Ecate
Ecate (in greco antico: Ἑκάτη, Hekátē) o Hekate o Hekat (in latino: Hecata o Hecate) è un personaggio di origine pre-indoeuropea che fu ripreso nella mitologia greca e romana e trasportato poi nella religione greca e romana.Ecate regnava sui demoni malvagi, sulla notte, la luna, i fantasmi, i morti e la Negromanzia.
Il più noto santuario dedicato a Ecate si trova a Lagina, in Turchia sudoccidentale.
Genealogia
A seconda degli autori è figlia del titano Perse e di Asteria o di Zeus e Asteria.Secondo Apollonio Rodio fu madre di Scilla avuta da Forco mentre secondo Diodoro Siculo fu madre di Circe, Medea ed Egialeo avuti da Eete.
Va però considerato che gli autori che attribuiscono a Ecate queste progenie sono posteriori ad altri che la citavano come vergine.
Le sue ancelle erano chiamate Empuse.
Origine e forme della divinità
Hecate, Hekate o Hekat era in origine una dea delle terre selvagge e del parto proveniente dalla Tracia, della Tessaglia o dalla Caria ed i culti popolari che la veneravano come una dea madre inserirono la sua persona nella cultura greca come Ἑκάτη.Nell'Alessandria tolemaica essa in ultima analisi ottenne le sue connotazioni di dea della stregoneria e il suo ruolo di Regina degli Spettri ed in queste vesti fu poi trasmessa alla cultura post-rinascimentale.
Oggi viene vista spesso come una dea delle arti magiche e della Stregoneria.
Ecate era una divinità psicopompa, in grado di viaggiare liberamente tra il mondo degli uomini, quello degli dei e il regno dei Morti. Spesso è raffigurata con delle torce in mano, proprio per questa sua capacità di accompagnare anche i vivi nel regno dei morti (la Sibilla Cumana, a lei consacrata, traeva da Ecate la capacità di dare responsi provenienti, appunto, dagli spiriti o dagli dei).
La natura di Ecate è bi-sessuata, in quanto possiede in sé entrambi i principi della generazione, il maschile e il femminile. Per questo motivo viene definita la fonte della vita e le viene attribuito il potere vitale su tutti gli elementi.
Nell'iconografia Ecate viene rappresentata spesso con tre corpi o con sembianze di cane o, accompagnata da cani infernali ululanti in quanto veniva considerata protettrice dei cani.
Mitologia
Dea degli incantesimi e degli spettri, Ecate è raffigurata come triplice (giovane, adulta/madre e vecchia) ed il numero Tre la rappresenta infatti le sue statue venivano poste negli incroci (trivi), a protezione dei viandanti (Ecate Enodia o Ecate Trioditis).È inoltre l'equivalente della Trivia romana.
Ecate veniva associata anche ai cicli lunari così come avveniva con altre divinità femminili: Perseide rappresentava la luna nuova, Artemide (Diana per il latini) rappresentava la luna crescente, Selene la luna piena ed Ecate la luna calante.
Fu Ecate a sentire le grida disperate di Persefone, rapita da Ade presso il Lago Pergusa e portata negli Inferi e fu sempre lei ad avvertire Demetra di quanto era accaduto.
Rappresentazioni
Le prime rappresentazioni di Ecate sono singole e non triplici. Lewis Richard Farnell sostiene che: «La testimonianza lasciata dai monumenti sulle caratteristiche e il significato di Ecate è altrettanto ricca di quella trasmessa dalla letteratura, ma solo nel periodo più tardo essi esprimono la sua natura molteplice e mistica. Prima del quinto secolo è quasi certo che fosse spesso rappresentata come una singola forma, come ogni altra divinità, ed è così che la immaginò il poeta della Beozia, perché nulla nei suoi versi allude a una divinità dalla triplice forma. Nel 2017 i geologi dell’Università di Camerino hanno individuato sotto Selinunte - con una termocamera caricata su un drone - la più antica raffigurazione di tutto il mondo greco di Hekate, risalente a circa 2700 anni fa. Il monumento più antico rinvenuto è una piccola terracotta trovata ad Atene, con una dedica a Ecate (tavola XXXVIII. a), in una scrittura tipica del sesto secolo. La dea è seduta su un trono e ha una corona attorno alla testa; non ha nessun tratto o caratteristica distintivi e l'unico valore dell'opera, che è chiaramente di un tipo comune ed è degna di menzione solo per l'iscrizione, è che prova come la forma singola fosse quella originale e che ad Atene era conosciuta prima dell'invasione persiana».Pausania sosteneva che Ecate fosse stata dipinta per la prima volta nella forma triplice dallo scultore Alcamene durante il periodo greco classico, verso la fine del quinto secolo. Alcuni ritratti classici, come quello illustrato qui in basso, mostrano la dea in forma triplice mentre regge una torcia, una chiave e un serpente. Altri continuano a rappresentarla in forma singola. Nell'esoterismo greco, di derivazione egiziana, con riferimento a Ermete Trismegisto e nei papiri di magia della Tarda Antichità è descritta come una creatura a tre teste: una di cane, una di serpente e una di cavallo. La triplicità di Ecate è espressa in una forma più ellenica, con tre corpi, mentre prende parte alla battaglia contro i titani nel vasto fregio del grande altare di Pergamo, ora a Berlino. Nell'Argolide, vicino al sacrario dei Dioscuri, Pausania, grande viaggiatore nel corso del II secolo dell'era cristiana, vide il tempio di Ecate davanti al santuario di Ilizia: «L'immagine è opera di Scopas, realizzata in pietra, mentre le immagini in bronzo che si trovano davanti, che hanno come soggetto sempre Ecate, furono realizzate rispettivamente da Policleto il giovane e suo fratello Naucide, figlio di Motone» (Description of Greece ii.22.7).
