Curated playlist
Deities in the Iliad
- 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…
- 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…
- DemeterDemeter once let everything on earth die. Not through carelessness or neglect, but through a grief so total that crops withered, harvests failed, and mortals began to starve. This is not a gentle story of a goddess tending fields. It is a…
- 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…
- PoseidonPoseidon is one of the twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, a god of such terrifying breadth that sailors prayed to him for safe passage while farmers credited him with the growth of their crops. He ruled the sea,…
- 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…
- DionysusDionysus stands as one of the most paradoxical figures in all of ancient Greek religion: the god who frees his followers from fear and self-consciousness, yet who also embodies ritual madness and the destruction of those who stand against…
- 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…
- Rhea (mythology)Rhea handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it whole. The ruler of the cosmos had just been deceived by his own wife. The infant he believed he had consumed was already hidden in a cave on the island of Crete.…
- ThetisThetis is a figure from Greek mythology whose power ran deeper than most mortals, or even gods, ever understood. She was one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus, but that description barely scratches the surface.…
- HermesHermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion, and his story begins in a cave on Mount Cyllene, in the dead of night, where Zeus secretly made love to Maia. On the very first day of his life, the rapidly maturing infant crawled…
- CronusCronus, leader of the Titans and ruler of the mythological Golden Age, was the deity Greeks credited with bringing the harvest and feared for devouring his own children. He overthrew his father Uranus by castrating him with a stone sickle,…
- 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…
- ThemisThemis, the Greek goddess of divine law, had a name the scholar Moses Finley called "untranslatable." Writing about Homer's use of the word in the 8th century BCE, Finley found it could mean "right custom, proper procedure, social order."…
- 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,…
- Tethys (mythology)In the ancient Greek cosmos, Tethys emerged as one of the Titans, the children born from the union of Uranus and Gaia. Hesiod lists her among twelve siblings including Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis,…
- 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.…
- Eris (mythology)The name Eris derives from the ancient Greek noun eris, which carries the stem erid-. This root means strife or discord. Scholars have debated its origin for centuries. R. S. P. Beekes found no strong evidence linking it to verbs meaning…
- 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…
- 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,…