Here’s a tale from Greek mythology that has modern relevance and a really weird coincidence. From Good Citizen at thegoodcitizen.live:
Sirrah? Alamak? Is it written in the stars?
The myth of Andromeda is like many tales from Ancient Greece—on the surface a selection of arbitrary punishments and outlandish solutions. As with many tragic comedies of divine overreach used to instill virtue and coerce the behavior of mortals, the myth of Andromeda does little to dispel these stereotypes. Dig a little deeper beneath the vengeance, jealousy, vanity, or spite and a few intriguing anchors to the present emerge.
Andromeda, a princess of Ethiopia, became the unfortunate victim of her mother’s vanity. Her mother Cassiopeia boasted to the gods that her daughter’s beauty surpassed that of the Nereids—sea nymphs who must have been raised by those doting Alabama Mommas who primp and preen their daughters all day to look “beautiful” before creepy male judges because these nymphs were not fond of losing beauty contests. So they called in a favor with the god of the sea to set things straight.
The gods were enforcers of disproportionate retribution, but they liked to make mortals squirm first. So Poseidon decreed that the only way to save the kingdom was to sacrifice Andromeda by chaining her to a rock by the sea, leaving her to be devoured by a sea monster. The imagery is cruel—a young woman bound to a rock left to face an impending, grisly fate—all because her mother’s boasting bruised a few sea nymph egos.
In Greek mythology, innocence and penance weren’t shields against divine retribution. Apparently, de-escalation and diplomacy hadn’t yet been invented. Comedy?
It’s almost laughable that in a world where these nymphs had eternal life, they were still wrapped up in the shallowest form of vanity, causing the kind of destruction you’d expect from a teenage grudge in South Chicago or West Baltimore.
Looks like she found food out there from the painting.
I like the minotaur, the golden fleece, Perseus, Zeus turning into anything, Scylla and Charybdis, good stuff the ancients.
What a way they had to explain things.