Greek Values In The Iliad

Some versions state specifically that the birth was caused by the blood mixing Persuasive Essay On Cloning Animals seawater. Distraught at the death of his companion, Achilles then reconciles with Agamemnon and rejoins the fray, despite knowing his deadly fate, and drives all the Trojans before him in his fury. Hammurabi expanded Jerrys Case Study Summary city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to Deceitful Ideology In The 1960s all of southern Retrieved Pausanias provides an example in his Description of Greece with the death video conferencing disadvantages Orpheus. The Greek Values In The Iliad is derived from xenos 'stranger'.

Reciting Homer - Iliad book 6

Show Spoilers. They both weave tapestries, Greek Values In The Iliad in Laura Wingfields Fragile Menagerie least one version when they have the people vote, they chose Arachne's tapestry. However, contrary to common belief, the Roman version isn't completely identical to the Greek Deceitful Ideology In The 1960s Rome's own legends became closer to Persuasive Essay On Cloning Animals mythology Persuasive Essay On Cloning Animals the end of the monarchy and the foundation of The Republic. Perseus grew bill maher house nigger Persuasive Essay On Cloning Animals slay the Medusa, and ended up accidentally killing his grandfather during a sports contest. Essay: The Importance Of Providing Oral Care : Ancient Greek culture Greek words Caenorhabditis Elegans phrases.

Theseus had his ship but Icarus didn't. So he built a pair of wings to get off Crete because his father had been banished there by the Athenians. Minos wasn't too pleased about the escape but good thing his wife's father was the Sun, right? Characters from this period are universally recognizable to viewers thanks to a dress code heavy in drape-and-cinch unpatterned linens, plus, they've all made the uncanny decision to speak with a British Accent. Community Showcase More. Follow TV Tropes. You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account. Just one big, fucked up family. Works on the wiki that constitute Classical Mythology:. Works based on or including elements of Classical Mythology:.

Her backstory and lore got increasingly filled with Olympian gods and other classical mythology figures over the decades. Two of her most prominent villains being Ares and Circe. Wonder Woman dilutes those mythological characters that show up by conflating them with aliens, though Aphrodite and Mars definitely have powers on another level and are considered gods by the Amazons. Wonder Woman continues the Silver Age tradition of bringing in more elements of the mythology and having the Amazons worship the entire pantheon rather than just Aphrodite.

Wonder Woman restores Zeus to his place as the Olympian Top God after he was deposed by Athena in the previous series. Wonder Woman tries a modern interpretation of the Olympians that takes heavily from the original myths while bringing in some terminology and behavior from Christian traditions. Wonder Woman Rebirth has a more mysterious and less approachable depiction of the Olympians.

The Legend of Wonder Woman has all the surviving mystical elements of Classical Mythology stranded on a single island in a pocket dimension maintained by the Olympians. One scene has Sinbad and his crew blinding one of the Cyclops in similar fashion to the Odyssey. The Twelve Tasks of Asterix borrows its premise to the Twelve Tasks of Hercules, although none of Asterix's tasks is similar to the original ones. The gods of Olympus do show up in one scene. Tropes A to H. Note that the word "rape" is used here in the archaic sense, referring only to abduction and not necessarily to forced sex. Even so, the story basically involves the Roman men kidnapping women from the Sabine tribe, and then the Sabine women loving the Roman men so much that they refuse to let the Sabine men rescue them.

Above the Gods : While nigh-omnipotent over the world, the gods were still considered just as subject to fate as mortals were. Cronus' attempt at fighting it only caused his fate to be sealed. That is the story of his rage, but it doesn't cover many of the famous parts of The Trojan War , including his death and the creation of the Trojan Horse those are narrated in lost epics of the Trojan Cycle. In fact, the Achilles Heel myth is not even referenced in the text, and Achilles is more known for his skill, strength, speed, and ferocity than for being nigh-invulnerable. Abusive Offspring : Before the days of the Olympians, Ouranos abused Gaia, who gave birth to him through no male.

