Athena the Nonbinary Part 2

This week we are going to continue our discussion of Athena as a nonbinary manifestation. Whether pursuing masculine-coded activities like conflict and competition or feminine-coded activities like weaving and homemaking, Athena strove for excellence. 

Athena used this trademark blend of masculinity and femininity to aid Orestes after he usurped the King of Mycenae and to aid Jason and Medea on the quest of the Golden Fleece. 

Following one’s own desires, duty to protect one’s family, striving for excellence in whatever one does, ignoring gender binaries to seek a fulfilled life, and bring others up while you are doing it. 

Athena’s nonbinary attributes allow them to be the kind of non-binary mentor and role-model we all need sometimes. 

Happy Pride Everyone!

Transcript

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Hello everybody and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast. I'm your host, Dominica Raven, episode 14, Athena the Nonbinary, Part 2. Jason and the Argonauts have reached the edge of Colchis, a kingdom on the eastern side of the Black Sea. Athena had been with the Argonauts from the very beginning, even helping the craftsman Argos construct the Argo itself and guiding the heroes throughout their journey. But now Jason must show his own strength and cunning. The whole reason the Argo left Greece in the first place was because the villainous King Pelias desired the Golden Fleece. Now it is time for Jason to go alone to the house of Aetes, the tyrant of Colchis, and ask for it as a gift. Aetes' reputation as a hard and unyielding man was well known, and the hero faced significant anxiety about the task at hand. So Athena and Hera discuss the perilous situation. Hera asks the cunning embodiment of tactics and strategy how they can aid Jason in his greatest trial. Athena pours over many possibilities, but none of them actually come up with a surefire way to bring Jason through Aeti's house alive. Finally, Hera suggests they recruit Medea to help. Medea is Aetis' gender queer child who is a powerful witch of Ekati. The deities agree that Medea's magic spells and tricks are the best way to aid Jason, but how do they recruit Medea to betray their own father? Athena suggests that, though they are unwed and immune to the pains of love, Medea is not. So Hera and Athena go to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and seek her help. Aphrodite deploys her impish son, Eros, in Latin better known as Cupid, to induce mad affection for Jason in Medea. After a bit of persuasion, Athena's plan works, and Eros flies to Aetes' court to shoot Medea with an arrow of desire. Once again, Athena's strategies work out in the end. Medea is immediately infatuated with Jason and chooses to assist him. First, they use the Prometheus charm to make Jason's body temporarily invulnerable to all physical attack. He uses this to great effect when Aetes has Jason fight some earthborn sown warriors of monstrous form. Then Medea and Jason go to claim the golden fleece itself, which is guarded by a great dragon. Medea sings a spell to get the dragon to sleep while Jason claims the fleece. Their quest over, Medea joins the Argonauts on their return journey to Greece. Once again we see a case where Athena uses others to carry out a plan that could have been much more easily accomplished alone. Athena mentor chose to encourage and build up a young heroine and hero instead. Last week we focused on Athena's non-binary aspects within the context of early poetry and mythology. The works of Homer and Hesiod provided more than enough content, but it did not even get us out of the archaic era in Greek history. This week we're going to continue the narrative by exploring some non-binary aspects of Athena in later tradition. Athena is a deity so queer that most ancient authors simply didn't know what to do with them. As we discussed last week, Athena is not clearly female or male, instead, manifesting both gendered expressions based on preferences and circumstances. Athena can be seen as a craftsman to rival Hephaestus, the visibly male god of the forge, or a warrior, more than a rival for Ares, the god of war himself. Now some authors have counterintuitively chosen to see this non-binary manifestation as actually reinforcing the gendered binary. See, when Athena was born, they basically became Zeus's right hand. Athena is a warrior who does not necessarily operate independently very often. The Odyssey actually begins with Athena and Zeus talking. They describe the situation on Ithaca with the suitors invading Odysseus' house. Both deities agree the suitors are sinning and behaving outrageously, and that it is finally time for Odysseus to return home. So Athena's actions throughout the story are predicated on the fact that Zeus has decided it is the best course of action. While Zeus is not entirely omnipotent, Zeus is the force which orders the entire universe. So we can read this scene as Zeus making a plan, then Athena carrying it out. An excellent example of this interpretation in action is found in the Orestia series of plays. Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae. He was a brash and arrogant warlord who wasn't terribly well liked by anybody, but he was the rightful king. Because he was the most powerful lord in all of Greece, he was selected to lead the campaign against Troy. Once his vast armies were assembled, he plans to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia for a safe passage. Artemis whisks Iphigenia away at the last second, but Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, never forgives him. When the war is over, she conspires with Aegisthus to kill Agamemnon when he gets home. Then they drive their young son Orestes into exile. Eventually Orestes returns to Mycenae and with the help of his sister Electra kills both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Now, with one bloody vengeance, Orestes has committed the crimes of matricide and regicide. Needless to say, the people of Mycenae are divided on whether to accept Orestes as a rightful king or violent usurper. Additionally, Orestes is tormented by the furies, hateful little sprites of vengeance, for spilling his own family's blood. Eventually, Orestes is put on trial, presided over by Athena. Though the vote to convict or acquit is a tie, Athena reveals that it is Zeus's plan for Orestes to go free, so the people consent. Later, the Furies continue to pester Orestes and insult Athena. Athena deals with the Furies by reminding them, I know where Zeus' thunderbolts are kept. There is a very real sense that in both instances, Athena is simply acting as a messenger carrying out the will of Zeus, not an independent actor in the story. This reading sees Athena's actions as reinforcing the gendered social order so they don't actually do anything of their own volition, rather relying on the vicarious power of Zeus to carry out the plan. Now, this is not an unreasonable reading of the stories. Athena often conspires with Zeus and agrees to a plan before actually carrying it out. Additionally, Zeus is the supreme power in the universe, and what he agrees to or denies will be upheld in the end. However, this dynamic is not unique to Athena. For a few quick examples, Poseidon says he would never kill Odysseus because Zeus had decreed Odysseus would one day reach his homeland on Ithaca. Poseidon is just making it take a very long time and cause Odysseus a great deal of pain. Similarly, Apollo stands beside the Trojan hero Hector for the entire Trojan war, then abandons him at the moment Zeus decrees Achilles will kill Hector. But I think most vivid example is when another queer deity, Dionysus, claimed that though their vengeance on Pentheus was harsh, Zeus had decreed it would happen. Just like Athena, Dionysus is only carrying out a plan set in motion by Zeus. As Hermes says to Calypso in the Odyssey, Zeus carries the Aegis, it is fruitless to transgress his will. Though this interpretation would see Athena as a docile, feminine coded deity wholly subservient to Zeus, other male gods and female gods, and queer gods alike are all bound to obey Zeus, especially because Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, and Athena are all the children of Zeus, and Poseidon is his brother. Zeus is the Potrop Familius, and everyone must honor and obey him. That Athena and Dionysus are feminine-coded queer deities does not necessarily matter if masculine-coded bisexuals like Hermes or Apollo are similarly bound by Zeus's plans and decrees. Now, there are definitely times when various deities try to follow a plan different from what Zeus ordains, but it never ends well. In fact, generally, their plans actually end up facilitating Zeus's ultimate plan without even coming close to upending it. So such scholarship is not necessarily seeing the whole picture. Olympus represents a family dynamic, and Zeus is the unquestioned, but not necessarily unquestionable, authority. So, here again in the Orestia, we can see that there is something exceedingly queer about the way Athena is represented. The very fact that Athena is playing a role in justice in the first place represents a departure from expectations. In Greece, justice and the law courts were almost exclusively the domain of citizen, heteronormative men. Athena's presence, then, is a direct violation of the way things are meant to work. Similar to the end of the Odyssey, Athena chooses to end the