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Original Title:Understanding the Relationship between Artists and Ancient Greek Myth

Ancient Greek Gods And Lore Revisited Pdf

(Original written December 2013)

The ancient Greeks believed that Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in mainland Greece, was the home of the gods. Ancient Greek religious practice, essentially conservative in nature, was based on time-honored observances, many rooted in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 B.C.), or even earlier.

1. Athena appears in Greek mythology as the patron and helper of many heroes, including Odysseus, Jason, and Heracles. In Classical Greek myths, she never consorts with a lover, nor does she ever marry, earning the title Athena Parthenos.When in battle behind Athena’s shield was Ericthonius, depicted as a snake.
2. To specify, Greek mythology is the body of myths and teachings that belong to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, and the nature and origin of the world. When we say ancient Greece, we mean ancient! Thisperiod lasted from around 800 BCE until about 600 AD. Theirmythology was a part of the religion in ancient Greece.

Note to reader: This is a sample of original theoretical analysis on Greek mythology completed during my focus in Religion Studies while studying in Athens, Greece. It was intended for a scholarly and academic readership and has remained largely unaltered. I have since revisited it several times and deemed it worth sharing. Views expressed may not be consistent with the views I hold today, but by and large I stand by my central thesis regarding the role of artists as instrumental in constructing social symbols by which ancient Greek society understood itself in religious and folkloric ways, with particular emphasis on the fluidity of folklore with the introduction of new public art.

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The riddle of Greek mythology is the question of which came first: the implicit need for order, and thus the creation of a religious system represented through mythic symbols via public art, or the body of public art that so succinctly actualized the Greek concept of order that the Greeks felt compelled to embrace it as their de facto explanation for worldly phenomena, adopting and crystalizing these symbols and narratives as religion and myth. The answer lies in between the two, albeit it is tricky to explicitly state. Art imitates life and in turn life imitates art. Greek mythology is unique in that it is so fundamentally defined by the art that depicts it, opposed to other world faiths, which generally begin with sacred texts or historic figures and grow artistically over time; the Greek branch of faith seems to derive from artistic expression over time, accumulative with no clear leadership or central authority. In ancient Greece, anyone who could pen a play or tragedy, paint, carve, sculpt, or orate was an authority on religion and mythology. In almost democratic fashion, the Greek polis seemed to accept any who could capture the sublime of the subconscious, anyone who could conjure the beautiful and striking as qualified to communicate on the polis’ behalf in regards to the very faith that governed their way of thinking.

This unique relationship between artists and the gods of ancient Greece is special for two reasons: in other faiths, legitimacy stems from an intangible higher power, as in Abrahamic tradition; second and consequently, this leads to a social hierarchy designed to communicate and interpret the nature of that higher power that permeates every aspect of the religion. This is not true of Greek religion, as anyone with artistic sensibility and inspiration for a new manifestation of the struggle between humans and gods was qualified to create as they saw fit without regard toward central authority or conflicting canonocity. I argue that the definitive social power the gods held over Classical Greece, symbols codified as means for law and order, extended from artists’ projections who fashioned them in their own image. It is the gods’ human characteristics and widely-accepted origins within Hesiod’s Theogony that make this relationship clear. Even within the symbols of the mythology itself, artists are implicitly given a role of great influence, as can be seen in the relationship between Hephaestus and Zeus. For the ancient Greeks, artistic expression was revered as the ultimate medium of knowing the gods, with the artists creating canon where alternatively monks or priests would. Out of nothingness, artists brought forth the mythic symbols that defined an age and established traditions that bled into the politics of its time. As Aristotle would phrase it, the artists of ancient Greece were responsible for “actualizing the conceptual” into reality. In short, the gods were largely not accepted as literal, historical beings who actively affected the lives of the Greek populace, but were accepted as a codified language actualized by the artists of the time in order to bring order to a chaotic world.