Un rilievo in marmo del IV secolo d.C. di Crannone in Tessaglia recava una dedica di un proprietario di cavalli. Il rilievo mostrava Ecate, in compagnia di un cane, mentre posa un serto sul capo di una cavalla. Questa statua si trova nel British Museum, inventario n° 816. La cagna è la sua compagna e il suo equivalente animale e una delle forme più usuali di offerte era lasciare della carne ai crocicchi. A volte gli stessi cani le venivano sacrificati (un giusto accenno alle sue origini non elleniche, dato che i cani, insieme con gli asini, raramente venivano tenuti in così alta considerazione negli antichi rituali greci).
Influenza culturale
A Ecate sono intitolati l'Hecates Tholus su Marte e l'Hecate Chasma su Venere.Ecate Appare nel Macbeth di Shakespeare ed è una delle streghe della tragedia.
Ecate compare nelle saghe di Percy Jackson ed Eroi dell'Olimpo scritte da Rick Riordan.
La figura di Ecate viene inoltre citata della serie tv Penny Dreadful quando viene introdotto il personaggio di Hecate Poole, strega figlia di Evelyn Poole.
Ecate è impersonificata in Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom da Hecatia Lapislazuli, anche lei capace di viaggiare liberamente tra mondi, avendo persino tre corpi.
Ecate appare nei romanzi di Michael Scott della serie I segreti di Nicholas Flamel, l'immortale.
Ecate è un personaggio di grande rilevanza nella serie a fumetti Sandman, di Neil Gaiman.
Hecate, Greek goddess of the crossroads
Name and origin
The etymology of the name Hecate (Ἑκάτη, Hekátē) is not known. Some suggestions derive the name from a Greek root: from ἑκών "willing" (thus, "she who works her will" or similar), or from Ἑκατός Hekatos, an obscure epithet of Apollo interpreted as "the far reaching one" or "the far-darter", whence for the feminine form "she that operates from afar" or "she that removes or drives off".R. S. P. Beekes rejected a Greek etymology and suggested a Pre-Greek origin. A possibility for foreign origin of the name may be Heqet, name of an Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth.
In Early Modern English, the name was also pronounced disyllabically (as /ˈhɛkɪt/) and sometimes spelled Hecat. It remained common practice in English to pronounce her name in two syllables, even when spelled with final e, well into the 19th century.[citation needed]
The spelling Hecat is due to Arthur Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and this spelling without the final E later appears in plays of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period. Webster's Dictionary of 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name.
Hecate possibly originated among the Carians of Anatolia, the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus, the father of Mausolus, are attested, and where Hecate remained a Great Goddess into historical times, at her unrivalled cult site in Lagina. While many researchers favor the idea that she has Anatolian origins, it has been argued that "Hecate must have been a Greek goddess." The monuments to Hecate in Phrygia and Caria are numerous but of late date.
William Berg observes, "Since children are not called after spooks, it is safe to assume that Carian theophoric names involving hekat- refer to a major deity free from the dark and unsavoury ties to the underworld and to witchcraft associated with the Hecate of classical Athens." In particular, there is some evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses (see also Arinna), based on similar attributes. She also closely parallels the Roman goddess Trivia, with whom she was sometimes identified in Rome, although Trivia was more commonly identified with Artemis by authors such as Lucretius.
