Heroes, myths and legends about them. Therefore, it is important to know their summary. The legends and myths of Ancient Greece, the entire Greek culture, especially of the late time, when both philosophy and democracy were developed, had a strong influence on the formation of the entire European civilization as a whole. Mythology has evolved over time. Tales, legends became known, because reciters wandered along the paths and roads of Hellas. They carried more or less long stories about a heroic past. Some gave only a summary.
The legends and myths of Ancient Greece gradually became familiar and beloved, and what Homer created was customary for an educated person to know by heart and be able to quote from anywhere. Greek scholars, seeking to streamline everything, began to work on the classification of myths, and turned the scattered stories into a harmonious series.
The very first myths are devoted to the struggle of various gods among themselves. Some of them did not have human features - these are the offspring of the goddess Gaia-Earth and Uranus-Heaven - twelve titans and six more monsters that terrified their father, and he plunged them into the abyss - Tartarus. But Gaia persuaded the remaining titans to overthrow her father.
This was done by the insidious Kronos - Time. But, having married his sister, he was afraid of children being born and swallowed them immediately after birth: Hestia, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera, Hades. Having given birth to the last child - Zeus, the wife deceived Kronos, and he could not swallow the baby. And Zeus was safely hidden in Crete. This is just a summary. The legends and myths of ancient Greece scary describe the events taking place.
Zeus grew up, matured and forced Kronos to return his swallowed sisters and brothers to the white world. He called them to fight the cruel father. In addition, part of the titans, giants and cyclops took part in the struggle. The struggle has been going on for ten years. The fire raged, the seas boiled, nothing could be seen from the smoke. But the victory went to Zeus. Enemies were overthrown in Tartarus and taken into custody.
Zeus, whom the Cyclopes forged with lightning, became the supreme god, Poseidon obeyed all the waters on earth, Hades - the underworld of the dead. This was already the third generation of gods, from which all the other gods and heroes originated, about whom stories and legends will begin to tell.
The ancients refer to the cycle of Dionysus, and winemaking, fertility, the patron of the night mysteries, which were held in the darkest places. The mysteries were terrible and mysterious. So the struggle of the dark gods with the light ones began to take shape. There were no real wars, but they gradually began to give way to the bright sun god Phoebus with his rational principle, with his cult of reason, science and art.
And the irrational, the ecstatic, the sensuous receded. But these are two sides of the same phenomenon. And one was impossible without the other. The goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus, patronized the family.
Ares - war, Athena - wisdom, Artemis - the moon and hunting, Demeter - agriculture, Hermes - trade, Aphrodite - love and beauty.
Hephaestus - artisans. Their relationship between themselves and people are the legends of the Hellenes. They were fully studied in pre-revolutionary gymnasiums in Russia. Only now, when people are mostly concerned with earthly concerns, do they, if necessary, pay attention to their summary. The legends and myths of Ancient Greece are becoming more and more a thing of the past.
They don't like people very much. Often they envied them or lusted after women, they were jealous, they were greedy for praise and honors. That is, they were very similar to mortals, if we take their description. Tales (summary), legends and myths of Ancient Greece (Kun) describe their gods in a very contradictory way. “Nothing pleases the gods so much as the collapse of human hopes,” said Euripides. And Sophocles echoed him: "The gods most willingly help a man when he goes towards his death."
All the gods obeyed Zeus, but for people he mattered as a guarantor of justice. It was when the judge judged unrighteously that a person turned to Zeus for help. In matters of war, only Mars dominated. Wise Athena patronized Attica.
To Poseidon, all the sailors, going to sea, made sacrifices. In Delphi, one could ask for mercy from Phoebus and Artemis.
One of the favorite myths was about Theseus, the son of the king of Athens, Aegeus. He was born and raised in the royal family in Troezen. When he grew up and was able to get his father's sword, he went to meet him. Along the way, he destroyed the robber Procrustes, who did not allow people to pass through his territory. When he got to his father, he learned that Athens paid tribute in girls and boys to Crete. Together with another batch of slaves, under mourning sails, he went to the island to kill the monstrous Minotaur.
Princess Ariadne helped Theseus through the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was located. Theseus fought the monster and destroyed it.
The Greeks joyfully, freed forever from tribute, returned to their homeland. But they forgot to change the black sails. Aegeus, who did not take his eyes off the sea, saw that his son was dead, and out of unbearable grief threw himself into the depths of the waters over which his palace stood. The Athenians rejoiced that they were forever freed from tribute, but also wept when they learned of the tragic death of Aegeus. The myth of Theseus is long and colorful. This is his summary. The legends and myths of Ancient Greece (Kun) will give an exhaustive description of him.
The legends of the Argonauts, the travels of Odysseus, the revenge of Orestes for the death of his father, and the misadventures of Oedipus in the Theban cycle make up the second half of the book that Kuhn wrote, Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece. A summary of the chapters is given above.
Returning from Troy to his native Ithaca, Odysseus spent many long years in dangerous wanderings. It was difficult for him to get home on the stormy sea.
God Poseidon could not forgive Odysseus that, saving his life and the lives of his friends, he blinded the Cyclops and sent unheard of storms. On the way, they died from the sirens, who carried away with their unearthly voices and sweet-sounding singing.
All his companions perished in their voyages across the seas. All were destroyed by an evil fate. In captivity at the nymph Calypso, Odysseus languished for many years. He begged to let him go home, but the beautiful nymph refused. Only the requests of the goddess Athena softened the heart of Zeus, he took pity on Odysseus and returned him to his family.
The legends of the Trojan cycle and about the campaigns of Odysseus were created in his poems by Homer - the Iliad and the Odyssey, the myths about the campaign for the Golden Fleece to the shores of the Pontus Eusinsky are described in the poem of Apollonius of Rhodes. Sophocles wrote the tragedy "Oedipus the King", the tragedy of the Arrest - the playwright Aeschylus. They are given by a summary of "Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece" (Nikolai Kun).
Myths and legends about gods, titans, numerous heroes disturb the imagination of artists of the word, brush and cinematography of our days. Standing in a museum near a picture painted on a mythological theme, or hearing the name of the beautiful Helen, it would be nice to have at least a little idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is behind this name (a huge war), and to know the details of the plot depicted on the canvas. This can be helped by "Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece." The summary of the book will reveal the meaning of what he saw and heard.
2. Ancient myths about gods and heroes.
Olympic gods - their images and functions in Hellenic mythology.
Mythological heroes of Ancient Hellas
With the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, a new stage of mythology develops, which can be called heroic, Olympic or classical mythology. In the mythology of this period, heroes appear who deal with all the monsters and monsters that once frightened the imagination of a person crushed by omnipotent nature.
Instead of small gods, one main, supreme god Zeus appears. the patriarchal community is now settling on Mount Olympus. Zeus, who fights with all sorts of monsters, imprisons them underground or even in tartar. Zeus is followed by other gods and heroes. Apollo kills the Pythian dragon and builds a sanctuary in its place. The same Apollo kills two monstrous giants, the sons of Poseidon, who grew up so fast that, having barely matured, they began to dream of climbing Olympus, mastering Hera and Artemis and, probably, the kingdom of Zeus himself. Perseus kills the medusa. Hercules performs his 12 labors. Theseus kills the minotaur.
At the same time, gods of a new type also appear. Female deities: Hera becomes the patroness of marriage and family, Demeter - agriculture, Athena - honest, open war (unlike Ares), Aphrodite - the goddess of love and beauty, Hestia - the hearth. Artemis acquired a beautiful and slender appearance and became a model of a sweet and friendly attitude towards people. The increased craft demanded for itself also a god - Hephaestus. Pallas Athena and Apollo, who are famous for their beauty and wisdom, became the gods of a specially patriarchal way of life. And Hermes from the former primitive existence became the patron of every human enterprise, including cattle breeding, art, and trade. Nature now receives appeasement and poeticization. The nymphs of rivers and lakes, the oceanids, the nymphs of the seas of the Nereids, as well as the nymphs of mountains, forests, and fields used to be presented in a wild, terrible form. But now the power of man over nature has increased considerably; he knows how to navigate it more calmly, find beauty in it, use it for his own needs. Now the power over the sea element belongs not only to the formidable Poseidon, but also to the peaceful, wise Nereus. The nymphs got a beautiful, poetic look, they began to admire and sing.
