CAS CL 101 Lecture 10: Lecture 10_Myth and Ritual.pdf
20 Mar 2015
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Document Summary
Ages of humanity : gold, silver, bronze, iron, and heroes. The concept of the golden age , the mythical past that was better than our present. Pessimistic outlook on the present: world is not a happy place. The living conditions in archaic greece must be borne in mind in order to understand: Farmers working the land which wasn"t very fertile to begin with. These are the condition in which hesiod grew up (his father moved across the aegean sea in search of a better life) Hesiod needed to place these stories within some period of time relative to his stories. E. g. hercules, argonauts, those who fought in troy. Cycles of legends had existed and hesiod added on to them. Hesiod blended heroic legends with his myth of the races/ages. Present age is that of suffering hesiod. Intent on making his theogony as an explanatory tool.
