Greek myth midterm 1 - exam 1 study guide PDF

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Terms ● Achilles ○ Greatest warrior on the greek side of the trojan war ○ Focus of Homer’s Iliad ○ Immortal except for heal b/c that’s what he was held by while being dipped in river styx ● Adonis ○ Born from Smyrna with her father ■ Smyrna didn’t worship aphrodite so she cursed her to fall in love w/ her father ○ Extremely handsome ○ Aphrodite and persephone fall in love w/ him ○ Adonia ■ Women only festival of adonis ■ Young girls party and watch plants grow and then die ■ Aspects of mourning and laughter ■ Jack Winkler: wilted sprouts represent male side of reproduction ● Brevity vs. enduring role of females in reproduction ● Aeneas ○ Flees troy after its attacked by greeks ○ Carries father from burning city, father dies, wants to go visit him ○ Wanders to temple of apollo at cumae ■ Sibyl helps him get to underworld ● Says he will start a colony but w/ much suffering ○ Sibyl’s instructions: find a golden leafed fruit ■ Panics at all of the spirits (unburied dead) ○ Falls in love w/ dido but abandons her to start his colony, then meets her in visit to underworld ○ River of lethe (“forgetfulness”) ■ Drink from river -> lose all memories -> reincarnation ■ Aeneas drinks and sees future of roman greatness ● Alcmene ○ Seduced by zeus in disguise as her husband amphitryon ○ Mother of heracles ● Anchises ○ The mortal that aphrodite is forced to fall in love w/ thanks to zeus ○ Fated to grow old but to have a son that will “grow very like the gods” -> Aeneas ● Aphrodite ○ Personnel of desire ○ Assisted by: ■ Two goddesses (harmonia “harmony”, and peitho “persuasion”) ■ Eros = roman amor/ cupid (love) ■ Pothos (longing) ■ Himeros (desire) ○ Aphrodite’s epithets

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■ Cyprian (port city), paphian (island), cythera (harbor town) ■ Limenia (of the harbor), pandemus (of all the people) ■ Philommedes (laughter-loving, or genital-loving) ■ eros Positives ■ Essential for marriage and children ■ Roles of persuasion - bring people together politics Negatives ■ Judgement of paris -> abduction of helen -> trojan war ■ hippolytus Born from zeus and hera Aphrodite’s lover Brother of eris (“quarrels”) God of conflict, not intellectual side of war just violence and aggression Trapped by hephaestus in bed w/ aphrodite ■ Contrast b/w strong and powerful ares w/ weak and clever hephaestus

Athena ○ Cunning/practical intelligence ○ Urban = lives in the center of the city ■ No connection to nature or natural phenomena ○ Associated w/ army activity ○ Manly activities ■ Craftsmen (wood and iron) ● Bridle, plough, ship-building, weavers (commercial) ● Arachne challenged athena to weaving contest -> lost -> spider ○ Trapped in web and weaving constantly ■ Soldiers - martial arts ■ Skills and strategies ● Phalanx = tight ranks of soldiers in greek warfare ○ Peplos ■ Ceremonial attire woven for her each year ■ Huge, associated w/ her stature and cult ○ Usually depicted w/ helmet, shield, spear, aegis ■ Aegis = animal skin breastplate w/ face of gorgon ● Given to her by perseus for helping him fight medusa ● Can protect anyone she wants ○ Helper of heroes ■ Favorite heroes: heracles, odysseus ● Also bellerophon and perseus ○ Offspring ■ Virgin goddess (a-sexual) ■ Erichthonius

