it." Second, and as a part of this tendency to put gods and heroes above all people, the Greeks celebrated their humanness and judged the finest people on the basis of their dedication to what translates as virtue. In modern terms, virtue is almost entirely a moral word; the Greek original was used differently to mean simply excellence. The hero of the Odyssey was excellent in the ways in which a person can be excellent: morally, intellectually, physically, practically. Odysseus "is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send." The hero of the Iliad is Achilles, and he is also "the most formidable of fighters, the swiftest of runners, and the noblest of soul." The Greek hero combined the virtues to which people aspired, and this is cited as one reason why the Greek epics survived to be the education of a more civilized age.
The creation of both the Greek hero and the Greek gods was bound with the freedom of the Greek mind, particularly with its throwing off of terrifying and irrational superstitions, which have no place in classical mythology. Greek mythology created a humanized world in which people were freed from the fear of the unknown, those terrifying incomprehensibili
...