Myth and History in Ancient Greece
Subtitle: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: July 2, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9780691114583
Subjects: Ancient Greek religion; Myths & mythology; Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval; History: World; Cyrene (Extinct city); History; Sociology; Ancient (Classical) Greek; Ancient Greece; Mythology, Greek; Ancient - Greece; Antiquities & Archaeology; Folklore & Mythology - Mythology; Classics; History / Ancient / Greece
First sentence: Is it appropriate once again to question that privileged object of the study of cultural anthropology that has evolved through the course of more than a century as "myth"?
Description: "Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an "archaeology." They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most "mythical" of the Greek colonies - Cyrene, in eastern Libya."--Jacket.