Greek Mythology

Greek Mythology

Greek Mythology

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION OLYMPIANS VS. TITANS FAMOUS GREEK GODS AND GODDESSES MYTHICAL PLACES STORIES BOOKS ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY MOVIES ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY
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INTRODUCTION
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to the myths and study them in an attempt to throw light on the religious and political institutions of Ancient Greece, its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself.[1] Greek mythology is embodied explicitly in a large collection of narratives and implicitly in Greek representational arts, such as vase-paintings and votive gifts. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world and details the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and mythological creatures. These accounts initially were disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition; today the Greek myths are known primarily from Greek literature. The greek gods are classified into two groups. The Titans and the

Olympians.

The Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. In the first generation of twelve Titans, the males were Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius and Iapetus and the females were Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea and Themis. The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion's children Eos, Helios, and Selene; Coeus's daughters Leto and Asteria; Iapetus's sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius; Oceanus' daughter Metis; and Crius's sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.
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The Titans as Elder Gods were overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("War of the Titans") which effected a mythological paradigm shift.

OLYMPIANS VS. TITANS.

Zeus grew up on the island of Crete. After he became a young
man, he obtained a potion that induced vomiting from a female Titan named Metis. Zeus had his mother Rhea arranged for him to become his fathers cupbearer. He slipped the potion into a drink causing Cronos to spit up his brothers and sisters. The five siblings were so grateful for the rescue that they wanted Zeus to become the leader of the Olympians. Cronos feared the rising power of Zeus. He tried to rally the Titans to join him to defeat Zeus and his siblings. He was not able to get the Titan women to join him For ten years, the Titans and the Olympians fought with neither side able to gain a lasting advantage. Gaia advised Zeus to free the Cyclopes and the hundred headed Giants from Tartarus (a
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place in the underworld) and persuade them to join his side. Zeus
went down to Tartarus, killed the monster which guarded the prisoners, and released them. In return for their freedom, the Cyclopes and the Giants became allies with Zeus tipping the scale of power to the Olympians.

The Cyclopes gave Zeus the power over thunder and lightning. Then gave the helm of darkness to Hades and to Poseidon they gave a trident (three-pronged spear). Hades used the helm of darkness to steal away Cronus weapons and Poseidon came at him with the trident. The distraction allowed Zeus to strike with lightning, and he downed Cronus. With the defeat of Cronus and the added power of the Cyclopes and Giants, the Olympians were able to defeat the Titans. The Titans, who participated in the war, were imprisoned in Tartarus. Atlas was given a special punishment for his role in the war. He was required to hold up the sky.

FAMOUS GREEK GODS AND GODDESSES!!!

Greek mythology consists of an infinite number of gods and goddesses. Listing all of them will be hard.Therefore here are some of the important ones.

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ZEUS
Zeus is the god of the sky and ruler of the Olympian gods. Zeus overthrew his Father Cronus. He then drew lots with his brothers Poseidon and Hades. Zeus won the draw and became the supreme ruler of the gods. His weapon is a thunderbolt which he hurls at those who displease him. He is married to Hera but, is famous for his many affairs. He is also known to punish those that lie or break oaths. He is represented as the god of justice and mercy, the protector of the weak, and the punisher of the wicked.

Zeus with his famous thunderbolt

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POSEIDON
God of the sea, protector of all waters. He was widely worshiped by seamen. He married Amphitrite, a granddaughter of the Titan Oceanus. At one point he desired Demeter. To put him off Demeter asked him to make the most beautiful animal that the world had ever seen. So to impress her Poseidon created the first horse.His weapon is a trident, which can shake the earth, and shatter any object. He is second only to Zeus in power amongst the gods.

Poseidon with his Trident

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HADES
Hades is the brother of Zeus. He had the worst draw and was made lord of the underworld, ruling over the dead. He is a greedy god who is greatly concerned with increasing his subjects. He is also the god of wealth, due to the precious metals mined from the earth. He has a helmet that makes him invisible. He rarely leaves the underworld. He is unpitying and terrible, but not capricious. His wife is Persephone whom Hades abducted.

Hades

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ATHENA
Athena is the Greek virgin goddess of reason, intelligent activity, arts and literature. Athena is the daughter of Zeus. She sprang full grown in armour from his forehead. Her mother was Metis, goddess of wisdom and Zeus' first wife She is fierce and brave in battle. She is the goddess of the city, handicrafts, and agriculture. She invented the bridle, which permitted man to tame horses, the trumpet, the flute, the pot, the rake, the plow, the yoke, the ship, and the chariot. She is the embodiment of wisdom, reason, and purity.

Goddess Athena

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APHRODITE
Aphrodite is the goddess of love, desire and beauty. In addition to her natural gifts she has a magical girdle that compels anyone she wishes to desire her. There are two accounts of her birth. One says she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. The other goes back to when Cronus castrated Uranus and tossed his severed genitals into the sea. Aphrodite then arose from the sea foam on a giant scallop and walked to shore in Cyprus. She is the wife of Hephaestus..

