/swtg/ Start with the Greeks

Welcome to the second Start with the Greeks thread. This group will cover the literature, history, and mythology of ancient Greece.

>ebooks of all texts and readings
mega.nz/#F!tRdWHJYY!_3uUYqfzqIpRpVN2l8XNVw

Required texts. If you want to buy a couple books for this group, these are the ones to get.
>The Iliad
>The Odyssey
>Sarah B. Pomeroy. A Brief History of Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History
>Any edition, and either the full one or the Brief one

Optional texts:
>Stephen Trzaskoma. Anthology Of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation (ACM)
>Edith Hamilton. Mythology

Image is of Zeus wielding a lightning bolt while an eagle perches on his other hand. Louvre G204.

Other urls found in this thread:

mega.nz/#F!tRdWHJYY!_3uUYqfzqIpRpVN2l8XNVw
docdro.id/7McywNF
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

The average daily reading load is about 30 pages. There will be catch-up days throughout, and the pace is subject to change.

If some of the content doesn't interest you, you are free to skip it.

Timeline of important literary figures in the Archaic Period.

Pop Quiz

Define the following terms:
>archon
>oikist
>thetes
>agora
>symposium

I'm about 6 books into the Iliad and holy shit does this thing show it's age. I think the thing I hate most about it is the number of times one character will say something, then tell another character to tell someone else and they repeat it word for word. It's interesting how it views war though. You have people stabbing each other in the gut, through the neck, in the eye socket and men falling over dead all over the place and yet you still have the two sides coming together every so often for a 3 page long dialogue. It's kind of jarring since my modern sensibility forces me to wonder if they can get along so well, pray to the same gods and exchange gifts why can't they just declare peace. It all seems like such a meaningless waste of life.

>symposium
drinking party

>agora
central square of the polis

>It's kind of jarring since my modern sensibility forces me to wonder if they can get along so well, pray to the same gods and exchange gifts why can't they just declare peace.

Really?

WW1 was the most pointless war in history.

>WW1
>Modern

This was really good and really makes u think, anyone finishing The Iliad should give this a read considering it's only 50 pages.

>When this beautiful disaster had been made, Zeus brought her out and wonder took hold of gods and men when they beheld her. From her, the first woman, comes the race of women, who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil.
/r9k/ is right.

Of all the words of tongue and pen the saddest are these "r9k was right again"

>Keep her commands, O email-devouring Hillary, and let verdicts be straight; yes, lay your crooked ways aside!
Jesus Christ, Hesiod.

>Marry a virgin so that you can teach her proper habits, and especially marry one who lives near you; and check all around so that your marriage will not be a joke to your neighbors, for nothing is better for a man than a good wife and nothing more horrible than a bad one
NO HYMEN NO DIAMOND
/r9k/ IS RIGHT!

When does it start? Or has it already started? In that case, how late am I?

I think we're on day six. Starting Hesiod today I believe. Check the syllabus to see what came before. Mainly readings from Mythology and A Brief History

DAY SEVEN

Readings
>Handbook of Classical Mythology, "Muses". pp. 154-5.
>Hesiod, Theogony. ACM pp. 129-160

Pictured is a muse.

>archon
A type of leader without absolute powers that emerged after the basileis.
>oikist
City-dweller? Just a guess.
>thetes
Kind of a wage slave.
>agora
City square/marketplace.
>symposium
Homosexual orgy that took place under the guise of discussing philosophy.

I noticed that both Theogony and Iliad start with a homage to the Muses, checked Works and Days and the first couple of lines are also about them. Why is this, is it just a thank you from Hesiod and Homer for receiving the gift of song, or is it some kind of belief that by mentioning them, they will receive their benevolence and the play will be better received. Furthermore, Muses are also marking the start of the last part of Theogony - "Now sing of the Goddesses, Olympian Muses", it sounds farfetched, but I like to believe that the Muses opening and closing the poem is a notion that everything starts and ends with art and beauty.

