STALIN'S CYCLE Two “peoples” of one country Usually, any community, including the human community, is in a certain environment. In order to exist in it, it must be able, on the one hand, to preserve information (experience) accumulated in the past that is useful for its development, and on the other

Cretan cycle of myths: Zeus, Minos, Minotaur.

For the Greeks, Crete has always remained a place shrouded in legends telling about amazing events that once took place here. According to myths, in Crete in a cave on the mountain Dikti(or Dikta) 1 the baby was covered Zeus whose mother Rhea hid from her cruel father Crown. Subsequently Zeus, having become the ruler of the Olympic gods, brought the daughter of the Phoenician king to Crete Agenora Europe, which he kidnapped by turning into a bull. Europe gave birth to 3 sons - Rhadamantha, Sarpedona And Minos.

Having matured, Minos gained supreme power over all of Crete and gave the first laws to the inhabitants of the island. Despite the favor of his divine parent, Minos were constantly plagued by failures. God of the sea Poseidon, angered by deception Minos, forced the wife of the Cretan king to enter into an unnatural relationship with a bull, from the union with which he was born Minotaur- a man with a bull's head. By order Minos Athenian architect and sculptor Daedalus built in Knossos 2 Labyrinth, where they were imprisoned forever Minotaur. When one of the sons died in Athens Minos, the Cretan king sailed to the shores of Attica and abandoned the country to devastation. Driven to despair, the Athenians concluded with Minos an agreement under which they agreed to send a kind of tax to Crete - 14 boys and girls selected by lot, doomed to die in the Labyrinth at the hands of Minotaur. A few years later the young hero Theseus decided to relieve his compatriots from a terrible burden by voluntarily going to Crete with another batch of young people. Having won the heart of the daughter of the Cretan king with his nobility Ariadne, Theseus got it on advice Daedalus from his beloved a ball of long thread, with the help of which he got out of the Labyrinth after defeating Minotaur.

The legend about the Atrid family.

Pelops, who deceived the charioteer Myrtilus, to whom he promised half the kingdom for his help in the victory over King Oenomaus, and insidiously killed his comrade-in-arms, was cursed by him, and his sons Atreus and Thyestes spent their lives in mutual enmity. Atreus, through a misunderstanding, killed his own son, sent by Thyestes, for which he treated his brother to the roasted meat of his own children. Atreus threw his wife Aerope, who was intriguing in favor of Thyestes, into the sea and sent his son Thyestes to kill his own father. But, having guessed his plan, the nephew killed Atreus. One of the Atrides, Agamemnon, died at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra and his cousin Aegisthus, who were harassed by the son of the hero of the Trojan War Orestes, for which he was persecuted by the goddess of vengeance Erinyes. The curse of the Atrides - descendants of the Mycenaean king Atreus - was to fade only when Orestes, the last of the dynasty, exhausted his punishment by committing murder and being purified at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi and at the Athenian Areopagus (court), where Pallas Athena presided. The legends about Tantalus, Pelops, the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, as well as the Atrids became the subjects of many tragedies. Homer and Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus and Euripides, Aeschylus and Pindar, Thucydides and Sophocles, Seneca and Ovid and, of course, classics of other eras turned to the bloody myth.

Theban cycle.

Oedipus. His childhood. Youth and return to Thebes

Oedipus in Thebes

Death of Oedipus

Seven against Thebes

Antigone

Campaign of the Epigones

Seven against Thebes.

In mythical Greece there were two most powerful kingdoms: Thebes in Central Greece and Argos in Southern Greece. There was once a king in Thebes named Laius. He received a prophecy: “If you don’t give birth to a son, you will destroy the kingdom!” Laius did not listen and gave birth to a son named Oedipus. He wanted to destroy the baby; but Oedipus escaped, grew up on the wrong side, and then accidentally killed Laius, not knowing that it was his father, and married his widow, not knowing that it was his mother. How this happened, and how it was revealed, and how Oedipus suffered for it, another playwright, Sophocles, will tell us. But the worst thing - the death of the kingdom - was yet to come.

