Click here to Read Online
12. A Glossary of Ancient Greek Myth
NIDGEL RODGERS
A
A sacred adornment of great importance, normally worn as a medallion or
necklace around the chest of a god (or a man worshipped as a god, such as
Alexander the Great), or carried on its own in solemn procession. Zeus, king of
the gods, first gave an aegis to his daughter Athena, patron goddess of Athens,
which made her invulnerable even to his thunderbolts. Fringed with snakes’
heads and decorated with images of the Gorgon—the dread creature that turned
viewers to stone—the aegis brought victory to whichever side the god wearing it
supported.
(See Athena, Perseus)
The main sea around Greece, which took its name from Aegeus, King of Athens.
When Aegeus’ son Theseus, as a young man, sailed off to Crete as part of
Athens’s tribute to the Minotaur, he promised his father that he would change the
color of his ship’s sails from the normal black if he had returned safely. Although
he did escape alive from Crete, Theseus failed to do so, and Aegeus threw
himself, in grief, into the sea—which was thenceforth known by his name.
Son of the goddess Aphrodite and the Trojan prince Anchises, and hero of The
Aeneid. Aeneas escaped from Troy as it fell, carrying his aged father. His
subsequent wanderings around the Mediterranean led him to Carthage, where he
had a passionate affair with Dido, the city’s founder and queen, and when his
god-given duty called him reluctantly away, Dido in despair committed suicide.
Aeneas then visited the Underworld to meet the ghost of his father, who had
since died, and hear of his part in Rome’s future greatness before sailing on to
Latium (now Lazio, central Italy). There Aeneas married Lavinia and founded
Lavinium, a city on the coast that was the precursor to Rome. The Romans
venerated Aeneas. Julius Caesar claimed to be descended from him, as did
Augustus, during whose reign Virgil wrote The Aeneid.
(See Aphrodite, Trojan War)
Female warriors. While real women in Greece were secluded indoors, unable to
vote let alone fight, one mythical race rejected male dominance: the Amazons.
Their name may come from Amazona, meaning “without breasts,” for they
reputedly cut off their right breasts in order to shoot better, but in Greek art they
are always shown with both breasts. The Amazons lived in Pontus (the north
coast of modern Turkey) and other remote, legend-misted regions around the
Black Sea. Here they formed societies where the women ruled and men either
did the domestic work or were excluded altogether. Above all, the Amazons
fought, invading many territories and even founding cities such as Ephesus (on
the Aegean coast of modern Turkey). Theseus of Athens, who had joined
Hercules on one of his adventures, abducted Antiope, an Amazon princess, and
took her home to Athens. In revenge the Amazons invaded Greece, and were
only defeated right outside Athens. During the Trojan War, the Amazon queen
Penthesilea went to Troy’s aid, fighting valiantly until killed by Achilles. Most
unusually, Achilles wept at her death. Later, Alexander the Great reputedly loved
an Amazon queen whom he encountered in central Asia.
(See Theseus)
Mythical princess, the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, and Cassiopeia.
Andromeda rashly boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, and the
angry sea nymphs complained to Poseidon, the sea god, who sent a flood and
monster to ravage the land. To appease the angry god, Andromeda was chained
to a rock as a sacrifice to the monster. But Perseus, the hero who had just killed
the hideous Medusa, saw Andromeda and fell in love with her. He killed the
monster and married Andromeda, and their son (also named Perseus) became the
ancestor of the Persians. Along with Cepheus and Cassiopeia, Andromeda and
Perseus were later raised to the heavens as constellations.
(See Perseus)
Son of Poseidon and Gaia. Antaeus was a giant of great strength so long as he
maintained contact with the ground. Once lifted into the air, all his strength
vanished. He would challenge passersby to wrestle him; he would kill them and
take their skulls to use as building material for a temple to his father. Hercules
discovered Antaeus’ secret and defeated him in a wrestling match by lifting him
into the air.
