The Ancients - Mermaids

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

The central Mediterranean is home to a bounty of creatures - fish, dolphins, and... mermaids? In today's episode Dr Amelia Brown returns to the podcast to talk marine mammals and Merpeople. From iconic characters such as Thetis, mother to one of the most famous heroes in the ancient world (anyone heard of a man called Achilles?) to the role Nereids played throughout Greek Mythology - just what can we learn from these mythical creatures and do we really want to be part of their world?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, we're going back to Greek mythology because we're talking about these great mythical patrons of ancient Greek mariners, of ancient Greek sailors. I'm talking about, shall we say, ancient mermaids. We're talking about the sea nymphs. Now to talk all about this, we were delighted to get back on the podcast Dr. Amelia Brown from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Now Amelia, she's been on the podcast once before, just over a year now since her last appearance, when she talked all about Corinth in late antiquity. But Amelia got in contact a few months back to let us know about her recent research about sea beasts, about mermaids

and so on and we thought yes let's do a podcast about mermaids. We go from the Black Sea to Thessaly to other areas of the central Mediterranean and cover a lot of ground. It was great to get Amelia back on the podcast and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, to talk about ancient mermaids, about the sea nymphs, and their importance, here's Amelia. Amelia, it is great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much, Tristan. It's great to be back. It has been too long since our last chat on Corinth in late antiquity, but now we're talking about something completely different.

Mermaids in ancient Greece. I mean, ancient mermaids, these were these great mythical patrons of, well, ancient Greek mariners. Yes, and ancient mermaids could be actually very helpful or very dangerous, depending on their attitude to you and your attitude to them. Now, I got actually into this research partly through Corinth, because it turns out that at the Temple of Poseidon at Corinth, there was once in the second century, when the travel guide Pausanias visited, there was once a fantastic statue of a mermaid, the mermaid Thetis, who was the most powerful of all the ancient mermaids.

So let's delve into the background first of all of this topic, because the context of this all, when looking at the emergence of coastal religious landscapes, go into the first millennium BC, early first millennium BC, because this is a time, isn't it, when you see ancient Greek mariners, the presence of Greek sailors all across the Mediterranean from the eastern edges of the Black Sea to the coast of Spain. That's right. So it's a very important time for seafaring religion and seafaring cults because all of these myriad beliefs of different coastal dwellers all around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were becoming systematized into one idea of Greek mythology of the sea and Greek religion of the sea, which were very much intertwined. So from being just the sailors, the fishermen, the travelers of the Aegean,

the Greeks went all around the Black Sea and they settled the coasts of the Black Sea with a series of colonies in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. So by the classical era, there was a thoroughly Greek character to the cities and the traditions on the edges of the Black Sea. But it wasn't just around the Black Sea. It was also, as you mentioned, along the coasts of Italy and Spain, what's now France, particularly Marseille, and then down at the actual mouth of the Mediterranean around Gibraltar. So throughout this whole circuit of watery coasts, there was an emerging idea that the sea itself was inhabited not just by fish and whales and octopuses and all of the sea birds that still live in the Mediterranean, but that there were also half human, half fish, men and women, mer men and mer women, mer people, mermaids. And of course,

you know, this is completely fantastical, right? There's no such thing. But it became thoroughly believed from one end of the Mediterranean to the other end of the Black Sea, they were out there. And in fact, that they might be helpful or harmful for sailors who encountered them far from shore or who even encountered them at the shore where they might even come up to see what was going on in the world of the humans. It is really interesting when you delve into that, when you look at those Greek settlements across the Black Sea or wherever, how they brought with them, not gods, but these mythical creatures, these sea nymphs, these mermaids. We might call them demigods or daimones, spirits. The word in Greek, daimones, later became demons. For the Greeks, the daimon or daimona was a helpful spirit of a sort. Also,

recently, a scholar called Emma Aston has written a fantastic book called Mix Anthropoi. She's coined this term to call them a mix between people, anthropoi, and, you know, something else. So, the centaurs are the most famous Mix Anthropoi of the land that are, you know, something else. So the centaurs are the most famous mix anthropoi of the land that are, you know, half horse and half man or woman. But in the sea, I think the mermaid is definitely the most famous mix anthropos of ancient Greek and later Roman mythology. And so what types of sources do we have available when looking at these mermaids and their importance to ancient Greek mariners? Well, it's very hard to bring these different kinds of sources together because we have mythology like Homer's Odyssey and all of the crazy characters, including merpeople that Odysseus encounters in his voyages to the far west of the Mediterranean. So you have mythical, epic poetry,

