Greek Myth Basics
A little confused about Greek mythology? Well here's a page to help ya out. Since I can't do much else for this page, because of my lack of stuff to do for the page, I might as well do something so I thought I'd explain some Greek Myth basics to people who are curious.
The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus
- Zeus- The almighty king of the Gods. The god of thunder and lightening. The father of Athena, as well as MANY MANY other gods and goddesses and mortals and all sorts of other things.
- Athena- The Goddess of War and Peace. She is the protector of the mortals. She is also the goddess of wisdom. She is very important to the Saint Seiya series. She is also my favorite goddess of Greek mythology. Her mother Metis, was swallowed by Zeus and Metis lives inside of Zeus's head from then on and guides him on stuff(she's the goddess of wisdom before her daughter). Think that's wierd? Well... it's not the wierdest thing you hear in Greek mythology. Anywayz, Metis was pregnant with Athena and Zeus was having major headaches. Finally, he couldn't take the headaches anymore so he has Hephaestus, the God of Iron, to split his head open. No wonder he was having headaches, right then, Athena popped out of Zeus's head full grown and fully armed. How she fit in there, I don't know and I don't know if I want to know... anywayz, "Athens" is named after Athena, as you can see. You could also say she was the most loved Goddess, considering she did protect them most of the time.
- Poseidon- The God of the Oceans, brother of Zeus. He can also be known as Athena's arch rival. The reason? Well, they were going to name the capital of Greece after either Athena or him. So, they both offered different kinds of gifts and they liked Athena's better so they named the city "Athens". Since that, Poseiden is bitter of Athena and he doesn't like mortals much either. So is he evil? No. None of the Gods were really evil, excluding a few like Ares and his sister Eris. Saint Seiya just portrayed him as being Athena's enemy, which he sort of was, and he didn't care what happens to mortals because he didn't cause he didn't like them.
- Hades- The God of the Underworld, brother of Zeus. This God is not evil, he just seriously has bad luck. When it was time to pick who was the god of what, he got the smallest straw, and got stuck with alot of dead people as well, how fun. He is always sad, gloomy and just plain dark. He wasn't an ugly god either, he just didn't get noticed much because the Gods didn't really care about him and the mortals feared him, although he really hasn't done anything bad. But then, he did something to make his sister, Demeter, Goddess of Earth hate him. Persephone, Demeter(and Zeus's) daughter, was playing out in the fields when all of the sudden the ground openned up and Hades kidnapped her. The reason, he wanted her for his bride. Demeter, enraged, told Zeus to do something about it so he did. Too bad Hades tricked Persephone into eating something from the underworld. So she is forced to stay there every Fall and Winter, while she can be on earth with her mother during spring and Summer. Well that also covers Demeter.
- Apollo- The God of the sun, son of Zeus and twin to Artemis.
- Artemis- Apollo's opposite, Goddess of the moon, twin sister of Apollo. Also goddess of hunting.
- Hera- The queen of the gods. Lets just go for she was VERY jealous. Zeus's wife(might explain why she's jealous considering most of Zeus's children aren't hers...)
- Ares- The God of War. Unlike Athena, he hated peace and love and the whole deal. So unlike Athena, he made wars and he loved it.
- Eris- The Goddess of Discord. Ares sister. Hated by basically everyone. Her joy in life was to see people argue and fight. Her symbol, the golden apple, is what she threw into a dinner one day and engraved in the apple were the words, "To the most beautiful". So she had Aphrodite(the goddess of love, not the narcissist gold saint..),Athena(yes sadly our goddess), and Hera fighting over it. This later caused the Trojan war...
- Aphrodite- The Goddess of Love. Although born from the foam of the ocean, she's considered Zeus' daughter.
- Cupid- The God of Love. Son of Aphrodite. Owned two sets of arrows, one capable of making people hate each other and the other to love each other.
- Hestia- The Goddess of the home and hearth. This is probably the Goddess talked about the least. She is Zeus's sister as well and one of the original Olympians.
- Hephaestus- The God of iron. He is originally Hera's child but because of his ugliness, she tossed him off of Mt. Olympus into the ocean(Says what kind of person she is huh?). Where he was found by kind and gentle Thetis,who raised him from there on. He was very good at making jewerly and weapons. He's actually pretty lucky too. Out of all the other Gods, Aphrodite ended up marrying him.
The Constellations
- Pegasus- This horse has an original beginning... Perseus, the he that slayed the gorgon Medusa, cut off Medusa's head and out popped Pegasus from her body. Lovely huh? Athena then took him to the Muses, and there he was taken care of one of the nine muses. Later on, Athena let's this one guy use him (I'll have his name later....) to slay the griffon. The hero succeeds and becomes really famous. But later on he gets cocky and decides he should be able to sit with the Gods since he did so many good deeds so he decided he'd fly up to Mt. Olympus using Pegasus. Bad decision. This really pissed off Zeus so he made Pegasus and the dude fall and unfortunately they were both killed. Then Athena and the muses asked Zeus to take pity on Pegasus so he did and put him up in the heavens where you can see the constellation of pegasus now.
- Andromeda- Andromeda was the princess of Ethiopia. She was one of the most beautiful mortals that ever lived. Unfortunately, her mother, Queen Cassiopia had to brag about her daughter's beauty to everyone. Then she also happened to slip out that her daughter was more beautiful than Poseiden's sea nymphs. Bad Idea. This seriously pissed off Poseiden and he ordered Cephius, Andromeda's Father and King of Ethiopia, to sacrifice Andromeda to him or he'd sink Ethiopia. Seeing that she had no choice because of her mother's big mouth, she agreed to be the sacrifice to save the kingdom. She was chained down to a rock in the ocean and waited for her death. Then, out of the water, came the sea monster and right when he opens his big mouth to gobble up Andromeda, the hero Perseus comes by and pulls out Medusa's head and turns the sea monster into stone just before he could eat Andromeda. He then saves Andromeda and they get married and live happily ever after and later Andromeda has a son. Now does this remind you of Shun? I mean, he's willing probably the most to sacrifice himself to save his friends and brother...Hades used him for a body....which isn't exactly sacrifice but still... and hey what do ya know? It was Athena that put Andromeda up into the sky as a constellation.
- Phoenix- Phoenix was the immortal bird that is reborn from the flames. A different "Phoenix" in Greek myth was the brother to Europe. That dude had a city named after him, "Phoenicia". Anywayz, back to the bird Phoenix...there isn't much to say about him, but this bird is like in every culture. And usually it's called Phoenix but in Japanese mythology it's called "Honou no tori" or "Houou" and represents one of four of the um.... I don't know what to call them, but there's this legend type thing that consists of four animals: a phoenix, a white tiger, a reptile, and a dragon.
