9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

• CHAPTER 1 •

The Nature of Myth

The longer I occupy myself with questions of ancient mythology, the more diffident I become of success in
dealing with them, and I am apt to think that we who spend our years in searching for solutions to these
insoluble problems are like Sisyphus perpetually rolling his stone uphill only to see it revolve again into the
valley.
—SIR JAMES G. FRAZER (1854–1941), author of The Golden Bough

T he Western Roman Empire ended more than fifteen hundred years ago, but the stories of classical
gods and goddesses, of Greek and Roman warriors and leaders, live on in their ancient vigor. Zeus,
Venus, Helen, Odysseus, Achilles, Aeneas—these familiar names stood in the background as later
Western art and literature advanced, and they stand there still today. They were bequeathed to us in the
writings of the Greeks and Romans, but their names and stories are much older than the written word.
They go back before the introduction of writing, an era when classical myth first took shape.
Later chapters examine specific myths that have come down to us from the Greeks and Romans, but in
this chapter we limit ourselves to examine some preliminary questions essential to a clear understanding
of classical myth. We discuss the definition of myth and the three main types of myth: divine myth,
legend, and folktale. We also look briefly at some aspects of the study of myth.

What is a Myth?
Human beings have told stories from time immemorial, for stories are a natural product of spoken
language, an outgrowth of the imaginative power that clearly separates us from our animal cousins. The
story is a universal ingredient of human culture, bringing relief from the tedium of everyday labor and
reminding listeners of their own values, beliefs, and origins.
This book is concerned with a certain type of story known as myth. The term myth is hard to define, in
part because of the enormous variety of stories gathered from many cultures by ethnographers,
anthropologists, and literary historians. Originally, the Greek word mythos simply meant “authoritative
speech,” “story,” or “plot,” but later writers used the term myth in more restricted ways. Some recent
authorities, exasperated by the complexity of the phenomena, deny that the term myth expresses a
coherent concept at all. A widely agreed-upon definition is that myth is a traditional story with collective
importance. We can accept this definition, but we must consider carefully what it means.
To say that a myth is a story is to say, first, that it has a plot, a narrative structure consisting of a
beginning, middle, and end. In the beginning of a typical story, we are introduced to characters in a
certain situation, usually one involving conflict with other characters, with misfortune, or with
themselves. The word character comes from a Greek word meaning “a certain mental imprint”: Hamlet
cannot make up his mind, Macbeth is ambitious, King Lear is blind to the character of others. Character is
the sum of the choices one makes. In myths, the characters may be gods, goddesses, or other supernatural
beings, but they may also be human beings or even animals that speak and act in the manner of human
beings.
In the middle of a typical story, the situation grows more complex, and tension and conflict develop. In
the end, the tension is somehow resolved. Today we might find an example of this basic structure in the
plot common to ten thousand novels and feature films: girl meets boy (the beginning), girl loses boy (the
[Link] 1/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

middle), girl finds boy (the end). Plot is an essential feature of myth. Without a beginning, middle, and
end, there can be no story and hence no myth. In casual speech we sometimes say that the Greek god
Zeus, for example, is a myth. However, strictly speaking, Zeus is not a myth, but a character in myth, in
the plotted stories that tell of his exploits. Belief in the existence of a particular god, the observance of a
ritual in a god’s honor, and religious symbols are not myths.
Another element of myth is setting. The setting is the time and place in which the action of the story
unfolds. Myths are never set in the present or the recent past. The action always takes place in the distant
past or in a shadowy time altogether outside human chronology. The setting of myths may be in an actual
city, such as Athens or Thebes, or some other location familiar to the audience. In other myths, the setting
is an obscure place: the underworld, which no one in the real world ever visited; Mount Olympus, which
really exists but in myth is the home of the gods; or Crete of a very long time ago.
Thus, like all other stories, myths have plot, characters, and setting. However, a myth is not just any
story, but a certain kind of story that we describe as traditional.
Our word traditional comes from the Latin trado, “hand over,” and a traditional story is one that has
been “handed over” orally from one storyteller to another without the intervention of writing. In societies
that do not use writing, stories must be handed over verbally, so traditional tales are the vehicle for
transmitting one generation’s thoughts to another. In this way traditional tales maintain contact with the
past (about which little really is known) and pass inherited wisdom on to the future. They explain a
society to itself, promulgating its concerns and values.
From this function derives myth’s “collective importance”—myths hold meaning for the group, not
just the individual. They describe patterns of behavior that serve as models for members of a society,
especially in times of crisis. For example, in Homer’s Iliad (written down in the eighth or ninth century
BC), Achilles tries to persuade King Priam of Troy to eat at a time when Priam is heartbroken for his dead
son Hector, killed by Achilles. Achilles tells the story of Niobê, a Theban princess: Although Artemis and
Apollo had killed her seven sons and seven daughters, still she ate, and so should Priam. Four hundred
years later, when the philosopher Socrates was on trial for his life, he defended his insistence on telling
the truth in spite of threats against him by recalling the example of Achilles, who was ashamed to live as a
coward and chose to die bravely before the walls of Troy.
Because they are traditional, myths are also anonymous. In contrast to such modern forms of
storytelling as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher
in the Rye, or George Lucas’s film series Star Wars, myths never have identifiable authors. Literary works
based on myth may have authors, but not the myths themselves. The Greek dramatist Sophocles wrote a
play about Oedipus the king, but the myth of Oedipus existed long before, and no one can say who
created it.
This anonymity helps us to understand why the Greeks, following the lead of the philosopher Plato,
eventually came to contrast mythos, “story” or “myth,” with logos, “account.” The teller of a logos takes
responsibility for the truth of what is said. A logos is a reasoned explanation of something that
emphasizes a continuing causal sequence, as in the proofs of plane geometry. We still use the suffix -logy
to indicate a reasoned inquiry into a topic, as in anthropology, “study of human beings”; biology, “study
of life forms”; or even mythology, “study of myth” (although mythology often is used as a synonym for
myth). By contrast, the teller of a mythos does not claim personal responsibility for what is said. After all,
the teller did not invent the story, but only passed it on.
During oral transmission, a traditional tale is subject to constant change. Different narrators of a story
have different motives and emphasize or embroider on different aspects. The story of Niobê could easily
illustrate the dangers of self-assertion (Niobê bragged that she had more children than the mother of
Apollo and Artemis), but Achilles uses the story to prove that eating food can lessen grief. Homer
describes Achilles’ anguished choice between a short, glorious life and a long, inglorious one, but never
[Link] 2/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

