Final Exam Study Guide for Ancient Mythology Oedipus Oedipus the last Greek hero who had moral parents and later become the tragic king of Thebes o His ankles were pierced with metal pins so the gods would decide his fate and was given to a shepherd so he could be exposed to the mountains but the shepherd could not abandon baby Oedipus so he gave him to Merope and Polybos Oed swollen pous foot o At a crossroads he kills a man Laios and all but one of his servants later he goes to Thebes where Creon is king and solves the sphinx s riddle o Has children with Jocasta son Eteocles and Polyneices and daughter An Laios the childless king of Thebes the son he had with Jocasta will kill him one day and marry his mother according to the Delphic oracle and he impregnates Jocasta while drunk Jocasta the childless queen of Thebes according to the Delphic oracle her son will kill his father and marry her Thebes ancient capital city of Egypt where Oedipus is born and one day rules Delphic oracle the son of Jocasta will kill his father it is the oracle of Apollo at Delphi the responses are typically riddles Apollo the god of sun who give prophecies to both Oedipus and Creon His knowledge is absolute and are not considered as warnings Delphi an ancient Greek city on the slopes of Mount Parnassus Merope the foster mother of Oedipus the queen of Corinth Polybos the foster father of Oedipus the king of Corinth Corinth where Oedipus lived with his adopted parents Creon the brother of Jocasta and uncle of Antigone who became king of Thebes after the fall of Laios Sphinx monster from Near Eastern myths who terrorizes Thebes has the head of a woman the body of a lion and the wings of a bird o What has one voice but four legs then two legs then three legs and Oedipus solves the riddle so it jumps to its death Sophocles Athenian tragedian wrote over 120 plays the author of Oedipus Rex 420s BCE Oedipus the King the king of Thebes killed his father and married his mother by accident after finding he was the cause of the kingdom s misfortune his mother wife committed suicide and he blinded himself with Jocasta s dress pins and decided to live life homeless and blind o Due to the plague in Thebes Oedipus and Creon try to figure out what happened to Laois and Teiresias tells them that Oedipus is the murder Aristotle a Greek philosopher Poetics literary criticism by Aristotle the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first to focus in the literally theory Anagnorisis when the heron has a recognition of truth about one s self and his actions moment of clarity Hamartia the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall Dramatic irony when a reader is aware of something that a character is not Oedipus complex according to Freud a boy s sexual desires toward his mother and jealousy and hatred for the rival Teiresias a blind prophet that tells Oedipus that he is a murderer when in the Land of the Dead Chiton a dress that Jocasta and other ancient Greeks wore Sigmund Freud a Jewish Austrian psychiatrist that created the Oedipus Complex father Herodotus the ancient Greek known as the father of history his mom was the homeland Hippias exiled Athenian tyrant that had sexual dreams about his mother From Paleontology to Mythology Fossil Latin curious or valuable things that comes out of the ground they are explained by myths pseudo science the observation of nature and knowledge of anatomy Protoceratops skeleton found in the Gobi Desert by Roy Chapman Andrews erosions by wind and rain revealed gold fossils white bones in red sand they were thought to be guarding eggs o Had beaks frill pronounced scapula four legged bird and protective Griffin mythological creatures that guard gold compared to protoceratops Rig Veda Final Exam Study Guide for Ancient Mythology o Had ears or horns flew or hopped with a beak and feathers scales fur Monster of Troy Late Corinthian column krater 560 540 BCE monster that appeared after a flood hesione human sacrifice that is slayed by Herakles the monster is depicted as a skull and a composite of a giant giraffe ostrich and whale Cyclops signle central hole trunk and eye socket Island of Sicily example Cyclops Polyphemus in Odyssey Bones of Orestes Delphic oracle to the Spartans bring orestes to your city it was 7 cubic feet found in Tegean Forge and brought back to Sparta to be reburied with great honors this sparked Panhellenic bone rush paradoxographers Rig Veda oldest literally work in India it was composed in early Sanski during 1700 1100 BCE it was an oral for centuries then became 10 books of 1028 hymns to the gods composed by the Vedic people Rig praise and veda is knowledge Later is became sacred to Hindus Sanskrit and early Indo European language Vedic people composed the Rig Veda for the gods Agni a binatural fire god including natural like the sun and lighting domestic hearth ritual sacrifice funeral cremation poetry light for inspiration Soma a binatural deified sacred drink and a god it is hallucinogenic and made from an unknown plant that grows in the mountains which was drank by priest and gods because it is associated with vitality and immortality When the priests drink soma they are god like momentarily It is associated with fear because soma is a frightening drink since it makes you do things you might not normally do also it is associated with exultation we suspect that this could be a god transformed possibly Indra it made him more powerful and magical Indra king of gods thunder and war like Baal s association with rain and fertility he is avid drinker of soma then he beats up monsters and humans Poet seer cf Angi Soma writing Rig Veda compared themselves to him because he seemed to be a poet o He is the child of Aditi and Tvashtr he was kept unborn and later kills his father similar to Kronos in Hesiod s Theogony because Ouranos would not let Gaia give birth to him so Kronos castrated and overthrew his father but Indra s mother kept him in the womb so he burst out of her side and kills Tvashtr Vritra a demonic dragon or serpent that holds back all the waters in the world so Indra kills him with his thunderbolts creating the rivers in the world Tiamat vritra s death is compared to how when Marduk kills Tiamat a serpent like monster her body is formed into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers Sarama Indra s dog Panis stole the cattle of the Angirases a family of sages and priests so he tries to them back and resists the brides of Panis to beat
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