Tale and Mythology

Maia is the daughter of Atlas and Pleione the Oceanid, and is the oldest of the seven Pleiades. They were born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, and are sometimes called mountain nymphs. Because they were daughters of Atlas , they were also called the Atlantides. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes , Zeus in the dead of night secretly begot Hermes upon Maia, who avoided the company of the gods, in a cave of Cyllene. After giving birth to the baby, Maia wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly maturing infant Hermes crawled away to Thessaly, where by nightfall of his first day he stole some of his half-brother Apollo 's cattle and invented the lyre from a tortoise shell. Maia refused to believe Apollo when he claimed that Hermes was the thief, and Zeus then sided with Apollo . Finally, Apollo exchanged the cattle for the lyre, which became one of his identifying attributes. Maia also raised the infant Arcas, the child of Callisto with Zeus . Wronged by t

Notus was the Greek god of the south wind. He was associated with the desiccating hot wind of the rise of Sirius after midsummer, was thought to bring the storms of late summer and autumn, and was feared as a destroyer of crops. Notus' equivalent in Roman mythology was Auster, the embodiment of the sirocco wind, a southerly wind which brings cloudy weather, strong winds and rain to southern Europe

Amphitrite was a sea goddess and wife of Poseidon and the queen of the sea. Amphitrite was a daughter of Nereus and Doris (and thus a Nereid), according to Hesiod's Theogony, but of Oceanus and Tethys (and thus an Oceanid), according to the Bibliotheca, which actually lists her among both the Nereids and the Oceanids. Others called her the personification of the sea itself (saltwater). Amphitrite's offspring included seals and dolphins. Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son, Triton who was a merman, and a daughter, Rhodos (if this Rhodos was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or was not the daughter of Asopus as others claim). Bibliotheca also mentions a daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme. Initially, she was considered an important deity, as mentioned in the Homeric Hymn, when she was present at the birth of Apollo, alongside Dione, Rhea and Themis. Gradually, she became less important and in the end, the poets used her name as a mere rep

In Greek mythology, Tartarus  is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans. Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato's Gorgias (c. 400 BC), souls are judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment. Like other primal entities (such as the Earth, Night and Time), Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial force or deity. According to Greek mythology the realm of  Hades  is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When  Cronus  came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed  Cyclop es and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard.  Zeus  killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans. The gods of Olympus eventually triumphed. Kronos and many of the other Titans were banished to Tartarus, though Prometheus, Epimetheus, Metis and most of the female Titans w

Anemoi were wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction from which their respective winds came (see Classical compass winds), and were each associated with various seasons and weather conditions. The Anemoi are minor gods and are subject to the god Aeolus. They were sometimes represented as gusts of wind, and at other times were personified as winged men. They were also sometimes depicted as horses kept in the stables of the storm god Aeolus, who provided Odysseus with the Anemoi in the Odyssey. The Spartans were reported to sacrifice a horse to the winds on Mount Taygetus. Astraeus, the astrological deity (sometimes associated with Aeolus), and Eos /Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, were the parents of the Anemoi, according to the Greek poet Hesiod. Of the four chief Anemoi, Boreas (Aquilo in Latin) was the north wind and bringer of cold winter air, Zephyrus (Favonius in Latin) was the west wind and bringer of light spring and early-summer breezes, and Notus (Auster

Minos was a mythical king in the island of Crete, the son of Zeus and Europa. He was famous for creating a successful code of laws; in fact, it was so grand that after his death, Minos became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld. During his rule, Crete became a naval superpower and had an excellent educational system. Minos is best known for his role in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur . When Minos' son, Androgeos, went to Athens, he died while fighting a bull. Minos went to Athens to avenge his son's death, and having Zeus by his side, managed to install a capital tax on the Athenians; every nine years, seven boys and seven girls from Athens would be sent to Crete to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, a mythical creature that was held in the Labyrinth, a maze under the palace of Minos. Eventually, the hero Theseus managed to kill the Minotaur with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne.

