Greek Mythology

Greek mythology is the body of stories concerning the gods, heroes, monsters and rituals of the ancient Greeks; the myths explained natural events such as seasonal change, helped determine social and moral values, and deeply influenced ancient art and literature. In the popular piety of the Greeks the myths were viewed as true though complex accounts and formed the basis of religious beliefs and practices. Greek myths were intricately connected to religion and explained the origin and lives of the gods, where humanity had come from and where it was going after death; they gave faces and characters to the gods and offered practical advice on how to lead a happy life.

Fixing a beginning to Greek mythology is difficult, because it grew out of centuries of oral tradition rather than from a single founding text. Without wide-spread literacy the passing on of myths was first done orally, probably by Minoan and Mycenaean bards from the 18th century BCE onwards. The traditions of Greek religion were first recounted only orally as there was no sacred text, and later attempts were made to put this oral tradition in writing, notably by Hesiod in his Theogony and more indirectly in the works of Homer.

The Theogony is an epic poem of 1,022 hexameter lines whose title derives from the Greek theogonia, meaning generations of the gods, and it describes the birth of the gods in the Greek pantheon. It was at first not actually written down but was part of a rich oral tradition, and it traces the history of the world from its creation through the battle between the Olympians and the Titans to the ascension of Zeus as the absolute ruler of the Olympian gods. It is the fullest and most important source of myths about the origin of the gods, including folktales and etiological myths, and Hesiod claims, like many other epic poets, to have been inspired by the Muses. The poem dates to the 8th century BCE. From Mnemosyne came the nine Muses: Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Urania and Calliope.

Earth lay with Heaven and bore deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys; after them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children. The most important Titan gods were the twelve Uranides, among them Cronus, Oceanus, Iapetus, Hyperion, Crius, Coeus, Rhea, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Themis and Mnemosyne. The union of Earth and Sky created the one-eyed Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes and Arges, and the three Hecatoncheires, Briareos, Cottus and Gyges, giants with 100 hands, 50 heads and a prodigious strength.

Hesiod composed two complete works that have come down to us, the Theogony and the Works and Days, both composed in the oral tradition, with various other works attributed to him including the Shield of Hercules and the Catalogue of Women; the Works and Days is an epic poem on the agricultural arts that includes elements of myth.

The primordial gods were for the most part purely elemental beings, and even the few who were shown in anthropomorphic form remained inseparable from their native element. Uranus was the literal sky, and Gaea the body of the earth. Chaos was the Protogenos of the lower air, filling the gap between the bright mists of the heavenly aither and the floor of the earth, and from him were descended Erebus (darkness), Nyx (night), Aether (light) and Hemera (day).

Tartarus was the Protogenos of the great stormy pit which lay beneath the roots of the earth, the anti-heaven arched beneath the earth, and in his depths the Titans were imprisoned.

Cronus was the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth) and the youngest of the 12 Titans, who on the advice of his mother led his brothers in the ambush and castration of their father Uranus with a harpe, thus separating Heaven from Earth.

Cronus became king of the Titans and took his sister Rhea as consort, and she bore him Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon, all of whom he swallowed because his own parents had warned that he would be overthrown by his own child. Cronus had usurped control of the heavens from his father Ouranos and was constantly wary of the same thing happening to him from his own children. When Zeus was born Rhea hid him in Crete and tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead, and Zeus grew up, forced Cronus to disgorge his brothers and sisters, waged war on Cronus and was victorious. Cronus was a male deity worshipped by the pre-Hellenic population of Greece but probably not widely worshipped by the Greeks themselves; his functions were connected with agriculture, and in Attica his festival, the Kronia, celebrated the harvest.

The Titanomachy was a ten-year battle in which the lawless Titans, encouraged by Gaia, immediately tried to wrestle control of the world from the Olympian gods. The eldest of the Titans, Cronus and his four brothers Crius, Coeus, Hyperion and Iapetus, were imprisoned in the stormy pit of Tartarus by Zeus after he was victorious, and some say the old Titan was later released by Zeus and appointed King of the Islands of the Blessed. The Titans were never worshipped as the other gods were, but through contrast they helped clarify the position in the universe of the Olympian gods who defeated the unruly and chaotic Titans.

Throwing the genitalia of Ouranos into the sea led to the birth of the goddess Aphrodite, and from the splashed blood sprang the Erinyes, Giants and Fates. Tartarus, a great chasm in the deepest, darkest part of the Underworld, was deeper than Hades and henceforth became known as a place of punishment.

Zeus was the chief deity of the Greek pantheon, regarded as the sender of thunder and lightning, rain and winds, and his traditional weapon was the thunderbolt. He was originally an Indo-European deity, venerated in Mycenaean times. His wife Hera is the mother of Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus. Zeus was a sky and weather god identical with the Roman god Jupiter, and the Capitoline Triad, the main focus of Rome's state cult, consisted of Jupiter, Minerva (Athena) and Juno (Hera).

The 12 Olympians included Zeus and his five siblings, the primordial goddess Aphrodite, and Zeus's divine children Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hermes and Ares, with Dionysus replacing Hestia in the pantheon.

