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Greek mythology

March 20, 2023

A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures, and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' own cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself.[1]

Scenes from Greek mythology depicted in ancient art. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: the birth of Aphrodite, a revel with Dionysus and Silenus, Adonis playing the kithara for Aphrodite, Heracles slaying the Lernaean Hydra, the Colchian dragon regurgitating Jason in the presence of Athena, Hermes with his mother Maia, the Trojan Horse, and Odysseus's ship sailing past the island of the sirens

The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC;[2] eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.

Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature, pictorial representations of gods, heroes, and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings and the decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Epic Cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence.[3]

Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture, arts, and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes.[4]: 43 

Achilles and Penthesileia by Exekias, c. 540 BC, British Museum, London

Sources

Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. 900 BC to c. 800 BC onward.[5]: 200  In fact, literary and archaeological sources integrate, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict; however, in many cases, the existence of this corpus of data is a strong indication that many elements of Greek mythology have strong factual and historical roots.[6]

Literary sources

Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus. This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends.[7]: 1  Apollodorus of Athens lived from c. 180 BC to c. 125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection; however, the "Library" discusses events that occurred long after his death, hence the name Pseudo-Apollodorus.

 
Prometheus (1868 by Gustave Moreau). The myth of Prometheus first was attested by Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, and Prometheus Pyrphoros.

Among the earliest literary sources are Homer's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the Epic Cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no direct connection with Homer. The oldest are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called Lyric age.[8]: 7  Hesiod, a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his Theogony (Origin of the Gods) the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths, dealing with the creation of the world, the origin of the gods, Titans, and Giants, as well as elaborate genealogies, folktales, and aetiological myths. Hesiod's Works and Days, a didactic poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Five Ages. The poet advises on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered yet more dangerous by its gods.[3]

Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, relate individual mythological incidents.[9]: xii  Additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama. The tragic playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories (e.g. Agamemnon and his children, Oedipus, Jason, Medea, etc.) took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths, in The Birds and The Frogs.[8]: 8 

Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions.[9]: xii  Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions he encountered and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East.[10]: 60 [11]: 22  Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural concepts.

The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise. Nevertheless, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of:

  1. The Roman poets Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Seneca and Virgil with Servius's commentary.
  2. The Greek poets of the Late Antique period: Nonnus, Antoninus Liberalis, and Quintus Smyrnaeus.
  3. The Greek poets of the Hellenistic period: Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus, Pseudo-Eratosthenes, and Parthenius.

Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus, and Heliodorus. Two other important non-poetical sources are the Fabulae and Astronomica of the Roman writer styled as Pseudo-Hyginus, the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger, and the Descriptions of Callistratus.

Finally, several Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works. These preservers of myth include Arnobius, Hesychius, the author of the Suda, John Tzetzes, and Eustathius. They often treat mythology from a Christian moralizing perspective.[12]

Archaeological sources

 
The Roman poet Virgil, here depicted in the fifth-century manuscript, the Vergilius Romanus, preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings.

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the nineteenth century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century, helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. Unfortunately, the evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece) was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified.[3]

Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth-century  BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles.[13] These visual representations of myths are important for two reasons. Firstly, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources: of the twelve labors of Heracles, for example, only the Cerberus adventure occurs in a contemporary literary text.[14] Secondly, visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not attested in any extant literary source. In some cases, the first known representation of a myth in geometric art predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry, by several centuries.[5] In the Archaic (c. 750 – c. 500 BC), Classical (c. 480–323 BC), and Hellenistic (323–146 BC) periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence.[3]

Survey of mythic history

 
Phaedra with an attendant, probably her nurse, a fresco from Pompeii, c. 60 – c. 20 BC

Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued.[i][15]

The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using animism, assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods.[16]: 17  When tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula invaded, they brought with them a new pantheon of gods, based on conquest, force, prowess in battle, and violent heroism. Other older gods of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders or else faded into insignificance.[16]: 18 

After the middle of the Archaic period, myths about relationships between male gods and male heroes became more and more frequent, indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty (παιδικὸς ἔρως, eros paidikos), thought to have been introduced around 630 BC. By the end of the fifth-century  BC, poets had assigned at least one eromenos, an adolescent boy who was their sexual companion, to every important god except Ares and many legendary figures.[17] Previously existing myths, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus, also then were cast in a pederastic light.[18]: 54  Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire, often re-adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion.

The achievement of epic poetry was to create story-cycles and, as a result, to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans.[19]: 11  While self-contradictions in these stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. The resulting mythological "history of the world" may be divided into three or four broader periods:

  1. The myths of origin or age of gods (Theogonies, "births of gods"): myths about the origins of the world, the gods, and the human race.
  2. The age when gods and mortals mingled freely: stories of the early interactions between gods, demigods, and mortals.
  3. The age of heroes (heroic age), where divine activity was more limited. The last and greatest of the heroic legends is the story of the Trojan War and after (which is regarded by some researchers as a separate, fourth period).[8]: 35 

While the age of gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth, the Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for the age of heroes, establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the questions of how the world came into being were explained. For example, the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed the divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity. Under the influence of Homer the "hero cult" leads to a restructuring in spiritual life, expressed in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead (heroes), of the Chthonic from the Olympian.[20]: 205  In the Works and Days, Hesiod makes use of a scheme of Four Ages of Man (or Races): Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. These races or ages are separate creations of the gods, the Golden Age belonging to the reign of Cronos, the subsequent races to the creation of Zeus. The presence of evil was explained by the myth of Pandora, when all of the best of human capabilities, save hope, had been spilled out of her overturned jar.[21] In Metamorphoses, Ovid follows Hesiod's concept of the four ages.[22]

Origins of the world and the gods

Further information: Greek primordial gods and Family tree of the Greek gods
 
Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All), a depiction of the god of love, Eros. By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, circa 1601–1602.

"Myths of origin" or "creation myths" represent an attempt to explain the beginnings of the universe in human language.[9]: 10  The most widely accepted version at the time, although a philosophical account of the beginning of things, is reported by Hesiod, in his Theogony. He begins with Chaos, a yawning nothingness. Out of the void emerged Gaia (the Earth) and some other primary divine beings: Eros (Love), the Abyss (the Tartarus), and the Erebus.[23] Without male assistance, Gaia gave birth to Uranus (the Sky) who then fertilized her. From that union were born first the Titans—six males: Coeus, Crius, Cronus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Oceanus; and six females: Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Rhea, Theia, Themis, and Tethys. After Cronus was born, Gaia and Uranus decreed no more Titans were to be born. They were followed by the one-eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires or Hundred-Handed Ones, who were both thrown into Tartarus by Uranus. This made Gaia furious. Cronus ("the wily, youngest and most terrible of Gaia's children"),[23] was convinced by Gaia to castrate his father. He did this and became the ruler of the Titans with his sister-wife, Rhea, as his consort, and the other Titans became his court.

A motif of father-against-son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus. Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same, and so each time Rhea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it. Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was full-grown, he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit, throwing up Rhea's other children, including Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and the stone, which had been sitting in Cronus's stomach all this time. Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes (whom Zeus freed from Tartarus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus.[24]

 
Attic black-figured amphora depicting Athena being "reborn" from the head of Zeus, who had swallowed her mother Metis, on the right, Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, assists, circa 550–525 BC (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Zeus was plagued by the same concern, and after a prophecy that the offspring of his first wife, Metis, would give birth to a god "greater than he", Zeus swallowed her.[25]: 98  She was already pregnant with Athena, however, and she burst forth from his head—fully-grown and dressed for war.[25]: 108 

The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogonies to be the prototypical poetic genre—the prototypical mythos—and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus, the archetypal poet, also was the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in Apollonius' Argonautica, and to move the stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades. When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the first thing he does is sing about the birth of the gods.[26] Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet's function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses. Theogony also was the subject of many lost poems, including those attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus, Epimenides, Abaris, and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites. There are indications that Plato was familiar with some version of the Orphic theogony.[27]: 147  A silence would have been expected about religious rites and beliefs, however, and that nature of the culture would not have been reported by members of the society while the beliefs were held. After they ceased to become religious beliefs, few would have known the rites and rituals. Allusions often existed, however, to aspects that were quite public.

Images existed on pottery and religious artwork that were interpreted and more likely, misinterpreted in many diverse myths and tales. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently unearthed papyrus scraps. One of these scraps, the Derveni Papyrus now proves that at least in the fifth-century BC a theogonic-cosmogonic poem of Orpheus was in existence.[20]: 236 [27]: 147 

The first philosophical cosmologists reacted against, or sometimes built upon, popular mythical conceptions that had existed in the Greek world for some time. Some of these popular conceptions can be gleaned from the poetry of Homer and Hesiod. In Homer, the Earth was viewed as a flat disk afloat on the river of Oceanus and overlooked by a hemispherical sky with sun, moon, and stars. The Sun (Helios) traversed the heavens as a charioteer and sailed around the Earth in a golden bowl at night. Sun, earth, heaven, rivers, and winds could be addressed in prayers and called to witness oaths. Natural fissures were popularly regarded as entrances to the subterranean house of Hades and his predecessors, home of the dead.[28]: 45  Influences from other cultures always afforded new themes.

Greek pantheon

Further information: Ancient Greek religion, Twelve Olympians, Family Tree of the Greek Gods, and List of Mycenaean gods
 
Zeus, disguised as a swan, seduces Leda, the Queen of Sparta. A sixteenth-century copy of the lost original by Michelangelo.

According to Classical-era mythology, after the overthrow of the Titans, the new pantheon of gods and goddesses was confirmed. Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians, residing on Mount Olympus under the eye of Zeus. (The limitation of their number to twelve seems to have been a comparatively modern idea.)[29]: 8  Besides the Olympians, the Greeks worshipped various gods of the countryside, the satyr-god Pan, Nymphs (spirits of rivers), Naiads (who dwelled in springs), Dryads (who were spirits of the trees), Nereids (who inhabited the sea), river gods, Satyrs, and others. In addition, there were the dark powers of the underworld, such as the Erinyes (or Furies), said to pursue those guilty of crimes against blood-relatives.[30] In order to honor the Ancient Greek pantheon, poets composed the Homeric Hymns (a group of thirty-three songs).[31] Gregory Nagy (1992) regards "the larger Homeric Hymns as simple preludes (compared with Theogony), each of which invokes one god."[32]: 54 

The gods of Greek mythology are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies. According to Walter Burkert, the defining characteristic of Greek anthropomorphism is that "the Greek gods are persons, not abstractions, ideas or concepts."[20]: 182  Regardless of their underlying forms, the Ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities; most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease, and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances. The Greeks considered immortality as the distinctive characteristic of their gods; this immortality, as well as unfading youth, was insured by the constant use of nectar and ambrosia, by which the divine blood was renewed in their veins.[29]: 4 

Each god descends from his or her own genealogy, pursues differing interests, has a certain area of expertise, and is governed by a unique personality; however, these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another. When these gods are called upon in poetry, prayer, or cult, they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets, that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves (e.g., Apollo Musagetes is "Apollo, [as] leader of the Muses"). Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece.

Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty, Ares was the god of war, Hades the ruler of the underworld, and Athena the goddess of wisdom and courage.[29]: 20ff  Some gods, such as Apollo and Dionysus, revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others, such as Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to a limited number of gods, who were the focus of large pan-Hellenic cults. It was, however, common for individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to minor gods. Many cities also honored the more well-known gods with unusual local rites and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere. During the heroic age, the cult of heroes (or demigods) supplemented that of the gods.

Age of gods and mortals

Bridging the age when gods lived alone and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited was a transitional age in which gods and mortals moved together. These were the early days of the world when the groups mingled more freely than they did later. Most of these tales were later told by Ovid's Metamorphoses and they are often divided into two thematic groups: tales of love, and tales of punishment.[8]: 38 

 
Dionysus with satyrs. Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter, Cabinet des Médailles.

