Giants, titans, and civil strife in the Greek &amp; Roman world down through the age of Augustus
Creators: name: Wright, David J.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2018

description: This project explores the myth of the Gigantomachy leading up to and during the age of Augustus. Scholarship often reads the myth as an allegory of order triumphing over chaos, or “civilization” over “barbarism,” and the myth is often thought to represent Greece’s conflict with foreign entities. In this study, I highlight some of the themes, both inherent in the myth and highlighted by poets and artists, that undermine this simplistic binary. In fact, I examine many examples when the myth signifies a conflict that may not be foreign at all, but rather a conflict from within. By the time the myth appears in Augustan poetry, it has strong connotations of civil war. Though the more traditional view of the myth might align with the agenda of various political propagandists in Rome’s civil wars, poets such as Vergil and Propertius draw attention to complicating elements in the myth to undermine any overly simplistic interpretations of these conflicts. Chapter 1 explores the Gigantomachy and Titanomachy in the Archaic period in both poetry and sculpture. I address some of the “traditional” interpretations in the poetry of Hesiod and Pindar, as well as some complications to the simplistic “order vs. chaos” binary. I also treat some of the myth’s connections to civil strife in visual art and poetry. Chapter 2 examines the myth in the 5th and 4th century Athens. While the image of the Gigantomachy on the Parthenon is often cited as being emblematic of Greece’s victory over foreign enemies, I highlight the myth’s problematic elements and its connection to civil strife in tragedy, comedy, and Plato. Chapter 3 considers the Gigantomachy in the Hellenistic era. During this period, the myth has connotations of a victory of the “civilized” over “uncivilized” due to court poets like Callimachus, who attempt to make Macedonian kings seem more legitimate through likening their victories over foreign people to the Olympians over the Giants. At the same time, I show that the Great Altar of Pergamum, a monument which is also cited as emblematic of this traditional viewpoint, has problematic elements that complicate an “order vs. chaos” meaning. Other later Hellenistic poets also exploit ambiguous elements of the Gigantomachy to subtly criticize powerful figures such as Philip V and Rome itself.Chapter 4 analyzes the significance of the myth in the middle and late Roman Republic.  During the early Republic, the Romans occupied an uncertain space on the “civilized vs. uncivilized” spectrum. The presentation of the Gigantomachy in the poetry of Naevius reflects this uncertainty. The myth in the poetry of Ennius may suggest that fraternal strife was at the very outset of the Annales. During the Late Republic, civil war was painfully frequent throughout Italy, and the Gigantomachy becomes a fitting allegory for this type of conflict.In Chapter 5, this dissertation reaches its culmination: the Gigantomachy myth in the Augustan era, a time in which the myth is especially prominent. While, on the one hand, Augustan propaganda might resonate with the more “traditional” interpretation of the myth, Augustan poets subtly draw attention to some of the more troubling aspects of Gigantomachy. Given the time period’s fatigue with civil war, the Gigantomachy is an apt myth to process the chaotic violence of the civil wars of the late first century BCE.