god developed very early.The legends of ancient Greece are more familiar because they have become sopermanently set in literary traditions of western civilization. Greek mythology followedthe pattern other mythologies: the forces of nature were given personalities and wereworshipped. There was no worship of animals or of gods in animal form. Greek gods andgoddesses were pictured as being much like men and women. The gods were conceivedas more heroic in stature, more outstanding in beauty and proportion, and more powerfulthan humans. They did have many human weaknesses. They could be jealous, envious,spiteful, and petty. Among them only Zeus was known as the Just.The earliest record of Greek mythology comes form clay tablets dating back to theMycenaean civilization, which reached its peak between 1450 and 1200 B.C.. Thiscivilization consisted of several city -states in Greece, including Mycenae. The basicsources for classical Greek mythology are Hesiod’s ‘’Theogony’ and Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and‘Odyssey’, which date from about the 700’s B.C.. Hesiod and Homer rank among thegreatest poets of ancient Greece. The books contain most of the basic characters andthemes of Greek mythology.GREEK GODS AND GODDESSESGreek divinities can be divided into several groups. The earliest group was theTitans, led by Cronus. The most power group were the Olympians. The Greeks believedthat the Olympians lived on Mount Olympus. They lived together in a community of lightand pleasantness, and from this height they mingled with (and often interfered with) thelives of mortals.The Titans were the children of Earth(Gaea) and the heavens(Uranus). Supposedly there were 12 Titans: the brothers Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Huperion, Iapetus,and Cronus and the sisters Thea, Rhea, Themis,Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. At theirmother’s prompting they rebelled against their father, who had shut them off...
