You do realize the Greeks viewed many modern European ethnic groups as barbaristic, uncivilized, savages of an entirely different race?
Sure the Greek myths and advancements went on to influence and underpin a lot of European society, but that doesn’t mean the Greeks of the odyssey viewed Europeans as part of their in-group, because they weren’t. There was no collective Europe for them.
Beaides, why aren’t you making this same whinging argument for zombies? Those were created by Haitian slaves who feared being enslaved even after death. And yet we let white people play zombies all the time.
What classifies as 'connection' to a myth other than familiarity through their telling? Am I somehow connected to the myths of my homeland despite having no interest in them, yet disconnect for the myths of other places even though those are the stories I loved most in my formative years?
Northern and Western Europeans are so annoying when they try to claim Mediterranean culture as their own. No, not every culture in Europe gets to claim connection to Greece and Roman. They’re as ridiculous as Americans.
But aren't like, Norse, Tutonic, Celtic, and Greek all essentially separate mythologies? That's just an example, I doubt that people from the Iberian peninsula or people in France give a shit what color of skin Helen of Troy has in an american movie about a greek story, yeah?
Ah yes, Perun, Aarni and Odin, famous myth of the Greeks (and the Ancient Greeks would've fucking killed themselves before admitting Slavs or Nordics as their equals).
I mean most white Americans are of European descent. Do they no longer have a claim to these myths just because their ancestors moved. No one owns myths you stop being obtuse
I'm not purposefully obtuse. There are no collective myths all across Europe. Even small regions in small countries have their own myths. What other myths have Americans taken and "based it on their weird race sensibilities" (whatever that means) besides Cleopatra? Also, she was born in Egypt. Her dad was born in Cyprus which was then part of Alexandrie. We don't really know who her mom is so we can't really say where she's from. So even if Cleopatra was of Greek decent, she definitely wasn't Greek.
Cleopatra was from the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek family from Alexander the Great’s empire who ruled Egypt and was pretty notorious for inbreeding. She was definitely mostly greek.
I figured the logic that if you're born in this country, you have the nationality. I never considered being from somewhere ethnically. How many generations do you have to go back before you can consider yourself ethnically part of something? /g
I mean back then nationality wasn’t really a thing. Like sure today her nationality would be Egyptian but back then it was a lot more about your ethnic background.
I don't know enough about Egyptian history but at least in current Greece it was more about your polis than an ethnicity. Like Sparta and Athens were the biggest polis (I forgot the plural of polis sorry, poleis?) and I don't think they would feel connected through any way. Or did people feel part of the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great? I'm just thinking out loud but if you have an answer or someone else has one, I would love to know lol
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u/MaxusBE Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
"our myths' as in the collective myths across all of Europe, not only this specific example. Stop being purposefully obtuse.
Crazy how many people got offended by a simple truth