Myths and Legends Anthology

Greek Myths Anthology

Painting of Pandora by John William Waterhouse, 1896

Year Seven, Autumn Term 1
My Name: ______________________________

- Contents -
Key Concepts
Themes of Greek Mythology

Gaea
Genesis Chapter One

The Titans
Cronus

Zeus and his family
Hades

Persephone
The Fates
Oedipus
Pandora
The Fall
King Midas
Prometheus
Sisyphus
Analytical Phrasebank
Knowledge Organiser

Key concept: Myth

Myths are the oldest and most powerful of all story forms. They often carry an
important message for a culture or group. Myths are stories that give people a
connection with the universe, the passing of time, and with their environment.
Some myths give the official view of creation, others are a way to explain natural
events. Myths were passed on by spoken word, and their function was to explain, to
teach lessons, and to entertain.
The English word myth comes from the Greek word mythos, which means word or
story. However, mythos does not mean just any word or story – it means divinely
inspired (from the gods). Claiming that myths are ‘from the gods’ gives these stories
a special kind of power.

1

2 Paired Image: Persephone gives in to
3 temptation and eats three
4 pomegranate seeds, leading to the
5 three months of winter.

6

7

8

9

10

Key concept: Moral Tale

A moral or morality tale is a type of story that portrays the struggle between good
and evil often culminating in a lesson.

1 Moral tales combine entertainment with information
2 and instruction. Moral tales aimed at children are
3 common in many cultures and are familiar to us from
4 a young age and include famous fables such as the
5 tortoise and the hare. In Greek mythology, the acts of
6 mortal characters such as Oedipus or Sisyphus teach
7 about the importance of living in a virtuous way and
8 how the Gods will punish sinful behaviour.

9 Paired image: Sisyphus’ eternal punishment for
10 a sinful life

Key concept: Allusion

An allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of
historical, cultural, literary or political significance. It does not describe in detail the
person or thing to which it refers. It is just a passing comment and the writer expects
the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance
in a text.

Allusion Examples in Everyday Speech

• “Don’t act like a Romeo in front of her.” – “Romeo” is a reference to
Shakespeare’s Romeo, a passionate lover of Juliet, in “Romeo and Juliet”.

• The rise in poverty will unlock the Pandora’s box of crimes. – This is an allusion to
one of Greek Mythology’s origin myth, “Pandora’s box”.

• “This place is like a Garden of Eden.” – This is a biblical allusion to the “garden of
God” in the Book of Genesis.

• “Hey! Guess who the new Newton of our school is?” – “Newton”, means a genius
student, alludes to a famous scientist Isaac Newton

11 Paired Image: ‘I am so hungry, I know what Oliver Twist

12 felt like!’

Key concept: Theme

“A theme is not a summary of a piece of literature; it is a universal statement, moral lesson,
message or idea that addresses the experience of being human. ... A literary theme involves
humans in relationship to society, nature and themselves as individuals.”

Paired image: the themes of a story are like the roots of a tree -

Character

Setting

Plot

Themes

Morals

Messages

Three important themes in Greek Mythology: fate, heroism and hubris

Fate

1 The power of fate hangs over the lives of many mythological characters and even controls the gods
2 themselves. In Greek mythology, Fate was personified as three sisters: Clotho, the spinner of life’s thread,
3 Lachesis, the allotter of a person’s destiny, and Atropos, who cut the thread at death. These three are rarely
4 mentioned by name, but their power seems to have control over even Zeus, the most powerful of the gods.
5 The Greek poets and playwrights found great irony in the fact that individuals might seal their fate by the
6 very precautions they took to prevent it. The Titan Cronus learns that a child of his is destined to overthrow
7 him, so he swallows all his children as soon as they are born. Gaia, his wife, hides the infant Zeus away, and
8 later he does indeed overthrow his father, but it is perhaps Cronus’s very bloodthirstiness that makes his
9 own wife and son turn against him. Among mortals a famous example involves Oedipus and his father Laius.
10 Laius also learns that his son will kill him, so he leaves the infant Oedipus to die – which only means that the
11 two do not recognize each other when they quarrel on a highway years later, and thus fate is fulfilled.

Heroism

12 Heroism and the motif of the hero’s quest are important elements in Mythology, and represent one of the
13 highest ideals of ancient Greek culture. Theseus is the Athenian hero, and the most “heroic” seeming to the
14 modern reader, as he slays monsters but also institutes a democracy. Hercules shows what the rest of
15 Greece found heroic, however: he is passionate but unintelligent, and often kills innocent people because of
16 his uncontrollable strength. Hercules’s heroism consists of great deeds rather than good deeds; brute
17 strength, self-confidence, and a simplistic but upright virtue are his most valued traits. Aeneas, the Roman
18 hero, likewise exhibits the Roman values of strength, military prowess, and order. Many of the heroes do
19 decidedly unheroic things as well, like Jason betraying Medea. Like the gods themselves, who can be cruel
20 and childish, the heroes show that the Greeks often honoured strength and song-worthy deeds over

1 complex morality. When the later Greeks began to question the gods’ moral superiority, this was a sign that
2 their idea of heroism had changed.
3 The “hero’s quest” is a recurring framework for many stories, notably Jason and Hercules. It usually involves
4 a hero who is raised as an orphan, is given an impossible task that requires leaving home, and is offered the
5 hand of a princess if he succeeds. Odysseus, the most famous “questor,” actually shares few motifs with the
6 rest, as he is returning home instead of leaving it, and is already married and middle-aged.

Hubris
7 The greatest sin in many myths is when a mortal grows too proud and claims to be the equal or superior of
8 the gods. This arrogance, also called “hubris,” is inexplicably common and always punished horribly. The
9 Greeks clearly felt that hubris was a terrible sin, but often in punishing it so extremely the gods showed their
10 spiteful, jealous sides. There are even cases where the mortal’s pride is deserved, as with Arachne, who
11 boasts of her skill at weaving but then is able to actually weave cloth as beautiful as Athena’s. The jealous
12 Athena turns Arachne into a spider for this.
13 Other punishments for pride include Niobe, who wanted to be worshipped like a goddess, and so has her
14 sons murdered and is turned into a weeping stone, and the famous Icarus, who flies too close to the sun on
15 his man-made wings and then drowns. In her introduction, Hamilton notes how the Greek gods were more
16 familiar and human than the gods of most cultures, and it is perhaps because of this that so many mortals
17 thought they could be like them – the gods were just human enough to relate to, but still all-powerful,
18 jealous beings who relentlessly punished any mortal with too much pride.

Review your understanding –

1. Write your own definition of what we mean by the theme of a story –

2. Give an example of a story we have read where fate plays an important part –

3. Which character have we read about who has demonstrated hubris?

4. Are heroes in Greek mythology always good? Why?/Why not?



Gaea

1
2 Gaea, the Earth, came out of darkness so long ago that nobody knows when or how.
3 Earth was young and lonesome, for nothing lived on her yet. Above her rose Uranus,
4 the Sky, dark and blue, set all over with sparkling stars. He was magnificent to
5 behold, and young Earth looked up at him and fell in love with him. Sky smiled down
6 at Earth, twinkling with his countless stars, and they were joined in love. Soon young
7 Earth became Mother Earth, the mother of all things living. All her children loved their
8 warm and bountiful mother and feared their mighty father, Uranus, lord of the
9 universe.

10

Genesis 1

11 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of
12 the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

13 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the
14 darkness.5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the
15 first day.

16 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the
17 water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God calledthe vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was
18 morning—the second day.

19 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place,and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry
20 ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

21 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it,
22 according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and
23 trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was
24 morning—the third day.

25 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark
26 sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God
27 made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God
28 set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.
29 And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

30 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God
31 createdthe great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to
32 their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful
33 and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and
34 there was morning—the fifth day.

35 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground,
36 and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the

1 livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it
2 was good.

3 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds
4 in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

5 27 So God created mankind in his own image,
6 in the image of God he created them;
7 male and female he created them.

8 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the
9 sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

10 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
11 They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along
12 the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

13 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
14

The Titans

15 The Titans were the first children of Mother Earth. They were the first gods, taller than the mountains she
16 created to serve them as thrones, and both Earth and Sky were proud of them. There were six Titans, six
17 glorious gods, and they had six sisters, the Titanesses, whom they took for their wives.

18 When Gaea again gave birth, Uranus was not proud. Their new children were also huge, but each had only
19 one glowing eye set in the middle of his forehead. They were the three Cyclopes and they were named
20 Lightning, Thunder, and Thunderbolt. They were not handsome gods, but tremendously strong smiths.
21 Sparks from their heavy hammers flashed across the sky and lit up the heavens so brightly that even their
22 father's stars faded.

23 After a while Mother Earth bore three more sons. Uranus looked at them with disgust. Each of them had
24 fifty heads and a hundred strong arms. He hated to see such ugly creatures walk about on lovely Earth, so
25 he seized them and their brothers the Cyclopes and flung them into Tartarus, the deepest, darkest pit
26 under the earth.

27 Mother Earth loved her children and could not forgive her husband for his cruelty to them. Out of hardest
28 flint she fashioned a sickle and spoke to her sons the Titans:

29 "Take this weapon, make an end to your father's cruelty and set your brothers free."

30 Fear took hold of five of the Titans and they trembled and refused. Only Cronus, the youngest but the
31 strongest, dared to take the sickle. He fell upon his father. Uranus could not withstand the weapon wielded
32 by his strong son and he fled, giving up his powers.

33 Mother Earth made Pontus, the boundless seas, her second husband, and from this union sprang the gods
34 of the watery depths. And from her rich ground grew an abundance of trees and flowers and, out of her
35 crevices, sprites, beasts, and early man crept forth.

36

Cronus

1 Cronus was now the lord of the universe. He sat on the highest mountain and ruled over heaven and earth
2 with a firm hand. The other gods obeyed his will and early man worshiped him. This was man's Golden Age.
3 Men lived happily and in peace with the gods and each other. They did not kill and they had no locks on
4 their doors, for theft had not yet been invented.

5 But Cronus did not set his monstrous brothers free, and Mother Earth was angry with him and plotted his
6 downfall. She had to wait, for no god yet born was strong enough to oppose him. But she knew that one of
7 his sons would be stronger than he, just as Cronus had been stronger than his father. Cronus knew it too, so
8 every time his Titaness-wife Rhea gave birth, he took the newborn god and swallowed it. With all of his
9 offspring securely inside him, he had nothing to fear.