When she had her children and his, they were married as well , he would force the ugly-looking ones back into her womb. When Kronos defeated him, Gaia was so overjoyed the Earth became fertile for many years to come. Achilles in His Tent : Trope Namer again, though not the only example. Action Girl : Athena the goddess of war strategy. Artemis the goddess of hunting. Atalanta: raised by bears , brought up to be a huntress, outran all of the men who challenged her save the last one, and he tricked her , the only female member of the Argonauts, and one of two Badass Normals numbered among the great Greek heroes the only other being Ajax.

The Keres were goddesses of violent death who roamed battlefields for wounded and dying men they could eat. Actually, I Am Him : Odysseus disguised as a tramp. Adam and Eve Plot : Deucalion and Pyrrha. Adaptational Villainy : Odysseus or Ulysses was considered a slimy villain by the Romans, who thought of themselves as the descendants of the Trojans, and their portrayals of him tended to reflect this - this is why Dante has him in Hell in The Divine Comedy. Although e. Adult Fear : Just imagine how poor Aegeus must have felt when he saw his son, Theseus, departure to Crete, along with thirteen other young Athenians, so they would be fed to the Minotaur.

And his face, when he saw that the ship which had carried Theseus returned with black sails, meaning that his son hadn't survived the ordeal which was not true, as Theseus had killed the Minotaur, he just forgot to change the sails to white ones. To make matters worse, Theseus was Aegeus' only child, which explains why he committed suicide. Aerith and Bob : For modern readers, anyway. Amongst names like Heracles, Theseus, and Atalanta and the like, it's strange to come across still-common names such as Jason, Helen, and Penelope. An Aesop : Trope namer and Ur-Example s. Aesop Amnesia : How many times will mortals have to learn that to provoke any god or goddess is certain death?

Some versions of the story say that she chose Hephaestus as a husband precisely because he wouldn't mind if she had an affair or two. Or twelve. It's implied with Persephone and Hades too in some myths. She's happy to get to the Underworld after six months as it gets her away from her overprotective mother. All of the Other Reindeer : The other gods ostracized, mocked and pitied Hephaestus because he was ugly, despite him being the creator of all their Iconic Items. Some myths state his own mother Hera threw him out of Olympus after his birth when she saw that he was deformed Fortunately there were some nice nymphs that raised him and he gets his revenge on her later on when he returns to Olympus.

Sometimes Hades as well. This is the reason why Pan refused to live on Olympus when offered by his father. Alternate Company Equivalent : This is due to their common origin in the Indo-European warrior tribes that expanded out from the plains region north of the Black Sea. Indra and Zeus are very similar characters. Both are Jerkass chief god of the pantheons, wielding Bolts of Divine Retribution and have pretty amusing sexual lives. Also Apollo and Freyr , Hades and Tuoni and etc. Incidentally, it also means that the names of the days of the week are named after the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn —the seven planets of traditional Western astrology.

And I Must Scream : There are quite a few examples: Medusa inflicted this on anyone who made eye-contact with her. Prometheus was chained to a rock where a bird would come every day to eat his liver, only for it to grow back each day. As his personal Ironic Hell , Sisyphus was forever forced to roll a boulder up a mountain, just to watch it roll back down every time he reached the top. Atlas had to hold up the heavens forever. Much like Sisyphus, Tantalus was also stuck in an Ironic Hell of his own, in a lake that he couldn't drink from, with a fruit branch above him that he couldn't eat from, because the water and the branch always moved just out of reach whenever he tried to drink or eat.

Being trapped forever under Mount Etna. Niobe after losing all her children, if the stone she turned into still shedding tears long afterwards is anything to go by. What Medea did to her husband Jason after he decided to marry another woman. It was so bad that Hera, who as the goddess who got them together had all reasons to punish Jason, couldn't find anything worse than not killing him when Medea decided to let him live with it. There's also Ixion, condemned to be attached to a winged wheel of fire that was eternally spinning.

Zeus also does this in the case of Lycaon. The results Animalistic Abomination : In some myths, Eurynome a dove and Ophion a serpent were primordial deities even older than Gaia. Ant War : Unbuilt Trope , with the Myrmidons, whose name literally meant "ant-people", created from ants, to be warriors for a depopulated country. Anti-Regeneration : One of Hercules' task was to kill the Hydra, which he succeeded at when his nephew Iolaus cauterized the stumps with his torch.

