2 Handbook of Classical Mythology

been set up there. Nevertheless, a skeptical minority rejected elements of the

old stories that were inconsistent with their own experience of the world, in
this case the representation of the north wind as a living being who might take
a human maiden for his bride. It appears that the question of the truth or falsity
of the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia was a perfectly reasonable topic of discus-
sion among intelligent adults, and an acceptance of the literal truth of the myth
was possible for an independent thinker such as Socrates. Even the skeptical
few did not discard the tradition in toto, only the parts that were counterexperi-
ential, accepting the rest as historical.2

BASIC CONCEPTS
The Greeks conceived of the history of the universe as falling into three great
eras according to the dominant players in each era: gods, heroes, and humans.
The gods preceded the great men and women of old, and the heroes and hero-
ines in their turn yielded the world stage to ordinary humans.3 Generically
speaking, narrative accounts of the events in the three periods of time corre-
spond respectively to our terms myth, heroic legend, and history.
This book focuses upon the first two eras and therefore upon the first two
genres, myth and heroic legend, which taken together can be called mythology.
Since classical myths and heroic legends developed largely before the historical
period and the events are set mostly in the prehistoric period, classical mythology
could be called the traditional prehistory of the classical lands, Greece and Rome.
Greek and Roman myths and legends are essentially stories. Since they are
anonymous narratives that were transmitted from one person to another and
from one generation to the next, they can be further described as traditional
stories. And since for the most part they developed at a time when writing was
unknown or little used, they are mostly oral stories.
A traditional story ordinarily differs in several ways from literary fiction
such as a short story. First, a traditional story has numerous composers, for
each person who transmits it shapes it in some way. Originally all such stories
were transmitted orally, but in literate societies traditional stories can be trans-
mitted also in writing. Second, for the most part their composers are anony-
mous. Third, the text of a traditional story is not fixed but emergent, in that it
is sensitive to an interplay of factors including the narrator, the narrators com-
petence, the genre, the situation, the audience, and the goals of the participants
(Bauman 1984, 3745). Characteristically, the texts of a traditional story show
variation and geographical distribution, since different persons in different
places relate the story, and no two of them do so in precisely the same way.
 Introduction 3

Since a traditional story possesses no fixed or proper form, its shape and
content reflect the narrators response to the particular occasion that calls forth
the tale. The poet Hesiod twice describes the creation of the first woman.4 In
one poem he says that two deities (Hephaistos and Athena) fashion and dress
her and that she is Zeuss gift of evil to men, whereas in another poem he re-
counts how she is fashioned and attired by many deities (Hephaistos, Athena,
the Hours, the Graces, Aphrodit, and Hermes), is given the name Pandora, ac-
quires a husband Epimetheus, and finally opens a fateful jar, from which terri-
ble evils escape into the world. The two versions differ drastically in emphasis
and content, reflecting the nature of the context in which each is employed. In
his Theogony, Hesiod focuses primarily upon the constituents of the world, so
that he is interested in the first woman primarily as a representative of mortal
women. In the Works and Days, he is interested rather in the quality and condi-
tions of human life, so that here he calls attention to the entry into human life
of miseries such as toil and diseases. Since every narration is motivated, the
myth of the first woman has no neutral or normal form. Hesiod slants each nar-
ration to its situational context.
Mythological narratives are generally represented by their narrators as ac-
counts of events that actually happened, and for this reason their principal char-
acters tend to be named persons with genealogical connections to other charac-
ters known from myth and legend, and the events are set at a definite point in
space and time. So in the myth of the north winds abduction of a maiden, the
principal characters are Boreas (the north wind) and Oreithyia (an Athenian
princess), the scene of the abduction is the bank of the Ilissos at the place where
one crosses over to the precinct of Agra, and chronologically the events are set
during the reign of the girls father, Erechtheus, who according to tradition was
an early king of Athens. These details of person, place, and time lent credibility
to the story, which was reinforced by the fact that the exact spot of the abduc-
tion was known and physically marked by an altar, and most Athenians of
Socratess day, it appears, accepted the tradition as true. In short, it was a belief-
story, a narrative that was told and received by most persons as essentially ac-
curate. With regard to its classification as a mythological narrative, it makes no
difference whether the narrative really preserves traces of an actual event or
not, for just as no one in Socratess day could have known if the story of Boreas
and Oreithyia reflected an actual occurrence, no one in our day can either.
In contrast to myths and legends, folktales are presented as fictional ac-
counts, and for this reason their characters are mostly unnamed (for example: a
princess, a lion, an Athenian) or bear generic names, and their action takes
place in generic settings (town, countryside, on a road) and in the indefinite
past. For example, in an ancient Greek folktale, a man who was cutting wood