Curated playlist
Characters in the Odyssey
- 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…
- Menelaus"Of moderate stature, auburn-haired, and handsome," with "a pleasing personality": that is how the writer Dares the Phrygian once described Menelaus, a king of Sparta. In Greek mythology, that mild portrait belongs to a king whose marriage…
- OdysseusOdysseus, the legendary king of Ithaca, spent ten years trying to get home after a war that had already lasted a decade. By the time he arrived, his wife had been fending off suitors for years, his son was grown, and the only creature to…
- 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…
- HadesHades is the god of the dead and the King of the underworld in ancient Greek religion and mythology. His name became so feared that by around the 5th century BC, the Greeks had largely stopped saying it aloud, pressing euphemisms into…
- AthenaAthena leaped from the forehead of her father Zeus, fully grown and armed, and the gods stood awestruck. Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his chariot in the sky. Pindar wrote that she cried aloud with a mighty shout, and that the Sky…
- HephaestusHephaestus refused to come home. The Greek god of artisans, blacksmiths, and fire had been thrown out of heaven by his own mother, Hera, and his answer was to forge her a golden throne. When she sat on it, invisible fetters locked her in…
- AchillesAchilles, the central figure of Homer's Iliad, carried a name that meant something like 'he who has the people distressed' - a striking label for a warrior celebrated above all others for his glory in battle. His name combines the Greek…
- PersephonePersephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, holds two thrones in ancient Greek mythology: one in the sunlit world of the living, and one in the darkness beneath the earth. She is the goddess of spring, whose return from below signals flowers…
- AresAres, the Greek god of war, was one of the most feared and least loved of the Twelve Olympians. Son of Zeus and Hera, he embodied something that made even his own divine family deeply uneasy: not the glory of war, but its raw, uncontrolled…
- AgamemnonAgamemnon, king of Mycenae, led the greatest military coalition the ancient Greek world had ever seen to the shores of Troy. He commanded the Achaean forces in a war that would become the defining myth of Western civilization. Yet when he…
- EosEos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, rose every morning from the edge of the river Oceanus and scattered light across the sky before her brother Helios, the sun god, could begin his own journey. She is rosy-fingered, saffron-robed,…
- 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…
- TelemachusA young man stands on the shore of Ithaca, watching waves crash against rocks that have seen no father for twenty years. The house is filled with strangers who eat his food and demand his mother's hand in marriage. Athena appears to him as…
- ErinyesThe Erinyes live in Erebus, older than any Olympian god, and their job is to make sure no oath goes unpunished. A formulaic curse in the Iliad names them directly as the forces that take vengeance underground on anyone who swears falsely.…
- OceanusOceanus once heard himself mocked by his own kin: "How did you summon courage to quit the stream that bears your name and the rock-roofed caves you yourself have made...?" Ancient Greek storytellers made Oceanus a Titan, child of Uranus,…
- Helen of TroyHelen of Troy was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Around the year 1604, the playwright Christopher Marlowe gave her the line most people still know. In Doctor Faustus, a character asks whether this was the face that…
- MemnonMemnon, the king of Aethiopia, arrived at Troy with an army so vast that ancient sources described it as too large to be counted. He was no ordinary ally. He was the son of Eos, goddess of the dawn, and Tithonus, a mortal man once carried…
- Nestor (mythology)Nestor of Gerenia, legendary king of Pylos, survives in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as a voice that never stops. Dares the Phrygian described him as large, broad and fair, with a long hooked nose and the bearing of a wise adviser. Beyond…