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theoi-crow · 2 months

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The humans in Greek Mythology are the mega rich and powerful:

In my college classes people are often shocked when I tell them my favorite part of Greek mythology is the gods themselves and I'm not a big fan of the humans.

99% of my classmates prefer the humans in mythos, especially the ones that stick it to the gods like Sisyphus and feel bad for humans like Kassandra and Helen who have been wronged by the gods because "they're just like us." My classmates and teachers hate the gods and don't understand why anyone in modern times would want to worship such violent and selfish beings whenever I point out there are still people who worship them. They hold onto the idea that people in mythology embody the human experience of being oppressed by terrible gods and fate and we should feel bad for them because "they're human just like us" but they forget that the people in Greek Mythology are NOT just like us. They are more relatable to medieval royalty, colonizers and ultra rich politicians who make laws and decisions on wars and the fates of others, especially the poor and the very vulnerable.

Every hero or important human in Greek Mythology is either some form of royalty or mega rich politician/priest-priestess (of course this is with the exception of people who are explicitly stated to be poor like the old married couple in the myth where Zeus and Hermes pretend to be panhandlers). All of them have an ancient Greek lifestyle more relatable to Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and especially to British royalty during the British empire, than the average person.

All of them.

Odysseus, Patroclus, Theseus, Helen of Troy, Kassandra, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Perseus, Hercules, Aeneas, Paris, Any human who has a divine parent or is related to one, etc. Although sometimes the story omits it, it is heavily implied that these are people who own hundreds or even thousands of slaves, very poor farmers and the tiny barely there working class as royal subjects.

They are the ones who make laws and whose decisions massively affect the fates of so many people. So no, they can't just be forgiven for some little whim, because that little whim affects the literal lives of everyone under their rule. By being spoiled they've just risked the lives of thousands of people and possibly even gotten them killed like when Odysseus' audacity got every single slave and soldier in his ships killed or when Patroclus as a kid got upset and killed another kid for beating him at a game. (A normal person wouldn't kill another person just for winning a game but royalty and those who think they're above the law do it all the time, plus the class status of the child wasn't mentioned but the way he didn't think he'd get in trouble implies the kid was of lower class, possibly the child of a slave or a foreign merchant.)

The gods get a bad reputation for punishing the humans in mythology but, if not them, who else is going to keep them accountable when they are the law?

And whose to say the humans beneath them weren't praying to the gods in order to keep their masters in check?

Apollo is the god in charge of freeing slaves, Zeus is the god of refugees, immigrants and homeless people, Ares is the protector of women, Artemis protects children, Aphrodite is the goddess of the LGBT community, Hephaestus takes care of the disabled, etc. It wouldn't be surprising if the gods are punishing the ultra rich and powerful in these myths because the humans under their rulership prayed and sent them as they did historically.

Every time someone asks me if I feel bad for a human character in a myth, I think about the many lives affected by the decision that one human character made and if I'm being completely honest, I too would pray to the gods and ask them to please punish them so they can make more careful decisions in the future because:

They are not just like us.

We are the farmers, a lot of our ancestors were slaves, we are the vulnerable being eaten by capitalism and destroyed by the violence colonialism created. We are the poor subjects that can only pray and hope the gods will come and correct whatever selfish behavior the royal house and mega rich politicians are doing above us.

And that's why I pray to the gods, because in modern times I'm dealing with modern Agamemnons who would kill whatever family members they have to in order to reach their end goal, I'm dealing with everyday modern Achilles who would rather see their own side die because they couldn't keep their favorite toy and would gladly watch their subjects die if it means they eventually get their way. The ones that let capitalism eat their country and it's citizens alive so long as it makes them more money. These are our modern "demigods," politicians who swear they are so close to God that they know what he wants and so they pass laws that benefit only them and claim these laws are ordained by God due to their close connection just like how Achilles can speak to the gods because of his demigod status via his mother.

Look at the news, these are humans that would be mythical characters getting punished by Greek gods which is why anything Greco-Roman is jealousy guarded by the rich and powerful and is inaccessible to modern worshippers because Ivy League schools like Harvard and Cambridge make sure to keep it that way. That's what we're dealing with. These are the humans these mythical beings would be because:

In our modern times the humans in mythos would be the politicians and mega rich that are currently ruining our society and trying to turn it into a world where only the rich can manipulate wars and laws, just like they do in mythology.

Fuck them.

I literally have so much more to add about my disdain for them and I didn't even touch on the obvious ancient Greek propaganda.

#greek gods #Greek mythology #hellenic polytheism #helpol #mythology #ancient greek tragedy

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fdelopera · 1 year

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The Oedipus Project (or, How Oedipus’ Historical Context Reveals the Play’s Meaning)

Sooo back in Spring 2020, Oscar Isaac starred in a Zoom production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus — The Oedipus Project. I highly recommend watching the production. Oscar gives a uniquely genuine performance of Oedipus. Thankfully, @hupperts linked to the full livestream in a post (it’s a Google Drive link you can watch here).

But I would be remiss in talking about Ancient Greek theatre if I didn’t also share a few historical facets of the play (and of Greek Theatre in general) that are often overlooked in modern productions. (For context, my college major was Classical Theatre — with an emphasis on Ancient Greek theatre and Shakespeare. So Ancient Greek Tragedy is still a big special interest.)

The Original Actors:

In Sophocles' and Euripides' tragedies, there were only three actors (all adult men), plus a Chorus of fifteen young men, led by a Chorus Leader. (Aeschylus before them had two actors, plus a chorus of twelve young men.)

Since there are more than three characters in these plays, it was standard for several (if not all) of the three actors to play multiple roles. The roles that these actors played often relate to each other, creating many subtextual layers of connection and meaning between the characters.

Read more below the cut:

The Three Actors and the Chorus:

In Ancient Greek theatre, the lead actor was called the Protagonist. This was often the most senior actor and the one deemed most skilled.

The second actor was called the Deuteragonist. This actor often had less seniority than the Protagonist, though they were often deemed to be of equal skill level.

The third actor was called the Tritagonist. This actor was often the youngest and least experienced of the three, and they would often play Messenger roles.

The Chorus comprised a Chorus Leader, leading a Chorus of 15 young men. They chanted and danced in unison, with certain lines spoken/sung solo by the Chorus Leader.

Singing, Dances, and Masks in Ancient Greek Theatre:

Ancient Greek theatre was first and foremost a religious ceremony, dedicated to the god, Dionysos. The plays were written in meter, and the actors would have alternated between speaking their lines and singing the text. The Chorus performed circular dances, and they also sang and chanted their lines. The actors were accompanied by a musician playing a double-piped reed instrument called the aulos (the sound would have been similar to a modern-day oboe).

The three actors and the Chorus all wore masks and costumes. These masks were religious in nature — they permitted the actors and Chorus to interact with the divine nature of Dionysos (which was believed to be present on the theatre stage) without being overcome by the god. In Ancient Greek theatre, masks do not conceal; instead, they reveal the truth. The masks also served a practical purpose, allowing the actors to switch between their characters with relative ease.

The Roles Played by the Three Actors and Chorus in Oedipus Tyrannus:

Here is the original cast list from Oedipus Tyrannus (this is my reconstruction, based on exits and entrances).

1st Actor (Protagonist):

Oedipus (King of Thebes, who unknowingly murdered his father, King Laius, and who married his mother, Queen Jocasta; he became the new King upon defeating the Sphinx at Thebes by solving her riddle)

2nd Actor (Deuteragonist):

Priest (Priest of Apollo)

Tiresias (blind prophet and servant of Apollo)

Queen Jocasta (Queen of Thebes, unknowing wife of her son Oedipus, and former wife of King Laius, Oedipus' father)

Theban Shepherd (who saved the infant Oedipus from death and gave him to the Shepherd and Messenger from Corinth)

3rd Actor (Tritagonist):

Creon (Brother of Jocasta, Queen of Thebes, and unknowing uncle of Oedipus)

Corinthian Messenger (the Shepherd who brought Oedipus to his adoptive parents in Corinth)

Theban Messenger (the Messenger who delivered the news of Jocasta's death and Oedipus' blinding)

Chorus Leader, leading a Chorus of 15 young men:

The Elder Citizens of Thebes (the Chorus serve as the point-of-view character through which the audience is meant to intellectually and emotionally understand the play)

The Connections Between the Three Actors and Their Roles:

The Protagonist in Oedipus played one role: Oedipus. In Greek Tragedy, the lead role was deemed to be of such importance that the Protagonist was often given no other roles to play.

