Aidos

Aidos
Flagellation mural from the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. The Winged figure on the right holding a whip has some scholars suggest to be Aidos
Goddess of shame, modesty, reverence, respect, and humility.
General Information
Species	Goddess, Daemon
Gender identity	Female
Relationships
Parents	Prometheus (Pindar)
Equivalents
Roman equivalent	Pudicitia

Aidos or Aedos (Ancient Greek: Αἰδώς) was the Greek goddess or daemon of shame, modesty, respect, and humility.

Aidos, as a quality, was that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men from wrong. It also encompassed the emotion that a rich person might feel in the presence of the impoverished, that their disparity of wealth, whether a matter of luck or merit, was ultimately undeserved.

Mythologically, she is often considered to be more of a personification than a physical deity.

Mythology & Sources

Modesty (Aidos) and Justice (Nemesis) returning to heaven. Composition from The Works, Days, And Theogony Of Hesiod. Designed By John Flaxman and Engraved By William Blake. 1817

In Hesiod's Works and Days, she was the last goddess with Nemesis to leave the earth after the Golden Age. She was also a close companion of the goddess of vengeance Nemesis.

“	Among the men of the fifth age . . . There will be no favour for the man who keeps his oath or for the Just (dikaios) or for the Good (agathos); but rather men will praise the evil-doer (kakos) and his violent dealing (hubris). Strength will be right (dike) and reverence (aidos) will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy (zelos), foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all. And then Aidos (Shame) and Nemesis (Indignation), with their sweet forms wrapped in white robes, will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter sorrows (lugra algea) will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.	”
–Hesiod, Works and Days

In Pindar's Olympian Odes, he calls Aidos a daughter of Prometheus.

“	...She who casts excellence and joys into men is the daughter of Prometheus (Forethought), Aidos (Reverence).	”
–Pindar, Olympian Odes, Olympian Ode For Diagoras of Rhodes' Boxing-Match

Pindar also said in his Nemean Odes that Aidos "which brings renown, is secretly beguiled by the love of gain" and that she was the one "who armed his warrior-spirit to repel the destruction of the war-god [Ares]".

Aidos also appeared in The Anacreontea, the title given to a collection of some sixty Greek poems on the topics of wine, beauty, erotic love, and the worship of Dionysus. The corpus date to between the 1st century BC and the 6th century AD, and is attributed pseudepigraphically to the lyric poet Anacreon.

In a surviving fragment, titled by scholars as To a Painter, it is about a painter to a subject and how specifically he wish to "Make his downy cheek as rosy as an apple, and, if possible, add a blush like that of Aidos (Modesty)"

In Plutarch's How the young man should study poetry, a surviving fragment by the poet Timotheus of Miletus is accounted for, he said that:

"Timotheus based on these lines the splendid exhortation of the Greeks in his Persians:

Have respect for Shame (Aidos), the helpmate of spear-fighting Valour. (Arete)"

Aeschyne

Some sources mention Aeschyne (Ancient Greek: Αἰσχύνη) as a personification of shame and reverence.

In Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, Eteocles said this about Melanippus:

“	I will station the trusty son of Astacus [Melanippus] as defender of this gate, since he is full noble and reveres the throne of Aeschyne (Honor) and detests proud speech. He is slow to act disgracefully, and he has no cowardly nature.	”
–Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes

One of Aesop's fables is about Zeus and Aeschyne, and sodomy:

“	After he had created people, Zeus immediately implanted in them all the possible human character traits, but he forgot about Shame. Since he didn't know how to get Aeschyne (Shame) inside the human body, he ordered her to go in from behind. At first Aeschyne (Shame) protested, considering Zeus's request to be beneath her dignity. When Zeus kept insisting, she said, 'All right, I will go in there, on the condition that if anything comes in there after me, I will leave immediately.' As a result, people who engage in sodomy have no sense of shame.	”
–Aesop, Fables

Worship

In Pausanias' Description of Greece, he attests that there was an altar to Aidos in Athens, along with Eleos, Pheme, and Horme.

“	In the Athenian market-place among the objects not generally known is an altar to Eleos (Mercy), of all divinities the most useful in the life of mortals and in the vicissitudes of fortune, but honored by the Athenians alone among the Greeks. And they are conspicuous not only for their humanity but also for their devotion to religion. They have an altar to Aidos (Shamefulness), one to Pheme (Rumor) and one to Horme (Effort). It is quite obvious that those who excel in piety are correspondingly rewarded by good fortune.	”
–Pausanias, Description of Greece

Pausanias also attests that in Sparta they have an altar to Aidos that was dedicated by Icarius.

“	The image of Aidos (Modesty), some thirty stades distant from the city, they say was dedicated by Icarius, the following being the reason for making it. When Icarius gave Penelope in marriage to Odysseus, he tried to make Odysseus himself settle in Lacedaemon, but failing in the attempt, he next besought his daughter to remain behind, and when she was setting forth to Ithaca he followed the chariot, begging her to stay.	”
–Pausanias, Description of Greece

References

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Aidos (view authors). As with Myth and Folklore Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported).