![]() ![]() And as William Empson pointed out about the myth of Oedipus, whatever Oedipus’ problem was, it wasn’t an ‘Oedipus complex’ in the Freudian sense of that phrase, because the mythical Oedipus was unaware that he had married his own mother (rather than being attracted to her in full knowledge of who she was).Īnd this points up an important fact about the Greek myths, which is that, like Aesop’s fables which date from a similar time and also have their roots in classical Greek culture, many of these stories evolved as moral fables or tales designed to warn Greek citizens of the dangers of hubris, greed, lust, or some other sin or characteristic. ![]() Similarly, Narcissus, in another famous Greek myth, actually shunned other people before he fell in love with his own reflection, and yet we still talk of someone who is obsessed with their own importance and appearance as being narcissistic. (Or, as the Bible bluntly puts it, the love of money is the root of all evil.) The moral of King Midas, of course, was not that he was famed for his wealth and success, but that his greed for gold was his undoing: the story, if anything, is a warning about the dangers of corruption that money and riches can bring. However, as this last example shows, we often employ these myths in ways which run quite contrary to the moral messages the original myths impart. We describe a challenging undertaking as a Herculean task, and speak of somebody who enjoys great success as having the Midas touch. So we describe somebody’s weakness as their Achilles heel, or we talk about the dangers of opening up Pandora’s box. ![]() The Greek myths are over two thousand years old – and perhaps, in their earliest forms, much older – and yet many stories from Greek mythology, and phrases derived from those stories, are part of our everyday speech. Rather than curiosity or idle, naïve, love-stricken besottedness, the main emotion driving Orpheus was fear and doubt. So, in the last analysis, although his love for his wife played a part, Orpheus’ decision to turn and look back at his wife was born of a fear that if he did look back, his wife wouldn’t be there – and if that were the case, he didn’t want to return to life without her. After all, this is the Underworld we’re talking about: you can’t just pop back if you’ve forgotten something, like the supermarket. And Orpheus’ determination to bring his wife back from the dead was so great that he wanted to make sure he wasn’t leaving the Underworld without her. In many ways, his doubt is well-placed: the Greek gods and goddesses were not above tricking mankind. What’s more, when the ship passed the island on which the Sirens sang and played their fatal melody, Orpheus sang loudly to drown out their song, to save Jason and the rest of the crew from running aground and becoming Siren-food, although one of the unfortunate Argonauts, Butes, did succumb and was whisked off by Aphrodite. What is less well-known is that Orpheus was also one of the crew who accompanied Jason on his voyage to find the Golden Fleece: Orpheus was one of the fabled Argonauts. Indeed, so closely intertwined is Orpheus’ name with the tradition of lyric poetry (so named because it was originally sung to musical accompaniment courtesy of the lyre), that a tradition later grew up that both Homer and Hesiod, the two greatest poets of ancient Greece, were descendants of Orpheus. His singing was so beautiful that wild beasts would tamely follow him, seduced by the power of his song. He was said to live near Mount Olympus, and could often be found singing there. Thracian in origin, Orpheus is, in many ways, the archetype of the musician and poet in Greek mythology. Orpheus was a lyrist (a player of the lyre), singer, and poet. ![]()
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