Chapter 01

Interpretation and Definition of Classical Mythology

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING MYTH
The establishment of a single, comprehensive definition of myth has proved impossible to attain. No one
definition can satisfactorily embrace all the various kinds of stories that can legitimately be classed as
myths on the basis of one criterion or another. The attempt to define myth in itself, however intractable
a proposition, serves to highlight the very qualities of the stories that make them so different from one
another.
THE MEANING OF THE WORD MYTH
Myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which can mean tale, or story, and that is essentially
what a myth is: a story. For many, such a general definition proves to be of no real service, and some
would add the qualification that a myth must be a traditional tale or story, one that has proved of so
lasting a value that it is continually retold, through whatever medium the artist/storyteller chooses to
employ. For further clarification, distinctions are often made between myth, i.e., true myth or myth
proper, and saga or legend, and folktale.
MYTH, SAGA OR LEGEND, AND FOLKTALE
Myth: not a comprehensive term for all stories but only for those primarily concerned with the gods and
their relations with mortals.
Saga or legend: a story containing a kernel of historical truth, despite later fictional accretions.
Folktale: a story, usually of oral origin, that contains elements of the fantastic, often in the pattern of the
adventure of a hero or a heroine. Its main function is entertainment, but it can also educate with all
sorts of insights. Under this rubric may be classed fairytales, which are full of supernatural beings and
magic and provide a more pointed moral content.
Rarely, if ever, do we find in Greek and Roman mythology, a pristine, uncontaminated example of any
one of these types of story.
MYTH AND TRUTH
The most common association of the words myth and mythical is with what is incredible and
fantastic. How often do we hear the expression, Its a myth, uttered in derogatory contrast with such
laudable concepts as reality and the facts? As opposed to the discoveries of science, whose truths
continually change, myth, like art is eternal. Myth in a sense is the highest reality, and the thoughtless
dismissal of myth as fiction or a lie is the most barren and misleading definition of all. Myth serves to
interpret the whole of human experience and that interpretation can be true or fictitious, valuable or
insubstantial, quite apart from its historical veracity.

MYTH AND RELIGION

The study of myth must not and cannot be separated from the study of religion, religious beliefs, or
religious rituals. No mythologist has been more eloquent than Mircea Eliade in his appreciation of the
sacredness of myth and the holy and timeless world that it embodies.
MYTH AND ETIOLOGY
An etiological interpretation of myth demands that a true myth must give the aitia, or cause or reason,
for a fact, a ritual practice, or an institution. Thus narrowly defined, etiology imposes too limiting and
rigid a criterion for definition. On the other hand, if one broadens the concept of the aitia of a myth to
encompass any story that explains or reveals something or anything, an etiological approach offers one
of the most fertile ways of interpreting myth, although it cannot really define it. What story can avoid
offering some kind of explanation or revelation? Is the best general definition of myth, after all, a
traditional story?
RATIONALISM, METAPHOR, AND ALLEGORY
Euhemerism: an attempt to rationalize classical mythology, attributed to Euhemerus (ca. 300 B. C.). He
claimed that the gods were great men of old who had become deified.
Allegory: a sustained metaphor. The allegorical approach to mythology is favored by the antirationalists, who interpret the details of myth as symbols of universal truth.
Allegorical nature myths: for Max Mller in the nineteenth century, myths are to be defined as
explanations of meteorological and cosmological phenomena. Mllers theory is too limited. Some
Greek and Roman myths, but by no means all, are concerned with nature.
MYTH AND PSYCHOLOGY
The theories of Freud and Jung are fundamental and far-reaching in their influence, and although
continually challenged, provide the most searching tools for a profound, introspective interpretation of
mythology.
Freud.
Freuds most influential ideas for the interpretation of myth center on psychosexual development, the
theory of the unconscious, the interpretation of dreams, and the Oedipus complex.

Oedipus Complex

Developed in a work that attempts to explain the particularly uneasy and timeless dramatic import of
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos, the theory of the Oedipus complex holds that a male childs first sexual
feelings are directed towards the mother with the concomitant arousal of jealousy and hatred towards
the rival for those affections, the father. The female version has been identified by Carl Jung as the
Electra complex, in which the daughter's love is towards the father with hatred of the mother.

