Greek Mythology: The greatist game of telephone ever played.

"Trying to teach Greek Mythology in 3 hours is like trying to teach all of U.S History in 20 minutes." The words of Mrs. White ring even more true when trying to condense century's of Mythology in a single blog post. So with all that in mind, please enjoy my attempt.

This past Saturday was the last of our weekend seminar classes. Getting up that morning was disheartening not because i had to wake up before noon on a Saturday but because i knew the end of this amazing experience was drawing near. Pushing aside my woebegone emotions I decided to embrace the inevitable by arriving to school 20 minutes early. However, even showing up early did not seem to make the day last any longer. So when the clock struck 10 I walked into Mrs. Whites office and prepared myself for a day of Greek Mythology.
The first thing that we talked about was the rich oral tradition of story telling that the Greeks had cultivated many years ago. This to me was an important way to start off because it answered my burning question as to why there were so many inconsistencies in these myths. Laying out to me that man kind had basically been playing a giant game of telephone with most of Greek Mythology allowed me to settle in and take Mrs. Whites interpretation for what it was. As we moved on we talked about how mythology was interwoven in all aspects of our culture. From Homer and the lliad, Ovaid and The Metamorphis and how colonialism fueled the spread of all this. As we went deeper and deeper Mrs. White explained to use that the fundamental reasons behind most of these myths was to explain the unknown. I found that very interesting that even with all of our modern day technology and science we still cherish these myths.

As the morning flew past and the afternoon drew closer we began to talk about my favorite aspect of Greek Mythology , the Heroes. From Heracles to Odysseus, the archetype that we judge a hero by today comes from these stories. My favorite of these being the story of Theseus because it has everything. From a father son relationship doomed for tragedy, romance doomed for tragedy and of course a terrifying monster doomed for tragedy. Even though i had seen these stories repeated countless times it was really amazing to hear the original in all of its greatness

At the end of our lesson i thought to myself just how different each of our seminars were compared to one another. Roman History with Mr. Sullivan was like auditing a college lecture., the booming voice of the professor going so fast that my pencil and my brain could hardly keep up. Art History with Mrs. Everrett was like going back to the simpler days of elementary school, were you learned, laughed and made a poster with pretty markers. Finally, Greek Mythology with Mrs. White could only be described as your cooler older sibling trying to describe how awesome college is and enjoying every second of it. Thank you all for giving up your weekends and giving all of us this amazing opportunity.

Dennis Johnson