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Hisarlik (Turkish), Ilios (Homer), Ilion (Greek) and Ilium (Roman

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Troy is the name of the Bronze Age city attacked in the Trojan War, a popular story in the mythology of ancient Greece, and the name given to the archaeological site in the north-west of Asia Minor (now Turkey) which has revealed a large and prosperous city occupied over millennia. There has been much scholarly debate as to whether mythical Troy actually existed and if so whether the archaeological site was the same city; however, it is now almost universally accepted that the archaeological excavations have revealed the city of Homer's . Other names for Troy include Hisarlik (Turkish), Ilios (Homer), Ilion ( Greek) and Ilium ( Roman). The archaeological site of Troy is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Troy in myth

Troy is the setting for Homer's Iliad in which he recounts the final year of the Trojan War sometime in the 13th century BCE. The war was in fact a ten-year siege of the city by a coalition of Greek forces led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae. The purpose of the expedition was to reclaim Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon. Helen was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris and taken as his prize for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in a competition with Athena and Hera. The Trojan War is also told in other sources such as the Epic Cycle poems (of which only fragments survive) and is also briefly mentioned in Homer's . Troy and the Trojan War later became a staple myth of Classical Greek and Roman literature.

In the Iliad, Homer describes Troy as 'well-founded', 'strong-built' & 'well-walled'.

Homer describes Troy as 'well-founded', 'strong-built' and 'well-walled'; there are also several references to fine battlements, towers and 'high' and 'steep' walls. The walls must have been unusually strong in order to withstand a ten-year siege and in fact, Troy fell through the trickery of the Trojan horse ruse rather than any defensive failing. Indeed, in Greek mythology the walls were so impressive that they were said to have been built by Poseidon and Apollo who after an act of impiety were compelled by Zeus to serve the Trojan king Laomedon for one year. However, the fortifications did not help the king when Hercules sacked the city with an expedition of only six ships. The sacking was Hercules' revenge for not being paid for his services to the king when he killed the sea-serpent sent by Poseidon. This episode was traditionally placed one generation before the Trojan War as the only male survivor was Laomedon's youngest son Priam, the Trojan king in the later conflict.

Inhabited from the Early Bronze Age (3000 BCE) through to the 12th century CE the archaeological site which is now called Troy is 5 km from the coast but was once next to the sea. The site was situated in a bay created by the mouth of the river Skamanda and occupied a strategically important position between Aegean and Eastern civilizations by controlling the principal point of access to the Black Sea, Anatolia and the Balkans from both directions by land and sea. In particular, the difficulty in finding favourable winds to enter the Dardanelles may well have resulted in ancient sailing vessels standing by near Troy. Consequently, the site became the most important Bronze Age city in the North Aegean, reaching the height of its prosperity in the middle Bronze Age, contemporary with the Mycenaean civilization on the Greek mainland and the Hittite empire to the East.

Troy was first excavated by Frank Calvert in 1863 CE and visited by Heinrich Schliemann who continued excavations from 1870 CE until his death in 1890 CE; in particular, he attacked the conspicuous 20 m high artificial mound which had been left untouched since antiquity. Initial finds by Schliemann of gold and silver jewellery and vessels seemed to vindicate his belief that the site was actually the Troy of Homer. However, these have now been dated to more than a thousand years before a probable date for the Trojan War and indicated that the history of the site was much more complex than previously considered. Indeed, perhaps unwittingly, Schliemann would add 2000 years to Western history, which had previously gone back only as far as the first Olympiad of 776 BCE.

The excavations continued throughout the 20th century CE and continue to the present day and they have revealed nine different cities and no less than 46 levels of inhabitation at the site. These have been labelled Troy I to Troy IX after Schliemann's (and his successor Dorpfeld's) original classification. This has since been slightly adjusted to incorporate radio-carbon dating results from the early 21st century CE.

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Troy I (c. 3000-2550 BCE) was a small village settlement surrounded by stone walls. Pottery and metal finds match those on Lesbos and Lemnos in the Aegean and in northern Anatolia.

Troy II (c. 2550-2300 BCE) displays larger buildings (40 m long), mud-brick and stone fortifications with monumental gates. Schliemann's 'treasure' finds - objects in gold, silver, electrum, bronze, carnelian and lapis lazuli - most likely come from this period. This 'treasure' includes 60 earrings, six bracelets, two magnificent diadems and 8750 rings, all in solid gold. Once again, finds of foreign materials suggest trade with Asia.

Troy III - Troy V (c. 2300-1750 BCE) is the most difficult period to reconstruct as the layers were hastily removed in early excavations in order to reach the lower levels. Generally speaking, the period seems a less prosperous one but foreign contact is further evidenced by the presence of Anatolian influenced dome ovens and Minoan pottery.

The archaeological site of Troy has impressive fortification walls 5 m thick & up to 8 m high constructed from large limestone blocks.

Troy VI (c. 1750-1300 BCE) is the period most visible today at the site and is the most likely candidate for the besieged city of Homer's Trojan War. Impressive fortification walls 5 m thick and up to 8 m high constructed from large limestone blocks and including several towers (with the rectangular plan as in Hittite fortifications) demonstrate the prosperity but also a concern for defence during this period. The walls would have once been topped by a mud brick and wood superstructure and with closely fitting stonework sloping inwards; as the walls rise they certainly fit the Homeric description of 'strong-built Troy'. In addition, sections of the walls are slightly offset every 10 m or so in order to curve around the site without the necessity for corners (a weak point in wall defence). This feature is unique to Troy and displays an independence from both Mycenaean and Hittite influence. The walls included five gateways allowing entrance to the inner city composed of large structures, once of two stories and with central courts and collonaded halls similar to those of contemporary Mycenaean cities such as Tiryns, Pylos and Mycenae itself. Outside the fortified citadel the lower town covers an impressive 270,000 square metres protected by an encircling rock-cut ditch. The size of the site is now much bigger than first thought when Schliemann excavated and suggests a population of as high as 10,000, much more in keeping with Homer's grand city-state.

Finds at the site point to the existence of a thriving wool industry and the first use of horses, recalling Homer's oft-used epithet 'horse-taming Trojans'. Pottery very similar to that on the Greek mainland has been discovered, principally the Grey Minyan ware which imitates metal vessels. There are also imported ceramics from Crete, Cyprus and the Levant. In marked contrast to Mycenaean palaces, there is no evidence of sculpture or fresco-painted walls.

Troy VI was partially destroyed but the exact cause is not known beyond some evidence of fire. Intriguingly, bronze arrow heads, spear tips and sling shots have been found on the site and even some embedded in the fortification walls, suggesting some sort of conflict. The dates of these (c. 1250 BCE) and the site destruction correlate with Herodotus' dates for the Trojan War. Conflicts over the centuries between Mycenaeans and Hittites are more than probable and may well have been the origin of the epic Trojan War in Greek mythology. There is very little evidence of any large-scale war but the possibility of smaller conflicts is evidenced in Hittite texts where 'Ahhiyawa' is recognised as referring to Mycenaean Greeks and 'Wilusa' as the region of which Ilios was the capital. These documents tell of local unrest and Mycenaean support of local rebellion against Hittite control in the area of Troy and suggest a possible motive for regional rivalry between the two civilizations. Intriguingly, there is also a bronze Mycenaean sword taken as war booty and found in Hattusa, the Hittite capital.

Troy VIIa (c. 1300-1180 BCE) and Troy VIIb (c. 1180-950 BCE) both display an increase in the size of the lower town and some reconstruction of the fortifications but also a marked decline in architectural and artistic quality in respect to Troy VI. For example, there is a return to handmade pottery after centuries of wares made on the wheel. Once again, this correlates well with the Greek tradition that following the Trojan War the city was sacked and abandoned, at least for a time. Both Troy VIIa and Troy VIIb were destroyed by fires.

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Troy VIII and Troy IX (c. 950 BCE to 550 CE) are the sites of Greek Ilion and Roman Ilium respectively. There is evidence that the site was populated throughout the so-called Dark Ages but the settlement did not return to a level of significant development until the 8th century BCE. Ancient Troy was never forgotten though. The Persian King Xerxes is said by Herodotus to have sacrificed over a thousand oxen at the site prior to his invasion of Greece and Alexander the Great also visited the site before his expedition in the opposite direction in order to conquer Asia.

A Doric temple to Athena was constructed in the early 3rd century BCE along with new fortifications under Lysimachos (c. 301-280 BCE). The Romans also held Troy in high regard and even referred to the city as 'Sacred Ilium'. In Roman tradition, the Trojan hero Aeneas, son of Venus, had fled Troy and settled in Italy thus giving the Romans a divine ancestry. Julius Caesar in 48 BCE and Emperor Augustus (reign 27 BCE -14 CE) rebuilt much of the city and Hadrian (reign 117-138 CE) also added buildings which included an odeion, gymnasium and baths. Emperor Constantine (reign 324-337 CE) even planned to build his new capital at Troy and some construction work began until Constantinople was chosen instead. Over time the site declined, most probably because the harbour had silted up and the once great city of Troy was finally abandoned, not to be rediscovered for another 1500 years.

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Troy is the name of the Bronze Age city attacked in the Trojan War, a popular story in the mythology of ancient Greece, and the name given to the archaeological site in the north-west of Asia Minor (now Turkey) which has revealed a large and prosperous city occupied over millennia.

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Troy was located in now days turkey.

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Troy is the name of the Bronze Age city attacked in the Trojan War, a popular story in the mythology of ancient Greece, and the name given to the archaeological site in the north-west of Asia Minor (now Turkey) which has revealed a large and prosperous city occupied over millennia. There has been much scholarly debate as to whether mythical Troy actually existed and if so whether the archaeological site was the same city; however, it is now almost universally accepted that the archaeological excavations have revealed the city of Homer's . Other names for Troy include Hisarlik (Turkish), Ilios (Homer), Ilion ( Greek) and Ilium ( Roman). The archaeological site of Troy is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Troy in myth

Troy is the setting for Homer's Iliad in which he recounts the final year of the Trojan War sometime in the 13th century BCE. The war was in fact a ten-year siege of the city by a coalition of Greek forces led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae. The purpose of the expedition was to reclaim Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon. Helen was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris and taken as his prize for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in a competition with Athena and Hera. The Trojan War is also told in other sources such as the Epic Cycle poems (of which only fragments survive) and is also briefly mentioned in Homer's . Troy and the Trojan War later became a staple myth of Classical Greek and Roman literature.

In the Iliad, Homer describes Troy as 'well-founded', 'strong-built' & 'well-walled'.

Homer describes Troy as 'well-founded', 'strong-built' and 'well-walled'; there are also several references to fine battlements, towers and 'high' and 'steep' walls. The walls must have been unusually strong in order to withstand a ten-year siege and in fact, Troy fell through the trickery of the Trojan horse ruse rather than any defensive failing. Indeed, in Greek mythology the walls were so impressive that they were said to have been built by Poseidon and Apollo who after an act of impiety were compelled by Zeus to serve the Trojan king Laomedon for one year. However, the fortifications did not help the king when Hercules sacked the city with an expedition of only six ships. The sacking was Hercules' revenge for not being paid for his services to the king when he killed the sea-serpent sent by Poseidon. This episode was traditionally placed one generation before the Trojan War as the only male survivor was Laomedon's youngest son Priam, the Trojan king in the later conflict.

Inhabited from the Early Bronze Age (3000 BCE) through to the 12th century CE the archaeological site which is now called Troy is 5 km from the coast but was once next to the sea. The site was situated in a bay created by the mouth of the river Skamanda and occupied a strategically important position between Aegean and Eastern civilizations by controlling the principal point of access to the Black Sea, Anatolia and the Balkans from both directions by land and sea. In particular, the difficulty in finding favourable winds to enter the Dardanelles may well have resulted in ancient sailing vessels standing by near Troy. Consequently, the site became the most important Bronze Age city in the North Aegean, reaching the height of its prosperity in the middle Bronze Age, contemporary with the Mycenaean civilization on the Greek mainland and the Hittite empire to the East.

Troy was first excavated by Frank Calvert in 1863 CE and visited by Heinrich Schliemann who continued excavations from 1870 CE until his death in 1890 CE; in particular, he attacked the conspicuous 20 m high artificial mound which had been left untouched since antiquity. Initial finds by Schliemann of gold and silver jewellery and vessels seemed to vindicate his belief that the site was actually the Troy of Homer. However, these have now been dated to more than a thousand years before a probable date for the Trojan War and indicated that the history of the site was much more complex than previously considered. Indeed, perhaps unwittingly, Schliemann would add 2000 years to Western history, which had previously gone back only as far as the first Olympiad of 776 BCE.

The excavations continued throughout the 20th century CE and continue to the present day and they have revealed nine different cities and no less than 46 levels of inhabitation at the site. These have been labelled Troy I to Troy IX after Schliemann's (and his successor Dorpfeld's) original classification. This has since been slightly adjusted to incorporate radio-carbon dating results from the early 21st century CE.

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter!

Troy I (c. 3000-2550 BCE) was a small village settlement surrounded by stone walls. Pottery and metal finds match those on Lesbos and Lemnos in the Aegean and in northern Anatolia.

Troy II (c. 2550-2300 BCE) displays larger buildings (40 m long), mud-brick and stone fortifications with monumental gates. Schliemann's 'treasure' finds - objects in gold, silver, electrum, bronze, carnelian and lapis lazuli - most likely come from this period. This 'treasure' includes 60 earrings, six bracelets, two magnificent diadems and 8750 rings, all in solid gold. Once again, finds of foreign materials suggest trade with Asia.

Troy III - Troy V (c. 2300-1750 BCE) is the most difficult period to reconstruct as the layers were hastily removed in early excavations in order to reach the lower levels. Generally speaking, the period seems a less prosperous one but foreign contact is further evidenced by the presence of Anatolian influenced dome ovens and Minoan pottery.

The archaeological site of Troy has impressive fortification walls 5 m thick & up to 8 m high constructed from large limestone blocks.

Troy VI (c. 1750-1300 BCE) is the period most visible today at the site and is the most likely candidate for the besieged city of Homer's Trojan War. Impressive fortification walls 5 m thick and up to 8 m high constructed from large limestone blocks and including several towers (with the rectangular plan as in Hittite fortifications) demonstrate the prosperity but also a concern for defence during this period. The walls would have once been topped by a mud brick and wood superstructure and with closely fitting stonework sloping inwards; as the walls rise they certainly fit the Homeric description of 'strong-built Troy'. In addition, sections of the walls are slightly offset every 10 m or so in order to curve around the site without the necessity for corners (a weak point in wall defence). This feature is unique to Troy and displays an independence from both Mycenaean and Hittite influence. The walls included five gateways allowing entrance to the inner city composed of large structures, once of two stories and with central courts and collonaded halls similar to those of contemporary Mycenaean cities such as Tiryns, Pylos and Mycenae itself. Outside the fortified citadel the lower town covers an impressive 270,000 square metres protected by an encircling rock-cut ditch. The size of the site is now much bigger than first thought when Schliemann excavated and suggests a population of as high as 10,000, much more in keeping with Homer's grand city-state.

Finds at the site point to the existence of a thriving wool industry and the first use of horses, recalling Homer's oft-used epithet 'horse-taming Trojans'. Pottery very similar to that on the Greek mainland has been discovered, principally the Grey Minyan ware which imitates metal vessels. There are also imported ceramics from Crete, Cyprus and the Levant. In marked contrast to Mycenaean palaces, there is no evidence of sculpture or fresco-painted walls.

Troy VI was partially destroyed but the exact cause is not known beyond some evidence of fire. Intriguingly, bronze arrow heads, spear tips and sling shots have been found on the site and even some embedded in the fortification walls, suggesting some sort of conflict. The dates of these (c. 1250 BCE) and the site destruction correlate with Herodotus' dates for the Trojan War. Conflicts over the centuries between Mycenaeans and Hittites are more than probable and may well have been the origin of the epic Trojan War in Greek mythology. There is very little evidence of any large-scale war but the possibility of smaller conflicts is evidenced in Hittite texts where 'Ahhiyawa' is recognised as referring to Mycenaean Greeks and 'Wilusa' as the region of which Ilios was the capital. These documents tell of local unrest and Mycenaean support of local rebellion against Hittite control in the area of Troy and suggest a possible motive for regional rivalry between the two civilizations. Intriguingly, there is also a bronze Mycenaean sword taken as war booty and found in Hattusa, the Hittite capital.

Troy VIIa (c. 1300-1180 BCE) and Troy VIIb (c. 1180-950 BCE) both display an increase in the size of the lower town and some reconstruction of the fortifications but also a marked decline in architectural and artistic quality in respect to Troy VI. For example, there is a return to handmade pottery after centuries of wares made on the wheel. Once again, this correlates well with the Greek tradition that following the Trojan War the city was sacked and abandoned, at least for a time. Both Troy VIIa and Troy VIIb were destroyed by fires.

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Troy VIII and Troy IX (c. 950 BCE to 550 CE) are the sites of Greek Ilion and Roman Ilium respectively. There is evidence that the site was populated throughout the so-called Dark Ages but the settlement did not return to a level of significant development until the 8th century BCE. Ancient Troy was never forgotten though. The Persian King Xerxes is said by Herodotus to have sacrificed over a thousand oxen at the site prior to his invasion of Greece and Alexander the Great also visited the site before his expedition in the opposite direction in order to conquer Asia.

A Doric temple to Athena was constructed in the early 3rd century BCE along with new fortifications under Lysimachos (c. 301-280 BCE). The Romans also held Troy in high regard and even referred to the city as 'Sacred Ilium'. In Roman tradition, the Trojan hero Aeneas, son of Venus, had fled Troy and settled in Italy thus giving the Romans a divine ancestry. Julius Caesar in 48 BCE and Emperor Augustus (reign 27 BCE -14 CE) rebuilt much of the city and Hadrian (reign 117-138 CE) also added buildings which included an odeion, gymnasium and baths. Emperor Constantine (reign 324-337 CE) even planned to build his new capital at Troy and some construction work began until Constantinople was chosen instead. Over time the site declined, most probably because the harbour had silted up and the once great city of Troy was finally abandoned, not to be rediscovered for another 1500 years.

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Troy is the name of the Bronze Age city attacked in the Trojan War, a popular story in the mythology of ancient Greece, and the name given to the archaeological site in the north-west of Asia Minor (now Turkey) which has revealed a large and prosperous city occupied over millennia.

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Historians think that the city of Troy is in Hisarlik, Turkey.

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Greek: Troia ...(Show more)

The search for Troy at Hisarlık

The approximate location of Troy was well known from references in works by ancient Greek and Latin authors, including Homer, Herodotus, and Strabo. But the exact site of the city remained unidentified until modern times. A large mound, known locally as Hisarlık, had long been understood to hold the ruins of a city named Ilion or Ilium that had flourished in Hellenistic and Roman times. In 1822 Charles Maclaren suggested that this was the site of Homeric Troy, but for the next 50 years his suggestion received little attention from Classical scholars, most of whom regarded the Trojan legend as a mere fictional creation based on myth, not history. Those who did believe in the existence of a real Troy thought it to be at Bunarbashi (Pınarbaşı), a short distance south of Hisarlık. It took Frank Calvert, a scholarly amateur archaeologist, until 1860 to begin exploratory work on Hisarlık. It was he who persuaded the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann to work at Hisarlık, though Schliemann soon took full credit for adopting Maclaren's identification and demonstrating to the world that it was correct. (Not until the late 20th century was the full extent of Calvert's role widely known.) In seven major and two minor campaigns between 1870 and 1890, Schliemann conducted excavations on a large scale mainly in the central area of the Hisarlık mound, where he exposed the remains of a walled citadel. After Schliemann's death in 1890, the excavations were continued (1893-94) by his colleague Wilhelm Dörpfeld and later (1932-38) by an expedition from the University of Cincinnati headed by Carl W. Blegen. After a lapse of some 50 years, excavations resumed (1988-2005) under the leadership of University of Tübingen archaeologist Manfred Korfmann and continued after his death.

Questions of Troy's physical size, population, and stature as a trade entrepôt and regional power became subjects of intense scholarly dispute following the resumption of excavations at Hisarlık in the late 1980s. Although Homeric Troy was described as a wealthy and populous city, by this time some scholars had come to accept the probability of a lesser Troy-a relatively minor settlement, perhaps a princely seat. Beginning in 1988, Korfmann's team investigated the terrain surrounding the citadel site in search of wider settlement. Korfmann's findings at Hisarlık, drawn from geomagnetic surveying and isolated excavations, led him to conclude in favour of a greater Troy-that is, a settlement of some size and prosperity. His presentation of this perspective in a 2001 exhibition, accompanied by a controversial model reconstruction of the city, sparked especially intense scholarly debate over the city's true nature.

Findings

Before excavations began, the mound rose to a height of 105 feet (32 metres) above the plain. It contained a vast accumulation of debris that was made up of many clearly distinguishable layers. Schliemann and Dörpfeld identified a sequence of nine principal strata, representing nine periods during which houses were built, occupied, and ultimately destroyed. At the end of each period when a settlement was destroyed (usually by fire or earthquake or both), the survivors, rather than clear the wreckage down to the floors, merely leveled it out and then built new houses upon it.

The nine major periods of ancient Troy are labeled I to IX, starting from the bottom with the oldest settlement, Troy I. In periods I to VII Troy was a fortified stronghold that served as the capital of the Troad and the residence of a king, his family, officials, advisers, retinue, and slaves. Most of the local population, however, were farmers who lived in unfortified villages nearby and took refuge in the citadel in times of danger. Troy I to V corresponds roughly to the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 to 1900 bce). The citadel of Troy I was small, not more than 300 feet (90 metres) in diameter. It was enclosed by a massive wall with gateways and flanking towers and contained perhaps 20 rectangular houses. Troy II was twice as large and had higher, sloping stone walls protecting an acropolis on which stood the king's palace and other princely residences, which were built of brick in a megaron plan. This city came to an end through fire, and Schliemann mistakenly identified it with Homer's Troy. In the "burnt layer's" debris were found a trove of gold jewelry and ornaments and gold, silver, copper, bronze, and ceramic vessels that Schliemann named "Priam's treasure." The burning of Troy II seems to have been followed by an economic decline; each of the citadels of Troy III, IV, and V was fortified and somewhat larger than its predecessor, but the houses inside the walls were much smaller and more closely packed than in Troy II.

Troy VI and VII may be assigned to the Middle and Late Bronze Age (c. 1900 to 1100 bce). Troy at this time had new and vigorous settlers who introduced domesticated horses to the Aegean area. They further enlarged the city and erected a magnificent circuit of cut limestone walls that were 15 feet (4.5 metres) thick at the base, rose to a height of more than 17 feet (5 metres), and had brick ramparts and watchtowers. Inside the citadel, which was now about 650 feet (200 metres) long and 450 feet (140 metres) wide, great houses were laid out on ascending, concentric terraces. Troy VI was destroyed by a violent earthquake a little after 1300 bce. Dörpfeld had identified this stage as Homeric Troy, but its apparent destruction by an earthquake does not agree with the realistic account of the sack of Troy in Greek tradition. Moreover, the city's date, as indicated by imported Mycenaean pottery found in the earthquake debris, is too early for the Trojan War.

The survivors of the earthquake quickly rebuilt the town, thus inaugurating the short-lived Troy VIIa. The ruins were leveled and covered over by new buildings, which were set close together and filled all available space inside the fortress. Almost every house was provided with one or several huge storage jars that were sunk deep into the ground, with only their mouths above the level of the floor. Troy VIIa probably lasted little more than a generation. The crowding together of houses and the special measures to store up food supplies suggest that preparations had been made to withstand a siege. The town was destroyed in a devastating fire, and remnants of human bones found in some houses and streets strengthen the impression that the town was captured, looted, and burnt by enemies. Based on the evidence of imported Mycenaean pottery, the end of Troy VIIa can be dated to between 1260 and 1240 bce. The Cincinnati expedition under Blegen concluded that Troy VIIa was very likely the capital of King Priam described in Homer's Iliad, which was destroyed by the Greek armies of Agamemnon.

The partly rebuilt Troy VIIb shows evidence of new settlers with a lower level of material culture, who vanished altogether by 1100 bce. For about the next four centuries the site was virtually abandoned. About 700 bce Greek settlers began to occupy the Troad. Troy was reoccupied and given the Hellenized name of Ilion; this Greek settlement is known as Troy VIII. The Romans sacked Ilion in 85 bce, but it was partially restored by the Roman general Sulla that same year. This Romanized town, known as Troy IX, received fine public buildings from the emperor Augustus and his immediate successors, who traced their ancestry back to the Trojan Aeneas. After the founding of Constantinople (324 ce), Ilion faded into obscurity.

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Troy | Geography, Archaeology, Map, & Trojan War

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Troy, ancient city in northwestern Anatolia that holds an enduring place in literature and archaeology. It lay on trade routes between Europe and Asia, and questions of its size, wealth, and status are matters of scholarly debate. The legendary Trojan War was fought between the Greeks and the people of Troy.

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Fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age,

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The Trojan War, fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age, has grabbed the imagination for millennia. A conflict between Mycenaeans and Hittites may well have occurred, but its representation in epic literature such as Homer's is almost certainly more myth than reality. Nevertheless, it has defined and shaped the way ancient Greek culture has been viewed right up to the 21st century CE. The story of gods and heroic warriors is perhaps one of the richest single surviving sources from antiquity and offers insights into the warfare, religion, customs, and attitudes of the ancient Greeks.

The main source for our knowledge of the Trojan War is Homer's Iliad (written sometime in the 8th century BCE) where he recounts 52 days during the final year of the ten-year conflict. The Greeks imagined the war to have occurred some time in the 13th century BCE. However, the war was also the subject of a long oral tradition prior to Homer's work, and this, combined with other sources such as the fragmentary Epic Cycle poems, give us a more complete picture of what exactly the Greeks thought of as the Trojan War.

The Trojan War, in Greek tradition, started as a way for Zeus to reduce the ever-increasing population of humanity and, more practically, as an expedition to reclaim Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon. Helen was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris (also known as Alexandros) and taken as his prize for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in a competition with Athena and Hera at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Menelaos and the Greeks wanted her back and to avenge Trojan impudence.

The Greek Army

The coalition of Greek forces (or Archaians as Homer often calls them) was led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae. Amongst the cities or regions represented were Boiotia, Phocia, Euboea, Athens, Argos, Corinth, Arcadia, Sparta, Kephalonia, Crete, Rhodes, Magnesia, and the Cyclades. Just how many men these totalled is unclear. Homer states an army of 'tens of thousands' or rather more poetically 'as many [men] as the leaves and flowers that come in springtime'.

The gods had their favourites amongst the men fighting down on the plains of Troy & they often protected them by deflecting spears.

Amongst the Greek warriors were some extra special heroes, leaders who were the greatest fighters and displayed the greatest courage on the battlefield. Also, they often had a divine mother or father whilst the other parent was a mortal, thereby creating a genealogical link between the gods and ordinary men. Amongst the most important were Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Diomedes, Patroklos, Antilokus, Menestheus, and Idomenus.

The Greeks were aided by several of the Olympian gods of Greek religion. Athena, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaistos, Hermes, and Thetis all gave direct or indirect help to the Greeks in Homer's account of the war. The gods had their favourites amongst the men fighting down on the plains of Troy and they often protected them by deflecting spears and even spiriting them away in the heat of battle to put them down somewhere safe, far from danger.

The Trojan Army

The Trojan army defending the great city of Troy, led by their king Priam, had assistance from a long list of allies. These included the Carians, Halizones, Kaukones, Kikones, Lycians, Maionians, Mysians, Paionians, Paphlagonians, Pelasgians, Phrygians, and Thracians.

The Trojans, too, had their semi-divine heroes and these included Hektor (son of Priam), Aeneas, Sarpedon, Glaukos, Phorkys, Poulydamas, and Rhesos. The Trojans also had help from the gods, receiving assistance during the battle from Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares, and Leto.

Key Battles

Most of the Trojan War was in a fact a protracted siege, and the city was able to resist the invaders for so long principally because its fortifications were so magnificent. Indeed, in Greek mythology, the walls of Troy were said to have been built by Poseidon and Apollo who, after an act of impiety, were compelled by Zeus to serve the Trojan King Laomedon for one year. There were, though, battles outside the city where armies fought, sometimes with chariots, but mostly by men on foot using spears and swords and protected by a shield, helmet, and armour for the chest and legs. War waged back and forth across the plains of Troy over the years, but the really exciting battles seem to have been reserved for the final year of the siege and the following are a selection of the highlights.

Paris v Menelaus

Tiring of indecisive battles, Menelaus offered to fight Paris in single-combat and so settle the issue of the war. Agreeing to this, the two warriors drew lots to see who would have first throw with their spear. Paris won and threw first but his spear landed harmlessly in the shield of Menelaus. The Greek king then threw his weapon with tremendous force and the spear went through the shield of Paris and carried on through to pierce his armour. If Paris had not swayed at the last moment, he would surely have been killed outright. However, Menelaus was not finished and with his sword he struck a fearful blow on the Trojan prince's helmet. The sword shattered, though, and fell in pieces into the dust. Menelaus then grabbed Paris' helmet with his bare hands and proceeded to drag him from the field. Choking as his helmet strap wrapped around his neck, Paris was only saved through the intervention of Aphrodite who broke the helmet strap and, covering the prince in a thick mist, spirited her favourite back to the safety of his perfumed bedroom.

Hektor v Ajax

The meeting of the two great heroes echoes that of Menelaus and Paris. Each throw their spears but to no effect. Hektor then threw a large rock at the Greek, only for him to fend it off with his shield. Ajax then returned the favour with an even bigger rock, smashing Hektor's shield. They then drew their swords and closed for mortal combat but were each stopped by their comrades who called for an end to the fighting as night was approaching. Displaying the code of honour for which the good old days were famous, the two warriors even said goodbye on friendly terms by exchanging gifts, Hektor giving a silver-hilted sword and Ajax giving a splendid purple belt.

With the support of Apollo, an inspirational Hektor, in his finest hour, once more beat the Greeks back to their ships.

The Greek Ships Attacked

Following a tremendous day of fighting, Hektor led the Trojans in an attack on the very walls of the Greeks' camp. Breaking through the gates, the Trojans sent the Greeks fleeing in panic back to their ships. However, as Zeus was momentarily distracted by the charms of Hera, Poseidon stepped in to encourage the Greeks who rallied and forced the Trojans to retreat. Then the tide of battle changed again and, with the support of Apollo, an inspirational Hektor, in his finest hour, once more beat the Greeks back to their ships where he sought to set them ablaze.

Patroklos Falls

Invincible Achilles was quite simply the greatest warrior in Greece, or anywhere else for that matter. Much to the Greek's frustration, though, he sat out most of the final act of the war in a big sulk. Agamemnon had stolen his female war-booty Briseis and consequently, the hero refused to fight. Agamemnon at first doesn't seem to have been too bothered about losing his temperamental talisman but as the Trojans started to gain an upper hand in the war, it began to look like Achilles would be needed if the Achaians were to actually win the protracted conflict. Accordingly, an increasingly desperate Agamemnon sent an appeal to Achilles with promises of vast treasure if he would only re-join the conflict. These Achilles refused but with the Greek camp under attack, Patroklos appealed to his mentor and great friend Achilles to rejoin the conflict and, when he still refused, Patroklos asked for permission to wear Achilles' armour and lead the fearful Myrmidons himself. Achilles, on seeing one of the Greek ships already ablaze, reluctantly gave his consent but warned Patroklos to only repel the Trojans from the camp and not pursue them to the walls of Troy.

Achilles' New Armour

When Achilles discovered the death of his great friend Patroklos, he was overcome with grief and rage and he swore to take terrible revenge on the Trojans and Hektor in particular. After a suitable show of mourning, Achilles finally decided to enter the battlefield once more. It was a decision which would seal the fate of Troy.

Resplendent in his shining armour, Achilles, still mad with rage, predictably routed the Trojans.

Before he could enter the fighting, though, Achilles needed new armour and this was provided by his divine mother Thetis who had Hephaistos, the master craftsman of Olympus, make him the most magnificent set of armour ever seen. Using bronze, tin, silver, and gold, the god made a massive shield which depicted a myriad of earthly scenes and all the constellations. So too, he made a dazzling, gold-crested helmet for the hero. Resplendent in his shining armour, Achilles, still mad with rage, predictably routed the Trojans who fled in panic behind the safety of their city walls.

Hektor v Achilles

Hektor alone remained standing outside the walls but at the sight of the awesome Achilles on the rampage, even his nerve gave way and he made a run for safety. Achilles, however, gave chase and pursued the Trojan prince three times around the city walls. Finally catching him, Achilles killed his quarry with a vicious stab of his spear in Hektor's throat. Achilles then stripped the body of its fine armour and, tying Hektor by the ankles to his chariot, Achilles dragged the body back to the Greek camp in full view of Priam standing atop the fortifications of the city. This was a shockingly dishonourable act and against all the rules of ancient warfare.

Having avenged the death of Patroklos, Achilles arranged funeral games in his fallen friend's honour. Meanwhile, Priam entered the Greek camp in disguise and begged Achilles to return the body of his son that he might be given proper burial. Initially reluctant, the emotional pleas of the old man were finally heeded and Achilles consented to return the body. Here the Iliad ends but the war still had a few more twists of fate to turn.

The Trojan Horse & Victory

The war involved several more exciting episodes including Achilles' fight with and killing of the Ethiopian King Memnon and the Amazon Penthesilea who both came to the aid of the Trojans. Achilles was even said to have fallen in love with the beautiful Amazon just at the moment he killed her with his spear. Achilles himself met his destiny and was killed by an arrow to his only weak spot, his ankle, shot by Paris and guided by Apollo. Odysseus and Ajax squabbled over the hero's magnificent armour and Ajax went mad with disappointment when he lost out on the prize. Slaughtering a herd of sheep he thought were Greeks, he fell on his sword in a messy and pointless suicide. Philoktetes got revenge for Achilles by fatally shooting Paris with the legendary bow of Hercules. Finally, Odysseus even managed to get into the city in disguise and steal the sacred Palladion statue of Athena.

Troy was sacked & the population slaughtered or enslaved.

The final and decisive action was, though, the idea of the wooden horse. Odysseus, inspired by Athena, thought up the ruse to get a body of men inside the walls of Troy. First, the Greeks all sailed off into the sunset leaving a mysterious offering to the Trojans of a gigantic wooden horse which in reality concealed a group of warriors within. Just to make sure the Trojans took the horse within the city, Sinon was chosen to stay behind and tell a cock and bull story about the Greeks having given up and left a nice present. The Trojans did take the horse inside the city walls but whilst they were enjoying a drunken celebration of their victory, the Greeks climbed out of the horse, opened the city walls for the returning Greek army, and the city was sacked and the population slaughtered or enslaved. Helen was taken back to Argos and of the Trojan heroes only Aeneas escaped to eventually set up a new home in Italy.

Victory had its price though. Due to their pitiless ravaging of the city and its people and even worse, outrageous sacrilegious acts such as the rape of Kassandra, the gods punished the Greeks by sending storms to wreck their ships and those who did eventually return were made to endure a protracted and difficult voyage home. Even then, some of the Greeks who did make it back to their homeland only did so to face further misfortune and disaster.

Trojan War: Art & Literature

Troy and the Trojan War became a staple myth of Classical Greek and Roman literature and were revisited many times by writers in works such as Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Euripides' Trojan Women, and Virgil's Aenid. Also in pottery decoration and in sculpture, artists were captivated by the Trojan War. Scenes of the judgement of Paris, Achilles fighting Hektor, Achilles playing dice with Ajax, and Ajax falling on his sword were just some of the myriad scenes from the story that would appear in art again and again over the centuries. Perhaps more importantly, the Trojan War came to represent the struggle of Greeks against foreign powers and it told tales of a time when men were better, more able, and more honourable.

There has been much scholarly debate as to whether the mythical Troy actually existed and if so, whether the archaeological site discovered in Anatolia which revealed a city which had prospered over thousands of years of habitation was actually the same city; however, it is now almost universally accepted that the archaeological excavations have revealed the city of Homer's Iliad.

Of the several cities built on top of each other, Troy VI (c. 1750-1300 BCE) is the most likely candidate for the besieged city of Homer's Trojan War. Impressive fortification walls with several towers certainly fit the Homeric description of 'strong-built Troy'. The lower town covers an impressive 270,000 m² protected by an encircling rock-cut ditch and suggests a grand city like the Troy of tradition.

Troy VI was partially destroyed but the exact cause is not known beyond some evidence of fire. Intriguingly, bronze arrowheads, spear tips, and slingshots have been found at the site and even some embedded in the fortification walls, suggesting some sort of conflict. The dates of these (c. 1250 BCE) and the site destruction correlate with Herodotus' dates for the Trojan War. Conflicts over the centuries between the Mycenaean and Hittite civilizations are more than probable, colonial expansion and control of lucrative trade routes being prime motivators. However, such conflicts are unlikely to have been on the scale of Homer's war, but collectively they may well have been the origin of the epic tale of the Trojan War which has fascinated for centuries.

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The Trojan War, fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age, has grabbed the imagination for millennia. A conflict between Mycenaeans and Hittites may well have occurred, but its representation in epic literature such as Homer's is almost certainly more myth than reality.

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The unknown location throughout history.

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta. This abduction was done by Paris, the son of Troy's King Priam. Throughout the "Iliad" the gods constantly intervene in support of characters on both sides of the conflict.

Troy also refers to a real ancient city located on the northwest coast of Turkey which, since antiquity, has been identified by many as being the Troy discussed in the legend. Whether the Trojan War actually took place, and whether the site in northwest Turkey is the same Troy, is a matter of debate. The modern-day Turkish name for the site is Hisarlik.

The idea that the city was Troy goes back at least 2,700 years, when the ancient Greeks were colonizing the west coast of Turkey. In the 19th century, the idea again came to popular attention when a German businessman and early archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, conducted a series of excavations at Hisarlik and discovered treasures he claimed to be from King Priam.

The Trojan War is thought to have taken place near the end of the Bronze Age. That is around or before 1200 B.C. It took place around the time that a civilization that we call Mycenaean flourished in Greece. They built great palaces and developed a system of writing.

The earliest accounts of this war come from Homer, who lived around the eighth century B.C., several centuries after the events took place. They do not appear to have been written down until even later, likely during the sixth century B.C., when a tyrant named Peisistratus ruled Athens.

