Among her many lovers, Aphrodite counts the other gods Ares, Poseidon, Dionysus, and Zeus. She also sleeps with Hermes in return for one of her sandals, which had been stolen by Zeus's eagle. The result of this union with the messenger god is Hermaphroditus, a boy of remarkable beauty. In a story made famous in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a water nymph sees Hermaphroditus walking in the woods and falls in love with him. As he bathes in a spring, the nymph jumps into the water and clings to the boy, praying that they will never be separated. The nymph's prayers are answered as they are joined into a single being with a woman's breasts and a man's genitals-source of the word "hermaphrodite."

Another tale from Ovid involving Aphrodite is the famous story of Pygmalion, the legendary king of Cyprus. Pygmalion has grown so disenchanted with the women of his land that he carves a statue of a perfect maiden. He is so taken by it that he falls in love with the statue and prays that it might become real. Aphrodite hears his prayer and grants his wish. This story is the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, about a linguistics professor who teaches a working-class girl to behave like royalty. Shaw's play, in turn, inspired the musical My Fair Lady.

Priapus, an ancient Near Eastern god who appears in other mythologies, is another of Aphrodite's children. Because he is a very old fertility symbol and a popular god of procreation, statues of Priapus were often placed in Greek and Roman gardens. Although Priapus is dwarflike, these statues always depict him with an enormous, erect phallus, and he is also supposedly a good-luck god who could ward off the "evil eye." Priapus was even more popular among the Romans, who liked to suspend obscene poetry from the prominent phallus on his statues. ("Priapic" now means "relating to the phallus," and a disease called "priapism" is a persistent and usually painful erection, not related to sexual arousal. With Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis crowding the market, it's a wonder no drug company has decided to market "Priapus.")

Apollo (Apollo) The son of Zeus and the Titan Leto, Apollo (who is also known as Phoebus, which means "bright" or "radiant") is worshipped as the god of light. Although not the true sun god, Apollo is later identified with the sun and is also seen as the civilizing god of music, poetry, and prophecy, as well as the protector of flocks and herds.*

Apollo's origins in Greek mythology are mysterious, and he may have been introduced to Greece as late as during the Dark Ages. But he was well known to Homer and Hesiod, and becomes one of the greatest gods in the Greek pantheon. Associated with the healing arts and medicine, he is also the god of disease whose arrows bring plagues. Apollo's role in prophecy was especially important, and his cult shrine at Delphi was one of the most significant in Greece. (See below, What was the Delphic Oracle?)

By the classical period in Greece, Apollo represented the Greek ideal of vigorous manhood, but he was not especially lucky in love. In one myth, he falls in love with one of his priestesses, the Sibyl at Cumae, one of the mythical women gifted with the power of prophecy. Taken by her beauty, Apollo offers to give her as many years in her life as grains of sand she can scoop in her hand. She accepts his offer, but then refuses to sleep with Apollo. Keeping his word, Apollo grants her long life, but denies her everlasting youth, so she becomes a shriveled old crone.

In another myth, Apollo falls in love with Daphne, a nymph. Unimpressed by Apollo's come-on, she prays for help to her father, a river god, and is changed into a laurel tree. The laurel became Apollo's sacred plant, and the crown of laurels a symbol of victory in Greece, adorning the heads of winners at the Olympic games.

Apollo also has a taste for young men. One of these is Hyacinth, a beautiful boy. While he and Apollo are practicing the discus, a gust of wind causes the discus to hit Hyacinth in the head and kill him. From the dead youth's blood, Apollo creates the flower called a hyacinth-a white flower with splashes of red.

Ares (Mars) A son of Zeus and Hera, Ares is the god of battle, blood lust, and war-in its destructive sense, as opposed to Athena, who represents the orderly use of war to defend the community. Disliked by Zeus, and less popular among the gods, Ares was not widely worshipped by the Greeks, but was highly admired and honored by the more militaristic Romans as Mars. Although he had no wife, Ares did have a very steamy affair with Aphrodite. Among their children were Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Fear), who accompanied Ares on the battlefield. They also provide the names of the two moons that orbit the planet Mars. (While Ares ruled the battlefield, the honored title of goddess of victory in battle went to Nike, rewarded by Zeus because she fought with the gods against the Titans. Otherwise unimportant in mythology, Nike is also the goddess of athletic victory-hence her connection to the footwear with the Olympian price tag.)

