Classical Literature Flashcards
Epic poets
Virgil
Virgil
Chances are that The Ecologues will not be on your exam, though they were very important for later poets like Edmund Spenser. The Aeneid will be on the exam, though it may only account for a question or two.
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter.
Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano…, “I sing of arms and the man…”) and an invocation to his Muse (Musa, mihi causas memora…, “O Muse, relate to me the reasons…”). He then explains the cause of the principal conflict of the plot; in this case, the resentment held by Juno against the Trojan people. This is in keeping with the style of the Homeric epics, except in that Virgil states the theme and then invokes his Muse, whereas Homer invokes the Muse and then states the theme.
Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. Juno stirs up a storm which is on the verge of sinking the fleet. Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno’s intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas gains the favor of Dido, queen of Carthage, a city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and which will later become Rome’s greatest enemy.
At a banquet given in the honor of the Trojans, Aeneas recounts the events which occasioned the Trojans’ fortuitous arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad, and tells of the end of the Trojan War, the ruse of the Trojan Horse, the sack of Troy by the Greek armies, and his escape with his son Ascanius and father Anchises, his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed in the general catastrophe. She was later turned into a minor goddess. He tells of how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean (including Thrace, Crete and Epirus) before being divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia or Hesperia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. The fleet reached as far as Sicily and was making for the mainland, until Juno raised up the storm which drove it back across the sea to Carthage.
During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus, who was murdered by her cupidinous brother Pygmalion. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas’ mother, with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido’s love, and during a hunting expedition, a storm drives them into a cave in which Aeneas and Dido presumably have sex, an event that Dido takes to indicate a marriage between them. But when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind him of his duty, he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself upon a pyre with a sword. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas’s people and hers; “rise up from my bones, avenging spirit” is an obvious invocation to Hannibal. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees Dido’s funeral pyre’s smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy.
Aeneas’s father Anchises having been hastily interred on Sicily during the fleet’s previous landfall there, the Trojans returned to the island to hold funeral games in his honor. Eventually, the fleet lands on the mainland of Italy and further adventures ensue. Aeneas descends to the underworld through an opening at Cumae, where he speaks with the spirit of his father and has a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Returning to the land of the living, he leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium, where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus. A war ensues between the Trojans and some of the indigenous peoples of Italy, which is brought to a close when Lavinia’s rejected suitor Turnus, king of the Rutuli, challenges Aeneas to a duel in which Turnus is slain.
The Eclogues
Written in around 37 BC, it consists of ten poems with a rural setting. (For this reason, they are sometimes known as “The Bucolics”.) Most of the individual poems are in the form of conversations between characters with names such as “Tityrus” (supposedly representing Virgil himself), “Meliboeus”, “Menalcas” and “Mopsus”.
Epic poets
Homer
Homer
I don’t have good notes on either The Odyssey or the Iliad, but I would suggest looking at the wikipedia pages here and here.
Remember: you’re not going to need to know about the historical contexts of these poems – just the plot synopses and major characters. You will also need to know that both poems begin in media res, meaning “in the middle of things.”
Also, you will need to know that both poems are written in dactylic hexameter.
Dramatists
Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Lysistrata
Aristophanes’ anti-war, Greek comedy, written in 411 BC, has female characters, led by the eponymous Lysistrata, barricading the public funds building and withholding sex] from their husbands to secure peace and end the Peloponnesian War. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of them are at first aghast at the suggestion of withholding sex, but they finally agree and swear an oath to support each other. The woman from Sparta, Lampito, returns home to spread the word there.
The Frogs
The Frogs tells the story of how the god Dionysus , despairing of the state of Athens’ tragedians , travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead to rescue the Athenians.
However, in the underworld, a small “civil war” is going on. Euripides, who had only just recently died, is challenging the great Aeschylus to the seat of ‘Best Tragic Poet’ at the dinner table of Pluto. A contest is held with Dionysus as judge. Dionysus eventually chooses Aeschylus, although he had originally set out to retrieve Euripides, because he knew “from the depth of his heart” that the traditional and morally sound Aeschylus was the only tragic poet for the job.
