Curated playlist
Greek goddesses
- HeraThe Greek goddess Hera renewed her virginity every year in a spring near Nauplia. The rites were not to be spoken of.
- DemeterGrief over her stolen daughter made the goddess Demeter let crops wither and mortals starve.
- Phoebe (Titaness)In Aeschylus's play The Eumenides, the Titan Phoebe gives Delphi's oracle to Apollo as a birthday gift.
- Metis (mythology)Zeus swallowed his pregnant wife Metis for fear she would bear something stronger than his thunderbolt.
- TheiaTheia, the Titan goddess of light, barely speaks in the myths that survive. Sun, Moon and Dawn all descend from her.
- NyxNyx is the Greek goddess who personifies the night, and in Homer's Iliad even Zeus, king of the gods, is said to be in awe of displeasing her. The Romans called her Nox, which also means Night. Poets placed her among the very first beings…
- Rhea (mythology)Rhea tricked her husband Cronus into swallowing a stone instead of their baby. The real baby was hidden on Crete.
- PersephonePersephone was gathering flowers when Hades burst through the earth and carried her off.
- ThemisAphrodite asked the goddess Themis why her son Eros would not grow. Themis said he was lonely and needed a brother.
- EosEos got her lover Tithonus immortality but forgot eternal youth. In the end she turned him into a cicada.
- PandoraPandora's famous box was not a box until the sixteenth century. In Greek myth it was a big storage jar.
- ErinyesIn Aeschylus's Oresteia, Athens put a man on trial for killing his mother. The Erinyes accused him.
- Eris (mythology)Eris, the Greek goddess of strife, plants herself beside the ship of Odysseus and lets out a scream. In Book 11 of the Iliad, Zeus sends her to the Achaean camp carrying a portent of war. Odysseus's black ship sits in the middle of the…
- PasiphaëMinos broke a vow to Poseidon, but Queen Pasiphaë paid the price. Her curse led to the birth of the Minotaur.
- Iris (mythology)Iris, the Greek personification of the rainbow, has no temple, no shrine and no festival that anyone can name. Yet she turns up everywhere in ancient storytelling. She appears in epic poems, in tragedies, and even in a comedy about birds…
- GaiaIn the Iliad, a black lamb is sacrificed, and the oath sworn over it calls on Gaia as a witness. The Greeks believed she was listening. If a man broke his word, she would know. Gaia was the Greek personification of the Earth. Some writers…
- CybeleIn 204 BC, Rome fetched the goddess Cybele in the form of a black lump of meteoric iron.
- MnemosyneZeus visited the Titaness Mnemosyne for nine nights, and she bore the nine Muses. Her name is the Greek word for memory.
- CirceCirce, the enchantress of Greek mythology, is called by Homer "a dreadful goddess with lovely hair and human speech." The phrase captures the trouble with her. She is a witch, yet she is sometimes treated as a goddess and sometimes as a…