Curated playlist
Deeds of Zeus
- OdysseusWhen Odysseus finally reached home, only his dog Argos recognized him. He had been away twenty years.
- TitanomachyAfter winning the Titanomachy, Atlas alone was sentenced to hold up the sky. The other defeated Titans went to Tartarus.
- Metis (mythology)Zeus swallowed his pregnant wife Metis for fear she would bear something stronger than his thunderbolt.
- HephaestusHephaestus answered being thrown out of heaven by forging his mother a golden throne.
- Rhea (mythology)Rhea tricked her husband Cronus into swallowing a stone instead of their baby. The real baby was hidden on Crete.
- ThetisAn early Spartan hymn by Alcman calls Thetis the creator of the universe. Later myths made her Achilles's mother.
- PerseusPerseus beheaded Medusa by walking backward into her cave, watching her in a shield.
- Trojan WarIn Greek myth, the Trojan War began with a golden apple. Eris, goddess of discord, brought it uninvited.
- ArgonautsOne missing sandal put a Greek king on edge and launched the Argonauts.
- BellerophonBellerophon carried a sealed letter ordering his own death to a king. The king feasted him for nine days first.
- AtreusAtreus was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. His two sons are the ones remembered for sailing against Troy. Yet the legends told about their father are far…
- PandoraPandora's famous box was not a box until the sixteenth century. In Greek myth it was a big storage jar.
- AnchisesIn Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius tries to talk Brutus into murdering Caesar by pointing to a famous rescue from a burning city. The man saved in that story is Anchises, a Trojan of royal blood from Greek and Roman mythology. He was…
- DeucalionDeucalion, a figure from Greek mythology, once received an order that sounded like nonsense: "cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder." An oracle gave him this instruction after a flood had swept across the…
- HecatoncheiresIn Homer, gods call a hundred-armed giant Briareus and mortals call him Aegaeon. The mortal name points to the sea.
- ThyestesThe phrase "Thyestean feast" describes a meal at which human flesh is served. It comes from Thyestes, a king of Olympia in Greek mythology, and from the worst dinner of his life. His family tree reads like a chain of crimes, each one…
- IxionIxion, king of the Lapiths, ruled the most ancient tribe of Thessaly. In Greek mythology he became a byword for punishment without end. His ruin did not begin with a war or a curse. It began with a promise to a father-in-law that he never…
- CadmusCadmus sowed a dragon's teeth, and armed warriors rose from the ground.
- Judgement of ParisAn uninvited goddess threw a golden apple into a wedding party. Eris's snub led to the Judgement of Paris.
- TantalusIn the earliest named crime, Tantalus asked Zeus to let him live as the gods do.
- AdonisEvery midsummer, ancient Greek women set tiny gardens in the sun to watch them wither. The festival mourned Adonis.
- MemnonMemnon, king of Aethiopia, drew blood from Achilles at Troy. Achilles then killed him with a spear through the chest.
- AtalantaIn Greek myth, Atalanta drew first blood on the Calydonian boar before any man landed a strike.
- PrometheusPrometheus hid a live coal in a fennel stalk to bring fire back to people. Zeus had taken fire away after being tricked.
- SisyphusSisyphus chained up Thanatos, the god of death, and no one on Earth could die.