Homer's "Iliad" is set in the 10th year of the siege against Troy and tells of a series of events that appear to have taken place over a few weeks. The story makes clear that the siege had taken its toll on the Greek force sent to recover Helen. The "timbers of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken and far away are our wives and our young children," the poem reads (translation by Richmond Lattimore).

The war had essentially become a stalemate with the Greeks unable to take the city and the Trojans unable to drive them back into the sea. We "sons of the Achaians [Greeks] outnumber the Trojans - those who live in the city; but there are companions from other cities in their numbers, wielders of the spear to help them," the "Iliad" reads.

A number of key events happen in the poem, including a duel between Menelaos or Menelaus), the king of Sparta and husband of Helen, against Paris. The winner is supposed to receive Helen as a prize, ending the war. However, the gods intervene to break up the duel before it is finished and the war continues.

Another important duel occurs nears the end of the poem between Achilleus (or Achilles) and a great Trojan warrior named Hektor (or Hector). The Trojan knows that he's no match for the Greek warrior and initially runs three laps around Troy, with Achilleus chasing him. Finally, the gods force him to face the Greek warrior and he is in turn killed.

Contrary to popular belief, the "Iliad" does not end with the destruction of Troy but with a temporary truce after which the fighting presumably continues. Another Homeric work called the "Odyssey" is set after the destruction of the city and features the Greek hero Odysseus trying to get home. That poem briefly references how the Greeks took Troy using the famous "Trojan Horse," a gift concealing warriors within.

"What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!" reads part of the poem (Translation by A.T. Murray through Perseus Digital Library).

The site of Hisarlik, in northwest Turkey, has been identified as being Troy since ancient times. Archaeological research shows that it was inhabited for almost 4,000 years starting around 3000 B.C. After one city was destroyed, a new city would be built on top of it, creating a human-made mound called a "tell."

"There is no one single Troy; there are at least 10, lying in layers on top of each other," writes University of Amsterdam researcher Gert Jan van Wijngaarden in a chapter of the book "Troy: City, Homer and Turkey" (University of Amsterdam, 2013).

Van Wijngaarden notes that archaeologists have to dig deep to find remains of the first settlement and from what they can tell it was a "small city surrounded by a defensive wall of unworked stone." Outside the largest gate was a stone with an image of a face, perhaps a deity welcoming visitors to the new city.

Troy took off in the period after 2550 B.C. The city "was considerably enlarged and furnished with a massive defensive wall made of cut blocks of stone and rectangular clay bricks," van Wijngaarden writes. He notes that on the settlement's citadel were houses of the "megaron" type, which contained "an elongated room with a hearth and open forecourt."

When Heinrich Schliemann excavated this level of Troy in 1873, he discovered a cache of treasure, which he believed belonged to King Priam. "The collection of weapons, gold, silver, electrum, copper and bronze vessels, gold jewellery, including thousands of gold rings, and a range of other objects made of precious materials apparently came to light close to the outer side of the city wall near the building which Schliemann designated as the royal palace," writes University of Queensland researcher Trevor Bryce in his book "The Trojans and their Neighbours" (Routledge, 2006).

Some researchers have speculated that these treasures were not found all in one hoard but were rather precious objects, from across the site, which Schliemann gathered over a number of weeks. While Schliemann believed he had found Priam's treasures, it became clear in the following decades that these were a millennium too early for Priam.

A stone block with Greek writing sits at the ruins of Troy, Turkey.

Credit: Alex Khripunov Shutterstock

The city that may have been the Troy mentioned by Homer belongs to two other phases that date between roughly 1700 B.C. and 1190 B.C. Bryce notes that its defenses were formidable.

"The walls, surmounted by mud-brick breastworks, once reached a height of nine meters (30 feet). Several watchtowers were built into these walls, the most imposing of which is the northeastern bastion, which served to reinforce the citadel's defences as well as offer a commanding view over the Trojan plain," he writes.

The exact size of the city is in dispute. Archaeologist Manfred Korfmann, who has led excavations at the site, writes in a paper in the book "Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic" (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) that work at the site shows that there was a "lower city" beyond the citadel, bringing its total size to about 30 hectares (74 acres).

"This Troy had a large residential area below a strongly fortified citadel. As far as we know today, the citadel was unparalleled in its region and in all of southeastern Europe," he writes in the book chapter. The extent of the residential area is a topic of debate among scholars with some arguing that Korfmann is overestimating its extent.

A key problem with identifying this city as Homer's Troy is the way it ended. Cracks in its walls suggest that it was hit by an earthquake around 1300 B.C., possibly followed by an uprising or attack. "There are also some indications of fire, and slingstones in the destruction layer (suggesting) the possibility that there might have been some fighting," writes van Wijngaarden. "Nevertheless an earthquake appears to have caused the most damage." Additionally, he notes, the city was rebuilt after its destruction by the same population groups as before, rather than by a foreign Greek force.

While the city was attacked in 1190 B.C., there are, again, problems with the idea that it was carried out by a Greek force. By this time, Greece's Mycenaean civilization had collapsed, its great palaces reduced to ruins. Additionally, at Troy archaeologists have found ceramics and bronze axes from southeast Europe, suggesting that that people may have moved into the city from there.

The city was abandoned around 1000 B.C. and was reoccupied in eighth century B.C., around the time Homer lived. The Greeks called the reoccupied city "Ilion."

The "new settlers had no doubt that the place they were preparing to occupy was the fabled setting of the Trojan War," Bryce writes, and in later times its inhabitants took advantage of this to draw in political support and ancient tourists.

For its first few centuries, Ilion was a modest settlement. While many scholars believe that the people who resettled Troy after 1000 B.C. were Greek colonists this idea has recently been challenged. In 2014, research published by a team of scholars in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology revealed that the amphora at Troy that was thought to have been imported from Greece was actually locally made and that much of the other pottery found at Troy after 1,000 B.C. was also made locally and was not imported from Greece. This led the team to suggest that many of the people who reoccupied Troy may not have been Greek colonists but rather people who already lived in the area.

Xerxes, the Persian king on his way to conquer Greece, stopped to pay homage to Troy and, most notably, Alexander the Great would do the same in the fourth century B.C., granting it special status within his empire.

"It is said that the city of the present Ilians was for a time a mere village, having its temple of Athena, a small and cheap temple," wrote Strabo, who lived around 2,000 years ago. When "Alexander went up there after his victory at the Granicus River he adorned the temple with votive offerings, gave the village the title of city, and ordered those in charge to improve it with buildings, and that he adjudged it free and exempt from tribute; and that later, after the overthrow of the Persians, he sent down a kindly letter to the place, promising to make a great city of it..." (Translation by H.L. Jones, through Perseus Digital Library)

Troy's special status would continue into the period of Roman rule. The Romans believed that Aeneas, one of Troy's heroes, was an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, Rome's legendary founders. The city's inhabitants took advantage of this mythology, with it becoming a "popular destination for pilgrims and tourists," Bryce writes. He notes that in this phase of Troy's existence, when it became a popular tourism location, the city became larger than at any time before, including when the Trojan War was said to have taken place.

However, as the Middle Ages took hold, Troy fell into decline. By the 13th century, the city had been reduced to that of a modest farming community. Recent DNA research revealed the story of a woman who died 800 years ago of an infection that occurred while she was pregnant. Today, Troy is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular site for tourists to visit in Turkey.

A new museum is being constructed at Troy and the Turkish government has put forward repatriation requests for artifacts that were illegally removed from Troy in the 20th century to be returned to Turkey. A collection of gold jewelry in the Penn Museum that research reveals was taken from Troy in the 20th century has been returned to Turkey after lengthy negotiations, said C. Brian Rose, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, in an article published in 2017 in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.

The big question researchers face is, was there ever a Trojan War? If there was, then is this really Troy?

Unfortunately, the only written remains found at Troy, that date before the eighth-century B.C. Greek occupation, is a seal written in a language called Luwian, the seal being perhaps brought to Troy from elsewhere in Turkey.

Scholars have noted that the topography of Troy as told in the legend does seem to generally match that of the real-life city and, as noted earlier, people as far back as Homer's time also believed this to be Troy.

Yet the archaeological remains still pose problems. Troy at the time of the Trojan War was apparently destroyed by earthquakes and later on may have received people from southeastern Europe rather than Greece.

These issues leave researchers with a mystery. "At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the conviction that there was indeed a war and that it was pretty much as the poet described it," send Bryce. "From that we pass through varying degrees of scepticism and agnosticism to the other end of the spectrum where the tradition is consigned wholly to the realm of fantasy."

Korfmann, the modern-day excavator of Hisarlik, believes the story of the Trojan War contains some truth. "According to the current state of our knowledge, the story told in the "Iliad" most likely contains a kernel of historical truth or, to put it differently a historical substrate," he writes. "Any future discussions about the historicity of the Trojan War only make sense if they ask what exactly we understand this kernel or substrate to be."

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta.

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Troy is located in northwest Turkey, and has been identified as being Troy since ancient times

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta. This abduction was done by Paris, the son of Troy's King Priam. Throughout the "Iliad" the gods constantly intervene in support of characters on both sides of the conflict.

Troy also refers to a real ancient city located on the northwest coast of Turkey which, since antiquity, has been identified by many as being the Troy discussed in the legend. Whether the Trojan War actually took place, and whether the site in northwest Turkey is the same Troy, is a matter of debate. The modern-day Turkish name for the site is Hisarlik.

The idea that the city was Troy goes back at least 2,700 years, when the ancient Greeks were colonizing the west coast of Turkey. In the 19th century, the idea again came to popular attention when a German businessman and early archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, conducted a series of excavations at Hisarlik and discovered treasures he claimed to be from King Priam.

The Trojan War is thought to have taken place near the end of the Bronze Age. That is around or before 1200 B.C. It took place around the time that a civilization that we call Mycenaean flourished in Greece. They built great palaces and developed a system of writing.

The earliest accounts of this war come from Homer, who lived around the eighth century B.C., several centuries after the events took place. They do not appear to have been written down until even later, likely during the sixth century B.C., when a tyrant named Peisistratus ruled Athens.

Homer's "Iliad" is set in the 10th year of the siege against Troy and tells of a series of events that appear to have taken place over a few weeks. The story makes clear that the siege had taken its toll on the Greek force sent to recover Helen. The "timbers of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken and far away are our wives and our young children," the poem reads (translation by Richmond Lattimore).

The war had essentially become a stalemate with the Greeks unable to take the city and the Trojans unable to drive them back into the sea. We "sons of the Achaians [Greeks] outnumber the Trojans - those who live in the city; but there are companions from other cities in their numbers, wielders of the spear to help them," the "Iliad" reads.

A number of key events happen in the poem, including a duel between Menelaos or Menelaus), the king of Sparta and husband of Helen, against Paris. The winner is supposed to receive Helen as a prize, ending the war. However, the gods intervene to break up the duel before it is finished and the war continues.

Another important duel occurs nears the end of the poem between Achilleus (or Achilles) and a great Trojan warrior named Hektor (or Hector). The Trojan knows that he's no match for the Greek warrior and initially runs three laps around Troy, with Achilleus chasing him. Finally, the gods force him to face the Greek warrior and he is in turn killed.

Contrary to popular belief, the "Iliad" does not end with the destruction of Troy but with a temporary truce after which the fighting presumably continues. Another Homeric work called the "Odyssey" is set after the destruction of the city and features the Greek hero Odysseus trying to get home. That poem briefly references how the Greeks took Troy using the famous "Trojan Horse," a gift concealing warriors within.

"What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!" reads part of the poem (Translation by A.T. Murray through Perseus Digital Library).

The site of Hisarlik, in northwest Turkey, has been identified as being Troy since ancient times. Archaeological research shows that it was inhabited for almost 4,000 years starting around 3000 B.C. After one city was destroyed, a new city would be built on top of it, creating a human-made mound called a "tell."

"There is no one single Troy; there are at least 10, lying in layers on top of each other," writes University of Amsterdam researcher Gert Jan van Wijngaarden in a chapter of the book "Troy: City, Homer and Turkey" (University of Amsterdam, 2013).

Van Wijngaarden notes that archaeologists have to dig deep to find remains of the first settlement and from what they can tell it was a "small city surrounded by a defensive wall of unworked stone." Outside the largest gate was a stone with an image of a face, perhaps a deity welcoming visitors to the new city.

Troy took off in the period after 2550 B.C. The city "was considerably enlarged and furnished with a massive defensive wall made of cut blocks of stone and rectangular clay bricks," van Wijngaarden writes. He notes that on the settlement's citadel were houses of the "megaron" type, which contained "an elongated room with a hearth and open forecourt."

When Heinrich Schliemann excavated this level of Troy in 1873, he discovered a cache of treasure, which he believed belonged to King Priam. "The collection of weapons, gold, silver, electrum, copper and bronze vessels, gold jewellery, including thousands of gold rings, and a range of other objects made of precious materials apparently came to light close to the outer side of the city wall near the building which Schliemann designated as the royal palace," writes University of Queensland researcher Trevor Bryce in his book "The Trojans and their Neighbours" (Routledge, 2006).

Some researchers have speculated that these treasures were not found all in one hoard but were rather precious objects, from across the site, which Schliemann gathered over a number of weeks. While Schliemann believed he had found Priam's treasures, it became clear in the following decades that these were a millennium too early for Priam.

A stone block with Greek writing sits at the ruins of Troy, Turkey.

Credit: Alex Khripunov Shutterstock

The city that may have been the Troy mentioned by Homer belongs to two other phases that date between roughly 1700 B.C. and 1190 B.C. Bryce notes that its defenses were formidable.

"The walls, surmounted by mud-brick breastworks, once reached a height of nine meters (30 feet). Several watchtowers were built into these walls, the most imposing of which is the northeastern bastion, which served to reinforce the citadel's defences as well as offer a commanding view over the Trojan plain," he writes.

The exact size of the city is in dispute. Archaeologist Manfred Korfmann, who has led excavations at the site, writes in a paper in the book "Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic" (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) that work at the site shows that there was a "lower city" beyond the citadel, bringing its total size to about 30 hectares (74 acres).

"This Troy had a large residential area below a strongly fortified citadel. As far as we know today, the citadel was unparalleled in its region and in all of southeastern Europe," he writes in the book chapter. The extent of the residential area is a topic of debate among scholars with some arguing that Korfmann is overestimating its extent.

A key problem with identifying this city as Homer's Troy is the way it ended. Cracks in its walls suggest that it was hit by an earthquake around 1300 B.C., possibly followed by an uprising or attack. "There are also some indications of fire, and slingstones in the destruction layer (suggesting) the possibility that there might have been some fighting," writes van Wijngaarden. "Nevertheless an earthquake appears to have caused the most damage." Additionally, he notes, the city was rebuilt after its destruction by the same population groups as before, rather than by a foreign Greek force.

While the city was attacked in 1190 B.C., there are, again, problems with the idea that it was carried out by a Greek force. By this time, Greece's Mycenaean civilization had collapsed, its great palaces reduced to ruins. Additionally, at Troy archaeologists have found ceramics and bronze axes from southeast Europe, suggesting that that people may have moved into the city from there.

The city was abandoned around 1000 B.C. and was reoccupied in eighth century B.C., around the time Homer lived. The Greeks called the reoccupied city "Ilion."

The "new settlers had no doubt that the place they were preparing to occupy was the fabled setting of the Trojan War," Bryce writes, and in later times its inhabitants took advantage of this to draw in political support and ancient tourists.

For its first few centuries, Ilion was a modest settlement. While many scholars believe that the people who resettled Troy after 1000 B.C. were Greek colonists this idea has recently been challenged. In 2014, research published by a team of scholars in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology revealed that the amphora at Troy that was thought to have been imported from Greece was actually locally made and that much of the other pottery found at Troy after 1,000 B.C. was also made locally and was not imported from Greece. This led the team to suggest that many of the people who reoccupied Troy may not have been Greek colonists but rather people who already lived in the area.

Xerxes, the Persian king on his way to conquer Greece, stopped to pay homage to Troy and, most notably, Alexander the Great would do the same in the fourth century B.C., granting it special status within his empire.

"It is said that the city of the present Ilians was for a time a mere village, having its temple of Athena, a small and cheap temple," wrote Strabo, who lived around 2,000 years ago. When "Alexander went up there after his victory at the Granicus River he adorned the temple with votive offerings, gave the village the title of city, and ordered those in charge to improve it with buildings, and that he adjudged it free and exempt from tribute; and that later, after the overthrow of the Persians, he sent down a kindly letter to the place, promising to make a great city of it..." (Translation by H.L. Jones, through Perseus Digital Library)

Troy's special status would continue into the period of Roman rule. The Romans believed that Aeneas, one of Troy's heroes, was an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, Rome's legendary founders. The city's inhabitants took advantage of this mythology, with it becoming a "popular destination for pilgrims and tourists," Bryce writes. He notes that in this phase of Troy's existence, when it became a popular tourism location, the city became larger than at any time before, including when the Trojan War was said to have taken place.

However, as the Middle Ages took hold, Troy fell into decline. By the 13th century, the city had been reduced to that of a modest farming community. Recent DNA research revealed the story of a woman who died 800 years ago of an infection that occurred while she was pregnant. Today, Troy is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular site for tourists to visit in Turkey.

A new museum is being constructed at Troy and the Turkish government has put forward repatriation requests for artifacts that were illegally removed from Troy in the 20th century to be returned to Turkey. A collection of gold jewelry in the Penn Museum that research reveals was taken from Troy in the 20th century has been returned to Turkey after lengthy negotiations, said C. Brian Rose, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, in an article published in 2017 in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.

The big question researchers face is, was there ever a Trojan War? If there was, then is this really Troy?

Unfortunately, the only written remains found at Troy, that date before the eighth-century B.C. Greek occupation, is a seal written in a language called Luwian, the seal being perhaps brought to Troy from elsewhere in Turkey.

Scholars have noted that the topography of Troy as told in the legend does seem to generally match that of the real-life city and, as noted earlier, people as far back as Homer's time also believed this to be Troy.

Yet the archaeological remains still pose problems. Troy at the time of the Trojan War was apparently destroyed by earthquakes and later on may have received people from southeastern Europe rather than Greece.

These issues leave researchers with a mystery. "At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the conviction that there was indeed a war and that it was pretty much as the poet described it," send Bryce. "From that we pass through varying degrees of scepticism and agnosticism to the other end of the spectrum where the tradition is consigned wholly to the realm of fantasy."

Korfmann, the modern-day excavator of Hisarlik, believes the story of the Trojan War contains some truth. "According to the current state of our knowledge, the story told in the "Iliad" most likely contains a kernel of historical truth or, to put it differently a historical substrate," he writes. "Any future discussions about the historicity of the Trojan War only make sense if they ask what exactly we understand this kernel or substrate to be."

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta.

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It was about Troy.

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War between Sparta and Troy over queen Helen of Sparta

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Ancient city located of the northwest coast of Turkey.

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Troy is the other city that battled against Sparta and Paris is the prince of Troy and started the Trojan War by stealing away Menelaus' wife Helen.

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asked the three goddesses to remove their clothes, but even so, he was unable to select the most beautiful of them, as they were all equal in beauty. That's when the goddesses decided to bribe him. told him that if he picked her, she would appoint him ruler of all Europe and Asia. told him he would be endowed with battle skills, wisdom and swordsmanship. said she would give him the most beautiful woman in the world. chose .

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asked the three goddesses to remove their clothes, but even so, he was unable to select the most beautiful of them, as they were all equal in beauty. That's when the goddesses decided to bribe him. told him that if he picked her, she would appoint him ruler of all Europe and Asia.

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The war was caused because the Trojans stole Helen from Athens

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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He is the father of the gods.

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A real ancient city located on the northwest coast of Turkey.

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta. This abduction was done by Paris, the son of Troy's King Priam. Throughout the "Iliad" the gods constantly intervene in support of characters on both sides of the conflict.

Troy also refers to a real ancient city located on the northwest coast of Turkey which, since antiquity, has been identified by many as being the Troy discussed in the legend. Whether the Trojan War actually took place, and whether the site in northwest Turkey is the same Troy, is a matter of debate. The modern-day Turkish name for the site is Hisarlik.

The idea that the city was Troy goes back at least 2,700 years, when the ancient Greeks were colonizing the west coast of Turkey. In the 19th century, the idea again came to popular attention when a German businessman and early archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, conducted a series of excavations at Hisarlik and discovered treasures he claimed to be from King Priam.

The Trojan War is thought to have taken place near the end of the Bronze Age. That is around or before 1200 B.C. It took place around the time that a civilization that we call Mycenaean flourished in Greece. They built great palaces and developed a system of writing.

The earliest accounts of this war come from Homer, who lived around the eighth century B.C., several centuries after the events took place. They do not appear to have been written down until even later, likely during the sixth century B.C., when a tyrant named Peisistratus ruled Athens.

Homer's "Iliad" is set in the 10th year of the siege against Troy and tells of a series of events that appear to have taken place over a few weeks. The story makes clear that the siege had taken its toll on the Greek force sent to recover Helen. The "timbers of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken and far away are our wives and our young children," the poem reads (translation by Richmond Lattimore).

The war had essentially become a stalemate with the Greeks unable to take the city and the Trojans unable to drive them back into the sea. We "sons of the Achaians [Greeks] outnumber the Trojans - those who live in the city; but there are companions from other cities in their numbers, wielders of the spear to help them," the "Iliad" reads.

A number of key events happen in the poem, including a duel between Menelaos or Menelaus), the king of Sparta and husband of Helen, against Paris. The winner is supposed to receive Helen as a prize, ending the war. However, the gods intervene to break up the duel before it is finished and the war continues.

Another important duel occurs nears the end of the poem between Achilleus (or Achilles) and a great Trojan warrior named Hektor (or Hector). The Trojan knows that he's no match for the Greek warrior and initially runs three laps around Troy, with Achilleus chasing him. Finally, the gods force him to face the Greek warrior and he is in turn killed.

Contrary to popular belief, the "Iliad" does not end with the destruction of Troy but with a temporary truce after which the fighting presumably continues. Another Homeric work called the "Odyssey" is set after the destruction of the city and features the Greek hero Odysseus trying to get home. That poem briefly references how the Greeks took Troy using the famous "Trojan Horse," a gift concealing warriors within.

"What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!" reads part of the poem (Translation by A.T. Murray through Perseus Digital Library).

The site of Hisarlik, in northwest Turkey, has been identified as being Troy since ancient times. Archaeological research shows that it was inhabited for almost 4,000 years starting around 3000 B.C. After one city was destroyed, a new city would be built on top of it, creating a human-made mound called a "tell."

"There is no one single Troy; there are at least 10, lying in layers on top of each other," writes University of Amsterdam researcher Gert Jan van Wijngaarden in a chapter of the book "Troy: City, Homer and Turkey" (University of Amsterdam, 2013).

Van Wijngaarden notes that archaeologists have to dig deep to find remains of the first settlement and from what they can tell it was a "small city surrounded by a defensive wall of unworked stone." Outside the largest gate was a stone with an image of a face, perhaps a deity welcoming visitors to the new city.

Troy took off in the period after 2550 B.C. The city "was considerably enlarged and furnished with a massive defensive wall made of cut blocks of stone and rectangular clay bricks," van Wijngaarden writes. He notes that on the settlement's citadel were houses of the "megaron" type, which contained "an elongated room with a hearth and open forecourt."

When Heinrich Schliemann excavated this level of Troy in 1873, he discovered a cache of treasure, which he believed belonged to King Priam. "The collection of weapons, gold, silver, electrum, copper and bronze vessels, gold jewellery, including thousands of gold rings, and a range of other objects made of precious materials apparently came to light close to the outer side of the city wall near the building which Schliemann designated as the royal palace," writes University of Queensland researcher Trevor Bryce in his book "The Trojans and their Neighbours" (Routledge, 2006).

Some researchers have speculated that these treasures were not found all in one hoard but were rather precious objects, from across the site, which Schliemann gathered over a number of weeks. While Schliemann believed he had found Priam's treasures, it became clear in the following decades that these were a millennium too early for Priam.

A stone block with Greek writing sits at the ruins of Troy, Turkey.

Credit: Alex Khripunov Shutterstock

The city that may have been the Troy mentioned by Homer belongs to two other phases that date between roughly 1700 B.C. and 1190 B.C. Bryce notes that its defenses were formidable.

"The walls, surmounted by mud-brick breastworks, once reached a height of nine meters (30 feet). Several watchtowers were built into these walls, the most imposing of which is the northeastern bastion, which served to reinforce the citadel's defences as well as offer a commanding view over the Trojan plain," he writes.

The exact size of the city is in dispute. Archaeologist Manfred Korfmann, who has led excavations at the site, writes in a paper in the book "Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic" (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) that work at the site shows that there was a "lower city" beyond the citadel, bringing its total size to about 30 hectares (74 acres).

"This Troy had a large residential area below a strongly fortified citadel. As far as we know today, the citadel was unparalleled in its region and in all of southeastern Europe," he writes in the book chapter. The extent of the residential area is a topic of debate among scholars with some arguing that Korfmann is overestimating its extent.

A key problem with identifying this city as Homer's Troy is the way it ended. Cracks in its walls suggest that it was hit by an earthquake around 1300 B.C., possibly followed by an uprising or attack. "There are also some indications of fire, and slingstones in the destruction layer (suggesting) the possibility that there might have been some fighting," writes van Wijngaarden. "Nevertheless an earthquake appears to have caused the most damage." Additionally, he notes, the city was rebuilt after its destruction by the same population groups as before, rather than by a foreign Greek force.

While the city was attacked in 1190 B.C., there are, again, problems with the idea that it was carried out by a Greek force. By this time, Greece's Mycenaean civilization had collapsed, its great palaces reduced to ruins. Additionally, at Troy archaeologists have found ceramics and bronze axes from southeast Europe, suggesting that that people may have moved into the city from there.

The city was abandoned around 1000 B.C. and was reoccupied in eighth century B.C., around the time Homer lived. The Greeks called the reoccupied city "Ilion."

The "new settlers had no doubt that the place they were preparing to occupy was the fabled setting of the Trojan War," Bryce writes, and in later times its inhabitants took advantage of this to draw in political support and ancient tourists.

For its first few centuries, Ilion was a modest settlement. While many scholars believe that the people who resettled Troy after 1000 B.C. were Greek colonists this idea has recently been challenged. In 2014, research published by a team of scholars in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology revealed that the amphora at Troy that was thought to have been imported from Greece was actually locally made and that much of the other pottery found at Troy after 1,000 B.C. was also made locally and was not imported from Greece. This led the team to suggest that many of the people who reoccupied Troy may not have been Greek colonists but rather people who already lived in the area.

Xerxes, the Persian king on his way to conquer Greece, stopped to pay homage to Troy and, most notably, Alexander the Great would do the same in the fourth century B.C., granting it special status within his empire.

"It is said that the city of the present Ilians was for a time a mere village, having its temple of Athena, a small and cheap temple," wrote Strabo, who lived around 2,000 years ago. When "Alexander went up there after his victory at the Granicus River he adorned the temple with votive offerings, gave the village the title of city, and ordered those in charge to improve it with buildings, and that he adjudged it free and exempt from tribute; and that later, after the overthrow of the Persians, he sent down a kindly letter to the place, promising to make a great city of it..." (Translation by H.L. Jones, through Perseus Digital Library)

Troy's special status would continue into the period of Roman rule. The Romans believed that Aeneas, one of Troy's heroes, was an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, Rome's legendary founders. The city's inhabitants took advantage of this mythology, with it becoming a "popular destination for pilgrims and tourists," Bryce writes. He notes that in this phase of Troy's existence, when it became a popular tourism location, the city became larger than at any time before, including when the Trojan War was said to have taken place.

However, as the Middle Ages took hold, Troy fell into decline. By the 13th century, the city had been reduced to that of a modest farming community. Recent DNA research revealed the story of a woman who died 800 years ago of an infection that occurred while she was pregnant. Today, Troy is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular site for tourists to visit in Turkey.

A new museum is being constructed at Troy and the Turkish government has put forward repatriation requests for artifacts that were illegally removed from Troy in the 20th century to be returned to Turkey. A collection of gold jewelry in the Penn Museum that research reveals was taken from Troy in the 20th century has been returned to Turkey after lengthy negotiations, said C. Brian Rose, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, in an article published in 2017 in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.

The big question researchers face is, was there ever a Trojan War? If there was, then is this really Troy?

Unfortunately, the only written remains found at Troy, that date before the eighth-century B.C. Greek occupation, is a seal written in a language called Luwian, the seal being perhaps brought to Troy from elsewhere in Turkey.

Scholars have noted that the topography of Troy as told in the legend does seem to generally match that of the real-life city and, as noted earlier, people as far back as Homer's time also believed this to be Troy.

Yet the archaeological remains still pose problems. Troy at the time of the Trojan War was apparently destroyed by earthquakes and later on may have received people from southeastern Europe rather than Greece.

These issues leave researchers with a mystery. "At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the conviction that there was indeed a war and that it was pretty much as the poet described it," send Bryce. "From that we pass through varying degrees of scepticism and agnosticism to the other end of the spectrum where the tradition is consigned wholly to the realm of fantasy."

Korfmann, the modern-day excavator of Hisarlik, believes the story of the Trojan War contains some truth. "According to the current state of our knowledge, the story told in the "Iliad" most likely contains a kernel of historical truth or, to put it differently a historical substrate," he writes. "Any future discussions about the historicity of the Trojan War only make sense if they ask what exactly we understand this kernel or substrate to be."

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta.

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The Trojan War was the Greeks against the Trojans. Paris stole Helen from Menelaus and Agamemnon (Menelaus' brother) launched a thousand ships to get Helen back. The fall of Troy happened by a horse full of Trojan warriors being accepted into Troy, for the Greeks thought it was a gift.. Then the Trojan warriors sacked Troy.

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Beowolf is the hero of Geats.

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Definition of Beowulf in the Titi Tudorancea Encyclopedia. Meaning of Beowulf. What does Beowulf mean? Proper usage and sense of the word Beowulf. Information about Beowulf in the Titi Tudorancea encyclopedia: no-nonsense, concise definitions.

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The conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece,

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Written by Virgil, tells the story of Aeneas.

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Free summary and analysis of the events in Virgil's The Aeneid that won't make you snore. We promise.

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Bronze age conflict between Mycenaean Greece and Troy.
Inspires Homer, Herodotus, and Sophocles to Virgil

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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The Story of the Trojan War, and the reasons the war started.

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today. This story had a central place in Greek mythology.

The poem deals with a very short period in the tenth year of the Trojan war. This sometimes surprises modern readers who expect the whole story of Troy (as, for instance, in Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy). But Homer and other early epic poets confined their narratives to particular periods in the war, such as its origins, key martial encounters, the fall of the city, or the returns of the soldiers to Greece. There is no doubt that Homer and other early poets could rely on a very extensive knowledge of the Trojan war among their audiences.

Warner Brothers

The central figure in the Iliad is Achilles, the son of Peleus (a mortal aristocrat) and Thetis (a sea-goddess). He comes from the north of Greece, and is therefore something of an outsider, because most of the main Greek princes in the poem come from the south. Achilles is young and brash, a brilliant fighter, but not a great diplomat. When he gets into a dispute with Agamemnon, the leading Greek prince in the war, and loses his captive princess Briseis to him, he refuses to fight and remains in his camp.

He stays there for most of the poem, until his friend Patroclus is killed. He then explodes back on to the battlefield, kills the Trojan hero Hector, who had killed Patroclus, and mutilates his body.

The Iliad ends with the ransom of Hector's body by his old father Priam, who embarks on a mission to Achilles' camp in the gloom of night to get his son's body back. It is worth noting that the actual fall of Troy, via the renowned stratagem of Greeks hidden within a Wooden Horse, is not described in the Iliad, although it was certainly dealt with in other poems.

All of this takes place under the watchful gaze of the Olympian gods, who are both actors and audience in the Iliad. The Olympians are divided over the fate of Troy, just as the mortals are - in the Iliad the Trojan war is a cosmic conflict, not just one played out at the human level between Greeks and non-Greeks. Ominously for Troy, the gods on the Greek side, notably Hera (queen of the gods), Athena (goddess of wisdom and war), and Poseidon (god of the land and sea), represent a much more powerful force than the divine supporters of Troy, of whom Apollo (the archer god and god of afar) is the main figure.

John Flaxman, The Iliad, 1793

The many faces of Homer

The Iliad is only one poetic work focused on the war for Troy; many others have not survived. But such is its quality and depth that it had a special place in antiquity, and probably survived for that reason.

We know virtually nothing about Homer and whether he also created the other poem in his name, the Odyssey, which recounts the return journey of Odysseus from the Trojan war, to the island of Ithaca. The Iliad was probably put together around 700 BC, or a bit later, presumably by a brilliant poet immersed in traditional skills of oral composition (ie "Homer"). This tradition of oral composition probably reaches back hundreds of years before the Iliad.

Early epic poetry can be a way of maintaining the cultural memory of major conflicts. History and archaeology also teach us that there may have been a historical "Trojan war" at the end of the second millennium BC (at Hissarlik in western Turkey), although it was very unlike the one that Homer describes.

The Iliad was composed as one continuous poem. In its current arrangement (most likely after the establishment of the Alexandrian library in the early 3rd century BC), it is divided into 24 books corresponding to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.

It has a metrical form known as "dactylic hexameter" - a metre also associated with many other epic poems in antiquity (such as the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, the Roman epic by Virgil). In the Odyssey, a bard called Demodocus sings on request in an aristocratic context about the Wooden Horse at Troy, giving a sense of the kind of existence "Homer" might have led.

The language of the Iliad is a conflation of different regional dialects, which means that it doesn't belong to a particular ancient city as most other ancient Greek texts do. It therefore had a strong resonance throughout the Greek world, and is often thought of as a "pan-Hellenic" poem, a possession of all the Greeks. Likewise the Greek attack on Troy was a collective quest drawing on forces from across the Greek world. Pan-Hellenism, therefore, is central to the Iliad.

Death and War

A central idea in the Iliad is the inevitability of death (as also with the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh). The poignancy of life and death is enhanced by the fact that the victims of war are usually young. Achilles is youthful and headstrong, and has a goddess for a mother, but even he has to die. We learn that he had been given a choice - a long life without heroic glory, or a short and glorious life in war. His choice of the latter marks him out as heroic, and gives him a kind of immortality. But the other warriors too, including the Trojan hero Hector, are prepared to die young.

The gods, by contrast, don't have to worry about dying. But they can be affected by death. Zeus's son Sarpedon dies within the Iliad, and Thetis has to deal with the imminent death of her son Achilles. After his death, she will lead an existence of perpetual mourning for him. Immortality in Greek mythology can be a mixed blessing.

The Iliad also has much to say about war. The atrocities in the war at Troy are committed by Greeks on Trojans. Achilles commits human sacrifice within the Iliad itself and mutilates the body of Hector, and there are other atrocities told in other poems.

The Trojan saga in the early Greek sources tells of the genocide of the Trojans, and the Greek poets explored some of the darkest impulses of human conduct in war. In the final book of the Iliad, Achilles and Priam, in the most poignant of settings, reflect upon the fate of human beings and the things they do to one another.

Jorge Láscar, CC BY

Postscripts and plagiarists

It was often said that the Iliad was a kind of "bible of the Greeks" in so far as its reception within the Greek world, and beyond, was nothing short of extraordinary. A knowledge of Homer became a standard part of Greek education, be it formal or informal.

Ancient writers after Homer, even the rather austere Greek historian Thucydides in the 5th century BC, assume the historicity of much of the subject-matter of the Iliad. Likewise, Alexander the Great (356-323BC) seems to have been driven by a quest to be the " new Achilles ". Plutarch tells a delightful story that Alexander slept with a dagger under his pillow at night, together with a copy of Homer's Iliad. This particular copy had been annotated by Alexander's former tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. One can only imagine its value today had it survived.

In the Roman world, the poet Virgil (70-19BC) set out to write an epic poem about the origins of Rome from the ashes of Troy. His poem, called the Aeneid (after Aeneas, a traditional Trojan founder of Rome), is written in Latin, but is heavily reliant on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

My own view is that Virgil knew Homer off by heart, and he was probably criticised in his own life for the extent of his reliance on Homer. But tradition records his response that "it is easier to steal Heracles' club than steal one line from Homer". This response, be it factual or not, records the spell that Homer's Iliad cast over antiquity, and most of the period since.

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today.

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This poem describes the final years of the Trojan War. It is about the Trojan War and the fight between Achilles and Hector and how the Trojan War started.

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One of the famous epic poems written by Homer. This became one of the schoolbooks of Ancient Greece. This was about the Trojan War.

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College - a new place with new people and a new you! You're ready to get a fresh start on a new campus; before you start, however, there are some social rules that you should know. These are suggestions that you are not required to follow, but they are highly recommended. Here are ten things you probably should not do from now on.

1. Raise your hand to use the restroom.

You're an adult now. You don't have to ask to use the restroom, go get a snack from the vending machine real quick, or go outside to take an important phone call. Just go and take care of whatever you feel is important.

2. Watch your favorite TV show... while sitting in the front row.

Going to lecture might be boring sometimes (and/or tiring, depending on when the class is). You would rather sign the attendance sheet, take out your laptop, and continue binge watching your favorite show. This is especially tempting when you have class in a big lecture hall with 200+ students; however, if you are in one of the front rows, other people can probably see your laptop screen (especially if you have a fairly large laptop). News flash: there are other people in the class trying to actually pay attention to what the professor is saying. It also defeats the purpose of going to lecture, so it's not doing you a favor either. So if you have to go to class and absolutely need to watch that last episode of "Game of Thrones", do your classmates a favor and sit in the back of the class.

3. Sit down on the bus and use the seat next to you for your backpack.

If you go to a big school like I do, we have a bus system to get from one part of the university to another. Do not be that jerk on a crowded bus who thinks their bag/backpack/whatever other stuff you have with you deserves a seat for itself. If you are on a crowded bus, place your bag on your lap, on the floor between your legs, or under your seat. You will get glares from people if you make a special seat for your [insert expensive bag here].

4. Avoid giving up your seat because you're already comfortable.

If you are able to stand on public transportation, let someone else who might have a heavier load take your seat. Included in this category would be elderly people, pregnant women, injured people, disabled people, someone holding multiple bags of groceries, and other people in situations. It's just the kind thing to do.

5. Leave your drink unattended.

There are horrible, scary people in this world. You might think that a lot cannot possibly happen in the two minutes you'll take in the bathroom or to find your friend in that crowded room, but it can. Someone could slip drugs (or something worse) in your drink while you're away. So I'm going to repeat it for those in the back of the room: NEVER LEAVE YOUR WATER/SODA/BEER/UMBRELLA COCKTAIL/ANY DRINK UNATTENDED.

