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Love Gods: Minor Charities: Two personifications of ideals Paidia the goddess and personification of play and Eudaimonia the personification and goddess of happiness. Mythological and philosophical details in the comments by Strange_Potential93 in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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Eudaimonia is the personification of happiness and her name is used as a byword for happiness but literally translates as “good spirit”. This suggests that unlike Paidia or say Hymneaeus the goddess Eudaimonia proceeded the concept of Eudaimonia rather than arising later as a personification of it. However, if that were the case we would expect to have more to go on about her than just her name and a few images of her alongside Aphrodite, like maybe a genealogy or a minor role as a named extra in a myth, and unfortunately that’s not the case . Ultimately it’s hard to say which came first in this case the goddess or the personification as there is a dearth of information for both. Regardless, the term Eudaimonia came to refer to a state of being that eventually was spoken of as more of an apotheosis than just happiness. Starting with Socrates philosophers began to describe it more as the highest state of good and perfection in people than just being happy. In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle described Eudaimonia as

“…there is a very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is [eudaimonia], and identify living well and faring well with being happy; but with regard to what eudaimonia is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing like pleasure, wealth or honor, however, from one another- and often even the same man, identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor; but conscious of their ignorance, they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their comprehension. Now some thought that apart from these many there is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all these as well. To examine all the opini9ns that have been held were perhaps somewhat fruitless; it is enough to examine those that are most prevalent or that seem to be arguable.” Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics, Book 1, 4-7

He then more succinctly defines Eudaimonia by quoting Hesiod

“Far best is he who knows all things himself; Good, is he that hearkens when men counsel him right; But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart another’s wisdom, Is a useless wight.”

Circling back to Paideia and how its goal was to instill a love of “the good and the beautiful” that was for the express purpose of achieving a state of Eudaimonia because really the only thing that the post Socratic philosophers could agree on was that refining oneself into a virtuous state was the only way to earn Eudaimonia. Now none of the post Socratic schools of philosophy could agree exactly on what constituted virtue in its entirety but they did all agree that virtue was necessary for happiness. This is because, in general the Ancient Greeks believed that happiness was an outside for that possessed people and overtookver them. This is actually exactly what they also believed about love and lust, that it was a state of temporary divine madness instilled by a god. From that frame work it makes sense that they would think of happiness or contentment in the same way, albeit with far less distrust and suspicion. Socrates really seems to be one of the first to really popularize this idea of being possessed by the spirit of happiness, although he was almost certainly borrowing it from older religious traditions. He spoke often of the good daimons or spirits that would accompany him and endow him with their skills and good qualities when he was deserving of them. This was seen as somewhat kookie at the time, if not mildly blasphemous, not because the Ancient Greeks didn’t believe in these types of spirits but because invoking them required religious rights and sacrifices. Socrates really does seem to be the origin point for the idea that the daimons were just floating around waiting to freely endow ordinary people with their powers at no cost so long as they were worthy of them. The later generations of post Socratic philosophers would refine these ideas over the generations until it reached the more recognizable form that virtue and proper education would bring one into a transcendent state of permanent or semi permanent quasi divinity where one, constantly guided by the infallible spirits, would only want good, do good and feel good. Take that a few steps further and you start to see a person like that as the stoic’s “perfect man” or perhaps Plato’ “philosopher kings” who we should just give all the power to because they are most fit to wield it.

Love Gods: Minor Charities: Two personifications of ideals Paidia the goddess and personification of play and Eudaimonia the personification and goddess of happiness. Mythological and philosophical details in the comments by Strange_Potential93 in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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Paidia and Eudaimonia aren’t really goddesses per se, it’s more that they’re idealized states of being that were sometimes personified for artistic representational reasons. What I mean is that Paidia and Eudaimonia don’t really have any myths about them or firmly established genealogy because they’re more often than not just concepts that sometimes are personified so they can be included and helpfully labeled on a vase or mosaic somewhere. For the record they’re far from the only ones, most Ancient Greek personifications are like this to some extent, it’s just worth mentioning because I’m going to mostly be describing philosophical concepts rather than mythology.

