Chapter Three, Lecture Two

The Development of Classical Myth

Last Lecture

• Some of the pre-historic antecedents of Greek myth

• Palaeolithic Fertility Worship

• Cycladic and Minoan Idols

• Mycenaean Age

• Mesopotamian/Semitic Myths

• Hittites

This Lecture

• Specific Greek cultural sources and contexts

• Different periods – Archaic 800–490– Classical 490–323– Hellenistic 323–31– Roman 31–

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Invention of writing makes Archaic Period critical for understanding earliest Greek myths.

• Painted pottery plentiful

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Homer (800 BC) himself knows nothing of writing

• Homer’s epics first Greek literature written down

• But his poetry could have been written only in alphabetic script, which notes vowels as well as consonants.

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• The IIiad and the Odyssey– Events associated with the Trojan War– Too long and complex ever to have been

presented this way– Their final form the result of writing

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Does Homer’s poetry depict the age of the heroes (the Mycenaean Period 1600–1200 BC) or his own age (the Dark Age 1200– 800 BC)?

• His poetry often conflicts with what is otherwise known about the Bronze Age.

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

Homer ArchaeologyHeroes are cremated and buried in urns.

Heroes are buried in shaft graves or beehive tombs, such as those at Mycenae.

Rulers are petty chieftains or war lords.

Rulers are powerful kings with complex palace bureaucracies.

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Homer does know of the boar’s tooth helmet, but such a precious item might have been kept into his age as an heirloom.

• His poetry mixes both his and the Mycenaean age into an imaginative landscape.

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Hesiod (b. 700?)

• Tells us about himself and his age, unlike Homer.– Came from Asia Minor to Mount Helicon near

Thebes.– Was a singer of stories (aiodos)– “The first European author”

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Theogony 1-33– An account of the origins of the cosmos to its

present form– Has many Near Eastern motifs

• The Works and Days– Issues of right and wrong– Gnomic; wisdom literature

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• The Cyclic Poems– A “circle” around the Iliad and the Odyssey– Include events not in the two great epics– Known only in later epitomes

• The “Homeric” Hymns– Songs to a deity in a public setting: a sacrifice

to a god, for example– Sets out the story of the deity: e.g. Demeter

Greek Myth in the Archaic Period

• Archaic – Lyric – Poetry– Personal reflections on private themes– Occasionally touches on mythic themes– Composed in writing and memorized, not

improvised and oral like earlier songs– E.g., Archilochus

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

490–323 B.C.

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Greek moral thought originates in the fact that the Greeks had no authoritative source of divine truth.

• Greek Humanism– The world is knowable to human reason

unaided by divine guidance or revelation.

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Rhapsodes– Memorized written poems– Leaning on a rhabdos

• With the advent of writing, the aiodoi gradually disappear

• Choral Song and Odes – Use myth for their own purposes– Pindar (518–438) ; Bacchylides

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Most important source the tragedies of the fifth century– “Goat Song”– Associated with Dionysus– Public performances– Actors always male; three-actor rule– Masks and gestures

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Directed toward the concerns of Athenian male citizens, but always couched in myth

• Dionysus (the god of the dêmos)

• Pisistratus

• Aristotle’s Poetics– cleansing through pity and fear– peripeteia => katastrophê– hamartia; hubris

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Aeschylus (525–456)– Seven of his eighty of his plays extant– Grand moral issues

• Sophocles (496–406)– Seven of his 123 plays extant– Dignity and loneliness of the hero caught in

conflict of wills– Influenced by folklore

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Euripides (485–406)– Nineteen of his ninety plays extant– Irrationalist, deflated heroes, ridicule of myth,

strong, passionate women, the most modern of the tragedians

– Showed men as they are, not as they ought to be – Aristotle

Greek Myth in the Classical Period

• Tragedies– Emphasis always on human beings from the

legendary past– Lusty, violent, perverse

• Greek science, developing at the time, viewed myth critically.

Greek Myth in the Hellenistic Period

323-31 B.C.

Greek Myth in the Hellenistic Period

• Alexandria’s Mouseion collected Greek literature

• Literature now read aloud with a written text in hand– Not necessarily “performed” in front of an

audience as before– More learned and difficult to understand than

previous performance literature– This style called “Alexandrian”

Greek Myth in the Hellenistic Period

• Callimachus (305–240 BC)– Author of first scientific history of literature

• Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC)– His Jason and the Argonauts is in the

Alexandrian style

• Allegorical method of discovering the hidden truths in the ancient myths

Greek Myth in the Hellenistic Period

• Increased effort to preserve Greek myth

• The “Library” of Apollodorus (AD 120)– Compendium of Greek myths, not itself a work

of literature

• The tour book of Greece by Pausanias (AD 150) also collects many local myths

• Hyginus (second century AD) wrote a Latin handbook

A Harsh Estimation

• This . . . is the time when mythology developed into a form of literary and artistic rabies, when pretty or scandalous stories of divine amours and surprising metamorphoses were told in elegant verse by poets who, poor men, found neither the inspiration nor the audience for anything more important. This is the age which intervenes between us and the classical Greeks, and gives the impression that the Greeks were incurable triflers . . . . The mythologizing of these poets is at first charming, but it soon becomes an intolerable bore. It is dead.” Kitto, The Greeks 203–4

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

31 BC–

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• The Romans eventually adopted Greek myths as their own and used them in their own literature

• The major Greek gods were given names of Roman gods that were similar to them

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• Vergil (70–19 BC)– The Aeneid is the story of a Trojan hero who

escapes and eventually founds a new nation in Italy.

– Transmits material that would have been lost to us

• A full description of the underworld, the legend of Dido, and one of adventures of Heracles

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• Ovid (43 BC–AD 17)

• The Metamorphoses– Witty and urbane retelling of myths that

contain transformations of shapes– Most influential book on the way the West

thinks of Greek myth

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• Livy (59 BC–AD 17)– His early history of Rome is more like legend

than history

• Seneca (AD 54–68)– Tutor to Nero– Wrote tragedies on mythic themes– Great influence on Shakespeare

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• As they increasingly came to be written down, myths became identified with the particular work in which they were contained.

• Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex is not the Oedipus myth; it is only one variant of the tale. It also doesn’t tell the complete story.

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• This book, while about myth per se, also discusses myths as they are best known to us in literary treatments.

• It also pieces together the complete myth from a variety of sources.– No one ancient text tells the entire story of

Heracles from his birth to death, for example.

Roman Appropriation of Greek Myth

• The ancients would not have experienced their myths this way.

• The book is similar in approach to that of the Hellenistic mythographers.

Summary

Summary

• Greek myth was used and presented in different ways and for different purposes as time went on

• Many of these differences are tied the increasing use of writing, as opposed to oral transmission.