Achilles was a paragon of ancient Greek heroes. He was nigh-unkillable, an unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield, bloodthirsty, battle-hungry, feared and respected in equal measure. So, what did this warrior do when he ended up on the losing side of a quarrel with the Mycenaean king Agamemnon during the Trojan War?
He ran to his mommy to cry on her shoulder.
Yes, really.
For all its larger-than-life characters and some truly surreal stories, there is a basic spark of humanity in Greek myth. That’s why people love it, I think. Heroes fight and conquer, sure, but they also cry, get frustrated, get tired, and pine for their loved ones. They feel anger, joy, regret, fear, love, pride, and just about everything else. At their core they are, in fact, people. Just people. Like you and me.
Why do old myths endure? I believe it is because they share universal human themes that we empathize with, even when we’re looking at them from atop our perch in the 21st century. Who hasn’t wanted to find a shoulder to cry on after losing a bitter argument, like Achilles did? How can we not feel a twinge of sorrow for Orpheus, who, after journeying into the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice, felt just that slightest bit of doubt on whether she would follow him back and risked a glance over his shoulder, dooming himself to lose her forever?
Beneath the layers of the fantastic are stories that are very much human. People experiencing the hard knocks of life. And like in real life, sometimes they triumph over adversity … and sometimes they don’t.
The funny thing is, the Greek gods have as much humanity in them as the humans they rule. Perhaps a bit too much, even. It make sense, because to the ancient Greeks, the gods were just people with special powers and their foibles and strengths cranked up till the knob broke off. When they get angry, they get VERY angry. When they are generous, they are VERY generous. They flit between emotions with ping-pong frenzy, changing moods in an eyeblink. Unpredictable? Yes. Cruel? Absolutely? Relatable? Well, just maybe.
Are you familiar with the smith god Hephaestus? He’s famous for being lame and crippled. Do you know how he was crippled? When his mother Hera and Zeus got into a fierce argument, he tried to intervene on her behalf. Zeus angrily tossed him out a window and off Mount Olympos. He fell a whole day before hitting the ground.
Well, that’s one version anyway.
A single story filled with things we can all relate to: parental love, anger, good intentions gone awry, even the specter of domestic abuse.
Maybe the Olympians really are too much like humanity.
They certainly are subject to quite a bit of criticism by today’s standards, and for good reason . The gods of Olympos are a bunch of arrogant, vindictive, oversexed, brutal, vengeful jerks. Get on their good side, and they’re your best friend. Get on their bad side – and there are oh-so-many ways to do that – and they’ll make you suffer.
And yet, don’t we see shades of ourselves in them? Maybe our dubious opinions of the Olympians come from seeing all-too human qualities in them. Maybe we get nervous at the thought of what we would do if we had absolute power and few restraints. Were the ancient Greeks projecting their own worst and best traits onto Zeus and company? Were they trying to craft an ideal, one that was blurred by shifting moral mores and the clashing of many different city-states with their own opinions on what constituted a “correct” society. Or did they witness a thunderstorm, imagine Zeus throwing his lightning bolts, and imagine that a god must be like them but just a bit MORE in every way?
On a sidenote, did you know that the human brain is trained to recognize the basic features of the human face? Look at a cloud or a rock or a splash of spilled soda on the sidewalk. Look hard, and your mind will find some way to see eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
How is that relevant? It’s what the Greeks did to nature. They gave it a face. They gave it humanity. Zeus is the storm and the sky. Hephaestus is the fire of the forge. Poseidon is the ocean and the earthquake. And that is barely scratching the surface. Every natural element and abstract concept you can imagine had a personified figure. It made them easier to understand and relate to. It probably made them easier to worship, too, when you knew that the object of your devotion was more than a vague, amorphous divine glob. And what we relate to, we empathize with.
Empathy is a natural building block of storytelling. We don’t tell stories about things we don’t care about. This mythology that endured from the Bronze Age all the way into the 21st century is one that resonates with us. It carries the spark of universal appeal.
Greek myths speak to us. They stir up emotions in ourselves because those are the emotions the characters feel. Their experiences are our experiences. Heroes and gods overcoming monsters. The triumph of overcoming great challenges. Going to war. Family drama. Romance. Tragedy. Comedy. Life.
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Jake W. Powell 