Did the average person in ancient Rome or Greece ever believe his mythology literally? Or did most people back then view those stories as primarily just entertaining tales?
IE, for many modern day christians, every word of the bible is literal truth, including the parts that may seem bizarre (like talking snakes, women turning into pillars of salt, whales eating a man who survives, etc). For many modern day believers, it’s simply unthinkable to question these stories.
Did the average person in ancient Greece or Rome feel the same way about his stories? Did they believe there was literally a river where Achilles was dipped in to make him invulnerable? Did the average guy on the street actually believe winter was caused by some girl eating four pomegranate seeds?
Would it have been socially acceptable back then for someone to publicly question the truth of those stories?
Probably to varying degrees just like religious believers of today. We are not as advanced from the thinking of the past as we wish to believe. I know people waiting for the rapture with glee. Can’t get nuttier than that.
I think most belief is almost at an academic level… and doesn’t intrude TOO much into the daily lives of believers. Then there are those who go further - using it to guide their lives in some respect or another - for compassion, separation of races (not in the Bible, incidentally after the OT), gay/lesbian objections and such.
So… I guess I question what you mean by belief. The academic belief or the deeper belief?
Modern religions have the threat of an afterlife – “you better believe all the stories in the bible or else you’ll go to hell”. It strongly encourages a mindset of not questioning the stories.
But in the ancient mythology, the concept of an afterlife was much less developed, so there was (I assume) less stigma against thinking, “Well, my priest says the sun is the god Helios in a fire chariot, but I heard the neighboring tribe thinks the sun is a flaming bird, and who knows which one is true, so therefore I really don’t know?”
No, he’d say, “Well, my priest says the sun is the god Helios in a fire chariot, but I heard the neighboring tribe thinks the sun is a flaming bird. Ha! What a bunch of idiots. What kind of fool thinks the sun is a flaming bird? I swear to Zeus, the sooner we show those barbarians what’s what, the better.”
Ancient people believed that knowlege was something passed down, not discovered, and that if a wise man said something, it had to be true, because he’s wise. Besides, how often did peple actually meet people with different beliefs? The vast majority of humans never went more than a few mlies from home their entire lives.
Depends. Some polytheistic systems, like the pre-Christian Roman religion, and ancient Greek religion to an extent, was remarkably inclusive. A Roman would likely have said either “Flaming bird? Yeah, toss that in as well. We have room for more gods.” or “Flaming bird? That must be their version of one of our gods.” With the expansion of the empire, the Romans incorporated gods from all over the place. Big ones include Cybele, Isis, Mithras (who might remind you of some other guy ) and Sol Invictus. The beef the Romans had with the Christians wasn’t that they worshipped their own god, but that they refused to worship the Roman state gods as well - and that was mostly a political issue.
True - I actually thought of that after I submitted my post. But even then, “Maybe it’s all bullshit!” was never really an option - at best, it was “Maybe we’re not seeing the bigger picture here.” In other words, they could imagine a situation where everyone was right; they couldn’t imagine a situation where everyone was wrong.
Many educated Greeks and Romans viewed mythology with a skeptical eye. The Hellenistic Greek mythographer Euhemerus “believed that much of Greek mythology could be interpreted as natural events subsequently given supernatural characteristics.”
My guess is that men and women then were much the same as they are now, with believers in myth and religion outnumbering skeptics, although the proportion of skeptics is greater now (at least I fervently hope so).
Let me rephrase the question: did ancient greeks and romans view mythology as pure religion? Or did they view it the way we view stories of Paul Bunyon or campfire tales of the Headless Horseman?
IE – was it meant to be interpreted literally, or just as entertaining stories?
If one is to believe Herodotus (and in this respect he was writing about and for his contemporaries), ancient Greeks certainly belived in things such as divinely inspired oracles and the like. That would strongly imply that they took their gods and associated mythology seriously.
On the other hand, Xenophanes famously rejected the idea that the gods resembled humans in form:
“ The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own"
In every culture for which we have data, there is usually a range of belief, comparable to the way modern religions work. That said, there is a difference in “believe in” and “believe literally in.” To the question as phrased in the OP, I would say “No. Some people did, but the average person, while they certainly would have seen the stories as important, would only have believed in them with qualifications. ‘Yes, that happened, but back when the world was new / when the gods were more active / with some other criteria that don’t apply to the modern world.’” In other words, they believe in the stories literally if and only if the world itself is fundamentally different (before time / in the process of formation / populated by heroes and demigods)
Compare Christian mythology (using the term in its technical sense as sacred narratives). Most Christians believe in the Eden story, many of them literally, but if you ask them whether snakes talk or angels with flaming swords run around Mobile, Alabama, they would look at you funny.
I always find this a very difficult concept to get across, probably because I explain it badly. People believe in their myths, but they usually have no trouble distinguishing the events of mythology from the events of reality. There is usually some provision for allowing one to intrude upon the other (e.g. miracles), but ancient people were not stupid. And, of course, even among the ancient Greeks you had skeptics.
I’m sure most people thought most religion is goofy, as they do today.
The churches may tell you what “all good practicing ___s believe”, but in fact they actually believe many different things. Of course some of those different things are also goofy, like yeti and little green men. But uniformity of believe is doctrine, not observable.
As has been expressed above, there was a wide range of belief, with some (probably most) people believing it, basically because it’s what they were taught, and why should they think otherwise? There were others that believed partially, aothers that took it metaphorically, and those who didn’t believe at all. Keep in mind, as well, that you’re not specifying at what point in history we’re tal;king about this – do you mean the Greeks at the time of Homer asnd Hesiod, or of the Periclean golden age, or the Romans at the time of Julius Caesar, or folks in the later empire? Do you mean philosophers, or the schnook who’s plowing the earth? It all makes a difference.
Here’s what Plato has Socrates say about it in Phaedrus, circa 370 BC:
The quote is worth reading in its fullness, which I haven’yt the time or inclination to reproduce here (besides worrying about copyright issues). To him, the question of whether or not the myth is true isn’t terribly important, and certainly taking the time to argue the issue is less important than arguing about the Real Truths of philosophy.