Everything is now ruled by Zeus and all the elemental forces are subordinate to him, now he is no longer a terrible thunder and blinding lightning, which people are only afraid of, but now you can turn to him for help. The environment on Olympus is characteristic. Nika Victory is no longer a terrible and invincible Demon, but a beautiful winged goddess, who is a symbol of the power of Zeus himself. Themis used to be no different from the Earth and was the terrible law of its erratic actions. Now she is the goddess of law and justice. The children of Zeus and Themis are Ores - cheerful, eternally dancing goddesses of the seasons and states. order, message. precipitation. Hebe is the goddess and symbol of eternal youth. Moira - the goddess of time: Cloto - "spinning, spinning", Lachesis - "giving lots" twisted the thread, Anthropos - "inevitability" tore the thread). The Romans have analogues: the parks of Nona, Decima and Morta. They, the terrible and unknown goddesses of fate and fate, are now interpreted as the daughters of Zeus and lead a blissful life on the bright and cheerful Olympus. Apollo and 9 Muses, Aphrodite and Eros, Charites - graces. God Poseidon and Apollo build the walls of Troy. Dionysus is the god of winemaking.
Kingdom of Hades. There flows the ever-chilling sacred river Styx, by whose waters the gods themselves swear. In the same place, the Leta River, giving oblivion to all earthly waters, flows. The barren light shadows of the dead rush and moan. The dog Kerber guards the exit. Carrier of souls Charon. Hades sits on the throne with his wife Persephone. He is served by the goddesses of vengeance Erinyes, they pursue criminals. The judges of the dead are Minos and Rhadamanthus. Hypnos plunges the dead into sleep: neither mortals nor gods can resist him. Dream gods. The goddess Hecate rules over all ghosts.
Animals are tamed by man, an echo of which we get at least in the myth of Hercules and his pacification of the wild horses of Diomedes). Orpheus tamed the singing of storms, thunderstorms and wild animals, which was also a symbol of human power. intellect and people triumph over the forces of nature.
In the person of Hercules, the heroic era reaches its highest peak. Hercules, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, is not only the slayer of various kinds of monsters: the Nemean lion, the Lernean hydra, the Kerinean fallow deer, the Erymantic boar and the Stymphalian birds, he is not only the winner of nature about the myth of the Augean stables and the winner of matriarchy in the myth of the belt obtained the Amazon Hippolyta. If he, with his victory over the marathon bull, the horses of Diomedes and the herds of Gerion, is still comparable to other heroes, then there are two of his feats by which he surpassed all the heroes of antiquity: in the extreme west, G. reached the garden of the Hesperides and took possession of their apples, and in the depths of the earth got to Cerberus himself and brought him to the pov-st.
Such myths could appear only in the era of man's conscious and powerful struggle for his happiness. It is not surprising that such a hero was taken to heaven by Zeus and there he married Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth.
Many myths speak of the victory of man over nature. When Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, the Sphinx threw himself off a cliff, when Odysseus (or Orpheus) did not succumb to the bewitching singing of the sirens and sailed unscathed past them, the sirens died at the same moment when the Argonauts safely sailed among the Symplegades - rocks that until then had incessantly converged and diverged, then these rocks stopped forever. When the same Argonauts sailed past the famous apples of the Hesperides, the Hesperides guarding them crumbled into dust and only later assumed their former appearance.
MYTHS ABOUT GODS AND HEROES. THEIR ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANCIENT GREEK POETRY
The main material for poetic processing in ancient Greek literature was myths about gods and heroes, which originated in the pre-class period, but continued to develop later. Greek epics, lyrics and drama were full of mythological plots, motifs and individual images taken from mythology. It can be said that the myths were a treasury that became the property of the entire Greek people. The deep penetration of myths into the consciousness of the masses created the conditions for a direct artistic perception of the literary works that grew out of them. This also applies to the ancient Greek fine arts - to sculpture and to vase painting.
Without taking into account the inseparable connection with mythology, it is impossible to understand the essence of ancient Greek poetry, the principles of its development, the nature of its perception by the Greeks themselves, and it is impossible to correctly perceive it now. Therefore, the well-known statement of K. Marx (“On the Critique of Political Economy”) should serve as the basis for a correct study of it:
“Regarding art, it is known that certain periods of its heyday are not in any way consistent with the general development of society, and therefore also with the development of the material basis of the latter, which constitutes, as it were, the skeleton of its organization. For example, the Greeks in comparison with modern peoples or Shakespeare With regard to certain forms of art, for example the epic, it is even admitted that they, in their classical form, which constitutes an epoch in the history of the world, can never be created as soon as artistic production as such has begun, which, therefore, in the field of art itself, known forms of great importance are possible only at a comparatively low stage of artistic development.If this is the case in the field of art in the relations between its various kinds, it is even less striking that this circumstance takes place in relation to the whole field of art to the general social development. lies only in the general formulation of these contradictions. t just highlight each of them, and they are already explained. Take, for example, the relation of Greek art and then Shakespeare to modernity. It is known that Greek mythology was not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its soil. Is that view of nature and social relations that underlies Greek fantasy, and therefore Greek [art], possible in the presence of self-factories, railways, locomotives and electric telegraph? Where is Vulcan against Roberts & Co., Jupiter against a lightning rod and Hermes against Crédit mobilier! Every mythology overcomes, subdues and shapes the forces of nature in and through the imagination; it disappears, therefore, with real mastery over these forces of nature. What would have become of the goddess Fama if Printinghousesquare existed? The premise of Greek art is Greek mythology, that is, nature and social forms, already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way in popular fantasy. This is his stuff. But not any mythology, i.e., not any unconsciously artistic reworking of nature (here, the latter is understood to mean everything objective, hence including society). Egyptian mythology could never have been the soil or mother womb of Greek art. But in any case, it is mythology. Consequently, it is by no means such a development of society that excludes any mythological relation to nature, any mythologization of nature, which, therefore, requires from the artist a fantasy independent of mythology.
On the other hand, is Achilles possible in the era of gunpowder and lead? Or the Iliad in general, along with the printing press and printing machine? And do not stories, songs, and muses inevitably disappear, and thus the necessary prerequisites for epic poetry, with the advent of the printing press?
However, the difficulty lies not in understanding that Greek art and the epic are connected by known forms of social development. The difficulty lies in understanding that they still continue to give us artistic pleasure and, in a certain sense, retain the significance of a norm and an unattainable model.
A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But doesn’t the child’s naivety please him, and shouldn’t he himself strive to reproduce his true essence at the highest level? Does not the child's nature in every epoch revive its own character in its artless truth? And why shouldn't the childhood of human society, where it has developed most beautifully, have eternal charm for us, like a stage that never repeats itself? There are ill-bred children and senilely intelligent children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. Greeks were normal children. The charm that their art possesses for us does not contradict the undeveloped social stage on which it grew up. On the contrary, it is its result and is inextricably linked with the fact that the immature social relations in which it arose, and could only arise, can never be repeated again.
A. M. Gorky also speaks about the role of myths:
“The older the fairy tale and myth, the more forcefully the victorious triumph of people over the forces of nature sounds in it and there are absolutely no dramas of a social nature, feuds of human units ... Myths in which a hopeless, pessimistic attitude to life and enmity of people - these myths came from the East, where the first despotisms and the first mystical religions arose, where, as in India, a sharp division into castes was organized, where the most terrible images of gods were created.Mediterranean mankind gave birth to human-like cheerful gods of Olympus, and it is very noticeable that the raw material for fabricating these gods talented blacksmiths, potters, singers and musicians, weavers, cooks and, in general, real people served... The goddess Demeter leaves Olympus and the gods in order to live among people...
