NETWORKS OF ETHNICITY IN GREEK MYTHIC GENEALOGIES (2025)

Analysis of communities in a mythological social network

arXiv (Cornell University), 2013

The intriguing nature of classical Homeric narratives has always fascinated the occidental culture 9 contributing to philosophy, history, mythology and straight forwardly to literature. However what would be so intriguing about Homer's narratives' At a first gaze we shall recognize the very literal appeal and aesthetic pleasure presented on every page across Homer's chants in Odyssey and rhapsodies in Iliad. Secondly we may perceive a biased aspect of its stories contents, varying from real-historical to fictional-mythological. To encompass this glance, there are some new archeological finding that supports historicity of some events described within Iliad, and consequently to Odyssey. Considering these observations and using complex network theory concepts, we managed to built and analyze a social network gathered across the classical epic, Odyssey of Homer. Longing for further understanding, topological quantities were collected in order to classify its social network qualitatively into real or fictional. It turns out that most of the found properties belong to real social networks besides assortativity and giant component's size. In order to test the network's possibilities to be real, we removed some mythological members that could imprint a fictional aspect on the network. Carrying on this maneuver the modified social network resulted on assortative mixing and reduction of the giant component, as expected for real social networks. Overall we observe that Odyssey might be an amalgam of fictional elements plus real based human relations, which corroborates other author's findings for Iliad and archeological evidences.

Networks and narratives: a model for ancient Greek religion?

Kernos, 2011

This paper uses a social network theory to examine the role of individuals in ancient Greek religion. Drawing on the work of Harrison White, it argues that individuals in different settings negotiate different identities, creating networks of relationships, through the use of narratives. It suggests that this approach can offer an additional dimension to our understanding of ancient Greek religion--describing it in terms of dynamic, interacting networks--which allows us to take account of coexisting, sometimes overlapping, networks of ritual activities, and the role(s) of the individual within them. The paper uses two case-studies: first, the creation and use of binding spells; second, cults relating to the worship of Dionysus. It argues that this approach may be able to overcome some conceptual difficulties created by the polis religion model, including the much-debated question of the place of particular ‘magical’ practices, and their practitioners.

Review of Michael Loy, Connecting communities in archaic Greece: exploring economic and political networks through data modelling. British School at Athens studies in Greek antiquity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 300. ISBN 9781009343817.

BMCR, 2025

Review of Michael Loy's "Connecting communities in archaic Greece: exploring economic and political networks through data modelling"

Origines Gentium: Mythic Kinships as an Archive of Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Ancient World

Global Histories: A Student Journal, 2019

There is a perceptible gap between present-day historians and those of classical antiquity in their understanding of inter-cultural connections. While ancient historians tended to conceptualize inter-cultural connections in terms of common descent, present-day historians focus mainly on concrete materialist processes such as trade networks and ‘actual’ moments of diplomatic contact. While the current neglect of mythic kinships is arguably justifiable given their largely fictitious nature, this paper argues that these sources are still very much relevant to the study of ancient global history as an ‘archive’ of cross-cultural interactions. Being discourses created to ideologically justify existing relationships within other societies and cultures, myths of ethnic origins constitute an important form of ancient diplomacy. This makes it extremely important for us to consider myths of ethnic origins as a mode of ancient cross-cultural interaction when writing a global history of the ancient world. In order to demonstrate how exactly myths of ethnic origins might be read as an ‘archive’ of ancient cross-cultural interactions, this paper will engage in a brief philological study of some of the various mythic kinships that mediated relations between the Indic and Hellenistic worlds after Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BC. Reading the myths told by each side as discursive strategies with a diplomatic imperative, I not only hope to emphasize the role played by myths of ethnic origins in Indo-Greek relations but also to develop a cohesive framework for a more complete and nuanced understanding of ancient cross-cultural interactions.

Universal properties of mythological networks

EPL (Europhysics Letters), 2012

As in statistical physics, the concept of universality plays an important, albeit qualitative, role in the field of comparative mythology. Here we apply statistical mechanical tools to analyse the networks underlying three iconic mythological narratives with a view to identifying common and distinguishing quantitative features. Of the three narratives, an Anglo-Saxon and a Greek text are mostly believed by antiquarians to be partly historically based while the third, an Irish epic, is often considered to be fictional. Here we use network analysis in an attempt to discriminate real from imaginary social networks and place mythological narratives on the spectrum between them. This suggests that the perceived artificiality of the Irish narrative can be traced back to anomalous features associated with six characters. Speculating that these are amalgams of several entities or proxies, renders the plausibility of the Irish text comparable to the others from a network-theoretic point of view.

Review of Irad Malkin's A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean, OUP 2011, in Hermathena 190, 2011, 113-116

Heterological ethnicity: conceptualizing identities in ancient Greece

2003

table, 1 map. ISBN 91-554-5823-8.

The Odyssey's mythological network

PloS one, 2018

In this work, we study the mythological network of Odyssey of Homer. We use ordinary statistical quantifiers in order to classify the network as real or fictional. We also introduce an analysis of communities which allows us to see how network properties shall emerge. We found that Odyssey can be classified both as real and fictional network. This statement is supported as far as mythological characters are removed, which results in a network with real properties. The community analysis indicated to us that there is a power-law relationship based on the max degree of each community. These results allow us to conclude that Odyssey might be an amalgam of myth and of historical facts, with communities playing a central role.

Review of A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology, by Harold Newman and Jon O. Newman

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2005

Anyone who has taught a survey of classical mythology is aware of the great importance of genealogy, whether framed in terms of Diomedes and Glaukos, the family curses of Laios and Pelops, or the foundation myths and hero cults of various city-states. Most standard texts offer a few simplified genealogical charts of the Olympians and various royal houses, but none presents a detailed overview of all the family relationships. Until now, only Carlos Parada's Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology (Jonsered: Paul Astroms Forlag, 1993) offered reasonably complete coverage. Parada's A-to-Z listing of mythological figures provides much information on their parentage, marriages, children, and manner of death, as well as a conspectus of primary source references. However, it is encumbered with an annoying coding scheme, and the genealogical charts, which resemble industrial flowcharts, are largely unreadable. The Newmans' work offers a far more attractive alternative.

Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1998

How should archaeologists approach ethnicity? This concept, which has such wide currency in social and anthropological studies, remains elusive when we seek to apply it to the archaeological past. The importance of ethnicity in our late twentieth-century world can easily lead us to believe that it must long have been a key element in human relations and awareness. The practice of defining oneself and one's group by contrast and opposition to other individuals and other groups, from the family level upwards, appears a basic feature of human behaviour. Ethnicity is a part of this social logic, though ethnic groups, and ethnicity itself, are notoriously difficult to define.Can we identify and distinguish ethnic groupings in the archaeological record? Had one posed that question earlier this century the answer would have no doubt have made immediate reference to the ‘culture-people hypothesis’; the idea that archaeological assemblages may be combined into ‘cultures’ defined by recur...