Conversations: Powerful or Powerless, Caring or Careless? The Goddess Thetis w/ Maciej Paprocki

Liv speaks with returning guest Dr Maciej Paprocki about the goddess Thetis, a goddess with seemingly immense but mysterious power, and a woman who has enough agency in her life that she becomes tragically unique. Learn more about the Staying Power of Thetis https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110678437/html?lang=en. 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 CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. 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 group trip.

• 0:41Speaker 01

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• 1:16Liv Albert?

  Hi listener, I am just here at the top to put a warning. I've been recording some introductions with the guests on the line. So we'll jump right into that in a second. But just a heads up, this episode, while being incredibly positive and, and really insightful into an ancient goddess, does feature pretty heavily in an assault narrative that is, I think, a particularly egregious case of, of assault of, of a woman in mythology. But it is also simultaneously

• 1:55Liv Albert?

  a woman who then gets to say fuck you to the man. And so I think it's, it's, it's worth it if you could manage. We definitely don't go too graphic. It's still very mythology, but I wanted to warn you all right at the top.

• 2:35Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, here recording introductions with the guest in front of me and trying not to be weird about it. And I am here today with returning guest, Dr. Machi Praprosky, and I'm so excited for this conversation. You and I had a like two-part conversation last time because I, I am so obsessed with the way you study mythology. So I'm so excited to talk to you today about Thetis. Thank you.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  And thank you as well. I'm so happy to be here with you again and to talk all things mythical.

• 3:12Liv Albert?

  You're one of my rare guests where you, what you study is like so much like the myth itself versus, you know, all of those sort of surrounding aspects, which I love too, but like the insights in our first episode have stuck with me in a way that like not all of my episodes do. I love everyone, but, but and then I, this came up because I was doing this episode on Thetis and you had been wonderful enough to give me a copy of the, the Thetis volume that you worked on with other people who've also been on my show, which is a thrill in itself. But then I got to your chapter and I was like trying

• 3:51Liv Albert?

  to put it into this episode and I was like, absolutely not. No, no, I can't. I need, I need all of it like from you and immediately sent you that email. So I'm, I'm really so excited for this one. So I, I don't even know quite how to begin it because I just am so obsessed with the idea, but like this article that you wrote for this Thetis volume, which I know you edited as well. So I'm sure you had lots of, of hands in it. But this particular article about how the, the rape of Thetis by Pelias, it's like, it's kind of served to take away, I'm saying it poorly because I'm going to let you, but like take away a lot of that kind of original power that she had as a goddess. So like, how did you go about this?

• 4:35Liv Albert?

  What do we know about Thetis? Like before that, she's such an interesting character. That's not really a great introductory question, but like, take it away if I, if I can be so bold.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  I'll try, I'll try because Thetis is, as you've said, a really fascinating character. And the thing about her, and I think about, we can say the same about many gods and goddesses, but about Thetis in particular, is that her life is shrouded in mystery. And we don't really know that much about it, but what we know is so tantalizing that we see snippets, we see mentions, we see allusions. And other characters say a lot about her, but always in this very oblique manner. And Thetis herself always remains silent. She very rarely says something about her past history, about her entanglements with other gods. But what we see is so incredible that I am really happy to discuss this with you today.

• 5:30Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, she's such a, she is such like this enigmatic character in not a unique way, but like certainly like one of the more unique goddesses in that way. Like, remind me, I mean, well, not, I know that, you know, most of the the earliest sources we have that survive on her are going to be the Iliad, because obviously that's like the earliest source. But, you know, in the Iliad, she is so focused on being Achilles' mother. And we get these like glimpses of her past. But like, oh, I don't even know where to begin. Like, maybe can you remind my listeners of like the glimpses we do get of her there?

• 6:09Liv Albert?

  And like, what, what those, I guess, led you, how those things led you to this, this argument that you worked on in this paper?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Uh, so to start, I I'd say that basically, I also need to go back in scholarship because our volume on Thetis was inspired by Laura Slotkin, excellent book, The Power of Thetis. And her main argument was, and I'm really trying to boil it down, but it's going to be difficult, is that whatever we see of Thetis in the Iliad is often very one sided. She is mostly presented as a grieving mother to Achilles, who knows that he's going to die soon. And she can't really do that much about it, but she's, she's still trying. She's still trying to just help him in any way she can. At the same time, we see glimpses of her being much more powerful, or at least that she used to be much more powerful than she is given the credit for.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And Laura Sladkin, building on this, she built an entire argument stating that if you compare what we have in the Iliad with the other fragmentary sources and with the Iliad itself, or at least what the Iliad seems to suggest, it seems that Thetis used to be a very powerful goddess, upon whose destiny hinged the entire destiny of the cosmos, because she was supposed to bear a son who would be stronger than his father. And for some reason, she, she never had this fate fulfilled in the way that it was meant to, because as we are, at least on the basis of the Iliad and the other paradoxical sources, as we infer,

• 7:43Speaker 02

  this child was supposed to be a son of Zeus or one of his brothers. But it never came to happen. It came to happen that the gods either knew about this plan, or there were other, obviously, there were other different competing versions of what happened. But one way or another, Thetis was impregnated, raped, we can say that, I think, by Pilius, and she bore Achilles. And Achilles was greater by his father, not only by the virtue of being a demigod, I know you dislike this term, but here I think it fits.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  But also, also by the virtue of this elevating quality that Thetis seems to have in her, that whatever she touches, she elevates, and she discovers these hidden powers and hidden agendas that people have. And here, I think we can start our exploration of her fascinating life.

• 8:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah. One of the things, and, and you sort of hinted at it there, but I think a great place to start for me is, is how it is actually, you know, described, that she is kind of married off to Pilius, because like, she is very intentionally married off to him, seemingly to avert this destiny that you're talking about. But on top of that, which like, you know, that that happens to a lot of goddesses, right? Like, there's a handful where there's a similar kind of fate ascribed, and then the gods will try to, like, circumvent it in some way, right? What the one that comes to mind is Metis, the the mother of Athena. It's a similar thing. She is destined to bear a son that's more powerful than his father.

• 9:17Liv Albert?

  And so Zeus seemingly can't stop himself from raping her. And so he instead eats her afterwards to ensure that, like, nothing else can come from that and then has Athena as a result. But with Thetis, it's so different because he he's almost, you can tell it it seems like they're more afraid of her because they're not willing to, like, find that root of, like, still getting with her and then fixing it afterwards. Like, they're more afraid of that. And so instead, like, very intentionally marry her off to Pelias. But then on top of that, the the evidence we have, if I'm not mistaken, for the actual, like, assault of Pelias is like very explicitly assault and like violent, right?

• 10:01Liv Albert?

  Like, there are, she's like transforming, trying to escape him, right?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, definitely. And if you just let me find my evidence, because obviously I'm an evidence guy.

• 10:13Liv Albert?

  We love evidence.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, yeah. So basically, what happens, for instance, when we start with the Iliad, because the Iliad, I think, is the basis here. We have this wonderful scene when Thetis comes to visit Hephaestus because she wants to have a set of armor done for Achilles so that, you know, he he gets more glory and he he fights better. So Thetis comes, she visits Hephaestus, and Hephaestus gives her all the honors. And he says, this is a dread and revered goddess who saved me when I was thrown away from the Olympus by the plottings of my mother Hera, obviously. And we know here that Hephaestus and Thetis have a story back there.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  But what is more important is that Thetis

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Has this very rare moment, because as you've said, you know, this is a very common story that, you know, a goddess is foisted on somebody, you know, and she has nothing to say about it, because obviously, this is a very patriarchal world of Greek mythology. But here, we see that Thetis, when she is with Hephaestus, in this very intimate context, like, you know, that they have a history together, on which we will talk more later. Then Thetis starts saying what she thinks about all of the situation. And she says, she says that she married, she's been married off to Pelias unwillingly, and she endured his marital bed, even though she was very much unwilling. And I can't stress strongly enough how unique this phrase of hers is.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But we never really see a goddess complain about her fate in such an open and cutting manner. Perhaps, you know, in the Iliad, if you were to look for a kind of parallel, you could try to point to the scene between Aphrodite and Dionne, when Aphrodite is wounded and she comes to Dionne and she comforts her. So also, you see this kind of intimacy and this closeness between two characters, and this sharing of the mutual unhappiness and trying to comfort each other. But here, Thetis, I think, is even more raw and even more open in that she says to Hephaestus that she was basically raped, that she endured his marital bed, though she was very much unwilling.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  And I think this is the opening moment that allows us to show, to throw a glimpse of, to get a glimpse of her past, of her history here, in that she's been raped, she speaks about it openly, and obviously, now, even though the Greeks lack the vocabulary for that, because for, obviously, for them in their patriarchal world, this is the fate that women are subjected to. But here, with our open, with our open-minded approach to that, we can see that Thetis is a quite unique goddess who speaks her mind and who complains and is aware enough to recognize that a great evil has been done to her.

• 13:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it is. I mean, obviously, my entire show is based off of interpreting so much of what happens to women as rape, because we can see pretty clearly what the results are. And you do have to pick it apart and make that interpretation on your own, because, like you said, they weren't, they didn't have a word for that, in the same way that we do. But yeah, with Thetis, it is, like, not only is it so clear it's unwilling, but then even, because there's like, there's artwork, too, that depicts it, right? Where it is like, yeah, she says she's unwilling, and then we also see all of these ways in which she actually tried to fight him

• 13:53Liv Albert?

  off, which is even more unique. Like, there are definitely a lot where it's like, they are unwilling, for sure. But the idea that she actually does a pretty good job at defending herself, or actually gets the chance to, is also so unique.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And the defense of Thetis against Pelias's advances is a perennial topic in art and appears on many, many pieces. And they are quite wonderful, because they often show Thetis as being physically larger than Pelias. I think alluding to this difference in status between her, she's a goddess, and he is a mortal man. And also, they often show her transforming into animals, so that she can repel his advances. And we see her transforming into a lioness, we see sometimes her being transformed into snakes. And from the other sources we have, limited although they are, we can sometimes see that she, for instance, she also tried to turn herself into fire, which is just so mind-boggling and

• 14:51Speaker 02

  so wonderful, that she had so many ways and so many, so many little maneuvers to try to sort of force this impudent mortal away, but she couldn't. And this is, I think, what is very, very tragic about her, that somebody who should be effortlessly able to defend herself as a goddess is not able to. And why it happens like that, this is the big mystery here.

