I hope everyone’s 2026 is off to a great start, and that my UK followers are enjoying the start of spring for me back home🌷🌿

I also wanted to say a huge thank you for tipping my last post over 200 likes this week! I’ve been writing here for eighteen months now, and I know that at the start 200 subscribers seemed inconceivable to me, let alone 200 likes on one article.

So thank you, welcome to all my new subs, and let’s get started.

I’ve been thinking about writing this one for a while now. The more time I spend reading and writing about Greek mythology, the more I notice how often people treat it as something intimidating, like you need a degree in Classics to talk about it. The thing is, these stories were never meant to belong only to academics. They’re messy, constantly retold and altered. So I wanted to explore how these myths ended up with this reputation of high culture in the first place.

Greek mythology holds an unusual place in modern culture. They’re stories widely known and retold, but they’re still grouped under the scary label of the Classics, a category that suggests seriousness and expertise. As a result, myths can feel less like ordinary stories and more like cultural artefacts, things to be analysed rather than simply enjoyed. It’s like they exist behind glass: too intimidating to approach unless you have the correct piece of paper validating your superior knowledge.

In many ways, this reaction makes sense. Greek mythology has long been associated with universities, the kind of education that historically only a small portion of the population had access to. The word classics itself carries a certain scholarly weight. And it absolutely should, because academic study of the ancient world has produced an enormous body of knowledge about Greek myths: their origins, variations, literary development, and the societies that first told them.

However! Somewhere along the way, appreciation seems to have morphed into ownership. Greek mythology is too often treated as though it belongs exclusively to scholars and specialists, as though the stories require academic permission to interpret. And that idea does not align with the reality of how myths actually came into existence.

Many, if not all, of the myths we now read in printed books began as part of an oral storytelling tradition. Before they were written down, these stories circulated through spoken performance. Epic poetry in particular, including the works attributed to Homer, was likely transmitted for generations by singers who performed for audiences rather than writing texts in isolation. Modern scholarship widely recognises that the Iliad and Odyssey emerged from a long oral tradition rather than appearing suddenly as fixed literary works. Homer himself uses the word aoidos (singer) to describe a poet.

In oral storytelling, variation is unavoidable. Stories change depending on who is telling them, and what that storyteller wants to emphasise. Instead of one single authoritative version, there are hundreds of thousands of coexisting versions of the same narrative. This is not a flaw. This is how storytelling works.

Even when myths began to appear in written form, variation remained common. Ancient authors frequently told different versions of the same stories. The Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all retold mythological narratives in their plays, often emphasising different aspects of the characters and events. Later, Roman writers such as Ovid reinterpreted many of these myths again, dramatically reshaping them for new audiences.

Greek mythology has always been fluid. The stories changed constantly because they were retold, and meant to be retold. When we look at myths through that lens, we can see how skewed the modern anxiety about ‘getting them right’ seems. Who are we to say that there was ever a single original version waiting to be preserved in perfect form? Maybe there was, and maybe it was rubbish, so someone changed it.

What we now call Greek mythology is really just a collection of overlapping fragments and interpretations that have accumulated over centuries. And how cool is that! Much better than one guy’s version of an old story, we get everyone’s version, all blended into one.

So how did these flexible, communal stories acquire such an intimidating reputation?

Part of the answer lies in the way mythology became integrated into formal education. From the Renaissance onwards, classical Greek and Roman literature became central to elite European schooling. Knowledge of authors like Homer, Virgil, Ovid and Sophocles was (and, in some circles, still is) treated as a marker of intellectual refinement and cultural literacy. As preserved classical texts were translated and studied in universities, they gradually became associated with academic authority.

And this process had many positive effects! It ensured the survival of incredibly ancient texts and allowed generations of readers to encounter Greek mythology in structured ways. And I get it! I’m always the first person in the room to find old stuff amazingly interesting and bore people to tears talking about it. Of course we should preserve and revere it.

But this reverence by one specific group also changed how myths were perceived. Stories that had once circulated freely became tied to institutions that only served narrow audiences. It was beyond most ‘common’ people to be able to study and interpret the myths for themselves, and to this day, the result is that many modern readers feel as though mythology belongs to academia rather than to everyone.

You can see this in the way people talk about mythological interpretation today. Modern retellings (especially feminist retellings) always provoke debates about whether writers have changed the stories too much. Discussions about mythology frequently reference the supposed ‘authority’ of classical texts like they represent definitive, untouchable versions, as though they were written by Zeus himself.

This approach flattens a centuries-old tradition. Exact preservation is historically inaccurate. Myths are not static narratives handed down in perfect form; they are dynamic, cultural stories which have adapted to different communities, political contexts, and artistic goals over thousands of years.

This painting by John William Godward shows a classical mythic figure rendered for sheer aesthetic beauty, with none of the chaotic, human drama of Bacchic (Dionysian) rites. It’s a perfect example of how the idea of Greek myths was often sanitised into decorative ‘high culture’ rather than lived stories.

Ancient writers themselves were not particularly concerned with maintaining a single authoritative version. When Euripides retold the story of Medea in his tragedy Medea, he emphasised her emotional complexity in ways that earlier mythological traditions had not (a true feminist icon). Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written centuries later, presented yet another series of reinterpretations of Greek myths, transforming them into a poetic exploration of change and transformation across hundreds of stories.

Retelling isn’t disrespectful to tradition. It is tradition.

Understanding this history doesn’t mean dismissing academic expertise. On the contrary, classical scholarship has played a crucial role in helping us recognise how complex and varied mythological traditions actually were. Without historians and archaeologists, many fragments of myth would have disappeared entirely. But scholarship shouldn’t function as a gate. Studying Greek mythology should expand access rather than restrict it.

One of the most interesting developments of the past few decades has been the renewed popularity of Greek myths outside of traditional academic contexts.

Contemporary novels and essays (hi!) alongside podcasts, YouTube channels and even TikToks have introduced these stories to people who might never have encountered them through formal study. And among the most visible of these modern retellings are feminist reinterpretations of Greek mythology, which return to familiar stories and ask what changes when the narrative focus shifts toward characters who historically occupied the margins.

Writers have revisited figures such as Circe, Penelope, Cassandra, and Medusa, exploring how classical myths look when told from perspectives that were often sidelined in earlier literary traditions. Authors such as Madeline Miller (Circe), Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships), and Pat Barker (The Silence of the Girls) have drawn heavily on classical sources while reimagining the emotional and narrative centre of these stories. And that’s to name just a few!

Their work reflects a broader cultural interest in feminist retellings of Greek mythology, stories that engage seriously with the ancient material while simultaneously asking modern questions about voice, agency, and narrative perspective (because you can have one with the other, they’re not mutually exclusive).

These reinterpretations have provoked debate, but they also highlight the point that I’m trying to make, which is that myths were never single, fixed stories. They have always been open to reinterpretation, and there has always been debate. Feminist retellings therefore do not represent a break from the tradition, but a continuation of the same process of adaptation and reinterpretation that has shaped mythological storytelling for centuries.

Calling a Greek myth a ‘retelling’ is superfluous, because it’s all been a retelling. A retelling of what? Oh, another retelling? It goes on and on and o-

Stories survive only if people keep telling them. If Greek myths existed purely in academic libraries, preserved but rarely engaged with, they would eventually become historical artefacts rather than continue as living, breathing narratives. Retellings, whether scholarly, literary, or feminist, keep the stories, and tradition, active.

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In many ways, the current cultural fascination with Greek mythology resembles the conditions in which the stories originally flourished. People encounter a myth, discuss it, reinterpret it, and share it (perhaps slightly altered) with others. The format has changed, from oral performance to novels, essays, and online discourse, but the underlying process is the same.

Treating mythology purely as high culture restricts this sort of participation. When people feel that interpretation needs formal credentials, they hesitate to explore the stories at all. You don’t need a degree in Classics to enjoy mythology. I dropped out of my Classics MA, and here I am banging on about it all the time. So take my word for it.

You can still discover the tragedy of Medusa’s story as you’d never thought to consider before, or the ingenuity of Odysseus, and notice the strange contradictions that run through many mythological narratives which come from thousands of years of different people’s retellings. The only credential you need is a working brain. If you have one of those, congrats! You’re in.

Academic study deepens our understanding, but it shouldn’t have the power to gatekeep the conversation. If anything, it reveals just how many voices have already been involved in shaping the tradition. Why shouldn’t we add a few more? Greek mythology doesn’t lose value when more people engage with it; the opposite is true! Like anything, it grows richer the more perspectives it gathers.

So, in conclusion! Myths were never meant to sit prettily behind metaphorical glass. They were meant to be told, argued over, reinterpreted, and passed along, which is exactly what is happening when Chad on Reddit gets upset about feminist retellings being suddenly more popular than the same old tales about men fighting men we were told as kids.

Maybe in another three thousand years a robot man will be writing a similar essay to this on his brain laptop about how matriarchal ideals have been force fed to young robot men for too long, and that it’s time to take back the narrative. Maybe they’ll have a fragment of a feminist retelling of a Greek myth preserved, and that will be their mythological canon.

Probably not, but you get the point I’m trying to make.

Anyway that’s the end, so go read a Greek myth ‘retelling’ today and just know that you’re not only bearing witness to thousands of years of culture and storytelling and bias, but you’re actively contributing to it when you tell someone about it later. Tell me that’s not the most amazing thing you’ve heard of in a while. I dare you.

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Hi, I’m Ellie! This is Ancient Echoes, where I write fun feminist retellings of Greek mythology (and the occasional essay), exploring the lives of women in classical myth and how modern authors bring them to life. 🏺 Subscribe below for more like this !

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Thanks for being here, I hope you stick around!

I’ve spoken about what feminist retellings of Greek myths are and look like (and written enough of them), but in this one I wanted to talk about why Greek myths have had such a resurgence lately, and specifically why they’re being reimagined through a feminist lens.

Now, if you’re new here and aren’t familiar/comfortable with the term feminist being thrown around so liberally, here’s a fun fact for you which I like to surprise people with, because astonishingly, this is a little-known truth.

Feminism = equality.

I am soo tired of telling people that my blog is on feminist retellings and seeing or hearing the startled reaction, like I’m some sort of radical activist spreading provocative, socio-political ideas and tarnishing the innocent minds of the youth.

Y’all. I just believe in equal rights😃

So now that’s out of the way and you know I’m just a 23-year-old gal who read Madeline Miller one day and then ended up writing her dissertation on feminist retellings (aka not some kind of extremist), while also, yes, being a feminist, we can get on with it.

As I was saying before I got all defensive, feminist retellings of Greek mythology have recently become extremely popular across contemporary culture. From novels and essays to newsletters (that’s me!), writers everywhere are returning to familiar myths to reconsider the women who were marginalised, punished, and silenced within them.

Importantly!! These retellings don’t treat Greek myths as a fixed and untouchable canon, but see them for what they truly are. A bunch of made-up stories shaped over thousands of years by literally hundreds of thousands of different people.

Remember that game Chinese whispers (also known now as the telephone game)? I always think of Greek myths in the context of that game. Someone can start off by whispering ‘green giraffes’ and by the time you’ve come round to the end of the circle you’ve got someone giggling ‘purple plums’ in your ear. The whole thing gets lost in translation, and you’re left wondering what the original words were.

The difference is, of course, that in the game you can just ask what the original words were. Unfortunately, we’re left scrambling about in the dark, using what little ancient sources are left to us, and just have a good guess. And that’s all that our revered Greek myths are! Extremely analysed purple plums.

The renewed interest in these myths isn’t just about revisiting ancient stories, but about questioning the narratives we have inherited from them. Modern readers are obviously now far more attentive to issues of gender, voice and authority, and Greek myths offer a particularly revealing framework through which people are examining how those ideas were embedded in these foundational stories.

And how there is clearly a growing impulse to tell them differently now. To retell them, if you will.

Sorry y’all, but Greek myths were never ‘neutral’ stories

In the same way that these myths have been shaped (probably into a completely unrecognisable version of the original) by time, they have also been shaped by the people who got to tell them, write them down, and decided which versions would be passed on to future generations.

Without spoiling too much (although I feel like you’ve probably guessed where this is going), a lot of these people were… drumroll please. You guessed it! Men.

We’re taught in school that Greek myths are these fixed, ancient truths, handed down intact from the past, untouchable and authoritative. But they were never neutral. They were shaped by a very specific set of the same people over time.

And those people were overwhelmingly men. Men writing about gods who looked like men, ruled like men, and punished women for stepping out of line.

When you look closely at women in Greek mythology, a pattern quickly emerges. Desire is dangerous… but only for women.

Speaking is dangerous. Refusing is dangerous. Survival itself can be (and often is) framed as a crime. And the myths weren’t subtle about this! We were just conditioned not to question it.

So when people talk about feminist interpretations of Greek myths as ‘rewriting’ or ‘modernising’ the classics, I think it’s worth asking: rewriting what, exactly?

Let me see the original version, not Homer, but the true original story, where Homer heard it from and where they got it from before that, and then we’ll talk.

Our (nowadays) leading ladies

Take Medusa. How many people know her story better than Perseus’? She was punished for being assaulted, transformed into a monster, and then slaughtered so that her head could be used as a weapon by a man deemed a hero. I could write an essay about what a snivelling little coward Perseus was, and how he only managed anything on his so-called ‘quest’ because the gods babysat him every step of the way.

Oh, what’s this…?

Also everyone, quick! Go read Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. Okay recs over back to the topic at hand.

Or Cassandra, granted the gift of prophecy and then cursed so no one would ever believe her, all as a punishment for refusing Apollo’s sexual advances. This myth feels less like fantasy and more like a depressingly accurate metaphor.

Daphne escapes assault by being turned into a tree. Io is transformed into a cow. Callisto is banished. Europa is abducted. Again and again, women are changed, silenced, or destroyed to preserve male power or divine reputation.

For years, these stories were presented as morality tales or tragic inevitabilities. Feminist retellings ask: why are these women punished at all? And perhaps more importantly, why on Earth were we taught not to notice? How have they gotten away with that one?

Why feminist retellings of greek mythology matter today

It’s not hard to see why feminist Greek myth retellings are finding such an eager audience now.

We live in a time shaped by conversations about consent, power, voice, and belief. About who is listened to and who is dismissed. How stories are used to justify harm. When you revisit Greek myths through that lens, they stop feeling like distant, ancient stories and start feeling uncomfortably familiar.

Feminist retellings don’t just right the record; they articulate an anger that many readers already know. They name injustices that have always, always been there but are so rarely acknowledged. They allow women to be complicated, furious, tender, and wrong. They allow them to speak, where they were never allowed to before.

Now, thanks to modern writers, these women are returned to humans, rather than symbolic warnings.

From authors to the internet

The resurgence of feminist mythology books didn’t come out of nowhere. Novels like Circe (Madeline Miller) and The Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker), along with the work of countless other talented writers like Natalie Haynes, Jennifer Saint, Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin opened the door for myth to be reconsidered as something still alive rather than embalmed.

But what’s happening now goes further than publishing alone. Feminist retellings of Greek mythology are thriving online, in essays, newsletters, podcasts, and videos from content creators that simply refuse the idea that classical knowledge belongs only to academics or institutions.

This matters. It means mythology and the Classics are no longer being gatekept. It means more voices get to interpret, question, and reimagine stories that shaped Western ideas about gender, power, and morality. The canon expands not by erasing the old, but by standing beside it and saying: hold up, this isn’t the only way to tell it.

‘But you’re ruining the myths’… shut up Darren

When I tell you there has been backlash against this resurgence. Yes, there were some woman-centric narratives from Ovid and Euripides in antiquity, yes, there are very valid arguments about the retellings which romanticise abuse. We can’t lump every feminist retelling in together when there has been so much variety in what has been written about.

This backlash to feminist retellings is often framed as concern over ‘changing the original myths,’ and there are several examples of this, but the resistance is usually more specific than that. Some readers are frustrated by retellings that oversimplify complex figures, flatten moral ambiguity, or project modern values onto ancient contexts in ways that feel heavy-handed. As a writer who also reads, these frustrations are all extremely familiar to me.

Others have expressed fatigue with the sheer volume of similar reinterpretations, particularly when marketing presents them as revealing a singular ‘truth’ rather than one possible reading among many. In these cases, the objection is less about feminism itself and more about questions of nuance, interpretation, and how much space retellings leave for contradiction and discomfort.

For many readers, however, these criticisms don’t undermine the value of feminist retellings so much as clarify what they are for. Their appeal doesn’t lie in offering a definitive or morally tidy version of myth, but in highlighting the (interpretive) choices that were always there but rarely, if ever, acknowledged.

