hello my name is peter meineck i'm
professor of classics in the modern
world at new york university and today
we're going to be breaking down greek
and roman mythology in tv and film so
this is a scene from the movie aquaman
this is the lost trident of atlanta oh i
know the story it's more than a story
it's real
when king atlan ruled over all that was
when the kingdoms of atlantis were won
it was a time of
great prosperity and technological
advancement we had unlocked the secret
of unlimited energy at a time when the
rest of the world still thought the
earth was flat
there is no other greek myth that
perhaps has seized the imagination more
than the story of atlantis where people
are actually still physically looking
for the place this movie does a
beautiful visual job actually of showing
us atlantis but the reality of atlantis
it only exists in one place and that is
actually in the dialogues of the
philosopher plato from about 360
bce where he's basically having three of
socrates friends talking about the ideal
city to live in this
highly technological super state that
had a great navy and in plato's story it
attacks athens and it's athens that
actually defeats atlantis and then
poseidon is made angry and he actually
does destroy atlantis and it kind of
falls beneath the sea and everyone's
been looking for it ever since but
clearly it's a metaphorical story but it
does draw i think on some real things
that were happening in antiquity
referencing the phoenicians who were
great sea traders it also might mention
some of the north african peoples who
were also trading and had large navies i
think you've got to see athens and
greece in particular as being in the
center of the mediterranean and you know
a good 50 of the mediterranean coastline
is the coastline of africa so i actually
think um most greek mythology connects
the greeks both with africa and also
with with mesopotamia but i certainly
don't think that a place called atlantis
ever actually exists in reality but it's
a great example of how myths work right
you tell a great story and people will
actually believe it this next scene is
from the movie immortals
that was very strange actually and i
have lots of feelings about it clearly
it's supposed to be theseus in the
minotaur the minor tour of course was
the mythical offspring half human and
half bull of creep theseus is dispatched
from athens to destroy the minotaur
because the athenians have been
regularly sending their young to be fed
to the minotaur in the famous crete
labyrinth that looked like it was a
human figure wearing some kind of
minotaur headdress i was very excited to
meet the minotaur when i heard it
snorting
but then i was very disappointed when i
actually met the minotaur
so this bow that he reveals from this
rock is not attested in the thesis myth
there is a story that theseus who grows
up in troison and doesn't know his
identity does find his father's sword
which is embalmed in a rock so maybe
that's where the screenwriter is getting
that idea but theseus is not
traditionally associated with a bow
heracles hercules is associated with a
bow so i wonder if they're kind of
conflating the two here because the bow
of heracles is what has these magic
arrows that never miss the bow is a
really interesting instrument in greek
mythology certainly in the classical
period fighting with a bow was
considered as dirty fighting like a
sniper you hide behind a rock you pop
out you fire your arrow and it was
considered ignoble weapons in mythology
always have great power most of these
stories probably come up from the bronze
age what's called the kind of hero 80
age of aristocratic warriors if you had
enough money in wealth that you could
afford bronze weapons and you went
against some guy with a pitchfork you're
going to win right because you've got a
bronze weapon or you've got bronze armor
guy you're fighting has just got a
wooden club so the weapon always has
great talismanic power even today if you
talk to any warrior you talk to any
modern soldier you know they sleep with
it they clean it it's absolutely
everything this next scene is from the
movie jason and the argonauts
and then
[Music]
i think it's a really great retelling of
the jason and the argonauts myth the
movie does a pretty good job actually of
sticking to that it changes the order of
some of it the story tells us that the
king of cultures has some of these teeth
from the serpent or the dragon depending
on which version of the myth that you
read those teeth are used and thrown
into the ground and they produce the
sewn men the spartoi they're not
described as skeletons in antiquity they
kind of come up as fully formed men
ready to fight the version of the myth
that most people know jason takes a
large rock and throws it in the middle
of them and they all start fighting each
other thinking that one of them has
thrown a rock at the at the other one
and that enables jason and media to get
away
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a hedra is a many headed creature that
is associated with water right hidra
heracles fights the hedra in one of his
