Harry Potter Allusions

The Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies and is currently translated into almost every language on the face of the earth. Millions have faithfully followed the story about this magical world and have fallen in love with the many enchanting characters, but most do not know the prominence of classical Greek mythological allusions found in the beloved Harry Potter characters. J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, does a fantastic job with cleverly connecting most of her main characters to classical Greek/Roman mythological figures that share very similar personality traits (and even sometimes the same name) to their wizard counterparts.
One of the most evident cross-references between the Harry Potter series and
Professor McGonagall is an extremely intelligent woman (hence being a teacher) who is also known as excellent dueler that is a member of the Order, an underground society fighting the Dark Lord. Professor McGonagall not only shares the same first name the roman counterpart to Athena (aka Minerva), she also shares very similar traits considering that Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and war. In the Harry Potter books she is a reputable teacher who demands respect, just like how Minerva the goddess demands respect from her peers and mortals through her wisdom and war fear tactics. This can be seen in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VI when Minerva challenges Arachne to a weaving competition. Minerva weaves a tapestry that glorifies the gods, but it honors herself in particular. Minerva portrays herself in the tapestry as a strong goddess and victor and also weaves the other gods in her tapestry that, “look on in wonder. Victory crowns her work” (Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VI, page 295). This shows that Minerva holds herself in high regard and demands respect not only from mortals, but also her fellow gods. Rowling continues to cleverly allude to classical mythology in order to strengthen and deepen her characters’ qualities by comparing their temperance’s to their classical
Filch is the caretaker of Hogwarts who enjoys catching and punishing students for breaking curfew or school rules. The Hogwarts caretaker is derived from Argus Panoptes who is known as Hera’s servant that watched and guarded Io from Zeus. He is represented as a great watchman with 100 eyes, which makes him all seeing because he is always watching. This is very similar to Filch whom constantly patrolling the hallways and catching students that are in trouble all throughout the day. This similarity can be seen in Ovid Metamorphoses Book I when it states, “Argus’s head was set about with a hundred eyes, which took their rest in sleep two at a time in turn, while the others watched and remained guard” (Ovid, Metamorphoses Book I, page 47). Here it shows how Argus Panoptes is always on patrol, which closely resembles Argus Filch who seems to always to catch students out of bed regardless of the time of night. Rowling persists with deepening her characters through the etymology of their names and their similar personality traits and behaviors to their classical mythological namesake. Fluffy, McGonagall, and Filch are only three of the many classical mythological allusions Rowling depicts throughout her detailed seven books. She must have put in a lot of time and research in order find and make these allusions, but she did so in order to create