Ate (mythology)
Ate ( ancient Greek Ἄτη 'delusion' ) embodies delusion in Greek mythology . According to Hesiod , Ate and her sister Dysnomia ( German : illegality) are daughters of Eris , goddess of discord, and granddaughters of Nyx , goddess of night.
For Homer , Ate is the daughter of Zeus . It brings ruin to men and gods; by beguiling and blinding the victims, they are led to rash, passionate actions. Ate is similar in her tragic role (e.g. in Aeschylos ) to the nemesis .
Agamemnon complains that he was tempted to insult Achilles . But it was Ate who made him act like this. But that was not dishonorable, because even Zeus was once a victim of Ate when he was facing his wife Hera with the future fate of Hercules boasted of that day from the lover Alcmene of the former, granddaughter Mycenaean ruler Perseus was to be born, : The child should one day (as the great-grandson of Perseus') become ruler of Mycenae, he swore , seduced by Ate, with a powerful oath . Vengeful, the jealous Hera delayed Herakles' birth, whereby he was born after Eurystheus , the cousin of Alcmene and grandson of Perseus, and thus became his subject. Full of anger and grief over the unfulfilled oath and the son's fate, Zeus banished Ate from Olympus forever.
Elsewhere in the Iliad , Ate is contrasted with the litai . The litai, daughters of Zeus, embody the apologies and prayers of the repentant sinner . It is true that pious penance can change the minds of the gods, but the litai follow the traces of sin only slowly and hesitantly, while Ate leaps forward lightly over the heads of people.
literature
- Ludwig von Sybel: Ate 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 668 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Konrad Wernicke : Ate . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Sp. 1898-1901.
- W. Havers: On the semiasology of Greek ἄτη . In: Journal for Comparative Linguistic Research . No. 43 (1910), ZDB -ID 544889-x , p. 225 ff.
- William Frank Wyatt: Homeric "ate". In: American Journal of Philology . 103: 247-276 (1982).
- Hanna M. Roisman: Hesiod's "ate". In: Hermes . 111: 491-496 (1983).
- Sofia Souli: Greek Mythology. Michalis Toubis S. A. Publishing House, Athens 1995, ISBN 960-7504-27-5 , p. 60.
Web links
- Ate in the Theoi Project
