Greta Hawes
Biographic Data
| ID | 3979747 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Greta Hawes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Greta |
| FAMILY NAME | Hawes |
| SIGNATURE | HAWES G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Johanna A. Michels
Rationalizing Mythic Monsters in Antiquity
This chapter describes the problems posed by mythical monsters when measured against strict standards of historical and biological plausibility. The fantastic forms of monsters were held up by ancient authors (e.g. Plato, Palaephatus, and Galen) as prominent obstacles to making myths accord with a ‘doctrine of present things’. In this way, the monsters of the distant mythic past resembled the strange creatures found in reports of far-off lands, i…
Matrilineal Succession in Greek Myth
This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses MANTO, a digital database of Greek myth, to identify kings who succeed their fathers-in-law, maternal grandfathers, step-fathers, or wives’ previous husbands. Analysis of the fifty-four instances identified shows that the prominence of the ‘succession via widow’ motif in archaic epic is not typical of the broader tradition. Rather, civic mythmaking mor…
How to Write a Local History of Imperial Greek Cults
This chapter alerts readers of the shortcomings of a mining approach to Pausanias’ Periegesis as a prime evidence for the study of local religion in ancient Greece. The question of where local specificities are discussed in the narrative is as critical as the actual information conveyed. The chapter speaks to the analytical challenge of interpreting a narrative that is, on the one hand, reflective of the non-linear and essentially decentralised n…
The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion
Which dimensions of the religious experience of the ancient Greeks become tangible only if we foreground its local horizons? This book explores the manifold ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices are encoded in and communicate with various local environments. Its individual chapters explore 'the local' in its different forms and formulations. Besides the polis perspective, they include numerous other places and locations above and be…
Heraclitus the Mythographer, On Unbelievable Stories
This chapter reviews the evidence for the date, authorship, and context of Heraclitus’s Peri Apiston (On Unbelievable Stories; De Incredibilibus). Little can be said with certainty, but we are probably dealing with a 1st- or 2nd-century AD text, the only work by this Heraclitus to survive. The text is a valuable document for hermeneutic practices in Greek culture in the imperial period in that it shows both points of continuity with notable forer…
Rationalizing and Historicizing
This chapter discusses rationalization, a historicist approach to myth. It offers a chronological survey of the most important ancient and post-antique rationalizers writing in Greek and Latin and analyzes their different methods and approaches. It then uses a case study of rationalistic interpretations of the Minotaur to examine the dynamics of the tradition. The chapter shows that rationalization is flexible in its applications. It can both pro…
Heracles Rationalized and Allegorized
This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure (“rationalization”) and to find in his stories philosophical principles (“allegorization”). It argues that rationalistic and allegorical interpretations cannot be as clearly delineated from one another in practice as they frequently are in theory, and that neither was hermetically removed from the “conventional” tradition of ancient storytelling. All three betray the…
Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth
Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us how the physical world existed in myriad complex and shifting relationships with the world of storytelling, and what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form o…
The Mythographical Topography of Pausanias’ Periegesis
Thebes on Stage, on Site, and in the Flesh
Myths on the Map
The spatial turn in the humanities has fuelled new ways of thinking about landscape as a lived environment which is radically affected by human hands and human minds, and which radically affects human experience. At the same time, scholars of Greek myth have become more sensitive to the contextual dynamics which animate the mythic tradition, having come to see storytelling as an activity which is both precisely situated in, and contingent on, its…
Callimachus and the Poetics of the Diaspora
This chapter reads Callimachus as a poet of the Hellenistic diaspora. It argues not only that his poems reflect the experience of Greeks born outside Greece, for whom the cultural baggage of earlier centuries is a repository of myths and stories which can be manipulated and reshaped, but also that contemporary issues of patronage and Ptolemaic geopolitics influenced the poet’s treatment of older themes. Time and space are collapsed. Set against t…
Beheading the Gorgon
Pausanias and the Footsteps of Herodotus
Stones, Names, Stories, and Bodies
This chapter discusses four different facets of the famous walls of that most literary of cities, Boeotian Thebes, encountered in different ways. My title sets out heuristic categories: the stones used to construct the walls, the names given to their gates, the stories intricately intertwined with them, and the bodies of the heroes who died attacking and defending them. These are deliberately flexible, porous labels. They illustrate an interlocki…
Conon. Diegeseis
Three passages from Conon’s Diegeseis show the appeal of rationalistic interpretation within a mythographic text. In this context, such non-standard versions of the canonical stories of Midas, Andromeda, and Cadmus provide Conon with an opportunity to indulge in unconventional narratives. He presents these rationalizations in a quite unusual ‘double narrative’ which sets him apart from other ancient rationalisers. The search for Conon’s sources i…
Pausanias. Periegesis
Conclusion
The conclusion highlights a number of themes which pervade the book. It emphasizes the contextual nature of mythic rationalization and its place within the broader system of ancient mythic storytelling, characterized as it is by the twin demands of tradition and innovation, and by plurality.
