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Mythology

  1. What were the staple crops of Greece?
    • olives
    • wheat
    • grapes
  2. The Greeks were the first to do what?
    • Master seafaring
    • Colonize
  3. What were some of the resources that the Greeks used?
    • Materials from the ground (weapons, tools, jewelry)
    • Limestone/marble (architecture, art, statues)
    • Clay (pottery for art & storage)
  4. Paleolithic Age
    • Pre-7000 BCE; "Old Stone Age"
    • Inhabited by pre-Greeks
    • People who lived there died & Greeks migrated from elsewhere
  5. Neolithic Age
    • 6000-3000 BCE; "New Stone Age"
    • Rudimentary farming = enough to get by
    • Finally settled & no longer migrating
  6. Early-Mid Bronze Age
    • 3000-1600 BCE
    • Minoans on Crete/Indo-Europeans (migrate from Asia to Europe/Eurasia)
    • People who we're looking for (Greeks)
  7. Late Bronze/Mycenaen Age
    • 1600-1200 BCE
    • Powerful kings (Achaeans)
    • Stability & person with great ideas
    • Infrastructure & government develop
    • Linear B writing system found
  8. Importance of Linear B?
    • Shows that we have time/most important in universe
    • Enter history which means writing
    • Time moves on a pendulum
  9. Dark Ages
    • 1200-800 BCE
    • Powerful kings to petty kings
    • Finite amount of power, but lots believe they should have it
    • not much written (illiterate & move from Linear B)
  10. Archaic Age
    • 800-480 BCE
    • Phonetic alphabet & polis (city-state) develop
    • Move away from monarchy, not quite democracy
    • Class struggle between aristoi & kakoi
  11. Aristoi
    • Aristos: best
    • Aristoi: best ones...aristocracy
    • Rule by the best
    • From the monarchy
  12. Kakoi
    • Caca: poop
    • cacophony: loud noises
    • Kakoi: bad ones
    • considered upstarts
    • usurp the throne from the tyrants
  13. Classical Age
    • 480-323 BCE
    • Era of Plato, Socrates, Golden Age of Athens
    • Democracy & Hellenes
    • Move from isolation to hegemony
    • Peloponnesian Wars characterize era
    • Alexander the Great poster child for the age
  14. Who are the Hellenes?
    • "The Greeks"
    • Greece moves from isolation to hegemony
    • People now want to be part of it
    • If everyone has a say then we're all in it together (more unified)
  15. Democracy
    • People/demographics
    • Rule of the people, by the people, & for the people
  16. How did the Peloponnesian Wars characterize the Classical Age?
    • Athens (cultural center) vs. Sparta (militaristic society)
    • Defining conflict of Greek paradigm/quintessential struggle (balance between brain & brawn)
    • Alexander the Great as poster child
  17. How was Alexander the Great the poster child for the Classical Age?
    • Invented libraries while also being violent
    • Many Alexandrias are centers for learning
    • Responsible for Hellenism
    • Conquered more land & spread more Greek culture
    • Viewed as god-like
  18. Hellenistic Age
    • 323-31 BCE
    • All things Greek/death of Alexander
    • Focus on things man has made/does & what it means to be Greek
    • Reflect on what Greeks have done
    • 31 BCE Rome begins to take over & Greece absorbed into the empire (no longer independent, but policies adopted & respected)
  19. Oikos
    • Household
    • includes everyone in it
  20. Gynaikeion
    • Women's section of the household
    • Engine of the household
    • Hearth, water, all runs from here
  21. Kore
    Young girl on way to adulthood
  22. Parthenos
    • Terrifying virgin force
    • Girls are coming into their sexuality (men fear it/in charge due to contamination & fear of losing self in sex)
  23. Nymphe
    • Bride
    • Woman in training
  24. Gyne
    • Woman/wife
    • Once married she becomes both woman & wife