presents the choice as between courage and cowardice. In the written works in which Greek myths have
been preserved, we often find strikingly different versions of the same myth. The poets Homer and
Sophocles both report that Oedipus, king of Thebes, killed his father and married his mother, but in
Homer’s account Oedipus continues to rule after the truth comes out, whereas in Sophocles’ play he
pokes pins in his eyes and leaves the city, a wretched wanderer. Neither is the “true” version of the myth,
of which the other is a variant. The myth of Oedipus contains all the variants.
A retelling of every variant of every Greek myth would require a book of enormous length, or a very
ambitious website, and would present its own false picture of the tradition. After all, it is not the
multiplicity of versions that attracts our attention, but the best-known variants, often those of some great
literary work. For example, Sophocles’ version of the myth of Oedipus is far better known than is
Homer’s passing reference. Virtually every group of humankind has its store of traditional narrative, but
in this book we limit ourselves to the myths of Greece and Rome, only occasionally referring to earlier
and parallel traditions.

Types of Myth
Modern scholars like to distinguish between several types of myth based on the nature of the principal
characters and the function that the story fulfilled for the listener and the teller. Divine myths (sometimes
called “true myths” or “myths proper”) are stories in which supernatural beings are the main actors. Such
stories generally explain why the world, or some aspect of it, is the way it is. Legends (or sagas) are
stories of the great deeds of human heroes or heroines. Legends narrate the events of the human past. The
word comes from the Latin legend, “things that should be read,” that is, originally, morally uplifting
stories about Christian saints. Folktales are stories whose actors are ordinary people or animals. Folktales
entertain the audience and teach or justify customary patterns of behavior.
The more we learn about myth, the more we discover how difficult it can be to separate one type from
another. For example, stories that appear to be legends often incorporate elements of folktales or explain
the nature of things, as do divine myths. Such distinctions are nonetheless valuable because they allow us
to isolate and study various aspects of myth. Let us look more closely at each type.

Divine Myth
The supernatural beings who are the principal characters in divine myth are depicted as superior to
humans in power and splendor. Sometimes they take on human or animal shapes at will. They control
awesome forces of nature: thunder, storm, rain, fire, earthquake, or fecundity. When these beings appear
in their own form, they can be enormous and of stunning beauty or ugliness. Conflicts among them can
take place on an immense scale and involve whole continents, high mountains, and vast seas.
Sometimes the supernatural characters in divine myth are little more than personified abstractions
without clearly defined personalities. In Greek myth, for example, Nikê (nī-kē) “victory,” is just the
abstract concept (Figure 1.1).