Other than that,I couldn't help but notice all the incest going on amongst the Gods. Also, Aphrodite called Philommedes because she loves dick. Some other interesting stuff that I noted was Cerberus portrayed as fifty-headed ,different from the three-headed dog that popular culture portrays him as. Olympus was called Snowy at one part, but I remember Hamilton saying that there was no snow on Olympus during the chapter about Demeter. This is probably meant to refer to the actual peak of Olympus as snowy, however, I always thought that the Greeks believed the Gods are not actually at the peak itself, but that the peak was a gateway towards the divine land of Olympus.

Thanks OP

Pop Quiz Part 1 for Day Seven

What does Theogony mean?

What goddesses inspire Hseiod at the beginning of the Theogony?

What was the first god or personified abstraction to exist?

Who was Ouranos' (Uranus') mother? His wife?

Who overthrew Ouranos, and why?

Who were Zeus' siblings? How did he evade their childhood fate, and who helped him?

Who gave Zeus his thunderbolts?

What two sides fought the Titanomachy, and who won?

Hey guys !
any of u know a comfy PDF reader ?

Foxit, Adobe, or Sumatra for PC.

Moon+ for Android.

KYS for iOS.

>Anonymous
Thanks mate
whats the diffrance between pdf and epub ?

PDF files have static layouts, like so much text appears on each page. This type is best for textbooks with charts, pictures, etc, and legal documents.

EPUBs are flowable, which makes it easier to read because the text can be bigger, works better on devices, and is more configurable.

EPUB > PDF for reading

Anyone interested in Starting with the Greek Language group?
I suggest having anons group together and study the language through literature, particulary by translating ancients texts, like New Testament, blind, passage by passage, and then sharing their results in the end of the week.
I'm self-studying latin already, but never touched greek in my life, if somebody organizes anything like it, I'll join

>What does Theogony mean?
Creation of the gods.
>What goddesses inspire Hseiod at the beginning of the Theogony?

The muses.
>What was the first god or personified abstraction to exist?
Chaos.
>Who was Ouranos' (Uranus') mother?
His wife.
>His wife?
His mother.
>Who overthrew Ouranos, and why?
His son, Kronos.

>Who were Zeus' siblings?
Hera, Poseidon, erm...i forgot the otherss.
>How did he evade their childhood fate, and who helped him?
>His mom smuggled him away to Crete where he was raised by a nymph and her goat.
>Who gave Zeus his thunderbolts?
That i don't know.
>What two sides fought the Titanomachy, and who won
The titans and the Olympian gods and the latter won.

>Who gave Zeus the thunderbolt ?
The Cyclopes.

Read Rachel Bespaloff's On the Iliad. It has similar ideas to Weil's commentary. Good read tho,

Pop Quiz for Day Seven Part 2

By what river do the gods swear oaths?

Was Prometheus helpful to man? Did he intend to be?

Prometheus represented technology for the Greeks. Are there any parallels between modern technology and Prometheus?

For what purpose does Zeus order the creation of Pandora? Is she a positive gift, or a negative one?

For what purpose was Eve created?

What similarities are there between the creation of Eve and that of Pandora? How do their purposes differ?

What happens to man when Eve eats the apple, and Pandora opens the box?

Stupid question. I don't see "Cambridge Copmanion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions" in the mega. Am I blind or is it not there?

Thanks for letting me know. I forgot to upload it.

The whole book is now in the folder, and the reading we will be using is in the Readings folder called "Greece from The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions.pdf"

Thanks!

>By what river do the gods swear oaths ?
Styx

>Was Prometheus helpful to man? Did he intend to be ?
Yes and yes

>Are there any parallels between modern technology and Prometheus ?

>For what purpose does Zeus order the creation of Pandora? Is she a positive gift, or a negative one?
Punishment for receiving the fire. She was described as negative by Hesiod.