In the Odyssey, Homer tells a humorous story of the adulterous couple being "caught in the act" by the cuckolded Hephaestus, the lame blacksmith god to whom Aphrodite was married. When the sun god Helios sees the lovers in bed as he crosses the sky, he snitches on them to Hephaestus, who has fashioned a net hidden in the bed that catches Aphrodite and Ares in flagrante. Suspended in midair, Aphrodite and Ares become an Olympian spectacle when Hephaestus summons all of the other gods to see the netted lovers in this awkward, compromising position. In Homer's words, the gathered Olympians see "the lovebirds, snuggled so sweetly together."

Artemis (Diana) With ancient origins as a mother goddess and patroness of animals, to the classical Greeks, Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and Apollo's twin sister. She is the "virgin goddess," the patron of the hunt, the untamed protector of wild animals. She presides over the rites of passage in which Greek women changed from "wild" parthenos (virgin) to fully "tamed" gyne (woman). She is also a merciless judge of anyone who breaks her laws, and when any woman dies suddenly, it is believed that she has been struck by the arrows of Artemis.

One of the most famous stories demonstrating Artemis's swift and cruel justice involves Actaeon, the handsome hunter who accidentally comes upon the goddess as she is bathing naked in a spring. Offended, Artemis turns Actaeon into a stag and then sends his own hunting hounds out to tear their master to pieces. Told by Ovid, this myth has been a favorite subject of artists throughout history-proving, if nothing else, that there has always been a market for naked women and violence.

Athena (Minerva) The patron of Athens-from whom her name is taken-Athena is the virgin goddess of war and wisdom, as well as the patron of arts and crafts, including building and carpentry. The daughter of Zeus and Metis (a goddess whose name meant "cleverness"), Athena is said to be born from Zeus's head. According to Hesiod, Zeus fears that one of his children will depose him, as he had done to his own father. To avoid this fate, Zeus swallows the pregnant Metis, hoping to absorb her cleverness and wisdom. When he complains of a severe headache, one of the other gods strikes his head with an ax, and out springs Athena, fully formed and armed, screaming a war cry. In this way, the child who might depose him is never truly "born."

Ever virginal and masculine in behavior, Athena is almost always depicted in full armor, holding a shield and spear. As patroness of Athens, she represents everything that Greek culture later idealizes-wisdom, the power of intelligence, and reason over unbridled love or passion-making her, in many respects, the opposite of Aphrodite.

She is not perfect, however. One myth illustrates that she can be swift to anger if her supremacy is questioned-especially by a mortal. A young woman named Arachne challenges Athena to a weaving competition. Taking the guise of an old woman, Athena tries to dissuade Arachne from the contest, but the mortal Arachne dismisses the warning. As the two work at their looms, Athena sees that Arachne's weaving has illustrations that seem to mock the gods by showing all of their deceptions and love affairs. She can also see that the mortal girl's weaving is better than her own. Snatching the tapestry from the loom, Athena starts to beat the poor mortal girl with a shuttle. In fear, Arachne tries to hang herself with a noose made of thread. As she hangs there, Athena sprinkles the mortal girl with poison and Arachne becomes a spider, which is why, of course, spiders spin webs and are called arachnids.

On a more noble note, the great temple dedicated to Athena in Athens was the Parthenon ("Temple to the Virgin"), which stands on a hill called the Acropolis overlooking the city. Probably the greatest example of classic Greek architecture, the Parthenon was built between 447 and 432 BCE as a celebration of Athenian pride during the Golden Age of Pericles, when Athens reigned supreme.*

Demeter (Ceres) The mother goddess of crops, Demeter plays a featured role in one of the central myths of Greece, the tale of Persephone, her daughter with Zeus. When Persephone is carried off to the underworld by Hades, Demeter is enraged and prevents the crops from growing. To restore the natural order, Zeus arranges his daughter's release by negotiating a settlement between Demeter and Hades. But Hades had already given Persephone a pomegranate seed, and since she has eaten the food of the underworld, she is compelled to spend one-third of the year there with Hades and the other two-thirds in the world above. (The Greeks thought of the year in terms of only three seasons: spring, summer, and winter.)

