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History 104A, September 19: Fates, Hubris and Polis + Bull Stories
Last week, Friday -- before I start on that. I wanted to remind
you that your group meeting grades are posted on-line so that if you
go up to my site, as indicated, go to western civilization, find the
little green man sticking his tongue out at you that says grades, and
then you have to listen to Yoda, you have nothing to fear but fear
itself. So they are there for the last two group meetings. Of course
again, while the first group meeting is beyond the deadline, if any of
you missed the second group meeting, you have two weeks from last
Friday to get the paper in for credit. Any questions on that? And
the next group meeting is near the end of the month with the exam
coming up right after. The exam is on the 30th. We are on schedule.
It looks like we're okay to go. And Pita, will remind me to make up a
take-home question. If he doesn't, then I won't have one ready for
you. You'll have a choice of one out of three essays to do.
Q Is that for the exam?
A I might need one as well.
THE PROFESSOR: It's not for him. He's going to remind me for
the class. Somebody has got the e-mail me or I forget and then I
bring it into class. When I bring it into class, I give it to you and
then you can go home if you'd like and prepare it. However, you can't
bring in the answer with you except in your head.
Q What about taking the exam early?
THE PROFESSOR: Oh in your case, you're taking it early.
A I told you about two weeks ago.
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THE PROFESSOR: Yeah, I told you I would forget anyway. That
you'll take by my office. It will be a different exam.
A I'll just remind you everyday.
THE PROFESSOR: When I walk out of here, it's not going to do me
any good.
As I was saying, I mentioned last week about the beginning of
archaeology to prove that the Greek myths had some basis in fact.
Obviously, there's no way to prove whether Hercules had 40 sons or not
or if he ever existed, but we do have at least the identification that
there was a City of Troy that was destroyed. We do know that there
was an advanced civilization in Crete. And the Cretan civilization
has always been fascinating to me for three reasons. I've changed my
order of the reason for fascination. Years ago my order was
different; but with age, the first order today that fascinates me are
toilets. They had running water and pipes and flush toilets
basically. Now, that's got to be an advance civilization. I put that
number one. It used to be number three. With age, I have to
reconsider.
Number two, that always fascinated me about Crete was the men
wearing their loincloths, always very tan with very narrow wastes and
broad soldiers, participating in gymnastics. That's now, number two.
I think that was always number one. But my number one is now three.
And that was outfits the women wore showed their breasts. That's
number three. For some of you guys, you can put that for number one.
In fact, the style interestingly came into fashion at a point during
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the French Revolution when some of the pictures of the Minoan Cretan
civilization began to appear, women started wearing very low cut with
the sort of beehive Marge Simpson hairdos. We still have the
Simpsons; right? That's still something you watch? I have to keep up
with whatever the new trend is. I know the Smurfs are gone except for
Ahmand over there. The only reason we can pick on him is because he
keeps his parents happy. He told me that already. He picks on me so
it's even.
In any case -- off the subject. I'll never forget going for
homecoming years back to my son's home college, Rutgers, and it was on
a Saturday morning and they were just beginning to play the college
soccer and all they talked about was that morning's episode of the
Smurfs. When you go to a real college, you'll be discussing the
Simpsons or whatever the new show is, King of the Hill or Sponge Bob.
A Yeah, Sponge Bob.
THE PROFESSOR: All right. Onward.
The other element that fascinated me, of course, was the
gymnastics. Having coached gymnastics, obviously participating at
some point, the fascination I had was that they were able to do their
gymnastics vaulting over bulls. They literally apparently had the
bulls charging. They would grab the horns as if they were vaulting
horns, and they could do flips with catchers on the other side of the
bull. Now is that a lot of bull or not? Nobody has been willing to
test it out in recent years. However, it is believed that the young
people that were engaged were actually young people sent to Crete for
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tribute who were, in a sense, trained to perform in the bull rings, if
you want to call it that way, to do the gymnastics because they were
foreign slaves, if you will. And that's where I wanted to go to with
Theseus or the Greek myth that I said I would get to.
