86 pages • 2 hours read
Edith HamiltonMythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Ancient Greece and Rome
For the purposes of studying textual sources that fall under the banner of “Greek and Roman mythology,” which is one of Hamilton’s projects in Mythology, it is helpful to specify who we are talking about when we talk about ancient Greeks and Romans.
In the past, it has been commonplace to treat Greek and Roman antiquity as a single unit, with Rome as the “inheritor” of Greek culture, and the modern West as the “inheritor” of Greek and Roman culture (in the singular, as if they were one). This notion has come under considerable scrutiny in recent years as a romanticized and ahistorical perspective that overlooks the more complex dynamics of competition and exchange not only between Greece and Rome but also between the modern West and the ancient world—as well as between ancient Near Eastern cultures and ancient Greece. In short, the Greeks and the Romans can perhaps best be understood as distinct neighboring cultures that evolved side by side, both influencing and competing with each other, until the Roman conquest of the Greek-speaking world, which unfolded gradually between the second and first centuries BC.
The influence of Greek culture in Italy has been traced back to as early as the sixth century BC. At this time, the Greek-speaking world was highly decentralized, with hundreds of independent city states scattered across the Mediterranean basin. These decentralized city states existed during what are known as the Archaic (approximately 776-510/490 BC) and Classical (approximately 510/490-323 BC) periods. These city states spoke their own local dialects of Greek, practiced their own local religious rituals, and even had their own calendars. In addition, religious festivals open to all Greek speakers were established. Thus, when we speak of “ancient Greeks,” we are referring, broadly speaking, to a dynamic language and culture rather than a single ethnic or political unit. These Greeks—or Hellenes, as they called themselves (the word “Greek” comes from the Latin Graeci and is a later term)—recognized each other as being culturally related but not interchangeable.
During the Archaic and Classical periods, various Greek-speaking city states established colonies around the Mediterranean, but these were not linked to a single administrative body whose project was the conquest and extraction of people and goods from the local culture to profit a centralized empire, as in the colonizing empires of the modern period. Greek city states competed against each other as well as against non-Greek speaking cultures.
During the sixth century, the Persian empire conquered Greek-speaking territories in Anatolia and the Aegean, and in the fifth century invaded the Greek mainland twice. A coalition of Greek city states repelled the invasions, but this coalition represented a relatively small percentage of Greek city states overall. Other city states remained neutral or sided with the Persians. After successfully defending the Greek mainland from the Persian invasion, the two city states that led the defense, Athens and Sparta, became embroiled in a war with each other that lasted until Athens’ defeat in 404 BC. In its efforts to defeat Athens, Sparta received support from Persia.
In the fourth century BC, a new power arose in Philip of Macedon, who conquered the Greek mainland in 338 BC. His son, Alexander the Great, went east, conquering Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, and India as far as modern-day Pakistan. After his death in 323 BC, the lands he and his father had conquered split up into smaller successor empires, which in turn were conquered by Rome beginning in the second century. The years of the succor empires are generally referred to as the Hellenistic period, which ended in 30 BC, when most of the Greek-speaking world had come under Roman control. Rome meanwhile had followed its own trajectory, from a kingdom (from approximately the 650s-510 BC), to a republic (from approximately 510-31 BC), to an empire.
Social Context: Ancient Greek and Roman Texts
Hamilton’s project in Mythology is to provide a reference for ancient Greek and Roman myths and “writers” of myth. She points out that the myths predate written language but does not elaborate on the implications of this, as it was not a facet of ancient studies that had received popular attention at the time of her writing. Now, it is generally believed that written language was introduced to the Greek-speaking world early in the eighth century (perhaps as early as 800 BC) and that the texts of Homer were effectively transcriptions of an oral performance. Further, the name “Homer” cannot be definitively linked to a particular person at a particular time but, from the way these works are discussed in ancient sources, may instead refer to a tradition of storytelling that was personified (perhaps in the way gods were personified forces of nature).
The poems attributed to Homer that have survived to the modern day, the Iliad and Odyssey, are believed to have been composed sometime during the second half of the eighth century to the first half of the seventh century. These analyses have had important implications on how the texts can be interpreted, as they use language very differently than sources composed in writing. In addition, composers of oral poetry do not engage with literary traditions but with traditions of storytelling that are tied to communities rather than individuals.
Throughout the Classical period, though written language existed and was used, texts themselves seem to continue to be linked to performances. The odes of Pindar, one of Hamilton’s sources, were composed and performed to honor the victors of various athletic competitions, which were held at religious festivals open to all Hellenes. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from Classical Athens were likewise performed in the context of dramatic competitions at religious festivals. These composers of verse all engage with the storytelling tradition in different ways. Pindar draws on hero mythology to celebrate his contemporaries, while the tragedians draw on the storytelling tradition in the context of bringing the community together to honor gods and heroes of the city. As texts began to accumulate over time during the Classical period, and to be tied to particular composers, a “literary” tradition grows up alongside a storytelling tradition. Thus, the tragedies of Euripides, though he composed for performance, draw on both the storytelling tradition and the nascent literary tradition (i.e., he may be responding to his predecessors’ use of that tradition).
It is perhaps in the Hellenistic Ptolemaic empire based in Alexandria that one can speak properly of Greek “literature,” meaning texts composed with the aid of writing, with the awareness of and reference to a large body of preexisting textual works and with the understanding that the text could reach a wider audience than the one that heard it performed. These Alexandrian poets experimented with form and language in a new way, and they influenced the poets of the Roman Empire, on whom Hamilton draws for her Mythology. The earliest Roman literature that survives is dated to the second half of the third century BC and seems to be highly influenced by Greek precedents.
Religious Context: Myth and Ritual
Hamilton tends to treat the Greek and Roman myths as stories, noting that the early Greeks “believed” what they wrote while the Romans saw the myths more as entertainment. To an important extent, both of these positions can be interpreted as extreme. What people specifically believed privately is not accessible to historians, and both cultures established rituals in their respective communities to honor gods and heroes of myth. What does seem accurate is that the Greeks and Romans related differently to the myths and drew on them in different ways.
According to one school of thought, the ancient Greeks’ myths provided the context for their sacred rituals, which varied by city-state. Among the sources Hamilton relies on, the poems of Homer were recited at religious festivals, and the poems of Pindar and the tragedians were composed and performed for the same. Archeological and textual evidence suggests that Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Argos, and so on instituted rituals to honor gods and heroes who belonged to the same pantheon, but which gods and heroes each city state worshiped varied.
In addition, multiple manifestations of the same god could be associated with and worshiped in different places. Delian Apollo, for example, was associated with the island of Delos, and Pythian Apollo with Delphi. Different stories were told about the Apollo associated with each place. Story details did not have to be consistent because the ancient Greeks seem to have found truth not in factual consistency but in the act of storytelling itself. Reenactment seems to have been an important facet of some cult rituals, and retelling stories a way to invoke the presence of gods and heroes.
With the rise of the Hellenistic and Roman empires, attention shifted to real-life powerful presences, those of emperors, who begin to be associated with gods and heroes. In Alexandria, cults were established to Alexander the Great as well as to the Ptolemies. In the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar was deified after his death and a cult established in his honor, a practice that continued with other emperors who followed him. In addition, literature could be produced with the tacit support or patronage of emperors, and celebrated (and/or subverted) their rule accordingly.
