Introductory notes and background
During the next week we will be
reading selected passages of Hesiod's
Theogony,
plus excerpts from Plato's
famous dialogue concerning creation,
Timaeus.
Please read the following
background material
and look over these questions before you begin the readings. You
are
not responsible for compiling answers to the questions below, but
preparing
them should both enhance class discussion and your reading of the
texts. We are starting off the
term with a poem by Hesiod, a Greek poet
who flourished in the last third of the eighth century BCE (Before
Common
Era). We know very little about him apart from what he tells us
in his writings: that he lived in central Greece (Boeotia), and
apparently
earned his living there as a farmer and shepherd until he attracted
fame
as a poet. His poetry contains themes borrowed from
other historical traditions of the Mediterranean world, including the
eleventh-century
BCE Babylonian
Epic of Creation
(from the area that is now
modern Iraq), as well as from Hittite cosmology.
(The Hittites were an Indo-European people who settled in Asia Minor,
in what
is now modern Turkey.) The poetic language Hesiod uses can seem
stilted and strange-sounding to modern
ears, so read slowly with an eye toward the broader subjects he treats.
The
Theogony, an elaborate
genealogy or family history of the
Greek gods, contains
the names of over 300 gods and heroes.
You do not
have to keep track of
them all. Keep focused on the important figures, such as
Earth, Heaven,
and Kronos, as well as their activities: what they do, how they act,
how they come into existence, and so forth.
The
Timaeus
has been
described as the Greek philosopher Plato's (ca. 428-348 BCE) creation
story. It has been read in many ways by philosophers, historians,
astronomers, literary critics, and others--including as a literal
presentation of his ideas about the creation of the cosmos, and as a
metaphorical account (a literary creation designed to talk about other
things), and sometimes as both. It opens with four men gathered
together at Athens, Greece, to celebrate the festival of the goddess
Athena by giving speeches. Socrates (469-399 BCE), Plato's mentor
and a great philosopher, is one of them; Critias another; Hermocrates
(who barely appears) the third; and finally, Timaeus. Timaeus is
presented as an "expert in astronomy" (p. 12) and vows to speak about
the origins of the universe. He was probably a fictional creation
of Plato, but Socrates, Critias, and Hermocrates were real enough.
After a few pleasantries, Timaeus begins by making an important
distinction between two categories of being (p. 13). On one hand,
he says, we can speak of "that which always is, and which has no
becoming" and on the other hand (2) "that which becomes but never
is." These are complicated notions, which depend to a
considerable extent on the Greek usage of the verb "to be," which is
not precisely the same as the English use of the word. To
describe something, as Timaeus does, as "that which always is" means
that the subject spoken of can never become something else, and its
condition as "always being" or "always is" implies changelessness, or
an eternal quality. By contrast, to say that something "becomes
but never is"
does not
mean that it does
not exist, but that it never is, or becomes, a single
thing. Rather, "that which is but never becomes" is something
always shifting, always in the process of moving toward being
something, but never achieving it. The first of these conditions,
Timaeus goes on, can be understood only by "a reasoned account" (13),
while the latter is grasped by "opinion" or "sense perception."
From here, Timaeus goes on to speak about the creation of the
universe.
Read carefully, take your time, and consider the
questions below.
Questions
I. Hesiod, Theogony
(1) How does Hesiod open the
poem? Why do you think he chooses the exploits of gods and heroes
as his subject matter? Who are the gods? How do they
behave? What does Hesiod tell us about them? How does he
characterize them?
(2) Does Hesiod appear to have
any real sense of or need for chronology? Does he care about
birthdates or times? If so, when? If not, why not?
(3) Do Hesiod's descriptions of
the gods tell us anything about his ideas concerning the cosmos (that
is, the universe he perceives to exist)?
(4) What, if anything, might
Hesiod's portrayal of the Greek
gods tell us about his society's values? How do we know?
(5) What is the relationship
between the gods and man? How do women come into being?
II. Plato, Timaeus
(1) How does the world come to
be? Who, or what, creates it? Why? What features does
it have? What/whom does it resemble?
(2) How is the universe mapped
out (pp. 24-27)? Why was time necessary?
(3) What sorts of metaphors or
images are used to describe creation?
(4) What are souls?