• 15:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's so, it's very, it's very interesting. Now, okay, so the Iliad is obviously the earliest, but you mentioned fragmentary sources. So are there, are there other sources, you know, that are in the realm of being nearly as old as the Iliad and which give us a bit more information into her like background or her story, or just sort of where any of that, that specific aspect of her marrying slash being raped by Pelias comes from?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  If we, well, there are many, obviously, but if I think how to arrange the material so that it becomes the clearest. So I think that I would stay with the Iliad for a bit, because, you know, for instance, on one hand, we see her being raped, but on the other hand, in the Iliad, we see the first echo of her being powerful. Because in the very first book of the Iliad, we have this wonderful story when Achilles comes to Thetis, he has been this honored, and he complains to her in a very, you know, sad way, as plaintive way, as Achilles can sometimes do, Achilles can sometimes do. And we, we see Achilles

• 16:26Speaker 02

  stating that Thetis has clout on Zeus's court, and he reminds her that she used to go and, you know, boast that she was the only one who saved Zeus from wrathful destruction, because there was a coup on Olympus, when Athena, Hera, and Poseidon all came and they bound Zeus in the fetters, and Zeus could do nothing about it. So he was bound very thoroughly, and the only one who saved him was Thetis, who came and who brought Briars to Olympus, who is one, you know, of these primordial giant-like characters, and he

• 17:05Speaker 02

  was the one to release Zeus. But what is often not stressed enough is that between the first coming of Thetis to Olympus, and her recognition of the situation, and her bringing Briars, Briars to Olympus, there's been a time

• 17:21Speaker 02

  In between, when I imagine Thetis had to hold off advances from three very powerful Olympians. Like, because we know that if Hera and Athena and Poseidon bound Zeus, they want him to stay bound. And here comes Thetis, just pretty as you please, and she tries to just undo their hard work. So I can't imagine they would just take it easily. I think they would fight her. And she was able to hold them off until, you know, the greater power, the Calvary, came, so to speak. So, so just this speaks to me how powerful she had to be that she found a way, either by some kind of a trick or deception, or she was even more powerful if we want to go the open conflict route.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  But one way or another, she was able to undo bounds, eh, bounds done by very, by three very powerful Olympians, and she came unscathed. And she basically saved Zeus and now is, and now Zeus is in her debt. So she can command Zeus as she pleases, obviously. I'm trying, I'm, I'm, it's a bit of a hi- hyperbole, because obviously Zeus is bound by the decrees of the fate and so on, and Thetis is as well. But the very fact that she could do this speaks of her incredible yet hidden power. The power that Laura Sladkin was very right to detect in the Iliad itself. So you have this contrast here between her being, you know, this kind of grieving mother character, her being raped, or at least this is suggested in the Iliad.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  But on the other, other hand, we hear of Thetis's glorious past, when she's done services to the gods. And this is only one of them, because obviously, you know, in the Iliad, we have other mentions. Like, for instance, I already mentioned Hephaestus, who was saved by Thetis and Euryonami, her aunt. And they lived together under the swell of Oceanos when, eh, when Hephaestus was exiled from Olympus. And we are, actually, in the Iliad, it is suggested that Hephaestus learned the craft of metalworking while under Thetis's care. And there's this wonderful description here of Hephaestus foraging underwater when the swell of the Oceanos was flowing around their underwater boat, a boat.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  And, you know, this image of fire being struck on the anvil underwater is, I think, one of these beautiful moments in the Iliad, when you can just realize how poetic this whole thing is.

• 19:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about that too. Even when you said, um, you know, that there was a, a version where she u- used fire to defend herself against Pelias. Cause that relationship she has to Hephaestus is so, I mean, the, the, it, the biggest thing about Thetis particularly in the Iliad is all of these things that you're laying out, but how they don't really carry too far beyond the Iliad in terms of surviving sources. Like especially the coup. That's one of the things that like haunts me is that we don't have more information about the coup as a story.

• 20:22Liv Albert?

  Like that, like I, I wanna know how widespread an idea it was, how fleshed out it was in the larger culture at the time and like how much it was really imagined as to have been a thing because it's huge. It's this like enormously momentous thing and I'd forgotten that Athena was on the side of the coup too. That's also its own surprise. Like she is so usually her father's favorite.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, definitely. And you know, the coup itself is fascinating, not only because, you know, it's just such an incredible event, but also because as you rightly noticed, we don't really know that much about it. Which is kind of unfortunate because you know, there is a whole scholarly tradition, a very old one stating that this is something that's been inserted into the Iliad, like, you know, that it wasn't there before, you know, and you know, somebody who has been fanciful and they just invented that. Or there is another version, I think it's more popular, that sometimes scholars say that this is just Homeric invention. But you know, that this is, uh, I think more of the school that Homer was being fanciful and the gods aren't stupid and petty like that.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  So he just put a lot of incredible and fanciful stuff into the Iliad and we shouldn't really believe that because the gods obviously don't behave like that. And you know, well.

• 21:42Liv Albert?

  But they do.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  They do, they do. But the problem is that it's recursive, because obviously, our first epic story of the gods is the Iliad. So obviously, our whole understanding of the gods is colored by the Iliad. So we can't really judge the Iliad by the Iliad, right?

• 21:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  But the other sources, they haven't survived, at least not fully.

• 22:03Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  And, and the Iliad, they say the Iliad is still pretty realistic, because what we have of the remainder of the poems that surround it, you know, it's like the so-called epic cycle, which was sort of the Iliad supplement. Because the Iliad only says, it tells a part of the Trojan War. And we have the other poems, which unfortunately didn't survive entirely, which says, which re- described the rest of the story. And within these poems, we often see that they've been even more fantastic and fanciful than the Iliad. Like, you know, these other poems had tales of magic and transformation and the gods doing all sorts of wicked things. So the Iliad, as we see, the Iliad is still quite realistic. You know, the humans behave mostly in the way that they should behave.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  And the gods, they don't meddle as much in the Iliad.

• 22:51Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  But why, why I am telling you all about this? Because, you know, when you look at this story of the coup, some people will tell you, oh, it's been an invention. But then Laura Sladkin and several other scholars, they pointed out that it's very well grounded within the Theogonic tradition of the gods fighting each other.

• 23:08Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  And we often don't know that much about, you know, about this kind of god-on-god violence. But the Iliad, which happens at the very late stage of mythical history. Because, you know, obviously, this is the age when all the gods have been born. This is the last age, the last generation of heroes, and they are dying off. Because the, the general story of the Iliad is as exactly as in the epic cycle. We are told that Zeus, upon Gaia's behest, he had an idea that the earth is over encumbered by so many tribes of people, and he decided to decimate the human race. And obviously, you know, he had this idea with, you know, the golden apple and causing the war and all that. But this is the very last of the hero's generation.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  So we see the end of the mythical history. But the Iliad itself is also a record of the earlier history. Because you know, the characters often give examples from their pasts. And whenever we see gods discussing their pasts. We see that there are some, I think it was Nancy Felton who called it rumbles of violence gone by. And we see that the gods have histories, often very violent histories. They like to fi- fight each other. And there is this wonderful article by Andrew Porter. Who, and I think does it quite convincingly, he tries to show us that this coup in the Iliad. It had repercussions. And we can find these repercussions in other parts of the Iliad.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  For instance. Uh, there is this series of divine um duels in the latter part of the Iliad. I don't know if you remember, because the gods, you know, they are kind of bored with the war and they decide to have god and god duels at some point. And you know, there is this also uh a moment when Apollo is supposed to fight Poseidon. But they refuse to. It's like, you know, and but what they say to each other sort of hints at them having common history. And when you see how Apollo and Poseidon are described in the Iliad. They are described as having done some great crime in the past.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  And they had to atone for it by serving the mortal king Laomedon in Troy. So we know that Apollo pastures flocks and Poseidon was responsible for building the walls of Troy. And Andrew Porter was very right in asking, okay, so what did they do so that they had to atone for that? And his point was that first Poseidon obviously was a part of that coup. In the very first book of the Iliad, and he had to atone for that. More mysterious is Apollo. Because he does not appear in the list of actors we have in the book one. But when we look at scolia, which are, you know, uh the learned commentaries of the people. Who lived in the Alexandria and the surrounding scholarly circles.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  We often see that, for instance, when they comment on this passage in the Iliad. We learned that some people have replaced Athena in that passage with Apollo. So even in, you know, among the scholars and the grammarians and the learned people who lived in a in a slightly later period of antiquity, there was no agreement about who exactly rose against Zeus. We know it was Hera, we know it was Poseidon, and about Athena and Apollo, they disagree. Because some people say, as you rightly noticed, Athena is always of Zeus. Why would she rise against him? And Apollo has a story of sort of having a kind of a troubled relationship with Zeus. We've discussed this in our previous episodes, so in our previous talk.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  So Apollo is seen to be a more appropriate character to be put here. But but some people who are in the Athena camp, they say that, you know, there is an explanation for that. And even in the scolia, we have an explanation that some people say that Athena was supposed to be married off to Hephaestus by Zeus, and she hated that, so she rose against Zeus. So so, you know, we see that even in antiquity, when the people writing scolia, they also found this passage very weird. But at the same time, they found some kind of an explanation for it. They tried to sort of embed it within the larger mythical story world, and they found ways to do that. So I would not, because I I would not say that this is necessarily an invention.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  And even if it is, it is one that fits very well, this tradition on god-gone god's primeval violence that the gods had, that, you know, they fought for power, and it was very, it was often very violent. So in here, I would say that I'm obviously in the camp that this is not an invention, this is something that happened. And as it happened, and, you know, it was put in the Iliad at a very early stage, and it fits very well within the rest of the poem. But at the same time, I think it's when you look at the entirety of Hephaestus' story, you just can appreciate how well it fits this entire coup into her character arc. That this is a goddess who once was very powerful, she did great services to the other gods,

• 28:18Speaker 02

  and then her star sort of faded away. And why that happened, this is something we're going to talk about today.

• 28:29Liv Albert?

  There's so, there's so many things. The idea of it being Apollo is really interesting because, yeah, you, you were the first one to put it into my head, this, the, what, what seems so, it, it, it feels like not obvious, but just like, oh, it makes sense to go down the line of like, yeah, that all of the sons overthrowing their fathers, but it stops before Apollo has the opportunity, but he would be the heir to the Olympians, like based on that kind of structure. And so it is, it's very interesting to think that it could have been Apollo working to basically like claim what he felt to be like his rightful place. But at the same time, I, I, I mean, the whole thing is, it's just so interesting. And I don't even know where

• 29:14Liv Albert?

  I'm going with, because I'm just obsessed with all of this. Um, but it does make, it is interesting to think of it being Apollo versus Athena. Like, it definitely makes more sense rationally. But I do have to ask, and this might be way too big a question. So stop me because I want to make sure we focus, you know, mostly on, on Thetis. But like, how, what, what's the idea of like, calling anything in Homer, an invention? Because like, it's, I just can't fathom like, what is like,

• 29:42Liv Albert?

  what constitutes an invention if it's something as old and like, like establishing as Homer? Like, I understand like an invention maybe like in later versions? Is that kind of what it would be? Like, how, how?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Oh, this is a huge question.

