How did the ancient Greeks view the myths?.

[David19]

This is something I'm really curious about, how did the ancient Greeks view their myths. I've heard that mythology was not important and that how the Gods were portrayed differed to how they actually were, and this site on Greek mythology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology) says:

After the rise of philosophy, and history, prose and rationalism in the late 5th century BC the fate of myth became uncertain, and mythological genealogies gave place to a conception of history which tried to exclude the supernatural (such as the Thucydidean history).[66] While poets and dramatists were reworking the myths, Greek historians and philosophers were beginning to criticize them

And that some philosophers, like Xenophanes of Colophon, among others, really attacked the myth and said things like:

Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods "all that is shameful and disgraceful among men; they steal, commit adultery, and deceive one another

Also, the same site says:

Plato created his own allegorical myths (such as the vision of Er in the Republic), attacked the traditional tales of the gods' tricks, thefts and adulteries as immoral, and objected to their central role in literature

And, I've heard all this before, and that Xenophanes even criticized the belief that the Gods were anthropomorphic, which I thought was wierd, 'cause aren't the Gods supposed to be like humans, only much more powerful, immortal, but with similar types of passions, desires, etc.

Did most ancient Greeks believe similar things to the philosophers, and if they paid any attention to the myths at all, interpreted them allegorically, or did they see the myths as tales of the Gods and their activities, not necessarily literal (as in not happening historically down on this realm)?.

I've also been reading this article called 'Greek Gods, Human Lives' by Dr. Mary Lefkowitz (http://www.helleniccomserve.com/lefkowitzspeech.html) (also the title of a book by the same author (http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Gods-Human-Lives-Learn/dp/0300101457)), and, IMO, it's a very good article (and it's made me want to read her book), in the article, she says:

An example: the Odyssey begins at the moment when Athena has decided that Odysseus should return home. But when Thomas Bulfinch or Robert Graves tell the story they start with his journey to Troy. Edith Hamilton tells us that the Greeks had “human gods” and that the Greeks felt at home on Mt. Olympus (the myths say just the opposite).

To Joseph Campbell also the Greek gods were just another species of human being. Or he sees them in completely modern ways: it is the moment of highest illumination when Odysseus comes to the island of the Sun (never mind that in the Odyssey his visit to the island of the Sun the nadir of his journey).

The ancient Greeks would have been surprised and even shocked by these modern interpretations. The vast majority of ancient people believed in these same gods, and when ancient writers tell the stories, the gods play an important and even dominant role in them. Myths were fundamentally religious stories, narratives about how to come to terms with forces beyond human control. Ancient Greeks learned about the gods from myths: they had no canonical text like the Bible.

And, maybe I'm just reading the article wrongly or misinterpreting it, but it seems to be saying that myths told the ancient Greeks about the Gods, about, like she says, "how to come to terms with forces beyond human control" and that the ancient Greeks learned about the Gods from their myths.

So, again, I was just wondering, how the ancient Greeks saw the myths, was the view that the philosophers held (like Xenophanes, Plato, etc) just elitist snobbery or just something like "mental masturbation" (i.e. something they just got up and wrote down one day).

Thanks for any help you can give me, as I really would like to learn more.

[Son of Goddess]

Check out this site:

http://www.goddess-athena.org/Encyclopedia/Friends/Sallustius/index.htm

Read these two sections:

III. - Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why.
IV. - That the species of myth are five, with examples of each

[Theres]

good question David, but one that is probably too deep to answer in a forum post. still...

i generally agree with Prof. Leftkowitz, but i think she generalizes the source a little too much.
by that i mean that she seems to have overlooked or disregarded another source for the average Greek's understanding of the gods, and that is family (or local) tradition.
obviously the gods' stories were known before the advent of the written word, and all of them can't be explained away through bardic tradition. Hesiod may be the earliest written tale which survives to this day, and his tales are full of personal and familial insights to his gods.
now where these insights originated within his family context is unknown, but i would suggest cult. it is likely that someone within his family was a priest or similar.

