Gods and Creation Flashcards
• Myth
a traditional story with collective importance.
o Has plot, narrative, beginning middle, and end with characters.
o The time and place are either in far away places or long ago in a place nearby.
o Usually orally handed over. Which maintains future relationship with the past.
o Describe how people should act, and how people and things came to be in the first place.
o Anonymous no one knows who came up with it first.
o Subject to constant change
• Logos
A non-anonymous myth with an actual writer.
o A reasoned logical explanation of something with a logical sequence of events, and proof.
• Divine Myth
Supernatural beings are the main characters.
o Usually explain the why the world is the way it is.
o Function as science
• Legends
Great men doing great deeds or actions.
o Usually the stories of human past.
o Morally uplifting
o Most likely these heroes and heroines actually lived in the Late Bronze Age- Mycenaean
• Folktale
Ordinary people or animals.
o Justify patterns of behavior
o Mostly just for entertainment and not true
o Occur in specific Patterns and Specific Types
• Etiological Tale
explains causes that brought world to existence.
o “Science” to the Greeks, was controlled by the Gods Human like emotions and unpredictability
• 4 Approaches to studying Myth
o Recording and Compiling of a given culture’s myth.
o The study of how one culture’s myth is related to that of another’s.
o The analysis of the impact a culture’s myths have within a culture.
o Analysis of the lasting human impact of a myth or group of myths.
• Boeotia
A plane in Balkan Peninsula that housed Thebes
• Attica
Plain that housed Athens
• Peloponnesus
a plain that was connected to the Balkan by a stretch of land called Isthmus.
• Laconia
Sparta
Euboea
land not far from Athens with Limestone and clay for pottery
• Aegean Sea
Centrally important to Greek life for imports and source of food.
• Cyclades
Island that housed Delphos, sacred island to Artemis and Apollo.
• Stone Age
7000B.C.-6000B.C. only known that people lived in Greece not much is known about them.
• New Stone Age
6000 B.C.- 3000 B.C. rudimentary agriculture was practiced, and people lived inside of walled communities with pottery
• Early/Middle Bronze Age
3000- 1600 B.C. mainland were farmers whose race and language are unknown that worshipped fertility goddesses. Cretans are the ones known.
o Minoans inhabited Greece
o Bull, double axe, and labyrinth were important symbols.
o Built non-walled palaces
o Indo European Language probably influenced all European Language
o 2100 B.C. Greek people invaded Greece
• Late Bronze Age
1600- 1150B.C.
o Bronze weapons, loved war, ruled by kings, walled palace.
o Mycenaean civilization takes over Minoan civilization
o Linear B existed, but not used for literature, but economic accounts
o Linear B was destroyed by fire, and lost forever which prompted Dark Age.
• Dark Age
1150 B.C.-800 B.C. Not much archaeological remains
o Mycenaeans were destroyed by the Dorians, except in Athens
• Archaic Period
800-480 B.C. characterized by Greek alphabet
o Polis emerged as center of politics.
o Coinage was invented
o Commerce thrived
o Kakoi-merchants vs. traditional wealth aristoi
o Tyrants ruled the cities, but aristocrats ruled culture
o Persian threat grew
• Classical Period
480-323 B.C.- characterized by democracy philosophy and science, with logical consequences and rational reasoning
o Battle of Thermopylae 300 Spartans fought off the Persians.
o Although city States remained one country by similar language and culture.
o Peloponnesian war ended the peace in Greece Sparta beat Athens after 10 years of war.
• Hellenistic Period
323-30 B.C.
o King Phillip over ran the city states
o Alexander inherited lands and instantly took control of huge empire from Persians all the way into India.
o Alexandria was center of the world, and Greek culture dominated the world.
o Rome conquered Greece by 30 BC ending this era.
