spin

This is part of a dump of 800 words reacting ostensibly to something GakuseiDon said over two weeks ago. Water under the bridge there, Roo. Smacks of a long drive-by to me.

Sheshbazzar

Newbie. chalk it up to inexperience.

spin

"Newbie" has connotations not appropriate with this poster. You chalk up faux pas to inexperience, but that's not the case with Roo. If you haven't read his long-winded, vociferous attack of Earl's book on Amazon, do so. You'll get the drift of the sort of hypocrisy entailed with his criticism of Earl based on the length of response.

Roo Bookaroo

A short note.
When it comes to the "ancients" and their religious beliefs, Greece is the subject of choice for study, because it offers by far the most abundant documentation of any ancient and primitive civilization.
What's interesting is that we have a pretty good description of the cast of characters involved in the mythological tales and religious representations of ancient Greece.
It is a huge list, that has been put together by patient collating of all available documentation by an immensity of untiring scholars.

And most certainly, this list is not complete, and will be enriched in the future.
As it is, Wikipedia offers state-of-the-art directories:

The list of Greek mythological figures,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ogical_figures

and the list of Greek mythological creatures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ical_creatures.

Some listings refer to groups rather than individuals, where only those identified with distinct names are counted.
And there's a slight overlap between some categories, when, for instance, Achilles or Herakles figure in two categories. The overlaps are few and don't undermine the order of magnitude of their categories.

In summary, we find the following number of characters in those lists:

12 Olympians
15 additional primordial deities
33 Titans
22 Giants
123 personified concepts (and I noticed that a few mentioned in Gilbert Murray's book are not in the list)
32 Chthonic deities
77 Sea deities
48 Sky deities
108 Rustic deities
14 Agricultural deities
25 Deified mortals
9 Health deities
63 Other deities
22 Heroes
30 Notable Women
157 Kings
19 Seers
22 Amazons
52 Inmates of Tartarus
581 Minor figures, a huge number, and all of them identified and named
38 Mythical monsters
16 Mythical animals
9 Dragons (including the Dracones, the Cetea, and the Dracaenae
6 Automatons (most of them groups)
and 5 Legendary Tribes
What is not included is the huge group of spirits and daemons lurking everywhere, which have not been identified and tagged with a specific name.

So these extensive directories were rich enough to provide enough material for ambitious writers, composers of hymns, treatises, teachers, preachers, oracles, all over the country and through the 1,200 years of ancient Greece.

What's not reflected in those numbers is that each character was subjected to a huge variety of treatments, stories and representations that differed radically from one another. The freedom of Hellenic and Hellenistic mythological imagination and its creativity were without compare.
By contrast, the stereotyped representations of the dour and depressing picture of the Christian God, his Jesus and Holy Spirit, plus their angels, saints and demons look pretty limited (and how boring) when compared to the luxuriant abundance of the ancient Greeks' dramatic imagination.

spin

Note this. What follows is called a "short note".

The stuff at the center above makes me think of rejects from a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, so with no further ado let's get a Greek mythical version going:

On the twelfth day of the pagan rite my true love told me of...

Twelve labors of Hercules
Eleven daughters of Dionysius
Ten Atlantean kings a-drowning
Nine Muses musing
Eight Hamadryads
Seven at Thebes a-fighting
Six children of Chronos
Five ages of man
Four eyes of Scylla
Three foul gorgons
Two Dioscuri
and a gumball of other woo

(first time, sing "a gumball of ancient woo")

Maybe we could teach that to kids instead of the silly christian song.

Sheshbazzar

I see. I was only going by his recently joining us and ultra-low post count. Thought it was only juvenile bad manners. Now I know better. uggghhh! nasty.