From an incestuous marriage with his own mother, Oedipus had two sons and two daughters: Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone and Yemene. When Oedipus renounced power, his sons turned away from him, reproaching him for his sin. Oedipus cursed them, promising them to share power with the sword among themselves. And so it happened. The brothers agreed to rule alternately, each for a year. But after the first year, Eteocles refused to leave and expelled Polyneices from Thebes. Polyneices fled to the southern kingdom - to Argos. There he gathered his allies, and all of them went to the seven gates of Thebes. In the decisive battle, the two brothers came together and killed each other: Eteocles wounded Polynices with a spear, he fell to his knee, Eteocles hovered over him, and then Polynices struck him from below with a sword. The enemies wavered, Thebes was saved this time. Only a generation later, the sons of seven leaders came to Thebes on a campaign and wiped Thebes off the face of the earth for a long time: the prophecy came true.

Aeschylus wrote a trilogy about this, three tragedies: “Laius” - about the culprit king, “Oedipus” - about the sinner king and “Seven against Thebes” - about Eteocles, the hero king who gave his life for his city. Only the last one has survived.

Voyage of the Argonauts.

Argonauts - in ancient Greek mythology, participants in the expedition to Colchis (the Black Sea coast) on the ship "Argo".
The ship was built with the help of Athena, who inserted a piece of sacred centuries-old oak into its hull, conveying the will of the gods with the rustling of its leaves.
The Argonauts led by Jason, among whom were the Dioscuri twins - Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux), Hercules, Orpheus, Peleus, the soothsayer Pug, Eurytus (Ευρυτος, son of Hermes and Antianira, brother of Echion), Hylas (the favorite of Hercules, the naiads captivated by his beauty, carried away into the abyss during the campaign) and Telamon, were supposed to return to Greece the golden fleece of the magic ram, taken to Colchis.
Apollodorus lists 45 Argonauts. According to Diodorus, who does not give a list, there were 54 in total. According to Theocritus, there were 60, according to a number of other authors, only 50. Since the lists contradict each other, more than ninety names of heroes are found in various lists.
Having experienced many adventures, the Argonauts fulfilled the order and returned the fleece to Greece, while the sorceress Medea, the daughter of the Colchian king, whom Jason later took as his wife, helped Jason take possession of the golden fleece. According to Hesiod, they sailed along the Phasis to the ocean, then arrived in Libya.

Well-known cycles of ancient Greek myths are the Trojan cycle, the Theban cycle, and the cycle of myths about the Argonauts.

The Trojan cycle of myths of Ancient Greece tells about the events associated with the city of Troy and the Trojan War. The war began due to the abduction of Helen the Beautiful by Paris, and ended with the destruction of Troy.

The cycle of myths about the Argonauts tells about Jason and his family, about the journey on the ship "Argo" for the Golden Fleece, Jason's marriage to Medea, and about further events in the life of the Argonauts: Jason's betrayal and his attempt at a new marriage, about Medea's terrible revenge, about the end Jason's life.

The Theban cycle of myths tells about the founding of the city of Thebes in the ancient Greek region of Boeotia, about the fate of the Theban king Oedipus and his descendants.

In the minds of the ancient Greeks, the Olympian gods were like people and the relationships between them resembled the relationships between people: they quarreled and made peace, envied and interfered in people’s lives, were offended, took part in wars, rejoiced, had fun and fell in love. Each of the gods had a specific occupation, being responsible for a specific area of ​​life:

1.Zeus (Dias) - ruler of the sky, father of gods and people.

2. Hera (Ira) - wife of Zeus, patroness of the family.

3.Poseidon - ruler of the seas.

4.Hestia (Estia) - protector of the family hearth.

5.Demeter (Dimitra) - goddess of agriculture.

6. Apollo - god of light and music.

7.Athena - goddess of wisdom.

8.Hermes (Ermis) - god of trade and messenger of the gods.

9. Hephaestus (Ifestos) - god of fire.

10.Aphrodite - goddess of beauty.

11.Ares (Aris) - god of war.

12.Artemis - goddess of the hunt.

People on earth turned to the gods - to each according to his “specialty”, erected temples for them and, in order to appease them, brought gifts as sacrifices. According to Greek mythology, in addition to the children of Chaos, the Titans and the Olympian gods, the earth was inhabited by many other deities who personified the forces of nature. So, the nymphs Naiads lived in rivers and streams, the Nereids lived in the sea, Dryads and Satyrs lived in the forests, and the nymph Echo lived in the mountains. Human life was controlled by three goddesses of Fate - the Moiras (Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos). It was they who spun the thread of human life from birth to death and could break it whenever they wanted...

The myths of ancient Greece about heroes took shape long before the advent of written history. These are legends about the ancient life of the Greeks, and reliable information is intertwined in tales about heroes with fiction. Memories of people who accomplished civil feats, being commanders or rulers of the people, stories about their exploits force the ancient Greek people to look at these ancestors as people chosen by the gods and even related to the gods. In the imagination of the people, such people turn out to be the children of gods who married mortals.

In accordance with their divine origin, the heroes of the myths of Ancient Greece had strength, courage, beauty, and wisdom. But unlike the gods, the heroes were mortal, with the exception of a few who rose to the level of deities (Hercules, Castor, Polydeuces, etc.).

In ancient Greek times, it was believed that the afterlife of heroes was no different from the afterlife of mere mortals. Only a few favorites of the gods move to the islands of the blessed. Later, Greek myths began to say that all heroes enjoy the benefits of the “golden age” under the auspices of Kronos and that their spirit is invisibly present on earth, protecting people and averting disasters from them. These ideas gave rise to the cult of heroes

4. The concept of epic. Homeric poems. The time and place of their creation, artistic features. The role of the gods in the fate of the heroes of the poems. Homeric question.

Epic - Greek. “word”, “narration”, “story”. One of the three types of literature identified by Aristotle. Originated earlier than other genera. It is a story about events unfolding in space and time independent of the objective narrator. The epic tells about the past holistically. Containing a holistic picture of people's life.

Three parts: story, description, reasoning.

Homer has a strictly objective narrative.

In the community-tribal formation, a heroic epic arose - a heroic narrative about an event important for the clan, which reflected the harmonious unity of the people and heroic heroes. “The Iliad” is a military-heroic epic, “The Odyssey” is a fairy-tale epic.

Homer is the legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, who is credited with creating the Iliad and Odyssey.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer. The Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century. BC, when their existence was reliably recorded.

One of the most important compositional features of the Iliad is the “law of chronological incompatibility” formulated by Thaddeus Frantsevich Zelinsky. It is that “In Homer, the story never returns to its point of departure. It follows that parallel actions in Homer cannot be depicted; Homer’s poetic technique knows only the simple, linear, and not the double, square dimension.” Thus, sometimes parallel events are depicted as sequential, sometimes one of them is only mentioned or even suppressed. This explains some apparent contradictions in the text of the poem.

Features of Homeric style.

1. Objectivity.

2. Antipsychologism.

3. Monumentality.

4. Heroism.

5. Retarding technique.

6. Chronological incompatibility (actions occurring in parallel are depicted sequentially).

7. Humanism.

8. Lyrical, tragic and comic principles in poems with the unity of artistic style.

9. Constant formulas (like epithets, for example).

10. Hexameter.

Homer is characterized by compound epithets (“swift-footed,” “rose-fingered,” “thunderer”); the meaning of these and other epithets should not be considered situationally, but within the framework of the traditional formulaic system. Thus, the Achaeans are “lush-legged” even if they are not described as wearing armor, and Achilles is “swift-footed” even when resting.

The action of the poem takes place in two parallel planes, human - near Troy and divine - on Olympus.

Artistic features of the Iliad and Odyssey

The images of Homer's heroes are to some extent static, that is, their characters are illuminated somewhat one-sidedly and remain unchanged from the beginning to the end of the action of the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", although each character has his own face, different from the others: resourcefulness is emphasized in the Odyssey mind, in Agamemnon - arrogance and lust for power, in Paris - delicacy, in Helen - beauty, in Penelope - the wisdom and constancy of a wife, in Hector - the courage of the defender of his city and the mood of doom, since he, and his father, and his son, and Troy herself.

The one-sidedness in the depiction of heroes is due to the fact that most of them appear before us in only one situation - in battle, where all the traits of their characters cannot appear. Some exception is Achilles, since he is shown in a relationship with a friend, and in a battle with an enemy, and in a quarrel with Agamemnon, and in a conversation with the elder Priam, and in other situations.

The lack of psychological characteristics of the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey is partly explained by the tasks of the genre: an epic, which is based on folk art, usually tells about events, about the affairs of some group, and is of little interest to an individual person.

Homer usually resorts to the intervention of the gods to explain an important change in behavior, the motivation for a conscious decision that replaced a momentary impulse.

The stylistic means used in the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” testify to the organic connection of the Homeric epic with its folklore origins; in terms of the abundance of epithets, Homer's poems can only be compared with works of folk art, where most of the nouns are accompanied by definitions. Achilles alone in the Iliad is endowed with 46 epithets. Among the epithets of the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” there are a large number of “constant” ones, that is, intended for any one hero or object. This is also a folklore trait. In Russian epics, for example, the sea is always blue, the hands are white, the fellow is good, the girl is red. In Homer, the sea is noisy, Zeus is the cloud suppressor, Poseidon is the shaker of the earth, Apollo is silver-bowed, the maidens are slender-ankled, Achilles is most often fleet-footed, Odysseus is cunning, Hector is helmet-shining.

Odyssey. After all, generations of heroes descend from Zeus (it’s not for nothing that Homer calls him “the father of men and gods”) or his relatives, so the gods are concerned about the fate of the heroes, and mortal people turn to their immortal patrons with sighs and pleas.

In the Odyssey, the wise goddess Athena and the wise hero Odysseus are inseparable. The goddess quietly watches him and always gets in his way on time - both on the island of the Phaeacians, taking the form of a beautiful maiden, and on Ithaca in the form of a young shepherd. She helps Odysseus and Telemachus hide their weapons; she watches the massacre of the suitors, turning into a swallow and sitting on the ceiling beam; she establishes peace in Ithaca. And it is she, the many-wise daughter of Zeus, who decisively stands up for Odysseus at the council of the gods.

The gods “put” sadness into a person’s heart, “throw” thought into him, “take out” his mind, “take away” fear, so that many mental acts are represented in Homer in a material-physical way. Sometimes the poet depicts the dependence of a person’s actions on the will of the deity in a surprisingly visible way. Thus, in the first song of the Iliad, in the scene of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, the angry Achilles is already ready to pull his sword from its sheath and attack the enemy, but at that moment the goddess Athena, standing behind the hero, strongly pulls his light brown curls and he instantly changes his intention.

But this direct connection with the deity does not at all prevent Homeric man from acting independently and creating life with his own hands. Moreover, in some cases, even the gods hesitate when making an important decision, since they do not know the word of fate, on which both mortals and immortals depend.

Obviously, these epithets (almost always decorative) took shape in the poetic language long before the creation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and Homer often uses them as ready-made cliches, sometimes in accordance not with the plot situation, but with the poetic meter. This is why Achilles, for example, is called fleet-footed even when he is sitting, and the sea is called noisy when it is calm.

The abundance of everyday details in the Iliad and Odyssey creates the impression of realism in the pictures described, but this is the so-called spontaneous, primitive realism.

Gomrovsky question. The historically characteristic image of the wandering singer Homer is intertwined in the legend preserved for us by ancient authors with all sorts of fantastic inventions. The Homeric question arose due to the lack of any reliable information about Homer already in ancient times. The interpretation of the name Homer already occupied the ancients. It was considered a common noun meaning “blind.” Researchers of the Homeric question interpreted this name in different ways: they saw in it an indication of a closely knit class of singers, and a designation of a singer, and simply the poet’s own name.

The Greek folk epic had an enormous influence on subsequent Greek literature and art, and later, especially through Virgil's Aeneid, served as a model for Western European epic.

The absence of any information about Homer’s personality, as well as the presence of contradictions, stylistic inconsistencies and plot inconsistencies in the poems gave rise to the “Homeric question” - a set of problems associated with the study of the Iliad and Odyssey, and primarily with the authorship of these poems.

In the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” they began to see works created by the people in ancient times, and in the name of Homer - a certain collective name for the author of the Greek epic as a whole. This interpretation of the Homeric question gained popularity because it made it possible to explain the artistic perfection of the Iliad and Odyssey by the nationality of these poems, thereby confirming the romantics' view of folklore as the only source of truly pure poetry. In addition to the analytical and unitary ones, there were various compromise theories of the Homeric question. For example, supporters of the “core core” theory assumed that the original text gradually acquired additions and insertions made by different poets; not only Homer, but three or four poets participated in the composition of the epic, hence the first, second, third editions, etc. Representatives of another theory saw in Homer’s poems a unification of several “small epics.”