6. Go into the shower without flip-flops.

Don't have your share of athlete's foot. Get a pair of shower shoes for those communal showers typical of first-year residence halls; shower floors can and will be gross when you share them with around 30 other people on your floor.

7. Register for an 8 A.M. class.

Unless it is a class needed for graduation and you have no other way around it, this is absolutely a no. You may think that you started high school at 7:30 A.M. in at least a semi-functioning status, so you'll be used to this. But you'll quickly learn this is no longer the case and regret your decision immediately. Just don't do it.

8. Avoid asking for help.

College is a tough transition for first-year students. It's normal to not earn marks as high as you did in high school. However, don't let it become a habit because your grades (and your GPA) do matter to employers. There are often resources like writing centers, tutoring, and study groups available for free through the university. This isn't limited to academics, as there are many resources through your college within your reach, such as career services, counseling centers, and health centers. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it!

9. Avoid office hours.

This goes along with #9. Professors hold office hours for a reason: so you can come in with your questions and seek help straight from the source. Going to office hours with prepared questions lets the professor know that you are serious about your performance in the class. Another benefit from going to office hours on a regular basis would be a higher possibility of them writing a letter of recommendation for you because they get to know you after a semester of struggle. If you have another class during your professor's office hours, ask the professor if you can meet them at another time that works for both of you.

10. Go home every weekend (unless absolutely necessary).

I know homesickness can get to you when first starting college. The first semester can be tough, and you'll be tempted to make a trip home. Unless you absolutely have to go back to your hometown, try not to. When you are home, you are missing out on chances to meet new people at school and do new things like attending football games, having Sunday brunch at the dining hall with your floormates, and getting involved in student organizations.

You will get the hang of things eventually. Good luck in the upcoming semester!

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College - a new place with new people and a new you! You're ready to get a fresh start on a new campus; before you start, however, there are some social rules that you should know. These are suggestions that you are not required to follow, but they are highly recommended.

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He wrote  Iliad and the Odyssey.

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed. In conjunction with Hesiod, Homer acts as a great pool of information for the Greeks about their gods. Homer is the earliest poet in Western culture whose works have survived intact.

The Iliad is composed of 15,693 hexameters (lines of verse), and is divided into 24 books corresponding to each letter of the Greek alphabet - alpha to omega, a system that was already in place by the time of Herodotus. The Iliad traces the anger of Achilles ("Sing Muse, of the wrath of Achilles" Iliad.1.1) and takes place over 51 days during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. The poem takes its name from the city of Troy, which is also known as Ilium.

Achilles, respect the gods and have pity on me, remembering your own father.
Priam to Achilles

Highlights include: the lengthy Catalogue of Ships of the Greek invading forces, the death of Patroclus and the description of him being carried away by the twins Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), the description of the shield of Achilles, the reconciliation between Achilles and Priam, perhaps one of the most moving scenes in Western literature, and several set-piece battles between pairs of Greek heroes, most famously the fight between Achilles and Hektor. In all of these events the intervention of the Greek gods, especially Athena on the side of the Greeks and Apollo for the Trojans, is instrumental in the outcome of all of the human actions during the war.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey is composed of 12,109 hexameters and is also divided into 24 in the same manner as the Iliad. Whereas war and anger were the themes of the Iliad, the Odyssey takes place after the Trojan War has been won by the Achaeans, as the Greeks are referred to by Homer. The Odyssey is concerned with the nostos (journey) of the Greek hero Odysseus (the protagonist after whom the poem is named) and the troubles that he faces on his way home from Troy, foiled on his way by godly interventions, especially those of Poseidon. Highlights include Odysseus' famous encounters with the Sirens, with the Cyclops Polythemus, and the slaying of his wife Penelope's suitors upon his return to Ithaca.

We handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it in his eye till the blood boiled up round the burning wood.
Odysseus on blinding the Cyclops

Unlike Hesiod, who mentions his family and life within his works, this is not really the case for Homer, and since writing is generally believed to have started around 700 BCE, there is no contemporary source on him either, but there are various later Hellenistic and even Roman descriptions of his life (and also the Contest of Homer and Hesiod). Because the dialect of Homer's works is composed in an archaic form of Ionian Greek and he displays a familiarity with the geography of Asia Minor in the Iliad, there could be some element of truth to claims that Homer's birthplace was Symrna, Chios, or Ios.

A Single Homer?

There have always been debates as to the 'person' of Homer: many places claim to be his birthplace. It is even debated whether or not the two great works were written by the same person: the ancients called those who thought this the chorizontes; the separatists. Some even doubt if one single person was behind these works, and that leads to 'the Homeric Question', the idea that the poems are a compilation of layers rolled into one story, which could explain inconsistencies in the narrative and the formulaic language used. According to this school of thought, the poems would most likely have been sung episodically by rhapsodes. This idea was first argued by F. A. Wolf in his 1795 CE work Prolegomena ad Homerum.

Nevertheless, whether Homer was a 'she', a 'he', or a 'they' does not diminish the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this can be seen by the fact that the two poems have come down to us in a continuous tradition. The poems were first compiled, organised, and edited under the Athenian Peisistratus, but the Greek text that we have survives from such Alexandrian scholars as Zenodotus and Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus and their comments on the texts. The first printed editions of Homer were in 1488 CE in Florence by Chalcondyles of Athens. Homer's work was hugely influential on Greek culture, and scenes from his works appeared in Greek sculpture, on Greek pottery, and in Greek tragedy and comedy. He was studied as part of Greek education, and the legends within his work would influence Hellenistic culture, Roman culture, and far beyond, so that Homer's lasting legacy is that his works are still studied to this day.

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed.

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the famous epic written by homer.

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The Odyssey is Homer's epic of Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War. While Odysseus battles mystical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand and Ithaca's throne long enough for Odysseus to return. The Odyssey ends as Odysseus wins a contest to prove his identity, slaughters the suitors, and retakes the throne of Ithaca.

Type of Work: epic poem

First Published: probably around 700 B.C.

Setting: The sea and Ithaca

Main Characters: Odysseus; Penelope; Telemachus; Athena (Pallas); Polyphemus (the Cyclops) and King Alcinous; Circe and Calypso

Major Thematic Topics: hospitality; loyalty; perseverance; vengeance; appearance versus reality; spiritual growth

Motifs: mythology; love; disguises

Major Symbols: Laertes' shroud; Odysseus' bow; the sea; Ithaca

The three most important aspects of The Odyssey:

The Odyssey is an epic, a very long poem on a single subject. Some epics were composed in order to be performed from memory, and so they include poetic devices to make them more memorable. And many epics, probably including The Odyssey, were written to be performed to musical accompaniment.

The journey of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca takes ten years - the same amount of time that the Trojan War itself lasted. The extraordinary length of Odysseus' return trip, which should take a matter of weeks, is due to his many antagonists, including the god Poseidon, the many mythical creatures he encounters, and Odysseus' often greedy and lazy crewmen.

Odysseus's most memorable quality is not his bravery or strength - though he is brave and strong - but rather his cleverness. In fact, Homer refers to his protagonist throughout the epic as "wily Odysseus."

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The Odyssey is Homer's epic of Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War. While Odysseus battles mystical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand and Ithaca's throne long enough for Odysseus to return.

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The poem tells of Odysseus' struggle to return home, which occurs over a ten year period following the Trojan War.

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Odysseus is the main character and hero of the epic poem The Odyssey, written by the Greek poet Homer in the 8 th century BC. In The Odyssey, the poem tells of Odysseus' struggle to return home, which occurs over a ten year period following the Trojan War.

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A Latin poem, written by Virgil, that tells the story of Aeneas.

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The Trojan War was fought because of the conflict between Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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Watch a brief video summarizing the Trojan War, the conflict recounted in Greek mythology between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Epic poem written by Homer about the Trojan War

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta. This abduction was done by Paris, the son of Troy's King Priam. Throughout the "Iliad" the gods constantly intervene in support of characters on both sides of the conflict.

Troy also refers to a real ancient city located on the northwest coast of Turkey which, since antiquity, has been identified by many as being the Troy discussed in the legend. Whether the Trojan War actually took place, and whether the site in northwest Turkey is the same Troy, is a matter of debate. The modern-day Turkish name for the site is Hisarlik.

The idea that the city was Troy goes back at least 2,700 years, when the ancient Greeks were colonizing the west coast of Turkey. In the 19th century, the idea again came to popular attention when a German businessman and early archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, conducted a series of excavations at Hisarlik and discovered treasures he claimed to be from King Priam.

The Trojan War is thought to have taken place near the end of the Bronze Age. That is around or before 1200 B.C. It took place around the time that a civilization that we call Mycenaean flourished in Greece. They built great palaces and developed a system of writing.

The earliest accounts of this war come from Homer, who lived around the eighth century B.C., several centuries after the events took place. They do not appear to have been written down until even later, likely during the sixth century B.C., when a tyrant named Peisistratus ruled Athens.

Homer's "Iliad" is set in the 10th year of the siege against Troy and tells of a series of events that appear to have taken place over a few weeks. The story makes clear that the siege had taken its toll on the Greek force sent to recover Helen. The "timbers of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken and far away are our wives and our young children," the poem reads (translation by Richmond Lattimore).

The war had essentially become a stalemate with the Greeks unable to take the city and the Trojans unable to drive them back into the sea. We "sons of the Achaians [Greeks] outnumber the Trojans - those who live in the city; but there are companions from other cities in their numbers, wielders of the spear to help them," the "Iliad" reads.

A number of key events happen in the poem, including a duel between Menelaos or Menelaus), the king of Sparta and husband of Helen, against Paris. The winner is supposed to receive Helen as a prize, ending the war. However, the gods intervene to break up the duel before it is finished and the war continues.

Another important duel occurs nears the end of the poem between Achilleus (or Achilles) and a great Trojan warrior named Hektor (or Hector). The Trojan knows that he's no match for the Greek warrior and initially runs three laps around Troy, with Achilleus chasing him. Finally, the gods force him to face the Greek warrior and he is in turn killed.

Contrary to popular belief, the "Iliad" does not end with the destruction of Troy but with a temporary truce after which the fighting presumably continues. Another Homeric work called the "Odyssey" is set after the destruction of the city and features the Greek hero Odysseus trying to get home. That poem briefly references how the Greeks took Troy using the famous "Trojan Horse," a gift concealing warriors within.

"What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!" reads part of the poem (Translation by A.T. Murray through Perseus Digital Library).

The site of Hisarlik, in northwest Turkey, has been identified as being Troy since ancient times. Archaeological research shows that it was inhabited for almost 4,000 years starting around 3000 B.C. After one city was destroyed, a new city would be built on top of it, creating a human-made mound called a "tell."

"There is no one single Troy; there are at least 10, lying in layers on top of each other," writes University of Amsterdam researcher Gert Jan van Wijngaarden in a chapter of the book "Troy: City, Homer and Turkey" (University of Amsterdam, 2013).

Van Wijngaarden notes that archaeologists have to dig deep to find remains of the first settlement and from what they can tell it was a "small city surrounded by a defensive wall of unworked stone." Outside the largest gate was a stone with an image of a face, perhaps a deity welcoming visitors to the new city.

Troy took off in the period after 2550 B.C. The city "was considerably enlarged and furnished with a massive defensive wall made of cut blocks of stone and rectangular clay bricks," van Wijngaarden writes. He notes that on the settlement's citadel were houses of the "megaron" type, which contained "an elongated room with a hearth and open forecourt."

When Heinrich Schliemann excavated this level of Troy in 1873, he discovered a cache of treasure, which he believed belonged to King Priam. "The collection of weapons, gold, silver, electrum, copper and bronze vessels, gold jewellery, including thousands of gold rings, and a range of other objects made of precious materials apparently came to light close to the outer side of the city wall near the building which Schliemann designated as the royal palace," writes University of Queensland researcher Trevor Bryce in his book "The Trojans and their Neighbours" (Routledge, 2006).

Some researchers have speculated that these treasures were not found all in one hoard but were rather precious objects, from across the site, which Schliemann gathered over a number of weeks. While Schliemann believed he had found Priam's treasures, it became clear in the following decades that these were a millennium too early for Priam.

A stone block with Greek writing sits at the ruins of Troy, Turkey.

Credit: Alex Khripunov Shutterstock

The city that may have been the Troy mentioned by Homer belongs to two other phases that date between roughly 1700 B.C. and 1190 B.C. Bryce notes that its defenses were formidable.

"The walls, surmounted by mud-brick breastworks, once reached a height of nine meters (30 feet). Several watchtowers were built into these walls, the most imposing of which is the northeastern bastion, which served to reinforce the citadel's defences as well as offer a commanding view over the Trojan plain," he writes.

The exact size of the city is in dispute. Archaeologist Manfred Korfmann, who has led excavations at the site, writes in a paper in the book "Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic" (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) that work at the site shows that there was a "lower city" beyond the citadel, bringing its total size to about 30 hectares (74 acres).

"This Troy had a large residential area below a strongly fortified citadel. As far as we know today, the citadel was unparalleled in its region and in all of southeastern Europe," he writes in the book chapter. The extent of the residential area is a topic of debate among scholars with some arguing that Korfmann is overestimating its extent.

A key problem with identifying this city as Homer's Troy is the way it ended. Cracks in its walls suggest that it was hit by an earthquake around 1300 B.C., possibly followed by an uprising or attack. "There are also some indications of fire, and slingstones in the destruction layer (suggesting) the possibility that there might have been some fighting," writes van Wijngaarden. "Nevertheless an earthquake appears to have caused the most damage." Additionally, he notes, the city was rebuilt after its destruction by the same population groups as before, rather than by a foreign Greek force.

While the city was attacked in 1190 B.C., there are, again, problems with the idea that it was carried out by a Greek force. By this time, Greece's Mycenaean civilization had collapsed, its great palaces reduced to ruins. Additionally, at Troy archaeologists have found ceramics and bronze axes from southeast Europe, suggesting that that people may have moved into the city from there.

The city was abandoned around 1000 B.C. and was reoccupied in eighth century B.C., around the time Homer lived. The Greeks called the reoccupied city "Ilion."

The "new settlers had no doubt that the place they were preparing to occupy was the fabled setting of the Trojan War," Bryce writes, and in later times its inhabitants took advantage of this to draw in political support and ancient tourists.

For its first few centuries, Ilion was a modest settlement. While many scholars believe that the people who resettled Troy after 1000 B.C. were Greek colonists this idea has recently been challenged. In 2014, research published by a team of scholars in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology revealed that the amphora at Troy that was thought to have been imported from Greece was actually locally made and that much of the other pottery found at Troy after 1,000 B.C. was also made locally and was not imported from Greece. This led the team to suggest that many of the people who reoccupied Troy may not have been Greek colonists but rather people who already lived in the area.

Xerxes, the Persian king on his way to conquer Greece, stopped to pay homage to Troy and, most notably, Alexander the Great would do the same in the fourth century B.C., granting it special status within his empire.

"It is said that the city of the present Ilians was for a time a mere village, having its temple of Athena, a small and cheap temple," wrote Strabo, who lived around 2,000 years ago. When "Alexander went up there after his victory at the Granicus River he adorned the temple with votive offerings, gave the village the title of city, and ordered those in charge to improve it with buildings, and that he adjudged it free and exempt from tribute; and that later, after the overthrow of the Persians, he sent down a kindly letter to the place, promising to make a great city of it..." (Translation by H.L. Jones, through Perseus Digital Library)

Troy's special status would continue into the period of Roman rule. The Romans believed that Aeneas, one of Troy's heroes, was an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, Rome's legendary founders. The city's inhabitants took advantage of this mythology, with it becoming a "popular destination for pilgrims and tourists," Bryce writes. He notes that in this phase of Troy's existence, when it became a popular tourism location, the city became larger than at any time before, including when the Trojan War was said to have taken place.

However, as the Middle Ages took hold, Troy fell into decline. By the 13th century, the city had been reduced to that of a modest farming community. Recent DNA research revealed the story of a woman who died 800 years ago of an infection that occurred while she was pregnant. Today, Troy is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular site for tourists to visit in Turkey.

A new museum is being constructed at Troy and the Turkish government has put forward repatriation requests for artifacts that were illegally removed from Troy in the 20th century to be returned to Turkey. A collection of gold jewelry in the Penn Museum that research reveals was taken from Troy in the 20th century has been returned to Turkey after lengthy negotiations, said C. Brian Rose, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, in an article published in 2017 in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.

The big question researchers face is, was there ever a Trojan War? If there was, then is this really Troy?

Unfortunately, the only written remains found at Troy, that date before the eighth-century B.C. Greek occupation, is a seal written in a language called Luwian, the seal being perhaps brought to Troy from elsewhere in Turkey.

Scholars have noted that the topography of Troy as told in the legend does seem to generally match that of the real-life city and, as noted earlier, people as far back as Homer's time also believed this to be Troy.

Yet the archaeological remains still pose problems. Troy at the time of the Trojan War was apparently destroyed by earthquakes and later on may have received people from southeastern Europe rather than Greece.

These issues leave researchers with a mystery. "At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the conviction that there was indeed a war and that it was pretty much as the poet described it," send Bryce. "From that we pass through varying degrees of scepticism and agnosticism to the other end of the spectrum where the tradition is consigned wholly to the realm of fantasy."

Korfmann, the modern-day excavator of Hisarlik, believes the story of the Trojan War contains some truth. "According to the current state of our knowledge, the story told in the "Iliad" most likely contains a kernel of historical truth or, to put it differently a historical substrate," he writes. "Any future discussions about the historicity of the Trojan War only make sense if they ask what exactly we understand this kernel or substrate to be."

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The name Troy refers both to a place in legend and a real-life archaeological site. In legend, Troy is a city that was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. The reason for this "Trojan War" was, according to Homer's "Iliad," the abduction of Helen, a queen from Sparta.

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The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus and how he wanders for ten years trying to find his way home.

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Table of Contents

How was the Odyssey originally performed?

What are the most popular English-language translations of the Odyssey from the 20th century?

Odyssey, epic poem in 24 books traditionally attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. The poem is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years (although the action of the poem covers only the final six weeks) trying to get home after the Trojan War. On his return, he is recognized only by his faithful dog and a nurse. With the help of his son, Telemachus, Odysseus destroys the insistent suitors of his faithful wife, Penelope, and several of her maids who had fraternized with the suitors and reestablishes himself in his kingdom.

The story

The Odyssey does not follow a linear chronology. The reader begins in the middle of the tale, learning about previous events only through Odysseus's retelling. The first four books set the scene in Ithaca. Penelope, Odysseus's wife, and their young son, Telemachus, are powerless before her arrogant suitors as they despair of Odysseus's return from the siege of Troy. Telemachus is searching for news of his father, who has not been heard from since he left for war nearly 20 years earlier. He journeys secretly to the Peloponnese and seeks out two men who fought with Odysseus in the war at Troy, Nestor and Menelaus, and discovers that his father is indeed still alive.

The second four books (V-VIII) introduce the main character, Odysseus, as he is being released from captivity by the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia. He suffers a shipwreck and lands on the shore of Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians. In Books IX-XII Odysseus tells the Phaeacians of the harrowing journey he and his crew endured as they tried to find their way home-including their encounters with the lotus-eaters, Laestrygonians, and the sorceress Circe, their narrow escape from the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, their ordeal navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, and the final shipwreck in which Odysseus is washed ashore on Ogygia alone.

Finally, Books XIII-XXIV, the second half of the poem, find Odysseus back in Ithaca, facing unexpected obstacles and danger. He meets with his protector-goddess Athena and reveals himself first to his faithful swineherd Eumaeus and then to Telemachus before developing a complicated plan to dispose of the suitors. During Odysseus's absence, Penelope resisted the importuning of more than a hundred suitors-who have stayed in Odysseus's house, eating, drinking, and carousing while waiting for her to decide among them. In order to reunite with his wife, Odysseus kills them all, with the aid of Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius (a servant and cowherd).

Composition and early translations

Scholars date the writing of the Odyssey to about 725-675 bce. The poem was intended for oral performance. It was composed of 12,109 lines written in dactylic hexameter (sometimes referred to as "Homeric hexameter")-that is, each line consisted of six feet, or metrical units, and each foot consisted of a dactyl (a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables). The original work may not have been constructed into the 24 books known to the contemporary reader, and the parts were certainly not in codex form. In the ancient world, the poem was likely written in columns on rolls made from papyrus, or possibly some kind of animal skin (such as vellum and parchment). Given its extraordinary length, the poem may have actually occupied 24 individual rolls. Homer's role in the writing of the poem and whether he was literate have been a source for rich scholarly debate, commonly referred to as the "Homeric Question."

Until the 15th century all volumes of the Odyssey in circulation were in handwritten Greek. In 1488 the first printed version (still in Greek) was produced in Florence. The earliest vernacular translations of the Odyssey from its original Ionic Greek dialect began to appear in Europe during the 16th century. Applying the ancient Greek metre to contemporary vernaculars, especially to words meant to be spoken aloud rather than read privately, posed a particular challenge, forcing translators to add and invent words in order to make the metre work. Some have translated it into prose and some into verse.

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Odyssey | Summary, Characters, Meaning, & Facts

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Odyssey, epic poem in 24 books traditionally attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. The poem is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years (although the action of the poem covers only the final six weeks) trying to get home after the Trojan War.

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She was Zeus' favorite child and she was born with no mother and fully grown.

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

Athena is a Greek goddess known as both Pallas and Athene. In ancient Greek mythology, they often associated her with both warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

She also shares some things in common with Minerva from Roman mythology. Many refer to her as a protector or a patron of major cities such as Athens.

She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with , the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy - but she had already conceived.

Etymology

Scholars believe that her name comes from the city of Athens. Legend says that she was the leader of Athenai. This was a group of women who followed and worshiped her.

There is some debate as to whether the citizens named Athens in honor of her or if she received her name after the city already existed. Many believe that she earned her name as she lived and led in Athens.

As early as 407 BC, Plato mentioned her name and claimed that others followed her due to her wisdom and knowledge. He further claimed that her name came from the Greek word Athenoa, which can mean moon and earth or air.

Early Roots

Unlike other Greek goddesses and gods, there isn't as much known about the early life of Athena. Early tablets called the Linear B tablets mention her name and refer to her as Lady of Athens. Some translate phrases in the Linear A tablets to mean Athena of Zeus as she was the daughter of Zeus.

There are also multiple fresco pieces that show her as a warrior. In one, she holds a shield in her hand and with two women nearby.

The other shows a woman standing in front of multiple rows of women. Some believe that this piece depicts a different or early version of the warrior goddess. Historians also found some early artwork that shows Athena as an owl, which might explain why she is occasionally called a bird goddess.

Patronage

Though not a patron saint, Athena is a goddess. Known for many years as a war goddess, she helped prepare men for the fighting ahead and provided them with the necessary tools and supplies.

She was unlike other gods and goddesses from ancient Greek tales who thought anything was worth a fight. Goddess Athena believed that people should only go to war as a last resort and only if they fought for a noble or just cause.

In later years, scholars associated her with both Hestia and Artemis. They also referred to her as Parthenos, which means virgin. Not only did she never marry, but she never took a lover either. Many today believe that the name of the Parthenon comes from the term used to describe her virginity. Citizens chose this name to honor the sexual modesty she had. They believed that her virginity paved the way for other women.

Outside of Athens

Though usually associated with Athens, Athena had followers in other cities. Known as panhellenic cults, these groups consisted of women who followed traditional rites. Most of her followers were young women who believed in socializing with others both in their hometowns and other cities.

While some used these events in the hopes of meeting a suitable man for marriage and citizenship, others simply wanted to make friends and connect with others. Her cults established several sanctuaries in her honor.

One of those sanctuaries is the Spartan Acropolis, which has an epithet dedicated to her. Originally made from bronze to show her connection to metal workers, locals later replaced it. The acropolis also has large bronze and terracotta bells.

Athena Polias is another dedicated to her, which Pytheos of Priene designed. Alexander the Great was on hand to dedicate the temple. An inscription that bears his words is now in the archives of the British Museum. This museum and others also have many sculptures of the goddess.

Other Epithets

As one of the most famous Greek goddess figures, Athena has multiple epithets such as Polias, which shows that she was the protector of Athens. She earned the Ergane name to reflect her role as the helper of artisans. When Orestes faced charges of killing his mother, Athena served as the judge who oversaw his case.

After finding him not guilty, she became known as Areia. There were others who simply referred to her as the goddess. Other epithets used in ancient Greece for her include:

-Hippa, which means equestrian. This refers to the bridle and her similar inventions.

-Aethyia is the name given to her by followers who lived in Megara

-Hygieia, which means health as she was a healthy woman.

Many of the descriptions of Athena come from Homer. He described her as a beautiful woman with bright or gleaming eyes.

Later translations changed this to mean her eyes were gray or blue and green. Historians believe that she likely earned her association with owls due to his description as it showed that she had the same type of face.

Others believe this association came from the artwork that shows her holding an owl in her hand. Not only did the owl become the Athenian mascot, but it also became associated with knowledge.

Athena appeared in the Odyssey as well as Homeric Hymns. Hesiod mentioned her in Theogony where he gave her an epithet that meant born in Triton. A popular myth claims that after Zeus abandoned her, Athena wandered the world and found Triton.

Triton took her in as his own child and raised her with Pallas, his biological daughter. This led to some questioning whether who her father was, but most now claim that she was the daughter of Zeus and the adopted daughter of Triton.

Early myths also use the terms third born and triple born to describe her. This can refer to the fact that she was the third child Zeus had.

Though she did not have a mother, the terms may refer to the idea that it took both her father and Metis as well as herself for the goddess to come into the world. A later legend claimed that the terms came from the idea that three necessary things vital to human life all came from the goddess.

Birth of Athena

There are many legends surrounding her birth, but most claim that she was the third child born to Zeus and that she had no mother. The most common legend claims that she came into the world as an adult and sprang from his head.

Another story claims that the Greek god worked with the goddess of counsel, a woman named Metis. She was pregnant with Athena when Zeus swallowed the women, which led to her coming from him.

Almost all stories and legends say that she was his favorite child and that he loved her more than his other children. The Iliad states that she was his favorite because she was the only one he birthed.

Yet another version of her birth claims that Zeus and Metis had a relationship that led to marriage. When he learned she was pregnant, the god worried that he would lose his position to her due to an old prophecy.

This prophecy claimed that any children born to the women would be smarter and stronger than their father. He swallowed her not knowing that she was already pregnant with his child.

There is also a story that says Metis was an unwilling partner and tried multiple things to escape the god but eventually became a victim to his wraith.

Legend says that the god had several other wives before settling down with Hera. He developed a headache so bad that he begged someone to cut open his head to relieve his pain. Stories dispute who it was that grabbed the cleaver and ranges from Hermes to Ares.

Athena burst forth and was such a beautiful sight that grown men dropped to their knees in front of her. Helios was so impressed with her beauty that he came to a complete stop in the middle of the sky.

Unlike his daughter Artemis who was the goddess of the outdoors and often shown as wild and unruly, Athena was more civilized and spent much of her time in urban areas. She did not have much of a relationship with her family.

Some say that Hera disliked her because she served as a reminder that another woman had his child. Others say that she loved the new woman as if she was her own daughter.

She also had a complicated relationship with Ares, especially in regard to war. While Ares had a blood lust and would fight for any cause, she believed in only fighting for causes she believed in and had merit.

This also made her a better fighter in battles because she could keep a clear head. Her victories led to her adopting a breastplate that showed her commitment to combat and the heroic ideal.

She eventually became such a strong fighter that others turned to her for advice before battles. One legend claims that she and Poseidon had a deal where they would each grant the other a favor. When she needed his help, he rose from the sea and created a saltwater well to help her people.

Pallas

Pallas is a Greek word that has several different meanings. It can mean someone who holds and uses a weapon or a young woman. Legend says that Pallas was the close friend and adopted sister of Athena after Triton adopted her.

The two women held a sparring match as a fun way to see who was stronger, but an accident led to Pallas's death. Athena was so upset that she began using the young woman's name in her honor.

A different version of the story claims that Pallas as a giant or a Gorgon. Goddess Athena traveled to his region and fought with him. When she won, she turned his skin into a cloak that she wore to show others of her victory.

There are also legends that claim this was one of the names given to her father. In this version, they fought to the death. She had a cloak made from his skin to show that she was the champion.

Most historians believe that the first legend is the oldest. She had a statue built and added to the Trojan Acropolis that showed her as her dead friend. Locals viewed the statue as a talisman and believed that it had mystical powers.

Legend said that no one could destroy the city as long as her statue was there. During the Trojan War, Cassandra hoped to save the statue and refused to leave its side. Ajax the Lesser carried her away from the statue, which infuriated Athena so much that she released a storm that nearly wiped out the soldiers.

The Dark Side

The Greek goddess also has a connection to Medusa. Legend says that she was a young woman who followed Athena and worked in her temple in Athens. Poseidon was so obsessed with her that he ignored her vow of chastity and brutally raped her in the temple.

Athena was so upset at what he did to both the young woman and her temple that she transformed Medusa into the classic mythical creature with snakes for hair who could turn men to stone.

Her dark side also appears in a poem written by Callimachus. Called Hymn 5, it tells the story of the Greek goddess bathing in secret on Mount Helicon. Tiresias, who was the son of one of her close friends, spotted her in the spring by accident and attempted to flee.

She was so upset at the thought of him seeing her naked that she turned him blind. Even when her friend begged her to reverse her decision, she refused. She instead gave the young man the gifts of seeing the future and communicating with birds.

There are also stories of her taking men to Mount Olympus for judgment. Athena only did so when she felt she couldn't deliver judgment. She would take the men directly to Zeus. Some claim she had no concerns over what happened next.

Facts about Athena

Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of Ares.

She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus's head, full-grown and clothed in armor.

She was Zeus's favorite child.

The Feast of Bath was a ritual held in honor of the goddess in Panathenaea. It took place at the end of the season and ran for five days. The festival required the removal of her clothing from a statue built in her honor. After washing the clothing and purifying the status, guests would take part in various crafts.

Bryn Mawr College has a large sculpture of her on display as she is a patron of universities.

Phi Delta Theta calls her their official goddess and uses an owl as their mascot in her honor.

In addition to the owl, her other official mascot is the olive tree.

Legend says that Athena invented the flute but never attempted to play it.

Though she never had any children, she adopted Ericthonius who was both a serpent and a man. She kept him safely tucked in a chest.

She appeared on a silver coin, which is one of the earliest depictions of her from around 380 BC.

Many refer to her as the patron goddess of heroes and those who act heroically.

Among the crafts that she enjoyed doing include weaving and spinning.

Not only did she enter the world fully grown, but she also wore clothing and armor.

A famous sculpture shows her standing with one had on Nike to show their victorious nature.

Where did Athena Live? What is Athena's Roman name?

Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity.

Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple.

Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens.

She is referred to in poetry as "gray-eyed."

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

Athena reared Ericthonius, son of Hephaestus. He was half man, half serpent. Athena put the infant in a chest and gave it to others to watch over, forbidding them to open it. When they did, she drove them mad as punishment.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

Hermes and Athena went to the aid of Perseus in his quest to kill Medusa. Looking directly at Medusa would turn any man to stone, so Athena provided Perseus with her polished shield. Using it, he was able to see Medusa as if looking in a mirror. Again, Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa's head with his sword.

Hera and Athena fought against Paris in the Trojan War since he had awarded the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

Athena Trivia

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Athena * Facts about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Athena facts, information and stories from ancient Greek mythology. Learn about the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Athena.

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Poseidon was the god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses. Brother to Zeus and Hades and the Romans named him Neptune.

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Poseidon was the god of the sea, earthquakes and horses. Although he was officially one of the supreme gods of Mount Olympus, he spent most of his time in his watery domain. Poseidon was brother to Zeus and Hades. These three gods divided up creation.

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Is a story nine years after the Trojan War and the story of Achilles Achaeans greatest warrior.

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Son of zeus, god of the sun  and light, music and poetry,

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☀ Apollo :: Greek God of Music and Light

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Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis. He was the god of music, and he is often depicted playing a golden lyre. He was also kno…

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The Odyssey was written by homer and the main character is odysseus

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Homer's is an epic poem written in the 8th century BCE which describes the long voyage home of the Greek hero Odysseus. The mythical king sails back to Ithaca with his men after the Trojan War but is beset by all kinds of delays and misadventures where he battles monsters and storms but also resists (eventually) the advances of beautiful women in the knowledge that, all the while, his faithful wife Penelope is awaiting him. For the Greeks, the story occurred sometime in the 13th century BCE during the Bronze Age, in a heroic golden era much better than today's sorry state of affairs.

The Odyssey is such a timeless story not only for its terrifying monsters, rip-roaring action scenes, and wealth of information on Mediterranean geography and legends but also because it involves the irresistible plot line of a worthy hero trying desperately to get back to his city, his family, and his throne. The reader is in equal measures thrilled and exasperated, just like Odysseus himself, with every new setback and wills the hero to finally make it home. The Odyssey is the first, and for many, still the best page-turner ever written.

Background

The Odyssey, written sometime in the 8th century BCE (although some scholars would place it in the 6th century BCE), is an epic poem of more than 12,000 lines organised by scholars in Alexandria into 24 books. The Greeks thought its author Homer was from Chios or Ionia and credited him with both this book and its prequel the , the two masterpieces of Greek literature. They also thought him the greatest ever writer and referred to him simply as 'the poet.' Homer drew on a long oral tradition of telling the Greek myths, and this heritage is seen in the repetition of epithets, introductory phrases, and recurring descriptive formulas. Some scholars see the Odyssey as the work of Homer in later life, hence the slightly different subject and style compared to the Iliad. Other scholars maintain that it is the work of another author precisely because of these differences. The issue is unlikely ever to be resolved.

The poem covers the voyage of Odysseus, the mythical king of Ithaca, on his return home from the Trojan War in Anatolia. The Greeks had finally sacked Troy after a 10-year siege, but their ruthlessness in doing so incurred the wrath of the gods. Their voyage in the grand fleet was to be hit by storm and misfortune, and none more so than the ship of Odysseus.

Like the Iliad, which covers only 52 days of the Trojan War, the Odyssey only covers 42 days of Odysseus' 10-year voyage, the events which happened previously are told in flashback. Again, this is because Homer is perhaps more concerned with a universal truth rather than a simple homecoming story. The adventures of the hero against strange peoples and monsters is a device to show throughout the value and necessity of civilization, that life in ordered Greek Ithaca is superior to that of the foreign lotus-eaters and barbaric Cyclops. Odysseus will receive life-threatening trials and irresistible temptations (even an offer of immortality, besides those of the flesh), he is frequently aided by Athena but constantly at the mercy of Poseidon, and he must, literally, go to hell and back, but his desire to return home to civilization will never die, and his superior skills and culture, along with a divine will, ensure that he does. There could be no other ending; civilization will, as always, prevail.
Book 1 - Interlopers Have Taken over the Palace
We jump into the story near the end when Odysseus is held in the clutches of the Nymph Calypso on her remote island. All the other heroes destined to return safely home after the Trojan War have already done so. Poseidon has got it in for Odysseus because he killed the god's son Polyphemus, the Cyclops, but the gods now agree that the hero will be allowed to return home too. Meanwhile, on Ithaca, many unscrupulous and entirely unworthy suitors, 108 to be precise, try to win the favour of Penelope, Odysseus' wife, and have taken over the palace for their own pleasure. We also meet the hero's son Telemachus, a fine specimen of a lad with good sense. Athena, in disguise, tells Telemachus to go forth in a ship and find his father so that this crowd of imposters can be shown their true place. If he cannot find his father, then he must clear the palace himself and find the queen a suitable new husband.

Nestor: 'There was not a man that dared to match his wits against the admirable Odysseus, who in every kind of strategy proved himself supreme.' (3:120)
Book 2 - Penelope Stalls & Odysseus Will Return
We are told how 'wise' Penelope has resisted the relentless pressure of her suitors to remarry - one ruse was to promise her hand only when a shroud for her father-in-law Laertes was completed, but each night she undid the work of the day. An omen of two eagles fighting each other is taken by Halitherses to indicate that Odysseus is fated, after a lapse of 20 years, to return and put his house in order by taking a terrible revenge on those who plunder his wealth. Athena again tells Telemachus to leave Ithaca and find his father, and with her help, a ship and crew are gathered.
Book 3 - Telemachus Meets Nestor
Telemachus arrives at the palace of Nestor at Pylos. The aged hero tells of how, after the fall of Troy, the Greek fleet split and he does not know what became of Odysseus' ships and men. Nestor recounts how Agamemnon was killed by Aegisthus on his return to Mycenae but Orestes avenged his father's killer. It is a warning for the young prince not to leave Ithaca too long at the mercy of Penelope's suitors.
Book 4 - Telemachus Meets Menelaus
Telemachus arrives at the palace of Menelaus at Sparta. The king does not know the fate of Odysseus either. Helen tells of the time Odysseus daringly entered Troy disguised as a beggar, and Menelaus tells of the great Wooden Horse which the Greeks used to enter the city. Menelaus then recounts his meeting with the Old Man of the Sea near Pharos who told him that Odysseus was being held in the clutches of the Nymph Calypso on her remote island. Meanwhile, back on Ithaca the suitors are playing sports and still eating Odysseus out of house and home. They discover Telemachus' expedition and plan to ambush him at Asteris. Athena reassures Penelope no harm will ever come to her son.

Narrator: '[Odysseus] was sitting disconsolate on the shore in his accustomed place, tormenting himself with tears & sighs & heartache, & looking out across the barren sea with streaming eyes.' (5:82)
Book 5 - Zeus Commands Calypso to Release Odysseus
Athena persuades Zeus to free Odysseus from the clutches of Calypso. Hermes is sent to relay the message, and while Calypso is indignant after having rescued the shipwrecked mariner, she bows, as all must do, to the will of Zeus. Well, almost, for she offers one last persuasion for the hero to stay: immortality. Odysseus refuses after sleeping with the Nymph one last time and then makes a raft to sail away. He will reach the welcoming Phaeacians but only after an arduous 20-day voyage beset by storms from Poseidon.
Book 6 - Nausicaa Welcomes Odysseus
After Athena ensures our hero safely arrives at the land of the Phaeacians, the princess Nausicaa finds the shipwrecked mariner just landed on the beach with nothing more than a scrap of foliage to cover his modesty. He is given a wash and brush-up, a fine new robe, and food so that he looks mightily impressive once more.
Book 7 - Odysseus Meets Alcinous
Odysseus arrives at the royal palace of Alcinous which is resplendent with bronze walls, gold statues, and lush fruit trees. The king agrees to Odysseus' request for aid so that he might return to Ithaca.
Book 8 - The Phaeacian Games
To give our hero an appropriate send-off a feast is prepared and after that some sporting games which Odysseus wins with ease. The games are preceded by a bard telling the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles and then followed by the tale of how Hephaistos entrapped Ares when he tried to seduce his wife Aphrodite. Finally, another story is sung of the Wooden Horse, and the king reveals a prophecy that one day a fine ship sailing from Phaeacia will be wrecked by Poseidon.