Goddess of love and the most beautiful of the Olympian deities. Aphrodite was
worshipped in many forms across the Mediterranean; doves were sacred to her
and she was often shown attended by Eros, mischievous god of desire. However,
Aphrodite had disconcertingly foul origins. The god Kronos, urged on by his
mother Gaia, castrated his father Ouranos and threw the severed genitals into the
sea. Out of the resulting foam rose Aphrodite, the “foam-born.” Blown ashore by
Zephyrus, the west wind, she landed at Cyprus, where she was dressed and
bejewelled by the Horae, goddesses embodying the four seasons. Now
dazzlingly lovely, she caused amorous chaos on Olympus, for every god adored
her. Zeus married her off to Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, but it did not prove
a marriage made in heaven. Aphrodite soon grew bored with her lame (and ugly)
husband and had an affair with Ares, the war god. When Hephaestus realized
this, he threw a steel net over the sleeping couple that chained them to their bed.
The other gods looked on, laughing. Aphrodite had affairs with other gods such
as Hermes and men such as the Trojan prince Anchises (the father of her son
Aeneas). Aphrodite’s beauty bewitched another Trojan prince, Paris, and when
he was called on to judge who was the most beautiful, Athena, Hera, or
Aphrodite, Paris chose the love goddess. In return he was gifted with great sex
appeal, which won him the heart of Helen, the loveliest woman alive.
Unfortunately, Helen was married already—to Menelaus, king of Sparta. By
eloping with her, Paris started the Trojan War.
(See Aeneas, Ares, Athena, Eris, Hephaestus, Hera, Jason, Nereids, Ouranos)
God of music, poetry, medicine, light, and science, and for many the archetypal
Greek deity. Apollo was born with his twin sister Artemis on the island of Delos.
His father was Zeus, king of the gods, and his mother Leto, a Titaness. The baby
god was fed nectar and ambrosia rather than milk, giving him the strength he
used to kill the serpent Pytho, which had molested his mother. He named the site
of his victory Delphi, and it became the seat of his Oracle, the greatest in Greece.
Each winter Apollo went far north to the land of the mysterious Hyperboreans in
a chariot drawn by white swans, and returned with the spring. He was master of
the lyre, Greece’s main musical instrument, and of the bow. On Mount Parnassus
near Delphi he held court, playing his lyre and attended by the Nine Muses.
Apollo could be dangerous if crossed. The satyr Marsyas rashly challenged him
to a musical contest, and when Apollo won, he had Marsyas flayed alive. He
could dispense sickness as well as medicine, sending plagues if angered. But
generally Apollo was a beneficent god, honored by humans and the other
Olympians. Depicted always as a serenely handsome, beardless young man,
Apollo had many, often unhappy, love affairs, most notably with Daphne, a
nymph. Apollo pursued her passionately but in vain, for she prayed to her father,
the river god Peneus, and he turned her into a laurel tree just as the god was
about to grasp her. One of his other love affairs was with the princess Coronis.
When Apollo discovered she had left him, he shot her with one of his arrows,
and repented of his rage too late to save her. Their son Asclepius was saved by
the centaur Chiron, however, and grew up to be a divine healer. Apollo also fell
in love with Hyacinthus, a Spartan prince, whom he taught to throw the discus.
When Hyacinthus was killed by a flying discus, the first hyacinth flower sprang
from the ground stained by his blood. Apollo was at times identified with Helios,
the sun god, but they were really distinct deities.
(See Artemis, Delphi, Hecate, Helios, Hercules, Hermes, Laurel, Mount Olympus, Nymphs, Oracles, Orpheus, Python, Zeus)
Daughter of a Lydian dyer, who rashly challenged the goddess Athena to a
weaving contest. The tapestry Arachne wove depicted the scene of Athena’s
contest with Poseidon with such brilliant realism that the goddess, jealously
enraged, destroyed Arachne’s works. Athena then turned the weaver herself into
a spider, doomed to repeat forever her compulsive weaving. From Arachne’s
name come the terms arachnid and arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
God of war. Irascible and cruel, Ares was disliked both by other gods and by
human beings. Although the son of Zeus and Hera, and so part of Olympus’
“royal family,” Ares was not loved by his parents. Only Aphrodite, bored by her
blacksmith husband Hephaestus, loved him, and even then only briefly. More
usually, he spent his time haunting the battlefield with his supporters, the lesser
gods Deimos (fear) and Phobos (panic), killing at will. But Ares was not
invincible, for he lacked intelligence as well as charm. Athena often managed to
outwit him and even Hercules, who was a mere demigod, at times defeated him.
