Introduction to Mythology
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hi.
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Today we're gonna be talking about Edith Hamilton's introduction from this lovely book, the classic
Mythology.
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Now, if you want to read it, go ahead.
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But I'm just gonna talk about it's like your very first lecture and honors to ask you to take notes on
this.
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And that's easier for you to dio.
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Then, by all means, please do so.
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Let's start by defining what Greek myth is Greek Myth is the study of how Greek man saw his
world, and we know that all great civilizations want to know why.
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Why does the sun shine hotter in the summer than it does in the winter?
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Why is there more rainfall in certain times, what is going on with thunder?
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And like on DSO, we look at all different kinds of civilizations, American myth and all all over the
world, and they always want to know why.
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In fact, a sociologist tell us that the marker of a civilized civilization of a great civilization is that
they want to explain why they're not barbaric, and what this really shows this is that they have the
time to do so.
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If you are worried about where your next meal is coming from or how you're going to stay warm that
night.
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You don't have time to ponder the constellations in the sky.
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So we know that the Greeks were advanced enough that they had the opportunity to think about
why things happened.
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Now, hopefully last year you study a little bit or all of the Odyssey, which means you're probably
also familiar with this text.
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The Iliad by Homer This is the oldest record that we have of ancient Greek that's written down.
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It's actually like a text that we can look at on.
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We date this about 1000 BC.
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Okay, this is 1000 BC and imagine all the culture and all the civilization building the cane before we
really had that written down that we're missing out on in history because it's been lost to us.
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Um, this story starts out with an advanced mythology of God's, with ideas of heroes, of kings and
civilizations and everything set up and it's written in beautiful meter, and it has a beautiful imagery,
and so it shows us how advanced the Greeks really are.
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And it's too bad that we don't have texts that survived that are even older because it could have
found out a lot of really cool stuff.
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So Edith Hamilton calls something in her book, The Greek Miracle.
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Those were her words and no, no one else is.
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And she defines the Greek miracle as the moment when mankind became the center of the
universe.
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I'll say that again for you the moment when mankind became the center of the universe.
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And what that means is that man now sees himself as the most important creature on the planet
Earth.
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And what great stew is actually make their gods look like themselves?
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Believe it or not, this is the first time in history this has ever happened.
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So think back to sixth grade.
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We're studying ancient civilizations.
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And you thought about the best Bettini ins in the ancient Egyptians.
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Do you remember their gods?
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They were 1/2 man and then half beast.
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So you might have had a new bus who had the head of a jackal or bass with the head of a cat
where there was one that had a falcon's head and they were scary.
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And when you died, you went to this place where there was these massive scales and your heart
was weighed against a feather.
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And if you were found watching, they went to the bad place.
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And if you were okay, then you went to the good place but didn't really know what the good place
was like.
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So you plan for everything, right?
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That's why the ancient pharaohs had these massive pyramids of all kinds of stuff they might need
in the afterlife.
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So they really didn't know what it was gonna be like.
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It was very scary.
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The ancient Greeks now have made their universe more rational.
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The gods look like them.
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It act like them.
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Society seems to be like them.
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So there's nothing to fear.
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You go to the underworld, it's gonna be kind of like the upper world on that.
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That fear of the unknown has has been taken away.
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And so that's a really great thing.
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Um, there's no need for fantasy anymore.
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I never think familiar and welcome.
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There are four ways of the Greeks did this first is that they set their gods in real settings.
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So over here I have a map of ancient Greece, it with some really important cities that are in meth,
like Athens.
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or Corinth or thieves or a Delfay.
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These locations were places that were in the mythology.
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And you, If you're in ancient Greek person, you could say, I want to go to Corinth and see where
Aphrodite E rose from the waves from the C phone.
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I want to go to Delfay and see the temple of Apollo.
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No, I want to go to these places.
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I wanna go to Athens and see where effort our Athena planted the first olive tree that's giving
Athens its name.
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Athens.
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Athena.
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You go to those places on that makes your belief system stronger.
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It helps reaffirm your faith and makes everything a little more riel.
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When you think about it, we do this today too.
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So think about the three major religions.
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Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
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All of them have the Holy Land.
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You could go to the Holy Land and visit Mecca.
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You can go to the Temple of Solomon, what's left of it.
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You can go to go.
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Got that where Christ was crucified or walk in the garden of guests em anywhere he was tempted.
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So being able to go to the places where your gods in your faith um, actually existed.
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That's a huge deal.
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And the ancient Greeks did the same thing next.
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They didn't believe in magic.
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So, you know, your next door neighbor couldn't come up with some kind of magical thing that was
gonna turn you into a toad.
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You didn't have to fear that.
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There are two exceptions there.
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Right here.
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One is media and wanna Searcy, Hopefully, you remember seriously.
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She was from the Odyssey.
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She turned all the men into pigs.
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But media, you'll read about this particular time.
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And she has a major 1,000,000 issues.
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Uh, or for man, that she's chosen is a real jerk, which probably more like both of these women are
descended from gods.
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Seriously is pretty much a Demi god which gives, or her power and media is her niece.