Odysseus: 'And we came to the land of the Cyclopes, a fierce, lawless people who never lift a hand to plant or plough but just leave everything to the immortal gods.' (9:106)
Book 9 - The Cyclopes
Alcinous asks Odysseus to tell the court of his adventures. The hero obligingly describes his plundering of the Cicones who, unsurprisingly, fought back and chased his men from the place. They were then hit by storms and ended up in the land of the lotus-eaters where some of the men ate the legendary lotus fruit which makes people forget. Leaving before the entire crew succumb to the lethargy-inducing fruit, the group arrive in the land of the Cyclopes. These one-eyed giants, although good cheesemakers, are insular; they have no laws and no sense of community, they are, therefore, vastly inferior to the civilised world to which Odysseus belongs.

The men come across a cave full of supplies and wait inside for the owner to return, but when he does, the giant Cyclops closes the cave entrance with a huge boulder. The monster makes a snack of two men for dinner and two more again for breakfast. Resourceful Odysseus then gets the Cyclops drunk on wine and blinds him with a giant pole he has sharpened. The men are able to escape the grasps of the wounded monster by tying themselves beneath the bellies of Polyphemus' sheep. Hurling a rock at Odysseus' ship as it sails away, the Cyclops calls on his father Poseidon to make sure the heroes never return home alive.
Book 10 - Aeolus & Circe
Odysseus' men are entertained by Aeolus, the god of the winds, on the fabulous island of Aeolia. Aeolus gives Odysseus the gift of a leather bag, inside which are all the winds. It is carefully stowed in the hold of the ship. After nine days of favourable winds directed by Aeolus, the heroes actually get within sight of home when disaster strikes. Odysseus falls asleep and his crew, thinking the bag is full of gold, open it and release the winds, which promptly blow the fleet all the way back to Aeolia. The wind god refuses to help such a cursed group for a second time, but the heroes manage to get to Telepylus. Here the men get a hot reception from the Laestrygonians, who pelt the ships with rocks and eat the men who landed ashore.

Next, the ever-dwindling heroes, now pretty much lost, land at Aeaea, home of the goddess Circe. The noted sorceress welcomes a group of them with a drink which makes the men lose all memory. Worse, it also turns them into pigs. Odysseus discovers their fate and sets off to free them, meeting Hermes on the way who gives him a drug to make him immune to Circe's potions. After making the goddess promise to release his men the pair retire to Circe's chambers. The party stays an entire year, the men enjoying great food and Odysseus enjoying Circe. Eventually, Odysseus may leave, but Circe insists that he first visits Hades where the dead prophet Teiresias will give him directions how to get home to Ithaca.

Achilles: 'I would rather work the soil as a serf on hire to some landless impoverished peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead.' (11:489)
Book 11 - Odysseus Visits Hades
Down in dreaded Hades, Teiresias tells Odysseus he has a chance of reaching home, ridding the palace of interlopers, and dying a peaceful death of old age, but he absolutely must not molest the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios on his island of Thrinacie. Odysseus meets many other spirits including his mother, Leda, Agamemnon, Achilles, Minos, Orion, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Hercules.
Book 12 - The Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis
Odysseus returns to Circe, who warns him of the Sirens, creatures which are half-bird and half-woman who prey on sailors. She advises the men to plug their ears with wax and for Odysseus to lash himself to the mast. He must then negotiate passage past the six-headed monster Scylla and deadly whirlpool Charybdis. He also receives his second warning of the folly of interfering with the herds of Helios. The heroes set sail across the wine-dark sea once more and negotiate the perils described by Circe to reach Thrinacie. Stuck on the island with unfavourable winds, the men eventually get so desperately hungry they slaughter a few cattle while Odysseus is asleep. Revenge is swift, and the ship is wrecked by a storm as soon as they set off from the island. The only survivor is Odysseus, blown back into the clutches of Charybdis. Saved by the branch of a fig tree, Odysseus is spewed out of the whirlpool, and after nine days adrift on the flotsam of his ship, he lands, once again the shipwrecked mariner, on the island of Ogygia, home of the Nymph Calypso.
Book 13 - Ithaca at Last
Reminiscences over with, Odysseus now bids farewell to Alcinous and sets off from Phaeacia. The hero finally lands on Ithaca. It is the end of his 10-year odyssey and 20-year absence but only the beginning of his battle to regain his throne. Poseidon has one more petulant trick and sinks the returning Phaeacian ship, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Meanwhile, Athena appears and tells Odysseus not to reveal his true identity when he returns to the palace as he must deal with Penelope's horde of suitors. Athena transforms him into an old beggar and leaves to fetch Telemachus from Sparta.
Book 14 - Eumaeus the Swineherd
Odysseus finds his faithful old servant the swineherd Eumaeus living in the hills but remains in disguise and pretends to be a Cretan adventurer. The king is fed, watered, and updated on the situation at the palace. Eumaeus describes what a fine lad Telemachus has become; he who was only a babe when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.
Book 15 - Athena Warns Telemachus
Athena urges Telemachus to return to Ithaca and warns him that the suitors are waiting in ambush for his ship near Samos. He is told to first report to Eumaeus. After a feast and accepting a fine silver and gold cup from Menelaus, he departs. Meanwhile, Odysseus is informed by Eumaeus that his father Laertes is still alive and praying daily for the king's safe return. Telemachus arrives on Ithaca.
Book 16 - Odysseus Meets Telemachus
Telemachus arrives at Eumaeus' hut. After initially continuing his disguise, Odysseus reveals his true self to Telemachus and the pair tearfully embrace. Odysseus tells his son to return to the palace and he will go there too but disguised as the old beggar. Telemachus must remove all weapons from the great hall, and whatever happens, he must not reveal his father's true identity.
Book 17 - Odysseus Returns to the Palace
Telemachus returns to the palace where his mother is delighted to see him again and the suitors are not. Odysseus arrives at his palace, still in disguise and unrecognised except by his old dog Argus. The king goes around the suitors begging for a small offering and is abused - verbally and physically.
Book 18 - Two Beggars
Another beggar, Irus, arrives at the palace, and he fights with Odysseus while the suitors watch on gleefully. Odysseus wins easily, but not too easily to give away his disguise. Meanwhile, Penelope, made even more beautiful by Athena, persuades each of her suitors to present her with a fabulous gift.
Book 19 - Odysseus is Recognised
As night falls Odysseus reminds Telemachus to remove all weapons from the great hall the next day. Still in disguise, Odysseus chats with Penelope who reveals how she has delayed the suitors while her husband repeats his Cretan adventurer cock and bull story. Later, a servant, Eurycleia, bathes the guest and recognises the king when she sees an old scar but is made to keep silent. Penelope reveals her plan to find the best suitor by having a shooting competition to see who can pass an arrow through twelve axe heads. Odysseus the beggar approves. Tomorrow will be the reckoning.
Book 20 - The Suitors Gather
Odysseus ponders how to deal with Penelope's horde of suitors as they gather in the great hall for the day's festivities. During the feast, Odysseus the beggar is abused - verbally and physically.

Odysseus: 'You dogs! You never thought to see me back from Troy. So you fleeced my household; you raped my maids; you courted my wife behind my back though I was alive...one and all, your fate is sealed.' (22: 35)
Book 21 - The Bow of Odysseus
Penelope fetches her husband's long disused bow from a storeroom and challenges the suitors to a shooting competition; the victor will win her hand. The bow is such a mighty weapon, though, that none of the suitors can even string it, never mind fire an arrow through the 12 axe heads. Meanwhile, Odysseus instructs the servants to bar all doors to the great hall. The king then effortlessly strings the bow and twangs the string so that it sings like a 'swallow' - significantly, the bird which returns each year to the same nest just as our hero is about to do. Zeus causes a peal of thunder, and Odysseus fires his arrow straight and true through all 12 axeheads.
Book 22 - Odysseus' Revenge
Odysseus turns to the gathering and reveals his true identity. The king is merciless and picks off the suitors one by one with his deadly arrows. Odysseus, the sacker of cities, now throwing spears and slashing with his sword, kills them all so that the palace hall is strewn with smashed heads and rivers of blood. Then those servants who were disloyal are rounded up and hanged.
Book 23 - King & Queen Reunited
Odysseus and Penelope are reunited. Some scholars consider the Odyssey to end here on stylistic grounds, others that the rest ties off a few loose ends. The text continues with husband and wife recounting all that has happened in each other's absence. Odysseus prepares to meet the clans of the slain suitors.
Book 24 - Peace in Ithaca
Hermes leads the souls of the dead suitors down to the dreaded Halls of Hades. They meet Achilles and Agamemnon and recount the story of Odysseus' revenge. Meanwhile, Odysseus is reunited with his father Laertes. Then a short battle follows between the king and the families of the dead suitors, but the gods intervene, and peace is restored to the kingdom of Ithaca. Thus ends the Odyssey.

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Homer's is an epic poem written in the 8th century BCE which describes the long voyage home of the Greek hero Odysseus. The mythical king sails back to Ithaca with his men after the Trojan War but is beset by all kinds of delays and misadventures where he battles monsters and storms but also resists (eventually) the advances of beautiful women in the knowledge that, all the while, his faithful wife Penelope is awaiting him.

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About a band of survivors who search for a faraway country

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The Aeneid, the story of a band of survivors who leave their destroyed city to seek another home in a faraway country, is about rebirth, about life springi

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Menelaus was Helens Husband and one of the people who started the Trojan War. Agamemnon was Menelaus's brother (sends 1000 ships to attack Troy.).

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Some Greek leaders of the Trojan War come to mind immediately, such as Achilles and Agamemnon. Others may take longer to think of, such as Nestor and the two Ajaxes. Read on for a comprehensive listing of all the Achaean forces and their leaders, as well as short bios of the most important leaders.

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Greek Goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.Known for her strategic skill in warfare

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

Athena is a Greek goddess known as both Pallas and Athene. In ancient Greek mythology, they often associated her with both warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

She also shares some things in common with Minerva from Roman mythology. Many refer to her as a protector or a patron of major cities such as Athens.

She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with , the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy - but she had already conceived.

Etymology

Scholars believe that her name comes from the city of Athens. Legend says that she was the leader of Athenai. This was a group of women who followed and worshiped her.

There is some debate as to whether the citizens named Athens in honor of her or if she received her name after the city already existed. Many believe that she earned her name as she lived and led in Athens.

As early as 407 BC, Plato mentioned her name and claimed that others followed her due to her wisdom and knowledge. He further claimed that her name came from the Greek word Athenoa, which can mean moon and earth or air.

Early Roots

Unlike other Greek goddesses and gods, there isn't as much known about the early life of Athena. Early tablets called the Linear B tablets mention her name and refer to her as Lady of Athens. Some translate phrases in the Linear A tablets to mean Athena of Zeus as she was the daughter of Zeus.

There are also multiple fresco pieces that show her as a warrior. In one, she holds a shield in her hand and with two women nearby.

The other shows a woman standing in front of multiple rows of women. Some believe that this piece depicts a different or early version of the warrior goddess. Historians also found some early artwork that shows Athena as an owl, which might explain why she is occasionally called a bird goddess.

Patronage

Though not a patron saint, Athena is a goddess. Known for many years as a war goddess, she helped prepare men for the fighting ahead and provided them with the necessary tools and supplies.

She was unlike other gods and goddesses from ancient Greek tales who thought anything was worth a fight. Goddess Athena believed that people should only go to war as a last resort and only if they fought for a noble or just cause.

In later years, scholars associated her with both Hestia and Artemis. They also referred to her as Parthenos, which means virgin. Not only did she never marry, but she never took a lover either. Many today believe that the name of the Parthenon comes from the term used to describe her virginity. Citizens chose this name to honor the sexual modesty she had. They believed that her virginity paved the way for other women.

Outside of Athens

Though usually associated with Athens, Athena had followers in other cities. Known as panhellenic cults, these groups consisted of women who followed traditional rites. Most of her followers were young women who believed in socializing with others both in their hometowns and other cities.

While some used these events in the hopes of meeting a suitable man for marriage and citizenship, others simply wanted to make friends and connect with others. Her cults established several sanctuaries in her honor.

One of those sanctuaries is the Spartan Acropolis, which has an epithet dedicated to her. Originally made from bronze to show her connection to metal workers, locals later replaced it. The acropolis also has large bronze and terracotta bells.

Athena Polias is another dedicated to her, which Pytheos of Priene designed. Alexander the Great was on hand to dedicate the temple. An inscription that bears his words is now in the archives of the British Museum. This museum and others also have many sculptures of the goddess.

Other Epithets

As one of the most famous Greek goddess figures, Athena has multiple epithets such as Polias, which shows that she was the protector of Athens. She earned the Ergane name to reflect her role as the helper of artisans. When Orestes faced charges of killing his mother, Athena served as the judge who oversaw his case.

After finding him not guilty, she became known as Areia. There were others who simply referred to her as the goddess. Other epithets used in ancient Greece for her include:

-Hippa, which means equestrian. This refers to the bridle and her similar inventions.

-Aethyia is the name given to her by followers who lived in Megara

-Hygieia, which means health as she was a healthy woman.

Many of the descriptions of Athena come from Homer. He described her as a beautiful woman with bright or gleaming eyes.

Later translations changed this to mean her eyes were gray or blue and green. Historians believe that she likely earned her association with owls due to his description as it showed that she had the same type of face.

Others believe this association came from the artwork that shows her holding an owl in her hand. Not only did the owl become the Athenian mascot, but it also became associated with knowledge.

Athena appeared in the Odyssey as well as Homeric Hymns. Hesiod mentioned her in Theogony where he gave her an epithet that meant born in Triton. A popular myth claims that after Zeus abandoned her, Athena wandered the world and found Triton.

Triton took her in as his own child and raised her with Pallas, his biological daughter. This led to some questioning whether who her father was, but most now claim that she was the daughter of Zeus and the adopted daughter of Triton.

Early myths also use the terms third born and triple born to describe her. This can refer to the fact that she was the third child Zeus had.

Though she did not have a mother, the terms may refer to the idea that it took both her father and Metis as well as herself for the goddess to come into the world. A later legend claimed that the terms came from the idea that three necessary things vital to human life all came from the goddess.

Birth of Athena

There are many legends surrounding her birth, but most claim that she was the third child born to Zeus and that she had no mother. The most common legend claims that she came into the world as an adult and sprang from his head.

Another story claims that the Greek god worked with the goddess of counsel, a woman named Metis. She was pregnant with Athena when Zeus swallowed the women, which led to her coming from him.

Almost all stories and legends say that she was his favorite child and that he loved her more than his other children. The Iliad states that she was his favorite because she was the only one he birthed.

Yet another version of her birth claims that Zeus and Metis had a relationship that led to marriage. When he learned she was pregnant, the god worried that he would lose his position to her due to an old prophecy.

This prophecy claimed that any children born to the women would be smarter and stronger than their father. He swallowed her not knowing that she was already pregnant with his child.

There is also a story that says Metis was an unwilling partner and tried multiple things to escape the god but eventually became a victim to his wraith.

Legend says that the god had several other wives before settling down with Hera. He developed a headache so bad that he begged someone to cut open his head to relieve his pain. Stories dispute who it was that grabbed the cleaver and ranges from Hermes to Ares.

Athena burst forth and was such a beautiful sight that grown men dropped to their knees in front of her. Helios was so impressed with her beauty that he came to a complete stop in the middle of the sky.

Unlike his daughter Artemis who was the goddess of the outdoors and often shown as wild and unruly, Athena was more civilized and spent much of her time in urban areas. She did not have much of a relationship with her family.

Some say that Hera disliked her because she served as a reminder that another woman had his child. Others say that she loved the new woman as if she was her own daughter.

She also had a complicated relationship with Ares, especially in regard to war. While Ares had a blood lust and would fight for any cause, she believed in only fighting for causes she believed in and had merit.

This also made her a better fighter in battles because she could keep a clear head. Her victories led to her adopting a breastplate that showed her commitment to combat and the heroic ideal.

She eventually became such a strong fighter that others turned to her for advice before battles. One legend claims that she and Poseidon had a deal where they would each grant the other a favor. When she needed his help, he rose from the sea and created a saltwater well to help her people.

Pallas

Pallas is a Greek word that has several different meanings. It can mean someone who holds and uses a weapon or a young woman. Legend says that Pallas was the close friend and adopted sister of Athena after Triton adopted her.

The two women held a sparring match as a fun way to see who was stronger, but an accident led to Pallas's death. Athena was so upset that she began using the young woman's name in her honor.

A different version of the story claims that Pallas as a giant or a Gorgon. Goddess Athena traveled to his region and fought with him. When she won, she turned his skin into a cloak that she wore to show others of her victory.

There are also legends that claim this was one of the names given to her father. In this version, they fought to the death. She had a cloak made from his skin to show that she was the champion.

Most historians believe that the first legend is the oldest. She had a statue built and added to the Trojan Acropolis that showed her as her dead friend. Locals viewed the statue as a talisman and believed that it had mystical powers.

Legend said that no one could destroy the city as long as her statue was there. During the Trojan War, Cassandra hoped to save the statue and refused to leave its side. Ajax the Lesser carried her away from the statue, which infuriated Athena so much that she released a storm that nearly wiped out the soldiers.

The Dark Side

The Greek goddess also has a connection to Medusa. Legend says that she was a young woman who followed Athena and worked in her temple in Athens. Poseidon was so obsessed with her that he ignored her vow of chastity and brutally raped her in the temple.

Athena was so upset at what he did to both the young woman and her temple that she transformed Medusa into the classic mythical creature with snakes for hair who could turn men to stone.

Her dark side also appears in a poem written by Callimachus. Called Hymn 5, it tells the story of the Greek goddess bathing in secret on Mount Helicon. Tiresias, who was the son of one of her close friends, spotted her in the spring by accident and attempted to flee.

She was so upset at the thought of him seeing her naked that she turned him blind. Even when her friend begged her to reverse her decision, she refused. She instead gave the young man the gifts of seeing the future and communicating with birds.

There are also stories of her taking men to Mount Olympus for judgment. Athena only did so when she felt she couldn't deliver judgment. She would take the men directly to Zeus. Some claim she had no concerns over what happened next.

Facts about Athena

Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of Ares.

She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus's head, full-grown and clothed in armor.

She was Zeus's favorite child.

The Feast of Bath was a ritual held in honor of the goddess in Panathenaea. It took place at the end of the season and ran for five days. The festival required the removal of her clothing from a statue built in her honor. After washing the clothing and purifying the status, guests would take part in various crafts.

Bryn Mawr College has a large sculpture of her on display as she is a patron of universities.

Phi Delta Theta calls her their official goddess and uses an owl as their mascot in her honor.

In addition to the owl, her other official mascot is the olive tree.

Legend says that Athena invented the flute but never attempted to play it.

Though she never had any children, she adopted Ericthonius who was both a serpent and a man. She kept him safely tucked in a chest.

She appeared on a silver coin, which is one of the earliest depictions of her from around 380 BC.

Many refer to her as the patron goddess of heroes and those who act heroically.

Among the crafts that she enjoyed doing include weaving and spinning.

Not only did she enter the world fully grown, but she also wore clothing and armor.

A famous sculpture shows her standing with one had on Nike to show their victorious nature.

Where did Athena Live? What is Athena's Roman name?

Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity.

Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple.

Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens.

She is referred to in poetry as "gray-eyed."

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

Athena reared Ericthonius, son of Hephaestus. He was half man, half serpent. Athena put the infant in a chest and gave it to others to watch over, forbidding them to open it. When they did, she drove them mad as punishment.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

Hermes and Athena went to the aid of Perseus in his quest to kill Medusa. Looking directly at Medusa would turn any man to stone, so Athena provided Perseus with her polished shield. Using it, he was able to see Medusa as if looking in a mirror. Again, Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa's head with his sword.

Hera and Athena fought against Paris in the Trojan War since he had awarded the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

Athena Trivia

Athena FAQs

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Athena * Facts about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Athena facts, information and stories from ancient Greek mythology. Learn about the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Athena.

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Goddess of Wisdom

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

Athena is a Greek goddess known as both Pallas and Athene. In ancient Greek mythology, they often associated her with both warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

She also shares some things in common with Minerva from Roman mythology. Many refer to her as a protector or a patron of major cities such as Athens.

She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with , the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy - but she had already conceived.

Etymology

Scholars believe that her name comes from the city of Athens. Legend says that she was the leader of Athenai. This was a group of women who followed and worshiped her.

There is some debate as to whether the citizens named Athens in honor of her or if she received her name after the city already existed. Many believe that she earned her name as she lived and led in Athens.

As early as 407 BC, Plato mentioned her name and claimed that others followed her due to her wisdom and knowledge. He further claimed that her name came from the Greek word Athenoa, which can mean moon and earth or air.

Early Roots

Unlike other Greek goddesses and gods, there isn't as much known about the early life of Athena. Early tablets called the Linear B tablets mention her name and refer to her as Lady of Athens. Some translate phrases in the Linear A tablets to mean Athena of Zeus as she was the daughter of Zeus.

There are also multiple fresco pieces that show her as a warrior. In one, she holds a shield in her hand and with two women nearby.

The other shows a woman standing in front of multiple rows of women. Some believe that this piece depicts a different or early version of the warrior goddess. Historians also found some early artwork that shows Athena as an owl, which might explain why she is occasionally called a bird goddess.

Patronage

Though not a patron saint, Athena is a goddess. Known for many years as a war goddess, she helped prepare men for the fighting ahead and provided them with the necessary tools and supplies.

She was unlike other gods and goddesses from ancient Greek tales who thought anything was worth a fight. Goddess Athena believed that people should only go to war as a last resort and only if they fought for a noble or just cause.

In later years, scholars associated her with both Hestia and Artemis. They also referred to her as Parthenos, which means virgin. Not only did she never marry, but she never took a lover either. Many today believe that the name of the Parthenon comes from the term used to describe her virginity. Citizens chose this name to honor the sexual modesty she had. They believed that her virginity paved the way for other women.

Outside of Athens

Though usually associated with Athens, Athena had followers in other cities. Known as panhellenic cults, these groups consisted of women who followed traditional rites. Most of her followers were young women who believed in socializing with others both in their hometowns and other cities.

While some used these events in the hopes of meeting a suitable man for marriage and citizenship, others simply wanted to make friends and connect with others. Her cults established several sanctuaries in her honor.

One of those sanctuaries is the Spartan Acropolis, which has an epithet dedicated to her. Originally made from bronze to show her connection to metal workers, locals later replaced it. The acropolis also has large bronze and terracotta bells.

Athena Polias is another dedicated to her, which Pytheos of Priene designed. Alexander the Great was on hand to dedicate the temple. An inscription that bears his words is now in the archives of the British Museum. This museum and others also have many sculptures of the goddess.

Other Epithets

As one of the most famous Greek goddess figures, Athena has multiple epithets such as Polias, which shows that she was the protector of Athens. She earned the Ergane name to reflect her role as the helper of artisans. When Orestes faced charges of killing his mother, Athena served as the judge who oversaw his case.

After finding him not guilty, she became known as Areia. There were others who simply referred to her as the goddess. Other epithets used in ancient Greece for her include:

-Hippa, which means equestrian. This refers to the bridle and her similar inventions.

-Aethyia is the name given to her by followers who lived in Megara

-Hygieia, which means health as she was a healthy woman.

Many of the descriptions of Athena come from Homer. He described her as a beautiful woman with bright or gleaming eyes.

Later translations changed this to mean her eyes were gray or blue and green. Historians believe that she likely earned her association with owls due to his description as it showed that she had the same type of face.

Others believe this association came from the artwork that shows her holding an owl in her hand. Not only did the owl become the Athenian mascot, but it also became associated with knowledge.

Athena appeared in the Odyssey as well as Homeric Hymns. Hesiod mentioned her in Theogony where he gave her an epithet that meant born in Triton. A popular myth claims that after Zeus abandoned her, Athena wandered the world and found Triton.

Triton took her in as his own child and raised her with Pallas, his biological daughter. This led to some questioning whether who her father was, but most now claim that she was the daughter of Zeus and the adopted daughter of Triton.

Early myths also use the terms third born and triple born to describe her. This can refer to the fact that she was the third child Zeus had.

Though she did not have a mother, the terms may refer to the idea that it took both her father and Metis as well as herself for the goddess to come into the world. A later legend claimed that the terms came from the idea that three necessary things vital to human life all came from the goddess.

Birth of Athena

There are many legends surrounding her birth, but most claim that she was the third child born to Zeus and that she had no mother. The most common legend claims that she came into the world as an adult and sprang from his head.

Another story claims that the Greek god worked with the goddess of counsel, a woman named Metis. She was pregnant with Athena when Zeus swallowed the women, which led to her coming from him.

Almost all stories and legends say that she was his favorite child and that he loved her more than his other children. The Iliad states that she was his favorite because she was the only one he birthed.

Yet another version of her birth claims that Zeus and Metis had a relationship that led to marriage. When he learned she was pregnant, the god worried that he would lose his position to her due to an old prophecy.

This prophecy claimed that any children born to the women would be smarter and stronger than their father. He swallowed her not knowing that she was already pregnant with his child.

There is also a story that says Metis was an unwilling partner and tried multiple things to escape the god but eventually became a victim to his wraith.

Legend says that the god had several other wives before settling down with Hera. He developed a headache so bad that he begged someone to cut open his head to relieve his pain. Stories dispute who it was that grabbed the cleaver and ranges from Hermes to Ares.

Athena burst forth and was such a beautiful sight that grown men dropped to their knees in front of her. Helios was so impressed with her beauty that he came to a complete stop in the middle of the sky.

Unlike his daughter Artemis who was the goddess of the outdoors and often shown as wild and unruly, Athena was more civilized and spent much of her time in urban areas. She did not have much of a relationship with her family.

Some say that Hera disliked her because she served as a reminder that another woman had his child. Others say that she loved the new woman as if she was her own daughter.

She also had a complicated relationship with Ares, especially in regard to war. While Ares had a blood lust and would fight for any cause, she believed in only fighting for causes she believed in and had merit.

This also made her a better fighter in battles because she could keep a clear head. Her victories led to her adopting a breastplate that showed her commitment to combat and the heroic ideal.

She eventually became such a strong fighter that others turned to her for advice before battles. One legend claims that she and Poseidon had a deal where they would each grant the other a favor. When she needed his help, he rose from the sea and created a saltwater well to help her people.

Pallas

Pallas is a Greek word that has several different meanings. It can mean someone who holds and uses a weapon or a young woman. Legend says that Pallas was the close friend and adopted sister of Athena after Triton adopted her.

The two women held a sparring match as a fun way to see who was stronger, but an accident led to Pallas's death. Athena was so upset that she began using the young woman's name in her honor.

A different version of the story claims that Pallas as a giant or a Gorgon. Goddess Athena traveled to his region and fought with him. When she won, she turned his skin into a cloak that she wore to show others of her victory.

There are also legends that claim this was one of the names given to her father. In this version, they fought to the death. She had a cloak made from his skin to show that she was the champion.

Most historians believe that the first legend is the oldest. She had a statue built and added to the Trojan Acropolis that showed her as her dead friend. Locals viewed the statue as a talisman and believed that it had mystical powers.

Legend said that no one could destroy the city as long as her statue was there. During the Trojan War, Cassandra hoped to save the statue and refused to leave its side. Ajax the Lesser carried her away from the statue, which infuriated Athena so much that she released a storm that nearly wiped out the soldiers.

The Dark Side

The Greek goddess also has a connection to Medusa. Legend says that she was a young woman who followed Athena and worked in her temple in Athens. Poseidon was so obsessed with her that he ignored her vow of chastity and brutally raped her in the temple.

Athena was so upset at what he did to both the young woman and her temple that she transformed Medusa into the classic mythical creature with snakes for hair who could turn men to stone.

Her dark side also appears in a poem written by Callimachus. Called Hymn 5, it tells the story of the Greek goddess bathing in secret on Mount Helicon. Tiresias, who was the son of one of her close friends, spotted her in the spring by accident and attempted to flee.

She was so upset at the thought of him seeing her naked that she turned him blind. Even when her friend begged her to reverse her decision, she refused. She instead gave the young man the gifts of seeing the future and communicating with birds.

There are also stories of her taking men to Mount Olympus for judgment. Athena only did so when she felt she couldn't deliver judgment. She would take the men directly to Zeus. Some claim she had no concerns over what happened next.

Facts about Athena

Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of Ares.

She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus's head, full-grown and clothed in armor.

She was Zeus's favorite child.

The Feast of Bath was a ritual held in honor of the goddess in Panathenaea. It took place at the end of the season and ran for five days. The festival required the removal of her clothing from a statue built in her honor. After washing the clothing and purifying the status, guests would take part in various crafts.

Bryn Mawr College has a large sculpture of her on display as she is a patron of universities.

Phi Delta Theta calls her their official goddess and uses an owl as their mascot in her honor.

In addition to the owl, her other official mascot is the olive tree.

Legend says that Athena invented the flute but never attempted to play it.

Though she never had any children, she adopted Ericthonius who was both a serpent and a man. She kept him safely tucked in a chest.

She appeared on a silver coin, which is one of the earliest depictions of her from around 380 BC.

Many refer to her as the patron goddess of heroes and those who act heroically.

Among the crafts that she enjoyed doing include weaving and spinning.

Not only did she enter the world fully grown, but she also wore clothing and armor.

A famous sculpture shows her standing with one had on Nike to show their victorious nature.

Where did Athena Live? What is Athena's Roman name?

Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity.

Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple.

Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens.

She is referred to in poetry as "gray-eyed."

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

Athena reared Ericthonius, son of Hephaestus. He was half man, half serpent. Athena put the infant in a chest and gave it to others to watch over, forbidding them to open it. When they did, she drove them mad as punishment.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

Hermes and Athena went to the aid of Perseus in his quest to kill Medusa. Looking directly at Medusa would turn any man to stone, so Athena provided Perseus with her polished shield. Using it, he was able to see Medusa as if looking in a mirror. Again, Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa's head with his sword.

Hera and Athena fought against Paris in the Trojan War since he had awarded the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

Athena Trivia

Athena FAQs

Link/cite this page

If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.

Link will appear as Athena: https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net - Greek Gods & Goddesses, November 29, 2021

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Athena * Facts about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Athena facts, information and stories from ancient Greek mythology. Learn about the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Athena.

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Greek word for "bright"
God of Sky and Thunder
King of all other Gods and Men

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An ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Academy and was taught by Socrates.

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Ancient Greek philosopher Plato founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought.

Synopsis

Born circa 428 B.C.E., ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language. Plato founded the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world. He died in Athens circa 348 B.C.E.

Background

Due to a lack of primary sources from the time period, much of Plato's life has been constructed by scholars through his writings and the writings of contemporaries and classical historians. Traditional history estimates Plato's birth was around 428 B.C.E., but more modern scholars, tracing later events in his life, believe he was born between 424 and 423 B.C.E. Both of his parents came from the Greek aristocracy. Plato's father, Ariston, descended from the kings of Athens and Messenia. His mother, Perictione, is said to be related to the 6th century B.C.E. Greek statesman Solon.

Some scholars believe that Plato was named for his grandfather, Aristocles, following the tradition of the naming the eldest son after the grandfather. But there is no conclusive evidence of this, or that Plato was the eldest son in his family. Other historians claim that "Plato" was a nickname, referring to his broad physical build. This too is possible, although there is record that the name Plato was given to boys before Aristocles was born.

As with many young boys of his social class, Plato was probably taught by some of Athens' finest educators. The curriculum would have featured the doctrines of Cratylus and Pythagoras as well as Parmenides. These probably helped develop the foundation for Plato's study of metaphysics (the study of nature) and epistemology (the study of knowledge).

Plato's father died when he was young, and his mother remarried her uncle, Pyrilampes, a Greek politician and ambassador to Persia. Plato is believed to have had two full brothers, one sister and a half brother, though it is not certain where he falls in the birth order. Often, members of Plato's family appeared in his dialogues. Historians believe this is an indication of Plato's pride in his family lineage.

As a young man, Plato experienced two major events that set his course in life. One was meeting the great Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates's methods of dialogue and debate impressed Plato so much that he soon he became a close associate and dedicated his life to the question of virtue and the formation of a noble character. The other significant event was the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in which Plato served for a brief time between 409 and 404 B.C.E. The defeat of Athens ended its democracy, which the Spartans replaced with an oligarchy. Two of Plato's relatives, Charmides and Critias, were prominent figures in the new government, part of the notorious Thirty Tyrants whose brief rule severely reduced the rights of Athenian citizens. After the oligarchy was overthrown and democracy was restored, Plato briefly considered a career in politics, but the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C.E. soured him on this idea and he turned to a life of study and philosophy.

After Socrates's death, Plato traveled for 12 years throughout the Mediterranean region, studying mathematics with the Pythagoreans in Italy, and geometry, geology, astronomy and religion in Egypt. During this time, or soon after, he began his extensive writing. There is some debate among scholars on the order of these writings, but most believe they fall into three distinct periods.

Early, Middle and Late Periods: An Overview

The first, or early, period occurs during Plato's travels (399-387 B.C.E.). The Apology of Socrates seems to have been written shortly after Socrates's death. Other texts in this time period include Protagoras, Euthyphro, Hippias Major and Minor and Ion. In these dialogues, Plato attempts to convey Socrates's philosophy and teachings.

In the second, or middle, period, Plato writes in his own voice on the central ideals of justice, courage, wisdom and moderation of the individual and society. The Republic was written during this time with its exploration of just government ruled by philosopher kings.

In the third, or late, period, Socrates is relegated to a minor role and Plato takes a closer look at his own early metaphysical ideas. He explores the role of art, including dance, music, drama and architecture, as well as ethics and morality. In his writings on the Theory of Forms, Plato suggests that the world of ideas is the only constant and that the perceived world through our senses is deceptive and changeable.

Founding the Academy

Sometime around 385 B.C.E., Plato founded a school of learning, known as the Academy, which he presided over until his death. It is believed the school was located at an enclosed park named for a legendary Athenian hero. The Academy operated until 529 C.E.., when it was closed by Roman Emperor Justinian I, who feared it was a source of paganism and a threat to Christianity. Over its years of operation, the Academy's curriculum included astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory and philosophy. Plato hoped the Academy would provide a place for future leaders to discover how to build a better government in the Greek city-states.

In 367 B.C.E., Plato was invited by Dion, a friend and disciple, to be the personal tutor of his nephew, Dionysius II, the new ruler of Syracuse (Sicily). Dion believed that Dionysius showed promise as an ideal leader. Plato accepted, hoping the experience would produce a philosopher king. But Dionysius fell far short of expectations and suspected Dion, and later Plato, of conspiring against him. He had Dion exiled and Plato placed under "house arrest." Eventually, Plato returned to Athens and his Academy. One of his more promising students there was Aristotle, who would take his mentor's teachings in new directions.

Final Years

Plato's final years were spent at the Academy and with his writing. The circumstances surrounding his death are clouded, though it is fairly certain that he died in Athens around 348 B.C.E., when he was in his early 80s. Some scholars suggest that he died while attending a wedding, while others believe he died peacefully in his sleep.

Plato's impact on philosophy and the nature of humans has had a lasting impact far beyond his homeland of Greece. His work covered a broad spectrum of interests and ideas: mathematics, science and nature, morals and political theory. His beliefs on the importance of mathematics in education have proven to be essential for understanding the entire universe. His work on the use of reason to develop a more fair and just society that is focused on the equality of individuals established the foundation for modern democracy.

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Ancient Greek philosopher Plato founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought. Born circa 428 B.C.E., ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language.

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The Iliad is greatly known for being one of the first European works of literature.

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today. This story had a central place in Greek mythology.

The poem deals with a very short period in the tenth year of the Trojan war. This sometimes surprises modern readers who expect the whole story of Troy (as, for instance, in Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy). But Homer and other early epic poets confined their narratives to particular periods in the war, such as its origins, key martial encounters, the fall of the city, or the returns of the soldiers to Greece. There is no doubt that Homer and other early poets could rely on a very extensive knowledge of the Trojan war among their audiences.

Warner Brothers

The central figure in the Iliad is Achilles, the son of Peleus (a mortal aristocrat) and Thetis (a sea-goddess). He comes from the north of Greece, and is therefore something of an outsider, because most of the main Greek princes in the poem come from the south. Achilles is young and brash, a brilliant fighter, but not a great diplomat. When he gets into a dispute with Agamemnon, the leading Greek prince in the war, and loses his captive princess Briseis to him, he refuses to fight and remains in his camp.

He stays there for most of the poem, until his friend Patroclus is killed. He then explodes back on to the battlefield, kills the Trojan hero Hector, who had killed Patroclus, and mutilates his body.

The Iliad ends with the ransom of Hector's body by his old father Priam, who embarks on a mission to Achilles' camp in the gloom of night to get his son's body back. It is worth noting that the actual fall of Troy, via the renowned stratagem of Greeks hidden within a Wooden Horse, is not described in the Iliad, although it was certainly dealt with in other poems.

All of this takes place under the watchful gaze of the Olympian gods, who are both actors and audience in the Iliad. The Olympians are divided over the fate of Troy, just as the mortals are - in the Iliad the Trojan war is a cosmic conflict, not just one played out at the human level between Greeks and non-Greeks. Ominously for Troy, the gods on the Greek side, notably Hera (queen of the gods), Athena (goddess of wisdom and war), and Poseidon (god of the land and sea), represent a much more powerful force than the divine supporters of Troy, of whom Apollo (the archer god and god of afar) is the main figure.

John Flaxman, The Iliad, 1793

The many faces of Homer

The Iliad is only one poetic work focused on the war for Troy; many others have not survived. But such is its quality and depth that it had a special place in antiquity, and probably survived for that reason.

