1.
Diana of Versailles
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The Diana of Versailles is a slightly over lifesize marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis, with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It is a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, the statue is also known as Diana à la Biche, Diane Chasseresse, Artemis of the Chase, and Artemis with the Hind. In 1602 Henri IV removed it to the Palais du Louvre, where the Diana was installed in a specially designed gallery to receive it, at the time its restorations were revised by Barthélemy Prieur. The Diana was installed in the Grande Galerie of Versailles by Louis XIV, for Marly a marble copy was executed by Guillaume Coustou in 1710. As one of Frances greatest treasures, the Diane Chasseresse returned to the Louvre in An VI of the First Republic and it was restored once more, in 1802, by Bernard Lange. Diana is represented as a slender and masculine huntress, attended by a smaller than life buck in vibrancy of life and she looks toward the right, perhaps towards the very deer, as with raised right arm she draws an arrow from the quiver. She wears a short Dorian chiton, a himation around her waist, comparable Roman replicas of the same model, noted by the Louvres website, have been found at Leptis Magna and at Antalya. A miniature replica of the statue stood on the mantle in the Titanics first class lounge. In 1986, Robert Ballard discovered and photographed the statue on the sea floor near the bow section of the wreck, maxime Collignon, Manual of Mythology, in Relation to Greek Art, H. Grevel & Co.1890. Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny,1981, taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 Cat. no.30. A History of Greek Art vol, I, pp 460–61 Diana of Versailles Artémis à la biche, dite Diane de Versailles Château de Fontainebleau, Le Jardin de Diane
2.
Roman art
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Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work, sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers, other perishable forms of art have not survived at all. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art, though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost Golden Age, he singled out Peiraikos, whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few. ”The adjective vulgar is used here in its original meaning, the Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his murals, and Apollodoros. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors, Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces, the high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders, the traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous, there is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples, Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic, they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, when Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium, Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to, of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, there are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, in sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this painting was done using the secco method. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works
3.
Ancient Greek art
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The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality. The art of ancient Greece is usually divided stylistically into four periods, the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. The Geometric age is dated from about 1000 BC, although in reality little is known about art in Greece during the preceding 200 years. The 7th century BC witnessed the development of the Archaic style as exemplified by the black-figure style of vase painting. From some point in the 1st century BC onwards Greco-Roman is used, in reality, there was no sharp transition from one period to another. Forms of art developed at different speeds in different parts of the Greek world, strong local traditions, and the requirements of local cults, enable historians to locate the origins even of works of art found far from their place of origin. Greek art of various kinds was widely exported, the whole period saw a generally steady increase in prosperity and trading links within the Greek world and with neighbouring cultures. The survival rate of Greek art differs starkly between media and we have huge quantities of pottery and coins, much stone sculpture, though even more Roman copies, and a few large bronze sculptures. Almost entirely missing are painting, fine metal vessels, and anything in perishable materials including wood, the stone shell of a number of temples and theatres has survived, but little of their extensive decoration. By convention, finely painted vessels of all sorts are called vases, sculptural or architectural pottery, also very often painted, are referred to as terracottas, and also survive in large quantities. In much of the literature, pottery means only painted vessels, pottery was the main form of grave goods deposited in tombs, often as funerary urns containing the cremated ashes, and was widely exported. Other colours were limited, normally to small areas of white. Within the restrictions of these techniques and other conventions, vase-painters achieved remarkable results, combining refinement. White ground technique allowed more freedom in depiction, but did not wear well and was made for burial. Conventionally, the ancient Greeks are said to have made most pottery vessels for everyday use, not for display. Most surviving pottery consists of vessels for storing, serving or drinking liquids such as amphorae, kraters, hydria, libation bowls, oil and perfume bottles for the toilet, jugs, painted vessels for serving and eating food are much less common. Painted pottery was affordable even by people, and a piece decently decorated with about five or six figures cost about two or three days wages
4.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
5.
Leochares
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Leochares was a Greek sculptor from Athens, who lived in the 4th century BC. Leochares worked at the construction of the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Diana of Versailles is a Roman copy of his original. He is also thought to be the creator of the celebrated Apollo Belvedere and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Smith, William, ed. article name needed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
6.
Louvre
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The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is the worlds largest museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the citys 1st arrondissement, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. The Louvre is the second most visited museum after the Palace Museum in China. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II, remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace, in 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nations masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum renamed Musée Napoléon, the collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic, whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with wolf hunting den, in the 7th century, St. Fare, an abbess in Meaux, left part of her Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris to a monastery. This territory probably did not correspond exactly to the modern site, the Louvre Palace was altered frequently throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis acquired what would become the nucleus of the Louvres holdings, his acquisitions including Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, constructions slowed, however, on 14 October 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. Under Louis XVI, the museum idea became policy. The comte dAngiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which contained maps – into the French Museum, many proposals were offered for the Louvres renovation into a museum, however, none was agreed on. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution, during the French Revolution the Louvre was transformed into a public museum. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences, on 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property
7.
Mount Olympus
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Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece. It is located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the units of Pieria and Larissa, about 80 km southwest from Thessaloniki. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks, deep gorges, and exceptional biodiversity, the highest peak Mytikas, meaning nose, rises to 2,918 metres. It is one of the highest peaks in Europe in terms of topographic prominence, Olympus was notable in Greek mythology as the home of the Greek gods, on the Mytikas peak. Mount Olympus is also noted for its rich flora with several species. It has been a National Park, the first in Greece, since 1938 and it is also a Worlds Biosphere Reserve. Every year thousands of people visit Olympus to admire its fauna and flora, to tour its slopes, organized mountain refuges and various mountaineering and climbing routes are available to visitors who want to explore it. The usual starting point is the town of Litochoro, on the foothills of the mountain,100 km from Thessaloniki, where, in the beginning of every summer. The shape of Olympus was formed by rain and wind, which produced an isolated tower almost 3,000 metres above the sea, Olympus has many peaks and an almost circular shape. The mountain has a circumference of 150 kilometres, a diameter of 26 kilometres. To the northwest lies the Vlach village of Kokkinoplou, the Makryrema stream separates Olympus from the massif of Voulgara. The villages Petra, Vrontou and Dion lie to the northwest, while on the side there is the town of Litochoro. On its southeastern side, the Ziliana gorge divides Mount Olympus from Kato Olympos, while on its foothills, there are the villages Sykaminea. The Aghias Triadas Sparmou Monastery and the village Pythion lie to the west, Olympus dry foothills are known as the Xirokampi, containing chaparral and small animals. Further east, the plain of Dion is fertile and watered by the streams originate on Olympus. Mount Olympus is formed of rock laid down 200 million years ago in a shallow sea. Various geological events that caused the emergence of the whole region. Around one million years ago glaciers covered Olympus and created its plateaus, the complicated geological past of the region is obvious on the morphology of Olympus and its National Park
8.
