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Showing posts from December, 2019

We need to talk about Zeus: Part 1 - Metis and Athena

Before I begin, a disclaimer.  Zeus was a bad god.  A very bad god.  He was, amongst many other things (and to be blunt), a serial rapist.  He might have considered himself an irresistible Lothario, but he wasn’t - he was a rapist.  And in the myths this was neither frowned upon nor considered unusual.  In fact, more often than not, the woman was seen to be at fault and suffered the appalling wrath of Zeus’ (eventual) wife, Hera, for having had the cheek of being so damn appealing to her husband.  Whilst I might not comment any further on the patriarchal wrongs of Greek mythology in this blog series (if you do want to read something which challenges misogyny within the Greek myths, check out Nikita Gills's “Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters”), I also – for the record – do not in any way condone the behaviour of the sky god. Another small point.  One rule that all Greek gods and goddesses had to follow – the main rule - was that they couldn’t show their true fo