ANCH2030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Castration, Mother Goddess, Cronus
Week 2 Lecture
Sources, names and myths:
Landscape of mythological meaning
Heroic and monstrous ancestors
Never die – immortal – able to cast them out (9 days to reach the darkness or thrown out to
the edge of the world
Most essential is that they can’t die – can be andromorphic
No evidence of a cult of peace before the 5th century
Much more living and fluid in their own religion
Zeus and Hera – Jupiter and Juno
Centre of the pantheon
Parton of the rulers on earth
Each temple had a massive cult statue of the house god
Olympia vs Mt Olympus:
Olympian Gods
Site of worship – different sites
Mt Olympus – temple of Hera (also temple of Zeus)
Zeus (classical temple and statue – gold and ivory – main cult site of Zeus and one of the 7
wonders of the ancient world
Fixes this imagery
Linear B – Pylos vs Dodona
Development of cult vs religion – growing number of monumental statues (matching up with
the poetry)
Theogony:
8th century BC – Boeotian Greek song from the Muses
Hesiod did not play instrument – bard that just sang (party due to growing up as a shepherd)
Much shorter epic poems – tells more about himself and a convention of the kind of poetry
he is writing – talks about his lowly background and his brother
Wisdom literature and poetry
Works and Days
Muses met him on Helacon while tending his sheep (taught art of singing first, of past and
future)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