Dramatists
Euripides
Euripides
Euripides is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of traditional Attic tragedy by showing strong women characters and smart slaves, and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology. His plays seem modern by comparison with those of his contemporaries, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown to Greek audiences.
Iphigenia at Aulis
At the start of the play, Agamemnon is having second thoughts about whether he can go through with the sacrifice of his daughter, and he sends a second message to his wife, telling her to ignore the first missive. However, Clytemnestra never receives this message because it is intercepted by Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother, who is enraged that his brother has changed his mind.
To Menelaus, this is not only a personal blow (it is his wife, Helen , with whom the Trojan prince Paris ran off, and retrieving her is a main pretext for the war), but it also may lead to mutiny and the downfall of the Greek leaders if the rank and file discover Calchas’ prophecy and realize that their general put his family above their pride as soldiers.
The brothers debate, and eventually, each changes the other’s mind: Agamemnon is now ready to carry out the sacrifice, and Menelaus is convinced that it would be better to disband the Greek army than to have his niece killed. But by this time, Clytemnestra is already en route to Aulis with Iphigeneia and her baby brother, Orestes , making the decision of how to proceed all the more difficult.
Iphigeneia is thrilled at the prospect of marrying one of the great heroes of the Greek army, but she, her mother, and the groom-to-be in the supposed marriage soon discover the truth. Achilles is furious at having been used as a prop in Agamemnon’s plan to lure his family to Aulis, and he vows to protect Iphigeneia - as much to save the innocent girl as to take revenge on her father for besmirching his own honor.
Clytemnestra and Iphigeneia try in vain to persuade Agamemnon to change his mind, but the general believes he has no choice. But as Achilles prepares to defend the young woman by force, Iphigeneia has a sudden change of heart and decides that the heroic thing to do is to let herself be sacrificed. She is led off to die, with her mother Clytemnestra distraught over the decision.
However, in an addition to the play, a messenger arrives in the end to inform Clytemnestra that at the last minute, just as Agamemnon was about to kill their daughter, Artemis, apparently appeased, switched the body of Iphigeneia with that of a deer, which was sacrificed in the girl’s stead. Iphigeneia was swept off by the gods, thus paving the way for the plot of another of Euripides’ plays, Iphigeneia in Tauris .
Medea
Medea is a tragedy written by Euripides, based on the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. Along with the plays Philoctetes, Dictys and Theristai, which were all entered as a group, it won the third prize at the Dionysia festival. The plot largely centres on the protagonist in a struggle with the world, rendering it the most Sophoclean of Euripides’ extant plays. Euripides breaks with tradition, having a female lead with what in Greek drama were very male characteristics and by having a female chorus, the chorus was usually city elders. The play is notable in that either Medea or Jason can be viewed as the tragic hero.
The play tells the story of the jealousy and revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband. The concentrated action of the play is at Corinth, where Jason has brought Medea after the adventures of the Golden Fleece but has now left her to marry the daughter of King Creon (elsewhere known as Glauce, and also known in Latin works as Creusa - see Seneca the Younger’s Medea and Propertius 2.16.30). The play opens with Medea grieving over her loss, and her elderly nurse fearing what she might do to herself or her children.
Creon, also fearing what Medea might do, arrives determined to send Medea into exile. Medea pleads for one day’s delay. She then begins to plan the deaths of Jason, Glauce, and Creon. Meanwhile Jason arrives to confront her and explain himself. He believes he could not pass up the opportunity to marry a royal princess, as Medea is only a barbarian woman, but hopes to someday join the two families and keep Medea as his mistress. Medea, and the chorus of Corinthian women, do not buy his story. She reminds him that she left her own barbarian people for him (“I am the mother of your children. Whither can I fly, since all Greece hates the barbarian?”), and that she had caused Pelias, whom he feared, to be killed by his own daughters.
She refuses with scorn his base gifts, “Marry the maid if thou wilt; perchance full soon thou mayst rue thy nuptials.”
