The most ancient gods of Ancient Greece, known to us from myths, were personifications of those forces of nature, whose activity determines physical life and arouses in the human heart either fear and horror, or hope and trust - personifications of forces mysterious to man, but obviously dominating his fate, which were the first objects of idolization among all peoples. But the gods of Ancient Greece were not only symbols of the forces of external nature; At the same time, they were the creators and guardians of all moral goods, personifications of all the forces of moral life. All those forces of the human spirit by which cultural life is created, and the development of which among the Greek people gave it such great importance in the history of mankind, were invested by him in the myths about the gods. The gods of Greece are personifications of all the great and beautiful forces of the Greek people; the world of the gods of Ancient Greece is a complete reflection of Greek civilization. The Greeks made their gods in myths similar to people, therefore they felt obliged to become like gods; caring about improving was a religious duty for them. Greek culture has a close connection with the Greek religion.
Legends and myths of Ancient Greece. Cartoon
Different generations of gods of Ancient Greece
The basis of the religion of Ancient Greece in Pelasgian times was the worship of the forces of nature, manifested in heaven, on earth, and in the sea. Those gods who were the most ancient personifications of the forces of earth and sky among the pre-Greek Pelasgians were overthrown by a series of catastrophes, the legends of which were preserved in ancient Greek myths about the struggle of the Olympians with the titans and giants. The new gods of Ancient Greece, who took away dominion from the previous ones, descended from them, but already had a completely human image.
Zeus and Hera
So, new humanoid gods began to rule the world, the main one in the myths was Zeus, the son of Cronus; but the former gods, personified forces of nature, retained their mysterious effectiveness, which even the omnipotent Zeus could not overcome. Just as omnipotent kings are subject to the laws of the moral world, so Zeus and other new gods of Ancient Greece are subject to the laws of nature and fate.
Zeus, the main god in the myths of Ancient Greece, is the collector of clouds, sitting on a throne in the heights of the ether, shaking with his lightning shield, Aegis (thundercloud), life-giving and fertilizing the earth, and at the same time the establisher and guardian of legal order. Under his protection are all rights, and especially family rights and the custom of hospitality. He commands rulers to be concerned about the welfare of the governed. He gives prosperity to kings and peoples, cities and families; he is also justice. He is the source of everything good and noble. He is the father of the goddesses of the clock (Or), personifying the correct course of the annual changes of nature and the correct order of human life; he is the father of the Muses, who give joy to the human heart.
His wife, Hera, in the myths of Ancient Greece is a grumpy goddess of the atmosphere, who has as her servants the rainbow (Iris) and clouds ( Greek name clouds, nephele, word female), at the same time the establisher of the sacred marriage union, in honor of which the Greeks performed solemn ceremonies at the festival of spring abundant with flowers. The goddess Hera is a strict guardian of the sanctity of the marriage union and under her protection is a housewife faithful to her husband; She blesses marriages with children and protects children. Hera relieves women of the suffering of childbirth; She is assisted in this care by her daughter Eileithyia.
Pallas Athena
Pallas Athena
The virgin goddess Pallas Athena, according to the myths of Ancient Greece, was born from the head of Zeus. Initially, she was considered the goddess of the clear sky, who disperses dark clouds with her spear, and the personification of victorious energy in any struggle. Athena was always depicted with a shield, sword and spear. Her constant companion was the winged goddess of victory (Nike). Among the Greeks, Athena was the guardian of cities and fortresses, and she also gave people correct, fair social and state orders. The image of the goddess Athena personified wise balance, a calm, insightful mind, necessary for the creators of works of mental activity and art.
Statue of Virgin Athena in the Parthenon. Sculptor Phidias
In Ancient Greece, Pallas was most revered by the Athenians, the inhabitants of the city named after this goddess. The public life of Athens was imbued with service to Pallas. A huge statue of Athena by Phidias stood in the magnificent temple of the Athenian Acropolis - the Parthenon. Athena was associated with the famous ancient Greek city by many myths. The most famous of them was the myth about the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica. The goddess Athena won it by giving the region the basis of its agriculture - the olive tree. Ancient Athens celebrated many festivals in honor of its beloved goddess. The main ones were the two Panathenaic holidays - Great and Small. Both of them, according to the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, were founded by one of the most ancient ancestors of Athens - Erechtheus. The Lesser Panathenaea was celebrated annually, and the Great Panathenaea once every four years. On the great Panathenaea, all the inhabitants of Attica gathered in Athens and organized a magnificent procession, during which a new mantle (peplos) was carried to the Acropolis for the ancient statue of the goddess Pallas. The procession marched from Keramik, along the main streets, which were crowded with people in white clothes.
God Hephaestus in Greek myths
Hephaestus, the god of heavenly and earthly fire, was close in importance to Pallas Athena, the goddess of the arts, in ancient Greek myths. The activity of Hephaestus was most strongly manifested by volcanoes on the islands, especially on Lemnos and Sicily; but in the application of fire to the affairs of human life, Hephaestus helped a lot in the development of culture. Prometheus, who brought fire to people and taught them the arts of life, is also closely related to the concept of Athena. The Attic festival of running with torches was dedicated to these three gods - a competition in which the winner was the one who would be the first to reach the goal with a burning torch. Pallas Athena was the inventor of those arts that women practiced; The lame Hephaestus, about whom poets often joked, was the founder of the art of blacksmithing and a master in metal work. Like Athena, he was the god of the hearth and hearth in Ancient Greece. family life, therefore, under the auspices of Hephaestus and Athena, it was performed in Athens wonderful holiday“state family”, the Anaturiya holiday, on which newborn children were surrounded by the steeple of the hearth, and this ritual consecrated their acceptance into the family union of the state.
God Vulcan (Hephaestus). Statue by Thorvaldsen, 1838
Hestia
The importance of the hearth as the center of family life and the beneficial influence of a strong home life on the moral and social life were personified in the myths of Ancient Greece by the maiden goddess Hestia, a representative of the concepts of settled life and a comfortable home life, the symbol of which was the sacred fire of the hearth. Initially, Hestia was in ancient Greek myths about the gods the personification of the earth, above which the ethereal fire of the sky burns; but later it became a symbol of civil improvement, which gains strength on earth only through the union of earth with heaven, as a divine institution. Therefore, in every Greek home, the hearth was the religious center of the family. Whoever approached the hearth and sat on its ashes acquired the right to protection. Each clan union of Ancient Greece had a common sanctuary of Hestia, in which symbolic rites were reverently performed. In ancient times, when there were kings and when the king made sacrifices as a representative of the people, resolved litigation, gathered noble people and ancestors for council, the hearth of the royal house was a symbol of the state connection of the people; Afterwards, the prytanium, the religious center of the state, had the same significance. An unquenchable fire burned on the state hearth of the prytaneum, and the prytanes, the elected rulers of the people, had to take turns staying constantly at this hearth. The hearth was the connection between earth and heaven; therefore Hestia was also the goddess of sacrifice in Ancient Greece. Each solemn sacrifice began with a sacrifice to her. And all public prayers of the Greeks began with an appeal to Hestia.
Myths about the god Apollo
For more details, see the separate article God Apollo
The god of shining light, Apollo, was the son of Zeus from Latona (who was the personification of the dark night in ancient Greek myths). His cult was brought to Ancient Greece from Asia Minor, where the local god Apelun existed. According to Greek myths, Apollo spends the winter in the distant land of the Hyperboreans, and in the spring he returns to Hellas, pouring life into nature and joy and the desire to sing into man. Apollo was therefore recognized as the god of singing - and in general of that inspiring force that gives rise to art. Thanks to its revitalizing qualities, the cult of this god was also associated with the idea of healing and protection from evil. With his well-aimed arrows (the sun's rays) Apollo destroys all defilement. This idea was symbolically expressed by the ancient Greek myth of the murder of Apollo. terrible snake Python. The skillful shooter Apollo was considered the brother of the goddess of hunting Artemis, together with whom he killed the sons of an overly proud woman with arrows. Niobe.
The ancient Greeks considered poetry and music to be the gift of Apollo. Poems and songs were always performed at his holidays. According to legend, having defeated the monster of darkness, Python, Apollo composed the first paean (victory hymn). As the god of music, he was often depicted with a cithara in his hands. Since poetic inspiration is akin to prophetic inspiration, in the myths of Ancient Greece Apollo was also recognized as the supreme patron of soothsayers, who gives them the prophetic gift. Almost all Greek oracles (including the main one, the Delphic one) were founded in the sanctuaries of Apollo.
Apollo Saurocton (killing the lizard). Roman copy of a 4th century statue of Praxiteles. BC
The god of music, poetry, and singing, Apollo, was in the myths of Ancient Greece the ruler of the goddesses of the arts - muses, nine daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory Mnemosyne. The groves of Parnassus and Helicon, located in the vicinity of Delphi, were considered the main abode of the muses. As the ruler of the muses, Apollo had the epithet "Muzageta". Clio was the muse of history, Calliope - epic poetry, Melpomene - tragedy, Thalia - comedy, Erato - love poetry, Euterpe - lyric poetry, Terpsichore - dancing, Polyhymnia - hymns, Urania - astronomy.
The sacred plant of Apollo was the laurel.
The god of light, purity and healing, Apollo in the myths of Ancient Greece not only heals people from ailments, but also cleanses them from sins. From this side, his cult is even more closely in touch with moral ideas. Even after defeating the evil monster Python, Apollo considered it necessary to cleanse himself of the filth of murder and, to atone for him, went to serve as a shepherd for the Thessalian king Admetus. By this, he gave people an example that those who committed bloodshed must always repent, and became the purifier god of murderers and criminals. In Greek myths, Apollo healed not only the body, but also the soul. Repentant sinners found forgiveness from him, but only with sincerity of repentance. According to ancient Greek customs, the murderer was supposed to earn forgiveness from the relatives of the murdered person, who had the right to take revenge on him, and spend eight years in exile.
Apollo was the chief tribal god of the Dorians, who celebrated two great festivals in his honor every year: Carneia and Iakinthia. The Carnean festival was celebrated in honor of Apollo the warrior, in the month of Carnea (August). During this holiday, war games, singing and dancing competitions were held. Hyacinthia, celebrated in July (nine days), was accompanied by sad rites in memory of the death of the beautiful young man Jacinthus (Hyacinth), the personification of flowers. According to the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, Apollo accidentally killed this favorite of his while throwing a discus (a symbol of how the disc of the sun kills flowers with its heat). But Hyacinth was resurrected and taken to Olympus - and at the festival of Hyacinthius, after the sad rites, cheerful processions of young men and girls with flowers took place. The death and resurrection of Jacinthos personified the winter death and spring rebirth of plants. This episode of ancient Greek myth appears to have developed under strong Phoenician influence.
