Summary Of Part 3, 4, & 5 Of Classical Myth By Barry B. Powell

December 24th, 2020

I finished reading the rest of Classical Myth by Barry Powell within the last week. It took me a while to finish it and even more time to get to the point where I was ready to write. I’ve had a couple of really busy weeks at work. Fortunately, I’m taking 3 weeks off for Christmas. I’ve had some thoughts about life throughout the past couple of weeks that may make it into the post, but we’ll see. It was mostly on career stuff and relationships. The holidays are always a time of disrupted routines for me. You’re going along with one routine and then thanksgiving hits and your routine gets disrupted slightly. There’s a long enough time between Thanksgiving and Christmas that you have to get into a new routine and then Christmas comes along and disrupts that routine. And then you start a new routine after Christmas and the beginning of the new year. The holidays have always been a time of relaxation and reflection for me. I think about the year that I’ve had and plan for the upcoming year. The disruption in routines can sometimes get me down as I feel that I’m just waiting until after Christmas to start anything new. I don’t want to start anything new if it just going to be disrupted by Christmas. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be hard for me. Although, this reflection period allows me to think about things and get excited about the new year. I have a whole year to explore things I’m interested in and plan on things to do. I’m thinking I might want to take an acting class, although that probably wouldn’t be for a while because of Covid. I was planning on going to Europe this past October, but that didn’t happen because of Covid. I’m not sure if I’ll go in 2021 or 2022 (I have two years until my rain check expires). I’m also looking at buying a house (Townhouse, Condo, whatever really). I’ve been saving money in a brokerage account for a down payment on a house. I don’t have enough at the present moment, but I’ve decided that I’m going to stop contributing to my Roth IRA and divert those contributions to the brokerage account so I can increase that faster. My father is giving me some money and I’m hoping to take potentially take advantage of the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency down payment assistance program as well as Joe Biden’s first-time homebuyer tax credit. I’m still in my grad school apartment at the moment and while it’s cheap, I know I can’t live there forever. The unfortunate thing is that there are record low house inventories in the Triangle area and some of the housing that is available isn’t even that nice at my price range. I don’t want to go over $200,000 as above that I’d start paying more than I’m comfortable with on my monthly housing costs. I’ll come back to this at some point, but I’d like to move onto discussing Classical Myth.

I summarized Part 1 and Part 2 in previous posts. Part 1 was an introduction to classical Greek and Roman myth and Part 2 was about specific divine myths. I read the rest of the book which consisted of Part 3 which discussed famous Greek legends, Part 4 which discussed Roman myths and legends, and Part 5 which was on theories of myth interpretation. I’m not necessarily as interested in the legends of ancient Greece as much as I am in the divine myths of ancient Greece. It’s interesting for me to compare the divine myths of Greece to the Hebrew and Christian stories and philosophy (see the summary of Part 2 for discussion about that). Legends in both Greece, Rome, and for the Hebrews and Christians is more culture and location-specific. We can see the themes of death and resurrection in the divine myth of Demeter and Persephone which was the basis of the Eleusinian Mystery Cult. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most honored cult of Greek religion 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. This is what I find interesting, whenever certain themes and ideas influence later Christian thought. Similarly what is interesting is when Greek and Hebrew myth can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia and when themes in Christianity trace back to Zoroastrianism. The legend of Perseus, Heracles, and Theseus on the other hand while still entertaining today were specific to Greece and Rome. The stories explain why certain ruins or natural rock formations were formed as well as other aspects of the natural world (The straits of Gibraltar were referred to as the Pillars of Heracles and were associated with a specific episode in the legends that were passed down of him which I’ll touch on later). The Hebrew tradition has the legendary figures of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which had certain tombs and shrines associated with them. What is interesting when it comes to legends is that many of the figures, divine and semi-divine, are featured in the Iliad and the Odyssey (as well as other works) which influenced much of western art and literature both directly and indirectly. Most if not all the legends were known to oral poets who performed the Iliad and the Odyssey and they show up in these epic poems. I’m not as interested in the specifics of some of these stories, but I figured I’d give a broad overview of each one of the chapters and mention things that I found interesting.

Chapter 13 provides an introduction to Greek legend and starts by discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh which is an ancient Mesopotamian heroic legend. While gods and goddesses play a role in the stories, legends are chiefly about heroes and purport to narrate events from the human past. The author makes mention of the tombs of heroes and how religious cultic activity, as well as other activities performed at these sites, reinforced belief in an earlier age of heroes. Alexander the Great made a pilgrimage to Troy and ran naked three times around the so-called tomb of Achilles. There are no heroes (in the Greek sense) in the myths of ancient Egypt and the Bible (with the exception of Samson and maybe David). Rome borrowed most of its heroes from Greece. Only the Ancient Mesopotamians told a story about a hero, the great king Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a real man who once ruled the Sumerian city of Uruk around 2600 BCE (this is evidenced in cuneiform king lists). This is strong evidence that legendary characters did live at one time, but that doesn’t mean that their stories represent actual historical fact. When it comes to the Bible, I don’t doubt that the figures represented by the names of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses actually lived, but through my study of ancient myth and legend, it is apparent that while they may have lived in the ancient past it doesn’t mean that the stories that are told about them represent actual historical facts. Anyways, the story of Gilgamesh is about the Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu and the adventures they go on. Gilgamesh, a king, has been tormenting his subjects because of his might and pride. The citizens of Uruk pray and Arururu, the mother of the gods, answers. She creates a primitive man named Enkidu who communes with the animals of the forests. Enkidu terrifies a local trapper who back to Gilgamesh about Enkidu. Gilgamesh sends the trapper back with a woman to have sex with Enkidu. Once they find him, the woman bares herself to Enkidu and they have sex for six days and seven nights. After this passionate affair all the animals reject Enkidu. The woman civilizes him and teaches him how to eat bread, drink wine, and wear clothes. A report came that Gilgamesh was going to deflower a virgin about to be married (one of the benefits of being king) and Enkidu decided to challenge him. They wrestle shaking the walls and breaking the doors of the city, however filled with mutual admiration, they embraced one another and became lifelong friends. They go on a series of adventures such as killing the guardian of the Land of the Cedars, Humbaba, and fighting the Bull of Heaven, sent by the goddess Ishtar after Gilgamesh refused to have sex with her. There was divine retribution for these actions and Enkidu was struck with sickness and died after twelve days. Gilgamesh, saddened and made aware of his own mortality, went on a quest for eternal life and found his way to Utnapishtim (Sumerian Ziusudra; Akkadian Atrahasis; and Hebrew Noah). Utnapishtim was the only mortal who survived the flood and was rewarded with immortality. Utnapishtim told him of an herb that grew deep in the sea that will grant him immortality. He collects the herb, but on his way home, a serpent manages to eat the herb, thus robbing Gilgamesh of Immortality. This is also an etiological tale for why snakes can renew their youth by shedding their skin. Defeated, Gilgamesh returns home a humble man, builds the walls around the city of Uruk, and is honored upon death by the citizens of Uruk. A central theme in the Epic of Gilgamesh is the contrast and hostility between the natural world and the cultural world of humans. Enkidu is a “natural man” who eats with the beats of the wild. After intercourse with a woman he becomes “wise” and is separated from the natural world. This theme shows up in the story of Adam and Eve, who after eating from the Tree of Knowledge see that they are naked and must leave the Garden of Eden. There are also certain folktale motifs that are present in the story that show up in the Greek legends (many of the Greek legends take their cues from Near Eastern stories). I won’t list them all here but some specific ones which the author compares and contrasts with the modern hero of Frodo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings would be:

• The hero’s truest companion is another male (Enkidu) – Frodo’s truest companion is Samwise Gamgee, among others.
• The hero falls under an enemy’s power and is compelled to perform impossible labors (Gilgamesh destroys Humbaba) – Frodo must take the Ring which seeks its master and destroy it in the land of fire, Mordor.
• The hero returns home and is rewarded with something of great value (Gilgamesh returns to rule Uruk and the people honor him) – Frodo returns to the shire and is taken to the Blessed Realms with Bilbo and Gandalf.

Frodo Baggins nonclassical features would be that he is humble, filled with self-doubt about his ability to perform his task; He does not seek a quest for glory and does not have the physical strength of Gilgamesh or Heracles; and, at the end of his journey fails to complete his task (he only succeeds because Gollum took the ring from him and fell into the fires of Mt. Doom. The author mentions that some see Frodo as an essentially Christian hero, that is, he is meek, carrying his cross, guided by pity and mercy towards his adversary Gollum. This is evidenced by the fact that Tolkien was a devout Catholic and converted C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, to Christianity. The end of the chapter sees an observation on heroic nudity in classical art and sculpture which I’m not interested in discussing.

Chapter 14 was about Perseus and the myths of the Argive Plain. The author mentioned that legends are attached to the names of men and women who really lived, their stories tend to be local, focused on a specific place or territory. The stories of Perseus are attached to the Argive Plain which is a region in Argolis (see image below for the location of Argolis in Greece).

