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 Talks about the meals of everyday life.

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 Talks about the meals of everyday life.

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They loved to drink wine and for dessert they would put honey and sugar on food

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

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In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in all areas of life. With formal rituals which included animal sacrifices and libations, myths to explain the origins of mankind and give the gods a human face, temples which dominated the urban landscape, city festivals and national sporting and artistic competitions, religion was never far from the mind of an ancient Greek. Whilst the individual may have made up their own mind on the degree of their religious belief and some may have been completely sceptical, certain fundamentals must have been sufficiently widespread in order for Greek government and society to function: the gods existed, they could influence human affairs, and they welcomed and responded to acts of piety and worship.

The Olympian Gods

Polytheistic Greek religion encompassed a myriad of gods, each representing a certain facet of the human condition, and even abstract ideas such as justice and wisdom could have their own personification. The most important gods, though, were the Olympian gods led by Zeus:

These Olympian gods were believed to reside on Mt. Olympus and would have been recognised across Greece, albeit, with some local variations and perhaps particular attributes and associations.

In the Greek imagination, literature & art, the gods were given human bodies & characters - both good & bad.

In the Greek imagination, literature, and art, the gods were given human bodies and characters - both good and bad - and just as ordinary men and women, they married, had children (often through illicit affairs), fought, and in the stories of Greek mythology they directly intervened in human affairs. These traditions were first recounted only orally as there was no sacred text in Greek religion and later, attempts were made to put in writing this oral tradition, notably by Hesiod in his and more indirectly in the works of Homer.

Temples, Rituals & Priests

Gods became patrons of cities, for example, Aphrodite for Corinth and Helios for Rhodes, and were called upon for help in particular situations, for example, Ares during war and Hera for weddings. Some gods were imported from abroad, for example, Adonis, and incorporated into the Greek pantheon whilst rivers and springs could take on a very localised personified form such as the nymphs.

The temple ( naos - meaning dwelling place in reference to the belief that the god dwelt in that place, or at least temporarily visited during rituals) was the place where, on special occasions, religion took on a more formal tone. Gods were worshipped at sacred sites and temples in all major Greek communities in ceremonies carried out by priests and their attendants.

At first, sacred sites were merely a simple altar in a designated area, but over time massive temples came to be built in honour of a particular god and these usually housed a cult statue of the deity, most famously the huge statue of Athena in the Parthenon of Athens or Zeus at Olympia. In time, a whole complex of temples to lesser gods could spring up around the main temple, creating a large sacred complex, often built on an acropolis dominating a city or surrounding area. This sacred area ( temenos) was separated from the rest of the community by a symbolic gate or propylon, and in fact, it was believed that this area belonged to the particular deity in question. Sacred sites also received financial donations and dedications of statues, fountains and even buildings from the faithful, often to celebrate a great military victory and give thanks to the gods, and larger sanctuaries also had permanent caretakers ( neokoroi) who were responsible for the upkeep of the site.

The animals sacrificed were usually pigs, sheep, goats or cows & always the same sex as the god which was being honoured.

The temple itself, though, was not used during religious practices as these were carried out at a designated altar outside the temple. Ancient authors often show a reluctance to go into explicit details of religious ceremonies and rites as if these were too sacred to be publicised in the written word. What we do know is that the most common religious practices were sacrifice and the pouring of libations, all to the accompaniment of prayers in honour of the god. The animals sacrificed were usually pigs, sheep, goats or cows and always the same sex as the god which was being honoured. The meat was then either burnt completely or cooked, with part offered to the god and the rest eaten by some or all of the worshippers or taken away to be eaten later. The actual killing of the animal was carried out by a butcher or cook ( megeiras) whilst a young girl sprinkled seeds onto the animals head, perhaps symbolic of life and regeneration at the moment of the animal's death. Other such rituals included examining the entrails of sacrificed animals to ascertain signs which could help predict future events.

Priests then, orchestrated the religious ceremonies and delivered prayers. The position was generally open to all and once assuming the role, particularly when wearing the sacred headband, the body of the priest became inviolate. Priests served a specific god but they were not necessarily religious experts. For theological questions, a citizen could consult an exegetes, a state official, who was knowledgeable in religious affairs. Women could also be priests, which is perhaps surprising given their lack of any other public role in Greek society. Often, but not always, the priest was the same sex as the god they represented. Priestesses did have the added restriction that they were most often selected because they were virgins or beyond menopause. Worshippers, on the other hand, could be both sexes and those rituals with restrictions could exclude either men or women.

Mysteries & Oracles

In addition to the formal and public religious ceremonies there were also many rites which were open to and known only by the initiated who performed them, the most famous example being the Mysteries of Eleusis. In these closed groups, members believed that certain activities gave spiritual benefits, amongst them a better after-life.

Places could also acquire a divine connection; the great oracles such as that of Apollo at Delphi and Zeus at Dodona may well have begun as places considered particularly good to receive signs from the gods. Such places became hugely important centres with their priest oracles consulted by both individuals and city-states so that the rather vague and ambiguous proclamations might help guide their future conduct.

Festivals & Games

Athletic Games and competitions in music (especially playing the kithara and lyre) and theatre (both tragedy and comedy) were held during festivals such as the City Dionysia of Athens and the Panhellenic games at the most important sacred sites of Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia to honour a particular god. These events were attended by visitors from all over Greece and the experience was perhaps more akin to a pilgrimage rather than that of a mere sports fan. Illustrating their sacred status, warfare was prohibited during these events and pilgrims were guaranteed free-passage across Greece. However, there were also much smaller festivals, sometimes only attended by a very select number of individuals, for example, the Arrhephoria in Athens, where only priestesses and a maximum of four young girls participated.

Personal Religion

Although the historical record reveals much about formal religious occasions and ceremony, we should remember that Greek religion was in fact practised anywhere, at any time, by private individuals in a very personal way. Not only temples but also the hearth in private homes was regarded as sacred, for example. Individuals could also visit a temple anytime they wanted to and it was customary to say a prayer even when just passing them in the street. People left offerings such as incense, flowers, and food, no doubt with a hopeful prayer or in gratitude for a past deed. Individuals could also organise their own private sacrifice if they had the means to do so, and these have been commemorated in thousands of stone relief markers found at sacred sites. In addition, temples were often visited in order to seek healing, especially at those sites associated with Asclepius the god of medicine, notably at Epidaurus.

People also looked for signs from the gods in everyday life and to interpret these signs as indicators of future events. Such signs could be birds in the sky or a spoken word between friends said at a particular moment or even a simple sneeze which might be interpreted as an auspicious or inauspicious omen.

Such beliefs and, indeed, certain aspects of religion such as the immorality of the gods as portrayed in the arts, were severely criticised by intellectuals, artists, and philosophers from the 5th century BCE, but these may or may not reflect the commonly held views of the wider populace, and it is difficult to believe from the wealth of archaeological and written records that religion was anything but a fundamental part of life for the ordinary inhabitants of the ancient Greek world.

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In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in all areas of life. With formal rituals which included animal sacrifices and libations, myths to explain the origins of mankind and give the gods a human face, temples which dominated the urban landscape, city festivals and national sporting and artistic competitions, religion was never far from the mind of an ancient Greek.

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The Greeks had different ways of transportation for different things. Such as they used ships to transport goods.

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The Greeks had different ways of transportation for different things. Such as they used ships to transport goods.

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Barley, figs, olives were staples in the Greek diet.

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Barley, figs, olives were staples in the Greek diet.

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

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Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher, known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally considered the first university in the western world. Born Aristocles, son of Ariston of the deme Colytus, Plato had two older brothers (Adeimantus and Glaucon), who both feature famously in Plato's dialogue Republic, and a sister Potone. He is known by the nickname 'Plato' which, according to Diogenes Laertius, was given him by his wrestling coach because of his broad shoulders (in Greek 'Platon' means broad). His family was aristocratic and well-connected politically, and it seems Plato was expected to pursue a career in politics. His interests, however, tended more toward the arts and, in his youth, he wrote plays and, perhaps, poetry.

When he was in his late teens or early twenties he heard Socrates teaching in the market and abandoned his plans to pursue a literary career as a playwright; he burned his early work and devoted himself to philosophy.

It is likely that Plato had known Socrates, at least by reputation, since youth. The Athenian politician, Critias, was Plato's mother's cousin and studied with Socrates as a young man. It has been suggested, therefore, that Socrates was a regular visitor to Plato's family. However this may be, nothing is suggested by the ancient writers to indicate Socrates' influence over Plato until the latter was about 20 years old. Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 CE) writes that Plato was about to compete for the prize in tragedies in the theatre of Bacchus when "he heard the discourse of Socrates and burnt his poems saying, 'Vulcan, come here; for Plato wants your aid' and from henceforth, as they say, being now twenty years old, he became a pupil of Socrates." Nothing is clearly known of Plato's activities for the next eight years save that he studied under the elder philosopher until the latter's trial and execution on the charge of impiety in 399 BCE.

Socrates' execution had a great impact on the then 28 year old and he left Athens to travel, visiting Egypt and Italy among other places, before returning to his homeland to write his dialogues and set up the Academy. His Dialogues almost all feature Socrates as the main character, but whether this is an accurate portrayal of Socrates' actions and beliefs has long been contested. Plato's contemporary, Phaedo, also one of Socrates' students (and best known for Plato's dialogue named after him) contended that Plato placed his own ideas in Socrates' mouth and made up the dramatic situations of his dialogues. Other philosophers and writers of the time have also questioned the accuracy of Plato's depiction of Socrates but seem in agreement that Plato was a very serious man with lofty ideas which were difficult for many to grasp.

Critics of Plato

Though he was respected as a philosopher of enormous talent in his lifetime (he was at least twice kidnapped and ransomed for a high price), he was by no means universally acclaimed. The value of Plato's philosophy was questioned most strenuously by the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who considered Plato an 'elitist snob' and a 'phony'. When Plato defined a human being as a bi-ped without feathers, Diogenes is said to have plucked a chicken and presented it in Plato's classroom, crying, "Behold, Plato's human being." Plato allegedly replied that his definition would now need to be revised, but this concession to a critic seems to have been an exception rather than the rule. Criticisms aside, however, Plato's work exerted an enormous impact on his contemporaries and those who followed.

The Apology is considered universally as the beginning of western philosophy.

Plato's Dialogues

Plato's Dialogues of the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo are commonly collected under the title The Last Days of Socrates and this four-act drama shows Socrates before, during, and after his trial in the Athenian court. I.F. Stone praises Plato's Apology as "a masterpiece of world literature, a model of courtroom pleading; and the greatest single piece of Greek prose that has come down to us. It rises to a climax which never fails to touch one deeply", and Stone is certainly not alone in his estimation of the work. The Apology is considered universally as the beginning of western philosophy. Plato's Euthyphro, however often overlooked, sets the stage for Apology while also providing the reader with another glimpse into the values Socrates may have held and the way in which he went about teaching these values. Perhaps it was Plato's intention to show why Socrates would have been put on trial in the first place, since the young fundamentalist, Euthyphro, is hardly hurting anyone with his beliefs and, no doubt, the case he brings against his own father would have been thrown out of court. As Euthyphro clearly and ardently believes in the gods of Greece, and as Socrates soundly shows him that his beliefs are inconsistent and incomplete, the dialogue illustrates what could have been meant by the charge of "corrupting the youth".

The Crito is a discussion of the law and how, as a citizen of the state, one should obey the law even if one disagrees with it. This dialogue, set in Socrates' prison cell as he awaits execution, prepares a reader for the final act of the drama, Plato's Phaedo, in which Socrates attempts to prove the immortality of the soul. Plato very purposefully states in the dialogue that he himself was not present that day and leaves it to his main character, the narrator Phaedo, to relate the events of Socrates' last hours which were devoted entirely to philosophical discourse with his students. Plato has the character of Socrates say, at one point, "I will go back to what we have so often spoken of, and begin with the assumption that there exists an absolute beauty, and an absolute good, and an absolute greatness, and so on. If you grant me this, and agree that they exist, I hope to be able to show you what my cause is, and to discover that the soul is immortal" (100b). If the reader does grant this to Socrates then, indeed, the soul is proven immortal; if one does not grant the assumption, however, it is not. The `assumption' that there exists "an absolute good and an absolute greatness" is quite a large one, and Plato's dialogues, no matter the subject they treat, may be read as a life's work to prove the truth of what Socrates asks us to grant him.

The Quest for Truth

The Dialogues of Plato universally concern themselves with the quest for Truth and the understanding of what is Good. Plato contended that there was one universal truth which a human being needed to recognize and strive to live in accordance with. This truth, he claimed, was embodied in the realm of Forms. Plato's Theory of Forms states, simply put, that there exists a higher realm of truth and that our perceived world of the senses is merely a reflection of the greater one. When one looks at a horse, then, and values that horse as `beautiful', one is responding to how closely that particular horse on earth corresponds to the `Form of Beauty' in the realm of Forms. In order to recognize the `Form of Beauty', one needs first be able to recognize that this perceived world is merely an illusion or a reflection, and that what one calls `beautiful' on earth is not beautiful in itself but is only `beautiful' in as much as it participates in the `Form of Beauty' (a concept further explored in Plato's famous `Allegory of the Cave' in Book VII of Republic).

Therefore, the old saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" would be completely unacceptable to Plato. If Person A claims a horse is beautiful and Person B claims that the horse is not, one of them needs to be right and one wrong in their claim; they cannot both be correct. According to Plato, the one who is right will be the one who understands and recognizes the Form of Beauty as it is expressed in that particular horse. This claim, of course, stands in direct opposition to Protagoras' assertion that "Man is the measure of all things" and, it seems, it was supposed to. Plato devoted most of his life to trying to prove the reality of the realm of Forms and to disprove Protagoras' relativism, even to the last dialogue he wrote, the Laws.

In all of Plato's work, the one constant is that there is a Truth which it is the duty of a human being to recognize and strive for, and that one cannot just believe whatever one wants to (again, a direct challenge to Protagoras). Even though he never conclusively proved the existence of the Forms, his standard inspired later philosophers and writers, notably Plotinus, who is credited with founding the Neo-Platonic school which exerted significant influence on early Christianity.

Plato's Influence

The enormity of Plato's influence was recorded by Diogenes Laertius who wrote, "

He was the first author who wrote treatises in the form of dialogues, as Favorinus tells us in the eighth book of his Universal History. And he was also the first person who introduced the analytical method of investigation, which he taught to Leodamus of Thasos. He was also the first person in philosophy who spoke of antipodes, and elements, and dialectics, and actions (poiêmata) and oblong numbers, and plane surfaces, and the providence of God. He was likewise the first of the philosophers who contradicted the assertion of Lysias, the son of Cephalus, setting it out word for word in his Phaedrus. And he was also the first person who examined the subject of grammatical knowledge scientifically. And as he argued against almost every one who had lived before his time, it is often asked why he has never mentioned Democritus ( Lives, XIX).

In this passage, Laertius is essentially claiming that Plato contradicted or significantly improved upon all of the accepted theories which came before him, and an important recognition of his influence on the world to the present day is summed up by the 20th century CE philosopher Alfred North Whitehead who stated, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato".

This influence is perhaps best represented by Plato's most famous dialogue, Republic. Professor Forrest E. Baird writes, "There are few books in Western civilization that have had the impact of Plato's Republic - aside from the Bible, perhaps none" ( Ancient Philosophy, 68). Republic has been denounced as a treatise on fascism (by Karl Popper, among others) and praised as an eloquent and elevating work by scholars such as Bloom and Cornford. The dialogue begins with a consideration of what Justice means and goes on to develop the ideal, perfect State. Throughout the piece, Plato's ideas of Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Justice are developed as they are explored by Socrates and his interlocutors.

While the work has traditionally been understood as Plato's attempt to outline his model for the perfectly just and efficient society, an important point is often overlooked: The character of Socrates very clearly states that they are creating this ` city' as a means to better understand the function of the perfect `soul'. The society which the men discuss, then, is not intended to reflect an actual physical political-social entity but rather to serve symbolically as a means by which a reader may recognize strengths and weaknesses in his or her own constitution. The young poet and playwright Aristocles was always present in crafting the mature works of the philosopher Plato and, in all the dialogues, a reader is expected to consider the work as carefully as one would a poem. Unlike his famous student Aristotle, Plato never clearly spells out the meaning of a dialogue for a reader. The reader is supposed to confront the truths which the dialogue presents individually. It is this combination of artistic talent with philosophical abstractions which has assured Plato's enduring value.

Aristotle & Plato's Legacy

While Aristotle disagreed with Plato's Theory of Forms and many other aspects of his philosophy, he was profoundly affected by his teacher; most notably in his insistence on a right way of living and a proper way to pursue one's path in life (as outlined most clearly in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics). Aristotle would go on to tutor Alexander the Great and, in so doing, would help spread the philosophy Plato had created to the known world. Plato died at the age of 80 in 348/7 BCE, and leadership of the Academy passed to his nephew Speusippus. Tradition holds that the Academy endured for nearly 1,000 years as a beacon of higher learning, until it was closed by the Christian Emperor Justinian in 529 CE in an effort to suppress the heresy of pagan thought. Ancient sources, however, establish that the Academy was severely damaged in the First Mithridatic War in 88 BCE and almost almost completely destroyed in the Roman Emperor Sulla's sack of Athens in 86 BCE.

