The Power of Imagination.

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history" - Robert Fulghum

I think that myth is in fact more powerful than history because imagination is more potent than knowledge. When violence took place, of stage, in Greek tragedy it was always more potent than some staged violence that might have been preformed on stage because when a messenger described the violence it left the gory details to the viewer’s imagination. People would rather listen to a story of an historical event (say the Trojan war) despite its possible historical inaccuracies rather than read through the reports of the archeology excavations of the city of Troy. Myth is always more palatable to people than fact because myth engages the readers imagination far more effectively than fact. When our goal is to inspire or entertain we should never let the facts interfere with a good story.

Sparagmos

Although I prefer the figurative use of the word to describe an event that causes extreme pain and suffering, I thought I would compile a list of literal examples both real and fictitious.

As any classical literature scholar knows sparagmos refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal--or sometimes even a human being--would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from ones body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered)

Examples:

Pentheus was lured into the forest by the god Dionysus after he banned worship of Dionysus. He is attacked by Maenads, followers of Dionysus, as well as by his own mother. The reference of his mother tearing apart his limbs is sparagmos.

Ovid recounts that the Thracian Maenads, Dionysus' followers, angry for having been spurned by Orpheus and retaliated by throwing sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the Maenads tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies.

Dozens of other stories in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, including the story of Marsyas who was flayed alive by Apollo after beating him in a music contest.

Lethe and Mnemosyne

In Greek Mythology Lethe and Mnemosyne meaning forgettfullness and Memory were two concepts that were personified in different forms.

Mnemosyne was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. This titaness was the daughter of Gaia and Uranus and the mother of the Muses by Zeus.
In Hesiod's Theogony, kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses.
Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights and thereby created the nine muses.

Mnemosyne was also the name for a river in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe, according to a series of 4th century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in dactylic hexameter. Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated. Those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience. Initiates in the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries were taught that they would receive a choice of rivers to drink from after death, and to drink from Mnemosyne instead of Lethe. These two rivers are attested in several verse inscriptions on gold plates dating to the 4th century BC and onward, found at Thurii in Southern Italy and elsewhere throughout the Greek world. Those plates gave instructions to the dead. When he comes to Hades, he must take care not to drink of Lethe ("Forgetfulness"), but of the pool of Mnemosyne ("Memory"), and he must say to the guards:
"I am the son of Earth and Starry Heaven. I am thirsty, please give me something to drink from the fountain of Mnemosyne."

Metempsychosis

Metempsychosis is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to the belief of transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.

The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as God from whom it comes. Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century BC, organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.

The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. Had he not embodied it in some of his greatest works it would be merely a matter of curious investigation for the Western anthropologist and student of folk-lore. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the story how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. After death, he said, he went with others to the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven and from purgatory, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new lives, human and animal. He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men, the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other. After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like stars to their birth. In Plato's view the number of souls was fixed; birth therefore is never the creation of a soul, but only a transmigration from one body to another. Plato's acceptance of the doctrine is characteristic of his sympathy with popular beliefs and desire to incorporate them in a purified form into his system.

Metempsychosis also appears in Molly Bloom's question to her husband, Leopold, in James Joyce's seminal novel Ulysses. In this multi-layered novel, at one level, Leopold's matter-of-fact and accurate response indicates that the ancient Greek hero's spirit resides in this most typical of modern men, a bumbling, cuckolded, seller of advertising copy

Agon at the Movies

After looking over the American Film Institute’s 100 Years... 100 Movies list, which includes award-winning movies created between 1915 and 1996, I realized that every movie on the list at least partially contains at least one of the five conflicts (AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies). Based on this I decided to focus on five of the movies on the list that perfectly embody each of the five conflicts. The movies I chose and the conflicts they embody are as follows:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves = Old vs. Young

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark = Men vs. The Gods

Frankenstein = Living vs. The Dead

My Fair Lady = Men vs. Women

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest = Individual vs. Society

So next time you go to the movies remember to look for the conflicts that drive their plots.

A New Angle on Sorrow

I found the following description of the term penthus as it related to Greek mythology on Wikipedia. I thought it was an interesting contrast with Pentheus, the king of Thebes in the Bacchae, whose name means sorrow.

The description from wikipedia is as follows: In Greek mythology, Penthus was the personification of grief. When Zeus began passing out domains to the various gods, Penthus was not there. As such, he received the one domain no one wanted: grief and sadness. It is believed that he likes to torment the same individuals; he favors those who weep for the dead. Therefore, the best way to keep him away is to grieve quickly and quietly.

Who Ever Heard of Cinncanatus?

Have you ever heard of the Roman citizen Cincinnatus?

Probably not, he was an ordinary Roman citizen who lived in the forth century B.C.E, and is regarded as the model of virtue and honor. Cincinnatus' first term as dictator began when the Aequi tribe from the east and the Volscians from the southeast began to menace Rome. The Roman Senate pleaded with Cincinnatus to assume the mantle of dictator to save the city.
According to Roman annalists, Cincinnatus had settled into a life of farming and knew that his departure might mean starvation for his family if the crops went unsown in his absence. He assented to the request anyway and within sixteen days had defeated the Aequi and the Volscians. His immediate resignation of his absolute authority with the end of the crisis has often been cited as an example of good leadership, service to the public good, civic virtue, and the virtue of modesty.

My point is that while most people have never heard of Cincinnatus, everybody has heard of Hitler, Stalin, and Nero. How fair is that. If the goal of humans is to achieve some type of immortality, than those who behave in an evil or immoral fashion (Hitler, Stalin, Nero) have achieved a type of immortality (if an infamous type) while those who live their lives in an honorable and modest fashion (of whom Cincinnatus was the most well known) are forgotten in the fog of the past.

The only justification I can offer is that perhaps those who live righteously and do good deeds live on through those good deeds and achieve a different type of immortality.