[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Ancient City

[jprussell]

I've been hearing a lot about The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and I finally got around to reading it. Very short version is that it's a good and interesting book, but unless it intersects with some particular interests of yours, you might be fine with a summary. Here's my attempt at such a summary, with some thoughts on what I got out of it (and wanted to, but didn't).

As always, any and all thoughts are most welcome.

Comments

Re: The spooky side of ancestor worship

[jprussell]

Hi Hosea,

Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts!

1) Ah, thanks for the correction! I wasn't sure how to parse his full name, so this is useful. I'll go in and fix it and update the post accordingly.

2) Hah! I didn't know that, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. I assumed his comments about folks of his day assuming they knew things about the ancients that were wrong were entirely aimed at fellow academics, but I guess not.

3) I'll have to check out Otto's book, it sounds very interesting, though if your hypothesis building on his is correct, I'd be inclined to move it back quite a bit, possibly before the Indo-European speakers split up into groups, for the simple reason that the Olympian Gods have clear parallels in the bodies of other Indo-European myths. A sky father who is king of the Gods, a thunderer who beats up monsters and protects humans, a sexy Goddess of sovereignty, and so forth. Also, burial practices seem to have switched back and forth between inhumation and cremation, with some variation, from a very long time back, which implies that the switch from Mycenaean inhumation to Classical cremation might not have been a dramatic one-time thing for cause. All that being said, one way to maybe reconcile the old, old stuff I'm talking about Otto's more recent proposal is some kind of interaction between the religion of the folks who were already in Greece when the Greeks showed up (the Pelasgians and whoever else, whose names we might not even have). As for Burkert, I haven't read Homo Necans since becoming religious, so it might be worth revisiting. Also, I'd be interested in comparing with a wider range of looks at indigenous practices around killing animals, since the mid to late twentieth century had a lot of well-known and oft-cited literature on things "intrinsic to humans" that haven't held up super well (a nearby example: S.L.A. Marshall's report that most soldiers didn't directly fire their weapons at human targets and the supporting studies for it have all come under a lot of fire for problems with their methods).

4) As for subscribing to comments, yeah, unfortunately, the only way I know how is with a dreamwidth account (free, but you do have to give them your email address), and even then, it's painfully inconsistent. It seems to do alright notifying about direct replies by the post owner, but everything else is hit or miss, even with a paid account.

Cheers,
Jeff

Re: The spooky side of ancestor worship

[(Anonymous)]

By all means do check out Otto's book. I have not begun to do it justice. Burkert, in Greek Religion, p.4, says: "[Otto's book] Die Götter Griechenlands (1929) is a challenging attempt to take the Homeric gods seriously as gods, in defiance of 2500 years of criticism...." This he does; and while he makes it clear that he does not himself personally or overtly worship the Homeric gods, there is none of the patronizing or evasive language one finds so often from authors who just can't take Them seriously.

I was thinking about the Indo-European parallels as I was writing my earlier post, but I didn't have time to re-read all the relevant chapters to remind myself whether or how Otto addressed them. He has to have been aware of the research that was being done on the early Indo-Europeans: apparently he finished his doctoral work in 1911 and died in 1958, so his floruit overlapped Georges Dumézil (who was 24 years younger). Yes, presumably the Pelasgians would be one way to make the story work. But also, Otto recognizes that some of the Olympians seemed to change their nature and function over time. He argues that Poseidon seems more archaic than Zeus in a number of his attributes, as well as being wilder, more chaotic, and more closely tied to natural phenomena. He also makes similar arguments about, for example, Demeter and Hermes. So I could imagine "rescuing" my story also by suggesting that in some cases, perhaps, some gods may have "changed sides," if you will.

Also, remember that the story I advanced makes no claims to scholarship. It is more of a jeu d'ésprit, where I am burbling, "Oh look how cool it is if you take these three authors and mash them up together just so!" 😃 If it turns out that my story doesn't work, I haven't invested a lot in it.


Best as always,
Hosea