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LGBT Themes In Greek Mythology
Greco-Roman mythology features male homosexuality in many of the constituent myths. In addition, there are instances of cross-dressing, androgyny, and other themes which are grouped under the acronym LGBTQ+. These myths have been described as being crucially influential on Western LGBT literature, with the original myths being constantly re-published and re-written, and the relationships and characters serving as icons. In comparison, lesbian relationships are rarely found in classical myths. Homosexuality and bisexuality Apollo, the god of sun and music, is considered the patron of same sex love, as he had many male lovers and was often invoked to bless homosexual unions. He is also called "the champion of male love" by Andrew Callimach. Other gods are sometimes considered patrons of homosexual love between males, such as the love goddess Aphrodite and gods in her retinue, such as the Erotes (mythology), Erotes: Eros, Himeros and Pothos (mythology), Pothos. Eros is also part of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greco-Roman Mythology
Classical mythology, also known as Greco-Roman mythology or Greek and Roman mythology, is the collective body and study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans. Mythology, along with philosophy and political thought, is one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later, including modern, Western culture. The Greek word ''mythos'' refers to the spoken word or speech, but it also denotes a tale, story or narrative. As late as the Roman conquest of Greece during the last two centuries Before the Common Era and for centuries afterwards, the Romans, who already had gods of their own, adopted many mythic narratives directly from the Greeks while preserving their own Roman (Latin) names for the gods. As a result, the actions of many Roman and Greek deities became equivalent in storytelling and literature in modern Western culture. For example, the Roman sky god Jupiter or Jove became equated with his Greek counterpart Zeus; the Roman fertility goddess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philostratus
Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus (; ; 170s – 240s AD), called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He flourished during the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211) and died during that of Philip the Arab (244–249), probably in Tyre. Name and life Some ambiguity surrounds his name. The nomen ''Flavius'' is given in ''The Lives of the Sophists'' and Tzetzes. Eunapius and Synesius call him a Lemnian; Photius a Tyrian; his letters refer to him as an Athenian. His praenomen was probably ''Lucius'', although this is not entirely confirmed. It is probable that he was born in Lemnos, studied and taught at Athens, and then settled in Rome (where he would naturally be called ''Atheniensis'') as a member of the learned circle with which empress Julia Domna surrounded herself. Works attributed to Philostratus Historians agree that Philostratus authored at least five works: '' Life of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valerius Flaccus (poet)
Gaius Valerius Flaccus (; died ) was a 1st-century Roman poet who flourished during the "Silver Age" under the Flavian dynasty, and wrote a Latin ''Argonautica'' that owes a great deal to Apollonius of Rhodes' more famous epic. Gaius Valerius Flaccus at Britannica.Tim Stover, Valerius Flaccus at Oxford Bibliographies. Life The only widely accepted mention of Valerius Flaccus by his contemporaries is by (10.1.90), who laments t ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boreas (god)
Boreas (, , , , ; also , ) is the Greek god of the cold north wind, storms, and winter. Although he was normally taken as the north wind, the Roman writers Aulus Gellius and Pliny the Elder both took Boreas as a northeast wind, equivalent to the Roman god Aquilo or Septentrio. Boreas is depicted as being very strong, with a violent temper to match. He was frequently shown as a winged old man or sometimes as a young man with shaggy hair and beard, holding a conch shell and wearing a billowing cloak. Boreas's most known myth is his abduction of the Athenian princess Orithyia of Athens, Oreithyia. Description Boreas, like the rest of the wind gods, was said to be the son of Eos, the goddess of the dawn, by her husband Astraeus, a minor star-god. He is thus brother to the rest of the Anemoi (the wind gods), the five star-gods and the justice goddess Astraea. Boreas was closely associated with horses, storms, and winter. He was said to have fathered twelve colts, after taking th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ptolemy Hephaestion
Ptolemy Chennus or Chennos ("quail") ( ''Ptolemaios Chennos''), was an Alexandrine grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. According to the ''Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an ...'', he was the author of an historical drama named ''Sphinx'', of an epic, ''Anthomeros'', in 24 books (both lost) and a ''Strange History''. The last is probably identical with the ''New History'' in six books ascribed by Photius to Ptolemy Hephaestion, of which a summary outline has been preserved in Photius' ''Biblioteca'' (cod. 190), who observed sarcastically of its credulous author that he found it "a work really useful for those who undertake to attempt erudition in history," for "it abounds in extraordinary and badly imagined information." Photius goes on to say, "In a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adonis
In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip and died in Aphrodite's arms as she wept; his blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower. The Adonia festival commemorated his tragic death, celebrated by women every year in midsummer. During this festival, Greek women would plant "gardens of Adonis", small pots containing fast-growing plants, which they would set on top of their houses in the hot sun. The plants would sprout but soon wither and die. Then, the women would mourn the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief. The Greeks considered Adonis's cult to be of Near Eastern origin. Adonis's name comes from a Canaanite word meaning "lord" and most modern scholars consider the story of Aphrodite and Adonis to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Callimachus
