Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

300 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
central aspect of Greek religion. Heroes were only powerful, however,
within the vicinity of their graves.
The Archetypal Dysfunctional Family
A number of myths explore the tensions, rivalries, and violence
that lurk beneath the surface of family life as a result of Greek
mythology’s identification of the family as the major producer of
neurosis and psychosis. The divine realm engendered more than its
fair share of dysfunctionality. Kronos castrated his father Ouranos
and attempted to kill all his children. Zeus’s loveless marriage to
Hera produced only one offspring, namely Ares, the god of war.
On the human level, the archetypal dysfunctional household
was that of Atreus. The cycle of evil that characterizes its fortunes
over the course of several generations began with the seduction of
Atreus’s wife by his brother Thyestes. Atreus then took revenge on
Thyestes by inviting him to a banquet at which he served to him
the cooked limbs of his children. Thyestes subsequently exacted
his revenge on Atreus by inciting Atreus’s son to murder his own
father. Atreus’s other son Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter
Iphigeneia in order to obtain a favorable wind to carry the Greek
fleet to Troy, met his death at the hands of his wife and her lover.
The pair was murdered in turn by Agamemnon’s son Orestes in
revenge for his father’s death.
Outlined simply thus, the myth of the house of Atreus strikes one
as melodramatic and even absurd. In the hands of a great playwright
like Aeschylus, however, it is transformed into a searching
investigation of a very real human dilemma. That is because
Aeschylus focuses almost exclusively upon the agonizing moral
choice that Orestes faces by having to perpetrate the most abhorrent
crime imaginable—matricide—in order to discharge the most
sacred filial duty—that of avenging his father. Greek myths were
not fashioned merely for the instruction of children.
Women in Myth
At first sight, Greek mythology seems to exhibit a strongly misogynistic
strain. The chamber of female horrors includes Klytaimnestra,
who murders her husband Agamemnon on his return from Troy;
Medea, who kills her children in order to avenge the infidelity of her
husband Jason; the 50 daughters of Danaos, who, with one exception,
all murder their bridegrooms on their wedding nights; and