The average modern woman is always a mistress and never a particular man's wife. Men who marry become husbands but there is no band which ties a woman, making her a wife. The potential bands of the heart are not formed in her youth. And those of the marriage have already disappeared. And it's foolish to not treat a woman in accord with her nature. The particular destructiveness for some lies in the words - Those who believe that words are about expressing truth are at a disadvantage because calling someone a wife does not make her into one.
I don't remember who said that but "Words were invented to lie."
Its not just about inculcating in the girl from the young age, but a sensibility of a "threshold" between domus-tic and pub-lic, in the very architectural and cultural sentiment of a "home" is fading today.
Its only with the notion of the threshold, of the 'liminality', the 'veiling' of the bride, it made sense to speak of a "Wife".
Quote :
"Some ancient Roman authors made it clear that a wedding is the union of two people, implying that they are equals, and described it with the verb iungere, meaning “to join.” Fittingly, this verb can also be used to describe the yoking of animals, and it may be that at one time Romans thought of a wedding as yoking together two people to “pull together through life,” as a team of oxen does.1 It is of importance that every literary description of this joining in marriage was slightly different. Sometimes a woman was joined to a man by a third party. Sometimes the couple was merely said to be joined. Moreover, we often cannot know by the author’s use of iungere or its compounds whether the bride and groom were at the wedding symbolically joined or were physically joined (by standing next to one another, by the clasping of hands, or even by sexual intercourse, as some suggested).
But as often as a wedding was identified as a union, it was also described with terms that identified individual actions of the bride and groom; to speak of an individual’s wedding was to identify that person’s gender. When a woman married, she nubere viro – she literally “put on a veil for a husband.” When a man married, he was said to ducere uxorem, or to “lead a wife.” So the most basic events of a Roman wedding, the sine quibus non, appear to be veiling and leading. The Romans named their wedding ceremony nuptiae, formed from the verb nubere (“to veil oneself”), which leads us to imagine that the wedding – perhaps in its earliest form – was more of a concern to the bride than to the groom.
... Lucan, too, described the flammeum as luteum and said that the veil is meant to shield the bride’s pudor, and here we ask whether Lucan is implying that the veil was reddish, to best conceal blushing cheeks, or that the veil is thick enough to conceal her face altogether,139 for a scholiast on Juvenal comments that the flammeum was indeed colored blood-red (sanguineum) to hide the blushes (rubor) of the bride.
If the veil was red, it may have symbolized the fire the bride would tend or even marked the bride as a sacrifice (because it was the color of blood).
Romans connected Vesta directly to liminality and placed her at the wedding..." [Karen Hersch, The Roman Wedding]
Quote :
"In madness and what seems to be a brief spasm of madness, violent rage (cf. Horace's ira furor brevis est, and the use of furo, furor, etc.), when the head was thus 'on fire', the normal rational consciousness, whose seat is the chest, is no longer in control. The man appears to be 'possessed', dominated by some other spirit, and might well seem to be dominated by that potent other spirit in him, dissociated from normal consciousness, the spirit in the head, more particularly in the brain (cerebrum), the genius. Thus we may understand not only references to the head as what was concerned in madness but also the use of cerebrum, cerebrosus and cerritus in reference to one who is furious or mad. He who was frantic, 'possessed', was cerritus or cerebrosus. These two words can scarcely be dissociated from each other; or cerebrosus from cerebrum; or cerritus from cerus, kerus (equivalent in meaning to genius) and the adjective kerriios applied to generative powers on the tablet of Agnone. It fits our interpretation of the rubbing of the forehead, when blushing, as a propitiation of the genius that the conscious self was afraid of the anger of the genius. Belief that the deity to whom one belonged, the genius or iuno, was in the brain and took cognisance of what the conscious self said or did may explain the custom or customs described by Pliny in two passages, in one of which he says that to escape retribution for one's words one asked divine pardon by touching the mouth with a finger and then applying the finger to the head behind the right ear and in the other that to 'propitiate disquietude of mind' people applied saliva with a finger to the head behind the ear. It fits an original attribution of fury to the genius. There is frenzy, the marrow is consumed and the normal consciousness, the mind whose seat is the organs of the chest, is dethroned. Other passages also may now be better understood; of frenzy as a becoming active, a burning and, as it were, eruption of the same.
