I've expressed my admiration for Ovid before, and I will recite it again. For one of the greatest collections of classical mythology, Metamorphoses is a treasure mine of stories fit for psychoanalysis. So, I present to you today the story of an naïve mortal and a wicked erotic god, cursed with loving (in whatever sense of the word) each other.  Psyche was the most beautiful girl on Earth. Suitors, both mortal and divine, came to seek out Psyche from all corners of Greece. Wo

Modern conceptions of the afterlife are rather binary. As a result of Christianity, we often tend to imagine a rather binary heaven or...

There aren’t many myths which surpass the story of King Tantalus in terms of gruesomeness. In my opinion, Tantalus is the greatest waste...

Artists are obsessed with ideal forms. As one myself, I would know that the relationship between creator and creation is one that is extremely intimate. The classics take that to another level.  In classical societies, the body was seen as a physical manifestation of one’s characters and status. Every man wanted to have the ideal masculine body fitted with abs and strong muscles, and they wished for all their women to have the ideal soft curves and slightly chubbiness symboli

Back in middle school, I carried a piece of amethyst with me everywhere. I have no recollection of where I managed to find it, but I always thought of it as a lucky charm. After all, isn’t it the case with gems and pretty things that we tend to think of them as fortune-bringers? However, the (alleged) origins of amethyst aren’t quite as nice as its looks. The inside of an amethyst gemstone Supposedly, there once lived a nymph named Amethyste. Her looks caught the affections o

The Romans worshipped a god for practically everything. Jupiter ruled the skies, Neptune ruled the waters, Pluto ruled the underground....

The Roses of Heliogabalus, a painting by the Dutch artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. "He [Elagabalus] loaded his parasites with violets and other flowers in a banqueting room with a reversible ceiling, in such a way that some of them expired when they could not crawl out to the surface." Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had only turned 14 when his mother staged a coup against Emperor Macrinus in 218 AD and replaced him with her son, who had just barely started developing his prefront

During Arachne and Athena's competition There’s nothing that the gods hate more than getting humbled. If you’ve read my post on...

Book 4 of the Aeneid  is one of my all-time favorite selections of Latin poetry. For those who don’t know what the Aeneid  is, it’s essentially a fanfiction/sequel written by the Latin poet Vergil to Homer’s Iliad , commissioned by Caesar Augutus, the first emperor of Rome. The Aeneid follows the story of Aeneas , a displaced Trojan prince and a son of the goddess Venus (and, for the most part, a self-insert of Augustus himself). He receives a prophecy from the Fates that he

On the Walpurgis night of 1977, mobs of women stormed Rome in witch disguises, passing the night in rowdy drinking and dancing.  Trailing off American revivals of witchcraft in feminist organizations such as W.I.T.C.H (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), these popular performative transgressions coalesced historical traditions of witchcraft circulating in the late 1950s and the political programs designed to mobilize non-hegemonic knowledge of the 1970s, pr

A painting depicting a stereotypical Roman witch: an old hag with supernatural abilities ***The following is a revised excerpt from a larger research project on the evolution of the identity of the witch that I did in the past spring. The first part of this project focuses on Roman witches. In the past, a learned Roman woman would find herself a social pariah for her intelligence. Most likely, she would also be a skilled herbalist and healer. Men fear that her superior knowle

Narcissus staring at his own reflection Narcissus was a young man of inexplicable beauty. Born from a god and a nymph, Narcissus came into the world with looks so divine and otherworldly that they could kill. Worried about him, his mother takes him to the seer Tiresias. The seer tells her that her son would live a long life, as long as he does not look at himself. The young Narcissus goes about his life, not knowing what he looked at. Everywhere he goes, men, women, satyrs, a