We know virtually nothing about Homer and whether he also created the other poem in his name, the Odyssey, which recounts the return journey of Odysseus from the Trojan war, to the island of Ithaca. The Iliad was probably put together around 700 BC, or a bit later, presumably by a brilliant poet immersed in traditional skills of oral composition (ie "Homer"). This tradition of oral composition probably reaches back hundreds of years before the Iliad.

Early epic poetry can be a way of maintaining the cultural memory of major conflicts. History and archaeology also teach us that there may have been a historical "Trojan war" at the end of the second millennium BC (at Hissarlik in western Turkey), although it was very unlike the one that Homer describes.

The Iliad was composed as one continuous poem. In its current arrangement (most likely after the establishment of the Alexandrian library in the early 3rd century BC), it is divided into 24 books corresponding to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.

It has a metrical form known as "dactylic hexameter" - a metre also associated with many other epic poems in antiquity (such as the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, the Roman epic by Virgil). In the Odyssey, a bard called Demodocus sings on request in an aristocratic context about the Wooden Horse at Troy, giving a sense of the kind of existence "Homer" might have led.

The language of the Iliad is a conflation of different regional dialects, which means that it doesn't belong to a particular ancient city as most other ancient Greek texts do. It therefore had a strong resonance throughout the Greek world, and is often thought of as a "pan-Hellenic" poem, a possession of all the Greeks. Likewise the Greek attack on Troy was a collective quest drawing on forces from across the Greek world. Pan-Hellenism, therefore, is central to the Iliad.

Death and War

A central idea in the Iliad is the inevitability of death (as also with the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh). The poignancy of life and death is enhanced by the fact that the victims of war are usually young. Achilles is youthful and headstrong, and has a goddess for a mother, but even he has to die. We learn that he had been given a choice - a long life without heroic glory, or a short and glorious life in war. His choice of the latter marks him out as heroic, and gives him a kind of immortality. But the other warriors too, including the Trojan hero Hector, are prepared to die young.

The gods, by contrast, don't have to worry about dying. But they can be affected by death. Zeus's son Sarpedon dies within the Iliad, and Thetis has to deal with the imminent death of her son Achilles. After his death, she will lead an existence of perpetual mourning for him. Immortality in Greek mythology can be a mixed blessing.

The Iliad also has much to say about war. The atrocities in the war at Troy are committed by Greeks on Trojans. Achilles commits human sacrifice within the Iliad itself and mutilates the body of Hector, and there are other atrocities told in other poems.

The Trojan saga in the early Greek sources tells of the genocide of the Trojans, and the Greek poets explored some of the darkest impulses of human conduct in war. In the final book of the Iliad, Achilles and Priam, in the most poignant of settings, reflect upon the fate of human beings and the things they do to one another.

Jorge Láscar, CC BY

Postscripts and plagiarists

It was often said that the Iliad was a kind of "bible of the Greeks" in so far as its reception within the Greek world, and beyond, was nothing short of extraordinary. A knowledge of Homer became a standard part of Greek education, be it formal or informal.

Ancient writers after Homer, even the rather austere Greek historian Thucydides in the 5th century BC, assume the historicity of much of the subject-matter of the Iliad. Likewise, Alexander the Great (356-323BC) seems to have been driven by a quest to be the " new Achilles ". Plutarch tells a delightful story that Alexander slept with a dagger under his pillow at night, together with a copy of Homer's Iliad. This particular copy had been annotated by Alexander's former tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. One can only imagine its value today had it survived.

In the Roman world, the poet Virgil (70-19BC) set out to write an epic poem about the origins of Rome from the ashes of Troy. His poem, called the Aeneid (after Aeneas, a traditional Trojan founder of Rome), is written in Latin, but is heavily reliant on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

My own view is that Virgil knew Homer off by heart, and he was probably criticised in his own life for the extent of his reliance on Homer. But tradition records his response that "it is easier to steal Heracles' club than steal one line from Homer". This response, be it factual or not, records the spell that Homer's Iliad cast over antiquity, and most of the period since.

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today.

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God of the sea and earthquakes

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Poseidon, in ancient Greek religion, god of the sea (and of water generally), earthquakes, and horses. He is distinguished from Pontus, the personification of the sea and the oldest Greek divinity of the waters. The name Poseidon means either "husband of the earth" or "lord of the earth." Traditionally, he was a son of Cronus (the youngest of the 12 Titans) and of Cronus's sister and consort Rhea, a fertility goddess. Poseidon was a brother of Zeus, the sky god and chief deity of ancient Greece, and of Hades, god of the underworld. When the three brothers deposed their father, the kingdom of the sea fell by lot to Poseidon. His weapon and main symbol was the trident, perhaps once a fish spear. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Poseidon's trident, like Zeus's thunderbolt and Hades' helmet, was fashioned by the three Cyclopes.

As the god of earthquakes, Poseidon was also connected to dry land, and many of his oldest places of worship in Greece were inland, though these were sometimes centred on pools and streams or otherwise associated with water. In this aspect, he was known as enosichthon and ennosigaios ("earth-shaker") and was worshipped as asphalios ("stabilizer"). As the god of horses, Poseidon is thought likely to have been introduced to Greece by the earliest Hellenes, who also introduced the first horses to the country about the 2nd century bce. Poseidon himself fathered many horses, best known of which was the winged horse Pegasus by the Gorgon Medusa.

Poseidon came into conflict with a variety of figures in land disputes. Notable among these was a contest for sovereignty over Attica, which he lost to the goddess Athena. Despite losing, Poseidon was also worshipped there, particularly at Colonus (as hippios, "of horses").

Poseidon's offspring were myriad. He was the father of Pelias and Neleus by Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus, and thus became the divine ancestor of the royal families of Thessaly and Messenia. Many of his sons became rulers in other parts of the ancient Greek world. Otherwise he had many monstrous offspring, including giants and savage creatures, such as Orion, Antaeus, and Polyphemus. Progenitor of many, with several consorts, Poseidon also was married to the Oceanid Amphitrite, with whom he also had multiple offspring, including the sea creature Triton.

The chief festival in Poseidon's honour was the Isthmia, the scene of famous athletic contests (including horse races), celebrated in alternate years near the Isthmus of Corinth. His character as a sea god eventually became his most prominent in art, and he was represented with the attributes of the trident, the dolphin, and the tuna. The Romans, ignoring his other aspects, identified him with Neptune as sea god.

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Poseidon, in ancient Greek religion, god of the sea (and of water generally), earthquakes, and horses. He is distinguished from Pontus, the personification of the sea and the oldest Greek divinity of the waters. The name Poseidon means either "husband of the earth" or "lord of the earth."

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She is the goddess of wisdom and war, daughter of Zeus

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They like to eat fish

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake.

The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

In the Summer months there were plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables to eat and in the winter they ate dried fruit and food they had stored like apples and lentils. As most of the Greeks lived very near the sea, they also ate a lot of fish, squid and shellfish.

fish

The soil by the sea was not so rich as on the plains so the Greeks used irrigation and crop rotation to keep the soil relatively fertile.

In some of the larger Greek city-states, meat could be purchased in cook shops. Meat was rarely eaten as the Greeks felt that just killing and eating a domesticated animal (like goats) was wrong. The Greeks would often sacrifice the meat to the gods first and then might eat some of the meat.

Meat

The Greeks loved their wine which was made from the grapes they grew.

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake. The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

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She is the Goddess of wisdom, and war. She was born from ZEUS after he experienced a headache and she came in armor from his forehead.

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

Athena is a Greek goddess known as both Pallas and Athene. In ancient Greek mythology, they often associated her with both warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

She also shares some things in common with Minerva from Roman mythology. Many refer to her as a protector or a patron of major cities such as Athens.

She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with , the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy - but she had already conceived.

Etymology

Scholars believe that her name comes from the city of Athens. Legend says that she was the leader of Athenai. This was a group of women who followed and worshiped her.

There is some debate as to whether the citizens named Athens in honor of her or if she received her name after the city already existed. Many believe that she earned her name as she lived and led in Athens.

As early as 407 BC, Plato mentioned her name and claimed that others followed her due to her wisdom and knowledge. He further claimed that her name came from the Greek word Athenoa, which can mean moon and earth or air.

Early Roots

Unlike other Greek goddesses and gods, there isn't as much known about the early life of Athena. Early tablets called the Linear B tablets mention her name and refer to her as Lady of Athens. Some translate phrases in the Linear A tablets to mean Athena of Zeus as she was the daughter of Zeus.

There are also multiple fresco pieces that show her as a warrior. In one, she holds a shield in her hand and with two women nearby.

The other shows a woman standing in front of multiple rows of women. Some believe that this piece depicts a different or early version of the warrior goddess. Historians also found some early artwork that shows Athena as an owl, which might explain why she is occasionally called a bird goddess.

Patronage

Though not a patron saint, Athena is a goddess. Known for many years as a war goddess, she helped prepare men for the fighting ahead and provided them with the necessary tools and supplies.

She was unlike other gods and goddesses from ancient Greek tales who thought anything was worth a fight. Goddess Athena believed that people should only go to war as a last resort and only if they fought for a noble or just cause.

In later years, scholars associated her with both Hestia and Artemis. They also referred to her as Parthenos, which means virgin. Not only did she never marry, but she never took a lover either. Many today believe that the name of the Parthenon comes from the term used to describe her virginity. Citizens chose this name to honor the sexual modesty she had. They believed that her virginity paved the way for other women.

Outside of Athens

Though usually associated with Athens, Athena had followers in other cities. Known as panhellenic cults, these groups consisted of women who followed traditional rites. Most of her followers were young women who believed in socializing with others both in their hometowns and other cities.

While some used these events in the hopes of meeting a suitable man for marriage and citizenship, others simply wanted to make friends and connect with others. Her cults established several sanctuaries in her honor.

One of those sanctuaries is the Spartan Acropolis, which has an epithet dedicated to her. Originally made from bronze to show her connection to metal workers, locals later replaced it. The acropolis also has large bronze and terracotta bells.

Athena Polias is another dedicated to her, which Pytheos of Priene designed. Alexander the Great was on hand to dedicate the temple. An inscription that bears his words is now in the archives of the British Museum. This museum and others also have many sculptures of the goddess.

Other Epithets

As one of the most famous Greek goddess figures, Athena has multiple epithets such as Polias, which shows that she was the protector of Athens. She earned the Ergane name to reflect her role as the helper of artisans. When Orestes faced charges of killing his mother, Athena served as the judge who oversaw his case.

After finding him not guilty, she became known as Areia. There were others who simply referred to her as the goddess. Other epithets used in ancient Greece for her include:

-Hippa, which means equestrian. This refers to the bridle and her similar inventions.

-Aethyia is the name given to her by followers who lived in Megara

-Hygieia, which means health as she was a healthy woman.

Many of the descriptions of Athena come from Homer. He described her as a beautiful woman with bright or gleaming eyes.

Later translations changed this to mean her eyes were gray or blue and green. Historians believe that she likely earned her association with owls due to his description as it showed that she had the same type of face.

Others believe this association came from the artwork that shows her holding an owl in her hand. Not only did the owl become the Athenian mascot, but it also became associated with knowledge.

Athena appeared in the Odyssey as well as Homeric Hymns. Hesiod mentioned her in Theogony where he gave her an epithet that meant born in Triton. A popular myth claims that after Zeus abandoned her, Athena wandered the world and found Triton.

Triton took her in as his own child and raised her with Pallas, his biological daughter. This led to some questioning whether who her father was, but most now claim that she was the daughter of Zeus and the adopted daughter of Triton.

Early myths also use the terms third born and triple born to describe her. This can refer to the fact that she was the third child Zeus had.

Though she did not have a mother, the terms may refer to the idea that it took both her father and Metis as well as herself for the goddess to come into the world. A later legend claimed that the terms came from the idea that three necessary things vital to human life all came from the goddess.

Birth of Athena

There are many legends surrounding her birth, but most claim that she was the third child born to Zeus and that she had no mother. The most common legend claims that she came into the world as an adult and sprang from his head.

Another story claims that the Greek god worked with the goddess of counsel, a woman named Metis. She was pregnant with Athena when Zeus swallowed the women, which led to her coming from him.

Almost all stories and legends say that she was his favorite child and that he loved her more than his other children. The Iliad states that she was his favorite because she was the only one he birthed.

Yet another version of her birth claims that Zeus and Metis had a relationship that led to marriage. When he learned she was pregnant, the god worried that he would lose his position to her due to an old prophecy.

This prophecy claimed that any children born to the women would be smarter and stronger than their father. He swallowed her not knowing that she was already pregnant with his child.

There is also a story that says Metis was an unwilling partner and tried multiple things to escape the god but eventually became a victim to his wraith.

Legend says that the god had several other wives before settling down with Hera. He developed a headache so bad that he begged someone to cut open his head to relieve his pain. Stories dispute who it was that grabbed the cleaver and ranges from Hermes to Ares.

Athena burst forth and was such a beautiful sight that grown men dropped to their knees in front of her. Helios was so impressed with her beauty that he came to a complete stop in the middle of the sky.

Unlike his daughter Artemis who was the goddess of the outdoors and often shown as wild and unruly, Athena was more civilized and spent much of her time in urban areas. She did not have much of a relationship with her family.

Some say that Hera disliked her because she served as a reminder that another woman had his child. Others say that she loved the new woman as if she was her own daughter.

She also had a complicated relationship with Ares, especially in regard to war. While Ares had a blood lust and would fight for any cause, she believed in only fighting for causes she believed in and had merit.

This also made her a better fighter in battles because she could keep a clear head. Her victories led to her adopting a breastplate that showed her commitment to combat and the heroic ideal.

She eventually became such a strong fighter that others turned to her for advice before battles. One legend claims that she and Poseidon had a deal where they would each grant the other a favor. When she needed his help, he rose from the sea and created a saltwater well to help her people.

Pallas

Pallas is a Greek word that has several different meanings. It can mean someone who holds and uses a weapon or a young woman. Legend says that Pallas was the close friend and adopted sister of Athena after Triton adopted her.

The two women held a sparring match as a fun way to see who was stronger, but an accident led to Pallas's death. Athena was so upset that she began using the young woman's name in her honor.

A different version of the story claims that Pallas as a giant or a Gorgon. Goddess Athena traveled to his region and fought with him. When she won, she turned his skin into a cloak that she wore to show others of her victory.

There are also legends that claim this was one of the names given to her father. In this version, they fought to the death. She had a cloak made from his skin to show that she was the champion.

Most historians believe that the first legend is the oldest. She had a statue built and added to the Trojan Acropolis that showed her as her dead friend. Locals viewed the statue as a talisman and believed that it had mystical powers.

Legend said that no one could destroy the city as long as her statue was there. During the Trojan War, Cassandra hoped to save the statue and refused to leave its side. Ajax the Lesser carried her away from the statue, which infuriated Athena so much that she released a storm that nearly wiped out the soldiers.

The Dark Side

The Greek goddess also has a connection to Medusa. Legend says that she was a young woman who followed Athena and worked in her temple in Athens. Poseidon was so obsessed with her that he ignored her vow of chastity and brutally raped her in the temple.

Athena was so upset at what he did to both the young woman and her temple that she transformed Medusa into the classic mythical creature with snakes for hair who could turn men to stone.

Her dark side also appears in a poem written by Callimachus. Called Hymn 5, it tells the story of the Greek goddess bathing in secret on Mount Helicon. Tiresias, who was the son of one of her close friends, spotted her in the spring by accident and attempted to flee.

She was so upset at the thought of him seeing her naked that she turned him blind. Even when her friend begged her to reverse her decision, she refused. She instead gave the young man the gifts of seeing the future and communicating with birds.

There are also stories of her taking men to Mount Olympus for judgment. Athena only did so when she felt she couldn't deliver judgment. She would take the men directly to Zeus. Some claim she had no concerns over what happened next.

Facts about Athena

Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of Ares.

She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus's head, full-grown and clothed in armor.

She was Zeus's favorite child.

The Feast of Bath was a ritual held in honor of the goddess in Panathenaea. It took place at the end of the season and ran for five days. The festival required the removal of her clothing from a statue built in her honor. After washing the clothing and purifying the status, guests would take part in various crafts.

Bryn Mawr College has a large sculpture of her on display as she is a patron of universities.

Phi Delta Theta calls her their official goddess and uses an owl as their mascot in her honor.

In addition to the owl, her other official mascot is the olive tree.

Legend says that Athena invented the flute but never attempted to play it.

Though she never had any children, she adopted Ericthonius who was both a serpent and a man. She kept him safely tucked in a chest.

She appeared on a silver coin, which is one of the earliest depictions of her from around 380 BC.

Many refer to her as the patron goddess of heroes and those who act heroically.

Among the crafts that she enjoyed doing include weaving and spinning.

Not only did she enter the world fully grown, but she also wore clothing and armor.

A famous sculpture shows her standing with one had on Nike to show their victorious nature.

Where did Athena Live? What is Athena's Roman name?

Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity.

Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple.

Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens.

She is referred to in poetry as "gray-eyed."

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

Athena reared Ericthonius, son of Hephaestus. He was half man, half serpent. Athena put the infant in a chest and gave it to others to watch over, forbidding them to open it. When they did, she drove them mad as punishment.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

Hermes and Athena went to the aid of Perseus in his quest to kill Medusa. Looking directly at Medusa would turn any man to stone, so Athena provided Perseus with her polished shield. Using it, he was able to see Medusa as if looking in a mirror. Again, Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa's head with his sword.

Hera and Athena fought against Paris in the Trojan War since he had awarded the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

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Athena * Facts about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Athena facts, information and stories from ancient Greek mythology. Learn about the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Athena.

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god of sky and thunder, king of all gods and men. Cronus(dad) Rhea(mom)

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goddess of wisdom and war, she was born from Zeus' forehead. She was Zeus' favorite child, so she had great power.

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Athena, also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, the city protectress, goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, identified by the Romans with Minerva. She was essentially urban and civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. Yet the Greek economy, unlike that of the Minoans, was largely military, so that Athena, while retaining her earlier domestic functions, became a goddess of war.

She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, so that she emerged full-grown from his forehead. There was an alternative story that Zeus swallowed Metis, the goddess of counsel, while she was pregnant with Athena, so that Athena finally emerged from Zeus. Being the favourite child of Zeus, she had great power.

Athena's association with the acropolises of various Greek cities probably stemmed from the location of the kings' palaces there. She was thought to have had neither consort nor offspring. She may not have been described as a virgin originally, but virginity was attributed to her very early and was the basis for the interpretation of her epithets Pallas and Parthenos. As a war goddess Athena could not be dominated by other goddesses, such as Aphrodite, and as a palace goddess she could not be violated.

In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspires and fights alongside the Greek heroes; her aid is synonymous with military prowess. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigns the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derives in part from the fact that she represents the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represents mere blood lust. Her superiority also derives in part from the vastly greater variety and importance of her functions and from the patriotism of Homer's predecessors, Ares being of foreign origin. In the Iliad, Athena is the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personifies excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. The qualities that lead to victory are found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wears when she goes to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. Athena appears in Homer's Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as helper of Perseus and Heracles (Hercules). As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, of prudent restraint and practical insight, as well as of war.

In post- Mycenaean times the city, especially its citadel, replaced the palace as Athena's domain. She was widely worshipped, but in modern times she is associated primarily with Athens, to which she gave her name. Her emergence there as city goddess, Athena Polias ("Athena, Guardian of the City"), accompanied the ancient city-state's transition from monarchy to democracy. She was associated with birds, particularly the owl, which became famous as the city's own symbol, and with the snake. Her birth and her contest with Poseidon, the sea god, for the suzerainty of the city were depicted on the pediments of the Parthenon, and the great festival of the Panathenaea, in July, was a celebration of her birthday. She was also worshipped in many other cities, notably in Sparta.

Athena became the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits in general. She was particularly known as the patroness of spinning and weaving. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill.

Athena was customarily portrayed wearing body armour and a helmet and carrying a shield and a lance. Two Athenians, the sculptor Phidias and the playwright Aeschylus, contributed significantly to the cultural dissemination of Athena's image. She inspired three of Phidias's sculptural masterpieces, including the massive chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos once housed in the Parthenon; and in Aeschylus's dramatic tragedy Eumenides she founded the Areopagus (Athens's aristocratic council), and, by breaking a deadlock of the judges in favour of Orestes, the defendant, she set the precedent that a tied vote signified acquittal.

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Athena | Goddess, Myths, Symbols, Facts, & Roman Name

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Athena, in Greek religion, the city protectress, goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, identified by the Romans with Minerva. Representing the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, Athena was superior to Ares, the god of war, who represented mere blood lust.

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He was a famous roman poet. His most famous work was the epic, Aeneid.

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Find out more about the life of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, at Biography.com.

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The famous greek writer.

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Where did Virgil grow up?

What was Virgil's education?

Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 bce, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]-died September 21, 19 bce, Brundisium), Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death).

Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet, an estimation that subsequent generations have upheld. His fame rests chiefly upon the Aeneid, which tells the story of Rome's legendary founder and proclaims the Roman mission to civilize the world under divine guidance. His reputation as a poet endures not only for the music and diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an intricate work on the grand scale but also because he embodied in his poetry aspects of experience and behaviour of permanent significance.

Virgil was born of peasant stock, and his love of the Italian countryside and of the people who cultivated it colours all his poetry. He was educated at Cremona, at Milan, and finally at Rome, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Greek and Roman authors, especially of the poets, and receiving a detailed training in rhetoric and philosophy. It is known that one of his teachers was the Epicurean Siro, and the Epicurean philosophy is substantially reflected in his early poetry but gradually gives way to attitudes more akin to Stoicism.

Political background

During Virgil's youth, as the Roman Republic neared its end, the political and military situation in Italy was confused and often calamitous. The civil war between Marius and Sulla had been succeeded by conflict between Pompey and Julius Caesar for supreme power. When Virgil was 20, Caesar with his armies swooped south from Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and began the series of civil wars that were not to end until Augustus' victory at Actium in 31 bce. Hatred and fear of civil war is powerfully expressed by both Virgil and his contemporary Horace. The key to a proper understanding of the Augustan Age and its poets lies, indeed, in a proper understanding of the turmoil that had preceded the Augustan peace.

Virgil's life was devoted entirely to his poetry and to studies connected with it; his health was never robust, and he played no part in military or political life. It is said that he spoke once in the lawcourts without distinction and that his shy and retiring nature caused him to give up any ideas he might have had of taking part in the world of affairs. He never married, and the first half of his life was that of a scholar and near recluse. But, as his poetry won him fame, he gradually won the friendship of many important men in the Roman world. Gradually, also, he became a Roman as well as a provincial. (The area in which he had spent his youth, the area around the Po River known as the province of Cisalpine Gaul, was not finally incorporated into Italy until 42 bce. Thus Virgil came, as it were, to Rome from the outside. The enthusiasm of a provincial for Rome is seen in the first eclogue, one of his earliest poems, in which the shepherd Tityrus tells of his recent visit to the capital and his amazement at its splendours.)

Literary career

Some of Virgil's earliest poetry may have survived in a collection of poems attributed to him and known as the Appendix Vergiliana, but it is unlikely that many of these are genuine. His earliest certain work is the Eclogues, a collection of 10 pastoral poems composed between 42 and 37 bce. Some of them are escapist, literary excursions to the idyllic pastoral world of Arcadia based on the Greek poet Theocritus (flourished c. 280 bce) but more unreal and stylized. They convey in liquid song the idealized situations of an imaginary world in which shepherds sing in the sunshine of their simple joys and mute their sorrows (whether for unhappy love or untimely death) in a formalized pathos. But some bring the pastoral mode into touch with the real world, either directly or by means of allegory, and thus gave a new direction to the genre. The fifth eclogue, on the death of Daphnis, king of the shepherds, clearly has some relationship with the recent death of Julius Caesar; the 10th brings Gallus, a fellow poet who also held high office as a statesman, into the pastoral world; the first and ninth are lamentations over the expulsion of shepherds from their farms. (It was widely believed in antiquity that these poems expressed allegorically Virgil's own loss of his family farm when the veteran soldiers of Antony and Octavian-later the emperor Augustus-were resettled after the Battle of Philippi in 42 bce. It was thought that he subsequently recovered his property through the intervention of his powerful friends. However that may be, it is certain that the poems are based on Virgil's own experience, whether in connection with his own farm or with those of his friends; and they express, with a poignant pathos that has come to be regarded as specially Virgilian, the sorrow of the dispossessed.)

But one eclogue in particular stands out as having relevance to the contemporary situation, and this is the fourth (sometimes called the Messianic, because it was later regarded as prophetic of Christianity). It is an elevated poem, prophesying in sonorous and mystic terms the birth of a child who will bring back the Golden Age, banish sin, and restore peace. It was clearly written at a time when the clouds of civil war seemed to be lifting; it can be dated firmly to 41-40 bce, and it seems most likely that Virgil refers to an expected child of the triumvir Antony and his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian. But, though a specific occasion may be allocated to the poem, it goes beyond the particular and, in symbolic terms, presents a vision of world harmony, which was, to some extent, destined to be realized under Augustus.

One of the most disastrous effects of the civil wars-and one of which Virgil, as a countryman, would be most intensely aware-was the depopulation of rural Italy. The farmers had been obliged to go to the war, and their farms fell into neglect and ruin as a result. The Georgics, composed between 37 and 30 bce (the final period of the civil wars), is a superb plea for the restoration of the traditional agricultural life of Italy. In form it is didactic, but, as Seneca later said, it was written "not to instruct farmers but to delight readers." The practical instruction (about plowing, growing trees, tending cattle, and keeping bees) is presented with vivid insight into nature, and it is interspersed with highly wrought poetical digressions on such topics as the beauty of the Italian countryside (Book II. line 136 ff.) and the joy of the farmer when all is gathered in (II.458 ff.).

The Georgics is dedicated (at the beginning of each book) to Maecenas, one of the chief of Augustus' ministers, who was also the leading patron of the arts. By this time Virgil was a member of what might be called the court circle, and his desire to see his beloved Italy restored to its former glories coincided with the national requirement of resettling the land and diminishing the pressure on the cities. It would be wrong to think of Virgil as writing political propaganda; but equally it would be wrong to regard his poetry as unconnected with the major currents of political and social needs of the time. Virgil was personally committed to the same ideals as the government.

In the year 31 bce, when Virgil was 38, Augustus (still known as Octavian) won the final battle of the civil wars at Actium against the forces of Antony and Cleopatra and from that time dates the Augustan Age. Virgil, like many of his contemporaries, felt a great sense of relief that the senseless civil strife was at last over and was deeply grateful to the man who had made it possible. Augustus was anxious to preserve the traditions of the republic and its constitutional forms, but he was in fact sole ruler of the Roman world. He used his power to establish a period of peace and stability and endeavoured to reawaken in the Romans a sense of national pride and a new enthusiasm for their ancestral religion and their traditional moral values, those of bravery, parsimony, duty, responsibility, and family devotion. Virgil, too, as a countryman at heart, felt a deep attachment to the simple virtues and religious traditions of the Italian people. All his life he had been preparing himself to write an epic poem (regarded then as the highest form of poetic achievement), and he now set out to embody his ideal Rome in the Aeneid, the story of the foundation of the first settlement in Italy, from which Rome was to spring, by an exiled Trojan prince after the destruction of Troy by the Greeks in the 12th century bce. The theme he chose gave him two great advantages: one was that its date and subject were very close to those of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, so that he could remodel episodes and characters from his great Greek predecessor; and the other was that it could be brought into relationship with his contemporary Augustan world by presenting Aeneas as the prototype of the Roman way of life (the last of the Trojans and the first of the Romans). Moreover, by the use of prophecies and visions and devices such as the description of the pictures on Aeneas' shield or of the origins of contemporary customs and institutions, it could foreshadow the real events of Roman history. The poem, then, operates on a double time scale; it is heroic and yet Augustan.

The enthusiasm that Virgil felt for the reborn Rome promised by Augustus' regime is often reflected in the poem. The sonorous and awe-inspiring prophecy by Jupiter (I.257 ff.), giving a picture of Rome's divinely inspired destiny, has a moving patriotic impact: "To these I set no bounds in space or time-I have given them rule without end" (278-279); and again, under Augustus, "Then shall the harsh generations be softened, and wars shall be laid aside" (291). The speech ends with a memorable image depicting the personified figure of Frenzy in chains, gnashing its bloodstained teeth in vain. At the end of the sixth book, Aeneas visits the underworld, and there pass before his eyes the figures of heroes from Roman history, waiting to be born. The ghost of his father ( Anchises) describes them to him and ends by defining the Roman mission as one concerned with government and civilization (compared with the Greek achievement in art and literature and theoretical science). "Rule the people with your sway, spare the conquered, and war down the proud": this is the vision of Rome's destiny that the emperor Augustus and the poet Virgil had before them-that Rome was divinely appointed first to conquer the world in war and then to spread civilization and the rule of law among the peoples. As Horace told the Romans in one of his odes, "Because you are servants of the gods, you are masters on earth."

The vision of Rome that the Aeneid expresses is a noble one, but the real greatness of the poem is due to Virgil's awareness of the private, as well as the public, aspects of human life. The Aeneid is no panegyric; it sets the achievements and aspirations of the giant organization of Roman governmental rule in tension with the frustrated hopes and sufferings of individuals. The most memorable figure in the poem-and, it has been said, the only character to be created by a Roman poet that has passed into world literature-is Dido, queen of Carthage, opponent of the Roman way of life. In a mere panegyric of Rome, she could have been presented in such a way that Aeneas' rejection of her would have been a victory to applaud; but, in fact, in the fourth book she wins so much sympathy that the reader wonders whether Rome should be bought at this price. Again, Turnus, who opposes Aeneas when he lands in Italy, resists the invader who has come to steal his bride. It is clear that Turnus is a less civilized character than Aeneas-but in his defeat Virgil allows him to win much sympathy. These are two examples of the tension against Roman optimism; in many other ways, too, Virgil throughout the poem explores the problems of suffering and the pathos of the human situation. Yet in the end, Aeneas endures and continues to his goal; his devotion to duty ( pietas) prevails, and the Roman reader would feel that this should be. "So great a task it was to found the Roman nation" (I.33).

The Aeneid occupied Virgil for 11 years and, at his death, had not yet received its final revision. In 19 bce, planning to spend a further three years on his poem, he set out for Greece-doubtless to obtain local colour for the revision of those parts of the Aeneid set in Greek waters. On the voyage he caught a fever and returned to Italy but died soon after arrival at Brundisium. Whether the Aeneid would have undergone major changes cannot be guessed; the story goes that Virgil's dying wish was for his poem to be burned, but that this request was countermanded by the order of Augustus. As it stands, the poem is a major monument both to the national achievements and ideals of the Augustan Age of Rome and to the sensitive and lonely voice of the poet who knew the "tears in things" as well as the glory.

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Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 bce, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]-died September 21, 19 bce, Brundisium), Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death).

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Ovid was a Greek poet who was exiled for one of his works.

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Ovid - Poet - Born on March 20, 43 BC, Ovid's poetic influence had a great impact on the writers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

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Tells about the Trojan War and Achilles

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today. This story had a central place in Greek mythology.

The poem deals with a very short period in the tenth year of the Trojan war. This sometimes surprises modern readers who expect the whole story of Troy (as, for instance, in Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy). But Homer and other early epic poets confined their narratives to particular periods in the war, such as its origins, key martial encounters, the fall of the city, or the returns of the soldiers to Greece. There is no doubt that Homer and other early poets could rely on a very extensive knowledge of the Trojan war among their audiences.

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The central figure in the Iliad is Achilles, the son of Peleus (a mortal aristocrat) and Thetis (a sea-goddess). He comes from the north of Greece, and is therefore something of an outsider, because most of the main Greek princes in the poem come from the south. Achilles is young and brash, a brilliant fighter, but not a great diplomat. When he gets into a dispute with Agamemnon, the leading Greek prince in the war, and loses his captive princess Briseis to him, he refuses to fight and remains in his camp.

He stays there for most of the poem, until his friend Patroclus is killed. He then explodes back on to the battlefield, kills the Trojan hero Hector, who had killed Patroclus, and mutilates his body.

The Iliad ends with the ransom of Hector's body by his old father Priam, who embarks on a mission to Achilles' camp in the gloom of night to get his son's body back. It is worth noting that the actual fall of Troy, via the renowned stratagem of Greeks hidden within a Wooden Horse, is not described in the Iliad, although it was certainly dealt with in other poems.

All of this takes place under the watchful gaze of the Olympian gods, who are both actors and audience in the Iliad. The Olympians are divided over the fate of Troy, just as the mortals are - in the Iliad the Trojan war is a cosmic conflict, not just one played out at the human level between Greeks and non-Greeks. Ominously for Troy, the gods on the Greek side, notably Hera (queen of the gods), Athena (goddess of wisdom and war), and Poseidon (god of the land and sea), represent a much more powerful force than the divine supporters of Troy, of whom Apollo (the archer god and god of afar) is the main figure.

John Flaxman, The Iliad, 1793

The many faces of Homer

The Iliad is only one poetic work focused on the war for Troy; many others have not survived. But such is its quality and depth that it had a special place in antiquity, and probably survived for that reason.

We know virtually nothing about Homer and whether he also created the other poem in his name, the Odyssey, which recounts the return journey of Odysseus from the Trojan war, to the island of Ithaca. The Iliad was probably put together around 700 BC, or a bit later, presumably by a brilliant poet immersed in traditional skills of oral composition (ie "Homer"). This tradition of oral composition probably reaches back hundreds of years before the Iliad.

Early epic poetry can be a way of maintaining the cultural memory of major conflicts. History and archaeology also teach us that there may have been a historical "Trojan war" at the end of the second millennium BC (at Hissarlik in western Turkey), although it was very unlike the one that Homer describes.

The Iliad was composed as one continuous poem. In its current arrangement (most likely after the establishment of the Alexandrian library in the early 3rd century BC), it is divided into 24 books corresponding to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.

It has a metrical form known as "dactylic hexameter" - a metre also associated with many other epic poems in antiquity (such as the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, the Roman epic by Virgil). In the Odyssey, a bard called Demodocus sings on request in an aristocratic context about the Wooden Horse at Troy, giving a sense of the kind of existence "Homer" might have led.

The language of the Iliad is a conflation of different regional dialects, which means that it doesn't belong to a particular ancient city as most other ancient Greek texts do. It therefore had a strong resonance throughout the Greek world, and is often thought of as a "pan-Hellenic" poem, a possession of all the Greeks. Likewise the Greek attack on Troy was a collective quest drawing on forces from across the Greek world. Pan-Hellenism, therefore, is central to the Iliad.

Death and War

A central idea in the Iliad is the inevitability of death (as also with the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh). The poignancy of life and death is enhanced by the fact that the victims of war are usually young. Achilles is youthful and headstrong, and has a goddess for a mother, but even he has to die. We learn that he had been given a choice - a long life without heroic glory, or a short and glorious life in war. His choice of the latter marks him out as heroic, and gives him a kind of immortality. But the other warriors too, including the Trojan hero Hector, are prepared to die young.

The gods, by contrast, don't have to worry about dying. But they can be affected by death. Zeus's son Sarpedon dies within the Iliad, and Thetis has to deal with the imminent death of her son Achilles. After his death, she will lead an existence of perpetual mourning for him. Immortality in Greek mythology can be a mixed blessing.

The Iliad also has much to say about war. The atrocities in the war at Troy are committed by Greeks on Trojans. Achilles commits human sacrifice within the Iliad itself and mutilates the body of Hector, and there are other atrocities told in other poems.

The Trojan saga in the early Greek sources tells of the genocide of the Trojans, and the Greek poets explored some of the darkest impulses of human conduct in war. In the final book of the Iliad, Achilles and Priam, in the most poignant of settings, reflect upon the fate of human beings and the things they do to one another.

Jorge Láscar, CC BY

Postscripts and plagiarists

It was often said that the Iliad was a kind of "bible of the Greeks" in so far as its reception within the Greek world, and beyond, was nothing short of extraordinary. A knowledge of Homer became a standard part of Greek education, be it formal or informal.

Ancient writers after Homer, even the rather austere Greek historian Thucydides in the 5th century BC, assume the historicity of much of the subject-matter of the Iliad. Likewise, Alexander the Great (356-323BC) seems to have been driven by a quest to be the " new Achilles ". Plutarch tells a delightful story that Alexander slept with a dagger under his pillow at night, together with a copy of Homer's Iliad. This particular copy had been annotated by Alexander's former tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. One can only imagine its value today had it survived.

In the Roman world, the poet Virgil (70-19BC) set out to write an epic poem about the origins of Rome from the ashes of Troy. His poem, called the Aeneid (after Aeneas, a traditional Trojan founder of Rome), is written in Latin, but is heavily reliant on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

My own view is that Virgil knew Homer off by heart, and he was probably criticised in his own life for the extent of his reliance on Homer. But tradition records his response that "it is easier to steal Heracles' club than steal one line from Homer". This response, be it factual or not, records the spell that Homer's Iliad cast over antiquity, and most of the period since.

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Homer's Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature, and many would say, the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In fact the Iliad takes its name from "Ilios", an ancient Greek word for "Troy", situated in what is Turkey today.

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Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

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Table of Contents

Why is Homer significant?

Read a brief summary of this topic

Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Although these two great epic poems of ancient Greece have always been attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, little is known of him beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey -so much may be said to be probable. If this assumption is accepted, then Homer must assuredly be one of the greatest of the world's literary artists.

He is also one of the most influential authors in the widest sense, for the two epics provided the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the Classical age and formed the backbone of humane education down to the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity. Indirectly through the medium of Virgil's Aeneid (which was loosely molded after the patterns of the Iliad and the Odyssey), directly through their revival under Byzantine culture from the late 8th century ce onward, and subsequently through their passage into Italy with the Greek scholars who fled westward from the Ottomans, the Homeric epics had a profound impact on the Renaissance culture of Italy. Since then the proliferation of translations has helped to make them the most important poems of the Classical European tradition.

It was probably through their impact on Classical Greek culture itself that the Iliad and the Odyssey most subtly affected Western standards and ideas. The Greeks regarded the great epics as something more than works of literature; they knew much of them by heart, and they valued them not only as a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism but also as an ancient source of moral and even practical instruction.

Literary Favorites: Fact or Fiction?

