Today is Feast of the Charities Day, the Charities, or Graces, being minor Greek goddesses. 10 things to know about them:
They are a group which vary in number although most commonly depicted as a group of three: Aglaea (brightness, splendour, elegance), Euphrosyne (mirth, joy and good cheer) and Thalia (festivity, youth, beauty).
The poet Hermesianax included a fourth, Peitho (persuasion) while Sparta excluded Thalia and included Kleta and Phaenna instead. In Athens, they’d add Auxo and Hegemone.
The Graces represented the pleasures of life, such as beauty, charm and creativity, and also the qualities the ancient Greeks found attractive in young women. Their ideal young woman was beautiful, and also a source of good cheer and brightness of spirit.
There seems to be some confusion as to who their parents were. Some say Zeus and Oceanid Eurynome, others Dionysus and Aphrodite or Helios and Aegle. Some ancient authors say Hera was their nurse.
Their function in mythology was to serve and bring pleasure to other gods during feasts and dances. They were servants to Aphrodite, bathing and anointing her in Paphos before her seduction of Ankhises. Because of this they were also seen as the goddesses of makeup, oils, Perfumes, fine clothing, and jewellery.
In some accounts they are associated with shooting stars.
They would dance for the other gods to the music of Apollo’s lyre.
Aglaea is the youngest, and was the wife of Hephaestus, the Greek god of artisans, blacksmiths, carpenters, craftsmen, fire, metallurgy, metalworking, sculpture and volcanoes.
In ancient Greece, they were usually depicted fully clothed, in a line, dancing. Somewhere along the line, they lost all their clothes as later artists tended to depict them naked.
Their cult was based around fertility, nature, springs and rivers. Their festival was called Charisia and it was basically a dance which lasted through the night. Anyone who managed to stay awake throughout the whole thing would be rewarded with a Cake.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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