Introduction 7

the hero who commits three grave offenses, told in Greek tradition of Herakles
and in Scandinavian tradition of Starkad.7 Likely to be Indo-European are the
notions that the gods speak a language of their own and that they imbibe a spe-
cial beverage of undeath that renders them immortal and unaging. At the ad-
stratal level are myths that the Greeks borrowed from their eastern neighbors,
including the Succession Myth, the Combat Myth, and the Flood Myth, and
some types of monsters such as the Sphinx that the Greeks adapted from Near
Eastern prototypes.

The Archaic Period

The collapse of the prosperous and militant Mycenaean civilization of the Late
Bronze Age around 1200 B.C. was followed by a period of political and material
decline in Greece, during which many mainlanders emigrated to Asia Minor. In
time they idealized the Mycenaean Age as a glorious period of heroes, closeness
to the gods, material wealth, and grand military efforts such as the great cam-
paign against Troy, crystallizing these qualities and events in story (Bowra
1964). Particular heroes of legend came to be associated with prominent and
prosperous cities of the Late Bronze Age (Nilsson 1965).
In addition, the panhellenic movement that began around the eighth cen-
tury B.C. and extended into the classical period led to the development of cul-
tural institutions that fostered communication among the Greek city-states,
emphasizing elements that were common to different Greek groups and de-em-
phasizing those that were regional and divisive (Nagy 1990, 52115). Among
these developments were the foundation of panhellenic shrines and cults at
Delphi (the oracle of Apollon), Delos (the sanctuary of Delian Apollon), and
Eleusis (the Eleusinian Mysteries) and the institution of panhellenic games at
Olympia, which according to tradition were founded in 776 B.C. The same cul-
turally centripetal force that played down local traditions fostered the forma-
tion of the panhellenic Olympian mythology that is found in the Homeric
epics, the Hesiodic epics, and the Homeric Hymns.
The Homeric and Hesiodic poems, the oldest of which appear to date from
the eighth century, did much to codify for the Greeks the way their gods looked
and acted, just as the vase-painters and sculptors did much to codify how satyrs,
centaurs, and other strange beings looked. Early Greek epic poetry, including
also the cyclic epics, translated informal oral traditions into formal verse com-
positions. The myths and legends underlying these works gave accounts of the
world from its beginning to the end of the heroic age. They established the basic
characters, relationships, setting, events, and conventions of Greek mythology.
8 Handbook of Classical Mythology

In later times this early Greek epic poetry, written down or in some cases com-
posed in writing, served Greeks and Romans as great storehouses of mythologi-
cal information. From the seventh century B.C. onward, written works were
supplemented by a rich tradition of mythological art, especially vase-painting
and statuary.8

The Classical Period

The myths and legends that made up traditional Greek prehistory were widely
recognized as a distinct class of story. Prose compilations began appearing in the
sixth century and continued to be made throughout the classical period, such as
those by Pherekydes of Athens and Hellanikos of Lesbos.9 The fifth-century his-
torian Herodotos distinguishes traditions about men of distant times such as
King Minos of Crete from those about men of more recent times such as
Polykrates of Samos, who lived in what Herodotos calls the human age.10 Pin-
dar and other lyric poets drew upon this body of myths and heroic legends for
their exempla, and the Athenian tragedians mined the legends of the heroic age
for the plots of nearly every tragic drama they wrote. Thus in Pindars First
Olympian Ode, where he sings the praises of Hieron of Syracuse, winner of the
single-horse race in the Olympic Games of 476 B.C., the poet recounts the story
of the hero Pelops, who won his wife, Hippodameia, in a chariot race. Although
mythology ostensibly focused upon the past, it often served as a means for
speaking and thinking about the present.
The inherited stories were not without their critics and skeptics. Some per-
sons were offended by the immoral behavior of the gods in mythological narra-
tives, an objection that sprang from the feeling that the gods should behave, not
with the license of a class of powerful beings, but as exemplars of moral behav-
ior. If gods were the best of beings, their behavior should also be the best. Other
critics objected to the pervasive element of the fabulous, which was inconsis-
tent with their own empirical experience of the world. Fabulous elements
seemed infantile.
Rationalist interpretations of mythological narratives appeared early and
were widespread, as in the passage from Plato with which this chapter begins.
When Phaidros asked if Socrates believed that the story of the abduction of the
maiden Oreithyia by Boreas was true, Socrates answered that clever men might
explain the story away by saying that the force of the north wind pushed the
girl off a rock as she was playing and that after she had died in this way people
said she had been taken away by Boreas, for such men take pains to rationalize
the centaurs, Chimaeras, Gorgons, and other strange creatures. This approach