Remnants of Rage, the Forced Marriage of Thetis, and the Fateful Judgement of Paris

The great goddess Thetis, the crimes of men, and the origins of the Trojan War. AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook 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 ourhttps://www.mythsbaby.com/contactpodcast 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: Brock "the Rapist" Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner#; Hockey Canada's Horrors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_Canada_sexual_assault_scandal#2025_criminal_trial; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Pindar's Nemean Ode 5 https://topostext.org/work/20; Pindar's Isthmian Ode 8 https://topostext.org/work/21; Homer's Iliad, translated by Emily Wilson; fragments of the Cypria https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/348/pg348-images.html#chap75. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributionsmythsbaby.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/grouptrip.

• 1:05Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello, welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv. And now today, we are carrying on with our journey revisiting the myths that surround the origins of the Trojan War. These are stories which I first shared with you all back in 2018,

• 1:24Liv Albert?

  a long time before I had all the research and the Greek skills that I have now. So in honor of beginning the next reading series, the modern translation of the Iliad, we're returning to the very beginning of that famous culture-defining mythical war. Now, did a war happen in the region of Anatolia that the Greeks called Troy? Definitely. Did it involve the Trojans against a group of people that can be reasonably understood to be the Anatolian name for Homer's Achaeans, the Achaeans? Yeah, that too. But did the Trojan War happen in any way that resembles, I can't speak, that resembles Homer's Iliad, gods or otherwise? No, it probably did not. I mean, even if you ignore the fact that the gods were there. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

• 2:09Liv Albert?

  There are quite a few moments that we have to revisit before that war ever begins. First, though, a word from me, your resident rage-fueled feminist. This is intentional. I have been sort of reflecting on this podcast and my life surrounding it and have written something that is quite intentional and not one of my recent rambles. So if you've had a habit of skipping those, I would ask that you listen to this one. That said, there is a trigger warning for discussions of sexual assault because we live in 2026.

• 2:50Liv Albert?

  And so I've been thinking a lot about how I got here. 2027 is going to mark 10 years of me creating this podcast. That number seems both absolutely absurd and also the natural progression of what has been both the hardest and best thing I've ever done for myself. Now, I've changed a lot in 10 years. This podcast has changed a lot in 10 years. But as I sit here writing this, it is occurring to me just how much hasn't changed in these past 10 years.

• 3:23Liv Albert?

  And frankly, the things that haven't changed are just painfully relevant to today's episode.

• 3:30Liv Albert?

  In 2015, I was a 20-something living in Toronto. I was a few years out of my undergrad and my postgrad for book publishing was at the time coming in handy. I worked at Penguin Random House Canada, an office which was relevantly made up of, I would guess at least 80% women, but less relevantly, at the time was still being run by an old white man who was, in my experience, a privileged, rich asshole. Now, again, that bit's not totally relevant, but these days, I'll take what I can get. Also in 2015, though, was the first major public viral rape case that I can remember. And existing within an office full of women and surrounded by a load of friends

• 4:11Liv Albert?

  who were all young women, this is something that was big for me, for everyone I was around with. Brock Allen Turner, I'm gonna say that name again, Brock Allen Turner was convicted by a jury in California of three counts of felony sexual assault. He was 19, a student swimmer at Stanford, and was caught in the act of rape by two Swedish graduate students who just were walking at night at 1:00 in the morning and turned a corner on Stanford's campus and found 19-year-old Brock Allen Turner, a man who has the face of chalk-colored, covered rat shit.

• 4:50Liv Albert?

  They found him behind a fucking dumpster where he was in the act of raping 22-year-old Chanel Miller, who was passed out, had her clothes hiked up, who was on the fucking ground behind a fucking dumpster, being raped by this piece of human garbage. And if you can believe it, Brocky Boy's actions here are only one of the most horrifically egregious moments of this case. Because, like I said, Brock the Rapist was convicted on three felony counts: assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person. Honestly, the third count is just

• 5:35Liv Albert?

  repetition of the other ones, and I'm not going to go double-check what I was wrong about, but there were three counts of various types of horrific sexual assault. And the prosecutors of Brock the Rapist's case recommended he receive a six-year prison sentence because of just how purposeful, intentional, egregious his acts were. The judge in his case, though, a man named Aaron Persky, thought differently. Brock the Rapist Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and released after three. His father wrote of this six-month sentence, quote, "It's a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life."

• 6:16Liv Albert?

