Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean RE-AIR: Fragments of an Ethiopian King, Memnon & the African Continent in Greek Myth About this episode The ancient Greeks knew incredible warriors when they saw them. The African continent featured often in Greek myth, Egypt as well as regions typically referred to as Libya and Ethiopia, these are the Greek myths featuring those people and places. Listen to Legendary Africa on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/legendary-africa/id1509442726 or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1RcMUxW2cB4bEBcKXDY1y9. Legendary Africa host Theshira's suggestions for more on African mythologies and lore: Giraffe's Eggs and Other African Tales by L. M. Daini, Afro Tales Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/afro-tales-podcast/id1515216733, By the Fire Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/by-the-fire-podcast/id1524883565, and No Be Juju: An African Mythology Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/no-be-juju-an-african-mythology-podcast/id1567697107.
Pre-order Liv's Odyssey adaptation (!!!), The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Liv Albert? Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So, check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.
0:43 Speaker 01 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So, this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO, and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
1:39 Liv Albert? Oh, hi, hello nerds. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv, back on my old shit. Well, we're finally leaving that never actually real or lost world of Atlantis behind. Can you believe it? I want to thank you all for telling me how much you've enjoyed this series, too. It's really meant a lot to me and has been super motivating. I was worried, as I said, because it is so different, and it's really all about my bursting bubbles and destroying dreams of some epic story of Atlantis from the Greek world. Still, I thought it was important to cover in the way that I did, and you all agreed, and I fucking love that. So, thank you for being the best. Still, we're not going to leave Atlantis behind forever because now I want to hear
2:24 Liv Albert? from you. This story has been so affected, so completely altered by modern lore and understanding that it's unrecognizable from Plato's original allegory. And that is the most mind-boggling part of the story. But what blew your mind from my Atlantis series? What was the most shocking or most affecting piece of information that you learned? And for that matter, what questions were raised for you in the episodes that you would like to have answered? I want to hear from you, and I'm going to make an episode out of it. I want questions, comments, thoughts on Atlantis and my Atlantis series, and you can submit them at the very bottom of the page at mythsbaby.com/atlantis, or
3:09 Liv Albert? just click the link in this episode's description. As with the Atlantis episodes I've already done, I'm not going to dive into detail about conspiracy theories because I don't want to give them airtime, but I'm happy to address certain details or quick debunks in terms of major theories and locations because I do think that can be helpful. So if you've found a suggested notion for Atlantis that you want to hear more about, more about why it simply can't fit the existing ancient Atlantis narrative, please do submit it and I will do what I can. And submit your questions before the end of February, please. But that's for another day. Today, in honor of Black History Month, I am bringing you the Greek stories of Africa. Or rather, the one big one. Because as I do love to remind
3:54 Liv Albert? you, the ancient Mediterranean was deeply interconnected and everyone interacted with everyone. They were very xenophobic, yes, but they didn't give a fuck about your skin color. And because of this, we have lots of important mythological characters from the African continent and beyond. They just, you know, had to speak Greek, otherwise they were barbarians. A progressive utopia, it was not. These are stories from Greek mythology of the most famous and important African kings, queens, and ancestors. To be very clear, these are stories from Greek myth that feature characters from those regions. I'm not trying to feature actual mythology from those regions because I don't know enough
4:37 Liv Albert? about sourcing or anything, and I would absolutely butcher it, and well, that would not be okay. So instead, I want to share what the Greeks thought of those people and regions in their myths, because that's what I'm good at. At the end of the episode two, I will also point you in the direction of further learning of actual mythologies from the African continent that I sourced through a fellow podcaster. And I will also be sharing a trailer for that podcast called Legendary Africa at the end of this episode, gonna share as much as I can about how you can learn more, but I am going to be telling you stories from a Greek myth, because, again, that's what I do.
5:28 Liv Albert? This is episode 153, Fragments of an Ethiopian King: Memnon and the African Continent in Greek Myth.
