Myth CC303
Outline 3/10

terms:
heroön
apotheosis (apo + theos)
barbarians
Amazons

I. Heroes and hero cult

Burkert: 2 types (which are not really separate)

1) Heroes of epic: "all those of whom the bard sings"; Age of Heroes when gods and men intermingled
2) A superhuman being (usually seen as a deceased person) of local importance to the community where his/her grave is located and whose function is to protect the community

• Heroön: grave of a hero, which is set off from other graves by marking off a special precinct (compare the temenos of a temple), bringing sacrifices/votive gifts
• Most heroes are worshipped in the form of funerary cult which often includes games (aition is funeral games of Patrocles in the Iliad)
• Heroes of this type are not necessarily warriors: may be children who died untimely death. In this case the funerary ritual/games often described as atonement in aetiological myth
• Women as heroes: Helen worshipped at Sparta with Menelaus
• Many heroön sites are near Bronze Age tombs or buildings
• Many heroes are worshipped as founders of a city or colonies, and may have a grave or monument in the agora or marketplace/center of government
• Don't have to be "good guys" or even born locally: Oedipus' heroön at Athens
• By Hellenistic times heroes can be created and a heroön set up; among one's (recent) ancestors or for rulers; the honors of a hero may even be voted by a city government to a benefactor.

II. HERACLES: Pan-Hellenic hero

• parents: Alcmena and Amphitryon/Zeus
• places: Argos, Mycenae and Tiryns; Thebes
• the sidekick: Iphicles, Hyllas
• the Twelve Labors

A. Heracles: mortal become god, or god become mortal?

• "Glory of Hera": Heracles as original male consort of the Great goddess?
• tradition of Hera nursing Heracles, giving Hebe to be his wife
• Harrower of Hell: multiple journeys to the underworld
• annual cycle of death and rebirth seen in male consort of Great Goddess

Culture hero and: helper of humankind, destroyer of monsters; founder of institutions

• The Olympic games, Nemean games, festival of Hyllas at Cos (Pindar)

B. Heracles and centaurs: tension between nature and culture

• Physical makeup: horse bodies (animal, sex, nature) vs, human torsos (human, intellect, culture)
• Nature side: violent, subject to drunkenness, lusty, use tree limbs and rocks instead of weapons
• Culture: Chiron educates Greek heroes (Heracles, Achilles, Asklepios)
• Characteristics Heracles shares with centaurs:
  1. animal/wild connections: lion skin, club
  2. uncontrollable fits of madness
  3. prodigious strength
  4. prodigious appetites and lusts: food, drink, sex (desires many women, sleeps with 50 daughters of king of Thisbe)

Symbolizes the conflicting elements of nature/culture in humans: yet his labors and apotheosis provide a model for humans to overcome their animal/mortal nature

C. Amazons: tension between Hellenes and barbarians

• Greeks and the Other: defining what is Hellene
• Women warriors: inversion of the natural order
• Iconography of Amazons, barbarians
• Heracles and other heroes as forerunner of Greek colonies in 8th and 7th cent B.C.: mythological propaganda? Black Sea, Egypt (Greek colony at Naucratis), Italy, Sicily

III. THESEUS: City hero of Athens

A. Myths perhaps modeled on those of Heracles: similarities

1) Centaurs
2) Amazons
3) Visit to and escape from Underworld
4) Connections with deeds of Heracles: Bull of Marathon, Underworld adventures

B. The life of a hero

• parents and birth: Aethra and Aegeus/Poseidon
• childhood and early labors/tests; journey from Troezen to Athens
• the sidekick: Perithoüs

1) Prince Theseus of Athens

• Bull of Marathon
• Crete, the Minotaur and Ariadne

2) King Theseus of Athens

• Amazons: Antiope/Hippolyta and Hippolytus
• Phaedra

3) Theseus, father of democratic Athens

mythical battles set precedent for Athenian consolidation of Attica and expansion into other parts of Greece: Eleusis, Megara, Troezen, Thrace/Black Sea (home of Amazons)

IV. PERSEUS and BELLEROPHON: City/regional heroes of the Argolid

• Zeus & Danae; Pegasus; Andromeda; Medusa
• Trials and deeds: monster-slayers
• Folktale motifs:
  1. Secret/hidden birth
  2. Magic helpers and magic equipment (Athena/Hermes, sword, shield, sandals)
  3. Winning the princess
  4. Outwitting by shrewdness and tricks rather than merely overcoming by strength

Vladimir Propp showed how myths could be compared to each other by breaking them down into basic plot elements. A number of hero myths share a structure which is outlined below. (Note that this is a general breakdown: not all hero myths conform to the entire structure or include all of the elements, while in others individual elements may be reduplicated.)

Typical structure of a hero-myth:

1) A god is reputed to be the hero's real father.
2) The hero is reared apart from his mortal father.
3) The hero is rejected by a mortal father figure (his father or grandfather or uncle).
4) On coming of age, he goes to his "father's" city.
5) His "father" sends him on a dangerous mission, expecting that he will not return.
6) He succeeds in the mission.
7) He negotiates a relationship with an older woman or mother-figure.
8) He meets a younger woman (usually the ruler's daughter) in the land of the mission who falls in love with him and helps him.
9) He takes the foreign princess back with him to Greece and marries her.
10) On his return he kills his "father" or causes his death.
11) After a time he deserts his foreign wife.
12) He commits some transgression and is destroyed.

Other related elements (which shade into folk motifs): the sidekick; the quest; the seemingly impossible task accomplished with magical devices and helpers; the mentor; the guardian who is overcome by trickery or shrewdness

Analyze the myths of Theseus, Heracles, Perseus and Bellerophon, and consider which of these elements are incorporated in them. Which myths reject or overturn them? (For instance, consider what happens to Heracles at the end of his life, as opposed to stage 12.)

VII. Study questions
1) How can the general structure of the hero myth be compared to the stages of adolescent initiation? (For instance, consider the hero myth elements #5-6, typically involving being sent away from Greece, in comparision with typical "liminal" stages of initiation as discussed by van Gennep.)

2) In what ways do the lives of some other characters from myth conform to elements of the hero-myth? Consider for instance: Apollo, Aeneas, Helen, Oedipus, Orpheus, Asklepius, Romulus and Remus (in the Roman part of the course), Dionysus, Jason.

3) Can you think of any books or movies that incorporate this hero myth structure? (Many of them consciously adapt this structure, drawing either from a specific hero or from the motif in general, which is well known in literature.) How do they use or reject particular elements?

4) How is the colonization of non-Greek lands by Greeks connected to hero-myths, and the delination of the Other in myth? (This will be important also in the Odyssey.)

Compare the colonization of North America and Africa by Europeans, and the modern myths and characters that arise from these periods in history: the cowboy; the pioneer; the sheriff; the outlaw; the White Hunter; the Indian; the aborigine/native. In what ways did Europeans characterize native inhabitants as the Other that are similar to the way the Greeks characterized barbarians in myth? What figures or characteristics function as inversions in the way Amazons did for the Greeks?