Greek Mythology

B

Heroes and Heroines

Myths told how the divinities, in their likeness and unlikeness to humanity, interacted with another group: the heroes and heroines. These were a particular category of mortals who, though dead, were believed to retain power to influence the lives of the living; hence they were, like the gods, recipients of cult. In myths they represented a kind of bridge between gods and mortals. Heroes such as Achilles, Perseus, and Aeneas were the products of a sexual union between a deity and a mortal. The fact that the gods often intervened to help heroes—for example, during combat—indicated not the heroes’ weakness, but their special importance. Yet they were not the equals of the gods. Hence, with a logic characteristic of Greek myth, heroes and heroines typically embodied a defect to balance out their exceptional power: Achilles was invulnerable except in the ankle; Cassandra always prophesied the truth but was never believed. Heracles constituted an extreme example of this paradox: his awesome strength was balanced by a tendency to become a victim of his own excessive violence. Nevertheless, the gods allowed Heracles, exceptionally, to cross the ultimate boundary by gaining admission to Olympus.

V

Functions

In common with most other mythological traditions, Greek myths served several readily identifiable functions. First, Greek myths were explanatory. They lent structure and order to the world, and showed how the current state of things had originated. Thus Hesiod’s Theogony narrated the development of the present ordering of the universe by relating it to Chaos, the origin of all things. By a complex process of violence, struggle, and sexual attraction, the regime contemporary to Zeus had eventually come into being. Another poem by Hesiod, “Works and Days”, gave an explanatory (or aetiological) account of why the world is full of trouble. The reason is that the first woman, Pandora, opened a jar whose lid she had been forbidden to lift; all the diseases and miseries previously confined in the jar escaped into the world. Such a myth also made an implicit statement about gender-relationships within Hesiod’s own world: the largely male audience for which (it is thought) he composed was evidently receptive to a tale that put women at the root of all evil.

One of the commonest types of explanation given in myths related to ritual. Myths helped worshippers to make sense of a religious practice by telling how it originated. A prime example was the supposed origin of sacrifice. This ritual involved the killing of a domesticated animal, in a ceremony that culminated in the butchering, cooking, and sharing of the meat of the victim. Hesiod recounts the aetiological myth associated with this rite. According to this myth, the tricky Titan Prometheus tried to outwit Zeus, by offering him a cunningly devised choice of meals: either an apparently unappetizing dish (an ox paunch—but with the tastiest meat concealed within) or a seemingly delicious one (gleaming fat on the outside—but with nothing but bones hidden beneath). Zeus chose the second dish, and ever since human beings have kept the tastiest part of every sacrifice for themselves, leaving the gods nothing but the savour of the rising smoke.

Myths were also vehicles of exploration. They charted paths through difficult territory, examining contradictions and ambiguities. For instance, Homer’s Iliad explores the consequences of the decision by the Greek leader Agamemnon to deprive another Greek warrior, Achilles, of his allotted prize (a slave-girl). Achilles feels that his honour or worth has been infringed; but how far ought he to go in his reaction? Is he right to refuse to fight, even if that means the destruction of the Greek army? Is he justified in rejecting the offer of compensation which Agamemnon makes to him? One of this epic’s themes is an exploration, through the medium of myth-telling, of the limits of honour.

The clearest example of mythical explanation is to be found in the narrative genre developed in 5th-century Athens: tragedy (see Greek Literature; Drama and Dramatic Arts). Athenian tragedies explored social questions by locating them, in extreme and exaggerated form, in a mythical context. Sophocles’ tragic play Antigone concerns just such an extreme situation. Two brothers have killed each other in battle, one (Eteocles) defending his homeland, the other (Polynices) attacking it. Their sister Antigone, in defiance of an edict by the city’s ruler, attempts to bury her ostensibly traitorous brother Polynices. Is she justified? Which should prevail, the religious obligation (especially on female kin) to tend and bury a corpse, or the city’s well-being? In fact, the moral issues involved are far from clear-cut, as would be expected from a work whose subtlety and profundity have so often been admired.

