Harris 1

Katherine “Nikki” Harris

Dr. Jones

Greek Mythology

17 May 2010

The Neolithic societies around 3500BC in the areas later to become

Greece were inhabited by very rudimentary protocultural non-Greeks. The

religion of these villages were a basic animistic religion that asserted

everything, all animals, plants, rocks, natural features such as rivers and hills,

have a life, force and will. All things with life, force, and will are numina. The

life of a numen is observed simply by its existence. The force is observed by

the expression of its will. Everything wills to be what it is and to do what it

does. For example, a river has life because it exists and shows obviously

lively characteristics like rushing and splashing, has force as there is a

physical force by its movement, and its will is expressed by going the

direction it is, how fast it is, and just by being a river. With this perspective,

much of fate is multi-determined. For example, a hunter throws a rock at an

animal and misses. That could have happened because the rock did not will

to hit the animal, because the hunter did not throw it well, or both. In this

world of lives, forces, and wills all around, the Neolithic animists sought to

align with numina.

In order to do this, the people of pre-Greece used sympathetic magic.

There are two basic properties behind this kind of magic. The first of these is

once in touch, always in touch, as in, if two things come into contact with

each other, they will always have a connection regardless of time or distance.
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The other property being like things affect other like things, or mimetic

magic. This simply means that things that are similar have a connection and

can affect each other. Their religion was that of binding themselves to other

numina, or in other words, aligning lives, forces, and wills. All magic and

rituals are attempts at this goal, to bind.

The binding agent of many rituals was words, which were also thought

to be numina. To the Neolithic man, words had life in that they existed, force

in that they can influence the thoughts of whoever hears and understands

them, and a will in that they mean what they represent. This makes

incantation an excellent and obvious addition to any religious ritual. They

also practiced some forms of apotropaic magic, “turning away” magic. This

would be any practice that was meant to repel or turn away evil numina. For

example, some villages would have scary looking images to keep away evil

spirits.

The fire was always a very important spiritual center of the home. This

makes sense, as it was very mysterious to the pre-scientific world, was

essential to the workings of the home, providing warmth, light, cooking

ability, and has a strong life, force, and will. Keeping a fire also necessitated

the contractual relationship that was applied to the rest of the religion. A fire

must be given wood and other things to burn and consume, and in return, it

provides light and warmth (RAGC 31-33). The logic of the people was to

provide for the fire also things that are important for human life, such as food

and blood, and therefore increasing the life of the fire. This sort of ritual

sacrifice was also done for doorways, borders, rivers, and any numen that the

people wanted to be aligned with. For communal sacrifices to community

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deities, a communal meal would generally follow, making feasts and large

meals part of their religious practice (RAGC 28-30).

These numina, or deities, of greater importance developed and were

personified. The anthropomorphism of the deities led to the gods and

goddesses of the pantheon. They were characterized as having human

psychology, form, personalities, likes and dislikes, and flaws. They were also

not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. They did not know the future

and were therefore subject to fate, being everything that has ever happened;

and also their wills were then subject to change.

Certain gods and goddesses were of such significance they were

universal, like the gods of the sea, sky, earth, harvest, weather, and the sun.

Some deities were very local such as of a local stream or hill. When groups of

people would encounter one another, they would share their understanding

of the gods, and gods themselves. Sometimes gods from different groups

would combine or one would win out over another and so on. This syncretism,

or amalgamation of religious ideas, helped to create a more universal

pantheon of gods in Greece by 2,500BC, the Bronze Age. In the range of

1400-1200BC, there were large migrations of people from the north. These

were the Mycenaeans, the Greeks. They took many of the religious ideas and

practices of the peoples inhabiting Greece before them.

In addition to the universal pantheon, there was a common theme of

the devolution of man. This was the belief that man used to be significantly

closer to the gods and goddesses in a sort of “golden age”, but through a

series of great sins, man devolved and lost piety. A slew of these “original

sin” stories of how mankind lost his rank of righteousness often committed by
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individuals involved men trying to either trick the gods or to obtain godly

powers. One way the original sinners thought to obtain immortality was to

have sex with a goddess, which never went well for him.

