Exam 1 Flashcards
Myth
stories that are products of spoken language
mythos meant “authoratative speech”
-is a traditional story with collective importance
-ha a plot, a narrative structure with a beginning, middle, end
-beginning usually has characters introduced into a situation, usually involving a conflict with other characters, misfortune etc
0middle everything gets more complex, tension and conflict develop
-in the end, tension gets resolved
-myths are never set in the present, or recent past-they are always in the distant past or in a shadowy time outside human chronology. setting can also be obscure ex: Mt. Olympus
-told orally from storyteller to storyteller
-are also anonymus, don’t have identifiable authors
-subject to coonstant change
Divine myths
-aka true myths
-supernatural beings are the main actors, superior to humans in power and splendor
-generally explain the world or some aspect of it: many tell the origin and destruction of grand things- the universe, the gods etc
events usually take place in a world before or outside the present order where time and space often have different meanings from those familiar to humans ex: how Zeus fought against Titans
Legends
stories of the great deeds of human heroes or heroines
narrate the events of the human past
-important cultural part of many cities
-central characters are human beings, not gods and goddesses
-supernatural beings can play a part, but its is minor to the human characters Ex: Orestes’s tale-Apollo is a side character
-heroes and heroines are from nobility, kings and queens, princes, princesses, aristocratic elite,
-also have extraordinary physical and personal qualities and are stronger, more beautiful, more courageous than ordinary people
Folktales
stories whose actors are ordinary people or animals
entertain the audience and teach or justify customary patterns of behavior
gods and spirits can make an appreance
did not really happen: ex: cinderella
characters often have low social status, are victimized, persecuted
-primary function is to entertain, also teach lessons and justify patterns of behavior
Etiological tale
a creation myth is an example of etiological tale
explains the causes that brought the world into existance
ex: the origin of mount etna, a dangerous volcano in Sicily. Beneath it Zeus imprisoned the fiire-breathing monster who can spew fire and lava
-the etiological tale expresses a conjecture about the cause of something that existed long before the explanation
Folktale types
a story that appears repeatedly in different cultures widely separated in space or time
ex: Cinderella
made of folktale motifs
folktale motifs
smaller elements that make up folktale types
can be recombined in endless variety
-are the cells that make up the body of a tale- thus a constellation of motifs that constitutes an independent story
different types may have similar motifs ex: the hero grows up and goes off into the world to seek his fortune
Boitia
plains
where Thebes was in ancient times
Attica
Southeast of Boetia are the plains of Attica, with Athen as the Capital
Peloponnesus
south of Athens/Attica, is a small penninsula
Laconia
a.k.a Lacedaemon
the territory around the town of Sparta
Euboea
the Greeks has access to excellent deposits of limestone and clay
the best were found on the island of Euboea, just east of the mainland, not far from Athens
Aegean Sea
a gret resource for the greeks
most of them lived near the sea and fished from there as fish was a staple diet’
the sea was also an avenue of communication with the world beyond the mountains that enclosed the isolated greek communities
Cylades
of the 2 principal groups of islands, Cyclades (circle of islands) is placed in a rough circle around the tiny central island of Delos which is sacred to Apollo and Artemis (the other group is Spordes “scattered islands” which extend along the coast of Ionia, the western coast of Asia minor
Indo-Europeans
the Greeks originally belonged to a cultural and linguistic group known as the Indo-Europeans whose original homeland was in central asia, maybe east of the Caspian sea
begininning in the 4th millenium BC, the indo-europeans migrated in all directions into Eurpoe and aisa, bringing with them their linguistic and cultural traditions
little is known about them, and much is inferred by scholars from a reconstruction of their language
Late Bronze Age
also known as the Mycenaean age
in the Mycenaean age, powerful kings rules greece
they had a militarym and an arisocratic elite
loved war, used bronze weapons, concentrated their wealth
-independent kings built impressive strongholds from which they controlled local economies
their greatest centers were Thebes, Orchomenus, Athens, Pylos, Sparta
-all of these are featured in Greek myths
-Palaces were strongly fortified
Achaeans
they Mycenaean Greeks may have called themselves this
-Achaeans was a word Homer used to describe those who attacked Troy
Linear B
a nonalphabetic script used in Greek
was used to keep track of economic accounts, not creative literature
was found on preserved clay tablets
Dark Age
lasted nearly 400 years
-the destruction of the Mycenaean world to an invasion by greek-speaking peoples from northwest Greece called Dorians
the Dorians overthrew the Mycenaean Greeks except for the remote mountaineous central Arcadia in the Peloponnesus
-a time of social disorganization, impoverishment
petty kings with only local authority replace the great Monarchs of the Myceanean age
many settlements were split apart by tribal feuds
Ionia
Many Greeks migrated from other regions migrated to resettle in the Aegean islands during the Dark Age
Refugees from Peloponnesus took possession of the central islands of the Aegean and the central sector of the western coast of Asia minor henceofourth known as Asia as Ionia