Myths about the goddess Artemis
Apollo's sister, Artemis, the virgin goddess of the moon, walked through the mountains and forests, hunting; bathed with the nymphs, her companions, in cool streams; was the patroness of wild animals; at night she watered the thirsty earth with life-giving dew. But at the same time, in the myths of Ancient Greece, Artemis was also a goddess who destroyed sailors, so in ancient times in Greece, people were sacrificed to her to appease her. With the development of civilization, Artemis became the goddess of virginal purity, the patroness of brides and girls. When they got married, they brought gifts to her. Artemis of Ephesus was the goddess of fertility, who gave harvests to the earth and children to women; in the idea of it, the myths of Ancient Greece were probably joined by eastern concepts. Artemis was depicted as having many breasts on her chest; this meant that she was a generous nurse of people. At the magnificent temple of Artemis there were many hierodulae and many attendants, dressed in men's clothing and armed; therefore, in ancient Greek myths it was believed that this temple was founded by the Amazons.
Artemis. Statue in the Louvre
The original physical meaning of Apollo and Artemis in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods was increasingly obscured by a moral one. Therefore, Greek mythology created a special sun god, Helios, and a special moon goddess, Selene. – A special god, the son of Apollo, Asclepius, was also made a representative of the healing power of Apollo.
Ares and Aphrodite
Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera, was originally a symbol of the stormy sky, and his homeland was Thrace, the country of winter storms. U ancient Greek poets he became the god of war. Ares is always armed; he loves the noise of battle. Ares is furious. But he was also the founder of the sacred Athenian tribunal, which tried cases of murder, which had its meetings on a hill dedicated to Ares, the Areopagus, and was called by the name of this hill, also the Areopagus. Both as the god of storms and as the furious god of battles, he is the opposite of Pallas Athena, the goddess of clear skies and judicious conduct of battles. Therefore, in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, Pallas and Ares are hostile to each other.
In the concepts of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, a moral element was also added to the physical nature of love in ancient Greek myths over time. The cult of Aphrodite passed to Ancient Greece from the colonies founded by the Phoenicians on Cyprus, Kythera, Thasos and other islands. In the myths of the Phoenicians, the concept of the perceiving and giving birth element of the forces of nature was personified by two goddesses, Asherah and Astarte, whose ideas were often mixed. Aphrodite was Asherah and Astarte. In the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, she corresponded to Asherah, when she was a goddess who loved gardens and flowers, living in groves, the goddess of joyful spring and voluptuousness, enjoying the love of the beautiful young man Adonis in the forest on the mountain. She corresponded to Astarte when she was revered as the “goddess of the heights”, like the stern, spear-wielding Aphrodite Urania (heavenly) or Aphrodite of Acreia, whose places of worship were the tops of mountains, who imposed on her priestesses a vow of eternal maidenhood, guarded the chastity of conjugal love and family morality . But the ancient Greeks knew how to combine these opposing ideas and, from their combination, created in myth a wondrous image of a graceful, charming, physically beautiful and morally sweet goddess, delighting the heart with the beauty of her forms, arousing tender affection. This mythological combination of physical feeling with moral attachment, giving sensual love its natural right, protected people from the gross vulgarity of eastern unbridled voluptuousness. Ideal female beauty and gracefulness, the sweetly smiling Aphrodite of ancient Greek myths and the goddesses of the east, burdened with heavy and precious attire, are completely different creatures. The difference between them is the same as between the joyful service to the goddess of love in the best times of Ancient Greece and the noisy Syrian orgies, at which the goddess, surrounded by eunuchs, was served with unbridled revelry of coarse sensuality. True, in later times, with the depravity of morals, vulgar sensuality penetrated into the Greek service to the goddess of love. Aphrodite of Heaven (Urania), goddess honest love, the patroness of family life, was pushed aside in the myths about the gods by Aphrodite of the People (Pandemos), the goddess of voluptuousness, whose holidays are big cities turned into a riot of vulgar sensuality.
Aphrodite and her son Eros (Eros), transformed by poets and artists into the oldest among the theogonic gods, into the youngest of the Olympian gods, and who became a young man accompanying his mother, later even a child, were favorite objects of ancient Greek art. The sculpture usually depicted Aphrodite naked, emerging from the waves of the sea; she was given all the charm of a beauty whose soul is full of feelings of love. Eros was depicted as a boy with soft, rounded body contours.
Myths about the god Hermes
With the development of culture in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, the Pelasgian god of nature Hermes, to whom Arcadian shepherds made sacrifices on Mount Cyllene, also acquired moral significance; he was among them the personification of the power of the sky, which gives grass to their pastures, and the father of their ancestor, Arcas. According to their myths, Hermes, while still a baby, wrapped in a cradle linen (in the fog of dawn), stole the flocks (light clouds) of the sun god, Apollo, and hid them in a damp cave near the seashore; stretching the strings on the shell of a turtle, he made a lyre and, giving it to Apollo, acquired the friendship of this more powerful god. Hermes also invented the shepherd's pipe, with which he walks through the mountains of his homeland. Subsequently, Hermes became the guardian of roads, crossroads and travelers, the keeper of streets and boundaries. On the latter, stones were placed, which were symbols of Hermes, and his images, which gave the boundaries of the plots holiness and strength.
God Hermes. Sculpture of Phidias (?)
Herms (that is, symbols of Hermes) were originally just heaps of stones piled on boundaries, near roads and especially at crossroads; these were boundary and waymarks considered sacred. Passers-by threw stones back where they had been placed before. Sometimes oil was poured on these heaps of stones dedicated to the god Hermes, as on primitive altars; they were decorated with flowers, wreaths, and ribbons. Subsequently, the Greeks placed triangular or tetrahedral stone pillars as waymarks and boundary markers; over time, they began to give them more skillful decoration; they usually made a pillar with a head, sometimes with a phallus, a symbol of fertility. Such herms stood along the roads, streets, squares, at gates, at doors; They were also placed in palaestras and gymnasiums, because Hermes was the patron of gymnastic exercises in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods.
From the concept of the god of rain penetrating the earth, the idea of mediation between heaven, earth and the underworld developed, and Hermes became in the myths of Ancient Greece the god who escorts the souls of the dead to the underworld (Hermes Psychopompos). Thus, he was placed in close connection with the gods living in the earth (chthonic gods). These ideas came from the concept of the connection between the emergence and death of plants in the cycle of life of nature and from the concept of Hermes as the messenger of the gods; they served as the source of many ancient Greek myths, which placed Hermes in very diverse relationships to the everyday affairs of people. The original myth already made him a cunning man: he cleverly stole Apollo’s cows and managed to make peace with this god; Hermes knew how to get out of difficult situations with clever inventions. This trait remained an invariable feature of the character of the god Hermes in later ancient Greek myths about him: he was the personification of everyday dexterity, the patron of all activities in which success is given by the ability to speak deftly and the ability to remain silent, hide the truth, pretend, and deceive. In particular, Hermes was the patron god of trade, oratory, embassies and diplomatic affairs in general. With the development of civilization, the concepts of these activities became predominant in the concept of Hermes, and his original pastoral meaning was transferred to one of the minor gods, Pan, "god of the pastures", just as the physical meaning of Apollo and Artemis was transferred to the less important gods, Helios and Selene.
God Pan
Pan was in ancient Greek myth the god of goat herds who grazed the wooded mountains of Arcadia; there he was born. His father was Hermes, his mother was the daughter of Dryope (“forest god”). Pan walks through shady valleys, caves serve as shelter for him; he has fun with the nymphs of the forest and mountain springs, dancing to the sounds of his shepherd's pipe (syringa, syrinx), an instrument that he himself invented; sometimes he himself dances with the nymphs. Pan is sometimes kind to the shepherds and becomes friendly with us; but sometimes he causes trouble for them, raising a sudden fear in the herd (“panic” fear), so that the whole herd scatters. God Pan forever remained in Ancient Greece as a merry fellow of shepherd's holidays, a master of playing the reed pipe, funny for the townspeople; Later art characterized Pan's closeness to nature, giving his figure goat legs, or even horns and other animal features.
God Pan and Daphnis, hero of an ancient Greek novel. Antique statue
Poseidon in the myths of Ancient Greece
For more details, see the separate article God Poseidon
The gods of the sea and flowing waters and the gods living underground, more than the deities of the sky and air, retained the original meaning of the personified forces of nature: but they also received human traits. Poseidon - in the myths of Ancient Greece, the divine power of all waters, the god of the sea and all rivers, streams, springs that fertilize the earth. Therefore, he was the main god on the seaside and on the capes. Poseidon is strong, broad-shouldered, and has an indomitable character. When he strikes the sea with his trident, a storm arises, the waves crash against the rocks of the shores so that the earth trembles, the cliffs crack and collapse. But Poseidon is also a good god: he produces springs from the cracks of the rocks to fertilize the valleys; he created and tamed the horse; he is the patron of horse races and all war games, the patron of all daring journeys, whether on horseback, in chariots, by land, or by sea in ships. In ancient Greek myths, Poseidon is a mighty builder who established the earth and its islands, and laid strong boundaries for the sea. He raises storms, but he also gives favorable winds; at his command, the sea swallows ships; but he also guides the ships into the pier. Poseidon – patron of navigation; he protects maritime trade and controls the course of naval warfare.
The god of ships and horses, Poseidon played, according to the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, an important role in all campaigns and sea expeditions of the heroic age. The birthplace of his cult was Thessaly, the country of the Neptunian formation, horse herds and navigation; then his service spread to Boeotia, Attica, and throughout the Peloponnese, and his holidays early began to be accompanied by war games. The most famous of these games in honor of the god Poseidon took place in the Boeotian city of Onchest and on Isthmus. In Onkhest, his sanctuaries and their grove stood picturesquely on a beautiful and fertile hill above Lake Kopai. The location of the Isthmian Games was a hill near Schoinos, "Reeds", a lowland overgrown with reeds, shaded by a pine grove. Symbolic rituals were introduced into the worship of Poseidon on Isthmus, borrowed from the legend of the death of Melicert, that is, from the Phoenician service to Melqart. – The wind-fast horses of the heroic age were created by the god Poseidon; in particular, Pegasus was created by him. – Poseidon’s wife, Amphitrite, was the personification of the roaring sea.
