Lecture 2: Types of myth

Mythology books traditionally distinguish between legends, folktales, and myths.

Three warnings

Some scholars are sceptical about these distinctions. All agree that there is considerable overlap between the various categories of myth I'll talk about below: not all can agree on how to define terms like "legend" and "folktale." Some scholars point out, rightly, that the Greeks themselves did not regularly distinguish myths from other sorts of stories; the terms legend and folktale were coined hundreds of years after the ancient Greeks. So these distinctions might not work for the Greeks. They also might not work for us: we do not have stories that play quite the same role in our society as myths did for the Greeks. We have our legendary figures--take Davy Crockett, for example. He is rather like the Greek hero Heracles: both are strong heroes who live on the borders of civilization and make the world safe, or at least safer, for less manly folk. They even look alike: Davy Crockett wears his coonskin cap, and Heracles wore a funny cloak and hat made of a lion's skin. But no one worshipped Davy Crockett like the Greeks worshipped the hero Heracles; no one swears "by Davy Crockett" like the Greeks swore "by Heracles." So are the stories really the same sort of stories? So keep in mind 3 skeptical possibilities:

• The categories overlap.
• The Greeks didn't make these distinctions.
• We may not have anything quite like "myth" in our society.

Divine myth

As the name implies, divine myths have gods as their primary characters. Their plots vary, but common examples include creation myths, and myths of conflict between the gods. Creation myths obviously take place at the beginning of time--whenever exactly that was--and conflicts between the gods, at least in Greek myth, are generally considered to have taken place in the distant past. Many divine myths explain aspects of the natural world. Here a famous example is the abduction of Persephone by the Greek god of the underworld, Hades. Persephone's mother Demeter, the goddess of grain, complained, and the resulting comprimise had Persephone spending part of the year in the underworld and part above. When Persephone is below, then, it is winter (at least in one version) because her mother is mourning for her, and when she returns her mother is happy again, and allows the grain to grow.

Myth and science: how versus why

Some functions of divine myth have been taken over by science. This is obviously a sort of progress on many levels: I'd have to agree that the inclination of the earth relative to the sun better explains the seasons than does the story of the abduction of Persephone. But science is not always better than myth: far from it. The abduction of Persephone, for example, is also about death. Science, true enough, can explain how we die, but it cannot explain, really, why we have to die. It cannot help us--or at least it does not help all of us--confront the problem of death, or live with our fear of death. Myth can help here. More about what myth can do later.

Legend

Legends are distinguished from divine myths in two ways. First--and most clearly--all legends star human characters, heroes, who may be of divine parentage and may be assisted--or opposed--by various gods, but essentially act on their own. Second--and less definitely--legends at least sometimes have some sort of historical basis. To the consequences of their human characters, first. Where divine myths tend to explain the natural world, legends, naturally enough, are more often linked to human things: they might explain or justify why a certain city is always fighting against another; why our city has kings rather than a democracy; why women have a restricted role in society, etc. It is legends, rather than divine myths, that provide most plots for Greek tragedies and makeup most of the most famous Greek myths.

Legend and history

The connection between legend and history is controversial, and must ultimately be judged on a case by case basis. It was once thought that most or all Greek legends were complete fiction; archaeological discoveries made early this century led some scholars to believe that the legends were actually quite factual; now, to some extent, the pendulum has swung back the other way.

Arguments in favor of the historicity of Greek legends

Greek legends do have certain historical elements: the place names in Greek legends are real. And they do correspond, rather impressively, with the places that were important early in Greek history. Sometimes places that were important only early in Greek history, and were unimportant--or even uninhabited--in later times, played prominent roles in later myths. It seems unlikely that anyone would have made up a legend about a place that was no longer important, so the usual conclusion is that Greek legends are historical at least inasmuch as they go back to an early period in Greek history: they are old stories at least, if not completely historical ones. Something similar can be said of the names of the characters in Greek legends, which tend also to be in common use from early times. But please note all this only tells us that the stories are old, not that they are true. Powell will argue, for example, that "Menelaus," a hero of the Trojan War, has what seems to be an authentically ancient name. But this no more proves the historical reality of Menelaus than would pointing out that Clark Kent was a real name proves that Clark Kent was a real person.

