A reminder:
Now, back to the book.
Introduction
The author is distraught / distressed that UK students not getting much exposure to the Classics.
Latin and Greek originally brought to Great Britain by Catholic Church emissaries.
Losing ground: Ovid, Virgil, and the grammar school summaries of the Trojan War.
Examples of myths current students not expected to know: Deucalion, Pelops, Daedalus, Oenone, Laocoön, Antigone.
Uses the word "chimerical" or variations several times in the introduction.
The Classics incredibly important in "their value in the study of early European history, religion, and sociology."
Author says it is the Church that is emphasizing the Bible, conspiring to move away from the Classics
Then, the full second paragraph on "chimerical -- the adjective form of the noun chimaera, meaning "she-goat" -- from Homer, the composite beast with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. That beast has been found in drawings from multiple places: on the walls of a Hittite temple at Carchemish.
Like other composite beasts as the Sphinx and the Unicorn, the Chimaera will originally have been a calendar symbol: each component represented a season fo the Queen of Heaven's sacred year .. many examples of the three-season year.
So, head, body, tail -- represent three seasons of the year.
Then, next paragraph, p. 12 -- the definition of true myth. True myth may be defined "as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields, tapestries, and the like." Similar to "Hello, Kitty" throughout Japan. LOL.
Chimera and her fellow calendar-beasts ...
Reiterates: queendoms, it seems, preceded kingdoms throughout the Greek-speaking area.
Then, the author lists 12 "things" from which "true myth"must be distinguished, and it's quite a list, page 12.
True myth:
- elements may be hard to find;
- may be found in bits and pieces from multiple sources (not always written from my perspective)
- seldom supplied by any one author;
- one should assume that the more ancient the written source, the more authoritative it must be
References the 13th century Exidium Troiae (The Destruction of Troy).
It begins with neolithic Europe -- p. 13.
A remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas, based on worship of the many-titled Mother-goddess, who was also known in Syria and Libya.
Ancient Europe had no gods.
The Great Goddess. The concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought.
Among the gods, first among equals: Hestia of the Hearth.
Hestia's aniconic image, perhaps her most widespread emblem, which appears at Delphi as the omphalos, or navel-boss, ...
.. the moon and the sun were the goddess' celestial symbols. In Greek myth, the sun yields precedence to the moon. -- p. 13 at the bottom.
Moon does not grow dimmer as the year wanes, and the moon is credited with the power to grant or deny water to the fields. [Interesting: the tides.]
The moon's three phases: new, changing, full.
The matriarch's three phases: maiden, nymph (nubile woman), and crone.
Mother earth: three seasons.
Another triad: the maiden of the upper air, the nymph of the earth or sea, the crone of the underworld -- typified respectively by Selene, Aphrodite, and Hecate.
Fostered the sacredness of the number three (think Pythagoras fascination with the triangle); and, the Moon-goddess became enlarged to nine when each of the three persons -- maiden, nymph, and crone -- appeared in triad to demonstrate her divinity. Her devotees: never forgot that there were not three goddesses, but one goddess; though by Classical times, Arcadian Stymphalus was one of the few remaining shrines where they all bore the same name: Hera.
Arcadia: center of the Pelops. Known for tackling, surviving adversity.
Turning point in religion: the relevance of coition to child-bearing had been officially admitted -- p. 14 -- appears in the Hittite myth of simple-minded Appu -- man's religious status gradually improved .. prior, wind and rivers inseminated / impregnated women.
Tribal nymph: a male (king) was sacrificed and his blood fertilized the crops.
The king died, corresponding with the decline of the sun at the end of summer.
Then, a twin -- the ancient Irish term, a "tanist," deputized; sacrificed mid-winter and reincarnated as a serpent.
Then a paragraph on the queenship culture.
Then, time. First reckoned by lunations.
Lunar month, 28 days; menstrual cycle, also 28 days.
364 days exactly divisible by twenty-eight = 13.
The sun passed through 13 monthly stages beginning at the winter solstice. The extra day between the thirteenth month and the first month.
That extra day -- the 365th day -- the most important for the tribal Nymph, at which time they chose the sacred king.
Over time, that extra day was celebrated at different times -- p. 16.
Greek mythology: concerned above all else with the changing relations between the queen and her lovers, which began with their yearly, or twice-yearly sacrifices; and end when the Iliad was composed and kings boasted that things had changed. -- p. 16.
Than casually mentions that "numerous African analogues illustrate the progressive stages of this change." This foreshadows more talk about Africa later in the introduction.
A large part of Greek myth is politico-religious -- p. 17. Then examples.
Violent killings.
Maenads. Followers of Dionysus. Think female versions of the Viking berserkers.
Maenad colleges were suppressed by the Hellenes. The Dionysus cult usurped by Apollo. Apollo's destruction of the Python at Delphi seems to record the Achaeans' capture of the Cretan Earth-goodess' shrine; so does his attempted rape of Daphne, whom Hera thereupon metamorphosed into a laurel. Daphne metamorphosed into a laurel by Hera. Apollo retained the prophetic Pythian Priestess at Delphi after destroying the shrine. -- p. 17.