Like Zeus, Poseidon had many love affairs in the myths of ancient Greece about the gods, many sea gods and goddesses, and many heroes were his children. Tritons, the number of which was countless, belonged to Poseidon's retinue. These were cheerful creatures of various forms, personifications of noisy, ringing, sliding waves and mysterious forces of the depths of the sea, fantastically transformed sea animals. They played on trumpets made from shells, frolicked, and trailed the Nereids. They were one of my favorite objects of art. Proteus, the sea god, prophet of the future, who, according to ancient Greek myths, had the ability to take all sorts of forms, also belonged to Poseidon’s large retinue. When the Greek sailors began to sail far away, then, returning, they amazed their people with myths about the wonders of the western sea: about the sirens, beautiful sea maidens who live there on underwater islands under the bright surface of the waters and with seductive singing insidiously lure sailors to destruction, about the good Glaucus , the sea god who predicts the future, about the terrible monsters Scylla and Charybdis (personifications of a dangerous rock and whirlpool), about the wicked Cyclops, one-eyed giants, the sons of Poseidon, living on the island of Trinacria, where Mount Etna is, about the beautiful Galatea, about a rocky, walled island , where the god of the winds Aeolus lives cheerfully in a magnificent palace with his airy sons and daughters.
Underground gods – Hades, Persephone
The greatest similarity with eastern religions in the myths of Ancient Greece was the worship of those gods of nature who acted both in the bowels of the earth and on its surface. Human life is in such close connection with the development and withering of vegetation, with the growth and ripening of bread and grapes, that worship, folk beliefs, art, religious theories and myths about the gods connected their most profound ideas with the mysterious activities of the gods of the earth. The circle of phenomena of plant life was a symbol of human life: luxurious vegetation quickly fades from the heat of the sun or from the cold; It dies with the onset of winter and is reborn in the spring from the ground in which its seeds hid in the fall. It was easy to draw a parallel to ancient Greek mythology: so a person, after a short life under the joyful light of the sun, descends into the dark underground kingdom, where instead of the radiant Apollo and the bright Pallas Athena, the gloomy, stern Hades (Hades, Aidoneus) and the stern beauty, his wife, reign in a magnificent palace , the formidable Persephone. Thoughts about how close birth and death are to each other, about the fact that the earth is both the mother’s womb and the coffin, served in the myths of Ancient Greece as the basis for the cult of the underground gods and gave it a dual character: there was a joyful side and a sad side. And in Hellas, as in the East, service to the gods of the earth was exalted; its rituals consisted of expressing feelings of joy and sadness, and those performing them had to endlessly indulge in the action of the emotional disturbances they caused. But in the East, this exaltation led to the perversion of natural feelings, to the fact that people mutilated themselves; and in Ancient Greece, the cult of the gods of the earth developed the arts, stimulated reflection on religious issues, and led people to acquire sublime ideas about divinity. The festivals of the gods of the earth, especially Dionysus, greatly contributed to the development of poetry, music, and dance; plastic artist loved to take objects for her works from the circle of ancient Greek myths about cheerful fantastic creatures accompanying Pan and Dionysus. And the Eleusinian mysteries, the teachings of which spread throughout the Greek world, gave profound interpretations to the myths about the “earth-mother,” the goddess Demeter, about the abduction of her daughter (Kore) Persephone by the harsh ruler of the underworld, about the fact that Persephone’s life goes on on earth, then underground. These teachings inspired people that death is not terrible, that the soul survives the body. The forces ruling in the bowels of the earth aroused reverent caution in the ancient Greeks; it was impossible to speak about these forces without fear; thoughts about them were conveyed in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods under the guise of symbols; they were not expressed directly, they had only to be unraveled under allegories. Mysterious teachings surrounded these formidable gods with solemn mystery, in the secrecy of darkness creating life and perceiving the dead, ruling the earthly and afterlife of man.
Persephone's gloomy husband, Hades (Hades), “Zeus of the underworld,” rules in the depths of the earth; there are sources of wealth and fertility; therefore he is also called Pluto, the “enricher.” But there are all the horrors of death. According to ancient Greek myths, wide gates lead to the vast dwelling of the king of the dead, Hades. Everyone can enter them freely; their guardian, the three-headed dog Cerberus, kindly lets those entering through, but does not allow them to return back. Weeping willows and barren poplars surround the vast palace of Hades. The shadows of the dead hover over gloomy fields overgrown with weeds, or nest in the crevices of underground rocks. Some of the heroes of Ancient Greece (Hercules, Theseus) went to the underground kingdom of Hades. According to various myths, the entrance to it was different countries, but always in wild areas, where rivers flow through deep gorges, the water of which seems dark, where caves, hot springs and vapors show the proximity of the kingdom of the dead. Thus, for example, there was an entrance to the underworld at the Thesprotian Gulf in southern Epirus, where the Acheron River and Lake Acheruz infected their surroundings with miasma; at Cape Tenar; in Italy, in a volcanic area near the city of Qom. In the same areas there were those oracles whose answers were given by the souls of the dead.
Ancient Greek myths and poetry spoke a lot about the kingdom of the dead. Fantasy sought to give curiosity accurate information that science did not provide, to penetrate the darkness surrounding the afterlife, and inexhaustibly created new images belonging to the underworld.
The two main rivers of the underworld, according to Greek myths, are the Styx and Acheron, “the dully roaring river of eternal sorrow.” In addition to them, there were three more rivers in the kingdom of the dead: Lethe, whose water destroyed the memory of the past, Pyriphlegethon (“Fire River”) and Cocytus (“Sobbing”). The souls of the dead were taken to the underworld of Hades by Hermes. Stern old man Charon transported in his boat through the Styx, which surrounded the earthly kingdom, those souls whose bodies were buried with an obol placed in the coffin to pay him for the transportation. The souls of unburied people had to wander homeless along the river bank, not accepted into Charon’s boat. Therefore, whoever found an unburied body was obliged to cover it with earth.
The ideas of the ancient Greeks about the life of the dead in the kingdom of Hades changed with the development of civilization. In the oldest myths, the dead are ghosts without consciousness, but these ghosts instinctively do the same things they did when they were alive; – these are the shadows of living people. Their existence in the kingdom of Hades was dreary and sad. The shadow of Achilles tells Odysseus that she would rather live on earth as a day laborer for a poor man than to be the king of the dead in the underworld. But making sacrifices to the dead improved their miserable fate. The improvement consisted either in the fact that the severity of the underground gods was softened by these sacrifices, or in the fact that the shadows of the dead drank the blood of the sacrifices, and this drinking restored them to consciousness. The Greeks offered sacrifices to the dead at their tombs. Facing the west, they slaughtered the sacrificial animal over a deep hole deliberately dug in the ground, and the blood of the animal flowed into this hole. Later, when ideas about the afterlife were more fully developed in the Eleusinian mysteries, the myths of Ancient Greece began to divide the underground kingdom of Hades into two parts, Tartarus and Elysium. In Tartarus, the villains, condemned by the judges of the dead, led a miserable existence; they were tormented by Erinyes, strict guardians moral laws, inexorably taking revenge for any violation of the requirements of moral sense, and countless evil spirits, in the invention of which Greek fantasy showed the same inexhaustibility as Egyptian, Indian and medieval European. Elysium, which, according to ancient Greek myths, lay near the ocean (or an archipelago on the ocean called the Isles of the Blessed) was the region of the afterlife of heroes of ancient times and the righteous. There the wind is always soft, there is no snow, no heat, no rain; there, in the myths about the gods, the good Cronus reigns; the earth gives harvest there three times a year, the meadows there bloom forever. Heroes and the righteous lead a blissful life there; on their heads there are wreaths, near their hands there are garlands of the most beautiful flowers and branches of beautiful trees; they enjoy singing, horse riding, and gymnastic games.
The most just and wise kings-legislators of the mythical Cretan-Carian time live there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and the pious ancestor of the Aeacides, Aeacus, who, according to later myth, became judges of the dead. Under the chairmanship of Hades and Persephone, they examined the feelings and affairs of people and decided, based on the merits of the deceased person, whether his soul should go to Tartarus or Elysium. – Just as they and other pious heroes of ancient Greek myths were rewarded for their beneficial activities on earth by continuing their activities in the afterlife, so the great lawless people of mythical stories were subjected by divine justice to punishments in accordance with their crimes. Myths about their fate in the underworld showed the Greeks what bad inclinations and passions lead to; this fate was only a continuation, a development of the deeds they had committed in life and which gave rise to the torment of their conscience, the symbols of which were pictures of their material torment. Thus, the daring Tityus, who wanted to rape the mother of Apollo and Artemis, lies thrown to the ground; two kites constantly torment his liver, an organ that, according to the Greeks, was the seat of sensual passions (an obvious alteration of the myth of Prometheus). The punishment for another mythical hero, Tantalus, for his former lawlessness was that the cliff hanging over his head constantly threatened to crush him, and besides this fear he was tormented by thirst and hunger: he stood in the water, but when he bent down to drink, the water moved away from his lips and dropped “to the black bottom”; fruits hung before his eyes; but when he stretched out his hands to pluck them, the wind lifted the branches upward. Sisyphus, the treacherous king of Ephyra (Corinth), was condemned to roll a stone up a mountain, which constantly rolled down; - the personification of the waves constantly running onto the shores of the Isthmus and running off them. The eternal futile labor of Sisyphus symbolized unsuccessful cunning in ancient Greek myths, and the cunning of Sisyphus was the mythical personification of the quality developed in merchants and sailors by the riskiness of their affairs. Ixion, king of the Lapiths, “the first murderer,” was tied to a fiery, ever-turning wheel; this was his punishment for the fact that, while visiting Zeus, he violated the rights of hospitality and wanted to rape the chaste Hera. – The Danaids always carried water and poured it into a bottomless barrel.
Myths, poetry, and art of Ancient Greece taught people goodness, turned them away from vices and evil passions, depicting the bliss of the righteous and the torment of the wicked in the afterlife. There were episodes in myths that showed that, having descended into the underworld, one can return from there to earth. So, for example, it was said about Hercules that he defeated the forces of the underworld; Orpheus, by the power of his singing and his love for his wife, softened the harsh gods of death, and they agreed to return Eurydice to him. In the Eleusinian mysteries, these legends served as symbols of the idea that the power of death should not be considered insurmountable. Ideas about the underworld of Hades received an interpretation in new myths and sacraments that reduced the fear of death; the gratifying hope of bliss in the afterlife was manifested in Ancient Greece under the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries, and in works of art.
In the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods, Hades little by little became the good ruler of the kingdom of the dead and the giver of wealth; the attributes of horror were eliminated from ideas about it. The genius of death in the most ancient works of art was depicted as a dark-colored boy with crooked legs, symbolically denoting the idea that life is broken by death. Little by little, in ancient Greek myths, he took on the appearance of a beautiful young man with a bowed head, holding in his hand an overturned and extinguished torch, and became completely similar to his meek brother, the Genius of Sleep. They both live with their mother, Night, in the west. From there, every evening, a winged dream flies in and, sweeping over people, showers calm on them from a horn or from a poppy stalk; he is accompanied by the geniuses of dreams - Morpheus, Phantasm, bringing joy to the sleeping. Even the Erinyes lost their mercilessness in ancient Greek myths and became the Eumenides, “Well-wishers.” So, with the development of civilization, all the ideas of the ancient Greeks about the underground kingdom of Hades softened, ceased to be terrible, and its gods became beneficial, life-giving.