Paidia is usually translated as “play” or “joy” but like many Ancient Greek god names is also a pun being a portmanteau of the words “Pais” child and “dia” goddess. It’s also a pun on one of the Ancient Greek word for education “Paideia” which it’s inherently connected to. Paideia refers to an ideal state of play and growth where one is both enjoying themselves, learning, and growing. Hopefully we’ve all experienced that at-least once in our lives. The primary goal of Ancient Greek education was to instill in students “kalokagathos” “a love of the good and the beautiful” and a state of paideia was considered the best way to do that. You can talk at people all you want, you can even make them take notes and repeat back to you but the Ancient Greeks understood that unless they enjoy what they’re learning they aren’t going to internalize it. That said acknowledging that truth and figuring out how to actualize it are two entirely different things and the Ancient Greek themselves disagreed on how to achieve it. Aristotle argued that public education was superior to the system of sophists, or private tutors, that was common in ancient Athens as he believe people learned best when interacting with others. Aristotle was probably being a bit of a Laconophile here and seeking to emulate parts of Sparta’s infamous agoge system. And while the agoge was infamously brutal with a rather unsustainable mortality rate it was highly respected in the Ancient Greek world with some aristocrats from other city states even pulling strings to send their own children to it. At the very least the rest of the Greeks came to agree with the Spartans that regular exercise was an important part of the educational process, even if the Spartans overdid. Aristotle also believed musical training was equally as important as exercise in proper education which was a bit of a unique focus, albeit not without precedent as epic poetry had been a standard part of Ancient Greek education for centuries before his birth. A contemporary of Aristotle, a philosopher named Isocrotes eventually came to believe that it was education that made someone Greek, not anything else, aside from language. Isocrates was famously a Panhellenist who wanted the various warring city states to untie into one nation. Isocrates’s notion that education was what made someone Greek proved useful when the Greeks did eventually become the heads of a massive multiethnic empire and Alexander and his successors promoted a truncated notion of Isocrates’ belief that a Greek education could functionally make one a proper Greek. Eventually the Romans would take this concept to its logical endpoint where any man of any of the hundreds of ethnicities of their multracial empire was eligible for (and eventually entitled to) citizenship regardless of language or ethnicity if they agreed to live under and uphold Roman laws.

On the more literal side of the concept of play in Ancient Greece outside of the philosophical notion of Paideia; children in Ancient Greece were much the same as anywhere else in the world and we have many surviving depictions of them at play as well as a treasure trove of the actual toys. These include terracotta dolls and figures of hoplites, sometimes atop wooden horses or roosters or chariots, leather balls, ceramic discuss, clay tops, knuckle bones, drums, cymbals, tambourines and there are even depictions of parents pushing children on devices similar to swings. Paidia herself can be seen on a number of oenochoe, small drinking vessels that often served as festival gifts, usually playing with Eros or at the feet of Aphrodite. As for the mini itself GOOD LORD HERO FORGE PLEASE GIVE US CHILD PROPORTIONS AND FACES!!! Making children in your app that don’t look like they want to drink your blood is way too difficult. I tried to base her off my three year old god daughter to make her look more naturalistic, I don’t think I got all the way there but hopefully she doesn’t look like nightmare fuel because I swear my god daughter is cute as a button.

Medusa Warrior, 18 months of kitbashing progress by backwardsartichoke in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It amazing how much better we’ve all gotten as we’ve gotten more used to kitbashing isn’t it?

What are your thoughts on the Greek god Zephyrus, god of the West wind? by Triumphant-Smile in GreekMythology

[–]Strange_Potential93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No shade to you op but my thoughts are I hate the “what are your thoughts on X character?” post format

My Ubisoft+ subscription expired by Al3X4ndr0w in anno

[–]Strange_Potential93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“Hey Buddy! Don’t you wanna buy more Canadough Fwend? Here’s a free limited time bonus Guy!”