An important site in the Argive Plain was that of Mycenae which is said to have been founded by Perseus while he was king of Tiryns. The chapter starts with the story of Io who is Perseus’s Great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother (that’s nine generations) on his mothers side. Io’s mother was Melia, nymph of an ash tree and daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, both of whom were Titans and children of Gaea and Uranus. Melia united with Inachus, god of the river that flows through the Argive plain (also the name of the river itself) and had two sons and a daughter, Io. Io is the ancestor of three great dynasties: the houses of Argos, Thebes, and Crete. The most well-known story of Io sees her lusted after by Zeus, but since she was a priestess of Hera, was off-limits. Zeus changes Io into a cow as a disguise, but Hera asked for her as a gift. Zeus reluctantly complies. To keep Io away from Zeus, she sent the monster Argus, a child of Gaea who had a hundred eyes and never slept, to protect Io. Zeus sends Hermes to slay Argus, which he does by dressing as a shepherd, lulling the monster to sleep, and cutting off its head (Hera places the eyes of Argus in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock). Io, freed, was tormented by a gadfly sent by Hera and ended up wandering through Greece. The Ionian sea is named after her and she ended up finding Prometheus imprisoned in the Caucus Mountains. Most of her story is told in Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound. She ends up going to Egypt and becomes pregnant with Epaphus, a future king of Egypt she was often associated with the Egyptian goddess Isis. Epaphus marries Memphis (Eponym of the Egyptian capital of the Old Kingdom) who was the daughter of Nilus (Eponym of the river) and had the daughter Libya (eponym of the country west of the Nile). There are some other stories of their predecessors who find their way back to Argos. fast forward in the generations and we get to Acrisius who had a daughter named Danae. Acrisius consulted an oracle because he wanted a male heir and the oracle told him that he would have a male heir through his daughter, Danae, but that this heir would kill. Attempting to forestall the prophecy, Acrisius locks Danae in an underground chamber, but Danae is impregnated by Zeus who came in the form of a golden shower that fell from the roof into her womb. This is how Perseus was conceived. Hearing the sounds of a child from Danae’s underground chamber, Acrisius orders his daughter and grandson to be sealed in a wooden box and thrown into the ocean. Much of the story of Perseus has been adapted into the Hollywood movie Clash of the Titans which came out in 1981 and was remade in 2010. I saw the 2010 remake back when it first came out and the 1981 version fairly recently. The 1981 version was certainly dated and I found it a bit hard to remain engaged with, but I’m sure it was entertaining when it first came out. Unfortunately, the remake got pretty bad reviews, although it is still memorable for me. I’m a stickler for Rotten Tomatoes scores and tend to only want to watch movies that have high scores. Clash of the Titans (1981) has a critic/audience score of 68%/70% and the 2010 remake has a score of 27%/40%. There was a sequel to the 2010 version that came out in 2012 called Wrath of the Titans but that also got bad reviews of 26%/49%. While the different reasons why the plot develops in each movie and in the original story are different, the main elements are the same: Perseus must find three sisters who are blind except for single eye that they share between them. In the original myth they are called the Graeae and they tell of the location of nymphs that give Perseus certain magical objects as well as telling him where to find Medusa; in the movies, they are called the Stygian witches and they tell Perseus where he can find Medusa (He already has the magical objects by this point). Perseus must slay the dreaded Medusa for differing reasons based on which version of the story is followed, but the way he does this is the same. Since the gaze of Medusa turns mortal men into stone he uses the shield he was given to see Medusa’s reflection and successfully cuts off Medusa’s head. In the original myth, Medusa was pregnant with the winged horse Pegasus, a child of Poseidon, and at the moment of her decapitation, Pegasus springs forth from her neck. Pegasus doesn’t play much of a role in the original myth of Perseus but finds his way to a more prominent position in the movies, although he is not a child of Medusa as he is in the original myth. The attempted sacrifice of Andromeda, an exceptionally beautiful young woman, to a giant sea monster is also in the original myth and the movies albeit for different reasons however in both versions, Perseus uses Medusa’s head to turn the sea monster into stone. The author goes onto to say that the myth of Perseus is most similar to that of a children’s story and is comparable to a folktale: there are hideous monsters, ugly hags, magic implements, and beautiful distressed maidens. throughout the rest of the chapter, the author discusses various aspects of the myths such as the folktale motifs, Medusa, and astrology (there are quite a few constellations that take their names from the story of Perseus). Thus concludes the chapter on Perseus and the myths of the Argive plain.

Chapter 15 was about Heracles, who was called Hercules by the Romans, and who was considered to be the greatest of Greek heroes. He is similar to Gilgamesh in that he is strong and willful, he lusts for adventure, he understands loyalty and friendship. His stories also feature a central theme of contrast and hostility between the natural world and the cultural world of humans. However, there is no continuous literary account, but his story inspired epic poetry (only one poem survives though), lyric, and tragedy. Most of what is known about him is pieced together from sculptural art and mentions of his deeds in other literary works however there is enough to form a complete biography. Heracles is the great-grandson of Perseus on his mother’s side. His mother, Alcmena, was married to Amphitryon but before Amphitryon could sleep with her, Zeus, who admired her beauty, disguised himself as Amphitryon and slept with her. Once Zeus left her the real Amphitryon and slept with her. Thus she received two seeds in one night, one divine and one mortal. From the divine seed cam Heracles, the greatest greek hero and from the mortal seed came Iphicles, a man of humbler stature (this curious story element is featured in the Netflix series Blood of Zeus although the story has nothing to do with Heracles, but rather an invented character named Heron and his brother Seraphim). Amphitryon didn’t know the difference however until Hera sent down serpents to destroy the infant son of Zeus. Heracles seized the snakes and crushed them with his mighty hands while Iphicles lay helpless nearby. Many of his stories were humorous such as this one and Heracles was often depicted as either a buffoon or a sexual genius. His stories also contained tragedy, however. In the play Heracles Insane by Euripides, Heracles marries Megara and fathered three children, but in a fit of madness (Hera was behind it) ended up killing them all. According to the usual sequence of events, after murdering his wife and children he went to Delphi to learn what he must do to atone for his crime. the oracle told him that he must serve as a bondsman to his cousin Eurystheus, king of Mycenae, and perform twelve labors for him. He ended up doing more than the twelve labors performing various other deeds and exploits not at the behest of Eurystheus. The Twelve Labors involved slaying an animal/monster or bringing items back and are as follows:

1. The Nemean Lion: This lion had impenetrable skin, Heracles killed it by snapping it’s neck and used it’s claw to skin. Ever after, he wore the pelt over his shoulders with it’s gaping jaws embracing his head like a helmet.
2. The Lernaean Hydra: The Hydra was an enormous serpent with many heads. When one of the heads was cut off, two would take it’s place and the central head was immortal. Heracles defeated it by cauterizing the heads as he cut them off so they wouldn’t grow back and burying the central head once it had been cut off.
3. The Ceryneian Deer: This deer had golden antlers and brazen hoofs and belonged to Artemis, but Heracles was tasked with bringing it to Eurystheus. Heracles manages to track it down and wound it at which point Artemis scolds him, but allows him to show it to Eurystheus if he lets it go afterwards.
4. The Erymanthian Boar: Heracles was required to capture it, but there is nothing special mentioned about this particular boar. Heracles did however visited a centaur named Pholus and caused some chaos with him and the rest of the centaurs.
5. The Augean Stables: To humiliate Heracles, Eurystheus ordered him to clean the stables of Augeas, a son of Helius and king of Elis in the northwestern Peloponnesus who’s father had given many herds, but never cleaned them. Heracles accomplished this task by diverting a nearby river through the stables.
6. The Stymphalian Birds: These death-dealing birds had arrow-firing wings and armor-piercing beaks. Heracles drove them from the thick forest they resided in by clanging bronze castanets. As they flew in the sky, Heracles shot them down with his arrows.
7. The Cretan Bull: This bull was a magnificent creature summoned from the sea by Minos, the king of Crete. Heracles sailed to Crete seized the bull by the horns, tossed it into the sea, and rode it back to the Peloponessus like a cowboy. After the bull was inspected it escaped wandered to the plain of Marathon where the Athenian hero Theseus later killed it.
8. The Horses of Diomedes: Heracles was to capture these horses dined on human flesh. On his way to collect them, he stopped by the house of Admetus which was in mourning because of the death of the queen, Alcestis. Heracles goes to the place where her body awaits its funeral, wrestles with death (Thanatos), and takes back Alcestis. Once he reaches his destination he finds the horses, feeds them their master Diomedes at which point they run away to Mount Olympus where they are later eaten by wolves.
9. The Girdle of Hippolyta: Eurystheus ordered Heracles to bring back the girdle of Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, for his daughter. The girdle was a belt that women wear above their hips: To loosen it was to offer oneself sexually, to take it forcibly was rape. So great were Heracles charms that Hippolyta gladly offered the belt, but an angry Hera disguised herself and ran throughout the city proclaiming that Heracles had abducted their queen. The Amazons attacked, and fearing treachery, Heracles strangled Hippolyta, removed her girdle, and sailed away.
10. The Cattle of Geryon: Geryon was a monster who had three bodies joined at the waist and who possessed a herd of red cattle as well as demonic two-headed dog, known as Orthus. Geryon lived somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and to get there Heracles had to travel through the sands of northern Africa, finally reaching where the narrows where the Mediterrenean Sea meets it. Heracles set pillars on either side known today as the Rock of Ceuta in Tangiers and British controlled Rock of Gibralter. To the ancients these were the Pillars of Heracles, the geographical boundry between the human world and the unknown vastness of outerspace. Helius, the sun, lent him the cup by which he traveled every night from the western to the eastern horizon. With the cup Heracles travels to the place where Geryon and his cattle reside. When he landed he bashed in Orthus’ brains and felled Geryon with arrows, herded the cattle into Helius’ cup and traveled back to Spain. He drove the cattle across Spain, then through southern France, and then made a detour near the future site of Rome. From the Aneid by Vergil, while Heracles was near the site of rome a three-headed firebreathing monster stole some of the cattle and hid them in a cave, but Heracles was able to recover them. after Other adventures, Heracles returns to Eurytheus and the cattle are sacrificed to Hera.
11. The Apples of the Hesperides: These apples grew on a magical tree with golden bark and golden leaves. The tree was a wedding present from Zeus to Hera and was planted in the garden at the foot of Mount Atlas (hence the name Atlantic Ocean). The hesperides liked to pilfer from the tree and so Hera set a ferocius hundred headed serpent named Ladon to Guard over it. On his search for the tree he ended up in Egypt where he caused some chaos as well as finding Prometheus in the Caucus mountains whose immortal liver was eaten every day by an eagle. Heracles killed the eagle and sets Promethesu free. At last he makes his way to the edge of the world where Atlas holds up the world. On the advice of Prometheus, Heracles persuades Atlas to fetch the apples for him, because it was too dangerous for him to go. While Atlas was away, Heracles held up the sky, but on Atlas’s return, Atlas decided that he was going to keep the apples and let Heracles continue holding up the sky. Heracles tricks him by agreeing to holding up the sky, but asking if Atlas can take it back while he finds a cushion for his head. Atlas agreed to take back the sky and with his trick a success, Heracles promptly left with the apples and takes them back to Eurystheus.
12. Cerberus: Heracles last labor involved him traveling to the underworld and bringing back the three headed dog Cerberus. Heracles met with the king and queen of the underworld who requested that he not use any weapons. Heracles agrees and accomplishes his task by seizing the hound by the throat and attaching a leash to him. He takes Cerberus back to Eurystheus and then released it back to the world below.

