Kunos, please
Mar. 2nd, 2012 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetMore gendery stuff later, but now for something completely different: Barbara Walker's Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and the word "bitch".
The word "bitch", Walker tells us, became "a naughty word in Christian Europe because it was one of the most sacred titles of the Goddess, Artemis-Diana". Walker gives no citation, and after a lot of unsystematic rummaging, I haven't been able to find any evidence that "bitch" was a title for either Artemis or Diana - let alone "one of the most sacred titles" for either goddess.
In the Iliad, "bitch" is certainly not a compliment, with Helen repeatedly castigating herself as "bitch" (kunos) and "bitchface" (kunopis - an insult also thrown at Aphrodite by the bard Demodokos), and Menelaus calling the Trojans "evil bitches" (kakai kunes). In the Odyssey, Penelope calls a treacherous maidservant kuon. In fact, "bitch" seems to pop up pretty frequently as an insult in Classical literature, well before "Christian Europe".
I've found hundreds of epithets for Artemis, but the closest to Kuon which I've been able to find is Kynagon, "leader of the dogs". (No luck with Diana's epithets, either - no "canicula" or "catula".) Surely there's such a thing as a complete list of Artemis' epithets? That would settle the matter.
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Loraux, Nicole. "The Phantom of Sexuality". in The experiences of Tiresias: the feminine and the Greek man. Princeton University Press, 1995.
Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1983.
The word "bitch", Walker tells us, became "a naughty word in Christian Europe because it was one of the most sacred titles of the Goddess, Artemis-Diana". Walker gives no citation, and after a lot of unsystematic rummaging, I haven't been able to find any evidence that "bitch" was a title for either Artemis or Diana - let alone "one of the most sacred titles" for either goddess.
In the Iliad, "bitch" is certainly not a compliment, with Helen repeatedly castigating herself as "bitch" (kunos) and "bitchface" (kunopis - an insult also thrown at Aphrodite by the bard Demodokos), and Menelaus calling the Trojans "evil bitches" (kakai kunes). In the Odyssey, Penelope calls a treacherous maidservant kuon. In fact, "bitch" seems to pop up pretty frequently as an insult in Classical literature, well before "Christian Europe".
I've found hundreds of epithets for Artemis, but the closest to Kuon which I've been able to find is Kynagon, "leader of the dogs". (No luck with Diana's epithets, either - no "canicula" or "catula".) Surely there's such a thing as a complete list of Artemis' epithets? That would settle the matter.
__
Loraux, Nicole. "The Phantom of Sexuality". in The experiences of Tiresias: the feminine and the Greek man. Princeton University Press, 1995.
Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1983.
