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" The Spartan Dioscuri: "
D. W. Frauenfelder
E. L. Brown
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1112407
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| Doc. No
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TLpq303939057
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| Main Entry
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D. W. Frauenfelder
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E. L. Brown
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| Title & Author
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The Spartan Dioscuri:\ D. W. FrauenfelderE. L. Brown
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| College
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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| Date
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1991
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| student score
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1991
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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211
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| Abstract
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This study presents a specific model of the origins and development of the Spartan Dioscuri in the Hellenic world, with special regard to their possible Indo-European heritage. A brief history of the question and discussion of the study's aims (Chapter I) leads into a reexamination of the traditional comparative method used to establish the Spartan Dioscuri as Indo-European (Chapter II). This chapter shows that the Spartan Dioscuri do not correspond as closely as thought to the comparativists' prototype (e.g. Twins as gods of light, celestial charioteers, saviors). It concludes that the comparative method cannot conclusively show that the Spartan Dioscuri are mythological figures of an Indo-European homeland. Next the study turns to an examination of Divine Twins of the Mediterranean world, including Anatolia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia, and shows that many of the mythological elements of 'Indo-European Divine Twins' are also present in Mediterranean Twins (Chapter III). It also shows that several elements of the Spartan Dioscuri left unexplained by comparative Indo-European mythology (usd\delta\acute o\kappa\alpha\nu\alphausd, athletics, chthonic nature, association with a tree-goddess) find parallels in Mediterranean contexts. It concludes by suggesting that the prototypes of the Spartan Dioscuri may be found in the heroic genealogy of the Hittite Anatolian monarchs and in Divine Twins of North Syria, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European. The final part of the study describes a possible route that the earliest prototypes of Castor and Polydeuces may have taken in coming to the Peloponnese (Chapter IV). First it establishes that Divine Twins of the comparative Indo-European type seem to be absent from Mycenaean Greece, but that the iconographical and mythological milieux of the Aegean Bronze Age would have been hospitable to Divine Twins of the type seen in Chapter III. Then, placing geographically these latter Twins and other figures on a map of the Eastern Mediterranean, the study suggests a route of migration from the Hittite Empire through Ugarit and Cyprus, to Rhodes, Crete, and Sparta, the process beginning in the late Bronze Age and complete by the composition of the Homeric epics.
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| Subject
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Classical studies
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Communication and the arts
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Divine Twins
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Greece
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Language, literature and linguistics
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Social sciences
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