The Crete, Minoan civilization did spread out over the
Mediterranean and perhaps before the Mycenaean civilization took over
that particular area of what we today call Greece. In tribute, it
appears that they demand from each of the cities once a year seven
boys and seven young girls to sacrifice, according to mythology to the
Mentor. The Mentor was a creature that was half bull and half human.
Now, the bull became sacred to Crete and symbolic of Zeus. Often
Crete had earthquakes. Earthquakes sound like a bull roaring. And
Zeus was apparently hidden in a mountain cave in Crete by his mother
to escape his father Kronos swallowing him and eating him because the
fates had predicted that his son would kill him. And so he got hid of
him, but he didn't get rid of him. He swallowed a big rock instead.
On the island of Crete, the story went that there was a queen,
Minos' wife whose name was Pasiphae, Minos being the king. And she
could not be pacified. She was, to use a slang term, a nymphomaniac,
although psychologists say they really don't exist, but then he didn't
watch Sex In the City. And from there, she decided to experiment.
And she sort of wanted to have sex with a bull, but that was a bit
dangerous and the bull wasn't really interested even if she looked
like a cow. So they had this great scientist -- you didn't learn it
this way; right? The story is basically there. They had this great
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scientist named Daedalus. Daedalus is famous for the destruction of
Crete, developing wings to fly away with wax and feathers. Of course,
if you recall, he told his son not to fly too high. But you know how
sons are. They disappear. They're parents, and the son's name was --
A Icarus.
THE PROFESSOR: The sun melted his wings and he landed in the sea
which was named after him, the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece on
the left.
In any case, the Daedalus invented, before we've used them in the
breeding farms, a metal cow. And today of course they use phony cows
and things like that to get the experiment, but this is the first time
we had a metal of it. And Pasiphae got inside the cow. The bull had
sex with the cow but he really had it with Pasiphae. And she bore a
creature half man, half bull. The story of course is bull, but in
this case, that creature scared everyone, was devastating, and so
rather kill the son of the queen, they placed the Mentor in a
labyrinth. The labyrinth was actually found, if you will, in a sense
because apparently the palace of Knossos the capitol of Crete when Sir
Arthur Evans dug it up, he found underneath, which some were used for
the heating process, and the stones for building what in a sense could
be called a labyrinth. Well, every year the myth goes, the seven boys
and seven girls were fed or sacrificed to the Mentor.
Now, one of the cities that owed a allegiance to Crete was the
City of Athens. Athens existed in an Attica peninsula which is this
upper area up here. The king of Athens at the time of King Minos
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mythology-wise was a man named Aegeus A-E-G-E-U-S. Aegeus was told
that his son would return to him -- how did it go? His son was left
and his son was return missing a sandal, would save the city, and
would become king, but in a sense, would kill his father or something
to that effect. In any case, his mother left with his son who's named
Theseus. They went north and lived near Macedonia. And when Theseus
was of mature age, he did return home, had lost his sandal, he was
recognized by King Aegeus as his son, and Aegeus had no other heirs.
However, in Athens, a semi democratic society at that time, the
tribute, the seven boys and the seven girls names to be sent to
sacrifice were drawn out of a pot, hat, whatever, by lot. One of the
seven boys that were chosen by lot -- everybody's name no matter what
status went in -- was Theseus. So the death ships with their black
sail set forth to deliver the sacrifices to the island of Crete. It
had a black sail which Aegeus said if his son should be saved, that
the sail should come back white so that he would know ahead of time.
Aegeus lands on the island of Crete and there the princess of Crete,
Ariadne falls in love with this good looking hero Schwarzenegger
type and she speaks to Daedalus to help save him. And Daedalus sneaks
him a sword and provides him with a roll of thread or string. So when
he goes into the labyrinth, he will be able to eliminate the Mentor or
escape and find his way back. Theseus, sleighing the Mentor, follows
the string back and rejects Ariadne, obviously like a true hero, like
his true superstars like we mentioned before. Supermen, heroes cannot
have women impeding their greatness, so he leaves her. She becomes
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distraught. She leaves Crete and joins a Dionysian cult. It's sort
of like joining the Moonies. And then the Dionysian cult is famous
for its continuous drinking alcohol and sexual freedoms. She goes
nuts like a true scorned woman. And he returns. However, apparently
he either forgets or he intentionally does not change the sail. His
father, Aegeus, looking out over the sea, hearing the ship is
returning, notices a black sail, gets very upset, and jumps off the
cliffs of Athens or Piraeus which is the port into the sea, and the
sea is then named the Aegean Sea after Aegeus' suicide. That of
course is the mythology that Sir Arthur Evans was attempting to search
out.
