Notes from Pennsylvania's Greek and Roman Mythology

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 What is Myth?
  • 1.2 Ancient ideas on Myth
  • 1.3 Ideas on Myth from the Modern Era
  • 1.4 The Trojan War and The World of Homer
  • 1.5 Trojan War Aftermath and The Homer question

1. Introduction

1.1 What is Myth?

Deep and highly valued ideas that cultures use in order to figure out and make sense of the world. People offer many definitions of it. Some of these definitions are in direct conflict with each other. But, nevertheles, it still points to something that endures over time despite all the confict defintions. Because people find them extremely valuable.

Kind of container in which people toss what is most valuable in their culture. Since people's valuations change over time, what gets tossed into the container of myth changes over time too.

First Incoherence
In contemporary english, the word "myth" implies something that's not true, needs to be cleared away.

But, some people take the word "myth" with extra aura. The word "mythic" - labels something deeply profoundly true.

Second Incoherence
Among people who claim myths has truth to it, some claim myths have universal truth to it. Digging deep into the hidden meaning of the stories, deep truth about something that is profoundly common and universal to all people.

Others claim if myths have truth to it, it must be a window in to a specific, culutral located in space time with specific people anchored to specific cultures. What it means to be Norse? or Greek? or Indian?

Third Incoherence
Some believe myth to be a primitave in past, irrantionan fantasies. Where science, logical reasoning has displaced them in modern context.

While others believed myth as primitave in a good way. Something that is primal, has to do with core reality, some fundamental or rudimentry aspect of the human condition.

Mythos - The Greek root of the word "myth"

It started off as any word or sound that comes out of a person's mouth could count as Mythos Later, the term came to be label a specific kind of speech, that is a narrative story. Later, the meaning changes to known as a specifically false story, connonation changes to slightly tall tale. Thousands of years later, the meaning changes again to tall tale but some underlying deeper truth to it.

Greeks and Roman didn't put fig leaves to cover the genitals of their myths

Hercules (Roman) $=$ Heracles (Greek)

Myth is a story that's always being retold. There's no ground truth when it comes to myths. It's retelling.

What it is to be a human? : a core question of mythology Animals have connection with the humans, in the myths. Sometimes, the lines between humans and animals are blurred. Half animal, half human. Minotaur, Centaur, etc.

Gods and Humans are a world apart. We don't see eye to eye. We see them with awe and reverence.

In today's world, we are connected with technology, internet. Back in the aniciet times, in homer's world - culture, people stay connected with the medium of Sea

The Mediterraren Sea is another kind of character in Greek and Roman mythology. The great connecting force of the ancient world.

1.2 Ancient ideas on Myth

• Anonymous ancient manuscript commentator (date unknown): noting down on the side of the text. among some people, these things are not permitted , on account of display of indecency.

• Plato (429-347 BCE) - The deleterious effects of the stories of myths can have on people as they are building values in their culture. He thought myths have the power to construct culture. They shape the shape of the culture.

• Xenophanes of Colophon (6th-5th c. BCE) - "If cattle and horses or lions had hands or were able to draw, horses wold draw the forms of their gods like horses, cattle like cattle". In another words, culture construct myths. Our mythic stores based on the culture values we hold, our gods are a reflection of us. Inversion of the observations from plato.

• Metrodotus of Lampsacus (5th c. BCE) - "Neither Hera nor Athena nor Zeus are the things which those who consecrate temples and walls to them to consider to be, but they are manifestions of nature and arragement of the elements..." Symbolic representaitons of the nature, he mapped the gods and characters to human body parts. "Achiles is the sun, Helen is the earth ... Demeter is the liver, Dionysyus is the spleen ..." . Anicient idea of myth called Allegory: myths carried deep, hidden truth.

• Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 216-144 BCE) - "Readers ought to take things told by the poet as more like legends, according to poetic license, and not bother themselves aobut what is outside the things told by the poet." STOP FINDING HIDDEN MEANING IN MYTHS!!! . Literary and Anti allegorical view of myth.

• Euhemerus (4th-3rd c. BCE) - "The gods, we are told, were terrestrial beings who gained immortal honor and fame because of their gifts to humanity. Regarding these gods, many and varied accounts have been handed down by the writers of history and mythology." Myths are based on real historical figures. The stories get told and retold they are literally deified. Euherism: Humans become gods

With times, through the middle ages, Allegory and Euhemerism are two most prominent theories that survive.

