#athenian theater

[emm-posts-things]

Some guys aren’t ready for a goth gf

- Medea, probably

#ancient greece #mythological #myth #mythology #greek literature #greek myth memes #medea #euripides #athenian theater #lit #ancient literature #literature #classic literature #classics #classicist #goth girl #goth gf #witch aesthetic

[blueheartbookclub]

Dionysian Delirium Unleashed: A Riveting Odyssey into Euripides' Bacchae

Euripides' timeless masterpiece, "Bacchae," as brilliantly translated by Gilbert Murray, serves as an electrifying exploration into the essence of human nature and the intoxicating power of the divine. This Athenian drama unfolds with an enigmatic title that hints at revelry, and indeed, the narrative plunges the audience into the captivating chaos of Dionysian rites. Murray's translation masterfully captures the raw energy and mysticism of the original text, plunging readers into a world where reason battles ecstasy, and the boundaries between mortals and gods blur into a thrilling dance of delirium.

The play centers around the god Dionysus, who descends upon Thebes to assert his divine identity. The portrayal of the erratic and orgiastic rituals of the Bacchantes, led by the charismatic yet enigmatic Dionysus, becomes a metaphorical journey into the deepest recesses of human psychology. Murray's linguistic prowess and sensitivity to the nuances of ancient Greek bring forth the rich tapestry of tragedy, ecstasy, and divine intervention that permeates every scene.

As the tension between Dionysus and the skeptical King Pentheus escalates, the audience is drawn into a complex web of power, belief, and the consequences of denying the divine. Murray's translation skillfully weaves together the poetic and the profound, ensuring that the play's philosophical undercurrents are as resonant today as they were in ancient Athens.

"Bacchae" is more than a dramatic spectacle; it is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of faith, reason, and the consequences of defying the divine order. Murray's translation adds a layer of accessibility without sacrificing the original's poetic brilliance, making this rendition an ideal entry point for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to Greek tragedy.

In conclusion, "Dionysian Delirium Unleashed" is a riveting journey through the mystical and tumultuous realm of "Bacchae," inviting readers to question the boundaries of sanity, embrace the divine within, and confront the consequences of resisting the call of the god of wine and revelry.

"Bacchae," of Euripides skillfully translated by Gilbert Murray is available in Amazon in paperback 10.99$ and hardcover 18.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 152

Language: English

Rating: 8/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

#Euripides #Bacchae #Athenian drama #Greek tragedy #Dionysian rituals #Divine ecstasy #Gilbert Murray translation #Ancient Greek theater #Thebes #Dionysus #Pentheus #Bacchantes #Tragedy and ecstasy #Greek mythology #Theater of the absurd #Ritual madness #Divine intervention #Theatrical mysticism #Power and belief #Mythological transformations #Greek classics #Poetic brilliance #Dramatic tension #Philosophical inquiry #Religious symbolism #Classical literature #Mythic confrontation #Enigmatic revelry #Athenian culture #Theatrical exploration

[blueheartbooks]

Dionysian Delirium Unleashed: A Riveting Odyssey into Euripides' Bacchae

Euripides' timeless masterpiece, "Bacchae," as brilliantly translated by Gilbert Murray, serves as an electrifying exploration into the essence of human nature and the intoxicating power of the divine. This Athenian drama unfolds with an enigmatic title that hints at revelry, and indeed, the narrative plunges the audience into the captivating chaos of Dionysian rites. Murray's translation masterfully captures the raw energy and mysticism of the original text, plunging readers into a world where reason battles ecstasy, and the boundaries between mortals and gods blur into a thrilling dance of delirium.

The play centers around the god Dionysus, who descends upon Thebes to assert his divine identity. The portrayal of the erratic and orgiastic rituals of the Bacchantes, led by the charismatic yet enigmatic Dionysus, becomes a metaphorical journey into the deepest recesses of human psychology. Murray's linguistic prowess and sensitivity to the nuances of ancient Greek bring forth the rich tapestry of tragedy, ecstasy, and divine intervention that permeates every scene.

