Men Fear What They Cannot Command or Control, the Husband-Slaying Lemnian Women

Just a casual, not at all timely, look at the myth of women taking revenge on their abusers and oppressors. For funsies. Check out the next group trip through Thalassa Journeys https://www.mythsbaby.com/tours-events/ariadnes-escape. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Sources: Apollonios of Rhodes' Argonautica https://topostext.org/work/126#1.609; Hyginus' Fabulae https://topostext.org/work/206; Pseudo-Apollodorus' Library https://topostext.org/work/150; Statius' Thebaid https://www.theoi.com/Text/StatiusThebaid5.html. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 2:03Liv Albert?

  And at dawn, before the Argonauts as they journeyed, rose Athos, the Thracian mountain, which with its topmost peak overshadows Lemnos, even as far as Merini. Though it lies as far off as the space that a well-trimmed merchant ship would traverse up to midday. For them on that day, till darkness fell, the breeze blew exceedingly fresh and the sails of the ship strained to it. But with the setting of the sun, the wind left them, and it was by the oars that they reached Lemnos, the Scintian Isle. Here, the whole of the men of the people together had been ruthlessly slain through the transgressions of the women in the year gone by.

• 2:46Liv Albert?

  For the men had rejected their lawful wives, loathing them, and had conceived a fierce passion for captive maids whom they themselves brought across the sea from their forays and thrace. For the terrible wrath of Kipris came upon them, because for a long time they had grudged her all the honors due. Oh hapless women, and insatiate in jealousy to their own ruin! Not their husbands alone with the captives did they slay on account of the marriage bed, but all the males at the same time, that they might thereafter pay no retribution for the grim murder.

• 3:41Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello, welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host with the most fury? Liv. Okay, real quick up at the top, I just want to let you all know that there is a new group trip available for your perusal, if you are so inclined. This is a similar trip to what we announced last year with Thalassa Journeys, which I'm obsessed with because Thalassa is just sea in Greek. But that version, honestly, the one that we released in the fall, it was too pricey, and people weren't into it, and I respect that. So we went back to the planning, we shifted the dates, so now the trip is at the end of October 2026. You can spend spooky season with me in Greece. We adjusted the locations in order to then also cut the cost.

• 4:25Liv Albert?

  So I will share more details at the end of the episode, but if you are keen to wander the Aegean Sea with me, including going to my favorite island ever, the one where I snagged a little kitten and brought him home. And in the first ever island hopping group trip, go to mythsbaby.com/groups for more information, or stay tuned again to the end of the episode, when I'm gonna talk about it. But now back to a brand new narrative episode? Okay, so full transparency, this is my first time writing a script for the show in like, like a bizarrely long time, like between the book and then my own really unending burnout. I've, I've struggled to pull myself back into this, like just this little particular aspect of the show, despite how much I fucking love it and I know I love it.

• 5:09Liv Albert?

  But you know, this is the part where I have to be creative and, and also smart and oh, sometimes the brain, you know, so bear with me on this one. Um, it's a little rushed and it's been a long time, but I'm still me. And like all of you, I have been watching the world news. You know, the world news that's slowly revealing that not only is the Western world ruled by the iron fist of white patriarchal power, which gods know I've been talking about for long enough, but also turns out it's run by very specifically a group of disgustingly rich, disgusting, mostly men, but some disgusting women in there too. People who have dedicated their lives and fortunes to destroying the lives of everyone

• 5:54Liv Albert?

  they come into contact with, all for their sick, their sick sickness. It just turns out the super rich aren't just like regular old evil. They're pedophiles, child killers, and some of the most morally repugnant people to ever live in this world with us. And bonus, one of them is president of the country with all the nukes, another runs one of the most powerful, well-known tech companies on the planet. One more is a member of the royal family of the UK who's disgusting, enabling family members' faces stain my country and others with their privileged, lawless, immoral wealth. Oh, and then there's the bonus loser, you know, the man whose dick doesn't work, let alone look even remotely human, if you believe the rumors.

• 6:39Liv Albert?

  You know, the one, yeah, you know, he created those dork ass hundred thousand dollar SUVs that can't even go through car washes without rusting and filling with water. Yeah, um, he actually, he doesn't seem to have been able to make it to the island, but we can all read the emails that he sent on Christmas day, begging to be invited to what was almost certainly, but allegedly a pedophile party.

• 7:04Liv Albert?

