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108-459: Ceto was also variously called Crataeis (Κράταιις, Krataiis , from κραταιίς "mighty") and Trienus (Τρίενος, Trienos , from τρίενος "within three years"), and was occasionally conflated by scholars with the goddess Hecate (for whom Crataeis and Trienus are also epithets ). This goddess should not be confused with the minor Oceanid also named Ceto, or with various mythological beings referred to as ketos (plural kētē or ketea ); this

216-507: A Great Goddess into historical times, at her unrivalled cult site in Lagina . In particular, there is some evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses (see also Arinna ) based on similar attributes. The monuments to Hecate in Phrygia and Caria are numerous but of late date. If Hecate's cult spread from Anatolia into Greece, then it possibly presented a conflict, as her role

324-508: A laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority ( Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode or he would have been presented with a lyre instead. Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days , but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it

432-499: A 7th-century indication of the survival of cult practices of this general sort, Saint Eligius , in his Sermo warns the sick among his recently converted flock in Flanders against putting "devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads", and, according to Saint Ouen would urge them "No Christian should make or render any devotion to the deities of the trivium, where three roads meet...". Thanks to her association with boundaries and

540-476: A city, keeping an eye on all who entered, and in the road in front of private houses, protecting their inhabitants. This function would appear to have some relationship with the iconographic association of Hecate with keys, and might also relate to her appearance with two torches, which when positioned on either side of a gate or door illuminated the immediate area and allowed visitors to be identified. "In Byzantium small temples in her honour were placed close to

648-418: A deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle ( Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod ( Theogony 116–53) and Homer ( Iliad 14.201, 246). He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in

756-439: A different story of a woman transformed into a polecat: I have heard that the polecat was once a human being. It has also reached my hearing that Gale was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress ( pharmakis ); that she was extremely lascivious, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May

864-462: A foreign origin for the name may be Heqet ( ḥqt ), a frog-headed Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, like Hecate, was also associated with ḥqꜣ , ruler. The word heka in the Egyptian language is also both the word for "magic" and the name of the god of magic and medicine, Heka . Hecate was generally represented as three-formed or triple-bodied, though the earliest known images of

972-411: A fragment of verse: O mistress Hecate, Trioditis With three forms and three faces Propitiated with mullets. In relation to Greek concepts of pollution, Parker observes, The fish that was most commonly banned was the red mullet ( trigle ), which fits neatly into the pattern. It 'delighted in polluted things', and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to

1080-479: A girl's brothers and murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the true culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape. Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus , Musaeus , Hesiod and Homer —in that order. Thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe

1188-413: A goddess who could also refuse to avert the demons, or even drive them on against unfortunate individuals. It was probably her role as guardian of entrances that led to Hecate's identification by the mid fifth century with Enodia , a Thessalian goddess. Enodia's very name ("In-the-Road") suggests that she watched over entrances, for it expresses both the possibility that she stood on the main road into

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1296-532: A hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently. In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days , numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of

1404-529: A just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealized view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for. Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources: Two different—yet early—traditions record

1512-520: A key, or snakes, or accompanied by dogs, and in later periods depicted as three-formed or triple-bodied. She is variously associated with crossroads , night, light, magic , protection from witchcraft , drugs, and the Moon . Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod 's Theogony in the 8th century BCE as a goddess of great honour with domains in sky, earth, and sea. She had popular followings amongst

1620-447: A lunar aspect of Hecate. Fowler also noted that the pairing (i. e. Helios and Perse) made sense given Hecate's association with the Moon. Mooney however notes that when it comes to the nymph Perse herself, there's no evidence of her actually being a moon goddess on her own right. Worship of Hecate existed alongside other deities in major public shrines and temples in antiquity, and she had

1728-465: A number of her cult titles: Apotropaia (that turns away/protects); Enodia (on the way); Propulaia / Propylaia (before the gate); Triodia / Trioditis (who frequents crossroads ); Klêidouchos (holding the keys), etc. As a goddess expected to avert harmful or destructive spirits from the house or city over which she stood guard and to protect the individual as she or he passed through dangerous liminal places, Hecate would naturally become known as

1836-463: A proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge , for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse . He had "a passion for systematizing and explaining things". Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates

1944-522: A significant role as household deity. Shrines to Hecate were often placed at doorways to homes, temples, and cities with the belief that it would protect from restless dead and other spirits. Home shrines often took the form of a small Hekataion , a shrine centred on a wood or stone carving of a triple Hecate facing in three directions on three sides of a central pillar. Larger Hekataions, often enclosed within small walled areas, were sometimes placed at public crossroads near important sites – for example, there

