odyssey & mythology study guide

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uranus (heaven) & gaea (earth) birthed

the titans

the grandchildren of heaven & earth are

the gods

the father of Zeus is

cronus (saturn)

who was cronus? (saturn)

he ruled over the other titans until zeus dethroned him and took the power for himself

cronus (saturn) brought ____ to italy

the golden age, a time of perfect peace & happiness

olympus is the

home of the gods (throne of Zeus) Greece’s highest mountain (sometimes above the clouds) it is NOT heaven

details about zeus (jupiter)

he became the supreme ruler; lord of the sky. he wielded a thunderbolt. he is represented as falling in love with one woman after another and descending to all manner of tricks to hide his infidelity from his wife (coerced and tricked women) bird was the eagle and tree is the oak.

details about hera (juno)

zeus wife & sister. brought up by ocean & tethys. she was the one married women would go to for help. severely punished all the women zeus fell in love with due to extreme jealously. cow & peacock were sacred to her.

details about poseidon (neptune)

ruler of the sea. brother to zeus & hades. his wife was amphitrite, the granddaughter of ocean. had a trident and was associated with earthquakes as well. he had a connection with bulls & horses.

details about pallas athena (minerva)

daughter of zeus, no mother bore her, she was birthed fully grown. goddess of war. known for her gray eyes. embodiment of wisdom, reason, & purity. owl was her bird

details about apollo (phoebus)

son of zeus & creto. most greek of all gods and known for playing the lyre. god of truth & light “no false word ever falls from his lips” sun god as well. guided men to divine will. cow and dolphins were sacred to him. laurel was his tree.

details about artemis (diana)

apollos twin sister. goddess of the hunt. independent. lover of the woods, she had a bow and arrow. goddess with 3 forms. selene in the sky (moon) artemis on earth, hecate in the lower world (dark & crossways) fierce. cypress was her tree and deer were sacred to her.

details about aphrodite (venus)

goddess of love & beauty. cupid was her son. daughter of zeus & dione. sprung from the foam of the sea. treachetous & malicious, exerting a deadly & destructive power over men. used her power to ensnare and betray. wife of hephaestus. myrtle was her tree and dove was her bird, sometimes swan and sparrow.

details about hermes (mercury)

son of zeus & maia (daughter of Atlas) winged sandals and delivered messages from zeus. guide of the dead. appears often in mythology.

details about ares (mars)

god of war. son of zeus & hera (they detested him) hateful, murderous, a pest. sister is eris (goddess of war) to the romans he was magnificent and idolized. not very significant character. vulture was his bird.

details about hephaestus (vulcan & mulciber)

god of fire. was known to be lame, ugly, and deformed. son of zeus & hera. hera didn’t want him. workman of immortals. husband to aphrodite. kind, peace- loving god of ceremony. popular in earth as in heaven.

details about hestia (vesta)

zeus’s sister. goddess of the hearth. every meal began and ended with an offering to her. fire never allowed to go out in each city in honor of her

details about the muses

there are 9 of them. daughters of zeus & mnemosyne (goddess of memory) they were entertainers with their singing, dancing, music, poetry, & arts.

details about the graces

daughters of zeus & eurynome (daughter of ocean) their purpose was to bestow beauty, charm, and goodness on young women and to give joy to people in general.

details about hades

king of the dead (and sometimes referred to as the god of wealth; one of his names, dis, is the latin term for wealth), but not death himself (thanatos). brother of zeus and poseidon. ruled the underworld with his wife persephone. never leaves the underworld because he is not generally liked by the other gods.

details about persephone

she was kidnapped by hades to rule the underworld with him

the underworld lies

beneath the secret places of the earth

where is tartarus?

the deeper of the two, the prison of the sons of earth.

what does charon do?

he is the son of erebus & nyx (night) who ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farther bank

what does cerberus do?

