Don’t Know Much About® Mythology

I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.

—V
OLTAIRE

Throughout the inhabited world, in all times, and under every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind….

—J
OSEPH
C
AMPBELL
,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

We have not met our forgotten ancestors, but we begin to sense their presence in the dark. We recognize their shadows here and there. They were once as real as we are. We would not be here if not for them. Our natures and theirs are indissolubly linked despite the aeons that may separate us. The key to who we are is waiting in those shadows.

—C
ARL
S
AGAN
and A
NN
D
RUYAN
,
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

I

Magically connected over the vastness of centuries to the people who heard these tales once sung around campfires, I was captivated. Instead of fighting fractions and verbs, I was aboard a ship, sailing mythical oceans, battling witches, demons, and one-eyed monsters—trying to find my way home with brave Odysseus, the wily hero of Homer’s epic.

Those daily doses of this great Greek story made my day, gave me a taste for literature and poetry, and certainly whetted my appetite for more mythology. When I had a chance, I would spend hours in the school library, devouring books about the myths—and not just the classics of Greece and Rome. I read about Norse gods such as Thor and the trickster Loki, and the Egyptian gods who inspired the pyramids. There was Sigurd slaying the mighty dragon Fafnir, and the fearsome Celtic hero Cuchulainn single-handedly battling hundreds of enemies in showers of gore that might make Arnold Schwarzenegger wince. I had discovered a whole new world. It was a world of gods, heroes, monsters, and legends—and it was a lot more interesting to me than school!

A few years later, my first job was delivering the
Daily Argus
, the local newspaper in my hometown of Mount Vernon, New York. By all accounts, I was a curious boy, so I wanted to know what “argus” meant. I soon discovered that in Greek mythology, Argus was a monster whose body was covered with eyes—exactly how many eyes he had depends on the source; some say four, some say a hundred—but only two of his eyes ever closed at any one time.

Argus played a supporting role in a tale about Zeus, the randy lord of the gods, and Io, the daughter of a local river god. She was just one of the many women—mortal and divine—desired by the seemingly insatiable Zeus. To conceal his dalliance with Io from his jealous wife, Hera, Zeus transformed the young maiden into a snow-white heifer. But Hera was no dummy when it came to Zeus and his philandering ways with nubile young women. Like some Olympian Alice Kramden of
The Honeymooners
always foiling Ralph’s best-laid plans, Hera saw through Zeus’s attempted ruse. To get back at her seemingly sex-addicted, cheating husband, Hera claimed Zeus’s pet heifer for herself. Hera had Io placed in chains and then set the ever-watchful Argus to guard over her youthful rival.

Zeus didn’t give up so easily. He struck back by sending the god Hermes to lull Argus to sleep and free Io. In one version of the story (many Greek myths have variations), Hermes tried to put Argus to sleep by playing on his magical pipe, but that didn’t work. So he bored Argus to sleep with a long, tedious story—then cut off his head. To honor Argus, the grieving Hera placed his many eyes on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock—and that’s why the peacock’s tail looks the way it does. Hera, however, wasn’t finished. Poor Io, still in the form of a heifer, was freed. But Hera just tormented Io with a gadfly that drove her, itching madly, on a wild gallop across Europe and Asia until she finally dove into the sea (the Ionian Sea, which is named for her). Io swam to Egypt, where Zeus returned her to human form and she bore what the tabloids call a “love child.” But that’s another story. With the Greeks, there’s almost always another story.

For me, the link between the monstrous Argus and the newspaper I carried every day was now clear—our local daily was supposed to be the ever-watchful eyes of the community. I’m not sure how accurate that was, but I did become a newspaper junkie from about that time—and this connection between a commonplace, everyday item like a newspaper and ancient myths just made me love the subject all the more.

