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Children of Impurity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Laura Makarius

Extract

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Mythologies generally devote much attention to the birth of heroes and gods whose coming into the world is described as particular. Our first examples come from Greek mythology.

The Furies, goddesses of vengeance, were born of the blood of Uranus who had been castrated by his son Cronos. Athena sprang, completely armed, from the head of Zeus which Prometheus had struck with an axe, an act sometimes attributed to Hephaistos. The Centaurs came from a union of Ixion with a cloud to which Zeus had given the appearance of Hera with whom he was in love. Adonis came into the world from a myrrh tree (Smyrna in Greek ) which opened magically to give him birth. Ten years earlier a woman named Smyrna (myrrh) had committed incest with her father, Theios, without his realizing it; when he discovered the fact, he changed her into the tree known by that name. Bacchus was drawn out, a six months old fetus, from the body of his mother by Zeus. The body was lying in coals lit by the lightning and thunder accompanying the god's chariot as he came to visit Semele. Terrified at the sound of nature's fury, she had died of shock. Zeus sewed the fetus in his thigh and, when the time came, gave birth to Dionysius.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 28 , Issue 112 , December 1980 , pp. 26 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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