  All to say, like many of you, I have been living in a constant state of misandrist fury. But I also had to write an episode this week, so... I mean gods, I have spent my career pointing out the ways that the ruling white patriarchal order has built Western civilization on the bodies of women and non-white bodies, and with every revelation, every passing day, my unbridled fury grows. The world has never, ever been a fair place, but now I think we're all seeing the ways in which we have barely, like, if ever, even had a chance. Those men don't see women as people, they don't even like us. To them, we're just bodies to be used. And I know that boys were involved in this too, and I'm absolutely including them, but

• 7:48Liv Albert?

  I also need everyone to know that all of this type of abuse is based around oppressing women, and yes, they do it to boys too, it's why toxic masculinity affects us all. Like, the billionaire class of 2026 did not invent this monstrosity, they pulled it straight from the historical record, but even in the ancient Greek world, when women were faced with the choice of living with people who didn't want them, don't like them, but also won't allow them to leave? Well, there's a reason the West eventually invented no-fault divorce and it wasn't out of the goodness of men's hearts. It's because when there's no alternative, well, women are capable of killing their abusers, the men who betray them.

• 8:31Liv Albert?

  Even if ancient and modern authors will still find ways to make it about women being evil and not the men who drove them to it. So today, we're taking all of our rage and our fury about these revolting men and their revolting crimes in this revolting world they've created, the same crimes they learned from all the men that came before them, and we're using it to make us stronger, more furious, and more prepared to burn it all down.

• 9:09Liv Albert?

  Men fear what they cannot command or control: the husband-slaying Lemnian women.

• 9:31Liv Albert?

  Here, the whole of the men of the people together had been ruthlessly slain through the transgressions of the women in the year gone by. For the men had rejected their lawful wives, loathing them, and had conceived a fierce passion for captive maids, whom they themselves brought across the sea from their forays in Thrace. For the terrible wrath of Kipris came upon them, because for a long time they had grudged her the honors due. "Oh hapless women, and insatiate ingelacy to their own ruin! Not their husbands alone with the captives that they slay on account of the marriage bed, but all the males, at the same time, that they might thereafter pay no retribution for the grim murder."

• 10:17Liv Albert?

  That was the introduction to Hypsipoly and the Lemnian women from Apollonius's Argonautica, you know, the story of Jason and the Argonauts. The story of these women really only appears in connection with Jason and his story, and it's always that their murder spree, which we'll get to, don't worry, took place before Jason ever showed up. What follows is, these women are all apparently super keen to fuck Jason and all of his men, so they can get pregnant and repopulate the island. And yeah, somehow that's actually not the point of today's story, but I do think it suggests something about the background behind this myth. What's the point? At least in terms of what survives for us today. The basics are these: long before Jason and his band of dweebs showed up on the island

• 11:02Liv Albert?

  of Lemnos, one of the first and briefest stops on their journey east to capture the Golden Fleece.

• 11:10Liv Albert?

  So, long before what we know is going to happen, you know, Jason will meet Medea and God knows, I've talked about Medea enough, except more coming soon. But before Jason ever reaches Colchis, Medea, and the Golden Fleece, his ship first lands on Lemnos, the island where, we are told, the women have murdered all the men. All but their queen, Hypsipoly, her father, Thoas. Hypsipoly, you see, is the token good woman. The Penelope, if you will, Hypsipoly chose not to kill her father, and so, we're told, she is worthy of our hero, Jason. Not worthy enough that he'll stay or ever think of her again, but worthy enough to fuck and impregnate, at least.

• 11:53Liv Albert?

  Hypsipoly and Jason and the Argonauts and the women of Lemnos, for all that matter, they get to business just having a lot of sex and getting pregnant. But again, that's not the point of today's story. What I'm really interested in is everything that came before Jason and his band of dweebs. How does it happen that an island is inhabited only by women? How is it that a story like this one comes to exist? Myths are never just stories, after all, and certainly not myths like this one where the story itself isn't the point, but the aftermath is the story? The killing of the men isn't the story. The story is an island of husband-killing women.

• 12:37Liv Albert?

  And I'm willing to bet it's not because there was ever a time when all of the women killed all of the men on an island the size of Lemnos.

• 12:46Liv Albert?

  Okay, I'm gonna read a short entry from the Pseudae. It's a Byzantine encyclopedia of the earlier ancient world. So, it's ancient, but also like a thousand years after a lot of this stuff. But what it does is get us a good idea of what was well-known at that time from the earlier time. So, this entry is meant to explain what appears to be a well-ish-known phrase at the time. Looking Lemnian evil.

• 13:17Liv Albert?

  Lemnian kakon vlepon, looking Lemnian evil, fiery. Also a proverb, Lemnian evil, for after the Lemnian men had abducted women from Athens and gotten children from them, they slaughtered the women together with the children. But then the women killed all the men, together with their Thracian wives, because they did not devote themselves to them, due to the noxious odor. Marsilos says the odor came from Medea out of her rivalry with Hypsipoly, but Caucitus says it took hold of the Lemnians due to their being contemptuous of Aphrodite. Because of that, big evils are called Lemnian.

