Part IV
In this part . . .
In this part I explore the fundamentals of Greek mythology and how these translated into practical religion and worship. Some of the mythology, beliefs, and cults are very strange indeed. I also look at the Greek philosophers; the men who dared to disagree with the established tradition and come up with their own unique answers to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
Chapter 19
In This Chapter
● Appreciating the role of myths in Greek life
● Distinguishing between myth and history
● Explaining creation and more
● Getting to know the Olympian gods
● Differentiating between Greek and Roman gods
Of all the things that have survived the passage of time between ancient Greece and today, the Greek myths are probably the most enduring. First adopted and altered by the Romans whilst the Greek world was still in existence (around 300 BC), the myths and their thrilling cast of gods, mortals, and creatures have proven to be a huge inspiration to Renaissance artists, English poets, and 20th-century movie makers - to name just a few.
The ancient Greek myths are stories of love, jealousy, rage, heroism, cowardice, and nearly all other human states. In short, they’re brilliant - and this chapter looks at why.
Demystifying Myths
Myths were central to Greek life. They dominated the ancient Greeks’ religious practices, adorned temples and buildings, and appeared in nearly all literature and poetry. The reason for the prominence of myth in ancient Greek culture is simple: Myths helped the ancient Greeks to understand who they were.
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon were the first Greek historians. Before them, the Greeks didn’t really have history as such. They still had to explain the world around them - as well as the things they couldn’t see or understand.
Initially, the Greeks used myths to answer the big questions - like how the world came into being and where men and women came from. Without any scientific notions to fall back on, the Greeks came up with some surprising explanations! (See the later section ‘Starting Out: Greek Creation Myths’ for all the fascinating details.)
Passing on myths
Before around 750 BC the Greeks didn’t have writing (see Chapter 1), so they passed on all mythical stories by word of mouth, generation by generation. Eventually, these stories became part of an accepted system of belief. The gods and heroes described in them became as real to everyday folk as their local potter or innkeeper.
Myths that went beyond man’s origins eventually sprang up. Gods and heroes dominated and were involved in incredible stories of adventure. The storytelling about these characters became more involved and developed into songs and poems.
Poets and epics
By the eighth century BC the Greeks began to record their oral poetry in written form. The works of poets like Homer (see Chapter 20) and Hesiod were written down, and the stories that they told became a kind of mythical fact - ‘mythtory’, if you like!
In many cases, the stories that the great poets produced were epic cycles - long stories about heroes’ whole lifetimes as well as what happened to their families for generations afterwards. These stories became a kind of mythtory too, explaining the period of time before real history was written and also served as inspiration to later playwrights, poets, and artists.
Keeping track of everything
Of course, one of the problems with myths that developed through an oral tradition was that everybody had his or her own slightly different version. Often, these differences were geographical, with many towns claiming to be the birthplace of a hero or the place where a famous event took place.
A good example of this confusion is the god Pan (see Chapter 13). At least 14 different mythological characters are referred to as being his father!
Collating all these many stories and their many versions was a big job, but some writers did try and do it. Not many of their works survive, but the following are two notable contributions:
● The Theogony by Hesiod (refer to Chapter 13) is literally a book about ‘god-birth’. This long poem describes the earliest elements of Greek mythology and how the Olympian gods came into being. Several translations are available online and in published form.
● The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus, a scholar who lived in Alexandria during the second century BC, is an expansive survey of myths. Translations of Apollodorus’s work are still published and widely available today.
Starting Out: Greek Creation Myths
So how did it all begin, then? Unsurprisingly, ancient cultures offer various versions of the myth of creation - and the ancient Greeks have several of their own takes on the story.
Hesiod's version
The Greeks called the creation stories cosmogony, or how everything came into being. The most common cosmogony was the one that Hesiod describes in the Theogony.
Chaos was first of all, but next appeared broad bosomed Earth, sure standing place for all... From Chaos came Black Night and Erebos and Night in turn gave birth to Day and Space whom she conceived in love to Erebos.
The idea is that first there was nothing but a void (Chaos) from which sprang Earth (also known as Gaia), Love (Eros), and other elemental beings. Eventually, Gaia gave birth to Uranos who became the sky; he in turn fertilised Gaia and she gave birth to more children - the Titans.
