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Ancient Greeks liked to eat a lot of barley, wine, and olives.

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Learn more about the history and origins of cooking, food and the culinary arts.

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Ancient Greeks ate Legumes (beans and nuts), olives, and wheat. 

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Ancient Greeks ate Legumes (beans and nuts), olives, and wheat. 

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The foods of ancient Greece were similar to foods we eat today but did not include many items that have become important parts of modern Greek cooking. For example, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and bananas didn't arrive in Greece until after the discovery of the Americas in the 15th century, because that's where those foods originated. Also, lemons, oranges, eggplant, and rice arrived later.

Ancient Greeks enjoyed a varied diet of vegetables, legumes, and fruit as the mainstay. But, being a coastal country with many islands, fish and seafood were an important part of the diet and animal husbandry and hunting brought meats and game to the menu. However, the consumption of fish and meat varied in accordance with the wealth and location of the household.

Typical ancient Greek meals incorporated these food items to varying degrees for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and prepared using different cooking methods to vary the appearance and taste.

Ancient Greek cuisine was characterized by its frugality, reflecting agricultural hardship. The ancient Greek diet was founded on the Mediterranean triad of wheat, olive oil, and wine and other foods reflect what was available to ancient Greeks. Several ancient Greek recipes still exist today.

Vegetables

Vegetables were eaten as soups, boiled or mashed, seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, herbs, or garon, a type of fish sauce. And, in the cities, since vegetables were more expensive, the poorer families would consume dried vegetables and oak acorns.

The main roots and tuber vegetables that were consumed included radishes, turnips, and carrots. Leafy and salad vegetables were cos lettuce (romaine), cress, arugula, and cabbage. Common bulb and stem vegetables were asparagus, cardoons (artichoke thistle), celery, fennel, garlic, and leeks.

Fruit-like vegetables that were a mainstay were cucumbers and squash (marrows). Artichokes (the flower part of the plant) and artichoke thistle (cardoons) also were popular at the time.

Popular herbs and spices that came from locally grown plants at the time included coriander (cilantro), dill, mint, oregano, saffron, and thyme. Salt and pepper were common condiments used at the time.

Grains and Cereals

Cereals formed the staple diet. The two main grains were wheat and barley. Barley was most commonly used for bread since it was easier to grow, especially in parts of Greece that had a Mediterranean climate. Barley often was roasted before milling producing a coarse flour. Wheat grains were softened by soaking, reduced into a gruel, or ground into a flour to make flatbreads or bread loaves. Spelt was commonly used as well.

Olives, which are considered a fruit, were one of the primary crops of Greece. Since the soil of Greece was generally poor, the Greeks grew grain at the bottom of the valleys and grapes and olives on the hill slopes. Olive oil was commonly used for cooking most dishes and preserved olives were a customary appetizer.

Fruits, fresh or dried, and nuts were typically eaten as dessert. Important fruits were figs, raisins (grapes), and pomegranates. In the early third century A.D., the historian Athenaeus describes a dessert made of figs and broad beans in his written historical work, Deipnosophistae. Dried figs also were eaten as an appetizer or when drinking wine.

It is believed that plums were among the first fruits ever domesticated by humans and it was a popular ancient fruit. Other orchard fruits consumed were apples, pears, and quinces. In general, other fruits that were available included carob (a pod from the carob tree), jujubes (red dates), and bergamot oranges, which were the first citrus fruit to make its way into Greek cuisine before lemon became a staple in modern times.

Legumes (Beans and Nuts)

Legumes would have been important crops, as their ability to replenish exhausted soil was known at least by the time of Xenophon in the fourth century B.C. As one of the first domesticated crops to be introduced to Greece, lentils are commonly found at archaeological sites in the region from the upper paleolithic period. Other popular legumes included chickpeas and green and yellow peas. Popular nuts included beechnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, and almonds.

Fish and Seafood

In the Greek islands and on the coast, mollusks like squid, octopus, cuttlefish, prawns, and crayfish were common. They were eaten locally but more often transported inland. Sardines and anchovies were regular fare for the citizens of Athens.

Common saltwater fish were yellowfin tuna, red mullet, rays, sea bass, grouper, wrasse, swordfish, sturgeon, and eels from Lake Copais. These were delicacies usually eaten salted. The cheapest fish, sprat, were small, herring-like fish that were readily available to the ancient Greeks.

Meat, Poultry, and Game

Ancient Greeks consumed much less meat than is usual today. In the country, hunting and trapping allowed for the consumption of pheasant, wild hares, boar, and deer. Peasants tended farmyards with chickens, geese, and their eggs. The expression, "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched," is attributed to Aesop in 570 B.C.

Slightly wealthier landowners could raise goats, pigs, lamb, sheep, and donkeys. In the city, meat was expensive except for pork. In Aristophanes' day, a piglet cost three drachmas, which was three days' wages for a public servant. Sausages were common both for the poor and the rich.

The main beverages in ancient Greece were water and wine. Beer was available at the time, as it had developed in ancient Egypt about 5000 B.C. Beer and honey mead were likely reserved for ancient festivals and holidays.

Other Foods

As the ancient Greeks domesticated farm animals, they collected milk and made cheese from it. Bees were domesticated throughout Europe by 500 A.D., but there is archeological evidence from the Minoan city on the Greek island of Crete of ancient beehives earlier than that.

Vinegar has been a popular staple in Greek cuisine. In ancient Greece, around 400 B.C., Hippocrates, who is considered the father of medicine, prescribed apple cider vinegar mixed with honey for a variety of ailments, including coughs and colds.

There is archeological evidence to suggest that escargot or land snails also were consumed in prehistoric and ancient Mediterranean cultures.

The Cuisine Evolved

Slowly, foods were introduced to Greece via trade routes and explorers. The ones that thrived in the climate and soil, became a part of what makes up modern Greek cuisine.

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List of the Various Foods Enjoyed by Ancient Greeks

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Ancient Greek foods were similar to the foods we know today, except the variety was limited. Learn about ancient Greek foods and how they evolved.

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Ancient Greeks used wagons, carriges, and carts as transportation.

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The Ancient Greeks ate barley for breakfast, olives for lunch, and fish for dinner.

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Learn more about the history and origins of cooking, food and the culinary arts.

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He was the god of gods.

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They liked to perform plays in genres such as tragedies and comedies.

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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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Wheats, Grains, Barely, fruits, vegies, breads cakes, olives, grapes, and cheese and milk

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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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Wrote the Iliad and The Odyssey

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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.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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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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Plato was his nickname, but his real name was Aristocles.

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The Athenian philosopher Plato is one of the most important figures of the ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. Let's know more about him by reading this article.