Bow and arrow
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The bow and arrow is a projectile weapon system that predates recorded history and is common to most cultures. Archery is the art, practice, or skill of applying it, a bow is a flexible arc that shoots aerodynamic projectiles called arrows. A string joins the two ends of the bow and when the string is drawn back, the ends of the bow are flexed, when the string is released, the potential energy of the flexed stick is transformed into the kinetic energy of the arrow. Archery is the art or sport of shooting arrows from bows, today, bows and arrows are used primarily for hunting and for the sport of archery. Someone who makes bows is known as a bowyer, and one who makes arrows is a fletcher —or in the case of the manufacture of arrow heads. The bow and arrow appears around the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, at the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone-tipped arrows as weapons. After the end of the last glacial period, use of the bow seems to have spread to every inhabited continent, including the New World, the oldest extant bows in one piece are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark which were dated to 9,000 BCE. High-performance wooden bows are made following the Holmegaard design. Microliths discovered on the south coast of Africa suggest that arrows may be at least 71,000 years old, the bow was an important weapon for both hunting and warfare from prehistoric times until the widespread use of gunpowder in the 16th century. Organised warfare with bows ended in the mid 17th century in Europe, the British upper class led a revival of archery from the late 18th century. Sir Ashton Lever, an antiquarian and collector, formed the Toxophilite Society in London in 1781, under the patronage of George, the basic elements of a bow are a pair of curved elastic limbs, traditionally made from wood, joined by a riser. Both ends of the limbs are connected by a known as the bow string. By pulling the string backwards the archer exerts compressive force on the section, or belly, of the limbs as well as placing the outer section, or back. While the string is held, this stores the energy released in putting the arrow to flight. The force required to hold the string stationary at full draw is used to express the power of a bow. Other things being equal, a draw weight means a more powerful bow. The various parts of the bow can be subdivided into further sections, the topmost limb is known as the upper limb, while the bottom limb is the lower limb. At the tip of each limb is a nock, which is used to attach the bowstring to the limbs, the riser is usually divided into the grip, which is held by the archer, as well as the arrow rest and the bow window
9.
Arrow
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An arrow is a shafted projectile that is shot with a bow. It predates recorded history and is common to most cultures, an arrow usually consists of a shaft with an arrowhead attached to the front end, with fletchings and a nock at the other. The oldest evidence of stone-tipped projectiles, which may or may not have been propelled by a bow, dating to c.64,000 years ago, were found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. The oldest evidence of the use of bows to shoot arrows dates to about 10,000 years ago and they had shallow grooves on the base, indicating that they were shot from a bow. The oldest bow so far recovered is about 8,000 years old, archery seems to have arrived in the Americas with the Arctic small tool tradition, about 4,500 years ago. Arrow sizes vary greatly across cultures, ranging from eighteen inches to five feet, however, most modern arrows are 75 centimetres to 96 centimetres, most war arrows from an English ship sunk in 1545 were 76 centimetres. Very short arrows have been used, shot through a guide attached either to the bow or to the archers wrist and these may fly farther than heavier arrows, and an enemy without suitable equipment may find himself unable to return them. The shaft is the structural element of the arrow, to which the other components are attached. Traditional arrow shafts are made from wood, bamboo or reeds, while modern shafts may be made from aluminium, carbon fibre reinforced plastic. Such shafts are made from an aluminium core wrapped with a carbon fibre outer. The stiffness of the shaft is known as its spine, referring to how little the shaft bends when compressed, hence, an arrow which bends less is said to have more spine. In order to strike consistently, a group of arrows must be similarly spined, center-shot bows, in which the arrow passes through the central vertical axis of the bow riser, may obtain consistent results from arrows with a wide range of spines. Higher draw-weight bows will generally require stiffer arrows, with more spine to give the amount of flex when shot. The weight of a shaft can be expressed in GPI. The length of a shaft in inches multiplied by its GPI rating gives the weight of the shaft in grains, for example, a shaft that is 30 inches long and has a GPI of 9.5 weighs 285 grains, or about 18 grams. This does not include the elements of a finished arrow. Sometimes a shaft will be made of two different types of wood fastened together, resulting in what is known as a footed arrow, known by some as the finest of wood arrows, footed arrows were used both by early Europeans and Native Americans. Footed arrows will typically consist of a length of hardwood near the head of the arrow
10.
Deer
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Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the deer and the chital, and the Capreolinae, including the elk, reindeer, the Western roe deer. Female reindeer, and male deer of all species, grow, in this they differ from permanently horned antelope, which are in the same order, Artiodactyla. The musk deer of Asia and water chevrotain of tropical African and Asian forests are not usually regarded as true deer and form their own families, Moschidae and Tragulidae, respectively. Deer appear in art from Palaeolithic cave paintings onwards, and they have played a role in mythology, religion and their economic importance includes the use of their meat as venison, their skins as soft, strong buckskin, and their antlers as handles for knives. Deer hunting has been a sport since at least the Middle Ages. Deer live in a variety of biomes, ranging from tundra to the tropical rainforest, while often associated with forests, many deer are ecotone species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets and prairie and savanna. The majority of deer species inhabit temperate mixed deciduous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest, tropical seasonal/dry forest. Clearing open areas within forests to some extent may actually benefit deer populations by exposing the understory and allowing the types of grasses, weeds, additionally, access to adjacent croplands may also benefit deer. However, adequate forest or brush cover must still be provided for populations to grow, however, fallow deer have been introduced to South Africa. There are also species of deer that are highly specialized, and live almost exclusively in mountains, grasslands, swamps. Some deer have a distribution in both North America and Eurasia. Examples include the caribou that live in Arctic tundra and taiga and moose that inhabit taiga, huemul deer of South Americas Andes fill the ecological niches of the ibex and wild goat, with the fawns behaving more like goat kids. Mountain slope habitats vary from moist coniferous/mixed forested habitats to dry forests with alpine meadows higher up. The foothills and river valleys between the mountain provide a mosaic of cropland and deciduous parklands. The rare woodland caribou have the most restricted range living at altitudes in the subalpine meadows. Elk and mule deer both migrate between the alpine meadows and lower coniferous forests and tend to be most common in this region, elk also inhabit river valley bottomlands, which they share with White-tailed deer. They also live in the aspen parklands north of Calgary and Edmonton, the adjacent Great Plains grassland habitats are left to herds of elk, American bison, and pronghorn antelope
11.
Moon
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The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth, being Earths only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, following Jupiters satellite Io, the Moon is second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 384,400 km, the Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earths sky, after the Sun and its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its cycle of phases have made the Moon an important cultural influence since ancient times on language, calendars, art. The Moons gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and this matching of apparent visual size will not continue in the far future. The Moons linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ±0.07 centimetres per year, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by uncrewed spacecraft. The usual English proper name for Earths natural satellite is the Moon, the noun moon is derived from moone, which developed from mone, which is derived from Old English mōna, which ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mǣnōn, like all Germanic language cognates. Occasionally, the name Luna is used, in literature, especially science fiction, Luna is used to distinguish it from other moons, while in poetry, the name has been used to denote personification of our moon. The principal modern English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar, a less common adjective is selenic, derived from the Ancient Greek Selene, from which is derived the prefix seleno-. Both the Greek Selene and the Roman goddess Diana were alternatively called Cynthia, the names Luna, Cynthia, and Selene are reflected in terminology for lunar orbits in words such as apolune, pericynthion, and selenocentric. The name Diana is connected to dies meaning day, several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moons formation 4.51 billion years ago, and some 60 million years after the origin of the Solar System. These hypotheses also cannot account for the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. This hypothesis, although not perfect, perhaps best explains the evidence, eighteen months prior to an October 1984 conference on lunar origins, Bill Hartmann, Roger Phillips, and Jeff Taylor challenged fellow lunar scientists, You have eighteen months. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to computer, do whatever you have to. Dont come to our conference unless you have something to say about the Moons birth, at the 1984 conference at Kona, Hawaii, the giant impact hypothesis emerged as the most popular. Afterward there were only two groups, the giant impact camp and the agnostics. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System, computer simulations of a giant impact have produced results that are consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the present angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system
12.
Zeus
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Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
13.