for the rest of your post i'll just say (to no one in particular) "i told you so!".
this is why i have yet to find a collection of classic myths which i can fully endorse. most of them have been condensed from various tales over a looong period of time, and this generalisation tends to miss the point as it was relavent to the people of the day.
example...

when the Dionysian Cult became popular in Athens Greek tragedy was born (we're talking roughly early 6th century BC here). these were first written as entries to a compitition held during the annual festival to Dionysus. participants were required to enter three inter-related plays, and the best was awarded a significant prize.
this process gave birth to the standard for western theater, but it also nearly guaranteed that the myths involved would be politicized. playwrite wanted to win the prize, but they were also well aware of who the powerful people were in Athens at the time and would write nothing to piss them off (as in Ovid's banishment from Rome some five centuries later),
so the original myths were altered for these and various other reasons, and this trend continued to perhaps a higher degree as the philosophers rose in popularity.
suddenly the gods were twisted even further to fit into various philosophies, or even demonized or eliminated entirely!

so for Graves or Kerenyi, et al, to come along 2000 years later and try to provide a continuous consistent mythology is a noble task, but probably an impossible one.
i know i've beat this horse repeatedly in the past, but the only real way to get a grasp on how the average citizen saw these myths is to go to the specific time in question, ie the original sources.
if a collection is necessary then i would suggest looking into 'The Library of Apollodorus' which may be from as early as the Hellenistic age, but that is not certain. this is generally thought to be the first time the myths were written down in one collection, although that can probably never be proven. it is likely the oldest collection still extant however.

all of this puts me in mind of that Dion Fortune quote about original sources being more pure (you remember, that thing about headwaters being unpolluted?).

okay, this has turned into a half-awake ramble, and i'm not even sure that i addressed your questions!
time for another cuppa...

[plumedsnake]

That's a great observation David. I've always reckoned that there've always been atheist throughout the entirety of human history. People like to make out that it is a modern phenomenon due to the progress of science etc, but I suspect that there've always been atheists, and in great number too. (how else would you explain the cynical way most people have used religionism throughout the ages).

Clues can be found in the bible where mention is often made of the godless. Or sometimes a psalmist is moaning about people who smirk at him behind his back and ridicule his beliefs. Sometimes it smacks so much of persecution that I think it possible that the atheists outnumbered the theists. Or at least they outnumbered those who believed in Yahweh.
Anyway, I see no reason why mankind should be any less diverse, sophisticated, complicated or varied in their beliefs in the past than they are now. I think that that is a big presumption of many historical researchers that life was simpler back then. It's the same brain we have that the cave men had, we haven't evolved since then. So why the presumption that we are more critical. There was just as little proof for the existence of gods then than there is now.
Heck! Even Pope Leo X was an atheist, and this was in the 16th century. Remember his quote: 'It has served us well, this myth of christ'. How many other religious leaders and empire builders in history had the same way of thinking.


Now about the Greek case, I was going to start a thread titled Is Philosophy Religion Without Recourse to Gods. But then I felt that no one would be into the proposition enough to respond. However there is plenty of evidence that the practice of philosophy is a form of religion without mentioning the gods. Also of interest is that the same movement was happening elsewhere on the planet. Most notably in India where Buddha had created a religion without gods. In fact many hindus consider buddhism to be Atheism. It's not that the gods vanish completely but they are re interpreted as psychological functions. They are just aspects of the illusion that distract us from nirvana, or Truth.

When Plato discusses Greek religion he treats it lightly on the one hand, but on the other hand still attempts to explain it's effects within the context of philosophy. The most obvious instance that I know is when he discusses the Corybantes and the Bacchantes. These are the women that were involved in the cults of Dionysus and Cybele. Their practice involved getting possessed by the diety and then they dance (a very particular dance) to a very particular style of music, played by a very particular instrument (the aulos).

