Greek Mythology

Chaos  Religion in Ancient Greece  Archaic and Classical Period  Greek Theology  The Olympian Gods

The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican)Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to 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 shed 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, heroines, and other mythological creatures. 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 Epic 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. It has been a part of the educational fabric from childhood, 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.



Sources of Greek mythology

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

The Roman poet Virgil, here depicted in the 5th century manuscript the Vergilius Romanus, preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings.

Achilles killing a Trojan prisoner in front of Charon on a red-figure Etruscan calyx-krater, made towards the end of the 4th century-beginning of the 3rd century BC.
Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature. In addition to the written sources, there are mythical representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period (c. 900-800 BCE) onward.


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, which attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends.

Among the literary sources first in age are Homer's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the "epic cycle", but these later and lesser poems are now almost entirely lost. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiod, a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in 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; elaborate genealogies and folktales and etiological myths. Hesiod's Works and Days, a didactic poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora and the Four Ages. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world rendered yet more dangerous by its gods.

Lyrical poets sometimes take their subjects from myth, but the treatment becomes gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides, and bucolic poets, such as Theocritus and Bion, provide individual mythological incidents. Additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama. The tragic playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides took their plots from the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories (i.e. Agamemnon and his children, Oedipus, Jason, Medea etc.) took on their classic form in these tragic plays. For his part, the comic playwright Aristophanes used myths, as in The Birds or The Frogs.

Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled around the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supply numerous local myths, often giving little-known, alternative versions. Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions presented him in and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East.

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, Callimachus, Pseudo-Eratosthenes and Parthenius.
The Roman poets Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Seneca and Virgil with Servius's commentary.
The Late Antique Greek poets Nonnus, Antoninus Liberalis and Quintus Smyrnaeus.
The ancient novels of Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus and Heliodorus.
The Fabulae and Astronomica of the Roman writer styled Pseudo-Hyginus are two important, non-poetical compendiums of myth. The Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Younger and the Descriptions of Callistratus, are two other useful sources.

Finally, a number of Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth sourced from lost Greek works, including Hesychius' lexicon, the Suda, and the treatises of John Tzetzes and Eustathius.


Archaeological sources
The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by German amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, in the 19th century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, in the 20th century, helped to explain many of the questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological proof 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, as 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 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.


Survey of mythic history
The Greeks' mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their own culture. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who assigned a 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 Balkan 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 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 Greek mythological characters.

The achievement of epic poetry was to create story-cycles, and as result to develop a sense of mythological chronology. Thus Greek mythology unfolds like a phase in the development of the world and of man. While self-contradictions in the stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. The mythological history of the world can be divided in 3 or 4 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 stories of the Trojan War and after (regarded by some researchers as a separate fourth period).

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. 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 Olympian from the Chthonic. 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 Cronus, the subsequent races the creation of Zeus. Hesiod intercalates the Age (or Race) of Heroes just after the Bronze Age. The final age was the Iron Age, during which the poet himself lived. The poet regards it as the worst; the presence of evil was explained by Pandora's myth. In Metamorphoses Ovid follows Hesiod's concept of the four ages.