2026-09-25T08:34:50Zhttps://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/3870162025-12-20T03:54:58Zcom_1810_198272com_1810_256061col_1810_219496

Doing History with Monsters: the Sphinx, Chimera, and Centaur in Archaic and Classical Greece https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.119962 Gray, Aidan Osborne, Robin “Monsters” abound in Greek art and literature, in every written genre and painted or sculpted medium from the emergence of post-Mycenaean Greek society down through late antiquity, and yet they remain understudied and underutilized in analyses of Greek culture. It is my contention that our ability to “do history” with monsters rests on some broadly accepted premises. First: monsters are mythical. Myths change (in emphasis, narrative, interpretation, etc.) due to their tellers (and re-tellers) shaping them. The tellers are themselves infuenced by, and respond to, the material, social, and mental conditions of their societies. Second: myths change over time. Taken together, these two premises point to something quite new and surprising: discourse about monsters has a history, and encodes other discourses across history. In this dissertation I "do history" with monsters by focusing not on tracing (hypothetical) origins but in tracking and explaining their transformation across the Archaic and Classical periods. Monsters change with shifting historical and social contexts, but not all in the same way. Different monsters interact differently with historical conditions. In the frst chapter, I analyse the unique procedure by which the Sphinx in art and literature comes together via cross-media communication, uniting around themes of art, death, and foreignness. The second chapter tracks the Chimera as it became a useful way for thinking concretely about the fctional, artistic, unreal, a focal point for conceptualizing the power of that which is not. And the third chapter explores the development of the Centaur into a political thought experiment about what makes for "bad" poleis, especially by examining the bifurcated paradigm of Centaurs into normally hostile, but occasionally sympathetic. Together, these three case studies demonstrate how myths were used to think with at different points in Archaic and Classical history. University of Cambridge 2024-11-05 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) n/a https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/387016 embargo 2026-07-17 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/511cbc93-6152-40c1-a812-5c94d984de09/download 7d8c20dd104740f9a4ce8aa6488940d2 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ca2099c4-e3e2-4e77-ab13-c182d4831409/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved Archaic Greece Athens Centaur Chimera Classical Greece Greek mythology History Monsters Sphinx