The Cultural Background of Greek

Myth

•Mythos

•Legend, saga

•Folktale

•Truth: literal, metaphorical, metaphysical

•Etiology

•Collective unconscious

•Archetype

•Modern Myths?

What is Myth?

Primary Sources: works produced within a culture:

•art and architecture

•literature and written records of other sorts (business lists etc.)

Secondary Sources: Commentary by modern authors on the ancient cultures:

•textbooks and other modern writings

Internet Resources:

•can be primary sources (if they reproduce texts or images from the original culture)

•or secondary sources (if they are modern commentary)

Sources

First settlers: c. 50,000 BCE

Agriculture develops: c. 7000 BCE

Bronze appears: c. 3000 BCE

Prehistoric Greece

Abbreviations:

BCE= Before the common era

CE= common era

c. = circa (about)

Greece in the Mediterranean

The Greek Environment

The Polis: City Walls (Troy)

Polis and Community

Shared Government

Shared laws

Shared religious festivals

Shared myths

Agriculture

Family Groups

Family Groups

Material Culture

Transportation

Transportation

Men’s Social Roles

Social Roles varied from society to society; some widespread phenomena:

Farming work or overseeing farming work on one’s own land

Service in the military

Participation in government to the extent allowed by the state’s constitution

Participation in rituals of one’s state

Education of one’s children

Women’s Social Roles

To marry and bear citizen children

To care for the household resources

To spin and weave

To participate in the state’s religious rituals

Sexuality

Sexuality was not a matter of the partner’s gender (male vs. female) but concerned active vs. passive roles.

Active roles were appropriate for grown men, whether the partner was male or female

Passive roles were appropriate for women and to some extent, teenaged men, but not for adult males

How far did the reality match the ideal? Public vs. private? Hard to say …

Myths usually try to explain matters physical, emotional, and spiritual not only literally and realistically but figuratively and metaphorically as well.

Morford and Lenardon 6Harpy: Hellenistic Earring

Etiology

“Facts” change in all the sciences . . . Myth in a sense is the highest reality.

Morford and Lenardon, pp. 4-5

A myth makes a valid statement about the origins of the world, of society, and of the institutions about the gods and their relationships with mortals; in short, about everything on which humans’ existence depends.” (Fritz Graf)

Europa and the Bull, courtesy VRoma

A Greek myth is a tale rooted in Greek culture that recounts a sequence of events chosen by the maker of the tale to accommodate his own medium and objectives and to achieve a particular effect in his audience.” (F. Brown and W. Tyrell)

Odysseus and the Sirens, VRoma

People believed in myths for a long time, according to programs that, to be sure, varied enormously from one era to another. It is normal for people to believe in the works of the imagination.” (Paul Veyne)

Hermes presents the infant Dionysus; courtesy Christus Rex

Finis

Quotes on myth selected by Staci Holt