Chapter 7-10 PDF

Francois-Charles Morice and Leopold Morice, Statue of the Republic (1879). Place de la République, Paris, France. Chapter 7: Hermes and Hestia October 19 & 24 Readings: CMiC Chapter 7 A satyr and maenad approach a herm. South Italian red-figure terracotta b...

Francois-Charles Morice and Leopold Morice, Statue of the Republic (1879). Place de la République, Paris, France. Chapter 7: Hermes and Hestia October 19 & 24 Readings: CMiC Chapter 7 A satyr and maenad approach a herm. South Italian red-figure terracotta bell-krater (mixing bowl). Attributed to the Pisticci Painter, ca. 430-410 BCE Hermes and Hestia - Walter F. Otto asked what distinguishes Greek gods from humans? - Even though they are anthropomorphic, they are not affected by circumstances like humans are - Each deity is distinguished by one essential and unchanging trait, in Otto’s opinion - According to Otto, Hermes’ trait is joy - He is associated with travel and acquisition of goods  Three herms. Red-figure pelike. Pan Painter, c. 470 BCE From Herms to Hermes - Mercury - Parentage: Zeus and the nymph Maia - Offspring: - Pan (with the nymph Penelopeia) - Hermaphroditus (with Aphrodite) - The ancestor of the Tanagran people (with the nymph Tanagra) - Ceryx (with Agraulus) - Eudorus (with Polymele) - Cap, winged sandals, wand - Significant cult titles: - Hermaphroditus (Of Contests) - Charidotes (Luck-Bringer) - Criophorus (Ram-Carrier) - Cynagches (Dog-Strangler) - Enodius (Of the Road) - Epimelius (Guardian of Flocks) - Psychopomp (Escort of Souls) Herme’s Hills - Hermes was sometimes represented as a fully human man (beardless youth or bearded adult), but also as a statue (square pillar with a head and phallus) - The Herms were square stone pillars featuring a bearded head and a phallus - They were thought to derive from piles of rocks called ‘Hermes’ hills’, typically found at the sides of roads - Hermes was honored by the Greeks for making roads safe for travelers - Honored as the purifier and guardian of roads by throwing stones into a pile (Hermes’s hill) - Rock piles eventually used to mark distances - Patron of travelers and patron of messengers, who often traveled long distances - Hermes is also frequently depicted as the messenger of the gods (sandals, hat, caduceus staff) - Brought messages from gods to mortals and other gods - Odyssey: Zeus calls on him to tell Calypso that she must release Odysseus from her island - Conveyed messages from human beings on earth to the souls of the dead in the Underworld - Caduceus staff had two snakes wrapped around it; auctioneers and announcers who kept order in political assemblies or festivals carried it; used in modern times as a symbol of the medical profession - Father of Ceryx, founded a family, Ceryces, in Eleusis whose members served as magistrates for the Great Mysteries of Demeter - Hermes was also the patron god of the Ceryces and messengers - Hermes the Psychopomp and the Underworld - Hermes was venerated by travelers and messengers, helped all who travel dangerous roads - Enodius (Of the Road) suggests his constant journeying - Iliad: he is called on to help the Trojan king Priam travel through Greek camps to ransom his son Hector’s body from Achilles - He also escorted the dead to the Underworld - Hermes’s hills also used as grave markers - Hermes was called on in curse tablets placed in the graves of the recently deceased to solicit the assistance of their souls - Curse tablets were thin, rectangular lead sheets inscribed with curses before being rolled up and pierced with nails - Often contained herbs or animal hairs or even hair of the intended human victim of the curse - Curses were directed at neighbors, love rivals, or business competition - Often grouped with other deities associated with the Underworld and is called to facilitate communication between the living and the dead - The Anthesteria - The Anthesteria was primarily a drinking festival dedicated to Dionysus, but also honored Hermes and the opening of the Underworld in the spring - Took place at springtime when the year’s wine casks were opened - Drinking contests, a sacred wedding, and parades of masked participants wandering the streets to represent the dead - Concluded with the closing of the Underworld and banishment of the souls of the dead from the city - Dedicated mixtures of beans and honey in special pots to Hermes and the dead, raised a cry demanding the dead depart and return to the Underworld Hermes with winged sandals, cap, and wand. Red-figured lekythos (oil flask). Attributed to the Tithonus Painter, c. 480-470 BCE Ithyphallic Herms - Scholars believe that Hermes’s hills were replaced with herms; can’t be proven - They are most frequently found outdoors at the gates and doors of cities, houses, and temples - The head and erect phallus suggests his connection to the fertility of herd animals - Fertility limited to goats, sheep, and swine - He is also connected to luck, particularly with possessions/lucky finds - Increases one’s possessions, whether flocks or other material goods - Charidotes (Luck-Bringer) - Associated with sudden windfalls - Ancient Greeks used the phallus as an apotropaic symbol, suggesting that Hermes played a role as a protector, especially of shepherds - Apotropaic symbol - Placed at the entryways of shops, houses, and temples, as well as on streets and plazas - Herms were also placed and entry to bedrooms, implying sleepers sought his protection and even encouragement of procreation - Protection of herd animals - Epimelius (Guardian of the Flocks) - Cyngches (Dog-Strangler) suggests an antagonism between him and protective dogs; Hermes can evade and silence dogs when he prowls at night helping travelers - Also has a kind of kinship with dogs bc they guard flocks - Burkert and the ethological comparison - Fertility: Polymele; the hermaion - Polymele: Hermes falls in love with her and she births Eudorus - Polymele = “rich in flocks”, often used to describe lands that have good pasturage for herds - Eudorus = “generous” - Hermaion = a lucky catch of fish - Abundance of fish seems to be a magical or unexpected form of increase because no labor was required Ithyphallic Herm. Marble relief from Siphnos. 510 BCE  The Calf-Bearer (Criophorus). Photograph taken shortly after exhumation on the Athenian acropolis, ca. 1865. Hermes and Pan - Hermes protected certain communities - Tanagra, Boeotia celebrated him for saving them from a plague by carrying a ram around the city walls - Tanagrans dedicated an annual festival to him; handsome young man imitates Herme’s actions - Criophorus (Ram-Carrier) - Pan, Hermes’s son, is also represented as ithyphallic (Pan = “Protector”?) - Part man and part goat; certain affinities with satyrs - Pan = cause panic to shepherds who tend their flocks far from home, he also protects the land he roams - Rare appearance in tales of the battle of Marathon; caused panic to spread among Persian troops so Athenians could defeat them - He is associated, later, with satyrs and the company of Dionysus - A young, beardless Hermes is associated with the transition of young men into adulthood - A traditional part of this process for Greek youths was cattle raiding. Hermes Epimelios, Hermes Cynagkhes Hermes Criophorus (Hermes carrying a ram). Parian marble statue. Imperial Roman copy of an early fifth-century BCE classical Greek original by Kalamis. Hermes Argeiphontes: Slayer of Argos - Zeus desires the girl Io (sometimes a nymph); he transforms her into a cow to deceive Hera, who finds out and puts Argos as guard - Argos is ever watchful (many-eyed giant but originally a two-faced guard dog) - Hermes, sent from Zeus to steal Io for him, puts Argos to sleep and then slays him (in another version, he stones him)  - In the best known version, Hera takes the eyes of Argos and puts it in the peacock’s tail (her favorite animal) - Hera torments Io with a stinging gadfly; Io finally reaches Egypt, where Zeus restores her form and she gives birth to their son Hermes slaying Argos (Io as cow in the background).Red-figured Attic stamnos, terracotta. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Hestia - In many ways, Hestia was Hermes’s opposite - She was the firstborn child of Cronus and Rhea, but has almost no temples, rituals, or cult shrines in her honor - Her name means ‘hearth’; closely connected to this fire at a household’s center - She is an eternal virgin, associated with the hearth and fire, and therefore worshiped in the home - Often showed veiled and/or carrying a flowering branch - In the center of cities, a public building often contained a city hearth where the fire had to be pure/kept burning - Hearth was also considered a palace of asylum for those seeking protection - Considered to partake of all sacrifices that required fire and cooking - Amphidromia ritual - She represented the fixed center of home and family, in opposition to Herme’s constant traveling - Jean-Pierre Vernant Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth. Detail from a red-figure kylix, c. sixth century BCE The Mind Structures Myths in Archetypes - ‘Trickster’ is a designation for a certain kind of character found in myths and folktales - It is linked to Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes, which, he argued, were generated by a “collective unconscious”– shared mental models that all people use to make meaning out of their experiences - The shadow has socially unacceptable responses to social demands, and often has characteristics that society does not value - The shadow can either be frightening, or it can be a benign figure who expresses antisocial behavior with humor - Most scholars no longer accept Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious - When they study archetypes, they catalog the traits they exhibit - Traits of trickster figures include: - Mockery of social, religious, or political laws or institutions - They disrupt situations, sometimes for their benefit but sometimes to their detriment - They have the ability to change form - They exhibit creativity and boundless energy - They are often cultural heroes to humans - Because of their role in questioning social customs and laws, they are often also the heroes of marginalized or powerless groups within society Hermes Trismegistus.Detail of a marble pavement. Giovanni di Stefano da Siena, 1488. Duomo, Sienna, Italy. Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus - The Greeks liked to draw connections between their deities and those of their neighbors, as with Athena and Neith - Hermes was frequently identified with the Egyptian god Thoth - Over time, they fused the two and developed a new deity, Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Blessed) - Hermes Trismegistus became a vehicle through which pagans articulated abstract, philosophical arguments about the nature of divinity Thoth - Thoth was depicted either as a baboon or as a man with the head of an ibis - Originally Thoth was a creator god, but later Egyptians began to associate him with law, language, medicine, mathematics, and magic, and also with advocating for the dead - Both Thoth and Hermes can be described as cultural heroes as well as tricksters - Thoth played a vital role in the myth of Osiris and Isis  - He is credited with inventing language and writing - Hermes Trismegistus was believed to be the author of the Hermetica - His followers in late antiquity believed he was a wise man who became a god Hermaphroditus in Pre-Raphaelite Art - Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, was also a trickster figure - He was both male and female - Associated with fertility and sexual abundance - In Ovid’s Metamorphosis he is described as having merged with the nymph Salmacis, and therefore has both male and female sexual organs - The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists in Victorian England who questioned existing artistic conventions - Poet Charles Algernon Swinburne uses a fascination with the Sleeping Hermaphroditus to question normal ideas of sexual difference and identity - Pre-Raphaelites artists Edward Gurne-Jones paintings depicted androgynous human figures - They challenged Victorian norms of masculinity - Both Phyllis and Demophoon and The Tree of Forgiveness illustrate the similarities between lovers - In The Tree of Forgiveness the two figures are nearly mirror images in physical appearance and pose - Demophoon’s pose also emphasizes his confusion and resistance: he is passive while Phyllis is active - Aubrey Beardsley is associated with art nouveau - He used the figure of the hermaphrodite to question the Victorian sexual code, which demanded purity of women and promiscuity of men - The artistic use of Hermaphroditus to question social conventions recall the original role of Hermaphroditus and Hermes as tricksters *QUIZ 3: CH. 6 & 7 (OCT. 26)* Chapter 8: Artemis and Apollo October 31 & November 2 Readings: CMiC Chapter 8 - Artemis - Diana - Parentage: Zeus and Leto - No offspring - Bow, quiver, wild animals (especially deer) - Significant cult titles: - Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor) - Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) - Agrotera (Of the Wilds) - Apollo - Apollo - Parentage: Zeus and Leto - Offspring: - Asclepius (with Coronis) - Linus and Orpheus (with Calliope, a Muse) - Many others  - Beardless, long-haired, bow, quiver, lyre, laurel branch - Significant cult titles: - Catharsius (Purifier) - Musagetes (Leader of the Muses) - Paean (Healer) - Pythian (Pythian) From Adolescence to Adulthood - Apollo and Artemis: children of Zeus and Leto - Especially youthful; don’t mature but maintain their youthful identity as siblings - Initiatory deities for boys and girls; transition from childhood to maturity Sacrifice of Iphigenia Artemis: Wild Animals, Young Girls, and Childbirth - Athena, Hestia, and Artemis: eternal Olympian virgins - Artemis’s virginity creates connection with nymphs and life cycle of young women - Nymphs = mythical counterparts to the mortal young girls who worshiped Artemis - Haunts the forests and open spaces outside cities, houses, and cultivated fields - Hestia = association with domestic space or city centers; stands for the integrity of the household, specifically the wife - Athena = distance from domestic sphere of women, allowing freedom to associate with men and involve herself with masculine concerns - Artemis and wild animals: Potnia Theron and Agrotera  - Connection to wild animals (not domesticated animals or livestock) who dwell in the forests and mountains - Depicted with a bow in her hand or quiver of arrows on her back; bow = hunting tool - Represented as both protecting and hunting animals - Actaeon - In pursuit of game, he sees Artemis and her female followers bathing together - Artemis turned Actaeon into a stag bc she is angered over her violation by his gaze; he is attacked and killed by his own hunting dogs - Orion - Attempts to rape Artemis, but she kills him directly with her arrows - Other versions: Orion provokes Hera or Gaia with his boasts about his hunting skills; Here/Gaia sens a scorpion to kill him; Artemis or Zeus transforms him into a constellation of stars set in the heavens near the constellation Scorpio - Callisto - Zeus impregnates Callisto; Artemis observes that she’s pregnant and turns her into a bear - Some versions = jealous anger - Other versions = Zeus transforms her to protect her from Hera’s wrath - Callisto’s son Arcas goes hunting and is about to kill her (as a bear); Zeus transforms her into Ursa Major - Some versions = Artemis kills Callisto deliberately with arrows - Other versions = accidental death, Artemis then transforms Callisto into Ursa Major - Protection or punishment? Callisto turning into a bear - Artemis’s oversight of transitional moments in women’s lives - Appears both benevolent and cruel - Initiation of girls, rituals before marriage, and childbirth - Artemis Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor) - Own birth illustrates this feature - Birth on Delos  - Hera wouldn’t let any land receive Leto when she was pregnant - Island of Delos in the Aegean allowed Leto to deliver her children - Artemis was born first; helped Leto birth Apollo - Leto, Artemis and Apollo all had temples on the island - Artemis’s “gentle arrows”; said to shoot women in labor, wounding/killing them - Iliad: Hera said Zeus made Artemis a “lion among women”, allows her to kill whomever of them she pleases - Arrows may explain the high mortality rate of childbirth in antiquity - Role is reflected in her attentions to nymphs - Benevolent and cruel - Myth of Hippolytus and his ritual for brides before marriage Hippolytus in Myth and Ritual - Euripides’s play Hippolytus (c. 428 BCE) - Hippolytus = young man, virgin, and hunter who prefers the woods and company of other young men to the city and demands of adulthood - Hoped to remain forever under Artemis and never mature into a married man and warrior - Aphrodite was angered, causes his stepmother Phaedra to fall in love with him - Phaedra confesses and forces him to acknowledge the power of love and abandon his youthful devotion to Artemis - Theseus curses his son and causes his death after Phaedra falsely accused Hippoyltus of rape; torn apart and trampled by his horses when they’re spooked by a bull sent by Poseidon - Artemis promises Hippolytus that young women in his hometown of Troezen will cut their hair and sing laments for him before they marry - Other versions = Artemis rescues him and installs him as a king or a temple servant in Aricia, Italy - Losses of adolescents as they enter adulthood; lamenting Hippolytus’s death seen as a way for girls to recognize and ritually mourn the end of their youth and virginity - Violence and sorrow attached to Hippolytus’s death allow a young bride to address her conflicting emotions on her marriage - Hippolytus’s myth and Troezen ritual connect mythic transformation and death with the losses that adolescents experience when entering a new life stage Young girl running at Brauron Girls’ Initiation: The Brauronia - “Playing the bear” for Artemis at Brauron - Foundation myth - A tamed she-bear scratches a young girl with whom she is playing and is then killed by the girl’s brothers - Afterwards, Athenians become ill until an oracle advises them that in order to be cured they must make young girls “play the bear” for Artemis, who was angered over the death of the she-bear - Archaeological evidence from Brauron - Dormitory and its finds; suggests that girls stayed in Brauron away from families during the festival - Statues and vase paintings indicate age range of those who played was wide; 5-16 before marriage - Vases suggested the activities constituted playing the bear: running, dancing, offering toys to the goddess - Temple to Iphigenia - When Iphigenia’s father Agamemnon kills a deer sacred to Artemis on the shores of Aulis, Artemis refuses to let the winds blow and strands his fleet  - Artemis demands he sacrifice his daughter to her before she will release the winds - Some versions = Iphigenia is slaughtered - Most versions = Artemis substitutes a deer and whisks Iphigenia to the land of the Taurians to become her priestess and even make her immortal - “Taming” of the girls into society Boys’ Initiation: Artemis Orthia in Sparta - Requires them to “kill off” a part of themselves that is socially unacceptable, but not “wild” - Significance of Orthia title unclear - Origin myth - Young men whipped at Artemis’s altar - Stealing cheese? - If caught, they were whipped for their failure to steal successfully - Took place between 16-19 years of age - Forced initiates to be treated like helots - Masks - Grotesque masks of satyrs, Gorgons, and wrinkled old men and women - The rest depict of heroic men of different ages - Interpreted as representing two possible male identities: grotesque helots and heroic Spartans - Represent a divide between what the initiates should strive to become and what they should avoid degenerating into - Initiates must prove themselves ready to become adults Votive mask from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta - Artemis stands on the threshold dividing childhood from adulthood that initiates must cross Apollo Apollo with kithara (lyre) and palm tree - First appearance in the Iliad; wields his bow and lyre in quick succession - Sends a plague to the Greek camps on Troy’s shores; descending from Olympus with his bow ready and quiver full of deadly arrows aimed at men and animals - Returns to Olympus to entertain the feasting gods by singing along with the Muses and accompanying them with his lyre - Apollo’s violence is tempered by his embodiment of cultural arts - Oversees cultural accomplishments and practices of medicine and prophecy - Healing Arts - God of both plague and healing  - Asclepius (legendary figure/god known for healing the sick) and sanctuary at Epidaurus - When Coronis is pregnant with Asclepius, she has an affair with a mortal man - Apollo has Artemis slay Coronis and asks Hermes to remove Asclepius from her body - Asclepius is reared and educated by the centaur Chiron, who teaches him the art of medicine - One form of healing demanded that ill people travel to Epidaurus to sleep in its dormitories where they’d have dreams whose interpretation would lead to a cure Asclepius and his daughter Hygeia (health) with a snake - Oracles and Prophecy - Access to Zeus’s thoughts; provides “Zeus’s counsel” to men at various sanctuaries - Men sought oracles on political matters and personal matters - Apollo at Delphi: “know thyself” and “nothing in excess” - God of moderation and reason - Oracle at Delphi - Cosmopolitan oracular shrine; sought Apollo’s counsel - Hosted quadrennial games - Offered purification from the crime of murder - Apollo Catharsius (Purifier) - Aeschylus’s Eumenides; Orestes arrives at Delphi to be purified because he killed his mother  - Pythias and Cassandra - Apollo’s priestesses, participated in oracular consultations, believed to be inspired by Apollo and bring his divine knowledge to humans - Cassandra promised herself to Apollo but retracted the offer; given the gift of prophecy, but made them appear untrue as punishment; isolated from those who heard her - Daphne and Apollo’s laurel - Also refused Apollo’s advances and was transformed into a laurel tree by her river god father, fulfilling her wish to escape Apollo’s attentions - Explains why Apollo is often shown carrying a laurel branch (symbolized prophecy and poetry) and why poets carry laurel branches or wear laurel crowns Aegeus (right), father of Theseus, consults the Pythia - Music and Poetry - The lyre and Apollo’s musical children - Hermes gives the lyre to Apollo, or Apollo is credited with inventing it - Apollo’s children = spheres of influence, especially in music - With Calliope = son named Linus, plays the lure and killed by Hercules during a music lesson - Poets mourned Linus at the start and end of their songs - Sometimes associated with lamentation - Hymenaeus = “wedding song”, said to be Apollo’s son - Orpheus, great musician and founder of Orphism - Boys’ Initiations - Presides over initiatory rituals for boys and young men; often kills or greatly harms young men and women  - Cyparissus wouldn’t stop mourning a pet stag, so Apollo turns him into a cypress tree (symbol of lamentation) - Apollo is linked to cultural achievements, unlike Artemis - Beardless and long-haired - Length of men’s hair in ancient Greece is a way of describing age and social position; long hair = men in the process of becoming adults - Connection to festivals that mark the development of young men - The Hyacinthia - In Amyclae, Apollo and Hyacinthus were celebrated together - Myth of Hyacinthus - Apollo loved Hyacinthus; accidentally killed him by hitting him with a discus; some versions = Zephyrus, the west wind, sent his winds in a fit of jealousy to blow Apollo’s discus off course - Three-day ritual, involving a form of ritualized loss - First day: Hyacinthus was mourned, somber, sacrifices were offered at his tomb - Second day: procession from Sparta to Amyclae (4 mile distance); musical and athletic contests for boys followed by a sacrifice in Apollo’s honor and a meal that slaves and foreigners could partake in - Women participated; also took part in dancing the night preceding it - Connected Hyacinthus with boys who participated in the festival - All boys must trade playful games with the discus for deadly battles with shields and spears - Must overcome their particular circumstances and identity by cutting their hair to don the hoplite’s helmet and by striving to enact the social ideals of masculinity that Apollo embodies Greek silver statuette The Homeric Hymn to Apollo - Two parts: - Hymn to Delian Apollo: Apollo’s birth on Delos - Hymn to Pythian Apollo: Apollo established his shrine at Delphi - Two parts: Establishment of the shrine and the acquisition of priests - Excerpt Myth, Ritual, and Initiations Sarcophagus depicting the death of Niobe’s children - Myth of Niobe portrays the violence of Artemis and Apollo against girls and boys, linking it to their roles as initiatory deities - The death of the Niobids - Niobe boasts that she has seven daughters and seven sons, unlike Leto - Artemis and Apollo use their arrows to slay Niobe’s children to avenge the insult to their mother; Artemis kills the daughters and Apollo kills the sons - Niobe turns to stone - Considering the relationship between myth and ritual by refining the term “initiation” - Jane Harrison and the Cambridge Ritualists - Myth and ritual are inseparable - Jane Harrison: “Myth is the spoken correlative of the acted rite, the thing done” - Ritual = series of events acted out like a drama/performance before or on behalf of others who formed an audience - Myth as a script for a ritual; when the ritual falls out of practice, the myth remains - Not ultimately convincing; not clearly applicable to most Greek myths/rituals, myths are too elaborate and detailed to be reduced to a ritual - Success in shifting attention to myths’ social contexts Arnold van Gennep and Rites of Passage - All rituals/rites of passage facilitate transition from one stage to another - “Accompany every change of place, state, social position and age” - Various life stages = age-grade initiations; acknowledge and reconcile biological determinants of an individual’s life with their social roles - Ensure both a society’s internal cohesion by enforcing individuals’ assumption of their expected roles and a society’s continuity over time by managing reproduction - Three stages: preliminal, liminal, and postliminal - Separation from former status - Temporarily move to a different place, change clothing/appearance, cross a real or symbolic boundary - Transition or time at the margin; ‘liminal stage’  - Psychologically, emotionally, and/or physically challenging activities with a symbolic aspect - Make initiates submissive to those conducting the initiation and receptive to the demanded changes - Then engage in educational activities such as learning/memorizing important knowledge or acquiring/performing new skills - Incorporation or reaggregation into society - Weddings; illustrate elegance and applicability of van Gennep’s rites of passage - The Brauronia and the Hyacinthia Brauronia Hyacinthia Separation Girls depart for Brauron (or Boys enter into a state of other sites dedicated to Artemis mourning for Hyacinthus; they in Athens’s environs) observe food restrictions; and they offer sacrifices at the tomb of Hyacinthus Transition Girls “play the bear for Boys participate in citywide Artemis.” They wear yellow competitions, processions from robes or are naked; they race, Sparta to Amyclae, banquets, dance, and sing; they dedicate and the dedication of a robe to votives and toys Apollo. Slaves and women participate. Incorporation Girls return home, prepared for Little evidence described the the changes that marriage brings events of this day. - Ken Dowden, “Initiation: the Key to Myth?” (2011) Anatolia and Rome: Cybele - Apollo’s origins seemingly outside of Greece - Name doesn’t appear on Linear B tablets in Greece dating from the Bronze Age - Linguistic connection between Anatolian god Appaliunas and Apollo, as well as Apollo’s worship in Lycia - Evidence suggests Anatolian origins or influence on Apollo - Lycia = Apollo had oracular temples in Patara and Telmessus and was worshiped alongside Leto at the temple Letoon near Xanthus - Northern Anatolia = treaty between Hittite kings Muwatallis and Alaksundus of Wilusa includes a number of gods’ names with one similar to Apollo: Appaliuna - Artemis and the Phrygian Great Mother - The Phrygian Great Mother, or Cybele (to the Greeks), derives from Phrygian adjective kubeliya “of the mountains” - Phrygian Great Mother left her imprint on goddesses with distinct maternal traits and on Artemis - The Great Mother’s representation in Phrygia - An older woman wearing a long, belted gown with a headdress and long veil - Sculptural reliefs = standing in a doorway; sometimes carries a cup accompanied by a predatory bird or lions or male attendants - Found near boundaries, such as city gates and fortification walls, and in rural places on funerary tumuli, altars, and in the mountains  - Great Mother more closely linked to nature than to the political world of the city; yet facilitated exchanges between natural and civilized spaces - Granted her worshipers power over the natural world - Seems to be a caretaker of the natural world who ensures its abundance - The Great Mother’s influence on several Greek goddesses, like Artemis, and even Dionysus - Demeter inherited Great Mother’s oversight of the abundance of the natural world - Artemis inherited the Great Mother’s intimate connection to the natural world - Anatolian attributes in Ephesus: many protrusions that have been interpreted as breasts, bull’s testicles, or ornaments Artemis in Roman Ephesus - Ephesus thriving under Roman rule in 1st century BCE - Inhabited by Greeks and Anatolians - The Artemisium and its history - Established by Androcles - A place of asylum as well as a bank that minted coins and took deposits - Destroyed and rebuilt several times - One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; burned down in 356 BCE - The statue of Ephesian Artemis (Diana of Ephesus) - Egg-shaped protrusions - Various interpretations allowed her to serve Greeks, Anatolians, and Romans - Neither particularly virginal nor maternal - Evolved in response to the fluctuation demographics of Ephesus - Artemis offered a vision of wealth, abundance, and protection to her worshipers Statuette of Diana of Ephesus - Excerpt from Xenophon, An Ephesian Tale Daphne in Contemporary Women’s Poetry Daphne and Apollo - Ovid’s account in the Metamorphoses - Apollo’s passion and Daphne’s transformation - Daphne's father asks Apollo to grant her eternal virginity, which he reluctantly grants - Apollo is pricked by Cupid’s arrow, sees Daphne in the woods, and immediately desires her and begins to chase her - Apollo boasts of his achievements as they run; when daphne can’t run, she prays to her father to destroy her beauty, and she’s turned into a laurel tree - Apollo’s love continues, claiming the laurel as his, using its leaves to crown his head, lyre, and quiver - Some contemporary women poets reimagine the story; express the nymph’s regret at having refused Apollo - Eavan Bolan, “Daphne with Her Thighs in Bark” - Anne Sexton, “Where I Live in This Honorable House of the Laurel Tree” - Alicia E. Stallings, “Daphne” - Transformed Daphne is neither passive nor beholden to Apollo - Daphne desires, moves, changes, and responds to Apollo as she pleases; Daphne retains the capacity to choose and act - Meditations on the violence of Apollo Chapter 9: Dionysus November 7 & 9 Readings: CMiC Chapter 9 - Bacchos - Parentage: Zeus and Semele (a mortal woman) - Offspring: - Three mortal sons (with Ariadne) - Several other mortal and immortal children - Wreath, wine cup, thyrsus (a plant stalk topped with ivy or grape leaves), grapes, vines - Significant cult titles: - Bacchos (a name linked to ritual worship) - Eleuthereus (from the town of Eleutherae, near Athens) - Iacchos (a ritual cry) - Limnaios (Of the Marshes) - Lysios (Releaser) Encountering Dionysus - Dionysus’s close connection to human beings - Mother Semele - Dionysus even dies in some myths - The Titans’ dismemberment of infant Dionysus - The dismemberment of Pentheus - Viticulture, wine, and fertility - Theater and masks - Mystery cults Viticulture, Wine, and Fertility - Dionysus oversees both agricultural and human fertility - St. Augustine: Dionysus associated with “liquid seeds”, including the vital sap and juices from plants and the semen of all living animals, including humans - Phrase provides a vivid image that connects Dionysus’s oversight of the fertility of the lands and men - Similar to Demeter, but his oversight of fertility is often infused with humor and danger - The three-day Anthesteria festival in Athens; celebrated Dionysus’s gift of wine to humankind; concluded with a sacred marriage that symbolically drew the fructifying powers of the god into the city - Day 1: Pithoigia (Jar-Opening) - Large storage jars of wine were brought into the center of Athens from the countryside and opened - Opening may have been associated with the release of the dead, who were believed to wander the city during the festival - Day 2: Choes (Wine Jugs) - Citywide drinking contest; made for an eerie day bc the rules inverted usual practices at a drinking party - Everyone drank from their own wine jug and tried to finish their portion before anyone else - No speaking was allowed - Procession to Dionysus Limnaios (Of the Marshes); dedicated their choes and garlands to Dionysus  - All temples in the city were roped off and closed (day was considered inauspicious), while Dionysus’s marsh temples were opened after being closed all year - Participants may have worn masks to represent the dead - Served to remind humans of their mortality - Day 3: Chytroi (Pots) - Change from somber to joyful mood - Three events: - Sacred marriage at Dionysus’s temple; fourteen older women conducted secret rites and oversaw a sacred marriage between the basilinna (queen) and Dionysus; symbolic marriage between Dionysus and the city itself - Girls on swings; commemorate the myth of Dionysus giving wine to Icarius, who shared it with his neighbors who became intoxicated and passed out; their families killed Icarius, his daughter Erigone found the body and hung herself - Offerings to the spirits of the dead; mixture of grains and honey boiled in special pots to appease them and send them back to the Underworld Woman pushing girl on a swing, while youth sits on an altar The Anthesteria and the Symposium - Events of the Anthesteria illustrate many features of Dionysus - Associations with wine, fertility - Confusion of categories of the living and the dead - Dionysus’s destabilizing effect on communities - The symposium (male drinking party) - Conjures male conviviality and sexuality unattached to reproduction - Symposiasts were waited on by female and male servants, musicians, and female hetaerae (women who provided musical and sexual entertainment) - Also occasions for men to examine their world and engage in self-examination - Theognis: “wine is a mirror for man” - Drinking cups with eyes; apotropaic, they protect the holder of the cup by deflecting an envious stare of another - Made the drinking of the wine mimic the experience of looking into a mirror - Suggest that Dionysus’s liquid had the potential to transform men at symposia into seekers of wisdom about themselves - Satyrs and maenads - If wine wasn’t sufficiently diluted with water or drunk in excess, it could transform men into satyr-like creatures whose speech and behavior were ruled by appetite rather than reason - Satyrs are frequently depicted in humorous and sexual activities with other satyrs and maenads - Maenads are mythical females who wear fawn skins and carry snakes and thyrsi (plant stalks topped with ivy or grape leaves) - Male symposiasts are shown dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, engaging in sexual activities with hetaerae and men, and parading in the streets - Often wore wreaths made of ivy or dresses in a manner of non-Greeks from Lydia: they carried parasols and wore earrings, boots, angle-length garments, and turbans Men dance and flirt at a symposium Theater and Masks - Dionysus is the patron god of theater - Masks, costumes, dramatic poetry (tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays) - Choral poems (dithyrambs) also associated with him and were sung in his honor during festivals - Three festivals in Athens and its environs:  - Lenaea, festival in the center of Athens consisting of processions, mystic rituals, and tragic performances - Country Dionysia (Rural Dionysia), small local festivals that took place throughout the Attic countryside - City Dionysia (Great Dionysia), took place in the center of Athens and culminated in the Theater of Dionysus The theater of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece - Country Dionysia - Took place around December - Consisted of parades in Dionysus’s honor followed by performances of tragedies and comedies - Aristophanes’s The Acharnians - Dicaeopolis assigns his daughter to carry a basket and admonished his two slaves to keep upright a wooden phallus as they parade it through the streets, while he drags a he-goat and sings a racy dithyramb in honor of Phales - Phallic processions accompanied by bawdy songs are thought by Aristotle to be the origin of comedy Phallophoria The City Dionysia - Week-long celebration in Athens, symbolic arrival of Dionysus - Statue of Dionysus Eleutherus was brought from a temporary lodging to its sacred precinct near the Theater of Dionysus, where Dionysus received sacrifices and offerings - Festival also included processions and several competitions for playwrights and performers - Various meanings of the title “Eleuthereus” - Refers to the village of Eleutherae between Athens and Boeotia - Myth: a man named Pegasus attends a banquet of early Athenian kings; Athenians refuse to worship Dionysus so the men of Athens develop a venereal disease, whose cure entails worshiping Dionysus and carrying out phallic processions in his honor - Eleutherus = “free”; title Lysios means “Releaser”; both interpreted to describe Dionysus’s effects on worshipers - He “releases” people from isolated existences and everyday lives as he leads them to his ecstatic worship - Male actors and male audiences in the Athenian theater; played the parts of male and female characters, as well as slaves and foreigners - Temporary liberation from their political identities - Ekstasis, or “ecstasy”; liberating experience similar to the effects of wine that reveal/unmask the drinker’s mind/soul Mystery Cults - Four key criteria - No civic affiliations, less restrictive than many civic festivals; open to whomever wanted to join them - Initiation; must endure (pathein) an encounter with the god or goddess of the cult - Did not demand sole allegiance - Offer succor, such as hood health - Difference from Demeter’s Mysteries and Eleusis  - Demeter’s Mysteries took place only in her temple and overseen by priests from Eleusis; worship is distinguished from Dionysus who were worshiped by an informal association/Thiasus of individuals that wasn’t linked to a particular temple or priesthood - Independent Dionysian communities often viewed with suspicion, provoked by the secret rites they were believed to practice Initiation Rites and Orgia - Shrouded in secrecy - Mural in the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii - Dionysus, a satyr, and a winged woman with a whip are portrayed near a woman undergoing an initiatory experience - Initiate unveils a phallus hidden in a basket and is disrobed, possibly prior to being whipped - Suggests that the staging of an initiation was designed to put the initiate in a fearful and confused state before a profound vision was revealed - Plutarch and the emotional tenor of initiation as an initiate moves from fear and darkness into relief and light - Compares experience of all initiates to the experience of the soul in the Underworld after death - “Every sort of terror” - Frequently group experience, but individual impact Villa of the mysteries - Orgia: ongoing Dionysian religious practices - Varied, contradictory evidence - Diodorus describes groups of women who, carrying thyrsi, dance, pray, and shout in honor of Dionysus - Orgia are described as taking place outdoors at night and including women only - Sparagmos: tearing apart of sacrificial victims - Omophagia: eating a sacrificial victim raw Euripides’s Bacchae - Dionysus arrives in Thebes with chorus of Bacchants - Disguised as a human worshiper in his birthplace  - Mask he wears serves a double purpose: a mask like those worn by any Greek actor, and it marks Dionysus as a god who hides his divinity - Proclaims that he wants to introduce the divinity of Dionysus to Thebes - Theban king Cadmus accepts the worship of Dionysus - Women of Thebes refuse at first to worship Dionysus, but soon leave their homes and go to the mountains outside the city - Pentheus’s resistance and Dionysus’s coaxing - Pentheus attempts to jail Dionysus but slowly fails under his power - Pentheus admits wanting to spy on the Theban women in the mountains, especially his mother - Pentheus dresses as a woman to join the Bacchants unnoticed - Pentheus has several visions: sees two suns and two gates at Thebes, and Dionysus appears to him as a bull - Pentheus is torn to pieces by the frenzied ecstatic Theban maenads; they return to town, led by Agave holding Pentheus’s head - Agave brandishes his head and announces to Cadmus and the Thebans that she captured a lion; slowly realizes it’s not a lion but her slaughtered son - Agave’s worship of Dionysus has culminated in unbearable suffering; play ends with her and Cadmus driven out of Thebes - Joy and violence - Destruction of boundaries Pentheus with maenads Initiations and Inversions - Victor W. Turner and “liminality” - Studied age-grade initiation rites among the Ndembu of Zambia - Turner’s debt to Arnold van Gennep - Separation stage; individuals leave behind their old identity - Liminal stage; initiates might endure physical and psychological hardships, learn new skills and secret knowledge, or relinquish possessions or certain behaviors - Reintegration stage; initiates re-enter society with a new identity - Turner’s focus on the liminal stage - Initiates are no longer their former selves but haven’t yet achieved their new status  - “At once no longer classified and not yet classified” - Activities in liminal stage make initiates socially invisible and push them outside of everyday norms - Encouraged initiates to see the provisional nature of all social identities and thereby to develop a critical perspective on their social world - Provoke reflection - Extension to “performative genres”; theater, carnivals, festivals, and films - Liminality in performative genres was “the scene and time for the emergence of society’s deepest values in the form of sacred drama and objects… but it may also be the venue and occasion for the more radical skepticism… about cherished values and rules” - Turner’s concept helps us to understand how the performative rituals of Dionysus served to propel participants out of their social world and place them between various social categories Liminality and Dionysus - Dionysian rituals and symposia included theatrical elements and took place at times separate from daily routines - Intellectual and emotional freedom - Reflect on their social world and identity - Reflection can encourage skepticism about and dissatisfaction with the social world participants find themselves - Liminality can challenge one’s identity by dressing/acting like someone different from oneself - Pentheus’s experience in Bacchae - Pentheus dresses as a female Bacchant and goes to the mountain to worship Dionysus; finds himself between several categories: male and female, king of Thebes and lonely child, commander of the disguised Dionysus and Bacchic servant of the revealed Dionysus - Not able to sustain reflection on his “cherished values and rules” - Excerpt from Eric Csapo’s “Riding the Phallus for Dionysus” Warrior, between eyes Anatolia and Rome: Cybele and Attis - Greeks located origins of Dionysian worship in Cybele - Dionysus’s name on Linear B tablets undermines this - Greeks developed myths about Phrygian Cybele and Attis - Few connections between these myths and any Phrygian precedent - The Galli and self-castration - Myths emphasize eastern luxury and reinforce Greek masculine ideals The Great Mother in Rome - The Magna Mater (Great Mother) introduced in Rome - Association with fertility - Ecstatic, non-state-sanctioned worship viewed unfavorably - Attribution of perceived effeminacy to the East - Catullus’s psychological portrait of Cybele’s ecstatic worship Dionysus and Dracula - Bram Stoker’s Dracula - The figure of the vampire across the world - Episodes of vampire-related mass hysteria in Europe - Plot of Stoker’s novel - Popularity of the novel - Structure - Themes of sexual repression and xenophobia - Dionysian themes *QUIZ 4: CH. 8 & 9 (NOV. 21)* Chapter 10: Heroes at Troy November 23 Readings: CMiC Chapter 10, additional D2L readings (Nagy 2013), AGHi24h Hour 1 Ancient Greek Heroes and Heroines – 5 Traits 1. A hero or heroine was understood to be a human being who had died 2. Heroes and heroines perform extraordinary deeds that may or may not be moral 3. Heroes and heroines die prematurely and violently 4. Heroes and heroines were worshiped at their gravesites or shrines 5. Heroes and heroines obtain a form a immortality through cult and song Heroes in Homer’s Iliad - Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as Greek cultural touchstones - Herodotus credited Homer and Hesiod with describing/teaching Greeks about their gods and goddesses - Homer’s poems provided a touchstone for considering how Greek men ought to act in political groups and on the battlefield - Herodotus doesn’t endorse the actions of the Homeric heroes - The Trojan War - For Greeks, occupied a place between fact and fiction - Heroes and heroines were said to have lived in towns in Greece where they had cult shrines - Cult shrines = repeated tales of their occupants - Some events in Homer’s poems were fanciful - Origins: Judgment of Paris - Paris is asked to award an apple inscribed with the words “to the fairest” to Hera or Athena or Aphrodite - He gives it to Aphrodite, who promises him Helen in return for the apple - Helen departs with Paris for Troy - Agamemnon and Menelaus marshal allies to punish Troy  - Expresses the fickleness of the gods, the vanity of all females, and the dangers of divine patronage - The historical Troy and oral tradition - There was a series of skirmishes and wars in the area from 1400 to 1000 BCE - Homer’s orally composed epics incorporated some historical references to these events, but don’t correspond to a particular war - Homer’s characters are poetic constructions, not portraits of men or women who once lived - “Homeric society” = the world created in Homer’s poetry; suggests this society is mostly fictional and some features may be historical Heroes in Homeric Society - James Redfield’s Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector; describes key characteristics and behaviors of heroes in Homeric society - Leading men/heroes as aristoi, “excellent ones” - Warriors who defend the communities they govern - Accepts that he must die at the hands of other men who have accepted his burden and are his enemies - A hero’s aristeia on the battlefield = his moment of excellence that occurs on the battlefield in the Iliad - Achieved by hero’s successful use of force against his enemies - Approaches divinity during this - Community rewards the hero by remembering his aristeia in song or cult - Kleos (reputation, fame) - Given to heroes by others as they spread his reputation - Heroes can have it for a general/particular quality or for an action - Associated with the hero’s death - Time (honor, status) - Also refers to price and pertains to the ransom a family or city will pay if a hero is caught by his enemies - “Time is a valuation of him, while his kleos is a description of him” - Geras (prize) - Homer’s heroes are men who perform an extraordinary deed on the battlefield, and then die and are worshiped in cult and song - Stories of heroes weren’t concerned to prove a particular hero met these criteria Agamemnon and Menelaus - Agamemnon - Parentage: Atreus and Aerope - Offspring: Orestes, Electra, Iphigenia, Laodike, Chrysothemis - Kings; rule over other men with Zeus’s protection and consent - Homer doesn’t represent them– Agamemnon in particular– as competent; make decisions that would harm the Greek war effort if pursued, and act in ways that cause unnecessary Greek deaths - Euripides portrayed them as corrupt and weak in his dramas about Troy - Agamemnon’s aristeia illustrates the extraordinary, not moral, deeds associated with heroes - Both were worshiped in hero shrines (Agamemnon = Mycenae; Menelaus = Sparta) and their fame insured their immortality - Ancestry - Tantalus and Pelops  - Tantalus set out to trick the gods and goddesses by killing, cooking, and serving his own son Pelops as a meal - All the immortals were aware of his actions and declined to participate except for Demeter; he ate Pelops’s shoulder, which was replaced with ivory when he was reconstituted - Tantalus was condemned to spend eternity in the Underworld in water with fruit hanging overhead, which receded whenever he reached for them - Atreus and Thyestes; sons of Pelops - Fight over kingship of Mycenae that cultivates in a gruesome feast - Whoever was in possession of a golden lamb wandering among their flocks would be king - Atreus’s wife Aerope was having an affair with Thyestes and gives the golden lamb to him - In revenge, Atreus kills, cooks, and serves Thyestes’s two sons to him; he eats them and is exiled for his impiety - Paris diminishes Menelaus’s time and kleos by taking Helen from Sparta - Governing principles of Homeric heroism compels Menelaus to respond to Paris’s actions - Troops from all over Greece ruled by local leaders; Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax - Agamemnon and the beginning of the Iliad - Agamemnon sets off a series of catastrophic events by his response to Achilles’s challenge to his authority; takes Chryseis as a war prize and Chryses (her father and local priest) begs for her return; Apollo unleashes a plague when Agamemnon refuses - Achilles supports a Greek seer Calchas who urges Agamemnon to return Chryseis to her father and appease Apollo; Agamemnon returns her but takes Achilles’s war prize, a woman names Briseis, th restore his diminished honor - Greeks who witness the conflict support Agamemnon; his kingly privileges and responsibilities differ from those of a warrior and he has the right to a greater portion of war prizes - Achilles withdraws from battle because Agamemnon offended him, causing the Greeks to suffer many losses - Agamemnon’s false dream - Zeus sends him a dream that falsely promises he and the Greeks will take Troy that day - Agamemnon doesn’t advise his generals to fight, instead attempts to rouse the Greeks by means of reverse psychology - Encourages them to give up the war effort and sail home; Greeks respond eagerly - They would’ve set sail if Odysseus hadn’t walked among them, shaming them and cajoling them to fight - Agamemnon’s aristeia in Book 11 of the Iliad - Agamemnon marshaled his troops; he puts on his armor - Bronze greaves with silver ties - Breastplate with ten bands of blue enamel, twelve of gold and ten of tin, complemented by a glittering enamel snake - A sword with a gold-studded handle and silver scabbard - A massive shield with bands of bronze, white tin, and enamel and an image of a Gorgon - Two bronze-tipped spears - Gleam from his armor is so great that it reaches the heavens and Hera and Athena thunder in recognition of his fierce and shining appearance - “Arming scene” followed by a lengthy account of his martial prowess - Cuts down the Trojans - Aristeia = splattered in blood and gore, he approaches the gods Diomedes - Parentage: Tydeus and Deiphyle - Offspring: Comaetho and Diomedes - A manual on “how to become a hero” - Initiated into the Homeric world of soldiering, learns which martial behaviors are to be avoided and which are acceptable and necessary parts of an aristeia - Agamemnon challenges Diomedes - Agamemnon strides among the troops and attempts to rouse them to fight by berating them; recounts how Tydeus attacked Thebes and escape an ambush of 50 men - Challenges Diomedes to live up to his father - Diomedes doesn’t question Agamemnon’s criticism and enters the battle; shines as bright as the brightest star, Sirius - Joined by Athena, who enables him to see immortals on the battlefield - Diomedes wounds Aphrodite and Ares in his aristeia with Athena’s help - Returns to a wholly human realm and meets an enemy soldier named Glaucus; learns their grandfathers were friends; they exchange armor instead of fighting, which compels Diomedes to return his attention to family generations and friendship - Learns about Homeric values and heroism in Book 10 - Agamemnon and Menelaus can’t sleep bc Trojans are gaining ground in war; hold a council and decide they should attempt to find a Trojan scout to get info about the Trojan’s strategy from - Diomedes (wearing ox-hide skull cap) and Odysseus (wearing a leather cap with a boar’s tooth helmet) ambush a Trojan named Dolon; they unceremoniously behead him after learning where the Trojan allies are encamped - Diomedes slays Thracian king Rhesus and other Thracian allies while they sleep; Odysseus moves their bodies to make a path for the white horses they steal - They return to camp with the horses and are praised, but the info they gained is of little military value - Animal outfits worn suggest significance of this episode; leave the human sphere and become animal-like - Diomedes learns to succeed in nighttime raids from Odysseus Achilles - Parentage: Peleus and Thetis, a Nereid - Offspring: Neoptolemus - Young soldier who also learns the appropriate behavior of a Homeric hero during his epic - Thetis, his mother, is a goddess (makes Achilles different from other heroes) - Thetis was destined to produce a son greater than Zeus; Zeus compels her to marry the mortal Peleus - Thetis attempts to burn or boil off the mortal parts of Achilles to make him immortal; held him by the heels over a fire or boiling cauldron; heels are his mortal vulnerability (“Achilles’s heel” = one’s weakness) - Death and birth not in the Iliad - Killed by Apollo or Paris, who shoot him in the heel - Two immortal traits: his knowledge and anger - His two fates: he may return home and live a long life or he may fight at Troy, earning great glory, but dying young - Decides to fight for the Greeks - Anger is a type usually attributed to the gods; becomes a force barely in his control - “Anger”: first word of the Iliad  - Provoked by Agamemnon when he takes Briseis - Achilles asserts that he should receive more war prizes than anyone because he’s the best of the warriors at Troy - Achilles offers criticisms of both causes of the war and the hierarchy among the Greeks (places rank above merit); questions the notions of honor (time) and fame (kleos) - He’s alone in his reflections - Achilles’s withdrawal and the death of Patroclus - Remains in his tent on the shore, playing his lyre, conversing with his mother, and refusing Agamemnon’s first offer of an apology and gifts - Watches the Trojans successfully battle and kill many Greeks until Patroclus enters the battle wearing Achilles’s armor; Patroclus is killed by King Priam of Troy’s son Hector - Achilles reconciles with Agamemnon and directs his anger against Hector and enters battle to avenge Patroclus - Achilles’s aristeia - Preceded by an arming scene - Achilles attacks the Trojans near the banks of the river Scamander; he throws their bodies into the river, polluting its waters; the river becomes angry and raises great waves and chases Achilles - Hephaestus fights on behalf of Achilles against Scamander in a cosmic battle many gods and goddesses eventually join; Achilles participates - Hera halts the battle, then Achilles seeks out Hector and kills him - Achilles and Priam - Achilles keeps Hector’s body and attempts to defile it and refuses to return it to the Trojans until Priam comes and supplicates him - Achilles accepts his own impending death and the measure and cost of human empathy and love Hector and Paris - Two most prominent Trojan princes in the Iliad - More than honor at stake: a whole society of men, women, and children risks obliteration - Both are sons of King Priam and Queen Hecuba - Destruction of Troy not in the Iliad, nor is the story of the large wooden horse that smuggles Greek soldiers into the city; told in Homer’s Odyssey - Paris’s thwarted aristeia in Book 3 - Strides in front of the Trojans but retreats immediately in fear when Menelaus steps forward to fight him; Hector rebukes him - The Greeks and Trojans allow two men to enter single combat to determine the outcome of the war; Paris draws a lot to give him a chance to restore his honor, but he has to fight Menelaus - Modest arming scene - Doesn’t attract the notice of any immortal except Aphrodite - Fares poorly in battle, and as Menelaus drags him by the plume of his helmet, Aphrodite releases the chin trap to free him; she whisks him away to his bedchamber, where she’s also place Helen - Paris’s beauty, free-spirited nature, and interest in women - Hector as heroic ideal - Book 6: returns to Troy and has three encounters with his mother Hecuba, Helen, and his wife Andromache and their son Astyanax - Each encounter, he refuses their offer of food and drink  - After his final encounter with his wife, he ignores her pleas to remain with her; he knows he’s the best hope Troy has of fending off the Greeks and has no choice but to fight in a war he likely won’t survive - Hector’s death and the death of Troy - He encounters Achilles and they run around the city until Athena, disguised as a friend, persuades him to stop running - Hector approaches Achilles to fight, but is killed wearing Achilles’s armor - Hector’s funeral concludes the epic - Hecuba, Helen, and Andromache look upon him for the last time, recalling his life and how he tried and failed to save his city from Achilles’s anger Rome: Aeneas - Vergil’s Aeneid (first century BCE) - Begins with Aeneas’s sorrow over the destruction of Troy and ends with his rage - Vergil modeled his epic on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Aeneas on Achilles and Odysseus - The Roman Homer - Aeneas’s escape from Troy with his father, his son Ascanius, and his city gods, but fails to save his wife Creusa - Travels to Italy, where he establishes Rome after many battles - Aeneas is similar to Achilles and Odysseus because their stories are shaped by epic conventions - Long poems, actions usually span years/decades - Grand setting: a battlefield, an entire city, many cities/islands, the ocean or forests, the realm of the gods, the Underworld, or any combination - Centers on war or quest - Serious tone - Superior male hero with divine parent, attempts to make his mark across a grand stretch of time and place - He succeeds because he loses something essential - Struggle includes his resistance to and then acceptance of that loss set against an expansive background Anger and Revenge in Vergil’s Aeneid - Anger concentrated in Juno (“queen of gods”) - Poem opens with an invocation of the Muse; stresses Aeneas’s “sense of duty” and mentions an “insult” = judgment of Paris who chose Aphrodite, rather than Hera or Athena, as the most beautiful goddess - Aeneas will suffer Juno’s anger caused by an action he isn’t responsible for - The Fury Allecto: Juno’s anger in visible form who resides in Hades - War between the Trojans and Rutulians, led by Turnus - Through the war and Aeneas’s actions, Vergil explores the consequences of anger and the inevitable use of force it provokes in connection to Rome - His epic asks if any nation can govern peacefully and fairly if force operaties in its foundational stories and defines its national heroes - The Aeneid’s Odyssean and Iliadic halves - Aeneas’s journey to Italy; his ships are driven off course by Juno’s anger - First six books depict Aeneas’s voyage westward from Troy to Italy - Modeled on the Odyssey - Last six books describe the battles Aeneas wages on Italian soil - Modeled on the Iliad - Last six books establish Aeneas as an epic hero in the mold of Achilles  - Aeneas seeks an alliance with King Latinus of the Latins and is engaged to Latinus’s daughter Lavinia - Juno sens Allecto to inflame Latinus’s wife Amata and Turnus, king of the Rutulians, who’s also a suitor for Lavinia’s hand - Allecto’s intervention blocks an alliance between the Latins and the Trojans and Lavinia’s marriage with Aeneas - When war breaks out between the Trojans and the Rutulians, Aeneas seeks military aid from Evander, king of the Arcadians, and agrees to take Evander’s son Pallas under his protection - Pallas is killed in battle by Turnus, and his death provokes Aeneas’s wrath - Aeneas’s drive to found Rome becomes wedded to his desire for revenge - The final scene: Aeneas kills Turnus - Turnus is wounded and begs Aeneas for clemency; Turnus asks to be spares and reminds Aeneas of their fathers, but Aeneas sees the belt Turnus stripped from Pallas as a trophy and kills him - The moral imperatives of empire and violence - Vergil’s epic asks whether the moral imperative to administer an empire with clemency can succeed if the men who govern are unable to restrain their use of force and their appetite for revenge Chapter 11: Heroes at the Ends of the Earth November 28 & 30 Readings: CMiC Chapter 11 Heroic Quests and Monstrous Encounters - Monsters and the boundaries of communities - They identify the political, economic, sexual, and cultural boundaries a community is organized around because they violate them - A hero’s defeat of a monster reinforces cultural norms - Hercules and the Nemean lion - Theseus and the Minotaur - Perseus and Medusa - Hercules as the idealized Greek (male) paragon Hercules - Vast number of myths - Alcmene, Zeus, and Amphitryon - Hercules = son of Zeus - Zeus isn’t the reason for the large number of myths devotes to Hercules; Hera’s anger at Zeus’s liaison with Alcmene, Hercules’s mother, stands behind it - Zeus disguises himself as Alcmene’s husband Amphitryon and seduces her, becoming pregnant with Hercules and Amphityon’s son Iphicles - Zeus announces that a child born that day descendant from him will be a king among men, but Hera had discovered his infidelity and not only delays Alcmene’s labor but causes the early birth of another baby Eurystheus (distantly descended from Zeus) - Eurystheus fulfills Zeus’s prophecy and becomes king of Tiryns - Hera’s prosecution - She drives him mad and causes him to hill his wife Megara and their two sons - Eurystheus and the twelve labors (athloi)