Greece Mythology

Greek myths simmer with spicy, titillating scandal as they explain the origins of natural phenomena and the ways of the world. The adventures of the gods and their mortal counterparts have inspired artists, writers, musicians, and psychoanalysts for centuries. Moreover, Greek mythology is inextricably intertwined with the nation’s religion, history, and literature.

Worship centered on prayer and offerings to the gods. Temples and rites were the heart of religious practice, and pilgrimages often were taken to consult oracles or to appease angered gods. Foreign deities were welcomed into the Greek pantheon, the canon of gods, to make sure no god was ignored or offended. There was even an altar to the unknown god, to keep the bases covered.

The Greek gods behaved like soap-opera characters who can’t be written off the show—the immortal all-stars lacked morals and were slaves to lust, greed, and jealousy. The Greeks knew that these divine passions were not to be trifled with: mythology is full of ugly examples of what happens to mortals who challenge or disrespect gods. The weaver Arachne was turned into a spider because she dared to declare herself more skilled than Athena. Tantalus, after serving the gods human flesh at a feast, was condemned to stand in a pool in Hades, forever tormented by hunger and thirst with “tantalizing” food and water just beyond his grasp. When King Minos didn’t make an expected sacrifice to Poseidon, the sea god struck Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, with an insatiable lust for a bull. Pasiphaë then conceived and bore the Minotaur, a cannibal bull-boy. Though the worship of Greek gods faded with the advent of Christianity, the pantheon’s legacy is still visible in Greece’s plentiful ancient ruins, not to mention the myths that survive today.