tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58951526145779246842024-02-07T09:04:45.964-08:00Greek Gods and Goddess...Greece Hotels Santorini mykonos crete olympos nafplio rhodes corfuUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5895152614577924684.post-82443990284696831292007-06-17T14:58:00.000-07:002008-12-08T16:19:14.744-08:00Greek Gods and Goddess<img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKJavp_lM3B48MAkXEhf1AD1vbBW-n-1nxPFxsBZ87A6ovGNgqPkrwKA3EepqNqpJ7t_pyow5Rf4bhQHptfWdnIAQjzzIMawU8dCjBl7eKNfYAVelnVpFR3BQHKnQsbZxOD0f1r0f3-tMP/s400/zeus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077164326051364690" border="0" />Let's begin our journey to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Greece </span>and learn everything about <span style="font-weight: bold;">Greek Gods</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Goddess</span>.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><b><br />The Sky</b>.</span> The king of gods was <strong>ZEUS</strong>, a sky god known as a wielder of thunder-bolts. In myth and legend, he is far from omnipotent, though feared by all his fellow deities. He is sometimes said to be the father (with Themis) of the <strong>Fates</strong> (or <strong>Moirai, Moerae</strong>, the three old women who spin out the threads of each man's life, but it sometimes appears that he himself is subject to their decrees. In classical times, the Greek gods were very anthropomorphic, but as an adulterer, Zeus could assume other guises, seducing <span style="font-weight: bold;">Danae </span>as a shower of gold, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Europa</span> as a bull, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Leda </span>as a swan. <p><a name="sacred_marriage"></a> The myths about Zeus's many adulteries, which bothered later Greeks who wished to see him as a divine fount of justice, were presumably local variants of the marriage of the earth goddess and her lover (often a sky god), sometimes represented by a priestess and the king or war chief. Such <strong>sacred marriages</strong> were common all over the Mediterranean, long before Greek speakers arrived. Earth goddesses may have been older and bound more closely the area whose fertility they guaranteed, so Hera is the patron of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Argos </span>and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Athena </span>of Athens--even <span style="font-weight: bold;">Aphrodite </span>is particularly identified with the island of Cyprus. The Greeks would have insisted on the authority of their Zeus over these older goddesses; he marries <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hera</span>, and Athena must be reborn from his forehead, while other local goddesses are reduced in legend to mere mortals. </p><p> <a name="poseidon"></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><b>The Sea</b>. </span>Zeus's brother <strong>POSEIDON, </strong>a river and sea god, was another important male <span style="font-weight: bold;">Olympian </span>(all the other male Olympians were sons of Zeus). Poseidon's weapon was the trident, and he was associated with horses as well. Like his brother, he courted the sea-nymph Thetis, a daughter of <strong>Nereus</strong>, a prophetic old man (or god) of the sea, often conflated with the shape-changing <strong>Proteus</strong>, another companion of Poseidon. Poseidon finally married another Nereid (there were 50), <strong>Amphitrite</strong>. Their children included the merman <strong>Triton</strong>. By mother Earth Poseidon was the parent of the monstrous <strong>Charybdis</strong> (or <strong>Kharybdis</strong>, a sea-monster who sucked in waters and spewed them out again--a kind of whirlpool. </p><p><a name="pontus"></a>Poseidon's father in law <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nereus </span>was the son of mother Earth and an earlier sea god, <strong>PONTUS</strong>. Pontus and Ge's son Thaumas, was important mainly as the father of the winged women-monsters the <strong>Harpies</strong> and of <strong>Iris</strong>, the goddess of the rainbow and a messenger of the gods, particularly of Hera. Another brother of Nereus was the sea god god<strong> Phorcys (Phorkys)</strong>, who was (with Hecate) the parent of Charypdis's companion in the straits of Messina, <strong>Scylla</strong> (or <strong>Skylla</strong>). Scylla did not start has an octopus-like monster with rapid dog heads on her tentacles, but Poseidon had been interested in her and a jealous Amphitrite turned her into a monster. Phorcys is also sometimes given as the father of the Sirens. </p><p><a name="apollo"></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><strong>The Sons of Zeus</strong>.