    • Moves into mother-in-law's gynaikeion 
    • Learns how to run new household
  25. Sophrosyne
    • "Self-control" but really control by the man
    • Father gets daughter controlled through marriage
    • Control from society through fear
  26. Hoplites
    • Soldiers
    • Foot soldiers with armor
  27. Gymnasium
    Athletes, men's club (no women)
  28. Erastes
    • The lover/older man
    • To give love
  29. Eramenos
    • The beloved/young boy
    • To receive love
  30. Mythos
    • Story
    • Account
    • Speech
  31. Logos
    • Argument
    • Logic/logistics
  32. Mythology
    • mythos + logos 
    • Using a story to persuade
    • NOT equal to lies
    • Traditional stories about gods/heroes bearing important messages about life, society, & sometimes religion
    • Flexible accounts of common beliefs, experiences, or events pertaining to people of a certain culture 
    • 5 basic story types (folktale, fable, legend, saga, etiology)
  33. Folktale
    • Anonymous familiar tale
    • Brothers Grimm & Mother Goose
  34. Fable
    • Teach a lesson/moral
    • Animals as lead character (stereotypical for clear message)
    • Better used to teach young children
  35. Legend
    Exaggerated story about historical figure
  36. Saga
    • String of legends connected by common theme
    • Can be told together or separately & still be understood
    • Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, spinoffs
  37. Etiology
    • Explains a phenomenon
    • In place to help people understand something until another understanding takes control
    • Built on levels of understanding at a certain time of maturity
    • Never a right answer, currently used to satisfy self
  38. Humanoid Gods
    • Look like humans before their existence, but bigger & better
    • Titans
  39. Titans
    • Humanoid gods
    • 3rd batch of children from 1st sacred marriage of Gaea & Uranus (6 male/female)
    • Imprisoned in mothers womb
    • 1st to have personality & sense of self (emotional)
    • Creation of time comes from them
  40. Chronos
    • Name symbolizes time
    • Beginning of time & early stages of universe
    • Ends perpetual sexual embrace through castration of father & frees his Titan siblings
    • Succeeded father as main Sky God
    • Father to Olympian gods
    • Last of the Titan children
  41. G-U Disunion
    • Severed genitals + water = Aphrodite
    • Blood of severed genitals + air = Erinyes (Furies)
    • Blood of severed genitals + earth = Giants
    • Not a benign universe, everything is fertile
  42. Aphrodite
    • Born from foam
    • Out of 1st crime in universe comes love
  43. Erinyes
    • The Furies
    • Punish crimes against the family
  44. Giants
    • Earth born/out of the earth
    • Humanoid from waist up & snake from waist down
    • We hate snakes due to hating women
  45. Second Sacred Marriage
    • Chronos + Rhea (sister)
    • Titan marriage of Earth + Sky
    • Intellect makes this different
    • Zeus leads siblings in titanomachy
  46. Titanomachy
    • Titan + War = Battle between the Titans
    • All Titans, but siblings referred to as Olympians based on nationality
  47. What is the difference in the Sacred Marriages?
    • Moving from brawn to brains
    • G + U: brute force
    • C + R: brute force & strategy/intellect
  48. Great Flood Story
    • Creation story
    • Code of hospitality out of whack
    • Hermes & Zeus outraged by Lycaon & being forced to eat flesh
    • Zeus floods earth
    • Deucalion (m) & Pyrrha (f) survive accidentally 
    • exhibit aidos & dike
    • repopulate the earth
    • produce Hellen (m) & offspring are Hellenes
  49. Aidos
    decency
  50. Dike
    Justice
  51. Deucalion + Pyrrha
    • Husband & wife who survive flood
    • Exhibit aidos & dike (correct behavior) by going to Temple of Themis to ask for help
