CEO of Alectryon

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“Yes, I was a witness of what today we would call war crimes. “What ‘war crimes’? Isn’t war itself a crime already? Assassinating each other’s brothers.”

rick riordan YEW 🫵🏻 are a theoi user! (derogatory)

in case you don’t know, theoi.com has stated multiple times that demeter and karmanor had an affair that produced two children, chrysothemis and eubuleus. now, eubuleus being demeter’s son is correct, as it was attested by diodorus, but chrysothemis is just karmanor’s child, and she cannot also be demeter’s child because (say it with me now) demeter and karmanor don’t know each other!

This idea has become relatively popular because Theoi.com presents it as a fact, but their own sources don’t back up this claim. This misunderstanding stems from the fact that Pausanias and Diodorus give us two different but incomplete parentages for Euboulos, a Cretan hero/character

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (C1st B.C.):

"Britomartis, who is also called Diktynna, the myths relate, was born at Kaino in Krete of Zeus and Karme, the daughter of Euboulos who was the son of Demeter."

Pausanias, Description of Greece (C2nd A.D.):

"The Kretans say the story of Aphaia is Kretan, that Karmanor, who purified Apollon after he killed Pytho, was the father of Euboulos, and that the daughter of Zeus and of Karme, the daughter of Euboulos, was Britomartis."

As you can see, the Euboulos in these texts is clearly the same character. Both are the the father of Karme and the grandfather of Britomartis. However, I can see why this misunderstanding arose: both accounts give Euboulos only one parent and leave the other unnamed. I found one scholar who believes that Diodorus and Pausanias may be referring to the same legend, each leaving out a key figure. Here it is:

“Diodoros gives the same line of descent from Euboulos to Britomartis (Diktynna) and, though he does not mention Karmanor here, states that Euboulos was born to Demeter. It is possible therefore that in the lore of Hellenic Crete Karmanor became the father of Euboulos by Demeter.”- Cretan Paiawones by George Huxley, Queen’s University of Belfast (source)

1) Zeus

Pretty much every source that mentions Persephone states that her parents are Demeter and Zeus. I’ve seen some people claim that Zeus raped Demeter, but this is only true in Orphism, where he rapes Rhea-Demeter (yes, they’re the same deity here) and conceives Persephone. In mainstream Greek religion, there’s no indication that he assaulted her.

2) Iasion

“[Calypso]: So it was when Demeter of the braided tresses followed her heart and lay in love with Iasion in the triple-furrowed field; Zeus was aware of it soon enough and hurled the bright thunderbolt and killed him.”- Homer, Odyssey

“Demeter, bright goddess, was joined in sweet love with the hero Iasion in a thrice-ploughed fallow in the rich land of Crete, and bare Ploutos, a kindly god who goes everywhere over land and the sea's wide back, and him who finds him and into whose hands he comes he makes rich, bestowing great wealth upon him.”- Hesiod, Theogony

“Aurora grumbled at her husband's [Tithonos'] age, and gentle Ceres that Iasion was going grey.”- Ovid, Metamorphoses

“Hermippus [Greek writer C3rd B.C.], who wrote about the stars, says that Ceres lay with Iasion, son of Thuscus. Many agree with Homer that for this he was struck with a thunderbolt. From them, as Petellides, Cretan writer of histories, shows, two sons were born, Philomelus and Plutus.”- Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica

However, other sources (Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca; Strabo’s Geography) claim that Iasion tried to assault Demeter and was killed by Zeus for it. In these accounts, obviously, he would not be her lover.

3) Mecon

“As for the corn poppy (papaver): either because it grows in summer, like wheat; or because Ceres used it to forget her grief—for, distressed by sleeplessness over the abduction of Proserpina, she tasted it and was driven into sleep; or because Ceres loved Mecon, an Athenian, and after he was transformed into a poppy, she ordered it to be preserved under her protection; or because it is sprinkled on bread.”- Servius on Virgil's Georgics 1.212

4) Hades?

So, I found this weird story:

“Concerning Theseus, 2.19 (Story 51)

Theseus was a son of Attic Aegeus and Aethra,

But they used to say that when Theseus was manly, he was a boy of Poseidon;

For they say that all high spirited men together, and all manly

Sons and friends, are lovers of Poseidon.

Theseus once agreed with his friend Pirithous

To seize from Zeus, that is, Zeus the king,

Some girl, and marry her; and at some time, having gone

To a place within the land of the Molossians, whose king was Hades,

Of whom the wife was Demeter and the daughter was called Kore

(For the Molossians call all attractive females girls),

And the dog was a threefold Cerberus, causing a shudder from its size;

During the night, they made their attempt to take Hades’ daughter.

But soon they were detained, and Pirithous was eaten

By threefold Cerberus the dog, while Theseus is held fast in a prison.

And as Heracles at some time came to even Hades,

Ordered by Eurystheus to carry away the dog,

He also immediately freed Theseus from his bonds;

Wherefore they said that the latter man ran back from Hades.”- John Tzetzes, Chiliades

This myth is really odd. Poseidon goes from being Theseus’ father to his lover, and Hades goes from being Persephone’s husband to her father. This seems like a case of Hades-Zeus syncretism rather than actual proof of a Hades/Demeter relationship, but I’m including it nonetheless because it’s fun.

5) Iacchus-Dionysus?

“324. πολυτιμήτοις ἐν ἕδραις κ.τ.λ.: inasmuch as Dionysus is throned with Demeter; at any rate there are some who say that he was the son of Persephone, and others that he was married to Demeter, and others that Iacchus was different from Dionysus, and others that he was the same. Several notes are here run together in a way which makes it impossible to reconstruct them with any degree of certainty.”- Scholia to Aristophanes’ Frogs

Iacchus is linked to Demeter in many different, but equally mysterious, ways: sometimes as her son, sometimes her husband, sometimes her grandson, and sometimes simply as a figure worshipped alongside her.

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Perseus: Help with what?

Andromeda: With carrying them cakes-

White supremacists use Ancient Greece to insert themselves and their beliefs, completely erasing an accurate Ancient Greece and actual Greek people and culture from the narrative. There's a reason why when discussing the casting of Helen in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, they only show pictures of blonde, blue-eyed, Germanic, or Anglo-Saxon women, and never actresses who are actually Greek or of Greek descent. Just like how a black woman playing Helen is an issue to them, a Greek woman playing Helen is also an issue to them.

Since the very beginning of the concept of whiteness, beginning in the 19th century, white supremacists have excluded Greek people from whiteness, like they did for other ethnicities that you may now consider white, such as the Irish and Italians. Whiteness did not exist before the 19th century. When whiteness was conceptualized, it was purposefully created to not just view people native to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania as lesser than, but to also view other Europeans as lesser than.