Plato's Academy was a wooded garden located near to one of his homes and not a `university' as one would picture such an institution today, and so the area underwent many changes both before and after Plato's school was established there and seems to have been a center of learning for centuries. The Roman writer Cicero claims that Plato was not even the first to have a school in the gardens of Academia, but that Democritus (c. 460 BCE) was the original founder and leader of a philosophical school in the locale. It is also established that Simplicius was the head of a school in the gardens, which was still known as the Academy, as late as 560 CE. Even so, in the present day the site is known as Plato's Academy, reflecting the importance of the philosopher's influence and respect for his legacy.

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Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher, known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally considered the first university in the western world. Born Aristocles, son of Ariston of the deme Colytus, Plato had two older brothers (Adeimantus and Glaucon), who both feature famously in Plato's dialogue Republic, and a sister Potone.

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Homer wrote the Iliad and the odyssey. His books were the schoolbooks of the greeks for hundreds of years 

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Homer wrote the Iliad and the odyssey. His books were the schoolbooks of the greeks for hundreds of years 

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Greek religious art connects with the book of Genesis

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If the early chapters of the Book of Genesis present a true account of human origins, then ancient secular human history must connect in significant ways to that account.

In fact, ancient Greek religious art connects in very significant ways with Genesis. While Genesis describes the early events and people in humanity's past, the Greeks depicted those same events and people - except from the point of view that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise.

The Greeks remembered the original paradise, calling it the Garden of the Hesperides, always depicting it with a serpent-entwined apple tree. The Book of Genesis doesn't say what kind of fruit it was: It's from the Greek tradition we get the idea that Eve ate an apple.
Oil Jar (lekythos) with the serpent-entwined apple tree in the Garden of the Hesperides. Greek made in Paestum South Italy 350-340 BC Terracotta. (Mary Harrsch/ CC BY NC SA 2.0 ) Zeus and Hera, the first couple according to the Greeks, seated together on the east frieze of the Parthenon, from about 435 BC. (Author provided)
Zeus and Hera - the Original Occupants of the Garden

Both the ancient commentator Apollodorus and the Greek playwright Euripides describe Zeus and Hera as the original occupants of the Garden of the Hesperides. To the Greeks, they were the first couple, a match for the Adam and Eve of Genesis.

The Judeo-Christian tradition considers Adam as the father of all humanity. The term "father Zeus" is a description of the king of the gods that appears over 100 times in the ancient writings of Homer. According to the ancient poet Hesiod, Zeus is "the father of gods and men" - the gods being deified ancestors.

Genesis 3:20 describes Eve as "the mother of all the living." In a hymn of invocation, the 6th-century BC lyric poet, Alcaeus, refers to Hera as "mother of all." As the first wife, the Greeks worshipped Hera as the goddess of marriage; as the first mother, the Greeks worshipped her as the goddess of childbirth.

Both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Greek religious tradition insist that their respective first couples came out of an ancient paradise with a serpent-entwined fruit tree. Two opposite spiritual standpoints-the former looking to the Creator as the source of truth, and the latter looking to the serpent for it-share the same factual basis.

Names of Hesperides Describe The Garden

The Hesperides, the nymphs who tend to the ancient garden, its tree, its apples, and its serpent, get their name from Hespere in Greek, which means evening, signifying the West where the sun sets.
The Garden of the Hesperides depicted on the lower panel of a red-figured hydria from about 410 BC. (Author provided)
This matches the Genesis account which describes civilization developing to the east of Eden. A return to Eden would mean traveling west. The Greeks put the Garden of the Hesperides in the Far West.

The Garden of the Hesperides was depicted on the lower panel of a water pot from about 410 BC. In this representation, the serpent entwines the apple tree with its golden fruit. The names of the figures are written on the vase. Two of the Hesperides, Chrysothemis (Golden Order) and Asterope (Star Face) stand to the immediate left of the tree.

Chrysothemis moves toward the tree to pluck an apple. Asterope leans pleasantly against her with both arms. To the left of them, Hygeia (Health) sits on a hillock and holds a long scepter, a symbol of rule, as she looks back towards the tree. To the right of the apple tree, Lipara (Shining Skin) holds apples in the fold of her garment, and raises her veil off her shoulder.

The names of the Hesperides describe what the garden is like. It's a land of soft starlight, gold for the taking, perfect health, and wondrous beauty.

Apollodorus, writing in the 2nd-century BC, gives four different names for the Hesperides: Aegle (Dazzling Light), Erythia (Red Land), Hesperia (Evening Star), and Arethusa (Water Fountain).

The sound of a water fountain is one of the most peaceful sounds. What an enchanting and delightful place! The Hebrew word for Eden means "to be soft or pleasant," figuratively "to delight oneself." The Garden of the Hesperides is the Greek version of the Garden of Eden.

Herakles Goes for the Apples
One of the Hesperides gestures for Herakles to stay with them as he makes off with the apples from the serpent's tree (Author provided)
The seated man on the vase to our right of the tree is Nimrod/Herakles. The goal of Nimrod/Herakles in the post-Flood world was to push Noah and his God out of the picture, dispatch those who disagreed with his own mankind-exalting rule, and get back to the ancient garden for another bite of the serpent's apple, its anti-Creator "enlightenment," and the promise of immortality without God.

On a vase-depiction from 450 BC, Nimrod/Herakles makes off with the apples as one of the Hesperides gestures for him to stay with them.
350 BC representation of the Hesperides tending to the tree and serpent. ( ) Vase from ca. 340 BC showing the Garden of the Hesperides. (Author provided)
Notice on the vase images above, and on the vase images, sculptures, and coin below, spanning over seven centuries (500 BC to 250 AD), that the serpent is always depicted in a friendly posture.
Vase from about 400 BC showing Nimrod/Herakles talking to one of the Hesperides as she sits in front of the serpent-entwined tree. (Author provided)
On this vase from about 350 BC, one of the Hesperides tends to the serpent as the other tends to the tree. To our right, Nimrod/Herakles holds one of the serpent's apples in his hand.
A vase from about 525 BC shows both Nimrod/Herakles and Cush/Hermes in the Garden of the Hesperides. (Author provided)
On a vase from about 340 BC, one of the Hesperides tends to the serpent, another tends to the tree, and a third tends to her own loveliness.

On the following vase from about 400 BC, Nimrod/Herakles appears to be chatting with one of the Hesperides who sits in front of the serpent-entwined tree.
Detail of a reconstruction of the Hesperides with the serpent-entwined tree. (public domain)
On a vase from about 525 BC, Cush/Hermes, carrying his two-headed serpent staff representing the serpent's rule in the pre-Flood world and now in the post-Flood world as well, gestures as if to say, "This is what we've been searching for." Nimrod/Herakles puts apples from the serpent-entwined tree into his basket. The apples represent humanity's self-exaltation, free from God's revealed word and judgment. Man is now the measure of all things.
Bronze depiction of Nimrod/Herakles and the serpent-entwined apple tree from Byblos, Lebanon, 1st Century AD (Author provided)
Part of the Pagan World's Collective Cultural Memory
Roman coin from the 3rd century AD. Hercules, the serpent-entwined apple tree, and three Hesperides. (Author provided)
Holmes Bryant created a computer restoration of the east pediment of the Parthenon, whose grand theme was the origin of humanity and the triumph of Zeus' religion after the Flood. An enlargement of this reconstruction depicts figures that were known only as K-L-M, until identified in 1982 by Parthenon scholar Kristian Jeppesen as the Hesperides, with the serpent-entwined tree to their proper right.

The mankind-friendly serpent-entwined apple tree in the ancient paradise was part of the pagan world's collective cultural memory. Another example comes from a 1st century AD bronze depiction from a temple in Byblos, Lebanon which depicts Nimrod/Herakles with three of the golden apples in his left hand and the serpent-entwined tree behind him.
Over the east entrance to the temple of Zeus in Olympia (c. 440 BC), aided by Athena, Nimrod/Herakles pushes away the heavens, and with them the God of the heavens, entitling him to receive the golden apples from the serpent's tree in the ancient garden from Lamech/Atlas, the last ruler of the Cainite world before the Flood. Reconstruction by Holmes Bryant.
The Romans borrowed their pantheon from the Greeks, using Latin names. On this Roman coin from the 3rd century AD, we see Nimrod/Herakles (the Roman Hercules), the serpent-entwined apple tree, and three Hesperides.

Depictions of the original garden paradise and Herakles obtaining the apples from its serpent-entwined tree after the Flood are extremely important in Greek religious iconography. They are at the very heart of the Greek religious boast: humanity will embrace the serpent's "enlightenment" and be as gods.
Top Image: Greek vase scene from about 360 BC. The serpent-entwined apple tree in bloom in the midst of the Garden of the Hesperides - the nymphs who tended to the serpent and the tree. (Author provided)
Related depictions of this subject appeared sculpted over the entrance to the temple of Zeus at Olympia, inside Zeus's temple on a painting, sculpted next to an image of Athena in Hera's temple at Olympia, carved therein on the cedar wood chest of Kypselos, sculpted on the temple of Hephaistos in Athens, and in addition to the ones shown here, on numerous red- and black-figure vases from the Archaic and Classical periods.

Without reference to Genesis, the long struggle of the Greek hero Herakles to obtain the apples from the serpent-entwined tree in the ancient paradise makes very little sense. With reference to Genesis, we can see clearly in their ancient art that the Greeks knew exactly where humanity originated.

On one hand, ancient Greek ancestor worship with its exaltation of the serpent's "enlightenment" contradicts the teaching of the word of God; on the other, if properly understood-as we see in the many Greek depictions of the ancient garden paradise-it reinforces what is written about human origins in the early chapters of Genesis.

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr

Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. is the author of The Parthenon Code: Mankind's History in Marble (translated into French and Greek) and Noah in Ancient Greek Art. His latest book is the full-color Genesis Characters and Events in Ancient Greek Art . www.genesisingreekart.com

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Garden of Eden Depicted in Ancient Greek Religious Art

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If the early chapters of the Book of Genesis present a true account of human origins, then ancient secular human history must connect in significant ways to that account. In fact, ancient Greek religious art connects in very significant ways with Genesis.

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Aside from politics, the Greeks left behind a "rich culinary legacy of varied food".

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...bouillabaisse, a French fish stew, was first prepared by the Greeks in the 6th century B.C. Similarly, the French aioli is a modified version of a garlic-flavored mayonnaise, first prepared by the Greeks.

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Apart from their wisdom and the ways of political governance and warfare, the ancient Greeks have also left behind, a rich culinary legacy of varied foods that the world savors to the day. Let's take a culinary journey through ancient Greece.

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The food was related to the gods. for instance wine for Dionysus and bread for Demeter. Bread, wine and the olive comprised the foundation of their diet

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What we know about food in Ancient Greece comes from their literature. No book specifically on food or recipes is extant from that period, but food is talked about a great deal by characters in Greek plays.

Greeks had two kinds of symbolism in their food. One kind was religious symbolism. Wine, for instance, was associated with Dionysos; bread with Demeter. And secondly, like the Jews, the Greeks wanted to use their food as a way of distinguishing themselves from their neighbours. While Jews used food to distinguish themselves religiously as a chosen people, the Greeks used food to show that they were civilised people in a barbarian world. The social etiquette rules, and "diets" around food reinforced this. They saw the feasts of the Persians as morally decadent. Overeating and conspicuous consumption were barbaric. Drinking wine straight up was barbaric. The Greeks approached both eating and drinking alcohol with frugality, to highlight their idea of themselves as poor but free people.

Bread, wine and the olive comprised the foundation of their diet, and continued to do so until well into the 300s AD. Vegetables were also highly important. Greeks put a great deal of effort and study into increasing the yield of their agricultural crops. Beans were an important source of protein, though followers of Pythagoras were taught to avoid them (see entry on Broad Beans.)

Most frying was done with olive oil, but frying wasn't done much before the 5th century BC; up until then, the Greeks mostly braised or boiled their food.

The Greeks taught the Romans how to make the fish sauce called " garum."

Greeks ate with their fingers. Banquets rarely included women or children.

Bread in Ancient Greece

The Greeks could grow barley and emmer, but those didn't make great bread. Barley and emmer could be used for soups, stews, and porridges.

Bread was often barley cakes or flat bread. Barley cakes were called "maza." The Romans called the Greeks "barley eaters." The poor's barley bread would often even contain chaff in it, as the flour wouldn't have been finely sifted.

Greece wasn't a great place to grow wheat. It was imported. Consequently, wheat flour was very late to come along as a food item.

Some ordinary households would have ovens made of pottery, allowing them to make their own bread. After the 5th century BC, when bakers appeared in the cities, bread could also be bought from stalls in the markets. Athens imported wheat from other countries, and a feature for which the market at Athens became known was the sale there of good wheaten bread. Commercial ovens were run by corporations during the night.

By the 400s BC there were 50 to 70 different kinds of bread in Greece.

Socrates didn't like whole grain bread; he considered it pig food.

Greek warriors were considered heavy-bread eaters, not heavy meat-eaters, as they are now.

Dairy in Ancient Greece

Milk was only prescribed as a medicine, and then it would usually be goat's milk. It was mostly made into cheese.

Butter was for barbarians.

The Influence of Dietetics in Ancient Greece

The Greek philosophers started a view of health and food that would last till the end of the Middle Ages. Raw nature was seen in Greek's minds as bad and uncivilised. Nature needed to be corrected, for instance by agriculture, and so did food, so that it would match the individual nature of your body. Your body had four elements or "humours" which could go into imbalance, and what you ate could address this and make you well again. Food would be prepared based on how it could influence your personal humours to make you well again, or on the basis of how the food needed to be corrected so that it would be balanced for your "humours" and not throw their balance off when you consumed it.

Fish in Ancient Greece

Greece just doesn't have good pasture land for livestock, so meat was scarce. The Greeks loved fish, but low on the scale of their likes, and thus cheapest, were small fish such as anchovies and sprats. Tuna, sea bass, grey and red mullet, grouper, were esteemed and expensive. They particularly loved eel; it could cost at least 12 drachmas (a small sheep might cost ten drachmas.)

In the Greek world, fish shifted from something that you caught yourself to something that you bought. The market at Athens sold fresh fish.

Dried fish steaks were traded and sold in markets.

Fish was easier to serve than meat, because to serve meat you first had to arrange to sacrifice it, and with fish you didn't. The first tuna caught in a good year, though, would be offered to Poseidon.

Catfish was particularly popular.

Fish as a food are not really present in Homer's Iliad, though it is somewhat in his Odyssey. In general, though, the heroes of the earliest Greek writings such as the Iliad and the Odyssey considered fish a "lesser" food.

Meat in Ancient Greece

Though the Greeks ate some meat, meat had slightly barbaric connotations for them. They probably didn't eat more than 1 to 2 kg (2 to 5 pounds) of meat a year in total. There were even vegetarian groups that rejected it entirely. Greeks would, however, eat dogs, something that is now beyond the pale for the Western world.

Other Greeks felt that Greeks in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace ate too much meat.

Meat was never eaten before it was sacrificed; this in their mind showed a respect for the life of an animal by dedicating it to a god. Every banquet began with a sacrifice. Animals such as hares and geese weren't sacrificed, however, so they were a less complicated meat to serve.

Meals in Ancient Greece

In early Greek history, there were 4 meals a day: akratisma (breakfast), ariston (mid-day meal), hesperisma, (early evening snack) and deipnon (later dinner.)

Later, the meals came to be called: akratisma (breakfast), deipnon (mid-day meal), dorpestos (early evening snack), and epidorpis (later dinner.)

Athenaeus reported that for a time, there was great confusion over what to call meals, and who ate when. For a while, some people used the words ariston, deipnon, and epidorpis interchangeably to mean "mid-day meal", and the words dorpestos and hesperisma to mean the evening meal. By the end of the Greek classical period, though, there were just 3 meals, and they were called akratisma ("breakfast"), ariston ("mid-day meal"), and deipnon ("evening meal.")

For breakfast (akratisma), the poor and the rich ate the same thing at home: bread dipped in wine (not watered down.) Sometimes, you would also nibble on some figs or olives. A person who skipped breakfast was called an "amaristeton."

Lunch (ariston) was a light meal of often warm or cooked foods, eaten outside the home.

For the evening meal, dinner (deipnon), there were two courses: a starter and the main course. The starter was called "sitos": it was the starch, the carbohydrate, the "fill you up" thing. It would be foods such as barley, wheat, lentils, beans, etc, but with pronounced flavours, to make it interesting. At a wealthy table, there would often be a selection of these. The main course was called "opson": originally this meant relish, but it came to mean everything else, the main thing of interest - whether fish, meat, cheese, salad, or vegetables, or sometimes just olive oil.

At formal dinners, men and women ate separately. The upper class ate reclining on couches, which meant only one hand was available to handle food with. Homer had his characters eat sitting up.

In Sparta, the meals were different - they were communal meals called "phiditia." The goal was to promote tight bonds for battle. When boys were twelve, if they had proved themselves, there were accepted into a group of 15 men. These men would both fight and eat together all their lives. They took their meals together in communal halls, by law. All 15 sat at a common table, in a hall of other similar tables. The law dictated certain dishes that had to be served. Dishes were also brought from home, and everyone was expected to contribute. Aristotle pointed out that this was a burden on the poorer citizens; those who could no longer contribute lost the right to be a citizen. At the age of 30, men could set up their own households, but they still had to have meals at the communal halls.

