Greek and Roman Conceptions of Myth
Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece. Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history. They used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace one's leaders' descent from a mythological hero or a god. Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian, columnist, political essayist and former Classics professor, and John Heath, associate professor of Classics at Santa Clara University, the profound knowledge of the Homeric epos was deemed by the Greeks the basis of their acculturation. Homer was the "education of Greece" (Ἑλλάδος παίδευσις), and his poetry "the Book".
Read more about this topic: Greek Mythology
Famous quotes containing the words greek, roman, conceptions and/or myth:
“It is an elegant refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer—and that he did not learn it better.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The most Christian France is the sole wet-nurse to the Roman court.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“None of the feathered race has yet realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman—a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)