Tales of love often involve incest, or the seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god, resulting in heroic offspring. The stories generally suggest that relationships between gods and mortals are something to avoid; even consenting relationships rarely have happy endings.[8]: 39  In a few cases, a female divinity mates with a mortal man, as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where the goddess lies with Anchises to produce Aeneas.[33]

The second type (tales of punishment) involves the appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, when Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus' table and gives it to his subjects—revealing to them the secrets of the gods, when Prometheus or Lycaon invents sacrifice, when Demeter teaches agriculture and the Mysteries to Triptolemus, or when Marsyas invents the aulos and enters into a musical contest with Apollo. Ian Morris considers Prometheus' adventures as "a place between the history of the gods and that of man."[34]: 291  An anonymous papyrus fragment, dated to the third century, vividly portrays Dionysus' punishment of the king of Thrace, Lycurgus, whose recognition of the new god came too late, resulting in horrific penalties that extended into the afterlife.[35]: 50  The story of the arrival of Dionysus to establish his cult in Thrace was also the subject of an Aeschylean trilogy.[36]: 28  In another tragedy, Euripides' The Bacchae, the king of Thebes, Pentheus, is punished by Dionysus, because he disrespected the god and spied on his Maenads, the female worshippers of the god.[37]: 195 

 
Demeter and Metanira in a detail on an Apulian red-figure hydria, circa 340 BC (Altes Museum, Berlin)

In another story, based on an old folktale-motif,[38] and echoing a similar theme, Demeter was searching for her daughter, Persephone, having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, and received a hospitable welcome from Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. As a gift to Celeus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make his son Demophon a god, but she was unable to complete the ritual because his mother Metanira walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright, which angered Demeter, who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand the concept and ritual.[39]

Heroic age

The age in which the heroes lived is known as the Heroic age.[40] The epic and genealogical poetry created cycles of stories clustered around particular heroes or events and established the family relationships between the heroes of different stories; they thus arranged the stories in sequence. According to Ken Dowden (1992), "there is even a saga effect: We can follow the fates of some families in successive generations."[19]: 11 

After the rise of the hero cult, gods and heroes constitute the sacral sphere and are invoked together in oaths and prayers which are addressed to them.[20]: 205  Burkert (2002) notes that "the roster of heroes, again in contrast to the gods, is never given fixed and final form. Great gods are no longer born, but new heroes can always be raised up from the army of the dead." Another important difference between the hero cult and the cult of gods is that the hero becomes the centre of local group identity.[20]: 206 

The monumental events of Heracles are regarded as the dawn of the age of heroes. To the Heroic Age are also ascribed three great events: the Argonautic expedition, the Theban Cycle, and the Trojan War.[40][41]: 340 

Heracles and the Heracleidae

Further information: Heracles, Heracleidae, and Hercules
 
Heracles with his baby Telephus (Louvre Museum, Paris)

Some scholars believe[41]: 10  that behind Heracles' complicated mythology there was probably a real man, perhaps a chieftain-vassal of the kingdom of Argos. Some scholars suggest the story of Heracles is an allegory for the sun's yearly passage through the twelve constellations of the zodiac.[42] Others point to earlier myths from other cultures, showing the story of Heracles as a local adaptation of hero myths already well established. Traditionally, Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, granddaughter of Perseus.[43] His fantastic solitary exploits, with their many folk-tale themes, provided much material for popular legend. According to Burkert (2002), "He is portrayed as a sacrificer, mentioned as a founder of altars, and imagined as a voracious eater himself; it is in this role that he appears in comedy.[20]

While his tragic end provided much material for tragedy—Heracles is regarded by Thalia Papadopoulou as "a play of great significance in examination of other Euripidean dramas."[44][20]: 211  In art and literature Heracles was represented as an enormously strong man of moderate height; his characteristic weapon was the bow but frequently also the club. Vase paintings demonstrate the unparalleled popularity of Heracles, his fight with the lion being depicted many hundreds of times.[20]: 211 

Heracles also entered Etruscan and Roman mythology and cult, and the exclamation "mehercule" became as familiar to the Romans[clarification needed] as "Herakleis" was to the Greeks.[20]: 211  In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traders, although others also prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger.[43]

Heracles attained the highest social prestige through his appointment as official ancestor of the Dorian kings. This probably served as a legitimation for the Dorian migrations into the Peloponnese. Hyllus, the eponymous hero of one Dorian phyle, became the son of Heracles and one of the Heracleidae or Heraclids (the numerous descendants of Heracles, especially the descendants of Hyllus—other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus). These Heraclids conquered the Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae, Sparta and Argos, claiming, according to legend, a right to rule them through their ancestor. Their rise to dominance is frequently called the "Dorian invasion". The Lydian and later the Macedonian kings, as rulers of the same rank, also became Heracleidae.[45][20]: 211 

 
Bellerophon riding Pegasus and slaying the Chimera, central medallion of a Roman mosaic from Autun, Musée Rolin, 2nd to 3rd century AD

Other members of this earliest generation of heroes such as Perseus, Deucalion, Theseus and Bellerophon, have many traits in common with Heracles. Like him, their exploits are solitary, fantastic and border on fairy tale, as they slay monsters such as the Chimera and Medusa. Bellerophon's adventures are commonplace types, similar to the adventures of Heracles and Theseus. Sending a hero to his presumed death is also a recurrent theme of this early heroic tradition, used in the cases of Perseus and Bellerophon.[46]

Argonauts

Further information: Argonauts

The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (epic poet, scholar, and director of the Library of Alexandria) tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis. In the Argonautica, Jason is impelled on his quest by king Pelias, who receives a prophecy that a man with one sandal would be his nemesis. Jason loses a sandal in a river, arrives at the court of Pelias, and the epic is set in motion. Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason in the ship Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece. This generation also included Theseus, who went to Crete to slay the Minotaur; Atalanta, the female heroine, and Meleager, who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey. Pindar, Apollonius and the Bibliotheca endeavor to give full lists of the Argonauts.[47][48][49]

Although Apollonius wrote his poem in the 3rd century BC, the composition of the story of the Argonauts is earlier than Odyssey, which shows familiarity with the exploits of Jason (the wandering of Odysseus may have been partly founded on it).[50][51] In ancient times the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Black Sea to Greek commerce and colonization.[50] It was also extremely popular, forming a cycle to which a number of local legends became attached. The story of Medea, in particular, caught the imagination of the tragic poets.[51]

House of Atreus and Theban Cycle

Further information: Theban Cycle and Seven against Thebes

In between the Argo and the Trojan War, there was a generation known chiefly for its horrific crimes. This includes the doings of Atreus and Thyestes at Argos. Behind the myth of the house of Atreus (one of the two principal heroic dynasties with the house of Labdacus) lies the problem of the devolution of power and of the mode of accession to sovereignty. The twins Atreus and Thyestes with their descendants played the leading role in the tragedy of the devolution of power in Mycenae.[52]

The Theban Cycle deals with events associated especially with Cadmus, the city's founder, and later with the doings of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes; a series of stories that lead to the war of the Seven against Thebes and the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Epigoni.[7]: 317  (It is not known whether the Seven figured in early epic.) As far as Oedipus is concerned, early epic accounts seem to have him continuing to rule at Thebes after the revelation that Iokaste was his mother, and subsequently marrying a second wife who becomes the mother of his children—markedly different from the tale known to us through tragedy (e.g. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex) and later mythological accounts.[7]: 311 

Trojan War and aftermath

Further information: Trojan War and Epic Cycle
 
El Juicio de Paris by Enrique Simonet, 1904. Paris is holding the golden apple on his right hand while surveying the goddesses in a calculative manner.
 
In The Rage of Achilles by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1757, Fresco, 300 x 300 cm, Villa Valmarana, Vicenza) Achilles is outraged that Agamemnon would threaten to seize his warprize, Briseis, and he draws his sword to kill Agamemnon. The sudden appearance of the goddess Athena, who, in this fresco, has grabbed Achilles by the hair, prevents the act of violence.

Greek mythology culminates in the Trojan War, fought between Greece and Troy, and its aftermath. In Homer's works, such as the Iliad, the chief stories have already taken shape and substance, and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek drama. The Trojan War also elicited great interest in the Roman culture because of the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero whose journey from Troy led to the founding of the city that would one day become Rome, as recounted in Virgil's Aeneid (Book II of Virgil's Aeneid contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy).[53][54] Finally there are two pseudo-chronicles written in Latin that passed under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.[55]

The Trojan War cycle, a collection of epic poems, starts with the events leading up to the war: Eris and the golden apple of Kallisti, the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis. To recover Helen, the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos, or Mycenae, but the Trojans refused to return Helen. The Iliad, which is set in the tenth year of the war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in battle of Achilles' beloved comrade Patroclus and Priam's eldest son, Hector. After Hector's death the Trojans were joined by two exotic allies, Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, king of the Ethiopians and son of the dawn-goddess Eos.[54] Achilles killed both of these, but Paris then managed to kill Achilles with an arrow in the heel. Achilles' heel was the only part of his body which was not invulnerable to damage by human weaponry. Before they could take Troy, the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image of Pallas Athena (the Palladium). Finally, with Athena's help, they built the Trojan Horse. Despite the warnings of Priam's daughter Cassandra, the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon, a Greek who feigned desertion, to take the horse inside the walls of Troy as an offering to Athena; the priest Laocoon, who tried to have the horse destroyed, was killed by sea-serpents. At night the Greek fleet returned, and the Greeks from the horse opened the gates of Troy. In the total sack that followed, Priam and his remaining sons were slaughtered; the Trojan women passed into slavery in various cities of Greece. The adventurous homeward voyages of the Greek leaders (including the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas (the Aeneid), and the murder of Agamemnon) were told in two epics, the Returns (the lost Nostoi) and Homer's Odyssey.[53] The Trojan cycle also includes the adventures of the children of the Trojan generation (e.g., Orestes and Telemachus).[54]

The Trojan War provided a variety of themes and became a main source of inspiration for Ancient Greek artists (e.g. metopes on the Parthenon depicting the sack of Troy); this artistic preference for themes deriving from the Trojan Cycle indicates its importance to the Ancient Greek civilization.[53] The same mythological cycle also inspired a series of posterior European literary writings. For instance, Trojan Medieval European writers, unacquainted with Homer at first hand, found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and romantic storytelling and a convenient framework into which to fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals. Twelfth-century authors, such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure (Roman de Troie [Romance of Troy, 1154–60]) and Joseph of Exeter (De Bello Troiano [On the Trojan War, 1183]) describe the war while rewriting the standard version they found in Dictys and Dares. They thus follow Horace's advice and Virgil's example: they rewrite a poem of Troy instead of telling something completely new.[56]

Some of the more famous heroes noted for their inclusion in the Trojan War were:

On the Trojan side:

On the Greek side:

Greek and Roman conceptions of myth

Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece.[16]: 15  Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history. They used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace the descent of one's leaders from a mythological hero or a god. Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian, columnist, political essayist, and former classics professor, and John Heath, a classics professor, the profound knowledge of the Homeric epos was deemed by the Greeks the basis of their acculturation. Homer was the "education of Greece" (Ἑλλάδος παίδευσις), and his poetry "the Book".[57]

Philosophy and myth

After the rise of philosophy, history, prose and rationalism in the late 5th century BC, the fate of myth became uncertain, and mythological genealogies gave place to a conception of history which tried to exclude the supernatural (such as the Thucydidean history).[58] While poets and dramatists were reworking the myths, Greek historians and philosophers were beginning to criticize them.[8]

By the sixth century BC, a few radical philosophers were already beginning to label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies: Xenophanes of Colophon complained that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods "all that is shameful and disgraceful among men; they steal, commit adultery, and deceive one another."[5]: 169–70  This line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato's Republic and Laws. Plato created his own allegorical myths (such as the vision of Er in the Republic), attacked the traditional tales of the gods' tricks, thefts, and adulteries as immoral, and objected to their central role in literature.[8] Plato's criticism was the first serious challenge to the Homeric mythological tradition,[57] referring to the myths as "old wives' chatter."[59] For his part Aristotle criticized the pre-Socratic quasi-mythical philosophical approach and underscored that "Hesiod and the theological writers were concerned only with what seemed plausible to themselves, and had no respect for us ... But it is not worth taking seriously writers who show off in the mythical style; as for those who do proceed by proving their assertions, we must cross-examine them."[58]

Nevertheless, even Plato did not manage to wean himself and his society from the influence of myth; his own characterization for Socrates is based on the traditional Homeric and tragic patterns, used by the philosopher to praise the righteous life of his teacher:[60]

But perhaps someone might say: "Are you then not ashamed, Socrates, of having followed such a pursuit, that you are now in danger of being put to death as a result?" But I should make to him a just reply: "You do not speak well, Sir, if you think a man in whom there is even a little merit ought to consider danger of life or death, and not rather regard this only, when he does things, whether the things he does are right or wrong and the acts of a good or a bad man. For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at Troy, including the son of Thetis, who so despised danger, in comparison with enduring any disgrace, that when his mother (and she was a goddess) said to him, as he was eager to slay Hector, something like this, I believe,

My son, if you avenge the death of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you yourself shall die; for straightway, after Hector, is death appointed unto you. (Hom. Il. 18.96)

he, when he heard this, made light of death and danger, and feared much more to live as a coward and not to avenge his friends, and said,

Straightway may I die, after doing vengeance upon the wrongdoer, that I may not stay here, jeered at beside the curved ships, a burden of the earth.