  Naturally, there is little to no concern with Chanel Miller's 22-plus years of life, in which she did not violently rape someone. But Brock Allen Turner violently raped Chanel Miller behind a dumpster while she was completely unconscious. And then, when caught literally violently penetrating an unconscious person, he tried to run. And let's be crystal fucking clear here, he got that sentence because he is A, a fucking man, B, whiter than a sheet of old paper, and C, a promising young athlete. You should know, today, he might be going by Allen Turner. So Brock the Rapist Turner, Allen the Rapist Turner, same rapist, different name. And to be clear, I'm naming Chanel Miller, who was originally known as Jane Doe, because she

• 7:01Liv Albert?

  wrote a memoir intentionally linking her name to this crime. And I don't mention this case because it was the beginning of anything, or even because it exemplifies the worst of any of this fucking disaster of a society we all live in, but because, to me, it marks the period when my eyes became fully opened to the world in which I was living as a woman. And as a woman, of course, I have my own experiences, my own stories, because every single fucking one of us does, whether or not she even sees it for what it is. But Brock the Rapist Turner's case went viral in a way that opened the eyes of a lot of women in this world. And since that point, our eyes have been open and we've been watching. In 2016, Donald Trump was running for president. A recording of him gets leaked where he says he likes to, quote, "grab 'em by the pussy."

• 7:46Liv Albert?

  He wins the presidency just a couple months later. I mentioned earlier that I worked in an office filled with women, and gods, did that make an impact? It was everything we could talk about, everything we thought about. And of course, so much of what the books we published were about or were trying to address. Even before that, those of us in the world of Canadian books and publishing had our own early form of hashtag #metoo before the public viral resurgence of that term. Back then, the man who was the face of Canadian books and literacy was revealed to be a fucking predatory creep, Jean Gomeschi. His future books were yanked. It felt briefly like it mattered, you know? It mattered when men were predatory monsters. It's funny to think about now, because then came Brock, then came Trump, then came Weinstein and Cosby, and more

• 8:28Liv Albert?

  men than I could possibly name here, and then Epstein, and then Epstein, and Epstein, and more fucking Epstein. In 2025, five players of Hockey Canada's 2018 World Junior Hockey Team were acquitted of gang raping a young woman who has remained anonymous and uses the pseudonym EM. It started as a consensual act with one of the players while EM was drunk, but after, allegedly, other men from the hockey team just kept coming into the hotel room, one after another. There was a group text involved. Naturally, it's supposed to be on the victim to decide, you know, in a drunken, vulnerable state, to stand up to a room full of five full fucking grown hockey players. What, she's just supposed to stand up and hope for the best?

• 9:11Liv Albert?

  And if not, she consented? Okay. So those men were acquitted. They made videos where they, in my personal opinion, coerced her into saying she was fine with it, because literally, what else could she have done? She is one young woman, a girl, surrounded by fucking hockey players. Again, those men were acquitted. Technically, they were found not guilty. Last year, one of them, Carter Hart, went all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals with the Vegas Golden Knights. This year, another of them, Alex Formenton, was signed to the Edmonton Oilers. And all the while, the NHL is capitalizing off of the success of a beautiful queer love story written by a woman that just happens to follow hockey players. It's really fun to

• 9:55Liv Albert?

  just wash over all the rape by shipping queer hockey players. Makes it all better. Now, this case sounds a bit familiar to you all, doesn't it? Probably not because the Americans have heard much about this culture-defining Canadian trial, but because it sounds almost exactly like the case that's gone viral and has me thinking about these past 10 years, what it means to be a fucking woman and just how little has changed. Because today, we're all watching as seven Cornell students are being defended by an enormous part of the internet despite group chats which involve the term "free pussy." And a little devil emoji when someone asks, allegedly, if the victim is still available for further alleged rapists to join in.

• 10:40Liv Albert?

  I started this podcast because I wanted to talk about mythology, but I also started this podcast because I was watching as the minor bits of feminism and the desperate scramble for something resembling equality of the 90s disappeared. Lindsay Clancy's heartbreaking trial of a woman being failed by the medical system and that resulting in a horrific, horrific killing of her children is being used to justify revoking women's rights to vote in the States. It's even being used to defend the seven rapists with jokes about those boys just going through postpartum depression. Not because that's a reasonable connection to make, but because the male status quo just doesn't see us as people and certainly doesn't see us as humans requiring medical

• 11:23Liv Albert?

  evaluations, medical care that is actually targeting our female bodies. And ironically, I had to pause this introduction to take a phone call from my doctor who says that the fact that I have every symptom of perimenopause except lowered estrogen just means I get to live like this. Because they just don't study our bodies. I started this podcast because Greek mythology holds the foundations of this mentality. It represents one of the earliest ways that women have been understood as less human than men, less worthy of rights and freedoms, less able to live their own lives. This has been the most important undercurrent of my work, but gods, if it isn't growing

• 12:08Liv Albert?

  stronger every fucking day, because I've been doing this 10 years and I have great pattern recognition skills. And here's my final point, I guess, but I want you all to sit with it, okay? More than anyone, though, I would like the cisgendered men who listen to me because I know you are good guys. I want you to sit with this. Now, our society in the West promotes an idea of achieved equality that is not based in reality, right? Men have this idea that women are, if not totally equal, then pretty equal. But whether it's women's rights or the rights of people of color, Black Americans and Indigenous peoples especially, none of us are even remotely equal to the power of usually white men.