Here are 15 interesting things about Plato:

1. Plato is just a nickname and his actual name is Aristocles (ask.com)

2. The nickname Plato (which means "broad" or "wide" in Greek) was given to him in reference to his broad shoulders. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

3. Plato was born in 428 BC and he died in 347 BC (ask.com).

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Refer these to your siblings/children/younger friends:

HOMEPAGE of Reviewers by OurHappySchool.com (Online e-Learning Automated Format)

HOMEPAGE of Free College Entrance Exam Reviewers by OurHappySchool.com (Online e-Learning Automated Format)

4. As a young man, Plato was not only a student-he was also a wrestler and a playwright. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

5. His parents are Ariston of Athens and Perictione. (ask.com)

6. One of his brightest works was The Republic which deals with questions of virtue, justice, wisdom, courage, and government. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

7. In 388 B.C. he founded his school, the Academy, which is considered the first European university. (History.com)

8. He used a lot of dialogues to try to obtain a deeper understanding of individual subjects. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

9. Aristotle was one of Plato's pupils at the Academy. ( History.com)

10. Above the entrance to his Academy was the following quote, "Let none who has not learned Geometry enter here." (funtrivia.com)

11. Plato's philosophical works were heavily influenced by Socrates. Plato's agreed to Socrates's ideas in his writings. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

12. Plato was a student of Socrates (funtrivia.com)

13. 'The Apology" is Plato's works that describes the trial of Socrates, and Socrates' defense against charges that he was corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates' self-defense was eloquent but not persuasive to his peers, who voted to have him executed. (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

14. Plato is recognized as one of the finest writers in Greek literature. (History.com)

15. Plato and his most esteemed student, Aristotle, both appear in the painting "The School of Athens" by Renaissance master Raphael (platophilosophymrj.blogspot.com)

We can see that Aristocles, well-known as Plato, is a real wise man who contributed a lot in Western philosophy. Some of his works and philosophy are still useful in the present time and I believe even in the future.

Charlene D. Torrejas, the contributor, is a simple girl from Caloocan City Philippines. She graduated from Kalayaan National High School and is now a third year student taking AB Political Science. You may contact her through e-mail: Charlenetorrejas@gmail.com, Chalyn28_chubby@yahoo.com, or via Twitter: @chapotts

What is the most interesting fact about Plato for you? Explain why it is the most interesting fact.

Tags: History, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Sociology, Social Science, Literature

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The Athenian philosopher Plato is one of the most important figures of the ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. Let's know more about him by reading this article. Here are 15 interesting things about Plato: 1. Plato is just a nickname and his actual name is Aristocles (ask.com) 2.

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He was a Roman poet.

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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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Married his sister

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Zeus, in ancient Greek religion, chief deity of the pantheon, a sky and weather god who was identical with the Roman god Jupiter. His name may be related to that of the sky god Dyaus of the ancient Hindu Rigveda. Zeus was regarded as the sender of thunder and lightning, rain, and winds, and his traditional weapon was the thunderbolt. He was called the father (i.e., the ruler and protector) of both gods and men.

According to a Cretan myth that was later adopted by the Greeks, Cronus, king of the Titans, upon learning that one of his children was fated to dethrone him, swallowed his children as soon as they were born. But Rhea, his wife, saved the infant Zeus by substituting a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes for Cronus to swallow and hiding Zeus in a cave on Crete. There he was nursed by the nymph (or female goat) Amalthaea and guarded by the Curetes (young warriors), who clashed their weapons to disguise the baby's cries. After Zeus grew to manhood he led a revolt against the Titans and succeeded in dethroning Cronus, perhaps with the assistance of his brothers Hades and Poseidon, with whom he then divided dominion over the world.

As ruler of heaven Zeus led the gods to victory against the Giants (offspring of Gaea and Tartarus) and successfully crushed several revolts against him by his fellow gods. According to the Greek poet Homer, heaven was located on the summit of Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and the logical home for a weather god. The other members of the pantheon resided there with Zeus and were subject to his will. From his exalted position atop Mount Olympus Zeus was thought to omnisciently observe the affairs of men, seeing everything, governing all, and rewarding good conduct and punishing evil. Besides dispensing justice-he had a strong connection with his daughter Dike (Justice)-Zeus was the protector of cities, the home, property, strangers, guests, and supplicants.

Zeus was well known for his amorousness-a source of perpetual discord with his wife, Hera-and he had many love affairs with both mortal and immortal women. In order to achieve his amorous designs, Zeus frequently assumed animal forms, such as that of a cuckoo when he ravished Hera, a swan when he ravished Leda, or a bull when he carried off Europa. Notable among his offspring were the twins Apollo and Artemis, by the Titaness Leto; Helen and the Dioscuri, by Leda of Sparta; Persephone, by the goddess Demeter; Athena, born from his head after he had swallowed the Titaness Metis; Hephaestus, Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia, by his wife, Hera; Dionysus, by the goddess Semele; and many others.

Though regarded by Greek religionists everywhere as omnipotent and the head of the pantheon, Zeus's very universality tended to reduce his importance compared with that of powerful local divinities like Athena and Hera. Although statues of Zeus Herkeios (Guardian of the House) and altars of Zeus Xenios (Hospitable) graced the forecourts of houses, and though his mountaintop shrines were visited by pilgrims, Zeus did not have a temple at Athens until the late 6th century bce, and even his temple at Olympia postdated that of Hera.

In art Zeus was represented as a bearded, dignified, and mature man of stalwart build; his most prominent symbols were the thunderbolt and the eagle.

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Zeus, in ancient Greek religion, chief deity of the pantheon, a sky and weather god who was identical with the Roman god Jupiter. His name may be related to that of the sky god Dyaus of the ancient Hindu Rigveda. Zeus was regarded as the sender of thunder and lightning, rain, and winds, and his traditional weapon was the thunderbolt.

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Goddess of wisdom, and was born out of Zeus's head.

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Greek Gods >> Olympian Gods >> Athena (Athene)

Athena, Athenian red-figure lekythos C5th B.C., Museum of Fine Arts Boston

ATHENE (Athena) was the Olympian goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and various other crafts. She was depicted as a stately woman armed with a shield and spear, and wearing a long robe, crested helm, and the famed aigis--a snake-trimmed cape adorned with the monstrous visage of the Gorgon Medousa (Medusa).

