The Enduring Myths of Ancient Greece

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1 • FEBRUARY 1984 Humanities The Enduring Myths of Ancient Greece The European Renaissance, through throughout because the purpose its rediscovery of the Greek (and was in the main preparation for many of the Latin) classics, estab modern literature; theories of myth, lished for the generations that fol its origins and functions were not lowed a common cultural back the prime concern. This is of course ground for secular literature and no longer the case; mythology as a art: the rich and varied mythology humanistic subject of study is now of ancient Greece. Its themes be concerned at least as much with came familiar not only to those theory as with content. The change who read the Greek classics in the has come about because of develop original but also to a larger audi ments in other fields. Previously ence who knew them through the unknown mythologies, those of medium of the Latin poets and to preliterate peoples, have been re still greater numbers who read corded and investigated by field an avidly the work of the great transla thropologists; archaeologists work tors of the period—Chapman, San- ing in the Middle East have dug up dys, Dryden, to mention only those and deciphered documents that writing in English. Until fairly late revealed forgotten mythologies— in the nineteenth century, a Euro Babylonian, Hittite, Ugaritic; folk pean writer or painter could count lorists have collected the oral nar on recognition of Greek mytholog rative traditions of shepherds and ical themes; Shakespeare, Milton, peasants. A wealth of comparative Pope, Keats, Browning and Tenny material, most of it not literary but son, like Tiepolo, Titian and Pous living and functioning in society, sin, could take for granted an audi has become available for compara ence familiar with the classical gods tive study. Myth has also emerged and heroes. They counted on a as a primary subject of concern for public educated like themselves in new psychological theories, as a the classics at school or, as in the key, like dreams, to the deepest an case of John Keats, self-taught with xieties of the individual psyche or the aid of Lampriere's famous clas of the collective unconscious. Myth sical dictionary. More recent writ is also the base for a far-reaching ers, though they can no longer ex theory of the nature of human pect an immediate response to clas mental activity, not just that of pre sical allusions, continue to rework literate societies but of all mankind. the ancient material in modern It was only to be expected that form, as in Joyce's Ulysses, Stravin these new assessments of the func sky's Oedipus, Sartre's Les Mouches, tion of myth in preliterate societies, Cocteau's Machine Infemale, Hoff- these new analyses of its role in the mannstahl-Strauss' Elektra and human unconscious, should have Anouilh's Antigone— not to mention their effect on the study of the the latest revival, The Gospel at most completely documented, var Colonus. ied, rich and splendid mythology As the study of the classics in we possess: the Greek vision of the the original languages lost its once gods on Olympus and their compli dominant position in the curricu cated relations with each other and lum of Western culture (a process with mankind; the intermediate accelerated sharply in the years af world of creatures neither human ter the second world war), the need nor divine—nymphs, satyrs, cen to provide a background for Eng taurs; the history of a heroic hu lish literature and the history of art man world through some four or saw the birth of "mythology” as an five generations of great dramatic independent subject: an elementary figures, culminating in two famous course in the main areas of classical o sieges, of Thebes and of Troy, and myth, with perhaps some excur coming to an unemphatic end with 3£ sions into the Norse and Celtic tra OJ 3 the sons and daughters of those ditions. The emphasis was literary Oedipus confronts the Sphinx on a fifth-century B.C. Attic vase. s who fought at Troy. After Orestes, Telemachus, Electra, Hermione and Laocoon and his sons Neoptolemus, the saga peters out. struggle with the ser Editor's Notes There had of course been what pents of Poseidon. "Long before Aristotle formulated might be called theoretical ap Laocoon was attacked the rules for tragic plot, Greek proaches to the phenomenon of and killed because he myths had been shaped to fit myth even in the ancient world. tried to warn Troy against the wooden horse them ," writes Bernard Knox. Mr. The embarassing aspects of Olym built by the Greeks. Knox examines the various ap pian conduct could be explained proaches to the study of classical away as allegory; this was a spe mythology from the Renaissance to cialty of the sophist