Misconceptions about Mythology - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 46) | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm Ellie. This is Mental Philosophy Video. Today, I'm going to talk about some misconceptions about the Greek and Roman myths. Get excited

Misconception number one, Greek and Roman mythology are the same. As a lot of people know, the ancient Romans borrowed a lot of gods and mythology from the Greeks

Venus is essentially the Roman version of Aphrodite, Jupiter is their equivalent of Zeus, and there are tons of other examples

Because of this, many believe that there are no differences between the two. But there are some

For instance, Romans believed that being good in this life would lead to living amongst the gods in the afterlife, and that often meant that they worshiped their ancestors as godlike figures

Ancient Greeks didn't focus as much on what happens after death, and they didn't worship lesser known gods or non-heroes

Misconception number two, all ancient Greeks believed in the same gods and stories

Like many religions, ancient Greek mythology evolved and changed over time. Scholars believe that the mythologies and stories started forming around 2000 BCE, and they

and they probably came from other ancient religions, like ones from the island of Crete. Then the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Homer around 800 and 700 BCE

and by that time the belief system had changed a lot. The empires that the ancient Greeks belonged to were very large places too

so there wasn't necessarily religious consistency within the same time periods. For instance during the Hellenistic Empire people may have honored the founders of their cities or nymphs might have been more important to people who lived near bodies of water Plus a lot of these stories were passed down verbally before they were ever written down so it inevitable that they changed over time Disconception number three there are twelve Olympians

The twelve Olympians were the twelve gods and goddesses who supposedly lived on Mount Olympus

The problem is that different sources, including ancient Greek texts, list different Olympians as part of the group, so there's no true twelve

Generally, though, there are Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus

But various texts replace some of these with Hebe, Helios, Selene, Eos, Eros, or Persephone

So the concept of the 12 Olympians is real, but an actual definite list of 12 does not exist

Disconception number 4, the Titans were evil. So the Titans are deities in Greek mythology who preceded the 12 Olympians

Basically, the Greeks believed that there were a couple of generations of Titans who eventually gave birth to gods like Zeus, Poseidon, and Hera

It was said that those younger gods overthrew the Titans. Nowadays, they're often portrayed as bad guys, like in the Percy Jackson and Olympians series

But in the original depictions, they had human qualities, both good and bad, just like the other gods

Disconception number five, Zeus was an omnipotent god. So it's really easy for us to project a lot of features of modern religions onto ancient ones

For instance, many people believe that Zeus was basically their version of a true, all-powerful god

But that wasn't actually the case. He was described as having many human qualities and he could not control everything including the other gods and fate Like in the epic poem The Dionysiaca it states that Zeus quote had no thought fighting against the threads of fate Misconception number six Hades was evil A lot of people are under the impression

that Hades was a villain of some sort, but that's not actually true. He just happened to be the god who guarded the underworld

Stop judging him, okay? It was a job that was actually given him by Zeus. He was just doing, he was a good employee, you guys

And there are examples of him being kind, like when Orpheus shows up to the underworld to bring his wife here at Dissy back to Earth

Hades says he can bring her back as long as he doesn't look at her on the way out, even though he does

It's not technically Hades' fault, okay? The rules were perfectly clear. He also wasn't totally perfect, like there was that time he kidnapped Persephone

But that was none of the ordinary for any of the gods, alright? So in general, he wasn't considered an evil figure or devil-like

Misconception number seven, gods were all fictional characters. Actually, in Greek mythology, the poets wrote about half-gods who were not divine at all

These were often real people who were considered heroes, so they were described as gods. And the Romans declared many real people to be demigods like Julius Caesar and Pompey

Misconception number eight, Pandora opened a box letting evil out into the world

The expression Pandora's box is very well known, but in the original story there's no

box. Pandora actually opens a jar. Bummer. The myth first appeared in a poem titled Works

and Days by Hesiod, which was probably written around 700 BCE, and in that version she opens

a pithos, the Greek word for large jar, which is how evil enters the world. In the 16th

century a writer named Erasmus of Rotterdam translated the story into Latin and changed Pandora jar into a box like you do Misconception number nine the ancient Greeks worshipped Ares the god of war Because one of the most famous epic poems out of Greece the Iliad is about a war

many people are under the impression that the god of war would be revered in ancient Greek mythology

But actually, he's on Troy's side in Homer's story, and many people didn't have much interest

in worshipping him because he was considered violent and difficult. In many myths, the other gods were described as not liking him, including his own parents

Zeus and Hera. That's… that's not fun. Question number 10, these ancient myths died out a long time ago

The religions I've described over the course of this episode pretty much completely died out by around the 9th century CE

But it turns out that a lot of them live on in other ways, and not just in pop culture, though there are tons of great movies about Hercules, like one called Hercules from Disney

The Olympics were originally a festival held in honor of Zeus, and some scholars see mythology's influence in Christianity

Jesus is often compared to Dionysus, a Greek god associated with wine ritual infertility

Many people actually believe that the stories in the Bible about Jesus and wine were the

writer's way of showing that Jesus was better than Dionysus. So take that, Dionysus