The rest of the chapter discusses various other deeds of Heracles, his descendants, and his death. Thus concludes the chapter on Heracles.

Chapter 16 discusses Theseus and the myths of Athens. Athens was the preeminent city state for literature, philosophy, and the arts, but the cities legendary history is uncertain. There is evidence to suggest that greek mythographers of a later generation filled in the gaps to fashion a coherent geneology. Many additions to legends of Athen’s greatest hero, Theseus, were made in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE when Athens became an important military and cultural center. The first part of the chapter discusses the various genealogies of the first kings of Athens. They are a bit confusing, but to get to the very end, I’ll discuss Theseus’s parentage. Aegeus, co-king of Athens with his brother Pallas, (Theseus’ mortal father) was not able to have a male heir and so consulted the Delphic Oracle to learn how to beget one: “Do not open the swelling mouth of the wineskin until you come to the height of the Athenians,” the oracle said. Aegeus was not able to understand this and thus sought the wisdom of Pittheus. Pittheus understood it immeadiately: Aegeus was destined to beget a child when he had intercourse with a woman. Pittheus urged Aegeus to have intercourse with his daughter, Aethra, so that his lineage was intertwined with the royal lineage and Aegeus complies. After intercourse with Aegeus, Aethra is instructed by a dream to offer a sacrifice on a nearby island, where Poseidon appeared from the sea and possessed her. Thus was Theseus conceived, at once the son of the mortal Aegeus and of the immortal Poseidon. The next morning Aegeus suspected that Aethra was pregnant and ordered her to raise the child in secret. He placed a sword and a pair of sandals under a rock. When he was strong enough to lift it he should take the items and travel to Athens. When he came of age and was able to lift the rock he took the items and made his way to Athens performing six labors, similar to those of Heracles, on his way there. When Theseus made it to Athens, Aegeus didn’t recognize him because he was under the spell of the sorceress Medea. Seeing Theseus as a threat, she persuaded Aegeus to send the young stranger against a bull wreaking havoc on the plain of Marathon. This was the very same bull that had begotten the minotaur on Crete and had been brought to the mainland by Heracles. Theseus managed to chain up the bull and sacrifice it to Apollo. Having failed in her plot to get rid of Theseus via the bull, Medea planned on poisoning Theseus, but Aegeus managed to break from her spells and was able to knock the cup from Theseus’ mouth right before he was about to drink it. Medea fled in disgrace to her homeland in Asia where she gave birth to Medus, the ancestor of the Medes, aka the Persians, Greece’s greatest enemy. This episode in Greek myth and legend reminds me of Lot and his daughters who gave birth to Moab and Ammon, the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites, respectively, two of Israel’s greatest rivals. With Medea’s sorcery lifted, Aegeus is able to make Theseus a proper successor. This is the point in Theseus’ story in which he travels to Crete and faces the Minotaur, but this is covered in the next chapter with along with other myths of Crete. After returning from Crete an unfortunate lapse of memory made Theseus the king of Athens. He promised his father that if he was successful in overcoming the Minotaur, he would change his black sails to white before his ship approached Athens. If he perished, his companions would leave the black sails up. In his excitement, Theseus forgot to change his sails and when Aegeus saw this he threw himself to his death into what would become known as the Aegean Sea. Upon becoming King, Theseus instituted many government reforms, but longing for adventure, he sailed to the land of the Amazons to abduct their queen Antiope. To his suprise, he was received in a friendly way and offered many presents, but he still ended up abducting Antiope when she brought the presents to the ship. This abduction started the Amazonomachy, “battle with the Amazons”. they invaded Attica, quickly overran the countryside, and set up camp outside of Athens. Despite some initial setbacks, the Athenians ended up defeating the Amazons however. The Amazons show up in many stories and the Greeks never questioned the historical reality of the Amazons. Herodotus speaks of a tribe of female “mankillers” who roamed the Scythian steppe, but while modern archeologists have found burial mounds with women dressed as warriors, there is very little evidence to suggest that a tribe of warrior-women actually existed. Just because ancient peoples accepted certain things as historical realities doesn’t necessarily make them true. The Athenian myth of the Amazonomachy became vigourous after the defeat of the persian invaders at the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. After this time Amazons were represented in Greek art as Persians, wearing long leather trousers and with Persian leather caps. Theseus’ victory over the Amazons symbolized and justified Athens’ moral and political superiority, not only over the Persians but over all peoples who would oppose her imperial democracy. There is another story in the life of Theseus that involves his son Hippolytus, who was born from Antiope and Theseus’ new wife, Phaedra, in an episode similar to that of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife from the Bible. I won’t summarize the story, but it can be found here: Euripides, Hippolytus. The author mentions that the basic story elements go back farther than the Bible surviving in an Egyptian papyrus from about 1250 BCE, which scholars call the “Tale of Two Brothers“, the oldest recorded folktale in the world. This same folktale also appears in The Iliad, told about the Corinthian hero Bellerophon. The author mentions that this story type appeals to the same male fear of woman’s vindictive power that underlies tales about the Mesopotamian Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte who, when she failed to seduce Gilgamesh, sent the bull of Heaven, then killed his companion Enkidu. Another story involves Theseus and his rival turned companion Pirithous and their run-ins with the Centaurs at a wedding feast. Being wild, uncivilized, and unaccumstomed to wine, the Centaurs lost control of themselves after a few drinks and ended up attacking the bride of Pirithous on the altar, thus sparking the Centauromachy. This “battle of the Centaurs” in Greek art came to symmbolize the struggle between civilization and barbarism between Greek and foreigner. After Theseus’ and Pirithous’ wives died they looked for others and because they were famous and of high birth decided that only daughters of Zeus could satisfy them. Although not of marriagable age, theseus chose Helen (who would later become Helen of Troy) and the two companions set out to Sparta and snatched her up. Because Helen was too young, Theseus left her with his mother Aethra for safe-keeping until she matured. Pirithous revealed that he wanted to marry Persephone, another daughter of Zeus, and the two headed down to the underworld to retrieve her. Hades listened politely to the request and invited them to sit down to a meal. when they sat down their flesh immeadiately clung to the seat and their limbs bound by serpents. Only later, when Heracles came to fetch Cerberus, was Theseus freed at the cost of leaving a good part of Theseus’ backside to the chair (which is why Athenians have such slender hips). Heracles also tried to save Pirithous, but the earth shook when he tried to release him and so he remained there still. When Theseus returned to the upper world, he found Athens in turmoil. Helen’s brother’s, Castor and Polydeuces, came and took her back along with Theseus’ mother Aethra. She appears in the Illiad as a slave of Helen who travels with her to Troy. Menestheus, who would lead the Athenian contingent to Troy, had taken over Theseus’ place as the first demagogue of Athens and called Theseus a tyrant forcing him to flee. Theseus fled to the island of Scyros hoping for hospitality by the local king, but the king envious of his greatness, led him to a cliff to see the view and pushed him off. The last part of the chapter talks about Myths and Propaganda and starts by saying that by the fifth century BCE, Theseus had become the official hero of Athens, but he was not so in the time of Homer during the 8th century BCE. The popularization of the legends of Theseus took place under the sponsorship of Pisistratus, the famous leader of Athens who came to power in 561 BCE and ruled until his death in 527 BCE. Like Theseus, Pisistratus unified Aticca, instituted various government reforms, and fought for Athen’s interests overseas. Parallels were constantly being drawn between the accomplishments of Theseus and Pisistratus an while Theseus often received the credit of Pisistratus’ important deeds, the parallels strengthed Pisistratus’ reputatation as a benevolent and powerful leader. When the Persians invaded, the myths transformed and transformed further still when that Persian threat receded and the Sparta threat began to emerge. These developments are a good example of the use of myth as propoganda. The legends of Theseus encapsulated, symbolized, and justified Athenian policies. This practice can be found in every country such as the exemplary lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln demonstrate values useful to a modern democracy, but bear little resemblance to the actual deeds and thoughts of these men. History and myth are in perennial tangle because humans are mythmaking animals, retelling ancient stories to fulfill present needs. Thus concludes the chapter on Theseus. I believe this mythicization and propaganda is apparent for Christianity both now and in the past for which interpretations have transformed and adapted to changing times. I believe propaganda is also present in the Bible with regards to the different priests vying for power (see my post about the book Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman for more info on this). Similarly, I think that the story of Lot is propaganda which attempts to explain why the Moabites and Ammonites are inferior to the Israelites.

