Gods and Creation Flashcards
• Myth
a traditional story with collective importance.
o Has plot, narrative, beginning middle, and end with characters.
o The time and place are either in far away places or long ago in a place nearby.
o Usually orally handed over. Which maintains future relationship with the past.
o Describe how people should act, and how people and things came to be in the first place.
o Anonymous no one knows who came up with it first.
o Subject to constant change
• Logos
A non-anonymous myth with an actual writer.
o A reasoned logical explanation of something with a logical sequence of events, and proof.
• Divine Myth
Supernatural beings are the main characters.
o Usually explain the why the world is the way it is.
o Function as science
• Legends
Great men doing great deeds or actions.
o Usually the stories of human past.
o Morally uplifting
o Most likely these heroes and heroines actually lived in the Late Bronze Age- Mycenaean
• Folktale
Ordinary people or animals.
o Justify patterns of behavior
o Mostly just for entertainment and not true
o Occur in specific Patterns and Specific Types
• Etiological Tale
explains causes that brought world to existence.
o “Science” to the Greeks, was controlled by the Gods Human like emotions and unpredictability
• 4 Approaches to studying Myth
o Recording and Compiling of a given culture’s myth.
o The study of how one culture’s myth is related to that of another’s.
o The analysis of the impact a culture’s myths have within a culture.
o Analysis of the lasting human impact of a myth or group of myths.
• Boeotia
A plane in Balkan Peninsula that housed Thebes
• Attica
Plain that housed Athens
• Peloponnesus
a plain that was connected to the Balkan by a stretch of land called Isthmus.
• Laconia
Sparta
Euboea
land not far from Athens with Limestone and clay for pottery
• Aegean Sea
Centrally important to Greek life for imports and source of food.
• Cyclades
Island that housed Delphos, sacred island to Artemis and Apollo.
• Stone Age
7000B.C.-6000B.C. only known that people lived in Greece not much is known about them.
• New Stone Age
6000 B.C.- 3000 B.C. rudimentary agriculture was practiced, and people lived inside of walled communities with pottery
• Early/Middle Bronze Age
3000- 1600 B.C. mainland were farmers whose race and language are unknown that worshipped fertility goddesses. Cretans are the ones known.
o Minoans inhabited Greece
o Bull, double axe, and labyrinth were important symbols.
o Built non-walled palaces
o Indo European Language probably influenced all European Language
o 2100 B.C. Greek people invaded Greece
• Late Bronze Age
1600- 1150B.C.
o Bronze weapons, loved war, ruled by kings, walled palace.
o Mycenaean civilization takes over Minoan civilization
o Linear B existed, but not used for literature, but economic accounts
o Linear B was destroyed by fire, and lost forever which prompted Dark Age.
• Dark Age
1150 B.C.-800 B.C. Not much archaeological remains
o Mycenaeans were destroyed by the Dorians, except in Athens
• Archaic Period
800-480 B.C. characterized by Greek alphabet
o Polis emerged as center of politics.
o Coinage was invented
o Commerce thrived
o Kakoi-merchants vs. traditional wealth aristoi
o Tyrants ruled the cities, but aristocrats ruled culture
o Persian threat grew
• Classical Period
480-323 B.C.- characterized by democracy philosophy and science, with logical consequences and rational reasoning
o Battle of Thermopylae 300 Spartans fought off the Persians.
o Although city States remained one country by similar language and culture.
o Peloponnesian war ended the peace in Greece Sparta beat Athens after 10 years of war.
• Hellenistic Period
323-30 B.C.
o King Phillip over ran the city states
o Alexander inherited lands and instantly took control of huge empire from Persians all the way into India.
o Alexandria was center of the world, and Greek culture dominated the world.
o Rome conquered Greece by 30 BC ending this era.
• Roman period
30 B.C. to 1453 A.D. the Romans almost perfectly preserved, and passed on Greek culture.
• Hoplites
heavily armed soldiers
parthenos
virgin
• Narcissus-
character who fell in love with himself by looking at himself in the reflection of the lake, and fell in and drowned. Flower named Narcissus
• Artemis Pontia Theron
Lady of the Beasts, one of the earliest sculptures ever found goddess of fertility
• Aoidoi
singers that sung the myths to a large audience, which helped the myths being passed on to later generations.
o Homer and Hesiod are the most famous
• Mesopotamia
Land Between Rivers
o Many important myths such as the battle between old gods and new, and the biblical flood story came from Mesopotamia
• Sumerians
People that inhabited Mesopotamia that invented irrigation agriculture, and established first city-states with up to 50000 inhabitants.
o Build Ziggurats for their Kings and Queens
o Cuneiform was the first ever style of writing, and was able to be translated into several different languages.
