Greek Mythology

by Neil Matt Hamilton

  Heroes occupy a critical place in every mythology. Heroes more than any other represent the role of the listener. Most mythological tales were stories told not unlike gossip, only the storytellers were often men who plied a craft rather than merely told tall tales. There was a point to the story, and when you examine the stories of the heroes you learn what that point is. The stories of heroes were meant to teach life lessons, and it is in hearing the stories of Theseus, Perseus, Achilles, and others that we learn the sorts of lessons the Greeks thought it important to teach.

  As the king of the Olympian gods, Zeus presided over the Greek pantheon. He was also the sky God and father of other gods, such as Apollo, Athena, Hermes, and Artemis. Zeus was the center of many tales as he was often the invisible hand spurring a hero towards this or that. But Zeus occasionally played the role of the protagonist. In the sixth chapter, we will learn tales of Zeus, most of which revolve around the many loves he nurtured with mortals.

  Apollo was another Greek god who served as an important fixture of myth. Indeed, the worship of Apollo was so important that he had his own oracle, the Oracle of Delphi, who was regarded as the most important in the Greek world. Apollo, god of the sun, was also otherworldly handsome so many of his own tales, too, revolve around love. Many of them do, but not all as Apollo was associated with moderation. In Apollo, the Greeks encapsulated many of their ideals on manhood, much as the Norse did with Thor. Apollo’s tales will be explored in Greek Mythology: Fascinating Myths and Legends of Greek Gods, Heroes, and Monsters to develop a picture of this god and what he meant to those who worshipped him.

  Heracles is one of the most important characters of Greek myth and legend. He embodied brute strength, though, like Apollo, he also represented maleness. Some of the great sculptures of the Greek period depicted a muscled, powerful Heracles, a demigod whom the Romans knew as Hercules. Though the Roman name is the more famous, this demigod's land was Greece and nearly all the tales of his life take place in Greek lands. In chapter eight, we will examine the twelve labors of Heracles and the statement that they made about the struggles of man.

  There are many other characters whose tales need to be examined to get the full picture of Greek myth and legend. Among these is Oedipus, a name that has become famous because of Greek tragedy. In the ninth chapter, we will examine tales of some of the other characters in Greek myth. Though not all should be termed light, these lighter tales often focus on Man and his hubris against the gods rather than on the spillover of godly conflict into the realm of Man.

  No story embodies this spillover from the gods than the story of the Trojan War. Told in the Iliad, the first long work of fiction in Europe, this story sums up the story of the Greeks in a way that few stories can summarize a people. It is a story of how the Greeks fought the Trojans and even turned against one another, all for the love of a woman: the most beautiful woman in the world. She was Helen of Troy, wife of the King of Sparta, and she was taken by fair Paris to his home kingdom of Troy in what is now Turkey. In the tenth chapter, you will discover the most epic tale of heroes ever written.

  Ancient Greece still exists around you. You see it in the government buildings that are fashioned to hearken back to Greece and Rome. You see it in the so-called Greek system in colleges and universities. And it is evident in many ways in popular culture, especially in film, literature, and television. Ancient Greece is as alive today as it was three thousand years ago. The important question to ask is why. By the time you finish reading Greek Mythology, you will have learned the answer to that question.

  Chapter 1: The Greek World

  The Ancient Greeks were very much a product of their environment. They were the beneficiaries of the fruits that the Mediterranean Sea had to offer it, plying this blessed waterway with their triremes. They colonized the coast of Asia Minor and Southern Italy, spreading their beliefs and way of life to distant shores. Their society enriched itself over time, becoming advanced in science and philosophy. But the Greeks never stopped looking to the gods for guidance for it was their religion which made them Greek. Socrates learned what could happen when one veered too far away from godly ways.

  But, for the most part, the gods looked approvingly on the activities of their subjects. They approved of the colonization efforts; they certainly approved of the massive temples erected all over the Greek world. They probably even approved of the philosophical meanderings, as long as they did not question the paramount place of the gods. Indeed, Greek history seemed to be a lesson on how the gods were always right. When you challenged their authority, when you aimed too high, you risked bringing all crashing down.

  In this first chapter, we will undertake a brief survey of Greek history, taking into account the Greek religion. As the Greeks became exposed to foreign people, they certainly adopted new gods, new language about religion, and new ways of worship. Greek society was always somewhat on the move, and the gods had to find a way to work themselves into that dynamics. Here we will discuss briefly the main ages of Greek history: the Heroic Age, the Classical Period, and the Hellenistic Age.

  The Heroic Age

  There is still debate about who wrote the Iliad, one of the most famous, and certainly among the most important, works of world literature. Historians have ascribed this work to a man named Homer, but it has been proposed that this great work was written by several authors in about the 9th century BC. At the very least, this work was compiled around that time and it pertained to events that had taken place around three centuries before.

