Discussing the similarities and differences between Chinese ancient myths and Greek myths

The so-called "loss of the goddess", that is, the downgrading of the goddess, refers to the fact that with the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal clans, matriarchy has been replaced by patriarchy, and the status of women has fallen from the peak to the trough, to the point where they are oppressed and enslaved. to the point of being oppressed and enslaved. The world of the Goddess is a reflection of the world of women, and so the Goddess has undergone the same transformation of status as women.

Human society began as a matriarchal society, and the worship of ancestors began with the goddess. In the early days of mythology, there were many outstanding goddesses, such as Nuwa and Xiwangmu in China, and Caiyia, the mother goddess of the earth in Greece.

Nuwa in Chinese mythology is the goddess who created mankind. She pinched the yellow earth and made the "spirits of all living things" in her own likeness, and thus the human race came into being. Nuwa loved the world and loved her children even more. When the sky collapsed and the earth fell, and mankind was almost exterminated, she made colorful stones to mend the sky, and killed the black dragon on the plains of Jizhou, so that mankind could be freed from the catastrophe.

In Greek mythology, the original universe was chaotic, and Caius was born from this chaos. Caius was the source of all things and gods, and from herself she gave birth to Uranus, the god of the heavens, with whom she gave birth to the twelve Titan giants. Caius represented the social force of matriarchy.

However, when clan society transitioned from matriarchy to patriarchy, with patrilineality replacing matrilineality, and patriarchal power replacing matriarchal power, the male god reigned supreme, while the goddess image gradually receded from a leading role to a supporting role.

The male god replaces the goddess in many myths, as reflected in the creation myths. Throughout the history of mythology, creation myths have gone through an evolutionary process in which the world was created independently by the goddess, the world was created by the combination of the goddess and the male god, and the world was created independently by a male god, a process in which the goddess went from being the protagonist in the creation of life to playing a supporting role and even losing her birthright. In Chinese mythology, Pangu, a later male god, is considered to be the creator of the world, replacing Nuwa as the sole creator of the world. In Greek mythology, the old generation of gods centered on Caius developed into a new generation centered on Zeus.

It is not uncommon for male power to take precedence over female power in mythology. It is said that when Athens chose its patron saint, the male citizens all chose Poseidon, the god of the sea, and the female citizens all chose Athena, and Athena was elected with one more vote. But the people were afraid of Poseidon flooding the city of Athens, depriving women of the right to vote, and the children's surnames were changed to follow their fathers.

From the transformation of the image and status of gods in Chinese and Greek ancient myths, one can explore the evolution of human social history at that time: from a feminized society to a patriarchal one.

(2) Worship of Heroic Images

With the development of social history, the primitive forefathers' understanding of nature became more and more profound, and human beings began to conquer nature and transform it, promoting the progress of human civilization. The productivity level of primitive society is very low, human beings are powerless in front of the power of nature, and human beings are born with the instinct to worship heroes, so the heroes of the nation became gods. Engels said, "The next step leads us to the high stage of the age of barbarism, in which all cultured peoples experienced their heroic age." Heroic performance is the source of myths. The Greeks regarded myths as "ancient history" and considered them to be true and trustworthy. Heroes were the protagonists of "ancient history," and "in the eyes of the Greeks of the archaic and classical age, they were like living men of ancient times, belonging to a race older and more powerful than the present, who, because they were more like men than like the gods, were held up as models to be emulated." Certain other hero cults are mythologies of the history in question, in which the protagonists were originally real people, or legendary mortals, who were portrayed by later generations as semi-divine figures with magical powers, capable of changing the destinies of mankind, and capable of averting evil and preventing disasters. The heroes created by people to help mankind solve their problems became objects of praise, and they were all endowed with wonderful qualities.

