1. The Appeal of Polytheism.
   1. We're used to the idea of a transcendent single God, but Christianity also has within it the notion of an immanent God, with us and within us.
   2. Monotheism expresses our intuition of the ultimate unity of all things, a view also arrived at by many Greek philosophers and basic to modern science. Polytheism expresses our sense of the multiplicity of things, including the forces within us.
   3. Some of the myths and legends are themselves a kind of proto-science, efforts to explain things:
      1. Why does the earth turn cold and cease to yield fruit and grain? Because Demeter is mourning for her abducted daughter Persephone. Because Aphrodite is mourning for Adonis.
      2. Why do volcanic islands in the Mediterranean give out smoke? It comes from the forges of the blacksmith god Hephaestus.
      3. How did man learn to use fire? From the demi-god Prometheus--whose sister-in-law Pandora opened the box which let out all the ills which bedevil mankind.
      4. How did the Greeks adopt the Phoenician alphabet? It was brought to them by Cadmus, who founded Thebes while searching for his sister Europa.
2. The Sources of Greek Mythology.
   The myths and legends of the Greeks come from a variety of sources, and some of the inconsistencies in them reflect that variety. Why, for example, was the maiden huntress Artemis worshipped at Ephesus as a many-breasted patroness of motherhood? Perhaps because a goddess worshipped by Indo-European speaking intruders from the North has been identified at Ephesus with a fertility goddess worshipped in those parts long before them. This is the same process of syncretism which allowed the Israelite patriarch Abraham to identify the god with whom he had made a special covenant with the El Elyon ("God Most High") worshipped at Salem--or which allowed some Jews in the first century B.C. to identify their god with Zeus.
   1. Crete. Much of the mythology of the classical Greeks goes back to Mycenean times--the linear B tablets discovered in the ruins of Agamemnon's Mycenae and Nestor's Pylos have some of their names. We believe that the religion of Mycenae must have been influenced by that of the culturally more advanced island of Crete. The Minoans of Crete seem to have given the greatest honor to goddesses; even in historical times, Cretans insisted that Zeus was primarily the child of Rhea who was slain and rose again, a notion that shocked their mainland fellows. The legend of Daedalus and of the Minotaur which Theseus defeated in Crete go back to this period of Cretan dominance.
   2. The Older Civilizations. Greek mythology also takes over stories from older Mediterranean civilizations. Much of the leadership of classical Greek culture in its early days came from the city-states of Asia Minor and from the islands off its coast. Vegetation myths like those of Demeter and Persephone, Aphrodite and Adonis are versions of myths known to the Sumerians and passed on to the Greeks by their descendants. Legends like those of Europa and her brother Cadmus show the Greek awareness of their borrowings from older cultures.
   3. The Indo-Europeans Greek mythology, and even the names of some deities, can be connected with the mythologies of other people speaking languages in the Indo-European family of languages, which includes Sanskrit (and its descendants in India), Greek, Latin (and its modern descendants like French and Spanish), and German (and its cognates like Dutch and English). Indo-European speaking peoples like the Greeks were late-comers to the Mediterranean. Their background appears to be nomadic, with more emphasis on sky deities (like Zeus the Thunderer) and with river gods rather than sea gods. Although they probably had important goddesses, many believe that the patriarchal nature of later Greek mythology comes from them. The story of how Zeus took over from his father Ouranos may also reflect a religious revolution following the arrival of the Greeks, though there are parallel stories in Mesopotamia.
3. Sacred Marriages
   When Greek-speaking peoples first came to Greece and established domination there, they would have brought their chief god Zeus with them and identified him with the sky gods they found already established.
   1. The process of identification also applied, then or later, to some goddesses, but in general, the goddesses are more directly tied to particular cities or areas. Hera is the patron goddess of Argos, Athena of Athens--even Aphrodite is particularly identified with the island of Cyprus.
   2. The Greeks would have insisted on the authority of their Zeus over these older goddesses; he marries Hera, and Athena must be reborn from his forehead.
   3. A traditional rite found in much of the Mediterranean is the sacred marriage, a union between the earth goddess and her lover (sometimes identified with the sky god), sometimes represented by the chief priestess and the king or war chief. This coupling is seen as promoting the fertility of the soil--and it is the ultimate source of later customs like crowning the king and queen of May. Earlier forms make this primarily a rite of the goddess.
      1. The immorality of Zeus, which puzzled even later Greeks, may owe a good bit to myths associated with such sacred marriages. Given the importance of the area around Argos, Zeus was said to be the husband of Hera, but he was also identified with the god who married other goddesses at other places. Making sense of all this, later poets were forced to make him an adulterer.
      2. Even some of the mortal women Zeus was said to have seduced or raped, like Danae and Europa, were probably originally goddesses. In mythology, Dionysus, though a god and not a mere demi-god, is described as the son of Zeus by Semele, a daughter of Cadmus of Thebes, but Semele appears to have originally been a patron goddess of Thebes.
4. Uranian vs. Chthonic Deities
   Even in the forms of worship, there was a distinction made between the gods who ruled from above on Mt. Olympus and the older gods of the earth:

   Uranian (heavenly)	Chthonian
   white victims, sacrificed with throats up to sky	black victims, sacrificed with throat down
   high outdoor altar	low altar or trench to receive blood
   temple	sometimes a cave
   morning sacrifice	night sacrifice
   pray with palms up	pray with palms down

5. Apollo and Dionysus
   Another great distinction in Greek religion, as some later scholars have looked at it, is between Apollo, a god associated with light reason, and the pursuit of form, and Dionysus, a god associated with darkness, intoxication, and the pursuit of ecstasy.
   1. Apollo is a true Olympian, son of Zeus and the Titaness Leto, a brother of Artemis. His origin has been seen in both a mouse or wolf god of Asia Minor and in the far north; he may well have absorbed elements from several traditions.
      1. One story tells of how when 4 days old he went after the Python who had pursued his mother and killed it at the Delphic shrine. He is said to have learned the art of prophecy from the goatish god Pan and then to have seized the Pythoness and taken over the oracle at Delphi. Such stories presumably report a take-over of the Delphic shrine by worshippers of Apollo.
         1. A story of how his lyre playing defeated the flute-playing mortal Marsyas in a music contest may reflect his taking over the patronage of the arts. The nine female Muses henceforward reported to him.
      2. Though less amorous than Zeus, Apollo also had his amours. He pursued the nymph Daphne until she turned into a laurel tree to escape him. He admired Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy and a sister of Paris, and gave her the gift of prophecy by spitting in her mouth; when she still refused him, he cursed her with never having her prophecies believed.
   2. Dionysus is one of the gods whose name can be traced to Mycenean times, but Greek mythology portrays him as an outsider and a late-comer to the Olympian 12. His worshippers were said to tear apart animals with the bare hands and eat the raw flesh, convinced that they were devouring and becoming one with their god. This sense of union with a god is foreign to the Olympians in general. The role of women in his worship was also regarded with distrust.
      1. The legend of Orpheus, torn apart by female worshippers of Dionysus, may suggest a latent identification of Dionysus with Orpheus. Orpheus was a founder of mysteries, quite possibly mysteries in honor of the Goddess. Dionysus was eventually worshipped as part of the great Eleusinian mysteries celebrated near Athens, which were chiefly in honor of Demeter and Persephone. Orpheus seeking in hell for his lost wife Eurydice reminds one of Demeter's search for Persephone. As in the Christian spring festival of Easter, a connection seems to have been made at Eleusis and in the Orphic mysteries between the renewal of vegetation, the dying and rising god, and the hope of bliss after death for the worshippers. All such connections, of course, are highly speculative; the mystery cults were secret and the sacred secrets were kept.
6. 6. Lasting Significance
   Though the Olympians have few worshippers today, they retain significance.
   1. The stories told about them and their dealings with human beings did not merely inspire the Greeks and Romans; they have provided subject matter and allusions for painters and poets throughout Western civilization.
   2. The temples they erected to their gods retained have also continued to influence architecture. Our own capital of Washington has always been full of classical architecture, starting with the Capital--the Lincoln Memorial is particularly like a temple with a seated statue--and a late 19th century revival of classicism left Chicago with a temple-like Museum of Science & Industry.
      1. In many ways, what is most remarkable about Greek temples is how much alike they are (flat roofs supported by columns), but ability to distinguish between Doric and Ionic orders is still a mark of an educated person.
   3. The gods still stand for forces which we ourselves can feel at work in the world and in ourselves.
      1. Aphrodite, a goddess much distrusted by the Greeks themselves, remains a force which can make and wreck lives.
      2. The legend of Oedipus (as presented by the great dramatist Sophocles) gave its name to one of the best known Freudian concepts.
      3. We fear the ingenuity of our own Daedalus's and mourn our own Icarus's and Phaetons.
      4. Anyone who confronts bare nature in a storm can understand the power the Greeks ascribed to Zeus and his thunderbolts or Poseidon of the restless sea.

[Last posted 1/29/98 by Bob Canary--canary@uwp.edu]