Mythology Text Book

[Elnora Heidrick]

TheTheoi Classical Texts Library is a collection of translations of works of ancient Greek and Roman literature. The theme of the library is classical mythology and so the selection consists primarily of ancient poetry, drama and prose accounts of myth.

The Theoi Greek Mythology Website (www.theoi.com) was compiled several years before the creation of this online library and in many cases quotes from different translations. It also draws on a considerably wider selection of classical literature. For more information on that site's content please refer to the Theoi Greek Mythology Site Bibliography.

Ancient Greek mythology is a vast group of legends about gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, warriors and fools, that were an important part of everyday life in the ancient world. Greek myths explained everything from religious rituals to the weather, and gave meaning to the world that people saw around them. While many of these myths are fanciful tales, such as the legends of greedy King Midas or heroic Hercules, other stories like the Trojan War epic have a basis in historical fact.

Later Greek writers and artists used and elaborated upon these sources in their own work. For instance, mythological figures and events appear in the 5th-century plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the lyric poems of Pindar. Writers such as the 2nd-century BC Greek mythographer Apollodorus of Athens and the 1st-century BC Roman historian Gaius Julius Hyginus compiled the ancient myths and legends for contemporary audiences.

ATU-AT-Motif guide

Although incomplete, a great portion of the AT and ATU classification schemes can be found on this site curated by academic librarian Michael Muchow. He has linked many of them to tales stored on the Internet Archive website.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts

This site is provided by retired professor D.L. Ashliman and hosted at the University of Pittsburgh. Again, there is some overlap with the other sources listed above, but some entries are unique. It is not exhaustive.

Multilingual Folk Tale Database

Folk tales from all over this world are provided on this site, in their original language or in translation. To organize the stories and make it easier to find and compare them, the stories have been classified along the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, which is the established standard for folk tales. Although the database contains over 10,000 stories and translations, it contains stories exemplifying only a limited portion of the ATU classes.

Perry's Index

This invaluable index to fables in the Aesopic tradition is to be found in the "Indices" section of Babrius, Phaedrus. Fables. Translated by Ben Edwin Perry in the Loeb Classical Library, volume 436 (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965).

Aesopica Posteriora: Medieval and Modern Versions of Greek and Latin Fables

Aims to encompass the entire European tradition of the fable by guiding the scholar topically to ancient, Medieval, and modern fables. By Gert-Jan van Dijk. With a preface by Prof. Francisco Rodríguez Adrados and an elaborate Index Fabularum at the end of the book. Many of the fables referenced can be found in Early English Books Online.

MythFolklore.net

Online resources compiled by Laura Gibbs, a professor of mythology & folklore at the University of Oklahoma. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature: Latin, Greek, Polish. It includes an index to Aesop's Fables that she translated. (See also, Perry's Index, above).

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy 2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the origin and nature of the world; the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself.[1]

The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC;[2] eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.

Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature, pictorial representations of gods, heroes, and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings and the decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Epic Cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence.[3]

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:

Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus, and Heliodorus. Two other important non-poetical sources are the Fabulae and Astronomica of the Roman writer styled as Pseudo-Hyginus, the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger, and the Descriptions of Callistratus.

Finally, several Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works. These preservers of myth include Arnobius, Hesychius, the author of the Suda, John Tzetzes, and Eustathius. They often treat mythology from a Christian moralizing perspective.[12]

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the nineteenth century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century, helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. The evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece) was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified.[3]

Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued.[i][15]

A motif of father-against-son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus. Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same, and so each time Rhea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it. Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was full-grown, he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit, throwing up Rhea's other children, including Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and the stone, which had been sitting in Cronus's stomach all this time. Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes (whom Zeus freed from Tartarus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus.[24]

Each god descends from his or her own genealogy, pursues differing interests, has a certain area of expertise, and is governed by a unique personality; however, these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another. When these gods are called upon in poetry, prayer, or cult, they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets, that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves (e.g., Apollo Musagetes is "Apollo, [as] leader of the Muses"). Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece.

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