Aphrodite (Venus): goddess of beauty and love.Hera (Juno): the queen of the gods and goddess of women and marriage.Zeus (Jupiter, in Roman mythology): the king of all the gods (and father to many) and god of weather, law and fate.Olympian deities looked like men and women (though they could change themselves into animals and other things) and were - as many myths recounted - vulnerable to human foibles and passions.
From their lofty perch, they ruled every aspect of human life. Many high school, college and professional sports teams (Titans, Spartans and Trojans, for instance) also get their names from mythological sources.Īt the center of Greek mythology is the pantheon of gods and goddesses who were said to live on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. Nike sneakers are the namesake of the goddess of victory, for example, and the website is named after the race of mythical female warriors. Writers such as the 2nd-century BC Greek mythographer Apollodorus of Athens and the 1st-century BC Roman historian Gaius Julius Hyginus compiled the ancient myths and legends for contemporary audiences.ĭid you know? Many consumer products get their names from Greek mythology. For instance, mythological figures and events appear in the 5th-century plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the lyric poems of Pindar. Later Greek writers and artists used and elaborated upon these sources in their own work. The Theogony tells the story of the universe’s journey from nothingness (Chaos, a primeval void) into being, and details an elaborate family tree of elements, gods and goddesses who evolved from Chaos and descended from Gaia (Earth), Ouranos (Sky), Pontos (Sea) and Tartaros (the Underworld). Around 700 BC, the poet Hesiod’s Theogony offered the first written cosmogony, or origin story, of Greek mythology.
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