Explicitly of sexual excitement, the furor of love, Catullus says cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas; while Virgil in the third Georgic says that all men and birds and beasts
infurias ignemque ruunt: amor omnibus idem.
For him explicitly this sexual fire of the marrow expresses itself in fury. Unwarlike deer become fierce. Man himself when thus possessed, with his marrow burning, is mad: Propertius refers to love as 'fire in the bones' (in ossibus ignes) which when unsatisfied might be assuaged by wine entering through the temples, i.e. to the cerebro-spinal marrow: Bacche, tuis perfervida tempora donisjaccersitus erit somnus in ossa mea.
With the same breath he speaks of the god Love as haunting his breast and asks 'what pleasure he can find living in dry marrows' (such as the poet's had now become).
The veiling of the head was probably for the benefit of the genius or iuno in the head. It is this that is primarily concerned in marriage. We can now better understand why the veil had so important a part in the ceremony (nubere, conubium, etc.), why it was flame-coloured and called flammeum, not just to hide a blush, as has been suggested, but to suit or perhaps rather to induce the appropriate state of the generative soul. Thus too the bridal torch." [Onians, The Origins of European Thought]
Quote :
"The anakaluptea ria, Pherekydes says, has its origin in the marriage of Zas (= Zeus) to Chthonia. This is preceded by the creation of his grand oikos, consisting of houses and possessions. On the third day, Zas weaves the whole world into a great mantle, pharos. There follows a lacuna, after which we find Zas offering this mantle to Chthonia and asking her to unite with him. Accepting the mantle, she makes her reply, but at this point the text breaks off.
The symbolic import of the mantle can hardly be overplayed. The robe appears indirectly in another fragment of Pherekydes, where we learn that "Zas and Khronos existed always, and Chthonia; but Chthonia acquired the name Ge (Earth), since Zas gives the earth to her as a gift of honour (geras)'' (frag. 14 Schibli; translation Freeman 1948, modified). As Schibli notes, The geras is the embroidered earthrobe, the gift of honour and wedding present for the bride of Zas. . . . The bestowal of the robe upon Chthonia signifies not only a bridal gift but also an official act of investiture by which she becomes Ge.
In the symbolic function of the mantle in the wedding of Zas and Chthonia, we have an explanation of the role of the nuptial mantle in visual representations of the wedding and the wife. This is the first of a series of correspondences between the foundation legend of the anakaluptea ria and its earthly performance. Zas's bride is Chthonia, "she who is beneath the earth''. Like the word enguea, her name evokes the image of the bride in subterranean confinement, from which she emerges on the day she meets her husband. Chthonia undergoes a transformation. The turning point is her acceptance of the mantle, when the groom addresses her for the first time. With the great mantle (pharos), she receives the earth as her domain and becomes Earth herself. The mortal bride's transformation into fertile ground is stated in the classic marriage formula that casts her in the shape of arable land: "I give you this woman for the sowing of legitimate children.'' The explanatory legend for the anakaluptea ria thus contains the blueprint of the symbolic structure of the wedding, The "uncovering'' that gives the day its name refers primarily, to the emergence of the bride into sight, from figurative seclusion in enguea. It is likely that the bride wore the nuptial mantle as she emerged from her chamber, at once revealed and veiled. Poised in the bridal gesture, she exposed her face to the groom, shielding it, at the same time, from the other men present." [Dodd/Farone, Initiation in Ancient greek Rituals]
Quote :
"The poetic force of the metaphor of the bride as buried treasure informs the phase of the marriage ritual. An important phase of the gamos ("wedding'') was the anakaluptea ria, which is mentioned for the first time in a fragment of the cosmogony of Pherekydes of Syros, which explain that, on that occasion, the bride was "uncovered''. The idea took shape long ago that the play of concealment and revelation that the word implies was acted out through a formal unveiling of the bride. There is now general agreement that the term was "used for both the ceremonial unveiling of the bride before the bridegroom and also for the gifts given by the groom to the bride immediately following this unveiling,'' but one should note that anakaluptea ria never means an act of unveiling. The term was used to designate the day on which the bride was "uncovered'', or "unveiled'', for the groom to see, and also for the gifts she received on that day from the groom, relatives, and friends The singular anakaluptea rion signified the moment when the bride was brought out, on the third day, as well as a gift given on that occasion. The bride was uncovered at the wedding feast for the husband and guests to see. Since that was the moment in which she first became visible, the bride's uncovering must have taken place before the couple's voyage to the husband's house, on foot or by wagon.