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● Handed to athena by gaia (autochthony) Autochthony ○ Being born from the earth ○ Three theories of the origin of athenians ■ Descended from cecrops ■ Autochthony -> athenian exceptionalism ■ Descended from athena ○ Thebans - grew out of earth from planted dragon teeth ○ Important factor in political claims ■ Territory (right to territory by birth) ■ Racial purity = unmixed w/ barbarians, city hates other races ■ Democratic equality = equality of birth -> political equality “Battle of wits” ○ Prometheus vs. zeus in theogony ○ Prometheus deceived zeus with fake meat, zeus punished by taking fire from mankind ○ Prometheus stole fire back, zeus created women to punish man Birth of Aphrodite ○ Born from severed genitals of uranus in the sea foam Birth of Athena ○ Born from zeus and metis (cleverness) ○ Zeus swallows metis to stop her from giving birth, athena birthed from zeus’ head ○ Why athena is manly? Why she supports orestes Callisto ○ Daughter of king of arcadia ○ Hunting companion of artemis, likes imitating her ○ Turned into a bear by artemis for not being pure anymore after she slept w/ zeus Catasterism ○ Translation from being an object on earth to a station among the stars ○ Usually done by a divine agency ○ Honor for the being/object ○ Use in myth ■ Normally occurs at the end ■ Provides an explanation for an astrological phenomenon Cerberus ○ Three headed dog that guards the underworld ○ Born from echidna and typhon Charon ○ Mans the boat that carries buried souls across the river styx in the underworld Charter myth ○ Explanation for all that is important in the social life of a community ○ Limitations of the charter theory ■ Too one-dimensional ● Emphasizes the practical part, ignores the parts that don’t fit (evil)

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Only works for dominant part of society ● Legitimizes royal power, but what about on-elites ● Ex. subversive myths celebrate women’s resistance to men, these myths do not support the idea of them being an explanation for a social practice ■ If myth is culturally specific, why are there common themes in different societies ● Ex. eve ate the apple = prometheus tricked zeus ■ OVERALL: Does not address the universalizing themes of myth (birth, suffering, death) Comparative approach (to myth) ○ Myths address common human concerns and we can compare myths across societies ○ Wendy doniger ■ Identifies questions and compares the answers provided by myths from different cultures ● Myths from different cultures can be traced back to common human experiences ■ Similar plots -> similar human concerns ● Universal theory of myth ○ frazier Contest for Athens ○ Poseidon produced a salt spring, athena planted an olive tree ○ One version: gods voted ■ Picked athena b/c she had cecrops as a witness ■ Poseidon got mad and flooded the thriasian plane ○ Another version: athenians voted ■ Men voted for poseidon, women for athena and won by one ■ Athenian women punished to appease poseidon ● No more voting (still citizens), and child takes fathers name ○ Athena became patron goddess of athens ■ Temple of athena parthenos on acropolis ■ Panathenaia ■ Consolation prize = temple of poseidon at sounion Contextual approach (to myth) ○ Myths must be understood in their social context ○ Malinowski ○ Charter myth Cronus ○ Titan born from gaia and uranus ○ Castrates uranus to set other titans free ○ Father of hestia, hera, demeter, poseidon, zeus, and hades w/ rhea ○ Swallows all of his kids, until being overthrown by zeus Demeter ○ Daughter of cronus and rhea ○ Mother of persephone ■

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Goddess of harvest, linked to death Attributes ■ Wheat stalks, cornucopia ■ Triptolemus - athens prince, spreads knowledge of agriculture to humans ■ Royal staff ○ Agricultural rituals ■ Proerosia (“before plowing”) ■ Haloa (“fields”) ● All female, bawdy ritual ● Agricultural and human fertility through sympathetic magic ■ Thesmophoria (“bringer of law”) ● Link to fertility: sympathetic magic to conjure agricultural success ● Link to death: bury pigs and genital pastries, then dig them up on day 3 Deucalion and Pyrrha (metamorphoses) ○ D: son of prometheus, P: daughter of epimetheus and pandora ○ Only humans left in ovid’s creation myth ○ Commanded by themis’ oracle to throw their mothers bones behind them ■ Bones are really “mother earths bones” = stones and rocks -> humans ■ Deucalion made men, pyrrha made women Earth (Gaia/Gaea) ○ First generation goddess ○ Offspring by herself: uranus, mountains, sea ○ Offspring w/ uranus: titans, cyclopses ○ Offspring w/ tartarus: typhoeus Eleusis/Eleusinian Mysteries ○ Part of homeric hymn to demeter ○ Celeus - king of eleusis build demeter a shrine -> eleusinian mystery cult ○ Features laughter and obscenity - reflecting Iambe ○ Barley water - offered in myth and initiation, promise of prosperity in life and happy after life Elysian Fields ○ Part of the underworld where heroes go ○ “Regions of joy” Epimetheus ○ Born from lapetus (titans) ○ “Afterthought” = foolish brother ○ Prometheus = “forethought” = clever brother ○ Received pandora as a gift from the gods (really to punish humans) Eros ○ First generation god of sexual love, in theogony ○ cupid Europa ○ Seduced by zeus in the form of a bull ○ ○

