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Welcome back, now, in this orientation
module, we're going to do a few more

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little videos and exercises, just to get 
started, so we can all feel like we're

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figuring out what's going on in this
class.

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This is of course an online class. So
we'll be doing just about all of our

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work here on Canvas, and so there
are a few things we want to just

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get through first of all.

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But we wanted to talk a little bit
about what we're doing in this

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class as well.

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This is an introduction to 
classical mythology.

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And so we probably want to make sure 
we're on the same page of what

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classical mythology is.

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It after all can mean a few different 
things to different people and so

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there are things we can lay out 
definitionally.

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Now, in particular, the idea of
classical mythology tends to land

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in the area of Greek and Roman
antiquity.

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So some students come into the class
thinking that this is a broad eclectic

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class that's going to touch on things
like say Norse mythology, or Hindu

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mythology, or various other mythological
traditions that are of course very

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important and exciting, but this really
squares on Greco-Roman Mythology

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of the period of classical antiquity.

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Now, just as a helpful visualization, when
we talk about Greece and Rome,

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you might think of say the modern state
of Greece or Rome, the city, the capitol

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city of Italy.

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When we use those terms, we're talking
about much larger cultures that cover

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enormous expanses.

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Here's a map of the Roman Empire 
at its largest extent.

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In 117 A.D. or C.E. that's 117 years
after the date ascribed to the birth

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of Jesus.

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And this was the largest extent of 
conquests that the Romans achieved

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during that period.

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So you can see that the Romans 
pushed the boundaries of empire

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all the way to northern Britain,
where I'm from.

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Actually, I'm from southern Britain,
but that's my accent,

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all the way down to the middle east

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to Egypt in the south and over
to what we would say is Morocco

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in the west.

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So a huge amount of area, and this
is roughly speaking, the parts of the

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world where these cultures have 
their greatest influence and exerted

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various kinds of power.

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And there are lots of different ways that
historians and archaeologists and

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literary critics have studied these
cultures.

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For example, Lizzie I know that you --
which - first of all,

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which side do you, we usually split
into two sides, you know, Roman

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and Greek or Latin and Greek.

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Do you have a particular one or the other?

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>> I do, I do, I have a particular
fondness for Latin, so--

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>> Oh hey, me too!

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>> Yeah, I tend to study Latin poetry 
in particular.

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I'm really interested in how language
reflects ideas of gender and of sexuality.

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So really how language brings the cultural
context into the forefront

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of what people are saying.

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>> And we've talked about this before,
that you have a particular interest in

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sort of Roman comedy. In Claudius and
stuff like that?

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>> I do, I do. I'm growing fonder of
Claudius as I work more on Claudius,

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um, I - right now I'm doing research
on Roman wordplay generally.

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So Claudius is involved because
he has lots of puns and insults

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and uh, yeah.

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>> Cool. I wonder if there will
be any puns or wordplay in this class?

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Moving on. I've studied, as an 
intellectual historian, I've looked - I've

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also looked at language, I've looked at 
the way that philosophies about

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language can express various kinds of
political or ideological commitments,

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particularly as Rome was becoming
a bigger and bigger empire.

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But these are really sort of social 
linguistics, or say politics, or um,

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you know cultural questions. Uh,
lots of different kinds of ideas.

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We can also study the ancient
Greek and Romans for their

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mythological legacy.

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And that's really what we're doing
in this class.

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So we're going to be looking at
figures, many of which you've

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probably already heard of.

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You've probably already
heard of the king of the gods

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in Greek and Roman mythology,
that's Zeus for the Greeks,

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or Jupiter for the Romans.

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And here is a picture of that figure
wielding his mighty thunderbolt.

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That's one of his iconic weapons
that we'll often see him depicted with.

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You might also have heard of 
one of Jupiter or Zeus's

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many hero sons.

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The hero Hercules, that's his Latin name.

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In fact, he's probably more commonly known
by his Greek name, Heracles.

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And here he is in the Disney movie
that is actually more than 20 years old.

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(laughter) Would you believe?

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There are, of course,
sagas that these heroes belong to,

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that they participate in,

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and Hercules wasn't at the Trojan War,
he was slightly before that,

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but it was descendants
or people coming after Hercules

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that fought at Troy 
and used the Trojan Horse

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to deviously make their way into the city.

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This is where fighters like Achilles and 
Odysseus and Agamemnon and Hector

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all fought, and we're going to be reading 
more of that as the course progresses.

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So you can see that these stories, 
even if you have only a cursory knowledge

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of classical antiquity, these are names
that have filtered their way through

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to modernity and are constantly being
reevaluated, reconsidered,

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criticized, reused.

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A couple years ago, the movie Wonder Woman
was a big hit in summer blockbusters,

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and Wonder Woman is an Amazon, who is--

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they're a tribe of women
in classical mythology.

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I don't want to give out any spoilers,
but Diana's main rival

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in the Wonder Woman comics is 
the god Ares, who is the Greek god of war.

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Now, once we start to look 
more and more at this,

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the idea of classical mythology 
starts to become a lot more clear.

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We could just call this class

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"Introduction to Ancient Greek 
and Roman Mythology,"

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but for a long time, 
it's been called "classical" mythology.

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And that might have something to do 
with the fact that

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the idea of "classical" connotes 
something that's exemplary,

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that is given a high 
kind of cultural value,

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and that is considered enduring in a way 
that these stories still have

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a kind of resonance, 
even 2,000 years after their retelling.

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Is that what you think of when you
think of the idea of "classical?"

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>> Yeah, I mean, I do, I think there's 
definitely the element of classics as

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very foundational, but I think there's
also a problematic element to classics

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in that calling something "foundational"
or "ideal" and idealizing the past

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really contributes to kind of othering
the other cultures

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that we're overlooking to look at these.

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>> Absolutely. And that's, I think,
something that we're going to look at

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over the next couple of weeks,
that-- in fact, the original use

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of "classic," the word "classic"
or "classicus" in Latin

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to denote something
of being high value

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was precisely in opposition to
the word "proletarian".

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There was a sort of guy,
and we'll look at this later,

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called Aulus Gellius
who was saying,

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well you know the good authors,
the classical authors because

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they used language in this way,
but the proletarian authors

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use them this way.

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And he was saying that-- making
that distinction as a matter

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not merely of aesthetic judgement,
but also sort of social judgement.

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And sure enough, throughout history
people have used the idea of

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a classical precisely as you say,
to create in and out groups,

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to say that some people belong
and some people don't,

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and also to draw lines of inheritance
from antiquity to the present

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that may not be justified when
we look at the historical record.

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So there's a lot that we
can dig into there,

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and we want to be able to use
this idea of classical not simply to

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investigate cultures that are
long removed from us,

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but cultures that are still--
that still have stakes today.

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And we want to join in that discussion
with you throughout the semester

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and find out where classical mythology
might show up in your lives.

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So we'll be doing that in videos here,
you're going to be seeing a lot of me

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in videos that we've recorded
before this semester.

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As you're watching this video,
I'll just say right now,

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occasionally you will see a question
show up, and that's one way that we can

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see how you're getting on in the class.

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We call those instapolls, and an example
of that is showing up right now.

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So that's not worth any credit, we want
to make sure that everything's working.

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For now we've got a few more things
we want you to take a look at,

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and we'll come back and talk some
more about classical mythology.