• 29:59Liv Albert?

  Like, yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, I, I will openly admit that I'm not a specialist here because I wasn't, I wasn't always interested in textual transmission, how the Iliad, you know, happened, basically.

• 30:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  But what I can tell you is that basically for the Iliad, we for the longest time had this discussion, one or many? So was there a person who was Homer? As we say, who actually composed the Iliad mostly as we have it today, mostly because obviously it changed later on. Or was there many homers and this was just an oral tradition being passed down? And it never really fossilized until it was written down. And even then, you know, the Iliad, as we know, it only happened in Alexandria, you know, very, very late, you know, as the Hellenistic era happened. So, you know, this is, this was a huge discussion and, you know, the question of American invention here

• 30:54Speaker 02

  is something that isn't really that much talked about these days because this is a remnant of the Bygones era when we believed in the single Homer, I think.

• 31:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's the, I think I guess, because I just like work off of the assumption that like I, I, I certainly believe and think it's most enjoyable too to believe in like the, the, the multiple stories, the general idea of this oral tradition coming together to form the Iliad.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Obviously, obviously, you know, and you know, majority of the people, the majority of people would agree that basically the Iliad took very, very long to fossilize in its, you know, in its current form. And when we speak about, you know, this oral stage, when we had all these poems that didn't survive, but we can compare sort of them, them sort of to the Iliad and see how they came together. So I think this is the stage when the things are at the same time the most unclear. At the same time, the most promising, because you know, you can sort of see what escaped our attention or was never, you know, written down at the same time, but you can sort of see hints and traces. And I think Thetis's story is also quite fascinating because, you know,

• 32:03Speaker 02

  so little of it survives, but what we have is beautiful and what we have is inspiring.

• 32:07Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So I don't, yeah, I don't, I just want to talk more or I want to hear more about Thetis. So like beyond the Iliad, like, I mean, I guess how, when you're looking at this idea of her as this character who has seemingly lost an enormous amount of her power, like other than these, these moments in the Iliad, which are very convincing of like suggesting that there was this missing piece, like, is there more explicit ideas of what she could have been before, like are there?

• 32:46Liv Albert?

  Um, I don't even know, like, but yeah, like, what do we have kind of outside of the Iliad, I guess, that gives us more about Thetis, or do we have anything, or like, yeah, where, where are like the, the deeper ideas of her, her having this major loss coming from?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. So if you want to learn more, you have to go to Pinder. Which is surprising, and you know, I, I had a professor of classical Greek who was very fond of saying, if you want to translate Pinder, you have to be a crazy person, because one crazy person can only translate another crazy person.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, because Pinder is famously obscure, and Pinder has this very, um, I would say, bodlerizing attitude, in that he often says that he disbelieves all these nasty stories about the gods, because they are gods, obviously couldn't have behaved like that. But on the other hand, Pinder is often very clear and very poetic in that how he describes the divine goings on on Olympus. And I can read a passage in a racist translation from Pinder's eighth Isthmian Ode, which describes very clearly what happened to Thetis.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  "Even the assembly of the blessed gods remembered this, when Zeus and his planted Poseidon quarreled over marriage to Thetis, each wishing her to be his own beautiful wife, for the love held them in its grip. But the gods' immortal minds did not accomplish that wedlock for them, when they heard what was ordained. For wise counseling Thetis said in their midst that it was fated for the goddess of the sea to bear a royal son mightier than his father, who would wield another kind of weapon, stronger than the thunderbolt or the tireless trident, if she was joined to Zeus or to Zeus's brothers. Come, stop this. Let her win a mortal's bed and see her son die in war. My advice is to grant the divine gift of this marriage to Iacchus's son Pilius,

• 34:40Speaker 02

  and do not allow Nerius's daughter, or Thetis, to place in her hands the leaves of strife a second time. But during the evenings of a full moon, let her loosen the lovely bridle of her virginity."

• 34:55Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  We all know what that means, right?

• 34:57Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, the way they'd say it, my god.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so basically, let's get her raped.

• 35:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. And.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  But we can, you know, we can discover quite a lot in this very pithy passage that, you know, the Thetis caused, almost caused a war against the gods, because Zeus and Poseidon were beyond reason, when, beyond reason, where they seen her. So we know that she must have been lovely, she must have been beautiful, enough to just, just mess with the heads of Zeus and Poseidon at the same time. So you can imagine what a hullabaloo on Olympus it was, like, you know, basically, things have gone crazy. And only Thetis, who's the goddess of divine order and law, found a way to sort of dispel this charm by stating that she has a terrible destiny attached to her. That her son, if married to Zeus or one to Zeus's brothers,

• 35:53Speaker 02

  would be more powerful than the father. So obviously, you know, Zeus loves his power much more than he loves Thetis. So he sort of moves away and Thetis continues that we should, as the gods often do, we should just get this divine danger and force it off on humans. Like, for instance, they did with Nemesis, right? And her daughter Helen, like, you know, we don't, you really shouldn't have Helen here, we should just cause a Trojan war with Helen. And the same goes for Thetis, like, you know, she is too dangerous to be left among the gods, because who knows? Maybe some other god will try to, you know, to have his way with her. So we need to remove her to the mortal sphere, we need to have her married off to Pilius.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  And this spinders, both metaphors. First of the leaves of strife being placed be- between the gods, and the second one of her lovely bridal of virginity. They just paint a very pretty picture that I'd say is, just hides a very ugly reality here.

• 36:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, that, yeah, that is Greek mythology, isn't it? Uh, but, uh, so one of the other things that really stuck with me from that passage you just read, the weapon of it all, like, do we think that's just more of a metaphor? Or is, like, that, that feels so unique of just, like, actually labeling out these things that make those three Olympian gods the most powerful? And then saying that he would wield a weapon, like, it's so, it's going beyond this idea of just generally being more powerful, and it seems more explicit. And then on top of that, possibly tied to Hephaestus in that way, right?

• 37:38Liv Albert?

  Like, this idea that if, if a son would be wielding a weapon stronger than, say, the, the lightning bolt, presumably it would be Hephaestus forging that. You know, I mean, obviously, there, there's also cyclops involved, but like, uh, Thetis's connection to Hephaestus seems to be also, like, saying something there.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And I think this weapon motive is very important because, you know, for instance, it returns when we, uh, read Prometheus bound, which obviously many people say is a very strange story when it comes to gods and describing how the gods work. But it also, you know, it's, uh, it's story is also about, you know, Zeus about to make marriage to Thetis. And Prometheus knows that if she, if she is married off to Zeus, then their son will be more powerful than Zeus. And Prometheus, when he describes in the play, the fate of the future child, he uses basically the same words. That this child will find weapon which will be stronger than the thunderbolt, will be stronger than the trident, will break the trident, if I remember correctly.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  And, you know, when, uh, when the, you know, when the child of Zeus and Thetis, the potential child is described, if I remember correctly, he is described as a wrestler.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Somebody who will wrestle Zeus for the control of the cosmos and will come off victorious. So again, you know, you have this metaphor of wrestling, which I think also applies to the way that Achilles was conceived, because Pilius had to wrestle Thetis physically for her to be impregnated, for him to rape her. And this imagery of wrestling, of violence, of weapons, you know, of flashing lights, of fire, is something that accompanies Thetis. And you would, I think, you would never, um, expect something like that from a goddess who, very disparagingly, is called by Apollo one of the lesser goddesses of the sea.

• 39:35Liv Albert?

  Hmm, does he call her that?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  He does.

• 39:50Liv Albert?

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• 42:24Liv Albert?

  See, okay, the wrestling, that's, I mean, that's wild. The wrestling thing is so interesting too, because it connects so deeply to her being the goddess of the sea, right? Because like Nerius, her father, is also famous, if I recall, for being this like kind of transformative character. And it's the same with like when Heracles has to fight a river and like any of these like water-based deities often have this ability to transform themselves in order to escape. And, and then like half, like, and it turns into this, this like wrestling match. So yeah, like, I mean, one, it's so interesting to give a goddess that kind of power generally, like in her fight with Pelias, because, I mean, like we already said, like, I think

• 43:07Liv Albert?

  this is one of the only, if not the only example of a woman being actually given the agency to fight back, even if she doesn't necessarily win. But to have it be this same kind of ability. That lies in so many very powerful, like oceanic kind of deities. I mean, I know it connects to the water generally, but like giving it to a goddess, but then also having Apollo call her lesser. Like, there's just so much going on there.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  I know, I know. And basically, you know, we can contextualize that this is fight with Pelias among these other kinds of scenarios. Because as you've noted, exactly, that for instance, in the Odyssey, we have Myrlus who wrestled Proteus, also the god of water, to make the god divulge how Myrlus can escape from Egypt and go back to home. And for instance, we also have this story, which for instance is most famous in Apolloderos, Apolloderos's bibliotheca, about how Heracles overpowered Nereus, so Thetis's father, to learn the location of the garden of Asperides.

• 44:10Liv Albert?

  I forgot it was he actually fought Nereus too, because I know he fights a river in that way, but he actually fought her, fights her father. Okay, that's even better.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Everything stays in the family here. So basically, you know, you have these different parallels and stories which come together. But you know, when I was writing my chapter, I thought about how these stories are different from the story of Thetis. And you know, I think the main difference was here is that you often have these ideas that you have to wrestle a god to get a boon. But when you, you know, when you have a male hero, a hero wrestle a male god, then you know, obviously they are manhandled, but nothing terrible happens to them. They continue being gods and their lives aren't fundamentally challenged.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  But there is other type of this kind of transformation fight story, and this is when you have a male and a female. So for instance, a god pursues a goddess. And we have these stories of Zeus who pursues both Metis, so Athena's mother, and Nemesis, mother of Helen. But he seeks not fortune or favors, but he sees, he seeks lasting physical subjugation of their fertile bodies. So he wants to have sex with them. And obviously, you know, for Zeus, Metis, she is digested and she becomes part of his, well, part of him. So she just sort of hidden within him and he sort of takes over her power. But for Nemesis, you had this wonderful story.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Uh, in the, in one of these fragmentary poems I was discussing, so Cypria. Uh, it's so that Zeus is pursuing the unwilling nemesis to rape her and sire Helen. Future Cassus Bell in the Trojan War. And she transforms into animals, just like Thetis does. So.