Orestia not in a bloodbath where they kill everyone left standing, but with persuasion and reconciliation. Persuasion of this sort is almost always considered a feminine art, where the type of persuasion where a man uses fancy rhetoric is the masculine art of persuasion. The story of Orestes thus shows Athena's non-binary aspects very clearly as they utilize both masculine and feminine aspects to fix a very complex dynastic problem. Now let's return to the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts. The story of Jason and the Argonauts is somewhat bookended with Dionysian elements. Remember, Dionysaic elements is another way to say there's queer stuff in this story. Phyxus and Heli were the children of Athamas, a king of Boeotia, during his first marriage. His second marriage was to Aino, a daughter of Cadmus the Dragonslayer, and they had two more children. Eventually Aino also fostered Dionysus after the death of their mother Semele. Aino took the child in and, if you remember, raised Dionysus as a girl. Now issues start to arise when Dionysus' stepmother, Hera, realizes what is going on. She induces madness in Adamas, and he attacks his own family. Adamas kills one of his sons and drives Aino with her other son out of the house. Fearing for their lives, Aino leaps into the sea with the infant to escape the violence. Now the gods take pity on the pair and transform the two into immortal sea nymphs. Aino becomes Leucothea, the white goddess, and the child becomes Palamon. Hermes whisks away Dionysus to the safety of Rhea Chibalae's house. Meanwhile, Athamus attacks his elder children, Phrixus and Heli. The two fly away on a magical golden ram over the Dardanelles, or the Strait of Gallipoli, which divides Anatolia in Asia from the rest of Europe. In this waterway, Heli falls from a great height and dies in the sea. The Greeks and Romans called the Dardanelles the Hellespont after this tragic death, but Phrixus makes it all the way to the Black Sea where he is taken in at King Aetes' court. He kills the golden ram as a sacrifice to Hermes and gives its golden fleece to Aetes as a gift. Now, a full generation later, King Pelaias, the tyrant of Boeotia, desires the golden fleece, but can never get a ship successfully through the Hellespont. Because of an oracle he had received, he also fears that his rule will be usurped by Jason. So when Jason does come before him, Pelias decides to send him to fetch the fleece. Every other ship he'd sent was destroyed and everyone drowned. So two birds, one stone. Well, technically two birds, two stones. There was a narrow strait in the Bosphorus called the Simplegades, or Clashing Rocks. These are two islands not anchored to the seabed which smash together, crushing any ship that ever tried to make it to the Black Sea. This prompts Athena to create a new kind of ship which is capable of making this journey. They recruited a craftsman named Argos to build the boat. Though Argos was the craftsman, Athena was the designer and architect. Athena even added a piece of Dodonin oak, a tree sacred to Zeus himself, to the ship's hull. This oak and plank allows the Argo to become very stable and sturdy, and even speak to Jason with advice throughout the journey. It's important to note here that the Argo is not simply a well-built ship, but a whole new kind of sailing vessel. See, up to this point the Greeks had been confined to, well, Greece. Though some travelers had been set out of the Aegean before, in fact, Dionysus was the one who invented traveling abroad, the Argo is the first ship ever to sail through the Hellespont and enter the Black Sea. So we can see Athena's role as one of the finest craftsmen in the universe. More than this, there's a plan in mind for the whole journey. The Argo is the only ship in existence which is capable of voyaging all the way to Colchis and retrieving the Golden Fleece. But after the voyage, the Argo became a template for all future sailing vessels throughout antiquity. Athena is fundamentally redefining the way Greeks travel and trade forever. Athena could have done this all by themselves, but once again, Athena chooses to build up the human hero craftsman Argos and hone his skills along the way. Athena's role as the greatest craftsman in the universe is shown a little later in the story during the Lamnian Women episode, the Argo Lambs at Lemnos, a relatively large island halfway between mainland Greece and the coast of Asia Minor. There's a lot of trepidation as the Argonauts do not know how they will be received by Hippsippy, the queen of Lemnos. So Jason puts on his finest armor and a magnificent purple cloak. The cloak is a majestic blend of colors and mythical stories. In one area, Cyclopes forge Zeus's thunderbolts