Chapter 17 is about the myths of Crete are closely related to those of Athens however they differ in one aspect. The myths of Athens were told by Athenians as well as being about Athenians whereas the the myths of Crete were told by Greeks living on the mainland, most of them in Athens itself. The Cretans before about 1450 BC were not Greek. They have come to be known as Minoan (after king Minos) and used Linear Script A which has not be deciphered. The classical Greeks descended from the Mycenaeans (after Mycenae) and used Linear Script B which has been deciphered. Archaeology has revealed that Crete was a great sea power in the second millennium BCE and that bulls and goddesses played important roles in their religion. The richness and power of the Cretans has survived in story, but the king has become a folktale figure. The elaborate buildings became maze-like structures and the bull of Cretan fertility religion became a half-human monster. The myths of Crete are clear examples of history becoming myth, but unfortunately, there is no Cretan history, only stories and archaeology. The first story discussed in the chapter is that of Europa and the Bull. Europa is a descendent of Zeus and Io (their great great grand daughter), but that didn’t stop Zeus from pursuing her. He came to her in the form of a Bull and from them Minos. Minos later became King and boasted that the sea-god Poseidon had promised him the throne. He asked that a bull rise from the ocean for him to sacrifice, but when one did arise, it was so magnificent that he didn’t want to sacrifice it and so he sacrificed a different bull and kept the sea-bull in his flock. Poseidon angered by this, caused his wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with the Bull. She enlisted the help of her confidant, Daedalus, the greatest craftsman of all time to help her. Daedelus constructed a hollow wooden cow for Pasiphae and covered it in cowhide. With Pasiphae inside, he rolled it to the bull from the sea where the bull mounted the fake cow and impregnated the queen. The fruit of this union was the dread Minotaur (“the bull of Minos”), a man-eating monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Although shamed by his wife’s behavior, Minos hesitated to kill the Minotaur and had Daedalus construct a prison capable of holding the monster. So Daedalus built a complex maze which has come to be known as a Labyrinth where the Minotaur could be kept. Another story of Minos involves one of his human sons, Androgeus and his death during the Panathenic games. Androgeus defeated every contender in every contest which angered King Aegeus who ordered him to fight the bull that was ravaging the plain of Marathon (this is the same bull that impregnated Pasiphae, was brought to the mainland by Heracles, and who was later killed by Theseus). When Minos learned of his sons death, he immediately collected a fleet and set sail to attack Athens. Having forced Athens to capitulate, he ordered as punishment for the death of Androgeus that every year the Athenians must send seven boys and seven girls to be devoured by the Minotaur. Several youths had already been sacrificed when Theseus showed up and volunteered to join the band of sacrificial youths. When Theseus arrived on Crete, one of Minos daughters fell madly in love with him and offered to help him defeat the minotaur if he would take her from the island and marry her. Theseus agrees and following the instructions of Daedalus ties a ball of yarn to a thread in the labyrinth, and works his way to the center of the labyrinth, where he finds and kills the Minotaur, then followed the thread back out. That night, Theseus and Ariadne fled in his ship, but Theseus ends up leaving Ariadne on the Island of Naxos where Dionysus soon rescues her. Minos, angered by Theseus’ escape and his daughters treachery, imprisons Daedalus and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth. Daedalus however is able to make wings from feathers and wax for him and his son and are able to escape from the labyrinth. Daedalus informs his son before they take off to not fly too low to the sea as his feathers would get wet or to fly too close to the sun as the wax holding the wings together would melt and he would fall into the sea. Icarus does not heed this advice and flys too close to the sun, and unfortunately his wings give way and he falls into the ocean. This story is a mythical illustration of the Greek maxim “Nothing too much” whereby it’s virtuous to go neither too high nor too low. Aristotle would difine virtue as the mean between the opposite of extremes, so that courage is the middle way between cowardice and foolhardy rashness. Icarus should have followed his father’s advice and kept the middle path. Daedalus ended up in Sicily at the court of Cocalus. Minos was further enraged by Daedalus’ escape and sought him everywhere. He carried a spiral conch shell with him and promised a grand reward for whoever could pass a thread through it’s windings. When Minos arrived at the court of Cocalus, he presented this task to the king who secretly gave it to Daedalus to solve. Daedalus accomplished the task by drilling a hole in the shell, tying thread around an ant, and placing honey at the other side of the shell for the ant to find it’s way to. When Cocalus presented the shell to Minos, Minos knew he had found Daedalus and ordered Cocalus to give him up. Cocalus agreed but invited Minos to first take a bath whereby his daughters filled the tub with boiling water, thus killing Minos. The further adventures of Daedalus are unknown. The rest of the chapter discusses various observations with regards to Cretan myth and archaeology. I won’t go into the details, but if you are interested in learning more about the Minoans, there are plenty of YouTube videos that I imagine do a good job covering the subject.

Chapter 18 was about Oedipus and the myths of Thebes. The beginning part of the chapter discusses the fact that there are two separate founding myths of Thebes. I won’t discuss these but skip ahead to the story of Oedipus the King. Oedipus’s father was the King of Thebes, Laius, and was married to Jocasta. Laius learned from an oracle that he would die at the hands of his own son. he avoided having sex with wife until one night he got drunk and did so anyways. When Jocasta bore a son, Laius ordered that the child be exposed to die leaving the child with a shepherd with orders to leave him on the slopes of Mount Cithaeron near Thebes. However, the shepherd took pity on the child and gave him to a friend who was visiting from Corinth, and the friend took him to the King of Corinth, Polybus. Polybus and his wife, Merope, never told him that he was adopted and so when he visited the Delphic Oracle one day and was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother he thought that the oracle referred to Polybus and Merope and decided to leave Corinth for Thebes. On his way to Thebes Oedipus had a run in with man and his retainers who were all killed by Oedipus in a rage at to a perceived slight, except one. When Oedipus arrived in Thebes he discovered that a Sphinx was terrorizing the Thebans killing anyone who could not solve his riddle: “what goes on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?”. Only when the riddle was answered would the Sphinx cease his reign of terror. The king of Thebes, Laius, had gone to the Delphic Oracle to find an answer, but after hearing of his death by bandits, Laius’ brother-in-law Creon declared that whoever answered the riddle and freed the city could marry the queen and become the next king. The quick-witted Oedipus saw that answer was “a human” since infants crawl on all fours in the morning of their lives, walk on two legs in their maturity, and when old men walk on a cane in the evening of their lives. With her riddle answered, the sphinx threw herself from a cliff and was dashed on the rocks below. Thus Oedipus married the queen and became the king. The rest of the story can be found in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus the King which has curiously been given a modern adaptation yet it is performed in a way reminiscent of how it would have been performed in ancient Greece: British recreation of Greek Theater. Sophocles Oedipus Rex 1957. The rest of the chapter talks about other Theban myths and stories about Oedipus. I’m not going to discuss them, but they can be found in other plays by the Greek Tragedians: Sophocles produced Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, Aeschylus produced Seven against Thebes, and Euripides produced Phoenician Women.

