I.

Introduction

Greek Mythology, set of diverse traditional tales told by the ancient Greeks about the exploits of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, and their interrelations with ordinary mortals.

Greek religion was polytheistic, and the culture within which it was practised was pluralistic: there was no single orthodoxy, and no equivalent of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran—that is, no sacred, written text in which all adherents were expected to believe. In Greece, therefore, stories about the origins and actions of divinities could and did vary widely, depending on the context in which they were told: different types of narrative—epic, tragedy, comedy, for example—portrayed widely differing and even conflicting aspects of the divine world. There were geographical variations too: a god might have one set of characteristics in one city or region, and quite different characteristics elsewhere. Greek mythology was like a complex and rich language, in which a vast range of perceptions about the world could be expressed.

II.

Origins, Sources, and Development

The focus of the present article is on mythology of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods; that is, roughly from the 8th century bc to the late 1st century bc. However, something must first be said about when and where that mythology might have originated.

A.

Origins

Linguists have concluded that some names of Greek deities, including the name “Zeus”, can be traced back to gods worshipped by speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of the Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit languages. But—quite apart from the fact that very little is known about the people who may have spoken Proto-Indo-European—it would in any case be misleading to regard this as “the origin” of Greek mythology, since many other elements contributed.

Archaeology has shown that many places where mythical events were, in the Greek imagination, located correspond to sites which were historically important during the Mycenaean period (second half of the 2nd millennium bc); so it is likely that the Mycenaeans made a major contribution to the development of the stories, even if this is hard to demonstrate in detail. The same kind of formative influence has been argued for the Minoan civilization of Crete, on the grounds that, for example, the myth of the Minotaur (half-bull, half-man) in his labyrinth might be a memory of historical bull-worship in the labyrinthine Palace of Knossos. However, there is little evidence for the survival of prehistoric Cretan religion in Classical Greece. Even Minos existed, so far as is known, only in myth: at least, nothing in surviving Linear B inscriptions (an early form of Greek) has yet confirmed that there ever was such a king.

Influence from the Near East can be demonstrated much more reliably. Especially in the realm of cosmogony and theogony, Greeks owed much to the heritage of Mesopotamian and Anatolian cultures. To take one example: when the Archaic Greek poet Hesiod sang about the castration of Ouranos (“Sky”, “Heaven”—see Uranus) by his son Cronus, and the subsequent overthrow of Cronus by his son Zeus, a clear parallel exists in the earlier Hurrian myth (known through Hittite sources) of the sky god Anu castrated by Kumarbi, “father of the gods”, who was in turn displaced by the storm god. More and more such similarities continue to be brought to light by scholars.

B.

Sources and Development

The direct sources for the Greek myths are a mixture of written texts, sculpture, and decorated pottery. Information about stories that circulated orally has to be reconstructed indirectly, by inference and guesswork.

The Iliad and Odyssey, epic poems attributed to Homer (c. 8th century bc), stand at the beginning of the Greek literary achievement (see Greek Literature), even though they almost certainly depended on a lengthy previous tradition of orally composed poetry. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War (see below); it focuses on the consequences of a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, two of the leading Greek warriors. The Odyssey is about the aftermath of the Trojan War, when the Greek hero Odysseus at last returns to his home on the island of Ithaca following years of wandering in wild and magical lands. The Trojan War would later provide the subject matter for many tragic dramas (originally staged in Athens, but replayed all over Greece later), and was illustrated on countless painted vases.

Contemporary with the Homeric epics were the songs of Hesiod. His Theogony gave an authoritative account of “how things began”. The coming-to-be (or creation) of the world described by Hesiod in terms of the passions and crimes of the gods, is a theme that Greek thinkers such as Empedocles and Plato would develop in new directions—a reminder that Greek mythology was not a completely separate aspect of Greek culture, but one that interacted with many other fields of experience. This is particularly true of the writing of history. For example Herodotus (5th century bc), in his historical account of the war between Greeks and Persians, employed numerous themes and story patterns found also in epic and tragedy.

Though the authority of Homer and Hesiod remained dominant, the poetic retelling of myths continued throughout antiquity. Myths were constantly remade in the light of new social and political circumstances. Thus the Hellenistic period (usually defined as 323-31 bc) saw many new trends in the treatment of myths. One of the most important was the development of “mythography”, a type of work that compiled and codified myths on the basis of particular themes (for example, myths about metamorphosis). Such codification corresponded to the wish of newly established Hellenistic rulers to lend legitimacy to their regimes by claiming to be continuing a cultural tradition reaching back into a supposedly great past.

