Greek Mythology - Mythological Stories

In many societies mythological stories establish moral laws and act as standards and models of behavior for people. Myths were created for the people to try to explain natural occurrences in everyday life. These stories repeatedly talk about characters that are gods or heroes with supernatural abilities. In mythology, these heroes must prove their worth by overcoming challenges of every kind. The result usually reveals a kind of moral theme that can be applied to everyone. These heroes are usually described as being incredibly gifted with strength, physical beauty, intelligence or a certain skill. The archetypal hero has to overcome several difficult tasks on his journey. A lot of the time the hero must seek out and defeat a powerful monster for one of the tasks. In Greek mythology, monsters serve to set heroes apart from regular humans. Monster are huge, strong, and scary monster so the heroes must use more than strength, they must use their wits to defeat them as well. In many of the most famous of myths, such as the story of Perseus and Odysseus, heroes have more wit than the average human because they must outwit the monsters.

There are numerous examples in Greek mythology where heroes must fight god-like monsters in order to reach their goal. There is a repeating pattern that can

be found with these monsters. In the stories the monsters have a specific relationship with the heroes, monsters frequently symbolize the inner struggle the hero must overcome in order to accomplish the challenge they are facing. They play a certain role in analyzing the beliefs and morals of this culture. This paper analyzes a few of the monsters famous in classical antiquity: Scylla and Charybdis, the Minotaur, and the Gorgon Medusa.

Two of these monsters are immortal monsters that appear in the story of

Odysseus. These monsters are named Scylla and Charybdis, who occupied a narrow strait of water, which was later, identified to be in the Stair of Messina. Scylla was a supernatural monster, with 6 dog-like head having three rows of sharp teeth, with long snake-like necks and 12 feet. She devoured whoever went into her cave and wandered within her reach. Scylla can easily be rationalized in antiquity as a dangerous reef or rock. Charybdis was a supernatural monster that resided not far away on the opposite shore, she swallowed all the water and spewed it back out three times a day and was deadly to ships. Charybdis can easily be rationalized as the personification of a whirlpool.

In mythology the Minotaur is half man half bull that lived in a labyrinth. He had horns with sharp ends like knifes and ate human flesh. King Minos fed young Athenians as sacrifices to the bull. This story shows us of the Greeks disdain of the practice of human sacrifice that was practiced by the Minoans of Crete, home of the Minotaur. Theseus was successful in killing the Minotaur