If Hecate's cult spread from Anatolia into Greece, it is possible it presented a conflict, as her role was already filled by other more prominent deities in the Greek pantheon, above all by Artemis and Selene. This line of reasoning lies behind the widely accepted hypothesis that she was a foreign deity who was incorporated into the Greek pantheon. Other than in the Theogony, the Greek sources do not offer a consistent story of her parentage, or of her relations in the Greek pantheon: sometimes Hecate is related as a Titaness, and a mighty helper and protector of humans.
Cult
Shrines to Hecate were placed at doorways to both homes and cities with the belief that it would protect from restless dead and other spirits. Likewise, shrines to Hecate at three way crossroads were created where food offerings were left at the new moon to protect those who did so from spirits and other evils. Dogs were sacred to Hecate and associated with roads, domestic spaces, purification, and spirits of the dead. Dogs were also sacrificed to the road. This can be compared to Pausanias' report that in the Ionian city of Colophon in Asia Minor a sacrifice of a black female puppy was made to Hecate as "the wayside goddess", and Plutarch's observation that in Boeotia dogs were killed in purificatory rites. Dogs, with puppies often mentioned, were offered to Hecate at crossroads, which were sacred to the goddess.Her most important sanctuary was Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was served by eunuchs. Lagina, where the famous temple of Hecate drew great festal assemblies every year, lay close to the originally Macedonian colony of Stratonikeia, where she was the city's patroness. In Thrace she played a role similar to that of lesser-Hermes, namely a governess of liminal regions (particularly gates) and the wilderness.
As Hecate Phosphorus (Venus) she is said to have lit the sky during the Siege of Philip II in 340, revealing the attack to its inhabitants. The Byzantines dedicated a statue to her as the "lamp carrier."
There was an area sacred to Hecate in the precincts of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, where the priests, megabyzi, officiated.
She was greatly worshipped in Byzantium. She was said to have saved the city from Philip II, warning the citizens of a night time attack by a light in the sky, for which she was known as Hecate Lampadephoros. The tale is preserved in the Suda.
The Deipnon
The Athenian Greeks honored Hekate during the Deipnon. In Greek, deipnon means the evening meal, usually the largest meal of the day. Hekate's Deipnon is, at its most basic, a meal served to Hekate and the restless dead once a lunar month during the new moon. The Deipnon is always followed the next day by the Noumenia, when the first sliver of moon is visible, and then the Agathos Daimon the day after that.The main purpose of the Deipnon was to honor Hekate and to placate the souls in her wake who “longed for vengeance.” A secondary purpose was to purify the household and to atone for bad deeds a household member may have committed that offended Hekate, causing her to withhold her favor from them. The Deipnon consists of three main parts: 1) the meal that was set out at a crossroads, usually in a shrine outside the entryway to the home 2) an expiation sacrifice, and 3) purification of the household.
Attributes and bynames
Hecate was known by a number of bynames:- Apotropaia (that turns away/protects)
- Chthonia (of the earth/underworld)
- Enodia (on the way)
- Klêidouchos (holding the keys)
- Kourotrophos (nurse of children)
- Krokopeplos (saffron cloaked)
- Melinoe
- Phosphoros, Lampadephoros (bringing or bearing light)
- Propolos (who serves/attends)
- Propulaia/Propylaia (before the gate)
- Soteria (savior)
- Trimorphe (three-formed)
- Triodia/Trioditis (who frequents crossroads)
- Trivia (mythology) (Roman form)
Representations
Hecate was generally represented as three-formed. This has been speculated as being connected with the appearance of the full moon, half moon, and new moon. As a virgin goddess, she remained unmarried and had no regular consort, though some traditions named her as the mother of Scylla.The earliest Greek depictions of Hecate were not three-formed. Farnell states: "The evidence of the monuments as to the character and significance of Hecate is almost as full as that of to express her manifold and mystic nature." The earliest known monument is a small terracotta found in Athens, with a dedication to Hecate, in writing of the style of the 6th century. The goddess is seated on a throne with a chaplet bound round her head; she is altogether without attributes and character, and the main historical value of this work, which is evidently of quite a general type and gets a special reference and name merely from the inscription, is that it proves the single shape to be her earlier form, and her recognition at Athens to be earlier than the Persian invasion.
