Titania Queen Of the Fairies and Elves

Titania

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For other uses, see Titania (disambiguation).

A Midsummer Nights Dream act IV, scene I. Titania, with fairies in attendance. Engraving from a painting by Henry Fuseli, published 1796.

Titania is a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters.
In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name. Shakespeare took the name "Titania" from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where it is an appellation given to the daughters of Titans.^[1]
Shakespeare's Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. The marital quarrel she and Oberon are engaged in over which of them should have the keeping of an Indian changeling boy is the engine that drives the mix ups and confusion of the other characters in the play. Due to an enchantment cast by Oberon's servant Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a rude mechanical (a lower class labourer), Nick Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of an ass by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character (which bears a resemblance to the story of Lycaon).
Oberon states in the play:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in

Fairy's view on human mortality

In the second act, Titania refers to the Athenians as "human mortals." Scholar John Hale interprets this as a reference to the mortality of humans from the fairy point of view, indicative of Shakespeare's ability to write from the perspective of all of his characters. Titania's use of the word "mortal" both looks down upon and sympathizes with youths.^[2]

- queen of the fairies and elves
- married to Oberon, king of the fairies and elves
- said to have been beautiful
- temporarily fell in love with bottom the weaver because of Oberon's desire to have Titania's adopted child.

Fairy Folklore and Mythology in "A Midsummer’s Night Dream"

Fairy Folklore and Mythology in "A Midsummer’s Night Dream"

Oberlin Opera Theater's  "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  2007

Thought to be written in 1594 or 1595, “A midsummer’s Night Dream” is one of the most well-known plays of the literary world, perhaps due to celebrated fame of its author – William Shakespeare. Born in the mid 16th century, today Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, with a repertoire of poems and plays that has achieved worldly prestige and has made him a literary figure.  “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” tells the story of Lysander and Hermia’s unpermitted love, along with Demetrius’ struggle to woo her despite him being the subject of Helena’s amorous obsession (Wells and Taylor XV, 401); however, the plot’s entertainment is attributed to a different set of juxtaposing characters that intervene in the affairs of these young lovers – the fairies. Drawn from European legend and folklore, Shakespeare took inspiration from a variety of fairy lore and mythology that makes itself present throughout the play.
  
This magical influence is referenced before one even reads the play; Midsummer’s Eve is a celebration of pagan origins intended to coincide with the summer solstice. In Gaelic folklore, the hours between dusk and dawn are said to be closer to the underworld and a special time when fairy activity is at its peak. This time was also said to be a period for witches to harvest magical plants (Illes 212); correspondingly, it is during this time that Oberon asks Puck to fetch him that love-bewitching flower that turns the play into a love comedy.  Oberon and Titania are the king and queen of fairy land who are introduced as having a personal dispute with each other; both entities are depicted as each keeping a multitude of servants: “Enter Oberon […] with his train, and Titania […] with hers” (Shakespeare 406).  They seem to mimic and contrast the uncaring Athenian aristocratic society; falling under the category of trooping fairies, these entities can be “subdivided into the Heroic Fairies [who] are the aristocracy of fairyland. They have as a rule a king and queen, and they pass their time in the manner of the medieval nobility” (Biggs 270).

The characters of Oberon and Titania are rooted in deep mythological origins. Oberon sees its origins during  the 5th- 8th century as a translation for Alberich, a sorcerer in Merovingian mythology; however, he can also be referred as Freyr or Ing, the fairy king god of Norse and Germanic mythology, a figure far older than Alberich (Swarthmore college). Titania, on the other hand, is associated with the goddess Diana, as Thomas R. Frosch writes:

Titania is a name Ovid uses for Diana. Another of Diana’s names appears in the lovers’ plan to escape into the forest “when Phoebe doth behold / Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass”. The moon goddess Diana, in addition to being a virgin goddess of the forest, was also a goddess of childbirth, and she was originally one of the great Near Eastern mother goddesses. (Frosch 489)

Going beyond the role of royalty, Oberon and Titania are also portrayed as semi-primordial beings, as demonstrated on act 2 scene 1 where their discord causes imbalances in nature, causing the wind to rise, the river to overflow, and the harvest to rot (407).  Additionally, Titania mentions an Indian women who was “a vot’ress of [her] order”, alluding that she and Oberon are capable of human devotion, placing them beyond the role of simply fairies to that of gods and goddesses (407).

Bacchus by Caravaggio 1595

Titania was very close to this Indian woman, as she narrates to Oberon how “in the Indian spice air by night/ full often hath she gossiped by [her] side/ and sat with her on Neptune’s yellow sand/ […][and how] her womb then rich with [a] young squire would […] sail upon land./[…] But she, being mortal, of that boy died/ and for her sake does [she] rear up her boy” (Shakespeare 407).  This Indian boy is the reason why Titania and Oberon are in a dispute, for “she never had so sweet a changeling, “causing jealously in fairy king (406). Occurring in almost every folklore in the world, a changeling is a term describing a human (usually a child) stolen away by the fairies, as well as the creature left instead of the human; in some cases, the child left could either be a sick fairy baby, or a piece of wood enchanted to look like a child (Illes 445). Furthermore, just as Oberon and Titania seem to have been inspired by ancient mythological figures, the Indian changeling boy is also thought to be of a similar origin; Thomas R. Frosch writes about the boy’s similarities to Bacchus – The Roman God of wine, celebrations, and ecstasy:

Pyramus and Thisbe, in the 1567 Golding translation of Ovid that Shakespeare used, live in “the East”: “So faire a man in all the East was none alive as he, / Nor nere a woman maide nor wife in beautie like to hir”. Their story is embedded in the story of Bacchus and is told by three sisters who would not countenance “The Orgies of this newfound God” and even denied his divinity. Ovid calls Bacchus “puer aeternus”, or as Rolfe Humphries translates, “A boy forever.” Golding also tells us that “all the East” obeys him “as far as Ganges goes,” and he calls him Niseus, the one from Nysa in India, where the god spent his infancy; Humphries calls him “The Indian”. Here is another meaning of the Indian boy of Shakespeare’s play. Bacchus is, in Golding’s rendering, “Twice borne, the sole and only childe that of two mothers came”; after his original mother, Semele, was destroyed by the glory of Zeus, the fetus was sewed into Zeus’s thigh, and after his birth he was cared for by Semele’s sister and the nymphs of Nysa. In having two mothers, Bacchus is like the Indian boy, who has both birth mother and Titania. (Frosch 506).

Robin Goodfeelow (Puck). 1639

Finally, perhaps the figure most depicted as a traditional fairy, is the character of Puck; it is him who, at Oberon’s orders, plays out the role of cupid (The roman god of Love) by enchanting the young lovers and Titania with the droplets of a magical flower. We are introduced to Puck in the beginning of Act 2 scene1 as Robin, short for robin goodfellow, a mischievous sprite who “frights the maidens of the villag’ry” (406). The term robin goodfellow is recorded as early as 1531; however, etymologically, the name Puck derives from Puca, an old English term for a woodland sprit with many variant names throughout Europe. The Puca is a respected and feared fairy; in fact, Pouk was a medieval term for the Devil, and “Pouk's Pinfold” was synonymous for hell, putting in perspective the kind of presence the Puca imposed (Wright). This association with the Devil makes one believe that the Puca, and thus Puck as well, is rooted in the pagan figure of the horned god, an archetype covering deities such as Satan, Bacchus (Dionysus), Pan, Hermes, and Freyr. This idea is also supported by the fact that outside of Shakespearean work, robin good fellow was sometimes depicted as a “hairy goat-man, horned and hoofed, […] and son of Oberon [also known as Freyr- the horned Fairy King]” (Illes 579).

Modern Puck

Shakespeare’s Puck, just like the folkloric Puca, is also a shapeshifter: “Sometime a horse [he]'ll be, sometime a hound, a hog, a headless bear, [or] as fire” (411). Coincidentally enough, very much like what Puck turns the character of Bottom into, The Irish Phouka was sometimes depicted as a terrifying creature with the head of an ass (Wright,); Puck alludes to this, saying that sometimes he is a “bean-fed horse beguile”(406). His transformation into “Fire […] sometimes mislead[ing] night wanderers, laughing at their harm,” refers to the fairy’s depiction as a will’o wisp figure, leading travelers to disorientation or even death (411). In some storytelling circles, this folkloric figure was also depicted a house fairy, such as the Pwwka from Wales (Reynolds 25). This domesticity is reflected in the fact that Puck “skims[s] milk, and sometimes labours in the quern [grain-gridding stone],”and lastly when he sweeps the floor after the wedding (406). The figure of robin goodfellow  and Puck seem to be the result of the folkloristic morphology of the Puca fairy and its variants, combining the archetypes of a wild solitary being, a domestic figure, and trooping fairies belonging to the high courts of fairy aristocracy, yet still holding on to dark trickster attributes.
 

In analyzing the fairies of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”, we are able to dig up the inspiration that Shakespeare used. This inspiration was directly taken from the fairy folklore of Europe, made with characters rooted in deep mythological archetypes. From Oberon’s origin as Fairy king, and Titania’s assimilation with Diana, to the Indian boy and Puck as derivations from previous deities, it is remarkable to see how literary elements can survive the test of time.

