BIO: Jack Green
editI’m a retired telecommunications engineer. I have three technical degrees and hold fifteen patents but I’ve always enjoyed “the arts” as well.
In retirement my hobbies include performing and writing vocal music, travel, yoga and Greco-Roman art and history. I’ve been a docent at the Getty Villa Museum for five years. The museum building in “Malibu” provides a beautiful, didactic setting for the display of antiquities from the ancient Mediterranean. I’ve recently traveled to archaeological sites in both Italy and Greece. “Jack Green” is a nom de plume.
My initial “wiki” interest is explained below.
RE: Wiki article “Twelve Olympians”
editHello Everyone,
I’ve never edited a wiki article so I thought I’d first communicate with you that are experts and interested in “Greek gods.”
I don’t feel that this article will ever be truly correct until we separate the concept of the “Cults of Twelve Gods” from the concept of “Olympian Gods.” There were many “Cults of 12” in the Eastern Mediterranean. There were many Olympian gods. I doubt that any given piece of ancient Greek literature ever mentioned exactly twelve. The wiki article’s first figure, the Monsiau engraving, is titled “The Twelve Olympians,” but the notes for the image list fifteen gods! It seems like modern writers, beginning in the 20th century, have tried to force the two concepts together. I believe that the article should be re-named simply “Olympian Gods” and discuss the various gods mentioned as “Olympian” by the ancient sources.
My conclusions are that
1) A given city tended to have its own “Cult of Twelve.” The particular gods in a local Cult varied from place to place and time to time.
2) “Olympian” meant highest or supreme. The games at Olympia were “the highest” form of competition. The gods “lived” on the highest of mountains. [I’m trying to find an expert source on the meaning of the ancient Greek root “olym-.”]
3) A given locality—or ancient author—might refer to their “Twelve” as “Olympian” meaning that those gods where their most important.
4) There was no “College of Cardinals” to enforce orthodoxy across the Greek peoples of the ancient Mediterranean.
All interested parties should read the “Conclusions” chapter [available in google books] of the reference The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome by Charlotte R. Long. For example, from page 333 of this reference:
In Olympia and Athens, the Twelve were major, named Greek gods, but the two sets were different. In Athens the set represented by the kyathos from Vulci differs from that on the Parthenon frieze. The membership continued to vary, though the Twelve were always the chief gods of a given city or individual at a given time. From the fourth century on, the Twelve are often synonymous with the Olympians, but, as we have seen, the two compital paintings from Pompeii, though close in date, show different sets of Twelve Gods.
My recommendations for the existing page “Twelve Olympians”:
a) Rename the article “Olympian Gods”
b) Explain the meaning of being “Olympian”
c) Provide a number of ancient sources for the Olympians. Include a table like that below.
d) Explain the “Cults of Twelve Gods” as a separate page
Regards,
Jack Green
REFERENCES
1 The Iliad, translated by Samuel Butler and available in searchable form at http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html ; Entries in this column based on a search by the author. * These gods are mentioned but they don’t seem to reside at Olympus. ** These messenger gods visit Olympus but don’t appear to live there.
2 Reference 6 of the wiki article: Herodotus, The Histories, 2.43–44
3 Inspection by the author of the annotated frieze drawing at www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/Sculpture
4 Reference 3 of the wiki article: ^ "Greek mythology". Encyclopedia Americana. 13. 1993. p. 431.
5 Notes in the “Summary” of the wiki file for this image [click on the image]
6 Standard reference book; available in paperback
7 Standard reference; this edition may be available in older libraries
8 Book of Greek Myths, Ingri & Edgar D’Aulaire, Delacorte Press, 1962, pp. 22-23; +The text indicates that Hestia tended the hearth but does not have a throne at Olympus. Hades is the eldest brother of Zeus, but preferred to stay at his own palace in the underworld.
9 “Canonical” list in the wiki article