“One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.” – Socrates “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” – Epicurus “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” - Demosthenes Greek mythology has been many times interpreted and analyzed virtually since it’s very beginning, and its inchoation’s have been as widely debated as the myths themselves have been interpreted. The arduousness in identifying the inchoation’s of Greek myths stems from the fact that, until the time of the Greek poets Hesiod and Homer, the transmission of myths was primarily a verbal affair. Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, in integration to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, are the oldest extant indited sources of Greek mythology, and most philomaths concur …show more content…
Nilsson first makes a distinction between the myths dealing with heroes and those concerned with divinity and cosmogony, stressing that it is erroneous to surmise that "the hero myths were derived from the same source as the myths concerning the gods." Nilsson contends that while divinity myths may indeed have "pre-Greek" inceptions, the heroic myth cycles as found in Greek epics can be dated back to the epoch kenned as the Mycenaean Age (1950 to 1100 B.C.) in Greece. Such upbraiders as Richard Caldwell and Robert Mondi are more concerned with the Near Eastern inchoations of Greek engenderment myths. Mondi examines this issue by focussing not on the textual transmission of myths, but on the diffusion of "mythic conceptions" or motifs. Such conceptions include the "cosmic disunion of earth and firmament," the hierarchical organization of the cosmos, and the "cosmic struggle" by which divine kingship is procured. Mondi concludes by verbalizing that elements in Greek myths are "derived from contact with the considerably more advanced cultures to the East and