The Homeric poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey

The 5th-century-bce Greek historian Herodotus remarked that Homer and Hesiod gave to the Olympian gods—the 12 gods who lived on Mount Olympus and presided over every facet of human life—their familiar characteristics. In the first book of the Iliad, the god Apollo, unnamed but described as the son of Zeus and Leto, was instantly identifiable to the Greek reader, as were the Greek kings Agamemnon and Menelaus when described as the sons of Atreus.

In both cases, the audience is expected to have knowledge of the myths that preceded their literary rendering. Little is known to suggest that the Greeks treated Homer, or any other source of Greek myths, as mere entertainment.

The works of Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days

The First Woman

Hesiod relates the story of Pandora, the first woman in Greek mythology, in the Theogony and in Works and Days. The first epic chronicles her creation by Zeus after Prometheus gives fire to mortals. The second epic records the tale of Pandora’s jar of evils (16th-century translations of the epic changed the jar to the more well-known box).

The fullest and most important source of myths about the origin of the gods is the Theogony of Hesiod (c. 700 bce). The elaborate genealogies are accompanied by folktales and etiological myths (myths that explain origins). The Works and Days shares some of these myths in the narrative framework of a farming almanac and uses them to deliver homilies on justice and morality. The orthodox view treats the two poems as quite different in theme and treats the Works and Days as a theodicy (an explanation of why God permits evil). It is possible, however, to treat the two poems as a diptych, each part dependent on the other. The Theogony declares the identities and alliances of the gods, while the Works and Days gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, and Hesiod urges that the most reliable—though by no means certain—way is to be just.

Other literary works

Fragmentary post-Homeric epics of varying date and authorship filled the gaps in the accounts of the Trojan War recorded in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Homeric Hymns—a series of 34 poems addressing the gods by unknown authors but ascribed to Homer—are the source of several important religious myths. Many of the lyric poets preserved various myths, but the odes of Pindar of Thebes (flourished 6th–5th century bce) are particularly rich in myth and legend. The works of the three tragedians—Aeschylus (author of the Oresteia and Prometheus Bound), Sophocles (author of Antigone and Oedipus Rex), and Euripides (author of Medea and Andromache), all of the 5th century bce—are remarkable for the variety of the traditions they preserve.

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From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

In Hellenistic times (323–30 bce) Callimachus, a 3rd-century-bce poet and scholar in Alexandria, recorded many obscure myths; his contemporary, the mythographer Euhemerus, suggested that the gods were originally human, a view known as Euhemerism. Apollonius of Rhodes, another scholar of the 3rd century bce, preserved the fullest account of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.

In the period of the Roman Empire, the Geography of Strabo (1st century bce), the Library (attributed to a 2nd-century-ce scholar), the antiquarian writings of the Greek biographer Plutarch, and the works of Pausanias, a 2nd-century-ce historian, as well as the Latin Genealogies of Hyginus, a 2nd-century-ce mythographer, have provided valuable sources in Latin of later Greek mythology.

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Archaeological discoveries

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th-century German amateur archaeologist, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete (from which the Mycenaean ultimately derived) by Sir Arthur Evans, a 20th-century English archaeologist, are essential to the 21st-century understanding of the development of myth and ritual in the Greek world. Such discoveries illuminated aspects of Minoan culture from about 2200 to 1450 bce and Mycenaean culture from about 1600 to 1200 bce; those eras were followed by a Dark Age that lasted until about 800 bce. Much of the evidence about myth and ritual at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is derived from the surviving architecture and monuments, because the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and Greece) was mainly used to record inventories.

Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century bce depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. The extreme formality of the style, however, renders much of the identification difficult, and there is no inscriptional evidence accompanying the designs to assist scholars in identification and interpretation. In the succeeding Archaic (c. 750–c. 500 bce), Classical (c. 480–323 bce), and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear to supplement the existing literary evidence.