Apparently Plato wasn't a big fan of the crazed dance movements of the Corybantes, but what is very interesting is that he does not attribute it to their being possessed by any Gods. On the contrary he explains the effect by comparing it to another non religious activity, the putting of a baby to sleep.
Remember that in plato's philosophy the world is made up of movements and Man's soul is made up of movement too. In fact these movements are the Gods as far as Plato is concerned. The movements of a man's soul can go out of sync with the movement of the universe and this is the cause of disease. In order to be made whole again, he must reharmonise his movement to that of the spheres.

And this is what happens, according to Plato, to . . . (I quote) . . . the women who perform rituals in the healing of the Corybantes. For when mothers have children who suffer from insomnia and want to go to sleep, lull them to rest they bring them not stillness, but this very movement, for they rock them ceaselessly in their arms, and they bring them not silence, but melody . . .

. . .the sufferings of both are, in brief, upsets . . . coming from a defect disposition of the soul. So whenever one applies an external jolting to sufferings of this kind, the external movement overpowers the internal movement of fear and madness and by thus overpowering it, it brings about a manifest calm in the soul and a cessation of the grievous palpitations of the heart, which had existed in each case. Thus, it produces very satisfactory results. It brings sleep to the one, while to the others, set to dancing and listening to the aulos, it brings wakefulness, with the help of the gods, made favorable by happy auspices, and to whom each one offers sacrifices, it completes the enjoyment of a sound state of mind instead of a state that is in our eyes madness.

This is taken from plato's LAWS. While in this passage he makes a concession that it is done with the help of the gods, elsewhere he has little concern with gods. Obviously Plato would have regularly witnessed this religious practice all around him in his life time, and he obviously believed that it worked, but what he didn't believe was the mechanism that it worked by. He felt that it worked due to the effects of music and dancing on the soul, and less due to the favours of any diety.

[plumedsnake]

. . . And, coming from a tradition steeped in mythology that is still extant today I find a wide range of beliefs within it. Despite the fact that many of the myths contradict each other, or that many of the stories use the same dramatic devices loads of people still believe in them in a factual way. It boggles me.

What seems obvious to me is that these stories are written in a particular way and a particular style and there is a lot of meaning contained in the devices as much as, if not more than, the actual events of the stories. Like when something happens for 3 days and 3 nights, it is not coincidental. Jonah just didn't happen to fall into the sea for 3 days and 3 nights. the length of time is trying to reveal something to us. Otherwise it becomes a curious oddity that a lot of events in myth just happen to occur for 3 days and 3 nights.

[Brightshores]

I have no actual evidence for this that I can point to, except a decent grasp of history. However - I would imagine that the ways that the "ancient Greeks" viewed myths changed over time, and likely varied from person to person and community to community. I think that to generalize how myths were viewed in as broad a time and place as "ancient Greece" would be like trying to generalize how Christians have viewed the Bible over the past thousand years.

For example - a peasant in Homer's time would probably have viewed mythology in a very different way than a member of the Pythagorean School, who would likely have thought about it very differently than a priestess of Artemis in the Hellenistic period.

Just my thoughts, and I could well be wrong. :)

[Tim]

This is something I'm really curious about, how did the ancient Greeks view their myths.

While this topic is covered (often only briefly) in many books on the ancient Greek religion, I recommend Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? by Paul Veyne. The Greeks did not view their myths in the same context as say Christians. In fact, their myths had little impact on the religion at all. You did have differing opinions from philosophers describing them as allegories to one priest of Delphi pretty much calling Homer a liar. The one thing that needs to be remembered is poets, not prophets, wrote the Greek myths.

[Twinkle]

While this topic is covered (often only briefly) in many books on the ancient Greek religion, I recommend Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? by Paul Veyne. The Greeks did not view their myths in the same context as say Christians. In fact, their myths had little impact on the religion at all. You did have differing opinions from philosophers describing them as allegories to one priest of Delphi pretty much calling Homer a liar. The one thing that needs to be remembered is poets, not prophets, wrote the Greek myths.


