The 12 Humanoid Cylons and the Archetypes

[Tavius]

It seems you were correct. I do have one question though, the 12 models represent the 12 archetypes that the Cylons have witnessed in humanity so what human traits do each of the humanoid cylons represent?

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

I do have one question though, the 12 models represent the 12 archetypes that the Cylons have witnessed in humanity so what human traits do each of the humanoid cylons represent?

Well, that's a great question, so what does everyone think?

[burningman]

Well Six is obviously geared toward Sexual manipulation :) adn i mean emotional manipulation..just to clear up and guttery thoughts out there :)

[sctfn]

It seems you were correct. I do have one question though, the 12 models represent the 12 archetypes that the Cylons have witnessed in humanity so what human traits do each of the humanoid cylons represent?

So far as I can figure out, the eleven known seem to go roughly like this:

Significant Seven

Six: seductress
Eight: maiden/mother/traitor
Doral: spy
Leoben: (false?) prophet
Simon: scientist
Three: (false?) messiah
Cavil: cynic Final Five

Anders: freedom fighter
Tory: politician
Tyrol: working class
Tigh: warrior

[JDS]

I'm not sure I see Three as a messiah figure...Hera is their [possible] Messiah, as I see it.

[chucklitos]

Six: I'm not sure we can be so quick to call her a seductress. She definitely starts out that way, but it seems, especially in the last season, that she has moved away from that (at least Caprica Six has). She can manipulate and has an excellent understanding of emotion. I would call her an emotional manipulator, but not only a sexual one.

Tigh: He's my favorite character, so I want to give him a little more credit than saying he's just a warrior. He seems to be very Machiavellian, but he's also Adama's moral adviser in a sense. I think he's a man of a code. He fights on New Caprica by whatever means necessary, despite Tyrols reservations. He kills his wife because she was a traitor. Tigh is a soldier but he also has a singular sense of right and wrong where he has a view on how things should be and anything counter that he tears down by any means necessary ie New Caprica and second season problems with the Giddean Massacre. For him more end justifies any means.

[JDS]

I'm not sure whether "Machiavellian" properly describes Tigh...I mean think about it, he's a damn fine soldier and warrior, and yes, he is an unwavering moral anchor, but he doesn't exactly seem very good at social or political manipulations. A more Machiavellian character would have found a way to deflect attention from himself while Adama was in sickbay, possibly by playing the civilian groups against each other or tricking them somehow. That sort of person understands how other people think and uses that. Tigh doesn't give three fraks about how anybody else thinks, he's right and you'd damn well work with him or get the hell out of his way.

[OrionFour]

Minor details aside, it's amazing to me just how similar Sharon 'Athena' Agathon (and the rest of the 8's for that matter) is to the actual Greek god Athena. Of course, the 8's have nothing to do with Athena's association with weaving or crafts, what's important about Athena is that she was the goddess of intelligent and tactical warfare.

Anybody who knows the series can attest that Sharon (either one) is one smart cookie, especially in matters of warfare. She always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else, despite the scorn given to her by the other Cylons. You always get the feeling that she knows exactly what she's doing, even when it seems like she doesn't.

Just thought I would point that out.

[Tavius]

Couldn't help but notice this (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Twelve_Colonies_%28RDM%29#The_Lord s_of_Kobol) list of The Lords of Kobol and I thought that some of these Lords seem quite similer to some of our well known Clyon friends, i.e Athena and Boomer (as we all know that Boomer attempted suicide, possibly over the guilt of her true nature), theres the Six's and Aphrodite and the two most obvious being Zues and Apollo (the two Adamas) now I know that both Lee and Bill cant be Cylons but I believe theres already a theory about Lee being the fifth so lets assume that the "leader of the gods" doesn't actually have to be a cylon to be a leader. And I'm going to take a stab in the dark and assume Col Tigh is Ares/Mars, god of war.

Now I know this is quite rough and ridden with holes but if we assume that there are twelve Lords of Kobol (which we dont know there aren't, right?) and theres twelve Cylons then it might be safe to assume that the Cylons are in fact the Lords of Kobol.

Please try not to tear my theory apart I'm so very fond of it :)

[alpha5099]

Yeah, I've thought that was probably the case since the Kobol arc of Season Two. The relationship between the cylons and the Lords of Kobol seems to be pretty strong. Although, after that arc, they seemed to focus less on that part of the mythology, so maybe they're taking it in a whole new direction.

I doubt we'll ever get any answers on one-to-one correspondence, if they are one and the same. Is Gaeta really going to stand around and say, "OK, so Athena is Athena, Six is Aphrodite, Leoben is Hephaestus ..."? If they ever do say, "Yeah, they're the same," they probably won't spell it out quite so neatly.

[OrionFour]

Yeah i've had this theory running for a long time myself. And frankly, I think a lot of people have noticed it (I got the idea in the miniseries when Adama got the note about there being 12 Cylon models).

There's only one potential problem (or potential conformation) with this theory - the guy to girl ratio. The ancient Greek pantheon calls for 5 female Olympians, 7 male Olympians (in most accounts). They are Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares and Hermes. Battlestar Galactica has currently 4 female, 7 male Cylons (which is bullshit btw - Cylon + Female = Badass). If the theory is absolutely correct, then the final Cylon must be a female.

I've always assumed that it was possibly an idea the writer's threw around early in the series, but later abandoned because they thought it might be too far over the heads of some viewers. At the very least, in my opinion the correlations are too strong to be coincidence. I mean for one, why 12 Cylons? - that number's important. But on the other hand, this series has a way of making everything make sense later on, so I'm not counting it out just yet.

As for who gets assigned to what Olympian, I'll throw my dice in the pile and say.....

