So far in this series I have described just a few of the most popular misconceptions about classical mythology. One huge misconception that I have failed to address, however, is the very notion of “classical mythology” in general.
You see, we tend to think of Greek mythology as being one cohesive set of canonical interlocking stories. That supposition is at least partially accurate, but what many people fail to understand is that the myths were not static in antiquity. They myths were constantly evolving and changing. Every community had its own stories that were often wildly different from the stories told in the next community over. In fact, virtually every myth had at least a dozen different local variations.
For that matter, ancient authors widely disagree about what the gods were even supposed to be like. Homeros, for instance, portrays Zeus as an insecure, boastful tyrant who resorts to petty threats to maintain his power. Hesiodos, on the other hand, who lived around the same time as Homeros, portrays Zeus very differently. For Hesiodos, Zeus is an all-powerful, all-knowing ruler, who gives just decrees and acts as the patron of the farmers, peasants, and the working class.
Plus, many of the stories that were popular in ancient Greece are virtually unknown today because they are simply too violent for modern readers. For instance, the story of King Tereus was one of the most popular stories in ancient Athens, but there is hardly a single modern book that even mentions it. The story goes like this (Warning: Reader discretion is advised):
King Tereus was a king of Thrace who married an Athenian princess named Prokne. Prokne gave birth to a son named Itys. Then Tereus became mad with lust for Prokne’s sister Philomela, so he violently raped her and cut out her tongue so she could not tell anyone. Philomela, however, wove a scene depicting Tereus raping her into a tapestry and sent the tapestry to Prokne. Prokne became so horrified that she murdered her own son Itys and served up his flesh to her husband Tereus. Then, after Tereus had eaten the meal, Prokne presented him with Itys’s head on a platter. Tereus chased Prokne and Philomela with a sword in attempt to murder them, but the gods intervened and turned them into birds. Tereus became the hoopoe, Philomela became the swallow, and Prokne became the nightingale. This is why the hoopoe chases the swallow and the nightingale. It is also why the swallow has no song: because her tongue has been cut out. This story also explains why the nightingale sings its sad lament; it is Prokne, still mourning for her murdered son.
This story, believe it or not, was actually one of the most popular myths in ancient Athens. Aristophanes alludes to it in multiple comedies and Sophokles actually wrote an entire tragedy about it. Today, however, the story is virtually unknown simply because it is so horrifyingly dark and grisly.
Many of the myths we recognize today are actually comparatively late stories that would have been completely unheard of during the classical period.
For instance, many of the stories we classify as “Greek myths” actually originate from the long poem Metamorphoses, which was written sometime around 8 A.D. by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, more commonly known as “Ovid.” In the poem, Ovid retold many traditional myths and stories, but he did not retell all of them exactly the way he had heard them. Instead, he expanded them, tweaked them, and added his own little improvements here and there.
In fact, many of the myths that Ovid told he probably invented himself because they are not attested in any prior sources. Stories told by Ovid that are not found in any earlier sources include beloved classics such as Athena and Arachne, Daidalos and Ikaros, Daphne and Apollon, and countless others.
Even today, however, the myths are still changing. They did not simply die out with Graeco-Roman paganism. Modern writers, following in the same tradition as Ovid, often adapt and change the myths to suit their own purposes and to make them more relatable for people today.
The only reason why today we often imagine the myths as being a static collection of canonical stories is because most people read about Greek myths in books entitled Greek Myths, not books called A Bunch of Cherry-Picked Stories from Various Ancient Writers Specially Edited to Suit a Modern Audience.
IMAGE CREDITS
The featured image for this article is the painting Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys by the Dutch Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. It was painted between 1636 and 1638. This image was retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain in the United States of America.
There is also the amazing stretch of time to be considered. Consider how notions of what God is and who Jesus is/was have changed over the last few hundred years, and consider that between Homer (or at least the time when the Homeric epics were being codified) and Ovid is almost TWICE as long as between Martin Luther and today.