he permits all spirits to enter in the underworld, but none to return

details about elysian fields

a land of perfect happiness at the end of the earth

details about styx

river of unbreakable oath by which the gods swear

details about lethe

river of forgetfulness. separates the underworld from the world above.

who were the furies?

roman goddesses of vengeance that tortured sinners. 3 sisters. children of gaea & uranus, tisiphone (avenging murder), megaera (grudging), and alecto (unceasing)

details about the graiae sisters

sisters of gorgons. 3 gray women who had but one 1 eye & 1 tooth between them. deino (dread), enyo (horror) and pemphredo (alarm). they were the daughters of the sea gods phorcys and ceto

details about the gorgons

3 sisters, stheno, euryale, and medusa. the gorgons were the result of an incestuous union between children of pontos (sea) and gaia (earth)

details about the sirens

enchanting voices & their singing lured sailors to their death. no one who ever saw them returned

details about the fates

assigned men at birth how much good or evil was in them. clotho (the spinner) who spun the thread of life, lachesis (the disposer of lots) who assigned to each man his destiny, and atropos (she who could not be turned) carried “the abhorred shears and cut the thread at death”

the story of demeter (ceres)

daughter of cronus & rhea. goddess of corn. demeter had a daughter named persephone. when she lost her daughter, she withheld her gifts from the earth, which turned to a frozen desert. (winter) taken by hades, persephone had disappeared. no one would tell demeter where her daughter was. the sun told her everything. she went to earth and people there realized she was a goddess. zeus knew there was a famine so he sent hermes to try and negotiate with hades so that they could have persephone back. persephone reunited with her mother and came to the agreement that 1/3 of the time persephone would stay in the underworld and that the other 2/3 would be spent on earth. that is why there are seasons.

story about dionysus (bacchus)

born in thebes, last god to enter olympus. son of zeus & semele. the god of wine was born of fire and nursed by rain; the hard burning heat that ripens the grape and the water that keeps the plant alive. he taught the culture of the vine. punished people who didn’t believe him. he had a wild vine power. he defied death to be his lover, ariadne.

zeus creation story

the beginning of the world was dark , empty, silent, with no life or end. cronus & rhea ruled over the world. cronus swallowed all his children so that none could dethrone him but rhea kept zeus hidden. zeus rebelled and conquered the titans and took over rulership of the earth while his brothers, poseidon and hades, took over the ocean and the underworld

5 ages creation story

the five ages of man traces the lineage of mankind through five successive "ages" or "races" including the golden age (spirits lived on after them. women were created so that prometheus would care about something other than men), the silver age (so little intelligence that they could not keep from injuring each other. spirits did not live on after them), the bronze age, the age of heroes, and the present (to Hesiod) iron age (evil times. never have rest from toil & sorrow)

story of prometheus & epimethus

prometheus and epimetheus were spared imprisonment in tatarus for not fighting against the olympians. they were given the task of creating man, which they shaped out of mud and athena breathed life into. however, epimetheus had given all the good qualities away, leaving none for man. prometheus decided to make man stand upright and give them fire. when zeus demanded a portion of each animal they scarified, prometheus tricked him by creating two piles. one with the bones wrapped in juicy fat, the other with the good meat hidden in the hide. he then made zeus pick. he picked the bones and in anger, took fire away, but prometheus returned it to man. zeus inflicted a terrible punishment on both man and prometheus, creating a mortal of stunning beauty and a deceptive heart, pandora, the first woman.

story of pandora

pandora was the first woman. “the race of women, who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil” (hamilton 87). pandora was given a box and was told to never open it because there was harmful things inside. she was taken to epimetheus. she had a lively curiosity and one day opened the box. there was innumerable plagues, sorrow, and mischief for mankind. the only good thing about the box was that there was hope, which was along all the tradgedies.