As the tension between Dionysus and the skeptical King Pentheus escalates, the audience is drawn into a complex web of power, belief, and the consequences of denying the divine. Murray's translation skillfully weaves together the poetic and the profound, ensuring that the play's philosophical undercurrents are as resonant today as they were in ancient Athens.

"Bacchae" is more than a dramatic spectacle; it is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of faith, reason, and the consequences of defying the divine order. Murray's translation adds a layer of accessibility without sacrificing the original's poetic brilliance, making this rendition an ideal entry point for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to Greek tragedy.

In conclusion, "Dionysian Delirium Unleashed" is a riveting journey through the mystical and tumultuous realm of "Bacchae," inviting readers to question the boundaries of sanity, embrace the divine within, and confront the consequences of resisting the call of the god of wine and revelry.

"Bacchae," of Euripides skillfully translated by Gilbert Murray is available in Amazon in paperback 10.99$ and hardcover 18.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 152

Language: English

Rating: 8/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

#Euripides #Bacchae #Athenian drama #Greek tragedy #Dionysian rituals #Divine ecstasy #Gilbert Murray translation #Ancient Greek theater #Thebes #Dionysus #Pentheus #Bacchantes #Tragedy and ecstasy #Greek mythology #Theater of the absurd #Ritual madness #Divine intervention #Theatrical mysticism #Power and belief #Mythological transformations #Greek classics #Poetic brilliance #Dramatic tension #Philosophical inquiry #Religious symbolism #Classical literature #Mythic confrontation #Enigmatic revelry #Athenian culture #Theatrical exploration

[whencyclopedia]

Helen (Play)

Helen is a Greek tragedy by Euripides (c. 484-407 BCE). It is usually thought to have first been performed at the Great Dionysia of 412 BCE and was part of the trilogy that included Euripides' lost Andromeda. Helen recounts an unusual version of the myth of Helen of Troy in which a phantom decoy, an eidolon, replaces Helen in Troy while the real Helen awaits the end of the Trojan War in Egypt. Ever since its first performance, Euripides' Helen has puzzled and fascinated: in his Thesmophoriazusae, performed the year after Euripides' Helen, Greek comedy playwright Aristophanes would parody the “new Helen” (line 850). To this day, scholars continue to debate many aspects of Euripides' Helen, including its jarring juxtaposition of the comic and the devastating, its contemporary relevance, and its message about the nature of truth and reality.

Euripides

Born around 484 BCE, Euripides was the youngest of the three Athenian tragedians regarded as “canonical” since antiquity (the other two are Aeschylus and Sophocles). Of the 90 or so plays he composed during his lifetime, 18 survive in full (one of the tragedies transmitted under his name, Rhesus, is almost universally regarded as spurious). There are thus more surviving plays by Euripides than by Aeschylus and Sophocles put together, demonstrating that after his death Euripides soon eclipsed his two predecessors in popularity.

Little enough is known about Euripides' life, and what little information we have is obscured by fable and fancy. He was born to a family of hereditary priests on the island of Salamis, near Athens. He was said to have married twice, though both marriages ended acrimoniously. From one of his marriages, he had three sons, one of whom became a tragedian too. Above all, Euripides was reputed to have been a recluse, famously living in a cave in Salamis (which became a shrine to him after his death). Eventually, he retired to the court of King Archelaus of Macedon, where he died in 406 BCE.

Euripides is best known to us through his plays. These were performed at various festivals, chiefly the Dionysia and Lenaia, at huge outdoor theaters. Most of Euripides' plays were performed at Athens for audiences of locals and tourists, though some of his works would have been produced elsewhere: in Macedon, where Euripides spent the last years of his life, or Sicily, where he was apparently very popular. Even during his own lifetime, Euripides was known as the most adventurous and avant-garde of the great tragedians. This did not always translate to success, however. Over a career that spanned half a century (Euripides produced his first trilogy around 455 BCE and continued to compose tragedies until his death) Euripides won the first prize just four times during his life (a fifth time posthumously). On the other hand, Aeschylus was said to have been victorious 13 times and Sophocles 18. Euripides' tragedies – full of desperation, novelty, and relentless questioning – were sometimes regarded as sensational and even impious. But Euripides' fame and popularity grew after his death while that of Aeschylus and Sophocles declined. Today there are those that think of Euripides as the greatest of the Athenian tragedians.

