Greek Religion
and
The Tradition of Myth
Religion
• Religion
• An institutionalized system of rituals.
• An institution is a “system of ideas whose object is to explain
the world” (Durkheim, 1965: 476).
• Spiritualism
• A belief in forces that exist outside of space and time but that
can act within those domains
Culture and Belief
• “Religion is sociologically interesting not because, as
vulgar positivism would have it, it describes the social
order...but because... it shapes it” (Geertz 1973, 119).
• “The social function of myth is to bind together social
groups as wholes or, in other words, to establish a social
consensus” (Halpern 1961, 137).
Mythos
• Archaic Greek: a story, speech, utterance.
• Essentially declarative in nature
• Classical Greek: An unsubstantiated claim
• Mythographos
• Logographos
• Logopoios
Modern Definitions
• “…Myth is defined as a complex of traditional tales in
which significant human situations are united in
fantastic combinations to form a polyvalent semiotic
system which is used in multifarious ways to illuminate
reality…”
• (Burkert 1985: 120).
• “A traditional story with collective importance”
• (Powell, 2009: 2)
Logos
• An argument
• A statement or story based on comparative evaluation or
collection of data
• The result of a process
• A study
• Bio-logy, Socio-logy, mytho-logy
• Powell:
• logos is defined by authorship, it has a known origin,
• mythos is anonymous, it exists in a social milieu undefined by
its origin
Truth and Falsehood
• “The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse
or in prose… The true difference is that one relates what
has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry,
therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than
history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history
the particular.”
• (Aristotle Poetics 1451a. 35 – b.5)
• The ‘truth’ about the past did not matter. “Acceptance
and belief where what counted” (Finley, 1965: 299).
Greekness
• Greek:
• Is a cultural definition
• Language
• Custom
• Religious practices
• Direct connection to the myth cycle
• The only reason to preserve community memory beyond the stories
of three or four generations is for the explanation or justification of
religious and socio-political orders. Oral tradition is a tool for the
maintenance of the status quo (Finley, 1965: 297-8).
A myth is…
• A myth is any communally ratified narrative that serves to
define or legitimate membership in the community, but which
is not, and must not be, subject to examination. Indeed, any
expression of doubt or skepticism identifies the miscreant as an
alien.
(just my thoughts…)
Tradition
• Orally transmitted through bards:
• Aiodos
• Ode
• Mythode
• Rhapsode
• Stories are handed down generation to generation
essentially intact…
• But they are subject to change
Olympian Gods
• Zeus
• Poseidon
• Apollo
• Ares
• Hermes
• Hephaestus
• Hera
• Hestia
• Demeter
• Athena
• Aphrodite
• Artemis
Zeus
• Indo-European Sky Father?
• Dewos
• Zeus, Dios :
• Daiva:
• Deva:
• Tues:
• Diespiter:
PIE
Greek
Old Persian
Sanksrit
Germanic
Old Latin
• (Dies Pater: God the Father)
• Jupiter
Latin
Hesiod
Ca. 750 BC
Legacy
• Works and Days:
– Socio-economic treatise
– Prometheus and Pandora
• Theogony:
– Origins of the world from Chaos
– Origins of the gods
• Homeric Hymns:
– Songs of praise to individual gods
Theogony
• From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing…
• Hesiod Theogony 1.
• And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he
was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon,
• Hesiod Theogony 25.
The Muses’ Claim
‘Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame,
mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though
they were true; but we know, when we will, to speak true things.'
Hesiod Theogony 26 – 28
• Myth and religion are not ‘true.’ They are paradigms of the
truth; representations.
• Myth is a cultural charter:
• It is not content that matters…
• It is the knowing
Theogony
• From the void emerged:
–
–
–
–
Chaos
Gaia (Earth)
Eros (Love)
Tartarus (A place beneath Hades)
• It takes nine days to fall from Earth to Tartarus (Theog.
721-23).
Theogony
Creation from the Void:
Chaos
Erebus
Nux (Night)
A dark place between
Earth and Hades
Aether (Atmosphere)
Hemere (Day)
Theogony
Creation from the Void:
Gaia (Earth)
Uranus (Heaven)
Pontus (Sea)
Oceanus Coeus Cruis Hyperion Theia Rhea Themis
Mnemosune Iapetus Phoebe Tethys
Cronus
The First Struggle
• Heaven was hated by his children
• Cronus castrated Heaven and the blood of Heaven produced:
Erinyes
Giants
Nymphs
Aphrodite = Eros
Desire
Cronus then became King of the gods
and trapped his brothers inside Earth
Titans and Gods
Heaven = Earth
Cronus = Rhea
Hestia
Hera Demeter Hades Poseidon Zeus
• Cronus, fearing his children, swallowed the first five.
• Rhea appealed to Heaven and Earth and they protected Zeus
and hid him on Crete
Zeus
• Defeated Cronus
• Freed his own siblings
• Freed the Titans, brothers of Cronus
• As a reward, they gave Zeus the thunder and lightning
• Zeus divided the spheres amongst his brothers:
• Zeus, Heaven:
• Hades, Underworld:
• Poseidon, the Sea.
Titans and Mortals
• Zeus defeated the Titans
• Titanomachy
• Imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus
• Zeus created a fourth race:
• “righteous god-like race”
• Some died at Thebes
• Some died at Troy
• The rest live on the Islands of the Blessed ruled by
Cronus
The Greek Mind
• Humans exist outside of the natural and divine
matrix
• Events are predetermined by Fate
• There is no free will because fate cannot be changed
• It is God’s will.
• Is that not an abrogation of responsibility?
• In the Iliad; the gods made me miss, the gods broke my
spear, the gods made me run away…
The Three Maxims
ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ
ΜΗ∆ΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ
ΕΓΓΥΑ ΠΑΡΑ ∆ ΑΤΑ
• Know yourself
• Nothing in Excess
• An oath sworn will be your ruin
The Tragic Trilogy
• Hubris
• Pride, entitlement, a sense of superiority.
• Ate
• Foolishness, recklessness
• Nemesis
• Divine retribution
Homer
Legacy
• Iliad:
– Story of the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles
– “Sing to me oh Muses the wrath of Achilles…”
• Odyssey:
– Story of Odysseus’ ten year voyage home from Troy.
Legacy
• Defined “Greekness”
– Hesiod and Homer gave the Greeks their conception of the
gods (Hdt. ii.53)
• Foundational texts of Greek culture
• Similar to the Bible:
– Basis for cultural and religious instruction
– Common reference
• Earliest epics in Western world
– Still regarded amongst the greatest works of literature
Who Was Homer?
• Lived ca 1050- ca 850 BC
• Nineteen birthplaces
• Most Likely:
–
–
–
–
Lived ca 850 BC
From Ionia (Chios)
Composed (collected) the works as songs
A single epithet representing a number of unknowable
sources