Intro
- myths means word, speech tale
- some myths are based on historical realty
- elements that are not considered truth, but explore certain absolute truths of human nature and existence
- three categories, Homeric hymns (myth proper, how gods interact with humans), Saga/Legend (connection to history), folktale (fantastical adventure of a hero, like Hercules)
Interpretive Theories
- etiological greek word “aitia” means “cause”
- explains the causes or origins of certain things which cannot be explained in other ways
- Oedipus Complex Freud believed that a boy wants to sleep with his mother and a girl wants to sleep with her father
Greek and Roman History Mythology
Neolithic period:
- people entered Greece over 40,000 years ago
- around 6500 BC
- not greek speakers
Early and Middle Bronze Ages:
- economy, trade, settlements
Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean):
- in 1450 BC Myceneans took over Crete
- around 1200BC the Mycenaean civilization collapsed (unclear why) and Greece entered a dark age
Dark Age c. 1150-900 and revival period 900 - 750:
- development of iron and alphabet
Archaic Period 750-500 BC:
- Hesiod, Homer, Homeric Hymns, colonization, expansion
Classical period c. 500-323 BC:
Hellenistic Period c. 323-30BC:
- death of Alexander the Great
Foundation of Rome and Roman Republic c. 753BC - 27 BC:
- traditional foundation of Rome 753BC
- founded around 507/507 BC
- Julius Caesar
Early and High Roman Empire 27BC - 200 AD:
- Vergil, Ovis rose to fame
- innovative time
Hesiod’s Theogony:
- Homer Iliad and Odyssey
- hexameter verse
- retold in performance
- Chaos
- Earth (Gaia), Tartaros, Love (Eros), Erebos (dark gloom of the underworld), (Nyx) night also come form chaos
- Ether (air), Hemera (day), Ouranos (sky or heavens), Pontus (sea)
- Titans , Cyclopes, Hundred-Handers
- Kronos plans with Gaia to lop off Ouranos genitals and it is done
- from those genitals, Aphrodite is born
- Kronos and Rhea give birth to Zeus and the Olympian generation
Kronos and Rhea:
- Zeus is concealed and not eaten as Kronos’s children do not overpower him
- Kronos eats a stone and Zeus rules with his thunderbolt
- similar to Hittite culture of Anatolia
Prometheus:
- gave humanity fire
- humans take the meat and gods receive the smoke of burnt fat and bones
- Zeus was angry
- Prometheus steals fire and hides it in a stalk of fennel
- fire is like technology industry and power
Pandora:
- evil
- contrived by Zeus
- The lame One (Hephaestus) made it and did a favour for Zeus
- eat up man’s products and make him poorer
- she opened a jar of evil of every type
Zeus:
- weather god, storm god
- hurler of thunderbolts
- powerful god wielding the thunder-bolt, king seated on throne
- zeus the liberator
- sexual powerful
- married to Hera
- father of Apollo and Artemis by Leto
- father of Hermes with Maia
- father of Persephone by Demeter
- father of Dionysos by Semele
- Athena was born from his head
- Ganymedes abducted by Zeus
Zeus and Danae:
- oracle foretells that Danae’s son will kill Arcrisius, so he locks her in a room
- Zeus breaks into the room and she gives birth to Perseus
Zeus and Europa:
Zeus and Io:
- Hera becomes mad
- turns Io into a white heifer and guards her with the snake Argus so Zeus can’t change her back
Olympia:
Apollo
- connected with the Sun
- Paean is treated as a god of healing (separate from Apollo)
- healing, purification, destruction, care for the young, prophecy, poetry, music
- Delos and Delphi are two cults of Apollo
- Zeus and Leto bore Apollo
- hosioi, holy men
Apollo and Marpesa:
- Marpesa chose Idas over Apollo because he was mortal, and it was a motif of unsuccessful love affair
Apollo and Cyrene:
- nymph Cyrene
- Apollo falls in love when she is wrestling a lion
- son with Apollo named Aristaeus
Apollo and Daphne:
- Cupid strikes Apollo with a golden arrow
- Cupid shoots Daphne with a lead arrow to shun love
Apollo and Cassandra:
- Cassandra could tell the future (Troy)
- Apollo wanted her, but she refused
- Apollo cursed her so no one would believe what she was saying
- she became frustrated
Apollo and Coronis:
- Coronis cheated on Apollo
- Apollo shoots her with an arrow
- tries to heal her, but cannot save her
- power of revenge and healing meet tragically
Apollo and Hyancinthus:
- Hyancinthus fetches the discus but it kills him
- male youth
Marsyas:
- part goat, part man, satyr
- challenges Apollo to a music contest on his flute, loses and was skinned alive
Artemis
- wilderness, bow and arrow
- prizes virginity
- contrast to aphrodite
- deity who brings punishment and death
Niobe:
- boasts that she is better than Leto because she has 6 boys and 6 girls
- Diana and Apollo kill Niobe’s sons and daughters and is changed into a rock
Actaeon:
- he sees Artemis naked
- she turns him into a stag
Callisto:
- huntress who is raped by Zeus
- Artemis banishs her from the band for pregnancy
- Hera turns her into a Bear
- turns into a constellation alongside Arcas, her son
Orion:
- famous hunter tried to rape Artemis
- Artemis made a scorpion sting Orion to death
Birth:
- born from Zeus and Leto on Ortydia
- closely linked to Selene
Aphrodite
- Athena, Artemis and Hestia could not be tamed by Aphrodite’s power
- juxtaposition from Aphrodite and Artemis
Hippolytus (By Euripides):
- Aphrodite makes his step-mom Phaedra fall in love with Hippolytus