• Roman period
30 B.C. to 1453 A.D. the Romans almost perfectly preserved, and passed on Greek culture.
• Hoplites
heavily armed soldiers
parthenos
virgin
• Narcissus-
character who fell in love with himself by looking at himself in the reflection of the lake, and fell in and drowned. Flower named Narcissus
• Artemis Pontia Theron
Lady of the Beasts, one of the earliest sculptures ever found goddess of fertility
• Aoidoi
singers that sung the myths to a large audience, which helped the myths being passed on to later generations.
o Homer and Hesiod are the most famous
• Mesopotamia
Land Between Rivers
o Many important myths such as the battle between old gods and new, and the biblical flood story came from Mesopotamia
• Sumerians
People that inhabited Mesopotamia that invented irrigation agriculture, and established first city-states with up to 50000 inhabitants.
o Build Ziggurats for their Kings and Queens
o Cuneiform was the first ever style of writing, and was able to be translated into several different languages.
• An
Sumerian God of the sky. Started out with all of the power then became very insignificant parallel to Uranus.
• Inanna
Queen of heaven and An’s daughter. Goddess of sexual love. Essentially Aphrodite. Sumerian
• Enlil
A king, An’s agent on Earth. God of the storm. Possessed tablet of destiny, so he controlled the fates of humans and weather. Parallel to Zeus. Controlled thunder and lightning. Sumerian.
• Enki
A Sumerian Hermes, very tricky, and clever. Also good craftsmen, god of groundwater, and god of wisdom. Somewhat like Poseidon, Hephaestus, and Prometheus.
• Ki
Earth/ mother goddess. Similar to Demeter. Sumerian.
• Ereshkigal
Sumerian goddess of death. Similar to Persephone. Sumerian.
• Semites- semi-nomadic people that inhabited the steppe at the fringes of the Arabian Desert. Not united, but are descendants of Noah’s three sons Aram, Eber, and Ashur.
• Akkadians
adopted the Sumerian culture after they took it over.
• Hebrews- Semitics that traced their ancestors back to Abraham.
o Followed Yahweh only after Moses led them out of Egypt.
o Greek alphabet developed from their Phoenician writing.
• Hittites
Ruled Asia Minor and sort of adopted Sumerian myths in Late Bronze Age.
• Egyptian
murder of Osiris and marriage to Isis
• Homer
earliest written and recorded myths, Iliad and Odyssey. Wrote Epic poetry.
• Epic
a type of tragic poetry that was very long
• Hesiod
Tells a bit about himself, writes about the origin of gods and the universe. Creation Myth.
• Homeric Hymns
poems about Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, and Demeter that circle around the Trojan War.
• Humanism
ethics on how to treat fellow humans that really weren’t described by any of the mythical texts.
• Choral song
memorized songs while children danced
• Tragedy
Song meant to be heard not read, written with characters that have a flaw and usually die because of this flaw.
o Aeschylus
7 of his 80 plays survive. Used myth to describe conflict between individual will and divine destiny, his characters embodies some principle. Lived at Athens peak of great glory
o Sophocles
Cultural dominance of Athens. 7 of 123 plays survive. Dignity of humans compared to divine beings. In all of his plays an oracle predicts an unexpected outcome that is ignored by the hero. They always learn too late how to act.
o Euripides
19 out of the 80 plays he wrote survive. Showed men as they really are. Subjected traditional myths to serious scrutiny.
• Apollonius of Rhodes
wrote the epic poem Jason and the Argonauts
• Library of Apollodorus
A straightforward account of all that ever happened in myth from the very beginning of creation until the death of Odysseus
• Vergil
wrote the Aeneid- the story of how Rome was founded. Gives most descriptive view of underworld
• Ovid
a very famous witty Roman poet until he was exiled for a sexual scandal with the house of Augustus Caesar.
o Wrote Metamorphoses, which is a large body of Greek myths tied together by change of shape
• Cosmogony
A story that tells the origins of the universe.
o Hesiod
• Theogony
A story that tells the origin of the gods.
• Chaos
The first primordial being that popped into existence. Chasm.
o Gave birth to Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (Night)
o Possibly a gap from which the rest of the universe came through
• Gaea
The Earth.
o Mother of Uranus (sky), Mountains, Pontus (sea)
o With Tartarus gave birth to Typhoeus
o With Uranus gave birth to the Titans, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes and from Uranus blood, Erinyes (responsible for punishing those who commit crimes against their family), the Giants and the nymphs.