Myths continue to fascinate me—and millions of others. Only most of us don’t call it “mythology.”
*
We like to call it “going to the movies.” For instance, on a cold Vermont night a few years ago, I went to see the second installment in
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy with my two teenagers and another friend. We were lucky to get tickets, as they sold out quickly. As we took our seats, people were scrambling futilely to find places, and I envisioned one of my worst personal fears: a raucous crowd of kids on Christmas break talking throughout the show.

But as soon as the lights went down, the extraordinary occurred. There was complete silence in this small Rutland theater. When the nearly-three-hour-long movie was over, the silence continued for a moment. And then the crowd exploded with loud and sustained applause.

There was some debate among the legions of Tolkien lovers about the faithfulness of these screen versions to their source. (Confession: I was one of those die-hard fans. When I was fourteen, I read all three books straight through while on a sick leave from school, which I extended a few days beyond the illness.) Merits of the film aside, I was struck at how
reverent
the audience was.

Chances are, a good many people in that audience were not churchgoers, and sitting in this darkened theater may have been as close to some form of collective spiritual encounter as any they might ever have experienced. And I thought further that this experience probably connected this twenty-first-century collection of strangers back to something much deeper, the act of sitting around a campfire three thousand years ago as someone recounted timeless exploits of heroes and monsters, Good versus Evil.

Looking at some of the box-office hits of the past few years merely confirms this idea. Recently, theaters have been filled with hits like
The Matrix
,
Finding Nemo
,
X-Men
, and the
Terminator
trilogy. To a large degree, all of these Hollywood blockbusters tap into ancient myths and tales of legendary heroes and epic quests. In the spring of 2004, the enduring appeal of myth got a fresh wind with
Troy
. Although moviegoers saw more of Brad Pitt’s butt than Achilles’ heel,
*
the success of the movie sparked lively new interest in a story that comes from the misty dawn of history. It is a story that still seems to speak volumes about men, women, and war. That said, the film
Troy
had about as much to do with Homer’s epic
Iliad
as
Gone With the Wind
had to do with the real Civil War. We might start with the presentation of Patroclus, who is identified as the “cousin” of Achilles in the film. Homer’s Achilles and Patroclus were “good friends,” very possibly in the way Greek comrades-in-arms often were. But Hollywood wasn’t having Brad Pitt do a gay Achilles.

Couple these recent Hollywood offerings with other successes, such as
E.T.
, a Disney—animated and very sanitized—version of
Hercules
, the Civil War romance
Cold Mountain
, and the Coen Brothers’
O Brother, Where Art Thou
(both works loosely based on the
Odyssey
), and, above all, the
Star Wars
saga, and you see even more evidence of the enduring appeal of ancient myths.

All of these films draw on mythic themes and often include very specific mythical references. (In
The Matrix
trilogy, for instance, the names Morpheus, Niobe, and Oracle are all drawn directly from mythic Greek characters.) Perhaps it is no accident that some of them are among the highest-grossing films worldwide. Throw in the extraordinary Harry Potter phenomenon—another spin on the mythic quest of an ordinary boy who learns to fly and has miraculous powers, like Luke Skywalker of
Star
Wars
and Neo of
The Matrix
—and you have yet another powerful piece of evidence that we still love myths.

And it’s not just the myths of Greece and Rome. Among the popular attractions at Disney World is a ride based on the 1946 film
Song of the South
. Perhaps best known for the famed Disney song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” this cartoon was inspired by the “Br’er Rabbit” stories, popular among African-American slaves. These stories, in turn, came from ancient tales of a mythic African Hare, a trickster god who crossed the Atlantic in the terrible Middle Passage and found new life in the American South. Tricksters, one of the most popular types of gods found in many societies, were greedy, mischievous, evil—kind of like the Joker in
Batman
—and sexually aggressive. Often, they took animal form, like the African Hare or Native American Coyote.

Hmmm. A mischievous rabbit and a greedy coyote trying to outsmart other animals. Sounds a little like Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner’s tireless nemesis Wile E. Coyote. And you thought myths were dead.

