9/8/11

"With all the cosmic scaffolding that had stood between the gods and men having thus colapsed, life seemed the more boyant and resplendent, but lonely too, fleeting and irretrievable. Such is the dominant sentiment that runs through the lucid age of Greece from Homer to Euripides. Everything is reduced to a few simple elements that can be reduced no further. Life is no longer a series of trade-offs between invisible powers but 'the sweetness of looking at the light'" (pg.108)
Sacrifice in ancient Greece happened all to frequently. For example, Iphigenia, was sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, so the Greek army could sail across the sea to fight the barbarians in Troy. Iphigenia, for lack of a better word, was a hero for Greece when she was forced to die. The Greeks seem to look at life as almost a meaning less gift or not to important. Death is just another stage of life and depending on what a person does during their life ultimately decides where they will end up once they die. Agamemnon did care about killing his own daughter and with much hesitation but an extreme want and desire to destroy Troy, decided to sacrifice his daughter.

Then when the Achaean's finished fighting in Troy they had to sacrifice another virgin. Again, the winds were not blowing in the right direction. This time it was a girl named Polyxena that was sacrificed. She was to be Achilles wife, but Achilles was killed by Apollo at the end of the battle, so he couldn't save her. He comes back as a spirit and claims his girl after she is also killed. Again, after the girl was sacrificed "they threw leaves over Polyxena as if she had won an event at the games: for this was the way they congratulated the winners" (pg.119). It's strange that no one seemed to care about killing innocent people.

Class Notes:

Mythology is a system that answers all questions, total explanation. Myth is a model for imitation, it is the beginning, it was before anything began, when everything was void, nothingness. Mythology is about tradition. Without tradition people wouldn't know what to do or where they came from.
Etiology is the explanation of how something came to be, short stories.
"Anamnesis- in Meno, Platos character (old teacher) Socrates is challenged by Meno with what has become known as the sophistic paradox, or the paradox of knowledge" (Anamnesis). Because in ilio
tempore (because in the beginning) everyone was born wih innate knowledge that they had aquired in the spirit world, before they were born. People were supposed to know everything there is to know, but they just forgot. So, the function of a teacher is to help the people remember what they already are a supposed to know.
Mnemosynein (memory) is the mother of the nine muses.
We talked about the story, The Myth of the Cave.  Which is about Humans that sat in a cave and were chained up with their backs to the entrance. There were projections by the light on the walls of the cave. The prisoners believed the projections to be reality because they were born in the cave and don't know of anything outside of it. One day one of the prisoners escaped and walkd outside into the light and then realized that his whole life had been only a shadow of illusion. The man returnd to the cave with wonderful news of his new discovery. He told the others what he had found and they became angry because they don't want to understand the truth. Then the cave people kill the man. 
Everything we need to know about life and the world around us was taught to us by nature, how we were raised and where we have lived.
Everything we think we see is not real.
Marduk was a god that was connected with water, vegetation, judgment, and magic. He is a god from ancient Mesopotamia. He was a deity of Babylon.
The Trojan war is the most important event/story in mythology for the Greeks.
Sparagmos: a type of sacrifice where the victims limbs are torn from their body
The real world consists of pain and suffering.

Massacre at Milos happened during the Peloponnesian War, where the Athenians attacked Milos. All of the men were killed and all of the women and children were sold as slaves. Some Athenians were left to repopulate and colonize the city.
The Trojan Women is a story about what happened to the women after the Athenians had killed all the men and sold the women as slaves. The speech of Hecuba happens after the Astyanax is killed and she talks about how wrong it is to kill a young boy and how that it isn't fair that she has to bury her grandson.
Orestes- from his story arose the jury system
Oedpis- fate and free haunted him throughout his life. As a child his heels were drilled and tied together and he was supposed to be left at the top of a mountain to die, but the person who was sent to put him at the top of the hill couldn't leave the kid. He took the child to a city where he was adopted by the King and Queen. When he grew up he found out he was adopted and set out to find his real parents but on his journey he ended up killing his father, then met his mother and without knowing she was his mother, they got together and had children.
Beginning- origins, how things came to be
End (apocalypse)- transformations into something else, veil lifted to show what/how things really are. At the end of the world or the Apocalypse the world will be destroyed and reveal its true self and show how things really are. Apo-calyps: Apo means take off and calyps means veil.


Work Cited
"Anamnesis (philosophy)." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 16 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Sept. 2011.
         <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamnesis_(philosophy)>.