One story was that of Tantalus who was graciously invited to dine with

the gods, stole ambrosia and nectar, the food of the gods, and took it down to

Earth to share with the human race. The gods were furious and banished

Tantalus from Mt. Olympus. Tantalus decided to take revenge on the gods.

Tantalus murdered and roasted his son Pelops as a feast for the gods, even

though human meat was forbidden for them to eat. Demeter, one of the

goddesses who preferred to walk with the mortals, graciously accepted the

food, but was immediately repulsed when she bit into the left shoulder. Zeus

realized the situation and stopped any further damage. Tantalus was

punished eternally, and his son was restored with iron replacing the missing

portion of his shoulder.

In some stories, a whole people committed an “original sin”. In many

cases, their crime was simply trespassing by crossing natural barriers that

they may or may not have been instructed by the gods to not do. These

stories of the devolution of man are examples of aitionological myths, a

cause story.

Myths, like the “original sin” stories, were stories that were meant to

demonstrate a proverb, tell the history of fate, the truth of a culture, the

ways of the ancestors, and the will, nature, and traits of the gods and

goddesses. The Archaic Greek man lived in an oral culture, one without

written word. These cultures inhibit the ability to have long definitions and

therefore limit their ability to abstract to a large degree. Their logic was
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mostly analogous, understanding things by how they are alike and unalike

other things that are known. Homer probably lived on the cusp of a literature

culture because of how long the Odyssey is. Another theory is that he

mentally structured the storyline and major elements and filled in the syllable

pattern as he went, memorizing chunks. He also used appositional elements,

such as type scenes, to play on the analogous logic of the oral culture.

In this oral culture, there was a collection of proverbs that were passed

down, and explained in myths. Everyone in a society would know a repertoire

of storylines and characters. A collection of related storylines and characters

are cycles. There are city cycles, like the Trojan and Theban Cycles of Troy

and Thebes, respectively, certain heroes, like in the Herakles Cycle, and each

god and goddess of the pantheon has his and her own cycle. The telling of

these myths was a large part of the hymns to the gods and goddess.

The myths were also the Homeric man’s history. His concept of truth

lacked causality. Their myths are often inconsistent with each other and not

placed chronologically because people did not value causality as necessary.

This allows each teller of myths to tell them in such a way, with certain new

twists to make whatever point he wants. Doing this is considered perfectly

acceptable and not blasphemous even if it contradicts another version; the

archaic man would receive all versions to be entirely true.

While there was no defined character to impiousness due to the lack of

dogma or doctrine, there was still condemnation of people in ancient Greek

societies for being impious or heretical. Asebeia, or impiety, was the lack of

respect towards the common religious beliefs and practices of a city or

region. This could be done by defacing the gods’ possessions, images, or

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rituals, introducing a new god or cult not supported by the community, or

claiming some opinion of the gods contrary to popular belief (RAGC 11-12).

Miasma, or pollution, comes from blaspheming against the gods, but

also from any kind of loss of honor or dirtiness. Physical dirtiness is

considered also a spiritual dirtiness; hence, if one looks unclean, he is

polluted. Before a religious ritual, participants would have to be clean, wear

clean clothes without knots as that may imply hiding something, with their

hair straight down, sometimes covered, and have the sanctuary cleansed and

marked. Also, participants could not have had sex within a certain amount of

time before the ritual. Pollution can come from an error or crime, any act

against the will of the gods. It can spread by location (which falls under the

once in touch always in touch property), and passed down to descendents.

Kings and aristocrats are at greatest risk for pollution, and if they commit

such a crime, they ruin the rituals and religious practices of the entire village

or city. Pollution never goes away without cleansing, and not all pollution can

be cleansed (RAGC 9-10).

Personal pollution is brought about the action of an individual and must

be removed by a ritual cleansing to the god or goddess related to the

particular pollution. In cases where it is not clear which god or goddess to go

to, the individual relies on the tradition of his city. Community pollution is

taken care of in the same fashion. In special cases, the community would

sometimes have to make up a cleansing if the pollution was unprecedented.

Curses bring to a god or goddess’ attention a pollution, but are not

efficacious without a crime committed by the cursed.