Chapter 19 is about Jason and the Myths of Iolcus and Calydon. I’m not as familiar with Jason and the Argonauts to provide a decent summary. I just finished watching the Hollywood movie from 1963 Jason and the Argonauts (it can be found on Youtube: Jason and The Argonauts (1963)). The special effects in my opinion were great and a heck of a lot better than in the 1981 Clash of the Titans (Surprising for a movie that came out almost 20 years earlier) and it got a critic/audience score on Rotten Tomatoes of 89%/79%. From what I was reading most of the events in the movie are either slightly modified or ripped from other heroes’ adventures but I don’t plan on discussing the differences. Jason is from Thessaly as was Achilles a generation later. Homer refers to the voyage of the Argonauts as it was a familiar tale, but the most important literary version is Apollonius of Rhodes’ epic poem Argonautica which was written in the 3rd century BCE. Jason belonged to the family of the Aeolids, descendents of Aeolus, eponym of the Aeolians. Aeolus was king of Magnesia in Thessaly and was a son of Hellen and grandson of Deucalion (the greek Noah) and Pyrrha. Aeolus had seven sons, including Athamas who became a king in Boeotia and whose story involves the origin of the golden fleece, integral to Jason’s story. Athamas has two children Helle and Phrixus, from his first wife, Nephele, but grows tired of her and marries his second wife Ino, with whom he also has children. Ino was jealous that Phrixus would inherit the throne instead of one of her own children and so devised a plot to get rid of him. Ino persuaded the local women to make the grain fail and to bribe a messenger sent by Athamas to the Delphic Oracle to tell him that Apollo must sacrifice his firstborn, Phrixus. Athamas sorrowfully leads him to the slaughter and right as he raises the knife, a golden ram appears (similar to the ram in the Bible that appeared as a substitute for Isaac) and flys away with Phrixus and his sister Helle on it’s back. The pair are never to be seen in Greece again. The ram took the pair to Colchis, possibly in Modern Georgia, but on the way, Helle fell to her death in what is known to this day as the Hellespont, “sea of Helle”. When Phrixus landed in Colchis, he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the fleece to the tyrant Aeetes who was a son of Helius, the sun, and brother to Circe, the witch featured in the Odyssey and Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete. Aeetes hung the fleece from an Oak tree in a grove of Ares and a great dragon was set forth to protect it. A brother of Athamas, Salmoneus had a daughter named Tyro who gave birth to Pelias who grew up to rule in Iolcus. He imprisoned his half-brother Aeson, who for some reason was said to be the rightful heir. Aeson’s wife bore a son, but fearing for his life spread the rumor that he was stillborn. In fact, he sent him to wise and civilized Centaur Chiron who raised him on the slopes of mount Pelion. Chiron named the boy Jason and raised him to manhood. In the meantime Pelius learned from an oracle that a one sandaled man would bring about his downfall. When Jason grew up he set out to Iolcus to claim the throne for himself. On the way there he helped a disguised Hera cross a river, losing a sandal in the river, but receiving her divine blessing thereafter. Hera hated Pelias and decided to destroy him through the wiles of the sorceress Medea, a daughter of King Aeetes in Colchis. Hera decided that Jason would be the one to bring Medea to Greece. When the one-sandaled Jason made it to Iolchus, a report was sent to Pelius that a one-sandaled man had shown up and so Pelius went to confront him and asked: “What would you do if you knew someone was going to kill you, someone over whom you had power?” “Why, I’d send him to recover the Golden Fleece,” Jason replied. “I shall do as you suggest,” snarled Pelias, “Go!” With that Jason summoned the ship-builder Argus who constructed the largest ship ever made which could hold fifty men named Argo after its builder. Jason called out to the best fighting men of his day to join him, among them: Heracles; Orpheus; the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, sons of Zeus and brothers of Helen of Troy; the Boreads, Zetes and Calais, sons of Boreas (the North Wind); Telamon, father of the Trojan war-hero, Ajax, and his brother Peleus, father of Achilles; Meleager, brother of Deianira and hero of the Calydonian Boar Hunt; the brothers Idas and Lynceus; Admetus, who married Alcestis and whom apollo served for a year as a slave; Augeas, whose stables Heracles cleaned; Tiphys, the helmsman; the seer Idmon; and Argus hiimself. At the last minute, Pelius’ own son Acastus ran out and lept into the ship. They made several stops at a couple of different places: an island of sex-starved women, a land where they accidentally killed all the inhabitants, and a land ruled by a man who challenged everyone to box but who always won. The accidentelly left Heracles behind at one of the stops after he had snapped his oar in two and needed to fashion a new one. One of the stops that features in the 1963 movie is their stop with King Phineus who had abused the gift of prophecy received from of Apollo and was thus plighted with a long and painful old age, blindness and who had harpies set on him to steal any food that he was given. Phineus agreed to give Jason exact information about the future course of the Argo if he would free them from the Harpies. They agree and manage to defeat the harpies. Phineus tells them about the Symplegades or “clashing rocks” that destroyed any vessel that attempted to pass and how to get past them. When they got near to the rocks, they set a dove that made it through and thus were able to make it through themselves. With that behind them, they made it to the land of Colchis. First to meet them was Aeetes daughter Medea who was pricked by Aphrodite at the persuasion of Hera to fall madly in love with Jason and help him retrieve the golden fleece from her father, who didn’t want to give it up. They manage to get the fleece and escape but are pursued all over the Mediterranean by Aeetes and his forces. The mangage to escape his pursuit but a storm throughs them into the desert in Lybia where they have to pick the boat and carry it through the sands. They make it out of that situation with the help of the water-god Triton and headed north to Crete. When they got close to Crete however, they were assaulted with huge boulders by the bronze giant Talus, whom Zeus had given to Europa after he abducted her in the form of a bull. They managed to overcome this obstacle and made it back to the place where they had begun their journey. This is the conclusion of Apollonius of Rhodes’ epic poem. The author goes on to compare and contrast the work of Apollonius and Homer as well as the heroic nature of Jason with that of Gilgamesh, Perseus, Theseus, Oedipus, and Bellerophon. After the voyage of the Argo, Jason presented Pelias with the Golden Fleece, but he refused to give up the throne and so Media, through her sorcery, managed to trick Pelias’ daughter into chopping him up and boiling the pieces because Medea was able to make an old goat young again using the same technique. This murder outraged the Iolcans and they drove Jason out of Iolcus forever. Jason and Medea make their way to Corinth where they have a couple of children, until Jason grows tired of her. This breakup is the subject of Euripides’ play Medea. Medea ends up killing Jasons’ new love Glauce and the children she bore Jason, before flying away on a chariot drawn by dragons to Athens. A distraught Jason one day sits down below his ship the Argo, where it lay decaying. the rotten prow broke off and killed him. Medea later returns to Colchis with her new son by Aegeus, Medus, who kills Aeetes and becomes the ancestor of the Medes, aka the Persians, Greece’s greatest enemy. There is a short section in the chapter discussing Medea as Sorceress and Wife, but I won’t relay that here. That last part of the chapter discusses the Calydonian Boar Hunt and discusses observations of heroic myths of the hunt and the hunter. I’m going to skip over this part except to mention one part in the discussion about the hunting myth. The author mentions the similarities between heroes and hunters in myth and the various features that emerge: the similarity between hunting and sacrifice; the similarity between hunting and war; the dangers that hunters meet and that they themselves pose to society; and patterns of dragon-combat or ritual initiation. This reminded me of a couple sections of A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1 by Mircea Eliade on religious and cultural development of hunters and warriors/heroes. In Paleolithic societies there was a special relationship between the hunter and slain animals. There was a sort of “mystical solidarity” because the shed blood is similar to human blood which reveals the kinship between human society and the animal world. To kill the hunted beast or later, the domestic animal, is equivalent to a “sacrifice” in which the victims are interchangeable. This heritage of the Paleolithic hunters lived on. In agriculturalist societies, hunting likely still continued as a means of subsistence, but a certain number of hunters were also likely employed as guardians of the villages first against wild beasts, later against bands of marauders. The first military organizations likely formed from these guardians and the symbolism and ideology of the paradigmatic hunter were carried on in the warriors, conquerors, and military aristocracies. Many military organizations used hunting to train their warriors for war as well. Various stories of the exploits of these warriors then became legendary yet were still connected to their ancestry as hunter-gatherers. Perseus hunts the dreaded Gorgon and protects Andromeda from the sea monster, Theseus slays the Minotaur and the Bull that begat it, Heracles hunts and slays multiple monstrous animals, and Jason and his trope hunt the Calydonian Boar. This even makes its way into the Bible with Nimrod who was the “first heroic warrior” and “the greatest hunter in the world”. few myths re devoted entirely to the hunt, but few are free from some reference to this primordial activity.

