myth lecture

1. Humans, Heroes and Half-gods
We will look at the creation of human beings.
We will discuss the “Myth of the Five Races” in
Hesiod’s Works and Days, which depicts a
deterioration of humanity’s lot form the
earliest Golden Race down to or own Race of
Iron.
We will contrast Hesiod’s description with
Ovid’s in Metamorphoses and consider the
implications of the differences in tone and
content of the two authors.
One crucial difference is that Hesiod includes
a “Race of Heroes” which Ovid omits.
We will conclude by discussing the heroes of
Greek mythology and the possibility that
they reflect a memory of the Mycenaean Age.

2. We have seen that Hesiod’s Theogony does not recount the origins of
humans. Works and Days, however, does contain an account of the creation of
humans. This account is often referred to as the “Myth of the Five Ages” or
“Myth of the Five Races.”
Hesiod describes five successive races of humans,
starting with the Golden Race and ending with our own
race. The overall pattern is one of degeneration and
increased hardship.
The first race, the Golden Race, was created by the
immortals who dwelt on Olympus during Cronos’s reign.
They had no cares or troubles, and old age did not
exist.
They did not have to work for food.
They died out but became benign spirits.
The Silver Race, also made by the Olympians, was
greatly inferior to the Golden
They lived as children, nourished by their mothers, for
one hundred years.
On reaching adulthood, they lived a short while but were
violent and irreverent. Zeus destroyed them.

3. The Bronze Race was made by Zeus from ash trees. They were warlike and violent and used
bronze for everything, including their homes. They too died out.
The fourth race was the Race of Heroes, which were better and more just than the Bronze
Race.
Zeus created the heroes.
Hesiod calls them “demigods” and says that they were the men who fought around Thebes
and Troy.
The fifth and worst race, Hesiod’s own and, by implication, ours as well, is the Race of Iron.
No creator is mentioned.
Hesiod describes the Iron Race’s lot as one of increasing hardship and toil.
The only end in sight is that conditions will get worse and worse, until finally Shame and
Retribution flee the earth, and society breaks down entirely.

4. This account apparently contradicts
the “Pandora” story, told only a few
lines before it in Works and Days, in
several ways. This is a reminder that
Hesiod was not attempting to provide
an orthodoxy.
The question of where humans
came from is not the most
pressing issue in Greek
mythology.
These myths are, by and large,
more concerned with how
humans should act and how
society should function than
with our origins.
Bronze Age
Weapons

5. Hesiod's story of the Five Races paints a very pessimistic view of the human condition. Ovid,
writing in Rome in the 1st century B.C., used the same basic myth but gave it a very different
emphasis.
In discussing the creation of humans, Ovid recaps Hesiod’s Myth of the Ages but with significant
differences. Ovid’s account has no Race of Heroes between the Bronze and the Iron Races.
We are not the Iron Race; rather, the Iron Race was destroyed by a great flood.We are the
offspring of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who survived the flood and threw stones over their shoulders
to repeople the earth. Thus, Ovid says, we are a hardy race, showing our ancestry.

6. As we saw in Ovid’s account of the creation of the world, we see here myth used as a self-conscious
literary device, rather than recorded as a still-dynamic living force. Because we are separated from the
earlier races, we can be more optimistic about our future than Hesiod was.
Who are these “heroes” whom Hesiod places right before our own day and Ovid leaves out of his
picture of the races?
Just as “god” is a misleading translation of the term
theos, so too “hero” is a misleading translation of heros.
The heroes of classical myth are not necessarily noble,
good, or morally exemplary; sometimes they are quite the
opposite.
This is one reason that many scholars find fault with
Campbell’s discussion of heroes. he takes it as a given
that “the hero” is motivated by a desire to provide a
“boon” for his fellows, but this is not the case in many, in
not most, Greek hero-tales.

7. The world heros had three basic meanings in ancient
Greek:
Hero could refer to a dead person who was revered and
to whom sacrifices were offered and who was considered
protective of a particular site or city (often because he
founded it). This status by no means implied that he had
been a good man, simply an extraordinary one.
Hero could refer to someone who lived in the past,
particularly up to the time of the Trojan War. Again, moral
qualities were not decisive.
Hero could refer to a human with one divine parent.
Achilles, Heracles, and Perseus are all heroes in this
sense.
A fourth sense, hero as the main character of a tragedy,
is post-classical and need not concern us here.

8. The three main senses of the term have a great deal of overlap.
Hesiod refers to his Race of Heroes as both demigods and men who fought around Thebes
and Troy.
These same legendary heroes were often claimed as ancestors and as the founders or
protectors of cities.
Remember, however, that some of the most famous heroes of Greek mythology, such as
Oedipus and Agamemnon, do not have divine parents.
The stories of heroes involved the sense, often found in myth, that things were different in
the past.
This difference often implies that, on one time, humans had more power or greater powers
than they now have.
The difference also involves the idea that gods and humans once interacted much more
freely than they do now.

9. Classical mythology’s emphasis on heroes is unusual.
Most cultures do not have nearly as many heroes intheir mythology as Greece
does, nor are those that they do have nearly so important. Mesopotamian myth,
for instance, includes almost no heroes at all (with the notable exception of
Gilgamesh).
It is possible that because Greek culture placed so much emphasis on the
opposition of mortal and immortal, the heroes were a means of mediating that
opposition. This idea that gods and human could interact was limited to the
remote past.

10. Another possibility is that a kernel of historical truth may lie in the Greek stories of greater
ancestors and a lost Golden Age.
Mycenaean civilization waned after c. 1100 B.C.; it did not suddenly disappear entirely.
Mycenaean cities, including some quite impressive architecture, would have remained more or
lest intact for some time.
Mycenaean artifacts, such as pottery and jewelry, would have continued to be used.
The skills needed to construct such buildings or to create such artwork, however, would have
been lost within one or two generations.
Memories of Mycenaean culture could be preserved in oral poetry, which is what seems to
have happened to some extent with the Trojan War.
Thus, the Greeks of Hesiod’s time might well have the sense that their own culture had been
preceded b a greater, more accomplished one, whose people were in some sense their
ancestors.