Curated playlist
Deities in the Aeneid
- 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…
- Jupiter (god)Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, takes his name from two ancient words: the Proto-Italic djous, meaning "day" or "sky," and pater, meaning "father." Sky Father. The name alone tells you what the Romans believed they were dealing with. For…
- ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated goddesses in the ancient Greek world, and she contained contradictions that still puzzle scholars today. She was the protector of young girls and the patron of childbirth, yet she remained a…
- Juno (mythology)Juno stands at the center of Roman state religion as both the special counsellor of Rome and the queen its people called Regina. She is a daughter of Saturn and Ops, the sister and wife of Jupiter, and the mother of Mars, Vulcan, Bellona,…
- Mercury (mythology)Mercury stands at a crossroads that no map can show: the boundary between the living and the dead, between buyer and seller, between the world of gods and the world of thieves. He was one of the twelve Dii Consentes, the inner council of…
- Venus (mythology)Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory, was so deeply woven into Roman life that the luckiest roll you could throw in a dice game was simply called "Venus." She was the divine ancestress…
- 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…
- Mars (mythology)Mars, the Roman god of war, was not simply a deity of battle. He was also a guardian of crops, a father of the Roman people, and a protector whose sacred animals spoke prophecy from the branches of oak trees. His very name gave the world a…
- 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,…
- 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…