This aspect of their culture was very important as a shame culture

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rather than a guilt culture, meaning that motivation was external. In a belief

system without judgment, an honor code is the only way to keep functioning.

They believed that upon death, a ghost of the person would remain eternally

in the underworld, where there is no joy. All people, regardless of their life on

Earth, go to the underworld with very few exceptions (RAGC 72). The

motivation for people who do not believe they will be eternally rewarded or

forever punished according to how they lived is in the desire to have honor, a

legacy, and the transcendence of their name.

Honor is acquired by ancestor worship, material possessions, and for

women, staying out of public view. They must help their friends and hurt their

enemies without exception. Also, this view of honor, being largely material

possession supports the contractual facet of the culture. Transgressions could

be paid off, for example, to restore the honor of whoever was wronged by

paying him and increasing his material wealth. The Homeric society was

based almost completely on contracts, creating a system of patrons and

clients, sometimes very complicated.

At this point, ancient Greece functioned as an aristocracy. There was a

king of the city and a group of thirty or forty families, or clans, who had the

greatest amount of honor in material possessions. The people did not have

state prosecution, but if someone was wronged he would either take care of it

himself, by negotiating with the offender a fair price for the crime, or taking

the price by force, or going to an aristocrat to mediate. The aristocrat would

either brush him off, saying that it is insignificant or something that should be

dealt with person to person, told that he was not in fact wronged and does

not deserve a price, or to decide a fair price. This decided price will either be
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honored by the offender, or taken by force by the justified victim. This

aristocracy and perspective was reflective of how they understood the gods

of the pantheon to function. They believed that Zeus’s justice would always

win out in the grand scale.

Zeus, meaning light or light bringer, was the ruler of all the gods and

goddesses. He is the god of the sky, weather, order, oaths, justice,

intelligence, leaders, and hospitality. Zeus’s strong political nature and

control of cosmic activity seemed to go hand-in-hand to the ancient Greek.

The son of Kronos and Rhea, he was not always in power but fought and took

it. As a child, he was hidden on Crete to keep from being swallowed by his

father, Kronos, and has a special connection to Crete as a result. Many of the

gods have a certain city that they are endeared to because of some

occurrence in the past. Zeus also chose to spread his intelligence on Earth

and in the cosmos by having sex with a variety of royal mortal women and

goddesses. This makes his wife, Hera, very jealous, and there are many

myths about her jealousy. She is the goddess of the home, household,

mothers, childbirth, and young children.

One of Zeus’s offspring, Apollo, whose mother is Leda, has some of

Zeus’s principals, like intelligence and order. Apollo is the god of prophesy,

health, and music. He was born in Delos andholds sanctuary in Delphi where

he established his oracle, as sung about in the Homeric hymn to Apollo, gives

prophesy and wisdom to those who come within proximity. His images cast

him as slightly effeminate, young, and sophisticated looking. His twin sister,

Artemis, is the goddess of the hunt, animals, and the wilds of the world. Even

so, she does not conflict with the will and order of her father Zeus, same as
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all of his children. She is a virgin goddess that is many times approached by

men and gods alike, but none with any success.

Athena, the daughter of Zeus and Metas, his first wife and goddess of

clever thinking, was born out of Zeus’s head. He had swallowed her mother,

and Athena came out of his head. Some myths, he has to use an axe to open

his head up. She is the goddess of crafts, wisdom, and intelligence. She is

considered the founder and protector of Athens, and appears with a helmet,

lance, and shield, with an owl or snake at her feet. She is another virgin

goddess, but unlike Artemis, is totally unapproachable.

Hephaistos is the son of Hera, sometimes on her own and sometimes

fathered by Zeus. In myths that he was born only of Hera, she was meaning

to take some control from Zeus, as he continued to have sex with many other

women. Hephaistos was born misshapen, so Hera threw him to earth, and he

was raised by mortals, became god of fire, crafts, progress or technology,

metal smith, best smith of any god or goddess, and eventually reconciles

with his mother and comes back to Olympus. In cases where he is the son of

Zeus and Hera, he was born normal and not misshapen, tried to stop a fight

between Hera and Zeus, siding too much with Hera and was thrown to earth

by his father, breaking his leg, was nursed back to health by mortals, but

remains the “hobbled god”.

