RTP-area local music and culture

[Nathaniel Florin <npflorin AT yahoo.com>]

--- Doctor Oakroot <doctor AT doctoroakroot.com> wrote:
> That depends on whether you're speaking classical
> Greek or modern English :o)

Emoticons aside, that's actually exactly it. The
question, I guess, is if yor pronounce "croissant" as
something like KWA-saw(n), or instead as KRU-sawnt. Or
if you have a guttural R in "genre".

Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, born from
Zeus' thigh after Semele burst into flames when she
sees Zeus in his full godliness, which mortals simply
cannot do. See Ovid's "Metamorphoses" for the fully
gruesome version. Dionysus was associated at some
points with the shadowy Iacchus, who had some
relationship to Persephone, who was Demeter's
daughter, but Dionysus was never Hecate's kid. In some
versions Hecate (and Helios) help Demeter find
Persephone in the underworld, so there's the (tenuous)
link.

As for "pre-Olympic texts", we're talking about a tiny
amount of Linear B script on tablets that don't say
much we can be certain of. The more positive view of
Hecate comes from the Eleusinian mysteries, which date
to about a century after Hesiod, whose "Theogony" is
all about the Olympians. Maybe 150 years after Homer
as well. Really, anything earlier than that is a
construct of modern scholarship, and must be treated
with the utmost caution.

Not that this is relevant, but Pausanius, who was the
Lonely Planet of the ancient world, has a tour guide
description of the temple of Chthonia (Demeter) at
Hermion, on Crete:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Paus%2e+2%2e35%2e5%2d8

I think the general point that the Greeks were extreme
mysoginists is about as correct as a point can be.

NF