Myth and fairy tale embody and reflect labor, materialistic thinking, which served as the basis for the philosophy of Democritus, then was processed by Lucretius Carus into the famous poem "On the Nature of Things."
Along the line of interests and goals of literature, as well as all other arts, myth and fairy tale tell us about the right and usefulness to exaggerate the created real in order to achieve the ideal, desired, and also talk about the positive and actual significance of the hypothesis in science and in literary creativity..."
A. M. Gorky spoke about the mythological roots of poetic creativity earlier, at the first congress of Soviet writers:
"A myth is a fiction. To invent means to extract its main meaning from the sum of the real given and embody it in an image - this is how we got realism. But if we add to the meaning of extracting from the real given - to conjecture, according to the logic of the hypothesis, - the desired, perhaps to supplement the image with this, we get that romanticism that underlies the myth and is highly useful there, which contributes to the excitation of a revolutionary attitude towards reality, an attitude that practically changes the world.
A. M. Gorky's remark about the emergence of myths from the East is rightly accompanied by his indication that, as applied to the Mediterranean peoples, this assertion must be severely restricted. In the second half of the 19th century, such dependence of Greek mythology on the East was greatly exaggerated. A monument to this fascination with the search for Eastern elements in almost every myth of the ancient Greeks is the book by O. Gruppe "Greek myths and cults in their connections with Eastern religions" (1887). At present, most scientists have abandoned such a reassessment of the role of the East. Modern bourgeois science is dominated by the so-called "anthropological school", the founder of which is Taylor, and its most prominent representatives in our day - Fraser and Leng. Approaching more correctly than in the 19th century to the specific features of human thinking in pre-class society, when myths were born, denying the decisive role of the "migration" of myths from one people to another, this school, in its numerous studies of the ethnographic material of the most diverse peoples, revealed the phenomena of taboo, fetishism, totemism and animism, established the great conservatism of oral tradition and the preservation in it of the remnants of the social life of distant times. All this is of great importance for the study of ancient Greek mythology, which was previously considered without connection with genetic problems, with the social conditions in which primitive man lived. Representatives of the "anthropological school" are trying to uncover the causes of similar myths among different peoples; but they cannot be consistent to the end, since they are dominated by idealistic views on the development of society in general, on the origin of forms of ideology, and in particular on the origin of religion and myth. The statements of A. M. Gorky, cited above, contain a program for the study of myths, and in particular Greek mythology, from the point of view of consistent materialism.
At the same time, approaching the study of ancient Greek myths and their role in the development of ancient Greek literature from this point of view, it must be borne in mind that their role outlined above is strictly limited chronologically, namely by periods - "archaic" (until the 7th century BC) and the so-called "classical" (VII-IV centuries). For the scientific mythological poetry of the Hellenistic era, the forerunner of which is Antimachus of Colophon (the end of the 5th century BC), and the largest poets are Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Euphorion and their numerous Roman imitators (Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, etc.), mythology was already only a rationalistically used "arsenal", but by no means "soil". Attempts by mythographers to revive mythology as a system of thought were doomed to failure. Marx says on this occasion: “... just at that epoch when the death of the ancient world was approaching, the “Alexandrian school” arose, which in every possible way tried to prove the “eternal truth” of Greek mythology and its full compliance with the “results of scientific research”. This is the direction , to which the emperor Julian belonged, believed that it would make the invading new spirit of the times disappear if it closes its eyes so as not to see it.
This outliving of itself by mythology did not come all at once, of course. Already in the 5th century BC. e. in the tragic and comic poets, in Anaxagoras and the sophists, rationalism breaks through with a powerful stream, threatening to abolish mythology. The latter, however, did not disappear immediately.
“The gods of Greece,” says Marx, “once already tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus’s Chained Prometheus, had to die once more comically in Lucian’s Conversations.”
Greece has not always been called that. Historians, in particular, Herodotus, single out even more ancient times in those territories that were later called Hellas, the so-called Pelasgian.
This term comes from the name of the tribe of Pelasgians ("storks") who came to the mainland from the Greek island of Lemnos. According to the conclusions of the historiographer, the then Hellas was called Pelasgia. There were primitive beliefs in something unearthly, saving for people - cults of fictional creatures.
The Pelasgians united with a small Greek tribe and adopted their language, although they never developed from barbarians into a nationality.
Herodotus assumed that the Greeks adopted from the Pelasgians the names of many gods and their cults. At least, the veneration of the lower deities and Kabirs - the great gods, with their unearthly power, rid the earth of troubles and dangers. The sanctuary of Zeus in Dodona (a city near the present Ioannina) was built much earlier than the Delphic one, which is still famous. From those times came the famous "troika" of Kabirs - Demeter (Axieros), Persephone (Axiokersa, in Italy - Ceres) and her husband Hades (Axiokersos).
In the Pontifical Museum in the Vatican, a marble statue of these three kabirams is installed in the form of a triangular pillar by the sculptor Scopas, who lived and worked in the 4th century BC. e. At the bottom of the pillar are carved miniature images of Mitra-Helios, Aphrodite-Urania and Eros-Dionysus as symbols of an inseparable chain of mythology.
From there, the names of Hermes (Camilla, Latin "servant"). In the History of Athos, Hades (Hell) is the god of the other world, and his wife Persephone gave life on earth. Artemis was called Caleagra.
The new gods of Ancient Hellas descended from the "storks", took away their right to reign. But they already had a human appearance, although with some exceptions left over from zoomorphism.
The goddess, the patroness of the city named after her, was born from the brain of Zeus, the main god of the third stage. Therefore, before him, the heavens and the earthly firmament were ruled by others.
The first ruler of the earth was the god Poseidon. During the capture of Troy, he was the main deity.
According to mythology, he ruled both the seas and the oceans. Since Greece has a lot of island territories, the influence of Poseidon and his cult also applied to them. Poseidon was the brother of many new gods and goddesses, including such famous ones as Zeus, Hades and others.
Further, Poseidon began to stare at the continental territory of Hellas, for example, at Attica, a huge part to the south of the central mountain range of the Balkan Peninsula and to the Peloponnese. He had a reason for this: in the Balkans there was a cult of Poseidon in the form of a fertility demon. Athena wanted to deprive him of such influence.
The goddess won the dispute over the land. Its essence is this. Once there was a new alignment of the influence of the gods. At the same time, Poseidon lost the right to land, he was left with the seas. The sky was intercepted by the god of thunder and lightning. Poseidon began to challenge the rights to certain territories. He hit the ground during a dispute on Olympus, and water came out from there, and
Athena gave Attica an olive tree. The gods decided the dispute in favor of the goddess, considering that the trees would be more useful. The city was named after her.
When the name of Aphrodite is pronounced in modern times, her beauty is mostly revered. In ancient times, she was the goddess of love. The cult of the goddess first originated in the colonies of Greece, its current islands, founded by the Phoenicians. Worship similar to Aphrodite was then reserved for two other goddesses, Asherah and Astarte. In the Greek pantheon of gods
Aphrodite was more suited to the mythical role of Ashera, a lover of gardens, flowers, a resident of groves, the goddess of spring awakening and voluptuous pleasure with Adonis.
Reincarnating as Astarte, the "goddess of heights", Aphrodite became impregnable, always with a spear in her hand. In this guise, she protected family fidelity and doomed her priestesses to eternal virginity.
Unfortunately, in later times the cult of Aphrodite split into two, if I may so express the differences between the various Aphrodites.
They are the most common and most cultivated in both Greece and Italy. This supreme pantheon of Mount Olympus included six gods - the children of Kronos and Hera (the Thunderer himself, Poseidon and others) and nine descendants of the god Zeus. Among them are the most famous Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite and others like them.