MYTHS

The more famous myths featuring the goddess Athene include:--

Her birth from the head of Zeus, fully-grown and arrayed in arms. << More>>

Her contest with Poseidon for dominion of Athens in which she produced the first olive tree and he the first horse. << More>>

The War of the Giants in which she buried Enkelados (Enceladus) beneath Mount Etna and made her aigis from the skin of Pallas. << More>>

The attempted violation of the goddess by Hephaistos (Hephaestus), who spilled his seed upon the earth and produced Erikhthonios (Erichthonius), who she then adopted as her own son. << More>>

The assisting of Perseus in his quest to slay the Gorgon and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. << More>>

The assisting of Herakles (Heracles) with his twelve labours. << More>>

The weaving contest with Arakhne (Arachne) who was transformed by the goddess into a spider . << More>>

The blinding of Teiresias (Tiresias) for seeing her naked while bathing. << More>>

The Judgement of Paris in which she competed with Hera and Aphrodite for the prize of the golden apple. << More>>

The Trojan War where she sided with the Greeks in battle, but attacked their ships with a storm when they failed to punish Oilean Aias (Ajax) for violating her Trojan shrine. << More>>

Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.

ATHENA PAGES ON THEOI.COM

This site contains a total of 9 pages describing the goddess, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Athena Pages (left column or below).

FAMILY OF ATHENA

PARENTS

[1.1] ZEUS & METIS (Hesiod Theogony 887, 924; Apollodorus 1.20)
[1.2] Born from the head of ZEUS (Hesiod Theogony 887, 924; Apollodorus 1.20, others)

OFFSPRING

NONE (she was a virgin goddess)

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Pallas Athena, Greco-Roman marble statue C2nd A.D., Musée du Louvre

ATHE′NA (Athênê or Athêna), one of the great divinities of the Greeks. Homer Il. v. 880) calls her a daughter of Zeus, without any allusion to her mother or to the manner in which she was called into existence, while most of the later traditions agree in stating that she was born from the head of Zeus. According to Hesiod ( Theog. 886, &c.), Metis, the first wife of Zeus, was the mother of Athena, but when Metis was pregnant with her, Zeus, on the advice of Gaea and Uranus, swallowed Metis up, and afterwards gave birth himself to Athena, who sprang from his head. (Hesiod, l. c. 924.) Pindar (Ol. vii. 35, &c.) adds, that Hephaestus split the head of Zeus with his axe, and that Athena sprang forth with a mighty war-shout. Others relate, that Prometheus or Hermes or Palamaon assisted Zeus in giving birth to Athena, and mentioned the river Triton as the place where the event took place. (Apollod. i. 4. § 6; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. vii. 66.) Other traditions again relate, that Athena sprang from the head of Zeus in full armour, a statement for which Stesichorus is said to have been the most ancient authority. (Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 355; Philostr. Icon. ii. 27; Schol. ad Apollon. iv. 1310.)

All these traditions, however, agree in making Athena a daughter of Zeus; but a second set regard her as the daughter of Pallas, the winged giant, whom she afterwards killed on account of his attempting to violate her chastity, whose skin she used as her aegis, and whose wings she fastened to her own feet. (Tzetz. ad Lycoph. l. c.; Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 23.)

A third tradition carries us to Libya, and calls Athena a daughter of Poseidon and Tritonis. Athena, says Herodotus (iv. 180), on one occasion became angry with her father and went to Zeus, who made her his own daughter. This passage shows more clearly than any other the manner in which genuine and ancient Hellenic myths were transplanted to Libya, where they were afterwards regarded as the sources of Hellenic ones. Respecting this Libyan Athena, it is farther related, that she was educated by the rivergod Triton, together with his own daughter Pallas. (Apollod. iii. 12. § 3.) In Libya she was also said to have invented the flute; for when Perseus had cut off the head of Medusa, and Stheno and Euryale, the sisters of Medusa, lamented her death, while plaintive sounds issued from the mouths of the serpents which surrounded their heads, Athena is said to have imitated these sounds on a reed. (Pind. Pyth. xii. 19, &c.; compare the other accounts in Hygin. Fab. 165; Apollod. i. 4. § 2 ; Paus. i. 24. § 1.)

The connexion of Athena with Triton and Tritonis caused afterwards the various traditions about her birth-place, so that wherever there was a river or a well of that name, as in Crete, Thessaly, Boeotia, Arcadia, and Egypt, the inhabitants of those districts asserted that Athena was born there. It is from such birth-places on a river Triton that she seems to have been called Tritonis or Tritogeneia (Paus. ix. 33. § 5), though it should be observed that this surname is also explained in other ways; for some derive it from an ancient Cretan, Aeolic, or Boeotian word, tritô, signifying "head," so that it would mean " the goddess born from the head," and others think that it was intended to commemorate the circumstance of her being born on the third day of the month. (Tztez. ad Lycoph. 519.) The connexion of Athena with Triton naturally suggests, that we have to look for the most ancient seat of her worship in Greece to the banks of the river Triton in Boeotia, which emptied itself into lake Copais, and on which there were two ancient Pelasgian towns, Athenae and Eleusis, which were according to tradition swallowed up by the lake. From thence her worship was carried by the Minyans into Attica, Libya, and other countries. (Müller, Orchom. p. 355.) We must lastly notice one tradition, which made Athena a daughter of Itonius and sister of Iodama, who was killed by Athena (Paus. ix. 34. § 1; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 355), and another according to which she was the daughter of Hephaestus.

These various traditions about Athena arose, as in most other cases, from local legends and from identifications of the Greek Athena with other divinities. The common notion which the Greeks entertained about her, and which was most widely spread in the ancient world, is, that she was the daughter of Zeus, and if we take Metis to have been her mother, we have at once the clue to the character which she bears in the religion of Greece ; for, as her father was the most powerful and her mother the wisest among the gods, so Athena was a combination of the two, that is, a goddess in whom power and wisdom were harmoniously blended. From this fundamental idea may be derived the various aspects under which she appears in the ancient writers. She seems to have been a divinity of a purely ethical character, and not the representative of any particular physical power manifested in nature; her power and wisdom appear in her being the protectress and preserver of the state and of social institutions. Everything, therefore, which gives to the state strength and prosperity, such as agriculture, inventions, and industry, as well as everything which preserves and protects it from injurious influence from without, such as the defence of the walls, fortresses, and harbours, is under her immediate care.

As the protectress of agriculture, Athena is represented as the inventor of the plough and rake: she created the olive tree, the greatest blessing of Attica, taught the people to yoke oxen to the plough, took care of the breeding of horses, and instructed men how to tame them by the bridle, her own invention. Allusions to this feature of her character are contained in the epithets boudeia, boarmia, agripha, hippia, or chalinitis. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1076; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 520; Hesych. s. v. Hippia; Serv. ad Aen. iv. 402; Pind. Ol. xiii. 79.) At the beginning of spring thanks were offered to her in advance (procharistêria, Suid. s. v.) for the protection she was to afford to the fields.