In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus, and in magical papyri of Late Antiquity she is described as having three heads: one dog, one serpent, and one horse. In other representations her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar. Hecate's triplicity is elsewhere expressed in a more Hellenic fashion in the vast frieze of the great Pergamon Altar, now in Berlin, wherein she is shown with three bodies, taking part in the battle with the Titans. In the Argolid, near the shrine of the Dioscuri, Pausanias saw the temple of Hecate opposite the sanctuary of Eileithyia; He reported the image to be the work of Scopas, stating further, "This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon." (Description of Greece 2.22.7)
In the Argonautica, a 3rd-century BCE Alexandrian epic based on early material, Jason placates Hecate in a ritual prescribed by Medea, her priestess: bathed at midnight in a stream of flowing water, and dressed in dark robes, Jason is to dig a round pit and over it cut the throat of an ewe, sacrificing it and then burning it whole on a pyre next to the pit as a holocaust. He is told to sweeten the offering with a libation of honey, then to retreat from the site without looking back, even if he hears the sound of footsteps or barking dogs. All these elements betoken the rites owed to a chthonic deity.
A 4th-century BCE marble relief from Crannon in Thessaly was dedicated by a race-horse owner. It shows Hecate, with a hound beside her, placing a wreath on the head of a mare. She is commonly attended by a dog or dogs, and the most common form of offering was to leave meat at a crossroads. Images of her attended by a dog are also found at times when she is shown as in her role as mother goddess with child, and when she is depicted alongside the god Hermes and the goddess Kybele in reliefs.
Animals
Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. "In art and in literature Hecate is constantly represented as dog-shaped or as accompanied by a dog. Her approach was heralded by the howling of a dog. The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, and was often eaten in solemn sacrament." The sacrifice of dogs to Hecate is attested for Thrace, Samothrace, Colophon, and Athens.It has been claimed that her association with dogs is "suggestive of her connection with birth, for the dog was sacred to Eileithyia, Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Although in later times Hecate's dog came to be thought of as a manifestation of restless souls or demons who accompanied her, its docile appearance and its accompaniment of a Hecate who looks completely friendly in many pieces of ancient art suggests that its original signification was positive and thus likelier to have arisen from the dog's connection with birth than the dog's underworld associations." The association with dogs, particularly female dogs, could be explained by a metamorphosis myth. The friendly looking female dog accompanying Hecate was originally the Trojan Queen Hekabe, who leapt into the sea after the fall of Troy and was transformed by Hecate into her familiar.
Another metamorphosis myth explains why the polecat is also associated with Hecate. From Antoninus Liberalis: "At Thebes Proitos had a daughter Galinthias. This maiden was playmate and companion of Alkmene, daughter of Elektryon. As the birth throes for Herakles were pressing on Alkmene, the Moirai (Fates) and Eileithyia (Birth-Goddess), as a favour to Hera, kept Alkmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alkmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eleithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alkmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished.
At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms. Alkmene’s pangs ceased at once and Herakles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel (or polecat), making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hekate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself."
Aelian told a different story of a woman transformed into a polecat: ""I have heard that the polecat was once a human being. It has also reached my hearing that Gale was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress (Pharmakis); that she was extremely incontinent, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May the goddess be gracious to me : fables and their telling I leave to others."
Athenaeus (writing in the 1st or 2nd century BCE, and drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens) notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is trimorphos, of a triple form". The Greek word for mullet was trigle and later trigla. He goes on to quote a fragment of verse "O mistress Hecate, Trioditis / With three forms and three faces / Propitiated with mullets". In relation to Greek concepts of pollution, Parker observes, "The fish that was most commonly banned was the red mullet (trigle), which fits neatly into the pattern. It 'delighted in polluted things,' and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to the blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep." At Athens, it is said there stood a statue of Hecate Triglathena, to whom the red mullet was offered in sacrifice. After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes, "Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to the red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire. The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of the dying fish change."
The frog, which was also the symbol of the similarly-named Egyptian goddess Heqet, has also become sacred to Hecate in modern Pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements.
In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent and horse.
Plants
Hecate was closely associated with plant lore and the concoction of medicines and poisons. In particular she was thought to give instruction in these closely related arts. Apollonius of Rhodes, in the Argonautica mentions that Medea was taught by Hecate, "I have mentioned to you before a certain young girl whom Hecate, daughter of Perses, has taught to work in drugs."The goddess is described as wearing oak in fragments of Sophocles' lost play The Root Diggers (or The Root Cutters), and an ancient commentary on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica (3.1214) describes her as having a head surrounded by serpents, twining through branches of oak.
The yew in particular was sacred to Hecate.
"Greeks held the yew to be sacred to Hecate... Her attendants draped wreathes of yew around the necks of black bulls which they slaughtered in her honor and yew boughs were burned on funeral pyres. The yew was associated with the alphabet and the scientific name for yew today, taxus, was probably derived from the Greek word for yew, toxos, which is hauntingly similar to toxon, their word for bow and toxicon, their word for poison. It is presumed that the latter were named after the tree because of its superiority for both bows and poison."Hecate was said to favor offerings of garlic, which was closely associated with her cult. She is also sometimes associated with cypress, a tree symbolic of death and the underworld, and hence sacred to a number of chthonic deities.