but you've also got the much more historically grounded guidebook of Pausanias. As he's going around Greece in his itinerary, he says in various places there is a statue in a temple of a mermaid, a half woman and half fish. And this, you know, reminds him of other statues in temples of half women, half fish that he's seen, not just in Greece, but also in places like Syria or on the coast of the Black Sea. And so when talking about these figures, I have in my notes one particular type of these mermaids, which are, and forgive me if my pronunciation is completely wrong, what are the Nereids? So the Nereids are the daughters of Nereus, and Nereus is one of the old men of the sea.

So besides mermaids, there are also these very venerable elderly men, some of whom are mermen, like Triton in The Little Mermaid, and some of whom are shapeshifters. They can change to be old men, or to be fish, or to be other creatures. And Nereus is one of the old men of the sea, and his daughters are the Nereids. So Hesiod's Theogony, which is another important source, is an epic poem of the 8th century BC. And in that poem, Hesiod tells the story of the Theogony, the birth of the gods, and he continues through the children and grandchildren of the gods. And eventually, after the creation of the ocean, he comes to Nereus, the son of the ocean, and then he comes to the Nereids, the daughters of Nereus.

And there are 50 of them, and he gives all 50 of their names, actually, including Thetis, the mother of Achilles, but also many, many names of women who have very well-omened names. So, you know, she who makes the sea calm, Galini, or she who is good in the harbour, Ulimeni. He enumerates all 50. He says that these are the daughters of Nereus, the Nereids, the sea nymphs, the young women who live in the sea and assist mariners. Well, you mentioned Thetis, so I'm going to ask about that first, because of all of the sea nymphs, it does seem that Thetis is arguably the most prominent of them all. Yes. So she has the most prominent role in mythology as the mother of the hero Achilles. And the hero Achilles features very prominently in the Iliad,

the story of the Trojan War, but he's also a more minor figure in many other works of epic poetry and also of drama, of ancient Greek and later Roman drama. So because he's so prominent as the greatest warrior of the ancient Greeks, the Achaeans, his mother Thetis also becomes the most prominent of the sea nymphs of the mermaids. And she has a role to play along with him, actually, as a patron of mariners, a good mother. And she's got various mythology associated with her, particularly the dipping of Achilles into the river Styx by his heel, causing him to be completely impervious to weapons except at the heel, which is where Paris would eventually kill him with the help of Apollo at the Trojan War. So there's that story about her, but there's also

the story about her wedding to his mortal father, Peleus. Peleus, who was a king of Thessaly, this eastern harbor region of Greece around Mount Peleon, the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, which was actually dictated by the gods because of a prophecy that Thetis' son would be more powerful than his father. So Thetis had to be safely married off to a mortal rather than any of the gods. And it was at that wedding, too, that the golden apple to the fairest was deposited by the goddess Strife, because she was not invited. And thus, the golden apple led to the judgment of Paris between the goddesses and then to the Trojan War

where Achilles would fight. It's all happening around that area of the Mediterranean, around Thessaly, Euboea, those two places you mentioned, which we will definitely come back to when going deep into history and worship the cult of these mermaids of the Nereids. I mean, it is so fascinating that you mermaids, of the Nereids. I mean, it is so fascinating that you mentioned how, you know, there are 50 different Nereids who are all mentioned by

name, Thetis among them. You have these literary sources, as you said, but it must be extraordinary, remarkable to see on ancient Greek sculpture, the depictions of various sea nymphs in various parts of the Greek world and being able to identify them too. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, we have a wide range of literary sources of texts, you know, things like epic poetry or guidebooks like Pausanias. But we also have a wonderful range of visual evidence of iconography of ancient Greek mermaids, of the Nereids in particular. Half women, half fish, they appear on vase painting, especially following Thetis carrying the armor for Achilles, her son, carrying it across the sea and giving it to Achilles at Troy. the sea and giving it to Achilles at Troy. We do also find them as cult statues in temples.