Besides the inventions relating to agriculture, others also connected with various kinds of science, industry, and art, are ascribed to her, and all her inventions are not of the kind which men make by chance or accident, but such as require thought and meditation. We may notice the invention of numbers (Liv. vii. 3), of the trumpet (Böckh, ad Pind. p. 344), the chariot, and navigation. [Aethyia.] In regard to all kinds of useful arts, she was believed to have made men acquainted with the means and instruments which are necessary for practising them, such as the art of producing fire.

She was further believed to have invented nearly every kind of work in which women were employed, and she herself was skilled in such work : in short Athena and Hephaestus were the great patrons both of the useful and elegant arts. Hence she is called erganê (Paus. i. 24. § 3), and later writers make her the goddess of all widom, knowledge, and art, and represent her as sitting on the right hand side of her father Zeus, and supporting him with her counsel. (Hom. Od. xxiii 160, xviii. 190; Hymn. in Ven. 4, 7, &c.; Plut. Cim. 10; Ovid, Fast. iii. 833; Orph. Hymn. xxxi. 8; Spanh. ad Callim. p. 643; Horat. Carm. i. 12. 19; comp. Dict. of Ant. under Athênaia and Chalkeia.) As the goddess who made so many inventions necessary and useful in civilized life, she is characterized by various epithets and surnames, expressing the keenness of her sight or the power of her intellect, such as optiletis, ophthalmitis, oxuderkês, glaukôpis, poluboulos, polumêtis, and mêchanitis.

As the patron divinity of the state, she was at Athens the protectress of the phratries and houses which formed the basis of the state. The festival of the Apaturia had a direct reference to this particular point in the character of the goddess. ( Dict. of Ant. s. v. Apaturia.) She also maintained the authority of the law, and justice, and order, in the courts and the assembly of the people. This notion was as ancient as the Homeric poems, in which she is described as assisting Odysseus against the lawless conduct of the suitors. (Od. xiii. 394.) She was believed to have instituted the ancient court of the Areiopagus, and in cases where the votes of the judges were equally diviled, she gave the casting one in favour of the accused. (Aeschyl. Eum. 753; comp. Paus. i. 28. § 5.) The epithets which have reference to this part of the goddess's character are axiopoinos, the avenger (Paus. iii. 15. § 4), Boulaia, and aguraia. (iii. 11. § 8.)

As Athena promoted the internal prosperity of the state, by encouraging agriculture and industry, and by maintaining law and order in all public transactions, so also she protected the state from outward enemies, and thus assumes the character of a warlike divinity, though in a very different sense from Ares, Eris, or Enyo. According to Homer ( Il. v. 736, &c.), she does not even bear arms, but borrows them from Zeus; she keeps men from slaughter when prudence demands it (Il. i. 199, &c.), and repels Ares's savage love of war, and conquers him. (v. 840, &c., xxi. 406.) She does not love war for its own sake, but simply on account of the advantages which the state gains in engaging in it; and she therefore supports only such warlike undertakings as are begun with prudence, and are likely to be followed by favourable results. (x. 244, &c.) The epithets which she derives from her warlike character are ageleia, laphria, alkimachê, laossoos, and others. In times of war, towns, fortresses, and harbours are under her especial care, whence she is designated as erusiptolis, alalkomenêïs, polias, poliouchos, akraia, akria, klêdouchos, pulaitis, promachorma, and the like.

As the prudent goddess of war, she is also the protectress of all heroes who are distinguished for prudence and good counsel, as well as for their strength and valour, such as Heracles, Perseus, Bellerophontes, Achilles, Diomedes, and Odysseus. In the war of Zeus against the giants, she assisted her father and Heracles with her counsel, and also took an active part in it, for she buried Enceladus under the island of Sicily, and slew Pallas. (Apollod. i. 6. § 1, &c.; comp. Spanheim, ad Callim. p. 643; Horat. Carm. i. 12. 19.) In the Trojan war she sided with the more civilised Greeks, though on their return home she visited them with storms, on account of the manner in which the Locrian Ajax had treated Cassandra in her temple. As a goddess of war and the protectress of heroes, Athena usually appears in armour, with the aegis and a golden staff, with which she bestows on her favourites youth and majesty. (Hom. Od. xvi. 172.)

The character of Athena, as we have here traced it, holds a middle place between the male and female, whence she is called in an Orphic hymn (xxxi. 10) arsên kai thêlus, and hence also she is a virgin divinity (Hom. Hymn. ix. 3), whose heart is inaccessible to the passion of love, and who shuns matrimonial connexion. Teiresias was deprived of his sight for having seen her in the bath (Callim. Hymn. pp. 546,589), and Hephaestus, who made an attempt upon her chastity, was obliged to flee. (Apollod. iii. 6. § 7, 14. § 6; Hom. Il. ii. 547, &c.; comp. Tzetz. ad Lycophr. 111.) For this reason, the ancient traditions always describe the goddess as dressed; and when Ovid ( Heroid. v. 36) makes her appear naked before Paris, he abandons the genuine old story. Her statue also was always dressed, and when it was carried about at the Attic festivals, it was entirely covered. But, notwithstanding the common opinion of her virgin character, there are some traditions of late origin which describe her as a mother. Thus, Apollo is called a son of Hephaestus and Athena -- a legend which may have arisen at the time when the Ionians introduced the worship of Apollo into Attica, and when this new divinity was placed in some family connexion with the ancient goddess of the country. (Müller, Dor. ii. 2. § 13.) Lychnus also is called a son of Hephaestus and Athena. (Spanheim, ad Callim. p. 644.)

Athena was worshipped in all parts of Greece, and from the ancient towns on the lake Copais her worship was nitroduced at a very early period into Attica, where she became the great national divinity of the city and the country. Here she was afterwards regarded as the thea sôteira, ugieia, and paiônia, and the serpent, the symbol of perpetual renovation, was sacred to her. (Paus. i. 23. § 5, 31. § 3, 2. § 4.) At Lindus in Rhodes her worship was likewise very ancient. Among the things sacred to her we may mention the owl, serpent, cock, and olive-tree, which she was said to have created in her contest with Poseidon about the possession of Attica. (Plut. de Is. et Os.; Paus. vi. 26. § 2, i. 24. § 3; Hygin. Fab. 164.) At Corone in Messenia her statue bore a crow in its hand. (Paus. iv. 34. § 3.)

The sacrifices offered to her consisted of bulls, whence she probably derived the surname of taurobolos (Suid. s. v.), rams, and cows. (Horn. Il. ii. 550; Ov. Met. iv. 754.) Eustathius ( ad Hom. l. c.) remarks, that only female animals were sacrificed to her, but no female lambs. In Ilion, Locrian maidens or children are said to have been sacrificed to her every year as an atonement for the crime committed by the Locrian Ajax upon Cassandra; and Suidas ( s. v. poinê) states, that these human sacrifices continued to be offered to her down to B. C. 346. Respecting the great festivals of Athena at Athens, see Dict. of Ant. s. vv. Panathenaea and Arrhephoria.

