Thinking Comparatively About Greek Mythology XVIII, a Post-Mycenaean View of He#Rakle#S As Founder of the Olympics

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of He#rakle#s as founder of the Olympics

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Citation Nagy, Gregory. 2019.11.27. "Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of He#rakle#s as founder of the Olympics." Classical Inquiries. http://nrs.harvard.edu/ urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries.

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Home » By Gregory Nagy » Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as founder of the Olympics Share This Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as founder of the Olympics November 27, 2019 By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy Comments off

2019.11.27 | By Gregory Nagy

§0. For my brief essay here, TC XVIII in Classical Inquiries, I return to a point I made in an earlier essay, TC V §§4–10, where I highlighted a remarkable sequence of events narrated in the Library of “Apollodorus,” dated to the second century CE, in the course of an overall narrative about the life and times of the hero Hēraklēs. According to this narrative by “Apollodorus” (2.5.5; 2.72), the failure of Augeias, king of Elis, to compensate for the clearing of his stables by Hēraklēs results in a war waged by our hero against that king, and this war is brought to an end only after Augeias is defeated and killed by Hēraklēs, who then installs the king’s son Phyleus as the new ruler of Elis. Further, Hēraklēs then follows up by establishing the athletic festival of the Olympics at Olympia (“Apollodorus” 2.7.2, pp. 249 and 251 ed. Frazer 1921). It is Classical Inquiries (CI) is an online, this follow-up that I highlighted in TC V, arguing that such a sequence of events—where the hero (1) rapid-publication project of Harvard’s establishes a new kingdom and then, right after that, (2) establishes an athletic festival as the centerpiece Center for Hellenic Studies, devoted to of that kingdom—amounts to a myth that is meant to explain the origins of sovereignty. Here in TC XVIII, sharing some of the latest thinking on however, I add a further argument: such a myth explains the origins of a kind of sovereignty that took the ancient world with researchers and shape not in the glory days of the Mycenaean Empire but in an era that came thereafter. Relevant to this the general public. further argument of mine is a detail that we find in the overall story of Hēraklēs as retold by Diodorus of Sicily, dated to the first century BCE. According to the retelling by Diodorus (4.14.2), Hēraklēs not only Editor established the athletic festival of the Olympics: he also competed and won in every athletic event. The illustration that I have selected to introduce my essay here is an ancient painting that shows Hēraklēs Keith DeStone wearing on his head the olive garland that marks the sum total of his Olympic victories. And these athletic kdestone at chs.harvard.edu victories of Hēraklēs exemplify the emergence of new dynasties that are destined to dominate the Editor: Poetry Project Peloponnesus in a post-Mycenaean age. Natasha Bershadsky nbershadsky at chs.harvard.edu

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Painting on a skyphos, Ashmolean Museum accession Subscribe Now! number AN1913.471, dated to the beginning of the fourth century BCE. The painting shows Herakles (his name is written next to his image) wearing on his head an olive garland symbolic of athletic victories to be won at the festival of the Olympics. Subscribe to this site to receive email updates about the latest research—just

one or two notices per week. §1. The myth about the defeat of Augeias, king of Elis, by the hero Hēraklēs is also narrated in a victory ode of Pindar, Olympian 10, composed in 476 BCE for the celebration of an athlete’s victory at the EU/EEA Privacy Disclosures Olympics. We learn from the wording of this ode a vitally important additional detail about the myth: it turns out that the royal wealth of Augeias, plundered by Hēraklēs in the course of his wartime victory over the king, became the funding, as it were, for the foundation of the Olympics (lines 55–59). This ode of Pindar, composed decades before the completion of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, already anticipates the reason for prioritizing one of the Twelve Labors of Hēraklēs, the hero’s clearing of the stables of Augeias, as the twelfth and culminating deed of the hero in the set of relief sculptures gracing the twelve metopes of Now Online the Temple. According to the logic built into the myth about the Twelve Labors of Hēraklēs as retold in the twelve metopes, it is this one Labor, the clearing of the stables, that required a compensation received in the form of the plundered wealth that funded, in terms of the myth, the founding of the Olympics. And, again in terms of the myth, the compensation for this Labor included not only the Olympics as an eternally lasting athletic festival but also the building of the Temple of Zeus, metopes and all, as the sacred centerpiece of that festival.

