Myths & Their Meaning
Part II:
Reading the Myths of
Greek and Roman Culture
Introduction, Callimachus’ Hymns
•Athena
• Wisdom and battle
• Contrasted to Ares
•Springs direct from
head of Zeus
Athena
•Holding Nike
(“neekay”), goddess of
Victory
•On her Aefia are vipers
and the head of
Medusa
•Reconstruction of
presumed statue in the
Parthenon
Introduction, Callimachus’ Hymns (2):
Demeter
•Earth goddess, giver of grains
•Ends nomadic existence → organized
existence
•Daughter is Persephone (“Kore”)
• Captured by Hades (Pluto)
• Restored by intervention of Zeus
• But Persephone had eaten pomegranate seed,
so must return for one season
Persephone
•Persephone (l.),
holding a torch and
Demeter (r.),
•offering the ears of
corn to young
Triptolemos
• brother of Demophon,
see. P. 174)
Demeter and Persephone
The early stories: Callimachus
•What feelings are generated by the Hymn to
Athena?
• “Mimesis”: recreating the feeling of the ritual
• What is the price of seeing the god? Is being a
prophet a sufficient reward?
•Hymn to Demeter
• Erysichthon (l. 35 ff.)?
• His ailment (ll. 68 ff.)?
•Are the gods “good”?
The Early stories: Hesiod
•Origins of the Rule of Zeus
• Chaos → Gaia and Tartaros
• Gaia → Ouranos, mountains, sea
• Eros
•Rule: Ouranos → Cronos → Zeus
•Ouranos and Cronos
• Ouranos hates his offspring: Hesiod, ll. 137-160;
621-5
• Cronos castrates Ouranos (l. 181) → Aphrodite
Hesiod, (2): Cronos and Zeus
• Cronos is swallowing his children
• Rheia asks Earth and Heaven for help
• Cronos given stone in place of Zeus
• Zeus received lightning from the Cyclopes
• Titanomachy: Titans vs. Zeus
• Zeus assisted by the Cyclopes and the “Hundred-handers”
(see. P. xlii)
• Zeus leads “Olympians” to power
• Evidence of the war (p. 151, see also 155)
• See l. 867, “Works and Days,” ll. 26-28
Zeus Artemision
Closeup of Zeus
Sacrificial process, c. 6th century
BCE
The sacrifice
© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia
Commons
The Invention of Sacrifice
(Homeric Hymns, 4d)
• Hermes: divine messenger
• He steals Apollo’s cows
• Wood in a trench (not on altar)
• Thighs on spits
• Twelve sections (=Olympian gods)
• See Hermes the Thief, (Google books) pp. 102ff
Rituals and Magic
•Dedications (Anthology, 456-8)
• “first-fruits”
• Why would one “dedicate” a statute? How would a
statute be beneficial to a god?
•Purity Regulations (459-461)
•Healing (461-4); Magic (472-8)
•Prayer to Zeus as vegetation god (467-8)
• “Lament for Adonis” (Anthology, 73-4)
Kouroi & korai
Hesiod: further discussion
•Are the gods “great”? Are the gods “good”?
•“Works and Days” (pp. 160 ff.)
• “Good strife” & Eris
• Why is life hard?
•Pandora
• Gift to Epimetheus (“hind-sight”), brother of
Prometheus
• Do the Hesiod tales give us reason to hope?
“Sociology” and “psychology” of the
gods: “Homeric Hymns”
• Revelations of the gods:
2c, 3h-i, 5b-d, 7, 14, 19, 27, 32, 33
• Conflicts of the gods: 2a, 3b, 3f-g, 4c, 4g-h
• The psychology of the gods
• Divine—human copulation: 5 b-d
• “power and causality” (Clas. Myth., p. 40)
• Fate
• Hubris (p. 44)
• “spinning” myth (p. 45, see 53)
Rituals and Temples
• Origins? — Pausanius, I: stones
• Temenos: ritual ground, some naturally special
place (e.g., grove, spring, cave)
• Altar
• Temples
• Social functions
• Psychological functions
• What attitude does Pausanius have towards the gods
and the stories about them: D, J?