Athena was frequently represented in works of art; but those in which her figure reached the highest ideal of perfection were the three statues by Pheidias. The first was the celebrated colossal statue of the goddess, of gold and ivory, which was erected on the acropolis of Athens; the second was a still greater bronze statue, made out of the spoils taken by the Athenians in the battle of Marathon; the third was a small bronze statue called the beautiful or the Lemnian Athena, because it had been dedicated at Athens by the Lemnians. The first of these statues represented the goddess in a standing position, bearing in her hand a Nike four cubits in height. The shield stood by her feet; her robe came down to her feet, on her breast was the head of Medusa, in her right hand she bore a lance, and at her feet there lay a serpent. (Paus. i. 24. § 7, 28. § 2.) We still possess a great number of representations of Athena in statues, colossal busts, reliefs, coins, and in vase-paintings.

Among the attributes which characterise the goddess in these works of art, we mention -- 1. The helmet, which she usually wears on her head, but in a few instances carries in her hand. It is usually ornamented in the most beautiful manner with griffins, heads of rams, horses, and sphinxes. (Comp. Horn. Il. v. 743.) 2. The aegis. ( Dict. of Ant. s. v. Aegis.) 3. The round Argolic shield. in the centre of which is represented the head of Medusa. 4. Objects sacred to her, such as an olive branch, a serpent, an owl, a cock, and a lance. Her garment is usually the Spartan tunic without sleeves, and over it she wears a cloak, the peplus, or, though rarely, the chlamys. The general expression of her figure is thoughtfulness and earnestness; her face is rather oval than round, the hair is rich and generally combed backwards over the temples, and floats freely down behind. The whole figure is majestic, and rather strong built than slender: the hips are small and the shoulders broad, so that the whole somewhat resembles a male figure.
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES

HYMNS TO ATHENA

I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Homeric Hymn 11 to Athena (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"Of Pallas Athena, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves the deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune and happiness!"

Homeric Hymn 39 to Athena :
"I begin to sing of Pallas Athena, the glorious goddess, bright-eyed, inventive, unbending of heart, pure virgin, saviour of cities, courageous, Tritogeneia. From his awful head wise Zeus himself bare her arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold, and awe seized all the gods as they gazed. But Athena sprang quickly from the immortal head and stood before Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear: great Olympos began to reel horribly at the might of the grey-eyed goddess, and earth round about cried fearfully, and the sea was moved and tossed with dark waves, while foam burst forth suddenly: the bright Son of Hyperion [Helios the Sun] stopped his swift-footed horses a long while, until the maiden Pallas Athena had stripped the heavenly armour from her immortal shoulders. And wise Zeus was glad. Hail to you, daughter of Zeus who holds the aigis!"

II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Orphic Hymn 32 to Athena (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :

"Only-begotten, noble race of Zeus, blessed and fierce, who joyest in caves to rove: O warlike Pallas, whose illustrious kind, ineffable, and effable we find : magnanimous and famed, the rocky height, and groves, and shady mountains thee delight: in arms rejoicing, who with furies dire and wild the souls of mortals dost inspire. Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind, dire Gorgon's bane, unmarried, blessed, kind: mother of arts, impetuous; understood as fury by the bad, but wisdom by the good. Female and male, the arts of war are thine, O much-formed, Drakaina (She-Dragon), inspired divine: over the Phlegraion Gigantes (Phlegraean Giants), roused to ire, thy coursers driving with destructive dire. Tritogeneia, of splendid mien, purger of evils, all-victorious queen. Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray, with supplicating voice both night and day, and in my latest hour give peace and health, propitious times, and necessary wealth, and ever present be thy votaries aid, O much implored, art's parent, blue-eyed maid."

DESCRIPTIONS OF ATHENA

Athena, Athenian red-figure lekythos C5th B.C., British Museum

Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 14. 6 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes . . . For the Libyans have a saying that the goddess is the daughter of Poseidon . . . and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon."

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 8. 350 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic C4th A.D.) :
"Athena from Olympos swooped to forest-mantled Ida. Quaked the earth and Xanthos' murmuring streams; so mightily she shook them . . . From her immortal armour flashed around the hovering lightnings; fearful serpents breathed fire from her shield invincible; the crest of her great helmet swept the clouds."

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 12. 167 ff :
"Ares to the fray rose first, and on Athena rushed. Thereat fell each on other: clashed around their limbs the golden arms celestial as they charged. round them the wide sea thundered, the dark earth quaked 'neath immortal feet. Rang from them all far-pealing battle-shouts; that awful cry rolled up to the broad-arching heaven, and down even to Hades' fathomless abyss."

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 14. 386 ff :
"She [Athena] donned the stormy Aigis flashing far, adamantine, massy, a marvel to the Gods, whereon was wrought Medousa's (Medusa's) ghastly head, fearful: strong serpents breathing forth the blast of ravening fire were on the face thereof. Crashed on the Queen's breast all the Aigis-links, as after lightning crashes the firmament. Then grasped she her father's weapons, which no God save Zeus can lift, and wide Olympos shook. Then swept she clouds and mist together on high; night over earth was poured, haze o'er the sea. Zeus watched, and was right glad as broad heaven's floor rocked 'neath the Goddess's feet, and crashed the sky, as though invincible Zeus rushed forth to war."

Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 8 (trans. Fairbanks) (Greek rhetorician C3rd A.D.) :
"[From a description of a Greek painting :] Three goddesses standing near them--they need no interpreter to tell who they are; for Athena is recognized at a glance, clothed as she is in what the poets call the 'panoply of her race,' casting a 'bright glance' from under her helmet, and ruddy of face as well as masculine in general appearance."

Ovid, Metamorphoses 6. 70 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"[The artist] gives her [Athena] a shield, she gives a spear sharp-tipped, she gives a helmet for her head; the aegis guards her breast."

Apuleius, The Golden Ass 10. 30 ff (trans. Walsh) (Roman novel C2nd A.D.) :
"[From a description of an ancient Greek play portraying the Judgement of Paris:] A second girl then burst in, whom you would have recognized as Minerva [Athene]. Her head was covered with a gleaming helmet which was itself crowned with an olive-wreath; she bore a shield and brandished a spear, simulating the goddess' fighting role . . . Each maiden representing a goddess was accompanied by her own escort . . .
The girl whose appearance in arms had revealed her as Minerva [Athene] was protected by two boys who were the comrades in arms of the battle-goddess, Terror [Deimos, Terror] and Metus [Phobos, Fear]; they pranced about with swords unsheathed, and behind her back a flutist played a battle-tune in the Dorian mode. He mingled shrill whistling notes with deep droning chords like a trumpet-blast, stirring the performers to lively and supple dancing."

ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART

SOURCES (ALL ATHENA PAGES)

GREEK

Homer, The Iliad - Greek Epic C8th B.C.

Hesiod, Theogony - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Hesiod, Works and Days - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Hesiod, Catalogues of Women Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

The Homeric Hymns - Greek Epic C8th - 4th B.C.

Epic Cycle, The Cypria Fragments - Greek Epic C7th - 6th B.C.

Epic Cycle, The Little Iliad Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 7th B.C.

Epic Cycle, The Sack of Ilium Fragments - Greek Epic C8th B.C.

Epic Cycle, The Returns Fragments - Greek Epic C7th - 6th B.C.

Epic Cycle, The Telegony Fragments - Greek Epic C8th - 6th B.C.

Pindar, Odes - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric V Telestes, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Plato, Hippias Major - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Menexenus - 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.

Parthenius, Love Romances - Greek Mythography C1st 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.

Plutarch, Lives - Greek Historian C1st - 2nd A.D.

Plutarch, Moralia - Greek Historian C1st - 2nd A.D.

Plutarch, Parallel Stories - Greek Historian C1st - 2nd 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.

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae - Greek Rhetoric C3rd A.D.

Philostratus the Elder, Imagines - Greek Rhetoric C3rd A.D.

Philostratus the Younger, 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.

Colluthus, The Rape of Helen - Greek Epic C5th - 6th 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.

Ovid, Heroides - Latin Poetry C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

Virgil, Georgics - Latin Bucolic C1st B.C.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History - Latin Encyclopedia C1st A.D.

Valerius Flaccus, The Argonautica - Latin Epic C1st A.D.

Statius, Achilleid - Latin Epic C1st A.D.

Statius, Silvae - Latin Poetry C1st A.D.

Apuleius, The Golden Ass - Latin Novel C2nd A.D.

BYZANTINE

Photius, Myriobiblon - Byzantine Greek Scholar C9th A.D.

Suidas, The Suda - Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.

OTHER SOURCES
Source status of Athena pages:-
1. Fully quoted: Hesiod; Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle & Homerica, Apollodorus, Pausanias, Strabo, Orphic Hymns, Quintus Smyrnaeus, Parthenius, Aelian (On Animals),; Ovid (Metamorphoses), Hyginus (Fabulae), Apuleius, Aesop;
2. Partially or not quoted (Greek): Homer (Iliad & Odyssey), Pindar, Greek Lyric (Fragments), Greek Elegaic (Fragments), Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Herodotus, Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachus, Diodorus Siculus, Antoninus Liberalis, Theocritus, Lycophron, Plutarch, Philostratus & Callistratus, Nonnus, Oppian; Tryphiodorus, et. al.;
3. Partially or not quoted (Latin): Hyginus (Astronomica), Ovid (Fasti), Cicero, Statius, Colluthus, Propertius, Valerius Flaccus, et. al.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A complete bibliography of the translations quoted on this page.

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ATHENA - Greek Goddess of Wisdom, War & Crafts

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Athena was the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and various other crafts. She was depicted as a stately woman armed with a shield and spear, and wearing a long robe, crested helm, and the famed aegis - a snake-trimmed cape adorned with the monstrous visage of the Gorgon Medusa.

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Wrote epics such as 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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Heroic Poem

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Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. The work deals with events of the early 6th century, and, while the date of its composition is uncertain, some scholars believe that it was written in the 8th century. Although originally untitled, the poem was later named after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, whose exploits and character provide its connecting theme. There is no evidence of a historical Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified. The poem did not appear in print until 1815. It is preserved in a single manuscript that dates to circa 1000 and is known as the Beowulf manuscript (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV).

Plot

Beowulf falls into two parts. It opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar has a splendid mead hall known as Heorot, a place of celebration and much merriment. However, the joyous noise angers Grendel, an evil monster living in a nearby swamp. For 12 years the creature terrorizes Heorot with nightly visits in which he carries off Hrothgar's warriors and devours them.

After learning of the Danes' trouble, young Beowulf, a prince of the Geats in what is now southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to rid Heorot of its monster. Hrothgar is astonished at the little-known hero's daring but welcomes him. After an evening of feasting, much courtesy, and some discourtesy-at one point, one of Hrothgar's men insults Beowulf-the king retires, leaving Beowulf in charge. During the night, Grendel comes from the moors, rips open the heavy doors, and devours one of the sleeping Geats. He then grapples with Beowulf, who refuses to use a weapon. Beowulf grips one of Grendel's hands with such force that the monster finally wrenches himself free only when his arm is torn off at the shoulder. Mortally wounded, Grendel returns to his swamp and dies. Beowulf then displays the monster's arm in Heorot for all to see.

The next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot, and a feast is thrown in Beowulf's honour. However, as the warriors sleep that night, Grendel's mother, another swamp monster, comes to avenge her son's death, and she kills one of Hrothgar's men. In the morning Beowulf dives into her mere (lake) to search for her, and she attacks him. They struggle in her dry cave at the mere's bottom, and Beowulf finally kills her with a sword. In the cave, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse, whose head he cuts off and takes back to Heorot. The Danes rejoice once more. Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, and Beowulf, enriched with honours and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats.

The second part passes rapidly over Hygelac's subsequent death in a battle (of historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf's succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. However, the tranquility ends when a fire-breathing dragon becomes enraged after a man steals from its treasure-filled lair. The creature begins ravaging Geatland, and the brave but aging Beowulf decides to engage it, despite knowing that he will likely die. The fight is long and terrible-a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful too is the desertion of all his retainers except for his young kinsman Wiglaf, who comes to his aid. They ultimately kill the venomous dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded from a bite in the neck. Before he dies, he names Wiglaf his successor. Beowulf is cremated on a funeral pyre, and his remains are buried in a barrow built by the sea. As his people mourn his death, they also express the fear that, without Beowulf, Geatland will be invaded by nearby tribes.

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Beowulf | Summary, Poem, Characters, Monster, Analysis, & Facts

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Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. It deals with events of the early 6th century and is believed by some to have been composed in the 8th century. Learn more about Beowulf in this article.

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Blind Author of epic poems

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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.

Fact Check

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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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Athena was Zeus' favorite child and she was the goddess of 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.

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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 the gods, birthed most of them himself

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ZEUS Workshop 2018 The 10th ZEUS Workshop (ZEUS2018) will take place in Dresden on February 8-9, 2018

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They were polytheistic, which means that they believed in more than one god

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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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Epic poem written by homer

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Free summary and analysis of Book 1 in Homer's The Odyssey that won't make you snore. We promise.