The Deuteragonist had to shoulder some of the most important moments in the play. They opened the play as the Priest of Apollo. They played Tiresias and then Jocasta, both wrestling emotionally with Oedipus. And finally, they played the Theban Shepherd, who is tortured into his confession of saving the baby Oedipus from certain death. The fact that the Deuteragonist portrays all of these roles provides a common thread between them, linking together characters who unknowingly lead Oedipus to his downfall.

The Tritagonist played Creon as well as the two Messenger roles. As the Theban Messenger, they would have been expected to deliver a dramatic and scene-stealing monologue about the death of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus, which would have given the younger actor some scenery to chew.

The Historical Context of Oedipus Tyrannus:

Something to note about Oedipus Tyrannus in the context in which it was written: the original meaning of the play is different from the Freudian themes that we normally associate with it. Freud took Oedipus and used it as an exploration of unconscious desires, but that wasn’t really Sophocles’ intent.

When Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannus, Athens was beginning the second half of the great war with Sparta (the Peloponnesian War), which would ultimately lead to Athens’ downfall, as well as Sparta’s downfall not long after.

About 50 years prior, Athens and Sparta had fought together in the Persian Wars to prevent the Persians from conquering Greece (if you’ve ever seen the movie 300, that’s what it is about). But in the intervening decades, Sparta and Athens had become rivals for resources and land within Greece, and between 460 – 445 BCE, and 431 – 404 BCE, they fought two bloody wars that ultimately led to the defeat of Athens, and the end of the Athenian Democracy.

Many Athenians, including the playwrights Sophocles and Euripides, were incredibly nervous about this conflict, and foresaw that it would lead to prolonged bloodshed and even the city’s downfall.

For example, around the same time that Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannus, Euripides wrote Medea, about a woman who murders her children to spite her husband — Euripides was effectively saying, “If these two powers of Sparta and Athens, mother and father, go to war with each other, all that we will succeed in doing is murdering our children (the young soldiers who will die in battle).”

Oedipus Tyrannus is about a king who wants to be a great ruler for his city, Thebes. And yet, he cannot know how to lead his city, for he does not even know himself.

Many years before the start of the play, he had defeated the Sphinx who had camped out outside Thebes’ city walls and was consuming the city’s inhabitants. She demanded that everyone who passed by her must answer her riddle. If they could not figure it out, she would eat them.

She asked them, “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

No one in Thebes could answer her riddle, and so one by one, she devoured them, simultaneously consuming the city’s soldiers and starving out the city’s inhabitants.

Around the time that the Sphinx was laying waste to Thebes, Oedipus was running from himself. Oedipus had received a prophecy that he would “kill his father and marry his mother,” so he left his city of Corinth and ran far away from his (adoptive) parents (though he didn’t know that he was adopted).

Along the way, Oedipus encountered an old man who attacked him at a crossroads. In anger, Oedipus killed the man, and kept going (unbeknownst to him, this was his father, Laius, the King of Thebes).

He soon happened upon the city of Thebes, and encountered the Sphinx. Like she had done countless times before, she asked Oedipus her riddle. But unlike the others before him, Oedipus used his intelligence and cunning to defeat her.

Oedipus understood what the Sphinx was asking, and he answered her riddle correctly. The answer is “man.” Man walks on four legs in the morning (crawling as a baby), on two legs at noon (walking upright in the prime of his youth), and on three legs in the evening (using a cane to walk in old age).

Oedipus knew “man,” but he did not know himself.

Still, the Sphinx was defeated, and Oedipus was welcomed into the city of Thebes as a hero. The old king had just died, and the city was in turmoil. They were looking for a new king. The old king’s brother-in-law, Creon, did not want the throne, and so the city decided to adopt Oedipus as their new king and leader. The Queen, Jocasta, willingly married this young man who had saved her and her city. They wed and had four children together: two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.

(Of course, these children would continue the twisted generational trauma of their family, as brother would turn against brother, sister against sister, and uncle against niece and nephew, until the family had consumed itself from the inside out.)

