Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691114583)

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.

Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today's misapplication of the terms "myth" and "mythology." Next, he examines the Greeks' symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene's foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks' symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.

Author: Claude Calame
ISBN-10: 0691114587
ISBN-13: 9780691114583
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/22/2003
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.03lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.42w x 0.84d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2004 pg. 903