• Tartarus
some place beneath the Earth.
o Father of Typhoeus with Gaea
• Eros
God of love makes people fall for each other.
o Eros fell in love with Psyche when he accidentally scratched himself with an arrow, which was supposed to make Psyche fall in love with something hideous.
o People worshipped Psyche instead of Aphrodite.
• Titans
the second generation of gods.
o Cronus, Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Pheobe, Tethys
• Cyclopes
the brutal violent but talented craftsmen of the gods. Had one eye.
o Gave Zeus Thunder and Lightning
• Hecatonchires
had 100 arms, 50 heads most hated by Uranus
• Cronus
last Titan born, but King of the Titans, hated his father.
o Cuts off his fathers genitals with a steel sickle in order to be born
o Is father to the 12 Olympian gods after the titanomachy he loses power
• Uranus
locked in perpetual sexual embrace with Gaea and father of the Titans.
• Oceanus
The river that flows around the entire world, and all of the fresh water in the entire world.
o With Tethys gave birth to all of the Oceanids
• Rhea
Mother/grandmother to all of the 12 Olympians. Wife of Cronus.
o Had the 6 sons and daughters.
o Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera
• Hyperion
The sun god and father of Helius a better-known sun god.
o Also father of Selene (the moon) had only one love but had 50 kids with Endymion, and Zeus put him in perpetual sleep so that he would never grow old.
o Father to Eos (the dawn)- had many love affairs but the one with the Trojan prince Tithonus, whom she loved the most. Asked Zeus to let him live forever, which he let happen, but he aged until he didn’t want to live anymore.
• Phaethon
son of Helius that tried and failed to drag the son across the sky for a day. Died.
• Erinyes
frightful female spirits that haunt anyone who commits a familial crime.
• Aphrodite
born from the foam of Uranus’s genitals. She was the goddess of beauty, and sexual love. She was first seen in Cythera
• Gaea and Pontus had many offspring most were monsters
o Harpies
o Sirens- sang sailors to their rocky drowning death
o Sphinx- a lion headed winged human
o Gorgon- snakes for hair
o Gerion- 3 bodies joined at waste- enemy of Hercules
o Orthus- 2 headed dog that belonged to Gerion
o Echidna snake for legs
o Cerberus- 50 headed dog that guarded Hell
o Hydra- 7 heads
o Chimera- lion with the head of a lion and a goat also snake for a tail
• Thetis
Daughter of Nereus, a Nereid, and mother of Achilles. Could change shape like her father
• Titanomachy
Battle of the Olympians versus the Titans
o Prometheus and Themis sided with Olympians
o Zeus made Cronus vomit out his other siblings, after being raised by Nymphs, drinking goat mils, and eating honey from a bee. Corybantes hid Zeus’ crying by banging on their shields.
o Lasted ten years
o Only ended when Zeus freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires and got their help.
o In gratitude the Cyclopes made Zeus thunder and lightning
o With their help Zeus blasted the Titans into the Tartarus where Uranus had the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes imprisoned
• Atlas
a Titan that did not get sent to Tartarus, but did get sentenced to hold up the heavens for all eternity.
• Typhoeus
Hundred serpent heads, eyes shot out flames. Son of Tartarus and Gaea. When died etiology for volcano
• Succession Myth
how one god is outsmarted by another god and is then not king of universe.
• Gigantomachy
battle with the giants.
o Giants represent chaos, and violence while Olympians represent order and civilization.
o Heracles helped in the battle.
• Tiamat
Babylonian god equivalent to Gaea/ chaos. “primordial” salt water.
• Anu
Sky Babylonian
• Ea
rest Babylonian- wiseness, Apsu tried to kill younger gods, but was outsmarted by Ea who gave birth to Marduk the real hero.
