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Hello.

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Welcome back.

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I'm here with Esther
Eidinow today,

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who is from the Classics
Department at Nottingham.

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And she is an expert in
ancient Greek myth and ritual

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and religion.

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We're here to talk about the
relationship between myth

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and the study of ideology.

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So Esther, why should students
of ideology care about myth?

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So myth and ideology meet
in the arena of belief.

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Our word "myth" comes from
the Greek word "mythos."

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But we actually use the
words very differently.

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So in our use of myth, we use it
to refer to widely held beliefs

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that are wrongly held.

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But that wasn't what it
meant for the Greeks.

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So what are the
key characteristics

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of myth for the ancient Greeks?

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There's no one definition.

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But there are three
characteristics

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that come up regularly.

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So myths are generally
held to be traditional.

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They pass down
through communities.

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They are narrative, so they are
stories, tales, that are told.

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And they are socially relevant.

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So they encapsulate social
beliefs, social principles

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and ideas.

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And I'd actually
add a four which

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is that they are adaptable.

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So one of the reasons why myth
is so sticky down through time

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is the way in which it responds
to other cultures' myths

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and also to current events
among the people where

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the myth is being told.

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So if I understand
this correctly,

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they involve much more
than just religion, right?

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Yes.

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Absolutely.

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There is a close relationship
between myth and religion.

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In part, that's
because of the content

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of myth, which is often
about gods and monsters,

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nymphs, those kinds of things.

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And you often find that
religious ritual and myth

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relate to each other.

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But they don't directly map.

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So you get myth without ritual
and rituals without myth.

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But myths are about much more
than just religious aspects.

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They describe the world
around us fundamentally.

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They are ideologies.

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They give reasons for why the
world is the way it is, so

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why a territory
is the way it is,

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the birth of the gods,
relationships between men

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and women.

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And specifically to
the point of ideology,

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they also often are used
to legitimise power.

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OK.

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So most of the myth
we know are stories.

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Can you tell us a little
bit about the kind

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of narrative form of myth?

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Well, stories.

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Yes.

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Stories, it's an
instinctive human approach

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to explaining our world to do
it through a narrative form.

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And stories are
very interesting.

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And one of the reasons
why myth is so sticky

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is because of the narrative
form that it uses.

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It also makes it very powerful.

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A myth as the story is able
to communicate information.

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But it also makes us feel.

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So stories can
divide communities.

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They can bring them together.

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They can promote
particular ideas.

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And we see this idea
actually used by Plato

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in The Laws and The Republic,
two dialogues that he wrote.

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And there he actually says that
myth is a very powerful form

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of persuasion.

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And he legislates for
the kinds of myths

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that he wants people
to be allowed to tell.

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That sounds very much
like an ideology.

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Do are myths a form of ideology?

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Oh, yes.

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Yes, I think we can
certainly see that.

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For example, in the Athenian
use of the myths around Theseus,

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we see that very clearly.

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There are lots of ways in
which the Athenians and Theseus

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relate to each other.

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But one of the
clearest is around

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the relationship between the
Athenians and the Persians.

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So when the Persians--
there's a series

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of wars between the
Greeks and the Persians.

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We can see the myths about
Theseus changing emphasis

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according to whether the
Athenians are invading

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Persian territory
or the Persians

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are invading Athenian territory.

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We also can see how
widespread that belief

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is from the stories
that were told,

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for example, about the
Athenians believing that Theseus

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was fighting alongside them.

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That's the story told about
the Battle of Marathon.

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And then later we actually
see, at the beginning

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of the battle of Plataea,
when the Athenians

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are arguing about
where they should stand

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in the Greek lineup,
they use that myth,

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that Theseus defended
Attica against the Amazons,

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to explain why they should
be in a particular position

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in the lineup to defend
Greece against the Persians.

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So we know these stories.

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But do we know whether the
Greeks really believed in them?

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Or were they just
convenient stories?

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That question is a
long-running debate

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in scholarship on this area.

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And it is, in fact,
the title of a book

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by a man called Paul Veyne.

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And it's quite an interesting
question in the sense

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that it helps us to think
not just about Greek myth

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but also about our
relationship with Greek myth

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and our relationship with
beliefs more generally.

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So Veyne argues that over time
we create cultural programmes

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of truths that we're allowed
to believe in, that we

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restructure.

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And each era recreates
that structure

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so that they have a
different set of beliefs.

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They adapt their
beliefs over time.

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This doesn't mean
that anything goes.

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But it certainly means that
myth, that beliefs in general,

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can shift and change in
response, as we've talked about

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with myths specifically.

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But I don't think that
we should therefore

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think that beliefs,
that myths specifically,

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are being cynically manipulated.

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One of the reasons that
they're so long lived

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is that they're very sticky.

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But that's because they
encapsulate truths.

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And this is something
that, again, we

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can actually go back
to a Greek writer

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to think about-- Pausanias.

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He's writing during the
Roman period, but in Greek.

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And he goes around
Greece writing

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about what he sees and hears.

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So we get a lot of
information about myth.

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And he says at the
beginning of his travels

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he thought all these myths
were just full of foolishness.

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But now, as he gets towards
the end of that travel,

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he's realised that
they are, in fact,

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hard to understand
but full of wisdom.

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Thank you very much, Esther.

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So in the learning
steps that follow,

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we will be exploring the
theme whether myths contain

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particular forms of
wisdom that are perhaps

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difficult to express in
other ways and to what extent

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this is still true of
political discourse today.

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