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Divine Riddles: a Sourcebook for Greek Religion and Mythology

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Divine Riddles: a Sourcebook for Greek Religion and Mythology Divine Riddles: A Sourcebook for Greek Religion and Mythology E. Edward Garvin, Editor © 2013 What follows is a collection of excerpts from Greek literary sources in translation. The intent is to give students an overview of Greek mythology as expressed by the Greeks themselves. But any such collection is inherently flawed: the process of selection and abridgement produces a falsehood because both the narrative and meta-narrative are destroyed when the continuity of the composition is interrupted. Nevertheless, this seems the most expedient way to expose students to a wide range of primary source information. I have tried to keep my voice out of it as much as possible and will intervene as editor (in this Times New Roman font) only to give background or exegesis to the text. All of the texts in Gaudy Old Style are excerpts from Greek or Latin texts (primary sources) that have been translated into English. Ancient Texts In the field of Classics, we refer to texts by Author, name of the book, book number, chapter number and line number.1 Every text, regardless of language, uses the same numbering system. Homer’s Iliad, for example, is divided into 24 books and the lines in each book are numbered. Hesiod’s Theogony is much shorter so no book divisions are necessary but the lines are numbered. Below is an example from Homer’s Iliad, Book One, showing the English translation on the left and the Greek original on the right. When citing this text we might say that Achilles is first mentioned by Homer in Iliad 1.7 (i.7 is also acceptable). [1] Sing, goddess, about the anger of Achilles [1] μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος son of Peleus, [2] οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, [2] which brought countless evils upon the Achaeans. [3] πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προί̈αψεν [3] Many a brave soul did it send hurrying [4] ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν down to Hades, [4] and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs [5] οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή, and vultures, [6] ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε [5] for so were the wishes of Zeus fulfilled [6] from the day on which they first began to [7] Ἀτρεί̈δης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος quarrel; Ἀχιλλεύς. [7] the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles.2 Muthos, Logos, Faith and Reason: The word ‘myth’ comes to English from ancient Greek but the meaning has changed somewhat over the centuries. The Archaic Greek meaning of muthos, was ‘statement,’ ‘utterance’ or any sort of spoken declaration or story: Simply ‘that which is said.’ The Archaic meaning of logos was ‘story,’ ‘account’ or ‘argument’ implying a computation of things; of ideas or facts. In that sense, a logos could be constructed out of a series of muthoi. By the Classical period of Ancient Greece the two words had taken on very distinct and even oppositional meanings: Muthos was associated with unsubstantiated or fantastic utterances while logos referred to a statement, argument or proposition derived from a computation of verifiable evidence. This is not to say that logos is ‘true’ and muthos ‘false:’ but rather that the former operates in the realm of the empirical while the latter operates in the realm of the metaphysical. Aristotle, the father of scientific method, thought that myth, or poetry as it was more commonly called, was actually a superior method for the communication of ideas because it deals with the general while more pragmatic forms such as history can only deal with the particular. Aristotle, Poetics 1451a. 35 – b. 5 The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with metre no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, 1 Book and chapter numbers are used where applicable. 2 This is the Samuel Buttler translation (1898), edited by E. Garvin. Divine Riddles - 3 the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. There were others, however, who thought that the myths were nonsense and that reason and rational investigation, philosophy and history, provided a better source of knowledge. Pausanias i.3.3 There are many false beliefs current among the mass of mankind, since they are ignorant of history and consider trustworthy whatever they have heard from childhood in choruses and tragedies...3 Pausanias viii. 2.6-7 All through the ages, many events that have occurred in the past, and even some that occur today, have been generally discredited because of the lies built up on a foundation of fact. Those who like to listen to the miraculous are themselves apt to add to the marvel, and so they ruin truth by mixing it with falsehood. But most of the ancient Greeks believed that the stories we now call myths were based in actual fact; that these things did occur and that the people and events depicted in these stories were real. It was a matter of religious necessity, just as today one could not claim to be a Christian and also deny the truth of the miracles of Jesus, in ancient Greece one could not claim to be pious without accepting the truth of the stories of the gods. Even Pausanias, cited above for his scepticism, eventually concedes: Pausanias viii.2.44 I for my part believe this story; it has been a legend among the Arcadians from of old, and it has the additional merit of probability. For the men of those days, because of their righteousness and piety, were guests of the gods, eating at the same table; the good were openly honored by the gods, and sinners were openly visited with their wrath. Nay, in those days men were changed to gods, who down to the present day have honors paid to them… Pausanias viii.8.3 When I began to write my history I was inclined to count these legends as foolishness, but on getting as far as Arcadia I grew to hold a more thoughtful view of them, which is this. In the days of old those Greeks who were considered wise spoke their sayings not straight out but in riddles5, and so the legends about Cronus I conjectured to be one sort of Greek wisdom. In matters of divinity, therefore, I shall adopt the received tradition. The Greeks understood that mankind must be very old indeed, but they had no empirical knowledge of the more distant past. Plutarch likens it to geography: 3 In all fairness, Pausanias is here referring to the myth that Theseus was the founder of Athenian democracy, what we might call a myth of political expediency rather than tradition. 4 See also Pausanias viii.8.3, reproduced in the section below. 5 The original is αἴνιγμα (ainigma) from whence we derive the English ‘enigma.’ Divine Riddles - 4 Plutarch, Theseus 1.1 Just as the historians, in their geographical sections, fill the parts of the earth which elude their knowledge with explanatory notes like ‘What lies beyond is sandy desert without water and full of wild beasts,’ or ‘blind marsh,’ or ‘Scythian cold,’ or ‘frozen sea,’ so in the writing of my Parallel Lives, now that I have traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable reasoning and which afford a basis for a history dealing with facts, I might well say of the earlier periods ‘What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality, a land of poets and fabulists, of doubt and obscurity To compound the problem, Ancient Greece seems to have been an amalgam of at least three earlier cultures and their religious traditions were, therefore, a blending of a variety of mythic and religious beliefs. Diodorus iv.1.1-2 I am not unaware that the writers of antiquities in many things fall short of the truth in their editions. For being that ancient things are (as it were) scraped out of the rubbish with very great difficulty, they greatly perplex the writer. And because the reconstruction of times wherein things were done cannot now be so exact as to infer an infallible argument for the truth of the actions related, therefore it is that the reader despises the authors of these stories. And the multitude and variety of the gods, demi-gods, and other famous men, whose genealogies are to be treated of, add much more to the difficulty. And the greatest vexation of all is that the writers of antiquities and mythologies differ exceedingly in their relations one from another, [2] and therefore the most famed and noted historians of later times have altogether waved treatises of ancient things, and applied themselves to composing histories only of such as have happened in times a little before their own. Divine Inspiration The idea that only God, or the gods,6 can have true knowledge, and that man only acquires a sampling of this knowledge from the divine, is both ancient and current: Christians believe that the various authors of the Bible, especially the Apostles who composed the books of the New Testament, were merely conduits for the word of God. Muslims also believe that the Prophet Mohamed was given the Quran (Koran) by God through a vision.7 The ancients too believed that true knowledge was the sole possession of the gods but that the gods would occasionally impart glimpses of that universal knowledge to man, through the poets, seers and oracles. All of our extant works of epic poetry that treat of things divine or things very ancient, begin with the invocation of the gods as the source of knowledge.
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