For one thing, in their written form myths are often magnificent literature. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, and Vergil are among the foremost literary geniuses of all time. Yet even lesser authors and works like Gilgamesh, the Indian classics, Pindar, Horace, Ovid, Apuleius, Beowulf, the Eddas, and Malory make enjoyable reading.
For another, classical mythology formed the basis of a humanistic education throughout the ancient world and from the late Middle Ages down to the twentieth century. Writers from Chaucer to Robert Graves have been steeped in these old myths, so that their works can scarcely be appreciated without some knowledge of them. Furthermore, the art, sculpture, and architecture of the ancient world abounds in mythological themes; and the art and sculpture from the Renaissance to Picasso cannot be fully grasped without an understanding of mythology. Other fields, too, borrow some of their terminology from myths — fields as diverse as psychology, botany, astronomy, and space technology.
The anthropologist and the archeologist study the myths of a people as a means of grasping the culture.
But beyond these advantages a sympathetic reading of the myths of other peoples and ages can keep us from becoming provincial in outlook, locked in the narrow worlds of our own immediate concerns. Myths can show us the marvels that existed long before scientific reasoning shed its progressive light on our perceptions.