Hero worship can be divided into two categories:

⒈ hero worship of invention. Human civilization is constantly progressing, the ancestors learned more and more skills, such as drilling wood for fire, building houses. These advances have brought great benefits to people, such as fire not only allows people to eat cooked food, but also helps people to protect themselves from the cold, so as to fight against the harsh living environment. People were able to get fire by drilling wood, but they did not understand why drilling wood produced fire and thought it was a miracle. So in mythology, it is the hero who steals fire from heaven to bring light and warmth to people. In China, there was the inventor of fire, Suiren, who traveled through the sun and moon to the country of Suiming, where he did not know day and night, and saw a bird pecking at a fire tree to start a fire, so he drilled wood with a twig to get fire. Prometheus, whom Marx called "the noblest saint and martyr on the philosophical calendar," was the protector of mankind, and he made great sacrifices to protect mankind. In order to lighten the burden of mankind, he made a fool of Zeus by wrapping the bones of an ox in cowhide. Zeus fell for it and refused to pass the fire to mankind. So Prometheus picked a sprig of woody fennel and walked to the sun chariot. He sped under the car and stretched the branch into its flames until it burned. He descended to the earth with the kindling in his hand, and instantly the first pillar of jungle fire rose to heaven. Because he had stolen the fire privately from mankind, Zeus ordered him to be nailed in chains to the cliffs of Mount Caucasus, and his chest was cut open with a spear, and every morning a huge eagle came and pecked at his liver. At night the liver grew back, and the next day the huge eagle came to torment him again. This unbearable pain continued for a thousand years. People honor Prometheus by ushering in the sacred fire from Mount Olympus in Greece during the Olympic Games and holding a torch relay run to welcome the fire.

Peake the hero worship of the victory over the forces of evil. This worship expresses the forefathers' hazy expectation of overcoming nature and mastering their destiny. In the view of the forefathers, only super-powerful heroes could do so. Hou Yi is a famous hero in ancient Chinese mythology. The Huainanzi - Classic of the Materia Medica says: "In the time of Yao, ten suns came out together, scorched the crops, killed the grass and trees, and the people had nothing to eat. The Pillsbury pills, Chiseled Teeth, Nine Babies, Great Wind, Feng, and Xiu Snake, were all harmful to the people. Yao made Yi kill Chisel Tooth in the field of Chuhua, Nine Babies in the evil waters, Great Wind in the swamp of Qingqiu, Pillsbury pills in the ten suns, Cultivating Snake in Dongting, and Poultry Seal in the Mulberry Grove, and all the people were happy. Hou Yi was loved by the people and Yao, the man who deployed him, was crowned the son of heaven. Hercules is the most famous hero in Greek mythology. When he was born, he was coerced by Hera, the Queen of Heaven. Hera sent two great serpents to entangle Heracles, and he was strangled to death. When he grew up, he was invincible and accomplished twelve great feats: he strangled a huge lion, burned a hydra, shot a strange bird with bronze claws, wings and feathers, subdued a fire-breathing bull, defeated a three-eyed giant, and even defeated Hades, the king of the underworld, and he shot the eagle that harmed Prometheus every day. ...... He was widely praised and worshipped by all the Greek city-states. and worshipped.

(3) The Reasons for the Similarities

Why did China and Greece, so far apart, produce heroes with the same qualities? This, I am afraid, is due to the consistency of the material production and social forms of the peoples in the times when the myths arose.