In the modern interpretation of the word "Olympian", except for the athletes participating in the Olympiads, it means "calmness, self-confidence, outward greatness." And earlier there was also the Olympus of the gods. But at that time, these epithets applied only to the head of the pantheon - Zeus, because he fully corresponded to them. We talked about Athena and Poseidon in detail above. Other gods of the pantheon were also mentioned - Hades, Helios, Hermes, Dionysus, Artemis, Persephone.
The most ancient gods of Ancient Greece, known to us from myths, were the personifications of those forces of nature, whose activity determines physical life and arouses fear and horror, now hope and trust in the human heart - the personifications of forces mysterious to man, but obviously dominating his fate, which were the first objects of worship among all peoples. But the gods of ancient Greece were not only symbols of the forces of external nature; they were at the same time the creators and keepers of all moral blessings, the personifications of all the forces of moral life. All those forces of the human spirit by which cultural life is created, and the development of which among the Greek people gave it such importance in the history of mankind, were invested by them in the myths about the gods. The gods of Greece are the personifications of all the great and beautiful forces of the Greek people; the world of the gods of Ancient Greece is a complete reflection of Greek civilization. The Greeks made their gods in myths like men, so they felt obliged to become like gods; concern for perfection was a religious duty for them. Greek culture has a close relationship with the Greek religion.
Gods of Ancient Greece. video film
The basis of the religion of ancient Greece in Pelasgian times was the worship of the forces of nature, manifested in heaven, on earth, in the sea. Those gods who were among the pre-Greek Pelasgians the most ancient personifications of the forces of earth and heaven were overthrown by a series of catastrophes, the legends of which were preserved in the ancient Greek myths about the struggle of the Olympians with the titans and giants. The new gods of Ancient Greece, who took dominion from the former, descended from them, but already had a completely human image.
So, new anthropoid gods began to rule the world, the main of which was Zeus, the son of Kron, in myths; but the former gods, personified by the forces of nature, have retained their mysterious effectiveness, which even the omnipotent Zeus cannot overcome. As almighty kings are subject to the laws of the moral world, so Zeus and other new gods of ancient Greece are subject to the laws of nature, fate.
Zeus, the main god in the myths of Ancient Greece, is the collector of clouds, sitting on a throne at the height of the ether, stunning with his lightning shield, Aegis (thundercloud), life-giving and fertilizing the earth, at the same time he is also the establisher, guardian of lawful order. Under his protection are all rights, and especially family rights and the custom of hospitality. He tells rulers to be concerned about the welfare of those who are ruled. He gives prosperity to kings and peoples, cities and families; he is justice. He is the source of all that is good and noble. He is the father of the goddesses of hours (Or), personifying the correct course of annual changes in nature and the correct order of human life; he is the father of the Muses, who give joy to the heart of man.
His wife, Hera, in the myths of Ancient Greece, is a quarrelsome goddess of the atmosphere, who has a rainbow (Irida) and clouds (the Greek name for the cloud, nephele, a feminine word) as her servants, at the same time she is the establisher of the sacred marriage union, in honor of which the Greeks performed on feast of abundant flowers spring solemn ceremonies. The goddess Hera is a strict guardian of the sanctity of the marriage union and under her protection is a housewife faithful to her husband; she blesses marriage with children and guards children. Hera relieves women of the suffering of childbirth; she is assisted in this care by her daughter Eileithyia.
Athena Pallas
The virgin goddess Pallas Athena, according to the myths of ancient Greece, was born from the head of Zeus. Initially, she was considered the goddess of the clear sky, who disperses gloomy clouds with her spear, and the personification of victorious energy in any struggle. Athena was always depicted with a shield, sword and spear. Her constant companion was the winged goddess of victory (Nika). Among the Greeks, Athena was the guardian of cities and fortresses, she also gave people the correct, fair social and state orders. The image of the goddess Athena personified wise balance, a calm, penetrating mind, necessary for the creators of works of mental activity and art.
Statue of Athena the Virgin in the Parthenon. Sculptor Phidias
In ancient Greece, Pallas was most revered by the Athenians, the inhabitants of the city named after this goddess. The public life of Athens was imbued with the service of Pallas. A huge statue of Athena by Phidias stood in the magnificent temple of the Athenian Acropolis - the Parthenon. Athena was connected with the famous ancient Greek city by many myths. The most famous of these was the myth of the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica. The goddess Athena won it, giving the region the basis of its agriculture - the olive tree. Ancient Athens made many holidays in honor of the beloved goddess. The main of them were two Panathenaic holidays - Great and Small. Both of them, according to the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, were established by one of the oldest progenitors of Athens - Erechtheus. Small Panathenaic was celebrated annually, and the Great - once every four years. On the great Panathenaic, all the inhabitants of Attica gathered in Athens and staged a magnificent procession, during which a new mantle (peplos) was carried to the Acropolis for the ancient statue of the goddess Pallas. The procession marched from Keramik through the main streets, which were crowded with people in white robes.
To Pallas Athena, the goddess of the arts, Hephaestus, the god of heavenly and earthly fire, was close in meaning in ancient Greek myths. The activity of Hephaestus was most strongly manifested by volcanoes on the islands, especially on Lemnos and in Sicily; but in the application of fire to the affairs of human life, Hephaestus greatly helped the development of culture. Prometheus, who brought fire to people and taught them worldly arts, is also closely related to the concept of Athena. These three gods were dedicated to the Attic festival of running with torches, a competition in which the winner was the one who first ran with a burning torch to the goal. Athena Pallas was the inventor of those arts that women were engaged in; lame Hephaestus, who was often joked about by poets, was the founder of blacksmithing and a master in metal work. Like Athena, he was in ancient Greece the god of the hearth of family life, therefore, under the auspices of Hephaestus and Athena, a wonderful holiday of the “state family” was celebrated in Athens, the feast of Anatury, on which newborn children were surrounded by a steep hearth, and this rite consecrated their acceptance into the family union states.
God Vulcan (Hephaestus). Statue by Thorvaldsen, 1838
The significance of the hearth as the center of family life and the beneficial effect of a strong home life on moral and social life were personified in the myths of Ancient Greece by the virgin goddess Hestia, a representative of the concepts of a strong settled life, a comfortable home life, the symbol of which was the sacred fire of the hearth. Initially, Hestia was in the ancient Greek myths about the gods the personification of the earth, over which the ethereal fire of the sky burns; but later it became a symbol of civil well-being, which receives strength on earth only when the earth is in union with heaven, as a divine institution. Therefore, in every Greek house, the hearth was the religious center of the family. Whoever approached the hearth and sat on its ashes, he acquired the right to patronage. Each tribal union of Ancient Greece had a common sanctuary of Hestia, in which they reverently performed symbolic rites. In ancient times, when there were kings and when the king made sacrifices as a representative of the people, settled litigations, gathered noble people and ancestors for advice, the hearth of the royal house was a symbol of the state connection of the people; after, the pritaney, the religious center of the state, had the same significance. An inextinguishable fire burned on the state hearth of the pritanei, and the pritanes, the elected rulers of the people, had to take turns being constantly at this hearth. The hearth was the link between earth and heaven; because Hestia was in ancient Greece and the goddess of sacrifice. Each solemn sacrifice began with a sacrifice to her. And all public prayers of the Greeks began with an appeal to Hestia.
For more details, see the separate article God Apollo
The god of shining light, Apollo, was the son of Zeus from Latona (who was the personification of the dark night in ancient Greek myths). His cult was brought to Ancient Greece from Asia Minor, where the local god Apelun existed. According to Greek myths, Apollo spends the winter in the distant country of the Hyperboreans, and in the spring he returns to Hellas, infusing life into nature, and joy and the desire to sing into man. Apollo was therefore recognized as the god of singing - and in general of that inspiring force that gives rise to art. Thanks to the life-giving qualities, the cult of this god was also associated with the idea of healing, protection from evil. With his well-aimed arrows (solar rays), Apollo destroys all filth. This idea was symbolically expressed by the ancient Greek myth about the murder of the terrible serpent Python by Apollo. The skilled shooter Apollo was considered the brother of the goddess of hunting Artemis, with whom he killed the sons of the excessively proud sons with arrows. Niobe.