Even when individual retellings simplify or emphasise particular angles, they open space for questioning rather than closure, encouraging readers to sit with discomfort, contradiction, and unresolved tension. In a tradition built on variation and retelling, feminist interpretations are not a narrowing of meaning, but an expansion of it.

And for women who have spent a lifetime seeing other women reduced to plot devices or punishments, this change matters deeply.

Basically this renaissance isn’t about the past – it’s about the future

Okay that got a bit deep there sorry guys. Hopefully I’m getting my point across!!

To wrap this all up, I think the feminist renaissance in Greek mythology isn’t driven by a desire to correct the past so much as a refusal to leave it un-interrogated. The stories are enduring because they are adaptable and unsettled, capable of holding multiple versions at once.

Feminist retellings don’t ask readers to discard earlier myths, but to read them more attentively, with an awareness of whose voices were amplified and whose were constrained. In doing so, they reaffirm mythology not as a closed canon, but as an ongoing conversation, one that continues to evolve as new readers return to the same stories and ask different questions of them.

Okay, serious essay complete! How’d I do?

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Hi, I’m Ellie! This is Ancient Echoes, where I write fun feminist retellings of Greek mythology (and the occasional essay), exploring the lives of women in classical myth and how modern authors bring them to life. 🏺 Subscribe below for more like this !

ancient echoes

feminist retellings of greek mythology 𖤓

By Ellie Ireland

You’ll want to strap yourselves in for this one, because the story of the Lemnian women is one of the strangest and most unsettling myths in Greek mythology. And combined with my methods of retelling… I’ve created something that can hardly be called an essay.

Today we’re talking about Hypsipyle (that’s hip-sip-i-lee), and the women of Lemnos. This has been on my list to write about for a long time, but given that queen Natalie Haynes’ new book No Friend to this House came out recently, I thought I’d bump them to the front of the queue.

I didn’t actually love Haynes’ newest novel (and no one is more upset about it than I am – I’m convinced I just need to read a translation of Euripedes’ Medea and then come back to it), however the cover is the single most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

As it’s a retelling of Medea and Jason’s myth, Hypsipyle and the Lemnos gals were heavily featured, which has inspired this post! If you’ve read No Friend to this House, let me know what you thought in the comments, and if not, I would still recommend it if you’re a Classics lover, even though I didn’t love it.

I mean, I literally dropped out of my Classics MA, so we all know I’m not exactly an authority on that kind of stuff.

That being said… please read on. It’ll be funny if nothing else.

THE CONTEXT

As per usual, Hypsipyle’s myth reaches us in fragments, pieced together from different sources spanning several centuries. I adore how no mythical figure has a single, authoritative version of their story, only scattered appearances that reveal how later writers have reimagined them. Who knows what the origins and original versions of these myths truly are!

The earliest and most complete surviving account of Hypsipyle comes from the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BCE): a Hellenistic epic retelling the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts. It’s likely that this version shaped mostly all later interpretations of her character.

Earlier traces of Hypsipyle likely existed too. Scholars have long suggested that she appeared in the lost Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (also known as the Ehoiai), a genealogical poem that catalogued many mortal women (what?!) who bore children to gods and heroes (ohhh). No surviving lines name her, but her role as Jason’s consort and the mother of his children perfectly fits the poem’s contents (aka, women that were used by men during their adventures).

A century or so earlier, Euripides had written a tragedy titled Hypsipyle, which has been only partially perserved. The surviving material indicates that it focused on her later life, way after her encounter with Jason, and that it was probably staged fairly late in Euripides’ career. Magically, modern papyrus discoveries have actually helped to reconstruct parts of the plot, confirming that the play explored themes of exile and maternal recognition, characteristic of Euripidean interest in displaced women.

Hypsipyle also appears in Roman literature, most memorably in Heroides 6 by Ovid (1st century BCE). In this collection of fictional letters from mythic women to their absent lovers, she writes to Jason, giving her a distinct voice for the first time in Latin poetry. Later authors such as Valerius Flaccus (what a name) revisited her story in their own versions of the Argonautic myth, ensuring her survival well into Roman imperial imagination, and thus modern day imagination.

Which is exactly where we’re headed next.

THE MYTH

Picture this.

You’re living on the Isle of Lemnos, in the Northen Aegean. Elderly King Thoas (who, incidentally, is the son of Dionysus and Ariadne) is in charge, and his daughter, Hypsipyle, is a princess of the isle. You’re happily married to your husband (we’re all women in this scenario btw), there’s no war or anything, and life is good!

One day, the men of the isle all start acting strangely. They start avoiding their wives often, meeting in secret, and just acting downright suspicious. Next thing you know, you wake up on a normal Wednesday morning, and every single man has vanished from their beds without a trace.

‘Huh? Where did they go?’ I hear you ask. Well reader, to tell you the truth, they’d struck out by themselves to create a brand new town down the road, stole a bunch of women from other towns, and started a new life with them just around the corner.

Now, yes, this is absolutely unhinged behaviour, but there is a sort of reasonable explanation for it. It should come as no surprise to any of you that there was a scheming god involved in this strange turn of events, and in this case it was the goddess Aphrodite.

And her reason for driving all the men away? The women of Lemnos hadn’t been worshipping her enough. That’s it. The woman is such a diva.

Anyway, the reason the men had all run away with such haste was because Aphrodite had caused all of the women on the isle to emit an awful stench. Now it’s not specified whether the women could smell this change, and I like to imagine that they couldn’t, causing mass, chaotic confusion.

You’d think perhaps that between the steps of a) recognising this odorous problem and b) running for the hills, the men might have sat their wives down for a conversation about personal hygiene, but Aphrodite didn’t count on this happening so, I guess, why should we?

Now it was the wives’ turn for some rash action, because they immediately flew into a rage at the fact that their husbands had abandoned them, rallied the troops, went to their new neighbouring town and killed every last one of them.

Then they brought the stolen, mostly pregnant, new women that they’d found back home, and so began the reign of women on the Isle of Lemnos.

A hilarious subplot was going on while this mass murder was taking place. Hypsipyle didn’t feel great about murdering her elderly, half-senseless father (the king), and so she, along with a small group of trusted women, secretly smuggled him off of the isle in a chest, by sending him off out to sea.

I mean, why not just kill him at that point? This is a myth however, where the unlikely becomes highly probable, and it’s said that King Thoas eventually made landfall, alive, at the land of the Taurians, where Iphigenia’s story would later take place. It’s probably best if we don’t look into that particular subplot too much.

So the women are now in charge on Lemnos, but the fun wasn’t over yet, because some time later they got an unexpected visit from a certain group of adventurers on their way to Colchis.

Jason and his Argonauts had barely even begun their adventure when they decided that they needed to take an extended vacation on the Isle of Lemnos, and luckily for them the women had been living without men now for many years, and had apparently lost the murderous urge to kill every single man that they saw.

So a new era began, one with men and women (we can only assume that Aphrodite had forgotten about her unfaithful women on Lemnos and that they didn’t smell bad enough to cause their husbands to leave them anymore), and soon many women became pregnant by the Argonauts.

Including our very own queen Hypsipyle, by none other than Jason himself.

There was one Argonaut who was less than happy about this sudden vacation, and that was Hercules, who was aboard the Argo when it set sail for Colchis. He was constantly hounding Jason to continue with their voyage, and even threatened to take over and leave without the men that wanted to stay.

So, after a long while, the Argonauts took off again, leaving the women (and more than a few of their unborn children) behind. Hypsipyle would later give birth to Jason’s twin sons, Euneus and Nebrophonus (or Thoas, depending on who you speak to).

She raised her sons on Lemnos and continued to rule, but her secret little subplot (aka, not murdering her father) was eventually discovered by the other women, and for this act they drove her into exile.

In later myths, Hypsipyle’s story continues. She ends up in Nemea, where she serves as nurse to the infant Opheltes, the son of King Lycurgus and Queen Eurydice (a different Eurydice to the one you’re thinking about, who wasn’t dead).

When the Seven Against Thebes passed through Nemea on their march to war, Hypsipyle showed them where to find water, and while she was gone, the baby was, very dramatically, killed by a serpent.

Hypsipyle was blamed and almost executed, but was miraculously saved when her twin sons, now grown, arrived and recognised her. Great timing on their half, truly.

So what can we learn from Hypsipyle and the women of Lemnos? Probably don’t put your dad in a crate and send him out to sea, unless you’re in an ancient Grecian myth, in which case he’ll probably be okay. Also, always remember to worship Aphrodite, and if you don’t… best to invest in some deodorant.

SOME ART

This painting was used on another blog post about Hypsipyle and attributed to John William Godward, but I cannot find a source for that anywhere? I don’t think it’s even Hypsipyle, but unfortunately I like it so much that I’m going to use it for the thumbnail for this post anyway (just don’t tell on me).

It certainly looks like a Godward, having looked at his other works (which are equally as beautiful), but if someone wants to help me out here I would be very thankful! I’m going to guess early 1900’s.

I’m really struggling with art today, and I’m afraid I’m not sure where this one comes from either, but I do know that this is Hypsipyle sending her old dad off to sea, and it’s pretty funny. The best I can do with this one is to tell you it’s definitely super-duper old.

Okay this is genuinely the only other depiction I can find. A spalliera refers to decorative panels, often featuring mythological or historical scenes, that decorated the walls above furniture like beds or chests.

Not overly aesthetically pleasing, but again, very old, and thus very cool! Is someone falling off of a horse on the left?

THE END

Thanks so much for reading! Please like/comment/share if you enjoyed, just press any buttons you can see really, and I’ll catch you for the next one<3

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Hi, I’m Ellie! This is Ancient Echoes, where I write fun feminist retellings of Greek mythology (and the occasional essay), exploring the lives of women in classical myth and how modern authors bring them to life. 🏺 Subscribe below for more like this !

If you know the Aeneid, you’ve heard of Creusa, Priam’s daughter in Troy and Aeneas’ first wife. You remember Dido of Carthage. Maybe you remember the Volsci warrior Camilla… but do you remember Lavinia, the woman Aeneas ends up actually marrying at the end of Virgil’s Aeneid?

If you answered no, don’t stress. Neither did Virgil, and he was the literal author.

In this original epic, Lavinia is nothing more than a plot device: a beautiful, silent princess, offered up as a reward for Aeneas after his many trials. Her hair catches fire at one point (a divine omen), but she never speaks. Not once. Even when her hair catches fire. For a character whose marriage is supposed to found the Roman race, it’s strange silence.

But then, in 2008, Ursula K. Le Guin brought Lavinia to life.

In her novel Lavinia, Le Guin reimagines the princess as a narrator who is aware of her own mythic roots, living in a space between history and fiction. It’s dreamlike, philosophical, and extremely tender at times: a subtle reclaiming of a woman who had been left to fade into obscurity in the margins of someone else’s story.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, Lavinia is the daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata, a princess of Latium whose main narrative function is to be married off. Her father receives a prophecy that she must wed a foreigner, and when the Trojan hero Aeneas arrives on Italian shores, he is deemed the divine match. A war breaks out over the engagement, largely because her mother prefers local bad-boy Turnus. Whether this is because she herself had a big fat crush on him or not, we may never know.

Lavinia says nothing about any of this, because she doesn’t say anything at all. Ever.

Her only other notable moment in the narrative is strikingly visual: her hair bursts into flame during a sacrificial ritual. This image is poetic, but also telling. She’s not allowed to speak, so her body becomes the message. She’s simply used as an omen.

Lavinia is often remembered as the reward at the end of Aeneas’s journey, the domestic calm after the drama of Troy and Dido. She’s what he is awarded once he’s done grieving his past and fulfilling his destiny. But the irony is that in the Aeneid, Aeneas never even speaks to her. They don’t even share a conversation! The war ends, and then he marries her. The end, job done, thanks very much.

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For a character who is the ‘mother of Rome,’ Lavinia barely registers. But as we well know, this isn’t unusual in epic literature. Women who are central to the plot are often the least developed. They are the stakes, rewards, or vessels for prophecy, but never actual people worth writing about.

Ursula K. Le Guin looked at this voiceless princess, this ‘mother of Rome’ who was never allowed a single word, and presumably thought, bit unrealistic, what would she really have been saying? With Lavinia, Le Guin performed a quiet miracle. She didn’t reinvent Lavinia into someone new, she simply listened and in doing so, created a version of Lavinia that feels eerily, profoundly real.

This Lavinia knows she’s a character from a poem. She speaks to the ghost of Virgil, who, in the novel, appears to her as a melancholy shade, unable to finish his epic because he is dying, hence why he is able to pass into Lavinia’s world. This meta-literary twist gives the book a creepy, dreamlike quality. Lavinia exists within the unknowable grey area between history and fiction, between myth and memory.

But she is grounded! She’s not a queen of marble, but a sharp-minded teenage girl with a spiritual connection to the forest and a quiet sense of duty. She questions the world around her and wonders about things such as love and fate and choice. She is aware that she is being shaped by a story that was never written with her in mind, and yet she refuses to be passive within it.

In Le Guin’s retelling, Lavinia becomes a study in female agency expressed not through rebellion or violence, but through dignity and thoughtfulness. She doesn’t rebel against her role in the poem, instead expanding and narrating it in her own voice. It’s a gentle, radical act. Where Virgil used her as a plot device, Le Guin gives her real life.

The novel is a quiet experiment: what happens when a woman is allowed to speak from within a story that silenced her? What does it mean to give voice to someone history barely remembered, not by reinventing her into a flashy, feminist heroine as so many retellings do, but by simply allowing her to be who she may realistically have been all along?

In a genre dominated by noisy men and even more noisy battles, Lavinia offers something much quieter but equally, if not more, powerful: the reminder that the forgotten women of epic had lives. That their silence was not nothing, it was erasure.

As I so often love to remind you all, hers is a troublingly familiar silence. Across myths, histories, and modern media, women are sidelined in the service of someone else’s story. They’re the Love Interest™. A motivation or a reward for the main man. We’re allowed to glimpse them in flashbacks, in prophecies, as mothers, but never explore them as whole people. Lavinia is the ultimate example: a woman who is supposedly foundational to an entire empire, but who never once speaks? Sure, Virgil, that sounds realistic.

Le Guin’s novel feels radical not because it turns Lavinia into something she wasn’t, but because it imagines her as someone she very probably could have been, someone so very human. It invites us to consider the hundreds of thousands of women throughout history and literature who have been left voiceless, and that reclaiming these voices doesn’t have to always be about explosive drama and revenge.

I read Lavinia a few weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It might be my favourite feminist retelling of a classical myth ever, and that’s saying something as I’ve read a fair few.

What struck me most wasn’t just how beautifully it was written (although it is), but how boldly weird and meta it is for a novel written in 2008, before feminist retellings were popular. Lavinia knows she’s a character in the Aeneid, she talks to her author and learns that her story isn’t fully hers. And she claims it anyway.

It creates this haunting, liminal atmosphere. Lavinia exists in this forgotten between, but to her it’s just home, as real as our own homes and towns are to us. The world she lives in is vivid and earthy, full of sacred groves, rituals and political tensions, and yet it always feels a little dreamlike, as if it’s all being half-remembered.

I was absolutely all over it.

Before all the modern feminist mythology retellings filled the bestseller tables, Lavinia was doing something quieter, stranger, and in many ways deeper. It doesn’t scream feminism, it just whispers it. It lets a voiceless woman take the reins, not with vengeance and violence, but with real awareness and thought. I could just tell how much thought had gone into this story. Le Guin saw this small hole in the narrative, did a little digging and found a gaping Lavinia-shaped chasm, and filled it with breathtakingly realistic life.

If you haven’t read it yet, I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a bit unsettling in the best way and just so gorgeous. Trust me guys. I have a writing degree, and Ursula is a legend.

Other retellings I’ve read which felt as thoughtful, subtly feminist and had awesome prose include:

Circe, Madeline Miller

Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

Hera, Jennifer Saint

And of course, The Wolf Den trilogy by Elodie Harper. I just finished reading an ARC of her upcoming book Boudicca’s Daughter and I’m yet to recover. I may do a post about it soon!

That’s it from me today, I hope you enjoyed this take on a much lesser known character than the ones I usually write about. Lavinia is worth knowing about!

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Hi, I’m Ellie! This is Ancient Echoes, where I write fun feminist retellings of Greek mythology (and the occasional essay), exploring the lives of women in classical myth and how modern authors bring them to life. 🏺 Subscribe below for more like this !

Anyway, there was a chapter on Vestal Virgins, who I kind of vaguely knew about but as an ancient Greece gal wasn’t too sure on in terms of writing about them (hence why I’m reading the book). And that got me thinking about virginity in the ancient world and what it meant for women, and here we are!