Ares was worshipped by men only in Thebes, a city noted for its militarism and
dullness. (See Aphrodite, Eris, Hephaestus, Hera)
Daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphae of Crete. Ariadne fell in love with
Theseus of Athens when he came to Crete as one of the sacrificial victims for the
Minotaur, and so she gave Theseus a thread to help him find his way back out of
the Labyrinth, the maze in which the Minotaur was held. After Theseus had
killed the monster, the couple escaped from Crete together. However, Theseus—
for reasons still debated—abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. There she
was rescued by the god Dionysus, who married her. Ariadne, in origin, was
probably a Minoan goddess connected with the Great Mother.
(See Dionysus, Minotaur, Theseus)
ARTEMIS
Daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister of Apollo. In one avatar she was a
chaste huntress, slim, athletic, and short-skirted (Greek women usually wore
long robes). Protector of young wild animals, she roamed the woods with a bow
and was attended by nymph-huntresses sworn to celibacy like her. (These twenty
shadowy nymphs, immortal but with no real power, were nameless apart from
Callisto. Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, was seduced by Zeus while he was
disguised as the goddess herself. When Artemis discovered this, she shot the
unfortunate Callisto.) When the hunter Actaeon came upon Artemis bathing
naked, she angrily transformed him into a stag and he was devoured by his own
hounds. Often shown with the crescent moon, Artemis was sometimes associated
with Selene, the Titan moon goddess, and even with Hecate, the fearsome queen
of darkness. As Selene, she fell in love with the beautiful youth Endymion, who
was put by Zeus into an immortal sleep to preserve his beauty. Artemis was also
worshipped as the Great Goddess, an older multi-breasted fertility goddess
venerated in a huge temple at Ephesus in Asia Minor. (This is the temple of
Diana that St. Paul later attacked; Diana is the Latin form of Artemis.)
(See Apollo, Hecate, Nymphs, Zeus)
Goddess of wisdom. Athena was born fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.
Unlike most other gods, Athena showed almost no interest in sex, and was often
called Parthenos (virgin). Still, she was affronted when Paris, the Trojan prince,
chose Aphrodite over her in the Contest of Paris. In the Trojan War that
followed, Athena favored the Greeks, especially the wily hero Odysseus, whom
she helped on his long wanderings as he made his way home. Athena was the
patron goddess of Athens, especially of its craftsmen, and her temple the
Parthenon, the most perfect temple in the Greek world, still rises above the city.
She had won Athens’s devotion with the olive tree, which the Athenians
preferred to Poseidon’s gift of a freshwater spring. Another of her titles was
Promachos , defender or champion, for she was a fighter goddess, shown always
with spear, helmet, and shield. She sported the hideous snake-haired aegis of
Medusa, who was killed by her protégé Perseus, and was frequently pictured
with a snake coiling beside her and an owl, a symbol of wisdom, on her
shoulder.
(See Aegis, Aphrodite, Arachne, Ares, Daedalus, Eris, Furies, Hercules, Medusa,
Nemean Lion, Pegasus, Perdix, Perseus, Poseidon, Zeus)
ATLAS
Titan punished by Zeus for joining the “revolt of the Titans” by having to stand
forever at the world’s western edge and support the weight of the heavens on his
shoulders. Only once did he have a break: Hercules, on his mission to fetch the
golden apples of the Hesperides, agreed to take on his great burden if Atlas
fetched the apples. This done, Hercules promptly gave the crushing weight of the
heavens back. Atlas was the father of Calypso and of the Pleiades, who became a
constellation. He gave his name to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, the
westernmost area the Greeks knew.
