Aurora e Titone by Francesco de Mura
If you thought the only Greek mythology in True Blood was connected to maenads, here’s an eye opener. This is Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn. She’s getting ready for work as her aging husband gazes on. In some accounts, her job is to drive her chariot through the night sky carrying a pink torch that heralds in the new day. In others, she just pulls back the drapes in her palace and the pink light from inside spills out and lights up the night sky.
Remember that scene in season one when Dawn is getting ready for work, and Jason is tied to her bed? Aurora and Tithonus. He was a heroic prince of Troy. They fell passionately in love and married. When Aurora begged Zeus to grant immortality to her husband she forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. As a result, Tithonus couldn’t die but continued to age and grow ever more feeble until he lost the use of his limbs. Aurora kept him prisoner in her room until she finally turned him into a grasshopper. Tithonus is used in art and literature to symbolize passion untempered by reason and faded glory. Doesn’t that sound like a certain Stackhouse we know?
Jason as Tithonus
Notice the muted green backgrounds in both images. What is Dawn doing with plain white sheets if they are not meant to mimic the clouds that pillow Tithonus? Then there are Dawn’s tragically 80′s rose chintz sofa pillows that look like they came right out of Mura’s painting.
Another connection to the myth is the grasshoppers heard outside Dawn’s house when Jason shows up on her doorstep in the middle of the night. They’re still chirping the next morning when an outside view of the house shows so much light pouring from the windows that they glow, outshining the daytime sun. The kicker? When Jason complains about being stuck in bed all day, Dawn alludes to Tithonus by retorting that he should be honored since she doesn’t tie just any old man to her bed. The sound of Dawn’s car pulling away tells us that she is off to light up the day of every good ole boy who walks into Merlotte’s.
Updated 4/16/10
