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The general consensus is that we created myths to explain our environment to ourselves and to make sense of our experiences, to answer the question about where we came from, who we are and how we can be happy.
"Bury my body and don't build any monument. Keep my hands out so the people know the one who won the world had nothing in hand when he died." —Alexander the Great 356-323BCE
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it," said Aristotle.
"It lies in the lap of the gods." —Homer
Gaia was beautiful; she separated heaven from earth, water from land and air from space. She gave birth to Uranus (the sky) who in turn created rain to fashion the mountains, the rivers, the animals and the plants. Gaia also gave rise to Nyx (night), Pontus (the sea), Tartarus (the Underworld) and Erebus, the darkness that covers the Underworld.
Gaia and Uranus mate to create their first of many children, the 12 Titans – huge and powerful gods, like Oceanus, who has thousands of children i.e. all the rivers of the world. Another Titan, Hyperion, is credited with the creation of Dawn, the Sun and the Moon.
The Erinyes were the Fates or Furies, including gods like Poinai, Aroi and Praxidikai, whose three respective purviews were Retaliations, Curses and Exacting Justice. The Gigantes were a tribe of very strong giants and the cause of thermal activity and volcanoes. They included gods like Enkelades and Porphyrian. The Meliai were the honey-nurse nymphs of the god Zeus and perhaps even the nurses of mankind. In some versions the genitals are cast into the sea and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is born from the foam that arises from the semen.
A triumphant Cronus becomes king of the gods, frees all his siblings and marries Rhea. his sister. They produce six children; the gods Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus. Somehow Cronus becomes aware of a prophecy that he will be unseated by one of his children, so each time one is born he swallows them alive. Rhea is desperate to save at least one of her children, and when Zeus is born she secretly sends him away to Crete to be brought up by nymphs. In his place, she wraps a large stone in swaddling clothes and hands it to Cronus, who promptly swallows it down.
This set up a simmering rivalry between the Olympian gods led by Zeus and the Titans led by Cronus. The resulting conflict is known as the Titanomachy, which lasted ten years. Eventually Zeus prevailed and the defeated Titans were banished to Tartarus with but a few exceptions. The Titan Atlas was tasked with holding the earth up safely on his shoulders; the Titan brothers Epimetheus and Prometheus, who had sided with Zeus, were tasked with creating the first mortal men instead of being banished.
“How the gods must have chuckled when they added Hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora’s box, for they knew very well that this was the cruelest evil of them all, since it is Hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end.” —W. Somerset Maugham; British author 1874–1965
When Zeus appointed Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus to create men, his only stipulation had been that they should not have immortality.
exegesis
brazen
“Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?” Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.
lascivious
germane
syncretization
“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” —Joseph Campbell; American mythologist 1904-1987
