Greek Mythology: Gods, Heroes and the Stories That Shaped the West

What Greek Mythology Is

Greek mythology is the large collection of stories told by the ancient Greeks about their gods, heroes and the origins of the world. Together with the myths of ancient Rome, which borrowed heavily from it, it forms what is often called classical mythology. These stories tried to answer big questions: How did the universe begin? Why do the seasons change? Why do people suffer? What makes a person admirable, and what brings about their downfall?

For the Greeks, myths were not just entertainment. They were bound up with religion, with the rituals performed at temples and altars, and with the identity of each city. A town might claim descent from a particular hero, honour a particular god as its protector, and celebrate festivals that re-enacted episodes from the myths. Today historians and archaeologists study these stories to understand how ancient Greek society, religion and politics worked, and also to learn how human beings create myths in the first place.

No single holy book

One surprising feature of Greek mythology is that it never had one official version. There was no sacred scripture and no central authority deciding which story was correct. Myths were passed on by word of mouth for centuries, and different regions told them differently. Even the parents of a god, or the way a hero died, can vary from one ancient source to another. What we call "Greek mythology" is really a rich, sometimes contradictory, tapestry of local traditions.

Where the Stories Come From

The roots of Greek myth are very old. Clay tablets written in Linear B, the script of the Mycenaean Greeks of the Bronze Age, already mention gods such as Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hermes and Dionysus more than three thousand years ago. For many centuries afterwards, the stories were kept alive by poets and storytellers who performed them aloud.

The oldest Greek literature that survives is built from myth. The two great epic poems attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were probably composed in the 8th or 7th century BC. The Iliad tells of a few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, and the Odyssey follows the hero Odysseus on his long journey home. At around the same time, the poet Hesiod wrote the Theogony, a poem about the birth of the gods, and Works and Days, which includes the stories of Prometheus and Pandora.

Later, in the 5th century BC, the great playwrights of Athens, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, turned myths into tragedies performed before thousands of spectators. Even later writers collected and organised the myths: a handbook known as the Library, traditionally attributed to Apollodorus, gathers many of them in one place, and the Roman poet Ovid retold dozens of Greek tales in his Metamorphoses. Painted vases, temple sculptures and coins also preserve versions of myths, sometimes ones that no surviving text records.

How the World Began

According to Hesiod, in the beginning there was Chaos, a vast emptiness. From it emerged Gaia, the Earth, along with the dark depths of Tartarus and Eros, the force of love and attraction. Gaia gave birth to Uranus, the Sky, and together they produced the Titans, a generation of powerful, giant deities, as well as the one-eyed Cyclopes and other monstrous children.

Uranus feared and mistreated his children, so the youngest Titan, Cronus, overthrew him and became ruler of the universe. But Cronus was warned that one of his own children would one day do the same to him. To prevent it, he swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. His wife Rhea saved the last one, Zeus, by hiding him on the island of Crete and giving Cronus a stone wrapped in baby clothes to swallow instead.

When Zeus grew up, he forced Cronus to bring back his brothers and sisters. A great war followed between the younger gods and the Titans, known as the Titanomachy, which according to Hesiod lasted ten years. Zeus freed the Cyclopes, who forged his thunderbolts in gratitude, and with their help the young gods won. Most of the defeated Titans were locked away in Tartarus, and the Titan Atlas was condemned to hold up the sky. Zeus and his brothers then divided the world among themselves: Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea and Hades the underworld.

The Olympian Gods

The leading gods were known as the Olympians because they were believed to live on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, rising to about 2,900 metres. The usual list includes twelve of them:

• Zeus, king of the gods, ruler of the sky and weather, armed with the thunderbolt
• Hera, his wife, goddess of marriage and family
• Poseidon, god of the sea, earthquakes and horses, who carried a trident
• Demeter, goddess of grain, harvest and farming
• Athena, goddess of wisdom, crafts and strategic warfare, who sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus
• Apollo, god of music, poetry, prophecy and healing
• Artemis, Apollo's twin sister, goddess of hunting, wild animals and the moon
• Ares, god of war in its violent, chaotic side
• Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty
• Hephaestus, the blacksmith god of fire and metalwork
• Hermes, the swift messenger of the gods, protector of travellers and merchants
• Hestia, goddess of the hearth, or in some lists Dionysus, god of wine, theatre and festivity

Hades, although a brother of Zeus, is usually not counted among the Olympians because he lived in the underworld rather than on the mountain.

Gods who behaved like humans

Unlike the gods of many other religions, the Greek gods looked and acted very much like people. They fell in love, held grudges, played favourites, quarrelled with each other and sometimes behaved badly. The difference was that they were immortal and enormously powerful. Instead of blood, a golden fluid called ichor flowed in their veins, and they ate ambrosia and drank nectar, the food and drink of immortality. This very human character made the myths dramatic and memorable, and it let the Greeks explore jealousy, pride, loyalty and justice through divine examples.

Myths That Explain the World

Many myths offered explanations for natural events and human customs. The best known is the story of Demeter and Persephone. Hades carried Persephone, Demeter's daughter, down to the underworld to be his queen. Grieving, Demeter stopped caring for the crops, and the earth became barren. Zeus finally arranged for Persephone to return, but because she had eaten pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she had to spend part of each year there. While she is below, Demeter mourns and nothing grows; when she returns, spring arrives. The story explained the cycle of the seasons.