Continue reading...

#History #Euripides #GreekLiterature #GreekTragedy #WHE #[ #]

[straightplayshowdown]

Indecent: The story of Sholem Asch’s controversial play, The God of Vengeance, and the passionate artists who risked everything to bring it to the stage. The story—about the daughter of a brothel owner who falls in love with one of her father’s prostitutes—was polarizing even at its first readings, with many of Asch’s fellows arising him to burn it. Nevertheless, it achieved great success on the stages of Europe and in the Yiddish theatre scene of downtown New York City. But when an English-translation was attempted on Broadway, the play—featuring the first kiss between women on a Broadway stage—proved too scandalous for the general public, and the entire cast was arrested and charged with obscenity. 

Arcadia: The show takes place in a single room on the Coverly estate in two separate times: the Regency period and the present. 1809 finds a household in transition, where an Arcadian English garden landscape is being uprooted to make way for picturesque Gothic gardens, complete with hermitage. Meanwhile, brilliant thirteen-year-old Lady Thomasina proposes a startling scientific theory that is only starting to be figured out more than 200 years later. In the present day, we find two competing scholars researching the world of the estate in the Regency Era.

Propaganda under the cut!

Indecent:

Best, most emotionally resonant play I have ever seen performed. It recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923, and for which the producer and cast were arrested and convicted on the grounds of obscenity. In God of Vengeance, the brothel owner's daughter falls in love with the female prostitute. Vogel's play goes far beyond recounting the censorship. It's a complex story that follows the show's playwright and performers and how their relationship to the material changes from the plays original run, to the Broadway censorship, to the Holocaust. It focuses on the need for hope and love.

A troupe of ghosts rise to keep alive the story of author Scholem Asch's most controversy play. In three languages & innumerable roles (including a turn by Katarina Lenk in the 2017 Broadway production) the lovers in God of Vengeance preserve for the stages of eternity one rain-soaked & sacred night. Meanwhile Asch, once a passionate defender of the plays love story against intracommunal accusations of fueling antisemitism and well, indecency...he gets quieter as Lemml becomes the stage manager of a story whose ending he will always forget. The play that convinced me that I could & would read Yiddish theater.

A breathtaking play about art, censorship, and Jewish lesbians, by THE Jewish lesbian. "He’s crafted a play that shrouds us in a deep, deep fog of human depravity: then like a lighthouse, those two girls. That’s a beacon I will remember."

Arcadia: 

it's the COOLEST. it's an exploration of entropy and how time scrambles popular perception and desire derails supposedly perfect plans and how knowledge makes its way through the years as sources get lost. 

it's about math and also lord byron is a character and there's a turtle

This is his best play (and pretty accessible for Stoppard). It’s an exploration of humanities vs. science, chaos theory, the interpretation of history, and also a love story. 

This is such a beautiful play about academia and how we do research and understand the past. And it's about love and friendship and biases and egos and so much more. 

THOMASINA: Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

#polls #round 1 #indecent #arcadia #the straight play showdown

[thegodwhocums]

The sacramental setting of the theater no doubt added a special dimension to the audience's reaction to Euripides' Bakkhai when it was eventually produced, for here was a play about the god Dionysos being performed in his very own precinct. But even more arresting must have been the devastating thrusts made by Euripides in the name of that god against the very Athenians who gave him lip service on those special days. Standing within sight of his own altar, Dionysos addresses the Athenian political and religious establishment in the person of Pentheus and says, in effect, "You have repressed the sexual and emotional essentials of the old agrarian religion and are ignorant of your own inner self. The price to be paid for this repression is a madness that will tear you and your civilization asunder."