We find them on coins, especially coins of Syria, actually, where the fish goddess, the mermaid goddess, was a particularly important goddess for the ancient Syrians, I guess both of the coast and of the rivers. And we find it too on the tops of temples, because ancient Greek temples and Roman temples as well had these wonderful acroteria statues at the very top of the temple, and sometimes at the corners of the roof too. And those were sometimes wind goddesses, and sometimes they were mermaids. There was something about the shape, I think, of the woman with her hair blowing in the wind and her kind of fishy tail curling up behind her that made for a very evocative hecrotyrion or even a weathervane sometimes. We know about mermaid and also triton-shaped weathervanes. So mermaids and mermen too were often used as weather vanes on the tops of temples or other public buildings.

How interesting. I mean, my next question was just going to be a big general why question. Why is there so much importance, therefore, alongside prominent ancient Greek gods like Poseidon and the like? Why, of all mythical beasts, are there for mermaids? Why did they become so important for ancient Greek sailors? And I guess on top of that, now that you mentioned it, why then for weather vanes too? Yes. Well, I think in terms of importance, there is a gender aspect to it that the majority of sailors are men. And when they are far from home, they're missing the shore. They're missing their wives or girlfriends or family companionship.

Maybe their mothers, too. And the idea that there are these lovely young women, but also lovely motherly women, because Thetis is also a powerful mother, that they are out there on the seas looking after you. I think that that's a kind of underlying fountain of this mythology. And also, I guess the other big question, therefore, is, do we see this importance, this interest in mermaids for ancient Greek sailors, do we see it in any particular areas of the ancient Mediterranean or do we see it all across the Mediterranean? Well, there are a couple of places that loom large in the mythology and also in the cult practice

of devotion to Thetis and Achilles and to the Nereids more widely. And this is something that I've looked at with my student Niall de Young, who is now doing a PhD at UC Santa Barbara. And I thank her very much for getting me into this research for Thessaly in particular, when she looked at the Persian religion in Herodotus and the fact that Herodotus says after this huge windstorm on the coast of Thessaly in 480 BC that wrecked lots of Persian ships, that the Ionians with the Persian fleet advised the Persian magi to pray to the Nereids and especially to Thetis. So because she was the patron goddess of that stretch of coastline. This is a Persian priest making a sacrifice to an ancient Greek sea myth of Greek mythology. Yes, yeah, to an ancient Greek sea nymph, in order to try and

avert further storms, storms of waves and of wind. The waves and wind, the water and the air are quite closely linked in both Greek and Persian religion, and in devotion to the goddesses of the sea and the sea nymphs, the mermaids of the coast. So Thessaly was one place in particular where devotion to the Nereids was present on the shoreline among the Greeks and among the Persians too when they were there. Nereids were thought to inhabit the caves which are along the coast of Thessaly on Mount Pelion, and also inside of the Pagassi Gulf. Thetis actually was an object of devotion for Thessalians, even inland along the rivers, because you have very large rivers across Thessaly that flow down into the sea. And along those

rivers, we know that there was devotion to Thetis and the Nereids among even the inland Thessalians, who considered themselves to be descended from Achilles, and hence descended from Thetis as well, and Peleus. We know about this devotion, not just from the sanctuaries themselves and from inscriptions on rocks, but from a play that Euripides actually set at the sanctuary of Thetis near the city of Pharsalus. Some of your listeners might be familiar with the city of Pharsalus because of the great battle that was fought there between Caesar and Pompey in the first century BC. But Pharsalus had a long history before and after and is still a major city of Thessaly today. In antiquity, Euripides set his play Andromache about the Trojan princess, queen Andromache,

when she was a slave woman who had been brought back from the Trojan War, and then won her freedom again. He set that play about Andromache at the Sanctuary of Thetis at Pharsalus. So we know most about that sanctuary actually from the play and from just the dramatic instructions that go on in the course of that play which was put on at Athens. Well it's extraordinary as you mentioned Thessaly there also of course Pharsalus home of the elite 300 strong horseman contingents the elite of the elite of the Thessalian cavalry who accompanied Alexander the Great to think that that region which is so you know renowned for its vast plains it's a large area of ancient greece and a lot of it is inland to think to stress that point which you mentioned that you have this sanctuary