2052-509: A third Graiae, as the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys, Dino and Persis respectively. Apollodorus and Hyginus also make Ladon the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, rather than Ceto and Phorcys. The Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius cites Phorcys and Ceto as the parents of the Hesperides , but this assertion is not repeated in other ancient sources. Ceto is possibly the mother of the Nemean lion and

2160-399: A tone of voice that has been described as having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days , where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness through

2268-499: A votive sculpture from Attica of the 3rd century BCE, include additional dancing figures identified as the Charites circling the triple Hecate and her central column. It is possible that the representation of a triple Hecate surrounding a central pillar was originally derived from poles set up at three-way crossroads with masks hung on them, facing in each road direction. In the 1st century CE, Ovid wrote: "Look at Hecate, standing guard at

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2376-615: Is a contested issue in scholarly circles ( see § Dating below ). Epic narrative allowed poets such as Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in Works and Days , as well as some passages in his Theogony , that support inferences made by scholars. The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on

2484-506: Is a general term for "sea monster" in Ancient Greek. Besides Ceto, Gaia (Earth) and Pontus had four other offspring, Nereus , Thaumas , Phorcys and Eurybia . Hesiod 's Theogony lists the children of Ceto and Phorcys as the two Graiae : Pemphredo and Enyo , and the three Gorgons : Sthenno , Euryale , and Medusa , with their last offspring being an unnamed serpent (later called Ladon , by Apollonius of Rhodes ) who guards

2592-522: Is also associated with Hecate. Antoninus Liberalis used a myth to explain this association: At Thebes Proetus had a daughter Galinthias . This maiden was playmate and companion of Alcmene , daughter of Electryon . As the birth throes for Herakles were pressing on Alcmene, the Moirai (fates) and Eileithyia (birth-goddess), as a favour to Hera, kept Alcmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that

2700-549: Is also the name of one of the Oceanid nymphs , Helios’ wife and Circe's mother in other versions. In one version of Hecate's parentage, she is the daughter of Perses not the son of Crius but the son of Helios, whose mother is the Oceanid Perse. Karl Kerenyi noted the similarity between the names, perhaps denoting a chthonic connection among the two and the goddess Persephone; it is possible that this epithet gives evidence of

2808-490: Is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend ( Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially

2916-529: Is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology , farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy , cosmology , and ancient time-keeping . The dating of Hesiod's life

3024-434: Is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious. Gregory Nagy , on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs ("the destroyer" from πέρθω , pérthō ) and Hēsíodos ("he who emits

3132-535: Is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition. Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions. Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod: In addition to these works,

3240-698: The Argonautica , mentions that Medea was taught by Hecate: "I have mentioned to you before a certain young girl whom Hecate, daughter of Perses, has taught to work in drugs." Hecate was said to favour offerings of garlic , which was closely associated with her cult. She is also sometimes associated with cypress , a tree symbolic of death and the underworld, and hence sacred to a number of chthonic deities. A number of other plants (often poisonous, medicinal and/or psychoactive) are associated with Hecate. These include aconite (also called hecateis ), belladonna , dittany , and mandrake . It has been suggested that

3348-529: The Chaldean Oracles , coinage, and reliefs from Asia Minor. In artwork, she is often portrayed in three statues standing back to back, each with its own special attributes (torch, keys, daggers, snakes, dogs). The 2nd-century travel writer Pausanias stated that Hecate was first depicted in triplicate by the sculptor Alcamenes in the Greek Classical period of the late 5th century BCE, whose sculpture

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3456-527: The Elizabethan - Jacobean period. Webster's Dictionary of 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name. Evidence suggests that Hecate originated among the Carians of Anatolia , the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus , the father of Mausolus , are attested, and where Hecate remained

3564-489: The Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense. The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus , though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus ( Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and

3672-515: The Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias). Some scholars have detected

3780-556: The Sphinx by her grandson Orthrus . Homer refers to Thoosa , the mother of Polyphemus in the Odyssey , as a daughter of Phorcys, but does not indicate whether Ceto is her mother. Pliny the Elder mentions worship of "storied Ceto" at Joppa (now Jaffa ), in a single reference, immediately after his mention of Andromeda , whom Perseus rescued from a sea-monster. S. Safrai and M. Stern suggest

