November 19th, 2020
I just finished reading Part 2 of Classical Myth by Barry Powell and wanted to summarize what I’ve read. First I wanted to address what I was thinking about a little while ago. I’ve been using the language that I’m reviewing books, but I think I’m not always doing that. I think especially for these academic books where I’m condensing the information and presenting that condensed version, I’m providing a summary, but sometimes I provide commentary on some thoughts that I might have and a review on specific parts of the books. For me, the lines seem to be blurred and I’m sure that if I was in an academic setting I would be required to more analysis on specific points. I’m more so just interested in writing about things that stood out to me and offering thoughts that I think about while I’m reading it, but I tend to write more authoritatively and transition between summary, review, thoughts, and opinions, which I suppose is a good thing for writers to be able to do. I don’t know how well I stack up against actual professional writers, but I’ve been told that my writing is pretty good from friends who’ve read my material, which I’ll take as positive feedback. Anyways, onto the review-summary interlaced with thoughts and opinions.
Part 2 of Classical Myth by Barry Powell concerns itself with the divine myths of ancient Greece with discussion on key myths, passages from literary works, origins of those myths and etymologies, perspectives on those myths in modern art and literature, and comparisons with other cultures myths. Part 2 starts with chapters 4 and 5 and discusses the myths of creation around the rise of Zeus and the origins of mortals. Zeus was certainly the most important god in Greek religion and culture as outlined in A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 by Mircea Eliade. The most well-known work of literature that describes his origin is found in Theogony by Hesiod which gave the best answer to the question of “Where does the world come from?” for the Greeks living after him. Many of the religious rites, rituals, beliefs, and institutions already existed during Hesiod’s time and Hesiod simply offered an etiological explanation for those various rituals and beliefs. For Hesiod, the origin of the world, that is cosmogony, is the same as the origin of the gods, that is theogony. This can be contrasted with the biblical book of Genesis where God stands outside of creation and exists before it however I when reading the Old Testament, I still saw in it the similar etiological explanations for various albeit from a human perspective (I will discuss this phenomenon more when I get to Ovid’s Metamorphoses). In Theogony, Hesiod starts by saying that first came Chasm (Chaos) then came Earth (Gaea) and then Tartarus which is the place below the earth and then Eros which is the personification of sexual love. From Chasm came Darkness (Erebus) and Night (Nyx), from Night came Radiance (Aether) and Day (Hemera). Earth bore Heaven (Uranus), Sea (Pontus), and Mountains asexually and then with Uranus bore the 12 Titans including Oceanus which is the river that surrounds the world (as is shown in an imago mundi), Rhea who is the mother of zeus, and Cronus/Kronos who will contend with Uranus (Rhea and Cronus are also either the parents or grandparents of the twelve olympians). Also borne from the pairing of Gaea and Uranus (Earth and Heaven) were the Cyclopes and the Hecantonchires which were monstrous beings that played a part in the later succession of Zeus to the King of the Gods. Gaea and Uranus were locked in a perpetual sexual embrace and the first major event is the separation of the two. Their son Cronus is the one to do this by castrating Uranus, thus separating Heaven from Earth. From the blood of Uranus that fell on Gaea came the Giants and Erinyes. Uranus’s genitals were thrown into the sea and Aphrodite was born from the sea foam and was attended by Eros and Desire, thus her status as the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and passion. Hesiod then goes on to describe where aspects of existence come from: Night bores Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Misery, Resentment, Deceit, Intimacy, and Strife (Night also bears the Hesperides who tend to the golden apples beyond Oceanus, the river that surrounds the world. This is but one element that is reminiscent of the Biblical stories). Also through the union of Gaea and Pontus (Earth and Sea) comes a lineage of various monsters such as Harpies, Medusa, Pegasus, Cerberus, Hydra, Chimera, and Sphinx (this union also bears Nereus who begets Thetis who is the mother of Achilles). There are over 300 named gods and mythical beings listed in Theogony, but it is not my interest to catalogue them all. The next major event is the succession of Zeus to become king of the gods. Similar to how Uranus had tyrannized Gaea, so too did Cronus tyrannize his wife and sister Rhea. The