Roman Myths Research Articles

P02-161 - Alzheimer's madonna

Alzheimer's disease is hard to talk and think about and even harder toaccept. It pitilessly cuts the afflicted off from the self and points out to all of us how fragile the mind is. There is perhaps no expression more fitting than the term “loss of soul”, used by some tribal societies, to express the universal fear brought on by this disease. Its landscape lies at the furthest limit along the continuum of mental decline that is in its milder form a normal part of aging. Like a mythical land, it lies beyond the sun, far from the hum of life. It calls to mind the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness of Greek and Roman myth, from which mortals must drink before embarking on the journey to the underworld. I made a sculpture of the Alzheimer's Madonna because I felt a need to address the fear of Alzheimer's Disease. Both figures in the sculpture turn in a spiraling motion, as in a dance. As she stands at the beginning of adult life, he marks the end. Together, they form a kind of whole, as we each, in our own psyche, carry them inside of us- the image of hope, and youthful beauty, which denies any reality but eternal youth; the image of our decline, of the waning of our powers.

Mary Shelley’s Reworking of the Two Stories of the Prometheus Myth in Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

This article aims to show how Mary Shelley reworks the Greek and Roman myth of Prometheus through her portrayals of three protagonists in Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, namely Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s creature.In investigating her reworking of the ancient myths, the paper primarily looks at her mainconcern with the theme of transgressive desire which she constructs in various ways, bymaking an effective interlocking structure narrated by three main characters. Her adaptation ofthe Prometheus myths involves her perceptions of contemporary age, when they were greatlyinterested in the possibility of creation of life through the power of science. In addition, itconveys her vision of forthcoming danger and problems of science, which originated fromman’s unswerving ambition to be like God. The article explores such layers of significanceswhich underlie her creative adaptations of the two Prometheus myths.

A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6 (review)

Reviewed by: A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6 Niklas Holzberg R. Joy Littlewood . A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. lxxxvi, 259. $130.00. ISBN 978-0-19927134-4. Littlewood is well known to students of the Fasti, having published between 1975 and 1981, at a time when this work was only seldom an object of literary criticism, excellent analyses of the artistry (structure, narrative technique, variatio of style, intertextuality, and humor) displayed by Ovid in three longish passages from books 2, 4, and 5. This approach, favored in Fasti studies since the mid-eighties and most notably taken by Barchiesi, Hinds, Miller, and Newlands, is combined here in Littlewood's commentary on book 6 with penetrating discussions of two other aspects: religious history (Littlewood's follows the trail, e.g., of Bömer, Frazer, Le Bonniec, Porte, and Schilling) and the Augustan backdrop, an insightful picture of which was first drawn by Herbert-Brown. Her explications are as complex as we could wish them to be, and their place beside those of Fantham for book 4 and Green for book 1 is assured. Littlewood lays the foundation for her commentary with an exhaustive introduction, addressing there the aspects that will be central to her interpretation. She begins by discussing the political situation in Rome during the composition of the Fasti, focusing in particular on the reorganization of religion by Augustus reflected in the text. Littlewood characterizes the work as a mixture of "Greco-Roman literary tradition with contemporary antiquarian knowledge and personal experience" (xli); she names the principal motifs within its unmistakably thematic structure, describes the narrative technique (paying particular attention to Ovid's adaptation of narratives from Livy), and closes with a short chapter on the text (Littlewood uses, with few deviations, the Alton/Wormell/Courtney edition, 4th ed. [Leipzig 1997]). [End Page 259] In the headnotes for the separate sections, and passim in entries on specific verses, the aspects introduced in Littlewood's preliminaries are then considered in greater depth or supplemented with further information (Littlewood refers, for example, only ad loc. to the influence of didactic poetry). On the whole, her entries read more like portions of a continuous interpretation than typical commentary notes, which tend to drift into not strictly pertinent areas. Littlewood never forgets the priorities defined at the outset. She thus demonstrates convincingly that in book 6, which Ovid drafted in exile as clearly the last (for now? for ever?) within a structural unit, he creates an antithesis between the theme "war" introduced in the proem (by Juno and Iuventas) and that of "peace" in book 1. And she highlights again and again the elegist's humorous handling of his material, doubtless correct in her assumption that, when Ovid slips an erotic double entendre or two into a Roman myth (in 436–460, for instance, Vesta is "on fire" and so Metellus "penetrates" the sanctuary: see pp. 137–40), he is not being subversive, but simply offering a contemporary audience, Augustus included, something as funny as it is clever. One minor quibble: Littlewood skirts round knotty language problems. Should a commentary not steer readers through difficult, not immediately comprehensible passages (and there are some in Ovid, too), presenting a carefully reasoned translation? Littlewood heads the various sections of Fasti 6 with paraphrases which stick closely to the Latin wording, but good, literal translations might have been the wiser choice. She does occasionally render a verse into English, but not always very well (or does she really think that 15f. quas Priamides . . . contulit, for example, means "whom the son of Priam . . . encountered?"), and in rare glances at the meaning of a word or phrase, she invariably refers us not to the TLL, but to the OLD. But Littlewood more than compensates with countless brilliant observations on Ovid's consummate style, particularly where he himself dazzles with sound-play and nifty word-order (cf. esp. 110–11 on 341–342). These contributions alone will make Littlewood's commentary an indispensable tool for readers of the Fasti. If they can afford it, that is. A paperback edition soon please, publisher! Niklas Holzberg University of Munich Copyright © 2008...

