Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece. Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history. They used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace one's leaders' descent from a mythological hero or a god. Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian, columnist, political essayist and former Classics professor, and John Heath, associate professor of Classics at Santa Clara University, the profound knowledge of the Homeric epos was deemed by the Greeks the basis of their acculturation. Homer was the "education of Greece" (Ἑλλάδος παίδευσις), and his poetry "the Book".
Philosophy and myth
Raphael's Plato
in The School of Athens fresco (probably in
the likeness of Leonardo da Vinci). The philosopher expelled the
study of Homer, of the tragedies and of the related mythological traditions
from his utopian Republic.
After the rise of philosophy, 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).
While poets and dramatists were reworking the myths, Greek historians and
philosophers were beginning to criticize them.A few radical philosophers like Xenophanes of Colophon were already beginning to label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies in the 6th century BC; Xenophanes had complained that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods "all that is shameful and disgraceful among men; they steal, commit adultery, and deceive one another".This line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato's Republic and Laws. 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. Plato's criticism was the first serious challenge to the Homeric mythological tradition, referring to the myths as "old wives' chatter". For his part Aristotle criticized the Pre-socratic quasi-mythical philosophical approach and underscored that "Hesiod and the theological writers were concerned only with what seemed plausible to themselves, and had no respect for us ... But it is not worth taking seriously writers who show off in the mythical style; as for those who do proceed by proving their assertions, we must cross-examine them".
Nevertheless, even Plato did not manage to wean himself and his society from the influence of myth; his own characterization for Socrates is based on the traditional Homeric and tragic patterns, used by the philosopher to praise the righteous life of his teacher:
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But perhaps someone might say:
"Are you then not ashamed, Socrates, of having followed such a pursuit,
that you are now in danger of being put to death as a result?" But I
should make to him a just reply: "You do not speak well, Sir, if you
think a man in whom there is even a little merit ought to consider danger of
life or death, and not rather regard this only, when he does things, whether
the things he does are right or wrong and the acts of a good or a bad man.
For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at
Troy, including the son of Thetis, who so despised danger, in comparison with enduring
any disgrace, that when his mother (and she was a goddess) said to him, as he
was eager to slay Hector,
something like this, I believe,
My son, if you avenge the death of your
friend Patroclus
and kill Hector, you yourself shall die; for straightway, after Hector, is
death appointed unto you. (Hom. Il. 18.96)
he, when he heard this, made light of death and danger, and
feared much more to live as a coward and not to avenge his friends, and said,
Straightway may I die, after doing vengeance
upon the wrongdoer, that I may not stay here, jeered at beside the curved
ships, a burden of the earth.
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More sportingly, the 5th century BC tragedian Euripides often played with the old traditions, mocking them, and through the voice of his characters injecting notes of doubt. Yet the subjects of his plays were taken, without exception, from myth. Many of these plays were written in answer to a predecessor's version of the same or similar myth. Euripides mainly impugns the myths about the gods and begins his critique with an objection similar to the one previously expressed by Xenocrates: the gods, as traditionally represented, are far too crassly anthropomorphic.
Cicero saw himself
as the defender of the established order, despite his personal skepticism with
regard to myth and his inclination towards more philosophical conceptions of
divinity.
In
Roman religion the worship of the Greek god Apollo (early Imperial Roman copy
of a fourth century Greek original, Louvre Museum) was
combined with the cult of Sol Invictus. The worship of Sol as special protector
of the emperors and of the empire remained the chief imperial religion until it
was replaced by Christianity.
Credit : wikipedia
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