Monthly Archives: January 2012

Cleito

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The last installment of main characters from the novel I’m currently revising is Cleito.

Cleito is a minor figure in Greek mythology.  She’s mentioned briefly by Plato in his Critias dialogues:

“Poseidon…had been awarded the isle of Atlantis, where he begat children by a mortal woman.  The island…where dwelt an aboriginal inhabitant called Evenor, who by his wife Leucippe, had a daughter called Cleito.  The girl, after the deaths of her parents, was espoused by Poseidon.”

There’s no physical description of Cleito that I can find, nor any statues or paintings of her from the ancient world era.

In some ways, that makes her portrayal more fun.  Cleito was the Queen Mother of Atlantis, but she’s left obscure, while her husband is depicted widely in mythology and artwork.  I have a blank slate from which to work.

Here are a few images I retrieved that shape my rendering of her.

 

This is the crest from the Krewe of Atlantis, a civic organization that puts on an Atlantis-themed float at New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.  Cleito is the Grecian matron on the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, there are no ancient world artifacts featuring Cleito, so I had to stretch my search to modern things, like this painting that advertises the “Cleito Room” at the Atlantis Guest House in Bloemfontein, South Africa.  Here she’s a mermaid, with quite a following of young mermen.

I’m not depicting Cleito as a mermaid, but she does like having men wrapped around her finger.

According to the website, the “Cleito Room” features one double bed and a shared bathroom.  A room for travelers on a budget.  Cleito would be ruined.

 

This is a painting of the goddess Amphitrite that I really like.  It’s by artist Gintare Bruzas.  Amphitrite was Poseidon’s more famous wife, so there are a whole lot more images of her than Cleito.  It comes really close to how I imagine her.

 

 

Retrieved from Dreamstime

When I started writing Cleito, I kept thinking about Maria Sharapova.  She’s kind of been my muse.  Cleito is strong-willed, physically and psychologically intimidating, tall, commanding, fashion-conscious, and she doesn’t crack a smile when she’s hard at work.  Before she shared the stage with Poseidon, she was the kingdom’s High Priestess after all.

Poseidon!!

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In keeping with a theme, I thought I’d troll around the net and post some images of Poseidon that caught my fancy.

He always comes across as a dark character in mythology.  Angry.  Spiteful.  Pretty much indifferent to human suffering.

This is a really cool sculpture of Poseidon at the Port of Copenhagen.  He’s built and mean, with his trident spear.  Not precisely how I’ve imagined him in my novel; the premise is Poseidon was a regular Neolithic guy who was idolized for political purposes.  But my portrayal is influenced by his physicality, and an inference of sadness from the ancient Greek sources.

Here’s a younger, leaner Poseidon.  It’s a famous bronze statue circa 5th century BCE Greece.  I bought a copy of it in Mykonos.  He looks more athletic, less musclebound, in these earlier renderings.

 

 

 

 

Kevin McKidd made a fine Poseidon in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  He didn’t have the long wavy hair and beard, but he definitely had the gravitas.  And it wouldn’t seem right if Poseidon didn’t have a British accent.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s Poseidon on a Greek postage stamp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like this illustration by artist Rhea Babla.  Pretty much lays out the iconography, and he’s a handsome, kind of earthy-looking dude.  You can check out Rhea’s blog, with samples of her artwork at Silver Platypus.

 

What did Dionysius look like?

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So many of you have asked for more about Dionysius after last week’s post.  [Crickets chirping]  Nonetheless, this week, I collected some of my favorite images from around the web.

Here’s a 2nd century ACE Roman statue of Dionysius, or Bacchus, copied from an earlier Hellenistic model.  I saw this one years ago at the Louvre.

There are two common versions of the god.  Like the statue here, he is sometimes depicted as a handsome, beardless young man, a derivation of the earlier, popular Greek kouros, an idol of the masculine ideal, which also seems to have been the prototype for statues of Apollo.

 

 

A Roman bust, from Tyre, provides more facial detail for Dionysius, and the depiction of a horn on his head.  Dionysius was associated with animals, and mythological hybrid creatures like the satyr.

 

 

 

I had the opportunity to see this piece at the museum of Delos, an ancient archaeological site.  It was originally a mosaic from the atrium pool of a wealthy home that has been named the House of Dionysius.  The story here is  Dionysius riding back from the East, his reputed birthplace, on a panther.  He’s seen with his common symbols – a thrysos (a pine-cone tipped staff) and a wreath of ivy.  He certainly looks androgynous here, in fact – could he be cross-dressing?

This is a glass cameo from the 1st century ACE, at the Petit Palais in Paris.  Dionysius (Bacchus) is the little child, and the description says the older man in the picture is a satyr, giving Dionysius grapes.

 

 

Here’s Caravaggio’s painting of Bacchus, where he looks especially flamboyant, yet cherubic at the same time.  It’s from the 16th century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A painted vase by an ancient Greek artist known as Kleophrades shows an older, bearded Dionysius with a panther pelt as a cape and a cup of wine.