  Of course, we can now say that at least part of the Trojan War - the subject of the Iliad - appears to be true, but that statement could not be made two short centuries ago. The work of Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman, and archaeologist allowed history books to be rewritten. Troy was no longer a myth. It was a real city that existed on the coast of Asia Minor. Schliemann's finds reveal that Troy was the largest city in the region during its height, more than 3000 years ago. This would place the greatness of Troy - a city whose destruction was ordained by the gods - at a few hundred years before Homer is believed to have lived.

  This was the Heroic or Archaic Age of Greece. This is Greece before the explosion of artistic culture that has been left to us in the form of exquisitely decorated bowls, sculpture, and architecture. This is Greece before the philosophies of Plato and Socrates, the histories of Thucydides and Xenophon, and the plays of Aeschylus. This was Greece in a time when the gods were still very much real. They came down from the heights of Mount Olympus to interfere in the lives of men. They directed events for their own pleasure and often to the detriment of Man.

  Troy technically was a non-Greek culture, but enough remains in the Greek world to attest to what the Greeks themselves built. The remains of the Argolid and Crete give evidence of a vibrant culture where the men and women lived in sizeable towns. They were ruled by kings and left elaborate graves. This was different from the Greece of the Classical period. Classical Greeks primarily lived in oligarchies, although there were some notable democracies in Athens and other places. The Heroic Age of Homer was the period that later Greeks looked to as the age of their heroes. To them, Achilles, Theseus, Heracles, and others were men who actually lived, and they lived during this time.

  What is important to the student of myths and legends to know is that the Greeks left few written records from this time. There were likely several reasons for this. This was a time not only of war but of cultural solidification. Greek society was in the process of being formed into a shape that would be recognizable to us today. The Greeks were actually composed of several different groups who were collectively known as Hellenes or Greeks. Some of these groups were descended from the earliest inhabitants of the land while others were descended from invaders.

  The Greeks of the Classical period saw themselves as being composed of three major divisions: the Dorians, Ionians, and Aeolians. Each group spoke a dialect of Greek and had traditions that marked them out as a Dorian or Ionian.
For example, Dorian societies divided their group into a certain number of tribes while Ionians had a different number. The Spartans were Dorians while the Athenians were Ionians. This meant that the Spartans were descended from relatively recent invaders while the Athenians were descended from settlers of a much earlier period. These divisions were very real.

  For example, male gods tended to be more popular among Dorians like the Spartans and Corinthians, while older groups revered female gods or gods of very ancient origin. This dichotomy between a male-centered pantheon and gynocentric worship is somewhat subliminal, but it is there. It is apparent to those paying attention that there were several important female divinities in the Greek pantheon, forming a contrast to other mythologies where there may be one or two. The Greeks had Athena, Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and others, suggesting a pantheon where some gods were more ancient than others.

  There were practical differences in the various groups in Greece, too. Besides some differences in language, Greeks might form alliances based on the historical group to which they belonged. So Ionian Greeks might team up against Dorians like the Spartans, or they might share religious festivals in common. They might even claim a mythological person as their ancestors, such as Heracles or Achilles.

  The legacy of invasion in the Heroic Age persisted into the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The Spartans were conscious that they were invaders who had subjugated the Messenians and Arcadians who had come before them, turning them into helots and slaves. One day, these subjugated people would overthrow their Dorian conquerors, turning Sparta from a Greek power into a week, depopulated backwater.

  The Classical Period

  The Classical Period represents the height of Greek civilization. It was a golden age of art, literature, and practically all forms of cultural life. During this time, the Greeks bested their enemies and spread their influence to most regions of the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean Sea might have become a Greek lake and not a Roman one if it was not for the propensity of the Greeks to war amongst each other. Where the Romans were good at assimilating their enemies, the Greeks were good at... well, remaining divided until this division eventually destroyed them.

  One of the most important events to occur during the Heroic or Archaic Age was the colonization of much of the Mediterranean. This colonization was very significant because it resulted in Greek culture and Greek gods being adopted by the Romans. The Roman pantheon of gods is essentially Greek with the addition of some peripheral characters that never really developed a story. Roman culture, therefore, has a strong undercurrent of the Greek culture that preceded it. Even Roman historiography continues the work of the Greek historians who came first.

  The Classical Period on the surface appears to see a gradual diminishing of the influence of the gods, but the reality is much more complex. The Greeks actually lived in fear of their divinities. Though Greek drama appears to suggest that the gods were both fickle and very human, the Greeks knew better than to anger them. Angering the gods would be enough to bring a city-state or people crashing down, a fate they were wise enough to try and avoid.

  Indeed, the gods almost took on a political connotation. The glory of Athens contributed to the glory of Athena. The Athenians erected monuments to their gods and heroes, like the Parthenon, Eretheum, and the so-called Theseum. This happened all over the Greek world. The Argives built monuments to Hera and the Ephesians built monuments to Artemis. In a way, the Classical period saw an increase in monuments to the gods even as society became in some ways more secular. It was almost a sort of Counter-Reformation that occurred minutely across all the city-states.

