Myth ;
Before there was love, there were children. Zeus, having overtaken the cosmos, could not rule alone. He needed Gods to serve at his side, and thus began an era of procreation due to the labors of Zeus and Hera, which spurred forth only more children. Each new life born was given their own responsibility as designated by Zeus. Childbirth was merely an end to a means-- to shoulder the responsibility of a new demand to maintain the cosmos. Childbirth was a loveless job. It required suffering; not love. Children were born to loveless parents, and loveless lives, many the product of rape, of women given to man. Sex was for the purpose of procreation, man and women, vagina, and penis. Eileithyia was one such child born from Hera and Zeus’ procreation. From her birth, she became the Goddess of childbirth, thus overseeing the chore of new life, torch in hand, to shed light on the pain of unloved mothers sleeping in unloving arms to birth life anew. This remained unchanging until two very special births, Aphrodite, and Eros. Aphrodite was not born of the womb, but the skin of a man as it fell from the heavens. From foam she rose, as beauty, as grace, as love and new beginnings. Eros too was not pushed into existence, but a primordial God, born of his own making. He too was a God of love in the same right as Aphrodite but watched as the world fell into a loveless one. At the birth of Aphrodite, neither Eros nor Aphrodite could bear to watch Gods and mortals fall into unloving relationships solely for children against their will. They knew they must act. Thus, the two Gods banded together, scheming to reintroduce love into the world. When Eileithyia was distracted, Eros swiped her torch from her hands and Aphrodite doused the flame with the water. With the flame a childbearing temporarily extinguished, there was a revelation among mortals and Gods; that they could fall into the arms of those who truly loved them. Women leapt into each other's arms, kissing the faces of their true beloved and delving into a realm of their own pleasures without the burdens of responsibility. Gods jumped from the heavens into the embrace of other men, delighted and impassioned. Some ran both between the loving touch of men and women, indulging in all genders freely. The responsibility of childbirth snapped from the minds of all, allowing a new dominion of loving for the sake of love to blossom. While Eileithyia did relight the flame of her torch, the revelation did not die. Such was born a world of love, where mortals and God alike could fall into the beds of whichever gender they preferred, childbirth reserved to those who wished it. A world with love paved by Aphrodite and Eros introduced a realm of possibility into the sea of love, where love could be experienced truly and deeply between all genders, with no borders bared.
Explanation ;
Before jumping into the explanation, is worth mentioning that anatomy does not equal gender and individuals with a penis or vagina respectively can be in a relationship in which they are entirely different genders than the ones assigned at birth. There are also a multitude of genders that bring about multiple sexual orientations based on attraction. This story is written in a way where binary is intentionally the focus to represent the oppressive nature of being responsible for birthing children and, as it progresses, breaks out of the binary idea of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as being ‘penis’ and ‘vagina.’ Much of what informed my myth was the status and role of women in Ancient Greece along with the lore of the Gods in it. Within various sources, we see the role of women, subjugated to wives or mothers, most leading unhappy lives with heavy implications (if not outright admittance) of rape. These sources informed various aspects of my work, including the emphasis on sex being a loveless, if not forced affair, for the sake of producing children under the heteropatriarchy. Starting with the Iliad, we see the equation of women to the possession of men with the concept of ‘war brides,’ women who were stolen from their lands and pillaged by the invading forces. “’But I will threaten you thus: as Phoebus Apollo takes from me the daughter of Chryses, her with my ship and my companions I will send back, but I will myself come to your tent and take the fair-cheeked Briseis, your prize, so that you will understand how much mightier I am than you, and another may shrink from declaring himself my equal and likening himself to me to my face.’" (Homer, Iliad. 1.172-187) Here we see Agamemnon basically talking about his and Achilles’ respective war brides, Chryses and Briseis. This phenomenon influenced my myth by giving me a position in which I could put the child-bearers; beneath that of men. I wanted to push the narrative of women being below men, only with men due to forces beyond their will, not because they held any love for the men they were with (understandable, given they were kidnapped and most-likely raped.) Another influential text that swayed my writing was the Rape of Proserpine. Within it is the mourning of a mother for her daughter (Demeter mourning Persephone) for she has been stolen and essentially sold off to a man, who will wed her (Hades). “’Will my labours be successful? Shall I ever again be blest with thine embrace, my daughter? Art thou still fair; still glows the brightness of thy cheeks? Or shall I perchance see thee as thou cam’st in my nightly vision; as I saw thee in my dreams?’” (Claudian, Rape of Proserpine. 3.434-438) This quote just shows the grief of a mother mourning the rape and loss of her daughter, which is a theme I tried to replicate in my own myth. I drew inspiration from the treatment of women being whisked off into a marriage against their will, carrying out a cycle of births and marriages at the whims of other men, while they fall prey to loveless rapes. In addition to what women are to men (possessions to be owned and used as baby incubators) I also took inspiration from the portrayal of Aphrodite in the Rape of Helen and how her powers were handled. “’What has Aphrodite to do with shields? By beauty much more do women excel. In place of manly prowess I will give thee a lovely bride, and, instead of kingship, enter thou the bed of Helen. Lacedaemon, after Troy, shall see thee a bridegroom.’” (Colluthus, Rape of Helen. 