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7 results

  • MATRILINEAL SUCCESSION IN GREEK MYTH

  • Greta Hawes, Rosemary Selth
  • Journal:
    The Classical Quarterly / Volume 74 / Issue 1 / May 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 May 2024, pp. 1-23
    Print publication:
    May 2024
    • Article
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  • This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses MANTO, a digital database of Greek myth, to identify kings who succeed their fathers-in-law, maternal grandfathers, step-fathers, or wives’ previous husbands. Analysis of the fifty-four instances identified shows that the prominence of the ‘succession via widow’ motif in archaic epic is not typical of the broader tradition. Rather, civic mythmaking more commonly relies on succession by sons-in-law and maternal grandsons to craft connections between cities and lineages, and to claim panhellenic prestige. We show that matrilineal successors are not treated as necessarily illegitimate or inferior within the overwhelmingly patrilineal conventions of Greek myth. In fact, matrilineal calculations afford certain advantages, like the ability to integrate heroes from elsewhere, or to champion local kings with divine fathers. Matrilineal succession reveals the gendered dynamics inherent to Greek myth; we argue that, although in these instances regnal power is transferred through female relatives, the heroines involved are typically treated simply as nodes for this power and their roles in these stories do not necessarily correlate to a greater visibility or autonomy.

  • 12 - How to Write a Local History of Imperial Greek Cults: Observations from Pausanias

  • Edited by Hans Beck, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany, Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion
    Published online:
    06 April 2023
    Print publication:
    13 April 2023, pp 342-361

  • Summary

    This chapter alerts readers of the shortcomings of a mining approach to Pausanias’ Periegesis as a prime evidence for the study of local religion in ancient Greece. The question of where local specificities are discussed in the narrative is as critical as the actual information conveyed. The chapter speaks to the analytical challenge of interpreting a narrative that is, on the one hand, reflective of the non-linear and essentially decentralised nature of the local, yet on the other filters this nature through the linear rigours of writing. Starting from fleeting experiences of the local, highly subjective to the individual that makes them, Hawes turns to an exemplary discussion of Argos, Thebes, and Messenia that exposes the mechanics of a scripted localism, a literary approximation to place. The discussion of Pausanias’ localistic perspective extends to the narrative technique of cross references and to instances where such connections were deliberately denied: the case in point being Pausanias’ treatment of the notorious problem of the location of Homeric Pylos.

  • 12 - How to Write a Local History of Imperial Greek Cults: Observations from Pausanias

  • Edited by Hans Beck, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany, Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion
    Published online:
    06 April 2023
    Print publication:
    13 April 2023, pp 342-361

  • Summary

    This chapter alerts readers of the shortcomings of a mining approach to Pausanias’ Periegesis as a prime evidence for the study of local religion in ancient Greece. The question of where local specificities are discussed in the narrative is as critical as the actual information conveyed. The chapter speaks to the analytical challenge of interpreting a narrative that is, on the one hand, reflective of the non-linear and essentially decentralised nature of the local, yet on the other filters this nature through the linear rigours of writing. Starting from fleeting experiences of the local, highly subjective to the individual that makes them, Hawes turns to an exemplary discussion of Argos, Thebes, and Messenia that exposes the mechanics of a scripted localism, a literary approximation to place. The discussion of Pausanias’ localistic perspective extends to the narrative technique of cross references and to instances where such connections were deliberately denied: the case in point being Pausanias’ treatment of the notorious problem of the location of Homeric Pylos.

  • Mythographical topography, textual materiality and the (dis)ordering of myth: the case of Antoninus Liberalis

  • Charles Delattre, Greta Hawes
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 140 / November 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 December 2020, pp. 106-119
    Print publication:
    November 2020

  • This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach recognizes the materiality of mythographic writing as preserved by the manuscript tradition and the significance of the spatial dynamics it produces. Mythographic topography encompasses both the formal properties of textual organization and how these shape the reader’s imaginative experience of space and narrative. As an analytical framework, it involves interrogating a text according to three categories (each an ancient meaning of topos): its arrangement of textual passages, its use of space and its activation of narrative tropes. Using the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis as a case study, we demonstrate how this text requires the reader to consider issues of order, disorder and reordering within a culturally familiar narrative paradigm.