    • repopulate the  earth & have Hellen
  52. Hellen
    • Son of Deucalion & Pyrrha
    • Offspring will be the Hellenes/Greeks & "chosen people"
  53. Five Ages of Man
    • Creation story
    • Golden Age
    • Silver Age
    • Bronze Age
    • Heroic Age (Age of Warriors)
    • Iron Age
  54. Golden Age of Man
    • 1st stage of 5 ages of man
    • Chronos creates man
    • Life is great (young for 100s years, no troubles)
    • Earth produces everything
    • Earth covers them over
    • Walk as generous spirits of the earth
  55. Silver Age of Man
    • 2nd stage of 5 ages of man
    • Men stopped worshipping gods
    • 100 years of childhood, adulthood plagued by foolishness
    • Forced to work in order to continue worship & not all given to them
    • Zeus buries them under earth
    • Become blessed mortal spirits
  56. Bronze Age of Man
    • 3rd stage of 5 ages of man
    • Man out of ash trees
    • Violence on rise & significance of Ares
    • They work (nothing handed to them, always at war)
    • "No bread eaten"
    • Die by own hands
    • Soul goes to Hades
  57. Heroic Age of Man (Age of Warriors)
    • 4th age of 5 stages of man
    • Demi-gods & 1st use of word "hero"
    • War & battle way of life (evil war & dreadful battle)
    • War wipes them out
    • Select few go to Isle of the Blessed
  58. Iron Age of Man
    • 5th stage of 5 ages of man
    • Hesoid lives/same generation as us
    • Men created by Zeus or Prometheus
    • Waste away with toil & pain but still some good (parabolic)
    • Ends at Zeus' hands (social ties break down)
  59. Artemis Potnia Thêrôn
    • "Lady of the beasts"
    • Role to produce an abundance of game
    • Greek vase from 6th c. BCE with a lady holding a panther on her left & a stag on her right
  60. Aoidoi
    • Bard/oral poet
    • pre-historic Greek & Archaic illiterate singers
    • Language is shaped by unconscious rhythm (dactylic hexameter)
    • Spoke to contemporary concerns with no concept of history
    • Myth makers of early Greece
  61. Homer
    • Earliest known Greek literary poems (Iliad & Odyssey)
    • Possibly from the 8th c BCE & Asia Minor?
    • Had a wide knowledge of Aegean & Greece
    • Lived at the moment the alphabet was introduced (allowed for the creation of his poems due to complex rhythms alternating between long & short vowels)
    • Iliad & Odyssey define what we mean by epics
  62. Epics
    • Long narratives celebrating a hero's deeds
    • Iliad & Odyssey by Homer are examples
  63. Iliad
    • 16,000 lines
    • Takes place in the period 10 weeks before the 10th year of the Trojan War
    • Principal theme = wrath of Achilles
    • Epic poem by Homer
  64. Odyssey
    • 12,000 lines
    • Describes the return of Odyssey to his home after 12 years of being away
    • Epic poem by Homer
  65. Hesiod
    • 750-700 BCE?
    • Contemporary of Homer, but not anonymous
    • Wrote Theogony & Works and Days
    • Described as the first European author
    • 1st to give the definition of a poet
  66. Theogony
    • "Origin of the gods"
    • Muses give Hesiod the power of song at the base of Mount Helicon
    • Explains why a poet can speak with authority about past, present & future (inspired by Muses through divinely ordained mission)
    • Description of present world-order & how Zeus over came earlier generations to establish power
    • Owes much to Mesopotamian myths
    • 1 of the most important myths to survive antiquity
  67. Works and Days
    • Moral treatise & almanac
    • Bitter dispute between Hesiod & brother over disposition of father's property (theme allows for wide range over right & wrong)
    • "Wisdom literature" = close to Eastern literature sources
    • Hesiod describes singing at funeral games in Euboea = how poems were written down