• 13:59Liv Albert?

  Okay, so how does a story like this shape the culture? Particularly, how are these women conveyed by the ancient authors who talk about them? So according to this pseuda entry, this term of looking Lemnian evil was still in use many, many, many centuries after the myths were being developed, and it still had this specific connotation, where I guess in this case, the men also kill all the women? I don't know which women, because then who would kill all the men? Regardless, at least, I guess, both genders doing all of the murder that makes this Lemnian evil so evil, according to the pseuda. So what is it about this story?

• 14:41Liv Albert?

  It's not long, it's not detailed, but it seems to have really stuck. Because what does it mean to tell stories of that kind of female violence? How does it shape not only the patriarchal power structure, but the everyday lives and the everyday marriages of ancient Greece? What does it mean to have this story hanging over you? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

• 15:24Liv Albert?

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• 16:07Liv Albert?

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• 16:50Liv Albert?

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• 17:30Liv Albert?

  The sourcing we have around the women of Lemnos is scattered. It's often fragmented, particularly in the earliest sources. But we're going to try to piece some things together. First and foremost, Lemnos is an island in the northeastern Mediterranean. So it's south of what was ancient and mythological Thrace, now northern Greece and Bulgaria, and just off the western coast of modern Turkey. It was sacred to the god Hephaestus, and I mean sacred. So Lemnos is to Hephaestus what Athens is to Athena. Like, it's his island. And while that doesn't come up in the stories directly, I think it's not irrelevant that the, like, "disabled",

• 18:15Liv Albert?

  quote unquote, like, "unwanted god thrown from Mount Olympus because of his disability ends up on this island where women are wronged into killing men." Like, I don't know. I don't think it's irrelevant. But regardless, Hypsipoly is queen of this island of Lemnos. She's a woman ruling on her own amongst a court of other high-born women, alone. She rules over a town, an island, all of women. But we're not to imagine these to be women like the Amazons. No, the Greeks saw the Amazons as barbarous. They were not Greek. And worst of all, women were not allowed to fight in battle to ride horses, but to rule as queens with just as much power as the king?

• 18:57Liv Albert?

  Utterly disgusting, the Greeks believed. It was disturbing even. But this Lemnian queen, it's far worse than any barbarous Amazon, because the Lemnians are Greek. The women, not meant to rule a small town, let alone a whole island, they can't do that. No, these women weren't born to their barbarism, not like the Amazons. They made it themselves.

• 19:20Liv Albert?

  I wrote in my script here, can you hear the sarcasm? But I think I did it well enough in my voice. Like I said, there are elements of this story that are as old as anything, but the details of the Lemnian women's story come together later. They transform and warp into something considerably more disturbing.

• 19:41Liv Albert?

  So we know that the character of Hypsipoly is as old as the character of Jason. We know that he met her on his quest for the golden fleece, and we know that they have at least one child together. These facts are mentioned as far back as Homer in the Iliad, but there's little else from that long ago. Their story is long over, too. By the time the Greeks are fighting the war with Troy, remember in the heroic mythos, all of the heroes you think of came before the Trojan War. In Homer, we only know that Jason and Hypsipoly had a son. We know this just because he's involved peripherally in the Trojan War

• 20:23Liv Albert?

  and is still famously based in Lemnos. But there's nothing else said about the Lemnian queen, and absolutely nothing is said or implied in Homer's Iliad that suggests that this murderous story existed, at least in that form at that time. In Homer, Hypsipoly is just a Lemnian queen and the mother of Jason's son, Eunias. Now, flash forward a few centuries, and we get the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. That's the passage I read at the top. And again, the section I read at the, again, top, I don't know, after I read the title. Again, because Apollonius's epic tells a story that we know. It's so much older than the author himself,

• 21:07Liv Albert?

  but it's not until Apollonius, who is writing in the third century, and again, unlike Homer, is like one specific person that we know wrote this one epic, as compared to, you know, the oral tradition that is forming these mythos in a more organic and cultural way. The Argonautica is written by one human person. Still incredibly culturally relevant, but it has a different sort of mythical...

• 21:36Liv Albert?

  Basis because of that, because it is one person writing the story. That's not to say that everything didn't exist in the mythos before, but it is still biased in this way that the early sources that we know are from the oral tradition aren't.

• 21:51Liv Albert?

  And that's important because it's Apollonius who first provides the long and detailed, I mean, still not long and still not very detailed, but more so than others, story of exactly how Hypsipoly came to be queen of Lemnos, this island of only women.

