Legends of Heroes

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Legends of Heroes

• Wu Shiyu
• http//sla.sjtu.edu.cn/bbs

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Jason and the Golden Fleece)

• tale told for 3000 years.

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• Athamas,king in Boeotia
• first wife, cloud goddess Nephele
• two children, Phrixus and Helle
• His second wife Ino
• Jealous,plotted their deaths
• Sacrificing Phrixus end drought.
• Nephele, winged ram

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• Helle fell, drowned, Hellespont.
• ram spoke,Phrixus, heart, and took Colchis.
• Phrixus sacrificed, Poseidon, settled in the
  house of Aietes
• the Golden Fleece on an oak in a grove sacred to
  Ares,
• guarded by a dragon.

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The Golden Fleece
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Photo Hellespont

• Aeson rightful king of Thessaly.
• Pelias, power-hungry, overthrew Aeson
• killing all descendants of Aeson, spared
• Jason saved, women cluster, still-born.
• Alcimede sent, centaur Chiron for education.

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Centaur Chiron
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• Pelias beware of a man with one sandal.
• games in honor of Poseidon
• Jason claimed, lost one sandals, helping an old
  woman
• Iolcus, announced, one sandal
• "To take my throne, which you shall, you must go
  on a quest to find the Golden Fleece."
• Jason accepted the quest.

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• assembled group heroes,
• the Argonauts
• ship, the Argo
• The Argonauts

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the Argo
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• The Isle of Lemnos (races of women)
• Cyzicus (Heracles returned to Labors, Hylas lost)
• Phineas and the Harpies (Harpies,how to pass )
• The Symplegades (the only way to reach Colchis)
• The arrival in Colchis

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The Claim of the Golden Fleece

• Jason arrived in Colchis
• modern Black Sea coast of Georgia
• claim the fleece as his own
• Aietes promised to give, perform three tasks

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• Jason discouraged depression.
• Hera Aphrodite, Medea, fall love.
• Medea aided Jason
• ointment from oxen's flames.
• threw a rock into the crowd
• sprayed a potion, herbs.
• The dragon fell asleep,
• seize the Golden Fleece.
• sailed away with Medea.

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• Medea distracted her father, who chased them as
  they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and
  throwing pieces of his body into the sea
• Aietes stopped to gather them.

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Return Journey

• Zeus, punishment storms at the Argo and blew it
  off course.
• The Argo spoke and seek purification with Circe,
  a nymph living on the island called Aeaea.
• After being cleansed, they continued their
  journey home.

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Return Journey

• Sirens
• Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of
  Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to
  pass the Sirens.
• The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands,
  sang beautiful songs that lured sailors to come
  to them
• crashing of their ship into the islands.
• When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre
  and played music
• more beautiful and louder, drowning out the
  Sirens' bewitching songs.

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• Talos
• The Argo then came to the island of Crete,
• bronze man, Talos.
• hurled huge stones
• Talos one blood vessel
• neck to his ankle,
• by only one bronze nail
• make him immortal by removing the nail
• Talos bled to death.

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Jason returns

• Pelias' daughters
• make father younger pieces, boiling
• pieces cauldron water magical herbs.
• demonstrated with a sheep, a lamb.
• The girls, sliced and diced their father and put
  him in the cauldron.
• Medea did not add the magical herbs
• Pelias dead.
• Pelias' son, drove them into exile

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Treachery of Jason

• the couple settled in Corinth
• Jason engaged to Creusa
• Medea confronted Jason
• all the help, retorted, thank Aphrodite
• Infuriated, revenge, a cursed dress,
• stuck to her body and burned her to death
• father, burned to death, save her.

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• killed the two boys
• fearing that be murdered or enslaved
• already gone Athens
• chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun-god
  Helios.

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• As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea
  forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died
  lonely and unhappy.
• He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo
  when it fell on him, killing him instantly.
• The manner of his death was due to the deities
  cursing him for breaking his promise to Medea.

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• never achieved his true goalto become king of
  the land of Iolcus
• one of violence and tragedy as well as
  adventure

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Heracles The Greatest Hero
of all

• The son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Alcmene
• The greatest hero of all
• Zeus tricks Alcmene
• Hera hated Zeuss son
• Babyhood, difficulties

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Heracles' Maturity

• Great strength and courage
• Exceptional or excessive appetites, and power
• Extremes of sexual appetite
• 50 daughters (king Thespios)

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Cleanse of his crime

• Excessive passion, of rage
• The madness by Hera.
• madness, children, wife Megara
• consult the oracle
• Cleanse of his crime

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The twelve labors

• serve his cousin as a slave for 12 years
• perform whatever labors
• Three recognizable groups
• Peloponnesus(6) further away(7-9), Far West
  (10-12)

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The first six labors

• Involves animals
• First labor
• The second labor
• The third labor
• Labor four
• Labor five
• Labor six

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Labor 7-9

• Stranger and more dangerous
• The Seventh Labor (the Cretan bull)
• The Mares of Diomedes
• Girdle of Hippolyta

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Labor 10-12

• Edge of the world
• The Cattle of Geryon
• Apples of the Hesperides
• The Labor of Cerberus

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Side Works

• A warrior, not a king
• A fighter of animals, of monsters
• Role as a pan-Hellenic hero

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Achieve immortality

• Marry Deinira
• Nessos, the cetaur
• His blood
• Burn and eat away his flesh
• Funeral pyre
• burns
• Body dies, psyche

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Interpretation

• 1. Represents the spread of Greek culture, spread
  through colonies
• 2. Representing the humanizing of unknown lands.

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a contradictory character

• First, both admirable and horrifying, both
  powerful and powerless.
• Second, supremely ill-fated, and supremely
  fortunate.
• And thirdly, resists Death, and intentionally
  embraces it.
• both a serious figure and also a comic figure
• both masculine and feminine

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kind of everyman

• see in him both our best and worst potential.
• embodying, and thus mediating between, nature and
  culture.
• violent side representing nature.
• His civilizing side representing culture.

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• The Boreads (sons of Boreas, the North Wind) who
  could fly,
• Heracles, Philoctetes,
• Peleus, Telamon, Orpheus,
• Castor and Pollux,
• Atalanta, and Euphemus.

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• First, plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, the
  Khalkotauroi, that he had to yoke himself.
• Then, sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field.
• Overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the
  Golden Fleece.