3888-450: The Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved". Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum ( Trier ), from the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic is signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod. The Roman bronze bust,

3996-479: The Thessalian goddess Enodia (meaning "traveller"), who travelled the earth with a retinue of ghosts and was depicted on coinage wearing a leafy crown and holding torches, iconography strongly associated with Hecate. By the 1st century CE, Hecate's chthonic and nocturnal character had led to her transformation into a goddess heavily associated with witchcraft, witches, magic, and sorcery. In Lucan 's Pharsalia ,

4104-481: The conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from

4212-448: The epithet of Trivia , an epithet she shares with Diana , each in their roles as protector of travel and of the crossroads (trivia, "three ways"). Hecate was closely identified with Diana and Artemis in the Roman era. Potential Greek source words have been suggested for the goddess's name. The word ἑκών, meaning "willing" (thus, "she who works her will" or similar), may be related to

4320-501: The "Hesiodic corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most : "Hesiod" is the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself. Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles ( Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους , Aspis Hērakleous )

4428-653: The 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn ( ἄγών ), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side. Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus , Epimenides , Mimnermus , Semonides , Tyrtaeus and Archilochus , from which it has been inferred that

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4536-502: The 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death), claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle 's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honour in their agora , next to

4644-569: The 8th century BC. ( Theogony 337–45). Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod ( Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War

4752-546: The Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia , where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them. In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days

4860-595: The Near East .) Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece , which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land. Works and Days may have been influenced by an established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian wisdom literature. This work lays out

4968-502: The Roman period connecting Hecate to the Moon exists. Nevertheless, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter shows Helios and Hecate informing Demeter of Persephone 's abduction, a common theme found in many parts of the world where the Sun and the Moon are questioned concerning events that happen on earth based on their ability to witness everything and implies Hecate's capacity as a moon goddess in

5076-437: The blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep. At Athens, it is said there stood a statue of Hecate Triglathena , to whom the red mullet was offered in sacrifice. After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca, and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to

5184-472: The catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group. However whilst his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of

5292-545: The classical world. Supporters of this etymology suggest that Hecate was originally considered an aspect of Artemis prior to the latter's adoption into the Olympian pantheon. Artemis would have, at that point, become more strongly associated with purity and maidenhood, on the one hand, while her originally darker attributes like her association with magic, the souls of the dead, and the night would have continued to be worshipped separately under her title Hecate. Though often considered

5400-687: The coast of Anatolia , a little south of the island of Lesbos ) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra , "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" ( Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony ( property inherited from one's father or male ancestor ) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon , occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses , who at first seems to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or ‘kings’ but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from

5508-644: The conventional dialect of epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a native Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and one modern scholar refers to his "hobnailed hexameters". His use of language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles . All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. The ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The extent of variation depends on how

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5616-607: The crossroads, one face looking in each direction." Apart from traditional hekataia , Hecate's triplicity is depicted in the vast frieze of the great Pergamon Altar , now in Berlin, wherein she is shown with three bodies, taking part in the battle with the Titans. In the Argolid , near the shrine of the Dioscuri , Pausanias saw the temple of Hecate opposite the sanctuary of Eileithyia ; He reported

5724-404: The definite article associated with digamma, oἱ. Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences from Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days , 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield of Heracles . The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter. Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite

5832-512: The different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days , most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M. L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him." An example: Hateful strife bore painful Toil, Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain, Battles, Combats... The Theogony concerns

5940-497: The dog was sacred to Eileithyia , Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Images of her attended by a dog are also found when she is depicted alongside the god Hermes and the goddess Cybele in reliefs. Although in later times Hecate's dog came to be thought of as a manifestation of restless souls or daemons who accompanied her, its docile appearance and its accompaniment of a Hecate who looks completely friendly in many pieces of ancient art suggests that its original signification

6048-600: The dying fish change. In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent, and horse. Lions are associated with Hecate in early artwork from Asia Minor, as well as later coins and literature, including the Chaldean Oracles . The frog , which was also the symbol of the similarly named Egyptian goddess Heqet , has also become sacred to Hecate in modern pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements. Comparative mythologist Alexander Haggerty Krappe cited that Hecate

6156-745: The earliest known source for the myths of Pandora , Prometheus and the Golden Age . The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis . This cultural crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria . (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox 's Travelling Heroes and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and

6264-512: The evidence is collected and interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for example in the following set of statistics. Hesiod does not observe digamma as often as the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect that Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from the Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained by