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Offspring: king minos, rhadamanthus, sarpedon ■ Became three judges of the underworld Five Races of Humankind ○ Gold, silver, bronze, iron, ovid ○ Past was great humans have been degenerating Flood ○ Divine intervention in ovid’s creation story ○ Man was so bad that zeus flooded everything except deucalion and pyrrha Furies/Eumenides ○ Furies attack those who have killed kin (orestes) ○ Orestes was purified by apollo after murder so apollo backs him ○ Apollo’s first argument ■ Zeus commanded that agamemnon be avenged ■ Evokes pity by describing agamemnon’s murder ○ Apollo’s second argument ■ Mother is not kin, father is ■ Father “plants the seed”, so orestes didn’t really kill kin ■ Proof: Athena has a father but no mother ● Athena sides w/ orestes b/c she has no mother and “is entirely her father’s child” ○ Vote is tied -> orestes acquitted ○ Charter myth for areopagus court ■ Open air court, tries cases of murder Ganymede (hymn to aphrodite) ○ Trojan prince seduced by zeus as an eagle ○ Given a place next to zeus on olympus (cupbearer) - but doesn’t die or age Greek marriage ○ Patriarchal, validated in hymn to demeter ○ Women benefited by being honored by their husbands and worshiped by humans Hades ○ Born from cronus and rhea ○ Husband of persephone (pomegranate seed) ○ King of the underworld (not involved w/ the dead though) ○ “Receiver of many” Helen ○ Daughter of zeus ○ Most beautiful woman of greece ○ Given to prince of troy (paris) as a reward for naming aphrodite as the best looking ○ Her capture leads to trojan war Hephaestus ○ Aphrodite’s husband ○ Lame - either by female only birth, or b/c zeus threw him off olympus one time ■ Weak but clever ○

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God of metallurgy, associated w/ fire and volcanoes Created chair that trapped hera, rewarded w/ aphrodite by zeus for letting hera go Also trapped aphrodite and ares in bed (associated w/ divine laughter) Daughter of cronus and rhea Offspring w/ zeus: ares Zeus’ seventh wife - late b/c already powerful on her own ■ Main civic god of important city-states (cult of argos shows this) ■ Major festivals in her honor ■ Originally fertility goddess Seduced by zeus as a cuckoo bird Jealous wife Only goddess who can stand up to zeus (uses aphrodite’s girdle to distract zeus from war)

○ ○ ○ Hesiod ○ Shephard ○ Visited by the 9 muses and inspired ○ Thinks zeus regulates universe according to justice, morally ○ Thinks the iron age is the current state of man ○ Part of the oral tradition, poems not written down until later Hippolytus ○ “Horse-unleasher” or “destroyed by horses” ○ Refuses to worship aphrodite ■ Aphrodite is mad so makes hippolytus’ step mom phaedra fall in love w/ him ○ Devoted to artemis - rejects sex, adolescent ○ Rituals for hippolytus = young women cutting their hair before marriage to mourn the loss of their youth/virginity Homer ○ Believed fate of humans depends on bargaining b/w the gods ○ Just a name used to represent the oral tradition of passing down these poems ○ Wrote the iliad (and odyssey) ■ Describes brief episode of the trojan war ○ Thinks zeus is cruel and unconcerned w/ mortal suffering ○ Credited w/ hymn to demeter and aphrodite Hymn to Aphrodite ○ Starts off with praise of goddess and her control over men and animals ○ And zeus! So he gets mad he has to sleep w mortals so makes her fall in love w/ one ○ Aphrodite shamed for sleeping w/ anchises (weird for a hymn) ○ Could be a charter myth for family -> lineage of elite family of troy (aeneas) ○ Universalizing interpretation ■ Contrast b/w mortals and immortals (anchises gets old) ■ Necessity of death for humans ■ Powerful women? Hymn to Demeter

