wyoming cowboy wrote:wyoming cowboy wrote:A passage from Edith Hamilton's, Classical Greek Mythology
"....On earth too, the deities were exceedingly and humanly attractive. In the form of lovely youths and maidens they peopled the woodland, the forest, the rivers, the sea, in harmony with the fair earth and the bright "Greek" waters.
That is the miracle of Greek mythology--a humanized world, men freed from the paralyzing fear of an omnipotent Unknown. The terrifying incomprehensiblities which were worshipped elsewhere, and the fearsome spirits with which earth, air and sea swarmed, were banned from Greece. It may seem odd to say that the men wwho made the myths disliked the irrational and had a love for facts, but it is true, no matter how wildly fantastic some of the stories are. Anyone who reads them with attention discovers that even the most nonsensical take place in a world which is essentially rational and matter of fact. Hercules, whose life was one of long combat against preposterous monsters, is always said to have had his home in the city of Thebes. The winged Pegasus steed after skimming the air all day, went every night to a comfortable stable in Corinth. A familiar local habitation gave reality to all the mythical beings. If the mixture seems childish consider the how reassuring and how sensible the solid background is as compared with the Genie who comes from nowhere when Alladin rubs the lamp and his task accomplished returns to nowhere.
.....The terryfing irrational has no place in classical Greek mythology. ..........The demonic wizards and the hideous old witches who haunted Europe and America, too, up to quite recent years, play no part at all in the stories. Circe and Medea are the only witches and they are young and of surpassing beauty- delightful, not horrible. Astrology, which has flourished from the days of ancient Babylon down to today, is completely absent from classical Greece. There are many stories about the stars but not a trace of the idea that they influence men's lives. Astronomy is what the Greek mind finally made out of the stars. The priest is rarely seen and is never of importance. In the Odyssey when a priest and a poet fall on their knees before Odysseus, praying him to spare their lives. Oddyseus kills the priest and spares the poet. Homer says that he felt awe to slay a man who had been taught his devine art by the gods. "
I actually had an epiphany reading this passage from Mrs. Hamilton's book......and was hoping others had it too.
Could it be that after the Hellenes were infused with Christianity and an overbearing God, we lost our way. How can a people who lived under the hot mediterranean sun, during the day,and rested at night next to the serene Aegean and Mediterranean Seas not have an intense imagination. And then you couple that with the beauty of their myths, where you were rewarded not punished for reaching for the gods, and you have the Hellenic culture. The Hellenes were then subjected to Christianity and held against their will and injected with fears doubts and donts. Through christianity we also connected ourselves to the Northern European and his fearful myths, what beauty does a Nordic/german see every morning when he wakes up. The foggy chilly mornings, or the endless forboding snowy landscape. The culture of the Germans and their likes had to be structured and controlled, which goes against the individuality of the Greek. They want Greece to have a manufacturing sector, the northerners say, what Greek would want to sit at the same spot for 12 hours doing the same thing over and over again, when the Aegean and mediterranean are just outside the factory's window....what a dreary and disgusting life!!!
just a thought.....
I disagree with her simplistic approach. There is increasing evidence that the belief in the Olympian gods was whittled down to one (e.g. Plato/Socrates) by the time of the New Testament. That the Holy Trinity was a step towards that (still retained). The NT owes a lot to the worship of wise and moralistic Apollo (continued for several hundred years, AD) and that the philosophical teachings of the Hellenes (e.g. Epictetus) morphed into the wisdom of Jesus. A lot of this was absorbed into the Byzantium re-interpretations (re-branding?) which made more allowances for the scientific discoveries. There was a lot of early resistance to all this (e.g. the burning of the library at Alexandria) but still we retain many Olympian myths within Christianity (e.g. the eggs which signified Zeus turning himself into a swan to beget Leda's children).
