Heroes and Monsters in Greek Mythology

Acknowledgment of Country

  • The Classical Mythology Teaching Team acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the unceded lands where they work, learn, and live.
  • These include the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples, the Yorta Yorta Nation, and the Dja Dja Wurrung people.
  • Recognition and gratitude are extended to the Traditional Owners, Elders, and Knowledge Holders of all Indigenous nations and clans.
  • Acknowledgment of the unique place held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original owners and custodians of the lands and waterways, with histories dating back over 60,000 years.
  • Respect is paid to Elders past, present, and future, recognizing the importance of Indigenous knowledge.

Ancient World Studies, Classics, and De-colonising the Ancient Mediterranean

  • Ancient world researchers acknowledge the detrimental practices and ideologies, violence, and trauma instigated by power-holders in ancient Greece and Rome.
  • Acknowledge unexamined biases, Eurocentric world views, cultural practices in past and present scholarship.
  • This subject aims to bring light to these issues and work within a framework of 'de-colonising' the ancient Mediterranean.

Week 8 Lecture & Seminar Outline: Heroes & Monsters

  • Lecture (20 mins):
    • Orientation: Still in archaic Greece with Homer; texts are set in the ‘heroic age’.
    • Overview of heroes and monsters: definitions, types, examples, exceptions, mention of hero cult.
  • Activities:
    • Class discussion: Is it possible to be a hero if you are ‘other’? (10 mins)
    • Class discussion: Which ancient Greek hero would you choose as an ancestor, and why? (10 mins)
    • Group discussion: Perseus & Medusa—how is Medusa monstrous? Does Apollodorus’s depiction allow any sympathy for her? Why do the most violent elements of a myth seem to be the most popular in visual culture?
    • Group discussion based on Reading 4 (Apollodorus) and the Key Ancient Object.
  • Seminar Break (5 mins)
  • Lecture (5 mins):
    • Overview of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
  • Activity:
    • How are the Homeric heroes ‘heroic’, exactly? Close reading and analysis, group discussion of the Week 8 Key Ancient Texts, Readings 1 & 2; either the Iliad or the Odyssey. (40 mins)

Week 8 Heroes & Monsters: Intended Learning Outcomes

  • Identify and demonstrate an understanding of the different 'types' of hero in ancient Greek myth.
  • Critically examine the concept of 'hero' as constructed in ancient Greek myth.
  • Identify and demonstrate an understanding of the different 'monsters' in ancient Greek myth.
  • Critically examine the concept of 'monster' as constructed in ancient Greek myth.
  • Place the myths of heroes and monsters within the broader cultural and historical context of archaic and Classical Greece.

Lecture Outline: Heroes and Monsters

  • What is the Age of Heroes?
  • What is a hero?
    • The ‘early’ heroes: quests, misadventures, and a katabasis or two; die like a hero.
    • The ‘later’ heroes: battles, nostoi, problematising heroism?
  • What is a monster?
    • What makes a monster monstrous?
  • Homer and the Homeric epics

What is the Age of Heroes?

  • Hesiod's Erase:
    • The Golden Race
    • The Silver Race
    • The Bronze Race
    • The Age of Heroes
    • The Race of Iron

What is a Hero?

  • ἥρως (heros):
    • noteworthy man; warrior; protector (?); ripeness; readiness, honour
  • Possible etymology:
    • Goddess Hera
    • ὥρα (hōra), season; ripeness, ready for marriage
  • Herakles = ‘glory of Hera’ (her hated stepson); originally named Alcides.

Heroes: Is there a standard?

  • Male
  • Young
  • Greek
  • High social status (elite or royal)
  • Semi-divine
  • Favored or hated by a deity
  • Excels at something (strong, brave, invincible)
  • Destined for κλέος (kleos) (eternal glory)
  • Vanquisher of monsters
  • Is successful in battle or on quests (?)
  • Founder of cities
  • Journeys to unfamiliar places, the edges of the world, sometimes the Underworld
  • Alone? Outside the social norms?
  • Has to die; is in the hands of destiny or fate?
  • Remembered in epic poetry
  • Worshipped in hero cult after death (this was a particular aspect of how the ancient Greeks perceived heroes)

Terms associated with heroes in Greek myth, particularly Homeric epic

  • κλέος ἄφθιτον (kleos aphthiton) – eternal glory; to die a glorious death in battle; to be remembered in epic poetry
  • ἄριστος (aristos) – the best / ἀριστεία (aristeia) – the moment of ‘bestness’, the moment of achieving aristos, the moment of glory (kleos aphthiton)
  • ἀρετή (arete) – excellence, also virtue
  • τιμή (time) – honour, connected to being worshipped after death (hero cult) – connected to social status (aristos, being the best, having the highest status)

