The concept of polytheism can be difficult to
grasp for someone who grew up in a European country and had what can be called
a Christian-secular upbringing. This was one of the issues I faced myself when
having to study something so complex and foreign as Hinduism, Buddhism and
indeed Greek Mythology. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to
categorise and put everything in neat little boxes with ribbons on top to
finish it off and store away, organised nicely. However this concept does not
work when faced with the complexities of Greek Mythology, which we quickly saw
in our lecture, when we tried to pair up and organise some of the major Greek
deities, our white-board very quickly became messy and full of scribbles as you
can see in the photo.
There has
been a much bigger focus in later years that scholars need to take a couple of
steps back, leave their own views behind and look with fresh eyes on the
material. This is especially evident when we try to sort the gods as seen in
the photo from our lecture. Previously there has been a focus in academia to
study deities on a one by one basis and separate them as much as possible, or there had been an attempt to separate into the pairs of two, greatly inspired by Jean Pierre Vernants
work on the Hestia-Hermesrelationship. However I would like to argue that this approach no longer
works. It is clear, and probably has been for some time (but scholars are
stubborn creatures) that it is rarely possible to research Greek deities without
addressing the tangled relationships they share with each other. It might be
time to take a different approach in studying these ancient deities, a fresh
pair of eyes has never hurt anyone, it might lead to some exciting new
breakthroughs!
Another
issue that makes it incredibly difficult to study Greek deities with ‘modern’
eyes is the use of epithets. RobertParker states that
‘a god with three sanctuaries in a given city
would normally bear a different epitaph in each. The cult epitaph system was
thus a central element in thus emphasis on the particular sanctuary, the cult
as practised in a particular place, so characteristic of Greek religion.’
The
epithets can therefore be seen as a way of separating various places of
worship, but it is also important to remember that it was not just places of
worship that gave various epithets, the actions and attributes of a deity could
also lead to separation. Artemis Lochia was a watcher of childbirth
whilst Artemis Agrotera was ‘The
Huntress’. I must admit that this has been one of the most confusing aspects
for me to study. It has taken me much effort to set aside my conceptions and I
still struggle with the concept that Artemis Lochia and Artemis Agrotera
are both the same goddess but could also be found to be worshipped as separate
deities. At first I considered that the Greeks were worshipping just a part of
what made up the whole of the goddess Artemis, but that is not quite right
either. They are both the same but at the same time different, I think partly
why it was so difficult for me was because I kept associating epithets with the
Christian concept of the Holy Trinity, another example of how I was not able to
step away from previously learned concepts to study Greek mythology.
Bibliography:
- Parker, R.
(2011) OnGreek Religion (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology). Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press p. 67
No comments:
Post a Comment