“All gods are evil.”
“All gods are evil.”
That is what 11 year old Abby declared last night while we continued to read Greek Gods & Heroes by Alice Low. She is constantly outraged even by Athena and Artemis, who she started out liking a lot. Athena turns Arachnae into a spider (a horrible fate to Abby), and Artemis (along with Apollo) kills Niobe’s fourteen kids. And Aphrodite sabotage’s Atalanta’s independence, then turns her into a lion that pulls a chariot. It goes without saying almost that Zeus is horrible for screwing around on Hera, Hera is awful for taking revenge on mortals for Zeus’s screw-ups, Hades kidnaps Persephone, etc…
“Are there any good gods?” she finally asked. I said Hephaestus was never mean to anyone as far as I knew. Hopefully I wasn’t wrong.
No, pretty much everyone was mean to him.
ReplyDeleteI think she's absolutely correct. Pretty much every god I can think of (not just the greeks) were assholes. Have you seen Sita Sings the Blues? http://youtu.be/RzTg7YXuy34
ReplyDeleteNo, but that looks very cool.
ReplyDeleteGanesh. Friendly elephant-headed god, patron god of school-children, learning, and hard work (among other things). He holds the entire universe in his belly. His best friend is a rat that he turns giant so he can ride on it. Has infinite compassion. Is worthy of veneration because he is absurd.
ReplyDeleteHi`iaka from Hawaiian mythology isn't that bad, but that might just be because her better known sister Pele is absolutely horrible. Pele gives her a mission to bring her a Prince, and she diligantly follows her instructions like a good little sister, slaying horrible monsters along the way and making new friends. But when she takes too long, Pele thinks she's trying to steal the prince for herself, so she kills everyone (prince included) with lava (as angry volcano goddesses are wont to do)
ReplyDeleteHi`iaka then beats up Pele, brings everyone back to life, and marries the prince herself because dammit she earned that.
Also she might be a robot or clone or something. Pele brought her to Hawaii in an Egg, and there might be more than one of her. Mythology is weird.
Unfortunately, Hephaestus also does unpleasant things. He makes Hera a booby trapped throne as revenge for her forsaking him and he sets Aphrodite and Ares up for public ridicule when he discovers their affair. Oh, and gives he gives aphrodite's daughter a cursed necklace.
ReplyDeleteHecate and Hestia I think have better rep, but they feature much less in the stories.
I'm noticing a pattern here with the letter H at any rate.
ReplyDeleteDammit, Hephaestus...
ReplyDeleteAs for Sita. The gods themselves intervene on Sita's behalf several times. It's mostly just Rama who either doubts her, or has to put on a show for his non-perfect followers depending on how you interpret things.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know a bit more about the Greek Gods, I recommend http://www.theoi.com/
ReplyDeleteI think the project is no longer active, but it's a great resource. Partiuclarly as the relevant bits of source text have been compiled for you.
You can also check out Lords of Olympus! It has the most complete "who's who" of Greek Gods ever produced for an RPG, including the really really obscure ones.
ReplyDelete