Famous Myths and Legends

Long before anyone wrote down laws or history, people told stories. Every culture we know of has its myths and legends: tales about how the world began, why people suffer and die, and where the first fire or the first rain came from. These stories entertained, but they also held communities together, passed on rules and beliefs, and gave people a shared picture of the world.

早在有人把法律或历史写下来之前，人们就已经在讲故事了。我们所知的每一种文化都有自己的神话和传说：讲世界如何开始，人为什么会受苦和死去，第一团火或第一场雨从何而来。这些故事供人消遣，但也把群体凝聚在一起，传承规矩和信仰，让人们对世界有一幅共同的图景。

Myths say a lot about the people who told them. They deal with questions that every generation asks again: Where did the world come from? Why do we suffer? What happens after death? How should we treat each other? Myths are not failed attempts at science. They are serious, often clever ways of making sense of human life, and reading the myths of other cultures is one of the best ways to understand those cultures.

神话能告诉我们很多关于讲述者的事情。它们关注的是每一代人都会重新提出的问题：世界从哪里来？我们为什么受苦？人死后会怎样？我们应该如何对待彼此？神话并不是失败的科学尝试。它们是理解人生的严肃方式，而且往往十分巧妙。阅读其他文化的神话，是了解这些文化的最好途径之一。

The first poems about Gilgamesh were written in Sumerian on clay tablets in Mesopotamia around 2100 BCE, which makes them some of the oldest literature we have. The best-known version, in the Akkadian language, dates from about 1200 BCE. Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk, is two-thirds god and one-third human. When his closest friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is overwhelmed by grief and by fear of his own death, and he sets out to find the secret of eternal life.

最早关于吉尔伽美什的诗篇大约在公元前2100年用苏美尔语写在美索不达米亚的泥板上，因此它们属于我们现存最古老的文学作品。最著名的版本用阿卡德语写成，年代约为公元前1200年。吉尔伽美什是乌鲁克城的国王，三分之二是神，三分之一是人。他最亲密的朋友恩奇都死后，吉尔伽美什被悲痛和对自身死亡的恐惧压垮，于是踏上旅途，寻找永生的秘密。

His journey takes him to the edge of the world, to Utnapishtim, a man the gods made immortal after he survived a great flood. The flood story is so close to the later Biblical account of Noah that scholars believe the two are related. Utnapishtim cannot give Gilgamesh eternal life, but he tells him about a plant at the bottom of the sea that makes old people young again. Gilgamesh dives down and gets it, but on the way home he stops to bathe in a pool, and a snake carries the plant away. He returns to Uruk with nothing. The epic ends with Gilgamesh showing a companion the great walls of his city, the work that will outlast him. Storytellers have returned to the search for immortality, and its failure, ever since.

旅途把他带到世界的尽头，见到了乌特纳匹什提姆。此人在一场大洪水中幸存下来，之后被众神赐予永生。这个洪水故事与后来《圣经》中挪亚的故事极为相似，学者们认为两者之间有关联。乌特纳匹什提姆无法给吉尔伽美什永生，但告诉他海底有一种能让老人重返青春的植物。吉尔伽美什潜入海底取到了它，可在回家路上，他停下来在一个水池里洗澡，一条蛇把植物叼走了。他两手空空地回到乌鲁克。史诗的结尾，吉尔伽美什向一位同伴展示他城市的宏伟城墙，那是会比他活得更久的功业。从那以后，讲故事的人一次又一次回到追寻永生及其失败这个主题。

What sets Greek mythology apart is how human its gods are. The gods of Mount Olympus were not perfectly good or all-knowing. They were jealous, vain and quick to take revenge, and they could be cruel as well as generous and loving. Zeus was constantly unfaithful to his wife, Hera, and Hera often punished the women he seduced instead of Zeus himself. The heroes were no better: in the Iliad, Achilles refuses to fight for the Greeks because King Agamemnon has taken away a woman he had won. These are ordinary human faults on a huge scale.

