Mythology comes from a Greek word that means
simply “stories,” but the term is now used to refer
to ancient tales, especially those from Greece and
Rome, that attempt to account for such mysteries
as the origins of the world and the vagaries of
human behavior within the context of the religious
beliefs of the time. If the story was satisfying
enough, no one required proof of its veracity. In
true storytelling fashion, the oft-told tales, the
characters that populated them, and the events
they related grew more incredible with time.
Nearly every region of the ancient world has its
own body of mythology. The stories evolved and
expanded as different cultures mixed—due to military
invasions, for instance, or commercial trade—
and became aware of one another’s traditional
narratives. “Goddess-worshipping native cultures
were conquered by foreign patriarchies; Asian cosmology
was imported along with metals and spices;
monsters from abroad crossed paths with local
champions,”writes Michael Macrone, author of By
Jove! Brush Up Your Mythology. “The result was a
common pantheon of capricious, anthropomorphic
gods who camped on [their dwelling place]
Mount Olympus and pursued their separate interests
on earth.”
Initially, the births, exploits, and scandalous
carryings-on of the divine Olympians were committed
to memory. In the eighth century B.C., the
Greeks HOMER and HESIOD compiled these stories
and gave them narrative structure in their poems
the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Theogony. These works
recount, respectively, an episode during the Trojan
War that involves gods behaving badly; the adventures
of a Greek warrior returning home from the
Trojan War who is waylaid by a succession of
mythical creatures; and the origins of the universe
and the genealogy of the deities. Each of the Greek
gods exhibited a distinct personality and displayed
passions and weaknesses that humans readily recognized.
They also possessed the supernatural
powers they needed to satisfy their desires, punish
their adversaries, and wreak havoc.
The Roman pantheon, on the other hand, was
originally occupied by incorporeal agents who instigated
events but were not exactly “beings” and did
not mingle with one another. Eventually, through
interactions with Greece, the Romans adopted the
Greek stock of deities, renaming them appropriately;
for instance,“Zeus” became “Jupiter.” The Romans
also incorporated tales and legends that
arrived from Egypt and Asia into their own
mythologies. The Roman poets VIRGIL and OVID
elaborated on these myths to render their own
works, the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, respectively,
more powerful artistically and politically.
According to Greek and Roman myth, the first
gods on earth were the Titans, including Atlas,
Prometheus, and the leader Cronus (Latin name:
Saturn), who fathered the first six Olympian gods.
Cronus was told that one of his children would dethrone
him, so he swallowed his offspring at birth.
But when his sister-queen, Rhea, delivered Zeus
(Jupiter), she hid him and gave Cronus a rock to
swallow in his place. Accordingly, Zeus later overthrew
his father, became ruling power among the
deities, and punished the conquered Titans. Atlas
was compelled to bear the cruel weight of the sky
and the earth upon his shoulders. His brother,
Prometheus, who gave men fire, was shackled to
rocks in Tartarus, the depths of the underworld.
Twelve gods followed the Titans. Besides Zeus,
there were Hera (Juno in Latin), his long-suffering
wife and protector of marriage; Poseidon (Neptune),
god of the sea;Hades (Pluto), god of the underworld;
and Athena (Minerva), the goddess of
war and of wisdom, who sprang from Zeus’s head
fully formed and outfitted for battle. Apollo is the
god of poetry and healing. His twin sister, Artemis
(Diana), is a patroness of the forest and goddess of
the moon. Aphrodite (Venus) is the goddess of
love and beauty and, as such, causes more than her
share of discord.Hermes (Mercury) is a messenger
god.Ares (Mars), the war god, was more revered by
the Romans than the Greeks. Hephaestus (Vulcan),
god of the forge, is a patron of craftsmen; and
Hestia (Vesta) is the virgin goddess of the hearth.
One of the best-known myths features Demeter
(Ceres), the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. The
goddess of grain, wheat, and the harvest, she is one
of the oldest divinities. Demeter had a daughter,
Persephone, sired by Zeus.When the girl lived on
earth, it was always springtime. But Hades stole
Persephone away to be queen of the underworld.