The next three question make an interesting comparison between Eve and Pandora, even though the purposes of their creations are different, one was created to punish, the other, to keep company, the end result of the existence of both of them is bringing suffering to man. One through opening the box, the other through eating the apple and committing the first sin. Is this whole view of women as harbingers of evil shared by any other religions, or is it just these two ?

The comparison between modern technology and Prometheus can also result in an interesting discussion.

Iliad this week?

> dies as soon as we get to primary source material

I've read before that the first gods in the Theogony crib a bit from Near Eastern mythologies.
Is it it a novel text or is it following some kind of NE genre?

only a little bit more pointless than WW2

Prometheus gave man fire (and technology), but Zeus punished man and made their life worse. So was Prometheus's action actually helpful to man?

Read the picture.

>tfw chad gets to sleep with the goddesses and all you get are the evil women descended from pandora

lol

Reminder that the Greeks are relatively young society.

Why are ancient myths so fucking weird? Cronus cuts off his dad's dick, then throws it into the sea where it grows into a woman? What the fuck? Was Hesiod just having a big laugh, saying the most ridiculous shit just to see who would believe it?

Wait, at the beginning of the universe there were clearly genders already. Gaia is a woman, Uranus is a man. They fuck and have kids. And so on and so on. But if the first Golden Age race of humans was all men until Pandora, how did they reproduce? Did they just not?

>Was Hesiod just having a big laugh, saying the most ridiculous shit just to see who would believe it?
If you read the supplementary material, you'd know that 1) Hesiod didn't come up with it and 2) not even the Greeks came up with it.

That myth has been around since long before Hesiod's time.

Gaia is a female goddess, not a human woman. It's not clear to me if the humans prior to Pandora reproduced, or needed to reproduce.

The early sections of the Theogony are similar to the Mesopotamian myth of Tiamat. The Enuma Elis, a written source for the myth, dates from 18th Century BC. The myths were probably spread even earlier than that.

Obviously I know Hesiod didn't come up with it, he just wrote it down and yes I read that it was probably derived from Hittite myths but my point still stands that ancient people were weird as fuck.

They are very strange. They also evolved in strange times. I don't know the origins of those myths, or why they would tell the story as they do.

You made it seem like you thought Hesiod came up with it.

>tfw no slender-ankled pretty-ankled gf

But it says women were specifically created to be evil and a punishment for men, so is it the same deal for women goddesses?

It's not clearly delineated as such, but you could certainly make arguments for or against it. The first was Chaos, but Gaia also came quite early and she is seen as a good Goddess. So the first female goddess is not a burden to humans, though many others are.

>tfw you're already familiar with most of the material from watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

DAY EIGHT

Readings
>Hesiod, Works and Days. ACM pp. 160-7
>Semonides, Women. ACM pp. 387-90
>Greece reading in the Readings folder

Will do, thanks user!

Pop Quiz for Day 8

>Who warned Epimetheus not to accept Pandora?

>What was life like before Pandora (lines 111-114)? After?

>What sort of person is Pandora?

>What sort of life does Hesiod recommend living?

>What are the Five Ages of Man according to Hesiod? Which are just, and which are hubristic?

>What does Hesiod think of his generation?

>In the Iron Age, Shame and Nemesis go to Olympus (line 230-4). Why would this be bad for humanity?

>What are the two types of Strife, and which does Hesiod say is good?

>Later Greeks and Romans preserved Works and Days and taught it as a foundation text, like learning from the Bible. What about the text would seem important to them?

bump

>Later Greeks and Romans preserved Works and Days and taught it as a foundation text, like learning from the Bible. What about the text would seem important to them?

It gives an important moral dimension to work, a thing that surprised and interested me a lot. It could also be important because it explains the birth of humanity, seen as a decline (reminded me to Genesis, in a way).

well mostly greek is oral tradition. so they needed inspo from muses to remember. also hymns for ex.
and stop reading with modern morals please

>Later Greeks and Romans preserved Works and Days and taught it as a foundation text, like learning from the Bible. What about the text would seem important to them?
The instructions on how and where to piss, obviously.