5:52 Liv Albert? Then spoke Laomedon's son, the ancient king. "Nay, friend, and all you other sons of Troy, and you, our strong war helpers, flinch we not, faint-hearted from defence of fatherland. Yet let us go not forth the city gates to battle with that foe; nay, from our towers and from our ramparts let us make defence till our new champion comes, the stormy heart of Memnon. Lo, he is coming, leading on hosts, numberless Ethiopia's swarthy sons. By this I think he is near to our gates, for long ago, in sore distress of soul, I
6:35 Liv Albert? sent him urgent summons. Yes, and he promised me, gladly promised me, to come to Troy and make an end of all our woes." And now I trust he's nearly here. Let us endure a little longer then, for better far it is like brave men in the fight to die than flee and live in shame mid alien folk.
7:01 Liv Albert? That was a quote from the Roman epic The Fall of Troy by Quintus Mernaus, who some believe is based on an earlier archaic Greek epic telling the story of the Trojan War after the Iliad. The fragments of that archaic Greek work, called the Ethiopis, and this Roman epic are some of the only mentions we have of this great Ethiopian king Memnon. Memnon is by far the most famous king of Ethiopia found in Greek myth, and certainly he's the one with the more heroic story compared to others I've mentioned on this podcast,
7:41 Liv Albert? like Andromeda's parents, the Ethiopian king Kephalus and queen Cassiopeia, who went ahead and sacrificed her to a sea monster. But like I said, this story of Memnon, the most famous of African kings of Greek myth, comes from the Trojan War. That is both why he's the most famous and why the story of King Memnon of Ethiopia is brief and tragic, as so many stories of heroes of the Iliad are. Not only was Memnon a king of Ethiopia during the Trojan War, but he was the child of a goddess. I've told the story of his mother before in all her problematic glory, Eos' rosy-fingered dawn.
8:25 Liv Albert? If you want a refresher, I've made a Spotify playlist with episodes mentioned in this one. You can find it linked in the episode's description.
8:34 Liv Albert? Memnon, along with his brother Amathion, was the child of Eos and Typhonis, her most famous victim. Because, well, Eos had a thing for abducting men. Still, we won't blame Memnon for his mother's actions. Memnon is a fascinating character because, like I said, almost every detail of his story was found in works that are lost to us now. Namely, one of the lost epics called the Ethiopis, possibly written or developed in the early Archaic period or even the late Iron Age at a similar time to the Iliad and the Odyssey. It only remains in fragments, bits, and pieces of the story that are relayed in other sources that have survived.
9:17 Liv Albert? Memnon, though, also seems to have featured in a play by the famed Ischylus, author of the Orestia trilogy and Prometheus Bound, among others. Ischylus appears to have a lost play simply called Memnon. And Memnon is briefly mentioned in Hesiod II as this son of Eos and Tythonis. And Memnon is briefly mentioned in Hesiod II as this son of Eos and Tythonis. And there, he is named very specifically as a king of the Ethiopians.
9:50 Liv Albert? It's clear from what we know is lost, the Ethiopis, Ischylus's Memnon, as well as this mention in Hesiod, that Memnon was a notable hero, a notable king of Ethiopia who took part in the Trojan War. He's important, and yet, most of what was written about him in ancient Greece is lost. So, like the Amazon Penthesilea and the Amazons broadly, we know that Memnon was a feature of Greek myth, of epics and plays telling the story of the Trojan War, but we don't have much in the way of actually written material. What we do have that features Memnon in detail is only Roman.
10:32 Liv Albert? I've told you about this work before, Quintus Mernaus's Fall of Troy, also called the Post-Homica, a work from the Roman period that may have been based on this lost epic, Ethiopis, or may have been its own fiction. This is where we find the story of Achilles's fight with the Amazon Penthesilea and even the Trojan Horse itself. All examples of characters and concept we know for a fact existed in ancient Greek stories and epics, but whose Greek sources are lost.
