Myth and Religion (J199/11)
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Poison King: the Life and Legend of Mithradates the Great, Rome's
Copyrighted Material Kill em All, and Let the Gods Sort em Out IN SPRING of 88 BC, in dozens of cities across Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern Turkey), sworn enemies of Rome joined a secret plot. On an appointed day in one month’s time, they vowed to kill every Roman man, woman, and child in their territories. e conspiracy was masterminded by King Mithradates the Great, who communicated secretly with numerous local leaders in Rome’s new Province of Asia. (“Asia” at this time referred to lands from the eastern Aegean to India; Rome’s Province of Asia encompassed western Turkey.) How Mithradates kept the plot secret remains one of the great intelli- gence mysteries of antiquity. e conspirators promised to round up and slay all the Romans and Italians living in their towns, including women and children and slaves of Italian descent. ey agreed to confiscate the Romans’ property and throw the bodies out to the dogs and crows. Any- one who tried to warn or protect Romans or bury their bodies was to be harshly punished. Slaves who spoke languages other than Latin would be spared, and those who joined in the killing of their masters would be rewarded. People who murdered Roman moneylenders would have their debts canceled. Bounties were offered to informers and killers of Romans in hiding.1 e deadly plot worked perfectly. According to several ancient histo- rians, at least 80,000—perhaps as many as 150,000—Roman and Italian residents of Anatolia and Aegean islands were massacred on that day. e figures are shocking—perhaps exaggerated—but not unrealistic. -
An Engraved Carnelian Gem from Nysa-Scythopolis (Bet She’An)
‘Atiqot 71, 2012 An EngrAvEd CArnEliAn gEm from nysA-sCythopolis (BEt shE’An) gabriEl mAzor The western therma, located on a wide plateau Red carnelian. in the western part of the Roman civic center of Design engraved (intaglio), excellent work- Nysa-Scythopolis (Bet She’an), was concealed manship. by a thick, unstratified accumulation of earth Perfectly preserved, except for a minor chip on and debris. The fill, presumably washed down upper left edge. from the adjacent western hill, had gradually covered the floors of the complex after its Obverse: A nude male figure stands above a destruction in the earthquake of 749 CE. An thick horizontal ground line, facing right, left intact carnelian gemstone was revealed within leg bent forward while the right one is straight, the fill, along with an assortment of pottery and leaning slightly forward. Both hands are raised, coins from the Roman and Byzantine periods. gripping the neck of a lion in an attempt to The gem, originally set in a ring, depicts strangle it. The man’s head, supported by a Heracles in a scene of one of his labors: the thick neck, faces right; his facial features are overcoming of the Nemean lion. blurred, although he seems to be bearded with long, curly hair. The figure is heavy, extremely muscular, and depicted in a sturdy posture, dEsCription its legs forming a balanced triangle. Engaged L101161; B101 × 1407 (elevation -148.44 m) in a combat stance, a rearing, rampant lion Oval (12 × 9 mm, Th 2.5 mm; Fig. 1);1 upper attacks him, facing left. -
Clas109.04 Rebirth Demeter & Hades
CLAS109.04 REBIRTH M Maurizio ch.4.1 HISTORY—Homeric Hymn to Demeter before class: skim HISTORY context; refer to leading questions; focus on ancient texts Active Reading FOCUS • H.Hom.2 & Plut.Mor. cf. CR04 H.Hom.Cer. G. Nagy trans. (Maurizio p.163‐174 is fine) use CR04 Plutarch Moralia: Isis & Osiris 15‐16 (Plut.Mor.357A‐D) NB read for one hour, taking notes (fill in worksheets) RAW notes & post discussion question @11h00 W Maurizio ch.4.3 COMPARE—In the Desert by the Early Grass before class: skim COMPARE context; refer to leading questions; focus on ancient text Active Reading FOCUS • Early Grass (edin‐na u2 saĝ‐ĝa2‐ke4) use CR04 Jacobsen 1987 translation (Maurizio p.188‐194 is NOT fine) NB read for one hour, taking notes; finish previous as necessary RAW notes & post discussion question @12h00 F Maurizio ch.4.2 THEORY—Foley 1994 before class: skim also modern 4.4 RECEPTION paragraph synopsis of Foley, H. 1994. “Question of Origins.” Womens Studies 23.3:193‐215 NB read for one hour, practice summarizing; finish previous as necessary tl; dr & post discussion responses @11h00 Q04 • QUOTE QUIZ Gen.6‐11, Aesch.Prom., H.Hom.Cer., Plut.Mor.357A‐D; Early Grass FINAL notes @23h59 DRAFT 01 @23h59 • following guidelines DEMETER & HADES How does myth represent the natural world (e.g. pre‐scientific explanation)? How does myth represent religious ritual? How does myth represent social order? Homeric Hymn to Demeter1 G. Nagy 1 I begin to sing of Demeter, the holy goddess with the beautiful hair. -
The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers
OriginalverCORE öffentlichung in: A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World,Metadata, Oxford: Blackwell citation 2003, and similar papers at core.ac.uk ProvidedS. 431-445 by Propylaeum-DOK CHAPTKR TWENTY-FIVE The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers Anßdos Chaniotis 1 Introduction: the Paradox of Mortal Divinity When King Demetrios Poliorketes returned to Athens from Kerkyra in 291, the Athenians welcomed him with a processional song, the text of which has long been recognized as one of the most interesting sources for Hellenistic ruler cult: How the greatest and dearest of the gods have come to the city! For the hour has brought together Demeter and Demetrios; she comes to celebrate the solemn mysteries of the Kore, while he is here füll of joy, as befits the god, fair and laughing. His appearance is majestic, his friends all around him and he in their midst, as though they were stars and he the sun. Hail son of the most powerful god Poseidon and Aphrodite. (Douris FGrH76 Fl3, cf. Demochares FGrH75 F2, both at Athen. 6.253b-f; trans. as Austin 35) Had only the first lines of this ritual song survived, the modern reader would notice the assimilaüon of the adventus of a mortal king with that of a divinity, the etymo- logical association of his name with that of Demeter, the parentage of mighty gods, and the external features of a divine ruler (joy, beauty, majesty). Very often scholars reach their conclusions about aspects of ancient mentality on the basis of a fragment; and very often - unavoidably - they conceive only a fragment of reality. -
Mechanical Miracles: Automata in Ancient Greek Religion
Mechanical Miracles: Automata in Ancient Greek Religion Tatiana Bur A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney Supervisor: Professor Eric Csapo March, 2016 Statement of Originality This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Tatiana Bur, March 2016. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................................... 1 A NOTE TO THE READER ................................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 3 PART I: THINKING ABOUT AUTOMATION .......................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1/ ELIMINATING THE BLOCAGE: ANCIENT AUTOMATA IN MODERN SCHOLARSHIP ................. 10 CHAPTER 2/ INVENTING AUTOMATION: AUTOMATA IN THE ANCIENT GREEK IMAGINATION ................. 24 PART II: AUTOMATA IN CONTEXT ................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER 3/ PROCESSIONAL AUTOMATA ................................................................................ -
The Religious Life of Greek Automata 129
ClaraBosak-Schroeder The Religious LifeofGreek Automata This paper examines the religious livesofGreek automata. An automaton is an object that has been constructed to moveonits own.¹ Iargue thatancient Greek automata at first had asolelymagical life, later attained amechanicallife, and that this change from magical to mechanical allowed automata to proliferate in religious contexts. While automata wereoriginallyimagined as purelymagical, the advent of advanced mechanics later in antiquity made it possiblefor automata to be realized and also caused Greeks in the Hellenistic and Romanagestoreinterpret magical automata as mechanical. Later Greeks’ projection of mechanicalknowledge onto the magical automata of the past mirrors twentieth and twenty-first century scholars’ tendency to reinterpret ancient automata as “robots” in line with technological advances in their own time.Changes in mechanics in antiquity and the response of people to those changes leads me to advancethe concept of “relative modernism.” Iargue that modernism is amind-set that recurs throughout history rather than one that emergesinauniqueperiod of history. From MagictoMechanics In common parlance, an automaton is aself-moving or self-operatingmachine.In historical and literarystudies, “automaton” is used especiallytodesignatethose self-operating machinesthat were created before the twentieth century.These in- clude Leonardo da Vinci’sfifteenth-century “mechanical knight,” Jacques de Vau- canson’seighteenth-century “digesting duck,” and the manyclock-work dolls, ani- mals, and music boxesofthe nineteenth century.² Though no automata survive from classical antiquity,wedohaveancienttexts that describe them.³ The oldest of these appearinHomer’s Iliad. In Il. 18, Thetis enters Hephaestus’ workshop to commission new armorfor Achilles, and finds the godalreadyhard at his character- istic work: [Hephaestus] was makingtripods,twenty in all, to stand around the sides of his wellbuilthall, and below the base of each one he set golden wheels so that of their own accord[automatoi] LSJ, s.v. -
Homer's Use of Myth Françoise Létoublon