</span> <strong>APOLLO, </strong>the son of Zeus and <strong>Leto</strong>and the brother of Artemis, was the god of light and reason, though he pursued the nymph <strong>Daphne</strong> so violently that she turned into a laurel tree to escape him. He also failed in his wooing of the Trojan princess <span style="font-weight: bold;">Cassandra</span>. In a more successful courtship, he fell in love with <strong>Cyrene</strong> when he saw her wrestling a lion (and winning), and he carried off to Lybia to found a city in her name; <strong>Aristaeus</strong>, the father of Actaeon, was their son, as was <strong>Idmon</strong>, a famous seer. </p><p><a name="python"></a>Apollo himself was the god of seers and prophecy, though some said he had learned the art of prophecy from Pan. He took over the <strong>Delphic Oracle</strong> from the <strong>Python</strong>, which he is said to have pursued and killed for having harassed his mother. His defeat of the Python gave him the nickname of Pythian Apollo. Delphi was the most important oracular shrine in Greece, said to contain the <em>omphalos</em>, the navel stone of the earth, and famous for its counsels of moderation. The stories presumably reflect a takeover of the site by priests of Apollo. </p><p><a name="tmolus"></a>Apollo was a famous musician and often associated as a patron of the arts with the nine Muses. Apollo's favorite instrument was the lyre, which Hermes had invented and passed on to his brother in recompense for having stolen various things from Apollo. Pan challenged him to a contest pitting Pan's pipes vs. Apollo's lyre. The mountain god <strong>Tmolus</strong> was the judge and awarded the prize to Apollo. King Midas of Phrygia disagreed, and Apollo gave him the ears of an ass for this error in taste. The satyr <strong>Marsyas</strong> championed the flute against Apollo's lyre; his punishment for losing was to be flayed alive. Such cruelty was, however, unlike Apollo, who was a patron of the healing arts. His sons included the famous healer Asclepius. </p><p><a name="dionysus"></a> <strong>DIONYSUS</strong>, the god of wine, ecstasy, and generally living it up, is one of the gods whose name can be traced to Mycenean times, but Greek mythology portrays him as an outsider, probably a Thracian, and a late-comer among the Twelve Olympians, where he displaced Hestia. The mother of Dionysus was probably a Phrygian earth goddess in origin, but in Greek myth she is the princess <strong>SEMELE</strong> of Thebes, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia. She was was seduced by Zeus and destroyed before the baby's birth when she insisted on seeing Zeus's full splendor. Dionysus was sown up in Zeus's thigh for his last months before birth. As a young child, he was nursed by Semele's sister <strong>Ino</strong>. </p><p><a name="pentheus"></a>Dionysus punished harshly those who failed to respect his power, and many of the stories about him reflect conflicts over the introduction of his worship. The most famous deals with his return to his birthplace of Thebes. In his old age, Cadmus gave his throne to his grandson <strong>PENTHEUS</strong>, who opposed the introduction of the worship of Dionysus into Thebes, and was punished by being killed by his own mother, <strong>Agave</strong>, after which Cadmus and his wife were turned into serpents and sent into exile, a story told in Euripides's <em>The Bacchae</em>, named after the female worshippers of Dionysus, who was also known as <strong>Bacchus</strong>. </p><p><a name="nietsche"></a>Ever since the German philosopher <strong>Nietsche</strong>'s <em>The Birth of Tragedy</em> (1872), it has been conventional to see Apollo and Dionysus as the opposed sides of Greek culture, with Apollo representing the traditional classic virtues of light and reason and Dionysus representing those darker forces which we ignore at our peril--the great Greek tragedies, after all, were written for a festival in honor of Dionysus. His worshippers were said to tear apart animals with the bare hands and eat the raw flesh, convinced that they were devouring and becoming one with their god. This sense of union with a god is foreign to the Olympians in general. The role of women in his worship was also regarded with distrust. The legend of Orpheus, torn apart by female worshippers of Dionysus, may suggest a latent identification of Dionysus with Orpheus. Orpheus was said to be a founder of mysteries, quite possibly mysteries in honor of the Goddess. Dionysus was eventually worshipped as part of the great Eleusinian mysteries celebrated near Athens, which were chiefly in honor of Demeter and Persephone </p><p><a name="hermes"></a><strong>HERMES, </strong>Zeus's son by <strong>Maia</strong>, one of the Pleiades, was the messenger of the gods and a patron of both commerce and theft. He invented the lyre, though Apollo took it over as payment for a herd of his cows which Hermes had stolen. His name associates him with the phallic stone herms used to mark boundaries. He was the herald of the gods, and his son <strong>Echion</strong> became the herald of the Argonauts, while his son <strong>Autolycus</strong>, the grandfather of Odysseus, showed his ancestry by becoming a famous thief. </p><p><a name="hephaestus"></a> Zeus had two sons by his wife Hera: <strong>HEPHAESTUS, </strong>the lame blacksmith of the gods, and the war god <strong>ARES.