Human body in the Greek Mythology

by Marco Scarangella

The human body has always been a source of inspiration for myth and human storytelling since it’s the first point of reference, the original source of sensations and emotions that gives rise to all questions and attempts at answers.

This applies in particular to Greek mythology: dozens of stories and legends from ancient Hellenic culture focus on the aesthetics of the protagonists. Young and beautiful characters, monstrous beings, incredible metamorphoses and hybrid creatures have animated the mythical sagas of Greece and elsewhere for centuries and have subsequently entered the collective imagination of modern culture.

The ancients lived in a world where the unknown ruled and were terribly afraid of all that they couldn’t explain.

In this sense the body in Greek mythology was mainly used to create antitheses, a kind of confrontation between opposite worlds, the known and the unknown.

For this reason in most cases, Greek myths deal with the categories of the natural and the supernatural, and employ a corporeal vocabulary of missing or extra body parts, and of creatures whose identity is poised between human and animal, mortal and immortal, physical and spiritual.

In classical and Greek culture in particular, the human body represented beauty and perfection, so any kind of deformation was considered a kind of malediction.

Following this type of imagery, those who represent evil and darkness, mythical opponents are often represented with an unusual number of body parts, as in the case of the Cyclops who only have one eye, or are even hybrids between human and animal anatomy, as in the case of the Sirens, the Centaurs and the Minotaur.

On the contrary all the great heroes of the myths, from the blond Achilles to the muscular Hercules, and the young protagonists such as Helen of Troy and Ariadne, are all characterised by an extraordinary, almost divine beauty. It’ s no coincidence that the gods and demigods, benign creatures and protectors of mankind, were represented not only as anthropomorphic, but even with the same qualities and defects as human beings. Indeed, according to Plato’s Symposium, man at the dawn of time was a perfect being even better than the Olympian gods. These extraordinary beings were beautiful and had no gender difference. The gods Zeus and Apollo, fearful of the strength of these entities, divided them in half, and since then men have felt the desire to be united with their other half, for which they strive and struggle, some desiring members of their own sex, others those of the opposite sex. A separate issue is that of myths based on body change. Ancient Greek tradition produced hundreds of tales centred on this subject. The Latin poet Ovid tried to collect and rework over 250 Greek myths of this kind in his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses.

Daphne, pursued by Apollo, is transformed into a laurel tree

The causes of these mythical transformations are numerous and of different types. Mutation can be a punishment, as in the case of Arachne, the young girl who was turned into a spider for daring to challenge the goddess Athena in a weaving competition.

In other cases, however, metamorphosis is a real salvation, as happened to Daphne who, trying to escape the carnal desires of the god Apollo, transformed herself into a laurel tree.

There are also many examples of catasterism, the process by which a hero or deity is transformed into a star or constellation: Andromeda, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Orion and Callisto are just some of the most famous mythological characters to have turned into celestial asters.

The huge number of myths based on the transformation of the human body into objects or animals can be explained by the ancients’ need to explicate nature, to bring it closer to mankind by humanising it and giving a name (usually the name of the transformed character) to what until then belonged to the world of darkness and the unknown.

Thus Greek mythology used the body as a vehicle to show or express the underlying tensions, contradictions, problems and dilemmas we face as conscious living beings inhabiting an alternately generous and hostile physical world. A hostile and dangerous world where men often appear weak in the face of the force of nature. Weakness of the body, but this can be overcome with the mind and the power of thought as shown by some of the most famous characters in Greek mythology.

Faced with numerous monstrous creatures of unlimited power and strength, Ulysses manages to survive above all thanks to his own cunning. Theseus managed to defeat the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth having thought, thanks to Arianna’s advice, to use a roll of thread. Oedipus managed to defeat the Sphinx, a horrifying creature with the body of a lion and the head of a woman, by solving the riddle she had set him.

Although physical strength and beauty remained fundamental qualities in the myth, intelligence was just as important, if not more so, perhaps the main tool mankind can use in times of difficulty.

We have therefore seen how the human body was used in ancient Greek culture and mythology mainly to explain, to clarify what was unknown about man.

The body in a certain sense became the unit of measure for knowing the world and making it less wild and obscure, underlining the centrality of the human figure in the universe conceived by the Hellenic civilisation.

Ulysses blinds Polyphemus