What are Greek Myths?

A Myth is a stroy never fixed in a definitive version and for many thousands of years orally told. The Greek Myths start to appear around 1200-1400BC and talk of past generation or civilization that was lost. Homer's Ilian and Homer's Odyssey should not be seen as the beginning of something but the culmination of great bardin traditions.

How the Greek Gods began

Hesiod in the 7th C BC wrote the Theogony of how the gods got to be where they were in the Greek times. The primordial pair are Gaia and Uranus. Each time Gaia gace birth Uranus replaced his children back inside Gaia becase he did not want to be replaced as a god. Gaia then conspired with her son Kronos to ambush is father and castrate thing with a spear through the sea and created Aphrodite. Kronos became king of the Gods but acted much like his father and swallowed all of his children. His wife Rheia tricks him in to swallowing a stone rather than Zeus to allow him to grow up in secret with the help of Gaia and Uranus. Later Zeus confronts his father and he is made to throw up the stone and then all his other children.

• Hestia
• Demeter
• Hera
• Hades

and Maybe

• Poseidon

After Zeus takes control his has to fight a ten year war against Kronos' sibllings called the Titans called the Titanomachy.Although the Titans were defeated they left considerable offspring personified as Chance, Persuasion, Cunning, Intelligence etc plus Nymphs, The Dawn, Sun, Wind and Stars etc. The Old Man of the Sea, Atlas and Prometheus as well as Harpies and Gorgons.

After winning Zeus was given the sky, Poseidon the sea and Hades the underworld. Zeus married Metis and had a daughter Athena. Metis tries to avoid Zeus and eventually it is prophesized thay yet again a son will supplant the father so he swallows Metis so she can counsel him.

Zeus and the Olympians

Zeus now needed to face Gaia's progeny the Giants. This fight is known as the Gigantomachy. Herakles, Apollo etc defeat the Giants Ephialtres, Eurytos etc.

Still vengeful Gaia sends down her son Typhoeus, born of Tartaros or Kronos. Half Man nd beast his hands could rouch tops of mountains. Zeus sends down thunderbolts but Typhoeus manages to almost cut his hands and feet of but they are recovered by Hermes and Aigipan. Zeus then marries Hera and has more children such as Ares

The tales are beautiful Aetiologies or tales that explain the origins of the universe. The Comparatists make most of the similarity of these tales with Egyptian tales and many coincidences between Hesiod's Theogany and Hittite poems such as the Myth of the Kingdom of Heavan

The Twelve Olympians

After these battles we are left with 12 Gods

• Zeus or Jupiter. Father of the gods and the sky, weather and hospitality. His attributes include thunderbolts
• Hera or Juno. Wife and very angry about his affairs. Attributes: Peacock.
• Poseidon or Neptune. Sea, earthquakes, bulls. Attribute. Trident
• Athena or Minerva. Arts and Warware. Attribute Helmet, Spear and Shield, snake fringed aegis
• Apollo. Music, devination, prophesy. Bow and arrow, lyre, laurels
• Artemis or Diana. Hunting. Bow and arrows, hunting outfits
• Aphrodite or Venus. Sex and Love. Girdle, cloves, sparrows
• Demeter. Corn and the fertility of the lands. Torch and corn
• Ares or Mars. War. Helmet spear and shield
• Hephaistos or Vulvan. Fire and metalurgy. Axe, anvil
• Hermes or Mercury Messenger of the gods. Also guides souls to the underworld, thieves. Winged boots, Herald's staff
• Dionysos or Bacchus. Wine, ecstacy, drama. Ivy, wines and panthers

The Comparatist Approach - The Origin of the Greek Gods and other Mythologies

Interpetations can take an analogy approach or comparatis approach

• Structuralists point to the binary oppositions e.g. Eartha and Sky, Chaos and Order. Male and Female
• Freudians would point to the castration motifs
• The Jungian archetype of marriage appears three times and the characters themselves can be seen as archetypes such as Zeus as Sky.

Comparatists point to the similarity to Egyptians talea of the marriage between Nut (Heavan) and Keb (Earth) and also to Hittite mythology. In the Myth of the Kingdom of Heaven Alula) thr 1ft King Of Heaven is overthrown by his son Anu who is in turn overthrown by Kumarbi by biting off his penis. He cannot spit out the seen of thr storm god Teshub who looks destined to overthrown him but Kazal comes out of his head and threatens to eat him. Eventually Teshub emerges from Kumarbi. Kumarbi seeks revenge in the Song of Ullikummi and impreganates a rock that gives birth to Ullikummi who grows enourmous in a matter of days. With help Teshab defeats him also.

