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MYTHOLOGY
What is a Myth?
Myths are stories shared by a group that are part of that group’s cultural identity,
just like family traditions. No one knows who thought them up. They have been
around for hundreds of years, often passed along by word of mouth before written
language was invented. Myths always refer to some time in the distant past.
Every culture has myths. These stories tell them who they are and how they came to
exist. Myths express the world-view, beliefs, dreams and fears of a people.
Myths are often the beginning of scientific thought because they explain the reality
all around us. As we will see, the Greeks had a myth to explain how the sun travels
from east to west each day. They had another myth to explain the seasons.
Myths also have a central role in religious traditions. For example, nearly every
religion has a myth that explains how the world was created.
Myths are stories about people: where they come from, how they handle major disasters,
how they cope with what they must and how they believe everything will end.
Strictly speaking, myths are not “real” because the stories cannot be verified in a
scientific manner. But they do express underlying truths and understandings that
are very real indeed.
Sometimes English speakers use the word “myth” to describe a story that is
deliberately false, or at least greatly exaggerated. For example, if you say, “Love at
first sight is just a myth,” you mean it does not really exist.
In this class, we will not refer to “myth” in that way. Instead, we will read the old
stories, study what they mean and learn their importance in Western culture. We
will also learn lots of strong English vocabulary that echoes the lasting importance of
the old myths.
THE ANCIENT GREEKS
The ancient Greeks, or Hellenes (as they called themselves), invented Western
civilization. Their civilization produced the first great philosophers, poets,
mathematicians and scientists of the Western world. They invented democracy,
geometry, philosophy and science. They invented the Olympic Games, which began
in 776 B.C. and continued every four years for the next 12 centuries. Their ideas
continue to influence critical thinkers to this day.
By around 600 B.C., they lived in several hundred independent states in the lands
surrounding the Aegean Sea (present-day Greece and Turkey). They were unlike any
other people of their age. No other society had such a keen awareness of individual
worth or such a strong belief in what humans could accomplish. They had a
tremendous vitality of spirit that defied all odds; yet they were also the most rational
of people.
Greek legend was full of heroes who overcame their enemies through superior wit, like
Odysseus whose hollow wooden horse carried soldiers through Troy’s impenetrable
gates. They had a wide-ranging, clear-minded curiosity about all creation: the gods,
nature, and particularly themselves.
The first written record of Greece is the Iliad, the great poem about the Trojan War
written by Homer in the 8th century B.C. The Trojan War is said to have taken place
in he 12th century B.C., at a time when the Greek gods were still actively involved in
the lives of men. For many years scholars believed the Trojan War was pure myth, for
there was no historical proof that the war, or even the city of Troy, had ever existed.
But in 1870 a German archeologist found the remains of Troy in modern-day
Turkey, and most scholars now accept there is some historical basis for the tale. In the
Iliad, the war grew directly out of relationships between the gods and men. Thus the
Iliad is the first written document of Greek mythology, drawing on stories that must
have been passed around in an oral tradition for centuries.
For the Greeks, mankind was the center of the universe. They made their gods in their
own image, something that had not entered the mind of man before. Other ancient
societies – the Egyptians, the Babylonians – featured gods who had no semblance to
reality. In Egypt, they had monstrous figures, a woman with a cat’s head or a
monstrous sphinx; in Mesopotamia, men with birds’ heads and lions with bull’s
heads, things never seen in real life. These gods were remote and terrifying.
The Greek gods, on the other hand, were men and women. Of course they had special
powers, and you had to stay on their good side or they could be dangerous. But with
proper care, a man could be quite at ease with them, even laugh at them. Zeus had
numerous love affairs with human women, and always failed to hide them from his
wife, who got predictably angry and jealous. Such stories made the gods seem
knowable and companionable. And they were beautiful, too.
In Greece, for the first time, men were freed from the paralyzing fear of an allknowing Unknown. While there are lots of fantastic stories in Greek mythology,
there was no black magic, no human sacrifice. The early Greeks transformed a world
full of fear into a world full of beauty.
When the Greek cities declined and the power of Rome began to take over the
Mediterranean world, Greek ideas and myths did not die; they were taken up by the
Romans, often with little or no change. The Greek gods were given Roman names but
their influence lived on. And the stories continue to fascinate us even to this day.