Owls of the United States and Canada: a complete guide to their biology and behavior

There is no group of birds more mysterious and fascinating than owls. The loudmouths of the raptor world, they peep, trill, toot, bark, growl, shriek, whistle, chittle, whoop, chuckle, boom, and buzz. Indeed, very few actually hoot. They have become the stuff of lore and legend-from the Roman myth that an owl foot could reveal secrets to the First Nations belief that an owl feather could give a newborn better night vision. But the truth about owls is much more exciting. In this gorgeous book, celebrated natural history writer and wildlife photographer Wayne Lynch reveals the secrets of this elusive species with stunning photographs, personal anecdotes, and accessible science. The photos alone are masterpieces. Unlike most published owl photos, which are portraits of birds in captivity, the vast majority of these were taken in the wild-a product of the author-photographer's incredible knowledge and patience. Lynch complements the photos with a wealth of facts about anatomy, habitat, diet, and family life. For each of the nineteen species that inhabit Canada and the United States, he provides a range map and a brief discussion of its distribution, population size, and status. Lynch debunks myths about owls' supernatural powers of sight and hearing, discusses courtship rituals, and offers personal tips for finding owls in the wild. From the great horned to the tiny elf owl, this amazing volume captures the beauty and mystery of these charismatic birds of prey.

Developing Spanish Etymology Learning Models Using Greek and Roman Myths.

Developing Spanish Etymology Learning Models Using Greek and Roman Myths.

Virgil's Fourth Eclogue and the Eleusinian Mysteries1

This article argues that Virgil's Fourth Eclogue can in part be understood in light of the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries on Roman religion. In particular, it argues that the child can be compared with Ploutos and that the return of the Virgo reflects the myth of Persephone. The myths of Demeter at Eleusis are assimilated to the Roman myth of a golden age under the rule of Saturnus. The return of Persephone from the Underworld and the birth of the child signify an end to war. The possible significance of the poem to Augustan propaganda is also discussed.