In ancient myth, virginity is like a strange sort of superpower which, at a glance, elevated a woman to make her sacred and revered. But upon closer inspection this ‘privilege’ starts looking a lot less appealing and a lot more like a gilded cage, which is what I’m going to discuss in this article.

But first, this tweet:

It just seemed on theme and I laughed so hard the first time I came across it. Anyway.

Some of the most powerful women in Greek and Roman mythology were those who remained virgins, including literal goddesses such as Artemis, Athena and Hestia, and the Vestal Virgins of Roman society. The latter held a place of enormous prestige, but the price was immense pressure. Their untouched, ‘pure’ bodies were viewed as essential to the survival of Rome itself.

I feel like it’s quite easy to romanticise these virgin goddesses as symbols of independent queens, but these aren’t really stories of sexual freedom. They’re more about what happens when women’s power is allowed… only when there’s a caveat. In this case: them remaining virgins.

Artemis

Artemis (or Diana, if you were a Roman), is often framed as a feminist icon. Independent, living with her girlfriends in the forest away from the reach of men, moving through the land on her own terms. Sounds like a pretty good deal, no??? She protects young girls who swear off men and vow to stay virgins forever, punishes those who violate her sacred boundaries and stays firmly in control of her own body.

Her myth, however, is steeped in violence. When the hunter Actaeon accidentally comes across her bathing naked in a spring, she transforms him into a stag and has him torn apart by his own hunting dogs. Talk about savage. Similarly, when Orion tries to claim her, he ends up dead as well.

So Artemis’ virginity isn’t solely a personal choice, it’s a line drawn very physically, in blood. Her power and autonomy is conditional on her remaining distant and terrifying, and thus untouched.

It’s hard for me, and perhaps most modern readers, however, not to picture Artemis and her girls running free in the forest living their best cottagecore lesbian lives, laughing at the idea that they’re all ‘pure and chaste’ just because the men weren’t invited.

But maybe that’s just me, idk.

Athena

Athena (Minerva, if you’re Roman) born directly from Zeus’ head clad in full armour (don’t ask), is another virgin goddess, but I reckon her story reads more like a strategic rebrand than anything else.

She is the goddess of wisdom and battle, often favouring male heroes (Odysseus, Perseus, Achilles – but never romantically!) over female figures (like Medusa, who she cursed for being raped by Poseidon in her temple). Her virginity places her above the emotional bodily realm traditionally associated with femininity. She is a symbol of reason, logic and discipline: qualities the Greeks primarily aligned with, of course, masculinity.

Athena’s virginity serves solely to neutralise her womanhood so that she can enter male domains (politics, war, philosophy), precisely because she has symbolically left her gender behind. And she remains able to do so only as long as her modesty remains intact.

We know that Athens was named after the goddess Athena, but it’s worth noting that her temple the ‘Parthenon’ actually comes from the Greek word Parthenos, meaning virgin, which reflects Athena’s epithet as Athena Parthenos. ‘Athena the Virgin’.

Hestia

Hestia (or Vesta, important for the next section!) is probably the most overlooked goddess in the pantheon, so much so that she is oftentimes completely replaced by Dionysus in the big twelve. She is goddess of the hearth, the flame at the centre of every home and temple, and never marries or engages in any kind of scandal, which explains why she so rarely appears in any Greek myth retellings.

She represents peace and domesticity, but also silence in a role which is absolutely foundational, but very much brushed over. I include her because she represents a recurring pattern in these myths: the more virtuous and controlled a woman tends to act, the less space she takes up in the narrative.

Which leads me neatly onto our Vestal Virgins.

Vestal Virgins

In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins were chosen as children and sworn to thirty years (yep, you read that right) of chastity in service of the goddess Vesta (Hestia). They were responsible for keeping the sacred fire burning 24/7 in Vesta’s temple, and if it went out it was believed that Rome would fall.

It is a subject of great debate and confusion just why these Vestals had to be virgins. Was it because the fire was so pure, that the girls tending it had to be pure too, lest they corrupt it? All anyone knew was that their continued virginity was of absolute and utmost importance to the continued welfare of the entire Roman Republic, so we’ll leave it at that.

If any of these girls broke their vows, which two did, they were buried alive in the walls of Rome and left to die. Here, Southon brings up a quote from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who coined the phrase ‘well-behaved woman seldom make history’. These women would have been shamed in their lifetimes, but we don’t know any more details about other Vestal Virgins except from some of their names.

The two Vestals who were buried alive, Oppia and Urbina, have had their stories told, unlike their well-behaved peers who would have been praised in their lifetime and never spoken about again. But at what cost? That was a bit of a tangent, but it was a cool one so I think it’s allowed.

Thank you Emma Southon!

Point is, Vestal Virgins were honoured and well looked after, but their value hinged entirely on their purity. They were simply symbols of a moral ideal that wasn’t about them as women at all, and again, their worth came with conditions.

So what?

Virginity allows these women power, but only within narrow boundaries. It’s never about choice, but containment: a tool to render women non-threatening and convenient for the narrative. This is a legacy which still, troublingly, echoes today. Quite loudly, in fact.

Our society still expects women to be either powerful or desirable, and associates restraint with virtue. We still place value on women’s perceived purity, whether through the policing of sexuality or the persistent double standards around desire. You need to look no further than the backlash Sabrina Carpenter is currently receiving, which is highly reminiscent of Britney Spears’ experience in the public eye.

The virgin/whore binary may seem subtler now (unless you’ve ever been hit on by a drunk guy in a nightclub and turned him down), but it’s very much alive in media, politics and the language we use to describe women every day.

These stories tell us a fair bit about how women’s power has always been shaped by what they aren’t allowed to do. They’re worth revisiting/retelling not because they tell us about how things used to be, but because they show us how scarily little things have changed over time, and what it might mean to finally break free from this patriarchally palatable bargain.

Sorry for going a bit AWOL recently, I’ve been picking up some insane hours at the cafe which is great for funding my upcoming move to Australia (my boyfriend and I are going down under for a year🐨🌴!), but less great for finding the time to write these articles. One day I’ll adhere to a proper posting schedule, but unfortunately that day is not today.

I thought I’d write a mini-series on some of the mothers in the mythical world, and the roles they play in their hero-children’s lives (we tend to only hear about mums in Greek myth when they give birth to hero kids). Most people have heard about Achilles, Perseus, and Hercules (blah, blah, blah), so as is my duty, I’m going to completely ignore them and tell you more about the sidelined women in their lives<3

And today’s pick is Thetis!

Thetis

In Greek myth, Thetis appears as a sea nymph and one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus. Interestingly, some sources argue that she was actually one of the earliest deities worshipped in Archaic Greece. One written record (only a fragment), exists attesting to her worship, and an early Alcman hymn exists that identifies Thetis as the ‘creator of the universe’.

But she’s generally just known today as ‘Achilles’ mum’. Ah, motherhood.

To start with, Thetis used to date Zeus and/or Poseidon, but then there was a prophecy that said her son would grow up to be greater than his father, so they immediately booted her down to Earth and ordered her to be married to Peleus, a mortal man.

Thetis, fairly unhappy with this downgrade, flat-out refused (some might say this was fair enough). So Peleus, man that he was, snuck up on Thetis while she was sleeping and grabbed her so tightly that she couldn’t escape, even while she shape-shifted into different animals to try and escape him (she’s a nereid, they can do stuff like that).

Thetis eventually tired, and Peleus took this opportunity to rape her so that she’d have to agree to marry him.

At this rate, it wouldn’t take much for his son to grow up to be greater than him.

The wedding of Thetis and Peleus is something I have actually already written about due to the eternally intertwining nature of all Greek myths, so I’ll share a snippet here. This is from my newsletter on Helen of Troy, which I’ll link below for you if you’re interested !! It’s quite insane but also fun.

So Thetis’ and Peleus’ wedding led to the Judgement of Paris, which was instrumental in causing the Trojan War. But Thetis’ role in the drama didn’t stop there, because she soon gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Achilles.

In her quest to keep her child from harm forever, Thetis took some pretty extreme measures, but sources differ on exactly what extreme measures she took. One source tells of how she attempted to burn her son’s mortality away, anointing him in ambrosia and letting him sleep in fire at night. Peleus is said to have discovered his wife putting their son into the fire one night, and quite rightly, absolutely freaking out.

It’s said that Achilles’ one vulnerability (his heel) came about as a result of his father snatching him out of harm’s way before Thetis’ plan could be completed.

Another source, and the more commonly known (and just better) version of this myth, is that Thetis dipped the baby Achilles into the River Styx to grant him invulnerability. She held him by his heel, which was the only part of him not to be submerged, hence Achilles’ Heel.

After this, Thetis abandoned her child, too afraid to love him while he wasn’t completely protected from harm. There was a prophecy (at some point) about Achilles which said that he would either live a boring, long life, or a glorious, short one, so Peleus waited until Achilles was old enough and then gave him to Chiron the centaur to raise, hoping to create a warrior out of his son.

When the Trojan War broke out (the timeline is slightly skewed here, as is so often the case with Greek mythology, so we’re going to ignore it), Thetis arrived straight back onto the scene to whisk Achilles away to hide him at the court of Lycomedes on the isle of Scyros by disguising him as a girl, in what is possibly my favourite moment in all of Greek mythology.

This clever plan was no match for Odysseus, however, sent by Agamemnon to sniff the boy out, famed as he already was for being a fearsome warrior even at seventeen. So Achilles was carted off to war despite Thetis’ best efforts, and fought for nine years without issue.

Now, I’m not going to get into the whole drama that happens with Agamemnon and Achilles at the end of the war (you can go and read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for all that juicy gossip), but basically Achilles ended up refusing to fight until Agamemnon gave back his war prize: a Trojan girl. His ‘best friend’ (or lover, if you’re not a coward), Patroclus, has also just been killed in battle whilst pretending to be Achilles, dressed up in his armour, so he’s pretty distraught about that too.

Thetis plays a pretty huge role in this final stage of the ten year war, delivering Achilles some armour handmade by Hephaestus himself which he then uses to defeat Hector in battle, his biggest rival in the war. She also convinces Achilles to return Hector’s body to his family, but only after he’s completely defiled it by dragging it around the walls of his city several times tied to the back of his chariot.

Boys will be boys I guess.

Achilles is eventually killed too, and even though Thetis had known all along that this would happen (remember that prophecy?), she still laments the loss of her only child and beloved son.

I think the point of this article/series is that Thetis (and others) are compelling examples of how mythology frames maternal figures primarily through their relationship to specifically male heroes. Despite her status as a sea goddess with considerable power, Thetis is hugely defined by her role in Achilles’ life: shaping his fate, protecting him, and eventually mourning him.

Her actions are pivotal, yet her character isn’t centre stage, except for maybe when Achilles dies, but is that only because… he’s dead? Her divinity and agency are expressed totally in service to her son’s narrative, not her own. Does this pattern reflect a tendency in ancient and modern storytelling to focus on mothers as supporting figures? Essential, but ultimately secondary?

Heavy stuff. Let me know what you think below!! And now, onto the fun bit.

SOME ART

This really just couldn’t look any more incriminating. It’s hilarious.

Description from Theoi: “Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan) presents Thetis with a new set of armour for her son Achilles in a scene from Homer's Iliad. The goddess is seated on the right beside smith's wife, Charis. Her reflection is also visible on the mirrored surface of the shield. Two Cyclopes assist the god in his work--one holding the shield, the other seated working on the helm.”

I am so very obsessed with the reflection in the shield.

You can use this website to have a closer look at each individual scene going on in this painting: there’s so much to look at! Check out Eris flying over just to the left of the centre with her golden apple, and the judgement of Paris to the right at the back!

THE END

That’s it from me today, as always I hope you enjoyed and/or learned something new !! Let me know if you want me to continue this mythical mothers series, or who you’d like me to write about next !

Until next time🏺💗

Even today people can be heard complaining that they’re ‘waiting for their muse’ when embarking on artistic endeavours; I know I’ve cursed and ranted at mine (or lack of) when inspiration hasn’t been flowing as easily as I’d like.

So what is a muse? And who were these divine sisters?

A muse can be broadly defined as someone who is the source of creative inspiration for a creative, but the more interesting definition is that the Muses are nine goddesses: the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who preside over the arts and sciences. We’re going to be discussing the latter definition today (surprise, surprise), and exploring each of these nine divas in more unhinged detail.

Before I start it’s worth noting that Herodotus’ Histories were named after each of the nine Muses. A fun fact which I hadn’t known before!

Calliope – muse of epic poetry

According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Calliope was the ‘foremost’ of the nine muses, and this seems to have remained true through the ages. Calliope is without a doubt the most well-known of the Muses, having been portrayed in modern media more times than any of her eight sisters, and is also said to have inspired Homer’s Odyssey. You can see Homer depicted in the background of Meyneir’s painting!

In Greek mythology one time Calliope had to sort out an argument between Persephone and Aphrodite over Adonis (yikes), because they were both in love with him but couldn’t decide who should ‘get’ him.

Not their finest moment. I can’t imagine Adonis was at any point conferred with during this argument, and he probably would have been too afraid to speak if he was. So P&A took their quarrel to Zeus, who was also too afraid to speak, so passed the task onto Calliope. What a man.

Calliope (presumably using Persephone’s own predicament to help her decision) decided that Adonis should spend four months with Persephone, and four months with Aphrodite. With the other four months, he’d be allowed to do whatever he wanted. Lucky him!

Aphrodite still wasn’t too happy with this arrangement, and so, blaming Calliope, she ordered the Thracian women to kill Orpheus, Calliope’s son. Yes, apparently she was Orpheus’ mother, and she also is said to have had two children by the god Apollo.

In essence, Calliope had a jam-packed social calendar compared to her more introverted sisters.

Clio – muse of history

A guide to researching Clio:

1) Google Clio

2) See this picture of her fresco at Pompeii and go down a ninety-minute rabbit hole looking at pictures of ancient Pompeiian discoveries

3) Think you should probably get a tattoo of one of these because they’re so freaking cool

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I can’t talk about Pompeii right now because this will turn into a whole different article, but have a look at the frescos of Apollo and the Muses they found there. I’ll never ever ever shut up about Pompeii it’s too cool unfortunately.

Anyway, Clio had a son called Hyacinth, who you might know because he was famously Apollo’s lover, and was also accidentally killed by Apollo while playing a game of frisbee. Bad form from a literal god there. Another interpretation is that Zephyrus (the West wind, obviously) was a previous lover of Hyacinth’s, and killed him out of jealousy because he chose Apollo over him.

Clio is the ‘proclaimer, glorifier and celebrator of history, great deeds and accomplishments,’ and her name is used in various modern brands, including the Clio Awards for excellence in advertising.

Polyhymnia – muse of hymn (but also maybe dance?)

Here she is throwing some absolute shapes. This painting is oddly terrifying but also hilarious, I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I also cannot for the life of me work out what this woman is supposed to be the muse of. Someone says geometry? Why do we need a muse for geometry? Meynier calls her the muse of ‘eloquence’ above… I’m confused. What I do know is that Homer is in the background here again!

She’s not huge on actually being in any Greek myths (she had a son who was a first priest of Demeter?) but she looks great and is doing some groovy dance moves, so there’s that.

Euterpe – muse of the flute

(these frescoes are so cool I’m going to put my head through a wall look how well preserved and detailed they are)

You’ll never guess what Euterpe, muse of the flute, is credited with having created guys. It’s a real wild card.

I’m joking. The flute… it’s the flute.

More specifically the aulos, or double-flute, and Euterpe is most often depicted holding or playing her creation. If you’re a musician looking for divine inspiration, she’s your gal.

Terpsichore – muse of dance and chorus

Another muse of dance!? Stick with me, I’m as confused as you are, but there’s still loads of cool art and depictions to see so we’re ploughing on in the name of discovering cool paintings, statues and Pompeiian frescoes.

Terpsichore can often be found depicted sat down (me too bestie) playing the lyre in accompaniment to the choir with her music. She also gives us the English word ‘terpsichorean’ which means ‘relating to dancing,’ which I didn’t know before today.

Erato – muse of lyrical/erotic poetry

Now we’re talking. Erato’s just kicked down the door and said, ‘put your flute down and listen to this filthy poem I just wrote.’ She can sometimes be found depicted with a golden arrow which symbolises ‘eros’ (sexual love), the feeling she invokes, or sometimes actually accompanied by Eros, as seen above. I really like this one, well done Charles.

I’ve just googled why Meynier loved painting the muses so much, and he was actually commissioned to paint all nine of them for some posh bloke’s dining room, but only managed Calliope, Clio, Polyhymnia and Erato before his patron ran out of money.

Woops.