A number of other plants (often poisonous, medicinal and/or psychoactive) are associated with Hecate. These include aconite (also called hecateis), belladonna, dittany, and mandrake. It has been suggested that the use of dogs for digging up mandrake is further corroboration of the association of this plant with Hecate; indeed, since at least as early as the 1st century CE, there are a number of attestations to the apparently widespread practice of using dogs to dig up plants associated with magic.
Boundaries and crossroads
Hecate was associated with borders, city walls, doorways, crossroads and, by extension, with realms outside or beyond the world of the living. She appears to have been particularly associated with being 'between' and hence is frequently characterized as a "liminal" goddess. "Hecate mediated between regimes—Olympian and Titan—but also between mortal and divine spheres." This liminal role is reflected in a number of her cult titles: Apotropaia (that turns away/protects); Enodia (on the way); Propulaia/Propylaia (before the gate); Triodia/Trioditis (who frequents crossroads); Klêidouchos (holding the keys), etc.As a goddess expected to avert harmful or destructive spirits from the house or city over which she stood guard and to protect the individual as she or he passed through dangerous liminal places, Hecate would naturally become known as a goddess who could also refuse to avert the demons, or even drive them on against unfortunate individuals.
It was probably her role as guardian of entrances that led to Hecate's identification by the mid fifth century with Enodia, a Thessalian goddess. Enodia's very name ("In-the-Road") suggests that she watched over entrances, for it expresses both the possibility that she stood on the main road into a city, keeping an eye on all who entered, and in the road in front of private houses, protecting their inhabitants.This function would appear to have some relationship with the iconographic association of Hecate with keys, and might also relate to her appearance with two torches, which when positioned on either side of a gate or door illuminated the immediate area and allowed visitors to be identified. "In Byzantium small temples in her honor were placed close to the gates of the city. Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as a deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions." This suggests that Hecate's close association with dogs derived in part from the use of watchdogs, who, particularly at night, raised an alarm when intruders approached. Watchdogs were used extensively by Greeks and Romans.
Cult images and altars of Hecate in her triplicate or trimorphic form were placed at three-way crossroads (though they also appeared before private homes and in front of city gates). In this form she came to be known as the goddess Trivia ("the three ways") in Roman mythology. In what appears to be a 7th-century indication of the survival of cult practices of this general sort, Saint Eligius, in his Sermo warns the sick among his recently converted flock in Flanders against putting "devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads", and, according to Saint Ouen would urge them "No Christian should make or render any devotion to the deities of the trivium, where three roads meet...".
Like Hecate, "[t]he dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier. The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus, whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it."
Mythology
Classical period
Hecate has been characterized as a pre-Olympian chthonic goddess. The first literature mentioning Hecate is the Theogony by Hesiod:And she conceived and bore Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honored above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honor also in starry heaven, and is honored exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favor according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honor comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favorably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea.According to Hesiod, she held sway over many things:
Whom she will she greatly aids and advances: she sits by worshipful kings in judgement, and in the assembly whom she will is distinguished among the people. And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will. Good is she also when men contend at the games, for there too the goddess is with them and profits them: and he who by might and strength gets the victory wins the rich prize easily with joy, and brings glory to his parents. And she is good to stand by horsemen, whom she will: and to those whose business is in the grey discomfortable sea, and who pray to Hecate and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, easily the glorious goddess gives great catch, and easily she takes it away as soon as seen, if so she will. She is good in the byre with Hermes to increase the stock. The droves of kine and wide herds of goats and flocks of fleecy sheep, if she will, she increases from a few, or makes many to be less. So, then, albeit her mother's only child, she is honored amongst all the deathless gods. And the son of Cronos made her a nurse of the young who after that day saw with their eyes the light of all-seeing Dawn. So from the beginning she is a nurse of the young, and these are her honours.Hesiod emphasizes that Hecate was an only child, the daughter of Perses and Asteria, the sister of Leto (the mother of Artemis and Apollo). Grandmother of the three cousins was Phoebe the ancient Titaness who personified the moon.
