Hera, Aphrodite, Athena

In My Humble Opinion
41

I was going to say Aphrodite, but you said specifically that Hera was the most physically beautiful, and that’s what beauty contests are about. I’m screwed no matter who I pick, so I might as well do my job correctly.

Though, honestly, as much as Zeus sleeps around, I have a hard time believing that Hera would be the most beautiful. She just isn’t typically described as beautiful, either. Aphrodite is described as traditionally beautiful, and Athena has her athletic charms, but Hera is usually described like an older lady who has to doll up to look good.

42

From what I’d heard, Artemis didn’t give a damn what any man thought of her looks.

Unless Zeus thinks you’ve got the hots for his wife, in which case you are f****d beyond all description.

43

And the other 0.1% are soon going to have snakes growing out of their heads.

44

FWIW, Hera’s supposed to be the one with the biggest boobs.

45

Regardless of the actual dictionary definition, is there a woman alive who’d take it as a compliment to be called “Junoesque?”

46

I have a feeling that if you can’t be clever on your own, like Odysseus, Athena would soon grow tired of you. But you have to tread a very thin line of not being too clever for your own good, as Odysseus did on several notable occasions.

All three are akin to alpha females you do not want to cross. Athena strikes me as something like Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada, and Aphrodite as Christina Hendricks in Mad Men. Hera? Maybe Polly Walker in Rome. In their respective universes, get on the bad side of any of them and God help you.

47

Ha!

48

Which for some guys is a major turn-on. It gets them hard.

49

The version I learned was that Arachne claimed to be a better weaver than Athena, they had a contest and Arachne did better but chose as her theme the Fuckups of the Gods which pissed Athena off enough that she turned her into a spider.

50

On a side note, was Arachne supposed to be the very first spider (thereby making the myth a just-so story) or did spiders exist before her run-in with Athena?

51

My memory is that it was to explain why spiders spin (weave) webs, but not to explain why spiders themselves exist.

52

So does that mean in Classical mythology there were spiders before Arachne but they didn’t know how to spin webs?

53

Well, you know what they say : no matter how achingly beautiful the woman, someone somewhere is tired of her shit.

54

And Hera does have a lot of shit. Pretty much everything I remember from Greek Mythology class had her being pretty evil.

55

ISTM that a lot of posters are implicitly answering some variation on the question, “which one of these goddesses would you like to hang around with indefinitely?” For me, Athena would win that contest easily.

But that’s not the question. It’s, which of their gifts do you want?

And I figure I’m already pretty damned smart, which hardly makes me exceptional around here. So Athena’s gift has less of a potential upside to me or most other Dopers than it might to a kid like Paris.

Pushing 60, my sex drive isn’t what it was 20 years ago, so Aphrodite’s gift loses a great deal of its appeal right there.

But Hera’s…hey, I can see a lot that’s wrong with the world, and while many problems are intractable, some of them would be downright easy to solve by fiat, if only I had the fiat. Hera’s offering me that. Done.

56

Athena -> develop molecular nanotechnology -> functional omnipotence (within the boundaries of physical laws) and immortality.

57

I’m pretty sure you’re screwed no matter who you pick; the question is, in what way? Paris chose the bribe of the most beautiful woman in the world- who happened to be married to a jealous and powerful king, hence the Trojan war. If another goddess had won, I wonder what other disasters would have happened instead?

58

Exactly. The Olympians were not the Tooth Fairy; they were all tricksters to one degree or another. About the worst thing that could happen was to attract their attention. The central theme of Greek and Roman mythology is hubris - your downfall *will *come, blessings of the gods or no. Ask Achilles, Odysseus, Heracles, Io, Daphne, Leda…

Paris was fucked any way he chose. He just chose to be fucked while getting fucked.

Being as I’m happily married and war sickens me, I’m going to go with Hera. I’ll be fucked, but I’ll be well fed and waited on while I’m getting fucked, and might make a few good changes to the world before my inevitable downfall.

59

I remember that episode. I thought it odd that the actress paying Athena was MUCH hotter than the actress playing Aphrodite.

60

Being overlooked here is the fact that the goddesses all tried to bribe Paris:
Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite offered the world’s most beautiful woman, Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Aphrodite also used the Charites and the Horai to enhance her charms with flowers and song.