The Greek gods, amongst all other focal points of ancient mythologies and religions, are the most anthropomorphic, to the degree that they at are times outright mistaken to be humans. Ancient Greek contemporaries were not oblivious to this – Xenophanes is accredited to having said that if animals contained intelligence enough to fashion gods, they would fashion them in their own image just as the Greeks had done (1). This human depiction is the first key to understanding the nature of Greek mythos – this emphasis on human characteristics was not for vanity’s sake; indeed, the gods were intended as symbolic metaphors, warnings and idealizations to an audience of what one should and should not be like. Although the lessons and archetypes arose from history and oral tradition, their codified descriptions and subsequently popularity in widespread Greek culture came when the artists began molding these narratives into public works. The Greek notion of “knowing thyself” is pervasive even when examining the arts – there was a fundamental understanding that the gods performed as a mirror for “mortal” human matters, whether ethical, spiritual or material in nature, and that through this codified language, one could find the answers of what right action and order could be.

Another unique trait of the Greek gods is that they do not create the universe, but rather the universe creates them. They are not omnipresent, timeless and without origin, like the deity within Abrahamic faiths. Hesiod’s Theogony, commonly accepted as the pervasive canon of the origin narrative of the Greek mythos (not to be confused with the origin of Greek myth in of itself), clearly states that the Universe existed first, and out of the Void came the first creations – the gods. It is important that the first creation, according to Hesiod, is Chaos (2). One interpretation is that the Universe became self-aware in its totality, everything it encompassed being held at once. With no order to arrange itself, chaos was the first product of this awareness. All subsequent creations are attempts to rectify and combat this sense of chaos and lack of order. The next creations are the spaces that must fill the void, and from there, the laws that must govern it and those that must inhabit the space. The creations become pragmatic in their attempt to actualize remedies and structure to the initial chaos. The relationship between the Universe and all subsequent creations is parallel to that of the artists and their creations. Just as the Universe creates the gods out of nothing but will (in the philosophical sense, form) and matter, artists do the same in ancient Greece. Some primordial versions of these myths and gods exist before the Greek civilization establishes itself, but the concept of the creator role is refined within Greek practice. Especially apparent in psychoanalysis of the Theogony, the artists are in fact the Universe that must have existed before the gods. Seeing chaos around them, the artists created symbols to make sense of the world and to provide visual footholds for order based off of oral tradition. Seeing chaos around itself, the Universe births gods to begin formulating a hierarchy of order. The artists, then, actualize the conceptions of what it means to have order in a chaotic universe.

A fundamental aspect of this order is the actualization, or perceived actualization of justice. In Greek myth, punishment either stems from the gods themselves or as part of a natural law of karma, a sort of unspoken force of balance. Without law, mankind exists within anarchy and chaos – by defining the parameters of order and justice within myth, an unspoken, codified legitimacy is given to this need for order. Simplified, the universe remains defined as long as order is defined – the creation of the gods and upholding of mythic traditions and religious practice upholds the fabric of the human sphere that is Greek society. Artists, then, de facto manifest what order is into a shared understanding through mythic signs. Creation is held as the most sacred, responsible for all senses of order, whereas the destruction or nullification of that creative force is the most accursed. Examine the inherently cursed act of patricide or matricide within Greek myth – both the father and mother represent creative, or reproductive forces. To destroy that from which one comes from is the most tumultuous one can become – it is akin to the gods destroying the universe that spawned them. The same chaos that gnaws at the void before additional creation in the Theogony is a microcosm within every warning and law against the murder of one’s parents. A means for the Universe to protect itself is to make clear a system of justice, and thus punishment, through codified myth and religion. Again, artists actualize these concepts into a tangible, shared language of myth to serve this utilitarian function. The natural laws appear to exist prior to the gods, as they are held to it the same as mortals in Greek tradition; they are reminders that the Universe itself is a character within Greek philosophy and is actively attempting to sustain its system of order.