1.154-167) This quote shows where Aphrodite is trying to have Paris choose her as the most beautiful Goddess, saying if he chooses her, she will give him a wife. I wanted to play with this interpretation of Aphrodite and her ability to bestow one-person upon another, albeit in a more positive light. I took the idea of Aphrodite essentially arranging relationships and applied it to my own myth so that Aphrodite could play a match-making role given her powers of love, just in a more positive and general sense of setting people up with one another. Moreover, I took heavy amounts of inspiration from Euripides Medea. The entirety of this play is essentially a loveless woman abandoned by her husband, which was a big driving point in my myth. I really wanted to adopt the same melancholic theme as Medea being abandoned by her husband, spiteful that she was given a useless husband who could not even give her the love she deserved. I took a lot of inspiration from how Medea sees her children. “’All these she abandoned when she came here with a man who has now cast her aside. The poor woman has learned at misfortune's hand what a good thing it is not to be cut off from one's native land. She loathes the children and takes no joy in looking at them.’” (Euripides, Medea. 30-36) In this quote, the nurse is speaking about how Medea has had everything taken from her, is not loved at all, and loathes her very children for those reasons. I really tried to emphasize this narrative in my own creation myth, the fact that sex was a loveless act that was producing unloved children and overall unhealthy family dynamics. Though with limited space to do so, I wanted to draw on the idea that forced relationships between men and women specifically created loveless things that pushed the women into the role of a victim of rape and/or a baby incubator by a man who never fully appreciated them. Thus, my myth being the aetiology of a multiple sexual orientations, where women and men could break outside the binary of forced marriages (always for the point of children to carry on the family name) and find true love with people that were not obliged to be with them. As for the influence of Gods, there is first the use of Zeus, who is responsible in his role in maintaining the cosmos, hence his need for procreation, while caring little for the love behind creating children. Next, there is the Goddess of birth Eileithyia. She is often depicted having some sort of torch that is meant to represent the pains of childbirth (Theoi). Therefore, I depicted her in the story as having some sort of torch that represented childbirth and was essential in being extinguished to physically representing an end to childbirth (temporarily) so that love could take over. This is my own interpretation as there is no depictions of her opposing love. After that there is the incorporation of Eros, the God of love, heavily associated with Aphrodite. He has multiple depictions, but his first appearance according to Hesiod was that Eros was one of the first primordial Gods to come into existence along with Chaos, as mentioned in his Theogony. “and Eros （Love）, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.” (Hesiod, Theogony 104. 120) I drew inspiration from this interpretation of Eros as someone who was self-birthed as opposed to born of the womb since it would help me easier connect Eros and Aphrodite having that in common and have them work together as similar forces with outsider perspectives. Eros in his depiction differs as Hesiod claims that at the beginning of time, Eros already created and promoted love in Gods and men. For the sake of the myth, I stripped away that facet, as I wanted to promote the concept of sex being only for childbirth, requiring a vagina and penis, whereas love could be any combinations of genders together, thus removing Eros’ initial love-making job. Moreover, Aphrodite’s significance in this story comes in the form of working in accomplice with Eros as someone not born from a uterus and as another love Goddess. Her depiction in my aetiology is not too far off from what she is depicted as in the theogony since she was born from the sea form of Zeus’ foreskin. “and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden… Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess and rich-crowned Cytherea, because she grew amid the foam,” (Hesiod, Theogony 173. 190-196) I used Aphrodite’s status as someone not born of a uterus and as another love Goddess with ties to Eros to have the two work together. In my aetiology, her significance lies in being a bringer of love just like Eros was depicted as doing in the beginning of time. This is where her birth differs from myth, as she co-operates alongside Eros as the bringer of love to the world, sharing this role with Eros as an introducer of love, just later in the existence of the Cosmos.
Bibliography
Claudian, Rape of Proserpine. Theoi. Translated by Platnauer, Maurice. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 135 & 136. Cambridge, MA. Harvard Univserity Press. 1922. https://www.theoi.com/Text/ClaudianProserpine.html
Colluthus, Rape of Helen. Theoi. Translated by Mair, A. W. Loeb Classical Library Volume 219. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1928. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Colluthus.html
EILEITHYIA. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Eileithyia.html
Euripides, Medea. Theoi. Euripides, with an English translation by David Kovacs. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-eng1:1-48
Hesiod, Theogony. Theoi. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0130:card=104&highlight=eros
Homer, Iliad. Theoi. Translated by Murray, A T. Loeb Classical Library Volumes1. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1924. https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomerIliad1.html