Arthur Evans, “The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysos,” 1988

#arthur evans #Dionysos #theater #books #liberation #Pentheus #euripides #the bacchae

[kebriones]

In an elevator rn

How do you explain elevators to alcibiades

I think he'd understand elevators easily, because he was there when the parthenon was being built, and various machines like cranes were used in athenian theater performances as well, so he'd understand "basket that you get into and there's a mechanism on the top that pulls you up and down."

Electricity would be the problem, but I think even if "energy that goes through wires and makes things move" sounded like magic to him, he'd be like "oh okay". the buttons might be fascinating, judging by how fascinating they are to everyone, everyone likes pressing buttons. He might sit in there pressing buttons and going up and down for a bit.

[aceofcupsbiggestfan]

Lenaia

Lenaia is a four-day festival of the 12-15 of Gamelion. Lenaia was held in honor of Dionysos Lenaios and the Maenads, thought to originate in Dionysia. It was most commonly celebrated in Athens and lonia.

In Ancient Greece Lenaia was celebrated with a procession of women and symbols of Dionysos. A wine-mixing ritual could have also taken place. Carrying a representation of Dionysos, dancing Athenian girls carrying castanets and the thyrsus, lively competition were a few ways that the festival was celebrated.

Lenaia might have been traditionally connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries, though now it is seen as separate.

Lenaia is know for the Maeneds celebration. Maeneds, Dionysos' women worshippers, were knows as “Mad Women" They were known to get drunk, dance and follow the word of Dionysos in a group of merriment.

Now Hellenes can celebrate in a few ways.

• Eat, drink and be merry.

• Attend or put on plays or other forms of theater. Watch 'The Frogs' by Aristophanes

• Recite Orphic Hymns 30 and 45, Homeric Hymns I, VII and XXVI

• women's only night-time rite with dancing.

• witches might find it a good time for connection to their more wild side (this would also be a good time to explore The Devil in your work)

Links:

https://www.hellenion.org/festivals

#hellenic polytheism #hellenic witch #hellenism #hellenic deities #hellenic polytheistic #hellenic worship #hellenistic #lenaia #lenaia festival #dionysus #dionysos #dionysian #gamelion #dionysus worship

[firsttarotreader]

The character sounds a little bit like Pedro.

"In "After Aristophanes' Frogs," Dionysus is a central character and the protagonist of the play. Dionysus is the Greek god of wine, fertility, and theater, among other things. He is often depicted as a wild and unpredictable deity, embodying the dualities of chaos and order, ecstasy and madness.

In this play, Dionysus is portrayed as a somewhat bumbling and naive figure, but with a deep passion for the arts and a desire to rejuvenate the state of Athenian theater. He is determined to bring back the great playwright Euripides from the underworld in order to revitalize the creative spirit of the city.

Dionysus embarks on a journey to the underworld, facing various challenges and obstacles along the way. Despite his flaws and shortcomings, he is ultimately a well-intentioned character who is willing to take risks and make sacrifices for the greater good of the arts.

Throughout the play, Dionysus is portrayed with a combination of humor, wit, and vulnerability, making him a complex and engaging character for audiences to follow and root for as he navigates the trials and tribulations of his quest."

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/365917538486804989/

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/48/7f/ae/487fae2de27c897d9915c2cd5ad4b215.jpg

https://assets.playbill.com/editorial/_defaultEnhancement/c7b66957c0c5ec9775705d18f878b7ba-oldcomedyprod460.jpg

Wow! That’s beautiful, anon, thank you! Dionysus! 🥰🥰🥰🥰

And while I was reading about him this morning, I actually thought he sounds a lot like Oberyn Martell too. Pedro was always drawn to those “free spirit” roles! 🥰🥰

#theatre #dionysus #oberyn martell #old comedy

[azspot]

