#greek-mythology

#greek-mythology

It was long ago that poly­the­ism, as the sto­ry comes down to us, gave way to monothe­ism. Human­i­ty used to have many gods, and now almost every reli­gious believ­er acknowl­edges just one - though which god, exact­ly, does vary. Some pop­u­lar the­o­ries of "big his­to­ry" hold that, as the scale of a soci­ety grows larg­er, the num­ber of deities pro­posed by its faiths gets small­er.

When I was 8 or 9 years old, my uncle and aunt gave me a copy of D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, a standard-bearer for children's folklore that was originally published in 1962. I was immediately dazzled by the book: D'Aulaires' was my first exposure to Greek mythology, and I marveled at its vibrant cosmology, its richly illustrated tales of deities whose omnipotence was matched only by their strikingly human, self-indulgent caprice.

While researching for my Ph.D., I decided to delve into Greek mythology to determine whether I could find a story that could illuminate my understanding of mothering and my interest in maternal ambivalence. I discovered the myth of Demeter and Persephone, which, while thousands of years old, demonstrates how a mythical mother, Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, weathers changes and obstacles

The trailer follows Matt Damon's Odysseus as he's shipwrecked with his army and fights his way home across land and sea, venturing into cavernous darkness - including a glimpse of the Trojan horse and a cave where a massive beast lurks in the shadows - with brief shots of Tom Holland as Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope. It all builds to Odysseus' vow: "After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home. Not even me."

In Bushwick, Stanton - a kind of modern Michelangelo, or at least a painter who specializes in realistic, imaginative murals - painted a pair of murals, "Ariadne and the Flowers" and "Flower Boy" on a 150-foot-long, 15-foot-tall wall. The work is so big, he said, that he used a drone to get good images. Located at 421 Troutman St., the piece was commissioned by Quebracho, a custom framing company surrounded by cafes, bars, clubs, restaurants and other nightlife.

Which version of a story we choose to tell, which characters we place in the foreground, which ones we allow to fade into the shadows: these reflect both the teller and the reader, as much as they show the characters of the myth. Considerations of culture and bias have been central to the recent wave of mythic retellings focused on women,

Chiron was not just any centaur; he was the son of Cronus and an Oceanid named Philyra, possessing the upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse.

Hadestown, the Tony-winning musical by Anais Mitchell, blends folk and jazz, weaving a dark tale of love between Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades and Persephone.