• 22:11Liv Albert?

  I'm not going to read the passage again. Jason and his dweebs land on this island where there are only women. And the three sentence backstory is just quote, "Here the whole of the men of the people together had been ruthlessly slain through the transgressions of the women in the year gone by. For the men had rejected their lawful wives, loathing them, and had conceived a fierce passion for captive maids whom they themselves brought across the sea from their forays in Thrace. For the terrible wrath of Kipris came upon them, because for a long time they had grudged her, the honors due."

• 22:46Liv Albert?

  Cool, got it. The men had been killed entirely by the women. The women's transgressions killed the men. Why? Oh, it was absolutely out of nowhere. No, absolutely out of nowhere. The men did nothing to prompt any kind of anger from their wives. No, all they did was, all they did was hate them, leave their wives with nothing, no recourse at all, no divorce, just nothing. Just they left them. They sailed north. They captured and enslaved young Thracian women and then brought them home to their abandoned, hated wives.

• 23:25Liv Albert?

  What could the men possibly have done to avoid this female rage, this murderous female wrath? They were helpless. Can't you see how helpless?

• 23:37Liv Albert?

  Apollonius's take on their story is short and sweet. Only, it's only there to serve the purpose of introducing the Lemnian women to Jason and his Argonauts. It's like, an afterthought, that the reason why they're alone there is because they killed everyone. But still, we get quite this insight into how and why the men of Lemnos were killed. And it was, basically, all of them. And who bears the responsibility? Is it 100% on the Lemnian women, according to the mythological sources? No, don't be ridiculous, there's some accountability here. The men have taken some responsibility, it's just that... Alright, they were influenced by Aphrodite.

• 24:19Liv Albert?

  Right, no, Aphrodite cursed them, that's all it was, that's why they were helpless. What's that? Blaming Aphrodite actually just means blaming passion and lust? Blaming Aphrodite is really just a synonym for like, "Boys will be boys," or, you know, "Men are visual creatures," or, "What was she wearing?" Or, "Men just can't help themselves around a pretty woman in a short skirt." Men aren't taught self-control or bodily autonomy, they're taught that they are owed sex from women, and somehow, even in the ancient world, that's the fault of a woman. That's what Mythos can do.

• 25:14Liv Albert?

  Alright, let's flash forward another couple centuries. Now we're in the Roman period, or nearly at that point. And two more authors give us their takes on these Lemnian women.

• 25:28Liv Albert?

  Now, both these authors, Hyginus and Apollodorus, are sources whose authorship isn't entirely confirmed, but the works themselves are not only legitimate, but actually vital to our broader understanding of Greek myths. Hyginus was a Latin writer in Roman Spain, though himself, he was not a true Roman. I don't know all the details. It's Rome, whatever. But Apollodorus was a Greek, but writing during the time of the Romans. You'll remember Apollodorus, his life of Greek mythology is both frustratingly brief and simultaneously, sometimes the only surviving written source that we have for otherwise deeply wide-reaching stories that we know come from centuries and centuries before his time, even if written evidence doesn't actually survive. That was too many words. What this means is that both of these authors

• 26:13Liv Albert?

  are looking at the culture and the mythos of the previous 600 or 700 years before them. They're documenting it and detailing what they learned and interpreting it as something solidified.

• 26:28Liv Albert?

  But everything they were working off is lost to us, so all we have is what these guys did. Hence, lots about the Lemnian women. Oh, God. Lots is relative. First, we go to Hyginus. Both their works are straight and to the point, but they both also managed to tell the story differently. So Hyginus has these two works. They're both intended to be like almost kind of encyclopedias of myths. I'm using that term very broadly. Just these stories that existed before their time. I'm using encyclopedia broadly, not myth. But like, just they're more of like a sort of point-by-point list of myths, rather than like some big, comprehensive epic.

• 27:12Liv Albert?

  So Hyginus labeled his bit, "Simply Women of Lemnos." And he wrote, quote, "On the island of Lemnos, the women, for several years, did not make offerings to Venus, and because of her anger, their husbands married Thracian wives and scorned their former ones. But the Lemnian women, all except Hypsipoly, instigated by the same Venus, conspired to kill the whole tribe of men who were there. Hypsipoly secretly put her father Thoas on board a ship, which a storm carried to the island of Torica."

• 27:47Liv Albert?

  A couple added details in there, but it's simple enough to the point. Once more, the women are of course, the villains. The men utterly innocent. And again, it's Aphrodite's fault ultimately.

• 28:03Liv Albert?

  Before I tear that apart even more, we do have to look at Hyginus's fellow mythographer, Apollodorus, like I said, and how he tells the story of these women.