§2. By contrast with such a post-Mycenaean scenario for mythologizing the foundation of the Olympics, I see traces of an earlier Mycenaean scenario in another version of the myth—this time, as retold by Pausanias, who, like “Apollodorus,” is another source dating from the second century CE. According to the retelling by Pausanias (5.3.1), Augeias the king of Elis was never killed by Hēraklēs; and, although this king’s forces were defeated by forces led by the hero against him, Augeias was never even punished for defaulting on payment to Hēraklēs for the hero’s clearing of his royal stables. So, in this version, the founding of the Olympics is not the result of any plundering of royal Mycenaean wealth. Moreover, according to this version of the myth as retold by Pausanias (5.8.3), Hēraklēs was not even the founder of the Olympics: he only presided over the celebration of this festival, and even this presidency happened only after he had conquered Elis, the kingdom of Augeias; before the conquest, according to this version, it had been the king Augeias who had presided over the Olympics. Even before Augeias, as we also read in Pausanias (5.7.10–5.8.2), earlier heroes had likewise presided over the Olympics, and I list them here in chronological order, going backward in time:

—the twin brothers Pelias and Neleus, presiding together (Pausanias 5.8.1); as we read elsewhere (Pausanias 4.2.5), Pelias and Neleus were the sons of Kretheus son of Aiolos; or, alternatively, as Pausanias also reports (again 4.2.5), Pelias and Neleus were sons of Poseidon (this alternative version is affirmed elsewhere as well: Odyssey 11.254) —Amythaon, another son of Kretheus son of Aiolos (Pausanias 5.8.2) —Pelops (Pausanias 5.8.2) —Endymion son of Aethlios son of Aiolos—or, alternatively, Aethlios was son of Zeus (Pausanias 5.8.2) —Klymenos, who came from Crete and was descended from an earlier Hērakles, to whom he set up an altar at Olympia, so that this earlier Hērakles could thereafter be worshipped as as the parastatēs ‘the one who stands by’ (Pausanias 5.8.1). Top Posts & Pages §3. So, who on earth was this earlier Hēraklēs? In the myth as reported by Pausanias (5.7.6–7), this mythological figure was the very first hero ever to compete at the Olympics, and he competed in the form of improvised athleticism, emerging victorious by racing with his brothers in a primordial footrace. This earlier Hēraklēs, as Pausanias adds (5.7.7), also improvised as a prize for such an athletic victory the awarding of an olive garland. Seven Greek tragedies, seven simple overviews §4. I summarize here other details of this myth as retold by Pausanias (again, 5.7.6–7): The Last Words of Socrates at – Our earlier Hēraklēs and his brothers were five in number and were therefore called the Daktyloi or the Place Where He Died ‘Fingers’.

– Because Hēraklēs and his brother ‘Dactyls’ were five in number, the Olympics are celebrated on every A Roll of the Dice for Ajax fifth year (‘fifth’ by way of inclusive counting, since the Greek language had no zero).

– Hēraklēs and his fellow ‘Dactyls’ hailed from Mount Ida in Crete. So also the next known president of the Olympics, Klymenos, was a Cretan by origin, as we have already seen elsewhere in the reportage of Most Common Tags Pausanias (5.8.1), who adds that Klymenos presided over the Olympics precisely because he claimed descent from the earlier Hēraklēs.

§5. So, I think of the earlier Hēraklēs as a Mycenaean or even Mycenaean-Minoan variation on the theme of Achilles Albert Lord Aphrodite Ariadne Hēraklēs—by contrast with the later Hēraklēs who funds the Olympics by way of plundering the royal wealth of Augeias, king of Elis. In terms of such a contrast, this later Hēraklēs would be a post-Mycenaean Aristotle Artemis Athena Athens variant. In the myth of this later Hēraklēs as retold by Pausanias (5.8.4), the hero competed in two athletic events on the occasion of his presiding at the Olympics, and he emerged victorious in both competitions, Catullus Commentary which were the events of (A) wrestling and (B) pankration, a less regulated form of combat sport. But this Comments on Comparative later Hēraklēs, as we have already seen, was not the founder of the Olympics—from the standpoint of the myth as retold by Pausanias. According to that myth, it is an earlier Hēraklēs who qualifies as the true Mythology Daphnis and Chloe Delphi founder of the Olympics. Diodorus of Sicily Dionysus etymology Euripides Gregory Nagy H24H HAA travel-study Helen Hera Bibliography Herakles Herodotus Hippolytus See the dynamic Bibliography for Comments on Comparative Mythology. Homer Homeric epic

Tags: Augeias, Comments on Comparative Mythology, Elis, Herakles, Labors of Hēraklēs, Library of Iliad Indo-European lament Library of Apollodorus, Olympia, Olympics, Pausanias, Pindar, Temple of Zeus, Twelve Labors Apollodorus mimesis Mycenae Odysseus

Comments are closed. Odyssey Olympia « Introductory comments marking the occasion of an international conference on orality and literacy, University of Wrocław 2019.12.04–06 Pausanias Phaedra Pindar Plato

About what kinds of things we may learn about mythology by reading about rituals recorded by bureaucratic Poetics Sappho Theseus weaving scribes » Zeus