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Sparticus
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Is my favourite Greek god. He always has been. I love Greek gods and mythology; I have always been fascinated with them – ever since the third grade when we first learned Greek mythology. My favourite Greek gods were always the forgotten ones, or the quiet ones: Hestia, Persephone, Demeter, Kronus, etc. I love the animals and creatures too. Just everything about it intrigues me to no end.
I hate the Roman names for Greek gods. I love Rome and almost everything about that great Empire – and there has been no empire greater since – but I hate Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and especially Venus. I mean, her name is Aphrodite, not Venus. To me, these are the planets (and I know that the planets were named after the Roman gods [who are really Greek], but those names are planets first and gods second to me). I like to keep my gods and planets separate, thank you very much. Keep my gods out of the heavens, please.
The success of Rome was based on their amazing ability to assimilate. Instead of bashing a people, they would envelop and assimilate them into Rome with portions of that culture being adopted by Rome as well. Happened all the time – Christianity owes its existence not to Christ, but to Rome. If Rome hadn’t gone to Christ, it would have been just another sect that sprung up, not the cornerstone of the Western world, spread to every cranny of Rome’s might. People just don’t give Rome enough credit, I think. They give too much credit to god and such. Which is something that bothers me – whenever something terrible happens in a person’s life, it is supposedly because they are weak, and it’s their fault. Whenever something good happens, when greatness is accomplished, it is never because of the person but because of god. All badness and evil is the result of us, yet everything that is good is god’s. We can accomplish no good; we can take credit for nothing. What an automatic guilt mechanism.
There are I think four great moments in Rome’s history, points where either Rome would fall or go forward, and each time she survived. There were the Punic Wars and Carthage. I love Carthage. An empire in her own right, Carthage was too strong and would not bow to Rome’s will. Carthage produced one of the greatest military strategists in history: Hannibal. The man was a genius and would have conquered Rome had it not been for a more ingenious plan by the Senate and his homeland failing him. Rome could not assimilate Carthage, so Rome flexed her muscle and crushed Carthage, salting the fields and everything. No two stones set upon each other once Rome was done. That is one example of Rome’s survival through what most people know: her mighty legions. And when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, when Gaul was taken and Empire born from Republic, Rome was begun anew. It was a rejuvenation that Caesar provided and Rome needed, the Senate had outlived its usefulness and Rome would experience her glory days starting with Augustus and moving all the way down to Hadrian and his pals at the peak. This is Rome triumphing through might.
The Rome many people do not know is the Rome of craftiness, the survival of Rome through adaptation. Rome conquered the world because Rome knew what to do – make the people happy and don’t force it. The two greatest examples of this are when Rome was confronted with the Greeks, and much later when Rome ran smack dab into Christ and his many, many martyrs to follow. Christianity blossomed like so many illicit activities. It was frowned upon to be Christian, and like any other illegal activity, people flocked to it. Moths to a flame and such. I’m sure that if Confucianism were illegal here in the US, it would become the next fad cause to be championed by beatniks and activists alike. As the wave of Christian lion meat grew, it got to be a little much. Finally that (bastard) emperor Constantine made it all official and split the whole damn Empire in half. I mark this as the end of Rome. Christ and Constantine killed Rome and ruined Europe. Trace it back to those two men. For that I will always hate Constantine and resent Jesus – I really, really liked Rome and they had to go and ruin it. And I cannot express my anger at Rome enough for going Christian and thus making Europe go with her, ruining countless billions of lives in the coming millennia (I will just let that statement stand and not go into the why, as that would result in a blathe so long as to overwhelm a server).
What angers me almost as much, and what started this digression, was Rome’s assimilation of Greece. Granted, it had to be done, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Greece was the man back in BC, Greece was IT, Athens was the place and Greeks were the bomb-diggity, fool. Rome was the new kid on the block with no credentials. Unfortunately for Greece, after Sparta dropped off and Persia stopped poking around so much, Greece became a military pushover. Kind of like Stephen Hawking – genius-shining-light type brilliant, but your grandma could take him in a fight. So how convenient for Rome and her war machine to knock off Greece and say, “Well gosh, look at all these neat gods! What a cute little culture! GREAT architecture too, by the way. I think I’ll take it all, call it something else, and have everyone love it and me because while it will still be the same it will be mine now! Zeus shmoosh, he’s Jupiter nowadays!” And thus Rome stole Greece’s culture and became the new man, the new bomb-diggity. All the awesome tradition of established Greece WITH the added Roman bonus of just endowed, chosen greatness. Like combining an IN-N-OUT double double with Tommy’s Burgers chili.
