Curated playlist
LGBTQ themes in Greek mythology
- ZeusZeus was hidden in a cave as a baby so his father could not swallow him. Rhea gave Cronus a wrapped stone instead.
- PoseidonThe oldest records of Poseidon do not show a sea god at all. Bronze Age tablets from Pylos call him "earth shaker."
- DionysusZeus sewed the unborn Dionysus into his thigh after the child's mother died. That is why Dionysus is called twice-born.
- ErosIn the earliest Greek sources, Eros was not a child at all. He was one of the first four things to exist.
- AchillesAchilles's famous weak heel is not in Homer's Iliad. In Book 21, a thrown spear draws blood from his elbow.
- OrestesOrestes was acquitted of killing his mother because the jury vote was a tie. Athena's rules said a tie freed him.
- HermesOn his first day of life, the Greek god Hermes stole Apollo's cattle. He also invented the lyre by nightfall.
- AgamemnonIn myth, King Agamemnon led Greece's greatest army to Troy, then his own wife killed him in his bath.
- HeraclesZeus made the sun god Helios hold off rising for three days. He wanted more time with Alcmene, mother of Heracles.
- LaiusLaius, king of Thebes, is a key personage in the Theban founding myth, and his story ends on a road he never finished travelling. Greek tradition remembers him less for what he ruled than for what he was told. A voice at Delphi gave him a…
- 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…
- OrpheusOrpheus walked into the underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice. He lost her when he looked back.
- PolyphemusPolyphemus is a one-eyed giant, the son of Poseidon and a mother named Thoosa. Greek myth counts him among the Cyclopes, and Homer's Odyssey is where he first appears. His name is a small puzzle. It can mean "abounding in songs and…
- MarsyasIn Rome, a statue of the satyr Marsyas stood as a symbol of liberty. Poets posted verses against the powerful there.