Curated playlist
Characters in the Argonautica
- ZeusZeus is the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, and yet even the gods rise from their seats when he enters the room. That detail, preserved in ancient sources, says everything about the order of things on Mount Olympus. He is the king who…
- HeraHera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family in ancient Greek religion, and the protector of women during childbirth. She is the queen of the twelve Olympians and of Mount Olympus, the sister and wife of Zeus, and the daughter of the…
- AphroditeAphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love, has two birth stories that contradict each other, and the people who told them knew it. In Homer's Iliad and Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite, she is simply the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Hesiod's…
- ApolloApollo carries more names than any other Olympian. He is the archer god, the healer, the prophet, the musician, the shepherd's patron, the founder of cities, the averter of evil, the lord of light. He was born on a floating island in the…
- MedeaMedea, daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, first appears in Hesiod's Theogony around 700 BC. She carries a lineage that traces back to Helios, the sun god, making her the granddaughter of a deity and the niece of Circe, the enchantress.…
- ArgonautsJason was 20 years old when an oracle told him to dress as a Magnesian and walk to the court of Iolcus. He arrived with only one sandal, having lost the other crossing the muddy Anauros river while carrying an old woman he did not…
- JasonJason, the Greek mythological hero at the center of one of antiquity's great adventure stories, arrives in the city of Iolcus wearing only one sandal. He lost the other crossing a river called Anauros while carrying an old woman on his…
- HeraclesHeracles, born Alcaeus and later known to Rome as Hercules, is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Alcmene. His birth alone was the product of divine manipulation: Zeus ordered the sun god Helios to hold off rising for three days so…
- ScyllaScylla is a man-eating sea monster from Greek mythology, stationed on one side of a narrow channel of water so close to the opposite shore that an arrow could cross it. On that other side lurks Charybdis, a different horror entirely, a…
- HeliosHelios, the Greek god who personifies the Sun, is invoked in one ancient ritual text with remarkable vividness: "a youth, fair to behold, with fiery hair, clothed in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak and wearing a fiery crown." The same…
- Iris (mythology)The ancient Greek noun for rainbow also meant the halo of the Moon. An inscription from Corinth reveals an original form with a digamma that eventually disappeared. Scholars suggest a Proto-Indo-European pre-form exists, though some…
- OrpheusOrpheus was a Thracian bard whose music, the ancient Greeks believed, could move rivers from their courses and coax rocks into dance. Pindar called him "the father of songs." His mother was the Muse Calliope, and according to some…
- MeleagerA Calydonian prince named Meleager stood at the center of a family tree that ancient sources could not agree upon. Apollodorus records him as the son of Althaea and King Oeneus, while other accounts suggest his father was the god Ares.…
- PeliasPelias, king of Iolcus in Greek mythology, owes his entire reign to a single missing sandal. When a young stranger arrived in Iolcus wearing only one shoe, Pelias recognized the man at once as his greatest threat. An oracle had warned him…