When was greek mythology founded

Was there an individual inventor of the alphabet? The date attributed to the writing down of the Homeric epics is connected to the earliest evidence for the existence of Greek script in the 8th Century BC. The Greeks knew that their alphabet later borrowed by the Romans to become the western alphabet was adapted from that of the Phoenicians, a near-eastern nation whose letter-sequence began "aleph bet".

The fact that the adaptation was uniform throughout Greece has suggested that there was a single adapter rather than many. Greek tradition named the adapter Palamedes, which may just mean "clever man of old". Palamedes was also said to have invented counting, currency, and board games.

The Greek letter-shapes came to differ visually from their Phoenician progenitors - with the current geometrical letter-shapes credited to the 6th Century mathematician Pythagoras.

Did Pythagoras invent Pythagoras' theorem? Or did he copy his homework from someone else? It is doubtful whether Pythagoras c. But the Babylonians knew this equation centuries earlier, and there is no evidence that Pythagoras either discovered or proved it. In fact, although genuine mathematical investigations were undertaken by later Pythagoreans, the evidence suggests that Pythagoras was a mystic who believed that numbers underlie everything.

He worked out, for instance, that perfect musical intervals could be expressed by simple ratios. What made the Greeks begin using money? Was it trade or their "psyche"? It may seem obvious to us that commercial imperatives would have driven the invention of money.

But human beings conducted trade for millennia without coinage, and it's not certain that the first monetised economy in the world arose in ancient Greece simply in order to facilitate such transactions.

The classicist Richard Seaford has argued that the invention of money emerged from deep in the Greek psyche. It is tied to notions of reciprocal exchange and obligation which pervaded their societies; it reflects philosophical distinctions between face-value and intrinsic value; and it is a political instrument, since the state is required to act as guarantor of monetary value. Rich cities, like Athens, built temples with the best stone, and decorated them with paintings, statues and carvings.

People also had special places in their homes where they could pray to the Gods. There were public shrines in all sorts of places where people could pray and leave presents so the Gods would grant their wishes for things such as a good harvest, a safe journey or for their children to become beautiful.

Priests were important people in the community. They were believed to have the power to talk to the Gods and so were respected and trusted. There were only two ways you could become a priest. Either your mother or father was a priest or you were made a priest by a dying priest.

Why do you believe this? No one-word answers. Use full sentences to explain your thinking. No comments will show until approved by editors. What is Greek Mythology and when did it begin? Psyche entered the palace reluctantly and was welcomed by invisible servants. That night, an unknown man lied beside her on the bed.

From then on, the stranger returned each night. The stranger warned Psyche that her sisters were approaching and advised her to ignore them.

Originally, Psyche agreed to obey his desires but later felt bad for the cruel way she was about to treat her sisters. Eros, who was the secret lover of Psyche , pitied her and allowed her to welcome her sisters, warning her not to disclose his identity.

Psyche welcomed her sisters in her palace, and when one of them insisted on asking for her husband's identity, she simply replied that he was a young handsome man who always spent the day chasing animals.

Her sisters got extremely jealous. Their younger sister was suddenly rich and married to an incredibly beautiful man while they had ended up with ugly, old, and sick husbands.

Eros repeated his warning and then told her she was pregnant. By using fraudulent tricks, her sisters managed to make Psyche admit that she did not know who her husband was and ask for their help.

They advised her when her husband fell asleep, to bring a candle to his face and see who he was. Psyche did as she was told and discovered that her husband was Eros himself, with his bow and arrows next to the bed. Curious, Psyche touched one of his arrows and was injured by the edge, making her fall in love with Eros. The candle dripped on the shoulder of the sleeping god, who jumped awake and flew away, angry with Psyche for not keeping her word.

At the last moment, Psyche grabbed his foot and was lifted up in the air with him. When exhaustion forced her to leave him, Eros acknowledged that he had been hurt by his arrows, and therefore had desperately fallen in love with Psyche, but flew away leaving her in the wilderness.

Psyche took revenge from her sisters by driving them to suicide and continued looking for Eros while he lied wounded on his mother's bed. Desperate, Psyche approached Aphrodite, who tormented the unfortunate Psyche without knowing she was pregnant and gave her a series of impossible tasks to complete, which she did with the help of superior power.

By then, Eros had recovered from his injury. Filled with a lust for Psyche , he escaped from the room where his mother had imprisoned him, found his beloved, and flew to Zeus to ask him to approve his marriage with her.

Zeus agreed and announced to Aphrodite that Psyche was about to become a goddess. He ordered Hermes to bring the girl to Mount Olympus , where the wedding was celebrated with joy.

Zeus , having received an oracle from Prometheus revealing to him that a child of his born by Thetis would outpower him and steal his throne, decided to punish humankind. He instructed Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, and volcanoes, among others, to create a woman out of clay and give her a human voice.

Hephaestus worked hard and created a masterpiece. Goddess Athena liked this clay creature, blew life into her, and taught her how to weave and dress. Aphrodite , the goddess of love, made her beautiful. Hermes taught her how to charm and deceive. Zeus was satisfied when he saw her; he named her Pandora and sent her as a gift to Epimetheus.

Despite Epimetheus having been warned by his brother, Prometheus , that he should never accept gifts from Zeus because there would always be a trap, Epimetheus ignored his brother's warning, fell in love with Pandora, and married her.

Zeus, as a gift for their wedding, gave Pandora a beautiful box, on the condition that she would never open it. For a while, Epimetheus and Pandora were very happy.