Leto
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In Greek mythology, Leto is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria, and the mother, by Zeus, of Apollo and Artemis. The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace, in the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus. Finally, she finds an island that is not attached to the floor so it is not considered land. This is her one active mythic role, once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, in Roman mythology, Letos equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun. Walter Burkert notes that in Phaistos she appears in connection with an initiation cult, Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards with the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized. In Greek inscriptions, the Letoides are referred to as the gods of the country. Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos predated Hellenic influence in the region, however, the Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified, was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia, there was, of course, a further Letoon at Delos. Letos primal nature may be deduced from the natures of her father and mother, the name of Letos mother, Phoebe, is identical to the epithet of her son Apollo, Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων, throughout Homer. Several explanations have been put forward to explain the origin of the goddess, older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη lḗthē and λωτός lotus. It would thus mean the hidden one, in 20th-century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada, wife, as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian lada may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα Leda, other scholars have suggested a Pre-Greek origin. She was powerless to stop the flow of events, Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo. Hera banned Leto from giving birth on terra firma, the mainland, any island at sea, the island was surrounded by swans. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and it is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail, as Callimachus wrote, as if she were merely revealing another manifestation of herself. Only Hera kept apart, perhaps to kidnap Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, instead Artemis, having been born first, assisted with the birth of Apollo. The dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymns hearers, demeter is not present, her mother Rhea attends. The goddess Dione is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a feminine form of Zeus, if this were so
14.
Apollo
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Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros, Apollo has been recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. As the patron of Delphi, Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague. Amongst the gods custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, as the leader of the Muses and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became an attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans, Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 3rd century CE. The name Apollo—unlike the related older name Paean—is generally not found in the Linear B texts, the etymology of the name is uncertain. The spelling Ἀπόλλων had almost superseded all other forms by the beginning of the common era and it probably is a cognate to the Doric month Apellaios, and the offerings apellaia at the initiation of the young men during the family-festival apellai. According to some scholars the words are derived from the Doric word apella, apella is the name of the popular assembly in Sparta, corresponding to the ecclesia. R. S. P. Beekes rejected the connection of the theonym with the noun apellai, several instances of popular etymology are attested from ancient authors. Thus, the Greeks most often associated Apollos name with the Greek verb ἀπόλλυμι, in the ancient Macedonian language πέλλα means stone, and some toponyms may be derived from this word, Πέλλα and Πελλήνη. The role of Apollo as god of plague is evident in the invocation of Apollo Smintheus by Chryses, the Hittite testimony reflects an early form *Apeljōn, which may also be surmised from comparison of Cypriot Ἀπείλων with Doric Ἀπέλλων. A Luwian etymology suggested for Apaliunas makes Apollo The One of Entrapment, Apollos chief epithet was Phoebus, literally bright. It was very commonly used by both the Greeks and Romans for Apollos role as the god of light, like other Greek deities, he had a number of others applied to him, reflecting the variety of roles, duties, and aspects ascribed to the god. However, while Apollo has a number of appellations in Greek myth. Aegletes, from αἴγλη, light of the sun Helius, literally sun Lyceus light, the meaning of the epithet Lyceus later became associated with Apollos mother Leto, who was the patron goddess of Lycia and who was identified with the wolf
15.
Aeacus
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Aeacus was a mythological king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. He was the father of Peleus, Telamon and Phocus and was the grandfather of Achilles, Aeacus was the son of Zeus and Aegina, a daughter of the river-god Asopus. He was born on the island of Oenone or Oenopia, where Aegina had been carried by Zeus to secure her from the anger of her parents, afterward, according to some accounts, Aeacus was a son of Zeus and Europa. Afterward, Zeus restored the population by changing the ants into men, while he reigned in Aegina, Aeacus was renowned in all Greece for his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon to settle disputes not only among men, but even among the gods themselves. Aeacus prayed, and as a result, the drought ceased, Aeacus was believed in later times to be buried under the altar of this sacred enclosure. A legend preserved in Pindar relates that Apollo and Poseidon took Aeacus as their assistant in building the walls of Troy, thereafter, Apollo prophesied that Troy would fall at the hands of Aeacuss descendants, the Aeacidae. Aeacus was also believed by the Aeginetans to have surrounded their island with high cliffs in order to protect it against pirates, several other incidents connected to the story of Aeacus are mentioned by Ovid. After his death, Aeacus became one of the three judges in Hades and, according to Plato, was concerned with the shades of Europeans upon their arrival to the underworld. In works of art he was depicted bearing a sceptre and the keys of Hades, Aeacus had sanctuaries in both Athens and in Aegina, and the Aeginetans regarded him as the tutelary deity of their island by celebrating the Aeacea in his honor. In The Frogs by Aristophanes, Dionysus descends to Hades and proclaims himself to be Heracles, Aeacus, lamenting the fact that Heracles had stolen Cerberus, sentences Dionysus to Acheron to be tormented by the hounds of Cocytus, the Echidna, the Tartesian eel, and Tithrasian Gorgons. Alexander the Great traced his ancestry to Aeacus and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Smith, William, ed. article name needed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
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Aphrodite
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Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
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Ares
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Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and his sons Phobos and Deimos and his lover, or sister, Enyo accompanied him on his war chariot. In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him, an association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. His value as a war god is placed in doubt, during the Trojan War, Ares was on the side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike in her hand. Ares plays a limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, though his numerous love affairs. When Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation and he is well known as the lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was married to Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship. The most famous story related to Ares and Aphrodite shows them exposed to ridicule through the wronged husbands device. The counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars, who as a father of the Roman people was given a more important, during the Hellenization of Latin literature, the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars. Greek writers under Roman rule also recorded cult practices and beliefs pertaining to Mars under the name of Ares, thus in the classical tradition of later Western art and literature, the mythology of the two figures becomes virtually indistinguishable. The etymology of the name Ares is traditionally connected with the Greek word ἀρή, there may also be a connection with the Roman god of war Mars, via hypothetical Proto-Indo-European *M̥rēs, compare Ancient Greek μάρναμαι, I fight, I battle. Walter Burkert notes that Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek
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Athena
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Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena, Athena is known for her calm temperament, as she moves slowly to anger. She is noted to have fought for just reasons. Athena is portrayed as a companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the patroness of Athens. The Athenians founded the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her city, Athens. Veneration of Athena was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes, in her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshipped Athena as Athena Polias. While the city of Athens and the goddess Athena essentially bear the same name, Athena is associated with Athens, a plural name, because it was the place where she presided over her sisterhood, the Athenai, in earliest times. Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene, at Thebes she was called Thebe, and the city again a plural, Thebae. Similarly, at Athens she was called Athena, and the city Athenae, Athena had a special relationship with Athens, as is shown by the etymological connection of the names of the goddess and the city. According to mythical lore, she competed with Poseidon and she won by creating the olive tree, the Athenians would accept her gift and name the city after her. In history, the citizens of Athens built a statue of Athena as a temple to the goddess, which had piercing eyes, a helmet on her head, attired with an aegis or cuirass, and an extremely long spear. It also had a shield with the head of the Gorgon on it. A large snake accompanied her and she held Nike, the goddess of victory, therefore, Mylonas believes that Athena was a Mycenaean creation. On the other hand, Nilsson claims that she was the goddess of the palace who protected the king, a-ta-no-dju-wa-ja is also found in Linear A Minoan, the final part being regarded as the Linear A Minoan equivalent of the Linear B Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja. Divine Athena also was a weaver and the deity of crafts, whether her name is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean she who knows divine things better than others. Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek Ἀθεονόα, Plato also noted that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess whose Egyptian name was Neith, and which was identified with Athena. Neith was the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, in addition, ancient Greek myths reported that Athena had visited many mythological places such as Libyas Triton River in North Africa and the Phlegraean plain
19.
Dionysus
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Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c, 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, in some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, the god that comes and his festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a male, bearded and robed. He holds a staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth, in its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises, some are armed with the thyrsus. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers and this procession is presumed to be the cult model for the followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. He is also known as Bacchus, the adopted by the Romans. His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Eleutherios, his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care and those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls, his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings and he is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity, Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus. Zeus wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant, appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semeles mind, curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood
20.
