Book contents
- The Greeks and Their Histories
- Classical Scholarship in Translation
- The Greeks and Their Histories
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface to the German Edition
- Preface
- Note on Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Locus of Intentional History
- Chapter 2 Greek Myths As a History of the Greeks
- Chapter 3 Greek Historiography between Past and Present
- Chapter 4 Greek Historiography between Fiction and Truth
- Concluding Perspectives
- References
- Index
Chapter 2 - Greek Myths As a History of the Greeks
Motifs – Forms – Structures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2022
- The Greeks and Their Histories
- Classical Scholarship in Translation
- The Greeks and Their Histories
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface to the German Edition
- Preface
- Note on Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Locus of Intentional History
- Chapter 2 Greek Myths As a History of the Greeks
- Chapter 3 Greek Historiography between Past and Present
- Chapter 4 Greek Historiography between Fiction and Truth
- Concluding Perspectives
- References
- Index
Summary
The main subject of Chapter 2 is the motifs and the content of the Greeks’ myth-historical tales and songs. The Greeks’ past was very clearly structured: the main axis was the battle for Troy with the generations before and after. The more distant past led back to the origin of the world, gods, and men. On the other hand, the stories have led to the present day. Concepts of kinship, mediated by genealogies, played an essential role. This was connected with stories of migrations, colonisation, expulsions, and re-migrations. These narratives served as elements in order to structure the past, to constitute familiarity and difference, to explain relations of friendship or enmity, among the Greeks themselves and in relation to foreigners. We cannot see these stories of migration as evidence for older ‘historical’ events. But they reflect very clearly the dynamics of their time of origin, the time of the so-called Great Colonization. The identity-forming power of the Greek myth-history lay precisely in the fact that it re-located its own experiences into the past. What they had constructed themselves appeared to the Greeks as their past.
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- The Greeks and Their HistoriesMyth, History, and Society, pp. 42 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022