Next Medea is visited by Aegeus, King of Athens, who shares the prophecy that will lead to the birth of Theseus; Medea begs him to protect her, in return for her help in his wife conceiving a child. Aegeus does not know what Medea is going to do in Corinth, but promises to give her refuge in any case, provided she can escape to Athens.
Medea then returns to her scheming, plotting how she may kill Creus and Glauce. She decides to poison some golden robes (a family heirloom and gift from the sun god), in hopes that the bride will not be able to resist wearing them, and consequently be poisoned. Medea resolves to kill her own children as well, not because the children have done anything wrong, but because she feels it is the best way to hurt Jason. She calls for Jason once more, falsely apologizes to him, and sends the poisoned robes with her children as the gift-bearers.
“Forgive what I said in anger! I will yield to the decree, and only beg one favor, that my children may stay. They shall take to the princess a costly robe and a golden crown, and pray for her protection.”
The request is granted and the gifts are accepted. Offstage, while Medea ponders her actions, Glauce is killed by the poisoned dress, and Creon is also killed by the poison while attempting to save her. These events are related by a messenger.
“Alas! The bride had died in horrible agony; for no sooner had she put on Medea’s gifts than a devouring poison consumed her limbs as with fire, and in his endeavor to save his daughter the old father died too.”
Medea is pleased, and gives a soliloquy pondering her next action:
In vain, my children, have I brought you up,
Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood,
And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone.
In you, alas, was treasured many a hope
Of loving sustentation in my age,
Of tender laying out when I was dead,
Such as all men might envy.
Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you
I must wear out a drear and joyless life,
And you will nevermore your mother see,
Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye.
Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me,
Why smile upon your mother that last smile?
Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts
Beneath the bright looks of my little ones.
I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,
I will bear off my children from this land.
Why should I seek to wring their father’s heart,
When that same act will doubly wring my own?
I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.
What has come o’er me? Shall I let my foes
Triumph, that I may let my friends go free?
I’ll brace me to the deed. Base that I was
To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul.
Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong
To be attendant at my sacrifice,
Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged.
Forego my resolutions, O my soul,
Force not the parent’s hand to slay the child.
Their presence where we will go will gladden thee.
By the avengers that in Hades reign,
It never shall be said that I have left
My children for my foes to trample on.
It is decreed.
She rushes offstage with a knife to kill her children. As the chorus laments her decision, the children are heard screaming. Jason rushes to the scene to punish her for the murder of Glauce and learns that his children too have been killed. Medea then appears above the stage in the chariot of the sun god Helios; this was probably accomplished using the mechane device usually reserved for the appearance of a god or goddess. She confronts Jason, revelling in his pain at being unable to ever hold his children again:
“I do not leave my children’s bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera’s precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom.”
She escapes to Athens with the bodies. The chorus is left contemplating the will of Zeus in Medea’s actions.
Dramatists
Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles will probably be familiar to most people taking the GRE, but a little refresher is always in order.
Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.
The Oracle prophesies that the king of Thebes, Laius, will have a son who murders his father and marries his mother. When an infant son is born to Laius’s wife, Jocasta, he orders the child slain. The child’s feet are pierced, but instead of being abandoned in the wilderness, the child is given to a shepherd and eventually taken in by the childless king and queen of Corinth. When Oedipus matures, he learns from the Delphic Oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother. He vows never to set foot in Corinth again.
Wandering, Oedipus comes to a crossroads where he kills a stranger after an argument. The stranger turns out to be Laius. Oedipus eventually wanders to Thebes, a city suffering a plague that will only be relieved when the riddle of the sphinx is solved. Oedipus solves the riddle and wins the grand prize. He is made king of Thebes and Jocasta becomes his wife. Oedipus fathers four children, the sisters Antigone and Ismene, and brothers Eteocles and Polyneices, before the truth comes out. When Oedipus learns his true parentage he blinds himself; Jocasta hangs herself.
