Here we see one thing in common with all the gods, they all feel human emotions. Gods are supposed to be very powerful and to be able to be above all that which is mortal and dies. It makes no sense for them to feel love, pain or anything as such. This would even make it a none sense of why there were have gods or anything as such. This would be explained if it were us humans who created gods on our image. In the Greek mythology most gods commit human mistakes, like Juno who hurt all those that took his husbands attention from her, or feel things like love as Apollo did when he fell in love with Daphne because of Cupid’s arrow. In that time it is possible that people didn’t use gods as a way to make death easier but also to explain natures’ phenomenon too. What I believe to be the most interesting is that they use human emotions on these gods as well. It isn’t just something like god made it happen but more like Zeus is angry and therefore there is an electric storm happening. Such things did complicate worshiping much more. It could have been one of the many reasons why it would’ve been replaced by Christianity. (The roman’s did take over but only did some minor changes to the religion in order to make it their won, mainly just changes in the gods’ names.)
Another thing that we see as a constant here is that gods like Diana were human in almost every way. Although they had superpowers their way of acting was basically the same. As humans they bathed, looked revenge and hunted.(A lot like our modern day super heroes, like batman, superman, etc.) This proves that those kind of gods might have been extraordinary humans but human none the less whose story spread from ear to ear and eventually lost a great amount of its original meaning and details. At some point maybe someone decided to write this stories which were lore known by many. The writer of this might have seen the people in these stories as gods due to their incredible powers and therefore said it to be this way.
Finally above all their human emotions, all the lore and story there is always some sort of teaching behind them. A teaching of the right way to live and the right way to behave towards others. The jealousy of Juno was inspired by the acts of her husband who had no control of himself and would go after any Nymph, maiden or woman he could. This was of course punished by Juno but it showed both how bad jealousy is and how bad it is to be cheat on your loved one. This was also showed by the story of Cephalus and Pocris. This all show some flaw of human behavior on which we have to work on and to be able to try and better ourselves as humans. I believe that the reason for why gods are so important to us is that they show us in some way or another a good way to live without harming those who surround you.
lunes, 8 de septiembre de 2008
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1 comentario:
Great reading! It is strange how the ever-present Zeus resemble an road-raged cab driver at times.
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Finally,
The Romans
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