Oberon, King of the Faeries and Elves

February 18, 2010

Oberon, King of the Faeries

By Lisa Asanuma

Oberon is best known from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, the king of the faeries who interferes with the love lives of mortals, and plays tug-of-war with Titania over trinkets and toys (read: people) they both want.  Oberon was most likely taken from a legend of a Merovingian sorcerer named Alberich, or “elf-ruler,” who was believed to be the other-worldly brother of Merowich, whom the people got their name from.
The name Oberon first showed up in a French heroic song, about a fairy who was cursed  to a dwarfish height by an offended fairy at his birth (hello, Sleeping Beauty?) but was given great beauty in consolation.  In the poem, Oberon aids the hero in winning a pardon for killing the emperor’s son in self-defense, after performing various feats.  This poem was based on bits and pieces of fact of a true hero who lived in the ninth century, but was understandably embellished.  In it, Oberon had a magical cup, which has been compared to the Holy Grail, which was always full for the virtuous.
In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon wants to a human child that Titania’s taken into her care—it’s the child of a mortal friend of hers who’d died, and she wants to raise it for her friend, but Oberon wants to have the child for his own purposes, to raise as a henchman, basically.   To distract her, he uses a magical ointment that he has put into her eyes, so that she falls in love with a man who’s been given a donkey’s head—meanwhile he has his servant Puck meddle with two pairs of lovers that are wandering in the woods, with a mistake or two made along the way.  Eventually he feels badly for what he’s done to his Titania, though, and the two are reunited.
Given the title of King of the Faeries, Oberon is understandably mentioned here and there in other works of fiction, of a more contemporary nature.  As a few examples, he’s mentioned briefly both in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and also in Frewin Jones’ Faerie Path novels.

eron is best-known as a character in Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. In it he is the king of the fairies, and the husband of Titania. The origins of Oberon, though, lie not in folklore, but in John Bourchier, Lord Berners' translation of the 13th century French romance, Huon of Bordeaux, into English in 1534.
In it Oberon is a fairy king who lives in a wood that is full of strange and magical things. He is only three feet tall, and is deformed, with a crooked shoulder, yet with a face so handsome that no mortal man can remain unmoved by his beauty. Oberon wears a gown studded with precious stones, so bright that it shines like the sun. He carries a magic bow that can kill any animal he aims his arrows at, and a magic horn that can cure sickness and hunger when it is blown.
Oberon speaks to all who enter his wood, and anyone to whom he speaks is lost for ever. Those who remain silent and do not speak to Oberon are beset by terrible storms.
Oberon turns out to be the son of Julius Caesar and a lady of the Secret Isle. All the fairies were invited to celebrate his birth, except one. The excluded fairy was so angry, that she cursed the baby; her curse made him stop growing when he was three years old. Later, relenting, she gave him great beauty. In a manner similar to the story of Sleeping Beauty, the other fairy guests gave him many magical gifts: clairvoyance, the ability to go wherever he wants to by wishing, the power to tame any creature, the power to make a castle grow at his command, to never age or look old, and when he leaves this world, to go straight to Paradise.
From Huon of Bordeaux, Robert Greene introduced Oberon into his play, James IV (1594). In this Oberon is again the fairy king, and very small, as are all the fairies.
It is possible that Berners' translation, and Greene's play influenced Shakespeare in his creation of Oberon the fairy king in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Oberon was used in several later works as well, including a masque by Ben Johnson for Prince Henry, James I's heir, and in Michael Drayton's poem Nymphidia (1627). He also appears in Carl Maria von Weber's opera Oberon, or the Elf King's Oath, an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The opera was first performed in 1826, at Covent Garden, London.

Ophelia Part2

John William Waterhouse

The man who painted Ophelia

The English late Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse lived from 1849 to 1917. He had his studios and home in London and exhibited at the Royal Academy. In his time he was to paint several versions of Ophelia - most of those shown here on this page are his. He taught at the St. John's Wood Art School and served on the Royal Academy Council.

Waterhouse was married, but had no children and because his private life is not documented in any great detail, it is uncertain who the models were for his paintings - works which often depict beautiful and vulnerable young women drawn from historical settings, from mythology or folk law. Like all the pre-Raphaelites he was fond of the English Medieval period and of the age of chivalry and courtly love. Mary Lloyd, the model for Lord Leighton's masterpiece 'Flaming June' of the same period did pose for him at one stage. Among the Pre-Raphaelites there is a distinct 'type' that is instantly recognisable, with usually red or auburn hair, slender and frail and with a intensity of posture and a haunted look to the eyes.

The 1898 Waterhouse painting shown here is not of Ophelia, but that other tragic maiden from Shakespeare's vivid world of tragic characters:Juliet.

Elizabeth Siddal

the 'Ophelia' of her day

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall was born in London in July 1829. One of seven children, her background and education were unremarkable but she developed a love of poetry at a young age, after discovering a poem by Tennyson on a scrap of newspaper used for wrapping butter! It would be intriguing to know just what poem it might have been!

See Tennyson's famous poem 'The Lady of Shalott' for an example of his work.

We know her today as the most significant face of the Pre-Raphaelite school of art and as the most celebrated model for Ophelia herself. She was 'discovered' by the painter Walter Howell Deverell in 1849 while she was working as a milliner and she soon became drawn into the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of revolutionary young painters and poets of which her husband-to-be Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a central figure. She was later described by her brother in law William Michael Rossetti as: "a most beautiful creature with an air between dignity and sweetness with something that exceeded modest self-respect and partook of disdainful reserve; tall, finely-formed with a lofty neck and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, greenish-blue unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant complexion and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery golden hair."

A lot to live up to for any mortal woman! Modern biographers such as Lucinda Hawksley have speculatet that Siddal herself may have been anorexic - she once told Rossetti that "she had not eaten for a fortnight."

The pressures in her short life were immense. Being the muse and mistress, the lover and model not only for Dante Gabriel Rossetti but for many of the other most important painters of the brotherhood, she also had talents as an artist in her own right, but these were constantly swamped and stifled by the men around her. The seeking of oblivion in the deep watery grave of laudanum was her fatal pre-occupation, despite being pregnant at the time of her death (as Shakespeare's Ophelia could have been, perhaps).

Even with her death in 1862, however, Elizabeth could not escape the obsessions of the men who loved her. Rossetti, melodramatic and completely 'over the top' as ever, placed his unpublished verses of poetry of which he had no copy, into in her coffin - only to have to retrieve them again some years later by having her body exhumed - a task undertaken at night by candle-light.

As a figure central to the artistic climate of the late Victorian age, Lizzie's legacy was also a studied image and style that featured loose clothing, flowing robes - without the stays and restrictive undergarments favoured by the women of the times. Her style was one of freedom, with long lines and clinging folds, and it became the signature and mark of women aesthetes and feminists of subsequent generations.

Anne Boleyn Today

Here's another Squidoo page (lens) I made earlier ...

England's most unjustly maligned Queen

Anne Boleyn Today

Even nearly 500 years after her death, the figure of Anne Boleyn continues to intrigue, fascinate and captivate us. Why? What is the irresistible attraction...

What does Ophelia mean?

The message of Ophelia for us today

(The painting here is Ophelia by George Frederic Watts - 1817-1904. The subject is modelled by his young wife, the famous Victorian actress Ellen Terry.)

Health care professionals or psychotherapist working with adolescent females will sometimes say that at some stage in their growing up, many young women feel presurised, compelled to function within a narrow definition of what society and family interpret as being 'female.' They are expected to fit themselves into small, crowded and competitive spaces governed by fashion and custom, and to conform to commercial junk images of what they are supposed to look like, behave like and even to feel like inside. Faced with these pressures at such an emotionally vulnerable age, many lose their vitality and interest in life; their IQ and education suffer, and they can become victim to all manner of self-inflicted illnesses - coping with eating disorders, anorexia, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviours, sexual promiscuity and drugs. That this can prove life-threatening is all too obvious, and echoes the story of Ophelia in a chillingly accurate way even in our own modern, rational age.


In the Shakespearian and Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, Ophelia is a figure that is in transition, having to change rapidly due to simple biological circumstances from a child to a young woman in a very short space of time. At just stage of her life she is confronted with pressure from all sides, from parents, from her immediate society at the court of the king and queen of Denmark, and from a passionate and ever-increasingly deranged boyfriend (Hamlet) seeking to inflict revenge on her for his own failings to reach manhood and achieve justice for the crimes committed against his own father. Hamlet, too, in his own way suffers from an identity crisis. Being forced to become a whole man rather too quickly for his own good, he pays the ultimate price. But it is Ophelia herself who leads him to the grave and perishes much sooner. She is more vulnerable, more sensitive and ultimately becomes more confused sooner.

In our own times, just as in the Victorian era, young people - and perhaps young women in particular - are sometimes compelled to 'grow up' at a similar rapid rate. The girls, moreover, mature faster than the boys and have to confront their own demons earlier and more decisively, and in far less a span of time as well. The demands from fashion, popular culture and from parents and family seeking instant womanhood from their girls, can all take their toll on the developing psyche. We live in an age of Ophelia's. Learning to recognise this reality in our lives can be truly liberating - particularly for young women themselves. Recognising that Ophelia can exist within can be a life-saving and ultimately a life-affirming experience, enabling the individual to grow and move on through the crisis of adolescence into the safely of adulthood.

In a wider sense, this was precisely what was going on at a social scale in the latter half of the 19th century - in a society which was being compelled to grow up too fast, from innocent, rural tranquillity into bleak industrial adulthood. In doing so, it nearly destroyed itself. In taking Ophelia with it, however, and in cherishing her presence, it survived.

Ophelia Part1

Ophelia

Ophelia - then and now

Ophelia is a character in Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet' - a creation of the Elizabethan stage. Yet for over four hundred years she has remained a figure of fascination for artists, writers and poets alike - and she emerged as a subject of devotion among the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite movement of painters that flourished in England during the second half of the 19th Century.

