Curated category
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…
- HeraHera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family in ancient Greek religion, and the protector of women during childbirth.
- AphroditeAphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love, has two birth stories that contradict each other, and the people who told them knew it.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- HeliosThe word helios comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that ancient scholars trace back to the dawn of language itself. Walter Burkert noted in his 1985 book…
- 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…
- OrpheusOrpheus was a Thracian bard whose music, the ancient Greeks believed, could move rivers from their courses and coax rocks into dance.
- 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…
- 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…