Archaeological sources

The Roman poet Virgil, here depicted in the fifth-century manuscript, the Vergilius Romanus, preserved details
of Greek mythology in many of his writings.

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich

Schliemann in the nineteenth century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the
British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century, helped to explain many existing
questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological
details about gods and heroes. Unfortunately, the evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean
and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in
both Crete and mainland Greece) was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of
gods and heroes have been tentatively identified. [3]
Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth-century  BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well
as the adventures of Heracles.[13] These visual representations of myths are important for two
reasons. Firstly, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources: of the
twelve labors of Heracles, for example, only the Cerberus adventure occurs in a contemporary
literary text.[14] Secondly, visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not
attested in any extant literary source. In some cases, the first known representation of a myth in
geometric art predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry, by several centuries. [5] In
the Archaic (c. 750 – c. 500 BC), Classical (c. 480–323 BC), and Hellenistic (323–146 BC) periods,
Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary
evidence.[3]