  Of course, many of these cities built such monuments after the Persian War, when cities were vying for influence in the newly freed Greek world. This is certainly what Athens did. Athena became not only an important goddess in general but the symbol of the preeminence of Athenai, the city of Athena. Her wisdom was theirs. It seemed only natural that plays, art, and literature should flourish, even if there was a subversive or sacrilegious element. That element could always be purged, as happened around the time of Socrates when the Athenian Republic was at its lowest.

  There, indeed, is another point to explore: a very important concept in Greek mythology. The Greek gods were gods of republics as well as kingdoms. They were the divinities of the Greek city-States as well as the kingdoms of Macedon and Epirus. Gods are by nature conservative, but the Greek gods seemed to be a little more free-thinking. It seemed the Greek gods, too, created Man in their own image. Come what may, the Greek gods would remain characteristically Greek.

  What did that mean? The answer to that question would become more obvious as Greek civilization declined. Of course, it never completely disappeared as the Romans continued it, but politically the Greeks would never be the same once Alexander came onto the scene.

  The defeat of the Persians in the 5th century left a power vacuum that had to be filled. Athens, as one of two preeminent Greek states during the Persians Wars (the other was Sparta), rose to fill the space by forming the Delian League out of Ionian states that were now free. It was called Delian because it was centered on the island of Delis. It became an Athenian Empire in all but name, and the rivalry between Athens and Sparta eventually boiled over into a war, the Peloponnesian War, which would last for nearly 30 years.

  This was spilled over into the Greek colonies of Magna Grecia, foreshadowing the eclipse of Greece proper by the fertile colonies to the West like Syracuse and Tarentum, cities which still exist to this day. As most of you already know, Athens was defeated in this war, which led to the formation of a conservative government.

  A Spartan-led Greece was short-lived, as the Spartans really did not have the propaganda machine and mass appeal that Athens could muster. Thebes rose briefly, but, in the end, the Greeks would be overrun by a tribal people to the North, the Macedonians, a huge event that would eventually spell the beginning of the end of the Greek gods.

  The Hellenistic Age

  The Greek gods never seemed to have a problem with war. Their concern seemed always to be that their altars were kept lit and their sacrifices were not forgotten. But it would be a too great propensity for war that would eventually lead the Greeks into problems. A Greece always at war was a perfect open door for a well-organized outsider to enter. In this case, it was Macedon, led by the one-eyed King Philip.

  Philip of Macedon was the father of Alexander the Great. The world was too small for him so he wept when he realized there were no more worlds left to conquer. Alexander, out of all Greek historical figures, seems more like a legend than a real person. He was larger than life, but it would be he that would spell the beginning of the end for the Olympians.

  What did Alexander do that was so wrong? Alexander realized that the Greeks and Macedonians would have to live with Persians, Egyptians, and others, and that meant that a little bit of cultural exchange would have to take place. That meant more than intermarrying. It meant that the Greeks would have to get used to gods like Isis, Osiris, and others. Simple enough. There was always room for more gods up on Mount Olympus. The problem comes about when those gods are of a different character. The Eastern and African gods were the divinities of autocrats, not free men. Indeed, as Greek democracy died with the rise of Alexander, so too would the Greek gods themselves.

  Chapter 2: In the Beginning

  Every mythological tradition has stories of creation. These creation myths set the framework for how everything else is learned unfolds. So the listener hears the stories of the creation of the universe, of the Titans and Olympians, of Pandora’s Box and Atlas, and they learn how to interpret everything that comes afterward. This is essentially the role of mythology in societies: to help ordinary people understand how to live in their world and relate to one another. So men and women learned that the gods should not be angered because they were prone to vengeance and that the gods also must be appeased in order to obtain what wanted from them.

  Though Greek mythology
is often thought of as the benchmark by which other mythologies are compared, there are some unique aspects to Greek myth and legend that set it apart. The Greek pantheon featured male and female gods, both of which were prominent in the web of Greek myth and legend. The Greeks placed emphasis on others such as demigods, nymphs and naiads, and heroes who seemed to occupy the middle ground between god and man.

  The Creation of the World

  The Ancient Greeks believed that life sprang from nothingness: the vast void of space. From this abyss, Gaia sprung into life. Gaia was the goddess of earth, the personification of the planet. Gaia gave birth to two children without having to mate. These sons were Uranus and Pontus. Gaia also gave birth to several children who were monsters as well. But the youngest of the godly sons of Gaia was Cronus, youngest of the Titans. Cronus was actually fathered by Uranus, who was therefore both the father and half-brother of Cronus.

  Cronus’s brothers had been imprisoned in Tartarus by Uranus because this god had been displeased with the offspring that Gaia had created. Cronus attacked his father, freeing the monster children of Gaia from their imprisonment in Tartarus. Cronus felt pride at his overthrow of his father and became the new king of the gods. Cronus also disliked his brother monsters and imprisoned them back in Tartarus, which caused the anger of his mother.