The ancient Greeks considered poetry and music to be the gift of Apollo. Poems and songs were always performed at his holidays. According to legend, having defeated the monster of darkness, Python, Apollo composed the first paean (victory hymn). As the god of music, he was often depicted with a kithara in his hands. Since poetic inspiration is akin to prophetic, in the myths of ancient Greece, Apollo was also recognized as the supreme patron of soothsayers, who gives them a prophetic gift. Almost all Greek oracles (including the main one - Delphic) were founded in the sanctuaries of Apollo.
Apollo Saurokton (killing a lizard). Roman copy of a statue of Praxiteles, 4th c. BC
The god of music, poetry, singing, Apollo was in the myths of Ancient Greece the lord of the goddesses of the arts - muses, nine daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory Mnemosyne. The groves of Parnassus and Helikon located in the vicinity of Delphi were considered the main abode of the Muses. As the ruler of the Muses, Apollo had the epithet "Muzageta". Clio was the muse of history, Calliope of epic poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy, Erato of love poetry, Euterpe of lyrics, Terpsichore of dances, Polyhymnia of hymns, Urania of astronomy.
The sacred plant of Apollo was laurel.
The god of light, purity and healing, Apollo in the myths of Ancient Greece not only heals people from ailments, but also cleanses from sins. From this side, his cult comes into even closer contact with moral ideas. Even after the victory over the evil monster Python, Apollo considered it necessary to cleanse himself of the filth of the murder and, in his atonement, went to serve as a shepherd for the Thessalian king Admet. By this, he gave people an example that he who committed bloodshed should always repent, and became the god-purifier of murderers and criminals. In Greek myths, Apollo healed not only the body, but also the soul. He found forgiveness for penitent sinners, but only with sincerity of repentance. According to ancient Greek customs, the murderer was supposed to earn forgiveness from the relatives of the murdered, who had the right to take revenge on him, and spend eight years in exile.
Apollo was the main tribal god of the Dorians, who every year celebrated two great holidays in honor of him: Karnei and Iakinthii. The Karney festival was held in honor of Apollo the Warrior, in the month of Karney (August). During this holiday, military games, competitions in singing and dancing were held. Iakinthia, celebrated in July (nine days), was accompanied by sad rites in memory of the death of the beautiful young man Iakinf (Hyacinth), the personification of flowers. According to the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, Apollo accidentally killed this favorite of his while throwing a disc (a symbol of how the disc of the sun kills flowers with its heat). But Hyacinth was resurrected and taken to Olympus - and at the festival of Iakinthius, after the sad rites, cheerful processions of young men and girls with flowers took place. The death and resurrection of Iakinf personified winter death and spring rebirth of plants. This episode of ancient Greek myth seems to have developed under strong Phoenician influence.
Apollo's sister, Artemis, the virgin goddess of the moon, walked the mountains and forests, hunting; bathed with nymphs, her companions, in cool streams; was the patroness of wild animals; at night she irrigated the thirsty earth with life-giving dew. But at the same time, in the myths of Ancient Greece, Artemis was also a goddess who destroyed sailors, so in ancient times of Greece, people were sacrificed to her to propitiate her. With the development of civilization, Artemis became the goddess of virginal purity, the patroness of brides and girls. When they got married, they brought gifts to her. Artemis of Ephesus was the goddess of fertility, who gave harvest to the earth and children to women; in the idea of it, the myths of ancient Greece were probably joined by oriental concepts. Artemis was depicted as having many nipples on her chest; this signified that she was a generous breadwinner of the people. At the magnificent temple of Artemis there were many hierodula and many servants dressed in a man's dress and armed; therefore, in ancient Greek myths, it was believed that this temple was founded by the Amazons.
Artemis. Statue in the Louvre
The original physical significance of Apollo and Artemis in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods was more and more obscured by the moral one. Therefore, Greek mythology created a special sun god, Helios, and a special moon goddess, Selene. - A special god, the son of Apollo, Asclepius, was also made a representative of the healing power of Apollo.
Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera, was originally a symbol of the stormy sky, and his homeland was Thrace, the land of winter storms. Among the ancient Greek poets, he became the god of war. Ares is always armed; he loves the noise of battle. Ares is furious. But he was also the founder of the sacred Athenian tribunal that judged cases of murder, which had its seat on the hill dedicated to Ares, the Areopagus, and was also called the Areopagus after this hill. And as the god of storms, and as a furious god of battles, he is the opposite of Pallas Athena, the goddess of the clear sky and judicious conduct of battles. Therefore, in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, Pallas and Ares are hostile to each other.
In the concepts of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, a moral element also joined the physical character of love in ancient Greek myths over time. The cult of Aphrodite passed to Ancient Greece from the colonies founded by the Phoenicians in Cyprus, Cythera, Thasos and other islands. In the myths of the Phoenicians, the concept of the perceiving and giving birth element of the forces of nature was personified by two goddesses, Ashera and Astarte, ideas about which were often mixed. Aphrodite was both Asherah and Astarte. In the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, she corresponded to Ashera, when she was a goddess who loves gardens and flowers, lives in groves, a goddess of joyful spring and voluptuousness, enjoying the love of the beautiful young man Adonis in the forest on the mountain. She corresponded to Astarte, when she was honored as the "goddess of heights", as a stern Aphrodite Urania (heavenly) armed with a spear or Aphrodite of Akreia, whose places of service were the tops of the mountains, who imposed a vow of eternal girlhood on her priestesses, guarded the chastity of conjugal love and family morality . But the ancient Greeks knew how to combine these opposing ideas and from their combination created in myths a wondrous image of a graceful, charming, physically beautiful and morally sweet goddess, admiring the heart with the beauty of her forms, arousing tender affection. This mythological combination of physical feeling with moral affection, giving sensual love its natural right, protected people from the coarse vulgarity of unbridled oriental voluptuousness. The ideal of female beauty and grace, the sweetly smiling Aphrodite of ancient Greek myths, and the goddesses of the east, burdened with heavy and precious attire, are completely different creatures. There is the same difference between them as between the joyful service of the goddess of love in the best times of ancient Greece and the noisy Syrian orgies, in which the goddess, surrounded by eunuchs, was served with an unbridled revelry of gross sensuality. True, in later times, with the corruption of morals, vulgar sensuality also penetrated into the Greek service to the goddess of love. Aphrodite of Heaven (Urania), the goddess of honest love, the patroness of family life, was pushed aside in the myths about the gods by Aphrodite of the People (Pandemos), the goddess of voluptuousness, whose holidays in big cities turned into rampant vulgar sensuality.
Aphrodite and her son Eros (Eros), turned by poets and artists into the oldest among the theogonic gods, into the youngest of the Olympian gods, and who became a young man accompanying his mother, later even a child, were favorite objects of ancient Greek art. The sculpture usually depicted Aphrodite naked, emerging from the waves of the sea; she was given all the charm of a beauty, whose soul is full of feelings of love. Eros was portrayed as a boy with soft, rounded body outlines.
With the development of culture in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, the Pelasgian god of nature Hermes also received moral significance, to whom the Arcadian shepherds made sacrifices on Mount Kyllene; he was with them the personification of the power of heaven, giving grass to their pastures, and the father of their ancestor, Arkas. According to their myths, Hermes, while still a baby, wrapped in a lullaby (in the fog of dawn), stole the herds (bright clouds) of the sun god, Apollo, and hid them in a damp cave near the seashore; stringing strings on a tortoise shell, he made a lyre, and by presenting it to Apollo, gained the friendship of this more powerful god. Hermes also invented the shepherd's flute, with which he walks through the mountains of his homeland. Subsequently, Hermes became the guardian of roads, crossroads and travelers, the guardian of streets, boundaries. Stones were placed on the latter, which were symbols of Hermes, and his images, which gave the boundaries of the plots holiness, strength.