>tfw no bee gf

I am surprised a lot of the moral values of Hesiod still hold up today. Semonides, was also quite good with his advice on how you have to find a good and faithful wife is also something that one can relate to in any day or age. I found it interesting how the Greeks adopted the weighing of the hearts from the Egyptians, which provides an interesting point on how religions were adopted from one group of people to another and how the gods of the later evolved in relation to what practices they had adopted. It was also mentioned that Apollo and Dionysus were used as iconographic and conceptual models for understanding Christ, what exactly is this supposed to mean ?

>excellently planned out Greek reading group
>miss the start by a week
J U S T

Need help guys.

In the Iliad, what does the king mean by "prizes"? Their women?

Just catch up, or read the mythology later.

Probably. Give the context please

The pace is okay. I assumed I was far behind and apparently I'm only behind by a day. And I did all the optional readings.

The introduction to the Theogony I think pointed out that it directly continues with the Catalogue of Women, which describes women consorts of gods and their demigod children, kinda populating the mortal world after the immortal world in the Theogony. In a like way that's followed by the Shield of Heracles and that by the Wedding of Ceux, which are some mythological episodes, and that perhaps by the Megalai Eoiai and that by the Melampodia, which are supposed to be broader genealogical pieces.
It wouldn't surprise me if most of those are genre pieces that got falsely attributed to Hesiod and then joined with his authentic work with spurious editions, but the fact that folks did that is interesting to me. Like the Epic Cycle that canvases the whole Trojan War and the returnees. It's a totalizing project which I hadn't really thought of the Greeks as being inclined to before I learned about this.

> And then Zeus will destroy this generation too,
> Soon as they start being born gray around the temples.
> Then fathers won't get along with their kids anymore,
> Nor guests with hosts, nor partner with partner
> And brothers won't be friends, the way they used to be.

> And brothers won't be friends, the way they used to be.

> And brothers won't be friends, the way they used to be.

poor guy

Oh, there's a footnote in the Works and Days selection that was really interesting.

The text is regarding the bronze generation of man, "They didn't eat any food at all." and the note reads "The Greek word means specifically food made from grain. The point is that the people of the Bronze Age do not practice agriculture." The Greek is "οὐδέ τι σῖτον/ἤσθιον"

It seems like an extraordinary reach. Would pre-modern folks have actually had a concept of social development like that? Did the archaic Greeks interact with any non-agriculturalists?

> Would pre-modern folks have actually had a concept of social development like that?
Come to think of it that's a retarded question. Putting Hesiod's genealogy of man aside, tons of agricultural societies including the Greeks and Romans have deified inventors of agriculture. It's either a pretty natural thought or it's within memory.

>Archon
Politicians?

>Oikist
No idea desu

>Thetes
Proletariat citizens?

>Agora
A marketplace?

>Symposium
Gathering?

How did I do

so-so. I think you got Archon correct. From memory, oikist refers to family and/or the family's living space/property, Thetes refers to hired hand -- basically indentured servant/serf, Agora refers to a public space usually situated in the center of the polis, and symposium is a drinking party.

oikos is house, household, etc.
oikist is the founder of a colony, first one to set up a homestead basically

Why should I read all this shit when I can just read a footnote that describes the reference the author was making?

Why do these idiots keep stopping to try and take the armor off the people they kill in the middle of a battle? The number of dumbasses who have gotten themselves speared because they immediately kneel down and try to strip dead people of their armor is absurd

Because the armor costs a lot of money and if you have more armors you look like a badass.

So why are these myths so misogynistic and problematic? Were the ancient storytellers just a bunch of shitlords or is /r9k/ 100% right?

Women knew their place back in those days.