Wine in Ancient Greece

The Greeks didn't drink wine with their meals (neither did the Etruscans over in Italy.) Wine was drunk separately, at symposiums ("symposia"), which were only for men, with the occasional rare appearance of a woman.

During the symposiums, men recited poems and drank wine while reclined. Some food refreshments might be served, but only very simple ones, such as cheese and some form of bread.

Wine was never, ever drunk straight. It was mixed with water in a crockery vessel called the "krater." A 1 part wine to 1 part water mixture was considered dangerous. Even 1 part wine to two parts water was still considered too strong and barbaric. 1 part wine to three parts water was seen, by Plutarch at least, as the perfect balance.

The Greeks believed that when you drank enough wine, you could have your body possessed by Eros, Dionysus or the Muses. While the Romans admired many things about the Greeks and copied them, they didn't buy this whole "possessed by the god thing" or wine as a vehicle of sacred possession. The Romans thought that Dionysian priests, prancing about drunk and communing with their god, were all a bunch of charlatans.

Water in Ancient Greece

Between 430 to 426 BC inclusive, a plague wiped out ⅓ of Athens' population, ending its reign as a dominant force in the Mediterranean.

Though over the centuries many speculate what exactly the plague that hit Athens was, it was in 2005 that typhoid was identified by studying teeth recovered from an ancient cemetery in Kerameikos, Greece.

Typhoid fever (caused by the bacteria called "bacterium Salmonella typhi") is transmitted by food or water. Its spread is mainly caused by poor hygiene and sanitation. It only affects humans.

At the time, Athens was engaged in the Peloponnesian Wars, which would have caused overcrowding within the walls of the city and strained any sanitary measures and water supply protection that the city had.

Greeks distrusted water anyway, and rarely drank it straight, mixing it with wine instead, which would kill off most - though not all - pathogens.

Literature & Lore

"Both of us broke a bit of black barley bread, with chaff mixed in the kneading, twice a day, and had a few figs; sometimes, too, there would be a braised mushroom, and if there were a little dew we'd catch a snail, or we'd have some native vegetables or a crushed olive, and some wine to drink of dubious quality." - Poliochus, in The Deipnosophistae. Athenaeus. Charles Burton Gulick translation.

"Our dinner is a barley cake bristling with chaff, cheaply prepared, and perhaps one iris-bulb or a dainty dish of sow-thistle or mushroom or any other poor thing that the place affords us poor creatures." - Antiphanes, ibid.

"I [a Greek] would never be able to make an alliance with you [an Egyptian]; there is no common ground for our manners and customs to share, and great differences to separate them. You bow down before the cow, I sacrifice her to the gods. The eel you consider the greatest divinity, and we the very greatest dish." - Antiphanes. "The Lycon."

"Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman." - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950. Major Barbara. 1907. Act I.)

The earliest surviving mention of what Olympic athletes ate was recorded by Diogenes Laërtius, who lived sometime in the 200s to 300s AD. He recorded the philosopher Philostratus (170 to circa 245 AD) as saying, "Their food was bread made from barley and unleavened loaves of unsifted wheat. For meat they ate the flesh of oxen, bulls, goats, and deer; they rubbed themselves with the oil of the wild olive."

Broad, William. Black Sea wreck yields secrets about life in ancient Greece. New York Times, January 18 2003.

Highfield, Roger. Typhoid blamed for the fall of Athens. London: Daily Telegraph. 24 January 2006.

Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, Christos Yapijakis, Philippos N. Synodinos, Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani. DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens. International Society for Infectious Diseases. Elsevier Ltd. January 2006.

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What we know about food in Ancient Greece comes from their literature. No book specifically on food or recipes is extant from that period, but food is talked about a great deal by characters in Greek plays. Greeks had two kinds of symbolism in their food. One kind was religious symbolism.

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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.

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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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The Greeks normally had a very healthy diet.

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The Greeks normally had a very healthy diet.

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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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Theatres and the Olympic Games were common means of entertainment in Ancient Greek times.  

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Theatres and the Olympic Games were common means of entertainment in Ancient Greek times.  

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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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Plato was an ancient Greek Philosopher. He was a follower of Socrates. He wrote 36 dialogues.

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Plato: Early Life and Education

Plato was born around 428 B.C., during the final years of the Golden Age of Pericles' Athens. He was of noble Athenian lineage on both sides. His father Ariston died when Plato was a child. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes. Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404) and came of age around the time of Athens' final defeat by Sparta and the political chaos that followed. He was educated in philosophy, poetry and gymnastics by distinguished Athenian teachers including the philosopher Cratylus.

Plato's Influences

The young Plato became a devoted follower of Socrates-indeed, he was one of the youths Socrates was condemned for allegedly corrupting. Plato's recollections of Socrates' lived-out philosophy and style of relentless questioning, the Socratic method, became the basis for his early dialogues. Plato's dialogues, along with "Apologia," his written account of the trial of Socrates, are viewed by historians as the most accurate available picture of the elder philosopher, who left no written works of his own.

Following Socrates' forced suicide, Plato spent 12 years traveling in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt, studying with other philosophers including followers of the mystic mathematician Pythagoras including Theodorus of Cyrene (creator of the spiral of Theodorus or Pythagorean spiral), Archytas of Tarentum and Echecrates of Phlius. Plato's time among the Pythagoreans piqued his interest in mathematics.

Plato's Theory of Forms, stating that the physical world we know is but a shadow of the real one, was strongly influenced by Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. The two appear as characters in Plato's dialogue "The Parmenides."

Plato had a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, who would later seek his advice on reforming their city's politics.

Platonic Academy

Around 387, the 40-year-old Plato returned to Athens and founded his philosophical school in the grove of the Greek hero Academus, just outside the city walls. In his open-air Academy he delivered lectures to students gathered from throughout the Greek world (nine-tenths of them from outside Athens).

Did you know? The section on music in Plato's "Republic" suggests that in an ideal society flutes would be banned in favor of the more dignified lyre, but on his deathbed Plato reportedly summoned a young girl to play her flute for him, tapping out the rhythm with his finger while he breathed his last.

Many of Plato's writings, especially the so-called later dialogues, seem to have originated in his teaching there. In establishing the Academy Plato moved beyond the precepts of Socrates, who never founded a school and questioned the very idea of a teacher's ability to impart knowledge.

Aristotle arrived from northern Greece to join the Academy at age 17, studying and teaching there for the last 20 years of Plato's life. Plato died in Athens, and was probably buried on the Academy grounds.

Plato's Dialogues

With the exception of a set of letters of dubious provenance, all of Plato's surviving writings are in dialogue form, with the character of Socrates appearing in all but one of them. His 36 dialogues are generally ordered into early, middle and late, though their chronology is determined by style and content rather than specific dates.

The earliest of Plato's dialogues offer a deep exploration of Socrates' dialectic method of breaking down and analyzing ideas and presumptions. In the "Euthpyro," Socrates' endless questioning pushes a religious expert to realize that he has no understanding of what "piety" means. Such analyses pushed his students towards grappling with so-called Platonic forms-the ineffable perfect models (truth, beauty, what a chair should look like) by which people judge objects and experiences.

In the middle dialogues, Plato's individual ideas and beliefs, though never advocated outright, emerge from the Socratic form. The "Symposium" is a series of drinking-party speeches on the nature of love, in which Socrates says the best thing to do with romantic desire is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking (an idea termed "Platonic love" by later writers). In the "Meno," Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is less a matter of learning things than "recollecting" what the soul already knows, in the way that an untaught boy can be led to discover for himself a geometric proof.

The monumental "Republic" is a parallel exploration of the soul of a nation and of an individual. In both, Plato finds a three-part hierarchy between rulers, auxiliaries and citizens and between reason, emotion and desire. Just as reason should reign supreme in the individual, so should a wise ruler control a society.

Only those with wisdom (ideally a sort of "philosopher-king") are able to discern the true nature of things. The experiences of the lower tiers of the state and of the soul are-as Plato's famous analogy has it-related to true knowledge the way the shadows on the wall of a cave are related to, yet wholly different from, the forms that cast them.

Plato's late dialogues are barely dialogues at all but rather explorations of specific topics. The "Timeaus" explains a cosmology intertwined with geometry, in which perfected three-dimensional shapes-cubes, pyramids, icosahedrons-are the "Platonic solids" out of which the whole universe is made. In the "Laws," his final dialogue, Plato retreats from the pure theory of the "Republic," suggesting that experience and history as well as wisdom can inform the running of an ideal state.

Plato Quotes

Plato is credited with coining several phrases that are still popular today. Here are some of Plato's most famous quotes:

· "Love is a serious mental disease."

· "When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."

· "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge."

· "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."

· "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

· "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

· "Man-a being in search of meaning."

· "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of lover, everyone becomes a poet."

· "There are two things a person should never be angry at: What they can help, and what they cannot."

· "People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die."

Plato: Legacy and Influence

The Academy flourished for nearly three centuries following Plato's death, but was destroyed in the sacking of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 B.C. Though continually read in the Byzantine Empire and in the Islamic world, Plato was overshadowed by Aristotle in the Christian west.

It was only in the Renaissance that scholars like Petrarch led a revival of Plato's thought, in particular his explorations of logic and geometry. William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly and others in the 19th-century Romantic movement found philosophical solace in Plato's dialogues.

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The Athenian philosopher Plato (c.428-347 B.C.) is one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.

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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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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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Troy is located on the northwest coast of Turkey.

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Troy is located on the northwest coast of Turkey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit: Alex Khripunov Shutterstock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Homer was a famous Greek writer that wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. 

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Homer was a famous Greek writer that 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

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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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Around 770 BC, Greeks created a new form of entertainment known as the Olympic Games. There would be activities such as running, javelin, and boxing in these games.

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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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Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea and rivers, creator of storms and floods, and the bringer of earthquakes and destruction. He was perhaps the most disruptive of all the ancient gods but he was not always a negative force. He was a protector to mariners and, as a tamer of horses, the patron of that animal and horse breeding. To the Romans, he was known as Neptune.

Origins & Family

Cults to Poseidon date as far back as the late Bronze Age and the Mycenaean civilization (at its peak from the 15th to 12th century BCE), as attested by Linear B inscriptions found at Pylos in the Peloponnese and Knossos on Crete. Indeed, the god seems to have been one of the most important Mycenaean deities, perhaps no surprise given the culture's obvious seafaring skills. It may be that Poseidon was a mix of an indigenous but pre-Greek god with Potis, an Indo-European deity. Pylos, we know, had Poseidon as its main god with a priestess as the head of his cult.

In later Greek mythology, Poseidon was the son of Kronos and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Hades. He was a key figure in the battles for control of the universe between the Titans, the Giants, and the Olympians. On their victory, the three brothers drew lots to decide which domain they would reign over, and Poseidon gained the seas. The god dwelled in magnificent golden mansions beneath the sea, beautifully adorned with coral and sea flowers. Traditionally, this undersea palace, which included the god's stables of fine white horses, was located near Aegae in Euboea. Seemingly not content with the seas alone, Poseidon often interfered in the plans of Zeus, and once even attempted to overthrow his brother with the aid of Hera and Athena. It was as punishment for this treachery that Poseidon was made to build the magnificent walls of Troy.

Poseidon's wife was the Nereid Amphitrite although she had proved a little difficult during the courting process and once fled to the Atlas mountains. Fortunately, the sea god was helped by the dolphin Delphinus who persuaded Amphitrite to return and marry Poseidon. In gratitude, Poseidon ensured that Delphinus was remembered for all time by making a constellation in her likeness which still carries her name.

The god was particularly revered at Corinth & was the focus of the Panhellenic Isthmian games.

The god's most famous son with Amphitrite was Triton, who was half-man, half-fish. Two other children were Rhode and Benthesicyme. However, as with the other divinities, Poseidon fathered many other offspring with various partners. Most notable are Theseus (with Aithra), Polyphemus the Cyclops (whom Odysseus famously encountered on his lengthy return from the Trojan War), Orion the hunter (with the daughter of Minos), the flying horse Pegasus (after the rape of Medusa), the wild horse Arion, and Charybdis (with Gaia), the ship-eating sea monster which created terrible whirlpools. Perhaps justifiably jealous of all these affairs, Poseidon's infatuation with Scylla, the daughter of the sea god Phorcys, led Amphitrite to cast some magic herbs in the girl's bath which turned her into a raging monster with twelve feet and six heads. Both Scylla and Charybdis would menace mariners who passed the Straits of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy.

Poseidon was himself responsible for another terrible creature - the Minotaur. Minos' failure to sacrifice the bull given as a gift by the god resulted in Poseidon bewitching Minos' wife Pasiphae into falling in love with the bull; and the fruit of their amorous relationship was the half-man, half-bull creature which inhabited the labyrinth of Knossos.

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The god is a major protagonist in the Trojan War of Homer's, where he supports the Greeks and gives them either encouragement with rousing speeches, often in disguise as various Achaean personalities, or actually leads them in battle with flashing sword. However, he does also give aid to the Trojan hero Aeneas in order to escape from the fearsome Achilles. Poseidon also features in Homer's as the nemesis of Odysseus. In revenge for the blinding of his son Polyphemus, he cursed Odysseus to wander the sea for ten years. Poseidon is most often described by both Homer and Hesiod as 'deep sounding Earth-shaker', the 'dark-haired one' and 'encircler of the earth.' The latter title reminds that many ancients believed that all waterways were connected and that the land floated on water. For this reason, it made sense that one god looked after all these waterways which encircled the earth (even if many rivers and springs had their own specific personifications in mythology).

Worship & Sacred Sites

In the Greek religion, Poseidon was said to hold the Isthmus of Corinth in special regard; probably as it was an important sea route. The god was particularly revered here and was the focus of horse races and other events at the Panhellenic Isthmian games which were held in his honour near Corinth. The games were held every two years in the spring and, like the Olympic Games, athletes, charioteers, and horse racers competed for prizes, in this case, a prestigious crown of first pine and then, in the Classical period, of dry celery. Corinth was also one of the earliest cities to connect Poseidon to maritime trade and navigation as indicated by votive clay plaques dating to the Archaic period. Sounion was another strategic site close to the god, and his 5th-century BCE temple still stands on the promontory which overlooks ships entering the Saronic gulf. The god was honoured by boat races held at the cape once every four years.

In the legendary competition with Athena to win the patronage of Athens, Poseidon offered to the city the gifts of a saltwater spring and a horse. However, Athena's gift of an olive tree gained greater favour, and it was she who would become the patron of the great city. Still, the god was honoured by the annual Posideai festival - which perhaps had more to do with agriculture than the sea - and the mid-winter month of Posideon carried his name.

As a protector during earthquakes (despite the fact he was also seen as their cause), the god was often appealed to as Poseidon Asphaleios, and a temple to the god was built on Rhodes for just that purpose. Poseidon had an oracle at Taenarum in Laconia and important sanctuaries at the small island of Calauria off Troezen and Onchestus in Boeatia. Onchestus had a curious ceremony whereby horses pulled a riderless chariot through the site, and if it crashed, then the chariot was dedicated to the god. Many coastal settlements across the Mediterranean bore his name (for example, Posidonia/ Paestum), and mariners and fishermen everywhere made votive offerings to Poseidon for protection. His cult worshippers most frequently sacrificed bulls, stallions, and male sheep. Finally, the god was also credited as being the father of at least 30 different semi-historical city-founders and several major tribes across Greece, likely reflecting the importance the god had in the Mycenaean period.

Representation in Art

Poseidon is most commonly depicted in ancient Greek art as mature and bearded. He often brandishes his trident, fashioned by the Cyclopes, with which he would create earthquakes by striking it to the ground. He is also frequently portrayed riding his golden chariot pulled by hippocamps - half-horse and half-serpent creatures with fishtails - or gold-shod horses, of which he was patron. Dolphins, seahorses, and tuna fish are additional marine animals frequently seen in the god's company in art.

The god appears with Athena in their competition to become the patron of Athens on the west pediment of the Parthenon (447-432 BCE). Poseidon appeared on coinage, perhaps most strikingly the silver tetradrachms of ancient Macedon (306-283 BCE) where he seems about to hurl his trident. Perhaps the most celebrated representation of Poseidon is the 2 metre-high bronze statue (c. 460 BCE) from Cape Artemisium (although such is the similarity in the depiction of Poseidon and Zeus in ancient Greek art, it may well represent the latter). The statue was recovered from a shipwreck in the 1920s CE, and the magnificent striding figure now dominates one of the rooms of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

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Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea and rivers, creator of storms and floods, and the bringer of earthquakes and destruction. He was perhaps the most disruptive of all the ancient gods but he was not always a negative force.

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Homer is considered the most influential writers. Actually, little is known about him. We do not even know if he was real. 

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Homer is considered the most influential writers. Actually, little is known about him. We do not even know if he was real. 

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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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Plato was the student of Socrates. He is best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

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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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He was "one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world" and taught Aristotle.

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Plato: Early Life and Education

Plato was born around 428 B.C., during the final years of the Golden Age of Pericles' Athens. He was of noble Athenian lineage on both sides. His father Ariston died when Plato was a child. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes. Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404) and came of age around the time of Athens' final defeat by Sparta and the political chaos that followed. He was educated in philosophy, poetry and gymnastics by distinguished Athenian teachers including the philosopher Cratylus.

