Tuesday, February 20, 2007

An explanation of the title

In greek mythology, Eris is the goddess of discord. One day while watching Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas with some friends I made the comment that "Eris is so cool. I wish I was the goddess of discord!" And it kind of stuck. So every time I make a comment that is more unusual or disturbing than normal I get the response "yeah, well you're the goddess of discord, so no surprises there."

Also, as to the blog address, Kallisti is greek for "to the fairest one." It was the apple that Eris offered at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles) to the most beautiful one present. This led up to an argument between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite over which of them was the most beautiful. Now, the other gods were smart enough to keep out of it but the goddesses managed to get Paris (the idiot) to answer by each bribing him with something. Hera offered him political power, Athena promised skill in battle, and Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. Unfortunately, the most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, who just so happened to be already married to Menelaus of Sparta.

Too bad bad Paris didn't make the connection that Menelaus' brother was Agememnon (slayer of men is the nickname this dude gets). Also he failed to make the connection that getting the most beautiful woman in the world doesn't do you a lot of good if you don't have the political power or the skill in battle to keep her. I mean, honestly either of those choices would have been better. But really, the gods had the right idea to just keep out of the whole thing. Because, yeah, you might end up on the good side of one goddess, but you just made two really powerful enemies.

So Troy was destroyed. And it all started with Kallisti, thrown in by the Goddess of Discord.

Oh yeah, and I hope you are happy Jen. Hopefully I will come up with enough to write about to have this blog be worth it.

2 comments:

Jennifer @ Fruit of My Hands said...

Very interesting read.

Eris said...

Why thank you. This is all just part of the file full of random useless facts that I've got floating around in my head.