Greek mythology can teach us humanity and virtue.
Immortals teach humans about human beings and human archetypes. One example is Greek mythology. The word “humanity” refers to the characteristics that distinguish humans from robots and aliens, such as the ability to love, have compassion, and be creative. The Olympian gods are written as divine beings, but their stories show such traits clearly with strong emotions. In contrast, modern writing is often more complicated emotion-wise and justice-wise, which leads to confusing interpretations and double meanings. Greek mythology is more than simply a chaos of myth and fantasy. It deals with universal concerns that we may all experience in our lives and is captivating and informative for humans (Kokkinidis, 2021).
Greek goddesses explain femininity.
Generally, women tend to be more emotionally unstable than men. It may be because women have their secrets hidden inside. Several goddesses illustrate multiple parts of the archetypes of women’s personalities, both strengths and weaknesses. Such as the skies, seas, war, music, and the underworld, these outside worlds are all ruled by male gods. Whereas goddesses often rule within a household, and since then, the image of females has given an impression of playing roles of managing the house. According to the work of Mastrine (2021), the female archetypes are divided into three categories: virgin, vulnerable, and transformative.
- Virgin
The goddess of wisdom, the hunt, and the home were not fragile to fall in love with, were never victimized by anyone, and obtained strong power. This could be interpreted as the need for women to be independent, promising, and focused on achieving their goals.
- Vulnerable
The goddess of marriage, the goddess of agriculture, and the queen of the underworld represent the roles that women go through: a wife, a mother, and a daughter. Their identities depend on meaningful relationships, which vary from the aforementioned virgin goddesses. However, they were often abused by the male gods. Nevertheless, these goddesses were the symbol of women’s need for the establishment of a relationship and emotional support.
- Golden
Lastly, the goddess of love and beauty is known for a number of her lovers and offspring. It implies that she is an extroverted and enthusiastic person who would seek out new stuff that fascinates her. This archetype symbolizes women who have a high opinion of being flexible to changes and innovative action and prefer a strong connection to long life relationships.
The imperfect feminism in ancient Greek mythology.
The Greek gods have skills, and each personalized characteristic is somehow familiar to the modern species. Ancient Greek mythology is more about patriarchy. Women are often represented as emotionally negative creatures who show madness, jealousy, wantonness, and male sabotage. In contrast, male gods are mostly written with the words killer, rape, and possession. It seems to be strange that the patriarchal world supports both the feminine and the masculine on the same level. Moreover, humans in mythology also build relationships with gods and then produce offspring. All the characters have family relations, love relationships, and conflicts. These gods form and command the human world’s society; however, they are also the society itself (Tilborgh, 2021).
There is another important explanation that can be appliede to modern society. In Greek mythology, both genders describe strong sexual passion, although Greek women control their lust in order to gain power and sabotage men. Lust is depicted as an uncontrollable desire that will drive men to extremes. In addition, some goddesses were undistracted by sexual desire and obtained strong power. As a result, it could be said that women handled sexuality better than men did. Women are given ways to protect themselves.
Conclusion
Women’s rights are a fundamental human right that is essential to achieving peaceful societies and have been changing in a better direction in accordance with the times. The Ancient Greeks could have had a different story if the virgin goddesses had had a weak will. Without humanity, it is impossible to develop a society, start a dispute, and enhance the qualities of humans as the gods in Ancient Greek did. People should empower them, women, to live in a world where they can make the best out of it because humanity is a gift to all people in the world as a whole to give them the qualities and characteristics of people.
Reference list
Kokkinidis, T., 2021. Greek Mythology Can Teach the Young Humanity, Virtue. [online] Available at: <https://greekreporter.com/2021/03/18/greek-mythology-can-teach-youngsters-about-humanity-virtue/> [Accessed 20 August 2022].
Mastrine, A., 2021. What Ancient Greek Goddesses Can Teach Us About Femininity. [online] Available at: <https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/what-ancient-greek-goddesses-can-teach-us-about-femininity> [Accessed 20 August 2022].
Tilborgh, A.J. van (2021). The (Imperfect) Feminism of Ancient Greek Myth. [online] Available at: <https://medium.com/interfaith-now/the-imperfect-feminism-of-ancient-greek-myth-4a67ed87d5e2#:~:text=Gods%20such%20as%20Athena%2C%20Artemis> [Accessed 20 August 2022].
