lost metaphors and symbols of ancient greek

i have recently drawn the conclusion that many of the greek gods and situations of the greek mythological world, are only metaphors for what actually was for example of the hate, greed, fear, and power corrupted by the king, and when medusa gets her head cut off and perseus is flying home to stop his mom from getting married some of medusas blood falls onto the ground creating monsters in otherwords the sight of medusas head made the follwers rise up as monsters because of the horrible sight of medusas limp head. these are just a couple of examples of greek mythology in my opinion i was hoping that maybe we the people of ats could come up with more examples.

their are many stories in greek mythology and i believe they all contain lost metaphors and symbolism!!!

can you give us some stories, i'd be interested in reading. :]

The Oddysey by homer (not simpsons) was a great story in my opinion.

[edit on 1-9-2009 by platipus]

I never actually thought about that, but it makes so much sense.

The ancient world had little sense of archeology, geography, hard sciences. Storytelling was an oral tradition and adherence to literalness and factual accuracy were not considerations.

That is why the Bible, Homeric epics, Gilgamesh Epic, etc - are a frustrating synthesis of real characters, some history, much embellishment.

And in a world where the imagination and perception were not as separated as they are now, metaphor was a more solid an indentifier.

I wonder how much can be retroengineered from these allusions to things we know nothing about?

Thanks for the new insight.


Mike

I don't really have much in the way of examples, but I agree with your statement that the Greek myths were full of symbolism and metaphor.

While not a myth (though still Greek) "The Allegory of the Cave" is one of my favourites. It's only about 5 pages, and is a dialogue between Socrates and some student of his. That has more symbolism and metaphor than just about anything I know in any culture or time.

the bases of the allegory of caves is that their is a group of people who are chained inside a cave not just their arms and legs but their head too. their is a giant fire behind them.

essentially they are cut off from reality but alls they know is that this is life itself they are restricted by their senses, they start experienceing the shadows as different forms that coupled with the sounds, for us who know reality to somesense this would make sense to us. but to them this is alls they have are normal everyday walking around would be their staring at a wall all day.

i believe that this would be a metaphor for our constraints of not being able to reach pass our normal constraints of reality the ability to perceive something as more than we think it is. if we were to be chained down and only perceive these shadows against a wall we might start getting a more open look at the reality we face as humans. since we know that that would be like prison we would totally shut are selves off of the experience of being able to enter what some would call an altered state of reality, the perceptions we face as a society seem to be bland compared to what these people faced everyday chained up in a cave. i believe that if we were to open are mind to some extent in stead of covering up everything as the way we percieve it with thoughts but to percieve it as if it were the first time seeing it then maybe we would get a better look at what life really is.

Originally posted by make.changes
i have recently drawn the conclusion that many of the greek gods and situations of the greek mythological world, are only metaphors for what actually was for example of the hate, greed, fear, and power corrupted by the king, and when medusa gets her head cut off and perseus is flying home to stop his mom from getting married some of medusas blood falls onto the ground creating monsters in otherwords the sight of medusas head made the follwers rise up as monsters because of the horrible sight of medusas limp head. these are just a couple of examples of greek mythology in my opinion i was hoping that maybe we the people of ats could come up with more examples.

Well... yes, and no. The Greeks were great storytellers and they had certain themes that appear in their plays and poems and odes. The themes of 'hubris' for example as well as fidelity and honor run throughout everything they wrote and did.

Uhm.... I could go on, but I learned this in world literature courses, so there's a lot of detail and a LOT of books written on this topic. My personal favorite is Edith Hamilton's books on mythology.

reply to post by make.changes


Read Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of all Ages.

reply to post by make.changes


The Allegory of the Cave is a deep story, also to be learned from it is the fact that it is the enlightened man's duty to re-enter the cave to show his brothers the light. Though He knows they will at the least laugh and and the worst kill.