Greek mythology refers to stories of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of Greek mythology are either transcriptions of this spoken word, or are later literary reworkings.

For information on the worship and cult-practices offered to Greek gods and heroes, see Greek religion.

Overview

The scope of Greek mythology is enormous. It extends from the horrific crimes of the early gods and the bloody wars of Troy and Thebes, to the childhood pranks of Hermes and the touching grief of Demeter for Persephone. The legions of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, monsters, daemons, nymphs, satyrs, centaurs and chimaeras that one encounters in traversing this vast landscape are beyond count.

Like their neighbors, the Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and sex, while Ares was the god of war and Hades the god of the dead. Some deities like Apollo and Dionysus revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others like Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. There were also site-specific deities, such as river gods and nymphs of springs and caves, and venerated tombs of local heros and heroines.

Greek religion also included the Eleusinian mysteries and othermystery cults, which had their own body of secret tales to pass on to initiates. Some practitioners of these rites made use of books attributed to Orpheus and Musaeus. Although these and other works of dubious authorship survive only in scanty fragments or quotations today, what does remain offers us a tantalizing glimpse at a strange mythological world not hinted at in Homer and Hesiod.

Although there were hundreds of beings that could be considered "gods" or "heroes" in one sense or another, some figured only in folklore or were honored locally in particular places (e.g. Trophonius) or at particular festivals (e.g. Adonis). Major sites of ritual, the large temples, were dedicated mostly to a small circle of gods, chiefly the twelve Olympians, Heracles and Asclepius and in some places Helios. These deities were the centers of the large pan-Hellenic cults. Many regions and individual villages had their own cults centered on nymphs, minor deities, heroes or heroines unknown elsewhere; most cities also worshipped the major gods with peculiar local rites and had peculiar local legends about them.

The Nature of Greek Mythology

While all cultures throughout the world have their own mythologies, the term is a Greek coinage, and had a specialized meaning within Greek culture.

The Greek term muthologia is a compound of two smaller words:

• muthos — which in Homeric Greek means roughly "a ritualized speech act", as of a chieftain at an assembly, or of a poet or priest.
• logos — which in Classical Greek means "a convincing story, an ordered argument".

In the original sense, therefore, a mythology is an attempt to bring sense to the stylized narratives that the Greeks recited at festivals, whispered at shrines, and bandied about at aristocratic banquets. Since few breeds of men are more prone to squabbling than poets, priests and aristocrats, contradictions in the material are rife. Moreover, they are part of the fun.

Sources

Several types of primary source are available for the study of Greek mythology.

1. The poetry of the Archaic and Classical eras — composed primarily for performance at cultic festivals or aristocratic banquets, and thus part of muthos in the Homeric sense (see Etymology above). This includes:
   • the Homeric Odyssey, Iliad and Hymns
   • the Hesiodic Theogony.
   • the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes
   • the choral hymns of Pindar and Bacchylides.
2. The work of historians, like Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers, like Pausanias and Strabo, who made travels around the Greek world and noted down the stories they heard at various cities.
3. The work of mythographers, who wrote prose treatises based on learned research attempting to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets. The Bibliotheke by Apollodorus of Athens is the largest extant example of this genre.
4. The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which although composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise, nevertheless contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of:
   • The Hellenistic poets Apollonius of Rhodes and Callimachus.
   • The Roman poets Hyginus, Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Virgil.
   • The Late Antique Greek poets Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus.
5. The ancient novels of Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus and Heliodorus.

Did the Greeks believe their myths?

To the Greeks, mythology was literally a part of their history; few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks used myth to explain cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace one's descent from a mythological hero or a god.

On the other hand, philosophers like Xenophanes were already beginning to label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies in the 6th century BC; this line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato's Republic and Laws. More sportingly, the 5th century BCE tragedian Euripides often played with the old traditions, mocking them, and through the voice of his characters injecting notes of doubt. In other cases Euripides seems to be directing pointed criticism at the behavior of his gods.

Hellenistic Rationalism

The skeptical turn of the Classical age became even more pronounced in the Hellenistic era. Most daringly, the mythographer Euhemerus claimed that stories about the gods were only confused memories of the cruelty of ancient kings. Although Euhemerus's works are lost, interpretations in his style are frequently found in Diodorus Siculus.