• Marduk
God of Babylon.
o Faced a similar challenge as Olympians when Tiamat grew angry with the young gods and raised an army with Kingu to overthrow them.
o Tiamat fought with Marduk, and Marduk won which gave him total power, and the control over the Tablet of Destiny
• Prometheus
The forward thinker/ seer. Helped his cousin Zeus beat the Titans. Created human beings. Son of Iapetus
o Epimetheus is Prometheus’s brother.
o Tricked Zeus by giving men the tender meat wrapped in stomach and gods the shiny fat with bones inside, not bones are to be sacrificed to the Gods.
o Zeus punished mortals by stopping their eternal fire.
o When Prometheus tried to restore their fire by showing them how to make it, Zeus chained him to a rock, and had his eagle pick at his liver once a day for eternity.
o Etiology of how men came to have to do labor, and how livers regenerate.
o Warned Zeus of his fate with Thetis and Zeus swallowed her.
o Freed by Hercules.
• Pandora
The first woman who Zeus sent to Epimetheus to be married. She was very beautiful, but was warned by Zeus to never open a box, she couldn’t resist to everything in the world that is bad was released, and the only thing that kept humans going through all of the bad (hope) was also released.
• The Five Races
a myth from Hesiod that tells the 5 different ways humans lived on Earth the fifth being the present time.
o 1st generation fashioned of gold
didn’t age, labor or have women. When they died they just vanished. Lived when Cronus was king.
o 2nd generation fashioned of silver
spent 100 years as infants, but when they finally grew up they only had a short time to live because they were so violent.
o 3rd generation fashioned of bronze
extremely brutal and violent. They were born from ash trees.
o 4th generation of heroes
some lived at the edge of the world as immortals others dies and went to Hades. A very just and god like generation
o 5th generation of iron
labor and warfare
• Lycaon
A king who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice, and caused a universal flood wiping out all people except Deucalion and Pyrrah. Fed his own son to Zeus. Zeus turned him into a werewolf
• Deucalion and Pyrrah
husband and wife Deucalion is Prometheus’s son and Pyrrah is Epimetheus and Pandora’s wife. They were both chosen by Zeus to survive the flood. Threw rocks over their heads and repopulated the Earth.
• Hellen
was their most important son who gave his name to the entire Greek race. He had three sons Dorus he was the founder of the first race of Greeks, Aeolus the second race, and Xuthus who had a son Ion who founded the Ionian race to which the Athenians belonged.
• Eponym
The person who gives his name to something, like a flower or the Greek races.
• Zeus
Son of Rhea and Cronus, Father of Gods and Men. Married to Hera
o Very strong, stronger than all of the other gods combined.
o Controlled weather
o Aegis was a symbol of Zeus’s power
o Thunder and lightning for weapons
o Eagle was a companion of Zeus, and the bull a symbol and was sacrificed to Zeus.
o God of justice- guarded traditions, and xenia, which is the custom to treat guests as well as you possibly can even if they are complete strangers.
o Was deceived by Hera so she could rile up the Gods against the Trojans
o Married to Metis God of intelligence- ate her and became intelligent
o Married to Themis (things-established)- and had the Horae (seasons), which shoes that the universe is governed by law
o Also father of Moerae with Themis
o Sex with Eurynome an Oceanid had the three graces that accompanied Aphrodite and embodied the things that made men attracted to women
o Mnemosyne (memory) who bore the muses which inspired music and poetry
o Married to Dione in some versions of Greek myth they are together a long time and parents to Aphrodite
• Aegis
A shield that symbolized Zeus’s power, represents a primitive shield made of goat skin and often has snake heads coming out of it.
• Moerae
Children of night that represented the dark, implacable destiny of the world. Also said to be Zeus and Themis’ children
• Ganymede
the most beautiful Trojan boy prince, that Zeus had a crush on him so he kidnapped him and made him serve as the Olympian cup-bearer
• Hera
Zeus’s actual wife. Queen of the Olympians and protector of lawful marriage.
o Cow as sacred animal
o Mother of Ares- war god, hated among gods
o Mother of Eileithyia- protector of child-birth
o Mother of Hebe- a colorless abstraction that represented youth
o Hera, Poseidon and Athena rebelled against Zeus, but he was saved by a hundred-hander.
o Mother of Hephaestus wither with Zeus or without Zeus nobody can be sure.