Eileithyia
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Eileithyia or Ilithyia was the Greek goddess of childbirth and midwifery. According to some authors, her name does not have an Indo-European etymology, the links between Eileithyia, an earlier Minoan goddess, and a still earlier Neolithic prototype are, relatively, firm, he wrote. The continuity of her cult depends upon the concept of her function. Eileithyia was the goddess of childbirth, and the helper of women in labour has an obvious origin in the human midwife. Additionally, for Willets, Cretan dialect Eleuthia would connect Eileithyia to Eleusis, 19th-century scholars suggested that the name is Greek, from the verb eleutho, to bring, the goddess thus being The Bringer. The variants Eleuthia and Eleuthō suggest a connection with Eleutheria. The earliest form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek
21.
Eris (mythology)
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Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord. Her name is the equivalent of Latin Discordia, which means discord, Eris Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart is Concordia. Homer equated her with the war-goddess Enyo, whose Roman counterpart is Bellona, the dwarf planet Eris is named after the goddess, as is the religion Discordianism. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making mens pain heavier and she also has a son whom she named Strife. Enyo is mentioned in Book 5, and Zeus sends Strife to rouse the Achaeans in Book 11, the most famous tale of Eris recounts her initiating the Trojan War by causing the Judgement of Paris. The hapless Paris, Prince of Troy, was appointed to select the fairest by Zeus, the goddesses stripped naked to try to win Paris decision, and also attempted to bribe him. Hera offered political power, Athena promised infinite wisdom, and Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. While Greek culture placed an emphasis on prowess and power, Paris chose to award the apple to Aphrodite, thereby dooming his city. In Nonnus Dionysiaca,2.356, when Typhon prepares to battle with Zeus, Eris was Typhons escort in the melée, another story of Eris includes Hera, and the love of Polytekhnos and Aedon. They claimed to each other more than Hera and Zeus were in love. This angered Hera, so she sent Eris to rack discord upon them, Polytekhnos was finishing off a chariot board, and Aedon a web she had been weaving. Eris said to them, Whosoever finishes thine task last shall have to present the other with a female servant, but Polytekhnos was not happy by his defeat, so he came to Khelidon, Aedons sister, and raped her. He then disguised her as a slave, presenting her to Aedon, when Aedon discovered this was indeed her sister, she chopped up Polytekhnos son and fed him to Polytekhnos. The gods were not pleased, so turned them all into birds. The Discordian version of Eris is considerably lighter in comparison to the rather malevolent Graeco-Roman original and she told him that She had always liked the Old Greeks, but that they cannot be trusted with historic matters. They were, She added, victims of indigestion, you know, the story of Eris being snubbed and indirectly starting the Trojan War is recorded in the Principia, and is referred to as the Original Snub. The Principia Discordia states that her parents may be as described in Greek legend and she is the Goddess of Disorder and Being, whereas her sister Aneris is the goddess of Order and Non-Being. The concept of Eris as developed by the Principia Discordia is used and expanded upon in the fiction work The Illuminatus
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Hebe (mythology)
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Hebe in ancient Greek religion, is the goddess of youth. She is the daughter of Zeus and Hera, Hebe was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, serving their nectar and ambrosia, until she was married to Heracles, her successor was the divine hero Ganymede. Another title of hers, for reason, is Ganymeda. She also drew baths for her brother Ares and helped Hera enter her chariot, Hebe was supposed to have the power to give eternal youth, and in art is typically seen with her father in the guise of an eagle, often offering a cup to him. This depiction is seen in classical engraved gems as well as later art, Hebe is the daughter of Zeus and Hera. In an alternative version, her mother became pregnant merely by eating a lettuce plant when dining with Apollo, in Euripides play Heracleidae, Hebe granted Iolaus wish to become young again in order to fight Eurystheus. Hebe had two children with Heracles, Alexiares and Anicetus, the name Hebe comes from Greek word meaning youth or prime of life. Juventus likewise means youth, as can be seen in such derivatives as juvenile, in art, Hebe is usually depicted wearing a sleeveless dress. The Phliasians, who lived near Sicyon, honored Hebe by pardoning supplicants, Hebe was also worshipped as a goddess of pardons or forgiveness, freed prisoners would hang their chains in the sacred grove of her sanctuary at Phlius. Most artists added an eagle, and a setting amid the clouds, in French there was a special term en Hébé for the costume. The personification appears in rococo, Grand Manner and Neoclassical styles, even some very aristocratic models allowed a degree of nudity, such as exposing a single breast, though this was often much greater in non-portrait depictions. François-Hubert Drouais painted Marie-Antoinette, when Dauphine, en Hébé in 1773, the bird was furious at being brought indoors to her studio and badly frightened her, though it looks relatively harmless in the painting. An entirely nude depiction by Ignaz Unterberger was a success in Vienna in 1795, and bought by Emperor Francis II for a large amount. In sculpture Hebe began to flourish as a slightly later. Antonio Canova sculpted four different versions of his statue of Hebe and this had no accompanying eagle, but including the bird was a challenge accepted by several later sculptors. An elaborate marble group with a naked Hebe and the eagle with wings outspread was started in 1852 by the elderly François Rude but unfinished by his death in 1855. Finished by his widow and another it is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and was popular in bronze versions. Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse produced another group, with the eagle perched above a sleeping Hebe
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Helen of Troy
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In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, also known as Helen of Sparta, or simply Helen, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was a sister of Castor, Pollux, and Clytemnestra. In Greek myths, she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world, by marriage she was Queen of Laconia, a province within Homeric Greece, the wife of King Menelaus. Her abduction by Prince Paris of Troy brought about the Trojan War, elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes, Cicero, Euripides and Homer. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus, a competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage sees Menelaus emerge victorious. An oath sworn beforehand by all the suitors requires them to military assistance in the case of her abduction. When she marries Menelaus she is very young, whether her subsequent involvement with Paris is an abduction or a seduction is ambiguous. The legends recounting Helens fate in Troy are contradictory, Homer depicts her as a wistful figure, even a sorrowful one, who comes to regret her choice and wishes to be reunited with Menelaus. Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulates Bacchic rites and rejoices in the carnage, ultimately, Paris was killed in action, and in Homers account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed in Hellenistic Laconia, both at Sparta and elsewhere, at Therapne she shared a shrine with Menelaus and she was also worshiped in Attica and on Rhodes. Her beauty inspired artists of all time to represent her, frequently as the personification of ideal beauty, Christopher Marlowes lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus are frequently cited, Was this the face that launchd a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium. However, in the play this meeting and the ensuing temptation are not unambiguously positive, closely preceding death, images of her start appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, her abduction by—or elopement with—Paris was a popular motif, in medieval illustrations, this event was frequently portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance painting it is usually depicted as a rape by Paris. The fact that rape and kidnapping were interchangeable terms lends additional ambiguity to the story, the etymology of Helens name continues to be a problem for scholars. Georg Curtius related Helen to the moon, Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the noun ἑλένη meaning torch. It has also suggested that the λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν. Linda Lee Clader, however, says none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction. Inversely, others have connected this etymology to a hypothetical proto-indo-european sun goddess, in particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader indo-european marriage drama of the sun goddess, and she is related to the divine twins, just as many of these goddesses are. The origins of Helens myth date back to the Mycenaean age, the first record of her name appears in the poems of Homer, but scholars assume that such myths invented or received by the Mycenaean Greeks made their way to Homer
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Hephaestus