Temple of Athena Nike
Temple of Zeus at Olympus
(model at the Louvre)
Temple of Hera with altar
Aphrodite
•Pp. 385-6
•What does Sappho want from Aphrodite?
•What are the “snares” Zeus weaves?
•P. 393: How is the Greek version of
Aphrodite different from ours?
The tradition: Apollodorus (1)
• A1-E3: How did the Greeks see the world? The
Gods? Their relation to the gods?
• Struggle for power
• Deceit and copulation: B4, B5, C, H
• How would you describe the relation of the gods to
humans, and vice versa (F, G2, K5)?
• Heracles (K2, 15, 20; Class. Myth., pp. 49-53)
• The problem of human power (also M4)
Analyzing the relationship of Ritual
and Myth: Myth, ch. 4
• Tylor
• myth primary: (63) functions to explain the world
• primitive counterpart to theory (no applied science)
• Frazer
• ritual primary
• enactment of the myth
• vegetation god myth: death and rebirth
• Ritual as explanation vs. control
• Tylor: myth ≈ “scientific theory”
• Frazer: myth ≈ applied science
Frazer’s two interpretations of
myth-ritualism
• Vegetation god myth
• death and rebirth
• ritual enacts the myth
• even though the religious enactment of the myth
begins in myth, the function is control
• Divine king
• the life (death) of the king is the life (death) of the
community
• new king ➛ new life
• sympathetic magic
Origins of Ritual and Myth
•How does the ritual originate?
• What is the relationship between hunting and
sacrifice (pp. 76-78)?
•How does the myth originate?
• Myth separates from the ritual ➛ literature ?
• Why do we tell myths?
Religious Criticism &
Reconstruction of myth
• Modern religion vs. “primitive” religion
• “Modern” religion = “Protestantism” (Myth, 64)
• Can religion do without ritual? Myth?
• Demythologization: Bultmann, Jonas
• Myth is credible because it is Symbolic
• True meaning = existentialism
• Myth as return to sacred time (Eliade)
• Regeneration: from beyond time
• What do myths do for us?
Cinyras & Smyrna: Apollodorus (1)
• Background to Adonis & Aphrodite
• Cinyras and Smyrna are parents to Adonis
• Different geneologies
• Hesiod gives different parents
• Panyasis gives different father
• Cinyras’ children (daughters?) “by reason of the
wrath of Aphrodite” live with foreigners
• This (?) wrath also makes Smyrna desire her
father
Cinyras & Smyrna: Apollodorus (2)
• Nurse helps Smyrna to sleep with her father for
12 nights
• Father discovers her identity and pursues her
with a sword
• Begs to be made invisible ➛ becomes the
“smyrna” tree (Myrrh)
• Adonis is born 10 months later
• Killed while hunting
• See text
Ovid: Cinyras & Myrrh 298-355
• “believe in the punishment”
• Love or vengeance
• Furies came from the blood of Ouranos’ castration
• Duty versus nature:
• “own no laws, but those which love ordains” (l. 63)
• Consequence of questioning duty
• “accident of place”
• What are the obligations of human society and
reason (“names and ties”)?
Ovid: Cinyras & Myrrh 356-430
•Role confusion (ll. 113-121)
•“the reason for my death” (also ll. 235-7)
•“the destiny of your house is fortunate”
•The horror
•Why does the nurse give in (see ll. 238-9)?
•Must we “live on any terms” (l. 240)?
Ovid: Cinyras & Myrrh 431-502
• What gives Myrrh her chance?
• The co-responsibility of the king
• The words give it away: ll 304-7
• The night (ll. 277 ff.)
• The desire for light (ll 312 ff.)
• Why can she neither live nor die?
• The embrace of nature
• “merit in her tears”
Ovid: Cinyras & Myrrh 503-559
• Which comes first, the observation of the tree,
or the myth (ll. 369 ff.)?
• The beauty of Adonis
• Why is he only like Amor (Cupid)?
• Like the love that “painters...on naked loves bestow”
(l. 381)
• The temptation of Venus (Aphrodite)
• The revenge of Myrrh