story about the deluge and deucalion

deucalion was prometheus & pyrrha son (daughter of epimetheus & pandora) deucalion and pyrrha built a boat and survived the flood that came upon them (the deluge) after the flood subsided, they consult an oracle on how to repopulate the world. the oracle tells them to throw the bones of their ancestors over their shoulders. they figure out she means stones; the stones spawn a new generation of humans.

story about prometheus and io

a heifer that talked like a human visited prometheus. she was the daughter of inachus, io. hera hates her for making the god’s heart hot with love. she was once a princess and happy until she got turned into a cow in order to disguise herself so that hera didn’t see her with zeus. (zeus fell in love with her) hera sent io to argus (who had 100 eyes) to keep watch on her. hermes was ordered by zeus to kill argus so that he would get io back. hermes put it to sleep with music and killed it. however, hera immediately sent a fly to sting io so that io was not allowed to sleep, eat, or rest at all.

details about europa

europa was the daughter of the king sidon. she wanted to meet people her age because of a strange dream she had. cupid made zeus fall in love with her. zeus turned himself until a bull so that she could come near him in a beautiful flower field. she “rode” him. (he raped her) and didn’t realize until he spoke to her. their children were minos & rhadamanthus.

the cyclops polyphemus

all monstrous forms of life were banished except for the cyclops’, zeus’s favorite. they were well taken care of. polyphemus was the son of poseidon, god of the sea, and the nymph thoösa. polyphemus was in love with galatea (a sicilian nereid), but she fell in love with acis; polyphemus killed him in jealousy.

story about narcissus

flowers are always noticed in greece. narcissus: lovely bloom of glowing purple & silver. the flower helped persephone & hades get together. once picked, the earth opened up to where the underworld was and hades came out. another story was that narcissus was a beautiful lad. every girl wanted him (w rizz) he rejected all of the most beautiful girls for even they couldn’t attract him. hera cursed echo to repeat everything that is said to her because she thought zeus was in love with her. (she can never have the first word). echo still attempted to try and get with narcissus anyway. narcissus bent over a fountain for water and fell in love with his reflection. he now knew what it was like for the all the girls he rejected. he leaned over the pool so much that he drowned. he did this while “talking” with echo and as he said farewell, so did echo. his body was never found so a flower was named after him.

story about hyacinth

hyacinth: lily-shaped, deep purple or splendid crimson. it came into being by a beautiful youth. apollo’s best friend (hyacinth) died by playing a game of frisbee. both were shocked. his head broke off just like a flower breaks from a stem. he was turned into a flower, inital carved into flower by apollo. another story was that zephyo killed hyacinth out of jealousy because apollo like hyacinth better.

story about adonis

adonis: the bloodred anemone, windflower. aphrodite loved him. pierces men’s heart. persephone & aphrodite fought over him. they had to share him. winter in the underworld & spring on eath. he was killed by a boar with tusks. aphrodite was immensely hurt by his death. echo cried in woe for him. adonis could not hear them.

cyclops (the odyssey)

“rumbling voice & monstrous hulk” (cyclops) they do not fear gods, and shall not attack in fear. the cyclops (polyphemus) ripped some of odysseus’s crew limb from limb. the men cried to zeus; all of them appalled. odysseus was left in shock. he was planning to stab the cyclops in the eye along with 4 other men. he got the cyclops drunk so that it could sleep. they heated a stick and stabbed it right into the eye. after taking the stick out, polyphemus was blind. the crew got away onto the ship by sneaking onto a ram. odysseus taunted polyphemus by bragging that he won. polyphemus almost hit the boat. polyphemus prayed to poseidon (his father) that odysseus never makes it home and that he is late and to come home a broken man; all shipmates lost alone in a strangers ship, to find a world of pain.

helios (the odyssey)

helios is a gentle god known to bring light onto the earth. he rides his chariot throughout the sky, bringing about the sun on his journey. he is known to be an all-seeing god because his position in the sky gives him a view of the mortal realm. no one can handle how high above in the sky he is. not even his own son, who dies attempting to fill the role of helios. he got zeus to kill odysseus’ men after his cows had been killed.

