Behind Every ‘Great’ Man… Metis, Thetis, and the Power of Prophecy

The stories of Zeus and two goddesses defined by prophecies and patriarchy. Submit to the quarterly Q&A at mythsbaby.com/questions http://mythsbaby.com/questions and 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. Sources: Hesiod's Theogony, translated by HG Evelyn-White; Pindar's Isthmian Ode 8, translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien https://topostext.org/work/21#8.25; Nemean Ode 4 from Theoi.com https://www.theoi.com/Pontios/NereisThetis2.html#Wedding; Maciej Paprocki's "The Rape and Binding of Thetis in Its Mythological Context" from The Staying Power of Thetis. 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 grouptrip.

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• 1:52Liv Albert?

  Now Zeus, king of the gods, made Metis his first wife, and she was wisest among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to bring forth the goddess bright-eyed Athena, Zeus craftily deceived her with cunning words and put her in his own. ...belly, as earth and starry heaven advised, for they advised him so, to the end that no other should hold royal sway over the eternal gods in place of Zeus. For very wise children were destined to be born of her. First, the maiden, bright-eyed Tritonania, equal to her father in strength and in wise understanding.

• 2:35Liv Albert?

  But afterwards she was to bear a son of overbearing spirit, king of gods and men. But Zeus put her into his belly first, that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil. Next he married bright Thetis, who bore the horai, the seasons, eunomia, order, diche, justice, and blooming irene, peace, who mined the works of mortal men, and the moirai, fates, to whom wise Zeus gave the greatest honor. Clotho and Laquisis and Atropos, who gave mortal men evil and good to have.

• 3:19Liv Albert?

  And Eurimy, the daughter of ocean, beautiful in form, bore him three fair-cheeked charities, the graces, Agalia and Euphorosene and lovely Thalia, from whose eyes, as they glanced, flowed love that unnerves the limbs, and beautiful is their glance beneath their brows. Also he came to the bed of all nourishing Demeter, and she bore white-armed Persephone, whom Idoneus carried off from her mother, but wise Zeus gave her to him. And again he loved Nemoosene, with the beautiful hair, and of her the nine gold-crowned muses were born, who delight in feasts and the pleasure of song.

• 4:01Liv Albert?

  And Leto was joined in love with Zeus, who holds the aegis, and bore Apollo and Artemis, delighting in arrows, children lovely above all the sons of heaven. Lastly he made Hera his blooming wife, and she was joined in love with the king of gods and men, and brought forth Hebe and Ares and Ilithia.

• 4:48Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About Myths, baby! I'm your host, Liv, she who loves the ancient world maybe a little too much. Okay, so last week I attempted an introductory episode, a kind of return to the beginning, an explanation of where the myths come from and why, but I made the mistake of not scripting myself, which means I can speak for 45 minutes and not actually get to all the points I planned, because it turns out when you spend eight years studying myths with the depth that I do, when you've released going on 700 episodes during that time, when you end up with an absolute fuck-ton of knowledge, it just desperately needs somewhere to go. But today, we've got a bit more direction.

• 5:30Liv Albert?

  I was a bit inspired, too, by a recent comment I got from a listener who just missed me telling the myths like I used to. Now, I mean, that's hard for me, because again, like, it's just been eight years, and that means I've grown in that time, both in my writing style and humanity, and, you know, things have naturally shifted. I never made any kind of conscious decision to change the way I tell the stories, just kind of a natural progression. But I do understand the desire to return to some of the more traditional stories. And what is more traditional, let alone relevant today? Then, a story of Zeus using sexual assault as a means of subjugating a more powerful woman. That's right, we're going all the way back to episode three of this podcast, revisiting

• 6:15Liv Albert?

  a bit of 2017. In more ways than one. Today, I'm telling you the stories of Metis and Phatus, and how they threatened the supremacy of the all-powerful king of the gods. Content warning for sexual assault by gods, as you've already guessed, but there won't be any graphic details, only the breaking down of what it means to feature divine assault. Spoiler: It's more likely to result in righteous anger on your part than a traumatic response.

