Mythology and legends of ancient Greece

Author: H.A. Kuhn
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Features: This work by Professor H.A. Kuhn, a Soviet authority on the study of ancient Greek culture in the first half of the 20th century, is written in an accessible style, retelling the myths of ancient Greece – stories of imaginary beings: gods, monsters, and heroes – as if they had once lived in ancient Greece and its neighboring regions of the Aegean Sea. In antiquity, the inhabitants of the Aegean region personified all the forces and phenomena of nature as mighty and immortal beings – gods, whom they considered ideal humans, possessing all the emotions inherent in humanity (joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy, hatred, etc.). Part of Greek mythology depicts the behavior of the gods, while the other part describes heroes – the achievements and miraculous adventures of humans, endowed with divine powers, wit, and courage, and believed to be the offspring of gods and goddesses. These ancient legends and stories were widely circulated among the peoples of the Mediterranean countries and were also adopted by the Romans. Individual series of mythological tales, originally developed in different parts of the Aegean region (Crete, Delos, the western coast of Asia Minor, and in various Greek areas of Europe – Epirus, Peloponnese, Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica) gradually merged into a certain religious worldview system, based on the deification of incomprehensible natural phenomena or the veneration and worship of ancestors, especially the chiefs of tribes. The names of people and places in Greek mythology vary in translation in domestic publications, lacking uniformity. This book references The Great Dictionary of Foreign Myths and Legends (China International Press), The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Myths (Chinese Social Sciences Press), The Dictionary of Myths (Shanghai Commercial Press), The Small Dictionary of Greek and Roman Myths (FLTRP Press), and Greek and Roman Mythological Allusions in.