Other myths dealt with the human condition. The Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, and Zeus punished him by chaining him to a rock, where an eagle came to torment him; later ancient writers placed this rock in the Caucasus Mountains. Zeus also sent Pandora, the first woman in Hesiod's account, who opened a jar that released sickness, toil and other evils into the world, leaving only hope inside. The familiar phrase "Pandora's box" comes from a mistranslation made in the 16th century; in the Greek original it was a large storage jar.

Stories with a warning

A recurring theme is hubris, the excessive pride that leads mortals to challenge the gods or ignore natural limits. Icarus, flying on wings of feathers and wax made by his father Daedalus, ignored the warning not to fly too close to the sun; the wax melted and he fell into the sea. The weaver Arachne boasted that she was better than Athena and was turned into a spider. Such tales reminded listeners that pride, recklessness and disrespect come at a price.

Heroes and Their Quests

Between gods and ordinary humans stood the heroes, often the children of a god and a mortal. Their adventures form some of the most famous stories ever told.

• Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules), son of Zeus, was the strongest of all heroes. He performed the Twelve Labours for King Eurystheus, including defeating the Nemean lion, whose hide no weapon could pierce, battling the many-headed Hydra, cleaning the vast Augean stables in a single day by diverting two rivers, and bringing up Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld.
• Perseus defeated Medusa, a Gorgon whose gaze turned people to stone, using a polished shield so he never had to look at her directly.
• Theseus entered the Labyrinth on Crete and killed the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull. Princess Ariadne gave him a ball of thread so that he could find his way back out.
• Jason and his crew, the Argonauts, sailed on the ship Argo to Colchis, a land on the eastern shore of the Black Sea in what is now western Georgia, to bring back the Golden Fleece. He succeeded with the help of Medea, the daughter of the king of Colchis.
• Odysseus, king of the island of Ithaca, spent ten years fighting at Troy and another ten years trying to get home, facing the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus, the enchantress Circe, the Sirens whose song lured sailors to their deaths, and many other dangers.

The Trojan War

The greatest story cycle of all was the Trojan War. It began when Paris, a prince of Troy, took Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, back to his city. The Greeks sent a huge fleet, and the war dragged on for ten years. Its heroes include Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, and Hector, the noble defender of Troy. The war ended with the famous trick of the wooden horse, filled with hidden soldiers. Interestingly, the Iliad ends before Troy falls and does not describe the horse; it is mentioned in the Odyssey and told in detail centuries later by the Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid. Likewise, the story that Achilles could only be wounded in his heel does not appear in Homer and comes from later writers.

Myth, Religion and Daily Life

Myths were closely tied to worship. The Greeks built temples as homes for the gods, each with a statue of the deity inside, while sacrifices and prayers took place at altars outside. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens was dedicated to Athena, the city's patron goddess, and its sculptures showed scenes from her myths. At Olympia, a sanctuary of Zeus, the Olympic Games were held in his honour, traditionally from 776 BC. The great gold and ivory statue of Zeus made there by the sculptor Phidias was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

At Delphi, believed to be the centre of the world, the priestess of Apollo, called the Pythia, delivered prophecies to visitors who came from all over the Greek world, including kings and city governments. Near Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries, secret rites linked to Demeter and Persephone, attracted initiates for many centuries. Myths also lived on stage: the theatre festivals of Athens were held in honour of Dionysus.

How Scholars Read the Myths

People have tried to interpret Greek myths since ancient times. Some Greek philosophers criticised the poets for showing gods behaving immorally. In the 4th century BC, a writer named Euhemerus suggested that the gods had originally been real human rulers who were later worshipped. Others read the myths as allegories, with gods standing for forces of nature or moral ideas.

Modern scholars use many approaches. Some compare Greek myths with those of other cultures and find striking parallels, for example between the succession of divine rulers in Hesiod and older stories from the Near East. Others study how myths supported political claims, such as a city's right to its land. Archaeology has also played a role: in the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann began excavating a site in north-western Turkey that is generally identified with Troy, showing that the city of the legend had a real historical location. On Crete, the vast Bronze Age palace at Knossos, with its maze-like rooms, has often been linked to the legend of the Labyrinth.

A Legacy That Is Everywhere

When the Romans conquered Greece, they adopted much of its mythology and matched Greek gods with their own: Zeus became Jupiter, Hera became Juno, Athena became Minerva, Aphrodite became Venus, Ares became Mars, Hermes became Mercury and Poseidon became Neptune. Through Rome, these stories spread across Europe and inspired artists, poets and composers for centuries, from Renaissance painters to modern novelists and film-makers.

Greek mythology also lives on in everyday language and science:

• Panic comes from Pan, the god of the wild, who was said to cause sudden fear.
• Echo was a nymph who could only repeat the last words spoken to her.
• A Herculean task is an enormously difficult one, and a long, adventurous journey is an odyssey.
• The Achilles tendon at the back of the ankle is named after the hero's weak heel.
• A mentor is a wise guide, after Mentor, whose form Athena took to advise Odysseus's son in the Odyssey.
• The Atlantic Ocean takes its name from Atlas, and the chemical elements titanium and promethium are named after the Titans and Prometheus.
• Space exploration borrowed the names too: NASA's Apollo programme took humans to the Moon, and its Artemis programme, named after Apollo's twin sister, aims to send them back.

Even brand names, sports teams and video games draw on these ancient tales. Nearly three thousand years after Homer and Hesiod, the gods of Olympus and the heroes who challenged monsters remain among the most familiar characters in the world, proof that a good story about courage, pride, love and fate never truly grows old.