All fairly trippy stuff. Notice how the Greeks personified certain things which modern folks consider to be abstract notions. For example, love and the sky have humanlike qualities and even genders. The ancient Greeks relied heavily on anthropomorphism. They believed the creation of the world could be explained by the interaction of various forces, and these forces were best understood by making them like humans. See the later section ‘Defining the gods’ for more on anthropomorphism.
Other versions
Of course, Hesiod’s is just one version! Loads of others pop up throughout Greek literature. Here are a few good ones:
● The earliest creation myth is called the Pelasgian and may have been a foreign tradition that predated the Greeks. According to this version, Eurynome produced a massive egg. Her son Ophion sat on it and hatched it. From the egg came the whole universe, including the humans and the gods.
● In Homer, the coupling of two of the Titans - Tethys and her brother Ocean - produced all the gods.
● In later versions, the first deity was Night (known as Nyx). She either produced an egg (like Eurynome) or gave birth to all gods and humans.
These three versions (plus Hesiod’s explanation) are a great example of how fluid Greek mythology was and how similar stories were told in many completely different and alternative ways.
Remembering the Titans
In Hesiod’s version of the creation myth, Gaia (Earth) and Uranos (the sky) gave birth to a whole range of different characters known as the Titans. Like a mythological version of a musical, the Titans were made up of six males and six females.
Crafty Kronos
Chief amongst the Titans was the wily Kronos, who was married to his sister Rhea. He had his eyes on power and plotted with his mother Gaia. While Uranos slept, Kronos crept up on him and sliced off his genitals with a scythe! They fell from the sky into the sea and bobbed along, until they came to the island of Cyprus where they caused a rather surprising result. According to Hesiod:
The genitals, cut off with adamant and thrown from land into the stormy sea, were carried for a long time on the waves. White foam surrounded the immortal flesh, and in it grew a girl... and there the goddess came forth, lovely, much revered, and grass grew up beneath her delicate feet. Her name is Aphrodite among men.
The final lines inspired the Renaissance artist Botticelli’s famous painting The Birth of Venus - but you can see why he didn’t choose to depict the first part!
What goes around comes around
Kronos became the ruler of the Titans, but he feared that one of his own children would usurp him. To protect his power, every time his wife Rhea gave birth, he grabbed the child and ate it!
Eventually, Rhea swapped her latest child (a boy called Zeus) for a stone wrapped in a blanket, which Kronos gulped down. She then gave Kronos a poisoned drink that caused him to vomit up his other children. Zeus then got his siblings together and challenged Kronos to fight. Zeus and his siblings won the war: the Titans were defeated and sent down to the abyss (an empty chasm beneath the earth also known as Tartarus). The heavens had new rulers - the Olympian gods! (See the later section ‘Meeting the Olympians: X-Rated Deities’ for all the details on this motley crew of immortals.)
Bridging the gap between gods and man
The ancient Greeks thought that the events of the Titans happened a long time before their own day. While they passionately believed that gods existed, they considered that they only experienced the gods’ actions in the form of storms and so on.
To bridge this gap between Titans and everyday experience, the Greeks believed that another age had existed in between - an age when the gods and men had existed side by side.
Of course, the Greeks being Greeks, matters weren’t that straightforward! They divided this period between the Titans and everyday ancient Greek existence into various ages. Here’s a quick guide:
● The Golden Age: This was a peaceful time when men and women existed in harmony alongside the gods, who were ruled by Kronos. This was an age of plenty when all lived easily off nature.
● The Silver Age: When the Golden Age human race died out another race replaced them. But this race was foolish and wicked, and Zeus decided to destroy it (see the following section ‘Figuring out where it all went wrong’).
● The Bronze Age: During this age humans discovered war and became so obsessed with it that they ended up destroying themselves.
● The Age of Heroes: This period was when the great Greek heroes - including Heracles, Theseus, and Achilles - flourished. These individuals fought each other and went on incredible adventures. For more on this age, see Chapter 20.
● The Iron Age: This was the period that the ancient Greeks considered themselves to be living in. It was an age where men were forced to work hard for a living.
