Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Grummond has done the same for the Etruscans. 57 It would seem that many scholars who<br />
consider Etruscan and Roman myth do not keep in mind the important truth that myths<br />
…frequently show variations from place to place or from time to time (i.e.<br />
synchronically or diachronically), and to be understood, each myth should be<br />
studied within its own temporal and spatial context.” 58<br />
Another consideration brought up by Feeney is that at a certain point, a Greek import can<br />
become more Roman than Greek. In the proper context, an import can be imbued with meanings<br />
which it did not originally possess. Small also endorses this point of view when she states,<br />
The scholarly tendency to label ancient things as purely Greek, Etruscan, or<br />
Roman has confused the issue by opposing Greek stories to local legends.<br />
Indeed the two formed a continuous whole for both the Hellenistic Etruscan and<br />
Roman. 59<br />
This tendency to appropriate narratives also applies to deities and their iconography, and we<br />
must be mindful of the dynamic interchange of ideas and the shifting nature of paganism when<br />
dealing with theriomorphic and therianthropic deities.<br />
Scholarly works focused on Greek religion dealing with the topic of theriomorphic and<br />
therianthropic deities factor into the current study; even so they labor under the problems I have<br />
just discussed. The cults of these divinities are considered oddities and remnants of<br />
unsophisticated culture. The region of Arcadia seems to be considered a nexus for such<br />
archaism, and M.N. Nilsson repeatedly refers to the cults found there as “backward.” 60 In his<br />
article of 1894, A.B. Cook discussed the many animal “gods” that one can find represented in the<br />
prehistoric Bronze Age and commented upon their connections to cults found in Greece during<br />
historic times. 61 A recent exhibition catalogue, The Centaur’s Smile: The Human Animal in<br />
Early Greek Art ed. by J.M. Padgett, deals with the iconography of human-animal hybrids in<br />
ancient Greece, but it primarily covers “daimones” and “genies” such as satyrs, centaurs, sirens,<br />
and sphinxes and only two deities, Pan and Achelous. Even so, this material remains relevant for<br />
the present study.<br />
57 Feeney 1998, 66-70; De Grummond 2006a, xii.<br />
58 De Grummond 2006a, xii. Along similar lines, Childs (2004, 63) stresses the selectivity of the Greeks in<br />
borrowing elements from the Near East. When the Etruscans or Romans borrow a figure or motif, scholars are not<br />
generous enough to refer to them as “selective” and instead imply that they are derivative or worse.<br />
59 Small 1986, 89-90.<br />
60 Nilsson 1961, 9, 22.<br />
61 Cook 1894, 159.<br />
15