Greek Mythology

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Greek MythologyThe Odyssey
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What is a myth?
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Important Figures in Mythology

• Aphrodite goddess of love, beauty, and fertility
• Apollo god of poetry, music, prophesy, and
  healing
• Ares god of war and warlike frenzy
• Artemis virgin goddess of the hunt
• Athena goddess of wisdom, war, and peace
• Cronus a Titan who ruled the universe until Zeus
  took over
• Hephaestus god of metalworking
• Hades god of the underworld, brother to Zeus
• Hera goddess of marriage, wife and sister of
  Zeus
• Hermes messenger god
• Poseidon god of the sea, brother of Zeus
• Zeus ruler, supreme God of all the Olympians

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Homer

• probably lived and composed the Iliad and the
  Odyssey in part of the Greek world - Ionia
  between 850 and 650 B.C.
• Approx. 550 B.C. these orally transmitted epics
  were put into writing.

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Rhapsodoi

• bards, professional singers and reciters who
  traveled throughout the Ionian colonies with
  songs and stories. One of these rhapsodoi was the
  man we know as Homer.

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Muse

• 9 daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne
• small goddesses each assigned to a specific art
  form
• Custom of invoking the muse based on idea that a
  poet could achieve immortality for himself and
  the people he wrote about only with divine
  assistance
• Calliope the muse of epic poetry

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Literary conventions for the epic - established
by Homer

• the theme of the epic should be the adventures of
  a cultural heroa hero who embodies the virtues
  or characteristics admired by his people.
• the epic should begin with an invocation of the
  muse and the statement of theme.
• the story should begin in medias resin the midst
  of the action (Latin).

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Conventions (ctd.)

• 4. the poetic language should include traditional
  epithets and lengthy similes.
• 5. there should be intervention by divine beings
  into human affairs.
• 6. somewhere in the story the epic hero should
  descend to the underworld.

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How did the rhapsodoi commit long poems to
memory?

• REPETITION
• - of whole lines or clauses in describing similar
  situations.
• EX. when the dawn showed again her rosy fingers
  and all the journeying ways were darkened
  description of the beginning and the end of a
  day.

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• Committing poems to memory (ctd.)
• Notice the frequent occurrence of the
  following
• constructions
• What sort of word escaped your teeths barrier?
• But when they had put away their desire for
  eating and drinking
• On the sea where the fish swarm
• Sitting well in order we dashed the oars in the
  grey sea
• And the proud heart in us was persuaded
• In the division of his heart this way seemed best
  to him
• Sometimes the rhapsodoi repeated exactly lengthy
  passages when the narrative allowed it (compare
  Penelopes weaving in II and XIX).

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How did the rhapsodoi commit long poems to
memory?

• Epithets
• - Short, stock adjective or adjectival phrases
  that define a distinctive quality about a person
  or a thing
• EX. many-minded Odysseus
• swift-footed dogs
• life-killing drug
• early born, rosy-fingered dawn
• Your turn!
• Make up an epithet for
• a family member, a coach, a pet, political
  figure, or a movie star.
• Yourself
• A teacher

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How did the rhapsodoi commit long poems to
memory?

• Epic similes
• -compare heroic events in the story with common,
  everyday events
• As . So. Pattern
• EX. As a man may cover a torch with black
  embers/ At the edge of a field, where no
  neighbors may be by,/ And save the fires seed,
  so he need not light it from elsewhere./ So
  Odysseus covered himself with leaves