of thetis this sea nymph in lands along the rivers i guess really as you say it strengthens the importance of sea nymphs for all the people of thessaly for so many people of thessaly not just those by the coast i'm guessing throughout the time of ancient Greek history, does it almost seem as if the Carthaginians almost extends out from this area to other areas of the Mediterranean? It does. I think that it's very important. Thessaly and Euboea, the great long island just off of its coast, these must have been central places for the formation of Greek mythology as we have it, and central for the formation of the myths and the cults of the sea nymphs. And I think it probably spread from there eastwards to Ionia, to the Ionian coast,

and therefore became incorporated into the epic mythology and the oral tradition that Homer gives us. And it spread southwards into Boeotia, which is where Hesiod was from. Now, Hesiod says that he also traveled into Euboea, but that was the longest sea journey he ever made, just across the little strait between Boeotia and the island of Euboea. But that was far enough to make him also take part in this wider Pan-Hellenic sea nymph devotion, which was an aspect, an important aspect of the cults of mariners more broadly. But it spread even farther than that. It spread to the south into the Peloponnese, and it spread to the north into the coast of the Black Sea.

We'll go to the Black Sea next then, as you said. I mean, but just one quick question from me is a bit more on the purpose of the sea nymphs for these mariner cults. Was their purpose, you mentioned, you know, storms earlier, was it more to prevent storms? Was it for good weather? Or was it to protect sailors from those creatures that they thought lurked beneath the waves, these sea beasts? Ah, that's a really good question. In my reading and in looking at the iconographic evidence, that it was that they had power over wind and waves, and they were also thought to be able to assist sailors in distress. I haven't actually found any evidence that they were going to protect sailors from other sea beasts. There were certainly other sea beasts, both real and imagined.

There were friendly sea beasts and unfriendly sea beasts. Dolphins were also thought to be very helpful. And so sea nymphs and dolphins often were thought to travel together and could both be helpful to mariners. If a ship did sink, then, you know, a nereid or a dolphin might carry you to shore or help you with how to get to shore. There's a famous episode in the Odyssey where Odysseus is just about to be sunk by Poseidon. And the sea nymph Eno or Leucathea, the white goddess, she comes up out of the waves like a seabird, Homer says. comes up out of the waves like a seabird, Homer says. And she gives her veil to Odysseus and says, if you wrap this veil around yourself like a kind of primitive life jacket, then you'll be able to swim to shore. And then once you get to shore, throw the veil back into the sea. This is in the

Odyssey Book 5. So they could help, I think, especially if the wind and waves were too much with getting you back to shore, or, you know, keeping you safe with controlling the wind and waves, you know, making that calm weather that was so suitable, and also making the wind blow in the right direction, you know, for where you wanted to go. Well, as you say, extremely important for where they wanted to go, especially for those longer travels. And as you hinted at earlier, one of those longer travels is if you go north through the Hellespont, through that part of the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. It's so interesting that the Greeks once called it the inhospitable sea, then called it the hospitable sea, because, Amelia, Greek settlement, as you said earlier, is visible along the coastline of the Black Sea.

And the cults, you know, the importance of sea nymphs goes with it. It does. It absolutely does. And it's established already all around the Black Sea in the Archaic era. already all around the Black Sea in the archaic era, so about 25, 26, 2700 years ago. And many of these cities then endure over centuries or millennia because they are at the mouths of the rivers coming into the Black Sea, or they are on good natural harbors. At a majority of these cities we see evidence for devotion from the colonists to these sea nymphs and especially to Thetis and her son Achilles. So there is a tiny island in the northwest part of the Black Sea called Lefki in modern Greek, the White Island. So we have the White Goddess and now we have the White Island and it's covered with devotional objects left by sailors of which the oldest ones are dedicated to Thetis and Achilles in thanks for safe travel into the Black Sea or out of the Black Sea's northwest corner.

