From Mythos to Logos
1. The "Logic" of Greek Myth:
A Case Study: "Reflections of Womanhood"
Hera, Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite
The principal female Olympians -- Hera, Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite (together with Demeter) -- operate almost as though a meditation on the nature of womanhood. Each goddess speaks to a specific power of femaleness, and all sharply differentiate themselves from one another. Together, they seem both to describe and to analyze the many aspects of the feminine.
Hera (=Roman Juno). Special associations include matrons, marriage: wedded women, in particular, prayed to this goddess.
Attributes: no unique iconography, identified by context (the wife of Zeus) or inscription
Hera, in literature and in cult: the woman-who-is-the-wife
Athena (Athene). (= Roman Minerva; sometimes called Tritogeneia; often called "Pallas Athena" or simply "Pallas")
Attributes: helmet, spear, aegis (a fringed half-cloak, often decorated with the Gorgon's head, and fringed with snakes); sometimes associated with snakes and owls.
Athena, the virgin and warrior goddess of the citadel (the maiden-who-is-not-desired, woman-as-stabilizing-force)
The elemental associations of Athena
Carries arms (aegis, helmet, spear): a female god (!) sacred to the warrior and to warrior society
Oversees the central tools of the woman too: as Athena Ergane weaving and woman's handiwork (expressed mythically in the tale of Arachne)
(The two worlds of the Iliad: the dutiful warrior society, the dutiful women working at home at their looms)
Association with the citadel of cities: Athens, Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, even Troy (!)
Association with wisdom, but not the riddling divine wisdom of light and "brilliance" associated with Apollo, but rather a steady, more sober, practical "wisdom"
Helper of heroes: the one-who-is-near
the stabilizing role of women in Greek warrior society (and compare Aphrodite for the destabilizing role of women in that same society!). Women as symbols of the practical and organizational intelligence (necessary for a well-run house): the oikos (=home) as a microcosm of the civil society, the polis (=city)
Artemis (= Roman Diana). A virgin goddess, associated with the hunt, chastity, and childbirth (!)
Attributes: bow, fawn (or doe or stag); often appears with her brother, Apollo; usually a short dress (chiton) and a girl's hairstyle
Artemis, the maiden-who-is-desired-but-cannot-be-touched
Similarly there are two sides to her virginal (lack of) sexuality. Not, like Athena, a lack of sexuality: peculiarly erotic, and challenging in the erotic allure. The inviolate and inviolable virgin, usually accompanied (as in the story of Actaeon) by a swarm of equally enticing nymphs. But the appearance of Artemis' nymphs is strangely bound up in myth with rape: Zeus and Callisto, Theseus and Helen.
Instability of the image of the "virgin" follower of Artemis, Hippolytus.
The image of the "Pure Virgin" is unstable: no sanctity here, but rather that destabilizing eroticism tied up with virgin girls of marriageable age. "Nymph": cf. Greek nymphe =
(2) newlywed brides
(3) young women in their first encounter with love
Aphrodite. (= Roman Venus; sometimes called Cytherea or Cypris).
Attributes: in early art, usually clothed and often impossible to distinguish from Hera or other goddesses, unless there is an inscription; from the 4th century onward, usually nude (after Praxiteles)
sometimes pictured with a sceptre or a mirror; often accompanied by Eros (=Roman Cupid) or several Erotes (Cupids); sometimes accompanied by a goose or swan.
Aphrodite, the woman-who-is-desired-and-CAN-be-touched (cf. Artemis), the woman-who-is-not-the-wife (cf. Hera), woman-as-destabilizing-force (cf. Athena)
Near Eastern antecedents: Ishtar (goddess of love & war), also called Inanna and Astarte. Ritual prostitution. Sexuality, despite later representations, not solely feminine: bearded Aphrodite/Ishtar, male Aphroditos/Astar.
But as Aphrodite develops in Greek culture, clearly she is conceived as a contrast to Artemis.
Aphrodite: heavily adorned, accompanied by 3Graces (feminine divinities of feminine allure as it is enhanced by clothes, jewelry, hair-dressing)
Artemis "shoots straight"
Aphrodite "leads astray": Anchises because "she even led astray the mind of Zeus...": her feminine wiles are too much for Anchises, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, lines 97ff (Powell p. 158-9)
Artemis as the "repression" or denial of Aphrodite (and Euripides' Hippolytus as a meditation on that)