11:04 Liv Albert? Anyway, as you well know, I could go on forever and ever about what we don't have from ancient Greece, but today is about Memnon, so we must refer to this Roman work, The Fall of Troy.
11:33 Liv Albert? The Trojans are losing the war. They've lost our beloved, precious, and wonderful Hector, and things are looking very grim. Achilles' rage has only gotten more violent after Patroclus' death, and the Trojans have called for help from elsewhere. When we return to their story, they've just lost the Amazon Queen, Penthesilea, to that rage of Achilles, and she was one of their last hopes of winning the war, or even just saving themselves the most horrible of fates at the hands of the Greeks.
12:13 Liv Albert? Still, they now await the arrival of the Ethiopian king, Memnon, who they've called upon to help them. They know he's coming, and that his heroism will be a great savior at this point in the war. They wait with bated breath for this hero king of Ethiopia, their hopes for survival riding on him.
12:37 Liv Albert? Memnon arrives in Troy and is greeted with as much fanfare as they can manage this late in the war. They feast the night he arrives, preparing him for battle the next day, welcoming him as best they can, listening to his stories. Memnon, an enormous and godlike man, tells them of those he's defeated before, the cities he's visited, and everything he's accomplished. Priam is in awe of this son of a goddess.
13:10 Liv Albert? The connection between Memnon, this Ethiopian king and son of Eos and Achilles as this son of Thaddeus, is not unintentional, and not the last time that this is made to be a big deal in the Trojan War. Because if the story of Troy has anything, it's "sons of goddesses doing important things," something that's otherwise pretty rare in Greek myth. The other heroes, if they're divine at all, are the sons of gods and mortal women, rather than the other way around. Meanwhile, here we have Memnon, the son of Eos, Achilles, the son of Thaddeus, and even Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite.
13:52 Liv Albert? But only Aeneas will make it out alive. In the morning, the Greeks and Trojans stream out onto the battlefield for another day of fighting, but there is one man on either side who stands out as the best each of them have. Quote, "Amidst them rode Achilles, on like to a giant titan, glorying in steeds and chariot, while his armor flashed splendor around in sudden lightning gleams. It was as when the sun from utmost bounds of earth encompassing ocean comes, and brings
14:34 Liv Albert? light to the world, and flings his splendor wide through heaven, and earth and air laugh all around. So glorious, mid the Argives, Peleus's son rode onward. Mid the Trojans rode the while Memnon, the hero, even such to see as Ares, furious-hearted, onward swept the eager host arrayed about their lord."
15:02 Liv Albert? The two sides clash with equal force, though the Ethiopians are singled out for their prowess. Even still, Achilles is the first to kill anyone. He kills two men fighting on the Trojan side, before Memnon kills two fighting on the Greek side. The battle continues, there's so much bloodshed, death, and violence before Memnon makes his first momentous kill. He takes down Antilochus from the Greek side, a son of Nestor, one of the most important kings on the Greek side. From there, the Greeks throw almost everyone they have on Memnon, and he avoids them entirely.
15:41 Liv Albert? He is untouchable, at least for a time, dodging their spears and whatever they can imagine to throw at him. Quote, "A great lion seemed he there, standing above the heart, as jackals they, that how so hungry dare not to come to nigh."
16:01 Liv Albert? Memnon is, in a word, fucking impressive. Yes, I decide fucking is part of the word impressive. Memnon is kicking ass, he's everything the Trojans had hoped for, and more, he's the biggest, badass-est king from Ethiopia. He's it, he's the best, he's killing it, he's taking Greeks down and avoiding all they throw at him. Truly, there are paragraphs of this. Memnon's success, his incredible skill with his own spear, and in avoiding theirs. He is the best the Trojans have seen since they lost their beloved Hector and then Penthyselia. It seems like things are really looking up, like this Ethiopian king who came to their
16:43 Liv Albert? aid could really turn things around and save them. And, well, you see where this is going, it is the Trojan War, after all.