Prodicus, who our own day, with particular em maintained that Demeter was simp phasis on Claude Levi-Strauss's ly the grain and Dionysus the structural analysis as well as the wine, and in the hands of the Neo- psychoanalytic theorists who have platonic philosophers of late anti put "hundreds of mythical figures quity the method reached baroque and situations relentlessly through levels of ingenuity. Or the myths the Freudian grinder." could be simply rationalized, ex Robert M. Wallace, the translator plained as mistaken interpretations of Arbeit am Mythos, a major work of human phenomena, as in Euhe- of Hans Blumenberg, one of merus' theory that the gods were Germany's leading postwar philos originally great men, Heracles, for ophers, says that Blumenberg ad example, who did so much for hu dresses a question that has troubled manity that tradition deified them. European thinkers since the late A still later writer, Palaephatus, at seventeenth century: "Why, with tributed the creation of mythical the triumphant advance of secular, wonders (the title of his book is On scientific rationality, have the old Incredible Things) to linguistic mis myths not simply evaporated into understanding; Pasiphae doesn't thin air? How is it that they have fall in love with a bull but with a maintained and even increased handsome lieutenant of her hus their hold on...our imaginations?" band called Tauros; Sphinx was a These are the questions that gave rejected wife of Cadmus who com rise to the theme of this issue of manded a guerilla band against him Humanities. For the study of on the mountains (Palaephatus ex myth—not only classical Greek plains the riddle by the barefaced mythology but the myths of prelit assertion that the Greek word ainig- erate societies and other peoples ma meant 'ambush' in the Theban throughout the world—have be dialect). Strangely enough Palae come a subject of increasing inter phatus thus produced a prophetic est, made available for comparative travesty of the nineteenth-century of the sun chariot, which could in tions in general but specifically study through the work of anthro theory of Max Muller, that myth deed be regarded as symbolic of with ritual: Myths were sacred tales pologists, archaeologists, and was a "disease of language": that real phenomena, but only by fol intimately connected with and pro others. In this work, scholars are gods had emerged from early lowers of Professor Velikovsky. A bably derived from ritual; some discovering that perhaps myth is man's misunderstanding of Indo- later, very influential theory took were tales that tried to explain rit not the irrational, "dark side" of European words for the heavenly almost precisely the opposite posi uals which in the course of time the human unconscious, but a basis bodies, especially the sun. tion: Myths were not aetiological, had become unintelligible or appar for understanding the mental pro Muller's real importance lay in they did not explain natural phe ently pointless. The most famous of cesses of all humankind. his work on Sanskrit and early In nomena, or for that matter any these rituals was of course the cele —Judith Chayes Neiman dian texts; his theory that all myths thing else. Their function was so bration of the birth of the year-god were some kind of solar imagery cial: They validated institutions— and the mourning for his death, soon fell into disrepute. It was fol kingship, tribal precedence and the the central mystery of ancient relig lowed by others that all, though like, for which they were a "char ion as Frazer presents it in his fa they differed from it in almost ter." This theory had the advan mous book The Golden Bough, a Humanities every respect, shared with it one tage, unlike some of the others, theory richly developed by Jane A bimonthly review published by the fatal weakness: They were pro that it was based on anthropolo Harrison in Themis and other vol National Endowment for the Humanities posed as universal theories of gical work in the field, that of Mal umes. That there are important Chairman: William J. Bennett myth; they claimed to explain Director of Public Affairs: Marion Blakey inowski in the Trobriand Islands of connections between ritual and everything. And in every case this Assistant Director for Publications: the Pacific Ocean. It was a general myth (in some cases extremely claim proved impossible to main Caroline Taylor theory that shed new light on some close connections) no one would tain in the face of the bewildering Editor: Judith Chayes Neiman of the Greek myths. The story of deny. But there are also a multi variety of myth, especially of the Managing Editor: Linda Blanken Ion, son of Apollo, for example (the tude of myths that cannot reason classic example, Greek myth.

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