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[dramatic music]

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Athens, Greece.

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A city alive with commerce and culture.

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It is also a city of faith—
Greek Orthodox faith,

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part of the great eastern
arm of Christianity.

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[man singing]

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But there was another world
here once, of which only

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tantalizing fragments remain.

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Those who reach back
through time, both above

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ground and below, are in search
of a world that was equally alive

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and equally devout:

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The world of the Ancient Greeks.

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It still speaks to us today through one of
its legacies, Greek mythology.

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It was populated by many gods and
goddesses, each with certain powers

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in the world and each
with a story of their own.

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[mysterious music]

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For tens of thousands of years,
predating biblical times,

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accounts of the gods and their doings were
passed down by storytellers.

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[King Constantine] It is extremely
hard, but one tries to fantasize of

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what was it like in those days.

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I think favored stories of gods,
uh, must have been,

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thinking back, what did a child think
and was impressed about was, how did

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Zeus give birth to Athena
from a headache?

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Apollo, who was a very wise young man,

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who then developed into being the god
of order, of music, of arts.

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Poseidon, who created storms
when he was angry.

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Athena, who was the protector

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of our capital city and was in favor of peace.

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[narrator] Presiding over all was Zeus,
god of the sky, god of thunder.

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[thunder]

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[Thomas F. Scanlon] Zeus is a sky god
and you're in the domain

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of Zeus when you're out there in nature.

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Zeus had some control over whether you

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had a good day or a bad day
and a good life or a bad life.

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He had two jars on

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the door sill and there was a jar of good
and a jar of evil, and to each man,

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Zeus would pour out a portion
of good and a portion of evil.

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[narrator] There was Aphrodite and Artemis,
two sides of the same coin.

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Aphrodite, and what
is she the goddess of?

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Um, she is the goddess of
sexuality—female sexuality.

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She's the goddess of beauty.

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She's associated with
lots of fertility issues.

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You have Artemis on the other side,

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Artemis who is this chaste, chaste virgin.

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[narrator] And Apollo, who, like all the
gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece,

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had more than one power.

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[Richard Martin] He is the organizer,
the civilizer, he's the one who

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brings roads to places where
there were never roads before.

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He's the one who heals,

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but he also can bring plague.

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And this is something that happens in the

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case of many Greek gods.

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If they can cause something,
they can also stop it.

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He was a god—I heard
it most brilliantly put—a god of

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distance, and therefore he would deal with
people not face to face and hand to hand.

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He was better at shooting his bow and
killing people from a very far-off

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distance, and therefore his loves, perhaps,
are best kept at a distance too.

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[narrator] These gods and goddesses
evolved as the Ancient Greeks sought

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to find meaning, and perhaps faith,
in an often challenging world.

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[mysterious music]

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Their stories were embellished
and changed over time as

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different civilizations came into contact
with Ancient Greece.

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[Christina Sorum] Greece has been
inhabited since about 70,000 BCE, and

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there were invasions of people from
the Middle East and from the north,

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and each invasion led to—not another set
of divinities—but further layers of

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divinity added to the existing divinities.

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So Greek gods are a real amalgam of

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multiple cultures, cultures
of the Middle East mostly.

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[Thomas F. Scanlon] The Greek gods were
of such diversity that they are unlike any—

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many of the other gods from around the
Mediterranean, because they

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incorporated elements of a lot of different
peoples around them, and they

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don't clearly match a lot of the other peoples,
say, in Celtic or Italian religions.

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[narrator] These stories were passed
down through oral tradition, but

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sometime around 750 BC, they were collected,
organized and written down.

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Although scholars debate whether one author
or many authors were involved

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in this effort, the popular belief is that
there was just one—Homer.

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[Thomas F. Scanlon] As far as we know,
the real crystallization of Greek

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mythology was around the
time of Homer, 750 BC.

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And with Homer, we find the

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creation of Greek mythology
and the creation of the gods.

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Homer gave the Greeks their gods.

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Homer was effectively the closest thing the
Greeks had to a bible.

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[narrator] In the beginning, Homer tells
us, there was Okeanos, a spirit in

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the form of a great, circular, endless river
flowing eternally back upon itself.

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There was another presence too—
Tethys, sometimes called the first mother.

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When they finally mated, they began the line
of descent, which eventually

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produced the gods and
goddesses of the Ancient Greeks.

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[peaceful music]

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Some 50 years after Homer,
the poet Hesiod composes

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the <i>Theogony</i>, in which he too
describes the creation of the gods.

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But according to Hesiod,
the world began differently.

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First, there was a

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supernatural presence called Chaos,
by which Hesiod means emptiness,

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not disorder.

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[Christina Sorum] Once upon a time, there
was Chaos, and after Chaos there

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was a goddess called Gaia, "earth."

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And Gaia slept with—married, mated—

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Uranus, "heavens."

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[narrator] Uranus, however,
did not want children.

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He felt threatened by

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them and kept them from being born.

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[dramatic music]

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Gaia conspires with Cronus,
one of her unborn children, who

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castrates his father, presumably
from within his mother's womb.

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[dramatic music]

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Uranus' severed genitals fall
into the sea, from which a

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surprising entity emerges:
Aphrodite, goddess of love.

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These stories make up

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what is known as Greek mythology, derived
from the Greek word "mythos."

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It implies something untrue, but for the
Ancient Greeks, these stories were a matter

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of faith.

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They helped explain how and
why the world works as it does.

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[Thomas F. Scanlon] Interestingly, love
and war, or violence and sex, are

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deeply connected in Greek mythology, and not
only in Greek mythology but in

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a number of mythologies.

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Why are these two things deeply connected?

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I think that the ancient peoples, and certainly
the Greeks, felt that deeply passionate

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feelings were somehow connected in the human
mind and in the human emotions.

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That is, great desires and great fears or
great hatreds were somehow linked.

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[narrator] In this way, the stories and
characters of Greek mythology had

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real-life application.

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[dramatic music]

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Hesiod's creation story goes
on to tell how Cronus frees his

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brothers and sisters from Gaia's womb.

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These beings would be known as the

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Titans, born only after their
father has been castrated.

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The theme of conflict

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between father and son continues as Cronus
himself now kills his own children.

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[Christina Sorum] Cronus married Rhea.

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Every time Rhea gave birth, he'd

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swallow the children.

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Rhea desperately wanted to
have some children, and so

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she took one baby, Zeus, when he was born,
and wrapped him up and hid him in

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a cave in Crete to be raised, and gave Cronus
a stone wrapped up in swaddling

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clothes that he swallowed, so that he
thought he was swallowing the baby.

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Well, Zeus grew up, came attacked his father,
and all the children emerged,

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and those were the beginnings
of the Olympian gods.

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[narrator] Zeus retrieves the rock with
which his mother deceived his father.

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It can be seen even now at
the sacred shrine of Delphi.

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There's always a kind
of inherent conflict and tension

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between fathers and sons.

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Greece has been, really,
until this century,

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a subsistence economy, and so if you have a
small farm, the father is in charge of that.

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The son, even the first son, is not going
to get any kind of rights

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until the father moves on—retires or dies.

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[Christina Sorum] What is
the concern there?

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There's a real concern,

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obviously, about issues
of succession and power.

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[narrator] After Zeus rescues his brothers
and sisters from their father,

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they seize Mount Olympus.

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From this stronghold, they
battle for control of the

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world against their father, aunts,
and uncle—all of whom are Titans.

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Finally, the gods and goddesses
of Olympus prevail.

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They acknowledge Zeus, who

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is also god of the sky, as their king.

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But human beings have yet to appear

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on the scene.

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[ominous rumbling and music]

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The story of creation in Greek
mythology goes on in Hesiod's telling.

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Generations of gods continue
to struggle with one another,

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all before humanity's arrival in the cosmos.

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I think it says something
very interesting about a

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culture, whether it considers its formative
moments to be ones of conflict or

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ones of sort of unified production—
peaceful production.

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I am overwhelmed each

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time I study or teach a course that deal with
Greek mythology, how persistent

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these conflicts are.

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[narrator] After triumphing over the
Titans, the great god Zeus marries

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Metis, a Titan herself, and
therefore his aunt.

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Eventually, they have a daughter

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who births fully grown and
armed from his forehead.

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This is Athena, goddess of warriors.

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Other gods and goddesses enter the world,
each with different functions.

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They all have, however, one thing
in common, an attribute which

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sets them apart from virtually all other
divinities in the ancient world—

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their images are human.

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[Richard Martin] If you think of Egyptian
religion, with its gods having

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animal heads, various animal bodies, or Near
Eastern, Akkadian, Mesopotamian,

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Hittite religion, where you see divinities
associated with lions and other

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fierce animals,

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the Greeks' decision to somehow
represent the gods as

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being like Greeks is really an innovation.

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We're not really sure where it

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came from.

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[Christina Sorum] When you think about
divinity, you're talking about

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the unknown, and you really can only talk
about the unknown in terms of the known.

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In the Hebrew bible, in Genesis, it says God
came down and he walked

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in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening.

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It's almost impossible to talk

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about divinities without
doing something like that.

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Xenophanes said if horses

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could draw, horses would
draw their gods as horses.

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[narrator] In Homer's telling, it is
only after the gods and goddesses

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take up residence on Mount Olympus that the
story of human beings begins to unfold.

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The Judeo-Christian account
of the world's beginning

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culminates in God's creation of man, who is
given dominion over all the other

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creatures on Earth.

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However, the Ancient Greeks believe
the birth of humans is

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of little importance to the cosmos.

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[Thomas F. Scanlon] Although the Greeks
had a human-centered universe,

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their view of man was almost as an afterthought.

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He was a smaller creature

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in the universe, something
certainly lesser than the gods.

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And therefore,

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the creation of humans had to take a
second or third place down the line in the

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Greek world of the cosmos
and the Olympian deities.

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So why was the creation of

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man given such a small role in the creation
of the universe?

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[Richard Martin] It could be that Greeks
just assumed that human beings

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were always around, that human beings are
in fact so important that there was

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never a stage when they didn't exist.

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Um, it's still something of a mystery.

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[Greg Thalman] I like to think that
Greek myth reflects a certain understanding

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by the Greeks of humans' place in the world.

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That humans are not the center

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of things, that there's a whole wealth of
created world into which humans

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have to fit.

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This is a great contrast with a number of
other cultures and belief systems.

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[15:41 peaceful music]

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[narrator] As with the dawn of the gods,
Greek mythology contains

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different tellings of the creation of man.

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In none of them are mankind's

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beginning's auspicious.

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[Christina Sorum] We lived like ants
in the ground and we couldn't read

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and we didn't know the seasons and we didn't
know the weather and we couldn't think

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and we couldn't hear.

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We were just despicable
worms and worth despising.

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[narrator] In Homer's version of the
creation of humans, the god

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Prometheus forms the first man out of mud
and breathes life into him.

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In Hesiod's telling, Zeus
creates succeeding races of men—

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gold, silver, bronze, and iron.

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It seems that each race symbolizes different

233
00:16:35,519 --> 00:16:38,420
aspects of the human condition.

234
00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:42,219
The first race of men is made of gold.

235
00:16:42,219 --> 00:16:45,209
Their lives are easy, their crops abundant.

236
00:16:45,209 --> 00:16:47,860
They literally feast with the gods.

237
00:16:49,160 --> 00:16:52,389
[Christina Sorum] In the beginning,
there was a golden age, and people

238
00:16:52,389 --> 00:16:58,920
lived on the Earth and all the crops grew
of their own accord and everybody was

239
00:16:58,920 --> 00:17:02,259
good and everybody was just.

240
00:17:02,259 --> 00:17:05,619
And those people, after
a while, just disappeared.

241
00:17:05,619 --> 00:17:11,010
[narrator] The golden race appear to
have lived a perfect existence,

242
00:17:11,010 --> 00:17:14,190
seemingly in paradise.

243
00:17:14,190 --> 00:17:21,130
And yet this race vanishes
without explanation.

244
00:17:21,130 --> 00:17:25,180
In the biblical account of paradise, life's
hardships are seen as a result of

245
00:17:25,180 --> 00:17:30,311
Adam and Eve's fall from grace
in the Garden of Eden.

246
00:17:31,861 --> 00:17:36,980
For the golden race of men in Greek
mythology, there is no such explanation

247
00:17:36,980 --> 00:17:39,290
for their disappearance.

248
00:17:39,290 --> 00:17:42,720
The reason for their fate remains a mystery.

249
00:17:44,120 --> 00:17:48,100
[Richard Martin] The Greek system, in
which humans and their creation

250
00:17:48,100 --> 00:17:52,560
are not really a topic of concern, is so
different from what you find in Genesis,

251
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:56,170
where we have this focus on
the creation of the first man.

252
00:17:56,170 --> 00:17:57,170
Of course, in Genesis

253
00:17:57,170 --> 00:18:01,770
it's related to the further story, what
happened after the first man and woman

254
00:18:01,770 --> 00:18:03,130
disobeyed God.

255
00:18:03,130 --> 00:18:08,400
In Greek myth, disobeying the gods is not
such a big deal as it

256
00:18:08,400 --> 00:18:09,400
is in Genesis.

