• Founded in 509 BC
• More of an Oligarchy with elections than a democracy
• Women did not have the right to vote

Contents

1. Scenes from a Provincial Childhood
2. The Great-Uncle
3. A Political Master Class
4. Unfinished Business
5. A Boy with a Name
6. From Victory, Defeat
7. Killing Fields
8. Divided World
9. Golden Age
10. Fighting Neptune
11. Parthian Shots
12. East is East and West is West
13. The Phony War
14. Showdown
15. A Long Farewell
16. Abdication
17. Whom the Gods Love
18. Exercising Power
19. The Cult of Virtue
20. Life at Court
21. Growing the Empire
22. A Family at War
23. The Unhappy Return
24. The Bitter End
25. Into the Future

Campbell begins this essay with an anecdote about overhearing a precocious youngster speaking to his mother about a paper a classmate wrote about evolution. Both the child’s teacher and mother were not interested in hearing about the “scientific paper”, as the child put it, and were insistent that Adam and Eve were our first parents. “What a teacher! What a mother for a twentieth-century child!”, Campbell laments.

Campbell indicates that 1492 may have marked the end (or beginning of the end) of the period where mythology served as the true force governing people’s lives and beliefs. After Columbus sailed West, a number of exploratory and scientific advances have slowly worked to shatter and discredit the myths of the past.

Campbell makes a great point that the countless and expansive galaxies, the billions of shining stars, the varied planets and their moons, the comets zipping through space, and all of the other diverse and bizarre objects found in the sheer unimaginable vastness of the Universe discovered by Science is infinitely more mind-blowing and spectacular and awe-inspiring than any of the old mythologies. The world of the Bible truly does appear to be a children’s story in comparison. Stories such as Noah and the Great Flood, Adam and Eve, and the Exodus have all been disproved by science or archaeological evidence.

It is extremely interesting that similar mythologies have developed all over the earth in civilizations that have had no contact with each other. Throughout history, there have been myths of virgins giving birth to heroes who die and are resurrected: Osiris in Egypt, Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, and Dionysus in Greece. Even the Aztecs had their own virgin-born Savior, who died and was resurrected and who also had a cross as one of his symbols.

Campbell then discusses how all great civilizations have a tendency to believe that their myths are truth and are superior to the myths and beliefs of others. In many cases (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), the believers in other gods are heathens or infidels. In the modern world, such beliefs are ludicrous and Campbell asserts that anyone with a kindergarten education could not take them seriously. However, since such fundamental beliefs form the moral constructs and supports of civilization, there is a danger in dispelling them so thoroughly by science. When the masses can no longer believe and have nothing firm to latch on to that explains their place in the Universe, uncertainty follows. With uncertainty comes a breakdown in the moral order. Campbell associates the increase in violence, crime, mental disorders, drug addiction, and other vices with the breakdown of these old myths by modern science. This prevents a dilemma for modern teachers and parents – where should their loyalty lie? In preserving the myths supporting our civilization or the truth found in science?

Campbell believes that the answer to this problem lies in psychology. Because of the common similarities in the mythologies throughout history and between disparate civilizations, there must be something deep within the human psyche that validates and explains these beliefs.

There has been progress in this area of psychology. Sir James G Frazer, a 19th century author, believed that mythology, magic, and religion would be ultimately refuted and abandoned by advances in science. Freud took the study of myths to new levels. Myths, according to Freud, are in the same category as dreams. Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. Freud believed that religion and neurosis were one and the same with the only difference being that religion is more public. Ultimately, Freud believed, like Frazer, that myth, magic and religion would eventually be refuted by science. Jung, on the other hand, believed that mythology and religion served a positive purpose. Myth serves to bring us back in touch with the powers of the psyche. These powers have been common to the human spirit for millennia and represent the cumulative wisdom acquired throughout the ages. They cannot be refuted by science as science only has the power to affect the outside world and not the depths of the subconscious mind. Through myth, we have the ability to get in touch with the greater and wiser world that exists in ourselves. Therefore, the civilization that has the ability to keep its myths active and thriving will benefit from the powers inherent in the human spirit. However, there has to be balance. By going to deeply into the world of myths and dreams, one would lose the ability to survive in the modern world.

Campbell worries about societies that reject any interaction and cooperation between science and myth. He brings up the point of the rejection of the influence of the Greeks, who had already established the fact that the Earth revolved around the sun, in the science of the Bible. By doing so, the world lost more than a thousand years of scientific advancements and further development of civilization. Instead, we have the despicable legacy of heresy trials and the burning of people at the stake. Another interesting example lies in the history of Islam. For centuries, Islamic society was a shining example of progressive scientific thought, especially in the realm of medicine. The, with the strict enforcement of the Koran as the Word of God, Islamic progress in science and medicine died – and with it Islam itself (as a religion that provides any sort of positive impact on human life in the aggregate). From that point on, the west took the lead in the advancement of science and we had unprecedented progress from the early twelfth century onward.

In civilizations untouched by this progress, such as in developing nations, all social change is the result of conflict with others. Each distinct groups is frozen in time; change only occurs with the influence of invaders. In the modern Western world, continuous progress has occurred due to the inspired quest of a relatively few number of people to seek out the truth. However, what is so wonderful about this journey is that all of this scientific progress cannot be considered as the final truth. Instead, there is a relentless and unquenchable thirst to learn more and progress further.

Campbell concludes with the notion that the only certainty we have is that we do not know a thing. All we can do is continue to strive for the truth no matter where it leads and what fears it may awaken within us. Where the old mythologies strived to comfort us with the idea of an all-knowing presence that is concerned with our plight and is ready to receive us with open arms, the new science shows us that nobody knows what is out there or if “out there” even exists at all. We can only observe what appears to be out there and strive to explain it. And, within us, there is a different kind of phenomena, experienced best during sleep, that we do not know the source of, the reason for, or even what they really are. Again, we can only hypothesize. The only absolute known is that the source of myths and dreams is absolutely unknown.

Notes and References

Flat Earth
Sumerians
Greek astronomy
Plato
Sirens
Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Satan
Mountain of Purgatory
Biblical Plagues
Orinoco
Magellan circumnavigates the Earth
Vasco De Gama sails around Africa to India
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Copernicus and the heliocentric universe
Galileo
Sir Walter Raleigh
Cain
Enoch
Nod
Eden
Canaan
Ikhnaton
Ramses II
Merneptah
Moses
Creation
Genesis
Torah
Ezra
Quetzalcoatl
Aristotle
Hesiod
Aristarchus
Eratosthenes
Hipparchus
Justinian
Mohammed
Vedas
Shiva
Samudra manthan (Churning the Milky Ocean)
Jesus