Story Time at the Library
Underlying Palaephatus' method is a process of abstraction which does not derive organically from uses of myths elsewhere. The creation of a conception of mythology like that utilized by Palaephatus is part of the story of mythic decontextualization or rather, re-contextualization brought about by texts. On Unbelievable Tales gives us an extreme illustration of myth being treated in this way, but it is not merely an isolated curiosity; it is a va…
Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity
Instances of rationalistic interpretation in ancient Greek authors constitute a rare and valuable example of an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism. They display some of the ways in which the Greeks grappled with, manipulated and categorized their own narrative traditions. This book describes and discusses the rationalistic attitudes and approaches of six texts: three treatises transmitted under the title Peri Apiston (by Palaephatus, Herac…
Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity
Instances of rationalistic interpretation in ancient Greek authors constitute a rare and valuable example of an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism. They display some of the ways in which the Greeks grappled with, manipulated and categorized their own narrative traditions. This book describes and discusses the rationalistic attitudes and approaches of six texts: three treatises transmitted under the title Peri Apiston (by Palaephatus, Herac…
Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth
Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us how the physical world existed in myriad complex and shifting relationships with the world of storytelling, and what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form o…
Conon. Diegeseis
Three passages from Conon’s Diegeseis show the appeal of rationalistic interpretation within a mythographic text. In this context, such non-standard versions of the canonical stories of Midas, Andromeda, and Cadmus provide Conon with an opportunity to indulge in unconventional narratives. He presents these rationalizations in a quite unusual ‘double narrative’ which sets him apart from other ancient rationalisers. The search for Conon’s sources i…
Pausanias. Periegesis
Conclusion
The conclusion highlights a number of themes which pervade the book. It emphasizes the contextual nature of mythic rationalization and its place within the broader system of ancient mythic storytelling, characterized as it is by the twin demands of tradition and innovation, and by plurality.