[Link] 3/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

FIGURE 1.1. Nikê, wearing a long gown and winged, places the crown of victory on the horse’s
head: The young man, barefoot and wearing a cloak, has won the race. In her other hand she holds
a sash. South Italian red-figure wine-mixing bowl, c. 420 BC. (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

In other cases, the supernatural beings are gods, goddesses, or demons with well-developed and
distinctive personalities of their own. Zeus, the sky-god in Greek myth, is much more than a
personification of the sky; he is depicted as a powerful father, an often unfaithful husband, and the
upholder of justice in human communities.
The events of divine myth usually take place in a world before or outside the present order where time
and space often have different meanings from those familiar to human beings. For example, one Greek
myth explained how Zeus came to rule the world: He fought against the Titans, an earlier race of gods,*
defeated them in a terrible battle, and established his empire on the ruin of theirs. It would be pointless to
ask when these events occurred, even within the context of the story, because they are set in a time before
human chronology has meaning. Moreover, many divine myths of the Greeks are set in a place far
removed from the familiar world of human beings—on Mount Olympus, far away and unapproachable.
Understandably, many of the gods about whom traditional tales were told were both actors in the
stories and objects of veneration in religious cult. Zeus is a character in Greek myth, but he was also a
god for whom the Greeks built temples, carried out sacrifices, and celebrated festivals. Because of this
double function of the gods, divine myth is easily confused with religion, but the two must be clearly
distinguished. Myths are traditional stories; religion is belief and the course of action that follows from
belief. Belief is best defined as “what you accept (with or without proof) as a basis for action.” For
example, the Greeks believed that Zeus caused the rain to fall. Therefore, they sacrificed animals in times
of drought to persuade him to bring rain. Myths often justify a religious practice or a form of religious

[Link] 4/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

behavior, but we can retell a myth, even a myth about divine beings, without engaging in religious
behavior. The relationship between myth and religion is complicated, and we will have more to say about
it later, but we must remember that myth is a traditional story with collective importance, whereas
religion is a set of beliefs that motivates a course of action.
Divine myths served a function in ancient cultures analogous to that of theoretical science in our own:
They explained why the world is the way it is. Many of these myths tell of the origin and destruction of
grand things: the universe, the gods, and ourselves; the relations of gods with one another and with
human beings; and the divine origin of such human economic and social institutions as the growing of
crops, the cycle of the seasons, the making of wine, and prophecy and oracles. Many divine myths deal
with limited matters, such as the origin of local customs and practices.
In more technical language, we can describe such explanatory myths as etiological, from the Greek
word aition, “cause.” A creation myth is an example of an etiological tale because it explains the causes
that brought the world into existence. An etiological myth explained the origin of Mount Etna, a
dangerous volcano in Sicily: Beneath it Zeus imprisoned the fire-breathing monster Typhoeus, who
continues to spew forth smoke and lava. Another example is the myth of Persephonê, daughter of the
wheat-goddess Demeter. Persephonê must spend four months of the year in the underworld, and Demeter
refuses to let anything grow during those months—the hot, barren summer. The change of seasons is
“explained,” according to many, by the myth. The etiological tale expresses a conjecture about the cause
of something that existed long before the explanation.
Both divine myth and modern science offer explanations of why the world is the way it is, but they do
so in very different ways. Scientific explanations are based on impersonal general laws and statistical
probabilities discovered, or at least verified, by repeatable quantitative experiments, whereas mythic
explanations, expressed in traditional tales, assume that supernatural beings control the world through the
exercise of personal will. Assigning human qualities, especially unpredictability, to the forces that stand
behind the world is characteristic of the worldview we find in myth. Thunder is an expression of Zeus’s
anger, not the necessary result of impersonal physical forces. Greek myth could thus blame sudden and
puzzling deaths on the will of the gods, as in the story of how, out of spite, the gods Artemis and Apollo
struck down the fourteen children of Niobê. Modern scientists may be puzzled by death from cancer, but
they do not blame such death on a divine and irrational agent. The modern world was born from the
struggle of scientific thought against traditional explanations for why and how things happen in the
world, a struggle by no means concluded today.
In Part II of this text we examine more closely the divine myths of the ancient Greeks.

Legend
If divine myth in oral cultures is analogous to science in modern, literate Western society, legend is
analogous to history. Both legend and modern historical writing attempt to answer the question, “What
happened in the human past?” Because the past explains and justifies the present, the telling of legends
was an important activity in the cultural life of many ancient peoples, and never more so than among the
ancient Greeks. In legends, the central characters are human beings, not gods and goddesses. Although
supernatural beings often play a part, their roles are subordinate to those of the human characters. In the
legend of Orestes, the god Apollo orders Orestes to kill his mother, but the emphasis of the story is on
Orestes’ carrying out the order and facing its terrible consequences.
The principal actors of legend are heroes and heroines. Drawn from the ranks of the nobility, they are
kings and queens, princes and princesses, and other members of an aristocratic elite. They have
extraordinary physical and personal qualities and are stronger, more beautiful, or more courageous than
ordinary people. Most Greeks had no doubt that such legendary figures really lived, and members of
important families regarded themselves as descended from them. Whereas divine myth is set in a different
[Link] 5/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