10 But Rhea mourned. Her five sisters, who had married the five other Titans, were surrounded by their Titan
11 children, while she was all alone. When Rhea expected her sixth child, she asked Mother Earth to help her
12 save the child from his father. That was just what Mother Earth had been waiting for. She gave her
13 daughter whispered advice, and Rhea went away smiling.

14 As soon as Rhea had borne her child, the god Zeus, she hid him. Then she wrapped a stone in baby clothes
15 and gave it to her husband to swallow instead of her son. Cronus was fooled and swallowed the stone, and
16 the little god Zeus was spirited away to a secret cave on the island of Crete. Old Cronus never heard the
17 cries of his young son, for Mother Earth set noisy earth sprites outside the cave. They made such a clatter,
18 beating their shields with their swords, that other sounds were drowned out.

19

Zeus and his family

20 Zeus was tended by gentle nymphs and was nursed by the fairy goat Amaltheia. From the horns of the goat
21 flowed ambrosia and nectar, the food and drink of the gods. Zeus grew rapidly, and it was not long be-fore
22 he strode out of the cave as a great new god. To thank the nymphs for tending him so well, he gave them
23 the horns of the goat. They were horns of plenty and could never be emptied. From the hide of the goat he
24 made for himself an impenetrable breastplate, the Aegis, and now he was so strong that Cronus could do
25 nothing against him.

26 Young Zeus chose Metis, a Titan's daughter, for his first wife. She was the goddess of prudence, and he
27 needed her good advice. She warned him not to try alone to overthrow his child-devouring father, for
28 Cronus had all the other Titans and their sons on his side. First Zeus must also have strong allies.

29 Metis went to Cronus and cunningly tricked him into eating a magic herb. He thought that the herb would
30 make him unconquerable. Instead it made him so sick that he vomited up not only the stone he had
31 swallowed, but his five other children as well. They were the gods Hades and Poseidon and the goddesses
32 Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, all mighty gods who right away joined forces with Zeus. When Cronus saw the
33 six young gods rising against him, he knew that his hour had come and he surrendered his powers and fled.

34 Now Zeus was the lord of the universe. He did not want to rule alone. He shared his powers with his
35 brothers and sisters. But the Titans and their sons revolted. They refused to let themselves be ruled by the
36 new gods. Only Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus left the Titans to join Zeus, for Prometheus could
37 look into the future and he knew that Zeus would win.

38 Zeus freed the monstrous sons of Mother Earth from Tartarus. Gratefully the hundred-armed ones fought
39 for him with all their strength, and the Cyclopes forged mighty weapons for him and his brothers.

1 They made a trident for Poseidon. It was so forceful that when he struck the ground with it, the earth
2 shook, and when he struck the sea, frothing waves stood mountain high.

3 For Hades they made a cap of invisibility so he could strike his enemies unseen, and for Zeus they forged
4 lightning bolts. Armed with them, he was the mightiest god of them all, nothing could stand against him
5 and his thunderbolts. The Titans fought a bitter battle, but at last they had to surrender, and Zeus locked
6 them up in Tartarus. The hundred-armed monsters went to stand guard at the gates to see that they never
7 escaped. Atlas, the strongest of the Titans, was sent to the end of the world to carry forever the vault of the
8 sky on his shoulders.

9 Angry with Zeus for sending her sons the Titans into the dark pit of Tartarus, Mother Earth now brought
10 forth two terrible monsters, Typhon and his mate, Echidna, and sent them against Zeus. They were so
11 fearful that when the gods saw them they changed themselves into animals and fled in terror. Typhon's
12 hundred horrible heads touched the stars, venom dripped from his evil eyes, and lava and red-hot stones
13 poured from his gaping mouths. Hissing like a hundred snakes and roaring like a hundred lions, he tore up
14 whole mountains and threw them at the gods.

15 Zeus soon regained his courage and turned, and when the other gods saw him taking his stand, they came
16 back to help him fight the monster. A terrible battle raged, and hardly a living creature was left on earth.
17 But Zeus was fated to win, and as Typhon tore up huge Mount Aetna to hurl at the gods, Zeus struck it with
18 a hundred well-aimed thunderbolts and the mountain fell back, pinning Typhon underneath. There the
19 monster lies to this very day, belching fire, lava, and smoke through the top of the mountain.

20 Echidna, his hideous mate, escaped destruction. She cowered in a cave, protecting Typhon's dreadful
21 offspring, and Zeus let them live as a challenge to future heroes.

22 Now at last Mother Earth gave up her struggle. There were no more upheavals, and the wounds of the war
23 soon healed. The mountains stood firmly anchored. The seas had their shores. The rivers had their river-
24 beds and oxhorned river-gods watched over them, and each tree and each spring had its nymph. The earth
25 again was green and fruitful and Zeus could begin to rule in peace.

26 The one-eyed Cyclopes were not only smiths but masons as well, and they built a towering palace for the
27 gods on top of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. The palace was hidden in clouds, and the
28 goddesses of the seasons rolled them away whenever a god wanted to go down to earth. Nobody else
29 could pass through the gate of clouds.