Dionysus, or Bacchus, is another god with a birth story involving Hera’s

jealousy. Zeus decided to have sex with a mortal princess of Thebes, but

Hera finds out. She tricks Semele into tricking Zeus into showing his full form

to her. Semele dies by this, and Zeus takes the seed of Dionysus, which had

survived, and put it into his thigh, for being the greatest power in his body.
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After being born, he was taken by Hermes to Nysa in Asia, which accounts for

his appearance: fairly oriental-looking, slightly effeminate, very young god.

He is the god of wet elements, spring, new life, honey, fertility, vine,

agriculture, free flow of things, but not of water. When first traveling west

towards Greece, he first comes to Thebes, where he was bitterly rejected, as

he was in most places. Dionysus traveled the earth, mostly west, trying to

spread his worship, but most people were not taking him seriously as a god,

seeing him as a party god of drink. Men would fight him, called machotheos,

men who fought against gods, but he became very fierce whenever fought

against.

Dionysus started to gain a human procession of thiasos, mortals

following him banging drums and the like in a very Hindu fashion. This

consisted of bacchants, women in his procession that had a unique ecstasy

and peace of Dionysus’ higher spirituality, satyrs, half men and half goat who

live to drink and have sex, and wild animals joined the thiasos. Dionysus

becomes a god of the underworld, but often comes to the upper world. He is

sometimes told as the son of Zeus and Demeter and is torn apart by wild

beasts and goes to the underworld, where he becomes the god of rebirth.

Zeus chose to spread his principals the genealogy of tricksters,

appropriate as they often opposed his order. Hermes, the son of Zeus and

Maia, the daughter of Atlas, was a success of this endeavor, as he has Zeus’s

principals of order and justice, but with a trickster type of cleverness. He is

the god a persuasion, business, rhetoric, invention, and travel. He also is

charged with the duty to take souls to the underworld, and is a messenger for

the gods.
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Herakles is the son of Zeus and Allmene, a royal mortal woman. Hera

in her jealousy sends two or three, depending on the version, snakes to his

crib to kill him, but he, even as an infant breaks them. He travels much as the

patron saint of mankind, mortal, but extraordinary. As a hero, city protector,

Herakles slays many beasts and every city had a story of how Hercules came

to clean it up. He had large appetites for food, drink, and sex. His flawed

human nature lets these appetites get the better of him. In one myth, he had

to go to the underworld and back, and his quasi-divine quality increases. His

mortal wife became jealous when Hercules fell in love with another woman,

and ends up accidentally killing him, which burned away his mortal nature,

and he becomes and Olympian god.

Kronos and Rhea, the parents of Zeus, also had several other offspring.

Before Zeus took control of the cosmos, he was given control of the sky, with

the underworld to his brother Hades, and the seas to his other brother

Poseidon. The earth was meant to be shared among the three of them, but

Zeus quickly took it for himself. Poseidon, the god of the seas, wells, water,

fountains, earth movement, horses, trade, sailors, and the exchange of ideas,

sometimes worked against the will of Zeus, which is always more likely with a

deity not born of Zeus.

Demeter, Zeus’s sister, is the goddess of earth, fertility, harvest, and

hold Athens dearest. She spread her worship on Earth by a mortal kid,

Tripocemos. She also is the mother of Persephone, fathered by Zeus, who

was captured by Hades to make her his wife, as planned by Zeus. Hades, the

god of death and darkness, is lord of the underworld and, while an Olympian

god, is often rejected. His name means invisible, which is appropriate

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because he is unreachable by prayer and is told to be mean, cold, hard-

hearted, and is shown with a helmet with the visor down.

Ares, another brother of Zeus, is not considered as important in the

Greek pantheon as in the Roman because the Greeks have him as only the

god of war and strife. In some myths, he is actually married to Aphrodite, the

goddess of love, for balance. Aphrodite was born out of her father,

Ouremos’s, severed genitals as they fell into the sea, hence her name

meaning, “sea foaming”. She is the goddess of love, sex, lust, and sometimes

of prostitutes. She has temples to her two natures: pandemos, literally “all

areas”, the everyday Aphrodite, and Urania, to send minds to the higher

things of life. There are hundreds if not thousands of other deities, one for

every stream and mountain that a village finds importance in.