Hanson and Heath estimate that Plato's rejection of the Homeric tradition was not favorably received by the grassroots Greek civilization.[57] The old myths were kept alive in local cults; they continued to influence poetry and to form the main subject of painting and sculpture.[58]

More sportingly, the 5th century BC tragedian Euripides often played with the old traditions, mocking them, and through the voice of his characters injecting notes of doubt. Yet the subjects of his plays were taken, without exception, from myth. Many of these plays were written in answer to a predecessor's version of the same or similar myth. Euripides mainly impugns the myths about the gods and begins his critique with an objection similar to the one previously expressed by Xenocrates: the gods, as traditionally represented, are far too crassly anthropomorphic.[5]: 169–70 

Hellenistic and Roman rationalism

 
Cicero saw himself as the defender of the established order, despite his personal skepticism concerning myth and his inclination towards more philosophical conceptions of divinity.

During the Hellenistic period, mythology took on the prestige of elite knowledge that marks its possessors as belonging to a certain class. At the same time, the skeptical turn of the Classical age became even more pronounced.[61]: 89  Greek mythographer Euhemerus established the tradition of seeking an actual historical basis for mythical beings and events.[62] Although his original work (Sacred Scriptures) is lost, much is known about it from what is recorded by Diodorus and Lactantius.[7]: 7 

Rationalizing hermeneutics of myth became even more popular under the Roman Empire, thanks to the physicalist theories of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. Stoics presented explanations of the gods and heroes as physical phenomena, while the Euhemerists rationalized them as historical figures. At the same time, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists promoted the moral significations of the mythological tradition, often based on Greek etymologies.[63] Through his Epicurean message, Lucretius had sought to expel superstitious fears from the minds of his fellow-citizens.[64]: xxvi  Livy, too, is skeptical about the mythological tradition and claims that he does not intend to pass judgement on such legends (fabulae).[61]: 88  The challenge for Romans with a strong and apologetic sense of religious tradition was to defend that tradition while conceding that it was often a breeding-ground for superstition. The antiquarian Varro, who regarded religion as a human institution with great importance for the preservation of good in society, devoted rigorous study to the origins of religious cults. In his Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum (which has not survived, but Augustine's City of God indicates its general approach) Varro argues that whereas the superstitious man fears the gods, the truly religious person venerates them as parents.[64]: xxvi  According to Varro, there have been three accounts of deities in the Roman society: the mythical account created by poets for theatre and entertainment, the civil account used by people for veneration as well as by the city, and the natural account created by the philosophers.[65] The best state is, adds Varro, where the civil theology combines the poetic mythical account with the philosopher's.[65]

Roman Academic Cotta ridicules both literal and allegorical acceptance of myth, declaring roundly that myths have no place in philosophy.[61]: 87  Cicero is also generally disdainful of myth, but, like Varro, he is emphatic in his support for the state religion and its institutions. It is difficult to know how far down the social scale this rationalism extended.[61]: 88  Cicero asserts that no one (not even old women and boys) is so foolish as to believe in the terrors of Hades or the existence of Scyllas, centaurs or other composite creatures,[66] but, on the other hand, the orator elsewhere complains of the superstitious and credulous character of the people.[67] De Natura Deorum is the most comprehensive summary of Cicero's line of thought.[64]: xxvii 

Syncretizing trends

See also: Roman mythology
 
Apollo (early Imperial Roman copy of a fourth-century Greek original, Louvre Museum)

In Ancient Roman times, a new Roman mythology was born through syncretization of numerous Greek and other foreign gods. This occurred because the Romans had little mythology of their own, and inheritance of the Greek mythological tradition caused the major Roman gods to adopt characteristics of their Greek equivalents.[61]: 88  The gods Zeus and Jupiter are an example of this mythological overlap. In addition to the combination of the two mythological traditions, the association of the Romans with eastern religions led to further syncretizations.[68] For instance, the cult of Sun was introduced in Rome after Aurelian's successful campaigns in Syria. The Asiatic divinities Mithras (that is to say, the Sun) and Ba'al were combined with Apollo and Helios into one Sol Invictus, with conglomerated rites and compound attributes.[69] Apollo might be increasingly identified in religion with Helios or even Dionysus, but texts retelling his myths seldom reflected such developments. The traditional literary mythology was increasingly dissociated from actual religious practice. The worship of Sol as special protector of the emperors and the empire remained the chief imperial religion until it was replaced by Christianity.

The surviving 2nd-century collection of Orphic Hymns (second century AD) and the Saturnalia of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (fifth century) are influenced by the theories of rationalism and the syncretizing trends as well. The Orphic Hymns are a set of pre-classical poetic compositions, attributed to Orpheus, himself the subject of a renowned myth. In reality, these poems were probably composed by several different poets, and contain a rich set of clues about prehistoric European mythology.[70] The stated purpose of the Saturnalia is to transmit the Hellenic culture Macrobius has derived from his reading, even though much of his treatment of gods is colored by Egyptian and North African mythology and theology (which also affect the interpretation of Virgil). In Saturnalia reappear mythographical comments influenced by the Euhemerists, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists.[63]

Modern interpretations

Further information: Modern understanding of Greek mythology

The genesis of modern understanding of Greek mythology is regarded by some scholars as a double reaction at the end of the eighteenth century against "the traditional attitude of Christian animosity", in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a "lie" or fable had been retained.[71] In Germany, by about 1795, there was a growing interest in Homer and Greek mythology. In Göttingen, Johann Matthias Gesner began to revive Greek studies, while his successor, Christian Gottlob Heyne, worked with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and laid the foundations for mythological research both in Germany and elsewhere.[5]: 9 

Comparative and psychoanalytic approaches

See also: Comparative mythology
 
Max Müller is regarded as one of the founders of comparative mythology. In his Comparative Mythology (1867) Müller analysed the "disturbing" similarity between the mythologies of "savage races" with those of the early Europeans.

The development of comparative philology in the 19th century, together with ethnological discoveries in the 20th century, established the science of myth. Since the Romantics, all study of myth has been comparative. Wilhelm Mannhardt, James Frazer, and Stith Thompson employed the comparative approach to collect and classify the themes of folklore and mythology.[72] In 1871 Edward Burnett Tylor published his Primitive Culture, in which he applied the comparative method and tried to explain the origin and evolution of religion.[73][74]: 9  Tylor's procedure of drawing together material culture, ritual and myth of widely separated cultures influenced both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Max Müller applied the new science of comparative mythology to the study of myth, in which he detected the distorted remains of Aryan nature worship. Bronisław Malinowski emphasized the ways myth fulfills common social functions. Claude Lévi-Strauss and other structuralists have compared the formal relations and patterns in myths throughout the world.[72]

Sigmund Freud introduced a transhistorical and biological conception of man and a view of myth as an expression of repressed ideas. Dream interpretation is the basis of Freudian myth interpretation and Freud's concept of dreamwork recognizes the importance of contextual relationships for the interpretation of any individual element in a dream. This suggestion would find an important point of rapprochement between the structuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to myth in Freud's thought.[75] Carl Jung extended the transhistorical, psychological approach with his theory of the "collective unconscious" and the archetypes (inherited "archaic" patterns), often encoded in myth, that arise out of it.[3] According to Jung, "myth-forming structural elements must be present in the unconscious psyche."[76] Comparing Jung's methodology with Joseph Campbell's theory, Robert A. Segal (1990) concludes that "to interpret a myth Campbell simply identifies the archetypes in it. An interpretation of the Odyssey, for example, would show how Odysseus's life conforms to a heroic pattern. Jung, by contrast, considers the identification of archetypes merely the first step in the interpretation of a myth."[77] Karl Kerényi, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology, gave up his early views of myth, in order to apply Jung's theories of archetypes to Greek myth.[5]: 38 

Origin theories

See also: Mycenaean religion; Mycenaean deities; and Similarities between Roman, Greek and Etruscan mythologies

Max Müller attempted to understand an Indo-European religious form by tracing it back to its Indo-European (or, in Müller's time, "Aryan") "original" manifestation. In 1891, he claimed that "the most important discovery which has been made during the nineteenth century concerning the ancient history of mankind ... was this sample equation: Sanskrit Dyaus-pitar = Greek Zeus = Latin Jupiter = Old Norse Tyr".[74]: 12  The question of Greek mythology's place in Indo-European studies has generated much scholarship since Müller's time. For example, philologist Georges Dumézil draws a comparison between the Greek Uranus and the Sanskrit Varuna, although there is no hint that he believes them to be originally connected.[78] In other cases, close parallels in character and function suggest a common heritage, yet lack of linguistic evidence makes it difficult to prove, as in the case of the Greek Moirai and the Norns of Norse mythology.[79]

It appears that the Mycenaean religion was the mother of the Greek religion[80] and its pantheon already included many divinities that can be found in classical Greece.[81] However, Greek mythology is generally seen as having heavy influence of Pre-Greek and Near Eastern cultures, and as such contains few important elements for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European religion.[82] Consequently, Greek mythology received minimal scholarly attention in the context of Indo-European comparative mythology until the mid 2000s.[83]

Archaeology and mythography have revealed influence from Asia Minor and the Near East. Adonis seems to be the Greek counterpart—more clearly in cult than in myth—of a Near Eastern "dying god". Cybele is rooted in Anatolian culture while much of Aphrodite's iconography may spring from Semitic goddesses. There are also possible parallels between the earliest divine generations (Chaos and its children) and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish.[84][85] According to Meyer Reinhold, "near Eastern theogonic concepts, involving divine succession through violence and generational conflicts for power, found their way…into Greek mythology."[86]

In addition to Indo-European and Near Eastern origins, some scholars have speculated on the debts of Greek mythology to the indigenous pre-Greek societies: Crete, Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and Orchomenus.[20]: 23  Historians of religion were fascinated by a number of apparently ancient configurations of myth connected with Crete (the god as bull, Zeus and Europa, Pasiphaë who yields to the bull and gives birth to the Minotaur, etc.). Martin P. Nilsson asserts, based on the representations and general function of the gods, that a lot of Minoan gods and religious conceptions were fused in the Mycenaean religion.[87] and concluded that all great classical Greek myths were tied to Mycenaean centres and anchored in prehistoric times.[88] Nevertheless, according to Burkert, the iconography of the Cretan Palace Period has provided almost no confirmation for these theories.[20]: 24 

Motifs in Western art and literature

Further information: Greek mythology in western art and literature
See also: List of films based on Greco-Roman mythology and Greek mythology in popular culture
 
Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485–1486, oil on canvas, Uffizi, Florence)—a revived Venus Pudica for a new view of pagan Antiquity—is often said to epitomize for modern viewers the spirit of the Renaissance.[3]

The widespread adoption of Christianity did not curb the popularity of the myths. With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets, dramatists, musicians and artists.[3][89] From the early years of Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, portrayed the Pagan subjects of Greek mythology alongside more conventional Christian themes.[3][89] Through the medium of Latin and the works of Ovid, Greek myth influenced medieval and Renaissance poets such as Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante in Italy.[3]

In Northern Europe, Greek mythology never took the same hold of the visual arts, but its effect was very obvious on literature.[90] The English imagination was fired by Greek mythology starting with Chaucer and John Milton and continuing through Shakespeare to Robert Bridges in the 20th century. Racine in France and Goethe in Germany revived Greek drama, reworking the ancient myths.[3][89] Although during the Enlightenment of the 18th century reaction against Greek myth spread throughout Europe, the myths continued to provide an important source of raw material for dramatists, including those who wrote the libretti for many of Handel's and Mozart's operas.[91]

By the end of the 18th century, Romanticism initiated a surge of enthusiasm for all things Greek, including Greek mythology. In Britain, new translations of Greek tragedies and Homer inspired contemporary poets (such as Alfred Tennyson, Keats, Byron and Shelley) and painters (such as Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema).[92] Christoph Gluck, Richard Strauss, Jacques Offenbach and many others set Greek mythological themes to music.[3] American authors of the 19th century, such as Thomas Bulfinch and Nathaniel Hawthorne, held that the study of the classical myths was essential to the understanding of English and American literature.[9]: 4  In more recent times, classical themes have been reinterpreted by dramatists Jean Anouilh, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Giraudoux in France, Eugene O'Neill in America, and T. S. Eliot in Britain and by novelists such as James Joyce and André Gide.[3]

References

Notes

  1. ^ Cuthbertson (1975) selects a wider range of epic, from Gilgamesh to Voltaire's Henriade, but his central theme—that myths encode mechanisms of cultural dynamics structure community by the creation of moral consensus—is a familiar mainstream view that applies to Greek myth.

Citations

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  87. ^ Martin P. Nilsson (1927) The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion
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  90. ^ Miles, Geoffrey, ed. (2006). Classical Mythology in English literature: A Critical Anthology. Routledge. ISBN 0415147557. OCLC 912455670.
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  92. ^ l. Burn, Greek Myths, 75–76