Questing Heroes

  • Jason
  • Theseus
  • Perseus
  • Heracles
  • Orpheus

Heroes: Making the Grade

  • Theseus:
    • King of Athens, royalty (✓)
    • Goes on a quest (✓)
    • Kills a monster (✓)
    • Abandons a princess (⁈)
    • Is aided by gods (✓)
  • Oedipus of Thebes:
    • Defeats the riddle of the sphinx (✓)
    • Worshipped in Hero Cult at Athens (✓)
    • Kills his father, marries his mother (⁈)
    • Quest for self-knowledge (✓)
  • Perseus:
    • Young (✓)
    • Saves a princess (✓)
    • Vanquishes monsters (✓)
    • Is aided by gods (✓)
  • Heracles:
    • Vanquishes monsters (✓)
    • Has super strength (✓)
    • Hated by the goddess Hera (✓)
  • Orpheus:
    • Thracian (✘)
    • Excels at poetry (✓)
    • Goes on a quest (✓) (fails)
    • Dies unheroically (✗)
  • Jason:
    • Greek (✓)
    • Goes on a quest (✓)
    • ‘Rescues’ a princess (✓)
    • Abandons her for another (⁈)
    • Dies unheroically (✗)

Warrior Heroes

  • Hektor
  • Achilles
  • Menelaus
  • Aeneas
  • Agamemnon
  • Patroclus
  • Odysseus

A Singular Hero?

  • Odysseus
  • Menelaus:
    • Greek (✓), male (✓), warrior (✓⁈), royal (✓), loses his wife (✗), goes on a quest (Trojan War) (✓)
  • Aeneas:
    • Trojan (✗), semi-divine (✓), male (✓), warrior (✓⁈) (possibly betrays his city), royal (✓), loses his wife (✗), goes on a quest (founding Rome) (✓)
  • Agamemnon:
    • Greek (✓), semi-divine (✗), male (✓), warrior (✓) (but quite petulant), royal (✓), loses his cool (✗), goes on a quest (Trojan War) (✓)
  • Achilles:
    • Greek (✓), male (✓), young (✓), semi-divine (✓), excels at battle (✓), dies ingloriously in battle (⁈), arguably achieves kleos aphthiton (✓) betrays the warrior code (✗)
  • Patroclus:
    • Greek (✓), male (✓), young (✓), semi-divine (✗), excels at battle (✓), dies gloriously in battle (✓), arguably achieves kleos aphthiton (✓)

Heroes who are ‘other’

  • Is it possible to be an ancient Greek hero if you are ‘other’, especially if you are not Greek, or if you are not male?
  • Hektor: Hektor is a Trojan and still displays heroic qualities.
  • Memnon: Although Memnon is only mentioned briefly in the Iliad, and the Odyssey, we know of a lost epic called the Aethiopis, which was about this Aethiopian king.
  • Penthesilea
  • Atalanta:
    • Cast out by her father who wanted a son
    • Grows up worshipping Artemis, with hunting skills; excels at footraces
    • Defeats centaurs, assists in the killing of the monstrous Calydonian boar
    • Resists marriage: only falls for Hippomedes when he throws apples at her feet to distract her in a foot-race she ran to avoid marriage, having stated that she’d only marry someone who beat her
    • Aphrodite, who had given Hippomedes the apples at his request, cursed the couple when Hippomedes forgets to pay his dues; they make love in a sacred precinct and are transformed into lions.
  • Helen?
    • Hemitheoi (daughter of Zeus)
    • Excels at beauty (something women could excel at, when they weren’t murdering their husbands or children)
    • Is remembered in epic poetry
    • Is worshipped in hero cult, where she received many, many more offerings than her husband Menelaus (this is attested archaeologically)
  • The women of Troy:
    • Enslaved by the Greeks and portioned out like cattle; Hecuba, who is given to Odysseus, takes her revenge on a friend who betrayed her family by blinding him and then killing his children. Hecuba has all of her sons, and watched her husband King Priam die at the hands of Achilles’s son, Neoptolemous.

What is a Monster?

  • Τέρας (Greek) teras: aberration (out of the ordinary), sign; portent; monster
  • Pegasus: a monster? Born from the severed neck of Medusa

Is there a standard monster?

  • Divine parentage
  • Located on the edges of the world
  • Hybrid, parts of different animals, or part-human/part-animal
  • Extreme in some way: very large, very strong, invincible, clever/deceitful
  • Dangerous to mortals
  • Sometimes associated with a cursed heritage, or the misdemeanors of a parent or mentor.
  • Alone, lonely?
  • Fated to be outcast/vanquished/die?

Perseus & Medusa: how exactly is Medusa monstrous?

  • Focus questions:
    • How is Medusa a monster?
    • What does she look like?
    • What does she do?
    • What is her backstory?
    • Does Apollodorus’s depiction allow any sympathy for her? (or do we have to wait until Ovid for this?)
    • Why are the most violent scenes from a myth the ones that appear so often in Greek material culture?
  • Key Ancient Object: Attic red-figure krater depicting the moment that Perseus beheads Medusa and runs off with her head in his kibisis (bag). Athena looks on. Medusa’s head is still asleep in the bag. Medusa’s beheaded body seems to have awoken – see how her fingers are splayed on the groundline, and her arms straight; her body is turned towards her severed head.
  • Why is Medusa punished?