Evidence of the importance of the bride's mantle is not limited to vase-paintings. From the sanctuary of Persephone at Locri come series of votive terracotta plaques decorated with subjects related to the marriage of Persephone and Hades. These include one series depicting a cortege bringing the mantle, which lays folded upon a tray, and a deep cup. The mantle is at center stage on the metope from the temple of Hera at Selinus, which represents a marriage of divinities, probably Zeus and Hera. The god, seated, grasps the bride's wrist in the traditional gesture of marriage. She stands before him, framed by the great mantle. The display of the mantle characterizes Hera among the gods on the East frieze of the Parthenon, advertising the fact that she is the "lawfully wedded wife'' (kouridiea alochos) of Zeus. Does this gesture signify the ritual unveiling at the anakaluptearia? Twice in literary imagery the figure indeed marks the moment at which the bride meets the groom. In a fragment of Euphorion, the city of Thebes is said to be the anakaluptea rion (here: "wedding gift'') of Zeus to Persephone, "when she was about to see her husband for the first time, turning aside the cover of her nuptial mantle.'' Centuries later, Philostratus describes a painting of Pelops and his bride Hippodamia in the chariot, "she arrayed in nuptial attire, uncovering her cheek, now that she has won the right to a husband'' (Imagines 1.17.3)." [Dodd/Farone, Initiation in Ancient greek Rituals]
Quote :
"The abduction of Kore by Hades signified the change from parthenos to gyne. Kore as parthenos and the myth about her abduction by Hades and temporary return to the earth were a mythological symbol for the young maid who was going to get married. The change of status, from being a daughter living with her mother to being the wife of Hades, is connected in myth with the violent act of abduction. Moreover, the connection of this myth with a cult containing elements of marriage initiation was all the more appropriate in a Spartan context, where marriage by capture was practised, at least in a symbolic way in later times. The abduction is a turning point in the life of Kore and a point of no return for her identity as a parthenos and daughter. When she returns to earth it is as Persephone, the wife and queen of Hades. The myth has no cyclical pattern, as Burkert has remarked; it is a myth about an irrevocable change. The temporary period in the underworld also points to an initiatory pattern; the connection to earth and the underworld are almost universal symbols, expressing a pattern of death and rebirth associated with initiation ceremonies. The structure of the Hyakinthia, with its change between two basically opposed parts, corresponds to the sudden change in the life of the parthenoi involved in the cult. In sum, the presence of the triad Demeter- Kore-Hades on the reliefs on the altar should be interpreted as the mythological correlative to the female initiation during the Hyakinthia." [Pettersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta]
Looks to me cuck-ish. And I don't mean that just as a plain 'it's lame' insult, I mean the psychology of a cuck. This is the symbolic act of wearing a chastity belt and having given the key to his wife which means that man will likely get cucked eventually, by his wife.
OhFortunae
Gender : Posts : 2311 Join date : 2013-10-26 Age : 30 Location : Land of Dance and Song
Looks kinda desperate and dependend, a man who would have no other options anyway.
_________________ 1. "Youth, oh, youth! | of whom then, youth, art thou born? Say whose son thou art, Who in Fafnir's blood | thy bright blade reddened, And struck thy sword to my heart."
2. "The Noble Hart | my name, and I go A motherless man abroad; Father I had not, | as others have, And lonely ever I live."
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
I would consider him uninterested in every other female. Why he is, or made to be so, is up for speculation, and I would have to meet him and observe him to decide.
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Last edited by Satyr on Wed Feb 17, 2016 9:39 am; edited 1 time in total
Impulso Oscuro
Gender : Posts : 796 Join date : 2013-12-10 Age : 33 Location : Praxis
A real man would not wear such a thing, for the same reason you shouldn't need to say "i love you". It is something to be shown through action, not words.
_________________ Once more, with knowing.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but the Noble shall take it.
Slaughtz
Gender : Posts : 2593 Join date : 2012-04-28 Age : 33 Location : A stone.