So this is the area west of the Crimea and east of the mouth of the Danube and south of modern Ukraine. So this particular island, which some people might know what is the modern name of it, it's been in the news quite recently, but in antiquity this island was incredibly important. It was this sanctuary island, was it, Amelia? It was. It absolutely was. And the French excavated it in the 19th century. And there's a temple there, which was dedicated to Thetis and Achilles. There are pieces of anchors, actually, and there's Greek pottery. It's absolutely fantastic. And then later on, becomes also a stopping place for Christian sailors, too, who leave offerings for the Virgin Mary or other saints of the Orthodox Church as they're passing back and forth. Now, it has, as you mentioned, been, unfortunately, that whole area because the city on the shore as well to the north of it was called by the Greeks Olbia, the happy city, and then later on Boristhenes, the northern power city, you know, the northern wind power, like Boreas, the north

wind. And then that's the city which later became Edessa, and which is still Odessa now. And of course, the island of the Luque is now modern day Snake Island. Of course, the scene of something very early in the conflict that's been occurring over the last couple of months. It's remarkable to see that that particular island has a really rich ancient history in regards to Fetis and Achilles and the worship of them both for sailors. Does this northwestern part of the Black Sea, is this area particularly strong for the cult of mermaids by ancient Greek sailors? Or do we also see examples elsewhere in the Black Sea? Well, this island in particular, and then Olbia, the city of Olbia, those are the two places in the Black Sea. And I think it's

related to their settlement by Miletus, by this important city of Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, and that we see in Miletus and in other cities of the Ionian coast, devotion to sea nymphs, nereids, as part of the kind of maritime cult practice of those cities, not just at the city itself, but also at their colonies. but also at their colonies. So Miletus was the mother city of the majority of the cities around the coast of the Black Sea. And I think the Milesians would have brought her along with them as they were settling and setting up temples to gods and goddesses like Apollo and Aphrodite, but also to these heroes in a way, the heroes and their mermaids, sea nymphs, and the boys or young men of the shore that they were thought to have conceived, not just Achilles, but also the Dioscuri were very popular among mariners, these young men

who were brothers of Helen. and Helen herself was also present, and was said to actually to have become the wife of Achilles on the island of Leuke. Kind of weird, kind of bizarre, but I guess, you know, if she and her brothers are protectors of mariners, and so is Achilles and his mother, his sea nymph mother, that they were all happily there together on the island of Leuke. And so it would make sense that Helen would marry Achilles. Do we have from this area sculptural depictions surviving of sea nymphs of Thetis or Achilles or so on from either Olbia or Lucca, from that area of the Black Sea? I'm not as familiar with the temple sculpture, but there is wonderful graffiti on the walls of public buildings. And there's also small portable objects, things like seal stones and gems and such

that have these kinds of depictions on them. And we do find more of that at Olbia and at Leuke than other Greek cities. Those smaller portable items, could they actually be more precious? Because those are the sorts of items that you could imagine a Greek sailor taking with them on a journey, on a voyage as a representation of the mermaid, of those divine semi-mythical, well, those mythical patrons. Absolutely, absolutely. And there's amazing research, especially by Chris Ferroni, on amulets and seal stones and imagery on these small portable objects that were carried for safety by sea.

There was a particular importance attached to color, the color red or orange, like coral, and real coral, if one could get it. There was also, you know, use of blue and green and purple and other colors that would convey calm and a calm sea and a following wind, that sort of thing. A lot of these small portable objects do have images of mermaids or sea nymphs, nereids on them that a sailor could take along with him wherever he went and would bring him good luck, hopefully, and protection from the dangerous elements, the extremes of weather.

Throughout June on Not Just the Tudors, we're honoring Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee by focusing on queenship in the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and all this month with my guests, I'll be exploring the coronations of Tudor queens, queen's regnant and queen's consort, who wielded power in ways we haven't thought about. Really, when we begin to look at queen consorts, we notice that there's a lot of ways that the Renaissance court that women could hold informal power through their relationship with the king. Then there's the queen who ruled over the Spanish Netherlands and the female Swedish king.

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whilst you were sailing because of the real dangers of the real peril of sea travel at that time absolutely absolutely for the greeks and later on for the romans we have some wonderful expressions of the real dangers, of the real peril of sea travel at that time. Absolutely, absolutely. For the Greeks and later on for the Romans, we have some wonderful expressions in the mythology and in the poetry as well about how dangerous it was that you were just the width of one board away from life or death. That was the thickness of the hull. And the dangers actually increased in the wintertime, and they also increased the further north you went into the Black Sea. But there were

also a lot of human dangers too. There were pirates, unscrupulous captains or crews, they also could be as dangerous in some ways as the waves or the wind itself. In some ways also going out of sight of land was actually safer than being close to shore because there was less chance of running aground on rocks or other dangers that would be of the shore. A sailor had to also know where they were going, be able to navigate by the stars, especially by the planets and the moon, in order to be far enough away from shore that you wouldn't run ashore by accident. Well, there you go. It's absolutely important.