The ancient Greeks firmly believed that their own period (the Iron Age) was a time of great hardship and that life had been much better during the Golden Age. In his poem Works and Days Hesiod gives a lovely picture of what that golden era was like:
And like gods they lived with happy hearts, untouched by toil or sorrow. Vile old age never appeared, but always lively-limbed, far from ills, they feasted happily. Death came to them as sleep, and all good things were theirs; ungrudgingly, the fertile land gave up her fruits unasked. Happy to be at peace they lived with every want supplied.
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Then again, it isn’t unusual for any society to have a romantic view of the past and complain about its own time.
Figuring out where it all went wrong
So if the relationship between men and gods was perfectly happy during the Golden Age, why did the Greeks fear and respect the gods in their time? The difference is explained by the Silver Age, where Zeus became enraged at the wicked behaviour of the race that he’d created and decided to wipe it out.
Deucalion’s ark
Zeus’s choice of Armageddon weapon was a flood. Much like in the Old Testament story of Noah, only one man and his family had a chance to survive Zeus’s flood. In the Greek version, a Titan called Prometheus took pity on humans and warned a man called Deucalion.
Deucalion and his family built an ark and survived the rain for nine days before coming to rest on the top of Mount Parnassus near Delphi. Zeus relented and allowed Deucalion and his family to create a new race of men and women. One of the sons was called Hellen, who gave his name to the race that the Greeks were descended from - the Hellenes. Although this was a widely held mythological belief, no historical evidence for it exists. (For my theories on where the Greeks actually came from refer to Chapters 2 and 3!)
Prometheus: Always in trouble
Prometheus also helped the new race of Hellenes by defying the wishes of Zeus and giving men the gift of fire. Interestingly, Prometheus’s name means ‘forethought’, although he didn’t show too much here because Zeus’s anger was considerable.
Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a cliff and sending eagles to attack him. Every day the eagles tore out Prometheus’s liver. The wound magically healed every evening and the punishment was repeated the next day. Eventually, Heracles freed Prometheus when he passed by on the way to one of his labours. (Chapter 20 has more on Heracles.)
The story of Prometheus is a great example of the savage punishments that the ancient Greeks believed their gods were capable of. The tragic playwright Aeschylus (see Chapter 16) wrote a trilogy about Prometheus from which the first play, Prometheus Bound, still survives. In the following fiery excerpt, Prometheus defies Zeus’s worst punishments:
Let hurricanes upheave by the roots the base of the earth, let the sea-waves’ roaring savagery confound the courses of the heavenly stars. Let him lift me high and hurl me into black Tartarus [the deep abyss beneath the earth] on ruthless floods of irresistible doom: I am one whom he cannot kill!
The story of Prometheus is very much a fantastical myth but it does reinforce the way the Greeks felt about the relationship between man and the gods. People who defied the gods would be justly punished. Greek tragic plays are full of examples of characters who have pushed too far, been too bold, or too arrogant, and suffered terrible punishments as a result.
Putting the Gods in Their Place
The ancient Greeks loved gods, absolutely loved them. The Greeks had loads of gods, and through their rich mythology they turned the most surprising things - such as rivers and mountains - into gods. This section examines the various powers and responsibilities of the gods, from the perspective of an everyday ancient Greek citizen. Get ready for some surprises!
Understanding the role of gods
The gods played a vital part in how regular ancient Greeks lived their everyday lives, including what they thought, what they built, what they painted, and what they composed poems, plays, and songs about.
At the same time, people lived in great fear of the power of their gods and made sacrifices and offerings to them in the hope of receiving good fortune in return.
In the film Clash of the Titans (1980), the gods are depicted in quite a classical way: sitting around a temple in flowing robes, watching the world from afar and playing a game like chess with human lives. Although the special effects are pretty cheesy, the notion of the gods as beautiful and fabulous but capable of wielding enormous power is a decent depiction of these deities.
Worshipping many
After Zeus’s revolt against his father Kronus and defeat of the Titans in a war (see the earlier section ‘Remembering the Titans’), the gods that the ancient Greeks recognised came into existence and continued to rule for all eternity.
Ancient Greek religion was polytheistic, which means it consisted of many gods or deities. This is in contrast to Christianity, for example, which has one god and is therefore a monotheistic religion.