This page examines the Pre-Raphaelite obsession with Ophelia and asks the question of why was she so important within the intellectual landscape of Victorian society - and why might she still be of relevance to us today in an age where we sometimes expect young women to grow up so very fast and to conform to all manner of expectations that may be neither relevant or appropriate for their needs? We still have our 'desperate romantics' - even in our modern, most logically-minded and rational of ages.

(The painting shown here, above, is the 1910 version of Ophelia by John William Waterhouse)

Ophelia and the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the 19th Century

(The painting of Ophelia shown here is by John Everett Millais. Made in 1852, it remains one of the great iconic images of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and of Victorian art in general)

The Pre-Raphaelite movement has its origins around 1848 among a group of young English painters and writers - notably the founding members of the 'brotherhood' who were: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These were later joined by other notable artists such as William Morris and John William Waterhouse - who painted Ophelia several times during his career and who has left us with some of the most beautiful images of the whole era.

The aim of the brotherhood was to promote a new kind of art that celebrated the directness and 'honesty' of painting as it existed prior to the corrupting influence - as they saw it - of the great classical artists of the Renaissance such as Raphael and Michelangelo. Hence the term 'Pre-Raphaelite.' They felt that the classic methodology and style had permeated art through the centuries and that it still existed as a limiting influence even in their own times where it had resulted in a kind of sentimental and technically 'sloppy' kind of painting. They wanted to break away from the current conventions of Victorian art and to develop a style which was iconic, spiritually motivated and yet which was also constructed through the application of great detail, intense colours and complex composition. It was one of the first 'revolutionary' or avant garde movements in painting, and pre-dated the Impressionists in France.

In the painting above by Millais, the model for Ophelia was a young woman called Elizabeth Siddal, then aged 19. She was a popular choice of model for other painters within the group, and became the wife of Rossetti in 1860. For this work, she posed for the painter in a bath of water, warmed by oil lamps. Millais was so engrossed in his work on some occasions that he allowed the lamps to go out and the water to become cold, resulting in illness for his model. This negligence cost him dearly in medical bills, and Elizabeth survived to become one of the most famous faces of the Victorian age.

In a slightly more negative aspect, she and the other Pre-Raphaelite models (Annie Miller, Jane Morris and Fanny Cornforth) set the 'standard' for all subsequent idealised representations of women right up to our present times - with our 21st century ultra-thin, barbies and cat-walk nymphs and all the unrealistic and often dangerous associations that go along with these images.

Ophelia - her story

(The painting shown here, above, is the 1889 version of Ophelia by John William Waterhouse. Here, Ophelia is almost in a state of metamorphosis, of returning to the elements, part of the earth and marshy ground beneath her)

In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, written around 1600, Ophelia is a maid at the court of the King of Denmark. She is the sweetheart of the main character, prince Hamlet. Hamlet is faced with a dilemma in the play - being informed by his father's ghost that his uncle, the present king, has murdered his brother (Hamlet's father). The uncle's motive was to take the throne and to marry the King's widow (Hamlet's mother). Hamlet is plagued with indecision and by guilt as to whether it is right to take revenge upon his treacherous uncle.

This dilemma eventually drives him mad, and Ophelia becomes a victim of his deranged aggression towards both her and Ophelia's father - who he mistakenly kills instead of his uncle. Ophelia's father - Polonius - had concealed himself behind some hanging drapes at the time to eavesdrop on the conversation. Hamlet thrust through the drapes with his sword and the old man was slain.

Ophelia, herself, is turned by these events and she loses her mind - eventually wandering off from the castle and drowning - it is suggested by her own desire for death - in a nearby brook. It is this tragic event that became the subject for numerous paintings by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

Whether Ophelia was herself pained by guilt, perhaps having lost her virginity to Hamlet, or whether she was driven through remorse for the loss of her own father to take her own life will never be resolved. But the figure of a young woman profoundly troubled in spirit, being compelled to grow up too quickly and finding it impossible to reconcile the conflicting demands of society and sexuality are ones that still strike a chord today in our present age - which, for all its freedoms and climate of open discussion, can still give rise to those who indulge in self-harm or who suffer the anxieties of anorexia or bulimia.

Ophelia's tragic portrayal

(The painting shown here, above, is the 1894 version of John William Waterhouse's Ophelia. the background of water lilies is a powerful symbol of purity and innocence - also of the virgin Mary, of course. All this is greatly contrasted with the sensuous, curvaceous body of Ophelia herself, who could almost be in the early stages of pregnancy. Much of the Pre-Raphaelite message can only be comprehended through biblical imagery.)

The Pre-Raphaelites artists tended to show Ophelia at various times either in the process of contemplating her sorrow or else in the very act of drowning. It was the enacting of this intense emotional state that drew them to her as a dramatic figure - along with what was an almost obsessional reverence the Victorians held for the tragic feminine or the ideal of 'lost innocence' or beauty destroyed by a world of corruption and cruelty.

See Jane Grey And also The Lady of Shalott

In the wake of the earlier Romantic movement among artists and poets, the relentless growth of the industrial society in 18th Century England gave rise to a gradual dawning of a mood of nostalgia, of regret and guilt within 19th century and Victorian society - a concern felt at a very deep level about what was being lost in the race for progress. The world of nature was, even then, seen as being under threat - of being crushed beneath the grime and noise of the satanic mills and factories, the dreadful inner city slums and all the disease and poverty that they brought with them. Ophelia, in a similar way to the figure of doomed Tudor Queen Jane Grey, represented that lost innocence. She was the corrupted maid, a sacrificial figure destroyed by political intrigue or through her own sense of guilt - the paradox of beauty among ugliness, of innocence amid a world of exploitation and cynicism.

In this, and with their determination to paint nature with precision and accuracy, the Pre-Raphaelites chose in particular to show in their paintings of Ophelia the array of wild flowers and herbs that Shakespeare tells us the maiden hung about herself as she went to her death - a description given to us in the play by Hamlet's mother as she breaks the terrible news and describes Opelia's final moments:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

THANATOS (DEATH)

                              THANATOS

THANATOS (or Thanatus) was the god or daimon of non-violent death. His touch was gentle, likened to that of his twin brother Hypnos (Sleep). Violent death was the domain of Thanatos' blood-craving sisters, the Keres, spirits of slaughter and disease.
Thanatos plays a prominent role in two myths. Once when he was sent to fetch Alkestis to the underworld, he was driven off by Herakles in a fight. Another time he was captured by the criminal Sisyphos who trapped him in a sack so as to avoid death.
In Greek vase painting Thanatos was depicted as a winged, bearded older man, or more rarely as a beardless youth. He often appears in a scene from the Iliad, opposite his brother Hypnos (Sleep) carrying off the body of Sarpedon. In Roman sculptural reliefs he was portrayed as a youth holding a down-turned torch and wreath or butterfly (symbolsing the soul of the dead).

PARENTS

[1.1] NYX (no father) (Hesiod Theogony 212, Homer Iliad 14.250, Pausanias 5.18.1, Seneca Hercules Fur. 1068) [1.2] EREBOS & NYX (Hyginus Preface, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.17)

ENCYCLOPEDIA THA′NATOS (Thanatos), Latin Mors, a personification of Death. In the Homeric poems Death does not appear as a distinct divinity, though he is described as the brother of Sleep, together with whom he carries the body of Sarpedon from the field of battle to the country of the Lycians. (Il. xvi. 672, xiv. 231.) In Hesiod (Theog. 211, &c. 756) he is a son of Night and a brother of Ker and Sleep, and Death and Sleep reside in the lower world. (Comp. Virg. Aen. vi. 277.) In the Alcestis of Euripides, where Death cones upon the stage, he appears as an austere priest of Hades in a dark robe and with the sacrificial sword, with which he cuts off a lock of a dying person, and devotes it to the lower world. (Alcest. 75, 843, 845.) On the whole, later poets describe Death as a sad or terrific being (Horat. Carm. i. 4. 13, Sat. ii. 1. 58), but the best artists of the Greeks, avoiding any thing that might be displeasing, abandoned the ideas suggested to them by the poets. and represented Death under a more pleasing aspect. On the chest of Cypselus, Night was represented with two boys, one black and the other white (Paus. v. 18. § 1), and at Sparta there were statues of both Death and Sleep. (iii. 18. § 1.) Both were usually represented as slumbering youths, or as genii with torches turned upside down. There are traces of sacrifices having been offered to Death (Serv. ad Aen. xi. 197; Stat. Theb. iv. 528; Lucan, vi. 600; Philostr. Vit. Apoll. v. 4), but no temples are mentioned anywhere. PAEAN (Paian, Paiêôn or Paiôn), that is, "the healing." The name was used in the more general sense of deliverer from any evil or calamity (Pind. Pyth. iv. 480), and was thus applied to Apollo and Thanatos, or Death, who are conceived as delivering men from the pains and sorrows of life. (Soph. Oed. Tyr. 154 ; Paus. i. 34. § 2 ; Eurip. Hippol. 1373.) With regard to Apollo and Thanatos however, the name may at the same time contain an allusion to paiein, to strike, since both are also regarded as destroyers. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 137.) Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

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FAMILY OF THANATUS

Hesiod, Theogony 211 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"And Nyx (Night) bare hateful Moros (Doom) and black Ker (Violent Death) and Thanatos (Death), and she bare Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Oneiroi (Dreams). And again the goddess murky Nyx, though she lay with none, bare Momos (Blame) and painful Oizys (Misery), and the Hesperides . . . Also she bare the Moirai (Fates) and the ruthless avenging Keres (Death-Fates) . . . Also deadly Nyx bare Nemesis (Envy) to afflict mortal men, and after her, Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Friendship) and hateful Geras (Old Age) and hard-hearted Eris (Strife)."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Nox (Night) and Erebus [were born]: Fatum (Fate), Senectus (Old Age), Mors (Death) [i.e. Thanatos], Letum (Dissolution) [i.e. Ker], Continentia (Moderation), Somnus (Sleep), Somnia (Dreams), Amor (Love)--that is Lysimeles, Epiphron (Prudence), Porphyrion, Epaphus, Discordia (Discord), Miseria (Misery), Petulantia (Wantonness), Nemesis (Envy), Euphrosyne (Good Cheer), Amicitia (Friendship), Misericordia (Compassion), Styx (Hatred); the three Parcae (Fates), namely Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos; the Hesperides."
[N.B. In Latin Thanatos is translated as Mors, and Ker (the other death daimon) as Letum.]
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3. 17 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.) :
"Their [Aether and Hemera's] brothers and sisters, whom the ancient genealogists name Amor (Love), Dolus (Guile), Metus (Fear), Labor (Toil), Invidentia (Envy), Fatum (Fate), Senectus (Old Age), Mors (Death) [i.e. Thanatos], Tenebrae (Darkness) [i.e. Keres], Miseria (Misery), Querella (Complaint), Gratia (Favour), Fraus (Fraud), Pertinacia (Obstinacy), the Parcae (Fates), the Hesperides, the Somnia (Dreams): all of these are fabled to be the children of Erebus (Darkness) and Nox (Night)."
[N.B. Cicero translates Thanatos as Mors and Keres as Tenebrae.]