There are other interpretations of the Homeric question and opinions about the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but all of them in one way or another come down to the question of the relationship between the personal and collective creativity of the authors of the Homeric epic.

Theban mythological cycle

Micro paraphrase: One of the main mythological cycles (cycles) of Ancient Greece. The Theban cycle of myths tells about the founding of the city of Thebes in Boeotia, about the fate of the Theban king Oedipus and his descendants.

The founder of Thebes was the Phoenician Cadmus. His sister Europa was kidnapped by Zeus and carried across the sea in the form of a bull. The brother, looking for his sister, ended up in Hellas and founded Thebes. So the descendants of Cadmus began to rule the city.

The next king, Laius, was predicted by the priestess that he would die at the hands of his own son. When a son was born to him and his wife Jocasta, Laius ordered the newborn to be thrown into the abyss to be devoured by wild beasts. But the slave disobeyed the king’s will and slipped the boy to the servant of the Corinthian king Polybus. He raised him and named him Oedipus for his legs, swollen from wounds - before, the cruel father tied his newborn son's legs with belts, piercing his feet with a sharp iron.

Having become a young man, Oedipus, not knowing who his parents were, set off on his wanderings in order to find out the secret of his birth. On the way, without knowing it, in a fit of anger he kills his blood father Laius. Considering himself innocent of murder (after all, he was defending himself), Oedipus went to Thebes. Just then the city was threatened by a monster - the Sphinx. He kept Thebes in fear by asking people riddles, and if they did not answer them, they died.

Oedipus correctly answered the Sphinx’s question: “Who walks on four in the morning, on two in the afternoon, and on three in the evening?”, after which the monster threw himself from the cliff, and Oedipus saved the city and, becoming its king, married the dowager queen Jocasta, not knowing that it was his mother. They had children: two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, and two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices.

Having learned the terrible truth from the oracle, Jocasta hanged herself without surviving the shock, and Oedipus, mad with grief, gouged out his eyes and left Thebes. He became a beggar wanderer and traveled with his daughter Antigone. None of the children wanted to follow him except her.

After going a long way, Oedipus and Antigone reached Attica and ended up in the city of Athens. There, in the sacred grove of the Eumenides, Oedipus realized that his last hours were approaching. He asked to send for King Theseus so that he would help him and give him and his daughter shelter. Here Oedipus met his other daughter, Ismene. She came to say goodbye to her father and convey to him the sad news: Oedipus's youngest son, Etiocles, seized power in Thebes, expelling his older brother, Polyneices. The eldest son also came to his father to tell about his misfortune and ask for help, but Oedipus did not want to listen to him. Oedipus died in poverty, and Antigone returned to Thebes.

The sons continued to dispute power among themselves. Thebes was attacked. When Polyneices died at the hands of Eteocles during the battle, the Thebans decided to deprive him of burial. Despite the ban, Antigone, according to ancient custom, so as not to anger the gods, betrayed the body of Polyneices to the ground. The king of Thebes, Creon, angry because of Antigone's disobedience, demanded that she admit guilt.

For violating the ban, Antigone was sentenced to a terrible execution, and Polyneices’ body was dug up. But the blind soothsayer Tiresias stopped Creon, warning him with evil signs from the gods. Returning to the tomb where Antigone was buried alive, the king of Thebes learned that she had killed herself. To atone for his guilt before the gods, Creon performed the burial ceremony of Polyneices and asked for forgiveness from Hades and Hecate.

Ten years have passed since the campaign of the seven against Thebes. During this time, the sons of the heroes who fell at Thebes matured. They decided to take revenge on the Thebans for the defeat of their fathers and undertook a new campaign. An army of epigones set out from Argos and defeated Thebes. The defeated Thebans began negotiations with the besiegers, and at night, on the advice of Tiresias, they secretly left Thebes from the besiegers. They moved north to Thessaly, where they later settled. Thebes, taken by the epigones, was destroyed. The rich booty that they got was divided among themselves by the epigones.