The 3 best books of fascinating Greek mythology

Without a doubt Greek or Roman cultures (the second great importer of the first) have much more charm, with their gods, their heroes and their journeys through a still unknown world than other monotheistic and simplistic ones. (see also our Catholic or Muslim roots, uniformizing and radicalizing at times...)

In the last days of the ancient world (the Classical antiquity) a cultural, social, political and economic legacy is born that is the basis of everything. It is curious that in the face of this power the new religions finally took charge of destroying the vast imaginary of the Olympus and its designs on humans to end up establishing unique prophets: Jesus or Muhammad, and God or Allah as the entities diffuse (the triangle as the Eye of Providence in the Catholic or other and unrepresentable in the Muslim case).

The question, that I am going around the bush, and speaking clearly, is that the Bible is a literary pamphlet in the face of the mythological wealth of Greeks and Romans with its history of humanity in fascicles divided between Iliads, Odysseys and various tragic adventures. Adventures that also bring us closer to a very rich mosaic of gods in their particular garden of delights, to their bastard children, to the demigods, to the heroes in whom we can look for reflection and all kinds of tragedies or stories with morals about good and bad. evil that overwhelms in its plot exuberance.

Current authors like Irene Vallejo recover, if we ever lost, aromas to all those worlds that sustain our culture with a knowledge of the human that surprises and invites us to consider without doubt that Nihil sub sole novumIn other words, there was nothing new under the sun for these wise men, at least in terms of the human condition represented in such a vast literary imaginary ...

Top 3 Recommended Books of Greek Mythology

Odisea

Hero of heroes, Ulysses has a greater charm than Achilles (to my mind). Because the beautiful metaphor of travel, of the lost kingdom, of absences and hardships, of temptations, of darkness and loneliness. All current notion of resilience resides in Ulysses' ability to overcome everything marked by that fatality made vital test. Without a hero like Ulises, humanly necessary notions such as overcoming the worst tragedy could not have been forged.

The wanderings and adventures of the Greek Odysseus, lived in the ten-year span of his return home after an active participation in the Trojan War, make up the tight, almost romantic plot of one of the great monuments of our intellectual heritage. Probably composed at the end of the XNUMXth century BC, the Odyssey takes us into a real world, the ancient Mediterranean, but full of dangers and populated by fabulous beings: magicians, nymphs, giants, monsters ...

The marine avatars of the hero in this second great Greek epic distance Odysseus (Odysseus from the Romans) from the scenes of the epic, to place him in a fantastic environment, closer to the wonderful world of mystery tales.

Homer's Odyssey

Antigone

The tragic is transcendent because it points to death, in the end, to a possible, or not (but ultimately mysterious), elevation of what we are to another disembodied state. And yet, the pain that precedes this whole notion of the human as finite is very mundane, very clinging to the tears that do not germinate life on earth. Sophocles was the best narrator of those tragedies in which ancient man expressed his particular coldness of living, as he would say.

Among the seven tragedies of Sophocles (c. 496-406 BC) that have been preserved complete, Antigone undoubtedly occupies a privileged place. As a heroic figure, the transcendence of the protagonist has led to countless rereadings over the centuries (with an excellent reception in contemporary theater) and has given rise to philosophical speculations of all kinds.

The character, incarnation of the conflict between individual and society, indulges and enlivens it. Creon, king of Thebes, imposes the prohibition to bury Polynices, raised against the state and killed in a fratricidal struggle. Antigone, contravening these explicit orders, throws a handful of dirt on the corpse of her brother, thus providing him with a symbolic burial.

Antigone

Iliad

Ulysses maintains a fascinating balance between the fantastical and the tragic, Achilles is more clearly epic although in its background there are also readings of the human that can be extrapolated to any moment. The Iliad is the story of stories about the guilt and hatred that human beings are capable of harboring from their frustrated ambitions. Wars are basically that, the Trojan war outlines in each character, from Achilles to Hector, passing through Agamemnon or Patroclus, the entire range of wills that move us to conflict and war.

A few days before the last of the ten years that the Achaean siege of the city of Troy lasted, they provide the chronological framework for the events narrated in the Iliad, the oldest poem in Western literature.

Product of a long oral tradition, the epic, as its author warns in the first verse, tells the story of the consequences of a human passion. Achilles, angered by the outrage of Agamemnon, who as leader of the Greek expedition has taken his share of the booty from Briseida, decides to withdraw from combat. But it won't take long for him to return to him, with renewed fury, following the death of his companion Patroclus at the hands of the Trojans.

Iliad, by Homer
rate post

4 comments on “The 3 best books of fascinating Greek mythology”

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.