1. LF310
Greek Mythology
Introduction

2. Introduction
Syllabus
Reading Schedule

3. Texts
Apollodorus, Library of Greek Myth, trans. Robin Hard (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).
Homer, Essential Homer, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Hackett Publishing, 2000).
Homeric Hymns, trans. Diane Rayor (Univ. of Califronia Press, 2004).
Hesiod, Works and Days and Theogony, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Hackett Publishing, 1993).
T. H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (Thames & Hudson, 1991).

4. Today Summary and discussion Definitions Interpretations Methodology
Sources of Greek Mythology

5. Interpretation and Definition of Classical Mythology
Problem of Defining Myth:
No one definition can cover all kinds of myths
From the Greek word mythos, meaning:
word, speech, tale, or story.
A story which has proven itself worthy of becoming traditional.
Narrated orally, but usually it is eventually given written form.
May be told in other media: painting, sculpture, music, dance, or a combination, such as in drama, opera, film, etc.
Distinction between true myth vs. legend, saga, and folktale

6. Myth vs. Legend, Saga, and Folktale
True Myth: concerned with gods and humans’ relations with them.
Saga/Legend:
has a perceptible relationship with history, or roots in historical fact.
Focus on hero
Folktale: adventure, fantastic creatures, heroic ingenuity.
Categories overlap.

7. Myth vs. Truth It’s a myth: Scientific discoveries
we make a distinction between myth and “scientific truth”
Scientific discoveries
will change, grow obsolete
“Art is eternal, for it reveals the inner landscape, which is the soul of man”
Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer
Myth: provides a unity and reality to our transitory world of experience
Myth in a sense is the highest reality.

8. Myth and Religion Most Greek and Roman myths deal with:
creation
nature of god and men
the afterlife
other spiritual concerns
Mythology and religion are inextricably entwined.
The texts are, by nature, religious.

9. Myth and Etiology From aitia, or cause
Myths are the explication of the origin of some fact or custom.
Myths attempt to explain:
not just the physical world
but also the origin of man
the source of good and evil
beauty
division of body and soul.
Theory does not really say what is unique about myth.
Mythmaker is a primitive scientist using myths to explain things that cannot otherwise be explained.
Explanatory is a better word.

10. Rationalism, Metaphor, and Allegory
Euhemerus (c. 300 BCE):
the gods were men deified for their great deeds.
Metaphorical interpretation:
traditional tales hide profound meanings.
Myth as allegory
Details of the stories are symbols of universal truths.
Allegorical Nature Myths: Max Müller
Nineteenth century.
Myths are nature myths.
Said all myths refer to meteorological and cosmological phenomena.

11. Modern Approaches Myth and Psychology Myth and Society Structuralists
Comparative Studies
Feminist Studies

12. Myth and Psychology Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Purpose of Myth: to make life bearable
Theories:
Oedipal Complex
Dreams
Conception of god
Carl Jung ( )
Collective Unconscious
Archetypes
Heroic Models
Social necessity

13. Myth and Ritual Sir James G. Frazer (1854-1941) Robert Graves
The Golden Bough
Kingship Rituals
Robert Graves
( )
Distinguished myth from other categories
“Myth implies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same.”
The White Goddess
True myth is “the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed in public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields, tapestries, and the like” p.5

14. Myth as Social Charters
Bronislav Malinowski ( )
Social Anthropologist
WWI: Trobriand Islanders off New Guinea coast
Connection between myths and social institutions
Explained myths as charters of social customs and beliefs
Myths are related to practical life
They explain existing facts and institutions by reference