257
00:18:10,380 --> 00:18:15,200
So doesn't Hesiod have an answer,
or why doesn't Hesiod give an

258
00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:20,210
answer to why the golden race came to an end?

259
00:18:20,210 --> 00:18:23,630
With the Judeo-Christian myth
of the fall from the

260
00:18:23,630 --> 00:18:30,010
Garden of Eden, because that clearly was the
fault of Adam and Eve, and what that

261
00:18:30,010 --> 00:18:36,740
means is there is no real, really good
explanation for why the world is

262
00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:41,840
so difficult now—why humans
can't have an easy time.

263
00:18:42,830 --> 00:18:47,060
[narrator] After the golden race becomes
extinct, Zeus fashions men

264
00:18:47,060 --> 00:18:50,830
from silver, but this race is not very evolved.

265
00:18:52,270 --> 00:18:56,140
[Christina Sorum] The silver age people
were babies forever, and then they

266
00:18:56,140 --> 00:19:01,010
had this short period of maturity, and then
they had a horrible old age.

267
00:19:01,010 --> 00:19:04,510
And they disappeared under the Earth.

268
00:19:04,510 --> 00:19:08,170
They were more arrogant and did not

269
00:19:08,170 --> 00:19:10,290
worship the gods sufficiently.

270
00:19:11,090 --> 00:19:14,910
[narrator] Next come men of bronze,
who exterminate themselves through

271
00:19:14,910 --> 00:19:17,790
constant warfare.

272
00:19:18,930 --> 00:19:23,580
Eventually, the race of men
who live today appears.

273
00:19:23,580 --> 00:19:26,030
They are said to be men of iron.

274
00:19:29,250 --> 00:19:33,260
[Thomas F. Scanton] So basically, this
story of degeneration has moved

275
00:19:33,260 --> 00:19:38,210
to the present age, where actually it shows
a balance in these various views of

276
00:19:38,210 --> 00:19:40,310
the important things in life for the Greeks.

277
00:19:40,310 --> 00:19:42,510
Namely, your attitudes to the gods

278
00:19:42,510 --> 00:19:47,550
and your attitudes towards warfare and fighting
for your city-state and how you

279
00:19:47,550 --> 00:19:50,320
can get along or not get along with each other.

280
00:19:51,070 --> 00:19:54,880
[narrator] Interestingly, all these
stories account for the creation of

281
00:19:54,880 --> 00:19:58,500
only half the human race, man.

282
00:20:01,610 --> 00:20:07,091
Woman is created as an
affliction—a punishment—

283
00:20:07,091 --> 00:20:09,780
and all because of a trick.

284
00:20:11,230 --> 00:20:16,250
[Thomas F. Scanlon] The first woman
was sent to the Earth as a punishment

285
00:20:16,250 --> 00:20:18,020
to mankind.

286
00:20:18,020 --> 00:20:22,130
This sounds incredibly misogynistic,
and it was an incredibly

287
00:20:22,130 --> 00:20:26,580
misogynistic story on the part of Hesiod,
who told this in 700 BC.

288
00:20:26,580 --> 00:20:33,070
But the story goes that one of the gods,
Prometheus, tried to trick the master and king of

289
00:20:33,070 --> 00:20:35,180
all the cosmos, Zeus.

290
00:20:35,180 --> 00:20:38,780
[Christina Sorum] Prometheus is a trickster
god, he's a smart god.

291
00:20:38,780 --> 00:20:40,740
"Prometheus" means "forethought."

292
00:20:40,740 --> 00:20:44,500
Um, he—he killed a sheep
and he took the sheep

293
00:20:44,500 --> 00:20:50,330
and he took all the good, wonderful meat and
he put it inside the disgusting belly,

294
00:20:50,330 --> 00:20:54,670
and he took all the bare bones and
he wrapped them up in the beautiful

295
00:20:54,670 --> 00:20:58,293
white shining fat, which is of course what
burns in a sacrifice.

296
00:20:58,293 --> 00:21:03,200
And he presented these two bundles
to Zeus, and he said, "You pick."

297
00:21:03,850 --> 00:21:10,010
[narrator] Zeus knows he is being tricked
by Prometheus, who represents humankind.

298
00:21:10,010 --> 00:21:15,500
In retaliation, Zeus punishes
man by taking away fire.

299
00:21:15,500 --> 00:21:18,300
[ominous music]

300
00:21:18,300 --> 00:21:21,970
Prometheus, in return, steals
the fire back and gives it

301
00:21:21,970 --> 00:21:23,400
to humanity.

302
00:21:27,360 --> 00:21:30,220
[Thomas F. Scanlon] And by stealing
and giving men this gift of fire, he

303
00:21:30,220 --> 00:21:37,610
he was therefore punished indirectly by having
a woman created who was given to

304
00:21:37,610 --> 00:21:39,090
human beings.

305
00:21:39,090 --> 00:21:44,820
Now, Zeus didn't just sort of give
this evil thing, as he thought,

306
00:21:44,820 --> 00:21:46,420
to mankind.

307
00:21:46,420 --> 00:21:48,880
He called it a beautiful evil.

308
00:21:52,330 --> 00:21:54,040
She's one you can't
do without.

309
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:55,970
She's a <i>kalon kakon</i>

310
00:21:55,970 --> 00:21:58,590
in the terms of the Greek—
a "beautiful bad thing."

311
00:21:58,590 --> 00:22:01,310
And so Greek myth, Greek poetry,

312
00:22:01,310 --> 00:22:03,160
likes to have it both ways.

313
00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:07,310
Women are beautiful, women
are something irresistible.

314
00:22:07,310 --> 00:22:11,790
At the same time, women make you
work and so they're a bad thing.

315
00:22:11,790 --> 00:22:18,990
[Christina Sorum] I do think that,
throughout Greek mythology, you see a

316
00:22:18,990 --> 00:22:23,900
repeated emphasis on the
threat that women pose.

317
00:22:23,900 --> 00:22:26,420
The threat they pose because of

318
00:22:26,420 --> 00:22:35,130
your need for them, the need to have
children, and the very real fear of losing

319
00:22:35,130 --> 00:22:37,610
control because of desire.

320
00:22:37,610 --> 00:22:42,690
The overwhelming feminine
sexuality threatens men.

321
00:22:45,410 --> 00:22:50,010
[narrator] Zeus does not give
just any woman to men.

322
00:22:50,010 --> 00:22:51,330
Indeed, he gives men

323
00:22:51,330 --> 00:22:55,210
a <i>kalon kakon</i>, a beautiful evil.

324
00:22:55,210 --> 00:22:58,510
Her name is Pandora, and she comes with a

325
00:22:58,510 --> 00:23:04,371
jar full of evils to let loose in the world.

326
00:23:10,281 --> 00:23:14,600
The first woman in Greek
mythology is Pandora, and her story

327
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:19,490
echoes that of Eve and the forbidden fruit
in the Garden of Eden.

328
00:23:21,310 --> 00:23:29,230
Given a jar and told not to open it,
Pandora does so anyway, and all the evils

329
00:23:29,230 --> 00:23:31,520
of the world are let loose.

330
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:36,810
All sickness, pain, suffering, disease.

331
00:23:37,780 --> 00:23:39,030
Too late,

332
00:23:39,030 --> 00:23:44,640
she closes the jar leaving
only one thing behind: hope.

333
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:45,960
But what is hope doing

334
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:48,600
in Pandora's jar full of evils?

335
00:23:51,020 --> 00:23:58,170
Hope is there as an evil,
which is, I think, fascinating.

336
00:23:58,170 --> 00:24:04,860
Hope is an evil because hope allows
you to act with the sense that you

337
00:24:04,860 --> 00:24:12,270
can control the future, and in Hesiod,
that is a very dangerous thing to do.

338
00:24:12,270 --> 00:24:13,590
You can't control the future.

339
00:24:13,590 --> 00:24:16,330
And to be—it's to act under a delusion.

340
00:24:18,410 --> 00:24:22,290
[Thomas F. Scanlon] Is hope something
good or something bad?

341
00:24:22,290 --> 00:24:28,030
And the Greeks love this kind of dilemma
because hope was—could be good, could be bad.

342
00:24:28,030 --> 00:24:33,850
And so it was ambiguously left back in the
jar for humans to use or to avoid.

343
00:24:34,900 --> 00:24:38,930
[narrator] Pandora is perhaps the most
prominent, but certainly not the

344
00:24:38,930 --> 00:24:44,460
only example of women being a
source of evil in Greek mythology.

345
00:24:44,460 --> 00:24:49,970
Some scholars find a deeper meaning for this
disparagement of women, and point

346
00:24:49,970 --> 00:24:52,830
to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

347
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,309
[Christina Sorum] If you look at the
myths of Aphrodite, that she was the

348
00:24:58,309 --> 00:25:05,890
most beautiful and the most sexually desirable
thing ever, men are afraid of her.

349
00:25:05,890 --> 00:25:12,540
She—she sees a man, a human being,
Anchises, on a hill outside of Troy,

350
00:25:12,540 --> 00:25:14,870
and she wants to sleep with him.

351
00:25:14,870 --> 00:25:19,060
And she goes to him and he says,
"You are too beautiful to be a human.

352
00:25:19,060 --> 00:25:22,800
You must be a goddess and I
don't want to sleep with you."

353
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:26,830
And she says, "Oh, no, I'm just a
maiden from the neighborhood."

354
00:25:26,830 --> 00:25:32,900
They go to bed together, and and when he
wakes up, she's become her goddess self,

355
00:25:32,900 --> 00:25:34,040
and he's terrified.

356
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,480
He's terrified he's going to be
emasculated—that he'll lose

357
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:38,050
his strength.

358
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,710
[narrator] In contrast, the Ancient
Greeks believed that Athena,

359
00:25:44,710 --> 00:25:48,360
the goddess without a sexual
role, is a great force for good.

360
00:25:48,360 --> 00:25:50,060
[dramatic music]

361
00:25:50,060 --> 00:25:52,550
[Fritz Graf] Athena is the protector.

362
00:25:52,550 --> 00:25:55,130
Athena is the warrior divinity who

363
00:25:55,130 --> 00:25:59,000
leads the just defense war.

364
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:03,540
She is the city goddess and, in many respects,

365
00:26:03,540 --> 00:26:07,290
the most important divinity the Athenians have.

366
00:26:07,290 --> 00:26:09,420
And that might be true for many

367
00:26:09,420 --> 00:26:16,010
other city, where you have an acropolis
with the temple of Athena on top.

368
00:26:16,010 --> 00:26:20,020
[narrator] And thus the world of Greek
gods and goddesses is not merely

369
00:26:20,020 --> 00:26:25,671
a collection of colorful stories, but
a window on an ancient civilization,

370
00:26:25,671 --> 00:26:28,230
its thoughts and its values.

371
00:26:29,390 --> 00:26:32,460
[Richard Martin] The kind of non-linear
thinking that you see in myths,

372
00:26:32,460 --> 00:26:37,480
the sort of narratives that leap all around,
that introduce strange creatures,

373
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,670
look a lot like dreams.

374
00:26:39,670 --> 00:26:44,510
And so the question, I think,
is whether Greek myths are

375
00:26:44,510 --> 00:26:49,420
somehow the collective unconsciousness of
Greek civilization at an early period.

376
00:26:50,570 --> 00:26:54,330
[narrator] Whether conscious or
unconscious, the gods are very much

377
00:26:54,330 --> 00:26:57,850
present in the everyday
lives of ancient Greeks.

378
00:26:59,990 --> 00:27:03,760
[Thomas F. Scanlon] In each of the
mountains, in each of the plants,

379
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:08,100
in each of the emotions they felt,
they felt that there was a god in control

380
00:27:08,100 --> 00:27:09,540
behind this.

381
00:27:09,540 --> 00:27:12,300
[peaceful music]

382
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,610
One of this attractive
and unusual things about Greek

383
00:27:17,610 --> 00:27:23,170
religion from the beginning is its
responsiveness to environment.

384
00:27:23,170 --> 00:27:27,330
There are nymphs, for example,
who inhabit watery places.

385
00:27:27,330 --> 00:27:28,700
There are nymphs of the

386
00:27:28,700 --> 00:27:31,390
mountains, nymphs of the trees.

387
00:27:31,390 --> 00:27:36,030
There's an acknowledgement that
rivers are a kind of religious force.

388
00:27:36,030 --> 00:27:39,220
And Greek religion in this way has a certain

389
00:27:39,220 --> 00:27:43,990
affiliation with modern ecology—
the recognition that individual places have

390
00:27:43,990 --> 00:27:47,460
a value, a kind of numinous
quality, a sacred quality.

391
00:27:50,140 --> 00:27:53,130
[Richard F. Scanton] The Greeks had
particular terms for "sacred."

392
00:27:53,130 --> 00:27:53,980
In fact,

393
00:27:53,980 --> 00:27:56,060
they had several terms for "sacred."

394
00:27:56,060 --> 00:27:59,370
One of them is <i>heras.</i>

395
00:27:59,370 --> 00:28:00,900
And <i>heras</i> means that

396
00:28:00,900 --> 00:28:02,830
it belongs to the gods.