Story Time at the Library
Underlying Palaephatus' method is a process of abstraction which does not derive organically from uses of myths elsewhere. The creation of a conception of mythology like that utilized by Palaephatus is part of the story of mythic decontextualization or rather, re-contextualization brought about by texts. On Unbelievable Tales gives us an extreme illustration of myth being treated in this way, but it is not merely an isolated curiosity; it is a va…
Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity
Instances of rationalistic interpretation in ancient Greek authors constitute a rare and valuable example of an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism. They display some of the ways in which the Greeks grappled with, manipulated and categorized their own narrative traditions. This book describes and discusses the rationalistic attitudes and approaches of six texts: three treatises transmitted under the title Peri Apiston (by Palaephatus, Herac…
Beheading the Gorgon
Pausanias and the Footsteps of Herodotus
Stones, Names, Stories, and Bodies
This chapter discusses four different facets of the famous walls of that most literary of cities, Boeotian Thebes, encountered in different ways. My title sets out heuristic categories: the stones used to construct the walls, the names given to their gates, the stories intricately intertwined with them, and the bodies of the heroes who died attacking and defending them. These are deliberately flexible, porous labels. They illustrate an interlocki…
Thebes on Stage, on Site, and in the Flesh
Myths on the Map
The spatial turn in the humanities has fuelled new ways of thinking about landscape as a lived environment which is radically affected by human hands and human minds, and which radically affects human experience. At the same time, scholars of Greek myth have become more sensitive to the contextual dynamics which animate the mythic tradition, having come to see storytelling as an activity which is both precisely situated in, and contingent on, its…
Callimachus and the Poetics of the Diaspora
This chapter reads Callimachus as a poet of the Hellenistic diaspora. It argues not only that his poems reflect the experience of Greeks born outside Greece, for whom the cultural baggage of earlier centuries is a repository of myths and stories which can be manipulated and reshaped, but also that contemporary issues of patronage and Ptolemaic geopolitics influenced the poet’s treatment of older themes. Time and space are collapsed. Set against t…
The Mythographical Topography of Pausanias’ Periegesis
Heracles Rationalized and Allegorized
This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure (“rationalization”) and to find in his stories philosophical principles (“allegorization”). It argues that rationalistic and allegorical interpretations cannot be as clearly delineated from one another in practice as they frequently are in theory, and that neither was hermetically removed from the “conventional” tradition of ancient storytelling. All three betray the…
Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth
Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us how the physical world existed in myriad complex and shifting relationships with the world of storytelling, and what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form o…
Heraclitus the Mythographer, On Unbelievable Stories
This chapter reviews the evidence for the date, authorship, and context of Heraclitus’s Peri Apiston (On Unbelievable Stories; De Incredibilibus). Little can be said with certainty, but we are probably dealing with a 1st- or 2nd-century AD text, the only work by this Heraclitus to survive. The text is a valuable document for hermeneutic practices in Greek culture in the imperial period in that it shows both points of continuity with notable forer…
Rationalizing and Historicizing
This chapter discusses rationalization, a historicist approach to myth. It offers a chronological survey of the most important ancient and post-antique rationalizers writing in Greek and Latin and analyzes their different methods and approaches. It then uses a case study of rationalistic interpretations of the Minotaur to examine the dynamics of the tradition. The chapter shows that rationalization is flexible in its applications. It can both pro…
How to Write a Local History of Imperial Greek Cults
This chapter alerts readers of the shortcomings of a mining approach to Pausanias’ Periegesis as a prime evidence for the study of local religion in ancient Greece. The question of where local specificities are discussed in the narrative is as critical as the actual information conveyed. The chapter speaks to the analytical challenge of interpreting a narrative that is, on the one hand, reflective of the non-linear and essentially decentralised n…
The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion
Which dimensions of the religious experience of the ancient Greeks become tangible only if we foreground its local horizons? This book explores the manifold ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices are encoded in and communicate with various local environments. Its individual chapters explore 'the local' in its different forms and formulations. Besides the polis perspective, they include numerous other places and locations above and be…
Rationalizing Mythic Monsters in Antiquity
This chapter describes the problems posed by mythical monsters when measured against strict standards of historical and biological plausibility. The fantastic forms of monsters were held up by ancient authors (e.g. Plato, Palaephatus, and Galen) as prominent obstacles to making myths accord with a ‘doctrine of present things’. In this way, the monsters of the distant mythic past resembled the strange creatures found in reports of far-off lands, i…
Matrilineal Succession in Greek Myth
This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses MANTO, a digital database of Greek myth, to identify kings who succeed their fathers-in-law, maternal grandfathers, step-fathers, or wives’ previous husbands. Analysis of the fifty-four instances identified shows that the prominence of the ‘succession via widow’ motif in archaic epic is not typical of the broader tradition. Rather, civic mythmaking mor…
Johanna A. Michels
Classical Antiquity Studies (21 works) · Art (16 works) · History (15 works) · Literature (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Mythology (10 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Narrative (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works)