Mirthful Memes: MYTHED OPPORTUNITIES

CURRENT CONTENTS:
Infernal ("Divine Comedy")

Aurora and Tithon

Dryads

Eliyahu

Galatea

Ovid's "Metamorphosis"

Leda and the Swan

Cronus (Saturn)

Eos (Dawn's early light)

Pandora and her 'box'

Shooting dice with Satan

Authors' Note:   Well, this is about as close as you can get to the bona fide Greek myth. In actuality, Eos became enamored of a series of mortal lovers, but wanted to get on with things, and eventually turned the formerly handsome Prince Tithon/Tithonus into a cicada (which does not match the rhyming scheme). Be careful what you wish for!

   The legend continued into Roman times, during which Aurora personified the role of Eos, and Jove or Jupiter the role of Zeus. Much later, the dilemma of the once-mortal hero was fantasized in the poem "Tithonus" by Alfred Tennyson. Also, the involved deities have been immortalized in human names for astrophysical phenomena.

  In any case, this story fits an immutable pattern in which we mortals get clobbered in interactions with Greco-Roman deities.

  Look near the bottom of this collection for a verse about Eos's astronomical protégé.

Authors' Note: 

Eliyahu HaNavi -- ay-lee-YA-hoo ha-na-VEE-- (Elijah the Prophet) plays an important role in the traditional Passover Seder service. At the end of the multi-course dinner for family and friends, the fifth glass of wine is poured, but reserved for the prophet. The door of the home is then opened briefly, recitations from the Old Testament chanted, and the Prophet (who, some day, will announce the arrival of the Jewish Messiah) enters and may sip from the wineglass; children watch to see if the level in the glass really does go down. The distinguished visitor is not offered a dessert or any other food, and the door is not opened to let him out again, as I recall, but attention turns from the arrival of Eliyahu to the completion of the service, and finally the group singing of traditional songs.

  Note that Eliyahu may come by his reticence to use modern technology for good reason. Last week, Israel's chief rabbis decided that even in this plague-ridden year, video-conferencing is subject to the usual ban on the holiday use of electronics. 

Authors' Note:   The ancient Greek myth about the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion was recounted by the Roman poet Ovid in his epic work "Metamorphoses" in 8 CE. The name of Pygmalion's self-crafted ivory love-object was not recorded until French romanticists picked up the issue in the 19th century. In 1871, the British comic playwright W.S. Gilbert composed a modernized spoof in blank verse, "Pygmalion and Galatea", that became a successful hit, as did Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's 1913 theatrical contribution, and its musical and cinematic adaptations (1956 and 1964 respectively) known as My Fair Lady.

Authors' Note: Sulmona is a town in Italy's Abruzzo region where the renowned Roman poet Ovid (Ovidio in modern italian), contemporary of Horace and Virgil, started writing his works in Latin. His magnum opus "Metamorphoses" is a monumental epic of 15 books, recounting chronologically the creation of the universe to the reign of Julius Caesar. Although many of its tales are recounted with a personal twist, it is the source of much of our knowledge of Greco-Roman myth.

Authors' Note: King T. refers to Sparta's King Tyndareus, husband of Leda. These characters in the story of "Leda and the Swan" were presumably mortal. However, relevant accounts, as depicted in literature and representative art, vary as to the mortal status of the couple's famous offspring (the twins Helen and Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux were hatched as human babies from the oversized eggs.)

 

Authors' Note: The nasty Greek deity Cronus, (sometimes transcribed as Kronos) has intermittently been conflated with the Father Time-like figure Chronos, but eventually merged with the more benign Roman god Saturn, for whom Saturday, the planet Saturn, and the harvest festival saturnalia are named.

In the harsh Greek version of the myth, the youth Cronus castrates his father, Uranus, at the urging of his peevish mother Gaia. Later, Cronus learns that he, too, is fated to be overturned by his own offspring, and devours them, except for Zeus, who escapes and eventually does overthrow him to become king of the gods.

Author's Note: The asteroid known by astronomers as 221 Eos is apparently a large orbiting body with a diameter of over 100 km. It has a potential, should it strike the Earth, to bring about an extinction similar to that produced 60 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaur population.

  Like most heavenly bodies, this one was named after a figure from Greco-Roman mythology, Eos (Aurora), the Goddess of Dawn; the irony is apparent. 

Authors' Note: The Greek myth of Pandora addresses the question of why there is evil in the world. Zeus had Pandora created as the first human female. She was given a jar (misinterpreted millenia later as a box) that contained all of life's evils, with careful direction to guard them. She opened the jar out of curiosity, releasing most of its regrettable contents, thereby infesting subsequent generations of humanity. But one item — hope — was kept inside.

In various ethnic superstitions, apotropaic (protective) magic is invoked to counter a malevolent spiritual force that takes away human good fortune if it is celebrated too loudly. This influence presumably underlies the popular Yiddish expression keyn ay(i)n horah (corrupted to keneinahora or kinahora, even KH in Anglo-Yiddish) translated directly as "no evil eye"; this expression is often invoked when a praiseworthy person or attribute is mentioned.

Author's Note: Many floriculturists would sell their souls to find a cultivar of the lush perennial hosta, Hosta spp., whose foliage would persist through the winter. Although the plant routinely dies back during icy months, it usually returns in the following spring.

John Milton's epic work Paradise Lost, and the crapshoot are described in other verses.

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