Crete was a seafaring nation in its conquests. It went out on
the Mediterranean Sea and apparently did take control of these areas.
Many of the drawings, the friezes, the paintings, if you will, had
dolphins and various symbols some of which are symbols such as the
double headed ox comes from Egypt. There obviously were some ties
with Egypt. And some of these symbols from Egypt are believed to come
out the Egyptian desert city. Minoan language still has not been
translated, but we do see on these friezes the priests of Minos or
Mentor of Zeus who wore bull masks. Again, it could have been just
the mythology coming forth. We do see on those drawings the
gymnastics, the bull jumping, and so there is no reason to doubt that
it did occur as fascinating and interesting as it is, but
historically, young people are crazy and there's no reason why they
could not have been engaged in that kind of activity. I was looking
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at today's paper, they had apparently a circus down in Newpark and, as
usual, most of the acts are Russian. And you're talking 17, 18,
19-year-old people with the ability to participate in this gymnastics
and the Olympics finally banned these 11 and 12-year-olds from
participating. What's the age now? 16 for participation in
gymnastics in the Olympics. So that of course was part of the
mythology.
The other famous myth of the time or the one that we're familiar
with is the story of Oedipus. I'm trying to remember the myth part.
Oedipus, if you remember, came from the City of Thebes. Now,
interestingly, there is a Thebes in Egypt. And Velikovsky and some
others identify the myth coming out of Egypt to Greece because it also
deals with the sphinx coming out of Egypt as well. The story goes
that the king and queen of Thebes go to the oracle at Delphi. And at
Delphi, the oracles actually predicted things apparently with some
sort of weird drug that they took from gases there. And the priests
would interpret and of course the interpretations were always sort of
broad. To the Greeks, fate was inevitable. To the Greeks, the fates
were higher than the Gods. The Gods could not change fate. So the
Gods of Greece were not all powerful. The fates were more powerful
than the Gods. To confront the Gods, to think you were better than
Gods, or to -- no connection -- to think you were better than the Gods
would be that you would be committing the highest of Greek sins called
hubris. Hubris in English terms refers to excessive pride. If one
went against the Gods when one committed hubris, you would be punished
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by the furies. They would be furious. That's where the word comes
from. In reality, when we talk of Greek tragedies, a Greek tragedy is
not something that happens to somebody that as we use the word tragic
today, hurtful, harmful, upsetting. Tragedy was somebody who was
stupid enough to go against hubris, to commit hubris, to go against
the fates.
What I've done and it's on-line and it will be injected into the
lecture when it goes on-line today is just on the top of my head
because I didn't have a lot of time and thinking. And using some of
the words in your book, I popped in a word list so it will help in the
spelling for all of us. That's what I'm putting up right now. Since
I don't trust quote/unquote PC's and they don't trust me and we don't
get along well, I put it up on-line.
Dev2.Ohlone.EDU/people/AKirshner/greekterms.PPT
We're been talking about fate and hubris, the fates and the
hubris. Back where we were the, the story of Oedipus Rex perhaps
coming out of ancient Egypt. The oracle at Delphi informs the king of
Thebes that his son will not only kill him but marry his mother.
