Its a set of mythological stories. Almost every culture has their own set of mythologies.
So Why does only Greek mythology figure so heavily in western TV quizzes.
Because Greek culture is at the very root of Western Civilization. Plus the fact that it is still taught in elementary schools in the USA.
Moved to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Of course, Roman mythology and to some extent Norse mythology also figure in quizzes. So does Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament, which are basically Middle Eastern mythology.
Jeopardy will sometimes have a category related to Norse mythology, in addition to Roman or Greek. For Americans, at least, there is much more familiarity with Greek/Roman myths than with the Norse myths (even though the latter is the source of many of our names for the days of the week). That could change with the popularity of certain movies and TV shows.
As the others have said (so why am I bothering?), it’s because in the US (and, I presume, the UK (where I assume the OP is from based on the use of the word “quizzes”)), kids grow up reading stories from and seeing movies based on Greek and Roman myths, and generally not Norse myths, Babylonian myths, etc.
Because even the Romans believed what silenus said: The Romans, who came up as a civilization long after the Greeks had came, seen, conquered, and left, viewed Greek civilization as the source of culture in the civilized world and a model for Roman civilization to the extent they merged pantheons (helped by the underlying Indo-European Religious Practice which ensured they’d both have Male Sky Deities, for example) and imitated Greek originals in their own art.
Later, in the best-known of the various Renaissances which flowered across Europe during the so-called Dark Ages, the Italians saw that combined Greco-Roman culture as something to imitate, something the West had lost even while the East (well… the area we now call Turkey, anyway) had preserved it until one of the various Crusades helped topple the Roman Empire for good in the 1400s. Oops. Anyway, this re-integration of Classical culture into what was swiftly becoming Early Modern culture helped cement the primacy of Greek civilization for a few more centuries.
That process was helped along by the rise of the middle class, the people who suddenly had money and now wanted to get cultured, and how better to get cultured than to buy books and learn about the Classical Model to which all cultured people should aspire? This basic pattern re-occurs whenever there’s a new influx of nouveau riche upstarts eager to scrape the quaint small-town charm off their boots and figure out what all those tiny little forks are really for.
Which takes me to the most proximate cause for Alex Trebek asking about Zeus and Hercules: The American Middlebrow culture, the last example of an American acculturation project which was well and truly Western-focused to the exclusion of non-Western civilizations. An example of this is the Harvard Classics, or Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf: A list of books, created by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, who had said in speeches that a liberal education could be had by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from books which would fit on a five-foot shelf. Publisher P. F. Collier and Son took him up on that and now those books are still available in used book stores across the country, as well as online. This was an example of a culture of self-improvement, seeing certain kinds of knowledge as useful for the sake of making you a better person or, at least, more like your betters. Which kinds of knowledge? Well, it has Marcus Aurelius but not Confucius, the furthest East it goes (from a European perspective) is the Thousand And One Nights, and there’s not a hint of Africa or the New World. Plenty of Greeks and Romans, though.
We’ve moved beyond that, but only just. The special reverence for Greek civilization remains, which influences everything from the naming of cities to throwaway references in movies. More knowledge about that specific mythology can be assumed, so it’s used more often and in more depth, in a self-reinforcing cycle of people using those symbols specifically to signify their status as cultured to others. So it’s perfect Middlebrow quiz-show fodder: A bit outside the usual, which makes you feel smart for knowing it, but not obscure enough that only specialists or the truly well-traveled or intellectually broad have a chance. It’s the intellectual equivalent of Thai food: A bit more out-of-the-way than the Americanized Chinese cuisine every town has, but not as obscure as Moroccan.
And for a long time, a liberal education demanded a foundation upon the Western Classical (Greco-Roman) tradition so you had to start early. When your main subject matters are the writings of (or about) Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, Virgil, Caesar, Seneca etc., and major cities of your culture are full of Greco-Roman pagan art, you study the general cultural environment that led to them so you can understand.
Think about it, to this day in the language we are using here, a product that triggers lust is an aphrodisiac, things related to warfighting are martial, the inspiration for artistic creation is the muse; a weakness is an Achilles’ Heel, a lengthy hero’s journey an oddyssey, a feat requiring great might is herculean; every four years the sports world gathers for the Modern Olympics and men flew to another world under the name of Apollo. Greco-Roman culture in general, including its mythology, perfuses ours still.
… But not really.
Dingdingdingdingding, we have a winnaaaa ! From the 1850s onwards, higher education (the kind that was targeted at the elite of society and only applied to maybe 10% of the population) featured the humanities extensively - latin & greek authors in their original languages notably. Learning Latin or ancient Greek was all the more sought out that it was thoroughly without a practical use - so taking the time to read Cicero was declaring that you were above petty stuff like working for money or learning a trade. It’s a whole social status thing, you plebe.
But anyhoo, from then on, knowing that kind of stuff became a symbol of being smart and a person of culture. And so quizzes, the purpose of which is to ostensibly compete on matters of knowledge and culture haven’t challenged that. If they only catered to the pursuers of the arcane and the obscure, i.e. if they truely were about the breadth of human knowledge they could feature questions on Japanese theology or 1980s video game trivia - but that doesn’t fit in our “classy, high brow” cultural spot, or the idea of what highbrow represents among the non-elite (because of course, today’s *actual *elites, even the intellectual ones, couldn’t tell Cicero from Adam Sandler. But then they’re about as funny.)
Or, what **Derleth **said better, basically 