Classical Authors of Greek Mythology

Most ancient legends began as spoken stories that were passed on by the locals. Singers and poets made sure they were absorbed through generations. Eventually, storytellers and historians recorded them in their works and some have luckily been preserved to the modern days.

Early records and the Epic Cycle

Greek myths also are preserved in the Homeric Hymns and in other fragments of epic poems found in era of the Epic Cycle. They can also be found in lyric poems and in the works of the tragedians which were written somewhere up to 500 BC, and in manuscripts such as the Bibliotheca by Pseudo-Apollodorus.

Primary epic poets

The oldest Greek literary sources are Homer's epic poems the Odyssey and the Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony and the Works and Days.

Hesiod

The great Greek oral poet is thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC. He is credited by the ancient authors to have established Greek religious customs, while modern scholars refer to him as a major source of Greek mythology, farming techniques, Greek astronomy and is even identified by some to be the first economist. Hesiod practiced various styles of traditional verse, including gnomic, hymnic, genealogical and narrative poetry.

His earliest works are believed to be the Theogony and the Works and Days. In the first major work he shows his remarkable interest in genealogy as he is describing the very first beginning of the world and the origin of the gods. Some fragments of older tales that once existed can also be found in his work.

In the second work, which is a poem of over 800 verses, he talks about himself and his brother Perses and their heritage of the land. Perses lost all his wealth and came back for what originally belonged to Hesiod. He went to the law and bribed judges in his favor. In general, this work lays out the myth of the five ages of men as well as containing advice and wisdom, encouraging life of honest labour and strongly attacking idleness and injustice, as well as the practice of usury. It also describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice.

Homer

The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey is known as the greatest epic poet of Ancient Greece. It is still unknown when exactly was he born. According to Herodotus, he was living around 850 BC while other sources put him much nearer to the time of Trojan War which is believed to be around 1200 BC. Nowadays researchers are putting him between 7th and 8th century BC. His works which are fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive writing and speaking that were followed and emulated throughout the ancient Greek worlds.

The Iliad talks about the ten-year siege of the city of Troy. While the story only covers the last weeks of the siege itself, it also reveals earlier events such as the cause of the war which was originated from the argument between Athena, Hera and Aphrodite when Eris disrupted the wedding, the gathering of the warriors for the siege and prophecies of the future such as the Sack of Troy (trojan horse) and the death of Achilles.

On the other hand, the Odyssey describes a Greek hero Odysseus and his journey back home from Trojan war. It takes him another ten years to reach his home island of Ithaca after ten years of war. Meanwhile, Penelope has to deal with more and more nudging suitors.

Historians and Geographers

There were also historians and geographers who supplied myths and legends based on stories which they heard from local people while traveling across Europe and Middle East.

Herodotus

He was the most famous historian, supposedly the first who collected his materials systematically and tested their accuracy to a certain extent. He was also known for arranging them in a well constructed and vivid narrative.

Diodorus Siculus

The other important historian was known for his monumental work of forty books called The Library of History, describing the regions of the world at the time as well as covering all the mythological characters and events such as the destruction of Troy. Unfortunately, only fifteen of his books survived the test of time.

Pausanias

A historian who described Greece in the ten books called The Description of Greece as he recorded his journey across different parts of Greece. He could be very skeptical of the validity of the stories coming from locals.

Plutarch

He was known for his famous work Parallel lives which is a collection of 48 biographies of notable Greek and Roman leaders. He incorporated gods and heroes in his work by using them to explore human morality, fate, and the blurred line between ancient legend and recorded history. He warned readers that stories of early gods and founders contained poetic exaggerations and old traditions.

Theatrical playwrights

Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myths but gave them rather more allusive connotation than in original narrative descriptions. Most of the time, in their works, they relate to individual mythological incidents and try to elaborate connections between their experience and mythical events recorded in the past. Also the tragic and comic playwrights such as Sophocles, Aristophanes and Aeschylus used sources from myths and other literature to present their works.

Roman authors

Credits also go to the most famous Roman writers that further influenced the culture of a society in a totally different political system. Most famous writers were Ovid, known for his poetry collections Metamorphoses, Heroides, Amores and Ars Amatoria, Hyginus, known for his collections Astronomica and Fables, and Virgil, known for his epic Aeneid and epic poem Georgics.

Historical evidence

More sources came from archeological finds in the nineteenth and twelfth century by discovering Mycenaean and Minoan civilization which helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. However, the evidence found there reveal that they were mostly recording inventories but some names of gods and heroes have also been recorded.