Following the Greek tradition, when the child is born, the Greeks
practiced infanticide meaning that they had the option of putting a
child, once born, onto the mountainside where the child would either
be taken up or down to Hades or they could be adopted if somebody
found the child. In the democratic societies, babies were determined
as to whether they would be placed on the mountainside by their
parents. In the autocratic societies such as Sparta, the kings would
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decide which children should be placed on the mountainside because
they either would turn out to be poor soldiers or, for women, poor
breeders. The parents of Oedipus placed him on the mountainside
outside of Thebes and a couple who came from the north found the baby,
adopted him, but never told him that he was adopted. When he was of
mature age, Oedipus went to the oracle of Delphi to learn his fate and
was told that his fate was to kill his father and marry his mother. I
think most of you are somewhat familiar with the myth. And he dives
to leave his parents who he thinks are his natural parents and heads
out on an adventure. In Thebes or around Thebes at the time there was
this devastating monster who was destroying the land, eating the
crops, and killing anybody it encountered. And this was called a
sphinx. Oedipus, on the road, encounters the sphinx who is a wise ass
and decides that he will always give people a chance if they can
respond to his riddle. Riddle me that and -- nobody knows what riddle
me this and riddle me that comes from? The old Batman series. Never
mind. And so with what the sphinx says to Oedipus -- what crawls in
the morning -- I'm sorry -- what walks on four legs in the morning,
walks two legs in the afternoon, and walks on three legs in the
evening? And Oedipus thinks a while and does respond with the right
answer which is?
A Man.
THE PROFESSOR: Or he doesn't mention women but we can throw that
in. When they're young, they crawl. When they're mature, they walk
on two legs. And when they're old, they walk on three using a cane.
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Because his riddle has been discovered, the sphinx self-destructs,
jumps into a chasm and kills itself. However, as he's proceeding, he
encounters and nobleman with his retainers and they challenge him and
like typical noblemen, seeing a commoner, they're wise asses, but he
doesn't put up for it and he wipes out the king and his retainers,
which is of course really his father. Being a hero and having
destroyed the sphinx, when he returns to Thebes the queen is without a
husband. And so she marries Oedipus not knowing of course that it is
her son. And of course that leads to the Freudian term the Oedipus
complex which, does anybody know what the term is when you want to
kill your mother and marry your father?
A The Electra complex.
THE PROFESSOR: In any case, Oedipus -- I'm sorry. They find out
later after burying a couple of children and Oedipus, not realizing
that he has not been able to overcome his fate, he has committed
hubris by attempting to avoid his fate and therefore must be punished
by the furies. But in response to his own punishment, he tears out
his eyes in grief and now walks around guided by a cane with the
furies attacking him, and one of his daughters at least helping to
guide him around for the rest of his life in pain and in misery. That
is the story of Oedipus that encounters and deals with two of the main
three elements that really describe Greek life -- fate, hubris, and
the third one is there as well, but I didn't quite mention it, polis
P-O-L-I-S.
The polis refers to a city state the Greek society until
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Alexander the Great is broken into many city states. They are cities
that have land around them. And as we move into the so-called Achaean
period after about 800, these city states always Crete sort of empires
by founding colonies and starting at around 800 maybe earlier, Greek
cities spread out throughout this area that you see the dark orange.
And there are many Greek cities, by the way. And it doesn't really
show it very well here. In Egypt as well in what are called gnomes.
And these cities are related and tied to the mother polis. Sometimes
of course breaking off, but have the identity of the polis is
important and to the motherland is important, to the mother city,
because it really provides a sense of belonging, a sense of community.
Thebes was a polis, a city state with a sense of community. Your
whole life was centered in the city. The worse punishment perhaps
even worse than death for a Greek was to be thrown out of the city and
denied citizenship. And the word used was ostracism. Once
ostracized, you were a man or a woman without a nation, without a
country, or in Greek terms, without a polis. Of course today we see a
little of that, well a lot of that I suppose with nationalism. We
can't really use the term nationalism -- I'm not sure if there was a
word for it, but it's in a sense identified with that same nationalist
identity. And of course, the Greeks had a chauvinism as well, which
was their city was better than all others and would dominate in the
future. So again, the principle.
The Greeks themselves refer to themselves as graeci. However,
the terms given through the Roman, a more common use continuously are
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the Hellenes. Does it come from Helen of Troy?
A No.
THE PROFESSOR: I'm not sure. Maybe and maybe not and maybe that
was a sense of the myth that came with it. During the period of
Alexander and afterwards, we refer to it as the Hellenistic period.
Please do not confuse Helen and Hellenistic. The Helen period is the
period from I guess you'd say Troy, Mycenae down through Philip of
Macedonia and that is the fourth century, the middle of the fourth
century, Philip of Macedonia being Alexander of Macedonia's father, so
from about 1200 to about 350 BCE it is the Hellenes period. After
that, for about 200 to 300 years, it's the Hellenistic.
