Curated playlist
Shapeshifters in Greek mythology
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Metis (mythology)Metis, in the words of the poet Hesiod, was 'wiser than gods and mortal men.' Yet for most of her existence she was hidden beneath the inward parts of Zeus, the king of the gods. Her name, Μῆτις in ancient Greek, translates as Wisdom,…
- 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,…
- HeraclesHeracles, born Alcaeus and later known to Rome as Hercules, is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Alcmene. His birth alone was the product of divine manipulation: Zeus ordered the sun god Helios to hold off rising for three days so…
- 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…