(See Calypso, Hesperides, Titans)
12. A Glossary of Ancient Greek Myth
NIDGEL RODGERS
A
AEGIS
A sacred adornment of great importance, normally worn as a medallion or
necklace around the chest of a god (or a man worshipped as a god, such as
Alexander the Great), or carried on its own in solemn procession. Zeus, king of
the gods, first gave an aegis to his daughter Athena, patron goddess of Athens,
which made her invulnerable even to his thunderbolts. Fringed with snakes’
heads and decorated with images of the Gorgon—the dread creature that turned
viewers to stone—the aegis brought victory to whichever side the god wearing it
supported.
(See Athena, Perseus)
AEGEAN SEA
The main sea around Greece, which took its name from Aegeus, King of Athens.
When Aegeus’ son Theseus, as a young man, sailed off to Crete as part of
Athens’s tribute to the Minotaur, he promised his father that he would change the
color of his ship’s sails from the normal black if he had returned safely. Although
he did escape alive from Crete, Theseus failed to do so, and Aegeus threw
himself, in grief, into the sea—which was thenceforth known by his name.
AENEAS
Son of the goddess Aphrodite and the Trojan prince Anchises, and hero of The
Aeneid. Aeneas escaped from Troy as it fell, carrying his aged father. His
subsequent wanderings around the Mediterranean led him to Carthage, where he
had a passionate affair with Dido, the city’s founder and queen, and when his
god-given duty called him reluctantly away, Dido in despair committed suicide.
Aeneas then visited the Underworld to meet the ghost of his father, who had
since died, and hear of his part in Rome’s future greatness before sailing on to
Latium (now Lazio, central Italy). There Aeneas married Lavinia and founded
Lavinium, a city on the coast that was the precursor to Rome. The Romans
venerated Aeneas. Julius Caesar claimed to be descended from him, as did
Augustus, during whose reign Virgil wrote The Aeneid.
(See Aphrodite, Trojan War)
AMAZONS
Female warriors. While real women in Greece were secluded indoors, unable to
vote let alone fight, one mythical race rejected male dominance: the Amazons.
Their name may come from Amazona, meaning “without breasts,” for they
reputedly cut off their right breasts in order to shoot better, but in Greek art they
are always shown with both breasts. The Amazons lived in Pontus (the north
coast of modern Turkey) and other remote, legend-misted regions around the
Black Sea. Here they formed societies where the women ruled and men either
did the domestic work or were excluded altogether. Above all, the Amazons
fought, invading many territories and even founding cities such as Ephesus (on
the Aegean coast of modern Turkey). Theseus of Athens, who had joined
Hercules on one of his adventures, abducted Antiope, an Amazon princess, and
took her home to Athens. In revenge the Amazons invaded Greece, and were
only defeated right outside Athens. During the Trojan War, the Amazon queen
Penthesilea went to Troy’s aid, fighting valiantly until killed by Achilles. Most
unusually, Achilles wept at her death. Later, Alexander the Great reputedly loved
an Amazon queen whom he encountered in central Asia.
(See Theseus)
ANDROMEDA
Mythical princess, the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, and Cassiopeia.
Andromeda rashly boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, and the
angry sea nymphs complained to Poseidon, the sea god, who sent a flood and
monster to ravage the land. To appease the angry god, Andromeda was chained
to a rock as a sacrifice to the monster. But Perseus, the hero who had just killed
the hideous Medusa, saw Andromeda and fell in love with her. He killed the
monster and married Andromeda, and their son (also named Perseus) became the
ancestor of the Persians. Along with Cepheus and Cassiopeia, Andromeda and
Perseus were later raised to the heavens as constellations.
(See Perseus)
ANTAEUS
Son of Poseidon and Gaia. Antaeus was a giant of great strength so long as he
maintained contact with the ground. Once lifted into the air, all his strength
vanished. He would challenge passersby to wrestle him; he would kill them and
take their skulls to use as building material for a temple to his father. Hercules
discovered Antaeus’ secret and defeated him in a wrestling match by lifting him
into the air.
