Greek Mythography in the Roman World

Greek Mythography in the Roman World
Author: Alan Cameron
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2004-09-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0195171217

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture, and become instead a central element in elite culture. This book illustrates the importance of semi-learned mythographic handbooks in the social, literary, and artistic world of Rome. One of the most intriguing features of these works is the fact that they all cite classical sources for the stories they tell, sources which are often forged.

Greek Mythography in the Roman World

Greek Mythography in the Roman World
Author: Alan Cameron
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2004-09-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0198038216

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture. Mythology had become instead a central element in elite culture. If one did not know the stories one would not understand most of the allusions in the poets and orators, classics and contemporaries alike; nor would one be able to identify the scenes represented on the mosaic floors and wall paintings in your cultivated friends' houses, or on the silverware on their tables at dinner. Mythology was no longer imbibed in the nursery; nor could it be simply picked up from the often oblique allusions in the classics. It had to be learned in school, as illustrated by the extraordinary amount of elementary mythological information in the many surviving ancient commentaries on the classics, notably Servius, who offers a mythical story for almost every person, place, and even plant Vergil mentions. Commentators used the classics as pegs on which to hang stories they thought their students should know. A surprisingly large number of mythographic treatises survive from the early empire, and many papyrus fragments from lost works prove that they were in common use. In addition, author Alan Cameron identifies a hitherto unrecognized type of aid to the reading of Greek and Latin classical and classicizing texts--what might be called mythographic companions to learned poets such as Aratus, Callimachus, Vergil, and Ovid, complete with source references. Much of this book is devoted to an analysis of the importance evidently attached to citing classical sources for mythical stories, the clearest proof that they were now a part of learned culture. So central were these source references that the more unscrupulous faked them, sometimes on the grand scale.

Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth

Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth
Author: Greta Hawes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198832559

The author uses Pausanias's Periegesis to illuminate the spatial dynamics of Greek myth, showing how apparently conflicting local versions belonged to a unifying cultural expression.

Women and Weasels

Women and Weasels
Author: Maurizio Bettini
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2013-08-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022603996X

If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.

Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture

Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture
Author: Zahra Newby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1107072247

A new reading of the portrayal of Greek myths in Roman art, revealing important shifts in Roman values and identities.

Intende, Lector - Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel

Intende, Lector - Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel
Author: Marília P. Futre Pinheiro
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110311909

Representation of myth in the novel, as a poetic, narrative and aesthetic device, is one of the most illuminating issues in the area of ancient religion, for such narratives investigate in various ways fundamental problems that concern all human beings. This volume brings together twenty contributions (six of them to a Roundtable organized by Anton Bierl on myth), originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient novel (ICAN IV) held in Lisbon in July 2008. Employing an interdisciplinary approach and putting together different methodological tools (intertextual, psychological, and anthropological), each offers a illuminating investigation of mythical discourse as presented in the text or texts under discussion. The collection as a whole demonstrates the exemplary and transgressive significance of myth and its metaphorical meaning in a genre that to some extent can be considered a modernized and secular form of myth that focuses on the quintessential question of love.

A Bestiary of Monsters in Greek Mythology

A Bestiary of Monsters in Greek Mythology
Author: Spyros Syropoulos
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784919519

The aim of this book is to explore the realm of the imaginary world of Greek mythology and present the reader with a categorization of monstrosity, referring to some of the most noted examples in each category.

Early Greek Mythography

Early Greek Mythography
Author: Robert L. Fowler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 849
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198147414

Volume 2 is a detailed commentary on the texts of Early Greek Mythography: Volume 1, a critical edition of the twenty-nine authors of this genre from the late 6th to early 4th centuries BC. Volume 2 provides a mythological commentary of the original works, as well as a philological commentary on separate authors.

The Last Pagans of Rome

The Last Pagans of Rome
Author: Alan Cameron
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 891
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 019974727X

Rufinus' vivid account of the battle between the Eastern Emperor Theodosius and the Western usurper Eugenius by the River Frigidus in 394 represents it as the final confrontation between paganism and Christianity. It is indeed widely believed that a largely pagan aristocracy remained a powerful and active force well into the fifth century, sponsoring pagan literary circles, patronage of the classics, and propaganda for the old cults in art and literature. The main focus of much modern scholarship on the end of paganism in the West has been on its supposed stubborn resistance to Christianity. The dismantling of this romantic myth is one of the main goals of Alan Cameron's book. Actually, the book argues, Western paganism petered out much earlier and more rapidly than hitherto assumed.The subject of this book is not the conversion of the last pagans but rather the duration, nature, and consequences of their survival. By re-examining the abundant textual evidence, both Christian (Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Paulinus, Prudentius) and "pagan" (Claudian, Macrobius, and Ammianus Marcellinus), as well as the visual evidence (ivory diptychs, illuminated manuscripts, silverware), Cameron shows that most of the activities and artifacts previously identified as hallmarks of a pagan revival were in fact just as important to the life of cultivated Christians. Far from being a subversive activity designed to rally pagans, the acceptance of classical literature, learning, and art by most elite Christians may actually have helped the last reluctant pagans to finally abandon the old cults and adopt Christianity. The culmination of decades of research, The Last Pagans of Rome will overturn many long-held assumptions about pagan and Christian culture in the late antique West.