Download Chapter Two, Lecture Two

Chapter Two, Lecture Two
The Cultural Context of Classical
Myth
From Greek Society
Males
• 25,000 citizen males
• Alone fought in wars
• Education in athletics and moral/intellectual
virtues
• Ideal: athletic, intelligent, cultured, and an
asset to the family and the clan
• The symposia
• Born into a monogamous family
• With some household slaves
• Father about 30, mother in her teens
Males
• 0–6 years: In the house
• 6–3: Paedagogue
• 14–8: More specialized trainers (object of
sexual attention of older males–pederasty)
• 18–20: ephebe
• 20–30: anêr
• 30: patêr
Males
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Hoplites and the Phalanx
Gymnasium and the Athlos
Closer social classes
Agonistic (cultural competition)
Sport as War / War as Sport
“Help your friends, harm your enemies”
Females
• Skewed sources
• Ideal: chaste, submissive, silent, out
of sight
• Raised in the gynaikeion: parthenos
• Arranged marriage to a 30–year–old
man
• Duties to certain state rituals
Females
• Parthenos (korê)
• Nymphê
– miasma of childbirth
• Gynê and the oikos
Slavery
• Pervasive
– ¼ of the work force in Greece
• No rights
• Laurion Silver Mines
Religion
• Polytheistic and anthropomorphic
– Gods dwelt in the world
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No sacred writings, no priesthood
Sacrifice, respect, and bargaining
No necessary moral meaning
Worldly
– Sometimes criticized and ridiculed; sometimes
doubted to exist at all by some Greeks
Beliefs and Customs
• “Magical” (ensouled) world (“I-Thou”;
“I-It”)
• Power of words (spells)
• Prophecy
• Ghosts (blood) and miasma
Beliefs and Customs
• Taboo (the “Violated Prohibition”)
– cannibalism, incest, human sacrifice
• Mingling of higher and lower
– animals can talk, Adonis born from a tree, Narcissus,
humans with divine parent, metamorphosis
• Prophecy and dreams
• References to older customs no longer practiced
– cannibalism, human sacrifice
Greece and Rome
• Roman variations of Greek myths
• Roman period (30 BC– )
• Rome for a long time on the periphery of
Mediterranean culture
• First rulers at Rome were Etruscan kings
– Gladiatorial games
• Roman Republic next, followed by the Roman
Empire
• Romans had few indigenous stories – adopted
Greek myths