希腊神话的独特之处在于它的神有多么像人。奥林匹斯山上的众神既不完美善良，也不无所不知。他们善妒、虚荣、睚眦必报，既能慷慨深情，也能十分残忍。宙斯不断背叛妻子赫拉，而赫拉常常惩罚被宙斯引诱的女子，而不是惩罚宙斯本人。英雄们也好不到哪里去：在《伊利亚特》中，阿喀琉斯拒绝为希腊人作战，因为国王阿伽门农夺走了他作为战利品得到的一个女子。这些都是普通的人性弱点，只是规模巨大。

Because of this, Greek myths are full of psychology and moral questions. Sigmund Freud used the story of Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother, to describe what he called the Oedipus complex. The beautiful young Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection, gave us the word “narcissism.” Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. As punishment, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle ate his liver every day, until the hero Heracles finally set him free. In Western art and literature, Prometheus became the classic image of the rebel who defies power to help others.

正因如此，希腊神话充满了心理学和道德问题。西格蒙德·弗洛伊德借用俄狄浦斯的故事（他在不知情的情况下杀死了父亲、娶了母亲），来描述他所说的“俄狄浦斯情结”。爱上自己倒影的美少年那喀索斯，给我们留下了“自恋”（narcissism）一词。普罗米修斯从众神那里盗取火种交给人类。作为惩罚，宙斯命人把他锁在一块岩石上，每天让一只鹰啄食他的肝脏，直到英雄赫拉克勒斯最终把他解救出来。在西方艺术和文学中，普罗米修斯成了为帮助他人而反抗强权的叛逆者的经典形象。

Norse mythology was the religion of Scandinavia in the Viking Age. Most of what we know about it comes from Icelandic texts written down in the 13th century, about two hundred years after Iceland became Christian. Its most unusual feature is that the gods know they are going to lose. At Ragnarök, the “fate of the gods,” the world tree Yggdrasil will shake, monsters will break free, and the gods will die in a final battle. Odin will be swallowed by the giant wolf Fenrir. Thor will kill the world serpent Jörmungandr, take nine steps, and fall dead from its poison.

北欧神话是维京时代斯堪的纳维亚的宗教。我们对它的了解大多来自13世纪写成的冰岛文献，那时冰岛皈依基督教已有约两百年。它最不同寻常的地方在于，众神知道自己终将失败。在诸神黄昏（Ragnarök，意为“诸神的命运”）到来时，世界之树尤克特拉希尔将会颤抖，怪物将挣脱束缚，众神将在最后一战中死去。奥丁将被巨狼芬里尔吞下。托尔将杀死世界之蛇耶梦加得，走出九步后中毒倒地而死。

Knowing the end does not make the Norse gods give up. They prepare for the battle anyway, and Odin gathers the bravest dead warriors in his hall, Valhalla, to fight beside him on the last day. The myths do not end in complete darkness either: after Ragnarök a new, green earth rises from the sea, and a few gods and two humans survive to begin again. The same Germanic gods, under their Old English names, gave English four days of the week: Tuesday is named after Tiw (the Norse Tyr), Wednesday after Woden (Odin), Thursday after Thunor (Thor), and Friday after Frig (Frigg).

知道结局并没有让北欧众神放弃。他们照样为这场战斗做准备，奥丁把最勇敢的阵亡战士召集到他的殿堂瓦尔哈拉，让他们在最后一天并肩作战。神话也并非以一片黑暗告终：诸神黄昏之后，一片崭新的绿色大地从海中升起，几位神和两个人类幸存下来，重新开始。同一批日耳曼神祇以古英语的名字为英语留下了一周中的四天：Tuesday（星期二）得名于提尔（Tiw，北欧称Tyr），Wednesday（星期三）得名于沃登（奥丁），Thursday（星期四）得名于苏诺尔（托尔），Friday（星期五）得名于弗丽格。

Few legends have lasted in the Western world as long as the story of King Arthur: the boy who pulled a sword from a stone, gathered the Knights of the Round Table, sent them in search of the Holy Grail, and ruled at Camelot until his kingdom fell apart. The legend has been told for more than a thousand years, and every age has retold it in its own way.

