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The ancient Greek Mythology - Introduction to Greek Mythology
Ancient Greek mythology was part of a culture that lived for over a thousand years, with a prehistory reaching back millenia. It is an integral part of that culture's imaginative understanding of nature, human psychology, and its own history. It developed historically as a result of migrations, trade and absorption of local cults, and traditions; its figures, themes, and narratives show signs of origin in India, Asia Minor, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Egypt as well as in Greek territories. Greek mythology was absorbed and further modified by other cultures with which it came into contact, particularly that of Rome. In Greece, it was altered by oral transmission, adaptation by local cults, political manipulation, and of course imaginative folk and literary storytelling. (There never was a coherent religious structure in Greece, or a canon of religious writing.) All these processes resulted in variations and new stories that were incorporated into the body of myth and legend that has been transmitted to us. |
Most of what we know of Greek religion, myth, and legend comes from such literary sources as Homer, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, Pindar and other poets, the dramatists, and such writers as Pausanias and Apollodorus, who compiled a Library of mythology around 150 BCE, from modern-day interpretation of vase paintings, architectural sculpture, and archaeological evidence; and from linguistic research, including the twentieth-century reading of previously undecipherable Middle Eastern inscriptions. The Romans, who for their own reasons adopted much of Greek religion and mythology, somewhat arbitrarily identifying many Latin and Italian deities and spirits with those of the Greeks and subtly or not so subtly modifying them, have also influenced our understanding of the Greek material, either directly through Roman poets such as Ovid, or by way of Byzantine, medieval Church, or Renaissance writers.
In this webiste we can do no more than hint at the great literary and historical interest of Greek mythology. Here we present basic versions of narratives that were known to the Greeks in the Classical period, roughly between 700 and 350 BCE, with variations noted. An exception is the story of Cupid and Psyche, which is the work of a Roman writer of the second century CE. We present it as an example of the creative life led by Greek myths outside the Greek world.
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...In the beginning, Hesiod says, there was Chaos, vast and dark. Then appeared Gaea, the dep-breasted earth, and finally Eros, ' the love which softens hearts ', whose fructifying influence would thenceforth preside over the formation of beings an things. From Chaos were born Erebus and Night who, uniting, gave birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the day. On her part Gaea first bore Uranus, the sky crowned with stars, ' whom she made her equal in grandeur, so that he entirely covered her '. Then she created the high mountains and Pontus, ' the sterile sea ' with its harmonious waves...
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