union of Cronus and Rhea resulted in the birth of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Cronus, fearing that he would be overthrown by his children ate each as they were born except for Zeus whom Rhea replaced with a rock in swaddling clothes to deceive him. Because of this, upon maturation, Zeus was able to free his brothers and sisters and with the help of them, the titan Themis and her son Prometheus, the Cyclopes, and the Hecantonchires fought Cronus and the rest of the Titans in the Titanomachy (battle of the Titans), and become the king of the gods. Between the freeing of Zeus’ brothers and sisters and the Titanomachy, Hesiod discusses the sons of Iapetus: Atlas and Prometheus (Iapetus is a son of Gaea and Uranus) and there fates. I will discuss them in a little bit. Hesiod then goes on to describe Zeus’ fight with Typhoeus, a monstrous being who is the offspring of Gaea and Tartarus. This battle is similar to near eastern myths of dragon combat which I will discuss in a bit. The rest of Theogony discusses other gods that were born. Most notably are the offspring of Zeus and various consorts/wives. From Zeus and Metis, whose name means “resource” or “cunning”, came Athena the goddess of wisdom (interestingly Zeus swallowed Metis before she gave birth and with the help of Hephaestus, Athena was born from Zeus’ head! This also means that resourcefulness and cunning were then associated with Zeus, thus he could no longer be overthrown like his father and grandfather which is why he hasn’t been overthrown in the real world as the primary god worshipped in ancient Greece). From Zeus and Themis (read “the personification of all that is right and proper in nature and society”) came Lawfulness, Justice, Peace, and the Fates. From Zeus and Demeter came Persophone who will be discussed later as the goddess stolen by Hades and whose myth forms the basis of the Elusinian Mysteries). From Zeus and Leto came Apollo and Artemis, from Zeus and Hera came Ares, from Zeus and Atlas’ daughter Maia came Hermes, and from Zeus and Semele came Dionysus. Hephaestus was begat by Hera asexually similar to how Athena was born. There are other gods and mythical beings that form unions and birth various other gods and mythical beings and that is where Theogony ends. Theogony is thus the prime example from Greek myth of Divine myth which seeks to explain how the world came to be and primarily how Zeus came to rule the world, although it has elements of folktale: gods act as ogres and tricksters; goddesses behave as sexual victims, as dangerous enemies, and as beneficent protectors; Typhoeus is a dragon, Zeus is his enemy. Family conflict drive the action Wife plots against husband, son against father, and father against children. There are likely countless analyses of the text, but I won’t be doing that here except to mention the similarities that there are similarities with the Babylonian poem, Enuma Elish. This is an example of the Mesopotamian creation myth which likely inspired Hesiod for his poem. In the Enuma Elish, the god Marduk is the chief God and it explains how he came to power and how he defeated the the evil Tiamat. The Succession myth between Chaos -> Uranus (“Sky”; castrated by his son) -> Cronus -> Zeus (storm-god) is also found in the Hittite poem Kingship in Heaven features a similar succession Alalush -> Anush (“Sky”; castrated by his son) -> Kumarbi -> Teshub (storm-god). The Creation story in Genesis is similar with regards to universe beginning in a watery mass and the separation of Earth and Heaven. In the Mesopotamian account, the great elements of nature are deified whereas in the Hebrew account they are simply a part of nature created by a transcendent God. In the Enuma Elish, the primordial waters are personified as the great dragon Tiamat. In Theogony, the dragon is Typhoeus, the offspring of Earth and the underworld. There is a vague reflection of the dragon combat found in the Mesopotamian account in the Biblical account in Isaiah 27:1
“In that day the Lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the swiftly moving serpent, the coiling, writhing serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea.”
Isaiah 27:1, NLT
The similarities to the creation myth of Mesopotamia and the creation account in Genesis leads me to believe that the creation account in Genesis is a myth and that it is similar to the way the Mesopotamian creation myth influenced Hesiod’s Theogony as a way to explain the present state of the world. The Isrealites were mostly monothesistic and the creation story in Genesis 1, which is attributed to priests who, from Who Wrote the Bible? By Richard Elliot Friedman, writing during the time of Hezekiah and borrowing elements from the Mesopotamian creation story (There is some discrepancy with this and I have actually emailed Richard Elliot Friedman to get some clarification) penned their account of creation from a monotheistic point of view.