• 7:00Liv Albert?

  Behind Every Great Man: Metis, Thetis, and the Power of Prophecy.

• 7:23Liv Albert?

  The whole of Greek mythology is utterly riddled with sexual assault. Often, in broad retellings of myth, this gets justified in seemingly endless ways. You've heard me rant on, either it's completely ignored, and the victims of the gods are presented as just these consensual romances, or it's explained away by suggesting that because the ancient Greeks didn't conceptualize sexual assault as we do now, that means it simply wasn't? Or worst, it's presented as like just a piece of a larger story, a separate anecdote, a little plot device with little meaning other than to facilitate another piece of the story, as if real ancient women weren't taking these stories in. Even I, in the long arc that is this podcast, have gone through my own journey in terms

• 8:08Liv Albert?

  of how I interpret these assaults. They were always egregious, but I didn't always see what was hidden underneath, a kind of simmering legacy of the women who came before. But what if we looked at these stories of divine assault as exactly that, as an assault that is absolutely an assault, but which ultimately means so, so much more for the myth and the ancient Greek world as a whole? I'm speaking like this is the first time I'm gonna dig into the gods raping women. Somehow it kinda feels like that, since I'm so intentionally bringing us back to just the beginning of it all. The third episode of this podcast, and the many, many women whose sexual assaults by

• 8:51Liv Albert?

  Zeus laid the groundwork for the entirety of not only Greek myth, but Western patriarchal culture as we know it. But I promise I'm also going to tell you the myths.

• 9:05Liv Albert?

  So this is how I originally told Metis's story back in July of 2017, the earliest days of this podcast. Metis was a Titan, or Titaness if you want to get gendered with your nouns, which I don't. Chronologically, it's unclear when this went down, given Zeus ultimately locks the Titans up, but regardless, Metis is a Titan. She's wise and she's cunning, and she's got some trickster qualities as well. Zeus, as king of the gods and giant slut, has sex with Metis, and apparently he immediately fears the consequences. As with most men, he does not seem to have considered the consequences beforehand, because there was an offer of sex.

• 9:46Liv Albert?

  So he has sex with Metis, and he fears the consequences, because it's foretold that she will bear him children, one of which will be more powerful than him. And he is, after all, the son of Cronos, who was the son of Uranus, and we all remember how that went down. So, of course, Zeus does what any rational person would do after they choose to have sex with someone and then regret it, because they would have a child that overthrows them. He eats Metis. But alas, it is too late, and Metis is already pregnant, because Zeus has rocket sperm, apparently. And this is Greek mythology, so eating her does little to stem the pregnancy from developing further. Instead, Metis immediately begins constructing a helmet and robe for her fetal daughter.

• 10:29Liv Albert?

  This is all from within Zeus, mind you. That's right, Metis is alive and functioning within Zeus, because mythology, it's great. So, here she is, just hammering away at this helmet using some sort of internal forge, and poor Zeus is really suffering from all the noise. He's got a tough life, you know? So he develops an awful headache, the poor guy, and his solution is to have Hephaestus, the god of the standard, you know, external forge, cleave at Zeus's head with an axe, you know, as we all do to save ourselves from a migraine. In fact, I'm feeling one coming on now, I wonder where my hatchet is? So, Hephaestus cracks open Zeus's head, and bam, out pops Athena.

• 11:13Liv Albert?