• 12:51Liv Albert?

  We're not equal, not because we don't have the same rights as them on the surface, but because the rights we share with them were never imagined to be inherently granted to us. They were never imagined to be inherently bestowed upon us simply because we are human like the powerful white men. The rights that we have that resemble equality were given to us because our ancestors fought for them, because those people fought tooth and nail, died, gave up their lives and livelihoods just to prove that all humans deserve equal rights and equal access. But the thing is, true equality is not something that can be gifted by those in power.

• 13:36Liv Albert?

  If it's something that was given, then it's something that can be taken away, and that inherently is antithetical to a true idea of equal rights. The patriarchal capitalist system which rules us cannot be saved because it doesn't inherently consider all humans to be equal. If anything resembling equality had to be forced, like it has in our reality, if men, if white, powerful men had to be convinced that other humans deserve the same rights as them, then this system can and will fail the rest of us. Because imagine if someone suggested removing men's right to vote. Like, you can't even imagine it, right?

• 14:21Liv Albert?

  Because their rights weren't bestowed with an amendment. They were inherent. They were there from the beginning. So if it's even possible to joke about removing the rights of one group and impossible to even conceptualize removing the rights of another, then those groups were never really equal and they never can be equal under this system. It all needs to be torn down. We need to start from scratch. We need to start from a place of empathy, understanding. We need to start from a place where the basic assumption is that all humans are created equal.

• 15:02Liv Albert?

  And to finally bring it back to the topic at hand, I think if there is any character in Greek myth who conceptualizes everything that I have just put into this, it's the goddess Thetis. She knows this rage and she knows it all too well.

• 15:34Liv Albert?

  Remnants of Rage: The Forced Marriage of Thetis and the Fateful Judgment of Paris.

• 15:57Liv Albert?

  Thetis is a goddess with immense and immensely mysterious power. We've talked about her in so many ways over the years, including an incredible conversation on the depth and breadth of her story. If you want deeper dives on this goddess, search her name and find the other episodes I've done. They're good. Today, we're going to revisit her wedding specifically and how it ties her to the origins of the Trojan War. But gods, does she contain multitudes, like in a deeply unique way.

• 16:32Liv Albert?

  Thetis, of course, is a Nariad, a daughter of the old god of the sea, Nereus, and the oceanid Dorus. There were said to be at least 50 Nariads, but it is Thetis who stands above the rest, not because of any defined myth, which is an enormous part of her appeal, but because unlike the other Nariads, Thetis features as a major, and I mean major, player amongst the Olympian gods, particularly before and during the Trojan War. But long before the war, she was a goddess who threatened the patriarchal order of things. Thetis's origin story is told beyond the Iliad, in later sources like Pindar.

• 17:16Liv Albert?

  Pindar, remember, is an archaic poet from Biocia. He references loads of different myths and bits and pieces in his poems, but the poems themselves are always written in honor of different athletes participating in different competitions in Greece. That's all to say he can be helpful, but you'll rarely hear me mentioning him because it always revolves around those athletes, which I frankly don't care that much about. But as for Thetis's story, he can help us a little bit. Pindar has two different odes related to athletes from the island of Aegina, the small island in the Serronic Gulf. Today, it's about an hour-long ferry from Athens and yes, has been a feature on two of the group trips we've done in the past years. I love Aegina.

• 18:00Liv Albert?

  And Aegina, like Thetis, is a bit of a mystery, but the island's mythical origins are interconnected with the family line that Thetis is about to marry into. Hence, she features in these athletic odes. But still, this is a Greek myth, so get ready for two very contradictory backstories, both written by the same author. Thank you, Pindar. Regardless of the background, Thetis was "forced" to marry the mortal king Pelias. And oh, do I mean forced. In one of Pindar's odes, he says that Thetis was "given" to Pelias as a gift because he'd been such a good guy and had refused the advances of a married woman who was trying to trick him like Sherbroe.

• 18:41Liv Albert?

  Alternatively, in the other of Pindar's odes, for the wrestling boys of Aegina, he writes, quote, "All this was remembered even by the assembly of the blessed gods, when Zeus and splendid Poseidon contended for marriage with Thetis, each of them wanting her to be his lovely bride, for desire possessed them. But the immortal minds of the gods did not accomplish that marriage for them when they heard the divine prophecies. Wise Thetis spoke in their midst and said that it was fated that the sea goddess should bear a princely son, stronger than his father, who would wield another weapon in his hand, more powerful than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident.

• 19:23Liv Albert?