Homer’s Use of Myth Françoise Létoublon Epic and Mythology The Homeric Epics are probably the oldest Greek literary texts that we have,1 and their subject is select episodes from the Trojan War. The Iliad deals with a short period in the tenth year of the war;2 the Odyssey is set in the period covered by Odysseus’ return from the war to his homeland of Ithaca, beginning with his departure from Calypso’s island after a 7-year stay. The Trojan War was actually the material for a large body of legend that formed a major part of Greek myth (see Introduction). But the narrative itself cannot be taken as a mythographic one, unlike the narrative of Hesiod (see ch. 1.3) - its purpose is not to narrate myth. Epic and myth may be closely linked, but they are not identical (see Introduction), and the distance between the two poses a particular difficulty for us as we try to negotiate the the mythological material that the narrative on the one hand tells and on the other hand only alludes to. Allusion will become a key term as we progress. The Trojan War, as a whole then, was the material dealt with in the collection of epics known as the ‘Epic Cycle’, but which the Iliad and Odyssey allude to. The Epic Cycle however does not survive except for a few fragments and short summaries by a late author, but it was an important source for classical tragedy, and for later epics that aimed to fill in the gaps left by Homer, whether in Greek - the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna (maybe 3 c AD), and the Capture of Troy of Tryphiodoros (3 c AD) - or in Latin - Virgil’s Aeneid (1 c BC), or Ovid’s ‘Iliad’ in the Metamorphoses (1 c AD). -
Analyzing Two Domains of Dionysus in Greek Polytheism
Philomathes Two Sides of the Dice: Analyzing Two Domains of Dionysus in Greek Polytheism T he study of religion in ancient Greece is complicated by the fact that, unlike modern world religions with ancient roots, there is no “holy doctrine” to which scholars can refer. Although they shared a complex pantheon of gods, ancient Greek city- states were never a unified political empire; instead of a globalized dogma, religion was localized within each polis, whose inhabitants developed their own unique variations on “Greek” religious rituals and beliefs.1 The multiplex natures of ancient Greek gods compounds the problem; it is a monumental task to study all aspects of all deities in the Greek world. As a result, scholarship often focuses solely on a single popular aspect or well-known cult of a god or goddess — such as Apollo Pythios of Delphi or Athena Parthenos of Athens, neglecting other facets of the gods’ cult and personality.2 Greek religion, 1 As Jon D. Mikalson states in Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 4, “In varying degrees Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Athens and the other city-states differed from one another in political, social, and economic structure, and it is only reasonable to assume that they also differed in some extent in their religion … One should be wary of assuming that a religious belief or practice must have been current in all the city-states and among all Greek simply because it is attested for one city-state.” 2 Apollo is generally remembered as the god of prophecy because of his oracle and cult in Delphi. -
The Idea of Hellenism: What the Greeks Created
1 The Scheme of Things Entire Historical speculation is fun; dates and facts are often thought of as PART I tedious. But in their absence there is no structure, no framework in which to fit one’s experience of things past. In the case of Classical antiquity, the very simplistic outline set out below may help. It begins with the independent Hellenic cities of the Aegean and the Greek mainland in the 8th century BC, and charts the spread of Hellenism The Idea of Hellenism: through their founding of colonies. It continues with Alexander’s conquests and the dominions of his successors, which are followed by the generally benign attitude of the Romans towards Hellenic culture. What the Greeks Created We then move through the slow disintegration of the Roman Empire, to conclude with the transformation of Classicism into Byzantine Christianity in the 4th century AD. The Archaic Age: Ionian cities and colonies, c. 750–547 BC This is the era when numerous small, free, independent Hellenic cities – most conspicuously Miletus – prospered, founding colonies (settle- ments related to the mother city) on the coasts of the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, Asia Minor, North Africa and southern Italy. Latterly the chief mainland power in western Asia Minor was Lydia. c. 750–675 Homer creates the Iliad and the Odyssey. Hesiod writes. c. 625–547 Miletus flourishes. Thales and others begin the first enquiry into the physical nature of the universe. 560–547 Croesus is king of Lydia. 547 Cyrus the Great, king of the Persians, takes Lydia and numerous Ionian cities. -
The Decapolis Again – Further Notes on the Meaning of the Term
ARAM, 23 (2011) 1-10. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.23.0.2959648 THE DECAPOLIS AGAIN – FURTHER NOTES ON THE MEANING OF THE TERM Prof. YORAM TSAFRIR (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) It may seem that little can be added to the long-standing discussion of the term “Decapolis”. Still, I believe that there is now room for some reconsidera- tion. I began to deal with the Decapolis while attempting to write a history of Bet Shean, or Scythopolis, as reflected by the results of the Hebrew University’s excavations on the site.1 For the first time we have substantial, though limited, information on the plan and urban structure of Scythopolis in the early Roman period, before it was reshaped at the peak of the Pax Romana in the mid second century CE. It has become clear that the town was highly decorated, adorned by temples, a theatre and houses with mosaic pavements, even at that early stage of its foundation. The archaeological discoveries of our work were pre- sented by Benny Arubas at the ARAM meeting in November 2008.2 The most prominent renovation took place at some time after Gabinius (57-54 BCE) had returned the town to its former (Hellenic) citizens, when a new city centre and residential quarters were built in the basin of Nahal Amal (Arabic Wadi Asi) to the west, southwest and south of Tel Bet Shean. The ancient mound, once the site of the entire town of Bronze Age and Iron Age Bet Shean and of the early stages of Hellenistic Scythopolis, now became the acropolis of the newly built Scythopolis. -
INTRODUCTION to the KORE Story/Persephone’S Dog
ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2016 INTRODUCTION TO THE KORE Story/persephone’s dog Craig San Roque - 1 ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2016 . .we are dreaming creatures . (Salman Rushdie, BBC radio, 17 September 2012) On the poetics of being Imagine original beings walking the earth, archetypal forms in the making, emerging out of the land. Emerging simultaneously from the human psyche. You might ask – am I discovering these beings walking toward me across the land, or am I creating them? It is a human thing to dream creatures. Yet perhaps not every original being is invented by human beings. Perhaps the force of nature has a life of its own and comes to meet us in forms that nature chooses, firing our imagination as it does so. A special kind of sung poetry has developed among many peoples of the world that mingles the reality that we see with the reality that we create. There may not be one clear term in the English language that describes this intermingling of that which we imagine and that which is independently there. I prefer the term ontopoiesis – or, more simply, ontopoetic – suggesting a mingling of the Greek concept ontos (“that which is” – “I am” or “being”) with poiesis ( indicating “com- ing into being” – “creation” or “bringing forth”). Together these words ontos and poiesis synchronize into a sense of the poetic, creative relationships between beings. This intermingling is an intricate etymologi- cal and psychological matter and my sentence here merely hints at the subtlety of ontopoetics. Let us say that the term draws our attention to the poetic infrastructure of creation, the beauty and symmetry that may be found in the order of an insect, in the structure of seeds, in the composition of bird song, in the camouflage speckle on the skin of trout or deer . -
Orientalism in the Ancient World: Greek and Roman Images of the Orient from Homer to Virgil !
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Waseda University Repository Orientalism in the Ancient World: Greek and Roman Images of the Orient from Homer to Virgil ! HUANG Ya ng In an illuminating study the American scholars Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen have expounded that a range of geographical divisions that we have taken for granted as scientific knowledge, from the division of the continents to the distinction of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, are not so objective after all. They are in fact divisions that are fundamentally based on cultural perceptions of the Europeans who are responsible for establishing systematically the disciplines of human knowledge and for making it objective1. In a more penetrating analysis Edward Said revealed that not only the ‘Orient’, but also the ‘West’ is a European ‘invention’, a discourse that was formed out of dealing with and conceptualizing alien cultures. He said, “Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.”2 Said further stated that the Orient is Europe’s “deepest and most recurring images of the Other”. That is to say, the Orient is a mentally constructed ‘Other’ as opposed to the West (the ‘Self’). As the ‘Other’ it plays a role in the development of European civilization in two ways. On the one hand it serves as a mirror through which the West can most clearly see itself and refine itself.