Greek religion had a specific pantheon, or collection of gods, that comprised the most important deities. I look at these top tier gods in the later section ‘Meeting the Olympians: X-Rated Deities’.
Defining the gods
The Greek gods were anthropomorphic. This means the Greeks imagined their gods in their own terms - looking and speaking like men and women, although being fabulously powerful and magical.
Anthropomorphism is quite a reasonable thing for humans to do. (The Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religions all include anthropomorphism in various ways.) The Greek philosopher Xenophanes summed the idea up quite nicely in his comment that ‘If horses could draw, they would draw horse gods'.
Super powers
Despite taking human form, the Greek gods were awesome in their abilities. Specifically, they were
● Able to resist wounding and disease
● Able to transform into other beings or creatures at the drop of a hat
● Blessed with eternal youth
● Capable of flight
In a way, they were like modern superheroes.
Do as I say, not as I do
Of course, the Greeks also imagined that their gods acted with some of the same motivations as normal people and experienced the same emotions.
This belief meant that the Olympian gods often acted in cruel, childish, and immoral ways. In the myths, they commit adultery, rape, and murder on a seemingly daily basis and very often appear to revel in the cruel and inhuman punishments that they inflict on poor, defenceless humans.
To the Greeks there was nothing strange about the gods’ actions. The Greeks didn’t look to Zeus or Apollo as exemplars of good behaviour or for moral guidance. And that’s just as well really! The Greeks didn’t have a concept of sin or wickedness that came from religion. All the restrictions placed on people’s liberty to act were based on legal or social conventions rather than religious instruction.
Visiting Olympus - a home fit for the gods
According to mythological tradition, the gods lived at the very top of Mount Olympus in northern Greece. This was where they spent a lot of time in near continual feasting and revelry, eating ambrosia and drinking nectar. It was vital for them to do this because the magical properties of these foodstuffs renewed their divine blood and kept up their powers.
Despite this seeming idyllic existence, the gods often roamed around, visiting parts of the world and interacting with their human subjects. A good example of this god/human interaction happens in Homer’s The Odyssey when the other gods hold a sneaky meeting while Poseidon is away visiting the Ethiopians. The gods decide to help Odysseus (whom Poseidon is angry with) get home. The Greeks thought Ethiopia (their name for all of Africa beyond the Nile) was the farthest place in the world. So far, in fact, not even Poseidon could see what was happening in the Mediterranean while he was in Ethiopia!
Working like a god: Attributions and divine job descriptions
When they weren’t feasting or misbehaving, the Olympian gods did have responsibilities. Each god had his or her own area of expertise, which I think of as their attributions.
Nearly every area of human experience had a god that oversaw it. For example, Demeter looked after farming, Poseidon sea travel, and Asclepius medicine and healing.
Inspiring ladies: The Muses
The immortals who were most closely associated with their area of expertise were the Muses. These nine female deities were led by Apollo (patron god of the arts) and each represented an area of artistic endeavour:
● Calliope: Epic poetry
● Clio: History
● Erato: Lyric poetry
● Euterpe: Flute-playing
● Melpomene: Tragedy
● Polymnia: Hymns
● Terpsichore: Dancing and the chorus
● Thalia: Comedy
● Urania: Astronomy
The ancient Greeks believed that the relevant Muse directly inspired artists working in these fields. For this reason, all epic poems traditionally begin with a request by the poet to be inspired by the Muse Calliope. Hesiod's Theogonyis a good example; he starts the poem by describing the encounter that he had with the Muses that inspired him: 'With the Heliconian [resident on Mount Helicon] Muses let us start our song.'
The Greeks believed that the Muses lived on Olympus and spent their days entertaining the gods. Occasionally, they came down to earth and literally filled an artist with their inspiration. Hopefully, Clio paid me a visit while I was writing this book!
In many cases, gods had more than one attribution. Some, like Apollo and Athena, had loads. And yes, these attributions sometimes clashed with each other. For example, Athena was the goddess of handicrafts, wisdom, and war. Not the most obvious combination!