Melpomene – muse of tragedy

Melpomene (resident sad girl) is often depicted with a(n often terrifying) tragic mask, scrolls and a crown of leaves. She was described by an Italian iconographer as: “a gentlewoman all in mourning; she holds a bloody dagger in her right hand; behind her, upon the ground, a garment of cloth of gold, and diverse precious jewels; shod with cothurni.”

The oldest known portrait of Virgil, a mosaic dated back to the first century, depicts him sat between Clio and Melpomene, which has been interpreted as a commentary on the similarities of recording history and writing fictional works of tragedy. Very cool!

Thalia – muse of comedy

Onto my personal favourite now, Thalia is often depicted as a young woman with a joyous air, holding a comic mask in her hand, the direct opposite of her sad sister Melpomene. Many of her statues also hold a bugle or a trumpet, or, randomly, a shepherd’s staff.

Urania – muse of astronomy, astrology and space

Last but not least, Urania is usually depicted with a celestial globe to which she points with a small staff, and more often than not can be found gazing up to the heavens, which is a cool little detail. In this one she’s wearing a headband of stars, which gives her away as the muse of astronomy. She’s also leaning back on her big ol’ celestial orb, using it as a sort of beanbag, which I absolutely adore.

Urania is the namesake for astronomical observatories across Europe, and the main belt asteroid Urania was also named after her. A fine example of how ancient Greek mythology is still relevant today which makes me feel like crying happy tears a little bit.

SOME (more) ART

You can never have enough.

Check out this article from 2020 for loads more depictions of all the muses together - if I tried to do them all justice here we’d all be here for hours.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that that article names Polyhymnia as the muse of grapes and agriculture. Who is that woman????

THE END

That’s it from me today! Once again, I’m so sorry to my email users. I can never help myself with the length of these newsletters.

I hope you had as much fun reading this one as I had writing it, I’ve loved learning about the different muses over the past week, and how to differentiate them in art! Now I just need to wait for some very niche pub quiz questions.

Until next time💗🏺

I can’t even remember where this quote is from, some article from 2023, the year I was preparing to write my undergrad dissertation for my Creative Writing BA. What I do remember is reading this quote during my initial research and thinking: ‘why didn’t anyone feel the need to bring this up about the countless male dominated narratives in Greek mythology we’ve had up until now?’

Then I thought: ‘I could probably write an essay about this.’

So I did! And I nailed it, and received first class honours in return from the University of the West of England later that year. This retelling and accompanying essay (and lovely certificate), however, were not enough. Even a year later, I was still itching to write about women in Greek mythology, and once the shock of third year and all those hours sitting in the library had finally worn off, I felt ready to tackle my laptop keyboard again.

It took me that long to work out that I could write whatever I wanted. It didn’t have to be long, boring essays about publishing cycles, or an in depth analysis of my favourite book which would make me never want to look at it again. I could write insane, wild, relatable retellings of my favourite stories, in fact I had to! My breaking into the Substack algorithm depended on mad retellings and bonkers titles.

And so, Ancient Echoes was born.

I started this newsletter because of my love for Greek mythology, yes, but also because of that continued feeling of unease I got when I first read that quote about the market for feminist retellings being oversaturated. It almost felt to me like someone saying that the market for feminism was oversaturated, which feels depressingly likely in today’s political landscape.

We all know Circe, Madeline Miller’s (excellent) feminist retelling of the famous sorceress from the Odyssey (that’s one of those male dominated narratives I was talking about earlier, by the way), and in my essay I pulled a quote from her Author’s Note to use as a basis for my reasoning.

‘It was a startling experience to be revisiting scenes that precisely mirrored what I was seeing on the news—but the unfortunate truth is that sexism, misogyny, and our culture’s distrust of powerful women are timeless’ (Miller, 2018.)

In original Greek myths, Circe is a dangerous ‘witch’ who entraps and transforms men. An evil villain, right? But in Miller’s retelling, Circe is a fully realised woman struggling to find her place in a world designed to control her. The crucial part here isn’t ‘retelling’ these stories, it’s about challenging the idea that women’s stories only matter when they serve men’s narratives.

Not to get all heavy and serious, but that is the main reason I love writing about these myths, and doing it in a relatable way to get more people involved. Yes, Jason and the Argonauts seems like a cool story, but what about Medea, his ‘crazy wife’ (say it with me now: 🎶male dominated narrative 🎶), or Atalanta, the only woman allowed on board the ship due to her immense strength and bravery?

Perseus’ story is all very well and good, but what about the ‘monstrous woman’ he was sent to kill? Did anyone ever think to ask Medusa what she thought about all of this? Or Ariadne, after Theseus abandoned her and ran off with her sister? Demeter, after having her daughter stolen by the king of the Underworld? Clytemnestra, who waited ten years for her murderous husband to return home from war after killing their daughter?

In short, I’m bored of hearing about all these masculine ‘heroes’ running around Ancient Greece raping women, sacking cities and doing stupid tasks. They make for good stories, (if a little disturbing) but they’re completely one-sided, and thus, quite uninteresting when you get anywhere below surface level. You start finding the real gems once you add the other side of the story back into the mix, the side with women.

So, no, person from some article which I’ve lost from two years ago, I don’t think that the market for feminist retellings is oversaturated. I think the more important issue to be raising is why, from about 500BC until Marget Atwood and Ursula Le Guin kicked down the door in the early 2000’s, no one thought to ask the same about the male centric narratives we’ve been getting ‘shoved down our throats’ (another quote from said article) for over two thousand years.

During my search for said article I came across this lovely little piece which I hadn’t seen before, but basically says we should leave the Classics alone because misogyny was allowed back in the Olden Days ™ and we can’t compare it to nowadays. It filled me with that similar sense of dread I mentioned earlier.

Here’s a quote if you don’t fancy reading the whole thing:

Oh! Euripides already did it?! And women weren’t allowed to know how to write? That’s fine then. Put down your pens guys, let’s write about men again.

If women have only been telling their side of the story for thirty years and you’re already bored, I’d suggest strapping in.

I, for one, am only just getting started.

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Post script time !!!

I wrote this essay to celebrate 1000 subscribers (!!!) because I knew I wanted to do a piece on why I decided to start up Ancient Echoes in the first place, and why I think it’s so important to keep talking about women’s voices being silenced (ironically). I hope you enjoyed the read, despite it being a bit different from my usual, crazy style.

I want to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone who’s been here from the start, and everyone who’s joined recently. This newsletter certainly hasn’t been an overnight success, and in a way I am so grateful for that because it’s taught me how to write these posts just for me! I still love finding new details in myths I thought I knew back to front, and learning about myths which I definitely didn’t know much about before I began writing about them.

Also just a teeny tiny note to say that I have turned paid subscribers on, and while I’m not sure that I want to paywall any posts or comment sections just yet (don’t panic!!) I would be so excited to start making some money from this endeavour! If you were to go paid, it would be funding my trip to Australia later this year which I am so excited about, and the minute I get some paid subs I will definitely be introducing some most excellent perks for them (a goddess series, perhaps??).

But for now, I’m so grateful that people continue to read my funny little rants anyway, and I appreciate you all so much!

Until next time😎

Because of the extensive list of characters in said ginormous retelling today, I thought I’d treat you to a little (big) dramatis personae, which means ‘here’s who’s in the story’ but posh. I’m going to be doing this instead of the usual context section, because every person who you could possibly think of has already talked about Helen of Troy, so that’s that covered.

Dramatis personae

Helen of Troy – the main character, today and every day

Clytemnestra - her sister

Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri) – her brothers

Leda – her mother

Zeus – her biological father

Tyndareus – her stepfather, husband of Leda

Theseus – general buffoon

Odysseus – a very wily man, and husband of Penelope, Helen’s cousin

Menelaus – Helen’s husband

Agamemnon – Menelaus’ brother, and husband of Clytemnestra, Helen’s sister

Paris – Helen’s kidnapper/lover/second husband (it’s complicated)

Priam and Hecuba – the king and queen of Troy, parents of Paris

Thetis – sea-nymph, Achilles’ mum

Peleus – king of Phthia, Achilles’ dad

Eris – goddess of strife

Aphrodite – goddess of love

Hera – goddess of marriage

Athena – goddess of wisdom

Got that? No? Me neither to be honest.

THE MYTH

Helen, instead of being born, was hatched out an egg (of course), along with her sister Clytemnestra, and two brothers Castor and Pollux (also known as the Dioscuri). This unusual birth came about due to Helen’s mother, Leda, being raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. If you don’t believe me, check out this collection of forty-five pieces of artwork depicting Leda and Zeus as a swan. It seems as though this particular moment in mythology has captured the minds of many an artist over the centuries.

You can read my retelling of Clytemnestra’s myth below—

So four children are born of Zeus and Leda, with Leda’s husband Tyndareus (a king) as their stepfather, and although all of them are pretty cool, as they grow up it becomes quite quickly apparent that Helen is an absolute stunner. Like, she’s really, really pretty. People are going to write songs about her face kind of thing.

Unfortunately for Helen, being a) a daughter of Zeus and b) so beautiful at such a young age turns out to be counter-productive due to factors like misogyny and the patriarchy, which is why she is instantly kidnapped by Theseus. The very same ‘hero of Athens’ who is so coveted by his people, who also, if you remember, ditched Ariadne on a deserted island after she saved his life and went off to marry her younger sister.

Read about Ariadne here—

At this point in time, Theseus is middle-aged. Helen is ten or eleven. What a hero! It’s times like these when I really wonder why we’re having to ‘rewrite the narrative’ of Greek myths. Surely the narrative speaks for itself? Anyway.

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Shortly after kidnapping Helen, Theseus decided that he actually quite fancied kidnapping Persephone from the Underworld too. You can imagine exactly what Hades thought about that. Castor and Pollux, Helen’s brothers, rescue her and bring her safely back home, while Theseus finds himself trapped in the Underworld.

So Helen continued to grow up, as children do, and soon it was time to decide who she should marry. This was a matter of much debate among the kings and princes of Greece, because she was after all the loveliest young woman any of them had ever seen.

Tyndareus, Helen’s ‘father’, called a meeting of all potential suitors, and they gathered in Sparta, each claiming to be the perfect match for Helen. Among these suitors was Odysseus (whose name you might have heard before thanks to a certain Homer), and he had brought with him a clever solution to this large, testosterone-fuelled problem.

He suggested that Helen be allowed to choose who she wanted to marry (gasp! The very thought of a woman being allowed to make a decision!), and that every potential suitor present would be obliged to swear on their honour to protect the union of Helen and whoever she choose. If anyone broke this agreement, all of Greece would go to war against them. This way, there could be no backstabbing, and no trickery.

So it was decided, and when Helen chose Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, everyone else had to say ‘fair dos’ and go home peacefully. The thing is, no one had thought about what would happen if someone who hadn’t been part of this big agreement decided to steal Helen away.

And that’s where Paris comes in.

At this moment in time, Paris is living as a goatherd wayyy across the ocean in the hillsides near Troy, and appears to have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

This, unfortunately for everyone involved, couldn’t be further from the truth, because Paris is really the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. No one knows this yet, because he was meant to be left on a mountain top to die after his birth, because a seer decided that a dream Hecuba had the night before Paris’ birth foretold the downfall of Troy.

Clearly he hadn’t died, and that’s because the old dude who was meant to make sure he was left alone to die up there took pity on him, and took him into the hills to raise the baby as his own.

Now, fast forward a bunch of years, and Paris was deemed to be an all-round great guy, intelligent, honest and very good-looking. Which is why he was chosen by the gods to judge a divine contest between Athena, Aphrodite and Hera.

Whoa, what??? Isn’t this meant to be all about Helen??

I know! And I will explain, but you have to put up with one last tiny tangent while I do, but afterwards I promise it will all come together, and you’ll think, wow, that huge newsletter was so worth reading, I’m glad I stuck with it through all those weird tangents. They coalesce in a most satisfying and plausible way.

Stay with me folks.

A sea-nymph, Thetis, and king of Phthia, Peleus, are getting married. In the future they will be the parents of the famous Achilles, which is quite interesting but not too important right now. Every god and demi-god you can imagine had been invited to the wedding, apart from Eris, the goddess of discord and strife. Because who wants strife at their wedding??

Anyway, Eris predictably turns up to cause some strife anyway, and rolls a lovely golden apple across the floor. It’s engraved with the words ‘tei kalliste’, for the most beautiful. The apple stops on the floor, within sight of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite, all of whom think the apple is for them. When it’s discovered that the sender and recipient of the apple are both unclear, all hell breaks loose. Thetis can wave goodbye to her gorgeous wedding, because now there are three angry goddesses on the rampage.

They storm up to Zeus, who probably felt dread as he never had before as his wife asked him to judge who he thought was the most beautiful out of her, his favourite daughter and his niece, who just so happened to be the goddess of beauty.

Instead of making a decision and invoking the wrath of the other two, Zeus clicked his fingers and sent them away to be someone else’s problem. Specifically, Paris the goatherd’s problem. We can only imagine the young man’s shock when three radiant, furious goddesses appeared on his front porch, stripped naked and asked him to decide which was the most beautiful.

Paris, understandably, also didn’t want to upset any of the three all-powerful goddesses (clever), and claimed that he couldn’t possibly choose between them. So they instantly turned to bribery.

Hera offered him all the land and titles he could possibly wish for. Athena offered him wisdom in battle, and the skills of the greatest warrior. Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth.

Aha, see where we’re going now? Straight back to Helen. Told you it would all make sense.

Fast forward a few weeks, and Paris has uncovered his true heritage, reclaimed his title as prince of Troy, sailed off across the sea to collect Helen, and raced back home again before anyone can stop him. And so Helen of Sparta became Helen of Troy, leaving behind her husband Menelaus and her baby daughter, Hermione.

Now Menelaus hadn’t forgotten about the oath that all of Helen’s potential suitors had sworn, and the minute he realised his wife had been stolen away from him, he called on them all to come to his aid in helping to retrieve his wife. All of Greece was obliged to set sail at once for Troy, to take part in the most famous war in history: the Trojan War.

I’m not going to go into detail about what happened next, and if you want me to you’ll have to ask for it in another newsletter, because I’m about to run out of space here already. In short, the war was fought for ten years, and eventually Greece won, sacking Troy and killing all the men inside, and kidnapping all of the women. Helen was returned to her husband, Menelaus, and then… we’re not sure.

Some sources say she went to Olympus, some to the Underworld, some say she was hanged for deserting her husband… so take your pick I guess. One thing we do know for sure was that hers was, and will always be, the face that launched a thousand ships.

SOME ART

Once again, Evelyn takes the biscuit here. It’s almost a mirror image of her painting of Cassandra, which is very cool! I’ll write about her one day.

I adore this depiction of Helen. She looks like someone’s just told her off for something menial and now she’s sulking. What an icon.

Of all the paintings I found of Paris judging the goddesses, this one is my favourite. And as always, I will not be elaborating beyond ‘I like the vibes’.

Rubens painted loads of depictions of this scene, and he painted this one just four years before his death. It always gets me when these works of art are from the seventeenth century and before. Greek mythology is so old, and so cool. People have been reading and talking and writing and painting about these same stories for so long! Pretty cool, ay.

I couldn’t find a year for this one, but I love it so much. I think it perfectly reflects each of the three goddess’ personalities so well, and Paris is in the background dressed like a garden gnome thinking oh shit.

If anyone knows more about the artist/year this was painted, please let me know!

Speaking of Paris being dressed like a garden gnome…

THE END

If you’re still here, congratulations, truly. Thanks for sticking with me until the end, I hope it was worth it! I’ve been super busy recently and am ploughing on with my novel which I’m determined to finish by the summer, but I’m really eager to keep posting here as well!

If that wasn’t enough art for you, check out this huge collection of art all based around the Trojan War.

Let me know who you’d like to see me write about next, and I’ll catch you next time for more mythical madness🏺🏛️

You can read my initial newsletter about the Medusa myth here.

I wondered if this essay would have enough substance when I set out to plan it, but it quickly became clear just how relevant Medusa has been to the feminist movement in recent years. I had so much fun researching for this one. A lot of it was drawn from my uni studies which, here, I was able to dive deeper into when I wasn’t allowed two years ago, due to pesky word counts and the like.

If you asked most people about Medusa, even now, they’d probably describe a terrifying woman with snakes for hair who can turn men into stone with a single look. She’s been a staple of mythology and pop culture for centuries, from ancient Greek pottery to the literal Versace logo. In recent years, however, she’s been reinterpreted, not as a monster, but as a symbol of female empowerment, rage, and persistence against patriarchal violence. This transformation has positioned our girl as a key figure in new, feminist mythology and modern gender discourse.

I know I shared my newsletter on the myth above, but if you don’t have time to read it or just don’t fancy it, I’ll give a quick run-down here too.

