Greek Mythology in Ancient Greek, the Word

Greek Mythology

In ancient Greek, the word "myth" literally means "word" or "story." It refers to authorless tales perpetuated by ancient Greek communities. The characters in Greek myths are typically gods and heroic humans. Each story contains moral lessons for humans on earth that they learn from the immortal gods and various kinds of tragic human heroes. Most often, these lessons either concern morality or an explanation of how a feature of nature was created.

The myths are generally believed, at least since the studies of the Swedish scholar Martin Nilsson (1874-1967), to have been acquired during the Mycenaean age being transmitted by poets and minstrels in a monarchic and probably militaristic society in which local kings were vassals of an overlord. Nilsson's assumption in the early 1930s that the Mycenaeans were Greeks was later confirmed when the architect Michael Ventris deciphered the Linear B. tablets in 1952 a few years before his death. Linear B. is a script developed from the Minoan Linear A (still undeciphered), used by the Mycenaeans between ca. 1500 BC and 1100 BC, a period which is also known as Late Helladic. Important mythical tales are located in places like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos or Thebes, and it has been remarked that these were also Mycenaean centers as archaeological excavations have shown. Following mythical chronology it may be said that the Greek historical legends extend from ca. 1900 BC to ca. 1000 BC (the Roman extension of the myths overlaps the Greek and may be said to cover the period from ca. 1200 BC to 550 BC).

The early Greek myths were primarily transmitted orally from one generation to another. They were never written down hence, they were probably told slightly different as time goes by. However, fortunately, pencils were eventually invented, and myths were recorded in print. The two main responsible for writing down the Greek myths were Hesiod and Homer.

Hesiod lived during the 7th Century B.C. He wrote the poem The Generation of Gods, where he explained the origin of the immortal Greek gods. According to him, it was at the summit of Mount Olympus where the gods live. Many gods represent a part of the natural universe. For instance, the first gods were Uranus and Gaea. Uranus was a male god signifying heaven while Gaea was a female god signifying earth. Uranus and Gaea had many children and grandchildren, one of whom was the famous Zeus. Zeus, the most powerful god, and his wife Hera are the leaders and parents for the most famous Greek gods who live in Mount Olympus.

Homer was a Greek poet who lived in the late 8th Century B.C. He wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, two influential epic poems that helped to define mythology. The Iliad and The Odyssey chronicled events during the Trojan War. Homer's poems spoke of human characters with names like Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles, and take place in Greek cities like Corith,

Thebes, and Athens. The stories of these characters were not gods, but they were considered myths and were further dramatized by Greek dramatists such as Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aeschylus.

These stories were about murder, adultery, incest, power struggles, and love. According to Greek mythology expert H.J. Rose, the gods are "glorified men and women who remain extremely human, and on the whole, neither irrational nor grossly unfair in their dealings."

In addition to the poets the myths were also told, collected or commented by historians and compilers like Herodotus (484-430 BC), Diodorus Siculus (80 BC - 20 BC), or Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60 BC - AD 7), by the geographer Strabo (64 BC -AD 25), the traveller Pausanias

(fl. ca. AD 150), the philosopher Plato (427-347 BC), a number of scholiasts, and also by philologists and mythographers, at least since the times of Theagenes of Rhegium (fl. c. 525 BC) or Metrodorus of Lampsacus (5th century BC). The typical mythographers may be exemplified with the names of Apollodorus (fl. ca. AD 100) and Hyginus (fl. ca. AD 200), but many other names could be mentioned as contributing to the myths in various forms, as some works of Plutarch (AD 45-120), the collection of Antoninus Liberalis (fl. ca. AD 100), or a certain story by Lucius Apuleius (fl. ca. AD 160).