Arguments against the historicity of Greek legends

In fact while the places and personal names in Greek myths do seem to be real, there is almost no evidence to support they idea that events described in them or even the characters in them have any historical basis. In part this is simply a matter of our limited evidence: we don't know much about what was going on in 1250 BC, and so the mere fact that we have no conclusive proof that such a thing as the Trojan War took place doesn't mean that it didn't take place (this would be the same sort of logic as arguing that the fact that we have no evidence of alien life means that there is no such thing as alien life--for we all know that aliens exist). But there are other grounds for scepticism about the historicity of Greek legends. Sometimes the events in them--supernatural monsters, interventions by gods, super-human heroism--are clearly fantastic and impossible. More importantly, perhaps, we can often see how different tellers of myths altered them to fit their own audiences.

To take a famous example, in Homer's poems the poet holds an honored role in society. Does this tell us anything about the actual role of poets in ancient societies? Maybe, but it might also be wishful thinking on the poet Homer's part. Kings and heroes do all the important fighting in Homer's poems, with the common men playing little role: Does this show that kings and heroes played the predominant role in fighitng in ancient times? Perhaps, but kings and aristocrats likely made up the major part of his audience, and they would undoubtedly have liked to believe that they played such an important role. What archaeology can tells us about the earliest Greek kings might seem to indicate that they did more accounting than fighting: accounting makes for bad myth.

Legends and history writing

As science is to divine myth, so is historical writing to legend. But is myth just lousy history? Once again, as with science, even I, the mythology teacher, must admit that distinguishing history from legend marks a certain progress. The historian's aim to discover the truth about the past is a noble calling, and can do things that myth cannot do. But just as we shouldn't toss out divine myths simply because we have science, so too, I'd argue, we can't chuck legends just because we, unlike the earliest Greeks, have history. One function of history, I'd argue, is to provide us with some sort of help in facing the present; and legend, which cuts through the confusing muddled facts of history to present clear cases of good and evil men and women doing well or doing badly, can sometimes be a more helpful guide than more prosaic historical fact. History also helps us learn what other societies, and our own society are like: this function legends perform just as well, or better. If you want to understand what today's Americans are like, it is probably more important to learn the legends they believe about, say, the first Thanksgiving--than it is to learn the actual historical facts about the Pilgrims in Massachussets--facts very few Americans know.

Folktale

The term folktale is applied to a great variety of stories, most commonly perhaps to fairytales such as Cinderalla and Snow White. But the Greeks also had their folktales, and elements of folktales are to be found in most Greek myths. Where divine myths star gods and legends star heroes, folktales star everyday folk. Their characters are usually anonymous and their settings generalized in time and space: once upon a time . . . They thus have little connection to history, much less than legends do.

Folktales are often thought to rely more on entertainment than on their educational value for their survival, though one can also learn much about a society from its folktales. Particularly common in folktales are certain patterns in plot: called folklore motifs: the evil stepmother who mistreats her virtuous step-daughter; the lusty step-mother who attempts to seduce her son (step-mothers really take it on the chin). Folktale characters often begin as lower class figures--though often the end of the story reveals that they were in fact the true son of a king who had somehow been lost. Folktale plots often have one or more great reversals in which the character goes from rags to riches or vice versa. A particularly common type for the Greeks seems to have been the quest, in which the hero gathers a band of helpers, and then goes off to a strange land to fight monsters and return with the prize, which usually wins the hero a wife: Jason and the Argonauts is a famous example. Tricks and magic are common--whereas they are shunned by the more manly heroes of legend.

