MDDM Ch. 32 Twins

[David Morris]

http://www.cultures.com/greek_resources/greek_encyclopedia/greek_entry.html/dioscuri_e.html

Dioscuri (dye-us-KOO-ree)
The Hero Twins of Sparta, Castor and Polydeuces. When Theseus abducted their 
sister, later renowned as Helen of Troy, they succeeded in rescuing her. 
Since Polydeuces was immortal and Castor was not, they were at first 
separated after death. Polydeuces was admitted to Olympus while Castor was 
sent to the Underworld. But the gods relented and allowed them to spend 
eternity together, half the year in one place and half in the other.

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/DIOSCURI.html

The DIOSCURI are the twin brothers Castor 1 and Polydeuces ("Castor and 
Pollux"). These brothers were most affectionate: they never strove in 
rivalry for the leadership and they never acted without consulting each 
other, which is a distinctive mark of real brotherhood. Poseidon gave them 
the power to aid shipwrecked men, stilling winds and waves. The DIOSCURI 
were still alive when the seducer Paris abducted their sister Helen, but 
they had already left this world when the Trojan War broke up.

Birth:  Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda, and on the same 
night Tyndareus, king of Sparta, also made love to her. This is why she 
bore, beneath the peak of Mount Taygetus (in Laconia) Polydeuces and Helen 
to Zeus, and Castor 1 and Clytaemnestra to Tyndareus. Because of their 
different parentage, Polydeuces was immortal and Castor 1 mortal.


http://www.loggia.com/myth/dioscuri.html

Castor was famous for taming and managing horses, and Polydeuces for skill 
in boxing. They were united by the warmest affection and inseparable in all 
their enterprises. They accompanied the Argonautic expedition. During the 
voyage a storm arose, and Orpheus prayed to the gods, and played on his 
harp, whereupon the storm ceased and stars appeared in the heads of the 
brothers. From this incident, Castor and Polydeuces came afterwards to be 
considered the patron deities of seamen and voyagers, and the lambent 
flames, which in certain states of atmosphere play round the sails and masts 
of vessels, were called by their names.

After the Argonautic expedition, we find Castor and Polydeuces engaged in a 
war with Idas and Lynceus. Castor was slain, and Polydeuces, inconsolable 
for the loss of his brother, besought Zeus to be permitted to give his own 
life as a ransom for him. Zeus so far consented as to allow the two brothers 
to enjoy the boon of life alternately, passing one day under the earth and 
the next in the heavenly abodes. According to another form of the story, 
Zeus rewarded the brothers by placing them among the stars as Gemini the 
Twins.

They received divine honors under the name of Dioscuri.



>From: "Otto" <o.sell at telda.net>
>
>"Who should be listening to a Tale of Geminity," explains Pliny, "if not 
>Twins." (315.10-11)
>
>Once upon a time, in myth, twins signified whatever dualism a culture 
>entertained: mortal/immortal, good/evil, creation/destruction, what had 
>they. In western literature since the romantic period, twins (and doubles, 
>shadows, mirrors) usually signify the "divided self," our secret sharer or 
>inner adversary--even the schizophrenia some neo-Freudians maintain lies 
>near the dark heart of writing. Aristophanes, in Plato's _Symposium_, 
>declares we are all of us twins,* indeed a kind of Siamese twins, who have 
>lost and who seek eternally our missing half. The loss accounts for 
>alienation, our felt distance from man and god; the search accounts for 
>both erotic love and the mystic's goal of divine atonement.

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