Women in Myth, i

Helen, Medea, Dido, and Women in Myth

Agenda

Presentation Overview

• Course Evals
• Review of kleos and xenia
• Female Kleos and xenia
• Helen
• Medea
• Dido
• Discussion

Objectives

• Students will compare and contrast masculine and feminine methods of generating kleos

Course Survey

Course Evals (formal and anonymous)

• ICON
• “Student Tools”
• “Course Evals”

Rate my professor (informal and anonymous)

• shorturl.at/fiMV6

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Review: Kleos and Xenia

• Kleos
• What is kleos?
• What do you do to get kleos?
• Who can get kleos?
• Examples?
• Xenia
• What is xenia?
• What does the process look like?
• Who can do it?
• Examples?

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Helen, Xenia and Kleos

Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, thought to slip a drug into the wine they drank, one that calmed all pain and trouble, and brought forgetfulness of every evil. Whoever tasted it mixed with the wine would shed no tears that day, not though his mother and father lay there dead, not though they put his dear son or his brother to the sword, before his very eyes. The daughter of Zeus had these powerful healing drugs as a gift from Polydamna, Thon’s wife, a woman of Egypt, as the fertile soil there is rich in herbs, many of them curatives when compounded, many of them, also, harmful. Everyone there is the wisest of physicians, since they are of Paeeon’s race (Od.VI.113)

With this the heroic son of Atreus held out the two-handled cup to Telemachus, while mighty Megapenthes brought the silver mixing-bowl and placed it before him. Then Helen approached holding the robe, and addressed him: ‘Dear child, I too give you a gift to remember Helen by, made by her own hands, for your bride to wear when the longed-for wedding day arrives. Let your dear mother keep it by her in the palace until then. As for yourself I wish you a joyful return to your own home and country.’ Then she placed it in his hands, and he received it with pleasure (Od.XV.120)

Helen’s Agency

• Is Helen responsible for the Trojan war?
• Was she captured unwillingly by Paris?
• Did she willingly follow Paris?

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Helen Discussion

• How is Helen in portrayed in each of the following sources?
• Iliad 6—Paris and Hector
• Odyssey 6
• Sappho 16
• Euripides’ Troiades
• Seneca’s Troades
• Is Helen responsible for the Trojan war?

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Medea and Dido Discussion

• Can we evaluate Medea and Dido in the same manner as Helen?
• Motives and desires?
• Do Dido and Medea care about their kleos?
• Actions?
• Agency?
• Self perception and how they are perceived by others?
• “‘Dido, unhappy spirit, was the news, that came to me of your death, true then, taking your life with a blade? Alas, was I [Aeneas] the cause of your dying? I swear by the stars, by the gods above, by whatever truth may be in the depths of the earth, I left your shores unwillingly, my queen” (Ver.Aen. BkVI:440-476)

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Announcements

• Do before class
• Aug 2: Highlighted selections from Ovid (content warning for sexual assault); Arthur 1981
• Ovid reading is optional, if you chose to not read it, please read Mueller 2010 as a replacement
• Aug 2: Discussion Question 15
• Important Dates
• Aug 4: Final