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Further reading

External links

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March 20, 2023
greek, mythology, major, branch, classical, mythology, body, myths, originally, told, ancient, greeks, genre, ancient, greek, folklore, these, stories, concern, origin, nature, world, lives, activities, deities, heroes, mythological, creatures, origins, signif. A major branch of classical mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks and a genre of ancient Greek folklore These stories concern the origin and nature of the world the lives and activities of deities heroes and mythological creatures and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks own cult and ritual practices Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and to better understand the nature of myth making itself 1 Scenes from Greek mythology depicted in ancient art Left to right top to bottom the birth of Aphrodite a revel with Dionysus and Silenus Adonis playing the kithara for Aphrodite Heracles slaying the Lernaean Hydra the Colchian dragon regurgitating Jason in the presence of Athena Hermes with his mother Maia the Trojan Horse and Odysseus s ship sailing past the island of the sirens The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC 2 eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey Two poems by Homer s near contemporary Hesiod the Theogony and the Works and Days contain accounts of the genesis of the world the succession of divine rulers the succession of human ages the origin of human woes and the origin of sacrificial practices Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle in lyric poems in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature pictorial representations of gods heroes and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings and the decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Epic Cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles In the succeeding Archaic Classical and Hellenistic periods Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear supplementing the existing literary evidence 3 Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture arts and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes 4 43 Achilles and Penthesileia by Exekias c 540 BC British Museum London Contents 1 Sources 1 1 Literary sources 1 2 Archaeological sources 2 Survey of mythic history 2 1 Origins of the world and the gods 2 1 1 Greek pantheon 2 2 Age of gods and mortals 2 3 Heroic age 2 3 1 Heracles and the Heracleidae 2 3 2 Argonauts 2 3 3 House of Atreus and Theban Cycle 2 3 4 Trojan War and aftermath 3 Greek and Roman conceptions of myth 3 1 Philosophy and myth 3 2 Hellenistic and Roman rationalism 3 3 Syncretizing trends 4 Modern interpretations 4 1 Comparative and psychoanalytic approaches 4 2 Origin theories 5 Motifs in Western art and literature 6 References 6 1 Notes 6 2 Citations 6 3 Primary sources Greek and Roman 6 4 Secondary sources 7 Further reading 8 External linksSourcesGreek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c 900 BC to c 800 BC onward 5 200 In fact literary and archaeological sources integrate sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict however in many cases the existence of this corpus of data is a strong indication that many elements of Greek mythology have strong factual and historical roots 6 Literary sources Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature Nevertheless the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo Apollodorus This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends 7 1 Apollodorus of Athens lived from c 180 BC to c 125 BC and wrote on many of these topics His writings may have formed the basis for the collection however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death hence the name Pseudo Apollodorus Prometheus 1868 by Gustave Moreau The myth of Prometheus first was attested by Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays possibly by Aeschylus consisting of Prometheus Bound Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Pyrphoros Among the earliest literary sources are Homer s two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey Other poets completed the Epic Cycle but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely Despite their traditional name the Homeric Hymns have no direct connection with Homer The oldest are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so called Lyric age 8 7 Hesiod a possible contemporary with Homer offers in his Theogony Origin of the Gods the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths dealing with the creation of the world the origin of the gods Titans and Giants as well as elaborate genealogies folktales and aetiological myths Hesiod s Works and Days a didactic poem about farming life also includes the myths of Prometheus Pandora and the Five Ages The poet advises on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world rendered yet more dangerous by its gods 3 Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive Greek lyric poets including Pindar Bacchylides and Simonides and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion relate individual mythological incidents 9 xii Additionally myth was central to classical Athenian drama The tragic playwrights Aeschylus Sophocles and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War Many of the great tragic stories e g Agamemnon and his children Oedipus Jason Medea etc took on their classic form in these tragedies The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths in The Birds and The Frogs 8 8 Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus and geographers Pausanias and Strabo who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard supplied numerous local myths and legends often giving little known alternative versions 9 xii Herodotus in particular searched the various traditions he encountered and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East 10 60 11 22 Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural concepts The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise Nevertheless it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost This category includes the works of The Roman poets Ovid Statius Valerius Flaccus Seneca and Virgil with Servius s commentary The Greek poets of the Late Antique period Nonnus Antoninus Liberalis and Quintus Smyrnaeus The Greek poets of the Hellenistic period Apollonius of Rhodes Callimachus Pseudo Eratosthenes and Parthenius Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleius Petronius Lollianus and Heliodorus Two other important non poetical sources are the Fabulae and Astronomica of the Roman writer styled as Pseudo Hyginus the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger and the Descriptions of Callistratus Finally several Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth much derived from earlier now lost Greek works These preservers of myth include Arnobius Hesychius the author of the Suda John Tzetzes and Eustathius They often treat mythology from a Christian moralizing perspective 12 Archaeological sources The Roman poet Virgil here depicted in the fifth century manuscript the Vergilius Romanus preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the nineteenth century and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century helped to explain many existing questions about Homer s epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological details about gods and heroes Unfortunately the evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental as the Linear B script an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece was used mainly to record inventories although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified 3 Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles 13 These visual representations of myths are important for two reasons Firstly many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources of the twelve labors of Heracles for example only the Cerberus adventure occurs in a contemporary literary text 14 Secondly visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not attested in any extant literary source In some cases the first known representation of a myth in geometric art predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry by several centuries 5 In the Archaic c 750 c 500 BC Classical c 480 323 BC and Hellenistic 323 146 BC periods Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear supplementing the existing literary evidence 3 Survey of mythic history Phaedra with an attendant probably her nurse a fresco from Pompeii c 60 c 20 BC Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture of which mythology both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions is an index of the changes In Greek mythology s surviving literary forms as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes it is inherently political as Gilbert Cuthbertson 1975 has argued i 15 The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who using animism assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature Eventually these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods 16 17 When tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula invaded they brought with them a new pantheon of gods based on conquest force prowess in battle and violent heroism Other older gods of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders or else faded into insignificance 16 18 After the middle of the Archaic period myths about relationships between male gods and male heroes became more and more frequent indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty paidikὸs ἔrws eros paidikos thought to have been introduced around 630 BC By the end of the fifth century BC poets had assigned at least one eromenos an adolescent boy who was their sexual companion to every important god except Ares and many legendary figures 17 Previously existing myths such as those of Achilles and Patroclus also then were cast in a pederastic light 18 54 Alexandrian poets at first then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire often re adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion The achievement of epic poetry was to create story cycles and as a result to develop a new sense of mythological chronology Thus Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans 19 11 While self contradictions in these stories make an absolute timeline impossible an approximate chronology may be discerned The resulting mythological history of the world may be divided into three or four broader periods The myths of origin or age of gods Theogonies births of gods myths about the origins of the world the gods and the human race The age when gods and mortals mingled freely stories of the early interactions between gods demigods and mortals The age of heroes heroic age where divine activity was more limited The last and greatest of the heroic legends is the story of the Trojan War and after which is regarded by some researchers as a separate fourth period 8 35 While the age of gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth the Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for the age of heroes establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the questions of how the world came into being were explained For example the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed the divine focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity Under the influence of Homer the hero cult leads to a restructuring in spiritual life expressed in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead heroes of the Chthonic from the Olympian 20 205 In the Works and Days Hesiod makes use of a scheme of Four Ages of Man or Races Golden Silver Bronze and Iron These races or ages are separate creations of the gods the Golden Age belonging to the reign of Cronos the subsequent races to the creation of Zeus The presence of evil was explained by the myth of Pandora when all of the best of human capabilities save hope had been spilled out of her overturned jar 21 In Metamorphoses Ovid follows Hesiod s concept of the four ages 22 Origins of the world and the gods Further information Greek primordial gods and Family tree of the Greek gods Amor Vincit Omnia Love Conquers All a depiction of the god of love Eros By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio circa 1601 1602 Myths of origin or creation myths represent an attempt to explain the beginnings of the universe in human language 9 10 The most widely accepted version at the time although a philosophical account of the beginning of things is reported by Hesiod in his Theogony He begins with Chaos a yawning nothingness Out of the void emerged Gaia the Earth and some other primary divine beings Eros Love the Abyss the Tartarus and the Erebus 23 Without male assistance Gaia gave birth to Uranus the Sky who then fertilized her From that union were born first the Titans six males Coeus Crius Cronus Hyperion Iapetus and Oceanus and six females Mnemosyne Phoebe Rhea Theia Themis and Tethys After Cronus was born Gaia and Uranus decreed no more Titans were to be born They were followed by the one eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires or Hundred Handed Ones who were both thrown into Tartarus by Uranus This made Gaia furious Cronus the wily youngest and most terrible of Gaia s children 23 was convinced by Gaia to castrate his father He did this and became the ruler of the Titans with his sister wife Rhea as his consort and the other Titans became his court A motif of father against son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son Zeus Because Cronus had betrayed his father he feared that his offspring would do the same and so each time Rhea gave birth he snatched up the child and ate it Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby s blanket which Cronus ate When Zeus was full grown he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit throwing up Rhea s other children including Poseidon Hades Hestia Demeter and Hera and the stone which had been sitting in Cronus s stomach all this time Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods At last with the help of the Cyclopes whom Zeus freed from Tartarus Zeus and his siblings were victorious while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus 24 Attic black figured amphora depicting Athena being reborn from the head of Zeus who had swallowed her mother Metis on the right Eileithyia the goddess of childbirth assists circa 550 525 BC Musee du Louvre Paris Zeus was plagued by the same concern and after a prophecy that the offspring of his first wife Metis would give birth to a god greater than he Zeus swallowed her 25 98 She was already pregnant with Athena however and she burst forth from his head fully grown and dressed for war 25 108 The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogonies to be the prototypical poetic genre the prototypical mythos and imputed almost magical powers to it Orpheus the archetypal poet also was the archetypal singer of theogonies which he uses to calm seas and storms in Apollonius Argonautica and to move the stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes the first thing he does is sing about the birth of the gods 26 Hesiod s Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet s function with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses Theogony also was the subject of many lost poems including those attributed to Orpheus Musaeus Epimenides Abaris and other legendary seers which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery rites There are indications that Plato was familiar with some version of the Orphic theogony 27 147 A silence would have been expected about religious rites and beliefs however and that nature of the culture would not have been reported by members of the society while the beliefs were held After they ceased to become religious beliefs few would have known the rites and rituals Allusions often existed however to aspects that were quite public Images existed on pottery and religious artwork that were interpreted and more likely misinterpreted in many diverse myths and tales A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently unearthed papyrus scraps One of these scraps the Derveni Papyrus now proves that at least in the fifth century BC a theogonic cosmogonic poem of Orpheus was in existence 20 236 27 147 The first philosophical cosmologists reacted against or sometimes built upon popular mythical conceptions that had existed in the Greek world for some time Some of these popular conceptions can be gleaned from the poetry of Homer and Hesiod In Homer the Earth was viewed as a flat disk afloat on the river of Oceanus and overlooked by a hemispherical sky with sun moon and stars The Sun Helios traversed the heavens as a charioteer and sailed around the Earth in a golden bowl at night Sun earth heaven rivers and winds could be addressed in prayers and called to witness oaths Natural fissures were popularly regarded as entrances to the subterranean house of Hades and his predecessors home of the dead 28 45 Influences from other cultures always afforded new themes Greek pantheon Further information Ancient Greek religion Twelve Olympians Family Tree of the Greek Gods and List of Mycenaean gods Zeus disguised as a swan seduces Leda the Queen of Sparta A sixteenth century copy of the lost original by Michelangelo According to Classical era mythology after the overthrow of the Titans the new pantheon of gods and goddesses was confirmed Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians residing on Mount Olympus under the eye of Zeus The limitation of their number to twelve seems to have been a comparatively modern idea 29 8 Besides the Olympians the Greeks worshipped various gods of the countryside the satyr god Pan Nymphs spirits of rivers Naiads who dwelled in springs Dryads who were spirits of the trees Nereids who inhabited the sea river gods Satyrs and others In addition there were the dark powers of the underworld such as the Erinyes or Furies said to pursue those guilty of crimes against blood relatives 30 In order to honor the Ancient Greek pantheon poets composed the Homeric Hymns a group of thirty three songs 31 Gregory Nagy 1992 regards the larger Homeric Hymns as simple preludes compared with Theogony each of which invokes one god 32 54 The gods of Greek mythology are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies According to Walter Burkert the defining characteristic of Greek anthropomorphism is that the Greek gods are persons not abstractions ideas or concepts 20 182 Regardless of their underlying forms the Ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities most significantly the gods are not affected by disease and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances The Greeks considered immortality as the distinctive characteristic of their gods this immortality as well as unfading youth was insured