Humans And Mythological Explanation Of Love

Our human nature was not what we always thought of it to be, in simpler times two were made as one. We roamed the earth in unity with our other halves without the burden of trying to find them. However, Zeus did not find this to be in his best interest because of how we behaved so he split each being in two. As a result of this split we must now go about our lives in search of our other half. This is the speech that Aristophanes gave in Plato’s Symposium a book composed of various speeches from many different famous Greek people. Aristophanes’ view of love is compelling because it describes our very human nature to find our love, it justifies the reasoning of why there are different sexualities, and it gives an explanation as to why our bodies are the way that they are today.

Moreover, the misogynistic Greek culture exemplified significant inferiority complexes towards the ties between women and nature. Women within Greek culture were significantly looked down upon. Their purpose was to serve as child bearers and even then that power is taken away from them in certain points of Greek mythology. For instance, when Zeus is trying to protect his son from Hera, he sows him into his leg and then essentially gives birth to him in four years’ time. In many cases it is shown how threatened the Greek men are by females; to the point that they either blame them for their misfortunes by portraying them as the mistake or fail to deliberate on the female goddesses, as it is in the case of Pandora and Athena. Then the

In his speech, Aristophanes tells the story about the origin of the nature of human beings. He tells that once, there were no humans, but only creatures that were round, had four hands, as well as, four legs and two faces. There were three kinds of such creatures: males, females, and androgynous – the form that was made up of male and female elements. They made an attempt on the Gods, and that pissed Zeus off, so that he ordered to split them in half. That is, how according to Aristophanes, humans appeared. Those who belonged to the male creatures wanted to reunite with males, those who belonged to female creatures wanted to reunite with women and those who belonged to androgynous wanted to reunite with the opposite sex.

The Greek and Roman societies were a very patriarchal society. This is reflected throughout the myths in classical mythology. By looking at the many pieces of literature involving Greeks and Romans we will see that the roles women portrayed are very different from women’s roles in today’s society. Although there are a few similarities to women’s roles in today’s society, their roles are more like those women in the past. We can see this by looking at the qualities of Greek and Roman female gods and looking at the roles women play in the myths.

It wasn’t until the Greek and Roman empires that gender roles in society really started to widen the gap between males and females. The combination of a growing belief of women as servants and the impact of mythology on culture culminated in a “gender specific code of conduct” (Evans). In Greek mythology (coincidentally written by men), the Hesiod’s Theogony (The Birth of the Gods) played a tremendous role in the status of man and woman (Mason). In Theogony (The Birth of the Gods), Prometheus lives in a world of only men where life was great. There was no work and all leisure. Prometheus makes the Gods

Though love, sexuality, and social status are sometimes closely linked in literature, both Plato’s Symposium and Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe address these two concepts individually and independently. Through speeches and dialogues, Symposium takes a more direct approach to these concepts, often tackling these issues through specific discourse and relating them to everyday life. Daphnis and Chloe on the other hand, attacks these issues through storytelling. Compared to the speeches and dialogues in Symposium, these stories lead to a more fluid interaction between sexuality and social status. The male-male sexuality in Daphnis and Chloe often highlights the constructs of social hierarchies.

The ancient Greeks had very clear ideas about many things in life. In particular, this clarity can be exemplified as a binary system of worldview by looking at things in black-and-white perspectives to avoid ambiguity. A person is either free or a slave, a native Greek or a foreigner, rich or poor, royalty or not, and in the case of gender, either a man or a woman. This kind of dichotomy was a good way to impose social order and maintain harmony in Greek society because their social hierarchy was quite rigid. However, from the early myth of Hesiod's Theogony where misogyny is quite obvious, ancient Greek literature soon takes a more enlightened view of female roles in Greek society as their civilization develops further.

In this essay I will examine the war-of the-sexes taking place in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia. The plot of The Eumenides pits Orestes and Apollo (representing the male gods and, to a certain extent, male values in general) against the ghost of Clytemnestra and the Furies (equally representative of female values.) Of more vital importance, however, is whether Athene sides with the males or females throughout the play.

Throughout Socrates telling of Diotima’s story, there are many remarks made to discredit and antagonize Aristophanes. First is the fact that Diotima retells a story of the origin of love as two human beings being one and then are split apart. However in his speech earlier in the Symposium Aristophanes claims to have just created this myth of the top of his head. Aristophanes is then forced to question how Diotima can claim to have previously heard this story he just made up. The origin of love story acts as a catalyst for the further sources of Aristophanes attempted rebuttal.

In looking at this portrayal of Agathon, it also brings into question Aristophanes’ view of homoeroticism. In looking purely at Women at the Thesmophoria, Aristophanes seems to be pushing the commonly held negative notions of passive homoeroticism. In his choice to ridicule Agathon by means of his effeminate nature, is Aristophanes a believer of these commonly held notions of homoeroticism, is he

Dr. Hayland from Indiana University believes Aristophanes’ double-human speech provides valuable insight into Plato’s ideas on human origins. Based on Aristophanes’ speech in comparison to Plato’s other works, Dr. Hayland believes that it is plausible that Plato believed that humans are merely animals who replaced an irrational desire for power with logos. In order to prove his thesis, Dr. Hayland first introduces Aristophanes’ speech and thoroughly investigates what “caused us to ‘fall’ to our present state” of being humans (Hyland 194). Next, he explores the humanizing character of modern-day people through further reading of Aristophanes’ speech, specifically looking at our sexual behaviors. Lastly, Hayland explores the factors that make up our humanizing character by analyzing Diotima’s speech in the Symposium. By comparing Diotima’s Speech to Aristophanes’, Hayland believes he will be able to explain Plato’s beliefs on the origins of mankind.

Many religions and cultures no matter how small or large have creation myths and legends that were deemed to be important to their livelihood. Mythology was a tool that was used to explain how the world came to be. It gave explanations for how the seasons change, where humans come from, why there are specific rituals for a certain culture, and structure to how societies were governed. In Classical Greek mythology patriarchy is a common theme that was used for how society was governed. Zeus became king of the gods and from the mythologies created Ancient Greece followed the ways by which the gods lived. The Greek goddesses didn’t obtain higher power unless they had to threaten another god or they were working with a male god. Patriarchy was used in mythology to promote the male domination of government and the mainstream governing forms of the Ancient Greek world. Examining the story of Hesiod's Theogony we find instances that there was a patriarchal structure.

In the Aristophanes' Speech, the original human nature has three gender. There was a female, male and a union of the male and female. In the union of the two it named as an ‘androgynous’.

When one thinks of love as a general concept, most people do not attach a gender to the idea. However, to the ancient Greeks, in order to explain this phenomenon love became an entire person: Cupid, or the Greek name, Eros. This raises the question, how does someone determine the human characteristics of such a vague concept? In William Blake's poem, he discusses why this choice was made, and if it was the correct one. Of course, the characteristics of Cupid would have an outcome on what he rules over, so the Greeks must have had appropriate reason to make him in the image of a young boy. The purpose behind William Blake’s “Why Was Cupid A Boy?” was to explain the difficulties of love by using the stereotypes of Cupid’s gender and age, while also explaining his importance in Greek culture.

     On the sixth day, God made male and female in his image, and he saw that it was very good (Genesis 1:27, 31).