#hellenic chat

Am I aware that "Father of Monsters is actually an epithet for Typhon? Yes. Will I still be using it for Poseidon in this story? Also yes.

The portrayal of the Amazons in the Riordanverse was not. It.

There is so much more to the legends of Amazon and Themiskyra, and literally none of the myths with actual base to them mention the warrior women as man hating. In fact, they are actively called "man-loving". Granted, they were also called "man-killing" but did people forget that they were warriors? Warriors kill, and idk how much people know about ancient warrior ethics, but killing children, old people and women who weren't participants of battle was generally considered a grave sin. So obviously the Amazons were called "man killers". Killing women went against the very essence of being a warrior, but men were literally on the dam battlefield.

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Also, why are all the powerful women in the Riordanverse somehow made out to be villainish?? Hera, the literal queen of the Gods and an extremely venerated deity of the Hellenics (y'all her epithets are so fucking cool), is given such a bad character arc. Athena, such an important goddess, and why is she shown like she is? Why is she shown so vengeful against the Romans? She was nearly more important than motherfucking Mars in Roman religion. Mars! The literal Father of the damn city!

The Amazons are given a bad representation, and then Piper is a "quirky" girl and I'm.. disappointed.

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Anyways, I just wanted to make clear that I'm also going to change a lot of things about Percy Jackson and The Olympians, and in The Lost Hero. Those changes will be made known when relevant.

Also to be noted is that the Gods are still assholes, but they do help. They are present in their children's lives, even if they can't show themselves due to the Rules of Existence. They are there, they are supporting their children.

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List of Gods Percy respects:

Sally Jackson (a goddess in her own right)

Poseidon

Amphitrite

Triton (don't tell him that)

Artemis

Apollon

Hestia (obviously)

Persephone

Hades (whose character is going to be changed drastically because canon is horrifically inaccurate)

Demeter

A few others

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The thing about Percy going down to Atlantis twice a week and about him having bi weekly dinners with the whole family? Yeah, none of the Gods know about it. Just you watch as the whole thing blows up.

I mainly use epithets in describing Hera and the other Gods because in Ancient Greece, names were believed to have immense power, and calling a God by their given moniker was belived to attract their attention. Percy does not want any more attention from the Gods than is necessary, fuck you very much.

Also what do you think about the change in the Amazon way of life? I found the books very disappointing as i already said, so I changed it up hehe.

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OKAY OKAY So no source actually lists Perseis as the wife of Helios. She is Specifically the Mother of his children-

Sources:

Homer, Odyssey 10. 139 ff (trans. Shewring) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) : "We came to the island of Aiaia (Aeaea); here Kirke (Circe) dwelt, a goddess with braided hair, with human speech and with strange powers; the magician Aeetes was her brother, and both were were the radiant sun-god's [Helios'] children; their mother was Perse, Okeanos' (Oceanus') daughter." Hesiod, Theogony 955 ff : "To Helios, the unwearied Sun, the glorious daughter of Okeanos (Oceanus), Perseis, bore Kirke (Circe) and the King Aeetes." Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 156 : "Children of Sol (the Sun) [Helios]. Circe by Persis, daughter of Oceanus, and Pasiphae."

Now, this obviously happened a lot with Gods, and was not really considered an affair by the standards of the time. I've spoken some on this before so check my tag for more information.

Rhodes, however, IS called his wife.

Sources:

Pindar, Olympian Ode 7. 13 ff (trans. Conway) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) : "Praise the sea maid, daughter of Aphrodite, bride of Helios (the Sun), this isle of Rhodes." Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 28 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Poseidon married Amphitrite, and had as children Triton and Rhode, whom Helios (the Sun) made his wife."

(There are more sources discussing them, but these are the ones explicitly using the word wife).

While Perseis has the older sources mentioning her with Helios, Rhodes has the specificity of being his wife. So in this situation, Rhodes would be his wife and Perseis a mother of his children.