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THANATUS & THE BODY OF SARPEDON

On the orders of Zeus, Hypnos and Thanatos carried off the body of Sarpedon from the battlefield to the country of the Lykians.
Homer, Iliad 16. 453 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"[Hera speaks to Zeus about the approaching death of his son Sarpedon:] ‘But after the soul and the years of his life have left him [Sarpedon], then send Thanatos (Death) to carry him away, and Hypnos (Sleep), who is painless, until they come with him to the countryside of broad Lykia (Lycia) where his brothers and countrymen shall give him due burial with tomb and gravestone.’"
Homer, Iliad 16. 681 ff :
"Then [Apollon] gave him [Sarpedon] into the charge of swift messengers to carry him, of Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), who are twin brothers, and these two presently laid him down within the rich countryside of broad Lykia."
Bacchylides, Fragment 20e (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"But the highest god [Zeus], mighty with his thunderbolt, sent Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death) from snowy Olympos to the fearless fighter Sarpedon [to carry off his body for burial]."

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THANATUS & SISYPHUS

Alcaeus, Fragment 38a (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric I) (Greek lyric C6th B.C.) :
"King Sisyphos (Sisyphus), son of Aiolos (Aeolus), wisest of men, supposed that he was master of Thanatos (Death); but despite his cunning he crossed eddying Akheron (Acheron) twice at at fate's command."
Theognis, Fragment 1.703 (trans. Gerber, Vol. Greek Elegiac) (Greek elegy C6th B.C.) :
"Sisyphos, son of Aiolos, who by his wits came up even from Aides (Haides) . . . No one else has ever contrived this, once Thanatos' (Death's) dark cloud has enveloped him and he has come to the shadowy place of the dead."
Aeschylus, Sisyphus the Runaway (lost play) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
Weir Smyth (L.C.L.) quotes from Pherecydes, a C5th B.C. mythographer, in his discussion of the plot of this lost play: "The drama was satyric; its theme, the escape from Haides of the crafty Korinthian king. According to the fabulous story told by Pherekydes (Frag. 78 in Müller, Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum) Sisyphos made known to Asopos that it was Zeus who had carried off his daughter Aigina; in punishment for which offence the god sent Thanatos (Death) against the babbler; but Sisyphos bound Thanatos (Death) fast, so that men ceased to die, until Ares came to the rescue, released Thanatos, and gave Sisyphos into his power."

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THANATUS, ALCESTIS & HERACLES

Euripides, Alcestis 19 ff (trans. Vellacott) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"Apollon: She [Alkestis] is in the house now, gathered in his [Admetos'] arms and held at the breaking point of life, because Moira (Fate) marks this for her day of death and taking leave of life. The stain of death in the house must not be on me. I step therefore from these chambers dearest to my love. And here is Thanatos himself, I see him coming, Thanatos who dedicates the dying, who will lead her down to the house of Hades. He has come on time. He has been watching for this day on which her death falls due.
[Enter Thanatos (Death), armed with a sword. He sees Apollon suddenly and shows surprise.]
Thanatos: Ah! You at this house, Phoibos? Why do you haunt this place. It is unfair to take for your own and spoil the death-spirits' [eneroi, ‘of those below’] privileges. Was it not enough, then, that you blocked the death of Admetos, and overthrew the Moirai (Fates) by a shabby wrestler's trick? And now your bow hand is armed to guard her too, Alkestis, Pelias' daughter, though she promised her life for her husband's.
Apollon: Never fear. I have nothing but justice and fair words for you.
Thanatos: If you mean fairly, what are you doing with a bow?
Apollon: it is my custom to carry it with me all the time.
Thanatos: It is your custom to help this house more than you ought.
Apollon: But he is my friend, and his misfortunes trouble me.
Thanatos: You mean to take her body, too, away from me?
Apollon: I never took his body away from you by force.
Thanatos: How is it, then, that he is above ground, not below?
Apollon: He gave his wife instead, and you have come for her now.
Thanatos: I have. And I shall take her down where the dead are.
Apollon: Take her and go. I am not sure you will listen to me.
Thanatos: Tell me to kill whom I must kill. Such are my orders.
Apollon: No, only to put death off. They must die in the end.
Thanatos: I understand what you would say and what you want.
Apollon: Is there any way, then, for Alkestis to grow old?
Thanatos: There is not. I insist on enjoying my rights too.
Apollon: You would not take more than one life in any case.
Thanatos: My privilege means more to me when they die young.
Apollon: If she dies old, she will have a lavish burial.
Thanatos: What you propose, Phoibos, is to favour the rich.
Apollon: What is this? Have you unrecognised talents for debate?
Thanatos: Those who could afford to buy a late death would buy it then.
Apollon: I see. Are you determined not to do this for me?
Thanatos: I will not do it. And you know my character.
Apollon: I know it: hateful to mankind, loathed by the gods.
Thanatos: You cannot always have your way where you should not.
Apollon: For all your brute ferocity you shall be stopped. The man to do it is on the way to Pheres' house now, on an errand from Eurystheus, sent to steal a team of horses from the wintry lands of Thrake. He shall be entertained here in Admetos' house and he shall take the woman away from you by force, nor will you have our gratitude, but you shall still be forced to do it, and to have my hate beside.
Thanatos: Much talk. Talking will win you nothing. All the same, the woman goes with me to Haides' house. I go to take her now, and dedicate her with my sword, for all whose hair is cut in consecration by this blade's edge are devoted to the gods below.
Thanatos enters the house. Apollon leaves."
Euripides Alcestis 140 ff :
"Chorus: We would like to know whether the queen is dead or if she is alive.
Maid: I could tell you that she is still alive or that she is dead.
Chorus: How could a person both be dead and live and see?
Maid: It has felled her, and the life is breaking from her now . . .
Chorus: There is no hope left she will live?
Maid: None. This is the day of destiny. It is too strong."
Euripides Alcestis 201 ff :
"Maid: Oh yes, he [Admetos] is crying. He holds his wife [Alkestis] close in his arms, imploring her not to forsake him. What he wants is impossible. She is dying. The sickness fades her now. She has gone slack, just an inert weight on the arm."
Euripides, Alcestis 235 ff :
"The bravest of wives [Alkestis, is] fading in sickness and doomed to Haides Khthonios (the Death God of the world below)."
Euripides, Alcestis 259 ff :
"Alkestis [has a vision of Death]: Somebody has me, somebody takes me away, do you see, don't you see, to the courts of dead men. He frowns from under dark brows. He has wings. It is Haides (Death)." [N.B. Here Haides is Thanatos.]
Eurpides, Alcestis 266 ff :
"Alkestis: I have no strength to stand. Aides (Death) is close to me. The darkness creeps over my eyes."
Euripides, Alcestis 839 ff :
"Herakles: I must save this woman who has died so lately, bring Alkestis back to live in this house and pay Admetos all the kindness that I owe. I must go there [to the funeral at the graveside] and watch for Thanatos (Death) of the black robes (melampeplos), master of dead men (anax nekrôn), and I think I shall find him drinking the blood of slaughtered beasts beside the grave. Then, if I can break suddenly from my hiding place, catch him, and hold him in the circle of these arms, there is no way he will be able to break my hold on his bruised ribs, until he gives the woman up to me. But if I miss my quarry, if he does not come to the clotted offering, I must go down, I must ask the Maiden (Kore) and the Master (Anax) in the sunless homes of those below (domos anêlios)."
Euripides, Alcestis 870 ff :
"Admetos: Such was the one Thanatos (Death) has taken from me, and given to Haides."
Euripides, Alcestis 1140 ff :
"Admetos: How did you bring her [Alkestis] back, from down there to the light?
Herakles: I fought a certain deity who had charge of her.
Admetos: Where do you say you fought this match with Thanatos (Death)?
Herakles: Beside the tomb itself. I sprang and caught him in my hands.
Admestos: But why is my wife standing here, and does not speak?
Herakles: You are not allowed to hear her speak to you until her obligations to the gods who live below are washed away. Until the third morning comes."

