D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths

The earliest sources for ancient Greek myth narratives are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days. Today they tend to be referred to as poetry because they are composed in verse, but in the earliest sources that mention them, from the sixth century BCE, they were referred to as songs that conveyed sacred knowledge about immortal forces (gods and heroes) and their impact on mortals. These songs and the knowledge they communicated were communal knowledge shared broadly by Greek speakers.

Because these songs told people of that time what they needed to remember about gods and heroes, they provided foundational knowledge that others built on, questioned, and adapted. In classical Athens of the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, not only poets but also historians and philosophers interacted with Homer. The poet Pindar incorporated mythic narratives in the works he composed to celebrate winners of athletic contests at festivals in honor of gods and heroes. Playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides lifted episodes from myth and crafted tragedies from them, also for performance at sacred festivals. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides and the philosopher Plato also engaged with the knowledge Homer provided to examine recent events and to question what should be worshiped and how it should be worshiped.