The stories of Greek mythology accumulated over the course of fifteen centuries or so, spanning several distinct cultural eras. Yet modern accounts often telescope all of these stories into a single category – The Greek Myths®.
Here, we engage in some mythic archaeology, trying to understand when particular stories were first told. Instead of interpreting the stories with a modern slant, we’ll try to understand why and how these stories first came to be, and what they might have meant to contemporary listeners.
Digging through Greek mythology, we identify several strata of storytelling, different styles and different subjects from different periods.
Let’s give some thought to how storytelling evolved over the history of Greece.
Stories from the preliterate era tend to be stylized histories, lessons, and fables. Without written texts, the only way that history was remembered was by telling and retelling it in homes and in taverns and in palaces. There wasn’t room for fiction as we know it, as there was always new history happening, adding to the collected stories shared by a family, a village, a kingdom. Over generations, older histories would become abbreviated, stylized, and to a degree fictionalized; many tales from this era can be read as allegorical memories of the histories of forebears from many generations earlier.
On the basis of content, we can roughly divide the preliterate era into three phases.
The earliest Greek stories date to roughly 1800 – 1500 BCE. In this era, the Olympian gods included Poseidon and Hestia, who we suspect came to the region with the horseriders from the steppes around 1900 BCE.
Poseidon was originally a god of horses, who later became a god of the ocean and horses.
Hestia, usually cited as goddess of the hearth,
was eventually pushed out of the inner circle of Olympians;
with people settled in villages all about, skill in starting a fire wasn’t a daily need,
as fires were kept burning at all times.
But to the nomadic horseriders, the knowledge and skill of starting a fire,
or transporting some embers was critical to their lifestyle;
Hestia must have been an important goddess.
Two heroes of this period, Orion of Boeotia and Theseus of Troezen (later Athens),
are sons of Poseidon, and their adventures include episodes on Crete.
Stories involving Greek heroes on Crete often include Minos and his daughters.
(‘Minos’ in Greek myth is a title for the ruler of Crete,
just as ‘Pharoah’ refers to the ruler of Egypt.)
The second phase of Greek myth begins around 1500 – 1400, when a Zeus-cult spread out of Arcadia, to be adopted by the palace-centers of the Argolid – Argos, Tiryns, and Mycenae. While the Poseidon-era Olympians were happy to coexist with the Minoans, the Zeus-cult appears to have instigated the cultural genocide of the Minoans in the late 15th / early 14th century BCE. Perseus has ties to all three of these palaces; the slaying of snake-headed Medusa is easily read as the son of Zeus vs the Minoan Snake Goddess, a memory of the time the Mycenaeans tried to erase the Minoans.
The story of the children of Cronus and Rhea is what modern readers might call a ‘re-boot’ of Olympian religion. In this telling, there are six Olympian deities: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, and Hades, Poseidon, Zeus. Zeus is the youngest, and according to this narrative he is savior, and thus leader of his older siblings.
(It’s complicated.)
The stories of Perseus, and the figures of the constellations date to this period, which ended in the early 12th century BCE.
The early Iron Age saw a general decline in palace-centers across the Mediterranean,
but farmers still farmed, and fishers still fished, and life went on.
During this period, a practice of public storytelling evolved,
a technique of presentation anchored in rhythm, rhyme, and skill.
A practice which led to the works of Homer and Hesiod,
written transcriptions of spoken performance.
As a rule, surviving stories of the early preliterate age can be read as allegories
The introduction of writing seems a clear demarcation in history, from a modern vantage.
But in practice, the oldest written works are transcriptions of ancient singers.
By all (surviving) accounts, it was a matter of centuries before writers learned
how to use this new medium for new styles of storytelling.
Early works of Homer and Hesiod and others are not ‘written’ works in the modern sense, but instead transcriptions of oral presentations. It took some time for artists to find ways to use the tool of literacy.
Apollodorus and Hyginus, authors of ancient encyclopaediae of mythology,
cite a number of epic tales known to them, but lost to us, dating from the 6th century.
Some or most of these might have been transcriptions of performances by non-literate singers,
in the manner of Homer’s works.
But the Argonautica of Apollonius,
from the 3rd century, is an epic poem that seems to have been
composed in writing, instead of captured from a performance.
Or maybe transcribed from a singer, then edited by a poet. . . .
Whatever the details, the act of composition was transformed by writing,
because written texts could be edited, revised and polished.
We’re not arguing ‘better’ or ‘worse’ here;
simply acknowledging ‘different’.
Pindar, in the 5th century, was among the first to publish ‘composed’ poetry,
work rooted in forms used by non-literate singers,
but less reliant on preexisting bits of text (‘the wine-dark sea’, e.g.).
The ability to edit and polish a written copy
allows for the refinement of work
beyond the capabilities of even the greatest singers.
There were other experiments in poetry and such.
But these works didn’t spread much,
because there wasn’t much of an audience for written works.
The first significant effect of literacy on art was in the theater
– the ability to produce a script.
A script, a written copy of the text
Available for all to study
A version all can agree upon,
must agree upon,
for theater to rise as an art
Not long after the earliest theater, we encounter the earliest western histories.
Herodotus, writing in the mid-5th century BCE, created a work known today as The History, a sprawling prose account of the history and geography and peoples of the world known to the Greeks. Herodotus aims to understand the conflict between the Greeks and peoples of Asia Minor in the early part of the 5th century; his search for root causes reaches back centuries, spanning a wide geographic area.
A few decades later, Thucydides produced a detailed history of the Peloponnesian war, a work which
The survival of these two works tell us that by this time there was a significant audience who not only read, but recopied these texts.
By the second and first centuries BCE, centers of learning had developed in Alexandria, Athens, and other locations. Among the scholarly texts which survive from this period are several works we could call ‘encyclopaedic’. The Library of Apollodorus, the Fabulae of Hyginus are among the most important sources of Greek mythology. For constellation myths, the Poetic Astronomy of Hyginus, and the Katasterismoi of Eratosthenes (a major source for Hyginus).
So: .
Our primary sources of constellation information
date to the early 2nd/late 1st century BCE.
Our primary sources of Greek mythology
range from 800 BCE to 200 CE.
But the stories of Perseus and Andromeda
(along with many others)
date to the 14th century BCE.
In reading Greek mythology,
it helps to consider
just where in this timeline
a given tale originates