Item #011078 The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family. Philip Slater.

The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family

Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. Soft cover. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Very Good. Item #011078

Soft cover. xxvi, 513 pp. Covers are stained, rubbed, some warping to rear cover. Creasing and bumping to lower corner of text block. Few objective portraits, and little objective data, exists to describe Athenian society during the fifth and fourth centuries, the so-called Golden Age in Greece. Contrary to conventional accounts of the period, which are rather appealing, Philip Slater argues that the Greeks were "quarrelsome as friends, treacherous as neighbours, brutal as masters, faithless as servants, shallow as lovers -- all of which was in part redeemed by their intelligence and creativity." The mother-son relationship is the focus of this major study of Greek family and Greek mythology. Greek women married early, were excluded from public life, and had little legal protection; yet females figure prominently in Greek mythology and the maternal goddesses are often represented as powerful and aggressive. It is Slater's contention that women in Greek society exerted a strong matriarchal dominance, which simultaneously encouraged and stymied the exploits of the fabled Greek hero. Slater pursues the themes of narcissism and psychological ambivalence as he studies the myths of Zeus, Apollo, Orestes, and Dionysus: and particularly Heracles (literally, "the glory of Hera"), whose several responses to his persecutory mother, Hera, exemplify every mode of response to maternal threat.

Price: $32.00

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