  She's born a fully grown adult, she's fully clothed, in a helmet and the robe that her mother made for her, and she's armed with a shield and weapons, and she utters a deafening war cry as she springs from the crack in Zeus's head. Athena is badass from day one. The annoying thing about this story, though, is that the mythology at large takes this to mean that Zeus conceived Athena himself, which is obviously bullshit, because patriarchy. So, there are so many references to Athena being basically a pseudo, like, virgin birth, like, Zeus is the new Virgin Mary, sure, but fuck that, because Matus was her mom, and it only makes sense, frankly, because Athena's the goddess of

• 11:54Liv Albert?

  wisdom, and Matus was also all about wisdom, and the word "Matus" even means wisdom in ancient Greek. So fuck the idea that Zeus had her all on his own, we know it doesn't work that way. That clip, eight years ago live, on episode three of the show, is honestly still the perfect way to examine how this story shifts when the thousands of years of context get brought into the mix. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So the passage I read at the top of this episode was from Hesiod's Theogony. It's Zeus and the many women that he quote-unquote "married" leading up to Hera, and is the earliest surviving written version of Matus's story. This is

• 12:36Liv Albert?

  gonna be hard, because Matus and Thetis, I'm gonna try to emphasize, Matus. This next passage is from Pseudo Apollodorus, so a very late version of essentially the same moment in mythology. "Zeus had intercourse with Matus, who turned into many shapes in order to avoid his embraces. When she was with child, Zeus, taking time by the forelock, swallowed her, because earth said, that after giving birth to the maiden who was then in her womb, Matus would bear a son who should be the lord of heaven. From fear of that, Zeus swallowed her, and when

• 13:17Liv Albert?

  the time came for the birth to take place, Prometheus, or, as others say, Hephaestus, smote the head of Zeus with an axe, and Athena, fully armed, leaped up from the top of his head at the river Triton."

• 13:33Liv Albert?

  So many of these moments are shared with Thetis. I can't wait to get into it. So unlike so many stories from Greek myth, Metis's experience with Zeus doesn't change that much over the centuries in between the versions. That's in large part because hers wasn't a story of heroes and monsters, but a simple explanation where the goddess Athena came from and how Zeus became a god of wisdom in any way and maintained his hold over the Olympians. In the earliest days of divinity, when Zeus and the Olympians were still in this midst of solidifying their power against the Titan gods who had come before them, Zeus raped Metis, this Titan goddess of wisdom, Kounsel.

• 14:19Liv Albert?

  Metis was a second-generation Titan alongside the Olympian parents, Cronos and Rhea. Now, Hesiod Theogony describes her as Zeus's first wife. Pseudo-Apollodorus says she was raped by the god. In a way, both are true. At this point, I think I will spend my entire life looking at the way Hesia describes women and their sexual experiences, because it's terrible. But for now, we can just say that he never really bothered to consider women as human beings with agency who might not be keen to fuck a god. So instead, when he says that Metis was Zeus's first wife, he's not referring to some officially-recognized legal state, but rather a sexual union sanctified in some way to warrant the children that are going to result from it.

• 15:01Liv Albert?

  Because of course, it's Athena that comes from this terribly troubling union with Metis, not through a traditional pregnancy and birth, but through still more tragedy for Metis.

• 15:24Liv Albert?

  After Zeus has assaulted Metis, he learns that she's prophesied to eventually give birth to this son that would be more powerful than his father. Having just overthrown his own father, Cronos, who overthrew his father, Uranus, Zeus isn't keen to have a prophecy like that hovering over his head. But the prophecy also stated that first, before a son, Metis would give birth to the daughter who, already growing inside her. This is important, because Zeus's solution to this problem is not to stop Metis from having that second child that's prophesied, but to stop her from even giving birth to the daughter. Because if men have learned anything from spending millennia stamping out the flames of a matriarchy or egalitarianism in general, it's that in order to solidify one's power,

• 16:09Liv Albert?

  you have to make an example. So Zeus eats Metis. Zeus cannot kill a Titan goddess like Metis, but he can consume her and her abilities, her strengths, and her status. Zeus consumes wisdom. He consumes good counsel, and he takes control of Metis's pregnancy, making the daughter his alone. This is how Hesiod tells the story of Athena's birth, just a bit later in the Theogony. "But Zeus lay with the fair-cheeked daughter of Ocean and Tethys apart from Hera, deceiving Metis, although she was full wise.

