February 5

"All women are maiden and mother."

Sparagmos: tearing or rending of living flesh
-Dionysian ritual
-happens in "Bacchae"

Hymn to Hermes: he was born yesterday
-polytropic: line 13, like Odysseus, but in this case wily, trickster, shrewd
-the story of how an outsider (Hermes) became an insider (member of the Pantheon) through trickery and justice

Zeus's job is to produce offspring that have some claim to divinity.
-"The lightening bolt pilots all things."

Metamorphosis: theme in "to Hermes"
-"But dying you'll make one terrific singer (no music existed in the world before Hermes)
--The first song was in praise of the birth of the gods
-Metempsychosis: the transmigration of the soul from one body to another, a reincarnation of sorts

Story of Pygmalion: a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he created
-In modern culture this is played out in the book Pygmalion, the stage production My Fair Lady, and the movie Pretty Woman.

Hermes is depicted as: a thief, a barterer, and a guide of souls
-Hermes gave Apollo the lyre, and it is Apollo that is often credited with music, so who is the real thief?

Herm: a block of wood that was placed at intersections in Greece because Hermes was the god of boundaries

Barbaric: the term comes from the sounds that Greeks thought people who did not speak Greek made when talking

One of Apollo's epithets comes from killing the snake, Python which lived at Delphi
Everything can be laughed at:
-Line 389: Zeus had a good laugh