Very critical back then, as you rightly stated. I mean, I guess one other place where the shores weren't too far away, and we're talking about the sea crossing, as we're heading south, you mentioned the Romans. We'll get to the Romans very quickly. But if we go to the Hellespont, this key crossing area for armies in antiquity,

the Persians, but of course, Alexander the Great too. And is there also a reference to Alexander the Great? He recognises the importance of the Nereids for sea travel too. Yes, he absolutely did. Now, part of that is that he liked to emulate Achilles whenever possible. Achilles was his inspiration, his heroic inspiration. And so the historian Arian says that in the middle of the Hellespont, Alexander the Great stopped his entire fleet and they all sacrificed to the Nereids and especially to Thetis, the mother of Achilles, in the middle of the Hellespont. And the Hellespont itself is a place of many stories and many myths around Nereids and sea nymphs coming to the assistance. And in the mouth of the Black Sea, actually, there was a holy place called Hieron, just the holy

place, the sanctuary. And this is somewhere where those entering or leaving the Black Sea for the Bosporus could actually make their sacrifices on shore and avoid the dangers of the clashing rocks, which were a Greek myth that somehow in the navigation through the Bosporus and the Hellespont from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean Sea, one might face the danger of rocky faces actually just crashing together and swallowing you up. Now, of course, this doesn't happen in real life, but there are very strong currents all through the Black Sea, the passage from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean and vice versa. There are very strong currents which might well sweep a ship onto the rocks. That could be avoided if one had the assistance of enough sea nymphs who might keep the ship safe out in the middle of the water,

the middle of the strait. Yes, make sure you've got enough sea nymphs on your side, enough of the 50, as you say. Exactly. So if we head further south, because just before we head a bit further west, you did mention another area where sea nymphs do seem to have some importance in the sea travel for ancient Greek sailors. And this is the Peloponnese. So a bit further south, but also an important place when looking at sea nymphs and ancient Greek maritime history. And there were important shrines right on the seashore at most of the major ports of the Peloponnese. So at Isthmia, of course, at Corinth, down by the beach on the east and west sides of the Isthmus. The two that I want to point out the most are those of Messenia and Sparta. Now, of course, Spartans conquered Messenia, but then they got driven out again in

the Hellenistic era. Just on the south side of Messenia, there is today the modern city of Kalamata, which has grown up on top of ancient Pherae. And just a little south of that, there is the beautiful seaside town of Kardamili, which has become famous in modern times as the home of Patrick Lee Firmer. And now since his death, still a writer's center and retreat with his house there. Now Pausanias in his Guide to Greece says at Cardameli there was a major sanctuary right down on the seashore of Thetis and the Nereids and that sailors made devotions there and that this was a special place because it was also where Thetis and the Nereids had actually come closest to the shore because they wanted to see Pyrrhus or Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, as he was sailing by on his way to Sparta.

Now, he was married in the mythical tradition, in the heroic tradition. He was married to Hermione, who was the only daughter of Helen and Menelaus. The only child of Helen, actually, was the princess Hermione, and she was married to Pyrrhus or Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. Messenia, therefore, was also a really strong place for the Nereids and a strong place of devotion to the Nereids and a strong place of devotion to the Nereids. And it was from Messenia that the Spartans supposedly carried off a very ancient wooden statue of Thetis and also the priestess of the goddess Thetis. And they carried off the priestess and her statue to Sparta as part of their conquest of Messenia and installed her and her statue in a temple in archaic Sparta.

