This is probably more of a GQ sort of answer than GD. So sue me.
jarbaby, there is a lovely and interesting website called Mything Links - it’s run by a professor from UC Santa Barbara, and has lots and lots of reviews and links to sites all over the place. It includes sections on worldwide mythology, pages organized by theme, and whatnot. Greek and Roman, too, if you want.
http://www.mythinglinks.org/home.html
Hope you enjoy it!
What about Celtic mythology, or Egyptian mythology, or Babylonian/Phoenician/Mesopotamian mythology?
I mean, I name you several, several Celtic deities and tell you the story of Finn MacCool. I can do the same for Egyptian mythology. I can even dredge up a few of the last category, and tell a short story or two. But why are these (and also Native American myths/deities) generally glossed over, or in most cases, forgotten?
IIRC, the Vikings weren’t really up to the challenge of producing written records before Christianity arrived.
The rune alphabet is custom-designed to be used in stone or wood, it’s not for bookwriting. When foresighted scholars started taking down the myths and the poetry, Norse mythology was already on its way out, if not actually out. The 1300s ? Kings and chieftains got themselves baptised as early as in the 900s. (Harold Bluetooth around 960, for instance.)
The Norse mythology, with no written tradition, apparently got overrolled by Christianity with its cental tenet of Holy Scripture.
I might be wrong, of course.
S. Norman
The way I look at it, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are named after Norse gods.
Greco-Romans have Saturday.
Western culture celebrates Christmas, which is basically a bastardization of Yule, which is a Nordic tradition.
How many Greco-Roman holidays are still around?
As far as literary reference/ symbolism, well, Norse mythology is a shade darker than Greco-Roman. Most tales have a unifying theme which can be summed up as: life is hard, and if you survive you’ll have some scars. Even Odin loses an eye in order to gain knowledge.
Is the influence of Latin not due, not to the number of people who read it, but the kind of people? After all, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, effectively the only supra-national force in Europe with any interest in preserving knowledge was the Church - and the language of the Church was Latin. So, if you were a scholar wanting to exchange ideas, you had to know Latin. (I’ve heard the language described as “the Internet of its day”.) Eventually, a tradition emerged which recognised Latin as the language of education; you’re not a proper intellectual unless you can decline jusjurandum…
(I have to admit, though, that I find this debate slightly mystifying. I learned about Norse and Egyptian mythology at school… and it was just an ordinary grammar school. Maybe I was just lucky.)
The English speakers celebrate Christmas. We Scandinavians celebrate Jul.
Nice try but wrong guess. I don’t think I’ve read more than five comics in my entire life (literally). One was the Silver Surfer (a special edition super long thing…bound like a book) and two were The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. I think the other two were Archie and Richie Rich.
Is it possible the stories from Greek Mythology are just more interesting to the western mind? I’m just guessing but I’m serious. It seems to me mythology was to the Greeks and Romans what SOAP Operas are to us today. There simply seemed a larger component of entertainment in Greek mythology than you see in most other pantheons.
Anything to that maybe?
Italy was not the first European nation (not that Italy even was a nation) to emerge from the “Dark Ages,” a concept that has undergone a considerable amount of revision. Italy was in fact the least centralized of the European nation-states with the possible exception of Germany.
All of this nonwithstanding, the Roman tradition never actually died in Italy. Furthermore, the reason that the “Renaissance” is considered to be the beginning of modern science is due to our own cultural bias and post-Enlightenment education. The dogma we hear in school. We are imposing a Greco-Roman intellectual history on ourselves in order to achieve legitimacy through continuity. I cannot stress this issue enough. The Grand Narrative of Western history did not arise from Italy, but from Atticizers in England, France, and especially Germany.
The fact that very few extant documents exist does not testify to the literary competence of the Vikings. There are so many other possible reasons that I believe it is dangerous to assume in this way.
Actually, what is so fascinating about Nordic (especially Icelandic) spirituality is that Christianity and native religion were able to coexist side by side for so long. It would have been considered unusual in the slightest in 1100 AD to be baptized, go to church, and pray to Thor. For two or three hundred years Norsemen did not acknowledge that their native beliefs were inconsistent with those of their new religion.
People argue this all the time to the extent that it has become popular dogma. Greco-Roman mythology is about pain and suffering. In some of Greece’s finest tales, there seems to be no end to the suffering and no wisdom gained. They are easily as grim and depressing as those of the Vikings.