or previous world order, legendary events belong to our own order, although they took place in the distant
past, at the very beginning of human time when mighty heroes and heroines lived on earth, great cities
were founded, difficult quests undertaken, fearful monsters slain, and momentous wars waged.
Most ancient Greeks, then, did not doubt that such events as the Trojan War really did occur, and they
pointed out the tombs of legendary figures and the actual sites of their exploits. But the Greeks had no
way to compare their traditions with historical reality. Today, armed with the insights of archaeology and
techniques of historical investigation, modern scholars recognize that the oral transmitters of traditional
tales had little respect for historical truth, or even any concept of it. Greek myth tells us more about the
circumstances and concerns of its transmitters than it does about life in the distant past.
Still, legends can contain an element of historical truth. Modern scholars have long thought that Greek
legend does reflect, however dimly, major events and power relations of a historical period now known to
us through archaeological remains. Many or most of the figures in Greek legend probably did live at
some time, most likely in the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 BC). Their
very names provide one bit of evidence. For example, the name of Menelaüs, the legendary husband of
Helen of Troy, means something like “upholder of the people.” This distinctive name is appropriate to the
aristocracy that certainly existed during this period, and similar names appear in written documents of the
time (the Linear B tablets, the writings of the Mycenaeans, discussed in Chapter 2).
Archaeology provides further evidence. Excavation has shown that many of the places associated with
important legendary events were great centers of civilization during the Late Bronze Age. Troy, for
example, was a settlement of considerable importance until it was destroyed about 1230 BC. Although we
have no proof that it was destroyed by Greek warriors, as Greek legends assert, there remains a
tantalizing correspondence between the legend and the archaeological evidence (Figure 1.2).

FIGURE 1.2. The author at the walls of Troy. The earliest settlement at Troy can be dated to about
3000 BC, but the citadel walls shown here belong to the sixth level of occupation (Troy VI), built
around 1400 BC and destroyed around 1230 BC. Constructed of neatly cut blocks of limestone that
slope inward, the citadel wall had at least four gateways, two of them protected by towers. Either
Troy VI or its much poorer successor Troy VIIa, destroyed about 1180 BC, could have inspired
Greek legends of the Trojan War.

Like divine myths, some legends also served a specific etiological function. Thus, one Greek story
explained why, at the spring wine festival, Athenians brought their own wine jugs, although at other

[Link] 6/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

festivals they drank from a communal bowl. According to the legend, the Mycenaean prince Orestes, who
had killed his own mother to avenge her murder of his father, came to Athens at the time of the festival.
The king of Athens did not want to send Orestes away impolitely, but neither did he want the Athenian
people to be polluted by sharing a bowl with a man who had murdered his mother, so the king had every
man fill his cup from his own jug. In reality the use of separate jugs seems to have arisen from a fear of
contagion from ghosts, thought to be abroad at this season. The practice had nothing at all to do with a
visit from Orestes, and the story was invented well after the custom was established. Such is often true of
etiologies in myth.
We examine the legends of the ancient Greeks and Romans in detail in Part III of this text, with further
remarks on general patterns in heroic myth (Chapter 12).

Folktale
Folktale is more difficult to define than is divine myth or legend because of the variety of traditional
stories grouped together under this heading. Some scholars describe folktales as any traditional story that
is not a divine myth or legend. This category would encompass such familiar fairytales as “Cinderella”
and “Snow White,” among the many German stories written down from oral sources in the early
nineteenth century by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (see Perspective 1.1). Likewise, the beast
fables attributed to the Greek writer Aesop (sixth century BC), such as “The Tortoise and the Hare,” might
also be considered folktales, as could a story such as “Sinbad the Sailor” from the Arabian Nights and
most oral tales recorded in North America and Africa during the last two hundred years. In the “myths” of
many cultures there is scarcely any divine myth or legend, but all is folktale.
Within this diversity we can still discern common traits. As in legend, the central characters in
folktales are human beings, even though gods and spirits appear and play important roles. But in folktales
the main characters usually are ordinary men, women, and children rather than kings and queens and
others of exalted personal qualities or social status, hence the term folktale, a story about common people.
Even in fables, a kind of folktale in which the characters are animals, the animals speak and act as though
they were ordinary humans. (The fable is the only category of tale for which the Greeks had a specific
word, ainos, from which comes our enigma, “like a fable”).
Unlike legends, folktales do not pretend to tell us what happened in the human past. No one believes
that Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, or the American Indian trickster Crow really existed, as
the Greeks believed that Achilles, Helen, and Orestes did. Often the main characters in folktales have low
social status, at least at the beginning of the story, and are persecuted or victimized in some way by other
characters. The folktale hero may be an outcast whose intelligence and virtue are not recognized by those
in power. The hero often is the youngest child of three brothers or sisters, abused by siblings or by a
wicked stepmother. Very often the end of the story brings a reversal of fortune, the happy ending for
which folktales are well known. Initially taken to be stupid or ineffectual, the folktale hero triumphs over
all obstacles and receives an appropriate reward. The trickster, who gets what he wants by unexpected
means, is common in folktale.
Whereas divine myths explain why the world is the way it is and legends tell what happened in the
human past, the primary function of folktales is to entertain, although they may also play an important
role in teaching and justifying customary patterns of behavior. Folktales draw on such universal human
experiences as the child’s place in the hierarchy of the family. They appeal to such universal human
instincts as the belief that good is eventually rewarded and evil punished. In modern literate culture, the
novel and the feature film have functions analogous to that of the folktale in oral society. For this reason
feature films almost without exception “end happily.”
Although curiously few pure folktales have come down to us from the Greeks and Romans, this
category of traditional tale is of central importance to the study of Greek myth. To understand why, we
[Link] 7/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