30 Iris, the fleet-footed messenger of the gods, had her own path down to earth. Dressed in a gown of
31 iridescent drops, she ran along the rainbow on her busy errands between Olympus and earth.

32 In the gleaming hall of the palace, where light never failed, the Olympian gods sat on twelve golden thrones
33 and reigned over heaven and earth. There were twelve great gods, for Zeus shared his powers, not only
34 with his brothers and sisters, but with six of his children and the goddess of love as well.

35 Zeus himself sat on the highest throne, with a bucketful of thunder-bolts beside him. On his right sat his
36 youngest sister, Hera, whom he had chosen from all his wives as his queen. Beside her sat her son, Ares,
37 god of war, and Hephaestus, god of fire, with Aphrodite, goddess of love, be-tween them. Next was Zeus's
38 son Hermes, the herald of the gods, and Zeus's sister Demeter, goddess of the harvest with her daughter,
39 Persephone, on her lap. On the left of Zeus sat his brother Poseidon, the lord of the sea. Next to him sat the
40 four children of Zeus: Athena, the twins Apollo and Artemis, and Dionysus, the youngest of the gods.
41 Athena was the goddess of wisdom, Apollo, the god of light and music, Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and
42 Dionysus, the god of wine.

43 Hestia, the eldest sister of Zeus, was goddess of the hearth. She had no throne, but tended the sacred fire
44 in the hall, and every hearth on earth was her altar. She was the gentlest of all the Olympians.

1 Hades, the eldest brother of Zeus, was the lord of the dead. He preferred to stay in his gloomy palace in the
2 underworld and never went to Olympus.

3 The gods themselves could not die, for divine ichor flowed in their veins instead of blood. Most of the time
4 they lived happily together, feasting on sweet-smelling ambrosia and nectar, but when their wills clashed,
5 there were violent quarrels. Then Zeus would reach for a thunderbolt and the Olympians would tremble
6 and fall to order, for Zeus alone was stronger than all the other gods together.

Hades

7 Hades, lord of the dead, was a gloomy god of few words. Mortals feared him so much that they did not
8 dare mention his name, for they might attract his attention and he might send for them. Instead of Hades
9 they called him the Rich One, and indeed, rich he was. All the treasures in the ground belonged to him.
10 They also called him the Hospitable One, for in his desolate underground realm he always had room for
11 another dead soul.

12 Hermes guided the souls of the dead down to the brink of the river Styx, a murky, stagnant river that
13 flowed around the underworld. There Hermes left them in charge of the ferryman Charon. If they had
14 money to pay for their fare, Charon set them across. If not, he refused to take them, for he was greedy.
15 Those who could not pay had to wander about till they found the pauper's entrance to Hades. That is why,
16 when a man died, his kin put a coin under his tongue.

17 Sooner or later, all mortals came to Hades. Once inside his realm, they whirled about forever like dry leaves
18 in a cold autumn wind. Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of the underworld, stood at the gates. He let
19 the dead souls enter, but, once past his gnashing teeth and spiked tail, they could never go out again.

20 Hades lived in a dark and gloomy palace with his ice-cold queen, Persephone. She was beautiful, but as
21 silent and sombre as her husband, for she wasn't happy. She had not come to rule the joyless underworld
22 of her own free will. She had been kidnaped by Hades.

Persephone

23 Persephone grew up on Olympus and her gay laughter rang through the brilliant halls. She was the
24 daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and her mother loved her so dearly she could not bear to
25 have her out of her sight. When Demeter sat on her golden throne, her daughter was always on her lap;
26 when she went down to earth to look after her trees and fields, she took Persephone. Wherever
27 Persephone danced on her light feet, flowers sprang up. She was so lovely and full of grace that even
28 Hades, who saw so little, noticed her and fell in love with her. He wanted her for his queen, but he knew
29 that her mother would never consent to part with her, so he decided to carry her off.

30 One day as Persephone ran about in the meadow gathering flowers, she strayed away from her mother and
31 the attending nymphs. Suddenly, the ground split open and up from the yawning crevice came a dark
32 chariot drawn by black horses. At the reins stood grim Hades. He seized the terrified girl, turned his horses,
33 and plunged back into the ground. A herd of pigs rooting in the meadow tumbled into the cleft, and
34 Persephone's cries for help died out as the ground closed again as suddenly as it had opened. Up in the
35 field, a little swineherd stood and wept over the pigs he had lost, while Demeter rushed wildly about in the
36 meadow, looking in vain for her daughter, who had vanished without leaving a trace.

37 Above, on earth, Demeter ran about searching for her lost daughter, and all nature grieved with her.
38 Flowers wilted, trees lost their leaves, and the fields grew barren and cold. In vain did the plow cut through
39 the icy ground; nothing could sprout and nothing could grow while the goddess of the harvest wept. People

1 and animals starved and the gods begged Demeter again to bless the earth. But she refused to let anything
2 grow until she had found her daughter.

3 With the frightened girl in his arms, Hades raced his snorting horses down away from the sunlit world.
4 Down and down they sped on the dark path to his dismal underground palace. He led weeping Persephone
5 in, seated her beside him on a throne of black marble, and decked her with gold and precious stones. But
6 the jewels brought her no joy. She wanted no cold stones. She longed for warm sunshine and flowers and
7 her golden-tressed mother.

