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GREEK GODS
Greek gods are an integral part of Greek mythology. Our
formal knowledge of the ancient Greek gods can be traced
back to the writings of Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey
(8th century BC). In addition, many scholars believe that
the myths were heavily influenced by the Mycenaean culture
that existed in Greece between 1700 and 1100 BC. Remarkably,
there is evidence that the beginnings of Greek mythology can
be traced back to the ancient Middle Eastern cultures of
Mesopotamia and Anatolia. There are many similarities
between the mythology of these ancient Middle Eastern
cultures and the ancient Greeks.
The Greek gods were created by man to explain the world
around them, act as a means of exploration, provide
legitimacy and authority to ancient Greek aristocracy, and
provide entertainment for the masses.
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The religion of the
ancient Greeks did not have a single source of written
scripture such as the Bible. Furthermore, the ancient
Greeks did not believe in absolute truth as practiced by
modern faiths such as Christianity and Judaism. Generally, a
Greek city-state would devote itself to a particular god or
a set of gods, and depending on the location of the
city-state, the characteristics of the gods could vary
widely. Many city-states erected temples to their particular
gods, and these gods were honored in festivals and animal
sacrifices. The ancient Greek gods normally took on human
form and lived in a society similar to human society. They
exhibited all the emotions of human beings and frequently
intervened in human history. The most significant difference
between the Greek gods and humans was that the gods were
immortal and human beings were not.
There are three main periods of Greek Gods:
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TITANS:
The Titans, also known as the elder gods, ruled
the earth and the cosmos before the Olympians
overthrew them. The Titans presided over the ordering of
time and the regulation of the heavenly cycles.
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OLYMPIANS: The
most powerful Greek gods were known as the Olympians.
The Greeks believed the Olympians lived on the highest
mountain in Greece, Mount Olympus.
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LESSER GODS: |
Our forefathers in the
most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a
tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies are
gods, and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The
rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form
with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its
legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods are in
the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they
say other things consequent on and similar to these which we
have mentioned. But if one were to separate the first point
from these additions and take it alone-that they thought the
first substances to be gods, one must regard this as an
inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each
art and each science has often been developed as far as
possible and has again perished, these opinions, with
others, have been preserved until the present like relics of
the ancient treasure. Only thus far, then, is the opinion of
our ancestors and of our earliest predecessors clear to us..
Aristotle, Metaphysics 1074 b
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