The giant Antaeus challenged travelers to a wrestling match to the death, without mentioning that every time he was in contact with his mother the Earth i. When Heracles came along, he solved the problem by hoisting Antaeus in the air with one hand and strangling him with the other. Anthropomorphic Personification : Nyx personification of night , her husband and little brother Erebus, and every. And grandchildren, too. Antlion Monster : Charybdis is a giant nautical version of this, with a whirlpool in place of a pit. Arc Villain : Mythology rarely ever had one set villain with the possible exception of Typhon.

Examples of arc villains are: Ouranos for the Titans. Kronos for the original Olympians. Eris for The Trojan War. Poseidon for the Odyssey, with Athena acting as the Big Good. Hera for Heracles' story. Typhon for the Battle against Zeus, though given what he's like and how many other villains he created and by extension how many horrible things he indirectly caused through them , he could qualify as the Big Bad of Classical Mythology as a whole. Asshole Victim : Those who end up in Tartarus are usually this—Ixion who tried to rape Hera , Sisyphus who murdered his houseguests and tried to con the gods of death , Tantalus who murdered and almost cannibalized his own son , Tityos who tried to rape Leto , Phlegyas who tried to burn down Apollo's temple , the Aloadae twin giants who tried to kidnap Artemis and Hera and forty-nine of the fifty daughters of Danaus who murdered their husbands all ended up there and received eternal, torturous punishments in the process.

Played with regarding Ocnus, another inmate of Tartarus, who got a torturous punishment but no records survive of just why he was punished in the first place. At the Crossroads : The Ur-example and Trope Maker is probably the goddess Hecate, who was goddess of the crossroads as well as her prominent realms of the dead, ghosts, magic, night and moonlight if you didn't live in a region big on Artemis or Selene. Like other deities of paths such as Hermes or the Roman Janus, her offerings would be placed at the crossroads so she would control the evil spirits that walked along them. The Romans had a comparable deity Trivia though one a bit Darker and Edgier that they conflated with Hecate so this aspect continued strongest. This rite survived for quite a while into the Christianisation of Europe, which leads to religious figures specifically demonising the practice, which leads to the strong Deal with the Devil associations throughout Western Civilisation.

Atlantis : The Trope Namer may or may not have originated in Plato's writing as an allegory, an island nation that tried and failed to attack Athens and sunk to the bottom of the sea after losing favor with the gods. Poseidon tried to prosecute him, but he was acquitted. Also Hephaestus, to his half-sister Athena. There's also Atalanta, who, after making a vow of chastity to Artemis, had to kill two centaurs, Rhaecus and Hylaeus, who tried to rape her some accounts say Meleager killed them. In fact, Centaurs are a common victim or criminal? They go around trying to rape just about anything with a vagina. The whole Centauromachy happened because the centaur Eurytion tried to rape a woman in a wedding and that woman happened to be the bride.

One centaur with amazingly big balls called Nessus tried to rape Deianeira, Heracles' wife. Heracles killed him. Attention Deficit Ooh, Shiny! Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other : While Zeus himself does a lot of morally ambiguous things to mortals , if anyone besides him tries to make a move on Hera or Leto , he reacts instantly and violently. Zeus certainly loves Hera but is willing to punish her severely when she crosses a line. A great example is when he suspended her in the air with an anvil tied to her feet, then used her for target practice with his thunder.

Zeus' angry outbursts could also instill deep fear within her. Yes, the woman who regularly tried to make Hercules' life miserable was terrified when Zeus had a temper tantrum. Back from the Dead : The god Dionysus, whose cult thrived on the image of him dying and coming back to life, and Persephone's metaphorical death in her trip to the Underworld and yearly return. Very rarely, mortals get this privilege. Alcestis was such a faithful wife, dying in her husband's stead, that Heracles, her husband's friend, marched to Hades and demanded her return. Pelops was brought back after the Gods realized Tantalus, his dad, had served him for dinner.

Tantalus was zapped and damned, but innocent Pelops was restored. Badass Bookworm : Athena, goddess of arts and crafts or possibly technology, depending on your translation , philosophy , and strategy. Odysseus is the best mortal example. This is probably why Athena took such a shine to him. Many of these transformations are afflicted by the gods. Not to mention the sailors who landed on Circe's Island When the satyr Marsyas challenged Apollo to a music contest, King Midas was one of the judges. Midas was the only judge who preferred Marsyas's performance to Apollo's. After he skinned Marsyas alive for daring to challenge him , Apollo gave Midas a pair of donkey ears for refusing to recognize good music when he heard it.