The Remarkable Abigail: Story-Telling for Character Education

As character education continues to be an objective of the social studies, the more effective educators have taken up the challenge by first understanding the principles of their discipline and opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. Strategy then comes to the forefront. Social studies is rediscovering the focus on the actual men and women of history as a major cog in teaching character, a method that John Dewey asserted was once widely used in American schools and is currently utilized successfully in foreign schools (Brooks and Goble, 1997). But this focus cannot be a matter of simply relating irrelevant facts. Rather, it requires the art of story-telling. History abounds with stories of the human struggle. When approached from that perspective as opposed to coldly looking at events only, a myriad of opportunities available. Lockwood and Harris (1985) noted that true historical stories involving dramatic moments of moral conflict especially useful in engaging students to reflect upon values. These stories relate individuals making personal decisions involving truth, integrity, honesty, and loyalty, among many others, and encourage students to analyze the issues and choices made. At the very least, such stories help students realize that others before faced the same dilemmas that they do, by making the right choices, persevered. More importantly, they also prove that the values of good character not restricted to people of a particular place or time (Sanchez, 1998). Egan's (1988) study of the way students successfully conceptualize and understand information about one's culture further supports the idea that applying the story metaphor may serve to bring in-depth, overall meaning to history instruction. Specifically, Egan noted that information such as historical/cultural/political values does not make sense to the contemporary student unless presented in a way which connects information with a larger sense-making picture, a picture which reveals the basic dynamics of why and how things happen; in other words, a story that relates an individual's values. He went on to point out that the story has all of the properties necessary to organize and connect bits of information into an overall understandable image. story works so well because of the way it encodes and makes sense of its contents. Our concern in teaching, also, is not simply to have students store knowledge.., but rather to have students remember because it makes vivid sense to them (p.79). This dynamic is easy to see if one looks closely at the elements of a story itself. A story is essentially driven by characters and their actions. These characters often in conflict with forces inside themselves (as in many Greek and Roman myths), with each other, and/or with some physical force or forces. Conflict in a social setting is further heightened by the basic circumstances of human existence noted by economists: humans have unlimited desires for things but resources limited. Conflict within characters or between characters then shapes and generates the story's plot. Consequently, the basic theme of the story is usually about 1) conflict and resolution of the conflict to one degree or another; and 2) psychological/personal changes that may occur with the characters by the time of resolution. Note further that such resolution need not necessarily be an unqualified victory. The changes that may occur in a character's personal because of decisions the character makes regarding the conflict often carry relevant personal/psychological truths for the listener/reader (Henderson, 1964). Campbell (1988) noted the sheer power of historical/cultural stories to impart important ideas and values to ensuing generations, stating that such stories are about the wisdom of life (p.4). He also lamented that present education lacks such emphasis. Because of educators' apparent reluctance or perceived inability to not only utilize the story-telling strategy but more importantly to relate social values, what student learning in school is not the wisdom of but merely information and technology. …

Tot in Vno Corpore Formae: Hybridity, Ethnicity and Vertumnus in Propertius Book 4

The opening poem of Propertius Book 4 famously contains a programmatic statement which presents notamor(love or desire)—the staple of Roman elegy through the 20s and into the 10s BCE—as the ruling theme of the collection, but Roman aetiology:Roma, faue, tibi surgit opus, date candida ciuesomina, et inceptis dextera cantet auis!sacra diesque canam et cognomina prisca locorum.(4.1.67-69)Rome, lend your support. This work arises for you. Citizens, grant brightomens—and may the bird of augury sing favourably!Of rites and days I will sing, and of the ancient names of places.The focus on Roman origins in poem 1 itself specifically involves a comparison between the early history of Rome (the mythic past) and the poet's present (what we have come to know as ‘Augustan’ Rome). This comparison is introduced in the very opening lines of the poem:hoc quodcumque uides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est,ante Phrygem Aenean collis et herba fuit;atque ubi Nauali stant sacra Palatia Phoebo,Euandri profugae procubuere boues.fictilibus creuere deis haec aurea templa,nec fuit opprobrio facta sine arte casa.(4.1.1-6)Whatever you see here, stranger, where now is great Rome,was hills and grassland before the coming of Phrygian Aeneas.Where the Palatine shrine of Naval Phoebus now stands,the cattle of Evander once lay down as refugees.These golden temples grew from clay gods,and there was no shame in an artless dwelling.Anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated the vital role which myths of origin, such as the poet here purports to represent, play in the formation, maintenance and expression of ethnicity in many cultures, ancient and modern. A.D. Smith even goes so far as to call such myths thesine qua nonof ethnic identity. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that the representation of Roman origins projects Roman identity. Indeed, some scholars have recently argued for this in the case of Propertius Book 4. What is more, as I will argue here, Propertius Book 4 accentuates the complexities inherent in the particular picture of Roman identity which Roman myth transmits, and dramatises them in such ways as to challenge the unitariness of that identity at the very moment of its assertion.

Sorrows and the Making of Life Stories

All may be borne if you may put them into a or tell a about them. Hannah Arendt uses Isak Dinesen's beautiful proverb as epigraph her great chapter Action in The Human Condition. This chapter based on remarkable theme of of agent in speech and (§24), followed by its corollary, that it in narrative that disclosure of who fulfilled, thanks its weaving of the web of between agents and circumstances of action. What lost, at least for a moment (it explored a little later in the frailty of human affairs §26), burden of these sorrows in epigraph. Whence my question: what resources does story have make bearable? It in examining this question that I would like enrich and reinforce conclusions of On Stories.* I will do this by adding adjective that of suffering, referring acting and suffering person. This topic not absent in On Stories; its three histories-Joyce's Daedalus , Freud's Dora, and Spielberg's representation of Schindler compared with Lanzmann's Shoah-are about sorrows, whether they be torments of hysteria, of unspeakable horror of death camps; in this way sorrow in answer question which opens book: where do Stories come From?. However, in none of these cases does story make sorrow bearable: Molly's final soliloquy in Ulysses does not achieve this effect; similarly, Dora not cured (perhaps her case was used verify a theory which would take shape more so in Freud's biography); and the, sufferings of extermination exceed resources of narrative, cinematic as much as literary. If sorrow neither absent nor resolved in Kearney's journey through personal it goes no differently in national narratives, those founding Roman myths, those humiliating representations of Irish by British until recently, those relating distorted relationships of Americans with their others, border crossings that prove be source of an alienation that makes neighbors into strangers. What then can I add this collection of stories generated in some way or other by innumerable figures of sorrow? It would be a reflection on capacity to bear-to endure-that generated by narrative. A void indeed remains be filled in vigorous concluding chapter of On Stories entitled Narrative Matters. This chapter remains centered, like Arendt's chapter on Action, on relationship between narrative and acting person. Richard Kearney shows himself be concerned by postmodern criticism of traditional be they fiction or history (coinciding paradoxically, though for opposite reasons, with negationist criticism of Shoah.) At stake in quarrel persistence of very capacity narrate in a time of fragmentation and dispersion of human experience in its totality. In his response, Kearney finds support from that which seems validate persistence of capacity narrate, such as perennial nature of categories of narrative theory drawn from Aristotle's Poetics; it link between narrative and action that at center of theory, which a matter of mythos, mimesis, or catharsis. The basic argument that life itself in search of narrative because it strives discover a pattern cope with experience of chaos and confusion; cast in these terms, argument leaves me enough lee-way join suffering action. However, following Aristotle, what, said of life re-centered on action in order introduce topic of mimesis, which mimesis of action, by virtue of thesis taken from anthropological part of Nichomachean Ethics, according which action is always conducted in view of some end. It thus permitted affirm that each human life always already an implicit story. …

Threading time: a cultural history of threadwork

In a survey taken primarily from literary sources, this volume reveals the essential link between the human spirit and the art of connecting threads. Whether looking at stories about clothing made in the Garden of Eden, a mediaeval manuscript, or modern fiction and poetry, the author traces the importance to humankind of a craft that has never ceased since it began thousands of years ago. The author's conception of threadwork throughout is generic, including all kinds of work done with thread, yarn or fibre. In the author's view, threadwork becomes more than a garment, a rug, or a tapestry on the wall. It is often a bond shared with contemporaries and with ancestors, a links between humans and cultural beliefs, even a tie between humankind and the Divine. This age-old association of interwoven fibres and humanity is found today in a metaphor that is used to convey the concept of shared traditions, values and beliefs - the fabric of society. A rip in the fabric can be alarming; mending it is necessary to avert instability and even chaos. The volume discusses work such as: stories from biblical traditions; Greek and Roman myths; Piers Plowman; the Bayeux Tapestry and other mediaeval textile evidence; French manuscripts; selections of poetry by English writers such as Robert Burns and William Blake; and novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, D.H. Lawrence, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edith Wharton, Margaret Mitchell and Alice Walker.