Primitive societies, with low productivity, were filled with fear of nature. In the view of the uncivilized cultures, the natural phenomena usually seen, such as the sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, thunder and lightning, and other celestial phenomena and climate, because people never understood the reasons for these phenomena, and therefore regarded them as the acts of the gods. Some uncommon natural disasters, such as massive floods, earthquakes and tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, in the view of the ancestors is even more incredible. The people saw the real world as a harmonious and conscious arrangement, and the one who made the arrangement was obviously not a mortal. Thus, there was an explanation for the puzzlement of the forefathers: the arrangement of the gods. Attributing the progress of human civilization to the inventions or gifts of mythological figures was an extremely popular view among the ancestors. Since it was impossible to trace the origins of some production or living skills initially adopted by human beings, some skills that were only gradually developed through a long process of human evolution were regarded as the creations of a certain god or genius figure. In addition, people were afraid of natural disasters and human suffering, such as illnesses and unexpected misfortunes. Hero worship was based on the desire of the ancestors to conquer natural disasters or human suffering. Many disasters in nature cannot be conquered by ordinary human beings, and great disasters are often fatal to human beings. People are at a loss in the face of these injuries, and only a god who transcends nature can stop the ravages of natural disasters. So people imagined some heroic figures to help mankind overcome the disasters and thus save mankind.

II. Differences between the two

The portrayal of gods in Chinese and Greek ancient myths could not be exactly the same, and there are differences between the two. In this paper, we will compare them in terms of appearance, character, thought, and relationship between humans and gods, showing their respective characteristics.

(I) Appearance

The image of early gods in Chinese myths is quite different from that of human beings, whereas the image of gods and human beings in the later myths that were religiousized are basically the same, and are beyond the scope of this paper. In Chinese mythology, many gods and goddesses are portrayed as "half-human, half-animal" or "human-faced and animal-bodied", and these human-animal deities and goddesses dominate the mainstream, far outnumbering the human-god deities and goddesses in the same form. According to some statistics, the ratio of humanoid gods to non-humanoid gods in the more than 450 gods in the Classic of Mountains and Seas is 1:4. For example, Fuxi and Nuwa, who are regarded as the founders of mankind, are depicted as human-headed and snake-bodied gods on the bricks of the Han Dynasty; Chiyu, who fought with the Yellow Emperor, "had a bronze head and iron forehead, a bull's hoof, four eyes and six hands, and his ears and temples were like a sword and halberd with horns on his head" (The Story of the Differences). The different records"); Queen Mother of the West "human face and tiger body, there are text and tail, all white, the place. ...... Dai Sheng, tiger's teeth, a leopard's tail, the cave" ("Classic of Mountains and Seas - the Great Desert West"), "its shape is like a man, a leopard's tail, tiger's teeth and good whistling, puffy hair, Dai Sheng, is the Secretary of the Heavenly Knights and the five disabilities" ("Classic of Mountains and Seas - West Mountain Scripture"); River Goddess The river god "Bingyi", the water god "Tianwu", the sea gods "Yujing" and "Yu Guo", and the swamp god "Zhuan Xu had the face of a man, the mouth of a pig and the body of a qilin. All of these gods were a combination of human and animal figures. Although there were also gods in human form, the dominant image of gods in Chinese mythology was still the human-animal homunculus.

In the Greek mythology of the earliest period, the gods were also human-animal homunculi in appearance. This was true of the titanic giants that preceded the Olympian line of gods, and the earth goddess Caius and the sky god Uranus gave birth to giants with hideous faces and dragging a scaly dragon's tail behind them. This is only a small part of Greek mythology; in the subsequent Olympian lineage, the ancient Greeks molded the gods in the image of man, so that these gods took on human form and were seen as the most beautiful, robust, intelligent and powerful. For example, the image of Apollo, the god of the sun: beardless, with a Greek nose, handsome face, well-proportioned body, often carrying a bow and arrows, holding a bow or a stringed lyre in his hand, and often accompanied by a muse, he was a symbol of male beauty on earth. Cupid, the little god of love, is usually depicted as a child with small wings and a black cloth covering his eyes as he bends his bow and arrows. Priapos, the son of Dionysus, the god of wine, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, in Greek mythology, was at first a protector of agrarians, shepherds, and fishermen, but later became the god of procreation and carnal desires. He is depicted as a bearded man wearing a long coat and holding fruit on his chest. Both according to Hesiod's ancient Genealogy of the Gods and Homer's ancient Iliad, as well as the works of later tragedians, the Greek gods, especially the main one (Zeus), underwent a fairly complete "humanization". The gods of the Olympian lineage were identical to human beings in appearance, and the only difference between the gods and human beings was immortality and superhuman abilities.