16:58 Liv Albert? With his son killed on the battlefield, Nestor calls upon the only Greek he knows can defeat Memnon: Achilles. He tells Achilles of his son's death and asks that he avenge Antilochus by killing Memnon once and for all. He wants him taken out, so Memnon can't kill any more of the Greeks. The men face off, both equally matched in their skill in combat. After some fighting and minor wounds, they begin to brag, because of course they do. Memnon speaks of his goddess mother, how he was raised amongst the Hesperides, and just how powerful this divine blood makes him.
17:43 Liv Albert? He even gets in a jab at Thetis, noting how much more important of a goddess Eos is to Achilles's mere Nereid nymph-mother. It's kind of adorable, these two epic and impressive heroes trading jabs about each of their goddess moms. And I mean, I love Thetis, but Memnon isn't wrong. His mother is the literal dawn, rosy-fingered dawn. The titan goddess every poet calls upon to denote the passing of another day. Every goddamn time! That is Memnon's mom. Still, Achilles does not let that stand. He starts going on about how important his grandfather, Nereus, is.
18:26 Liv Albert? "He's the old man of the sea, damn it, don't you know who I am?" It's got big, privileged, white-boy energy. "Do you know who my mother is?" But that is the only lighter moment in their fight, because things get bad. I can't properly describe an ancient battle between two heroes with divine blood, but safe to say they're incredibly evenly matched, until they're not. While they're fighting, the gods themselves are watching. It's rare that two semi-divine heroes fight it out on the battlefield, and it easily attracts the attention of those on Olympus and beyond.
19:07 Liv Albert? But when long lengthened out the conflict was of these two champions, and the might of both in that strong tug and strain was equal matched, then, gazing from Olympus's far-off heights, the gods joyed, some in the invincible son of Peleus, others in the goodly child of old Typhonus and the queen of dawn. Thundered the heavens on high from east to west, and roared the sea from verge to verge, and rocked the dark earth neath the hero's feet,
19:45 Liv Albert? and quaked proud Nereus's daughters all round, Thetis thronged in grievous fear for mighty Achilles's sake, and trembled for her son, the child of mist, as in her chariot through the sky she rode.
20:05 Liv Albert? Their battle continued, on and on their weapons clashed loudly on the Trojan battlefield, and, like I said, they were evenly matched until the very last second that they weren't. In an instant Achilles's sword plunged through Memnon's chest and suddenly snapped the silver cord of life.
20:34 Liv Albert? In a split second Achilles had taken the life out of the great Ethiopian king Memnon, son of dawn herself. The Myrmidons quickly stripped him of his armor as his mother watched from above. It wasn't much longer after this that Achilles met his own end at the hand of Paris and Apollo's guiding arrows. The visuals we have of the moments after the death of each of these men are so similar.
21:10 Liv Albert? Eos holds the body of her son and Thetis holds hers. Memnon's story, his heroism on the side of the Trojans and his epic battle with Achilles, are lost when it comes to the Greek sources, but his death and his mother's grief are depicted often. His fate is another beautiful example of how we know some stories existed in the ancient world. The words themselves may be lost to time, but the visual representations have been found and are detailed and beautiful enough that we can learn their stories this way. The death of this Ethiopian king is no different.
21:54 Liv Albert? The end of the Trojan War is a brutal mess. There's no redeeming moments, but these two sons of goddesses fighting it out only to meet their ends not far apart and have their goddess mothers mourning over them is as touching and beautiful as it all is tragic and horrifying.