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N12.1 THANATOS, HYPNOS, SARPEDON

N12.2 THANATOS, HYPNOS, SARPEDON

N12.3 THANATOS, SARPEDON

N12.3 THANATOS, ALKESTIS, HERAKLES

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THANATUS SPIRIT OF DEATH, GENERAL

Homer, Odyssey 11. 397 ff (trans. Shewring) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"I [Odysseus] wept to see him [the ghost of Agamemnon in Haides], my heart went out ot him, and I uttered these words in rapid flight: ‘Renowned Atreides, Agamemnon, the lord of men, what doom (ker) of distressful death (thanatos) overmastered you?’"
Hesiod, Theogony 758 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"Nyx (Night) carries Hypnos in her arms, and he is Thanatos' (Death's) brother . . . And there [near the house of Nyx in the underworld] the children of gloomy Nyx have their houses. These are Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), dread divinities. Never upon them does Helios, the shining sun, cast the light of his eye-beams, neither when he goes up the sky nor comes down from it. One of these [Hypnos], across the earth and the wide sea-ridges, goes his way quietly back and forth, and is kind to mortals, but the heart of the other one [Thanatos] is iron, and brazen feelings without pity are inside his breast."
Terpander Frag 10 (from Palatine Anthology : Tryphon) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric I) (Greek lyric C7th B.C.) :
"He died when he was struck on the lips by one single fig. Alas, Thanatos (Death) is never at a loss for an occasion."
Bacchylides, Fragment 13 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"When the dark-blue cloud of Thanatos (Death) covers them."
The Anacreontea, Fragment 36 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (Greek lyric C5th or C4th B.C.) :
"If Ploutos (Wealth) offered life to mortals for gold, then I would persevere in hoarding it, so that if Thanatos (Death) came he could take some and pass on."
Aeschylus, Fragment 82 Niobe (from Stobaeus, Anthology 4. 51. 1) (trans. Weir Smyth) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"For, alone of gods, Thanatos (Death) loves not gifts; no, not by sacrifice, nor by libation, canst thou aught avail with him; he hath no altar nor hath he hymn of praise; from him, alone of gods, Peitho (Persuasion) stands aloof."
Aeschylus, Fragment 141 Philoctetes (from Stobaeus, Anthology 4. 52. 32) :
"[The wounded Philoktetes laments:] ‘O Death (thanatos), the healer (paian), reject me not, but come! For thou alone art the mediciner of ills incurable, and no pain layeth hold on the dead.’"
Aristophanes, Birds 1360 ff (trans. O'Neill) (Greek comedy C5th to 4th B.C.) :
"Aiskhylos (Aeschylus): Thanatos (Death) loves not gifts, alone amongst the gods [i.e. sacrifices to this particular god accomplish nothing]."
Aesop, Fables 484 (from Syntipas 2) (trans. Gibbs) (Greek fable C6th B.C.) :
"A poor man was carrying a load of wood on his shoulders. After a while he was feeling faint, so he sat down by the side of the road. Putting aside his burden, he bitterly called out to Thanatos (Death), summoning Thanatos with the words ‘O him!' Thanatos (Death) immediately showed up and said to the man, `Why have you summoned me?’ The man said, ‘Oh, just to have you help me pick this burden up off the ground!’"
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 690 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"As for myself [Mopsos], though Thanatos (Death) still shudders at the sight of me, I have the feeling that the coming year will see me in the grave."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3. 1127 ff :
"Nothing shall part us in our love till Thanatos (Death) at his appointed hour removed us from the light of day."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 1. 306 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic C4th A.D.) :
"All through the tangle of that desperate fray stalked slaughter and doom. The incarnate Kydoimos (Onset-shout) raved through the rolling battle; at her side paced Thanatos (Death) the ruthless, and the fearful Keres (Deaths), beside them strode."
Orphic Hymn 87 to Thanatus (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"To Thanatos (Death), Fumigation from Manna. Hear me, O Thanatos (Death), whose empire unconfined extends to mortal tribes of every kind. On thee the portion of our time depends, whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends. Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid bolds by which the soul attracting the body holds: common to all, of every sex and age, for nought escapes thy all-destructive rage. Not youth itself thy clemency can gain, vigorous and strong, by thee untimely slain. In thee the end of nature's works is known, in thee all judgment is absolved alone. No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage control, no vows revoke the purpose of thy soul. O blessed power, regard my ardent prayer, and human life to age abundant spare."
Aelian, Historical Miscellany 2. 34 (trans. Wilson) (Greek rhetorician C2nd to 3rd A.D.) :
"At the end of his life, having reached a very great age, Gorgias of Leontini was overcome by weakness and lay gradually slipping away into sleep. When one of his friends came to see him and asked how he was, Gorgias said: ‘Hypnos (Sleep) is now beginning to hand me over to his brother [i.e. Thanatos, Death].’"
Colluthus, Rape of Helen 365 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poetry C5th to C6th A.D.) :
"[The child Hermione cries when her mother Helene abandoned her to elope to Troy:] She wailed, and leaning back her neck breathed Hypnos (Sleep) who walks with Thanatos (Death); for verily it was ordained that both should have all things in common and pursue the works of the elder brother: hence women, weighed down with sorrowing eyes, oft-times, while they weep, fall asleep."

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MORS OR LETUM THE SPIRIT OF DEATH (LATIN)

The Romans usually name Thanatos Mors. Letum is less common and often refers to the Keres instead.
Virgil, Aeneid 6. 268 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman epic C1st B.C.) :
"[Aeneas is guided by the Sibyl on a journey through the Underworld:] On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis [Haides] and his phantom realm . . . Just before the entrance, even within the very jaws of Orcus [Haides], Luctus [Penthos, Grief] and avenging Curae (Cares) have set their bed; there pale Morbi [Nosoi, Diseases] dwell, sad Senectus [Geras, Old-Age], and Metus [Phobos, Fear], and Fames [Limos, hunger], temptress to sin, and loathly Egestas [Aporia, Want], shapes terrible to view; and Letum [Thanatos, Death] and Labor [Ponos, Toil]; next, Letum's (Death's) own brother Sopor [Hypnos, Sleep], and Gaudia (the soul's Guilty Joys), and, on the threshold opposite, the death-dealing Bellum [Polemos, War], and the Eumenides' [the Furies'] iron cells, and maddening Discordia [Eris, Strife], her snaky locks entwined with bloody ribbons. In the midst an elm, shadowy and vast, spreads her boughs and aged arms, the whome which, men say, false Somnia [Oneiroi, Dreams] hold, clinging under every leaf."
Virgil, Georgics 2. 492 (trans. Fairclough) (Roman bucolic C1st B.C.) :
"Fate's implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Acherontis (Death)."
Seneca, Hercules Furens 554 ff (trans. Miller) (Roman tragedy C1st A.D.) :
"Sluggish stands the mere [Akheron, Acheron] with black abyss, and, when Mors [Thanatos, Death], pale-visaged with greedy teeth, has brought countless tribes to the world of shades, one ferryman [Kharon, Charon] transports those many peoples."
Seneca, Hercules Furens 1063 ff :
"O Somnus [Hypnos, sleep], vanquisher of woes, rest of the soul, the better part of human life, thou winged son of thy mother Astraea [i.e. Nyx, Night], sluggish brother of cruel Mors [Thanatos, Death]."
Seneca, Medea 740 ff :
"Funereal gods, murky Chaos and shadowy Dis' [Haides'] dark dwelling-place, the abysses of dismal Mors [Thanatos, Death], girt by the banks of Tartarus."
Seneca, Oedipus 124 ff :
"We are perishing, are falling ‘neath the fierce onslaught of fate [i.e. a plague]. Each hour a new train moves on to Mors [Thanatos, Death]; the long array of a mournful band hastes to the shades; the gloomy procession jams, and for the throng that seeks burial the seven gates spread not wide enough. The grievous wrack of carnage halts and funeral crowds funeral in unbroken line."
Seneca, Oedipus 160 ff :
"[Drought and pestilence ravage the city of Thebes:] They have burst the bars of abysmal Erebus, the throng of sisters with Tartarean torch [the Erinyes], and Phlegethon, changing his own course, has mingled Styx with our Sidonian streams [i.e. to cause fevers]. Dark Mors [Thanatos, Death], death opens wide his greedy, gaping jaws and unfolds all his wings, and the boatman [Kharon, Charon] who plies the troubled stream with roomy skiff . . . [is] worn out with ferrying the fresh throng o'er."
Seneca, Oedipus 647 ff (trans. Miller) (Roman tragedy C1st A.D.) :
[The ghost of Laios (Laius) demands Oidipous (Oedipus) be expelled from Thebes before he will recall the pestilence daimones ravaging the land back to Haides:]
"[Laios:] ‘Wherefore speedily expel ye the king from out your borders, in exile drive him to any place so-ever with his baleful step. Let him leave the land; then, blooming with flowers of spring, shall it renew its verdure, the life-giving air shall give pure breath again, and their beauty shall come back to the woods; Letum [Ker, Ruin] and Lues [Nosos, Pestilence], Mors [Thanatos, Death], Labor [Ponos, Hardship], Tabes [Phthisis, Corruption] and Dolor [Algos, Distress], fit company for him, shall all depart together. And he himself with hastening steps shall long to flee our kingdom, but I will set wearisome delays before his feet and hold him back. He shall creep, uncertain of his way, with the staff of age groping out his gloomy way. Rob ye him of the earth; his father will take from him the sky.’"
Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 8. 67 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic C1st A.D.) :
"All powerful Somnus [Hypnos, Sleep] . . . now come to my aid with mightier influence, most like thy brother Letum [Thanatos, Death]."
Statius, Thebaid 1. 632 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic C1st A.D.) :
"Pleasant lives droop and fail, Mors [Thanatos, Death] with his sword cuts through the Sister's [Moirai's, Fates] threads, and hurries the stricken city to the shades."
Statius, Thebaid 4. 410 ff :
"Awful realm of insatiable Mors [Thanatos, Death]."
Statius, Thebaid 4. 520 ff :
"Abodes of Tartarus and awful realm of insatiable Mors (Death) [Thanatos], and thou, most cruel of the brothers [Haides], to whom the Shades are given to serve thee."
Statius, Thebaid 4. 527 ff :
"The void [of Haides] is flung open, the spacious shadows of the hidden region are rent, the groves and black rivers lie clear to view, and Acheron belches forth noisome mud. Smoky Phlegethon rolls down his streams of murky flame, and Styx interfluent sets a barrier to the sundered ghosts. Himself [lord Haides] I behold, all pale upon the throne, with Stygian Eumenides [Erinyes, Furies] ministering to his fell deeds about him, and the remorseless chambers and gloomy couch of Stygian Juno [Persephone]. Black Mors [Thanatos, Death] sits upon an eminence, and numbers the silent peoples for their lord; yet the greater part of the troop remains. The Gortynian judge [Minos] shakes them in his inexorable urn, demanding the truth with threats, and constrains them to speak out their whole lives' story and at last confess their extorted gains."
Statius, Thebaid 5. 155 ff :
"When Somnus [Hypnos, sleep], shrouded in the gloom of his brother Letum [Thanatos, Death] and dripping with Stygian dew, enfolds the doomed city [of the island of Lemnos], and from his relentless horn pours heavy drowse, and marks out the men. Wives and daughters are awake for murder . . . they fall to their horrid work [murdering their husbands in their sleep]."
Statius, Thebaid 7. 64 ff :
"Fit sentinels hold watch there [the Thracian palace of Mars-Ares]: from the outer gate wild Impetus (Passion) leaps, and blind Nefas (Mishief) and Irae (Angers) flushing red and pallid Metus [Deimos, Fear], and Insidia (Treachery) lurks with hidden sword, and Discordia [Eris, Discord] holding a two-edged blade. Minis (Threatenings) innumerable make clamour in the court, sullen Virtus (Valour) stands in the midst, and Furor [Lyssa, Rage] exultant and armed Mors [Thanatos, Death] with blood-stained visage are seated there; no blood but that of wars is on the altars, no fire but snatched from burning cities."
Statius, Thebaid 8. 376 ff :
"Mors [Thanatos, Death] let loose from Stygian darkness exults in the air of heaven, and hovers in flight over the field of battle, and with black jaws gaping wide invites the heroes; nought vulgar doth he choose, but with bloody nail marks as victims those most worthy of life, in the prime of years or valour; and now all the Sister's [the Moirai's] strands are broken for the wretched men, and the Furiae [Erinyes, Furies] have snatched the threads from the Parcae [Moirai, Fates]."
Statius, Thebaid 10. 90 ff :
"Within [the halls of Somnus, Hypnos, god of sleep], glowing Mulciber [Hephaistos] had carved a thousand likenesses of the god [Somnus, Hypnos]: . . . in the secret places of the palace he lies [depicted] with Mors [Thanatos, Death] also, but that dread image is seen by none."
Statius, Silvae 2. 1. 183 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman poetry C1st A.D.) :
"Lay aside thy fears [for the beloved dead], and be no more in dread of threatening Letum [Thanatos, Death]."
Statius, Silvae 3. 1. 171 ff :
"I [the god Herakles] will hold fast the threads of the Parcae [Moirai, Fates] and stretch out the wool upon their distaffs--I can subdue remorseless Mors [Thanatos, Death]."
Statius, Silvae 5. 3. 260 ff :
"[Prayer for a father who died at a venerable old age:] The gate of death was not dark for thee: gentle was thy passing . . . a tranquil unconsciousness and death (mors) that counterfeited slumber set free thy soul, and bore thee to Tartarus [Haides] under the false semblance of repose."