As time passed, however, Pandora became increasingly curious about what was in the box. She could not understand why someone would send her a box if she could not see what was in it, and one day, defeated by her curiosity, she decided to open it. She took the key, put it in the lock, turned it around, and carefully opened the lid to take a quick look. Before realizing what was going on, the room was filled with terrible things: illness, despair, evil, greed, aging, death, hatred, violence, cruelty, and war.

Terrified, she closed the lid with force leaving only the spirit of hope in the box. According to one variation, probably the oldest one, Zeus had filled the box with real gifts ordering Pandora to never open it. Curious as she was, Pandora disobeyed Zeus, opened the box, and as a result, all of the good it contained, all the things Zeus had given to the people, except for Hope, flew back to heaven.

Despite its many variants, it is not clear whether Zeus wanted to punish people with what was released from the box or whether the punishment was the woman herself, with many comparing Pandora's box with the apple of Eve. According to Greek Mythology, Minos , King of Crete and son of Zeus and Europa , once asked god Poseidon to give him a sign whether he or his brother, Rhadamanthus , should take the throne of Knossos from King Asterios.

Poseidon sent him a beautiful white bull and asked him to sacrifice it in his honor. Minos, however, dazzled by the beauty of the animal, decided to mislead Poseidon and sacrifice another bull in its place. Desperate, Pasiphae sought the help of a skillful craftsman and artist, Daedalus , who built a wooden cow dummy, Damalis , covered in true cowhide.

Pasiphae entered the dummy and, fooled, the bull mated with her. When King Minos saw the monster, he asked Daedalus to build a dark building with endless corridors to imprison the Minotaur. Driven by envy, the people of Athens killed the young athlete, and Minos declared war on the Athenians, defeating them with ease.

As a punishment, Minos forced Athenians to send to Crete, every nine years, seven young men and seven young women to be devoured by the Minotaur. Theseus , son of Aegeus, the king of Athens, did not endure this humiliation and asked that he be one of the seven young men sent to Crete, with a special mission; to kill the Minotaur in the dark labyrinth.

Upon his arrival, he met with the daughter of Minos, Ariadne , and they both fell in love. Ariadne then gave Theseus a threaded rope -known as Ariadne's thread- and advised him to tie its end to the entrance of the labyrinth and unroll it as he moves inside the labyrinth so that, when he killed the Minotaur, he could find the exit. Then, he managed to return to the exit, following the thread.

Theseus took Ariadne with him and, along with the rest of the Athenians, they began the trip back home. Ariadne stayed in Naxos, married Dionysus, and was later brought to Mount Olympus to become immortal. When the rest of the Athenians sailed to Athens, they forgot to change the black sails on their ships, symbolizing the mourning for the loss of young people.

When Aegeas saw the black sails, thinking that Theseus was killed, he fell from the cliffs of Cape Sounio, giving the sea in which he drowned the name it holds to this day: the Aegean Sea.

Greek Mythology is an integral part of the Greek culture , even today. It has exceedingly influenced Western civilization, its philosophy, history, politics, art, and literature and has served as an inspiration to poets and artists from across the world.

Its power and attraction are evident through the findings that have surfaced, with scenes from Greek Mythology being found on mosaics, depicted as marble statues, and decorating the vessels of everyday life. Today, we think of these stories as either dead remnants of the ancient world or themes for a box-office action movie. Is that, however, the extent to which Greek mythology has affected the modern world? How often are we surrounded by those stories during our day and refer to them inadvertently?

Here, we present you with some examples that will help you realize what a big part of your life Greek Mythology really is. Bronze head of Hypnos - credits: en. Hypnosis, hypnotherapy, hypnotize, hypnopompia, etc. During Roman times, he was known as Somnus e. According to mythology, Hypnos was the son of Nyx the night and Erebus the darkness , always close to his twin brother Thanatos death.

Homer reveals that the entrance to the Underworld where he lived, could be found on the island of Lemnos , at the northern part of modern Greece. The entrance of his cave is said to be filled with poppies and other hypnotic plants, watered from the river of Lethe forgetfulness.

The sunlight never showers his cave, and the concept of sound is unknown in his territory. He was a god of great power, even among the rest of the Olympian gods. With Pasithea, the youngest of the Graces goddess of relaxation and hallucination he had his three sons Morpheus meaning Shape , the god that can intrude and take human form in dreams, Phobetor the one responsible for nightmares and Phantasos , the maker of illusions and hallucinations.

When he witnessed Patroclus being on a rampage, slaying one Trojan after the other, he stood against him. The two men starting fighting with every mean they had, with Zeus closely observing the situation, anxious about the fate of his son.

At one point, he tried to interfere only to be stopped by Hera , who reminded him that his actions might provoke terrible consequences. With a final blow, Patroclus hit Sarpedon on his chest, killing him on site.

Before he died though, he begged Glaucus to protect his body from the Greeks. The armies of the Greeks and Trojans engaged in a battle around the fully-armored dead body of Sarpedon. The battle ended with the victory of the Greeks and the order of Patroclus to take the armor of Sarpedon. In around B. Most of all, Pericles paid artisans to build temples In the year B. It was the first known democracy in the world. This system was comprised of The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable.

They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years B. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was Sparta was a warrior society in ancient Greece that reached the height of its power after defeating rival city-state Athens in the Peloponnesian War B.

Spartan culture was centered on loyalty to the state and military service. At age 7, Spartan boys entered a