PlaymoFriends
Creative => Customs Gallery => Topic started by: Timotheos on April 19, 2008, 16:06:53
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Attached are photos of my Greek Athene and Norse Thor.
My Athene probably follows a predictable design idea, but an important detail is the aegis around her neck (which I didn't know about until I researched Athene Parthenos, the lost statue that stood in the Parthenon). According to my mythology encyclopedia, Athene, goddess of Athens, may have originated as a thunder goddess and her aegis (the mantle around her neck) may once have represented the heavens. My instinct was to dress her in white, but I liked the Greek-looking design on the gown's hem and of the several paintings I saw of her, none showed her in white.
The Thor I slapped together because I wanted to post photos of more than one god. His chariot is a little slipshod, but looks closer to a German chariot than the Roman toy chariot does. His motif was the goats, who pulled his cart. The red beard seems obvious, except for those of us raised on Marvel comics in which he was recast as a blond (and put to rest the cliche that blonds have more fun--comic book Thor was a humorless prim).
-Tim
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Two very nice customs, Tim, and I like your attention to detail, especially the owl for Athene.
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Nice customs, Tim! They're very recognizable.
I'd love to see many more pics of your Roman landscape! The glimpses of the chariot, Viking boat, the officer (or Caesar?), and the boy on the pony in the backgrounds make me want to see it all!
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Thanks, Gordon, for the comments!
Nice customs, Tim! They're very recognizable.
I'd love to see many more pics of your Roman landscape! The glimpses of the chariot, Viking boat, the officer (or Caesar?), and the boy on the pony in the backgrounds make me want to see it all!
To Justin: Actually, what you're seeing in the background are the remnants of my medieval setup. My Roman setup is still coming together. I made a major change last night to my fortlet by removing the cavalry stables. In Karen Dixon's "Roman Cavalry from the 1st to 3rd Centuries" she reports speculation that many Roman forts kept their horses in corrals outside the camp confines. If horses are allowed to grow their hair long in winter, they can endure winter conditions, and the US Cavalry used the same arrangement. This required of course guard duty, which makes my setup a little easier (I'm aiming for a domestic scene and can't figure out how to keep everyone looking busy).
The speculation about the corrals comes from the problem that many architectural sites don't leave clear traces of stables--or else what is called the stables is disputed enough by others to leave doubt. Archaeologists have to rely on the presence of drainage canals and lack of internal walls to identify most stables. Nobody even can say for certain whether stables followed a military standard or how many horses shared a slip.
PS: RE: the Athene Parthenon statue: the giant god statues are gone from Europe, but if you ever want to get a feel for what they would have been like, they're all over Asia. Chengde northeast of Beijing has the largest wooden statue of Kwanyin (goddess of mercy) standing at over three stories tall. And of course Japan's famous bronze Buddha at Kamakura and the wooden one at Todaiji Temple in Nara.
Unfortunately, though, you can't get the same "feel"--except at Kamakura, the Buddhist temples tend to arrange it so that you can't see the statue until you are within a few feet of it, then you have to tilt your head back to see the entire thing (it makes the statue look taller and reminds you how short you are compared to it).
It seems that the Greeks and Romans placed their statues at the rear of huge halls with pools of water in front or other special effects like torchlight to make the statue look more impressive.
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Wonderful! :D
I love the skirt you chose for Athene. I think the pattern on the hem is very fitting for this type of mythological character. :)9
Thor looks great too! The beard, belt and hammer suit him perfectly. 8-)
My 8-y-o twins have been studying the Romans at school this term and part of their course involved learning about the Gods and Goddesses, which were all based on the Greek ones. They even had to dress up as a chosen God and give a little speech about themselves. Dayna went as Diana and Aidan was Vulcan. On open day all the parents were greeted by Jupiter at the door. I heard that most of the boys in the class wanted to be Jupiter since he was the 'boss.' ;)
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Hello, Timmy ... :wave:
Very IMPRESSIVE customs !!! ... :wow: ... :wow: ... :wow:
The muted backgrounds are really cool. Especially the one for the goddess Athene!
I hope that this is just the beginning.
