February 26: Love Month

In ancient Greece, the term “hero” didn’t always imply bravery or strength, let alone righteousness. Pausanias mentions a “Hero” who terrorised the region of Temesa. In his lifetime, he would have been a sailor from Odysseus’ crew, who had assaulted a young Temesian girl and had been stoned to death for it. As an evil spirit, he kept on sowing panic and death. According to the oracle, he could only be appeased by a yearly sacrifice of a local virgin, and so it happened. Luckily, one year, the famous boxing champion Euthymos passed by and fell in love with the girl that was to be sacrificed. (Note that she doesn’t have a name, and neither have the other girls who fell victim to the so-called hero.) Euthymos waited till the Hero-spirit appeared and drove him out of the land. Pausanias dryly notes that afterwards, “Euthymos got a glorious wedding”. And when “he reached the farthest point of age, he escaped death and departed from the world of mankind in a different way.” Whether he took his wife with him, is not known.

Lebes Gamikos (Wedding Urn), Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève, Switzerland

Masks on the Sarcophagus of the Muses, Antikensammlung Berlin, Germany