by the constant use of nectar and ambrosia by which the divine blood was renewed in their veins 29 4 Each god descends from his or her own genealogy pursues differing interests has a certain area of expertise and is governed by a unique personality however these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants which do not always agree with one another When these gods are called upon in poetry prayer or cult they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves e g Apollo Musagetes is Apollo as leader of the Muses Alternatively the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life For example Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty Ares was the god of war Hades the ruler of the underworld and Athena the goddess of wisdom and courage 29 20ff Some gods such as Apollo and Dionysus revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions while others such as Hestia literally hearth and Helios literally sun were little more than personifications The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to a limited number of gods who were the focus of large pan Hellenic cults It was however common for individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to minor gods Many cities also honored the more well known gods with unusual local rites and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere During the heroic age the cult of heroes or demigods supplemented that of the gods Age of gods and mortals Bridging the age when gods lived alone and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited was a transitional age in which gods and mortals moved together These were the early days of the world when the groups mingled more freely than they did later Most of these tales were later told by Ovid s Metamorphoses and they are often divided into two thematic groups tales of love and tales of punishment 8 38 Dionysus with satyrs Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter Cabinet des Medailles Tales of love often involve incest or the seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god resulting in heroic offspring The stories generally suggest that relationships between gods and mortals are something to avoid even consenting relationships rarely have happy endings 8 39 In a few cases a female divinity mates with a mortal man as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite where the goddess lies with Anchises to produce Aeneas 33 The second type tales of punishment involves the appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods when Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus table and gives it to his subjects revealing to them the secrets of the gods when Prometheus or Lycaon invents sacrifice when Demeter teaches agriculture and the Mysteries to Triptolemus or when Marsyas invents the aulos and enters into a musical contest with Apollo Ian Morris considers Prometheus adventures as a place between the history of the gods and that of man 34 291 An anonymous papyrus fragment dated to the third century vividly portrays Dionysus punishment of the king of Thrace Lycurgus whose recognition of the new god came too late resulting in horrific penalties that extended into the afterlife 35 50 The story of the arrival of Dionysus to establish his cult in Thrace was also the subject of an Aeschylean trilogy 36 28 In another tragedy Euripides The Bacchae the king of Thebes Pentheus is punished by Dionysus because he disrespected the god and spied on his Maenads the female worshippers of the god 37 195 Demeter and Metanira in a detail on an Apulian red figure hydria circa 340 BC Altes Museum Berlin In another story based on an old folktale motif 38 and echoing a similar theme Demeter was searching for her daughter Persephone having taken the form of an old woman called Doso and received a hospitable welcome from Celeus the King of Eleusis in Attica As a gift to Celeus because of his hospitality Demeter planned to make his son Demophon a god but she was unable to complete the ritual because his mother Metanira walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright which angered Demeter who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand the concept and ritual 39 Heroic age The age in which the heroes lived is known as the Heroic age 40 The epic and genealogical poetry created cycles of stories clustered around particular heroes or events and established the family relationships between the heroes of different stories they thus arranged the stories in sequence According to Ken Dowden 1992 there is even a saga effect We can follow the fates of some families in successive generations 19 11 After the rise of the hero cult gods and heroes constitute the sacral sphere and are invoked together in oaths and prayers which are addressed to them 20 205 Burkert 2002 notes that the roster of heroes again in contrast to the gods is never given fixed and final form Great gods are no longer born but new heroes can always be raised up from the army of the dead Another important difference between the hero cult and the cult of gods is that the hero becomes the centre of local group identity 20 206 The monumental events of Heracles are regarded as the dawn of the age of heroes To the Heroic Age are also ascribed three great events the Argonautic expedition the Theban Cycle and the Trojan War 40 41 340 Heracles and the Heracleidae Further information Heracles Heracleidae and Hercules Heracles with his baby Telephus Louvre Museum Paris Some scholars believe 41 10 that behind Heracles complicated mythology there was probably a real man perhaps a chieftain vassal of the kingdom of Argos Some scholars suggest the story of Heracles is an allegory for the sun s yearly passage through the twelve constellations of the zodiac 42 Others point to earlier myths from other cultures showing the story of Heracles as a local adaptation of hero myths already well established Traditionally Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alcmene granddaughter of Perseus 43 His fantastic solitary exploits with their many folk tale themes provided much material for popular legend According to Burkert 2002 He is portrayed as a sacrificer mentioned as a founder of altars and imagined as a voracious eater himself it is in this role that he appears in comedy 20 While his tragic end provided much material for tragedy Heracles is regarded by Thalia Papadopoulou as a play of great significance in examination of other Euripidean dramas 44 20 211 In art and literature Heracles was represented as an enormously strong man of moderate height his characteristic weapon was the bow but frequently also the club Vase paintings demonstrate the unparalleled popularity of Heracles his fight with the lion being depicted many hundreds of times 20 211 Heracles also entered Etruscan and Roman mythology and cult and the exclamation mehercule became as familiar to the Romans clarification needed as Herakleis was to the Greeks 20 211 In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traders although others also prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger 43 Heracles attained the highest social prestige through his appointment as official ancestor of the Dorian kings This probably served as a legitimation for the Dorian migrations into the Peloponnese Hyllus the eponymous hero of one Dorian phyle became the son of Heracles and one of the Heracleidae or Heraclids the numerous descendants of Heracles especially the descendants of Hyllus other Heracleidae included Macaria Lamos Manto Bianor Tlepolemus and Telephus These Heraclids conquered the Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae Sparta and Argos claiming according to legend a right to rule them through their ancestor Their rise to dominance is frequently called the Dorian invasion The Lydian and later the Macedonian kings as rulers of the same rank also became Heracleidae 45 20 211 Bellerophon riding Pegasus and slaying the Chimera central medallion of a Roman mosaic from Autun Musee Rolin 2nd to 3rd century AD Other members of this earliest generation of heroes such as Perseus Deucalion Theseus and Bellerophon have many traits in common with Heracles Like him their exploits are solitary fantastic and border on fairy tale as they slay monsters such as the Chimera and Medusa Bellerophon s adventures are commonplace types similar to the adventures of Heracles and Theseus Sending a hero to his presumed death is also a recurrent theme of this early heroic tradition used in the cases of Perseus and Bellerophon 46 Argonauts Further information Argonauts The only surviving Hellenistic epic the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes epic poet scholar and director of the Library of Alexandria tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis In the Argonautica Jason is impelled on his quest by king Pelias who receives a prophecy that a man with one sandal would be his nemesis Jason loses a sandal in a river arrives at the court of Pelias and the epic is set in motion Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes as well as Heracles went with Jason in the ship Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece This generation also included Theseus who went to Crete to slay the Minotaur Atalanta the female heroine and Meleager who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey Pindar Apollonius and the Bibliotheca endeavor to give full lists of the Argonauts 47 48 49 Although Apollonius wrote his poem in the 3rd century BC the composition of the story of the Argonauts is earlier than Odyssey which shows familiarity with the exploits of Jason the wandering of Odysseus may have been partly founded on it 50 51 In ancient times the expedition was regarded as a historical fact an incident in the opening up of the Black Sea to Greek commerce and colonization 50 It was also extremely popular forming a cycle to which a number of local legends became attached The story of Medea in particular caught the imagination of the tragic poets 51 House of Atreus and Theban Cycle Further information Theban Cycle and Seven against Thebes In between the Argo and the Trojan War there was a generation known chiefly for its horrific crimes This includes the doings of Atreus and Thyestes at Argos Behind the myth of the house of Atreus one of the two principal heroic dynasties with the house of Labdacus lies the problem of the devolution of power and of the mode of accession to sovereignty The twins Atreus and Thyestes with their descendants played the leading role in the tragedy of the devolution of power in Mycenae 52 The Theban Cycle deals with events associated especially with Cadmus the city s founder and later with the doings of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes a series of stories that lead to the war of the Seven against Thebes and the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Epigoni 7 317 It is not known whether the Seven figured in early epic As far as Oedipus is concerned early epic accounts seem to have him continuing to rule at Thebes after the revelation that Iokaste was his mother and subsequently marrying a second wife who becomes the mother of his children markedly different from the tale known to us through tragedy e g Sophocles Oedipus Rex and later mythological accounts 7 311 Trojan War and aftermath Further information Trojan War and Epic Cycle El Juicio de Paris by Enrique Simonet 1904 Paris is holding the golden apple on his right hand while surveying the goddesses in a calculative manner In The Rage of Achilles by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 1757 Fresco 300 x 300 cm Villa Valmarana Vicenza Achilles is outraged that Agamemnon would threaten to seize his warprize Briseis and he draws his sword to kill Agamemnon The sudden appearance of the goddess Athena who in this fresco has grabbed Achilles by the hair prevents the act of violence Greek mythology culminates in the Trojan War fought between Greece and Troy and its aftermath In Homer s works such as the Iliad the chief stories have already taken shape and substance and individual themes were elaborated later especially in Greek drama The Trojan War also elicited great interest in the Roman culture because of the story of Aeneas a Trojan hero whose journey from Troy led to the founding of the city that would one day become Rome as recounted in Virgil s Aeneid Book II of Virgil s Aeneid contains the best known account of the sack of Troy 53 54 Finally there are two pseudo chronicles written in Latin that passed under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius 55 The Trojan War cycle a collection of epic poems starts with the events leading up to the war Eris and the golden apple of Kallisti the Judgement of Paris the abduction of Helen the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis To recover Helen the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus s brother Agamemnon king of Argos or Mycenae but the Trojans refused to return Helen The Iliad which is set in the tenth year of the war tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles who was the finest Greek warrior and the consequent deaths in battle of Achilles beloved comrade Patroclus and Priam s eldest son Hector After Hector s death the Trojans were joined by two exotic allies Penthesilea queen of the Amazons and Memnon king of the Ethiopians and son of the dawn goddess Eos 54 Achilles killed both of these but Paris then managed to kill Achilles with an arrow in the heel Achilles heel was the only part of his body which was not invulnerable to damage by human weaponry Before they could take Troy the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image of Pallas Athena the Palladium Finally with Athena s help they built the Trojan Horse Despite the warnings of Priam s daughter Cassandra the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon a Greek who feigned desertion to take the horse inside the walls of Troy as an offering to Athena the priest Laocoon who tried to have the horse destroyed was killed by sea serpents At night the Greek fleet returned and the Greeks from the horse opened the gates of Troy In the total sack that followed Priam and his remaining sons were slaughtered the Trojan women passed into slavery in various cities of Greece The adventurous homeward voyages of the Greek leaders including the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas the Aeneid and the murder of Agamemnon were told in two epics the Returns the lost Nostoi and Homer s Odyssey 53 The Trojan cycle also includes the adventures of the children of the Trojan generation e g Orestes and Telemachus 54 The Trojan War provided a variety of themes and became a main source of inspiration for Ancient Greek artists e g metopes on the Parthenon depicting the sack of Troy this artistic preference for themes deriving from the Trojan Cycle indicates its importance to the Ancient Greek civilization 53 The same mythological cycle also inspired a series of posterior European literary writings For instance Trojan Medieval European writers unacquainted with Homer at first hand found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and romantic storytelling and a convenient framework into which to fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals Twelfth century authors such as Benoit de Sainte Maure Roman de Troie Romance of Troy 1154 60 and Joseph of Exeter De Bello Troiano On the Trojan War 1183 describe the war while rewriting the standard version they found in Dictys and Dares They thus follow Horace s advice and Virgil s example they rewrite a poem of Troy instead of telling something completely new 56 Some of the more famous heroes noted for their inclusion in the Trojan War were On the Trojan side Aeneas Hector ParisOn the Greek side Ajax there were two Ajaxes Achilles King Agamemnon Menelaus OdysseusGreek and Roman conceptions of mythMythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece 16 15 Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history They used myth to explain natural phenomena cultural variations traditional enmities and friendships It was a source of pride to be able to trace the descent of one s leaders from a mythological hero or a god Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey According to Victor Davis Hanson a military historian columnist political essayist and former classics professor and John Heath a classics professor the profound knowledge of the Homeric epos was deemed by the Greeks the basis of their acculturation Homer was the education of Greece Ἑllados paideysis and his poetry the Book 57 Philosophy and myth Plato in Raphael s The School of Athens After the rise of philosophy history prose and rationalism in the late 5th century BC the fate of myth became uncertain and mythological genealogies gave place to a conception of history which tried to exclude the supernatural such as the Thucydidean history 58 While poets and dramatists were reworking the myths Greek historians and philosophers were beginning to criticize them 8 By the sixth century BC a few radical philosophers were already beginning to label the poets tales as blasphemous lies Xenophanes of Colophon complained that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all that is shameful and disgraceful among men they steal commit adultery and deceive one another 5 169 70 This line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato s Republic and Laws Plato created his own allegorical myths such as the vision of Er in the Republic attacked the traditional tales of the gods tricks thefts and adulteries as immoral and objected to their central role in literature 8 Plato s criticism was the first serious challenge to the Homeric mythological tradition 57 referring to the myths as old wives chatter 59 For his part Aristotle criticized the pre Socratic quasi mythical philosophical approach and underscored that Hesiod and the theological writers were concerned only with what seemed plausible to themselves and had no respect for us But it is not worth taking seriously writers who show off in the mythical style as for those who do proceed by proving their assertions we must cross examine them 58 Nevertheless even Plato did not manage to wean himself and his society from the influence of myth his own characterization for Socrates is based on the traditional Homeric and tragic patterns used by the philosopher to praise the righteous life of his teacher 60 But perhaps someone might say Are you then not ashamed Socrates of having followed such a pursuit that you are now in danger of being put to death as a result But I should make to him a just reply You do not speak well Sir if you think a man in whom there is even a little merit ought to consider danger of life or death and not rather regard this only when he does things whether the things he does are right or wrong and the acts of a good or a bad man For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at Troy including the son of Thetis who so despised danger in comparison with enduring