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Persephone taken by hades to underworld Demeter spends a long time looking for her and is told by helios where she is Stays in the king of eulises house disguised as an old women, starves herself until iambe makes her laugh ○ Demeter entrusted w/ kings son and tries to make him immortal but mom says no ■ Charter myth for worshiping demeter b/c demeter is mad they didn’t let her make son immortal so they have to worship her now to appease her ○ Demeter causes famine so the gods don’t get sacrifices from humans ○ Zeus sends hermes to get persephone back ○ but she already ate a pomegranate seed from hades ○ Persephone stays in underworld for ⅓ of year and normal world for ⅔ ○ What is this myth really about? ■ Validating greek marriage practices ● Women benefit by being honored by their husbands and worshiped by human beings ● Problem: most women don’t spend ⅔ of the year w/ their mother ■ Is it about death? ● Separation felt by demeter and persephone = separation felt by mortals when they die ■ Is it about life and death? ● Persephone represents life and death ■ Is it about matriarchy? ● Persephone as an ancient fertility goddess ● Problem: pre-greek matriarchal societies didn’t exist ■ Is it a charter myth for the cults of demeter? ● Celeus builds her cultic shrine at eleusis -> eleusinian mystery cult ■ Is it about mothers and daughters? ● Separation from marriage b/w mothers and daughters ■ Is it about female resistance to male power? Iambe (Baubo) ○ Name represents ritual obscenity and connection to iambic poetry ○ Makes demeter laugh by lifting up her skirt ○ Reflects ritual of laughter and obscenity and other festivals of demeter Indo-Europeans ○ Possible source of greek mythology when they migrated into greek peninsula ■ Explains parallels b/w greek and non-greek traditions ● Ex. dyaus = vedic sky god = zeus = jupiter Io ○ One of zeus’ wives who made hera super jealous ○ Zeus turned her into a cow to disguise her but hera knew ○ Hera sent argus to guard her, hermes killed argus -> peacock Ishtar ○ Middle eastern parallel of aphrodite ○ ○ ○

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Connection in cyprus (all have trading points there) = syncretism (mixing of identities b/w ishtar and aphrodite ○ Shared characteristics w/ aphrodite: ■ Fertility, sexuality, war ■ Male consort that dies ■ The sea ■ Symbolic clothing Judgment of Paris ○ Contest b/w aphrodite, hera and athena for an apple that says “the fairest” ○ Prince of troy (paris) is the judge - he chooses aphrodite ○ He was rewarded w/ helen -> trojan war ○ Athena offers victory in battle, hera offers royal power Lameness ○ Hephaestus - lame but clever ○ Could be caused by female only birth? ○ Or caused by violence by zeus Leda ○ Mother of helen of troy ○ Seduced by zeus as a swan ○ Discrepancy b/w seduction vs. rape - either way humanity cannot resist the will of zeus Male pregnancy ○ Could be cause of manly traits in females ○ Ex. athena Metamorphoses ○ Written by ovid while in exile ○ Chaos -> Separation = eternal order ■ Heaven from earth, water from land, are from the high stratosphere ○ Man: fashioned out of clay and water by prometheus ○ Myth of ages of man ■ Gold (before zeus)- no weapons and eternal spring ■ Silver (during zeus)- added seasons -> houses ● Had to begin farming, toil and suffering, refused to honor the gods ■ Bronze - aggressive instincts, not entirely evil ■ ** hesiod adds race of heroes ■ Iron - let loose all evil, desire ● War came, justice fled ● Current state according to hesiod, ovid ↓ ● “Sons of blood” ○ Gigantomachy = zeus vs. giants ○ Contemptuous of gods (murder hungry, violent) ● Divine intervention = the flood Metis ○ First wife of zeus, swallowed by him ■

