Volume: Volume 10, Issue 1

Ancient Greek myths are an inexhaustible source of meanings. Mythical persons were consolidated as archetypal figures and took on a dramatic character in the context of ancient Greek tragedy. These persons, as familiar beings, are the trigger for later creators to express their own concerns and thoughts. Thus, a coupling of archetypes and influences of the era of each creator emerges. The theory of intertextuality is the expression of this coupling. Through intertextuality, the ancient myth and the new text meet at specific points – intertexts – without the ancient text losing its importance and value. Thus begins a conversation between the two texts. This conversation as a hybrid framework – as Baktin will call it – is the field for the expression of new intertextual conversations and quests. The new text resulting from this coupling is autonomous and functions as a response to the different social and historical stimuli, as well as the perceptions of the creators. In other words, alongside intertextuality goes the concept of reception, i.e. the way the creator perceives the myth, transforms it according to its values and perceptions. Within this context, the archetypal figure of the Beautiful Helen will travel from the ancient myth and the Euripidean Helen, at the end of the 19th century to confront the second Faust of the German philosopher and writer Goethe, while much later the important Greek poet Yannis Ritsos will place her in the context of the Fourth Dimension to express his own issues and concerns.

Modern science is the natural continuation of Pythagorean view of nature based on mathematics, as commands Pythagoras philosophy. Pythagoras, considering that numbers, symmetries and harmonies are the first principles of nature, laid the foundations of scientific thought, continuing the work of Thales. Pythagoras is not just an ancient philosopher, but the first to grasp the deeper idea that nature is not simply described by mathematics—it is mathematics in itself. This worldview is expressed in modern physics with the theories of symmetry and the search for fundamental laws. Just as the Pythagoreans saw in the ratio 1:2 or 2:3 the harmony of the universe, so physicists today recognize in the symmetries of the fields SU(2), SU(3), U(1) the harmonious structure of the microcosm. The mathematical equations that govern the universe are the modern expression of Pythagoras' "music of the spheres". Even the search for the Theory of Everything (a greek term, Θεωρία Παντός) is nothing more than the attempt to discover the perfect cosmic agreement, the one and harmonious law that unites everything, as expected in modern physics. For the Pythagoreans, beauty, simplicity, and symmetry were criteria of truth and beauty. The same happens in modern science, where the most successful theories are distinguished by their elegance. The world, therefore, is presented as a mathematical and musical instrument, where every phenomenon is a note of a universal rhythm. Thus, the Pythagorean idea of numerical harmony remains alive: nature is number and order, and we, in search of its mathematical essence, are all Pythagoreans. It is quite normal that Pythagoras was transformed from a philosopher into a legendary and semi-divine figure already in ancient and late antiquity. Proportions such as 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (fifth), 4:3 (fourth) become metaphors for cosmic relationships. Pythagorean-Platonic emphasis on number to argue that harmony in music mirrors harmony in the heavens and within the soul.3

The origins of the alphabet have long been a subject of scholarly debate, with two principal contenders: the Phoenicians and the Greeks. The prevailing consensus holds that the Phoenicians provided a consonantal script that the Greeks adapted and expanded with vowels. However, a re-examination of numerical, phonetic, and cosmological evidence—particularly the correlation between the one-digit sums of the letter-values of the Greek names of the seven celestial bodies with their rank/order from the sun being first (1st)—suggests that the Greek alphabet represents an indigenous system of symbolic and phonetic coherence rather than a mere adaptation. The study argues that the Greek alphabet reflects an autonomous development grounded in earlier Minoan 25 alphabetiform symbols (Fig. 1) and Linear B vowels (Fig. 5) and the individualization of the Linear B syllabes into consonants + vowels, (Fig. 7)

Historically humans have demonstrated a persistent attraction to the "unknown", that which they cannot understand or attribute to natural causes. This view led to the “birth” of supernatural entities to which are attributed not only natural phenomena but everything one lacks or enjoys in comparison with others. Concequently, in the Ancient Greek consciousness, the lightning was not due to the collision of the clouds, but to Jupiter. The plague that wiped out a multitude of Achaeans in Phrygia resides in the wrath of Apollo. In the context of explaining a phenomenon, a boon or an unfortunate event, therefore, man invents the concept of “god” (etym. probably from v. θέω or τίθημι, according to Babiniotis). The existence of deities is evident in cult traditions that predate, by far, even ancient Greek. Sometimes beneficial, in a sense such, as the gods of Olympus and sometimes “dark” and eerie like Lamia. The veneration of the divine— often oscillating between profound reverence and an existential sense of horror— emerges as a direct corollary of the human fascination with the indeterminate. This ontological tension is rooted in the perceived disparity between mortal limitations and the absolute nature of the gods, who are viewed as possessing an inexhaustible abundance of both material goods and moral virtues. Consequently, the gods are not merely objects of admiration but serve as transcendent benchmarks of an excellence that, while aesthetically and ethically alluring, remains inherently inaccessible and potentially threatening to the human condition. Since we are referring to the term “morality” it is necessary, before delving into our subject, to clarify the correlation of the concept with the religious system in question. In the multitude of views expressed on the relationship between religion and ethics, I single out as the most lucid account that of Lloyd-Jones, according to whom the understanding of the morals of a culture must be sought within the religious framework from which they derive. Anyone who questions the religiosity of the ancient Greek polytheistic system because its mechanisms do not resemble those of other monotheistic religions, such as Christianity, is far from approaching what is at stake.1 The existence of divine intervention could not be absent from the works of Ancient Greek Literature, especially Drama. The aim of this paper is to examine the ways and patterns through which respect for the divine is manifested in three specific tragedies: Hippolytus, Iphigenia in Aulis and Bacchae of Euripides, as well as the similarities and differences among the plays in terms of how this respect is highlighted.