Rationalizing hermeneutics of myth became even more popular under the Roman Empire, thanks to the physicalist theories of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, as well as the pragmatic bent of the Roman mind. The antiquarian Varro, summarizing centuries' worth of philosophic tradition, distinguished three kinds of gods:

• The gods of nature: personifications of phenomena like rain and fire.
• The gods of the poets: invented by unscrupulous bards to stir the passions.
• The gods of the city: invented by wise legislators to soothe and enlighten the populace.

Cicero's De Natura Deorum is probably the most comprehensive summary of this line of thought.

Syncretizing Trends

One unexpected side-effect of the rationalist view was a popular trend to syncretize multiple Greek and foreign gods in strange, nearly unrecognizable new cults. If Apollo and Serapis and Sabazios and Dionysus and Mithras were all really Helios, why not combine them all together into one Deus Sol Invictus, with conglomerated rites and compound attributes? The surviving 2nd century AD collection of Orphic Hymns and Macrobius's Saturnalia are products of this mind-set.

But though Apollo might in religion be increasingly identified with Helios or even Dionysus, texts retelling his myths seldom reflected such developments. The traditional literary mythology was increasingly dissociated from actual religious practice.

Christian Views

By the time Christian evangelism and Greek mythology collided, Greek mythology was already being viewed primarily as literature, not religion. This view persisted among the Church fathers, and can still be found among most Christian educators, where Greek mythology is taught as a subset of the Classics.

However, there is a contrary view that has always existed side by side with this idea. Some Christians fear that all gods other than the God of Abraham are real, and are representations of Satan, other fallen angels, or demons, and appeared in the form of false gods in order to lure human beings away from monotheism and other spiritual truths. Among Christians who hold this belief, Greek mythology is understood to be a subset of the subject of demonology.

The Fate of Mythology

In addition to the continuing use of and allusion to mythology in literature, Greek mythology today makes for some wonderful stories that remain enjoyable. Greek mythology continues to be an important cultural reference long after the Greek religion with which it was entwined ceased to be practiced. There was, to be sure, a Christian move to deface or destroy idols and other images that reflected the public cult of the gods when Christianity replaced paganism as the official faith of the Roman Empire. Literature posed a harder problem to the Christians; it would be impossible to erase the influence of Greek mythology there without casting aside the Iliad and Odyssey, Theocritus, Virgil, Ovid, and many other authors that most were not willing to cast aside. Greek mythology thus has persisted for more than a millennium after Greek religion became extinct. Even much classical Christian literature contains allusions to Greek and Roman mythology, as a glimpse at parts of Dante's Inferno or most of Milton's Paradise Lost makes plain.

Modern Interpreters

The developers of modern mythography and hermeneutics, starting from Bulfinch's genteel Christian tradition, in approximate chronological order:

• Thomas Bulfinch
• Johann Jakob Bachofen
• James George Frazer
• Jane Ellen Harrison
• Walter Burkert
• Otto Rank
• Carl Jung
• Walter Otto
• Edith Hamilton
• Karl Kerenyi
• Robert Graves
• Marija Gimbutas
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Michael Grant
• Joseph Campbell
• Timothy Gantz

See also

• List of Greek mythological characters
• Family Tree of the Greek Gods
• Greek religion
• Classical mythology
• Similarities between Roman, Greek, and Etruscan mythologies

Some important mythical places

• Elysium
• Hades
• Helicon
• Hyperborea (Hyperboria)
• Lethe
• Mount Olympus (Olýmpos)
• Styx
• Tartarus (Tartaros)

Related Subjects

• Roman mythology
• Roman religion
• Paganism
• List of movies based on Greco-Roman mythology

External links

• A Guide to Greek Gods, Spirits and Monsters (http://www.theoi.com/) a guide to the Ancient Greek Pantheon of Gods (Theoi), Spirits (Daimones) and Monsters (Theres) from various classical texts and illustrations from ancient greek vase painting.
• MythWeb (http://www.mythweb.com/) heroes gods and monsters of Greek mythology with contemporary illustrations.
• Timeless Myths (http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical) provides information and tales from classical literature.
• Greek Mythology (http://www.greekmythology.com/) provides a complete overview of Greek Myths
• Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html) contains full-text documents of classical sources and modern commentaries on Greek, Roman, and Modern literature, philosophy and history. It has also images of ancient objects.
• The Androphile Library Greek mythology section (http://www.androphile.org/preview/Library/Mythology/Greek/GreekMythology.htm) presents brief renditions of the Greek myths of male love.