God Hermes. Sculpture of Phidias (?)
Hermes (that is, the symbols of Hermes) were originally just heaps of stones, poured on the boundaries, along the roads and especially at the crossroads; these were landmarks and road signs, considered sacred. Passers-by threw stones to those laid before. Sometimes oil was poured on these heaps of stones dedicated to the god Hermes, as on primitive altars; they were decorated with flowers, wreaths, ribbons. Subsequently, the Greeks placed trihedral or tetrahedral stone pillars as travel and boundary signs; over time, they began to give them a more skillful finish, they usually made a pillar with a head, sometimes with a phallus, a symbol of fertility. Such germs stood along the roads, and along the streets, squares, at the gates, at the doors; they were also placed in palestras, in gymnasiums, because Hermes was the patron of gymnastic exercises in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods.
From the concept of the god of rain penetrating the earth, the idea of mediation between heaven, earth and the underworld developed, and Hermes became in the myths of ancient Greece a god who escorts the souls of the dead to the underworld (Hermes Psychopompos). Thus, he was put in close connection with the gods living in the earth (the chthonic gods). These ideas came from the concept of the connection between the emergence and death of plants in the cycle of life of nature and from the concept of Hermes as the messenger of the gods; they served as the source of many ancient Greek myths that placed Hermes in very diverse relationships to the everyday affairs of people. The original myth already made him cunning: he deftly stole the cows of Apollo and managed to make peace with this god; with deft inventions, Hermes knew how to extricate himself from difficult situations. This feature remained an invariable attribute of the character of the god Hermes in the later ancient Greek myths about him: he was the personification of worldly dexterity, the patron of all activities in which success is given by the ability to speak deftly and the ability to remain silent, hide the truth, pretend, deceive. In particular, Hermes was the patron god of trade, oratory, embassies and diplomatic affairs in general. With the development of civilization, the concept of these activities became predominant in the idea of Hermes, and his original shepherd meaning was transferred to one of the minor gods, Pan, "the god of pastures", just as the physical meaning of Apollo and Artemis was transferred to less important gods, Helios and Selena.
Pan was in ancient Greek myths the god of goat herds who grazed on the wooded mountains of Arcadia; there he was born. His father was Hermes, his mother was the daughter of Dryop ("forest god"). Pan walks through shady valleys, sheltering in caves; he has fun with the nymphs of the forest and mountain springs, dancing to the sounds of his shepherd's pipe (syringa, syrinx), an instrument that he himself invented; sometimes he himself dances with the nymphs. Pan is sometimes kind to the shepherds and enters into friendship with us; but sometimes he makes trouble for them, raising a sudden fear (“panic” fear) in the herd, so that the whole herd scatters. God Pan forever remained in Ancient Greece as a merry fellow of pastoral holidays, a master of playing the reed pipe, funny for the townspeople; later art characterized Pan's closeness to nature, giving his figure goat's feet, or even horns and other animal features.
God Pan and Daphnis, the hero of an ancient Greek novel. antique statue
For more details, see the separate article God Poseidon
The gods of the sea and flowing waters and the gods living underground, more than the deities of heaven and air, retained the original meaning of the personified forces of nature: but they also received human features. Poseidon - in the myths of Ancient Greece, the divine power of all waters, the god of the sea and all rivers, streams, springs that fertilize the earth. Therefore, he was the main god on the coasts and capes. Poseidon is strong, broad-shouldered, and his character is indomitable. When he strikes the sea with his trident, a storm rises, the waves beat against the rocks of the coast so that the earth trembles, the cliffs crack and collapse. But Poseidon is also a good god: he draws springs from the cracks of the rocks to fertilize the valleys; he created and tamed the horse; he is the patron of horseback riding and all military games, the patron of all daring journeys, whether on horseback, in chariots, by land or by sea in ships. In ancient Greek myths, Poseidon is a mighty builder who approved the earth and its islands, laying firm boundaries for the sea. He stirs up storms, but he also gives a favorable wind; at his beckon, the sea swallows up the ships; but he also sees the ships in the pier. Poseidon is the patron saint of navigation; he guards maritime trade and governs the course of maritime warfare.
The god of ships and horses, Poseidon played, according to the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, an important role in all campaigns and sea expeditions of the heroic age. The birthplace of his cult was Thessaly, a country of Neptunian formation, horse herds and seafaring; then the service to him spread to Boeotia, Attica, the Peloponnese, and his holidays early began to be accompanied by military games. The most famous of these games in honor of the god Poseidon took place in the Boeotian city of Onchest and on Isthma. In Onhest, his sanctuaries and their grove picturesquely stood on a beautiful and fertile hill above Kopai Lake. The terrain of the Isthmian games was a hill near Skhina (Schoinos, "Reeds", a lowland overgrown with reeds), overshadowed by a pine grove. Symbolic rites borrowed from the legend of the death of Melikert, that is, from the Phoenician service to Melkart, were introduced into the worship of Poseidon on the Isthm. - Fast as the wind, the horses of the heroic age were created by the god Poseidon; in particular, Pegasus was created by him. - The wife of Poseidon, Amphitrite, was the personification of the noisy sea.
Like Zeus, Poseidon had many love affairs in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, many sea gods and goddesses, and many heroes were his children. Tritons belonged to the retinue of Poseidon, the number of which was innumerable. They were cheerful creatures of the most diverse forms, personifications of noisy, ringing, sliding waves and the mysterious forces of the depths of the sea, fantastically transformed sea animals. They played pipes made of shells, frolicked, dragged after the Nereids. They were one of my favorite pieces of art. Proteus, the sea god, the soothsayer of the future, who, according to ancient Greek myths, had the ability to take on all kinds of forms, also belonged to the numerous retinue of Poseidon. When the Greek sailors began to sail far, then, returning, they amazed their people with myths about the wonders of the western sea: about sirens, beautiful sea girls who live there on underwater islands under the bright surface of the waters and seductively lure sailors into death with seductive singing, about the good Glaucus , a sea god who predicts the future, about the terrible monsters Scylla and Charybdis (personifications of a dangerous rock and whirlpool), about the wicked Cyclopes, one-eyed giants, the sons of Poseidon living on the island of Trinacria, where Mount Etna, about the beautiful Galatea, about a rocky, walled island , where the god of the winds Eol lives cheerfully in a magnificent palace with his airy sons and daughters.
In the myths of ancient Greece, the worship of those gods of nature that acted both in the depths of the earth and on its surface had the greatest similarity with Eastern religions. Human life is in such close connection with the development and withering of vegetation, with the growth and ripening of bread and grapes, that divine services, popular beliefs, art, religious theories and myths about the gods combined their most profound ideas with the mysterious activity of the gods of the earth. The circle of phenomena of plant life was a symbol of human life: luxurious vegetation quickly fades from the heat of the sun or from the cold; perishes at the onset of winter, and is reborn in the spring from the ground in which its seeds hid in the fall. It was easy to draw a parallel to ancient Greek mythology: so a person, after a short life under the joyful light of the sun, descends into the dark underworld, where instead of the radiant Apollo and the bright Athena Pallas, the gloomy, stern Hades (Hades, Aidoneus) and the strict beauty, his wife, reign in the magnificent palace , formidable Persephone. Thoughts about how close birth and death are to each other, about the fact that the earth - both the mother's womb and the coffin, served in the myths of Ancient Greece as the basis for the cult of the underground gods and gave it a dual character: it had a joyful side, and there was a sad side. And in Hellas, as in the East, the service to the gods of the earth was exalted; its rites consisted in expressing feelings of joy and sadness, and those who performed them had to indulge in boundless action of the emotional disturbances they caused. But in the East, this exaltation led to a perversion of natural feelings, to the fact that people mutilated themselves; and in ancient Greece the cult of the gods of the earth developed the arts, aroused reflection on religious questions, led people to acquire sublime ideas about the deity. The holidays of the gods of the earth, especially Dionysus, greatly contributed to the development of poetry, music, dances; plastics liked to take subjects for their works from the circle of ancient Greek myths about funny fantastic creatures that accompany Pan and Dionysus. And the Eleusinian mysteries, whose teachings spread throughout the Greek world, gave thoughtful interpretations of the myths about the “mother earth”, the goddess Demeter, about the abduction of her daughter (Cora) Persephone by the harsh ruler of the underworld, that Persephone’s life goes on earth, then underground. These teachings inspired man that death is not terrible, that the soul survives the body. The forces ruling in the bowels of the earth aroused reverent caution in the ancient Greeks; these forces could not be spoken of fearlessly; thoughts about them were conveyed in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods under the guise of symbols, were not expressed directly, had only to be guessed under allegories. Mysterious teachings surrounded with solemn mystery these formidable gods, in the concealment of darkness, creating life and perceiving the dead, ruling the earthly and afterlife of man.