</strong> It was said that Hephaestus became lame because his father threw him off Mt. Olympus for taking his mother's side in an argument. He married Aphrodite, who betrayed him with his brother Ares. </p><p><a name="uranus"></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><strong>Some Non-Olympian Gods</strong>. </span> Zeus and the Olympians were not the first gods to rule the earth, sea, and heavens. The first king of gods was the sky god <strong>URANUS (Ouranos). </strong>His sons the Titans, led by <strong>KRONOS, </strong>overthrew and castrated their father. After the Titans overthrew Uranus, Kronos became chief god, and <strong>Oceanus</strong> was the god of the sea. The Titan rebellion was aided by the one-eyed Cyclops, but they got no rewards from Kronos for their help, and so helped his children when they overthrew the Titans in their turn, led by his son Zeus. </p><p><a name="prometheus"></a> Two important Titans, <strong>Themis</strong> and her son <strong>PROMETHEUS, </strong>sided with Zeus and the Olympians. Prometheus was credited with creating human beings. Athene aided him, but Zeus was less pleased. When Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to humanity, Zeus punished him by chaining him to a mountain and having an eagle gnaw away forever at his liver. Prometheus remained defiant. <strong>Epimetheus, </strong>the brother of Prometheus was also a friend of humanity and thus suspectin the eyes of the gods. Zeus gave him <strong>Pandora </strong>as a bride. She opened a box which Prometheus had hid away, and out flew all the vices, diseases, and evils which afflict mankind, along with Hope, whose task it is to keep us going by telling us pretty lies. </p><p> <a name="hyperion"></a> The Titan <strong>Hyperion </strong>was a sun god, the son of Uranus and <strong>Gaea. </strong>Hyperion's children included <strong>Eos, </strong>the goddess of dawn, <strong>Helius (Hellus), </strong>another sun god, and <strong>Selene, </strong>a moon goddess. Eos was the mother (by the Titan <strong>Astraeus) </strong>of the wind gods: <strong>Boreas </strong>(north), <strong>Euros </strong>(east), <strong>Notos </strong>(south), and <strong>Zephyrus </strong>(west), though some claim <strong>Aiolos</strong> (or <strong>Aeolus</strong>) keeps all winds in an island cave. </p><p> <a name="pan"></a> The younger generation of Greek gods includes <strong>PAN, </strong>a woodland god with goat's feet and pipe. Pan was said to be a son of Hermes. Another younger deity was <strong>Eros, </strong>the patron cherub of erotic love. He was said to be the son of Aphrodite by either Hermes or Ares, though some claimed he was one of the very first gods, for obvious reasons. The parentage of her son <strong>Priapus</strong>, a phallic god, was equally in dispute, with Hermes, Pan, Dionysus, Adonis, and Zeus being among those suggested. <strong>Hermaphroditus</strong>, on the other hand, is pretty definitely her son by Hermes. According to Ovid, he was a lovely youth who resisted the embraces of the fountain nymph <strong>Salmacis</strong> till he was joined with her as a single hermaphrodite being. </p><p> <a name="hades"></a><strong>HADES, </strong>although a brother of Zeus and Poseidon, isn't an Olympian. After defeating Kronos, Zeus and Poseidon got the sky and sea, but Hades took (and gave his name to) the Underworld (Tartarus), a grim place, where ghosts must pay the ferryman <strong>Charon </strong>to take them across the river Styx. After death, only a few great heroes and noble souls are judged worthy of the Elysian Fields, a daylight land where Kronos rules. Elysium and the Elysian Fields are sometimes said not be in Hades at all, but off in the Atlantic, or in some other spot. The river <strong>Styx</strong> surrounds Hades, although some claim that Charon's ferry crosses the <strong>Acheron. </strong>Other rivers of Hades are <strong>Avernus, Cocytus, Lethe </strong>and <strong>Phlegethon. </strong>Bathing in Lethe purges the dead of their memories of life. </p><p><a name="goddesses"></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><strong>Olympic Goddesses</strong></span>. <a name="hera"></a> The Queen of the gods was <strong>HERA, </strong>Zeus's wife and sister, the patron of marriage and motherhood. Many myths tell of her rage at his adulteries. Another sister of Zeus was <strong>Hestia</strong>, the goddess of the hearth fire. Hestia was eventually displaced among the Twelve Olympians by Dionysus. </p><p><a name="demeter"></a> <strong>DEMETER</strong> was a sister of Zeus and the goddess of agriculture. Her daughter <strong>Kore</strong> was