Greek Mythology

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Origins and Development of Greek Mythology

Our knowledge of Greek mythology begins with the epic poems attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which date from about the 8th century bc even though the stories they relate probably have their origins in events that occurred several centuries earlier. Scholars, however, know that the origins of Greek mythology reach even farther back than that.

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Origins of Greek Mythology

Linguists (people who study languages) have concluded that some names of Greek deities, including Zeus, can be traced back to gods worshiped by speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of the Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit languages. But it would be misleading to regard the people who may have spoken this language as originators of Greek mythology because many other elements contributed.

Archaeologists have shown that many of the places where mythical events presumably took place correspond to sites that had historical importance during the Mycenaean period of Greek history (second half of the 2nd millennium bc). Scholars thus consider it likely that the Mycenaeans made a major contribution to the development of the stories, even if this contribution is hard to demonstrate in detail. Some scholars have argued that the Minoan civilization of Crete also had a formative influence on Greek myths. The myth of the Minotaur confined in a labyrinth in the palace of King Minos, for example, might be a memory of historical bull-worship in the labyrinthine palace at Knossos on Crete. However, there is little evidence that Cretan religion survived in Greece. Nor have any ancient inscriptions confirmed that Minos ever existed outside of myth.

Scholars can demonstrate influence on Greek mythology from the Middle East much more reliably than influence from Crete. Greek mythology owed much to cultures in Mesopotamia and Anatolia, especially in the realm of cosmogony (origin of the universe) and theogony (origin of the gods). To take one example, a clear parallel exists in an early Middle Eastern myth for Greek poet Hesiod’s story about the castration of Uranus by his son Cronus and the subsequent overthrow of Cronus by his son Zeus. The Middle Eastern myth tells of the sky god Anu who was castrated by Kumarbi, father of the gods. The weather and storm god Teshub, in turn, displaced Anu. Scholars continue to bring to light more and more similarities between Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies.

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Development of Greek Mythology

Our knowledge of Greek myths comes from a mixture of written texts, sculpture, and decorated pottery. Scholars have reconstructed stories that circulated orally by inference and guesswork.

Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, stand at the beginning of Greek literary tradition (see Greek literature), even though they almost certainly depended on a lengthy previous tradition of oral poetry. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War; it focuses on the consequences of a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, two of the leading Greek warriors. The Odyssey is about the aftermath of the Trojan War, when the Greek hero Odysseus at last returns to his home on the island of Ithaca following years of wandering in wild and magical lands. The Trojan War later provided subject matter for many tragic dramas and for imagery on countless painted vases.

Hesiod’s Theogony, composed in the 8th century bc at about the same time as the Homeric epics, gave an authoritative account of how things began. The creation of the world, described by Hesiod in terms of passions and crimes of the gods, is a theme that later Greek philosophers such as Empedocles and Plato developed but took in new directions. This connection serves as a reminder that mythology was not a separate aspect of Greek culture, but one that interacted with many other fields of experience, particularly the writing of history. For example, in the 5th century bc Greek historian Herodotus employed numerous themes and story patterns from Greek epics and tragedies in writing his historical account of the war between Greeks and Persians (see Persian Wars).

Although the authority of Homer and Hesiod remained dominant, the poetic retelling of myths continued throughout antiquity. Myths were constantly remade in the light of new social and political circumstances. The Hellenistic period of Greek history (4th century to 1st century bc) saw many new trends in the treatment of myths. One of the most important was the development of mythography, the compilation and organization of myths on the basis of particular themes (for example, myths about metamorphosis). Such organization corresponded to a wish of newly established Hellenistic rulers to lend legitimacy to their regimes by claiming that they continued a cultural tradition reaching back into a great past.

Artists, too, portrayed myths. Statues of gods stood inside Greek temples, and relief sculptures of scenes from mythology adorned pediments and friezes on the outside of these temples (see Greek Art and Architecture). Among the best-known examples are the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens. These reliefs include depictions of combat between centaurs and Lapiths.

Other visual representations of mythology were more modest in size and scope. The best evidence for the use of mythology in Greek painting comes from painted ceramic vases. The Greeks used these vases in a variety of contexts, from cookery to funerary ritual to athletic games. (Vases filled with oil were awarded as prizes in games.) In most cases scholars can securely identify the imagery on Greek vases as mythological, but sometimes they have no way of telling whether the artist intended an allusion to mythology because myth became fused with everyday life. For example, does a representation of a woman weaving signify Penelope, wife of Odysseus who spent her days at a loom, or does it portray someone engaged in an everyday activity?

The Greeks retold myths orally, as well as preserving them in literary and artistic works. The Greeks transmitted to children tales of monsters and myths of gods and heroes. Old men gathered to exchange tales in leschai (clubs or conversation places). Storytelling, whether in writing, art, or speech, was at the heart of Greek civilization.

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The Legacy of Greek Mythology

Mythology formed a central reference point in Greek society because it was interwoven with ritual and other aspects of social existence. Yet the question of how far people believed the myths is a difficult and probably unanswerable one. Some intellectuals, such as Greek writer Palaephatus, tried to interpret the myths as having figurative (nonliteral) meanings. Writing in the 4th century bc, Palaephatus interpreted the stories of Diomedes, a king devoured by his own mares, and of Actaeon, a hunter torn apart by his own hounds, as concealing perfectly credible accounts of young men who had spent too much money on their animals and so been figuratively eaten alive by debt.

Other thinkers, such as the 4th-century-bc philosopher Plato, objected to some myths on moral grounds, particularly to myths that told of crimes committed by the gods. Yet such skepticism seems hardly to have altered the imaginative power and persistence of Greek myths. As late as the 2nd century ad, the Greek traveler and historian Pausanias described the myths and cults in the places he visited as if they constituted a still-living complex of religious discourse and behavior.

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Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

The ancient Romans eventually took over Greek civilization and conquered Greece. In the process, they adapted Greek mythology, and myths remained a vehicle for reflecting on and coping with the world. In his poem the Aeneid, written in the 1st century bc, Roman poet Virgil used the theme of the wandering Trojan hero Aeneas and his eventual foundation of a settlement that became Rome. The Aeneid not only continues story patterns developed in Homer’s epics, but it also makes frequent and detailed allusions to the texts of Homer and other Greek writers. The long poem Metamorphoses by Roman poet Ovid embraces an enormous number of Greek myths, reworked into a composition that later had unparalleled influence on European culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Greek mythology survived during Christian antiquity by its interpretation as allegory (expressive of a deeper or hidden meaning). Early Christians incorporated pagan stories into their own worldview if they could reinterpret the story to express a concealed, uplifting meaning. In the 5th century ad, for example, Latin mythographer Fulgentius gave an allegorical reading of the Judgment of Paris. The Greek myth told of a young Trojan shepherd faced with a choice between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Each goddess tried to bribe Paris to name her the most beautiful: Hera offering power, Athena offering success in battle, and Aphrodite offering a beautiful woman. Fulgentius explained that the choice was actually a moral one, between a life of action, a life of contemplation, and a life dominated by love. The allegorical approach to the myths has never died out; we find it today in the writings of those who regard myths as expressions of basic, universal psychological truths. For example, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, borrowed from Greek mythology in developing his ideas of human psychosexual development, which he described in terms of an Oedipus complex and an Electra complex. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that certain psychic structures he called archetypes were common to all people in all times and gave rise to recurring ideas such as mythological themes.

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