Learn about Greek Mythology!

I must confess that I was not always interested in Greek mythology but one day I came closer to this world and I started to ask myself many questions about it. I then got excited about the idea of putting some order in all this chaos of names, places and different stories and, fascinated with what happened more than 2500 years ago, I started to study regularly the mythological stories. I then found myself in a complex world of gods who are similar to humans in many ways and thanks to whom today we can have a good picture of the culture, the lifestyle and the social structures of the ancient times.

People have always been fascinated about those things that they are not able to explain: why does it rain or thunder? Why does the ground move? In the ancient times, man found the explanation for these phenomena in gods who lived in the sky, and understood every event as a gift or a punishment from the gods. Therefore, those who wanted to have a harmonious relation with gods should try to be in peace with them and by no means judge them or make fun of them. They were gods with human qualities, such as jealousy, power, temper and also generosity. Besides, many mythological characters described in the Iliad or the Odyssey had children who became big heroes and did great deeds.

Some of these stories can have a historical origin. Also, a bad social situation, certain events or even facts resulting from the personal destiny could end up becoming a story with the time. Some things would be invented, some details changed a little bit, the time or the scene adapted, and maybe some of the characters would be created or left apart. It is then not strange that often a son happens to have two fathers or two mothers, or that the different sources do not completely agree in which ones were the twelve gods from the Olympus.

All in all, it is a world that has fascinated me since I started to know about it. But I still have to read a lot, and many names have still to pass in front of me that will stay in my mind going around without an exact place where to be ordered.

My aim is to get other people interested in the subject of mythology, to break down the typical prejudices such as that it is a boring subject or that they are just old stories, because, even though they are old, they are still completely valid.

Finally, I would like to say that I have tried to tell these stories in an entertaining and enjoyable way. For this I found a very good example in the really nice stories told by Michael Koehlmeier and his way of telling them.

So, enjoy it!