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25:09 Liv Albert? Though brief and fragmentary, most of the details having come from a Roman epic hundreds and hundreds of years older than the original story, the story of Memnon, the badass Ethiopian king, is one of the best we have in terms of characters from the African continent. But not everything we know about Greek myths and Greek mythological characters come from surviving or fragmentary written work. We also get a lot of information from these visual representations that I mentioned, characters and moments from myth typically on Ancient Greek pottery. Memnon is a perfect example of this. While we have just brief mentions to this Ethiopian king in Hesiod, fragments of the
25:51 Liv Albert? Ethiopis, and the name of Aeschylus's play, Memnon, where it's believed Eos might have featured pleading with Zeus for her son's life, along with Thetis doing the same, we can also see him appearing on pottery. This is where the connection between Memnon and Achilles is really emphasized. We have these two sons of goddesses preparing to square off, and eventually one killing the other, while their mothers watch from the sidelines. There's one piece that shows the goddesses Eos and Thetis watching as their two sons prepare to fight, and another that depicts Eos holding Memnon's body in her arms weeping over him.
26:34 Liv Albert? Other fragmentary references to Memnon suggest further connections with Achilles, even that he wore armor forged by Hephaestus, just like that famed son of Thetis. And there's a passing reference to him in the Odyssey, where Odysseus, as he's speaking to the shade of Achilles in the underworld, telling him of his son's exploits after his death, Odysseus says, quote, "I cannot name every single one of those whom he slew while fighting on the side of the Argives, but will only say how he killed that valiant hero Euripides, son of Telephus, who was the handsomest man I ever met, except Memnon."
27:19 Liv Albert? So, it seems, not only was Memnon this king of the Ethiopians great in battle and a worthy opponent for Achilles himself, but it seems he was hot as fuck, too. Sexy, sexy Memnon.
27:33 Liv Albert? There are other brief references to Memnon, suggestions from later authors, that another wrote that he was buried in Syria. And of course, I mentioned Ischylus. What we know of his plays of the Ethiopians during the Trojan War is minimal, but it's important. First, it may have been an entire trilogy, with the first called Memnon, and detailing the arrival of the Ethiopian king to Troy, his time on the battlefield, and the death of Nestor's son Antilochus. The second play, it seems, may have featured Thetis and Eos before Zeus, and the weighing of the two heroes' souls.
28:12 Liv Albert? So, once again, I tell you that what I would not give for a time machine, so I could just go back and witness all of these lost plays.
28:22 Liv Albert? When we're looking at the importance of Memnon in the mythology of the war, there's another piece of pottery that's super interesting. Now, first, all of this information on fragments and pottery comes from this two-volume book, The Early Greek Myths, by Gantz. Fascinating references, that it basically details every minor mention of myths, both in text evidence and visual representations. It's a lot to weed through, but I love it. I explain this because I'm gonna quote him here. It's just too interesting. He says, quote, "There is a well-known amphora from, probably, Melos, with Apollo in a chariot greeted by Artemis, which dates to about 640 BCE.
29:03 Liv Albert? On the neck are two warriors confronting each other with armor stacked up between them, and in panels to either side, a concerned woman looking on. In the absence of names, the armor, rather than a corpse, between the combatants has been taken to signify the duel between Ajax and Diomedes at the funeral games for Patroclus, where the armor of Sarpedon was, in fact, the prize. Or perhaps the conflict between Ajax and Odysseus for the armor of Achilles. But such scenes will not in any way explain the women." And more likely, we do have here our first look at Achilles and Memnon accompanied by their mothers.
29:44 Liv Albert? How cool is that? 640 BCE and this questionable amphora seems a compelling argument that it is Memnon and Achilles, once again cementing this mostly lost story in the public knowledge very early in the Archaic period. There are other examples of similar works included in this book, along with references to Memnon being mentioned in some of Pindar's poems, but still nothing more in terms of real detail. The importance is simply that he was around, he was in the public imagination and understanding of that mythical war, even if he doesn't feature in the Iliad.
30:21 Liv Albert? Memnon, super interesting guy, but sadly, we will need to leave him behind because I've gotten very in the weeds with his representation, rightfully I think, because it's vital to his story to understand that while most text representations are either lost or Roman, the story of his fight with Achilles is very, very old, maybe as old as the Iliad itself, and popular enough to make it onto multiple pieces of pottery. Depictions of the battle, his tragic death, and his mother's divine mourning are found in a number of places.