must take note of a distinctive aspect of the folktale: the regular appearance of identifiable folktale types,
even in stories from cultures widely separated in space or time. Scholars recognize more than seven
hundred folktale types in traditions around the globe. Sometimes a folktale type is named after a famous
example. The “Cinderella type,” for example, is any story in which an abused younger sister, assisted by a
spirit, appears in fancy dress at a ball, disappears from the prince’s admiring glance, and then is
recognized and marries the prince.
Folktale types are made up of smaller elements called folktale motifs that can be recombined in
endless variety. A type may occasionally consist of a single motif, but folktales usually have several
motifs, and we might think of folktale motifs as the cells that make up the body of a tale. A folktale type
is thus a constellation of motifs that constitutes an independent story, that is, a story that makes sense in
itself and does not depend on its relation to some larger story. Some motifs making up the “Cinderella
type” would be “the abused younger sister,” “the spirit helper,” “the glass slipper as a token,” and
“marriage to the prince.” Different types may share the same motifs. For example, in any number of
folktales the hero grows up and goes off into the world to seek his fortune. This motif by itself could
hardly define a type. What defines a type is a recurring constellation of motifs.
Folktale motifs are not commonplace events, people, or incidents, but are always distinctive or unusual
in some way. A “sister” is not a motif, but “an abused youngest sister of three” is. “The woman went to
town” has no motifs, but “a hero put on his cap of invisibility, mounted his magic carpet, and flew to the
Land Beyond the Sun” has four motifs: “the cap of invisibility,” “the magic carpet,” “the magic flight
through the air,” and “the wondrous land.” Other common motifs are “the dragon that guards a spring” or
“a magic object that protects against attack.” Modern scholars have exhaustively described and organized
the bewildering variety of folktale motifs, which number in the thousands, so that you can look up a given
motif and find where else it occurs throughout world folklore.

PERSPECTIVE 1.1 The Brothers Grimm

Everyone has heard of “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, “Child and House Tales”), a collection
that reached its familiar form in an edition of 1857, but took fifty years to assemble. Already in the short first
edition of 1812–1815, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered together tales that represent virtually every folktale
type found in Germanic countries. From the great work of the Grimm brothers come all later divisions of folktales
into certain types and motifs.
Where did the Grimm brothers get these world-famous stories? Their sources were not printed documents. They
claimed that their best storyteller was a “peasant woman” who told “genuine Hessian [west-central German]
tales.” We know, however, that this woman was a tailor’s wife from a French Protestant family and that the
Grimms’ informants were never peasants, but in general educated women, sometimes of high social status.
According to the romantic temper of the times, however, the Grimms wanted their stories to come from “the folk,”
thought to be a repository of uncorrupted truths.
In studying traditional tales, we always face the problem of the relation of our written version with a version
that might have really appeared in an oral environment. The Grimms were scientists, yet saw no objection in
refining and even re-creating whatever might have been their original source. For example, in the first edition of
1812–1815, “The Frog King” opens like this (in English translation):
Once upon a time there was a king’s daughter, who went out into a wood and sat down beside a cool
spring. She had a golden ball, her favorite toy, which she threw up high and caught it again in the air and
enjoyed herself in this way. (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1812–1815, 1:1)
In subsequent editions the scene kept growing until in the last edition of 1857, edited by Wilhelm Grimm, the story
opens as follows:
In ancient times, when wishing still did some good, there lived a king whose daughters were beautiful, but
the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astounded at her when he
[Link] 8/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

shone upon her. Nearby the castle of the king lay a huge dark wood, and in the wood under ancient Lindens
was a spring. If the day were hot, the child of the king would go into the wood and sit down at the edge of
the cool spring. And if she was bored, she took a golden ball, threw it in the air and caught it again. That
was her favorite game. (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857, 1:29)
The words of the story, then, are those of the Grimm brothers, not of a “peasant” from the folk or even an educated
and aristocratic informant. Wilhelm Grimm did not think of his embellishments of style as violating his mission to
record German “Child and House Tales,” because in his view the tale consisted of a constellation of motifs that
remained the same in spite of the actual words used to tell it. Probably most myth tellers would agree.