The Failure of Success: Arendt and Pocock on the Fall of American Republicanism

The Failure of Success: Arendt and Pocock on the Fall of American Republicanism Ellen M. Rigsby (bio) No scholar of the American Revolution doubts that some form of republicanism influenced the founding of the United States. Most historians of the American Revolution though, find that republicanism as a national political discourse was replaced by liberalism in the nineteenth century. Liberalism grounds politics on interest rather than virtue, and presumes that private interest can be made into public interest. The narrative both Gordon S. Wood and Bernard Bailyn relate locates republicanism as an important but passing influence on American political discourse. Yet, Hannah Arendt and J.G. A. Pocock suggest for very different reasons that the history of American political theory would be better served by understanding the American engagement with republicanism as a lengthier or more complex interaction. Pocock suggests that republicanism remains part of the national dialogue well into the nineteenth century, though in a more diminished role, circumscribed not only by the increasing popularity of liberalism, but also by the limits placed on classical republicanism once it has merged with Christian theology in the European context. Arendt continues to use republicanism to take the measure of the American political landscape by her analysis of the failure of the Constitution to enact a republic. At the end of On Revolution she offers a plan for what might have been a successful republican Constitution based on Jefferson’s suggestions, many of which were rejected by the Constitutional Convention.[1] Pocock considers compromised versions of republicanism to continue the practice of the discourse of the American Revolution, while Arendt actually continues the discourse by using republicanism to criticize what the American revolution became. While Pocock and Arendt are at theoretical odds, each brings out useful aspects of republicanism. Furthermore, comparing Pocock and Arendt illuminates the fact that any understanding of American republicanism is lessened if either intellectual history or political theory is abandoned as a means of explanation. In The Machiavellian Moment Pocock chronicles the changes that occur when Christianity and classical republicanism are made to work together in the Florentine Republic. He argues that these changes produce a flawed republicanism that all the Atlantic States work with. Arendt, in contrast, attempts to remove Christian metaphysics from what she portrays as the entirely secular political character of the American founding. Thus both thinkers lead their audiences to examine the places in republicanism that contain aspects of Christian theology, and to explore the implications of those vocabularies. The clearest case for this comparison is the desire for the perpetual republic — the attempt to establish a lasting republic impervious to the encroachment of private interest into the public sphere — and it is to Pocock’s and Arendt’s discussions of an American perpetual republic that this essay will now turn. Pocock points out that in the conceptual realm of classical republicanism fate destroys republics. Others will spring up to take their places elsewhere.[2] Pocock argues that as Christianity becomes incorporated with republican theory during the Italian Renaissance, there is a change in how republics are said to decline. In classical Greek and Roman myth and history, republics decline because fate interferes. But as virtue takes on Christian ideals of purity, fate is replaced with an idea of corruption. And cyclical time is replaced with linear time that culminates in a heavenly state of perfection or in an absolute state of damnation. For example, Montesquieu mentions in Spirit of the Laws that republics come into and out of existence through a cyclical pattern in which republics degenerate into monarchies and despotism. For example, by the time Montesquieu is writing Spirit of the Laws, the modern work on Republicanism which heavily influenced the founders of the United States, Montesquieu argues that republics rise and fall entirely due to the eventual corruption of their citizens. Republics degenerate into monarchies and despotisms when their citizens cease to be virtuous.[3] Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment links the desire to found a lasting republic with the incorporation of classical republicanism into Christian Europe. The attempt to found a republic that can withstand the corrupting influence of private interest, a perpetual republic, becomes possible with the adaptation of...

Religions of Rome: Volume 2: A Sourcebook (review)