The way that a god got his attribution was this: People adopted a god as the patron deity of some area of human experience. It’s impossible to know why the gods were given their attributions although they were usually relevant to an incident in mythology (such as Poseidon being given the sea as his realm by Zeus). Individuals honoured the god and made offerings, hoping for benefits in return. In the case of individual trades (such as medicine or shipbuilding), having a designated god led the Greeks to form guilds and organise public festivals and celebrations in honour of their deities.
Have you seen the film Xanadu (1980)? It probably doesn’t immediately strike you as relevant to the ancient Greeks but it does feature the Muses masquerading as rock band ‘The Nine Sisters’. It also features Zeus, Cliff Richard, and ELO - perfect for a Sunday afternoon!
Separating fate from dumb luck
The ancient Greeks believed that they had to worship the gods to ensure that their lives progressed happily and that bad things didn’t happen to them. This philosophy may suggest that the Greek believed the gods controlled their destinies - but this isn’t the case.
In addition to the gods, the Greeks believed in the idea of fate - that their lives were planned out and followed preordained paths. Thus, the time of your birth and the time of your death were fixed by a group of three female deities called, surprisingly enough, the Fates.
According to Hesiod, the Fates were very ancient goddesses who were the daughters of Nyx (Night); see the earlier section ‘Starting Out: Greek Creation Myths’. These sisters spun out the thread (or the fabric) of a life and then one of them, Atropos, cut it when it was time for the human to die. The Fates existed apart from the other gods, and some accounts go as far as to state that the Olympian gods feared them.
The role of the gods was to administer fate as it came to pass. In Thelliad Homer describes Zeus as having a set of scales on which he weighs the fates of the heroes who are in combat, deciding who’ll live or die that day.
But although Zeus administers these fates, he can’t actually do anything to change them, which is highlighted when his own mortal son, Sarpedon, is killed in battle. For a moment Zeus considers trying to prevent his son’s death but then he realises that he can’t.
The Odyssey includes an even better example of the gods’ relationship with fate. Athena states:
But from the great leveller Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.
Accordingly, people rarely asked the gods for anything related to their deaths or how long they would live. The Greeks generally accepted that the gods controlled what happened in your mortal life, not when it ended. I look at the Greek attitude towards death in Chapter 21.
Mocking the gods
Despite the awesome power that the Greeks thought the gods wielded, people still often treated them as figures of fun and amusement in art, literature, and theatre. For example, in The Iliadthe childish and comic affairs of the gods act as a kind of counterpoint to the remorselessness of the fighting and death going on in the Trojan War.
Comic plays (see Chapter 16) frequently poke fun at the gods. In Frogs by Aristophanes, two of the central characters, Dionysus and Heracles, are immortals and they’re lampooned just as much as the rest of the cast. In one scene, Dionysus asks Heracles for travel tips on the journey to Hades (the underworld):
I wondered if you could give me a few tips: any useful contacts down there, where you get the boat, which are the best eating houses, bread shops, wine shops, knocking shops . . . And which places have the fewest bugs.
Fun and games aside, I must make two important points about Aristophanes’s comic musings about the gods:
● He isn’t mocking any aspect of the gods’ awesome powers as gods; rather he’s making fun of them acting like humans.
● He’s picked two relatively minor gods - he isn’t mocking Zeus or Apollo.
This careful fun-poking reveals that the Greeks had something of a hierarchy for their gods. So without further ado, the next section looks at the most important ones!
Meeting the Olympians: X-Rated Deities
Probably the most important factor to remember about the Olympian gods is that they were, for the most part, related (see the section ‘Starting Out: Greek Creation Myths’ for the odd genealogical details). For example:
Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were all brothers.
Hera was their sister and was married to Zeus. (The Zeus/Hera relationship was more than fit for an episode of Jerry Springer!)
Apollo, Artemis, and Hermes were just a few of Zeus’s many children.
Like all families, the gods had their ups and downs. Many of the stories about the Greek gods are born out of their petty jealousies and squabbles. It’s like a kind of immortal soap opera - so meet the cast of Olympian gods.
Zeus, the king of the gods
Zeus was king of all the gods. When he defeated his father Kronos (see the earlier section ‘Starting Out: Greek Creation Myths’), he became lord of everything. He mostly appears in myth as a great philanderer, sleeping with many mortals and immortals. Zeus regularly transformed himself into other creatures to do this: a swan (Leda), a bull (Europa), and even a shower of gold (Danae)!