Plato's Influences

The young Plato became a devoted follower of Socrates-indeed, he was one of the youths Socrates was condemned for allegedly corrupting. Plato's recollections of Socrates' lived-out philosophy and style of relentless questioning, the Socratic method, became the basis for his early dialogues. Plato's dialogues, along with "Apologia," his written account of the trial of Socrates, are viewed by historians as the most accurate available picture of the elder philosopher, who left no written works of his own.

Following Socrates' forced suicide, Plato spent 12 years traveling in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt, studying with other philosophers including followers of the mystic mathematician Pythagoras including Theodorus of Cyrene (creator of the spiral of Theodorus or Pythagorean spiral), Archytas of Tarentum and Echecrates of Phlius. Plato's time among the Pythagoreans piqued his interest in mathematics.

Plato's Theory of Forms, stating that the physical world we know is but a shadow of the real one, was strongly influenced by Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. The two appear as characters in Plato's dialogue "The Parmenides."

Plato had a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, who would later seek his advice on reforming their city's politics.

Platonic Academy

Around 387, the 40-year-old Plato returned to Athens and founded his philosophical school in the grove of the Greek hero Academus, just outside the city walls. In his open-air Academy he delivered lectures to students gathered from throughout the Greek world (nine-tenths of them from outside Athens).

Did you know? The section on music in Plato's "Republic" suggests that in an ideal society flutes would be banned in favor of the more dignified lyre, but on his deathbed Plato reportedly summoned a young girl to play her flute for him, tapping out the rhythm with his finger while he breathed his last.

Many of Plato's writings, especially the so-called later dialogues, seem to have originated in his teaching there. In establishing the Academy Plato moved beyond the precepts of Socrates, who never founded a school and questioned the very idea of a teacher's ability to impart knowledge.

Aristotle arrived from northern Greece to join the Academy at age 17, studying and teaching there for the last 20 years of Plato's life. Plato died in Athens, and was probably buried on the Academy grounds.

Plato's Dialogues

With the exception of a set of letters of dubious provenance, all of Plato's surviving writings are in dialogue form, with the character of Socrates appearing in all but one of them. His 36 dialogues are generally ordered into early, middle and late, though their chronology is determined by style and content rather than specific dates.

The earliest of Plato's dialogues offer a deep exploration of Socrates' dialectic method of breaking down and analyzing ideas and presumptions. In the "Euthpyro," Socrates' endless questioning pushes a religious expert to realize that he has no understanding of what "piety" means. Such analyses pushed his students towards grappling with so-called Platonic forms-the ineffable perfect models (truth, beauty, what a chair should look like) by which people judge objects and experiences.

In the middle dialogues, Plato's individual ideas and beliefs, though never advocated outright, emerge from the Socratic form. The "Symposium" is a series of drinking-party speeches on the nature of love, in which Socrates says the best thing to do with romantic desire is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking (an idea termed "Platonic love" by later writers). In the "Meno," Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is less a matter of learning things than "recollecting" what the soul already knows, in the way that an untaught boy can be led to discover for himself a geometric proof.

The monumental "Republic" is a parallel exploration of the soul of a nation and of an individual. In both, Plato finds a three-part hierarchy between rulers, auxiliaries and citizens and between reason, emotion and desire. Just as reason should reign supreme in the individual, so should a wise ruler control a society.

Only those with wisdom (ideally a sort of "philosopher-king") are able to discern the true nature of things. The experiences of the lower tiers of the state and of the soul are-as Plato's famous analogy has it-related to true knowledge the way the shadows on the wall of a cave are related to, yet wholly different from, the forms that cast them.

Plato's late dialogues are barely dialogues at all but rather explorations of specific topics. The "Timeaus" explains a cosmology intertwined with geometry, in which perfected three-dimensional shapes-cubes, pyramids, icosahedrons-are the "Platonic solids" out of which the whole universe is made. In the "Laws," his final dialogue, Plato retreats from the pure theory of the "Republic," suggesting that experience and history as well as wisdom can inform the running of an ideal state.

Plato Quotes

Plato is credited with coining several phrases that are still popular today. Here are some of Plato's most famous quotes:

· "Love is a serious mental disease."

· "When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."

· "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge."

· "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."

· "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

· "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

· "Man-a being in search of meaning."

· "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of lover, everyone becomes a poet."

· "There are two things a person should never be angry at: What they can help, and what they cannot."

· "People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die."

Plato: Legacy and Influence

The Academy flourished for nearly three centuries following Plato's death, but was destroyed in the sacking of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 B.C. Though continually read in the Byzantine Empire and in the Islamic world, Plato was overshadowed by Aristotle in the Christian west.

It was only in the Renaissance that scholars like Petrarch led a revival of Plato's thought, in particular his explorations of logic and geometry. William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly and others in the 19th-century Romantic movement found philosophical solace in Plato's dialogues.

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The Athenian philosopher Plato (c.428-347 B.C.) is one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.

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Plato is one of the greatest philosophers to ever live.

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Plato is one of the greatest philosophers to ever live.

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What was Plato's family like?

Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece-died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers-and Plato himself in certain passages-used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them ( the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.

Life

The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630-560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.

Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters-variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"-and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.

After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408-354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430-367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.

Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417-369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395-c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.

Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508-11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.

Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, " the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.

Dating, editing, translation

Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies ( see below Works individually described).

Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries-by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.

Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances-some of crucial importance-where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.

A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.

In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.

Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.

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Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who produced works of unparalleled influence.

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Aphrodite was the Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation.

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Greek Gods >> Olympian Gods >> Aphrodite

Aphrodite riding goose, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., British Museum

APHRODITE was the Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros (Love). Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. In classical sculpture and fresco she was usually depicted nude.

MYTHS

Some of the more famous myths featuring the goddess include:--

Her birth from the sea foam. << More>>

Her adulterous affair with the god Ares. << More>>

Her love for Adonis, a handsome Cypriot youth who was tragically killed by a boar. << More>>

Her love for Ankhises (Anchises), a shepherd-prince. << More>>

The judgement of Paris in which the goddess was awarded the prize of the golden apple in return for promising Paris Helene in marriage. << More>>

The Trojan War in which she supported her favourites Paris and Aeneas and was wounded in the fighting. << More>>

The race of Hippomenes for Atalanta, which was won with the help of the goddess and her golden apples. << More>>

The death of Hippolytos, who was destroyed by the goddess for scorning her worship. << More>>

The statue of Pygmalion which was brought to life by Aphrodite in answer to his prayers. << More>>

The persecution of Psykhe (Psyche), the maiden loved by the goddess' son Eros. << More>>

Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.

APHRODITE PAGES ON THEOI.COM

This site contains a total of 18 pages describing the goddess Aphrodite, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Aphrodite Pages (left column or below).

FAMILY OF APHRODITE

PARENTS

[1] Born from the castrated genitals of OURANOS in the sea's foam (Hesiod Theogony 188, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21, Apuleius 6.6, Nonnus Dionysiaca 1.86, et al)
[2] ZEUS & DIONE (Homer Iliad 5.370; Euripides Helen 1098; Apollodorus 1.13, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21, et al)
[3] OURANOS & HEMERA (Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21)

OFFSPRING

See Family of Aphrodite

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Aphrodite "Venus de Milo", Greek marble statue C2nd B.C., Musée du Louvre

APHRODI′TE (Aphroditê), one of the great Olympian divinities, was, according to the popular and poetical notions of the Greeks, the goddess of love and beauty. Some traditions stated that she had sprung from the foam (aphros) of the sea, which had gathered around the mutilated parts of Uranus, that had been thrown into the sea by Kronos after he had unmanned his father. (Hesiod. Theog. 190; compare Anadyomene.) With the exception of the Homeric hymn on Aphrodite there is no trace of this legend in Homer, and according to him Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. ( Il. v. 370, &c., xx. 105.) Later traditions call her a daughter of Kronos and Euonyme, or of Uranus and Hemera. (Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 23; Natal. Com. iv. 13.)

According to Hesiod and the Homeric hymn on Aphrodite, the goddess after rising from the foam first approached the island of Cythera, and thence went to Cyprus, and as she was walking on the sea-coast flowers sprang up under her feet, and Eros and Himeros accompanied her to the assembly of the other great gods, all of whom were struck with admiration and love when she appeared, and her surpassing beauty made every one desire to have her for his wife.

According to the cosmogonic views of the nature of Aphrodite, she was the personification of the generative powers of nature, and the mother of all living beings. A trace of this notion seems to be contained in the tradition that in the contest of Typhon with the gods, Aphrodite metamorphosed herself into a fish, which animal was considered to possess the greatest generative powers. (Ov. Met. v. 318, &c.; comp. Hygin. Poet. Astr. 30.) But according to the popular belief of the Greeks and their poetical descriptions, she was the goddess of love, who excited this passion in the hearts of gods and men, and by this power ruled over all the living creation. (Hom. Hymn. in Ven. ; Lucret. 15, &c.)

Ancient mythology furnishes numerous instances in which Aphrodite punished those who neglected her worship or despised her power, as well as others in which she favoured and protected those who did homage to her and recognized her sway. Love and beauty are ideas essentially connected, and Aphrodite was therefore also the goddess of beauty and gracefulness. In these points she surpassed all other goddesses, and she received the prize of beauty from Paris; she had further the power of granting beauty and invincible charms to others. Youth is the herald, and Peitho, the Horae, and Charites, the attendants and companions of Aphrodite. (Pind. New. viii. 1, &c.) Marriages are called by Zeus her work and the things about which she ought to busy herself. (Hom. Il. v. 429; comp. Od. xx. 74; Pind. Pyth. ix. 16, &c.) As she herself had sprung from the sea, she is represented by later writers as having some influence upon the sea (Virg. Aen. viii. 800; Ov. Heroid. xv. 213; comp. Paus. ii. 34. § 11.)

During the Trojan war, Aphrodite, the mother of Aeneas, who had been declared the most beautiful of all the goddesses by a Trojan prince, naturally sided with the Trojans. She saved Paris from his contest with Menelaus ( Il. iii. 380), but when she endeavoured to rescue her darling Aeneas from the fight, she was pursued by Diomedes, who wounded her in her hand. In her fright she abandoned her son, and was carried by Iris in the chariot of Ares to Olympus, where she complained of her misfortune to her mother Dione, but was laughed at by Hera and Athena. ( Il. v. 311, &c.) She also protected the body of Hector, and anointed it with ambrosia. ( Il. xxiii. 185.)

According to the most common accounts of the ancients, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus ( Odyss. viii. 270), who, however, is said in the Iliad (viii. 383) to have married Charis. Her faithlessness to Hephaestus in her amour with Ares, and the manner in which she was caught by the ingenuity of her husband, are beautifully described in the Odyssey. (viii. 266, &c.) By Ares she became the mother of Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, and, according to later traditions, of Eros and Anteros also. (Hesiod. Theog. 934, &c., Scut. Herc. 195; Hom. Il. xiii. 299, iv. 440; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iii. 26; Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 23.)

But Ares was not the only god whom Aphrodite favoured; Dionysus, Hermes, and Poseidon likewise enjoyed her charms. By the first she was, according to some traditions, the mother of Priapus (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 933) and Bacchus (Hesych. s. v. Bakchou Diônês), by the second of Hermaphroditus (Ov. Met. iv. 289, &c.; Diod. iv. 6; Lucian, Dial. Deor. xv. 2), and by Poseidon she had two children, Rhodos and Herophilus. (Schol. ad Pind. Pyth. viii. 24.)

As Aphrodite so often kindled in the hearts of the gods a love for mortals, Zeus at last resolved to make her pay for her wanton sport by inspiring her too with love for a mortal man. This was accomplished, and Aphrodite conceived an invincible passion for Anchises, by whom she became the mother of Aeneas and Lyrus.

Respecting her connexions with other mortals see Adonis and Butes. The ancient story ran thus : Smyrna had neglected the worship of Aphrodite, and was punished by the goddess with an unnatural love for her father. With the assistance of her nurse she contrived to share her father's bed without being known to him. When he discovered the crime he wished to kill her; but she fled, and on being nearly overtaken, prayed to the gods to make her invisible. They were moved to pity and changed her into a tree called smurna. After the lapse of nine months the tree burst, and Adonis was born. Aphrodite was so much charmed with the beauty of the infant, that she concealed it in a chest which she entrusted to Persephone; but when the latter discovered the treasure she had in her keeping, she refused to give it up. The case was brought before Zeus, who decided the dispute by declaring that during four months of every year Adonis should be left to himself, during four months he should belong to Persephone, and during the remaining four to Aphrodite. Adonis however preferring to live with Aphrodite, also spent with her the four months over which he had controul. Afterwards Adonis died of a wound which he received from a boar during the chase. Thus far the story of Adonis was related by Panyasis.

Later writers furnish various alterations and additions to it. According to Hyginus ( Fab. 58, 164, 251, 271), Smyrna was punished with the love for her father, because her mother Cenchreis had provoked the anger of Aphrodite by extolling the beauty of her daughter above that of the goddess. Smyrna after the discovery of her crime fled into a forest, where she was changed into a tree from which Adonis came forth, when her father split it with his sword. The dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone was according to some accounts settled by Calliope, whom Zeus appointed as mediator between them. (Hygin. Poet. Astron. ii. 7.) Ovid ( Met. x. 300, &c.) adds the following features: Myrrha's love of her father was excited by the furies; Lucina assisted her when she gave birth to Adonis, and the Naiads anointed him with the tears of his mother, i. e. with the fluid which trickled from the tree. Adonis grew up a most beautiful youth, and Venus loved him and shared with him the pleasures of the chase, though she always cautioned him against the wild beasts. At last he wounded a boar which killed him in its fury.

According to some traditions Ares (Mars), or, according to others, Apollo assumed the form of a boar and thus killed Adonis. (Serv. ad Virg. Ecl. x. 18; Ptolem. Hephaest. i. p. 306, ed. Gale.) A third story related that Dionysus carried off Adonis. (Phanocles ap. Plut. Sumpos. iv. 5.) When Aphrodite was informed of her beloved being wounded, she hastened to the spot and sprinkled nectar into his blood, from which immediately flowers sprang up. Various other modifications of the story may be read in Hyginus ( Poet. Astron. ii. 7), Theocritus ( Idyll. xv.), Bion ( Idyll. i.), and in the scholiast on Lycophron. (839, &c.) From the double marriage of Aphrodite with Ares and Adonis sprang Priapus. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 9, 32.) Besides him Golgos and Beroe are likewise called children. of Adonis and Aphrodite. (Schol. ad Theocrit. xv. 100; Nonn. Dionys. xli 155.) On his death Adonis was obliged to descend into the lower world, but he was allowed to spend six months out of every year with his beloved Aphrodite in the upper world. ( Orph. hymn. 55. 10.)

Aphrodite possessed a magic girdle which had the power of inspiring love and desire for those who wore it; hence it was borrowed by Hera when she wished to stimulate the love of Zeus. (Hom. Il. xiv. 214, &c.) The arrow is also sometimes mentioned as one of her attributes. (Plnd. Pyth. iv. 380; Theocrit. xi. 16.) In the vegetable kingdom the myrtle, rose, apple, poppy, and others, were sacred to her. (Ov. Fast. iv. 15. 143; Bion, Idyll. i. 64; Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. 993; Paus. ii. 10. § 4; Phornut. 23.)

The animals sacred to her, which are often mentioned as drawing her chariot or serving as her messengers, are the sparrow, the dove, the swan, the swallow, and a bird called iynx. (Sappho, in Ven. 10; Athen. ix. p. 395; Horat. Carm. iv. 1. 10; Aelian, Hist. An. x. 34; Pind. Pyth. l. c.) As Aphrodite Urania the tortoise, the symbol of domestic modesty and chastity, and as Aphrodite Pandemos the ram was sacred to her. [Urania; Pandemos.] When she was represented as the victorious goddess, she had the attributes of Ares, a helmet, a shield, a sword : or a lance, and an image of Victory in one hand. The planet Venus and the spring-month of April were likewise sacred to her. (Cie. de Nat. Deor. iii. 20; Ov. Fast. iv. 90.)

All the surnames and epithets given to Aphrodite are derived from places of her worship, from events connected with the legends about her, or have reference to her character and her influence upon man, or are descriptive of her extraordinary beauty and charms. All her surnames are explained in separate articles.

The principal places of her worship in Greece were the islands of Cyprus and Cythera. At Cnidus in Caria she had three temples, one of which contained her renowned statue by Praxiteles. Mount Ida in Troas was an ancient place of her worship, and among the other places we may mention particularly the island of Cos, the towns of Abydos, Athens, Thespiae, Megara, Sparta, Sicyon, Corinth, and Eryx in Sicily. The sacrifices offered to her consisted mostly of incense and garlands of flowers (Virg. Aen. i. 416; Tacit. Hist. ii. 3), but in some places animals, such as pigs, goats, young cows, hares, and others, were sacrificed to her. In some places, as at Corinth, great numbers of females belonged to her, who prostituted themselves in her service, and bore the name of hierodouloi. ( Dict.of Ant. s. v. Hetairai.) Respecting the festivals of Aphrodite see Dict. of Ant. s.v. Adônia, Anagôgia, Aphrodisia, Katagôgia.