• Hera gets mad at Zeus for cheating, but he is so much stronger than her that there is nothing anybody can do about it
• Poseidon
ruler of the sea and makes earthquakes.
o Raped Demeter as a stallion and had a strong horse named Arion that saved the hero Adrastus
o Married the Nereid Amphitrite, and had a son Triton who had the power to calm the seas by blowing his conch shell
o Father of the Cyclops Polyphemus
o Responsible for the deaths of seamen
o Pulled by a chariot of horses or sea monsters over the sea.
o Usually shown with a trident
o Medusa and Poseidon had a thing and bore two children Pegasus and the warrior Chrysaor
• Hades
Ruler of the underworld. Called Pluto ironically. Married to Persephone with no kids. Wears a helmet that makes him invisible, and gets borrowed from time to time by heroes and other gods
• Anthropomorphism
• The idea that gods are shaped like humans, and perform almost every humanly task. The only two excluded are dying and excreting.
• Nymphs
almost godlike, but not necessarily immortal lovely ladies that usually embodied some aspect of nature.
• Apollo
probably Asian minor god that originated in the Dark Age. Son of Zeus and Leto and his twin sister is Artemis.
o His arrows bring disease, and he is associated somehow with the sun.
o Trojan priest asked him to avenge his daughter, and he diseased the Greeks for him.
o Was born on Delos
o Apollo fills the same roll as Aoidoi fill for people, for the gods
o Flayed Marsyas alive after he challenged him to a battle of music.
o Slew the Python while establishing the oracle at Delphi
o Tried to sleep with Cassandra
o Tried to sleep with Sibyl at Cumae
o Tried to sleep with Daphne afterwards associated with the Laurel Tree.
o Created the Hyacinth flower from his love of a young boy.
o Father of Asclepius with the mortal Coronis
o Represented order against barbarianism
• Delphi
important place where Apollo’s cult lived and there was an oracle through which Apollo gave advice. Dionysus lived there for the coldest three months of the year.
• Delos
The floating island that Leto gave birth to Apollo on because Hera forbade the land to let her give birth on any land that sees the light of day.
• Pythia
The prophetess that worked at the oracle of Delphi
• Cassandra
she tried to bargain for foresight and she would sleep with him. Ended up getting foresight and not sleeping with him, so Apollo made it so that she see the future, but when she spoke about it no one would believe her.
• Sibyl at Cumae
Apollo failed to woo her so he promised her as many years of life as grains of sand that she could pick up with one hand. Apollo honored the gift even though she did not sleep with him, but she aged into a cicada
• Daphne
a nymph who tried to flee Apollo until her father Peneus, a river god, finally had to turn her into a Laurel Tree so that she could escape Apollo
• Hyacinth
a beautiful young boy that Apollo loved, was turned into a flower after his death by Apollo after Apollo hit him in the head with a discuss. Zephyr might have killed him with wind.
• Asclepius
the son of Apollo who became the best doctor to ever live even able to bring people back from the dead. Carried a staff with a snake woven around it. Raised by the centaur Chiron.
• Coronis
a girl Apollo got pregnant, but while she was pregnant slept with a mortal man. Crow saw and told Apollo, who at first did not believe the crow so he turned him black, later found out the truth and made the crow the sacred bringer of bad news.
• Hermes
son of Zeus and Maia, protector of the travelers and commerce. Messenger god.
o Named after Herms, which are stone piles that protect travelers.
o Carried a caduceus, which is a staff that has two snakes copulating wound around it.
o Plays the role of psychopompos
o Named the slayer of Argus after he slayed the hundred-hander names Argus, who was following commands by Hera to guard one of Zeus’s lovers.
o Stole Apollo’s cattle
o Invented the Lyre
o Walked backwards to try and fool him
o Father of Autolycus- a famous thief that could make the things he stole invisible, and grandfather of Odysseus a great trickster
o Father of Pan the sheparding god, who was very lustful
• Psychopompos
Ferries the dead from this world to the next
• Maia
Mother of Hermes, an Oceanid daughter of Atlas.
