Greek and Roman Mythology

Greek and Roman Mythology

--Comparison with the Greek and Roman mythology and Chinese mythology In this semester, I took the course of The Ancient Greek And Roman Mythology Story. Comparing with Chinese mythology story, I find some common points and some differences.

First of all,I want to talk about some common points of them. First,the origin of the world . First of all, they mention the similar way of the formation of things in the world. China and Greec e people all think that the original universe is a mass chaos. In Chinese old book, it recorded the st ory of Pan Gu breaking out the sky and the earth. And in the ancient Greek myth, according to He ctor spectrum, the universe at first is also in a mass chaos, people can not divide the heaven and earth.What’s more, land, water and air all mixed together, right now the god Chaos and by his wife night god Cox and their children made the animals and plants in the world.Both of them think that god gave everything for the world.Second ,the origin of human beings. In these two mythology,people all made by clay and when the disaster strikes in humans, coincidentally, there is a God, who sacrifice his live to save human beings.n Chinese mythology,the god is Nv Wa and in Greek and Roman mythology people called him Prometheus . What’s more,they all shows people’s best wish about love.

Then I want to talk about some differences. Of cause,because both in the east and in the west are accordance with their national human’s image to shape the image of the ”god”, so their looks are totally different. However,the personality traits of them also have some

differences.The most different is that gods in the Greek myth are more humanization. They live lik e common people. They also have the seven emotions and six sensory pleasures. In their life, fathe r probably loves his daughter and mother probably loves her son. The Greek gods in the moral asp ects have nothing to praise, in the spirit and wisdom, they have no what superman place, they are being god just because their body are very satisfactory. But in east, gods don‘t have any desire. Gods are gods, they have huge difference with the people ordinary. In the Greek myth, gods also have rights to love or hate, personality is distinct. Such as the father in heaven Zeus often chase th e beautiful women in the mundane, and his wife Hera like a jealous heart strong woman persecute her rival in love. But in the east myth, through Qixiannv and Dongyong love each other, they can’t live together and they must suffer hardship.

Also,there is a large gap in the proportion of men and women between Greek and Roman mythology and Chinese mythology. In Chinese mythology,we can see very few goddesses or we can say that there are few goddesses in Chinese mythology can be named,only Chang’e, WangMu and Guanyi .But in Greek and Roman mythology,there are many goddesses and most of them are powerful.Like Athena, goddess of wisdom. She can even fight with Poseidon. Nearly all of goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology She have the same ability with God.Obviously,in ancient Greek and Roman culture, people emphasis on the power of women more than in Chinese culture.

Finally, from the culture of different can be seen in the system. In the ancient Greek, the syste m is democratic, so we can see in the ancient Greek myth, although gods regard Zeus as the king o f all the gods, they often deal with the affairs in the areas they are in charge of by themselves, they have the right, not necessary after the examination and approval, the gods would be on Olympus, to negotiate business and the vote, not by Zeus personal dictatorship. This has been performance o f democratic centralism. But in China the system is emperor of led centralized. People can be conv erted into the god, to become a god, as long as through uniting the painstaking and to guide people to do good, accumulate more than a virtue. In Greek and Roman mythology culture, the God is innate God,they have a strict kinship, they are more inclined to human family model when they get along with each other. While in Chinese culture God,the system of gods is loose, everyone has a relatively independent system.Because people can be converted into the god as long as through uniting the painstaking and to guide people to do good, accumulate more than a virtue. Their coexistence model is more biased in favor of monarch and his subjects.

Both them use myth to explain the world when they could not understand it. Thus, myth is th e most concentrated and unique embodiment of national spirit, and it is the most ancient and solid root of life, it is also essential characteristic of national culture. There are still many other cultural differences between Chinese and Greek myth. But in a word, Chinese myth lays more emphasis o

n morality and it is conservative, while Greek myth emphasizes strength and it is open. The analys is of cultural differences between Chinese and Greek myth will help us understand the literary out puts of Western countries further, and can promote our cultural exchanges with Western countries.

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