2. Introduction
Men were the mightier sex. Even
amongst the gods, the women were
looked upon as being the weaker sex.
A woman’s place was to the man or to
the children she would bare for him.
She belonged in the home. Her abilities
were tied to what she could do for her
family, not outside those limits.
3. The Olympian Goddesses
& Their Place as Women
Hera – Goddess of
Marriage Demeter & Persephone
– Goddesses of the
Artemis – Goddess of fertility of the land
Hunt, Childbirth,
Virginity & Children (Men are at war; women
take care of the land)
Athene – Goddess of
Warfare (but was a Hestia – Goddess of
Virgin) (fire of) Hearth
Aphrodite – Goddess (Hearth is associated
of Love & Sex with cooking & warming)
4. Goddesses &
Their Mortal
Lovers
• Thetis is one example of where
she marries a mortal and it
ends with her return back into
the ocean.
• Harmonia married a mortal as
well but their union ended
them with becoming snakes.
(On the bright side they
remained together).
• Eos also loved Tithonos, son of
a king of Troy. He begged Zeus
Peter Paul Reubens, C.1625
to make him immortal. Zeus Thetis Dipping Achilles in the River of
agreed but made him into a Styx
cicada, to chatter away
invisibly all his days (Buxton
96).
5. “Whereas goddesses
faced an uphill struggle
to continue enjoying
their all-too-human
favourites, their male
counterparts took their
pleasure where they
liked, and suffered few
emotional traumas as a
result; the traumas were
for their lovers to cope
with” (Buxton 97).
6. Zeus & Danae
Danae, daughter of a king, was put into a prison when an he
received and oracle that the child to be born to his daughter
Danae would kill him. But Zeus went into the prison as rain,
and laid seed to the prisoner. She bore Perseus. Her father,
not believing her, locked her away and sent her adrift in an ark
to sea (Buxton 98).
This shows how the
women are brought
down by the doom of
the male gods. They are
faced with tragedy &
have no choice in the
mating between god
and themselves.
Orazio Gentileschi, Danae and
The shower of Gold, c. 1621
7. Atlanta
Atlanta, raised by a she-bear, was notorious for her temper. Her
reluctance to get married was shown also by how she challenged
her suitors; failure meant their death. One man, Melanion tricked
her and won her hand. Her husband and her made love on a
sanctuary of Zeus which caused
punishment to them both in the form
of their change to a lion.
“Her myth explores a tension central to Greek
perceptions of gender ideology, name that,
although there is an aspect of women which is
‘wild’ (and therefore must be tamed by men),
there can be no compatibility between, on the
one hand, the role of wife-and-mother and, on
the other, the activities of hunting and warfare”
(Buxton 107).
8. Figurine of Aphrodite Playing with Eros
Though most tales of
Aphrodite paint her as a
scandalous woman as
well as a illustrious lover,
this helps to paint a
picture of how even the
most “loose” of women
are brought down to be
that of a mother.
9. Conclusion
The abilities of women were tied to the
home. The story of Atlanta helps to
show what may happen if a woman
steps outside the limits of her sex. Even
the goddesses are defined by their sex,
their reigning rule of powers as well as
their connections to their consorts or
their brothers (i.e. Hera and Artemis).
10. Works Cited
Atsma, Aaron J. The Theoi Project: Greek Mythology. 200-
2011. Web. 26 October 2012.
<http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Artemis.html>
Buxton, Richard. The Complete World of Greek Mythology.
London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2004. Print.
Figurine of Aphrodite Playing with Eros. 4th century BC.
Hermitage Museum. Collection Highlights. 2011. Web.
26 October 2012.
<http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/03/hm3_
1_1c.html>