The bereft Demeter searched for her beloved
daughter, during which time the earth and its flora
began to wither.Without the fond attentions of its
patroness, the world was thrust into a permanent
state of winter. Zeus at last dispatched Hermes to
liberate Persephone. Before she left the land of the
dead, she was tricked into eating a pomegranate
seed. Demeter knew this would kill her, so she and
Hades struck a deal in which Persephone would
spend part of the year with the dead and the other
part with the living. When Persephone is with
Hades and Demeter is forlorn, the crops die, darkness
descends, and cold comes.When Persephone
is on earth, springtime returns. This myth accounts
for the seasons of the year.
The myth of Epimetheus explains how evil was
introduced into the world. The foolish Epimetheus
(“afterthought”) was the brother of the cunning
Prometheus (“forethought”). They were charged
with the tasks of creating animals and man, respectively.
Epimetheus gave the animals formidable
qualities such as strength and speed, leaving
none left over for humans. Prometheus retaliated
by making man in the image of the gods and stealing
fire from Mount Olympus for use by the creatures.
An angry Zeus sent Pandora, the first
woman, to Epimetheus, armed with a box that they
were told must forever remain shut.Overwhelmed
by curiosity, however, Pandora lifted the lid and
unleashed misery and affliction to plague mankind
forevermore. But the vessel also contained hope,
which helps humans endure inevitable suffering.
Contemporary language reflects the enduring
influence of these and other classical myths. “Such
ancient Greek and Roman tales have enlivened
English speech for centuries,” according to author
Michael Macrone. “In fact, you probably invoke at
least one god a day.” Chaos, a disorganized mass,
was the first power in the universe, according to
Hesiod’s Theogony; “aphrodisiac” is derived from
the name of the love goddess Aphrodite; “cereal”
comes from Ceres; Flora and Faunus were gods of
nature; and the Amazons were bellicose superwomen
living along the Black Sea.
The works influenced by classical mythology
are endless. In DANTE ALIGHIERI’s Divine Comedy,
the narrator takes Virgil as his guide and names
Homer and Ovid among the great writers. Other
works include William Shakespeare’s Venus and
Adonis, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and
Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen. Even John Milton’s
Paradise Lost uses mythological imagery, despite
its Christian subject matter.
European poets and dramatists who relied on
myth include Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Gotthold
Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, as well as England’s Romantic poets.
In the 20th century, the playwright Eugene O’Neill
used myth as the basis for Desire Under the Elms.
Artists from Rubens in the baroque period to
Matisse during the 20th century have used mythological
subjects, and operas from George Frideric
Handel,Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von
Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Benjamin Britten
all exhibit the influence of the classics. The
George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion and the musical
My Fair Lady by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay
Lerner, to name just a couple of contemporary
theatrical examples, are derived from the myth of a
king who sculpted a statue so beautiful he fell in
love with it.
“Every age has reinvented old myths in line with
its new sensibilities turning them into romances or
satires, demonic histories or heavenly allegories,”
writes Michael Macrone. Psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud used the story of Oedipus, dramatized by
SOPHOCLES, to identify psychological phases and
disorders and also saw a relationship between
myths and dreams. Carl Jung demonstrated that
myths feature archetypal characters that serve as
models of behavior and project the “collective unconscious”
of a society or community. And finally,
the sociologist Claude Lévi-Strauss considered
myths a form of communication within a culture.
English Versions of Works of Greek and
Roman Mythology
Great Classical Myths. Edited by F. R. B Godolphin.
New York: Random House, 1964.
Hesiod. Hesiod. Translated by Richmond Lattimore.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1959.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. (Oxford World’s Classics).
Translated by A. D.Melville. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by David West. New
York: Penguin Books, 1990.
Works about Greek and Roman Mythology
Buxton, Richard. The Complete World of Greek
Mythology. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor
Books, 1988.
Edinger, Edward F. and Deborah A.Wesley, eds. Eternal
Drama: The Inner Meaning of Greek Mythology.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001.
James,Vanessa. The Genealogy of Greek Mythology: An
Illustrated Family Tree of Greek Mythology from the
First Gods to the Founders of Rome. New York:
Gotham Books, 2003.
Macrone, Michael. By Jove! Brush Up Your Mythology.
New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Wilson, Donna F. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity
in the Iliad. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.