Why do Ancient Myths Seem so…Mythical?

The answer, possibly, lies in the vastly different technologies available to us moderns as compared to the ancients.

Stylized picture of warriors fighting at Troy, courtesy of Pan MacMillan.

Over the past few years, I have taken it upon myself to read more of the classics. I feel that I was never adequately schooled in the greatest works of literature—those books whose influence was so vast that they are still being discussed hundreds, if not thousands, of years after they were originally written.

Perhaps the most recognizable of these classics is the pair written by Homer around the eighth century B.C.: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Originally a story passed down between generations orally, these two books tell the tales, respectively, of the siege of Troy and the voyage home of Odysseus, one of the heroes of that first story. I recently finished the Iliad, and, as of this writing, I am about halfway through the Odyssey. 

The Iliad is a slow burn, but once it gets going, the story is fascinating. A brief synopsis: The Iliad takes place in the city of Troy and its surrounding environs, supposedly one of the most impressive cities in the ancient world. A coalition of Greeks led by King Agamemnon is attempting to topple that great city and divide its spoils among its most worthy warriors. Yet the most fearsome of those warriors, Achilles, refuses to fight because of a petty disagreement he has with Agamemnon. The story proceeds to explain the plight of the Greeks, who are driven back to their ships by the mighty Hector of Troy, and the subsequent attempts to persuade Achilles to enter the fight. Interestingly, the story ends before the fall of Troy, and thus does not tell the tale of the Trojan Horse, even though that part is the most well-known of the whole saga.

But this is not a review of the Iliad. I am not nearly well-enough versed in the story or the commentary surrounding it to do that. Instead, I want to explain an idea that has been growing in my head since I started reading the book. This newsletter, therefore, will be somewhat different from those that came before it. I have no idea if this nugget of wisdom makes sense or deserves to stick; rather, I am sending this out as a sort of trial balloon, hoping that my readers will be at least somewhat entertained by my musings about a subject that I really have no business musing about.

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One of the reasons why ancient stories stick around is that human nature never really changes. Yes, over time, we have become much more tolerant of other people and therefore much less tolerant of violence. Today, we have elections, and free speech, and we feel relatively safe walking around after dark in a big city. Moreover, today we have unfathomable-to-the-ancients technology, from the Internet to running water to horseless carriages that can drive us the length of Italy in less than a day. And yet, human nature—those emotions that drive us, and our notions of fairness and honor, among other things—have remained the same.

Look, for example, at children. We tend to view children as innocent, happy, unburdened creatures. Yet a simple glance at their behaviors among their peers shows that they are incredibly violent and vindictive. Children—especially toddlers, who, I imagine, are learning to climb social hierarchies before and during preschool—do not want to share. They don’t want to share their parents’ attention, or their toys, or really anything. Parents have to painstakingly teach their children that they must share. When one toddler takes a toy from another, its reactions are essentially limited to crying until it gets its toy back, or hitting the other toddler to get the toy back. Eventually, children grow out of these impulses, and learn to share on their own. They also learn to fight injustice using their words, or, in elevated circumstances, the court system. They do not learn this on their own, of course. They must be taught this by their parents and other civilizing influences. Without these influences, they grow up in the same way that they reacted in their infancy, and resort to violence as a means of redemption and honor retention. This is why there are gangs, for instance: Most gang members were not raised by loving parents who taught them right from wrong at an early age and, instead, learned their sense of justice from their peers on the streets.

But the childlike reaction to the toy’s being taken away is completely natural, and would be recognized by Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and all of the other Greeks described in the Iliad. This natural impulse—the one we civilized people have to suppress when something unfair happens to us—has been with us for hundreds of thousands of years. This is why, when we read of Achilles’ pettiness at having been snubbed by Agamemnon, we understand it, and perhaps even relate to it. Our yearning for justice and retaliation is one of the things that animates us, and even though we have tried valiantly to suppress violence as a means of adjudicating petty disagreements, we know that we would instantly resort back to our old ways if society were to crumble.

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But I digress. The real reason that I am writing about the Iliad is not to show that human nature is largely static, though I do find that idea interesting. Instead, what I want to explore is how utterly ancient this story is. Moreover, I want to demonstrate why we modern humans are increasingly skeptical of our ancient stories. Even though human nature has remained the same, technological progress has made so many of these stories seem obsolete, or merely fantastical origin stories whose supernatural elements were simply made up by Homer and his ilk.