Artists too portrayed myths. Temples contained statues of the gods, and the pediments and friezes on the outside of temples were adorned with relief sculptures of scenes from mythology (see Greek Art and Architecture). Among the best-known examples are the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, which include depictions of combat between centaurs (half-man, half-horse) and heroes from the race known as Lapiths. There were also plenty of more modest visual representations of mythology. The best evidence comes from thousands of surviving painted ceramic vases, which were used in a variety of contexts, from cookery to funerary ritual to athletic games (vases filled with oil were awarded as prizes). Often the imagery can be securely identified as mythological, but sometimes there is no way of telling whether an allusion to mythology was envisaged; myth becomes fused with everyday life.

As well as the myths that have survived into the present in literary and artistic works, Greeks also retold myths orally. Mothers, grandmothers, and nurses transmitted to children tales of monsters, bogeymen, and also myths of gods and heroes; for their part, old men gathered to exchange tales in leschai (clubs or “conversation places”). Storytelling, whether in writing, art, or speech, was at the heart of Greek civilization.

III.

Principal Gods, Heroes, and Other Mythological Figures

Given the plurality of myths that circulated in Greece, it is impossible to select a single canonical version of the genealogy of the gods. However, if the account of Hesiod’s Theogony is combined with that in the Library attributed to the mythographer Apollodorus, the result is a narrative that most Greeks would have recognized as plausible.

A.

Genealogy and Powers of the Gods

The foundation of all things was Chaos (“Gaping Void”). Next came Gaea (“Earth”), the bottomless depth known as Tartarus, and Eros (“Love”), needed to draw divinities together in order to propagate. Chaos produced Night, while Gaea bore Ouranos first of all, and after that mountains, sea, and the gods known as Titans, who strove to commit arrogant deeds; the youngest of these was Cronus. Also born to Gaea were the Cyclops, one-eyed giants who made thunderbolts.

Ouranos tried to block any succession to his own supremacy by forcing back into Gaea the children whom she bore. But Cronus thwarted his father, castrating him with a sickle and tossing his genitals into the sea; from the bloody foam Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love, was born. Sovereignty then passed to Cronus, but he in turn feared that he would be supplanted by his son. When his sister-wife Rhea gave birth to offspring (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon), Cronus swallowed them. Only the youngest, Zeus, escaped this fate, when Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in place of the baby.

When fully grown, Zeus forced his father to disgorge those he had swallowed; with their help, and armed with the thunderbolt, Zeus made war on Cronus and the Titans, and overcame them. A new regime was established, that of the Olympians, based on Mount Olympus. Zeus ruled the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the Underworld.

Zeus married his sister Hera, and among their children was Ares, whose sphere of influence was war. However, Zeus also had numerous children by other women, both mortal and immortal. By Semele he had Dionysus, a god associated with wine and with other forms of intoxication and ecstasy. By Leto, a Titan, Zeus fathered Apollo and Artemis, two of the greatest Olympian divinities. Artemis remained a virgin, and took hunting as her special province; Apollo was associated with music, ritual purification, and prophecy, above all with the oracular shrine at Delphi. By the nymph Maia, Zeus became father of Hermes, the trickster god who had the power to cross all kinds of boundaries: he guided the souls of the dead down to the Underworld, carried messages between gods and mortals, and drifted a magical sleep upon the wakeful.

Two other Olympian divinities, Hephaestus and Athena, had unusual births. Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, was conceived by Hera without a male partner. Subsequently he suffered the wrath of Zeus, who once hurled him from Olympus for coming to the aid of his mother; this fall down on to the island of Lemnos crippled Hephaestus. The birth of Athena was even more anomalous. Zeus had intercourse with Metis (“Cunning Intelligence”), daughter of the Titan Ocean; but Zeus had been warned by Gaea that, after giving birth to the girl with whom she was pregnant, Metis would bear a son destined to rule Heaven. To avoid this, Zeus swallowed Metis (as Cronus had previously tried to block the succession to himself by swallowing his own children). Metis’ child Athena was born from Zeus’ head, which Hephaestus split open with an axe. Athena, another virgin goddess, embodied the power of practical intelligence in warfare and craftsmanship. She was the patron deity of the city of Athens.

