Mythology1200字
Mythology
The book Mythology written by Edith Hamilton presents a modern view of the Greeks and Romans’ social beliefs. The word Mythology came from a Greek term Mythologia, which refers to a body of folklores and legends. They aren’t necessarily tall tales but show a basic understanding of natural events in a non-scientific way. And now, scientists look back at what was thought “superstition”, they could keep track of the happenings in early years.
Interestingly enough, the early Greeks had different understandings than the commons, according to their explanation of the creation of mankind. First there was chaos. Then Chaos gave birth to Night and Erebus (now considered as hell). Love was born from these two. And Love somehow gave birth to Light and Day by itself. All of a sudden Earth appears, without an explanation. Earth gives birth to Heaven. Earth and Heaven gave birth to Cyclops (monsters with only one eye, Polyphemus was famous among them), Titans. Finally, Titans bore Gods.
So instead of “God created the universe” as Christians say, the Greek believed that it was the other way around. Now that’s a relief. Not only Gods aren’t the father of everything, they were pretty carried away with their mortal emotions. They were not Mr. and Mrs. Perfect, but shows lots of human features. Zeus’ love or desire we should say to possess woman, Hera’s green as envy and hatred towards the innocents, all backed up this argument. Hera’s desire to be judged as the fairest Goddess was probably the leading cause of the great Trojan War.
There were in total twelve Gods living in Mount Olympus. Zeus being the chief, Hera being his wife, his brother Poseidon and Hades, his kids Athena, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hestia, Hephaestus and Aphrodite. Mount Olympus was a place where it never rained, but shouldn’t be confused with heaven. Then there was the Earth gods led by Demeter, goddess of Corn and Dionysus, Goddess of wine. The sea world was ruled by great Poseidon. And Hell was ruled by Hades and his wife, together with a three headed dog and judges.
The stories contained magnificent details, so well preserved that it is hard to believe they were passed down from centuries ago. It was told that mulberries were once white, until a pair of lovers died tragically, it turned to dark crimson. And once a maid was in love with Apollo, the sun god, but he could find nothing adorable in her and refuses to see her. The maid died in solitude and hence grow into a flower forever turning towards the sun.
I could tell many great writers where inspired by Mythology. Shakespeare was one of them. His most famous play script, Romeo and Julius refers to the story Pyramus and Thisbe. One was attacked by lions but managed to escape, leaving blood trails which caused the other think she was dead. Then the other committed suicide, eventually this one dies out. Same thing happened in Romeo and Julius. The move Star Wars also contains many elements and motifs from the ancient mythology.
Those mythologies, comic or tragic, were told in a very delighted tone. The world of fantasies almost seemed too farfetched beyond our ability to understand the ancient times. However, ancient life in Greece was not easy. People faced hunger and disease, no merrier than people today. But they were able to think outside of the box and created such wonderful tales with their incredible imaginations, which really shows how civilized, how spiritually developed ancient Greeks were.
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Mythology1200字