Early references

Implicit references to Homer and quotations from the poems date to the middle of the 7th century bce. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus in the 7th century and Sappho and others in the early 6th adapted Homeric phraseology and metre to their own purposes and rhythms. At the same time scenes from the epics became popular in works of art. The pseudo-Homeric "Hymn to Apollo of Delos," probably of late 7th-century composition, claimed to be the work of "a blind man who dwells in rugged Chios," a reference to a tradition about Homer himself. The idea that Homer had descendants known as "Homeridae," and that they had taken over the preservation and propagation of his poetry, goes back at least to the early 6th century bce. Indeed, it was not long before a kind of Homeric scholarship began: Theagenes of Rhegium in southern Italy toward the end of the same century wrote the first of many allegorizing interpretations. By the 5th century biographical fictions were well under way; the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heracleitus of Ephesus made use of a trivial legend of Homer's death-that it was caused by chagrin at not being able to solve some boys' riddle about catching lice-and the concept of a contest of quotations between Homer and Hesiod (after Homer the most ancient of Greek poets) may have been initiated in the Sophistic tradition. The historian Herodotus assigned the formulation of Greek theology to Homer and Hesiod and claimed that they could have lived no more than 400 years before his own time, the 5th century bce. This should be contrasted with the superficial assumption, popular in many circles throughout antiquity, that Homer must have lived not much later than the Trojan War about which he sang.

The general belief that Homer was a native of Ionia (the central part of the western seaboard of Asia Minor) seems a reasonable conjecture for the poems themselves are in predominantly Ionic dialect. Although Smyrna and Chios early began competing for the honour (the poet Pindar, early in the 5th century bce, associated Homer with both), and others joined in, no authenticated local memory survived anywhere of someone who, oral poet or not, must have been remarkable in his time. The absence of hard facts puzzled but did not deter the Greeks; the fictions that had begun even before the 5th century bce were developed in the Alexandrian era in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce (when false scholarship as well as true abounded) into fantastic pseudobiographies, and these were further refined by derivative scholars under the Roman Empire. The longest to have survived purports to be by Herodotus himself; but it is quite devoid of objective truth.

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Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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God of the sea, and youngest of the 12 titans

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Poseidon, in ancient Greek religion, god of the sea (and of water generally), earthquakes, and horses. He is distinguished from Pontus, the personification of the sea and the oldest Greek divinity of the waters. The name Poseidon means either "husband of the earth" or "lord of the earth." Traditionally, he was a son of Cronus (the youngest of the 12 Titans) and of Cronus's sister and consort Rhea, a fertility goddess. Poseidon was a brother of Zeus, the sky god and chief deity of ancient Greece, and of Hades, god of the underworld. When the three brothers deposed their father, the kingdom of the sea fell by lot to Poseidon. His weapon and main symbol was the trident, perhaps once a fish spear. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Poseidon's trident, like Zeus's thunderbolt and Hades' helmet, was fashioned by the three Cyclopes.

As the god of earthquakes, Poseidon was also connected to dry land, and many of his oldest places of worship in Greece were inland, though these were sometimes centred on pools and streams or otherwise associated with water. In this aspect, he was known as enosichthon and ennosigaios ("earth-shaker") and was worshipped as asphalios ("stabilizer"). As the god of horses, Poseidon is thought likely to have been introduced to Greece by the earliest Hellenes, who also introduced the first horses to the country about the 2nd century bce. Poseidon himself fathered many horses, best known of which was the winged horse Pegasus by the Gorgon Medusa.

Poseidon came into conflict with a variety of figures in land disputes. Notable among these was a contest for sovereignty over Attica, which he lost to the goddess Athena. Despite losing, Poseidon was also worshipped there, particularly at Colonus (as hippios, "of horses").

Poseidon's offspring were myriad. He was the father of Pelias and Neleus by Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus, and thus became the divine ancestor of the royal families of Thessaly and Messenia. Many of his sons became rulers in other parts of the ancient Greek world. Otherwise he had many monstrous offspring, including giants and savage creatures, such as Orion, Antaeus, and Polyphemus. Progenitor of many, with several consorts, Poseidon also was married to the Oceanid Amphitrite, with whom he also had multiple offspring, including the sea creature Triton.

The chief festival in Poseidon's honour was the Isthmia, the scene of famous athletic contests (including horse races), celebrated in alternate years near the Isthmus of Corinth. His character as a sea god eventually became his most prominent in art, and he was represented with the attributes of the trident, the dolphin, and the tuna. The Romans, ignoring his other aspects, identified him with Neptune as sea god.

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Poseidon, in ancient Greek religion, god of the sea (and of water generally), earthquakes, and horses. He is distinguished from Pontus, the personification of the sea and the oldest Greek divinity of the waters. The name Poseidon means either "husband of the earth" or "lord of the earth."

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Roman poet, best known for his epic, the Aeneid.

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Where did Virgil grow up?

What was Virgil's education?

Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 bce, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]-died September 21, 19 bce, Brundisium), Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death).

Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet, an estimation that subsequent generations have upheld. His fame rests chiefly upon the Aeneid, which tells the story of Rome's legendary founder and proclaims the Roman mission to civilize the world under divine guidance. His reputation as a poet endures not only for the music and diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an intricate work on the grand scale but also because he embodied in his poetry aspects of experience and behaviour of permanent significance.

Virgil was born of peasant stock, and his love of the Italian countryside and of the people who cultivated it colours all his poetry. He was educated at Cremona, at Milan, and finally at Rome, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Greek and Roman authors, especially of the poets, and receiving a detailed training in rhetoric and philosophy. It is known that one of his teachers was the Epicurean Siro, and the Epicurean philosophy is substantially reflected in his early poetry but gradually gives way to attitudes more akin to Stoicism.

Political background

During Virgil's youth, as the Roman Republic neared its end, the political and military situation in Italy was confused and often calamitous. The civil war between Marius and Sulla had been succeeded by conflict between Pompey and Julius Caesar for supreme power. When Virgil was 20, Caesar with his armies swooped south from Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and began the series of civil wars that were not to end until Augustus' victory at Actium in 31 bce. Hatred and fear of civil war is powerfully expressed by both Virgil and his contemporary Horace. The key to a proper understanding of the Augustan Age and its poets lies, indeed, in a proper understanding of the turmoil that had preceded the Augustan peace.

Virgil's life was devoted entirely to his poetry and to studies connected with it; his health was never robust, and he played no part in military or political life. It is said that he spoke once in the lawcourts without distinction and that his shy and retiring nature caused him to give up any ideas he might have had of taking part in the world of affairs. He never married, and the first half of his life was that of a scholar and near recluse. But, as his poetry won him fame, he gradually won the friendship of many important men in the Roman world. Gradually, also, he became a Roman as well as a provincial. (The area in which he had spent his youth, the area around the Po River known as the province of Cisalpine Gaul, was not finally incorporated into Italy until 42 bce. Thus Virgil came, as it were, to Rome from the outside. The enthusiasm of a provincial for Rome is seen in the first eclogue, one of his earliest poems, in which the shepherd Tityrus tells of his recent visit to the capital and his amazement at its splendours.)

Literary career

Some of Virgil's earliest poetry may have survived in a collection of poems attributed to him and known as the Appendix Vergiliana, but it is unlikely that many of these are genuine. His earliest certain work is the Eclogues, a collection of 10 pastoral poems composed between 42 and 37 bce. Some of them are escapist, literary excursions to the idyllic pastoral world of Arcadia based on the Greek poet Theocritus (flourished c. 280 bce) but more unreal and stylized. They convey in liquid song the idealized situations of an imaginary world in which shepherds sing in the sunshine of their simple joys and mute their sorrows (whether for unhappy love or untimely death) in a formalized pathos. But some bring the pastoral mode into touch with the real world, either directly or by means of allegory, and thus gave a new direction to the genre. The fifth eclogue, on the death of Daphnis, king of the shepherds, clearly has some relationship with the recent death of Julius Caesar; the 10th brings Gallus, a fellow poet who also held high office as a statesman, into the pastoral world; the first and ninth are lamentations over the expulsion of shepherds from their farms. (It was widely believed in antiquity that these poems expressed allegorically Virgil's own loss of his family farm when the veteran soldiers of Antony and Octavian-later the emperor Augustus-were resettled after the Battle of Philippi in 42 bce. It was thought that he subsequently recovered his property through the intervention of his powerful friends. However that may be, it is certain that the poems are based on Virgil's own experience, whether in connection with his own farm or with those of his friends; and they express, with a poignant pathos that has come to be regarded as specially Virgilian, the sorrow of the dispossessed.)

But one eclogue in particular stands out as having relevance to the contemporary situation, and this is the fourth (sometimes called the Messianic, because it was later regarded as prophetic of Christianity). It is an elevated poem, prophesying in sonorous and mystic terms the birth of a child who will bring back the Golden Age, banish sin, and restore peace. It was clearly written at a time when the clouds of civil war seemed to be lifting; it can be dated firmly to 41-40 bce, and it seems most likely that Virgil refers to an expected child of the triumvir Antony and his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian. But, though a specific occasion may be allocated to the poem, it goes beyond the particular and, in symbolic terms, presents a vision of world harmony, which was, to some extent, destined to be realized under Augustus.

One of the most disastrous effects of the civil wars-and one of which Virgil, as a countryman, would be most intensely aware-was the depopulation of rural Italy. The farmers had been obliged to go to the war, and their farms fell into neglect and ruin as a result. The Georgics, composed between 37 and 30 bce (the final period of the civil wars), is a superb plea for the restoration of the traditional agricultural life of Italy. In form it is didactic, but, as Seneca later said, it was written "not to instruct farmers but to delight readers." The practical instruction (about plowing, growing trees, tending cattle, and keeping bees) is presented with vivid insight into nature, and it is interspersed with highly wrought poetical digressions on such topics as the beauty of the Italian countryside (Book II. line 136 ff.) and the joy of the farmer when all is gathered in (II.458 ff.).

The Georgics is dedicated (at the beginning of each book) to Maecenas, one of the chief of Augustus' ministers, who was also the leading patron of the arts. By this time Virgil was a member of what might be called the court circle, and his desire to see his beloved Italy restored to its former glories coincided with the national requirement of resettling the land and diminishing the pressure on the cities. It would be wrong to think of Virgil as writing political propaganda; but equally it would be wrong to regard his poetry as unconnected with the major currents of political and social needs of the time. Virgil was personally committed to the same ideals as the government.

In the year 31 bce, when Virgil was 38, Augustus (still known as Octavian) won the final battle of the civil wars at Actium against the forces of Antony and Cleopatra and from that time dates the Augustan Age. Virgil, like many of his contemporaries, felt a great sense of relief that the senseless civil strife was at last over and was deeply grateful to the man who had made it possible. Augustus was anxious to preserve the traditions of the republic and its constitutional forms, but he was in fact sole ruler of the Roman world. He used his power to establish a period of peace and stability and endeavoured to reawaken in the Romans a sense of national pride and a new enthusiasm for their ancestral religion and their traditional moral values, those of bravery, parsimony, duty, responsibility, and family devotion. Virgil, too, as a countryman at heart, felt a deep attachment to the simple virtues and religious traditions of the Italian people. All his life he had been preparing himself to write an epic poem (regarded then as the highest form of poetic achievement), and he now set out to embody his ideal Rome in the Aeneid, the story of the foundation of the first settlement in Italy, from which Rome was to spring, by an exiled Trojan prince after the destruction of Troy by the Greeks in the 12th century bce. The theme he chose gave him two great advantages: one was that its date and subject were very close to those of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, so that he could remodel episodes and characters from his great Greek predecessor; and the other was that it could be brought into relationship with his contemporary Augustan world by presenting Aeneas as the prototype of the Roman way of life (the last of the Trojans and the first of the Romans). Moreover, by the use of prophecies and visions and devices such as the description of the pictures on Aeneas' shield or of the origins of contemporary customs and institutions, it could foreshadow the real events of Roman history. The poem, then, operates on a double time scale; it is heroic and yet Augustan.

The enthusiasm that Virgil felt for the reborn Rome promised by Augustus' regime is often reflected in the poem. The sonorous and awe-inspiring prophecy by Jupiter (I.257 ff.), giving a picture of Rome's divinely inspired destiny, has a moving patriotic impact: "To these I set no bounds in space or time-I have given them rule without end" (278-279); and again, under Augustus, "Then shall the harsh generations be softened, and wars shall be laid aside" (291). The speech ends with a memorable image depicting the personified figure of Frenzy in chains, gnashing its bloodstained teeth in vain. At the end of the sixth book, Aeneas visits the underworld, and there pass before his eyes the figures of heroes from Roman history, waiting to be born. The ghost of his father ( Anchises) describes them to him and ends by defining the Roman mission as one concerned with government and civilization (compared with the Greek achievement in art and literature and theoretical science). "Rule the people with your sway, spare the conquered, and war down the proud": this is the vision of Rome's destiny that the emperor Augustus and the poet Virgil had before them-that Rome was divinely appointed first to conquer the world in war and then to spread civilization and the rule of law among the peoples. As Horace told the Romans in one of his odes, "Because you are servants of the gods, you are masters on earth."

The vision of Rome that the Aeneid expresses is a noble one, but the real greatness of the poem is due to Virgil's awareness of the private, as well as the public, aspects of human life. The Aeneid is no panegyric; it sets the achievements and aspirations of the giant organization of Roman governmental rule in tension with the frustrated hopes and sufferings of individuals. The most memorable figure in the poem-and, it has been said, the only character to be created by a Roman poet that has passed into world literature-is Dido, queen of Carthage, opponent of the Roman way of life. In a mere panegyric of Rome, she could have been presented in such a way that Aeneas' rejection of her would have been a victory to applaud; but, in fact, in the fourth book she wins so much sympathy that the reader wonders whether Rome should be bought at this price. Again, Turnus, who opposes Aeneas when he lands in Italy, resists the invader who has come to steal his bride. It is clear that Turnus is a less civilized character than Aeneas-but in his defeat Virgil allows him to win much sympathy. These are two examples of the tension against Roman optimism; in many other ways, too, Virgil throughout the poem explores the problems of suffering and the pathos of the human situation. Yet in the end, Aeneas endures and continues to his goal; his devotion to duty ( pietas) prevails, and the Roman reader would feel that this should be. "So great a task it was to found the Roman nation" (I.33).

The Aeneid occupied Virgil for 11 years and, at his death, had not yet received its final revision. In 19 bce, planning to spend a further three years on his poem, he set out for Greece-doubtless to obtain local colour for the revision of those parts of the Aeneid set in Greek waters. On the voyage he caught a fever and returned to Italy but died soon after arrival at Brundisium. Whether the Aeneid would have undergone major changes cannot be guessed; the story goes that Virgil's dying wish was for his poem to be burned, but that this request was countermanded by the order of Augustus. As it stands, the poem is a major monument both to the national achievements and ideals of the Augustan Age of Rome and to the sensitive and lonely voice of the poet who knew the "tears in things" as well as the glory.

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Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 bce, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]-died September 21, 19 bce, Brundisium), Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death).

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the King of the Gods and the god of the sky, weather, law and order, destiny and fate, and kingship.

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Greek Gods >> Olympian Gods >> Zeus

Zeus with eagle and lightning, Athenian red-figure amphora C5th B.C., Musée du Louvre

ZEUS was the King of the Gods and the god of the sky, weather, law and order, destiny and fate, and kingship. He was depicted as a regal, mature man with a sturdy figure and dark beard. His usual attributes were a lightning bolt, a royal sceptre and an eagle.

MYTHS

Zeus was the youngest child of the Titans Kronos (Cronus) and Rheia. Kronos devoured each of his children as they were born, but Zeus escaped this fate when his mother spirited him away, handing the Titan a stone substitute wrapped in swaddling cloth. << More>>

The god was raised in secrecy on Mount Dikte in Krete (Crete) where he was nursed by nymphs on the milk of the goat Amaltheia and guarded by the warrior Kouretes (Curetes) who drowned out the sound of his crying with their shield-clashing battle-dance. << More>>

Upon coming of age Zeus recruited the goddess Metis to his cause. She served the Titan Kronos a magical draught which caused him to disgorge the young gods he had devoured. << More>>

Zeus liberated the six giant-sons of Heaven from the pit of Tartaros. In gratitude the Kyklopes (Cyclopes) armed him with lightning-bolts and the Hekatonkheires (Hundred-Handed) aided him in his assault on the Titanes with volleys of thrown boulders. Kronos and his allies were eventually defeated and banished to a prison beneath the earth. << More>>

After the fall of the Titan-gods, Zeus and his brothers drew lots to divide rule of the cosmos - Zeus won the heavens, Poseidon the sea and Haides the underworld.

Zeus devoured the pregnant goddess Metis when an oracle revealed that her son was destined to replace him as King of the Gods. Their child, Athena, was subsequently born in his belly and birthed directly from his head. << More>>

Zeus married his sister Hera, queen of the heavens, after seducing her in the guise of a cuckoo-bird. But this union of ever quarreling sky-god and sky-goddess proved not to be a match made in heaven! << More>>

Prometheus crafted the race of man and gave them fire stolen from the gods of heaven. Zeus punished this act by ordering the creation of the first woman, Pandora, and sent her to earth with a vessel full of troubles to plague mankind. Prometheus himself was arrested and chained to a mountain with an eagle set to torment him. << More>>

The early generations of man descended into wickedness and corruption and Zeus decided to wipe them from the face of the earth with a great deluge. One virtuous couple, Deukalion and Pyrrha, were spared and afterwards allowed to repopulate the world with the casting of stones which transformed into men. << More>>

The earth-goddess Gaia (Gaea), angered by the imprisonment of the Titanes, urged the Giants to rise up against the gods of Olympos. They laid siege to the heavenly fortress but Zeus laid low their king and many others with his deadly lightning-bolts. << More>>

Gaia produced one more giant, Typhoeus, the most monstrous of his kind and set him upon Olympos. The rest of the gods fled in horror and Zeus himself was defeated in combat with the monster tearing the sinews from his limbs rendering him helpless. Pan later stole back the god's strength and, restored, Zeus defeated the giant in a rematch and bound him beneath Mount Etna. << More>>

Zeus seduced many mortal woman including Leda in the guise of a swan, Europa as a bull, Danae as a shower of gold, Alkmene as her own husband, Kallisto (Callisto) as the goddess Artemis, and Antiope as a satyr. << More>>

The god's favorite mortal son was Herakles (Heracles) whom he supported throughout his trials and eventually welcomed to Olympos as a god.

Zeus punished the worst villians of myth for their impiety and crimes against the gods including Tantalos who stole ambrosia from heaven, Lykaon (Lycaon) who served human flesh to the gods, Ixion who attempted to rape Zeus' wife the goddess Hera, and Salmoneus who tried to imitate Zeus and steal the worship that was due the gods.

Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.

SYMBOLS & ATTRIBUTES

Zeus' most distinctive attribute was his stylized lightning bolt which he wielded in his hand like a javelin. His other attributes included a royal sceptre, a throne, an eagle, a miniature Nike (winged goddess of victory), and the aigis (a goat-skin arm-guard). The god was usually clothed in a long robe ( chiton) and cloak ( himation) but was sometimes depicted nude. He was often crowned with a wreath of olive leaves.

Below are some examples of his attributes as depicted in ancient Greek art:-

1. Lightning bolt; 2. Lightning bolt; 3. Throne; 4. Wreath of olive-leaves.

SACRED ANIMALS & PLANTS

Zeus' sacred animals were the eagle and the bull. In myth he abducted the youth Ganymede in the shape of an eagle and the maiden Europa in the guise of a bull.
His sacred plants were the evergreen holm oak and the olive tree. At the ancient oracle of Dodona Zeus' priests were inspired by the rustling of oak-leaves, and at the Olympic Games victors were crowned with a wreath of olive-leaves picked from the god's sacred grove.

Below are examples of the god's animals as depicted in ancient Greek art and photos of his sacred plants:-

1. Eagle; 2. Bull; 3. Holm oak; 4. Olive tree.

RETINUE OF ZEUS

Befitting his role as King of the Gods, Zeus was attended by a large complement of lesser divinities.

His throne was guarded by four winged spirits, two male and two female, named Kratos (Strength), Zelos (Rivalry), Nike (Victory) and Bia (Force). Kratos and Bia functioned as muscular enforcers and were tasked with jobs such as the apprehension and imprisonment of the Titan Prometheus. Nike drove Zeus' chariot and often accompanied him in miniature form as something of a divine familiar.

The god Hermes was Zeus' personal herald who acted as diplomat, envoy and general agent of the god's will.

His messenger was Iris, the winged goddess of the rainbow, who simply relayed messages verbatim and delivered commands to the other gods.

Zeus' high councillor Themis, goddess of law and order, was seated beside his throne. She was attended by their six daughters the Moirai (Fates) and the Horai (Seasons). These goddesses were collectively responsible for the orderly functioning of the cosmos. Themis was also charged with summoning all of the gods to assembly in the courtyard of Zeus.

The god's virgin sister Hestia also resided in his palace where she tended the ever-burning, divine hearth-fire in the center of his hall.

Metis, goddess of wisdom, was perhaps his most unusual attendant. Zeus swallowed her whole to avoid a prophesy and she took up residence in his belly. The ancient Greeks believed the belly rather than the brain was the seat of thought and emotion, and so by subsuming her he effectively implanted wise counsel in his mind. She continued to exist in some form or other within the god, even to the extent of birthing Athena there and equipping her with armour and weapons before her second birth from Zeus' head.

Ganymede and the goddess Hebe were Zeus' cupbearers who served ambrosia and nectar at the feasts of the gods.
The winged Harpyiai (Harpies), known as the "hounds of Zeus", were crude creatures tasked by the god with carrying off or harrassing mortals.
Pegasos, the winged horse, carried Zeus' lightning bolts, and four other immortal horses drew his chariot through the sky.

ZEUS PAGES ON THEOI.COM

This site contains a total of 8 pages describing the god, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Zeus Pages (left column or below).

FAMILY OF ZEUS

PARENTS

KRONOS & RHEA (Homer Iliad 15.187, Hesiod Theogony 453, Apollodorus 1.4, Diodorus Siculus 5.68.1, et al)

OFFSPRING

See Family of Zeus

Zeus was a son of the Titans Kronos (Cronus) and Rheia and a grandson of Ouranos (the Sky) and Gaia (the Earth). He was a brother of the gods Poseidon, Haides, Hera, Demeter and Hestia.
Zeus married his sister, the sky-goddess Hera, and they had three children - Ares, Hebe and Eileithyia.
His other divine consorts included: his sister Demeter mother of Persephone; his cousins Metis mother of Athena, Leto mother of Apollon and Leto, and Maia mother of Hermes; his aunts Dione mother of Aphrodite, Themis mother of the Moirai (Fates) and Horai (Seasons), and Mnemosyne mother of the Mousai (Muses); and his descendant Semele mother of Dionysos.
He was also the father of innumerable mortal kings and heroes, the most famous of which were Perseus, Herakles (Heracles), and Helene of Troy. << More>>

Below are two graphics depicting Zeus' core family tree, the first with names transliterated from the Greek and the second with the common English spellings:-

A much more detailed family tree for Zeus including all of his immortal lovers and children can be found here (transliterated Greek version) and here (English names version).

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Zeus, Athenian red-figure Panathenaic amphora C5th B.C., Staatliche Antikensammlungen

ZEUS (Zeus), the greatest of the Olympian gods, and the father of gods and men, was a son of Cronos and Rhea, a brother of Poseidon, Hades (Pluto), Hestia, Demeter, Hera, and at the same time married to his sister Hera. When Zeus and his brothers distributed among themselves the government of the world by lot, Poseidon obtained the sea, Hades the lower world, and Zeus the heavens and the upper regions, but the earth became common to all (Hom. Il. xv. 187, &c., i. 528, ii. 111; Virg. Aen. iv. 372).

Later mythologers enumerate three Zeus in their genealogies two Arcadian ones and one Cretan; and tne first is said to be a son of Aether, the second of Coelus, and the third of Saturnus (Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 21). This accounts for the fact that some writers use the name of the king of heaven who sends dew, rain, snow, thunder, and lightning for heaven itself in its physical sense. (Horat. Carm. i. 1. 25 ; Virg. Georg. ii. 419.)

According to the Homeric account Zeus, like the other Olympian gods, dwelt on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, which was believed to penetrate with its lofty summit into heaven itself ( Il. i. 221, &c., 354, 609, xxi. 438). He is called the father of gods and men (i. 514, v. 33; comp. Aeschyl. Sept. 512), the most high and powerful among the immortals, whom all others obey ( Il. xix. 258, viii. 10, &c.). He is the highest ruler, who with his counsel manages every thing (i. 175, viii. 22), the founder of kingly power, of law and of order, whence Dice, Themis and Nemesis are his assistants (i. 238, ii. 205, ix. 99, xvi. 387; comp. Hes. Op. et D. 36 ; Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 79).

For the same reason he protects the assembly of the people (agoraios), the meetings of the council (boulaios), and as he presides over the whole state, so also over every house and family (herkeios, Od. xxii. 335; comp. Ov. Ib. 285). He also watched over the sanctity of the oath (horkios), the law of hospitality (xenios), and protected suppliants (hikesios, Od. ix. 270; comp. Paus. v. 24. § 2). He avenged those who were wronged, and punished those who had committed a crime, for he watched the doings and sufferings of all men (epopsios, Od. xiii. 213; comp. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1123).

He was further the original source of all prophetic power, front whom all prophetic signs and sounds proceeded (panomphaios, Il. viii. 250 ; comp. Aeschyl. Eum. 19 ; Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 69). Every thing good as well as bad comes from Zeus, and according to his own choice he assigns their good or evil lot to mortals ( Od. iv. 237, vi. 188, ix. 552, Il. x. 71, xvii. 632, &c.), and fate itself was subordinate to him.

He is armed with thunder and lightning, and the shaking of his aegis produces storm and tempest ( Il. xvii. 593) : a number of epithets of Zeus in the Homeric poems describe him as the thunderer, the gatherer of clouds, and the like.

He was married to Hera, by whom he had two sons, Ares and Hephaestus, and one daughter, Hebe ( Il. i. 585, v. 896, Od. xi. 604). Hera sometimes acts as an independent divinity, she is ambitious and rebels against her lord, but she is nevertheless inferior to him, and is punished for her opposition ( Il. xv. 17, &c., xix. 95, &c.) ; his amours with other goddesses or mortal women are not concealed from her, though they generally rouse her jealousy and revenge ( Il. xiv. 317). During the Trojan war, Zeus, at the request of Thetis, favoured the Trojans, until Agamemnon made good the wrong he had done to Achilles.

Zeus, no doubt, was originally a god of a portion of nature, whence the oak with its eatable fruit and the fertile doves were sacred to him at Dodona and in Arcadia (hence also rain, storms, and the seasons were regarded as his work, and hence the Cretan stories of milk, honey, and cornucopia) ; but in the Homeric poems, this primitive character of a personification of certain powers of nature is already effaced to some extent, and the god appears as a political and national divinity, as the king and father of men, as the founder and protector of all institutions hallowed by law, custom. or religion.

Hesiod ( Theog. 116, &c.) also calls Zeus the son of Cronos and Rhea , and the brother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Cronos swallowed his children immediately after their birth, but when Rhea was near giving birth to Zeus, she applied to Uranus and Ge for advice as to how the child might be saved. Before the hour of birth came, Uranus and Ge sent Rhea to Lyctos in Crete, requesting her to bring up her child there. Rhea accordingly concealed her infant in a cave of Mount Aegaeon, and gave to Cronos a stone wrapped up in cloth, which he swallowed in the belief that it was his son. Other traditions state that Zeus was born and brought up on Mount Dicte or Ida (also the Trojan Ida), Ithome in Messenia, Thebes in Boeotia, Aegion in Achaia, or Olenos in Aetolia. According to the common account, however, Zeus grew up in Crete. As Rhea is sometimes identified with Ge, Zeus is also called a son of Ge. (Aeschyl. Suppl. 901.)

In the meantime Cronos by a cunning device of Ge or Metis was made to bring up the children he had swallowed, and first of all the stone, which was afterwards set up by Zeus at Delphi. The young god now delivered the Cyclopes from the bonds with which they had been fettered by Cronos, and they in their gratitude provided him with thunder and lightning. On the advice of Ge. Zeus also liberated the hundred-armed Gigantes, Briareos, Cottus, and Gyes, that they might assist him in his fight against the Titans. (Apollod. i. 2. § 1; Hes. Theog. 617, &c.) The Titans were conquered and shut up in Tartarus ( Theog. 717), where they were henceforth guarded by the Hecatoncheires. Thereupon Tartarus and Ge begot Typhoeus, who began a fearful struggle with Zeus, but was conquered. ( Theog. 820, &c.)

Zeus now obtained the dominion of the world, and chose Metis for his wife. ( Theog. 881, &c.) When she was pregnant with Athena, he took the child out of her body and concealed it in his own, on the advice of Uranus and Ge, who told him that thereby he would retain the supremacy of the world. For Metis had given birth to a son, this son (so fate had ordained it) would have acquired the sovereignty. After this Zeus, by his second wife Themis. became the father of the Horae and Moerae; of the Charites by Eurynome, of Persephone by Demeter, of the Muses by Mnemosyne, of Apollo and Artemis by Leto, and of Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia by Hera. Athena was born out of the head of Zeus; while Hera, on the other hand, gave birth to Hephaestus without the co-operation of Zeus. ( Theog. 8866, &c.)

The family of the Cronidae accordingly embraces the twelve great gods of Olympus, Zeus (the head of them all), Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis. These twelve Olympian gods, who in some places were worshipped as a body, as at Athens (Thueyd. vi. 54), were recognised not only by the Greeks, but were adopted also by the Romans, who, in particular, identified their Jupiter with the Greek Zeus.

In surveying the different local traditions about Zeus, it would seem that originally there were several, at least three, divinities which in their respective countries were supreme, but which in the course of time became united in the minds of tile people into one great national divinity. We may accordingly speak of an Arcadian, Dodonaean, Cretan, and a national Hellenic Zeus.

1. The Arcadian Zeus (Zeus Lukaios) was born, according to the legends of the country, in Arcadia, either on Mount Parrhasion (Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 7, 10), or in a district of Mount Lycaeon, which was called Cretea. (Paus. viii. 38. § 1 ; Callim. l. c. 14.) He was brought up there by the nymphs Theisoa, Neda, and Hagno; the first of these gave her name to an Arcadian town, the second to a river, and the third to a well. (Paus. viii. 38. § 2, &c., 47. § 2; comp. Callim. l. c. 33.) Lycaon, a son of Pelasgus, who built the first and most ancient town of Lycosura, called Zeus Lycaeus, and erected a temple and instituted the festival of the Lyceia in honour of him; he further offered to him bloody sacrifices, and among others his own son, in consequence of which he was metamorphosed into a wolf (lukos; Paus. viii. 2. § 1, 38. § 1; Callim. l. c. 4 ; Ov. Met. i. 218.) No one was allowed to enter the sanctuary of Zeus Lycaeus on Mount Lycaeon, and there was a belief that, if any one entered it, he died within twelve months after, and that in it neither human beings nor animals cast a shadow. (Paus. viii. 38. § 5; comp. Schol. ad Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 13.) Those who entered it intentionally were stoned to death, unless they escaped by flight; and those who had got in by accident were sent to Eleutherae. (Plut. Quaest. Gr. 39.) On the highest summit of Lycaeon, there was an altar of Zeus, in front of which, towards the east, there were two pillars bearing golden eagles. The sacrifices offered there were kept secret. (Paus. viii. 38. § 5; Callim. l. c. 68.)

2. The Dodonaean Zeus (Zeus Dôdônaios or Pelasgikos) possessed the most ancient oracle in Greece, at Dodona in Epeirus, near mount Tomarus (Tmarus or Tomurus), from which he derived his name. (Hom. Il. ii. 750, xvi. 233; Herod. ii. 52 ; Paus. i. 17. § 5; Strab. v. p. 338, vi. p. 504; Virg. Eclog. viii. 44.) At Dodona Zeus was mainly a prophetic god, and the oak tree was sacred to him ; but there too he was said to have been reared by if the Dodonaean nymphs (Hyades; Schol. ad Hom. Il. xviii. 486; Hygin. Fab. 182 ; Ov. Fast. vi. 711, Met. iii. 314). Respecting the Dodonaean oracle of Zeus, see Dict. of Ant. s. v. Oraculum.

3. The Cretan Zeus (Zeus Diktaios or Krêtagenês). We have already given the account of him which is contained in the Theogony of Hesiod. He is the god, to whom Rhea, concealed from Cronos, gave birth in a cave of mount Dicte, and whom she entrusted to the Curetes and the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, the daughters of Melisseus. They fed him with milk of the goat Amaltheia, and the bees of the mountain provided him with honey. (Apollod. i. 1. § 6; Callim. l. c. ; Diod. v. 70; comp. Athen. xi. 70; Ov. Fast. v. 115.) Crete is called the island or nurse of the great Zeus, and his worship there appears to have been very ancient. (Virg. Aen. iii. 104; Dionys. Perieg. 501.) Among the places in the island which were particularly sacred to the god, we must mention the district about mount Ida, especially Cnosus, which was said to have been built by the Curetes, and where Minos had ruled and conversed with Zeus (Hom. Od. xix. 172; Plat. de Leg. i. 1; Diod. v. 70; Strab. x. p. 730; Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 21); Gortyn, where the god, in the form of a bull, landed when he had carried off Europa from Phoenicia, and where he was worshipped under the surname of Hecatombaeus (Hesych. s. v.) ; further the towns about mount Dicte, as Lyctos (Hes. Theog. 477), Praesos, Hierapytna, Biennos, Eleuthernae and Oaxus. (Comp. Hoeck, Creta, i. p. 160, &c., 339, &c.)

4. The national Hellenic Zeus, near whose temple at Olympia in Elis, the great national panegyris was celebrated every fifth year. There too Zeus was regarded as the father and king of gods and men, and as the supreme god of the Hellenic nation, His statue there was executed by Pheidias, a few years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the majestic and sublime idea for this statue having been suggested to the artist by the words of Homer, Il. i. 527. (Comp. Hygin. Fab. 223.) According to the traditions of Elis, Cronos was the first ruler of the country, and in the golden age there was a temple dedicated to him at Olympia. Rhea, it is further said, entrusted the infant Zeus to the Idaean Dactyls, who were also called Curetes, and had come from mount Ida in Crete to Elis. Heracles, one of them, contended with his brother Dactyls in a footrace, and adorned the victor with a wreath of olive. In this manner he is said to have founded the Olympian games, and Zeus to have contended with Cronos for the kingdom of Elis. (Paus. v. 7. § 4.)

The Greek and Latin poets give to Zeus an immense number of epithets and surnames, which are derived partly from the places where he was worshipped, and partly from his powers and functions. He was worshipped throughout Greece and her colonies, so that it would be useless and almost impossible to enumerate all the places.

The eagle, the oak, and the summits of mountains were sacred to him, and his sacrifices generally consisted of goats, bulls and cows. (Hom. Il. ii. 403; Aristot. Ethic. v. 10, ix. 2; Virg. Aen. iii. 21, ix. 627.) His usual attributes are, the sceptre, eagle, thunderbolt, and a figure of Victory in his hand, and sometimes also a cornucopia. The Olympian Zeus sometimes wears a wreath of olive, and the Dodonaean Zeus a wreath of oak leaves.

In works of art Zeus is generally represented as the omnipotent father and king of gods and men, according to the idea which had been embodied in the statue of the Olympian Zeus by Pheidias.
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES

HYMNS TO ZEUS

Zeus and the giant Porphyrion, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., Antikensammlung Berlin

I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Homeric Hymn 23 to Cronides (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"To [Zeus] Kronides (Cronides) (Son of Kronos), Most High ( hypatos). I will sing of Zeus, chiefest among the gods and greatest, all-seeing, the lord of all, the fulfiller who whispers words of wisdom to Themis as she sits leaning towards him. Be gracious, all-seeing Kronides, most excellent and great!"

II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Orphic Hymn 15 to Zeus (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"O Zeus, much-honoured, Zeus supremely great, to thee our holy rites we consecrate, our prayers and expiations, king divine, for all things to produce with ease through mind is thine. Hence mother earth ( gaia) and mountains swelling high proceed from thee, the deep and all within the sky. Kronion (Cronion) king, descending from above, magnanimous, commanding, sceptred Zeus; all-parent, principle and end of all, whose power almighty shakes this earthly ball; even nature trembles at thy mighty nod, loud-sounding, armed with lightning, thundering god. Source of abundance, purifying king, O various-formed, from whom all natures spring; propitious hear my prayer, give blameless health, with peace divine, and necessary wealth."

Orphic Hymn 19 to Zeus of Thunder :
"To Zeus Keraunos (Ceraunus) (Thundering). O father Zeus, who shakest with fiery light the world, deep-sounding from thy lofty height. From thee proceeds the ethereal lightning's blaze, flashing around intolerable rays. Thy sacred thunders shake the blest abodes, the shining regions of the immortal Gods. Thy power divine the flaming lightning shrouds with dark investiture in fluid clouds. 'Tis thine to brandish thunders strong and dire, to scatter storms, and dreadful darts of fire; with roaring flames involving all around, and bolts of thunder of tremendous sound. Thy rapid dart can raise the hair upright, and shake the heart of man with wild affright. Sudden, unconquered, holy, thundering God, with noise unbounded flying all abroad; with all-devouring force, entire and strong, horrid, untamed, thou rollest the flames along. Rapid, ethereal bolt, descending fire, the earth, all-parent, trembles at thine ire; the sea all-shining, and each beast, that hears the sound terrific, with dread horror fears: when nature's face is bright with flashing fire, and in the heavens resound they thunders dire. They thunders white the azure garments tear, and burst the veil of all-surrounding air. O Zeus, all-blessed, may thy wrath severe, hurled in the bosom of the deep appear, and on the tops of mountains be revealed, for thy strong arm is not from us concealed. Propitious to these sacred rites incline, and to thy suppliants grant a life divine, add royal health, and gentle peace beside, with upright reasoning for a constant guide."

Orphic Hymn 20 to Zeus of Lightning :
"To Zeus Astrapaios (Astrapaeus) (Lightning Maker). I call the mighty, holy, splendid, light, aerial, dreadful-sounding, fiery-bright, flaming, ethereal light, with angry voice, lighting through lucid clouds with crashing noise. Untamed, to whom resentments dire belong, pure, holy power, all-parent, great and strong: come, and benevolent these rites attend, and grant the mortal life a pleasing end."

