Myth in Art: Iconography and representations of the hero
Preliminary: reading Greek vases
1. Heracles
2. Medea (and Jason)
3. Perseus (and monsters)
Heracles
1. Life and times: a hero of incredible power and sexual potency, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes bad: and the most popular hero in antiquity
The iconography of the hero
Development of the iconography (example of the lion: near eastern prototypes)
The Labors, the Deeds, the Side Deeds: the rationalizing of a folktale hero
Labors: overview (metopes from temple of Zeus at Olympia)
General absence of many literary sources (happenstance?)
Variants and new stories unknown from the literature, but appearing in the iconography
The nature of a hero: power, gods, and heroes
Heracles and Athena, 1: the Stymphalian Birds. Metope from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, ca. 470-455 B.C.
Heracles and Athena, 2: Atlas and the apples of the Hesperides. Metope from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, ca. 470-455 B.C.
Heracles & classical art: Ethos and Pathos: who he is, what he had to endure
Overview of Olympia metopes (temple of Zeus at Olympia, ca. 460 B.C.)
Heads of Heracles from the metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia: the expressions of Heracles: uncertain youth (lion); at the end, weary but mature (apples of the Hesperides), in the course of the labors disgusted (Augean stables), or wary (Cerberus)
Heracles & myth: Riddling nature of Heracles
God-man / lowly man (buffoon)
sexually potent / sexually ambiguous,
master / slave, dead / alive,
all-powerful / easily mastered & tricked,
divine /grotesque,
slayer of the uncivilized (monsters) / uncivilized himself (glutton, slob)
conquerer of women / conquered by women
(NOT the cartoon-like simplicity of 20th-century representations of Heracles!)
Freudian interpretation?
Structuralist interpretation?
Heracles fighting with Nessus and rape of Deianira
The Labors: Images
The Labors: the famous metopes from the temple of Zeus at Olympia (directory)
Heracles and Cerberus (Kerberos) and Eurystheus (reacting, left part of vase)
Kerberos (another example: a happy dog?)
Medea, Jason & the Argonauts
Hero & Heroine: Jason as ambiguous hero, Medea as ambiguous heroine
1. Medea as the oriental foreigner: Woman as "other"
Eastern Mediterranean: Black Sea, Colchis ("solipsism")
2. Medea and Snakes: Woman as sorceress
3. Medea and Euripides' Medea
(Euripides: 5th century, c. 485-405 B.C.: Aeschylus - Sophocles -Euripides)
In what ways is Medea an ambiguous heroine? What does that tell us about the "meaning" of this myth? Freudian interpretation? Structuralist interpretation?
Perseus: Gorgons and other Monsters
![an extreme example [Cerberus])](heracles_images/cerberus.jpg){kind=link}
![[Atalanta]](medea_images/atalanta.jpg){kind=link}