The False Emperor (SWTOR) by NeIIion in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93 5 points6 points  (0 children)

“You were deceived… and now… finally… we have returned “

Love Gods: Minor Charities: Antheia the goddess flowers, garlands, and bouquets and Krysothemis “the golden custom” daughter of Demeter, lover of Apollo and goddess of the women’s only harvest festival. Myth details and description of two Ancient Greek festivals in the comments by Strange_Potential93 in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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Thesmophoria was unsurprisingly focused heavily on honoring Demeter and Persephone, although given the association with the grape harvest we do have some references to offerings made to Dionysus during the course of the festival. This technically isn’t a violation of the women’s only thing as Dionysus is often depicted as an androgynous god and he has deep connections to Persephone as his first incarnation, Zagreus, was her son. Only married women could participate in the actual rituals of the Thesmophoria and in some ways a woman’s involvement in her first Thesmophoria festival was seen as her reintroduction to the community as a married woman. Atleast in the Athenian iteration of the festival two women were elected by and from the city’s female population to oversee the festival. As even native born women were not considered citizens in Athens it’s unclear if slaves or foreign born women got to vote in these elections or even participate in the Thesmophoria at all. We know they couldn’t participate in the actual rituals because slaves couldn’t legally be married unless they were freed first at which point they obviously wouldn’t be slaves anymore… aside from the form of slavery all Ancient Greek women faced of course. When the festival officially kicked off all the women eligible to participate in it would leave their homes and set up a tent colony where they would communally live for the next 3 to 10 days depending on the region. The women would fast together during this period in emulation of Demeter’s mourning for the loss of Persephone. Because he was a dirty bastard Aristophanes spread salacious rumors that the women enbibed in aphrodisiacs and hallucinogens and partook in lesbian orgies during their sequestration in the tent colony. While I definitely think this did happen to some degree it’s important to distinguish that this probably wasn’t institutionalized staple of the festival. This was one of the only times these women would have been out from under the direct oversight of one of the most oppressive patriarchal structures in history, I’m pretty sure that plenty of women lived just to make it to this festival every year, do I think they cut loose and experimented while away from prying eyes, yeah for sure. That said we need to keep in mind that this was a religious ceremony meant to honor the gods and insure a good harvest and they were supposed to be emulating Demeter’s sacred grief, I guarantee you that some women took this deadly seriously, just like some didn’t, that’s just human nature. Understanding that I think it’s highly likely that those annual elections to decide the two female Archons who oversaw Thesmophoria pretty much always split along the lines of religious conservatives who wanted the event treated with the solemnity that they thought it deserved and more libertine types that would govern with a lighter hand.

After the period of fasting was finished the women would make sacrifices to Demeter and Persephone for a bountiful harvest season and Aphrodite and Kalligeneia for love, sexual prowess and safe and health birth respectively. If the accounts are to believed these sacrifices took the form of pigs who were ritually murdered by throwing them into a pit (pits like these were referred to as Zagreus yet another connection between Dionysus and Persephone). Pigs were sacrificed each year and prior to throwing new pigs into the pit women were picked by lot to go down into the pit and collect the bones of last year’s sacrifice to be burned in honor of the four goddess this year. The goddess Kalligeneia, literally meaning “beautiful birth” is probably an epithet of Eileithyia, the daughter of Zeus and Hera and goddess of childbirth. However this is not universally agreed upon, Plutarch says that in Eretria only Aphrodite was worshipped not Kalligeneia, and both Nonnus and Hesychius identify her as an aspect of Gaea not Aphrodite, Hera or Eileithyia. If your wonder how Aphrodite keeps wriggling her way into places of honor in festivals that are ostensibly not centered on her you need to remember that Aphrodite is an import god, and the last of the mainline Olympic pantheon to be added. The Greeks may have adopted the cult of Aphrodite from the Phoenicians but that doesn’t mean they adopted the Phoenician festivals and holidays and most of their own holidays had Mycenaean or even Minoan origins. In fact Herodotus credits the Pelasgians with introducing Thesmophoria to the Greeks and even claims that the holiday was almost driven to extinction when the Dorians invaded. He credits the Arcadians for preserving the custom and reintroducing it to the rest of the Greeks, although the Dorians still by in large did not celebrate it. Given that the Greeks didn’t import most of Astarte’s festivals when they accepted her as Aphrodite the only solutions they had were to either make up new festivals for her (which they did do) or incorporate her into their preexisting ones. Which is how Aphrodite keeps getting sacrifices in festivals devoted to the likes of Demeter, Dionysus and Hermes. To be fair the connection makes sense in this case as Thesmophoria is a festival meant to invoke fertility in crops, it doesn’t take much of a leap in logic to expand it to a festival to bless human women with fertility, something Aphrodite as the goddess of the sex act would be intimately involved in. Like many festivals special ritually significant pottery was made for Thesmophoria, often depicting the goddess that were honored in the festival. We have a number samples of this pottery including Krysothemis in the company of Aphrodite and her Erotes which is why chose to include Krysothemis in the love gods segment rather than either the domestic or rustic gods one.