• Pan
Had a goats legs and head. Was the lord of sheparding and he was known for blessing fertility.
o Mother was Dyrope a nymph who ran off in terror after she gave birth to pan.
o Lusted for the nymph Syrinx, but she was turned into reeds, he cut them all down looking for her and made a piped instrument out of them afterwards.
o He napped at noontime everyday and if awoken would give a terrible scream that resulted in PANic.
o The Christian representation of the devil comes from pan.
o HE was the only god to die
• Hephaestus
the black smith god, son of Hera and Zeus. He was lame.
o Married to Aphrodite
o Was kicked out of Olympus by his mother and tricked her into a throne from which she could not stand up.
o Native to Lemnos
o Made Pandora
o Rescued by Nereids
• Ares
The god of war son of Zeus and Hera, the most hated and violent of all gods.
o Had four children in his affair with Aphrodite
• Fear
• Panic
• Harmony
• Eros- even though this child should have already been born from chaos
o Helius told Hephaestus he saw Aphrodite and Ares in bed together
o Hephaestus devised a trap for the two of them and caught them in the act. He then took them to embarrass them in front of the other gods, but they laughed at him instead of them.
• Persephone
Demeter’s daughter that got kidnapped by Hades, and has to spend time in the underworld every year causing the changes of seasons.
o Often called Kore, which means daughter. When Hades stole her she was a Parthenos
o Zeus was her father
o Ate a pomegranate so she had to remain in the underworld for that many months
• Demeter
The fertility goddess that causes the grains and crops to grow
o Etiological myth for the cult at Eleusis.
o Stopped in Eleusis to mourn the abduction of her daughters and the 4 daughters of Celeus stopped by and asked her to come stay with them
o Demeter tried to make Celeus and Metanairia’s newborn son immortal but was caught doing it so she could not continue.
• Triptolemus
Demeter taught him the rituals of the Eleusian mysteries and he taught the entire world how to grow grain.
• Inanna
traveled to the underworld in order to become queen of the dead or bring the dead back to life. Once she got there the queen of the underworld trapped her. Without Inanna the nothing could have sex and so eventually the queen of the underworld let her go on the condition that she send someone else to take her place. She chose her husband Dumuzi.
• Isis and Osiris
Isis married Osiris who was killed by the jealous brother, and sent in a coffin down a river. Isis wept in mourning and tried to find the coffin eventually she did find it.
• Adgestis
a mighty and violent lustful toward men and women
o Dionysus got him drunk and turned his genitals into a vine to stop him from being violent and lustful.
o He ripped off his own genitals, and from the blood formed a pomegranate tree.
o Sanguine took a pomegranate from this tree got pregnant and had Attis.
• Attis
was loved by Cybele, Adgestis, but was betrothed to the daughter of King Midas. Adgestis got jealous and drove everyone in Phygeria mad. Attis as a result of this tore off his own genitals, and killed himself. From the blood a violets grew, and on his grave an almond tree.
• Dionysus
God of wine, late to the Olympian party, and is said to have displaced Hestia as one of the 12. Played a major role in Fertility.
o Raised by Ino, she and her husband were driven mad by Hera.
o Zeus then had Dionysus turned into a goat until he could fend off Hera on his own. The Nymphs of Nysa raised him as a goat.
o Hera struck Dionysus mad, but Cybele cured him of the madness.
o Bacchae/ Maenads were his mad followers. Mostly women.
o Thyrsus was the ivy staff that he carried.
o Satyrs were his male followers
o Met Midas, who wished he could turn everything to gold, which backfired.
o Was kidnapped by pirates who didn’t believe him to be a god so he turned them to dolphins and killed some.
o Married Adriane the daughter of King Minos.
• Semele
had sex with Zeus and Had Dionysus. Hera tricked her into making Zeus show him his true form, and she was killed by it.
o Became a god after Dionysus went down to the underworld to save her.