397
00:28:02,830 --> 00:28:07,500
In fact, the Greek word
for religion is <i>ta hiera,</i>

398
00:28:07,500 --> 00:28:09,320
"the sacred things."

399
00:28:10,470 --> 00:28:13,710
[narrator] And so, the stories in Greek
mythology are used to explain an

400
00:28:13,710 --> 00:28:16,610
often difficult and random world.

401
00:28:16,610 --> 00:28:19,880
[mysterious music]

402
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:25,520
Winter is born when Persephone,
daughter of the goddess Demeter,

403
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:31,550
is kidnapped by the god Hades and
taken to the underworld to be his bride.

404
00:28:32,900 --> 00:28:37,030
[Christina Sorum] Demeter was horrendously
upset to have lost her daughter

405
00:28:37,030 --> 00:28:40,340
and began searching the world
looking for her daughter.

406
00:28:40,340 --> 00:28:44,820
Couldn't find her daughter,
wept, cried, crops didn't grow.

407
00:28:44,820 --> 00:28:47,880
Hence, the gods weren't getting sacrifice.

408
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:51,960
So finally, some gods went to Zeus and said,
you know, you've got to

409
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,990
get Persephone back, so her mother makes the
crops grow so that we get our

410
00:28:54,990 --> 00:28:57,880
sacrifices and all the people don't die.

411
00:28:59,050 --> 00:29:03,430
[narrator] Eventually, Persephone is
allowed to return to her mother

412
00:29:03,430 --> 00:29:05,350
on one condition.

413
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:10,990
Each year, Persephone must
spend three months with Hades.

414
00:29:11,890 --> 00:29:16,980
It is during this time that her mother, Demeter,
goddess of agriculture,

415
00:29:16,980 --> 00:29:19,250
is inconsolable.

416
00:29:19,250 --> 00:29:25,800
And thus, each year, the fields lie
barren in the cold of winter.

417
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:30,600
And thus, life's larger hardships were explained.

418
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:31,910
Personal difficulties,

419
00:29:31,910 --> 00:29:36,100
however, were often explained
by some offense to the gods.

420
00:29:36,860 --> 00:29:38,150
Those who offended

421
00:29:38,150 --> 00:29:42,380
the gods were punished not by
some earthly authority, but by the

422
00:29:42,380 --> 00:29:44,340
gods themselves.

423
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,120
[thunder]

424
00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:56,240
[Greg Thalmann] There's a Greek word, in fact,
<i>deisidaimonia</i>, which means a fear of the gods

425
00:29:56,240 --> 00:30:00,400
or respect for the gods, and this
was a positive thing.

426
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:07,000
Life was felt to be fairly precarious and you
needed to do everything you could to get

427
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:11,400
whatever powers ruled the world
on your side to keep you safe.

428
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:13,090
Many of them

429
00:30:13,090 --> 00:30:18,940
lived one drought away from starvation,
and you just didn't mess around with

430
00:30:18,940 --> 00:30:20,260
the world like that.

431
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:25,121
One of the things
I love about Greek myth is it never

432
00:30:25,121 --> 00:30:27,280
lets people off the hook.

433
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:31,260
It never says, "This happened because
the gods made it happen."

434
00:30:31,260 --> 00:30:32,720
It's <i>our</i> fault.

435
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,680
If we can just understand why.

436
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:35,680
It's sort of a,

437
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,030
I think, a difficult world to exist in.

438
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,761
[narrator] In a difficult world, people
often look for a hero, someone

439
00:30:45,761 --> 00:30:50,980
to bring deliverance from a life seemingly
filled with adversity.

440
00:30:50,980 --> 00:30:52,020
Some believe

441
00:30:52,020 --> 00:30:57,940
a child born of a Greek god and an earthly
woman prefigures the appearance of Christ.

442
00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:02,050
Was this destined to happen?

443
00:31:06,990 --> 00:31:10,880
One of the most famous figures
in Greek mythology may possibly

444
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:15,690
have helped pave the way for a later event
pivotal to human history.

445
00:31:17,130 --> 00:31:22,900
Heracles, better known to us as Hercules,
is born because the great god Zeus

446
00:31:22,900 --> 00:31:26,140
lusted for a beautiful mortal woman.

447
00:31:27,050 --> 00:31:30,870
She, however, is a faithful wife.

448
00:31:30,870 --> 00:31:35,610
Zeus takes on the appearance of her
husband and manages to have her.

449
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,740
The outrage is compounded
by the fact that Zeus himself is

450
00:31:40,740 --> 00:31:45,380
married to one of his sisters, Hera.

451
00:31:46,980 --> 00:31:50,780
[Greg Thalman] The notion that
the gods are not always ethical,

452
00:31:50,780 --> 00:31:55,810
not always honest, is also one that
makes sense when you think about it.

453
00:31:55,810 --> 00:32:00,110
And the Greeks seem to have been
comfortable with it for many centuries.

454
00:32:00,110 --> 00:32:01,310
It makes sense

455
00:32:01,310 --> 00:32:10,740
because if the god are humans, but
better off somehow—more strong,

456
00:32:10,740 --> 00:32:16,740
more powerful, immortal—they never have
to take consequences of anything they do,

457
00:32:16,740 --> 00:32:18,480
whereas humans do.

458
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:23,450
The burden of acting ethically,
of thinking about consequences,

459
00:32:23,450 --> 00:32:26,640
falls on human beings, not on gods.

460
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:30,870
[narrator] Hera is unable to
vent her anger upon Zeus.

461
00:32:30,870 --> 00:32:32,550
[thunder]

462
00:32:32,550 --> 00:32:38,420
In a move entirely characteristic
of a Greek god, she turns

463
00:32:38,420 --> 00:32:42,280
her wrath on the child born
from her husband's infidelity.

464
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:43,820
Heracles is perhaps

465
00:32:43,820 --> 00:32:50,340
the most famous Greek hero, a figure
particularly important in Greek mythology.

466
00:32:51,550 --> 00:32:56,640
Even in his infancy, Heracles is a god with
extraordinary strength.

467
00:32:57,420 --> 00:33:00,800
Hera sends deadly serpents to his cradle,

468
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,030
and Heracles strangles them both.

469
00:33:03,030 --> 00:33:04,910
[dramatic music]

470
00:33:04,910 --> 00:33:09,010
[Greg Thalman] Many of the Greek heroes
did in fact have one divine

471
00:33:09,010 --> 00:33:11,590
parent and one mortal parent.

472
00:33:11,590 --> 00:33:16,380
More generally, a hero was a man of more than

473
00:33:16,380 --> 00:33:25,720
normal strength who was somehow marked out
for a life of achievement, but also

474
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,980
a life of enormous difficulty.

475
00:33:28,980 --> 00:33:32,300
Uh, they were very difficult,
uh, to integrate

476
00:33:32,300 --> 00:33:36,750
into society precisely because
of their great capacities.

477
00:33:36,750 --> 00:33:39,900
[narrator] The vengeful Hera continues
to pursue her husband's

478
00:33:39,900 --> 00:33:45,500
illegitimate son throughout his life,
periodically driving him into fits of

479
00:33:45,500 --> 00:33:48,320
anger and madness.

480
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:53,990
Deeply regretting the murders
and other crimes he commits

481
00:33:53,990 --> 00:34:01,200
during these fits, Heracles undertakes great
tasks of repentance, often the

482
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:03,760
killing of tyrants and monsters.

483
00:34:07,330 --> 00:34:13,190
At the end of his life, Heracles
is granted immortality,

484
00:34:13,190 --> 00:34:17,110
and taken by his father Zeus to
live with him on Mount Olympus.

485
00:34:23,090 --> 00:34:27,659
And thus, the story of Heracles
may have paved the way for

486
00:34:27,659 --> 00:34:33,960
the Apostle Paul, who brought word of a new
faith to the Greeks centuries later.

487
00:34:35,870 --> 00:34:40,889
[Richard Martin] They had a story of
a son of god, Heracles, who suffered

488
00:34:40,889 --> 00:34:46,580
and died and then went through an apotheosis,
himself went up to Olympus,

489
00:34:46,580 --> 00:34:51,949
and so the story of another son of God who
suffered and died and went to heaven

490
00:34:51,949 --> 00:34:54,940
would not be all that non-familiar.

491
00:34:54,940 --> 00:34:57,500
In the same way, the notion that a god could

492
00:34:57,500 --> 00:35:02,150
take on human form and look exactly like one
of us, was completely acceptable

493
00:35:02,150 --> 00:35:04,410
to a pagan Greek audience.

494
00:35:04,410 --> 00:35:09,150
And so early Christianity
proceeded in Greece and struck

495
00:35:09,150 --> 00:35:11,180
roots in Greece quite easily.

496
00:35:12,460 --> 00:35:18,340
Not quite a Christ figure,
but elements of that, because

497
00:35:18,340 --> 00:35:24,730
it was someone—someone who through toil
and suffering and labor and loyalty

498
00:35:24,730 --> 00:35:27,070
achieved divinity.

499
00:35:27,670 --> 00:35:33,630
[narrator] While Heracles is unique,
he is only one of many heroes who

500
00:35:33,630 --> 00:35:36,930
walk among the Greeks.

501
00:35:36,930 --> 00:35:42,590
There are Achilles and Ulysses,
great warrior of the Trojan War.

502
00:35:42,590 --> 00:35:46,730
And Theseus, whose feats
include killing the dreaded Minotaur,

503
00:35:46,730 --> 00:35:50,570
the creature that feasted on
the flesh of Greek youths.

504
00:35:50,570 --> 00:35:53,350
[foreboding music]

505
00:35:53,350 --> 00:35:58,640
[narrator] But heroes did not have to
be offspring of the gods, nor were

506
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:03,560
they necessarily heroic in today's terms,
risking grave danger for the sake

507
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,470
of others.

508
00:36:06,590 --> 00:36:10,480
For the ancient Greeks, a hero was
someone who broke the bonds of

509
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:15,190
ordinary life, regardless of the consequences.

510
00:36:16,610 --> 00:36:20,320
[Richard Martin] It's not necessary
that a hero be descended from a god or

511
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:25,000
a goddess, it's not necessary that a hero
even do something good in life.

512
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,570
And so achievement is more doing something
extraordinary and being recognized

513
00:36:29,570 --> 00:36:30,880
for it.

514
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:34,960
Now the extraordinary thing that a
hero could do could even be killing

515
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:39,300
a number of the enemy, or killing
people in his own community,

516
00:36:39,300 --> 00:36:45,730
in such a strange fashion that the gods
have to be consulted, so the heroes are

517
00:36:45,730 --> 00:36:50,650
dangerous, unusual individuals,
extraordinary but not necessarily

518
00:36:50,650 --> 00:36:52,760
extraordinary good.

519
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:57,490
Heroes really are a projection
of what it is to be human on

520
00:36:57,490 --> 00:36:58,630
a large scale.

521
00:36:58,630 --> 00:37:02,880
They really focus both the great
potential of human beings at

522
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,510
their best and also the, uh,
the vulnerabilities of humans.

523
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:16,080
[narrator] Another unlikely hero is
Oedipus, who kills his father and

524
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:17,910
marries his mother.

525
00:37:19,730 --> 00:37:24,990
Having fulfilled his terrible
fate, Oedipus then blinds himself

526
00:37:24,990 --> 00:37:27,010
and seeks redemption.

527
00:37:29,020 --> 00:37:32,880
It is a story for the ages,
speaking to the darker side of

528
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:36,960
feelings between parents
and their children.

529
00:37:38,670 --> 00:37:42,450
I think there definitely
was a thread of Greek

530
00:37:42,450 --> 00:37:47,110
culture and of Greek mythology which was
interested in the conflict between

531
00:37:47,110 --> 00:37:48,750
father and son.

532
00:37:48,750 --> 00:37:53,550
Obviously Freud—Sigmund Freud—
saw this and picked up on it

533
00:37:53,550 --> 00:37:57,240
in the story of the Oedipus
and the Oedipus Complex.

534
00:37:57,240 --> 00:37:59,370
And I think there was a

535
00:37:59,370 --> 00:38:04,990
threat of generational conflict that the Greeks
actually feared, but recognized

536
00:38:04,990 --> 00:38:07,530
as real at the same time.

537
00:38:08,750 --> 00:38:14,650
[narrator] The story of Oedipus and
his parents raises another age-old question:

538
00:38:14,650 --> 00:38:17,320
Are the lives of humans preordained?

539
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,360
Or do humans have the

540
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:21,600
power to exercise free will?

541
00:38:26,340 --> 00:38:31,530
Oedipus is someone who
for no reason ever given has—has

542
00:38:31,530 --> 00:38:36,340
this fate that he will kill his father and
marry his mother.

543
00:38:36,340 --> 00:38:39,130
When Oedipus has

544
00:38:39,130 --> 00:38:46,010
realized that he is not the son of the king
of Corinth as he thought he was,

545
00:38:46,010 --> 00:38:50,250
he says I'd count myself as the child of chance.

546
00:38:50,250 --> 00:38:51,440
And by chance, he means

547
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:53,540
something very random.

