Everything you need to know about Aphrodite

Greek Goddess of Love, Beauty & Eternal Youth

Statue of Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty and according to Hesiod’s Theogony, she was born from the foam in the waters of Paphos, on the island of Cyprus. According to the second story, however, Aphrodite supposedly arose from the foam when the Titan Cronus slew his father Uranus and threw his genitals into the sea.

However, according to Homer, in Iliad, Aphrodite may instead be the daughter of Zeus and Dione. As with so many Greek deities, there are many stories about the origins of the gods.

Many gods believed that her beauty was such that their rivalry over her would spark a war of the gods. Because of this, Zeus married Aphrodite to Hephaestus – he wasn’t seen as a threat because of his ugliness and deformity.

Despite this marriage to Hephaestus, Aphrodite had many lovers. Her lovers include both gods and men – including the god ARES and the mortal Anchises. She also played a role in the story of Eros and Psyche in which admirers of Psyche neglected to worship Venus (Aphrodite) and instead worshipped her. For this, Aphrodite enlisted EROS (Cupid) to exact her revenge but the god of love instead falls in love with the girl.

Later, Aphrodite was both Adonis’s lover and his surrogate mother. This led to a feud with Persephone in which Zeus decreed ADONIS should spend half of the year with Aphrodite and half of the year with Persephone. Aphrodite was the goddess of fertility, love, and beauty.

Two different stories explain the birth of Aphrodite. The first is simple: She was the child of Zeus and Dione.

Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, but Aphrodite did not enter into this union of her own volition.

Aphrodite didn't just have it out for those who denied her advances — she also wasn't down for disrespect of any kind. A man named Glaucus once insulted her, so she clapped back by feeding his horses magic water that caused them to turn on him during a chariot race. The horses not only crushed him but ate his body. Aphrodite was not bothered in the slightest.

                                 

Everything you need to know about Athena

Athena, goddess of wisdom and war

Athena, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, handicraft, and warfare who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name.Athena, also referred to as Athene, is a very important goddess of many things. 

She is goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity. Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple. Zeus trusted her to wield the aegis and his thunderbolt.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead. She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus’s head, full-grown and clothed in armor. She was Zeus’s favorite child. According to Homer’s account in the Iliad, Athena was a fierce and ruthless warrior. In the Odyssey, she was angry and unforgiving. In the course of the Trojan War, she struck Ajax with madness. Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with Metis, the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy – but she had already conceived. Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens. She is referred to in poetry as “gray-eyed.” She was known as Athena Parthenos ("Athena the Virgin"), but, in one archaic Attic myth, the god Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero. 

Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have also aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War. She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the divine counselor to Odysseus. She is one of three virgin goddesses; the other two were Hestia and Artemis.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos.

From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos (both derived from polis, meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

Everything you need to know about Hades

Greek God of the Dead and King of the Underworld

In Greek mythology, Hades, the god of the underworld, was the first-born son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Hades was the god of the underworld and the name eventually came to also describe the home of the dead as well. He had three older sisters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, as well as a younger brother, Poseidon, all of whom had been swallowed whole by their father as soon as they were born. Zeus was the youngest child and through the machinations of their mother, Rhea, he was the only one that had escaped this fate. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release, the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. 

Hades, god of the underworld

The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Hades and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated their father and the Titans to end their reign, claiming rulership over the cosmos. They agreed to split their rule with Zeus becoming god of the skies, Poseidon god of the sea and Hades god of the underworld. Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with his turnout, but had no choice and moved to his new realm.

According to Iliad, Hades’ dominion lies between secret places of the earth. According to the Odyssey, one must cross Ocean to get there.  He was later known to the Greeks as Plouton, which the Romans pluralized to Pluto. The Etruscan god Aita and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to Hades and merged into Pluto, a Latinization of Plouton itself a euphemistic title often given to Hades.

The god of the underworld was married to Persephone, the daughter of Demeter , whom he obtained through deception after abducting her to the underworld and giving her the forbidden fruit pomegranate, forcing her to remain in the underworld with him for one third of each year. Hades was depicted as stern and unyielding, unmoved by prayer and sacrifice. Hades had a cap or helmet that made its wearer invisible.

Hades and his wife, Persephone

His wife was Persephone, Demeter’s only daughter, whom he kidnapped and made his queen.

He was also called the God of Wealth or “the rich one” because he possessed the precious metals of the earth.

Cerberus was a three-headed dog who guarded his realm; the ferryman Charon was another one of the underworld’s attendees.

