Munich: Per podcast on the ancient Greeks!

Created: 07/01/2023, 08:00

By: Katja Kraft

Take the subway to antiquity – works if you have the podcast “Listening to Antiquity” from the Munich State Collections of Antiquities with you.

© Juan Novakosky

Antiquity is not for the faint-hearted.

Love dramas, murder and death - the ancient Greeks had it all.

The new podcast "Listening to Antiquity" by the Munich State Collections of Antiquities tells about it on Spotify.

Exciting!

Just don't mess with the gods.

Otherwise you will end up like Actaeon.

He was so bold as to approach the chaste goddess Artemis in the bath.

Didn't end well for him.

Artemis transformed Actaion into a stag - and thus into a feast for his own greedy dogs.

Or the story of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Doesn't begin particularly lovingly.

Her father Uranus would have benefited from her later function as the patron saint of sexuality.

Cast out by his own son Kronos!

With a sickle stroke, he cut off the sexual organs of the sky god Uranus.

And it gets even worse: Kronos did not come up with this bloodthirsty idea alone, but did it on the advice of his mother Gaia.

Cut it off and throw it into the sea: blood and semen mixed - Aphrodite rose from the spray.

Aphrodite, goddess of love, as a clay statuette, to be admired in the Munich State Collections of Antiquities.

© State Collections of Antiquities Munich/Renate Kühling

It's true, Greek myths are not for the faint-hearted.

Overflowing with sex and violence and death.

And that is why, thousands of years after its creation, it is a brilliant parable of all the weaknesses that we children of earth carry within us.

"When it's about the gods, it's always about the people at the same time," emphasizes Barbara Greese in an episode of the podcast "Listening to Antiquity", which the Munich State Collections of Antiquities have recently published.

In episodes between 20 and 60 minutes long, curator Astrid Fendt tells of the everyday life of the ancient Greeks, Greese garnishes this with texts from more than two and a half millennia.

From Homer to Goethe, Alkaios to Heine.

The highlight: Fendt regularly refers to objects from the museum that tell of the myths and rituals described.

He who listens attentively gets pleasure

to see them in Munich.

The clay statuette of said goddess Aphrodite, for example.

Wrote a hymn-like ode to the poetess Sappho.

For to whom else but to this goddess did one turn in longing?

In ancient times there was a lot of carousing.

And thus paying homage to whom?

Dionysus, the god of wine.

His picture can also be found on this clay drinking bowl.

© Astrid Schmidhuber

Whoever says love in ancient times must also say sex.

It is not for nothing that Eros is the son and constant companion of the goddess of love.

And it is probably no coincidence that it is portrayed as a winged boy.

As we learn in this podcast, pederasty, the love for young men, was an institutionalized form of homosexuality.

Fendt tells of a vase in Munich, the pictures of which clearly show what was meant by pederasty.

A much older one gives a piece of meat (!) to a young, naked man.

A gift of love.

By accepting it, the younger one engages in a kind of sponsorship between adult and adolescent.

“The elder took the younger under his wing, erotic and moral.

In addition to the sexual component, the pedagogical claim played a decisive role.

There are just many varieties of love.

Ovid summarized this particularly aptly in his sophisticated poem “Ars amatoria”.

A teaching piece about the most beautiful of all arts that is always valid in many respects.

And so this podcast gives us a motto for the new year along the way: "Know yourself, only those who know themselves will also love with wisdom."