I'm reading Herodotus for the first time, and he claims that three entities (Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians) all mentioned accounts, however differing, of the kidnapping of Io, Europea, Medea, Helen.
I'm familiar with these myths, and it makes sense to me that the Greeks would regard these myths as historical, at the very least the Trojan War they would.
What stands out to me is that Herodotus spoke with Phoenicians and Persians who ALSO made reference to these GREEK myths, as if they were historical
How could this be? Did these barbarians hear the Illiad? Were these myths based in history? Has Herodotus simply made things up?
And as a follow up question, how could the Persians possibly cite these myths as a source of animosity between them and the Greeks, when these events would have happened ~900BC or prior, and the Persian Empire wasn't created until 400 years later?
I asked this in a discord but I felt like the question wasn't really answered ... do we have any way of knowing a real answer to this?
This is going to bother me forever if I don't get an answer haha, I would love to hear all your thoughts on it ...
Thank you very much in advance.
Many of the Greeks, and other ancient peoples, certainly believed that other cultures believed in some form of their own myths, because obviously they had the right way of religion, the Gods, myths, and so on
That's a little complicated so let me break it down.
All societies interpret other cultures according to their own framework that is the result of their unique cultural developments and history. This happens in many different ways, almost too numerous to count. For example, think of trying to explain to an American the difference between the Head of State of another country who isn't called the President, you might explain it to them, or they may understand a position like Prime Minister or Chancellor as comparable to the US Presidency.
Ancient peoples did similar things all of the time. We can see this in a variety of ways, for example you may have heard how the Romans had their own versions of Greek deities. Jupiter=Zeus, Mars=Ares, etc.... Now of course the Romans did not steal those deities or copy the Greeks and give them Latin names, but they did draw parallels between Roman gods and Greek ones, and not only Greeks! For example, when describing the Germanic peoples of the Roman frontier, Tacitus compares deities that they worshipped to Roman gods like Mercury or Castor and Pollux. This is called interpretatio Romanae and was a common occurrence in a polytheistic world, not limited to only the Romans as the name might imply. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and so on all interpreted the Gods, myths, stories, and more of their neighbors in a framework that made sense to them, hence the somewhat bizarre idea that the Persians recognized Greek mythological figures and stories.
Now it is worth mentioning that many other culture, such as the Romans, did believe in "Greek" myths such as the Trojan War, and as the world of classical antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages, the belief in the historicity and importance of the Trojan War for example did not wane, and indeed many medieval cultures, such as the English, Icelandic people, Normans, and Danes connected their ancestry back to the Trojan War! I'd be happy to talk more about that aspect if you've any questions on the later reception of Greek myths like the Trojan War.