Post on 16-Jan-2016
transcript
The Cultural Background of Greek
Myth
•Mythos
•Legend, saga
•Folktale
•Truth: literal, metaphorical, metaphysical
•Etiology
•Collective unconscious
•Archetype
•Modern Myths?
What is Myth?
Primary Sources: works produced within a culture:
•art and architecture
•literature and written records of other sorts (business lists etc.)
Secondary Sources: Commentary by modern authors on the ancient cultures:
•textbooks and other modern writings
Internet Resources:
•can be primary sources (if they reproduce texts or images from the original culture)
•or secondary sources (if they are modern commentary)
Sources
First settlers: c. 50,000 BCE
Agriculture develops: c. 7000 BCE
Bronze appears: c. 3000 BCE
Prehistoric Greece
Abbreviations:
BCE= Before the common era
CE= common era
c. = circa (about)
Greece in the Mediterranean
The Greek Environment
The Polis: City Walls (Troy)
Polis and Community
Shared Government
Shared laws
Shared religious festivals
Shared myths
Agriculture
Family Groups
Family Groups
Material Culture
Transportation
Transportation
Men’s Social Roles
Social Roles varied from society to society; some widespread phenomena:
Farming work or overseeing farming work on one’s own land
Service in the military
Participation in government to the extent allowed by the state’s constitution
Participation in rituals of one’s state
Education of one’s children
Women’s Social Roles
To marry and bear citizen children
To care for the household resources
To spin and weave
To participate in the state’s religious rituals
Sexuality
Sexuality was not a matter of the partner’s gender (male vs. female) but concerned active vs. passive roles.
Active roles were appropriate for grown men, whether the partner was male or female
Passive roles were appropriate for women and to some extent, teenaged men, but not for adult males
How far did the reality match the ideal? Public vs. private? Hard to say …
Myths usually try to explain matters physical, emotional, and spiritual not only literally and realistically but figuratively and metaphorically as well.
Morford and Lenardon 6Harpy: Hellenistic Earring
Etiology
“Facts” change in all the sciences . . . Myth in a sense is the highest reality.
Morford and Lenardon, pp. 4-5
A myth makes a valid statement about the origins of the world, of society, and of the institutions about the gods and their relationships with mortals; in short, about everything on which humans’ existence depends.” (Fritz Graf)
Europa and the Bull, courtesy VRoma
A Greek myth is a tale rooted in Greek culture that recounts a sequence of events chosen by the maker of the tale to accommodate his own medium and objectives and to achieve a particular effect in his audience.” (F. Brown and W. Tyrell)
Odysseus and the Sirens, VRoma
People believed in myths for a long time, according to programs that, to be sure, varied enormously from one era to another. It is normal for people to believe in the works of the imagination.” (Paul Veyne)
Hermes presents the infant Dionysus; courtesy Christus Rex
Finis
Quotes on myth selected by Staci Holt