• 45:59Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  She finally, she's finally, you know, is taken by Zeus when she is in the form of a goose. And lays an egg, which later will become Helen. So you see that, you know, whenever you have a male and a male fighting. In these sort of transformation contest, fight, wrestling, sorry. Nothing terrible happens to the male god. But when you have a goddess, she's always downtrodden and something terrible happens to her. And there is always an element of rape. And Thetis, I think. It stands at the intersection of these two classes, because it's not a god who accosts her with a mortal man. But, and we see that in many sources.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Pilius had to receive some help from another god, because on his own, he would be unable to subdue Thetis. Thetis. And this is something that I tried to show in my chapter as well. That you have such an unusual story of a mortal man trying to attack and rape a goddess. Something which is almost unheard of in Greek mythology. And when this idea even appears, for instance, for Ixion, who wanted to rape Hera and Thetis and all these. All these characters who tried to foist themselves upon powerful goddesses, they would be always severely punished. But not for Pilius, because this was part of Zeus's divine plan. And as I suspect, he had some help, because Thetis would not go down quietly.

• 47:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Okay, also, I was not familiar with that. The nemesis as Helen's mother in that way, like I'm just so used to the, the Leda.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:36Liv Albert?

  But that, that being from the Cypria, that make, oh, I'm gonna have to go.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of these early poems. So basically, you know, this was a very old version as well.

• 47:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's so, that's so much more interesting to have her as the daughter of Nemesis in that way, too. Like, there's a lot going on there. Oh.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, it basically very well ties with Pinder's story, how, how the gods remove all that is dangerous from their own midst, and they send it off to the world of the humans, right?

• 48:03Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:06Liv Albert?

  Oh, see, and this is why I get this idea, like, who, who is saying that the gods are not petty? Because like, all of the evidence, really, in the stories that's

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, they are.

• 48:15Liv Albert?

  Like, they are so petty. That's what I find the most interesting, too, and like, especially compared to modern religious ideals, like, just, I like this idea that they were just kind of enormously fucked up. And that's just sort of the point, and it, I mean, it humanizes them in ways that I think, I don't know, I, I, I don't need to say to my audience that I prefer this, but it's just, it's fascinating, but like,

• 48:42Liv Albert?

  huh, that I just, the, the, the way that Thetis is so unique and then doesn't really, but yeah, yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  She's not.

• 48:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, like, so, yeah, oh, there's, there's, there's so much. It, it, Pelias is, Pelias is interesting, you know, because he serves in this whole kind of storyline and like, is Achilles' father. But do you think that there's much to do with him? Like, why they picked him? Like, is there kind of something going on there with him and this, this like, subjugation of Thetis? Other than the, the more literal parts of it?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Remember what I told you about patterns in the story and all staying in the family?

• 49:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Uh, so let's start with Pelias' dad.

• 49:34Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm, yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  I guess, yes, and it's not a very well-known story, but it's, you know, it's in Hesiod's Theogony that he had a relationship with, uh, Thetis' sister, Samathy. The narrator of Sandy Beaches, and it was not consensual, as far as we know. So basically, Pelias' dad also raped a water goddess and Thetis' sister. And they had a child who was supernaturally nimble. He was called Focus. And but he was actually killed, if I remember correctly right now, because I haven't read it for a long time. But I think he was killed actually by his jealous brother, Pelias. He had to be, be, go into exile because of that.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  So already the plot thickens at the very early stage. But also, you know, if you want to look at Pelias as a partner, sort of, so to say, to Thetis. You can sort of see that Zeus is very keen on Prophecies to play out, but not exactly as everybody would imagine they would play out.

• 50:40Liv Albert?

  Uh huh.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  So for instance, if he designates somebody else to have a child with Thetis, he has to contrive some sort of a substitution trick. And Peleus, as his grandson, is a perfect example. Because let's, you know, let's realize it. He, his father already raped an Iriad, so we can say that obviously, you know, it's a terrible thought, but in the Greek mythical thinking, you know, there's already a precedent here in the family.

• 51:09Liv Albert?

  Uh huh.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  That somebody did the jo- did the job previously. So Zeus thinks he's obviously a good candidate. And he's also his descendant, but he is not Zeus himself. So the prophecy will latch upon him. But at the same time, it won't be Zeus who is as, who is ensnared by the prophecy. It will be another one, but similar enough so that you can sort of put the wheels in motion.

• 51:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. That just reminded me too, because when there, there's pretty little evidence that Thetis is ever actually kind of like forced to live with Peleus as his wife, right? Like, if I recall, it seems pretty clear that like she was kind of subjugated by his, that like quote unquote marriage, you know, the rape, the, the, the impregnation with Achilles. But I, I know there are like some stories where they, they have some other children, which I would also love to hear more about. Yeah. But then there's also this idea, like at least in the Iliad, where she's pretty clearly like living in the ocean, right? And she's like not really with him and it's, it's almost like it, it kind of served its purpose and she was,

• 52:16Liv Albert?

  you know, sufficiently subjugated and therefore kind of, you know, got to go back to just like being under the water and then sort of became this goddess that Apollo then calls like lesser.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it will be helpful to sort of try to reconstruct Thetis' fictional biography here.

• 52:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Please. Uh, so let's start with the parents. So obviously, this is Nereus and Doris. And here it's already interesting because you know, um. Some people have tried to explain Thetis' unique power by her being the descendant of two families. Because Doris is the daughter of Oceana's, so sweet water. Representation of the water, you know, of the river of sweet water which surrounds the earth. Whereas Nereus comes from uh the family of Pantus or the sea, the salt water. So we have this element of commingling, sweet and salty. And all of the of the children of this pair sort of have this potential to be something that hasn't happened before.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  But obviously, you know, this could apply to any of her sisters. So it's not a good enough explanation why Thetis is so powerful. Some would say a quirk of fate, but I digress here. But we see her being born of these parents, but at the same time, in the Iliad. Hera, who is a notorious liar, but we have to take her word for this. She says that she found Thetis. She liked her and she took her and raised her as her own in her house on Olympus.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  So we see a sort of adoption at an early stage happening on and Thetis. Lee lives on Olympus for some time. At least this is what the Iliad suggests. Then comes Pindar and we see that Thetis grows up and becomes so beautiful that she attracts the roving eye of both roving eye of both Zeus and Poseidon. And obviously, this whole quarrel happens, which we just discussed, which is described in Pindar. And Thetis, well, here we have a mystery. We don't know what happens then. Because it looks to us that. You know, there was this idea that Thetis says that Thetis should be married to Apelias.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  But it doesn't fit with the rest of her biography. Because as you've noted, it looks like, at least it looks like to me, but many people agree with me, is that she was exiled from Olympus. Like, you know, that before this decision to marry her off to Pilius, she was deemed too much trouble and she went back into the ocean or into the sea. And she was living on her own. And this is the time in her story when she saves Hephaestus, because we are clearly told that she's living underwater with her aunt Eurydice, who was also an oceanite, when she finds and nurses Hephaestus back to health. And this is also the time when Dionysus, who is being chased, you know, by Icarus,

• 55:11Speaker 02

  he also jumps into the sea and he's also received into the waiting bosom of Thetis, as it is beautifully described in the Iliad. So you have these two gods who just sort of take refuge with Thetis and they live with her. It looks like it wasn't at the same time, because we have nothing about them living there at the same time. But it looks like it was in roughly the same period, so one after another. And only after she helps Hephaestus, only after she helps Dionysus, you know, we have this moment in the story when Zeus says enough is enough. Pilius has to take care of Thetis. And this is where the whole rape story happens.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  And after that, depending on who you ask, but for instance, if you if you look at the Organatica, then you have this story of Thetis being mortally angry at Pilius. And you have this scene when Hera tries to sort of soften her heart towards Pilius, because Pilius is part of the crew of the Organates who is sailing. And they have some nautical troubles, so Hera goes to Thetis and she says, "But you should really forgive your husband. I tried to pick the west one for you," and so on and so forth. And this is a very unusual version of the story, because it it suggests that Hera

• 56:37Speaker 02

  knew about the prophecy, that Thetis is supposed to have a child stronger than his father. The same time Hera tries to say that Thetis refused Zeus's advances just because she was a kind word and she had respect for Hera, so she did it for her. But obviously, as I've said, Hera is an enormous liar in the Iliad and many sources. And I think she's trying to do the best of a bad job. So it looks like here, you know, Apollonius tries to combine two versions. One says that there was a prophecy and this is why Zeus avoided Thetis. And the other one was that Thetis refused Zeus because, you know, she was, she honored Hera in this way.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  And Hera tries to sort of combine these two stories into one in a kind of unusual way that really seems ineffectual when you look at it. And she tries to exhort Thetis to sort of forgive Pilius and help him in his predicament. But she also makes an interesting remark, and this is why I'm telling you this story. She also says, we also get this glimpse of what happened before, what made Thetis so angry at Pilius. We see that Thetis is reportedly, when she had a child by Pilius, she tried to make this child immortal and she did a very mysterious ritual to try.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  She put the child into the fire by night and she anointed the child with ambrosia and she did all sorts of magical things to make this child with Pilius of hers immortal. But Pilius found it out at some point and he interrupted the ritual. And Thetis threw the child on the ground and she left the house of Pilius as Apollonius says exceedingly angry and she never returned again. So this is, we call, can I say, a sort of a divorce moment for Thetis. That obviously, you know, they have a relationship with Pilius still, but they don't live together ever more. Thetis returned to the house of her father and her sisters.

• 58:49Liv Albert?

  Oh my god, okay, there's so mu- there's so much there. I, that... Firstly, I'd forgotten about Dionysus being also somebody that she, like, takes in. And it's really interesting that it's Hephaestus and Dionysus. Because of all of the men of all of the men in Greek mythology, like, they are the two...

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Powerful outsiders, right?

• 59:14Liv Albert?

  Exactly, yeah, that exist outside of the, like, Olympian's power structure. That aren't like, yeah, they're not on the same level in term... I mean, they're also just like more sympathetic characters, they're more, I mean, I wanna say interesting, but they are just more like, they just are different, they are the outsiders, like you said. And so the fact that it's them, yeah, one after another, is really interesting. They're also both, like, in being outsiders, like, this is less true of Dionysus, but it kind of is towards, like, the, when he's like an adult god. But that, like, they're also the two that are not welcome on Olympus.

• 59:56Liv Albert?

  Like, in being outsiders, that's part of it, but like, you know, Hephaestus is not welcome on Olympus because, well, you, you know, you wanna say that it's like Hera who throws him off because he's quote-unquote imperfect. But it's also that she, he is this god that she had without Zeus. And then Dionysus is this god that he, that Zeus had without Hera, but also that he had with a mortal, which is like, you know, it, there's a whole other level of why that makes Dionysus interesting. But to have it be both of them, i-is quite something. And also, Thetis is... Isn't she generationally older than Hera? Like, in terms of the wider generation of...

• 1:00:40Liv Albert?

  Like the theogony? Am I wrong?

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a very good point. It's hard to say at this point because obviously we can't try to sort of arrange generations when we come to humans.

• 1:00:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  But with regards, you know, chronology doesn't really work. So it's difficult to say, but I think that technically, you know, at least Hera's story, which places Thetis in a very subordinate position.