None of this means that this story isn’t divinely inspired, it very well could be. It could be that God inspired the person penning Genesis 1 to pull from the stories that he was familiar with to construct a more accurate version of how he actually created the world. Thus it lines up with the theories that we have about the origin of the universe. However, I don’t think that we should take Genesis 1 to be literally true and inerrant because it doesn’t have to be and whenever Christians (specifically Young Earth Creationists) say that that is the case it only serves to push me away from Christianity. I’m looking for the most logical reasons to be a Christian and doing my best to recognize illogical reasons to believe so that I can avoid beliefs based on those reasons. If humans created the gods of Greece and Mespotamia who’s to say that the Abrahamic god was not also created by humans. This is not to say that there is no God, but rather that the Bible is a deeply human book and perhaps it doesn’t contain the truth that most people believe it to contain. I think the most logical answer to the question of is there a god is I don’t know.
Moving on, Chapter 5 discusses the origins of mortals by discussing Prometheus (maker and protector of mortals), Pandora, The Five Races (gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron), and the Universal Flood (discussion of Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Noah; Lycaon, Deucalion, and Pyrrha). Prometheus is interesting because him and his story has influenced countless works of literature and art (along with many other stories from Greek myth). One example that is on my list to read is Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Similarly Percy Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound after reading Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. There are countless other literary works that I will discover as I work my way through history-via-literature that are inspired by him and his story. I will want to keep my eye out. The most well known story of Prometheus as the maker of mortals appears in Metamorphoses by Ovid. I will be reading this book eventually but from what is said in Classical Myth, Prometheus made the human race by mixing primeval earth and water and because the earth contained divine seed, the human was a superior being. This is opposed to the version in the Enuma Elish where human beings were made from the blood of Kingu (the consort of Tiamat), which is why humans are disposed to wickedness. A related eastern story tells how humans are made from mud and clay and the version that entered the Biblical narrative is found in Genesis 2:7:
“Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.”
Genesis 2:7, NLT
(Breath is discussed later with the discussion of death and the underworld) Prometheus as the protector of Mortals is found in Hesiod’s Theogony. In Theogony, Prometheus managed to trick Zeus into accepting a subpar sacrifice. When Prometheus carved up an Ox he covered the meat with the ox’s stomach and he covered the bones with the delicious fat so as to deceive Zeus into accepting the fat-laden portion however Zeus recognizes the trick and even though he takes the bones, he punishes man in response. This is the etiological explanation that Hesiod gives for burning bones for the gods by the people on earth. Zeus takes away fire from the humans but Prometheus steals it back. Because of this second trickery Zeus chains up Prometheus and sets an eagle to eat his immortal liver which grows back every night only to be eaten the next day. In Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Prometheus describes the many benefits he conferred to mankind. I have yet to read this, but it is on my list to read along with other works by the tragedians. Another punishment for the stealing of fire by Prometheus was what Hesiod regarded as the greatest affliction for mortals: woman! This story is told in both Theogony and Works and Days. In Works and Days, the first woman is created by Hephaestus and is called Pandora. Pandora is sent to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus who accepts her despite the explicit violation against accepting gifts from gods. Epimetheus’s violation and Pandora opening her box are what caused labor, misery, and disease, with death at the end. This is similar to the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve and serves as a similar etiological tale for the origin of woman, marriage, and suffering in the world. In both, the woman is responsible for the suffering which makes it apparent that many of the stories in the Bible and many of the stories based on myth were written by men. Another similarity is with the five races listed in Works and Days: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes, and Iron. Hesiod describes how gold was idyllic, how silver was worse than gold, and how bronze is worse than silver. The age of heroes was better than the bronze age and the final age of iron, Hesiods time, which is rife with toil and misery, constant distress, and harsh troubles. Barry Powell mentions how ascribing metals to specific ages is an eastern invention and how this is similar to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the book of Daniel 2:31-33:
“In your vision, Your Majesty, you saw standing before you a huge, shining statue of a man. It was a frightening sight. The head of the statue was made of fine gold. Its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were a combination of iron and baked clay. “
Daniel 2:31-33, NLT
Speaking about similarities with the Bible, Works and Days reminded me a lot about some of parts of the Bible. Works and Days concerns itself primarily with the virtues of right over wrong and working over not working. It provides farming and fishing best practices, life guidance, marriage advice. It is essentially a work with moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry and sheds a fascinating light on Greek society, ethics, and superstition similar to how the Hebrew Bible provides moral and practical advice and sheds light on Hebrew society, ethics, and superstitions. Hesiod provides pre-existing proverbs and popular sayings and it reminded me of the wisdom literature from the Bible.The last part of the chapter on the origin of Mortals discusses the Universal Flood story and compares the Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek versions of the flood. Since the Greek Flood story is outlined in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I will wait to do a detailed analysis until I read that. One thing that I did want to mention however was the discussion of the offspring of Deucalion and Pyrra who were the only survivors of the Greek version of the flood:
“Most important of the children of Deucalion and Pyrrha was their son Hellen who gave his name to the whole Greek race, the Hellenes. Hellen had three sons: Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus. Dorus and Aeolus were the founders of the Dorians and the Aeolians, peoples who spoke two of the principal Greek dialects. Xuthus, the brother of Dorus and Aeolus, was father to Ion, from whom descended the Ionians, the third principal group of Greeks, which included the Athenians.
