Tag: male violence

Tisiphone is one of the Erinnyes (Furies) in ancient Greece, sister of Alecto and Megaera. Her purview was to punish murderers, including those who killed parents or siblings. But as Ovid tells the story (Metamorphosis 4), Tisiphone brings about murder at the behest of Juno/Hera. She drives king Athamas mad and causes him to kill his children. He sees his  wife Ino and their children as a lioness and her cubs, and smashes his son’s head on a rock. Ino grabs her daughter, runs away to the top of a cliff, and jumps into the sea.

This is the base story, which was resurrected in medieval Europe during the revival of Greek and Roman literature, and remythologized according to western European witch archetypes. Here is the first image that I came across, which had no visible connection to Greco-Roman mythology, since everyone is dressed in 15th century French garb. Tisiphone is no longer a goddess, but a witch holding two winged dragons (mischievous and adorable). She is shown causing Athamas to slay his family (wife as well as both children, thus diverging from the ancient story).

So I find out that are quite a few paintings of this scene, the attraction apparently being the idea that Athamas wasn’t really at fault. It was that serpentine woman who was to blame. The painting below tracks quite closely with Tisiphone holding up twin dragonlets, but this time the children are newborns.

Another painting of the 1400s shows much the same thing, except that Ino may be asleep, and Tisiphone has released the serpents which are moving toward the murder scene. She is making sweeping gestures to show the magic she is using.

The next painting is also from the 1400s (Christine de Pizan’s lament about the misogyny that pervaded the literature of her times comes to mind). This time there is only one serpent, and it is coiled around the arm of Tisiphone, as in the ancient Cretan goddesses  from Knossos.

The next image sticks closer to Ovid’s version, with Ino jumping into the sea with her daughter. Nevertheless, the imagery tracks closely with medieval themes, adding hovering animalistic devils overhead. In this woodcut Tisiphone is shown naked. Not only does she hold snakes in each hand, but she has snake hair like Medusa. At center, she is also shown with a snake wrapped around her waist. Here she resembles medieval Huastec goddesses in eastern Mexico (look up Jalapa Museum)

A baroque etching from the 1600s again shows Tisiphone half naked and wielding serpents, but from a cloud in the heavens.

In Greco-Roman culture, the Furies also appear in scenes of male violence, but in opposition to it. The most famous case is their harrying of Orestes for murdering his mother, Clytemnestra. In the Greco-Italian vase painting below, the Erinys holds out her serpents (as in the medieval paintings), while Orestes prepares to kill his mother with a dagger. The gesture of grabbing her by the hair is already old by the time of this painting; countless bronze age murals and reliefs show kings slaughtering captives in this way.

A classic painted vase now in the British Museum shows an Erinys with snakes in her hair and in her hands, hovering over the sacred tripod of the Pythias at Delphi. Behind her is the shade of the murdered Clytemnestra. Below Orestes rests at the Omphalos stone,  supported by Athena and Apollo. In the Oresteia, Aeschylus recounts how Athena sides with the gods against the goddesses in supporting Orestes, because he is avenging his father’s death at the hands of his mother. This is the famous scene where Athena declares herself to be “for the male in all things,” upholding the patriarchal order, and banishes the Erinnyes, avengers of the mothers’ blood, to the underworld.

Here’s one last vase painting from Apulia (southern Italy), circa 320 bce. It shows another scene of male violence: Lycurgus has just murdered his wife. The serpentine-haired, winged Fury reaches toward him with her snake-coiled arm, and points a lance toward him with her other hand. In these Greek paintings, the Furies bring vengeance to men who kill women. In the medieval art, they cause the violence. The killer’s guilt is explained away and transferred to a witch-like figure.

The ancient snaky goddesses are much closer in time and in spirit to the Cretan archetype of the Great Goddess, and ‘Ashtart of the Canaanites. So we’ll end with a closeup of the Apulian Erinys, who still shows that spirit:

Max Dashu, August 2018.

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