Aphrodite-Goddess of love

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APOLLO
Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto. His twin sister is Artemis. He is the god of music, playing a golden lyre. The Archer, far shooting with a silver bow. The god of healing who taught man medicine. The god of light. The god of truth, who can not speak a lie. One of Apollo's more important daily tasks is to harness his chariot with four horses and drive the Sun across the sky. He is famous for his oracle at Delphi. People traveled to it from all over the Greek world to divine the future.

Apollo

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ARTEMIS
She was goddess of chastity, virginity, the hunt, the moon . Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto. Her twin brother is Apollo.. She is the huntsman of the gods. She is the protector of the young. Like Apollo she hunts with silver arrows. She became associated with the moon. The cypress is her tree. All wild animals are sacred to her, especially the deer.

Artemis

HERMES
He was the cleverest of the Olympian gods, and messenger to all the other gods. Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia. He is Zeus messenger. He is the fastest of the gods. He wears winged sandals, a winged
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hat, and carries a magic wand. He is the god of thieves and god of commerce. He is the guide for the dead to go to the underworld. He invented the lyre, the pipes, the musical scale, astronomy, weights and measures, boxing, gymnastics, and the care of olive trees.

Hermes

HEPHAESTUS
Hephaestus is the son of Zeus and Hera. Sometimes it is said that Hera alone produced him and that he has no father. He is the only god to be physically ugly. He is also lame. Accounts as to how he became lame vary. Some say that Hera, upset by having an ugly child, flung him from Mount Olympus into the sea, breaking his legs. Others that he took Hera's side in an arguement with Zeus and Zeus flung him off Mount Olympus. He is the god of

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fire and the forge. He is a smith. He uses a volcano as his forge. He is the patron god of both smiths and weavers. He is kind and peace loving. His wife is Aphrodite.

Hephaestus

HESTIA
Hestia is Zeus sister. She does not have a distinct personality. She plays no part in myths. She is the Goddess of the Hearth, the symbol of the house around which a new born child is carried before it is received into the family. Each city had a public hearth sacred to Hestia, where the fire was never allowed to go out. Of all the Olympians, she is the mildest, most upright and most charitable

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Goddess Hestia

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MYTHICAL PLACES
Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus towers up from the center of the earth. Here the major gods live and hold court. The myths are somewhat vague on weather it is an actual mountain or a region of the heavens.

The Underworld
The underworld is hidden in the earth. It is the kingdom of the dead and ruled over by Hades.

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For most, life in the underworld is not particularly pleasant. It is rather like a miserable dream, full of shadows, without sunlight or hope. A joyless place where the dead slowly fade into nothingness. Geographically, the underworld is surrounded by a series of rivers: The Acheron (river of woe), The Cocytus (river of lamentation), The Phlegethon (river of fire), The Styx (river of unbreakable oath by which the gods swear), and The Lethe (river of forgetfulness). Once across the rivers an adamantine gate, guarded by Cerberus, forms the entrance to the kingdom. Deep within the kingdom is Hades vast palace, complete with many guests. Upon death a soul is lead by Hermes to the entrance of the underworld and the ferry across the Acheron. There is a single ferry run by Rhadamanthus, Minos I, and Aeacus, who pass sentence. The very good go to the Elysian Fields.

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Tartarus
Tartarus lies far beneath the disk of the world. Deeper then Hades kingdom of the underworld. It is used as the ultimate of prisons, unpleasant and inaccessible.

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LABYRINTH
In Greek mythology Daedalus, an architect and inventor, designed the first labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. This was a man-eating monster that was half man and half bull. King Minos had a daughter named Ariadne. She fell in love with Theseus. He was the son of King Aegus of Athens. Adriadne told Theseus that she would help him kill the Minotaur if he would marry her. Theseus agreed. To help Theseus get through the Labyrinth, Adriadne gave Theseus a magic ball of thread. At the entrance she tied one end of the thread to the lintel and told Theseus to unroll the ball as he went. By following the thread back, he would be able to find his way out. Theseus did this and killed the Minotaur. He and Adriadne left by ship.

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STORIES
The Trojan War & the Judgement of Paris
Once upon a time, around 1250 BC, toward the end of the Bronze Age in Greece, three goddesses were having an argument. The goddesses Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera were arguing about which one of them was the most beautiful. They agreed to choose a human man and let him decide. More or less at random, the goddesses picked Paris, the youngest son of King Priam of Troy, to be their judge. Each of the goddesses offered Paris a bribe to get him to vote for her. Athena offered him wisdom. Hera offered him power. But Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, and Paris voted for her. So Aphrodite had to come through on her promise. She sent Paris to go visit the Greek king of Sparta, Menelaus. Menelaus was married to Helen, who was the most beautiful woman in the world. Menelaus and Helen welcomed Paris kindly, and gave him dinner and let him stay the night in their house. But during the night Paris convinced Helen to run away with him (because Aphrodite made her agree). He took her back to Troy with him and married her, even though she was already married to Menelaus.