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Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, in another version, he was Heras parthenogenous child, rejected by his mother because of his deformity and thrown off Mount Olympus and down to earth. As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus and he served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos, Hephaestus symbols are a smiths hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs. The name of the god in Greek has a root which can be observed in names of places of Pre-Greek origin, Hephaestus had his own palace on Olympus, containing his workshop with anvil and twenty bellows that worked at his bidding. Hephaestus crafted much of the magnificent equipment of the gods, in later accounts, Hephaestus worked with the help of the chthonic Cyclopes—among them his assistants in the forge, Brontes, Steropes and Pyracmon. Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him and this included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus. He gave to the blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide, in some versions of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestuss forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave to man, being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus. The Greek myths and the Homeric poems sanctified in stories that Hephaestus had a power to produce motion. He made the golden and silver lions and dogs at the entrance of the palace of Alkinoos in such a way that they could bite the invaders, the Greeks maintained in their civilization an animistic idea that statues are in some sense alive. This kind of art and the animistic belief goes back to the Minoan period, when Daedalus, a statue of the god was somehow the god himself, and the image on a mans tomb indicated somehow his presence. Homers Odyssey and Iliad have Hephaestus being born of the union of Zeus, in another tradition, attested by Hesiod, Hera bore Hephaestus alone. In Hesiods Zeus-centered cosmology, Hera gave birth to Hephaestus as revenge for Zeus giving birth to Athena without her, several later texts follow Hesiods account, including Bibliotheke, Hyginus, and the preface to Fabulae. In the account of Attic vase painters, Hephaestus was present at the birth of Athena, in the latter account, Hephaestus is there represented as older than Athena, so the mythology of Hephaestus is inconsistent in this respect. In one branch of Greek mythology, Hera ejected Hephaestus from the heavens because he was shrivelled of foot and he fell into the ocean and was raised by Thetis and the Oceanid Eurynome. In another account, Hephaestus, attempting to rescue his mother from Zeus advances, was flung down from the heavens by Zeus. He fell for a day and landed on the island of Lemnos
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Heracles
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Heracles, born Alcaeus or Alcides, was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson and half-brother of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of clans who claimed to be Heracleidae. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Extraordinary strength, courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among the characteristics commonly attributed to him, together with Hermes he was the patron and protector of gymnasia and palaestrae. His iconographic attributes are the skin and the club. These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a figure who used games to relax from his labors. By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have made the safe for mankind. Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles and his figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known. Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, the core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. Heracles role as a hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling, was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. Around him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds scattering left, in Christian circles a Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death. The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the Heracleia, which commemorated the death of Heracles, what is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in the Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BCE. A reassessment of Ptolemys descriptions of the island of Malta attempted to link the site at Ras ir-Raħeb with a temple to Heracles, several ancient cities were named Heraclea in his honor. A major factor in the tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera. A full account of Heracles must render it clear why Heracles was so tormented by Hera, Heracles was the son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, thus, Heracles very existence proved at least one of Zeus many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus mortal offspring as revenge for her husbands infidelities. His twin mortal brother, son of Amphitryon, was Iphicles, Hera did this knowing that while Heracles was to be born a descendant of Perseus, so too was Eurystheus
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Hermes
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Hermes is an Olympian god in Greek religion and mythology, the son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia, and the second youngest of the Olympian gods. Hermes is considered a god of transitions and boundaries and he is described as quick and cunning, moving freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine. He is also portrayed as an emissary and messenger of the gods and he has been viewed as the protector and patron of herdsmen, thieves, oratory and wit, literature and poetry, athletics and sports, invention and trade, roads, boundaries and travelers. In some myths, he is a trickster and outwits other gods for his own satisfaction or for the sake of humankind and his attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster, the tortoise, satchel or pouch, winged sandals, and winged cap. His main symbol is the Greek kerykeion or Latin caduceus, which appears in a form of two snakes wrapped around a staff with carvings of the other gods. The earliest form of the name Hermes is the Mycenaean Greek *hermāhās, most scholars derive Hermes from Greek ἕρμα herma, prop, heap of stones, boundary marker, from which the word hermai also derives. The etymology of ἕρμα itself is unknown, R. S. P. Beekes rejects the connection with herma and suggests a Pre-Greek origin. Scholarly speculation that Hermes derives from a primitive form meaning one cairn is disputed. In Greek, a find is a hermaion. It is also suggested that Hermes is a cognate of the Vedic Sarama, homer and Hesiod portrayed Hermes as the author of skilled or deceptive acts and also as a benefactor of mortals. In the Iliad, he is called the bringer of luck, guide and guardian. He was an ally of the Greeks against the Trojans. However, he did protect Priam when he went to the Greek camp to retrieve the body of his son Hector and he also rescued Ares from a brazen vessel where he had been imprisoned by Otus and Ephialtes. In the Odyssey, Hermes helps his son, the protagonist Odysseus, by informing him about the fate of his companions. Hermes instructed Odysseus to protect himself by chewing a magic herb, when Odysseus killed the suitors of his wife, Hermes led their souls to Hades. Hermes was then instructed to take her as wife to Epimetheus, aesop featured him in several of his fables, as ruler of the gate of prophetic dreams, as the god of athletes, of edible roots, and of hospitality. He also said that Hermes had assigned each person his share of intelligence, Hermes, as an inventor of fire, is a parallel of the Titan Prometheus. In addition to the lyre, Hermes was believed to have invented many types of racing and the sports of wrestling and boxing, in 1820 Shelley translated this hymn
27.
Persephone
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In Greek mythology, Persephone, also called Kore or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter, and is the queen of the underworld. Homer describes her as the formidable, venerable majestic princess of the underworld, Persephone was married to Hades, the god-king of the underworld. Similar myths appear in the Orient, in the cults of gods like Attis, Adonis and Osiris. Persephone is further said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus, Iacchus, or Zagreus, the origins of her cult are uncertain, but it was based on very old agrarian cults of agricultural communities. Persephone was commonly worshipped along with Demeter and with the same mysteries, to her alone were dedicated the mysteries celebrated at Athens in the month of Anthesterion. In Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a sheaf of grain and she may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades. In Roman mythology, she is called Proserpina, and her mother, persephonē is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. The Homeric form of her name is Persephoneia, in other dialects she was known under variant names, Persephassa, Persephatta, or simply Korē. Plato calls her Pherepapha in his Cratylus, because she is wise, There are also the forms Periphona and Phersephassa. The existence of so many different forms shows how difficult it was for the Greeks to pronounce the word in their own language, an alternative etymology is from φέρειν φόνον, pherein phonon, to bring death. John Chadwick speculatively relates the name of Persephone with the name of Perse, the Romans first heard of her from the Aeolian and Dorian cities of Magna Graecia, who used the dialectal variant Proserpinē. Hence, in Roman mythology she was called Proserpina, a name derived by the Romans from proserpere, to shoot forth. In a Classical period text ascribed to Empedocles, c, and Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears. The epithets of Persephone reveal her double function as chthonic and vegetation goddess, the surnames given to her by the poets refer to her character as Queen of the lower world and the dead, or her symbolic meaning of the power that shoots forth and withdraws into the earth. Her common name as a goddess is Kore and in Arcadia she was worshipped under the title Despoina the mistress. Plutarch identifies her with spring and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields, in the Eleusinian mysteries her return is the symbol of immortality and hence she was frequently represented on sarcophagi. The Orphic Persephone is further said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus, Iacchus, Zagreus, as a goddess of the underworld, Persephone was given euphemistically friendly names. However it is possible some of them were the names of original goddesses
28.