Since the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 and its subsequent acquisition by Disney in 2009, Marvel has perfected a business model predicated upon the continual release of largely formulaic action films. These films, primarily drawing their emotional weight from nostalgia and self-reference, tend to lack artistic and moral complexity and creative risk—and reflect a political ethos that is attuned to liberal-woke sensibilities but nonetheless glorifies imperialism. The same way ancient Athenian theater reinforced civic ideals of democracy, justice, and honor using the heroes and deities from Hellenic mythology, the Marvel Cinematic Universe draws on the mythology of American comic books to reinforce our culture’s dominant ideals, those of perpetual conflict against perpetual enemies in a world order characterized by American military and political hegemony. The films hardly make any effort to justify these ideals, much less critically interrogate them. The movies’ characters do at times use certain leftist critiques, such as the language of class antagonism or the concern about wealth and power being abused by individuals. But these critiques end up neutralized in favor of the status quo.

U.S. Empire and the Marvel Moral Universe

#movies #marvel

[shirayuki7]

To preface, I don't play the assassins creed games. Too many buttons and too small words even at the largest setting. BUT! My husband asked me to play Odyssey because I wrote my bachelor's thesis about the Peloponnesian war times.

TL:DR: as someone who can speak confidently about ancient Greek history, particularly the Peloponnesian war, I appreciate Odyssey a lot!!

Long answer: okay so. I've only just left the beginning island, and I appreciate this game so much. The music. The landscape. The background noise and people talking. The goats. But you know what I appreciate most?

The women.

Particularly the depiction of these ancient women. It varies, obviously, but I have yet to see a woman in here who isn't actively about her business. Now to brag a little. I read Thucydaddy's The History of the Peloponnesian War cover to cover during my thesis. I didn't need to read the whole thing but I'm glad I did. It got me to really see and understand the ancient greeks zeitgeist/mentality. Thucydaddy didn't write about women tho. Who did? Playwrights and Plato and Xenophon. Particularly Xenophon. Now, what he had to say wasn't nice or really even pleasant from a modern perspective. If we took his words at face value, we would see a world in which women weren't valued, never left their homes, and were simply stupid baby making machines. Because that's how Xenophon thought they should be. SHOULD BE. not WAS. My thesis was based on two assumptions about ancient greece: one, that these ancient writers didn't write what they saw but what they wanted to see (And two, that women attended the Athenian theater). Xenophon's expectations for the women around him were completely illogical! How could she stay home all day and still get things done? Not all women were wealthy enough to have slaves. Here's where I appreciate Odyessy. The women are out and about. They are the spokesperson of groups. They have things to do and people to see. I was so pleased to see an old woman as the priestess of the temple of Zeus. The actual ancient greek society was slightly more egalitarian than the ancient writers want us to believe. Society, religion, and economy would stop if the Greek woman did exactly as Xenophon (or worse, Aristotle) said they should do.

The creators of Odyessy were smart enough to see that, or they did their research (Particularly of the leading researcher herself, Sarah Pomeroy. I highly recommend reading her if you're interested in ancient greek women history). And I just really appreciate it, as a researcher and historian. I know nothing about the assassins creed fandom or how this game was received when it came out. I just want to say to the casual history dudebros who didn't like it based on its societal "inaccuracies": get fucked. This isn't "feminist woke shit", these developers did their research and they did it well. Deal with it.

I look forward to playing the game more and seeing how they depict Peracles (Thucydaddy's golden boy) and the other Athenian generals/statemen. Maybe I'll be able to go to Athens and meet my number one guy, Euripides? We'll see!!

#assassins creed #assassins creed odyssey #history #ancient greece #seriously tho #go read sarah pomeroy #her 1975 'goddesses wives whores and slaves' is very easy to read and just blew my mind #i love it #i want to meet her someday #and tell her how she totally 180ed my perspective on the entire ancient world

[shezasag]

today at work it was a topic of conversation about who's worse - debate kids or theater kids. and it's actually a trick question bc they're the same exact type of annoying, it's just contextually different. debates are ultimately theatrical productions with their own set of rules behind their performances but it's all for the purpose of putting on a show, a little farce, their own attempts at athenian glory, thinking they're going to become the next great Mind for rote memorization of statistics and factoids as their script.