6372-505: The fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to compose like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried to compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when it was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a significant difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days , but that is merely due to the fact that the former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it makes frequent use of

6480-500: The farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter. The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women." He was in fact a " misogynist " of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides . He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how

6588-418: The five Ages of Man , as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses ) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in

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6696-481: The frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier. The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus , whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it." Hecate was closely associated with plant lore and the concoction of medicines and poisons . In particular she was thought to give instruction in these closely related arts. Apollonius of Rhodes , in

6804-738: The gates of the city. Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as a deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions." This suggests that Hecate's close association with dogs derived in part from the use of watchdogs, who, particularly at night, raised an alarm when intruders approached. Watchdogs were used extensively by Greeks and Romans. Cult images and altars of Hecate in her triplicate or trimorphic form were placed at three-way crossroads (though they also appeared before private homes and in front of city gates). In what appears to be

6912-475: The goddess are singular. Her earliest known representation is a small terracotta statue found in Athens . An inscription on the statue is a dedication to Hecate, in writing of the style of the 6th century, but it otherwise lacks any other symbols typically associated with the goddess. She is seated on a throne, with a chaplet around her head; the depiction is otherwise relatively generic. Farnell states: "The evidence of

7020-402: The goddess be gracious to me: Fables and their telling I leave to others. Athenaeus of Naucratis , drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens , notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is trimorphos , of a triple form". The Greek word for mullet was trigle and later trigla . He goes on to quote

7128-499: The goddess with a single body, but three faces. In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus , and in the Greek Magical Papyri of Late Antiquity , Hecate is described as having three heads: one dog, one serpent , and one horse. In other representations, her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar. The east frieze of a Hellenistic temple of hers at Lagina shows her helping protect

7236-488: The golden apples. Also according to Hesiod, the half-woman, half-snake Echidna was born to a "she" who was probably meant by Hesiod to be Ceto, (with Phorcys the likely father); however the "she" might instead refer to the Oceanid Callirhoe . The mythographer Pherecydes of Athens (5th century BC) has Echidna as the daughter of Phorcys, without naming a mother. The mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus , each name

7344-400: The holder of the keys to Tartaros . Like Hermes , Hecate takes on the role of guardian not just of roads, but of all journeys, including the journey to the afterlife. In art and myth, she is shown, along with Hermes, guiding Persephone back from the underworld with her torches. By the 5th century BCE, Hecate had come to be strongly associated with ghosts , possibly due to conflation with

7452-486: The hymn. Another work connecting Hecate to Helios possibly as a moon goddess is Sophocles 's lost play The Root Cutters , where Helios is described as Hecate's spear: O Sun our lord and sacred fire, the spear of Hecate of the roads, which she carries as she attends her mistress in the sky This speech from the Root Cutters may or may not be an intentional association of Hecate with the Moon. In Seneca 's Medea ,

7560-408: The image to be the work of Scopas , stating further, "This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon." While Greek anthropomorphic conventions of art generally represented Hecate's triple form as three separate bodies, the iconography of the triple Hecate eventually evolved into representations of

7668-463: The latest possible date for him is about 650 BC. An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC ( Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine , a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in

7776-499: The liminal spaces between worlds, Hecate is also recognized as a chthonic (underworld) goddess. As the holder of the keys that can unlock the gates between realms, she can unlock the gates of death, as described in a 3rd-century BCE poem by Theocritus. In the 1st century CE, Virgil described the entrance to hell as "Hecate's Grove", though he says that Hecate is equally "powerful in Heaven and Hell." The Greek Magical Papyri describe Hecate as

7884-486: The lunar goddesses Diana (the huntress), Luna (the Moon) and Hecate (the underworld) became a ubiquitous feature in depictions of sacred groves, where Hecate/Trivia marked intersections and crossroads along with other liminal deities. The Romans celebrated enthusiastically the multiple identities of Diana as Hecate, Luna and Trivia. From her father Perses, Hecate is often called "Perseis" (meaning "daughter of Perses") which

7992-459: The monuments as to the character and significance of Hecate is almost as full as that of to express her manifold and mystic nature." A 6th century fragment of pottery from Boetia depicts a goddess which may be Hecate in a maternal or fertility mode. Crowned with leafy branches as in later descriptions, she is depicted offering a "maternal blessing" to two maidens who embrace her. The figure is flanked by lions, an animal associated with Hecate both in