APHRODITE
Goddess of love and the most beautiful of the Olympian deities. Aphrodite was
worshipped in many forms across the Mediterranean; doves were sacred to her
and she was often shown attended by Eros, mischievous god of desire. However,
Aphrodite had disconcertingly foul origins. The god Kronos, urged on by his
mother Gaia, castrated his father Ouranos and threw the severed genitals into the
sea. Out of the resulting foam rose Aphrodite, the “foam-born.” Blown ashore by
Zephyrus, the west wind, she landed at Cyprus, where she was dressed and
bejewelled by the Horae, goddesses embodying the four seasons. Now
dazzlingly lovely, she caused amorous chaos on Olympus, for every god adored
her. Zeus married her off to Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, but it did not prove
a marriage made in heaven. Aphrodite soon grew bored with her lame (and ugly)
husband and had an affair with Ares, the war god. When Hephaestus realized
this, he threw a steel net over the sleeping couple that chained them to their bed.
The other gods looked on, laughing. Aphrodite had affairs with other gods such
as Hermes and men such as the Trojan prince Anchises (the father of her son
Aeneas). Aphrodite’s beauty bewitched another Trojan prince, Paris, and when
he was called on to judge who was the most beautiful, Athena, Hera, or
Aphrodite, Paris chose the love goddess. In return he was gifted with great sex
appeal, which won him the heart of Helen, the loveliest woman alive.
Unfortunately, Helen was married already—to Menelaus, king of Sparta. By
eloping with her, Paris started the Trojan War.
(See Aeneas, Ares, Athena, Eris, Hephaestus, Hera, Jason, Nereids, Ouranos)
APOLLO
God of music, poetry, medicine, light, and science, and for many the archetypal
Greek deity. Apollo was born with his twin sister Artemis on the island of Delos.
His father was Zeus, king of the gods, and his mother Leto, a Titaness. The baby
god was fed nectar and ambrosia rather than milk, giving him the strength he
used to kill the serpent Pytho, which had molested his mother. He named the site
of his victory Delphi, and it became the seat of his Oracle, the greatest in Greece.
Each winter Apollo went far north to the land of the mysterious Hyperboreans in
a chariot drawn by white swans, and returned with the spring. He was master of
the lyre, Greece’s main musical instrument, and of the bow. On Mount Parnassus
near Delphi he held court, playing his lyre and attended by the Nine Muses.
Apollo could be dangerous if crossed. The satyr Marsyas rashly challenged him
to a musical contest, and when Apollo won, he had Marsyas flayed alive. He
could dispense sickness as well as medicine, sending plagues if angered. But
generally Apollo was a beneficent god, honored by humans and the other
Olympians. Depicted always as a serenely handsome, beardless young man,
Apollo had many, often unhappy, love affairs, most notably with Daphne, a
nymph. Apollo pursued her passionately but in vain, for she prayed to her father,
the river god Peneus, and he turned her into a laurel tree just as the god was
about to grasp her. One of his other love affairs was with the princess Coronis.
When Apollo discovered she had left him, he shot her with one of his arrows,
and repented of his rage too late to save her. Their son Asclepius was saved by
the centaur Chiron, however, and grew up to be a divine healer. Apollo also fell
in love with Hyacinthus, a Spartan prince, whom he taught to throw the discus.
When Hyacinthus was killed by a flying discus, the first hyacinth flower sprang
from the ground stained by his blood. Apollo was at times identified with Helios,
the sun god, but they were really distinct deities.
(See Artemis, Delphi, Hecate, Helios, Hercules, Hermes, Laurel, Mount Olympus, Nymphs, Oracles, Orpheus, Python, Zeus)
ARACHNE
Daughter of a Lydian dyer, who rashly challenged the goddess Athena to a
weaving contest. The tapestry Arachne wove depicted the scene of Athena’s
contest with Poseidon with such brilliant realism that the goddess, jealously
enraged, destroyed Arachne’s works. Athena then turned the weaver herself into
a spider, doomed to repeat forever her compulsive weaving. From Arachne’s
name come the terms arachnid and arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
ARES
God of war. Irascible and cruel, Ares was disliked both by other gods and by
human beings. Although the son of Zeus and Hera, and so part of Olympus’
“royal family,” Ares was not loved by his parents. Only Aphrodite, bored by her
blacksmith husband Hephaestus, loved him, and even then only briefly. More
usually, he spent his time haunting the battlefield with his supporters, the lesser
gods Deimos (fear) and Phobos (panic), killing at will. But Ares was not
invincible, for he lacked intelligence as well as charm. Athena often managed to
outwit him and even Hercules, who was a mere demigod, at times defeated him.
