Cosmos of the Ancients

the long version

The philosophers of Ancient Greece lived in a time when the gods were worshipped and the myths about them very much alive. They were generally regarded as accurate and there was no scientific evidence at hand to dismiss them. So, were they believed? This book explores to what extent the Greeks were able to question their own mythology. This is done by examining the cosmology of their philosophers and what roles they allowed therein for the gods – as much as possible according to their own words. To the philosophers, the quest to understand the world was neither made redundant by the mythology nor completely independent of it. If they were able to express doubts regarding the gods as well as the myths about them, and many of them certainly were, then their contemporaries must have been able to grasp the same. The Greeks were devoted to their mythology, but not all of them blindly so. Stefan Stenudd is a Swedish author and historian of ideas, who specializes on studies of the patterns of thought in creation myths.