TFBT: Gayley's Commentaries, Pythagoras' Harmony of the Spheres and Bode's Law

Elsewhere I have spoke with much affection about   Charles Mills Gayley’s  “The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art, Based Originally on Bulfinch's.”  It rained heavily this weekend, the ditches are full of running water. Even my Black Labrador dreads going outside for a walk.  With time on my hands and no current book club at Hour 25  I searched my bookshelf for something fun to re-read.  I chose Gayley’s Commentaries.  Keep in mind that Gayley’s master piece was published in 1893.  Believe me when I say that research and thought on Greek mythology has come a long ways since then.  Allegorical interpretation was all the rage in his day.  Gayley without too much comment offers up all the most popular interpretations of each god or myth discussed. However, two thirds of the way through is commentaries he says;

“Of the stories told in these and the following sections no systematic, allegorical, or physical interpretations are here given, because ;

1.  the general method followed by the unravelers of myth has already been sufficiently illustrated;
2. the attempt to force symbolic conceptions into the longer folk-stories, or into the artistic myths and epics of any country, is historically unwarranted and, in practice, is only too often capricious; and
3. the effort to interpret such stories as the Iliad and the Odyssey must result in destroying those elements of unconscious simplicity and romantic vigor that characterize the early products of the creative imagination” 

But it was too late a determination for me as a youthful reader.  My own thoughts on Greek myth were already contaminated by the solar theory of Max Muller’s and Sir G. W. Cox's theories on clouds, forever merged in my mind into “Solare Cattle” theories.

 

Here are a few insights offered up by Gayley;   

• “Deucalion was represented as the only survivor of the flood, but still the founder of the race (Greek laós), which he created by casting stones (Greek lâes) behind him."
• “Overbeck insists that the loves of Zeus are deities of the earth: "The rains of heaven (Zeus) do not fall upon the moon.”
• “Sprung forth a Pallas, arm'd and undefiled" Byron
• “Leto, according to ancient interpreters, was night,—the shadow, therefore, of Hera, if Hera be the splendor of heaven.”
• Aphrodite "she is, also, the sweetly smiling, laughter-loving, bright, golden, fruitful, winsome, flower-faced, blushing, swift-eyed, golden-crowned.”
• Hestia “She is "first of the goddesses," the holy, the chaste, the sacred.”
• “Hades is called also the Illustrious, the Many-named, the Benignant, Polydectes or the Hospitable.”
• “Lower than the sons of Heaven: lower than the Titans, sons of Uranus (Heaven), who were plunged into Tartarus.”
• The serpents that draw Medea's chariot "are part of the usual equipage of a witch, symbolizing wisdom, foreknowledge, swiftness, violence, and Oriental mystery.”
• “Preller says Minos "is the solar king and hero of Crete; his wife, Pasiphaë, is the moon (who was worshiped in Crete under the form of a cow); and the Minotaur is the lord of the starry heavens which are his labyrinth.”  To add some support here Aaron Atsma says;  “The Minotauros' proper name Asterion, the starry one.”
  

He tells the story of the Sibyl.  I re-print  it  for your benefit.  Knowing this tale saved my wife and I $5,000 dollars at the second round of negotiations for our current home;

 

“The Sibyl. The following legend of the Sibyl is fixed at a later date. In the reign of one of the Tarquins there appeared before the king a woman who offered him nine books for sale. The king refused to purchase them, whereupon the woman went away and burned three of the books, and returning offered the remaining books for the same price she had asked for the nine. The king again rejected them; but when the woman, after burning three books more, returned and asked for the three remaining the same price which she had before asked for the nine, his curiosity was excited, and he purchased the books. They were found to contain the destinies of the Roman state. They were kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, preserved in a stone chest, and allowed to be inspected only by especial officers appointed for that duty, who on great occasions consulted them and interpreted their oracles to the people.” 

Gayley’s commentaries also discuss the Harmony of the Spheres;

“In the center of the universe (as Pythagoras taught) there was a central fire, the principle of life. The central fire was surrounded by the earth, the moon, the sun, and the five planets. The distances of the various heavenly bodies from one another were conceived to correspond to the proportions of the musical scale.” 

