jprussell | (Reply)

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well, I might say the post-Enlightenment Faustian myths were certainly never better-enacted by any *other* society!

Fair enough!

The evidence on Etruscans I heard about is supposedly from archaeology about them, but I don't know details; I still need to check those differences between depictions of sex, and, who'da thunk, romance! (Then again, it's called "ROMANce", isn't it?)

Yeah, I don't have great evidence here, either. My college Latin teacher gave a not-for-credit lecture or two about how Etruscan architecture was picked up by Romans and then copied by folks copying the Romans. She walked us around our campus and pointed out things like "see tha triple arch motif? That's Etruscan." Unfortunately, I did't take very good notes, and I can't remember her name to see if she published anything on the subject. The material on sex/Romance came from another class, a survey on Roman technology and culture, and again, I can't remember the fellow's name, and it's not listed on my transcript.

based on not-much knowledge, it appears to me that later Zoroastrian (don't know about early) and Abrahamic cultures tend to be rigidly moralizing, Indo-European myths tend to more moral nuance, and a lot of other myth seems light on morality to me?

Yeah, the whole "rigid moralizing" thing might have been especially characteristic of Magian civilization/religions, but I'm not sure on non-Indo-European, non-Abrahamic myths, as I don't know them in as much detail.