Wife, as husband, is a soial construct that comes with its stereotypes. To say he loves his wife, announcing it to the whole world, reeks of insecurity - of being pussy whipped in USA. Certainly suspicious. And who but Americanized people or politically commentating jokers would wear a shirt announcing such a thing? There is always a possibility that there'd be no issue, of course. However, if a man truly loves someone, I don't think he's going to cheapen it by putting it on a shirt and announcing it to all, unless he's a real airhead or indifferent. Being exhibitionists about your adoration for each other is dangerous, volunteering information to and causing resentment in others. All information has a value. The average male would probably interpret it as indifference, projecting their own fear - since they act on the worst possibility instead. In that way, it could work as a statement to others to "back off" his wife, or else.
OhFortunae
Gender : Posts : 2311 Join date : 2013-10-26 Age : 30 Location : Land of Dance and Song
Or he thinks he get attention from women on birthday parties by remarking how sweet he is. The only way.
_________________ 1. "Youth, oh, youth! | of whom then, youth, art thou born? Say whose son thou art, Who in Fafnir's blood | thy bright blade reddened, And struck thy sword to my heart."
2. "The Noble Hart | my name, and I go A motherless man abroad; Father I had not, | as others have, And lonely ever I live."
perpetualburn
Gender : Posts : 955 Join date : 2013-01-04 Location : MA
Would Dionysus get down on one knee before Ariadne?
_________________ And here we always meet, at the station of our heart / Looking at each other as if we were in a dream /Seeing for the first time different eyes so supreme / That bright flames burst into vision, keeping us apart.
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
Would Dionysus get down on one knee before Ariadne?
Dionysos brought a whole loud bacchanal to make her his own, or did he just bring along a bacchanal and she just became his? In N.'s poem though, he's a Seizer.
A man can be crazy in love and can celebrate it without the purpose of necessarily showing it off to the world or how he's perceived by them. He can be in his own world, and in this world. Someone happy.
Maybe he would do that to impress upon his kids, the idea/l of it.
Maybe he's an unmarried romantic and in love with the idea/l of it, and cant wait..
Would Dionysus get down on one knee before Ariadne?
Dionysos brought a whole loud bacchanal to make her his own, or did he just bring along a bacchanal and she just became his? In N.'s poem though, he's a Seizer.
A man can be crazy in love and can celebrate it without the purpose of necessarily showing it off to the world or how he's perceived by them. He can be in his own world, and in this world. Someone happy.
Maybe he would do that to impress upon his kids, the idea/l of it. .
Is the getting down on one knee Christian in origin though? Leaving the gods aside, how did the Ancient Greeks actually propose? (apple throwing?). Would they consider the gesture of getting down on one knee even romantic? Is there any evidence for it (in art/sculpture)?
_________________ And here we always meet, at the station of our heart / Looking at each other as if we were in a dream /Seeing for the first time different eyes so supreme / That bright flames burst into vision, keeping us apart.
Hrodeberto
Gender : Posts : 1318 Join date : 2014-07-14 Age : 37 Location : Spaces
Did they not marry off their daughters, had the potential groom not to ask the father permission first and discuss with the daughter.. How it went in Germanic countries would be interesting too.
_________________ 1. "Youth, oh, youth! | of whom then, youth, art thou born? Say whose son thou art, Who in Fafnir's blood | thy bright blade reddened, And struck thy sword to my heart."
2. "The Noble Hart | my name, and I go A motherless man abroad; Father I had not, | as others have, And lonely ever I live."
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
Is the getting down on one knee Christian in origin though?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is J.-Xt in origin, whereas Alexandrianism differentiated it to the lowest rank: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. See also the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Full prostration is recorded in I.E culture, but not kneeling, and as such wrt. proposing, that I know of.
Quote :
"When Chaucer resorts to Petrarch to provide an extended first song in which Troilus analyzes his feelings on first falling in love, this conforms with a larger pattern in Chaucer’s accounts of lovers, as does his sorrowful realization that his lady does not hear his complaints. “Kan he wel speke of love?” asks Criseyde (II.503), and the protracted early sequences in which a humbled Troilus comes to confess his love and compose letters to his lady (guided in this, unlike in Filostrato, by Pandarus) is part of the way Chaucer’s poem turns on questions of love in a manner of speaking. Part of that manner lies in the way that love seems indivisible from its encodement in an idiom and role play of service, whereby the lover is cast as the lady’s servant or feudal vassal. Troilus is only one of various heroes of classical antiquity reinvented by Chaucer as medieval servants of love: Theseus kneels to Ariadne and proffers service until death as a page in her court (LGW, 2028, 2060–5), just as Arcite in the Knight’s Tale serves in disguise as a page to Emelye, “my lady, whom I love and serve, / And evere shal til that myn herte sterve” (I(A), 1143–4).