• 16:53Liv Albert?

  But he seized her with his hands and put her in his belly, for fear she might bring forth something stronger than his thunderbolt. Therefore did Zeus, who sits on high and dwells in the ether, swallow her down suddenly. But she straightway conceived Pallas Athena, and the father of men and gods gave her birth by way of his head on the banks of the river Trito. And she remained hidden beneath the inward parts of Zeus, even Metis, Athena's mother, worker of righteousness, who was wiser than gods and mortal men. There the goddess Athena received that whereby she excelled in strength, all the deathless

• 17:34Liv Albert?

  ones who dwell in Olympus, she who made the host-scaring weapon of Athena. And with it Zeus gave her birth, arrayed in arms of war." That was a bit messy and fragmentary, but essentially we get this idea that Zeus gave birth to Athena.

• 17:54Liv Albert?

  I don't even know what to say. Now, later versions of the story say that Metis remained inside Zeus. You know, the tellings get a bit campy with Metis just living inside of Zeus. Athena coming to term and grew to adulthood, all within the king of the gods. And you know, that's silly and fun. But ultimately, those adjustments to the story serve to sanitize the story even more. Because let's be honest, what's happening here, Zeus is threatened by a woman notably wiser than him, who will have children wiser and more powerful than him. So he takes her out. But not only does he take her out of the equation, he quite literally consumes her. He becomes a god of good counsel. He takes on the intelligence of Metis and presents it

• 18:35Liv Albert?

  as his own. With, when Athena is birthed, she too becomes Zeus's alone. And that's not even focusing on the fact that in the pseudo Apollodorus version, she is like fighting him. It's terrible.

• 18:53Liv Albert?

  Zeus, this king of the gods and supreme ruler, had to consume a woman in order to determine both good and evil. Like as if this wasn't in him to begin with, he needed a woman to make him have, I don't know, a conscience and empathy and the ability to determine anything?

• 19:16Liv Albert?

  And as a result, because Athena becomes this Zeus's daughter alone, her mother just fades into the ether. Except her mother isn't gone. She's living inside Zeus, ensuring that he can recognize good and evil. But think back to the episodes I did earlier this year, looking closer at the theogony and all the women that it brings to heel, generation after generation. Also, I just realized I said earlier this year, it's January 2025. I meant earlier last year. These stories of Zeus assaulting women, impregnating them with gods and heroes, they're not just icky stories of gods doing terrible things, they're ripples from something much bigger and much more

• 19:56Liv Albert?

  nefarious. They're examples of women who threatened the male power structure, or remnants of a time when there was no male power structure. They're the remains of this time when women had more power, more agency, when there was a slightly more even playing ground, when women were the keepers of history and wisdom. They were the storytellers.

• 20:19Liv Albert?

  Matisse Wisdom is a goddess who doesn't get to be the goddess of wisdom any longer than two lines of a poem, because the men took it from her in order to keep it as their own. Matisse represented not only female threats to the male power structure, but she was also a kind of test case for the gods. Zeus had just, and I mean just, seized power from the Titans who came before him, and here's this prophecy that one of them, this woman, could give birth to a god more powerful than him. Ultimately, this prophecy goes far beyond Matisse. It's this example of what would be the biggest and most constant threat to the patriarchal structure of not only the Olympian gods, but mortals too. Women held

• 21:01Liv Albert?

  the power of reproduction. In the ancient world, the womb is the threat to the patriarchy more than anything else.

• 21:13Liv Albert?

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• 21:56Liv Albert?

  right now, and I have my go-to woven leather bag. I seriously use it everywhere. That's why it's with me here. It's beautiful, and it's practical, and it's from Quince. And I actually have a parcel to pick up when I get back home, which has some goodies in there. I got this pair of corduroy high-rise pants. I'm really excited to try those out as soon as I get home. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can get Give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 22:41Liv Albert?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Let's Talk About Myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

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• 24:23Liv Albert?