548
00:38:53,540 --> 00:38:58,750
Uh, there is no plan.
Uh, by the end of the play,

549
00:38:58,750 --> 00:39:04,870
it's turned out that everything he's ever
done has fit into a plan and that, uh,

550
00:39:04,870 --> 00:39:11,130
if he is the child of chance, it's chance
in a sense that's closely aligned with fate.

551
00:39:13,090 --> 00:39:19,220
[Christina Sorum] He, Oedipus,
the man, made choices.

552
00:39:19,220 --> 00:39:20,220
When he learned he

553
00:39:20,220 --> 00:39:24,510
was going to kill his father and marry his
mother, he fled his home not

554
00:39:24,510 --> 00:39:26,270
knowing he was adopted.

555
00:39:26,270 --> 00:39:29,370
Um, and of course meets his father
on the road and kills him and

556
00:39:29,370 --> 00:39:31,940
then arrives in the city
and marries his mother.

557
00:39:31,940 --> 00:39:35,620
Um, he chose to leave his home.

558
00:39:35,620 --> 00:39:40,970
Uh, he did a terrible thing, but he didn't
do it trying to do evil.

559
00:39:40,970 --> 00:39:41,970
And fate

560
00:39:41,970 --> 00:39:43,940
didn't make him do it.

561
00:39:46,170 --> 00:39:50,800
[narrator] The question of a person's
fate versus the role of free will

562
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:57,400
was of such importance to the ancient Greeks
that they personified fate in

563
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:00,470
the form of three goddess.

564
00:40:02,580 --> 00:40:07,380
[Richard Martin] When you read the poetry
of Homer, it seems that it goes two ways.

565
00:40:07,380 --> 00:40:11,540
On the one hand, the Fates are
a group of three women,

566
00:40:11,540 --> 00:40:14,450
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

567
00:40:14,450 --> 00:40:17,489
Their names meaning
"the weaver," "the alloter,"

568
00:40:17,489 --> 00:40:20,040
and "not turning back."

569
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:23,450
And they weave a thread for each person's
life when that

570
00:40:23,450 --> 00:40:27,670
person is born and determine when
that person's life is gonna end.

571
00:40:27,670 --> 00:40:28,720
On the other hand,

572
00:40:28,720 --> 00:40:33,870
we see in Homer's poetry that fate is
power above the gods.

573
00:40:33,870 --> 00:40:34,870
The gods

574
00:40:34,870 --> 00:40:37,880
bow to fate in several instances.

575
00:40:38,730 --> 00:40:42,970
[Christina Sorum] You can look at the
story of Oedipus and talk about fate.

576
00:40:42,970 --> 00:40:47,070
Was he fated to kill his father
and marry his mother?

577
00:40:47,070 --> 00:40:48,070
Yes.

578
00:40:48,070 --> 00:40:49,470
What does that mean?

579
00:40:49,470 --> 00:40:52,050
Does that mean he didn't have any free will?

580
00:40:52,050 --> 00:40:53,050
No.

581
00:40:53,050 --> 00:40:54,180
It doesn't mean that.

582
00:40:54,180 --> 00:40:55,280
It means

583
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:58,440
that's what was going to happen.

584
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:02,510
The Greeks had a complicated
view of how the world worked.

585
00:41:02,510 --> 00:41:08,450
On the one hand, the gods controlled a lot
of actions of human beings or

586
00:41:08,450 --> 00:41:10,550
had an effect upon it.

587
00:41:10,550 --> 00:41:14,330
But yet, the humans also
could control their own

588
00:41:14,330 --> 00:41:17,670
individual destinies and
call a lot of the shots.

589
00:41:17,670 --> 00:41:18,670
So there's this funny

590
00:41:18,670 --> 00:41:23,680
relationship between what the gods control
and what humans control.

591
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:24,600
And you know what?

592
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:26,900
They loved this ambiguity.

593
00:41:27,940 --> 00:41:31,070
[narrator] And so the ancient Greeks
came to terms with the fact that

594
00:41:31,070 --> 00:41:34,310
there were no guarantees in life.

595
00:41:35,860 --> 00:41:38,090
Some of their concerns seem hauntingly

596
00:41:38,090 --> 00:41:39,900
familiar today.

597
00:41:41,500 --> 00:41:46,070
[Richard Marin] This consciousness that
the Greeks have, that you cannot

598
00:41:46,070 --> 00:41:50,180
have too many generations on the Earth at
the same time, is even expressed in a myth,

599
00:41:50,180 --> 00:41:54,740
the myth of the beginning of the Trojan War,
which says that the Earth

600
00:41:54,740 --> 00:42:00,940
was burdened with too many people and cried
out to Zeus to relieve her buden.

601
00:42:00,940 --> 00:42:05,200
And so Zeus invented the Trojan War
to get rid of a lot of people.

602
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:07,050
[dramatic music]

603
00:42:07,550 --> 00:42:10,290
[mysterious music]

604
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:19,550
The stories of the gods and
goddesses of ancient Greece

605
00:42:19,550 --> 00:42:21,520
are eternal.

606
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:24,230
They still speak to us today.

607
00:42:27,860 --> 00:42:31,080
Among the deities were two
groups of lovely sisters who

608
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,870
dwelt on Mount Olympus:

609
00:42:33,870 --> 00:42:36,410
The Graces and the Muses.

610
00:42:36,410 --> 00:42:38,310
The Graces bestowed beauty,

611
00:42:38,310 --> 00:42:42,920
charm, and gratitude on the mortal world.

612
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,170
The Muses had a profound impact on

613
00:42:45,170 --> 00:42:49,451
how generations since have passed the
tales of the gods and the sagas of that

614
00:42:49,451 --> 00:42:52,030
long-gone era through oral tradition.

615
00:42:52,030 --> 00:42:54,050
[peaceful music]

616
00:42:56,290 --> 00:43:00,300
From their lofty plain, they
descended to the Earth teaching

617
00:43:00,300 --> 00:43:03,570
history, astronomy, and the arts.

618
00:43:05,570 --> 00:43:08,850
[Katerina Zacharia] Each one of the
nine Muses is associated with a

619
00:43:08,850 --> 00:43:13,600
particular subject, usually concerning the
arts and sciences.

620
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:14,600
For instance,

621
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:19,440
Cleo, the proclaimer, is the one
that is associated with epic poetry

622
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,510
and is the Muse of history.

623
00:43:22,510 --> 00:43:25,610
Now the Muses are very
well known because we have

624
00:43:25,610 --> 00:43:31,280
words like "museum," the [inaudible] of the
Muses that are in contemporary English

625
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,240
and of course Greek.

626
00:43:34,870 --> 00:43:40,720
[Christina Sorum] Greek stories are
about those things that people regard

627
00:43:40,720 --> 00:43:41,810
as important.

628
00:43:41,810 --> 00:43:44,560
They wouldn't have persisted if they weren't.

629
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:45,560
I mean, if stories

630
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:50,790
are going to last and be retold for several
thousand years, there must be

631
00:43:50,790 --> 00:43:54,610
something in them that has meaning for the
people who hear them

632
00:43:54,610 --> 00:43:57,819
across generations.

633
00:43:57,819 --> 00:44:00,400
[narrator] Evidence of the
divine was everywhere.

634
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:03,030
To the Greeks, the gods

635
00:44:03,030 --> 00:44:07,040
were as real as the fields they tilled and
the families they raised.

636
00:44:09,290 --> 00:44:13,290
[Greg Thalman] The number of little
shrines that would be all around

637
00:44:13,290 --> 00:44:19,170
the city, the number of dedications to gods
in big sanctuaries, really does speak

638
00:44:19,170 --> 00:44:23,580
to a pretty strong belief in them.

639
00:44:23,580 --> 00:44:28,660
Life was felt to be fairly precarious and

640
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:32,910
you needed to do everything you could to get
whatever powers ruled the world

641
00:44:32,910 --> 00:44:36,110
on your side to keep safe.

642
00:44:36,690 --> 00:44:41,630
[narrator] From cradle to grave and
from season to season, every phase of

643
00:44:41,630 --> 00:44:45,460
human life was intertwined with the gods.

644
00:44:46,720 --> 00:44:51,750
[narrator] As ever-present as they
were for the ancient Greeks, the

645
00:44:51,750 --> 00:44:55,869
same gods were not always
worshiped throughout the land.

646
00:44:55,869 --> 00:45:03,330
3,000 years ago, Greece was a patchwork of
independent city-states linked by

647
00:45:03,330 --> 00:45:06,620
a common language, culture, and trade.

648
00:45:07,900 --> 00:45:11,060
But while the principle deities
such as Zeus, Prometheus,

649
00:45:11,060 --> 00:45:15,950
and Demeter were worshiped in all of
the more than 700 different city-states,

650
00:45:15,950 --> 00:45:20,690
each town and village laid claim to
its own god.

651
00:45:23,870 --> 00:45:28,150
Richard Martin] The landscape
of Greece is just full of gods,

652
00:45:28,150 --> 00:45:30,950
gods who might not even be
heard of in the next village.

653
00:45:30,950 --> 00:45:32,611
Every little stream,

654
00:45:32,611 --> 00:45:37,660
every spring of fresh water—something you
come to appreciate in the dusty Greek

655
00:45:37,660 --> 00:45:40,570
climate—has its own divinity.

656
00:45:41,720 --> 00:45:44,390
[Thomas F. Scanlon] The hills
divided up village from village

657
00:45:44,390 --> 00:45:46,320
and people from people.

658
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:50,700
So each village was encouraged to have its
own favorite gods and

659
00:45:50,700 --> 00:45:52,540
its own favorite heroes.

660
00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:55,360
And I think that, in terms
of the natural layout of

661
00:45:55,360 --> 00:46:00,470
the land, was very important in the formation
of myth and of their religion.

662
00:46:02,090 --> 00:46:06,480
[narrator] The gods were many,
as were their functions.

663
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:11,460
Hermes was the protector of flocks and herds
of domesticated animals.

664
00:46:11,460 --> 00:46:16,180
Hera was the goddess of
marriage as well as paternity.

665
00:46:16,180 --> 00:46:19,980
Eros prevailed over matters of love.

666
00:46:19,980 --> 00:46:23,180
Hephaestus was the god of fire and volcanoes.

667
00:46:24,240 --> 00:46:27,460
Poseidon ruled over the sea.

668
00:46:27,460 --> 00:46:30,740
There was Pan, part human and part goat.

669
00:46:30,740 --> 00:46:33,780
He was recognized as the shepherds' god.

670
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:40,690
And there was Artemis, protector
of nature and the young.

671
00:46:41,970 --> 00:46:46,530
Artemis is associated
with young, blooming nature,

672
00:46:46,530 --> 00:46:48,160
with young animals.

673
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:52,950
But Artemis is also associated with the initiation
of young women.

674
00:46:52,950 --> 00:46:57,400
So there's a continuum in Greek thinking between
what happens in the

675
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:01,180
natural world and what happens in what we
would identify as a very different

676
00:47:01,180 --> 00:47:02,990
human social sphere.

677
00:47:02,990 --> 00:47:05,660
To Greek mythological thinking, these are
all part of the

678
00:47:05,660 --> 00:47:06,860
same phenomenon.

679
00:47:06,860 --> 00:47:09,870
And that's why Artemis can be the huntress,
the one who is

680
00:47:09,870 --> 00:47:14,790
associated with the wild, but also the one
who tames young girls.

681
00:47:16,070 --> 00:47:20,190
[narrator] Of all the deities that influenced
human life, Demeter was

682
00:47:20,190 --> 00:47:22,420
one of the most important.

683
00:47:22,420 --> 00:47:26,240
Celebrated once every five years,
she was the goddess

684
00:47:26,240 --> 00:47:28,140
of corn and crops.

685
00:47:30,610 --> 00:47:34,040
Greeks looked at
and lived with their landscape for an

686
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:39,600
awfully long time and developed stories by
watching nature and by living with it.

687
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:44,340
And the worship of a kind of Earth-goddess
who protected the Earth and

688
00:47:44,340 --> 00:47:50,270
saw to the welfare of the crops and withheld
the crops if people didn't behave themselves,

689
00:47:50,270 --> 00:47:53,359
all of that was part of the Greek view of
the cycle of nature.

690
00:47:53,359 --> 00:47:58,970
[narrator] The relationship between
man and the divine was not simple.

691
00:47:58,970 --> 00:48:02,030
However, theirs was an uneasy alliance.

692
00:48:02,030 --> 00:48:04,170
Though the gods were powerful and

693
00:48:04,170 --> 00:48:08,330
immortal, they were not
beyond human questioning.

694
00:48:08,330 --> 00:48:09,460
The ancient Greeks often

695
00:48:09,460 --> 00:48:12,480
criticized the immoral behavior of the gods.

696
00:48:15,620 --> 00:48:18,340
They could act in excess.

697
00:48:18,340 --> 00:48:20,140
Each one had passions,

698
00:48:20,140 --> 00:48:27,119
had made mistakes, but the mortals
had to respect their own boundaries.