(2) Character

The gods in ancient Chinese myths tended to be relatively homogeneous in their characterization, and the gods of high status were always righteous, solemn, great, perfect, full of creativity and supreme, and they were "sensible, modest, kind, and rewarding, and regarded conscience, rationality, and a sense of responsibility as the law". ". They are alone and above all things. For example, Nuwa created mankind but then passed away quietly without asking for anything in return, full of great love and the great creative spirit of the nation. Another example is Dayu, who was able to control the water by passing through his house three times, putting the people first and sacrificing his small family for the sake of the whole. The heavy and hard labor made his body without skin and feet without shin hair, so much so that his proud body served his feet and his skin festered. Pangu opened the heavens and earth for mankind, during the support of 18,000 years, and so the earth constitutes only after the decadent collapse, the body into the world; Fu Xi invented for mankind to remember the symbols of gossip; Yandi taught people to sow the grains, identify herbs; Yellow Emperor taught people to build a house for warmth ...... when mankind encountered all kinds of difficulties, God is not at the mercy of, rule over mankind, but Instead, they lived in harmony with people and created benefits for them. Mythological depictions of the character of gods and goddesses are limited to one aspect only, with a clear distinction between good and evil, the good gods never do evil, the evil gods never do good, and a single character.

In Greek mythology, the gods are highly personalized, and the Greek gods and heroes are "gods and men in one", the gods and men are homogeneous and homoerotic, and the Greeks created the gods based on themselves, so what the people have is also what the gods have. Greek gods and human beings have love, hate, joy, anger, sadness and happiness, seven emotions and six desires, but also food, clothing, housing, love, childbirth and other needs of life, some of their character integrity, bravery, and some cruelty, jealousy, and love of vanity. Zeus, the father of the gods, as the supreme ruler of all things in the world, brutal and dictatorial. Her wife, Hera, the goddess of marriage, was beautiful and noble, and often jealous. There is also the handsome and brave sun god Apollo, the goddess of war Athena who is in charge of victory and skill, the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite and so on, the good side of their human nature, like kindness, wisdom, bravery, compassion and so on, make their image more glorious. On the other hand, the inevitable ugly side of human nature, such as jealousy, arbitrariness, indifference, etc., is also reflected in them, which makes them look like living human beings. The strengths and weaknesses of human nature can be reflected from the gods. For example, Zeus, the main god, lacks the high sanctity and inviolable majesty of the Chinese gods and goddesses. He was infatuated with the beautiful Princess Io, in order to hide from the Queen of Heaven, Hera, she turned into a snow-white heifer; Princess Europa demure and charming, he turned into a cow, abducted her; fancy the mortal beauty of Leda, turned into a swan while she bathed with her in a rendezvous; he also into a shower of gold rain from the window cracks into the room, so that Danae gave birth to the hero Pelphius. For example, Medea betrayed her father and killed her brothers to help Iason seize the Fleece for the sake of love, and followed Iason to a foreign land, but was abandoned when she grew old and lost her color. Her grief and anger, the heart ignited the fire of revenge, first designed to burn the bride and her father, and then personally killed and Iason son, face also showed in the joy of revenge in the intoxication of the terrible expression, holding the child's body, ride the dragon car in the air, Iason desperate to pull out the sword to commit suicide. Medea used the most cruel means to take revenge, and her fierce and ferocious character was really distinct to the extreme. These can be seen that the Greek gods are extremely humane, which also reflects the Greek mythology at a certain level of people-oriented, cool real life, love is the most fundamental concept of life.

So, the gods in ancient Chinese mythology are full of divinity, they are solemn, without spirit, and are fully sanctified and idolized, while the Greek gods are highly personalized and artistic, with rich images.

