Greek and Roman Mythology Final

Critical thinking

Not having the answers before asking the question

Thesis

A statement based on facts that a reasonable person could disagree with

Observation

A statement about more than one fact that every reasonable person will agree with

Historicism

The ideas that humans had fundamentally different idea of how the world worked in the past and their motives cannot always be understood

Humanism

The assumption that human beings were essentially the same in the acient world as in the present

• connects the people of the past or present

Textualism

Because categories and even mythic figure are constructed by language it is better to understand categories and mythic figures as subject to limited change over time rather than imperfect copies of an ideal hero or category

Idealism

• The belief that categories and idea exist “out there” independent of language and human beings. Sometimes these categories are referred to as natural

Raw and the Cooked

• one of the opposition identified by Levi-Strauss that represented the opposition of the nature (raw food) to culture (cooked food) 

  • Metaphor for converted products of nature into products of  culture 

Theodicy

• The defense of Gods or the gods goodness and omnipotence in view of existence of evil 

Polis

• A greek city state broadly a state or society especially when characterised by a sense of community 

• Not the only way to organize a civilized society even in the ancient world 

Oedipus the King

• reading

Sophocles

• Born 497/6 BCE

• Died 406/405 BCE

• Author of tragedies, including Antigone

• One of the treasurers of the Delian League 443/42 BCE

• Elected General in 441 BCE

• Oedipus

Eumenides

• Also know as Erinyes

• Attributes: snakes, whips

• Areas of Concern: the punishment of murders of family members

• born from the blood of the castrated Ouranous (Uranus)

Aeschylus

• Born c525 BCE Eleusis

• Died 456 Sicily

• Author of the Oresteia trilogy (including Agamemnon)

• Fought in the battle of Marathon 490BCE

De Rerum Natura

Reading

Lucretius

• author De Rerum Nature;  employs mythic and divine imagery, he is careful to rationalize these images after he employs them;  employs imagery of the underworld but later rationalizes the traditional mythic underworld as psychological torments among living men;  presents the reader myth the myst of the ages and man and monsters of history

Aeneid

Reading

Vergil

wrote Aneid

Odyssey

reading

Homer

• believed to be the author of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns; Allegedly born in different places, such as Chios and Smyrna; most professionals now believe that Homer is a name for a tradition rather than a person

Oedipus

• Son of Laius and Jocasta ( and husband of Jocasta)

• Solved the riddle of the sphinx and became tyrant of Thebes

• Arrived at Colonus in Attica and died there

Tiresias

• Blind Prophet swelled in thebes and was turned into a women for a time

• Plays a significant role in Oedipus

Jocasta

• Oedipus's Wife + biological mother

• realized that Oedipus fullfilled the prophecy --> hung her self --> triggers Oedipus self-blinding

Creon

- brother of Queen Jocasta
- brother in law and uncle to Oedipus children
- leading noble to Oedipus
- gets sent to the Oracle at Delphi
- become new king of Thebes

Antigone

- daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta

Sphinx

• Daughter of Echidna and Typhoeus

• Plagued the city of Thebes by killing anyone who could not answer her riddle

• the riddle was solved by Oedipus and she killed herself

Orestes

• Son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

• Avenges his father by killed his mother

• Suffers punishment for killing his mother from the Furies

Pythian Priestess

• the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece, serving as the physical voice of the god to deliver divine prophecies, guiding individuals and states on crucial matters from war to personal life, often through enigmatic utterances while in a trance-like state

Clytemnestra

• Wife of Agamenon

• Killed her husband with her lover Aegisthus

• killed by her son Orestes

Tantalus

• Son of Zeus or Tmolus

• Father of Pelops

• Because he cut his son Pelops and tried to get the gods to eat him he was punished in the underworld with eternal hunger and thirst

• (Origin of English Tantalize)

Aeneas

• son of aphrodite and anchises, a trojan prince; fought for troy but escaped the destruction of the city; the mythical ancestor of several Roman noble families (including the Ceasars) → visits under world and son of aphrodite + mortal anchises → wants to to the spirit of his father anchises

Apollo

• Son of Zeus and Leto

• Areas of Concern: Music, Healing, Prophecy

• Attributes, Kithara, Bow, Laurel

• Roman Apollo and Etruscan Aplu

Athena

• Attributes: helmet, owl;

• Areas of Concern: Wisdom and War; Patron goddess of Athens

• Virgin Goddess born from the head of Zeus 

Eumenides ;)

reading

Dike

• Daughter Zeus and Themis

• Attributes: balanced scales

• Areas of concern: justice

Artemis

• Attributes: Bow and Arrow, hunting dog, stag, moon

• Areas of Concern: Hunting, childbirth, virginity

• Daughter of Zeus and Leto

• Twin sister of Apollo

Hera

• (hymn to apollo) Sister and Wife of Zeus, Attributes: Crown, Peacock, Areas of Concern: Marriage, Family

Hestia

• Attributes: Veil,Fire

• Areas of Concern: the hearth, Architecture

• Sister of Zeus who never married

Zeus

• Areas of Concern: the sky, kingship

• Attributes: beard, Eagle, thunderbolt

• Based on the same root as Roman Iuin Jupiter (Jove) and Sanskrit Dyaush pita (both “sky father)

• Associated with Egyptian Amun and Persian Ahura-Mazda

Demeter

• Areas of Concern: Agriculture

• Attributes: Grain Sheaf, Crown of Whear

• Mother of Persephone

Aphrodite

•  attributes: cupids, doves; areas of concern: love, desire, fertility; associated with venus BUT NOT THE SAME

Claude Levi-Strauss

• Born Brussels, Belgium, 1908

• Died Paris, France, 2009

• “the father of modern anthropology”

• Identified universal structures of human society, such as kinship rules

Sigmund Freud

• Born Freiburg in former the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1856

• Died London, England 1939

• Austrian Neurologist and the founder of Psychoanalysis

• Coined the term “Oedipal Complex”

James George Frazer

• born 1854 Glasgow; Died Cambridge; authro of the Golden Bough; Argues myth is designed to explain ritual

Freidrich Nietzche

• 1844-1900; developed the concept of Dionysian and Apollonian in The Birth of Tragedy (1872); Claimed that Apollo represented order while Dionysus represented Chaos

Eleusis

•  A deme or village of athens that was formerly independent

• Home of Eleusinian Mysteries and initiation ceremony of which the details were secret but had something to do with the Eleusinian triad and an afterlife

Delphi

• Panhellenic sanctuary and sacred precinct of Apollo located in the region Phocis

• Site of Delphic oracle overseen by the Pythia

• Setting of the first half of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo

Thebes

• Legendary home of Cadmus, Heracles, Oedipus, and Dionysos (Among others)

• Site of constant occupation from the bronze Age

• Traditional Enemy of Athens and something of an anti-Athens

Areopagus

• A hill in the Athens where the council of former Archons (chief official of the Athenian state) met and set policy

• Reduced to court for high crimes in 462 BCE

• Setting of the second half of the Eumenides

Parnassus

• A mountain in central Greece sacred to Apollo and Dionysus; also sacred to the muses and a place of inspiration some poets to this day