'Who mourns for Adonais?'

Michael Forrest as 'Apollo' (courtesy of www.startrek.com)

As this could well be my final posting in my Greek religion blog, I feel I should utilise my 'original idea' format and talk about one of my favourite topics revolving around Greek religion. Now before I start, I shall warn readers that this posting might not appeal to everyone, and it is entirely fictitious - but then again, Greek mythology has its fictitious aspects! The title of this posting refers to an early episode of the TV series of Star Trek, which stuck in my mind thanks to its portrayal of the Greek god Apollo.

The reason why I have included this as a blog is that in one of the scenes, Kirk (the captain) comes up with the theory that the Greek gods were not mythological beings, and fragments of the ancient Greeks' imagination, but they were in fact creatures with abnormal powers from a different part of the universe who took on the form of humans and resided in ancient Greece. To the ancient Greeks they would have been seen as gods! When these 'beings' saw that humanity did not need the assistance of 'gods' they went off to different parts of the galaxy.

So in short, while this could be interpreted as a rather silly or irrelevant point, I feel it is fascinating that we take the aspects of Greek religion for granted. We, the scholars, the historians and the students have to base our knowledge of the Greek gods on sources from the time such as Homer and Hesiod. Ancient greek lives from people such as Apollodorus, however who's to say these people really knew why they worshipped the Greek gods? What if they were in fact real beings. Every myth has it's basis and founding, the Trojan war is widely believed to have occured, thanks to the recent excavations in modern day Turkey. Wood (1998:4) states: 'there was a justifiable reluctance among scholars to admit the idea that the epics have a real connection with historical events of the thirteenth century BC. Indeed the feeling was fairly widespread that the Trojan War was simply a myth and had no relation to history whatsoever. The new discoveries in archaeology, diplomatic records and linguistics are continuing to fill in a real historical background to the Trojan War.' While this doesn't prove the real existence of the Greek 'gods', it does leave us with a thought that we should not be so naive when we think of the gods as simple a 'myth' (perhaps!)

This topic is linked somewhat to the religious belief of gods in general. Wisdom (1944:185) has stated 'The existence of God is not an experimental issue in the way it was. An atheist or agnostic might say to a theist "you still think there are spirits in the trees, nymphs in the streams, a God of the world". He might say this because he noticed the theist of the time in drought pray for rain and make a sacrifice and in the morning look for rain. But disagreement about whether there are gods is now less of this experimental or betting sort than it used to be.' I  think that Wisdom has a fair point here, perhaps the existence of the Greek gods were real, but only in the minds of Greek people when in times of need or distress. Admittedly, it looks likely that the writers of Star Trek had a vivid imagination; compelling, but vivid nonetheless!

Fictional the show may be, however anyone who views this episode cannot shake off that seed of doubt that is in their minds regarding the origins of the gods. McLaren (1999:39) states: 'In the encounter with Apollo, we have cut the last cord to a pre-scientific understanding of the cosmos with its myths of the gods. Nevertheless, something in the back of our minds is unsettled and unsatisfied. At the corners of consciousness we sense that the cosmos is colder than it was before. Some nameless dread, some angst, crowds unwelcomed into our psyche. We are not reassured; we are disquieted.' This is a compelling point, which only adds to the fascination of the existence of the gods. I am not saying I will start a conspiracy theory about the Greek gods, I am simply saying is it really that silly to think that they were real? We can trust the ancient sources, there is no real reason why we need to dispute them! But for those of us who like to go against the norm, there is that little crumb of comfort of Star Trek to call upon!

Further Reading:

M. Wood (1998) In search of the Trojan War. University of California press
J. Wisdom (1944) Gods. Proceedings of the Aristotellian society. New series, Vol 45 pp 185-206
J. E Porter & D. L McLaren (1999) Star Trek and sacred ground: explorations of Star Trek, religion and American culture. SUNY press

Dionysos

Dionysos has long been a favoured deity of mine. This is because he is arguably the god that stands apart from the rest of the olympians and lesser gods. He is portrayed as a rule-breaker, the god of transgression and ultimately the opposite of Zeus. Whenever I think about Dionysos, it is difficult to think of anything other than possession, sense of ecstasy, and a loss of self!

 In this posting I intend to explore the question of 'Why is he a god?' This links indirectly to my first and second posts where i explored the question of 'what makes a god?' Despite the fact that he is not noted as one of the 12 Olympians, he is worshiped by his many followers who dedicated widespread festivals on a frequent basis, that they perceived him as a god. Larson (2007:127) states: 'the major Dionysiac festivals can be assigned to the Ionian and Athenian Greeks or to the Dorians and the Aiolic speakers of Thessaly and Boiotia. This division also corresponds to two early centers of Dionysiac activity, the Aegean islands and Boiotian Thebes. The islands, particularly Chios and Naxos, were leading producers of wine and proponents of Dionysos as the god of viticulture whose sacred marriage with Ariadne ensured prosperity.' What we can see here is that Dionysos' followers had an abundance of festivals ranging from a large geographical area across the Aegean sea, from Thessaly to Chios. Evidently a hugely popular deity to worship.