  If she lay with Zeus or one of his brothers, no, cease from this. Let her accept a mortal's bed and see her son die in battle, a son who is like Ares in the strength of his hands and like lightning in the swift prime of his feet. My counsel is to bestow this god-granted honor of marriage on Pelias, son of Iacchus, who is said to be the most pious man on the plain of Iolcus. Let the message be sent at once to Chiron's immortal cave right away, and let the daughter of Nereus never again place the leaves of strife in our hands. On the evening of the full moon, let her loosen the lovely bridle of her virginity for that hero."

• 20:08Liv Albert?

  Meanwhile, what we know of the so-called marriage process is that Thaddeus fought her future quote-unquote husband. She fought him with everything she had. There's a trope found within Greek myths that feature water gods. There are a bunch of instances where water gods must wrestle or be wrestled by mortal heroes. Heracles wrestles the river god Akalos, and in the Odyssey, Menelaus and his men wrestle the old sea god Proteus. In all cases of these mythical wrestling matches, the water gods are found to be particularly slippery. They're always able to transform themselves into all sorts of things in an

• 20:47Liv Albert?

  attempt to escape their mortal heroes—lions, snakes, even water itself. There is only one instance, to my knowledge, where the water god being wrestled isn't actually a god but a goddess, and it is the story of Thaddeus's desperate attempt to fight off her so-called husband. Though Thaddeus is mentioned in all sorts of very ancient sources, it isn't until much later that the details of her wedding appear in sources like Pindar's Odes that I mentioned. Like in Hesiod, Thaddeus is named as one of the Nereids and she's mentioned as the mother of Achilles, but there's no account of her relationship with his father, let alone the actual experience of her marriage. In the Iliad, though, the

• 21:32Liv Albert?

  oldest surviving source for Thaddeus and everything else in Greek myth, she tells her side of the experience pretty clearly. She's speaking to Hephaestus at the time. She's desperate for a way to save Achilles's life, despite the prophecy that he's gonna die there in Troy. She's asking Hephaestus to forge him fresh armor and a shield. Hephaestus is a bit of a softie here, too. It actually makes me like him even more. She's distraught, and he's caring, and he asks her what's wrong, like, what is it that he can do to help her? This is when Thaddeus replies through tears, quote, "Hephaestus, has any goddess on Olympus suffered the agonies and bitter pain and grief that Zeus, the son of Cronos, has imposed

• 22:16Liv Albert?

  on me alone? Of all the goddesses submerged beneath the salty seas, he chose me to be subjugated to a man, and that I endured a marriage with a human. Entirely against my own desires, I went to bed with Pelias, the son of Iacchus." Thaddeus makes her experience plain. Not only did she not want to marry Pelias, but she was forced into her bed with him explicitly against her own will. Pindar may have chosen to question her story, or simply shared with us a story that doesn't otherwise survive elsewhere. Over time, though, it becomes clear that the wider story of their so-called

• 22:54Liv Albert?

  marriage remains much closer to Thaddeus's own story of what is explicitly marital rape. From as far back as the 7th century, like, long before Pindar lived, pottery survives and shares Thaddeus's rape with its viewers and its users. There's a plate from Crete which is broken but likely showed Pelias wrestling Thaddeus as she transforms herself into a fish and wriggles free—or tries to wriggle free—from his grasping mortal hands. Pausanias tells us that he viewed a chest that depicted Thaddeus transforming herself into a snake for the same reason. There's an amphora from Melos still from the 7th century BCE, which shows a collection of Nereids and Pelias selecting Thaddeus.

• 23:39Liv Albert?

  A crater from Corinth, the 6th century, shows something similar: Pelias laying in wait for his so-called bride. There are three tripods from the same century that expand the assault's details. She transforms into a lion and a snake, anything to save herself from the forthcoming trauma. More paintings show the same from all over century after century. Pelias has his arms wrapped tight around the furious, terrified woman as she transforms and transforms and transforms—lions, panthers, snakes, monsters, gods. She tries everything

• 24:19Liv Albert?

  that she has in her to free herself from this marriage. The word "bride" is so often used in these situations. Bride, bride, bride. I can't read it now without thinking about what exactly that meant for a woman—or more often, a girl. Bride sounds like a good thing. It sounds like something to be sought after, right? Bride implies some kind of consent—parental or otherwise. Bride implies something that just isn't here. It's vaguely true of Thaddeus, but it is far more true of other stories. There are so many uses of that word, bride, and only a handful of them actually result

• 25:00Liv Albert?

  in a marriage. Even what I read earlier about the whole impetus for Thaddeus having to marry Pelias because Poseidon and Zeus wanted her to be their brides, despite the fact that they both already have wives. And thus, this is my newest obsession, because what does it mean to be a bride if there is never a marriage, if there is never a groom, never a husband? In that case, what is a bride? And don't forget, don't forget, the word for bride in ancient Greek is nymphi.

