Myth as Source of Knowledge in Early Western Thought: The Quest for Historiography, Science and Philosophy in Greek Antiquity

291 Pages·2015·2.891 MB·English

by  Harald Haarmann

Harald Haarmann
Myth as source of knowledge
in early western thought
The quest for historiography, science and philosophy
in Greek antiquity
Harrassowitz
194071-OHV-Haarmann-Umschlag.indd 1
Harald Haarmann
Myth as source of knowledge in early western thought
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Harald Haarmann
Myth as source of knowledge
in early western thought
The quest for historiography, science and philosophy
in Greek antiquity
2015
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Cover illustration:
Part of The nine muses [Urania, Thalia, Terpsichore, Polyhymnia, Melpomene, Erato,
Euterpe, Clio, Calliope]; on a Roman sarcophagus (2nd century CE; original in the Louvre).
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Myth as a human condition ............................................................. 1
1. Myth through the ages: Crafting realities in a mythopoeic key ...................... 9
Myth and environment .................................................................................... 13
Myth and culture ............................................................................................. 14
Myth and world-view ...................................................................................... 15
Myth and science ............................................................................................ 15
Myth and politics ............................................................................................ 18
2. Myth and knowledge – An intimate yet little known relationship .................. 25
Balancing views on the relationship between myth-making, historio-
graphy and philosophy .................................................................................... 25
Myth-making as an integral part of ancient knowledge-construction ............. 27
The reflection of mythic traditions in cultural memory .................................. 28
Positions of ancient historians and philosophers vis-à-vis myth ..................... 30
Mythos and logos: a case of competing modes of enquiry? ............................ 34
3. Exploring the world through myth: The organic whole and its mythopoeic
conceptualizations ........................................................................................... 37
Narration and its mythopoeic conceptualizations ........................................... 38
Mythic cosmology and the impact of the supernatural ................................... 42
The world of gods and mythical heroes in epic poetry ................................... 44
Interactional patterns of gods and mortals in Greek theater ............................ 51
The necessity of using myth when addressing the public in Greek antiquity . 53
4. History before writing: Foundational myths as building-blocks for
knowledge-construction .................................................................................. 57
Myths as indicators of cultural fusion: The Greeksʼ encounters with their
predecessors and how these contacts are reflected in the mythical tradition .. 58
The mythical ages of humankind and the rise of civilization.......................... 66
Celebrating cultural achievements in Greek mythology:
Mythical perceptions of the origins of agriculture, wine and olive
cultivation, weaving, metallurgy ..................................................................... 71
Demeter and her gift of agriculture ................................................................. 72
Dionysos and his gift of wine ......................................................................... 75
Athena and her gift of the olive tree ............................................................... 76
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VI Table of Contents
Athena and her gift of weaving ....................................................................... 77
Hephaistos and his gift of metallurgy ............................................................. 80
Themis and her gift of customary law ............................................................. 83
5. Myth-making as social and political agency: Myths as vehicles for group
solidarity and ethnic self-identification ........................................................... 87
Myth as tradition ............................................................................................. 87
The popularity of mythical genealogies for Greek aristocratic lineages ......... 89
Myths to live by: The significance of oracles and their pronouncements ....... 99
The political impact of myth: Athena and Erechtheus in the foundation
myth of the Athenian state .............................................................................. 103
The need of innovation: Mythical traditions in the horizon of time ................ 106
6. Preconditions for the making of history and of philosophy: The inter-
relation of orality and literacy ......................................................................... 109
Getting writing right: The impact of writing as an information technology ... 110
Deconstructing modern myths about writing Greek ....................................... 113
Tracing the ancestry of Linear A: Continuity and transformations in the
Balkanic-Aegean convergence zone .......................................................... 117
Tracing sources of Linear B (other than Linear A): The legacy of the
Danube script in the Cycladic Islands and on the mainland ...................... 120
The Old European legacy in the Cycladic Islands ..................................... 121
The Old European legacy on the mainland ............................................... 122
The legacy of Linear B: Safeguarding continuity for literacy in the
Greek world ............................................................................................... 124
Minoan literacy and the Cyprian connection: The emergence of Cypro-
Minoan and Cypriot-Syllabic .................................................................... 125
Myths about the role of the alphabet and the true story of the Greek
letters ......................................................................................................... 128
Orality and literacy in classical antiquity ........................................................ 133
How to use language properly for writing history and rendering
philosophical discourse? ................................................................................. 137
7. Conceptualizing divinely inspired order: The endeavour of pre-Socratic
philosophers to rationalize mythical truths ..................................................... 141
Competing modes of enquiry: Questioning traditions and mythic
experiences ...................................................................................................... 143
Myth and reasoning: A crucial linkage in allegorical interpretation ............... 150
Picking up the threads: The rope model of repetitive continuity of ideas ....... 153
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Table of Contents VII
Reflecting on nature and cosmic order: Some influential pre-Socratic
philosophers .................................................................................................... 157
Parmenides ................................................................................................ 159
Anaxagoras ................................................................................................ 163
Protagoras .................................................................................................. 163
Xenophanes ............................................................................................... 164
Democritus ................................................................................................ 165
Herakleitos (Heraclitus) ............................................................................ 166
The legacy of the pre-Socratics ....................................................................... 168
8. Myth into historiography: Herodotus and his mytho-historical world ............ 173
The problem of continuity: How to describe events since Deukalion and
the Great Flood?.............................................................................................. 179
The endeavour of Herodotus: Ancient explanations for the clash of
civilizations ..................................................................................................... 185
How to read myth in the Histories .................................................................. 191
Herodotus as myth-maker: Crafting a myth about the rise of democracy ....... 196
The pragmatic-political framework set up by Cleisthenes in his reforms . 197
The covert trend of self-administration and self-determination in the
village communities (demes)..................................................................... 200
The myth of Athenian democracy as the hub of freedom .......................... 204
9. Myth into philosophy: Plato as mythologist ................................................... 209
Platoʼs respect for old traditions and mythic truths......................................... 213
Myth as a tool of philosophical reasoning: Platoʼs use of traditional myths
and his invention of new ones ......................................................................... 215
Platoʼs concept of “a probable story” (eikos mythos) ..................................... 219
Platoʼs concept of “divine law” ...................................................................... 224
The issue of gender as a topic in Platoʼs Laws ................................................ 227
The general assessment of gender roles (book VII: 804d-806c) ............... 229
The aim of legislation to achieve virtue; (book VI: 770c-d6) ................... 230
The question of public activities for women (book VI: 781a2-b4)
and of holding public offices (book VI: 785b2-9) ..................................... 230
Musical education and entertainment for the sexes (book VI: 764c-
765a; book VII: 802a-e) ............................................................................ 232
The issue of women as soldiers in the army (book VII: 804d-805a) ......... 232
The scope of marriage (book VI: 783e ff.) ................................................ 233
The issue of childbearing and motherhood (book VI: 785b, 833c-d,
834a-d, 947b-d) ......................................................................................... 233
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VIII Table of Contents
10. Hellenistic transformations: Stigmatizing myth as source of knowledge ....... 235
Platoʼs Academy: Rise and decline of a civic institution of learning .............. 235
Consequences of specialization of Hellenistic thought: Losing sight of
the organic whole ............................................................................................ 239
Hellenistic mythography as literature for entertainment ................................. 241
In the aftermath of antiquity: A major rescue operation to secure
Hellenistic sources .......................................................................................... 242
Epilogue: The ideology of myth-dismissal and the cult of reason in
the New Era .......................................................................................................... 245
Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 253
List of figures ....................................................................................................... 275
Index ..................................................................................................................... 277

