In its literary manifestations Classical mythology covers over a thousand years of writing. It starts with Homer, who lived about 800 B.C. and remains the greatest epic poet of the West; and it ends with the Roman elegiac poet Musaeus, a minor writer who lived in the fifth century A.D.. It includes some of the world's best writing and some of its dullest. Moreover, it includes two very distinct cultures, the Greek and the Roman.
Greek mythology is colorful, individualistic, amazingly diversified, and rationalistic. It displays a culture where personal honor is paramount and in which conflict is always present. Homer is both ebullient and stark in the way he depicts war. He delights in his senses, in courage and prowess, but he also shows the horrors of death. He is casual toward the gods, admiring their might but laughing at their human antics. Opposed to him is the early poet Hesiod, fierce, pious, a bit naive, but full of powerful conviction in the gods. He dislikes Homer's irreverent attitude. However, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod's Theogony contribute much to our knowledge of Greek myths.
The Homeric Hymns, recorded from 700 B.C. to about 450 B.C., were poems in praise of various gods that told of their various exploits. Pindar, a lyrical poet of the late sixth century B.C., wrote Odes celebrating the winners of Greek festivals in which myths were referred to or explicitly told. Pindar was as pious as Hesiod, but he expurgated the brutal elements and rationalized the myths for a more sophisticated audience.
The Greek dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, used myths as material for their dramas. Aeschylus explored the problem of divine justice, Sophocles employed myth to delve into innocent suffering and retribution; and Euripides used myth to present divine injustices. Aristophanes, however, referred to myths in a casual manner. In about a century, from around 500 B.C. to 400 B.C., Greek drama reflected a devolution from high faith to profound disillusionment.