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○ Goddess of cleverness, mother of athena Minos ○ One of the judges of the underworld ○ Son of europa and zeus Misogyny ○ Hippolytus misogynistic rant during tragic play ○ Pandora is a punishment = super misogynistic (hesiod’s theogony) ○ Apollo saying women aren’t part of birth in eumenides Mortality ○ Hymn to aphrodite - anchises has to die, aphrodite tried to make tithonus immortal but he kept aging (mortality is necessary) Ancient Middle East ○ Parallels w/ greek myth(ishtar and aphrodite) ○ What does it tell us that we have similar deities across different cultures? More worldly interactions Olympians ○ Zeus, hera, poseidon, apollo, artemis, aphrodite, hermes, demeter, ares, athena, hestia, hephaestus, hades ○ Sit on mount olympus - tallest mountain in greece Oral tradition ○ How myths are passed down ○ They get changed a little to fit a more local tradition ○ Homeric hymns, hesiod, illiad Orestes ○ Killed his mother to avenge his father agamemnon ○ Tried by furries in court w/ apollo helping him Orion ○ Hunter and companion of artemis ○ Boasted he could kill every animal on earth, gaia got mad and sent a serpent to kill him ○ Artemis begged zeus to castrize him Orpheus ○ Amazing musician ○ Wife goes to underworld b/c she dies from snake bite ○ Tries to recover her but can’t look back to see if she’s coming or she has to stay… he looks back Ovid ○ Exiled for poetry, writes metamorphoses, roman Pandora ○ Given to epimetheus as a gift from the gods ○ Represent women as a punishment to man? Patriarchy ○ End all be all in ancient greece Persephone

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○ Hades wife (not by choice) ○ Falls in love w/ adonis too Phaedra ○ Cursed by aphrodite to fall in love w/ her step son ○ Resolves to kill herself to keep her honor ○ Tells her nurse about her feelings, nurse tells hippolytus ○ Accuses hippolytus of rape in death note Pomegranate seeds ○ Symbol of fertility b/c prepares bride for sexuality of married life ○ Trap persephone in underworld for ⅓ of the year Poseidon ○ Son of cronus and rhea ○ Sea, trident, earthquakes, horses ○ Offspring; theseus, bellerophon, polyphemus ○ Plays a part in birth of erichthonius w/ athena Prometheus ○ Creator of man ○ Part of the battle of wits against zeus ○ Prometheus tricking zeus == eve eating the apple Rhea ○ Born from earth and heaven ○ Mother of olympians ■ Hides zeus in a cave so cronus doesn’t swallow him Sacrificial ritual ○ Hesiod theogony may be charter myth for this Semele ○ Mother of dionysus ○ Zeus showed her his divine form so she died and he put baby in his thigh Sibyl ○ Oracle at cumae ○ Guides people to the entrance of the underworld ○ Fates aeneas to start a colony but w/ much suffering Tartarus ○ Part of the underworld designated for punishments ○ Part of first generation ○ Offspring w/ earth: typhoeus Tithonus (hymn to aphrodite) ○ Mortal who slept w/ a god ○ Immortal but grows old, locked away in chamber Theogony ○ Collection of oral poems, hymns, catalogues, and dramatic tales ■ Hymns: prayer to and praising of the gods ■ Catalogues: genealogies of the gods, creation story

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Dramatic tales: how zeus came to rule creation ● Imprisons chaotic gods ● Creates order and justice No systematic order Creation of man never described! Could be a charter myth for: kings, sacrificial ritual, marriage (b/c creation of women) ■

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