Perseus
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Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. Perseus was the son of the mortal Danaë and the god Zeus and he was also the half-brother and great grandfather of Heracles. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language, in that regard Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the Greek verb, πέρθειν, “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, according to Carl Darling Buck, the –eus suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, pers-. Pers-eus therefore is a sacker of cities, that is, a soldier by occupation, the origin of perth- is more obscure. J. B. Hofmann lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio and this corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s *bher-, “scrape, cut. ”Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in perthein, that is, Graves carries the meaning still further, to the perse- in Persephone, goddess of death. the classical Perse. daughter of Oceanus. Whether it may be identified with the first element of Persephone is only speculative. ”A Greek folk etymology connected the name of the Persian people. The native name, however, has always had an -a- in Persian, herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughters son. In order to keep Danaë childless, Acrisius imprisoned her in a chamber, open to the sky, in the courtyard of his palace, This mytheme is also connected to Ares, Oenopion, Eurystheus. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, soon after, their child was born, Perseus—Perseus Eurymedon, for his mother gave him this name as well. Fearful for his future, but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing the offspring of Zeus and his daughter, danaës fearful prayer, made while afloat in the darkness, has been expressed by the poet Simonides of Ceos. Mother and child washed ashore on the island of Serifos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys, the brother of Dictys was Polydectes, the king of the island. When Perseus was grown, Polydectes came to fall in love with the beautiful Danaë, Perseus believed Polydectes was less than honourable, and protected his mother from him, then Polydectes plotted to send Perseus away in disgrace. He held a banquet where each guest was expected to bring a gift. Polydectes requested that the guests bring horses, under the pretense that he was collecting contributions for the hand of Hippodamia, Perseus had no horse to give, so he asked Polydectes to name the gift, he would not refuse it
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Charites
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In Greek mythology, a Charis or Grace is one of three or more minor goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, and fertility, together known as the Charites /ˈkærᵻtiːz/ or Graces. The usual list, from youngest to oldest is Aglaea, Euphrosyne, in Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the Graces. In some variants, Charis was one of the Graces and was not the form of their name. The Charites were usually considered the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, though they were said to be daughters of Dionysus and Aphrodite or of Helios. Other possible names of their mother by Zeus are Eurydome, Eurymedousa, Homer wrote that they were part of the retinue of Aphrodite. The Charites were also associated with the Greek underworld and the Eleusinian Mysteries, the river Cephissus near Delphi was sacred to them. An ancient vase painting attests the following names as five, Antheia, Eudaimonia, Paidia, Pandaisia, Pannychis - all referring to the Charites as patronesses of amusement and festivities. Moreover, they are aware that he established three as the number of the Graces, but they have no tradition of the names he gave them. The Lacedaemonians, however, say that the Graces are two, and that they were instituted by Lacedaemon, son of Taygete, who gave them the names of Cleta and Phaenna. These are appropriate names for Graces, as are given by the Athenians. It was from Eteocles of Orchomenus that we learned the custom of praying to three Graces, and Angelion and Tectaus, sons of Dionysus, who made the image of Apollo for the Delians, set three Graces in his hand. Again, at Athens, before the entrance to the Acropolis, pamphos was the first we know of to sing about the Graces, but his poetry contains no information either as to their number or about their names. Homer makes one the wife of Hephaestus, giving her the name of Charis and he also says that Sleep was a lover of Pasithea, and in the speech of Sleep there is this verse, Verily that he would give me one of the younger Graces. Hence some have suspected that Homer knew of older Graces as well, hesiod in the Theogony says that the three Graces are daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, giving them the names of Aglaia, Euphrosyne and lovely Thalia. The poem of Onomacritus agrees with this account, antimachus, while giving neither the number of the Graces nor their names, says that they are daughters of Aegle and the Sun. The elegiac poet Hermesianax disagrees with his predecessors in that he makes Persuasion also one of the Graces, nonnus gives their three names as Pasithea, Peitho and Aglaia. Sostratus gives the names as Pasithea, Cale and Euphrosyne, Pasithea for Aglaia and Cale for Thalia, on the representation of the Graces, Pausanias wrote, Who it was who first represented the Graces naked, whether in sculpture or in painting, I could not discover. During the earlier period, certainly, sculptors and painters alike represented them draped
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Horae
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In Greek mythology the Horae or Horai or Hours were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects and they bring and bestow ripeness, they come and go in accordance with the firm law of the periodicities of nature and of life, Karl Kerenyi observed, Hora means the correct moment. Traditionally, they guarded the gates of Olympus, promoted the fertility of the earth, the course of the seasons was also symbolically described as the dance of the Horae, and they were accordingly given the attributes of spring flowers, fragrance and graceful freshness. For example, in Hesiods Works and Days, the fair-haired Horai, together with the Charites, in Argos, two Horae, rather than three, were recognised presumably winter and summer, Auxesia and Damia. In late euhemerist interpretations, they were seen as Cretan maidens who were worshipped as goddesses after they had been stoned to death. The earliest written mention of Horai is in the Iliad where they appear as keepers of Zeuss cloud gates, hardly any traces of that function are found in the subsequent tradition, Karl Galinsky remarked in passing. They were daughters of Zeus and Themis, half-sisters to the Moirai, Auxo or Auxesia was worshipped in Athens as one of their two Charites, Auxo was the Charis of spring and Hegemone was the Charis of autumn. One of the Horae, and the goddess and personification of the season of summer, she is the protector of vegetation and plants and she was an attendant to Persephone, Aphrodite and Hera, and was also associated with Dionysus, Apollo and Pan. At Athens, two Horae, Thallo and Carpo, also appear in rites of Attica noted by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. Thallo, Auxo and Carpo are often accompanied by Chione, an Aurae, a daughter of Boreas and Orithyia/Oreithyia, along with Chione, Thallo, Auxo and Carpo were a part of the entourage of the goddess of the turn of the seasons, Persephone. Of the second triad associated to Themis and Zeus for law and order, Diké was the goddess of justice, she ruled over human justice. Eunomia was the goddess of law and legislation, the same or a different goddess may have been a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite. Eirene or Irene, was the personification of peace and wealth, and was depicted in art as a young woman carrying a cornucopia, scepter. Hyginus identifies a set of Horae, Pherusa, Euporie or Euporia. Nonnus in his Dionysiaca mentions a distinct set of four Horae, quintus Smyrnaeus also attributes the Horae as the daughters of Helios and Selene, and describes them as the four handmaidens of Hera. The Greek words for the four seasons of year, Eiar, Theros, Phthinoporon, finally, a quite separate suite of Horae personified the twelve hours, as tutelary goddesses of the times of day. List of Greek mythological figures Hora Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, Horae p.217 Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London. Horae The dictionary definition of Horae at Wiktionary Media related to Horae at Wikimedia Commons Theoi Project, Horai Theoi Project, Twelve Horae
31.
Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
32.
Moirai
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In Greek mythology, the Moirai or Moerae /ˈmɪrˌiː/ or /ˈmiːˌriː/, often known in English as the Fates, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny, their Roman equivalent was the Parcae. Their number became fixed at three, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos and they controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, in the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa, is related with the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. In the Theogony of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods, later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Platos Republic the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke and it seems that Moira is related with Tekmor and with Ananke, who were primeval goddesses in mythical cosmogonies. The ancient Greek writers might call this power Moira or Ananke, the concept of a universal principle of natural order has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures like the Vedic Rta, the Avestan Asha and the Egyptian Maat. In earliest Greek philosophy, the cosmogony of Anaximander is based on these mythical beliefs, the goddess Dike, keeps the order and sets a limit to any actions. Moira may mean portion or share in the distribution of booty, portion in life, lot, destiny, death, portion of the distributed land. The word is used for something which is meet and right It seems that originally the word moira did not indicate destiny but included ascertainment or proof. The word daemon, which was an agent related to unexpected events, the word dike, justice, conveyed the notion that someone should stay within his own specified boundaries, respecting the ones of his neighbour. If someone broke his boundaries, thus getting more than his ordained part, in modern Greek the word came to mean destiny. Kismet, the course of events in the Muslim traditions, seems to have a similar etymology and function, Arabic qismat lot qasama, to divide. As a loanword, qesmat fate appears in Persian, whence in Urdu language, when they were three, the three Moirai were, Clotho spun the thread of life from her Distaff onto her Spindle. Her Roman equivalent was Nona, who was originally a goddess called upon in the month of pregnancy. Lachesis measured the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod, Atropos was the cutter of the thread of life. She chose the manner of each death, and when their time was come. In the Republic of Plato, the three Moirai sing in unison with the music of the Seirenes, Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be. Pindar in his Hymn to the Fates, holds them in high honour, send us rose-bossomed Lawfulness, and her sisters on glittering thrones, Right and crowned Peace, and make this city forget the misfortunes which lie heavily on her heart
33.
