I have been meaning to add a horse to my collection for a while. if you were to look at my sketch book you’d see page after page of horse sketch. I finally settled on a greek theme. I nearly went with the The Trojan Horse, But I changed my mind!
The Siege of Troy.
In a nut shell the story goes like this, Paris, a trojan, steels Helen from her husband Menelaus king of Sparta. Why did he do it? The poor lad was manipulated by the powers above! It started with a vanity-fueled dispute among three goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite sparked by another Goddess, Eris (strife), Eris inscribed an apple,”to the fairest” and tossed it umogst the festivities at a wedding sparking the quarrel between the 3 goddesses about who indeed the fairest. Zeus (king of the gods) wanted to settle the dispute and so sent the three goddesses to Paris to settle the argument. Who was the fairest? well,each Goddess tried to bribe him, the most tempting bribe to Paris was Aphrodite’s who offered Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Oh dear!
Menelaus and Agamemnon (his brother) led a greek expedition to Troy to retrieve Helen from Paris. This was the start of the Trojan war which was a 10 year siege on Troy
The war terminated with the scam of the Trojan Horse. The Greeks built a wooden horse and hid an elite group of soldiers in it, they wrote an inscription on it,”For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena” (the goddess of wisdom) and left by boat back to Greece. (well they appeared too!) The Trojans despite a warning from Laocoon, Helen and Cassandra that it was a bad idea, pulled the horse into the city.
The elite force inside the horse now attacked, as did the greek army that had not sailed back to Greece but had just laid in wait. Troy fell, game over. Goodnight Vienna!
Spring is in the Air
But war and con tricks don’t really fit with my theme of Animals in there natural habitat! Fortunately there are a lot of horses in greek mythology.
The Anemoi were the four wind gods, They were often depicted as horses, each ascribed a cardinal direction from which their respective winds came. Zephyrus was the west wind, the gentlest of the winds, known as the messenger of spring.
Zephyrus is most commonly depicted as a winged youth, the most famous myth about him is his rivalry with Apollo (greek sun god) for the love of Hyakinthos. Hyakinthos chose Apollo and this drove Zephyrus mad with jealousy, yeah you guessed it, It’s a greek myth, it’s going to end badly, and it does! Zephyrus saw Apollo and Hyacinth playing quoits in a meadow, Zephyrus insane with jealousy struck the quoit with a gust of wind which struck Hyakinthos on the head and killed him. Very sad! In his grief Apollo created the hyacinth flower from his blood.
Zephyrus’ Roman equivalent was Favonius, who held dominion over plants and flowers
Below you can see the watercolour in progress.
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