any disgrace that when his mother and she was a goddess said to him as he was eager to slay Hector something like this I believe My son if you avenge the death of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector you yourself shall die for straightway after Hector is death appointed unto you Hom Il 18 96 he when he heard this made light of death and danger and feared much more to live as a coward and not to avenge his friends and said Straightway may I die after doing vengeance upon the wrongdoer that I may not stay here jeered at beside the curved ships a burden of the earth Hanson and Heath estimate that Plato s rejection of the Homeric tradition was not favorably received by the grassroots Greek civilization 57 The old myths were kept alive in local cults they continued to influence poetry and to form the main subject of painting and sculpture 58 More sportingly the 5th century BC tragedian Euripides often played with the old traditions mocking them and through the voice of his characters injecting notes of doubt Yet the subjects of his plays were taken without exception from myth Many of these plays were written in answer to a predecessor s version of the same or similar myth Euripides mainly impugns the myths about the gods and begins his critique with an objection similar to the one previously expressed by Xenocrates the gods as traditionally represented are far too crassly anthropomorphic 5 169 70 Hellenistic and Roman rationalism Cicero saw himself as the defender of the established order despite his personal skepticism concerning myth and his inclination towards more philosophical conceptions of divinity During the Hellenistic period mythology took on the prestige of elite knowledge that marks its possessors as belonging to a certain class At the same time the skeptical turn of the Classical age became even more pronounced 61 89 Greek mythographer Euhemerus established the tradition of seeking an actual historical basis for mythical beings and events 62 Although his original work Sacred Scriptures is lost much is known about it from what is recorded by Diodorus and Lactantius 7 7 Rationalizing hermeneutics of myth became even more popular under the Roman Empire thanks to the physicalist theories of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy Stoics presented explanations of the gods and heroes as physical phenomena while the Euhemerists rationalized them as historical figures At the same time the Stoics and the Neoplatonists promoted the moral significations of the mythological tradition often based on Greek etymologies 63 Through his Epicurean message Lucretius had sought to expel superstitious fears from the minds of his fellow citizens 64 xxvi Livy too is skeptical about the mythological tradition and claims that he does not intend to pass judgement on such legends fabulae 61 88 The challenge for Romans with a strong and apologetic sense of religious tradition was to defend that tradition while conceding that it was often a breeding ground for superstition The antiquarian Varro who regarded religion as a human institution with great importance for the preservation of good in society devoted rigorous study to the origins of religious cults In his Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum which has not survived but Augustine s City of God indicates its general approach Varro argues that whereas the superstitious man fears the gods the truly religious person venerates them as parents 64 xxvi According to Varro there have been three accounts of deities in the Roman society the mythical account created by poets for theatre and entertainment the civil account used by people for veneration as well as by the city and the natural account created by the philosophers 65 The best state is adds Varro where the civil theology combines the poetic mythical account with the philosopher s 65 Roman Academic Cotta ridicules both literal and allegorical acceptance of myth declaring roundly that myths have no place in philosophy 61 87 Cicero is also generally disdainful of myth but like Varro he is emphatic in his support for the state religion and its institutions It is difficult to know how far down the social scale this rationalism extended 61 88 Cicero asserts that no one not even old women and boys is so foolish as to believe in the terrors of Hades or the existence of Scyllas centaurs or other composite creatures 66 but on the other hand the orator elsewhere complains of the superstitious and credulous character of the people 67 De Natura Deorum is the most comprehensive summary of Cicero s line of thought 64 xxvii Syncretizing trends See also Roman mythology Apollo early Imperial Roman copy of a fourth century Greek original Louvre Museum In Ancient Roman times a new Roman mythology was born through syncretization of numerous Greek and other foreign gods This occurred because the Romans had little mythology of their own and inheritance of the Greek mythological tradition caused the major Roman gods to adopt characteristics of their Greek equivalents 61 88 The gods Zeus and Jupiter are an example of this mythological overlap In addition to the combination of the two mythological traditions the association of the Romans with eastern religions led to further syncretizations 68 For instance the cult of Sun was introduced in Rome after Aurelian s successful campaigns in Syria The Asiatic divinities Mithras that is to say the Sun and Ba al were combined with Apollo and Helios into one Sol Invictus with conglomerated rites and compound attributes 69 Apollo might be increasingly identified in religion with Helios or even Dionysus but texts retelling his myths seldom reflected such developments The traditional literary mythology was increasingly dissociated from actual religious practice The worship of Sol as special protector of the emperors and the empire remained the chief imperial religion until it was replaced by Christianity The surviving 2nd century collection of Orphic Hymns second century AD and the Saturnalia of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius fifth century are influenced by the theories of rationalism and the syncretizing trends as well The Orphic Hymns are a set of pre classical poetic compositions attributed to Orpheus himself the subject of a renowned myth In reality these poems were probably composed by several different poets and contain a rich set of clues about prehistoric European mythology 70 The stated purpose of the Saturnalia is to transmit the Hellenic culture Macrobius has derived from his reading even though much of his treatment of gods is colored by Egyptian and North African mythology and theology which also affect the interpretation of Virgil In Saturnalia reappear mythographical comments influenced by the Euhemerists the Stoics and the Neoplatonists 63 Modern interpretationsFurther information Modern understanding of Greek mythology The genesis of modern understanding of Greek mythology is regarded by some scholars as a double reaction at the end of the eighteenth century against the traditional attitude of Christian animosity in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a lie or fable had been retained 71 In Germany by about 1795 there was a growing interest in Homer and Greek mythology In Gottingen Johann Matthias Gesner began to revive Greek studies while his successor Christian Gottlob Heyne worked with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and laid the foundations for mythological research both in Germany and elsewhere 5 9 Comparative and psychoanalytic approaches See also Comparative mythology Max Muller is regarded as one of the founders of comparative mythology In his Comparative Mythology 1867 Muller analysed the disturbing similarity between the mythologies of savage races with those of the early Europeans The development of comparative philology in the 19th century together with ethnological discoveries in the 20th century established the science of myth Since the Romantics all study of myth has been comparative Wilhelm Mannhardt James Frazer and Stith Thompson employed the comparative approach to collect and classify the themes of folklore and mythology 72 In 1871 Edward Burnett Tylor published his Primitive Culture in which he applied the comparative method and tried to explain the origin and evolution of religion 73 74 9 Tylor s procedure of drawing together material culture ritual and myth of widely separated cultures influenced both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell Max Muller applied the new science of comparative mythology to the study of myth in which he detected the distorted remains of Aryan nature worship Bronislaw Malinowski emphasized the ways myth fulfills common social functions Claude Levi Strauss and other structuralists have compared the formal relations and patterns in myths throughout the world 72 Sigmund Freud introduced a transhistorical and biological conception of man and a view of myth as an expression of repressed ideas Dream interpretation is the basis of Freudian myth interpretation and Freud s concept of dreamwork recognizes the importance of contextual relationships for the interpretation of any individual element in a dream This suggestion would find an important point of rapprochement between the structuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to myth in Freud s thought 75 Carl Jung extended the transhistorical psychological approach with his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes inherited archaic patterns often encoded in myth that arise out of it 3 According to Jung myth forming structural elements must be present in the unconscious psyche 76 Comparing Jung s methodology with Joseph Campbell s theory Robert A Segal 1990 concludes that to interpret a myth Campbell simply identifies the archetypes in it An interpretation of the Odyssey for example would show how Odysseus s life conforms to a heroic pattern Jung by contrast considers the identification of archetypes merely the first step in the interpretation of a myth 77 Karl Kerenyi one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology gave up his early views of myth in order to apply Jung s theories of archetypes to Greek myth 5 38 Origin theories See also Mycenaean religion Mycenaean deities and Similarities between Roman Greek and Etruscan mythologies Max Muller attempted to understand an Indo European religious form by tracing it back to its Indo European or in Muller s time Aryan original manifestation In 1891 he claimed that the most important discovery which has been made during the nineteenth century concerning the ancient history of mankind was this sample equation Sanskrit Dyaus pitar Greek Zeus Latin Jupiter Old Norse Tyr 74 12 The question of Greek mythology s place in Indo European studies has generated much scholarship since Muller s time For example philologist Georges Dumezil draws a comparison between the Greek Uranus and the Sanskrit Varuna although there is no hint that he believes them to be originally connected 78 In other cases close parallels in character and function suggest a common heritage yet lack of linguistic evidence makes it difficult to prove as in the case of the Greek Moirai and the Norns of Norse mythology 79 It appears that the Mycenaean religion was the mother of the Greek religion 80 and its pantheon already included many divinities that can be found in classical Greece 81 However Greek mythology is generally seen as having heavy influence of Pre Greek and Near Eastern cultures and as such contains few important elements for the reconstruction of the Proto Indo European religion 82 Consequently Greek mythology received minimal scholarly attention in the context of Indo European comparative mythology until the mid 2000s 83 Archaeology and mythography have revealed influence from Asia Minor and the Near East Adonis seems to be the Greek counterpart more clearly in cult than in myth of a Near Eastern dying god Cybele is rooted in Anatolian culture while much of Aphrodite s iconography may spring from Semitic goddesses There are also possible parallels between the earliest divine generations Chaos and its children and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish 84 85 According to Meyer Reinhold near Eastern theogonic concepts involving divine succession through violence and generational conflicts for power found their way into Greek mythology 86 In addition to Indo European and Near Eastern origins some scholars have speculated on the debts of Greek mythology to the indigenous pre Greek societies Crete Mycenae Pylos Thebes and Orchomenus 20 23 Historians of religion were fascinated by a number of apparently ancient configurations of myth connected with Crete the god as bull Zeus and Europa Pasiphae who yields to the bull and gives birth to the Minotaur etc Martin P Nilsson asserts based on the representations and general function of the gods that a lot of Minoan gods and religious conceptions were fused in the Mycenaean religion 87 and concluded that all great classical Greek myths were tied to Mycenaean centres and anchored in prehistoric times 88 Nevertheless according to Burkert the iconography of the Cretan Palace Period has provided almost no confirmation for these theories 20 24 Motifs in Western art and literatureFurther information Greek mythology in western art and literature See also List of films based on Greco Roman mythology and Greek mythology in popular culture Botticelli s The Birth of Venus c 1485 1486 oil on canvas Uffizi Florence a revived Venus Pudica for a new view of pagan Antiquity is often said to epitomize for modern viewers the spirit of the Renaissance 3 The widespread adoption of Christianity did not curb the popularity of the myths With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets dramatists musicians and artists 3 89 From the early years of Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo and Raphael portrayed the Pagan subjects of Greek mythology alongside more conventional Christian themes 3 89 Through the medium of Latin and the works of Ovid Greek myth influenced medieval and Renaissance poets such as Petrarch Boccaccio and Dante in Italy 3 The Lament for Icarus 1898 by Herbert James Draper In Northern Europe Greek mythology never took the same hold of the visual arts but its effect was very obvious on literature 90 The English imagination was fired by Greek mythology starting with Chaucer and John Milton and continuing through Shakespeare to Robert Bridges in the 20th century Racine in France and Goethe in Germany revived Greek drama reworking the ancient myths 3 89 Although during the Enlightenment of the 18th century reaction against Greek myth spread throughout Europe the myths continued to provide an important source of raw material for dramatists including those who wrote the libretti for many of Handel s and Mozart s operas 91 By the end of the 18th century Romanticism initiated a surge of enthusiasm for all things Greek including Greek mythology In Britain new translations of Greek tragedies and Homer inspired contemporary poets such as Alfred Tennyson Keats Byron and Shelley and painters such as Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma Tadema 92 Christoph Gluck Richard Strauss Jacques Offenbach and many others set Greek mythological themes to music 3 American authors of the 19th century such as Thomas Bulfinch and Nathaniel Hawthorne held that the study of the classical myths was essential to the understanding of English and American literature 9 4 In more recent times classical themes have been reinterpreted by dramatists Jean Anouilh Jean Cocteau and Jean Giraudoux in France Eugene O Neill in America and T S Eliot in Britain and by novelists such as James Joyce and Andre Gide 3 ReferencesNotes Cuthbertson 1975 selects a wider range of epic from Gilgamesh to Voltaire s Henriade but his central theme that myths encode mechanisms of cultural dynamics structure community by the creation of moral consensus is a familiar mainstream view that applies to Greek myth Citations Volume Hellas Article Greek Mythology Encyclopaedia The Helios 1952 Cartwirght Mark Greek Mythology World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 26 March 2018 a b c d e f g h i j k l Adkins A W H Pollard John R T 2002 1998 Greek Mythology Encyclopaedia Britannica Foley John Miles 1999 Homeric and South Slavic Epic Homer s Traditional Art Penn State Press ISBN 978 0 271 01870 6 a b c d e f Graf Fritz 2009 1993 Greek Mythology An Introduction translated by T Marier Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 9780801846571 Alms Anthony 2007 Theology Trauerspiel and the Conceptual Foundations of Early German Opera City University of New York a b c d Hard Robin 2003 Sources of Greek Myth The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology based on H J Rose s A Handbook of Greek mythology London Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 18636 0 a b c d e f g Miles Geoffrey 1999 The Myth kitty in Classical Mythology in English Literature A Critical Anthology Chicago University of Illinois Press ISBN 978 0 415 14754 5 a b c d Klatt Mary J and Antoinette Brazouski 1994 Preface in Children s Books on Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology An Annotated Bibliography Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 28973 6 Cartledge Paul A 2004 The Spartans translated in Greek Livanis ISBN 978 960 14 0843 9 Cartledge Paul A 2002 Inventing the Past History v Myth in The Greeks New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 280388 7 Pasiphae Archived 15 May 2018 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopedia Greek Gods Spirits Monsters Jane Henle Greek Myths A Vase Painter s Notebook Bloomington Indiana University Press 1973 ISBN 0 253 32636 2 Homer Iliad 8 An epic poem about the Battle of Troy 366 369 Cuthbertson Gilbert 1975 Political Myth and Epic Ann Arbor Michigan State University Press a b c Albala Ken G Claudia Durst Johnson and Vernon E Johnson 2000 Understanding the Odyssey Courier Dover Publications ISBN 978 0 486 41107 1 Calimach Andrew ed 2002 The Cultural Background Pp 12 109 in Lovers Legends The Gay Greek Myths New Rochelle NY Haiduk Press ISBN 978 0 9714686 0 3 Percy William A 1999 The Institutionalization of Pederasty in Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece London Routledge ISBN 978 0 252 06740 2 a b Dowden Ken 1992 Myth and Mythology in The Uses of Greek Mythology London Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 06135 3 a b c d e f g h i j k l Burkert Walter 2002 Prehistory and the Minoan Mycenaen Era in Greek Religion Archaic and Classical translated by J Raffan Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 631 15624 6 Hesiod Works and Days 90 105 Archived 12 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine Ovid Metamorphoses I 89 162 Archived 23 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine a b Hesiod Theogony 116 138 Hesiod Theogony 713 735 a b Guirand Felix 1987 1959 Greek Mythology In Guirand Felix ed