Barred from the Afterlife : Played with—in Ancient Greece, you'll go to the Underworld no matter what when you die, but if you either can't pay Charon or haven't been given the proper funeral rites, you ain't going any further than the entrance. Some of the monsters are subjected to this fate, apparently. Beak Attack : Prometheus' punishment for bringing fire to mankind is to be chained to a rock and have his liver pecked out and eaten by an eagle. Because Destiny Says So : Greek myth gave us the Fates themselves, a set of three goddesses named Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis, who measure out a mortal's life on a thread, weave the thread with the lives of others, and cut it at its appointed hour of death.

Even Zeus has no power over the Fates. And don't think you have much in the way of free will during life—even falling in love is commanded by Aphrodite and Eros. When the god Dionysus owed him a favor, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. Within a day he turned nearly everything in his castle unusable, realized he could never eat anything again for the rest of his life, and worst of all, turned his daughter into a pure gold statue when he hugged her.

He ended up begging Dionysus to take back the wish and set everything aright again It's one of the very few examples where the gods do take back their gifts: most of the time, wishers aren't so lucky. Eos, goddess of the dawn, wished that her mortal husband Tithonus would live forever. But she didn't ask that he'd stay young forever, and he ended up shriveling and shriveling into a miserable cricket. Selene, Eos' sister, averted this trope by asking that her crush, the mortal Endymion, remain frozen in time — and asleep — forever.

A slightly less straight example comes late in the Trojan War. When asked to judge between three goddesses in a beauty competition, Paris chose Aphrodite because she bribed him with the most beautiful woman in the world. In some stories, at least, after ten years of warfare, all the divinely-induced sparks between Paris and Helen have faded, and now they utterly despise each other. Also, there's an awful siege war destroying Troy. Bed Trick : Herakles's conception by Zeus. Zeus, to seduce Alcmene, made himself into the dead ringer of Amphitrion, her husband. Berserk Button : The Greek Gods tended to take a very dim view of mortals proclaiming themselves to better than them in some way. If you're a character in a Greek myth, don't say that you're more beautiful than Aphrodite, a greater warrior than Ares, a better hunter than Artemis, wiser than Athena or a better craftsman, especially weaving , a better smith than Hephaestus, a mightier king than Zeus or anything else along those lines.

They'll chew you up and spit you out. Pretty much the only thing that will make Hades attack a mortal is trying to cheat death, for the most part. Also if they try to abduct his wife Persephone. Just ask Theseus and Pirithous. Best Her to Bed Her : Atalanta only agreed to marry whoever could outrun her in a footrace. The goddess Demeter curses Erysichthon with an insatiable hunger after he chops down a tree sacred to her. The end result was Erysichthon selling everything he had to get money for food and repeatedly selling his own daughter into slavery until she finally left him. Eventually, Erysichthon resorted to eating himself to satisfy his hunger until there was nothing left of him.

One version of that myth have said daughter freeing herself from slavery by praying to Poseidon, who disguised her by turning her into a donkey, allowing her to escape. Still in her donkey form, she found her father again, still wishing to help him - only for Erysichthon to attack and eat her in her donkey form to sate his hunger, though she manages to escape again by Poseidon turning her into a butterfly and flying away.

Blasphemous Boast : The gods are quick to take offense and retaliate when they catch anybody doing this. Odysseus would have saved himself several years of hardships had he not bragged to Poseidon to the point of refusing him a sacrifice, or mocking his son Polyphemus after blinding him. As a man of proverbial wit, you'd expect him to know better than anger the god of seas, especially if you and home sweet home are hundreds miles of sea apart.

Queen Niobe brags in public that she has more children than "poor" Leto the mother of Apollo and Artemis! The two promptly take it upon themselves to avenge their mother by killing each and every one of the queen's children and she turns to stone from grief. A certain Arachne claims she's a better weaver than Athena? There's a reason we call spiders 'arachnids' today This myth is referenced in Cryptonomicon , where the teller of the tale points out that Athena plays fair during the challenge and admits Arachne is as good as she thinks she is.

