Medusa reveals something the Greeks already suspected. Beauty and terror are not opposites. They are twins. Both arrest the mind through the eye. A man who sees Medusa cannot move. A man who sees Helen often cannot act. The mechanism is identical. The Greeks understood this long before philosophers explained it. The eye commands theContinue reading “Helen”
Tag Archives: Diomedes
Athena
I am suffering a sinus infection that is giving me a pounding headache. The phrase is overplayed but accurate. The pain behind my eyeballs is impossible to ignore; it pulses with a dull insistence. A steady, hammering rhythm. One imagines Zeus felt something like this. Zeus had taken Métis, the goddess of cunning intelligence, asContinue reading “Athena”
Aphrodite
Aphrodite born of inseminated sea foam. Her name evokes the froth (aphros) and hints at deep currents. Sailors would intuitively know how they are moved by the unseen. The Twelve Olympians that appear as the definitive powers holding dominion were not the first. Like all Greek myths, they hold power only after family drama andContinue reading “Aphrodite”