Why Icarus? Written by Emily McCullough The first time I read the myth of Icarus, my heart broke. I love the story; I thought it was beautiful imagery, and it spoke to me as a writer. Something about the idea of wishing so hard to achieve, only to melt and quickly fall away from it…
Tag: Ancient
The Starry One: A Modern Look at a Monster
As with many monsters, the mythology surrounding the Minotaur goes far deeper than the hero’s quest to kill it. The story of Crete’s monstrous prince, given the name Asterion (“The Starry One”) in some sources, also entwines with several other widely popular mythological figures. The Minotaur’s mother, Queen PasiphaĂ«, is a part of the same…
The Inventor, the Prisoner, and the Wax Wings
Hubris is one of many Greek words that have carried into common modern use, but to the Ancient world, the concept of hybris was more than just misplaced confidence. In its earliest uses, the word referred to “the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade,” and was considered a crime in Archaic and Classical…
The Hero, The Princess, and the God of Ecstasy
“What marvel that the horns of a monster were betrayed by his sister, when the twisted path was revealed by the gathering of her thread.” Propertius, Elegies 4.4 (trans. Goold) The earliest literary records of the hero Theseus come from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, composed around the 8th century BCE. The legendary founder and king…
The King, the Witch, and the Sacred Bull
“Crete rising out of the waves; PasiphaĂ«, cruelly fated to lust after a bull, and privily covered; the hybrid fruit of that monstrous union—the Minotaur, a memento of her unnatural love.” Virgil, Aeneid (trans. Day-Lewis) As all good legends must, the mythic cycle of Knossos takes place in a palace rife with treachery. Many of…
The Birthplace of Legend
The island of Crete is the birthplace of millennia of mythology. As the stepping stone between Africa and Europe, European civilization began on the narrow island, both literally and mythologically. According to legend, the first inhabitants on the island sprang from Zeus’ coupling with Europa, who gave the continent her name. Looking to the archaeological…
The Bronze Age Pompeii
Situated squarely between mainland Greece, Turkey, and Crete, the Cycladic Islands sat at the heart of the Bronze Age Mediterranean world. The spiral-shaped volcanic island of Thera (now Santorini)—the southernmost of the Cycladic Islands and the closest to Crete—was home to the city of Akrotiri, comfortably nestled atop a rocky cliff face. Akrotiri was a…
Tracing the Myth of Achilles
Written by Carrinna Muncy “Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles, son of Peleus.” This is the first line of Homer’s Iliad, which sets the tone of the epic. The Iliad is a story of Achilles’s rage and the consequences of it, but Achilles’s story extends far beyond Homer’s epic. So, where does…
Poetry: Ashes and an Arrow
A Brief Disclaimer For the sake of literary analysis, I’m going to discuss Achilles here as if he is one single character. In reality, there are hundreds of Achilles (Achilleses?), as each depiction takes pieces of others, and adds their own additions; all influenced by the author’s own culture and biases. For a deeper dive…
A Crash Course on Ancient Delaware
What comes to mind when you think of prehistoric civilizations in North America? The Aztec pyramids in Mexico? Or maybe the cities carved into stone cliff faces in Colorado? While those are stunning examples of pre-modern architecture (in the most literal sense of the term), there is one region of the continent that is often…