In the myth of Illuyanka he is overpowered by a snake and loses his heart and eyes. He gets them back and with help from goddess Inara defats Illuyanka.

So there are plenty of similarities

• Succession of devine kings
• monstrous challenges
• recurrent motifs such as birth, castration, swallowing

But these events happen to different characters at different times. For instance the castration motif happens between Uranus and and Kronos but only once in the Hittite version. Also

• Anu (Sky) has a predecessor, Alula but Uranus (sky does not)
• Ullikummi is a stone monster. Typhoeus is a hybrid beast

It is possible that Hesiod was aware for some stories but unlikely he drew directly from them. Greeks would have travelled close to Hittite lands but it would be wrong to say the Greek Mythology derives from Hittite. The relationship is more like a gene pool where destinctive characteristics exist but with constant alternation of the genetic code. Sometimes they are similar sometimes not.

Hesiod also wrote about Pandora's Jar. Zeus wanted to counter-balance the power mankind had achieved when Prometheus gave mak the gift of fire. All the gods were asked to give something of themselves to create Pandora. Once created she was given a Jar and told not to open it. Eventually she is persuaded to open it and all the evils and travails of the world are released leaving Hope at the bottom of the jar.

In another story Hades God of Death kidnaps Persephone, daughter of Demeter and fertility is withdrawn from the world. Zeus demands Hades release her, which he does but not after ricking her to eat a pommegranite seed and henceforth she has to spent four months a year with Hades for ever more (non-growing Winter season)

What do these Myths Mean?

Myths are an economic form of thinking about the world. Think of it as a process than a thing. To myth rather than a myth. It explains why things in human life are as they are and why life to so hard and full of challenges but they are not a scapegoat for what goes on or to persuade us to look at our live's in a fatalist perspective but get her to think deeply about the reasons why things happen as they do. They are not prescritive in the way that 1 plus 1 equals 2 but instead it gives pointers, insights amd questions on the human condition.

Myths as a thought experiment

The Tragedians of the 5th C BC started to develp plays that interwove myths into their great tragic stage plays from writers such as Sophokles. The tragedies often explore the underside of heroism so for instance Orestes must decide to avenge his father's death or kill his mother who had Agamemenon slain. Stories like this test political and moral categories.

Greek Scholars and Myths

When the great Greek scholars were starting to write on philosophy and politics one would have thought they wouuld have little time for the myths. Like it or not they were so ingrained in society and still are in the 21st C. These scholars and poets actually co-opted them for their own ends. Take Ovid in his 15 volume Metaphorphoses. His narrator takes the position of beleiving the myths yet the characters questions their veracity, which seems to question the myth from within its self.

Commentary

I like the phase "explain the unexplainable" but I might replace "explain" with "understand" as "explain" might infer there is an answer. I listened to a very interesting podcast on Greek Myths chaired by Melvyn Bragg http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0093z1k . In the podcast Mary Beard suggests that myths are a process not a thing and we should start the definition with "To myth" rather than "A myth" as a way of thinking of myths. Myths help us understand why our lives are so difficult and full of challenges and help us think deeply about the reasons why things happen but without being prescriptive. Instead they give us pointers, suggestions and insights on the human condition.

Another perspective is that myths test our moral convictions. The Tragedians used myths to explore the underside of heroism. For example, faced with a moral dilemma, which among a number of equally destructive actions should the hero take? In both perspectives we are dealing with consequences of actions rather than something that leads us to a definitive conclusion and this might be why defining what myths are is so difficult.

One thing the experts said was that myth wasn't 'fixed', that it could continue to be re-told and re-interpreted even after it was written down. Also that many myths had regional variations. That they were a set of ways of looking at the world, they help us think about human existance, why it's so hard and why we do what we do. That there is a tension between myth and fact. Myth is always asking - do you believe? How far will you go along with this?

I find interesting the idea that myths aren't " fixed" and is something I had never really focused on before. It ties in with the comment of Walter Burkett that a myth satisfies the need of both its teller and its audience. Myths can look at " big questions" like the creation of the world, life after death but the way they are interpreted and told is rooted in particular cultures. I was thinking about how the myth of Dionysus was adopted by the Romans but then due to official dispproval at the excesses of the Dionysian cult was " toned down" .