8100-481: The most likely Greek origin of the name, the Ἑκατός theory does not account for her worship in Asia Minor, where her association with Artemis seems to have been a late development, and the competing theories that the attribution of darker aspects and magic to Hecate were themselves not originally part of her cult. R. S. P. Beekes rejected a Greek etymology and suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Early Modern English ,

8208-476: The name Hecate. However, no sources suggested list will or willingness as a major attribute of Hecate, which calls this assertion into question. Another Greek word suggested as the origin of the name Hecate is Ἑκατός Hekatos , an obscure epithet of Apollo interpreted as "the far-reaching one" or "the far-darter". This has been suggested in comparison with the attributes of the goddess Artemis , strongly associated with Apollo and frequently equated with Hecate in

8316-466: The name was also pronounced disyllabically (as / ˈ h ɛ k . ɪ t / ) and sometimes spelled Hecat . It remained common practice in English to pronounce her name in two syllables, even when spelled with final e , well into the 19th century. The spelling Hecat is due to Arthur Golding 's 1567 translation of Ovid 's Metamorphoses , and this spelling without the final E later appears in plays of

8424-413: The necks of black bulls which they slaughtered in her honor and yew boughs were burned on funeral pyres. The yew was associated with the alphabet and the scientific name for yew today, taxus , was probably derived from the Greek word for yew, toxos , which is hauntingly similar to toxon , their word for bow and toxicon , their word for poison. It is presumed that the latter were named after

8532-453: The newborn Zeus from his father Cronus ; this frieze is the only evidence of Hecate's involvement in the myth of his birth. Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. "In art and in literature Hecate is constantly represented as dog-shaped or as accompanied by a dog. Her approach was heralded by the howling of a dog. The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, and

8640-487: The origins of the world ( cosmogony ) and of the gods ( theogony ), beginning with Chaos , Gaia , Tartarus and Eros , and shows a special interest in genealogy . Embedded in Greek myth , there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus , the accepted version that linked all Hellenes . It's

8748-449: The pains of her labour would drive Alcmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eileithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alcmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms. Alcmene’s pangs ceased at once and Herakles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away

8856-457: The possibility that someone at Joppa established a cult of the monster under the name Ceto. As an alternative explanation, they posit that Pliny or his source misread the name cetus —or that of the Syrian goddess Derceto . Hecate Hecate ( / ˈ h ɛ k ə t i / HEK -ə-tee ) is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology , most often shown holding a pair of torches,

8964-455: The red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire. The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of

9072-578: The road. This can be compared to Pausanias' report that in the Ionian city of Colophon in Asia Minor a sacrifice of a black female puppy was made to Hecate as "the wayside goddess", and Plutarch's observation that in Boeotia dogs were killed in purificatory rites. Dogs, with puppies often mentioned, were offered to Hecate at crossroads, which were sacred to the goddess. Hesiod Hesiod ( / ˈ h iː s i ə d / HEE -see-əd or / ˈ h ɛ s i ə d / HEH -see-əd ; Ancient Greek : Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos ; fl.   c. 700 BC )

9180-405: The silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy. The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite

9288-628: The site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides , reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea , and so he fled to Locris , where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in

9396-498: The so-called Pseudo-Seneca , of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca the Younger . It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification. Hesiod employed

9504-467: The thrifty poet ( Works 35, 396). Unlike his father Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Amphidamas of Chalcis and there won a tripod in a singing competition. He also describes meeting the Muses on Mount Helicon , where he had been pasturing sheep, when the goddesses presented him with

9612-453: The time, Homer's Ionian . It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passing them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise: the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it

9720-407: The titular Medea invokes her patron Hecate whom she addresses as "Moon, orb of the night" and "triple form". Hecate and the moon goddess Selene were frequently identified with each other and a number of Greek and non-Greek deities; the Greek Magical Papyri and other magical texts emphasize a syncretism between Selene-Hecate with Artemis and Persephone among others. In Italy, the triple unity of

9828-522: The tomb of Minyas , their eponymous founder. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" ( οἰκιστής , oikistēs ). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by author Charles Abraham Elton in his Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod , depicts Hesiod as being falsely accused of rape by

9936-473: The tree because of its superiority for both bows and poison. Hecate was seen as a triple deity, identified with the goddesses Luna (Moon) in the sky and Diana (hunting) on the earth, while she represents the Underworld. Hecate's association with Helios in literary sources and especially in cursing magic has been cited as evidence for her lunar nature, although this evidence is pretty late; no artwork before

