Introduction to Mythology

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Introduction to Mythology

• Greek and Roman mythology is quite generally
  supposed to show us the way the human race
  thought and felt untold ages ago. Through it,
  according to this view, we can retrace the path
  from civilized man who lives so far from nature,
  to a man who lived in close companionship with
  nature.

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• The real interest of the myths is that they lead
  us back to a time when the world was young and
  people had a connection with the earth, with
  trees and seas and flowers.

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• When these stories were being made, little
  distinction had been made between the real and
  the unreal.

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Question 1

• In earlier times, the imagination was vividly
  alive and not checked by reason. But the
  imagination of primitive beings differed from the
  imagination of the Greeks. Explain this
  difference between primitive and classical
  mythology.

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Answer 1

• Classical mythology comes from a more civilized
  time. Thus, the Greeks tended to see lovely
  nymphs in the forest and other pleasant visions,
  while the more primitive peoples saw ugliness and
  terror lurking everywhere.

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• We, for a moment, can catch a glimpse of that
  strangely and beautifully animated world. But a
  very brief consideration of the ways of
  uncivilized peoples everywhere is enough to prick
  that romantic bubble. Nothing is clearer than the
  fact that primitive man, whether in New Guinea
  today or eons ago, is not a creature who peoples
  his world with bright fancies and lovely visions.

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• Horrors lurked in the primeval forest. This dark
  picture is worlds apart from the stories of
  classical mythology. Of course the Greeks too had
  their roots in the primeval slime. But what the
  myths show is how high they had risen above the
  ancient filth. Only a few traces of that time
  are found in the stories

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Question 2

• Specifically, how did the gods of Greece differ
  from the gods of Egypt or Mesopotamia?

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Answer 2

• Greek gods were in human form, while the gods of
  other cultures were part cat or bird or lion.

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gods of ancient Egypt
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Anubis, the jackal-headed guardian deity
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Horis
The sun god
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Horus, a guide and protector
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Question 3

• Edith Hamilton speaks of the miracle of Greek
  mythology. What does she mean?

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Answer 3

• Since the Greeks believed in human gods, people
  could be more at ease with them. While the
  half-human, half-beast gods of the other cultures
  inspired fear, the Greek gods appeared more
  companionable.

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• The Greeks made the gods in their own image.
  Mankind became the center of the universe, the
  most important thing in it. This was a revolution
  in thought. Human beings counted for little
  before. In Greece man first realized what mankind
  was.

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• Until the Greeks, gods had had no semblance of
  reality. They were unlike all living things. In
  Egypt, a towering colossus, immobile, and
  deliberately made unhuman. Or a rigid figure, a
  woman with a cats head suggesting inflexible,
  inhuman cruelty. One need only to place beside
  them any Greek statue of a god, so normal and
  natural with all its beauty, to perceive what a
  new idea had come into the world. With its
  coming, the universe became rational.

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• In the ancient world, people were preoccupied
  with the visible they were finding satisfaction
  in what was actually in the world around them.
  The sculptor watched the athletes contending in
  the games and he felt that nothing he could
  imagine would be as beautiful as those strong
  young bodies. So he made his statue of Apollo.
  Greek artists and poets realized how splendid a
  man could be, straight and swift and strong. He
  was the fulfillment of their search for beauty.

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Ares, god of war
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Embodiment of beauty/heroism

• The first written record of Greece is The Iliad.
  Greek mythology begins with Homer, generally
  believed to be not earlier than a thousand years
  before Christ. The Iliad is written in a rich and
  subtle and beautiful language and serves as proof
  of civilization. The tales of Greek mythology do
  not throw any clear light upon what early mankind
  was like. They do throw an abudanance of light
  upon what early Greeks were likea matter, it
  would seem, of more importance to us, who are
  their descendants intellectually, artistically,
  and politically, too. Nothing we learn about them
  is unfamiliar to ourselves.

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A passage from The Iliad

• Andromache expresses her fears and pleads with
  Hector not to return to battle. Hector replies
• Lady, these many things beset my mind no less
  than yours. But I should die of shame before our
  Trojan men and noblewomen if like a coward I
  avoided battle, nor am I moved to. Long ago I
  learned how to be brave, how to go forward always
  and to contend for honor, Fathers and mine.
  Honorfor in my heart and soul I know a day will
  come when ancient Ilion Troy falls, when Priam
  and the folk of Priam perish.

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• Human gods naturally made heaven a pleasantly
  familiar place. The Greeks felt at home in it.
  They knew just what the divine inhabitants did
  there, what they ate and drank and where they
  banqueted and how they amused themselves.

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• Of course, they were still to be feared they
  were very powerful and very dangerous when angry.
  

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Question 4

• What are some of the dark spots to which the
  author refers?

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Answer 4

• Sometimes Greek gods behaved cruelly or
  indecently. Sometimes traces remained of the
  older beast-gods in the satyrs or other partly
  human creatures.

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• There are also stories which clearly point to a
  time when there was human sacrifice, but there
  are so few stories that do so.

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• Of course the mythical monster is present in any
  number of shapes, but they are there only to give
  the hero his means of glory. What could a hero do
  in a world without them?

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Question 5

• How does Edith Hamilton define or explain
  mythology?

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Answer 5

• She stresses that it is not an account of Greek
  religion, but rather an explanation of something
  in nature. However, religion is part of mythology
  and some myths explain nothing at all.
• 4 functions of myth

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Question 6

• How does the author explain the different views
  of the same god?

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Answer 6

• Mythology grows and develops as a people grow and
  develop. There may be numerous versions of a
  single story coming from various times or
  authors. Homer and Hesiod both describe Zeus as
  chief of the gods but their views of the
  character of Zeus differ.