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
Heroes are cremated and
buried in urns.
Archaeology
Heroes are buried in shaft
graves or beehive tombs,
such as those at Mycenae.
Rulers are petty chieftains or Rulers are powerful kings
war lords.
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.