The essence of myth is the earliest statement to the world in non-religious language, which is "a way for early human beings to reveal their own spirit and a mode of spiritual projection" [4](P90). The most essential feature of Greek mythology is the "identity" between God and man. From the general meaning of myth, the "God" in myth seems to be infinite, and the life of God has become the ideal and goal pursued by Greek ancestors. However, the gods and heroes in Greek mythology are not absolutely free and can do whatever they want. Not only can they not completely dominate the fate of mankind, but there is also something they can't get rid of or change-"Oracle" (or "fate" or "destiny") hanging over their heads, which is self-denial within the protoss (whether consciously or unconsciously, willing or unwilling).
Greek myths and legends, like all ethnic groups, originated from the product of "conquering, dominating and visualizing natural forces with imagination and with the help of imagination" [5](P 1 13). Due to the low level of productivity, the Greeks in primitive times had extremely limited understanding of society and nature. They are puzzled by many natural phenomena, social phenomena and life phenomena, and explain all the problems around them with the help of imagination. They believe that all phenomena and changes in nature are subject to God, a generalized God, and the fate of mankind is arranged by God. Therefore, the Greeks endowed all kinds of natural forces with supernatural images (gods) and used the images of gods to explain natural and social life. In fact, the story of gods and heroes in myths and legends is a symbol of the brilliant achievements of a clan and tribe, and it is the natural and social form itself that people "process in an unconscious artistic way" in fantasy [5](P 1 13).
Greek mythology tells us that the lives of the gods are happy and their bodies are tall and handsome. The Greeks turned Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in China, into a paradise for the gods to live and live. But human beings live in infinite time and space, and life is bound by the laws of nature. In darkness, people divide time into past, present and future, and space into heaven, land and hell. Space and time constitute the coordinates reflecting life activities. In the extremely difficult and complicated natural environment, the ancient Greeks took the ground of space and the present moment of time as the basis of their life activities, and strived to pursue the eternal future and the lives of the gods in the sky. In the imagination of the ancient Greeks, God was omnipotent and invincible, because they knew the past and the future like the palm of their hand. It seems that nothing is inviolable and profane by God, and nothing is unshakable by God. These superhuman objects can break away from the natural fetters of life and enter the highest life fantasy that human beings can imagine. In fact, otherwise, "the life of the gods is just a perpetual motion machine conceived by human beings" [6](P2). The gods also have the limits and limitations of wisdom and strength, and they are as sad and distressed as heroes. The ancient Greeks believed that there was a power beyond God and man, which was equally binding on God and man. This is the "Oracle", mysterious and hard to change. The power of the prophet controls all the processes in the world. What is the Oracle? Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an unconquered natural environment and an unrecognized objective law of social development by ancient Greek ancestors.
Greek myths and legends show us the story of the Olympian god system and the human heroes as their descendants. Homer's epic and Hersiad's divine spectrum make it have a distinct pedigree and "internal integrated whole structure" [7](P 15). The genealogy of the gods not only reflects the development history of the protoss, but also reflects the ancient Greeks' views on the universe and natural formation. If the divine script constitutes the story of Greek mythology and the backbone of the legend of heroes, then the Oracle is the soul of mature Greek mythology, which means a mysterious and irreversible inevitability hanging over the heads of gods and heroes.
There are two kinds of Oracle: one is determined by God's will (narrow sense); Second, even the gods are helpless about it, helpless-fate or destiny. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the Oracle of Delphi Temple at the foot of Panacas Mountain (the second Oracle) was supreme and sacred. The ancient Greeks were famous for their love of freedom, but they always acknowledged the irreversibility of some mysterious fate, and their ideal of freedom was similar to that of Hegel later. In the final analysis, the freedom of the Greeks is the external fate or inevitable acquiescence, and the Oracle is the display of this fate or inevitability in front of people. Greek myths and legends hint at the power of the Oracle everywhere. "A Greek myth is a history that records the development and realization of various oracles" [3](P 17). In the Titan system, Cronus drove away his father Uranus and seized the throne of God. Before he died, Uranus predicted (the first Oracle) that Cronus would be killed by his son. After that, Cronus swallowed his son (only Zeus, the youngest son, survived because his mother Rhea exchanged stones), but he could not escape the turning point of fate. Uranus's prediction finally came true, and Zeus replaced Cronus as the new king of God. Hecapa, the queen of Troy, got an Oracle in her dream, saying that the kingdom of Troy would be reduced to ashes because of her children. In order to avoid this tragedy, the king and queen abandoned her as soon as she was born in Paris, but Paris miraculously survived. After judging the most beautiful goddess, she kidnapped Helen, the queen of Sparta, which led to the Trojan War in 10, and finally turned Troy into ashes. King Raius of Thebes got an Oracle when he prayed to God for his son. He will die at his son's hand. So although he got a precious son, he abandoned his son Oedipus three days after his birth. When he grew up, the surviving Oedipus learned the Oracle from the prophet Prometheus and left his hometown, but in the end, he killed his father and married his mother. The power of the Oracle is also fully reflected in the legends of heroes such as Hercules and Poerxiusi. So the freedom of gods and heroes is not absolute. Although their life is happy and their behavior is free, they are also subject to some external mysterious fate or destiny. Here, Oracle Bone Inscriptions showed a profound thought to people at that time and later generations, "It means some abstract and transcendental essential concept" [3](P 18).