  And then there is fetus.

• 24:27Liv Albert?

  When I first thought of returning to episode three of the podcast and revisiting when I broke down all the horrible stories of Zeus assaulting women for his own power and his general creepy nature, I hadn't planned on including Thetis. You know, she wasn't in that original episode and actually isn't assaulted by Zeus at all, or rather not by him directly. Instead, our girl Thetis is connected to Metis through this prophecy. Another prophecy that spawned another bout of male fear of women capable of more than them. And if you're curious, we will get back to more of the women directly associated with Zeus because they have stories to tell too. But like Metis, Thetis had the potential to take down this patriarchal order.

• 25:12Liv Albert?

  And thus she had to be handled by those same Olympian gods. Thetis is of course, mother to none other than Achilles, but it's what came before Achilles that concerns us. When we meet Thetis in the Iliad, she's already been brought to heel by the Olympian order. She has these remnants of power, but ultimately holds no sway aside from being able to call in a favor or two. But unlike Metis, because Thetis still walks the same earth as the gods, these remnants of her power and potential reverberate through the story of Achilles. And again, unlike Metis, the full extent of Thetis's power before the prophecy was

• 25:57Liv Albert?

  used to bring her down, isn't at all clear. Like, the Iliad is the earliest reference we have to her, and there Homer already seems to know something we don't. Thetis here is a figure who clearly holds sway, whose presence means something well beyond her just being this mother of Achilles, but there is also this echo of when she held much, much more. Still now, she is this guiding force behind him, seemingly just this enormous part of what makes Achilles so impressive. But it's not until the poet Pindar, writing in the Archaic period, where we get a sense of what it meant to have Thetis as your mother. So this source comes after the Iliad, but based on how Thetis is treated and spoken

• 26:42Liv Albert?

  of in the Iliad, it's pretty likely that this background story, or at least some part of it, existed before the Iliad ever brought Thetis and Achilles into our modern tradition.

• 26:55Liv Albert?

  This is how the poet Pindar tells her story. "When Zeus and splendid Poseidon contended for marriage with Thetis, each of them wanting her to be his lovely bride, for desire possessed them. But the immortal minds of the gods did not accomplish that marriage for them, when they heard the divine prophecies. Wise Thetis spoke in their midst and said it was fated that the sea goddess should bear a princely son, stronger than his father, who would wield another weapon in his hand, more powerful than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident, if she lay with Zeus or one of his brothers. No, cease from this, let her accept a mortal's bed,

• 27:40Liv Albert?

  and see her son die in battle, a son who is like Ares in the strength of his hands and like lightning in the swift prime of his feet. My counsel is to bestow this God-granted honour of marriage on Pelias, son of Iacchus, who is said to be the most pious man living on the plain of Iolcus. Let the message be sent at once to Chiron's immortal cave, right away, and let the daughter of Nereus never again place the leaves of strife in our hands. On the evening of the full moon, let her loosen the lovely bridle of her virginity for that hero."

• 28:20Liv Albert?

  Now I know I said that this episode wouldn't have any kind of graphic telling of divine assault, but I hadn't quite realised how dark Thetis's story could get. So just be warned, while it's still mythological, there is more to come. Because gods, the damage a prophecy can do when it is placed in the hands of a man. Both Thetis and Metis have their fates tied to a prophecy, one that is so similar to the other. For all we want to imagine Zeus as this eternal king of the gods, as some kind of all-powerful figure all the time. The ancient Greeks did not see him that way. Zeus had seized power like any other tyrant. He'd been born into it, but then took it by force.

• 29:02Liv Albert?

