Mythos
Greek art is all about the mythology. From about 700 BC onward, almost everything depicts a myth, alludes to a myth, embroiders on a myth - I though I had a decent grasp of Greek mythology, but there are entire cycles of myths I hadn't even heard of.
Even the bittiest of bit players in the Iliad, it seems, have their own stories. And the people in those stories have their own stories. And everyone shows up in each other's stories, until there is a web of story telling so dense that you could wrap it around you like a blanket and sit in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate.
I aspire to create rich mythological backgrounds for my stories, and at first realizing the complexity of a real mythological system distressed me: there's no way I could home-grow that in any reasonable period of time. But then I realized: I don't need to have a complete system. There are no complete systems of mythology, because mythology isn't a simple system of geometry.
Mythology is fractal. It iterates. Even now, people embellish and reinterpret Greek myths, just as Exekias did in 530 BC.
Isn't that beautiful?
Even the bittiest of bit players in the Iliad, it seems, have their own stories. And the people in those stories have their own stories. And everyone shows up in each other's stories, until there is a web of story telling so dense that you could wrap it around you like a blanket and sit in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate.
I aspire to create rich mythological backgrounds for my stories, and at first realizing the complexity of a real mythological system distressed me: there's no way I could home-grow that in any reasonable period of time. But then I realized: I don't need to have a complete system. There are no complete systems of mythology, because mythology isn't a simple system of geometry.
Mythology is fractal. It iterates. Even now, people embellish and reinterpret Greek myths, just as Exekias did in 530 BC.
Isn't that beautiful?