Oedipus’ Hubris:

Oedipus learns several important lessons from this incident. However, these lessons ultimately lead to his downfall:

1) He can defeat any enemy through argument, both in terms of aggression and cunning. He defeated the old man who attacked him (his own father) through aggression, and he defeated the Sphinx through cunning.

2) His intellect and reason are more powerful than even a superhuman force (the Sphinx), and he can threaten to banish or execute anyone who tries to challenge his understanding of things. He creates an echochamber from which he cannot escape.

3) He must continue to run away from his past, and never look at himself too deeply. He must never “know himself” or engage in any deep self-analysis because he believes that he is still running from the prophecy. He doesn’t realize that he already fulfilled the prophecy years before, and soon his punishment will come due.

In his Oedipus Project performance, Oscar did a masterful job at making Oedipus' guilt clear, and at laying out his hubris. Oedipus’ anger and insistence in his own righteousness ultimately bring him down.

Oedipus' haughtiness is a protection against the fear and inadequacy he feels in his life. He has felt like an outsider for much of his life, and he is overcompensating for that. He feels that he must prove himself right in all arguments, because deep down, he knows that he’s not who he thinks he is.

Oedipus is terrified to look at the “truth,” because he suspects that he'll be looking in a mirror.

The downfall of Oedipus is that he resists the truth of himself that is staring him in the face. He won't see until he literally blinds himself, and then when he is blinded, he can finally see, but by then it is too late.

Athens’ Hubris:

Like Oedipus, Athens believed it could defeat any enemy through cunning and aggression. Years before, it had decisively routed the Persians in the Battle of Salamis, driving the Persian forces away from Greece and ending the war. In the same way, it believed that it could use cunning and aggression to defeat Sparta. Sparta and Athens were like mirror selves. They were the two parts of the whole that made up what it was to be Greek.

Like Oedipus, Athens’ rulers were hubristic, and believed that they could know what was best for all of Greece, and yet they didn’t even know what was best for their own city.

Thebes, Oedipus’ city, had sided with Persia during the Persian Wars. During the Peloponnesian War, it sided with Sparta. To the Athenians, Thebes was the Anti-Athens. But by basing this critique of Athens in a city that was seen as an enemy, Sophocles was effectively looking at Athens “through the mirror,” and recognizing that self and reflection of self are two parts of the same whole.

So, unlike the modern Freudian characterization of Oedipus, Sophocles’ intention was to explore the way that a political entity can become entirely corrupted by its leaders. These leaders argue themselves in circles, round and round, until they eventually come face to face with themselves. In that moment, it is shown that they have not been fighting against any external enemy, they have been destroying their own city from within, and in their own immolation, they burn the city as well.

Oedipus Tyrannus is a great exploration of generational trauma — it shows in microcosm the way that toxic dynamics are passed down over and over to create an inheritance of destruction. If Jocasta and Laius had loved their son despite Apollo’s prophecy, if they had sought to wrestle with the god instead of blindly following him, if they had treated their son with care instead of piercing his ankles and leaving him on a hillside to die, their downfall and his would never have occurred. Their compulsion towards the very predeterminism they feared sealed their fate.

In the same way, Athens' and Sparta's fear and enmity towards each other ultimately led to Athens' downfall and Sparta's decline not long after. In trying to destroy one another, Athens and Sparta learned far too late that they were only destroying themselves.

The Anti-War Message of Ancient Greek Tragedy:

Ancient Greek Tragedy dealt with deeply human themes, such as psychology, philosophy, religion, politics, and art. Above all, it dealt with what it is to be a nation at war.

The Athenian Democracy was bookended by two great wars: the Persian Wars, which culminated around 480 BCE, and the Peloponnesian War, which concluded in 404 BCE when Sparta defeated Athens.

Within that span of roughly 80 years, the Greek playwrights engaged in a complex discourse, addressing their existential feelings of being a society defined by both internal and external conflict. They warned about the horrors of war, and they strove to use their art to steer the ship that was Athenian Democracy.

When we understand Ancient Greek Tragedy within its historical context, we can see that it is just as relevant today as it was when it was written over 2400 years ago.

#oscar isaac #the oedipus project #oedipus rex #ancient greek tragedy #ancient greek theater #oedipus tyrannus

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