Curated category
Greek goddesses
- HeraThe name Hera appears on clay tablets from Pylos and Thebes written in the Linear B script, dating to the Mycenaean period.
- 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…
- Phoebe (Titaness)The Greek name Phoibē carries the weight of light itself. It is the feminine form of Phoîbos, which means pure, bright, and radiant.
- Metis (mythology)The Greek word metis meant a quality that combined wisdom and cunning. This quality was considered to be highly admirable, the hero Odysseus being the…
- TheiaTheia is the Greek goddess from whom all light was said to proceed, and yet she barely speaks a line in the myths that survive.
- Rhea (mythology)The earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus gave birth to Rhea as one of their twelve or thirteen Titan children. She grew up alongside her siblings…
- PersephoneA clay tablet from Pylos, dated between 1400 and 1200 BC, bears the reconstructed name *Preswa. John Chadwick identified this as a goddess who could be…
- EosThe Proto-Greek form of the dawn goddess is reconstructed as auhōs. This linguistic root connects her to the Vedic goddess Ushas, the Lithuanian goddess…
- PandoraIn the 8th century BCE, Hesiod wrote lines 560 through 612 of his poem Theogony. He described a woman created by Hephaestus on Zeus's orders without ever…
- ErinyesUranus lay upon the earth as his son Cronus struck with a sickle. Drops of blood fell from the wound and stained the soil below.
- Eris (mythology)The name Eris derives from the ancient Greek noun eris, which carries the stem erid-. This root means strife or discord.
- PasiphaëIn the ancient Greek pantheon, Pasiphaë stood as a daughter of Helios and Perse. Her lineage traced back to Colchis, an early Kartvelian-speaking polity…
- 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…
- CybeleA corpulent female figure sits flanked by large felines on a stone slab from Çatalhöyük, dated to the 6th millennium BC.
- MnemosyneIn the ancient Greek creation myth, a Titan named Mnemosyne emerged as one of the children born from Uranus and Gaia. Hesiod wrote in his Theogony around 700…