8 Dead souls crowded out from cracks and crevices to look at their new queen, while ever more souls came
9 across the Styx and Persephone watched them drink from a spring under dark poplars. It was the spring of
10 Lethe, and those who drank from its waters forgot who they were and what they had done on earth.
11 Rhadamanthus, a judge of the dead, dealt out punishment to the souls of great sinners. They were
12 sentenced to suffer forever under the whips of the avenging Erinyes. Heroes were led to the Elysian fields,
13 where they lived happily forever in never-failing light.

14 Around the palace of Hades there was a garden where whispering poplars and weeping willows grew. They
15 had no flowers and bore no fruit and no birds sang in their branches. There was only one tree in the whole
16 realm of Hades that bore fruit. That was a little pomegranate tree. The gardener of the underworld offered
17 the tempting pomegranates to the queen, but Persephone refused to touch the food of the dead.

18 Wordlessly she walked through the garden at silent Hades' side and slowly her heart turned to ice.

19 Bent with grief, Demeter turned into a grey old woman. She returned to the meadow where Persephone
20 had vanished and asked the sun if he had seen what had happened, but he said no, dark clouds had hidden
21 his face that day. She wandered around the meadow and after a while she met a youth whose name was
22 Triptolemus. He told her that his brother, a swineherd, had seen his pigs disappear into the ground and had
23 heard the frightened screams of a girl.

24 Demeter now understood that Hades had kidnaped her daughter, and her grief turned to anger. She called
25 to Zeus and said that she would never again make the earth green if he did not command Hades to return
26 Persephone. Zeus could not let the world perish and he sent Hermes down to Hades, bidding him to let
27 Persephone go. Even Hades had to obey the orders of Zeus, and sadly he said farewell to his queen.

28 Joyfully, Persephone leapt to her feet, but as she was leaving with Hermes, a hooting laugh came from the
29 garden. There stood the gardener of Hades, grinning. He pointed to a pomegranate from which a few of the
30 kernels were missing. Persephone, lost in thought, had eaten the seeds, he said.

31 Then dark Hades smiled. He watched Hermes lead Persephone up to the bright world above. He knew that
32 she must return to him, for she had tasted the food of the dead.

33 When Persephone again appeared on earth, Demeter sprang to her feet with a cry of joy and rushed to
34 greet her daughter. No longer was she a sad old woman, but a radiant goddess. Again she blessed her fields
35 and the flowers bloomed anew and the grain ripened.

36 "Dear child," she said, "never again shall we be parted. Together we shall make all nature bloom." But joy
37 soon was changed to sadness, for Persephone had to admit that she had tasted the food of the dead and
38 must return to Hades. However, Zeus decided that mother and daughter should not be parted forever. He
39 ruled that Persephone had to return to Hades and spend one month in the underworld for each seed she
40 had eaten.

41 Every year, when Persephone left her, Demeter grieved, nothing grew, and there was winter on earth. But
42 as soon as her daughter's light footsteps were heard, the whole earth burst into bloom. Spring had come.
43 As long as mother and daughter were together, the earth was warm and bore fruit.

1 Demeter was a kind goddess. She did not want mankind to starve during the cold months of winter when
2 Persephone was away. She lent her chariot, laden with grain, to Triptolemus, the youth who had helped her
3 to find her lost daughter. She told him to scatter her golden grain over the world and teach men how to
4 sow it in spring and reap it in fall and store it away for the long months when again the earth was barren
5 and cold.

The Fates

6 Minor gods and goddesses also lived on Olympus besides the twelve great ones. The most powerful of
7 them were the goddesses of destiny, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They were the three Fates and they
8 decided how long a mortal would live and how long the rule of the gods should last. When a mortal was
9 born, Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured a certain length, and Atropos cut the thread at the
10 end of the life. They knew the past and the future, and even Zeus had no power to sway their decisions.
11 Their sister, Nemesis, sow to it that all evil and all good on earth were justly repaid, and all mortals feared
12 her.

Oedipus

13 One day a blind old man came to Theseus and asked for permission to stay in his kingdom and die in peace.
14 No one dared let him stay in their country, for he was pursued by the avenging furies, the Erinyes.
15 Homeless he wandered about. The old man, whose name was Oedipus, then told Theseus his sad story.

16 His misfortunes had started before he was born. His father, King Laius of Thebes, had been told by the
17 oracle of Delphi that the child his queen, Jocasta. was carrying was fated to kill his father and marry his
18 mother. This must never happen, thought the king, so when Oedipus was born he ordered a servant to take
19 the child away and abandon him in the mountains. But destiny had willed it differently. A shepherd from
20 the neighboring kingdom of Corinth heard the child's cries. He picked up the little boy and carried him to
21 his king. The King and Queen of Corinth were childless and happily they adopted the handsome little boy.
22 They loved him dearly and he never knew that he was not their real son. Without a care in the world he
23 grew to manhood, and one day went to Delphi to find what the future had in store for him. Great was his
24 horror when he heard the words of the oracle! He was destined to kill his father and marry his mother.

25 This must never happen, thought Oedipus. He took destiny in his own hands and fled across the mountains,
26 never to see his dear parents again.