Chapter 20 is about the Trojan War. This is when where it starts to get in the Iliad and Odyssey territory. Many scholars believe that the stories surrounding the Trojan War began with a real event: the sack of a Bronze Age city near the Hellespont around 1200 BCE, however, there is not enough evidence to definitively draw a relationship between the stories of Homers time in 800 BCE to historical events a hundred years earlier. The works of Homer and later poets focused more on the difficult choices and tragic consequences all human beings face as they attempt to answer the demands of society and their own desires rather than actual historical events. The kings who led the expidition to Troy were from the House of Atreus which ruled in the Argive Plain. They are descended from Tantalus, who attempted to trick the gods into eating his son Pelops. There is a short section on Pelops that I won’t relay except to say that after some adventures, he returned to his homeland and named it Peleponesus, “island of Pelops”, where he had many sons whose descendants include Aethra, mother of Theseus; Thyestes, father of Aegisthus; and Atreus, father of Menelaus and Agamemnon. There is a short section detailing the sibling rivalry between Thyestes and Atreus, resulting in the death of Atreus and the expulsion of Thyestes by Atreus’ sons with the help of Tyndaraeus, the king of Sparta, who was sympathetic to the sons of Atreus. Tyndaraeus had married Leda whose beauty was so great that even Zeus took notice. Zeus appeared to Leda in the form of a swan and had his way with her and Tyndareus also had intercourse with later that night. Similar to how Heracles was born, Zeus fathered two children, Polydeuces and Helen, and Tyndareus fathered two children, Castor and Clytemnestra. together Castor and Polydeuces were known as the Dioscuri, “the sons of Zeus”, which I think is an awesome title for any pair of brothers. Tyndareus married Clytemnestra to Agamemnon, but he had difficulty when it came to marrying Helen. Being the most beautiful woman in the world, she had many suitors, including Odysseus, Diomedes, Ajax, Philoctetes, Patroclus, Menelaus, and many others. Tyndareus worried that if he married Helen to any one of them, the others would turn on him, but Odysseus, recognizing his predicament came up with a solution if only Tyndaraeus would marry his niece, Penelope to him, which Tyndareus agreed to. Odysseus’ solution was to have the suitors pledge to defend the marriage of Helen and whoever was chosen and to come to his aid if she was ever carried off by someone else. The next section discusses the wedding of Peleus and Thetis who the parents of Achilles. Peleus had a brother, Telamon, who was the father of Ajax. Zeus had lusted after Thetis, but after learning from Prometheus that the child of Thetis would be greater than the father arranged for her to be married to Peleus. Hera, pleased that Thetis did not sleep with her husband, threw Thetis a lavish wedding, however there was a minor ruckus caused by Eris, “strife”, who was resentful that she hadn’t received an invitation. She decided to the roll an apple into the midst of the wedding party and announced “May the most beautiful god take it” which caused Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena to claim the apple for herself. because they made such a ruckus, Zeus ordered them to be quiet and present themselves for an impartial appraisal before Paris, a son of the Trojan King Priam, who had an eye for the ladies. One day Paris awoke from a nap to find Hermes before him, who presented the three feuding goddesses for inspection. Each bribed him with gifts: Hera, dominion over all the world; Athena, a glorious military career; and Aphrodite, the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite as the fairest and she gave him Helen, for whom he only had to sail to Sparta to retrieve. Menelaus received warmly, according to the conventions of xenia “guest-friendship”, but after Menelaus had to go to Crete for a funeral, Paris and Helen, who were irresistibly attracted to each other, gathered up the treasure in the palace and fled. Menelaus then returned from Crete and found that Paris had violated the solemn bonds of xenia (ancient hospitality customs) and appealed to his brother Agamemnon to invoke the Oath of Tyndareus. While the brothers were preparing for the expidition for Troy, a prophet of the expedition, Calchas said that they would never take Troy without the help of Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis. Odysseus and Diomedes (I believe a different Diomedes than the Diomedes that was fed to his man-eating horses in one of Heracles Labors) were sent to go fetch him. With all the Warriors assembled, they set out to Troy, there was some minor setbacks but they eventually make it to Troy. Odysseus and Menelaus go to the walls of Troy and ask for Helen and the treasure that was stolen back to settle the issue without the need for bloodshed, whoever they were nearly killed by treachery, thus sparking the war. The Iliad covers the events that unfold in the tenth year of the war, but refer back to other events that happened, such as a passage where the Trojan elders complain about risking so much for a woman. The main subject of THe Iliad is the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. The poem begins when Chryses, a priest of Apollo comes to the greek camp to ransom his daughter Chryseis, who had been captured in a raid and taken by Agamemnon. Agamemnon refused and so Chryses prays to Apollo to send a plague onto the greek camps. Only by giving up Chryseis can the greek forces be relieved. Agamemnon, reluctant to give up his war-prize demands and takes Achilles own prize, Briseis, which enrages Achilles, causing him to beg his mother Thetis for revenge against Agamemnon which she does by asking Zeus, who owes her a favor, to destroy the greek forces so that they might realize how wrong they were to dishonor Achilles. Achilles also decides that he is not going to fight anymore and refuses the offer of an enormous reward from Agamemnon because the greeks are losing so badly. Achilles closest friend (and possibly lover), Patroclus, goes to him to ask if he can wear Achilles armor so that he can boost the morale of the soldiers. Achilles agrees, but warns him not to fight with Hector, another of Priams sons. Patroclus unfortunately does not head this advice and is killed by Hector, who strips him of Achilles’ armor. Achilles, hearing that his best friend is dead because of his own stubbornness, is maddened with grief and only thinks of revenge. He receives new armor forged by Hephaestus from his mother and goes to face Hector, killing many Trojans along the way. Achilles kills Hector, but does not honor his request for an honorable burial and instead drags him around behind his chariot for days. The grief-stricken Priam manages to penetrate the Greek lines with the help of Hermes and comes to the tent of Achilles where he asks for his son back which Achilles agrees to. The death and furneral of Hecotr is the last episode of the Iliad, the last lines being “And so they buried the horse-taming Hector”. The last section of the chapter is on the observation of Homer as the inventor of plot and character. The Iliad is not a story about the Trojan War, but of a single episode in the tenth year of the war, “the anger of Achilles”. The focus is on the turbulent emotions of a single man who allows his anger to run away from him, destroying alike those he hated and those he loved. Thus ends the chapter on the Trojan War.

Chapter 21 is about the fall of Troy and it’s aftermath. The details about the fall of Troy are not covered in the Iliad, but are referenced in The Odyssey and other poems by Homer as well as the plays of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. One of the notable events was the death of Achilles. When Achilles was a child, his mother Thetis held him by the heel and dipped into the river Styx thereby making him immortal except for his heel. An arrow shot by Paris and guided by Apollo eventually struck Achilles in the heel, therby bringing about his death. This is the origin of the phrase “Achilles heel”. Later Ajax and Odysseus would have a contest to see who would get his armor. Odysseus was the winner. Another notable event was that of the Trojan horse which Odysseus conceived, which allowed the Greeks to infiltrate the Trojan walls. The Trojans were fooled by the Greeks who had built a large wooden horse thinking it was gift left behind by the Greeks as they sailed home. Little did the Trojans know but the horse held 50 warriors who opened the gates to the rest of the army later in the evening. Thus the city of Troy fell. Menelaus found Helen and they returned to Greece. Only a few Trojan males escaped, the most important being Aeneas, who is the main character of Virgil’s The Aeneid. The next section discusses whether the Trojan War actually took place. Several excavations occurred at a place known as Hissarlik (= Turkish “castle hill”) which is believed to be the site of Troy. There are several superimposed settlements at this site that have been named Troy I to Troy IX with Troy VI and Troy VII being likely candidates for Homer’s Troy. The specific site of Troy VII show signs of warfare with “actual evidence that the town was subjected to siege, capture, and destruction by hostile forces at some time in the general period assigned by Greek tradition to the Trojan War, and that it may safely be identified as the Troy of Priam and Homer”. So there is some historical truth in the Trojan War that was the setting of The Iliad and it would have taken place in the late bronze age (1700 BCE to 1150 BCE) and Homer, who dates to the 800’s BCE, would have known about it from the oral poetic tradition that passed down the stories. In the classical period, no one doubted the historicity of the war and the events that took place. However, just because the site of Troy has been found and we have ancient writings that claim to tell a historical reality doesn’t mean that the events in the Iliad are true to history and I’m certain that you’d be able to find someone that would believe that it was. A parallel to this is the excavation of Jericho. There are superimposed sites and one of the sites shows signs of warfare. The dating of the battle of Jericho in the Bible is contradictory with what the Archaeological evidence shows. The archaeological consensus says that the destruction occurred in the 17th/16th BCE, Biblical chronology says that it occurred later in the 15th/14th centuries BCE and the first time it would have been written down would be around the fall of Israel c. 722 BCE. I just read an article on the subject that can be found here: The Walls of Jericho: How Accurate Was The Biblical Account?. It discusses the archeological evidence that has been found and concludes with a comparison to Troy and the Iliad as well as this:

“Although there are still unanswered questions and discrepancies between the Biblical account and the archaeological record, the Bible can be thought of as a basically reliable document that does provide some useful details for archaeologists and historians interested in understanding the lifeways and societies of the ancient Levant, even if it turns out to not be true or accurate in its entirety.”

There are certain Christians who believe that the Bible is 100% historically accurate and without error and use the description of the battle of Jericho in the Book of Joshua and the archeological evidence that matches this description to prove it. I believe it is too large a leap to say that because some details of the Bible have been corroborated with archaeological findings that other parts of the Bible that have not been corroborated with archeological findings are just as accurate. That logic would suggest that since there is archaeological corroboration with The Iliad, the events depicted can be taken as historic fact, yet is there anybody alive today who believes this? For example, there are some Christians who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old yet archeologists have found a site called Gobekli Tepe which dates back to around 10,000 BCE, not to mention the fact that geologists have determined that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Archaeology can prove to be a double edged sword for people who have a very definite idea of the human past. I will only be able to scratch the surface in my lifetime.