31:16 Liv Albert? While actual stories of Libya broadly and the Ethiopians specifically are harder to find, we have some fascinating details and anecdotes when it comes to how the Greeks understood these regions that they called Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, at least in terms of their mythology. First, a bit of background on how the ancient Greeks and so their myths saw the African continent. I've spoken so much about these so-called Ethiopians, but that doesn't necessarily mean this referred to the modern nation or region of Ethiopia. When it comes to Greek myths, you'll hear the names of regions that sound familiar, but that isn't because they're explicitly referring to the modern regions that use
31:57 Liv Albert? those names, it's just that, I imagine at least, the modern, English, names of these countries comes from the Greek history.
32:06 Liv Albert? It's difficult to pin down exactly what physical regions were called what, at what time, so I won't try to give you an accurate rundown of the geographical regions as the Ancient Greeks saw them. This understanding of geography adapted and it changed over the centuries during which the Greeks interacted with the African people, so it's near impossible to understand how it might have been understood in the mythology broadly, but we have the basics. First, of course, the Greeks knew of Egypt. Egypt being so very fucking ancient compared to Greece, it was one of the most famous regions of the ancient world, and with good reason. The Greeks would have traveled to Egypt even as far back as like the Bronze Age and they would have seen the pyramids.
32:49 Liv Albert? Imagine, you're living in the late Bronze Age Mediterranean in, say, 1800 BCE, and you travel to this place that is just so far ahead of your time. You have the palatial complexes of the Mycenaean period, sure, but you don't have anything even remotely as monumental as the pyramids, and yet here are these people to the south, just across the sea, who built these things. Then, travel further through the time periods of ancient Greece to the Archaic period when works like the Iliad, having been told by bards over generations, are finally being written down. By that point, these pyramids are like a thousand years old. Just take that in.
33:34 Liv Albert? Ugh, still, though Egypt was incredibly notable in the ancient Greek world, I want to look at the regions surrounding it, Memnon's Ethiopia, and then the wider region that they called Libya. The regions that don't get nearly enough airtime when it comes to Greek myths of the wider ancient world. But returning to the questionable and definitely confusing African geography when it comes to Greek myth. So northern Africa, west of the region ruled by the Egyptians, was typically referred to as Libya, and Ethiopia tends to be the region kind of south of Egypt, but also Libya basically referred to the whole of what they knew of the continent, which, you know, was probably only the top half.
34:20 Liv Albert? I think it's that they had a name for Ethiopia like within the wider Libya? It's hard for me to tease out. Still, again, this is not universal, it's very broad. For example, I'm not entirely sure where in Africa Andromeda, like of Perseus fame, is meant to be from. She's explicitly from Ethiopia. Though in some cases, she's like a Phoenician whose family colonized Ethiopia, but there's a sea monster, so I would assume it would be like the northern coast, given it would be the Mediterranean. Anyway, understanding mythological geography is somewhat futile and definitely not the best use of this episode. Basically, the point is that there were these two main regions in Africa that the ancient Greeks spoke of beyond Egypt.
35:04 Liv Albert? But, let's talk about the people themselves. At least, the people as they were seen through the lens of Greek mythology.
35:14 Liv Albert? Libya is a word that comes up often, specifically because, like I said, in much of the mythological sources and historical too, I imagine, it's used to refer to most of the African continent. Basically, the people to the south across the Mediterranean. Still, many people and cultures in that region were also seen as Phoenician colony. Still, many people and cultures in that region were Phoenician colonies, like Dido's Carthage, and even according to some, this kingdom of Caffias and Cassiopeia and their daughter Andromeda. But the real details and background on the Greek mythological understanding of the African continent is found in the family tree of a very famous Greek woman. Io.