And that is it in a nutshell.

[David19]

While this topic is covered (often only briefly) in many books on the ancient Greek religion, I recommend Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? by Paul Veyne. The Greeks did not view their myths in the same context as say Christians. In fact, their myths had little impact on the religion at all. You did have differing opinions from philosophers describing them as allegories to one priest of Delphi pretty much calling Homer a liar. The one thing that needs to be remembered is poets, not prophets, wrote the Greek myths.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll try and check that out.

Would you agree with Dr. Mary Lefkowitz when she says:

Myths were fundamentally religious stories, narratives about how to come to terms with forces beyond human control. Ancient Greeks learned about the gods from myths: they had no canonical text like the Bible.

Thanks again for the recommendation :).

[David19]

good question David, but one that is probably too deep to answer in a forum post. still...

i generally agree with Prof. Leftkowitz, but i think she generalizes the source a little too much.
by that i mean that she seems to have overlooked or disregarded another source for the average Greek's understanding of the gods, and that is family (or local) tradition.
obviously the gods' stories were known before the advent of the written word, and all of them can't be explained away through bardic tradition. Hesiod may be the earliest written tale which survives to this day, and his tales are full of personal and familial insights to his gods.
now where these insights originated within his family context is unknown, but i would suggest cult. it is likely that someone within his family was a priest or similar.

for the rest of your post i'll just say (to no one in particular) "i told you so!".
this is why i have yet to find a collection of classic myths which i can fully endorse. most of them have been condensed from various tales over a looong period of time, and this generalisation tends to miss the point as it was relavent to the people of the day.
example...

when the Dionysian Cult became popular in Athens Greek tragedy was born (we're talking roughly early 6th century BC here). these were first written as entries to a compitition held during the annual festival to Dionysus. participants were required to enter three inter-related plays, and the best was awarded a significant prize.
this process gave birth to the standard for western theater, but it also nearly guaranteed that the myths involved would be politicized. playwrite wanted to win the prize, but they were also well aware of who the powerful people were in Athens at the time and would write nothing to piss them off (as in Ovid's banishment from Rome some five centuries later),
so the original myths were altered for these and various other reasons, and this trend continued to perhaps a higher degree as the philosophers rose in popularity.
suddenly the gods were twisted even further to fit into various philosophies, or even demonized or eliminated entirely!

so for Graves or Kerenyi, et al, to come along 2000 years later and try to provide a continuous consistent mythology is a noble task, but probably an impossible one.
i know i've beat this horse repeatedly in the past, but the only real way to get a grasp on how the average citizen saw these myths is to go to the specific time in question, ie the original sources.
if a collection is necessary then i would suggest looking into 'The Library of Apollodorus' which may be from as early as the Hellenistic age, but that is not certain. this is generally thought to be the first time the myths were written down in one collection, although that can probably never be proven. it is likely the oldest collection still extant however.

all of this puts me in mind of that Dion Fortune quote about original sources being more pure (you remember, that thing about headwaters being unpolluted?).

okay, this has turned into a half-awake ramble, and i'm not even sure that i addressed your questions!
time for another cuppa...

Thanks for the great info, and the recommendations too.

[Tim]

Would you agree with Dr. Mary Lefkowitz

I would have to read the context of that quote. The stories were considered sacred in that they spoke of the Gods and held within them hidden truths, but they were not scripture and not taken literally. The fact that there were often multiple versions of myths, poets had creative license to change and adapt myths, and there was no great fight for a single mythical version to be accepted as the "true" account lends to the idea that myths were not believed to be literally true. It is also a fact that myth had little impact on the religion itself, which is documented by most scholars including Murry, Miikalson, Fairbanks, Harrison, and many others.

