Did some Ancient Greeks interpret myth as metaphor? Either purely morality stories or hiding a deeper "divine truth", similar to the views of some modern Christians? Can any Ancient Greeks be described as atheists?
Any kind of sceptical view of Greek mythology from Ancient Greeks is what I'm interested in. Also how widespread were these ideas?
I'd especially appreciate any primary sources you could point me towards for learning more about this. Thankyou.
As mentioned, there have been loads of posts here on the Greeks and their attitudes to their gods. Give them a scan for source references.
belief
atheism
myth
This is a pretty common question on here, there must be some help in the sidebar for extra sources. So, I'll try to help with how you should approach the sources.
One could argue that all Ancient Greeks interpreted myth as metaphor, because the 'truth' of a myth is not really the point. As such, we don't have many sources that question the authenticity of myths and rituals because people weren't listening to them for the facts as much as their moral and religious insight.
Your only chances at finding an atheist is either Socrates or Plato, but even then I'd be extremely hesitant to classify either of them as atheists in our sense of the word. All of Socrates' ideas that we have come via Plato, so you should look at Plato's Apology and Republic for the more radical ideas, but bear in mind that this was a small part of their philosophy, which in turn was a minuscule part of the wider population.
Socrates was put to death for asebeia or neglecting the gods of the city and Plato openly questions the existence of the gods. These sound like they fit what you're looking for, but I'd urge you to become more familiar with the religious world of classical Athens before arguing that this reflects atheism or even skepticism in the way we'd imagine in.