- Phaedra leaves a note for her husband Theseus that it was Hippolytus who lusted for her, and curses his son to die
Anchises:
- Zeus employs Aphrodite to fall in love with Anchises, irony where Aphrodite will be conquered by her own power
- gives birth to Aeneas, who will found Rome
Ares and Hephaestus:
- Hephaestus (Aphrodite’s husband) learns of Aphrodite’s affair with Ares sets a trap
- all of the gods stand around and laugh at her
- goddess of love suffers shame before the gods
Adonis and Persephone:
- Aphrodite falls in love with Adonis
- Aphrodite hides him in a chest and gives him to Persephone
- spends 4 months a year with Aphrodite and 4 months a year with Persephone (decided by Zeus)
Cupid:
- scratches Venus with one of his arrows and falls in love with his mother Venus
- is not locked in a chest, but killed while on the hunt of a tusk of a boar, and changed into a flower by Aphrodite
- Pygmalion is disgusted with the prostitution, he makes a statue he falls in love with
- prays to Aphrodite to have the statue as his wife, named Galatea, son Paphos
- Paphos granddaugher falls in love with her father Cinyas (famous hero of Cyprus)
- he is furious and she is turned into a myrrh tree which drips tears and Adonis is born of the tree
Eros/Cupid
Cupid and Psyche:
- Psyche is extremely beautiful
- has Cupid make Psyche fall in love with a terrible man
- Cupid falls in love
- father consults the oracle
- her lover hides her from the serpent in the mountains
- Psyche is in grief after almost trying to kill Cupid and tries to commit suicide
- Psyche does impossible tasks, sort mixed grains (ant helps), wool from dangerous sheep (reed helps her), go to a tall mountain and bring back water (eagle of Jupiter gets it), take a fragment of Persephone’s beauty and not look in the box
- she uses food to calm cerebus and money for charon
- she looks in and has a deathlike sleep
- Cupid tries to save her, and psyche is made a goddess
Demeter
- meter = mother
- tamer of the earth
- search for persephone
- goddess of corn and wheat, controls vegetation and growth of crops
Hades and Persephone:
- Hades carries off Persephone
- Demeter disguises as an old woman and tells them she was kidnapped by pirates in Crete
- tries to make Demophon immortal, by feeding ambrosia and putting him in the fire, but Metaneira cries out that her son is in the fire
- Demophon is removed and Demeter demands a temple and altar
- creates a famine for the world because she is angry at the loss of her daughter
- Hades gives Persephone a pomegrante, and binds her to Hades forcing her to return to him for a time each year
- lives in Olympus for 2/3 the year, and 1/3 with Hades
- Persephone’s stay in the underworld is a aition (explanation of the cause) for winter
Hermes
- son of Zeus and Maia, nypmh and daugther of Atlas
- messenger god
- part in birth of Dionysus, Zeus shows Semele the true form and Semele is burned to ashes
- clever, trickster
- inventor of Lyre
- hymn of Hermes’ birth
- steals cattle of Apollo
- does not actually eat the cattle
- Hermes is father of pan, inventor of panpipe
- Hermes two snakes wrapped around a staff confused with Apollo’s son Asclepius with two snakes sign of physician
- conductor of souls
- crosses boundaries
Aphrodite and Hermes:
- Hermaphroditus is born, goes into hills
- nypmh Salmacis falls in love and eventually blends into him
- aition for both sexual organs
Athena
- born from Zeus’s head
- goddess of war
- Athena’ mother is Metis, meaning wisdom, embodiment of craft and cleverness
Arachne:
- challenges Athena to a weaving contest
- Athena reveals herself and Arachne hangs herself, but Athena takes punishment and turns her into a spider
- Athena Ergane, craft maker
Ares
- god of war
- destructive and hateful to Zeus
- Zeus’s son
Poseidon
- carries trident
- fish and other animals
- earthquakes
- has the seas
- also controls the earth and taming horses
Odysseus:
- tricks the Cyclops and drives a stake into his eye
- Poseidon is mad since the cyclops Polyphemus is his son, and constantly drives him off course and from getting home
Amphitrite:
- married to amphitrite, nereid, daugher of nereus, son of sea (Pontus) and earth (Ge)
- Poseidon falls in love with Scylla, daughter of Hecate and Amphitrite puts magic herbs to transform Scylla into a horrible monster
- Scylla attacks Odysseus’ crew in Homer’s Odyssey
Dionysus
- god of wine, celebration
- son of Zeus and Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes
Pirates:
- abduct Dionysus and everyone except the helmsman doesn’t know he is a god
- Dionysus brings punishment among the pirates
Pentheus:
- Pentheus does not believe that Semele and Zeus bore Dionysus
- Dionysus makes all the women go to the mountains intoxicated to celebrate Dionysus
- Dionysus convinces him to dress up like a female celbrant and then Pentheus is torn apart by his mother Agave
Orpheus
- searches for Eurydice his wife
- he is a singer and poet
- Eurydice is bitten by snake
- Hades and Persephone give Orpheus a chance
- he cannot look at her to see if she is alright, and fails
- he gives up women and he plays charming music
- the women fall in love with him, and Bacchantes dismember him
- he punishes the Bacchantes who killed Orpheus by turning them into trees
- connection of ancient worlds with death and afterlife