Mythological stories are born based on the totem worship of the primitive social period, and in the course of world development, both China and Western countries have similarities, and these similarities are the meaning and interpretation behind the mythological stories.
In Western mythology, Greek mythology dominates. Similar to Chinese mythology, Greek mythology also contains many heroic stories intertwined with human gods, the gods in the story are not only flesh and blood, but also have the seven passions and six desires of people, but the difference with human beings is that they can live forever.
In Greek mythology, there are many female gods, such as Gaia, the goddess of the earth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, and so on. The status of Greek women in the society at that time was also deeply influenced by these shrines.
Deified Greek women
The earliest primitive form of society in ancient China was the matrilineal clan period, when women were revered to a very high status because they could give birth to new life. Ancient Greece also had moments when women were enshrined as shrines, and these had a lot to do with the myths and stories they believed in.
When Zeus was in charge of the Divine Realm, he, together with his brothers and sisters and his own children, formed the "Twelve Lord Gods of Olympus". At this time, there were no human beings in the world, and later he felt that the world was missing something, so he created human beings.
Therefore, the ancient Greeks believed in Zeus and regarded him as their ancestor. Under the blind worship, it will also affect the thinking and concepts of people at that time. Zeus has always maintained an appreciative attitude toward women, believing that women can also stand up to half the sky.
This can be seen from the fact that nine of the "Twelve Lord Gods of Olympus" are women, and the most representative of them is Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and even in today's society, there are still a large number of people who worship Athena.
Athena was one of the three goddesses, the goddess of the Olympian gods who vowed to protect their virgin bodies. She is in charge of wisdom, art and female celebrities, and is also the goddess of victory in war. The frequent conquests of ancient Greece also further established Athena's position.
Because Athena was in charge of the war, the soldiers prayed to Athena before each expedition that they would return triumphantly this time.
In addition to Athena, there were demeter, the goddess of agriculture, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, and Hestia, the goddess of vesta. Although they were not as famous as Athena, they also gained attention because they were closely related to the lives of the Greek people.
Greek goddesses gave people hope in life, and their reverence further affected people's attitudes towards women in society. So when ancient Greece entered the "Dark Ages", their attitude towards women also took a big turn.
Status declines
With the development of society, the power struggle between countries and people has gradually become prominent, and the idea of patriarchy has begun to sprout. People gradually realized that they had to rely on men to obtain more resources and rights, so men began to take the stage of history.
As the weaker party, women's status began to decline. Their fanatical worship of the goddess was transformed into a fierce male god.
Especially after the Trojan War, there was a growing belief that only men could dominate the world and that women needed to depend on men to survive. Then there were blasphemous remarks about the goddess in society, and women's proud ability to reproduce became an accessory to men.
The worship of the goddess was strongly opposed at the time, and even the holy marriage was canceled, which also marked the beginning of the era of devastation for Greek women.
In a patriarchal society, how miserable can Greek women be? At that time, women were often used as fertility tools to marry and stop wars. In fact, in ancient China, there were also such things, and the two countries did not want to fight a war, so they used marriage as a covenant.
However, these words alone are not enough to explain the misery of Greek women, who have completely lost the respect they deserve. If they were only used as reproductive tools, they seemed to have some use value, which later directly evolved into exile and death.
Because the men advertise the "female uselessness", thinking that they will waste food for one more day, they simply put them all to death, so that they will also end up clean. With many women suffering from this treatment, there are many problems in society.
In the end, people feel that the easy execution of women will not only solve the problem, but also cause social unrest, such as the imbalance between men and women. So they came up with a compromise that would control women without wasting social resources.
This method is to enslave women, who are pushed into the market one by one and selected like fruits and vegetables. Among the Greek aristocracy, the number of female slaves was formed. And the price of buying female slaves was much lower than that of men.
Under the patriarchal society, they continue to improve the status of men, and use this way to consume the value of women. Even if it is not sold into the noble family, the status of women in ordinary families has plummeted.
They generally work as servants and handle the affairs of the family to reflect their value. Sometimes as a wife, she also assumed a role similar to that of a slave, and for families with conditions, she could buy back a slave girl to help the wife reduce the burden on the family.
But even so, women still fail to gain anyone's sense of recognition. Their images fell to the altar and went through a heartache process that everyone worshipped and spurned.
Tragic characters
After that "dark age," Greek women became appendages of men, so the image they gave to people has always been linked to misery. With the development of social civilization, drama has gradually stepped onto the stage of history.
There are some female characters in the play, but they are always a tragic and despicable character image, and even the ending is not very good.
"Hecabo" is a famous Greek drama, which mainly shows the sad and indignant journey of a generation of queens after experiencing the destruction of the city-state and the killing of their children. The expressiveness of this kind of drama can indeed resonate with the audience's emotions, but it also amplifies the objectification of women.
Here women are no longer a person, but an object. As a queen, you can be the object of "enslavement", let alone an ordinary person. So it also indirectly shows how low the social status of Greek women was at that time.
The fate of these Greek women also seems to coincide with the experience of Athena in mythological stories. Athena was revered as the goddess of wisdom, and Zeus felt pressure from the underworld. So he gave Athena to death to dispel his anger.
The rewriting of the myth not only affected the status of Greek women, but also showed that this was a conspiracy theory of the male rulers. They used zeus' hand to get rid of the goddess of wisdom, and tried to declare to all Greek women that women, no matter how powerful, should not upset men.
And their thought control was so successful that many Greek women today still don't recognize their status, but they have completely given up resistance after brainwashing.
Perhaps the phenomenon of enslavement by men, in their hearts and habits, even tends to be rationalized, is this a mythical sadness or a human sadness?