15. The Structuralists
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Vladimir Propp
Walter Burkert

16. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
Cultural Anthropologist
Structural similarities underlie all cultures
Structural Anthropology, 1958
Myth is a mode of communication
Myths are derived ultimately from the structure of the mind, which is binary.
It is the function of myths to mediate between these opposing extremes: raw/cooked; life/death; hunter/hunted; nature/culture; etc.
“Mythological thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions towards their resolutions”
In myth, the different or partial versions combine to reveal its total structure.
Breaks down each myth into its component parts.
Basis: all human behavior is based on certain unchanging patterns, whose structure is the same in all ages and in all societies.
Society has a consistent structure and therefore a functional unity in which every component plays a meaningful part.
Myths are derived ultimately from the structure of the mind, which is binary.
It is the function of myths to mediate between these opposing extremes: raw/cooked; life/death; hunter/hunted; nature/culture; etc.
“Mythological thought always progresses from t he awareness of oppositions towards their resolutions”
Myth is a mode by which a society communicates and through which it finds a resolution between conflicting opposites. Differences in versions don’t matter – they can all be used to explore the conflicts.
The logical structure of a myth provides a means by which the human mind can avoid unpleasant contradictions and thus, through mediation, reconcile conflicts that would be intolerable if unreconciled.

17. Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) Russian folklorist
Morphology of the Folktale, 1928
31 functions or units of action
later called motifemes by others
Always in the same order
Looked only at Quest stories
Applicable to myth in some ways

18. Walter Burkert (1931-) Historian of religion and myth Four theses
Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, 1979
Synthesized structural and cultural theories
Historical dimension of myth
Four theses
Myth belongs to the more general class of traditional tale.
The identity of a traditional tale is to be found in a structure of sense within the tale itself.
Tale structures, as sequences of motifemes, are founded on basic biological or cultural programs of actions.
Myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance
Most widely regarded theorist today

19. Feminist Theorists
Social criticism of the male-centered world of Greek mythology
Goes back to Greek poetess Sappho.
Especially concerned with the tales in which the central figure is female.
The role of women in religious rituals was fundamental
they participated in many festivals of their own, from which men were excluded
Women in Greek society
1.Women were citizens of their communities, unlike non-citizens and slaves-a very meaningful distinction. They did not have the right to vote. No woman anywhere won this democratic right until 1920.
2. The role of women in religious rituals was fundamental; and they participated in many festivals of their own, from which men were excluded.
3. Women’s education was dependent on her future role in society, her status or class, and her individual needs (as was that of a man).
4. The cloistered, illiterate, and oppressed creatures often adduced as representative of the status of women in antiquity are at variance with the testimony of all the sources, literary, artistic, and archaeological

20. Conclusions
Many important myths occur in multiple versions, but usually one ancient treatment has been most influential.
Literary and artistic versions of myths and legends of
their artistic merit and the inspiration they have afforded to others are indisputable.
The tales have been retold and continue to be retold.
“A classical myth is a story that, through its classical form has attained a kind of immortality because its inherent archetypal beauty, profundity, and power have inspired rewarding renewal and transformation by successive generations.” – Morford and Lenardon

21. Textual Sources of Greek Mythology
Homer (8th c. BCE), Iliad and Odyssey
Hesiod, (8th c. BCE), Theogony, Works and Days
Homeric Hymns
Archaic Poets, Pindar (early 5th c. BCE)
Fifth-century BCE dramatists,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
Alexandrian poets (Apollonius of Rhodes, 260 BCE)
Historians (Herodotus, 5th c. BCE)
Mythographers (Apollodorus,120 CE)
Philosophers (Plato, 4th c. BCE)
Satirists (Lucian (120 CE)

22. Roman Textual Sources Vergil (70-19 BCE): Aeneid
Ovid (43 BCE- 17 CE): Metamorphoses
Seneca (1st c. CE): Thyestes
Valerius Flaccus (d. 80 CE): Argonautica
Statius (d. 96 CE): Thebaid
Apuleius (b. 123 CE), Metamorphosis
Hyginus (mid. 2nd c. CE) mythographer
Fulgentius (6th c. CE) mythographer

23. Other Sources for Greek Mythology
Ancient artistic representations
Vase paintings
Reliefs
Sculpture
Perseus Project

24. A word about names Pronunciation guide on-line
Pronunciation Guide Handout

25. Sources for Slides Morford and Lenardon, Classical Mythology,
7th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), Chapter 1.