Reviewed by: Religions of Rome: Volume 2: A Sourcebook Clyde Curry Smith Emeritus Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, editors. Religions of Rome: Volume 2: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv + 416. $69.96. In Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History (1998; hereafter RR1), Beard of Cambridge, North of University College London, and Price of Oxford, each of whom had contributed chapters to Cambridge Ancient History, second edition, teamed up to write one coherent analysis of the “religions” of Rome from “the origin of the Lupercalia” to the attack upon those rites by Bishop Gelasius a full thousand years later, though with that impossible-to-fulfill temptation to look back to the origins of Rome itself for origins of “religion(s)” within Rome. The problematic of RR1 was the matter of “religion” itself within the history of the Latin language, as well as within those contemporaneous authors who often had little means of separating what had come to be from what they supposed to have been origins. These editors do not take seriously that “religio” was a concept that only emerged in the second century b.c.e., which affects the kind of Roman history which can be written [Cf. Remus: A Roman Myth, by Timothy Peter Wiseman (Cambridge 1995)]. Nevertheless, several features stand out from RR1: incorporation of concern for Jews and Christians among the others in a manner not typical of some recent narratives of Roman Religion, such as The Cults of the Roman Empire, by Robert Turcan (Blackwell 1996); need for fuller documentation than the limits of one volume permitted, hence boldface reference in notes to entries in this present volume. Therefore, the editors go a long way in correcting conceptual deficiencies of RR1, though without apparent awareness of full vocabulary implications [even in their Glossary (pp. 365–68)], when they present data that constitutes Religions of Rome: Volume 2: A Sourcebook (hereafter RR2), within 340 typological selections without the necessity for greater chronological precision. They are able to provide in fresh and reliable translation, a major array whereby students of Roman “religions” can grasp what actually is known from sources. Moreover, they have gone beyond the strictly literary to incorporate 75 examples of illustrative materials (indexed pp. 402–4) which frequently say more than the meager or lack of writing on such would imply, and in all these latter cases the editors have added relevant and directly pointed notations (especially to sub-features). Thus, one has in RR2 a major volume of wider usage than would seem to be provided only from the genuinely thorough integration of references back to RR1. Few comparable volumes to RR2 exist; one might still recall Ancient Roman Religion, by Frederick Clifton Grant (Liberal Arts Press, 1957), whose introduction remains superior, whose selections are often more extensive and but occasionally overlapping, yet receives no reference in RR1 or RR2. In contrast to RR1, whose linear story of sacro-political differentiation and development was told in two halves, each of four chapters, and turned at Augustus, RR2 topically arranges: 1earliest Rome, 2deities of Rome, 3calendar, 4religious places, 5festivals and ceremonies, 6sacrifices, 7divination and diviners, 8priests and priestesses, 9individuals and gods re life and death, 10Rome outside Rome, 11threats to Roman order, 12religious groups, and final 13perspectives. [End Page 465] Noteworthily, one observes immediately that the collection peculiarly begins (1.1a “gods without images”) and concludes (13.9 “the old and the new cities of god”) with Varro apud Augustine, though leaving the question how one is to distinguish the critique of Varro’s “god is the or a spirit” from Augustine’s own “god is not a spirit but the creator of spirit.” At a level of minutia, Pelikan (1996: 46) in discussing “choices facing biblical translators,” under the issue of grammar reminds emphatically of the lack of “articles” in Latin. One might ask these classicists to keep their entries precise, or at least to add commentary notes, so that the English-only user grasps what constitutes actual understanding within the temporal frame of the sources—be that of Varro’s first century b...

How Big Was the Roman Empire?

This activity was designed as part of a sixth-grade interdisciplinary unit. “Seeing the World through the Eyes of Ancient Greeks and Romans.” In addition to learning about Greek and Roman geography, economics, government, and societies in social-studies class. students studied ancient scientists, physicians. and inventors in science class. They also explored Greek and Roman myths, religions, languages, and ideas in language-arts classes. In mathe matics classes, students experimented with the golden ratio and the pentagram. wrote an essay on how the Greeks used mathematics to understand their world, examined Greek and Roman architecture, and investigated the physical size of the Roman Empire. To culminate the unit, students worked in small groups on special projects, such as building a scale model of the Parthenon, measuring and creating a cale drawing comparing the soccer field with the Pantheon, creating and performing original myths or plays depicting life in ancient Greece and Rome, and constructing simple machines or demonstrations of the scientists' work in Greek and Roman times.

Classical Mythology in Twentieth-Century Art: An Overview of a Humanistic Approach

In surveying the humanistic implications of the Greek and Roman myths that have provided subject matter for twentieth-century art, the article shows how modern artists have interpreted the myths through their own personal experience. Among their motivations for turning to mythology is the attempt to suggest that the world is a continuum of unchanged human experience. Also explored is the influence on the artists of earlier artistic, literary, philosophical, and psychological interpretations. The focus is on the myths most frequently seen as bearing humanistic meaning: Prometheus, Venus, Apollo, Dionysos, Orpheus, Oedipus, and Odysseus, and the Minotaur.

