| Astraea | |
|---|---|
Goddess of justice, the constellation Virgo | |
 An 1886 bas-relief figure ofAstraea in the Old Supreme Court Chamber at theVermont State House. | |
| Greek | Ἀστραία |
| Abode | Earth(formerly) Sky(currently) |
| Symbols | Corn, scales of justice |
| Genealogy | |
| Parents | |
| Siblings | Anemoi,Horae,Planetae,Pudicitia |
Inancient Greek religion andmythology,Astraea (/æˈstriːə/;Ancient Greek:Ἀστραία,romanized: Astraía,lit. 'starry, star-like'[1]), also spelledAstrea orAstria, is a daughter ofAstraeus andEos. She is the virgin goddess of justice, and is closely associated with another Greek justice goddess,Dike, the daughter ofZeus andThemis. Astraea is not to be confused withAsteria, the goddess of the stars and the daughter ofCoeus andPhoebe.
In Greek myth, Astraea lived together with humans on earth during the idealistic Golden Age, when people were virtuous and no evil existed in the world. But as the human race became progressively crueler and more corrupt, Astraea decided to abandon humanity forever and live among the stars as the constellationVirgo. The Virgo was associated with a number of Greek goddesses in antiquity.
Themain beltasteroid5 Astraea is named after her, and her name was also suggested for the planetUranus.[2][3]
The goddess's name "Astraea" (spelled inAncient GreekἈστραία) is derived from the Greek wordἀστήρ (astḗr) meaning 'star'.[4] The wordἀστήρ in turn is inherited from theProto-Indo-European root*h₂ster- ('star'), from*h₂eh₁s-, meaning 'to burn'.[5] Astraea's name thus shares an etymology with the name ofAstraeus, who is her father in some versions, and cousinAsteria.
Astraea is a goddess that personifies justice.[6] When identified with the justice goddessDike, Astraea is made the daughter ofZeus andThemis, or otherwise she is the daughter ofAstraeus andEos-Aurora, goddess of the dawn.[7][8]Juvenal calls Astraea the sister ofPudicitia (the Roman goddess of chastity and equivalent to GreekAidos[9]), and that the two sisters withdrew from the mortal world together.[10] When relating this tale, ancient authors tend to alternate between referring to her asDike orAstraea. As Dike, she is also calledIustitia, the name of the Roman goddess of justice and counterpart to Dike.[11] Astraea was represented holding a pair of scales, symbol of justice and impartiality.[12]
Astraea, the celestial virgin who presided over justice, modesty and good faith,[13] was traditionally said to be the last of the immortals to live together with humans during theGolden Age, the first of theold Greek religion's fiveAges of Man until the coming of the harsh Iron Age, when the world fell into disarray and people only coveted gold, while family and friends would no longer trust each other.[14]
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The myth of Astraea has been variously attributed to eighth-century BC Greek poetHesiod, who in his surviving works prophesied that since mankind had deteriorated so much in morality and virtue during his era (that is the Fifth Age, or Iron Age) the goddessesNemesis andAidos, who embodied divine retribution and humility respectively, would finally abandon the earth once and for all and return toMount Olympus by the end of it, forsaking men and leaving them to deal with the hardships and evils on their own.[15][16]
Later authors, starting first withAratus writing over four hundred years after Hesiod, expanded on the tale. According to the later myths, at the beginning of time Justice (Dike in Greek) the daughter ofAstraeus used to live and mingle with men and women on earth, an immortal among mortals. During this Golden Age there was no strife, war and battle or detestation between people as Justice urged them all to be kind to each other and spread feelings of virtue and honour among them.[17] In this pre-seafaring era, humans only ploughed their rich fields while Justice supplied them with all they could ever want or need.[18]
As the Golden Age ended and the Silver one arrived, the goddess found herself dissatisfied as people were less virtuous than before and started yearning for the older times. She no longed spoke with gentle words to them and took to the hills and then the mountains.[19] She used threats and shame on them, but failed to motivate them to become better people.[20] Then the Bronze and Iron Ages rolled in which introduced war and hatred, corruption, people consuming the oxen they previously only used to plough the fields and the vanishment of honour and love.[7][21] They began to sail the seas after cutting down trees to build ships,[12] divided the free land between them and dug up the earth in search for wealth such as iron and gold.[22][23] Finally the disillusioned Dike-Astraea decided to abandon humanity for good and take her place among the stars as the constellationVirgo,[24] also known as the Maiden, with the starSpica as the ear of corn she holds.[8][20]
To a lesser extent, Astraea was also envisioned as the goddess who watched over mortals and then reported their wrongdoings back to Zeus.[25]Valerius Flaccus wrote that the harsh weather and storms of November were associated with Zeus' vengeance against mankind on behalf of Astraea.[26] According toNonnus, Astraea as the starry nurse of the universe once took under her care and nurishedBeroe, the daughter ofAphrodite. She nursed the infant on her breast and fashioned a necklace out of Spica for her.[27]
The first-century BC Roman poetVirgil wrote in around 40 BC that Astraea was about to come back to Earth permanently, bringing with her the return of the utopian Golden Age of which she was the ambassador,[28][29] and the reign ofSaturnus, a Roman fertility god associated with the GreekCronus, but who nevertheless had an independent origin and worship in the Italic peninsula, lauded as the fallen god-king who introduced agriculture and helped humans develop civilization.[30] The prophecy of Astraea's hoped-for return is found in the fourth book of hisEclogues:
[J]ustice returns, returns old Saturn's reign.
