http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================

Classics 242 Summary Notes on the Virgins

There are at least two interesting questions raised by the Olympian
virgins: 1) Why are half of the Pantheon's goddesses, and the vast
majority of the subsidiary divine females, *virgins*, when marriage is
the central focus of the Greek woman's life, and perpetual virginity is
not an option?
2) Among the three Olympian virgins, does 'virginity' function
distinctively in each?

ATHENA [or Athene; identified with the Roman Minerva]

*_Epithets_* identify her as /Pallas/, /Tritogeneia/ (born at Lake
Triton [Tritonis]? on the 3rd day? as the 3rd child?), /grey-eyed/,
/resourceful/, /defender of cities/, the /spoiler/, /aegis-bearing/
(like her father). (The/ aegis/ is a goat-skin covered shield or
breastplate; in Athens the sacrifice of goats was a special part of her
cult; her aegis is often bordered by snakes, and has Medusa's head in
its center.) Her name may derive from the place since -ENE is a
place-name suffix: thus, Athena, the goddess from Athens.

*_Associations_: *One of Ovid's myths associates her with the /owl/;
everyone also knows she brought /olive trees/ to Attica. In the contest
to determine who will be patron deity for Athens, Poseidon offers a
salt-water spring for the Acropolis, but Athena's olive tree is deemed
the more valuable gift. Indeed, the olive tree was the staple of
Athenian economy and prosperity--an Athenian necessity. The /Oresteia/
associates, more broadly, Athena with Athens' /cultural and political
advancements/: the communal administration of justice, e.g.

Other *_inventions_*, in addition to the olive tree:/ bridle/ and
/chariot/ (to make use of Poseidon's horses?--another example of
Athena's superiority over her uncle), /ships/ (likewise), the /flute/
(wooden reeded variety--she was said to have thrown it away when she
discovered how distorted one's features become when playing the flute;
thus, Pan could claim the invention). And of course her major household
association was women's work in weaving, the /textile-industry/; hence/
Athene Ergane '/Workwoman/.' /Arachne, perhaps significantly, comes from
the major textile area of Lydia in Asian Minor.

*_Origins/Roles:_ *she has been variously explained as the /Snake
Goddess/ of Minoan palaces/houses and as the/ Shield Deity/ of Mycenaean
fortresses. In numerous locations, her temple is centrally located on
the fortress hill. Her virginity parallels the impregnable condition of
the citadel and the /polis/ that springs up around the citadel. Thus, at
Troy the /Palladion /or /Palladium/ (her small cult image) was the
guarantee of Troy's continued existence; its theft by Diomedes and
Odysseus meant destruction for Troy--or perhaps, as the Romans later
said, the Greeks only took away a fake Palladion, and Aeneas rescued the
real one and brought it with him to Italy. She is thus a deity of the
*city*/, /and her inviolate nature is that of the/ /*defended /polis/*.
Many of her activities place her within the masculine world of power:/
military defense/, /economic productivity/, /political managment/,
/law-courts/. _Though she shares virginity, then, with Artemis and
Hestia, she shares complementary and overlapping responsibilities with
Ares, Apollo, Hephaestus, Poseidon, and of course, Zeus_.

*_Paradoxes and Problems_*: her 'masculinity'--a gender-bending or
'bi-gendered' goddess--

* female, yet (from an ancient perspective) 'masculine'--or, as some
think, a peculiarly androgynous, almost asexual nature. Yet she
was still at least once the object of sexual attraction
* active in male realms, but providing no precedents for mortal
women to assume 'male roles'
* Her temple, the Parthenon, her 'Maiden's Chamber,' depicts victory
for the immortal female (Athena over Poseidon), but defeat for the
mortal Amazons and for the famous mythic violators of
marriage--Centaurs, Trojans (Blundell 191-3).
* a dedicated virgin, resisting marriage and thus subordination to
any male (except the father), yet voicing the patriarchal line in
marriage and the subordination of the ancient female Furies to the
new male regime of Olympian Zeus (/Eumenides/).
* virginal, yet 'mother' or 'foster mother' to Erichthonius, the
autochthonous parent of the Athenian race, and nurturer of
numerous young male heroes;
* fiercely aggressive and defensively virginal, yet an ever-present
helpmate to the heroic generation of noble males; _Walter Otto
calls her the goddess of nearness and intimacy_. This would make
her a contrasting complement to the twins of distance: Apollo and
Artemis. And she also should be associated with Hermes as a god of
nearness, invention, cleverness, and sometimes deceit. 