The rest of the chapter discusses a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus which cover the return of Agamemnon to Greece and murder (Agamemnon); his son, Orestes, revenge for his father’s murder (Choephori); and Orestes trial for the revenge (Eumenides). I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plays, but I did want to mention what the author had to say about Aeschylus as it was rather interesting. Aeschylus lived through the radical democratic reforms of Clisthenes and fought in the battles of Marathon and Salamis and brought his boundless optimism of the young democracy to his poetic vision. A leading theme in this trilogy is the question “What is Justice?” according to the ancient law of the tribe, justice is revenge: blood for blood, eye for eye, limb for limb. This is a blood-vendetta, and it was rooted in the belief that ghosts will demand blood. Before Aeschylus’ time an advancement was made whereby a murderer could be sprinkled with pigs blood and thus purified of this type of blood vendetta. The Athenian system of Law was a marked improvement over the superstititious ritual of magical purification (although Aeschylus gives Apollo credit for inspiring this improvement). In Athenian civic law, that authority of the state curtailed the juridical power of the the family. Laws recorded in writing were the will of the state, but they were not new to ancient civilizations. The Mesopotamians and Hebrews had written law, but they said that these laws were handed down by the gods, immutable, divine, and inexorable. In Athens, the people drafted and approved the laws, revised them, and interpreted them in open courts before a jury of fellow citizens. This system contributed greatly to the development of the arts of persuasion and led directly to the invention of logic an the philosophical speculations of Plato and Aristotle, on which modern science directly depends. Thus concludes the chapter of the Trojan War and its aftermath. There was another short section earlier that discussed Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida which is set during the eighth year of the Trojan war. The author mentioned that in the Middle Ages, all direct knowledge of Homer was gradually lost in Western, Latin-speaking Europe, and knowledge of the Greek language disappeared for about six hundred years. I’m not too familiar with the middle ages, but I should like to read more about it at a later date and I figured I’d make a comment here about how it relates.) I should like to read Aeschylus’ plays at a later date as they seem to represent an interesting transition from the superstitious ideas of the ancient Greeks to the refined philosophical ideas of the Classical Greeks.

Chapter 22 is about The Odyssey. The Odyssey could be considered a sequel to The Iliad and recounts events from the war and offers some interesting expeditions of the main character Odysseus as he returns to his home on Ithaca (I saw somewhere that The Iliad was Troy Story and The Odyssey was Troy Story 2, which I thought was pretty clever). The Iliad can be considered a tragedy because of the somber tone whereas The Odyssey can be considered a comedy because it has a happy ending. A note was made about the figure of Odysseus, who was to the Romans, Ulysses in that “he always either glorified as a seeker of truth, the restless clever intelligence penetrating the secrets of the world, or damned as the treacherous deceiver, the exalter of intellect above the demands of the heart”. The Romans were hostile to Odysseus because they claimed Aeneas, a Trojan as their founder. In The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri follows the Roman tradition of condemning Odysseus. To Dante, “[Odysseus] is condemned to Hell because of his successful stratagems against the Roman’s Trojan forebears, but Dante also condemns him for the restlessness of his intellect and his search for truth, a sinful exploration that can lead only to destruction. The pro-Odysseus tradition reappears in “Ulysses” by Lord Alfred Tennyson who glorifies the very qualities that Dante Condemns. A sympathetic perception also appears in Ulysses by James Joyce. In The Odyssey, Odysseus recounts his adventures on the island of Phaeacia in the court of King Alcinous, Where he came ashore after being shipwrecked in a violent storm. I won’t provide too many details on all of Odysseus’ stops, but will provide a brief mention of each. When Odysseus and his ships leave Troy they stop at the land of the Cicones where they are attacked by the local inhabitants, they manage to escape, but then get caught in a storm and end up in the mythical land of the Lotus Eaters where the local inhabitants made them consume a drug that makes men forgetful of their home and purpose. THey managed to escape this, but ended up in the land of the Cyclopes where they were trapped by the Cyclops Polyphemus in is cave for several days. They manage to escape Polyphemus by blinding him, but Odysseus taunts him as they sail away which causes Polyphemus to curse him to have even greater difficulties getting him. Their next stop is the island of Aeolus, the wind-king who gives him a bag of dangerous wind, but is told to not open it under any condition. Favored by the good winds in the bag, Odysseus and his men come so close to Ithaca, they can see it, but his men happened to untie the bag, thus releasing the winds and sending them all the way back to the island of Aeolus, who gruffly orders them away. They next find their way to land of the Laestrygonians who end up being cannibals who end up eating/destroying all of the men/ships of Odysseus’ fleet except for his ship and crew. Next they come to the land of Circe who was a witch who turned half the crew into animals. Odysseus set out to resolve the situation and was given an herb by Hermes that would ward of Circe’s spells allowing him to persuade Circe into releasing his men instead of being turned into an animal (there is an interesting Ted-ed video that discusses the herb that Hermes gave to Odysseus and how it may have been based on actual experiences using a similarly described herb in real life). Circe agrees, but they end up staying on the island for a year when Odysseus’ men remind him of his purpose. Circe agrees they may go but tells them that they need to seek the ghost of Tiresias past the river Ocean and to do so they must survive run-ins with the Sirens, Scylla, and Carybdis and under no circumstances should they eat the cattle of Helius. The sirens are beings whose song no man can resist. They pass this by plugging up their ears. Charybdis was an enormous whirpool that destroyed any ship that entered its perimiter and Scylla was a monster with twelve mishappen feet and six long necks each with their own head. They manage to make it past these two terrors and find themselves at the island of Helius where his cattle graze. The men do not heed Circe’s warning and eat Helius’ cattle and when they set out again, their ship was smashed by Zeus with a thunderbolt, at the request of Helius. everyone drowns except for Odysseus who manages to cling to the mast and he has another run in with Charybdis before finding his way to the island of Calypso. There he stays with Calypso for seven years, but longing for home he prays to Athena to ask Zeus to let him go home. Zeus agrees and so Odysseus builds a raft and drifts in the ocean until he finds his way to the island of Phaeacia. There is a brief section discussing the mythical travel as it related to actual historical travel and the adventures of actual seafarers of ancient Greece. The Phaeacians give Odysseus many gifts and sail him back to his home on Ithaca although he is not out of danger yet. His wife, Penelope, has had many suitors since he left for Troy, but she has declined to choose a husband from them. Odysseus enters the court disguised as a beggar, but his wife does not marry him. With the help of Athena though, Penelope decides to hold a contest to determine who she will marry on the very next day: She will marry the man who can string her husbands bow and shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve aligned ax handles. The suitors try to string the bow, but are unable to string it. Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, suggests they let the beggar string the bow which the beggar, being Odysseus, manages to do effortlessly. He then fires an arrow through the twelve ax handles. Helped by Telemachus, Odysseus then slays all the suitors. Penelope realizes it is Odysseus afterwards and they make love and chat about everything that has happened. This is the end of The Odyssey. The last section of the chapter discusses the similarities between The Odyssey and various other mythical and folktale motifs. Thus concludes the chapter on the Odyssey. This is also the conclusion of Part 3 of the book which covered the Legends of Greece. While there are two more parts to the book, these parts are relatively short with 3 chapters shared between all of them.