Just smartly packaged mass media, you say? I don’t think so. Many of these films, cartoons, or books are well made and highly entertaining. But their broad, international popularity crosses the boundaries of age and sex, tapping into our basic human need for myth. As Homer—the poet, not the father of Bart Simpson—put it, “All men have need of the gods.”

And it’s not just entertainment. Do you like Halloween and its Hispanic equivalent, Día de los Muertos (“the day of the dead”)? Both are modern vestiges of ancient mythical celebrations. Or perhaps you celebrate Christmas and Easter? With its candles and gift-giving, Christmas is based on old pagan Roman holidays, including the Saturnalia, a weeklong festival of the winter solstice dedicated to the god of agriculture. Many of the trappings of modern Christmas, including Christmas trees, wreaths, mistletoe, holly, and ivy, are borrowed from ancient druidic traditions from northern Europe in which the evergreen symbolized the hope for new life in the dead of winter. The Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is closely associated with pagan festivals celebrating the coming of spring. Early Christians appropriated this familiar mythic notion to celebrate the new life Christians gain through Jesus’s death and resurrection. The word “Easter” itself may have come from an early-English word
Eastre
, possibly the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. (Other scholars believe the word “Easter” comes from the early German word
eostarun
, which means “dawn.”)
*
The blending of Christian teachings with local myths in such places as ancient Celtic Ireland, Mexico, and Central America, and in the Caribbean and American South, where Christianity and myth fused in voodoo and Santeria—so-called “primitive,” African-influenced religions still widely practiced today—is one of the most fascinating and ignored aspects of ancient mythology alive in our world today.

The intermingling of pagan myth and Christian rites and beliefs is one key element in the plot of the best-selling sensation
The Da Vinci Code
, a thriller which draws on the adaptation—or theft—of ancient pagan religions and rituals by Christians in ancient Rome and the first Church fathers. While many of its most controversial elements are historically questionable, the book’s runaway international success is another tip-off that lots of people think there are deeper connections to ancient myths and mysteries than we’ve ever been told by mainstream religion. The fascination with
The Da Vinci Code
, as with
The Celestine Prophecy
, another novel that posits an elaborate Church conspiracy to conceal ancient truths, plays to a deep-seated skepticism about organized religion, but also taps into a level of curiosity about ancient spiritual ideas and wisdom—in other words, myths.

To get another gauge of the impact of myths, you could simply check the calendar. Is today a Thursday in March? A Saturday in June? The names of these days and months all come from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. From the calendar to the planets in our solar system—all except Earth are named for Roman gods—our language is loaded with words from our mythic past. Do you buy your books from
Amazon
.com? Are you wearing a pair of
Nikes
? Do you worry about a
Trojan horse
virus infecting your computer? Does the idea of a
panacea tantalize
you? Or perhaps your
arachnophobia
puts you in a
panic
? “Hypnosis,” “morphine,” “Golden Fleece,” “Labor of Hercules,” “leprechaun,” “typhoon,” and “hurricane” are just a few of the words and phrases that come from the world of mythology and color our speech. Is there an American Express card in your wallet? Then you don’t leave home without Hermes (or Mercury), the Greco-Roman god of commerce whose image appears on that card.

Hell! Even
hell
comes from the name of the Norse goddess Hel, ruler of an icy underworld where oath-breakers, evildoers, and those unlucky enough not to have died in battle were sent. Unlike Christianity’s fiery place of eternal torment, the Norse hell, you might say, was “frozen over.”

In other words, myths have been, and remain, a powerful force in our lives, often without our even recognizing them. Myths surround us—in literature, in pop culture, in our language, and in the news. Rarely do you pick up a newspaper or magazine without finding words and phrases that contain references to ancient myths. And sometimes myths are part of the news. In Mexico, the planned construction of a Wal-Mart-owned supermarket was met with fierce resistance, because it was so close to the Pyramid of the Sun in the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, the place where, the Aztecs believed, “men became gods.” (Despite the protests and the discovery of an altar during excavation the store opened in November 2004.)