Such are the conventions aped in Absolom’s parodic courtship of Alisoun in the Miller’s Tale (“And swoor he wolde been hir owene page,” I(A), 3376), not least because the role of servant can be adopted more for the lover’s sake, even in spite of the lady’s wishes: Chaucer’s short poem A Complaint to his Lady laments “That ye ne shul me from your servyce dryve / That I ne wil ay . . . Serve yow trewly” (91–3). By the same token, the functional idiom allows love to be dissembled by the insincere, as in the feigned observances of courtship-as-service recollected by the betrayed falcon in the Squire’s Tale (V(F), 514–31). In contrast, where the role is played with sincerity, the lover constructs the lady as wielding power of life or death over him: the royal tercel in the Parliament of Fowls will always serve the formel, “Do what hire lest, to do me lyve or sterve” (420), and Criseyde has a moment of private exultation to herself “For who is that ne wolde hire glorifie, / To mowen swich a knyght don lyve or dye?” (II.1593–4). Against the sheer conventionality of how relations between lover and lady are modeled on service, a ceremonious formality and deliberateness to the role play of love as service makes Troilus stand out in Chaucer’s work. Both Troilus’s self- abasement as Criseyde’s vassal in his private thoughts (I.432–4), and his speech proffering his service when Criseyde visits his sickbed (III.127–47), reinvest convention with personal commitment, expressing that reversal of outward social power and position which his love gives his lady in their private emotional lives.
It is a convention that the lover views himself as a petitioner seeking for the “mercy” of his lady, a compassion that ultimately but always implicitly represents her concession of herself sexually. The Man in Black in the Book of the Duchess is reduced to a single blurted first entreaty to his lady for mercy (“I durste nat ones loke hir on, / For wit, maner, and al was goon. / I seyde ‘Mercy!’ and no more!” 1217–19), just as Troilus at his first meeting with his lady “With look down cast and humble iyolden chere, / Lo, the alderfirste word that hym asterte / Was, twyes, ‘Mercy, mercy, swete herte!’ ” (III.96–8 ). Indeed, the plea for mercy seems the conventional cli- max to a lover’s first petition, whether it is Aurelius ending his speech to Dorigen with “Have mercy, sweete . . .” (V(F), 978), the false Theseus insincerely closing his petition to Ariadne with “And mercy, lady! I can nat elles seye!” (LGW, 2073), or Damyan’s blurted “Mercy!...” in the Merchant’s Tale (IV(E), 1942). The tragic pathos of the Knight’s Tale—where any prior interchange between the lovers has been disallowed—plays on this convention by making the dying Arcite’s first and last words just such an entreaty for mercy: “His laste word was ‘Mercy, Emelye!’ ” (I(A), 2808). Such petitioning for mercy is part of the lover’s self-vassalizing idiolect, positioning himself in relation to the lady in terms that profess an imbalance in emotional if not social power between them.
In the Parliament the “royal tersel” speaks with “humble cheere” and bowed head “Unto my soverayn lady, and not my fere . . . / Besekynge hire of merci and of grace, / As she that is my lady sovereyne” (414–22), just as Prince Troilus declares himself (at least in his private imaginative world) to be the feudal “man” and servant of Criseyde. The lover’s plea for mercy is to the lady’s better nature, for his undeservingness can have no claim to compassion than that he loves her best, as the tercel or Troilus admit, and that he is in great pain. Arveragus won Dorigen’s hand when she “Hath swich a pitee caught of his penaunce” (V(F), 740), and Aurelius begs Dorigen, “Madame, reweth upon my peynes smerte” (974), while Aeneas deceives Dido into pitying him (“And as a fals lovere so wel can pleyne, / That sely Dido rewede on his peyne,” LGW, 1236–7). Such pleas for mercy become a measure of the lover’s power of pleading, and hence power more generally.
