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Greek mythology is the body of myths and stories developed by the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars referred to the myths and studied them in an attempt to throw light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and, in general, on the ancient Greek civilization.• Greek mythology consists in part of a large collection of narratives that explain the origins of the world and detail the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines. These accounts were initially fashioned and disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition; the Greek myths are known today primarily from Greek literature. The oldest known literary sources, the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on events surrounding the Trojan War. 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 Homeric Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians of the 5th century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age and in writers of the time of the Roman Empire, for example, Plutarch and Pausanias. Monumental evidence at Mycenaean and Minoan sites helped to explain many of the questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological proofs of many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. Greek mythology was also depicted in artifacts; Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear to supplement the existing literary evidence.• Greek mythology has had extensive influence on the culture, the arts and the literature of Western civilization and remains part of western heritage and language. Greek mythology has been a part o the educational fabri from childhoo, while poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in classical mythological themes. Therefore, western literature is diachronically heavy with allusiins to the heritage of the ancient Greek myths. Etymology While all cultures throughout the world have their own myths, the term mythology is a Greek coinage and had a specialized meaning within Greek culture. The Greek term mythologia is a compound of two smaller words: Sources of Greek mythology The Greek myths are known today primarily from Greek literature. In addition to the written sources, there are mythicl represantions on visual media dating form the Geometric period onward. Literary sources
Archaeological sources The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th century German amateur archaeologist, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by Sir Arthur Evans, a 20th century English archaeologist, helped to explain many of the questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological proofs of many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. Unfortunately, the evidence about myth and ritual at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, because the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and Greece) was mainly used to record inventories, though the names of gods and heroes have been doubtfully revealed. Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. These visual representations of myth are important for two reasons; on the one hand, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources (of the twelve labors of Heracles, only the Cerberus adventure occurs for the first time in a literary text)Homer, Iliad, 8.366-369 and, on the other hand, 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. In the Archaic (c. 750–c. 500 BC), Classical (c. 480–323 BC), and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear to supplement the existing literary evidence. A survey of mythic history While self-contradictions in the stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. There was first an age of gods, then an age when men and gods mingled freely, followed by an age of heroes, where divine activity was more limited. While the age of gods has often 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. For example, the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed the divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity. The age of gods Like their neighbors, the Greeks believed in a of gods and goddesses who were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty, while Ares was the god of war and Hades the god of the dead. Some deities, 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. There were also site-specific deities: river gods, nymphs of springs, caves, and forests. Local heroes and heroines were often venerated at their tombs by people from the surrounding area. Many beings described in Greek myths could be considered "gods" or "heroes." Some were recognized only in folklore or were worshipped only at particular locales, (e.g. Trophonius) or during specific festivals (e.g. Adonis). The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to a limited number of gods: the twelve Olympians, Heracles, Asclepius and occasionally Helios. These gods were the focus of large pan-Hellenic cults. It was, however, common for individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to nymphs, minor gods, or local heroes. Many cities also honored the more well-known gods with unusual local rites and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere. Evolution of the relevant myths The Greeks' construction of the gods changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their own culture. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who assigned an evil spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human shape and entered the local mythology as gods and goddesses. When tribes from the north of the Greek Peninsula invaded, they brought with them a new pantheon of gods, based on conquest, force, prowess in battle, and violent heroism. Other older deities of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders or else faded into insignificance. After the middle of the Archaic period myths about love relationships between male gods and male heroes become more and more frequent, indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty (Eros paidikos, παιδικός ἔρως), thought to have been introduced around 630 BC. By the end of the 5th century BC, poets had assigned at least one eromenos to every important god except Ares and to many legendary figures (Previously existing myths, such as that of Achilles and Patroclus, were also cast in a pederastic light). Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire, often adapted stories of characters in Greek myth in ways that did not reflect earlier actual beliefs. Many of the most popular versions of these myths that we have today were actually from these fictional retellings, which may blur the archaic beliefs. The first gods One type of narrative about the age of gods tells the story of the birth and conflicts of the first divinities: Eurynome and Ophion, Chaos, Nyx (Night), Eros (Love), Uranus (the Sky), Gaia (the Earth), 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 (myth)—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 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 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 preliminary invocation to the Muses. The Olympian gods After the overthrow of the elder gods by the Olympians, another set of myths 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. Characteristics of the Greek gods In the wide variety of myths and legends that constitute ancient Greek mythology, the deities that were native to the Greek peoples are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies. Regardless of their underlying forms, the ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities: they can disguise themselves or make themselves invisible to humans, they can instantly transport themselves to any location, and are able to act through the words and deeds of humans, often without the knowledge of the human through whom the gods act. Most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease, can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances, and are immortal. Even though each of the gods was born, most of them growing from infancy to adulthood, once they reach their physical peak of maturity they do not age beyond that point. 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 were 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. A Greek deity's epithet may reflect a particular aspect of that god's role, as 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. In such mythic narratives, we are told that the gods are all part of a huge family, spanning multiple generations. The oldest of the gods were responsible for the creation of the world, but younger gods usurped their power. In many familiar epic poems set in the "age of heroes," the twelve Olympians are said to have appeared in person. In order to help out the Greeks' primitive ancestors, the gods performed miracles, instructed them in various areas of practical knowledge, taught them proper methods of worship, rewarded good behavior and chastised immorality, and even had children with them. 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, 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 Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus' table and gives it to his own 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. Myths centered around households and lineages were particularly popular, and grouped by historians under the name of the key ancestor, such as Atreus, whose household passed a curse that touched the Trojan war. Yet another type belongs to Dionysus: 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. A similar theme echoes in a myth about Demeter: The maternal goddess in search of her kidnapped daughter stops in a kingdom and out of love tries to make the royal family's son immortal by dipping him into a magical fire. When the matron finds her son being held in a fire by his nurse, the woman turns on the disguised Demeter, causing Demeter to throw him down on the floor. Before the enraged mother, Demeter strips her mortal guise and punishes the woman for her faithlessness. The age of heroes The age of heroes can be broken down around the monumental events of Heracles as the dawn of the age of heroes, the Argonautic expedition and the Trojan War. The Trojan War marks roughly the end of the Heroic Age. Heracles Among heroes, Heracles is 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 descendants of Heracles, known as the Heracleidae, were the mythical ancestors of the Dorian Greek kings. Other early heroes Other members of this is the 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. 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. 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. The Seven against Thebes and 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 Epigoni. For obvious reasons, this generation was extremely popular among the Athenian tragedians. The Trojan War and its aftermath The Trojan War, including its causes and consequences, was the turning point between the heroic age and what the ancient Greeks considered to be their historical era. Vastly more attention was paid to this struggle than to all the many other contemporaneous events combined. The lasting popularity of the tales related to the Trojan War have kept them in circulation for millennia. The Trojan cycle includes: Origin theories The origins of Greek mythology remain a fascinating and open question. In antiquity, historians such as Herodotus theorized that the Greek gods had been stolen directly from the Egyptians. Later on, Christian writers tried to explain Hellenic paganism through degeneration of Biblical religion. Since then, the sciences of archaeology and linguistics have been applied to the origins of Greek mythology with some interesting results. Historical linguistics indicates that particular aspects of the Greek pantheon were inherited from Indo-European society (or perhaps both cultures borrowed from another earlier source), as were the roots of the Greek language. Thus, for example, the name Zeus is cognate with Latin Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus and Germanic Tyr (see Dyeus), as is Ouranos with Sanskrit Varuna. 