Following the death of Oedipus, his children debate the succession. Eteocles and Polyneices agree to share rulership of Thebes, alternating active command yearly. Eteocles reigns first, and when his year is up he refuses to yield the throne. Polyneices organizes an army against Eteocles and attack Thebes. Plyneices and Eteocles die at one another’s hands. Creon, brother of Jacasta and acting regent of Thebes, decrees that because Polyneices has waged war against his own city, he will not be buriedl, an act which will prevent him from finding peace in the afterlife. Antigone defies the decree and performs the burial ceremonies for her brother. For this Crean has Antigone entombed alive within a cave. There she commits suicide, and Haemon (Creon’s son), her lover, finds her body and commits suicide beside it.
Dramatist
Aeschylus
Aeschylus
The Oresteia is a trilogy of tragedies about the end of the curse on the House of Atreus, written by Aeschylus.
It is the only surviving trilogy of ancient Greek plays, although the fourth satyr play that would have been performed with it has not survived.
Agamemnon (part 1)
Introduction
Agamemnon details the return of Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the Trojan War to his death. Waiting at home for him is his wife, Clytemnestra, who has been planning his death as revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia. Furthermore, in the ten years of Agamemnon’s absence, Clytemnestra has entered into an adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s cousin and the scion of a dispossessed branch of the family, who is determined to regain the throne he believes should rightfully belong to him.
Storyline
The play opens to Clytemnestra awaiting the return of her husband, having been told that the mountaintop beacons have given the sign that Troy had fallen. Though she pretends to love her husband, she is furious that he sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia. This is not made clear here, but it would have been familiar to the audience. A servant stands on top of the roof, reporting that he has been crouching there “like a dog” (kunothen) for years, “under the instruction of a man-hearted woman.” He laments the fortunes of the house, but promises to keep silent: “A huge ox has stepped onto my tongue.” However, when Agamemnon arrives in his chariot, he has on board the prophetess Cassandra as a slave and concubine. This, of course, serves to anger Clytemnestra further.
The main action of the play is the agon between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. She attempts to persuade Agamemnon to step on a purple (sometimes red) tapestry or carpet to walk into their home. The problem is that this would indicate hubris on Agamemnon’s part, and he does not wish to do this. Eventually, for reasons that are still heavily debated, Clytemnestra does convince Agamemnon to enter the oikos, where she kills him in the bath: she ensnares him in a robe and as he struggles to free himself she hacks him with three strokes of a pelekos. Agamemnon is murdered in much the same way as an animal killed for sacrifice with three blows, the last strike accompanied by a prayer to a god.
Whilst Clytemnestra and Agamemnon are offstage, Cassandra discusses with the chorus whether or not she ought to enter the palace, knowing that she too will be murdered. Cassandra is a daughter of King Priam of Troy. Apollo has cursed her, giving her the gift of clairvoyance, but on the condition that no one who heard her prophesies would believe them. In Cassandra’s speech, she runs through many gruesome images of the history of the House of Atreus, and eventually chooses to enter the house knowing that she cannot avoid her fate. The chorus, in this play a group of the elders of Athens, hear the death screams of Agamemnon, and frantically debate on a course of action.
A platform is soon rolled out displaying the gruesome dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, along with Clytemnestra, who attempts to explain her action. Later, Aegisthus struts out and delivers an arrogant speech to the chorus, who nearly enter into a brawl with Aegisthus and his henchmen. However, Clytemnestra halts the dispute, saying that “There is pain enough already. Let us not be bloody now.” The play closes with the chorus reminding the usurpers of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, who will surely return to exact vengeance.
The Libation Bearers (part 2)
Introduction
The Libation Bearers is the second play of the Oresteia. It deals with the reunion of Agamemnon’s children, Electra and Orestes, and their revenge.
Storyline
In the palace of Argos, Clytemnestra, who now shares her bed and the throne with her lover Aegisthus, is roused from slumber by a nightmare: she dreamt that she gave birth to a snake, and the snake now feeds from her bosom and draws blood instead of milk. Alarmed by this, a possible sign of the gods’ wrath, she orders her daughter, the princess Electra, whom in the meantime Clytemnestra has reduced to the virtual status of a slavegirl, to pour libations on Agamemnon’s grave. A group of women (the libation bearers of the title) are to assist her.