  * the question of whether a myth has to be grounded in a real event
  * the idea that myth wasn't 'fixed', that it could continue to be re-told and re-interpreted even after it was written down.
  * many myths have regional variations
  * the notion that myth satisfies the need of both its teller and audience.

Pairing the Gods

Any study which attempted to define the Greek gods independently from one another, as if they were separate and isolated figures, would be in danger of missing an essential point about them. Much erudition has been brought to studies of this kind and they provide us with much highly valued information. However, it is no longer possible today to be satisfied with such an approach. The work of an historian of religion such as G. Dumezil has clearly shown that, as with a linguistic system, it is impossible to understand a religious system without making a study of how the various gods relate to each other.

Instead of simply drawing up a list of the different deities we must analyse the structure of the pantheon and show how the various powers are grouped, associated together and opposed to and distinguished from each other. Only in this way can the pertinent features of each god or each group of gods emerge ­- that is to say, those which are significant from the point of view of religious thought. The study of a god such as Hermes, who is a very complex figure, must first define his relation to Zeus in order to pick out what in particular it is that Hermes contributes to the wielding of sovereign power, and then compare him with Apollo, Hestia, Dionysos and Aphrodite. Hermes has affinities with all of these gods but is distinguished from each of them by certain modes of action which are peculiar to him.

Why Dionysus appears so comparatively late and why Pan disappears?

This is, in a sense, how polytheism works. You've always got space for new gods - maybe they've never been properly acknowledged before, of maybe one feels them to be particularly significant at the moment. A good case in point is Tykhe (Chance), who becomes particularly significant at around the start of the Hellenistic Age - Alexander the Great had stirred things up so much that people felt that life was more unstable than it had ever been before, and so we see a particularly strong interest in Tykhe in cult, art, drama, philosophy etc. The same goes for Kairos (the Opportune Moment). Greek religion (or religions?) seems to have a strong element of 'bulge and squeeze' about it!

Dionysos might not be as late as used to be thought - there's quite strong evidence in the Linear B tablets from Pylos and Keos that he was worshipped in Greece from at least the 15th century BCE. The definitive book on all this is Walter Burkert's Greek Religion, Blackwell, 1985.

The influence of foreigners on the Olympians

Looking back at Homer, it is a bit odd that the Greeks and the Trojans all speak perfect Greek and worship Greek deities. The find of a biconvex seal in VIIb1 (1180 - 1130 BCE on Korfmann's dating) inscribed with a man’s and woman’s name in Luwian hieroglyphics is the first evidence for writing at Troy (absolutely nothing found prior to that date yet). Its owner was a scribe, and seals like this were used by kings, bureaucrats and officials throughout the Hittite empire and its vassal states. . But this doesn’t prove that the Trojans spoke Luwian:

• Luwian was used on seal inscriptions throughout the area of Hittite control, regardless of the local language(s) – it was the language of the political elite;
• The fact that it was found at Troy does not prove that it came from there originally – seals are highly portable

It is inconclusive either way. One suggested scenario, though, is that the kingdom of Wilusa-Troy was the creation of a dynasty of Luwian ethnic origin that established its authority over the region at the start of the Late Bronze Age. During the Early Bronze Age quite a lot of newcomers, who spoke Indo-European language(s) had arrived in Anatolia:

• Hattians (central Anatolia): became part of the basic stock of the Hittite empire, speaking Nesite (i.e. ‘Hittite’);
• Palaians: north-west of Hatti, spoke Palaic;
• Luwians: western & southern Anatolia, spoke Luwian. Possibly these people are responsible for destruction of sites c. 2300 BCE, including, perhaps, Troy II. But this is not proved, and there is no change in culture between Troy II and III. Maybe:
• Luwians just sacked it and moved on;
• They were absorbed into the local culture and became indistinguishable from it;
• Troy had always had a Luwian population (or a big element of one).

Troy VI (1740/30 - 1300 BCE on Korfmann's dating) shows a major material-cultural break with what preceded it. Did Luwians take it over, seeing the advantages of the site? One theory posits that the Luwian kingdom’s seat of power was the citadel at Hisarlik which was extensively redeveloped by the new dynasty – royal palace, spacious residences, big fortifications, etc. – who ruled a population of mixed ethnicity.

In 'real life', Greeks and Luwians were both of Indo-European stock, and so would have spoken the same language-family, but that doesn’t mean that they were closely related. Homer’s identical Greeks and Trojans must be a literary convention – their languages were probably unintelligible.