Virgil used the pre-existing myth of Astraea within a political frame in order to hail the dawning Augustan rule, signaling the return of harmony and lack of war, conflict and suffering that had marked the turbulent period between 44 and 38 BC; he added that Astraea's return would be accompanied by the arrival of a child who would also kick off Augustus' new golden age along with her.[31][32] The exact identity of the unknown child that escorted Astraea is the subject of much debate; it has been speculated that Virgil meant the son ofGaius Asinius Pollio, the consul to whom the poem was dedicated; or the hypothetical child that the marriage betweenMark Antony and Augustus' sisterOctavia the Younger would produce;[33] or evenAlexander Helios, the son ofCleopatra and Mark Antony.[32]
Astraea was conflated and often treated as interchangeable with Dike,[34] one of theHorae (daughters of Zeus and Themis) and goddess of justice, who was also given the same story of living with mortals during the early years of humanity before abandoning them to become the Virgo after their wickedness and lawlessness became too unbearable for her.[35] Dike's fiercer form was Nemesis, the goddess who is set to depart from the earth in Hesiod's prophecy.[16] Dike is one of the several goddesses identified with the Virgo constellation.[36]
Judging from the preserved Greek and Roman corpus and art, there is no indication that this goddess was ever properly calledAstraea beforeOvid in the early first century AD, with writers preceding him preferringDike ("justice") or simplythe Maiden to refer to her.[37] It seems that the notion of using Astraea as Dike's name proper was prompted from Aratus writing that Astraeus was the star-maiden's father.[37]
During theEuropean Renaissance, Astraea became associated with the general spirit of renewal of culture occurring at that time, particularly in England, where she became poetically identified in literature with the figure ofQueen Elizabeth I as the virgin Queen reigning over a new Golden Age.[38] In Spain, she was often identified with the rule ofPhilip IV. The French authorHonoré d'Urfé wrote a very popularserial novel calledL'Astrée, whose titular heroine is named after Astraea, which was published serially between 1607 and 1627 with each installment very much anticipated by the aristocratic public at the time;Jean-Jacques Rousseau in hisConfessions (p. 160Penguin Classics) notes it as one of the novels read with his father and says it "was the one that recurred most frequently to my mind". A spectacle play by theCount of Villamediana and thirteen dramas byPedro Calderón de la Barca introduce a character named Astraea to highlight the political and astrological concerns.[39] In the Russian Empire, Astraea was identified first with EmpressElizabeth of Russia, then with EmpressCatherine the Great of Russia.
The English epic poetEdmund Spenser further embellished this myth at the opening of Book V ofThe Faerie Queene (1596), where he claims that Astraea left behind "her groome | An yron man" calledTalus.William Shakespeare refers to Astraea inTitus Andronicus, and also inHenry VI, Part 1. In his most famous play,Life Is a Dream,Calderón has a character named Rosaura (an anagram for "dawns") take on the name of Astraea at Court. This may be a laudatory political allusion to the dawn of a new Golden Age under Philip IV/Segismundo.
Astraea is also referenced inJohn Milton's epic poemParadise Lost, in Book IV between lines 990 and 1000. When Satan is discovered in the Garden of Eden and brought before the Angel Gabriel, the two are on the verge of war.
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The British writerAphra Behn used "Astrea" as one of her code-names while working as a spy for King Charles II.[40] She subsequently used the name "Astrea" to identify the speaker in many of her poems, and was herself referred to as "The Incomparable Astrea".[41]
Astraea was represented on a allegorical engraving byJohn Norman published in 1784, just a few years after the American declaration of independence, in which she appears to decide on where on earth she will make her residence while Nature is about to play the lyre, Fame blows her trumpet and Liberty presents a medal toGeorge Washington.[42]
"Astræa" is also the title of a poem byRalph Waldo Emerson.[43]
The planned British replacement A21/Mk7 nuclear warhead will be namedAstraea.[44]
| Astraea's family tree[45] |
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Media related toAstraea at Wikimedia Commons| International | |
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