The most famous version of Medusa’s story comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written in the first century AD. According to his version of the myth, Medusa was originally a beautiful mortal who caught the eye of Poseidon. He raped her in a temple of Athena, and instead of punishing Poseidon, Athena transformed Medusa into a Gorgon, giving her snakes for hair and a gaze that turned men into stone.

Plenty to be angry about.

In short, this is a story about a woman being punished for her own victimisation. Medusa, rather than being protected, was turned into a monster, shunned and feared. A survivor of sexual violence being blamed and discredited rather than protected and supported.

Sound familiar? The myth of Medusa, one which exists at least as far back as two-thousand years ago, reflects the struggle of women in patriarchal structures, making her an undeniable feminist symbol.

For centuries, however, Medusa existed as a depiction of terror, a warning against rather than for female power. Sigmund Freud even suggested that the image of Medusa’s head represented male ‘castration anxiety’ (men finding powerful women intimidating). But feminists in the twentieth and twenty-first century have flipped that interpretation on its head… no pun intended.

Hélène Cixous, a French feminist writer, playwright and literary critic emphasised in her 1975 essay The Laugh of the Medusa that women need to embrace their power and refuse to be silenced. Instead of seeing Medusa as a monster, she saw her as a representation of female strength, rage and defiance. Cixous was one of the earliest thinkers in post-structural feminism, and the use of Medusa in the title of her famous essay isn’t a coincidence.

Medusa has been rebranded in modern media, fashion and art, adopted by luxury fashion brand Versace as its logo to symbolise beauty, strength and allure. The most striking use of Medusa in art in the last twenty years though is, for me, a sculpture by artist Luciano Garbati. Cast in 2008, the sculpture Medusa with the Head of Perseus went viral in 2020, and I adore it. It is a striking visual representation of a reclamation of power, and resurfaced to the algorithm along with the phrase: “Be thankful we only want equality, and not payback.”

This image was reused during 2017 (this one a parody of Cellini’s original statue): a truly disgusting use of Photoshop showing then (and, depressingly, now again) President Donald Trump as Perseus holding the severed head of Hillary Clinton as Medusa, in a stark example of how powerful women are often symbolically, or here, literally depicted as being defeated. The image echoed historical narratives of men triumphing over women they perceived as threatening, reinforcing the deep-seated fear of not female leadership, but female autonomy in general.

Throwback to when I did my presentation on Medusa during the second or third month of my Classics MA, put the Trump/Clinton picture on the board, and a guy in that class laughed loudly and said ‘HAH. I want that on a t-shirt’ and then all his friends laughed too.

And then I quit !! Anyway.

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Natalie Haynes’ 2022 novel Stone Blind (you know I had to bring it up) has given Medusa’s story further light, centring her perspective rather than the ‘hero’ who murdered her. This modern retelling (as with Jessie Burton’s Medusa) challenges the idea of Medusa as a villain and instead highlights her as a woman whose story was twisted to fit a patriarchal narrative.

In Greek mythology, Perseus is celebrated as the hero who beheaded Medusa, using her severed head as a weapon before giving it up to Athena. When examined through a feminist lens (or any other lens, frankly), however, Perseus can be seen to represent the patriarchal force which aims to silence/control powerful women. His act of slaying Medusa mirrors the way in which women throughout history have been vilified, punished and erased for challenging male dominance.

So Perseus slaying Medusa is not an act of heroism, but is in fact a symbolic act of suppressing female rage and bodily autonomy. Her head, once a source of male terror, is repurposed by the same men who so feared her as a tool of power, much the same as women’s voices and bodies are controlled and commodified in our patriarchal society.

The reversal of power in modern interpretations such as Garbati’s Medusa with the Head of Perseus reflects an important shift towards equality and away from the structures which have historically sought to suppress it.

Medusa’s transformation from monster to feminist icon is part of a broader cultural shift. Crucially, we’re re-examining the stories we’ve been told and questioning why certain figures, especially women, are cast as villains (hence the birth of Ancient Echoes). Her story is no longer just a cautionary tale: she’s a symbol of defiance, of strength in the face of injustice, and in a world which is still punishing women for their own pain, Medusa’s legacy remains a vital part of the feminist discourse.

In today’s era of gender-based violence awareness and women beginning to reclaim their voices, Medusa as a symbol of survivors fighting back and reclaiming their power resonates more than ever.

Medusa is no longer a myth, but a movement.

Or, in other words…

No one has asked for this, but I’ve been feeling proud of my reading streak so far this year and I want to write about the books I’ve read, so here we are. I love historical fiction, fantasy and romance, so if you have any good book recs, drop them below!

As with my retellings of Greek myths, you can expect minimal expert analysis and a thorough examination of vibes and whether I understood the plot or not (This is How you Lose the Time War, I’m looking at you).

Let’s go.

The Instrumentalist – Harriet Constable🎻

I received this hardback for Christmas, and after reading so many books on Kindle last year it felt soo good to have a physical book in my hands again. Also the smell of new books and the positive impact they have on my mental health needs to be studied.

The Instrumentalist is set in eighteenth century Venice, and follows the story of Anna Maria della Pieta, a young girl who grows up in the famous Venetian Pieta orphanage and has a talent for the violin. Her teacher, though never named, is the famous Antonio Vivaldi, and the novel tells the story of how he taught her violin, how she thought up some of ‘his’ most famous melodies, and how she was then left uncredited due to her gender and social standing.

Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘how can we know that she helped with his compositions?’.

Answer: we can’t, but there are scraps of evidence which I’m choosing to believe mean something, and Harriet Constable has convinced me. Good day.

For a debut novel, this one blew me away. I can’t imagine the research which must have gone into this, and I thought the writing was phenomenal, I was dragged through by my hair in about three days.

Excuse me while I bring up Anna Maria’s name every time Vivaldi is mentioned from now on.

Goodreads rating: 5 stars ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

This is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar⏰

I was very excited for this one, but it didn’t deliver, and before you start yelling at me, no one was more upset by this than me.

I don’t even know how to write a description for this because I’m still not exactly sure what was going on at any given moment in the book. There were two characters called Red and Blue, and that’s all the important info I can remember.

I think the world building was good, but I also don’t think I’ll ever know if it actually was. Am I stupid, or was it just completely unanchored and crazy?? I can see why the romance is considered good by a lot of people, but it just didn’t land for me.

The writing saved this book from the dreaded two star rating, the descriptions were chefs kiss and I loved the creativity with the way they left notes for each other. I liked the ending, but it definitely left me feeling very confused and dissatisfied at the end.

I’ve just realised that this review is almost as insubstantial as the book, and I think that’s fitting, so I’m not changing a thing.

Goodreads rating: 3 stars ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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Tress of the Emerald Sea – Brandon Sanderson🦠

You know Brando Sando had to make an appearance. I liked this one, but the romance SUCKED. If it was anyone other than Mr Sanderson I’d be annoyed, but I wasn’t going into this expecting anything other than a flat-as-a-pancake romance, so I’ve decided to allow it because every other aspect is so mind-bendingly good.

Basically a young girl decides to go on a sea-bound adventure to save this boy she’s had like three conversations with, because his dad sacrificed him to an evil sea witch. He’s a duke by the way, which has absolutely no impact on the story.

As always, the world building is 10/10, as is the writing style, which made me laugh and then have an existential crisis every other page. I can’t think of any higher accolade to be honest.

I want to describe how great the oceans made of spores and aethers and characters all are but I’m struggling to avoid giving loads away, so you’ll have to take my word that it’s really good and go read it yourself. The plot twists in Sanderson books always make me smile, because they’re so blatantly obvious when they’re revealed, but I never guess them before the fact.

Goodreads rating: 4 stars ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The Voyage Home – Pat Barker⛵

Another one I wanted to love but didn’t! Which isn’t to say that I hated it, but I definitely don’t think it hit as hard as the first two in the trilogy.

This is the third and final instalment in Barker’s Silence of the Girls trilogy, and follows Cassandra and her fellow Trojan woman Ritsa on their journey from their ruined homeland to Mycenae, where a vengeful Clytemnestra has been waiting for her husband to return home for ten long years. So that she can murder him.

I’ve read more retellings of Clytemnestra’s story than I care to admit, and this one honestly didn’t take the cake. If there’s one thing Clytemnestra isn’t, it’s defeated, and that’s the vibe she gave off in this retelling.

It just felt very drawn out, and when we finally got to the murder of Agamemnon, that fell flat too. I always enjoy Barker’s writing style and world building, but the story didn’t land for me, this time. I think the first two books in the trilogy were simply too incredible to be followed.

If you want to read about Clytemnestra, someone has written a preettyy cool blog post about her here…

Goodreads rating: 3 stars ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Cleopatra and Frankenstein – Coco Mellors💍

Now this one has me baffled, because usually I severely dislike these kinds of character driven books. But for some reason I didn’t let the ‘for fans of Sally Rooney’ review on the back scare me away (I didn’t like Normal People, fight me), and I’m actually glad that I didn’t.

This novel (another debut, which apparently took seven years to complete??) is about Cleo and Frank and their absolutely unhinged marriage, and the impact it has on all of their friends. None of them are particularly likeable, and the book is about 400 pages long, but for some reason I found myself becoming very involved?? And it’s not like it’s a cheerful book either, in fact it’s pretty melancholic and at some points completely depressing. But I finished it in four days, so explain that.

This review I saw on Goodreads sums up my experience of reading this book pretty nicely: ‘sometimes you buy a book because it has a pretty cover, and that’s okay.’

Goodreads review: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – Victoria E. Schwab🔮

This one has been on my TBR (to be read) list for soo long, and now that I’ve read it I cannot believe I let it sit there for so long. Definitely my favourite book of the month, this book felt like the amazing read I’ve been waiting for.

It follows the (very long) life of Addie LaRue, who is cursed to move through the world and have no one remember her. Until three hundred years into her existence, when she meets Henry Strauss, a bookshop owner and (in my opinion) perfect love interest.

This book had it all; history, romance, well-developed characters, character development, and a hot villain. Call me a basic bitch, but I ate this up. I can’t really say much more without spoilers but if someone else read this and loved it please reach out so I can shout at you about it.

Goodreads review: 5(000) stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

That’s it for this month, I think six books in January is pretty good and it has set me well on my way to reading fifty books in 2025. I’m thinking of making this a monthly review, partially for more content on my Substack and partially as an accountability method for my reading goal.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you read and liked/disliked any of the books I mentioned, or if you have any recs for me.

post script -- my goodreads username is @flossreads if anyone wants to be friends !!

We just hit 700 subscribers over here, and as I write that I can hear the ghost of June 2024 Ellie who thought ‘maybe I should start a Substack’ screaming and climbing the walls in excitement. 700 of you. I can’t wrap my head around it, I feel as though I was just getting excited over 26 subscribers !

Thank you soo so much for being here and continuing to read my unhinged takes on these mythological women, I appreciate every one of you so much !!!

In other news, I’m still looking for freelance copy and/or content writing gigs, still saving to travel, and still don’t have a plan for said travelling even as June 2025 and the end of my tenancy in this flat marches ever closer. However, in the words of my boyfriend, ‘it’ll probably be alright, won’t it.’

Promising stuff.

Today we’re going to discuss a lady who has been waiting in the wings for a long time for me to stop being so afraid to tackle her myth and get on with it, and I can confirm that today is that day.

It’s Medea’s turn in the spotlight.

THE CONTEXT

Euripides!!!

In the 5^th century BC, Euripides wrote a great big play about Medea, and it was (and is) quite famous to be fair. I’m going to go on a small tangent here because I’ve just googled ‘Euripides’ Medea’ to find something poignant to say to you all, and have come across this.

This is from 1898, but it looks so modern to me?? It’s very cool. Sorry to jump the gun because I know we’re not in the art section yet, but I couldn’t resist showing everyone.

(If you’re new here, now’s probably a good time to mention that this isn’t the most academic of newsletters. Sometimes I can feel my braincells actually dying when I write these posts).

Anyway, Euripides wrote a great play about Medea, and this one was actually part of a trilogy, but the other plays didn’t survive, which most historians agree is an absolute bummer. The play won Euripides third (and last) prize in the Dionysia, and if you don’t know about the Dionysia, then you should. So I’ll tell you. It was a big festival held in Ancient Athens to honour the god… you guessed it, Dionysus. The main events of these festivals were the performances of dramatic tragedies and comedies.

So there, now you know, and all this information is excellent for pub quizzes by the way.

Medea is 1. generally considered a masterpiece, 2. has been explored and analysed in what is probably every way humanly possible over the centuries, and 3. influenced works by Shakespeare. Which just goes to show that the people attending that first show in Athens, 431 BC, didn’t have a clue what they were on about.

THE MYTH

TRIGGER WARNINGS: all of them.

Seriously, this lady is about to go through it, and take everyone she knows and loves with her.

Not to immediately bring up a man, but Medea was the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis. That’s some context that’ll you’ll want to know later, to be fair. Also, she’s a bit witchy.

For reasons which I’m not about to get into, some bloke called Jason had gathered a bunch of other dudes (and one legendary woman called Atalanta, who I promise to write about soon) on a boat, and sailed straight for Colchis to steal a golden fleece which was hanging in a tree. Actually, I don’t know if it was hanging in a tree or why I think that it was, but that’s what I’m going with.

King Aeetes, when Jason approached him with this proposal to steal his property, thought absolutely not. But instead of saying this, he said ‘sure thing! But first I need you to do me some tasks.’ Kings love setting boys tasks in Greek mythology. Medea, having watched this exchange from the sidelines and instantly fallen in love with Jason (as our gals are known to do at this point in the story), vows to protect and help him during these tasks.

She gives him ointment to protect him from fire-breathing beasts, clues about how to hack one task so that he doesn’t actually have to do anything, and gives him sleeping herbs for a dragon which would probably otherwise have bitten his head off.

They take the golden fleece and flee along with Medea’s younger brother, but are soon pursued by King Aeetes, who is presumably quite annoyed that this J-name has at this point nicked his two children and nice golden fleece.

At this point (look away if you’re squeamish), Medea does the only sensible thing she can think of to do. She kills her younger brother, and then starts chopping him up and throwing his body parts over the side of the boat to slow their father down.

To her credit, it does work. Then they go for a quick stop-over at her aunt Circe’s house, to be absolved of their sins. Well, Medea’s sins. Remember Circe?? Course you do. Here’s my summary of their time together from my post of Circe:

So there you have it. Lots more goes down but I’m running out of space for y’all who read me from your emails (yes, I see you), so you’ll have to make do with this brief version of events.

Medea proceeds to, in order, kill a giant bronze man, cure Jason’s father of an illness, make three daughters murder their own father (another king), be abandoned by Jason for another woman, kill her and her father, and then murder her own children by Jason, before leaping into a golden chariot and flying away.

Because of course that’s what happened.

SOME ART

Time now for some actually amazing paintings. Minimal analysis, MUCHO vibes today, as always.

This quote accompanied this painting in the museum at its first exhibition. I know very little about Evelyn de Morgan but I love her more every time I come across one of her paintings.

John !!! Nuff said.

This is a bit of an obscure one I think but I had to include my gal Artemisia. You know her from that painting of Judith and Holofernes. You know, the one.

Not Medea but I had to include this because how did I miss it when I did my post on Circe ??? Sincere apologies to everyone involved, Margaret’s Circe is here now, never fear.

THE END

I’ve been looking forward to but also dreading writing about Medea for a while, but I had a lot of fun with this one !! Check out this article for more cool paintings and better analysis than I could ever hope to offer.

And sorry for the sort of rushed myth today, I just had to get all of that art in! I hope you all enjoyed and/or learnt something new, and let me know who you want to see me write about next:)

until next time<3

I hope you had a restful holiday filled with happiness, relaxation, and minimal family feuds. It’s been a while, so I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear that one of my new year’s resolutions is to write here more regularly.

My main new year’s resolution, however, is to start and finish writing my novel! I’m debating publishing some chapters on here once they start to resemble something like a plot, but I’ll keep you updated on that front.

If you want to know more about my plans for a fiction novel, drop me a message or leave a comment and I can keep you updated via the ancient echoes chat.

It’s not necessarily about anything ancient or echo-y, it’s more contemporary and romance based, but I’d love to share it with anyone who might be interested anyway! And also to have people to hold me accountable for getting on with it.

But enough about me, today you’re here for Eurydice. I have a feeling this one is going to be fairly short and sweet, given the lack of sources I could find on Eurydice before her marriage, overshadowed as she is by Orpheus. I say sweet… maybe short and sour is more apt.

THE CONTEXT

Eurydice is mentioned by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (of course), but also by Plato and Virgil, who I don’t think we’ve talked about yet.

