26 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
uum. The creation of classical myth has never really stopped, but from the time
of Homer it has constantly been reborn and revitalized, expressed in exciting
and challenging new ways through literature, art, music, dance, and film.APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I
SOURCES FOR CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
Traditional tales were handed down orally until they were stabilized in a writ-
ten form that spread over a wide area. The geography and topography of the
Greek world often made communications by land and sea difficult, and these
natural tendencies to cultural separatism were enhanced by tribal, ethnic, and
linguistic variations. The Greek myths, therefore, varied greatly from place to
place, as did the cults of individual gods. With the coming of writing, perhaps
in the eighth century, "standard" versions of myths began to be established, but
the sophistication of succeeding generations of poets led also to ingenious vari-
ations. Even in the central myths of Athenian drama—whose stories were well
known to and expected by their audiences—substantial variations are found, as,
for example, in the legends of Electra. The problem of variations is especially
acute in saga, where differing literary versions and local variations (often based
on local pride in the heroic past) make it virtually impossible to identify a "stan-
dard" version. This is especially the case with local heroes like Theseus at Athens.
Nevertheless, there is a body of recognized principal sources for classical mythol-
ogy from which major versions may be identified.
Greek Sources. Pride of place goes to Homer (to use the name of the poet to
whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are ascribed), whose poems stabilized the myths
of the Olympian gods and exercised an unparalleled influence on all succeed-
ing Greek and Roman writers. The Iliad is much more than the story of the wrath
of Achilles or the record of an episode in the tenth year of the Trojan War, for
it incorporates many myths of the Olympian and Mycenaean heroes, while its
picture of the gods has ever since been the foundation of literary and artistic
representations of the Olympian pantheon. The poems themselves, which de-
veloped over centuries of oral tradition, perhaps took something like their final
form in the eighth century, the Iliad being somewhat earlier than the Odyssey.
The written text was probably stabilized at Athens under the tyranny of Pisis-
tratus during the second half of the sixth century. Our debt to Homeric mythol-
ogy and legend will be apparent in this book.
Important also for the Olympian gods and the organization of Olympian
theology and theogony are the works of Hesiod, the Boeotian poet of the late
eighth century, perhaps as late as 700. His Theogony is our most important source
for the relationship of Zeus and the Olympians to their predecessors, the Titans,
and other early divinities; it also records how Zeus became supreme and or-
ganized the Olympian pantheon. Hesiod's Works and Days also contains impor-