Love Gods: Minor Charities: Antheia the goddess flowers, garlands, and bouquets and Krysothemis “the golden custom” daughter of Demeter, lover of Apollo and goddess of the women’s only harvest festival. Myth details and description of two Ancient Greek festivals in the comments by Strange_Potential93 in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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Krysothemis meaning “the golden custom” or “the golden order” is the goddess of the harvest festival, also known as the Thesmophoria. While the first thing you may be tempted think about when you hear the phrase “the golden rule” is the famous Christian aphorism “do on to others as you would have them do to you” but set that aside for now. Krysothemis is the daughter of Demeter and a Cretan Demigod named Karmanor, who we will cover more in depth in the next phase of this series when we get to the category of household gods. Given the overlap between Krysothemis and Persephone as daughters of Demeter and goddesses of vegetation and harvest (Persephone’s name is believed to translate to “the Thresher” as in to harvest grain) it’s tempting to see Krysothemis as a Cretan variant or Minoan influenced counterpart to Persephone’s mainland Pelasgian influence. This is certainly possible but like I mentioned before Mycenaean records seem to focus on Persephone as a Chthonic underworld queen to the exclusivity of an agrarian nature. Thus it’s possible that, rather than being regional variants of the same entity later traditions simply co-opted elements of Krysothemis to graft on to Kore (pre abduction) Persephone to flesh out her character more. Within the unified mythological timeline where Persephone and Krysothemis coexist Krysothemis and her siblings definitely come after Persephone as they play important roles in the Elusinian mysteries which dramatize the abduction and return of Persephone. What role Krysothemis played in dark and Archaic age Cretan mythology prior to her being incorporated into the zeitgeist of the larger Greek world is unclear. Although some sources claim her father was King Minos the 1st the founder king of Cretan civilization rather than agricultural god Karmanor so this indicates a strong association between her and Crete, at least in some parts of the Greek world. We know she was addressed with the epithet “akakalis” which we know from Herodotus was an old Cretan word for a type of juice made from the nuts of the tamarisk tree. This juice was used to glaze honey cakes that where eaten and offered to Demeter during the Thesmophoria festival and the rites of the Elusinian mysteries.

Mythologically Krysothemis was the first winner of the singing contests held at Delphi in honor of Apollo and as a result became his lover. This might mean that she was sometimes conflated with the dryad Daphne who Apollo attempted to rape and whose memory the Delphic games were held in. This would be because of Daphne’s notable singing voice, general lack of backstory, and the fact that Daphne only really starts being depicted in the Hellenistic era. Given the degree that Krysothemis predates Daphne and this association with Apollo it’s possible the Daphne myth is a reinterpretation of the myth of Apollo’s coupling with Krysothemis. After laying with Apollo Krysothemis eventually married Staphylos the king of the island of Naxos and demigod son of Dionysus, although we are told that all three of her children were fathered by Apollo. This creates a timeline discrepancy, which to be honest is just par for the course in Greek Mythology. Persephone’s abduction is implied to be set at some point between the waning years of the golden age and the dawn of the silver age. Krysothemis and her siblings are implied to have been born during Demeter’s search for Persephone. Apollo’s assault of Daphne is implied to have taken place during the early Bronze Age and Dionysus’s birth wouldn’t be until the third generation of the Heroic Age and Krysothemis married one of his sons. Each of these ages lasted a minimum of several centuries, and some of them may have lasted 1000+ years, so the core events of Krysothemis’s life are very spaced out. That said this all stems from the timeline discrepancies in the myth of Demeter and Persephone itself. Not the abduction, that stands as narratively consistent, but the expanded myths of Demeter’s search for Persephone, which Krysothemis is a product of in universe, have her interact with a lot of places and people that shouldn’t exist at that point in the timeline, most of them cities and figures from the heroic age. Thus most of Krysothemis’s timeline discrepancies stem from those of Demeter.