while Amphion and Zephos build the walls of Thebes, and the flight of Phrixus itself all play out across the cloak's purple canvas. These figures were woven into the cloak so intricately that they seem to move across the fabric. The whole cloak gleams like the sun. This is the masterwork of Athena's finest weaving, who gave it to Jason back at the start of the journey. This is not merely a beautiful showing of woven skill, it is a token to identify Jason as beloved of the gods. When a human hero is given a gift directly by a deity, it shows the gods favor. Jason appears so splendid in the robe that the Argonauts and the Lemnian women all marvel at him. Athena's craftsmanship is key to him being welcomed and respected on Lemnos. Next, the Argonauts engage in a diverse series of adventures, eventually reading the Simpledes or Clashing Rocks. Remember, no ship had ever sailed through this dangerous strait and entered the Black Sea. Jason first sends a dove through, and it survives. This is a portent that the Argo itself will survive the passage as well. So the Argo begins the treacherous path. But even with such a great ship, they never would have made it through on their own efforts. It was by Athena's assistance that they were able to successfully enter the Black Sea. Athena held the clashing rocks apart, giving them a very small opening to sail through. Finally, like a child pushing a little boat, Athena knocks the Argo through that opening, and the ship sped on like an arrow past the rocks and into the Black Sea. After this episode, the clashing rocks were forever rooted in the seabed, no more to clash and destroy ships. The Black Sea is now open to Greek trade. The Argo now sails across the Black Sea and finally reaches the border of Aetes' kingdom in Colchis. This is that scene we opened with. Athena and Hera go to Aphrodite and Cupid to recruit Medea, the teenage witch. Medea is a gender-queer sorcerer. Though loosely feminine coded, it is clear that this figure's gendered expressions are not heteronormative. They're shown pursuing a life as a devotee of Akati, not being married off as a docile pawn in Aeti's business deals with his neighbors. In fact, Medea controls their own sexuality by pursuing Jason in the first place. All Eros did was get the infatuation going. Medea did everything else. Medea chose Jason over filial piety. Medea figured out how to use the Prometheus charm and the serpent song to deliver Jason from peril. Medea chose their path in life and in love, and not the parent Aetes. Of course, the ending of the story of Jason and Medea is tragic, not triumphant, but that's over a decade away. For now the two are united in purpose. The Argonauts return to Greece and Jason eventually does use Medea's magic potions to usurp Pelaias as the king. Once Pelaias is dead, the Bacchic element returns at the end of the story. Dionysus appears and asks Medea to mix up another potion which will heal their aged nurses. When Medea does heal Bacchus nurses, Dionysus bestows an everlasting favor upon Medea. Medea does not die, but instead is whisked away to the Eleusinian fields, where they marry another genderqueer hero, Achilles. But that's another story for another time. For today, Athena Mentor chose to encourage Jason and build him up, giving him the tokens he would need to be deemed acceptable in everybody's eyes. Athena Mentor chose to build up Medea and allow them to choose their own path. Athena Mentor chose to send both of them on their greatest adventure with the tools they needed to accomplish their greatest feats as heroes, claiming the Golden Fleece. Athena is not about bringing strong masculinity or strong femininity to achieve heroic ends. In fact, Medea just barely represents somebody slightly feminine coded. Medea makes plans without the will of their father, uses a mix of masculine and feminine wiles and attricts to achieve every victory, and ultimately chooses their own path. Athena can mentor Jason into becoming a better young hero. Athena can also mentor Medea into becoming a better young queer. When we consider all the stories about Athena, one thing is painfully clear. A straightforward masculine and feminine binary never works very well. Sometimes Athena shows very clear masculine attributes, specifically related to justice, competition, or a tree or fighting skill, where at other times Athena shows overwhelming abilities associated with the feminine sphere related to weaving, persuasive arguments, and encouraging others. Athena chose to use feminine kindness and shows of unyielding masculine strength and power. Athena is able To achieve these desired outcomes by moulding masculine and feminine attributes into a single, unified strategy. Following one's own