scholarly journals Themis and Dike – Justice in Greek Myth and Tradition

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-39
Author(s):  
Isidora Fürst
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Moral Power ◽  
Legislative Reforms ◽  
And Behavior

The understanding of law in Ancient Greece was based on the religious interpretations of human nature and natural laws. Two Greek goddesses were representatives of justice and fairness. In the ancient sources Themis is presented as a goddess and prophetess, one of the Titans and the daughter of Gea and Uranus. She is a symbol of divine order, justice, natural law and good customs. Dike, the daughter of Themis, is the goddess of justice and truth, the protector of rights and courts of justice, the arbiter, the symbol of honor, the goddess of revenge and punishment. In early Greek culture and poetry, the terms themis and dike represented justice in the meaning of cosmic order, natural law, and legality. The paper analyses the Hellenic notions of justice, fairness and legality embodied in the phenomena of themis and dike. Nomos (law) is just only if it is in harmony with themis, and law is valid only if it is just. The paper presents the doctrines of Hellenic writers, poets and playwrights on justice and law, with special reference to the influence of mythology on Hellenic law. Publius Ovidius Naso’s work „Metamorphosis”, which speaks about Themis’ role in the creation of the world and the salvation of the human race is one of the greatest sources about this goddess. In Homer’s „Iliad” and „Odyssey”, epics that sing of the heroic spirit, justice is shown in the motives, intentions and behavior of the participants in the event, mostly heroes. The poet Hesiod, famous for the poems „Theogony” and „Works and Days”, moves away from the heroic virtues of people and portrays the gods as bearers of moral power and guardians of justice. In the light of legislative reforms, Solon’s dike represents the progress and well-being of society through economic reforms, which is why justice and injustice refer only to legal and illegal acquisition of wealth and its effect on the community. Aeschylus’ „Oresteia” shows the principle of justice based on talion, according to which the punishment has to be identical with the committed crime. One of the greatest Ancient Greek playwrights, Sophocles, based his play „Antigone” on the conflict between the laws of men and the laws of gods. According to Herodotus, the greatest Ancient Greek historian, the actions of the gods govern human destinies and historical events. The idea of justice in Ancient Greece was all throughout its transformation based of the universial concept of natural balance.

Confronting the Ancient Greek Golden Age in Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962)

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Emma Scioli
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
The World

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.

Dangerous Gifts: Ideologies of Marriage and Exchange in Ancient Greece

2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Durable Goods ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
Greek Thought ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
Economic Contribution ◽  
Mythic Thinking

A familiar theme in Greek myth is that of the deadly gift that passes between a man and a woman. Analysis of exchanges between men and women reveals the gendered nature of exchange in ancient Greek mythic thinking. Using the anthropological categories of male and female wealth (with examples drawn from many cultures), it is possible to arrive at an understanding of the protocols of exchange as they relate to men and especially to women. These protocols, which are based in part on the distinction between metals and other durable goods as "male" and textiles as "female," are closely related to the gendered division of labor. Anxiety about women as exchangers derives in part from their status as objects exchanged in marriage (as exemplified by Helen in the Iliad), and partly from a misogynist and pessimistic strand of Greek thought (embodied by Hesiod's Pandora) that discounts any female economic contribution to the oikos. Indeed, the majority of destructive exchanges take place within the context of marital crisis. While some texts, beginning with the Odyssey, show the positive side of women's economic role, tragedy tends to follow the Hesiodic distrust of women as exchange partners. Passages from the Agamemnon and the Trachiniai are analyzed to show how in situations of perverted reciprocity brought about by marital discord, even women's traditional gifts of textiles may become deadly.

Greek and the Factory Worker

1946 ◽  
Vol 15 (44) ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
R. M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Factory Worker ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Risk Of Failure ◽  
The World ◽  
Greek Civilization

About a year ago a group of Rugby School masters planned a short residential course for factory workers; and Shakespeare, History, Poetry, Religion, Music, and Geography seemed the obvious subjects to choose. In addition, a few lectures on Classics were proposed and provoked the inevitable reaction: ‘surely that's dead; why can't you bury it?’, ‘the world has passed through that phase’, and so on. But in spite of these protests six lectures, each lasting an hour, were allotted to the Civilization of Ancient Greece.As general organizer I regarded these lectures as the most interesting feature of the course: it is perhaps relevant to add that I had read very little Greek since taking Matriculation thirty years before, and so I felt sufficiently detached to judge impartially. It was easy to guess that in prospect these lectures would be unpopular; and indeed, before the first, I heard students saying that no one expected to enjoy the Greek. So we decided to watch carefully; and if, after three lectures, there were little interest shown, then we were prepared to cancel the remainder. But it was soon abundantly clear that there was no risk of failure, and by the third lecture Greek was evidently one of the most successful features of a course that was enjoyed by all. Here are a few sentences from various letters sent by the students after the course: ‘I thought that the subjects were too “classic”, especially the last one (Ancient Greek civilization)…. Now I know that these subjects are vital for anyone who is to get the most out of life’; ‘Doors were opened to me into new worlds of delight’, meaning poetry and classics; ‘What a change from technical studies which unfortunately resume next week: I now feel that I want to give up engineering… gave me the incentive to go farther afield and delve deeper into the classics’; ‘Two weeks of exquisite delight’… with later special reference to the Greek class; ‘Greek culture and literature for instance seemed such dry subjects before, but now I realize how much we can learn from them and how very similar their problems were to those confronting us to-day.’

