The transmission and reception of Graeco-Roman mythology in Anglo-Saxon England, 670–800

Abstract

Rhetoricians, orators, and public speakers of all stripes, if asked the question, which Greek or Roman deity they should invoke in case of need, would surely answer ‘Hermes’ or ‘Mercury’. Members of this profession who also read early Latin-Old English glossaries might therefore be surprised to learn that the deus oratorum was none other than Priapus! This came as good news to me as one who occasionally looks for novel ways to arouse an audience. However, as I reflected further on the meaning of Épinal Glossary 10v32, my expectations wilted. Oratorum must be a simple error for hortorum, ‘of gardens’. Priapus may be fecundus, but he is not facundus.

The origins of the theophoric week in the Germanic languages

“…Michael Herren has seen in such glossaries evidence of a 'mini-renaissance' of classical learning in southern areas of England in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. 36 He specifically notes that 'the Anglo-Saxons of the late seventh century were conscious of the relation between the gods and prodigies of Graeco-Roman mythology and the divinities and wondrous beings of their native religion and worked out a table of correspondences between the two mythological systems'. 37 This is a plausible reading of the Anglo-Saxon evidence, but it ignores continental evidence for such equations of Graeco-Roman and Germanic deities.…”

Bishops, giants, and ideas about Rome in early Anglo-Saxon literature, 597-c.800

“…We know that monastic education in England involved reading the pagan poets from very early in the seventh century, though it is not entirely clear when this began. 967 Vivien Law deduced that such education must have been available in England from early on, given the gradual appearance of Anglo-Saxons at higher levels within the Church hierarchy over the course of this century. Their elevation could hardly have happened, she argues, without an understanding of Latin.…”