The MYTHENOR encyclopedia

Greek Mythology

Who they were

Greek mythology is the body of stories about gods, heroes and monsters told by the Greek-speaking peoples of the Aegean islands and coasts, Asia Minor and the colonies of the Mediterranean. Its roots reach back to the Bronze Age, and the earliest great surviving texts are the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer, and Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, composed around the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The myths were sung by bards, staged in the theater of Athens, painted on vases and carved on temples. For the Greeks, the gods had human form and human emotions, and the world was full of divine forces: rivers, mountains and trees each had their nymphs. The heroic ideal was glory, kleos, the fame that let a name outlive death for as long as it was sung.

Cosmology

According to Hesiod's Theogony, in the beginning came Chaos, the yawning void, and then Gaia, Earth, Tartarus in the depths, and Eros. Gaia bore Uranus, Sky, and from the two came the Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. The Titan Cronus overthrew his father and, fearing the same fate, swallowed his children, until Rhea saved Zeus. Zeus freed his siblings, defeated the Titans in a ten-year war, the Titanomachy, and imprisoned them in Tartarus; later he defeated the monster Typhon. The three brothers divided the world: Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea and Hades the realm of the dead. Souls went down to Hades as shades, crossing the river with the ferryman Charon; a few heroes reached the Elysian Fields, and great sinners were punished in Tartarus.

Pantheon

Atop Olympus reigned the twelve great gods, in a list that varied slightly. Zeus was king, lord of the sky and the thunderbolt, guardian of justice; Hera, his wife, protected marriage. Poseidon ruled the sea and earthquakes. Athena was goddess of wisdom and strategy; Apollo of light, music and oracles; Artemis, his twin, of the hunt. Aphrodite was goddess of love, Ares god of brutal war, Hephaestus the smith, Hermes the messenger, Demeter goddess of the harvest, and Hestia or Dionysus completed the group. Hades ruled beneath the earth. Around them lived Titans, nymphs, Muses, spirits such as the Keres and Nemesis, and the heroes, children of gods and mortals.

In MYTHENOR

In MYTHENOR, Greek mythology is the Aegean of Heroes, under the Bronze Sky, woven from the epics bards sang from port to port. There, to be remembered is to live: glory is a form of immortality. The Champion Aristeia guards the bronze thread in a temple on the cliff. But for three moons Olympus has not answered, the oracles see only smoke, the strait of Scylla and Charybdis has grown too calm, and souls arrive in the underworld without names. Ione of Aegina is the playable heroine of this land.

Sources

  1. Greek Mythology (World History Encyclopedia) — Mark Cartwright
  2. Theogony (World History Encyclopedia) — Donald L. Wasson
  3. Theogony — Hesiod (trans. H. G. Evelyn-White), Theoi Classical Texts Library
  4. Ancient Greek Religion (World History Encyclopedia) — Mark Cartwright
  5. Iliad (World History Encyclopedia) — Mark Cartwright

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