#this is cosigned as a former theater kid thank you

[straightplayshowdown]

Indecent: The story of Sholem Asch’s controversial play, The God of Vengeance, and the passionate artists who risked everything to bring it to the stage. The story—about the daughter of a brothel owner who falls in love with one of her father’s prostitutes—was polarizing even at its first readings, with many of Asch’s fellows arising him to burn it. Nevertheless, it achieved great success on the stages of Europe and in the Yiddish theatre scene of downtown New York City. But when an English-translation was attempted on Broadway, the play—featuring the first kiss between women on a Broadway stage—proved too scandalous for the general public, and the entire cast was arrested and charged with obscenity. 

Medea: The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering his new wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

Propaganda under the cut!

Indecent:

Best, most emotionally resonant play I have ever seen performed. It recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923, and for which the producer and cast were arrested and convicted on the grounds of obscenity. In God of Vengeance, the brothel owner's daughter falls in love with the female prostitute. Vogel's play goes far beyond recounting the censorship. It's a complex story that follows the show's playwright and performers and how their relationship to the material changes from the plays original run, to the Broadway censorship, to the Holocaust. It focuses on the need for hope and love.

A troupe of ghosts rise to keep alive the story of author Scholem Asch's most controversy play. In three languages & innumerable roles (including a turn by Katarina Lenk in the 2017 Broadway production) the lovers in God of Vengeance preserve for the stages of eternity one rain-soaked & sacred night. Meanwhile Asch, once a passionate defender of the plays love story against intracommunal accusations of fueling antisemitism and well, indecency...he gets quieter as Lemml becomes the stage manager of a story whose ending he will always forget. The play that convinced me that I could & would read Yiddish theater.

A breathtaking play about art, censorship, and Jewish lesbians, by THE Jewish lesbian. "He’s crafted a play that shrouds us in a deep, deep fog of human depravity: then like a lighthouse, those two girls. That’s a beacon I will remember."

Medea:

Imagine you are an Athenian man at the Dionysia circa. 431 BC. You are drunk. Your little Athenian wife is at home weaving or giving birth or talking to the slaves about vegetables or something. On stage, you watch a man dressed as a woman give one of the greatest monologues of all time about how hard it is to be a woman. Maybe you are moved, maybe not. Then you watch her KILL HER CHILDREN with a sword and FLY off into the sky in a chariot pulled by DRAGONS. Wyd?

I do love me a greek play. Chorus is all 'oh no, murder is happening, someone stop it. We can't, obvs '

It’s MEDEA by EURIPIDES. 

#round 2 #polls #indecent #medea #the straight play showdown

[paganimagevault]

Aphrodite Epitragia 1st C. BCE - 2nd C. CE. Agate onyx cameo. National Archeological Museum of Naples. Inv.-Nr. 25845/13. Georg Lippold, Gemmen und Kameen, Stuttgart 1922, plate 24, 5.

"Often, when one finds this epithet of Aphrodite, it is in reference to the many iconographical depictions of her riding a goat. Such depictions seem to appear towards the end of the Classical era and refer to her role as Pandemos, especially in Athens, which Plutarch explains in Theseus, 18:

“When the lot was cast, Theseus took those upon whom it fell from the prytaneium and went to the Delphinium, where he dedicated to Apollo in their behalf his suppliant’s badge. This was a bough from the sacred olive-tree, wreathed with white wool. Having made his vows and prayers, he went down to the sea on the sixth day of the month Munychion, on which day even now the Athenians still send their maidens to the Delphinium to propitiate the God. And it is reported that the God at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat (‘tragos’) all at once, for which reason the Goddess has the surname Epitragia.” (trans. Bernadotte Perrin)

At first glance, it is hard to see how Aphrodite Epitragia relates to Aphrodite Pandemos or even the Aphrodisia. According to Plutarch, Aphrodite Epitragia places herself as Theseus’ personal guide in the journey that would lead him to accomplish the synoikismos (lit. “coming together” of cities) and establish the cult of Aphrodite Pandemos, which is at the heart of the Aphrodisia.