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, and his Symposium is a text which depicts speeches made by notable figures from Athenian society, including Socrates (Plato’s teacher) and Aristophanes (the playwright), made during a banquet. Phaedrus speaks of Eurydice and Orpheus during his speech in this text.

Now that I’m writing this I’m thinking that we have actually spoken about Plato before, but I’m sure I haven’t written about Virgil yet. He was an ancient Roman poet (best known for penning the Aeneid), and he recounts the tale of Eurydice and Orpheus in his Georgics. I will show you Virgil:

Tell me that isn’t the stuff of nightmares. Although, I reckon I’d be pretty annoyed too if my nose had been smashed off.

THE STORY

We’ll start with Eurydice, a wood nymph, being engaged to Orpheus, who was famous across Greece for being a legendary poet and musician. He was so legendary that he was picked to travel with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece to be something of a cheerleader for them.

Fast forward to their wedding day, and Eurydice is promptly bitten by a snake and dies.

Orpheus is distraught, and decides to venture down to the Underworld to retrieve his fiancé (you could do that in ancient times, apparently). Such is his skill with the lyre that he was able to get all the way down to Hades and Persephone without anyone really batting an eyelid (including Cerberus), distracted as they were by his miraculous playing.

Orpheus is allowed to play for the King and Queen of the Underworld, and he manages even to move Hades to tears. Here’s where shit starts to get real. Hades asks Orpheus what he wants from them, and he asks for Eurydice back. Hades agrees, but on one condition™.

Orpheus must walk straight from the Underworld back to the land of the living, trusting that Eurydice is following him, and must NOT under ANY circumstances look behind him to check that she is following him, before they reach the upper surface.

Did everyone get that?

DON’T. TURN. AROUND.

…

Time for a quick quiz now.

Given what we have learnt about male characters in Greek mythology over the past few months (thinking back to the likes of Narcissus, Perseus and Agamemnon) please choose one of the following options regarding what you think happens next:

a) Orpheus says ‘Oh, wow! Thanks so much Hades, literal King of the Underworld. I will respect your terms and not look behind me, because I came all this way for the sole purpose of retrieving the woman I love.’ And escapes successfully with his fiancé.

b) Orpheus gets all the way to the top without looking behind him, when, mere steps from the exit to the upper world, he turns around to check Eurydice is following him.

If you chose option b), congratulations! You have the measure of male characters in Greek mythology.

Because of course Orpheus goes the whole way without looking behind him, only to fail seconds from Eurydice’s salvation.

There are many interpretations of the message of this myth, including ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ and ‘don’t objectify women.’

But personally, I think the main message Hades would have wanted us to take away here is ‘fuck around and find out.’

SOME ART

I’m actually quite proud of myself right now, because as we all know I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to analysing these works of art. But as I was importing this one I thought to myself ‘it’s giving Claude Monet’ (very analytical).

And then I scrolled down to read the description, and what did I see but this quote: ‘Claude Monet himself said, "There is only one master here: Corot."'

Huge win for me, I am now an expert. It is giving Claude Monet!

Here’s the website in case you want to read an actual good and informative description of this painting.

Not exactly a picture of marital bliss. Makes me slightly more sympathetic to Orpheus’ situation. But not much.

This one wins !! You can see Charon rowing slowly towards them across the River Styx, and the reflections on the water are extremely cool.

Truth be told I’ve added this one because I think it’s pretty and want to use it as the header for this post. I’m nothing if not honest. Also I literally base what paintings I choose to include here based off of how cool I think they look, so I’m not sure why I’m trying to defend myself here.

THE END

As always, I hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading! Stick with me, there’s much more to come in 2025☘️

Let me know who you want me to write about next! Medea, Atalanta, Cassandra and Arachne are currently all queued up for future posts.

Until next time<3

First of all I want to say a hugee thank you, because there are over 600 of you subscribed now, and that’s insane to me! A big thank you to everyone who has been here awhile, and a warm welcome to everyone new<3

I’m also sorry I’ve been slightly absent over the past few weeks; I’ve been picking up a lot of work which has meant that this blog has fallen by the wayside a bit, not by choice! But we’re back in business just in time for Christmas, and this week I want to talk about Penelope.

THE CONTEXT

By far the most common version of Penelope’s myth comes from, you guessed it, Homer’s Odyssey. As Odysseus’ wife, there’s a fair amount of information regarding Penelope in this enormous text.

Ancient accounts, as they so often do, vary, and one of them has a plot twist which we know from Madeline Miller’s Circe, which I wrote an article about a few weeks ago. In this version of the myth, Telegonus (Odysseus’ second son by Circe) sets out to find his father, but mistakenly kills him. Just how he managed to accidentally kill the very man he was looking for remains a mystery to me.

Telegonus returns to his mother’s island with Penelope and Telemachus (Pen and Odysseus’ son), very apologetic. In the end, Circe goes off travelling with Telemachus, and Penelope falls in love with Telegonus.

Yes, you heard. Her husband’s illegitimate son.

Greek mythology never ceases to amaze me.

A stunning retelling of Penelope’s myth was written by the one and only Margaret Atwood in 2005, titled The Penelopiad. In it, Penelope is allowed to tell her version of the story from the Underworld, where she roams the Fields of Asphodel eternally.

It’s probably the most iconic feminist retelling of any woman in Greek myth, and perhaps the pioneering novel of the genre. I did a presentation on it in uni, but I won’t bore you with that (yet). I would highly recommend giving it a read.

THE MYTH

Penelope is the daughter of Icarius of Sparta and the nymph Periboea, and, of course, the wife of Odysseus. Together they had a son, Telemachus.

When Odysseus is called away to fight in the Trojan war (which I will write about one day when I’m feeling strong, I promise), Penelope is left to defend their tiny island of Ithaca all alone, along with their infant son. Ithaca, for reference, is a teeny tiny island just off of Kefalonia, and was known for being very rocky, sparse and full of goats.

Not exactly a big name in Grecian powers.

Odysseus is away for ten years fighting Agamemnon and Menelaus’ war, and while he’s gone, every nobleman in and around Ithaca begins vying for Penelope’s hand.

Miss Pen is forced to come up with a plan, and quick, so (presumably panicked) she tells all of her suitors that they have to wait for her to finish weaving her father-in-law’s funeral shroud before they start trying to hit on her.

I feel as though I should also mention that Odysseus’ father Laertes is alive and healthy at this time, so I’m not sure what he would have made of this whole funeral shroud business.

So Penelope spends her days weaving, but unbeknownst to her suitors, she spends her nights un-weaving, the result of which is a funeral shroud which takes absolutely ages to be done with. The suitors, who are steadily eating and drinking their way through the palace’s stores over the years, swallow this story without batting an eyelid until one of Penelope’s maids gives the game away.

Ithaca’s Queen is barely clinging on to her claim to the throne when Odysseus finally returns, twenty years later. He arrives in disguise, before killing all of the suitors and reclaiming his throne at his faithful wife’s side. I personally would love to know what excuses this man came out with when asked by his wife what took him so long to get home.

(spoiler alert, he was cheating on his wife. TWICE. and don’t try and tell me he was ‘forced into it’. that man was having a ten year holiday on the way back from Troy and you can’t convince me otherwise)

If you couldn’t already tell, I’m not Odysseus’ biggest fan.

SOME ART

We are sooo back!! John’s scored another blinder with this one, and I will be looking at it for the rest of today, and possibly even a bit tomorrow. I featured this one in my ‘art of women in Greek myth’ advent calendar earlier this week, that’s how much I adore it.

I particularly enjoy the man on the right who seems to have just whipped out his purse and started pulling jewellery from inside it. That’s one way to go about trying to court a woman, I suppose.

Let the woman weave in peace!!

This one is very dramatic. It shows Penelope anti-weaving (I’m coining this new term thank you) in the dead of night while she watches over her sleeping son, Telemachus. A great big statue of Odysseus watches over them in an incredibly un-scary and normal manner.

Very dark and atmospheric, I enjoy it very much.

I’m sure there’s much to analyse here but unfortunately I don’t know anything about art history and am only here to comment things like ‘omg this one is really cool’.

And omg, this one is really cool.

THE END

That’s it from me! Thanks so much for reading, I hope you learnt something new and/or had a giggle. Let me know in the comments who you want to see featured on Ancient Echoes next.

And for god’s sake don’t use ‘sorry, not until I’ve finished weaving my father-in-law’s funeral shroud’ as an excuse ever, unless you want to have a very awkward family conversation.

Until next time<3

This week this lil newsletter hit, and then surpassed, 500 subscribers !!!

I am SO grateful for everyone who has been supporting me on this very fun journey! I’m planning on trying to post more regularly from now on, maybe every Tuesday or Friday? We’ll all find out together very soon when I work out how to use analytics.

I also have a guest post on Medea coming out very soon for ’s Substack , which is an absolutely stunning publication with all sorts of essays about history, literature, and more! You can have a gander by clicking the link above, and keep an eye out for yours truly, appearing there very soon.

I’ve been so excited to write about Medusa, so I think a 500 subscriber celebration post is very fitting for what is my fave topic to talk about from Greek myth.

Let’s do it!

THE CONTEXT

Hesiod describes Medusa and her Gorgon sisters Sthenno and Euryale in his Theogony (you remember the farming poem), and of course Ovid later brings her up in Metamorphoses (he would have been absolutely all over hair being transformed into snakes). The Gorgons also get a shout out in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. And that’s all very interesting, but my primary source for learning about Medusa has been Natalie Haynes.

I wrote three (3) separate essays on this novel in my second and third years of uni, and in 2022 went to the ancient Roman Baths in Bath to listen to Haynes do a talk on Medusa, so I’m sorry to the old men, but she’s taking the limelight today.

Haynes rewrites the ‘monstrous’ Medusa to reflect her story (as Ovid told it), not just the general one we got handed down to us from the patriarchy, featuring words such as ‘hideous’ and ‘inhuman’. This story instead features sisterhood and sexual assault, flipping the ‘original’ myth on its head. And in my humble opinion, it’s incredibly well done.

Another piece of ancient context I think is very cool is the concept of a Gorgoneion. This was a symbolic head of Medusa used on everything from architecture to metal work, and was perceived to be a protective symbol.

Gorgoneions could be found on ancient breastplates, and are featured heavily on Athena’s shield or breastplate in ancient depictions, for reasons which will be made clear very soon…

See the tiny Medusa head on her chest?? I spent the whole time I travelled around Europe running around museums and shouting ‘LOOK’ at my partner when I found a Gorgonieon, so I’m very well-practiced at this game.

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THE STORY

Medusa is one of three Gorgons, her sisters being Sthenno and Euryale. According to Hesiod and Apollodorus they were offspring of the sea-god Phorcys and his sister Ceto (it’s worth remembering that incest is generally considered pretty normal in a) Greek myth and b) between gods).

In Ovid’s version of the myth (which Haynes uses for Stone Blind) Medusa is a perfectly normal child. No snakes for hair or anything, just a happy kid chilling in their cave-home by the sea, playing in the waves and being looked after by her two decidedly Gorgon-like sisters.

It’s all very peaceful and happy until Poseidon shows up, sees Medusa and thinks ‘Aha! A young girl who’s life I haven’t ruined! Perfect.’ He promptly corners her in a nearby Temple to Athena, and rapes her. There’s no motive, other than him being a colossal idiot.

Medusa runs home, understandably distraught, to hide in her cave. At this point, Athena finds out what’s been going on in her sacred temple and gets pretty angry. Here’s how I imagine her thought process went:

‘How dare such a thing happen on my sacred ground! How can I fix this atrocity that has occurred? I know! I will curse the girl who Poseidon raped forever. That’ll teach her.’

The next morning, Medusa wakes up with snakes for hair, unable to look at anything or anyone without turning them to stone. Then, as if matters weren’t already bad enough, a random dude turns up (also being helped by Athena, Hermes and Hades?), and decapitates her with a sword.

Sthenno and Euryale go quite mental at this point, but luckily the guy has been gifted lots of presents from the Gods for no apparent reason, so manages to fly away on his magical winged shoes with Medusa’s head.

This, of course, is Perseus, who has been instructed by a far-off King to bring him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, or he will force his mother (who was also raped by a God btw, this time Zeus was the perpetrator, in the form of ‘a shower of golden rain’) into marriage. Seems fair, right? At this point I’d like to share this depiction of Perseus from Stone Blind which I very much enjoyed:

In some versions of the myth when Perseus beheaded Medusa, Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant wielding a golden sword, sprang from her body, offspring from her rape by Poseidon.

So Medusa’s story is short and brutal, and her reputation for being a hideous, blood-thirsty killer is based off of… nothing. Well, I supposed it’s based off of the patriarchal need to villainize women, but ANYWAYS—

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SOME ART (trigger warning - graphic depictions/blood)

I tried to condense the story a bit because I have LOTS to talk about down here this week. First of all you should have a quick look at this short article about depictions of Medusa through the ages – it’s so interesting. I did a whole presentation on Medusa and the Gorgons when I was battling my way through the first term of my Classics MA and actually got a really good grade?? So you guys can trust me with this one.

I’m afraid there aren’t any cutesy/cool paintings of Medusa by John William-Waterhouse (I miss him) this week, this is kind of setting the tone quite well for the rest of the art. There’s LOTS OF BLOOD.

This one is very cool because Caravaggio painted this onto a shield! Like because of the concept of Gorgoneions? And guess who SAW it in the Uffizi in Florence ?? (hint: it was me)

I actually will never be able to talk enough about this sculpture. There’s so much that’s cool and disturbing about it, but my favourite fact is that it’s placed in a Piazza Della Signora in Florence, with several other famous sculptures. And when they had it installed they put it in a spot which the other statues faces were turned towards.

So it looks like Medusa’s head has turned them to stone?? It’s SICK. Look it up, the history of the square and the art is soo interesting.

Cellini also carved his head into the back of Perseus’ head, but you’ll have to Google that because I’m running out of space<3 Also, please check this article out about a woman’s response in 2008 to Cellini’s sculpture. It’s amazing.

There’s also a painting of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens, but I actually don’t want to include it here because I find it SO terrifying and gruesome, so you can check that out in your own time too, if you’re feeling brave.

I just discovered this one today! Barney used her daughter to model for this, which I think is pretty cool. No further notes, I just liked how it looked.

THE END

That was VERY LONG I’m sorry. I should have known I wouldn’t have been able to be succinct about Medusa. I hope you enjoyed it, and/or learnt something new!

I really wanted to talk about how the Medusa head has become a symbol for SA survivors and feminism but there just wasn’t space, so if you’d be interested in hearing about that I may consider doing a separate post. Let me know!

Until next time<3

Today I’m going to jump straight in, firstly in the interest of making these tangential blog posts slightly shorter, and secondly so that I don’t bore any potential new subs with my entire life story (working at the café, a new content writing gig (!!) and rewatching Good Omens for the third time, there, you’re all up to speed).

This week I want to talk about Clytemnestra. Someone requested her story on the Ancient Echoes thread a while ago (I just opened that back up for more suggestions from any new arrivals btw!), but I ALSO just finished Costanza Cosati’s debut novel about her because it finally came out in paperback, and I was absolutely blown away by it. Also, it looks like this:

How could I not pick it up off the shelf??

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I hope you’re prepared, because this woman’s story is possibly the most insane of them all. Maybe I should start ranking these women by order of most unhinged life?? That might be fun. Let me know in the comments if you think that’s a fun idea. And now!

THE CONTEXT

We’re going to talk about Aeschylus’ Oresteia because I know you’ve all been dying for a bit of tragedy. I’d warn you about spoiler alerts but this play literally came out in the 5^th century BC, so tough luck if you haven’t heard about it already.

Aeschylus was the MAN when it came to playwriting in ancient Athens, along with two other blokes call Euripides (who wrote Iphigenia in Aulis, so is actually quite relevant today) and Sophocles who you MIGHT have heard of once or twice. There are a few others too, but in my esteemed opinion these guys are the only ones you need to pay attention to for now.

Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia about Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s son Orestes. It’s a play of three parts: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides, and covers the (spoiler alert!!!) murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies. There’s a lot to unpack there, I am not getting myself into the curse of the House of Atreus but you should go read about it.

It’s really good, there’s cannibalism and everything.

We are very, incredibly lucky to have the Oresteia, like all other ancient artefacts, given its frankly mind-boggling age. It pretty much tells us Clytemnestra’s whole story, and there are other sources which tell us about her but I’m getting fed up with mentioning Homer in every post. It seems unfair to all the others, because he talked about literally everyone in Greek myth.

So.

THE STORY

Right. Hold on to your hats.