A general folktale type often found in Greek myth is the quest. In the quest, the folktale hero,
compelled to seek some special object, journeys to a strange, terrifying, or wonderful land. There he must
face a powerful antagonist: a dragon, monster, ogre, or thoroughly wicked man. To overcome his
antagonist, the hero needs the assistance of animals, ghosts, divine beings, or magical weapons or
devices. The hero is often a clever trickster, whereas his adversary is brutish, stupid, and cruel. The
adversary succeeds in imprisoning, enchanting, or even killing the hero, but at last, often through a trick,
the hero escapes, overcomes the enemy, and dispatches him in some cruel or gruesome way. Taking the
object he sought, the hero returns to his native land, where his reward is marriage to a princess, or a part
of the kingdom, or a great treasure.
Many of these motifs appear in the Greek story of Perseus (see Chapter 14), who was sent on a
dangerous journey by an evil king who wanted to marry Perseus’ mother. Assisted by nymphs, the
goddess Athena, and an array of magical objects, Perseus went to the ends of the earth and slew the
deadly Gorgon. On his return journey, carrying the Gorgon’s death-dealing head in a pouch, he killed a
sea monster that threatened a young woman chained to a rock. He took the woman back to Greece,
married her, and killed the wicked king. This story illustrates the way Greek myth can use folktale motifs
to elaborate on what would otherwise be considered a legend. About Perseus, for example, we are also
told that he was born in the town of Argos and brought up by a poor fisherman on the island of Seriphus,
that he accidentally killed his grandfather Acrisius in the town of Larissa (up north in Thessaly), and that
he moved to Tiryns and founded Mycenae, where his children later ruled. These are details appropriate to
a widespread legend. The myth of Perseus, then, is neither pure legend nor pure folktale, but a mixture of
the two.
In general, we may describe much of Greek myth as legend strongly colored by folktale. The main
characters in these stories often have names appropriate to men and women who might really have lived,
members of a social elite whose stories are attached to prominent Greek towns. Yet their adventures are of
a sort we expect to find in folktale. The distinctions we have drawn between types of myth are of great
value in organizing our thinking about myth, but we should remember that our distinctions are the results
of intellectual analysis; they were not recognized by the ancient Greeks themselves.

The Study of Myth

The word mythology should mean “the study of myth” (by analogy with biology, anthropology), but in
common usage mythology typically refers more loosely to the myths themselves, or to a particular group
of myths, not to the study of myth. Such statements as “I like mythology” are therefore taken to mean “I
like myths as such,” and the myths of Greece and Rome are often called “classical mythology.” To be
clear, I avoid the ambiguous term mythology altogether, using instead myth or myths, on the one hand, and
the study of myth on the other.
The study of myth is multifaceted. There are many different ways in which modern scholars approach
the study of myth, but they can be grouped into four general categories:

• the recording and compiling of a given culture’s myths

[Link] 9/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

• the analysis of the role that specific myths play or played within the culture
• the study of how one culture’s myths are related to those of other cultures
• assessment of the lasting human significance of specific myths or groups of myths