Naturally. But I was referring to the number of people who know Latin now, not who knew it in the Middle Ages. It certainly had more cultural immediacy to the educated, ecclesiastical elite, but the same is certainly not true today. Yet the influence persists.
This makes little sense to me. Just because you learned some stories in school does not mean that these other mythological systems carry the same cultural weight. Hence the debate.
MR
Absolutely not. This is usually an argument from ignorance and inherency. There is nothing by nature more entertaining about Greek and Roman myth. While this is a subjective judgment, I would argue that those who make a sincere attempt to cast off overwhelming cultural bias would come to the same conclusion.
MR
ah oui, et les Francais ont Noel
I found a ton of hits for Hoenir, but they all had the same three sentences: Gentle, brilliant God, will rule in the next world, timid, aloof and handsome. The End.
Don’t tell me that the one God who will emerge as the leader after Ragnarok has no more to his life story.
And yet, if I search Hades and Persephone…I can’t even BEGIN to get through the information, it’s like a 1000 page novel.
Confusing, and as for the porno…would you want to get it on with a timid, brilliant tuetonic god? I know I would.
jarbaby
The OP asked why Greek/Roman mythology seems to thrive today while other mythologies get much less play.
In that case it doesn’t matter if Greek and Roman myth aren’t ‘by nature’ more entertaining than other mythologies. I bet most American’s make no attempt whatsoever at casting off ‘overwhelming cultural bias’…certainly not when it comes to making a decision about what they like or don’t like.
American SOAP Operas show there is no accounting for taste or that there is any sense of good writing or compelling stories or good acting. Nevertheless they seem to grab large audiences. I am asking if this might be the same thing that pulls Greek and Roman mythology into the limelight to the exclusion of other mythologies? Not that they are in some way qualitatively better but, for whatever reason, they have somehow grabbed the popular imagination.
Academics can sit in their Ivory Towers and cast aspersions on the uneducated masses all they want but it doesn’t change much except perhaps to make themselves feel better. In the end people will watch, read and listen to what they want regardless of what the critics have to say.
Since women are apparently interested in timid, brilliant tutonic gods, I wonder why I’m not getting laid more often…
So what exactly is your point? You argued the following:
A) Greek myths are more entertaining.
B) Therefore people like them.
C) It doesn’t matter whether they are more entertaining or not, because people like them anyway.
Does not compute.
There is no such thing as “for whatever reason.” I have presented a brief history of pedagogy and of Western intellectual history in my above posts, yet people continue to wade in with such facile arguments as “it’s older”, “people just like it more”, etc. Greco-Roman myths have grabbed the popular imagination because they are what it is taught. For centuries educators have appropriated Greek literature and contrived literary continuity in order to justify and legimitize our intellectual tradition.
There is nothing random or “for whatever reason” about it. It is the Will to Knowledge, and thus the Will to Power.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
No one is casting aspersions on the uneducated masses. Rather, I have been casting aspersions on the institution of Western education for its artificiality and its misrepresentation of Western culture.
People will manifestly not watch or read whatever they want, Whack. Ivory Tower academics, writers, and philosophers revived Greek culture and created the fiction of the Grand Western Providential Narrative which intelligent people today still blithely believe. Hence Everyman likes stories of Achilles and Herakles. And now Ivory Tower academics are in the process of dissociating the West from its patriarchal, hegemonic, culturally imperialist intellectual tradition, hence the study of classics suffers.
And as for people ignoring critics, well, that is the grist for another mill. I would argue that people suck down whatever critics tell them to and love every self-justifying moment of it. Observe the continued popularity of top 40 radio and MTV.
MR
I wasn’t patronizing you, Maeglin. Akatsukami wrote that the Greeks did all this stuff, and you accused him of “cultural bias and ignorance.” That was what I was objecting to.
Sua
I apologize for the accusation then. I will explain how the exchange seemed to me.
It is manifestly obvious that the Greeks did all of the above. However, Akatsukami’s point was that because of all of these things, it should be clear and obvious why the Greeks are considered to be the core of our Western heritage. This is why I accused him of ignorance and bias. I certainly did not object to his catalogue of accomplishments. I thought you were niggling me by asking a rhetorical question about an issue to which I offered no objection, namely, the accomplisments of the Athenian city-state.
If it looked as though I was actually objecting to Greek accomplishment, I apologize for my lack of clarity.