Behind courtly supplication for the lady’s mercy lies Christian under- standing of the Redemption, in which the merciful love exemplified in Christ transcends what may be deserved in strict justice. “Here may men seen that mercy passeth right!” (III.1282)…
Compassion for the lover sick with love as an illness is another conven- tion, and one where Chaucer recurrently conforms his lovers to the stereotype. Lovesickness is customarily taken seriously as a possibly fatal condition, within a courtly convention whereby the intensity of love’s experience and pain are likened to dying: in the Knight’s Tale Arcite exclaims, “The fresshe beautee sleeth me sodeynly / Of hire” (I(A), 1118–19); Mars declares, “For this day in her servise shal I dye” (Complaint of Mars, 189)… As an escape from dying for love, the religious language of grace and salvation implies a heaven of coming fulfillment, which the lady with her quasi-divine powers may grant or withhold.
As an escape from dying for love, the religious language of grace and salvation implies a heaven of coming fulfillment, which the lady with her quasi-divine powers may grant or withhold. it is certainly possible to cite other fourteenth-century English voices who contest such language from an otherworldly perspective, as Richard Rolle does in his Incendium Amoris:
"There is nothing more dangerous, more degrading, more disgusting than that a man should exhaust his mind in love for a woman, and pant after her as if she were his “blessed rest” [beatam requiem]. And after it is all over, small wonder that he begins to degenerate, because before it had happened he had striven for this “supreme blessedness” [summe beatitudine] with such great anguish. (ch. 24)"
Given that Troilus is a Trojan pagan, without access to Christian revelation, yet also a fundamentally virtuous pagan (or he could scarcely merit his final apotheosis), his idiom may rather be interpreted as exploiting contemporary religious language to express the sense of humility that Troilus feels before love and his own experience. His sense both of gratitude and undeservingness is something akin to a reverence that may aptly be understood in terms of grace." [Helen Cooney, Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages]
The very idea of courtly civility was to avoid the ancient custom of bridal abduction or paternal suitorship. Upon kneeling, a man is at the level of a woman's womb; rebirth or resurrection related initiation 'mysteries' may be what it originally signified. A man here expects to be 'raised' because man as such is 'fallen'. Xt. vows ask, do you 'take' him/her as your husband/wife; I.E. wedding rituals revolve around 'give'…
Would they consider the gesture of getting down on one knee even romantic? Is there any evidence for it (in art/sculpture)?
Not that I know of, but there is evidence to the contrary, that they found it distasteful.
Quote :
"And so they said that kneeling was unworthy of a free man, unsuitable for the culture of Greece, something the barbarians went in for. Plutarch and Theophrastus regarded kneeling as an expression of superstition.
Aristotle called it a barbaric form of behavior (cf. Rhetoric 1361 a 36)."
"In addition to the mourning gestures that represent the violence and disorder of death, there was another category of gesture that was gendered female: kneeling in prayer. A Greek, when praying, normally would stand upright with both hands raised above the head, palms facing upward and forward (cheiras anateinein). Indeed, they thought that all human beings did so: “All human beings stretch out hands to the sky when making prayers” (Aristotle, De mundo 400a 16-17; see Plut. Phil. and Tit. 2-3; Cole: 114).5 Plato asserts that if you preferred to raise only one hand in prayer, you would raise the right to pray to the Olympians and the left to pray to the chthonians (Leg. 717a). However, there is both monumental and literary evidence that in some situations, certain Greeks knelt in prayer, sometimes on their own behalf, most often on behalf of others (van Straten 1974: 177 n. 142). Van Straten shows that most, if not all, of kneeling worshippers are female, praying to deities whom they thought more closely concerned with human affairs – divinities considered as sôtêres (saviors) and epêkooi (listeners, those who give heed) such as Zeus, Demeter, Artemis, Herakles, and Asklepios. Van Straten argues that kneeling in close proximity to healing deities in the Classical period expresses not just submission and supplication but also a feeling of emotional closeness between these worshippers and gods. “In sickness, when the personal need for the gods is felt most poignantly, their nearness may be experienced most clearly” (1993: 258).