The goddess Gaia, who was the personification of the general concept of the earth, generating everything and taking everything back into itself, did not appear in the foreground in the myths of Ancient Greece. Only in some of the sanctuaries that had oracles, and in the theogonic systems that outlined the history of the development of the cosmos, was mention of her as the mother of the gods. Even the ancient Greek oracles, which originally all belonged to her, almost all passed under the authority of the new gods. The life of nature developing on earth was produced from the activity of the deities who ruled its various regions; service to these gods, who had a more or less special character, is in very close connection with the development of Greek culture. The power of vegetation, producing forests and green meadows, vines and bread, was explained even in Pelasgian times by the activity of Dionysus and Demeter. Later, when the influence of the East penetrated into Ancient Greece, these two gods were joined by a third, borrowed from Asia Minor, the earth goddess Rhea Cybele.
Demeter in the myths of Ancient Greece
Demeter, “earth-mother,” was in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods the personification of that power of nature, which, with the assistance of sunlight, dew and rain, gives growth and ripening to bread and other fruits of the fields. She was a “blond” goddess, under whose protection people plow, sow, reap, knit bread into sheaves, and thresh. Demeter gives harvests. She sent Triptolemus to walk all over the earth and teach people arable farming and good morals. Demeter married Jasion, the sower, and gave birth to Plutos (wealth); she punished the wicked Erysichthon, who “spoils the earth,” with insatiable hunger. But in the myths of Ancient Greece she is also a goddess married life giving children. The goddess who taught people agriculture and proper family life, Demeter was the founder of civilization, morality, and family virtues. Therefore, Demeter was the “giver of laws” (Thesmophoros), and the five-day festival of Thesmophoria, “laws,” was celebrated in her honor. The rituals of this holiday, performed by married women, were a symbolic glorification of agriculture and marriage. Demeter was the main goddess of the Eleusinian festival, the rites of which had as their main content the symbolic glorification of the gifts people received from the gods of the earth. The Amphictyon League, which met at Thermopylae, was also under the patronage of Demeter, the goddess of civil improvement.
But the highest significance of the cult of the goddess Demeter was that it contained the doctrine of the relationship between life and death, the bright celestial world and dark kingdom bowels of the earth. The symbolic expression of this teaching was the beautiful myth of the abduction of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, by the ruthless ruler of the underworld. Demeter "The Sorrowful" (Achaia) walked all over the earth, looking for her daughter; and in many cities the festival of Demeter the Sorrowful was celebrated, the sad rites of which bore a resemblance to the Phoenician cult of Adonis. The human heart longs for clarification of the question of death; The Eleusinian mysteries were an attempt by the ancient Greeks to solve this riddle; they were not a philosophical exposition of concepts; they acted on feelings with aesthetic means, consoled, aroused hope. Attic poets said that blessed are those dying who are initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter: they know the purpose of life and its divine beginning; For them, the descent into the underworld is life, for the uninitiated it is horror. Demeter's daughter, Persephone, was in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods the connection between the kingdom of the living and the underworld; she belonged to both.
Myths about the god Dionysus
For more details, see the separate article God Dionysus
Dionysus in the myths of Ancient Greece about the gods originally personified the abundance of plant power. It was clearly manifested in the form of bunches of grapes, whose juice intoxicated people. Vine and wine became symbols of Dionysus, and he himself became the god of joy and fraternal rapprochement of people. Dionysus is a powerful god who overcomes everything hostile to him. Like Apollo, he gives inspiration, excites a person to sing, but not harmonious, but wild and violent songs, reaching the point of exaltation - those that later formed the basis of ancient Greek drama. In the myths of Ancient Greece about Dionysus and in the holiday of Dionysius, various and even opposite feelings were expressed: the joy of that time of year when everything blooms, and sadness when the vegetation withers. Joyful and sad feelings then began to be expressed separately - in comedies and tragedies that arose from the cult of Dionysus. In ancient Greek myths, the symbol of the generative force of nature - the phallus - was closely related to the veneration of Dionysus. Initially, Dionysus was a rude god of the common people. But in the era of tyranny its importance increased. The tyrants, who most often acted as leaders of the lower classes in the struggle against the nobility, deliberately contrasted the plebeian Dionysus with the refined gods of the aristocracy and gave the festivities in his honor a broad, national character.
Myth translated from Greek means - word,conversation,legend,news etc.
IN myths reality has always been depicted in a fantastic or fairy-tale form. During the first civilizations, mythology combined philosophy,history,ethics And poetry.There are still many catchphrases in society that came from myths : Achilles' heel,flour Tantalus,Sisyphean labor etc. Yes myths about creation Mira, and there is about the life of the gods. The creation of the world in myths is described as follows: first there was a primary Chaos- a boundless abyss.. From it arose Dark And Light,Day And Night,Sky (Uranus) And Earth (Gaia), as well as the underground kingdom - Tartarus.Uranus With Gay got married and Gaia began to give birth to children. First, hundred-armed monsters with 50 heads were born. Uranus got angry and threw them into the bowels of the earth. Then one-eyed cyclops - giants - began to be born, Uranus got rid of them too.
Then came titans.We know the following: Ocean- lord of the seas, children of titan Iapetus: Atlant- titanium, holding the firmament and Prometheus - titanium who gave people fire, Mnemosyne - memory, Themis- justice ,Kronos- all-consuming time. Afraid of losing power, Uranus decided to destroy them. Gaia persuaded the titans to rebel against her father. Kronos won Uranus and began to rule Peace.Here, myths say, the golden age began.
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| Prometheus |
But history repeats itself, now Kronos afraid that his children will take power away from him. Just like Uranus,Kronos decides to get rid of his children, he swallows Hestia,Demeter,Geru,Pluto,Poseidon and others. And philosophically it sounds like this: Time consumes everything born. Wife Kronos,Rhea, saves the last son - Zeus.She runs to the island Crete and gives birth there Zeus,and when Zeus He grew up and defeated his father and forced him to return everyone he had consumed.
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| ZEUS statue |
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| Hera statue |
And the era of the Olympic gods began. The gods live on the mountain Olympus, own the whole world. The most powerful of them are twelve: Zeus -lord of gods and men,his wife Hera- protecting the marriage, his daughter Athena- goddesswisdom, crafts and science,Brother Zeus,Poseidon- god of the seas, Hades(or Pluto) - god of the kingdom of the dead, Aphrodite- goddess of beauty and love, Ares- god of War, Gefes- god is a blacksmith, Apollo- patron god of the arts, Demeter- goddess of agriculture, Hermes- patron of livestock farming, Artemis- goddess of the hunt, they are all relatives.
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| Poseidon statue |
The gods appear before us in the form of beautiful people, but sometimes they can turn into animals. We see this in the example of how Zeus turned into white bull and took the princess away Europe to the island Crete.Also, gods can turn into fire, rain, clouds, etc. Sometimes gods are identified.
So the sun god Helios identified with Apollo, A Artemis- With Selena- goddess of the moon. Gods often combine opposites: good and evil, life and death. Pluto- god of the kingdom of the dead and god of wealth. Apollo - God sun and resurrects and kills (his arrows bring death). The rays of the sun bring both life and death. In myths Earth- a huge cemetery and the mother of all living things. Sometimes gods can perform the same functions: Artemis- the goddess of the hunt helps women during childbirth and does the same Hera- wife Zeus, the messenger of the gods is Hermes, and the messenger - Iris.On Olympus there were also gods - strangers, for example Dionysus- patron of viticulture and winemaking from Thrace.Myths say that the gods take care of the cities that they themselves founded. The gods patronized certain geographical places. According to legend, during the reign of the king Laomedon gods Poseidon And Apollo built an indestructible wall around Troy. Myths say that the goddess Hera was the patroness Mycenae And Argos, and later became the patroness Samosa. Aphrodite bala patroness of the island Cyprus and her middle name Cypris By the way, near this island she once appeared from the sea foam. Athena has always been considered the patroness of the city Athens. Zeus patronized his native Krita And Thessaly. Apollo And Artemis were born in Delos and therefore were his patrons.Cult Artemis originated in Asia Minor, and its main temple was located in Ephesus.
In the very heart Greece, on the sacred Olympic soil, stood the fourth wonder of the world.
The creator of this masterpiece was Phidias- great sculptor Ancient Greece.Father Zeus was in heaven Cron, and on the ground Olympia -Phidias.Phidias created a magnificent statue Zeus in the temple Zeus. At the end of the 4th century AD. e. pious emperor Theodosius ordered the removal of this "pagan idol" from Olympia V Constantinople,Where statueZeus Olympian disappeared without a trace.Myths ancient Greece a lot, I will introduce you to them in the following articles.
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Part one. Gods and heroes
Myths about the gods and their struggle with giants and titans are presented mainly based on Hesiod’s poem “Theogony” (The Origin of the Gods). Some legends are also borrowed from Homer’s poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and the poem “Metamorphoses” (Transformations) by the Roman poet Ovid.
In the beginning there was only eternal, boundless, dark Chaos. It contained the source of life in the world. Everything arose from boundless Chaos - the whole world and the immortal gods. The goddess Earth, Gaia, also came from Chaos. It spreads wide, powerful, giving life to everything that lives and grows on it. Far under the Earth, as far as the vast, bright sky is far from us, in immeasurable depths, the gloomy Tartarus was born - a terrible abyss full of eternal darkness. From Chaos, the source of life, was born the mighty force that animates everything, Love - Eros. The world began to be created. Boundless Chaos gave birth to the Eternal Darkness - Erebus and the dark Night - Nyukta. And from Night and Darkness came the eternal Light - Ether and the joyful bright Day - Hemera. The light spread throughout the world, and night and day began to replace each other.
The mighty, fertile Earth gave birth to the boundless blue Sky - Uranus, and the Sky spread over the Earth. The high Mountains born of the Earth rose proudly towards him, and the ever-noisy Sea spread widely.
Mother Earth gave birth to the Sky, Mountains and Sea, and they have no father.
Uranus - Heaven - reigned in the world. He took the fertile Earth as his wife. Uranus and Gaia had six sons and six daughters - powerful, formidable titans. Their son, the Titan Ocean, flowing around the entire earth like a boundless river, and the goddess Thetis gave birth to all the rivers that roll their waves to the sea, and the sea goddesses - the Oceanids. Titan Hipperion and Theia gave the world children: the Sun - Helios, the Moon - Selene and the ruddy Dawn - pink-fingered Eos (Aurora). From Astraeus and Eos came all the stars that burn in the dark night sky, and all the winds: the stormy northern wind Boreas, the eastern Eurus, the humid southern Notus and the gentle western wind Zephyr, carrying clouds heavy with rain.
