Ate (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Ate (Ancient Greek: Ἄτη, romanized: Átē, lit. 'Recklessness, Delusion, Folly, Ruin')[1] is the personification of moral blindness and error, and the goddess of mischief and rash actions. She could blind the mind of both gods and men leading them astray. Ate was banished from Olympus by Zeus, for blinding him to Hera's trickery denying Heracles his birthright. Homer has Ate as the daughter of Zeus, while Hesiod has Ate as the daughter of Eris (Strife).[2]
Personification
[edit]Ate is a personified abstraction, allegorizing the meaning of her name.[3] The Greek word ἄτη (ate) is a verbal noun of the verb ἀάω (aáō),[4] meaning to lead astray, befuddle, blind, or delude,[5] with ἄτη meaning the state of infatuation, recklessness, folly, or ruin, resulting from being mislead.[6] Thus Ate represents the blinding or clouding of the mind which leads to ill-considered and reckless actions, as well as the ruin such actions may entail.[7] She is thought of as being both the instigator of delusion and its resulting destruction.[8]
Description
[edit]In the Iliad, Agamemnon describes Ate as lightly treading upon the heads of men:[9]
Ate who blinds all—accursed one; delicate are her feet, for it is not the ground that she touches, but she walks over the heads of men, bringing men to harm, and this one or that she ensnares.
Family
[edit]Homer's Iliad calls Ate the eldest daughter of Zeus, with no mother mentioned.[10] However, Hesiod's Theogony has Ate as one of the several children of Eris (Strife) with no father mentioned.[11] Hesiod particularly associates Ate with her sister Dysnomia [Lawlessness]. He names both as children of Eris, on the same line (230) of his Theogony, and says that the two (and all of the children of Eris?) are "much like one another".[12] Aeschylus, in his tragedy Agamemnon, has the Chorus call Peitho "the unendurable child of scheming Ruin [Ἄτας]".[13]
Mythology
[edit]Banishment
[edit]Ate appears in a story in the Iliad, where it is told how she came to be thrown out of Olympus, and never permitted to return. Zeus held Ate to blame for blinding him to Hera's trickery which resulted in the loss of the birthright Zeus intended for his son Heracles: to be lord over the Argives.[14] As punishment, an enraged Zeus:
seized Ate by her bright-tressed head, angered in his mind, and swore a mighty oath that never again to Olympus and the starry heaven should Ate come, who blinds all. So said he, and whirling her in his hand flung her from the starry heaven, and quickly she came to the tilled fields of men. At thought of her would he ever groan when he saw his dear son in disgraceful toil at Eurystheus’ tasks.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, when Ate was thrown down by Zeus, Ate landed in Phrygia at a place called "the hill of the Phrygian Ate", where the city of Troy was founded.[15] The Hellenistic poet Lycophron, in his Alexandra, also mentions the place calling it "the high Hill of Doom [Ate]".[16]
Other mentions
[edit]In his third-century BC epic poem the Argonautica about the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, Apollonius of Rhodes has Hera say that "even the gods are sometimes visited by Ate".[17]
In Nonnus's Dionysiaca, Ate, in order to gratify Hera, persuades the boy Ampelus whom Dionysus passionately loves, to impress Dionysus by riding on a bull from which Ampelus subsequently falls and breaks his neck.[18]
Among the tragic poets, Ate appears in a somewhat different light than she does in the Iliad: she avenges evil deeds and inflicts just punishments upon the offenders and their posterity,[19] so that her character here is almost the same as that of Nemesis and Erinys. She appears most prominent in the dramas of Aeschylus, and least in those of Euripides, with whom the idea of Dike (justice) is more fully developed.[20]
A fragment from Empedocles refers to the "Meadow of Ate",[21] which probably signifies the mortal world.[22]
Post-classical
[edit]In the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare introduces the goddess Ate as an invocation of vengeance and menace. Mark Antony, lamenting Caesar's murder, envisions:
And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,[23]
Shakespeare also mentions her in the play Much Ado About Nothing, when Benedick says, referring to Beatrice,
Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the
infernal Ate in good apparel.[24]
So too, in King John, Shakespeare refers to Queen Eleanor as "An Ate stirring him [John] to blood and strife",[25] and in Love's Labour's Lost Birone jeers "Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! stir them on, stir them on!"[26]
In Spenser's The Faerie Queene, a fiend from Hell disguised as a beautiful woman is called Ate. This is a possible parallel to the fallen angels.
See also
[edit]- Folly (allegory)
- 111 Ate, a main-belt asteroid
Notes
[edit]- ^ 'Ate' is variously translated as 'Recklessness' (Most, p. 21), 'Delusion' (Hard, p. 31), 'Folly' (Gantz, p. 10), or 'Ruin' (Caldwell, p. 42 on 212–232); compare LSJ, s.v. ἄτη.