circe (the odyssey)

the aeaean island, home of circe. bred by the sun, mother was perse, daughter of ocean; she was also the sister of aeëtes. she was known to have lovely braids as well. odysseus’s crew saw smoke and went there for food. circe had a spellbinding voice and an enchanting web only goddesses can weave. circe invited the crew and they all went except for polites. he sensed a trap and stayed behind. circe stirred up a brew to wine memories of home. she turned them into pigs. polites went to go look for help. eurylochus survived but did not want to go back for the rest of the crew. hermes warned odysseus of the trickey and gave him a drug to shield the magic of circe. hermes made a plan for odysseus so that he would not fall into her trap. he fulfilled the plan and circe was struck with fear. she recognized he was odysseus. she bathed him and was well taken care of after that. he however felt shame for eating while his crewmates were still pigs. he demanded for his crewmates to be freed. they were released and circe hosted a feast. she treated the rest of the crew with kindness as well. circe gave them help to get back home to ithaca. she said he has to go to the underworld to consult tiresias (blind prophet, everlasting wisdom) and warns him of the sirens, scylla, and charybdis.

scylla (the odyssey)

scylla was a monster that snatched 6 sailors off the deck and devoured them alive after odysseus successfully navigated the strait. she was a nymph that poseidon fell in love with and turned into a monster with six heads

laertes (the odyssey)

(father of odysseus) upon his son's return to ithaca, he helped odysseus fight off the families of the suitors who pursued penelope while he was away.

telemachus (the odyssey)

“grown to manhood without the correction and support of a father…” (knox 52). he was raised by women (eurcleia & penelope) his mom tells him he has poor judgment. his father abandoned him for 20 years. (no father figure?) his heart was obsessed with grief. he also is curious about his father’s whereabouts so, with the help of athena, he goes on a journey to discover more about his father.

penelope (the odyssey)

penelope was the wife of odysseus, king of ithaca, with whom she had a son named telemachus. penelope raised telemachus by herself while odysseus was away with the achaeans at war against troy. when odysseus was gone for over 20 years, he was presumed dead so over 100 guys wanted to be penelopes new husband. they were all allowed into their palace. she said that she would pick one as soon as she finished weaving a beautiful web. however, by day she would weave and by night she would unravel it so that it would never be finished, for she still longed for her husband. all of the suitors soon realized this as one of her nurses told them. she was caught in the act and the suitors, in revenge, mistreated the house and continued to do so until odysseus eventually came back to the house.

the sirens (the odyssey)

the sirens' goal is to lure sailors off course and to their deaths. their siren song can hypnotize sailors, causing them to crash their boats into rocks and land. when odysseus hears the words and the music of the sirens, the song enchants his heart. he longs to plunge into the waves and to swim to the island. he wants to embrace the Sirens. he strains against the bonds which hold him to the ship's mast.

charybdis (the odyssey)

charybdis is an enormous whirlpool that threatens to swallow the entire ship. as instructed by circe, odysseus holds his course tight against the cliffs of scylla's lair. odysseus and his men passed between her and the monster scylla to reach the land of the dead. after odysseus' men disobeyed tiresias' warning and ate the cattle of helios, it was charybdis who sucked down and destroyed the last of odysseus' men and ships.

calypso (the odyssey)

calypso held odysseus captive at her island for years and years. she wanted to make him immortal and for him to be her husband. every god took pity on odysseus except for poseidon. calypso said that the gods were just jealous and “hard-hearted” calypso saved odysseus from the waves. he was sexually coerced to sleep with her. she never physically hurt odysseus but did not want to free him either. calypso & odysseus eventually make a boat and he attempts to sail home. he almost drowns from the waves but cadmus’ daughter ino helps odysseus get back on his boat. at first he did not listen until athena inspired him to not give up. (NEVER BACK DOWN NEVER WHAT. NEVER GIVE UP) he prayed to the gods. he barely surived poseidons waves.

