SOURCE: "How Old Is Greek Mythology?," in The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology, University of California Press, 1932, pp. 1-34.

In the following essay, Nilsson argues that Greek epics and the heroic myth cycles they include (rather than elements or motifs found in individual myths) can be dated to the Mycenaean age (1950 to 1100 B.C.).

The question: How old is Greek mythology? may at first sight seem idle, for Greek mythology is obviously of many different ages. For example, many genealogies and eponymous heroes created for political purposes are late, such inventions having been made through the whole historical age of Greece; yet most of them are earlier than the very late myths like the campaigns of Dionysus, or the great mass of the metamorphoses, especially the catasterisms, which were invented in the Hellenistic age. The great tragic poets reshaped the myths and left their imprint upon them, so...