History of Greek Mythology

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Pre-greek inhabitants The word mythology started with the Greek word mythos, meaning “tale” or “speech”. Truly, mythology is a story of how things started to be such as how man was created, and how the gods influenced the growth of all living things, like how the season change and why the crops wither during winter and come back during spring (Morford, 2009; Macaraeg, 2012). Greek mythology was not only about the origin of things but it also included dramas, tragedies, romance, imagination and epics. These mythologies may look like works of literary geniuses; however, these are just products of man’s search for knowledge and explanation and work of the thousand of unnamed narrators who are telling and retelling these myths that shaped the very fabric of Greek ideology, culture, life style and religion (http://library.thinkquest.org/C005854/text/types.htm) The early inhabitants of the Grecian archipelago were the nomads that established a matriarchal society that made the earth their primary deity and have their own tradition and practices. Each community worshipped a local earth goddess and the mother earth where they came from and this goddess lived within the earth mother to both living and the dead and received prayers for fertility, good health and economy as payment for a good fortune (Rosenburg, 1984; Evans, 2008). And their society reflected the superiority of the women through “their society which reflected matriarchal principles, particularly the superiority of women, respect and appreciation for the beauty in life and an emphasis on graceful and peaceful living” as stated by Loverance, (1992). The religion they established focused on the earth as their primary deity which gave them life and hailed a priestess as their highest ranking authority in the community (Evans, 2008). Each community then was separated from one another but
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