The worship of Aphrodite was undoubtedly of eastern origin, and probably introduced from Syria to the islands of Cyprus, Cythera, and others, from whence it spread all over Greece. It is said to have been brought into Syria from Assyria. (Paus. i. 14. § 6.) Aphrodite appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, called by the Hebrews Ashtoreth, and her connexion with Adonis clearly points to Syria. But with the exception of Corinth, where the worship of Aphrodite had eminently an Asiatic character, the whole worship of this goddess and all the ideas concerning her nature and character are so entirely Greek, that its introduction into Greece must be assigned to the very earliest periods. The elements were derived from the East, but the peculiar development of it belongs to Greece. The Roman goddess Venus was identified with the Greek Aphrodite.

Aphrodite, the ideal of female graec and beauty, frequently engaged the talents and genius of the ancient artists. The most celebrated representations of her were those of Cos and Cnidus. Those which are still extant are divided by archaeologists into several classes, accordingly as the goddess is represented in a standing position and naked, as the Medicean Venus, or bathing, or half naked, or dressed in a tunic, or as the victorious goddess in arms, as she was represented in the temples of Cythera, Sparta, and Corinth. (Paus. iii. 23. § 1, ii. 5. § 1, iii. 15. § 10.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

Birth of Aphrodite, Greco-Roman fresco from Pompeii C1st A.D., Naples National Archaeological Museum

CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES

HYMNS TO APHRODITE

I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"Moisa (Muse), tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite Kypria (Cyprian), who stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all the sea: all these love the deeds of rich-crowned Kythereia. [The story of the love of Aphrodite and Ankhises follows.] . . .
Hail, goddess, queen of well-builded Kypros (Cyprus)! With you have I begun; now I will turn me to another hymn."

Homeric Hymn 6 to Aphrodite :
"I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Kypros (Cyprus). There the moist breath of Zephyros the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, ad there the gold-filleted Horai (Horae, Seasons) welcomed her joyously. [The story of the birth of Aphrodite follows.] . . .
Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess! Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest, and order you my song. And now I will remember you and another song also."

Homeric Hymn 10 to Aphrodite :
"Of Kythereia (Cytherea) [Aphrodite], born in Kypros (Cyprus), I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it. Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt Kypros; grant me a cheerful song. And now I will remember you and another song also."

II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Orphic Hymn 55 to Aphrodite (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"To Aphrodite. Ourania (Urania) (Heavenly), illustrious, laughter-loving ( philommeideia) queen, sea-born ( pontogenes), night-loving ( philopannyx), of awful mien; crafty, from whom Ananke (Necessity) first came, producing, nightly, all-connecting dame. 'Tis thine the world with harmony to join, for all things spring from thee, O power divine. The triple Moirai (Fates) are ruled by thy decree, and all productions yield alike to thee: whatever the heavens, encircling all, contain, earth fruit-producing, and the stormy main, thy sway confesses, and obeys thy nod, awful attendant of Bakkhos [Dionysos] God. Goddess of marriage, charming to the sight, mother of the Erotes (Loves), whom banquetings delight; source of Peitho (Persuasion), secret, favouring queen, illustrious born, apparent and unseen; spousal Lukaina, and to men inclined, prolific, most-desired, life-giving, kind. Great sceptre-bearer of the Gods, 'tis thine mortals in necessary bands to join; and every tribe of savage monsters dire in magic chains to bind through mad desire. Come, Kyprogenes (Cyprus-Born), and to my prayer incline, whether exalted in the heavens you shine, or pleased in odorous Syria to preside, or over the Aigyptian (Egyptian) plains they care to guide, fashioned of gold; and near its sacred flood, fertile and famed, to fix they blest abode; or if rejoicing in the azure shores, near where the sea with foaming billows roars, the circling choirs of mortals thy delight, or beauteous Nymphai (Nymphs) with eyes cerulean bright, pleased by the sandy banks renowned of old, to drive thy rapid two-yoked car of gold; or if in Kypros (Cyprus) thy famed mother fair, where Nymphai unmarried praise thee every year, the loveliest Nymphai, who in the chorus join, Adonis pure to sing, and thee divine. Come, all-attractive, to my prayer inclined, for thee I call, with holy, reverent mind."

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF APHRODITE

Aphrodite, Apulian red-figure volute krater C4th B.C., Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Classical literature offers only a few, brief descriptions of the physical characteristics of the gods.

Homer, Iliad 3. 396 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"She [Helene of Troy] recognized the round, sweet throat of the goddess [Aphrodite] and her desirable breasts and her eyes that were full of shining."

Stasinus of Cyprus or Hegesias of Aegina, Cypria Fragment 6 (from Athenaeus 15. 682) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.) :
"She [Aphrodite] clothed herself with garments which the Kharites (Charites, Graces) and Horai (Hours) had made for her and dyed in flowers of spring--such flowers as the Horai (Horae, Seasons) wear--in crocus and hyacinth and flourishing violet and the rose's lovely bloom, so sweet and delicious, and heavenly buds, the flowers of the narcissus and lily. In such perfumed garments is Aphrodite clothed at all seasons."

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 78 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus stood before him [Ankhises (Anchises)], being like a pure maiden in height and mien, that he should not be frightened when he took heed of her with his eyes. Now when Ankhises saw her, he marked her well and wondered at her mien and height and shining garments. For she was clad in a robe out-shining the brightness of fire, a splendid robe of gold, enriched with all manner of needlework, which shimmered like the moon over her tender breasts, a marvel to see. Also she wore twisted brooches and shining earrings in the form of flowers; and round her soft throat were lovely necklaces . . .
[later she revealed her true divine height and mien] and her head reached to the well-hewn roof-tree; from her cheeks shone unearthly beauty such as belongs to rich-crowned Kythereia (Cytherea). . . [and] when he [Ankhises] saw the neck and lovely eyes of Aphrodite, he was afraid and turned his eyes aside another way, hiding his comely face with his cloak."

Homeric Hymn 6 to Aphrodite 6 ff :
"The Horai (Horae, Seasons) clothed her [Aphrodite] with heavenly garments: on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold, and in her pierced ears they hung ornaments of orichalc and precious gold, and adorned her with golden necklaces over her soft neck and snow-white breasts, jewels which the gold-filleted Horai wear themselves."

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 . . . the second one [Aphrodite] even in the painting shows the 'laughter-loving' ( philomeides) disposition caused by the magic of her girdle."

Orphic Hymn 57 to Chthonian Hermes (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"Celestial Aphrodite, Paphian queen, dark-eyelashed Goddess, of a lovely mien."

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:] After them a third girl entered, her beauty visibly unsurpassed. Her charming, ambrosia-like complexion intimated that she represented the earlier Venus [Aphrodite] when that goddess was still a maiden. She vaunted her unblemished beauty by appearing naked and unclothed except for a thin silken garment veiling her entrancing lower parts. An inquisitive gust of air would at one moment with quite lubricous affection blow this garment aside, so that when wafted away it revealed her virgin bloom; at another moment it would wantonly breathe directly upon it, clinging tightly and vividly outlining the pleasurable prospect of her lower limbs. The goddess's appearance offered contrasting colours to the eye, for her body was dazzling white, intimating her descent from heaven and her robe was dark blue, denoting her emergence from the sea . . .
Each maiden representing a goddess was accompanied by her own escort . . . Venus [Aphrodite] was surrounded by a throng of the happiest children; you would have sworn that those little boys whose skins were smooth and milk-white were genuine Cupides [Erotes] who had just flown in from sky or sea. They looked just he part with their tiny wings, miniature arrows, and the rest of their get-up, as with gleaming torches they lit the way for their mistress as though she were en route to a wedding-banquet. Next floated in charming children, unmarried girls, representing on one side the Gratiae [Charites, Graces] at their most graceful, and on the other the Horae [Horai] in all their beauty. They were appeasing the goddess by strewing wreaths and single blossoms before her, and they formed a most elegant chorus-line as they sought to please the Mistress of pleasures with the foliage of spring. The flutes with their many stops were now rendering in sweet harmony melodies in the Lydian mode. As they affectingly softened the hearts of onlookers, Venus [Aphrodite] still more affectingly began to gently stir herself; with gradual, lingering steps, restrained swaying of the hips, and slow inclination of the head she began to advance, her refined movements matching the soft wounds of the flutes. Occasionally her eyes alone would dance, as at one moment she gently lowered her lids, and at another imperiously signalled with threatening glances."

Apuleius, The Golden Ass 2. 8 ff :
"Venus [Aphrodite] . . . wearing that belt of hers around her waist, diffusing the scent of cinnamon and bedewing the air with balsam."

Colluthus, Rape of Helen 82 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poetry C5th to 6th A.D.) :
"Kypris (Cypris) [Aphrodite] of crafty counsels unfolded her snood and undid the fragrant clasp of her hair and wreathed with gold her locks, with gold her flowing tresses."

ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART

SOURCES (ALL APHRODITE PAGES)

GREEK

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

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

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

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

Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles - 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.

Aesop, Fables - Greek Fables C6th B.C.

Pindar, Odes - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Pindar, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric I Alcman, Fragments - Greek Lyric C7th B.C.

Greek Lyric I Sappho, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric II Anacreon, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric II Anacreontea, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th - 4th B.C.

Greek Lyric III Ibycus, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric III Simonides, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th - 5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Bacchylides, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Corinna, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric V Folk Songs, Fragments - Greek Lyric B.C.

Greek Elegaic Mimnermus, Fragments - Greek Elegaic C7th B.C.

Greek Elegaic Theognis, Fragments - Greek Elegaic C6th B.C.

Aeschylus, Eumenides - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Suppliant Women - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Fragments - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Euripides, Bacchae - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Euripides, Helen - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.

Plato, Cratylus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Letters - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Phaedo - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Phaedrus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Philebus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Republic - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Symposium - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Apollodorus, The Library - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.

Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica - Greek Epic C3rd B.C.

Callimachus, Fragments - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Parthenius, Love Romances - Greek Mythography C1st B.C.

Greek Papyri III Poseidippus, Fragments - Greek Elegiac C2nd 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.

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.

Oppian, Halieutica - Greek Poetry C3rd 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.

Greek Papyri III Anonymous, Fragments - Greek Poetry C4th 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, Aeneid - Latin Epic C1st B.C.

Virgil, Georgics - Latin Bucolic C1st B.C.

Propertius, Elegies - Latin Elegy C1st B.C.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum - Latin Rhetoric C1st B.C.

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

Seneca, Medea - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

Seneca, Phaedra - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

Seneca, Troades - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

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

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

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APHRODITE - Greek Goddess of Love & Beauty

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Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros. Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. Her Roman name was Venus.

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Homer was believed to be an author who wrote two iconic stories to Greek culture. The Iliad and The Odyssey were two books that Greeks would learn in school to be considered a well educated person. However, Homer may not even be real. Homer is a mystery and no one really knows if he was actually an author.

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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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Greek Gods >> Olympian Gods >> Aphrodite

Aphrodite riding goose, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., British Museum

APHRODITE was the Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros (Love). Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. In classical sculpture and fresco she was usually depicted nude.

MYTHS

Some of the more famous myths featuring the goddess include:--

Her birth from the sea foam. << More>>

Her adulterous affair with the god Ares. << More>>

Her love for Adonis, a handsome Cypriot youth who was tragically killed by a boar. << More>>

Her love for Ankhises (Anchises), a shepherd-prince. << More>>

The judgement of Paris in which the goddess was awarded the prize of the golden apple in return for promising Paris Helene in marriage. << More>>

The Trojan War in which she supported her favourites Paris and Aeneas and was wounded in the fighting. << More>>

The race of Hippomenes for Atalanta, which was won with the help of the goddess and her golden apples. << More>>

The death of Hippolytos, who was destroyed by the goddess for scorning her worship. << More>>

The statue of Pygmalion which was brought to life by Aphrodite in answer to his prayers. << More>>

The persecution of Psykhe (Psyche), the maiden loved by the goddess' son Eros. << More>>

Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.

APHRODITE PAGES ON THEOI.COM

This site contains a total of 18 pages describing the goddess Aphrodite, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Aphrodite Pages (left column or below).

FAMILY OF APHRODITE

PARENTS

[1] Born from the castrated genitals of OURANOS in the sea's foam (Hesiod Theogony 188, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21, Apuleius 6.6, Nonnus Dionysiaca 1.86, et al)
[2] ZEUS & DIONE (Homer Iliad 5.370; Euripides Helen 1098; Apollodorus 1.13, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21, et al)
[3] OURANOS & HEMERA (Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.21)

OFFSPRING

See Family of Aphrodite

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Aphrodite "Venus de Milo", Greek marble statue C2nd B.C., Musée du Louvre

APHRODI′TE (Aphroditê), one of the great Olympian divinities, was, according to the popular and poetical notions of the Greeks, the goddess of love and beauty. Some traditions stated that she had sprung from the foam (aphros) of the sea, which had gathered around the mutilated parts of Uranus, that had been thrown into the sea by Kronos after he had unmanned his father. (Hesiod. Theog. 190; compare Anadyomene.) With the exception of the Homeric hymn on Aphrodite there is no trace of this legend in Homer, and according to him Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. ( Il. v. 370, &c., xx. 105.) Later traditions call her a daughter of Kronos and Euonyme, or of Uranus and Hemera. (Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 23; Natal. Com. iv. 13.)

According to Hesiod and the Homeric hymn on Aphrodite, the goddess after rising from the foam first approached the island of Cythera, and thence went to Cyprus, and as she was walking on the sea-coast flowers sprang up under her feet, and Eros and Himeros accompanied her to the assembly of the other great gods, all of whom were struck with admiration and love when she appeared, and her surpassing beauty made every one desire to have her for his wife.

According to the cosmogonic views of the nature of Aphrodite, she was the personification of the generative powers of nature, and the mother of all living beings. A trace of this notion seems to be contained in the tradition that in the contest of Typhon with the gods, Aphrodite metamorphosed herself into a fish, which animal was considered to possess the greatest generative powers. (Ov. Met. v. 318, &c.; comp. Hygin. Poet. Astr. 30.) But according to the popular belief of the Greeks and their poetical descriptions, she was the goddess of love, who excited this passion in the hearts of gods and men, and by this power ruled over all the living creation. (Hom. Hymn. in Ven. ; Lucret. 15, &c.)

Ancient mythology furnishes numerous instances in which Aphrodite punished those who neglected her worship or despised her power, as well as others in which she favoured and protected those who did homage to her and recognized her sway. Love and beauty are ideas essentially connected, and Aphrodite was therefore also the goddess of beauty and gracefulness. In these points she surpassed all other goddesses, and she received the prize of beauty from Paris; she had further the power of granting beauty and invincible charms to others. Youth is the herald, and Peitho, the Horae, and Charites, the attendants and companions of Aphrodite. (Pind. New. viii. 1, &c.) Marriages are called by Zeus her work and the things about which she ought to busy herself. (Hom. Il. v. 429; comp. Od. xx. 74; Pind. Pyth. ix. 16, &c.) As she herself had sprung from the sea, she is represented by later writers as having some influence upon the sea (Virg. Aen. viii. 800; Ov. Heroid. xv. 213; comp. Paus. ii. 34. § 11.)

During the Trojan war, Aphrodite, the mother of Aeneas, who had been declared the most beautiful of all the goddesses by a Trojan prince, naturally sided with the Trojans. She saved Paris from his contest with Menelaus ( Il. iii. 380), but when she endeavoured to rescue her darling Aeneas from the fight, she was pursued by Diomedes, who wounded her in her hand. In her fright she abandoned her son, and was carried by Iris in the chariot of Ares to Olympus, where she complained of her misfortune to her mother Dione, but was laughed at by Hera and Athena. ( Il. v. 311, &c.) She also protected the body of Hector, and anointed it with ambrosia. ( Il. xxiii. 185.)

According to the most common accounts of the ancients, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus ( Odyss. viii. 270), who, however, is said in the Iliad (viii. 383) to have married Charis. Her faithlessness to Hephaestus in her amour with Ares, and the manner in which she was caught by the ingenuity of her husband, are beautifully described in the Odyssey. (viii. 266, &c.) By Ares she became the mother of Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, and, according to later traditions, of Eros and Anteros also. (Hesiod. Theog. 934, &c., Scut. Herc. 195; Hom. Il. xiii. 299, iv. 440; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iii. 26; Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 23.)

But Ares was not the only god whom Aphrodite favoured; Dionysus, Hermes, and Poseidon likewise enjoyed her charms. By the first she was, according to some traditions, the mother of Priapus (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 933) and Bacchus (Hesych. s. v. Bakchou Diônês), by the second of Hermaphroditus (Ov. Met. iv. 289, &c.; Diod. iv. 6; Lucian, Dial. Deor. xv. 2), and by Poseidon she had two children, Rhodos and Herophilus. (Schol. ad Pind. Pyth. viii. 24.)

As Aphrodite so often kindled in the hearts of the gods a love for mortals, Zeus at last resolved to make her pay for her wanton sport by inspiring her too with love for a mortal man. This was accomplished, and Aphrodite conceived an invincible passion for Anchises, by whom she became the mother of Aeneas and Lyrus.