在西方世界，很少有传说能像亚瑟王的故事那样长久流传：那个从石头中拔出宝剑的少年，召集了圆桌骑士，派他们去寻找圣杯，在卡美洛统治，直到他的王国分崩离析。这个传说已经流传了一千多年，每个时代都用自己的方式重新讲述它。

Whether a real Arthur ever lived is still debated. A Latin history from the 9th century and some early Welsh poems mention a war leader called Arthur who fought against Saxon invaders of Britain around the year 500. Most of the famous legend, however, came later. In about 1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a “history” of the kings of Britain that gave Arthur his sword, his queen Guinevere and the wizard Merlin. The French poet Chrétien de Troyes added Lancelot and the Grail in the late 12th century, and in 1485 the English writer Thomas Malory collected the stories in Le Morte d'Arthur. Arthur is less a historical person than a picture onto which each generation paints its own idea of a good king.

历史上是否真有亚瑟其人，至今仍有争议。一部9世纪的拉丁文史书和一些早期威尔士诗歌提到一位名叫亚瑟的军事首领，他在公元500年前后与入侵不列颠的撒克逊人作战。不过，这个著名传说的大部分内容出现得更晚。约1136年，蒙茅斯的杰弗里写了一部不列颠诸王的“历史”，给了亚瑟他的宝剑、王后桂妮薇儿和巫师梅林。法国诗人克雷蒂安·德·特鲁瓦在12世纪末加入了兰斯洛特和圣杯，1485年英国作家托马斯·马洛礼把这些故事汇集成《亚瑟王之死》。与其说亚瑟是一个历史人物，不如说他是一块画布，每一代人都在上面描绘自己心目中的好国王。

The Popol Vuh is the sacred book of the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala. It was written down in the K'iche' language with Latin letters in the 16th century, a few decades after the Spanish conquest, and the copy that survives was made by a Spanish priest around 1701. It tells how the gods tried several times to make beings who could speak and honor them. The animals could only screech and howl. People made of mud fell apart, and people made of wood had no hearts or minds. Only the fourth attempt worked: humans made from maize dough. For the Maya, maize was not just food; it was what people themselves were made of.

《波波尔·乌》是危地马拉基切玛雅人的圣书。它于16世纪、西班牙征服之后几十年间用拉丁字母以基切语写成，现存的抄本是一位西班牙神父在1701年前后抄写的。书中讲述众神如何多次尝试创造能说话、能敬奉他们的生灵。动物只会尖叫和嚎叫。用泥做的人散了架，用木头做的人没有心也没有头脑。直到第四次尝试才成功：人类是用玉米面团做成的。对玛雅人来说，玉米不只是食物，更是构成人本身的物质。

The Popol Vuh also tells the story of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. They go down into Xibalba, the underworld, play a dangerous ball game against its lords of death, and defeat them with tricks rather than strength. At one point they even let themselves be killed and then come back to life. In the end, the twins rise into the sky and become the Sun and the Moon. The story is about death and rebirth and about cleverness beating brute force, ideas that appear in myths all over the world.

《波波尔·乌》还讲述了英雄双胞胎乌纳普和斯巴兰克的故事。他们下到冥界西巴尔巴，与那里的死亡之主进行一场危险的球赛，靠计谋而不是力气打败了对手。有一次，他们甚至故意让自己被杀，然后又起死回生。最后，双胞胎升上天空，变成了太阳和月亮。这个故事讲的是死亡与重生，以及智慧战胜蛮力，这些主题在世界各地的神话中都能找到。

Anansi, a trickster in the shape of a spider, is one of the best-known characters in West African folklore. His stories come from the Akan people of present-day Ghana. In one famous tale, all the stories in the world belong to the sky god Nyame. Anansi asks to buy them, and Nyame sets a price that seems impossible: Anansi must bring him a python, a leopard, a swarm of hornets and a fairy. Using only tricks, Anansi captures all four, and since then the stories have been called Anansi's stories.