36:00 Liv Albert? I told you some of Io's wandering story and what she would go on to do when I covered Aeschylus' Prometheus bound recently. But it's most relevant here, so we're gonna dive into some more details. Now, the most notable thing here is the Greeks, at least in their mythology, are trying to get Greek credit for essentially everything in Africa, which I mean is just so very Greek of them. It's very much related to that idea of who is and who is not a barbarian. My take on it is that the Greeks would have seen the wonder of the African continent, the things the Egyptians had already built long before the Greeks had built anything quite so monumental. They would have seen all of these cultures and societies thriving and making
36:45 Liv Albert? beautiful things all over the continent, at least the parts the Greeks had visited, and they wanted in on the action. Maybe they wanted a reason not to call these particular people barbarians. Enter Io.
37:02 Liv Albert? Io was the woman punished by Hera for Zeus's interest in her. Io was transformed into a cow and forced to wander the Mediterranean world for ages and ages. In Prometheus Bound, she meets Prometheus on her wanderings before heading south. But Io was important in many stories because of this wandering. She's seen as one of the most important women of Greek myth, a founding mother in the most explicit of ways.
37:33 Liv Albert? In fact, as Gantz says in this section on Io, quote, "Mythology proper begins with Io."
37:43 Liv Albert? Io's wandering takes her eventually to Egypt, where she is finally transformed back into her human form, and she has a son, Epaphos. Epaphos marries the nymph named Memphis. She's associated with the main water sources for what will become the famed Egyptian city, Memphis. Memphis, meanwhile, was the daughter of the oceanid Nilus, who is, you guessed it, the river Nile, and they have a daughter named, well, Libya. Libya then has children with Poseidon, which fortunately doesn't really have a story associated with it, so we don't have to deal
38:26 Liv Albert? with what a horror show that was likely to be. The point is, they had children. Libya had two sons, Agonor and Belos.
38:36 Liv Albert? Agonor goes on to found the region of Phoenicia. Particularly, he becomes the king of Tir, where he marries a woman named Telefassa, and they have children. One is named Cadmus, "my boy, my love, the subject of my novel that one day I will finish, I promise." Now, a reminder, the Phoenicians are sort of generally modern Lebanon in the Levant. Bellos, meanwhile, stays in Egypt, and he marries a nymph associated with the Nile River and Kinoi. They have more children, notably Egyptus and Danaeus.
39:15 Liv Albert? These are the two fathers, who then have fifty children each, fifty sons to Egyptus and fifty daughters to Danaeus, resulting in the story I've told before of the Danaids and their murder of Egyptus's sons, who they're forced to marry. Of course, though, one of each of these remain alive, and they found the Argive Dynasty in Greece. This is a way for the mythology to go full circle. Io is born in Argos, she travels, and her family founds Egypt and much of Africa, even Phoenicia to the east, before her descendants head back to Argos and become the ancestors of people like Perseus.
39:58 Liv Albert? There are many other minor characters associated with the region, typically nymphs of the rivers and lakes. And just like there were nymphs of rivers and lakes in Greece, there is Tritonus, who's the nymph of the lake with the same name, Pallas, a nymph of that same lake, who, according to sources, and I've spoken of this before, was friends with Athena, and one of the reasons possibly for Athena taking on the name, becoming Pallas Athena.
40:28 Liv Albert? There are many more minor Libyan nymphs and gods, but like so much of Greek mythology, it would just be a matter of me continuing to list names, so I will stop here. But you get a sense of just how much Greek mythology featured the continent of the south, just how much they wanted it associated with their own stories and gods. It's a matter of them finding a way to understand the world around them, but to me, it also suggests an association with that region, the respect they might have had for it and its people. They wanted to incorporate them into their own Greek stories, connect with them in what they saw as like a shared human history that they had revolve around Io. As I find more details on Greek myths associated with the wider Mediterranean world, Africa
41:13 Liv Albert? and beyond, I do plan to tell them. There's certainly more in the Epic of Nonus, called the Dionysiaica, but frankly, there's so much to unpack in that that I haven't dared go near it since my episode on Dionysus and Mepellus. One day, though, one day. For now, these are just some of the characters and stories that the ancient Greek mythology told about the people of Africa of what they called Libya, Egypt, and Ethiopia. But if you take anything from this episode, it's that Memnon is one of the most underrated heroes of the Trojan War.
