Just to relieve myself of all the bothering things that go up in my life these days, I decided to watch a movie along with friends. This way I could also forget about some of the nasty things that life is throwing in my direction. The movie we watched was Percy Jackson & The Thunder Thief.
It's basically a children's movie based on a novel of the same name. It talks about the adventures of, well, Percy Jackson and how he found out that he was actually a demi-god, son of of Poseidon and a mortal woman. The movie, which is a start of a 5-novel series, details how Percy was accused of stealing the lightning of Zeus from Mount Olympus.
At this point, we already view Greek mythology with such creativity, treating each of the characters in this body of myths to be only the creation of the ancient Greeks to explain much of the natural phenomena that they were experiencing back then.
Thousands of years earlier, however, these legends are well-believed in. These stories explained the gods, the origin of life, the nature of the world, and the various heroes that once plied the lands of ancient Greece. The Gods were revered, and this system was basically included in the religious system of the ancient Greeks. What's interesting about the gods of Greek mythology was that they acted pretty much like ordinary human beings--with the drama and all--except that they have super powers to add extra damage. A lot of what we know right now about the ancient Greeks came from the numerous poems and epics that survived until this day.
Among the most popular gods are, of course, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Athena, plus so many more minor gods that you would hardly read about in history books.
Sometimes I wonder what will happen if Greek mythology existed up to this day. Divination would have probably taken a different course. It would have been very much unlike what it is today.