These figures are eponymous ancestors of the Greeks as a whole (the Hellenes) and of the three principal ethnic divisions among the Greeks (Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians). Eponymous means “giving one’s name to something,” a place, people, city, or institution, and an eponym is the person whose name is so given. There are many eponyms in myth but most are really named after the fact: First came a tribe called the Dorians, then came the legendary, and mythical, founder Dorus.”
Classical Myth, page 131
This is the same way that I think of many of the people groups that are described in the Bible and is but another thing that makes me believe that the bible is the work of humans. Take the Moabites and Ammonites. They are descended from Lot’s sons Moab and Ammon. First came a tribe called the Moabites, then came the founder Moab however the story is from the rival Israelites the perspective takes on a negative light. Israelite superiority is apparent because the story of Lot involves him sleeping with his daughters to produce Moab and Ammon.
The remaining chapters on divine myth discuss the myths surrounding the most prominent gods worshipped in Greece: the Twelve Olympians. These are by far the most well-known Greek gods and many modern people are familiar with. The twelve Olympians are Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Ares, Hermes, Poseidon, Demeter, and Hestia/Dionysus (The latter replaces the former) Hades is not considered one of the twelve olympians since he doesn’t reside on Mt. Olympus, but rather in the underworld. Many of the stories about the Olympians are told throughout The Iliad and The Odyssey as well as various Homeric Hymns to individual gods. I wanted to pull out some of things that I found interesting or insightful as it relates to the melding of the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman worldviews. To start with Chapter 6, Zeus the lord of the sky and ruler over the world he also presides over law and justice. In the early stages of Greek history, law and justice were simply what had always been done, in essence customs, and were not abstract ideals. In Plato’s Republic, Plato attempts to define what is meant by justice. The Greek word for justice is dike, the root of which means “to point out”, is of critical importance to Greek and Western thought. Zeus had many consorts, primarily Hera as his wife who is the goddess of marriage and other women’s fertility. There is a story of her seduction of Zeus and the antagonism they share toward each other in The Iliad. Zeus had many other consorts however (which is where the antagonism arises from). One of note is the union of Zeus and Themis to produce the Fates (Moerae) (in Theogony, Hesiod reported that the Fates were the daughters of Night (Nyx) but later changed this later). In Greek popular thought, one’s fate can never be changed. Zeus was also subject to fate. A passage from the Iliad implies that zeus could act against fate, but to do so would upset the balance of things and violate his role as the upholder of law. The conception of Zeus as subordinate to fate kept the Greeks from evolving to true monotheism in which a single God rules all things. Poseidon was the ruler of the sea and lord of the deep and had some stories preserved in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Hades was King of the dead and has an appearance in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter of which I will discuss when discussing later. The last thing discussed in chapter 6 was the anthropomorphism of the gods such that they looked, acted, and thought like men and women. THey honor kings, live in families, marry, procreate, have sexual liasons, wrangle, intrigue, dine at banquets, and are entertained by songs. This anthropomorphism makes possible the large body of myths associated with them. Gods had powers fit to receive sacrifice and to be adored in religious cult as evidenced by the expensive temples built to these gods, the pious sacrifices made, and fear and awe that they inspired. However Greek myths were not “gospels” to be accepted by pious Greeks as trustworthy records of literal truth about the doings of the divine beings or as revelatory of their inner nature, thus gods were simply actors in greek myth while worshipped outside of it.
