MYTHOLOGY 



4042 



MYTHOLOGY 



not a difficult word. It is taken from a Greek 

 word signifying the human form, and simply 

 means the attributing of human form and 

 qualities to a divine being. 



Then, too, a religion in the modern sense of 

 the term is supposed to try to better people 

 morally, but few of the old mythologies made 

 any such attempt. An ancient Greek, for in- 

 stance, might lie and steal, but so long as he 

 offered his homage to the gods, and had certain 

 qualities of character, such as courage, he was 

 all right in their sight. Indeed, there was one 

 powerful god, Mercury, who had special charge 

 of t hie VPS and helped them out of their diffi- 

 culties 



As for science, mythology has a right to that 

 name only in the sense referred to above. It 

 did not, as a modern science does, try to trace 

 effects from causes or work backward to causes 

 from visible effects; it contented itself with 

 assigning supernatural causes to natural events. 



Because of the light it throws on all these 

 phases of ancient life, scholars find mythology 

 worthy of study; but the ordinary reader need 

 not go so far for his reason. It is interesting 

 that is enough; and any child who loves fairy 

 tales cannot fail to be fascinated by these 

 stories woven in the morning of the world 

 when everything was as fresh, as untried, as 

 unexplained to the wisest man as it is to the 

 little child to-day. 



Some Interesting Questions. About many of 

 the myths that have come down to modern 

 times there is one very curious fact. It will 

 often be found that a myth which grew up in 

 Greece or in Egypt bears a striking resemblance 

 to one woven by the Norsemen far away in 

 their land of ice, or even that some American 

 Indian tale is strangely like one that the Ro- 



mans made. Even the wisest scholars have 

 never been able to account absolutely for such 

 resemblances. Some declare that far, far back, 

 long before recorded history began, all these 

 peoples must have had a common ancestry, and 

 that the myths were invented before the sepa- 

 ration took place and were carried by each 

 people to their new home, where gradually 

 among new surroundings changes crept in and 

 details were forgotten. 



There is another theory, however, which sat- 

 isfies more scholars. That is that the different 

 primitive peoples, finding themselves in the 

 same world with the same things going on 

 about them, asked themselves the same ques- 

 tions and invented similar explanations. 



Then there is another interesting question 

 whence came all those myths that show the 

 gods as unjust and capricious? Perhaps, de- 

 clare some students, wise men invented those 

 in which the gods appear as good and kindly, 

 thinking that they might be helpful to the 

 people, while story-tellers of a later time made 

 up the others in a spirit of daring or irrever- 

 ence. Another explanation is that all the myths 

 are but exaggerated biographies of heroes who 

 came to be looked upon long after their death 

 as gods, or at least as demigods half-gods. 



The Greeks and Romans, the Norsemen, the 

 Egyptians and the Hindus are the nations 

 whose mythologies have been most studied. 

 Of these, the first two are the most interesting, 

 and they alone will be treated here in detail, 

 because the Egyptian and Hindu myths are 

 of such a mystic character as to appeal little 

 to any save scholars. In the Related Subjects, 

 under the subheads Egyptian and Hindu, will 

 e found listed the deities who are treated in 

 these volumes. 



Myths Regarding the Creation of the World 



One of the questions which demanded an 

 answer was that of the beginning of all things. 

 Anything so wonderful as a world could not 

 just happen, these early peoples believed 

 some strong power must have made it. Their 

 explanations are interesting. 



Greek and Roman. Though the Romans had 

 some deities of their own, they adopted most 

 of those of the Greeks, and took over bodily 

 their account of the creation. First of all, said 

 the Greeks, there was just a vast abyss, known 

 as Chaos. From this there rose Love, which 

 created the goddess Gaea (Earth), and from 

 these two came the sky and the mountains, the 



sea and the animals. Chaos also brought forth 

 two gloomy creatures, Erebus (Darkness) and 

 Nox (Night), and from these, strangely enough, 

 sprang two beautiful beings, light and day. 

 Gaea bore to Uranus (Heaven) twelve children 

 who grew to gigantic stature and were called 

 Titans. Uranus, first ruler of all things, proved 

 very despotic, and at length Saturn, one of the 

 Titans, with the aid of his mother, dethroned 

 Uranus, and made himself king instead. His 

 period of rule, during which everybody and 

 everything on earth was good and happy, was 

 called the Golden Age, but it did not last. For 

 Jupiter, one of Saturn's sons, overthrew him 



