ClSt / ComL 200:
Notes and Supplements: Monday, March 18

"The Greek Myths After Antiquity"

Introduction

In the first part of the course, we became acquainted with some of the ways in which mythology informed experience in ancient Greek society. In particular, we saw how the uses of mythology changed over time in various parts of the Greek world. With the exportation of Greek culture from the ancient city states to the outlying areas defined by the great Hellenistic kingdoms, the Greek myths became less a basis of social organization and metaphysical belief than a kind of symbolic language that was used to make claims about the the nature of power and cultural identity. This aspect of Greek mythology was greatly developed by the Romans, who took full advantage of the encyclopedic work of the Greek mythographers and incorporated the myths pervasively into their art, literature, and political propaganda. We have seen that OvidÕs Metamorphoses is in some ways the ideal example of a work that draws upon the encyclopedic traditions and the conventional propaganda of the Augustan regime to turn Greek mythology into a searching examination of the Roman national character.

The adoption of Greek myths as a symbolic language by Hellenistic and Roman culture is an important aspect of European intellectual history, one that should not be regarded as ÒaturalÓ or ÒexpectableÓ in any sense. The Hellenistic despots, and still less the Romans, were not Greeks and did not live in the same spiritual or intellectual world that gave rise to the worship of Zeus and Pelops at Olympia. But because these cultures developed certain tendencies of earlier Greek intellectuals, particularly the tragic poets and later the philosophers of classical Athens, to universalize the Greek myths and to use them as a symbolic language in which to debate great ideas, it has proven all the easier for later cultures to follow suit and even to expand upon this project. As a result, the Greek myths have continued to enjoy in later times an important place in intellectual discourse of all kinds. In the remaining weeks of the course, we shall consider briefly the place of Greek mythology in medieval and modern thought, sampling the uses that have been made of the Greek myths in the realms of religion, philosophy, education, psychology, anthropology, natural science, pop culture, and the arts.

Periodicity

The ÒMiddle AgesÓ

Just as we divided antiquity into discrete periods, so shall we do with the centuries that follow. Broadly speaking, the period that follows antiquity is known as the Middle Ages or Medieval Period. The boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages is notoriously difficult to fix, but for the sake of convenience, the year AD 529 is a year of great symbolic importance. In that year the Academy, a pagan school of philosophy founded by Plato in the fourth century BC, was closed by the emperor Justinian; and in the same year (it is believed) a monk named Benedict of Nursia (later St. Benedict) founded a monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy and promulgated a rule that became the chief basis of monastic culture in the Christian Middle Ages.

The distinction between paganism and Christianity is a convenient basis for differentiating between antiquity and the medievalism, but it is misleading as well. For several centuries before the closing of the Academy and the foundation of Monte Cassino, Christians and pagans had been living in a state of sometimes peaceful, sometimes turbulent coexistence characterized by attempts at self-definition that saw pagans incorporating elements of Christianity and other mystery religions into their own belief systems and social practices, while Christians both conformed to and eagerly adopted various elements of pagan culture either for the sake of personal social advancement or to enhance the intellectual stature of their religion as something comparable to pagan philosophy. This exchange produced some remarkable immediate effects and some important long-term consequences. Chief among these, for our purposes, is the fact that medieval culture must be considered not merely the replacement of pagan antiquity by a uniformly Christian world-view, but rather as a hybrid that contains important elements inherited from both classical pagan and early Christian culture.

The ÒRenaissanceÓ

The Renaissance (French for ÒrebirthÓ) is so called because it has traditionally been conceived as the era in which the knowledge of classical antiquity was reborn along with a spirit of inquiry and exploration that had been stifled by the religiosity of the Middle Ages. This is a crass and now in considerable part outmoded view: Renaissance culture, while in some respects more overtly hospitable to ÒpaganÓ culture than the Middle Ages had been, is in many ways the child of the Middle Ages just as much as the Middle Ages had been the child of pagan antiquity. It is true, however, that the visual culture of the Renaissance was in many important respects closely modeled on that of classical antiquity rather than that of the Middle Ages, and that the content of Renaissance art frequently derives from classical mythology, and particularly form Ovid, in ways that are distinct from medieval habits of expression.

Currently it is fashionable to consider the Renaissance not so much as the rebirth of antiquity as the beginning of what is called the ÒEarly ModernÓ period. It is, indeed, a transitional period, and shares important characteristics with previous and later epochs. Although the criteria for dating the Renaissance are not clear-cut, the period may be roughly dated from about 1300Ð1600.

The Modern Period

This is an extremely broad term which we will be using in this course to cover the entire period since the Renaissance. Practically, however, we will be concerned with onlt a few episodes in the history of modern culture.

In fact, the main charcacteristics of modern thought germane to our purposes derive from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and from subsequent intellectual movements. The Enlightenment is characterized by a privileging of human reason over religious belief. Although Christianity and other religions remain important social forces in Western culture to this day (and in some ways, more important forces than in the recent past), the intellectual history of Europe traditionally considers religious belief to have been a much more characteristic mode of thought throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Early Modern period before the Enlightenment.

Unlike earlier Christian interpretations of the Greek myths, which attempt to read pagan mythology as a prefiguration of the truth that Christians believe was revealed by Christ, modernist interpretations typically read the Greek myths as keys to a truth that does not emanate from God, but resides in an essential human nature. The tools by which such interpretations are constructed are largely psychological or psychoanalytical in nature, but the anthropological study of contemporary ÒprimitiveÓ cultures has also played an important role.

Finally, in recent times there has been a resurgence of ÒpaganismÓ as a kind of counter-cultural religion that answers to the spiritual needs of its practitioners in ways that more established, culturally approved religions seem not to do.

Conclusion

This is a brief overview of what is in store during the coming weeks. In general, we will be continuing our examination of the Greek myths as a symbolic language that changes its specific meaning as it is transfered from one cultural context to another.
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