Poseidon, the earth-shaker
Poseidon was the brother of Zeus. When Zeus became supreme, Poseidon was made the god of the earth (thus he was responsible for causing earth quakes) and the sea. Poseidon was also the god of horses and he impregnated the demon Medusa. When Medusa was killed by the hero Perseus, the famous winged horse Pegasus was born from her neck!
Hades, the king of the dead
Zeus’s other brother Hades was given the underworld to rule and he became king of the dead. The Greeks (and more frequently the Romans) also referred to him as Pluto, meaning ‘wealthy’, because of the richness and fertility that come from underneath the earth.
Hades is mainly known for his abduction of Persephone (daughter of Zeus and Demeter), who he took to the underworld to be his wife. Zeus forced Hades to allow Persephone to return to mortality for six months of the year, bringing with her return to the land of living the warm weather of spring and summer.
Hera, the queen of heaven
Hera was the older sister of Zeus and also his wife. She was the goddess of marriage and the Greeks honoured her in this way. In myth and literature she spends most of her time being offended by Zeus’s philandering and cruelly punishing his mortal lovers. She bore Zeus three children, including Ares the god of war. She also makes regular appearances in the stories of Heracles (setting him his tasks) and Jason (helping him to steal the Golden Fleece).
Hestia, the quiet one
Another sister of Zeus, Hestia was an intriguing, lesser-known immortal. She was the goddess of the hearth and home and is often depicted tending an eternal flame or fire. She renounced sexual love and lived a life of chastity - and consequently she never really features in any myths at all!
Despite her low profile in literature, Hestia was probably the most worshipped goddess because she was the protectoress of every household, typically receiving the first offering of every sacrifice made in a Greek home.
Apollo, lord of the silver bow
Apollo was the male twin born of Zeus’s coupling with Leto, the daughter of one of the Titans (Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister). Apollo was the patron god of archers and had many names like ‘the far shooter’ and ‘lord of the silver bow’. Apollo is the god of prophecy and is also heavily associated with the sun and light. He was famed for establishing the Delphic Oracle (see Chapter 21) and is always depicted in Greek art as the epitome of male beauty and perfection.
Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love
The goddess of beauty, attraction, and sexual love, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, but they had no children, and she was frequently unfaithful. Her most famous myth is that of her birth (see the earlier section ‘Crafty Kronos’). She frequently appears in other stories, meddling in human relationships, sometimes with her son Eros. She plays a critical role in setting up the conflict that launched the Trojan War; see Chapter 20.
Ares, the god of war
Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, and he was a truly terrifying god. Not only the god of war, Ares actively enjoyed the fear and chaos of battle and was credited with inspiring blood lust and savagery in mortals. He had two sons - Phobos (‘Terror’) and Deimos (‘Fear’). He was also the father of Eros, a god of lust, love, and intercourse, as a result of a long-term liaison with Aphrodite.
Athena, the intelligent one
Athena was the daughter of Zeus and was identified with both war and handicrafts. This may seem a strange combination, but these were identified as the chief male and female occupations of the day. Unlike Ares, Athena’s association with war was with the sober, correct use of it to defend cities.
Athena was also closely identified with intelligence and is often shown with an owl. The patron deity of the city of Athens, she was also the great protector of the hero Odysseus in The Odyssey.
Artemis, the hunter
The daughter of Zeus and the twin sister of Apollo, Artemis was the goddess of hunting and of women - with a particular focus on childbirth. Her role as huntress encompassed all wildlife, and she was seen as being wild and untamed in this way. She’s often depicted in art carrying a bow and arrows and wearing animal skins.
Hephaestus, the god of the forge
Hephaestus was the god of fire and metalwork. He was the son of Hera and born crippled. In some versions, he was born without a father, developing out of Hera’s rage for Zeus’s infidelities. Hera was so ashamed of him that she flung him from Mount Olympus, and several myths exist about the extravagant revenges that he took upon her.
