The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life

Начало книги

Greek Mythology: For Whom? For What?

Let us begin with beginnings: What is the underlying purpose of the Greek myths, and why today—more than ever, perhaps—should we pay attention to them? I believe the answer lies in a single passage of what is perhaps the most celebrated work of ancient Greece, the Odyssey of Homer, in which we see clearly the extent to which mythology is not what we so often think of it as being: an accumulation of “tales and legends,” a collection of anecdotes more or less fantastical, whose sole end is to amuse us. Far from being reducible to literary entertainment, mythology is at the core of ancient wisdom, the foundation for that great edifice of Greek philosophy that would subsequently sketch out, in conceptual form, the blueprint of a successful life for human kind, mortal as we are.

Let us allow ourselves to be carried along for a moment on the tide of Homer’s story, whose broad outlines I recall here but which we shall have reason to revisit later on.

Читать дальше →