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THANATUS CULT & CULTIC ART

Sacrifices were sometimes offered to Thanatos but he possessed no temples.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 18. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"Near the statues of Pausanias [beside the temple of Athena of the Bronze House] is an image of Aphrodite Ambologera (Postponer of Old Age), which was set up in accordance with an oracle; there are also images of Hypnos (Sleep) and of Thanatos (Death). They think them brothers, in accordance with the verses in the Iliad."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 18. 1 :
"[Amongst the illustrations on the chest of Kypselos dedicated at Olympia :] There is a figures of a woman holding on her right arm a white child asleep, and on her left she has a black child like one who is asleep. Each has his feet turned different ways. The inscriptions declare, as one could infer without inscriptions, that the figures are Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep), with Nyx (Night) the nurse of both."
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 5. 4 (trans. Conybeare) (Greek biography C1st to C2nd A.D.) :
"The city of Gadeira [now Gibralta in Spain] is situated at the extreme end of Europe, and its inhabitants are excessively given to religion; so much so that they have set up an altar to Geras (Old Age), and unlike any other race they sing hymns in honour of Thanatos (Death)."

ATHENA WRATH

ATHENA WRATH

(1) WRATH FOR SACRILEGEOUS ACTS

AGRAULOS A princess of Athens (in Southern Greece) who opened the secret box containing the infant Erikhthonios against the express orders of Athena, and proceeded to slander the virgin goddess. In anger, Athena caused the girl to become inflamed with jealousy over the wooing of her sister by the god Hermes. When she tried to obstruct him, he transformed Agraulos into a stone.

AIAS OÏLEUS A Prince of Opuntian Lokris (in Central Greece) who raped the Trojan princess Kassandra within the goddess' holy precincts at the fall of Troy. To avenge herself upon Aias and the Greeks, who failed to punish him, Athena sent a storm to devastate their fleet. Aias was shipwrecked and drowned, while his people, the (historical) Opuntians, were compelled to appease the goddess for 1000 years with the despatch of sacrificial maidens to the Trojan land. [See Athena & the Trojan War: Shipwreck of Aias]

AUGE A Princess of Arkadia (in Southern Greece) and a priestess of Athena, who birthed her illegitimate son within the sacred precincts of the goddess. As punishment for the sacriligeous act, Athena made the land barren until the king had the girl exiled and sold into slavery.

"CROW, THE" A bird familiar of Athena, who angered the goddess either by revealing the secret of the baby Erikhthonios to the daughters of Kekrops, or by reporting to her as an overly keen tell-tale that the girls had opened the secret chest. In either case the goddess punished him by turning his white feathers to black and banishing him from her company.

IODAMA A Priestess of Athena in Koroneia, Boiotia (Central Greece) who was turned to stone when the goddess appeared before her wearing the Gorgoneion (Medousa's head) displayed upon her breast. Presumably the girl was so punished for some religious sacrilege.

ILOS The first King of Troy (in Anatolia) who was blinded by Athena when he removed the Palladium from the burning shrine of the goddess. It was forbidden for a man to gaze upon the image.

ISMENE A Princess of Thebes in Boiotia (in Central Greece) who had intercourse with her lover in the sacred precinct of Athena. The goddess urged the hero Tydeus to slay her for this infraction.

KEKROPS, DAUGHTERS OF Three princesses of Athens (in Southern Greece) - Aglauros, Herse and Pandrosos - who were entrusted by Athena with a chest containing her foster-son, the infant Erikhthonios. She forbade them to open it, but they were overcome by curiousity and did so anyway. As punishment for the sacrilege she drove them mad and they leapt to their deaths from the heights of the Akropolis.

LOKRIANS, THE The people of Opuntian Lokris (in Central Greece) were struck down by a deadly plague sent by Athena, as punishment for the desicration of her Trojan temple by their king Aias. An oracle declared that they must thenceforth despatch two maidens to Troy regularly for a thousand years in order to appease the goddess.

MEDOUSA A beautiful nymph who Athena transformed into a hideous monster with serpents for hair. Some say it was because she had intercourse with Poseidon in the goddess' sacred precints, others that she had claimed to be more beautiful than the goddess. Athena also later assisted the hero Perseus in his quest to bring back the Gorgon's head.

TEIRESIAS A seer of Thebes in Boiotia (Central Greece) who accidentally came across the goddess Athena bathing in a mountain stream. As punishment for seeing her naked she took away his sight, but in recompense also bestowed him with gifts, since his crime was not a deliberate one.

(2) WRATH: PUNISHMENT OF HUBRIS

ARAKHNE A girl of Kolophon in Lydia (in Anatolia) who in her hubris dared challenge the weaving goddess to a contest of skill. She lost, and as punishment for her sacriligeous boasts and offensive portrayal of the gods in her art was transformed into a spider.

MEROPIS A Princess of Kos (in the Greek Aegean) who Athena transformed into an owl as punishment for despising the gods and mocking the goddess for her grey eyes.

(3) WRATH: PATRON GODDESS

ALKINOE A Princess of Korinthos (in Southern Greece) who was cursed by Athena into betraying her own husband as punishment for refusing to pay a spinner named Nikandra the wages which were her due.

(4) WRATH: OTHER

AIAS TELAMANIOS A Prince of Salamis Island (in Southern Greece) who fought in the Trojan War. When he lost the contest for the Arms of Akhilleus to Odysseus, Athena drove him to madness when he threatened to slay some of the Greek leaders. [See Athena & the Trojan War: Madness of Aias]

HARMONIA A Queen of Thebes in Boiotia (Central Greece) who, at her weddding to King Kadmos was presented with a cursed necklace and robe by the gods Athena and Hephaistos. The two divinities cursed her as punishment for her mother Aphrodite's immoral behaviour: for Harmonia was the child born of the goddess' adulterous affair with Ares.

