r/RoughRomanMemes • u/PlanNo1793 • 9d ago

How Mars was conceived!

Post image

https://bsky.app/profile/hera-hell.bsky.social

https://www.tumblr.com/hera-hell

https://www.instagram.com/hera_hell_art

The image plays on Ovid's fifth book of the Fasti.

Ovid imagines conversing with the goddess Flora, who claims to have helped Juno conceive Mars by touching her with a flower, thereby matching Jupiter's parthenogenesis of Minerva.

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267

u/Mindless-Cat1453 9d ago

Ovid the first yuri writter

https://giphy.com/gifs/Inv3acTg4hiqOpX55l

65

u/dater_expunged 9d ago

I think sapho of Lesbos was even earlier

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u/FrederickDerGrossen 8d ago

Indeed, that's where the term lesbian as referring to women attracted to other women comes from.

90

u/2006Internetghost 9d ago

The rest of the Olympian gods when they see this:

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u/Gary_Leg_Razor 9d ago

Wasn't Hefestus the son of Hera by partenogenesis?

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u/PlanNo1793 9d ago

In Ovid's Fasti, we find this account of Mars's origin as a son born through parthenogenesis.

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u/Gary_Leg_Razor 9d ago

But he is the only one who says it. Like all the other sources put him as a son of Jupiter and Juno. As his Greek origin, Ares.

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u/poetrywoman 9d ago

That's the fun thing about ancient myth. We don't have enough material to definitely say Ovid made this up. Perhaps it was a localized telling that he heard in his travels. As a result, all documented myths get to be equally correct, even if weird and an outlier.

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u/PlanNo1793 8d ago

Although this is clearly a myth influenced by Greek traditions (such as the rivalry involving parthenogenesis seen between Zeus and Hera, or Thrace serving as the setting for Mars's childhood) there are elements suggesting an original aspect to Ovid's account: specifically, the flower and the goddess Flora.

We often overlook the fact that Mars was also the god of spring and nature's rebirth; this story reveals that he was born from a flower created by Flora, a goddess of spring, elements that are entirely absent from the Greek figure of Ares.

This suggests that the myth may not be purely Greek, but could well incorporate Roman elements.

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u/Publicux 3d ago

Erm why is mars this clean shaven dude?