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