In addition to the titans, the mighty Earth gave birth to three giants - cyclops with one eye in the forehead - and three huge, like mountains, fifty-headed giants - hundred-armed (hecatoncheires), so named because each of them had a hundred hands. Nothing can resist their terrible power; their elemental power knows no bounds.
Uranus hated his giant children; he imprisoned them in deep darkness in the bowels of the Earth goddess and did not allow them to come into the light. Their mother Earth suffered. She was oppressed by this terrible burden contained in her depths. She summoned her children, the Titans, and convinced them to rebel against their father Uranus, but they were afraid to raise their hands against their father. Only the youngest of them, the treacherous Kron, overthrew his father by cunning and took away his power.
As punishment for Kron, the Goddess Night gave birth to a whole host of terrible substances: Tanata - death, Eris - discord, Apata - deception, Ker - destruction, Hypnos - a dream with a swarm of dark, heavy visions, Nemesis who knows no mercy - revenge for crimes - and many others. Horror, strife, deception, struggle and misfortune brought these gods into the world where Cronus reigned on the throne of his father.
Gods
The picture of the life of the gods on Olympus is given from the works of Homer - the Iliad and the Odyssey, which glorify the tribal aristocracy and the basileus leading it as the best people standing much higher than the rest of the population. The gods of Olympus differ from aristocrats and basileus only in that they are immortal, powerful and can work miracles.
Zeus
Birth of Zeus
Kron was not sure that power would remain in his hands forever. He was afraid that his children would rebel against him and would subject him to the same fate to which he doomed his father Uranus. He was afraid of his children. And Kron ordered his wife Rhea to bring him the children that were born and mercilessly swallowed them. Rhea was horrified when she saw the fate of her children. Cronus has already swallowed five: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades (Hades) and Poseidon.
Rhea did not want to lose her last child. On the advice of her parents, Uranus-Heaven and Gaia-Earth, she retired to the island of Crete, and there, in a deep cave, her youngest son Zeus was born. In this cave, Rhea hid her son from her cruel father, and instead of her son she gave him a long stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow. Krohn had no idea that he had been deceived by his wife.
Meanwhile, Zeus grew up in Crete. The nymphs Adrastea and Idea cherished little Zeus; they fed him with the milk of the divine goat Amalthea. The bees brought honey to little Zeus from the slopes of the high mountain Dikta. At the entrance to the cave, the young Kuretes struck their shields with their swords every time little Zeus cried, so that Kronus would not hear him cry and Zeus would not suffer the fate of his brothers and sisters.
Zeus overthrows Cronus. The fight of the Olympian gods with the titans
The beautiful and powerful god Zeus grew up and matured. He rebelled against his father and forced him to bring back into the world the children he had absorbed. One after another, Kron spewed out his children-gods, beautiful and bright, from the mouth. They began to fight with Kron and the Titans for power over the world.
This struggle was terrible and stubborn. The children of Kron established themselves on high Olympus. Some of the titans also took their side, and the first were the titan Ocean and his daughter Styx and their children Zeal, Power and Victory. This struggle was dangerous for the Olympian gods. Their opponents, the Titans, were powerful and formidable. But the Cyclopes came to the aid of Zeus. They forged thunder and lightning for him, Zeus threw them at the titans. The struggle had already lasted ten years, but victory did not lean on either side. Finally, Zeus decided to free the hundred-armed giants Hecatoncheires from the bowels of the earth; he called them to help. Terrible, huge as mountains, they emerged from the bowels of the earth and rushed into battle. They tore entire rocks from the mountains and threw them at the titans. Hundreds of rocks flew towards the titans when they approached Olympus. The earth groaned, a roar filled the air, everything around was shaking. Even Tartarus shuddered from this struggle.
Zeus threw fiery lightning and deafeningly roaring thunder one after another. Fire engulfed the entire earth, the seas boiled, smoke and stench covered everything with a thick veil.
Finally, the mighty titans wavered. Their strength was broken, they were defeated. The Olympians chained them and cast them into gloomy Tartarus, into eternal darkness. At the copper indestructible gates of Tartarus, the hundred-armed hecatoncheires stood guard, and they guard so that the mighty titans do not break free from Tartarus again. The power of the titans in the world has passed.
The fight between Zeus and Typhon
But the struggle did not end there. Gaia-Earth was angry with the Olympian Zeus for treating her defeated titan children so harshly. She married the gloomy Tartarus and gave birth to the terrible hundred-headed monster Typhon. Huge, with a hundred dragon heads, Typhon rose from the bowels of the earth. He shook the air with a wild howl. The barking of dogs, human voices, the roar of an angry bull, the roar of a lion were heard in this howl. Turbulent flames swirled around Typhon, and the earth shook under his heavy steps. The gods shuddered with horror, but Zeus the Thunderer boldly rushed at him, and the battle broke out. Lightning flashed again in the hands of Zeus, and thunder rumbled. The earth and the firmament were shaken to the core. The earth flared up again with a bright flame, just as during the fight with the titans. The seas were boiling at the mere approach of Typhon. Hundreds of fiery lightning arrows rained down from the thunderer Zeus; it seemed as if their fire was making the very air burn and the dark thunderclouds were burning. Zeus incinerated all of Typhon's hundred heads. Typhon collapsed to the ground; such heat emanated from his body that everything around him melted. Zeus raised Typhon's body and threw it into the gloomy Tartarus, which gave birth to him. But even in Tartarus, Typhon also threatens the gods and all living things. It causes storms and eruptions; he gave birth to Echidna, half-woman, half-snake, the terrible two-headed dog Orph, the hellish dog Kerberus, the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimera; Typhon often shakes the earth.
The Olympian gods defeated their enemies. No one could resist their power anymore. They could now calmly rule the world. The most powerful of them, the thunderer Zeus, took the sky for himself, Poseidon took the sea, and Hades took the underground kingdom of the souls of the dead. The land remained in common possession. Although the sons of Kron divided the power over the world among themselves, the lord of the sky, Zeus, still reigns over them all; he rules people and gods, he knows everything in the world.
Olympus
Zeus reigns high on bright Olympus, surrounded by a host of gods. Here are his wife Hera, and golden-haired Apollo with his sister Artemis, and golden Aphrodite, and the mighty daughter of Zeus Athena, and many other gods. Three beautiful Oras guard the entrance to high Olympus and raise a thick cloud covering the gates when the gods descend to earth or ascend to the bright halls of Zeus. High above Olympus, the blue, bottomless sky stretches wide, and golden light pours from it. There is no rain or snow in the kingdom of Zeus; There is always a bright, joyful summer there. And the clouds swirl below, sometimes covering the distant land. There, on earth, spring and summer are replaced by autumn and winter, joy and fun are replaced by misfortune and grief. True, even the gods know sorrows, but they soon pass, and joy reigns again on Olympus.
The gods feast in their golden palaces, built by the son of Zeus Hephaestus. King Zeus sits on a high golden throne. The courageous, divinely beautiful face of Zeus breathes with greatness and a proudly calm consciousness of power and might. At his throne are the goddess of peace Eirene and the constant companion of Zeus, the winged goddess of victory Nike. Here comes the beautiful, majestic goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus. Zeus honors his wife: all the gods of Olympus surround Hera, the patroness of marriage, with honor. When, shining with its beauty, in a magnificent outfit, great Hera enters the banquet hall, all the gods stand up and bow before the wife of the thunderer Zeus. And she, proud of her power, goes to the golden throne and sits next to the king of gods and people - Zeus. Near the throne of Hera stands her messenger, the goddess of the rainbow, the light-winged Iris, always ready to quickly fly on rainbow wings to carry out the commands of Hera to the farthest ends of the earth.
The gods are feasting. The daughter of Zeus, young Hebe, and the son of the king of Troy, Ganymede, the favorite of Zeus, who received immortality from him, offer them ambrosia and nectar - the food and drink of the gods. Beautiful harites and muses delight them with singing and dancing. Holding hands, they dance in circles, and the gods admire their light movements and wondrous, eternally youthful beauty. The feast of the Olympians becomes more fun. At these feasts the gods decide all matters; at them they determine the fate of the world and people.
From Olympus, Zeus sends his gifts to people and establishes order and laws on earth. The fate of people is in the hands of Zeus; happiness and unhappiness, good and evil, life and death - everything is in his hands. Two large vessels stand at the gates of Zeus's palace. In one vessel there are gifts of good, in the other - evil. Zeus draws good and evil from them and sends them to people. Woe to the man to whom the Thunderer draws gifts only from a vessel of evil. Woe to those who violate the order established by Zeus on earth and do not comply with his laws. The son of Kron will move his thick eyebrows menacingly, then black clouds will cloud the sky. The great Zeus will be angry, and the hair on his head will rise terribly, his eyes will light up with an unbearable brilliance; he will wave his right hand - thunderclaps will roll across the entire sky, fiery lightning will flash, and high Olympus will shake.
Zeus is not the only one who keeps the laws. At his throne stands the goddess Themis, who preserves the laws. She convenes, at the behest of the Thunderer, meetings of the gods on bright Olympus and people's meetings on earth, ensuring that order and law are not violated. On Olympus is also the daughter of Zeus, the goddess Dike, who oversees justice. Zeus severely punishes unrighteous judges when Dike informs him that they do not comply with the laws given by Zeus. Goddess Dike is the defender of truth and the enemy of deception.
Zeus maintains order and truth in the world and sends happiness and sorrow to people. But although Zeus sends happiness and misfortune to people, the fate of people is still determined by the inexorable goddesses of fate - the moirai, who live on bright Olympus. The fate of Zeus himself is in their hands. Fate rules over mortals and gods. No one can escape the dictates of inexorable fate. There is no such force, such power that could change at least something in what is intended for gods and mortals. You can only humbly bow before fate and submit to it. Some Moirai know the dictates of fate. Moira Clotho spins the life thread of a person, determining his lifespan. The thread will break and life will end. Moira Lachesis takes out, without looking, the lot that falls to a person in life. No one is able to change the fate determined by the moiras, since the third moira, Atropos, puts everything that her sisters have assigned in a person’s life into a long scroll, and what is included in the scroll of fate is inevitable. The great, harsh moiras are inexorable.
There is also a goddess of fate on Olympus - this is the goddess Tyukhe, the goddess of happiness and prosperity. From the cornucopia, the horn of the divine goat Amalthea, whose milk Zeus himself was fed, she will send gifts to people, and happy is the person who meets the goddess of happiness Tyukhe on his life’s path; but how rarely does this happen, and how unhappy is the person from whom the goddess Tyukhe, who has just given him her gifts, turns away!
So reigns surrounded by a host of bright gods on Olympus great king people and gods Zeus, protecting order and truth throughout the world.