There were religious festivals thrown by communities for the gods and

goddess for each of the most important ones to that community. These were

big poetic moments and were also meant to be entertainment for the gods

and goddesses with contests, athletic games, and poetic competitions (RAGC

15-109). Hymns were sung in honor of the god or goddess the festival was

celebrating. Prayer was generally said in hymns, and early prayer language

was full of rhetorical tricks, but personal ones not by singers were not

necessarily very good, but done according to his capacity. Each city had a

collection of its own hymns to the gods. They hymns including a beseeching

of the god or goddess, but this had to be done in his correct persona, so

many times, hymns include numerous titles of the god to cover their bases.

Certain elements and motifs were always expected in hymns. The genealogy

of the god was nearly always included with mention to his favorite city or
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sanctuary. There would be a short narrative of the good deeds of the god

with a request that those deeds and good graces come to the singer and his

community and a promise that the hymns and worship from the people will

continue, a contract. These were sung using epic language not often used in

any other scenario. They were sometimes used at particular religious

practices, like a procession or ritual.

Singers at the beginning of hymns would call upon the muses to come

into them and sing through them. The understanding that men at the time

had of any behavior outside the range of the norm was that it must have

been caused by a god or goddess that got inside of him. The individual was

still considered responsible for the action, however, because it was assumed

that if it happened, it was because he deserved it. This held true for the

better, as in actions deserving of honor and praise, or worse, sins outside the

norm, agonistic actions. Singer would call upon the muses to honor him with

a song too good to be of himself.

Hesiod’s incantation of the muses often frontloads the whole story he

is about to tell, and he claims that the muses can make some men lie but he

has been chosen by the muses as a “seer” into the truth of matters. In his

theogony, he sang to Zeus about how he came to rule and all his victories

and good deeds. He started with the very beginning, when there was only

Chaos, then Gaia, the earth, appeared, and Tartaros, the dark void. Gaia and

Tarataros gave birth to Eros, the desire for unity (116-22). Gaia of herself

gave birth to Ouranos, the sky, Ourea, and Pontos. Gaia and Ouranos gave

birth to three Hundred-Handeds, monstrous and powerful giants, three

Kyklopes, and the twelve Titans, including Rhea and Kronos (133-52).
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Ouranos engulfs Gaia and all their offspring, not letting them escape. Kronos

then cuts off his father’s genitals, after which he pulls away, freeing those

previously restrained. The blood that splatter on the earth gave birth to the

Furies, bloodguilt, barbaric giants, Erinyes, ashtree nymphs, and the genitals

that fell in the sea bore Aphrodite (154-210).

Nyx, night and darkness, who had been begotten by Chaos, begot

fifteen abstractions, including Moros (Doom), Thanatos (Death), and Apate

(Deceit). Her youngest, Eris, or Discord, parallels her mother and begets

fifteen more abstractions. Hesoid then returns to the children of Gaia, but

with her other mate, Pontos, or the sea. After another long line of deities and

beasts (233-330), he returns to the two Titans, Kronos and Rhea, the parents

of Zeus. They have their offspring of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth,

Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus.

Kronos, from his own experience, knows that if he wished to maintain

his place as ruler of the cosmos, his children are his first threat and must be

prevented from overthrowing him as he overthrew Ouranos. Kronos begins

swallowing his offspring, but mistook a rock for Zeus. Zeus then was hidden

on Crete until he grew enough to release the Kyklopes and Hundred-Handeds

who had been imprisoned in the Earth, and joined his siblings who had been

disgorged. This was the great war of Titans and gods (453-506). Hesiod

resumes his succession of the Titans, tells of the story of Prometheus’s

punishment, and the story of Pandora, the first woman. Interestingly enough,

Hesiod tells woman as being sent to men as the source of great evil. The

great war is picked up again that has now been going on for a decade. In an

epic scene, the battle turned, and the war was won (617-721).
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The scene then turns to the underworld with an emphasis on the dark

river, Styx. Hesiod then tells the stories and offspring of Zeus and his seven

successive wives, eventually settling on his sister Hera. The other

genealogies, like those beginning with Zeus’s brothers Poseidon, Zeus’s son

Ares, and then the goddesses. A song like this was meant to firstly honor

Zeus, but also to tell the entire history of the gods, and educate his listeners

in regards to all of history, fate, and to give insight into the ways of the gods.