10044-443: The use of dogs for digging up mandrake is further corroboration of the association of this plant with Hecate; indeed, since at least as early as the 1st century CE, there are a number of attestations to the apparently widespread practice of using dogs to dig up plants associated with magic. The yew in particular was sacred to Hecate. Greeks held the yew to be sacred to Hecate ... Her attendants draped wreathes of yew around

10152-637: The voice" from ἵημι , híēmi and αὐδή , audḗ ) as fictitious names for poetical personae . It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Anatolia westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However, around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Anatolia to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with

10260-401: The witch Erichtho invokes Hecate as "Persephone, who is the third and lowest aspect of Hecate, the goddess we witches revere", and describes her as a "rotting goddess" with a "pallid decaying body", who has to "wear a mask when [she] visit[s] the gods in heaven." Like Hecate, "the dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with

10368-565: The witches of Thessaly , and an important sanctuary among the Carians of Asia Minor in Lagina. Her oldest known representation was found in Selinunte , in Sicily . Hecate was one of several deities worshipped in ancient Athens as a protector of the oikos (household), alongside Zeus , Hestia , Hermes , and Apollo . In the post-Christian writings of the Chaldean Oracles (2nd–3rd century CE) she

10476-426: The womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel (or polecat), making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hecate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself. Aelian told

10584-414: Was already filled by other more prominent deities in the Greek pantheon, above all by Artemis and Selene . This line of reasoning lies behind the widely accepted hypothesis that she was a foreign deity who was incorporated into the Greek pantheon. Other than in the Theogony , the Greek sources do not offer a consistent story of her parentage or of her relations in the Greek pantheon. A possible theory of

10692-411: Was also named ίππεύτρια ( hippeutria – 'the equestrienne'), since the horse was "the chthonic animal par excellence ". The goddess is described as wearing oak in fragments of Sophocles 's lost play The Root Diggers (or The Root Cutters ), and an ancient commentary on Apollonius's Argonautica (3.1214) describes her as having a head surrounded by serpents, twining through branches of oak. Hecate

10800-514: Was also regarded with (some) rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Savior ( Soteira ), Mother of Angels and the Cosmic World Soul ( Anima Mundi ). Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, "she is more at home on the fringes than in the centre of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition." The Romans often knew her by

10908-470: Was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer . Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety. Among these are Theogony , which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus 's rise to power, and Works and Days , a poem that describes the five Ages of Man , offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such as Pandora's box . Hesiod

11016-406: Was associated with borders, city walls, doorways, crossroads and, by extension, with realms outside or beyond the world of the living. She appears to have been particularly associated with being 'between' and hence is frequently characterized as a " liminal " goddess. "Hecate mediated between regimes— Olympian and Titan —but also between mortal and divine spheres." This liminal role is reflected in

11124-463: Was often eaten in solemn sacrament." The sacrifice of dogs to Hecate is attested for Thrace, Samothrace, Colophon, and Athens. A 4th-century BCE marble relief from Crannon in Thessaly was dedicated by a race-horse owner. It shows Hecate, with a hound beside her, placing a wreath on the head of a mare. It has been claimed that her association with dogs is "suggestive of her connection with birth, for

11232-465: Was one on the road leading to the Acropolis . Likewise, shrines to Hecate at three way crossroads were created where food offerings were left at the new Moon to protect those who did so from spirits and other evils. In Zerynthus there was a cave dedicated to Hecate. Dogs were sacred to Hecate and associated with roads, domestic spaces, purification, and spirits of the dead. Dogs were also sacrificed to

11340-426: Was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly was not in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute it to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on

11448-568: Was placed before the temple of the Wingless Nike in Athens. Though Alcamenes's original statue is lost, hundreds of copies exist, and the general motif of a triple Hecate situated around a central pole or column, known as a hekataion , was used both at crossroads shrines as well as at the entrances to temples and private homes. These typically depict her holding a variety of items, including torches, keys, serpents, and daggers. Some hekataia , including

11556-554: Was positive and thus likelier to have arisen from the dog's connection with birth than the dog's underworld associations." The association with dogs, particularly female dogs, could be explained by a metamorphosis myth in Lycophron : the friendly-looking female dog accompanying Hecate was originally the Trojan Queen Hecuba , who leapt into the sea after the fall of Troy and was transformed by Hecate into her familiar. The polecat

11664-700: Was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony , a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis. Three works have survived which were attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days , Theogony , and Shield of Heracles . Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in

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