Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [268]
*This is one of several parallels between the feats of Heracles and those of the biblical Samson, another ancient strongman, who also killed a lion and was renowned for his hefty sexual appetites.
*Asclepius was identified with a single snake. Perhaps because of its ability to shed its skin, it was viewed in ancient times as a sign of immortality. The staff with two snakes, chosen by the American Medical Association as an emblem, is actually the wand of Hermes, called a caduceus, which he used to conduct the dead to Hades.
*The Academy started in a grove of olive trees shared with a public gymnasium, or place of nude exercise. The Academy was shut down by the Byzantine Roman emperor Justinian, who thought he was stamping out paganism.
*The daughter of Priam, Cassandra is so beautiful that Apollo falls in love with her and gives her the power of prophecy. But she rejects him, and Apollo punishes Cassandra by ordering that no one will ever believe her prophecies, including her own Trojan people when she advises them to return Helen. After Troy falls, Agamemnon takes Cassandra to Mycenae as a slave and ignores her prophecy of his death. After Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, has the king killed, Cassandra is also murdered. Her name is now used to describe any prophet of doom.
*“Indo-European” generally refers to people who lived in the area north of the Black Sea, in southeastern Europe. This culture worshipped a warrior god who ruled the sky. One group of Indo-Europeans migrated westward to what is now Greece and Rome. Another group migrated southward into northern India. Called the Aryans, they developed the warlike sky god Indra and are discussed in chapter 6.
*In some versions it is a basket, an interesting parallel to the stories of Moses, the Mesopotamian Sargon, and the Persian Cyrus, great leaders who were all abandoned in baskets on rivers.
*The NBA’s famed Boston franchise is commonly pronounced sehl-tics, but the word “Celts” is more accurately pronounced kelts, though some authorities prefer shelts.
*Among the many Celtic offshoots were the people addressed by St. Paul in his Epistle to Galatia, a region around what is now Ankara, Turkey. This significant letter made clear that, in Paul’s view, Gentiles (non-Jews) did not have to become Jews before becoming Christians. And Paul included a very specific catalog of vices that may have been commonplace in Galatia, among them fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, envy, drunkenness, and carousing. But the Galatians—and other Celts—surely had no monopoly on this sort of behavior in the first-century world.
*The sacredness of water to Celts is also attested to by the thousands of coins found in the springs of Bath. We know the Celtic practice of throwing an object into the water was widespread, based on discoveries of many objects—including swords and shields—in lakes and wells near Celtic sites. This vestige of Celtic belief lives on in the commonplace practice of throwing coins in wishing wells and fountains.
*Perhaps this helps explain why the Irish Celts so readily accepted the teachings of St. Patrick (c. 389-461 CE) when he explained that Jesus had also sacrificed his life to save his people. That concept may have appealed to the Celts, along with the three-leafed shamrock that Patrick supposedly used to illustrate the idea of a Holy Trinity, as three was a number sacred to all Celts.
*In legend, the author of the Táin, Fergus, is another Irish hero of superhuman size, strength, and sexual appetites. He was the king of Ulster before Conchobar. When one of his lovers agrees to sleep with him only if her son can be king of Ulster for a year, Fergus consents. But the son, Conchobar, proves to be so popular that Fergus is not permitted to return to the throne. Fergus and Conchobar later argue over Conchobar’s cruelty to Deirdre, a young woman who throws herself to death under the wheel of a chariot rather than marry at Conchobar’s command, leading Fergus to join the rival