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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 eighteenth century against "the traditional attitude of Christian animosity", in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a "lie" or fable had been retained. [74]
Many species existed in Greek mythology. Chief among these were the gods and humans, though the Titans (who predated the Olympian gods) also frequently appeared in Greek myths. Lesser species included the half-man-half-horse centaurs, the nature-based nymphs (tree nymphs were dryads, sea nymphs were Nereids) and the half-man, half-goat satyrs.
As Christianity spread throughout the Hellenic world, an increasing number of church leaders were educated in Greek philosophy. The dominant philosophical traditions of the Greco-Roman world then were Stoicism , Platonism , Epicureanism , and, to a lesser extent, the skeptic traditions of Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism .
Nevertheless, the settlement of Greek colonists around the region had long lasting consequences and Alexander features prominently in Western history and mythology. [12] The city of Alexandria in Egypt, which bears his name and was founded in 330 BC, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of the Western World.
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 ]
Hesiod's Theogony, (c. 700 BCE) which could be considered the "standard" creation myth of Greek mythology, [1] tells the story of the genesis of the gods. After invoking the Muses (II.1–116), Hesiod says the world began with the spontaneous generation of four beings: first arose Chaos (Chasm); then came Gaia (the Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all"; "dim" Tartarus (the Underworld), in ...
Christian asceticism, however, developed a strong feeling against secular studies. As early as the fourth century Martin of Tours finds that men have better things to do than study. There are lettered monks at Lérins , but their scholarship is a relic of their early education, not acquired after their monastic profession.
The English Anglican scholar John Henry Newman argued, in a book that he wrote before converting to Catholicism, that the essence of the doctrine on purgatory is locatable in ancient tradition, and that the core consistency of such beliefs are evidence that Christianity was "originally given to us from heaven". [14]