The gloomy husband of Persephone, Hades (Hades), "Zeus of the underworld", rules in the depths of the earth; there are sources of wealth and fertility; hence he is also called Pluto, "the enricher." But there are all the horrors of death. According to ancient Greek myths, wide gates lead to the vast dwelling of the king of the dead Hades. Everyone can freely enter them; their guardian, the three-headed dog Cerberus, kindly lets those in, but does not allow them to return. Weeping willows and barren poplars surround the vast palace of Hades. The shadows of the dead hover over gloomy fields overgrown with weeds, or nest in the crevices of underground rocks. Some of the heroes of ancient Greece (Hercules, Theseus) went to the underworld of Hades. According to different myths in different countries, the entrance to it was in the wild, where rivers flow through deep gorges, the water of which seems dark, where caves, hot springs and evaporation show the proximity of the kingdom of the dead. Thus, for example, there was an entrance to the underworld at the Thesprotian Gulf in southern Epirus, where the Acheron River and Lake Acheruz infected their surroundings with miasma; at Cape Tenar; in Italy, in a volcanic area near the city of Cum. In the same areas were those oracles whose answers were given by the souls of the dead.
Ancient Greek myths and poetry spoke a lot about the realm of the dead. Fantasy strove to give curiosity exact information that science did not give, to penetrate into the darkness surrounding the afterlife, and inexhaustibly created new images belonging to the underworld.
The two main rivers of the underworld, according to the myths of the Greeks, are the Styx and Acheron, "a deafly noisy river of eternal sorrow." In addition to them, there were three more rivers in the realm of the dead: Lethe, whose water destroyed the memory of the past, Piriflegeton (“Fire River”) and Cocytus (“Sobbing”). The souls of the dead were taken to the underworld of Hades by Hermes. Stern old man Charon transported in his boat through the Styx surrounding the underworld kingdom those souls whose bodies were buried with an obol placed in a coffin to pay him for the transportation. The souls of the unburied people had to wander homelessly along the banks of the river, not taken into the boat of Charon. Therefore, whoever found an unburied body was obliged to cover it with earth.
The ideas of the ancient Greeks about the life of the dead in the kingdom of Hades changed with the development of civilization. In the oldest myths, the dead are ghosts, unconscious, but these ghosts instinctively do the same things they did when they were alive; are the shadows of living people. Their existence in the kingdom of Hades was dreary and sad. The shadow of Achilles tells Odysseus that she would rather live on earth as a day laborer for the poor than to be the king of the dead in the underworld. But offering sacrifices to the dead improved their miserable lot. The improvement consisted either in the fact that the severity of the underground gods was softened by these sacrifices, or in the fact that the shadows of the dead drank the blood of the sacrifices, and this drink restored their consciousness. The Greeks offered sacrifices to the dead in their tombs. Turning their faces to the west, they cut the sacrificial animal over a deep hole, purposely dug in the ground, and the blood of the animal flowed into this hole. After, when ideas about the afterlife were more fully developed in the Eleusinian mysteries, the myths of Ancient Greece began to divide the underworld of Hades into two parts, Tartarus and Elysius. In Tartarus, villains led a miserable existence, condemned by the judges of the dead; they were tormented by Erinyes, strict guardians of moral laws, inexorably avenging any violation of the requirements of moral feeling, and countless evil spirits, in the invention of which Greek fantasy showed the same inexhaustibility as Egyptian, Indian and medieval European. Elysium, which, according to ancient Greek myths, lay by the ocean (or an archipelago on the ocean, called the islands of the Blessed), was the area of the afterlife of the heroes of ancient times and the righteous. There the wind is always mild, there is no snow, no heat, no rain; there, in the myths of the gods, the good Cronus reigns; the earth gives harvest there three times a year, the meadows there are forever in bloom. Heroes and the righteous lead a blissful life there; on their heads are wreaths, near their hands are garlands of the most beautiful flowers and branches of beautiful trees; they enjoy singing, horseback riding, gymnastic games.
The most just and wise legislators of the mythical Cretan-Carian time also live there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and the pious ancestor of the Aeacids, Aeacus, who, according to later myth, became judges of the dead. Under the chairmanship of Hades and Persephone, they examined the feelings and deeds of people and decided, according to the merits of a dead person, whether his soul should go to Tartarus or Elysium. - As they, and other pious heroes of ancient Greek myths, were rewarded for their beneficial activities on earth by continuing their studies in the afterlife, so the great transgressors of mythical stories were subjected to divine justice with punishments in accordance with their crimes. Myths about their fate in the underworld showed the Greeks what bad inclinations and passions lead to; this fate was only a continuation, a development of the deeds they committed in life and gave rise to the torments of their conscience, the symbols of which were the pictures of their material torments. So, the impudent Titius, who wanted to rape the mother of Apollo and Artemis, lies thrown to the ground; two kites constantly torment his liver, an organ that, according to the Greeks, was a receptacle for sensual passions (an obvious alteration of the myth of Prometheus). The punishment for another hero of myths, Tantalus, for his former lawlessness was that the cliff hanging over his head constantly threatened to crush him, and besides this fear, he was tormented by thirst and hunger: he stood in the water, but when he bent down to drink, the water moved away from his lips and went down "to the black bottom"; fruits hung before his eyes; but when he stretched out his hands to pluck them, the wind lifted the branches up. Sisyphus, the treacherous king of Ether (Corinth), was condemned to roll a stone up the mountain, constantly rolling down; - the personification of the waves, constantly running on the banks of the Isthm, and running away from them. The eternal vain labor of Sisyphus symbolized unsuccessful tricks in ancient Greek myths, and the cunning of Sisyphus was the mythical personification of the quality developed in merchants and sailors by the riskiness of their affairs. Ixion, the king of the Lapiths, "the first killer", was tied to a fiery wheel that was always spinning; this was a punishment for him because, while visiting Zeus, he violated the rights of hospitality, he wanted to rape the chaste Hera. - The Danaids always carried water and poured it into a bottomless barrel.
Myths, poetry, art of ancient Greece taught people goodness, turned them away from vices and evil passions, depicting the bliss of the righteous and the torment of the evil in the afterlife. There were episodes in the myths that showed that, having descended into the underworld, one could return from there to the earth. So, for example, it was said about Hercules that he defeated the forces of the underworld; Orpheus, by the power of his singing and his love for his wife, softened the harsh gods of death, and they agreed to return Eurydice to him. In the Eleusinian mysteries, these legends served as symbols of the idea that the power of death should not be considered irresistible. Ideas about the underground kingdom of Hades received an interpretation in new myths and sacraments that reduced the fear of death; the gratifying hope of bliss in the afterlife was manifested in ancient Greece under the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries, and in works of art.