A Dione is among the Titanides or Titanesses. She is called a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys , hence an Oceanid , a water-nymph. She is otherwise called a daughter of Gaia ; according to worshippers of Orpheus her father is the sky-god Uranus , while others identify her father as Aether. She and Zeus are called the parents of Aphrodite by some ancient sources. Hesiod listed Dione among the wives of Zeus who were daughters of Tethys and Oceanus; she is described as beautiful in the "sacred books of Orpheus". She was one of the goddesses assembled to witness the birth of Apollo . The Greek goddess of love sometimes takes the name Dione: this may identify her with Aphrodite , though Homer calls Dione the mother of Aphrodite . Károly Kerényi notes in this context that the name Dione resembles the Latin name Diana, and is a feminine form of the name Zeus (cf Latin deus, god), hence meaning "goddess of the bright sky". This association does not prevent her, howe

In Greek mythology, a Gorgon  is a mythical creature portrayed in ancient Greek literature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature and occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not and she was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus. The large Gorgon eyes, as well as Athena 's "flashing" eyes, are symbols termed "the divine eyes" by Gimbutas (who did not originate the perception); they appear also in Athena's sacred bird, the owl. They may be represented by spirals, wheels, concentric circles, swastikas, firewheels, and other images. Anyone who would gaze into their eyes would be turned to stone instantly.

BOREAS was the purple-winged god of the north wind, one of the four seasonal Anemoi (Wind-Gods). He was also the god of winter who swept down from the cold mountains of Thrake (Thrace), chilling the air with his icy breath. Beyond his mountain home lay Hyperborea, a mythical land of eternal spring untouched by the god's winds. When Boreas sought a wife, he carried off Oreithyia ("Mountain Gale"), daughter of King Erekhtheus (Erechtheus) of Athens, who was playing with her companions in a riverside meadow. Their children included Khione (Chione), goddess of snow, and the Boreades, a pair of winged heroes. Boreas and his brother-winds were often imagined as horse-shaped gods in form. An old Greek folk belief was that the winds Boreas and Zephyros would sweep down upon the mares in early spring and fertilize them in the guise of wind-formed stallions. The horses born from these couplings were the swiftest and finest of their kind. The fabulous horses of King Laomed

In Greek mythology, Pallas was one of the Gigantes (Giants), the offspring of Gaia , born from the blood of the castrated Uranus . According to the mythographer Apollodorus, during the Gigantomachy, the cosmic battle of the Giants with the Olympian gods, he was flayed by Athena who used his skin as a shield. Though the origin of Athena's epithet " Pallas " is obscure.   Athena , after having used his skin for her cloak, took her name from the Giant Pallas.

The Ash Tree Nymphs or Meliae were created by the blood that fell on the earth when the Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus , in his effort to overthrow him. Along with the Meliae, came out the Erinyes (the Furies) and the Giants. The mankind of the Age of Bronze originated from the Meliae. The honey-nymphs that nurtured and raised Zeus in Crete, Ida and Adrasteia, were called Meliai and probably belonged to this group of nymphs. The Meliae were always invoked as a group, although in a few myths, some of them are given individual names. One of them was called Melia and was the mother of Io, Philodice, Inachus, and Aegialeus.

Metis ("wisdom," "skill," or "craft"), in ancient Greek religion, was a mythical Titaness belonging to the second generation of Titans . Metis was an Oceanid, the daughters of Oceanus and his sister Tethys , who were three thousand in number, and was of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings. Metis was the first great spouse of Zeus , and also his cousin. Metis was both a threat to Zeus and an indispensable aid: Metis was the one who gave Zeus a potion to cause Cronus to vomit out Zeus' siblings. It had been prophesied that Metis would bear extremely powerful children: the first, Athena and the second, a son more powerful than Zeus himself, who would eventually overthrow Zeus In order to forestall these dire consequences, Zeus tricked her into turning herself into a fly and promptly swallowed her. He was too late: Metis had already conceived a child. In time she began making a helmet and robe for her fetal daughter. The hammering as sh