Clytemnestra is born in Sparta a Princess, daughter to King Tyndareus and Queen Leda. Leda, it is said, was raped by Zeus in the shape of a swan, and gave birth to two eggs. Out of one came Helen and Polydeuces, and out of the other came Castor and Clytemnestra. So, yes, just to confirm, we’re one paragraph in and Clytemnestra has already been born from an egg. There were also three younger sisters: Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra, but they’re kind of irrelevant for our purposes.

Also, if the name Helen is setting off alarm bells, this is indeed Helen of Troy. But that’s another story, one which would probably have to come in several parts.

Clytemnestra meets and falls in love with Tantalus, a King of either Pisa or Lydia, and they have a baby. Soon after, however, Agamemnon and Menelaus turn up. They are two brothers, and they want Sparta’s help retaking their city: Mycenae. Tyndareus grants them this help, and, to repay this kindness, when they get back Agamemnon murders Clytemnestra’s husband and infant child in cold blood because he wants her for himself.

So I feel like that gives you a pretty good idea of what Agamemnon’s morals look like. Menelaus marries Helen too, but I’m not even looking in their direction at the moment. Their union will be the catalyst for the Trojan War, and that’s a whole ordeal which I’m not writing about today.  

So, Agamemnon whisks his new bride back off to Mycenae, where they live happily ever af… oh, wait, no they don’t, because he literally murdered her whole family❤ She is forced to have four children by him, and they are Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes, and Chrysothemis.

One day, Agamemnon receives a message from his brother Menelaus. He is quite annoyed because a Trojan prince has stolen his wife, Helen. This would be a valid reaction if he wasn’t such a bastard.

For reasons which I won’t get into now, every prior potential suitor of Helen’s has to now go to war against Troy, because that’s just how politics worked back then. So, all the Grecian Kings jump aboard their ships with their men and weapons and head to Aulis, to set sail for Troy. They’re going to wage war, and bring Helen back! Well, they would, except Agamemnon has the IQ of an ANT, and has just been overheard bragging that he’s a better hunter than Artemis.

The Goddess of Hunting, that is. Understandably, Artemis banishes all the wind from Aulis, meaning that the entirety of Greece now can’t set sail for Troy. Good work, Agamemnon.

A seer, Calchas, decides that the only way Artemis can be appeased is by the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s oldest daughter. Soon after, Clytemnestra receives word that her and Iphigenia are to travel to Aulis, where Iphigenia will be married to Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, as a ‘morale boost’ for the waiting army.

This, of course, is a load of rubbish, and Iphigenia is dressed up and then led to the alter at Aulis to have her throat slit by her father. And Clytemnestra is left alone back in Mycenae with a grand total now of three dead family members by Agamemnon’s hand.

The war in Troy is fought for ten years, in which, it seems prudent to mention, Greece is a very peaceful and prosperous place (might this have anything to do with all the women in charge, and lack of male citizens??? We may never know). Clytemnestra spends this whole time plotting Agamemnon’s death before he returns, and also having an affair with his cousin, Aegisthus, who has returned after being in hiding for many years (I’d hide too if I had a family like that).

When Agamemnon does finally return, Clytemnestra pretends to be delighted, waits until he’s having a nice relaxing bath, and then stabs him to death, in what is possibly the most satisfying moment in all of Greek mythology.

In a less fortunate turn of events, and something that Clytemnestra maybe should have foreseen, Orestes is now obliged to avenge his father… by killing his mother, and thus invoking the wrath of the Furies. Not ideal for Orestes, more ideal for Aeschylus, who won some prizes in Athens for writing plays about it.

SOME ART

John William-Waterhouse fell off with this one because he didn’t paint any pictures of Clytemnestra, but that’s okay because ANOTHER John (Collier) painted this one and I think that makes up for the lack of JWW today.

There’s a double-headed axe, blood dripping down the step and the vaguest hint of a body in the room behind her. Pop off Queen.

Here, Aegisthus is giving a reluctant looking Clytemnestra a final nudge in Agamemnon’s direction. Personally, I don’t think she would have needed much encouragement.

This painting is so haunting and cool?? It’s going to be in my nightmares tonight but like, I’m okay with it?? Also, I didn’t mean to show you all art by people called John today, but it’s worked out quite nicely.

THE END

That’s it from me! As always, I hope you enjoyed reading and learnt something new, let me know who you want to hear about next in the comments or the AE thread❤

Until next time!

I have a bit of a different one for you this time, as I was asked by the lovely (author of the ) to write a post to feature on her newsletter, and I said yes! This article is going to be about the sorceress Circe, but I wanted to base it off of the novel Circe by Madeline Miller. So that’s what we’re doing!

You can go and check out this article and loads more super interesting pieces of writing by Mariella over on her Substack (linked above!), where she tells the stories of all different historical women of fiction. I’m told that gentlemen are allowed as long as they don’t interrupt, and wear shiny cufflinks.

And while I’m promoting other people on here, I want to give an absolutely enormous shout out to ’s newsletter too. Her newsletter has all the fun and actual academic content too (she actually completed her Classics MA y’all), so if you want to actually learn something rather than having me scream at you about how cool I think Pompeii is, you know where to go. I did a guest post for her on Psyche and Eros not too long ago, so you can go and check that one out too! 

is also hosting a whole real-life symposium in London very soon on the 2^nd of November (you can read all about it over on her blog), so if you’re in London and want to go and have the best night ever, you can get your butt over there for that.

But now, Circe.

THE CONTEXT

I’m going to use Madeline Miller for the context today, because I fear I’ve been talking about nerdy old men quite a lot here recently, as unfortunately women writers weren’t really allowed back in like, 600BC. Homer talks a whole bunch about Circe in (spoiler alert) The Odyssey, and that’s the end of that conversation today.

Miller’s Circe is one of my all-time favourite feminist Greek myth retellings. Her debut novel (it blows my mind that it was her debut???) The Song of Achilles (2011) was the first Greek myth retelling I ever read in 2020, and so we have her to blame for everything that has come after, including this newsletter.

It’s been a while since I last read Circe, but I remember knowing I’d found something special the first time I read it, devouring it in something ridiculous like three days. I will now steal the blurb to describe to you the general plot of her myth:

“In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--neither powerful like her father nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power: the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.”

I mean, the setup is sensational, and Miller does not disappoint. This book does it all for me tbh, plot, characterisation, pacing, you name it, Miller nails it.

As one girl I follow on Goodreads put it: ‘madeline miller, you have done it again. i’m your hoe’.

Before we get into it I’d just like to say that I have so much fun writing these. It’s like the same content as my uni essays but there isn’t any referencing, I get to write how I want and put in ridiculous pictures.

Hell yeah???

THE STORY

This is going to be an absolute whistle stop tour through miss Circe’s life (which, given that she is immortal, is quite a challenge), because unfortunately I don’t (yet!) feel that I have the capacity to write a novel on the matter. That, and it’s kinda already been done.

To start at the very start: Circe is born to the sun god Helios, and his wife Perse. She is generally mocked and scorned by her family, including her sister, Pasiphae. If that name rings in a bell, you might want to go and have a quick peek at my last blog post about Ariadne. Pasiphae was in it, playing a very interesting disturbing part.

One day, Prometheus is brought to the palace where they live and Circe witnesses him being whipped, before having his terrible eagle-related fate decided for him. Against her father’s wishes, Circe secretly brings Prometheus healing nectar, and he tells her that she doesn’t have to be like other gods.

This conversation is pretty crucial, and Circe decides to make it her entire personality from now on. And honestly, with a family like that, fair enough girl. Two baby brothers are born (Aeetes and Perses), and later all of her siblings are married off, leaving Circe alone in the vast, empty palace (Miller treats time so amazingly well in the novel, unlike I am doing here).

Circe meets a mortal sailor, falls in love with him, and goes on an unhinged side quest to find a highly illegal and dangerous substance, pharmaka, to make him immortal. When she does so, he promptly leaves Circe for a nymph called Scylla instead. So far, not so good.

Having never been parented properly, or ever, in fact, Circe decides that the best next course of action would be to pour her pharmaka into the pool where Scylla bathes, hoping to make her as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside. Instead, Scylla becomes a horrifying, six-headed monster who flees to live in a cave near a whirlpool.

When Circe goes home to confess to her dad, it’s revealed that all four siblings are actually a rare kind of witch/sorcerer, and they have abilities that no one has ever heard of before.

Then, to make things worse, Circe is exiled by her father to a far-flung island (Aiaia), where she must stay forever. It’s not actually as bad as you might think for a while. She chills by herself, honing her newfound witch-y skills and even adopting a lioness at one point, just because she can.

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Now for a comprehensive list of things that happen to Circe while she’s on Aiaia:

1. Hermes shows up unannounced, and tells Circe that Scylla has been killing and devouring passing sailors. Circe is deeply troubled by this news, considering it to be her fault seeing as she created the monster in the first place, and then, as there isn’t much else to do, sleeps with Hermes to pass the time.

2. Daedalus (remember him from Ariadne’s myth? He’s the dude who built the labyrinth for the Minotaur) shows up on a boat with instructions from Pasiphae to bring Circe to her in Crete. Our witchy girls jumps at the opportunity to leave her island to see, and maybe kill, Scylla for herself. She fails to defeat Scylla, but is at least successful in helping her sister through the birth of the Minotaur, and then gives it a potion so that it’s only hungry once a year (nicely setting up Ariadne’s myth).

3. Aeetes’ daughter Medea (blog post incoming for this absolute menace) and her boy-toy Jason turn up next, with pleas that Circe cleanse them for their sins. When she does this, they reveal that Medea killed her own brother in order to slow down her father’s pursuit after they took his golden fleece. Circe invites Medea (another witchy gal) to live with her on Aiaia so they can practice their magic together. Medea is extremely rude in her refusal, and takes off with Jason soon after.

   

4. Loads of nymphs start arriving; apparently word has got around that Aiaia is the place to send your misbehaving daughters who are bringing shame down on the family name.

5. Lost sailors start arriving on the island. She invites the men on the first ship into her house, and they thank her by raping her. After that, she turns every man who steps foot over her doorstep into a pig, which I think is a completely valid reaction ngl. When Odysseus shows up on his way home from the Trojan War, however, he waits behind before going to Circe’s house, effectively outsmarting her. They quickly become friends, and Circe turns all his mates back into humans, and promptly becomes her lover, which I can’t imagine his friends being overly happy about.

That’s the end of that absolutely unhinged list.

Odysseus chills on the island with Circe for a year (yes, the very same Odysseus from the Odyssey who tried his very best to get home as quickly as he could to his waiting wife and child), before leaving to continue on his ten year long holiday. Unbeknownst to him, he leaves Circe behind with his child in her belly.

Later, Circe births a baby boy, Telegonus. Athena shows up and demands the baby, and Circe says absolutely not??? Leave us alone. And casts an enchantment on the island to hide her and her baby from the goddess. But when Telegonus turns sixteen, he demands to be allowed to go and find his father. Circe is powerless to refuse, and pops off to grab a huge, ancient stingray tail from under the sea to give to her son to keep him safe on his journey.

Telegonus comes back with Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus’ wife and other son, and tells his mother that he accidentally killed his father; when Telemachus refused to avenge his fathers’ death him and his mother had to flee the angry citizens of Ithaca. They live peacefully on the island for a while, until Athena shows up again and demands to speak to them.

Having loved Odysseus, their father, the goddess offers both of his sons a powerful kingdom in the West. Telemachus refuses, but Telegonus accepts. Circe sends her son off, and decides she too wants to see the world, so summons her dad (that’s Helios, the sun god), demanding that her exile be lifted. He agrees, and she leaves with Telemachus to travel the world while Penelope stays on Aiaia to look after it.

Together, Circe and Telemachus kill Scylla, travel the world (and become lovers along the way), before finding the place where she found the pharmaka right at the start of her journey.

The ending of the book, I think, is very cool. Circe consumes the pharmaka, knowing it will transform her into what she truly is: the essence of her, hoping that it will make her mortal so she can live out the rest of her days with Telemachus on Aiaia. The book ends there, without the reader knowing the outcome of her consuming the pharmaka, which I loved.

To make a long story short, Circe had an absolute time of it.

SOME ART

Hello and welcome back to the JWW fan club. This week we will be staring at this interpretation of Circe until our eyes fall out of our heads. Peep Odysseus in the mirror behind her!! And the lions on her seat?? I’m unwell.

Double JWW alert! I couldn’t help but put this one in too, mainly because he has Circe riding a giant catfish??

This painting captures a younger ‘jealous’ Circe, poisoning Scylla’s bathing water. The intensity in her gaze is absolutely crazy; I adore this painting.

Not to rock the boat or anything, but I can’t decide if I like this one or the second JWW one more. Sorry John. I don’t know much about this piece, apart from that I want it hanging up in my living room.

Her wrap that looks like fairy wings?? The red flower petals which look like blood, paired with the tiger pelt?? The metaphors are flying around every which way, and I love it. 10/10 Wright, good job buddy.

Breaking news, this just in, John did a THIRD painting of Circe?? And this one has a leopard, and the loom in it?? This looks kind of like me trying to do my science homework.

THE END

To finish with, here’s a cool article Madeline Miller wrote on depictions of Circe in art overtime.

I hope you found this at least vaguely entertaining, and/or informative, and as always, thank you so much for reading. Also, before you go, remember to check out and !!

Mariella just posted a great feature on Van Gogh, if you’re an art lover (and I know you are, you’re part of the JWW fan club).

The Literary Ladies' Tearoom

A Reflection on van Gogh’s Sunflowers

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done…

Read more

2 years ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Mariella Hunt 🦋

See you next time!

Last time I said I wouldn’t give you a follower update at the start of every new post, but unfortunately I lied, because there are 347 people subscribed here now and that’s something I feel like acknowledging. Like… holy moly.

Welcome back to my guys who have been here a while now, and welcome anew to all my new followers – thank you so much for being here!!

This week we’re going to talk about Ariadne! Now, am I basing what myth I write about on cool John William Waterhouse paintings?? PERHAPS (if you’re new here, you should know that this blog is fast turning into a John William Waterhouse fan club), but actually no, I’m basing it off of what you guys want to hear about!

And recently, commented on the Ancient Echoes chat that they wanted to hear about Ariadne. This request, coupled with the fact that Jennifer Saint has written a very nice book on this myth which I happen to love, AND a very cool JWW painting that I found, meant that I couldn’t NOT write about Ariadne for my next post.

If you have a favourite myth which you want me to write about, comment in the chat who you want to hear about. I think I’ve accidentally made this only a girls only Greek myth retellings club; we seem to be centring on women, but I for one am absolutely fine with that. I did my bachelor’s thesis on feminist retellings of Greek mythology, so we shouldn’t be too surprised that this is what I’ve ended up writing a blog about.

RIGHT. Let’s get started.

THE CONTEXT

I just lovee choosing myths with multiple versions and sources, just to make my life difficult. First up, we have Homer, and for all you newbies, Homer is quite a big deal. He wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad, and is super important. But we also don’t know if he’s a real dude, or lots of different dudes. Accept it, and move on.

Homer has Ariadne killed by Artemis in the Odyssey, but due to me not liking that version, we’re going to ignore him today. Sorry Homer.

Next, we have Hesiod. Remember him?? He wrote a poem for his brother about how to be a good farmer; we talked about him in the article about Persephone’s myth. Well he’s back today with his enormously massive farming poem, and in it he has Dionysus turning Ariadne into a goddess after marrying her.

You can see why I like this version better than Homer’s boring one.

She also appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I know you remember Ovid, we talked about him last time with Pandora and decided that he was a bit too enthusiastic about poetry and history. Anyway, Ovid agrees with Homer, and has Ariadne becoming a goddess as Dionysus’ wife.

There are absolutely loads of sources on Ariadne’s myth; pretty much anyone who wrote about Greek history and myths wrote about her, including Plutarch, Seneca and Nonnus (some other old history nerds, I’ll tell you about them another time).

As always, all this below is a mishmash of everything I’ve ever read on the myth, and if it’s not accurate, then that’s because that word literally does not exist when it comes to mythology.

THE STORY

You guys are going to have to seriously bear with me for this one, because there is a whole lot going on, and because I don’t want this to be 10,000 words long, sometimes you’re just going have to accept the strange things that I say and trust me.

Let’s all hold hands now, we’re going to get through this together.

We’re going to start with Minos (King of Crete) and Pasiphae, his wife and queen. These guys are Ariadne’s parents. In Crete, where they live, there’s a really good bull, and when I say good, I mean like… in terms of sacrificing. I don’t know what this entails, but it just is really good. This bull has been sent by Poseidon for sacrificial purposes.

Minos decides that actually, he quite likes having a good bull around on Crete. Actually, he’s probably going to keep it. Seems a waste to sacrifice such a perfect animal. Poseidon is not a fan of this logic, so he decides to punish Minos.