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A heroic poem set in Sweden.

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Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. The work deals with events of the early 6th century, and, while the date of its composition is uncertain, some scholars believe that it was written in the 8th century. Although originally untitled, the poem was later named after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, whose exploits and character provide its connecting theme. There is no evidence of a historical Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified. The poem did not appear in print until 1815. It is preserved in a single manuscript that dates to circa 1000 and is known as the Beowulf manuscript (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV).

Plot

Beowulf falls into two parts. It opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar has a splendid mead hall known as Heorot, a place of celebration and much merriment. However, the joyous noise angers Grendel, an evil monster living in a nearby swamp. For 12 years the creature terrorizes Heorot with nightly visits in which he carries off Hrothgar's warriors and devours them.

After learning of the Danes' trouble, young Beowulf, a prince of the Geats in what is now southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to rid Heorot of its monster. Hrothgar is astonished at the little-known hero's daring but welcomes him. After an evening of feasting, much courtesy, and some discourtesy-at one point, one of Hrothgar's men insults Beowulf-the king retires, leaving Beowulf in charge. During the night, Grendel comes from the moors, rips open the heavy doors, and devours one of the sleeping Geats. He then grapples with Beowulf, who refuses to use a weapon. Beowulf grips one of Grendel's hands with such force that the monster finally wrenches himself free only when his arm is torn off at the shoulder. Mortally wounded, Grendel returns to his swamp and dies. Beowulf then displays the monster's arm in Heorot for all to see.

The next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot, and a feast is thrown in Beowulf's honour. However, as the warriors sleep that night, Grendel's mother, another swamp monster, comes to avenge her son's death, and she kills one of Hrothgar's men. In the morning Beowulf dives into her mere (lake) to search for her, and she attacks him. They struggle in her dry cave at the mere's bottom, and Beowulf finally kills her with a sword. In the cave, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse, whose head he cuts off and takes back to Heorot. The Danes rejoice once more. Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, and Beowulf, enriched with honours and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats.

The second part passes rapidly over Hygelac's subsequent death in a battle (of historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf's succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. However, the tranquility ends when a fire-breathing dragon becomes enraged after a man steals from its treasure-filled lair. The creature begins ravaging Geatland, and the brave but aging Beowulf decides to engage it, despite knowing that he will likely die. The fight is long and terrible-a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful too is the desertion of all his retainers except for his young kinsman Wiglaf, who comes to his aid. They ultimately kill the venomous dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded from a bite in the neck. Before he dies, he names Wiglaf his successor. Beowulf is cremated on a funeral pyre, and his remains are buried in a barrow built by the sea. As his people mourn his death, they also express the fear that, without Beowulf, Geatland will be invaded by nearby tribes.

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Beowulf | Summary, Poem, Characters, Monster, Analysis, & Facts

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Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. It deals with events of the early 6th century and is believed by some to have been composed in the 8th century. Learn more about Beowulf in this article.

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The Odyssey is about the Odyssey's journey 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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God of sea, earthquakes, and horses.

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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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Located on the 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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it is about the trojan war and it explains what happens. and it was wrote by homer.

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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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Troy was in modern-day 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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A Greek poet who 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 Polyphemus, 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 Smyrna, 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...

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Troy was located in northwestern Turkey.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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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War over pretty girl named helen

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About Odysseus traveling back home after 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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he was a student of Socrates

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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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Troy was in a war against Greece because Paris of Troy took Agamemnon's wife.

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Trojan War | Myth, Characters, & Significance

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Trojan War, legendary conflict between the early Greeks and the people of Troy in western Anatolia, dated by later Greek authors to the 12th or 13th century BCE. The war stirred the imagination of ancient Greeks more than any other event in their history and was celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyss…

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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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the supreme gods of Mount Olympus, he spent most of his time in his watery domain. Poseidon was brother to Zeus and Hades.

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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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A poem about a man named Odysseus and his journey home from war, and it was written by Homer

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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.

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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 Odyssey 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...

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The most powerful of all the gods

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Zeus was the king of the Olympian gods and the supreme deity in Greek religion. Often referred to as the Father, as the god of thunder and the 'cloud-gatherer', he controlled the weather, offered signs and omens and generally dispensed justice, guaranteeing order amongst both the gods and humanity from his seat high on Mt. Olympus.

Zeus' Struggle for Power

Zeus' father was Cronus and his mother Rhea. Cronus had usurped control of the heavens from his father Ouranos and he was constantly wary of not having the same thing happen to him from his own children. To pre-empt any takeover he, therefore, swallowed all of his children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. However, Rhea saved her youngest child Zeus by wrapping a stone in swaddling clothes and giving this to Cronus to swallow. Zeus was spirited away to Mt. Dikte on the island of Crete where he was raised by the primeval goddess Gaia (Earth), or in some versions by the Nymphs. Amongst these was the Nymph Amaltheia (in some versions of the myth she was a goat) who suckled the young god.

On reaching adulthood Zeus made Cronus cough back up the children he had swallowed and Zeus then married his sister Hera. However, the lawless Titans, encouraged by Gaia, immediately tried to wrestle control of the world from the Olympian gods in a ten-year battle known as the Titanomachy. The Titans were the brothers and sisters of Cronus and it was only through the help of the Cyclopes - who made Zeus his lightning bolts - and the hundred-handed giants or Hecatoncheires (Briareos, Cottus and Gyges) that Zeus was finally able to imprison the Titans in Tartarus, the deepest part of the Underworld. Making himself ruler of the skies, Zeus then gave dominion over the seas to Poseidon and of the Underworld to Hades.

The Olympians still could not reign peacefully, though, for Gaia then enlisted the help of the terrible and savage Giants to battle with Zeus in the Gigantomachy. The Olympians were this time helped by the great hero Hercules and, after Zeus outwitted Gaia in her attempt to give the giants a magic herb, they once again won the battle for control of the world, not however, before the Giants had created great destruction by moving mountains, islands and rivers.

Zeus's reign was only once more challenged when some of the gods, notably Hera, Athena and Poseidon, tried to takeover Zeus' role as head of the Olympian gods and bound him to his bed. The Father was, however, freed by one of the Hecatoncheires and the status quo restored.

Zeus' Offspring

Although first married (briefly it seems) to the Titan Metis and then married to Hera, Zeus was infamous for his adulterous affairs, during which he often transformed himself into various incarnations to bed his prey. He, therefore, had many offspring:

Hephaistos, Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia - with Hera.