As I mentioned previously, Homer wrote his two classics around the eighth century B.C.  That would date the printing of the original copy of the Iliad to around 2,700 years ago. But if you read some basic background about the Iliad, you know that Homer was far from the first person to tell this story. Instead, Homer simply wrote down what other storytellers had been saying for perhaps hundreds of years. Therefore, the story of the Iliad is really much older than 2,700 years. You see some evidence of this when you read the Iliad. Several times, Homer references things that happened in the olden days—a concept that seems bizarre to us, since the Greeks were the olden days.

And yet, the technology of the Homerian Greeks was not that different from that of their forebears. Look, for instance, at weapons. In the Trojan War, the Greeks and the Trojans both used swords, spears, and bows and arrows. This technology held relatively steady in Europe until, basically, the discovery of gunpowder. So if the pre-Homerian Greeks were using spears, swords, and bows and arrows, it’s a pretty good guess to say that Homerian Greeks used the same types of weapons.

Moreover, Europeans used these weapons for another thousand or two years. This means that when Europeans in, say, 1000 A.D., read the Iliad, they could largely recognize the technology described in the book. When we moderns read the Iliad, however, we do not recognize that technology, at least in the sense that we have never even come close to experiencing it. Since wars today are fought with tanks, airplanes, and guns, we view the Trojan War almost as a fairy tale rather than actual history. In other words, we have advanced so far technologically that we do not recognize ancient literature as having happened in our world.

It is easy for, say, a Frenchman in 1200 A.D. to relate to the Iliad. That Frenchman has perhaps gone to war and fought with a sword, only to return home to his mud hut with a thatched roof to sup on mutton and nuts. This, therefore, makes him more susceptible to believing the account of the Trojan War as historical truth. And yet, many events in the Iliad are supernatural. The gods—Zeus and Athena foremost among them—shape events from their perch on Mount Olympus, and often assume the guise of a friend of Achilles or whomever to talk them into some course of action.

But, you may ask, why would the Frenchman be likely to believe in the supernatural aspects of the Iliad or other ancient stories? It is highly unlikely that he has seen a supernatural event himself. Therefore, wouldn’t he be just as skeptical as we are that those events truly happened?

I think the technological similarities between the two cultures are the key here. Because everything in the Iliad tracks so well with everything in 1200 A.D. France, the supernatural events are believable to the Medieval Frenchman. This is in stark contrast to humans in the 21st century. When we contemplate the Iliad from our comfortable armchairs, staying cool in the hot summer with our air conditioning, drinking filtered water out of a mass-manufactured cup, and listening to cars whiz by at the speed of perhaps four chariots put together, it is easy to dismiss Zeus’s meddling on behalf of the Trojans as wishful thinking on the part of the Greeks, who are driven back by a superior foe.

This, I assert, holds true not just of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but any ancient story. When we read Biblical narratives, for instance, we are much more likely to be skeptical of their true historical value today than we ever were. Not that long ago, the Biblical creation narrative was the Gospel truth (pun intended), until our scientific capabilities demonstrated the truth of evolution and the Big Bang and life before humans. We are, therefore, much more willing to entertain Genesis as a story, rather than an account, of the creation of Earth and the first humans. Moreover, we are more likely to scratch our heads at the ability of Jesus to walk on water or cure leprosy or turn water into wine. Lots of people even suggest that the Virgin Mary was not actually a virgin, but that the label implies her goodness and other Christ-like virtues.

This is not to denigrate religious or other ancient stories. I think there is immense value in these myths, even if I think they are myths and not realities. The same holds true for more modern classics. Nobody thinks that the events of the Lord of the Rings actually happened long ago in Middle-Earth, but we still derive value from its warnings against arbitrary power and human inability to control our lust for it. Similarly, the Iliad warns us against refusing to let go of petty disagreements and implores us to take up the fight on our own rather than send out our best friend in our armor to do the fighting (and dying) for us (that’s a spoiler, but the book is almost 3,000 years old, so it’s kind of your fault if you haven’t read it yet).

Of course, I could be entirely wrong here. Instead of technology that makes the ancient stories more believable, it could be that the culture is the true anchor. Perhaps ancient Native Americans or Japanese or Madagascarians would have rejected any assertion that the Iliad was historical truth because their culture was not built around these tales. But I think that this is a good way to look at our ancient stories. Not only does it give us perspective on why Homer and his readers may have been more willing to accept these ancient tales than we are, it also gives us a deep appreciation of how far our civilization has advanced since Homerian times. If you like clean drinking water, central heating, flush toilets, and antibiotics, you should view this immense progress as a blessing.