699
00:48:27,119 --> 00:48:30,609
This is the main difference
between gods and mortals.

700
00:48:30,609 --> 00:48:31,730
Gods could do anything

701
00:48:31,730 --> 00:48:35,100
they liked, do as they please.

702
00:48:35,100 --> 00:48:39,060
Mortals had to refrain from excess.

703
00:48:39,060 --> 00:48:45,460
Greek gods and goddesses are facets of
what could become of a deadly passion,

704
00:48:45,460 --> 00:48:49,960
what could happen to mortals if they
really step over a boundary.

705
00:48:52,660 --> 00:48:55,360
[Richard Martin] Now we might think
of criticizing the gods as a kind of

706
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:59,470
blasphemy, but in fact it reinforces the notion
that the gods do exist.

707
00:48:59,470 --> 00:49:05,250
I think what was really being criticized
were other Greeks' attitudes about the gods.

708
00:49:05,250 --> 00:49:08,440
Something that's very hard for us to understand
is that the Greeks could play

709
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:10,180
with their notions of gods.

710
00:49:10,180 --> 00:49:16,150
[narrator] Superior to the humans over
whom they held sway, the gods were

711
00:49:16,150 --> 00:49:21,030
nevertheless subject to the same passions,
failures, and weaknesses of mortals.

712
00:49:22,220 --> 00:49:26,190
They knew love, despair, and tragedy.

713
00:49:27,330 --> 00:49:29,640
They took on human form and were

714
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:32,700
vulnerable to injury and illness.

715
00:49:32,700 --> 00:49:36,310
But unlike people, they healed quickly.

716
00:49:37,780 --> 00:49:40,400
Thomas F. Scanlon] Of course, they
weren't just humans.

717
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:42,840
They were different from
humans in many ways.

718
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:45,520
They first of all obviously never died,

719
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:49,800
secondly they had incredible
powers of strength and knowledge.

720
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:56,200
But the reason why they're in human form 
is that the Greeks had tremendous pride

721
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:58,230
in the human form.

722
00:49:58,230 --> 00:50:01,780
The Greeks had such high value
for the perfection of human

723
00:50:01,780 --> 00:50:07,930
intelligence and physicality that they could
not imagine a more perfect form to

724
00:50:07,930 --> 00:50:09,560
attribute to the gods.

725
00:50:10,860 --> 00:50:17,620
[Greg Thalman] This notion that the
gods are "humans-plus" seems to have

726
00:50:17,620 --> 00:50:20,890
answered a very deep need in the Greeks.

727
00:50:20,890 --> 00:50:23,710
It's a sort of fantasy of overcoming

728
00:50:23,710 --> 00:50:27,520
all the weaknesses that make
us humans what we are.

729
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:30,610
[dramatic music]

730
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:36,220
[narrator] The gods were also subject
to similar laws which governed humanity.

731
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:40,790
Hermes was the guardian of travelers.

732
00:50:40,790 --> 00:50:42,100
When he cleared a pathway

733
00:50:42,100 --> 00:50:49,140
by killing the hundred-eyed monster called
Argos, he had to stand trial for the deed.

734
00:50:50,570 --> 00:50:51,950
[Christina Sorum] Well, he killed.

735
00:50:51,950 --> 00:50:54,050
He's a god but he's polluted.

736
00:50:54,050 --> 00:50:56,070
And so he had to stand trial.

737
00:50:56,070 --> 00:51:00,410
And the way the gods all cast their votes
was by putting a stone at his foot,

738
00:51:00,410 --> 00:51:04,300
which made a stone heap,
which is called a "herm."

739
00:51:05,870 --> 00:51:09,630
[narrator] Though the gods were not
perfect, they were not powers to

740
00:51:09,630 --> 00:51:12,040
be trifled with.

741
00:51:12,690 --> 00:51:18,130
[Greg Thalman] What you did need to
do was be careful not to offend the

742
00:51:18,130 --> 00:51:24,910
gods, not to set yourself up as the gods' equal,
not to be arrogant in that way,

743
00:51:24,910 --> 00:51:27,180
because that was inviting disaster.

744
00:51:27,180 --> 00:51:29,550
Not from any other humans, but from the

745
00:51:29,550 --> 00:51:30,550
gods themselves.

746
00:51:31,940 --> 00:51:37,200
There's the story of Salmoneus,
who had himself driven

747
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:44,470
around on a cart, banging on shields or some
noise-making implement, saying that

748
00:51:44,470 --> 00:51:50,540
he was Zeus and trying to imitate Zeus' thunder,
and he was probably dispatching

749
00:51:50,540 --> 00:51:51,860
a thunderbolt.

750
00:51:51,860 --> 00:51:53,510
[thunder]

751
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:58,170
I think everybody believed
that somebody really

752
00:51:58,170 --> 00:52:02,350
powerful had to be in charge of lightning,
and the obvious candidate was Zeus.

753
00:52:02,350 --> 00:52:05,000
Zeus was a weather god, primarily.

754
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:07,870
In fact, when it rained,
you said "Zeus is raining."

755
00:52:07,870 --> 00:52:09,650
You didn't say "It's raining."

756
00:52:09,650 --> 00:52:13,060
And so lightning, this powerful,

757
00:52:13,060 --> 00:52:16,830
strange thing that can kill you, obviously
had to be under the control of

758
00:52:16,830 --> 00:52:19,040
someone like Zeus.

759
00:52:20,250 --> 00:52:24,700
[narrator] In Athens, the people also
worshiped a god with no name,

760
00:52:24,700 --> 00:52:28,740
one who was simply referred
to as the "unknown god."

761
00:52:30,030 --> 00:52:32,369
[Richard Martin] The shrine to the unknown
god was probably the

762
00:52:32,369 --> 00:52:36,580
Athenians' way, in their own
religious system, of covering their bets.

763
00:52:36,580 --> 00:52:40,340
Just in case there was a god out there that
they hadn't managed to worship, a god

764
00:52:40,340 --> 00:52:41,520
that might do something to them,

765
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:44,080
they had a shrine to the unknown god.

766
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:49,190
[narrator] The Greeks rationalized the
world around them.

767
00:52:49,190 --> 00:52:52,430
Philosophy and intellectual
thought flourished,

768
00:52:52,430 --> 00:52:56,060
most of all, in Athens.

769
00:52:56,060 --> 00:52:57,619
It was here that Athena

770
00:52:57,619 --> 00:53:01,710
presided in noble splendor over the people.

771
00:53:01,710 --> 00:53:04,630
Goddess of war and patron of the arts,

772
00:53:04,630 --> 00:53:10,650
she was honored in the form of a gold
ebony and ivory statue at the Parthenon.

773
00:53:11,590 --> 00:53:14,930
It was believed that her symbolic presence
would make the city

774
00:53:14,930 --> 00:53:17,650
invincible to attack.

775
00:53:19,820 --> 00:53:23,660
Thousands came to pay tribute to her here
in one of the

776
00:53:23,660 --> 00:53:25,890
finest buildings ever constructed.

777
00:53:26,650 --> 00:53:32,290
But of all the sacred places
in Ancient Greece, few approached

778
00:53:32,290 --> 00:53:38,880
the significance of a tree-lined valley of
unsurpassed beauty and strange power.

779
00:53:40,110 --> 00:53:44,630
For it was here that the Greeks
came to learn of their future.

780
00:53:48,900 --> 00:53:51,810
This is Olympia.

781
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:58,300
2,500 years ago, a
40-foot-high statue stood here.

782
00:53:59,770 --> 00:54:04,020
It was made of gold and ivory and was
considered one of the seven wonders

783
00:54:04,020 --> 00:54:05,910
of the ancient world.

784
00:54:06,530 --> 00:54:11,170
Dedicated to Zeus in celebration
of his omnipotence, this

785
00:54:11,170 --> 00:54:17,740
ancient wonder presided over the oldest known
organized sporting event on Earth,

786
00:54:17,740 --> 00:54:20,240
the Olympic games.

787
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:26,190
[Richard F. Scanton] Every four years,
the Greeks from all over the Greek

788
00:54:26,190 --> 00:54:30,910
world and the islands in Italy would come
to Olympia to celebrate this festival.

789
00:54:31,900 --> 00:54:37,170
[narrator] Restricted to only males,
including spectators, naked athletes

790
00:54:37,170 --> 00:54:43,130
competed for crown and glory
under a burning sun in five events:

791
00:54:43,130 --> 00:54:50,510
the broad jump, discus throwing,
javelin hurling, wrestling, and the

792
00:54:50,510 --> 00:54:52,400
200-yard dash.

793
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:54,400
[triumphant music]

794
00:54:55,280 --> 00:55:01,170
While the object of the games
was to win, the purpose was to worship.

795
00:55:02,510 --> 00:55:06,250
[Richard F. Scanton] According to one
scholar, David Sansone, he believed

796
00:55:06,250 --> 00:55:12,750
that the athletic event is an expenditure
of ritual energy for the gods.

797
00:55:12,750 --> 00:55:19,140
And in fact, one way of showing this is that
what the athletes did was sweat.

798
00:55:19,140 --> 00:55:22,770
And they sweat and they had dirt
on them and they had olive oil on.

799
00:55:22,770 --> 00:55:23,770
And after

800
00:55:23,770 --> 00:55:30,780
they finished competing, they cleaned off
the scum from their skin using a strigil.

801
00:55:30,780 --> 00:55:35,080
And they actually collected the scum from
the athletes, which was

802
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,180
thought to have magical properties.

803
00:55:37,180 --> 00:55:40,580
And in a sense, they were reaping the

804
00:55:40,580 --> 00:55:47,890
product of human energy and having this as
a magical potion that the gods would honor.

805
00:55:49,740 --> 00:55:53,609
[narrator] This, then, was Olympia.

806
00:55:53,609 --> 00:55:55,520
And to this day around the world,

807
00:55:55,520 --> 00:56:01,010
winning an Olympic event remains an
accomplishment beyond comparison.

808
00:56:04,330 --> 00:56:07,829
[Constantine] Winner had the
luck to win the Olympic games and

809
00:56:07,829 --> 00:56:09,930
come first.

810
00:56:09,930 --> 00:56:14,690
My country hadn't had the first place in any
Olympics for over fifty years.

811
00:56:14,690 --> 00:56:18,410
All this was very exciting for a young person.

812
00:56:18,410 --> 00:56:20,170
You know, the idea that

813
00:56:20,170 --> 00:56:21,820
you get on to the podium.

814
00:56:21,820 --> 00:56:24,590
Your achievement is honored only by a

815
00:56:24,590 --> 00:56:26,910
medal and nothing else.

816
00:56:26,910 --> 00:56:29,780
You hear the national anthem
of your country, you see

817
00:56:29,780 --> 00:56:33,170
the great flag going up,
these things remain in your mind.

818
00:56:33,170 --> 00:56:34,210
And I—I've often

819
00:56:34,210 --> 00:56:38,230
said that that is the greatest feeling in
my life, other than getting engaged

820
00:56:38,230 --> 00:56:40,520
to my wife.

821
00:56:41,810 --> 00:56:46,760
[narrator] Another site central to the
ancient Greeks is Delphi.

822
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:51,470
Mystical and mysterious, Delphi is perhaps
best known as a place where a

823
00:56:51,470 --> 00:56:55,640
famous oracle resided.

824
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:59,650
Also known as the Oracle of Apollo,
she provided clues

825
00:56:59,650 --> 00:57:02,349
to those who sought insight into the future.

826
00:57:02,349 --> 00:57:04,560
[mysterious music]

827
00:57:05,380 --> 00:57:10,030
[Richard F. Scanton] The Oracle of Apollo
was a priestess who was named

828
00:57:10,030 --> 00:57:16,630
the "Pythia," people would come from all over
the known world to seek the advice

829
00:57:16,630 --> 00:57:20,140
of this priestess for important questions—

830
00:57:20,140 --> 00:57:24,360
often affairs of state,
political questions and direction.

831
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:32,120
[narrator] Unfortunately, the oracle spoke
in a language no one could understand.

832
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:36,970
Her pronouncements on the future
had to be translated by a prophet,

833
00:57:36,970 --> 00:57:40,750
but even then her prophecies were
often obscure.

834
00:57:40,750 --> 00:57:47,900
There's one famous
ambiguous answer in which

835
00:57:47,900 --> 00:57:52,330
a great king asks the oracle,
"Should I go to war?"

836
00:57:52,330 --> 00:57:54,500
And the oracle says, "If you go

837
00:57:54,500 --> 00:57:57,400
to war, you will destroy a great kingdom."

838
00:57:57,400 --> 00:57:59,230
And so the guy goes to war, and

839
00:57:59,230 --> 00:58:01,820
of course his kingdom is
the great one destroyed.

840
00:58:01,820 --> 00:58:03,850
He should've read that the right way.

841
00:58:03,850 --> 00:58:08,580
The oracle always gives you a
kind of question in return—a puzzle,

842
00:58:08,580 --> 00:58:11,300
an enigma—that you have to answer.

843
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:17,090
[Christina Sorum] Humans are born,
and they grow up, and they make a

844
00:58:17,090 --> 00:58:19,340
choice to do this and to do that.

