How Perseus Came to Make a Rash Vow

'I am Pallas Athene; and I know the thoughts of all men's hearts, and discern their manhood or their baseness. And from the souls of clay I turn away, and they are blest, but not by me. They fatten at ease, like sheep in the pasture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall. They grow and spread, like the gourd along the ground; but, like the gourd, they give no shade to the traveller, and when they are ripe death gathers them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name vanishes out of the land.
'But to the souls of fire I give more fire, and to those who are manful I give a might more than man's. These are the heroes, the sons of the Immortals, who are blest, but not like the souls of clay. For I drive them forth by strange paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and the monsters, the enemies of Gods and men. Through doubt and need, danger and battle, I drive them; and some of them are slain in the flower of youth, no man knows when or where; and some of them win noble names, and a fair and green old age; but what will be their latter end I know not, and none, save Zeus, the father of Gods and men. Tell me now, Perseus, which of these two sorts of men seem to you more blest?'
Then Perseus answered boldly: 'Better to die in the flower of youth, on the chance of winning a noble name, than to live at ease like the sheep, and die unloved and unrenowned.'
Charles Kingsley, Heroes

3 comments:

Grim said...

Well answered.

Ymarsakar said...

New Testament had something along the lines of not swearing on the bible or any other thing under or over heaven.

Reminds me of some people who in 2012 or before said that they would "fight to the death to defend the rights of their fellow Democrats" on the assumption that their fellow Democrats would also be interested in defending the religious and constitutional liberty of their opponents.

At the time I was like... are you serious. You are swearing or making an oath online, in the presence of more than 2 witnesses, that you will fight to the death to defend the rights of certain people.... who they later have to fight or kill because they weren't serious about the "to death part". They are just quoting and copycatting.

Some of them are even self proclaimed christians. Good job oathbreakers.

Ymarsakar said...

Btw, Plato and the scriptures quoted by the Apostles have data on who the Greek gods were and how hybrids like Hercules came about.

The Norse have legends about titans and so do the Greeks, these were the Watchers: the grigori.

In Genesis Six they are mentioned as angels mating with the daughters of man. Angels are normally without marriage or sex in the heavenly substance, but they abandoned their First Estate, taking on mortal form permanently. There are angels such as at Lot's account of Soddom that took mortal form temporarily, but those are shapeshifting powers akin to sons of God.

These produced half Watcher, half human hybrids, the nephiliim, who were giants because their fathers were giants too most likely.

I find it interesting that the number of watchers that were said to descend on mount Hermon (the gates of hell at Caesar Phillipi I believe) was 20, each a leader of 10. That would mean 20/70 is about 1/3rd. One third of the host of heaven.

In the US Revolution, it splits apart like that too. One third for the British loyalty, one third neutral, one third for independence of a sort, but only 3% was actively courting warfare.

http://www.nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Transcript-95-David-Burnett-Death-of-the-Gods.pdf

A world where everything had been discovered first by someone else, would be far too boring