Thursday, February 21, 2013

Mythology, Zeus and Ancient Love

Love predates pretty much everything, it seems. At least, that's what I took away from Dr. Richard Freund's lecture. When he discussed Greek mythology, especially Zeus and his many forms, I felt his point was clear. Greek mythology had always been interesting to me, although I never really perused it in an academic setting.

There are a lot of implications about love in those myths, and Dr. Freund talked about some of those, especially pertaining to Zeus, who is arguably the most known god according to mythology. One that I remember in particular was something about how humans initially were created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Zeus feared their power and split the humans, so they would wander around searching for their other half. We hear this expression a lot, especially with the term "soul mate." Even love that we wouldn't conventionally think of, like how religions seem to have a slightly erotic connotation with their icons and images. This is important because without these stories and ideas of different kinds of attraction, desire and love, we wouldn't have the complex theories we've discussed so far in our lecture series or in class.

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