Archaic period
period of political and cultural revival, began with the invention of the alphabet
-emergence of the Greek polis
rebirth of commerce
polis
a plitically independent city-state
emerged in the Archaic period
the members of a polis owed their allegiance to a social group defined by geography
only men were citizens and could participate in political affairs, women lived in a separate world
-downside was that this created tensions in many citizens between ancient loyalty to the family and current loyalty to the political state
Classical Period
-the emergence of the world’s first democracy in Athens
authority in govt no longer came from inheritance
from this emerged other forms of civilization: rule by writeen law, reason supported by evidence, seperation of religion and politics
historical writing, science, philosophy arose
myths recreated for entertainmens
Athenian soliders drove the Persian army away-shows power of freedom
many key thinkers emerged: Plato, Aristotle etc in Athens
Peloponnesian War
war between Sparta, a military state rules by old fashioned aristocrasy, and Athens which was a democracy
from 431-404 they fought each other
Hellenistic period
starts with the death of Alexander the great
(Greece was invaded by Phili 2 of Macedon, who got rid of democracy
when he was killed, his son Alexander took the throne, and then invaded Persia, and went as far as India. After his death starts the Hellenistic period)
-after his death, Alexander’s empire broke up into small hostile kingdoms, but Greek culture spread
other cities were established by the Greek moel
-and then Rome conquered the Greek mainland
pederasty
isolated from the female sex, men in their 20s gathered where prepubescent boys would excersize naked, and court them with gifts and poetry
“love for boys”
Hoplites
heavily armed men who fought wars in the Classical period for the glory of their polis
had to pay for their own equipment
parthenos
the period between first menstruation and marriage was of great danger to a girl and her family
as a parthenos, the girl was thought to be wild and dangerous, like the goddess artemis to whom the parthenis was often compared and whose cult young girls served
most heroines of greek myth are parthenoi, in a momentary position of freedom to do immense harm or bring great advantage to their people
miasma
childbirth was a moment of personal crisis for women because many died from it, but also of enormous pollution called miasma because of the blood and other fluids that accompany childbirth
no man would come close to a woman in labor
Narcissus
a youth of tremendous beauty
his parents wanted to know whether he would live a long life
a priestess told them “very long” but only if he did not look at his own face
when Narcissus was grown, he saw his face reflected in a spring. Reaching for the beautiful figure, he fell in and drowned
his body as changed into a flower and still bears his name
term narcissism comes from this
Roman period
dates from when Egypt, the Hellenistic cultural center fell into Roman hands
Etruscans
North of Rome lived the powerful and influential Etruscans who resided in independent city-states like the Greeks
they spoke a language different from Greek or latin
their origin is unknow, could have originated from Asia minor
they took over the greek alphabet after it was introduced to them
Potnia Theron
“lady of the beasts”
figure of Artemis
role in Greek religion was to promote the abundance of game
might havae been a seperate deity, perhaps of a Mycenaean mother-goddess
Mesopotamia
“the land between the rivers”
occupies what is now Iraq
important source of Greek myth: ex:The Greek myth of the origin of the present world-order in a battle of the gods was of Mesopotamian origin
Sumerians
unknwn racial stock, spoke a language unrelated to other known ones
lived close to the Persian gulf
their culture appeared suddenly about 4000 BC
they came from somewhere outside Mesopotamia-maybe from Iran (Persia) or India
they invented agriculture and created the fist known full-fledged city-states
each Sumerian city had its own protectie deity (god or goddess) that lived in the city’s center, often at the top of a tall pyramid known as a ziggurat
the ruling elites most powerful tool was the writing cuneiform
-the first true writing
An
-Sumerian god
“sky” was god of the infinite expanse above us across which the sun travels from which the rain falls
was originally the supreme authority, the source of order in the worlds of gods above and humans below
Inanna
Sumerian goddess An's daughter "queen of heaven" goddess of sexual love and curiosity and war her lust ws insatiable is like Aphrodite in the Greek myth
Enlil
sumerian god
“lord of storm”
embodied force, power, the unruly violence of a thunderstorm
was also King, An’s agent on Earth, was personally involved in Earthly events
he could be beneficial, bringer of fertilizing rain, or destructive, the drier up of the flood water
similar to Zeus in Greek myth
Enki
sumerian god
“lord of Earth”
ruled the sweet groundwater found beneath the soil
was the active fertilizing principle
was clever, crafty, the trickster of Sumerian myth
also the God of wisdom and magic who instructed humankind in all the arts and crafts
Enki has much in common with Hermes but also shares characteristics with Hephaestus, Promethius, Poseidon, Dionysus
Semites
seminomadic people who inhabited the steppe at the fringes of the Arabian desert
conquered Sumer
not a united people or race
Akkadians
the Semitic Akkadians, named after their capital, Akkad, took over southern Sumerian cities and adopted Sumerian culture
they identified Sumerian gods with their own deities, and took Sumerian myths, refashioned them, and preserved them in cuneiform script on clay tablets
