The Iliad: The Definition Of Greek Myth

According to Edith Hamilton (1999), Greek mythology is mostly learned from historical poets. The poet highly accredited with the written greek myths is Homer. He is generally believed to have lived about a thousand years before Christ. Homer’s work includes the Iliad, which is considered to be the first written record of Greece. The Iliad is the oldest Greek literature and is written in such a way that it provides an indisputable proof of civilization.
Greek mythology is not be read like stories of the Bible for the Greek religion. It is mostly made up of stories about gods and goddesses that make up parts of the Greek religion. According to the current definition, a real myth has nothing to do with religion. The dictionary states that, “a …show more content…
To believers, it explains how any and everything in the universe came into existence such as mankind, animals, trees or …show more content…
Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece but in Greek mythology, Mt. Olympus is the site of Zeus’ palace where he and eleven other gods and goddesses live. All twelve gods and goddesses formed a divine family and they served as a court similar to a court for a king (Mikalson, 2015). They received the name Olympian Gods from their residence on Mt. Olympus. Some scholars believe that Mt. Olympus was not in Greece nor was it a mountain at all. In the Iliad, Zeus says that if he wanted to he could hang earth and sea from a peak of Olympus, which does not describe a mountain (Hamilton, 1999). Wherever Mt. Olympus may have been located, it was the home to the most divine family in Greece. The family consisted of Zeus and his two brothers Hades and Poseidon; their sister Hestia; Zeus’ wife (and sister) Hera and their son Ares; and Zeus’ other children: Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, and Artemis; and Hera’s son Hephaestus, who is sometimes referred to as Zeus’ son too (Atsma,