Further Notes on the City Myth

[sdi]

Recall how I have been tracing two categories of myths: the city myth, and the hero myths that are embedded within the city myth? I think they describe two different categories of time: the city myth is cyclical, while the hero myth is linear. The city myth therefore describes the world, but the hero myth describes one's experience within the world; and it must be noted that there are many heroes for a given city, each with different goals: some, like Ganumedes, are spirited away during the city's lifetime; some, like Aineias and Teiresias, leave the city before it is destroyed to found a new one; some, like Horos and Orestes and Alkmaion, avenge their father who was betrayed while away at the city; some, like Perseus and Odusseus, merely find their way home.

But let me take a moment to describe why I think the city-myth is cyclic. If we look at the royal line of Thebai from it's founding to it's destruction, we see these seven generations:

↓ Kadmos Founds Thebai. Given necklace of Harmonia. ↓	→	Oudaios Born from the earth. ↓
Poludoros ↓		Euerous ↓
Labdakos ↓		Teiresias Lives for seven generations. ↓
Laios ↓		↓
Oidipous ↓		↓
Seven Against Thebai ↓		↓
Epigone Laodamas killed. Thersandros's line continues on but leaves Thebai. The necklace is taken to Argos. ×		Leaves Thebai to found Haliartos. ↓

We see a hero found the city, and then seven generations later, his line peters out, but a new hero arises and leads a remnant of the city to found a new city as the old one is destroyed.

Now, compare this to the Troian royal line:

↓ Dardanos Founds Dardanos. ↓
Erikhthonios ↓
Tros
↙ Ilos Founds Troia, which mostly subsumes Darnados. ↓	↘   Assarakos ↓
Laomedon ↓	Kapus ↓
Priam ↓	Ankhises ↓
Hektor Zeus withdraws favor. Line ends. ×	Aineias Leaves Troia and rebuilds it after the Akhaians sack it. ↓

This is very similar: a city is founded, the primary line dies, but a secondary line spawns a hero who founds a new city after the destruction of the first, seven generations later.

We see that many of these cities come from previously founded cities: Thebai is founded because Kadmos is barred from returning home; Haliartos is founded because Thebai is destroyed; Dardanos is founded because of a catastrophic flood that destroyed Arkadia; Troia is refounded after it is burned to the ground.

I think these indicate world ages, after which the old world is destroyed in fire and flood and a new one begins, just like Plato's priest of Sais describes. I have mentioned that I wonder if the Horos-myth is a reaction to Atlantis; this would be a very natural result if Atlantis was the city of a prior age, just as Troia is the city of our age.