• 28:15Liv Albert?

  Spoiler, it's about to get stinky. So annoyed. Quote, "The Lemni and women did not honor Aphrodite, and she visited them with a noisome smell. Therefore, their spouses took captive women from the neighboring country of Thrace and bedded with them. Thus dishonored, the Lemni and women murdered their fathers and husbands, but Hypsipoly alone saved her father Thoas by hiding him."

• 28:41Liv Albert?

  So yeah, another fun new detail added here. Aphrodite, it seems, is not only caused all of this, but she's also made the women smelly. Yeah, surely these innocent, delicate men couldn't be expected to keep having sex with their smelly wives. Oh, that changes everything. Obviously, if their wives were smelly, these men had every right to sail north and abduct fresh, nice smelling women to rape. I mean, make love to.

• 29:08Liv Albert?

  You can also see how in both Hyginus and Apollodorus, these later writers, again, writing hundreds, up to like 800 years, maybe after like Homer, minimum, these authors are trying to also kind of redefine what we have from earlier. Now, Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica is not kind to these women's story, but he does kind of give you these fact by fact breakdown of why. And it's, it's quite clear at least that the men just gave up on their wives, decided they hated them, and then went north and abducted and enslaved these young Thracian women, basically to replace their wives,

• 29:51Liv Albert?

  presumably only in the beds. I don't even know. It's horrifying. But at least in Apollonius, he's kind of like, okay, well, this is what happened. He's still like, it's the women's fault, which like objectively it is, they killed all the men. But he at least provides this. Information, kind of of how we got here. If we look back to Hyenas, you know, he's saying, yeah, they didn't honor Aphrodite. And because of that, their husbands just went and married Thracian wives and like ignored their original wives. But then again, all because of Aphrodite or Venus in his case, killed all of the men. Okay, so in in Hyenas's, the men are like completely let off the hook, right? They just went and married Thracian wives.

• 30:36Liv Albert?

  Okay. And then Apollodorus comes back and, you know, he does say that the women are captive from Thrace, but even still, he's like, well, you know, they were smelly and they didn't honor Aphrodite. So what are the men gonna do? So you can watch as the story gets manipulated to be more and more about the women doing this like spontaneously evil thing that had absolutely no grounding in retribution of any kind. Like, it's just slowly more and more becoming this idea that women, the women just snapped.

• 31:17Liv Albert?

  You know, they went crazy, they killed everyone, absolutely nothing prompted that tragedy.

• 31:38Speaker 01

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• 32:53Liv Albert?

  The story of the Lemni and women and the murder of their husbands and the men of Lemnos as a whole seem to span the whole of the Greek world and mythical history. But it transformed and morphed into the definition from the seuda that I read earlier: "looking Lemni and evil." But aside from an obvious lesson in male fear, what is this myth actually telling us? I mean, murder is never an answer, except if they're in a certain genre of recently released emails. Then, I don't know, I don't know, allegedly. But let's look at everything that led up to the murder of the Lemni and women, or rather, the Lemni and women murdering their husbands and other men.

• 33:35Liv Albert?

  Placing blame on a goddess in place of just simple men lacking self-control. Even putting that aside, these men of Lemnos are said to have sailed north to Thrace, where they waged a war, spent years there seemingly, and we should say so close that the women of Lemnos could like nearly see the Thracian mainland in the distance, before eventually taking surviving Thracian women hostage as like war prizes, sex slaves, and bringing them home to the wives they abandoned. That's the story ultimately, and then they get killed for it. But this wasn't an army sailing halfway across the world to Troy to... Wage a decade-long war. This was one island's worth of men who sailed the equivalent of like

• 34:19Liv Albert?

  a three-hour ferry ride today to the mainland just north of their island. They weren't far, and according to some of these sources, like the men stayed there for years before bringing home enslaved women as prizes? Like, were their wives at home meant to hold them a party? They've been abandoned for who knows how long, replaced with slaves that their husbands don't have to respect even on the most basic level. Were these women meant to say "thank you"?

• 34:47Liv Albert?

  And oh, the smell. The smell. I've only found that reference in Apollodorus and the Suda, but the Suda likely got it from Apollodorus. So, like, was that an element in the more ancient versions of the myth? Maybe? But it feels to me like this added rationale to the so-called innocence of the men. These can't just be furious, fed-up women who have been wronged in every imaginable way in a society that does not give them rights to begin with. No, no, no, that can't be the story. Instead, these women had to be smelly because of a bitchy goddess. It's hard to say whether this was always meant to be just a cautionary tale about leaving your

• 35:31Liv Albert?

  wives at home, but I think it's pretty safe to say that it probably became one. But what's most infuriating, or at least, like, to me, the most ridiculous part of this entire narrative, is that the whole smelly nonsense, just like, again, does not appear in sources until Apollodorus, like, the first century CE. And yet, like, go ahead and give this a Google. Just Google "Lemni and women myth", and the hideous, water-guzzling AI overview will tell you the most common form of the myth now, which is, spoilers, almost always focusing on the smell of the women, as if that somehow makes them more evil.