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 Moirae and the Norns of Norse mythology. Archaeology and mythography, on the other hand, has revealed that the Greeks were inspired by some of the civilizations of Asia Minor and the Near East. Cybele is rooted in Anatolian culture, and much of Aphrodite's iconography springs from the Semitic goddesses Ishtar and Astarte. Textual studies reveal multiple layers in tales, such as secondary asides bringing Theseus into tales of The Twelve Labours of Herakles. Such tales concerning tribal eponyms are thought to originate in attempts to absorb mythology of one tradition into another, in order to unite the cultures. In addition to Indo-European and Near Eastern origins, some scholars have speculated on the debts of Greek mythology to the still poorly understood pre-Hellenic societies of Greece, such as the Minoans and so-called Pelasgians. This is especially true in the case of chthonic deities and mother goddesses. For some, the three main generations of gods in Hesiod's Theogony (Uranus, Gaia, etc.; the Titans and then the Olympians) suggest a distant echo of a struggle between social groups, mirroring the three major high cultures of Greek civilization: Minoan, Mycenaean and Hellenic. The extensive parallels between Hesiod's narrative and the Hurrian myth of Anu, Kumarbi, and Teshub makes it very likely that the story is an adaptation of borrowed materials, rather than a distorted historical record. Parallels between the earliest divine generations (Chaos and its children) and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish are possible (Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins: NY, Biblo-Tannen, 1974). Psychoanalytic Interpretations Sigmund Freud put forward the idea that symbolic communication does not depend on cultural history alone but also on the workings of the psyche. Thus 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 mportance of contextual relationships for the interpretation of any individual element in a dream. This suggestion would find an important point of rapprochment between the structuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to myth in Freud's thought. According to Jung, "myth-forming structural elements must be present in the unconscious psyche". 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. Greek and Roman conceptions of myth Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in ancient Greece. 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 one's leaders' descent 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, associate professor of Classics at Santa Clara University, 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". Philisophy and myths
Hellenistic and Roman rationalism
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 Sol Invictus, with conglomerated rites and compound attributes? The surviving 2nd century collection of Orphic Hymns and Macrobius's Saturnalia are products of this mind-set. Apollo might be increasingly identified in religion with Helios or even Dionysus, texts retelling his myths seldom reflected such developments. The traditional literary mythology was increasingly dissociated from actual religious practice. Modern interpretations The genesis of modern understanding of Greek mythology lies in a double reaction at the end of the eighteenth century against "the traditional attitude of Christian animosity mixed with disdain, which had prevailed for centuries", in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a "lie" or fable had been retained. In Germany, a generation of Romantic artists and poets idealized the myths created, they were convinced, by a specially-gifted nation in a time of pristine cultural nobility, unsullied as yet by Rome. This literary aspect of the Greek Revival was an expression of the Philhellenism of the Romantic generation. On the other hand, British classicists continued to see the Greek myths as examples demonstrating how far the modern mind had progressed from its childhood simplicity and superstition. The genteel Christian tradition of Thomas Bulfinch narrated a synthesized view of myths entirely drawn from literary sources. In 1856 the Anglo-German Max Müller invented comparative mythology, applying the new science of philology to the study of myth, in which he detected the distorted remains of Aryan nature worship. A hint at the conclusion of Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) suggested that evolutionary principles might be applied to the study of mankind. Edward Burnett Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) surveyed the field of a universally similar "primitive" religion, a form of failed science. Tyler's procedure of drawing together material culture, ritual and myth of widely separated cultures was followed by Carl Jung and later, by Joseph Campbell, to offer archetypes of mythic themes. William Robertson Smith's The Religion of the Semites (1890) provided the earliest attempt to study Semitic religion from the point-of-view of comparative religion and anthropology. Smith's assertion that "in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual and not the ritual from the myth" informed the works of James George Frazer (The Golden Bough) and of Jane Ellen Harrison and the Cambridge Ritualists. J.F. del Giorgio has added a new turn to that approach, insisting in The Oldest Europeans about Greek myths being generated by the clash between a Paleolithic European population and the incoming Indo-European tribes. Other mythographers in approximate chronological order: Notes Primary sources (Greek and Roman) Secondary sources Further reading Standard secondary sources in English include: Influential, more specialized studies include: See also Greek cosmology Related subjects | |||||||||||||
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