42:03 Liv Albert? Ah, nerds. Thank you so much for listening. Obviously, this is a very skewed and specific understanding of mythology of the African continent, specifically through the eyes of the Greeks across the Mediterranean. Everything I've shared is based on what they saw and heard and what stories were invented surrounding those things, but in the Greek world. I wasn't about to try to present to you actual mythology of those people and places. It isn't my place, and I would make a real mess of it if I had tried. Instead, I can share what is in my skillset: how did the Greeks see Africa? I think it's interesting to look at and a reminder of how the people of the wider Mediterranean shared the region and interacted with those around them. It's a big and important reminder that much of our understanding of the ancient Greeks
42:46 Liv Albert? as the origin of so-called Western civilization is an invention of a much later time, a time and people that wanted to make the Western world seem more important, smarter, and more so-called civilized. Ugh. This understanding simply didn't exist in the ancient world. It's wholly modern and deeply problematic for that reason, among countless others. To the Greeks, skin tone didn't matter. For the most part, you were judged based on whether or not you spoke Greek. Yet another reminder that barbarian just meant you didn't speak Greek. It didn't say anything about cultural practices or acts. It didn't mean what it does today. It just meant not Greek. I think that's a super important thing to remember, obviously, because I tell you all like all the time, but still, it is particularly important in this episode.
43:31 Liv Albert? The Greeks might have seen these people as barbarians, but not because of anything they did or what they might have looked like, purely because they didn't speak Greek and thus were seen as lesser than the Greeks. Again, they had their own types of racism back then, it just wasn't about your skin tone. And clearly, as we can learn from Memnon and beyond, the Greeks saw great value in the people from Africa. They saw them as having the potential to be great and fierce warriors, coming to the aid of a region that was being threatened, coming in and attempting to save the day. Memnon follows up the help of the Amazons, the barbarian women serving the same purpose. Memnon was a hero, the son of a literal Titan goddess.
44:13 Liv Albert? But before I leave you today, I want to share some of those resources on actual mythology of the African continent. I found this podcast because we've been sort of various social media mutuals for a while, and I just thought this was the perfect opportunity to share a podcast featuring some actual African mythologies. And the host was kind enough to also share some other suggestions for learning more about African mythology, which I have added into the episode's description, along with a link to this podcast, Legendary Africa.
45:04 Speaker 02 Hello and welcome to Legendary Africa. Legendary Africa is a podcast focused on adapting African myths, legends, and lore in a fun, sometimes humorous, and always magical way. Everyone's heard of werewolves, dragons, magical stone circles, and the Loch Ness Monster. But have you heard of wer-hyenas, gigantic elephant-headed snakes, and Kodumo Dumo, the terrifying swallowing monster? But don't worry, Legendary Africa also has badass dragon-slaying princesses, quests for Egyptian treasure, demigods, giants, ogres, witches, and even fairies. There are spooky ghost stories that'll make you leave the lights on at night, as well as sweet animal folktales which can educate and delight. So, there's something for everyone.
45:49 Speaker 02 Legendary Africa brings you myths, mysteries, and magical stories from the magnificent continent of Africa, and I'm so excited for you to join me. Available on all popular podcasting platforms, so subscribe on your favorite platform, listen, and, if you like what you hear, pop us a review. Follow on Twitter at LegendaryPod1 and Instagram at LegendaryPod. I am your host, the Sheerapatha, and I hope you'll join me every month for another African adventure. Stay safe, stay sexy, and stay legendary.
46:31 Liv Albert? Thank you all so much for listening. You are the best. I am Liv, and I love this shit.
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Previous Conversations: Blood-Sweat Horses and Empire, Ancient Greece and China w/ Lee Moore Next A Very Odyssean Conversation, A Modern Retelling; You Are Odysseus; and The Other One Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated