The stories and characters found in Greco-Roman mythology are not considered real in terms of the same way that historical or scientific facts are real. They are not factual accounts of events that occurred. Instead, Greco-Roman mythology is a collection of ancient stories, legends, and beliefs that were created by the people of ancient Greece and Rome to explain aspects of the world around them, express cultural values, and provide a framework for understanding their existence. These myths often involve gods, heroes, goddesses, afterwar appearances, and other supernatural beings, and they were an integral part of the religious and cultural practices of the time. While these myths are not considered historically accurate, they hold cultural and literary significance.
Greek myths were narratives related to
ancient Greek religion, often concerned with the actions of
gods and other supernatural beings and of
heroes who transcend human bounds. Major sources for Greek myths include the
Homeric epics, that is, the
Iliad and the
Odyssey, and the
tragedies of
Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and
Euripides. Known versions are mostly preserved in sophisticated literary works shaped by the artistry of individuals and by the conventions of
genre, or in
vase painting and other forms of visual art. In these forms, mythological narratives often serve purposes that are not primarily religious, such as entertainment and even comedy (
The Frogs), or the exploration of social issues (
Antigone).
Roman myths are traditional stories pertaining to
ancient Rome's
legendary origins,
religious institutions, and
moral models, with a focus on human actors and only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. Roman myths have a dynamic relation to
Roman historiography, as in the early books of
Livy's
Ab urbe condita. The most famous Roman myth may be the birth of
Romulus and Remus and the founding of the city, in which
fratricide can be taken as expressing the long history of political division in the
Roman Republic. As late as the
Hellenistic period of Greek influence and primarily through the
Roman conquest of Greece, the Romans identified
their own gods with those of the Greeks, keeping their own Roman names but adopting the Greek stories told about them (see
interpretatio graeca) and importing other myths for which they had no counterpart. For instance, while the
Greek god Ares and the
Italic god
Mars are both
war deities, the role of each in his society and its religious practices differed often strikingly; but in literature and
Roman art, the Romans reinterpreted stories about Ares under the name of Mars. The literary collection of Greco-Roman myths with the greatest influence on later Western culture was the
Metamorphoses of the
Augustan poet Ovid. Syncretized versions form the classical tradition of
mythography, and by the time of the influential
Renaissance mythographer
Natalis Comes (16th century), few if any distinctions were made between Greek and Roman myths. The myths as they appear in popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries often have only a
tangential relation to the stories as told in ancient Greek and Latin literature. The people living in the Renaissance era, who primarily studied the Christian teachings, Classical mythology found a way to be told from the freshly found ancient sources that authors and directors used for plays and stories for the retelling of these myths. Professor John Th. Honti stated that "many myths of Graeco-Roman antiquity" show "a nucleus" that appear in "some later common European folk-tale".
Mythology was not the only borrowing that the Romans made from Greek culture. Rome took over and adapted many categories of Greek culture:
philosophy,
rhetoric,
history, epic,
tragedy and their forms of
art. In these areas, and more, Rome took over and developed the Greek originals for their own needs. Some
scholars argue that the reason for this "borrowing" is largely, among many other things, the
chronology of the two cultures. Professor
Elizabeth Vandiver says Greece was the first culture in the Mediterranean, then Rome second. ==See also==