by León, Vicki
Aphrodite, who sprang from the ancient mother goddess tradition of Ishtar and Astarte, may have also had a progenitor in the sea goddess of Minoan Crete. Once the Romans took her into their bosoms as their love queen Venus, her popularity rose even further.
Eros, on the other hand, was a tangle of contradictions. Called a love god by Hesiod and the earliest Greek poets, Eros was thought be among the oldest of deities. When spoken of by mystics and philosophers, Eros and the uniting power of love became one of the fundamental causes of the formation of the world. Later poets, especially the ones scribbling erotic and epigrammatic verse, described Eros as a boy-god, the youngest of deities.
When the Romans popularized him as Cupid, the god infantilized further, becoming a rosy toddler, equipped with wings, bow, and arrows, and often accompanied by his “love posse,” the erotes, described in the next entry.
At a certain point in the first few centuries A.D., cupid images became commonplace on coffins as a symbol of life after death. That notion was eagerly adopted by early Christians, who preferred to call them cherubs instead.
The Erotes:
Love posse to the sex goddess
Naughty boy Eros had his own entourage of godlings or godlets, called the Erotes. The Greeks, who always made room for another deity, identified them as the additional progeny of Ares and Aphrodite, the gods of war and love, respectively. (No clue as to why the children of a Greek war god would pursue a “make love, not war” philosophy.)
There was a strong family resemblance between Eros and his brothers. They all had wings, hot youthful bodies, and ran around naked. Like big brother, they carried bow and arrows as weapons. They first showed up on sculptured friezes in Hellenistic times, after Alexander the Great died. Originally there were luscious young maidens with wings depicted with the Erotes, but apparently they did not make the cut.
Venus, or Aphrodite, the love goddess, had an entourage of godlings called the Erotes. Usually portrayed as winged babies, they were sought for such issues as sexual yearning.
Because of their pinchable cuteness, Erotes became very popular subject matter for sculptors, potters, vase painters, and the creators of bronze jewelry, lamps, and household knickknacks.
Although Eros seemed to have the bases covered on love, lust, beauty, and sexual intercourse, he was later burdened with additional chores. He became the god of athleticism and a backup deity for fertility. He also shouldered the job of guarding male-to-male sexuality.
Nevertheless, it was felt by a higher Olympian authority that some areas of romantic love and biology were not being addressed. In addition, Eros had complained of being lonely. Thus an Erote called Antero became the god of love returned, that is, requited love. A charming fellow, he wore his hair long and had wings resembling a butterfly. He also carried a golden club, apparently to enforce that “love ’em or else” idea—and to avenge those rebels who refused to commit.
After Antero, another offspring of Ares and Aphrodite came into being. Named Himeros, he became the deity of unrequited love. He also backed up Eros on sexual desire issues. To distinguish him from the other Erotes, he carried a fashionable taenia or headband, like the colorful ones that Greek athletes wore. It looked more dopey than sexy to carry the taenia instead of wearing it, but that was the burden Himero had to bear.
The Erotes sibling that attracted the most attention, however, especially from the love-gone-wrong crowd, was Pothos, who represented sexual longing or yearning. From time to time Ares and Aphrodite disavowed him as a son, insisting that Zephyrus the wind god and Iris the rainbow-maker were his parents. To humans in pain, it didn’t matter what his parentage was, they were simply glad to have a deity to moan to about their rotten love life.
Just as Anteros and Himeros represented the opposing aspects of unrequited and requited love, another pair of Erotes covered the bases of persuasive seduction versus sweet-talk and flattery. Peitho personified the art of romantic seduction, while Hedylogos was the deity to consult for the best opening lines and charming patter.
Greco-Roman artists were delighted to have the Erotes as subject matter, as they enlivened murals and lent a mischievous air to otherwise dull paintings. They also became important symbols in art; when they appeared in a portrait of two women, for instance, the wink-wink Erotes provided a sexual subtext.