Sharon - Athena
Six - Aphrodite
Tigh - Poseidon
Cavil - Ares

Let me think about the rest, I guess you could say that I just found this theory in the attic and i'm dusting it off.

[JDS]

Hmm...maybe the Tigh's Vipers are Poseidon's dolphins? :D

[ouiouiwewe]

If we go along with the idea of the 12 cylons = 12 olympians:

Plausible connections:
Leoben - Hermes
Number Six - Aphrodite
Number Eight - Athena
Tyrpl - Hephaestus
Anders - Ares

As for others (which may or may not be logical):
Tigh - Zeus
Cavil - Hades
D'anna - Artemis
Simon - Apollo
Doral - Poseidon
Tory - Demeter

If Roslin is the final cylon - Hera

Anyway, I doubt this idea would work.

[JDS]

I definitely don't think Roslin is the final one.

I DO think it's likely going to be Starbuck.

Also, Tigh doesn't seem to fit Zeus. Tigh is really, truly the XO, whereas Zeus is the king, and a BIG part of Zeus was that he was a real womanizer, which Tigh isn't.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

I never thought that the 12 Cylons really followed the Greek pantheon to a tee. I can understand it because it's an easy trap to fall into, but I never bought it.

I don't think that the Cylons would deliberately pattern themselves after a pantheon that they so loathe, as per their apparent religious imperatives.

[alpha5099]

I would assume that they didn't consciously try to emulate the Lords of Kobol. But all this has happened before, and all this will happen again; if there is a connection between the Lords and the Cylons, then I would think the Cylons would just be playing their roles, unknowingly falling into the patterns established in earlier cycles of time.

Just taking a stab at the pantheon/cylons:

Hades - Cavil (seems the most obviously outside the Cylon mainstream)
Athena - Athena (duh)
Artemis - Three (although that has so much to do with D'Anna/Diana)
Aphrodite - Six (probably the most obvious, at least until Sharon got her callsign)
Hephaestus - Tyrol (forger of the gods / maintaining the fleet's vipers)
Hermes - Doral (he always struck me as the spokesman of the Cylons. When you need a cylon, but don't want Six or Eight, get yourself a Doral)

Hestia's hard to pin down, as she's a god I'm really not familiar with much, and still a little surprised she's so important. I'm reluctant to pin anyone down as Zeus or Hera. I'm tempted to label Simon Poseidon and Leoben Ares, but that seems like a stretch, just trying to make it fit the pattern.

Yeah, once you actually try and do it, you realize it doesn't really work. There's some that are just such good matches you assume it has to be right, but who the frak are you going to saddle with Hestia? Tory? Why?

Actually, the Wikipedia entry says that Hades isn't a member of the 12 Olympians, and instead includes Demeter. If that's the case, the gender ratio is screwed in terms of what we have in terms of Cylons, assuming that the models would be the same gender as the gods they represent.

[JDS]

Apollo and Simon might work, considering Simon's scientific/medical nature.

But considering it critically...yes, it does start to become too much of a stretch when you try to pin down the last few.

Of course, we don't know for SURE that the Twelve Lords are the same as the Twelve Olympians. They might actually include a few of the other Greco-Roman gods (Hades being one example).

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

Of course, we don't know for SURE that the Twelve Lords are the same as the Twelve Olympians. They might actually include a few of the other Greco-Roman gods (Hades being one example).

The series seems to, at least, indicate the Greco-Roman gods, such as "Mercury" and "Jupiter".

[JDS]

Yes, but my point is that there were other gods than those twelve, and the Lords of Kobol COULD possibly include some of them. We just don't know, because we don't have an actual list of the Lords.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

Yes, but my point is that there were other gods than those twelve, and the Lords of Kobol COULD possibly include some of them. We just don't know, because we don't have an actual list of the Lords.

Absolutely true. There's no telling whether or not the gods mentioned are all major or minor either.

[alpha5099]

Absolutely true. There's no telling whether or not the gods mentioned are all major or minor either.

Yeah, I mean, they've mentioned Aurora, who's a fairly minor deity in classical mythology. Presumably, she's not one of the Lords of Kobol, so there must be some distinction between the major and minor deities.

I'd hope that if they ever do give us the Lords of Kobol, they don't do with the canonical Twelve Olympians. Because honestly, who gives a frak about Hestia?

[chucklitos]

I'd hope that if they ever do give us the Lords of Kobol, they don't do with the canonical Twelve Olympians. Because honestly, who gives a frak about Hestia?

One Hestia is not one of the 12 Olympians she steps down to let Dionysus be a God because they can't have 13 (an unlucky number). If they work this capitulation in that could be interesting although I'm not sure that I see it in the characters we have. The twelve Gods (assuming strict Olympus) are (and my set of guesses as to correlations)
Zeus- (final cylon: Rosalin or Lee- either could be supreme leader)
Hera- (Doral?- I did this one last and he's all that left, but that doesn't make sense)
Poseidon- Tigh (second to the top, jealous and emotional, easily angered, ie all of the mythology about the sea)
Demeter- Tori (Demeter gives out food, Tori helps the president and pleasures Anders, that could work)
Aphrodite- Six (let's face it she's hot)
Apollo- Leoben (prophetic power, hunting starbuck)
Artemis-three (prophetic power, search)
Ares- Anders (guerilla)
Athena- Boomer (Athena)
Hermes-Simon (smart, conniving)
Hephaestus- Tyrol (builder)
Dionysus- I'm thinking he's too unimportant to count and that we should look at Hades.

Hades is technically not an Olympian because he lives in the underworld, so he may not count, but I think I would fit Cavil to him.

Hestia steps down to be hearth keeper, and frankly I think that makes her, psychologically one of the most interesting Greek Gods, but this is not the place to discuss that.