Of course not every myth follows the pattern of encapsulating wisdom, let alone nontrivial wisdom. But keep in mind that what counts as “wisdom,” and what it takes to unpack the wisdom in a myth, can be very tightly bound to a dense cultural matrix of interwoven ideas/symbols/metaphors inscrutable to outsiders, and often very much open to debate even to learned members of a culture. It’s (usually) a mistake to think a myth is about a single piece of wisdom as opposed to being something you can point to as an example of any of various pieces of wisdom.
There’s a comment thread below about the Oresteia. Aside from whatever we’re supposed to think about Agamemnon, he let himself be persuaded into symbolically claiming higher status than the gods (walking upon the purple cloths) and then gets murdered. His son avenges him (matricide) and is forced to flee from the Furies’ punishment, because matricide is wrong. Athena then holds the first trial by jury, and founds Athens, specifically to resolve the dispute. In this sense the moral is, “Here’s how we conduct trials, and why; here’s how the judgment of the gods supersedes and is better than the primal wrath of the Furies; here’s how orderly, modern civilization is superior to the kleos and virtues of the heroes of old.”
That’s actually a common motif. Read Njal’s Saga, and a lot of it is about the relative virtues of revenge and peacemaking. It’s told in the context of a society where individual vengeance and familial feuds are common and considered virtuous, while peacemaking is often belittled or demeaned, but also a society in the midst of converting to Christianity and grappling with the accompanying changes in belief about what is Right and Good.
Of course not every myth follows the pattern of encapsulating wisdom, let alone nontrivial wisdom. But keep in mind that what counts as “wisdom,” and what it takes to unpack the wisdom in a myth, can be very tightly bound to a dense cultural matrix of interwoven ideas/symbols/metaphors inscrutable to outsiders, and often very much open to debate even to learned members of a culture. It’s (usually) a mistake to think a myth is about a single piece of wisdom as opposed to being something you can point to as an example of any of various pieces of wisdom.
There’s a comment thread below about the Oresteia. Aside from whatever we’re supposed to think about Agamemnon, he let himself be persuaded into symbolically claiming higher status than the gods (walking upon the purple cloths) and then gets murdered. His son avenges him (matricide) and is forced to flee from the Furies’ punishment, because matricide is wrong. Athena then holds the first trial by jury, and founds Athens, specifically to resolve the dispute. In this sense the moral is, “Here’s how we conduct trials, and why; here’s how the judgment of the gods supersedes and is better than the primal wrath of the Furies; here’s how orderly, modern civilization is superior to the kleos and virtues of the heroes of old.”
That’s actually a common motif. Read Njal’s Saga, and a lot of it is about the relative virtues of revenge and peacemaking. It’s told in the context of a society where individual vengeance and familial feuds are common and considered virtuous, while peacemaking is often belittled or demeaned, but also a society in the midst of converting to Christianity and grappling with the accompanying changes in belief about what is Right and Good.