Dreams

Freud saw dreams as the expression of repressed or concealed desires. The dream-work of sleep has
three basic functions: to condense elements; to displace elements, by altering them; and to represent
elements through symbols. In this regard, symbols of dreams can work in much the same way as the
symbols of myths.
Carl Jung

Collective Unconscious

Jung went beyond the connection of myths and dreams with the individual to interpret myths as the
projection of what he called the collective unconscious, that is, the revelation of the continuing
psychic tendencies of a society. Jung made an important distinction between the personal unconscious,
concerning matters of an individuals own life, and the collective unconscious, embracing political and
social questions of the group.

Archetypes

Myths contain images or archetypes, according to Jung, traditional expressions of collective dreams,
developed over thousands of years, of symbols upon which the society as a whole has come to depend.
These archetypes, revealed in peoples' tales, establish patterns of behavior that can serve as exemplars,
as when we note that the lives of many heroes and heroines share a remarkable number of similar
features that can be identified as worthy of emulation. Similarly, other kinds of concept are to be
classified among the many and varied types of Jungian archetype embedded in our mythic heritage, e.g.,
the great earth mother, the supreme sky-god, the wise old man, the idealistic young lover.
MYTH AND SOCIETY
Myth and Ritual

J. G. Frazer and Jane Harrison

Sir J. G. Frazers The Golden Bough remains a pioneering monument in its attempts to link myth with
ritual. Similarly, the works of Jane Harrison are of seminal importance. Both Frazer and Harrison provide
a wealth of comparative data, and both may be subjected to the same critical reservations about the
validity of their ritualistic interpretations and their analogies between myths of primitive tribes and
classical myths. Yet both established fundamental approaches that endure to this day.

Robert Graves

The justly renowned novelist and poet Robert Graves has written an influential treatment of Greek
myths, full of valuable factual information, accompanied by dubious and idiosyncratic interpretations.
He definition of true myth as a kind of shorthand in narrative form for ritual mime is far too restrictive.
He separates myth from tales of other kinds by wisely focusing upon the literary distinctions to be found
in a variety of stories.

MYTH AS SOCIAL CHARTERS

Bronislav Malinowski

Bronislav Malinowskis work as an anthropologist among the Trobriand Islanders (off New Guinea) led to
his identification of the close connection between myths and social institutions. Myths are related to
practical life and explain existing practices, beliefs, and institutions by reference to tradition; they are
charters of social customs and beliefs.
THE STRUCTURALISTS

Claude Lvi-Strauss

The structuralist Claude Lvi-Strauss sees myth as mode of communication in which the structure or
interrelationships between the parts, rather than the individual elements alone, establish meaning. In
the belief that human behavior is patterned and that the human mind has a binary structure, LviStrauss argues that the creations of the mind, including myths in particular, partake of a binary
structure. One of the principal aims of myth is to negotiate between binary pairs or pairs of opposites
(e.g., raw/cooked, life/death, hunter/hunted, nature/culture, male/female, inside/outside), and to
resolve them. Since the meaning of a myth is coded in its structure, all versions of a myth have the
capacity to be equally valid.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp, a Russian folklorist, developed the structuralist approach to myth before Lvi-Strauss by
analyzing a select group of tales with similar features and isolating the recurrent, linear structure
manifest in them. In this pattern Propp identified 31 functions or units of action, which have been
termed motifemes. All these motifemes need not be present in one tale, but those that are will always
appear in the same sequential order.
This comparative approach to mythology has proven useful in analyzing a wide range of seemingly
dissimilar tales across many different cultures, which satisfy the sequential pattern, such as those about
a heros quest or, in particular, the thematic details concerning his mother and his birth, which Walter
Burkert has broken down into five motifemes:

The girl leaves home.

The girl is secluded.
She becomes pregnant by god.
She suffers.
She is rescued and gives birth to a son.

The understanding of classical mythology can be made both easier and more purposeful if underlying
structures are perceived and arranged logically. The recognition that these patterns are common to
stories told throughout the world is also most helpful for the study of comparative mythology.

Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert has attempted a synthesis of various theories about the nature of myths, most important
being those having a structuralist and a historical point of view. To Burkert, of great significance is the
fact that a myth has a historical dimension. In its development a myth may incorporate successive
layers of narrative, each of which has addressed the particular needs of a particular storyteller with a
particular audience in a particular time. To support his synthesis, he has developed four theses:

Myth belongs to the more general class of traditional tales.

The identity of a traditional tale is to be found in a structure of sense within the tale itself.
Tale structures, as a sequence of motifemes, are founded on basic biological or cultural
programs of actions.
Myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective
importance.

COMPARATIVE STUDY AND CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY

Oral and Literary Myth. Many insist that a true myth must be oral and anonymous. The tales told in
primitive societies are the only true myths, pristine, timeless, and profound. The written word brings
contamination and specific authorship. We disagree with such a narrow definition of mythology. Myth
need not be just a story told orally. It can be danced, painted, and enacted, and this is, in fact, what
primitive people do.
Myth is no less a literary than an oral form. Despite the successive layers that have been grafted onto
Greek and Roman stories and their crystallization in literary works of the highest sophistication,
comparative mythologists have been able to isolate the fundamental characteristics that classical myths
share with other mythologies, both oral and literate.
Joseph Campbell. A comparative mythologist, perhaps best known for his series of PBS interviews with
Bill Moyers, Campbell did much to popularize the comparative approach to mythology. Though his
attention was largely devoted to myths from other traditions, many of his observations, as he himself
was well aware, can be profitably applied to classical mythology.
Feminism, Homosexuality, and Mythology

Feminism

Feminist critical theory focuses upon the psychological and social situation of female characters in terms
of the binary nature of human beings, especially in the opposition (or complementary relationship) of
female and male. Feminist scholars have used the critical methods of deconstruction to interpret myths
from their points of view about political, social, and sexual conflict between men and women in the
ancient and modern world. Their conclusions are sometimes determined by controversial
reconstructions of two major topics: the treatment and position of women in ancient Greece and the
theme of rape.

Women in Greek Society

Here are four out of many observations that could be made about the treatment and position of women
in Greek society:

Women were citizens of their communities, unlike noncitizens and slavesa very meaningful
distinction. They did not have the right to vote. No woman anywhere won this democratic right
until 1920.
The role of women in religious rituals was fundamental; and they participated in many festivals
of their own, from which men were excluded.
A womans education was dependent on her future role in society, her status or class, and her
individual needs (as was that of a man).
The cloistered, illiterate, and oppressed creatures often adduced as representative of the status
of women in antiquity are at variance with the testimony of all the sources: literary, artistic, and
archaeological.
The Theme of Rape

What are we today to make of classical myths about ardent pursuit and amorous conquest? Are they
love stories or are they all, in the end, horrifying tales of victimization and rape?
The Greeks and the Romans were obsessed with the consequences of blinding passion, usually evoked
by Aphrodite, Eros, or Dionysus and his satyrs, and of equally compulsive chastity, epitomized by a
ruthless Artemis or one of her nymphs. The man usually, but by no means always, defines lust and the
woman chastity. Often there is no real distinction between the love, abduction, or rape of a woman by a
man and of a man by a woman.
Stories about abduction, so varied in treatment and content, have many deeper meanings embedded in
them, e.g., social, psychological, and very often religious. The supreme god Zeus may single out a chosen
woman to be the mother of a divine child for a grand purpose, and the woman may or may not be
overjoyed. Thus the very same tale may embody themes of victimization, sexual love, and spiritual
salvation, one or all of these conflicting eternal issues or more. Everything depends on the artist and the
person responding to the work of art: each individuals gender, sexual orientation, age, experience or
experiences, politics, and religion. There is no one correct interpretation, just as there is no one
correct definition of a myth.
These stories from antiquity to the present have evoked so wide a range of responses that they should
not be subjected to a criticism reduced to a simple harangue about the mistreatment of womenor of
men. Romantic critics in the past sometimes chose not to see the rape; many today choose to see
nothing else.

