Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of
Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to
survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of
Pseudo-Apollodorus. This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of
the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and
heroic legends.
Apollodorus of Athens lived from c.
180–120 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the
basis for the collection; however the "Library" discusses events that
occurred long after his death, hence the name Pseudo-Apollodorus.
Prometheus (1868 by Gustave
Moreau). The myth of Prometheus first was attested by Hesiod and then
constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus,
consisting of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound,
and Prometheus Pyrphoros.
Among the earliest literary sources are Homer's two epic poems,
the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the "epic
cycle", but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely.
Despite their traditional name, the "Homeric Hymns" have no direct
connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the earlier part of the
so-called Lyric age.
Hesiod,
a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his Theogony
(Origin of the Gods) the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths,
dealing with the creation of the world; the origin of the gods, Titans, and Giants; as well as elaborate genealogies,
folktales, and etiological myths. Hesiod's Works and Days, a didactic
poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus,
Pandora,
and the Four Ages.
The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered
yet more dangerous by its gods.
Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their
treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets
including Pindar,
Bacchylides,
Simonides and bucolic poets such as Theocritus
and Bion,
relate individual mythological incidents.
Additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama. The tragic
playwrights Aeschylus,
Sophocles,
and Euripides
took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War.
Many of the great tragic stories (e.g. Agamemnon
and his children, Oedipus,
Jason,
Medea,
etc.) took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes
also used myths, in The Birds and The Frogs.
Historians Herodotus and Diodorus
Siculus, and geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled
throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous
local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions.
Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions presented him and
found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece
and the East.
Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural
concepts.
The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman
ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise.
Nevertheless, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost.
This category includes the works of:
1.
The Roman poets Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Seneca, and Virgil with Servius's
commentary.
2.
The Greek poets of the Late Antique
period: Nonnus,
Antoninus Liberalis, and Quintus
Smyrnaeus.
3.
The Greek poets of the Hellenistic period: Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus,
Pseudo-Eratosthenes,
and Parthenius.
4.
The ancient novels of Greeks and Romans such as Apuleius,
Petronius,
Lollianus,
and Heliodorus.
The Fabulae and Astronomica of the Roman writer
styled as Pseudo-Hyginus are two important, non-poetical
compendiums of myth. The Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger and the Descriptions
of Callistratus, are two other useful sources
that were drawn upon for themes.
Finally, Arnobius and a number of Byzantine Greek writers provide
important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works.
These preservers of myth include a lexicon of Hesychius, the Suda, and the
treatises of John Tzetzes and Eustathius. The Christian moralizing view
of Greek myth is encapsulated in the saying, ἐν παντὶ μύθῳ καὶ τὸ Δαιδάλου μύσος / en
panti muthōi kai to
Daidalou musos ("In every myth there is also the defilement of
Daidalos"). In this fashion, the encyclopedic Sudas reported the role of
Daedalus
in satisfying the "unnatural lust" of Pasiphaë
for the bull of Poseidon: "Since the origin and blame for these evils were
attributed to Daidalos and he was loathed for them, he became the subject of
the proverb."
Credit : wikipedia
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