Ares was worshipped by men only in Thebes, a city noted for its militarism and
dullness. (See Aphrodite, Eris, Hephaestus, Hera)
ARIADNE
Daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphae of Crete. Ariadne fell in love with
Theseus of Athens when he came to Crete as one of the sacrificial victims for the
Minotaur, and so she gave Theseus a thread to help him find his way back out of
the Labyrinth, the maze in which the Minotaur was held. After Theseus had
killed the monster, the couple escaped from Crete together. However, Theseus—
for reasons still debated—abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. There she
was rescued by the god Dionysus, who married her. Ariadne, in origin, was
probably a Minoan goddess connected with the Great Mother.
(See Dionysus, Minotaur, Theseus)
ARTEMIS
Daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister of Apollo. In one avatar she was a
chaste huntress, slim, athletic, and short-skirted (Greek women usually wore
long robes). Protector of young wild animals, she roamed the woods with a bow
and was attended by nymph-huntresses sworn to celibacy like her. (These twenty
shadowy nymphs, immortal but with no real power, were nameless apart from
Callisto. Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, was seduced by Zeus while he was
disguised as the goddess herself. When Artemis discovered this, she shot the
unfortunate Callisto.) When the hunter Actaeon came upon Artemis bathing
naked, she angrily transformed him into a stag and he was devoured by his own
hounds. Often shown with the crescent moon, Artemis was sometimes associated
with Selene, the Titan moon goddess, and even with Hecate, the fearsome queen
of darkness. As Selene, she fell in love with the beautiful youth Endymion, who
was put by Zeus into an immortal sleep to preserve his beauty. Artemis was also
worshipped as the Great Goddess, an older multi-breasted fertility goddess
venerated in a huge temple at Ephesus in Asia Minor. (This is the temple of
Diana that St. Paul later attacked; Diana is the Latin form of Artemis.)
(See Apollo, Hecate, Nymphs, Zeus)
ATHENA
Goddess of wisdom. Athena was born fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.
Unlike most other gods, Athena showed almost no interest in sex, and was often
called Parthenos (virgin). Still, she was affronted when Paris, the Trojan prince,
chose Aphrodite over her in the Contest of Paris. In the Trojan War that
followed, Athena favored the Greeks, especially the wily hero Odysseus, whom
she helped on his long wanderings as he made his way home. Athena was the
patron goddess of Athens, especially of its craftsmen, and her temple the
Parthenon, the most perfect temple in the Greek world, still rises above the city.
She had won Athens’s devotion with the olive tree, which the Athenians
preferred to Poseidon’s gift of a freshwater spring. Another of her titles was
Promachos , defender or champion, for she was a fighter goddess, shown always
with spear, helmet, and shield. She sported the hideous snake-haired aegis of
Medusa, who was killed by her protégé Perseus, and was frequently pictured
with a snake coiling beside her and an owl, a symbol of wisdom, on her
shoulder.
(See Aegis, Aphrodite, Arachne, Ares, Daedalus, Eris, Furies, Hercules, Medusa,
Nemean Lion, Pegasus, Perdix, Perseus, Poseidon, Zeus)
ATLAS
Titan punished by Zeus for joining the “revolt of the Titans” by having to stand
forever at the world’s western edge and support the weight of the heavens on his
shoulders. Only once did he have a break: Hercules, on his mission to fetch the
golden apples of the Hesperides, agreed to take on his great burden if Atlas
fetched the apples. This done, Hercules promptly gave the crushing weight of the
heavens back. Atlas was the father of Calypso and of the Pleiades, who became a
constellation. He gave his name to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, the
westernmost area the Greeks knew.
(See Calypso, Hesperides, Titans)
Comments
Post a Comment