Respecting her connexions with other mortals see Adonis and Butes. The ancient story ran thus : Smyrna had neglected the worship of Aphrodite, and was punished by the goddess with an unnatural love for her father. With the assistance of her nurse she contrived to share her father's bed without being known to him. When he discovered the crime he wished to kill her; but she fled, and on being nearly overtaken, prayed to the gods to make her invisible. They were moved to pity and changed her into a tree called smurna. After the lapse of nine months the tree burst, and Adonis was born. Aphrodite was so much charmed with the beauty of the infant, that she concealed it in a chest which she entrusted to Persephone; but when the latter discovered the treasure she had in her keeping, she refused to give it up. The case was brought before Zeus, who decided the dispute by declaring that during four months of every year Adonis should be left to himself, during four months he should belong to Persephone, and during the remaining four to Aphrodite. Adonis however preferring to live with Aphrodite, also spent with her the four months over which he had controul. Afterwards Adonis died of a wound which he received from a boar during the chase. Thus far the story of Adonis was related by Panyasis.

Later writers furnish various alterations and additions to it. According to Hyginus ( Fab. 58, 164, 251, 271), Smyrna was punished with the love for her father, because her mother Cenchreis had provoked the anger of Aphrodite by extolling the beauty of her daughter above that of the goddess. Smyrna after the discovery of her crime fled into a forest, where she was changed into a tree from which Adonis came forth, when her father split it with his sword. The dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone was according to some accounts settled by Calliope, whom Zeus appointed as mediator between them. (Hygin. Poet. Astron. ii. 7.) Ovid ( Met. x. 300, &c.) adds the following features: Myrrha's love of her father was excited by the furies; Lucina assisted her when she gave birth to Adonis, and the Naiads anointed him with the tears of his mother, i. e. with the fluid which trickled from the tree. Adonis grew up a most beautiful youth, and Venus loved him and shared with him the pleasures of the chase, though she always cautioned him against the wild beasts. At last he wounded a boar which killed him in its fury.

According to some traditions Ares (Mars), or, according to others, Apollo assumed the form of a boar and thus killed Adonis. (Serv. ad Virg. Ecl. x. 18; Ptolem. Hephaest. i. p. 306, ed. Gale.) A third story related that Dionysus carried off Adonis. (Phanocles ap. Plut. Sumpos. iv. 5.) When Aphrodite was informed of her beloved being wounded, she hastened to the spot and sprinkled nectar into his blood, from which immediately flowers sprang up. Various other modifications of the story may be read in Hyginus ( Poet. Astron. ii. 7), Theocritus ( Idyll. xv.), Bion ( Idyll. i.), and in the scholiast on Lycophron. (839, &c.) From the double marriage of Aphrodite with Ares and Adonis sprang Priapus. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 9, 32.) Besides him Golgos and Beroe are likewise called children. of Adonis and Aphrodite. (Schol. ad Theocrit. xv. 100; Nonn. Dionys. xli 155.) On his death Adonis was obliged to descend into the lower world, but he was allowed to spend six months out of every year with his beloved Aphrodite in the upper world. ( Orph. hymn. 55. 10.)

Aphrodite possessed a magic girdle which had the power of inspiring love and desire for those who wore it; hence it was borrowed by Hera when she wished to stimulate the love of Zeus. (Hom. Il. xiv. 214, &c.) The arrow is also sometimes mentioned as one of her attributes. (Plnd. Pyth. iv. 380; Theocrit. xi. 16.) In the vegetable kingdom the myrtle, rose, apple, poppy, and others, were sacred to her. (Ov. Fast. iv. 15. 143; Bion, Idyll. i. 64; Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. 993; Paus. ii. 10. § 4; Phornut. 23.)

The animals sacred to her, which are often mentioned as drawing her chariot or serving as her messengers, are the sparrow, the dove, the swan, the swallow, and a bird called iynx. (Sappho, in Ven. 10; Athen. ix. p. 395; Horat. Carm. iv. 1. 10; Aelian, Hist. An. x. 34; Pind. Pyth. l. c.) As Aphrodite Urania the tortoise, the symbol of domestic modesty and chastity, and as Aphrodite Pandemos the ram was sacred to her. [Urania; Pandemos.] When she was represented as the victorious goddess, she had the attributes of Ares, a helmet, a shield, a sword : or a lance, and an image of Victory in one hand. The planet Venus and the spring-month of April were likewise sacred to her. (Cie. de Nat. Deor. iii. 20; Ov. Fast. iv. 90.)

All the surnames and epithets given to Aphrodite are derived from places of her worship, from events connected with the legends about her, or have reference to her character and her influence upon man, or are descriptive of her extraordinary beauty and charms. All her surnames are explained in separate articles.

The principal places of her worship in Greece were the islands of Cyprus and Cythera. At Cnidus in Caria she had three temples, one of which contained her renowned statue by Praxiteles. Mount Ida in Troas was an ancient place of her worship, and among the other places we may mention particularly the island of Cos, the towns of Abydos, Athens, Thespiae, Megara, Sparta, Sicyon, Corinth, and Eryx in Sicily. The sacrifices offered to her consisted mostly of incense and garlands of flowers (Virg. Aen. i. 416; Tacit. Hist. ii. 3), but in some places animals, such as pigs, goats, young cows, hares, and others, were sacrificed to her. In some places, as at Corinth, great numbers of females belonged to her, who prostituted themselves in her service, and bore the name of hierodouloi. ( Dict.of Ant. s. v. Hetairai.) Respecting the festivals of Aphrodite see Dict. of Ant. s.v. Adônia, Anagôgia, Aphrodisia, Katagôgia.

The worship of Aphrodite was undoubtedly of eastern origin, and probably introduced from Syria to the islands of Cyprus, Cythera, and others, from whence it spread all over Greece. It is said to have been brought into Syria from Assyria. (Paus. i. 14. § 6.) Aphrodite appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, called by the Hebrews Ashtoreth, and her connexion with Adonis clearly points to Syria. But with the exception of Corinth, where the worship of Aphrodite had eminently an Asiatic character, the whole worship of this goddess and all the ideas concerning her nature and character are so entirely Greek, that its introduction into Greece must be assigned to the very earliest periods. The elements were derived from the East, but the peculiar development of it belongs to Greece. The Roman goddess Venus was identified with the Greek Aphrodite.

Aphrodite, the ideal of female graec and beauty, frequently engaged the talents and genius of the ancient artists. The most celebrated representations of her were those of Cos and Cnidus. Those which are still extant are divided by archaeologists into several classes, accordingly as the goddess is represented in a standing position and naked, as the Medicean Venus, or bathing, or half naked, or dressed in a tunic, or as the victorious goddess in arms, as she was represented in the temples of Cythera, Sparta, and Corinth. (Paus. iii. 23. § 1, ii. 5. § 1, iii. 15. § 10.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

Birth of Aphrodite, Greco-Roman fresco from Pompeii C1st A.D., Naples National Archaeological Museum

CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES

HYMNS TO APHRODITE

I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"Moisa (Muse), tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite Kypria (Cyprian), who stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all the sea: all these love the deeds of rich-crowned Kythereia. [The story of the love of Aphrodite and Ankhises follows.] . . .
Hail, goddess, queen of well-builded Kypros (Cyprus)! With you have I begun; now I will turn me to another hymn."

Homeric Hymn 6 to Aphrodite :
"I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Kypros (Cyprus). There the moist breath of Zephyros the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, ad there the gold-filleted Horai (Horae, Seasons) welcomed her joyously. [The story of the birth of Aphrodite follows.] . . .
Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess! Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest, and order you my song. And now I will remember you and another song also."

Homeric Hymn 10 to Aphrodite :
"Of Kythereia (Cytherea) [Aphrodite], born in Kypros (Cyprus), I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it. Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt Kypros; grant me a cheerful song. And now I will remember you and another song also."

II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Orphic Hymn 55 to Aphrodite (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"To Aphrodite. Ourania (Urania) (Heavenly), illustrious, laughter-loving ( philommeideia) queen, sea-born ( pontogenes), night-loving ( philopannyx), of awful mien; crafty, from whom Ananke (Necessity) first came, producing, nightly, all-connecting dame. 'Tis thine the world with harmony to join, for all things spring from thee, O power divine. The triple Moirai (Fates) are ruled by thy decree, and all productions yield alike to thee: whatever the heavens, encircling all, contain, earth fruit-producing, and the stormy main, thy sway confesses, and obeys thy nod, awful attendant of Bakkhos [Dionysos] God. Goddess of marriage, charming to the sight, mother of the Erotes (Loves), whom banquetings delight; source of Peitho (Persuasion), secret, favouring queen, illustrious born, apparent and unseen; spousal Lukaina, and to men inclined, prolific, most-desired, life-giving, kind. Great sceptre-bearer of the Gods, 'tis thine mortals in necessary bands to join; and every tribe of savage monsters dire in magic chains to bind through mad desire. Come, Kyprogenes (Cyprus-Born), and to my prayer incline, whether exalted in the heavens you shine, or pleased in odorous Syria to preside, or over the Aigyptian (Egyptian) plains they care to guide, fashioned of gold; and near its sacred flood, fertile and famed, to fix they blest abode; or if rejoicing in the azure shores, near where the sea with foaming billows roars, the circling choirs of mortals thy delight, or beauteous Nymphai (Nymphs) with eyes cerulean bright, pleased by the sandy banks renowned of old, to drive thy rapid two-yoked car of gold; or if in Kypros (Cyprus) thy famed mother fair, where Nymphai unmarried praise thee every year, the loveliest Nymphai, who in the chorus join, Adonis pure to sing, and thee divine. Come, all-attractive, to my prayer inclined, for thee I call, with holy, reverent mind."

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF APHRODITE

Aphrodite, Apulian red-figure volute krater C4th B.C., Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Classical literature offers only a few, brief descriptions of the physical characteristics of the gods.

Homer, Iliad 3. 396 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"She [Helene of Troy] recognized the round, sweet throat of the goddess [Aphrodite] and her desirable breasts and her eyes that were full of shining."

Stasinus of Cyprus or Hegesias of Aegina, Cypria Fragment 6 (from Athenaeus 15. 682) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.) :
"She [Aphrodite] clothed herself with garments which the Kharites (Charites, Graces) and Horai (Hours) had made for her and dyed in flowers of spring--such flowers as the Horai (Horae, Seasons) wear--in crocus and hyacinth and flourishing violet and the rose's lovely bloom, so sweet and delicious, and heavenly buds, the flowers of the narcissus and lily. In such perfumed garments is Aphrodite clothed at all seasons."

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 78 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :
"Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus stood before him [Ankhises (Anchises)], being like a pure maiden in height and mien, that he should not be frightened when he took heed of her with his eyes. Now when Ankhises saw her, he marked her well and wondered at her mien and height and shining garments. For she was clad in a robe out-shining the brightness of fire, a splendid robe of gold, enriched with all manner of needlework, which shimmered like the moon over her tender breasts, a marvel to see. Also she wore twisted brooches and shining earrings in the form of flowers; and round her soft throat were lovely necklaces . . .
[later she revealed her true divine height and mien] and her head reached to the well-hewn roof-tree; from her cheeks shone unearthly beauty such as belongs to rich-crowned Kythereia (Cytherea). . . [and] when he [Ankhises] saw the neck and lovely eyes of Aphrodite, he was afraid and turned his eyes aside another way, hiding his comely face with his cloak."

Homeric Hymn 6 to Aphrodite 6 ff :
"The Horai (Horae, Seasons) clothed her [Aphrodite] with heavenly garments: on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold, and in her pierced ears they hung ornaments of orichalc and precious gold, and adorned her with golden necklaces over her soft neck and snow-white breasts, jewels which the gold-filleted Horai wear themselves."

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 . . . the second one [Aphrodite] even in the painting shows the 'laughter-loving' ( philomeides) disposition caused by the magic of her girdle."

Orphic Hymn 57 to Chthonian Hermes (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"Celestial Aphrodite, Paphian queen, dark-eyelashed Goddess, of a lovely mien."

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:] After them a third girl entered, her beauty visibly unsurpassed. Her charming, ambrosia-like complexion intimated that she represented the earlier Venus [Aphrodite] when that goddess was still a maiden. She vaunted her unblemished beauty by appearing naked and unclothed except for a thin silken garment veiling her entrancing lower parts. An inquisitive gust of air would at one moment with quite lubricous affection blow this garment aside, so that when wafted away it revealed her virgin bloom; at another moment it would wantonly breathe directly upon it, clinging tightly and vividly outlining the pleasurable prospect of her lower limbs. The goddess's appearance offered contrasting colours to the eye, for her body was dazzling white, intimating her descent from heaven and her robe was dark blue, denoting her emergence from the sea . . .
Each maiden representing a goddess was accompanied by her own escort . . . Venus [Aphrodite] was surrounded by a throng of the happiest children; you would have sworn that those little boys whose skins were smooth and milk-white were genuine Cupides [Erotes] who had just flown in from sky or sea. They looked just he part with their tiny wings, miniature arrows, and the rest of their get-up, as with gleaming torches they lit the way for their mistress as though she were en route to a wedding-banquet. Next floated in charming children, unmarried girls, representing on one side the Gratiae [Charites, Graces] at their most graceful, and on the other the Horae [Horai] in all their beauty. They were appeasing the goddess by strewing wreaths and single blossoms before her, and they formed a most elegant chorus-line as they sought to please the Mistress of pleasures with the foliage of spring. The flutes with their many stops were now rendering in sweet harmony melodies in the Lydian mode. As they affectingly softened the hearts of onlookers, Venus [Aphrodite] still more affectingly began to gently stir herself; with gradual, lingering steps, restrained swaying of the hips, and slow inclination of the head she began to advance, her refined movements matching the soft wounds of the flutes. Occasionally her eyes alone would dance, as at one moment she gently lowered her lids, and at another imperiously signalled with threatening glances."

Apuleius, The Golden Ass 2. 8 ff :
"Venus [Aphrodite] . . . wearing that belt of hers around her waist, diffusing the scent of cinnamon and bedewing the air with balsam."

Colluthus, Rape of Helen 82 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poetry C5th to 6th A.D.) :
"Kypris (Cypris) [Aphrodite] of crafty counsels unfolded her snood and undid the fragrant clasp of her hair and wreathed with gold her locks, with gold her flowing tresses."

ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART

SOURCES (ALL APHRODITE PAGES)

GREEK

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

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

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

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

Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles - 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.

Aesop, Fables - Greek Fables C6th B.C.

Pindar, Odes - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Pindar, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric I Alcman, Fragments - Greek Lyric C7th B.C.

Greek Lyric I Sappho, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric II Anacreon, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric II Anacreontea, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th - 4th B.C.

Greek Lyric III Ibycus, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th B.C.

Greek Lyric III Simonides, Fragments - Greek Lyric C6th - 5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Bacchylides, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Corinna, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric V Folk Songs, Fragments - Greek Lyric B.C.

Greek Elegaic Mimnermus, Fragments - Greek Elegaic C7th B.C.

Greek Elegaic Theognis, Fragments - Greek Elegaic C6th B.C.

Aeschylus, Eumenides - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Suppliant Women - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Aeschylus, Fragments - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Euripides, Bacchae - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Euripides, Helen - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.

Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.

Plato, Cratylus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Letters - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Phaedo - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Phaedrus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Philebus - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Republic - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Plato, Symposium - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Apollodorus, The Library - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.

Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica - Greek Epic C3rd B.C.

Callimachus, Fragments - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Parthenius, Love Romances - Greek Mythography C1st B.C.

Greek Papyri III Poseidippus, Fragments - Greek Elegiac C2nd 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.

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.

Oppian, Halieutica - Greek Poetry C3rd 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.

Greek Papyri III Anonymous, Fragments - Greek Poetry C4th 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, Aeneid - Latin Epic C1st B.C.

Virgil, Georgics - Latin Bucolic C1st B.C.

Propertius, Elegies - Latin Elegy C1st B.C.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum - Latin Rhetoric C1st B.C.

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

Seneca, Medea - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

Seneca, Phaedra - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

Seneca, Troades - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.

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

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

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APHRODITE - Greek Goddess of Love & Beauty

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Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros. Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. Her Roman name was Venus.

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Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher and student of Socrates. He also founded the Academy.

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Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher and student of Socrates. He also founded the Academy.

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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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Apollo is the god of sun, light, music, and poetry. 

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Apollo is the god of sun, light, music, and poetry. 

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☀ Apollo :: Greek God of Music and Light

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

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He was the god of the sea and was swallowed by his father when he was born. He created horses and was very vengeful.

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Greek Gods >> Olympian Gods >> Poseidon

Translation

Neptunus, Neptune

Chariot of Poseidon, Greco-Roman mosaic, Bardo National Museum

POSEIDON was the Olympian god of the sea, earthquakes, floods, drought and horses.
He was depicted as a mature man with a sturdy build and dark beard holding a trident (a three-pronged fisherman's spear).

MYTHS

At birth Poseidon was swallowed whole by his father Kronos (Cronus), but Zeus later enlisted the aid of the goddess Metis who fed the Titan a magical elixir causing him to disgorge the god. << More>>

During the War of the Titanes, the Kyklopes (Cyclopes) crafted a magical trident for Poseidon, and together with his brothers Zeus and Haides he defeated the elder gods and imprisoned them in Tartaros. << More>>

Poseidon and his brothers drew lots for the division of the cosmos after the fall of the Titanes, and won the sea as his domain.