The fate or destiny revealed by Oracle, through the mediation of Greek tragedy, deeply influenced the later Greek philosophy, "and eventually evolved into the origin, essence, necessity and logos (Tao) in Greek philosophy" [3](P 18).
Divine spectrum is the main line of Greek myths and legends, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions has become the internal logic to maintain the development of divine spectrum and heroic pedigree. The change of theocracy and hero family is the process of realizing the Oracle. The difference is that in the case of helpless Oracle, compared with the happy life of the gods, the lives of heroes are often full of hardships and misfortunes. In this sense, "Greek mythology expresses people's desire for a happy life, while Greek the legend of heroes reflects people's sorrow for the painful real life" [3](P 19). The legend of heroes, which originated from ancestor worship, reflects the struggle of human beings to conquer nature and society. Legendary heroes are said to be produced by the combination of man and god, because the Greeks believe that as heroes of their ancestors, there must be the origin of a god. Although God and hero are related by blood, they show completely different lives. In essence, this difference is the difference between ideal and reality. The protagonist's behavior is a story in which people try to transcend reality and move towards ideals.
In this sense, myth is comic, while the legend of heroes is tragic. Heroes are heroes only because they have experienced all kinds of hardships, which are exactly the difficulties and pressures faced by the Greeks in primitive society. Sisyphus's Labor became the epitome of their lives. Faced with the helplessness of fate and the "Tantalus torture" of natural environment, these heroes are still struggling, but they are still unable to change the status quo. So their fate is doomed to be tragic: Hercules, the Hercules, finally died in Sagittarius. Achilles' achilles' heel was finally hit by Paris' arrow; Jason died of loneliness and regret; Oedipus was blinded by remorse for his crimes and had to go into exile again ... descendants of the palop family (such as Atreus, titus Oster, Agamemnon, etc. ) constantly killing each other, incest, the root of all tragedies is the Oracle. The legend of heroes in Greek mythology realized these oracles through legendary heroes, just as Hegel's absolute spirit was realized through realistic heroes such as Alexander and Napoleon. However, the Greeks are optimistic by nature. After the death of heroes, they all received generous treatment, which is a great psychological comfort to the living, thus encouraging them to imitate the heroic behavior to create great achievements, and even making the ancient Greeks face the difficulties and tragedies in life with an optimistic attitude.
The irreversibility of Oracle led to the development of Greek mythology and the continuation of protoss, and the opportunity was completed by internal self-denial. In Greek mythology, the supremacy of protoss was achieved by violence through "taboo-exile-rebellion-substitution". From Uranus to Cronus, from Cronus to Zeus, every stepfather's career was achieved through hard struggle. In the legend of heroes, examples of self-denial revealed by Oracle are also common. Behind the free will of gods and heroes, there is always a deeper determinism-destiny determinism, which also makes the free will of gods and heroes become the intermediary and means of destiny self-realization. The self-denial mechanism developed by the whole Greek god system freely expresses the determinism of the Oracle in a tragic way. This violent self-denial mechanism, after transcending moral rationality, has gained higher rationality, that is, the rationality of fate and destiny under the control of Oracle. Because of this, Cronus and Zeus overstepped the patriarchy, Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, Hercules, a powerful man, died at the hands of his wife, and the descendants of the palop family killed each other, all of which were determined by the inescapable fate. This determinism of fate dominated by Oracle is the only thing with metaphysical elements in Greek mythology. It has two meanings: internally, this self-denial mechanism embodies the mysterious and cruel power of the Oracle; Externally, this self-denial mechanism shows a kind of metabolic social evolution thought, bringing forth the old and bringing forth the new, taking change as the essence and constantly surpassing reality and itself. This is what Aeschylus's Agamemnon tells us. [8](P247)
Greek mythology shows the determinism of the Oracle in a tragic way. The Oracle is inviolable and inevitable. As an external objectivity, Oracle is superior to all gods. Faced with this Oracle of external inevitability, Greek gods and heroes were as frightened as people abandoned by God in the face of a terrible flood. In Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus describes the absolute domination of fate over the gods. When captain Song advised Prometheus to compromise with Zeus and avoid the pain of flesh and blood, Prometheus replied: "... however, the fate that dominates everything does not allow ... the power of technology is far greater than fate." Thus, at this time, all gods and heroes are just inferior beings, and there is a higher existence in them, which is self-sustaining, unknowable, transcendental and metaphysical. If there is a god in Greek mythology, it is an Oracle. As Russell said, "What can really be found in Homer's poems is not the Olympic God, but the existence of fate, inevitability and destiny that even Zeus has to obey." [9](P33) There is a unique absolute God at work behind all kinds of gods on this shore, who dominate people's real life through God, and God is not a real God, no longer an independent and self-sufficient subject, but the only God floating above and outside this shore-the means of fate and many styles. In the face of fate, the Olympians used to be like eunuchs in the Persian palace, so humble that they didn't even dare to lift their heads under their imperial orders.