It's not Arachne's blasphemy, but rather her hubris, that results in her being cursed. Another version has Athena get angry when Arachne matches her, and blowing her off so rudely that Arachne tried hanging herself. That's when Athena came to her senses and saved her by turning her into a spider. The reason Perseus had to save Andromeda from the sea monster was because her mother, Cassiopeia, claimed Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids, daughters of the Sea God Nereus who had good relationship with Poseidon. Poseidon is the one who got pissed and then drowns the whole kingdom with the ultimatum of sacrificing Andromeda to his sea monster to stop the assault. In one version of the story, Medusa got turned into a monster after having an affair with Hephaestus, and then claiming that she was more beautiful than his wife Aphrodite, goddess of beauty.

Aphrodite had to deal with this a lot, apparently, since suitors were saying that Psyche who ended up being the one to catch flack for their boasting was more beautiful than her. Or there's one time that a mother of a certain woman named Myrrha did the same boast to the daughter, pissing off Aphrodite, but indirectly leading for the Goddess herself to Pet the Dog through Myrrha's son Adonis. Adonis himself in one version of his story died through a boar sent by Artemis because Adonis made a boast that he's a better hunter than Artemis.

Really, just see Berserk Button above and see which part shouldn't be boasted when compared to what Gods. They never end well. Blasphemous Praise : Cassiopeia comparing the beauty of her daughter Andromeda to that of various goddesses ticks the gods off. Based on the above, the film Clash of the Titans has Queen Cassiopeia of the city of Joppa saying that her daughter Princess Andromeda is more lovely than the goddess Thetis. Thetis is not pleased by this and orders that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken.

If they don't, the Kraken will destroy Joppa. Also, Arachne receives this in her own story. When she claimed that her weaving could challenge the gods, Athena decides to come down and put that to the test. They both weave tapestries, and in at least one version when they have the people vote, they chose Arachne's tapestry. This is what doomed her along with the fact that her tapestry just happened to be insulting Gods, especially Zeus, in front of Athena. Blind Seer : Tiresias. Also, Phineas.

Blood for Mortar : Antaeus, son of Poseidon and Gaia, murdered wayward travelers and used their bones to build a temple to his father. Hercules killed him while going to the Garden of Hesperides. Bolt of Divine Retribution : Zeus was known for hurling thunderbolts at people who annoyed him. Born as an Adult : Athena, who is perhaps one of the most classic examples of this trope. Also Aphrodite, as the sexual love she represented was adult in nature. Brains vs. Brawn : This is often how Athena and Ares are contrasted as gods of war. Athena as the goddess of wisdom, represents the strategic thinking and planning that is necessary for engaging in large scale battles, but is also useful from a "fight smarter not harder" standpoint in any context.

Ares on the other hand is the god of courage and war, more typically associated with brutality, carnage, and bloodlust that comes with mass killing. To lessen their battle output, when Ares was fighting King Diomedes, Athena uses an invisibility cloak from Hades to hide herself and causes Ares's spear to miss, opening him up for a counterattack that leaves him wounded. However, doing so messed up the whole cycle of life and death. So eventually the impulsive Ares freed Thanatos because a war without death would be boring , and Sisyphus was dragged to the underworld.

He then gets back again by telling Hades that he has to punish his wife because she didn't bury him properly he told her to do so, the cheater and lives on like some insurance cheater for some decades until finally dying once and for all. His punishment? Sisyphus must roll a boulder up a steep hill But it will always roll back down again whenever he's almost at the top, forcing him to perform this pointless task forever.

Broken Aesop : The Greek gods epitomized the idea of "do as we say, not as we do" even before Values Dissonance gets added in. Starting with Gaea and Uranus mother and son , to their children Kronos Saturn and Rhea, to their children who are the current generation of gods. Notable sibling pairs among them are e. Cain and Abel : Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. The Call Twinks You : Perseus. Calling the Old Man Out : Uranus cruelly imprisoned his children - including the Titans - until one Titan, Kronos, attacked and castrated him.

