Atë

Ate (mythology)

Ate (mythology)

Ancient Greek goddess of mischief

For other uses, see Ate (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, Ate, Até or Aite (/ˈeɪtiː/; Ancient Greek: Ἄτη) was the goddess of mischief, delusion, ruin, and blind folly, rash action and reckless impulse who led men down the path of ruin. She also led both gods and men to rash and inconsiderate actions and to suffering.

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Description

In the Iliad, Agamemnon describes Ate as she "that blindeth all—a power fraught with bane; delicate are her feet, for it is not upon the ground that she fareth, but she walketh over the heads of men, bringing men to harm, and this one or that she ensnareth."[1]

Family

Homer called Ate the eldest daughter of Zeus, with no mother mentioned.[2] While, according to Hesiod's Theogony, Ate was the daughter of Eris, the goddess of strife, with no father mentioned:[3]

And hateful Eris bore painful Ponos (Hardship),
Lethe (Forgetfulness) and Limos (Starvation) and the tearful Algea (Pains),
Hysminai (Battles), Makhai (Wars), Phonoi (Murders), and Androktasiai (Manslaughters);
Neikea (Quarrels), Pseudea (Lies), Logoi (Stories), Amphillogiai (Disputes)
Dysnomia (Anarchy) and Ate (Ruin), near one another,
and Horkos (Oath), who most afflicts men on earth,
Then willing swears a false oath.[4]

Of these offspring of Eris, all personified abstractions, only Ate has any actual identity.[5]

Aeschylus, in his tragedy Agamemnon, has the Chorus call Peitho "the unendurable child of scheming Ruin [Ἄτας]".[6]

Mythology

Banishment

Ate appears in a story in the Iliad, where it is told how she came to be thrown out of Olympus, and never permitted to return. Zeus held Ate to blame for blinding him to Hera's trickery which resulted in the loss of the birthright Zeus intended for his son Heracles: to be lord over the Argives.[7] As punishment, an enraged Zeus:

seized Ate by her bright-tressed head, wroth in his soul, and sware a mighty oath that never again unto Olympus and the starry heaven should Ate come, she that blindeth all. So said he, and whirling her in his hand flung her from the starry heaven, and quickly she came to the tilled fields of men. At thought of her would he ever groan, whenso he beheld his dear son in unseemly travail beneath Eurystheus' tasks.[8]

According to the mythographer Apollodorus, when Ate was thrown down by Zeus, Ate landed in Phrygia at a place called "the hill of the Phrygian Ate", where the city of Troy was founded.[9]

In the Argonautica, Hera says that "even the gods are sometimes visited by Ate".[10]

In Nonnus's Dionysiaca, Ate, in order to gratify Hera, persuades the boy Ampelus whom Dionysus passionately loves, to impress Dionysus by riding on a bull from which Ampelus subsequently falls and breaks his neck.[11]

Among the tragic writers, Ate appears in a different light: she avenges evil deeds and inflicts just punishments upon the offenders and their posterity,[12] so that her character here is almost the same as that of Nemesis and Erinnys. She appears most prominent in the dramas of Aeschylus, and least in those of Euripides, with whom the idea of Dike (justice) is more fully developed.[13]

A fragment from Empedocles refers to the "Meadow of Ate",[14] which probably signifies the mortal world.[15]

Post-classical

In the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare introduces the goddess Ate as an invocation of vengeance and menace. Mark Antony, lamenting Caesar's murder, envisions:

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,[16]

Shakespeare also mentions her in the play Much Ado About Nothing, when Benedick says, referring to Beatrice,

Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the
infernal Ate in good apparel.[17]

So too, in King John, Shakespeare refers to Queen Eleanor as "An Ate stirring him [John] to blood and strife",[18] and in Love's Labour's Lost Birone jeers "Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! stir them on, stir them on!"[19]

In Spenser's The Faerie Queene, a fiend from Hell disguised as a beautiful woman is called Ate. This is a possible parallel to the fallen angels.

See also

Notes

  1. [1]
    Homer, Iliad 19.91–94.
  2. [2]
    Homer, Iliad 19.91.
  3. [3]
    Hesiod, Theogony 230.
  4. [4]
    Caldwell, p. 42 lines 226–232, with the meanings of the names (in parentheses), as given by Caldwell, p. 40 on lines 212–232.
  5. [5]
    Gantz, p. 10.
  6. [6]
    Aeschylus, Agamennon 385–386.
  7. [7]
    Homer, Iliad 19.95–124.
  8. [8]
    Homer, Iliad 19.126–133.
  9. [9]
    Apollodorus, 3.12.3.
  10. [10]
    Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.817.
  11. [11]
    Nonnus, Dionysiaca 11.113 ff.
  12. [12]
    Aeschylus, Choēphóroi 381.
  13. [13]
    Smith, s.v. Ate.
  14. [14]
    Inwood, Brad, ed. (1992). The Poem of Empedocles. University of Toronto Press. pp. 134–135. ISBN 0-8020-5971-6..
  15. [15]
    Dodds, E. R. (1957). The Greeks and the Irrational. Beacon Press. p. 174..
  16. [16]
    Julius Caesar 3.1/296–299, Folger Shakespeare Library.
  17. [17]
    Much Ado About Nothing 2.1/251–252, Folger Shakespeare Library.
  18. [18]
    King John 2.1/63, Folger Shakespeare Library.
  19. [19]
    Love's Labor's Lost 5.2/761–762, Folger Shakespeare Library.

References
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