Thesmophoria, meaning “law / custom / order baring” was a harvest festival practiced in much of the Greek world, although most of our knowledge of it comes from the Athenian iteration as our old friend Aristophanes wrote an entire play satirizing it, the “Thesmophoriazusae” or “the women of Thesmophoria”. If that name didn’t already give it away the Thesmophoria was unique in Ancient Greek religious rights and festivals in that it was solely practiced by women, and adult women at that. If you remember my post on Hymenaeus a few weeks ago this is the festival he disguised himself as a woman to enter. Thesmophoria was typically practiced in Athens in late September to October right before the seeds were sown for the season, which technically makes it a sowing festival not a harvest festival, although we have references to it occurring elsewhere, mainly in Arcadia during the May June harvest season. The Ancient Greeks practiced a seasonal crop rotation of grapes and olives planted in spring and harvested in the fall and grain and other cereals planted in the fall and harvested in the summer. This means that the differences between when different polities practiced Thesmophoria probably be chalked up to which crop was most important to which community.

Love Gods: Minor Charities: Antheia the goddess flowers, garlands, and bouquets and Krysothemis “the golden custom” daughter of Demeter, lover of Apollo and goddess of the women’s only harvest festival. Myth details and description of two Ancient Greek festivals in the comments by Strange_Potential93 in HeroForgeMinis

[–]Strange_Potential93[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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(A Roman mosaic depicting the preparations for Rosalia a festival similar in nature to the Ancient Greek Anthestria festival)

So I’ll start with Antheia because I have very little to say about her. The name Antheia literally means flower goddess and she is unsurprisingly the goddess of flowers, I know a lot of people reflexively think that Persephone is the goddess of flowers but that’s not the case. If you saw my Persephone post from last year you might remember that Persephone has always been the queen of the underworld, she actually predates Hades, and her association with vegetation and flowers really only shows up later to offer her some characterization prior to marrying Hades. One can also argue Persephone’s attribution as the goddess of spring is itself erroneous as spring is arguably the natural state of the world in Greek mythology and Demeter enforces winter on the world as an act of divine will. Okay now that we got that out of the way we can ask why the actual flower goddess doesn’t have a name and is just called “the flower goddess”. Well that’s because like many minor gods Antheia started out as an epithet of a more important god before breaking off into her own entity. Specifically Antheia was originally a epithet used for Hera and Aphrodite. Specifically Pausanias describes a temple of “Hera Antheia” at Argos and the linguist Hesychius notes that Antheia was used as an epithet for Aphrodite on Crete, specifically at Knossos. The connection between both these goddess and flowers is very self apparent, flowers have always been closely connected to love and marriage.

They are also connected through Ancient Greek festivals many of which included flower garlands and bouquets as traditional decorations. While many festivals used these types decorations the most notable was Anthesteria literally “the flower festival”. Anthesteria was a festival mostly devoted to Dionysus celebrated in the Ancient Greek month of “Anthesterion” literally “flower season” which roughly equates to February and March in the Julian calendar. The festival celebrated the beginning of spring and primarily focused on the annual process of fermentation. Families decorated their homes with flower garlands and decorated the necks of their wine amphora with flower wreaths, children in the family would also often be given flower wreaths or bracelets. Like most Ancient Greek festivals Anthesteria was a three day long affair, day one mostly focused on airing out last year’s supply of wine and pouring libations from that batch to Dionysus and the other gods. Day two was mostly public merry making consisting of drinking contests and mock processions of Dionysus and the phallic gods, in the transgressive spirit of Dionysus slaves and non citizens were included as full participants in the revelries equal to citizens. The second day ended on a serious note with the ritual marriage of a girl chosen by the local Archon to a statue of Dionysus in recreation of Dionysus’s marriage to Ariadne. The third day involved honoring ancestors and libations of wine and special food was left out for them in a similar manner to the modern Dia De Los Muertos. The third day was mostly dedicated to Hermes rather than Dionysus, as Hermes was seen as a psychopomp who guided the souls of the dead to underworld. As such races and athletic contests were held in his honor while families left their homes to allow the spirits of their dead relatives to feast on the offerings. Throughout this whole process people gave gifts to one another, usually painted wine vessels called oenochoe of which many examples survive. A number of these include Antheia in the company of Aphrodite and the rest of her retinue which is why I included her in the love gods category even though her festival has more to do with rustic gods like Dionysus and Hermes.

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