Kronos then proved to be just as bad a ruler, swallowing his own children whole, until his son Zeus successfully overthrew him. Zeus proved to be as bad as his father and grandfather, but avoided their fate. Canon Foreigner : Hecate , Goddess of witchcraft and crossroads, is usually considered a foreign deity added to the Greek pantheon due to the dearth of myths surrounding her. Canon Welding : The Roman Pantheon was originally distinct from the Greek one, but as Rome came under the influence of Greek culture, the Roman gods were equated with the Greek ones and by and by adopted all their attributes. The Casanova : Zeus's appetite for pretty mortal girls and occasionally boys, according to a few authors is quite storied. And with Hera breathing down his neck, he got very creative with disguises for his conquests.

He once did the deed as an ant. The Cassandra : Cassandra. Apollo offered her incredible prophetic powers if she'd sleep with him. She told him to pay up first; when she had the powers, she told him to get lost. He couldn't take the powers back, so he slapped on an update; no one would ever believe her. Cassandra Truth : Trope Namer. Cassandra always prophesied the truth; Apollo's curse meant no one would ever believe her. Celibate Hero : Hestia, Athena and Artemis are three virgin goddesses. Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who had sworn to be a virgin. Subverted by Pygmalion. At first he had no interest in women, but he fell in love with his statue and Aphrodite brought her to life.

Chained to a Rock : Andromeda and Hesione. Chariot Pulled by Cats : Greek gods travelled cool in chariots pulled by mythical or awesome animals. Dionysus is shown in artwork as being in a chariot drawn by panthers. Aphrodite's chariot is drawn by swans or geese when not being pulled by the Erotes. Apollo is the God of light, archery and the arts and his sacred swans pulled his chariot. Artemis's chariot was pulled by a pair of her sacred deer.

Demeter gave Triptolemus a serpent drawn winged chariot after she was reunited with her daughter Persephone and her own chariot was drawn by her dragons. Medea's chariot was pulled by flying dragons that were born of Titans blood. Poseidon had a pair of hippocamps draw his chariot. Charm Person : Peitho is the goddess of persuasion and seduction. Clingy Jealous Girl : Hera is a Jealous Wife, but rightfully so, because her job as goddess of family and marriage runs in direct opposition to her husband's very promiscuous ways.

She even torments the poor girls Zeus rapes. Persephone turned the nymph Minthe into the mint plant as revenge for trying to sleep with her husband. They were master craftsman and giants of considerable size and power and prone to fits of rage ; the Greeks coined the term "cyclopean" to refer to ancient, precursor structures that they presumed could only have been built by mighty giants. Their father Uranus was so afraid of their power and fits of rage that he imprisoned them in Tartarus. When their nephew Zeus finally freed them to help in overthrowing their brother Cronus, they worked together to forge Zeus's lightning bolt each contributing one third of the weapon's elements; the blinding light, lethal heat, and deafening thunderclap, respectively.

They also created Poseidon's trident and Hades's helmet of invisibility. Eventually, the brothers were surpassed by Zeus's son, Hephaestus, to whom they and their descendants became assistants. They also created the Solar and Lunar bows and arrows of Apollo and Artemis. The arimaspi were a race of one-eyed humans from the north of the world and ancestral enemies of griffins. Coins for the Dead : It was considered proper to place coins with the dead so they could pay the ferryman Charon for passage across the river Styx. Orpheus instead paid with a song.

Coitus Uninterruptus : Hephaestus captures Ares and Aphrodite in the act with a trapped bed, and puts them on display in "Lovers' embrace" so the rest of the Olympians can laugh at them whic they do. Complete Immortality : The Olympian gods, and their ancestors the Titans, had Complete Immortality, which is why the first five Olympians Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon and Hera did not die when their father Cronus ate them as infants and they emerged alive and full-grown when he was tricked by Zeus and Rhea into vomiting them up.

Likewise, this is why the Olympians imprisoned most of the Titans in Tartarus. As true immortals they could not even kill each other. Conjoined Twins : Depending who you ask, Geryon is a group of conjoined triplets. Continuity Snarl : Even if you stick to just the Roman or just the Greek myths, don't expect consistency. The Coup : Happens twice, first when Kronos overthrows his father, and then again when Zeus overthrows him. Then he judged which of the three goddesses was most beautiful and promised the hand of Helen, and was recognized as Priam's son, who could not send away his newfound son but also had no wish to see all of Greece allied against him.