Married to Aphrodite, Hephaestus spent most of his days in his forge where he famously created a wonderful shield for the hero Achilles. Eventually, the Greeks revered him for all industry and manufacturing activities.
Hermes, the messenger god
One of the many sons of Zeus, Hermes was the messenger and herald of the gods. He appears in myth wearing winged sandals that enable him to fly at great speed to deliver messages from Olympus. Unsurprisingly, he was also the god of travellers; people made offerings to him before setting out on long journeys. He was also known as a cunning trickster - probably not the one to ask directions from then!
Demeter, the life-giver
Demeter was the goddess of corn and accordingly considered to be the sustainer of life. She was the sister of Zeus and bore him a daughter called Persephone. Due to her association with the harvest, she was very heavily worshipped by the Greeks and central to their most famous cult, the Eleusinian Mysteries (described in Chapter 21).
Dionysus, the god of good times
Dionysus was another son of Zeus and the god of wine and intoxication. Drunkenness was seen as a good thing because it helped to banish the cares of the world. Drinking and revelry fitted well with his other role as god of the theatre, where people could wear masks to change their identity. Dionysus spent his time roaming the countryside with his drunken crew, including his crazed female followers known as maenads.
The preceding is just a tiny introduction to the top-tier Olympian gods and their most famous stories. The myths about them are incredibly complex and contradict each other all the time. What’s most important is the associations the gods had because that’s why Greeks worshipped them. (See Chapter 21 for more on how the ancient Greeks went about worshipping.)
Not all fun and games
Although the gods all sound like tremendous fun, they were actually violent and unpredictable. Dionysus is a particularly good example. He sounds like a god who inspired good times and revel, and he did. But he also turned people mad. Under Dionysus's influence, people did awful and terrible things.
In Euripides's play Bacchae, Dionysus turns Pentheus (the king of Thebes) insane after he attempts to stop Dionysus's followers from worshipping him. Pentheus is torn to pieces by the maenadswhen he blunders in on their rites.
Here Dionysus sets out how Pentheus had broken the rules.
No god can see his worship scorned, and hear his name profaned, and not take vengeance to the utmost limit. Thus men may learn that gods are more powerful than they.
Although they may act like fools and make human mistakes in many of the myths, the gods were to be feared and the Greeks worshipped them through fear as much as devotion.
The third section of Disney’s Fantasia (1940) is an animated piece that accompanies Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony ‘The Pastoral’. The Greek gods on Mount Olympus are all in it. The blend of music and animation is wonderful and I can never hear that music without thinking about Greek mythology.
Transitioning from Greek to Roman
The Romans adopted gods very close to the Greek ones as their own. Greek and Roman gods were very similar and had the same attributions, but had different names. It can sometimes get quite confusing so Table 19-1 serves as a quick guide.
|
Table 19-1 |
Greek and Roman Deities |
|
|
Greek Name |
Roman Name |
Greek Attribution |
|
Zeus |
Jupiter |
Sky, weather, storms, and lightning. |
|
Hera |
Juno |
Marriage and childbirth |
|
Poseidon |
Neptune |
The ocean and earthquakes |
|
Hades |
Pluto |
Death and the underworld |
|
Greek Name |
Roman Name |
Greek Attribution |
|
Hestia |
Vesta |
The hearth (or home) |
|
Apollo |
Apollo |
Prophecy, divination, the arts |
|
Aphrodite |
Venus |
Beauty and erotic love |
|
Athena |
Minerva |
War and handicrafts |
|
Hephaestus |
Vulcan |
Fire and metalworking |
|
Ares |
Mars |
War |
|
Hermes |
Mercury |
Messages and travel |
|
Demeter |
Ceres |
Corn |
|
Artemis |
Diana |
Hunting and women |
|
Dionysus |
Bacchus |
Wine and intoxication |
The Roman and Greek gods aren’t exactly the same but they had similar attributions, so the Romans adopted the Greek gods completely as they absorbed Greece into their empire (refer to Chapter 12).
One thing that did change in the transition from Greek to Roman was the importance of some gods. Mars (Ares) was incredibly important to a warlike people like the Romans, and Vesta (Hestia) came to prominence as the founding deity of the famous Vestal Virgins, a hugely influential cult in Rome that trained young women to be priestesses.