MYTH

Achilles
Achilles (ukil'ēz) [key], in Greek mythology, foremost Greek hero of the Trojan War,
son of Peleus and Thetis. He was a formidable warrior, possessing fierce and uncontrollable
anger. Thetis, knowing that Achilles was fated to die at Troy, disguised him as a girl and hid
him among the women at the court of King Lycomedes of Skyros. He was discovered there
by Odysseus, who persuaded him to go to Troy. One of Lycomedes' daughters, Deidamia,
bore Achilles a son, Neoptolemus. According to Homer, Achilles came to Troy leading the 50
ships of the Myrmidons. In the last year of the siege, when Agamemnon stole the captive
princess Briseis from him, Achilles angrily withdrew and took his troops from the war. Later
he allowed his friend and lover Patroclus to borrow his armor and lead the Myrmidons to aid
the retreating Greeks. When Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles was filled with grief and rage
and returned to the battle, routed the Trojans, and killed Hector, viciously dragging his body
back to the Greek camp. Achilles died of a wound inflicted by Paris. According to one
legend, Thetis attempted to make Achilles immortal by bathing him in the river Styx, but
the heel by which she held him remained vulnerable, and Paris inflicted a fatal wound in
that heel. Other legends state that Achilles was struck from behind and killed by Paris when
he went to visit Priam's daughter Polyxena, with whom he had fallen in love. Achilles, the
object of widespread hero worship, is the main character of Homer's epic The Iliad.

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Odysseus
Odysseus (ōdis'ēus) [key], Lat. Ulysses (yOOlis'ēz) [key], in Greek mythology, son and
successor of King Laertes of Ithaca. A leader of Greek forces during the Trojan War,
Odysseus was noted (as in the Iliad) for his cunning strategy and his wise counsel. He is the
central figure of the Odyssey, which tells of his adventures after the fall of Troy. In post-
Homeric legend, however, he was pictured as a wily, lying, and evil man. He avoided
service in the Trojan War by feigning madness—until exposed by Palamedes, whom he later
treacherously caused to be executed.

See E. Hamilton, Mythology (1942, repr. 1971).

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Titan
Titan, in Greek religion and mythology, one of 12 primeval deities. The female Titan is
also called Titaness. The Titans—six sons and six daughters—were the children of Uranus
and Gaea. They were Kronos, Iapetus, Hyperion, Oceanus, Coeus, Creus, Theia, Rhea,
Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Themis. The name Titan was sometimes applied also to
their descendants, such as Prometheus, Atlas, Hecate, Selene, and Helios. The Titans, led
by Kronos, deposed their father and ruled the universe. They were in turn overthrown by
the Olympians, led by Zeus, in the battle called the Titanomachy. Zeus freed from Tartarus
the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants, the Hecatoncheires, to aid him in the war.
The Cyclopes forged Hades' helmet of darkness, Poseidon's trident, and Zeus' thunderbolts.
With these weapons Zeus and his brothers were able to defeat the Titans. After the struggle
Zeus sent Kronos to rule the Isle of the Blessed and condemned Atlas to bear the sky on his
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shoulders. Prometheus (and, in some myths, Oceanus and Themis), because he sided with
Zeus, was allowed to remain on Olympus, but all the other Titans were condemned to
Tartarus.

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Pandora
Pandora (păndôr'u) [key], in Greek mythology, first woman on earth. Zeus ordered
Hephaestus to create her as vengeance upon man and his benefactor, Prometheus. The
gods endowed her with every charm, together with curiosity and deceit. Zeus sent her as a
wife to Epimetheus, Prometheus' simple brother, and gave her a box that he forbade her to
open. Despite Prometheus' warnings, Epimetheus allowed her to open the box and let out
all the evils that have since afflicted man. Hope alone remained inside the box.

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Amazon
Amazon (ăm'uzon) [key], in Greek mythology, one of a tribe of warlike women who
lived in Asia Minor. The Amazons had a matriarchal society, in which women fought and
governed while men performed the household tasks. Each Amazon had to kill a man before
she could marry, and all male children were either killed or maimed at birth. It was believed
that the Amazons cut off one breast in order to shoot and throw spears more effectively.
They were celebrated warriors, believed to have been the first to use cavalry, and their
conquests were said to have included many parts of Asia Minor, Phrygia, Thrace, and Syria.
Several of the finest Greek heroes proved their mettle against the Amazons: Hercules took
the golden girdle of Ares from their queen Hippolyte; Theseus abducted Hippolyte's sister
Antiope and then defeated a vengeful army of Amazons at Athens. A contingent of Amazons
fought with the Trojans under Penthesilea.

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Hercules
Hercules (hûr'kyulēz") [key], Heracles,or Herakles (both: her'uklēz") [key], most
popular of all Greek heroes, famous for extraordinary strength and courage. Alcmene, wife
of Amphitryon, made love to both Zeus and her husband on the same night and bore two
sons, Hercules (son of Zeus) and Iphicles (son of Amphitryon). Hercules incurred the
everlasting wrath of Hera because he was the child of her unfaithful husband. A few months
after his birth Hera set two serpents in his cradle, but the prodigious infant promptly
strangled them.
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When he was a young man, Hercules defended Thebes from the armies of a
neighboring city, Orchomenus, and was rewarded with Megara, daughter of King Creon. But
Hera later drove Hercules insane, and in his madness he killed his wife and children. After
he had recovered his sanity, he sought purification at the court of King Eurystheus of Tiryns
for 12 years. During those years Hercules performed 12 arduous labors: he killed the
Nemean lion and the Hydra; caught the Erymanthian boar and the Cerynean hind; drove off
the Stymphalian birds; cleaned the stables of Augeas; captured the Cretan bull and the
horses of Diomed; made off with the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyte; killed Geryon;
captured Cerberus; and finally took the golden apples of Hesperides.

