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.