6/22/2017

This week's theme: Ancient Greek Women

No wait, I mean: Cowboys.

First, I have a correction to make.
I mistakenly had the author of "Steal This Book" as Addie Hoffman.
Actually, it should have been Abbie Hoffman. "Abbie" not "Addie".
Sorry.

Also, I mentioned I was a little bit of a hippie "wannabe".
Actually, I talk big, but don't worry, I was never an actual hippie.

In fact, you will probably never meet a more mild mannered, milquetoast, 
plain vanilla, drab, middle-of-the-road guy than I am.

Gosh, when I put it like that ... I gotta go spin a record to lighten up a 
little. Maybe I'll play some Jimi Hendrix :-)

...

Okay, I'm back ... I'm okay.

Anyway, all this hippie talk has gotten me thinking about ancient Greek 
women and no, I don't mean Sophia Loren (she's actually Italian) I mean 
actual ancient Greek women, circa 400 BC.

Ancient Greek homes were typically two stories, where the wives were kept 
virtually prisoner in the upstairs apartments and not allowed to go out 
unsupervised. They didn't have DNA testing back then so the men HAD to do 
this to guarantee the integrity of their prodigy. (Sounds reasonable to me 
:-)

Of course men were free to roam wherever they wanted in search of 
adventure - but not the women.

The ancient Greeks thought that people were mostly rational but that 
everybody had a little bit of a crazy streak and you couldn't fight that, 
you just had to direct it and let it run it's course from time to time.

Anyway, as you can imagine, these women would get a little crazy from time 
to time being all cooped up like that, so many of them joined the cult of 
Dionysus.

Dionysus was the ancient Greek god of wine and all the crazy stuff that 
flows from drinking too much of it.

Anyway, as part of their religion, these women would go out in groups into 
the boondocks, drink and work themselves up into a ritual frenzy and then 
run around naked and catch little animals like squirrels and bunny rabbits 
and rip them to shreds with their bare hands and eat them raw.

I used to like to do this myself sometimes on the weekends, but I usually 
just stayed here in town and ran around the neighborhood naked and ... well 
... the neighbors ... and the police ... well ...

Anyway, I know what you're thinking - you're just making this stuff up.

Scholars used to think that too, but there is an ancient account of a freak 
snowstorm where the men of a town had to organize a rescue party to go out 
and search for some of these women.

The technical terms for this are "Omophagia" (Greek "the eating of raw food, 
especially raw meat") and "Sparagmos" (Greek "tear, rend, pull to pieces").

There is a famous ancient Greek play about this by Euripides called "The 
Bacchae".

In the play, the king is curious about what these women are up to (including 
his mother - there always has to be some kind of weird psycho twist to 
everything in Greek plays) and decides to sneak up on them and peek at what 
these naked women were doing.

Well, as you can imagine, it doesn't go well. In their freaked out state, 
the women mistake him for a big bunny rabbit or something and tear him to 
shreds and eat him.

I think I saw this performed at the Chanhassan Dinner Theater a while back 
... no, wait, maybe that was "Grease". I always get those two mixed up. 
(Which one had Olivia "Neutron Bomb" in its movie version?)

Anyway, you thought all those hippie chicks were crazy :-)


Omophagia (Greek "the eating of raw food, especially raw meat")
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omophagia

Sparagmos (Greek "tear, rend, pull to pieces")
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparagmos

Dionysus (ancient Greek god)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

Euripides
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides

The Bacchae
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bacchae
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/bacchae/summary.html

There's an old joke from the British TV show "The Young Ones":
"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Euripides."
"Euripides who?"
"You Euripides trousers, Eumenides trousers!"