Another of Zeus’ children was Persephone; her mother was Demeter, goddess of corn and vegetation. Once, when Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, Hades, god of the Underworld, saw and abducted her, taking her down to the Kingdom of the Dead to be his bride. Her grief-stricken mother wandered the world in search of her; as a result, fertility left the earth. Zeus commanded Hades to release Persephone, but Hades had cunningly given her a pomegranate seed to eat; having consumed food from the Underworld, she was obliged to return below the earth for part of each year. This myth was told especially in connection with the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which offered initiates the hope of symbolic rebirth in the same way as Persephone had been reborn after staying with Hades.

As well as reporting the exploits of the principal Olympians, Greek myths refer to a rich variety of other divinities, each with their particular sphere of influence. Many were children of Zeus, symbolizing the fact that they belonged to the new order of Zeus’ regime. The Muses, children of Zeus and Mnemosyne (“Memory”), presided over song, dance, and music; the Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—and the Horae—Eirene, Eunomia, and Dike (“Peace”, “Good Order”, and “Justice”)—were appropriately the children of Zeus and Themis (“Right”). Far different in temperament were the Erinyes (Furies), ancient and repellent goddesses who had sprung from the earth where it had been impregnated with the blood of Ouranos’ severed genitals. Yet, abhorrent though they were, the Erinyes too had a legitimate role in the world: to pursue those who had murdered their own kin.

Human existence is characterized by disorder as well as order, and many of the most characteristic figures in Greek mythology exert a powerfully disruptive effect. Satyrs—imagined as part human, part horse (or part goat)—led lives dominated by wine and lust; myths depicted them in drunken pursuit of nymphs in a wild landscape. Images of satyrs are found on many vases used at symposia (drinking-parties). Equally wild, but more threatening, were the centaurs, who were prone to uncontrolled aggression (their combat with the Lapiths, depicted on the Parthenon, was caused by the centaurs’ attempt to carry off Lapith women at a wedding feast). A different sort of threat was posed by the Sirens, usually portrayed as birds with women’s heads. These island-dwelling enchantresses lured mariners to their deaths by the irresistible beauty of their song. Odysseus alone was able to survive this temptation, by ordering his companions to block their own ears, to bind him to the mast of his ship, and to ignore all his entreaties to be allowed to follow the lure of the Sirens’ song.

B.

Mortals

Various conflicting stories were told about the creation of humanity. Some myths recounted how the populations of particular localities had been autochthonous, that is, had sprung directly from the earth. The Arcadians claimed this distinction for their “first man”, Pelasgus (see Pelasgians), while the Thebans boasted descent from earthborn men who had sprung from the spot where Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, had sown the ground with the teeth of a sacred serpent. According to another tale it was Prometheus who fashioned the first mortal from water and earth, though in the more usual version of the story Prometheus did not actually create humanity, but simply lent it assistance through the gift of fire.

Another tale dealt with humanity’s re-creation. When Zeus planned to destroy a primordial race living on Earth, he sent a deluge. However, Deucalion and Pyrrha—the Greek equivalents of Noah and his wife—put provisions into a chest and climbed into it. Carried across the waters of the flood, they landed on Mount Parnassus. When the waters receded, the couple gratefully sacrificed to Zeus. His response was to send Hermes to instruct them how to repopulate the world. They should cast stones behind them: those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women.

From Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, there descended (according to one genealogy) Dorus, Aiolus, and Xouthos, and from Xouthos, Achaios and Ion; all were eponymous heroes of various regional or linguistic groups among the Hellenes. These figures, in their turn, produced offspring who, along with children born of unions between divinities and mortals, made up that disparate collection of heroes and heroines whose exploits constitute a central part of Greek mythology.

C.

Heroes: Prowess and Violence

Several myths relate to quests or combats involving expeditions by groups of heroes.

Meleager was the son of King Oeneus of Calydon and his wife Althaea. At Meleager’s birth the Fates predicted that he would die when a log burning on the hearth was completely consumed. His mother snatched the log and hid it in a chest. Meleager grew to manhood. One day, his father accidentally omitted Artemis from a sacrifice; in revenge she sent a mighty boar to ravage the country. Meleager set out to destroy it, accompanied by some of the greatest heroes of the day, including Peleus, Telamon, Theseus, Jason, and Castor and Pollux. The boar was killed but, in a quarrel about who should receive the boarskin, Meleager killed his mother’s brothers. In her anger Althaea threw the log on to the fire, so ending her son’s life; she then hanged herself.