  And though he may be a god, Zeus doesn't have any kind of job security. He's the king of the gods because he took the throne, not because it was inherently his to take. What doesn't get enough airtime are these attempts on that power, though, either via the coup, attempted by the other Olympians, or these gods' forsaken prophecies.

• 29:23Liv Albert?

  And naturally Zeus didn't give a shit whose lives he fucked up in an attempt to hold on to his power. It's not lost on me that I'm speaking of holding on to political power at the cost of others. Hmm, what would it be like if politics were actually about helping people, making their lives better and easier and kinder, rather than power and influence and money and the endlessly destructive strength of patriarchal capitalism? The moment Zeus learns of the prophecy, you know, that Thetis would give birth to a son more powerful than his father, more powerful again than the thunderbolt, or who could wield a weapon more powerful than the thunderbolt. He not only wants nothing more to do with her, but he also can't let this woman just

• 30:04Liv Albert?

  like exist with the potential to overthrow him or give birth to a child who could. Instead, with the help of Poseidon, who also wanted to marry Thetis before this reveal of the prophecy, they set out to absolutely ruin this woman's life. And that's putting it mildly.

• 30:37Liv Albert?

  I've been reading an article by past guest of the show, Machi Poproski, about this part of Thetis's life and story. And I think I could reasonably dedicate multiple episodes to his article alone. So instead, I will just preface that much of what I'm about to say, though not taken from his article, because I had to finish writing this before I could read all of it beyond the introduction anyway, but was inspired by the introduction. I was also inspired by, well, just like, just how incredibly fucked up the so-called marriage of Thetis and Peleus is. On the surface, Zeus's decision seems on par with the rest of his poor decisions. He doesn't want Thetis ending up with an immortal and giving birth to a supremely powerful god.

• 31:20Liv Albert?

  So he decides to give her away to a mortal hero, Peleus. And even if she'd gone willingly, that would be bad enough. But instead, in nearly all descriptions of their so-called wedding, we're told of just how hard Thetis fought.

• 31:37Liv Albert?

  This is how the late source, Pseudo Apollodorus, tells it. Quote, "Next, he, Pelias, married Nereus's daughter Thetis, over whom Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals. But when famous had predicted that the son of Thetis would be stronger than his father, they bowed out. Some say that when Zeus was eager to have sex with Thetis, Prometheus told him that his son, by her, would take over the dominion of the sky. Others say that Thetis was unwilling to have sex with Zeus because she had been reared by Hera, and that Zeus, in fury, wanted to marry her off to a mortal. At any rate, Chiron warned

• 32:18Liv Albert?

  Pelias to grab Thetis and hold on while she changed her form. So he watched for his chance and carried her off. And although she changed into fire, and then water, and then a wild animal, he did not release her until he saw that she had returned to her original shape. They were married on Pelion, and the gods celebrated the marriage with hymns and a banquet."

• 32:45Liv Albert?

  I'm not sure I'll get over this. The connection between Metis and Thetis and how they both changed their shape into everything imaginable in an attempt to get away?

• 32:56Liv Albert?

  And the fact that Pelias and Thetis's wedding becomes one of the most famous, and that strife, strife ends up, oh, we have more to say, we have more to say, but that, today, we're talking about Thetis. So that was Thetis's punishment for simply just being the bearer of a theoretical, like a prophesied son. Because as we learn with the story of Metis, let alone that of Zeus himself, the sons are always the biggest threats to their father's power. But naturally, it's the women who are affected by that threat. It's the women who are punished because they have the potential to bear sons who might defeat their fathers.

• 33:38Liv Albert?

  Thetis is a bit of a mystery for endless reasons. Unlike so many other women of myth, the pieces of her story that we know are missing likely tell us even more about her potential. Like about what made this particular goddess so special that she had to be handled in such a way. Because of what survives too, we can be certain that she was powerful in a way that we do not yet fully understand, that there was some background, some history that made Thetis a bigger threat than almost any one else.

• 34:16Liv Albert?