• 25:45Liv Albert?

  Nymphi. Unless you imagine some other spelling, some means of distinguishing between the nymphs who are brides and the nymphs who are nymphs, there isn't any. It's the same word. It's the same word. And for some reason—I have yet to discern—the men who have interpreted and translated these texts so many centuries ago, those men determined that sometimes we—in English—should call them nymphs, and sometimes we should call them brides, even when there's no groom and no husband. And unless we become versed in the ancient

• 26:29Liv Albert?

  language, we may never even realize that a distinction has been made between those two things. Anyway, there's only so much I can give away from the book I'm neck-deep in writing, but I don't really think bride means bride. I think it means sexually available woman, ready to be used by a man. And it's horrifying.

• 27:08Liv Albert?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the drill. Quince makes elevated, everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now, and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that—I mean, it's nearing sweater season, so those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather, and I use it, like, basically every day. Because that's the thing, they have really great

• 27:51Liv Albert?

  basics. Like, they have really great things that you can wear with so many other things. Just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe—from warm, responsibly-sourced down jackets, and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves—to beautiful 14-karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen, you

• 28:32Liv Albert?

  know? Making things more affordable. So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 29:12Liv Albert?

  Thetis fought her assaulter. She fought and fought and fought with all she had, but it was impossible. Not because she wasn't powerful. Thetis holds a power that seems to extend into history and into stories that we will never fully understand. She has this hidden power that is unique amongst the sea gods and most gods for that matter. No, Thetis lost the fight with her groom rapist because Zeus wanted it that way. Thetis holds hidden powers beyond explanation, but she also held a very explicit power over Zeus. Well, two, but we'll get to the other one. It was prophesied that she would give birth to a son more powerful than his father.

• 29:54Liv Albert?

  As Pindar told us, this is the reason that Thetis must marry Peleus, a mortal, rather than the two Olympian gods who were otherwise interested in having her be their bride, despite the fact that they already have wives and no one is attributed as having more than one wife. So then what is a bride? Zeus would have loved to have her as his bride. A nymph, nymph, maybe. Poseidon would have too, but neither god was willing to create their own downfall. No, she had to marry a mortal. Gods, apparently I could make this whole episode about Thetis, but we must persist. Remember, I have done a handful, handful of episodes about her in the past years where I have dove much deeper in ways that I can't do now, but desperately want

• 30:35Liv Albert?

  to, into this like unnamed importance of her, including, so one of my all time favorite episodes is with Dr. Machi Propuski, who edited a book all about Thetis. So just search her name in your podcast app and listen to more after this one, please. She's amazing. The gods force the marriage despite Thetis's protests and her desperate attempts to fight back. And for reasons that are lost to time, the wedding is a huge fucking deal. The wedding of Thetis and Peleus is one of two incredibly famous mythical Greek weddings. There are really only two weddings at all, let alone weddings between mortals and gods, which have explicit stories associated with them, and which have become and remained so famous. And both weddings feature mortal heroes marrying

• 31:20Liv Albert?

  goddesses. Today's is of course Thetis, but the other I have to tell you is Cadmus and Harmonia, because gods, I love them. And it is only these two divine mortal weddings which are attended by the gods. Now frustratingly, the story of their wedding and this infamous judgment that will come from it do not survive in particularly ancient forms. Instead, this story is generally understood to have been told in a lost ancient epic that we call the Cypria. Fragments of it survive, kind of, mostly it survives in later authors talking about what was in it. So, and some things are gathered from depictions and art, of course, but that is all there is. We don't actually have

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  like a surviving story about this wedding. Now, their wedding was held on Mount Pelion, where Peleus and his future wife wait for their guests to arrive. The ceremony and the party were very famously attended by all the gods save for one. But the initial guests are laid out on some of these surviving bits and pieces of pottery primarily, and it's really interesting to see who is explicitly found there at the like, front of the queue. The rainbow messenger goddess Iris leads this procession of divine guests, though sometimes it's a hero tutor centaur Chiron. And then there's Hestia, Demeter, sometimes Leto, and Charaklo, one of the goddesses that

• 32:48Liv Albert?

  we call the graces, and Dionysus. So there are two pieces of pottery which show this procession, and they both include Hestia, Demeter, Charaklo, and Dionysus, which is just fascinating. Charaklo is not someone who comes up very often, so it's her inclusion. And the fact that Dionysus is the only male god in this procession is just particularly interesting. We also learned that many of the most important married couples arrived at the wedding together. Zeus and Hera, Poseidon and Amphitrite, and funny enough, Ares and Aphrodite, despite there being no official account of them being a couple outside of adultery. There are also the Muses and the Fates,

• 33:32Liv Albert?