  68. Who were the earliest to have possession of the Greek alphabet?
    Euboeans
  69. Cyclic Poems
    • Post-Homeric epics that were constructed in a circle around the Iliad & the Odyssey telling parts of the Trojan War not covered by Homer
    • Left an enormous influence on Greek art & 5th c BCE Athenian tragedies
  70. Homeric Hymns
    • Important source from the Archaic period
    • Collection of poems
    • Composed orally & in antiquity believed to be by Homer 
    • From 7th & 6th c BCE
    • Literary elaboration of an old religious tradition & performed in public places & composed by specially trained aoidoi
  71. Hymns
    • Metrical address invoking a god or goddess by listing cultic names and telling an important story about the deity
    • Usually performed in public places, at festivals before women & broad social classes
    • Composed by specially trained aoidoi
  72. Ethics
    • Way to tell right from wrong without divine authority
    • Greek cultural prejudgment led to this
    • Greek invention
  73. Secular law
    • Rules of behavior
    • Punishment for infringement
    • Depends on human invention & not divine revelation
  74. Humanism
    • Value central to Western civilization
    • Ethics & secular law are at the heart of this
  75. Rhapsodes
    • Those adept at memorization of written epic and at the effective public delivery of those texts
    • Performed while leaning on a staff
    • NOT poets
    • Re-create from a written piece someone else's invention
    • Conspicuous feature of 4th c BCE
    • Rapidly popularized Greek myth
  76. Choral Song
    • New technique of composition in writing made possible
    • Memorized for public presentation by a group of 12+ boy/girl dancers
    • Pindar was the greatest choral poet
  77. Pindar
    • 522-443 BCE; greatest choral poet
    • Odes contain myth that reflects glory of the athlete being praised
  78. Tragedy
    • Most important source from Classical Period
    • Performed in Athens in 5th c. BCE
    • "Goat Song"
    • Composed in writing, but script meant to serve as prompt book for live performance
    • Always male actors & not more than 3
    • Wore masks with stereotypical features
    • Communicate emotion through words & gestures only
    • Form of popular entertainment directed to the complex concerns of Athenian male citizens
    • Dionysus was the divine patron of tragedy
    • Allows audience to experience intense emotions without terrible cost
  79. Aeschylus
    • 525-456 BCE (during Athens glory days)
    • Earliest tragedian whose works survive
    • Long & elaborate descriptions esp. foreign lands & high-flown metaphorical language
    • Used myth to explore grand moral issues (conflict between individual will & divine destiny)
    • Characters embody some principle
    • Composed own epitaph
    • Persians only surviving play with no mythical theme
    • Inherited curse & divine will motivate the action
  80. Sophocles
    • 496-406BCE(political/cultural dominant Athens)
    • 7/123 plays survive
    • Tightly plotted dramas, vivid characters, bitter conflict
    • Shows dignity of humans in conflict with superior/divine forces
    • Heroes are lonely & unbending & learn how to act too late
    • Deeply influenced by folklore & oracle fulfillment
    • All plays contain prophecy/oracle who predicts unexpected outcome
    • Fate stands behind events
  81. Euripedes
    • 484-406BCE
    • 19/90+ plays survive
    • Subjected traditional myths to rigorous scrutiny & severe criticism
    • Characters are deflated heroes & veer off into abnormal mental states
    • Showed men as they really are
    • Reflects contemporary Athenian rhetoric
    • Plays center on long debate
    • Celebrates the power of emotion over reason
    • Passionate/erotic & esp. female emotions drives the action
  82. Mouseion
    • "Hall of the Muses"
    • 1st real library established established at Alexandria, Egypt 331 BCE
    • Classics of Greek literature were gathered & edited in standard editions
    • 1st time scholars appeared in modern sense
    • Critical principles established to determine the original form of texts corrupted through repeated copying
  83. What was important about Greek myth in the Hellenistic period?
    • Literature read aloud to a small group from a papyrus scroll
    • Psychological effect enormous
    • Literature now written to be read, not performed
    • Literature now more self-conscious, learned & very abstract & difficult
    • Interest in the essential truth of myth
  84. Apollonius of Rhodes
    • 3rd c. BCE
    • Wrote Argonautica, epic poem on Jason in Homeric style
    • Most important treatment of this myth & poem on which own accounts are based
  85. Library of Apollodorus
    • c. 120AD
    • Most important survivor
    • Straightforward account of mythical events from the creation of the world to the death of Odysseus
    • 1 of best sources of info about Greek myths (esp in lost Cyclic Poems)
  86. Pausanias
    • c. 150 AD
    • Great geographical survey of Greece
    • Preserved mythological material that would have otherwise been unknown
  87. Sir James Frazer
    • 1854-1941; classical scholar
    • 1 of the founders of modern anthropology
    • The Golden Bough derived many theories about myth from study of Pausanias
  88. Virgil/Vergil
    • 70-19 BCE; Greatest Roman poet
    • Aeneid, epic story of Aeneas, 1 of the fullest descriptions of the underworld & most vivid account of the sack of Troy; preserves legend of Dido & Hercules battle against Cacus
  89. Ovid
    • c. 43BCE- 17AD
    • Most important source from early Roman empire
    • Man about town. good birth, clever & witty verse
    • Moved in the highest society, but exiled after sexual scandal in 8 AD
    • Metamorphoses, most substantial & influential repertory of Greek myth
    • Most appear as love stories & to good-humored taste of Roman elites
    • Most important source from Roman period to Renaissance for artists, writers, etc.