Electra arrives at the grave of her father and comes upon a man by the tombstone, who has just placed a lock of his hair on the stone. As they start to speak, it gradually and rather agonizingly becomes apparent that the man is her brother Orestes (who had been sent away to the royal court of Phocis since infancy for safety reasons), and who has, in her thoughts, been her only hope of revenge. Together they plan to avenge their father by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her new husband, Aegisthus.
Orestes wavers about killing his own mother, but is guided by Apollo and his close friend Pylades, the son of the king of Phocis, that it is the correct course of action. Orestes and Pylades pretend to be ordinary travellers from Phocis, and ask for hospitality at the palace. They even tell the Queen that Orestes is dead. Delighted by the news, Clytemnestra sends a servant to summon Aegisthus. Orestes kills the usurper first, and then his mother. As soon as he exits the palace, the Furies appear and, being only visible to him, they begin to haunt and torture him for his crime. He flees in agony.
The Eumenides (part 3) Introduction
The Eumenides (also known as The Furies) is the final play of the Oresteia, in which Orestes and the Furies go before a jury of Athenians, the Areiopagos (Rock of Ares, a flat rocky hill by the Athenian agora where the supreme criminal court of Athens held its sessions), to decide whether Orestes’ murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, makes him worthy of the torment they have inflicted upon him.
Storyline
Orestes is tormented by the Furies, chthonic deities that avenge patricide and matricide. He, at the instigation of his sister Electra and the god Apollo, has killed their mother Clytemnestra, who had killed their father, King Agamemnon, who had killed his daughter and their sister, Iphigenia. Orestes finds a refuge and a solace at the new temple of Apollo in Delphi, and the god, unable to deliver him from the Furies’ annoying wrath, sends him along to Athens under the protection of Hermes, while he casts a drowsy spell upon the pursuing Furies in order to delay them.
Clytemnestra’s ghost appears from the woods and rouses the sleeping Furies, urging them to continue hunting Orestes. The Furies’ first appearance on stage is haunting: they hum a tune in unison as they wake up, and seek to find the scent of blood that will lead them to Orestes’ tracks. Ancient tradition says that on the play’s premiere this struck so much fear and anguish in the audience, that a pregnant woman named Neaira died on the spot.
The Furies’ tracking down of Orestes in Athens is equally haunting: Orestes has clasped Athena’s small statue in supplication, and the Furies close in on him by smelling the blood of his slain mother in the air. Once they do see him, they can also see rivulets of blood soaking the earth beneath his footsteps.
As they surround him, Athena intervenes and brings in a jury of twelve Athenians to judge her supplicant. Apollo acts as attorney for Orestes, while the Furies act as spokespersons for the dead Clytemnestra. The trial results in a hung jury and Athena breaks the tie by voting in favour of Orestes, and then must persuade the Furies to accept her decision. They eventually submit. (However, in Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris, the Furies continue to haunt Orestes even after the trial.) Athena then renames them Eumenides (Ladies of Good Will). The Furies will now be honored by the citizens of Athens and ensure their prosperity. Athena also declares that henceforth hung juries should result in the defendant being acquitted, as mercy should always take precedence over harshness.
Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek play. It is traditionally attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as the 4th century BC. However, it is still normally included in collected editions of Aeschylus. There is evidence that it was the first play in a trilogy, but the other two plays, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Pyrphoros, survive only in fragments.
The play is based on the myth of Prometheus, a titan who gave the gift of fire to mortals and was punished by the god Zeus for this. Prometheus (whose name means ‘foresight’) possessed prophetic knowledge of the person who would one day overthrow Zeus, but refused to divulge this information.
