WEBVTT 00:00:05.906 --> 00:00:10.252 Welcome back, now, in this orientation module, we're going to do a few more 00:00:10.252 --> 00:00:15.712 little videos and exercises, just to get started, so we can all feel like we're 00:00:15.712 --> 00:00:17.460 figuring out what's going on in this class. 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:20.902 This is of course an online class. So we'll be doing just about all of our 00:00:20.902 --> 00:00:24.894 work here on Canvas, and so there are a few things we want to just 00:00:24.894 --> 00:00:26.303 get through first of all. 00:00:26.303 --> 00:00:29.765 But we wanted to talk a little bit about what we're doing in this 00:00:29.765 --> 00:00:31.065 class as well. 00:00:31.065 --> 00:00:34.410 This is an introduction to classical mythology. 00:00:34.410 --> 00:00:37.088 And so we probably want to make sure we're on the same page of what 00:00:37.088 --> 00:00:39.170 classical mythology is. 00:00:39.170 --> 00:00:43.344 It after all can mean a few different things to different people and so 00:00:43.344 --> 00:00:46.316 there are things we can lay out definitionally. 00:00:46.316 --> 00:00:51.945 Now, in particular, the idea of classical mythology tends to land 00:00:51.945 --> 00:00:55.556 in the area of Greek and Roman antiquity. 00:00:55.556 --> 00:01:01.206 So some students come into the class thinking that this is a broad eclectic 00:01:01.206 --> 00:01:06.061 class that's going to touch on things like say Norse mythology, or Hindu 00:01:06.061 --> 00:01:10.518 mythology, or various other mythological traditions that are of course very 00:01:10.518 --> 00:01:15.557 important and exciting, but this really squares on Greco-Roman Mythology 00:01:15.557 --> 00:01:18.692 of the period of classical antiquity. 00:01:18.692 --> 00:01:22.367 Now, just as a helpful visualization, when we talk about Greece and Rome, 00:01:22.367 --> 00:01:28.250 you might think of say the modern state of Greece or Rome, the city, the capitol 00:01:28.250 --> 00:01:29.603 city of Italy. 00:01:29.603 --> 00:01:33.963 When we use those terms, we're talking about much larger cultures that cover 00:01:33.963 --> 00:01:35.483 enormous expanses. 00:01:35.483 --> 00:01:39.971 Here's a map of the Roman Empire at its largest extent. 00:01:39.971 --> 00:01:46.913 In 117 A.D. or C.E. that's 117 years after the date ascribed to the birth 00:01:46.913 --> 00:01:47.994 of Jesus. 00:01:47.994 --> 00:01:52.342 And this was the largest extent of conquests that the Romans achieved 00:01:52.342 --> 00:01:53.389 during that period. 00:01:53.389 --> 00:01:56.551 So you can see that the Romans pushed the boundaries of empire 00:01:56.551 --> 00:02:00.691 all the way to northern Britain, where I'm from. 00:02:00.691 --> 00:02:04.031 Actually, I'm from southern Britain, but that's my accent, 00:02:04.031 --> 00:02:07.116 all the way down to the middle east 00:02:07.116 --> 00:02:11.342 to Egypt in the south and over to what we would say is Morocco 00:02:11.342 --> 00:02:12.276 in the west. 00:02:12.276 --> 00:02:17.003 So a huge amount of area, and this is roughly speaking, the parts of the 00:02:17.003 --> 00:02:23.895 world where these cultures have their greatest influence and exerted 00:02:23.895 --> 00:02:26.561 various kinds of power. 00:02:26.561 --> 00:02:31.678 And there are lots of different ways that historians and archaeologists and 00:02:31.678 --> 00:02:34.930 literary critics have studied these cultures. 00:02:34.930 --> 00:02:37.778 For example, Lizzie I know that you -- which - first of all, 00:02:37.778 --> 00:02:40.894 which side do you, we usually split into two sides, you know, Roman 00:02:40.894 --> 00:02:42.936 and Greek or Latin and Greek. 00:02:42.936 --> 00:02:45.173 Do you have a particular one or the other? 00:02:45.173 --> 00:02:50.658 >> I do, I do, I have a particular fondness for Latin, so-- 00:02:50.658 --> 00:02:53.379 >> Oh hey, me too! 00:02:53.379 --> 00:03:00.131 >> Yeah, I tend to study Latin poetry in particular. 00:03:00.131 --> 00:03:08.042 I'm really interested in how language reflects ideas of gender and of sexuality. 00:03:08.042 --> 00:03:14.048 So really how language brings the cultural context into the forefront 00:03:14.048 --> 00:03:16.972 of what people are saying. 