Reminder: when considering "Greek," need to include a much broader area than modern day Greece. First Greeks in southern Europe, began in southern Balkan peninsula, and Classical Greece was what we think of as Greece today as well as Cyprus.
Hellenes: fusion of Greek and Egyptian cultures. Wiki. Proto-Greek, began on the Balkan peninsula. Note the two waves of immigration:
The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during the 2nd millennium BC (2000 BC to 1000 BC) has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects, as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties.
There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Achaeans, which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, [remember, Troy, 13th/12th century] and the second, the Dorian invasion, around the 11th century BC, displacing the Arcadocypriot dialects [Arcado-cypriot: Achaea - Cyprus], which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse.
Robert Graves:
- early second millennium BC: the Aeolian and Ionian invasions
- came later, the Achaean and Dorian invasions
The early invasion history, p. 18.
Also, the Aryan trinity of gods: Indra, Mitra, and Varuna.
The Great Year: 100 lunar cycles, about 7 years. Then, 325 lunations, about 19 years. The Great Year became the Greater Year. I don't fine a wiki entry, yet -- p. 18. Animals eventually substituted for young boys for sacrifice.
Wow, the nexus of Orson Wells, Robert Graves, and Bogdanovich -- and Dinesen is also mentioned: http://www.wellesnet.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=520.
Sacred king, still held position only by right of marriage to the tribal Nymph -- p. 19.
Ultimogeniture: youngest nubile daughter of the junior branch.
Over time matrilinear heirarchy weakened, and with the Dorian invasion, at the close of the 2nd millennium, patrilineal succession became the rule -- p. 19.
The big example: Odysseus and Penelope -- p. 19.
Then the familiar Olympian system: a compromise between the Hellenic and pre-Hellenic views: a divine family of six gods and six goddesses, headed by the co-sovereigns Zeus and Hera and forming a Council of Gods in the Babylonian style.
A rebellion of pre-Hellenic population, described in the Iliad as a conspiracy against Zeus, Hera became subservient to him. Athene avowed herself to her father, Zeus, and in the end, Dionysus assured male preponderance int eh Council by displacing Hestia. Story is well-known; google it.
So, this is huge: the evolution of matrilineal to patrilineal and how it occurred, and why Dionysus because the "big" god for festivals.
Today, the analogy is almost like Trump displacing Hillary.
Wow.
"Yet the goddesses, though left in a minority, were never altogether ousted -- as they were at Jerusalem -- because the revered poets Homer and Hesiod had given the deities their titles and distinguished their several provinces and special powers, which could not be easily expropriated. -- p. 19-20.
New system "in stone," when solidified in Rome when the Vestal College was formed.
In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals (Latin: Vestālēs, singular Vestālis [wɛsˈtaːlɪs]) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame (Vesta: Roman counterpart to Greek Hestia).
In Palestine, the analogy, when King David formed his royal harem -- but none of this reached Greece. Patrilineal descent, succession, and inheritance discourage further myth-making; historical legend then begins and fades into the light of common history.
So, to recap:
- matrilineal line favors myth-making;
- as matrilineal morphs into patrilineal, further myth-making is discouraged; and,
- historical legend then begins and fades into the light of common history. -- p. 20
Robert Graves discusses Zeus, Metis (Wisdom) and Athene -- p. 20.
Reminds us, like Athene, Dionysus was also a parthenogenic god -- the erotic Dionysus -- once a parthenogenous son of Semele -- was reborn from his thigh, just as the intellectual Athene was reborn from his head. Semele to Hades; rescued by her son, Dionysus; Semele is the goddess associated with the Dionysus festivities.
Robert Graves suggests that the "Judgement of Paris" did not involve three separate goddesses but "one" goddess as a trinity:
- Athene, the maiden
- Aphrodite, the nymph,
- Hera, the crone
Aphrodite presents the apple to Paris rather than receiving it from him. This apple, symbolizing her love bought at the price of his lefe, will be Paris' passport to the Elysian Fields, the apple orchards of the west, to which only the souls of heroes are admitted. A similar gift is frequently made in Irish and Welsh myth; as well as the the Three Hespirides, to Heracles; and by Eve, "the Mother of All Living," to Adam. Thus Nemesis, goddess of the sacred grove who, in late myth, became a symbol of divine vengeance on proud kings, carries an apple-hung branch, her gift to heroes. All neolithic and Bronze Age paradises were orchard-islands; paradise itself means "orchard."
AHA! Who actually gave the apple to whom? Eris, the goddess of discord actually threw the apple, but then who picked it up and who gave it to whom. Robert Graves suggests it is unlikely that Paris, on his own volition, grapped the apple on the ground to give to one of the three. Rather, Robert Graves would suggest, Aphrodite picked up the apple, and promising Paris the hand of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, gave the apple to Aphrodite.
And that brought on the Trojan War.
Then 2 and a half more pages on myth by Robert Graves, in the introduction.
The Greek Myths
Volume One
SKIP AHEAD
p. 345
Greece was Cretanized towards the close of the 18th century BC (Troy, about the 12th century).
Most likely, an Hellenic aristocracy had seized power in Crete a generation or two earlier and there initiated a new culture, probably about 1400 BC (about the 15th/14th century).
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