So why is he a god? My biggest criticism of this fact is the issue of his birth, in that he is born from the immortal Zeus, and the mortal Semele. However in similar fashion to many other Greek births, his mother is disputed amongst sources; ancient Cretans believing he was born from Persephone. Rengel (2007:86) has stated 'his mother is variously thought to be Semele, Demeter, Persephone, or Io, Dione or Lethe. The most common myth identifies his mother as Semele' Whilst this is an important point it alters the term of whether he is a god or not. In other words Dionyos would surely be considered a demi-god if he was born from Semele, similar to the likes of Perseus and Achilles - epic heroes who performed heroic exploits. Therein lies the issue - what has Dionysos done that was heroic except for possesing his followers and getting them uncontrollably drunk! So perhaps it would be more reasonable to assume that the Dionysos was born from Persephone.

Another issue is the fact that he is perceived as more human than god thanks to his eccentric nature. As previously mentioned, he stands out more than the other gods due to his transgression. Perhaps it could be argued that his expressive nature is down to his human characteristics (being a son of a mortal woman) and that being the son of the supreme Zeus, he embodies the power to possess followers (godlike) and limit their free-will, while at the same time using typically dark human traits such as fornication and excessive drinking. Benson (2008:201) states: 'Dionysus would seem to be an immanent rather than a transcendent god. The complication with Greek gods is that some of them are simultaneously immanent and transcendent - very strangely so. They have human characteristics but also divine characteristics.' Is he therefore considered to be more human or god? Again this is down to interpretation. I personally feel he is one of the more human-like gods, not just in appearance (see bottom) but also in nature. Perhaps Zeus created Dionysus to be the embodiment of both human and god - to provide common ground between the two races.

I have used these points as they are the most interesting issue to do with Dionysos, whilst many believe it is his followers (the maenads) or his nature. Therefore I have tried to incorporate some of those aspects into this posting! For further reading please see the extended bibliography below.



Further Reading:

J. Larson (2007) Ancient Greek Cults, a guide. Routledge

K. N Daly & M Rengel (2009) Greek & Roman mythology A to Z. Infobase publishing

B. E Benson (2008) Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian faith. Indiana university press

F. Musgrove (1974) Ecstasy and Holiness: counter culture and open society. Taylor & Francis

L. B Zaidman & P. S Pantel (1992) Religion in the ancient Greek city. Cambridge university press





(left) Dionysos as a young man with his thyrsos (pine-shaped staff) from an Athenian red-figured hydria, c. 5th century BC http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Dionysos.html
(right) Dionysus depicted as an older man with his customary drinking vase (courtesy of http://carlanthonyonlinedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/dionysus.jpg)

Blog Workshop analysis

Having spent half a lecture listening to my fellow students dissect and pick apart various blogs, including some interesting constructive criticism on my own, I feel it is necessary to explain briefly the key areas which I think makes a good blog.

Now firstly, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and there are plenty of different criteria which is used in creating blogs - this is simply my opinion, which hopefully most people will agree with!
My ideal blog has to agree with a subject matter. In this case, my subject matter is Greek religion and aspects about it which I personally find fascinating. Unlike some of my fellow students who are doing posts on a single subject, for example 'the role of Athena within the pantheon', I prefer to talk about a range of topics which enable me to explore a wider variety of criteria, as well as keeping my audience interested with my topics and further to prevent repeating myself!

Referencing or linking is essential, that much is certain. We cannot come up with interesting topics for discussion without enlisting the help of other works as focal points. Reynolds (2007:118) came up with this interesting point: 'Bloggers tend to link to original sources wherever possible. The result is that you can follow the link and make up your mind for yourself. A blog that doesn't have links is less interesting. The link isn't a guarantee of accuracy, of course the source you're using can always be wrong - but it does let the readers evaluate the source themselves.' In my case, my 'links' take the form of references, and I try to add as many references as I feel are necessary for a particular point. For sure, many people will try to quote and quote until they're blue in the face, but if their quotes aren't relevant or too heavy to read then what is the point? Quality not quantity in my opinion!

One criticism that arose during the blog session was that my ideas lacked originality. Now while I can understand this point, I do not feel that a lack of originality infringes on the quality of the posting. For example we can take one idea that we studied in class and go further with it in our posting - something which I hoped to achieve with my Aphrodite posting. Nevertheless my next postings will hopefully involve more original ideas which are also interesting!

Right, rant over, I will now take on board the criticism and hopefully incorporate some of the tips into my future postings!

Further Reading:
G. Reynolds (2007) An army of Davids: how markets and technology empower ordinary people to beat big media, big government and other Goliaths. Thomas Nelson Inc.
S. Gardner (2005) Buzz marketing with blogs for dummies. John Wiley & Sons