How to Do Things with History

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Common Thread

How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that explores current and future approaches to the study of ancient Greek cultural history. Rather than focus directly on methodology, the essays in this volume demonstrate how some of the most productive and significant methodologies for studying ancient Greece can be employed to illuminate a range of different kinds of subject matter. These essays, which bring together the work of some of the most talented scholars in the field, are based upon papers delivered at a conference held at Cambridge University in September 2014 in honor of Paul Cartledge’s retirement from the post of A. G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Culture. The assembled essays trace the broad horizons charted by Cartledge’s work: from studies of political thinking to accounts of legal and cultural practices to politically astute approaches to historiography. The contributors to this volume all take the parameters and contours of Cartledge’s work, which has profoundly influenced an entire generation of scholars, as starting points for their own historical and historiographical explorations. Those parameters and contours provide a common thread that runs through and connects all of the essays while also offering sufficient freedom for individual contributors to demonstrate an array of rich and varied approaches to the study of the past.

Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and Nietzsche’s Vision of Ancient Greek Theatre

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The Future ◽  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Of Greece

Chapter 3 deals with ‘Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and Nietzsche’s Vision of Ancient Greek Theatre’ with regard to the emergence of a new image of ancient Greece that would rival the Winckelmannian image from that point on. Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk is described as an attempt not to return to ancient Greece but to revive ancient Greek theatre by taking into account the conditions of the modern world, as Nietzsche similarly interpreted it in his treatise The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872). The truly revolutionary aspects of the image of Greece as developed in this treatise are examined. While Winckelmann only considered the Apollonian side of Greek culture and art, Nietzsche complemented it by focusing on its Dionysian side, thus opening up an absolutely novel approach to Greek tragedy for the future.

General

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-360
Author(s):  
Ivana Petrovic
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The Other ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
American Universities ◽  
Main Culprit ◽  
The One ◽  
Science Major ◽  
Different Levels

One of my favourite undergraduate classes to teach is Greek mythology. At American universities, Greek myth is a popular choice for satisfying humanities credit requirements, and professors are faced with a double dilemma. On the one hand, students have very different levels of knowledge, ranging from, say, a science major with virtually no idea about the ancient world to a know-it-all myth-whiz Classics major at the other end of the scale. The second problem is the choice and organization of material. Tough decisions have to be made, especially if a professor insists on students reading ancient Greek and Latin texts in translation, instead of relying on a modern retelling of myth. Which tragedies to choose? Which sections of Ovid's Metamorphoses? The whole of Homer or just select books? The challenges are real, but the rewards are great. After the initial struggle with Hesiod's Theogony (despite collective grumbling, Hesiod is non-negotiable for me), witnessing the magic of Greek myth at work never ceases to amaze me. In a blink of an eye, the class is passionately defending or attacking Phaedra, or debating fate and the gods; and, of course, everyone is united in hating Jason. It was my early fascination with Greek myth that attracted me to study Classics (the main culprit was the generously illustrated Serbian translation of Gustav Schwab's Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece) and the crushing sense of responsibility for sparking that first interest in my students is only matched by joy upon seeing it work. I take mythology books very seriously because they are often the gateway to the Classics. Several books on myth landed on my desk this year and I'll start with three general introductions. None of these could serve as introductions to myth for children or young adults, but each could be an excellent first step for those wishing to know more about various scholarly approaches to Greek myths and cults.

scholarly journals Dance in Ancient Greek Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Rita Spalva
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Dance ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
European Culture ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal

The greatness and harmony of ancient Greece has had an impact upon the development of the Western European culture to this day. The ancient Greek culture has influenced contemporary literature genres and systems of philosophy, principles of architecture, sculpture and drama and has formed basis for such sciences as astronomy and mathematics. The art of ancient Greece with its penchant for beauty and clarity has been the example of the humanity’s search for an aesthetic ideal. Despite only being preserved in its fragments, the dance of ancient Greece has become an example worthy of imitation in the development of classical dance as well as the 20th century modern dance, inspired by the notions of antique dance by Isadora Duncan. Research in antique dance helps sunderstand the historical relationships in dance ontology, axiology and anthropology.

General

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-352
Author(s):  
Ivana Petrovic ◽  
Andrej Petrovic
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Real Thing ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Emotional Detachment ◽  
Greek Myths

Most of us tend to encounter Greek myths in childhood as exciting stories brimming with heroes, monsters, and moody divinities. The story of Odysseus’ homecoming and the story about the Little Mermaid feature different characters, but their relationship to reality is understood to be the same: they are fantasy, and not real. If, like me, you were lucky enough to escape the Disneyfication of fairy tales in your childhood, perhaps you will remember the brutality and harshness of folktales, which puts them on a par with many Greek myths. My first encounters with ancient Greek stories about the gods and heroes were very similar to Sarah Iles Johnston's: we were both captivated by Greek myth as children, and the passion, once kindled, only grew stronger when we became mature enough to read the ‘real thing’. In my case, learning about ancient Greek culture and becoming a scholar of Greek religion required a thorough rethink, as I needed to readjust my stance towards Greek myths in order to understand the role that they played in ancient Greek society as formative narratives about the communities’ identities, early history, and human relationships with the gods. My process essentially required an emotional detachment from the beloved heroes of my childhood and a significant amount of distancing.

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