desires, feeling a duty to protect one's family, striving for excellence in whatever one does, ignoring gender binaries, seeking a fulfilled life, and bringing others up while you are doing it. Athena represents an excellent non-binary role model for us all. Next time, we're going to explore the king of the universe himself. Zeus is a singularly unique figure in the whole pantheon. While there are innumerable examples of Zeus' escapades, they don't seem to follow a meaningful pattern of attraction. Zeus has relationship with other gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs, preternatural abstractions, human men and human women. When we consider this through a queer lens, Zeus appears to be an excellent example of a pansexual in the Pantheon. We'll see you in two Mondays to discuss Zeus, the pansexual. Though this is a difficult but natural position for everybody, I'm trying to navigate it while being a vaguely feminine coded queer as well. There's a lot of emotion as I've struggled with not really knowing how to be an older queer person. I never had the privilege of having a queer mentor, or a professional mentor either for that matter. At one point, I struggled with figuring out how to be a good positive influence when I have so many of my own internal struggles and insecurities. If I can show some of that restraint, resilience, striving for excellence, and well thought out strategies while I try to bring up the rest of my community, I will be proud to have had some impact on other queers. Right now, Athena is a queer mentor for me, and I valued having a chance to explore Athena mentor with you these past few weeks. This was a very powerful opportunity for me, and I thank you for it. The Argonautica was written by Apollonius of Rhodes, a scholar and poet living in the 3rd century BC. Apollonius lived in Alexandria, where he actually became the chief librarian for the famous library at Alexandria. He was either a friend, pupil, or male lover of Callimachus, the finest poet from the entire Hellenistic age. We don't know much else about his life, even whether he actually lived in Rhodes at any point or not. His Argonautica ranks second only to the Odyssey on my personal favorite epics.

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C. Seaton's 1912 Loeb Classic Library Edition remains a standard translation. This year the notable American classicist Stanley Lombardo and Cynthia Pulsley translated it as well, and it is available at Hackett Publishing. Also, Christopher Kelk's 2020 translation is available online for free at PoetryandTranslation.com. Athena helps Argos build the Argo at the very beginning of the Argonautica in Book 1, verse 23-25. The scene of Athena and Hera discussing recruiting Medea is from the Argonauca, Book 3, verse 1 through 37. The story of Orestes is found in Aeschylus Orestia, which won the first prize at the city Dionysia in 458 BC. This is a trilogy of plays which began with Agamemnon, which detailed the conspiracy and death of the king, followed by the Libation Bearers, which tells of Orestes' vengeance, and concludes with the Eumenides, which includes Orestes being tormented by the Furies and put on trial. Greek plays were generally written in trilogies, and the Orestia is the only extant example where all three are transmitted down to the present day. Athena threatens the Furies with thunderbolts at the Eumenides, verse 822 through 824. The line where Hermes explains that they almost obey Zeus to Calypso occurs in the Odyssey, Book 5, verse 103-104. The discussion about Athena's non-binary aspects in the Orestia is drawn in part from Poppy Joe Robin's treatment of the subject. While I argue a few aspects a little differently, the general idea to interpret Athena's role in the play through a non-binary lens is drawn from their dissertation titled The Gendered Presentations of Athena, which is available online at academia.edu. The madness of Athamas is described most vividly in Ovid's Metamorphosis Book 4, verse 464 through 542. Athena is listed as the main builder of the Argo, with Argos as the assistant in Argonautica Book 1, verse 133 through 135. Athena's edition of the Dodona Oak Plank is taken from the Argonautica Book 1, verses 611 through 614. The Lemnian Women episode is found in the Argonautica Book 1, verse 700 through 1050. The story is interesting to interpret from a queer angle, and we may revisit it at some point in the future. The mantle of Jason is described at length in the Argonautica, Book 1, verse 829 through 899. The Argonauts passed through the clashing Brocks in the Argonautica, Book 2, verse 630 through 694. That's all for this week, folks. We'll see you next time for our presentation of Zeus, the pansexual in the Pantheon.