To sum up, we know that Greek mythology and its exuberant vitality come from the Oracle and the self-denial mechanism within the divine system caused by it. However, when Homer and Hersiad systematized the myths circulating among the people for hundreds of years, they also planted the seeds of Greek myth crisis. This contradiction of polytheism in Greek mythology-self-denial-actually shows the trend of transformation from polytheism to monotheism. The playwright Aeschylus realized this potential danger and predicted the possibility of a new stage in the development of Greek mythology through the mouth of the prophet Prometheus. After Zeus's rule in heaven was established, his children and brothers were no longer forced to suppress, and a more relaxed democratic atmosphere appeared in heaven. Zeus lived in harmony with the gods, not as bossy as his predecessor (except occasionally). He was like a kind parent, a prestigious elder or the speaker of the modern parliament. As Toynbee said, Zeus's position in heaven is "very similar to that of the monarch of the constitutional state later, but it only provides a symbol of power for the role of fate and nature" [10](P324). The change of Zeus' behavior is essentially a transition from authoritarian spirit to democratic spirit. Zeus is the father of Greek gods, but all gods can act according to their own will. Zeus respects them and they respect him. Although sometimes he scolds them and threatens them, they either obey or shrink back and complain; But Zeus never took things to extremes. He usually handled everything to everyone's satisfaction ... "[1 1] (P275) Democracy (compromise) replaced autocracy and arbitrariness here, which is obvious from Zeus' change of attitude towards the Trojan War. But even so, under the domination of the Oracle, Zeus faced the same fate as his ancestors. Prometheus, as a prophet, knew that Zeus would be overthrown by his own son because of his engagement (there are two legends in Greek folk, one is that Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, will replace Zeus; It is said that Zeus married thetis, the sea god, and gave birth to a son to replace his authority. [ 12](P208)。 Zeus was forced to ask Prometheus, his enemy, for help after learning this Oracle, but Prometheus was determined not to tell Zeus. The ending is comedy. The prophet compromised with the heavenly king, and Zeus avoided this marriage (thetis, the sea god, married peleus, a human hero, and his son Achilles, and Hegel praised him for winning the Trojan War for the Greeks, but failed to overthrow Zeus' rule). Oracle has lost its constraint on God, and Greek mythology is facing rigidity and aging. This is because the productivity of Greek society has been greatly improved in the late Homer era. With the improvement of people's awareness, the strengthening of their ability to conquer nature and the fact that "natural forces are dominated, the myth disappears" [5](P 1 13).
The irreversibility of Oracle has become the eternal theme of Greek mythology, which is not only manifested in folklore and Greek tragedy, but also related to the determinism of all subsequent philosophies and religions-fate, fatalism, inevitability, God and absolute spirit through abstraction. Greek philosophy developed on the basis of transforming Greek mythology. "The whole Greek philosophy is a denial of Greek polytheism" [3](P37 Of course, the existence of the Oracle in mythology is not the retribution of the free will of the gods and heroes, but an unchangeable fate that has nothing to do with free will. The god in Greek mythology is "the god of human nature", which has a natural state, but the Oracle and fate have an abstract thing. This ambiguous feature makes Greek mythology develop into two completely different tendencies in later Greek philosophy, namely, religious martyrdom consciousness and secular heroism (Prometheus and Achilles are represented respectively in myths and legends, while Socrates and Alexander are taken as models in the real world), which become the main content of later western historical development and the embryonic form of the basic spirit of western culture, and make western culture as a whole show its unremitting pursuit of surpassing reality and comparing with eastern culture for a higher and better life.
The ancient Greeks were the first people in Europe to enter the civilized era, and Greek myths and legends were also the earliest folk oral creations in Europe. In Greek mythology, natural forces and natural phenomena are personified and regarded as gods, the essence of which is the desire of ancient Greeks to know the world and explore its laws. Engels pointed out that Greek mythology and Homer's epic are "the main legacy of the Greeks from barbarism to civilization" [14](P22), but they have less religious elements and the core is people-oriented. They showed people the constraints of nature and society through the Oracle, and the end of the Oracle made the world firmly believe in their own strength.