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Introduction
Myth as a human condition
“What we know is a drop; what we donʼt know is an ocean”
(Isaac Newton 1687; Fabiola Giannotti, CERN 2011)
Introduction: Myth as a human condition
When encountering concepts like ʻmythʼ and ʻmythologyʼ in our modern world we
usually associate them with legends, fairy-tales or fantastic stories, and it is com-
monplace to consider such stories untrue. What comes to mind is the popular adage
that we search for reality behind the myth. When we have to do with issues relating
to historiography, philosophy and science, we tend to associate these fields (the
natural sciences in particular) with reasoning, truth-finding and academic discourse.
Through the prism of our Western education we have been conditioned to think in
binary terms, contrasting myth as something unreal and irrational with the estab-
lished domains of the humanities and of natural science in their enlightened objec-
tivity. Yet such a dichotomy results in stereotypes and and generalisations, which
fail to reflect realities, both historical or modern.
In our historical retrospective, most of us are conditioned to perceive the rise of
historiography, science and philosophy as the divergence of objective knowledge-
construction from a stage of “primitive” thinking which was, allegedly, oriented
solely towards imaginative speculations. Those who share this mentality
“[...] will long have been familiar with the idea that the development of man-
kind as a whole has tended to follow a trajectory leading from Mythos to Lo-
gos, and will have learned that a development of this sort not only took place
in ancient Greece but has also been one of the most important parts of the
legacy of the classical world to Western civilization. Such an idea is ex-
pounded in numerous works of scholarship and, even more, in countless pop-
ular presentations; and indeed there is much to be said for it, not least that it
enlists the Greeks in the service of modern impulses towards Enlightenment
whose benefits many of us have come to count upon (and thereby legitimates
at one stroke both the ancients and the moderns).” (Most 1999: 25)
It is noteworthy that the author from whose text the quotation is made actually ques-
tions the validity of this sort of mainstream mentality, and he has chosen the follow-
ing title for his contribution: “From logos to mythos”. Indeed, the alleged displace-
ment of mythos by logos in ancient Greece is itself a myth, a myth of our modern
age, to be precise.
We have to make an effort to overcome stereotypical views about the nature of
myths and mythology, with the negative connotations they carry in our conditioned
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