National origin stories

[rgprice]

What are some Hellenistic era examples of national origin stories? Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian, whatever...

[Peter Kirby]

Spartans claimed a legendary origin with Lacedaemon, a son of Zeus who had the same name as the country (named after him), who married Sparta, who had the same name as the capital city (named after her).

Their first king was the legendary Lelex, a native of the land. The accounts disagree about whether Lelex started a dynasty of his own (Apollodorus) or he had no heirs and so was succeeded by Lacadaemon (Pausanias). The accounts agree about the dynasty passing on to the son Amyclas first, after whom another city was supposedly named. Then they disagree again about the succession after Amyclas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lelex_(king_of_Sparta)

https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus3.html

[3.10.3] Taygete had by Zeus a son Lacedaemon, after whom the country of Lacedaemon is called.170 Lacedaemon and Sparta, daughter of Eurotas (who was a son of Lelex,171 a son of the soil, by a Naiad nymph Cleocharia), had a son Amyclas and a daughter Eurydice, whom Acrisius married. Amyclas and Diomede, daughter of Lapithus, had sons, Cynortes and Hyacinth.172 They say that this Hyacinth was beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the cast of a quoit.173 Cynortes had a son Perieres, who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, as Stesichorus says, and she bore Tyndareus, Icarius, Aphareus, and Leucippus.174 Aphareus and Arene, daughter of Oebalus, had sons Lynceus and Idas and Pisus; but according to many, Idas is said to have been gotten by Poseidon. Lynceus excelled in sharpness of sight, so that he could even see things underground.175 Leucippus had daughters, Hilaira and Phoebe: these the Dioscuri carried off and married.176 Besides them Leucippus begat Arsinoe: with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Aesculapius. But some affirm that Aesculapius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly.177 And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her, but that she, against her father's judgment, preferred and cohabited with Ischys, brother of Caeneus. Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings and made him black instead of white, as he had been before; but he killed Coronis. As she was burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the centaur,178 by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he had received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead.179 I found some who are reported to have been raised by him,180 to wit, Capaneus and Lycurgus,181 as Stesichorus says in the Eriphyle; Hippolytus,182 as the author of the Naupactica reports; Tyndareus, as Panyasis says183; Hymenaeus, as the Orphics report; and Glaucus, son of Minos,184 as Melesagoras relates.

https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias3A.html

[3.1.1] After the figures of Hermes we reach Laconia on the west. According to the tradition of the Lacedaemonians themselves, Lelex, an aboriginal was the first king in this land, after whom his subjects were named Leleges. Lelex had a son Myles, and a younger one Polycaon. Polycaon retired into exile, the place of this retirement and its reason I will set forth elsewhere. On the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne. He led down to the sea by means of a trench the stagnant water on the plain, and when it had flowed away, as what was left formed a river-stream, he named it Eurotas.1

[3.1.2] Having no male issue, he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygete, after whom the mountain was named, while according to report his father was none other than Zeus. Lacedaemon was wedded to Sparta, a daughter of Eurotas. When he came to the throne, he first changed the names of the land and its inhabitants, calling them after himself, and next he founded and named after his wife a city, which even down to our own day has been called Sparta.

[3.1.3] Amyclas, too, son of Lacedaemon, wished to leave some memorial behind him, and built a town in Laconia. Hyacinthus, the youngest and most beautiful of his sons, died before his father, and his tomb is in Amyclae below the image of Apollo. On the death of Amyclas the empire came to Aigalus, the eldest of his sons, and afterwards, when Aigalus died, to Cynortas. Cynortas had a son Oebalus.

[Leucius Charinus]

Sassanid Persian "Avesta" was canonised c.224 CE and made the holy writ of a centralised monotheistic Persian state by Ardashir.

[rgprice]

Hmm... still looking for accounts more like The Aeneid, which sort of clearly develops a historical narrative that is designed to justify or bolster the current state. Maybe I'll just work on analyzing the ways that the Romans co-opted Greek mythology and developed their own national history based on Greek mythology during the Hellenistic era, leading up to the writing of The Aeneid.

[MrMacSon]

They weren't nations in those days. There's a foundation story for Rome that is intertwined into the story of the foundation of the Roman Republic. But that's different to accounts of ancient Greece and the formation of the Alexandrian and the Roman empires; and all the other concurrent and intermediate empires.

Though what an empire is and how one is formed is somewhat analogous to the terminology used in early Christian lore ie. to and for 'the nations' ie. the different ethnicities and peoples largely based on spatial geography and local theologies and customs.

[andrewcriddle]

Hmm... still looking for accounts more like The Aeneid, which sort of clearly develops a historical narrative that is designed to justify or bolster the current state. Maybe I'll just work on analyzing the ways that the Romans co-opted Greek mythology and developed their own national history based on Greek mythology during the Hellenistic era, leading up to the writing of The Aeneid.

Virgil (and Livy) in the reign of Augustus may represent something new in the Greek and Roman world.

Andrew Criddle