CH.5 - Heroines of Myth

Question 1

Brauronia

Answer 1

• the initiation ritual of girls become women, performed before girls reached puberty
• named after the location of Artemis’s shine at Bauron in Attica
• most important part of the ritual was the Arkteia, where they ran as “bears” either nude or wearing short garments
• a boy becomes a man after killing a savage beast but girls become women by becoming a savage beast
• girls leave the event as sister with Artemis as she is the goddess of wildlife and the hunt

Question 2

Callisto and Artemis

Answer 2

• one of Artemis’s entourage
• Zeus approaches her disguised as Artemis but ends up impregnating her, giving birth to a son
• she has to leave Artemis’s entourage
• after the birth of her son, she is turned into a bear (a clear insult to the bear goddess) by Hera
• wanders the forest alone until her son Arcas is hunting and almost kills her but Zeus stops him
• becomes the great bear constellation

Question 3

Zeus and Semele

Answer 3

• impregnanted by Zeus
• she insisted on making love to the god in his natural form (lightning), goaded by Hera
• she explodes and he takes the fetus of dionysus

Question 4

Clytemnestra

Answer 4

• Agamemnons wife
• defies gender roles
• after her daughter Iphigenia was sacrificed by Agamemnon, had no intrest in being a mother to her children after this
• had a love affair with Agamemnons brother, Aegisthus,
• Clytemnestra and Aegisthus began plotting Agamemnon’s demise. Clytemnestra was enraged by Iphigenia’s murder
• stabs him and is slave wife Cassandra with a sword
• she boasts and brags about these murders