It had been years since the creation of humans. Mortals never seemed to develop attractions on their own.
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Eros crept through the woods, bow ready. Two women were gathering flowers in a meadow. A man came into view and Eros chose one of the women at random and fired. The arrow happened to hit Psyche and not Pragma. Eros was seconds from shooting the man when Psyche turned around, revealing her beauty. Eros faltered, his shot grazed Pragma.
The women gazed at each other with love. He was confused and quite late for the annual Olympus potluck at this point. He quickly removed the arrow’s spell from both and sped off. Confident everything had been fixed.
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Later, Eros sought Psyche out to woo her. It was a cool morning in the meadow as Psyche and Pragma made crowns of violets while locked in each others embrace. It was time to get help. He closed his eyes and prayed to Aphrodite.
She glared at him in all her elegant splendor, “I was in the middle of a date with Ares. This better be good.”
Eros hastily explained everything and gestured towards the women.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”, she said smiling. “Wait, how is this possible? Humans have never felt any sort of attraction without the arrows before.” Aphrodite’s brow furrowed, “Let’s go visit their creator.”
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Mount Elbrus
Prometheus was where he always was, chained to a rock. Thankfully for Eros’ weak stomach, the eagle hadn’t come by yet.
Aphrodite told him all she knew about the “human defect”. Prometheus looked taken aback, “When I formed the humans, I did everything perfectly, I’m certain of it.”
Aphrodite sighed, “Eros, fetch the blueprints.”
She scanned the documents for a few seconds before crumpling them up and pointing an accusing finger at Prometheus. “Attraction is nowhere in any of your blueprints! Did you really not double check everything?”
‘I- well no, I didn’t.”
Aphrodite massaged her temples. She needed to get this fixed.
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Mount Olympus
Zeus and Hera were on their thrones. Aphrodite laid out the situation. “As you can see, the humans weren’t fully formed. I ask your permission, Zeus, to make them whole.”
Zeus thought for a moment, “Well I don’t see why no-”. He cut himself off when he saw the look Hera gave him.
“You want to go against what has always been?”, Hera said scoffing.
Thankfully, the three fates entered the hall. “Do this and ensure the greatness of the Greeks. A demigod will be found in a chest on the shores of Seriphos by two women who will raise him as their own. He will become a great hero. Later, a war will take place between the Greeks and Trojans. The turning point will be when a Greek warrior rejoins the fight after the loss of his lover, a fellow warrior. These are but two great things that are destined to be.”
Zeus was not one to mess with fate. “I permit you to make this matter right. To the glory of the Greeks!”.
Aphrodite beamed. She’d help the humans get used to their newfound attractions and ensure that true love always reigned supreme.
ANALYSIS
This is an aetiological myth that explains the creation of sexual orientation. In this analysis, I will delve deeper into the figures, themes, events, and more that I used in my myth.
The major underlying theme of my myth is love. Psyche and Pragma are in love, there are love spells, and the fates mention two women in love and two men in love. Finally, the two main figures are love gods. Loves plays an important role in many Greek myths. It acts as the catalyst that drives characters’ rational (and irrational) actions. Also, I wanted to acknowledge the fact there’s different types of love. Hence why one of the characters bears the name Pragma. It’s a Greek love word meaning “a mature, realistic love that is commonly found amongst long-established couples” (Krznaric 2013). In the context of my myth, it hints at the fact the two women will be together for a long time. You’ll notice that the relationships of two female couples and one male couple are mentioned. I decided to focus more on same sex relationships between women. In Greek myth, when something non-heterosexual happens it’s typically between two men and there’s little mention of lesbianism. I wanted my myth to break this trend and give more representation to love between women. I also accomplished this by having Psyche and Pragma make flower crowns with violets. I purposefully chose this flower because it and its colour have historically been code for sapphic women (Hastings 2020). This trend was started by Sappho, she has described lovers as wearing “crowns of violets” (Sappho, Fragments).
The most important love god in my myth is Aphrodite. It makes sense the Goddess of love and beauty would want to get to the bottom of a “human defect” that has to do with attraction and love. In my myth, Aphrodite encounters a few headaches along the way but eventually figures out the problem and fixes it. She was the perfect Goddess to tackle this since her motivation for helping the humans is pure. Denying humans true love doesn’t sit right with her. Also, I wanted her to be directly responsible for the creation of sexual orientation because of the several times Sappho mentions her in poetry. In one of her poems she asked Aphrodite for help and referred to her as an ally,
Ah, Aphrodite—
come here, be with me
soothe my anxiety,
I need your help to win her
come—please—now,
yes be my ally! (Sappho, Fragments)
The second (and more troublesome) love god in my myth is Eros, a Greek god of love and sexual desire (Graf 2006, Eros). His task in this myth is to use his bow and arrow to make humans fall in love. His abilities are the same as in ancient myth. He has golden arrows that make people feel love and other arrows that make people feel aversion (Ovid, Metamorphoses i.468; Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 548.). The detail I changed is that he now uses his love spells on all humans when they’re of age and not just some humans as in the myths. This shows no human had any sort of sexual orientation and needed a love spell to feel attracted to each other.
These two love gods have often crossed paths in Greek myth. Eros is typically portrayed as a minion of Aphrodite’s and/or her son (Encyclopedia Mythica 1997, Eros) so I wanted to feature them together. “Most men consider Eros to be the youngest of the gods and the son of Aphrodite.” (Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.27.1.). Although, there are ancient Greek authors that contradicted this. For example, saying that Eros was the son of Iris instead (Plutarch, Amatorius 20.). I made their exact relationship ambiguous. However, I kept their overall dynamic the same. Aphrodite tends to be annoyed by Eros’ troublemaking as she is in my myth.
