Curated playlist
Greek mythological heroes
- MenelausWhen Troy fell, did Menelaus kill Helen, the wife who left him? Ancient writers tell the moment four different ways.
- OdysseusWhen Odysseus finally reached home, only his dog Argos recognized him. He had been away twenty years.
- AeneasTwice in Homer's Iliad, gods snatch the Trojan Aeneas from death. He was a minor warrior who became Rome's first hero.
- HectorHector, Troy's prince, fights the Greeks knowing Troy will fall.
- AchillesAchilles's famous weak heel is not in Homer's Iliad. In Book 21, a thrown spear draws blood from his elbow.
- TheseusTheseus entered a maze with a hidden sword and a ball of thread. Inside waited the half-man, half-bull Minotaur.
- OrestesOrestes was acquitted of killing his mother because the jury vote was a tie. Athena's rules said a tie freed him.
- PerseusPerseus beheaded Medusa by walking backward into her cave, watching her in a shield.
- OedipusOedipus, king of Thebes, blinded himself with a pin from his dead wife's gown.
- TriptolemusTriptolemus, a hero of Eleusis in Greek mythology, stands as a boy between two goddesses in a 5th-century relief now in the National Museum in Athens. The goddesses are Demeter and her daughter, the Kore. Demeter is handing him a golden…
- AgamemnonIn myth, King Agamemnon led Greece's greatest army to Troy, then his own wife killed him in his bath.
- JasonJason lost a sandal carrying an old woman who was really the goddess Hera. That sandal set his quest in motion.
- BellerophonBellerophon carried a sealed letter ordering his own death to a king. The king feasted him for nine days first.
- HeraclesZeus made the sun god Helios hold off rising for three days. He wanted more time with Alcmene, mother of Heracles.
- IphigeniaAgamemnon killed a deer in Artemis's sacred grove, and every wind stopped. His fleet could not reach Troy.
- PatroclusPatroclus, the Greek hero of the Trojan War, was once described by the ancient writer Philostratus down to the flare of his nostrils. Philostratus gave him an olive complexion, black eyes, fine eyebrows and moderately long hair. He said…
- DiomedesThe great albatrosses carry the name of a Greek hero. Their genus is Diomedea and their family is Diomedeidae, both drawn from Diomedes, a hero of Greek mythology known above all for his part in the Trojan War. Homer's Iliad ranks him with…
- OrpheusOrpheus walked into the underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice. He lost her when he looked back.
- CadmusCadmus sowed a dragon's teeth, and armed warriors rose from the ground.
- MeleagerMeleager was a Greek hero honored with his own sacred precinct, a temenos, at Calydon in Aetolia. According to the Fates, his life was bound to a single piece of wood burning in his family's hearth. Only when that wood was consumed by fire…
- Seven against ThebesA seer marched to Thebes knowing he would die there. His wife was bribed with a golden necklace to force him.
- TelephusAn oracle told wounded Telephus that his assailant would heal him. The cure came from rust on Achilles' spear.
- 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.