• Lycurgus
a king of Thrace who resisted him. Driven mad by the gods and was stricken blind before he was eaten alive by horses
• Mynads
daughter of King Mynas that resisted Dionysus. He drove them mad so they ate their children and were turned into bats
• Pentheus
King of Thebes that denied Dionysus claim to be a god and was killed by his own mother who Dionysus drove mad.
• Tiresias
a ghost that Odysseus must consult with before returning home.
o Was blinded by Hera after he said that 9/10 parts of enjoyment of sex goes to females.
• Sisyphus
tricked Hades into letting him go back to the Earth. Punished by pushing boulder
• Tantalus
tried to trick the gods into eating his own son that he cooked up in a stew. Punished by not being able to drink or eat.
• Elysium
when they die go to a special place
• Eurydice
was killed by a snake while being chased by a rapist the day before she was supposed to be married to Orephestus
• Orephestus
best singer in the entire world. Could make a rock cry. Made Hades feel sorry for him for losing Eurydice, and gave him one condition don’t look back until you get to the upper world, one step away from Eurydice being in the upper world he looked back.
o Invented male homosexuality
o Torn to pieces by the Bacchae
• Pythagoras
philosopher who taught people to be ascetic and thought that life could be measured. Original teacher of Orphism
• Er
a man that was killed in battle ten days earlier but was alive before they lit him on fore in a pyre.
o Tells the stories of how great men get to pick what they want to be in the next-life he was unsure how he got to go back to his own life.
• Aeneas
founder of Rome
o Looking for his father finds Hecate who shows him the way to the underworld and is guided by Apollo’s lover the Sibyl at Cumae.
• Acheron
sorrowful river of underworld
• Charon
The monstrous ferrymen of the underworld, only if you have the money
• Hestia
god to which the 1st sacrifice was made. Was the god of the Hearth and was responsible for the eternal fires that helped grow cities. First swallowed by Cronus last born.
• Hermaphrodites
son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Was fused with Salamancis who fell in love with him. He became a bisexual hermaphrodite
• Priapus
either Aphrodite and Hermes or Aphrodite and Dionysus, always had a huge erect penis and warded off the evil eye.
• Pygmalion
king of Cyprus that built himself a statue that he fell in love with and Aphrodite made it real for him.
• Cinyras
descendent of Pygmalion whose wife seduced him and fell in love with him because Aphrodite made her after his wife claimed that the daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite.
o Killed himself out of shame
• Myrrah
had sex with father because Aphrodite made her fall in love with him
o Turned into Myrrh Tree and Adonis was born form it.
• Adonis
The son of Myrrah and Cinyras who became a talented hunter and loved by Aphrodite and was turned into an anemone after his death being gouged by a boar.
• Anchises
slept with Aphrodite, she told him not to tell. He told so then he was blinded
• Artemis
brother of Apollo daughter of Leto. Protectress of the hunt, and Parthenos
o Followed by virgin nymphs
• Niobe
boasted of her 6 sons and 6 daughters that she was greater then Leto. Artemis and Apollo killed all 12 of her children out of spite.
• Orion
great hunter who threatened rape Artemis. Artemis didn’t let him, and killed him with a scorpion but sent him into the stars as a constellation
• Actaeon
accidentally saw Artemis naked so she turned him into a stag, which was hunted by his own dogs and killed.
• Castillo
a virgin nymph of Artemis that was raped by Zeus because she thought it was Artemis. Artemis turned her into a bear, rescued the child (Arca) is now responsible for minor and major ursa.
• Athena
won the patron of the city of Athens with an olive tree. Was a Parthenos. Son of Zeus and Metis, whom Zeus ate and gave birth to Athena.
o Owl as animal
o Turned Arachne into a spider
• Arachne
woman who challenged Athena in a weaving contest and when she lost was turned into a spider.
• Alpheus and Arethusa
Alpheus pursues a nymph named Arethusa to Ortigia, where Artemis turns her into a spring and he turns himself into a river.