27 On a narrow mountain path, he met the chariot of a haughty lord. "Give way for our master's chariot,"
28 shouted the servants, and tried to push Oedipus off the path. Angrily Oedipus fought back and in the
29 struggle the lord and all his servants were killed, except for one who escaped. Oedipus continued on his
30 way and came to the city of Thebes. But its seven gates were closed. Nobody dared to enter or leave, for a
31 monster, the Sphinx, had settled on a cliff just outside the city wall. This winged monster with a woman's
32 head and a lion's body challenged all who passed by to solve her riddle. If they couldn't, she tore them to
33 pieces. Nobody yet had solved the riddle of the Sphinx.

34 "What creature is it that walks on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening,"
35 she asked with a sinister leer when she saw Oedipus.

36 "It is man," Oedipus answered. "As a child he crawls on four. When grown, he walks upright on his two feet,
37 and in old age he leans on a staff."

38 The Sphinx let out a horrible scream. Her riddle was solved and she had lost her powers. In despair she
39 threw herself to her death. The gates of Thebes burst open and the people crowded out to thank the
40 stranger who had freed them. Their old king had recently been killed, leaving no son to inherit the throne

1 and when they heard that Oedipus was a prince from Corinth, they asked him to marry their widowed
2 queen and become their king. To be sure, Queen Jocasta was much older than Oedipus, but she was still
3 beautiful, for she wore a magic necklace that the gods had given Harmonia, the first Queen of Thebes.
4 Those who wore that neck-lace stayed young and beautiful all their lives. Thus Oedipus became King of
5 Thebes, and he ruled the city justly and wisely for many years.

6 One day the news reached him that the King of Corinth had died the peaceful death of old age, and while
7 he mourned his father, he was glad that he had been spared from a terrible destiny. Shortly afterward, a
8 pestilence broke out in Thebes and people died in great numbers. Oedipus sent for a seer and asked how
9 he could save his people. The pestilence would last until the death of the old king had been avenged, said
10 the seer. Oedipus swore that he would find the man who had killed the old king, and put out his eyes. He
11 sent his men to search till they found the one surviving servant of King Laius' party. When he was brought
12 before King Oedipus, the servant recognized him at once as the slayer of the old king! And now the whole
13 terrible truth came out, for he was also the selfsame servant who had abandoned the infant Oedipus in the
14 mountains, and had known all the while that the child had been found and adopted by the King of Corinth.

15 In despair Queen Jocasta went to her room and took her own life and Oedipus in horror put out his own
16 eyes and left Thebes, a broken old man. His daughter Antigone went with him, and they wandered from
17 place to place, turned away from every city, till, at last, they came to Athens.

18 "Not cursed but blessed will be the place where you lie down and close your eyes," said Theseus when he
19 had heard the story. "No man could have tried harder than you to escape his destiny."

20 The avenging Erinyes, who had been chasing him, now dropped their whips, and Oedipus could die in
21 peace.

Pandora

22 Pandora was modelled by Hephaestus in the likeness of Aphrodite. He carved her out of a block of white
23 marble, made her lips of red rubies and her eyes of sparkling sapphires. Athena breathed life into her and
24 dressed her in elegant garments. Aphrodite decked her with jewels and fixed her red mouth in a winning
25 smile. Into the mind of this beautiful creature, Zeus put insatiable curiosity, and then he gave her a sealed
26 jar and warned her never to open it.

27 Hermes brought Pandora down to earth and offered her in marriage to Epimetheus, who lived among the
28 mortals. Epimetheus had been warned by Prometheus never to accept a gift from Zeus, but he could not
29 resist the beautiful woman. Thus Pandora came to live among mortals, and men came from near and far to
30 stand awestruck by her wondrous beauty.

31 But Pandora was not perfectly happy, for she did not know what was in the jar that Zeus had given her. It
32 was not long before her curiosity got the better of her and she had to take a quick peek.

33 The moment she opened the lid, out swarmed a horde of miseries: Greed, Vanity, Slander, Envy, and all the
34 evils that until then had been unknown to mankind. Horrified at what she had done, Pandora clapped the
35 lid on, just in time to keep Hope from flying away too. Zeus had put Hope at the bottom of the jar, and the
36 unleashed miseries would quickly have put an end to it. They stung and bit the mortals as Zeus had
37 planned, but their sufferings made them wicked instead of good, as Zeus had hoped. They lied, they stole,
38 and they killed each other and became so evil that Zeus in disgust decided to drown them in a flood.

39 The moment she opened the lid, out swarmed a horde of miseries: Greed, Vanity, Slander, Envy, and all the
40 evils that until then had been unknown to mankind. Horrified at what she had done, Pandora clapped the
41 lid on, just in time to keep Hope from flying away too.

42

The Fall (Genesis 3)

1 Just like Pandora, curiosity got the best of Eve in the story Adam and Eve from the Book Of Genesis. After
2 God created Eve, he had told her to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge, like Pandora opening the
3 forbidden box, Eve ate the forbidden fruit. After Eve ate the fruit, she gained the knowledge of good and
4 evil, creating a world with sickness and death, but a world also with hope, just as Pandora had done,
5 making curiosity their downfalls.