The Cyclops were giant; one-eyed MONSTERS; a wild race of lawless creatures who possess neither social manners nor fear of the Gods. Cyclopes means ‘round eye.’ Considered the sons of Uranus and GAEA they were the workmen of the God HEPHAESTUS whose workshop was in the heart of the volcanic mountain Etna. According to Homer’s Odysseus where he introduced likely the most famous Cyclops, Polyphemus, Cyclopes were the sons of POSEIDON , not Gaea . Homer described the Cyclopes as wild savages, who abstained from agriculture and laws other than every man for himself. They were shepherds who lived in the southwestern part of Sicily, actively ate human beings and lived with their wives and children in caves ruling over them with arbitrary power. The Homeric Cyclopes were not servants of ZEUS , and in fact, they mostly disregarded him. Polyphemus was a man-eating monster with a bloody and barbaric story. He fell in love with a beautiful nymph called Galatea who rejected him in favo

BRIAREOS (Briareus) was one of the Hekantonkheires (Hecatoncheires), three primordial hundred-handed, fifty-headed storm giants. He was more specifically a god of sea-storms and in this guise he was often named Aigaion (Of the Aegean). Briareos wed Poseidon 's daughter Kymopoleia ("Wave-Ranging") and dwelt with her in the depths of the sea. His two brothers, on the other hand, were appointed guardians of the gates of the storm-pit Tartaros. According to some Aigaios (Aegaeus) was a storm-giant ally of the Titanes and father of Briareos instead of a just a by-name of Briareos himself. AEGAEON (Aigaiôn), a son of Uranus by Gaea . Aegaeon and his brothers Gyges and Cottus are known under the name of the Uranids, and are described as huge monsters with a hundred arms (hekatoncheires) and fifty heads. Most writers mention the third Uranid under the name of Briareus instead of Aegaeon, which is explained in a passage of Homer, who says that men called him Aegaeon, but

Hephæstus, the son of Zeus and Hera, was the god of fire in its beneficial as- pect, and the presiding deity over all workmanship accomplished by means of this useful element. He was universally honoured, not only as the god of all mechanical arts, but also as a house and hearth divinity, who exercised a beneficial influence on civilized society in general. Unlike the other Greek divinities, he was ugly and deformed, being awkward in his movements, and limping in his gait. This latter defect originated, as we have already seen, in the wrath of his father Zeus, who hurled him down from heaven24 in conse- quence of his taking the part of Hera, in one of the domestic disagreements, which so frequently arose between this royal pair. Hephæstus was a whole day falling from Olympus to the earth, where he at length alighted on the island of Lemnos. The inhabitants of the country, seeing him descending through the air, received him in their arms; but in spite of their care, his leg was brok

Hera, the eldest daughter of Cronus and Rhea, was born at Samos, or, accord- ing to some accounts, at Argos, and was reared by the sea-divinities Oceanus and Tethys, who were models of conjugal fidelity.  6   She was the principal wife of Zeus, and, as queen of heaven, participated in the honours paid to him, but her dominion only extended over the air (the lower aërial regions). Hera appears to be the sublime embodiment of strict matronly virtue, and is on that account the protectress of purity and married women. Faultless herself in her fidelity as a wife, she is essentially the type of the sanctity of the marriage tie, and holds in abhorrence any violation of its obligations. So strongly was she imbued with this hatred of any immorality, that, finding herself so often called upon to punish the failings of both gods and men in this respect, she became jealous, harsh, and vindictive. Her exalted position as the wife of the supreme deity, combined with her extreme beauty, caused her

The goddess, though loath to part with her guest, dared not disobey the commands of the mighty Zeus. She therefore instructed the hero how to con- struct a raft, for which she herself wove the sails. Odysseus now bade her farewell, and alone and unaided embarked on the frail little craft for his native land. Nausicaa.—For seventeen days Odysseus contrived to pilot the raft skil- fully through all the perils of the deep, directing his course according to the directions of Calypso, and guided by the stars of heaven. On the eighteenth day he joyfully hailed the distant outline of the Phæacian coast, and began to look forward hopefully to temporary rest and shelter. But Poseidon, still enraged with the hero who had blinded and insulted his son, caused an awful tempest to arise, during which the raft was swamped by the waves, and Odysseus only saved himself by clinging for bare life to a portion of the wreck. For two days and nights he floated about, drifted hither and thither by the