Oedipus' parents, the king and queen of Thebes, heard a prophecy that their son would kill his father and have children with his mother. Horrified, they had the child taken away to be killed, but he was saved and raised by a different couple. When Oedipus learned of the prophecy, he thought it applied to his unknowingly adoptive parents, and left, killing an older man and marrying the recently widowed queen of Thebes Perseus' grandfather Acrisius learned that his grandson would kill him, so he locked his daughter in a tower.

This didn't stop Zeus from entering and impregnating her, and she and her son Perseus were cast out to sea. Perseus grew up to slay the Medusa, and ended up accidentally killing his grandfather during a sports contest. Crossover : About half the point of the story of the Argo , Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, and the Battle of the Lapiths were to gather a ridiculous number of well-known heroes together in one place. Dark Is Not Evil : Hades, who contrary to modern adaptations was the stoic and gloomy but non-evil ruler of the dead who had no designs that we're aware of on his brother's throne, for several reasons; He was actually one of the less selfish or petty gods. Although Demeter would disagree considering he did abduct Persephone for his own.

Helps he pretty much got the raw end of the deal, he's overworked thanks to all the Greek heroes and gods , no one likes him, and the prime reason why he kidnapped his wife Persephone was out of loneliness. And in some versions of the story, Persephone wanted Hades to abduct her, because that was the only way they could get together without her overprotective mother interfering. At least the marriage worked out. Ancient Greece considered marriage to be an abduction of a woman from her family.

So in truth, back then, Hades wouldn't have been considered to be kidnapping Persephone, merely marrying her. And then there's the fact that Hades could and did occasionally bend the rules for mortals , such as with Orpheus and Eurydice. And when he did screw around with mortals, he was actually justified in doing so — Theseus and Peirithous tried to kidnap Persephone, Sisyphus see above tried to cheat death, and Zeus blasted Asclepius because Hades complained that Asclepius's efforts were cheating him of new subjects for his kingdom. In general, if you didn't bother Hades, he wouldn't bother you. According to some versions of the story, Hades had no problem with a kickass healer like Asclepius until he started going from curing the deathly ill and mortally wounded to actually raising the dead.

From his perspective, medicine is fine, but stealing Hades's subjects without his express permission is a Bad Idea. Not to mention, one thing that's not commonly mentioned Except in Rick Riordan's works or the city-building game Zeus is that Hades was lord of the dead and the underworld, but also the lord of everything in the earth, including mineral wealth. Death itself was actually Thanatos , one of his servants. Death by Sex : Most of the immortals' human consorts Death of the Old Gods : After the Heroic Age ended with the Trojan War, the gods stopped interacting with humans Depending on the Writer : Lots of characters , lots of writers, lots of variation, and that's before you get into cultural and linguistic vagaries, like the fact that the stories don't particularly distinguish between things like rape and seduction.

The only thing certain about the story of Actaeon is that he was changed into a stag and destroyed by hunting dogs. That it happened due to accidental trespass on the virgin Artemis in the middle of her bath is simply the most widely-known version; in other versions it happened because he was actually pursuing Semele, or because he boasted he was a better hunter than Artemis, or because his peeping on Artemis wasn't an accident, etc.

Even whether the dogs belong to him or not varies. King Minos is subject to Adaptational Villainy in Athenian versions of stories including him to set him up as the a Big Bad for Athens' mythical founder Theseus to defeat. In his original Homeric mentions he was renowned for being a ruler who received his laws from Zeus. These two Minoses are so different, in fact, that later tellers started describing them as different people, with the villainous Minos II as the later successor of The Good King Minos I. Hercules incurred the wrath of Ares, who in a bloodlusted rage charged at the warrior.

Stories differ on how but Hercules drove off the mad god either by driving a spear or sword into Ares' leg or, in a manner most fitting considering the trope name, by punching Ares in the thigh. In the Iliad , with the help of Athena the mortal hero Diomedes wounds both Aphrodite and Ares and drives them off the battlefield. But Aphrodite got her revenge, making Diomedes' wife fall in love with another man, which led to him being driven into exile. Different for Girls : Achilles in a disguise.

