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Mythology
Gods, Goddesses and Mortals
The “Greek Miracle”
• Mankind became the center of the
universe
• Greeks made gods in their own image
– No bestial shapes like the sphinx
Gods were beautiful and strong
• New idea of humankind
• Gods looked and acted
human
The Greeks Humanized the world
• Mythology freed human from the unknown
• Greeks had risen from the fierceness of
their time
• Use of real places gave sense of reality to
mythical beings
Mt. Olympus
• Home of the Gods and Goddesses
Oracle at Delphi
Thebes (Home of Hercules)
The Greeks transformed a world of
fear into a world of beauty
The Parthenon
The Parthenon (Greek: Παρθενών) is
the most famous surviving building of
Ancient Greece and one of the most
famous buildings in the world. The
building has stood atop the Acropolis
of Athens for nearly 2,500 years and
was built to give thanks to Athena, the
city's patron goddess, for the salvation
of Athens and Greece in the Persian
Wars. The building was officially called
the Temple of Athena the Virgin, and
its popular name derives from the
Greek word παρθένος (parthenos), a
virgin.
Gods
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Beautiful and immortal
Limited sense of justice
Could act cruelly
In Iliad the gods are jealous and vengeful
Idea of justice
– Came later in Odyssey
– Strangers and those in need were protected by Zeus
– Grew as humans became more conscious of their
world
Mythology
• Begins with Homer 1000 B.C.
• Explains something in nature
– Doesn’t have anything to do with religion, but
rather how natural phenomenon came into
existence.
– Form of early entertainment
Writers
• Homer
Homer
• Wrote The Iliad and The
Odyssey
• Iliad is the first written
record of Greece
• Homer was an Ionian of
the 8th or 9th century
B.C.E., which would
place his writings also
more than 3 centuries
after the Trojan War,
Homeric Period
• The time period around 1400 B.C. was an era where
Mycenae, the traditional home of Agamemnon, brother of
Menelaus and leader of the Greek warriors in Troy,
dominated the mainland, and his island of Crete assumed
the political and military status of master of the eastern
Mediterranean. A golden age of splendor arouse during this
period, as shown by excavations of the royal graves at
Mycenae, and the cultural and religious traditions of the
eminent classical Greece began to take form. This is the
Homeric, or Heroic, Age - also called Mycenaean, or Late
Minoan -for the culture and values of the latter part of this
period are those permanently embodied in the Homeric
poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Hesiod
• Hesiod (Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and
rhapsode, believed to have lived around the
year 700 BCE. From the 5th century BCE,
literary historians have debated the priority of
Hesiod or of Homer. Most modern scholars now
agree that Homer lived before Hesiod.
• Hesiod serves as a major source for knowledge
of Greek mythology, of farming techniques, of
archaic Greek astronomy and of ancient timekeeping
Creation
In the beginning there
was …
Chaos
From Chaos came Gaia
And the two darknessess
 Erebos
– Darkness under the earth
•Night
Darkness over the earth
The First Romance
Night mated with Erebos and..
Light was Born
Light was born
Light was Born
Two types of light
Aither: light of
heaven
Day: light of earth
The family tree
CHAOS
Gaia
Gaia
(mother earth)
Gaia
(earth)
3 giants
Rhea
olympians
3 cyclops
12 titans
Cronus
Erobus
night
Eros
light
aither
(light of heaven
Uranus
(sky)
Aphrodite
3 furies
day
(light of earth)
Uranus not happy with
3 Giants
Locks them up in Gaia’s womb
(OUCH!)
Gaia asks sons for help….
Cronus to the rescue
• Cuts off his father’s genitals
• From his blood sprung the furies
The 3 furies
Alecto
Tisiphone
Megara
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Avenge
parricide
And other
crimes
Aphrodite was also born from
The blood of Uranus
Prophecy of Uranus
• A son of Cronus’s will klll him
• And so as the Olympians were born guess
what Dad did?
• A) He sent them to boarding school?
• B) He tied them up and made them listen
to Frank Sinatra music
• C) He…..
ATE THEM!
• But when Zeus was born,
his mother Rhea sent him
to Crete where he was
raised by his Aunt.
• Rhea then gave her
husband a rock wrapped
in swaddling clothes,
which he ate for dinner
thinking it was another
son.
The Return
• When he was older Zeus returned to the
palace disguised as a cup bearer. He gave
his father a special drink known as….
The Barf Cocktail
• Take a little Mustard
• Mix with salt
• Sweeten with honey
• Serve with a sly smile and move out of the
way…
The stone that Cronus spits up
becomes part of the oracle at
Delphi
The Battle Begins
• Zeus released giants with
100 hands
• 7 Titans aligned with
Zeus against Cronus
• But his brother Atlas was
the general for Cronus
• Battle lasted 10 years
Zeus wins
• The giants with 100 hands give him the
ligntning bolt for releasing them from the
earth.
• Hades is given helmet of invisibility
• Poseidon receives the trident
Atlas (brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus) was
punished by Zeus
• He was given the
task of holding up
the sky and the
earth
Cronus and the rest of the Titans were
banished to Tartarus (underworld).
• In some stories Cronus escapes to Italy
• After the battle, Zeus’s Grandmother,
Gaia, turns against him and unleases
Typhon.
• Zeus imprisoned him under volcano.
Typhon
– Early science:
• Typhon imprisoned
under Mt. Etna
Zeus on Mt. Olympus
• Zeus becomes the
ruler of the world
• He marries his sister
Hera
• Their children were
Hebe, Ares and
Haephastus
Oy what a headache
• Zeus, ruler of the gods on
Mount Olympus. It is told
that he swallowed his
pregnant first wife, Metis,
meaning wisdom, so that
she would not bear a
child stronger than he. In
some versions of the
story, Athena's birth was
assisted by the
blacksmith, Hephaestus,
who opened Zeus's head
with a stroke of his axe.
The Olympian Gods on Mt.
Olympus