Doctor's appt & EGD today so who knows when I'll be back. Luckily now the rain isn't set to hit us until after it's over and I'm back home (she said hopefully).🤞🏼
"The Gargarians, in accordance with an ancient custom, go [...] to have intercourse with them for the sake of begetting children, doing this in secrecy and darkness, any Gargarian at random with any Amazon; and after making them pregnant they send them away; and the females that are born are retained by the Amazons themselves, but the males are taken to the Gargarians to be brought up."
Strabo, Geography, 11.5.1
"Amazons [...] all the toil of men do they endure; and therefore evermore the spirit of the War God thrills them through [...] never faint their knees nor tremble."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 1. 618
#Inanna or #Ishtar is the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war & fertility. In one Akkadian hymn, Ishtar transforms men into women. Priests known as gala worked in her temples, where they performed elegies and lamentations. Gala sometimes adopted female names and some Sumerian proverbs seem to suggest that gala had a reputation for engaging in anal sex with men.
"Agraulos daughter of Kekrops king of [#Athens] and #Ares had a daughter Alkippe. As Halirrhothios, son of #Poseidon and a nymphe named Eurtye, was trying to rape Alkippe, Ares caught him at it and slew him. Poseidon had Ares tried on the Areopagos with the twelve gods presiding. Ares was acquitted."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.180
"Ares mated with #Triteia the daughter of [the Sea-God] #Triton, this maiden was priestess to Athena, and that Melanippos, the son of Ares and Triteia, founded the city [Triteia, Akhaia] when he grew up, naming it after his mother . . . The people here are accustomed to sacrifice both to #Ares and to Triteia."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.22.8
"And Ares led them, and Pallas Athene. These were gold, both, and golden raiment upon them, and they were beautiful and huge in their armour."
Homer, Iliad 18.516
"Once on a time, where the milky region is set in a tranquil heaven, lay kindly Venus in her bower, whence night had but lately fled, faint in the rough embrace of her Getic lord [Mars] [...] Weary she lies upon her cushions."
Statius, Silvae 1.2.51
🏛 #Mars & #Venus, detail on a silver cup from the House of Menander in #Pompeii, 1st century CE
"Demodokos struck his lyre and began a beguiling song about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, how first they lay together secretly in the dwelling of #Hephaistos. Ares had offered many gifts to the garlanded divinity and covered with shame the marriage bed of Lord Hephaistos."
Homer, #Odyssey 8.267
"Ares went with the Trojans. Who then was the first and who the last that they slaughtered, Hektor, Priamos' son, and Ares armed with brass?"
Homer, Iliad 5. 699
🏛 Marble bust of #Ares, after the Greek original by Alkamenes ca. 420s BCE
"The #Amazons of the Doiantian plain were by no means gentle, well-conducted folk; they were brutal & aggressive, and their main concern in life was war. War, indeed, was in their blood, daughters of #Ares as they were and of the Nymph Harmonia, who lay with the god in the depths of the Akmonion Wood and bore him girls who fell in love with fighting."
"The women of Tegea made an attack upon the enemy from an ambuscade. This decided the victory. The women therefore celebrated the victory alone, and excluded the men from the sacrificial feast. This gave rise to the surname of #Ares [Gynaikothoinas, "feasted by women"]."
Pausanias 8.48.3