Those who were not Greek, translation, did not speak the Greek
language, were known as barbarians, non-Greek speaking. It was a
derogatory term. It was an insulting term. As the Greek cities
emerge, they begin to develop various forms of government sometimes
passing from one to the other. And when we say they're emerging, as I
say, we had the great period of Greece in the Mycenae area was about
1100 BCE 1200, if you will, we enter what's called the dark ages of
Greek. Perhaps they never existed, as I said, with Velikovsky. As we
move out of the dark ages, at around 800, we see an Egyptian influence
because the statues and the Gods begin to have an Egyptian striped
body, very squarish, with the left foot forward. The left foot was
always forward. However, as we move outside into the Akkadian period,
600 or 500 BCE, we begin to see a more natural appearance in the
sculptures because the Greeks used an idealism. So with the city
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states, starting around 800s, we begin to see the emergence first of
what we might call monarchies, absolute monarchies. One person rules
with absolute power. From this we begin to see the emergence of
limited monarchy that develops in many of the cities into aristocracy,
meaning ruled by the best usually through blood, being born that way.
By the way, monarchy is inherited ruled generally defined. However,
in many of the Greek cities, the monarchs were actually elected. In
fact, Sparta had two kings, one for military and one for political
actions. From aristocracy often came oligarchy or ruled by the few.
And during the oligarchy, you began to see the emergence of despots
and tyrants. The Greeks had different terms or different meanings.
We often use the term despot. A despot was a person that ruled for
themselves in an autocratic fashion and could well be quote/unquote
evil. A tyrant ruled for the people and generally provided for the
people. And tyrants were the ones who introduced in some of the Greek
states of course most formidable democracy by creating a writing,
Constitutions that were given to the people to provide them certain
rights. And the Greek cities began to develop constitutional forms of
government that described their form of government. In the sixth
century, at around 595, in ancient Athens a tyrant by the name of
Solon; Solon gave the City of Athens a Constitution. The Constitution
was the beginning of a people's government. Democracy means
government of the people, Ocracy meaning government and demos meaning
people.
I forget to mention that some of the Greek societies, some of the
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Greek cities also developed theocracies. They're dedicated to certain
Gods and the priests of those Gods ruled. In fact, early Athens had
an element of theocracy in it. The God of Athens was Athena. And
according to mythology, he was born out of the head of Zeus which made
her intelligent. She was the Goddess of wisdom. He had this
tremendous headache, split his head open and out popped his daughter.
Don't try it. In Athens, she took her staff and broke the ground up
at the height of Athens called the acropolis. The acropolis was up at
the top of the city. Usually Greek cities in the early years were
built on a plateau or on a mountain to protect them from invasion.
There she gave Athens the olive tree. And to Athens, the olive tree
gave the city lots of wealth, not just the eating of olives, but olive
oil used for cooking and used for everything else including I guess
sun bathing. Athens traded that olive oil and the olives throughout
the Mediterranean. And since it was near the Aegean Sea, it became a
seafaring port.
Democracy tends to develop in seafaring nations. Does anybody
know why?
A Because they have so much outside influences.
THE PROFESSOR: The outside influences, including contacts with,
if not migration from or immigration from other cultures, which means
with that they are more open to understanding other peoples.
Landlocked nations tend to be more autocratic and conservative because
they're closed, their traditions are closed. You go out to the
farming belt of America and Indiana or where and people are extremely
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conservative -- I was talking to somebody the other day and he said he
went to Atlanta and he found Atlanta 100 times more liberal than where
he lived in Indiana in a rural community where he taught at a college.
People know your business, even if they're 10 miles away, they know
everybody and what's going on. In a city, you're lost. You generally
don't even though your neighbors. You're given the freedom to act
often as you want to act. And so the coasts tend to be liberal.
They're the blue states. And the center tends to be, as we saw in the
last election, the red states. And that has been common historically
to the extent that one of the trends in history -- I didn't realize it
was that close.
One of the trends in history we're going to talk about from time
to time is land power versus sea power and the conflict between the
seafaring nations and the landlocked nations. We'll talk about Sparta
as a landlocked nation, conservative Athens as a seafaring nation,
liberal.
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