Hippolytus is born from a kingdom already carrying unfinished business. His father is Theseus. Athens uses Theseus to explain the transition from heroic violence to civic order. His mother is either Antiope or Hippolyta, depending on which poet had stronger opinions and less editorial supervision (Plutarch, Life of Theseus 27, 28). Either way, he isContinue reading “Hippolytus”
Tag Archives: Apollodorus
Odysseus
Odysseus did not want to go to war. When the oath he had devised to bind the other kings was called due and the kings of Greece gathered for Troy, he attempted to escape it. He yoked an ox and a donkey to the same plow and drove them in erratic lines across the field,Continue reading “Odysseus”
Troy
Troy is not the beginning of the heroic age. It is the point where the heroic age destroys itself. The Greeks understood this. Their myths do not describe a long golden era stretching indefinitely backward into legend. The heroic age is startlingly brief. From the first monster-slayers to the sack of Troy spans only aContinue reading “Troy”
Protective Arts 