Synopsis
The play is composed almost entirely of speeches and contains little action since its protagonist is chained and immobile throughout. At the beginning, Cratos (power), Bia (violence), and Hephaestus the smithy-god chain Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus and then depart. The daughters of Okeanos, who make up the chorus, appear and attempt to comfort Prometheus by conversing with him. Okeanos himself, a friend, arrives and warns Prometheus not to arouse the further wrath of Zeus by boasting of the god’s future overthrow. Prometheus is then visited by Io, a maiden whom Zeus pursued, and who has been changed into a cow by Zeus to save her from the wrath of Hera; Prometheus gives her knowledge of her own future, telling her that one of her descendants will release him from his torment. Finally, Hermes the messenger-god is sent down by the angered Zeus to demand that Prometheus tell him who threatens to overthrow him. Prometheus refuses, and Zeus strikes him with a thunderbolt that plunges Prometheus into the abyss.
Mythology
Cupid and Psyche (Roman myth)
Cupid and Psyche (Roman myth)
The tale of Cupid and Psyche first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century CE. Apuleius probably used an earlier folk-tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel. Read on its own, it is for the most part a mixture of straightforward fairy tale and parody.
Psyche, in Roman mythology, beautiful princess loved by Cupid, god of love. Jealous of Psyche’s beauty, Venus, goddess of love, ordered her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. Fortunately for Psyche, Cupid instead fell in love with her and carried her off to a secluded palace where he visited her only by night, unseen and unrecognized by her. Although Cupid had forbidden her ever to look upon his face, one night Psyche lit a lamp and looked upon him while he slept. Because she had disobeyed him, Cupid abandoned her, and Psyche was left to wander desolately throughout the world in search of him. Finally, after many trials she was reunited with Cupid and was made immortal by Jupiter, king of the gods.
Mythology
Niobe
Niobe
A mortal woman in Greek mythology, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and either Euryanassa, Eurythemista, Clytia, Dione, or Laodice, and the wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven male and seven female, while Leto had only two. Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, with the last begging for his life (Apollo would have spared his life, but had already released the arrow), and Artemis, her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and turned into stone as she wept, or committed suicide. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone and so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death, when the gods themselves entombed them.
Mythology
Lamia
Lamia
On the fringes of Greek mythology Lamia was one of the monstrous bogeys that terrified children and the naive, like her daughter Scylla, or Empousa. Laimos is the gullet, and she had a cannibal appetite for children that could be interpreted as a dangerous erotic appetite for men: harlots might be named “Lamia.”
Mythology
Ariadne
Ariadne
In later Greek mythology, Ariadne’s divine origins were submerged and she became known as the daughter of King Minos of Crete, who conquered Athens after his son was murdered there. The Athenians were required to sacrifice seven young men and seven maidens each year to the Minotaur. One year, the sacrificial party included Theseus, a young man who volunteered to come and kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love at the first sight of him, and helped him by giving him a magic sword and a ball of thread so that he could find his way out the Minotaur’s labyrinth. She ran away with Theseus after he achieved his goal, and according to Homer was punished by Artemis with death, but in Hesiod and most others accounts, he left her sleeping on Naxos, and Dionysus wedded her. With Dionysus, she was the mother of Oenopion.
Mythology
Cassandra
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra (“she who entangles men”) (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba, who captured the eye of Apollo and so was given the ability to see the future. However, when she did not return his love, he placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. Thus Cassandra foresees the destruction of Troy (she warns the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), but is unable to do anything about them. Coroebus and Othronus came to the aid of Troy out of love for Cassandra. Cassandra was the first to see the body of her brother Hector being brought back to the city.
Mythology
Daphne
Daphne
Pursued by Apollo who has been shot with an arrow by Eros, Daphne prays Pheneus to be turned into a tree, which later becomes sacred to Apollo.
Mythology
Europa
Europa
was a Levantine woman in Greek mythology. There were two competing myths relating how Europa came into the Greek world: in the more familiar one she was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a bull and carried away to Crete on his back, but according to Herodotus she was kidnapped by Minoans , who likewise were said to have taken her to Crete. The mythical Europa cannot be separated from the mythology of the sacred bull , which had been worshipped in the Levant.