  90. Metamorphoses
    • Written by Ovid
    • most substantial & influential repertory of Greek myth
    • Compendium of 200+ stories united by the theme of transformation of shape
    • Most stories are that of love & appeal to refined, good-humored Roman elite
    • Defines what world thinks of as classical myth
  91. Cosmogony
    "Origin of the world" & the story that explains it
  92. Chaos
    • "Chasm"
    • 1st to appear
    • A being of some kind that was not always there
    • The opening from which the other primordial beings arose
  93. Gaea
    • Mother "Earth"
    • Personification of the earth beneath us, the solid, sure foundation of the world
  94. Tartarus
    • Place beneath Earth
    • Where children of Gaea are imprisoned
    • Later couples with Gaea to create Typhon to attempt to defeat Zeus
  95. Eros
    • "Sexual love", "attraction"
    • The source of motion that brings sexual beings together to produce still more offspring
  96. Uranus
    • "Sky"
    • 1st born of Gaea asexually
    • Sexual union with mother, Gaea, produced 6 male/female Titans
    • Covered her completely in perpetual sexual embrace
  97. Pontus
    • "Sea"
    • Second born of Gaea in watery doublet
  98. Oceanus
    • Notable Titan; watery male
    • River that encircles the world, where dome of the sky touches flat surface of the earth
    • All waters fed by his flow
    • United with Tethys (F) to give birth to all gods & 6,000 Oceanids, spirits of sea, rivers & springs
  99. Cyclopes
    • "Round-eyes"
    • 3 born of Gaea & Uranus
    • Clever smiths of the gods & made lightning
    • Brontes "thunderer"
    • Steropes "flasher"
    • Arges "brightener"
  100. Hecatonchires
    • "Hundred-handers"
    • 3 born of Gaea & Uranus
    • Hundred arms & fifty heads
  101. Hyperion
    • "He who goes above"
    • Sun god & father to Helius (sun), Selene (moon) & Eos (dawn)
  102. Helius
    • A Homeric Hymn to Helius portrays his chariot ride across the sky
    • Ovid's story about Phaëthon, son of Helius
  103. Gigantomachy
    • "Battle of the Giants"
    • Attacked the Olympians & urged on by Gaea
    • Heracles, mortal son of Zeus, joins battle
    • After Olympians win, Zeus (heaven), Hades (dark mist, underworld, at world's end) & Poseidon (grey sea) divide the world
  104. Prometheus
    • "Forethought"; "Maker of mortals"; "protector of mortals"
    • Titan who took Zeus's side against Titan cousins (son of Iapetus, 1st gen Titan)
    • Mortals made through primeval mix of earth & water & divine seed
    • Stole fire & gave to mortals & highest human skills (medicine, metallurgy, prophecy)
    • Forced to be tied to a post & have liver eaten every day for eternity (Jesusesque; passionate crime/love)
  105. How did Zeus punish mortals & Prometheus for Prometheus' crimes?
    • Mortals: gave man woman
    • Prometheus: Spend eternity having liver eaten by eagle (until Heracles frees him)
  106. Pandora
    • "All-gifted/giver" begins race of women
    • Etiological folktale to explain the origin of woman, marriage & suffering in the world
    • Given a jar from Epimetheus who was given it by Zeus, Hope remains trapped under the lip of the jar, & all miseries flood the earth
    • Placed in the world as Zeus' punishment for man
Author
nik_larose
ID
236239
Card Set
Mythology
Description
Exam 1
Updated

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