In the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, Hades gradually became the good lord of the kingdom of the dead and the giver of wealth; the trappings of horror were eliminated from representations of him. The genius of death in the oldest works of art was depicted as a dark-colored boy with twisted legs, symbolically denoting the idea that life is broken by death. Little by little, in ancient Greek myths, he took on the form of a beautiful young man with a bowed head, holding an overturned and extinguished torch in his hand, and became completely similar to his meek brother, the Genius of sleep. Both of them live with their mother, night, in the west. From there every evening a winged dream arrives and, rushing over people, pours calmness on them from a horn or from a poppy stalk; he is accompanied by the geniuses of dreams - Morpheus, Phantaz, bringing joy to the sleeping. Even Erinyes lost their ruthlessness in ancient Greek myths, they became Eumenides, "Well-wishers". So with the development of civilization, all the ideas of the ancient Greeks about the underground kingdom of Hades softened, ceased to be terrible, and its gods became beneficent, life-giving.
The goddess Gaia, who was the personification of the general concept of the earth, giving birth to everything and taking everything back into itself, did not come to the fore in the myths of Ancient Greece. Only in some of the sanctuaries that had oracles, and in the theogonic systems that set out the history of the development of the cosmos, she was mentioned as the mother of the gods. Even the ancient Greek oracles, which originally all belonged to her, passed almost all under the rule of the new gods. The life of nature, developing on earth, was produced from the activity of the deities who ruled over its various regions; the worship of these gods, which had a more or less special character, is in very close connection with the development of Greek culture. The power of vegetation, producing forests and green meadows, vines and bread, was explained even in Pelasgian times by the activity of Dionysus and Demeter. Later, when the influence of the East penetrated Ancient Greece, a third, borrowed from Asia Minor, the earth goddess Rhea Cybele, was added to these two gods.
Demeter, "earth-mother", was in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods the personification of that force of nature, which, with the assistance of sunlight, dew and rain, gives rise and ripening to bread and other fruits of the fields. She was a "fair-haired" goddess, under whose patronage people plow, sow, reap, knit bread in sheaves, thresh. Demeter brings forth harvests. She sent Triptolemus to walk all over the earth and teach people arable farming and good morals. Demeter combined with Jasion, the sower, and bore him Plutos (wealth); she punished the impious Erysichthon, "corrupting the earth," with an insatiable hunger. But in the myths of Ancient Greece, she is also the goddess of married life, giving children. The goddess who taught people about agriculture and proper family life, Demeter was the founder of civilization, morality, and family virtues. Therefore, Demeter was the "law-setter" (Thesmophoros), and the five-day feast of Thesmophoria, "laws", was celebrated in her honor. The rites of this holiday, performed by married women, were a symbolic glorification of agriculture and married life. Demeter was the main goddess of the Eleusinian festival, the rites of which had as their main content the symbolic glorification of the gifts received by people from the gods of the earth. The Amphictyonic Union, which met at Thermopylae, was also under the auspices of Demeter, the goddess of civic amenities.
But the highest significance of the cult of the goddess Demeter was that it contained the doctrine of the relationship between life and death, the bright world under heaven and the dark kingdom of the bowels of the earth. The symbolic expression of this teaching was the beautiful myth of the abduction of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, by the ruthless ruler of the underworld. Demeter "Grieving" (Achaia) went all over the earth, looking for her daughter; and in many cities the feast of Demeter the Sorrowful was celebrated, the sad rites of which resembled the Phoenician cult of Adonis. The human heart yearns for an explanation of the question of death; The Eleusinian mysteries were among the ancient Greeks an attempt to solve this riddle; they were not a philosophical exposition of concepts; they acted on the sense of aesthetic means, consoled, aroused hope. The Attic poets said that those dying are blessed who are initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter: they know the purpose of life and its divine beginning; for them, the descent into the underworld is life, for the uninitiated it is horror. The daughter of Demeter, Persephone, was in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods a link between the realm of the living and the underworld; she belonged to both.
For more details, see the separate article God Dionysus
Dionysus in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods originally personified the abundance of plant power. It was clearly manifested in the form of grapes, whose juice intoxicates people. The vine and wine became symbols of Dionysus, and he himself became the god of joy and brotherly rapprochement of people. Dionysus is a powerful god, overcoming everything hostile to him. Like Apollo, he gives inspiration, excites a person to sing, but not harmonious, but wild and violent songs, reaching exaltation - those that later formed the basis of the ancient Greek drama. In the myths of Ancient Greece about Dionysus and in the feast of Dionysius, various and even opposite feelings were expressed: fun at that time of the year when everything blooms, and sadness at the withering of vegetation. Joyful and sad feelings then began to be expressed separately - in comedies and tragedies that arose from the cult of Dionysus. In ancient Greek myths, the symbol of the generative power of nature, the phallus, was closely related to the veneration of Dionysus. Initially, Dionysus was a rude god of the common people. But in the era of tyranny, its importance has increased. The tyrants, who most often acted as leaders of the lower classes in the struggle against the nobility, deliberately contrasted the plebeian Dionysus with the refined gods of the aristocracy and gave the festivities in honor of him a broad, nationwide character.
Almost every inhabitant of the planet at least once, if not read, then heard about such components of ancient Greek culture as myths about the gods of ancient Greece . The ancient Greek epic is rich in various stories about the exploits, battles of ordinary heroes and about the life and glory of the Olympian gods. Acquaintance with this area of art for many begins at an early age due to the fact that some of the myths and legends are depicted in cartoons, fairy tales and films for children.
All the myths of ancient Greece are divided into 2 parts:
As it becomes clear, the first half of the myths includes 2 subparts, one of which tells about the gods, each of which is dedicated to not a single myth and even poems about the gods of ancient Greece .
Among them, special mention should be made of such characters as:
And the other half tells about such heroes as:
The ancient Greek epic included in the second part of the myths, in turn, includes:
Each deity on Olympus was responsible for a certain element, part of the world and life.
So, here you could find the gods:
Ancient myths, in which all the nuances of this or that natural phenomenon were sorted out, gave answers to these questions.
According to the description of the change of day and night, one can trace how the ancient Greeks imagined this process.
Several stages are noted here, in which different deities took part in turn:
Having laid his daily route, the sun god descends to the waters of the Ocean. There awaits his golden canoe, in which he sails back to the east, where his wonderful palace is. The Sun God is given a whole night, during which he lies there and rests in order to ascend to heaven the next morning in his former splendor.
In order to become the supreme god, Zeus had to dare many deeds. The most important of these was the overthrow of his own father Kronos from heaven. To do this, he resorted to the help of the titans imprisoned in the dungeon. But contrary to their expectations, immediately after Zeus got his way, he sent them back to prison.
This was not the end of his struggle. After all, Gaia, Mother Earth. She was angry at Olympian Zeus for what he did to her children - the titans. She married the gloomy Tartarus, as a result of which the terrible monster Typhon was born to them.
The gods trembled in horror at the sight of him, but the brave Zeus, without fear, rushed at him, and the battle caught fire. Again, lightning flashed in the hands of Zeus, thunder was heard. The earth and the vault of heaven shook during this battle. A bright fire flared up again on the ground, just like in the fight against the titans. It seemed that the fire of the arrows of Zeus could burn even the air and dark thunderclouds. As a result, Zeus burned all 100 heads of Typhon, and he collapsed to the ground. The body of the monster was thrown into the gloomy Tartarus. That is why, according to the ancient Greeks, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions occur on Earth.
It was in Tartarus that such monsters were born as:
Since then, Zeus and his brothers Hades and Poseidon could easily rule the world:
The earth remained common property between them, but the lord of heaven, Zeus, still reigns over all of them. It is he who rules over men and gods. Poseidon, in turn, is a peaceful king who does not contradict Zeus.
In this he differs from the third brother of Hades. According to the myths, he did not really like this distribution of "roles", according to which he had to be responsible for crossing the dead through the Styx. That is why Hades sought to harm the Thunderer Zeus in various ways. Watch an interesting video about the kingdom of Hades.