Chapter 7 discusses the myths of Apollo, the god of prophecy who has stories in The Illiad and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as well as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Of note with regards to Apollo is the Oracle at Delphi which was a Pan-Hellenic religious center to which all Greeks paid respect, regardless of their unending political differences. It would be interesting to explore more about this oracle and the prophecies foretold in relation to the Biblical prophecies, but it may be a while before I get to that. Apollo can also be considered the god of Shamans.
Chapter 8 discusses the myths of Hermes, Pan, Hephaestus, and Ares. Hermes, the God of Wayfarers, makes an appearance in the Odyssey to give Odysseus the magical herb Moly to protect him from Circe’s magic (See this video on an interesting scientific analysis of that story/herb). The entire Homeric Hymn to Hermes is listed in this chapter and is quite an amusing read. Hermes, upon being born, steals Apollo’s cattle and feigns innocence when confronted about it. Apollo and Hermes then go to a sort of civil court on Mt. Olympus with Zeus presiding. Hermes was found to be at fault and gives the cattle back to Apollo, but Apollo does not seek anymore restitution because Hermes gives him the Lyre that he made (Thus one of Apollo’s emblems is the lyre). One of sons, Pan, is of interest. Pan, the goatherd’s god did not live on Mt. Olympus but wandered the wild hills of arcadia. Pan was a rustic deity who was the last to succumb to the attacks of Chritianity. The pictorial representations of Pan along with Faunus and Silvanus whom the Latins identified Pan with (plural pans, fauns, and silvani) comes the horned, hoofed, pointy-eared, lusty devil. A certain Christian bishop in the fifth century CE (The exact one is not specified) complained that among illiterate peasantry the worship of Pan was still vigorous. Pagan comes from the Latin paganus which means rustic. Apparently in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, when describing the Garden of Eden, he evokes the mood of the pastoral tradition that associated Pan with the idealized country life as opposed to the refined but corrupt ways of city life. This is but one instance of why I’m studying the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions to fully appreciate the works of literature produced in later generations. Hephaestus is the god of smiths and Ares is the incarnation of blood lust and god of war. There is an interesting story in the Odyssey of how Ares and Aphrodite were caught in a net made by Hephaestus (Aphrodite was Hephaetus’ wife). Shenanigans ensue.
Chapter 9 discusses myths of several female deities including Aphrodite, Artemis, and Athena. Demeter is the mistress of wheat and will be discussed in the next chapter. Hestia is simply the hearth that is found in every house. Being a colorless god she was replaced by Dionysus as one of the Twelve Olympians. Aphrodite is the goddess of sexual love. She had affairs with many of the gods including Ares, Hermes, Dionysus, Adonis, and Anchises detailed in various works by Sappho, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Hymn to Aphrodite. An interesting thing about Adonis is that his name is semitic for “lord”. Adonai “my Lord” is still used as a word for god in modern Judaism. Anchises, a mortal prince related to the Trojan royal house is most notably the father of Aeneas who is the first true hero of Rome and is the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of rome. His story is detailed in Virgil’s The Aeneid which I will be reading eventually. Virgil also appears as a character in Dante’s Divine Comedy on his descent through Hell, a topic which will be touched on when discussing chapter 12. Artemis is the mistress of animals and goddess of the hunt. Some of her stories are detailed in The Iliad and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She had one of the most largest Greek temples and her most important cult centers at Ephesus. Apparently in the New Testament, Paul comes to Ephesius and has a run in with adherents to Artemis. It will be interesting to read about that when I get to it. The last goddess is Athena, the mistress of the city and goddess of wisdom. She was the patron deity of Athens, but her name is take from the city of Athens. One interesting story appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses where she is challenged by the young woman Arachne in a weaving competition. The result of this story is that Arachne is turned into a spider which is where modern scientific term arachnids comes from.