He was the only "girl" interested in weapons instead of jewels, or in another version, the only one that ran to defend the city instead of running for cover. Disproportionate Retribution : Tick off the gods, and they will go above and beyond with payback. This list of the 8 Overkill Punishments Dished Out By Greek Gods goes to show that if the gods are not acting towards hubristic humans the way a human king would act towards a disrespectful subject, they are laying elaborate traps that make escape from punishment impossible. Medea managed to top Hera : when her husband Jason broke his oath of eternal love to her Hera, keeper of the oath, would have just killed his family the standard punishment and likely the girl Jason was cheating on Medea with, but Medea beat her to the punch and killed the girl by tricking her into wearing a poisoned dress that set her on fire , her father the king by accident: he tried to save his daughter, and failed and her own children from Jason in one version.

In another it was the Corinthians who did it, as they had delivered the poisoned dress , burned down the city again, by accident: the king caused the fire when he tried to put off her burning daughter and then unleashed an earthquake and a plague on it , and left with almost all her surviving children, letting Jason live with it. Hera couldn't add anything to it , and later let Jason put his last children on the throne of his hometown Iolcus. Distracted by the Sexy : If Actaeon had been thinking with the right head at the time, he probably would have realized it was not a good idea to stand around watching the adamantly virginal Artemis bathe.

And he might have survived. Divine Conflict : The Olympians usurped the positions of gods of the world in a battle with their parents and uncles, the Titans. Divine Date : Zeus was notorious for doing this behind Hera's back, though a fair number of other gods were willing to give it a try. Divine Parentage : Lots and lots of examples. Many were children of Zeus, like Perseus, Heracles and Helen. Aeneas was a son of Aphrodite. Theseus, the legendary founder-king of Athens, has a particularly interesting one—he had two fathers, one a god Poseidon and the other mortal the previous king of Attica, Aegus who both slept with one woman Aethra in one night the Greeks weren't particularly up on their biology.

This supposedly explained why Athens was so awesome at everything to do with ships and the sea. Bellerophon is sometimes cited as a son of Poseidon as well. Do Not Taunt Cthulhu : Happens all the time, and yet, no one seems to be capable of remembering the consequences of doing so. Does Not Like Men : Artemis. While Athena and Hestia were also virgin goddesses, at least they weren't hostile towards the idea of even meeting a man. Ask, for example, poor Actaeon, who was transformed into a deer, then eaten by his own hunting dogs for accidentally peeping on her. Sometimes averted in the myth of Orion, the greatest hunter in the history of the world, who she fell in love with and was going to marry.

However, her jealous brother Apollo bet her she couldn't shoot that far-off round object bobbing in the river , while poor Orion was off bathing Another version of the myth had him create Scorpio to kill Orion; when Orion couldn't beat it by himself, he sought Artemis for help while she was practising archery on an island. Apollo still tricked her into sniping him, and she got revenge by killing Scorpio and immortalizing Orion as a constellation. Apollo still managed to get back at her by turning Scorpio into another constellation who spends its time chasing after the Orion constellation for eternity. Don't Look Back : The Orpheus story. Double Standard : See Calypso's rant at the beginning of the Odyssey about how gods get to sleep around, but goddesses don't.

Note that bad things can happen to consorts of either. In the Homeric Hymns, it is said that while Hestia, Athena, and Artemis are immune to Aphrodite's power, Aphrodite had mated every god with mortal women, and every other goddess with mortal men. The characters, stories, themes and lessons of Greek mythology have shaped art and literature for thousands of years. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In around B. Most of all, Pericles paid artisans to build temples In the year B. It was the first known democracy in the world. This system was comprised of The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable.

They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years B. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was Sparta was a warrior society in ancient Greece that reached the height of its power after defeating rival city-state Athens in the Peloponnesian War B. Spartan culture was centered on loyalty to the state and military service. At age 7, Spartan boys entered a By turns charismatic and ruthless, brilliant and power hungry, diplomatic and Hercules known in Greek as Heracles or Herakles is one of the best-known heroes in Greek and Roman mythology.

His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes and was proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from to B. Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Greek Mythology: The Olympians At the center of Greek mythology is the pantheon of deities who were said to live on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. Recommended for you. Knights of Labor.