For Christmas I received a copy of “The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology “ edited by Roger D. Woodard. Contributors include My hero Greg Nagy, the famous Richard Buxton Claude Calame, Jenifer Neils, Ada Cohen and others. Wonderful book! A wonderful book for those uninitiated in the mysteries of Greek myth, starting from Homer and running to myth in modern film. Not just the myths but the history of the science of mythology.
Below a few text with insights or very quotable quotes;
“As Hoffner notes the struggle for the throne in the Hittite accounts pit two fundamentally different types of beings against each other - celestial gods against netherworld gods...On the other hand there are the Titans Hesiod identifies them as earth-born - chthonian - the Titans who will become denizens of the Netherworld after being vanquished by Zeus. “ Woodard
“To create a dsemon of subhuman intelligence the artist would surmount a human body with an animal head, as in the case of the canonical Minotaur...A female wings ould be...a onster if given an ugly or leering frontal face (Harpy Fury Medusa)...Most of the canonical hybrids...by the mid-seventh century and continued relatively unchanged thoughout classical art and well beyond.” ( Neils) What does this tell us about river gods, Oceanus and the Old Men of the Sea who are often represented with horns of some sort?
Page 293 Neils suggests a small winged figure could represent sleep hovering over a character on a vase. Based on Nagy I would have expected this to represent the soul of the deceased warrior.
“A case in point is the elixir of immortality that is offered by Athena to one of the Seven that marched against Thebes Tydeus while in Etruscan art is is depicted as a jug held by Athena the Attica vase painter invents a personification labeled Athanasia , a young girl whomm the goddess leads by the hand to t he mortally wounded warrior. “ Neils. Just saying Callimachus uses Athanaia as an epithet of Athena twice in the Bath of Pallas
“ After 450(BC) a significant shift occurs from depiction of hs Heracles) laborsand other adventurres to the hero’s apotheosis and his appearance in the company of The Olympian agods. In the fourth century the favor themes are the apples of the Hesperides and his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries.” ( Neils) All the latter are symbols of immortality, Just saying the people of Marathon were the first to worship Heracles as a god (Pausanias) and Heracles aided the Greeks at the battle of Marathon 490 BC
“
No comments:
Post a Comment