Chapter 10 discusses Demeter primarily and a significant myth associated with her. A goddess of fertility, Demeter is associated with agriculture and the harvest. I won’t discuss the entire chapter except to point out a few key elements. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter explores the relationship between Demeter and her daughter Persephone after Hades carries away Persephone to be his bride. This upsets Demeter and she causes the earth to stop being fertile and the grains to stop growing. A deal is worked out with the gods whereby Persephone spends two thirds of the year on earth with demeter and one third of the year in the underworld with Hades. There are some interesting cultural overtones with the myth and it offers a mythical explanation, or etiology, for the presence of death in the world, explaining why the fertility of the earth cannot be separated from the inevitable presence of death.The Greek myth shows patterns similar earlier near eastern fertility myths such as the Sumaerian Inanna and Dumuzi, the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, and the Phrygian Cybele and Attis. Barry Powell discusses various observations with regards to elements found in each including The Dying God, The Sacred Marriage, and The Life Blood. In each story someone dies. The Greek story, although an allegory, explains the cycle of vegetable growth. The Sumerian story explains the loss of fecundity as the disappearance of the goddess and need for sacrifice to keep the earth fruitful. The egyptian story explains how the power of pharaoh is eternal and always regenerating out of itself. The Phrygian story is part of an etiology for an exaggerated form of religious devotion that likened semen to blood to bloody seeds to a child to plant life.The Greek Homeric Hymn to Demeter celebrates the founding of one of the most famous religious cults in the ancient world: the Eleusinian Mysteries. The religious aspects of this were discussed in A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 by Mircea Eliade. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most honored cult of Greek religion giving hope, giving hope and comfort to untold thousands from all over the mediterranean world and commanding veneration until they were finally suppressed at the end of the fourth century CE, however some of the ideas associated with the cult found their way into Christianity and can be found in first Corinthians. I may do a more in depth study of this at a later date as it would be interesting to explore it further and see how it influenced Christianity.
Chapter 11 discusses one of my favorite greek gods, Dionysus, the god of wine and festivity (I actually dress up as Dionysus on Halloween!) Some of the features of the cult of Dionysus (which is also discussed in A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 by Mircea Eliade) were later to find striking parallels in Christianity. Barry Powell stated that the various myths of Dionysus must be pieced together. The sources cited in the chapter include the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, Catullus’ Poem, Homer’s The Illiad, and Euripides Bacchae. There is a line from Bacchae that I found that is spoken by Dionysus to the resistant Penthus: Speak sense to a fool, he thinks it’s only nonsense” (479). Much of Dionysus’ myths involve encountering resistance to his new eastern religion which was inevitably futile as Dionysus caused those who resisted him to go mad and suffer the consequences of their own prudishness. This may be a way to explain the popularity of the cult among the people of Greece. A good parallel that I can think of is how the prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States. There is a whole lot of analysis with regards to Dionysus and his cult that I wish I could get into, but alas I need to move onto other things. I should like to come back to it at some point, but I figured I’d leave this here:
“Early Christians viewed Dionysus as an evil demon. From his religion and the cult of Pan derive the goatish qualities of popular representations of the devil and the attribution to the devil of ritual indulgence in intoxicants and sex. Yet the Dionysian notion of the identification of god and worshipper ironically became central to Christian doctrine, sometimes expressed in terms similar to those in Dionysiac cults. FOr example, from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (AD 1549, still used in churches of the Anglican Communion):
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood … that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.
Paradoxically the pagan god of drunkenness and sexual license served as one model for the early Christians in their attempts to understand their own relationship to Jesus of Nazareth, who died and returned. Sarcophagi with scenes from the stories of Dionysus often were reused for Christian burials. In the eleventh or twelfth century AD an unknown Byzantine author, no doubt inspired by parallels between Pentheus’ interrogation of Dionysus and Pontius Pilate’s of Christ, put together a work called Christus Patiens (The Suffering Christ), the story of the crucifixion told as a Greek tragedy. Christus Patiens is made up entirely of lines taken from ancient drama, especially the Bacchae.”
Classical Myth, page 287
Frederich Nietzsche was also inspired by the figure of Dionysus which played a prominent role in his writings finding its way into the Birth of Tragedy and Beyond Good and Evil, both of which I will be reading when I get to that point in history.