Another figure Eros has already crossed paths with in myth is Psyche. They have an entire myth dedicated to them. In my myth, Psyche is one of the women Eros hits with an arrow in the meadow. I scraped most of their myth while keeping one key detail. The detail I kept was Psyche’s beauty. In ancient myth, it’s been compared to the beauty of Aphrodite herself (Apuleius, The Golden Ass 4.28-6.24.). I used this as an explanation for why Eros, a practiced bowman, could miss a target upon seeing her face. It’s a crucial detail that sets up the inciting incident of my myth. This is when Eros misses the man and his second arrow hits Pragma instead. Also, Psyche’s beauty gave me a reason to make Eros return to woo her and find out he hadn’t actually fixed the arrow mishap.
Whenever there are different forms of love, there will always be people that oppose them. In my myth, this is where Hera comes in. She opposes Aphrodite’s plan. Since she was the Goddess of marriage and childbirth, I assumed she’d be especially sensitive to changes that may impact either. I used this figure to represent the traditional Christian and Catholic ideologies surrounding marriage and their belief it’s an institution between one man and one woman. A creation of sexual orientation would “threaten” this idea of marriage. Hera essentially represents ignorance and hate towards same sex couples. In this myth, she loses and Aphrodite (who can be seen as an ally of same sex couples), wins.
Moving on from love, fate and destiny is another key theme in my myth. I used it as a deus ex machina of sorts. Zeus is about to give the green light to the fix when Hera’s disapproval stops him. I needed a way to quickly convince Zeus to side with Aphrodite over Hera. In comes the three fates with a story about the future and the greatness of the Greeks. I used this device to change Zeus’ mind since in multiple myths its alluded to that if the gods go against fate bad things would happen. Much like the gods can’t go against fate, humans can’t go against (change) their sexual orientation.
The first fated hero mentioned in my myth is Perseus. In Greek myth, he’s put in a wooden chest as a baby with his mother and cast into the sea. To suit my purposes, I changed it so that he was alone in the chest so it would be a smoother transition to his new family. The only other change I made was having a female couple find him. Everything else I kept the same. My version of Perseus’ origin story highlights adoption as a possibility for same sex couples. It acts as a rebuttal to all the naysayers that bring up the “reproductive purpose of marriage”.
The second fated hero is Achilles. In the Iliad, he rejoins the fight and kills Hector after Patroclus wore his armour and was killed (Homer, The Iliad 15-16.). In the Homeric tradition, it appears the two had a platonic bond (Jusdanis, 2013). However, later Greek authors theorized the two were lovers. For example, there’s evidence that Aeschylus wrote a play called “The Myrmidons” where he depicted a sexual bond between the two (Jusdanis, 2013). In my myth, everything in the Iliad stayed the same except for Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship status.
Fate determines the way stories are told and the stories that are able to come after. Without the fate of Psyche and Pragma, there would be no fate/story for Perseus or Achilles.
The final theme I’ll be exploring in my analysis is hubris. Going beyond one’s grasp and arrogance are common patterns in Greek myth. For example, when Arachne bragged she could weave as well as Athena (Ovid, Metamorphoses vi.1-145.). Hubris shows up a couple times in my myth. First, with Eros, when he removed the love spell and was confident everything had been fixed. This led to a delay in the creation of sexual orientation. More importantly, hubris also shows up with Prometheus. He was so confident he had formed the humans perfectly he didn’t bother to double check everything. This caused the problem of humans not having sexual orientations.
Prometheus immediately sprung to mind when I was thinking of a figure to put the blame on. In Greek myth, he formed humans from clay before Athena breathed life into them (Apollodorus, The Library i.7.1; Ovid, Metamorphoses i.81.). It makes sense that a fundamental problem with mortals could have been made on his end. Also, there’s another aetiological myth featuring Prometheus where he gets drunk and gives some humans the wrong genitals (Phaedrus, The Fables of Phaedrus 4.14-15.). It explains the creation of transgender people. I thought it would be prudent to include him in my myth that explains the creation of sexual orientation.
WORKS CITED
Apollodorus, The Library i.7.1. Translated by Sir J. G. Frazer, 1921
Apuleius, The Golden Ass 4.28-6.24. Translated by A. S. Kline, 2013
Encyclopedia Mythica, "Eros." 1997, https://pantheon.org/articles/e/eros.html
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 548. Translated by E. P. Coleridge, 1891
Graf and Birley, “Eros.” Brill’s New Pauly, edited by Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider,
English Edition by Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by Manfred
Landfester, English Edition by Francis G. Gentry, 2006,
http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e401810
Hastings, Christobel. “How lavender became a symbol of LGBTQ resistance”,
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lgbtq-lavender-symbolism-pride/index.html
Homer, The Iliad 15-16. Translated by A. T. Murray, 1924
Jusdanis, Gregory. “Brokeback Mount Olympus: Being Gay in the Iliad”,
https://arcade.stanford.edu/blogs/brokeback-mount-olympus-being-gay-iliad
Krznaric, Roman. “The Ancient Greeks’ 6 Words for Love”,
https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2013/12/28/the-ancient-greeks-6-
words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life/
Ovid, Metamorphoses i.81. Translated by Brookes More, 1922
Ovid, Metamorphoses i.468. Translated by Brookes More, 1922
Ovid, Metamorphoses vi.1-145. Translated by Brookes More, 1922
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.27.1. Translated by W. H. S. Jones, 1918
Phaedrus, The Fables of Phaedrus 4.14-15. Translated by Christopher Smart, 1913
Plutarch, Amatorius 20. Translated by William Goodwin, 1874
Sappho, Fragments. Translated by Christina Farella, 2016
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