Pasiphae, Minos’ queen, is all of a sudden overcome with desire for this perfect bull. I won’t go into details here my guys, but next thing you know, Pasiphae is pregnant, and Minos is not the father.

Then, the Minotaur is born, a bull/man hybrid.

King Minos commissions his architect, Daedalus (who, incidentally, helped Pasiphae with her plan to get pregnant by the bull in the first place), and his son Icarus (I’ll talk about these two in more detail another time) to build a labyrinth to house this monster.

The Minotaur is locked up, everyone is told to shut up, and life goes on.

Right. Part two.

Due to some beef (as a vegetarian, I will not be making a subsequent joke about the bull at this time) that went down a while ago, which may or may not have involved one of Minos’ sons being killed on Athenian soil, Athens is required every year to send seven boys and seven girls to Crete, to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Apparently this was just a widely accepted fact, and parents continued to live in Athens after this was announced?? Anyway.

One year, a kid called Theseus was chosen to be a part of this sacrificial party. His dad happened to be the current king of Athens, and instead of saying ‘actually, no thank you, this won’t do’, Theseus’ dad sends him off with strict instructions to kill the Minotaur.

And now we can start talking about Ariadne.

As a Princess of Crete, she watches the Athenian sacrifices traipsing into the labyrinth on her father’s orders year after year to be sacrificed to her half-brother, the Minotaur. This year, as she watches, Eros is perched nearby, ready to absolutely body her with a well-aimed arrow.

Ariadne sees Theseus, and is instantly in love.

Unable to bear the thought of this gorgeous young prince being led to his death, Ariadne sneaks down to where the prisoners are being kept at night and gives Theseus a sword and a ball of thread.

‘Use this to kill my half-brother and then retrace your steps to escape the labyrinth,’ Ariadne tells him.

‘How convenient, I was actually sent here to kill him anyway,’ says Theseus.

‘What about us?’ say the other prisoners.

‘Unlucky,’ says Ariadne, and runs back to bed.

The next morning, the prisoners are sent into the labyrinth, but a while later out comes Theseus, met by Ariadne, and they peg it back to the ship, which conveniently hasn’t returned to Athens yet.

Ariadne leaves with Theseus, having betrayed her father and killed her half-brother, which is technically cause for the Eumenides (the Furies, or Kindly Ones) to come after her, but luckily for Ariadne there’s never any mention of them turning up.

So off Ariadne sails with Theseus, excited to start her new life in Athens. That is, until Theseus dumps her on a nearby island and takes off again without so much as a backwards glance. The island is Naxos, and when Ariadne wakes up in the morning, she is entirely alone.

She is, of course, heartbroken for a bit, but luckily Dionysus turns up soon after that, and decides to marry her and make her a goddess.

Standard procedure really. So that confuses Ariadne even further, and Theseus gets some absolutely spectacular karma.

First, he tries to kidnap Persephone from the Underworld (our poor bloom-like girl cannot catch a break), and gets a little taste of eternal punishment. I say small taste due to the fact that he was only stuck to that rock for a bit. It was probably still quite traumatic though.

Second, after he’s married Ariadne’s younger sister, Phaedra (I mean, what the hell man??), she falls in love with her stepson: Theseus’ son by the Amazon queen Hippolyta. This is probably a whole other post, so I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say Theseus got what was coming to him.

In several versions of the myth, Ariadne also gets her very own constellation; a gift from Dionysus. He throws her jewelled crown into the sky to create the Corona Borealis, because gods can just do that kind of thing.

This is referred to as a ‘catasterism’ or ‘catasterisation’, and is probably one of my favourite terms.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

SOME ART

Here’s our girl chilling after being abandoned by Theseus but it’s okay because Dionysus has just rocked up, married her and made her a goddess. And she has some leopards. Slay.

John strikes again. I’m calling it: this is my favourite one yet. I aspire to be this relaxed.

This one is exceptionally cool because a woman painted it in a time when women painting was deemed by men to be very strange, so I felt like giving Angelica some extra exposure.

Ariadne is a bit more stressed out in this one, unable to even look at the ship departing. Maybe this was before Dionysus turned up. At least she’s got a comfy seat to lounge dramatically on.

Lovee the juxtaposition between the two, although if I had to choose between which was done by a man and women, I would fail.

Which almost makes it even cooler!

Another female artist depicting Ariadne in her grief-stricken state after realising she’s been abandoned and left for dead.

You know what time it is. If you’re new here, you should know that any time Pompeii is brought up I usually start shouting about how cool it is. It’s just so old. I feel quite restrained today and am not going to use capital letters, but loookkkk.

THE END

We made it! This one is especially unhinged even by Greek mythology’s standards, so if you made it this far, sincere congratulations.

As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed<3

If there’s a specific Greek myth that you’d like to see me write about next, wing it in the comments or pop me a message and I’ll see what I can do!

Until next time!

I won’t keep shouting about my updated follower count every time I post something new, but there’s a GORGEOUS community of 139 (!!!!!) of us here now and I would just like to say I think that’s VERY awesome<3 Thank you everyone for subscribing, and hello to all you new folk.

You’re in for a wild ride.

This week’s post is going to be a little bit shorter as I have somehow managed to find myself some PAID copywriting work on top of my part time coffee shop role – which is absolutely splendid, but does also mean that I have less time to spend shouting at you lot about Greek myths.

I remain undeterred however, and would like to shout at you now, if you’ll permit me, about the myth of Echo and Narcissus. This one was requested by in the Ancient Echoes chat, where you too can request your favourite myths to be written about!

We have also been discussing what we think the WiFi password is on Mount Olympus; your input would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway…

THE CONTEXT

Echo and Narcissus feature in Book 3 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. If you’re new to Greek mythology, it’s very important for you to understand that Ovid went absolutely mental with this one. Metamorphoses is a narrative (Latin) poem which he wrote in 8BC, containing the history of the world, two-hundred and fifty myths, fifteen books and eleven thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine lines.

Not your average poem.

So Ovid popped off, and luckily for us he wrote a lovely little section about Narcissus and Echo, which I’m going to be using today to explain their unhinged story to you. It will not be a poem, and probably won’t involve fifteen books. Maybe just one chapter.

Another recollection of the myth appears in Pausanias’ (insanely creatively named) book ‘Description of Greece’ (from the second century A.D.), and without wishing to spoil the story for you, he reckoned it was ‘utter stupidity to imagine that a man old enough to fall in love was incapable of distinguishing a man from a man's reflection.’

Bit rich coming from a guy who lived in a time without contact lenses.

As always, the following retelling of the myth is a lovely, jumbled mess of information which I have gathered from various sources to make the best story, which is basically the basis for all retellings ever now that I think of it.

THE STORY (maybe)

Today, Hera is on a war path.

Zeus has been entertaining (👀) mortal girls again, and the Queen of the Heavens has had it up to HERE with his antics. She’s storming through the woods, looking for her wayward husband.

Unfortunately, Zeus has caught wind of the fact that his wife might be a bit upset with him (he has a sneaking suspicion it might be something to do with the fifty-seventh mortal girl he’s just cheated on her with), and has sent a decoy her way: a distraction. Here’s where we meet Echo, our main-nymph-character. She has a gorgeous voice, admired even by Aphrodite and the only thing she loves more than singing is listening to herself talk.

And Echo has been given one very simple, joyous instruction by Zeus: talk. And that she does. She yaps and yaps to Hera, who enjoys the gossip for a while, before starting to smell a rat.

Whether she had any proof in her assumption that Echo was following orders from Zeus or just fancied taking her annoyance out on someone that day, we don’t know. What we do know is that Hera cursed the talkative nymph so that she could only ever repeat the last word that someone spoke back at them.

Shortly after this unfortunate exchange, Narcissus happens to wonder by, separated from his hunting party. It takes Echo about 0.4 seconds to deduce that she is in absolute, unequivocal love with this complete stranger and follows him, unable to call out to him due to her newly disobedient vocal chords.

A note on Narcissus before we continue: he’s a stuck-up, self-obsessed jerk. Continue.

Echo reveals herself to Narcissus, unable to say anything to her newly beloved except the last words from his sentences, which, as you can imagine, goes down really well with Narcissus. He basically tells her to get lost, and storms off to continue looking for his hunting party.

After this rejection Echo, in a show of great bravery and resilience, wastes away to nothingness, leaving behind only her voice: an echo.

Echo’s fellow nymphs feel quite indignant on her behalf after the absolute nightmare of a day she’s just had, what with all the cursing and dissolving into thin air, and pray to the goddess Nemesis to take revenge on the one who had caused Echo such heartbreak.

At this point, in a completely unrelated turn of events, Narcissus (who is still wondering through the forest) has just caught sight of the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in a nearby pool of water. Who was this gorgeous youth gazing wistfully up at him from beneath the water???

Spoiler alert – it’s his own reflection. Nemesis had thought up a particularly devious punishment for Narcissus: having him fall in love with his own mirror image.

Narcissus, unable to pull himself away from the gorgeous youth staring at him from beneath the water’s surface, doesn’t take long to die, unable to pull himself away even to eat or drink.

So, what did we learn?? DON’T get involved with Hera and Zeus’ personal life, for one. Also, don’t ever get so hung up on someone that you quite literally dissolve when they reject you. Especially if you’ve never seen or spoken to them before. He’s not worth it ladies.

Greek mythology is full of handy life lessons.

SOME ART

If you look closely here, you can actually see Echo thinking ‘what the f*** Narcissus’.

Side note, John William Waterhouse is fast becoming my favourite artist from researching art for these posts about women in Greek myths.

I need everyone to shut up and look at this one for a sec because???

It’s from Pompeii. Look how well it’s been preserved, look at the detail.

I’m sorry for telling you to shut up. If you’re new here, you should know that I get very (justifiably) excited whenever Pompeii is mentioned. I’m sorry in advance (not really).

Look at his teeny, blurry, reflected head though!!! IT’S SO OLD AND COOL.

Eros is here in this one, and he is judging everyone for the mess they’ve got themselves into.

THE END

Okay, we’re done! Thank you Mandy for this suggestion; I hope you all had as much fun reading this as I had writing it! Let me know in the thread, comment or message me who you want to see written about next, and I will see you then.

Until next time, please don’t get involved in Hera and Zeus’ personal life. Go and look up John William Waterhouse art instead, it’s really cool.

There are like 52 of you now!! Where are you all coming from?!? It’s almost like having an actual established niche for your blog is good for engagement??

Thanks so much to each and every one of you for being here<3 You recharge my motivation to write, and that’s no mean feat, so congratulations actually??

Life update: I’ve been working full time hours in hospitality again for the first time since March and let me tell you: my feet are not having a wonderful time. Every day I get home from work, exhausted but relieved, and think, time to write my blog! And then I sit on the sofa and suddenly it’s ten pm??? And then I’m in bed asleep??? (I’m working on it). HOWEVER.

I’m back to tell you about another unhinged Greek myth and its origins.

This week I’ve been thinking about Pandora, for no better reason than the fact that I find it hilarious that Pandora’s Box is a thing. What she actually had was a jar, or pithos. (We believe that) Erasmus of Rotterdam mistranslated pithos to pyxis when translating text into Latin in the sixteenth century, and we were left with Pandora’s Box, and a most likely unemployed translator. Classic Erasmus.

I just think that that’s such an adorably human thing to have happen.

THE CONTEXT⋆⭒˚.⋆

The earliest mention of Pandora we have is from Hesiod, who wrote about her myth in his Works and Days, which was a handy manual (or a didactic poem) he wrote for his brother all about how to be a good farmer back in 700BC. But how on earth does that relate to Greek myths?! (I hear you cry). I’ll tell you. Hesiod used mythological examples in this manual to outline his conception of the necessity of hard work to his brother, hoping to convey to him the proper way to live (in his opinion).

If you’re not writing 828 lines of poetry instructing your sibling on how to be a good farmer, using mythology as the basis for all of your main points, what are you doing??? Certainly less than Hesiod, that’s for sure.

The point is, Pandora was in one of these myths that he wrote about in his big old farming poem.

Hesiod also wrote about Pandora (but doesn’t ever name her) in his Theogony, which was another massive poem, but this one was less about farming and more about the origins of the Greek gods. It’s also one of the most important sources we have today for understanding early Greek cosmology, but that’s hardly relevant.

There’s quite a lot of disparity between the fragments about Pandora we’ve managed to preserve. Was she not an ‘all-gifted’ woman after all, but originally ‘all-giving’; a goddess who appeared as a frieze on the Parthenon itself?? As the matriarchy shifted to the patriarchy in Greek culture, was the life-bringing goddess Pandora lost in the shadow of the death-bringing mortal version? After Erasmus’ fuck-up it seems more than likely that other details of the original myth were lost between literally nearly three-thousand years ago and today. I’d go as far to say that it’s certain that the myth we have today is pretty much completely inverted, upside down and backwards from the one that Hesiod hints at.

But I also dropped out of my Classics MA, so take that as you will.

There are so many fragments of retellings of the myth that if I tried to list them all here we’d be here for three hours, so go and have a little research if you like. Or just take my word as gospel. I’ve taken all the best bits and put them here anyway.

Back to Pandora!

THE MYTH (maybe)⋆⭒˚.⋆

There’s actually a prequel to this myth, and it involves a dude (or Titan, whatever) called Prometheus, who you’ve probably heard of. All you need to know for now is that he stole fire from the Gods after the human race was created, and gifted it to the humans. Zeus was Not Very Happy™ about that, and decided that the only suitable punishment would be to chain Prometheus to a rock and have an eagle tear out and eat his liver every day. His liver grew back every night, of course, and so his punishment would be eternal.

Fair’s fair. Zeus had told everyone that the humans shouldn’t be allowed the fire. So after humans have been given this exciting gift, Zeus decided that they must now be given a punishment to compensate for their nice prize. Something really bad and nasty.

He decides to introduce women to the human race. The horror!!!

Remember the shift from the matriarchy to the patriarchy in Greek culture around Hesiod’s time I was talking about earlier??? Yeah—

He instructs Hephaestus to create the first women from the Earth, a ‘beautiful evil’ whose descendants’ only purpose would be tormenting the human race. Each of the gods and goddesses bestowed a gift on this first women (hence all-gifted): Athena taught her needlework and weaving, and clothed her, Aphrodite ‘shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs’, Hermes gave her a shameful mind and deceitful nature (some gift!) and gave her the power of speech, ‘lies and crafty words’. She also got some nice jewellery and a crown from Persuasion, the Horae and the Charities, and was then deemed fit to be sent to Earth to begin her tormenting.

She is sent along with a box jar, which she is given strict instructions not to open, and packed off to Earth with her ‘deceitful nature’.

Pandora is given to Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, as a bride, and despite having been warned severely by Prometheus to not under any circumstances accept gifts from the gods, especially not Zeus, he gladly accepts this incredibly unsuspicious gift.

Of course, it takes Pandora about 0.6 seconds to open the jar she was specifically told not to open, which unfortunately for everyone on Earth contains ‘countless plagues’, such as sickness, violence, turmoil and strife, greed, passion, old age and death. She slams the lid shut before the last thing can get out, however, trapping hope inside the jar for eternity.

All-in-all, it’s not a great story for mankind, who now have to deal with an Earth full of evils, and worst of all, women.

Pandora’s daughter, Pyrrha (fire), is the first child born of a mortal mother, and the second woman on Earth. She and her husband Deucalion would be the only survivors of a Great Deluge, and repopulate the Earth by casting stones over their shoulders to form a new race of men and women.

But that’s another unhinged story for another time.

SOME ART⋆⭒˚.⋆

This is the BEST artwork of Pandora, and that’s on facts. Trust me, I’m an academic (kind of). The whimsical, fantasy-esque vibe is right up my street and I would like to hang it on my wall thank you very much.

Pandora stands in the centre at the top, about to be adorned with a wreath by Athena. Some satyrs are having a dance in the nude below, because why not. This vase is 2500 years old. Tell me that’s not the coolest thing you’ve seen all week.

I. bloody. love. ancient things.

THE END⋆⭒˚.⋆

Thanks for reading once again, and I hope you enjoyed this very messy and chaotic journey into the myth of Pandora. Next time I’m going to pick a myth which is more widely agreed upon by ancient sources with less mistranslations (if there is one).

Also, if any actual academics read this and I’ve got something wrong, please correct me!! I’m here to learn and be told all the research I did for this was rubbish<3 (seriously tho please message me or comment).

AND if you enjoyed this and want to learn more about Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes wrote an absolutely fantastic book by that very name about the origins of women in Greek mythology, so go check that out here.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to write a poem for my brother about how to live his life properly and be a good farmer.