845
00:58:19,340 --> 00:58:21,500
At any point in their life, they could go

846
00:58:21,500 --> 00:58:28,730
to Delphi, and hear an oracle, like,
"Beware of the sea because it will kill you."

847
00:58:28,730 --> 00:58:34,270
And you spend your whole life avoiding the
sea so that you won't get killed.

848
00:58:34,270 --> 00:58:39,349
Then one day, you're in an aquarium and a
tank bursts and you drown in the

849
00:58:39,349 --> 00:58:44,070
seawater in this salt-water aquarium, or
something more sensible than that.

850
00:58:44,070 --> 00:58:45,800
Did fate make that happen?

851
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:46,590
No.

852
00:58:46,590 --> 00:58:49,150
It's just the god knew the
future and could say

853
00:58:49,150 --> 00:58:51,460
that it was going to happen.

854
00:58:51,460 --> 00:58:53,040
[peaceful music]

855
00:58:53,040 --> 00:58:58,070
[narrator] Delphi was also the place
where the son of Zeus presided.

856
00:58:58,070 --> 00:59:01,290
His name was Apollo.

857
00:59:01,290 --> 00:59:05,700
In addition to presiding over Delphi,
Apollo had other responsibilities.

858
00:59:07,660 --> 00:59:12,610
He was the god associated
with sexuality and love.

859
00:59:12,610 --> 00:59:13,860
Ironically,

860
00:59:13,860 --> 00:59:17,770
Apollo himself was never
known to be a great lover.

861
00:59:19,470 --> 00:59:22,000
[Christina Sorum] Apollo is beautiful.

862
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:24,010
He's the most beautiful male,

863
00:59:24,010 --> 00:59:27,450
as Aphrodite is the most beautiful female.

864
00:59:27,450 --> 00:59:31,690
He is the best athlete, he is a

865
00:59:31,690 --> 00:59:39,640
beautiful singer, he is strong and a marvelous
archer, he's your perfect

866
00:59:39,640 --> 00:59:41,790
human being—your perfect male.

867
00:59:41,790 --> 00:59:45,390
And he has this sad, sad life.

868
00:59:45,390 --> 00:59:46,390
He falls in love

869
00:59:46,390 --> 00:59:49,710
over and over and over and
none of the women want him.

870
00:59:49,710 --> 00:59:56,950
And he attempted to rape girls
at certain occasions in his life.

871
00:59:56,950 --> 01:00:03,830
He's really a god, I think, of distance and
rationality more than a god of love.

872
01:00:05,110 --> 01:00:08,480
[narrator] Perhaps the most tragic
of Apollo's romantic escapades was

873
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:15,609
his love for Cassandra,
daughter of the king of Troy.

874
01:00:15,609 --> 01:00:18,010
As Greek mythology would have it,

875
01:00:18,010 --> 01:00:21,950
Apollo and Cassandra's tragic affair
would directly impact the course

876
01:00:21,950 --> 01:00:23,590
of history.

877
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:29,120
[Christina Sorum] He falls in love
with Cassandra, who is a princess in

878
01:00:29,120 --> 01:00:34,860
Troy, and he says, you know, "I'll give you
the gift of prophecy if you will

879
01:00:34,860 --> 01:00:36,460
sleep with me."

880
01:00:36,460 --> 01:00:43,880
And she says "Okay" and he does, and
then he—she rejects him, and he makes

881
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:48,460
it so no one will ever believe
any of her prophecies.

882
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:54,210
[narrator] And thus, according to
Homer, a seemingly insignificant

883
01:00:54,210 --> 01:00:58,369
lovers' squabble later played a major role
in one of the classic battles of the

884
01:00:58,369 --> 01:01:03,359
ancient world: the Trojan War.

885
01:01:05,809 --> 01:01:11,200
The Greek stories
of Homer told of a glorious day

886
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:15,130
in which all the Greeks actually
did one thing together.

887
01:01:15,130 --> 01:01:16,820
They did an expedition,

888
01:01:16,820 --> 01:01:19,559
and they fought the Trojans.

889
01:01:20,710 --> 01:01:24,910
[narrator] According to Homer, the
conflict begins when Paris, son of

890
01:01:24,910 --> 01:01:29,410
the king of Troy, kidnaps the
beautiful daughter of a Greek king.

891
01:01:31,050 --> 01:01:33,330
Furious at the abduction,

892
01:01:33,330 --> 01:01:36,310
the king and his brother unite
all the leaders of the Greek world

893
01:01:36,310 --> 01:01:38,960
to join in an attack on Troy.

894
01:01:38,960 --> 01:01:41,210
[1:01:38 dramatic music]

895
01:01:42,690 --> 01:01:49,320
For ten long years, they
lay siege to the city, but to no avail.

896
01:01:49,320 --> 01:01:56,010
Troy is a fortress—all but impenetrable.

897
01:01:56,010 --> 01:01:57,400
And then, a Greek general named

898
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:01,190
Odysseus comes forward with
a plan that will echo through history.

899
01:02:05,260 --> 01:02:08,440
He suggests that the Greeks
build an enormous wooden horse

900
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:13,690
and pretend to leave Troy, as if the
great horse were a parting tribute.

901
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:19,220
But Helen, the Greek princess,
who has now fallen in love

902
01:02:19,220 --> 01:02:26,810
with her captor, knows her people
well and suspects a trick.

903
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:33,800
Helen, who went
and imitated the voices of many

904
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:40,030
wives of the companions of the Greeks, and
walked around the Trojan horse,

905
01:02:40,030 --> 01:02:46,040
hoping that some of them might hear the
voices of their wives and really cry out.

906
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:50,150
Odysseus was the one that restrained
his companions from revealing themselves.

907
01:02:51,150 --> 01:02:53,140
[indistinct yelling]

908
01:02:53,140 --> 01:02:56,950
[narrator] And so tragedy awaits the
unsuspecting Trojans.

909
01:02:57,870 --> 01:03:01,280
The horse is brought inside the walled city.

910
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:05,230
But they have one more
chance when Cassandra,

911
01:03:05,230 --> 01:03:10,390
the Trojan woman who spurned the god
Apollo's advances, also tries to warn

912
01:03:10,390 --> 01:03:13,270
her fellow citizens.

913
01:03:15,330 --> 01:03:19,280
Another warning came from
Cassandra, the Trojan princess.

914
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:23,760
She had been given the gift of prophecy by
Apollo in exchange for

915
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:25,290
sleeping with him.

916
01:03:25,290 --> 01:03:26,940
But in the end, she refused.

917
01:03:26,940 --> 01:03:28,520
So Apollo made sure that

918
01:03:28,520 --> 01:03:30,780
nobody would believe in her prophecies.

919
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:37,950
[narrator] And thus the god Apollo
gets his revenge on Cassandra,

920
01:03:37,950 --> 01:03:40,440
the mortal who spurred him.

921
01:03:40,950 --> 01:03:44,060
It is unfortunate for the citizens of Troy.

922
01:03:44,060 --> 01:03:48,230
After much feasting and celebrating,
the Trojans fall asleep.

923
01:03:50,180 --> 01:03:52,970
Late at night, under cover of darkness,

924
01:03:52,970 --> 01:03:56,250
the Greek armies return.

925
01:03:57,090 --> 01:03:59,940
Within the walled city of Troy, Odysseus and

926
01:03:59,940 --> 01:04:05,310
his men slip quietly out of the wooden horse's
belly and unlock the city gates.

927
01:04:11,230 --> 01:04:14,980
The Greeks storm through
the now-open gates and lay waste

928
01:04:14,980 --> 01:04:16,670
to the city.

929
01:04:16,670 --> 01:04:19,520
[intense music and battle sounds]

930
01:04:21,580 --> 01:04:24,750
But revenge does not a
better lover make.

931
01:04:24,750 --> 01:04:26,520
Apollo would remain

932
01:04:26,520 --> 01:04:30,680
a failure in affairs of the heart.

933
01:04:32,150 --> 01:04:36,400
In stark contrast to Apollo
and the area of romance

934
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:41,730
is the other god who presided
over Delphi: Dionysus.

935
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:46,360
Dionysus, on the other hand,
is a guy you'd expect to

936
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:48,730
have a lot of luck with the ladies.

937
01:04:48,730 --> 01:04:52,480
He's a god who is a god of the vines,

938
01:04:52,480 --> 01:04:59,720
he's a god of wine, he's a god of
vegetation, he's a god of the sea.

939
01:04:59,720 --> 01:05:01,170
So he's a god

940
01:05:01,170 --> 01:05:06,310
who has been described as a god
of the fluid element—a god of fluidity.

941
01:05:06,310 --> 01:05:11,470
And I think that's an excellent description,
because he's a god who can induce madness

942
01:05:11,470 --> 01:05:13,190
on the individual.

943
01:05:13,190 --> 01:05:16,420
Your mind can turn to a fluid
mush if you're under the

944
01:05:16,420 --> 01:05:19,730
influence of Dionysus, whether it's
through drink or through some

945
01:05:19,730 --> 01:05:21,410
religious ecstasy.

946
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:26,060
[Katerina Zacharia] Strong
emotion is Dionysus.

947
01:05:26,060 --> 01:05:28,800
Formal expression is Apollo.

948
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:33,590
Of course, that idea, which is as well known
as the division between

949
01:05:33,590 --> 01:05:38,240
classical and romantic, is no longer valid.

950
01:05:38,240 --> 01:05:41,760
Yet, the idea of relating Apollo and

951
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:46,270
Dionysus was one that was
quite pertinent in antiquity.

952
01:05:46,270 --> 01:05:48,530
During the three winter months

953
01:05:48,530 --> 01:05:54,930
at Delphi that Apollo was absent,
Dionysus replaced him.

954
01:05:54,930 --> 01:05:56,100
Dionysus is

955
01:05:56,100 --> 01:06:02,339
the god of civic disorder, but also the god
of imperial democracy, whereas Apollo

956
01:06:02,339 --> 01:06:04,160
is the god of civic order.

957
01:06:04,160 --> 01:06:09,870
[narrator] And thus, as is so often
the case with the gods of ancient Greece,

958
01:06:09,870 --> 01:06:12,880
there is a moral to the story.

959
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:14,980
In this case, the lesson lies in the

960
01:06:14,980 --> 01:06:19,890
very contrast between Apollo and Dionysus.

961
01:06:20,690 --> 01:06:25,700
Dionysus is a god who—
who is worshiped by women

962
01:06:25,700 --> 01:06:32,170
and is worshiped in the countryside,
and leads women out of their homes,

963
01:06:32,170 --> 01:06:37,940
away from their looms, into the tops of
mountains where they dance all night

964
01:06:37,940 --> 01:06:42,430
and carry torches, and, men
thought, drank a lot.

965
01:06:42,430 --> 01:06:44,930
We think about Apollo as a god

966
01:06:44,930 --> 01:06:48,060
of reason, as a god of order.

967
01:06:48,060 --> 01:06:50,520
On his temple at Delphi,
there are all these things.

968
01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:56,710
It says "nothing too much"—<i>medan
agan</i>, moderation in all things.

969
01:06:58,050 --> 01:07:02,970
[1:06:50 narrator] While the gods loved to
battle and ruled over earth and sky,

970
01:07:02,970 --> 01:07:07,490
beneath the fertile folds and sun-drenched
landscape of ancient Greece lay

971
01:07:07,490 --> 01:07:13,470
another domain—
a dark and foreboding place.

972
01:07:19,060 --> 01:07:22,530
When the Greeks of ancient
times died, they were either

973
01:07:22,530 --> 01:07:25,000
buried or cremated.

974
01:07:29,440 --> 01:07:34,140
Beyond death lay the underworld,
a type of shadow existence

975
01:07:34,140 --> 01:07:37,110
where there was no conscious afterlife.

976
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:40,810
No one went to heaven.

977
01:07:40,810 --> 01:07:44,160
That was the exclusive
domain of the gods.

978
01:07:45,750 --> 01:07:49,880
After death, we
have a soul, according to the

979
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:55,930
Greeks, which is called <i>psykhe</i>, which goes
fluttering off like a shadow of smoke

980
01:07:55,930 --> 01:07:58,310
into the underworld.

981
01:07:58,310 --> 01:08:04,120
Now, when you get to the underworld,
this place is called "Hades."

982
01:08:04,120 --> 01:08:08,170
Or it's sometimes called "the House
of Hades," because Hades is the

983
01:08:08,170 --> 01:08:10,670
god of the underworld.

984
01:08:11,650 --> 01:08:15,439
And there's a journey that
the soul has to take.

985
01:08:17,398 --> 01:08:21,739
[narrator] The journey was
across the fabled River Styx,

986
01:08:21,739 --> 01:08:27,019
or "River of Hatred," with a man named
Charon to ferry the soul over.

987
01:08:29,959 --> 01:08:34,578
You have to pay Charon
your obols or two obols

988
01:08:34,578 --> 01:08:38,279
to get across the river, and that's why
these coins were put in the mouths of

989
01:08:38,279 --> 01:08:41,139
the corpse upon death.

