The Heroic Age

It is commonly held that history, myth and fiction have all contributed to the formation of the Greek heroic stories; but opinions differ widely as to the relative importance to be attributed to the three elements. Among modern scholars the general tendency has been to assign the chief weight to myth. By many indeed the heroes of the Trojan War are believed to be as mythical in origin as the gods themselves.

One conclusion may safely be drawn from the Northern evidence discussed in the last chapter: we must definitely dismiss the argument that the Homeric heroes cannot have been men of flesh and blood because they are brought into contact with the gods. No one will be so hardy as to suggest that King Haakon or his namesake, the famous earl of Lade, were products of myth or poetic imagination. Yet Göndul is as much responsible for the death of King Haakon as Athene is for that of Hector. There is certainly this difference between the two cases, that we have no historical evidence for the existence of the Homeric heroes. But the fact that deities participate in their destruction does not in itself prove that they are themselves products of myth or fiction.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when most of the characters of the Greek Heroic Age were believed to owe their origin to nature-myth–personifications of light, darkness and so forth.