Mythology 1: Greek

   GREEK MYTHOLOGY

- Ancient Greek mythology is a vast group of legends about gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, warriors and fools, that were an important part of everyday life in the ancient world. Greek myths explained everything from religious rituals to the weather, and gave meaning to the world that people saw around them. While many of these myths are fanciful tales, such as the legends of greedy King Midas or heroic Heracles (NOT Hercules), other stories like the Trojan War epic have a basis in historical fact.

-There is no single original text, like the  CHRISTIAN BIBLE  or the Hindu Vedas, that introduces all Greek myths' characters and stories. Instead, the earliest Greek myths were part of an oral tradition that began in the BRONZE AGE , and their plots and themes gradually unfolded in the written literature of the archaic and classical periods of the ancient Mediterranean world.  

- The poet  HOMER 'S 8th-century BC epics,  The Iliad  and  The Odyssey , for example, tell the story of the TROJAN WAR  as a divine conflict as well as a human one. They do not, however, bother to introduce the gods and goddesses who are their main characters, since readers and listeners would already have been familiar with them.

"Homer"