Mythological systems

Hi, a lot of mythological figures were worshiped as gods and goddesses in Ancient Greece and Rome, and to a lesser degree, still are. Now that we have a Religion domain, those figures can be typed Deities:

http://www.freebase.com/view/filter?id=/religion/deity

Wildly belated reply, but I just saw this conversation. Not all mythological figures are deities. For instance, King Arthur and indeed everyone in that story eg. Merlin, Guinevere, etc. (Sorry, don't know much about classical mythology, so can't give an example from ancient Greece or Rome.)

Arguably, Arthur et al. are legendary figures, which is a slightly different sort of thing (although the line is probably hazy at the boundaries). But your main point is correct -- there are lots of people, animals, monsters, whatnot, that are in myths who are not at all deities (Odysseus, Medusa, Pegasus, etc.). I don't have any clever ideas about where to put them, however.

Kirrily: I agree, not all mythological figures are deities. I'm glad you brought it up; I do think a Myth/Legend domain would be useful here. Before venkytv posted this, I had started a similar post (with a mythological figure type in my own domain). In response, I believe it was crism who pointed out that tagging someone's god as mythological might not be sensitive to that religion and adherents thereof. The Religion domain was in the works then, so to keep our users informed of the new domain I felt compelled to point out the Deity type.

As for King Arthur himself, historians disagree as to whether it was based on any historical fact (with some apparently quite insistent on that the man really existed). I gave him the benefit of the doubt when I had to pigeon-hole him a while back (for the purpose of automating autocomplete/search test cases), and tagged him as a Person/Deceased Person. But feel free to correct that if needed -- I'm definitely not an expert on King Arthur. ;)

The differences between legend and myth can sometimes be subtle (it doesn't help that the two words are often used interchangeably in English), and if you throw in forklore too... This might be something worth bringing up on the data modeling mailing list, where we have a larger audience and it's easier to hold longer back-and-forth discussions.