Greek Mythology The Nature Of Greek Mythology Overview

Topics in Greek mythology
Gods:
Primordial gods and Titans Zeus and the Olympians Pan and the nymphs Apollo and Dionysus Sea-gods and Earth-gods
Heroes:
Heracles and his Labors Achilles and the Trojan War Jason and the Argonauts Perseus and the Gorgon Oedipus and Thebes Theseus and the Minotaur Triptolemus and the Eleusinian Mysteries
Related: Satyrs and centaurs Greek religion

Greek mythology comprises the collected legends of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of mythology are either transcriptions of this spoken word, or are later literary reworkings.

In their various legends, stories and hymns the gods of ancient Greece are nearly all described as human in appearance, unaging, nearly immune to all wounds and sickness, capable of becoming invisible, able to travel vast distances almost instantly, and able to speak through human beings with or without their knowledge. Each has his or her own specific appearance, genaeology, interests, personality, and area of expertise; however, these descriptions do have local variants that do not always agree with the descriptions used in other parts of the Greek-speaking world of the time. When these gods were called upon in poetry or prayer, they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets, with the epithets identifying them by these distinctions from the other gods.

In legends, these beings are described as a large multi-generational family. Their oldest members created the world as we know it. The generation of the gods most current (and relevant) to ancient Greek religion are described in epic poems as having appeared in person to the Greeks during the "age of heroes," understood to be a reference to the archaic dark age (ca. 1200 BC to 800 BC) that preceded the Greek classical civilization. They provided the struggling ancestors of the Greeks with a limited number of miracles, taught them a selection of useful skills, taught them the methods of worshipping the gods, rewarded virtue and punished vice, and fathered children by humans. These half-human, half divine children are collectively known as "the heroes," and until the establishment of democracy their descendents claimed the right to rule on the basis of their divine ancestry and presumed divinely inherited ability to rule well.

1 The nature of Greek mythology

While all cultures throughout the world have their own mythologies, the term is a Greek coinage, and had a specialized meaning within Greek culture.

In the original sense, therefore, a mythology is an attempt to bring sense to the stylized narratives that the Greeks recited at festivals, whispered at shrines, and bandied about at aristocratic banquets. Since few breeds of men are more prone to squabbling than poets, priests and aristocrats, contradictions in the material are rife. Moreover, they are part of the fun.

2 Overview

The scope of Greek mythology is enormous. It extends from the horrific crimes of the early gods and the bloody wars of Troy and Thebes, to the childhood pranks of Hermes and the touching grief of Demeter for PersephoneIn Greek mythology, Persephone ("per-SE-fo-neh") was the queen of the Underworld, the Kore or maiden, daughter of Demeter. Persephone ("she who destroys the light") is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. In other dialects she was known under v. The legions of gods, goddessA goddess a female deity, contrasts with male deities, known as " gods". A great many cultures have their own goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger pantheon that includes both of the conventional genders and in some cases even heres, heroThis article is about the type of character. For other meanings, see Hero (disambiguation . Sir Galahad, a prototypical hero In many myths and folk tales, a hero is a man or woman (then often called a heroine , traditionally the protagonist of a story, lees, heroines, monsterThis article is about monsters as a kind of legendary creature. For other uses, see Monster (disambiguation). Monster (lat. monstrum) is a term for any number of legendary creatures that frequently appear in mythology, legend, and horror fiction. The words, daemonThe term Daemon has several meanings: Daemon (mythology) Daemon (computer software) Daemon (His Dark Materials) in the Philip Pullman trilogy of novels His Dark Materials The Daemons is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who's, nymphNymphs : For the use of the term "nymph" in biology, see nymph (biology . For the use of the term "nymph" in terms of fishing, see nymph (fishing . Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large classs, satyrs, and centaurs that one encounters in traversing this vast landscape are beyond count.

Greek mythology has an approximate internal chronology. While contradictions in the material make an absolute timeline impossible, it breaks down roughly into an age of gods, an age when men and gods mingled freely, and an age of heroes where divine activity was more limited. While the myths of the age of gods have often been more interesting to contemporary students of myth, Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for those of the age of heroes: the heroic Iliad and Odyssey, for example, dwarfed the divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity.

Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

2.1 The age of gods

Like their neighbors, the Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love, while Ares was the god of war and Hades the god of the dead. Some deities like Apollo and Dionysus revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others like Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. There were also site-specific deities, such as river gods and nymphs of springs and caves, and venerated tombs of local heroes and heroines.

Although there were hundreds of beings that could be considered "gods" or "heroes" in one sense or another, some figured only in folklore or were honored locally in particular places (e.g. Trophonius) or at particular festivals (e.g. Adonis). Major sites of ritual, the large temples, were dedicated mostly to a small circle of gods, chiefly the twelve Olympians, Heracles and Asclepius and in some places Helios. These deities were the centers of the large pan-Hellenic cults. Many regions and individual villages had their own cults centered on nymphs, minor deities, heroes or heroines unknown elsewhere; most cities also worshipped the major gods with peculiar local rites and had peculiar local legends about them.

2.1.1 The first gods

One type of narrative about the age of gods tells the story of the birth and conflicts of the first divinities: Chaos, Night, Eros, Uranus, Gaia, the Titans and the triumph of Zeus and the Olympians. Hesiod's Theogony is an example of this type. It was also the subject of many lost poems, including ones attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus, Epimenides, Abaris and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently-unearthed papyrus scraps.

