The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth: A Psychological Exploration of Myth (Expanded and Updated) - Softcover

"Nearly all prominent civilized nations, including Babylonians and Egyptians, Hebrews and Indians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as Germanic peoples and others, have left us literatures in which, early on, they glorify national heroes--mythical princes and kings, and founders of religions, dynasties, empires, and cities--in many poetic tales and legends. The history of the birth and youth of these supermen came to be especially invested with fantastic features, which in different nations, though widely separated by space and entirely independent of each other, present a baffling similarity or, in part, a literal correspondence...The ultimate problem is not whence and how the material reached a certain people. That question is, Where did it come from to begin with?"