ARTEMIS [identified with the Roman Diana]

*_Epithets_*: /arrow-pouring/, /goddess of golden shafts/,
/horse-riding/, /huntress/, /Dictynna/(goddess of the chase or nets),
/Phoebe/ (after her Tutanness grandmother)/, Letogeneia /or/ Latogeneia/
(daughter of Leto), /Cynthia/ (in Roman texts, associating her with Mr.
Cynthus on Delos, her birthplace)

Artemis *_frequents_*_ _/shady mountains/, /windy peaks,/ /groves/
(where she dances with the Graces and Muses or leads a dance of her
numerous /woodsy nymphs/). She of course loves the /wild chase/ and
wilderness in general, but is still a most appropriate comparison for a
/young girl /like Nausicaa (who has marriage on her mind, /Odyssey/ 6).

Burkert says she is one of the oldest, most individual, and
widely-worshipped of the Greek deities. Her* _name_* is obscure
(healthy? butcher? bear?). She has close connections with the /Asian
Mistress of Animals/ (Cybele). If *Aphrodite* wants to appear in
disguise, unlike Athena (who appears as a man or a little girl or an old
woman), she incongruously impersonates a follower of Artemis; when
Aphrodite attracts and leads a train of wild animals, she is in part
'playing Artemis' -- perhaps showing that Aphrodite and Artemis were
much more similar in their Asian origins than they appear to be in their
Greek manifestations.

If *Athena's* /virginity/ defends impregnable citadels and women's
quarters in the /oikos/, Artemis' defends inviolate, /untamed nature
/(meadows, groves, virgin forests, the open country beyond the ploughed
fields). Patron of /wild animals/ (as opposed to her brother's
domesticated herds/flocks), she also delights in the 'kill' and has
/deadly aim/. She may share the wild mountain with *Hermes* and
*Dionysus*, but, among the gods, _only *Apollo*_ is her close associate.
Among the goddesses she _complements *Hera *as patroness of women_, but
relatively late in the mythic traditions she also becomes identified
with *Selene* (moon), and thus also with *Hecate* (cross-roads, esp. at
night); the three sometimes coalesced as *Trivia* (properly Hecate's
epithet as 'goddess of three roads').

In _myth_ [Callisto, Actaeon, Niobe] she frequently (as also her
brother) *punishes human presumption *and trespass of divine
prerogatives. Like her brother, Artemis is a deity who keeps her
distance--especially from men. [Hippolytus is an obvious exception, but
note that despite their claimed intimacy, she can't weep at the end or
attend his death, and even at the beginning, Hippolytus makes observes
that he has heard the goddess, but can never expect to see her face to
face. Likewise, Apollo is nowhere around when Hector finally dies in
/Iliad/ 22.]

If Athena's virginity is an 'asexuality' or a masculinizing of the
feminine, Artemis's virginity is quite different: /untamed,
undomesticated, unmarried, and _*reserved *sexuality_/. Despite her role
as hunter, she doesn't move in men's circles (as Athena does), but
avoids them. She has a particular and paradoxical importance for girls
and women as they go through their life-cycle; Artemis is important for
the _/physical aspects of female experience/_: menstruation, loss of
virginity or consummation of sexuality (wedding nights), childbirth, and
death. [This is perhaps complementary to Hera's association with more
institutional, familial, and wifely aspects of marriage, but the two
goddessess' spheres are overlapping.] Artemis is associated with
choruses of girls who are approaching the age of marriage (14 or so),
the _/goddess of the turning points in girls' lives/_--a function
brother Apollo seems to serve for boys. Since these moments all have an
element of fear and cruelty inherent in them, she can also be a _/cruel
goddess/_, threatening girls and women who are going through those very
turning points--*every god is both alluring and frightening*. What
person--male or female--approaches marriage or childbirth as an
unambiguous pleasure? Contradictory demands are not limited to conflicts
*between* gods (like /Hippolytus/' Artemis/Aphrodite), but are present
in the *paradoxical nature* of each god. As a virgin, therefore, Artemis
_/both supports and endangers women/_ entering maturity and assuming
familial functions. In this the goddess reflects the way things are--or
are experienced to be. Women pray to her when they undergo childbirth;
if they die in childbirth, they are called her victims. [Likewise,
though the _/nurturer of young animals, she 'raises' them to be hunters'
prey/_, and herself delights in the kill.] In some myths she seems to
demand cruel and bloody sacrifices; at Tauris in Asian Minor she demands
human blood, as she also seems to have done in Iphigenia's case--unless
Artemis substituted an animal at the last moment and whisked the maiden
away to be her priestess in Tauris. As Burkert says, she brings
something of the _/un- or pre-civilized life/_/ /into the civilization
of the /polis/. We can never be fully tamed?

_Paradoxical_ associations, therefore, with/ fertility/--in animal
nature and women--and with the resistance /to giving up the resources of
that fertility/: the patroness of adolescent women (and one man) on the
point of becoming mature--/both the transition and the resistance to the
transition/.

HESTIA

Hestia sits at the center of every household and every city and state
(in the 'town hall' or /prytaneion/, a place women did not normally
enter) and even at the center of Delphi, the very navel of Greece and
the world. She attends all Greece's hearth. Hestia in fact means
'hearth'--another god (like Hermes) who gets her name from a stone
structure or piece of topography. Hymn 29 presents a rather surprising
association of Hestia with Hermes, calls them 'neighbors' who are
related by place and function. What do you make of this?

Both are considered 'epichthonic' deities, i.e. dwelling or acting
primarily on the earth rather than _above_ (the Uranian/Olympian ones)
or _below_ (the chthonic ones) or inside the earth. Both act as
mediators between the regions above and those below. Both dwell in or at
the house, but she never leaves it, and he is always leaving it.

What follows here is a summary of an article by Vernant ('Hestia-Hermes:
the Religious Expression of Space and Movement among the Greeks'). The
article uses the significances of these two deities to show how the
Greeks created a mental organization of 'space' along gender lines.

The household hearth was a circular stone structure anchored to the
ground within the square megaron or common room; hence it was the center
of the domestic sphere of /domos/ (house as building) and /oikos/ (house
as family and property). Hestia is therefore the locus, the point of
orientation and organization in the human sphere (private household and
public temples/civic centers). Rooted to the earth, she is immobile at
the center of life; she is that which is fixed and dependable at the
center of things--fixity, immutability, permanence. Dwelling on the
earth's surface, she links the household with the both the underworld
and (through the hole in the roof through which her smoke ascends) the
heavens. She is the immovable axis through which all parts of the
universe are joined together--the place of contact. [Perhaps this can be
seen as a role she derives from, and shares with her grandmother Gaia,
the mother root of all that is, foundation of life.]

	[By contrast, HERMES is not at all stable, fixed, permanent, definite,
but elusive and ubiquitous. Located at the door or threshhold, at
gateways and other entrances,he is a wall-piercer and boundary-crosser.
Wherever _exchange_ takes place--in theagora, stadium, etc.)--he is
present--wherever men go when they leave the /oikos /everyday. The
venture forth to work, war, trade, social contact, politics --in the
great outdoors. They go out to _acquire_--to acquire 'hermes-fashion' by
hook or by crook--to acquire goods which those inside the /oikos/ store,
preserve, prepare, and consume. (Hesiod's metaphor of 'devouring belly'
for women?) He is the transition between sleep and waking, life and
death. He is passage, not permanence, but equally a connector of heaven,
earth, and hell.]

Hestia and Hermes are associated, therefore, as the world of the
interior and the world of the exterior: retreat, safety, stability vs.
passage, venture, opportunity.

So, in the polarity of the divine neighbors Hestia and Hermes, the
Greeks can say and think, women are made for indoors--permanently rooted
within the /oikos/--men, on the other hand, for outdoors--for moving
freely within the larger social structure of the/ polis/.

But there is an interesting contradiction: In patrilocal marriage (the
norm in Greece), women, not men, are the mobile element--moved from
father's house to husband's--and yet still belonging in a sense to the
father's, whither they return if the marriage is dissolved for any
reason. Daughters are uprooted from their parental /oikos/ and
established at the hearth of their conjugal /oikos/. Vernant thinks
Hestia has an important role in addressing this contradiction. She
represents both _what women are_ and _what they cannot be_. She is the
immobile virgin, the stable female element in the patriarchal /oikos/.

Hestia's role is to ensure the continued existence of the household in
time; she fosters the generation of legitimate offspring though she
herself is divorced from sexual relationship. As the household's fixed
and secure hearth, she represents the paternal line of descent--both in
the role as _virgin daughter of the house_ and as the _procreative
capacity of the women_ brought into the house to give birth to its
offspring. Since children of the household are considered children of
the hearth (the stable permanent female), Vernant sees Hestia's function
as actually giving some credence to the patriarchal dream of producing
offspring without having to resort to real women (the sentiment
expressed by Hippolytus, Jason, the /Eumenides/' Apollo). Sure, 'foreign
women' have to be brought in for procreation, but in Hestia Greek
patriarchs, in a sense, 'incarnate' the dream that the household can be
self-sufficient. The children belong to the house (and hence, to the
father).

The two roles (virgin daughter of household and maternal procreation)
come together in the Greek institution of the /epikleros/, literally
'with the property' or 'heiress.' This term refers to the daughter of a
father who lacks sons. At the father's death she must become married to
her father's nearest male relative in order to produce a 'son' for her
now dead father. Her son will be considered her father's child and not
her husband's. Thus, she functions as the (virgin) daughter preserving
the father's line and the continuation of the hearth in that she is
still now more her father's daughter than her husband's wife. The
/epikleros/ is then both virgin daughter and procreative maternal
'vehicle.' Vernant thinks Hestia is the mythic/divine analogy to the
/epikleros/.

In the rites of 'child-integration,' the /Amphidromia/, the official
naming of the child and acceptance into the family, the family members
formed a circle around the hearth while dancing and holding the child,
and then they laid the child on the ground next to the hearth. This
perhaps represented the closed circle of the /oikos/ and the
legitimization of the mortal offspring of the house. [Laying the child
on the ground--or throwing him in anger on the ground--occurs in the
Hymn to Demeter as a result/sign of failed immortalization.] Hence, the
ground near the hearth represents both mortal nature and household
membership. In the practice of child exposure (casting out from
/oikos/), the child is placed on the untamed, undomestic ground outside
the /oikos/ and /polis/. Integration into the /oikos/ means verification
of paternal descent; rejection of the child necessitates exclusion from
/oikos/ and Hestia. [However, shepherds, wolves, etc. appear in myths to
save the exposed children, raise them, and then send them off to be
integrated into someone else's /oikos/--or perhaps eventually and
secretly into their own true one, Oedipus' devious path to tragedy.]

Note also, that the hearth has special significance both in maintaining
the household as a closed circle (the private family meal from which
outsiders are barred) and in opening the household hospitably to the
outside (strangers are led to the hearth, received, feasted, and then
asked their name and story--likewise in the city's /prytaneion/, where
foreign visitors are received).

Hence, the Greeks have organized 'space' into a static, enclosed
interior (women's space, yet maintained for the paternal line of
descent) and a mobile, open exterior (associated with men, business,
politics, etc.).

As a focal and integrating point for the /oikos/, Hestia is a powerful
female presence at the center of patriarchal life. Surrounded by women,
she nevertheless enforces paternal control. Her virgin sexuality,
'subdued' for the purposes of the home, but not 'tamed by Aphrodite and
sexual desire, is then complementary to, but different from, Athena's
and Artemis'. I think we can get a sense, in all of this, of the unique
features of the three goddesses' virginal natures, and perhaps the
beginning of an answer to the question of why the Pantheon
includes--even needs--so many virgins. Blundell, in the conclusion to
her chapter on the goddesses (to be read for Monday's class session),
continues to develop this answer.

Return to Supplements Page <supplemn.html>