests that there is an important change halfway book 6. ...http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/f......"

Wendel -- thank you for this link. Much to mine from those, including so many illustrations. (I almost missed that there are multiple sections, all indicated at the bottom of the first page.)

Patrice wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Arachne, possibly too proud of her own weaving accomplishments given the ultimate consequence, goads the god, Minerva, into a contest. Surprise, surprise, the gods judge Minerva ..."

Patrice and Lily, I was thinking about each of your comments above and realized that Lily refers to Niobe and Patrice refers to Arachne, which then made me realize that these two stories are very similar and yet very different.

Arachne wants to compete with the best of the best weavers, whereas Niobe wants to compete based upon her progeny - for which she may only take one-half the credit and the very most. I see hubris is Niobe and an ending that results in the destruction of her children, whereas I see something much more noble in Arachne motive for competing, and she was shown mercy in that her work gained immortality through spiders webs!

On the other hand, Minerva did tell Arachne

"Heed my advice: seek all the fame you wish as best of mortal weavers, but admit the goddess as your superior in skill;"

Martin, Charles (2009-01-31). Metamorphoses: A New Translation (p. 190). Norton. Kindle Edition.

Another thought occurs to me. Since Ovid chose to connect these two stories in his poem, I wonder if he was making a comparison between himself as represented by Arachne (his poem will gain immortality) and the Roman leader Augustus as represented by Niobe?

Patrice wrote: "The "Fall", the Tower of Babel, Prometheus, etc. Men want to know and want to create and do magnificent things. Then the gods slap their hands for overreaching. Yes, hubris. But why?"

Just out of curiosity, how do the Rabbis interpret the Fall and the Tower of Babel?

Above it was asked, what is wrong with knowing and creating ...

I am no expert, but it seems to me that Greek wisdom was found in moderation in all things. Stay in balance. So, for example, you may weave and excel and actually beat Athena (Minerva) in a contest, but it's not wise to go there. Better to weave well, know your place and stay unnoticed. So soon as you stand out and start getting noticed, you're bound to make enemies of those who are your superiors (betters), be they gods or nobles or others in power, and they, in their jealousy, can make things miserable for you and yours.

I don't think the western way is moderation at all. It's be all you can be, reach for the stars.... and like someone mentioned above about Mexicans seeing us in a race, we really ARE in a race in the US, always striving for a little bit more.

And that, incidentally is what I saw in the Genesis story that was mentioned here too. NOT that knowing is bad, but that God gave Adam and Eve every tree, but this one tree. They had everything else... so what did they want?? The one tree they could not have... because that is human nature. So I guess I look at the story more from an etiological perspective of 'this was what humanity was like from the start: ambitious and also greedy--- never quite content with what we have, we always want either more, or that which we do not have. --- And backing up into the Greek theme above, I think the Greek wisdom of moderation was that, you can never have it all, there is always more, so if you want it all, you're chasing the wind and bringing on enemies, so how about just being content with what you have and live life quietly and unnoticed??

Lene

@11Elizabeth wrote: "...Patrice and Lily, I was thinking about each of your comments above and realized that Lily refers to Niobe..."

Elizabeth -- well, really not. I was responding to your Msg 5. But I do think "hubris" can appropriately be applied to both Arachne and Niobe, although, as you point out, they are somewhat different case studies of pride gone astray. (Are there differences in the ways and extent to which we react to female pride versus to male pride? We will certainly see examples of both among these myths.)

Somehow, the myth of Arachne usually reminds me of the legend regarding William Tell about how the persistence of a spider in spinning her web encouraged him to persevere. I believe the moral is similar in Charlotte's Web?

http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/drupal/

A modern digital technical "Arachne" that I just stumbled across while looking for material on Typhoeus. In a cursory look, it appears as if the analogy is a web of archeological information.

Lene wrote: "Above it was asked, what is wrong with knowing and creating ...

I am no expert, but it seems to me that Greek wisdom was found in moderation in all things. Stay in balance. So, for example, you ma..."

Really interesting point. But there might be a distinction to be made between the ideals of the heroic age that Ovid seems to draw from and the classical ideals of the 4th century. I don't think Homer held moderation to be an ideal, at least not in the way that Socrates would later on. In that sense American society is more like the Heroic age (7th cent. BCE) age of Homer than the more reasonable age of Plato and Aristotle.

In other ways we are more like the classical Athenians -- our political system is certainly more like this -- but the American competitive spirit seems to me to have more in common with the likes of Achilles and Odysseus than the moderation espoused by Socrates. The combination of these two ideals -- competition and moderation -- creates some interesting conflicts in modern society.

Ovid's Rome was much more like Homeric Greece, I agree. That's why I thought a distinction should be made. Moderation was a hallmark of Socratic philosophy, which is obviously not what Ovid is meditating upon. I think we are today much more influenced by the Greek notion of moderation than first century Romans were.

Lene wrote: "Above it was asked, what is wrong with knowing and creating ...

I am no expert, but it seems to me that Greek wisdom was found in moderation in all things. Stay in balance. So, for example, you may weave and excel and actually beat Athena (Minerva) in a contest, but it's not wise to go there. Better to weave well, know your place and stay unnoticed. "

That's an excellent point.

Thomas wrote: "Ovid's Rome was much more like Homeric Greece, I agree. That's why I thought a distinction should be made. Moderation was a hallmark of Socratic philosophy, which is obviously not what Ovid is medi..."

It was also a hallmark of Aristotelian thinking, and the motto over the doorway of the Temple at Delphi.

Were the Greeks always striving to be best?

Yes, I think their games, Olympic and other games, dealt with trying to be best among humans, but I do think, as the story of Arachne shows, that when you want to be better than the Gods, that was a whole other bowl of wax from trying to outcompete another human in athletics. This shows itself, also in the story of Niobe, who had 7 sons and 7 daughters and bragged that she was 'better' than Letho, who only had two kids: Apollo and Artemis. Her brag did not go over so well.

And then there is Hippolytus (vis a vis Euripides), who exclusively devoted himself to Artemis and not to Aphrodite (he was out of balance), and all the trouble visited on his head for his lack of moderation on that count.

Not an Ovid expert, and perhaps this has been discussed before, but Ovid seemed to me a bit outrageous, and it seems to me that we have to take his representations of the gods and the myths with a grain of salt. He may not present an 'orthodox' (if such a notion exists in Rome) religious perspective, but more of a 'shock' perspective on many myths that we have no other sources for than Ovid. If any of you have read his Art of Love, he seems tongue in cheek and out to get a reaction from people.

Lene in CO

Since he got banished, it's not clear Ovid understood his own messages -- there are places to compete and places to avoid competition. The basic idea sometimes becomes "choose your battles."

I quite agree with Lene's comments that it is easy to assign certain motivations like intentional provocation to Ovid's writings. But, we must realize we are interpreting text to reach across centuries to assess what drove Ovid to write as he did.

Patrice wrote: "I did hear one rabbi say that the snake actually did us a favor because he encouraged man to "know". Had we stayed in Eden we would have been perennial children. ..."

I remember asking a Lutheran pastor what he called "the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question" in my first ever conversation about religion as an atheist. He said that it was better not to know some things. I disagreed back then. But thinking back on it now, he does have a point. To "know" something, in the Biblical sense, means to have intercourse with something, to be intimately familiar with it. To have the knowledge of evil would entail that the person become evil in himself. It's not objective knowledge, but experiential knowledge of evil, an appropriation. Something it is better not to have. To use an analogy, it is like health and sickness. A person in good health doesn't have any knowledge of sickness, but only when he becomes sick, does he know what sickness is like, and what health is in a relative sense.

Nemo wrote: "Patrice wrote: "I did hear one rabbi say that the snake actually did us a favor because he encouraged man to "know". Had we stayed in Eden we would have been perennial children. ..."

I remember as..."

That's excellent, Nemo. And Lene, it seems to me, too, that Ovid is going for the shock card.

Patrice wrote: "How did the elephant get his trunk? How did the tiger get his stripes? Seems similar to Ovid, doesn't it? ..."

Indeed, aetiology (explaining the origin of words - distinct from their meaning) is central to the Metamorphoses. Implying that there is a story behind everything, an extra dimension created by our mind.

Of course , these are just stories, myths. They should not be held true, we should not pretend to know what cannot be known. But as long as we see with the eyes of our imagination nothing is permanent, everything changes and is forever young.

The idea of etiology seems fitting for myths and for religion at large. We probably need to be careful not to confuse a western scholarly pursuit of a topic with the information we gain on that same topic from myths. Myths are obviously deep in a more nebulous and more difficult to interpret way.

I would say that it isn't that Adam and Eve having knowledge t is bad in the Genesis story. I see their immoderate appetite as bad. It is all about eating and not eating, about some form of gluttony on their part (seeing that something is good and then immediately having to eat it, rather than waiting, thinking, asking permission) I do not think it's bad that mankind wants to know about stuff, it's perhaps bad that for starters, they have no contentment with what they already have, and no moderation, no courtesy, in the way they seek new knowledge from things that do not belong to them. They are 'guests' of sorts in God's garden, and he has explained the rules, and they 'sneak' their fill from a tree that is forbidden. Is that a comment that knowledge is bad? Personally I think it's more about the way they go about gaining it, the breach of trust that occurs because they are not following decorum than it is about God wanting to withhold knowledge from them as a matter of principle.

Patrice wrote: "Good question. When it comes to Jews no two agree on anything. I did hear one rabbi say that the snake actually did us a favor because he encouraged man to "know". Had we stayed in Eden we wou..."
So true! Yes it's the rebellious and over individualistic view on the random and perhaps even blind free will that manifests evil, not just being someone or thinking for yourself, it's making everything over me making my only my rules. Definitely in a coded way the Bible, specially Genesis, and Milton's Paradise Lost manifests that reality or as skeptics call it, theory, no harm, but proving comes way later, and simple faith pushes forward a leap transcendentally into thing beyond any scope the tower of Babel can ever do. So why is there evil? For me it's mistake or ego sin, not Prometheus forethought, rebellion, not good use of free will, try individuals and righteous as well are I believe living gospels or theatre plays for the angels. Sorry for going from literature to religion but literature for me includes every human sphere respectively.

Lene wrote: "Above it was asked, what is wrong with knowing and creating ...

I am no expert, but it seems to me that Greek wisdom was found in moderation in all things. Stay in balance. So, for example, you ma..."

Beautiful epiphany and conclusion! That's how I live my life! if not we will be just idiots and automats stepping endlessly on the same sharp stone, like sysyphus, so there is redemption, even for feisty Prometheus right on the razor's edge, like most crucial stuff!

Laurele wrote: "Nemo wrote: "Patrice wrote: "I did hear one rabbi say that the snake actually did us a favor because he encouraged man to "know". Had we stayed in Eden we would have been perennial children. ..."

..."
There must be an answer and meaning and purpose, such a world after sin happened, then everything comes along in dialectic..

Lene wrote: "Above it was asked, what is wrong with knowing and creating ...

I am no expert, but it seems to me that Greek wisdom was found in moderation in all things. Stay in balance. So, for example, you ma..."

The world in your measure, or yourself in measure of the world, or ideal world, like Taoists Heaven concept...

Wendel wrote: "Of course , these are just stories, myths. They should not be held true, we should not pretend to know what cannot be known."

To us, yes. Or at least to most of us.

But to the Greeks and Romans?

Everyman wrote: "Wendel wrote: "Of course , these are just stories, myths. They should not be held true, we should not pretend to know what cannot be known."

To us, yes. Or at least to most of us.

But to the Gre..."
I guess everything is relative and this particular word is precisely relevant in Greeks and Romans, so ambiguous, wavery, bent or undefined in a moral standard with all those gods who raped and so forth...

Elizabeth wrote: "I've been thinking about Niobe and trying to think of examples of how her thoughts relate to today's world. ..."

I can think of two examples:

First, what matters is quality not quantity. Niobe had seven times more children than Latona, but her children were not endowed with power and immortality as Apollo and Diana were. They would have been beaten by the twins in any contest, and, if engaged in a duel in defense of their mother's honor, they would have been killed too.

Second, riches, fertility and longevity are not under the control of the mortals, so there is no ground for boasting. The complacency of Niobe reminds me of The Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12.