antinous (the odyssey)

he is the most disrespectful of all the suitors. he also speaks the most among all of them saying that “three whole years she deceieved us blind, seduced us, with this scheme…now that king odysseus is no more, go slowly, keen as you are to marry me, until i can finish off his web..so by day she’d weave at her great and growing web--by night, by the light of torches set beside her, she would unravel all she’d done” (homer 96). she was caught in the act which proves her dishonesty. in response the suitors replied, “so we will devour your wordly goods and wealth as long as she holds out, holds to that course the gods have charted deep inside her heart” (homer 97). antinous also severely insults odysseus when he was in the beggar form by getting violent and throwing a chair that thankfully didn’t hit odysseus.

athena (the odyssey)

athena is the divine benefactor of odysseus, king of ithaca, and his family. she advocates for odysseus to the gods on mount olympus, and she provides odysseus and his son with sage advice, most often in the form of the aged man, mentor, as the two confront life's battles. she inspires telemachus to go find his father. had a lot of mercy towards odysseus and helped him on his journey back to ithaca. for example, she set a mist around his boat so that no islander could hurt him. athena makes odysseus appear more attractive in some cases and she also greatly helps him by making him shapeshift from a beggar to his normal self.

zeus (the odyssey)

zeus’ role in the odyssey was the weigher and middleman of all disputes. he was primarily the one who determined each of our characters' fates, as he held the power of life and death. he also sends hermes to tell calypso to release her captive, odysseus. then he keeps poseidon off of odysseus's back.

poseidon (the odyssey)

poseidons hatred for odysseus began after odysseus blinded poseidon's son, polyphemus. his son's humiliation prompted the god of the sea to use his powers to prevent the hero from returning home to ithaca. he rocks odysseus’ boat and makes him fall off of it while he is sailing away from calypso to the land of the phaecians.

the adventures that odysseus and his men experienced after defeating the trojans

after the trojan war, odysseus embarked on a 10 year journey to reach his home, ithaca. 1) council of the gods. athena bargains with zeus 2) athena visits telemachus; he sails for pylos 3) telemachus reaches pylos, then moves on to sparta 4) king menelaus receives telemachus 5) second council of gods. calypso frees odysseus 6)poseidon destroys odysseus’ raft 7)odysseus lands on scheria and meets nausicaa 8)odysseus narrates his adventures to phaeacians 9)odysseus and his men raid the cicones 10)they arrive at the land of lotus eaters 11)odysseus blinds polyphemus 12)aiolos gives odysseus the bag of winds 13)odysseus nearly reaches ithaca 14)the laistrygones destroy 11 ships 15)circe turns the crew into swine (pigs) 16)odysseus visits teiresias in the underworld 17)odysseus’s ship passes the sirens 18)odysseus passes between scylla & charybdis 19)the crew slaughters helios’ cattle 20) zeus kills everyone but odysseus 21)odysseus arrives on calypso’s island 22)the phaeacians bring odysseus to ithaca. he stays with the swineherd, eumaeus 23)telemachus travels back to pherai. next he sails to pylos, then home to ithaca 24) telemachus joins odysseus and eumaeus on ithaca.disguised as a beggar, odysseus visits the palace 25)penelope proposes bow competition. still disguised, odysseus wins the competition 26)odysseus reveals himself to suitors & penelope. with athena’s help, odysseus kills all the suitors 27)odysseus reassumes his throne. penelope finally accepts odysseus 28)suitors’ families attempt to take revenge. athena intervenes to put an end to the violence

what happens after odysseus returns home to ithaca

he enters an archery contest intended to determine who, among the unwelcome suitors, will marry penelope and take over the kingdom. victorious, odysseus is revealed as the true king, promptly kills all of the suitors, and regains his throne. in the final scene, odysseus is reunited with his faithful wife.