And still in the Roman imperial era, that statue remained and was only accessible actually to women to see it and to take part in the rituals in the city-state of Sparta and also in the city of Sparta. But down on the coast of Sparta, Githio, which was the major port of Sparta in antiquity as it is still now, there was another sanctuary of Thetis and the Nereids, which was available to sailors, so to men as well as women sailing in and out. Supposedly, the statue there had been dedicated by Menelaus himself when he brought Helen back to Sparta to be his wife again after the Trojan War, and when he made thanks for having a safe sea voyage back from Troy to Sparta. You see these connections, don't you, as you said right there, and it's fascinating, isn't it, how Sparta, this power who you might associate with land clashes

and so on, let's say with naval, well, the naval aspect, but it's remarkable to see, once again, as you mentioned, that link with the nymphs. And also, I guess, how in these various areas of the ancient Greek world, how you do have these references to the family of Achilles or Achilles himself, or Thetis, whether it's Thessaly or Neoptolemus or Lucre, how it's in those areas where you get almost the strongest legacy of the sea nymphs with ancient Greek sailors. That's true, yes. Yeah. And especially Sparta is known as a place of this great military power by land. And yet they must have also had far-reaching, at least mercantile connections, because already in the archaic era, the Dioscuri, the princes of Sparta, are associated with the Gemini,

the constellation, and they are also associated with St. Elmo's fire, with this electrical discharge that gathers around ships at sea, was called the Dioscuri, the sons of Zeus, the Spartan princes in antiquity. Again, from Spain to the Black Sea, mariners would say, oh, well, that's the diascuri, they've come to help us, actually. And it would give them faith in storms, that the storm would pass and the stars would come out again, that a clear sky would again be visible. That later became rebranded by the Christians as St. Elmo's fire. Well, rebranded by the Christians indeed. And talking about, let's say, not the classical Greek period or the archaic Greek period, if we do move a bit ahead in history to the Roman period,

I mean, Amelia, we have covered centuries therefore, but in regards to mermaids for sailors, therefore, but in regards to mermaids for sailors, do they retain their importance, do sea nymphs retain their importance for Greek sailors when under Roman rule, when during, let's say, the Roman imperial period? Absolutely, they do. We can definitely see in Pausanias' guidebook, but also in the arts, in the amulets that they carry, in the dedications that they make in thanks for safe arrival, that Greek sailors are still clearly devoted to sea nymphs and to mermaids in their hope of a safe arrival back ashore and help on the sea. There's also some fascinating mermaid cult figures in the Roman imperial era that we know about, not just from Pausanias, but also from the satirist Lucian, and from the second

sophistic orator, Diocrysostom. Now, Diocrysostom has an oration which is actually set at Olbia, at Boristhenes, up on the northern coast of the Black Sea. And Lucian, the satirist from Comagene in what's now southeastern Turkey, he has an entire work about the Syrian goddess who is half fish and half woman. And we have multiple depictions of her on coinage of that area as well. And finally, Pausanias, when he's traveling around Greece, he tells stories about these cults, about the altars by the sea, but also about a fascinating cult statue in Arcadia, of all places, on a river, yes, again, but a little ways from the sea. The Arcadian city of Figalia, which is famous today for its incredibly well-preserved temple of Apollo, Epicurus, Apollo who looks after the young men at Barsai. the Peloponnese, just the part of Arcadia that's closest to the ocean and to the sea,

and looking out over it, had a statue of a mermaid in their main temple in the center of the city. She was called Eurynome, who's one of the Nereids. She of the wide places, I guess, would be what her name means. Anyway, Eurynome was depicted as a mermaid in this temple in Phigalia on the west coast of the Peloponnese. And she was patron of young men woman, but also because the statue was chained to the base so that it could not be stolen, but also so that the goddess herself could not leave the city. She would stay and be their patron no matter what. I love that. I love that.

Chaining it down to make sure it never left. Never left at all. Of course, your previous research has been around Corinth, has been around late antique Corinth and the coming of Christianity and how the landscape changes. You kind of hinted at it with Lucca, the island of Lucca up in the Black Sea earlier.

