greek-deities-and-spirits

"Surely the Sun has labour all his days, And never any respite, steeds nor god, Since Eos first, whose hands are rosy rays, Ocean forsook, and Heaven’s high pathway trod;"

"So on he drifted for two nights and days O’er the high swell, and oft his heart forbode The end; but when the fair-haired Dawn fulfilled The third day, then the tempest dropped, and fell A windless calm; and, poised on a big wave With quick look-out he saw the land near by."

"I who now am called Flora was formerly Chloris: a Greek letter of my name is corrupted in the Latin speech. Chloris I was, a nymph of the happy fields where, as you have heard, dwelt fortunate men of old. Modesty shrinks from describing my figure; but it procured the hand of a god for my mother's daughter. 'Twas spring, and I was roaming; Zephyr caught sight of me; I retired; he pursued and I fled; but he was the stronger, and Boreas had given his brother full right of rape by daring to carry off the prize from the house of Erechtheus. However, he made amends for his violence by giving me the name of bride, and in my marriage-bed I have naught to complain of. I enjoy perpetual spring; most buxom is the year ever; ever the tree is clothed with leaves, the ground with pasture. In the fields that are my dower, I have a fruitful garden, fanned by the breeze and watered by a spring of running water. This garden my husband filled with noble flowers and said, 'Goddess, be queen of flowers.' Oft did I wish to count the colours in the beds, but could not; the number was past counting. Soon as the dewy rime is shaken from the leaves, and the varied foliage is warmed by the sunbeams, the Hours assemble, clad in dappled weeds, and cull my gifts in light baskets. Straightway the Graces draw near, and twine garlands and wreaths to bind their heavenly hair. I was the first to scatter new seeds among the countless peoples; till then the earth had been of but one colour. I was the first to make a flower out of Therapnaean blood, and on its petals the lament remains inscribed. Thou, too. Narcissus, hast a name in the trim gardens, unhappy thou in that thou hadst not a double of thyself. What need to tell of Crocus, and Attis, and the son of Cinyras, from whose wounds by my art doth beauty spring?"

"And May with Flora, did company bear;"

"Now how great must that immortality be thought which is attained even by harlots! Flora, having obtained great wealth by this practice, made the people her heir, and left a fixed sum of money, from the annual proceeds of which her birthday might be celebrated by public games, which they called Floralia. And because this appeared disgraceful to the senate, in order that a kind of dignity might be given to a shameful matter, they resolved that an argument should be taken from the name itself. They pretended that she was the goddess who presides over flowers, and that she must be appeased, that the crops, together with the trees or vines, might produce a good and abundant blossom. The poet followed up this idea in his Fasti, and related that there was a nymph, by no means obscure, who was called Chloris, and that, on her marriage with Zephyrus, she received from her husband as a wedding gift the control over all flowers. These things are spoken with propriety, but to believe them is unbecoming and shameful. And when the truth is in question, ought disguises of this kind to deceive us? Those games, therefore, are celebrated with all wantonness, as is suitable to the memory of a harlot. For besides licentiousness of words, in which all lewdness is poured forth, women are also stripped of their garments at the demand of the people, and then perform the office of mimeplayers, and are detained in the sight of the people with indecent gestures, even to the satiating of unchaste eyes."

"There is scent of the speech of the Sabines about the altars also, which by the vow of King Tatius were dedicated at Rome: for, as the Annals tell, he vowed altars to Ops, Flora, Vediovis and Saturn, Sun, Moon, Vulcan and Summanus, and likewise to Larunda, Terminus, Quirinus, Vertumnus, the Lares, Diana and Lucina: some of these names have roots in both languages, like trees which have sprung up on the boundary line and creep about in both fields: for Saturn might be used as the god's name from one source here, and from another among the Sabines, and so also Diana; ..."

"Why need I tell of the purple wraps and the wrestling-oils used by women? Who has not seen one of them smiting a stump, piercing it through and through with a foil, lunging at it with a shield, and going through all the proper motions ?—a matron truly qualified to blow a trumpet at the Floralia!"

"A rakish stage fits Flora well; she is not, believe me she is not, to be counted among your buskined goddesses. ... She is none of your glum, none of your high-flown ones: she wishes her rites to be open to the common herd; and she warns us to use life's flower, while it still blooms; for the thorn, she reminds us, is flouted when the roses have fallen away."

