The ancient Greeks had many gods, demigods, and heroes. The
sheer numbers are confusing and the fact that the same god could go by
different names or be assigned different attributes in different cities makes
the study of ancient Greek religion particularly complex. I readily admit my
own discomfort with polytheism generally and with the religion of the ancient
Greeks in particular. Greek gods could be petty, selfish, immoral, arbitrary,
cruel, fickle, dishonest, and everything else that humans can be. Rather than serving as moral arbiters much
less as examples of virtue, their very immorality often seemed to constitute an
excuse for immoral behavior. In all this chaos and depravity, however, one
story stands out as touchingly uncharacteristic – and tellingly it is the story
of two Spartan princes particularly honored and revered in Sparta.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the Divine Twins, the
Dioskouroi, were the brothers of Helen.
More precisely, Polydeukes was Helen’s full-brother, likewise fathered
by Zeus on her mother Leda, while Kastor was her half-brother, the son of Leda
by her (mortal) husband Tyndareus, the king of Sparta. Raised at the Spartan
court as twin sons of the king, the Dioskouroi lived the ideal lives of
aristocratic youth in the age of heroes. They had great adventures, sailing
with Jason on the Argo, hunting boar with Herakles, rescuing their sister from
the Athenian king Theseus, who had abducted her – and then robbing two sisters
from a neighboring kingdom for their own wives. Nothing about these adventures
suggestions anything particularly virtuous or morally exemplary. They were, it
seemed, just hot-blooded young Greek heroes.
And then, in a fight over stolen cattle, Kastor was killed.
According to the myth, both brothers would have been killed, if Polydeukes
hadn’t been immortal. Polydeukes lived
on after his mortal end and went to his father’s home on Mount Olympus, while
Kastor went into the cold, dark grave, a prisoner of grim Hades, destined never
to see the light of day or breathe fresh air or enjoy any pleasures of the
senses ever again.
According the myth, Polydeukes was so distraught by his
brother’s fate that he was unable to enjoy his own immortality. Seeing his
son’s misery, Zeus took pity on him and allowed the twins to switch places on
an alternating basis. Every other day, Polydeukes took his brother’s place in
hell, so that Kastor could escape the grave.
There is, I think, something wonderfully Spartan about this
tale. It includes both the love of life, which – contrary to popular opinion –
was characteristic of ancient Sparta (see Loving Life in Lacedaemon and Nothing
in Excess), and the spirit of self-sacrifice that we associate with Leonidas.
"Well, Zeus does it, sooo . . ." LOL
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Professor.
I am not a scholar, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think, perhaps, it is too easy to conflate the myths of Gods with the sense that people had of these Gods. The God of the Jews and Moslems is not exactly a nice God in many ways, yet the worshippers don't necessarily equate the stories with the God as a one to one comparison. I think, based on my own intuition at least, that what the ancient Greeks felt about their Gods and what the poets and storytellers wrote were probably very different things. Both informing each other, yet being drastically distinct.
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