But do we see with the coming of Christianity to this part of the world, sea nymph statues being removed or the cult being ironed out? What do we know about sea nymphs in this time, in late antiquity? Well, certainly the worship of sea nymphs as an aspect of polytheism and traditional Greek religion is wiped out by Christianity in a very systematic way. We don't have any surviving statues, cult statues of sea nymphs. We have the wholesale conversion of what temples do survive to use as

churches, and the majority of temples are either abandoned or torn down. However, belief in the existence of sea nymphs, of mermaids, is continuous throughout the Middle Ages and up until the modern era. In the Western Mediterranean, they become associated with the sirens, mythical bird women who somehow develop fishy tails and take to the sea. So from the sirens of Greek mythology, we come to having in the Western Mediterranean, strong medieval tradition of sirens of the sea, who actually continue out into the oceans as well. Now, in the Eastern Mediterranean, something a bit different happens. The Greeks and Greek Orthodox Christians who were using the Greek language in their devotional practices, they start to talk more about gorgons of the sea. And so the gorgon, gorgons of the sea. And so the gorgon Medusa and the gorgons of snaky hair, they change into these half female, half fish creatures of the sea. And the gorgonia or gorgones, the gorgons of Greek

sailors, they can be helpful or harmful still to sailors who encounter them. But Patrick Lee Fermer talks about this legend or myth of 19th and 20th century Greek sailors. And I've actually collected various versions of this myth also from Thessaloniki, from Thessalonica and among sailors there, Niki from Thessalonica and among sailors there, that these gorgones or gorgons of modern Greek fishermen's stories, they are still in love with Alexander the Great. There's some strange way in which Achilles turns into Alexander and Fetis turns into a gorgon. And the myth of the modern Greek fishermen's gorgons is that these gorgons can sink ships or they can help still the waves and still the winds and assist. But if they ask you, does Alexander the Great still live and rule? You must reply yes, because they love Alexander. As long as Alexander is still known, then mermaids, Gorgon mermaids, now will assist

sailors who are part of Alexander's legacy. You know, Amelia, I wasn't intentionally trying to steer this conversation at the end towards Alexander the Great, but it's fascinating how he just seems to appear time and time again in these different contexts. The legacy of that man is astonishing and several podcasts could no doubt be done about it. Amelia, this has been absolutely amazing. We are running a bit out of time now, but just before we finish, you are jetting over from Australia to the Mediterranean very soon for a conference, a big conference surrounding sea beasts, mermaids, the ancient Mediterranean, and so much more. What is this conference?

Yes, I'd really like to advise all of your listeners that if they're interested in this topic, then they should either come or zoom in to the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions Conference on the island of Malta from June 25th to 30th on the theme of Sailing with the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean. So this is a conference co-organized by myself and Professor Sandy Blakely of Emory University. And it will be several days of papers from scholars from all over the world, actually, from the US and Australia, from England, France, Spain, Italy, and Malta itself, who are interested in maritime religion of the ancient Mediterranean sailors, the Greeks and the Romans, and the ways in which that Mediterranean maritime religion

manifested in the arts, in literature, in cult practices, ancient Greco-Roman and Hellenic religion in the practices of the mariners themselves, as far as we can recover how they went sailing with the gods. Well, Amelia, it promises to be very exciting indeed. If that's not an excuse for a holiday to the central Mediterranean, then I don't know what is. Amelia, it's wonderful to have had you back on the podcast today. And it only goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. You're welcome. Thanks for interviewing me, Tristan, and having me back on the show. It's been a real pleasure to talk about this research and

this fascinating area of the ancient Greek mermaids. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Amelia Brown explaining all about these ancient mermaids, about the sea nymphs of ancient Greek mythology and their importance. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now a few notes from me before completely wrapping up this episode. Next week I will be at Chalk Valley. I'll be at the History Festival down near Salisbury. We've got a couple of live interviews occurring down there. We've got one on Neanderthals with Dr Rebecca Rag Sykes. i'm really looking forward to that one we've also got an interview with toby wilkinson all about tutankhamun's trumpet a hundred objects from ancient egypt that also promises to be really really good indeed

love doing ancient egyptian stuff and we also have got a couple of history hit ancient reenactments from the assassination of julius ca. We'll be getting the audience involved in the events of the Ides of March, 44 BC. And also we'll be doing a reenactment of Alexander the Great's victory at the Battle of Gaucamela. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I'm also going to be doing a talk at Chalk Valley

on the death of Alexander the Great. Basically, long story short, we've got a lot of history hit ancient events happening at Chalk Valley this year, alongside the other history hit events going on. So if you can make it down to Chalk Valley one of those days next week, have a look at the schedule, see what we're doing, and it'd be lovely to meet you in person. So if you can, we'd love to see you. I'd love to see you. If you'd like more ancient content, well, you can, of course, subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below.

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