Homosexuality

Homosexuality was accepted and accommodated as a part of life, certainly in Athens. There were no
prevailing hostile religious views to condemn it as a sin. Yet there were serious moral codes of behavior,
mostly unwritten, that had to be followed to confer respectability upon homosexual relationships and
individuals who were homosexual.
Homosexuality may be found as a major theme in some stories, e.g., Zeus and Ganymede, Poseidon and
Pelops, Apollo and Hyacinthus, Apollo and Cyparissus, Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, and
Nisus and Euryalus. Thus Greek and Roman mythology embraces beautifully the themes of

homosexuality (and bisexuality) but, overall, it reflects the dominant concerns of a heterosexual society
from the Olympian family on down.
Female homosexuality in Greek and Roman society and mythology is as important a theme as male
homosexuality but it is not nearly as visible. Sappho, a lyric poetess from the island of Lesbos (sixth
century B.C.), perhaps offers the most overt evidence.
SOME CONCLUSIONS AND A DEFINITION OF CLASSICAL MYTH
We have provided a representative (and by no means exhaustive) sampling of influential definitions and
interpretations that can be brought to bear on classical mythology. It should be remembered that no
one theory suffices for a deep appreciation of the power and impact of all myths. Certainly the
panorama of classical mythology requires an arsenal of critical approaches.\
Let us end with a definition of classical mythology that emphasizes its eternal qualities, which have
assured a miraculous afterlife. It may be that a sensitive study of the subsequent art, literature, drama,
music, dance, and film, inspired by Greek and Roman themes and created by genius, offers the most
worthwhile interpretative insights of all.
A classical myth is a story that, through its classical form, has attained a kind of immortality because its
inherent archetypal beauty, profundity, and power have inspired rewarding renewal and transformation
by successive generations.

Chapter 02
Historical Background of Greek Mythology
EARLY GREECE AND THE AEGEAN
The study of classical mythology, especially Greek legend or saga with its basis in historical fact, is
enhanced by a survey of the history of Greece in the Bronze Age, our knowledge of which has
continually been expanded since the time of Heinrich Schliemann.
Heinrich Schliemann (18221890), Founder of Modern Archaeology. Schliemann fervently believed in
the historicity of Homers picture of the age of heroes and amassed a great fortune before he turned to
archaeological excavation to prove the truth of his seemingly romantic convictions. His extended
excavations at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns, begun in the 1870s, confirmed that these cities had achieved
a stature in wealth, power, and influence that accords well with Homer's depiction of the Mycenaean
world.
Sir Arthur Evans in Crete. Subsequently the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the Bronze Age
civilization that existed on the island of Crete. In 1899 he began his excavations at Cnossus, the center of
power for the legendary King Minos, and thus the period of the Bronze Age in Crete is designated as
Minoan.
A WORKABLE THUMBNAIL CHRONOLOGY

Stone Age

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) before 70,000 B. C.

Neolithic (New Stone Age) ca. 6,0003,000 B. C.
The Bronze Age (named Minoan for Crete, Cycladic for the Cyclades, the islands of the Aegean, and
Helladic for mainland Greece, Hellas).

Early Bronze Age (30002000 B. C.)

Early Minoan

Early Helladic

Middle Bronze Age (20001600 B. C.)

Middle Minoan

Early Cycladic

Middle Cycladic

Middle Helladic

Late Bronze Age (16001100 B. C.)