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The Trojan Horse being dragged to the city

Paris played by Orlando Bloom

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Perseus
Perseus and his mother Danae drifted to a new kingdom and stayed there while Perseus grew up. But after a while the king of the new place wanted to marry Danae, but she didn't want to marry him. This king wanted to get rid of Perseus for awhile so he could make Danae marry him. So the king sent Perseus on a quest, to kill the monster Medusa and bring back her head. At first Perseus didn't know where to find Medusa, so he went and asked the three Fates. The Fates were very old and they only had one eye and one tooth between them and they took turns every day, passing the eye and the tooth between them. When Perseus came to them, at first they didn't want to tell him where Medusa was. But Perseus waited until they were passing the eye from one to another, and so none of them could see. Then he quick grabbed the eye! The Fates had to tell Perseus where Medusa was in order to get their eye back. Then Perseus met the god Hermes, who gave him, winged sandals to wear so he could fly to where Medusa was, and fight from the air. And he met the goddess Athena, who gave him a sword and a shield. Athena told Perseus not to look at Medusa or her ugliness would turn him to stone. Instead he should use the shield as a mirror and look in that to cut off Medusa's head.

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Persephone
Persephone was the daughter of the goddess Demeter. One day she was dancing with her friends in a sunny meadow, having a good time. Suddenly her spooky uncle Hades burst out of the ground and grabbed her and pulled her into his chariot. He took her under the ground to his kingdom, the land of the dead, and told her that he wanted her to be the Queen of the Underworld and marry him. Persephone was very sad there under the ground. She wanted to go up into the sunshine again. But Hades would not let her. Meanwhile, back up in the land of the living, Persephone's mother Demeter was looking everywhere for her and could not find her. She cried and cried. Finally she went to her brother Zeus, and asked him to help find her. Zeus, sitting way up there on top of Mount Olympus, was able to see where Persephone was. He told Hades to give her back. But Hades said he would only give Persephone back if she had really not eaten or drunk anything from the land of the dead. She had not eaten much, but it turned out she HAD eaten six pomegranate seeds. So they agreed that Persephone could spend
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six months a year above ground with her mother, but she would have to spend the other six months in the land of the dead with her uncle/husband. And that is how it has been since then, according to the story.

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FAMOUS BOOKS ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY THE ILIAD BY HOMER

The Iliad (sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege, the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war and similar, tending to appear near the beginning, and the events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' looming death and the sack of Troy, prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly approaching the end of the poem, making the poem tell a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.

THE ODYSSEY
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem mainly centers on the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home following the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War..

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It continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. The original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos (epic poet/singer), perhaps a rhapsode (professional performer), and was more likely intended to be sung than read. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians

This is a pentalogy of adventure and fantasy fiction books authored by Rick Riordan. The series consists of five books. Set in the United States, the books are predominantly based on Greek mythology. The Lightning Thief, the first book, is the basis of a film called Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which was released in the United States and Canada on February 12, 2010. All the books are written as though the hero is telling the story. The protagonist of the series is Percy Jackson, who discovers that he is the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, or Neptune, Roman god of the sea. He learns that the legendary beings of Greek mythology still exist, and have always existed, including monsters, cyclopes, empousi, Titans, and the Greek gods, including the Twelve Olympians themselves, who dwell on Olympus; now situated on the mythical 600th floor of the Empire State Building in New York, New York. Percy is frequently attacked by monsters because he is a child of one of the "Big Three" or the three most powerful Greek gods. Percy meets many other young demigods, both friendly and hostile, who are also in the process of discovering their ancestry and powers.

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FILMS ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY

HELEN OF TROY (1956)

BLACK ORPHEUS (1959)

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CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)

ODYSSEY(TV SHOW) (1997)

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HELEN OF TROY (TV SERIES) (2003)

TROY (2004)

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CLASH OF THE TITANS (REMAKE) (2010)

PERCY JAKSON AND THE OLYMPIANSTHE LIGHTNING THEIF (2010)

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IMMORTALS (UPCOMING) (2011)

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CONCLUSION
Greek Mythology is very vast and interesting. It is filled with magical creatures, dark places, brave heroes, exciting legends and a lot of adventure.It is a fantasy ride with beautiful goddesses and charming princes.It involves drama, action, tragedy and some melancholy. It is one of the most fascinating mythologies of the world. It might seem boring at first but once you are hooked, you will be left wanting for more..

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
WWW.GOOGLE.COM WWW.GREEKMYTHS.COM WWW.WIKIPEDIA.COM

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