Hesiod's inclusion and praise of Hecate in the Theogony has been troublesome for scholars, in that he seems to hold her in high regard, while the testimony of other writers, and surviving evidence, suggests that this may have been the exception. One theory is that Hesiod's original village had a substantial Hecate following and that his inclusion of her in the Theogony was a way of adding to her prestige by spreading word of her among his readers. Another theory is that Hekate was mainly a household god and humble household worship could have been more pervasive and yet not mentioned as much as temple worship. In Athens Hecate, along with Zeus, Hermes, Hestia, and Apollo, were very important in daily life as they were the main gods of the household. However, it is clear that the special position given to Hecate by Zeus is upheld throughout her history by depictions found on coins depicting Hecate on the hand of Zeus as highlighted in more recent research presented by d'Este and Rankine.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hecate is called the "tender-hearted", a euphemism perhaps intended to emphasize her concern with the disappearance of Persephone, when she assisted Demeter with her search for Persephone following her abduction by Hades, suggesting that Demeter should speak to the god of the sun, Helios. Subsequently she became Persephone's companion on her yearly journey to and from the realms of Hades; serving as a psychopomp. Because of this association, Hecate was one of the chief goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries, alongside Demeter and Persephone.
Variations in interpretations of Hecate's role or roles can be traced in classical Athens. In two fragments of Aeschylus she appears as a great goddess. In Sophocles and Euripides she is characterized as the mistress of witchcraft and the Keres.
One surviving group of stories[clarification needed] suggests how Hecate might have come to be incorporated into the Greek pantheon without affecting the privileged position of Artemis. Here, Hecate is a mortal priestess often associated with Iphigeneia. She scorns and insults Artemis, who in retribution eventually brings about the mortal's suicide.
Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity
Hecate is the primary feminine figure in the Chaldean Oracles (2nd-3rd century CE), where she is associated in fragment 194 with a strophalos (usually translated as a spinning top, or wheel, used in magic) "Labour thou around the Strophalos of Hecate." This appears to refer to a variant of the device mentioned by Psellus.In Hellenistic syncretism, Hecate also became closely associated with Isis. Lucius Apuleius in The Golden Ass (2nd century) equates Juno, Bellona, Hecate and Isis
- "Some call me Juno, others Bellona of the Battles, and still others Hecate. Principally the Ethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Egyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustomed to worship me, do call me Queen Isis."
Legacy
Strmiska (2005) claims that Hecate, conflated with the figure of Diana, appears in late antiquity and in the early medieval period as part of an "emerging legend complex" associated with gatherings of women, the moon, and witchcraft that eventually became established "in the area of Northern Italy, southern Germany, and the western Balkans." This theory of the Roman origins of many European folk traditions related to Diana or Hecate was explicitly advanced at least as early as 1807 and is reflected[dubious ] in etymological claims by early modern lexicographers from the 17th to the 19th century, connecting hag, hexe "witch" to the name of Hecate. Such derivations are today proposed only by a minority A medieval commentator has suggested a link connecting the word "jinx" with Hecate: "The Byzantine polymath Michael Psellus [...] speaks of a bullroarer, consisting of a golden sphere, decorated throughout with symbols and whirled on an oxhide thong. He adds that such an instrument is called a iunx (hence "jinx"), but as for the significance says only that it is ineffable and that the ritual is sacred to Hecate."Shakespeare mentions Hecate both before the end of the 16th century (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1594-96), and just after, in Macbeth (1605): specifically, in the title character's "dagger" soliloquy: "Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings..."
Modern reception
In 1929, Lewis Brown, an expert on religious cults, connected the 1920s Blackburn Cult (also known as, "The Cult of the Great Eleven,") with Hecate worship rituals. He noted that the cult regularly practiced dog sacrifice and had secretly buried the body of one of its "queens" with seven dogs. Researcher Samuel Fort noted additional parallels, to include the cult’s focus on mystic and typically nocturnal rites, its female dominated membership, the sacrifice of other animals (to include horses and mules), a focus on the mystical properties of roads and portals, and an emphasis on death, healing, and resurrection.As a "goddess of witchcraft", Hecate has been incorporated in various systems of modern witchcraft, Wicca and Neopaganism, in some cases associated with the Wild Hunt of Germanic tradition, in others as part of a reconstruction of specifically Greek polytheism, in English also known as "Hellenismos". In Wicca, Hecate has in some cases become identified with the "Crone" aspect of the "Triple Goddess".
Hecate is also the namesake of the hundredth numbered asteroid, which was discovered by American astronomer James Craig Watson on July 11, 1868. Its adopted name alludes to it as being the hundredth named asteroid ('hekaton' being the Greek for 'hundred').
La Ecate Chiaramonti, una scultura romana della triplice Ecate, successiva a un originale Ellenistico, Città del Vaticano, Museo Chiaramonti, Musei Vaticani.
Triple-formed representation of Hecate. Marble, Roman copy after an original of the Hellenistic period.
