The myths of Ceyx and Alcyone and Pyramus and Thisbe, told in the book Mythology by Edith Hamilton, tell two stories of tragic love. Pyramus and Thisbe were two lovers whose love was forbidden by their parents. Their relationship ended tragically; through a misunderstanding, they killed themselves, not wanting to live without the other. The gods memorialized this tragic relationship by making the mulberries red for the blood that was spilled upon them, because they died under a mulberry tree. Ceyx and Alcyone were a husband and wife that loved each other very much. When Ceyx dies, Alcyone went to the shore to find his body, and when she dis, they both turned into birds and flew away together. The broods they raised on the water…show more content… Phenomena in nature, such as volcanoes eruptions or lightning bolts, were explained through stories that tried to make sense of them. However, it is their methods of explaining them, their first tries to explain the world rationally, that make these myths all the more interesting.They saw the sea grow calm in the winter and they thought love had caused it. They saw something beautiful in the brightly colored mulberries and attributed that to love. Their explanation for the Halcyon days, for instance, is that "every year there are seven days on end when the sea lies still and calm...these are the days when Alcyone broods over her nest floating on the sea...they are called after her, Alcyone, or more commonly, Halcyon days" (Hamilton, 146) The Greeks' myth about Ceyx and Alcyone shows that Greek culture admired nature, or, more specifically, the phenomena that nature…show more content… The Greeks, who were otherwise rationally minded, wrote many more myths with a combination of love and nature. Why were the Greeks so fascinated with the two concepts, both separate and together? Maybe they weren't as rationally minded as thought. Consider this: The city state of Athens had a direct democracy, the first of its kind in the ancient world. Greeks are often credited for great technological advances and discoveries. It is not safe, not rational to try new concepts, yet the Greeks experimented with ideas that are the basis of our modern world. Maybe the myths of love and nature were their first attempt to put safe, primitive ways behind them, and view the beautiful, irrational and rational world in which they