(3) Values

In terms of values, Chinese and Greek myths are distinctly different. Chinese mythology emphasizes the moral responsibility of society, while Greek mythology emphasizes individualism, which can be reflected in the gods.

The gods in Chinese mythology have a strong sense of social responsibility and dedication. Jiu Ji and Yu, the father of the father, ruled over the water, highlighting the spirit of selflessness; Nuwa mended the sky, reflecting the nation's great creative spirit and great love; Jiu Ji filled up the sea, and Kuafu chased after the sun, exalting the quality of self-sacrifice and the benefit of the future generations. These gods took the world as their own, established their hearts for heaven and earth, and their lives for the people, and were all saints with high ideals and self-restraint. Greek mythology tends to be self-centered, emphasizing the naturalness and individuality of human beings and personal interests. This is mainly reflected in the Greek myths of self-centeredness, the affirmation of the adventure of possession, the concern for material interests. For example, the "Golden Apple" dispute describes the competition among three goddesses for beauty. Legend has it that the goddess of quarrels threw the golden apple engraved with "for the most beautiful" at the wedding of Achilles' father, Peleus, causing the three goddesses to fight over it, and Zeus dared not offend any of them, so he threw the problem to Paris, the Trojan prince who was herding cattle in the mountains. Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, was stunningly beautiful and won the golden apple with the tantalizing reward of "Helen". Thus, the Greeks fully recognized human desires. In addition, many heroic stories are actually histories of personal struggle. For example, Hercules chose the path of hard work and adventure, he accomplished twelve great things, and was finally accepted by Zeus as a god of the sky, and achieved a brilliant life performance. The values reflected in ancient Greek mythology are mainly expressed in the identification of the self, the pursuit of freedom, respect for human nature and the promotion of desire, and the obligation to undertake and the pursuit of happiness.

In short, Chinese mythology emphasizes personal sacrifice and advocates the moral and ethical concepts of the world as a whole, selflessness, and the supremacy of virtue, while Greek mythology emphasizes more on the pursuit of personal interests. The former emphasizes righteousness over profit, while the latter emphasizes profit over righteousness.

(4) Human-God Relationship

The gods and heroes in Chinese mythology were created in separate stories and were not closely connected with each other, "This is an interesting phenomenon different from Greek mythology, that is, in the whole mythological system, there is no main god with supreme power, and there is no absolute submissive relationship among the five emperors after the god of the beginning, but rather, they are divided into two groups, one of which is the god of the world and the other is the god of the world. The five emperors after the god of creation also do not have an absolute submissive relationship with each other, but rather rule the five lands in the east, west, south, north, and center separately." In Chinese mythology, the boundaries of the transformation of gods and humans are blurred. To become a god, one only needs to cultivate oneself through painstaking practice, and gods and humans can be intertwined. However, gods and men cannot intermarry, and very few of the intermarriages between gods and men are happy and successful, usually ending in a beautiful tragedy. For example, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, Dong Zhuo and the Seven Fairies all ended in tragedy. In addition, people are extremely respectful of the gods, "Shun Tian An Min" "for the sky to do" these words can be seen in the ancient Chinese people look forward to the tacit understanding between man and heaven.

The gods in Greek mythology were arranged in a prominent blood relationship, and the gods were always gods, and would not be reduced to mortals, who could only be mortals and could not become gods, and the nature of the gods and men was unchangeable. Gods, however, can intermarry with men and give birth to half-human, half-god heroes who, through their struggles, build monumental feats and thus become one of the gods. In addition, the gods and men do not live in complete peace***; the gods enjoy themselves on Mount Olympus and do not care about the plight of the multitudes. There are many stories of the antagonism of the gods and men, such as the story of Talos and Neopos.