Late Minoan

Late Cycladic

Late Helladic (also called

Mycenaean because of the

powerful city of Mycenae)
Paleolithic Age. Greece was inhabited at this time, but our knowledge remains scanty.
Neolithic Age. A migration of people from east and north of Greece settled into agricultural
communities to judge from the archaeological remains: the foundations of dwellings, pottery, tools, and
graves. The presence of small female fetishes or icons with exaggerated feminine characteristics have
fostered the notion that this civilization worshiped a mother goddess. Smaller numbers of male
statuettes have been interpreted by some as her lesser male consort.
Bronze Age. The Bronze Age followed the Neolithic period with inhabitants moving into Greece, Crete
and Cyclades from the east. To these peoples are attributed the construction of Minoan civilization on
Crete.
Minoan Civilization. Named after the legendary king Minos, Minoan civilization reached its zenith during
the Late Bronze Age (16001100 B. C.). The large palatial complexes (especially the one at Cnossus) that
have been unearthed reveal a sophisticated and wealthy civilization. Excavations at Cnossus and
Phaestus confirm the historical and mythological tradition that Minoan Crete by its control of the sea
extended a cultural hegemony throughout the Aegean islands and mainland Greece and support the
interpretation that the mythological stories about King Minos and Theseus slaying of the Minotaur in its
labyrinth as a kind of quasi-historical remembrance. The collusion of the archaeological record and
legend has continued to fascinate: the importance of the bull motif, especially provocative in the
frescoes that depict the bull-leaping ritual or contest; the double-headed axe, or labrys, and its
connection with the non-Greek word labyrinth; the complexity of the palace of Cnossus, suggesting a
labyrinthine structure; the significance of the fertility mother goddess; the exaction of tribute by an
ascendant Cretan power from lesser Greek states.
Cretan power was undone by about 1400 B. C., though there is no consensus regarding the exact
reasons. Generally speaking, scholars find themselves divided between those who hold that the
Mycenaean Greeks assumed control over Crete and those who do not. The former hypothesis seems the
more likely.
For some, the cause of the eclipse of Cretan power is to be found in the volcanic eruption on the island
of Thera (modern Santorini, some seventy miles northwest of Crete), though the archaeological remains
seem to date the destruction of the island earlier than that of Crete. Some scholars also see in the
eruption of Thera and the destruction of its sophisticated culture the seeds of Platos myth of the
destruction of Atlantis in his Critiasand Timaeus.
The Mycenaean Age. In the Middle Bronze Age an invasion or migration from the north and possibly the
east brought into mainland Greece the first Greek-speaking people. The civilization that they established
reached its peak in the Late Bronze Age and has been called Mycenaean, after one of its principal
centers of power, Mycenae. Mycenaean civilization, although influenced by the earlier Minoan, differs
from it in some striking ways. Mycenae, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann, seems to have lived up to its
most famous Homeric epithet rich in gold. Surrounded by monumental walls (called Cyclopean
because they were said to have been built by the Cyclopes) and entered through the Lion Gate (with its
relief above the entrance of two lions or lionesses flanking a single column), Mycenae was built, as were
Cretan communities, around a complex palatial structure. Just inside the gate, Schliemann discovered a
circle of shaft graves, which contained a considerable treasure. Also excavated were tholos tombs,
beehive structures below the palace complex and typical of Mycenaean centers in general.

