5 ms·
> Is there still a fundamental difference between what we ‘know’ about Zeus and Caesar? Yes! But both narratives are mythologies. This is an interesting exam
by quesera 11mo ago
> Is there still a fundamental difference between what we ‘know’ about Zeus and Caesar?
Yes!
But both narratives are mythologies.
This is an interesting example. What we think we know about Caesar has lots of documentation (much of it written by himself), and the correspondence to truth for a great deal of it, is absolutely unknown.
I'd agree that the Caesar mythology is clearly more truthy than the Zeus mythology. But that doesn't make it any more of less of a mythology.
- lazide 11mo agoIt absolutely does make it less of a mythology. Because one meets the definition of a mythology, and the other one doesn’t.
- quesera 11mo agoAs soon as simple, non-interpretable, facts get fleshed out into a story, you have a mythology. All story writers are fallible and often have an agenda. Caesar was born to a wealthy family, did lots of things, led armies, wrote lots of words, crossed a river, challenged some ideas, offended some people, got killed by a mob. Add any more detail to that, and you're building a mythology. It doesn't matter if it's true. Every single one of those "facts" has a mythology attached to it, and the whole system of stories is the Caesar mythology. You picked Caesar, which I think is an interesting but easily-debunked choice. Any historian of the era would agree that there's an enormous mythology built around Caesar's life. Something simpler and more recent? Would you say there's no mythology around the Kennedys or the Clintons? (There is so much mythology around those people it's hard to imagine an argument otherwise). Anywhere there's a collective interpretation of a narrative, there's a mythology. (It might be important that "collective interpretation of narrative" is also a reasonable definition of "history", and that any interpretation is a likely introduction of error or at least lossy compression -- which is the same thing.)
- lazide 11mo agoCaesar existed, we can prove it, and we have various bits and pieces of evidence too about numerous facets of that. Zeus didn’t, and in fact that is clearly acknowledged. You’re building a giant vague narrative about something which is not vague at all.
- quesera 11mo agoThat's a trap. We know that Caesar lived. We probably also know that Jesus lived. They are both real people (probably) and also icons. Zeus did not live, as we understand him, but the notional Zeus is derived from earlier prototypes and it's even possible that there was a real human behind proto-Zeus as there is behind notional Jesus. There is more documentation behind Caesar, of course, but the full truth of "Caesar" the icon is equally unknowable. All of these characters have extensive mythologies about the details, intentions, and meanings of their lives. Many of those details are unverifiable-but-critical parts of their stories, and the purposes those stories serve. Even the verifiable points of truth have mythologies around their meaning. This may devolve into a question of what is knowable and what is unknowable. Facts are very very important, but they are not the most powerful force in society. If you want to argue that you are a scholar of the early Roman Empire, and you know everything there is to know about Caesar, that's fine -- but the scholarship changes, and all you are saying is that you can recite the most-accepted-today interpretation of sparse facts. Interesting, but not authoritative. They say that history is written by the victors. Caesar was a victor until he was not. They do not say that history is truth.