Ancient Greeks dressed differently, too. Most wore a chiton, which was similar to a long T-shirt made from one large piece of cotton. The poor slaves, however, had to make do with a loincloth a small strip of cloth wrapped around the waist. To show the Gods how important they were, the Greeks built temples in every town for one God or Goddess. The most famous temple is the Parthenon in Athens. This temple was built for the Goddess Athena, the protector of the city. The temples were not like modern places of worship, for ordinary people to pray in.
They were homes for statues of Gods, which were cared for by priests. Religious ceremonies and festivals went on outside the temple. Rich cities, like Athens, built temples with the best stone, and decorated them with paintings, statues and carvings. People also had special places in their homes where they could pray to the Gods. There were public shrines in all sorts of places where people could pray and leave presents so the Gods would grant their wishes for things such as a good harvest, a safe journey or for their children to become beautiful.
Priests were important people in the community. They were believed to have the power to talk to the Gods and so were respected and trusted.
There were only two ways you could become a priest. Either your mother or father was a priest or you were made a priest by a dying priest. A warrior like this lives to die in battle, winning renown for generations. Then there is the warrior hero who fights for a dying but illumined culture, and one he knows is doomed.
The Homeric hero Hector fights for Troy and for his family, but these responsibilities tend to encumber him when he finally meets Achilles, who has nothing to lose by dying and who is completely dedicated to killing.
And King Arthur, after all the splendors of Camelot, is fatally wounded in battle by his illegitimate son, Modred. There is also the warrior who seeks to establish a kingship or build a city.
Aeneas is the exemplar of this type, fighting for a new and coming civilization with the force of destiny in his breast. He represents the values that made Rome triumphant for centuries, even though he is a literary rather than a mythical personage. Finally we have the metaphysical hero, who sets out on a strange quest. Gilgamesh in his journey to overcome death is such a hero, and his failure carries the sadness of human mortality. But the pure metaphysical hero is Buddha, who conquers within himself all the urges that prevent enlightenment.
Thus we see the spectrum of values and heroic codes that a society can use to shape a civilization. Epic legends show the direction of a culture and what it is likely to accomplish. Legends are not mere entertainments; they serve to educate and channel the energies of the young.
Puberty rites in primitive cultures involve rigorous instruction in myth and legend. The boys of classical Greece were expected to memorize large parts of Homer and Hesiod. As Werner Jaeger points out in Paideia, the Iliad had a profound effect on the spectacular brilliance of Greek civilization.
The Achillean thirst for glory helped promote a striving for excellence in every field, which created the stunning geniuses of the Classical Age. Essentially heroic legends are the stuff for which civilizations live and die. Besides the pure myth and the saga there is another type of story common in primitive cultures: the folk tale or fairy tale.
This is a story told for sheer pleasure without any pretense to being factual. The travelers' tales, such as the adventures of Odysseus, are stories of this kind. And the legend of Perseus has a large element of fairy tale and magic. Yet because folk tales are told for pleasure does not mean they cannot have meaning or beauty. The writings of Jung and other psychoanalysts dissuade us from lightly dismissing folk tales as nonsense. They may be a primitive form of fiction, but for that very reason they are close to the tap root of man's imagination.
Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche is a delightful literary adaptation of the fairy tale, expressing the hard discipline of the soul before it can recover its true place as the mate of love.
In a sophisticated society myths may be conscious and symbolic creations designed to embody an abstract idea. A story, after all, is far more memorable than a sermon or a treatise. It can present a complicated concept and make it shimmer with implications. Aesop's fables, Plato's philosophical myths, and India's mythical allegories are such stories. As Jesus realized, if one wants to make an abstract idea understandable to the masses one should present it as a story or parable.
The tale of the Good Samaritan, for example, shows the broad idea of universal brotherhood very simply. Myths connected with the mystery cults of ancient Greece, such as those of Persephone, Dionysus, and Orpheus, where the hero or heroine enters the kingdom of death to re-emerge later, point not merely to the annual dying and rebirth of vegetation but also to a belief in the immortality of the soul.
The fable, the parable, and the allegory all require considerable intelligence to create them and are usually not the product of the popular or folk imagination. There is yet another type of story often classified as myth that is the result of a conscious literary effort and which belongs to a highly developed culture. This is the romance, the love story in which the hero is dedicated to the pursuit or happiness of a woman.
In the realm of heroic action women were almost incidental to the hero's destiny. A woman could help or hinder the hero but his deeds belonged to him alone. Heroes like Heracles, Jason, Theseus, Odysseus, and Aeneas might have romantic entanglements, but they always left the women behind to follow their true calling. In the romance, however, the hero devotes himself to love.
These tales crop up when a culture begins to grow soft, as in Hellenized Greece, late Augustan Rome and after, or the courtly societies of the late Middle Ages.
In Ovid, for instance, the elegant Augustan poet, there is an obsessive preoccupation with love and feminine psychology. It would seem that when a culture lacks monsters to kill, civilizations worth fighting for, or ideas to advance, men seem to dissolve in effeminate idleness, making the art of love their main profession.
Having delineated the major types of stories usually classed as myth — the explanatory myth, the heroic saga, the folk tale, the symbolic story, and the romance — it must be said that these stories are rarely found in their pure form, but are blended and take on multiple functions. Myths have their source in the imagination and can satisfy those needs that require an imaginative solution. Stories are indeed the most impressive records of human life.
Many of the myths in this volume have lasted for thousands of years, remaining as fresh as when they were first written down, while the architecture of the age lies buried in ruins. This is because myths have their origin in man's creative faculty, which is vital and permanent. For one thing, in their written form myths are often magnificent literature. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, and Vergil are among the foremost literary geniuses of all time.
For another, classical mythology formed the basis of a humanistic education throughout the ancient world and from the late Middle Ages down to the twentieth century. Writers from Chaucer to Robert Graves have been steeped in these old myths, so that their works can scarcely be appreciated without some knowledge of them. Furthermore, the art, sculpture, and architecture of the ancient world abounds in mythological themes; and the art and sculpture from the Renaissance to Picasso cannot be fully grasped without an understanding of mythology.
Other fields, too, borrow some of their terminology from myths — fields as diverse as psychology, botany, astronomy, and space technology. The anthropologist and the archeologist study the myths of a people as a means of grasping the culture. But beyond these advantages a sympathetic reading of the myths of other peoples and ages can keep us from becoming provincial in outlook, locked in the narrow worlds of our own immediate concerns.
Myths can show us the marvels that existed long before scientific reasoning shed its progressive light on our perceptions. Next About Egyptian Mythology. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Many of these creatures have become almost as well known as the gods, goddesses and heroes who share their stories.
The characters, stories, themes and lessons of Greek mythology have shaped art and literature for thousands of years. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In around B. Most of all, Pericles paid artisans to build temples In the year B. It was the first known democracy in the world. This system was comprised of The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable.
They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years B. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was Sparta was a warrior society in ancient Greece that reached the height of its power after defeating rival city-state Athens in the Peloponnesian War B.
Spartan culture was centered on loyalty to the state and military service. At age 7, Spartan boys entered a By turns charismatic and ruthless, brilliant and power hungry, diplomatic and
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