King Midas

6 King Midas was a kind but rather stupid man who had always been a friend to the Phrygian satyrs. One
7 morning his servants had found an old satyr sleeping in the king's favourite flower bed. Midas had spared
8 the satyr from punishment and let him go. This old satyr was a follower of Dionysus, and the god had
9 rewarded Midas for his kindness by granting him a wish. Shortsightedly, King Midas wished that everything
10 he touched would turn to gold. His golden touch made him the richest man on earth, but he almost starved
11 to death for even his food and drink turned to gold. And when his little daughter ran to him to hug him, she
12 too turned into gold! Midas had to beg Dionysus to undo his wish and make everything as it had been
13 before.

14 Now again, King Midas showed poor judgment. The nine Muses all agreed that Apollo was by far the better
15 musician, but Midas voted for the Phrygian satyr. Apollo disdainfully turned his lyre upside down and
16 played just as well as before. He ordered Marsyas to turn his flute and do the same. Not a sound came from
17 Marsyas' flute however hard he blew, and even Midas had to admit that the satyr's flute was inferior to
18 Apollo's lyre. So Marsyas lost the contest and Apollo pulled off his skin and made a drum of it. Then he
19 turned to King Midas and said, "Ears as stupid as yours belong to an ass. Ass's ears you shall have from now
20 on!"

21 Ever after, King Midas went about with a tall, peaked cap on his head to hide his long ears. His subjects
22 thought he had started a new fashion, and it wasn't long before all the Phrygians wore tall, peaked caps.

23 The king's barber was the only one who knew what Midas was hiding. He had been forbidden to breathe a
24 word about it and he almost burst from having to keep such an important secret. When he could bear it no
25 longer he ran out to a lonesome field, dug a hole in the ground, and whispered into it, "King Midas has ass's
26 ears!" He quickly covered up the hole and thought the secret was safe. But the nearby reeds had heard and
27 as they swayed in the wind they whispered, "Midas has ass's ears, Midas has ass's ears," and soon the
28 secret spread all over the world.

29 King Midas was so ashamed that he left his throne and hid deep in the woods where no one could see him.

Prometheus

30 Prometheus could not bear to see his people suffer and he decided to steal fire, though he knew that Zeus
31 would punish him severely. He went up to Olympus, took a glowing ember from the sacred hearth, and hid
32 it in a hollow stalk of fennel. He carried it down to earth, gave it to mankind, and told them never to let the
33 light from Olympus die out. No longer did men shiver in the cold of the night, and the beasts feared the
34 light of the fire and did not dare to attack them.

35 A strange thing happened: as men lifted their eyes from the ground and watched the smoke from their fires
36 spiralling upward, their thoughts rose with it up to the heavens. They began to wonder and think, and were
37 no longer earth-bound clods. They built temples to honour the gods and, wanting to share what they had
38 with them, they burned the best pieces of meat on their altars.

1 Zeus was furious when he first saw the fires flickering on earth, but he was appeased when the savoury
2 scent of roast meat reached his nostrils. All the gods loved the smell of the burnt offerings; it spiced their
3 daily food of ambrosia and nectar. But Prometheus knew how hard men worked to make their living and
4 thought it a pity that they burned up the best parts of their food. He told them to butcher an ox and divide
5 the meat in two equal heaps. In one were the chops and roasts, hidden under sinews and bones. In the
6 other were scraps and entrails, covered with snow-white fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to come down
7 to earth and choose for himself which part he wanted for his burnt offerings. Zeus, of course, chose the
8 best-looking heap, but when he discovered that he had been tricked he grew very angry. Not only had
9 Prometheus stolen the sacred fire and given it to men, he had also taught them to cheat the gods. He
10 resolved to punish both Prometheus and his creations.

11 Cast in unbreakable irons, Prometheus was chained to the top of the Caucasus Mountains. Every day an
12 eagle swooped out of the sky and ate his liver. At night his immortal liver grew anew, but every day the
13 eagle returned and he had to suffer again.

Sisyphus

14 Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, was born heir to the throne of Thessaly in central Greece. Sisyphus and one of
15 his brothers, Salmoneus, hated each other and Salmoneus took the throne of Thessaly from him.

16 Eventually Sisyphus would become a king—but never of Thessaly. The sorceress Medea gave Sisyphus the
17 throne of Ephyra, later known as Corinth. Some say that Sisyphus earned the crown by founding the city,
18 which he populated with people grown out of mushrooms. Sisyphus married Merope, the only one of the
19 seven Pleiades (daughters of the Titan Atlas and Pleione) to have wedded a mortal rather than consorting
20 with the gods. The couple would have three children: Glaucus, Ornytion, and Sinon.

21 Glaucus would inherit the throne of Ephyra, but would suffer a gruesome fate. A renowned horseman,
22 Glaucus fed his mares on human flesh. Having whetted their appetites for flesh, Glaucus unwittingly served
23 them up a full meal. After losing a chariot race, his mares tore Glaucus to pieces and ate him on the spot.
24 For generations afterward, horses on Corinth seemed unusually skittish—haunted no doubt by the ghost of
25 Glaucus.

26 Sisyphus, called “the craftiest of men” by Homer, was extraordinarily clever. His ingenuity came in handy
27 when Autolycus began grazing cattle near the herds of Sisyphus.

28 Autolycus was a notorious thief. He would steal anything he could get his hands on. But he always escaped
29 detection because he could change the form or color of anything he stole. Horned cattle would lose their
30 horns; brown cattle would become white.