• An
Sumerian God of the sky. Started out with all of the power then became very insignificant parallel to Uranus.
• Inanna
Queen of heaven and An’s daughter. Goddess of sexual love. Essentially Aphrodite. Sumerian
• Enlil
A king, An’s agent on Earth. God of the storm. Possessed tablet of destiny, so he controlled the fates of humans and weather. Parallel to Zeus. Controlled thunder and lightning. Sumerian.
• Enki
A Sumerian Hermes, very tricky, and clever. Also good craftsmen, god of groundwater, and god of wisdom. Somewhat like Poseidon, Hephaestus, and Prometheus.
• Ki
Earth/ mother goddess. Similar to Demeter. Sumerian.
• Ereshkigal
Sumerian goddess of death. Similar to Persephone. Sumerian.
• Semites- semi-nomadic people that inhabited the steppe at the fringes of the Arabian Desert. Not united, but are descendants of Noah’s three sons Aram, Eber, and Ashur.
• Akkadians
adopted the Sumerian culture after they took it over.
• Hebrews- Semitics that traced their ancestors back to Abraham.
o Followed Yahweh only after Moses led them out of Egypt.
o Greek alphabet developed from their Phoenician writing.
• Hittites
Ruled Asia Minor and sort of adopted Sumerian myths in Late Bronze Age.
• Egyptian
murder of Osiris and marriage to Isis
• Homer
earliest written and recorded myths, Iliad and Odyssey. Wrote Epic poetry.
• Epic
a type of tragic poetry that was very long
• Hesiod
Tells a bit about himself, writes about the origin of gods and the universe. Creation Myth.
• Homeric Hymns
poems about Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, and Demeter that circle around the Trojan War.
• Humanism
ethics on how to treat fellow humans that really weren’t described by any of the mythical texts.
• Choral song
memorized songs while children danced
• Tragedy
Song meant to be heard not read, written with characters that have a flaw and usually die because of this flaw.
o Aeschylus
7 of his 80 plays survive. Used myth to describe conflict between individual will and divine destiny, his characters embodies some principle. Lived at Athens peak of great glory
o Sophocles
Cultural dominance of Athens. 7 of 123 plays survive. Dignity of humans compared to divine beings. In all of his plays an oracle predicts an unexpected outcome that is ignored by the hero. They always learn too late how to act.
o Euripides
19 out of the 80 plays he wrote survive. Showed men as they really are. Subjected traditional myths to serious scrutiny.
• Apollonius of Rhodes
wrote the epic poem Jason and the Argonauts
• Library of Apollodorus
A straightforward account of all that ever happened in myth from the very beginning of creation until the death of Odysseus
• Vergil
wrote the Aeneid- the story of how Rome was founded. Gives most descriptive view of underworld
• Ovid
a very famous witty Roman poet until he was exiled for a sexual scandal with the house of Augustus Caesar.
o Wrote Metamorphoses, which is a large body of Greek myths tied together by change of shape
• Cosmogony
A story that tells the origins of the universe.
o Hesiod
• Theogony
A story that tells the origin of the gods.
• Chaos
The first primordial being that popped into existence. Chasm.
o Gave birth to Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (Night)
o Possibly a gap from which the rest of the universe came through
• Gaea
The Earth.
o Mother of Uranus (sky), Mountains, Pontus (sea)
o With Tartarus gave birth to Typhoeus
o With Uranus gave birth to the Titans, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes and from Uranus blood, Erinyes (responsible for punishing those who commit crimes against their family), the Giants and the nymphs.
• Tartarus
some place beneath the Earth.
o Father of Typhoeus with Gaea
• Eros
God of love makes people fall for each other.
o Eros fell in love with Psyche when he accidentally scratched himself with an arrow, which was supposed to make Psyche fall in love with something hideous.
o People worshipped Psyche instead of Aphrodite.
• Titans
the second generation of gods.
o Cronus, Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Pheobe, Tethys
• Cyclopes
the brutal violent but talented craftsmen of the gods. Had one eye.
o Gave Zeus Thunder and Lightning
• Hecatonchires
had 100 arms, 50 heads most hated by Uranus