990
01:08:41,139 --> 01:08:44,769
When you got there, the first
thing you meet is Cerberus,

991
01:08:44,769 --> 01:08:48,019
this three-headed guard dog, at
the door to the underworld.

992
01:08:48,019 --> 01:08:51,529
You went by—because you were a
dead man, you were allowed in.

993
01:08:51,529 --> 01:08:52,459
But if you tried to get in

994
01:08:52,459 --> 01:08:55,350
as a live man, you were
eaten alive by this thing.

995
01:08:55,350 --> 01:08:58,080
[intense music]

996
01:08:59,640 --> 01:09:05,248
[narrator] In Homer's telling, Hades
is a grim and dreadful place.

997
01:09:05,248 --> 01:09:10,779
It is so bleak, no temple
for Hades exists anywhere.

998
01:09:10,779 --> 01:09:12,139
The underworld is described

999
01:09:12,139 --> 01:09:17,850
as a place where human spirits
suffer an eternity of empty dreams.

1000
01:09:21,080 --> 01:09:24,880
[Katerina Zacharia] Hades is terrible
and inexorable, but he is not the

1001
01:09:24,880 --> 01:09:29,429
punisher of souls like Satan in Christianity.

1002
01:09:30,289 --> 01:09:32,920
<i>Psykhe</i> in Greek means "breath,"

1003
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:37,158
It comes from a verb
<i>psykhein</i>, which is "to breathe."

1004
01:09:37,158 --> 01:09:39,158
Now one—when someone

1005
01:09:39,158 --> 01:09:42,599
dies, he no longer breathes.

1006
01:09:42,599 --> 01:09:46,979
<i>Psykhe</i> has really been translated as "soul."

1007
01:09:46,979 --> 01:09:50,488
Now, <i>psykhes</i> in the underworld
have no consciousness.

1008
01:09:53,019 --> 01:09:55,999
[narrator] There are two
levels to the underworld.

1009
01:09:55,999 --> 01:09:57,439
The first,

1010
01:09:57,439 --> 01:10:02,479
called Erebus, is where the human
soul passes immediately after death.

1011
01:10:03,839 --> 01:10:09,719
The second is a deeper and more
terrible place called Tartarus.

1012
01:10:10,769 --> 01:10:15,340
Those unrepentant and violent souls
who have offended the gods are

1013
01:10:15,340 --> 01:10:17,679
banished to dreaded Tartarus.

1014
01:10:17,679 --> 01:10:20,650
[eerie music]

1015
01:10:24,380 --> 01:10:27,130
One of the most famous
characters who was put into

1016
01:10:27,130 --> 01:10:34,879
Tartarus was a fellow named Tantalus,
and Tantalus was made to stand

1017
01:10:34,879 --> 01:10:41,400
in a river with a fruit tree over his head,
and he was eternally thirsty and eternally

1018
01:10:41,400 --> 01:10:46,410
hungry because whenever he reached to
drink out of the river, the water would flow

1019
01:10:46,410 --> 01:10:49,679
through his hands and he couldn't get
it to his mouth, and when he reached

1020
01:10:49,679 --> 01:10:53,999
for the fruit of the tree over his head,
it would always move just out of reach.

1021
01:10:53,999 --> 01:10:59,179
And so he was eternally "tantalized,"
as we have the word from it now.

1022
01:11:00,489 --> 01:11:03,459
narrator] Thus the gods of their
stories gave meaning to the different

1023
01:11:03,459 --> 01:11:10,059
cycles of life and even the
possibility of an afterlife.

1024
01:11:10,059 --> 01:11:13,689
They also helped the Greeks establish
a morality and a body of ethics.

1025
01:11:16,769 --> 01:11:20,440
In ancient Greece, one of the
most advanced civilizations

1026
01:11:20,440 --> 01:11:27,429
of its time, these stories eventually inspired
the birth of a new art form—

1027
01:11:27,429 --> 01:11:29,590
the theater.

1028
01:11:30,400 --> 01:11:34,749
Later, playwrights such as
Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes

1029
01:11:34,749 --> 01:11:39,400
dramatized them, allowing the epic tales to
come alive for people throughout

1030
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:40,679
the centuries.

1031
01:11:43,249 --> 01:11:46,489
[Greg Thalmann] The relation of
literature to myth and religious belief

1032
01:11:46,489 --> 01:11:49,739
among the Greeks is
a very complicated one.

1033
01:11:49,739 --> 01:11:50,780
You have to remember

1034
01:11:50,780 --> 01:12:00,679
that for them, literature—poetry,
especially—was not the preserve of an

1035
01:12:00,679 --> 01:12:02,959
educated elite.

1036
01:12:02,959 --> 01:12:07,159
It was not even originally,
uh, meant to be read.

1037
01:12:07,159 --> 01:12:09,349
It was publicly performed.

1038
01:12:09,349 --> 01:12:11,719
It was accessible to everyone.

1039
01:12:13,050 --> 01:12:17,730
Richard Martin] They had various
kinds of performances, they had oral

1040
01:12:17,730 --> 01:12:22,909
poetry, choral dancing, drama, but they
would never think of it as something

1041
01:12:22,909 --> 01:12:24,719
like one category.

1042
01:12:24,719 --> 01:12:27,699
Especially, they would never
think of reading this material.

1043
01:12:27,699 --> 01:12:32,519
You had it performed, and therefore
it's much more deeply embedded in

1044
01:12:32,519 --> 01:12:34,050
the local culture.

1045
01:12:34,050 --> 01:12:36,960
It's not something that only a
few people do—read these works.

1046
01:12:36,960 --> 01:12:40,099
It's something that
everybody hears and sees.

1047
01:12:40,859 --> 01:12:44,170
[narrator] Some of the early authors
crafted their plays and their poetry

1048
01:12:44,170 --> 01:12:47,970
around themes which
were critical of the gods—

1049
01:12:47,970 --> 01:12:49,400
something which later

1050
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:52,160
philosophers vehemently condemned.

1051
01:12:53,869 --> 01:12:58,809
Plato's criticism of traditional
literature and of the

1052
01:12:58,809 --> 01:13:04,400
stories in them was that the gods
essentially didn't act like gods.

1053
01:13:04,400 --> 01:13:11,090
I think Plato especially was very uncomfortable
with that, because of his own notion

1054
01:13:11,090 --> 01:13:14,400
of what a god ought to be.

1055
01:13:14,400 --> 01:13:17,479
You can see some of the
same critique in Euripides—

1056
01:13:17,479 --> 01:13:22,809
in his tragedies, his sense that, you know,
gods shouldn't really act the way

1057
01:13:22,809 --> 01:13:27,530
that a lot of the myths he's treating
dramatically show them.

1058
01:13:28,690 --> 01:13:31,789
Certainly, when you look at a
drama like the <i>Ion</i>, in which

1059
01:13:31,789 --> 01:13:37,761
Apollo is represented as a rapist, you
begin to question the value of a god

1060
01:13:37,761 --> 01:13:39,070
like that.

1061
01:13:40,050 --> 01:13:43,379
[narrator] Some philosophers believe
that redemption is the moral

1062
01:13:43,379 --> 01:13:45,589
of the story.

1063
01:13:46,839 --> 01:13:50,209
By the end of the play, the woman
who is raped becomes the

1064
01:13:50,209 --> 01:13:52,660
mother of Apollo's son, Ion.

1065
01:13:54,450 --> 01:13:58,630
He goes on to become the
leader of the city-state of Athens.

1066
01:13:59,789 --> 01:14:03,880
Many of the plays reflected
the more tempestuous side

1067
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:06,719
of human nature in the conduct of the gods.

1068
01:14:07,969 --> 01:14:10,280
Sexuality and affairs of the heart

1069
01:14:10,280 --> 01:14:14,699
were controlled by Aphrodite, the goddess
of beauty, love and fertility.

1070
01:14:16,799 --> 01:14:21,230
Just like Apollo, Aphrodite
lived a turbulent life.

1071
01:14:24,639 --> 01:14:29,409
Aphrodite was connected
with warfare through her

1072
01:14:29,409 --> 01:14:33,959
union, her affair, with
Ares, the god of war.

1073
01:14:33,959 --> 01:14:35,790
And they were two famous lovers.

1074
01:14:35,790 --> 01:14:40,480
Aphrodite wasn't actually married to Ares—
she was married to Hephaestus

1075
01:14:40,480 --> 01:14:42,969
or Vulcan, the god of the forge.

1076
01:14:42,969 --> 01:14:45,830
But she had this flaming affair with Ares,

1077
01:14:45,830 --> 01:14:47,309
the war god.

1078
01:14:47,309 --> 01:14:50,679
And the question is, why are
these two always getting together?

1079
01:14:50,679 --> 01:14:57,190
It's the fury of their mutual passions,
which made them two gods that were

1080
01:14:57,190 --> 01:15:01,179
beyond the control of all the other gods.

1081
01:15:01,179 --> 01:15:03,110
And as the saying goes, you know,

1082
01:15:03,110 --> 01:15:06,980
that every lover is a soldier on a campaign.

1083
01:15:07,730 --> 01:15:13,300
[narrator] Thus, early Greek writings
conveyed life's everyday lessons.

1084
01:15:13,300 --> 01:15:19,029
And yet, some of the works reflected a
blatantly sexist attitude towards women.

1085
01:15:20,349 --> 01:15:23,599
One example is the story of Hippolytus.

1086
01:15:24,959 --> 01:15:29,139
He despised women,
he despised female sexuality,

1087
01:15:29,139 --> 01:15:31,139
he was chaste, chaste, pure.

1088
01:15:31,139 --> 01:15:36,710
We'd send him to a psychiatrist, but—
pure, pure as the snow.

1089
01:15:36,710 --> 01:15:42,380
His stepmother's nurse, handmaid,
went to Hippolytus and told

1090
01:15:42,380 --> 01:15:46,370
Hippolytus that his stepmother
was in love with him.

1091
01:15:46,370 --> 01:15:48,030
Hippolytus was appalled.

1092
01:15:48,030 --> 01:15:49,960
He was horrified.

1093
01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:53,139
When Greek men got
together at the drinking parties at

1094
01:15:53,139 --> 01:15:57,860
the symposia, we know that they told stories,
that they produced poetry,

1095
01:15:57,860 --> 01:15:59,959
which made fun of women.

1096
01:15:59,959 --> 01:16:03,459
In early Greek culture, women
were seen as consumers

1097
01:16:03,459 --> 01:16:04,780
of men's effort.

1098
01:16:04,780 --> 01:16:08,730
The man had to farm, the woman
simply consumed the efforts—

1099
01:16:08,730 --> 01:16:13,109
stayed at home, cooked, and
was always on the man's back.

1100
01:16:13,109 --> 01:16:16,599
And it's a strong misogynistic string in
Greek literature all the way through

1101
01:16:16,599 --> 01:16:19,229
the 5th and the 4th century.

1102
01:16:20,149 --> 01:16:24,260
[narrator] And so, Greek dramas and
comedies unfolded in amphitheaters

1103
01:16:24,260 --> 01:16:30,400
throughout the land, with all-male casts
playing the roles of gods as well

1104
01:16:30,400 --> 01:16:35,609
as goddesses, mortal men, as well as women.

1105
01:16:37,759 --> 01:16:41,070
But the Greeks were not
the only ones absorbed by stories

1106
01:16:41,070 --> 01:16:43,350
of deities and heroes.

1107
01:16:43,350 --> 01:16:46,069
Others were watching too.

1108
01:16:48,499 --> 01:16:53,739
Far to the west, across
the Mediterranean, a great new

1109
01:16:53,739 --> 01:16:56,350
empire was being born.

1110
01:16:57,260 --> 01:16:59,709
[dramatic music]

1111
01:17:02,819 --> 01:17:07,039
The Greek gods and goddesses,
like classical Greece itself,

1112
01:17:07,039 --> 01:17:09,540
would know the ravages of time and change.

1113
01:17:10,989 --> 01:17:14,309
As functioning deities,
they would eventually slip into

1114
01:17:14,309 --> 01:17:16,240
the mists of history.

1115
01:17:17,970 --> 01:17:22,009
And yet, they have not
completely disappeared.

1116
01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:28,709
Even though they're
not part of our religion, we still

1117
01:17:28,709 --> 01:17:30,139
need these stories.

1118
01:17:30,139 --> 01:17:35,639
They're wonderful, rich,
richly suggestive tales about

1119
01:17:35,639 --> 01:17:40,929
how the world works and
what we are as human beings.

1120
01:17:40,929 --> 01:17:42,499
Generation after generation

1121
01:17:42,499 --> 01:17:48,310
of modern students love—they're
fascinated by these myths.

1122
01:17:48,310 --> 01:17:55,179
And I think that springs from something we
all have in us, which is a desire to make

1123
01:17:55,179 --> 01:18:01,920
stories, a need to understand the
world by making stories about it.

1124
01:18:03,320 --> 01:18:06,039
[narrator] Greek mythology has
transcended the centuries coming

1125
01:18:06,039 --> 01:18:11,829
down to us not only from the great poets
and playwrights, but through the

1126
01:18:11,829 --> 01:18:14,600
conduits of many other cultures.