Though Hades is the King of the Dead, he should not be confused with Death itself, which is personified by Thanatos. Hades rarely left the underworld. His presence was not welcomed by men or by gods. Hades took pride in collecting “subjects” for his kingdom and was disinclined to let anyone leave. His dominion was separated from the land of the living by the following rivers: Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Phlegethon, and Cocytus. Hades employed the Furies, who were responsible for torturing the guilty.

 

Everything you need to know about Poseidon

The next greek god is Poseidon. Poseidon was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes. His Roman equivalent is Neptune.

Statue of Poseidon

Poseidon is widely known as protector of seafarers, and sea creatures. His name is Greek for “husband.” He wielded the trident or three-pronged spear, and this image of him is reflected in art. He could strike the ground with his trident to produce an earthquake. This earned him the nickname “Earth-shaker.” Poseidon possessed a palace, made of gems and coral, located on the ocean floor.

He was at Mount Olympus more often than his palace. Poseidon was god of the sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses and is considered one of the most bad-tempered, moody and greedy Olympian gods. He was known to be vengeful when insulted.In the heavily sea-dependent Mycenaean culture, there is not sufficient evidence that Poseidon was connected with the sea. We do not know if "Posedeia" was a sea-goddess. 

Homer and Hesiod suggest that Poseidon became lord of the sea following the defeat of his father Cronus, when the world was divided by lot among his three sons; Zeus was given the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon the sea, with the Earth and Mount Olympus belonging to all three. Poseidon was most notably the God of the sea and the protector of all waters; sailors relied upon him for safe passage. 

He was allotted his dominion after the fall of the Titans. It stands to reason that, because of his influence on the waters, he was worshipped in connection with navigation. He was also worshipped as a fertility god.  Poseidon was moody by nature: his temperament was unstable at best, and his emotional fluctuations often resulted in violence

                                   

In Homer's Iliad, Poseidon supports the Greeks against the Trojans during the Trojan War and in the Odyssey, during the sea-voyage from Troy back home to Ithaca, the Greek hero Odysseus provokes Poseidon's fury by blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, resulting in Poseidon punishing him with storms, the complete loss of his ship and companions, and a ten-year delay. 

Given Poseidon's connection with horses as well as the sea, and the landlocked situation of the likely Indo-European homeland, Nobuo Komita has proposed that Poseidon was originally an aristocratic Indo-European horse-god who was then assimilated to Near Eastern aquatic deities when the basis of the Greek livelihood shifted from the land to the sea, or a god of fresh waters who was assigned a secondary role as god of the sea, where he overwhelmed the original Aegean sea deities such as Proteus and Nereus

Poseidon is also the subject of a Homeric hymn. In Plato's Timaeus and Critias, the island of Atlantis was Poseidon's domain. Conversely, Walter Burkert suggests that the Hellene cult worship of Poseidon as a horse god may be connected to the introduction of the horse and war-chariot from Anatolia to Greece around 1600 BC.

                                                

Everything you need to know about Zeus

Greek mythology has always been a big part of my life. Greek mythology is the set of stories about the gods, goddesses, heroes and rituals of Ancient Greeks. Greek Mythology was a part of the religion in Ancient Greece. The most popular Greek Hods are Zeus, Poseidon and Apollo.

                                           

The short biography of Zeus

Zeus was the strongest Greek god the ruler of all gods. Zeus was well known as the god of honor and justice as it was Zeus was the one who both established and enforced law. He set the standard for kings to follow just to make sure the kings did not sentence the wrong judgments and did not abuse the power of their position. 

His symbols were 

• the thunderbolt

• a sceptre

• an oak tree

• the eagle and bull were his sacred animals. 

Zeus is the god of the sky, lightning and thunder in Ancient Greek religion and myth, and king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the sixth child of Kronos and Rhea, king and queen of the Titans. His father, Kronos, with the fear of a prophecy which foretold that one of them would overthrow him swallowed his children as soon as they were born. 

When Zeus was born, Rhea hid him in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete, giving Kronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow instead. Eventually Zeus grew up and went on a mission to free his brothers and sisters, together with their allies, the Hekatonkheires and the Elder Cyclopes, Zeus and his siblings fought against the Titans in a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy.

At the end of the war, Zeus took Kronos' scythe and cut him into pieces, throwing his remains into Tartarus. He then became the king of the gods.

The supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, Zeus was universally respected and revered throughout Ancient Greece; the ancient Olympic Games were held at the site of Olympia every four years in honor of him. 

Highly temperamental, Zeus was armed with the mighty thunderbolt, said to be the most powerful weapon among the gods. Zeus was married to his sister, Hera, though he was infamous for his infidelity, taking on an almost innumerable amount of lovers and consorts, both mortal and divine including Karis and Hercules' mother.