abducted by Hades, making Demeter so unhappy that nothing grew. Zeus finally arranged for the girl to spend half the year with her mother and half ruling the underworld with her husband Hades. This myth reflects the cycle of the agricultural seasons. As Queen of the Underworld, Kore was known as <strong>PERSEPHONE</strong> and was a figure to be reckoned with. Together, Demeter and Persephone were important figures in the "mystery" rites celebrated at Eleusis near Athens, where initiates seem to have been promised immortal life. <strong>Hecate,</strong> the goddess of witches, is Persephone's close friend and ally. </p><p><a name="hebe"></a> <strong>HEBE </strong>was Hera's daughter by Zeus and the goddess of youth. She served as cup-bearer to the gods on Mt. Olympus, but either gave up the job on marrying Heracles or was dismissed for literally failing down on the job. Hebe was replaced as cup-bearer to the gods by <strong>Ganymede, </strong>a beautiful boy (son of King Tros of Troy) whom Zeus abducted. </p><p> <a name="artemis"></a><strong>ARTEMIS</strong> was the virgin goddess of the moon and of hunting. Artemis was <strong>Leto</strong>'s daughter and the twin sister of Apollo. Although honored as a patron of motherhood, Artemis was proud of her purity. Poor <strong>Actaeon </strong>was out hunting when he came upon Artemis bathing in a stream and stopped to look, for which she had him changed to a stag and torn into pieces by his own hunting dogs. Artemis was, however, fond of the mighty hunter <strong>Orion, </strong>to the point where her jealous brother tricked her into killing Orion, whom she then placed among the stars. Orion had earlier been promised <strong>Merope </strong>in marriage if he cleared Chios of wild beasts. When her father reneged, Orion raped her (or tried to), for which her father had him blinded, though his sight was later restored by the gods. </p><p> <a name="athena"></a> <strong>ATHENA, </strong>goddess of wisdom, justice and war, was said to have burst motherless from the brow of Zeus, though she was also said to be his daughter by the wisdom goddess <strong>Metis</strong>--or to have been born in Lybia with no parent at all. Athena was a great weaver, and when the mortal <strong>Arachne </strong>claimed equal skill, Athena first defeated her in a contest and then turned her into the first spider. </p><p> <strong><a name="aphrodite"></a>APHRODITE </strong>(goddess of love and beauty) arose from the sea near Cythera, though some claim that she was Zeus's daughter. Aphrodite married Hephaestus, who caught her in adultery with Ares and displayed the pair, trapped in a golden net, to the assembled gods, who are said to have shown more envy for Ares than sympathy for the betrayed Hephaestus. Aphrodite also loved several mortals, especially the handsome young <strong>Adonis. </strong>He was killed while hunting by a wild boar sent by a jealous deity. Aphrodite mourned a long time and eventually persuaded Zeus to let him spend at least the summer months alive with her. This is the Greek version of a common Near Eastern vegetation myth. [In Semitic languages "adon" just means "Lord."] Unlike the stories of sacred marriages, the goddess is clearly more important than her lover. The story of Demeter and her daughter has a similar theme. </p><p><span style="font-size:78%;"><b>Some Other Greek Goddesses. </b></span> <a name="erinyes"></a> Like <strong>Nemesis, </strong>goddess of retribution, the <strong>ERINYES (Furies) </strong>hounded evildoers, especially those who violated the bonds of kinship or hospitality. To placate them, they were also sometimes called the <strong>Eumenides </strong>(which means "the Kindly Ones"). The three of them <strong>-Tisiphone, Allecto, </strong>and <strong>Megaera </strong>--are older than Zeus. They have snake hair, dog's heads, and bat wings. </p><p> <a name="rhea"></a>The wife of Kronos was <strong>RHEA. </strong>Like him, she was a child of Uranus and his wife <strong>Gaea</strong> (mother Earth). It had been prophesied that Kronos would be succeeded by a child greater than himself, so he swallowed their children as they were born. Rhea hid their son Zeus away, and he grew up to overcome his father and force him to vomit up his siblings, who then helped Zeus defeat the other Titans. </p> <a name="muses"></a> The nine <strong>MUSES </strong>were daughters of Zeus and <strong>Mnemosyne, </strong>the goddess of memory. They were patrons of the arts: <strong>Calliope </strong>(heroic poetry), <strong>Clio </strong>(history), <strong>Erato </strong>(lyric poetry), <strong>Euterpe</strong> (music), <strong>Melpomene </strong>(tragedy), <strong>Polyhymnia </strong>(singing and rhetoric), <strong>Terpsichore </strong>(dance), <strong>Thalia</strong> (pastoral and lyric) and <strong>Urania </strong>(astronomy). Their home was on Mt. Helicon in Boetia.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4