Hermes has been alive for only a few hours when he finds a tortoise outside the cave where he was born. Most newborn gods might have left it alone. Hermes picks it up, examines it…
At the beginning of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a girl is picking flowers in a meadow. Persephone is there with the daughters of Okeanos, gathering roses, crocuses, violets and irises, when she sees something extraordinary:…
Apollo with bow and kithara. Attic red-figure vase painting. At the beginning of the Iliad, an old priest walks away from the Greek camp in despair. His name is Chryses, and his daughter has been taken…
Hestia is one of the Olympian gods. She is a daughter of Kronos and Rhea, sister to Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon and Hades. Yet compared with the rest of her family, remarkably little happens to…
When we think of Dionysus today, we tend to think first of wine: the youthful god holding a drinking cup, surrounded by vines, satyrs and dancing maenads. The Greeks certainly knew him as the giver…