"But O, young beauty of the woods, Whom Nature courts with fruits and flowers, Gather the flowers, but spare the buds; Lest Flora, angry at thy crime To kill her infants in their prime, Do quickly make th’ example yours; And ere we see, Nip in the blossom all our hopes and thee."

"See where my Love a-Maying goes With sweet dame Flora sporting! She most alone with nightingales In woods delights consorting."

"Perhaps you may think that I am queen only of dainty garlands; but my divinity has to do also with the tilled fields. If the crops have blossomed well, the threshing-floor will be piled high; if the vines have blossomed well, there will be wine; if the olive-trees have blossomed well, most buxom will be the year; and the fruitage will be according to the time of blossoming. If once the blossom is nipped, the vetches and beans wither, and thy lentils, O Nile that comest from afar, do likewise wither. Wines also bloom, laboriously stored in great cellars, and a scum covers their surface in the jars. Honey is my gift. 'Tis I who call the winged creatures, which yield honey, to the violet, and the clover, and the grey thyme. 'Tis I, too, who discharge the same function when in youthful years spirits run riot and bodies are robust."

"About the same time he dedicated some temples of the gods, which had perished from age or from fire, and which Augustus had begun to restore. These were temples to Liber, Libera, and Ceres, near the Great Circus, which last Aulus Postumius, when Dictator, had vowed; a temple to Flora in the same place, which had been built by Lucius and Marcus Publicius, ædiles, ..."

"Nature’s confectioner, the bee, ... Having rifled all the fields Of what dainty Flora yields,"

"So you may give up all the performances of Flora, of Ceres, and of Cybele; so much finer are the games of human life."

"Nymphs and shepherds, come away, In this grove let’s sport and play; For this is Flora’s holiday, Sacred to ease and happy love, To music, to dancing and to poetry. Your flocks may now securely rest While you express your jollity! Nymphs and shepherds, come away.Nymphs and shepherds, pipe and play, Tune a song, a festal lay; For this is Flora’s holiday, Lightly we tread o’er all the ground, With music, with dancing and with poetry. Then trip we round with merry sound, And pass the day in jollity! Nymphs and shepherds, come away."

"And that white-robed wheedler there, dragged open-mouthed by his thirst for office—is he his own master? Up with you before dawn, and deal out showers of vetches for the people to scramble for, that old men sunning themselves in their old age may tell of the splendour of our Floralia! How grand!"

"Muse of sweet eloquence, of Jupiter daughters, teachers | of hymns. Beautiful moon sung by swift wings. | From her comes heavenly glow to envelop the earth, | from his immortal head, from the bright rays, he pours out | Supreme Beauty: A Glowing Aura | from the golden crown, rays are scattered through the air, | When from the eddies of the sea, wash your shining limbs, | girded with her garments, Selène, who drives her gaze afar, | his foals yok from the steep cervix, radiant, | in vespers, at half a month, that his disc shines fullly; | And as she grows, bright rays are shed | from the firmament; and it is for mortals a signal and an omen. | Once, in her bed of love, she was joined by Croníde, | and she became pregnant and gave birth to Pandía, the maiden | who has, among the Blessed of Heaven, so charming his countenance. || Hail, O Lady, O Goddess of the white arm, O Selene. | Diva with beautiful curls, | benign. Starting with you, | Of the Semigods I will tell the deeds, to which the vati are wont to do, | ministers of the Muses, to sing with the amiable voices."

"Νυκτερινή, δίκερως, φιλοπάννυχε, φαῖνε, Σελήνη, φαῖνε, δι᾽ εὐτρήτων βαλλομένη θυρίδων αὔγαζε χρυσέην Καλλίστιον ἐς τὰ φιλεύντων ἔργα κατοπτεύειν οὐ φθόνος ἀθανάτῃ. ὀλβίζεις καὶ τήνδε καὶ ἡμέας, οἶδα, Σελήνη: καὶ γὰρ σὴν ψυχὴν ἔφλεγεν Ἐνδυμίων."

"Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in a Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?"

"Zeus: , you are a king, and it's to your sense of king-ship I appeal, for you enjoy wielding the scepter. Aegistheus: Continue. Zeus: You may hate me, but we are akin; I made you in my image. A king is a god on earth, glorious and terrifying as a god. Aegistheus: You, terrifying? Zeus: Look at me. [A long silence.] I told you you were made in my image. Each keeps order; you in Argos, I in heaven and on earth — and you and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts. Aegistheus: I have no secret. Zeus: You and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts. Aegistheus: I have no secret. Zeus: You have. The same as mine. The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free. Yes, Aegistheus they are free. But your subjects do not know it, and you do."

"Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names."

"ὦ Ζεῦ͵ πάτερ Ζεῦ͵ σὸν μὲν οὐρανοῦ κράτος͵ σὺ δ΄ ἔργ΄ ἐπ΄ ἀνθρώπων ὁρᾶις λεωργὰ καὶ θεμιστά͵ σοὶ δὲ θηρίων ὕβρις τε καὶ δίκη μέλει."

"Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise, has established his fixed law— wisdom comes through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, so men against their will learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods seated on their solemn thrones— such grace is harsh and violent."

"Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains."

"Many etymologies have been proposed for the name Hermes. Some suggest a connection with the Vedic Sarameyas derived from Sarama."

"The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated primate history."

"The scientist, like the magician, possesses secrets. A secret — expertise — is somehow perceived as antidemocratic, and therefore ought to be unnatural. We have come a long way from Prometheus to Faust to Frankenstein. And even Frankenstein's monster is now a joke."

"Mike is our Prometheus — but that's all. Mike keeps emphazing this. Thou art God, I am God, he is God — all that groks. Mike is a man like the rest of us. A superior man admittedly — a lesser man taught the things the Martians know, might have set himself up as a pipsqueak god. Mike is above that temptation. Prometheus… but that is all."

"It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again."

"The Titan Prometheus wanted to give mankind equal footing with the gods — for that he was cast from Olympus. Well my friends, the time has finally come for his return."

"As technology became more important, the Trickster underwent a shift in character and became the god of crafts — of technology, if you will — while retaining the underlying roguish qualities. So we have the Sumerian Enki, the Greek Prometheus and Hermes, Norse Loki, and so on."

"Prometheus, I have no Titan's might, Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart, For daytime's vulture talons tear apart The tender alcoves built by love at night."

"Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discoveries. We play with fire and take the consequences, because the alternative is cowardice in the face of the unknown."

"The myth of Prometheus means that all the sorrows of the world have their seat in the liver. But it needs a brave man to face so humble a truth."

"Although the turning point in the interpretation of the myth appears in its most striking form in Germany with Goethe, and in England with Shelley and Byron, some of France's most famous artists of the first half of the nineteenth century found in the Prometheus figure a perfect image to express their ideals and/or fears. They took hold of Prometheus so well that the Titan became — whether intentionally or not — an artistic model to identify with. Different features of Prometheus as a symbol or as a myth appealed to them, and although different, there are probably no better examples of this new 'cult' devoted to Prometheus than his treatment by Hugo and Balzac in literature, and Liszt in music."

"At sea on a ship in a thunderstorm on the very night the Christ was born a sailor heard from overhead a mighty voice cry "Pan is Dead!" So follow Christ as best you can Pan is dead — Long live Pan!"

"Jove is not one half so merciless As thou art to thyself. But fare thee well; Our love is all as stubborn as thy pride, And swift as firm."

"Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book."

"To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change nor falter nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!"

"Sweet were change, If but a change of tortures! But to grow A motionless rock, fast as my strong prison, Age after age, till circling suns outnumber The sands upon the tide-worn beach! No hope, Or that sad mockery of hope that fools With dull despair, spanning the infinite! Torment unmeasurable!"

"Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world."

"We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish, silly tale."

"Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself — and equal to all woes, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can decry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory."

"Hard I strove To put away my immortality, Till my collected spirits swell'd my heart Almost to bursting; but the strife is past. It is a fearful thing to be a god, And, like a god, endure a mortal's pain; To be a show for earth and wondering heaven To gaze and shudder at! But I will live, That Jove may know there is a deathless soul Who ne'er will be his subject. Yes, 'tis past. The stedfast Fates confess my absolute will,— Their own co-equal."

"Come with me on a journey beneath the skin We will look together for the Pan within."

"He's like a man you'd meet any place until you recognize that ancient Face The Great God Pan is alive!"

"You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things — yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet — I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."

"Some say the Gods are just a myth but guess Who I've been dancing with... The Great God Pan is alive!"

"Why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation; yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any means I may arouse in the interiors of Plane and Solid Humanity a spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity."

"In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so. I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions."