Myths and Legends | Greek Myths

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Episode 274 Myths and Legends Greek Myths

GREEK MYTHS

The ancient Greeks had many myths or stories about gods and heroes. These gods and heroes acted very much like human beings, though on a grander scale. They fell in love, and they quarreled.

Myths try to explain things. Some myths are stories about how the universe, the world, and human beings were created. Other myths offer explanations for why such things as war, earthquakes, and floods happen.

Myths are such great stories that they get told over and over. We still read the Greek myths today.

HOW EVERYTHING BEGAN

According to Greek myths, there was nothing but emptiness at first. Then came Gaea, the earth, who gave birth to Uranus, god of the heavens. Gaea and Uranus had 12 children called Titans.

Uranus was afraid that the Titans would take his power. He was right to be afraid. The youngest Titan, Cronus, killed his father. Cronus then tried to kill his own children by swallowing them. He did not succeed. His youngest child, Zeus, overcame Cronus and helped the other children to escape. Zeus’s brothers were the gods Poseidon and Hades, and his sisters were the goddesses Hera, Demeter, and Hestia.

THE GODS OF OLYMPUS

The new gods—the children of Cronus—were known as the Olympians because their home was on Mount Olympus.

Zeus was king of the gods. Hera was his queen. Zeus’s children included the twins Artemis, goddess of hunting, and the sun god Apollo.

Zeus was also father of the three Fates, who controlled human life and decided when people should die. Even Zeus could not make them change their decisions.

GODS OF THE SEA AND THE UNDERWORLD

Not all the gods lived on Mount Olympus. Poseidon had his own kingdom of the sea. Sailors had to be careful not to offend him. If angry, he might start a storm.

Hades ruled the underworld—a place beneath Earth where the souls of the dead go. Hades kidnapped Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of grain. Demeter was too busy searching for her child to look after the harvest, and people began to starve.

Zeus ordered Hades to let Persephone go, but she had eaten a little of Hades’s food. Because of that, she had to spend part of every year in the underworld. When Persephone is with Hades, it is winter on Earth and nothing grows. When she returns, spring comes with her.

There are different versions of this myth and of other Greek myths. But most of the stories give the same picture of the Greek gods. The gods were passionate and often fought with each other. They also took part in human battles.

THE TROJAN WAR

The Trojan War was a major event in Greek mythology. The Greeks may actually have fought the Trojans in a long war. Myths that have a basis in history are sometimes called legends.

According to Greek legend, a Trojan prince named Paris was asked to decide which goddess was most beautiful, Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. Paris chose Aphrodite. She gave him the lovely Helen as a reward.

Helen was already married to a Greek prince. When Paris ran away with Helen, the Greeks declared war on Troy, where the Trojans lived. The fighting lasted ten years, until Athena helped the Greeks to build a giant wooden horse. The Trojans took the horse within their strong city walls without realizing that Greek soldiers were hiding inside it. At night, these soldiers came out of the horse. They opened the gates to Troy and let the rest of the Greek army inside to destroy the city.

A long poem, the Iliad, describes the Trojan War. A second poem, the Odyssey, tells the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus after the war was over. The writer of both poems is supposed to be Homer, a poet who probably lived around the 8th century B.C. However, the legends are much older than that. Greek storytellers passed on the tales for hundreds of years before they were written down.

MONSTERS AND HEROES

Some creatures in Greek myths were terrifying beasts. The Hydra was a monster with many heads. Other creatures were half-human and half-animal. The Minotaur had the head of a bull and the body of a man.

Heroes were the only people who could kill the monsters. Greek heroes were usually the children of gods and humans. Heracles was a son of Zeus. He fought the Hydra and many other creatures.

Theseus was a hero who tracked the Minotaur through a maze and killed him. No one else had ever found their way out of the maze, but Theseus succeeded by following a thread through the twisting tunnels.

GREEK MYTHS IN HISTORY

Ancient Greek writers like Euripides and Aeschylus turned some of the myths into great plays. Their plays influenced later writers.

After the ancient Romans became the major power of Europe, in the 1st century B.C., they gave the Greek gods new names and borrowed their stories. Zeus, for example, became the Roman god Jupiter. Roman statues, paintings, and poetry all used stories from Greek myths.

Later, European artists looked back to Greece for inspiration. Famous painters and sculptors created their own versions of the gods. Musicians and writers took ideas from Greek myths. Even today, you can find the ancient stories in movies and computer games.