While the depictions of Aphrodite riding a goat appear quite early on in Athenian history, the epithet “epitragia” only appears in later sources, one being the quote cited above from Plutarch, and the other being an inscription on one of the seats in the Theater of Dionysus, also dated from the 2nd century AD, probably the seat reserved for the clergy in charge of Aphrodite’s cult under this epithet.

And this is, honestly, quite curious. If Aphrodite riding a goat was, until the turn of the millennium, mostly an iconographical and artistic depiction referring to her role as Pandemos, it is surprising to see that the cult of Aphrodite Epitragia had a clergy, as attested by the presence of the seat in the theater, and it mostly raises the question of the purpose of the cult. Was it different from the cult of Aphrodite Pandemos? If that was the case, how so? Was the cult of Aphrodite Epitragia always there despite the fact we have no trace of it before the 2nd century AD? etc.

In L’Aphrodite grecque, V. Pirenne-Delforge interprets Epitragia as a guide in the sexual coming of age of Theseus. In the same manner that another legend associates the cult of Aphrodite Pandemos as a patron the sexuality of young people through the opening of a brothel under Solon (6th century BC), the Thesean version would represent Aphrodite foreshadowing the metamorphosis of Theseus from a child to a man with the miraculous change from a she-goat to a he-goat. V. Pirenne-Delforge also points out that the image of Aphrodite riding a goat is not exclusively used to refer to Pandemos, as it is the case on ex-votos where she is represented in her Ourania aspects as well.

Still according to the same author, both the epithet and the iconographical trope seem to have been more akin to a protection than an actual representation of the Goddess, popularized by the sculpture of Scopas in Elis, which represented Aphrodite in this manner (unfortunately lost to us). This conclusion can only be reevaluated if we find depictions of Aphrodite Epitragia that were made before the 4th century BC."

-taken from thegrapeandthefig wordpress & Plutarch's Life of Theseus

#aphrodite #venus #cupid #pagan #paganism #ancient greece #ancient rome #antiquities #sculpture #literature #european art #antiquity #ancient history #art #museums

[the1975attheirverybest]

no because what if instead of sucking him off i just want to hold his hand and flap about a bit while i explain the importance of theater to ancient athenian society and why comedies like frogs are infinitely better forms of political satire than anything that exists currently and that 2 obols is the funniest joke to exist (it is a reference to the devaluation of athenian currency and a very funny inside joke between my friends) - 🐸

PLEASEEEE I would pay Matty money to let him just take a little walk with me while I tell him about how Lysistrata essentially proves that politics should be run by women, HAHA. And he’d be like “listen, Aristophanes actually gets too much credit, can I just say-“ NO MATTY. YOU CANNOT SLANDER MY MAN Aristophanes.

No, but, really, I WANT THAT SO MUCH. Idk if anyone on here knows more about these anecdotes but I seem to remember reading somewhere that, back when the band was way less popular, Matty would actually go for coffee with fans if he bumps into someone and had some free time and they’d just chat about stuff. And that he apparently once paid for some music students instruments or some shit? Does anyone know anything about that? Cuz I was curious for more info but couldn’t find anything….IF YOU HAVE HAD COFFEE WITH MATTY BEFORE COME TELL ME ABOUT IT PLEASE

#🐸anon

[whencyclopedia]

The Acropolis and Ancient Athens

An image illustrating the evolution of the Athenian Acropolis (a fortified citadel and state sanctuary of the goddess Athena) and the city of Athens as it emerged from the devastation and ruin of the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BCE through the grand ambition of Pericles and successive generations of leaders and visionaries until the Hellenistic and Roman times, when the city became a "theater of memory" linking the "glory days" of ancient Athens with the emerging new powers of the world.

#Athens #Acropolis