What is a Greek

Myth

to N o r t h e r n Thessaly, such as 'the grave o f A i p y t o s where men

like to fight h a n d to h a n d ' {Iliad

2.604), A r e i t h o o s 'the club-

bearer' (7.8f, 137f) or A m y n t o r w h o lived i n a ' s t r o n g h o m e ' in

Eleon ( 1 0 . 2 6 6 ) . N o n e o f these persons comes f r o m I o n i a , Aeolia or
the islands, so they most p r o b a b l y derive from sources d a t i n g back
at least to the t i m e before the Greeks e m i g r a t e d to those areas at
the e n d o f the second m i l l e n i u m B C . T a k i n g the m a i n l a n d as o u r
point o f departure,

we can also observe that the archaic

poet

A l c m a n (about 600 B C ) m e n t i o n s details about Odysseus and C i r c e

that are different from those found i n H o m e r but not necessarily o f
a later date. I f , indeed, various figures o r i g i n a t e i n p r e - e m i g r a t i o n
sources,

then

the existence

m y t h o l o g y seems assured.

of a Mycenaean

layer

in Greek

C a n we go back further? T h e great philologists o f the last cent u r y discovered that Greek a n d V e d i c poetry shared the formulas
kleos aphthiton, or ' i m p e r i s h a b l e g l o r y ' , a n d klea andron, or 'glories
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o f m e n . F u r t h e r investigations have c o n f i r m e d the existence o f a

c o m m o n I n d o - E u r o p e a n poetic language; organisations o f poets
such as the H o m e r i d a i o f C h i o s or the K r e o p h y l o i o f Samos w o u l d
have been bearers o f this poetic t r a d i t i o n .

Investigations into

I n d o - E u r o p e a n m y t h o l o g i c a l themes have been less successful.

The

whole fabric o f I n d o - E u r o p e a n

mythology, which

Max

M i i l l e r a n d his contemporaries erected in the course o f the nineteenth c e n t u r y , had already collapsed by the end o f that century.
Yet some complexes stood the test o f t i m e . T h e m y t h o f H e l e n , for
e x a m p l e , has been shown to have close analogies i n V e d i c and
Latvian

m y t h o l o g y . I n Sparta,

H e l e n was w o r s h i p p e d as

the

goddess who supervised the life o f girls between adolescence and

m o t h e r h o o d . A s the w e d d i n g also plays an i m p o r t a n t role i n V e d i c
and L a t v i a n t r a d i t i o n s , the p r o t o - m y t h o f H e l e n was p r o b a b l y part
of Indo-European wedding poetry.

C a n we go back even further? B u r k e r t recently has studied

H e r a k l e s ' capture o f cattle, w h i c h were h i d d e n in a cave, from a
shape-changing o p p o n e n t . T h i s capture, as he shows, is closely
analogous to the V e d i c I n d r a ' s fight against the d e m o n V i s v a r u p a ,
or ' o f all shapes', w h o had also h i d d e n his cows in a cave. But
B u r k e r t also showed that there are close analogies for these fights
in the m y t h o l o g y o f various h u n t i n g peoples o f Siberia and the
Arctic.

A n o t h e r ancient t r a d i t i o n lies b e h i n d the epic o f the T r o j a n

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