Titanis (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Titanis (Ancient Greek: Τιτανίς, romanized: Titanis, lit. 'she-Titan') is an obscure figure who is connected to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Her existence and myth is only attested in Euripides, an Athenian playwright of the fifth century BC. Titanis' story seems to be an amalgamation of the myths of Callisto and Taygete, two virgins connected to Artemis.

Family

The only thing known about her family is a father named Merops.[1] That Merops might have been identical with Merops the king of Kos, an island in the southeastern Aegean Sea.[2]

Mythology

Titanis' tale is a very brief and obscure one, surviving in just one line in Euripides' play Helen. According to Euripides, the beautiful Titanis was changed by Artemis into a golden-antlered deer and expelled from her group on account of her beauty.[1][2]

Background

The brief passage containing Titanis' myth is very ambiguous due to its short length, as it is not entirely clear what Euripides meant when he wrote that Artemis kicked her out 'on account of her beauty'; it could be that Titanis bragged about being more beautiful than the goddess, or that her beauty attracted the attention of Zeus, or that Artemis got jealous of her.[3]

The story seems like an echo of the myth of the Arcadian princess Callisto, whom Artemis punished for being seduced or raped by Zeus, and might be a deliberate distortion or imitation of that story on Euripides' part.[4] The similarity to another myth, that of Artemis turning the nymph Taygete into a doe in order to help her escape from the advances of Zeus, has also been noted.[3] Pindar, one of the earliest sources of Taygete's myth, wrote that she dedicated a deer to Artemis, and Euripides' Titanis might be a twist on that story.[4]

Titanis's own nature is questionable, as Euripides names her father as Merops, but given that her name translates to "female Titan", he could be designating her as a Titaness without naming her.[3] In the Orphic Hymns, 'Titanis' (there spelled as Τιτηνίς, Titēnís) appears as an epithet of Artemis herself, while the masculine version, 'Titan', is also an epithet of Apollo.[5][6]

See also

Punitive transformations in Greek mythology:

References

  1. ^ a b Euripides, Helen 382
  2. ^ a b Hathorn 1967, p. 332.
  3. ^ a b c Fontenrose 1981, p. 131.
  4. ^ a b Forbes Irving 1990, p. 209.
  5. ^ Orphic Hymn 36 to Artemis line 2.
  6. ^ Athanassakis & Wolkow 2013, pp. 32, 139.

Bibliography

  • Athanassakis, Apostolos N.; Wolkow, Benjamin M. (July 31, 2013). The Orphic Hymns. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0881-1.
  • Euripides (1938). The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Vol. 11: Helen. Translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York: Random House.
  • Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy (1981). Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09632-0.
  • Forbes Irving, Paul M. C. (1990). Metamorphosis in Greek Myths. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-814730-9.
  • Hathorn, Richmond Y. (1967). Crowell's Handbook to Classical Drama. NYC, United States: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. ISBN 0-690-22501-6.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.