>Soon as they start being born gray around the temples. Then fathers won’t get along with their kids anymore, Nor guests with hosts, nor partner with partner, And brothers won’t be friends, the way they used to be. Nobody’ll honor their parents when they get old, But they’ll curse them and give them a hard time, Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back For all the trouble it was to raise them. They’ll start taking justice into their own hands, Sacking each other’s cities, no respect at all For the man who keeps his oaths, the good man, The just man. No, they’ll keep all their praise For the wrongdoer, the man who is violence incarnate, And shame and justice will lie in their hands. Some good-for-nothing will hurt a decent man, Slander him, and swear an oath on top of it. Envy will be everybody’s constant companion, With her foul mouth and hateful face, relishing evil.

Is Hesiod describing modern society?

bee = unicorn

Where's the Cambridge Companion book? It wasn't in the downloads.

Why live life when you can just kill yourself?

Check again. It's there, comrade.

I've got
A Brief History of Ancient Greece - Sarah B. Pomeroy
Anthology of Classical Myth
Edith Hamilton; Steele Savage Mythology
Handbook of Classical Mythology - William Hansen
The Iliad - Homer (tr. Robert Fagles)
Lamberton, Interpretation, Allegory, and the Critics of Homer
Muses - From Handbook of Classical Mythology
The Society of the Gods - from Jean-Pierre Vernant Myth and Society in Ancient Greece
What is a Greek Myth - from Interpretations of Greek Mythology (1989) - Jan Bremmer

mega.nz/#F!tRdWHJYY!_3uUYqfzqIpRpVN2l8XNVw

strange. I'm looking at all the documents right now and it's definitely there

>date created 1/29
I download it before then

Prizes were objects of value or people taken from an opponent slayed in battle. It could be his armor, weapons or horses if he was killed on the battlefield or it could be things like precious metal drinking cups or mixing bowls or people, if they were obtained as a result of sacking a city or a dwelling place. The people could be the loser's slaves or others who hadn't been slaves before but who definitely found themselves in that position now: his wife, sons and daughters. Chryseis, mentioned in the beginning of book 1 is an example of the latter. Prizes were taken for oneself but they could also be awarded by the gathering of aristocratic warlords after the battle, usually to their king (I'm not sure if to others too, as a recognition of their special merit?). You may think of these prizes as "loot", except that word carries in English connotations of thievery and foul play, while the Greeks certainly did not see things that way: prizes were not only won fair and square, they were a consequence of, and brought further glory to their owner.

Where can I find those other pieces you mention? I only have The Shield of Heracles as an appendix to my edition of Hesiod.
>Catalogue of Women
That sounds convenient. Were the Greeks able to order from such catalogues? :^)

Exactly. They did not have to meet any in the flesh to imagine an age before grain. As for Hesiod's "bronze age", it is not the same as what modern historians call the Bronze Age.

Your lack of understanding for the mindset of people other than those of your day and age is tragicomic.

>Is Hesiod describing modern society?
Have things ever been otherwise? is what you mean to ask.

If you haven't already, you may want to download the (not entirely complete) collection of loeb classical library pdfs floating around some public torrent trackers. I have a collection of 400+ (out of 500ish), but it's 26GB and so I can't post a direct download link.

If anyone ever needs specific greek texts, especially those only offered by loeb, just ask in the Greek thread and I'll throw them on mega or something. Otherwise OP seems to be doing a good job of maintaining a library of source material for you guys.

Reading the greeks is like fucking primordial man

People have been complaining about the corruptions of the next generation and the decay of society in every society for thousands of years. It is relevant to our time because it is relevant to all times.

Today readings were wonderful

DAY NINE

Readings
>Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus. ACM pp. 84-5
>The Lord's Prayer
>Cornutus, Hymns to Athena and Dionysus. pp. 89-91
>Diodorus of Sicily, Origin of Gods. pp. 96-101
>Fulgentius, Story of Dionysus. pp. 112-3
>Homeric Hymn to Demeter. pp. 167-78

Please tell me you don't need to keep track of all the names in the book 2 of the Iliad.

You don't

Bonus Reading

>Absent Deity
docdro.id/7McywNF