The emergence of impiety during the fifth century Athens was by no least a coincidence. In 430 BCE the Peloponnesian War began where the powerful Athenian state desperately tried to grip onto the lands they once controlled through the Delian League, as the Spartans defeated them in a costly war with the price of Athenian lives and pillaged homes. Athens not only had to deal with the enemies outside on the borders of their territory but had to endure through a deadly plague that inflicted death and fear in the lives of Athenian citizens. The Peloponnesian War was a horrible blow to Athens pride as a powerful Greek city-state and society as they knew it was crumbling beneath the foundations of their political and religious ideologies. The Athenian …show more content…
75) (2). In Euripides "Hippolytus" it is the young half-son Hippolytus who refuses to honour the goddess, Aphrodite calling her, "A god of nocturnal prowess is not my god." (lines 106) (3). His declaration of not praising Aphrodite unlike his devoted attachment to the goddess Artemis leaves the goddess of love to take matters into her own hands and punish him for his disrespect towards her by putting his mother Phaedra under a spell that will make her lust for her own son, "I am ashamed of what I said. Cover me up. The tears are flowing, and my face is turned to shame. Having my mind straight is bitterness to my heart; yet madness is terrible. It is better then that I should died and know no more of anything." (246-249) (4). Hippolytus' impious actions that stem from not respecting or worshipping Aphrodite lead to the harsh consequence of punishing Phaedra, driving her into a lustful state of madness until she made the
Further along in the story, he ends up blaming Zeus for creating women and he also blames him after finding out about Phaedra's feelings; which seems to me that he was even blaming Zeus for making her become infatuated with him. The infatuation was Aphrodite's doing for lack of worship, not Zeus'. So even though Hippolytus did not sin toward Phaedra, he ends up sinning toward Zeus, by questioning his putting of women on the earth and blaming him for something he had no part in, and to Aphrodite by not giving her the respect she thought she deserved.
Hermes comes to Calypso under Zeus’s order and demands that Odysseus who has been crying and longing of home and being able to be around his wife whom he loves and his son Telemachus. Calypso who is fond of Odysseus thus keeping him imprisoned for 7 years for the sake of her companionship. When ordered to let Odysseus go Calypso engages in dialogue with Hermes whom she is obviously displeased with his order from Zeus to let Odysseus go. “You are hard-hearted, you gods, and unmatched for jealousy. You are outraged if a goddess sleeps openly with a man even if she has chosen him as her husband” This quote is significant because it shows that the stigma against women that’s still every present today. The idea that women are to be the ones who are pursued, that the idea of assertiveness is unattractive and also what she alludes to is that women get punished all the time for this kind of behavior she goes on to say “When lovely Demeter gave way to her desire and made love with her beloved Iasion in the field of the three ploughed furrows, Zeus heard of it quickly enough and struck him dead with his blinding
Firstly, in the outset of the play, Aphrodite’s speech is necessary for both plot development and characterisation. Her contempt towards Hippolytus and her dark intentions are at first revealed to
Well, when the two large figures of power originally met in the Aztec culture, a lot could have happened. There is a lot of controversy around this meeting. Many people have many different views based upon what they have seen and what they have read. Many documents of the time have been tossed around and many people no longer know what to think or believe. But I will share my views on the matter of the subject matter. I believe, when Cortez and the Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma met, they were both a bit on edge. Cortez was nervously in a new place he’d never traveled and having battled a small army beforehand didn’t really help him either. Moctezuma was worried himself due to the fact the god portrayed in his culture was said to return soon.
The story of Theseus and Hippolytus is another myth that shows the role of women in Greco-Roman society. In this story Hippolytus rejects Aphrodite to follow Artemis. In revenge, Aphrodite makes Hippolytus' mother Phaedra fall in love with him. Phaedra, unable to control her sexual desire, makes her move on Hippolytus. After he rejects her, she hangs her self and leaves a note saying that Hippolytus raped her. When his father Theseus returns he kills him. This story shows that the Roman-Greco society thought women were filled with lies and the cause of many bad things. This is different than women's roles in today society because today it is usually thought that more men lie to avoid
Meanwhile, there was the mighty Zeus, the king of the gods, who was married to the goddess Hera. Hera is the goddess of War and Honesty, but she had an awful temper and often took it out on her husband, Zeus. Hera only loved Zeus because he was the king of gods and she wanted some of that power for herself, so she never let him leave her side, and although he was her husband, she talked badly about him, and constantly blamed and insulted him. Aphrodite witnessed this many times and started to feel empathy for Zeus, she knew Zeus was kind and didn’t deserve to be treated like that. At this, anger burned inside of Aphrodite for Hera and what she did to hurt Zeus, and as this anger burned she felt a passion. Aphrodite casually began to develop feelings for Zeus. She always told herself she shouldn’t, that Zeus was married and she needed to stay away, but she couldn’t help how she felt for Zeus.