LAOKOON A Priest of Poseidon at Troy. When he would reveal the secret of the Trojan Horse to his comrades, Athena sent two giant serpents forth from the sea to destroy him and his sons.| [See Athena & the Trojan War: Death of Laokoon]

TEUTHIS A Prince of Arkadia (in Southern Greece) who in the course a quarrel with Agamemnon at Aulis, wounded Athena in the thigh with a spear. Teuthis was sent home, and the goddess then afflicted his people with a wasting disease until she was properly appeased.

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ATHENA WRATH: THE KEKROPIDES & THE CROW

LOCALE: Athens, Attika (Southern Greece)

For the PRELUDE to this story see Athena & the BIrth of Erikhthonios

VERSION 1

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 14. 6 (trans. Frazer) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Athena brought him [ Erikhthonios] up unknown to the other gods, wishing to make him immortal; and having put him in a chest, she committed it to Pandrosos, daughter of Kekrops, forbidding her to open the chest. But the sisters of Pandrosos opened it out of curiosity, and beheld a serpent coiled about the babe; and, as some say, they were destroyed by the serpent, but according to others they were driven mad by reason of the anger of Athena and threw themselves down from the acropolis."
Callimachus, Hecale Fragment 1.2 (from Papyri) (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Pallas laid him [Erikhthonios], the ancient seed of Hephaistos within the chest, until she set a rock in Akte (attika) for the sons of Kekrops; a birth mysterious and secret, whose lineage I neither knew nor learnt, but they themselves [the daughters of Kekrops] declared, according to report among the primeval birds [the crows], that Gaia (earth) bare him to Hephaistos. Then she [Athena], that she might lay a bulwark [the Akropolis] for the land which she had newly obtained by vote of Zeus and the twelve other immortals and the witness of the Snake [Kekrops], came unto Pellene in Akhaia [to fetch the rock]. Meanwhile the maidens that watched the chest bethought them to do an evil deed ((lacuna)) . . and undoing the fastings of the chest . . [rest of papyrus text missing]."
Callimachus, Hecale Fragment 1.3 (from Papyri) :
"We crows alone are rejected of the gods: for never did I vex they heart, O Lady [Athena] ((lacuna)) . . but I would that I had been voiceless then [i.e. reavealing the secret of Erikhthonios]. So much she abhors our voice and suffers not our race to call upon her name. Mayst thou never fall from her favour: ever grievous is the anger of Athene."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 18. 2 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"It was to Aglauros and her sisters, Herse and Pandrosos, that they say Athena gave Erikhthonios, whom she had hidden in a chest, forbidding them to pry curiously into what was entrusted to their charge. Pandrosos, they say, obeyed, but the other two (for they opened the chest) went mad when they saw Erikhthonios, and threw themselves down the steepest part of the Akropolis."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 166 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"When Minerva [Athena] was secretly caring for him [the infant Erikhthonios], she gave him in a chest to Aglaurus, Pandrosus, and Herse, daughters of Cecrops, to guard. A crow gave the secret away when the girls opened the chest, and they, driven made by Minerva [Athena], threw themselves into the sea."
Suidas s.v. Drakaulos (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Drakaulos: Sophokles in Tympanistai uses the word. Since Athena seems to place the snake among them, for the daughters of Kekrops. Because they dwell in the same courtyard, as you would expect, as Kekrops, who is of double nature. Because one of them, spending the day with the goddess, dwells on the Akropolis with the Drakon."

VERSION 2

Ovid, Metamorphoses 2. 550 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"To learn the latest news a garrulous Crow flapped quickly after him [Apollon's Raven], and when it heard his journey’s aim, ‘To no good end’, it said, ‘You make your way. Heed my prophetic tongue! See what I was, what I am now, and ask did I deserve it. Frank good faith you'll find was my undoing. Once upon a time a baby, Erichthonius, was born without a mother. Pallas [Athena] hid the child safe in a box of wicker wood and gave the box to Cecrops’ three unmarried daughters, with strict instructions not to pry inside. I hid among the delicate foliage of a large leafy elm and watched to see what they would do. Two, Pandrosos and Herse, impeccably observed their trust; but one, Aglauros, called them cowards and untied the fastenings, and there inside they saw the baby, and beside him stretched a Draco (Snake). I told the goddess. All the thanks I got was to be banished from Minerva's [Athenas] sight, reduced to rank below the bird of night [the owl]! My punishment might well warn birds to watch their tongues and take no risks. No doubt you think I pestered her, and not that she chose me: asks Pallas then herself! Of course she’s angry, but not too angry to admit the truth . . . I [the crow] was given to Minerva [Athena], her companion without stain. But what good was it, if Nyctimene, she who was made a bird [the owl] for her foul sin, supplants me in my place of privilege?’"
Ovid, Metamorphoses 2. 748 ff :
"She [Agraulos] looked at him [the god Hermes when he had come to woe her sister Herse] with those hard eyes that spied not long ago fair-haired Minerva's [Athena's] mystery [i.e. the baby Erikhthonios], and asked a golden fortune for her services, and pending payment forced him from the house. The warrior goddess [Athena] turned her angry eyes upon the girl and heaved a sigh so deep that breast and aegis shuddered. She recalled it was Aglauros whose profaning hand laid bare that secret when the oath she swore was broken [i.e. opening the forbidden box] and she [Aglauros] saw the infant boy [Erikhthonios], great Lemnicola's [Hephaistos’] child, the babe no mother bore; and now she would find favour with the god and with her sister too, and grow so rich with all that gold her greed had planned to gain. Straighway she [Athena] sought the filthy slimy shack were Invidia (Envy) dwelt [and summoned her to lay her curse upon the girl] . . . Tritonia [Athena] filled with loathing, forced a few curt words: ‘Inject your pestilence in one of Cecrops' daughters; that I need; Aglauros is the one.’ . . .
Into the room of Cecrops' child she [Invidia] went and did as she was bid. On the girl’s breast she laid her withering hand [and infected her with jealous heart] . . . She sat herself outside her sister’s door to bar Cyllenius' [Hermes'] access [but was turned by the angry god into a stone]."

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ATHENA WRATH: MEDOUSA

LOCALE: Kisthene Island (perhaps in the Red Sea)
I) METAMORPHOSIS Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 790 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Her [Medousa's] beauty was far-famed, the jealous hope of many a suitor, and of all her charms her hair was loveliest; so I was told by one who claimed to have seen her. She, it's said, was violated in Minerva's [Athena’s] shrine by the Rector Pelagi (Lord of the Sea) [Poseidon]. Jove's daughter [Athena] turned away and covered with her shield her virgin's eyes. And then for fitting punishment transformed the Gorgo's lovely hair to loathsome snakes. Minerva [Athena] still, to strike her foes with dread, upon her breastplate wears the snakes she made."
II) BEHEADING Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 46 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"It is affirmed by some that Medousa was beheaded because of Athena, for they say the Gorgon had been willing to be compared with Athena in beauty."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 37-41 :
"Perseus took flight and made his way to the ocean, where he found the Gorgones sleeping . . . All who looked at them were turned to stone. Perseus, therefore, with Athena guiding his hand, kept his eyes on the reflection in a bronze shield as he stood over the sleeping Gorgones, and when he saw the image of Medousa, he beheaded her."

For MORE information on the Gorgon see MEDOUSA

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P23.2 ATHENA, PERSEUS, MEDOUSA

P23.7 ATHENA, PERSEUS, MEDOUSA

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ATHENA WRATH: AUGE

LOCALE: Tegea, Arkadia (Southern Greece)

For the PRELUDE to this story see Athena Favour: Herakles' Spartan War

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 146 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"On his way past Tegea Herakles deflowered Auge, without realizing that she was the daughter of Aleus [his wartime ally]. She gave birth to her child secretly and placed it in the temenos of Athena. Since the land was being ravished by a pestilence [sent by the goddess], Aleus entered the temenos and there tracked down the evidence of his daughter’s travail. He set the infant out for exposure on Mount Parthenon . . . and gave Auge to Poseidon‘s son Nauplios to sell abroad [into slavery]."

