So... ...the Ancient Greeks had this coin, see - the tetradrachma. Very high value denomination -, actually, I think it was the highest value of all the silver coins, representing pretty much a week's salary for a hoplite soldier.
On the coin were some letters: 'AOE.' ...Is actually 'Alpha,' Theta,' 'Epsilon;' and that is an abbreviation - according to modern academics - for 'Of the Athenians.'
Now, 'Of the Athenians' is the word in Greek, or at least, supposedly, the word 'Athenaion.'
Whereas really, it means 'the children of Athena.'
We're getting to the 'High Classics' now. What does that mean...? |
Ostensibly, this is impossible, since she is said to be a 'virgin' Goddess and doesn't have any actual 'engendered' children. Yet here we are, having the Athenian people themselves, literally claiming that they are the children of Athena. Look there are so many word puns going here in the original Greek, that it is pointless me going through them all because half of them would only be seen by actual ethnic Greeks themselves, and whereas 'academics' and 'scholars' continuously insist on affecting dubiousness over these punning claims. Waste of time enumerating them all. Like our friend who ran to Wiki to check 'Alcibiades' and instantly came up with the rude stuff, having totally abstained, himself, from just plain reading the actual source text and seeing about that last section in there... ...like that kind of thing, stating the puns here would have people rushing straightaway to 'check' on Wikipedia and gainsay anything that was just said.
Waste... of... time.
So okay but put my 'attitude' aside for one minute, and let's go to this matter of 'why somewhat slanderous?'
Hey hey hey. But now look here!
We have had over two thousand years of people talking about this, no one has ever told you what I am about to...
Remember, we have to entertain the 'short-cut haired' girls, now, right... |
; )
And believe me, beforehand posting this I had to do a little, well, not so much 'proseuchomai' at the Temenos - in fact in this case I dared not even to 'pour out a libation' (and you will shortly see why; casting something onto the ground!), and I prefer the Latin word 'precaria' because -, Jesus!
This thing is precarious. You can't mess with these for real gods. They can take exception.
I don't wish to be seen in even the slightest way, to be promoting any kind of slander, but nor telling false stories either just to extricate something, some 'delicate matter.'
Some delicate matter...
Underscoring therefore, that I am simply for the purpose of explaining properly, recounting the (false) myth about it first: Hermes formed a strong desire for Athena, and as he pursued her, he 'spilled his seed onto the ground.' The slanderers don't even say that - they say he ejaculated, either deliberately onto her lap, or she pushed him away and at the precise moment... ...on her lap whereupon she slung it off onto the ground.
...From which these 'pebbles' came alive; aka the Athenian indigenous people, albeit prior to when the place was even actually called 'Athens.'
For reasons which go well beyond the most obvious one, this 'wooden phallus' then, was symbolic of the event.
And the pebble 'Herms' symbolized the people who 'sprang from the stony ground,' but then also, their official Divine claim to the land where they were 'born.'
The 'High Classics' are what is in some of the Classics, that is really, stupendously involved. |
But there is a kind of a problem with this. And it is this - the Athenians, by adopting these symbols, literally are confronting Athena openly to her face, that she didn't bear them as her actual bodily children (even though, sure, Hermes was forcing himself on her), and they are reminding her of this by calling themselves 'of Athena.' I mean, ostensibly, they are clearly 'of Hermes and the ground' and not 'of Athena' at all.
Some ignorant but well-meaning people think still now, or 'thought' back then, that they, the Athenians, as ordinary humans, sided with her against the bad actions of Hermes, and so that is how come they call themselves after her even though she didn't bear them. Or, that additionally to that first reason, the 'Athenians' were attracted to her and not to their real father Hermes... Theoretically then, in this perspective, she has no actual 'physical' part of them at all though. And the children of Hermes are openly, again, just as Hermes had, declaring their attraction to her.
But now we arrive at the next most obvious problem with that - she NEVER not even for one single second, repudiates them in anyway, always siding with them, and aiding them at every turn, even doing so sometimes surreptitiously behind the backs of all the other gods.
The slander comes in from this fact:
It is not possible for a god to do wrong.
So, we cannot and we must not, say that Hermes was setting about to, or was in the interdicted act of, raping the Goddess.
This is what happened - nay, is happening:
Hermes found himself attracted to the Goddess of Wisdom, and, he moved on her all right, and she did not repel him (don't strike me blind, You-Know-Who!), instead she set out her terms to him.
Thus, the pebble people are not completed people; they are 'embryonic.'
And, fulfilling her terms - following the edicts of Wisdom, as Solomon says, and David actually did - leads a human of a certain kind, to the Olympian Family. And what does that mean - it means you become one of the Olympian tribe, an immortal.
And what did Jesus say?
He said this: 'You know not David. David is not dead for God is not God of the Dead but of the Living,' and in this He explicitly said that David was alive, when all 'knew' that David had been dead for a thousand years.
Strauss's 'Der Rosenkavalier:' (Elina Garanca as Octavian).