The same generation of heroes took part in the Argonautic expedition. King Pelias of Iolcus had been warned by an oracle to beware of a man with only one sandal. When a young man called Jason arrived having lost a sandal while crossing a river, Pelias sent him away on an apparently impossible quest to win the Golden Fleece, which was guarded by a serpent in the far-off land of Colchis, on the Black Sea. Thanks to the magical powers of Medea, daughter of the ruler of Colchis, Jason won the Fleece and returned with it to Iolcus; Medea then took horrible revenge on Pelias by tricking his own daughters into cutting him up and boiling him in a cauldron. Medea’s story continued to involve horrific violence: when rejected by Jason in favour of another woman, she once more used her magic to avenge herself with extreme cruelty.

The greatest expedition of all was that which resulted in the Trojan War. The object of this quest was Helen, a Greek woman who had been abducted by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. Helen’s husband Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon led an army of Greeks to besiege Troy. After ten years, with many heroes dead on both sides, the city fell to the trick of the Trojan Horse. For the Trojans defeat meant death or enslavement; for the Greeks it meant the chance to return home, whether to a welcome from a faithful wife (Penelope and Odysseus) or to murder by an adulterous one (Clytemnestra and Agamemnon).

A central theme of Greek mythology is the conflict between civilization and wild savagery, a conflict exemplified by the deeds of Heracles (see Hercules) and Theseus. Each confronted and overcame monstrous opponents, yet neither enjoyed unclouded happiness. Heracles left the Argonautic expedition after being plunged into grief at the loss of his squire Hylas; in another story, a fit of madness led him to kill his own wife and children. Theseus successfully slew the Minotaur, yet on his voyage home to Athens he forgot to hoist the white sails which would have signified that his exploit had been successful; his heartbroken father Aegeus committed suicide.

No hero has fascinated students of Greek mythology more than Oedipus. He too destroyed a monster, the Sphinx, by answering its riddle; yet his ultimate downfall served as a terrifying warning of the instability of human fortune. As a baby, he had been abandoned on a mountainside by his parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, because of a prophecy that the child would grow up to kill its father and marry its mother. Saved by the pity of a shepherd, the child—its identity unknown—was reared by the king and queen of the neighbouring city of Corinth. In due course, Oedipus unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy, matching the horrific crimes he had committed with the equally ghastly self-punishment of piercing his own eyes with Jocasta’s brooch-pins.

IV.

The Nature of the Gods and Heroes

A.

Gods and Goddesses

The gods and goddesses of Greek mythology were in many respects like extraordinarily powerful mortals: they experienced (albeit in supernaturally intense form) such emotions as jealousy, love, grief, and the desire to assert their own authority and to punish anyone who flouted it. As numerous literary descriptions and artistic representations testify, the gods’ shape, too, was typically imagined as human (anthropomorphic), even though strongly idealized. Moreover, relationships between divinities were partly modelled on those between human beings: Apollo and Artemis were brother and sister, Zeus and Hera were husband and wife, and the society of the gods on Mount Olympus resembled that of an unruly family, with Zeus at its head. The gods could be temporarily drawn into the human world: they might fall in love with a mortal (as Aphrodite did with Adonis, Apollo with Daphne, Zeus with Leda, Alcmene, and Danae), or destroy a mortal who displeased them (as Dionysus destroyed King Pentheus of Thebes for mocking his rites). However, all such involvements with mortals were limited by a crucial distinction: human beings die, but gods and goddesses do not.

As well as their anthropomorphism, Greek divinities had a different side: they could be uncanny, strange, alien. This quality is powerfully visible in artistic representations of monsters, such as the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa with the stare that turned her victims to stone; or the Graeae, crones grey-haired from birth who possessed but a single tooth and a single eye between them; or the hideous monster Typhoeus, from whose shoulders grew a hundred snake-heads with dark, flickering tongues. Such alienness is a characteristic even of the major deities of Olympus: one of the recurrent markers of divine power is the ability to change shape, either one’s own (Athena once transformed herself into a vulture; Poseidon once took the form of a stallion) or that of others (Zeus turned Lycaon into a wolf to punish him for his wickedness). The ability to exercise power over the crossing of boundaries is a crucial feature of divine power among the Greeks.

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.