- ^ Rose and Dietrich, s.v. Ate; Dräger, s.v. Ate; Grimal, s.v. Ate; Tripp, s.v. Ate; Parada, s.v. Ate; Smith, s.v. Ate; LSJ, s.v. ἄτη.
- ^ Like all the children of Eris, see Hard, p. 31; Gantz, p. 10.
- ^ Dräger, Brill's New Pauly s.v. Ate.
- ^ The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, s.v. ἀάω; compare LSJ, s.v. ἀάω.
- ^ The Cambridge Greek Lexicon',, s.v. ἄτη; compare with LSJ, s.v. ἄτη.
- ^ Hard, p. 31; Rose and Dietrich, s.v. Ate; Dräger, s.v. Ate; Smith, s.v. Ate. As the daughter of Eris, Ate represents one of the many harms which might be thought to result from discord and strife.
- ^ The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, s.v. ἄτη.
- ^ Grimal, s.v. Ate.
- ^ Homer, Iliad 19.91.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony 226–232.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony 230. Compare with Hesiod's Works and Days 225–231, which associates ἄτη with λιμὸς (famine) personified as Ate's sister Limos at Theogony 227. The same passage of Works and Days also associates ἄτη with the absence of justice and peace, personified as Dike (Justice) and Eirene (Peace) at Theogony 901–902 as the daughters of Zeus and Themis.
- ^ Aeschylus, Agamennon 385–386.
- ^ Hard, p. 31; Gantz, p. 10; Homer, Iliad 19.95–124.
- ^ Grimal, s.v. Ate; Apollodorus, 3.12.3. Compare Tzetzes on Lycophron 29; Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Ἲλιον.
- ^ Lycophron, Alexandra 29.
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.817; English translation: Rieu, p. 169.
- ^ Nonnus, Dionysiaca 11.113 ff.
- ^ Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 381.
- ^ Smith, s.v. Ate.
- ^ Inwood, Brad, ed. (1992). The Poem of Empedocles. University of Toronto Press. pp. 134–135. ISBN 0-8020-5971-6..
- ^ Dodds, E. R. (1957). The Greeks and the Irrational. Beacon Press. p. 174..
- ^ Julius Caesar 3.1/296–299, Folger Shakespeare Library.
- ^ Much Ado About Nothing 2.1/251–252, Folger Shakespeare Library.
- ^ King John 2.1/63, Folger Shakespeare Library.
- ^ Love's Labor's Lost 5.2/761–762, Folger Shakespeare Library.
References
[edit]- Aeschylus, Agamemnon, in Aeschylus: Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, Loeb Classical Library No. 146. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-99628-1. Online version at Harvard University Press.
- Aeschylus, Libation Bearers in Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes, Vol 2, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, edited and translated by William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library No. 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-99630-4. Online version at Harvard University Press.
- Apollonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of Argo: The Argonautica, translated with an introduction by E. V. Rieu, Penguin Books, 1969.
- Blünmer, Ueber Idee die des Schicksals, &c. p. 64,&c
- Calasso, Roberto – The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
- Caldwell, Richard, Hesiod's Theogony, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company (June 1, 1987). ISBN 978-0-941051-00-2. Internet Archive.
- The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, edited by J. Diggle et al, Cambridge University Press, 2021 ISBN 978-0-521-82680-8.
- E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California Press.
- Dräger, Paul, s.v. Ate, in Brill’s New Pauly Online, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry, published online: 2006.
- Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
- Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1. Internet Archive.
- Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360. Google Books.
- Homer, Iliad, Volume I: Books 1-12, translated by A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library No. 170, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999. Online version at Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99579-6.
- Homer, Iliad, Volume II: Books 13-24, translated by A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library No. 171, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999. Online version at Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99580-2.
- Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1940. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Lycophron, Alexandra (or Cassandra) in Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Internet Archive.
- Most, G.W., Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library No. 57, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-674-99720-2. Online version at Harvard University Press.
- Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca translated by William Henry Denham Rouse (1863–1950), from the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1940. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
- Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Volume I: Books 1–15, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb Classical Library No. 344, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1940 (revised 1984). ISBN 978-0-674-99379-2. Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive (1940).
- Rose, Herbert Jennings, and B. C. Dietrich, s.v. Ate, published online 22 December 2015, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Tim Whitmarsh, digital ed, New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
- Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Stephanus of Byzantium, Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt, edited by August Meineike (1790-1870), published 1849. Google Books.
- Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). ISBN 069022608X.
- Tzetzes, John, Scholia eis Lycophrona, edited by Christian Gottfried Müller, Sumtibus F.C.G. Vogelii, 1811. Internet Archive