  and both groups emphasize the overall importance and impact of this wedding. It is a very big deal. But of course, famously, there's only, there's one goddess who is not invited. Eris, the personification of strife. Now, the sources aren't entirely in agreement on how this bit goes down, but frankly, the popular version of the story is something that I've been obsessed with since long, long, long, long, long, long before this podcast ever started. So I'm just going with that. Eris, the uninvited goddess, was particularly incensed by this snub. And so

• 34:10Liv Albert?

  she arrived anyway. She was ready for strife to crash the party. And crash she did. Eris came prepared. She had with her a golden apple, the special type only found in the divine garden of the Hesperides, goddesses of the evening. In that golden apple, Eris had inscribed two words, "T kalisti." The essential translation is straight out of Snow White, only absolutely preceded Snow White by literally millennia. It means for the fairest. And this is where my feminine rage just gets like a little bit more prickled, because of course, the famous next bit involved

• 34:51Liv Albert?

  three of the most powerful Olympian goddesses fighting, not just over a simple apple, which they could pluck anytime they wished, but specifically the implication that it held, that whoever possessed this apple was the fairest. I can't fathom a reason why Aphrodite, goddess of sex and beauty, Athena, goddess of war and craft, or Hera, goddess of women and marriage, would deign to fight one another over something so silly. Especially since none of this actually survives in anything other than a much later ancient summary. I just find it difficult to believe that that bit was particularly ancient. The versions of these goddesses found in the Iliad are above such nonsense. But regardless, this happens, the goddess's dispute

• 35:36Liv Albert?

  becomes all too important. The three goddesses are apparently commanded by Zeus to have their disagreement decided by this random guy in Troy, you know, for reasons. Now, do I think this bit was imagined later as a way to explain how the Trojan War started? Yes. Yes, I do. Because regardless, Zeus decides that this random shepherd dude named Alexandros, better known by his other name, Paris, will decide which of these three ridiculously fair goddesses are actually the fairest. You know, because all girls care about is looking pretty for the boys, obviously. Even the goddesses of war and every other badass thing. Now, the Iliad makes a vague

• 36:20Liv Albert?

  reference to this event, but there is no mention of an apple or no, or the question of this, who is the fairest. Instead, in the Iliad, all we learn is that Hera and Athena were angry with Troy because of Paris Alexandros's decision, whatever that may have been. Hence, added later to explain what the decision was. Now, an additional hiccup as we continue on with this bit of the story, it makes absolutely zero chronological sense to suggest that Paris Alexandros was in any way old enough to be making such a decision at the time of Peleus and Thetis's wedding, because Achilles is yet to be born, and it's reasonable to believe that he and Paris are

• 37:04Liv Albert?

  of at least a vaguely similar age. Surely they can't be more than a handful of years apart. So like, how is it that Paris was an adult who could answer such a thing? As always, try not to think too hard about how little sense it makes. Such is the wonder of Greek myth. But the decision, this judgment rather, must be made. The young shepherd who will soon find out, or maybe has already found out, that he's a prince, is set before these three goddesses and asked to determine which of them is most fair. One by one, these powerful Olympian goddesses offer him personal promises. Now Hera tells him he can have all the power in the world,

• 37:45Liv Albert?

  Athena offers him immense skill in warcraft, and Aphrodite offers him the love of a beautiful woman. Naturally, because patriarchy and its misogynist stereotypes of both men and women, they had to start somewhere. So Paris picks the hot girl. This is why patriarchy affects us all. It also makes dudes look useless.

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• 39:16Liv Albert?

  I'm sure I don't have to tell you all, but I will anyway. The hot girl is Helen of Sparta, and it doesn't seem to matter to Aphrodite or Paris that she is already married. Still, with the help of the goddess of sex, Paris builds ships and sets sail on a journey that is, on the surface, meant as a kind of embassy mission to the foreign lands of Akaea. He lands in Lacedaemon, where he meets Helen's brothers, the Dioscuri, and then he meets her husband, the king, Menelaus. Paris has brought gifts for Sparta's queen, something that's not at all worrisome and actually very much expected. But in this case, he has an alternate motive. He's there to steal the hot girl.

• 40:00Liv Albert?

  While Paris and his Trojan entourage are visiting Sparta, Menelaus must leave. He's expected in Crete, turns out. How lucky. He asks his beautiful wife to continue hosting these strangers while he's gone. She can feel free to give the foreign guests anything they need. Lucky for Paris. So with the king far from home, it's easy for Paris and Aphrodite to continue on with their plan. According to this fragmented ancient summary of the Cypria, Aphrodite brings the two together in love, and in doing so, puts everything into motion. Paris and Helen gather riches from Sparta, the gifts that Paris has brought from Troy, and together they set sail off into

• 40:45Liv Albert?

  the sunset. Except they sail east, so it's more like they're sailing off into the sunrise. But that doesn't sound as good.

• 40:54Liv Albert?

