Greek Culture Essay

Greek culture is really no different from modern culture. For example in today’s culture, there are various iterations of the super heroes who are popular today—and so readers of comic lore will know different variations on the Bruce Wayne, Bruce Banner, Spiderman, and Superman myths. The same is true for the Greeks. Depending on the author, there were different iterations. Euripides told stories of the Greek gods in a much different vein than did Aeschylus or Homer. The reason for this is that the form of the drama had changed but so too had the culture from the time of Homer to Aeschylus to Euripides. Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony is different from Zeus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. In Aeschylus’ play, Zeus is silent and the focus instead is on Prometheus: the playwright aims at increasing the audience’s sympathy for the title character. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Zeus’s thoughts and feelings are given a great deal of attention—primarily because the purpose of the work is different (it aims to show the genealogy of the gods and why man must work all his life). Hesiod’s work being an earlier one, it serves as a foundational depiction of the gods. Aeschylus began to explore that world for the Greeks in more detail. Sophocles followed along with Aristophanes (a satirical playwright) and Euripides (who wrote some of the saddest of the Greek classics).

Greek culture was very fluid in the sense that it appreciated all these different takes on the stories and lives of the gods, because each one illuminated a different aspect about the theology and philosophy of the Greeks themselves. As the Greeks changed, do to social, political and economic reasons, so too did their perspectives on themselves and their religion. Thus, the depiction of the gods in different lights should not really be that surprising. The authors were simply holding the mirror up to nature and showing in their works the changes in perspective of their own people and of their own times.