These godlets might have seemed a charming afterthought, a trivial matter, but they were a splendid idea. Since long-ago cultures had to get along without any human therapists, much less any self-pitying country-music lyrics to sing along with, the Erotes lent a listening ear to our mortal obsession with love.
Alkibiades of Athens:
Number-one hottie among women—& men
Scion of a famous and wealthy family of aristocrats, possessing the charisma and keen intellect to become Socrates’ pet disciple as well as the athletic courage to be a much-admired warrior, bisexual pretty boy Alkibiades had it all during the Athenian golden age.
Greek philosopher Plato wrote admiringly (perhaps enviously) about Alkibiades, the brilliant bad boy of Athens, who was sexually pursued by men and women alike.
Well, almost all. From Plato’s writings we learn that young Alkibiades, to his utter chagrin, could not seduce his mentor Socrates. An excerpt reads: “I allowed myself to be alone with [Socrates] and naturally supposed he would embark on conversation that a lover usually addresses to his darling. Nothing of the kind; he spent the day with me in the sort of talk habitual to him, then left. Next I invited him to train with me in the gym, and accompanied him there, believing I should succeed with him now. He took exercise and wrestled with me frequently, with no one else present, but I need hardly say that I was no nearer my goal … so I invited him to dine with me, behaving just like a lover who has designs on his favorite … when the light was out and the servants had withdrawn … I nudged him and said, ‘Are you asleep, Socrates?’ ‘Far from it,’ he answered. I said, ‘I think that you are the only lover I’ve ever had who is worthy of me but you are afraid to mention your passion to me.’” (Alkibiades continues in this self-indulgent vein but gets no further.)
He then says, “Finally, I got up and covered him with my own clothes—for it was winter—and then laid myself down under his worn cloak, and threw my arms round this truly superhuman and wonderful man, and remained thus the whole night long … but in spite of all my efforts … I swear by all the gods that after sleeping with Socrates, I might as well have been sleeping with my father or elder brother.”
This story is attested elsewhere, as is the genuine astonishment Alkibiades demonstrates at being turned down.
When it came to lovers male or female, however, Socrates was probably the only holdout. Due to Alkibiades’ extraordinary physical beauty, his orator’s way with words, and his charming impudence, he had a long string of male suitors.
He had female alliances as well. He delighted the richest man in Athens, who gave him his daughter Hipparete; Alkibiades then treated her shamefully, bringing hookers home and forcing her to endure other abuses. When she tried to file divorce papers, Alkibiades swept her away from the magistrate and then imprisoned her at home. Hipparete died in childbirth in 417 B.C.
In addition, this arrogant risktaker had a string of reckless affairs with supposedly untouchable women. The most notorious? His fling with Spartan queen Timaea while her husband, King Agis II, was off doing battle. Their interlude produced that awkward byproduct, a love child. Later, the baby boy that Timaea and Alkibiades collaborated on got passed over for Spartan kingship, but the adulterers emerged unscathed.
Another sexcapade involved his pal and fellow philanderer Axiochus. The two went to Abydos in Asia Minor, somehow achieving the extraordinary feat of marrying the same woman. When she gave birth to a daughter, neither man claimed to know whose it was; as the girl reached puberty, they both cohabited with her. When Alkibiades was intimate with his offspring, he’d say, “Oh, she’s the daughter of Axiochus,” and vice versa.
E
xceedingly nimble at erotic triumphs with both genders, this man was equally adept at switching political sides and carrying out criminal acts without paying the price.
An active politician as well as a part-time general, Alkibiades pushed for several disastrous moves. He led a huge Athenian armada to conquer Sicily’s rich Greek cities, a defeat that lost thousands of men and the entire fleet, crippling his home city-state. After the Sicily debacle, with Athenians calling for his blood, he fled to live in Sparta (bitter enemy of his home city). Despite his despicable moves, Alkibiades easily won back the esteem and love of the Athenians when he defected back to them in 412!