MR
What a great thread!
jarbaby: I think that Hoenir may be a minor deity, even within the Norse pantheon (how’s that for imposing a Greek concept/word onto Norse culture?). I went to the really excellent site seawitch linked and searched for minor Greek deities. I came up with many I had never heard of (not that that proves anything) which, when searched on, came up with only 1 or 2 hits (example: Eleusis, one of Medusa’s sisters). If you want hits similar to those you got on Hades and Persephone, you may need to search on Loki or Sigurd.
The world is a very big place. It is impossible to expose students to every worthwhile work, even to every worthwhile period or culture. Humans would be less if there wasn’t such a riot of cultures and ideas. So, how do we pick and choose what gets taught, without somehow slighting what is not taught? This is the “don’t teach dead white males” issue–by teaching dead white males (by teaching anything) we necessarily ignore authors and cultures because we cannot teach everything. The act of choosing does not necessarily mean that the cultures not taught are not important–it means that they are for some reason not taught. I think it is simplistic to talk about a competition of ideas in academe–if one period is emphasized by one generation of scholars, the next will be drawn to another–worthwhile ideas are never really defeated. Teutonic studies were perhaps more popular early in the 20th century before the historical accident of the World Wars gave us political (not scholarly) reasons to deemphasize this area of study. That said, I think it is perfectly justifiable to argue that particular works should be taught–I just wanted to say that I think that every side has really good arguments in this dispute. (And I know that, even with a really broad definition of “worthwhile,” I will be ignoring someone else’s idea of worthwhile.:))
So, why exactly do Greece/Rome get taught currently, to the relative neglect of other myths and medievilism? Historic accident should not be ignored. Augustine wrote an extremely popular work which looked in some ways to Plato. Greek scientific manuscripts were preserved through a time of chaos and rediscovered in the Middle Ages. A really great scholar and author who was very much of his age, Aquinas, was turned on by Aristotle. Did they ignore or dismiss their localized contemporary cultures by using these works in their own? Did they intend to say that Greek culture was smarter or better than their own? I don’t think this is so. They assimilated; they built on ideas that they themselves were fascinated by; I view the fact that certain works happen to speak to great writers who go on to create great works that inspire others as an historic accident. There were plenty of great works that could have inspired these geniuses–they took what they found great (but there was plenty of other stuff they could have found great if that was the bent of their minds). The “great man” carries his influences in his wake for his own age and for all ages that rediscover him.
On preview, I see that Maeglin is also focusing on why things get taught. While you may not agree with my modified great man view, I submit that what gets taught does not necessarily matter so much to the great man–teaching is never enough to make someone able to write a great work–whatever makes this possible comes from something more than education only. What gets taught influences the masses but only to some extent the geniuses.
Maeglin:
True enough. [anecdote] One of the cooler archeological artifacts found in Denmark is a jeweler’s mold from the Viking age. The jeweler apparently mass-produced religious artifacts and had a highly practical attitude, because the mold produces one cross and two Thor’s hammers, satisfying all comers.[/anecdote]
I might agree that at least some of the myths aren’t really in sync with modern thinking - i.e., the good principle doesn’t always win, bad guys get away with a lot, even the good guys sometimes commit what we’d consider unfair and cruel acts.
In John Carlsens (unfortunately untranslated) book “Odin and the harddrive”, the author argues that there’s been a basic change in paradigms since the Norse myths were useful moral tales: He claims that the Vikings didn’t really value things on a “Good-Bad” scale, but more of a scale going from at one end “Able, competent, capable” to “useless, incapable, incompetent”. (I’m putting this badly, dammit.)
Hence Loki is an acceptable figure, even though he cheats - because he’s so competent at cheating. The “moral” isn’t that the good guys win, but that the most able (competent, whatever, the Danish word is “duelig”) fellow will win out in the end. The gravest insult in those days was the word “nidding”, which didn’t mean “bad, immoral person”, but rather more “useless cipher” - some claim it’s related to “nothing”.
Moral in the Christian sense - the good win out in the end, the meek inherit the Earth - was apparently very far from the Norse look at things. The Vikings weren’t the sort to let the meek inherit anything. And that view on things shines through in their mythology.
This is, of course, not how modern man sees things. And that might be part of the reason that the Nordic myths have fallen into obscurity.
Damn, now I’ll have to re-read the book.
S. Norman
I’m going to throw something else out into the mix, which is that the Greeks, and later the Romans, created a great deal of fairly permanent artistic representations of their mythologies. On a monumental scale, buildings such as the Parthanon are decorated with visual representations of mythological figures. For those who didn’t live within walking distance of a Greek temple, the mythology was also depicted on pottery. As this pottery was intended for actual use, it also had trade value as functional vessels, in addition to any artistic merit. Naturally, pottery is breakable, but the sheer number of pots produced accounts for the fact that there are literally tens of thousands of examples that survive today.
People who were completely uninterested in Greek and Roman mythology were still exposed to it. Architects and engineers studied buildings like the Parthanon and the Pantheon, because they wanted to duplicate the buildings’ accomplishments.
I can’t think of any examples of artifacts depicting other mythologies that would have been so widespread and long-lasting as the art/architecture/artistic-type stuff produced by the ancient Greeks, and by extension, the Romans (although I’m sure Maeglin will correct me if I’m wrong, and I mean that in the best possible way). And I don’t think it’s long-lasting because of any intrinsic appeal or quality, I’m saying long-lasting because they used marble for their statuary, which lasts a heck of a lot longer than the average wooden sculpture, and because they cultivated a wide market for useful pots that were often decorated with mythological themes.
I don’t mean to disaparage the art and architecture of other cultures, I’m just pointing out that coincidentally the Greeks made many things out of marble and stone, as it was available in good supply. Norse artifacts were more often made with wood, which rots, sometimes attracts insects, and does not survive fire with great success. Metal was also used (it was also popular with the Greeks, and fewer examples survive), because that is the first thing to go when you need to start melting things down to make weapons. You can also break stone structures down to use the materials for building other things, but if you are an army on the move, it is probably worth your while to cart off hundreds of pounds of metal, because you need it for spear tips and shields, and not so practical to carry away hundreds of pounds of stone for some public works project in the future.
That’s a great point, del. I guess it’s why literary historians keep art historians around. Can’t forget that material culture.
It certainly helps to explain why modern Greeks and Italians, or even medieval Greeks and Italians constantly have access to the memories of their forerunners.
But why does this necessarily hold true in the US, in which most people have never even left the country?
MR
It’s so nice to feel useful. 
Not only medieval Greeks and Italians. Granted, the average Joe in the middle ages didn’t journey very far afield, but if you DID travel, where did you go? If you were clergy, you went to Rome. If you were going on a Crusade, or trading along any of the routes between Venice and Constantinople, you would most likely pass through Greece, or the Hellenic cities in Asia minor. And you brought stuff home with you – stories or descriptions or actual things. There are Dutch woodcuts of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World from the early 16th century – 5 of the seven are Greek or Greek-related.
This fits in with your explanation above – that the “enlightened” thinkers of the 18th century were looking to Greece and Rome, and this was the same philosophy that was driving the people who decided what it meant to be educated and cultured in the US. Again, most did not travel, but sometimes the wealthy and privileged did. They brought back souvenirs of their travels. There is a particular style of oil painting that depicts ancient ruins and other famous sites – these paintings were practically mass produced, and sold as souvenirs. Even at the time, they were not usually considered great works of art, but rather held the same function that our snapshots do today. They were reminders of your travels, and reminders to other people that you were wealthy and aristocratic enough that you, or a member of your family, could travel. Plantation and other estate homes from the early 19th century are lousy with these paintings.
Later in the 19th century, a galvanizing event occurred – Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy. Putting issues of scholarship aside, the general public was suddenly excited by the fact that Troy was a REAL PLACE. The ancient Greeks had been drifting around the popular imagination for a while, and perhaps they would have eventually been replaced by a fascination with another culture, but this discovery was significant because it created a focus and a new relevance for Greek mythology.
Enter Neoclassicism … you have banks, libraries, and public offices built to look like Greek temples (there has always been a strong vein of this in American architecture, but now it explodes). Museums and cultural institutions are in a period of expansion, and they are judged on the quality of their antiquities (those Greek pots again). There is probably some trickle down classicism at play here – scholars make more discoveries in this field, university collections and museums get more actual stuff to display, kids get dragged to the museum, where some of them at least get interested in the larger-than-life statue of a guy cutting off a chick’s head (and she’s got SNAKES for HAIR, how cool is THAT?).
This brings us up to the present day, and why most of us had a unit in school where we learned that Athens invented democracy but America made it better, never carry a fox inside your shirt, and beware of Greeks bearing gifts.