1.3 Ideas on Myth from the Modern Era

Modern Era : Renaissance and forward

Fabula - Fablue (pl.) - Story or tale. Like Aesop's Fables.

Bernard de Fontenell (1657 - 1757) - Myths grow up as a reaction of early humans to the natural environment that surrounds them. They're in his view, is an attempt to explain otherwise difficult to understand strange features of the natural world. (thunder, lightting, volcano etc.). Myth is an attempt to science, kind of proto science.

David Hume (1711 - 1776) - Enlightment thinker. Rational thinking takes center stage. To them, myths are not source of great interest. It's just fearful human beings making up stories that was comforting to them, but not oging to be worth a lot of time.

Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729 - 1812) - Precursor to the study of anicient world of the Greeks and Romans. The Classics. To understand the anicient world, need to understand the ancient stories. Like geography, zoology, it gave context to the understanding. Not only fear. It was the feeling of awe that drove the creation of myths. Awe = Feat + Wonder. Fabula (latin.) seems too simplistic to explain the richness of the myths. He needed something more deeper meaning, hence he used the term mythus in a way that resembles our modern understanding of "myth."

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 - 1803) - As an early precursor to Romanticism, carried forward the reaction against the Enlightenment. He thought, myths are deeply profound truth. The most profound truths humans have to express, Herder thought they expressed through myths. Myths are innate to human nature. A capacity for human expression. Myths are identical to poetry, to language, to religion. Coming up as deep expression of human beings' feeling of being alive

Walter Burkert (1931-2015) - "Myth is a traditional tale told with secondary partial reference to something of collective importance." Modern understanding of myth, and for the class.

1.4 The Trojan War and The World of Homer

Now $\leftarrow$ Rome (1st BCE) $\leftarrow$ Athens (5th BCE) $\leftarrow$ Homer (8th BCE) $\leftarrow$ Trojan War (13th BCE)

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), at the north coast of Turkey, excavated the ruins of the ancient city of Troy. Nothing about the characters, events or other details from the Iliad though. It's just it may be corelated with the Trojan War mentioned by Homer.

Characters in Iliad: Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomedes, Hector, Paris, Priam

A poem about rage. Rage of a specific kind. Rage of Achilles.

Achilles vs Agamemnon argument starts off The Iliad. Achilles rages against Agamemnon, after being insulted by him in front of his peers. The dispute arose when Agamemnon was forced to return his war prize, Chryseis, to her father, a Trojan priest of Apollo. To compensate for his loss, Agamemnon took Briseis, a woman who had been given to Achilles as a prize. So, he withdraws to his tent.

Priam's visit to Achilles: Priam, the king of Troy, comes to Achilles' tent to ask for the body of his son, Hector, to be returned for a proper burial. Achilles agrees. Showing another side of Achilles. So, ends the Iliad . The Trojan horse and the destruction of the city is not in The Iliad. Most of the stories in the Iliad talks about three days of battlefields. Other epic poets added further pieces to the epic.

The Judgment of Paris & Apple of Discord: From the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Eris, the goddess of discord wasn't invited. So, she throws a golden apple with a message "to the fairest". Hera, Athena, Aphrodite - "IT'S MEEEE". Paris, promised with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, by Aphrodite, the simp who started the Trojan War.

Around 100,000 men and 1000 warships marched to Troy, led by Agamemnon.

1.5 Trojan War Aftermath and The Homer question

Odysseus, Diomedes and the stealing of the Palladium: A statue that represent Athena.

The Rape of Cassandra by Ajax, the lesser, at the altair of temple of Athena.

Nostoi - Journey to home

Homer (750 BCE) - Is there a single figure or are there many homers? But the coherene of the stories is the scholarly view that the stories are likely from a single poetic hand, atleast the Iliad and Odyssey itself. "Editorial" hand.

Cretan Linear Script. Homer’s epics were originally oral poems, passed down through generations by rhapsodes (oral storytellers). Phoenician invented the greek alphabet. With the adoption of writing (around 8th century BCE), the Greek alphabet allowed these epics to be recorded. This ensured that The Iliad and The Odyssey were preserved rather than being lost to memory.

Dactylic hexameter - The meter of Homer.
Hexa meter. Six feet. - u u / - u u / - u u / - u u / - u u / - x
Dactyl: - u u; Spondee: -
Around 15,000 of them in the Iliad, around 12,000 in the Odyssey.

The first word in Homer's epics is Andra : Man. Showing the focus of the epic, what it's all about. What it is to be a male human being?