Trivia
Nella mitologia romana Trivia era un appellativo delle dee Diana, Ecate e Luna.L'epiteto viene indicato da Nigidio Figulo come appellativo della sola personificazione lunare di Diana. Altre interpretazioni attribuiscono invece al nome Trivia la definizione della triplice natura della medesima divinità, rappresentata in cielo come Luna, in terra come Diana e agli inferi come Proserpina o Ecate. Un'ultima lettura, ritenuta però controversa, vuole infine l'identificazione con la ninfa Marica.
Culto
Un'iscrizione dedicata a Trivia si troverebbe nel santuario di Marica a Minturno, ma l'interpretazione della parola è controversa.Un bosco sacro a Trivia sorgeva secondo il libro VI dell'Eneide a Cuma. A Diana Trivia era inoltre dedicato il tempio di Diana Nemorensis presso l'odierna Nemi. Un tempio di Trivia è segnalato sul luogo dove oggi sorge la chiesa di Santa Maria del Tricalle, a Chieti; del tempio, però, non vi sono attestazioni di epoca romana.
Secondo la Storia dell'Antico, e Nuovo Testamento di Augustin Calmet un tempio consacrato a Trivia sarebbe sorto inoltre alle porte di Gerusalemme.
Citazioni dell'appellativo in letteratura
Nella letteratura latina l'appellativo è citato da Virgilio e Ovidio. Il primo lo menziona tre volte nell'Eneide: in un'occasione nel già citato libro VI e in due nel VII. In tutti e tre i casi l'appellativo si riferisce a Diana, nel primo facendo riferimento a un bosco sacro a essa dedicato. Il secondo lo cita invece nel libro II delle Metamorfosi, anche in questo caso indicando con questo nome Diana. Un ulteriore riferimento che invece coniuga Diana e Luna si deve a Catullo, che riporta l'epiteto nel Carme 34.Nella Divina Commedia Dante Alighieri usa invece la parola come sinonimo di luna nel canto XXIII del Paradiso. Con il medesimo significato, nella sua edizione annotata della Gerusalemme liberata di Torquato Tasso, la cita Camillo Arborio Mella, che la segnala con Febe e Latona come una delle «appellazioni date spesso da' poeti greci e latini all'argenteo satellite del nostro pianeta».
Origine del nome
Marco Terenzio Varrone, in De lingua Latina, attribuisce l'origine dell'epiteto all'abitudine di collocare le raffigurazioni di Diana nei trivi, in luoghi per altro isolati e dunque meglio illuminati dalla luna.
William Blake, Ecate o le tre Parche, 1795, Londra.
Trivia
Trivia in Roman mythology was the goddess who "haunted crossroads, graveyards, and was the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, she wandered about at night and was seen only by the barking of dogs who told of her approach." Despite popular belief, she was not the equivalent of the Greek goddess Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, the three-way crossroads and the harvest moon. She was an underworld Titan-goddess who assisted Jove in the Titanomachy and was therefore able to keep her powers. She was a friend of Ceres and helped her to find her daughter Proserpina.[citation needed] As a part of her role as an underworld goddess, she was known as the Queen of Ghosts. Although she helped Ceres to find her daughter, she was also known to steal young maidens to assist her in her powers. These women later became nymphs.Her association for Romans of the first century BCE with Artemis was so thorough that Lucretius identifies the altar of the goddess at the sacrifice of Iphianassa (Iphigeneia) in Aulis as Triviai virginis aram.
Ecate combatte Clizio, a sinistra. Dettaglio del Rilievo dall'Altare di Pergamo, IV secolo a.C.
Detail of the Relief of the Pergamon Altar. left to right: Hekate fights Klyt
Statuette of Triple-bodied Hekate. Pen, ink and light brown and grey wash.
Statuette of Triple-bodied Hekate.
Pen, ink and light brown and grey wash.
Triple Hecate and the Charites, Attic, 3rd century BCE (Glyptothek, Munich)
Hekateion
(little votive column to Hecate). The triple-body goddess is surrounded
by three dancing Charites. Attica, ca. 3rd century BC.
Triple Hecate
A goddess, probably Hekate or else Artemis, is depicted with a bow, dog and twin torches.
Jusepe de Ribera - Hecate, Procession to a Witches' Sabbath
Data sconosciuta
Title: Manual of mythology : Greek and Roman, Norse, and old German, Hindoo and Egyptian mythology
Year: 1875 (1870s)
Authors: Murray, A. S. (Alexander Stuart), 1841-1904
hecate with dog
The coins of Agathocles of Bactria (ruled 190-180 BCE), show Zeus holding Hecate in his hand.