• 36:14Liv Albert?

  Misogyny knows no bounds, my friends. Their distaste of us, it contains multitudes.

• 36:23Liv Albert?

  This isn't the first time I've covered the Lemni and women, but it's definitely the first time I've looked at them through like the lens of my current thoughts, my late-stage myth obsession. I know too much. I have too much context. I have too much misentry from all of that context. And back when I first covered their story, the smelly bit just seemed funny. Like their whole story just felt like, like a funnier kind of misogyny, if that's a thing. Like it felt, I guess, just like less harmful than so much of the other misogyny that's so inherent in these stories. But now, like now I see

• 37:01Liv Albert?

  this story for exactly what it is. It's this fantasy of male fear of women standing up when they're mistreated. Like, I'm sure that there's a minor argument to be made that this story is, is meant to be a cautionary tale for both husbands and wives, but in my opinion, that's a bit of a stretch. As we saw, the original form of Hypsipoly may have had nothing to do with an island of murderers. She may have simply been just like a queen ruling an island. At best, this could have been a story that's like holding on to a piece of history, maybe an anecdote or two of like wives killing their cheating abusive husbands. The idea that the Lemnians were at least like husband killers

• 37:41Liv Albert?

  does exist a few hundred years after Homer, like a few hundred years also before Apollonius wrote his Argonautica. There are brief references in Pindar, who predominantly wrote these like mythically infused celebratory odes for people who had won like Olympics and adjacent. This was unintentionally Olympics themed. Um, Pindar and Herodotus do both make reference to this, but it doesn't seem like real details of like how they became husband killers appear until Apollonius and his Argonautica. Now regardless of their status as husband slayers, what really interests me about the Lemni and women is

• 38:28Liv Albert?

  The way that the stories seem to attempt to understand why a wife might kill her husband. That's where sources like Apollonius, Apollodorus, and Hyginus come in. Unlike sources like Homer, Pindar, and even Herodotus, actually. These works, Apollonius, Apollodorus, and Hyginus, are not myths in the same more traditional sense. Instead, they're later attempts to understand pre-existing cultural mythos. Homer, Pindar, and Herodotus are working off of the cultural myths of their time. They're of a time when the stories were still being kind of made by the people and their culture.

• 39:08Liv Albert?

  Herodotus, on his travels, heard that husband killers lived on Lemnos and apparently told us that. Pindar, on the other hand, only knew that Lemnos had been the place of some very evil act. And so those are the early references that we have. It's only later that the patriarchal control structure that's been in the making for centuries seems to try to understand or like even rewrite some of this existing mythos to fit their narrative and their cultural identity. It's under that purview that Hypsipoly and her Lemnian women aren't now just husband killers. Instead, they're vile, smelly creatures, unworthy of any kind of love, right?

• 39:53Liv Albert?

  And affection, anything. It's no wonder that their husbands left them, like, we're meant to think that. By this later point, these women are just evil. Like, the only good one is Hypsipoly because she saved a male life. But by the point... Because by the point these later writers are attempting to understand or reimagine their cultural myths, the fear of women committing violence as retribution for the treatment they receive is almost certainly a real, lived fear. By that point, men know that if they beat their wives, if they abandon them for years only to show up with a young enslaved woman to share their bed, that it's not out of the realm of possibility

• 40:35Liv Albert?

  that women might take the only form of retribution that they have available to them in this world that is built to contain and control them.

• 40:45Liv Albert?

  Because when women are stripped of their rights, their bodily autonomy, when women are treated as property, as less human, as creatures that men can use and abuse. Well, history and myth all tells us the same thing. Women are more than capable of protecting themselves and those they love when necessary. No matter how many cautionary tales are told to make women look pure evil, conniving, and murderous, we're still just people, equally capable of all things, including violence, when violence is the only option. And I just know someone's going to listen to this and intentionally misunderstand me. This isn't a story about women killing every single man and that being an appropriate response to the acts of those men.

• 41:28Liv Albert?

  This is a story about women who rose up against their oppressors in whatever way, and what the male mythographers and every man who interacted with their mythos over the thousands of years took away from that myth of the Lemnian women's story. What they turned it into and why. Because at the very heart of this tale of terrible murder and violence is the story of women who were able to stand up for themselves, who defended themselves and their households against their abusers and oppressors, and the absolute fear that elicited in the men who heard about it. These men weren't afraid that one day every wife would wake up out of nowhere and decide their husbands and every other man deserved to die for no other reason than they felt like it.