Schliemanns finds established the generally accurate picture of the Homeric account of the
sophistication and wealth of these Mycenaean Greek communities. Homer composed epic songs
celebrating a heroic age, and it must be about these communities that he, and other poets, would
continue to sing hundreds of years after their collapse.
Of great significant is the work of Carl Blegen (18871971), who discovered the Mycenaean palace of
the legendary King Nestor at Pylos. Particularly impressive is its well-preserved megaron, or central
room, with an open hearth, a feature found in Mycenaean but not in Minoan palaces.
In the sphere of religion, the Mycenaeans with their worship of a supreme sky-god Zeus differed
fundamentally from the Minoans, who worshiped a fertility mother goddess. In many respects, Greek
mythology can be seen as the synthesis of the tension between Minoan and Mycenaean culture.
Linear B. In the excavation of Mycenaean civilization, clay tablets inscribed with writing have been
found; an especially rich hoard was discovered at Pylos, preserved by the fire that brought destruction
towards the end of the Bronze Age. These tablets, deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, in
collaboration with John Chadwick, have been found to be the earliest form of the Greek language that
we possess. The script is called Linear B, to distinguish it from the earlier Minoan script (as yet
undeciphered) found on Crete. On Linear B tablets, mention is made of deities familiar to us from later
Greek mythology: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hermes, Athena, Eileithyia, and Dionysus. Also recorded is the
word paean, which would be a later epithet for Apollo, and the name Enualios, to be identified with
Ares. The appearance of the word potnia (mistress or lady) suggests that the Mycenaeans worshiped a
goddess of the mother-fertility type, in addition to their sky-god Zeus.
Troy and the Trojan War. Schliemann and Wilhelm Drpfeld conducted pioneering archaeological
campaigns from 1871 to 1894 at Troy. The site was reexamined by Blegen from 1932 to 1938. In 1988
Manfred Korfmann began new excavations of the site, which are in progress today.
Nine successive settlements have been identified on the hill of Hisarlik, the site of Troy. Troy I dates
from the Early Bronze (ca. 29202450 B. C.). Troy VIII or Ilion was an important city between ca. 700 B.C.
and 85 B. C. Under Augustus, the Romans, who traced their ancestry back to the Trojan Aeneas, began a
large-scale restoration of the city (Troy IX, Ilium 85ca. A. D. 500). A viable city survived there until the
late 12th or early 13th centuries.
At the level of Troy II (ca. 26002450) Schliemann unearthed a horde of treasure, which he inaccurately
identified as belonging to Priam and the city of the Trojan War. This Gold of Troy was lost during
World War II but rediscovered in the 1990s residing in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Subsequent excavations have identified Troy VI or Troy VIIa or both as the Troy of the Homeric epics.
Drpfeld claimed that Troy VI (Troia or Ilios, ca. 17001250), with its monumental walls, was the city of
Priam. The current excavators under Korfmann, however, tend to believe, along with Blegens earlier
assessments, that an earthquake destroyed Troy VI. For Blegen Troy VII (Troy VIIa to be exact) showed
signs of siege and fire and was to be identified as the city of epic song. There was a continuity of culture
between Troy VI and Troy VIIa and the remains, taken together, show evidence of human destruction
and may represent Priams Troy at different stages of the conflict.
Archaeology places the eclipse of Troy VI and VIIa at 12501150 B. C., which would coincide nicely with
the traditional date of 1184 B. C. for the fall of Troy. The citadel at Troy VI reveals a place of prestige and
power with significant fortification walls. The whole settlement, both citadel and lower area of
habitation, was ca. 200,000 meters square, with a population of ca. 7000. The presence of hasty burials
and piles of long-range weapons indicates the last struggles of Troy, the losing side in the war against
the Mycenaean Greeks. Evidence suggests commercial ties between the two powers. Troy's strategic
position guarding access through the Hellespont and her imposition of tolls suggest economic causes for
the conflict.

Hittite texts reveal close ties between the Hittites and a city called Wilusa, which has plausibly
identified with Ilios or Troy. Another text names the god Appaliunas, almost certainly to be identified
with Apollo, one of the principal divine defenders of Troy in the Iliad.
Excavations have also tended to confirm Homeric geography. Most tantalizing of all has been the
discovery of a Mycenaean cemetery, contemporaneous with late Troy VI or VIIa, on the original
seashore at the time of the Trojan War. It surely is more than a romantic notion to identify here the
camp of the Greek invaders.
End of the Mycenaean Age. Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, the eastern Mediterranean
experienced widespread upheaval. Within a generation, nearly all the centers of Mycenaean civilization
suffered devastation. There are signs of siege and internal dissension. The tradition that the destruction
of Mycenaean power coincided with an invasion of the Dorians from the north, though widely held, has
come under fire. Some have attempted to attribute the end of Bronze Age Greece to the invading sea
peoples mentioned in Egyptian records. Certainty has proven elusive.
Homer. Greece now entered an Age of Iron; there is a decline in population, a loss of literacy, and a
much-impoverished material culture. By the eighth century B. C., Greece began to re-emerge from its
Dark Age, with the composition of the Iliad and theOdyssey. Through an uninterrupted oral tradition
from the Bronze Age to the eighth century B. C., bards transmitted their poetic songs glorifying the
earlier epoch. Homer, whoever he was, or at least the material of the two epic poems, belongs to Asia
Minor or one of the coastal islands.
The Homeric question or questions, details about the composition and development of the Homeric
epics, cannot be finally answered. Both poems convey a Greek point of view and are recorded in an epic
language, an amalgamation of Greek dialects created by the bardic tradition. Though the poems glorify
the Bronze Age heroes, they also portray the world of the later period, down to the eighth century B. C.
At some point the Homeric poems were committed to writing, but when this occurred or to what degree
writing itself played a part in their composition is a much-disputed question. The end of the Dark Age
sees the development of a system of writing much more flexible than Linear B. By borrowing from the
symbols of the Phoenician script, but distinguishing in a new way both vowels and consonants, the
Greeks invent the first true alphabet.