Chapter 12, the last chapter on divine myth, talks about the myths of death and encounters with the underworld. We may consider death to be a natural process but it was more mysterious to the ancient Greeks. For them, death was caused by a hostile force from the natural world (a storm, an animal attack), from a human being (an enemy soldier), or from the invisible and inexplicable realm of gods, ghosts, magicians, and priests that we call disease. Any of the deaths that had a natural explanation could still be attributed to the gods, but one god, in particular, Hades, played a special role as the lord of the dead in the underworld. The dead, buried in the earth, are unseen, and that’s where Hades rule, thus Hades is “the unseen one”. Most Greeks believed life continues after death in the form of their soul which many ancient people attributed with the breath, likely because of the fact that breathing is an indication of life even during times of low activity such as sleeping. Thus a special significance is placed on the soul and which forms the basis for deep philosophical speculations about the relationship of the human to the divine. The author mentions that this notion would be refined by Plato and Christian Theologians. For the Greeks, the soul eventually became a ghost or spirit. Some ghosts are beneficent and some are malevolent and there are ways to appease, ward-off, and interact with the spirits. Later intellectuals eventually questioned this view in an attempt to dispel the fear surrounding death and suffering. With the invention of writing, traditional beliefs could be analyzed and many Greek philosophers came to doubt that the soul survived after death in the underworld, but among the common people, the traditional view persisted. The chapter goes on to elaborate on several stories where death and the underworld are central features. The first was from a part of The Odyssey where Odysseus seeks the counsel of the ghost of Tiresias and encounters the ghost of one of his companions, Elpenor, as well as the ghost of his mother. He also sees the ghost of Achilles, Ajax, and King Minos and describes the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus both of whom were guilty of crimes against the gods. Sisyphus is interesting and well known for being the one who endlessly pushes a boulder up a hill only to have it fall back down again. Although this was certainly not what the story was about originally, but in modern times, the myth seems to have some parallels with the idea of the “rat race” of modern capitalism. We work towards achieving something only to have that sense of achievement evaporate once we achieve it, thus making us start the process over with the next thing that needs to be achieved. I’m not sure if this is what it’s about, but Albert Camus wrote an essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus that I should like to read. Another figure who journeyed to the underworld was Orpheus to bring his wife-to-be Eurydice back from the dead. This story is told in Georgics by Vergil. There was an interesting thing mentioned that I would like to explore at a later date involving Orphism which, similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries, offered knowledge to its initiates about life and death, specifically offering Greeks a hope for salvation, ensuring a more comfortable life after death. The main idea is that the goal of human striving should be to free the immortal soul from its bodily prison. The Orphics also taught the reincarnation of the soul which both Plato and Vergil accept. Plato conception of human nature, the soul as a divine spark within an earthly body, no doubt derives from Orpic teachings or at the very least parallels them. The author mentions the following with regards to Christianity:
“Through Plato, Orphic doctrines influenced the fathers of the Chritian church, especially in Christian teachings about the soul and its relation to the body. Much of what we think of as Christianity is Platonic philosophy, some of it Orphic in origin. The early Christians themselves recognized the affinity, and paintings in catacombs show Christ as Orpheus.”
Classical Myth, page 311
The religion of the Orphics formed around the time of a great spiritual ferment that was concerned with the mortality of the individual in the 6th century BCE. This included Pythagoras in Greece, the Second Isaiah in Israel, Zoroaster in Persia, Guatama the Buddha in India, and Confucious in China, although there is not a direct connection between any of them. Plato in the 4th century refined the Orphic tradition and, pertinent to our discussion on classical myth, developed the modern notion that myths are fictitious, untrue stories or versions of events. However, he is not above using traditional mythic elements for speculative philosophical and intellectual purposes. The author mentions the “myth of Er” which is featured in The Republic by Plato which is a recasting of ancient traditional accounts of life after death and the underworld to teach that the soul is immortal and that moral law governs the world. Another person influenced by Orphism was Vergil and many of our popular conceptions about the other world lead back to his description of Aeneas descent into the underworld in the Aeneid which incorporates Greek and Roman myth, religion, and philosophy. The work of Vergil later influences the Christian Dante Aligheri for his work The Divine Comedy which is an allegory of the soul’s progression from sin to redemption, offering a highly complex and learned exploration of morality, politics, theology, cosmology, and philosophy along the way. This is what gets me excited about exploring how early works of literature influence later works of literature which then influences us. It’s incredibly complex and fascinating and I’m only scratching the surface. There are so many elements of Greek and Roman myth, literature, religion, and philosophy that influences us to this day that it can be mind-boggling at times. And then on top of that the influence of Greek thought on Christian and Roman thought and the melding of Roman and Christian thought that makes this one interesting subject. I am excited to learn more.