Oddly, Greek deities rarely seem absolute – there are only a few examples where a god is innocent of any fault. One of the few consistencies within the Greek narrative is that Zeus is the master of Law; nothing is mightier than his lightning bolt, his wrath, his judgment. Whatever human faults he may exhibit – patriarchy, adultery, fatherhood, succession and leadership – he also represents the actualized concepts of Unwritten Law and Absolutism. It is this imperative need to believe that balance, or that justice will come to the unjust or imbalanced that makes Zeus so pivotal in Greek myth. Zeus as a personality and character is just as fallible as the rest of the gods in terms of his human traits – the reason he is King is because he represents the vanguard necessary to maintain the order wrought by the Universe, or the artists. In making him absolute, artists depicting Zeus can use him as a codified sign of the arbiter of order and justice. Some origin stories outside of Hesiod depict Zeus devouring Phanes, the original god of Creation, in order to gain the power necessary to preside over all balance in the universe (3). It is not coincidence that Hephaestus, fundamentally a god of creation, is the one to grant Zeus his lightning bolts, the crucial column of his authority. Without these creative forces to actualize the conceptual, Zeus is powerless. Just so, without artists, order and balance are only concepts within a chaotic ancient Greece. Just as Hephaestus grants Zeus the might to instill order throughout the cosmos, ancient artists granted the Greek populace the authority to establish order through codified language of myth. Myth and religion are the lightning and thunder of Greek culture and identity, their authority often implicitly but undeniably derived from the artists amongst them.

It’s this relationship that seems to indicate that Greek myth and religion were not a theological system – they were a shared system of metaphor and symbols for the human experience that ancient Greeks wrestled with. The Greek aphorism to “know thyself” found at the site of the Delphic oracle is indicative of this – unlike other faiths that seek answers externally, the Greek myths and traditions directly reveal aspects of those who internalize them. The gods were made in man’s image because they are made by man – the mythic pantheon is an actualization of the stories and themes that the Greeks found most relevant to their time. The artists, those who give form to these stories, are in essence the most important characteristic in Greek mythic creation. The Greek philosophers that underpinned the thought processes of ancient Greece prescribe to this internalized analysis – just as they developed the theory, or Form of the human spirit, the artists developed the manifestation, or Matter of it in perfected, sublime form. As a result, the classical Greek gods come into full actualization. There will always be some who view the mystical on a cursory, literal level and live their lives accordingly – I believe, however, that the vast majority of the ancient Greeks understood the nature of the gods as codified language and artistic manifestations of existential crises of the time. Whether it be the gods versus the giants (the Greeks versus the Persians), the veneration of heroes (nostalgia of past eras), or Icarus learning what can happen when stepping beyond one’s boundaries (lessons in humility), the Greek mythos represents a vast undertaking to understand not the world around oneself, but how one must act when confronted by the chaos of that world. This structured order stems from the artists; it is their ageless works that we continue to admire for their seemingly effortless capture of the soul in artistic form. It is unspoken that we do not look upon the gods when we see the statue of Hermes at Olympia, or the towering Pantheon atop the Acropolis – we see a reflection of ourselves in a perfected form that is both melancholy and reviving. The humanity we see in the gods is the same humanity that the artists pour into them from their own being, essence of one form passing into another. Art is the clearest allegory for mystic creation – just as the universe paints the gods to bring color and context to a blank page, the artist paints order into a vast and unruly world.

Bibliography / Works Consulted

• Xenophanes; Fragment 15-16- Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker – Diels-Kranz

• Hesiod’s Theogony

• Theoi, Online Greek Myth Encyclopedia – Phanes

Abstract

References

Jacques Derrida, “La Mythologie Blanche,” Marges de la Philosophie (Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1972).

Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology,” Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972).

Jean-Claude Monod, “La mise en question contemporaine du paradigme aristotélicien — et ses limites,” Archives de Philosophie 70.4 (2007): 535-558.

Bernard Harrison, “‘White Mythology’ Revisited: Derrida and His Critics on Reason and Rhetoric,” Critical Inquiry 25.3 (1999).

Rodolphe Gasché, “On ‘Tropic’ Movements and Syntactic Resistance in Derrida’s White Mythology, International Yearbook for Hermeneutics 13 (2014).

Leonard Lawlor, “Dialectic and Iterability: The Confrontation between Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida,” Philosophy Today 32.3 (1988).

Leonard Lawlor, “A Little Daylight: A reading of Derrida’s ‘White Mythology,’” Man and World 24 (1991).

Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).

Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002), 374-376.

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