Myth and History: Close Encounters

Description

The fluidity of myth and history in antiquity and the ensuing rapidity with which these notions infiltrated and cross-fertilized one another has repeatedly attracted the scholarly interest. The understanding of myth as a phenomenon imbued with social and historical nuances allows for more than one methodological approaches. Within the wider context of interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, the present volume returns to origins, as it traces and registers the association and interaction between myth and history in various literary genres in Greek and Roman antiquity (i.e. an era when the scientific definitions of and distinctions between myth and history had not yet been perceived as such, let alone fully shaped and implemented), providing original ideas, new interpretations and (re)evaluations of key texts and less well-known passages, close readings, and catholic overviews. The twenty-four chapters of this volume expand from Greek epos to lyric poetry, historiography, dramatic poetry and even beyond, to genres of Roman era and late antiquity. It is the editors’ hope that this volume will appeal to students and academic researchers in the areas of classics, social and political history, archaeology, and even social anthropology. • new perspectives and interpretations of the interactions between myth and history in Greek and Roman antiquity • analysis of Greek and Latin texts of cross-generic array • synchronic and diachronic approach of primary material Contents Preface Part I: Epos Historicizing Homer’s Myth in the Homeric Epigrams The Aristotelian Constitution of the Ithacans and Homero-Cyclic Reception of the Odyssey “Let Me Tell You an Ancient Deed of the Distant Past”: The Epic Hero as a ‘Historian’ Authority, Power and Governability in the Odyssey: The Mythical Birth of the Polis Part II: Lyric Poetry Domestic and Political Order in the ‘Foundation Myths’ of Partheneia Myth, Memory and a Massacre on the Road to Dodona: Reinterpreting an Elegiac Lament from Archaic Ambracia (SEG 41.540A) Part III: Historiography Shaping History: The Case of the Tyrannicides and the Marathonomachoi The Myth of Troy Turned into History: Thucydides’ Archaeology The Argive Women, Beards and Democracy Seeking Agariste The Herodotean Myth on the Origin of the Scythians Part IV: Drama (Re)writing a Sicilian Myth: The Palici and Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai “To Be Buried or Not to Be Buried?” Necropolitics in Athenian History and Sophocles’ Antigone Sophocles’ Trachiniae and the Peloponnesian War: A New Perspective The Authority of ‘History’ in the Exodus of Sophocles’ Trachiniae Nectanebo II and Philip II in Mythic Disguise: Comedy’s Burlesque of History Part V: Loci and Tempora The Myth of Opheltes at Nemea in the Context of Rivalry in the Archaic Peloponnese Marginal Remarks on the Concept of ‘Time of Origins’ in Classical Greek Culture Myth and History in the Court of Archelaus Part VI: Roman Era and Late Antiquity “Oceans Rise, Empires Fall”: Cyclical Time and History in Seneca’s Quaestiones Naturales 3 Herodotus’ Phoenix between Hesiod and Papyrus Harris 500, and Its Legacy in Tacitus Empire, Ethnicity, Exegesis: Lucian on Interpretations of Greek Myth in the Roman Mediterranean Myth and History in Libanius’ Imperial Speeches Myth and Levels of Language in the Octavia Appendix The Editors The Contributors Index Rerum et Nominum Notabiliorum