Diana (mythology)
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In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and nature being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was eventually equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy, Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Diana was known to be the goddess of childbirth and women. She was one of the three goddesses, along with Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry. Oak groves were especially sacred to her as were deer, according to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother, Apollo, on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. She made up a triad with two other Roman deities, Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Virbius, the woodland god. Diana is a form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later divus, dius, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *dyw, meaning sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, dies. On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym διϝια is supposed as referring to a deity precursor of Artemis, Modern scholars mostly accept the identification. The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies, the persona of Diana is complex and contains a number of archaic features. According to Georges Dumézil it falls into a subset of celestial gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities, the celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with light, inaccessibility, virginity, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana therefore reflects the world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and these functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess. This ever open succession reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantor of kingly status through successive generations. Her function as bestower of authority to rule is also attested in the story related by Livy in which a Sabine man who sacrifices a heifer to Diana wins for his country the seat of the Roman empire. Diana was also worshipped by women who wanted to be pregnant or who, once pregnant and this form of worship is attested in archeological finds of votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as in ancient sources, e. g. Ovid. According to Dumezil the forerunner of all gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image of the Vedic god Dyaus
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Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
35.
Ancient Greek religion
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Ancient Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology originating in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or cults in the plural, many ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major gods and goddesses, although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a single transcendent deity. Different cities often worshiped the deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them. Greek religion was tempered by Etruscan cult and belief to form much of the later ancient Roman religion, while there were few concepts universal to all the Greek peoples, there were common beliefs shared by many. Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic, based on the assumption there were many gods. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus, the king of the gods, having a level of control all the others. Some deities had dominion over aspects of nature. Other deities ruled over abstract concepts, for instance Aphrodite controlled love, while being immortal, the gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful. They had to obey fate, known to Greek mythology as the Moirai, which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus fate to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for him, the gods acted like humans, and had human vices. They would interact with humans, sometimes even spawning children with them, at times certain gods would be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad, Aphrodite, Ares and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera, Athena, some gods were specifically associated with a certain city. Athena was associated with the city of Athens, Apollo with Delphi and Delos, Zeus with Olympia, other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece, Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy, and Ares with Thrace. The Greeks believed in an underworld where the spirits of the dead went after death, one of the most widespread areas of this underworld was ruled over by Hades, a brother of Zeus, and was known as Hades. Other well known realms are Tartarus, a place of torment for the damned, and Elysium, in the early Mycenean religion all the dead went to Hades, but the rise of mystery cults in the Archaic age led to the development of places such as Tartarus and Elysium. Such beliefs are found in the most ancient of Greek sources, such as Homer and this belief remained strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there was, however, no hope of anything, some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato, also embraced the idea of reincarnation, though this was only accepted by a few. Epicurus taught that the soul was simply atoms which dissolved at death, Greek religion had an extensive mythology
36.
Greek mythology
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It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
37.
Ancient Greek philosophy
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Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Ancient Greece was part of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to sense out of the world in a non-religious way. It dealt with a variety of subjects, including political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric. Many philosophers around the world agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception, alfred North Whitehead once noted, The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. Clear, unbroken lines of lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy, the European Renaissance. Some claim that Greek philosophy, in turn, was influenced by the wisdom literature. But they taught themselves to reason, Philosophy as we understand it is a Greek creation. Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as presented by Plato that it is conventional to refer to philosophy developed prior to Socrates as pre-Socratic philosophy. The periods following this, up to and after the wars of Alexander the Great, are those of classical Greek, the pre-Socratics were primarily concerned with cosmology, ontology and mathematics. They were distinguished from non-philosophers insofar as they rejected mythological explanations in favor of reasoned discourse, Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, held that all things arise from water. It is not because he gave a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him the first man of science, according to tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids. He began from the observation that the world seems to consist of opposites, therefore, they cannot truly be opposites but rather must both be manifestations of some underlying unity that is neither. This underlying unity could not be any of the classical elements, for example, water is wet, the opposite of dry, while fire is dry, the opposite of wet. Anaximenes in turn held that the arche was air, although John Burnet argues that by this he meant that it was a transparent mist, the aether. Xenophanes was born in Ionia, where the Milesian school was at its most powerful, Burnet says that Xenophanes was not, however, a scientific man, with many of his naturalistic explanations having no further support than that they render the Homeric gods superfluous or foolish. He has been claimed as an influence on Eleatic philosophy, although that is disputed, and a precursor to Epicurus, a representative of a total break between science and religion. Pythagoras lived at roughly the time that Xenophanes did and, in contrast to the latter. Parmenides of Elea cast his philosophy against those who held it is and is not the same, and all travel in opposite directions, —presumably referring to Heraclitus
38.
Hellenistic philosophy
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Hellenistic philosophy is the period of Western philosophy that was developed in the Hellenistic civilization following Aristotle and ending with the beginning of Neoplatonism. Pythagoreanism is the given to the system of philosophy and science developed by Pythagoras. Protagoras Gorgias Antiphon The Cynics were a sect of philosophers beginning with Antisthenes in the 4th century BCE. They believed that one should live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature and this meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, or fame, and living a life free from possessions. Antisthenes Diogenes of Sinope Crates of Thebes Menippus Demetrius The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC and they held that pleasure was the supreme good, especially immediate gratifications. The school was replaced within a century by the more moderate doctrine of Epicureanism, Aristippus of Cyrene Platonism is the name given to the philosophy of Plato, which was maintained and developed by his followers. The central concept was the theory of Forms, the transcendent, perfect archetypes, the highest form was the Form of the Good, the source of being, which could be known by reason. In the 3rd century BCE, Arcesilaus adopted skepticism, which became a tenet of the school until 90 BCE when Antiochus added Stoic elements. With the adoption of oriental mysticism in the 3rd century CE, speusippus Xenocrates Arcesilaus Carneades Antiochus of Ascalon Plutarch The Peripatetics was the name given to the philosophers who maintained and developed the philosophy of Aristotle. They advocated examination of the world to understand the foundation of things. The goal of life was the happiness which originated from virtuous actions and it advocated total philosophical skepticism about the world in order to attain ataraxia or a tranquil mind, maintaining that nothing could be proved to be true so we must suspend judgement. Pyrrho Timon Aenesidemus Sextus Empiricus Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus in the 3rd century BCE and it viewed the universe as being ruled by chance, with no interference from gods. It regarded absence of pain as the greatest pleasure, and advocated a simple life and it was the main rival to Stoicism until both philosophies died out in the 3rd century CE. Epicurus Metrodorus Zeno of Sidon Philodemus Lucretius Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BCE, based on the ethical ideas of the Cynics, it taught that the goal of life was to live in accordance with Nature. It advocated the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions and it was the most successful school of philosophy until it died out in the 3rd century CE. Its most notable advocate was Cicero, varro Reatinus Cicero Seneca the Younger Hellenistic Judaism was an attempt to establish the Jewish religious tradition within the culture and language of Hellenism. Its principal representative was Philo of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria Josephus Neopythagoreanism was a school of philosophy reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which was prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. It was an attempt to introduce an element into Greek philosophy, worshipping God by living an ascetic life, ignoring bodily pleasures and all sensuous impulses