31 Autolycus repeatedly stole cattle from Sisyphus’s herd. Sisyphus noticed that cattle were missing—and that
32 the herd of Autolycus seemed to be expanding in number, but could not prove any theft.

33 In an attempt to catch Autolycus in the act, Sisyphus secretly marked the inside of the hooves of his cattle.
34 Some say he wrote the words “Stolen by Autolycus,” while others maintain he wrote only the letters “SS”.
35 The later discovery of his mark on cows in Autolycus’s herd proved that his neighbor was a thief.

36 Sisyphus was not satisfied merely with proving Autolycus a thief and recovering his cattle. Seeking revenge,
37 he seduced Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus and later the mother of Odysseus . Given the cunning that
38 Odysseus later demonstrated, many have suggested that Sisyphus, rather than Anticleia’s husband Laertes,
39 was his father.

40 This was not the only occasion when Sisyphus used an enemy’s daughter in order to take revenge on the
41 father. When he consulted the oracle at Delphi to find out how he might exact revenge on his hated

1 brother, Salmoneus, he learned that if he had children by his brother’s daughter, they would destroy their
2 grandfather.

3 Without a second thought, Sisyphus violated his beautiful niece Tyro. The oracle went unfulfilled, however,
4 because Tyro, learning of the prophecy, killed both of her sons.

5 In his time on Earth, Sisyphus killed, raped and stole. The special place of Sisyphus in the lore of the
6 Underworld, however, comes not from his ill treatment of his niece or other mortals, but from the
7 application of his cunning in his relations with the Gods.

8 His crimes against the gods began with Zeus. Asopus—a river god whose father was Poseidon—was looking
9 for his daughter Aegina, who had disappeared. Sisyphus promised to tell Asopus what had happened to
10 Aegina if the river god would create an eternal spring for Sisyphus’s kingdom, Corinth. Once Asopus created
11 this endless source of fresh water, Sisyphus named Zeus as Aegina’s abductor. Enraged, Asopus pursued
12 Zeus until the god’s thunderbolts forced him to retreat.

13 Even though Zeus had in fact taken Aegina, to punish Sisyphus for his betrayal, Zeus sent Thanatos (Death)
14 after him. Yet Sisyphus managed to outwit Death. He may have asked Thanatos to demonstrate how a pair
15 of handcuffs worked and then locked them on Death himself or he may have used some other trickery to
16 entrap Death in heavy chains.

17 In any case, Death found himself a prisoner in Sisyphus’s house. With Death locked up, no one could die—
18 no matter how gruesome the injuries suffered. The headless, bloodless, mortally wounded, and disease-
19 torn continued to walk the earth, racked with pain and begging for release. Finally, the war – god Ares set
20 Death free and delivered Sisyphus to him.

21 However, clever Sisyphus managed to elude his fate. Before descending to Hades, he instructed his wife
22 Merope not to bury him, give him a funeral feast, perform any sacrifices to Hades or Persephone, or place a
23 coin under his tongue (which was used to pay Charon, who ferried the dead for passage across the river
24 Styx to the Underworld home of Hades).

25 Sisyphus thus arrived at the Palace of Hades as an unburied pauper. Appealing to Queen Persephone,
26 Sisyphus told her that he had no right to be there. As one of the unburied, who had no fare for Charon, he
27 should have been abandoned on the far side of the river Styx. Furthermore, Sisyphus argued, his wife’s
28 neglect of funeral ceremonies and sacrifices might set a bad example for other widows in the future.

29 Sisyphus pleaded for permission to return to the surface of the earth for just three days. This brief time
30 would allow him to arrange for his funeral, to punish his wife for neglecting her duties, and to teach her
31 respect for the lords of the Underworld. Persephone fell for his pleas and allowed Sisyphus to go home.
32 Sisyphus, of course, had no intention to return to the world of darkness. He reneged on his promise to
33 descend again in three days. Indeed, he lived many more years until old age claimed him at last.

34 For his offenses to both Zeus and Hades, Sisyphus was condemned to eternal punishment in Tartarus, the
35 lowest region of the Underworld.

36 The king of Corinth would forever roll a massive boulder to the top of a steep hill. But his efforts were
37 always in vain, for whenever Sisyphus neared the top, the rock would roll right back down again. Sisyphus
38 was thus forced to start his labour all over again.

Analytical Phrasebank

1. Point and evidence embedded:
The portrayal/presentation/depiction of … shows him to be a character who… when…
The reader gets a sense of…when…
This is shown when…
2. Analysis of techniques (if there is one) sentence starters:
The writer’s use of descriptive language implies that…
The (insert name of technique) used in this conversation suggests…
The author manipulates their descriptive language in order to present…
The author shapes the reader’s opinion of…by using…
The author creates sympathy for…by using…
The author creates dislike for…by using…
The author portrays…as … through his use of
3. Analysis of word choice sentence starters:

The word ‘…’:
is evocative of…
evokes an image of…
is reminiscent of the idea that…
implies that…
conjures an image of…
reminds the reader of…
Suggests…
Is suggestive of…

4. Bringing in context sentence starters:
By doing this, the myth explores the theme of…
As the Greeks believed that…., this is a clear moral tale about…
This idea connects to values concerning…