Poseidon and the deities of the sea
Deep in the depths of the sea stands the wonderful palace of the great brother of the thunderer Zeus, the earth shaker Poseidon. Poseidon rules over the seas, and the waves of the sea are obedient to the slightest movement of his hand, armed with a formidable trident. There, in the depths of the sea, lives with Poseidon and his beautiful wife Amphitrite, the daughter of the prophetic sea elder Nereus, who was kidnapped by the great ruler of the sea depths Poseidon from her father. He once saw how she led a round dance with her Nereid sisters on the shore of the island of Naxos. The god of the sea was captivated by the beautiful Amphitrite and wanted to take her away in his chariot. But Amphitrite took refuge with the titan Atlas, who holds the vault of heaven on his mighty shoulders. For a long time Poseidon could not find the beautiful daughter of Nereus. Finally, a dolphin opened her hiding place to him; For this service, Poseidon placed the dolphin among the celestial constellations. Poseidon stole the beautiful daughter Nereus from Atlas and married her.
Since then, Amphitrite has lived with her husband Poseidon in an underwater palace. High above the palace there is noise sea waves. A host of sea deities surround Poseidon, obedient to his will. Among them is Poseidon's son Triton, who with the thunderous sound of his shell trumpet causes menacing storms. Among the deities are Amphitrite’s beautiful sisters, the Nereids. Poseidon rules over the sea. When he rushes across the sea in his chariot drawn by wondrous horses, then the ever-noisy waves part and make way for the ruler Poseidon. Equal in beauty to Zeus himself, he quickly rushes across the boundless sea, and dolphins play around him, fish swim out of the depths of the sea and crowd around his chariot. When Poseidon waves his formidable trident, then sea waves, covered with white crests of foam, rise like mountains, and a fierce storm rages on the sea. Then the sea waves crash noisily against the coastal rocks and shake the earth. But Poseidon extends his trident over the waves, and they calm down. The storm subsides, the sea is calm again, smooth as a mirror, and barely audibly splashes along the shore - blue, boundless.
Many deities surround Zeus's great brother, Poseidon; among them is the prophetic sea elder, Nereus, who knows all the innermost secrets of the future. Nereus is alien to lies and deception; He reveals only the truth to gods and mortals. The advice given by the prophetic elder is wise. Nereus has fifty beautiful daughters. Young Nereids splash merrily in the waves of the sea, sparkling among them with their divine beauty. Holding hands, a line of them swim out of the depths of the sea and dance in a circle on the shore under the gentle splash of the waves of the calm sea quietly rushing onto the shore. The echo of the coastal rocks then repeats the sounds of their gentle singing, like the quiet roar of the sea. The Nereids patronize the sailor and give him a happy voyage.
Among the deities of the sea is the old man Proteus, who, like the sea, changes his image and turns, at will, into various animals and monsters. He is also a prophetic god, you just need to be able to catch him unexpectedly, master him and force him to reveal the secret of the future. Among the companions of the earth shaker Poseidon is the god Glaucus, the patron saint of sailors and fishermen, and he has the gift of divination. Often, emerging from the depths of the sea, he revealed the future and gave wise advice to mortals. The gods of the sea are mighty, their power is great, but the great brother of Zeus, Poseidon, rules over them all.
All seas and all lands flow around the gray Ocean - the titan god, equal to Zeus himself in honor and glory. He lives far on the borders of the world, and the affairs of the earth do not disturb his heart. Three thousand sons - river gods and three thousand daughters - Oceanids, goddesses of streams and springs, near the Ocean. The sons and daughters of the great god Ocean give prosperity and joy to mortals with their ever-rolling life-giving water; they water the whole earth and all living things with it.
The kingdom of dark Hades (Pluto)
Deep underground reigns the inexorable, gloomy brother of Zeus, Hades. His kingdom is full of darkness and horror. The joyful rays of the bright sun never penetrate there. Bottomless abysses lead from the surface of the earth to the sad kingdom of Hades. Dark rivers flow through it. The chilling sacred river Styx flows there, the gods themselves swear by its waters.
Cocytus and Acheron roll their waves there; the souls of the dead resound with their groaning, full of sadness, on their gloomy shores. In the underground kingdom the waters of the Lethe spring flow and give oblivion to all earthly things. Across the gloomy fields of the kingdom of Hades, overgrown with pale asphodel flowers, ethereal light shadows of the dead rush. They complain about their joyless life without light and without desires. Their moans are heard quietly, barely perceptible, like the rustling of withered leaves driven by the autumn wind. There is no return for anyone from this kingdom of sadness. The three-headed hellish dog Kerber, on whose neck snakes move with a menacing hiss, guards the exit. The stern, old Charon, the carrier of the souls of the dead, will not carry a single soul through the gloomy waters of Acheron back to where the sun of life shines brightly. The souls of the dead in the dark kingdom of Hades are doomed to an eternal, joyless existence.
In this kingdom, to which neither the light, nor the joy, nor the sorrows of earthly life reach, Zeus’s brother, Hades, rules. He sits on a golden throne with his wife Persephone. He is served by the inexorable goddesses of vengeance, Erinyes. Formidable, with whips and snakes, they pursue the criminal; they do not give him a minute of peace and torment him with remorse; You can’t hide from them anywhere, they find their prey everywhere. The judges of the kingdom of the dead, Minos and Rhadamanthus, sit at the throne of Hades. Here, at the throne, is the god of death Tanat with a sword in his hands, in a black cloak, with huge black wings. These wings blow with grave cold when Tanat flies to the bed of a dying man to cut off a strand of hair from his head with her sword and tear out his soul. Next to Tanat are the gloomy Kera. On their wings they rush, frantic, across the battlefield. The Kers rejoice as they see the slain heroes fall one after another; With their blood-red lips they fall to the wounds, greedily drink the hot blood of the slain and tear out their souls from the body.
Here, at the throne of Hades, is the beautiful, young god of sleep Hypnos. He silently flies on his wings above the ground with poppy heads in his hands and pours a sleeping pill from the horn. He gently touches people's eyes with his wonderful rod, quietly closes his eyelids and plunges mortals into a sweet sleep. The god Hypnos is powerful, neither mortals, nor gods, nor even the thunderer Zeus himself can resist him: and Hypnos closes his menacing eyes and plunges him into deep sleep.
The gods of dreams also rush about in the dark kingdom of Hades. Among them there are gods who give prophetic and joyful dreams, but there are also gods who give terrible, depressing dreams that frighten and torment people. There are gods of false dreams, they mislead a person and often lead him to death.
The kingdom of the inexorable Hades is full of darkness and horror. There the terrible ghost of Empus with donkey legs wanders in the darkness; it, having lured people into a secluded place in the darkness of the night by cunning, drinks all the blood and devours their still trembling bodies. The monstrous Lamia also wanders there; she sneaks into the bedrooms of happy mothers at night and steals their children to drink their blood. The great goddess Hecate rules over all ghosts and monsters. She has three bodies and three heads. On a moonless night she wanders in deep darkness along the roads and at the graves with all her terrible retinue, surrounded by Stygian dogs
The most important element of Greek culture were myths, i.e. tales, traditions, legends dating back to ancient times. They constitute a rich treasury of images and subjects. Myths reflect man's need for creativity, to understand the world around him and himself. Myths were created at a very early stage of the development of Greek society, in various regions of continental Greece, in Attica, Boeotia, Thessaly, Macedonia and other areas, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, on Crete, on the coast of Asia Minor. These regions developed their own
Local cycles of myths. Later they merged into a single pan-Greek system, in which the artistic talent and religious worldview of the ancient Hellenes manifested themselves.
Birth and death, the change of seasons, sea ebbs and flows, thunderstorms and rains, weather changes, flowering and withering of plants, the appearance of fruits on them - these and many other phenomena of the surrounding world were attributed to the action of certain fantastic, divine forces. These phenomena often appeared in the form of specific, visible images and were personified, that is, identified with living beings. If a person couldn't explain a natural phenomenon, especially
To overcome it, such as a drought or an epidemic, he attributed it to the action of some fantastic forces.
It seems that Greek nature itself predetermined that special multicoloredness that permeates mythology: valleys and mountain ranges, a sparkling blue sea with many islands, cozy bays, a blinding southern sun, evergreen vegetation, a warm climate. The earth was inhabited by fabulous creatures: mountain nymphs - oreads - lurked in the mountains, dryads - in the forests, naiads - in the rivers. But myths were not only a bold flight of human imagination. They often reflect folk wisdom, observations of life around us, and insight into human nature. Therefore, Greek mythology rightfully became part of universal human culture. That is why situations and heroes of myths have entered our everyday speech in expressions and phrases that have become popular.
We use the expression “Sisyphean labor”, meaning hard, meaningless work. The origin of this concept is as follows. According to myth, Sisyphus, the king and founder of Corinth, and according to another version, the father of Odysseus, was famous for his enviable cunning and suffered punishment in the underworld for his frauds. He had to roll a heavy stone up the mountain, which, having reached the top, fell down, after which everything was repeated all over again. We are talking about “titanic” efforts, “giant” proportions. In myths, titans and giants are huge giants who fought with the gods themselves.
Myths are closely related to folk cultures and beliefs. They often absorbed popular common sense. Thus, the ancient Hellenes had a custom of sacrifice to the gods; at the same time a lot was lost good meat. Then the Titan Prometheus found a way to help people. Having slaughtered the sacrificial bull, he butchered it so that two unequal heaps were formed: one contained bones and tripe, and the other - pieces of edible meat. Prometheus covered both heaps with skins and invited the supreme god Zeus to choose one of them. Zeus was flattered by a larger pile. This incident, reproduced in myth, established the rule: after the ritual of sacrifice, the Greeks began to leave inedible parts for the gods, and for themselves what could be eaten. In Greek mythology, there are a variety of creatures: demons, satyrs, unbridled and playful; semi-humans and chimeras, fire-breathing creatures, etc. The main characters of mythology are gods and heroes.
The basis of Greek religion was anthropomorphism - likening to man. The gods had a human appearance, were beautiful, and most importantly, immortal. They are characterized by a variety of human qualities, although they manifest themselves with special strength and intensity: generosity, generosity, jealousy, deceit. Gods and heroes not only reminded ordinary people, but also communicated with them, mere mortals, could enter into love relationship. Some ancient Greek aristocrats counted gods among their ancestors and were proud of their divine origins.
Greek gods were divided into several categories according to their importance. Twelve main, supreme gods lived on the snow-covered Mount Olympus, about 3000 meters high. At the top of Olympus were the palace of Zeus and the dwellings of other gods, who were called Olympians. The name Olympus itself is close to the concept of “sky”. The Greeks believed that there were three generations of gods, and, according to legend, the younger ones overthrew the power of the older ones. Mythology thus reflected the rivalry between individual clans and tribes for supremacy.