1127
01:18:16,130 --> 01:18:19,860
One of the first was Rome, far to the west.

1128
01:18:19,860 --> 01:18:24,339
It absorbed much of what Greece had to offer.

1129
01:18:26,060 --> 01:18:30,519
[Richard Martin] The Romans
discovered Greek religion, really,

1130
01:18:30,519 --> 01:18:37,200
in the third century BC, and began to make
a bigger deal of it than it had been before.

1131
01:18:37,200 --> 01:18:41,230
We know that there had been cultural
contact for a long time, but there

1132
01:18:41,230 --> 01:18:46,369
was a kind of prestige of the Greeks that
the Romans felt they didn't have.

1133
01:18:46,369 --> 01:18:53,320
And so they took over, really, the Olympian
system, and aligned their own local gods

1134
01:18:53,320 --> 01:18:57,589
with more recognizable,
high-status Greek gods.

1135
01:18:59,229 --> 01:19:03,349
[narrator] In adopting the gods of
the Greeks, the Romans imbued the

1136
01:19:03,349 --> 01:19:08,050
pantheon of deities with
distinctly Roman characteristics.

1137
01:19:08,050 --> 01:19:09,829
The first priority

1138
01:19:09,829 --> 01:19:12,469
was to assign them Roman names.

1139
01:19:13,659 --> 01:19:17,019
Zeus became Jupiter
in their terms.

1140
01:19:17,019 --> 01:19:19,280
Ares became Mars.

1141
01:19:19,280 --> 01:19:21,000
Athena became Minerva.

1142
01:19:21,000 --> 01:19:23,969
When I say became, I mean that
they had these gods

1143
01:19:23,969 --> 01:19:28,510
existing already—Minerva, Mars, Jupiter—
but they now aligned them in a new way

1144
01:19:28,510 --> 01:19:35,120
that said, "Yes, we're part of a continuum
of culture with the higher-status Greeks."

1145
01:19:36,290 --> 01:19:40,410
[narrator] Other gods adopted by the
Romans include Hera, who became

1146
01:19:40,410 --> 01:19:42,479
known as Juno.

1147
01:19:42,479 --> 01:19:45,969
Poseidon was renamed Neptune.

1148
01:19:45,969 --> 01:19:49,280
Hades reemerged as Pluto.

1149
01:19:49,280 --> 01:19:54,220
Aphrodite would forever be immortalized as
the goddess Venus.

1150
01:19:54,220 --> 01:19:55,189
And so,

1151
01:19:55,189 --> 01:20:00,289
the Greek pantheon, to a large
extent, became the Roman pantheon.

1152
01:20:01,640 --> 01:20:05,769
As mighty Rome developed
into an empire, it eventually

1153
01:20:05,769 --> 01:20:10,940
occupied a little-known dusty corner of the
Middle East called Judea.

1154
01:20:11,789 --> 01:20:14,589
Here, the Hebrews clustered
around their capital city,

1155
01:20:14,589 --> 01:20:19,719
Jerusalem—where a new
religion was being born.

1156
01:20:20,879 --> 01:20:23,820
Following the crucifixion of Christ,

1157
01:20:23,820 --> 01:20:27,690
word rapidly spread of his teachings.

1158
01:20:27,690 --> 01:20:29,269
Even Christianity found

1159
01:20:29,269 --> 01:20:32,769
connections in Greek
and Roman philosophies,

1160
01:20:32,769 --> 01:20:35,709
particularly through the Apostle Paul.

1161
01:20:37,149 --> 01:20:42,179
We know that Paul was
educated in Greco-Roman terms.

1162
01:20:42,179 --> 01:20:46,840
He quotes Euripides at least
several times in his epistles.

1163
01:20:46,840 --> 01:20:48,599
Later on, notions

1164
01:20:48,599 --> 01:20:54,170
that had developed in Platonism, especially,
became crucial in the ways in which

1165
01:20:54,170 --> 01:20:59,349
early Christians tried to make their religion
more understandable to highly

1166
01:20:59,349 --> 01:21:02,679
educated class in the Greco-Roman world.

1167
01:21:03,489 --> 01:21:08,330
In the Orthodox Church even today,
the Greek Christian church,

1168
01:21:08,330 --> 01:21:11,480
you still see some of the
mysticism that you can identify in

1169
01:21:11,480 --> 01:21:14,769
the works of Plato in the 4th century BC.

1170
01:21:16,999 --> 01:21:20,999
[narrator] The Christian belief that
Jesus was the son of God, yet born

1171
01:21:20,999 --> 01:21:25,319
of a mortal woman, also resonated
with the early Greeks.

1172
01:21:27,470 --> 01:21:30,760
[Richard Martin] Because Greek religion
was completely comfortable

1173
01:21:30,760 --> 01:21:35,050
with the notion of gods interacting with
human women, I think it helped in

1174
01:21:35,050 --> 01:21:40,170
the spread of Christianity, in an early
period, that a narrative like that was

1175
01:21:40,170 --> 01:21:42,119
at its core.

1176
01:21:42,119 --> 01:21:45,160
And so we'll never know cause
and effect, and I certainly don't

1177
01:21:45,160 --> 01:21:51,239
want to attribute early Christianity wholly
to the Greeks, but it helped that

1178
01:21:51,239 --> 01:21:52,929
the groundwork was laid.

1179
01:21:52,929 --> 01:21:56,760
[narrator] Despite the enormous cast
of divinities that ruled over

1180
01:21:56,760 --> 01:22:03,070
the Greeks just a few centuries before Christ
was born, a new idea sprang

1181
01:22:03,070 --> 01:22:09,670
up among the people—the notion of
the existence of only one true god.

1182
01:22:10,969 --> 01:22:15,500
The Greek world shifted
towards monotheism,

1183
01:22:15,500 --> 01:22:23,569
I would say sometime around the 400s
and 300s BC, with the advent of philosophy.

1184
01:22:23,569 --> 01:22:29,439
And philosophers like Plato and Aristotle
who were skeptical of

1185
01:22:29,439 --> 01:22:34,059
the Greek religion—the way it was written
in mythology—but they did believe in

1186
01:22:34,059 --> 01:22:36,909
some supreme force.

1187
01:22:36,909 --> 01:22:42,500
Some supreme all-good,
all-knowing kind of power.

1188
01:22:42,500 --> 01:22:45,929
[narrator] This movement toward
monotheism in ancient Greece did not

1189
01:22:45,929 --> 01:22:48,859
go unnoticed by the Apostle Paul.

1190
01:22:50,690 --> 01:22:54,219
One day in Athens, Paul
found himself addressing Greek

1191
01:22:54,219 --> 01:22:58,309
citizens from atop the Areopagus,
a hill that was a meeting place for a

1192
01:22:58,309 --> 01:23:00,689
council of noblemen.

1193
01:23:04,499 --> 01:23:07,460
[woman narrator] "But Paul, standing
in the midst of the Areopagus, said:

1194
01:23:07,460 --> 01:23:15,260
'Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in
all things you are too superstitious.

1195
01:23:15,260 --> 01:23:18,530
For passing by and seeing
your idols, I've found an altar

1196
01:23:18,530 --> 01:23:23,220
also on which was written:
"To the unknown god."

1197
01:23:23,220 --> 01:23:29,559
What therefore you worship without
knowing it—that I preach to you.

1198
01:23:29,559 --> 01:23:30,659
God who made the world and

1199
01:23:30,659 --> 01:23:36,050
all things therein and hath made of one all
mankind to dwell upon the whole

1200
01:23:36,050 --> 01:23:41,669
face of the Earth."
Acts 17:22.

1201
01:23:42,939 --> 01:23:46,590
[narrator] One of the most potent
forces that shape Greek thinking

1202
01:23:46,590 --> 01:23:49,559
was an awareness of sin.

1203
01:23:49,559 --> 01:23:53,400
But 2,000 years ago, the concept
of sin meant something

1204
01:23:53,400 --> 01:23:57,079
very different than the beliefs
held by the early Christians.

1205
01:23:59,269 --> 01:24:03,030
The Greek word
for "sin," the closest one, is a word

1206
01:24:03,030 --> 01:24:07,610
that means "to miss the mark,"
"to err," "to go wrong."

1207
01:24:07,610 --> 01:24:09,690
Now, what does that

1208
01:24:09,690 --> 01:24:17,819
mean to sin, if you go too high, it means that
you're stepping beyond human limitations.

1209
01:24:17,819 --> 01:24:22,129
If you go too low, it means that you're not
living up to your fulfillment.

1210
01:24:22,129 --> 01:24:28,779
And so, for the Greeks, a sin was
really not fulfilling who you are.

1211
01:24:30,959 --> 01:24:35,429
[narrator] Though separated from us
by untold millennia, the great

1212
01:24:35,429 --> 01:24:40,740
pageantry of gods, goddesses, and heroes,
of Muses, Fates, and Graces,

1213
01:24:40,740 --> 01:24:45,910
of soaring accomplishments and bitter
defeats, is as significant today as it was

1214
01:24:45,910 --> 01:24:49,020
to the ancient Greeks.

1215
01:24:51,790 --> 01:24:54,710
[Constantine] The interesting
thing about the Greeks at that

1216
01:24:54,710 --> 01:25:00,229
period who venerated these gods, that they
gave to the gods the attitude also

1217
01:25:00,229 --> 01:25:01,590
of human beings.

1218
01:25:01,590 --> 01:25:04,470
There was the fighting, there was
the jealousy, there was the adultery,

1219
01:25:04,470 --> 01:25:07,010
there was the happiness, there was
the truth, there was the peace,

1220
01:25:07,010 --> 01:25:11,580
there were all the different things that were
going on in everyday life of the human beings.

1221
01:25:11,580 --> 01:25:13,779
It was all associated with the gods.

1222
01:25:13,779 --> 01:25:16,130
And I think that that is

1223
01:25:16,130 --> 01:25:21,769
part of the reason why these things
have survived all these centuries in

1224
01:25:21,769 --> 01:25:28,229
the minds of people, and identified in the
way the Greeks think even today.

1225
01:25:28,229 --> 01:25:30,630
[Greg Thalmann] Greek myth is a whole
body of narratives.

1226
01:25:30,630 --> 01:25:39,979
Say something very complicated about
the world, um, they—they speak to a kind of

1227
01:25:39,979 --> 01:25:43,379
optimism and a kind of
pessimism at the same time.

1228
01:25:43,379 --> 01:25:47,059
[Richard Martin] Greek myth as a whole
really does tell us, through a lot

1229
01:25:47,059 --> 01:25:52,209
of exemplary stories, a lot of different
things about the nature of reality and

1230
01:25:52,209 --> 01:25:53,699
the nature of life:

1231
01:25:53,699 --> 01:25:55,689
What's important.

1232
01:25:55,689 --> 01:25:58,549
What we ought to care about.

1233
01:25:58,549 --> 01:26:01,380
[Thomas F. Scanton] One of the major
lessons is that, to read any of

1234
01:26:01,380 --> 01:26:07,389
these stories, which are timeless treatments
of big human questions of

1235
01:26:07,389 --> 01:26:13,179
personal morality versus the morality of the
state and laws that are imposed,

1236
01:26:13,179 --> 01:26:19,239
and how do you negotiate these very
difficult questions of the best behavior as

1237
01:26:19,239 --> 01:26:21,500
a citizen in this state?

1238
01:26:21,500 --> 01:26:25,219
Those are addressed by Greek
myths and by Greek legends.

1239
01:26:25,219 --> 01:26:31,539
And you are left with this feeling that we
don't know, really, what these

1240
01:26:31,539 --> 01:26:38,159
gods are or who they are, but, you know,
we know there's some force out there.

1241
01:26:38,159 --> 01:26:44,689
There's some huge force that's controlling
our lives, and that we have to keep

1242
01:26:44,689 --> 01:26:49,289
an open mind to what that force is doing.

1243
01:26:49,289 --> 01:26:51,090
That's why the Greeks can speak

1244
01:26:51,090 --> 01:26:58,479
across 3,000 years of history and tell us
some questions, if not the answers,

1245
01:26:58,479 --> 01:27:02,849
to some of the most perturbing
eternal questions in the world.

1246
01:27:03,699 --> 01:27:06,780
[narrator] There was
another world here once.

1247
01:27:06,780 --> 01:27:11,309
And the gods and goddesses and people
who lived here still haunt the landscape.

1248
01:27:11,309 --> 01:27:13,379
[birds chirping]

1249
01:27:13,379 --> 01:27:16,450
Their stories still travel
across time.

1250
01:27:18,160 --> 01:27:19,709
As long as people

1251
01:27:19,709 --> 01:27:27,610
seek a deeper understanding of themselves
and their world, ancient Greece lives on.

1252
01:27:29,020 --> 01:27:33,110
[woman narrator] "All ye are
the gods of this great place.

1253
01:27:33,110 --> 01:27:39,050
Grant to me that I be made beautiful in my
soul within, and grant that all my external

1254
01:27:39,050 --> 01:27:44,510
possessions be in peaceful harmony
with my inner man, with myself."

1255
01:27:46,110 --> 01:27:48,100
Plato.