tasks and each time he chops off one of
the heads another head grows back and he
has to find the kind of central head and
bury it under a rock and we think that
that's an ideological myth for
irrigation you tame the main body of the
river and then you allow the rivolets to
come out and irrigate your land and so
that's where we think the story of the
heather comes from in terms of special
effects jason the argonauts was
way ahead of its time i think it holds
up i think it's still a great movie this
next clip is a scene from the tv show
xena warrior princess
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yeah i have no idea what that was but it
was fantastic the one thing that always
was interesting about xena is the way
that she does this eulation she goes
whenever she kind of goes into battle
[Music]
but actually the women's udulation was a
kind of sound of female power in greek
antiquity and women would perform this
thing in choral groups together and it
was a very powerful sound so it's
interesting that that kind of found its
way into xena
[Music]
but there's there's the uh there's the
amazon trope the attributes of the
amazon fighter and she's good at it
right i mean it's weird and was that a
pterodactyl in it i don't know and who
are these guys coming out of these pods
i have absolutely no idea i would not
use the term accuracy at any point in
xena warrior princess but it doesn't
matter because it's fantastic
this scene is from the movie troy
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[Applause]
the depiction of fighting and warfare in
this movie was kind of very unsatisfying
you seem to have two mass armies
fighting each other thousands of men on
each side then you have these guys in
chariots so why is this not a chariot
war if i know if i had 20 chariots or 30
chariots you know i would use them to
kind of run down the infantry which is
what chariots are used for but the
chariots are used rather like kind of
taxi services they're like ubers they
deliver the aristocrats to the
battlefield and then counter-intuitively
they get out of the chariots and then
they have these one-on-one battles
there's really nowhere in greece you can
have a good chariot battle you need you
need a huge plane for that what we think
we get in the iliad is a memory of
ancient chariot warfare that comes from
africa or from anatolia but chariots
were regarded as high status so chariots
get put in there this next clip is from
percy jackson sea of monsters seven
years ago four of these children were
headed to camp half blood the only place
on earth that is safe for our kind
keep going i'll hold them all no
over here
her name was talia and she gave her life
to save three
[Music]
father zeus found another way for her to
live
to ensure no one in camp has blood would
die the same way
the barrier
to protect them from those who lived for
their death
so the percy jackson books and movies
they're very successful in their own
right because they kind of transpose
greek mythic material onto kids stories
and stories about their anxieties about
their identity and their parents and
their behavior and their rights of
passage if i look at them as someone
that studies mythology i think they work
really really effectively they're not
that close to most stories of greek
mythology but i think that's their
success actually i think they've kind of
broken the bonds of it and are telling
their own stories and you're kind of
seeing everything through these kids we
do know of course that achilles was
educated by a centaur chiron so there is
this idea of going off into the wild to
being educated the percy jackson movie
definitely adopts that one of the things
in this clip that isn't so obvious at
the beginning but is really powerful is
the idea of sacrifice talia kind of
sacrifices herself for the group and the
gods sort of look down on that and
actually sacrifice particularly human
sacrifice is all over classical myth we
see you know the sacrifice of
agamemnon's daughter ephedra to get good
wins to sail on troy and also animal
sacrifices to the gods and so we see
lots of these myths imbued with stories
of sacrifice and of course contemporary
world religions today also have their
own images and myths and one can think
of abraham and isaac the image of jesus
being crucified so these things have
come down to us and you know you can see
them operating here again where this
character talia is being sacrificed for
the greater good of the group
myths are the most relevant things
because facts can be debated interpreted
and argued over but if you tell a story
to somebody you're trying to communicate
something important to that person so
when we study ancient myths and the
reason they're told we can actually
learn a lot about that culture we could
learn a lot about ourselves as well by
the myths that we have we have a myth of
the american dream what does that mean
our myths are as important as the myths
are in antiquity
i'm peter meineck professor of classics
in the modern world at new york
university thanks for watching
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