Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Sisyphus was a Greek king usually associated with Corinth. He was famously cunning, but unfortunately also deceitful and impious. In the most common version of the myth, Sisyphus managed to cheat Death and thereby extend his life (the details of how he accomplished this vary across different sources). Eventually, however, Sisyphus did die.
Odysseus, son of Laertes and Anticleia, was a Greek hero and the king of the island of Ithaca. He married the beautiful princess Penelope and had one son by her, Telemachus. Described by Homer as the “man of twists and turns,” Odysseus was noted above all for his intelligence and cunning. He used these attributes to great effect during the ...
Tantalus, the son of the nymph Pluto and either Zeus or Tmolus, was a king, usually said to have ruled somewhere in Anatolia. For many years, Tantalus enjoyed the gods’ favor. He was even invited to dine with them—an honor extended to few other mortals. But Tantalus eventually did something to gravely offend the gods, either betraying their ...
Sisyphus was thus able to escape death for a time. But his actions led to a dangerous crisis: with Thanatos in chains, death had been—temporarily—abolished. The gods finally sent Ares, the god of war, to release Thanatos from his chains. Sisyphus was forced to die, but he managed to trick the Underworld gods a second time. He told his wife ...
Tityus, son of Zeus and Elara, was a brutish man of enormous size and strength. He is best remembered for trying to rape Leto, one of Zeus’ lovers and the mother of the gods Apollo and Artemis. For this crime, Tityus was slain by either Artemis, Apollo, or both. He was then cast into Tartarus, where his sins earned him a terrible punishment ...
The name Bellerophon may have been derived from the words belos (“projectile”) and phontēs (“killer”). Bellerophon would thus mean “he who kills with a projectile.”. According to an alternative ancient etymology, Bellerophon received his name because he had killed a tyrant of Corinth named Bellerus; in this version, his name would ...
The Danaids were the fifty daughters of Danaus, who ruled over Libya. Danaus’ brother Aegyptus, meanwhile, ruled over Egypt. When Aegyptus wished to arrange a marriage between his fifty sons and Danaus’ fifty daughters, Danaus and the Danaids fled to Argos, their ancestral homeland. In Argos, Danaus and the Danaids were taken in by King ...
Cronus, the second ruler of the Greek cosmos, was a Titan known primarily for his cruelty and for usurping his father Uranus. He fathered the first of the Olympian deities, including Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Zeus. Insatiably cruel and hungry for power, Cronus was ultimately deposed by his son Zeus, who ushered in the era of ...
Astonish’d at the sight, aghast I stood, And a cold fear ran shivering through my blood; Straight I command the sacrifice to haste, Straight the flay’d victims to the flames are cast, And mutter’d vows, and mystic song applied. To grisly Pluto, and his gloomy bride. “Now swift I waved my falchion o’er the blood;
Persephone, often known simply as Kore (“Maiden”), was a daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Her mythology tells of how she was abducted by her uncle Hades one day while picking flowers. Demeter, distraught, wandered the entire world in search of her daughter. When Demeter at last located Persephone in the Underworld, she demanded that her ...