Finding differences in mythological depictions - my experience with the MANTO project.
written by Jade Wallace
During the Session 1 2024 mid-semester break I was lucky enough to be chosen as a PACE Intern for the MANTO project, an exciting project with a premise that immediately had me hooked; we’d be contributing to “an ambitious initiative to create a digital model of the storyworld of Greek myth.” The experience itself did not disappoint. We hit the ground running, looking through images of Pompeiian wall art for evidence of Greek mythological scenes, and classifying them in a way so we could systematically enter data into MANTO.
While at first apprehensive about working with a Linked Open Data set for the first time, I found myself enjoying the almost trance-like process of rhythmically finding images of my favourite Greek myths, sorting them into subjects, predicates and objects and so on, and making entries, knowing that they might help someone learn about Greek myth or contribute to their research. While realising how Linked Open Data could be utilised to make Greek myth easily accessible and readable, qualities that really stood out to a university ancient history student that has spent many hours trawling through library collections and internet pages looking for shreds of ancient evidence, there was a different highlight from the internship experience that stuck out to me - finding Pompeiian wall paintings of the mythological figures of Eosphoros and Hesperos.
It was during one of my “trance-like processes” that I routinely flipped the page of a Pompeii: Pitture e Mosaici volume that I stopped short. There was a Pompeiian wall image of Eosphoros, the winged personification of the morning star, with their counterpart, Hesperos, the personification of the evening star. This specific image (found at r7-i16-p22-space-62 East wall) depicted Eosphoros and Hesperos in competition with each other, likely competing for Apollo’s favour although we can’t be certain. While I’d heard of these figures before, I had never seen any ancient depictions of them, and I became very intrigued. It wasn’t long before I came across a different image, (found at r9-i1-p20-space-s East wall) this time depicting only Hesperos with Aphrodite. It was at this point my interest was properly piqued, and I used MANTO to do a deep dive on these figures and learned that there were noticeable imbalances and differences in portrayals that hinted at how these figures have evolved and changed.
Image: Drawing by Nicola La Volpe, 1866, of wall painting of Hesperus and Venus with a Cupid, now in mediocre condition and faded, from east wall House of the Diadumeni, Pompeii. Image: Wikicommons
Thanks to MANTO’s ability to easily present data from ancient sources, I could easily find other ancient depictions and mentions of Eosphoros and Hesperos, helping me make sense of how representations of these figures differed. For instance, their parentage and familial relations change across different entries. MANTO also reflects that there appear to be far more ancient depictions of Hesperos, while Eosphoros is much harder to come across. I immediately questioned why. Considering it was Eosphoros that is believed to have later evolved into the largely popular figure of Lucifer, known best for their appearance in the Christian religion, I assumed Eosphoros would be more commonly depicted, yet the reverse is true. Using MANTO to easily spot these differences was both extremely useful and wholly satisfying.
Being involved with the MANTO PACE project was a far more valuable experience than I ever could have imagined, and I look forward to utilising it in my studies.
This is the third in a series of blog posts from students at Macquarie University who are participating in this semester’s PACE internship.