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ATHENA WRATH: ARAKHNE

LOCALE: Kolophon, Lydia (Anatolia)
Ovid, Metamorphoses 6. 1 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Then to herself [Athena said] - ‘To praise is not enough; I should have praise myself, not suffer my divinity to be despised unscathed.’ She had in mind Arachne's doom, the girl of Lydia, who in the arts of wool-craft claimed renown (so she had heard) to rival hers. The girl had no distinction in her place of birth or pedigree, only that special skill. Her father was Idmon Colophonius, whose trade it was to dye the thirsty wool with purple of Phocaea. She had lost her mother, but she too had been low-born and matched her husband. Yet in all the towns of Lydia Arachne's work had won a memorable name, although her home was humble and Hypaepae where she lived was humble too. To watch her wondrous work the Nymphae would often leave their vine-clad slopes of Tmolus, often leave Pactolus' stream, delighted both to see the cloth she wove and watch her working too; such grace she had. Forming the raw wool first into a ball, or fingering the flock and drawing out again and yet again the fleecy cloud in long soft threads, or twirling with her thumb, her dainty thumb, the slender spindle, or embroidering the pattern - you would know Pallas [Athena] had trained her.
Yet the girl denied it [all such gifts were god-given so her denial was blasphemous], a teacher so distinguished hurt her pride, and said, ‘Let her contend with me. Should I lose, there’s no forfeit that I would not pay.’ Pallas [Athena] disguised herself as an old woman, a fringe of false grey hair around her brow, her tottering steps supported by a stick, and speaking to the girl, ‘Not everything that old age brings’, she said, ‘we'd wish to avoid. With riper years we gain experience. Heed my advice. Among the world of men seek for your wool-craft all the fame you will, but yield the goddess place, and humbly ask pardon for those rash words of yours; she'll give you pardon if you ask.’
With blazing eyes Arachne stared at her and left her work. She almost struck her; anger strong and clear glowed as she gave the goddess (in disguise) her answer: ‘You’re too old, your brain has gone. You've lived too long, your years have done for you. Talk to your daughters, talk to your sons' wives! My own advice is all I need. Don’t think your words have any weight. My mind's unchanged. Why doesn't Pallas come herself? Why should she hesitate to match herself with me?’ Then Pallas said, ‘She's come!’ and threw aside the old crone's guise and stood revealed.
The Nymphae and Lydian women knelt in reverence. Only Arachne had no fear. Yet she blushed all the same, a sudden colour tinged her cheeks against her will, then disappeared; so when Aurora [Eos] rises in the dawn, the eastern sky is red and, as the sun climbs, in a little while is pale again. She stood by her resolve, setting her heart, her stupid heart, on victory, and rushed to meet her fate. Nor did the child of Jove [Zeus] refuse or warn her further or postpone the contest. Then, with no delay, they both, standing apart, set up their separate looms and stretched the slender warp. The warp is tied to the wide cross-beam; a cane divides the threads; the pointed shuttles carry the woof through, sped by their fingers. When its through the warp, the comb's teeth, tapping, press it into place. Both work in haste, their dresses girdled tight below their breasts; the movements of their arms are skilled and sure; their zeal beguiles their toil. Here purple threads that Tyrian vats have dyed are woven in, and subtle delicate tints that change insensibly from shade to shade. So when the sunshine strikes a shower of rain, the bow's huge arc will paint the whole wide sky, and countless different colours shine, yet each gradation dupes the gaze, the tints that touch so similar, the extremes so far distinct. Threads too of golden wire were woven in, and on the loom an ancient tale was traced [Athena depicted her contest with Poseidon for Athens] . . .
Yet to provide examples to instruct her rival what reward she should expect for her insensate daring, she designed in each of the four corners four small scenes of contest, brightly coloured miniatures . . . That was the end, and she finished her picture with her own fair tree.
Maeonis [Arakhne] shows [in her weaving the seduction of various mortals by gods in animal disguise] . . . Round the edge a narrow band of flowers she designed, flowers and clinging ivy intertwined.
In all that work of hers Pallas could find, envy could find, no fault. Incensed at such success the warrior goddess, golden-haired, tore up the tapestry, those crimes of heaven, and with the boxwood shuttle in her hand (box of citrus) three times, four times, struck Arachne on her forehead. The poor wretch, unable to endure it, bravely placed a noose around her neck; but, as she hung, Pallas in pity raised her. ‘Live!’ she said, ‘Yes, live but hang, you wicked girl, and know you’ll rue the future too: that penalty your kin shall pay to all posterity!’ And as she turned to go, she sprinkled her with drugs of Hecate, and in a trice, touched by the bitter lotion, all her hair falls off and with it go her nose and ears. Her head shrinks tiny; her whole body's small; instead of legs slim fingers line her sides. The rest is belly; yet from that she sends a fine-spun thread and, as a spider, still weaving her web, pursues her former skill. All Lydia rang; the story raced abroad through Phrygia’s towns and filled the world with talk."
Virgil, Georgics 4. 246 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman bucolic C1st B.C.) :
"The spider, hateful to Minerva [Athena], hangs in the doorway her loose-woven nets."

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ATHENA WRATH: HARMONIA

LOCALE: Thebes, Boiotia (Central Greece)
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 148 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From their [Aphrodite and Ares' adulterous] embrace Harmonia was born, and to her Minerva [Athena] and Vulcanus [Hephaistos] gave a robe ‘dipped in crimes’ as a gift. Because of this, their descendants are clearly marked as ill-fated."

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ATHENA WRATH: TEUTHIS

LOCALE: Aulis, Boiotia (Central Greece) & Teuthis, Arkadia (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 28. 5-6 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"Adjoining the land of Theisoa is a village called Teuthis [in Arkadia], which in old days was a town. In the Trojan war the inhabitants supplied a general of their own. His name according to some was Teuthis, according to others Ornytos. When the Greeks failed to secure favorable winds to take them from Aulis, but were shut in for a long time by a violent gale, Teuthis quarrelled with Agamemnon and was about to lead the Arkadians under his command back home again. Whereupon, they say, Athena in the guise of Melas, the son of Ops, tried to turn Teuthis aside from his journey home. But Teuthis, his wrath swelling within him, struck with his spear the thigh of the goddess, and actually did lead his army back from Aulis. On his return to his native land the goddess appeared to him in a vision with a wound in her thigh. After this a wasting disease fell on Teuthis, and its people, alone of the Arkadians, suffered from famine. Later, oracles were delivered to them from Dodona, telling them what to do to appease the goddess, and in particular they had an image of Athena made with a wound in the thigh. This image I have myself seen, with its thigh swathed in a purple bandage."

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ATHENA WRATH: ILOS

LOCALE: Troy, the Troad (Anatolia)
Pseudo-Plutarch, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories 17 (trans. Babbitt) (Greek historian C2nd A.D.) :
"When the shrine of Athena in Ilion was in flames, Ilos [the first king of Troy] rushed up and seized the Palladion, a statue which had fallen from heaven, and was blinded: for the Palladion might not be looked upon by man. But later, when he had placated the goddess, he regained his sight. So says Derkyllos in the first book of his Foundations of Cities."

For other MYTHS of the Palladium see: (1) Athena & her Friend Pallas (2) Athena & the Trojan War: Theft of the Palladium

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ATHENA WRATH: THE LOKRIANS

LOCALE: Opountian Lokris (Central Greece) & Troy, the Troad (Anatolia)

For the PRELUDE to this story see Athena & the Trojan War: Aias Oïleus

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E6. 20-22 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Lokrian Aias, when he saw Kassandra clinging to the wooden statue of Athena, raped her . . . Athena was enraged at . . . the impious act of Aias [and destroyed his ship] . . . The [rest of Aias'] Lokrians regained their own country with difficulty [after returning from the Trojan War], and three years afterwards, when Lokris was visited by a plague, they received an oracle bidding them to propitiate Athena at Ilion [Troy] and to send two maidens as suppliants for a thousand years. The lot first fell on Periboia and Kleopatra. And when they came to Troy they were chased by the natives and took refuge in the sanctuary. And they did not approach the goddess, but swept and sprinkled the sanctuary; and they did not go out of the temple, and their hair was cropped, and they wore single garments and no shoes. And when the first maidens died, they sent others; and they entered into the city by night, lest, being seen outside the precinct, they should be put to the sword; but afterwards they sent babes with their nurses. And when the thousand years were passed, after the Phokian war they ceased to send suppliants."
Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 1. 8 (from Scholiast on Iliad 13. 66) (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Athena compelled the Lokrians for a space of a thousand years to send to Ilios maidens selected by lot. The story in Callimachus Aitia 1."
Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 2.1 (from Scholiast on Lycophron 1141) :
"A plague having come on Lokris through the assault of Aias upon Kassandra, the god [Apollon] told them by an oracle that for a thousand years they must send maidens every year to Troy for Athena. When they arrived they were slain by the Trojans who met and stoned them. Any who escaped made their way secretly to the temple of Athena and became for the future her priestesses."
Strabo, Geography 13. 1. 40 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The present Ilians [Trojans] further tell us that the city was, in fact, not completely wiped out at its capture by the Akhaians and that it was never even deserted. At any rate the Lokrian maidens, beginning a little later, were sent every year. But this too is non-Homeric, for Homeros knows not of the violation of Kassandra . . . and yet he does not so much as mention any violation of her or say that the destruction of Aias in the shipwreck took place because of the wrath of Athena or any such cause . . . But the fact is that the Lokrian maidens were first sent when the Persians were already in power."
Other sources not quoted here: Tzetzes on Lycrophon; Polybius xii.5; Scholiast on Homer's Iliad xiii.66; Iamblichus, De Pythagorica vita, viii.42; Suidas, s.v. poinê; Servius on Virgil's Aeneid 1.41

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ATHENA WRATH: IODAMA

LOCALE: Koroneia, Phokis (Central Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 34. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"Iodama, who served the goddess [Athena] as priestess [at the shrine of Koroneia in Phokis], entered the precinct by night, where there appeared to her Athena, upon whose tunic was worked the head of Medousa the Gorgon. When Iodama saw it, she was turned to stone. For this reason a woman puts fire every day on the altar of Iodama, and as she does this she thrice repeats in the Boiotian dialect that Iodama is living and asking for fire."

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ATHENA WRATH: ALKINOE

LOCALE: Korinthos, the Isthmos (Southern Greece)
Parthenius, Love Romances 27 (trans. Gaselee) (Greek poet C1st B.C.) :
"From the Curses of Moero [of Byzantium, Greek poetess C3rd B.C.]: Alkinoe, so the story goes, was the daughter of Polybos of Korinthos and the wife of Amphilokhos the son of Dryas; by the wrath of Athene she became infatuated with a stranger from Samos, named Xanthos. This was the reason of her visitation: she had hired a woman named Nikandra to come and spin for her, but after she had worked for her for a year, she turned her out of her house without paying her the full wages she had promised, and Nikandra had earnestly prayed Athene to avenge her for the unjust withholding of her due. Thus afflicted, Alkinoe reached such a state that she left her home and the little children she had borne to Amphilokhos, and sailed away with Xanthos; but in the middle of the voyage she came to realise what she had done. She straightway shed many tears, calling often, now upon her young husband and now upon her children, and though Xanthos did his best to comfort her, saying that he would make her his wife, she would not listen to him, but threw herself into the sea."