Greek and Roman

Critical Thinking

“Not having the answer before asking the question.”

Thesis

Statement based upon facts that a reasonable person could disagree with

Observation

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

Humanism

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

Historicism

Ideas that human beings had fundamentally different ideas of how the world worked in the past

Idealism

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

Textualism

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

Ritual

A sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to a set sequence that is usually prescribed by a community or religion

Rationalizing

A means of explaining myth by understanding it as misunderstood history Euhemerism is a form of rationalization

Intertextuality

A literary device that rates an interrelationship between texts and generates meaning by inviting comparison between these texts

Hera

Sister and Wife of Zeus

Attributes: Crown, Peacock

Areas of Concern: Marriage, Family

Aphrodite

Attributes Cupids, Doves

Areas of Concern: Love, Desire, Fertility

Associated with Roman Venus

Lover of Adonis

Cronus

Son of earth and sky

Father of Zeus

Areas of Concern: Time, The Islands of the Blessed

Attributes: Snake and Scythe

Associated with Roman Saturnus 

Berossus History of Babylonia

Apollo

Son of Zeus and Leto

Areas of Concern-Music, Healing, Prophecy

Attributes-Kithara, Bow, Laurel

Roman Apollo and Etruscan Apulu Claimed that Apollo represented order while Dionysus represented chaos

Dionysus

Bacchus, Mr. D)

God of Wine

Son of Zeus and Semele

Honored at the Great Dionysia festival in Athens, where tragedies were performed

Claimed that Apollo represented order while Dionysus represented chaos

Hades

• God of the underworld

• Basically, his only importance is that he was trapped or did he? Persephone in the underworld by letting her eat that bitch ass pomegranate

• Husband to Persphone

• Hermes gets sent to ask him to let her go and stuff

Persephone

Daughter of Demeter and Zeus

Wife of Hades

Attributes- Pomegranate, Torch, Flowers

Areas of Concern- Queen of the Underworld, Vegetation

Athena

Attributes: Helmet, Owl

Areas of Concern: Wisdom & War

Patron goddess of Athens 

Virgin goddess born from the head of Zeus

Prometheus

Trickster God, Greek, saves his son Deucalion by warning him & giving instructions on how to build the boat. Leave everything but the wild animals.

Pygmalion

The Pygmalion play by George Bernard Shaw

Legendary Figure in Cyprus

His wife owes her very existence to Pygmalion

• Fell in love with his own creation

• Originally, his wife was a statue

The story of his marriage to his nameless statue ends with the birth of their son, Paphos

disgusted by women who live their lives in wickedness

Adonis

Venus changes her habits to please Adonis

She holds Adonis a lot

The lover of Aphrodite, and she said she would rather him than the heavens, WTF

Myrrha

wants to have sex with her father

Comes to a realization, doesn't want to do it anymore, wants to respect and love him properly

 worries about her relationship with her son

Venus

Attributes Cupids, Doves

Areas of Concern: Love, Desire, Fertility

Associated with Roman Venus

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 Caesars)

Sisyphus

who is sometimes named as the father of Odysseus, labors ceaselessly because he cheated death(i,e, escaped from the underworld)

Tantalus

Gates of Horn and Ivory

Agamemnon

People don't know how he died, so they create different stories

Basically, people say he died in a storm or Poseidon

makes it home only to be murdered by his wife’s lover

Don't be open with your wife and don't tell her every thought in your mind; reveal a part, not yourself.

Odysseus

Sons of Laertus, Husband of Penelope, Father of Telemachus

King of Ithaca 

Greek hero who took ten years to return after the end of the Trojan War\

Beat that one guy to take Achilles' armor, aka Ajax

Orpheus

Son of Oleagrus and Calliope, the muse

Tried and failed to bring his wife, Eurydice, back from the dead

Died when the followers of Dionysus ripped him limb from limb

Deucalion

Son of Prometheus, hero of the story/savior.

The flood lasts nine days for Deucalion (From Pseudo-Apollodorus), floating in the chest over the sea for nine days, drifted to Parnassus, and when the rain ceased, he landed and sacrificed to Zeus (god of Escape)

De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

Odyssey

Homer

Made the Odyssey

Believed to be the author of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns

Allegedly born in different places, such as Chios or Smyrna

Most professionals believe Homer is a name for a tradition rather than a person

Library of Greek Mythology

(Pseudo-) Apollodorus

Lived sometime in the 2nd Century

Author of the Library of Greek Mythology

Pseudo-Apollodorus

One of the flood stories

The one with Prometheus, Deucalion, and all of them

Author of many stories

Aeneid

Poem by Vigil

Was commissioned by Augustus to make this story 

Story of Aeneas

Metamorphoses

Poem by Metaphors

Collection of stories/poems

Ovid

Author of Metaporphoses

Made his “magnum opus” with that poem/story

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

James George Frazer

Author of the Golden Bough

Argued that myth is designed to explain ritual

Friedrich Nietzsche

Developed the concept of Dionysian and Apollonian in the “Birth of Tragedy”

Claimed that Apollo represented order while Dionysus represented chaos

George Bernard Shaw

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925

Author of Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Saint Joan

Augustus

 Augustus Born Gaius Octavius 63 BCE

Died Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus 14 CE

Claimed to have restored the republic while maintaining a de facto monarchy

Claimed to be the descendant of Iulus, the son of Aeneas

Commissioned Vigil to write the Aeneid

Rome

City-state in modern Italy

Expanded its power over a large part of the Mediterranean basin between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE

Claimed to have been founded by the descendants of the Trojan hero Aeneas

Cyprus

An island located near modern Turkey

Home to Greeks and Phoenicians, and later a territory of Egypt

Now an independent Republic with northern territory occupied by the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Cyprus

Sicily

Eleusis

A deme or village of Athens that was formerly independent 

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

Parnassus

A mountain in Central Greece, sacred to Apollo and Dionysus

Also sacred to the muses and a place of inspiration for some poets to this day