Jan-Maat’s Reviews > The Uses of Greek Mythology > Status Update

"One myth plainly for women is that of Demeter & Kore (Persephone). Even this presents a grim portrait of marriage as abduction from the mother with the connivance of the father (Zeus)"

"Amazons are there to tell us how the world isn't"

After Athene beats Poseidon in a contest to decide who will be the patron god of Athens "the Athenians placated Poseidon's wrath by henceforth denying women the vote & denying children the the right to be called by their mother's names"

"Non-Greek peoples, just like centaurs & giants, are there to speak about hypothetical, alternative orders of things, by contrast with which the essence of Greek culture may be understood...Foreigners in Greek myth exist in order to define Greekness"

"Myth establishes people, places, things. More than that, it identifies them & gives them some sort of conceptual place, by associations or by contrasts. Indeed the whole of Greek Mythology may be viewed as an enormous text in dialogue with that other text, the world in which we live. It has...no other function than to address the task of existing in the real world in its various oblique & suggestive ways"

"Perhaps we, too, are tempted by the romance of discovering where myth actually happened. Where did Argo actually sail? Where did Noah's ark actually reach land? Where did Atlantis sink? Where was King Arthur's castle, and where was Homer's Troy? We have got to recognise that there is a deep yearning in us to make contact with the world of myth, as we can see from the Turin Shroud, the countless fragments of the...

The Trojan war, author says, can be seen as a version of Indo-european myth in which twin brothers must rescue their sister/wife - Helen, it is pointed out, may relate to Helios the Sun god.