Orphic Hymn 73 to the Daemon :
"To the Daimon [Zeus]. Thee, mighty ruling Daimon dread, I call, mild Zeus, life-giving, and the source of all: great Zeus, much wandering, terrible and strong, to whom revenge and tortures dire belong. Mankind from thee in plenteous wealth abound, when in their dwellings joyful thou art found; or pass through life afflicted and distressed, the needful means of bliss by thee suppressed. 'Tis thine alone, endued with boundless might, to keep the keys of sorrow and delight. O holy blessed father, hear my prayer, disperse the seeds of life-consuming care, with favouring mind the sacred rites attend, and grant to life a glorious blessed end."

ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART

SOURCES (ALL ZEUS PAGES)

GREEK

Homer, The Iliad - Greek Epic C8th B.C.

Homer, The Odyssey - Greek Epic C8th B.C.

Hesiod, Theogony - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Hesiod, Catalogues of Women Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Hesiod, Great Eoiae Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Hesiod, Astronomy Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

The Homeric Hymns - Greek Epic C8th - 4th B.C.

Pindar, Odes - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Pindar, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric I Alcman, Fragments - Greek Lyric C7th B.C.

Aeschylus, Fragments - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.

Plato, Republic - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Theages - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Apollodorus, The Library - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.

Callimachus, Hymns - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Callimachus, Fragments - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History - Greek History C1st B.C.

Strabo, Geography - Greek Geography C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

Pausanias, Description of Greece - Greek Travelogue C2nd A.D.

The Orphic Hymns - Greek Hymns C3rd B.C. - C2nd A.D.

Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.

Aelian, On Animals - Greek Natural History C2nd - 3rd A.D.

Aelian, Historical Miscellany - Greek Rhetoric C2nd - 3rd A.D.

Philostratus the Elder, Imagines - Greek Rhetoric C3rd A.D.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana - Greek Biography C2nd A.D.

Ptolemy Hephaestion, New History - Greek Mythography C1st - 2nd A.D.

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy - Greek Epic C4th A.D.

Nonnus, Dionysiaca - Greek Epic C5th A.D.

ROMAN

Hyginus, Fabulae - Latin Mythography C2nd A.D.

Hyginus, Astronomica - Latin Mythography C2nd A.D.

Ovid, Metamorphoses - Latin Epic C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

Ovid, Fasti - Latin Poetry C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

Virgil, Aeneid - Latin Epic C1st B.C.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum - Latin Rhetoric C1st B.C.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History - Latin Encyclopedia C1st A.D.

BYZANTINE

Suidas, The Suda - Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.

OTHER SOURCES
Other sources not quoted here: numerous.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A complete bibliography of the translations quoted on this page.

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ZEUS - Greek God of the Sky, King of the Gods

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Zeus was the king of the ancient Greek gods, and the god of the sky, weather, law and order, destiny and fate. He was depicted as a regal, mature man with a sturdy figure and dark beard. His usual attributes were a lightning bolt, royal sceptre and eagle.

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One thing Plato was famous for was his Allegory of the Cave which represents the effect of philosophy on us.

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What was Plato's family like?

Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece-died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers-and Plato himself in certain passages-used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them ( the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.

Life

The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630-560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.

Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters-variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"-and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.

After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408-354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430-367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.

Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417-369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395-c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.

Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508-11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.

Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, " the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.

Dating, editing, translation

Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies ( see below Works individually described).

Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries-by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.

Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances-some of crucial importance-where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.

A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.

In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.

Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.

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Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who produced works of unparalleled influence.

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Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty and love. She identifies with Venus.

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Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty, identified with Venus by the Romans. The Greek word aphros means "foam," and Hesiod relates in his Theogony that Aphrodite was born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus (Heaven), after his son Cronus threw them into the sea. Aphrodite was, in fact, widely worshipped as a goddess of the sea and of seafaring; she was also honoured as a goddess of war, especially at Sparta, Thebes, Cyprus, and other places. However, she was known primarily as a goddess of love and fertility and even occasionally presided over marriage. Although prostitutes considered Aphrodite their patron, her public cult was generally solemn and even austere.

Some scholars believe Aphrodite's worship came to Greece from the East; many of her attributes recall the ancient Middle Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Astarte. Although Homer called her "Cyprian" after the island chiefly famed for her worship, she was already Hellenized by the time of Homer, and, according to Homer, she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione, his consort at Dodona. In Book VIII of the Odyssey, Aphrodite was mismatched with Hephaestus, the lame smith god, and she consequently spent her time philandering with the handsome god of war, Ares (by whom she became the mother of Harmonia, the warrior twins Phobos and Deimos, and Eros, the god of love).

Of Aphrodite's mortal lovers, the most important were the Trojan shepherd Anchises, by whom she became the mother of Aeneas, and the handsome youth Adonis (in origin a Semitic nature deity and the consort of Ishtar-Astarte), who was killed by a boar while hunting and was lamented by women at the festival of Adonia. The cult of Adonis had underworld features, and Aphrodite was also connected with the dead at Delphi.

Aphrodite's main centres of worship were at Paphos and Amathus on Cyprus and on the island of Cythera, a Minoan colony, where in prehistoric times her cult probably originated. On the Greek mainland, Corinth was the chief centre of her worship. Her close association with Eros, the Graces (Charites), and the Horae (Seasons) emphasized her role as a promoter of fertility. She was honoured by the Roman poet Lucretius as Genetrix, the creative element in the world. Her epithets Urania (Heavenly Dweller) and Pandemos (Of All the People) were ironically taken by the philosopher Plato (in the Symposium) to refer to intellectual and common love; rather, the title Urania was honorific and applied to certain Asian deities, while Pandemos referred to her standing within the city-state. Among her symbols were the dove, pomegranate, swan, and myrtle.

Representations of Aphrodite in early Greek art are fully dressed and without distinguishing features that differentiate her from other goddesses. She first attained individuality at the hands of the great 5th-century-bce Greek sculptors. Perhaps the most famous of all statues of Aphrodite was carved by Praxiteles for the Cnidians. The first full-scale female nude, it later became the model for such Hellenistic masterpieces as the Venus de Milo (2nd century bce).

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Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty, identified with Venus by the Romans. The Greek word aphros means "foam," and Hesiod relates in his Theogony that Aphrodite was born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus (Heaven), after his son Cronus threw them into the sea.

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The gods, mythology, and stories etc.

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In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in all areas of life. With formal rituals which included animal sacrifices and libations, myths to explain the origins of mankind and give the gods a human face, temples which dominated the urban landscape, city festivals and national sporting and artistic competitions, religion was never far from the mind of an ancient Greek. Whilst the individual may have made up their own mind on the degree of their religious belief and some may have been completely sceptical, certain fundamentals must have been sufficiently widespread in order for Greek government and society to function: the gods existed, they could influence human affairs, and they welcomed and responded to acts of piety and worship.

The Olympian Gods

Polytheistic Greek religion encompassed a myriad of gods, each representing a certain facet of the human condition, and even abstract ideas such as justice and wisdom could have their own personification. The most important gods, though, were the Olympian gods led by Zeus:

These Olympian gods were believed to reside on Mt. Olympus and would have been recognised across Greece, albeit, with some local variations and perhaps particular attributes and associations.

In the Greek imagination, literature & art, the gods were given human bodies & characters - both good & bad.

In the Greek imagination, literature, and art, the gods were given human bodies and characters - both good and bad - and just as ordinary men and women, they married, had children (often through illicit affairs), fought, and in the stories of Greek mythology they directly intervened in human affairs. These traditions were first recounted only orally as there was no sacred text in Greek religion and later, attempts were made to put in writing this oral tradition, notably by Hesiod in his and more indirectly in the works of Homer.

Temples, Rituals & Priests

Gods became patrons of cities, for example, Aphrodite for Corinth and Helios for Rhodes, and were called upon for help in particular situations, for example, Ares during war and Hera for weddings. Some gods were imported from abroad, for example, Adonis, and incorporated into the Greek pantheon whilst rivers and springs could take on a very localised personified form such as the nymphs.

The temple ( naos - meaning dwelling place in reference to the belief that the god dwelt in that place, or at least temporarily visited during rituals) was the place where, on special occasions, religion took on a more formal tone. Gods were worshipped at sacred sites and temples in all major Greek communities in ceremonies carried out by priests and their attendants.

At first, sacred sites were merely a simple altar in a designated area, but over time massive temples came to be built in honour of a particular god and these usually housed a cult statue of the deity, most famously the huge statue of Athena in the Parthenon of Athens or Zeus at Olympia. In time, a whole complex of temples to lesser gods could spring up around the main temple, creating a large sacred complex, often built on an acropolis dominating a city or surrounding area. This sacred area ( temenos) was separated from the rest of the community by a symbolic gate or propylon, and in fact, it was believed that this area belonged to the particular deity in question. Sacred sites also received financial donations and dedications of statues, fountains and even buildings from the faithful, often to celebrate a great military victory and give thanks to the gods, and larger sanctuaries also had permanent caretakers ( neokoroi) who were responsible for the upkeep of the site.

The animals sacrificed were usually pigs, sheep, goats or cows & always the same sex as the god which was being honoured.

The temple itself, though, was not used during religious practices as these were carried out at a designated altar outside the temple. Ancient authors often show a reluctance to go into explicit details of religious ceremonies and rites as if these were too sacred to be publicised in the written word. What we do know is that the most common religious practices were sacrifice and the pouring of libations, all to the accompaniment of prayers in honour of the god. The animals sacrificed were usually pigs, sheep, goats or cows and always the same sex as the god which was being honoured. The meat was then either burnt completely or cooked, with part offered to the god and the rest eaten by some or all of the worshippers or taken away to be eaten later. The actual killing of the animal was carried out by a butcher or cook ( megeiras) whilst a young girl sprinkled seeds onto the animals head, perhaps symbolic of life and regeneration at the moment of the animal's death. Other such rituals included examining the entrails of sacrificed animals to ascertain signs which could help predict future events.

Priests then, orchestrated the religious ceremonies and delivered prayers. The position was generally open to all and once assuming the role, particularly when wearing the sacred headband, the body of the priest became inviolate. Priests served a specific god but they were not necessarily religious experts. For theological questions, a citizen could consult an exegetes, a state official, who was knowledgeable in religious affairs. Women could also be priests, which is perhaps surprising given their lack of any other public role in Greek society. Often, but not always, the priest was the same sex as the god they represented. Priestesses did have the added restriction that they were most often selected because they were virgins or beyond menopause. Worshippers, on the other hand, could be both sexes and those rituals with restrictions could exclude either men or women.

Mysteries & Oracles

In addition to the formal and public religious ceremonies there were also many rites which were open to and known only by the initiated who performed them, the most famous example being the Mysteries of Eleusis. In these closed groups, members believed that certain activities gave spiritual benefits, amongst them a better after-life.

Places could also acquire a divine connection; the great oracles such as that of Apollo at Delphi and Zeus at Dodona may well have begun as places considered particularly good to receive signs from the gods. Such places became hugely important centres with their priest oracles consulted by both individuals and city-states so that the rather vague and ambiguous proclamations might help guide their future conduct.

Festivals & Games

Athletic Games and competitions in music (especially playing the kithara and lyre) and theatre (both tragedy and comedy) were held during festivals such as the City Dionysia of Athens and the Panhellenic games at the most important sacred sites of Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia to honour a particular god. These events were attended by visitors from all over Greece and the experience was perhaps more akin to a pilgrimage rather than that of a mere sports fan. Illustrating their sacred status, warfare was prohibited during these events and pilgrims were guaranteed free-passage across Greece. However, there were also much smaller festivals, sometimes only attended by a very select number of individuals, for example, the Arrhephoria in Athens, where only priestesses and a maximum of four young girls participated.

Personal Religion

Although the historical record reveals much about formal religious occasions and ceremony, we should remember that Greek religion was in fact practised anywhere, at any time, by private individuals in a very personal way. Not only temples but also the hearth in private homes was regarded as sacred, for example. Individuals could also visit a temple anytime they wanted to and it was customary to say a prayer even when just passing them in the street. People left offerings such as incense, flowers, and food, no doubt with a hopeful prayer or in gratitude for a past deed. Individuals could also organise their own private sacrifice if they had the means to do so, and these have been commemorated in thousands of stone relief markers found at sacred sites. In addition, temples were often visited in order to seek healing, especially at those sites associated with Asclepius the god of medicine, notably at Epidaurus.

People also looked for signs from the gods in everyday life and to interpret these signs as indicators of future events. Such signs could be birds in the sky or a spoken word between friends said at a particular moment or even a simple sneeze which might be interpreted as an auspicious or inauspicious omen.

Such beliefs and, indeed, certain aspects of religion such as the immorality of the gods as portrayed in the arts, were severely criticised by intellectuals, artists, and philosophers from the 5th century BCE, but these may or may not reflect the commonly held views of the wider populace, and it is difficult to believe from the wealth of archaeological and written records that religion was anything but a fundamental part of life for the ordinary inhabitants of the ancient Greek world.

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In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in all areas of life. With formal rituals which included animal sacrifices and libations, myths to explain the origins of mankind and give the gods a human face, temples which dominated the urban landscape, city festivals and national sporting and artistic competitions, religion was never far from the mind of an ancient Greek.

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The Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

Athena is a Greek goddess known as both Pallas and Athene. In ancient Greek mythology, they often associated her with both warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

She also shares some things in common with Minerva from Roman mythology. Many refer to her as a protector or a patron of major cities such as Athens.

She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Athena was born from Zeus after he experienced an enormous headache and she sprang fully grown and in armour from his forehead.

She has no mother but one of the most commonly cited stories is that Zeus lay with , the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, and then swallowed her whole as he feared she will give birth to a child more powerful than him because of a prophecy - but she had already conceived.

Etymology

Scholars believe that her name comes from the city of Athens. Legend says that she was the leader of Athenai. This was a group of women who followed and worshiped her.

There is some debate as to whether the citizens named Athens in honor of her or if she received her name after the city already existed. Many believe that she earned her name as she lived and led in Athens.

As early as 407 BC, Plato mentioned her name and claimed that others followed her due to her wisdom and knowledge. He further claimed that her name came from the Greek word Athenoa, which can mean moon and earth or air.

Early Roots

Unlike other Greek goddesses and gods, there isn't as much known about the early life of Athena. Early tablets called the Linear B tablets mention her name and refer to her as Lady of Athens. Some translate phrases in the Linear A tablets to mean Athena of Zeus as she was the daughter of Zeus.

There are also multiple fresco pieces that show her as a warrior. In one, she holds a shield in her hand and with two women nearby.

The other shows a woman standing in front of multiple rows of women. Some believe that this piece depicts a different or early version of the warrior goddess. Historians also found some early artwork that shows Athena as an owl, which might explain why she is occasionally called a bird goddess.

Patronage

Though not a patron saint, Athena is a goddess. Known for many years as a war goddess, she helped prepare men for the fighting ahead and provided them with the necessary tools and supplies.

She was unlike other gods and goddesses from ancient Greek tales who thought anything was worth a fight. Goddess Athena believed that people should only go to war as a last resort and only if they fought for a noble or just cause.

In later years, scholars associated her with both Hestia and Artemis. They also referred to her as Parthenos, which means virgin. Not only did she never marry, but she never took a lover either. Many today believe that the name of the Parthenon comes from the term used to describe her virginity. Citizens chose this name to honor the sexual modesty she had. They believed that her virginity paved the way for other women.

Outside of Athens

Though usually associated with Athens, Athena had followers in other cities. Known as panhellenic cults, these groups consisted of women who followed traditional rites. Most of her followers were young women who believed in socializing with others both in their hometowns and other cities.

While some used these events in the hopes of meeting a suitable man for marriage and citizenship, others simply wanted to make friends and connect with others. Her cults established several sanctuaries in her honor.

One of those sanctuaries is the Spartan Acropolis, which has an epithet dedicated to her. Originally made from bronze to show her connection to metal workers, locals later replaced it. The acropolis also has large bronze and terracotta bells.

Athena Polias is another dedicated to her, which Pytheos of Priene designed. Alexander the Great was on hand to dedicate the temple. An inscription that bears his words is now in the archives of the British Museum. This museum and others also have many sculptures of the goddess.

Other Epithets

As one of the most famous Greek goddess figures, Athena has multiple epithets such as Polias, which shows that she was the protector of Athens. She earned the Ergane name to reflect her role as the helper of artisans. When Orestes faced charges of killing his mother, Athena served as the judge who oversaw his case.

After finding him not guilty, she became known as Areia. There were others who simply referred to her as the goddess. Other epithets used in ancient Greece for her include:

-Hippa, which means equestrian. This refers to the bridle and her similar inventions.

-Aethyia is the name given to her by followers who lived in Megara

-Hygieia, which means health as she was a healthy woman.

Many of the descriptions of Athena come from Homer. He described her as a beautiful woman with bright or gleaming eyes.

Later translations changed this to mean her eyes were gray or blue and green. Historians believe that she likely earned her association with owls due to his description as it showed that she had the same type of face.

Others believe this association came from the artwork that shows her holding an owl in her hand. Not only did the owl become the Athenian mascot, but it also became associated with knowledge.

Athena appeared in the Odyssey as well as Homeric Hymns. Hesiod mentioned her in Theogony where he gave her an epithet that meant born in Triton. A popular myth claims that after Zeus abandoned her, Athena wandered the world and found Triton.

Triton took her in as his own child and raised her with Pallas, his biological daughter. This led to some questioning whether who her father was, but most now claim that she was the daughter of Zeus and the adopted daughter of Triton.

Early myths also use the terms third born and triple born to describe her. This can refer to the fact that she was the third child Zeus had.

Though she did not have a mother, the terms may refer to the idea that it took both her father and Metis as well as herself for the goddess to come into the world. A later legend claimed that the terms came from the idea that three necessary things vital to human life all came from the goddess.

Birth of Athena

There are many legends surrounding her birth, but most claim that she was the third child born to Zeus and that she had no mother. The most common legend claims that she came into the world as an adult and sprang from his head.

Another story claims that the Greek god worked with the goddess of counsel, a woman named Metis. She was pregnant with Athena when Zeus swallowed the women, which led to her coming from him.

Almost all stories and legends say that she was his favorite child and that he loved her more than his other children. The Iliad states that she was his favorite because she was the only one he birthed.

Yet another version of her birth claims that Zeus and Metis had a relationship that led to marriage. When he learned she was pregnant, the god worried that he would lose his position to her due to an old prophecy.

This prophecy claimed that any children born to the women would be smarter and stronger than their father. He swallowed her not knowing that she was already pregnant with his child.

There is also a story that says Metis was an unwilling partner and tried multiple things to escape the god but eventually became a victim to his wraith.

Legend says that the god had several other wives before settling down with Hera. He developed a headache so bad that he begged someone to cut open his head to relieve his pain. Stories dispute who it was that grabbed the cleaver and ranges from Hermes to Ares.

Athena burst forth and was such a beautiful sight that grown men dropped to their knees in front of her. Helios was so impressed with her beauty that he came to a complete stop in the middle of the sky.

Unlike his daughter Artemis who was the goddess of the outdoors and often shown as wild and unruly, Athena was more civilized and spent much of her time in urban areas. She did not have much of a relationship with her family.

Some say that Hera disliked her because she served as a reminder that another woman had his child. Others say that she loved the new woman as if she was her own daughter.

She also had a complicated relationship with Ares, especially in regard to war. While Ares had a blood lust and would fight for any cause, she believed in only fighting for causes she believed in and had merit.

This also made her a better fighter in battles because she could keep a clear head. Her victories led to her adopting a breastplate that showed her commitment to combat and the heroic ideal.

She eventually became such a strong fighter that others turned to her for advice before battles. One legend claims that she and Poseidon had a deal where they would each grant the other a favor. When she needed his help, he rose from the sea and created a saltwater well to help her people.

Pallas

Pallas is a Greek word that has several different meanings. It can mean someone who holds and uses a weapon or a young woman. Legend says that Pallas was the close friend and adopted sister of Athena after Triton adopted her.

The two women held a sparring match as a fun way to see who was stronger, but an accident led to Pallas's death. Athena was so upset that she began using the young woman's name in her honor.

A different version of the story claims that Pallas as a giant or a Gorgon. Goddess Athena traveled to his region and fought with him. When she won, she turned his skin into a cloak that she wore to show others of her victory.

There are also legends that claim this was one of the names given to her father. In this version, they fought to the death. She had a cloak made from his skin to show that she was the champion.

Most historians believe that the first legend is the oldest. She had a statue built and added to the Trojan Acropolis that showed her as her dead friend. Locals viewed the statue as a talisman and believed that it had mystical powers.

Legend said that no one could destroy the city as long as her statue was there. During the Trojan War, Cassandra hoped to save the statue and refused to leave its side. Ajax the Lesser carried her away from the statue, which infuriated Athena so much that she released a storm that nearly wiped out the soldiers.

The Dark Side

The Greek goddess also has a connection to Medusa. Legend says that she was a young woman who followed Athena and worked in her temple in Athens. Poseidon was so obsessed with her that he ignored her vow of chastity and brutally raped her in the temple.

Athena was so upset at what he did to both the young woman and her temple that she transformed Medusa into the classic mythical creature with snakes for hair who could turn men to stone.

Her dark side also appears in a poem written by Callimachus. Called Hymn 5, it tells the story of the Greek goddess bathing in secret on Mount Helicon. Tiresias, who was the son of one of her close friends, spotted her in the spring by accident and attempted to flee.

She was so upset at the thought of him seeing her naked that she turned him blind. Even when her friend begged her to reverse her decision, she refused. She instead gave the young man the gifts of seeing the future and communicating with birds.

There are also stories of her taking men to Mount Olympus for judgment. Athena only did so when she felt she couldn't deliver judgment. She would take the men directly to Zeus. Some claim she had no concerns over what happened next.

Facts about Athena

Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of Ares.

She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus's head, full-grown and clothed in armor.

She was Zeus's favorite child.

The Feast of Bath was a ritual held in honor of the goddess in Panathenaea. It took place at the end of the season and ran for five days. The festival required the removal of her clothing from a statue built in her honor. After washing the clothing and purifying the status, guests would take part in various crafts.

Bryn Mawr College has a large sculpture of her on display as she is a patron of universities.

Phi Delta Theta calls her their official goddess and uses an owl as their mascot in her honor.

In addition to the owl, her other official mascot is the olive tree.

Legend says that Athena invented the flute but never attempted to play it.

Though she never had any children, she adopted Ericthonius who was both a serpent and a man. She kept him safely tucked in a chest.

She appeared on a silver coin, which is one of the earliest depictions of her from around 380 BC.

Many refer to her as the patron goddess of heroes and those who act heroically.

Among the crafts that she enjoyed doing include weaving and spinning.

Not only did she enter the world fully grown, but she also wore clothing and armor.

A famous sculpture shows her standing with one had on Nike to show their victorious nature.

Where did Athena Live? What is Athena's Roman name?

Known for protecting civilized life, she was the Goddess of the City.

According to some sources, Athena was praised for her compassion and generosity.

Athena was a patron of the arts and crafts, especially when it came to spinning and weaving.

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

Athena served as a guardian of Athens, where the Parthenon served as her temple.

Her most important festival was the Panathenaea, which was celebrated annually at Athens.

She is referred to in poetry as "gray-eyed."

The owl was her bird, and the olive tree was hers.

Athena reared Ericthonius, son of Hephaestus. He was half man, half serpent. Athena put the infant in a chest and gave it to others to watch over, forbidding them to open it. When they did, she drove them mad as punishment.

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

Hermes and Athena went to the aid of Perseus in his quest to kill Medusa. Looking directly at Medusa would turn any man to stone, so Athena provided Perseus with her polished shield. Using it, he was able to see Medusa as if looking in a mirror. Again, Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa's head with his sword.

Hera and Athena fought against Paris in the Trojan War since he had awarded the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

The sacred image of Athena, a wood statue called the Palladium, protected the Trojans as long as they had it.

Athena Trivia

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Athena * Facts about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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Athena facts, information and stories from ancient Greek mythology. Learn about the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Athena.

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Roman poet  who write the poems Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses. He was very influential.

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Ovid, Latin in full Publius Ovidius Naso, (born March 20, 43 bce, Sulmo, Roman Empire [now Sulmona, Italy]-died 17 ce, Tomis, Moesia [now Constanṭa, Romania]), Roman poet noted especially for his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses. His verse had immense influence both by its imaginative interpretations of Classical myth and as an example of supreme technical accomplishment.

Why is Ovid important?

What did Ovid write?

What was Ovid's education like?

What was Ovid's occupation?

Why was Ovid banished?

Life

Publius Ovidius Naso was, like most Roman men of letters, a provincial. He was born at Sulmo, a small town about 90 miles (140 km) east of Rome. The main events of his life are described in an autobiographical poem in the Tristia ( Sorrows). His family was old and respectable, and sufficiently well-to-do for his father to be able to send him and his elder brother to Rome to be educated. At Rome he embarked, under the best teachers of the day, on the study of rhetoric. Ovid was thought to have the makings of a good orator, but in spite of his father's admonitions he neglected his studies for the verse writing that came so naturally to him.

As a member of the Roman knightly class (whose rank lay between the commons and the Senate), Ovid was marked by his position, and intended by his father, for an official career. First, however, he spent some time at Athens (then a favourite finishing school for young men of the upper classes) and traveled in Asia Minor and Sicily. Afterward he dutifully held some minor judicial posts, the first steps on the official ladder, but he soon decided that public life did not suit him. From then on he abandoned his official career to cultivate poetry and the society of poets.

Ovid's first work, the Amores ( The Loves), had an immediate success and was followed, in rapid succession, by the Epistolae Heroidum, or Heroides ( Epistles of the Heroines), the Medicamina faciei ("Cosmetics"; Eng. trans. The Art of Beauty), the Ars amatoria ( The Art of Love), and the Remedia amoris ( Remedies for Love), all reflecting the brilliant, sophisticated, pleasure-seeking society in which he moved. The common theme of those early poems is love and amorous intrigue, but it is unlikely that they mirror Ovid's own life very closely. Of his three marriages the first two were short-lived, but his third wife, of whom he speaks with respect and affection, remained constant to him until his death. At Rome Ovid enjoyed the friendship and encouragement of Marcus Valerius Messalla, the patron of a circle that included the poet Albius Tibullus, whom Ovid knew only for a short time before his untimely death. Ovid's other friends included the poets Horace and Sextus Propertius and the grammarian Hyginus.

Having won an assured position among the poets of the day, Ovid turned to more-ambitious projects, the Metamorphoses and the Fasti ("Calendar"; Eng. trans. Ovid's Fasti). The former was nearly complete, the latter half finished, when his life was shattered by a sudden and crushing blow. In 8 ce the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis (or Tomi; near modern Constanṭa, Romania) on the Black Sea. The reasons for Ovid's exile will never be fully known. Ovid specifies two, his Ars amatoria and an offense which he does not describe beyond insisting that it was an indiscretion ( error), not a crime ( scelus). Of the many explanations that have been offered of that mysterious indiscretion, the most probable is that he had become an involuntary accomplice in the adultery of Augustus's granddaughter, the younger Julia, who also was banished at the same time. In 2 bce her mother, the elder Julia, had similarly been banished for immorality, and the Ars amatoria had appeared while that scandal was still fresh in the public mind. Those coincidences, together with the tone of Ovid's reference to his offense, suggest that he behaved in some way that was damaging both to Augustus's program of moral reform and to the honour of the imperial family. Since his punishment, which was the milder form of banishment called relegation, did not entail confiscation of property or loss of citizenship, his wife, who was well-connected, remained in Rome to protect his interests and to intercede for him.

Exile at Tomis, a port originally settled by Greeks on the extreme confines of the Roman Empire, was a cruel punishment for a man of Ovid's temperament and habits. He never ceased to hope, if not for pardon, at least for mitigation of sentence, keeping up in the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto ("Letters from the Black Sea") a ceaseless stream of pathetic pleas, chiefly through his wife and friends, to the emperor. But neither Augustus nor his successor Tiberius relented, and there are hints in the later poems that Ovid was even becoming reconciled to his fate when death released him.

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Ovid | Biography, Metamorphoses, & Facts

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Ovid, Latin in full Publius Ovidius Naso, (born March 20, 43 bce, Sulmo, Roman Empire [now Sulmona, Italy]-died 17 ce, Tomis, Moesia [now Constanṭa, Romania]), Roman poet noted especially for his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses . His verse had immense influence both by its imaginative interpretations of Classical myth and as an example of supreme technical accomplishment.

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Ancient philosopher student of Socrates and taught by Aristotle.

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What was Plato's family like?

Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece-died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers-and Plato himself in certain passages-used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them ( the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.

Life

The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630-560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.

Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters-variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"-and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.

After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408-354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430-367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.

Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417-369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395-c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.

Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508-11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.

Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, " the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.

Dating, editing, translation

Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies ( see below Works individually described).

Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries-by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.

Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances-some of crucial importance-where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.

A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.

In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.

Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.

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Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who produced works of unparalleled influence.

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Another name that the Greeks were called Hellas, Graecia, and Ionia.

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Wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey

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Table of Contents

Why is Homer significant?

Read a brief summary of this topic

Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Although these two great epic poems of ancient Greece have always been attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, little is known of him beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey -so much may be said to be probable. If this assumption is accepted, then Homer must assuredly be one of the greatest of the world's literary artists.

He is also one of the most influential authors in the widest sense, for the two epics provided the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the Classical age and formed the backbone of humane education down to the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity. Indirectly through the medium of Virgil's Aeneid (which was loosely molded after the patterns of the Iliad and the Odyssey), directly through their revival under Byzantine culture from the late 8th century ce onward, and subsequently through their passage into Italy with the Greek scholars who fled westward from the Ottomans, the Homeric epics had a profound impact on the Renaissance culture of Italy. Since then the proliferation of translations has helped to make them the most important poems of the Classical European tradition.

It was probably through their impact on Classical Greek culture itself that the Iliad and the Odyssey most subtly affected Western standards and ideas. The Greeks regarded the great epics as something more than works of literature; they knew much of them by heart, and they valued them not only as a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism but also as an ancient source of moral and even practical instruction.

Literary Favorites: Fact or Fiction?

Early references

Implicit references to Homer and quotations from the poems date to the middle of the 7th century bce. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus in the 7th century and Sappho and others in the early 6th adapted Homeric phraseology and metre to their own purposes and rhythms. At the same time scenes from the epics became popular in works of art. The pseudo-Homeric "Hymn to Apollo of Delos," probably of late 7th-century composition, claimed to be the work of "a blind man who dwells in rugged Chios," a reference to a tradition about Homer himself. The idea that Homer had descendants known as "Homeridae," and that they had taken over the preservation and propagation of his poetry, goes back at least to the early 6th century bce. Indeed, it was not long before a kind of Homeric scholarship began: Theagenes of Rhegium in southern Italy toward the end of the same century wrote the first of many allegorizing interpretations. By the 5th century biographical fictions were well under way; the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heracleitus of Ephesus made use of a trivial legend of Homer's death-that it was caused by chagrin at not being able to solve some boys' riddle about catching lice-and the concept of a contest of quotations between Homer and Hesiod (after Homer the most ancient of Greek poets) may have been initiated in the Sophistic tradition. The historian Herodotus assigned the formulation of Greek theology to Homer and Hesiod and claimed that they could have lived no more than 400 years before his own time, the 5th century bce. This should be contrasted with the superficial assumption, popular in many circles throughout antiquity, that Homer must have lived not much later than the Trojan War about which he sang.

The general belief that Homer was a native of Ionia (the central part of the western seaboard of Asia Minor) seems a reasonable conjecture for the poems themselves are in predominantly Ionic dialect. Although Smyrna and Chios early began competing for the honour (the poet Pindar, early in the 5th century bce, associated Homer with both), and others joined in, no authenticated local memory survived anywhere of someone who, oral poet or not, must have been remarkable in his time. The absence of hard facts puzzled but did not deter the Greeks; the fictions that had begun even before the 5th century bce were developed in the Alexandrian era in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce (when false scholarship as well as true abounded) into fantastic pseudobiographies, and these were further refined by derivative scholars under the Roman Empire. The longest to have survived purports to be by Herodotus himself; but it is quite devoid of objective truth.

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Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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The roots for Greek religion in their early years were the gods Zeus, Dyaus, and Jupiter.

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Greek religion, religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Hellenes. Greek religion is not the same as Greek mythology, which is concerned with traditional tales, though the two are closely interlinked. Curiously, for a people so religiously minded, the Greeks had no word for religion itself; the nearest terms were eusebeia ("piety") and threskeia ("cult").

Although its origins may be traced to the remotest eras, Greek religion in its developed form lasted more than a thousand years, from the time of Homer (probably 9th or 8th century bce) to the reign of the emperor Julian (4th century ce). During that period its influence spread as far west as Spain, east to the Indus River, and throughout the Mediterranean world. Its effect was most marked on the Romans, who identified their deities with those of the Greeks. Under Christianity, Greek heroes and even deities survived as saints, while the rival madonnas of southern European communities reflected the independence of local cults. The rediscovery of Greek literature during the Renaissance and, above all, the novel perfection of Classical sculpture produced a revolution in taste that had far-reaching effects on Christian religious art. The most-striking characteristic of Greek religion was the belief in a multiplicity of anthropomorphic deities under one supreme god. Priests simply looked after cults; they did not constitute a clergy, and there were no sacred books.

The sole requirements for the Greeks were to believe that the gods existed and to perform ritual and sacrifice, through which the gods received their due. To deny the existence of a deity was to risk reprisals, from the deity or from other mortals. The list of avowed atheists is brief. But if a Greek went through the motions of piety, he risked little, since no attempt was made to enforce orthodoxy, a religious concept almost incomprehensible to the Greeks. The large corpus of myths concerned with gods, heroes, and rituals embodied the worldview of Greek religion and remains its legacy. ( See Greek mythology.) It should be noted that the myths varied over time and that, within limits, a writer-e.g., a Greek tragedian-could alter a myth by changing not only the role played by the gods in it but also the evaluation of the gods' actions.

From the later 6th century bce onward, myths and gods were subject to rational criticism on ethical or other grounds. In those circumstances it is easy to overlook the fact that most Greeks "believed" in their gods in roughly the modern sense of the term and that they prayed in a time of crisis not merely to the "relevant" deity but to any deity on whose aid they had established a claim by sacrifice. To that end, each Greek polis had a series of public festivals throughout the year that were intended to ensure the aid of all the gods who were thus honoured. They reminded the gods of services rendered and asked for a quid pro quo. Particularly during times of crises, the Greeks, like the Romans, were often willing to petition deities borrowed from other cultures.

History

The roots of Greek religion

The study of a religion's history includes the study of the history of those who espoused it, together with their spiritual, ethical, political, and intellectual experiences. Greek religion as it is currently understood probably resulted from the mingling of religious beliefs and practices between the incoming Greek-speaking peoples who arrived from the north during the 2nd millennium bce and the indigenous inhabitants whom they called Pelasgi. The incomers' pantheon was headed by the Indo-European sky god variously known as Zeus (Greek), Dyaus (Indian), or Jupiter (Roman). But there was also a Cretan sky god, whose birth and death were celebrated in rituals and myths quite different from those of the incomers. The incomers applied the name of Zeus to his Cretan counterpart. In addition, there was a tendency, fostered but not necessarily originated by Homer and Hesiod, for major Greek deities to be given a home on Mount Olympus. Once established there in a conspicuous position, the Olympians came to be identified with local deities and to be assigned as consorts to the local god or goddess.

An unintended consequence (since the Greeks were monogamous) was that Zeus in particular became markedly polygamous. (Zeus already had a consort when he arrived in the Greek world and took Hera, herself a major goddess in Argos, as another.) Hesiod used-or sometimes invented-the family links among the deities, traced out over several generations, to explain the origin and present condition of the universe. At some date, Zeus and other deities were identified locally with heroes and heroines from the Homeric poems and called by such names as Zeus Agamemnon. The Pelasgian and the Greek strands of the religion of the Greeks can sometimes be disentangled, but the view held by some scholars that any belief related to fertility must be Pelasgian, on the grounds that the Pelasgi were agriculturalists while the Greeks were nomadic pastoralists and warriors, seems somewhat simplistic. Pastoralists and warriors certainly require fertility in their herds-not to mention in their own number.

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Greek religion | Beliefs, History, & Facts

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Greek religion, the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Hellenes.

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He wrote two of the most famous Epics which were The Odyssey and The Iliad.

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed. In conjunction with Hesiod, Homer acts as a great pool of information for the Greeks about their gods. Homer is the earliest poet in Western culture whose works have survived intact.

The Iliad is composed of 15,693 hexameters (lines of verse), and is divided into 24 books corresponding to each letter of the Greek alphabet - alpha to omega, a system that was already in place by the time of Herodotus. The Iliad traces the anger of Achilles ("Sing Muse, of the wrath of Achilles" Iliad.1.1) and takes place over 51 days during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. The poem takes its name from the city of Troy, which is also known as Ilium.

Achilles, respect the gods and have pity on me, remembering your own father.
Priam to Achilles

Highlights include: the lengthy Catalogue of Ships of the Greek invading forces, the death of Patroclus and the description of him being carried away by the twins Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), the description of the shield of Achilles, the reconciliation between Achilles and Priam, perhaps one of the most moving scenes in Western literature, and several set-piece battles between pairs of Greek heroes, most famously the fight between Achilles and Hektor. In all of these events the intervention of the Greek gods, especially Athena on the side of the Greeks and Apollo for the Trojans, is instrumental in the outcome of all of the human actions during the war.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey is composed of 12,109 hexameters and is also divided into 24 in the same manner as the Iliad. Whereas war and anger were the themes of the Iliad, the Odyssey takes place after the Trojan War has been won by the Achaeans, as the Greeks are referred to by Homer. The Odyssey is concerned with the nostos (journey) of the Greek hero Odysseus (the protagonist after whom the poem is named) and the troubles that he faces on his way home from Troy, foiled on his way by godly interventions, especially those of Poseidon. Highlights include Odysseus' famous encounters with the Sirens, with the Cyclops Polythemus, and the slaying of his wife Penelope's suitors upon his return to Ithaca.

We handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it in his eye till the blood boiled up round the burning wood.
Odysseus on blinding the Cyclops

Unlike Hesiod, who mentions his family and life within his works, this is not really the case for Homer, and since writing is generally believed to have started around 700 BCE, there is no contemporary source on him either, but there are various later Hellenistic and even Roman descriptions of his life (and also the Contest of Homer and Hesiod). Because the dialect of Homer's works is composed in an archaic form of Ionian Greek and he displays a familiarity with the geography of Asia Minor in the Iliad, there could be some element of truth to claims that Homer's birthplace was Symrna, Chios, or Ios.

A Single Homer?