• 1:01:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Doesn't really pan out. As I, as I've told you twice today, you know, Hera's stories, they often smack of some lies.

• 1:01:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Or at least Hera, you know, I often look at Hera as somebody who is enormously frustrated by her lot in life, so she tries to project.

• 1:01:20Liv Albert?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  She doesn't always do it in a very good way, but she tries to project an image of tranquility un- until she does not. But when she does, you know, she tries to paint a vision of perfect domestic life. And maybe this is something that she also tried to do, like she tried to project this image of Thetis being her favorite stepdaughter. And you know, that Thetis was somebody that honored her and it was her, Hera, who made it so that, you know, this whole cosmic conflict didn't happen because Thetis was so grateful to Hera. That she refused Zeus's advances. Obviously, you know, that would be one way of looking at it, but you know, Thetis herself never says.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  And we see that after this story, you know, after the story in the Argonautics, when Thetis, you know, she is convinced by Hera that she has to help Pilius.

• 1:02:10Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  And she does. But we also see that Thetis is still absolutely insane insanely pissed at Pilius and she wants to do nothing. For him and she, it is clear that she's just doing this underdress. And whenever she's, you know, when she's done, she just leaves immediately and we are told that she's very angry. So we know that whatever Hera says is most likely not true, that Thetis has no warm feelings for Hera, for Zeus, for Pilius, for the entire Olympus here.

• 1:02:40Liv Albert?

  And that is in itself so interesting, like that is a rare thing that not only like a divinity can have such strong feelings about the power structure, but also that she can simultaneously like exist outside of the power structure, like that she doesn't have to stay with Pelias.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:03Liv Albert?

  That she can go back into the sea, this place that is, you know, in itself, like a separate kind of realm, like we don't, you know.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  A kind of refuge, right?

• 1:03:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like it almost, I mean, even though Poseidon is the god of the sea shore, but like it still as this like actual depths seems to exist outside the power structure of the Olympians in at least some way where she gets to kind of, she gets to do what she wants and like, and it comes after obviously such a horrible trauma of the, the quote unquote marriage to Pelias and everything, but the fact that she actually gets to in some really substantial way, like escape that is so unique. And yeah, the feminist in me is just like, fuck yeah, Thetis, you know?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you go girl.

• 1:03:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, yeah, somebody gets to.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Finally, and you know, I, I, I think always, you know, of what Terry Pratchett said about, you know, sometimes how do you relate to power structures and to paraphrase and traverse Pratchett in some way that into the sea's family, Poseidon merely married.

• 1:04:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  But Thetis was born and bred in the sea.

• 1:04:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and, and when it comes to Poseidon too, you know, we don't, we don't have a lot of surviving stories of him existing in the sea, like actually living amongst the sea people in whatever way, you know, he, he just sort of is like the Olympian god in charge of it, but like the people, the gods who were actually in there are Thetis and her family, like her father and all of them.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Yes, like you know, you sort of see a kind of armed neutrality here.

• 1:04:43Liv Albert?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  And that they exist, but you know, they recognize that they are the older ones and they've been here before. While Poseidon is an upstart. And you kind of see that, you know, obviously there is an understanding because, you know, he's the top god now. But at the same time, you see that there is a very kind of separateness be- be- between Poseidon and the rest of them. Like they know that he is not one of them and he will never be. Although he married into them by marrying Fethys's sister. And I think this is also wonderful, uh, example of, uh, Poseidon not being able to get Fethys. So he settles, I'd say.

• 1:05:20Liv Albert?

  Well, and even though his, and his story with how he marries Amphitrite is also so fucked up. Because, I mean, uh, uh, uh, you know, I, I love to say that Poseidon is like the, you know, the, the actual most violent of the gods. For all that Zeus seems like it. And it, it has so many ties to the sea, obviously. But it's really interesting that Poseidon is such a violent god. Like how he gets Amphitrite is via, via like, like violent rape essentially. And, and so that, like, he is this violent sea god. But then the sea gods, like you're saying, the older ones, the one who live, the ones who actually like exist, they were born into it. Don't have that same kind of violence. And that, that's also like a, an interesting kind of dichotomy.

• 1:06:05Liv Albert?

  But yeah, I, I never thought of it quite as Amphitrite being her sister. But still, like, oh, yeah, that, I mean, that makes sense. And marrying into the sea though, that's such a, that's such an interesting way of like phrasing that part of, yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know what, when you realize that, you know, that, uh, that Pilius's father raped another sister of Fethys and Amphitrite. Wow. Like, you know, this family is so fucked up.

• 1:06:31Liv Albert?

  Yes. Yeah. Which like, you know, again, is like what I've based my entire career on. But like, but it's so true.

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• 1:07:43Liv Albert?

  But Thetis, I just can't get over the way that she is kind of just outside of like all of the rules that that seem to exist amongst the sort of Olympian order. And just the fact that she gets to live, that she gets to leave.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. There is this moment in her history when she just either by her own volition or she's exiled. But I would like to think that she just had enough of Olympus.

• 1:08:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Whatever is going on because you know, imagine that. If we go with Hera's story, that there is a young goddess who is growing up and suddenly, you know, somebody who has been her stepfather and her step uncle starts fighting over her. Just can you imagine? And obviously, you know, this is Greek mythology. It's patriarchal, but still.

• 1:08:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Imagine Thetis's position.

• 1:08:35Liv Albert?

  But the fact that like. That that's like a thing we can say because she actually gets to sort of, sort of get some agency. That in itself is so interesting because yes to everything you're saying, but yeah, that, that, that kind of story exists in so much of Greek mythology. And it is just sort of like, that's the way it is. Like, I think about this with Persephone all the time. Like, Hades is her uncle on both sides. And while we get this idea that, that like, you know, I, I stand by the, the interpretation that like she is taken there against her will.

• 1:09:17Liv Albert?

  But even then, like, she stays there and she does get this, she does seem to get like a kind of agency. Persephone becomes incredibly powerful in the underworld. There's a lot of like, good that, that I think comes out of it for her as a, as a sort of person. But she still lives with it. She still goes with it and she still has to. Like, she doesn't actually get the chance to not. But Thetis gets the chance to, to

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  To say no.

• 1:09:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, to say no and to leave. And that is so unique.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Although, you know, you do have this very unusual version by Melanippides, which I think I mentioned previously, is that he says that Thetis was already pregnant by Zeus when she was being married after Pythias.

• 1:10:06Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Which, you know, is unusual. It, it's very difficult to reconcile with other versions. But at the same time, you know, it kind of builds on this mythical logic, then whenever Zeus wants somebody, he's going to get it.

• 1:10:21Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, so as you know, as you can say very obliquely, the beds of the gods are never empty. So, you know, why would Zeus wait?

• 1:10:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. What would happen? Like, you know, because, you know, you have Pender's version, where you have this family drama and coup and, you know, on Olympus and Tiff and Hera and Poseidon and Zeus all running around. But you also have this different version when it says Zeus wants, Zeus gets.

• 1:10:52Liv Albert?

  Which checks out.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Which checks out, obviously, you know, in mythology.

• 1:10:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  But what happened to this child? And you know, actually, there were articles about this, that Achilles is maybe, is Achilles Zeus's, you know, great, great son, or maybe it's Achilles Zeus's son? Who was sort of hidden because, you know, you never know what happens. And this ties into this ritual I was telling you about, so Thetis, obviously, wanted to make Achilles immortal. She wanted to cleanse him of the taint of mortality that he inherited from his father. She never succeeded.

• 1:11:27Liv Albert?

  Which, can I just say, I think, that feels like she's also trying to cleanse the taint of his father, period? And like, that's how it, that's the form it takes, which I just love, yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's my child, it's not yours.

• 1:11:39Liv Albert?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is fascinating, you know?

• 1:11:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Because, you know, I think we are, Thetis is aware that her power lies in her reproductive potential. So, you know, this is one of the big questions here, whether, you know, the prophecy only works once, or Thetis is still fertile, so she can still, you know, bring forth a child who will be more powerful than his father. We don't know that. But we do know that Thetis, in the sources we have, she often tries to sort of undo the deed. So if, you know, she either, and this is wonderful, she either sometimes tries to murder children by Pilius, by checking if they are immortal in very gruesome ways, and they are not, so they die.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  For instance, she puts them into the cauldron of water, or fire, or all these different sort of ways, and they die. And Pilius discovers that she's doing that. And sometimes we are told, for instance, I think in Lycra from that she actually had seven children, Achilles was the seventh one. Before Pilius discovered what was going on, he put a stop to that. But the other six, they died because of Thetis's experiments with immortality. So you get this image of her being sort of very callous and cruel mother, who doesn't care about the welfare of her children. She only cares about whether they are immortal or not. And on the other hand, you have this image in the Iliad, when she is very, you know, protective and caring, and she tries to do all the best for Achilles.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Fighting with the lot that she and he had been given. So what I think is most fascinating in Tethys is that she is a very dual and composite character. Then she can be either caring or cruel. She can be weak or willful. She is full of stratagems, but in the Iliad, she looks as if she's very weak. But and on the other hand, whenever you choose one of these extremes, you always get hints of the other extreme just lurking beneath the surface, just trying to come out.

• 1:13:45Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Powerful or powerless, sexualized or sexless. And it's all within this one character.

• 1:13:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah. This idea that that that she had all these other children too, that then, you know, she killed in that way. That screams to me, and especially if it's coming from Lecraefron, which because he's fairly late, right? Like Helenistic, yeah. So it feels to me almost like, not necessarily like a rewriting, but sort of like, like this kind of contextualization meant to demonize a woman who was able to leave and was able to, you know, in Achilles, who is not only like one of the most famous heroes,

• 1:14:37Liv Albert?

  but also someone that she does seem to have been able to, at least in whatever way that she needed for herself, like she was able to remove the the taint of his father, like we're saying, like she was able to make him at least, like, I mean, he's not immortal, but he's closer than most, you know?

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:55Liv Albert?

  And and so like, it feels almost like that idea that like, oh, but she killed a bunch of other kids is like this way of sort of demonizing this woman who has control over her body in some way.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, she becomes like Medea, right?