Other than the animal fables of Aesop--which we won't be giving much attention to, alas--there are few pure folktales in Greek myth. But we will often has cause to observe folktale motifs. As Powell concludes, much Greek myth is made up of legend strongly colored by folktale. So we return to the initial point of scepticism: while these separate categories help us to think about how myth works, we shouldn't be surprised if most Greek myths have elements of more than one type.

Folktale and fiction

Modern counterparts for folktale include, I suppose, movies and novels--or at least those movie and novel characters than are famous beyond the original movie or novel in which they appear. Comic book figures may be the clearest examples: Superman, Batman and the like. As with ancient folktales, modern comic book figures fall into certain patterns, although the patterns may differ from the ancient ones. If you want to be a modern superhero, you've gotta have a mask and wear tights, for example. The ancient hero was under no such restraints (perhaps because he appeared more often in legends, which portray him in a more realistic vein), but even he, as we will see, often has a secret true identity.

Grand summarizing chart (more detailed than the chart in class)

	Divine myth	Legend	Folktale
Plot	[Creation and conflict]	[Warfare]	Motifs, reversals quests
Characters	Deities	Heroes	Ordinary folk
Setting	Otherworldly	Distant past--but within our world	Vague
Function	Explain the natural world	Explain or justify human past and present	Entertain (also explain, justify)
Example	Creation	Trojan War	Tortoise and Hare
Modern version	Science	History	Comic-book heroes; novels and movies

 Archaeology and myth

Archaeology and individuals

When it comes to the relationship between myth and history, we must largely rely on archaeology for the historical side, since we have very few documents for the early periods of history that myth deals with. While archaeology can reveal much about Greek society of this early age&endash;the Bronze Age, about which more later&endash;it can only rarely tell do much to confirm myth. For myth is essentially about individuals, and it is a very rare individual who leaves any archaeological record. We don't find swords with "Achilles" written on them, or ships with graffitti by Odysseus.

Did the Trojan War really take place?

What archaeology can confirm are the existence of cities at a given time, and, just perhaps, the destruction of one particular city at about the right time: Troy. It was once thought that mythical Troy--the most famous city and subject for Greek myths--was purely mythical, had no historical foudnation. Then a German amateur acchaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann dug it up, rather embarassing the so-called experts. But there is still debate about the significance of his discoveries.

Arguments in favor of the reality of the Trojan War

If the city he found in NW Turkey is in fact Troy&endash;as most, though not all, scholars are willing to admit&endash;Schliemann did in fact prove the reality of at least one aspect of the Trojan War: there was a Troy. Some scholars believe we can prove more: that Troy was destroyed by an army sometime around 1200, which is about the date that myth would assign to the destruction of Troy by the Greek army made up of heroes like Achilles and Odysseus. And they add that there is evidence that city of Troy was in contact with Greeks: we find Greek pots at Troy, and there is probably a reference to the Greeks in a contemporary text from the neighboring Hittite empire.

Counterarguments

But while it is certainly true that the city identified with Troy was destroyed several times in its history--as were most cities--and that at least one of those destructions could have come at about the right time for the destruction told of in myth, it is not clear just which level of destruction should correspond to the Trojan War, if any. And when one is digging up 3000 year old rubble, it is very hard to distinguish between destruction due to earthquake or fire from that due to war. Even on the best case scenario we do not have much evidence for who destroyed the city. There is some evidence that the people living in this part of Turkey had contact with the Greeks, but we cannot be sure it was those Greeks who destroyed Troy. Certainly we cannot know the names of those Greeks, or just what historical truth, if any, could stand behind myths like those of the Trojan Horse.

So while it is possible that a Greek army did destroy Troy&endash;possible, in other words, that there was such a thing as a Trojan War&endash;the details of this Greek legend, like those of almost all Greek legends, cannot be confirmed by archaeology, or by any other emans.

Motel of the Mysteries

This humorous parody (by David Macaulay) of Schliemann's discovery of Troy is meant to both entertain and instruct (like a good myth). It is possible to be very, very, wrong about what one finds when one deals only with the material remains of long dead cultures.