Representations of this physical proximity and emotional closeness disappear in the Hellenistic period in which the relationship between humans and gods becomes more vertical, like that between an absolute monarch and subjects. Still, the number of reliefs with kneeling worshippers is small. Out of several hundred surviving Classical Attic votive reliefs, only twenty or so depict kneeling worshippers at all, and none shows a male kneeling before a god (van Straten 1974).6 The rarity of this gesture among males and its association with females is underscored by a vase-painting depicting Ajax kneeling and praying just before his suicide. This great hero, having been driven mad by Athena and in that effeminized state of having lost control of himself, committed acts that destroyed both his glory and his masculinity (Pulleyn: 190). In literature, the evidence is similar. In Greek tragedy, only women kneel, whereas in Greek comedy, only slaves do. Both kneel only when the situation is dire (Aesch. Sept. 111; Eur. Alc. 162–64; Aristophanes Eq. 30-31; see Cole, 116-17).
There are, however, a few references in literature to kneeling men. The first appears in Xenophon’s Anabasis. Born in 430 BCE, Xenophon was an Athenian general who wrote this account of rescuing an army of Greek mercenaries in Asia Minor. At the sudden sound of a sneeze, a literally ominous occurrence, his entire army fell to their knees in fright to supplicate Zeus Soter (3.2.9). Given Telemachos’ portentous sneeze in Book 19 of the Odyssey, foretelling the imminent slaughter of the suitors, they were probably wise to do so! The second mention of a man kneeling in worship is Theophrastus’ account of the superstitious man (deisidaimon, Char. 16.5). Excessively anxious about ritual observance, he behaves more like a woman than a man, to judge by Polybios, who describes a kneeling man (gonupetôn) as acting like a woman (gunaikisdomenos, 3.2.15.7-8 ).
Kneeling seems to be associated with hiketeia, or supplication, “in general reserved for urgent prayers . . . addressed to deities that were close to the common people, and who could be trusted not to stand aloof, but to hear their invocations and come to their aid” (van Straten 1974: 184). Kneeling is a ritual act of last resort, pursued by those in victim positions, who fall down on their knees and grasp a divinity’s statue, if one is available (Alroth: 12-21). Kneeling is above all a sign of submission, appropriate for girls and women, inappropriate in most cases for free men. Women, children, slaves and foreigners supplicate in abundance in Greek culture; “no other religious practice . . . has so humble as well as diverse a cast of participants” (Naiden: 19)."
Is there a "I hate desperate outspoken declaratives" one? :p
Apart from the fixation of an ideal, is there anything or anyone of actual reality enough that their service demands a reverence in front of which to kneel?
_________________ Life has a twisted sense of humour, doesn't it. . . .
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Hrodeberto
Gender : Posts : 1318 Join date : 2014-07-14 Age : 37 Location : Spaces
"Megilla’s shaved head recalls the Spartan marriage ritual, as recorded by Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus 15.5) in which the bride’s hair was cut very short and she was dressed in men’s clothing and then laid in the dark on a bed waiting to be “captured” by her husband." [Kate Gilhuly: Faraone, Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World]
"The Krevatia which is also known as the Bed Making Ceremony is a Greek wedding tradition which blesses the marital bed and the couples fertility.
The marital mattress or a krevati in Greek, is decorated for the wedding and money is thrown on it by the relatives of the new couple as a gift for their new beginning and common life. The bed making ceremony is usually a done a couple of days before the wedding and sometimes it includes a tradition known as the flipping of the baby. A baby is placed on the wedding bed as a symbol of fertility and blessing, a girl if the couple wants their first baby to be a girl, or a baby boy."
The blessing of the first night bed under a cosmic mantle of flowers/stars, is a nuptial rite among all I.E. cultures. The importance of it as 'true bedrock' or sworn oath upon the oak-bed is also recorded in the Odyssey, as Penelope's test to verify Odysseus' identity, his memory, etc.
The modern explanation does not go into what the spread on the bed really is. It is was originally a rite where threads in criss-cross were inter-woven together, symbolic of joining the new bride into the family. All the weaving women of the household or community put in their parts to make a joint mantle. The inter-twining that formed a fabric was seen as the basis/support/foundation for a new life… growing into more elaborate patterns. Orthogonality as the first sacrificial foundation, of raising a thread by "putting down" one thread… and continuing, a pivot around which things turn, multiply, expand. Typically, now the rite has been forgotten, and the bed itself comes to be blessed...
