Lecture Nine. Apollo and Artemis.
Two of the most important younger Olympians are Artemis and Apollo, twin children of Zeus and the goddess Leto.
- These deities play essential roles both in reference to the other gods and for the Greek construction of human experience.
- Many dictionaries of classical mythology will say that Apollo is the sun god and his sister Artemis is the moon. Although both did come to have these associations eventually, they are much more complex than these identifications would indicate.
Apollo is a god of youth, medicine, healing, music, prophecy, and, in general, moderation and rationality. However is also associated with sudden death for men and the plague.
- Most of the younger generations of Olympians are depicted in art as young adults in their twenties, but Apollo is represented as youth par excellence, the ideal of manly beauty. Each generation of Olympians matures to its proper age and remains at the age.
- He is associated both with medicine and healing and with sudden death and death through disease.
- The double association of healer and plague-bringer gives a complete and rounded image of Apollo; he is not entirely beneficent towards humans, despite his positive qualities.
- He is described as wearing a quiver and carrying a bow; when he shoots men with these arrows, they die suddenly. His sister Artemis performs the same function for women.
- As the patron of music and the arts, Apollo presides over the Muses.
- Perhaps his most important role is as a main god of prophecy. He passes on prophecy from Zeus to selected humans.
- Zeus, too, controls prophecy, but the most famous and important oracle of ancient Greece was in Delphi, sacred to Apollo.
- Questioners could ask the god anything they wanted and would receive answers through the Pythia, his priestess at Delphi, inspired by Apollo himself.
- Many of the oracles that we know of are so ambiguous as to be impossible to refute; however, the oracle of Delphi was taken extremely seriously by the Greeks and their neighbors. A priestess could be corrupted, but faith in Apollo was profound.
- Apollo’s role as patron of prophecy at Delphi reflects his overall association with reason and moderation.
- Greek religion had no prescriptive commandments, but two sayings carved on the temple at Delphi are crucial for understanding the underlying presumptions of the religion. These sayings are gnothi sauton and meden agan: “Know yourself” and “Nothing in excess.”
- “Know yourself” means what kind of creature you are, remember your limitations, and remember that you are not a god.
These two maxims encapsulate a theme that runs throughout Greek myth: that humans are liable to transgress the boundaries that separate them from the gods, which inevitably brings suffering.
- Humans must remember their status and not seek to exceed it.
- In particular, humans should avoid hubris, a word that is often translated as “excessive pride” but basically means insolence or wantonness; hubris is the kind of excessiveness that leads one to claim more than is one’s due.
- The story of Niobe is a particularly good example of the importance of Apollo’s maxims and of the dangers of hubris.
- Niobe, queen of thebes and sister of Tantalos, boasted that she was more worthy of worship than leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo, because Leto had only two children but she, Niobe, had fourteen.
- Apollo and Artemis kill all Niobe’s children. When only one remains, Niobe begs for mercy, but even the last is killed.
- Niobe has failed to remember both maxims; she has not known herself- the vulnerability of her humanity- and she has been misled by the excess of her good fortune.
Like her brother Apollo, Artemis brings sudden death, but in other ways, she is her twin’s polar opposite.
- She is associated with wilderness and wild things, where he is associated with reason and civilization. She is a huntress, the patron of wild beasts, and the protector of the young of all species.
- Artemis’s association with wild animals in various aspects dates back to very early times.
- Homer calls Artemis potnia theron or “Mistress of Wild Beasts”; many artistic representations recall this title.
- One of her most important sites of worship was at Ephesus, in modern Turkey, where her role as potnia theron seems to have predominated.
- As a huntress, she carries a bow and wears a quiver; she is often shown in a short robe that would allow for running.
- Artemis is also associated with women in several ways.
- She is the protector of women in childbirth.
- She is a virgin and is particularly associated with young girls before and up to the time of their marriages.
- She brings sudden death to women.
- Artemis’s status as a virgin and her role as protector of women in childbirth may at first sight seem contradictory, but both aspects of the goddess tie in to her essential wildness.
Artemis’s rejection of sexuality is the impetus for the story of Actaeon, which illustrates the danger of crossing a god. Even unintentional violations of the boundaries between gods and humans can lead to disaster.
- Actaeon inadvertently saw Artemis nude while he was out hunting.
- Artemis turned him into a stag, but left his mind cognizant of what had happened to him.
- Actaeon was torn to shred by his own hunting hounds.
- In the worldview represented by classical mythology, intentions are often irrelevant; what matters are actions. Our culture tends to make a strong distinction between action according to their intent, but the ancient Greeks considered motives much less important.