  Again, I'm thinking back to my recent revisit of Hesiod's Theogony and the way that we can see this slow breakdown of female power over the generations of the gods. Thetis is an ancient goddess on the same level as Metis in terms of primordial power. Both women were generationally more powerful than Zeus and the Olympians, and both women promised threats to that newly established patriarchal order.

• 34:42Liv Albert?

  Metis, though, was a goddess who Zeus could bring to heel by himself. All he had to do was devour her like his father had devoured his siblings. Not only did he get the threat of prophecy out of the way, but he consumed the Titan goddess of wisdom, thereby taking all of that wisdom, all of that good counsel for himself. But Thetis, though the reasons don't necessarily survive, we know that she was too much for him. He couldn't do to Thetis what he had done to Metis. She needed to be brought down to the level of mortals in order for her to be sufficiently weakened. Here's another passage that tells of their so-called marriage, their wedding.

• 35:27Liv Albert?

  This is also from Pindar. Quote, "The fate destined by Zeus, Pelias made his own, devouring flames and the sharp claws of fearless lions and tearing teeth safely endured. His naryed bride he won from her high seat, and saw round him enthroned the gods of sky and sea proffer their gifts, foretelling the kingdom he and his race should rule."

• 36:03Liv Albert?

  It's like the establishment of a patriarchy. And the translator here explains that the quote, "devouring flames and the sharp claws of fearless lions and tearing teeth safely endured." That refers to just, oh, only Thetis's ability to transform into various shapes in her attempts to escape Pelias's assault. That explanation, it seems a bit simplistic to me. The experience is obviously traumatic, it's horrifying, she fights with all she has, and what she has is a lot. And it's so similar to Maitus.

• 36:44Liv Albert?

  But this is a patriarchal story at its core, one meant to solidify Zeus's status as supreme ruler and to lay the groundwork for the famed hero that is Achilles. So we call it a wedding. It's just a wedding. We call it a wedding when this woman fights for her life against the man that other men, men less ancient than her, less powerful, have assigned to her as a so-called groom.

• 37:16Liv Albert?

  This won't be the last time we talk about Thetis. Every time I learn more about her, I'm a little bit more consumed. This article that I got stuck on the introduction of, because I had to write this script, goes on to really, really examine what those transformative assaults did to her, and I can't wait to read more and hopefully get a repeat guest conversation, or at least an episode out of it. Just every time I learn something more about Thetis, I'm a little bit more just utterly consumed. Did I already say that part? I'm trying to go back to my script after getting off of it. We're finishing up with, okay, this is a quote from this article by Machi

• 37:58Liv Albert?

  Popolsky, though, as you'll hear, he's, he's referencing the work of Laura Slatkin alongside his own, who is a, another big name in Thetis. Quote, "In her seminal work, The Power of Thetis, Laura Slatkin demonstrates that the Iliad presents Thetis as a formerly powerful, yet ultimately marginalized deity. The mistress of cords and binding, Thetis could avert destruction or bring it on. Once, she played an active role in divine affairs, having rescued Hephaestus and Dionysus, and freed Zeus from bonds put on him by rebellious Olympians. Curiously, in the timeframe of the Iliad, Thetis appears mostly passive.

• 38:43Liv Albert?

  She inexplicably knows much about future and past happenings. She carries enormous clout and she indirectly influences the war. But she exercises her power indirectly, only through calling in favors owed from Zeus and Hephaestus. Slatkin noted that Thetis still blames Zeus for her arranged marriage, yet she never directly opposes him, as if some unseen factor forestalled her wrath."

• 39:14Liv Albert?

  End quote. Ah.

• 39:33Liv Albert?