Not all hymns were this serious. In the Homeric hymn to Hermes, the

tone is very playful and comic, which suited Hermes who possesses those

qualities. It opens by telling of Hermes’s conception and birth. He leaps up

almost immediately and goes off to steal Apollo’s precious cattle. He firsts

comes to a tortoise, greets it, kills it, makes its shell into a lyre, and then

thanks it. Continuing on, he steals Apollo’s cattle, driving them to the

Alpheios river. On the way, he invents sandals and a way of jumping around

to disguise his footprints as animal tracks. At the river, he sacrifices two of

the cows, and cooks the meat without tasting any. He hides away the rest in

a cave, but Apollo is quick to track him down. Hermes tries to talk his way out

by saying that he is only a day old, how could he accomplish such a feat? He

lied so far as to say he did not even know what cattle were. Zeus eventually

comes in to settle the confrontation is so impressed with Hermes that he is

made an Olympian god, and reconciles with Apollo by giving him the lyre,

and therefore making him the god of music. This hymn hits all of Hermes

fortes, persuasion, business, rhetoric, invention, and travel, and illustrates his

character of cleverness and playful trickery.

The Homeric hymn to Demeter is more solemn, telling the story of her
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daughter Persephone and her abduction by Hades. There is a long procession

and ritual that is performed along with this hymn, with supposedly such an

extraordinary conclusion, that all accounts claim it to be long changing. The

story of her abduction is traditionally referred to as the Rape of Persephone.

In the later Olympian pantheon of Classical Greece, Persephone is given a

father: according to Hesiod's Theogony, Persephone was the daughter

produced by the union of Demeter and Zeus: "And he [Zeus] came to the bed

of bountiful Demeter, who bore white-armed Persephone, stolen by Hades

from her mother's side"

Thus, Persephone lived a peaceful life before she became the goddess

of the underworld, which, did not occur until Hades abducted her and brought

her into it. She was innocently picking flowers with some nymphs, Athena,

and Artemis, the Homeric hymn says, in a field in Enna when Hades came to

abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Later, the nymphs were

changed by Demeter into the Sirens for not having interfered. Life came to a

standstill as the devastated Demeter, goddess of the Earth, searched

everywhere for her lost daughter. Helios, the sun, who sees everything,

eventually told Demeter what had happened.

Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the

other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return

Persephone. However, it was a rule of the Fates that whoever consumed food

or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Before

Persephone was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her,

Hades tricked her into eating three pomegranate seeds, which forced her to

return to the underworld for a season each year. When Demeter and her
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daughter were united, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for

some months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the

earth once again became a barren realm. This is an origin story to explain the

seasons, and in the hymn is used to worship and ask favor of Demeter.

Hymns were used to worship the gods and be the reciprocating act for

the gods’ kindness. Sacrifices to the gods also fulfilled this purpose.

Sacrifices and most religious rituals were performed at temples of the

god they were to. Almost all rituals were performed outside of the temple in

the open at the altar, or bomos. The naos, or inner room, generally had an

image or figure of the god or goddess, a reflecting pool, torches, incense, no

windows, sometimes individuals were allowed there. The priest performed

the sacrifice at the bomos, facing the temple away from the congregation

gathered outside. At the end of it, the priest would enter the naos (RAGC 55-

58). Priests were chosen individuals, generally an aristocrat, who lived

otherwise normal lives. They were not set apart from the community and in

fact aristocrats would even take turns at being a community priest (RAGC 49-

50). Religious cults were very secretive, but nonetheless supported by the

faithful community. Members were promised different benefits for each cult,

some being earthly blessings, but sometimes even the promise of some joy in

the afterlife. The mystai were members being initiated, while epoptai were

those already part of it. Most cult rituals, like other religious practices, were

done outside in daylight, as to be visible to the gods and show that they were

not hiding anything (RAGC 112-113).