Callimachus (; ; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar, and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which do not survive, in a wide variety of genres. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western canon, Western literature. Born into a prominent family in the Greek city of Cyrene, Libya, Cyrene in modern-day Libya, he was educated in Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. After working as a schoolteacher in the city, he came under the patronage of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus and was employed at the Library of Alexandria where he compiled the ''Pinakes'', a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature. He is believed to have lived into the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes. Altho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Admetus
In Greek mythology, Admetus (; Ancient Greek: ''Admētos'' means 'untamed, untameable') was a king of Pherae in Thessaly. Biography Admetus succeeded his father Pheres after whom the city was named. His mother was identified as Periclymene or Clymene (mythology), Clymene. He was one of the Argonauts and took part in the Calydonian Boar hunt. Admetus' wife Alcestis offered to substitute her own death for his. The most famous of Admetus's children was Eumelus (son of Admetus), Eumelus, who led a contingent from Pherae to fight in the Trojan War. He also had a daughter Perimele. Mythology Relationship with Apollo Admetus was famed for his hospitality and justice. When Apollo was sentenced to a year of servitude to a mortal as punishment for killing Delphyne, or as later tradition has it, the Cyclopes, the god was sent to Admetus' home to serve as his herdsman. Apollo in recompense for Admetus' treatment made all the cows bear twins while he served as his cowherd. The romant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcissus (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Narcissus (; ) is a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia (alternatively Karaburun, Mimas or modern-day Karaburun, İzmir Province, Izmir), known for his beauty which was noticed by all. According to the best-known version of the story in Ovid, Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', Narcissus rejected the advances of all women and men who approached him, instead falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. In some versions, he beat his breast purple in agony at being kept apart from this reflected love, and in his place sprouted narcissus (plant), a flower bearing his name. The character of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a self-centered personality style. This quality in extreme contributes to the definition of narcissistic personality disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration, and an impaired ability to empathy, empathize. Etymology The name Narcissus is of Greek etymology. According ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ameinias (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Ameinias () was a young man who fell in love with Narcissus, a handsome hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia, who had already spurned all his other suitors, according to the version of Narcissus's myth by Conon (''Narrations,'' 24). Mythology Narcissus also spurned Ameinias and gave him a sword. The latter committed suicide at Narcissus's doorstep after being rejected by him. He had prayed to Nemesis to give Narcissus a lesson for all the pain he provoked. Narcissus walked by a pool of water and decided to drink some. He saw his reflection, became entranced by it, and killed himself because he could not have his object of desire, or gazing endlessly at the image, he slowly pined away and was transformed by the nymphs into a narcissus flower. Others say he was instead filled with remorse for humiliating Ameinias and killed himself beside the pool—and from his dying life's blood the flower was born. It was said that because of this tragedy, the Thespians came t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protrepticus (Clement)
The ''Protrepticus'' (: "Exhortation to the Greeks") is the first of the three surviving works of Clement of Alexandria, a Christian theologian of the 2nd century. Description The work is, as its title suggests, an exhortation to the pagans of Greece to adopt Christianity, and within it Clement demonstrates his extensive knowledge of pagan mythology and theology. It is chiefly important due to Clement's exposition of religion as an anthropological phenomenon.Droge (1989), p. 138 After a short philosophical discussion, it opens with a history of Greek religion in seven stages. Clement suggests that at first, men mistakenly believed the Sun, the Moon and other heavenly bodies to be gods. The next development was the worship of the products of agriculture, from which he contends the cults of Demeter and Dionysus arose.Droge (1989), p. 131 Man then paid reverence to revenge, and deified human feelings of eros, love and Phobos (mythology), fear, among others. In the following stage, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argynnus
In Greek mythology, Argynnus () is a young and handsome boy from Boeotia. He is said to have been a lover of the Greek king Agamemnon, and to have later died in the Cephissus river. Agamemnon subsequently establishes the worship of Aphrodite under the epithet " Argynnus". His story is told by the Greek elegaic poet Phanocles, as well as by Athenaeus and the Roman poet Propertius. According to the Byzantine author Stephanus of Byzantium, he is the son of Pisidice, while Likymnios of Chios considered him the lover of the god Hymenaeus. Mythology According to the elegaic poet Phanocles, while Agamemnon is in the town of Aulis, he becomes enamoured of Argynnus. His love for the boy causes him to forget his troops. The boy later dies from drowning in the Cephissus river, leading Agamemnon to start a cult to Aphrodite Argynnus. The Greek grammarian and rhetorician Athenaeus (2nd to 3rd century AD) tells a similar tale, of how Agamemnon mourned the loss of Argynnus, his friend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