the Sumerian language itself dissapeared as a living spoken language
Hebrews
the best known of the Semitic peoples
traced their ancestry back to Abraham
(according to tradition, Abraham migrate to Canaan (Isreal and Jordan) after God promised that he would become father of a mighty nation. Abraham’s descendents drifted into Egypt where they became slaves to the pharoh, remaining there for centuries. The tradition remains today a basis for Jewish self-explanation
-the great teacher Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt
the writing system the hHebres used was the Phoenicia alphabet
Hittites
non-Semitic controlled Anatolia (Asia Minor) were Indo-European speakers but they inherited cultural traditions first formulated among the Sumerians and later refine by the Sumerians' Semitic successors
Homer
the earliest Greek literature is the poems of Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey
we know nothing for certain about Homer’s life
but his poems show wide knowledge of Aegean and Greece
must have lived just as the alphabet was introduced in Greece (would have been impossible to record it with any earlier writing- Linear B or Phoenician)
The Iliad: a long peom set in a period of several weeks during the tenth year of the Trojan war
The Odyssey: narrates the return of Odysseus to his home after an absence of 20 years
Homeric poems are mysterious-no one has explained their purpose
epic
a long narrative poem celebrating the deeds of Heroes
Hesiod
contemporary of Homer
tells us about himself a little
the Muses, inspirers of poetry, came to him in a vision while he was tending his flock and gave him the power of song
His works:
-Theogony: a description of the creation of the present world order, owes a great deal to Mesopotamian myths
tells how Zues overcame the earlier generation of monsters in battle and came into power
Works and Days: describes the bitter dispute between Hesoid and his brother over the desposition of their father’s property, a theme which allos Hesoid to talk about the issues of right and wrong which he illustrates by telling stories like Pandora
Homeric Hymns
collection of poems
they were composed orally (like the poems of Homer and Hesoid) and were believed to be by Homer himself
the Homeric hymns are a literary elaboration of old religious tradition with a focus on mythic narrative, on the story about the god
performed in public spaces, at festivals including women and other social classes (myths performed for elite male audiences)
humanism
ethics and law together make up humanism which is a central value to Western civilization
the Greeks cultural prejudgment led to them creating ethics, a way to tell right from wrong without divine authority, and secular law where rules of behavior, and punishment depend on human invention and not divine revelation
choral song
new technique of composition in writing
memorized for public presentation by a group of twelve or more boy or girl dancers
(Greek chorus= dance)
tragedy
-word “tragoidia” means “goat song” because the goat was an animal associated with Dinoysus, at whose spring festival tragedies were staged, the name may be taken from the song sung during the sacrifice of a goat in the god’s honor
composed in writing, the script of a tragic playw asn’t meant ot be read, but to serve as a prompt of a live performance
the actors were always male, and never more than 3 in number
they wore masks with stereotypical features to distinguish their roles (ex: old man, young girl)
tragedy was a form of popular entertainment directed to the complex concern of the Athenian male citizens and their taste for propaganda, horror, violence, conflict between the sexes
tragedy allowed the audience to feel intense emotion that they could not in real life without terrible cost
they expanded one’s experience as a human being
Aeschylus
the earliest tragedian whose works survive
loved song and elaborate descriptions especially of foreign lands, high-flown metaphorical language
used myth to explore grand moral issues like conflict between will and divine destiny
his characters tended to embody some principle
his play, Persians, about the events of his own time, is the only surviving tragedy that doesn’t have a mythical theme
Sophocles
wrote plays
in his plays the characters were usually locked in bitter onflict
liked to show humans in conflict with superior, divine forces
his heroes were lonely and unbending- they learn to late how they should act
he is deeply influenced by folklore, especially by the theme of fulfillment of an oracle; all his plays have an orable or prophecy with an unexpected outcome
Euripides
was a poet
subjected traditional myths to scrutiny and criticism
characters are often deflated heroes, mere humans caught up a human squabble
his characters iten veer of into abnormal mental states
he showed man as they really are
most of his plays were abou tlong debates
was called an irrationalist because he liked to celebrate the power of emotion over reason
Apollonius of Rhodes
wrote an epic poem on Jason in the style of Homer
Apollonius of Rhodes, is best known as the author of the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece.
Library of Apollodorus
a straightforward account of mythical events from the creation of the world to the death of Odysseus
our best source of information abou tmany Greek myths, especially those told in the lost Cyclic poems
Vergil
the greatest Roman poet
told the story of Aeneas in his epic the Aeneid- this poem has our fullest description of the underworld and our most vivid account of the sack of Troy
the poem also preserves the legends of Dido, queen of Carthage and of Hercules (Heracles) battle against the monster Cacus
