Hades is moral compared to the rest of the Greek Gods
- Thread starter killer565
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Who else would you have tending to your eternal soul, if not the one god who minded his damn business (you)!
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- Location
- The Hague
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- He/Him
I mean, sure, he only has kidnapping Persephone to his name, but also why did you make this thread ...?
He is unfairly vilified.
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I don't know that this actually ... matters.
Shanejayell
Yuri Fan without a Pause
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Or at least the thread shouldn't be HERE.
Chat?
Chat?
Alright. I'll see somewhere different.
And even that's debatable because of translations, rewrites and conflicting tales. Like, Enyo, Ares' wife and pretty much the goddess of sacking cities and having your way with te inhabitants gets melded into her sister Eris happened and there was a ton of other stuff going on.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
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This is a cold and very frequently made take. It's not wrong it's just basic.
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Also, the Persephone issue is easily handwaved if an author wants to. Third party accusations of kidnapping and/or rape have been pretty historically commonly levied against "inappropriate" men whose actual sin is the woman's relatives or just the local townsfolk not liking him.
Given that it was Demeter and not Persephone making the big show of anger against Hades it could easily be interpreted as a control freak mother being angry that Persephone ran off with Hades without her permission. And it's not like the Greek gods would be above making false accusations out of spite.
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Quite frankly I'm seeing Good-Guy Hades far more than Bad-Guy Hades these days, and it annoyed me just as much as Devil!Hades does. No, Hades is not 'a Good Guy'. We just have fewer surviving myths about him and there for fewer myths of him being a standard Greek God jerk. IMO, that's where the impression comes from.
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Vyslanté
The self is a prison
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- European Union
Because we're the ones that created them
Nerx
Chikin Noodle
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They must hate their parentsBecause we're the ones that created them
Yeah, it's not hard to be the best behaved in the room when you're sitting next to Zeus.
Where do I make a thread about the Emperor in Warhammer and giving my thoughts on him/
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Well, since he is a fictional character in a work of fiction... I think Fiction Discussion might be a good place.
I just posted a rant about this on my tumblr earlier today, fortuitous!
The answer, is, I think, Values Dissonance. It's difficult to grok for someone raised in a modern democracy that believes that all men are equal, sprung off from a Judeo-Christian culture who's idea of Godhood expects the Divine to be perfect and omnipotent, but the Greek Gods are not, in fact, people with superpowers. They are Gods, higher beings to whom the world and everything in it belongs. Mankind exists entirely at their sufferance, and human civilization exists equally entirely because of their mercy and generosity.
Man exists because the Gods allow it. If a Man or Woman is strong or smart or beautiful or charming, it is because the Gods made him or her that way. If a harvest is successful, it's because the Gods of weather and earth and plants allowed it to be. If a hunt is successful it is because the Gods of hunting and animals allowed it to be. If a sea voyage is successful, it is because the Gods of wind and sea allowed it to be.
The land you live on belongs to the Gods, and you are able to live on it because the Gods allow it. The crops you grow and harvest so you can eat belongs to the Gods, and you are able to grow and harvest it it because the Gods allow it. The wood and metal and stone you gather and mine to build homes and tools from belongs to the Gods, and you are able to gather and mine it because the Gods allow it.
The Gods give Man heroes, to lead and protect them. The Gods give Man oracles, to teach and guide them. The Gods give Man justice, bringing punishments to the wicked and rewards to the righteous. Man has language and farming and animal husbandry and metalworking and music and writing and math and laws and all the things that civilization needs to exist and be worthy of the name because the Gods gave them to Man. The sole exception is fire, which Prometheus gave to us after stealing it from the Gods, and which the Gods then allowed us to keep, even after Prometheus taught us to cheat the Gods.
Man owes the Gods everything. The Gods owe Man nothing. So, yeah, the Gods inflicting terrible and horrific punishments on mortals who break their rules and/or offend them is not, in fact, petty or disproportionate, and is often arguably lenient.
Its a creation of superstitious men.
The Greek Gods are imperfect because we are imperfect. They are not moral, outside of Hades.
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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Hephaestus is a lot more moral than Hades.
And did Artemis ever do anybody wrong? Athena? And the worst Aphrodite did was cheat once. A lot of female gods weren't rapists like their male counterparts.
Contemporary writers of the time( the "time" here being incredibly broad) such as Ovid would disagree. His writing depicted various gods as not only bastards, but extremely idiotic bastards. Something to be dealt with rather than actually respected.
Just because they're powerful and important doesn't make them beyond reproach in everyone of the time's opinion.
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Well, Artemis killed the daughters of that one Queen who talked shit about her mom. And there was the thing with Actaeon. Though as per the schema I proposed, they were both justified.
Athena has what she did to Arachne and Medusa, but I can think of multiple versions where she was justified and maybe one or two each where it was kinda dickish. Though of course those are the ones that get repeated.
Isn't Aphrodite infamous for screwing with people?
Which is a second Values Dissonance, since AIUI, the Ancient Greeks thought of romantic/sexual love as a form of insanity.
Is a Roman writer really "contemporary" in this sense?
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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If we're going to break it up between Roman and Greek are we going to start breaking it up by century and particular region too?
The depiction of those Gods is shared but extremely diverse in a plethora of ways.
I forgot about who messed over Arachne, but didn't remember the others too well. I'd forgotten that Medusa was Athena too.
But yeah, depictions of these gods are going to be so diverse that there's probably a version of just about every story in which they were fairly monstrous or moral by various standards(even modern outside of the rape stories) due the time scale and nature of various cults and the separation inherent in a large ancient society.
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Athena in a lot of stories punished ones such as Medusa. Artemis murdered a man for accidentally seeing her naked (a few stories had him considering raping her, though most say it was just an accident).
Most of the women aren't as terrible as the males.
Fair enough.
Boom, what'd I say?
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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Anyone know any times Hephaestus was a bastard?
I don't know all that many stories about him, so the worst I know off the top of my head is the time he was being cheated on so he made a trap that grabbed those involved, then had the family come around to look and laugh before letting them go.
I don't know all that many stories about him, so the worst I know off the top of my head is the time he was being cheated on so he made a trap that grabbed those involved, then had the family come around to look and laugh before letting them go.