has a mythos, attached to him, and which accounted for his place in the city's life, or for the rituals that honored him. These myths, rising spontaneously out of the lore of the place and the people, or out of the inventions and embellishments of rhapsodists, became at once the faith and the philosophy, the literature, and the history of the early Greek:
The Greek pantheon was established as early as
the Homeric epoch. The many divinities of which
it was composed generally appear in the Iliad and
the Odyssey, with their characteristic physiognomy,
their traditional attributes and their own time-
With the poems of Hesoid in the eighth century B.C., comes the Theogony, the oldest Greek attempt at mythological classification. It recounts the origin of the gods, recalling their chief adventures, and establishes their relationships, and also claims to explain the formation of the universe.
To understand the spirit of the myth, one must learn to live over again the age which produced it. Of course, the same is true to comprehend fully the work of Shakespeare, of all key literature. For without this, the minute analysis of myths and even history are of little value. The study of mythology, like that of history, requires the power of imagination coupled with patience and trained methods of the scientific mind:
However well the divisions of myths into classes
may serve the uses of scientific study, the farther
that investigation is carried into the past the
more all classes of mythological stories come into
contact and mingle or blend, with one another, and
reveal to us man trying to solve the primitive
The ancient myths were at once religious, philosophical and scientific, in that they contained such knowledge of these subjects as the race had reasoned out. Many similar myths, in subject and detail, on the struggles of nature, are found in different parts of the world. ...