Topics

The Greek goddesses are the female deities of Greek myth, from Gaia and Night at the start of Hesiod's Theogony to the Olympian queens, the powers born of strife and victory, and the goddesses of hearth, birth and sea.

Greek heroes are the mortal and half-divine figures of Greek myth, from the warriors and kings of Troy and Calydon to hunters, seers and craftsmen whose stories end in glory, ruin or transformation.

Love and Transformation gathers five myths of desire ending in a changed body, almost all of them known today only through Ovid's fuller Latin retelling of a thinner or entirely absent Greek original.

Greek myth's monsters, the Gorgons, the Hydra, Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Cyclopes, Scylla, Charybdis and the Sirens, mostly descend from Typhon and Echidna, and ancient sources disagree about nearly every one of their origins, numbers and fates.

Myth in everyday language is the set of English words and idioms that come from Greek and Roman myth, from cereal and money to Pandora's box and the Achilles heel, including the cases where the modern sense has drifted far from the ancient story.

Nymphs, Muses and the other minor divinities are the goddesses of Greek myth who rank below the Olympians: spirits of springs, trees, mountains and sea, and the nine Muses who give poets their songs.

Oracles and Fate gathers Greek mythology's account of a fixed future, the three goddesses who set it, the oracle sites and priestess who reveal fragments of it, and the two ways mortals fail to act on what they are told, disbelief and pride.

The Roman heroes are the figures of Rome's legendary age in Livy and Virgil, from Latinus, Turnus and Camilla in Italy before the city, through Romulus, Remus and Numa, to Lucretia and the end of the kings.

The Argonaut Cycle is the group of Greek myths about Jason's voyage aboard the Argo to retrieve the Golden Fleece, a crew of heroes ancient sources cannot fully agree on, and a sorceress ancient playwrights judged in opposite ways.

The Heracles Cycle is the group of Greek myths that follow Heracles through his whole life, from a birth Hera tried to thwart, through the labors for Eurystheus and the troubles after them, to his death on Mount Oeta and his place among the gods.

The House of Atreus and the Returns are the Greek myths of what happened after Troy fell: the murder that met Agamemnon at home, the revenge of Orestes, and the scattered voyages that brought the other Greek leaders back or drowned them on the way.

The Olympians are the generation of gods who took power after the Titans and were worshipped as a group of twelve, though the ancient lists of who filled the twelve seats never fully agreed.

The Perseus Cycle is the group of Greek myths that follow one Argive family from the oracle that made Acrisius fear his grandson, through the Gorgon and Andromeda, to the discus that killed him and the line that led to Heracles.

The Roman gods are the deities of Rome's state religion: the Capitoline Triad, the twelve gods of the lectisternium of 217 BCE, the older Latin gods with no Greek original, and the cults Rome brought in from abroad.

The Theban Cycle is the group of Greek myths about the royal house of Thebes, from Cadmus founding the city to Oedipus, his feuding sons, Antigone, and the two Argive wars fought at its seven gates.

The Theseus Cycle is the group of Greek myths that set the royal houses of Athens and Crete against each other across three generations, from Minos's stolen bull and the death of Androgeus to the black sail and the ruin of Phaedra and Hippolytus.

The Trojan Cycle is the group of Greek myths about the ten-year war at Troy, its cause in a divine beauty contest, its major fighters on both sides, and an ancient tradition that disputes whether Helen was ever at Troy at all.

The Greek underworld is both the god Hades and the shadowy realm he rules, and the sorted, judged afterlife of Tartarus, Elysium, and infernal judges is a later layer added on top of Homer's flatter and far less organized land of the dead.

Titans, Primordials and Creation follows Hesiod's own continuous account of the cosmos, from the first beings before Gaia through three generations of divine kings to the war that installs Zeus.