マイア

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マイアΜαῖα、Maia)は、ギリシア神話またはローマ神話の女神。マイヤとも。ギリシア神話のマイアとローマ神話のマイアは本来無関係だったが、後に混同されるようになった。マイア(meɪə; 古代ギリシャ語: Μαῖα; または Maie, Μαίη; Maia)[1]は、古代ギリシャの宗教・神話におけるプレアデス星団(昴)の一つで、オリンポスの王ゼウスの子供でギリシア主要神の一つヘルメースの母親である。

家族

Maia is the daughter of Atlas[2] and Pleione the Oceanid,[3] and is the oldest of the seven Pleiades.[4] They were born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia,[3] and are sometimes called mountain nymphs, oreads; Simonides of Ceos sang of "mountain Maia" (Maiados oureias) "of the lovely black eyes."[4] Because they were daughters of Atlas, they were also called the Atlantides.[5]

Mythology

ファイル:Cup Mercury Maia CdM.jpg
Mercury and Maia[6] inside a silver cup dedicated by the freedman P. Aelius Eutychus (late 2nd century AD), from a Gallo-Roman religious site

Birth of Hermes

According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Zeus, in the dead of night, secretly made love to Maia,[7] who avoided the company of the gods, in a cave of Cyllene. She became pregnant with Hermes. After giving birth to the baby, Maia wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly maturing infant Hermes crawled away to Thessaly, where by nightfall of his first day he stole some of his half-brother Apollo's cattle and invented the lyre from a tortoise shell. Maia refused to believe Apollo when he claimed that Hermes was the thief, and Zeus then sided with Apollo. Finally, Apollo exchanged the cattle for the lyre, which became one of his identifying attributes.[8]

Although the Homeric Hymn has Maia as Hermes' caretaker and guardian, in Sophocles's now lost satyr play Ichneutae, Maia entrusted the infant Hermes to Cyllene (the local mountain goddess) to nurse and raise, and thus it is her that the satyrs and Apollo confront when looking for the god's missing cattle.[9]

As nurturer

Maia also raised the infant Arcas, the child of Callisto with Zeus. Wronged by the love affair, Zeus' wife Hera in a jealous rage had transformed Callisto into a bear.[10] Arcas is the eponym of Arcadia, where Maia was born.[3] The story of Callisto and Arcas, like that of the Pleiades, is an aition for a stellar formation, the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Great and Little Bear.

Her name is related to μαῖα (maia), an honorific term for older women related to μήτηρ (mētēr) 'mother',テンプレート:Citation needed also meaning "midwife" in Greek.[11]

Roman Maia

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Maia embodied the concept of growth,[12] as her name was thought to be related to the comparative adjective maius, maior "larger, greater". Originally, she may have been a homonym independent of the Greek Maia, whose myths she absorbed through the Hellenization of Latin literature and culture.[13]

In an archaic Roman prayer,[14] Maia appears as an attribute of Vulcan, in an invocational list of male deities paired with female abstractions representing some aspect of their functionality. She was explicitly identified with Earth (Terra, the Roman counterpart of Gaia) and the Good Goddess (Bona Dea) in at least one tradition.[15][16] Her identity became theologically intertwined also with the goddesses Fauna, Ops, Juno, Carna, and the Magna Mater ("Great Goddess", referring to the Roman form of Cybele but also a cult title for Maia), as discussed at some length by the late antiquarian writer Macrobius.[17] This treatment was probably influenced by the 1st-century BC scholar Varro, who tended to resolve a great number of goddesses into one original "Terra".[16] The association with Juno, whose Etruscan counterpart was Uni, is suggested again by the inscription Uni Mae on the Piacenza Liver.[18]

The month of May (Latin Maius) was named for Maia,[19] though ancient etymologists also connected it to the maiores "ancestors", again from the adjective maius, maior, meaning those who are "greater" in terms of generational precedence.テンプレート:Cn On the first day of May, the Lares Praestites were honored as protectors of the city,[20] and the flamen of Vulcan sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia, a customary offering to an earth goddess[21] that reiterates the link between Vulcan and Maia in the archaic prayer formula. In Roman myth, Mercury (Hermes), the son of Maia, was the father of the twin Lares, a genealogy that sheds light on the collocation of ceremonies on the Kalends of May.[22] On May 15, the Ides, Mercury was honored as a patron of merchants and increaser of profit (through an etymological connection with merx, merces, "goods, merchandise"), another possible connection with Maia his mother as a goddess who promoted growth.[12]

See also


References

ギリシア神話

巨人アトラースプレーイオネーの7人の娘たちプレイアデス(昴)の1人[23][24]。彼女たちはアルカディア地方のキュレーネー山で生まれたとされる[25]

マイアは長女とされ、キュレーネー山の洞窟内で[26]ゼウスの子ヘルメースを生んだ[27][28]