• 1:15:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. Like that it is this way of demonizing a woman because the worst thing. A woman can do is like destroy the, the, you know, power of reproduction because the primary concern of all of, you know, this, this ancient Greek patriarchal structure is that women are valuable because they can make more men. And, you know, so this idea that like, that she, you know, they're always just so concerned with, with paternity and with impregnation, particularly when it comes to deities, like you're saying, like, like Zeus. What Zeus wants, Zeus gets like, and it's always, you know, there's never a divine

• 1:15:57Liv Albert?

  moment of sex, be it, you know, rape or otherwise, that does not result in a child. Like, there is always that because that is like the structural purpose of women. Like, that's, you know, reductive, but like, it's also fairly true. Like, and so this idea that like Thetis is one that she was able to say, like, no, no more. This is not for me. And then like, sort of becomes, she becomes like less powerful in the stories, like you're saying, like she, she clearly has this kind of this hit, this power that has been like lost in some way. Or, yeah, like, we get this idea that she killed a bunch of kids too. Like, there are all these ways that it seems to sort of be trying to limit

• 1:16:39Liv Albert?

  her power because her power existed outside of the, the patriarchal, like, expectations.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Yes. So, you know, this is a huge topic and obviously, you know, there are several strands here I would like to pick on. But one thing is that what you've discovered, this demonizing trend, has been also recognized by other scholars who say that Thetis, just like Medea, just like other characters, is one of those witch-like goddesses which evolved into witches in later literature.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  And obviously, you know, um, this is something that's quite fascinating because both in Thetis, in Circe and in Medea, we see the image of a bubbling cauldron on the fire and the transformation happening within.

• 1:17:25Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  And this is fascinating because even though Circe is the very first witch in the so-called Western literature, in the Odyssey.

• 1:17:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  But we also have Medea, who is her mythical pendant, who is her niece, and she also makes use of many of the same paraphernalia of which we now think of as witchcraft related. But we also have a Thetis, which is less recognized, but also she's one of these women with supernatural power who conducts sort of supernatural experiments to change the nature of things. So there's that. And whether this makes her demonized, I would say that La- Laikofron obviously is one of these versions, but we also have this, people say now it's pseudo-hesiodic.

• 1:18:09Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Uh, poem, Agymis, which, you know, is mentioned in the Scholia to the Ergonatica, and it's basically says the same story. So we also have a very old, or at least much older, source which also says that Thetis was playing around with her children, trying to find out if they are mortal or not in a very gruesome way. So whether this makes her a demonized character? Yes and no.

• 1:18:35Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Because I don't think we should, um, uh, you know, uh, we don't really think we should appraise a mythical character by today's morality standards.

• 1:18:47Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Because these are the goddesses, and they do live in a patriarchal system. And a part of us, I think, will always be trying to support them and try to show them, to show them as these characters who are downtrodden and they try to fight and we sympathize with them, and I think it's wonderful. But on the other hand, we should recognize that, as Emma Aston has said it quite wonderfully, Thetis's loveliness is not to be relied on, that she can transform into a terrifying character. And I think it gives her even more agency, that she can be a very caring and devoted protector, as she is to Hephaestus, to Dionysus, even to Zeus, although this ends badly for her.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  At the same time, she can be terrible. And we see that, we see that hinted all the time, even in Iliad, when she just takes away all those who are plotting in the coup. She must have done something terrible. She unbound the bonds put upon by three very powerful Olympians. So she has immense power. She is crafty, she's sneaky. She doesn't always play fair, as we can see, because, well, she's trying to better her a lot, and you know, everything's fair in the war, and this is a war, this is the Trojan War. And I think that it would actually diminish Thetis if we were to sort of sugar over these less palatable aspects of her character.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  And I think this is something also happens in Madeleine's Miller book, right? The Song of Hercules. Thetis is the villain there. But she all, but you know, but Miller had a sort of a mythical precedent to that. Thetis is not all sweetness and light in the mythology as well.

• 1:20:27Liv Albert?

  Well, okay, and so that, that's, that absolutely is like still getting at what, how I am reading it, because for me, and it's similar with Medea, which is that I see these women not as like, like these good characters demonized by the patriarchy. What I see them as is realistic women in the good and the bad, in the way that like, women are just as human and can be capable of terrible things and capable of really good things. And that's what I find most interesting about characters like those two and why I think it's interesting to,

• 1:21:09Liv Albert?

  like, not put our, you know, modern morality on them so much as, what, like, sort of question particularly some of these later sources, which were like intentionally written, you know, a- a- as compared to, say, the oral tradition, like these ones that were actually like, you know, that we have evidence that they were like intentionally composed. Because it seems to me less, like, I don't mean they're just like trying to make her look bad. What it feels like is a way of.

• 1:21:40Liv Albert?

  The this men in this patriarchal structure trying to reckon with a woman who is capable of bad things, a woman who is like a fully realized human being, who can be a caring mother and also be like completely fucked up. And I think that's what makes it actually like, I think it's more sympathetic to these ancient people and the ancient goddesses to recognize that it's not so much like this, like, oh, they're making her look bad. It's that like, they are trying to reckon with humanity of women. And there's a lot of places where I think that comes across as making them look bad. Like, the way that

• 1:22:25Liv Albert?

  people often think that like, Euripides hated women because he wrote Medea. And it's like, no, I think Euripides recognized that women are just as complex human beings as men. And it comes across in this way that then it's like, oh, no, like, they're making them look bad. It's like, no, he's just like examining like the human condition. That's what it feels like to me. Yeah. Like, yeah, less about like, yeah, rewriting anything and more about just like them trying to reckon with their idea that women are like made for reproduction and made for, made to be kind of like, put down and be lesser and be like tucked away. But they are also being faced with the fact that like, that's not actually true. And there are always going

• 1:23:09Liv Albert?

  to be women who are going to push against that idea. And so, these characters end up sort of representations of that, of like, that reality. And it's like, it doesn't make them look bad. It doesn't make, you know, it's not like about, yeah, necessarily demonizing them in that sort of more explicit way, but just like, recognizing reality, like Thetis versus a Hera, whereas Hera to me feels like them. Like the male power structure, that's what I mean by say that I'm just like the general like the the power structure itself. Hera is this character where they're trying to establish a wife as being like so like on her husbands, like either she's jealous or she's like just upholding this, this like this power structure in whatever way.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  She is defined by Zeus, right?

• 1:23:56Liv Albert?

  E- exactly. And so that fits that she is that narrative to them, whereas Thetis is the sort of example of like a woman that can't be defined by the man and what that looks like.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I fully agree. And when you were just discussing this, it came to me that they don't know what to do with her. So a bitch becomes a witch.

• 1:24:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, they don't, they, they can't fathom this, this idea of a woman who controls her destiny, who is willing to do terrible things to children, who like just all of these things that are like antithetical to this idea of women as like just nurturers who hang out and raise children. And it's like, that's true for some and also like not all. And so it's just, yeah, this, this way of kind of trying to reckon with these people who don't fit. It reminds me, I was before our call, I was editing an episode that came out today on, on medicine, women and Hippocratic medicine, but it, I had this conversation with, it's

• 1:24:58Liv Albert?

  Dr. Kristy Vogler. She and I had this conversation a couple of years ago of like women in medicine in Rome and how like they just tended to be called witches because like a man is a doctor and a woman is a witch regardless kind of of what they're doing, right? And it's, yeah, it's the same thing. It's like trying to reckon with this idea to like, oh, all humans are like ultimately equal. But like if you've created this entire power structure on the idea that women are made for one thing and that thing is raising children, then trying to wrap your head around a woman who is different or just like outside of those bounds, like is, becomes She is the devil, or she is a witch, or something in between.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Yes, and obviously, you know, you get this very old and psychoanalytical thoughts that basically we were discussing cauldrons today, and the cauldron is the womb. The space of transformation. So obviously, you know, they would also, I think, bring that up in their comparisons. And try to constrain their characters in such a way.

• 1:25:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, and I wonder if it's also there's something going on there of trying to reckon with babies that die in the womb. And making that the woman's fault in some kind of way. And, you know, then then you get this image of a woman like dumping a baby in in a cauldron and it dying, right? Like, they're they're always they're trying to wrap their heads around this that these these things that are just like outside of the societal expectations.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  And exactly, you know, when you mentioned these uterine afflictions, I think I also made a comparison here. And I think it's fairly well documented that sometimes because, you know, on these depictions of fetuses and pilius, sometimes fetus transforms into snakes. And we also get this mention in Pinder that her lovely bridal virginity has to be loosened. And we had get these depictions when the pilius just crosses his hands and gets fetus in the lock and he pushes upon her womb. And I've discovered that sometimes in the Greek Roman medicine, the uterine afflictions were likened to wombs or scorpions. They have to be pushed out of the womb.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  So there is a lot of imagery of sexual magic and medicinal magic in fetus's descriptions and depictions of her fight with pilius. And in depictions of her reproductive potential. So we see this kind of an idea that what she's supposed to bear is a monster and it has to be removed and replaced with something safer. Which obviously goes back to this idea that maybe, maybe she was already pregnant with Zeus when pilius attacked her. Maybe pilius wanted to replace whatever was inside her with something that he could control.

• 1:27:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. And I just, and yeah, it makes it just makes me wonder where where things like miscarriages are coming in or stillbirths or like. The these like tragedies that they're trying to sort of like contextualize for themselves and understand in that kind of. You know, in the way that mythology did serve to to like explain these seemingly like inexplicable human things.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  Yes, and because it's goddesses, they occupy this intersectional space between being divine and women. So they have this unique spot where they actually can sort of uh be subject subjected to the male patriarchy. And as such, they can be dissatisfied with their lot in life. And I think many of these stories of goddesses, even though we don't see that, and Thetis is perhaps the only one who speaks her mind, at least shortly. I think these stories tell us about this kind of domestic undercurrent of fear and suffering on Olympus. In that the goddesses recognized that their lot was lower than that of the male gods, and they also had to deal with the consequences.

• 1:28:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it reminds me of Aphrodite, and I'm sure we talked about this a lot in in our last episodes together. Because I'm sort of obsessed with Aphrodite and the way she also does and does not exist within that power structure. Because, you know, we have all these stories of her marriage and, you know, who she did or did not want to be married to. And there's so much going on there, but she is also like this other, like a sort of a a a way of understanding, like a different type of unsatisfied woman. And reckoning with that. And yeah, I mean, all the goddesses on Olympus, like I think there. There's so much to be said with with what is actually being kind of conveyed through their stories. And like, yeah, what is coming from like the real world being interpreted.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  Exactly, and you made a very good point, because Aphrodite is also one that is bound by Hephaestus, right? In the Odyssey. So I made this connection in my chapter as well, that Aphrodite is bound in a sexual moment with Ares by Hephaestus. So this is a very similar story to that of Thetis and Pylus. And Aphrodite also loses a part of her power because she's derided, she's loved it. Her whole secret, you know, uh ploy to be with Ares is uncovered and she's just made laugh of. So so basically, you know, I would say this is also a scene of just being bound within a moment of sexual humiliation. Which makes it very similar to what happens to Thetis.

• 1:30:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  As well. And you can also say that in all these stories, whenever Zeus pursues Nemesis, or he pursues Metis, or he makes Thetis get raped, or he makes Aphrodite fall in love, that he takes something crucial to them and he turns it against them.