Coin of the Baktrian king Agathokles
Hecate by Richard Cosway
Marble statue of Hecate Trimorph.
Pen and brown ink with traces of graphite underdrawing.
Relief
of triplicate Hekate. Three female figures framed in aedicula, with
high poloi on their heads, dressed in chiton and peplos, holding torches
in their hands. Marble (small), Hadrian classicism. NG Prague, Kinský
Palace, NM-H10 4742.
Vatican Pius Clementine Museum
Hekate holding a swordi in the right hand, a snake in the left. (Detail of fol. 37 - Statuette of Triple-bodied Hekate).
Pen, ink and grey wash.
Hekate
holding a key in the left hand and a rope in the right. (Detail of fol.
37 - Statuette of Triple-bodied Hekate). Watermark: Crown and Star.
Pen and ink with light-brown and grey wash.
Reliéf - Hekate - bohyne mesiaca, ochránkyne ciest, križovatiek, porodov a mládeže, vlákdyne tajomných síl
CARIA,
Stratonikeia. Late 1st century BC - early 1st century AD. AR Drachm
(16mm, 1.58 g, 12h). Phanias, magistrate. Laureate head of Hekate right,
crescent above / Nike walking right, holding wreath and palm.
Hecate, Greek goddess of the crossroads
Hecate
Hecate (Marble Group in the Museum of the Capitol, Rome.)
Ancient Roman antiquities in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
Hecate, cropped
Hecate presenting the Mysteries at Spring Mysteries Festival. A recreation of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries.
This altar was created for the Goddess Hecate. Several offerings are noted, specifically a blood offering for healing.
Hecate,
or The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, Butlin 316
Title: Hecate, or The Night of Enitharmon's Joy
Origination: William Blake: inventor, delineator, printer, colorist
Composition Date: 1795
Print Date: 1795
Note: The characteristics of the color printing indicate that this
impression is the first one printed in 1795. The second impression in
that printing session is Hecate, or The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy in the
Huntington Library and Art Gallery (Butlin 318); the third impression
of the design is in the National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh (Butlin 317).
Number of Objects: 1
Object Size: 43.9 x 58.1 cm.
Number of Leaves: 1
Leaf Size: 54.5 x 77.0 cm.
Medium: planographic color printing with water color and pen and ink
additions to the impression
Printing Style: planographic
Support: wove paper
Watermark: 1794 JWhatman
Penned Numbers: none
Frame Lines: none
Binding: loose
Stab Holes: none
Provenance
Name: Tate Collection
Date: 1939
Dealer: none
Price: gift
Note: Acquired by Thomas Butts from Blake, possibly c. 1805; Thomas
Butts, Jr., apparently by inheritance in 1845; Frederick J. Butts,
apparently by inheritance in 1862; his widow, c. 1905, by inheritance;
sold 1906 through Carfax and Co., London, to W. Graham Robertson; given
1939 by Robertson to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Collection).
Present Location
Tate Collection
Millbank
London SW1P 4RG
United Kingdom
Hecate. Triple goddess of the crossroads, 3rd century BC. Nesebar Archaeological Museum
Statue der Hekate Triformis
Hekataion dal tempio di atena polias sull'acropoli antica di rodi, tardo ellenismo,
Hekataion dal tempio di atena polias sull'acropoli antica di rodi, tardo ellenismo,
Hekataion dal tempio di atena polias sull'acropoli antica di rodi, tardo ellenismo,
Relief der Hekate am Haus Oberanger 7, München
The triple-body goddess Hecate at Muzeul Naţional Brukenthal.
Data sconosciuta
On
a base, in which an inscription (No. 85), a standing triple Hekate, the
heads of whom bear a commune polos. The figure is encircled by three
dancing Nymphs.
HEKATE
Votive relief of the strategoi of Mesambria in honour of Hecate.
2nd-1st century BC
Archeological Museum, Nesebar, Bulgaria
Votive relief of the strategoi of Mesambria in honour of Hecate.
2nd century BC
Archeological Museum, Nesebar, Bulgaria
Selinunte Trapani: Sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros - [Hecate] temple
Stele imaging Hermes, Cybele, Hekate from Olbia. First century AD. Odessa Archeological Museum
Wenceslas Hollar - The Greek gods. Diana
Hecate: Goddess of Witchcraft & Necromancy - (Greek Mythology ...
YouTube
Hecate Greek Goddess of the Underworld Resin Statue
Macbeth, the Three Witches and Hecate in Act IV, Scene I of "Macbeth" by Shakespeare Published 1805
Hecate: Goddess of Witchcraft & Necromancy - (Greek Mythology Explained)
Hecate
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