Athena - with Metis but as Zeus swallowed his wife in fear a son would usurp his position, Athena was born from Zeus' head and she became the god's favourite child.

Apollo & Artemis - with Leto.

- with the Nymph Maia. Zeus, impressed by his trickery and silver tongue, gave him the role of messenger of the gods.

Dionysos - with Semele who, being tricked by a jealous Hera, asked to see Zeus in all his godly splendour and immediately expired as a consequence. Dionysos was born from Zeus' thigh as a result of his mother's premature death.

Hercules - with Alkmene and he was, therefore, forever the subject of a jealous Hera's scheming but on his death Zeus brought him to Mt. Olympus and made him into a god.

Perseus - with Danae, who was won over to the charms of Zeus when he appeared to her as golden rain in order to enter her chamber where she was imprisoned by her father Acrisius.

Persephone & Iacchus- with Demeter.

The Fates, the Hours, Horae (Seasons), Eunomia (Lawfulness), Dike (Justice), Eirene (Peace) - with Themis.

Helen, the Dioskouroi & Polydeuces - with Leda, for whom he transformed himself into a swan.

Aglaea (Splendour), Euphrosyne (Joy) & Thalia (Good Cheer) - (the three Graces) with Eurynome.

Minos, Rhadamanthys & Sarpedon - with Europa after Zeus disguised himself as a magnificent white bull and whisked her off to Crete.

Epaphos - with Io.

Iasion - with Electra.

Arcas - with the Nymph Callisto - both son and mother were transformed into bears by a jealous Artemis but Zeus made them into constellations - Ursa Minor and Major.

The nine Muses - with Mnemosyne after the couple slept together for nine consecutive nights.

Zeus was also regarded as the founder of certain races, notably the Magnesians and the Macedonians. He also turned ants into the magnificent fighting Myrmidons for his son Aiakos, later to be led by Achilles in the Trojan War.

Zeus the Punisher

The god was also the great punisher. Those who did wrong or committed acts of impiety were severely punished, often for all time. The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus and after acts of impiety against Zeus, Apollo and Poseidon were made to build the magnificent walls of Troy which proved so useful in the Trojan War. An explanation for the war in mythology was that Zeus sought to curb the rising population of humanity. Zeus also selected Paris as the judge in the famous beauty contest between Aphrodite, Hera and Athena, and when the young prince won Helen as his reward for choosing Aphrodite it was cited as another, more human cause for the Trojan War.

...it is not possible in any way to evade the mind of Zeus

Other victims of Zeus' vengeance included The Titan Prometheus who was condemned to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day after he stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind. Atlas had to support the heavens for eternity because of his role in the Titanomachy. Sisyphus, punished for his trickery, was condemned to forever roll a huge stone up a hill in the Underworld. Asclepius was killed by one of Zeus' thunderbolts because the former's medicine and his ability to raise the dead threatened the balance of power between men and gods. Pandora, the first woman was sent into the world by Zeus as punishment for receiving the gift of fire and she was to be the source of all mankind's misfortunes, carried with her in a box. Phineus, who was tricked by Hera into blinding his two sons, was himself blinded by Zeus who also sent the Harpies to continuously harass him. Ixion rashly declared his love for Hera and so Zeus banished him to Hades to be forever bound to a rotating wheel. Lycaon gave human flesh to Zeus to test his divinity and the god punished his impudence by turning him into a wolf. Salmoneus thought he was a god and pretended to be Zeus by throwing flaming torches for lightning bolts and riding his chariot to make a noise like thunder but Zeus swiftly put a stop to his antics by killing him instantly with a real lightning bolt. The list goes on but the message is clear, wrong-doing and lack of respect would be severely punished.

Zeus the Peacemaker

Despite the terrible punishments Zeus could inflict he was also a peacemaker, famously reconciling Apollo and Hermes when they fought over the first lyre. Similarly, Zeus resolved the conflict between Apollo and Hercules over the tripod from Delphi. He also persuaded Hades to part with Persephone for part of each year and so end the terrible drought her mother Demeter had caused for the human race in protest at being held captive in the Underworld. For mere mortals, Zeus was at least fair-minded. At his feet Zeus had the jars of Fate - one full of bad things, another full of good things and he dispensed both with justice. Similarly, the time of a mortal's death was carefully weighed in Zeus' golden scales.

Sites Sacred to Zeus

Zeus had an oracle, the oldest in fact, at Dodona in northern Greece where ascetic priests served an oracle which interpreted the sounds from the wind in the branches of the sacred oak trees and the babbling of water from the holy spring. Another great sanctuary dedicated to Zeus was at Olympia where every four years from 776 BCE the Olympic Games drew crowds from all parts of the Greek world to honour the father of the gods and where 100 oxen were sacrificed to Zeus at the end of each Games. Also at Olympia, the massive 5th century BCE temple of Zeus housed the gigantic gold and ivory statue of the god by Pheidias which was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Other important sacred sites for the god were on Mt. Lycaios, in Athens, Nemea, Pergamon, Stratos, and in Libya.

There were surprisingly few festivals in honour of Zeus, one was the Diasia of Athens. Generally, though, Zeus, as head of the Greek pantheon, was omnipresent and so made no particular attachments to specific cities. Zeus was, however, worshipped in most family homes where an altar was often dedicated to him in each courtyard, for as Zeus Herkeios, he protected the family hearth and property in general. He was also Zeus Xenios, the god of hospitality, Zeus Polieus, protector of cities, Zeus Horkios guardian of oaths and Zeus Soter, the protector and general benefactor to all.

Representations in Art

In Greek art Zeus is almost always bearded and carries either a lightning bolt or sceptre. He was also strongly associated with bulls, oak trees and eagles, one of the latter sometimes appears at his side when he does not have his lightning bolt or sceptre. Zeus is a central figure in the east pediment of the Parthenon but without doubt the most majestic representation of the god is the bronze statue from Artemesium (460 BCE) where he confidently stands, feet wide apart, about to launch a thunderbolt.

Some scholars believe the figure is Poseidon but the art historian J.Boardman presents the convincing argument that the stance is much more familiar to representations of Zeus in Greek art (see the Dodona statue) and if the figure held a trident (much longer than a thunderbolt) it would obscure the face, an undesirable aesthetic consequence for Greek sculpture. Greek pottery is another rich source of the myths involving Zeus, in particular scenes representing his many metamorphoses and Zeus also appeared on many coins, notably those of Elis.

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Zeus was the king of the Olympian gods and the supreme deity in Greek religion. Often referred to as the Father, as the god of thunder and the 'cloud-gatherer', he controlled the weather, offered signs and omens and generally dispensed justice, guaranteeing order amongst both the gods and humanity from his seat high on Mt.

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It is located in northwest 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.