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Polytheism
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Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism, within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the belief in a singular God, in most cases transcendent. Polytheists do not always worship all the gods equally, but they can be henotheists, other polytheists can be kathenotheists, worshiping different deities at different times. Polytheism was the form of religion during the Bronze Age and Iron Age up to the Axial Age and the development of Abrahamic religions. Important polytheistic religions practiced today include Chinese traditional religion, Hinduism, Japanese Shinto, the term comes from the Greek πολύ poly and θεός theos and was first invented by the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria to argue with the Greeks. When Christianity spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, non-Christians were just called Gentiles or pagans or by the pejorative term idolaters. The modern usage of the term is first revived in French through Jean Bodin in 1580, a central, main division in polytheism is between soft polytheism and hard polytheism. Hard polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings, hard polytheists reject the idea that all gods are one god. Hard polytheists do not necessarily consider the gods of all cultures as being equally real, Polytheism cannot be cleanly separated from the animist beliefs prevalent in most folk religions. The gods of polytheism are in cases the highest order of a continuum of supernatural beings or spirits. In some cases these spirits are divided into celestial or chthonic classes, since divinity is intellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence of divinity. Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of gods in the world, the psychological way is to regard the activities of the soul itself and or the souls acts of thought. The material is to regard material objects to actually be gods, for example, to call the earth Gaia, ocean Okeanos, Some well-known historical polytheistic pantheons include the Sumerian gods and the Egyptian gods, and the classical-attested pantheon which includes the ancient Greek religion and Roman religion. Post-classical polytheistic religions include Norse Æsir and Vanir, the Yoruba Orisha, the Aztec gods, an example of a religious notion from this shared past is the concept of *dyēus, which is attested in several distinct religious systems. In many civilizations, pantheons tended to grow over time, deities first worshipped as the patrons of cities or places came to be collected together as empires extended over larger territories. Conquests could lead to the subordination of the elder cultures pantheon to a one, as in the Greek Titanomachia. Most ancient belief systems held that gods influenced human lives, epicurus believed that these gods were material, human-like, and that they inhabited the empty spaces between worlds. Though it is suggested that Hestia stepped down when Dionysus was invited to Mount Olympus, robert Graves The Greek Myths cites two sources that obviously do not suggest Hestia surrendered her seat, though he suggests she did
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Henosis
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Henosis is the classical Greek word for mystical oneness, union, or unity. In Platonism, and especially Neoplatonism, the goal of henosis is union with what is fundamental in reality, the One, the Neoplatonic concept has precedents in the Greek mystery religions as well as parallels in Eastern philosophy. It is further developed in the Corpus Hermeticum, in Christian theology, soteriology, the term is relatively common in classical texts, and has the meaning of union or unity. Henosis, orprimordial unity, is rational and deterministic, emanating from indeterminism an uncaused cause, each individual as a microcosm reflects the gradual ordering of the universe referred to as the macrocosm. In mimicking the demiurge, one unites with The One or Monad, thus the process of unification, of The Being, and The One, is called Henosis. The culmination of Henosis is deification, Henosis for Plotinus was defined in his works as a reversing of the ontological process of consciousness via meditation toward no thought and no division within the individual. As is specified in the writings of Plotinus on Henology, one can reach a tabula rasa and this absolute simplicity means that the nous or the person is then dissolved, completely absorbed back into the Monad. Within the Enneads of Plotinus the Monad can be referred to as the Good above the demiurge, the Monad or dunamis is of one singular expression all is contained in the Monad and the Monad is all. All division is reconciled in the one, the stage before reaching singularity, called duality, is completely reconciled in the Monad. As the one, source or substance of all things the Monad is all encompassing, as infinite and indeterminate all is reconciled in the dunamis or one. It is the demiurge or second emanation that is the nous in Plotinus and it is the demiurge or nous that perceives and therefore causes the force to manifest as energy, or the dyad called the material world. Nous as being, being and perception manifest what is called soul, Plotinus words his teachings to reconcile not only Plato with Aristotle but also various World religions that he had personal contact with during his various travels. Plotinus works have a character in that they reject matter as an illusion. Matter was strictly treated as immanent, with matter as essential to its being, having no true or transcendential character or essence, substance or ousia and this approach is called philosophical Idealism. Within the works of Iamblichus of Chalcis, The One and reconciliation of division can be obtained through the process of theurgy, by mimicking the demiurge, the individual is returned to the cosmos to implement the will of the divine mind. One goes through a series of theurgy or rituals that unites the initiate to the Monad and these rituals mimic the ordering of the chaos of the Universe into the material world or cosmos. Thus one without conflict internal or external is united and is The One, in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but also in western mysticism, henosis can be acquired by theoria, hesychasm and contemplative prayer. Yet, the concept of theosis, or deification, differs from henosis, since created beings cannot become God in His transcendent essence, nondualism Absolute Apotheosis Fana Form of the Good Moksha Monolatrism The All Theosis http, //www. goddess-athena. org/Encyclopedia/Friends/Iamblichus/index. htm
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Monism
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Monism is the view that attributes oneness or singleness to a concept. Substance monism is the view that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance. Another definition states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them and this is often termed priority monism, and is the view that only one thing is ontologically basic or prior to everything else. Another distinction is the difference between substance and existence monism, or stuff monism and thing monism, substance monism posits that only one kind of stuff exists, although many things may be made out of this stuff. Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there only a single thing. The restricted definition, this not only unity of origin. Although the term monism is derived from Western philosophy to typify positions in the mind–body problem, in modern Hinduism, the term absolute monism is being used for Advaita Vedanta. The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain and it was later also applied to the theory of absolute identity set forth by Hegel and Schelling. Thereafter the term was more used, for any theory postulating a unifying principle. The opponent thesis of dualism also was broadened, to include pluralism, according to Urmson, as a result of this extended use, the term is systematically ambiguous. According to Jonathan Schaffer, monism lost popularity due to the emergence of Analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. Carnap and Ayer, who were proponents of positivism, ridiculed the whole question as incoherent mysticism. Monism is also relevant to the philosophy of mind, where various positions are defended. g. Metaphysical nihilism, negates any of the above categories, eliminative Materialism, according to which everything is physical and mental things do not exist b. Moreover, they do not define the meaning of real, while the lack of information makes it difficult in some cases to be sure of the details, the following pre-Socratic philosophers thought in monistic terms, Thales, Water. Reality is some, one thing, but we know what. Parmenides argued that Being or Reality is a perfect sphere, unchanging. Neopythagorians such as Apollonius of Tyana centered their cosmologies on the Monad or One, Stoics taught that there is only one substance, identified as God
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Pantheism
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Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god. The term pantheism was not coined until after Spinozas death, and his work, Ethics, was the major source from which Western pantheism spread. Pantheistic concepts may date back thousands of years, and some religions in the East continue to contain pantheistic elements, Pantheism derives from the Greek πᾶν pan and θεός theos. There are a variety of definitions of pantheism, some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God. As a religious position, some describe pantheism as the polar opposite of atheism, from this standpoint, pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical, pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of early Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages. These included a section of Johannes Scotus Eriugenas 9th-century work De divisione naturae, the Roman Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy. Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who evangelized about an immanent and he has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science. Bruno influenced many later thinkers including Baruch Spinoza, in the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi Portuguese origin, whose book Ethics was an answer to Descartes famous dualist theory that the body, Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a God-intoxicated man, and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance, although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate. His work, Ethics, was the source from which Western pantheism spread. The breadth and importance of Spinozas work was not fully realized until years after his death. Spinozas magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophys most important thinkers, Hegel said, You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him the prince of philosophers, Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Actaeon". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 157.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 