Athena and the Amazons
Mar. 2nd, 2012 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetDid some heavy-duty reading yesterday. We pass the gleanings on to you!
In her chapter "Athena and the Amazons", Susan Deacy explores the paradoxical nature of Athena: patroness of patriarchy, the goddess of Greek civilisation; and yet at the same time armed and armoured, not just unmarried but refusing marriage, and closely associated with those back-to-front barbarians, those "enemies of Greek civilisation", the Amazons. Though the Amazons are long defeated, and Athena is firmly on the side of Athens and its men, these contradictions produce a restless tension, which I think speaks to the basic problem of oppressing people: keeping them oppressed.
According to Diodorus Sicilius, Athena leads the Amazon army; like them, she clings "tenaciously to manliness (andreia) and virginity (parthenia)." She remarks that Jean-Pierre Vernant (in Myth and Society in Ancient Greece) "has demonstrated that prior to marriage, the parthenos might be deemed not to be properly and exclusively feminine, capable of assuming warrior attributes and characteristics". Goddess and Amazons both "exhibit female behaviour not regulated by marriage" - they're not under men's control. In Amazon society, Diodorus tells us, men are strictly confined to the home because otherwise they might try to take over. Oh what a giveaway!
Anywho, there are obvious parallels here with Inanna/Ishtar, who although a wife, performs no domestic duties and bears no children, and prefers to spend her time fighting and generally making trouble. As the embodiment of what women aren't supposed to be, she reinforces what they are supposed to be... mostly. Again there's this tension, this instability: people don't fall tidily into the roles society dictates for them, especially if those roles are lesser ones. They have to be constantly put back in their place.
(Also intriguing: Diorodus says the Gorgons were an entire race of warrior women!)
ETA: If this discussion is accurate, the Amazons are still being killed off today, at least in the world of comics...
__
Deacey, Susan. "Athena and the Amazons: mortal and immortal femininity in Greek myth". in Lloyd, Alan B. (ed) What is a God?: studies in the nature of Greek divinity. London, Duckworth; Swansea, Classical Press of Wales, 1997.
In her chapter "Athena and the Amazons", Susan Deacy explores the paradoxical nature of Athena: patroness of patriarchy, the goddess of Greek civilisation; and yet at the same time armed and armoured, not just unmarried but refusing marriage, and closely associated with those back-to-front barbarians, those "enemies of Greek civilisation", the Amazons. Though the Amazons are long defeated, and Athena is firmly on the side of Athens and its men, these contradictions produce a restless tension, which I think speaks to the basic problem of oppressing people: keeping them oppressed.
According to Diodorus Sicilius, Athena leads the Amazon army; like them, she clings "tenaciously to manliness (andreia) and virginity (parthenia)." She remarks that Jean-Pierre Vernant (in Myth and Society in Ancient Greece) "has demonstrated that prior to marriage, the parthenos might be deemed not to be properly and exclusively feminine, capable of assuming warrior attributes and characteristics". Goddess and Amazons both "exhibit female behaviour not regulated by marriage" - they're not under men's control. In Amazon society, Diodorus tells us, men are strictly confined to the home because otherwise they might try to take over. Oh what a giveaway!
Anywho, there are obvious parallels here with Inanna/Ishtar, who although a wife, performs no domestic duties and bears no children, and prefers to spend her time fighting and generally making trouble. As the embodiment of what women aren't supposed to be, she reinforces what they are supposed to be... mostly. Again there's this tension, this instability: people don't fall tidily into the roles society dictates for them, especially if those roles are lesser ones. They have to be constantly put back in their place.
(Also intriguing: Diorodus says the Gorgons were an entire race of warrior women!)
ETA: If this discussion is accurate, the Amazons are still being killed off today, at least in the world of comics...
__
Deacey, Susan. "Athena and the Amazons: mortal and immortal femininity in Greek myth". in Lloyd, Alan B. (ed) What is a God?: studies in the nature of Greek divinity. London, Duckworth; Swansea, Classical Press of Wales, 1997.
