Greek Mythology in Art, Literature, and Everyday Life

Greek mythology has profoundly influenced Western culture. So universally familiar are its stories that many of our common words and sayings refer to them. The myth ofNarcissus, for example, produced narcissism, or excessive vanity, and something that causes an argument may be called an “apple of discord,” after an apple that Eris (pronounced AIR-is), the goddess of discord, used to start a dispute among Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera. Greek myths and legends span the sky in the names of constellations and planets.

The Greek gods made their home on Mt. Olympus as illustrated in this painting by Jan van Kessel, The Feast of the Gods. ® MUSEE D'ART ET D'HISTOIRE, SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, FRANCE/GIRAUDON/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.

Literature and drama have long drawn upon themes and stories from Greek myth. Besides the works of the ancient Greeks themselves— including the plays of Sophocles and Euripides—writers from ancient times to the present have found inspiration in Greek mythology. Roman authors Virgil (the Aeneid) and Ovid (the Metamorphoses) used Greek stories and characters in their poems. References to Greek myths appear in the works of the medieval Italian poets Petrarch and Boccaccio and in those of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. William Shakespeare’s A

Midsummer Night’s Dream contains the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as a comic play-within-a-play. Modern writers who have drawn upon Greek mythology include James Joyce (Ulysses) and Mary Renault (The Bull from the Sea).

Artists from the Renaissance to the present have depicted scenes from Greek mythology. Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (c. 1480), Nicolas Poussin’s Apollo and Daphne (c. 1630), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Diana (1867) are just a few of many such paintings. The Greeks chanted songs and hymns based on myth at religious festivals, and Greek mythology has continued to inspire composers of the performing arts. Operas based on mythic stories include Claudio Monteverdi’s Ariadne, Richard Strauss’s Elektra, and Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. Marcel Camus’s film Black Orpheus also came from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Apollo and Orpheus by George Balanchine, Ariadne by Alvin Ailey, and Clytemnestra by Martha Graham are four modern ballets that interpret Greek myths through dance.