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Page name: Dioscuri [Logged in view] [RSS]
2010-03-09 08:51:40
Last author: Ravenclaw
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Let me first give a shout out to Wikipedia.

*copy paste*

Their Vedic parallels in the effulgent brother horsemen Asvin sets them firmly in the Indo-European tradition. Their archaic and inexplicable name in Spartan inscriptions Tindaridai or in literature Tyndaridai occasioned an explanatory myth of a Tyndareus, that in turn occasioned incompatible accounts of their parentage, as that for their sisters Helen and Clytemnestra.

The better known story is that Zeus disguised himself as a swan and seduced Leda. Thus Leda's children are frequently said to have hatched from two eggs that she then produced. The Dioscuri can be recognized in vase-paintings by the skull-cap they wear, the pilos, which was already explained in Antiquity as the remnants of the egg from which they hatched. Tyndareus, Leda's mortal husband, is then father or foster-father to the children. Whether the children are thus mortal and which half-immortal is not consistent among accounts, nor is whether the twins hatched together from one egg. In some accounts, only Polydeuces was fathered by Zeus, while Leda and her husband Tyndareus conceived Castor. This explains why they were granted an alternate immortality. It is a common belief that one would live among the gods, while the other was among the dead.

Castor and Polydeuces are sometimes both mortal, sometimes both divine. One consistent point is that if only one of them is immortal, it is Polydeuces. In Homer's Iliad, Helen looks down from the walls of Troy and wonders why she does not see her brothers among the Achaeans. The narrator remarks that they are both already dead and buried back in their homeland of Lacedaemon, thus suggesting that at least in some early traditions, both were mortal. Their death and shared immortality offered by Zeus was material of the lost Cypria in the Epic cycle. They do make an appearance together in the plays by Euripides, Helen and Elektra.

Mod interjection: When [Madame Black] concocted this game she chose to set it in the Gemini Constellation. While researching the mythological applications behind her choice I stumbled upon the Dioscuri, the Greek methos behind the constellation. Lucky me right? I may just decide to make them our main game antagonists. LIKE APOTHIS! Isn't it great?


<img:http://www.billcasselman.com/castor_pollux_adj.jpg>
<img:http://kiaa.pku.edu.cn/~yuqj/m74_geminiN_GRI.jpg>

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