Chapter 23 and 24 are about Aeneas and the legends of early Rome. Chapter 23 covers the Roman foundation stories linked to Venus and Aeneas, especially as told in the Aeneid, which was inspired by the Iliad and the Odyssey. Chapter 24 discusses the later foundation stories involving Mars and Romulus and to the legends of Roman Heroes. In Roman Tradition, there is no creation story and no divine myth. Roman myth is Roman legend bound up in Roman history, but there is little that is historically true in these stories. they are mostly myths in the modern sense, propaganda designed to elicit support for social patterns. Romans knew that their legends worked as propaganda and accepted their validity just as American educators once taught children that George Washington cut down a cherry and, because he could not tell a lie, confessed the crime to his father. Even if this did happen, the moral of the story is more important than the historical truth. This was true for the Romans especially. An important function of myth is to define a culture to itself, to inform a people what is real in their world and important in their personal and social lives, and to offer bases for the difficult decisions everyone must face. The first half of the chapter discusses early Roman history, Roman religion, and their relationship with the gods that they borrowed from Greek and Etruscan culture. I won’t cover this as that is a topic for a later date. I will however discuss the last half of the chapter which discusses Vergil’s The Aeneid and observes the idea of the National Epic. An interesting thing was mentioned just before this section though that talked about a set of duties called pietas, which has little in common with the english derivatives piety and pity, but refers instead to the extraordinary devotion that one shows first to the paterfamilias (father of the family), then by extension to the abstraction of the sate itself and it’s gods. This was the highest virtue among the early Romans. This did not go away when Augustus became the first emperor of Rome. He sponsored a religious, artistic, and literary program which was heavily propagandistic, with the aim of making the new regime appear to be a continuation of the old republic. In reality, the old republic had ceased to exist. Among Augustus’ cultural program were Vergil, Livy, and Ovid, who alluded often to the tales of early Rome, linking the present political situation with a mythical past. I will focus on Vergil and the Aeneid here, but I plan to read some of Ovid’s work at a later date. In The Iliad, Aeneas was the son of nchises and Aphrodite and a cousin of Hector. Aeneas is destined to survive the war and one day his descendents would rule over the Trojans, thus, his Roman ancestors were destined to rule all the lands around them. Although The Aeneid is similar to the works of Homer, it is a modern poem, composed in writing and not orally, that makes use of the traditions of Homer’s work and is never just a story, but always an explanation of the problems that Romans faced and the moral and political solutions that gave Rome ascendency over the world. The Aeneid opens with an explanation of the ferocious and bitter rivalry that would one day exist between Carthage and Rome. They sailed around from Troy, stopping in Carthage for a bit as well as the underworld before finally ending up in Italy. the last section of Chapter 23 discusses the similarities and differences between Vergil and Homer and how Homer’s epics were primarily used to entertain whereas Vergil’s epic were used to provide justification for the new regime. There is a brief comparison of the idea of tracing back a nations mythical roots that was used by the ruler of Italy’s fascist regime, Benito Mussolini, with how it was done in ancient rome and how Benito Mussolini used the stories of ancient Rome to validate his regime. In order for Vergil to provide justification for Augustus’ regime, he needed a philosophy that could explain the whole of Roman history to that point which he found in the philosophy of Stoicism, which taught that the world is ruled by the divine logos, an untranslatable word that means something like “purpose”, “structure”, “intelligence”, and “order” (the origin of our word logic). This Stoic logos was close enough to the Judeo-Christian God to appear in the opening of the Gospel of John (1:1): “In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God, and without the logos was nothing made that was made.” The usual translation of logos as word is inadequate. There is bit more discussion of The Aeneid, but I will save that for a later date. Chapter 24 gets into the stories told in Livy’s History of Rome and includes details on Romulus and Remus, The rape of the Sabine Women, The Horatii and Curiatii, and Lucretia and the End of the Monarchy. I will not get into the details of each aside from a few minor points, but I will likely get into Roman history at a later date. Some interesting things that I wanted to mention were the fact that Romulus and Remus were abandoned in a basket on a river, just as Sargon of Akkad, Cyrus the Great, and Moses were. Another thing that was mentioned was process in which Roman Emperors were deified, known as apotheosis which occured until Constantine’s adoption of Christianity in 337 CE. I had a conversation with a Christian woman a while back who said that she believed in Jesus because he was the only person to called himself a god, but that is just not the case. Many of Rome’s emperor’s were elevated to being a god after their death and some roman emperors, mostly the bad ones, even proclaimed themselves to be a god before their death. Much of the Eastern Kingdoms viewed the emperor as divine inherently such as in Egypt, where the emperor became pharaoh, son of the Sun and incarnation of the hawk-god Horus. The cult of emperor worship was more political than religious though and the cult helped unify the roman state. Participation was a clear act of allegiance, whereas refusal to participate had the appearance of treason. Early Christians attracted suspicion and suffering for not subscribing to this emperor worship, considering it a form of idolatry. The rest of the chapter discusses other stories and heroes in Rome as well as some peculiarities of Roman culture. Thus concludes Chapter 24 and Part 4 of the book on Roman Myth.

Chapter 25 is the last chapter in the book and is it’s own Part of the book which discusses theories of myth interpretation. Disturbed by irrational and immoral content of their traditional tales, Greek intellectuals already began to question the validity of these stories which developed further in the medieval period and the Renaissance. In the modern era, anthropologists, and psychologists have developed their own theories of myth. Some of these theories will be discussed here. The Greeks, with the help of their rationalism, were the first people to become fully self-conscious and critical of their own traditions. This inquiry was bound up in Greek philosophy, which began as a speculation about the nature of myth, then developed into a system of reasoning about causes and effects and about the nature of things independent of traditional, mythical explanations. Xenophanes insisted that gods were man-mad and said that if cattle and horses could carve idols they would show their gods in the form of ;=cattle and horses. Ethiopians say that their gods have snub noses and black skin and the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair. He also said that if their is one god, greatest among gods and men, his appearance and thought would be nothing like ours. Plato also disliked traditional myth, but considered myth-like stories to be an appropriate vehicle to demonstrating the existence of timeless eternal realities, which Plato called “Ideas” or “Forms”. Other uses of myth to Plato among others was in allegories or symbolism to show certain eternal truths. There were other classical interpretations that used allegories, such as Natural, Historical, and Moral Allegory, but I won’t elaborate on them here except to say that these forms of interpretation were superseded by Neoplatonism around 200-500 CE which sought to revive Plato’s theories and was eventually absorbed by Christianity. Both myth itself and the various methods devised for interpreting it were part of the cultural heritage taken over by the Christian church. The allegorical method was even applied to the Bible: The Song of Solomon was explained as an allegory of God’s love for the church (in fact, the poem descends from secular Egyptian love poetry). While the direct acquaintance with classical culture and it’s literature declined drastically in the middle ages, the ancient methods of interpretation survived into the middle ages. During the Renaissance, renewed interest in classical culture came from an interest in Platonism, which contains profound symbolic truth concerning higher spiritual realms which was highly attractive to Christian culture that led to a combination of pagan and Christian elements. These interpretations, however, fell under intense scrutiny during the profound cultural revolution known as the Enlightenment. As the institutional power of the church declined in response to political and social changes in Europe, everything traditional was subject to reexamination with a notable lack of sympathy. The authority of mythical accounts (including the Bible) and the traditional methods of interpretation were increasingly questioned. Approaches to myth since the enlightenment have either used an evolutionary perspective or have studied myths with the methods of the social sciences. Both approaches are closely related, but their effect is to reduce myth to a cultural relic, however, the counterview of myth as valid in its own rights reemerged in the Romantic movement during the late eighteenth century. Opposing the Enlightenments rationalism, the Romantics saw the emotional side of experience as being distinctly human and returned to myth as a vehicle for gaining lost truths, whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment attacked myth as a product of primitive mental and emotional states. The flood of information coming back about newly discovered cultures from European Colonial powers seemed to support the Enlightenment point of view. The process of integrating this data into general theories was further encouraged by Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution presented in The Origin of Species from which emerged the field of anthropology. This led to the view that myth was a protoscientific effort at explanation. There were other theories that were postulated such a the ritual theory of myth and the charter theory of myth. The first says that a certain religious ritual may have already existed and a myth was developed around that ritual and elaborated on and changed. The second was that myth was used to justify and validate economic, political, social, and religious realities. There were liguistics theories that developed that sought to show that all myth was essentially descended from the same forms and a common ancestry, specifically, the Indo-Europeans. There were psychological theories advanced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung (The contemporary Jordan Peterson is influenced heavily by these two as well as Frederich Nietzche). There are structuralist theories which can be thought of as looking at the sum of a myth as well as different versions of it, different tellings of it, and different interpretations of it. Steming from this approach is the contextual approach which argues that whille the structure of a myth is good, the cultural and historical context must be taken into consideration as well. What did it mean to the people who developed the myths. This approach is no doubt complex as it makes use of insights from structural, historical, and comparative methods and appeals to what we know aboout human biology, the history of religion, language, and anthropology. This is the approach that is taken throughout this book. Thus concludes the book.

In conclusion, this was quite a book to get through. Considering that it was a textbook for one of my college classes, it should be no wonder that I there was quite a lot to talk about. Taking the class in college is what made me start to pull away from religion and what made me want to read the textbook cover to cover, not that I was super religious before though. When I get down and depressed I feel that the comfort of the certainty that religion brings would be nice, but when I’m feeling good, I definitely don’t think I need it. It’s perfectly normal for people to be sad and lonely and it is easy enough to turn to religion when you are having a difficult time in your life, but for me, when someone makes a claim that seems to be outrageous to me, I tend to disengage. I believe that there are things that are greater than me and that there are cosmic forces that permeate the universe and affect everything we do, but I don’t believe in the supernatural. Even though people claim to have supernatural experiences, I find these claims hard to believe and I tend to think these people are a little crazy, but I know they are just human and we all have ways of tricking ourselves into believing something that is not based in reality. I tend to operate in a way that if something works for me, I tend to repeat it and if something is not working for me, I tend to stop doing it. I’m not very religious, because it hasn’t really benefitted me in the past to be religious. When it comes to relationships, I don’t think I have an issue with someone who is religious, but I imagine that they might have an issue with me, which doesn’t make me feel very good. There are a lot of beautiful women who are very religious and I’ve felt that if I could just have a certain level of religiosity, I’d have access to these women, but as it stands, I’m closer to being an atheist than a devout Christian. I’m working on developing my own set of beliefs about the world, especially when it comes to dating because there are certain things that I don’t know at the moment and I don’t think Christianity would be able to teach me. For starters, I do believe that there are forces greater than myself and that I have very little control over a vast number of things in the world. When it comes to morality, I believe in doing the least amount of harm to the most amount of people. This includes physical and emotional harm. I’m inevitably going to hurt people in my life, but I never want it to be my intention if I can help it.