Chapter 1. Homer and Comparative Mythology Still under the spell of Heinrich Schliemann’s rediscovery of Troy, students of ancient Greece have been accustomed to regard the Greek epic tradition of Homer as a reporting of events that really happened in the second millennium B.C., the Mycenaean Bronze Age. [1] This view must be modified by the perspective of comparative mythology, as… Read more
Chapter 2. Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer Since the discoveries of Milman Раrry [1] and Albert Lord [2] about the nature of “oral poetry,” some problems have developed over how to define the formula. Parry’s own definition will serve as a useful point of departure: the formula is “a group of words… Read more
Chapter 3. Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism The Hesiodic Question From the vantage point of the ancient Greeks themselves, no accounting of Homer is possible without an accounting of Hesiod as well. In the fifth century B.C., Herodotus was moved to observe (2.53.2) that the Greeks owed the systematization of their gods—we may say, of their universe—to two poets, Homer and Hesiod. The… Read more
Chapter 4. Patroklos, Concepts of Afterlife, and the Indic Triple Fire The rituals occasioned by the Funeral of Patroklos, as narrated in Iliad XXIII, have been compared with the royal funerary rituals of the Hittites. [1] The parallelisms in details and in ideology suggest a common Indo-European heritage, in view of additional comparative evidence available from the Indic traditions. Read more
Chapter 5. The Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness It has been argued often, and in many ways, that the poetry of Homer is unique, transcending his poetic heritage. The point of departure for this presentation is a confrontation with one such argument, concerning the meaning of the Homeric expression kléos áphthiton ‘fame…imperishable’ at Iliad IX 413, cognate with the Indic expression… Read more
Chapter 6. The King and the Hearth: Six Studies of Sacral Vocabulary Relating to the Fireplace In the Electra, of Sophocles, Clytemnestra dreams that Agamemnon has come back from the dead to the realm of light (417-419; ἐς φῶς 419). The king seizes the skêptron ‘scepter’ (σκῆπτρον 420) that had once been wielded by him, but which is now held by the usurper Aegisthus (420-421),… Read more
Chapter 7. Thunder and the Birth of Humankind In the myth making traditions of a wide variety of societies, there is a convergent pattern of thought concerning the origin of fire: that a stroke of thunder can deposit fire into trees or rocks and that this fire of thunder is extracted whenever friction is applied to these materials. [1] Oftentimes… Read more
Chapter 8. Sêma and Nóēsis: The Hero’s Tomb and the “Reading” of Symbols in Homer and Hesiod The word semiotic—and se mantic, for that matter—may be perceived in a new light if we look again at its Greek origins. The basic form in Greek is sêma ‘sign’, a neuter action-noun built on a root-verb that is no longer attested in the language. There is… Read more
Chapter 4. Euripides’ Hippolytos Many of the metaphors of illegitimacy we have already seen, along with the social forces and structures that inform them, come together in Euripides’ Hippolytos, a drama that confronts in turn a woman’s sexual desire and a young man’s transition to adulthood. But Hippolytos is not any young man, for his father is one of the primary heroes and “forefathers” of the fifth-century… Read more
Conclusion Many of the concerns associated with illegitimacy cut across the narratives we have examined. The connection between legitimacy and reining in female desire is present not only in Euripides’ portrayal of Phaedra but also in the narratives about Danaë. [1] Both narratives in turn imply an ideology of marriage as a cultural control of the “natural” desires of women. As we… Read more