Thanks for sharing and all the best,
Richard
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My 8-y-o twins have been studying the Romans at school this term and part of their course involved learning about the Gods and Goddesses, which were all based on the Greek ones. They even had to dress up as a chosen God and give a little speech about themselves. Dayna went as Diana and Aidan was Vulcan. On open day all the parents were greeted by Jupiter at the door. I heard that most of the boys in the class wanted to be Jupiter since he was the 'boss.' ;)
When I was in school, I remember Roman gods being misrepresented as if Romans and Greeks had all the same gods, but with different names.
I've since learned (and learned more reading up on Athene) that Rome did a "best fit"--example: Minerva and Athena really weren't the same goddess, but the Romans, instead of accepting Athena into their Pantheon as a new god, decided she was similar to Minerva and kept a sort of "population control" on their pantheon. Minerva, originally a Roman agriculture god, came to take on the warrior symbols of Athena.
Several "Greek" gods are Asiatic imports:
1) Apollo (possibly Nordic or Turkic / Trojan)
2) Aphrodite (possibly the Phoenician Astarte, imported from the island of Cyprus)
You see less of this in the Roman Pantheon because the Romans assimilated these figures into Latin gods.
Leading to some weird combinations like:
Odin = Mercury (because they both were patrons of magic)
Thor = Jupiter
Baal = Saturn
The downside is that the Roman historians didn't see point in retaining most of the original names, so like all the mysterious Celtic and Germanic gods have come down to us on paper as like the following:
(a god of the Suebi tribe) => "Suebian Jupiter"
And, finally, a great deal of the gods we think of as "universal to a people" tend to have their origins as the god of a particular tribe or a particular location that then gets rolled into the greater pantheon as those people join the community.
Our learning in school is heavily influenced by our instinct to treat mythology more like a fiction novel with each god being a precise character with a distinct personality who fits into a greater story that has a beginning, a logical progression, and an ending (and with Norse mythology, the compiler Snorri Sturluson attempted just such a thing with his retelling of the myths).
Then, Roman mythology comes along with its hodge-podge of gods and myths and our mind gets blown away trying to relate to it.
-Tim
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Here's a photo of a statue of Minerva in York
http://www.york360.co.uk/gallery6/carving-of-minerva.htm
as you can see she has the white owl for wisdom the same as Tim's Athene, plus a pile of books, together with Athene's shield and helmet.
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As odd as it may seem (it certainly was to me) there is a full scale copy of the Parthenon in Nashville,TN, USA including a statue of Athena! Here is the site, but I don't know if I am linking correctly (I guess I better learn the rules if I am going to play the game!):
http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/
Gepetto
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As odd as it may seem (it certainly was to me) there is a full scale copy of the Parthenon in Nashville,TN, USA including a statue of Athena! Here is the site, but I don't know if I am linking correctly (I guess I better learn the rules if I am going to play the game!):
http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/
Gepetto
Your link worked fine.
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As odd as it may seem (it certainly was to me) there is a full scale copy of the Parthenon in Nashville,TN, USA including a statue of Athena! Here is the site, but I don't know if I am linking correctly (I guess I better learn the rules if I am going to play the game!):
http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/
It's a shame they didn't paint it! (EDIT: I mean the Nashville Parthenon. Athena looks great!)
Like in DC, all those stone-gray Roman and Greek edifices don't stand in tribute to a classical obsession with bald marble, but to the banal phenomenon that if you leave something sitting outside for 2,000 years without doing any maintenance, the paint chips off.
According to Archaeology magazine, the museum at Harvard university is hosting a display of repainted Greek artifacts to give people an idea how things might have looked. Peter Connolly, in his illustrated books on Rome and Athens, also gives you an example of how the colors could have looked.
That Hollywood movie "Troy" a few years back was so god-awful that the artistic designers naturally perpetuated the belief in bald temples and bald cities. It makes the Mediterranean people seem downright gloomy and Nordic!
EDIT: I didn't realize the Nashville Parthenon had Athena inside. I'm kicking myself for not bothering to investigate when I was passing through Nashville in 2005. Sounds like a good excuse for trip.
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:wow:
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I love the fact that Thor fence in a chariot drawn by two goats, as the Elder Edda recounts, great post! 8}
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Hadn't seen this yet... :wow: