Name: ______Date: ______Per: ______
Study Guide for “Introduction to Classical Mythology” from Mythology by Edith Hamilton
1. While many consider myths a way “back to a time when the world was young and people had connections with the earth […and] little distinction” was “made between ______,” Hamilton believes that this was a time of “terror […] magic […] and ______.
2. Humankind’s “chief hope of escaping the [gods’] wrath […] lay in some magic rite […] or in some offering ______”
3. The preserved Greek myths show “how high ______
______
4. “The first written record of Greece is ______”
Date: at least ______BCE
5. While “the tales of Greek mythology do not throw any clear light upon what early mankind was like, they do throw […] light upon ______
______”
6. Why is this knowledge important to inhabitants of Western countries?
______
7. The new point of view from Greece = humankind as the center ______
______and the gods were ______.
The universe had become ______and Saint Paul passed on the Greek idea that ______. “All […] art and all […] thought of Greece centered in ______
8. “There were no men and only two women with ______.”
9. Hamilton lists several “dark spots.” What are they? (2 pts)
______
______
10. Hamilton also traces the changes in Zeus. Identify the four or five stages.
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Sources for Hamilton’s work: (Using her book, list as much info on the lines as you can about each one. The amazing part is the huge collation of a number of sources even though she does tend to editorialize.)
a. Ovid (Roman): lived in time of Augustus Caesar & wrote Metamorphosis
b. Homer ______
c. Hesiod ______
______
d. Homeric Hymns ______
e. Pindar ______
f. Aeschylus ______
______
g. Sophocles: one of three tragic poets; younger than Aeschylus
h. Euripides: died at end of 5th Century; youngest of tragic poets
i. Aristophanes ______
j. Herodotus: first historian of Europe; prose writer
k. Plato: philosopher; school of philosophy; Socrates’ student; Aristotle’s teacher
l. Alexandrian poets c 250 BCE:
Apollonius: ______
Pastoral poets were ______
m. Apuleius (Roman) ______
n. Lucian (Greek) ______
o. Apollodarus (Greek): voluminous writer from between 1 and 9th centuries CE
p. Pausanias (Greek): ______
q. Virgil: while he did not believe the myths, he did use them ______