The main supreme god, the father of all gods and people, was Zeus. He was considered the son of Cronus, the god of time, and therefore was called Kronid. Zeus rode across the sky in a golden chariot; he was depicted sitting on a throne with an eagle and a scepter in his hands and a beam of lightning as the main attributes of power. From the heights of Olympus, he scattered his gifts to people and established order on earth and established laws.
Zeus's wife Hera was the supreme Greek goddess, the queen of the gods, who patronized marriage, conjugal love and childbirth. She was portrayed as a majestic woman of rare beauty. Zeus's brother Poseidon was the god of the sea, all springs and waters, as well as earth's bowels and their wealth; His palace was located at the bottom of the sea. The god of death was another brother of Zeus - Hades, who reigned deep underground. The kingdom of Hades, where the rays of the sun did not penetrate, looked gloomy, terrible and cold, and the afterlife was a misfortune. The son of Zeus Apollo is the god of harmony and spiritual activity, the god of the arts. He received from Hermes the lyre he invented and became the patron of the muses, hence his nickname: Apollo Musaret, that is, the leader of the muses.
Muses were goddesses, companions of Apollo, patroness of science, poetry and the arts: Clio - history, Euterpe - lyric poetry, Melpomene - tragedy, Thalia - comedy, Terpsichore - dancing, Calliope - epic poetry, Polyhymnia - hymns, pantomime, Urania - astronomy, Erato - love, erotic poetry.
The sister of the golden-haired Apollo was Artemis, the goddess of hunting, fertility, patroness of animals, as well as everything that lives on earth, grows in the forest and in the field. In sculptures she was depicted with a bow and quiver over her shoulders, hunting in forests and fields. The goddess Athena, one of the most revered in Greece, was born by Zeus himself, appeared from his head. She was the goddess of wisdom, the main city of Greece was named in her honor and erected main temple Parthenon. Athena patronized the city-states of Greece, gave them wise advice, and saved them in times of danger. The son of Zeus, Hermes, is the god who patronizes travelers, crafts, and trade. The god of war, Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera, usually appeared in the guise of a heavily armed warrior - a hoplite. This is the least favorite of the descendants of Zeus, who was not tolerated because of his belligerence and bloodthirstiness. The son of Zeus and Hera was the god of fire, as well as the art of blacksmithing, Hephaestus. He was depicted wearing an apron and holding a blacksmith's hammer, amid sparks and smoke. Hephaestus, the only Olympian engaged in productive work, was considered a skilled forger.
Ares' wife, the most beautiful Aphrodite, the goddess of love, outwardly personified the Hellenic ideal of female beauty. She awakened love in the hearts of both gods and mortals and therefore had all-conquering power and reigned over the world. One of the greatest goddesses was considered the sister of Zeus Demeter, the goddess of fertility, the patroness of agriculture: without her mighty power nothing would be born.
The favorite god was also the son of Zeus Dionysus, the patron of viticulture and winemaking. Celebrations in honor of the god Dionysus played a large role in the development of Greek theater. In addition to the main Olympic gods, there were also numerous “second-class” gods. Among them is Eros, the son of Ares and Aphrodite, a playful teenager, a winged archer, the god of love; Hypnos - god of sleep; Thanatos - god of death; Hymen: - god of marriage; Asclepius, son of Apollo and Coronis, is the god of healing; Eris - goddess of strife; Nike - goddess of victory, etc.
Along with the gods, heroes, or titans, were “involved” in myths. Heroes were considered semi-divine personalities who stood between gods and people. Heroes were also people who really existed, historical figures- Athenian commander (Miltiades), statesmen. (Solon), founders of philosophical schools, major poets, whose activities played a large role in the life of the Greeks. Their tombs were often located in the center of cities as a reminder of past exploits. There were also heroes and legendary figures created by folk imagination.
One of the most famous and noble martyred heroes in mythology was Prometheus, who provided invaluable service to the human race. Among the most beloved folk heroes was Hercules, endowed with enormous strength. Literally, his name means “performing exploits due to the persecution of Hera.” When Hera planned to kill the baby Hercules by setting two snakes on him, Hercules strangled them. Surpassing everyone in strength and not knowing any rivals in military exercises, Hercules performed 12 labors. Among them is the killing of a monstrous lion; the destruction of the hydra - a monster with the body of a snake and nine heads of a dragon; extermination Stymphalian birds, devastated the area, pursued animals and people, tearing them apart with copper beaks, and many others. These and other episodes form a whole cycle of fascinating short stories.
Among the popular heroes of Greece, Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danaus, known from many myths, also accomplished many feats. Like Prometheus, he is depicted in works of world art, on the canvases of Rubens, Rembrandt and Titian. The greatest hero Greece was also considered Theseus, who was credited with creating the ancient political system in Athens. The legendary singer Orpheus was revered as heroes; the greatest architect and builder Daedalus; the rich man Tantalus, so proud that he considered himself equal to the gods, and for this was severely punished; Pygmalion, a sculptor who can even bring his creations to life.
Mythology played a huge role in the development of ancient Greek literature. The plots and images of myths were used in many works: in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. At the same time, cults and traditions associated with mythology served as the basis for the creation of certain genres and forms of literature, for example, lyrics, tragedy, comedy, and ancient theater.
The Myth of Pygmalion
Aphrodite is favorable to those who serve her faithfully. She brought happiness to Pygmalion, the great artist from the island of Cyprus. Pygmalion lived alone, avoided women, and was not married. But one day he made a statue of a girl, inexpressibly beautiful, out of white ivory. Looking at his creation, he admired its perfection and vitality. It seemed that the girl was breathing, that she was alive. As a result, Pygmalion fell in love with his own creation. Powerless to control his passion, he even addressed the statue with words, but it was mute. Then, at a festival in honor of golden Aphrodite, he sacrificed a heifer with gilded horns to her and prayed to the goddess of love to give him a girl as beautiful as his statue as his wife. After this, the flame of the altar flared up brightly. This was a sign that the goddess heard his request. When Pygmalion returned home, he saw that the beautiful statue was alive. So the goddess of love gave Pygmalion a beautiful girl as his wife. This plot, originally rethought, is the basis of Bernard Shaw's famous play Pygmalion.
The Myth of Adonis
The goddess of love Aphrodite fell in love with the son of the king of Cyprus - the beautiful young man Adonis, surpassing all mortals in beauty. Forgetting about everything in the world, Aphrodite spent time with Adonis in Cyprus, hunting with him in the mountains and forests of the island. She tried not to part with him, and when leaving him for a while, she asked him to be careful and avoid formidable animals such as lions and wild boars. One day, when Aphrodite was not around, the dogs picked up the trail of a huge boar and rushed after it. Adonis was already preparing to hit the beast with a spear when the boar rushed at him and inflicted a mortal wound on him.
Having learned about the death of Adonis and experiencing it hard, Aphrodite went barefoot along the mountain slopes and gorges in search of him, her tender feet leaving bloody footprints on the stones. Finally she found the murdered Adonis and began to moan bitterly over him. Wanting to preserve his memory forever, the goddess commanded to grow from the blood of the young man beautiful flower anemone. And where drops of blood fell from the wounded legs of the goddess, scarlet roses appeared. They were luxurious, and their color was as bright as the blood of the goddess. Then Zeus took pity on Aphrodite's grief. He ordered his brother Hades, the god of the underworld of the dead, to release Adonis to earth from the kingdom of shadows every six months. After spending six months in the kingdom of Hades, Adonis returns to earth at the same time to meet the bright rays of the sun and the embrace of golden Aphrodite. All nature rejoices, rejoicing in their love.
Myth of the Trojan War
Zeus and the god of the sea Poseidon argued about Thetis's love. The goddess of justice, Themis, intervened in the dispute and predicted that Thetis would give birth to a son who would surpass his own father in strength. To save themselves from possible danger, the gods decided to marry Thetis to a mere mortal Peleus. At the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, which took place in the cave of the centaur Chiron, all the Olympian gods gathered and generously presented the newlyweds with gifts. At the same time, the goddess of discord Eris was not invited to the feast. Stung by such neglect, she decided to punish the gods in a very sophisticated way. She threw a golden apple on the banquet table with the inscription: “To the most beautiful.” Since then it has become known as the “apple of discord.” Three goddesses began to argue about who should own it: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, who were by no means devoid of feminine vanity. Even Zeus refused to speak on this matter. He sent Hermes to the vicinity of Troy, where among the shepherds was the handsome Paris, the son of the Trojan king Priam. According to prophecy, Paris, the son of Priam and Hecuba, was destined to become the culprit of the death of Troy. To avoid this fate, Priam ordered Paris to be taken to the forest thicket and left there. But Priam’s son did not die; he was suckled by a bear. When Hermes approached Paris with a proposal to resolve this dispute, he was embarrassed. Each of the goddesses convinced the young man to award the apple to her. At the same time, they promised him enviable gifts: Hera promised power over all of Asia; Athena - military glory and victories; Aphrodite is the most beautiful of mortal women to marry. Without hesitating for long, Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite. From then on he became the favorite of Aphrodite, and Hera and Athena, as we will see, hated Troy and the Trojans.
This beautiful woman was Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. Soon Paris came to visit him. Menelaus warmly received him and arranged a feast in his honor. Seeing Elena, Paris fell in love with her. But she was also amazed by the beautiful newcomer, dressed in luxurious oriental clothes. Having left for Crete, Menelaus asked her to take care of the guest. But Paris repaid him with black ingratitude. Taking advantage of her husband's absence, he took Elena away and at the same time seized his treasures.
Menelaus regarded this not only as a personal insult, but also as a blow to all of Greece. After all, Elena was her national treasure. He gathers the leaders of the Greek tribes and goes on a campaign against Ilion ( ancient name Troy, where the title of the poem comes from). The commander-in-chief of the army is Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, the king of Argos, belonging to the Atrid family, over whom, as we will see later, a curse weighs. In the ranks of the Achaean (Greek) warriors are Odysseus, the king of the island of Ithaca, the courageous warrior Diomedes, the brave Ajax, and the owner of the magic arrows Philoctetes.
The bravest was young Achilles, king of the Myrmidon tribe. At birth, he was destined to have a long and happy life if he did not take part in the war, and a short, brilliant life if he began to fight. Hoping to outwit fate, Thetis bathed Achilles in the waters of the underground river Styx, making his body invulnerable. Only his heel was unprotected, by which she held the baby (hence the expression “Achilles heel”). The mother tried to hide Achilles and not give him the opportunity to take part in the campaign. She hid him by dressing him in women's clothing, but Achilles gave himself away. He became part of the Greek army, which, according to legend, numbered more than one hundred thousand people and more than a thousand ships. The army sailed from the harbor of Obida and landed near Troy. The demand for the extradition of Helen in exchange for lifting the siege was rejected. The war dragged on. The most important events took place in the last, tenth year.