• 1:30:28Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  So he turns Aphrodite's desire against her, so she falls in love against her will. He takes Nemesis's independence and his willfulness, and she transforms it into something that will pester humans instead of gods. And he takes Metis's wisdom and cunning, and he transforms it into something that will work for him. And he takes Thetis's prophecy, her fertility, and he makes it something that will not pester him anymore. He just reviews that into the human sphere. So we can see that Zeus is very good at taking what makes a woman or a goddess hers, and just turning it against themselves so that they will fight against their own nature.

• 1:31:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. It just makes me think, yeah, it's just, you know, it's just like these sort of stories to represent the overall patriarchal structure. And it's, it, yeah, oh, Zeus's, I mean, I got, obviously I have a lot to say. Uh, but it's, uh, Thetis is just such an interesting representation of this. Cause I really, like, I'm pretty obsessed with finding any female characters that, that you can kind of, you know, pick apart, like, sort of what, what is really happening there in the background. But she, she really is, like, stands out in this way. I, I wanna hear more. I don't, I'm like, I don't know quite what questions to ask, but like,

• 1:32:01Liv Albert?

  i- is there more evidence for, I mean, I guess we've, we've looked at a lot of evidence. I just wanna know more about like this idea that she was more powerful before. And like, what, wha- how, like, what is really going on there? I mean, we've talked about it a lot. I just always want there to be more. So if there is, I want it.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  So basically, you know, when you look at Thetis, I think we need to go into Greek magic.

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  Because you know, the basic of the Greek magic is the idea exactly of binding.

• 1:32:34Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  That if you want to enchant somebody, you need to bind them. And you know, basically, you know, what the image we have of voodoo dolls is something that actually comes from antiquity. And it was actually quite widespread in Greece, that if you wanted to just enchant somebody or curse somebody, you would make an effigy of them from anything you have, sometimes wax, sometimes lead, sometimes some other things. And you would sort of bind them with something, and that would represent the charm you're putting on them. And this is a kind of thinking that also appears all over the early uh, early works of poetry in Greece, but in a slightly different context, because it's sexual.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Because in Greek, damadzo means to tie down, to subjugate, but also to subjugate sexually. And it often appears, for instance, in uh, in Theogony, that somebody was subjugated sexually. For instance, Aphrodite is described with this word, that somebody is subjugated sexually and they yield to a man. And they are bound within this bonds of desire. And this is something that is very prominent in the story of Thetis as well. This symbol, this symbol is of binding and unbinding. Because we see that Zeus is bound by the Olympians and Thetis unbinds him.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  And we also see that Thetis in Pender's story recognizes that the bridle of Thetis's virginity should be unbound.

• 1:34:05Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  And we also see Pilius, who surrounds her with his hands on these pictures and depictions on the vases. And he bears down on her and his hands interlink into the binding gesture. And Thetis tries to release herself, but she cannot. But this physical gesture of surrounding Thetis with arms, this wrestler's choke, so to speak, is later on in the later sources transformed into something that is physical. That Pilius receives some kind of a binding object from another god. For instance, in Alvid's version, eh, he gets advice from Proteus that.

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  Phetta has to be bound with fetters that won't give way. They are described exactly in that way. And he has to bind her physically so that she doesn't transform into anything that can slip away from his grasp. Even if she becomes a tigress, water, fire, what have you, these physical fetters will hold. And this ties into this very widespread idea into the Greek mythology that it's very difficult to bind a god because they effortlessly free themselves from any normal, usual fetters that we have. But also, there are kinds of bindings that gods have that can actually be used against them and they won't be able to release themselves. And this is something that I was also, I think, quite fascinating and was something what

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  I did for my chapter is that I tried to analyze the scenarios in which one agent tries to bind a god and how they do that. And unsurprisingly, usually the somebody who creates these bonds is Hephaestus, the god of binding. And the unbinders, the loosener of the Greek gods, is Dionysus. And both of these gods lived with Phetta and they are complementary aspects of the binding and unbinding. If Hephaestus binds, then Dionysus loosens. And this is something, I think, is such a wonderful commentary on Phetta's story as well, that she has the potential to do both. She can tighten up and she can release.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  And she does both across her life. And when you realize these scenarios in which, you know, the god was bound by something, that you get all sorts of stories. For instance, you see that, obviously, you know, you get the story in the Iliad when Zeus is bound by Hera, Athena and Poseidon. You also get another story in the Iliad when Zeus binds Hera with an so-called unbreakable golden chain. You also have this wonderful fragment of pindar, which also ties to the story of Hephaestus and Dionysus. And when Hephaestus, who was exiled, finally returns to the Olympus, he's brought by Dionysus.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  But before that happens, Hephaestus sends a sort of

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  foreboding gift, so to say, because he sends a golden throne for his lovely mother Hera. Hera sits down and some sort of veterans come out and they imprison her. And she is bound, she's immobilized, and what we see is suggests that she is unable to use her powers in any way. So she is bound as if in Tartarus. Can you imagine this story? So that Hephaestus binds the great goddess of heaven, Hera, his mother. So that's an incredible story. So Hephaestus has this power to bind another god. And obviously, even though, you know, eventually he is persuaded and brought to Olympus by Dionysus, and he is persuaded to release Hera, this danger of Hephaestus lingers.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  And the same happens in the Odyssey, that Hephaestus is being, you know, betrayed by Aphrodite, who is having an affair with Eris, so he finds a way to create invisible bonds that will hold even a god in bondage, and he does that. And he imprisons Eris and Aphrodite. He shackles divine principles of war and love. Can you imagine that? And in this wonderful story in the Odyssey, when the younger gods, Apollo, Hermes, they laugh at the couple who are imprisoned. Poseidon, the older god, recognizes the danger and he comes to Hephaestus and he pleads with him, "Release them. It's not good for a god to be bound."

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  So there is this terrible potential of binding within Hephaestus, and I think where is Thetis to be bound in any variant of the story? It doesn't survive. We don't have a story in which Hephaestus actually creates something that was used to bind Thetis. But I think that what we have and the evidence we have suggests that such a story variant might have existed. And my evidence for that is that there is an introductory sort of hymn, very poorly preserved, on Thetis. And I think it's part and part in a hymn. Let me just find it because it's a bit longer one. Oh yeah, so this was basically published in nineteen fifty seven, so quite a long time ago.

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  Uh, this was by uh Glenn Most and he believes that this was a so-called cosmogonic fragment. But it's really, um, I would think it's a philosophical commentary on a lost poem of Alkman. But I digress, but the important thing is that it described the sort of first meeting or wedding of Pelias and Thetis. And very little of this piece survives, but we have words like all shapes, convulsed, upset. Pelias found a way, an end was achieved. And we also have words like, the nature of all things is like the matter of bronze. Thetis's nature is like a craftsman.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  And third darkness and flashings or twit- the twinklings. So, you know, Most tried to reconstruct what happened here. And he said that all shapes refers to Thetis's transformations in Pelias's grasp. Convulsed or upset, obviously, Thetis by Pelias's advances. And we also have words way or end, so he says Pelias found a way to subdue Thetis through which an end, her subjugation was achieved. But he didn't comment on these two words, so like for instance, he's uh, he didn't comment on these phrases. So the nature of all things is like the matter of bronze and Thetis's nature is that of a craftsman. But he says obviously this third darkness refers that Thetis transformed into fire, a lion, and third darkness.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  And the flashes might have uh referred to their wedding. So if we take all of this together, then I think that the things that Glenn Most left out, so the nature of all things uh being of a bronze. And Thetis being like a craftsman refers to that in this very allegorizing poetical commentary is that there was some kind of an object. Made of bronze, which was used to subdue Thetis. And Glenn Most says as much, he says that there was a way or an object for her to become subdued by Pelias. And bringing all this knowledge we have. Of all these scenarios in which the gods are bound by other gods or by mortals, by supernatural objects. And we have this weird allegorizing commentary on the story of Thetis and Pyleus.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  And we have reference to a craftsman, something made out of bronze, something that happened and Thetis was subdued. I think this might have been this long lost and very expected by me piece, which sort of suggested that. Somebody, most likely Hephaestus, made an object that was used against his knowledge, because Hephaestus and Thetis obviously are close. It was used against Hephaestus's knowledge to subdue Thetis by Pyleus. And obviously, this is only a reconstruction. We don't know what happened. But I think that the entirety of the mythical material we have. Not only doesn't go against this, but sort of suggests that this is also something that might have happened.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  In this in-between space between the lost sources that we don't have, but what survives is fascinating and makes us think.

• 1:42:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, I mean, I'm all upset before I'll say it again. I just would like us to find everything that's lost, or at least know what's lost.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  Never meet your heroes.

• 1:42:22Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, well, true, fine. But yeah, I've just been like jotting down a ton of notes from everything you've said. If you see me looking distracted, I'm just like, this is, I am obsessed. I, yeah, this kind of binding, like the, the stories of Hephaestus having this ability or like inventing these things. That bind the gods in this way have always interested me. And, I mean, yeah, it makes sense that there would be more of them, like, cause he, there are such strong examples. But there aren't that many. And so you gotta think, like, yeah, this, this was very clearly.

• 1:43:01Liv Albert?

  A like a major sort of not trope, but you know, something like that, like a major kind of uh uh aspect of Hephaestus is that he was.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  I can give you another example if you want.

• 1:43:12Liv Albert?

  Great, please.

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so just, you know, it's a sort of tangential example, but you remember that Thetis lives with Euryonami when she takes care of Hephaestus. And Pausanias in his description of the Greeks says that Euryonami this was worshipped in, if I remember correctly, in Figalia as this statue of a half woman half fish. And this statue was bound with golden chains.

• 1:43:37Liv Albert?

  Ah.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  So exa- again, you, we get this idea of binding of chains made of gold and of this transforming character who is imprisoned. And you know, I, I obviously, you know, it's not Thetis herself, but you know, the very fact that they're associated sort of.

• 1:43:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Suggest that, well, sometimes things don't come together, but they do rhyme in Greek mythological imagination. I think this is a kind of idea that maybe they weren't the same, but some of the ideas have percolated and they linked them, that they had a similar approach towards these things.

• 1:44:11Liv Albert?

  Ah, I, I love as soon as you started saying something, I was like, I think I've heard what this Pausanias thing, but yeah, cause that I feel like that's one of the only visual examples of like a woman, half fish, half goddess or, or woman, like, cause there's all these like Tritons, um, you know, these like sort of mermen, if you will, and there's like no.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  The first mermaid.

• 1:44:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but yeah, exactly. And there's like, there's almost no women depicted like that. And I remember that one coming up as like almost the only example, but I had forgotten about the gold chains, like that is, that's a whole other level. And it really, it really reminds you of the, the, that transformational power of like, because it, it, we, we have these ideas of half people, half fish, but it's always in that kind of moment of transformation, unless you're talking about like just the Tritonis, but like.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Liv Albert?

  When it comes to, yeah, you know, Nereus and, and Thetis and this, you have these examples of it, but they are transforming, like it is a process they're, they're using as a defense mechanism, this kind of transformation. So to have it depicted in that way. As chained is like, well, she has been trapped in this form because that is almost always serving as a means of defense or an attempt to escape is when they transform.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  Uh, in this volume we edited, I had another chapter in which I re, uh, I analyzed Theodalma of Pirates of the Caribbean as a Thetis analog. And Theodalma in the movie says this wonderful, uh, phrase, "It has been tortured, trapped in this single form away from the sea."

• 1:45:54Liv Albert?

  That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I could talk about this forever. I'm cognizant of the time though. Oh my God. I want to, I need to read all of the articles. That's the problem. I also just like, I don't know. I'm kind of obsessed with Thetis now. So thank you. Um, I think I'm gonna have to get, uh, David Wright back on the show too, to tell me all he wrote about in that same volume. It was just like, I'm going to pick all of your brains that I have access to about Thetis. And it's one of those things, I'm sure I mentioned this last time, or I certainly have in my other Thetis episodes, but, um, there's a lake, uh, on the island where I grew up. That's like an hour outside

• 1:46:33Liv Albert?

  of town and it's called Thetis Lake is how we pronounce it. And it is like, not directly, but it is named for her. And it's just always been one of those things. Like I, I don't know. I think about it all the time and it's such a rare, like this random island on Vancouver Island happens to have this lake. And it's like, was at least our most like popular swimming lake. You just go to Thetis all the time. And now I just think of her, like she really, she was like so widespread, like even to the point of, yeah, this little island that I assumed my life, I assumed that it was an indigenous name because half the stuff on our island is named that. But it was like named for some British ship that was named for Thetis.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Liv Albert?

  So it's just, she really like, she even, you know, I don't know. I, I like this lasting idea of her, the same, you know, the name of, of the, the volume, like.

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  The staying power.

• 1:47:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. The staying power of, of Thetis. Like she is, she is everywhere, even on my silly little, silly little island. Uh, and I just, I mean, it's a, it's an enormous island. I like calling it silly little. Um, it's like three times the size of Crete is big. Um, but yeah, it's just like, she really, she's everywhere. And I don't know, I, I clearly could talk about this forever. So this is my like rambling brains trying to wrap this up. So I don't. Keep you for all time. But is there anything else like that you haven't had a chance to say and are particularly obsessed with Thetis? Cause I i- if there is, I want to hear it before we go.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe, you know, just to bring this, you know, together.

• 1:47:58Liv Albert?

  Please.

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Uh, I think that, you know, we have this wide gamut of sources on Thetis. And obviously, you know, we tried to show that she has so many facets that she can be basically everything. And I think it ties very well with her nature of transformation. That, you know, she can be both cruel and caring, that she can help or harm, that, you know, she is her own person. I think that we should, you know, stress this once again, that she, even though she, she want, you know, different people want to control her, she is neither of Hera, neither of Zeus, neither of Poseidon. She helps Dionysus, she helps Hephaestus, but she is not, you know, dependent on them. She is her own person.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  And we don't really see that that often. And I think the greatest disservice that has been done to Thetis is that that we read the Iliad on the surface and we see her as a weepy character.

• 1:48:56Liv Albert?

  Or just Achilles' mom, you know.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, a mom.

• 1:48:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. That, you know, she is this mother who can't do much, that she, you know, she, she's been dealt a rough hand and she can't do anything. But at the same time, you know, if we focus only on that, we lose so much more. And these things were already in the Iliad itself. So it's not, you know, that, it's not that we focus on the Iliad, we focus on a very selected image from the Iliad that is not even complete. And, you know, I think this is one of the greatest disservices down to a mythical character is transforming Thetis into this kind of plaintive, weak character that has no power to her. Whereas the Iliad itself thought of her as an incredibly powerful character.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  And all these sources we've seen, the only build upon this uh assumption, they always say that Thetis had her own power. A different one, a hidden one. Laura Sladkin has said, one that requires, you know, revelation, some sort of a secret that needs to be divulged. But at the same time, if you know where to look, that this secret becomes pretty obvious. By the gaps in her biography, by things that remain unspoken by the characters who surround her. But that is herself. She never has to prove anything to anyone. She just does. She just does what she wants. She doesn't always succeed. She tries her very hardest.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  But as you've said, this is what makes her one of the greatest women in this subset of literature. Because she strives, she had a destiny, but she never surrendered to it. And she tried to make it hers in the way she could. And this is, I think, why so many fascinating and opposing qualities converge in her.

• 1:50:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's just so much. And I think it reminds me again of Aphrodite. Where we, I think she often is wrongly characterized as just this like beautiful goddess of sex and love. And like, she's just, she's just, yeah, she's shallow. She's just like sexy and naked coming out of a shell. Like, that's her whole thing. Whereas she was this independent goddess who, who to the degree that she could in her world, like, took what she wanted and, and did, she lived the life she wanted. And I think that, like Thetis, she is, our understanding of them has been colored,

• 1:51:30Liv Albert?

  like, again, by this patriarchal structure that is struggling to understand these women who do not fit inside of this, this box that has been created. And so, you know, over time and, and for all of these varied reasons, like, we get this idea that Thetis is just Achilles's mom and Aphrodite is just this like shallow sexy goddess of love. But in truth, like, when you're actually looking at what we have and what we know, they really are these women who were able to build the lives they wanted within the patriarchal structure they were forced to exist. And that is something so powerful. And, yeah.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think this is why the so-called resisting reading is so popular these days. Because you know, on one hand, you could say that all these writers, all these authors are misogynistic, right? And they often are, but at the same time, they um they depict women so well in such a manner that captures the entirety of their existence.

• 1:52:37Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  With all the beauty and all the terror. And I think that this is a great credit to their name. But even though they lived in a patriarchal world and they had a patriarchal, you know, perspective.

• 1:52:50Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:50Speaker 02

  At the same time, they were open enough to capture that the women were also unhappy, they strived, and they tried to better their lot. And you know, whenever somebody says that ancient literature is all patriarchal and it's terrible and we shouldn't read it, I always say to them, but look at how great these characters are. That we still, until this day, we think about these great characters, Thetis, Medea, Aphrodite, Cersei, you know, Hera, Athena, you know, they are all different, nobody fits into this nice little patriarchal box. Which is, I think, quite surprising that no goddess is actually, you know, perfectly accustomed to this patriarchal role of a wife and a mother.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Uh but at the same time, they all make something different out of their lives. They all have characters, biographies, and they all have dreams, ideas, wishes, which they try to realize. And even though we often cannot recognize them, if we read shallowly, we can find a way to make these voices come up. And I think this is what we should try to do.

• 1:53:57Liv Albert?

  I am so thrilled at the way you just phrase that and everything you just said. So this is a great time. I I don't know. This episode is gonna air in a couple of weeks, so it's probably perfect timing. Um but I am in the process of launching, um along with my producer Michaela, uh a collective of people doing similar things in this realm.

• 1:54:18Liv Albert?

  But explicitly with the intention of looking at history from like that lens essentially like this idea that like it's not the sources necessarily that are like the big issue with the patriarchal ideals and the misogyny, a lot of it, most of it is how those things have been interpreted and by whom over the last 2000 plus years. The people like quote unquote forming the history based on the ancient things is a lot of the time where most of those damaging patriarchal ideas are coming from. It's this idea that people

• 1:54:58Liv Albert?

  were then led to believe Thetis is just Achilles' mother. So we need to be actually looking back and registering where those things are coming from and then reinterpreting what we actually have through these lenses. And so yeah, this is my way for the listeners of reminding them that the nomosony, but the memory collective, because no one wants to pronounce nomosony, is welcoming anyone who wants to share this type of history and mythology and that just through this lens of registering the patriarchy in which it was developed and interpreted and just sort of breaking that down and looking at it sort

• 1:55:41Liv Albert?

  of beyond that. So anyway, that's the thing I've been working on and hopefully we're gonna have like lots of content about this because I do think it's so important and there's so much there. We just kind of have to like realize it and then look again.

• 1:55:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love this initiative. Just let the sources speak for themselves.

• 1:55:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. And just register like the way that they were understood throughout this time and like how that has like damaged how we actually, how they actually existed back then. Or yeah, there's just, there's just so much. But looking at it through Thetis is so perfect. So this is just, I'm like, this has been so much fun. I'm, I mean, I've been obsessed with her for a while. Oh, thank you. We've got to make sure you're coming back more anytime because I, I really like, I really love the way you look at mythology and the way that we can talk about it. It's really, I love, I love all my episodes that are beyond mythology or looking more at the sort of the cultural connections. But like, yeah, being able to actually just straight

• 1:56:38Liv Albert?

  up talk the myths in this way. It's, yeah, it's really fun for me. So thank you again for coming. On the show.

• 1:56:46Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. I had a blast.

• 1:56:48Liv Albert?

  Oh, I'm so glad. Is um, is there anything you want to share with my listeners about uh, reading more from you or following you anywhere?

• 1:56:55Speaker 02

  Well, obviously there's the volume, right?

• 1:56:58Liv Albert?

  Yes, yeah, the staying power of Thetis. I'll link to it in the episode's description as well.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  Uh, I think the readers will find a lot of uh, the material I've referenced in my chapter and the other chapters. So I would just say, go back to that book if you can and just obviously, you know, it is densely written, but at the same time, we try to make it as approachable as possible. And if not, you know, hopefully in not so far future, I will also write a more popular science book on Thetis. And this is where I hope to just bring all of these different issues to the forefront for also for the popular audience.

• 1:57:32Liv Albert?

  Oh, I would be, I'm, I will be your first sale on that. I, that sounds incredible. So I hope you're able to do that.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  So let's keep our fingers crossed so that I have enough time.

• 1:57:44Liv Albert?

  I, I know that feeling.

• 1:57:49Liv Albert?

  Oh, thank you again so much.

• 1:57:51Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:58:08Liv Albert?

  Thank you all so much for listening. As always, the less talk about myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pankish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, bitches. Uh, we are working on pulling together people in this realm who, for lack of more details in this moment, because it's nine AM and I'm trying to get this episode out, people who give a shit. Learn more at collectivemem, M E M dot com. It's like collective memory, but not spelled out fully because that was like $20,000 for the domain.

• 1:58:51Liv Albert?

  Collectivemem.com. And sign up for the newsletter, which one of these days I will be able to uh, put together an update that explains things in the memory network and everything else that has been going on, which is that everything i- in the world is terrible, but um, I am, but we are still going and we.

• 1:59:13Liv Albert?

  You know, this is the best, the best time to learn accessible history that gives a shit. Um, so sign up at, at myths baby.com slash newsletter to, to learn more as we have it. I am Liv and I love this shit.

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