Ares bane of the living
A title fitting of the god of war. I understand he wasn't that popular a god back then, aside from when soldiers prayed to him during war. I do wonder why it was him they prayed to, Athena definitely seems better fitted for the part.
Lesbos,
Not to be confused with the one from south park.
god of the silver bow
As Apollo is the god of the sun, I expected him to have a golden bow, or some other color that's not silver. I always though the silver bow was more fitting for Artemis.
She struck the angry Ares on the neck, and knocked him down, with a clash of armour, and he lay stretched out over an acre of ground, his hair in the dust, Pallas Athene laughed in triumph:
The god of war seems to loose quite a lot in these stories. Tough luck.
You have still not learnt to know my strength: it’s greater than yours, you fool, if you try and match it with mine.
This again seems to showcase the difference between the two. Athena is far more calculated.
You share your mother Hera’s intolerable, headstrong spirit; she too will scarcely obey my word.
it's interesting to see how the god of war is described as being headstrong, a polar opposite to the goddes of war, Athena, who is also the goddess of wisdom. She is meticulous in her strategies, he is head strong.
Cytherea
It's interesting how Aphrodite is referred to using different names. I'm assuming Cypris also refers to Aphrodite as well.
I cry woe for Adonis, the beauteous Adonis is dead.
The mourning that Aphrodite feels for Adonis is conveyed through this repetition. It seems as though this type of story would be told with a chorus.
beautiful hair
Throughout the whole story, Demeter, and women are described alot by their visuals, where as Zeus and other male characters are described by their power and physical attributes.
Do not be too stubborn in your anger at the dark-clouded son of Kronos.
Having been through all that, Demeter's choice to still be powerful in front of Persephone, and tell her to not be angry with Hades shows just how much women in these stories must repress their feelings to conform to the patriarchal values imposed upon them.
She was being taken, against her will, at the behest of Zeus,
Does this mean that Zeus approved of Hades's kidnapping?
This was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the true. There was no fear or punishment: there were no threatening words to be read, fixed in bronze, no crowd of suppliants fearing the judge’s face: they lived safely without protection.
When god created us we were pure, but as we discovered more, we fell into chaos, which I found interesting, that we aren't sinners to begin with.
Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all the immortals to depart, herself abandoned the blood-drenched earth.
Very nihilistic.
This conflict was ended by a god and a greater order of nature, since he split off the earth from the sky, and the sea from the land, and divided the transparent heavens from the dense air.
Gods are alluded to as the things that keeps order, and makes everything stable. It seems like to them without gods, the world would be in chaos, which I found to be fascinating.
he god, they say, wishing to preserve an immortal memorial of his close association with the bees, changed the colour of them, making it like copper with the gleam of gold, and since the region lay at a very great altitude, where fierce winds blew about it and heavy snows fell, he made the bees insensible to such things and unaffected by them, since they must range over the most wintry stretches.
We have the greek gods to blame for making bees indestructible.
And when he had attained to manhood he founded a city in Dicta, where indeed the myth states that he was born; in later times this city was abandoned, but some stone blocks of its foundations are still preserved.
Siculus uses real places to add believability to his claims, which I believe is what made his story telling unique.
when she had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Idê, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Cronus, entrusted the rearing of him to the Curetes who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mount Idê.
There seems to be a pattern in these hero's stories where they are forced into hiding to escape the wraths of the one in power, only to return back to civilizations as a full grown adult to take over power.
Then forth stepped an awesome, beauteous goddess; and beneath her delicate feet the grass throve around: 195 gods and men name her Aphrodite, the foam-sprung goddess,
It seems the male gaze plays an important part in her character, as if her identity is prescribed by the expectations of the males that view her.
She too bore also the barren Sea, rushing with swollen stream, the Pontos, I mean, without delightsome love; but afterward, having bedded with Sky, she bore deep-eddying Okeanos, Koios and Kreios, Hyperion and Iapetos, 135 Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Tethys.
It's clear that these stories were passed on orally, and not written down. The way that the words flow really sounds as though Hesiod meant for the audience to connect with the epic he was telling to them.
She too bore also the barren Sea, rushing with swollen stream, the Pontos, I mean, without delightsome love; but afterward, having bedded with Sky, she bore deep-eddying Okeanos, Koios and Kreios, Hyperion and Iapetos, 135 Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Tethys.
Hesiod really has a case of the run-on sentences, he needs to fix that if he wants to actually convey his messages to his audience.