interesting than modern people, but who were not gods. The mythologies of Egypt and Mesopotamia are
not much concerned with heroes. Very rare in Greek myths are talking animals; and in general, although
there are many exceptions, the events of the myths are an exaggeration or heightening of ordinary life
rather than the wholly bizarre and dream-like sequences found in so many of the world's traditional tales.
This special character of Greek myth has proved a considerable stumbling-block to modern general
theories of mythology.
Another way in which Greek mythology is a special case is its pervasiveness and importance, in a society
more advanced than most of those in which modern missionaries and travellers have been able to
interview native speakers. From Homer to Attic tragedy, it is in terms of the myths that poets work out
their deepest thoughts; both history and philosophy emerge from mythical thought, and both poetry and
the visual arts remained always attached to mythical subjects.
Greece did, of course, have its cosmogonies, myths which told of the creation of the world, and other
stories which took place on the purely divine level. Hesiod, as we shall see, told in his Theogony of the
coming into existence of Earth (Gaia) and her son-partner Heaven (Uranus), and how they were separated,
and how Zeus came to be the ruler of the gods. That story has been heavily influenced by eastern sources,
and it has little connection with real Greek cult or Greek religion. Another tale which is clearly early is
that of the abduction of Persephone (or Kore, 'the Maiden', as she is more usually called) by the Lord of
the Underworld. In anger and grief her mother Demeter made the whole world barren, and in the end Kore
was restored to her for two-thirds of the year, but had to spend one-third of it under the earth. It is natural
to connect her absence with the 'dead' time when the corn is in the earth, before it comes up.
One striking omission in the Theogony of Hesiod is any account of the origin of mankind; and early
Greek thought had in fact no agreed account of it. Sometimes men are said to come from ash trees, or to
be made from clay by Prometheus, or to have emerged from stones; in some sense Zeus is the 'father' of
all men. The omission seems strange to readers of the Bible, which opens so memorably with Adam and
Eve; but it is interesting that after the Book of Genesis Adam is never named again in the Old Testament,
in which 'in the beginning' is normally expressed by reference either to Abraham or to Moses. Early man
is not as constantly aware of his ultimate origins as those who are brought up on the theory of evolution.
Another point worth making at the outset is that there was no standard or orthodox version of a myth. The
fact that a story was told in one way in Homer did not prevent later poets from telling it very differently.
To give a striking instance, the lyric poet Stesichorus, in the early sixth century, produced a celebrated
poem denying that Helen ever went to Troy at all-which of course made nonsense of the Trojan War.
Euripides exploited the ironic potential of that subversive tale in his Helen, and Herodotus, with delightful
rationalism, says that it must be true, as otherwise the Trojans would obviously have given her up long
before the destruction of their city. 'And I think Homer knew this story,' he adds, 'but because it was not
so appealing a subject for poetry, he preferred the other': a good example of the judgement passed by fifth-
century enlightenment on the historical value of the poets and their myths. Certainly we hear, from the
beginning of Greek literature, protests at the mendacity of poets. 'We know how to tell many lies that look
like truth,' say the Muses to Hesiod, 'but we know how to tell the truth when we choose'; and Solon,
himself a poet, said (in verse), 'Poets tell many lies'. Each new poet had the right to interpret the tradition