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So everybody sort of has this God blood and them that allows them have appetite.
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I think that there's only two exceptions to this.
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I know magic rule, and they're both beautiful women.
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Tells us that the Greeks weren't that afraid of magic.
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The angel groups believe that poets had the power in heaven, not priests.
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This is big.
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Remember the fall of ancient Egypt from sixth grade.
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Maybe, uh, the priests had a lot of power, more power toward the end of the civilization than the
pharaoh did.
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Things not really correct in there for the engine Greeks.
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They weren't looking for a priest to facilitate any relationship that they had with their gods.
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Instead, they were looking for a poet or a musician who could do the same thing.
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That tells us a lot about what the Greeks found to be important, that beauty and music and
literature and art was so much more valued in their society than just how well you prayed on.
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And so this is a big deal in delineating the difference between the ancient Greeks and the cultures
that came before them.
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Fourth, the rigs did believe in the goat in ghosts, but it wasn't great.
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Grandma was rattling your cabinets because she was mad about something you did.
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They stayed in the underworld.
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That's where they were all the time.
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So the people that could go visit them might be, Oh, Odysseus, who says I need some advice So
he goes down to the enrolled in talks to Achilles, gets that advice that he needs or he goes to sis
afis and starts to understand how he did portrayed the God.
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So they're there for your education.
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They're there to help you along your path as his guides.
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But they're never gonna come out and haunt you.
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So again, the world a little less scary on a little more understandable.
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Now there are three dark spots, three spots that we see as carry overs from before.
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The Greek miracle happened when the ancient Greeks did believe in beast guys when they were a
little more primitive.
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The first of those is that the gods themselves are very spiteful.
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So you might have heard of, like, jealous Hera while her husband's cheating on her all the time.
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When you want from her.
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Uh, but the gods, if you made them mad, they'd come after you.
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But that's also a very human quality, right?
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We don't like to be wrong.
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So you wanted to keep the gods happy.
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The second is that there are two beast gods that sort of carrion Teoh, the more advanced Greek
settling to greet civilization.
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One is this guy.
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The center R c E N T A.
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You are half man, half horse.
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I'm sure you for it.
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The second is the seder es 80.
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Why are a seder is half man, half goat.
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So if you've ever seen disease Hercules, it's Phil Bryant getting trains, working these little
guidebook on, then third monsters.
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So, yeah, the Greeks believed in monsters.
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Monsters like the Hydra where you cut off one head and three grown at spot.
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But how else is Hercules supposed to prove that he's a great hero If he can't kill a monster house?
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Jason supposed to show that he can get the Golden Fleece if he hasn't defeated some monsters
along the way House Percy is supposed to cut off the head of what a the giant fish.
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Now he's got Medusa that he has to do that for.
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So they have a specific function in Greek mythology, and that is to give the hero his glory.
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There are just there to scare you.
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They're there to prove the heroes worth.
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So when we look at all the mythology that we're gonna be looking at this particular unit, we can sort
of categorize them into three different categories science, religion, literature and religion.
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And when I say science, I mean science in very loose terms because the ancient Greeks weren't
thinking of science The way we think of science today, like scientific method, they're thinking, I
don't understand why the seasons are the way they are, why it's sometimes plant squirrel more
easily and lie in the winter.
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It's colder.
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I don't understand that.
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So they come up with a story about Haiti's and for Stephanie and demeanor.
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Or you don't quite understand.
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Um, you know what all that center lining is going on in heaven?
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OK, well, maybe that's how fast us.
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And he's making some lightning bolts for Zeus, and this is gonna smite those that have wronged
him.
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So they're explaining the natural world in a way that they can understand literature.
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Some of the stories that we read or just really beautiful.
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They're great awesome hero stories like the Quest for the Golden Police or the 12 Labours of
Hercules.
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Or maybe their love stories like Orpheus and Euridice E were pureness and Bisbee, and they're just
really good stories.
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But we get to learn about the Greeks and what they find valuable not only in their heroes but in their
relationships with each other and how the dynamic in relationships works when we look at the left
story, so sometimes they're just really good stores on, then the last one's religion.
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So remember that the ancient Greeks did believe in this stuff, right?
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Thes air, the gods and goddesses that they pray to and they believed were waiting for them after
they died.
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And sociologist tell us that human beings need to believe in something greater than themselves
and whatever it is that we need to believe in, we put into our gods so usually have some
semblance of what is right and we just wrong.
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And then the things that we find our good were rewarded in the afterlife and the things that we find
punishable the gods punish us.
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Right?
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So we see this in lots of different belief systems.
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As the Greek society and civilization went on, the pantheon of all these hundreds of God's became
less loss important with the Romans.
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Their names were changed in some of the gods were combined into one god and that that sort of
paring down of how many gods that there were continued to happen over time, until eventually the
Onley God, that really mattered anymore.
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It was Zeus.
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He became less of Zeus and more of a universal father.
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Someone that you saw as protecting you.
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Someone that you saw as looking out for the greater good.
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Anything you needed.
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You could then Prezi Zeus.
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And what this did was it really lays the foundation for monotheism?
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That's gonna come later.
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Thanks for listening.