Myths also had the function of legitimation. If a claim, an action, or a relationship could be seen to have a mythical precedent, it thereby acquired extra authority. Aristocratic Greek families liked to trace their ancestry back to the heroes or gods of mythology; there is ample evidence for this in the songs of the poet Pindar (early 5th century bc), who used to praise the exploits of contemporary victors in the Olympian Games by linking them with the deeds of their mythical ancestors. Again, if a city could argue that it had had an alliance with another city in the mythological past, such a memory might help to cement contemporary bonds between two city-states.

Last but not least, myth-telling was felt to be a source of enjoyment and entertainment. Homer’s epics contain several descriptions of audiences held spellbound by the songs of bards, and it is known that real-life recitations of Homer attracted audiences. Public performances of tragic drama were also hugely popular, regularly drawing some 15,000 spectators.

VI

Legacy

Mythology formed a central point of reference within Greek society, since it was interwoven with ritual and with other aspects of social existence. Yet the question of how far people believed the myths is a difficult and probably unanswerable one. Some intellectuals tried to rationalize the myths: for Palaephatus (4th century BC), the stories of the Thracian king Diomedes being devoured by his own man-eating mares, and that of the young hunter Actaeon being torn apart by his own hounds, concealed perfectly credible accounts of young men who had spent too much on their animals and so been figuratively eaten alive by debt. Other thinkers, such as Plato, objected on moral grounds to some myths, particularly those that portrayed crimes committed by the gods. Yet the imaginative power and persistence of the myths seems hardly to have been touched by such scepticism. As late as the 2nd century ad, when the traveller Pausanias wrote a detailed account of parts of the Greek mainland, he talked of the myths and cults in the places he visited as if they constituted a still-living complex of religious discourse and behaviour.

When Greek civilization was eventually taken over by the Romans, Greek myths, in adapted form, continued to be a vehicle for reflecting on and coping with the world. In the Aeneid Virgil took the theme of the wandering of the Trojan hero Aeneas, and his eventual foundation of a settlement that was the precursor of Rome (see Kings of Rome). Not only does this work explicitly continue story-patterns developed in Homeric epic, but it makes constant and detailed allusions to the text of Homer and other Greek writers. As for Ovid, his long poem entitled Metamorphoses embraces an enormous number of Greek myths, reworked into a composition that would have unparalleled influence on Medieval and Renaissance European culture.

The survival of Greek mythology during Christian antiquity was assured by a variety of interpretative strategies, most notably that involving allegory. If a pagan story could be reinterpreted so that it was found to express a hidden, uplifting meaning, then it could be incorporated into a Christian world view. Thus the mythographer Fulgentius (5th century ad) gave an allegorical reading of the Judgement of Paris: when mythology told of a young Trojan shepherd faced with a choice between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, what this actually meant was a moral choice, between a life of action, a life of contemplation, and a life dominated by love. This kind of allegorical approach to the myths has never died out; it can still be seen today in the writings of those who regard the myths as expressions of basic, universal psychological truths.

The influence of Greek mythology on the later Western tradition in art, music, and literature can hardly be exaggerated. Many of the greatest works of painting and sculpture have taken myths as their subject, for example Birth of Venus by Botticelli, the marble sculpture of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, the terrifying Cronus Devouring One of his Children by Goya, and the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel, in which peasants continue with their daily toil oblivious of the mythological drama being played out in the sky above. Musicians too, especially composers of opera and oratorio, have found inspiration in the ancient stories, from the dramatizations of the return of Odysseus and the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice by Monteverdi, to Elektra by Richard Strauss, and Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky. On literature the impact of Greek mythology has been incalculably great. In the 20th century the story of the murderous revenge of Orestes on his mother Clytemnestra has inspired dramatists as diverse as Eugene O’Neill, T. S. Eliot, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Among the most notable of all mythologically inspired works has been Ulysses, the intricate novel by James Joyce in which Ulysses (Odysseus) becomes the Dubliner Leopold Bloom, while Bloom’s wife Molly combines characteristics of the faithful Penelope and the seductive Calypso.

The influence of Greek mythological story-patterns shows no sign of abating. Computer games (see Electronic Games) and science fiction frequently use combat- or quest-oriented story-patterns that have particularly clear parallels in Classical mythology. Greek myths developed in one specific, ancient society, but the emotional and intellectual content of the stories has proved adaptable to a broad range of different cultural contexts.