Does this bear any relations to Bode's Law?  The formula suggests that, extending outward, each planet would be approximately twice as far from the Sun as the one before. The hypothesis correctly anticipated the orbits of the asteroid  belt and Uranus, 

 

TFBT: The Death of Structural Analysis, Solar Mythology and …

I was disturbed when I read, my hero, Gregory Nagy announce the demise of structural analysis.¹ Specifically, he wrote, “structuralism has become an unstable and even unwieldy concept, which cannot any longer convey the essence of the methodology.”   This is quite the disappointment because I still haven’t gotten a handle on structural analysis.  Many authors in the past seemed to value this tool and offered examples of the insights it offered.  What little I know about this way to study myth came from an article by Claude Levi-Strauss in “Structural Anthropology”.  I had the pleasure to read this article is a small dusty rose-colored book I found at a second hand store, “Myth: a Symposium”²

The end of structuralism felt just like the “Eclipse of Solar Mythology” which I’d read in the exact same volume. Richard M. Dorson did a fine job of explaining Solar Mythology before lampooning it to death with some deft illustrations and a few quick jabs.   In truth, this   was more than I’d ever known about   Max Muller’s work.  (I’ve always wondered if the English translations of his work were burnt by an angry mob of intellectuals with torches and pitchforks.)

 As child I’d learned about Solar Mythology from Gayley in “The Classic Myths”. (First Ed. 1893)  I loved that book, with the square glossy pages, clear quality etching for illustration and enigmatic endnotes.  It was in the reference section at the library and I could never check it out. Everything I knew about Muller came from the back of Gayley.  Although I agree that not everyone can be a solar-hero, Muller’s theories were great for helping me with my studies of Norse Mythology (i.e. The death of Balder, Ull and Odin, and the nine mothers of Heimdall.)  I would think Solar Mythology would also be helpful in the study of sun-gods.

In Gayley too, I learned about George W. Cox.  Even as a child his idyllic theory of shepherds on their backs watching the clouds pass, wasn’t too convincing, but when I hear modern scholars speak of Zeus the cloud-gatherer and refer to him as a storm-god, I feel confident that we learned something from Cox.

Before the internet, Robert Graves’ ”The Greek Myths” provided a wide range of mythological information.  About the time I bought my second copy of the two volume set, someone told me that Graves was not held in wide regard by scholars.  Which struck me as odd, since his theory on the triple goddess worked pretty well when discussing triple goddesses.  And the story of Oedipus makes a lot more sense if you know something about sacrificial kings.

When I purchased Themis by Jane Harrison I read that her writings on ritual-myth were not well-received.  However, all her biographers finish by saying how influential her writings were. 

Here’s my theory; a researcher in some quiet moment receives inspiration; a bolt of lightning out of the blue or the small still voice of the muse. The sudden insight works well on the material at hand and a few associated topics.  A paper is published too much acclaim.  A book follows with much additional material, sometimes far from the original source or intent.  It attracts followers who declare it a universal tonic.  It is re-interpreted, mis-interpreted, “detached from its moorings” and run aground.  Everyone declares it a failure and throws the baby out with the bath water. If I may, new each form of analysis or interpretation is elevated by universal acclaim to Olympic heights and then tossed like Hephaestus.

I would suggest that we retain all the forms of interpretation and analysis that have come to us put them in a toolbox and pull them out to use appropriately.

One other thing disturbs be about Professor Nagy’s eulogy to structuralism. In the next paragraph he discusses the work of Parry and Lord.  Their work in oral composition was earth-shaking and now the foundation of virtually every Homeric discussion.  Let’s hope the classics community treats Parry and Lord better than most.

________________________

1 The Epic Hero” appeared in 2005, A Companion to Ancient Epic (ed. J. M. Foley) 71-89. Oxford.

2  Editor Thomas A Sebeok, Indiana University Press, 1972