Doing History with Monsters: the Sphinx, Chimera, and Centaur in Archaic and Classical Greece

“Monsters” abound in Greek art and literature, in every written genre and painted or sculpted medium from the emergence of post-Mycenaean Greek society down through late antiquity, and yet they remain understudied and underutilized in analyses of Greek culture. It is my contention that our ability to “do history” with monsters rests on some broadly accepted premises. First: monsters are mythical. Myths change (in emphasis, narrative, interpretation, etc.) due to their tellers (and re-tellers) shaping them. The tellers are themselves infuenced by, and respond to, the material, social, and mental conditions of their societies. Second: myths change over time. Taken together, these two premises point to something quite new and surprising: discourse about monsters has a history, and encodes other discourses across history. In this dissertation I "do history" with monsters by focusing not on tracing (hypothetical) origins but in tracking and explaining their transformation across the Archaic and Classical periods. Monsters change with shifting historical and social contexts, but not all in the same way. Different monsters interact differently with historical conditions. In the frst chapter, I analyse the unique procedure by which the Sphinx in art and literature comes together via cross-media communication, uniting around themes of art, death, and foreignness. The second chapter tracks the Chimera as it became a useful way for thinking concretely about the fctional, artistic, unreal, a focal point for conceptualizing the power of that which is not. And the third chapter explores the development of the Centaur into a political thought experiment about what makes for "bad" poleis, especially by examining the bifurcated paradigm of Centaurs into normally hostile, but occasionally sympathetic. Together, these three case studies demonstrate how myths were used to think with at different points in Archaic and Classical history.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Gray, Aidan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Osborne, Robin

• Archaic Greece
• Athens
• Centaur
• Chimera
• Classical Greece
• Greek mythology
• History
• Monsters
• Sphinx

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ca2099c4-e3e2-4e77-ab13-c182d4831409/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.119962

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/387016