It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
"That gift of love consumed her. From her womb her baby, still not fully formed, was snatched, and sewn (could one believe the tale) inside his father's thigh, and so completed there his mother's time." #Ovid, Metamorphoses 3
🏛️ Birth of #Dionysos, detail, Roman sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysos, 190 CE, Walters Art Museum
📸 Lucas Livingston
It's the Day of Hermes aka Mercurius Day aka #Wednesday! 🐏
"Zeus taking up the child [Dionysos], handed it over to #Hermes, and ordered him to take it to the cave in Nysa, which lay between Phoenicia and Neilos [the River Nile]."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.2.3
🏛 Birth of #Dionysos from #Zeus' thigh, Roman work of the 2nd century after a Greek original of the late 4th century BCE, Vatican Museum
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
Fufluns or Puphluns is the #Etruscan god of plant life, happiness, wine, health, and growth in all things. He is the son of the god Tinia and Semla, who was killed by Tinia in the form of a lightning bolt. Like #Zeus, Tinia sews the infant into his thigh and later gives birth to him.
🏛️ Birth of #Fufluns (#Dionysos), Etruscan mirror in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
"#Nike, giver of sweetness, to you the father, son of Ouranos (Uranus), on his high bench has granted glorious honour, so that in gold-rich Olympos you stand beside #Zeus and judge the outcome of prowess for immortals and mortals: be gracious, daughter of thick-tressed, right-judging Styx."
Bacchylides, Fr. 11
🏛️ Red-figure vase painting of #Hermes, Zeus, Nike, and #Hera.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
"A Phrygian, and born of our blood, was he [#Ganymedes] who now is with the gods, and mingles water with the nectar for their drinking."
Ovid, Heroides 16.199, Paris to Helen
Exquisite gold offering bowl engraved with the drinking contest between #Bacchus and #Hercules. We know this story from art but no written account of this myth has survived.
🏛️ #Dionysos and #Herakles, Drinking Contest Detail, Patera of Rennes, Roman bowl, ca 210 CE. Today in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, #Paris.
@dyadya_boris@mythology@antiquidons@archaeodons The way I understand it, the association with #Dionysos with big cats in general and #panthers/#leopards more specifically is that they represent the dangerous side of wine/alcohol. Also, in myth, he was sent to fight a war against the Indians by his father #Zeus, his triumphant return sometimes depicted with him in a tiger-drawn chariot. In art, his kitties are usually female with swollen teats to visualise his fertility powers.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
Meet Etruscan #Zeus or #Tinia watch his adult son #Hercle being breastfed by his wife #Uni [Hera] as a sign of adoption. #Aplu [#Apollon] and another god and goddess are present to witness the ritual too.
🏛️ #Hera breastfeeding #Herakles, drawing of an #Etruscan mirror case engraving from Volterra, 4th century BCE, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, #Florence
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
This solid bronze statuette of the Roman god #Jupiter (associated with #Zeus) was probably part of the domestic furnishings of a Roman 'domus' or 'villa'. The highest deity in the Roman pantheon, he is the god of international relations and guarantees the observation of treaties.
🏛️ Bronze statuette, #ancientRome, 1st century CE. Today in the Museu d’Art Medieval, #Barcelona.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
A late #DayOfZeus entry today because I didn't manage to post before work:
It's the birth of #Athena: The tiny goddess jumps from #Zeus' head in full armour!
On the left, #Hermes and a rare bearded #Apollon watch the scene. On the right, an unknown goddess and #Ares look on.
🏛️ Black-figure vase painting dated about 540 BCE. Today in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
#Zeus, disguised as a #satyr, seduces Antiope, daughter of the river god Asopos or of Nykteus, the king of Thebes. Antiope fled in fear of her father and was abducted by the hero Epopeus, eventually giving birth to two sons, Amphion by Zeus and Zethus by Epopeus.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
Painting of the theft of Fire: #Zeus and his eagle and his lover #Ganymedes are all asleep. Meanwhile, #Prometheus steals fire from the thunderbolt in Zeus' hand.
🏛️ The Theft of Fire by Christian Griepenkerl, dated 1878 CE.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
Humourous Roman #mosaic of #Ganymedes and #Zeus as a heron with a sponge on a stick, commony used by the Romans to clean the bum after going to the toilet. But if you know that Ganymedes is Zeus' lover, a different reason for sponging his genitals comes to mind 😏
🏛️ Dated 2nd century CE, discovered in Antiochia ad Cragum, Turkey
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
Meet the Jupiter of Cumae made of marble from Thassos. Cumae is famous for the Sybel of Cumae whose alleged cave is a tourist attraction. The statue probably used to be housed in the Temple of #Zeus which was turned into a basilica after Christianisation.
🏛️ #Jupiter of Cuma, 1st century CE, today in the National Archaeological Museum, #Naples
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
The inspiration for this sculpture of #Jupiter was the monumental gold and ivory statue of #Zeus created by the Greek sculptor Pheidias (active 470-420 BCE) for Zeus's temple at #Olympia. It was renowned in antiquity as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and numerous sculptors copied it.
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
"[Zeus] made Hera his blooming wife: and she was joined in love with the king of gods and men, and brought forth Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia."
Hesiod, Theogony 921
🏛️ #Hera and #Zeus, marble relief from Temple E in #Selinunte, dated ca. 450 BCE. Today in the Museo archeologico regionale di #Palermo.
This week's #MythologyMonday theme is fire and there are two major Greek gods associated with fire: #Hestia, goddess of the hearth, and #Hephaistos, god of smiths.
They represent #fire in two different forms: the sacrificial flame of the hearth as the sacred centre of domestic life and the flame of Hephaistos, source of all arts, and fuel of the funeral pyre. But both could be invoked for the cooking of sacrificial meat or a good meal:
No fire meant a disruption of all normal life for nine days: no regular meals like bread or porridge, no incense to burn for the gods, the hearth and thus the centre of every community and household is dead - until new life arrives from the sea.
#Hephaistos, it is said, loves #Lemnos "more than any place on earth". According to the Illiad, it was on Lemnos where Hephaistos landed after being thrown from Olympos by his father #Zeus and it is on Lemnos where he has his forge.
I'm writing about the intersection between birth and violence in various myths, including the birth of #Athena. Some sources say that Hephaistos or Prometheus used an axe to help her emerge, but many secondary discussions of the story also describe #Zeus having a terrible headache before the birth. I can't find the original sources mentioning the headache. If anyone knows what text or texts this is from, I would love to know! #GreekMyth#Mythology#Classics#AncientGreek#AskMastodon
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
There was a beauiful boy named Aëtos ("eagle"), a friend and playmate of #Zeus while he was growing up on Crete. Suspecting that Zeus was in love with him, Hera turned him into an eagle.
The story survives in Sophokles frag 320 & Servius' Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid.
🏛️ Zeus with eagle, tondo from a black-figure cup, ca 560 BCE, Louvre, Paris
It's the Day of Zeus / Jupiter's Day / #Thursday! ⚡
"He [#Zeus] made a golden eagle for his war standards and consecrated it to the might of his protection, whereby also among the Romans, standards of this kind are carried."
Fulgentius, Mythologiarum Libri III
🏛️ Roman marble sculpture of Zeus-Iupiter, #AsiaMinor, 2nd - 3rd century CE