Classical Mythology

Course Number 243; 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by: Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, University of Maryland, College Park

From A for Athena to Z for Zeus, classical mythology is a treasure trove of

unforgettable characters and stories. They have inspired countless works of

great art, and stimulated interpreters from Aeschylus to Joseph Campbell.

Themes and images from myth- the labors of Hercules, the wrath of Achilles, the

struggle between Theseus and the Minotaur, the terrible journey to self-

knowledge of Oedipus-are fascinating to learn about. They help to form the very

foundations of our culture, offer food for thought about timeless human

questions, and can repay your study with fresh harvests of insight.

Now you can enjoy an illuminating exploration of the great Greek and Roman myths

with Classical Mythology, a set of 24 half-hour lectures by Professor Elizabeth

Vandiver. Professor Vandiver has won high praise from Teaching Company customers

for her previous Great Courses on Tape® dealing with the epic poetry of Homer

and Virgil. Her approach is both sophisticated and accessible. Her lectures are

carefully thought-out, and exceptionally informative as regards both time-

honored and more recent scholarship.

You need no special knowledge of classical languages, history, or culture to get

the most from these richly suggestive lectures. Everything you require to master

the course material is on the tapes or in the booklets that you receive along

with them. This includes not only Professor Vandiver's lectures themselves and

their printed outlines, but also questions for study and discussion, a

chronology, a glossary of terms, and an annotated reading list.

Professor Vandiver begins by discussing and evaluating leading theoretical

approaches to mythology. Together with her, you consider the ideas of some of

the most influential 19th-and 20th-century students of myth, including Sigmund

Freud, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Sir James Frazer, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. By

starting in this way, Professor Vandiver provides you with an invaluable

intellectual framework for the rest of your learning in this course. And she

also gives you a vivid sense of the cultural fecundity of classical myth, which

has been stimulating new ideas and interpretations for thousands of years.

Among the theoretical questions you explore in the opening lectures are why

cultures generate mythic narratives, and what their myths say about those

cultures-their hopes, anxieties, and achievements, their attitudes about life

and the world. You also look at the relationship between myth, which is

preliterate in origin, and literature, which is the medium through which we-the

distant posterity of Greece and Rome-know these ancient stories.

Lectures 4 through 6 concentrate on the accounts of the creation of the world

and the battle between the Titans and the Olympian gods given in Hesiod's

Theogony and the Metamorphoses of the much later Roman author, Ovid. Hesiod is

our source for the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, which Professor Vandiver

probes for what they tell us about Greek views of women and gender roles, and of

relations between gods and humans.

In Lectures 7 through 11, you focus on individual gods, beginning with the

crucial myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. What does this story say about

the Greek view of life and death, of men and women, and of marriage? Lecture 8

treats the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most important ancient religious

cults, which honored Demeter and promised a happy afterlife. Lecture 9 discusses

Artemis and Apollo. Why was the latter's shrine at Delphi one of the most

important places in Greece? Lecture 10 examines Zeus' two youngest sons, Hermes

and Dionysos, while Lecture 11 concentrates on Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual

passion. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, which recounts her affair with the human

Anchises, is another excellent source for understanding the Greek view of sexual

passion and relations between the sexes.

Lecture 12 turns to the background of Greek myth. You weigh the intriguing

similarities between Hesiod's creation account and Mesopotamian myth; then you

learn about the two great prehistoric cultures of Greece, the Minoan and the

Mycenaean, and their role in giving rise to classical myths. The modern theory

of a prehistoric "great mother goddess" serves as a test case for the

difficulties of reconstructing prehistoric religious beliefs.

With Lectures 13 through 16, your focus shifts again, this time from immortal

gods to mortal heroes. Do the tales of heroes such as Theseus and Hercules

(Heracles) reflect memories of the Mycenaean Age?

Lecture 17 summarizes the legends surrounding the Trojan War, the most famous of

all mythic sources. Lectures 18 and 19 take up the tragic story of one of the

leading families involved in that war, the House of Atreus. Its tale of bloody

vengeance and a hereditary curse raises profound concerns about fate, individual

responsibility, violence, and justice that Aeschylus reflected on in his great

dramatic trilogy, The Oresteia. Lecture 20 addresses similar issues in its

examination of Sophocles' Oedipus the King.

Lecture 21 pulls together several threads of earlier lectures by examining the

threatening women and female monsters whom so many Greek heroes must face. The

lecture concentrates on the Amazons and Medea, and includes a brief discussion

of monsters such as Medusa and the Sphinx.

Lectures 22 and 23 focus on the Romans, who made the story of the Trojan War the

basis of a foundation myth despite the purely indigenous legend of Romulus and

Remus. Lecture 23 sets the Metamorphoses in context by examining the cultural

milieu in which Ovid wrote. The lecture also considers the difficulties of

trying to recover myths from Ovid's very literary, ironic retelling of them.

To conclude her lectures, Professor Vandiver examines the enormous influence

that Ovid in particular and classical myth in general have exerted over

European, English, and American culture. To underline this point, she shows how

the popular modern genre of science fiction has become a vehicle for numerous

mythic themes, from the "test-and-quest" pattern evident in the Star Wars movies

to the Hesiodic and Homeric echoes of The Road Warrior films and Star Trek.