  Nerds. Ugh, thank you for listening as always. I'm really excited to be getting back into the nitty gritty of this podcast. This is the first script I have written and I don't even want to guess how long. Um, it's tough to get back into writing 5,000 words a week. But really, I'm, I'm so pumped. I'm so excited to be recording new episodes and conversations and finally diving deep into the Patreon, our new oracle edition, just so much more. Now in my personal life, things have been really looking up for like the first time in a while. That's been nice, but of course alongside that, the world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. And I've been, I'm struggling with what to comment on and how and ugh.

• 40:16Liv Albert?

  I'm thinking of everyone affected by the fires in LA, not the billionaires though. Um, I actually wish the fire would eat them before anyone else. I'm fully Syria. Do you know there's a billionaire couple in LA who use like 60% of the water? Of like the whole. Yeah, anyway, eat the rich. Um, but the rest of you, I mean, honestly, I, I hope alongside all of the, the heartbreak and the sadness. We, we can all reach this point where we accept, where we just don't accept this any longer. Where we no longer allow the billionaire class to own the water supply. To continue to fuel climate change with their wealth, simply because they can afford private firefighters. So they don't care. Where we, we realize that this is not a world built on fairness.

• 41:00Liv Albert?

  It's not one built on hard work and grit. Capitalism is not an even playing field. Maybe it was originally, but it isn't any longer. And the more we ignore that fact, the worse it's going to get. Israel's genocide of Palestine, Gaza specifically, has been the single biggest contributor to climate change in the last. I don't even know how long their bombing of children and refugee camps and hospitals and every other piece of civilian infrastructure has produced more carbon in the last year than we can possibly imagine. There are numbers, I'm not going back to find them, but gods, they're fucked up. They've dropped more tons of bombs on kids in Palestine than the number of bombs dropped during, or rather the tonnage, I believe.

• 41:44Liv Albert?

  The tonnage of bombs dropped during the entirety of World War II. In one year on one tiny strip of land that they're trying to convince us they're not committing genocide in. They've dropped more bombs than World War II. And the governments in the West still want us to believe that this is a war and not a full blown extermination. The fires in California are inextricably tied with the genocide in Gaza. And we can't ignore that. Like add to that, that the 30%, 30% of California's firefighters are prisoners working as slaves.

• 42:17Liv Albert?

  30% of California firefighters are prison slaves. And you, they can't, even if they fight in all of the wildfires, they cannot work as firefighters when they get out of prison. Capitalism is a disease that's going to kill everyone except the billionaires if we let it. It's also not lost on me that I started this podcast right at the beginning of the first Trump presidency. The show's first years, its aim and its eventual purpose, honestly, was formed by those years. This next one seems ready to be so much worse. So for all I think that Democrats are worthless genocide-ers who only campaign on being non-Republican

• 42:57Liv Albert?

  warmongers versus like real forces for real change and equality, maybe if they just tried that a tiny bit, they'd win. Even though I think that, I still recognize that Trump will do a whole other type of damage. And while I don't like to pick which war criminal is worse, I do recognize just how fucking terrifying he is. And that this is so fucking real for an enormous amount of the American population and beyond, because apparently I live in the 51st state. I'm thinking of all of you too, even as Canada seems poised for the same. None of us are free until all of us are free.

• 43:40Liv Albert?

  Next week, Zeus's abductions and assaults of Europa and Semele, and how they too tie into the long arc of destructive patriarchal power structures. Because if we're gonna take it down from the inside, it's best to understand how we got here. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes, my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find ad-free episodes, finally, and so much more via the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/MythsBaby. If you want just ad-free and nothing else, too, a bare-bones Apple subscription is coming.

• 44:24Liv Albert?

  And sign up for the newsletter that's definitely absolutely coming sometime soon, along with which it will have photos of the new merch that's just arrived in my apartment and which awaits this new website that we're also working on. Anyway, sign up to that newspaper newsletter. Sign up to that newsletter at mythsbaby.com/newsletter.

• 44:45Liv Albert?

  I am Liv and I love this shit. Also fuck the patriarchy, fuck capitalism's billionaires burn in hell.

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