National myth
In totalitarian dictatorships, the leader might be given, for example, a mythical supernatural life history in order to make them seem god-like and supra-powerful (see also cult of personality).
In liberal regimes they can inspire civic virtue and self-sacrifice[3] or consolidate the power of dominant groups and legitimate their rule.
Ancient Hellenic culture adopted Homer's Ionian Iliad as a justification of its theoretical unity, and Virgil (70–19 BCE) composed the Aeneid in support of the political renewal and reunification of the Roman world after lengthy civil wars.
Generations of medieval writers (in poetry and prose) contributed to the Arthurian Matter of Britain, developing what became a focus for English nationalism by adopting British Celtic material.
French pamphleteers spread the ideas of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the 1790s, and American journalists, politicians, and scholars popularized mythic tropes like "Manifest Destiny", "the Frontier", or the "Arsenal of Democracy".
Socialists advocating ideas like the dictatorship of the proletariat have promoted catchy nation-promoting slogans such as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "Kim Il Sung thought".
Freyre's theory became a source of national pride for Brazil, which contrasted itself favorably vis-a-vis the contemporaneous racial divisions and violence in the United States.
He is the child of Deucalion (or Zeus) and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples.
They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the so-called Saga Age.
The Icelandic sagas are valuable and unique historical sources about medieval Scandinavian societies and kingdoms, in particular regarding pre-Christian religion and culture and heroic age.
Originally an orally transmitted epic cycle, today it is known through the work of Karl Felix Wolff in 1932, gathered in Dolomitensagen.
[28][29][30] It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
He launched a military expedition from Hyūga near the Seto Inland Sea, captured Yamato, and established this as his center of power.
[32] It has played a major role in the treatment of the Māori people in New Zealand by successive governments and the wider population, something that has been especially prominent since the late 20th century.
It was first signed on 6 February 1840 by Captain William Hobson as consul for the British Crown and by Māori chiefs (rangatira) from the North Island of New Zealand.
Richard Slotkin describes this myth as depicting "America as a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top.
The American frontier produced various mythologized figures such as Wild Bill Hickok, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy, and Davy Crockett.