After his labors were completed, Hercules was involved in many other adventures and
combats, including the Calydonian hunt and the Argonaut expedition. He killed Iphitus, son
of the king of Oichalia, because the king would not give him his daughter Iole. When Neleus,
king of Pylos, refused him absolution for that crime, Hercules sacked his kingdom and killed
all his sons except Nestor. For that outrage the Delphic oracle bade him serve Omphale,
queen of Lydia, who, in some legends, dressed him in women's clothes and had him work
with her maids spinning wool. He later was her lover, but after he finished his servitude he
returned to Oichalia and carried off Iole.

When his second wife, Deianira, daughter of King Oeneus, was seized by the centaur
Nessus, Hercules killed Nessus with arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra. As
he died, Nessus told Deianira that blood from his wound would restore Hercules' love for her
if ever it were to wane. Later, when Deianira sought to win back her husband's love, she
contrived to have him don a robe smeared with the blood. The robe stuck fast to Hercules'
skin, burning him unbearably. In agony, he built a huge pyre atop Mt. Oite and had it set
afire. His mortal parts burned away, but the rest rose to heaven, where he was finally
reconciled with Hera and married Hebe.

Although worshiped as a god, Hercules was properly a hero, frequently appealed to for
protection from various evils. In art Hercules was portrayed as a powerful, muscular man
wearing a lion's skin and armed with a huge club. Perhaps the most famous statue of him is
the Farnese Hercules in the National Museum in Naples. He is the hero of plays by
Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca.

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Oedipus
Oedipus (ed'ipus, ē'di–) [key], in Greek legend, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and his
wife, Jocasta. Laius had been warned by an oracle that he was fated to be killed by his own
son; he therefore abandoned Oedipus on a mountainside. The baby was rescued, however,
by a shepherd and brought to the king of Corinth, who adopted him. When Oedipus was
grown, he learned from the Delphic oracle that he would kill his father and marry his
mother. He fled Corinth to escape this fate, believing his foster parents to be his real
parents. At a crossroad he encountered Laius, quarreled with him, and killed him. He
continued on to Thebes, where the sphinx was killing all who could not solve her riddle.
Oedipus answered it correctly and so won the widowed queen's hand. The prophecy was
thus fulfilled. Two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene,
were born to the unwittingly incestuous pair. When a plague descended on Thebes, an
oracle declared that the only way to rid the land of its pollution was to expel the murderer
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of Laius. Through a series of painful revelations, brilliantly dramatized by Sophocles in

Oedipus Rex, the king learned the truth and in an agony of horror blinded himself.

According to Homer, Oedipus continued to reign over Thebes until he was killed in
battle; but the more common version is that he was exiled by Creon, Jocasta's brother, and
his sons battled for the throne (see Seven against Thebes). In Sophocles' Oedipus at
Colonus, Oedipus is guided in his later wanderings by his faithful daughter, Antigone.

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Electra
Electra (ilek'tru) [key], in Greek mythology. 1. Daughter of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra. After her mother and Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon, Electra, eager for
revenge, longed only for the return of her brother, Orestes. The reunion and vengeance of
the brother and sister were dramatized by the three great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides. However, only in the work of Euripides did Electra take an active part in the
killing of Clytemnestra. It is said that she later married Pylades, Orestes' friend, and bore
him two sons. 2. One of the Pleiades. She was the daughter of Atlas and Pleione and mother
by Zeus of Dardanus, the founder of what was to become the house of Troy. According to
one legend she was the lost Pleiad, disappearing in grief after the destruction of Troy. 3. A
sea nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys and mother by Thaumus of Iris, the rainbow,
and the Harpies.

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Medea
Medea (midē'u) [key], in Greek mythology, princess of Colchis, skilled in magic and
sorcery. She fell in love with Jason and helped him, against the will of her father, Aeëtes, to
obtain the Golden Fleece. When Jason left Colchis, she fled with him and lived as his wife for
many years, bearing him two children. Jason later wished to marry Creusa, daughter of King
Creon of Corinth, but Medea sent her an enchanted wedding gown that burned her to death.
Medea then completed her revenge by killing her own two children; in another version of
the legend the angered citizens of Corinth stoned them to death. Afterward, Medea fled to
Athens, where she married King Aegeus.

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Daedalus
Daedalus (ded'ulus) [key], in Greek mythology, craftsman and inventor. After killing his
apprentice Talos in envy, he fled from Greece to Crete. There, he arranged the liaison
between Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull that resulted in the Minotaur. At the order of King
Minos, he built the Minotaur's labyrinth. When Minos refused to let him leave Crete,
Daedalus built wings of wax and feathers for himself and his son Icarus. Together they flew
away, but Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell to his death when the wax melted.
Daedalus escaped to Sicily.
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