ANHS1602 Week 13 Lecture 13

Exam

* 2 hrs + 10 mins reading * 40% of final mark * A, B, C section * Answer all questions a, b, c in the same exam booklet * SECTION A o 50% of exam o Short answer * 4 options to choose for the right answer * Pronouns and little description * None of the above IS an option each question * SECTION B o 35% of exam o Essay section * Requires most planning use reading time wisely and plan them during reading time o 5 questions to choose from, choose one o Designed to cover mainly lecture material * Themes of lectures * Broad and thematic in scope of the lectures themes? * Big themes e.g. value of near eastern parallels etc., functions of myth, myth and identity going together * Most not limited to one lecture, but cover a number of lectures

* Demonstrate breadth of knowledge by drawing as many lecture content and parallels as you can * SECTION C o 15% o Image identification brief identification of figures o 3 images o Aspects of figures that are amplified and exemplified and HOW you identified that person * Characters * Attributes * Actions * Symbols o Mainly from textbook and lectures o Also WHERE myth was from like cycle of myths etc.

ROMAN MYTH

* Roman myth vs. Greek myth imported/plagiarised/copied * If myth is appropriated, is it actually myth?

Two types of Roman Myth (Horsfall, 1987) 1. Very few roman and Italian myths a. Not many authentic non-contaminated myth 2. Secondary myth a. Antiquarian, not springing from the people itself, not serving society at large, only for a few academics

Two types of Roman god (Wissowa, 1902) 1. Greek influence late and secondary a. Not native, inherent, not fundamentally Roman

Its not them, its us (Feeny 1998) * Reveals our own attitudes to qualities of Greek and Roman differences * Because Greeks have energy, it weakens the Roman counterpart that seems to inherently seem to be missing something that needs to borrow from this more creative foreign culture. * Views of Romans are boring and practical means that they MUST have needed to copy the more creative Greeks

When is a myth not a myth? * Myth or legend o Tendency to use the term of legend because myth doesnt spring from the spirit of the folk hence the pejorative term legend local resonances without the grand wide connotations of life that myth seems to have * Local or pan-something o Is local myth still myth? o If something only has relevance to a certain place it lacks a certain quality that makes it myth * Native or introduced? * Primary or secondary? o At what point does something have to enter into a collective consciousness before it is considered a primary part of their identity? o If anything is actually native? Is it not always introduced? * Myth on Roman is parasitic/secondary to Greek HOWEVER vs. Greek and Near Eastern is Greek introduced from near east? * Greek or Roman?

o How to decide on the identity of the myth? * Focuses on establishing culture, identity and values of Roman ideas * Does it have to be a story passed down from that location since it was settled can it become Roman even with distant Greek origins?

Is myth just myth? (Wiseman 2004) * Are myth just characters just in stories everybody known? Do they cease to have a Greek identity does this make them any less Greek in the first place? * Loss of origins vs. loss of identity

Uniqueness of Rome * Political and cultural success * Cultural appropriation * The local becomes universal o Because the city became the world something remaining localised in a smaller Greek settlement elsewhere, you call it local because its relevance is only to the community, but since Roman is so universal, local expands relevance local things to Rome take on a universal significance (city becomes the Cosmos and order of things)

Greece and Rome * Self-conscious compartmentalising (Feeney, 1998) vs. assimilation * Deliberate appropriation and transforming integration * Dynamic, diverse and energetic interaction vs. influence and borrowing o Meaning transformed because Romans wanted myths to have different meanings vs. Rome as passive receptor of Greek myth

Migration of Diomedes: marries into different families as well as moving to a new place example of a Greek AND Roman hero integrated into Italian myth and history. Also Greek AND Roman Idomeneus and Philoctetes and Odysseus

Connections with Greek myth * Odysseus and the West o E.g. Hesiods Theogony Latinus as son of Odysseus and Circe (1011 18) o Greek origin for the Latins people among who the Romans lived * Heracles and the West o Roman areas associated with Heracles like Heraklion panhellenic and PanMediterranean * Aeneas and the Trojan foundations of Rome * All dramatize and emblematise the introduction of Greek culture into Italy o Wanderers coming from a Greek heartland * Shared with other Western communities (Greek, Etruscan, Hispanic, Italian) o I.e. not the only parasites

Local myth: Greek parallels * Theban and Athenian autochthony o Local claim to a link and with the land o Universal mediation on ideas of mortality and reproduction

Local myth: Hercules and Cacus * Virgil Aeneid 8. o Evander: exiled Arcadian king, settled on future site of Rome o Origin myth of location and ritual myth from that location metamyth because character Evander is fully aware he is using this myth to describe origins o Describes the creation of the temple of Heracles in the Forum Boarium establishing myth because Heracles killed Cacus * Overall local myth but set up as having wider connotations

* Because its about Rome: links pan Mediterranean hero with Rome and thus links great Greek culture and soon to be great Rome; Heracles as a great founding hero of Rome. * Since it is the conquest of disorder by order this myth has very symbolic meaning. Virgil harnesses the mythological symbolic baggage that Heracles holds * Cacus was before this myth a relatively neutral and positive figure, before his run in with Heracles. Name suggests Cakos = evil in Greek. Transforms from a native positive deity to becoming a monstrous fiend. * Interaction of wandering Greek hero and a native Italian mythological divinity (Cacus)

Myth and Literature * How do we know what we think we know? o Material remains * Not as many as Greek * Inscriptions, mirrors etc. o Early Roman mythmakers: Ennius (239-269 B.C.) * Appropriating Greek poems for Roman purpose and audience o Drama and myth-making o Later (especially) Augustan literature

Early Roman history and myth * Think back to Greek myth and history

Myths of Rome * Romulus and Remus * Attempt to rationalise the fantastical elements of the story by Livy * Native Roman myth

o Not many obvious Greek parallel motifs shared with Greek but is this from Greek only or Indo-European cultural and structural heritage origin * Some: son avenging the grandfather etc.

When does myth cease to be myth? * Re-use and reappropriation * Augustus and Aeneas as examples o Blend of familial, national and universal o Various levels of myth o Establishes the right of Augustus to be the main guy in Rome and hence the world * Tracing his life through the goddess Venus through to Julius Cesar and Aeneis * But blended with national myth as it is of the city as a whole also o Universal themes: order over chaos, destructive passions of lust, bloodthirstiness are emblematised etc. o Formation of a new myth? o * Lucretius and demythologizing o Didnt believe in myths or gods o Takes traditional Greek myths of the underworld and take them to a new meaning o Can make something new from old existing myths by transforming them through the lens of allergisation * Uses of myth o Myth pervades Roman culture wall paintings of myth stories, all levels of Roman society e.g. poems that reference myth like Helen of Troy etc. * Sense of myth and it being secondary because of elegiac use of myth is posh and more sophisticated * Use of myth tells how it was regarded and valued * Not all myth was naturalised and made part of the culture but