In a few years, when it became clear that he couldn’t keep his current crop of false promises, Alkibiades once more ran for it. He was killed shortly after Athens surrendered to the Persians in 404 B.C.
As comic playwright Aristophanes once said of Alkibiades, the most insolent native son of Athens, “They love, and hate, and cannot do without him.”
Amazons:
Warriors who loved their freedom—& their boobs
It’s surprising to learn how many places in the world claim to have been founded by the Amazons of old. To name a few: Ephesus, Sinope, Cyme, Amasia, Themiscrya, Mytilene, Smyrna, Priene, Pitana, and Thyatira. One gets a vicarious, atavistic thrill of delight at the thought of women warriors strong and savvy enough to fight their way from the Black Sea and onto the acropolis of Athens. Or going mano a mano with Trojan warriors.
Herodotus, one of few historians of old to do extensive field research, spent time in Scythian country around the Black Sea. His detailed account describes a legendary time when Greek forces (in retaliation for a brazen Amazon raid on Athens) went to the south shores of the Black Sea and battled the Amazons at the Thermodon River. The Greeks won and jammed their female prisoners aboard their three ships. In midstream the intrepid gals managed to free themselves, then massacred the Greeks. Now what? they asked each other, none of them being sailors. Luckily the ship drifted to shore in Scythian country, where the women grabbed up the dead guys’ weapons, disembarked, and quickly stole horses.
Delightfully soon, a battle with local Scythians ensued, which went so badly for the locals that they laid down their arms, then opened their arms to the Amazons. Joining forces in the most intimate way, the Scythians and their newfound mates produced a batch of children, which the men got to babysit. Amazon women did the breast-feeding, however—and they possessed the female equipment to feed twins if needed. As ancient Greek art clearly shows, the “one breasted” Amazon myth is ancient malarkey, as is the etymology of the word.
Calling themselves the Sauromatians, they roamed a huge area of present-day Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. And, according to Herodotus, the younger generations of Amazons maintained their ancient traditions of hunting, plundering, and not marrying until each had killed an enemy. Herodotus’s account had the ring of truth but still fell in the realm of legend, it was thought until recently.
In Adrienne Mayor’s book The Poison King, however, she describes the year of 66–65 B.C., when the very real King Mithradates VI toyed with Roman general Pompey for months—then led him right into an ambush laid by his tribal allies of the Caucasus. As she writes,
While the Romans were celebrating Saturnalia, a jolly winter holiday of role reversals and heavy drinking, the Iberi, Albanoi, and allied bands ambushed the camp. The skirmishes were described by Appian, Plutarch, Strabo, and Cassius Dio. The barbarians numbered 60,000 on foot and 12,000 mounted. To the Romans, these tall handsome people appeared “wretchedly armed, wearing the skin of wild beasts.” They were formidable guerrilla fighters who attacked, then took cover in the forest.
Pompey methodically set the forest on fire, to drive them out. After the battle, stripping the nearly 9,000 dead bodies, the Romans discovered many women warriors with typical Amazon weapons and clothing, exactly as depicted on Greek vase paintings. Their wounds showed that their bravery matched that of the men. Female fighters were also found among the thousands of captives. According to Strabo, Amazons inhabited these mountains and the steppes beyond. In detailing the Amazon lifestyle, Strabo stated that his information came from the writings (now lost) of Mithradates’ old friend, the philosopher Metrodorus, and from someone by the name of Hypsicrates who was ‘quite familiar’ with this region.
“Hypsicrates” quite possibly may have been Hypsicratea, the female fighter and last lover of Mithradates, who fought alongside the king during the last six years of his life—and was perfectly capable of taking on a male persona. (Read more about her elsewhere in the book.)
As late as A.D. 350, a Roman historian called Ammianus Marcellinus asserted that Amazons still lived between the Don River and the Caspian Sea. After that came more than a millennium of silence.
