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The genesis of modern understanding of Greek mythology is regarded by some scholars as a double reaction at the end of the 18th century against "the traditional attitude of Christian animosity mixed with disdain, which had prevailed for centuries", in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a "lie" or fable had been retained. [1]
Thus, when essential sacred mysteries and teachings are described as myth, in modern English, the word often still implies that it is "idle fancy, fiction, or falsehood". [36] This description could be taken as a direct attack on religious belief , quite contrary to the meaning ostensibly intended by the academic use of the term.
The myths, however, continued to provide an important source of raw material for dramatists, including those who wrote the libretti for Handel's operas Admeto and Semele, Mozart's Idomeneo, and Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide. [3] By the end of the century, Romanticism initiated a surge of enthusiasm for all things Greek, including Greek mythology.
Classical mythology, also known as Greco-Roman mythology or Greek and Roman mythology, is the collective body and study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans. Mythology, along with philosophy and political thought , is one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later, including modern, Western culture . [ 1 ]
A coin featuring the profile of Hera on one face and Zeus on the other, c. 210 AC. Roman conquerors of the Hellenic East allowed the incorporation of existing Greek mythological figures such as Zeus into their coinage in places like Phrygia, in order to "augment the fame" of the locality, while "creating a stronger civil identity" without "advertising" the imposition of Roman culture.
In the fields of philosophy and mythography, euhemerism (/ j uː ˈ h iː m ər ɪ z əm,-h ɛ m-/) is an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages.
The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of ...
A mythology is inevitably bound to the society and time in which it occurs and cannot be divorced from this culture and environment. This is true even though Western society previously learnt from, and was informed by, the mythology of other cultures by including the study of Greek and Roman writings as part of its heritage.