Rainbows in mythology: Encyclopedia II - Rainbows in mythology - Greek mythology

Rainbows in mythology - Greek mythology

"In the Greek pantheon, the antiquity of Iris is as great as her importance is small." Daughter of 1st generation gods Electra and Thaumas, Iris dresses in rainbow colors. As messenger of the gods, she flies on golden wings. Iris appears in nine of the twenty-four books of Homer’s The Iliad, always speeding with the winds, delivering news.

Consistent with the rest of Greek myth, Iris’s swiftly delivered messages were rarely of peace or good fortune. One job of Iris was to fill a golden jug with holy water for Zeus, who made misbehaving gods take a most binding oath on this holy water. Another duty of Iris was to sever the souls of women by cutting their hair. However, like many Greek gods, Iris is continually being redefined. The rainbow eventually became solely a mode of transportation for Iris, who proves to be as elusive and unpredictable (yet unforgettable) as the rainbow itself.

Homer started the Greek tradition of not much divulgion on any natural phenomenon’s association with a god/goddess. Homer had a fear of assigning too much of the natural phenomenon to the god that signified it. Was it fear of Zeus’s lightning bolt, or fear of lack of perspective? Maybe neither. Homer was able to see that the rainbow, like other natural phenomenon, cannot be predicted or accounted for. Possibly Homer just felt that to anthropomorphize natural phenomenon (like the rainbow) too closely, would be like jinxing ourselves with the chaos and unpredictability that is inherent in these natural phenomena.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Greek mythology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki