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CLA/SRS 3333
Religions of the Graeco-Roman World
Jitse H.F. Dijkstra
Historical background:
Greek history
Bronze Age
3000-1200 BC
‘Dark Ages’
1200-750
Archaic Period
750-500
Classical Period
500-323
Minoan Civilization
Mycenean Civilization (1600-1200)
Trojan War?
ca. 1000: Dorian immigration into Greece
(Spartans and on Peloponnese); Ionians (e.g.
Athens), Aeolians
776: first Olympic games
Rise of the City State (polis); colonization of
Italy (‘Magna Graecia’)
Homer, Hesiod
490-479: Persian Wars: Herodotus
431-404: Peloponnesian War: Thucydides
sophists; Socrates/Plato; tragedy writers: Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides; comedy: Aristophanes
struggle between states
Greek History (next)
Aristotle
338: Macedonia wins battle of Chaeronea; 336: Phillip dead
336-323: his son, Alexander the Great conquers the world
Hellenistic
Period
323-30 BC
323: division of Alexander’s empire: Ptolemies in Egypt;
Seleucids in Persia; Antigonids Greece
148: Macedonia Roman
146: sack of Corinth; Greece Roman province
64: conquest of Syria; 30: conquest of Egypt
27: start Roman Empire under Augustus (27 BC-AD 14)
Knowledge Greek Religion: mostly Classical and Hellenistic Period!
1. City/village (polis, astu,
kome): where you live
Akropolis (‘upper city’, Athens)
Acrocorinth: the akropolis of Corinth
Mt. Olympus
2. Mountain: where you don’t
live
3 symbolic connotations in myth:
1.
outside/wild (you get raw materials from there: Argo;
strange creatures: Centaurs live there; hunting
ground: myth of Aktaion)
2.
‘before’ (Deukalion and Pyrrha survive flood on Mt
Parnassos)
3.
Reversals: place to meet gods (Aktaion), where mad
women live (maenads)
Rule: what is often ‘real’ in myth is symbolic in ritual, e.g.
maenads were in reality not mad but taking part in
women’s rituals outside of the male-dominated world!
3. Sea: ambiguous
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