00:03:16.972 --> 00:03:21.394 >> And we've talked about this before, that you have a particular interest in 00:03:21.394 --> 00:03:25.123 sort of Roman comedy. In Claudius and stuff like that? 00:03:25.123 --> 00:03:29.576 >> I do, I do. I'm growing fonder of Claudius as I work more on Claudius, 00:03:29.576 --> 00:03:37.155 um, I - right now I'm doing research on Roman wordplay generally. 00:03:37.155 --> 00:03:41.004 So Claudius is involved because he has lots of puns and insults 00:03:41.004 --> 00:03:43.326 and uh, yeah. 00:03:43.326 --> 00:03:47.341 >> Cool. I wonder if there will be any puns or wordplay in this class? 00:03:47.341 --> 00:03:53.524 Moving on. I've studied, as an intellectual historian, I've looked - I've 00:03:53.524 --> 00:03:57.125 also looked at language, I've looked at the way that philosophies about 00:03:57.125 --> 00:04:04.027 language can express various kinds of political or ideological commitments, 00:04:04.027 --> 00:04:07.135 particularly as Rome was becoming a bigger and bigger empire. 00:04:07.135 --> 00:04:13.477 But these are really sort of social linguistics, or say politics, or um, 00:04:13.477 --> 00:04:17.572 you know cultural questions. Uh, lots of different kinds of ideas. 00:04:17.572 --> 00:04:21.489 We can also study the ancient Greek and Romans for their 00:04:21.489 --> 00:04:23.201 mythological legacy. 00:04:23.201 --> 00:04:25.406 And that's really what we're doing in this class. 00:04:25.406 --> 00:04:28.160 So we're going to be looking at figures, many of which you've 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:30.209 probably already heard of. 00:04:30.209 --> 00:04:34.194 You've probably already heard of the king of the gods 00:04:34.194 --> 00:04:38.031 in Greek and Roman mythology, that's Zeus for the Greeks, 00:04:38.031 --> 00:04:40.258 or Jupiter for the Romans. 00:04:40.258 --> 00:04:46.284 And here is a picture of that figure wielding his mighty thunderbolt. 00:04:46.284 --> 00:04:51.863 That's one of his iconic weapons that we'll often see him depicted with. 00:04:51.863 --> 00:04:56.015 You might also have heard of one of Jupiter or Zeus's 00:04:56.015 --> 00:04:58.134 many hero sons. 00:04:58.134 --> 00:05:00.602 The hero Hercules, that's his Latin name. 00:05:00.602 --> 00:05:03.941 In fact, he's probably more commonly known by his Greek name, Heracles. 00:05:03.941 --> 00:05:10.522 And here he is in the Disney movie that is actually more than 20 years old. 00:05:10.522 --> 00:05:12.636 (laughter) Would you believe? 00:05:12.636 --> 00:05:17.757 There are, of course, sagas that these heroes belong to, 00:05:17.757 --> 00:05:19.792 that they participate in, 00:05:19.792 --> 00:05:25.492 and Hercules wasn't at the Trojan War, he was slightly before that, 00:05:25.492 --> 00:05:28.236 but it was descendants or people coming after Hercules 00:05:28.236 --> 00:05:31.651 that fought at Troy and used the Trojan Horse 00:05:31.651 --> 00:05:35.420 to deviously make their way into the city. 00:05:35.420 --> 00:05:39.989 This is where fighters like Achilles and Odysseus and Agamemnon and Hector 00:05:39.989 --> 00:05:45.020 all fought, and we're going to be reading more of that as the course progresses. 00:05:45.020 --> 00:05:50.876 So you can see that these stories, even if you have only a cursory knowledge 00:05:50.876 --> 00:05:57.659 of classical antiquity, these are names that have filtered their way through 00:05:57.659 --> 00:06:03.885 to modernity and are constantly being reevaluated, reconsidered, 00:06:03.885 --> 00:06:05.963 criticized, reused. 00:06:05.963 --> 00:06:12.056 A couple years ago, the movie Wonder Woman was a big hit in summer blockbusters, 00:06:12.056 --> 00:06:15.948 and Wonder Woman is an Amazon, who is-- 00:06:15.948 --> 00:06:22.160 they're a tribe of women in classical mythology. 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:26.695 I don't want to give out any spoilers, but Diana's main rival 00:06:26.695 --> 00:06:32.367 in the Wonder Woman comics is the god Ares, who is the Greek god of war. 00:06:32.367 --> 00:06:34.728 Now, once we start to look more and more at this, 00:06:34.728 --> 00:06:39.477 the idea of classical mythology starts to become a lot more clear. 00:06:39.477 --> 00:06:41.152 We could just call this class 00:06:41.152 --> 00:06:43.910 "Introduction to Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology," 00:06:43.910 --> 00:06:48.268 but for a long time, it's been called "classical" mythology. 00:06:48.268 --> 00:06:51.261 And that might have something to do with the fact that 00:06:51.261 --> 00:06:55.948 the idea of "classical" connotes something that's exemplary, 00:06:55.948 --> 00:07:01.348 that is given a high kind of cultural value, 00:07:01.348 --> 00:07:07.740 and that is considered enduring in a way that these stories still have 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:12.703 a kind of resonance, even 2,000 years after their retelling. 00:07:12.703 --> 00:07:16.456 Is that what you think of when you think of the idea of "classical?" 00:07:16.456 --> 00:07:21.702 >> Yeah, I mean, I do, I think there's definitely the element of classics as 00:07:21.702 --> 00:07:28.558 very foundational, but I think there's also a problematic element to classics 00:07:28.558 --> 00:07:36.357 in that calling something "foundational" or "ideal" and idealizing the past 00:07:36.357 --> 00:07:42.466 really contributes to kind of othering the other cultures 00:07:42.466 --> 00:07:46.584 that we're overlooking to look at these. 00:07:46.584 --> 00:07:49.518 >> Absolutely. And that's, I think, something that we're going to look at 00:07:49.518 --> 00:07:55.337 over the next couple of weeks, that-- in fact, the original use 00:07:55.337 --> 00:07:58.864 of "classic," the word "classic" or "classicus" in Latin 00:07:58.864 --> 00:08:02.250 to denote something of being high value 00:08:02.250 --> 00:08:06.857 was precisely in opposition to the word "proletarian". 00:08:06.857 --> 00:08:08.898 There was a sort of guy, and we'll look at this later, 00:08:08.898 --> 00:08:11.935 called Aulus Gellius who was saying, 00:08:11.935 --> 00:08:14.192 well you know the good authors, the classical authors because 00:08:14.192 --> 00:08:16.913 they used language in this way, but the proletarian authors 00:08:16.913 --> 00:08:17.852 use them this way. 00:08:17.852 --> 00:08:20.662 And he was saying that-- making that distinction as a matter 00:08:20.662 --> 00:08:24.284 not merely of aesthetic judgement, but also sort of social judgement. 00:08:24.284 --> 00:08:28.798 And sure enough, throughout history people have used the idea of 00:08:28.798 --> 00:08:32.439 a classical precisely as you say, to create in and out groups, 00:08:32.439 --> 00:08:35.407 to say that some people belong and some people don't, 00:08:35.407 --> 00:08:40.696 and also to draw lines of inheritance from antiquity to the present 00:08:40.696 --> 00:08:45.356 that may not be justified when we look at the historical record. 00:08:45.356 --> 00:08:47.361 So there's a lot that we can dig into there, 00:08:47.361 --> 00:08:53.387 and we want to be able to use this idea of classical not simply to 00:08:53.387 --> 00:08:57.101 investigate cultures that are long removed from us, 00:08:57.101 --> 00:09:01.564 but cultures that are still-- that still have stakes today. 00:09:01.564 --> 00:09:06.283 And we want to join in that discussion with you throughout the semester 00:09:06.283 --> 00:09:11.223 and find out where classical mythology might show up in your lives. 00:09:11.223 --> 00:09:15.308 So we'll be doing that in videos here, you're going to be seeing a lot of me 00:09:15.308 --> 00:09:18.388 in videos that we've recorded before this semester. 00:09:18.388 --> 00:09:20.937 As you're watching this video, I'll just say right now, 00:09:20.937 --> 00:09:24.589 occasionally you will see a question show up, and that's one way that we can 00:09:24.589 --> 00:09:26.317 see how you're getting on in the class. 00:09:26.317 --> 00:09:31.583 We call those instapolls, and an example of that is showing up right now. 00:09:31.583 --> 00:09:35.745 So that's not worth any credit, we want to make sure that everything's working. 00:09:35.745 --> 00:09:40.096 For now we've got a few more things we want you to take a look at, 00:09:40.096 --> 00:09:43.650 and we'll come back and talk some more about classical mythology.