Politics and Folktale in the Classical World

The usurpation of myths and folktales for political purposes is a phenomenon that is well attested during classical antiquity. The preservation of heroic legends was probably motivated in part by social or political considerations, and the process continued into historical times. Our focus has now shifted from the question of historicity to the degree to which folktale has embellished history, and to what degree historical figures have exploited folktale and myth for real-life ends. The Peisistratid tyrants in Athens employed myths and religious symbols both in the initial stages of Peisistratus' rise to power and in the maintenance of the dynasty over several decades. Alexander the Great made special efforts to associate himself with the hero Heracles; the emphasis on Heracles diminished as Alexander's interests turned toward administration of a united Greek-Persian empire. Scipio Africanus was viewed by contemporary and later Roman authors as a Roman Alexander, a fact that is revealing about his personality but that complicates study of his own image-making efforts. Cato Censorius, on the other hand, created his own conservative Roman image by appealing to distinguished historical Romans and by emphasizing cardinal Roman virtues in his public oratory and literary efforts. Greek myths tend to generalize events, Roman myths make them concrete; Greek legends transcend time and space, Roman legends insist upon historicity; Greek myths are largely related to Greek religion, Roman myths and folktales are not part of Roman religion, but part of Roman history, and should be examined first of all from that perspective.

Inquiring Minds: Mythology Makes the Tabloids

Rabbit-faced Baby Born to Buck-toothed Mom-the headline caught my eye in the grocery store checkout line. While waiting my turn to pay, always enjoy reading the front pages of the Enquirer, Sun, or Star. Thinking how absurd the actual article must be sparked an idea for a mythology assignment. Headlines raced through my mind: Three-headed Dog Guards Entrance, Daddy Becomes Mommy, Father Swallows His Newborn Children, Girl Transformed into Spider, Mother Throws Ugly Son from Mountain. realized that the Greek and Roman myths my ninthgrade students had been reading would provide bizarre stories for such journalistic license. decided on a group project in which each group became a newspaper staff to produce a paper written in the style of a tabloid. What do we do? How do we start? I can't

The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation

Within the last fifteen years, scholars have shown considerable interest in the ritual life of women in antiquity, and have been particularly successful in recognizing the traces of women's initiatory rituals in various Greek and Roman ceremonies and myths. With regard to the Greek materials, the Arrephoria and Brauronia festivals have been treated in this light, as have two ceremonies in which details of the Demeter-Persephone mythos were reenacted: the Thesmophoria and the Haloa.

Various Works in the Pergamene Style

The chief object of this paper is to record and classify the various monuments which on the ground of subject-matter or style may claim to be connected with Pergamene work. It may be well also to notice by way of introduction what we can gather from ancient testimony.Of most of the existing works that I shall mention I have had personal knowledge, and where I have had to rely merely on published representations of them, I can only bring them forward for the purpose of suggesting to those who have direct acquaintance with them to consider them from this point of view. The theory which I wish to work out—a theory already suggested by others—is that certain fields of Greco-Roman and late Roman art have received a deep and abiding impress from Pergamon. That this should be a priori probable does not need elaborate proof; Rome was the heir of the Pergamene kingdom, and had always friendly intimacy with it, and we hear of many Pergamene works being transferred to Rome by Nero (Dio Chrys. 644 R.): between certain Roman and certain Pergamene myths there was a close analogy, which coloured the artistic representation of them: the struggle of the Pergamene kingdom with the Gauls, or—to speak perhaps more correctly—with Antiochus Hierax supported by Gallic mercenaries, was the most recent counterpart to the struggle of Rome with the barbarians: it was the Pergamene school—as Professor Brunn was the first to demonstrate—who idealized and fixed for artistic representation the type of the northern barbarian and really created historic sculpture, and I think that it can be shown that their rendering of this type became conventionalized and remained traditional throughout many centuries.