  According to this version and others, Paris and Helen make a stop or two along the way. Hera, still angry at being called "not the prettiest," summons a storm that pushes the ships off course, south, where they land in the city of Sidon in the Levant. There, Paris Alexandros pulls an Israel, and he "takes" the city. Fortunately, though, he didn't have the backing of the tyrannical oligarchy that is modern America, and so Sidon continued on as one of the most incredible ancient cities in the whole of the world and its history.

• 41:28Liv Albert?

  At least until it's faced with the genocidal actions of the Zionist nation-state in 2026.

• 41:34Liv Albert?

  I know, I know, I'm a broken record, but if I am faced with the name of a city that I know is both 3,000 to 4,000 years old and which has also been bombed over and over and over again, all within the last 12 months, you're gonna hear me mention it. Hey, remember earlier this year when Israel dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in human history on southern Lebanon? You know, the southern Lebanon that's home to not only millions of innocent Lebanese people, but also two of the world's most ancient cities, Sidon and Teher? Yeah, you know the one. I feel like, if I recall, it's like in tons. It's bigger than nuclear. It's just not nuclear, so that's fine. Paris and Helen stay in Sidon is a flash in the pan, unlike Israel's years-long assaults

• 42:18Liv Albert?

  on southern Lebanon. And before long, the new couple is headed on to Troy, where everything is about to become a lot less fun for everyone. Because by this time, Menelaus is home in Sparta, and he's learned of what's gone down. His wife is gone, his treasure is gone, and gods be damned, he's not gonna try to get it back. Because women are property, thank you very much. It's exactly the same as treasure. They go hand in hand, even when that woman is also 100% the reason that you are even allowed to be king in the first place. That's a cool system we've got here. As for Helen, oh Helen. Now, I've gone back and forth over the years on how I feel about

• 43:01Liv Albert?

  Helen's involvement, her agency or lack thereof. But honestly, as I read and write this in 2026, I find I simply don't care for that debate. Not because I don't care about the character of Helen. I think you all know from listening to my reactions about Christopher Nolan's Odyssey that I care about Helen perhaps too much.

• 43:22Liv Albert?

  But if we debate whether or not she actually wanted to go with Paris, I think that we are in a way debating whether or not she is to blame for what's to come. It's clear to me now that the question is in itself a distraction. It offers a way to judge Helen for the actions of hundreds, thousands of men. Like, so what if she went intentionally? So what if she wanted to leave her home and sail off to a new life? Women were not permitted to have agency in that world, and so debating hers is only a way to distract from the reality. Men made decisions for her, and those decisions resulted in an enormous amount of pain and death and trauma for Helen and everyone else.

• 44:06Liv Albert?

  Meanwhile, if we decide that she didn't go willingly, all we've done is continue the emphasis on how little of her life is within her control. The gods determined how this happened, the gods and the mortal men. So feel however you want about Helen. Give her whatever agency you feel she has. Make her in love with Paris. Make her hate Paris, whatever you want. Just remember that in the world she mythically lived in, it doesn't really matter. Because regardless of what was or was not her decision, the world of men waged war over her, and the world of men spent centuries, millennia, blaming her for the decisions that the men made.

• 44:47Liv Albert?

  The Trojan War started because men are fragile. Paris was fragile. He intentionally sailed to remove a woman from her home, willingly or otherwise, and in doing so, should have been pretty well aware of what the repercussions could have been. Menelaus was fragile. His reaction to this is not based in any attempt to help Helen or really concerned for how she feels. He is concerned because his property has been stolen, the treasure, the wife, the honor. It's male fragility that results in one ends up being the equivalent of a world war. And yet, they find so many ways to blame women for their poor decisions and their

• 45:32Liv Albert?

  inability to understand when they've lost.

• 45:39Liv Albert?

  It sounds familiar, kind of, doesn't it? Going to war under the pretext of freeing women, only to use that war to kill hundreds, thousands of women and children. It's almost like the patriarchal power structures have always used women and children as a scapegoat. Hey, remember that time that the Achaeans bombed a girl's school in Troy? No? Right, that's because that's the other bullshit Western war that's based on the premise of helping women but which only serves to kill them en masse.

• 46:15Liv Albert?

  And thus, sparks the Iranian, I mean, the Trojan War.

• 46:38Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds. Thank you so much for listening. I, I really loved that script, and it made me feel really good, and I'm hoping you all agree. Was it over the top with rage? Yeah. Does it feel great? Also, yeah. Is it something that I feel like I, as a woman in 2026 who talks about ancient women have every right to rage against? Yeah. So, I hope you found it as cathartic as I did. Because all of this is wild. The fact that we still even talk about Helen as a cause

• 47:20Liv Albert?

  for anything. The fact that Christopher Nolan, like, still somehow made it, like, not only a little bit her fault, if not a lot her fault, but also decided to just make her battered. Just decided to make her husband not only think of her as property, but also beat her.