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice
Orpheus, the great singer, son of the river god Eager and the muse of song Calliope, lived in Thrace. His wife was the tender and beautiful nymph Eurydice. The beautiful singing of Orpheus and his playing of the cithara not only captivated people, but also enchanted plants and animals. Orpheus and Eurydice were happy until a terrible misfortune befell them. One day, when Eurydice and her nymph friends were picking flowers in a green valley, a snake hidden in the thick grass waylaid them and stung Orpheus’ wife in the leg. The poison spread quickly and ended her life. Hearing the mournful cry of Eurydice's friends, Orpheus hurried into the valley and, seeing the cold body of Eurydice, his tenderly beloved wife, fell into despair and moaned bitterly. Nature deeply sympathized with him in his grief. Then Orpheus decided to go to the kingdom of the dead to see Eurydice there. To do this, he descends to the sacred river Styx, where the souls of the dead have accumulated, whom the carrier Charon sends on a boat to the domain of Hades. At first, Charon refused Orpheus' request to transport him. But then Orpheus played his golden cithara and charmed the gloomy Charon with wonderful music. And he transported him to the throne of the god of death Hades. In the midst of the cold and silence of the underworld, Orpheus’ passionate song sounded about his grief, about the torment of his broken love for Eurydice. Everyone who was nearby was amazed by the beauty of the music and the strength of his feelings: Hades, and his wife Persephone, and Tantalus, who forgot about the hunger that tormented him, and Sisyphus, who stopped his hard and fruitless work. Then Orpheus stated his request to Hades to return his wife Eurydice to earth. Hades agreed to fulfill it, but at the same time stated his condition: Orpheus must follow the god Hermes, and Eurydice will follow him. During his journey through the underworld, Orpheus cannot look back: otherwise Eurydice will leave him forever. When the shadow of Eurydice appeared, Orpheus wanted to hug her, but Hermes told him not to do this, since in front of him there was only a shadow, and there was a long and difficult path ahead.
Quickly passing the kingdom of Hades, the travelers reached the River Styx, where Charon ferried them on his boat to a path leading steeply up to the surface of the earth. The path was cluttered with stones, darkness reigned all around, and the figure of Hermes loomed ahead and there was barely a glimmer of light, which indicated that the exit was close. At that moment, Orpheus was overcome with deep anxiety for Eurydice: was she keeping up with him, was she lagging behind, was she getting lost in the darkness. After listening, he did not discern any sound behind him, which exacerbated the uneasy feeling. Finally, unable to bear it and breaking the ban, he turned around: almost next to him he saw the shadow of Eurydice, stretched out his hands to her, but at the same moment the shadow melted into the darkness. So he had to relive the death of Eurydice a second time. And this time it was my own fault.
Greek mythology gave the world the most interesting and instructive stories, fascinating stories and adventures. The narrative immerses us in a fairy-tale world, where you can meet heroes and gods, terrible monsters and unusual animals. The myths of Ancient Greece, written many centuries ago, are currently the greatest cultural heritage of all humanity.
What are myths
Mythology is an amazing separate world in which people confronted the deities of Olympus, fought for honor and resisted evil and destruction.
However, it is worth remembering that myths are works created exclusively by people using imagination and fiction. These are stories about gods, heroes and exploits, unusual phenomena nature and mysterious creatures.
The origin of legends is no different from the origin folk tales and legends. The Greeks invented and retold unusual stories that mixed truth and fiction.
It is possible that there was some truth in the stories - a real-life incident or example could have been taken as a basis.
The source of the myths of Ancient Greece
How do modern people know myths and their plots for certain? It turns out that Greek mythology was preserved on the tablets of the Aegean culture. They were written in Linear B, which was only deciphered in the 20th century.
The Cretan-Mycenaean period, to which this type of writing belongs, knew most of the gods: Zeus, Athena, Dionysus, and so on. However, due to the decline of civilization and the emergence of ancient Greek mythology, mythology could have its gaps: we know it only from the most recent sources.
Various plots of the myths of Ancient Greece were often used by writers of that time. And before the advent of the Hellenistic era, it became popular to create your own legends based on them.
The largest and most famous sources are:
- Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
- Hesiod "Theogony"
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, "Library"
- Gigin, "Myths"
- Ovid, "Metamorphoses"
- Nonnus, "The Acts of Dionysus"
Karl Marx believed that the mythology of Greece was a vast repository of art, and also created the basis for it, thus performing a double function.
Ancient Greek mythology
Myths did not appear overnight: they took shape over several centuries and were passed on from mouth to mouth. Thanks to the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, we can become familiar with stories in the present day.
Each story has value, preserving the atmosphere of antiquity. Specially trained people - mythographers - began to appear in Greece in the 4th century BC.
These include the sophist Hippias, Herodotus of Heraclea, Heraclitus of Pontus and others. Dionysius of Samois, in particular, was involved in compiling genealogical tables and studying tragic myths.
There are many myths, but the most popular are the stories associated with Olympus and its inhabitants.
However, the complex hierarchy and history of the origin of the gods can confuse any reader, and therefore we propose to understand this in detail!
With the help of myths, it becomes possible to recreate the picture of the world as imagined by the inhabitants of Ancient Greece: the world is inhabited by monsters and giants, including giants, one-eyed creatures and Titans.
Origin of the Gods
Eternal, boundless Chaos enveloped the Earth. It contained the world's source of life.
It was believed that it was Chaos that gave birth to everything around: the world, the immortal gods, the goddess of the Earth Gaia, who gave life to everything growing and living, and the powerful force that animates everything - Love.
However, a birth also took place under the Earth: the gloomy Tartarus was born - an abyss of horror filled with eternal darkness.
In the process of creating the world, Chaos gave birth to the Eternal Darkness, called Erebus, and the dark Night, called Nikta. As a result of the union of Nyx and Erebus, Ether was born - the eternal Light and Hemera - the bright Day. Thanks to their appearance, light filled the whole world, and day and night began to replace each other.
Gaia, a powerful and blessed goddess, created the vast blue Sky - Uranus. Spread over the Earth, it reigned over the whole world. The High Mountains proudly reached out to him, and the roaring Sea spread across the entire Earth.
Goddess Gaia and her titan children
After Mother Earth created the Sky, Mountains and Sea, Uranus decided to take Gaia as his wife. From the divine union there were 6 sons and 6 daughters.
The Titan Ocean and the goddess Thetis created all the rivers that rolled their waters to the sea, and the goddesses of the seas, called Oceanids. Titan Hipperion and Theia gave the world Helios - the Sun, Selene - the Moon and Eos - the Dawn. Astraea and Eos gave birth to all the stars and all the winds: Boreas - northern, Eurus - eastern, Noth - southern, Zephyr - western.
The overthrow of Uranus - the beginning of a new era
The goddess Gaia - the mighty Earth - gave birth to 6 more sons: 3 Cyclopes - giants with one eye in their forehead, and 3 fifty-headed, hundred-armed monsters called Hecantocheirs. They possessed limitless power that knew no limits.
Struck by the ugliness of his giant children, Uranus renounced them and ordered them to be imprisoned in the bowels of the Earth. Gaia, being a Mother, suffered, weighed down by a terrible burden: after all, her own children were imprisoned in her bowels. Unable to bear it, Gaia called on her titan children, persuading them to rebel against their father, Uranus.
Battle of the gods with the titans
Being great and powerful, the titans were still afraid of their father. And only Kronos, the youngest and treacherous, accepted his mother’s offer. Having outwitted Uranus, he overthrew him, seizing power.
As punishment for the act of Kronos, the goddess Night gave birth to death (Tanat), discord (Eris), deception (Apata),
Kronos devouring his child
destruction (Ker), nightmare (Hypnos) and vengeance (Nemesis) and other terrible gods. All of them brought horror, discord, deception, struggle and misfortune into the world of Kronos.
Despite his cunning, Kronos was afraid. His fear was based on personal experience: after all, his children could overthrow him, as he once overthrew Uranus, his father.
Fearing for his life, Kronos ordered his wife Rhea to bring him their children. To Rhea's horror, 5 of them were eaten: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.
Zeus and his reign
Heeding the advice of her father Uranus and mother Gaia, Rhea fled to the island of Crete. There, in a deep cave, she gave birth to her youngest son, Zeus.
By hiding the newborn in it, Rhea deceived the tough Kronos by allowing him to swallow a long stone, wrapped in swaddling clothes, instead of her son.
As time went. Kronos did not understand his wife's deception. Zeus grew up while in Crete. His nannies were the nymphs Adrastea and Idea; instead of his mother’s milk, he was fed with the milk of the divine goat Amalthea, and hardworking bees brought honey to baby Zeus from Mount Dikta.
If Zeus began to cry, the young Kuretes standing at the entrance to the cave struck their shields with their swords. Loud sounds muffled the crying so that Kronos would not hear it.
The myth of the birth of Zeus: feeding the milk of the divine goat Amalthea
Zeus has grown up. Having defeated Kronos in battle with the help of the Titans and Cyclops, he became the supreme deity of the Olympian Pantheon. Lord heavenly powers commanded thunder, lightning, clouds and downpours. He dominated the Universe, giving people laws and maintaining order.
Views of the Ancient Greeks
The Hellenes believed that the gods of Olympus were similar to people, and the relationships between them were comparable to human ones. Their lives were also filled with quarrels and reconciliations, envy and interference, resentment and forgiveness, joy, fun and love.
In the ideas of the ancient Greeks, each deity had its own occupation and sphere of influence:
- Zeus - lord of the sky, father of gods and people
- Hera - wife of Zeus, patroness of the family
- Poseidon - sea
- Hestia - family hearth
- Demeter – agriculture
- Apollo – light and music
- Athena - wisdom
- Hermes - trade and messenger of the gods
- Hephaestus - fire
- Aphrodite - beauty
- Ares - war
- Artemis - hunting
From the earth, people each turned to their god, according to their purpose. Temples were built everywhere to appease them, and gifts were offered instead of sacrifices.
In Greek mythology, not only Chaos, the Titans and the Olympian Pantheon were important, there were other gods as well.
- Nymphs Naiads who lived in streams and rivers
- Nereids - nymphs of the seas
- Dryads and Satyrs - nymphs of the forests
- Echo - nymph of the mountains
- Fate Goddesses: Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos.
Ancient Greece gave us a rich world of myths. It is filled with deep meaning and instructive stories. Thanks to them, people can learn ancient wisdom and knowledge.
It’s impossible to count how many different legends exist at the moment. But believe me, every person should familiarize themselves with them by spending time with Apollo, Hephaestus, Hercules, Narcissus, Poseidon and others. Welcome to the ancient world of the ancient Greeks!
