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Religions 4: The Gods in Homer

Explore the influence of Eastern cultures on ancient Greece, specifically in the works of Homer. Discover how Greece developed its own culture through interactions with the East, the rise of city-states, and the development of maritime trade and the alphabet.

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Religions 4: The Gods in Homer

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  1. Religions 4: The Gods in Homer

  2. ‘Orientalizing Revolution’ • Greece isolated: division of disciplines • Only after WO II links between Eastern and Greek stories fully accepted • ‘Orientalism’ (Edward Said): 1978 > Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (1984) • Rise of Greece now seen as dynamic interaction with East in the archaic period (from ca. 750 on)

  3. Westward shift from Near East to Greece • Military and political developments: rise and fall (612 BCE) of Assyrians, then Babylonians, then Persians Greece was always on the fringe and spared, ca. 500: Persians occupy Greek cities in Asia Minor > Persian Wars (490-479): fuelled last step of growing self-consciousness among Greeks 2. Development of maritime trade: Phoenicians and Greeks 3. Development of alphabet: Phoenicians, then Greeks

  4. How could Greece develop its own culture? • Part of the answer: rise of the city states: power spread out and openness to innovation

  5. Influence of East on Homer • Iliad 15.187-93: ‘For when we threw the lots I received the grey sea as my permanent abode, Hades drew the murky darkness, Zeus however drew the wide sky of brightness and clouds; the earth is common to all, and spacious Olympus’. • Cf. Atrahasis (17th cent. BCE; Akkadian epic): They grasped the flask of lots by the neck, they cast the lots; the gods made the division: Anu went up to heaven, Enlil took the earth, for his subjects, and the bolts, the bar of the sea, were set for Enki, the far-sighted.

  6. Odyssey 4.759-767: Telemachos wants to go: Penelope at first struck; then she becomes more relaxed, puts on clean clothes, takes a basket with barley with her on goes to the roof of the house. She prays to Athena there for a safe return of Telemachos and ends with an inarticulate shriek (ololuge). • Gilgamesh epic 3.37-45: ‘she went up the stairs, she climbed on to the roof, to Shamash (the Sun god), she set up incense, she brought the offering and raised her hands before Shamash’

  7. Homer • First accounts; fifth century BCE: much unknown • ‘Homeric Question’: analytical school: multiple authors; unitarian school: emphasizes unity of the works • 1928: Milman Parry: oral tradition • Older (Bronze Age) and younger (archaic) layers: common in oral traditions: heroic past > decline/nothing happened (epic distance)

  8. Iliad: covers only small part of Trojan War, very end of it • Main theme: wrath of Achilles • Odyssey: also is situated at very end of O.’s travels to Ithaca: most stories in flashback at Phaiakians • Beginning of epic: prooimion(1-10)

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