“Myth has two main functions,” the poet and scholar
Robert Graves wrote in 1955. “The first is to answer the sort of awkward
questions that children ask, such as ‘Who made the world? How will it end?
Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?’…The second function
of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for
traditional rites and customs.”
In ancient Greece, stories
about gods and goddesses and heroes and monsters were an important part of
everyday life. They explained everything from religious rituals to the
weather, and they gave meaning to the world people saw around them.
Source: History.com