Monstrous Women: Gorgons

  • Gorgoneions depict startling faces: wide open eyes, often with boar’s tusks protruding from the mouth, sometimes with snakes for hair. They appear to have had an apotropaic (protective; warding off evil) function, attached to temples and houses. It is unclear how they intersect with the Gorgon Medusa.
  • Gorgons, and Medusa are hybrid, composite creatures, with wings and other animal elements. The winged gorgon on the left also holds birds (possibly geese) in each hand: this combination is known as ‘Mistress of the Animals’. Artemis is also depicted in this way. Some scholars suggest the image developed from much earlier Bronze Age depictions of goddesses associated with animals.

Homer & the Homeric epics

  • First written down probably in the eight century BCE (800-700 BCE)
  • Much dispute about Homer’s existence – one poet, many, later poets? The Homeric Question.
  • These epics coalesced into what is probably similar to their current forms during the archaic period, from a long-term tradition of oral storytelling.
  • For the ancient Greeks, these were mythos: not quite works of fiction, but not quite ‘history’; cultural knowledge, social commentary, encapsulates the heroic age that preceded the time of the ancient Greeks themselves
  • Written in dactylic hexameter – the epic rhythm
  • Feature stories of great heroes and other mortals – while the gods intervene (and even drive the plots), these are primarily stories set in the human world, with human concerns at their core.

The Epic Cycle

  • Cypria: events leading up to the Trojan war; first 9 years of the war; includes the Judgement of Paris
  • Iliad: Achilles’ rage sets of the events in the last 10 days of the war
  • Aethiopis: The story of Penthesilea, the Amazon queen, and Memnon, the Ethiopian king who join the war; Achilles kills both; Achilles dies
  • Little Iliad: post-Achilles’ death; Odysseus’ ruse of the horse; the building of the horse
  • Iliou Persis (‘Sack of Troy’): the destruction of Troy
  • Nostoi: the Greeks return home; focus on Agamemnon and Menelaus
  • Odyssey: the return of Odysseus to Ithaka
  • Telegony: Odysseys sets off again – this time to Thesprotia, returning to Ithaka and eventually being killed by his illegitimate son (with Circe) Telegonus

The Iliad: Themes and Concerns

  • heroic kleos
  • kleos amphithon
  • μῆνις (menis): unchecked rage
  • τιμή (time): honour– technically time is the honour paid through cult practice)
  • status – how to keep it, raise it, take it from someone else
  • how to die like a warrior
  • how to maintain the heroic code in battle
  • also – the cost of war? or its glorification?
  • fate & the will of the gods

The Odyssey: Themes and concerns

  • ξενία (xenia), the sacred and reciprocal relationship between guest & host (Zeus is the god of xenia – this word can mean both ‘stranger’ and ‘friend’)
  • colonisation, its dangers & attractions
  • Greek culture & ‘others’
  • ‘civilisation’ vs ‘barbarism’
  • nostos, travelling home by sea
  • how to be Greek in a new world
  • heroic kleos
  • the idea of home
  • fate
  • the role of the gods in human life
  • the importance of storytelling as cultural knowledge
  • the unreliability (or the malleability) of stories and storytellers

Seminar Focus Questions for Readings 1 & 2: In each of these passages, the Homeric hero encounters and takes action against his foe: Achilles and his Trojan opponent, Hektor; Odysseus and the cyclopes Polyphemus

  • Reading 2: The Odyssey
    • Are all of Odysseus’s actions those of an ancient Greek hero?
    • Does he offer anything extra?
    • Does Odysseus adhere to ancient Greek heroic and social codes (such as xenia)?
    • Are his actions problematic?
    • What are his motivations?
    • In what ways exactly is Polyphemus a monster?
  • Reading 1: The Iliad
    • How does Achilles fulfill the heroic code in this passage?
    • Are his behaviors problematic at all, or is he functioning as a pure warrior hero?
    • How would a Greek audience have felt about his actions, and Hector’s fate.
    • Is Hector a ‘monster’ because he is a Trojan? Why/Why not?
    • Is there any way in which Achilles is a monster here?

Discussion Question

  • Why are heroes connected to monsters?
  • Do heroes need monsters?
  • Do heroes and monsters fulfil a social role in the ancient world?

Week 8 Seminar Heroes & Monsters

  • Homeric epic in archaic Greece; ancient Greek heroes & monsters; heroes who are ‘other’
  • Readings from the Iliad and the Odyssey that illustrate the Homeric hero
  • Readings from Apollodorus focusing on Heracles, and on Perseus & Medusa
  • Analysis and problematising of the concept ‘hero’

Week 9 Seminar A Curse Upon your House: Myth in Greek Tragedy

  • Overview of classical Athens; introduction to Athenian tragedy and its social context; introduction to Aeschylus and Euripides
  • Greek myth as presented in Athenian tragedy
  • Focus on Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Euripides’s Bacchae.
  • Exploration of the key themes in these texts: the centrality of violence in Greek myth; gender roles and ideology; the role of the gods in human life and destiny; social concerns around succession and stability (oikos), violation of the domestic and public space (xenia; ecstasis)."