• 42:13Liv Albert?

  No, these men were afraid that their actions, their treatment of their wives and other women might one day be just bad enough to be their end. This is a story to remind everyone that anyone pushed to their limit is capable of terrible things, even women. And to that I say, good for her.

• 42:55Liv Albert?

  Well, in the herds, thank you all so much for listening. I'm really hoping that kind of all wrapped up in the end. Again, I have not written a script in so long. And I just really wanted to tell this story, but it is again, so fragmentary and so laced with all these other questions about like, why this story is even being told and what it says, you know? And so, yeah, anyway, I just, I really needed to tell their story. I wanted to fit in with the Danites too, or the other story of like, women mass killing men. That's even more fragmentary, if you can believe it. We'll get back to it one day, but regardless, I'm just, what is, what is

• 43:37Liv Albert?

  this world? It's just so bad for everyone who isn't a privileged white man, or, you know, I mean, there are lots of not white people involved in this, which is also horrifying, but it's because they probably want to be with this kind of behavior. And I just, honestly, the Epstein news has really, I mean, the more that comes out, it's like, okay, cool. So like, my entire existence as a girl and a woman was decided by these pedophiles, which is wild. And I think probably I'm like way more deep into the horrors of the news

• 44:18Liv Albert?

  cycle than most, so I'm sorry, but also, it's real. And like, the US is looking at getting rid of no-fault divorce. They want to. And you know what that means? Getting rid of no-fault divorce means that one person had to like, either cheat or like, do something like legitimately wrong.

• 44:37Liv Albert?

  But usually, you can't prove anything, particularly abuse. So, women can't get divorced purely because they want to. And do you know why no-fault divorce, I said at the top, I'm saying it again, do you know why no-fault divorce was invented? Because women kept killing their husbands when they were abused and couldn't leave.

• 44:57Liv Albert?

  It's why we're so associated with poisons. It's why all witches and their poisons are so scary. It's because they were used to kill men who did terrible things and escaped punishment. So.

• 45:15Liv Albert?

  Okay, um, I am here to tell you about the group trip that is happening. So again, I'm working with Thalassa Journeys. Now, this is a different situation from the previous group trips that we've done. Those we've worked with a travel agent solo and just kind of put it all together ourselves. We are absolutely planning on working with Antonia. Again, she's the one we're working with, a travel bug. We do intend to, we're going to be chatting with her soon to potentially be building up a 2027 offering that will, like the past ones we've done, be more affordable just generally. But Thalassa reached out to me a year and a half ago now or something

• 45:57Liv Albert?

  about trying out a more, slightly more luxurious trip. Slash, in this case, it's also just that we are going to the islands. The islands are more expensive, especially if you're taking fast ferries, which we are, which save you like hours of ferry time, honestly. And the nice thing about this tour, I believe, so it's like, it's around 55, 5600. It's still very expensive. I will not pretend it's not. It is in USD. It is expensive, but I will say that from what I can tell, that money is going to a lot. So the big differences with the original trips we've done is that those like include your lodging and the, like, you know, all the different day trips and things,

• 46:39Liv Albert?

  but like meals aren't included generally. Whereas with Thalassa, most meals are included, which makes a huge difference. Obviously not like thousands of dollars, but it does make a huge difference. So between the fact that like, almost all meals are included, the hotels are all like, at least one star nicer. They're going to be pretty nice, I think. And with the fast ferries, it, from my understanding, like, this is...

• 47:05Liv Albert?

  Obviously still expensive, but it's not like as crazy as it seems purely because of what we're doing. So this is very much a circumstance where it's like, if you really want to come and you've been dying to see the islands and you can afford it, I would love to have you with me for this one. We are going to Crete, to Naxos and to Athens. We've cut it down from the original. Unfortunately, we lost some, but we also cut it down a lot in cost. It's now towards the end of October, the 22nd to the 31st. So you can spend Halloween and spooky season with me in Greece, which would be so cool. On Crete, we're going to Knossos, obviously, which is honestly life-changing. I've only been there once. It was years ago. I really want to go back and I need enough of you to sign up so that I can. So like, let's go to Knossos. We'll see like the Minotaur's hang,

• 47:50Liv Albert?

  you know, we got everything. And then also the museum in Heraklion, which has everything or so much from Knossos and from Akritiri, which is on Santorini, which we will miss this time. But there is some crossover in the museum and Crete generally is so lovely and so Crete. And then we will go from Crete, we go north, we take a nice fast ferry. And again, that means we're cutting down like two or three hours. Like, the distance is long. We take the ferry north to Naxos. Naxos is where I feel happiest, I think, in the world at this point. Naxos is my favorite. I would really love to go with you all. It has the most beautiful beaches like I've ever seen.

