Ersa

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Friedrich Distelbarth : Artemis-Selene-Relief (1830), detail

Ersa ( Greek  Ἔρσα ) was the goddess of rope in Greek mythology . Like her two sisters Pandia and Nemea, she was a daughter of Zeus and Selene .

The goddess Ersa is only mentioned in three places in ancient literature by Plutarch in his moral writings . There he quotes the Greek poet Alkman (7th century BC), whose work has largely been lost and is mostly known only in part from quotes by other writers.

ἔρσα (ersa) and ἕρση (herse) both mean “Tau”. It is “not certain, however, whether one can equate her [Ersa] with Herse , the daughter of Kekrops and Aglauros , although her [Herses] sister Pandrosos [“ all-enthralling ”] bears a name which she also associates with Tau . "

iconography

Ersa seems to be an almost blank slate in art history, apart from the classicistic Artemis Selene relief described below, no works of art with a representation of Ersa are known.

Detail: The dew goddess Ersa
 Artemis Selene relief
literature Seyffer 1831 , page 30
year 1830.
description High relief in sandstone, based on a design by the painter Johann Friedrich Dieterich . The frieze shows Artemis / Selene , among other things, charging a two-horse chariot with a torch in hand, and her daughter, the youthful dew goddess Ersa, who floats behind her mother and wets the earth with dew from a shell.
place Rosenstein Castle , gable field above the main entrance

literature

  • Alcman; Claude Calame (ed.): Alcman. Introduction, texte critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire , Rome 1983
  • Plutarch: Moralia , London 1965 ff. [Greek / English]
  • Plutarch; Bähr, Johann Christian Felix (ex.): Plutarch's works, Moralische Schriften , Stuttgart 1835 ff. [German]
  • Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (ed.): Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Leipzig 1897–1909, Volume 1,2: Euxistratos - Hysiris , Column 2590–2591 (article "Herse")
  • Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (ed.): Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Leipzig 1897–1909, Volume 2.2: Laas - Myton , column 3172 (article "Moon goddess (Selene)")
  • Herbert Jennings Rose : Greek Mythology , Munich 2007, page 34
  • Ernst Eberhard Friedrich von Seyffer : Description of the royal country house Rosenstein , Stuttgart 1831, page 27-30 [1] .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The information in round brackets refers to the count of the edition by Stephen from 1572.
  2. ^ Alkman , page 118 (fragment 39 Bergk)
  3. ^ Alkman , p. 485 (from the French)
  4. ↑ In Seyffer 1831 , page 30, it says: "behind her [Artemis / Selene] the Thau floats in female youth". It is obvious that the two dew goddesses Ersa and Herse can only mean Ersa, Selene's daughter. Ernst Eberhard Friedrich Seyffer, the author of Seyffer 1831 , was director of the Royal Building and Gardening Directorate and received his information about the relief directly from Dieterich and Distelbarth.
  5. ↑ The Alkman quote is correctly given as “Alkm. frg. 48 [Bergk] ”(column 2590) and incorrectly as“ Alkmann fr. 39 "(column 2591).
  6. ↑ The Alkman quote is incorrectly stated as "Alkman frgm. 39 Bergk" (column 3172).