(5) Reasons for the difference in the portrayal of Chinese and Greek mythological gods

The reasons for the differences in the appearance, character, and emotion of the Chinese and Greek gods are twofold:

On the one hand, there is the difference in the era in which the two were produced. Chinese myths were created a little further back in time, when wild beasts were honored as sacred pets by the Chinese people of the time. Due to the influence of totem worship, the worship of gods and beasts can be unified, the emergence of the myth of "man and beast" image. Compared with the Chinese myths, the Greek myths are relatively late. According to Engels' analysis: "The Greeks, when they appeared on the stage of history, were already standing on the threshold of the age of civilization; ...... matriarchy had already given way to patriarchy." Greece at this time was in the Homeric or Heroic Age, far removed from the ancient age of totem-worship, and thus less influenced by it.

On the other hand, there are different concepts formed by the two peoples under different living conditions. The combination of human and animal forms in Chinese mythology reflects the ancient Chinese desire to live in harmony with nature. Because of the relatively favorable natural conditions, people were full of gratitude for the gifts of nature, so the description of the gods was mainly positive, although there were also some fierce and evil gods, but they were much lower than the positive gods in terms of godhood. This sense of gratitude constituted the concepts of obedience to heaven and peace of mind, and obedience to heaven to protect one's life. The Greeks, on the other hand, believed that heaven and man were opposites, that they existed in a harsh environment, and that man needed to constantly struggle against nature. The homogeneity of gods and men expresses the idea that the ancient Greek people wanted to struggle with heaven.

Other aspects:

Amazing similarity of a theme

Myths arose in ancient clan societies, and were the primitive form of thought of the ancient people, and were a special reflection of the natural world and the historical display. Therefore whether it is ancient China or ancient Greece, their myths are the product of ancient clan society. There are many similarities.

(I) About the creation of heaven and earth

Both China and Greece regarded the original universe as a chaotic mass. The Taiping Yuban? Recorded in the Sanwu Calendar Chronicle, the myth of China's opening of the heavens and the earth is: "Heaven and earth were as turbid as a chicken's egg, and Pangu was born in it. At the age of 18,000 years, heaven and earth were opened up, with Yang clear as heaven and Yin turbid as earth. Pangu was in the midst of it. He changed nine times a day and became a god in heaven and a saint on earth. The sky was one cubit high, the earth was one cubit thick, and Pangu was one cubit long. So for 18,000 years, the number of days was extremely high, the number of earths was extremely deep, and Pangu was extremely long, so the sky went to the earth for tens of thousands of miles." And in ancient Greek mythology, according to Hesiod's genealogy of the gods, the universe

between the initial is also a chaotic mass, heaven and earth are not divided, land, water and air are mixed together, at this time there is the god of chaos Khaos and his wife, the night god Nyx, followed by the emergence of the god of the earth to feed all the god of the Gaia, the god of the underworld, Tartarus and the god of love, Eros; Eros, the god of love to create the heavens and earth, he shot his arrows into the center of the earth, the birth of grass, trees, birds and beasts.

(2) On the emergence of human beings

Is it not a pity that there are no human beings in China and Greece, where all things in heaven and earth have been created by Pangu and Eros respectively? In fact, Nuwa and Prometheus had thought of this long ago. According to Han Ying Shao's "Customs? According to Han Ying Shao's "Customs and Folklore", "It is said that when heaven and earth were opened up, there were no people. Nuwa rolled the yellow earth into a human being, and when her strength was too great for her to supply, she drew a rope in the mud of the huan, and lifted it up to become a human being. Therefore, the rich and noble people, Huangtu people; poor and mediocre people, huan people." The ancient Greeks believed that after the creation of heaven and earth, the descendants of the gods and goddesses banished by Zeus, the god of the gods, Prometheus the seer, made little beings like himself out of the clay that hid the seeds of the gods and the water of the river - the -Man, then ingested good and evil from the hearts of various animals: lions, foxes, ewes, eagles, doves, etc., and planted them in man's chest, so as to give him many kinds of characters, such as bravery, cowardice, greed, generosity, cunning, loyalty, etc., and the Goddess of Love, Eros, gave him his spirit, and Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, his soul, and so the creation of man was completed. It is certain that Nuwa and Prometheus in no way consulted when they undertook this great project. The reason why they both used clay to create man was that they both created man according to the likeness of human beings, which exactly reflects the fact that the ancestors of both the Chinese and Greek people molded the gods according to the likeness of human beings, and embodies the idea of the first people that the gods and human beings should walk together.

(3) Myth of the Flood

For some reason, mankind became worse and worse, and was condemned by heaven, and a huge flood wiped out mankind, leaving only one or two survivors.

In China, there are many myths about the flood drowning human beings, such as Jiu Ji Yug healing the water, Nuwa mending the sky, Nuwa brother and sister getting married and so on. Only Nuwa siblings sat in the gourd and escaped from the flood, so they got married and gave birth to a strange stone, which became fish and shrimp in the river, birds and beasts in the mountain, and people in the village after it was broken. In Greece, Zeus in order to punish mankind, decided to use the flood to destroy mankind, so called the gods. The winds, which were on all sides, were commanded to gather the clouds together, and the rain fell in torrents, and the flood took place, and inundated the whole country, and drowned all creatures that dwelt there? Thucalion, following the advice of his father Prometheus, built an ark, so that only he and his wife Pyrrha were saved. On the ninth day of the flood, they traveled by boat to Mount Parnassus in Forks. When Deucalion asked Themis, the goddess of justice, how he could bring mankind back to life, the goddess said that mankind could be revived by casting the bones of the earth mother behind them. Deucalion guessed that the bones of the Earth Mother meant stones. He did so, and all the stones he cast became men, and all the stones Pyrrha cast 150 became women. There are similarities to be seen in the flood myths of the two countries: they saw the flood as the will of the gods, both had only one man and one woman left after the flood, they created humans, and both had something to do with stones.

Two obvious differences in contentThe Sino-Hellenic myths have similarities, but there are also many obvious differences in content.

(a) In the portrayal of the gods, each has its own characteristics: the gods in Chinese mythology are half-human, half-animal, while the gods in ancient Greek mythology are god-human isomorphic and homogeneous. Most of the gods in Chinese mythology are non-human or half-human and half-animal. According to some statistics, among the more than 450 gods appearing in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the ratio of humanoid gods to non-humanoid gods is about one to four. Although these gods love mankind, love of labor, with heroic beauty, but in appearance is not beautiful, strange shapes, a variety of different. For example, the dragon head and snake body of Pangu, Candle Dragon, snake body and human face Fuxi, Nuwa, human body and bull head of Yandi, Shennong, human face and ragged beak and body of Zhuanxu, leopard tail and tiger teeth of the Queen Mother of the West? The ancient Greeks, however, created the gods entirely in their own image: the gods have the same form as people, the same character as people, the same seven emotions and six desires as people, the same as people with the same joys and sorrows and sorrows and joys and joys and joys, the same as people with bravery, cruelty, jealousy and other behavior, the same will make a mistake, and not even inevitably in the private protection of the shortcomings of the hostage to the suspicion of retaliation. Such as the myth of many gods are very capricious, love of pleasure, vanity, jealousy and revenge are very strong, but also from time to time slipped down the mountain and the earth's beautiful men and women cheating, Zeus as the representative of the majority of the gods also like to play tricks on human beings, and even three times intend to destroy human beings. The ancient Greeks believed that the gods were the most perfect embodiment of human beings, so they created the gods in the image of human beings. The difference between the gods and humans only lies in the fact that human beings eat light meals, while the gods enjoy immortal food and jade; human beings wear coarse linen, while the gods wear silk; human beings are always going to die, while the gods are immortal, and the gods are smarter, more powerful, and taller than human beings. But the gods do not have the power to dominate the destiny of mankind (as can be seen in Plato's "Book of the Drinking Game"), and in some cases, man can confront, fight and even defeat the gods.