New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology Translated by R Aldington and D Ames Hamlyn ISBN 978 0 600 02350 0 Homeric Hymn to Hermes 414 435 Archived 25 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine a b Betegh Gabor 2004 The Interpretation of the poet in The Derveni Papyrus Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 80108 9 Algra Keimpe 1999 The Beginnings of Cosmology in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 44667 9 a b c Stoll Heinrich Wilhelm 1852 Handbook of the Religion and Mythology of the Greeks translated by R B Paul Francis amp John Rivington Adkins A W H Pollard John R T 2 March 2020 2002 Greek Religion Encyclopaedia Britannica J Cashford The Homeric Hymns vii Nagy Gregory 1992 The Hellenization of the Indo European Poetics in Greek Mythology and Poetics Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 8048 5 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 75 109 Archived 12 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine Morris Ian 2000 Archaeology As Cultural History Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 631 19602 0 Weaver John B 1998 Introduction in The Plots of Epiphany Berlin Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 018266 8 Bushnell Rebecca W 2005 Helicocentric Stoicism in the Saturnalia The Egyptian Apollo in Medieval A Companion to Tragedy Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 1 4051 0735 8 Trobe Kala 2001 Dionysus in Invoke the Gods Llewellyn Worldwide ISBN 978 0 7387 0096 0 Nilsson Martin P 1940 The Religion of Eleusis in Greek Popular Religion Archived 1 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine New York Columbia University Press p 50 Archived 1 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine Homeric Hymn to Demeter 255 274 Archived 16 June 2022 at the Wayback Machine a b Kelsey Francis W 1889 A Handbook of Greek Mythology Allyn and Bacon p 30 a b Rose Herbert Jennings 1991 A Handbook of Greek Mythology London Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 04601 5 Dupuis C F The Origin of All Religious Worship p 86 a b Heracles Encyclopaedia Britannica 6 February 2020 1999 Papadopoulou Thalia 2005 Introduction in Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 85126 8 p 1 Herodotus The Histories I 6 7 Archived 16 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Kirk Geoffrey Stephen 1973 The Thematic Simplicity of the Myths in Myth Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures Archived 27 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine Berkeley University of 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960 352 545 5 p 37 a b c Griffin Jasper 1986 Greek Myth and Hesiod in The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World edited by J Boardman J Griffin and O Murray New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 285438 4 p 80 Plato Theaetetus 176b Archived 8 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine Plato Apology 28b d Archived 8 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine a b c d e Gale Monica R 1994 Myth and Poetry in Lucretius Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 45135 2 Euhemerus Encyclopaedia Britannica 3 January 2020 1998 a b Chance Jane 1994 Medieval Mythography University Press of Florida ISBN 978 0 8130 1256 8 p 69 a b c Walsh Patrick Gerald 1998 The Nature of the Gods New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 282511 7 a b Barfield Raymond 2011 The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 75 76 ISBN 978 1 139 49709 1 Cicero Tusculanae Disputationes 1 11 Archived 15 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Cicero De Divinatione 2 81 Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine North John A Mary Beard and Simon R F Price 1998 The Religions of Imperial Rome in Classical Mythology in English Literature A Critical Anthology Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 31682 8 p 259 Hacklin Joseph 1994 The Mythology of Persia in Asiatic Mythology Asian Educational Services ISBN 978 81 206 0920 4 p 38 Sacred Texts Orphic Hymns Archived 18 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Ackerman Robert 1991 Introduction to Jane Ellen Harrison s A Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion p xv a b Buxton Richard G A Bolle Kees W Smith Jonathan Z 2002 myth Encyclopaedia Britannica Segal Robert A 1999 Theorizing about Myth University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 978 1 55849 191 5 p 16 a b Allen Douglas 1978 Structure amp Creativity in Religion Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade s Phenomenology and New Directions Berlin Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 90 279 7594 2 Caldwell Richard 1990 The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Greek Myth in Approaches to Greek Myth Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 3864 4 p 344 Jung Carl The Psychology of the Child Archetype p 85 Segal Robert A 1990 The Romantic Appeal of Joseph Campbell Christian Century April 1990 332 5 Archived from the original on 7 January 2007 H I Poleman Review 78 79 A Winterbourne When the Norns Have Spoken 87 Nilsson Martin Persson 1967 Geschichte der Griechischen Religion 3rd ed Munich C H Beck Verlag Volume I p 339 Paul Adams John 10 January 2010 Mycenaean Divinities Northridge CA California State University Retrieved 25 September 2013 Puhvel Jaan 1987 Comparative Mythology Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press p 138 143 Mallory J P and Douglas Q Adams 2006 Oxford Introduction to Proto Indo European and the Proto Indo European World London Oxford University Press p 440 L Edmunds Approaches to Greek Myth 184 Segal Robert A 1991 A Greek Eternal Child in Myth and the Polis edited by D C Pozzi and J M Wickersham Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 2473 1 p 64 M Reinhold The Generation Gap in Antiquity 349 Martin P Nilsson 1927 The Minoan Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion M Wood In Search of the Trojan War 112 a b c L Burn Greek Myths 75 Miles Geoffrey ed 2006 Classical Mythology in English literature A Critical Anthology Routledge ISBN 0415147557 OCLC 912455670 l Burn Greek Myths 75 l Burn Greek Myths 75 76 Primary sources Greek and Roman Aeschylus The Persians See original text in Perseus program Archived 17 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine Aeschylus Prometheus Bound See original text in Perseus program Archived 2 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine Apollodorus Library and Epitome See original text in Perseus program Archived 2 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica Book I See original text in Sacred Texts Archived 12 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine Cicero De Divinatione See original text in the Latin Library Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Cicero Tusculanae resons See original text in the Latin Library Archived 15 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Herodotus The Histories I See original text in the Sacred Texts Archived 16 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Hesiod Works and Days Translated into English Archived 12 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine by Hugh G Evelyn White Hesiod 1914 Theogony Translated by Hugh Gerard Evelyn White via Wikisource Homer Iliad See original text in Perseus program Archived 27 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite Translated into English by Gregory Nagy Homeric Hymn to Demeter See original text in Perseus project Archived 11 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine Homeric Hymn to Hermes See the English translation in the Medieval and Classical Literature Library Archived 25 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine Ovid Metamorphoses See original text in the Latin Library Archived 23 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Pausanias Description of Greece See original text in Perseus program Archived 20 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine Pindar Pythian Odes Pythian 4 For Arcesilas of Cyrene Chariot Race 462 BC See original text in the Perseus program Archived 17 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine Plato Apology See original text in Perseus program Archived 17 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine Plato Theaetetus See original text in Perseus program Archived 29 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine Secondary sources Ackerman Robert 1991 Introduction Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion by Jane Ellen Harrison Reprint ed Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01514 9 Albala Ken G Johnson Claudia Durst Johnson Vernon E 2000 Origin of Mythology Understanding the Odyssey Courier Dover Publications ISBN 978 0 486 41107 1 Algra Keimpe 1999 The Beginnings of Cosmology The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 44667 9 Allen Douglas 1978 Early Methological Approaches Structure amp Creativity in Religion Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade s Phenomenology and New Directions Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 90 279 7594 2 Argonaut Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Betegh Gabor 2004 The Interpretation of the poet The Derveni Papyrus Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 80108 9 Bonnefoy Yves 1992 Kinship Structures in Greek Heroic Dynasty Greek and Egyptian Mythologies University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 06454 3 Bulfinch Thomas 2003 Greek Mythology and Homer Bulfinch s Greek and Roman Mythology Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 30881 9 Burkert Walter 2002 Prehistory and the Minoan Mycenaen Era Greek Religion Archaic and Classical translated by John Raffan Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 631 15624 6 Burn Lucilla 1990 Greek Myths University of Texas Press ISBN 978 0 292 72748 9 Bushnell Rebecca W 2005 Helicocentric Stoicism in the Saturnalia The Egyptian Apollo Medieval A Companion to Tragedy Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 1 4051 0735 8 Chance Jane 1994 Helicocentric Stoicism in the Saturnalia The Egyptian Apollo Medieval Mythography University Press of Florida ISBN 978 0 8130 1256 8 Caldwell Richard 1990 The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Greek Myth Approaches to Greek Myth Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 3864 4 Calimach Andrew 2002 The Cultural Background Lovers Legends The Gay Greek Myths Haiduk Press ISBN 978 0 9714686 0 3 Cartledge Paul A 2002 Inventing the Past History v Myth The Greeks Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 280388 7 Cartledge Paul A 2004 The Spartans translated in Greek Livanis ISBN 978 960 14 0843 9 Cashford Jules 2003 Introduction The Homeric Hymns Penguin Classics ISBN 978 0 14 043782 9 Dowden Ken 1992 Myth and Mythology The Uses of Greek Mythology Routledge UK ISBN 978 0 415 06135 3 Dunlop John 1842 Romances of Chivalry The History of Fiction Carey and Hart ISBN 978 1 149 40338 9 Edmunds Lowell 1980 Comparative Approaches Approaches to Greek Myth Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 3864 4 Euhemerus Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Foley John Miles 1999 Homeric and South Slavic Epic Homer s Traditional Art Penn State Press ISBN 978 0 271 01870 6 Gale Monica R 1994 The Cultural Background Myth and Poetry in Lucretius Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 45135 2 Greek Mythology Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Greek Religion Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Griffin Jasper 1986 Greek Myth and Hesiod The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World edited by John Boardman Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 285438 4 Grimal Pierre 1986 Argonauts The Dictionary of Classical Mythology Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 631 20102 1 Hacklin Joseph 1994 The Mythology of Persia Asiatic Mythology Asian Educational Services ISBN 978 81 206 0920 4 Hanson Victor Davis Heath John 1999 Who Killed Homer translated in Greek by Rena Karakatsani Kakos ISBN 978 960 352 545 5 Hard Robin 2003 Sources of Greek Myth The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology based on H J Rose s A Handbook of Greek mythology Routledge UK ISBN 978 0 415 18636 0 Heracles Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Jung Carl Gustav Kerenyi Karl 2001 Prolegomena Essays on a Science of Mythology Reprint ed Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01756 3 Jung C J 2002 Troy in Latin and French Joseph of Exeter s Ylias and Benoit de Sainte Maure s Roman de Troie Science of Mythology Routledge UK ISBN 978 0 415 26742 7 Kelly Douglas 2003 Sources of Greek Myth An Outline of Greek and Roman Mythology Douglas Kelly ISBN 978 0 415 18636 0 Kelsey Francis W 1889 A Handbook of Greek Mythology Allyn and Bacon Kirk Geoffrey Stephen 1973 The Thematic Simplicity of the Myths Myth Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 02389 5 Kirk Geoffrey Stephen 1974 The Nature of Greek Myths Harmondsworth Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 021783 4 Klatt J Mary Brazouski Antoinette 1994 Preface Children s Books on Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology An Annotated Bibliography Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 28973 6 Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Artemis Verlag 1981 1999 a href Template Cite encyclopedia html title Template Cite encyclopedia cite encyclopedia a Missing or empty title help Miles Geoffrey 1999 The Myth kitty Classical Mythology in English Literature A Critical Anthology University of Illinois Press ISBN 978 0 415 14754 5 Morris Ian 2000 Archaeology As Cultural History Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 631 19602 0 myth Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Nagy Gregory 1992 The Hellenization of the Indo European Poetics Greek Mythology and Poetics Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 8048 5 Nilsson Martin P 1940 The Religion of Eleusis Greek Popular Religion Columbia University Press North John A Beard Mary Price Simon R F 1998 The Religions of Imperial Rome Classical Mythology in English Literature A Critical Anthology Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 31682 8 Papadopoulou Thalia 2005 Introduction Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 85126 8 Percy William Armostrong III 1999 The Institutionalization of Pederasty Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece Routledge UK ISBN 978 0 252 06740 2 Poleman Horace I March 1943 Review of Ouranos Varuna Etude de mythologie comparee indo europeenne by Georges Dumezil Journal of the American Oriental Society 63 1 78 79 doi 10 2307 594160 JSTOR 594160 Reinhold Meyer 20 October 1970 The Generation Gap in Antiquity Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114 5 347 65 JSTOR 985800 Rose Herbert Jennings 1991 A Handbook of Greek Mythology Routledge UK ISBN 978 0 415 04601 5 Segal Robert A 1991 A Greek Eternal Child Myth and the Polis edited by Dora Carlisky Pozzi John Moore Wickersham Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 2473 1 Segal Robert A 4 April 1990 The Romantic Appeal of Joseph Campbell Christian Century Archived from the original on 7 January 2007 Segal Robert A 1999 Jung on Mythology Theorizing about Myth Univ of Massachusetts Press ISBN 978 1 55849 191 5 Stoll Heinrich Wilhelm translated by R B Paul 1852 Handbook of the religion and mythology of the Greeks Francis and John Rivington Trobe Kala 2001 Dionysus Invoke the Gods Llewellyn Worldwide ISBN 978 0 7387 0096 0 Trojan War Encyclopaedia The Helios 1952 Troy Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 Volume Hellas Article Greek Mythology Encyclopaedia The Helios 1952 Walsh Patrick Gerald 1998 Liberating Appearance in Mythic Content The Nature of the Gods Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 282511 7 Weaver John B 1998 Introduction The Plots of Epiphany Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 018266 8 Winterbourne Anthony 2004 Spinning and Weaving Fate When the Norns Have Spoken Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ISBN 978 0 8386 4048 7 Wood Michael 1998 The Coming of the Greeks In Search of the Trojan War University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 21599 3 Further reading Ancient Greece portal Myths portal Religion portal Mythology portal History portalGantz Timothy 1993 Early Greek Myth A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 4410 2 Graves Robert 1993 1955 The Greek Myths Cmb Rep ed Penguin Non Classics ISBN 978 0 14 017199 0 Hamilton Edith 1998 1942 Mythology New ed Back Bay Books ISBN 978 0 316 34151 6 Kerenyi Karl 1980 1951 The Gods of the Greeks Reissue ed Thames amp Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 27048 6 Kerenyi Karl 1978 1959 The Heroes of the Greeks Reissue ed Thames amp Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 27049 3 Luchte James 2011 Early Greek Thought Before the Dawn Bloomsbury ISBN 978 0 567 35331 3 Morford M P O Lenardon L J 2006 Classical Mythology Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 530805 1 Pinsent John 1972 Greek Mythology Bantam ISBN 978 0 448 00848 6 Pinsent John 1991 Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece Library of the World s Myths and Legends Peter Bedrick Books ISBN 978 0 87226 250 8 Powell Barry 2008 Classical Myth 6th ed Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 606171 7 Powell Barry 2001 A Short Introduction to Classical Myth Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 025839 7 Ruck Carl Staples Blaise Daniel 1994 The World of Classical Myth Carolina Academic Press ISBN 978 0 89089 575 7 Smith William 1870 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology Veyne Paul 1988 Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths An Essay on Constitutive Imagination translated by Paula Wissing University of Chicago ISBN 978 0 226 85434 2 Woodward Roger D ed 2007 The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology Cambridge New York Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 84520 5 External linksListen to this article 1 hour and 8 minutes source source This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 19 January 2009 2009 01 19 and does not reflect subsequent edits Audio help More spoken articles Media related to Greek mythology at Wikimedia Commons Greek Myths on In Our Time at the BBC Library of Classical Mythology Texts translations of works of classical literature LIMC France provides databases dedicated to Graeco Roman mythology and its iconography Martin P Nilsson The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology on Google books Greek mythology the age of gods myths and heroes Hellenism Net Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Greek mythology amp oldid 1145769627, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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