There have always been debates as to the 'person' of Homer: many places claim to be his birthplace. It is even debated whether or not the two great works were written by the same person: the ancients called those who thought this the chorizontes; the separatists. Some even doubt if one single person was behind these works, and that leads to 'the Homeric Question', the idea that the poems are a compilation of layers rolled into one story, which could explain inconsistencies in the narrative and the formulaic language used. According to this school of thought, the poems would most likely have been sung episodically by rhapsodes. This idea was first argued by F. A. Wolf in his 1795 CE work Prolegomena ad Homerum.

Nevertheless, whether Homer was a 'she', a 'he', or a 'they' does not diminish the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this can be seen by the fact that the two poems have come down to us in a continuous tradition. The poems were first compiled, organised, and edited under the Athenian Peisistratus, but the Greek text that we have survives from such Alexandrian scholars as Zenodotus and Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus and their comments on the texts. The first printed editions of Homer were in 1488 CE in Florence by Chalcondyles of Athens. Homer's work was hugely influential on Greek culture, and scenes from his works appeared in Greek sculpture, on Greek pottery, and in Greek tragedy and comedy. He was studied as part of Greek education, and the legends within his work would influence Hellenistic culture, Roman culture, and far beyond, so that Homer's lasting legacy is that his works are still studied to this day.

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed.

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Plato is a ancient Greek philosopher.

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What was Plato's family like?

Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece-died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers-and Plato himself in certain passages-used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them ( the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.

Life

The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630-560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.

Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters-variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"-and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.

After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408-354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430-367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.

Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417-369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395-c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.

Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508-11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.

Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, " the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.

Dating, editing, translation

Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies ( see below Works individually described).

Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries-by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.

Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances-some of crucial importance-where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.

A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.

In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.

Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.

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Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who produced works of unparalleled influence.

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Homer was a poet who is believed to write

# data[].attributes.body
Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, founder of the Academy, most known fo being the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What was Plato's family like?

Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece-died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers-and Plato himself in certain passages-used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them ( the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.

Life

The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630-560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.

Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters-variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"-and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.

After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408-354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430-367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.

Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417-369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395-c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.

Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508-11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.

Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, " the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.

Dating, editing, translation

Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies ( see below Works individually described).

Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries-by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.

Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances-some of crucial importance-where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.

A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.

In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.

Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.

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Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who produced works of unparalleled influence.

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Moussaka, gyro, and Souvlaki are three key dishes in Greece

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I am the victim of my own aggressive order at a Greek takeaway restaurant. An extra helping of roasted potatoes with lemon seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly as they accompanied a small vat of spit-roasted beef and lamb served with a surprisingly decent tzatziki, a sauce made from yogurt, shredded cucumbers, garlic, salt, olive oil, and herbs. I like these potatoes, and they're a dish that's basically ubiquitous when it comes to Greek-American food. But really, how reflective of true Greek cuisine are they?

Most people's familiarity with Grecian cuisine is likely limited to a few key dishes. Souvlaki, which is basically pieces of marinated meat grilled on a skewer, is popular in many Greek-owned pizza joints and diners, as is the gyro (correctly pronounced 'yeer-oh'), which is typically a combination of spiced and seasoned ground beef and lamb (or chicken cutlets) packed into a cylinder-like shape, cooked on a rotating vertical spit, and shaved off on-demand. Moussaka, a casserole made from layered ground meat, eggplant and/or potato, tomato, and bechamel is easy to find, as are dolmas (grape leaves stuffed with rice and sometimes meat), and a range of other dips which show up in meze platters. And, of course, saganaki, that crazy flaming cheese everyone loves.

Beyond the baker's dozen of Greek dishes you can most easily find in the States lies a cuisine with more nuance than a lot of people are familiar with. This is something Argiro Barbarigou speaks about with passion and insistence. A chef and restaurateur in both Greece and the U.S., Barbarigou is one of the most prominent celebrity chefs in Greece. She also pushes for some of the best aspects of Greek food to be more widely recognized: freshness and seasonality.

"While a broad generalization, Greek food in America is far richer and can be difficult to stomach," she says. The American version of moussaka, for example, relies heavily on the addition of flour and butter to form a very heavy bechamel, and it's not uncommon to find the dish resting in a heavy pool of olive oil. In Greece, moussaka is much lighter and care is taken to not overcook the vegetables in the dish.

Barbarigou says the same type of issues plague pastitsio, a dish where pasta such as ziti is layered with lamb and tomatoes. The version from Greece is less likely to be swamped by cream or the over-application of cheese, whereas the American iterations are closer to a heavy lasagna.

Seasonality also plays a significant role in making Greek food lighter and healthier than we might be used to. "In winter, dolmas are made with cabbage while in the summer with vine leaves," Barbarigou says. Gemista is a dish where vegetables are hollowed out and filled with rice, and sometimes meat. In the winter the vessel may be onions or potatoes, while in summer it will be tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants.

Eleni Domazaki sits on the board of directors for a large food producer based in Greece named Creta Farms, which makes products like deli meats and frozen foods. She says, "when you eat the herbs and when you eat the food that's raised in the Cretan Greek lands, it's super different."

Americans are used to thinking of Greek cuisine as being meat-heavy, and that's not a completely unfair characterization. Barbarigou says dishes like kokkinisto, a thickened stew made from beef and vegetables are worth knowing and seeking out, as is giouvetsi, a baked dish of meat (such as beef or lamb) with orzo, spices, and tomato sauce.

Both Domazaki and Barbarigou convey how heavily Greek cuisine relies on the application of olive oil, herbs, and wild greens. Fresh vegetables and legumes are also a big deal and form the basis for many dishes, including fasolada, a soup that's said to be Greece's national dish, which is made from dried (and reconstituted) white beans and vegetables such as carrots, onions, and tomatoes. Revythada, chickpeas cooked in water and herbs, and fava beans, are two simple but extremely flavorful everyday foods.

Barbarigou says that the Aegean islands, which includes Crete, Santorini, and Mykonos, also have their own culinary characteristics. "The diet consists primarily of a large variety of seafood cooked in different ways, lots of legumes, mainly chickpeas and fava, as well as lots of other fresh ingredients such as wild artichokes, wild greens, asparagus, carob flour, and thyme honey."

Michael Coll, the wine director for Nerai restaurant in New York City, says Greek wines also play a large role in the Grecian diet. "It's one of the most ancient wine-producing countries, and it's also relatively modern in regards to the new wines of Greece." He says that Greek vintners used to have a "co-op mentality" where quantity was much more important than quality. Now it's more common to find producers focusing on a particular grape, or a particular type of wine, which has led to better quality. He says, "people generally look at Greece and trust the white wines more than the red wines, but there are some great red wines as well."

According to Coll, the Aegean islands, as with the Greek mainland, have a number of microclimates which influence horticulture. "If you go up through the coast there are all these valleys and mountains that come up really quickly. So you have the valley microclimates and you have the mountain microclimates. And the islands are all very different." Coll describes how Santorini's dry, volcanic environment creates very different conditions as opposed to the clay of clay of Crete, which helps to keep things cool. The salt and wind from the Aegean islands also influences wine development in a way that's distinct from the conditions of the mainland.

Barbarigou says the best form of Greek foods though are "recipes that have been made in the same way over thousands of years with the same pure and seasonal ingredients, always with Greek olive oil, wild herbs, miraculous legumes and seasonal vegetables." That's not impossible to find stateside, but we're more used to grilled meats and heavy sauces, not the vibrant and light cuisine of Greece itself.

About the author

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I am the victim of my own aggressive order at a Greek takeaway restaurant. An extra helping of roasted potatoes with lemon seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly as they accompanied a small vat of spit-roasted beef and lamb served with a surprisingly decent tzatziki, a sauce made from yogurt, shredded cucumbers, garlic, salt, olive oil, and herbs.

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In ancient Greece, people ate food such as bread, olive oil, and fish.

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Sacrifice and Greek food

Food, for people in Ancient Greece, was what separated people from animals, and from the gods. Gods didn't need to eat, and people did. Animals ate their food raw, but people cooked their food and were civilized. Civilized Greek people only ate fresh meat if it had been sacrificed to a god, or had been hunted in the wild. Like other Mediterranean people, though, Greek people ate a lot of fish and shellfish, octopus and squid (none of which had to be sacrificed to a god).

Bread, wine, Dionysos and Persephone

People thought of the god Dionysos as being part of the wine they drank, and they thought of Persephone as being part of their bread.

Bread and wine, with olive oil, and fish and shellfish, made up most of what people ate in Ancient Greece. They liked cheese when they could get it.

Did ancient Greek food include vegetables?

Yes, people also ate a lot of vegetables, especially lentils, chickpeas, green peas, and other beans. They also ate cabbage, parsnips and onions, garlic and leeks. They ate apples, figs, and almonds.

Chickens come to Greece

Greek people probably didn't have chickens, or chicken eggs, until around 500 BC - so when Socrates says to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius, he's thinking of something new and cool. Greek people started to import black pepper from India about the same time.

Desserts in ancient Greece

Most people only had meat on holidays. But people still liked cakes with honey, and yogurt with honey and walnuts in it, for dessert. They also ate a lot of figs, apples, and pears, both fresh and dried.

Did you find out what you needed about ancient Greek food? Let us know in the comments!

Bibliography and further reading about food in ancient Greece:

Food and Feasts in Ancient Greece, by Imogen Dawson (1995). - both a general discussion of how food was used in Ancient Greece, and some recipes.

Spend the Day in Ancient Greece : Projects and Activities that Bring the Past to Life, by Linda Honan (1998). Also for kids, with recipes for a Greek feast.

Food in the Ancient World A-Z, by Andrew Dalby (2003). Not a kids' book, but pretty easy going.

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Ancient Greek food - History of Food - Ancient Greece

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Ancient Greek food depended a lot on fish and bread, olive oil and wine. Greek people thought food separated people from gods: people cooked their food and ate it, but gods lived on smoke and nectar from sacrifices. Find out more about the history of food in ancient Greece.

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he wrote the odyssey and the Iliad

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Synopsis

The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on the coast of Asia Minor. He is famous for the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which have had an enormous effect on Western culture, but very little is known about their alleged author.

The Mystery of Homer

Homer is a mystery. The Greek epic poet credited with the enduring epic tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey is an enigma insofar as actual facts of his life go. Some scholars believe him to be one man; others think these iconic stories were created by a group. A variation on the group idea stems from the fact that storytelling was an oral tradition and Homer compiled the stories, then recited them to memory.

Homer's style, whoever he was, falls more in the category of minstrel poet or balladeer, as opposed to a cultivated poet who is the product of a fervent literary moment, such as a Virgil or a Shakespeare. The stories have repetitive elements, almost like a chorus or refrain, which suggests a musical element. However, Homer's works are designated as epic rather than lyric poetry, which was originally recited with lyre in hand, much in the same vein as spoken-word performances.

All this speculation about who he was has inevitably led to what is known as the Homeric Question-whether he actually existed at all. This is often considered to be the greatest literary mystery.

When He Was Born

Much speculation surrounds when Homer was born, because of the dearth of real information about him. Guesses at his birth date range from 750 BC all the way back to 1200 BC, the latter because The Iliad encompasses the story of the Trojan War, so some scholars have thought it fit to put the poet and chronicler nearer to the time of that actual event. But others believe the poetic style of his work indicates a much later period. Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-425 BC), often called the father of history, placed Homer several centuries before himself, around 850 BC.

Part of the problem is that Homer lived before a chronological dating system was in place. The Olympic Games of classical Greece marked an epoch, with 776 BC as a starting point by which to measure out four-year periods for the event. In short, it is difficult to give someone a birth date when he was born before there was a calendar.

Where He Was Born

Once again, the exact location of Homer's birth cannot be pinpointed, although that doesn't stop scholars from trying. It has been identified as Ionia, Smyrna or, at any rate, on the coast of Asia Minor or the island of Chios. But seven cities lay claim to Homer as their native son.

There is some basis for some of these claims, however. The dialect that The Iliad and The Odyssey are written in is considered Asiatic Greek, specifically Ionic. That fact, paired with frequent mentions of local phenomena such as strong winds blowing from the northwest from the direction of Thrace, suggests, scholars feel, a familiarity with that region that could only mean Homer came from there.

The dialect helps narrow down his lifespan by coinciding it with the development and usage of language in general, but The Iliad and The Odyssey were so popular that this particular dialect became the norm for much of Greek literature going forward.

What He Was Like

Virtually every biographical aspect ascribed to Homer is derived entirely from his poems. Homer is thought to have been blind, based solely on a character in The Odyssey, a blind poet/minstrel called Demodokos. A long disquisition on how Demodokos was welcomed into a gathering and regaled the audience with music and epic tales of conflict and heroes to much praise has been interpreted as Homer's hint as to what his own life was like. As a result, many busts and statues have been carved of Homer with thick curly hair and beard and sightless eyes.

"Homer and Sophocles saw clearly, felt keenly, and refrained from much," wrote Lane Cooper in The Greek Genius and Its Influence: Select Essays and Extracts in 1917, ascribing an emotional life to the writer. But he wasn't the first, nor was he the last. Countless attempts to recreate the life and personality of the author from the content of his epic poems have occupied writers for centuries.

The Iliad and The Odyssey

Homer's two epic poems have become archetypal road maps in world mythology. The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed. Even if The Iliad itself seems unfamiliar, the story of the siege of Troy, the Trojan War and Paris' kidnapping of Helen, the world's most beautiful woman, are all familiar characters or scenarios. Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem.

The Odyssey picks up after the fall of Troy. Further controversy about authorship springs from the differing styles of the two long narrative poems, indicating they were composed a century apart, while other historians claim only decades -the more formal structure of The Iliad is attributed to a poet at the height of his powers, whereas the more colloquial, novelistic approach in The Odyssey is attributed to an elderly Homer.

Homer enriched his descriptive story with liberal use of simile and metaphor, which has inspired a long path of writers behind him. His structuring device was to start in the middle- in medias res - and then fill in the missing information via remembrances.

The two narrative poems pop up throughout modern literature: Homer's The Odyssey has parallels in James Joyce's Ulysses, and his tale of Achilles in The Iliad is echoed in J.R.R. Tolkein's The Fall of Gondolin. Even the Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou? makes use of The Odyssey.

Other works have been attributed to Homer over the centuries, most notably the Homeric Hymns, but in the end only the two epic works remain enduringly his.

Legacy

"Plato tells us that in his time many believed that Homer was the educator of all Greece. Since then, Homer's influence has spread far beyond the frontiers of Hellas [Greece]...." wrote Werner Jaeger in Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. He was right. The Iliad and The Odyssey have provided not only seeds but fertilizer for almost all the other arts and sciences in Western culture. For the Greeks, Homer was a godfather of their national culture, chronicling its mythology and collective memory in rich rhythmic tales that have permeated the collective imagination.

Homer's real life may remain a mystery, but the very real impact of his works continues to illuminate our world today.

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Although very little is known about the life of Greek poet Homer, credited with being the first to write down the epic stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey, the impact of his tales continue to reverberate through Western culture.

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the greatest of all epic poets and and wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed. In conjunction with Hesiod, Homer acts as a great pool of information for the Greeks about their gods. Homer is the earliest poet in Western culture whose works have survived intact.

The Iliad is composed of 15,693 hexameters (lines of verse), and is divided into 24 books corresponding to each letter of the Greek alphabet - alpha to omega, a system that was already in place by the time of Herodotus. The Iliad traces the anger of Achilles ("Sing Muse, of the wrath of Achilles" Iliad.1.1) and takes place over 51 days during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. The poem takes its name from the city of Troy, which is also known as Ilium.

Achilles, respect the gods and have pity on me, remembering your own father.
Priam to Achilles

Highlights include: the lengthy Catalogue of Ships of the Greek invading forces, the death of Patroclus and the description of him being carried away by the twins Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), the description of the shield of Achilles, the reconciliation between Achilles and Priam, perhaps one of the most moving scenes in Western literature, and several set-piece battles between pairs of Greek heroes, most famously the fight between Achilles and Hektor. In all of these events the intervention of the Greek gods, especially Athena on the side of the Greeks and Apollo for the Trojans, is instrumental in the outcome of all of the human actions during the war.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey is composed of 12,109 hexameters and is also divided into 24 in the same manner as the Iliad. Whereas war and anger were the themes of the Iliad, the Odyssey takes place after the Trojan War has been won by the Achaeans, as the Greeks are referred to by Homer. The Odyssey is concerned with the nostos (journey) of the Greek hero Odysseus (the protagonist after whom the poem is named) and the troubles that he faces on his way home from Troy, foiled on his way by godly interventions, especially those of Poseidon. Highlights include Odysseus' famous encounters with the Sirens, with the Cyclops Polythemus, and the slaying of his wife Penelope's suitors upon his return to Ithaca.

We handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it in his eye till the blood boiled up round the burning wood.
Odysseus on blinding the Cyclops

Unlike Hesiod, who mentions his family and life within his works, this is not really the case for Homer, and since writing is generally believed to have started around 700 BCE, there is no contemporary source on him either, but there are various later Hellenistic and even Roman descriptions of his life (and also the Contest of Homer and Hesiod). Because the dialect of Homer's works is composed in an archaic form of Ionian Greek and he displays a familiarity with the geography of Asia Minor in the Iliad, there could be some element of truth to claims that Homer's birthplace was Symrna, Chios, or Ios.

A Single Homer?

There have always been debates as to the 'person' of Homer: many places claim to be his birthplace. It is even debated whether or not the two great works were written by the same person: the ancients called those who thought this the chorizontes; the separatists. Some even doubt if one single person was behind these works, and that leads to 'the Homeric Question', the idea that the poems are a compilation of layers rolled into one story, which could explain inconsistencies in the narrative and the formulaic language used. According to this school of thought, the poems would most likely have been sung episodically by rhapsodes. This idea was first argued by F. A. Wolf in his 1795 CE work Prolegomena ad Homerum.

Nevertheless, whether Homer was a 'she', a 'he', or a 'they' does not diminish the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this can be seen by the fact that the two poems have come down to us in a continuous tradition. The poems were first compiled, organised, and edited under the Athenian Peisistratus, but the Greek text that we have survives from such Alexandrian scholars as Zenodotus and Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus and their comments on the texts. The first printed editions of Homer were in 1488 CE in Florence by Chalcondyles of Athens. Homer's work was hugely influential on Greek culture, and scenes from his works appeared in Greek sculpture, on Greek pottery, and in Greek tragedy and comedy. He was studied as part of Greek education, and the legends within his work would influence Hellenistic culture, Roman culture, and far beyond, so that Homer's lasting legacy is that his works are still studied to this day.

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Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the and the ; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed.

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They used tambourines to create their own dance rhythm.Also, people learned to play the kithara, which is like a guitar.

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They traveled by land. It was hard because the roads were nothing more than dirt roads. The richer could rent or owned donkeys and the poor rode on donkeys.

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Indroduction to traveling by land in Ancient Greece

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The greeks ate olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese, lots of bread, beans and olives.

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The greeks ate olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese, lots of bread, beans and olives.

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake.

The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

In the Summer months there were plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables to eat and in the winter they ate dried fruit and food they had stored like apples and lentils. As most of the Greeks lived very near the sea, they also ate a lot of fish, squid and shellfish.

fish

The soil by the sea was not so rich as on the plains so the Greeks used irrigation and crop rotation to keep the soil relatively fertile.

In some of the larger Greek city-states, meat could be purchased in cook shops. Meat was rarely eaten as the Greeks felt that just killing and eating a domesticated animal (like goats) was wrong. The Greeks would often sacrifice the meat to the gods first and then might eat some of the meat.

Meat

The Greeks loved their wine which was made from the grapes they grew.

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake. The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

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Greek ate yogurt, rice, and sweets made from honey, nuts, and sesame seeds

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Food in Greece - Greek Food, Greek Cuisine - traditional, popular, dishes, recipe, diet, history, common, rice, famous

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The only things Homer is truly known for are his two epics, The Iliad and the Odyssey.

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Table of Contents

Why is Homer significant?

Read a brief summary of this topic

Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Although these two great epic poems of ancient Greece have always been attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, little is known of him beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey -so much may be said to be probable. If this assumption is accepted, then Homer must assuredly be one of the greatest of the world's literary artists.

He is also one of the most influential authors in the widest sense, for the two epics provided the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the Classical age and formed the backbone of humane education down to the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity. Indirectly through the medium of Virgil's Aeneid (which was loosely molded after the patterns of the Iliad and the Odyssey), directly through their revival under Byzantine culture from the late 8th century ce onward, and subsequently through their passage into Italy with the Greek scholars who fled westward from the Ottomans, the Homeric epics had a profound impact on the Renaissance culture of Italy. Since then the proliferation of translations has helped to make them the most important poems of the Classical European tradition.

It was probably through their impact on Classical Greek culture itself that the Iliad and the Odyssey most subtly affected Western standards and ideas. The Greeks regarded the great epics as something more than works of literature; they knew much of them by heart, and they valued them not only as a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism but also as an ancient source of moral and even practical instruction.

Literary Favorites: Fact or Fiction?

Early references

Implicit references to Homer and quotations from the poems date to the middle of the 7th century bce. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus in the 7th century and Sappho and others in the early 6th adapted Homeric phraseology and metre to their own purposes and rhythms. At the same time scenes from the epics became popular in works of art. The pseudo-Homeric "Hymn to Apollo of Delos," probably of late 7th-century composition, claimed to be the work of "a blind man who dwells in rugged Chios," a reference to a tradition about Homer himself. The idea that Homer had descendants known as "Homeridae," and that they had taken over the preservation and propagation of his poetry, goes back at least to the early 6th century bce. Indeed, it was not long before a kind of Homeric scholarship began: Theagenes of Rhegium in southern Italy toward the end of the same century wrote the first of many allegorizing interpretations. By the 5th century biographical fictions were well under way; the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heracleitus of Ephesus made use of a trivial legend of Homer's death-that it was caused by chagrin at not being able to solve some boys' riddle about catching lice-and the concept of a contest of quotations between Homer and Hesiod (after Homer the most ancient of Greek poets) may have been initiated in the Sophistic tradition. The historian Herodotus assigned the formulation of Greek theology to Homer and Hesiod and claimed that they could have lived no more than 400 years before his own time, the 5th century bce. This should be contrasted with the superficial assumption, popular in many circles throughout antiquity, that Homer must have lived not much later than the Trojan War about which he sang.

The general belief that Homer was a native of Ionia (the central part of the western seaboard of Asia Minor) seems a reasonable conjecture for the poems themselves are in predominantly Ionic dialect. Although Smyrna and Chios early began competing for the honour (the poet Pindar, early in the 5th century bce, associated Homer with both), and others joined in, no authenticated local memory survived anywhere of someone who, oral poet or not, must have been remarkable in his time. The absence of hard facts puzzled but did not deter the Greeks; the fictions that had begun even before the 5th century bce were developed in the Alexandrian era in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce (when false scholarship as well as true abounded) into fantastic pseudobiographies, and these were further refined by derivative scholars under the Roman Empire. The longest to have survived purports to be by Herodotus himself; but it is quite devoid of objective truth.

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Homer, (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]), presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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The first theaters were Greek.

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Theatres were invented by the Greeks. They could hold up to 14,000 people and audiences would come from all over Greece. Early Greek theatres were usually built into hillsides and were circular, so that all members of the audience could hear what the actors were saying. There were never more than three actors on stage at one time and they were almost always men or boys.

The plays were either comedies or tragedies. The actors wore masks ( like the one pictured on the right) so that the audience members sitting far away could easily spot different characters. But the masks muffled the actors' voices, so they had to speak very loudly to be heard by the audience.

To help the actors, in front of the stage was the chorus. They would chant songs or explain the background to the story being acted out.

2,700 years of the Olympic Games!

The Olympic Games began around 776 BCE. They were held at Olympia every four years, in honour of Zeus, who was the father and most powerful of all the gods ( Zeus is shown on the coin pictured opposite).

Over 40,000 spectators would come to watch the events. The games started off with just one event: a sprint across the stadium. Gradually more events were added, including javelin, discus, chariot racing, boxing and the long jump.

People still compete in many of these events, but today they are usually very different and much safer. In the Ancient Greek long jump, instead of taking a running jump athletes took a short run up carrying a heavy weight in each hand, which they swung forward as they jumped from a standing position. The heavy weights pulled the athlete forward in order to give them a longer jump.

Glossary

Chorus - a group of people who sing together

Comedy - showing the funny side of a story

Compete - to try to win or do something better than another person

Spectators - people who watch an event, like a sport or a play

Tragedy - a serious story, or a lesson about right and wrong

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Ancient Greeks: Everyday Life, Beliefs and Myths

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Theatres were invented by the Greeks. They could hold up to 14,000 people and audiences would come from all over Greece. Early Greek theatres were usually built into hillsides and were circular, so that all members of the audience could hear what the actors were saying.

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Grapes wheat garlic barley olives

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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bread, wine

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What we know about food in Ancient Greece comes from their literature. No book specifically on food or recipes is extant from that period, but food is talked about a great deal by characters in Greek plays.

Greeks had two kinds of symbolism in their food. One kind was religious symbolism. Wine, for instance, was associated with Dionysos; bread with Demeter. And secondly, like the Jews, the Greeks wanted to use their food as a way of distinguishing themselves from their neighbours. While Jews used food to distinguish themselves religiously as a chosen people, the Greeks used food to show that they were civilised people in a barbarian world. The social etiquette rules, and "diets" around food reinforced this. They saw the feasts of the Persians as morally decadent. Overeating and conspicuous consumption were barbaric. Drinking wine straight up was barbaric. The Greeks approached both eating and drinking alcohol with frugality, to highlight their idea of themselves as poor but free people.

Bread, wine and the olive comprised the foundation of their diet, and continued to do so until well into the 300s AD. Vegetables were also highly important. Greeks put a great deal of effort and study into increasing the yield of their agricultural crops. Beans were an important source of protein, though followers of Pythagoras were taught to avoid them (see entry on Broad Beans.)

Most frying was done with olive oil, but frying wasn't done much before the 5th century BC; up until then, the Greeks mostly braised or boiled their food.

The Greeks taught the Romans how to make the fish sauce called " garum."

Greeks ate with their fingers. Banquets rarely included women or children.

Bread in Ancient Greece

The Greeks could grow barley and emmer, but those didn't make great bread. Barley and emmer could be used for soups, stews, and porridges.

Bread was often barley cakes or flat bread. Barley cakes were called "maza." The Romans called the Greeks "barley eaters." The poor's barley bread would often even contain chaff in it, as the flour wouldn't have been finely sifted.

Greece wasn't a great place to grow wheat. It was imported. Consequently, wheat flour was very late to come along as a food item.

Some ordinary households would have ovens made of pottery, allowing them to make their own bread. After the 5th century BC, when bakers appeared in the cities, bread could also be bought from stalls in the markets. Athens imported wheat from other countries, and a feature for which the market at Athens became known was the sale there of good wheaten bread. Commercial ovens were run by corporations during the night.

By the 400s BC there were 50 to 70 different kinds of bread in Greece.

Socrates didn't like whole grain bread; he considered it pig food.

Greek warriors were considered heavy-bread eaters, not heavy meat-eaters, as they are now.

Dairy in Ancient Greece

Milk was only prescribed as a medicine, and then it would usually be goat's milk. It was mostly made into cheese.

Butter was for barbarians.

The Influence of Dietetics in Ancient Greece

The Greek philosophers started a view of health and food that would last till the end of the Middle Ages. Raw nature was seen in Greek's minds as bad and uncivilised. Nature needed to be corrected, for instance by agriculture, and so did food, so that it would match the individual nature of your body. Your body had four elements or "humours" which could go into imbalance, and what you ate could address this and make you well again. Food would be prepared based on how it could influence your personal humours to make you well again, or on the basis of how the food needed to be corrected so that it would be balanced for your "humours" and not throw their balance off when you consumed it.

Fish in Ancient Greece

Greece just doesn't have good pasture land for livestock, so meat was scarce. The Greeks loved fish, but low on the scale of their likes, and thus cheapest, were small fish such as anchovies and sprats. Tuna, sea bass, grey and red mullet, grouper, were esteemed and expensive. They particularly loved eel; it could cost at least 12 drachmas (a small sheep might cost ten drachmas.)

In the Greek world, fish shifted from something that you caught yourself to something that you bought. The market at Athens sold fresh fish.

Dried fish steaks were traded and sold in markets.

Fish was easier to serve than meat, because to serve meat you first had to arrange to sacrifice it, and with fish you didn't. The first tuna caught in a good year, though, would be offered to Poseidon.

Catfish was particularly popular.

Fish as a food are not really present in Homer's Iliad, though it is somewhat in his Odyssey. In general, though, the heroes of the earliest Greek writings such as the Iliad and the Odyssey considered fish a "lesser" food.

Meat in Ancient Greece

Though the Greeks ate some meat, meat had slightly barbaric connotations for them. They probably didn't eat more than 1 to 2 kg (2 to 5 pounds) of meat a year in total. There were even vegetarian groups that rejected it entirely. Greeks would, however, eat dogs, something that is now beyond the pale for the Western world.

Other Greeks felt that Greeks in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace ate too much meat.

Meat was never eaten before it was sacrificed; this in their mind showed a respect for the life of an animal by dedicating it to a god. Every banquet began with a sacrifice. Animals such as hares and geese weren't sacrificed, however, so they were a less complicated meat to serve.

Meals in Ancient Greece

In early Greek history, there were 4 meals a day: akratisma (breakfast), ariston (mid-day meal), hesperisma, (early evening snack) and deipnon (later dinner.)

Later, the meals came to be called: akratisma (breakfast), deipnon (mid-day meal), dorpestos (early evening snack), and epidorpis (later dinner.)

Athenaeus reported that for a time, there was great confusion over what to call meals, and who ate when. For a while, some people used the words ariston, deipnon, and epidorpis interchangeably to mean "mid-day meal", and the words dorpestos and hesperisma to mean the evening meal. By the end of the Greek classical period, though, there were just 3 meals, and they were called akratisma ("breakfast"), ariston ("mid-day meal"), and deipnon ("evening meal.")

For breakfast (akratisma), the poor and the rich ate the same thing at home: bread dipped in wine (not watered down.) Sometimes, you would also nibble on some figs or olives. A person who skipped breakfast was called an "amaristeton."

Lunch (ariston) was a light meal of often warm or cooked foods, eaten outside the home.

For the evening meal, dinner (deipnon), there were two courses: a starter and the main course. The starter was called "sitos": it was the starch, the carbohydrate, the "fill you up" thing. It would be foods such as barley, wheat, lentils, beans, etc, but with pronounced flavours, to make it interesting. At a wealthy table, there would often be a selection of these. The main course was called "opson": originally this meant relish, but it came to mean everything else, the main thing of interest - whether fish, meat, cheese, salad, or vegetables, or sometimes just olive oil.

At formal dinners, men and women ate separately. The upper class ate reclining on couches, which meant only one hand was available to handle food with. Homer had his characters eat sitting up.

In Sparta, the meals were different - they were communal meals called "phiditia." The goal was to promote tight bonds for battle. When boys were twelve, if they had proved themselves, there were accepted into a group of 15 men. These men would both fight and eat together all their lives. They took their meals together in communal halls, by law. All 15 sat at a common table, in a hall of other similar tables. The law dictated certain dishes that had to be served. Dishes were also brought from home, and everyone was expected to contribute. Aristotle pointed out that this was a burden on the poorer citizens; those who could no longer contribute lost the right to be a citizen. At the age of 30, men could set up their own households, but they still had to have meals at the communal halls.

Wine in Ancient Greece

The Greeks didn't drink wine with their meals (neither did the Etruscans over in Italy.) Wine was drunk separately, at symposiums ("symposia"), which were only for men, with the occasional rare appearance of a woman.

During the symposiums, men recited poems and drank wine while reclined. Some food refreshments might be served, but only very simple ones, such as cheese and some form of bread.

Wine was never, ever drunk straight. It was mixed with water in a crockery vessel called the "krater." A 1 part wine to 1 part water mixture was considered dangerous. Even 1 part wine to two parts water was still considered too strong and barbaric. 1 part wine to three parts water was seen, by Plutarch at least, as the perfect balance.

The Greeks believed that when you drank enough wine, you could have your body possessed by Eros, Dionysus or the Muses. While the Romans admired many things about the Greeks and copied them, they didn't buy this whole "possessed by the god thing" or wine as a vehicle of sacred possession. The Romans thought that Dionysian priests, prancing about drunk and communing with their god, were all a bunch of charlatans.

Water in Ancient Greece

Between 430 to 426 BC inclusive, a plague wiped out ⅓ of Athens' population, ending its reign as a dominant force in the Mediterranean.

Though over the centuries many speculate what exactly the plague that hit Athens was, it was in 2005 that typhoid was identified by studying teeth recovered from an ancient cemetery in Kerameikos, Greece.

Typhoid fever (caused by the bacteria called "bacterium Salmonella typhi") is transmitted by food or water. Its spread is mainly caused by poor hygiene and sanitation. It only affects humans.

At the time, Athens was engaged in the Peloponnesian Wars, which would have caused overcrowding within the walls of the city and strained any sanitary measures and water supply protection that the city had.

Greeks distrusted water anyway, and rarely drank it straight, mixing it with wine instead, which would kill off most - though not all - pathogens.

Literature & Lore

"Both of us broke a bit of black barley bread, with chaff mixed in the kneading, twice a day, and had a few figs; sometimes, too, there would be a braised mushroom, and if there were a little dew we'd catch a snail, or we'd have some native vegetables or a crushed olive, and some wine to drink of dubious quality." - Poliochus, in The Deipnosophistae. Athenaeus. Charles Burton Gulick translation.

"Our dinner is a barley cake bristling with chaff, cheaply prepared, and perhaps one iris-bulb or a dainty dish of sow-thistle or mushroom or any other poor thing that the place affords us poor creatures." - Antiphanes, ibid.

"I [a Greek] would never be able to make an alliance with you [an Egyptian]; there is no common ground for our manners and customs to share, and great differences to separate them. You bow down before the cow, I sacrifice her to the gods. The eel you consider the greatest divinity, and we the very greatest dish." - Antiphanes. "The Lycon."

"Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman." - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950. Major Barbara. 1907. Act I.)

The earliest surviving mention of what Olympic athletes ate was recorded by Diogenes Laërtius, who lived sometime in the 200s to 300s AD. He recorded the philosopher Philostratus (170 to circa 245 AD) as saying, "Their food was bread made from barley and unleavened loaves of unsifted wheat. For meat they ate the flesh of oxen, bulls, goats, and deer; they rubbed themselves with the oil of the wild olive."

Broad, William. Black Sea wreck yields secrets about life in ancient Greece. New York Times, January 18 2003.

Highfield, Roger. Typhoid blamed for the fall of Athens. London: Daily Telegraph. 24 January 2006.

Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, Christos Yapijakis, Philippos N. Synodinos, Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani. DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens. International Society for Infectious Diseases. Elsevier Ltd. January 2006.

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What we know about food in Ancient Greece comes from their literature. No book specifically on food or recipes is extant from that period, but food is talked about a great deal by characters in Greek plays. Greeks had two kinds of symbolism in their food. One kind was religious symbolism.

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Food in Ancient Greece separated gods and animals.

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Sacrifice and Greek food

Food, for people in Ancient Greece, was what separated people from animals, and from the gods. Gods didn't need to eat, and people did. Animals ate their food raw, but people cooked their food and were civilized. Civilized Greek people only ate fresh meat if it had been sacrificed to a god, or had been hunted in the wild. Like other Mediterranean people, though, Greek people ate a lot of fish and shellfish, octopus and squid (none of which had to be sacrificed to a god).

Bread, wine, Dionysos and Persephone

People thought of the god Dionysos as being part of the wine they drank, and they thought of Persephone as being part of their bread.

Bread and wine, with olive oil, and fish and shellfish, made up most of what people ate in Ancient Greece. They liked cheese when they could get it.

Did ancient Greek food include vegetables?

Yes, people also ate a lot of vegetables, especially lentils, chickpeas, green peas, and other beans. They also ate cabbage, parsnips and onions, garlic and leeks. They ate apples, figs, and almonds.

Chickens come to Greece

Greek people probably didn't have chickens, or chicken eggs, until around 500 BC - so when Socrates says to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius, he's thinking of something new and cool. Greek people started to import black pepper from India about the same time.

Desserts in ancient Greece

Most people only had meat on holidays. But people still liked cakes with honey, and yogurt with honey and walnuts in it, for dessert. They also ate a lot of figs, apples, and pears, both fresh and dried.

Did you find out what you needed about ancient Greek food? Let us know in the comments!

Bibliography and further reading about food in ancient Greece:

Food and Feasts in Ancient Greece, by Imogen Dawson (1995). - both a general discussion of how food was used in Ancient Greece, and some recipes.

Spend the Day in Ancient Greece : Projects and Activities that Bring the Past to Life, by Linda Honan (1998). Also for kids, with recipes for a Greek feast.

Food in the Ancient World A-Z, by Andrew Dalby (2003). Not a kids' book, but pretty easy going.

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Ancient Greek food - History of Food - Ancient Greece

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Ancient Greek food depended a lot on fish and bread, olive oil and wine. Greek people thought food separated people from gods: people cooked their food and ate it, but gods lived on smoke and nectar from sacrifices. Find out more about the history of food in ancient Greece.

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In Greece, they loved theatre, and they also loved the olympic games.

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The Greeks made pottery, used theatre's to hold festivals, and played harps, pipes, and other hand-made instruments.

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In Ancient times the Greeks ate grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake. They also grew olives grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They also ate lots of bread.

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake.

The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

In the Summer months there were plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables to eat and in the winter they ate dried fruit and food they had stored like apples and lentils. As most of the Greeks lived very near the sea, they also ate a lot of fish, squid and shellfish.

fish

The soil by the sea was not so rich as on the plains so the Greeks used irrigation and crop rotation to keep the soil relatively fertile.

In some of the larger Greek city-states, meat could be purchased in cook shops. Meat was rarely eaten as the Greeks felt that just killing and eating a domesticated animal (like goats) was wrong. The Greeks would often sacrifice the meat to the gods first and then might eat some of the meat.

Meat

The Greeks loved their wine which was made from the grapes they grew.

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The Greek diet was very healthy. Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains, wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake. The Ancient Greeks grew olives, grapes, figs and wheat and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and olives.

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Barley, figs, and olives were a staple.

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Learn more about the history and origins of cooking, food and the culinary arts.