Abstract guidelinesDEADLINE: May 31, 2017
ABSTRACT LENGTH: Up to 250 words PAPER DURATION: Up to 40 minutes |
ACCESSIBILITY NOTICE
We are committed to creating an accessible environment: the conference venue is accessible and we are happy to confirm specific accessibility details closer to the date. Please contact the organisers on thatothercrowd [at] gmail.com if you require any specific facilities (including hearing aid loops or visual aid) to fully enjoy and engage in this conference. Please note that presentations may need to conform to specific accessibility requirements; these will be circulated closer to the date. |
Call for abstracts
Building on the remarks of Isocrates (5.117) and Plato (Lg. 4.717A, 8.828A-C), scholars of ancient Greek religion have traditionally distinguished between the so-called Olympian and chthonic deities, with the former considered principally benevolent and the latter malevolent. The division was blurred in ritual practice, as Olympian deities (such as Zeus Meilichios, Hermes and Demeter) often took on chthonic titles and functions (Mikalson 1983: 63-66, Parker 2011: 80-84).
Analogously to ancient Greek religion, the body of the ancient Greek myth seems to distinguish between two ranks of deities. The first rank comprises Olympians: Zeus’ extended family, prototypical gods, ageless and immortal, living in bliss on radiant Mt Olympus. By exclusion, the second, extremely heterogeneous group encompasses all the remaining deities, not necessarily anthropomorphic and often associated with darker and grimmer forces of the world. Coming from ‘peripheral’ branches of the divine family tree, these non-Olympian divinities inhabit liminal spaces far from Olympian gods and men, hidden at the margins of Olympus-centred mythologies, geographies and narratives. Cunning, uncanny, awesome and enchanting, they stand in contrast to Olympians and their ways, but nonetheless perform crucial—even if underappreciated—roles in upholding the regime of Zeus. |
ERINYES: Ió, you younger gods, |
THANATOS: Are you engaged |
Interestingly, surviving works of the ancient Greek literature often stress Olympian superiority: narrators or Olympian protagonists disparage non-Olympian deities, not without some backlash from them. In the Archaic and Classical Greek texts, certain Olympians look down on ‘lesser’ gods, such as Apollo on Thetis (Hom. Il. 20.104-106), whereas non-Olympian deities appear to harbour deep-seated resentment against Zeus and his family over some ancient slights. Greek authors frequently allude to lines having been drawn between ‘younger’ and ‘older’ gods at some unspecified point, a sentiment that surfaces in the Prometheus Bound (955-960), Eumenides (162-164, 721-728, 778-779) and Thanatos’ first utterance in Euripidean Alcestis (24-37). A ‘lost’ piece of mythology, narratives focusing on and prioritizing non-Olympian deities could have been either submerged through accidents of transmission, deliberately suppressed, or—alternatively—have been something that is borne out by the surviving sources as a phenomenon that was obvious to the ancient Greeks yet largely invisible to modern scholarship.
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We invite abstracts that explore the ancient Greek mythical imaginarium from the perspective of those divinities who do not fit the Olympian paradigm of godhood, whom we collectively call nethergods (‘beyond or below Olympian gods’). Nethergods are not simply ‘chthonic’, although these categories often overlap: we define ‘nethergods’ in a broad sense, to include non-Olympian descendants of Gaia, Tartaros, Chaos, Pontos and other Titanic powers (for example, Hyperionides, Koionides, Krionides, Iapetionides, Okeanides, Styktides and Nereides).
Questions that might be addressed include (but are not limited to) the following:
We invite contributions that engage with some aspect of this topic in relation to archaic and classical Greek literature or material culture. Since we would like to investigate the Greek nethergod conceptual category sensu lato, we will also consider proposals involving both Greek and Roman literature. |
HERA: Hear me now, Earth and broad Heaven above, and you Titan gods |