As much as I love Rome, here is my problem: they just switched cultures like that. They did what they had to to succeed, yes, but to do it again with Constantine just makes me sick. I have a friend who switches religions – and I mean seriously switches them, baptism and everything – with girlfriends. Rome was the world’s first true bureaucracy. Efficient, neat, and clipped. Highly organized and potently successful. Need religion? Take Greece’s! Can’t you see the shallowness of this? The pathetic overreaching? Maybe I’m so mad not because its Rome – maybe this isn’t even about Rome at all. It’s about those people, all people (myself included) who are so anxious to succeed, so willing to be accepted, loved, liked, and saved that they will gladly and willingly fall into anything. We are so easily pulled. We don’t want to do any of the work for ourselves; we want it all done for us. Why bother making and establishing a culture, steal one! Why bother thinking for yourself and making educated decisions, join a cult! Copy! Cheat! Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V! Google and Yahoo! It’s all so shallow, so pathetic and superficial. No depth. We started losing depth with Christ and god taking the credit for everything, when Rome switched AGAIN. Once could have been ok, once was ok because Rome established herself and it was working out great, but twice is sad. Twice killed poor Rome. It was a slow loss of depth at first, but now in the neon world we lose a bit more of it, every one of us, every second. These pixels drain my soul.
Hephaestus is my favourite Greek god, and now I will finally tell you why. Hephaestus was one of Zeus’ many sons – the last in fact. Hephaestus was the youngest of the true gods – those sired by Zeus and borne by Hera to be an Olympian. He is the only truly ugly god. When he was born, his parents were so angry and ashamed at his ugliness, he was flung off Mount Olympus into the sea, breaking his legs and making him lame. Ugly and now crippled – keep track. He was sheltered by Poseidon, and was made god of the fire and of the forge. His forge is a volcano (his Greek name is Vulcan), and there he makes the finest weapons and metals for the gods. He made the chains that held Prometheus; he created Ares’ weapons of war, and helped craft Apollo’s chariot. Hephaestus forges the finest metals using the fires of the earth herself, and yet he is quite forgotten and alone. Now you can add abandoned and used to crippled and ugly. And as if this weren’t enough, he is madly in love with Aphrodite (NOT Venus), the most beautiful woman to ever live and the goddess of love and beauty. He lives for her, yet she scorns him. The gods married Aphrodite to Hephaestus, thinking his ugliness would curb her and he could control her. Aphrodite being who she is, however, is often unfaithful to him with Ares, god of war – the manly sex-machine that he is, full of brawn and testosterone. She uses Hephaestus to craft her petty things as she dallies with Ares. Poor Hephaestus is ugly, crippled, abandoned, used, and finally betrayed.
Yet he is still a GOD. He is still one of the twelve great Olympians. He holds his place with Zeus and Athena, Artemis and Hermes. Hephaestus is a god, a master of fire and craftsmanship who live on Mount Olympus but works in the heart of a volcano, quietly going about his business. If Hephaestus isn’t someone to look up to, I don’t know who is. I can tell you one thing: I like Hephaestus a lot more than the Trinity, and I find them to be equally believable. What makes a god that throws thunderbolts so different from one that turns people into salt pillars? Why is one fantasy and the other fact? They both seem just as fatuous.
So in the end, Rome did it. Rome killed Hephaestus and his accomplishments; Rome took away the pantheon and did in Olympus more thoroughly than the Olympians themselves could ever do away with the Titans. It just shows that gods are just a product of mankind, that we will readily switch to something new and more believable to us, something we like more and serves our purposes better. Man is shallow and Hephaestus died simply because Christ worked better for Rome – an efficient bureaucratic decision of survival. When we stop believing in something, when it is forgotten? Does it cease to exist? Is it really that easy to do away with our gods? Are our lives that superficial and simple?
Poor Hephaestus. Screwed over up till the very end. But you can see why I like him so much, and perhaps also why I resent religion, especially the popular ones.
Whatever. In the end, it’s all Greek to me.
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