• 47:41Liv Albert?

  Because in 2026, men think it's just realistic for women to be beaten if they anger their husband. That's literally what Christopher Nolan did by making that happen in the movie. And it is absolutely what a ton of people did in their responses to me intentionally or otherwise by saying that it made sense that Helen was beaten by her husband. It made sense. Do you know what it means if you think it makes sense? It means you want to beat a woman. She upsets you. That's the only reason it could make sense. Cause you've thought about that that's what you'd want to do. So. Anyway, I absolutely love the men who listen to this podcast because I know you hear me. And if you don't, you can leave, that's fine. But there are loads of you who do.

• 48:26Liv Albert?

  And honestly, we need you. We need you. And I hope watching every horror of the Cornell seven case. Fifty seven rather fucking level group chat, right? Jesus fucking grace. I just hope that with all of this, the men who listen to me really specifically are realizing that your role is not complacency. You do not have that luxury because we do not have that luxury. And because of everything I said at the top, the way that quote unquote, any equality, equality has been given to us. If it is given, it can be taken away.

• 49:07Liv Albert?

  That is why we need men to stand up because the whole point is that we've reached a stage in this society, the West, very broadly. We have reached the stage where men not only believe that women have equality, but that it has gone too far. And let me remind you that if you can imagine revoking the rights of one group, but it is impossible to even conceptualize revoking the groups of another, that's not equality. Like, I don't know why that's not equality. You know?

• 49:47Liv Albert?

  And so in order to fix the level of misogyny that we have reached as a culture, the level to which that men feel that they are owed, women's bodies, attention, what have you? This is something that must be fixed by the good men. Because it was constructed intentionally in such a way to devalue everything that women have to say on the subject. We are right, let me tell you, and we have a lot to say. But the whole point is that an enormous group of men do not believe that we have the right

• 50:31Liv Albert?

  to even talk about it or let or vote or control what happens to our own bodies. And so we have been put in a position, if you can believe it, women have been put in a lot of fucking positions over a lot of the entirety of recorded human history.

• 50:50Liv Albert?

  We have been put in a decision, in a position where our opinions are not valued by the people who are causing all of the problems. So news flash, it has to be the other men who stand up to this. And it doesn't mean just like knowing you're a good guy or feeling like you're a good guy. It means actively being loud. It means actively stopping situations that you see. It means cutting ties with the shitty men you are somehow still friends with. If you have a friend who jokes about anything in relation to the Cornell seven or anything in that realm, if they think any lick of this could be funny or comparative or just anything.

• 51:36Liv Albert?

  I need you all. I mean, in a perfect world, you'd punch your friend in the face. But at the very least, I'm going to need you to just cut ties. You know, wash your hands of them. Because in the same way that it is not equality when it was gifted by the powers that be, it is also something that has been constructed in such a way as to require men to stop it. And if you don't feel that as your role as something that is inherently required of you as a human fucking being, I need you to think about why.

• 52:21Liv Albert?

  Because I, I.

• 52:26Liv Albert?

  We're getting raped just all the time. Children are getting raped all the fucking time. The like, the men in power are literally just doing this. They, it's wild, the stuff you learn about Epstein and all of this, like. It's wild and I never, I never hear men in my life.

• 52:51Liv Albert?

  Actually talking about it in a way that matters. Like you can say it's bad, that doesn't do shit. You have to actually stand up to it. Like just because a man isn't a rapist doesn't make him good, actually, you know? You know? You have to have to actively put your body on the line to stop the men that are.

• 53:16Liv Albert?

  Anyway, I'll stop now, but I, this episode made me feel good. So I really hope it did the same for others and I'm psyched to be back in these scripts. However, of course it is spooky season, so not to worry. I'm looking at little bits and pieces of what we can have there. And then we will start this reading of the Iliad, which is going to be really fun and definitely not at all also helpful for other things that I am actively working on in this moment, you know?

• 53:46Liv Albert?

  Anyway, thank you all. Thank you all. Fuck. It's almost been 10 years and there's just more rapes all the time. There's definitely not less, so much more. It's just like keeps getting, it just increasing frequency of like some of the most egregious crimes against humanity that like are even just remotely imaginable. Like it's actually kind of wild if you just sit back and you're like, what, like what? Like, what are we doing?

• 54:15Liv Albert?

  Anyway, I got a necklace in the mail today that says Miss Andress and I'm pretty excited to start wearing it around town. I am Liv and I love this shit. And I especially love being able to channel my rage into Greek mythology.

• 54:33Liv Albert?

  It's what I've been doing for 10 fucking years and it has never felt better. Remember nymph just means bride? Think about what that, what are the implications of that? Okay, thanks, bye. I love this shit.

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