『ホメーロス風讃歌』によると、マイアはキュレーネー山の洞窟の奥に立派な館を構えて住んでおり、館の3つの部屋にはネクタールアムブロシアー、黄金や銀、衣服が満ちているとされる[29]。ゼウスは夜闇の中、ヘーラーが深い眠りに落ちているすきにマイアと関係を持った。これによって策略家で、盗みに長け、夜闇をうかがい、戸口を見張るヘルメースが生まれたとしている[30]

またカリストーが大熊にされた後、その子アルカスを育てたのは彼女である[31]。他のプレアデス7姉妹と同様、狩人オーリーオーンに追い回されて隠れていた。

ローマ神話

ローマ神話には春を司る豊穣の女神マイア (Maia) がおり、マイアの祭日である5月1日は供物が捧げられた。これがメーデーの起源である。

ギリシア神話のマイアとは本来は無関係だが、のちに混同されるようになった。またメルクリウスとも関連付けられるようになり、5月15日のメルクリウスの祭日にも祀られるようになった。

参考文献

  • アポロドーロス『ギリシア神話』高津春繁]]訳、岩波文庫(1953年)
  • オウィディウス『祭暦』高橋宏幸、国文社(1994年)
  • ヘシオドス『神統記』廣川洋一訳、岩波文庫(1984年)
  • ホメーロス『ホメーロスの諸神讃歌』沓掛良彦訳、ちくま学芸文庫(2004年)
  • 『四つのギリシャ神話 ホメーロス風讃歌より』逸身喜一郎・片山英男訳、岩波文庫(1985年)
  • 高津春繁『ギリシア・ローマ神話辞典』、岩波書店(1960年)
  • Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1. "Maia" p. 270
  • Harry Thurston Peck, Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1898
  • Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Maia"
  • Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.

関連項目

参照

  1. 代替スペルMajaは、声間ijと表現する。このため、ラテン語の「maior」(より大きい)は、英語では「major」(主要な)となる。
  2. The alternate spelling Maja represents the intervocalic i as j, pronounced similarly to an initial y in English; hence Latin maior, "greater," in English became "major."
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hesiod, Theogony 938
  4. 4.0 4.1 Apollodorus, 3.10.1
  5. Simonides, fr. 555
  6. Although the identification of Mercury is secure, based on the presence of the caduceus, the one-shouldered garment called the chlamys, and his winged head, the female figure has been identified variously. The cup is part of the Berthouville Treasure, found within a Gallo-Roman temple precinct; see Lise Vogel, The Column of Antoninus Pius, Loeb Classical Library Monograph (Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 79 f., and Martin Henig, Religion in Roman Britain, Taylor & Francis, 1984, 2005, p. 119 f. In Gaul, Mercury's regular consort is one of the Celtic goddesses, usually Rosmerta. The etymology of Rosmerta's name as "Great Provider" suggests a theology compatible with that of Maia "the Great". The consort on the cup has also been identified as Venus by M. Chabouillet, Catalogue général et raisonné des camées et pierres gravées de la Bibliothéque Impériale, Paris 1858, p. 449. Maia is suggested by the concomitant discovery of a silver bust, not always considered part of the hoard proper but more securely identified as Maia and connected to Rosmerta; see E. Babelon, Revue archéologique 24 (1914), pp. 182–190, as summarized in American Journal of Archaeology 19 (1915), p. 485.
  7. Homeric Hymns 4.5
  8. Apollodorus, 3.10.2
  9. テンプレート:Cite book
  10. Apollodorus, 3.8.2
  11. テンプレート:Cite book
  12. 12.0 12.1 テンプレート:Cite book
  13. テンプレート:Cite book
  14. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 13.10.2
  15. By Cornelius Labeo, as recorded by Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.20
  16. 16.0 16.1 テンプレート:Cite book
  17. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.16–33
  18. In Mario Torelli's diagram of this haruspicial object, the names Uni and Mae appear together in a cell on the edge of the liver; see Nancy Thompson de Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 2006, p. 44 (online).
  19. What's in a name? Months of the year.29 December 2017 - via {{{via}}}.
  20. Ovid, Fasti 5.73; Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 70.
  21. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.20; Juvenal, Satires 2.86; Festus, 68
  22. テンプレート:Cite book
  23. アポロドーロス、3巻10・1。
  24. オウィディウス『祭暦』5巻83行。
  25. キュレーネー山は現在のキリニ山。
  26. アポロドーロス、3巻10・2。
  27. ヘーシオドス『神統記』938行-939行。
  28. オウィディウス『祭暦』5巻85行-88行。
  29. 『ホメーロス風讃歌』第4歌「ヘルメース讃歌」229行-252行。
  30. ゼウスとマイアとの関係がヘルメース神の性格の由来となっている(沓掛訳注、p.252。)。
  31. アポロドーロス、3巻8・2。