I mean yeah but the Hearth is where you go for aid and council, it's the center of the home, center of the city, it is where you go for aid and help and to be at peace.

Of course the hearth aids in strength, you do all your home activities around it. You find peace and food and rest and recovery at the hearth.

Hmm, not sure where to start here so I'll list various notes about the beliefs!

First! The ancients did actually know the Earth was a sphere, including the Greeks. This is important to Astronomy, and was learned with Astronomy. Empedocles and Anaxagoras learned via a lunar eclipse, as they watched the shadow of the earth cover the moon.

Of course there were other methods of determining this too, such as ships! When a ship comes over the horizon you see the top first, which points towards the Earth being a sphere. This is brought up by quite a few astronomy texts of the time!

But Lunar Eclipses were important for astronomy!

Here's a picture of how Aristarchus of Samos calculated the size of the Earth via a lunar eclipse! The bottom circle is the sun, then the Earth, and then the moon. This isn't the only way this was done, but it's a cool method!

Other things... hmm, I suppose Aristotle's theory of the four fundamental elements is notable. Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Which was further separated into Hot and Cold and Wet and Dry. He believed all of space, and all of the Earth, was composed of these elements. Earth was the heaviest and fire the lightest, and the lighter the element the further it got from the center of the universe.

My personal favorite aspect of beliefs is the Wandering Stars vs Fixed Stars. Or what we know as Planets vs Stars. The Astra Planeta The Greeks noticed some stars moved around a lot more than others, and while they didn't know about planets they did know these stars were different. These moved around the celestial sphere of the universe and the heavens.

The heavens were argued to be made of a fifth element, unique to them, the quintessence.

There are "two rings" of this universe, the terrestrial range (with the moons orbit marking its boundary) and the outer/heavenly orbit which contained the rest. Things like comets and the wandering stars were in the terrestrial orbit while the constellations were in the heavenly orbit.

There's so much more I could say, but I'll just provide some sources to read up more and say that we still use a lot of the terms and theories today even if refined lol.

The time frame of Persephone's birth isn't something I can find a consistent source on, many mention her birth as a side note more than a detail. So I'm not sure. I can't find mention of Persephone, which probably means she was born after but there's no guarantee of it.

Would you happen know anything about the significance of women wearing veils in Ancient Greece or at least be able to point me in the right direction?

I read that Icarius, Penelope’s father wasn't willing to let her leave with Odysseus until after she covered herself with a veil that apparently symbolized she was under Odysseus’s protection, but what I can’t find out how Icarus figured that out.

(Also, I’ve been trying to figure out which translation of the Odyssey to buy for myself and I think I’ve decided on Emily Wilson’s after seeing a post of yours this last week, so thanks!)

We don't actually know for sure what the reasoning for it was, though there are multiple possible reasons.

A veil was after all a symbol of modesty, and even status to a certain extent. Especially in its original purpose (you could be lashed in the Assyrian times for wearing a veil if you were a slave). So it's possible that it was tied to that.

Veils and weddings have been tied together for a long time. The earliest time that we have reasoning for is the Roman's, in latest record I know. Which was a symbol of the husbands authority or something along those lines. The Greeks? We don't really know the reason behind it.

Also is it true that Artemis was one of the Patron Gods of Sparta along with Ares and did Artemis have any followers who were male or were women only aloud to follow her?

I did aaaages ago. I got Athena.

Sparta revered a number of Gods, including Athena funnily enough. But yes, Artemis was very popular with them.

Artemis had a huge number of male worshippers and followers. She hunted alongside several men. She even allowed men to spend time with her group, as long as they respected the boundaries. She was heavily worshipped for hunting, wilderness survival, and wild animals as a whole.

The times men got punished for being around her was when they lied about being men (sneaking in disguised as women while being men, usually because of a crush on a Huntress with Artemis), peeping on them bathing (multiple instances with Artemis punishing them), or pissing off Apollo with their behavior (some versions of Orion).