Then in the 1950s Russian archaeologists found the first of many Sauromatian burial sites in this area of vast steppes and mountainous terrain. A large percentage of these graves contained female bodies buried with high-status grave goods, including arrowheads, armor, horse gear, and weapons, dating from the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C.
Additional archaeological finds later showed that the Sauromatians gave way to another people called the Sarmatians, who thrived from the fourth to the second centuries B.C. Again, their burial sites contained many females with richer artifacts of greater variety than those of the males. Although the contents of some graves included more feminine items, such as spindles and bronze mirrors, a significant percentage of Sarmatian women were clearly warriors as well. Besides iron swords, daggers, and whetstones in their graves, researchers found skeletons with bowed legbones (indicating an active life on horseback); hunting trophies, such as a boar’s tusk; and evidence of death in battle.
Historians have argued that the Greeks invented the Amazons as a way to explain the struggle between early matriarchal cultures and the victorious Dorian invaders. But there was no need for fantasy. Groups or clans of Amazons—fierce, independent, and able to handle both male and female roles with ease— spread across a huge swath of wild Eurasian terrain and thrived for centuries.
Modern archaeology continues to amass more evidence that the once-mythical Amazons thrived for centuries as female warriors across the wild terrain of Eurasia.
Section IX
Love Dilemmas & Lust at the Crossroads
Family Affairs:
Incest, three ways
There was more than one type of incest in the ancient world.
One was the well-known Oedipus Rex scenario, now thought by some historians to represent a very ancient tradition of sacred kingship, in which the king was slain by his successor, who became the queen’s new bridegroom. It was discussed thoroughly in Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough.
Another was religious: incestum, which meant loss of religious chastity. This generally referred to priestesses or Rome’s vestal virgins.
But the most familiar form of incest to Greeks and Romans was dynastic incest, where brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters had intimate relations and/or openly married in order to preserve bloodlines and the right to rule within the family.
The eighteenth dynasty in Egypt, with famous names like Nefertiti, is the most spectacular and well-known example; it’s covered in the entry following this one.
Equally famed is the Ptolemy dynasty and its headliner, Cleopatra VII, the last of her line. True to form, she briefly married her two younger brothers, coolly arranging for their executions later.
The first Ptolemy, a Macedonian Greek and not Egyptian at all, took Egypt as his “prize” in the land-grab sweepstakes after Alexander the Great’s death. By 322 B.C., Ptolemy had kidnapped the mellified corpse of his former boss and brought it to Egypt for display and worship. (During his brief visit to Egypt, Alexander had been declared a pharaoh and thus a god.)
To make his own pharoahship more secure, Ptolemy I tied the knot with the daughter of the last Egyptian pharaoh. In a year
or so, he shoved her aside to marry the Macedonian daughter of Antipater, one of his former enemies but now pals. Swapping female relatives for matrimony soon became a standard practice among the generals from Alex the Great’s inner circle.
Not until the reign of Ptolemy III were male rulers forced to make incestuous marriages within their family. (Students of Ptolemaic history are often subject to migraines, since this dynasty routinely gave its elite females one of only three names: Arsinoe, Berenice, or Cleopatra.)
And yes, to answer your burning question: the number of incestuous links during the three centuries of Ptolemies did seem to have led to an inordinate number of grossly obese male rulers. The women in the dynasty, however, were noteworthy for being lean, mean, shrewd, and often murderous.
In Asia Minor on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, royal marriages between brothers and sisters became common within the Hecatomnid dynasty. These Greeks ran Caria and tried to keep it out of Persian hands during the fourth and third centuries B.C. The founder, Hecatomnus, had daughters Ada and Artemisia, who happily wed their brothers Idrieus and Mausolus. Artemisia in particular was anguished at the early death of her brother-husband Mausolus and she set about completing a gigantic temple-tomb complex that became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. That wonder is no more but we still use the term mausoleum, named after that incestuous king of long ago.