When the Gigantes (Giants) besieged the gods of Olympos, Poseidon crushed Polybotes beneath the island of Kos (Cos). <<More>>

He entered a contest with the goddess Athena for dominion over Athens and produced the very first horse as a gift. But the king refused him the prize and in anger Poseidon afflicted the land with drought.

The god assaulted his sister Demeter in the shape of a horse as she was wandering the earth in search of her daughter Persephone. << More>>

Poseidon seduced many nymphs and mortal woman often in the guise of an animal or flowing water. Some of his most famous conquests were the Gorgon Medousa (Medusa), Tyro, Amymone, and Aithra mother of the hero Theseus. << More>>

The god helped build the walls of the city of Troy, but when King Laomedon refused the payment he had promised, Poseidon sent a sea-monster to ravage the land. << More>>

The hero Odysseus blinded the god's son Polyphemos on his return from Troy and Poseidon sent a storm to scatter and wreck the hero's fleet. << More>>

Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.

SYMBOLS & ATTRIBUTES

Poseidon's most distinctive attribute was the trident, a three-pronged fishing spear. He sometimes also wielded a boulder encrusted with sea creatures (crayfish, octopi, fish, etc.). The god was either clothed in a robe ( chiton) and cloak ( himation) or depicted nude with just a cloak draped loosely about his arms and shoulders. He was often crowned with a wreath of wild celery or a simple headband.

Below are some examples of his attributes as depicted in ancient Greek art:-

1. Trident & boulder; 2. Trident's head; 3. Boulder with sea creatures;

4. Headband; 5. Wreath of celery-leaves; 6. Billowing cloak.

SACRED ANIMALS & PLANTS

Poseidon's sacred animals were the bull, the horse and the dolphin. As god of the sea he was also closely associated with fish and other marine creatures. His chariot was drawn by a pair of fish-tailed horses (Greek: hippokampoi). The most famous of his sacred animals in myth was the Cretan Bull, sire of the Minotaur.
Poseidon's sacred plants were the pine tree and wild celery which were used to crown victors at the god's Isthmian Games.

Below are examples of the god's animals as depicted in ancient Greek art and photos of his sacred plants:-

1. Hippocamp (half-horse, half-fish); 2. Dolphin; 3. Pine tree; 4. Wild celery.

POSEIDON PAGES ON THEOI.COM

This site contains a total of 6 pages describing the god, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Poseidon Pages (left column or below).

FAMILY OF POSEIDON

PARENTS

KRONOS & RHEA (Homer Iliad 15.187, Hesiod Theogony 453, Apollodorus 1.4, Diodorus Siculus 5.68.1, et al)

OFFSPRING

See Family of Poseidon

Poseidon was a son of the Titans Kronos (Cronus) and Rheia and a grandson of Ouranos (the Heavens) and Gaia (the Earth). He was a brother of the gods Zeus, Haides, Hera, Demeter and Hestia.
Poseidon married the marine-goddess Amphitrite, eldest child of Nereus, first born son of Pontos (the Sea), a marital alliance which secured his dominion over the sea. Their son was the fish-tailed god Triton.
He also had numerous mortal offspring including giants such as Antaios and the cyclops Polyphemos, magical horses like Pegasos and Arion, and various human kings, heroes and villians including Theseus and Bellerophontes. << More>>

Below are two graphics depicting Poseidon's family tree, the first with names transliterated from the Greek and the second with the common English spellings:-

Poseidon riding Hippocamp, Athenian black-figure cup C6th B.C., British Museum

ENCYCLOPEDIA

POSEIDON (Poseidôn), the god of the Mediterranean sea. His name seems to be connected with potos, pontos and potamos, according to which he is the god of the fluid element. (Müller, Proleg. p. 290.)

He was a son of Cronos and Rhea (whence he is called Kronios and by Latin poets Saturnius, Pind. Ol. vi. 48; Virg. Aen. v. 799.) He was accordingly a brother of Zeus, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter, and it was determined by lot that he should rule over the sea. (Hom. Il. xiv. 156, xv. 187, &c.; Hes. Theog, 456.) Like his brothers and sisters, he was, after his birth, swallowed by his father Cronos, but thrown up again. (Apollod. i. 1. § 5, 2. § 1.)

According to others, he was concealed by Rhea, after his birth, among a flock of lambs, and his mother pretended to have given birth to a young horse, which she gave to Cronos to devour. A well in the neighbourhood of Mantineia, where this is said to have happened, was believed, from this circumstance, to have derived the name of the "Lamb's Well," or Arne. (Paus. viii. 8. § 2.) According to Tzetzes ( ad Lycoph. 644) the nurse of Poseidon bore the name of Arne; when Cronos searched after his son, Arne is said to have declared that she knew not where he was, and from her the town of Arne was believed to have received its name. According to others, again, he was brought up by the Telchines at the request of Rhea. (Diod. v. 55.)

In the earliest poems, Poseidon is described as indeed equal to Zeus in dignity, but weaker. (Hom. Il. viii. 210, xv. 165, 186, 209; comp. xiii. 355, Od. xiii. 148.) Hence we find him angry when Zeus, by haughty words, attempts to intimidate him; nay, he even threatens his mightier brother, and once he conspired with Hera and Athena to put him into chains (Hom. Il. xv. 176, &c., 212, &c.; comp. i. 400.); but, on the other hand, we also find him yielding and submissive to Zeus (viii. 440).

The palace of Poseidon was in the depth of the sea near Aegae in Euboea (xiii. 21; Od. v. 381), where he kept his horses with brazen hoofs and golden manes. With these horses he rides in a chariot over the waves of the sea, which become smooth as he approaches, and the monsters of the deep recognise him and play around his chariot. ( Il. xiii. 27, comp. Virg. Aen. v. 817, &c., i. 147; Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1240, &c.) Generally he himself put his horses to his chariot, but sometimes he was assisted by Amphitrite. (Apollon. Rhod. i. 1158, iv. 1325; Eurip. Androm. 1011; Virg. Aen. v. 817.) But although he generally dwelt in the sea, still he also appears in Olympus in the assembly of the gods. (Hom. II. viii. 440, xiii. 44, 352, xv. 161, 190, xx. 13.)

Poseidon in conjunction with Apollo is said to have built the walls of Troy for Laomedon (vii. 452; Eurip. Androm. 1014),whence Troy is called Neptunia Pergama (Neptunus and Poseidon being identified, Ov. Fast. i. 525, Heroid. iii. 151; comp. Virg. Aen. vi. 810.) Accordingly, although he was otherwise well disposed towards the Greeks, yet he was jealous of the wall which the Greeks built around their own ships, and he lamented the inglorious manner in which the walls erected by himself fell by the hands of the Greeks. (Hom. Il. xii. 17, 28, &c.) When Poseidon and Apollo had built the walls of Troy, Laomedon refused to give them the reward which had been stipulated, and even dismissed them with threats (xxi. 443); but Poseidon sent a marine monster, which was on the point of devouring Laomedon's daughter, when it was killed by Heracles. ii. 5 § 9.)

For this reason Poseidon like Hera bore an implacable hatred against the Trojans, from which not even Aeneas was excepted (Hom. Il. xx. 293, &c.; comp. Virg. Aen. v. 810; Il. xxi. 459, xxiv. 26, xx. 312, &c.), and took an active part in the war against Troy, in which he sided with the Greeks, sometimes witnessing the contest as a spectator from the heights of Thrace, and sometimes interfering in person, assuming the appearance of a mortal hero and encouraging the Greeks, while Zeus favoured the Trojans. ( Il. xiii. 12, &c., 44, &c., 209, 351, 357, 677, xiv. 136, 510.) When Zeus permitted the gods to assist whichever party they pleased, Poseidon joining the Greeks, took part in the war, and caused the earth to tremble; he was opposed by Apollo, who, however, did not like to fight against his uncle. ( Il. xx. 23, 34, 57, 67, xxi. 436, &c.) In the Odyssey, Poseidon appears hostile to Odysseus, whom he prevents from returning home in consequence of his having blinded Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon by the nymph Thoosa. (Hom. Od. i. 20, 68, v. 286, &c., 366, &c., 423, xi. 101, &e., xiii. 125; Ov. Trist. i. 2. 9.)

Being the ruler of the sea (the Mediterranean), he is described as gathering clouds and calling forth storms, but at the same he has it in his power to grant a successful voyage and save those who are in danger, and all other marine divinities are subject to him. As the sea surrounds and holds the earth, he himself is described as the god who holds the earth (gaiêochos), and who has it in his power to shake the earth (enosichthôn, kinêtêr gas).

He was further regarded as the creator of the horse, and was accordingly believed to have taught men the art of managing horses by the bridle, and to have been the originator and protector of horse races. (Hom. Il. xxiii. 307, 584; Pind. Pyth. vi.50 ; Soph. Oed. Col. 712, &c.) Hence he was also represented on horseback, or riding in a chariot drawn by two or four horses, and is designated by the epithets hippios, hippeios, or hippios anax. (Paus. i. 30. § 4, viii. 25. § 5, vi. 20. § 8, viii. 37. § 7 ; Eurip. Phoen. 1707; comp. Liv. i. 9, where he is called equester.) In consequence of his connection with the horse, he was regarded as the friend of charioteers (Pind. Ol. i. 63, &c.; Tzetz. ad Lyc. 156), and he even metamorphosed himself into a horse, for the purpose of deceiving Demeter.

The common tradition about Poseidon creating the horse is as follows:-- when Poseidon and Athena disputed as to which of them should give the name to the capital of Attica, the gods decided, that it should receive its name from him who should bestow upon man the most useful gift. Poseidon their created the horse, and Athena called forth the olive tree, for which the honour was conferred upon her. (Serv. ad Virg. Georg. i. 12.) According to others, however, Poseidon did not create the horse in Attica, but in Thessaly, where he also gave the famous horses to Peleus. (Lucan, Phars. vi. 396, &c.; Hom. Il. xxiii. 277; Apollod. iii. 13. § 5.)

The symbol of Poseidon's power was the trident, or a spear with three points, with which he used to shatter rocks, to call forth or subdue storms, to shake the earth, and the like. Herodotus (ii. 50, iv. 188) states, that the name and worship of Poseidon was imported to the Greeks from Libya, but he was probably a divinity of Pelasgian origin, and originally a personification of the fertilising power of water, from which the transition to regarding him as the god of the sea was not difficult.

It is a remarkable circumstance that in the legends about this divinity there are many in which he is said to have disputed the possession of certain countries with other gods. Thus, in order to take possession of Attica, he thrust his trident into the ground on the acropolis, where a well of sea-water was thereby called forth; but Athena created the olive tree, and the two divinities disputed, until the gods assigned Attica to Athena. Poseidon, indignant at this, caused the country to be inundated. (Herod. viii. 55; Apollod. iii. 14. § 1 ; Paus. i. 24. § 3, &c.; Hygin. Fab. 164.) With Athena he also disputed the possession of Troezene, and at the command of Zeus he shared the place with her. (Paus. ii. 30. § 6 ) With Helios he disputed the sovereignty of Corinth, which along with the isthmus was adjudged to him, while Helios received the acropolis. (ii. 1. § 6.) With Hera he disputed the possession of Argolis, which was adjudged to the former by Inachus, Cephissus, and Asterion, in consequence of which Poseidon caused the rivers of these river-gods to be dried up. (ii. 15. § 5, 22. § 5; Apollod. ii. 1. § 4.) With Zeus, lastly, he disputed the possession of Aegina, and with Dionysus that of Naxos. (Plut. Sympos. ix. 6.) At one time Delphi belonged to him in common with Ge, but Apollo gave him Calauria as a compensation for it. (Paus. ii. 33. § 2, x. 5. § 3; Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1243, with the Schol.)

The following legends also deserve to be mentioned. In conjunction with Zeus he fought against Cronos and the Titans (Apollod. i. 2. § 1), and in the contest with the Giants he pursued Polybotes across the sea as far as Cos, and there killed him by throwing the island upon him. (Apollod. i. 6. § 2; Paus. i. 2. § 4.) He further crushed the Centaurs when they were pursued by Heracles, under a mountain in Leucosia, the island of the Seirens. (Apollod. ii. 5. § 4.) He sued together with Zeus for the hand of Thetis, but he withdrew when Themis prophesied that the son of Thetis would be greater than his father. (Apollod. iii. 13. § 5; Tzetz. ad Lyc. 178.) When Ares had been caught in the wonderful net by Hephaestus, the latter set him free at the request of Poseidon (Hom. Od. viii. 344, &c.), but Poseidon afterwards brought a charge against Ares before the Areiopagus, for having killed his son Halirrhothius. (Apollod. iii. 14. § 2.) At the request of Minos, king of Crete, Poseidon caused a bull to rise from the sea, which the king promised to sacrifice; but when Minos treacherously concealed the animal among a herd of oxen, the god punished Minos by causing his daughter Pasiphaë to fall in love with the bull. (Apollod. iii. § 3, &c.) Periclymenus, who was either a son or a grandson of Poseidon, received from him the power of assuming various forms. (i. 9. § 9, iii. 6. § 8.)

Poseidon was married to Amphitrite, by whom he had three children, Triton, Rhode, and Benthesicyme (Hes. Theog. 930; Apollod. i. 4. § 6, iii. 15. § 4); but he had besides a vast number of children by other divinities and mortal women.

He is mentioned by a variety of surnames, either in allusion to the many legends related about him, or to his nature as the god of the sea. His worship extended over all Greece and southern Italy, but he was more especially revered in Peloponnesus (which is hence called oikêtêrion Poseidônos) and in the Ionic coast towns. The sacrifices offered to him generally consisted of black and white bulls (Hom. Od. iii. 6, Il. xx. 404; Pind. Ol. xiii. 98; Virg. Aen. v. 237); but wild boars and rams were also sacrificed to him. (Hom. Od. xi. 130, &c., xxiii. 277; Virg. Aen. iii. 119.) In Argolis bridled horses were thrown into the well Deine as a sacrifice to him (Paus. viii. 7. § 2), and horse and chariot races were held in his honour on the Corinthian isthmus. (Pind. Nem. v. 66, &c.) The Panionia, or the festival of all the Ionians near Mycale, was celebrated in honour of Poseidon. (Herod. i. 148.)

In works of art, Poseidon may be easily recognised by his attributes, the dolphin, the horse, or the trident (Paus. x. 36. § 4), and he was frequently represented in groups along with Amphitrite, Tritons, Nereids, dolphins, the Dioscuri, Palaemon, Pegasus, Bellerophontes, Thalassa, Ino, and Galene. (Paus. ii. 1. § 7.) His figure does not present the majestic calm which characterises his brother Zeus; but as the state of the sea is varying, so also is the god represented sometimes in violent agitation, and sometimes in a state of repose. It must be observed that the Romans identified Poseidon with their own Neptunus, and that accordingly the attributes belonging to the former are constantly transferred by the Latin poets to the latter.
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

Poseidon-Neptune and Hippocamps, Greco-Roman mosaic C3rd A.D., Sousse Archaeological Museum

CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES

HYMNS TO POSEIDON

I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Homeric Hymn 22 to Poseidon (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.) :
"I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helikon (Helicon) and wide Aigai (Aegae). O Shaker of the Earth ( Ennosigaios), to be a tamer of horses and a saviour of ships! Hail Poseidon Holder of the Earth ( gaienokhos), dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in ships!"

II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Orphic Hymn 17 to Poseidon (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"Hear, Poseidon, ruler of the sea profound, whose liquid grasp begirds the solid ground; who, at the bottom of the stormy main, dark and deep-bosomed holdest they watery reign. Thy awful hand the brazen trident bears, and sea's utmost bound thy will reveres. Thee I invoke, whose steeds the foam divide, from whose dark locks the briny waters glide; shoe voice, loud sounding through the roaring deep, drives all its billows in a raging heap; when fiercely riding through the boiling sea, thy hoarse command the trembling waves obey. Earth-shaking, dark-haired God, the liquid plains, the third division, fate to thee ordains. 'Tis thine, cerulean daimon, to survey, well-pleased, the monsters of the ocean play. Confirm earth's basis, and with prosperous gales waft ships along, and swell the spacious sails; add gentle peace, and fair-haired health beside, and pour abundance in a blameless tide."

III) OTHER HYMNS

Aelian, On Animals 12. 45 (trans. Schofield) (Greek natural history C2nd to 3rd A.D.) :
"Arion [the poet rescued by a dolphin] wrote a hymn of thanks to Poseidon that bears witness to the dolphin's love of music and is a kind of payment of the reward due to them also for having saved his life. This is the hymn : 'Highest of the gods, lord of the sea, Poseidon of the golden trident, earth-shaker in the swelling brine, around thee the finny monsters ( theres) in a ring swim and dance, with nimble flingings of their feet leaping lightly, snub-nosed hounds with bristling neck, swift runners, music-loving dolphins, sea-nurslings of the Nereis (Nereid) maids divine, whom Amphitrite bore, even they that carried me, a wanderer on the Sikelian (Sicilian) main, to the headland of Tainarion (Taenarum) in Pelops' land, mounting me upon their humped backs as they clove the furrow of Nereus' plain, a path untrodden, when deceitful men had cast me from their sea-faring hollow ship in to the purple swell of sea.'"

ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART

SOURCES (ALL POSEIDON PAGES)

GREEK

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

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

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

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

Hesiod, Astronomy 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.

Pindar, Odes - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Bacchylides, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Greek Lyric IV Corinna, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.

Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.

Plato, Republic - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.

Apollodorus, The Library - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.

Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica - Greek Epic C3rd B.C.

Callimachus, Hymns - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Callimachus, Fragments - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Lycophron, Alexandra - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.

Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History - Greek History C1st B.C.

Strabo, Geography - Greek Geography C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

Pausanias, Description of Greece - Greek Travelogue C2nd A.D.

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

The Orphic Hymns - Greek Hymns C3rd B.C. - 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.

Ptolemy Hephaestion, New History - Greek Mythography C1st - 2nd A.D.

Oppian, Halieutica - Greek Poetry C3rd A.D.

Nonnus, Dionysiaca - Greek Epic C5th A.D.

ROMAN

Hyginus, Fabulae - Latin Mythography C2nd A.D.

Hyginus, Astronomica - Latin Mythography C2nd A.D.

Ovid, Metamorphoses - Latin Epic C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.

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

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

BYZANTINE

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

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

OTHER SOURCES
Other sources not quoted here: numerous.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A complete bibliography of the translations quoted on this page.

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POSEIDON - Greek God of the Sea & Earthquakes

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Poseidon was the ancient Greek god of the sea, rivers, floods and drought, earthquakes, and horses. He was depicted as a mature man with a sturdy build and dark beard holding a trident (a three-pronged fisherman's spear). His Roman name was Neptune.

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She was the goddess of love and beauty. She was widely worshiped as a goddess.

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Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English. Nobody knows for certain when the poem was first composed.

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is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest. More than 3,000 lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its eponymous hero, and his successive battles with a monster named Grendel, with Grendel's revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure.

Listen to an audio description of Beowulf on the VocalEyes website.

How old is the manuscript?

Beowulf survives in a single medieval manuscript. The manuscript bears no date, and so its age has to be calculated by analysing the scribes' handwriting. Some scholars have suggested that the manuscript was made at the end of the 10th century, others in the early decades of the 11th, perhaps as late as the reign of King Cnut, who ruled England from 1016 until 1035.

The most likely time for Beowulf to have been copied is the early 11th century, which makes the manuscript approximately 1,000 years old.

Nobody knows for certain when the poem was first composed.

The contents of the manuscript

Apart from Beowulf, the manuscript contains several other medieval texts. These comprise a homily on St Christopher; The Marvels of the East (also known as The Wonders of the East), illustrated with wondrous beasts and deformed monsters; the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle; and an imperfect copy of another Old English poem, Judith.

Beowulf is the penultimate item in this collection, the whole of which was copied by two Anglo-Saxon scribes, working in collaboration.

Who owned the Beowulf manuscript?

The first-recorded owner of Beowulf is Laurence Nowell (died c. 1570), a pioneer of the study of Old English, who inscribed his name (dated 1563) at the top of the manuscript's first page. Beowulf then entered the famous collection of Sir Robert Cotton (died 1631) - who also owned the Lindisfarne Gospels and the British Library's two copies of Magna Carta - before passing into the hands of his son Sir Thomas Cotton (died 1662), and grandson Sir John Cotton (died 1702), who bequeathed the manuscript to the nation. The Cotton library formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum in 1753, before being incorporated as part of the British Library in 1973.

Why is the manuscript damaged?

During the 18th century, the Cotton manuscripts were moved for safekeeping to Ashburnham House at Westminster. On the night of 23 October 1731 a fire broke out and many manuscripts were damaged, and a few completely destroyed.

Beowulf escaped the fire relatively intact but it suffered greater loss by handling in the following years, with letters crumbling away from the outer portions of its pages. Placed in paper frames in 1845, the manuscript remains incredibly fragile, and can be handled only with the utmost care.

See a full set of images of the Beowulf Digitised Manuscript or view the Electronic Beowulf, a collaboration between British Library and the University of Kentucky.

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Discover 'Beowulf' on the British Library website

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Goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts. She also was Zeus' favorite daughter

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Goddess of wisdom, war and the crafts, and favourite daughter of Zeus, Athena was, perhaps, the wisest, most courageous, and certainly the most resourceful of the Olympian gods.

Zeus was told that his son would take his throne from him, just as he had taken power from his father Cronus. Accordingly, when Metis was pregnant, he swallowed her and Athena was born from Zeus' head, wearing armour and fully grown. A popular theme in ancient Greek art, Hephaistos is often depicted in the role of midwife, splitting Zeus' head with an axe.

Epithets of Athena include Pallas (girl) and Parthenos (virgin), living up to which, she is conspicuous amongst the gods of Greek mythology for not indulging in illicit relationships with other divinities, demigods, or mortals. Other epithets were Promachos (of war) - perhaps referring to more patriotic, defensive, and strategic warfare, rather than attacking warfare, in contrast to her more aggressive, conflict-loving brother Ares, Ergane (of the crafts), and (victory).

Athena was not to be trifled with as her transformation of Medusa into a Gorgon demonstrates.

The goddess was not to be trifled with as her transformation of Medusa into a Gorgon demonstrates, and her sense of justice was such that acts of impiety were swiftly avenged, as with the Archaean heroes following their capture of Troy and desecration of the goddess' sanctuary.

Athena is also associated with household crafts, giving mortals the gifts of cooking and sewing. She is said to have invented the but on seeing her reflection and her puffed cheeks when playing these pipes, she threw them away, to be picked up by the satyr Marsyas.

She is closely associated with Athens, the city named in her honour after the people of Attica chose her as their patron following her gift of the olive tree, symbol of peace and plenty. The 5th century BCE temple of the Parthenon, which continues to this day to dominate the acropolis of the city, was built in her honour. Her adopted son Erichthonios, one of the first kings of Athens, is traditionally credited with inaugurating the Panathenaic festival, held every four years to honour the goddess. The festival included a magnificent procession through the city, the presentation to Athena of a specially woven peplos (depicting the Gigantomachy), and athletic games. Prizes for the games were amphorae painted with a figure of Athena and contained prime olive oil. In her role as protector, she was also revered in many other major cities, notably as patron of Sparta, as the founder of Thebes in Boeotia, and at Corinth where she appeared on the city's coins.

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Protector of Hercules, Athena often aids him in his twelve labours, for example, by helping him hold the world as Atlas searches for the sacred apples of the Hesperides. Perseus was another favourite and was given a shield to protect himself in his quest to kill Medusa. Achilles is helped to kill Hector, and Odysseus too was often given the benefit of Athena's wisdom, for example the idea to dress as a beggar on his return to Ithaca, and he is also protected from the arrows of his rivals when he clears the palace of the interlopers. Jason was yet another hero who benefitted from Athena's resourcefulness when she encouraged Argo to build the first Greek longship which would carry his name and the fame of the Argonauts.

Athena was a major protagonist in Homer's account of the Trojan War in the where she supports the Achaeans and their heroes, especially Achilles, to whom she gives encouragement and wise counsel, Menelaos, who is saved from the arrow of Pandaros, and Diomedes, whose spear, in one notable episode, is diverted to injure Ares himself. Aphrodite was another divinity who came off second best when she clashed with Athena. She also gave protection to Odysseus and is credited with giving him the idea of the Wooden Horse. Both Homer and Hesiod refer to Athena as 'bright-eyed' and 'Tritogeneia'. She is also frequently called 'goddess of spoil', the 'lovely-haired goddess', and 'Alalkomenaian Athena'.

Objects associated with the goddess include an owl - symbol of wisdom - and the olive tree. She is often depicted in art with armour, a golden helmet, a shield, and holding a spear. Her armour is the aegis made, in some accounts, from the skin of a Giant, hung with tassels of gold, and featuring the head of the Gorgon given to her by Perseus. The most famous representation of Athena in the ancient world was undoubtedly the monumental gold and ivory statue of the goddess by Pheidias which resided in the Parthenon of Athens and was over 12 m high. The statue has been lost but survives in the form of smaller Roman copies and shows Athena standing majestic, fully armed, holding Nike in her right hand and with a shield in her left depicting scenes from the Battles of the Amazons and the Giants. On her helmet were a sphinx and two griffins. Celebrated surviving depictions of Athena include friezes from the Parthenon and metopes from the temple of Zeus at Olympia.

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Goddess of wisdom, war and the crafts, and favourite daughter of Zeus, Athena was, perhaps, the wisest, most courageous, and certainly the most resourceful of the Olympian gods. Zeus was told that his son would take his throne from him, just as he had taken power from his father Cronus.

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Poseidon was the God of the Sea and earthquakes. 

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Poseidon was the God of the Sea and earthquakes. 

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Poseidon is the god of the sea and protector of all aquatic features. Brother of Zeus and Hades, after the overthrow of their father, Cronus, he drew ...

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Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty. She is said to have been born from sea foam. 

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Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty. She is said to have been born from sea foam. 

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🕊 Aphrodite :: Greek Goddess of Love and Beauty

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Aphrodite is the goddess of love, desire and beauty. Apart from her natural beauty, she also had a magical girdle that compelled everyone to desire h…

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This was an ancient epic written by Homer about  Odysseus's long journey home. This journey took pace after the Trojan War.

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Athena was the goddess of wisdom and courage. She was known for her strategic skill in warfare. 

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Athena was the goddess of wisdom and courage. She was known for her strategic skill in warfare. 

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Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War

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

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

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

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

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

Etymology

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

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

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

Early Roots

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

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

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

Patronage

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

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

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

Outside of Athens

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

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

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

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

Other Epithets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Birth of Athena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pallas

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dark Side

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

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

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

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

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

Facts about Athena

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

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

She was Zeus's favorite child.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.

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

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

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

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

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

Athena invented the flute, but she never played it.

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

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

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

Athena Trivia

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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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Written by Virgil, it was a long epic that describes the early mythology of Rome.

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The written by the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE), is a twelve-book-long epic poem that describes the early mythology of the founding of Rome. The eponymous hero Aeneas, a Trojan prince and son of Venus, faces trials and tribulations as he escapes Troy as it burns and sails the Mediterranean searching for a new home. Virgil spent the last ten years of his life writing the Aeneid, only to die before its completion. The poem is written in dactylic hexameter, a meter known for its use in epic poetry. It also features themes of conflict and renewal, which parallel the decades of civil war and strife the Roman Republic endured before the establishment of the Roman Empire under the rule of Augustus and the peace (" Pax Romana") that accompanied it.

The Aeneid alludes to both the and the , tales of the Trojan War composed as epic poems by the Greek poet Homer in the 8th century BCE. The first six books of the Aeneid are the stories of Aeneas and other Trojan survivors travelling around the Mediterranean, in the style of Odysseus and his crew in the Odyssey. The latter half of Virgil's work focuses on warfare, as Aeneas fights Turnus, king of the Rutuli and a warrior said to be more powerful than Achilles. The Aeneid also contains epic tropes that hearken back to Homer. For instance, in Book V Aeneas puts on funeral games for his dead father, Anchises. These games are strongly reminiscent of the funeral games hosted in honour of Patroclus in Book XXVIII of the Iliad. Later, in Book VI of the Aeneid, Aeneas descends into the Underworld where he encounters his father and Dido, his spurned lover and former Queen of Carthage; Odysseus makes a similar journey in Book XI of the Odyssey. Divine intervention is another prominent feature in the Aeneid; gods such as Jupiter and Venus compel and assist Aeneas to fulfill his destiny, while other divine figures, Juno, for example, actively plot against Aeneas, and attempt to thwart his attempts to reach Italy and lay the foundations of Rome.

Divine intervention is a prominent feature in the Aeneid; some gods assist Aeneas, while others actively plot against him.

Books I - VI

The epic begins in media res (Latin for "in the midst of things", another standard technique used in epic poetry) as Aeneas and his men wash up on an unfamiliar shore. He is whisked inland to the court of Dido, Queen of Carthage, where, in Book II, he tells the story of the fall of Troy from the Trojan perspective. In his account, he describes the Trojan Horse on the shores outside Troy, the warning of Laocoön ("Do not trust the horse, Trojans... I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts!" Aeneid 2.49-50), the Greeks' emergence from the hollow horse and the storming of the gates, the death of King Priam at the hands of Neoptolemus (Achilles' nephew), and the annunciation of his quest to take the Trojan gods and found a new city in the West. Aeneas goes on to describe his journey across the Mediterranean Sea. As he finishes the story, Dido is struck by an arrow of Cupid, Aeneas' half-brother, and falls in love with the Trojan. (This scheme is hatched by Juno to keep Aeneas in Carthage.) Their love was not meant to be, as Jupiter, via Mercury, reminds Aeneas of his destiny and orders him to embark once again in search of his new home. After that divine reminder, Aeneas sets sail on the Mediterranean, still seeking the location of Troy's successor. Heartbroken by his departure, Dido commits suicide.

In Book VI, Aeneas' journey takes him to Cumae (near present-day Naples). The Cumaean Sibyl, a priestess of Apollo, guides Aeneas into the Underworld. There, the Trojan encounters the shade of Dido, still heartbroken and silent, and his father, Anchises, who foreshadows the greatness of Rome. Romulus, he foretells, a descendent of Ascanius, will found Rome, and the city will begin a Golden Age when a Caesar (an obvious allusion to Augustus), another descendant of Ascanius, reigns over the city. Aeneas emerges from the Underworld now aware of the significance of the task charged to him.

Books VII - XII

Prompted by the gods, Aeneas settles the Trojans in Latium, a region in western Italy, at the invitation of Latinus, king of the Latin tribe. Aeneas begins to court Latinus's daughter, Lavinia, with her father's blessing. Turnus, king of the neighboring Rutuli tribe, also vies for Lavinia's hand in marriage; Amata, Lavinia's mother, supports his courtship. (This is another conflict engineered by Juno to prevent the establishment of Rome.)

In the end, Aeneas marries Lavinia, a fact that spurs Turnus to arms. The king of the Rutuli raises an army against Aeneas and the Latins. Seeing that he is outnumbered, Aeneas turns to the Tuscans and the Arcadians for help. With their assistance and after much fighting, the forces of the Rutuli are turned back with many casualties on both sides. The epic concludes abruptly as, in one-on-one combat, Aeneas mercilessly strikes down an injured Turnus.

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The written by the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE), is a twelve-book-long epic poem that describes the early mythology of the founding of Rome. The eponymous hero Aeneas, a Trojan prince and son of Venus, faces trials and tribulations as he escapes Troy as it burns and sails the Mediterranean searching for a new home.

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Poseidon is the violent and ill-tempered god of the sea. One of the Twelve Olympians, he was also feared as the provoker of earthquakes and worshipped as the creator of the horse. A hot-blooded deity, Poseidon had many disputes with both gods and men, most famously with Athena and Odysseus.

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The Iliad was written by Homer, it was an epic poem about the Trojan War.  

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The Iliad was written by Homer, it was an epic poem about the Trojan War.  

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The Iliad was written by Homer and is the story of the end of the Trojan war. The main character is Achilles. One famous moment from the Iliad is the Trojan horse.

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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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The Iliad is about the Greek War with Troy (Trojan War).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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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The Iliad was the epic poem about the Trojan War.

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The Iliad was the epic poem about the Trojan War.

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Paris became an enemy of Troy whenever he stole Helen of Troy from Menelaus. This caused a war.

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Famous Fictional Couples | Helen of Troy and Paris

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In Greek mythology, the face that launched a thousand ships by David Johnson Recounted in Homer's Iliad, the story of Helen of Troy and the Trojan War is a Greek heroic legend, combining fact and fiction. The earliest written work in Western civilization, it has inspired writers and artists through the ages.

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The war between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece.

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Trojan War - Definition, Summary & Hero | HISTORY

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

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Beowulf Movie

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The Aeneid was about a group of survivors who leave their destroyed city to find another home in a faraway country. It was written by Virgil.

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Zeus was the Greek God of thunder, sky, men, and all of the other gods.

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The Trojan War was between Troy and the Greeks. The battle resulted in the defeat of Troy. 

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The Trojan War was between Troy and the Greeks. The battle resulted in the defeat of Troy. 

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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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Roads were rarely built because they were expensive so traveling by land was difficult. Even though it was difficult this is how they often traveled. In some cases when things needed to be transported, they would travel by waterway.

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Troy is located in northwestern Anatolia were they really took on literature and archaeology.

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Greek: Troia ...(Show more)

The search for Troy at Hisarlık

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

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

Findings

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

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

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

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

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

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Troy | Geography, Archaeology, Map, & Trojan War

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

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Troy is located in Turkey. It is in ancient Asia Minor and present day Anatolia.

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Troy is located in Turkey. It is in ancient Asia Minor and present day Anatolia.

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The battle of Troy was said to be around Troas

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Paris stole Troy's wife Helen which caused the events that led to the Trojan War. Paris and Troy were known to be great enemies.

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The Trojan War | Explained as Short as Possible

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The Odyssey is a story written by Homer that explains a hero's journey home after the Trojan War.

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Is a game of choices you can make as different characters. You can be Odysseus or Telemachus.

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roy is located in northwest turkey but is in a different area than the actual Trojan war is believed to be.

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roy is located in northwest turkey but is in a different area than the actual Trojan war is believed to be.

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A war that involves two significant people - Achilles and Hector - fighting against each other.