Let us first discuss the recording and compiling of a given culture’s myths. The spread of alphabetic
literacy in the modern world, and now communication by the Internet, has greatly reduced the degree to
which myths serve as a guide to everyday life, but many cultures still maintain a vital oral tradition. One
task undertaken by anthropologists and others who study such cultures is to record, in writing or by other
means, the oral tales that are still passed on from generation to generation.
For ancient cultures like those of Greece and Rome, a direct recording of oral tales is of course no
longer possible. We can only study the myths of these cultures that have been recorded already. Typically
the ancient myths were recorded not by scholars studying the myths for their own sakes, but by men
(almost never women) who had other goals. In addition, oral tales exist in many different variants; the
variant recorded on one occasion could be very different from that recorded on another. As a result, the
records that have come down to us are contradictory, confusing, and incomplete. Careful study and
considerable experience are needed to move from existing records to a coherent picture of any one myth.
The principal source for the study of ancient myths is works of literature. A literary work can take the
form of a narrative and thus have the same structure as an oral tale (beginning, middle, end; plot,
character, setting). Literary works, encoded in writing, take their concepts of structure directly from oral
tales. Therefore, the study of myth has much in common with the study of literature. However, the
structural similarities between the original oral tale and the written work of literature in which it is
recorded can be deceptive. The literary work typically is the creation of a single person whose name we
often know, whereas myths are anonymous. While creating one’s own version of a given myth, the author
of the literary work introduces variations not present in the different oral retellings of the tale. Moreover,
the author may not have taken the myth directly from the oral tradition at all, but may have worked from
versions recorded in previous literary works. We know of many such instances in classical culture, so that
often we are not sure whether we are dealing with the study of myths or with the study of literature.
Another valuable source of information about the myths of ancient peoples is the archaeological
record. Painting, sculpture, and other nonliterary artifacts can provide valuable clues about variants not
contained in the literary record and about who told particular myths, and where and when they told them
and why they told them. The art of Greece and Rome is particularly useful for reconstructing ancient
myth, but a picture is not by itself a story. At most a picture can represent a character or scene from myth.
A major problem in the study of mythical representations in ancient art is determining whether such
images were inspired by written or unwritten sources. In any event, we have a great number of mythical
representations from ancient Greece and Rome, and much has been learned through study of them. For
that reason, this book contains abundant illustrations from Greek pottery and other artifacts.
A second way in which scholars approach the study of myth is to examine the functions of specific
myths in the context of a given society.
In a society with a living oral tradition, myths are told by someone to someone on some occasion. Both
the tellers of tales and their audience have a certain identity and status within the culture. They are male
or female, wealthy or poor, powerful or not. To understand the myth fully, we need to know how it
functioned for the people who took part in its retelling. We have already mentioned that myths can be
etiological, offering an explanation for beliefs or existing practices. But a myth can function in other
ways. Did it enhance the prestige of those who told the tale or heard it told? Did it justify the existing
distribution of power and wealth or perhaps express a protest? Did it strike a chord in the universal desire
to know the meaning of action and of human life? Just what was so interesting to the people who listened
to this tale?

[Link] 10/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

A third way in which scholars study myth is to trace relationships between the myths of one culture
and those of others.
We have already mentioned that many folktale motifs are found in the same or similar form in many
different cultures around the world. We can also look at the way that specific myths have migrated from
one culture to another but were transformed to suit the adopting culture’s needs and traditions. The
migration of myths from the ancient Near East to Greece, for example, is an event of extraordinary
importance in the history of civilization.
Finally, some scholars involved in the study of myth are concerned with the assessment of myths.
What is the deeper human significance of these old tales? Why have they fascinated so many for so long,
even after the culture that produced them ceased to exist? Is there some sense in which deep truths reside
in these fantastic tales?
Questions of the deeper meaning and truth of myth have played an important role dating back to
antiquity. Some have sought to find philosophical or psychological truth in myth by moving beyond the
obvious surface meaning to a hidden, less apparent meaning. But to say that this or that is the genuine
meaning of a myth is always a matter for dispute. Although some interpretations can be more successful
than others, it is never possible to offer conclusive proof. Still, good interpretations require sensitivity and
insight, knowledge of the society that produced the myth, and knowledge of one’s own mind, which likes
to see what it wants, unaware of its own prejudgments. In studying the history of the interpretation of
myth, we truly study more how people’s prejudgments have changed than we study myth itself. For some
scholars, nonetheless, the assessment of a myth’s meaning is the most important aspect of their study, and
in this book we offer many interpretations as a basis for discussion. Chapter 25 is devoted solely to an
examination of the interpretation of myth and the many different theoretical frameworks.

Classical Names: Pronunciation and Spelling

The pronunciation of classical names can be one of the most frustrating aspects to our study of classical
myth, and it is important that we have a sense of what the rules are.
Proper names of classical myth are mostly Greek in origin and were later transliterated into the Latin
alphabet, which is somewhat different from the Greek. Latin presently broke up into the Romance
languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese). Each had its own peculiarities of spelling and
pronunciation of originally Greek names. English is not a Romance language, but its speakers were
members of the western Christian church, which—in its Roman Catholic branch—used Latin for its
liturgy and for almost all its business down to the mid-twentieth century. In consequence, throughout
Western Europe Latin was a universal second language for educated classes for about fifteen hundred
years. For this reason the most familiar spellings of the proper names of classical myth are Latinized
forms of Greek names, sometimes further altered in standard English. Because of their familiarity, these
are the forms used (mostly) in this book. (The Index includes the Greek forms of names often
encountered in translations.)
The value of the sounds of names in classical myth as pronounced in English, especially those of
vowels, is a topic on which people agree to disagree. Certainly an ancient Greek would be astonished at
the ordinary English pronunciation of his or her name. So one often hears the name of the Athenian
playwright pronounced as E-schylus or Ē-schylus or sometimes Ī-schylus. Is the famous king of Thebes
called E-dipus or Ē-dipus? Professional classicists may use any of these versions without embarrassment.
Still, the correct pronunciation should be Ē-schylus and Ē-dipus, according to the rule that the Latin
diphthong (two vowels pronounced as one) ae and oi are equivalent to the English long ē.
Long vowels in the Index are to be pronounced according to the following key:

ā = pay
[Link] 11/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

ē = be
ī = wife
ō = no
ū = cute

Consonants arouse less uncertainty and tend to follow rules governing the English pronunciation of all
words Latinized from the original Greek, including, of course, classical names. Here are the rules:

• The letters c and g are “soft” before e and i sounds (not necessarily letters) and “hard” before a, o,
and u sounds in words of Greek or Latin origin: for example, center, Caesar, civic, cycle; gentle,
Eugene, Argive, but category, cooperate, cuneiform; garrulous, gonad, gusto. Notice the
requirement “in words of Greek or Latin origin”: get and give are of Germanic origin and do not
follow the rule.
• The Greek letter chi (x), written ch, represented a sound like k but pronounced back in the throat. In
English it is pronounced like the “hard” c in “card,” not like the ch of “chicken.”
• A final e must be pronounced as a separate syllable: Daph-nē, Cir-cē. To remind the reader of this
rule, I place a circumflex over the ê in such syllables (except for the common Aphrodite): Daphnê,
Circê. A final -es is also pronounced as a separate syllable with a long ē sound, as in Achill-ēs.

Another problem is accent—where to stress the word? Greek relied chiefly on pitch and quantity,
whereas English depends on stress. Quantity is the length of time it takes to pronounce a syllable; pitch is
the register of the voice. Because of the influence of Latin on Western culture, the English accent on
proper names of Greek and Latin origin follows the rule that governs the pronunciation of Latin itself: If
the second-to-last syllable of the name is “long,” it is accented; if it is not “long,” the third-to-last
syllable is accented. How do you know whether a syllable is “long” or “short”? If the second-to-last
syllable is followed by two consonants, or if it contains a diphthong (ae, oe, au, ei), or if it contains a
vowel originally long by nature, it is “long” and must be accented. Otherwise, the accent goes on the
third syllable from the end.
Hence Patroclus = pa-trok-lus (because the second-to-last syllable is followed by two consonants);
Actaeon = ak-tē-on (because the second-to-last syllable contains the diphthong ae; all diphthongs are
rendered as long vowels). Unfortunately, only by knowing Greek and Latin well can you know whether a
vowel is long by nature. For example, the goddess Demeter is de-mē-ter because the e in the second-to-
last syllable is long by nature, but you have to know Greek to know why.
A further complication arises from the fact that the combinations of vowels ae, oe, au, and ei are not
always diphthongs, but are sometimes pronounced separately. In these cases I place a dieresis (two
superimposed dots) over the second vowel. The mother of Perseus was Danaë, pronounced dān-a-ē
(accent is on the third-to-last syllable because the a in the second-to-last syllable is short by nature).
These rules are useful but complex. For many it will be easiest simply to consult the pronunciation
given after each name in the text and in the Index, where the syllable to be accented is printed in bold
characters.

Key Names and Terms

divine myth
legend
folktale
etiological tale
folktale types
folktale motifs
[Link] 12/13
9/8/23, 8:21 PM Classical Myth

Further Reading Chapter 1

Aarne, Antti, Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther, Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index. A catalogue of folktale types
originally composed in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910), then revised and translated into English
by American folklorist Stith Thompson (1928, 1961), and later revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-
Jörg Uther (2004). Along with Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932), the ATU Index is an essential
tool for folklorists.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales. A collection of eighteenth-century German folktales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm that
established, more than any other book, what we think of as a folktale. There are several editions on the Internet.
Hansen, William F., Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Ithaca, NY,
2002). Exhaustive study of world folklore found in classical myth.
Mayor, Adrienne, “Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient
Greece and Rome,” in Folklore, April 2000, on the Internet at
[Link]
Powell, Barry B., and Ian Morris (eds.), A New Companion to Homer (Leiden, 1997). Contains excellent essay by
William Hansen on folktale in Homer.
Thompson, Stith, The Folktale (New York, 1946; reprinted Berkeley, CA, 1977). Still the standard survey of the
nature and forms of the folktale, by the most distinguished modern scholar of the folktale.
Thompson, Stith, Motif-index of Folk-literature, 6 vols. (Bloomington, IN, 1993). The basic reference work for
folktale motifs throughout the world. The index to the Index, the sixth volume, is 893 pages long! On the Internet
at [Link]
For bibliographic items dealing explicitly with the interpretation of myth, see the list at the end of Chapter 25.

For digital learning resources, please go to [Link]

*The word God (capital G) should be limited to a single all-powerful being in any religion—Jewish, Christian,
Muslim, or other. A small g shows that you are talking about one of many divine powers. A demigod is the offspring
of a god and a human; sometimes a demigod becomes a god at death. The word deity is a general term that can refer
to God or gods.

[Link] 13/13