• 48:33Liv Albert?

  The water can be a bit cold, sorry, but it's gorgeous, crystal clear. And Naxos has some really interesting ruins. It is, of course, crazy sacred to Dionysus. Naxos is where, and this is why we're calling it Ariadne's escape, because we are escaping. We are going from Crete to Athens, but we're not including Theseus. It's perfect. So Naxos is where Dionysus picked up Ariadne after Theseus abandoned her there, which means like half the things on the island are named for either Dionysus and Ariadne. It's a goddamn delight. They have the best potatoes, like the best.

• 49:07Liv Albert?

  Potatoes and they're known for their Gruyere cheese, just cheese in general. Oh my Greek food. You guys, like, I know we're going for the myths. Let's be perfectly frank, but also the meals are included and we're eating at nice places. I'm assuming because the hotels seem very nice and the food is so good. So just saying Naxos and it's Naxos. Naxos. It's, oh, guys, it's just, it's the fucking best. And then from Naxos, we go on to Athens, where we will, of course, do the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, where everyone can see the Cariotids saved for the missing sister. And oh, also, like, just because I'm me and I'm here, um, the British Museum currently has the missing sister Cariotid,

• 49:45Liv Albert?

  uh, like out of display because they're renovating and I did kind of like tell off the guy who told me that in the British Museum, because he was an old white man and I didn't tell him off as if it was his fault, but I did make a big stink. And anyway, I won't tell, keep telling that story. Um, we're gonna go to Athens. We're gonna see the Acropolis Museum, but also the Temple of Poseidon at Sunion, which is this temple like over a cliff. It is said to be, so it is the southernmost tip of Attica, the peninsula where Athens is. But it is said to be the place where King Ageus, when Theseus sailed back without changing his goddamn sails. This is said to be the place where Ageus threw himself into the sea and the people of Athens and the area

• 50:29Liv Albert?

  built a Temple of Poseidon on that spot. And so this stunning ruin of a temple is literally perched on the edge of a cliff. The views are unreal. The sunsets are un-unbelievable, unbelievable. Um, and so we will be doing all of those things along with some just generally lovely times on the Mediterranean and in some of my all time favorite places. So again, if this is something you can afford at this time and you want to come with me, I would so love to have you. We do need to get 12 people in order, uh, to make this work. So we'll see how it goes. I would really love to see you guys there. But if this is totally out of the realm, or you don't want to do islands or whatever,

• 51:14Liv Albert?

  we will be looking at doing the other trips again, which we hope to make as affordable as possible. Also, all of that said, the old prices, like everything you guys have seen before, um, So like, none of it was break even. I feel like maybe I never made that clear and people are like, oh, it's so expensive. It's so expensive, but also like I, none of it was break even. We did not make a single dime. Like I lost money on both of the other trips. So that isn't something that we can keep up, um, which means prices generally will have to increase. Like either it'll keep happening or it won't. But we did have to kind of learn through all of these attempts to like slowly try to, um, make a profit. And that's not even my goal. Honestly, I just wanted to do these eyes this with you.

• 51:56Liv Albert?

  My goal was always just to like have my trip paid for, which has not happened yet, but should with the Lhasa. So this is just full transparency because, you know, I'm me, um, and I can get rambling, talking into a microphone. Thank you all. Uh, mythsbaby.com slash group trip for more information, or there's a link in the episode's description. I would love to see any and all of you there or stay tuned for more information on future group trips. And I heard from all of you about the Odyssey and I'll be doing another reading very soon with lots of more context. I'm so thrilled you all love it. Let's talk about Myth Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert, Michaela Penguish, it's the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network. Hey, we're working on new podcasts, more to come on that.

• 52:41Liv Albert?

  Select music by Loop Chaos.

• 52:44Liv Albert?

  Generally, I love you all. You can find ad free and so much more at our Patreon, uh, the Oracle Edition, patreon.com slash myths baby. Or you can sign up for just ad free in Apple, where I would get, I was gonna say wherever you listen. That's not true. Just in Apple. That's life, but the ad free, ad free, I'm, I'm gonna stop now. Ad free Patreon does go to Spotify.

• 53:08Liv Albert?

  Someone take the microphone away from me. I am Liv and I love this shit. And can you tell I haven't written a script in so long that now I'm just a rambling lunatic? I hope you all liked it. Kay, thanks. Bye.

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