阿南西是一个蜘蛛模样的狡猾角色，是西非民间故事中最著名的人物之一。他的故事源自今天加纳的阿肯人。在一个著名的故事里，世上所有的故事都属于天神尼亚梅。阿南西想把它们买下来，尼亚梅开出了一个看似不可能的价码：阿南西必须给他带来一条蟒蛇、一只豹子、一群大黄蜂和一个精灵。阿南西全凭计谋把这四样都捉到了，从此这些故事就被称为“阿南西的故事”。

Enslaved Africans carried the Anansi stories across the Atlantic. They took root in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean and in the American South, where the spider sometimes became “Aunt Nancy.” The tales changed over time, but Anansi stayed the same: a small, weak creature who beats the powerful by using his head. For people who had no power and no rights, his victories were more than entertainment. Today Anansi also appears in modern fiction, for example in Neil Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys (2005).

被奴役的非洲人把阿南西的故事带到了大西洋彼岸。这些故事在牙买加和加勒比其他地区扎下了根，也在美国南方流传开来，在那里，这只蜘蛛有时变成了“南希阿姨”（Aunt Nancy）。故事随着时间而变化，但阿南西始终没变：一个弱小的生灵，靠头脑战胜强者。对于没有权力、没有权利的人来说，他的胜利不只是消遣。如今，阿南西也出现在现代小说中，例如尼尔·盖曼的小说《阿南西之子》（2005年）。

Scholars who compare myths have found that many themes appear in cultures far apart from each other. Flood stories are a good example. The Mesopotamian flood of Utnapishtim and the Biblical flood of Noah are probably related, but similar tales exist in India, where the god Vishnu warns the first man, Manu; in Greece, where Deucalion and his wife survive in a wooden chest; and in Aztec Mexico. Trickster figures appear on almost every continent too: clever troublemakers like Anansi, the Norse Loki or Coyote in many Native American tales, who break the rules and make fun of the powerful.

比较神话的学者发现，许多主题出现在彼此相距遥远的文化中。洪水故事就是一个很好的例子。美索不达米亚乌特纳匹什提姆的洪水与《圣经》中挪亚的洪水很可能有关联，但类似的故事也存在于印度、希腊和阿兹特克时代的墨西哥：在印度，毗湿奴神警告第一个人摩奴；在希腊，丢卡利翁和妻子躲在一个木箱里活了下来。几乎每个大洲也都有骗子型的角色：像阿南西、北欧的洛基或许多北美原住民故事里的郊狼这样聪明的捣蛋鬼，他们打破规则，嘲弄强者。

The psychologist Carl Jung explained these repeated patterns with his idea of archetypes: basic images and types of story that, he believed, all humans share deep in the unconscious mind. Many scholars today doubt Jung's theory and point to trade, migration and common human experience instead. Whatever the reason, people separated by oceans and thousands of years have told similar stories about floods, heroes, creation and death, perhaps because they all faced the same things: love, loss, fear and the wish to understand their place in the world.

心理学家卡尔·荣格用他的“原型”概念来解释这些反复出现的模式：他认为，原型是全人类在无意识深处共有的基本意象和故事类型。如今许多学者怀疑荣格的理论，转而用贸易、迁徙和共同的人类经验来解释。无论原因是什么，被大洋和数千年时光隔开的人们讲述了关于洪水、英雄、创世和死亡的相似故事，也许是因为他们都面对着同样的东西：爱、失去、恐惧，以及想要明白自己在世界上的位置的愿望。

Myths and legends have outlived empires, burned libraries and even the religions that first told them. They survive because they deal with things that do not change: who we are, where we came from and how we should live.

神话和传说比帝国、被焚毁的图书馆，甚至比最早讲述它们的宗教都存在得更久。它们得以流传，是因为它们讲的是不变的东西：我们是谁，我们从哪里来，我们应该怎样生活。

Gilgamesh still grieves for his friend, Prometheus still steals fire, Anansi still tricks the sky god, and the Hero Twins still outwit the lords of the underworld. These stories are not true as history, and they do not need to be. People keep retelling them because they still recognize themselves in them.

吉尔伽美什仍在为朋友哀悼，普罗米修斯仍在盗火，阿南西仍在戏弄天神，英雄双胞胎仍在智胜冥界之主。这些故事作为历史并不真实，也不需要真实。人们一直在讲述它们，因为仍能在其中看到自己。