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Tag: the Cadmeia – temple at Thebes
“Juno” (c.1662 – c.1665)
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Actaeon’s suff’rings, and Diana’s rage,
Did all the thoughts of men and Gods engage;
Some call’d the evils which Diana wrought,
Too great, and disproportion’d to the fault:
Others again, esteem’d Actaeon’s woes
Fit for a virgin Goddess to impose.
The hearers into diff’rent parts divide,
And reasons are produc’d on either side.
remember, not all the gods were
on side
Juno alone, of all that heard the news,
Nor would condemn the Goddess, nor excuse:
queen, therefore, of the gods
She heeded not the justice of the deed,
But joy’d to see the race of Cadmus bleed;
For still she kept Europa in her mind,
And, for her sake, detested all her kind.
Europa had been whisked away
husband, and borne him several
children, to the enduring enmity
of the queen of the deities
Besides, to aggravate her hate, she heard
How Semele, to Jove’s embrace preferr’d,
Was now grown big with an immortal load,
And carry’d in her womb a future God.
philanderer apparently, had now
impregnated Semele, youngest
daughter of Cadmus, to Juno’s
utter disgust and dismay
Thus terribly incens’d, the Goddess broke
To sudden fury, and abruptly spoke.
let me reiterate here that the original
gods and goddesses of Olympus had
migrated with the Greeks to other
areas of the Mediterranean, but
became known, in the lands that
they’d settled, by other names
according to the languages and
customs that evolved in these new
territories, thus the Greek goddess
Hera was in Rome and its outlying
areas known as Juno, the Greek
though their home remained for
“Are my reproaches of so small a force?
‘Tis time I then pursue another course:
about his inveterate philandering,
her reproaches were not enough
to stop the god from his
determined activities
she therefore ordains
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die,
If I’m indeed the mistress of the sky,
If rightly styl’d among the Pow’rs above
The wife and sister of the thund’ring Jove
(And none can sure a sister’s right deny);
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die.
Juno / Hera is not only the wife of
sister, both children of Cronos /
were themselves children of the
earth goddess Gaia and the sky
She boasts an honour I can hardly claim,
Pregnant she rises to a mother’s name;
While proud and vain she triumphs in her Jove,
And shows the glorious tokens of his love:
though Juno / Hera did indeed have
she is probably no longer here
bearing him any, I am supposing,
while Semele, proud and vain, is
now show[ing] the glorious tokens
of his love
But if I’m still the mistress of the skies,
By her own lover the fond beauty dies.”
/ Zeus the cause of Semele’s
demise
This said, descending in a yellow cloud,
Before the gates of Semele she stood.
/ Zeus, would’ve been officiating at
the Cadmeia, the equivalent of the
Athenian Acropolis, at Thebes, the
city named after her father, its
sparks will surely fly
stay tuned
R ! chard
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