The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogony, or song about the birth of the gods, to be the prototypical poetic genre - the prototypical muthos - and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus, the archetypal poet, was also the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in the 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 to sing the birth of the gods. 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 perliminary invocation to the Muses.

2.1.2 New gods

Another type tells the story of the birth, struggles and exploits, and eventual ascent into Olympus of one of the younger generation of gods: Apollo, Hermes, Athena, etc. The Homeric Hymns are the oldest source of this kind of story. They are often closely associated with cult-centers of the god in question: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a compound of two earlier narratives: one telling of his birth at Delos, the other of his establishment of the oracle at Delphi. Similarly, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, with its tale of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, narrates the back-story of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

2.2 The age of gods and men

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 men moved freely together.

The most popular type of narrative that confronts gods with early men involves the seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god (most often Zeus), resulting in heroic offspring. 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. The marriage of Peleus and Thetis, which yielded Achilles, is another such myth.

Another type involves the appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from 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.

Yet another type belongs to Dionysus alone: the god wanders through Greece from foreign lands to spread his cult. He is confronted by a king, Lycurgus or Pentheus, who opposes him, and whom he punishes terribly in return.

2.3 The age of heroes

The age of heroes can be broken down around the monumental events of the Argonautic expedition and the Trojan War. The Trojan War marks roughly the end of the Heroic Age.

2.3.1 Early heroes

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Among heroes, Heracles is practically in a class by himself. His fantastic solitary exploits, with their many folk tale themes, provided much material for popular legend. His enormous appetite and rustic character also made him a popular figure of comedy, while his pitiful end provided much material for tragedy.

The other members of the earliest generation of heroes, such as Perseus 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 like Medusa and the chimera. This generation was not as popular a subject for poets; we know of them mostly through mythographers and passing remarks in prose writers. They were, however, favorite subjects of visual art.

2.3.2 The generation of the Argonauts

Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason on the expedition 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.

2.3.3 Royal crimes

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; also those of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes, leading to the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Seven Against Thebes and Epigonoi. For obvious reasons, this generation was extremely popular among the Athenian tragedians.

2.3.4 Troy and aftermath

As the turning point between the Heroic Age and what the Greek considered the historical period, the Trojan War, its preludes and epilogues, outweighs the rest of the age combined in the sheer amount of source material available. The Trojan cycle includes:

The events leading up to the war: the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis.
The events of the Iliad, including the quarrel of Achilles with Agamemnon and the deaths of Patroclus and Hector.
The ruse of the Trojan Horse and the destruction of Troy.
The homecomings of heroes from Troy, including the wanderings of Odysseus and the murder of Agamemnon
The children of the Trojan generation: e.g. Orestes and Telemachus

3 Sources

Several types of primary source are available for the study of Greek mythology.

The poetry of the Archaic and Classical eras — composed primarily for performance at cultic festivals or aristocratic banquets, and thus part of muthos in the Homeric sense (see The Nature of Greek Mythology above). This includes:
- the Homeric Odyssey, Iliad and Hymns
- the Hesiodic Theogony.
- the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes
- the choral hymns of Pindar and Bacchylides.
The work of historians, like Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers, like Pausanias and Strabo, who made travels around the Greek world and noted down the stories they heard at various cities.
The work of mythographers, who wrote prose treatises based on learned research attempting to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets. The Bibliotheke by Apollodorus of Athens is the largest extant example of this genre.
The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which although composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise, nevertheless contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of:
- The Hellenistic poets Apollonius of Rhodes and Callimachus.
- The Roman poets Hyginus, Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Virgil.
- The Late Antique Greek poets Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus.
The ancient novels of Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus and Heliodorus.

4 Did the Greeks believe their myths?

To the Greeks, mythology was literally a part of their history; few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks used myth to explain cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace one's descent from a mythological hero or a god.

On the other hand, philosophers like Xenophanes were already beginning to label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies in the 6th century BC; this line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato's Republic and Laws. 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. In other cases Euripides seems to be directing pointed criticism at the behavior of his gods.

4.1 Hellenistic rationalism

The skeptical turn of the Classical age became even more pronounced in the Hellenistic era. Most daringly, the mythographer Euhemerus claimed that stories about the gods were only confused memories of the cruelty of ancient kings. Although Euhemerus's works are lost, interpretations in his style are frequently found in Diodorus Siculus.

Rationalizing hermeneutics of myth became even more popular under the Roman Empire, thanks to the physicalist theories of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, as well as the pragmatic bent of the Roman mind. The antiquarian Varro, summarizing centuries' worth of philosophic tradition, distinguished three kinds of gods:

The gods of nature: personifications of phenomena like rain and fire.
The gods of the poets: invented by unscrupulous bards to stir the passions.
The gods of the city: invented by wise legislators to soothe and enlighten the populace.

Cicero's De Natura Deorum is probably the most comprehensive summary of this line of thought.

4.2 Syncretizing trends

One unexpected side-effect of the rationalist view was a popular trend to syncretize multiple Greek and foreign gods in strange, nearly unrecognizable new cults. If Apollo and Serapis and Sabazios and Dionysus and Mithras were all really Helios, why not combine them all together into one Deus Sol Invictus, with conglomerated rites and compound attributes? The surviving 2nd century AD collection of Orphic Hymns and Macrobius's Saturnalia are products of this mind-set.

But though Apollo might in religion be increasingly identified with Helios or even Dionysus, texts retelling his myths seldom reflected such developments. The traditional literary mythology was increasingly dissociated from actual religious practice.

5 External links

Ancient Greece Mythology *

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