[plumedsnake]

I would have to read the context of that quote. The stories were considered sacred in that they spoke of the Gods and held within them hidden truths, but they were not scripture and not taken literally. The fact that there were often multiple versions of myths, poets had creative license to change and adapt myths, and there was no great fight for a single mythical version to be accepted as the "true" account lends to the idea that myths were not believed to be literally true. It is also a fact that myth had little impact on the religion itself, which is documented by most scholars including Murry, Miikalson, Fairbanks, Harrison, and many others.

So isn't our idea of how the greeks would have viewed their myths totally influenced by Christian orthodoxy and literal fundamentalism. I don't think that the early christians took their myths literally either until the rise of orthodoxy (right thinking) which insisted that there is only one way to think about myth, only one right way and everything else is wrong and wicked. And of course the right way is always the way the guy with the sword in his hand thinks it is. Orthodoxy in both christianity and Islam may be the reason why today we presume that the ancients too were orthodox about their religion.
Orthodoxy usually arises in religion when it is about to get used for political purposes, then you got to make sure that everyone in the state (or organisation) is singing from the same hymn sheet. Islam and Christianity have through most of their history been political ideologies. It is hard enough today for us to understand another contemporary culture that I don't see how we could possibly understand a culture from 3 millenia ago with our modern mindset.

[Tim]

plumedsnake,

I agree. The West has been generationally conditioned by the way Christianity has presented their myths. It becomes unfathomable, for many, not to think that all religions see their myths as literal historic events, and literal descriptions of the Divine. This was not the case in most of antiquity, and absolutely not in ancient Greece. On the other hand, while the Greek religion was not an orthodoxy and encouraged continued discussion and expanded explanation of the Gods, there was a way of thought that some ideas would have been considered ludicrous, irrational, and just plain stupid.

The other true fact is that an orthodoxy's only real purpose is to control. Christianity, being the most perfect example, was embraced by Constantine as a way to unite a dieing Empire. It's greatest success is in feudal systems where religion and state are blended, and people are ruled under the power of a single individual who claim a divine right. I firmly believe the days of Christianity being a world dominating religion are ending. As the world becomes more democratic, more secular, and as freedom of religion is being recognized worldwide as a human right, Christianity's strong hold on the minds of people will diminish.

[plumedsnake]

It's not only in the west. Even in africa with traditional religions I've noticed a trend to take the stories as historical fact, in spite of blatant contradictions. I sometimes suspect that the blatant contradictions were put in just so that people won't take it literally. But to no avail. This is also the effect of christianity's way of thinking about it's myth. It forces a reaction from traditionalist that throws them off the truth.




The other true fact is that an orthodoxy's only real purpose is to control. Christianity, being the most perfect example, was embraced by Constantine as a way to unite a dieing Empire. It's greatest success is in feudal systems where religion and state are blended, and people are ruled under the power of a single individual who claim a divine right. I firmly believe the days of Christianity being a world dominating religion are ending. As the world becomes more democratic, more secular, and as freedom of religion is being recognized worldwide as a human right, Christianity's strong hold on the minds of people will diminish.

Yes but what about Islam. I've recently been thinking about the difference between christianity and islam and made a few observations. While christianity is originally and at it's core an anti establishment religion, calling on it's followers to drop out, Islam is at it's core created by establishment for the establishment. Christianity has to be distorted before it can be used politically and it has found itself throughout it's political career fighting against dissent from within and finally failing in it's battles against firstly the Reformation and secondly the advance of Science. Islam on the other hand being created by Muhammad, a military and political leader, is best suited for political use. Islam did not have the conflict with science that christianity had. In fact science blossomed under Islamic empires, which political leader does not see the advantage of being at the cutting edge of science and technology.
I suspect that as christianity fails further that Islam will (at least try to) take it's place. Not in countries like the US but in the rest of the world. It might be medieval, even barbaric but it's one hell of an efficient religion for organising people.