Athena stands among the twelve great Olympians as the goddess of war, fortifications and the defence of towns, and of good counsel and heroic endeavour; she was also a patron goddess of craftsmen. Poseidon held kingship of the sea and ranked as one of the twelve ruling gods of Olympus, lord of rivers, lakes and other sources of fresh-water, and god of horses and chariots; unlike the other Olympians he kept his residence in the sea rather than in heaven. The Olympian gods whom later Greek culture associates with its pantheon — Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Artemis, Ares, Hermes and Dionysos — all appear in Mycenaean records.

Mount Olympus is a mountain in northern Greece, between Thessaly and Macedonia, believed to be the dwelling of the gods. According to Homer, it was the place where Zeus and the other Olympian deities had their palaces, and the words Olympus and Ouranos, or heaven, were synonymous. Its highest summit reaches 2,918 metres, and one of its summits, called the Throne of Zeus, resembles the backrest of a chair.

The most important and well-known works of Greek mythology are the epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which outline many of the characteristics of the Olympian gods and notable heroes. The Iliad is composed of 15,693 hexameters and is divided into 24 books corresponding to each letter of the Greek alphabet, and it traces the anger of Achilles over 51 days during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War.

Homer's work was hugely influential on Greek culture, and scenes from his works appeared in Greek sculpture, on Greek pottery, and in Greek tragedy and comedy; he was studied as part of Greek education, and his legends influenced Hellenistic and Roman culture.

According to the ancient Greeks, the demigod Heracles, or Hercules as the Romans called him, was the son of a mortal woman named Alcmene and the supreme god Zeus. When he had recovered, Heracles consulted the oracle of Delphi, which ordered him to serve his relative Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, who would order him to perform the twelve labors. The kings of Sparta and Macedonia claimed to be descendants of the demigod, and in the Hellenistic age many Greek colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean claimed Heracles as their founder.

The great oracles such as that of Apollo at Delphi and Zeus at Dodona may well have begun as places considered particularly good to receive signs from the gods, and they became hugely important centres consulted by both individuals and city-states.

The four most famous festivals, each with its own procession, athletic competitions and sacrifices, were held every four years at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia; mystery cults such as the one at Eleusis were open only to initiates. The relationship between human beings and deities was based on the concept of exchange, and votive offerings, excavated from sanctuaries by the thousands, were a physical expression of thanks on the part of individual worshippers.

Another great sanctuary dedicated to Zeus stood at Olympia, where every four years from 776 BCE the Olympic Games drew crowds from all parts of the Greek world to honour the father of the gods. The festival was celebrated every fourth summer in honour of the supreme god Zeus. During it, a formal truce held between city states that were at war, allowing the contestants to travel to the sanctuary. Originally, the games consisted of a foot race of one stade, that is the length of the stadium, 192 meters. Theodosius I demanded an end to the Olympic Games, which he considered too pagan, and it was his grandson Theodosius II who really put an end to the games.

In May 1873 Schliemann claimed to have discovered Priam's treasure, a hoard of gold, valuable artefacts and jewellery that included the famous golden diadem photographed on his wife Sophia the following year. In 1876 the Turkish government brought a lawsuit against Schliemann, who promptly left the country and headed to Greece, where he began excavations at Mycenae and discovered the Greek Bronze Age Mask of Agamemnon.

The first examples of Linear B script were discovered at Knossos during the excavations made by Arthur Evans in March 1900; the majority of the clay tablets that survive date to the 13th century BCE. The script was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952 and has provided invaluable insights into the Mycenaean culture and its interaction with contemporary Mediterranean civilizations.

From the 6th century BCE the first documented scepticism and even rejection of the myths began with the pre-Socratic philosophers, while in the 5th century BCE the first historians Herodotus and Thucydides sought to document events as accurately as possible.

Yet Greek mythology continued to be popular through the centuries, and major public buildings such as the Parthenon at Athens, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and the Temple of Apollo at Delphi were decorated with sculpture representing myths; in the 5th century BCE the myths were presented in the new format of theatre.

• 18th century BCE onwards
  Oral transmission of myths
  Without wide-spread literacy the passing on of myths was first done orally, probably by Minoan and Mycenaean bards from the 18th century BCE onwards.^{2Greek Mythology · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 13th century BCE
  Surviving Linear B tablets
  The majority of the clay tablets that survive date to the 13th century BCE.^{12Linear B Script · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 6th century BCE
  First documented scepticism
  From the 6th century BCE the first documented scepticism and even rejection of the myths began with the pre-Socratic philosophers.^{2Greek Mythology · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 5th century BCE
  The first historians
  In the 5th century BCE the first historians Herodotus and Thucydides sought to document events as accurately as possible.^{2Greek Mythology · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• March 1900
  Discovery of Linear B at Knossos
  The first examples of Linear B script were discovered at Knossos during the excavations made by Arthur Evans in March 1900.^{12Linear B Script · World History Encyclopedia ↗}