This "deal with the devil" was always thought to explain the arrival of spring, which is when Persephone returns to earth. Her subsequent return to the underworld means the end of the growing season and the coming of winter, seen as the time of death. While simple and appealing, this explanation does not accurately fit the Greek growing season, some scholars note.* Instead, they view the tale of Persephone's abduction as an allegory explaining the fate of Greek girls who were often turned over to much older men in arranged marriages. Demeter's grief over the loss of Persephone was typical of the experiences of Greek mothers who gave up their daughters in arranged marriages, usually to an older stranger.

Dionysus (Bacchus) One of the most widely celebrated gods of Greece (and, later, of Rome), Dionysus is not only the god of wine and ecstasy, but also the male life-force, a masculine fertility god. Unmentioned by Hesiod and little-mentioned by Homer, Dionysus is another "foreign import" who arrived in Greece much later than the other gods, a transplant from the ancient Near East. (References to him date to about 1250 BCE, and there is no evidence that he was worshipped before the Archaic Age.) But as god of wine and the sexual life-force, he was clearly a hit with the Greeks, and eventually supplanted Hestia (see below) as one of the twelve Olympians. The festivals in his honor-Dionysia in Greece and Bacchanalia in Rome-were probably the original "toga parties." And followers of Dionysus might have been some of the ancient world's biggest "party animals." These festivals became the occasion for wild dancing in the streets and ecstatic behavior by his devoted followers. Later, in Rome, they acquired even greater notoriety, forcing the Roman Senate to ban the feasts and apparently execute some of the "Dionysians" as a threat to civil order (see below, What were the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia?).

But in Greek myth, Dionysus is depicted as the son of Zeus and a mortal woman Semele, who is burned to a crisp when she asks Zeus to appear to her as he really is. She unfortunately gets what she asks for-she's zapped by a thunderbolt. The dying Semele's fetus is saved by the messenger god Hermes, and Zeus sews the unborn child into his right thigh. A few months later, Dionysus is born. Ripped from his mother's womb and then from Zeus's leg, Dionysus would be described as "twice born."

In spite of his "multiple births," Dionysus is still on the hit list of Zeus's wife Hera. To save him from Hera's jealous vengeance, Zeus disguises the infant as a girl and takes him to be raised by his mortal aunt and uncle. Not fooled, Hera makes the child's mortal guardians go mad. They kill their own children and then commit suicide. But again Dionysus is spared, and Zeus transforms him into a young goat.

The vindictive Hera is not yet done with Zeus's "love child." After Dionysus returns to human form, Hera makes him go mad, and Dionysus wanders the Eastern world until he meets a goddess known as Cybele, from Asia Minor, a mother goddess (related to the Mesopotamian Inanna/Ishtar) whose cult followers indulged in ritual orgies and self-castration. Cybele cures Dionysus of his madness and introduces him to all of her secret fertility rites.

One of the most complex gods, Dionysus was sometimes perceived as both man and animal, had male and effeminate qualities, and was seen at times as both young and old. The ancient Greeks associated Dionysus with violent and unpredictable behavior, especially actions caused by drinking too much wine, and many stories about this god of intoxication involve epic sessions of drunken merrymaking. At one of these sessions, Dionysus grants the legendary King Midas his wish that everything he touches turns to gold. In another of those "be careful what you wish for" stories, Midas unfortunately discovers that Dionysus has made his wish literally come true, as his food turns to gold, and even his daughter is turned into a golden statue when he touches her. Dionysus reverses the golden curse by telling Midas to dive into a river, which accounts for the gold that was found in that area for generations. Dionysus's followers at these epic carousing sessions included nymphs, creatures called satyrs that were half-man and half-horse or goat, and women attendants called maenads.

Dionysus was also at the center of Greek drama, which had its roots in religious celebrations that incorporated song and dance. By the sixth century BCE, the rural celebration of Dionysus as an agricultural god who had brought farming, winemaking, and herding techniques to mankind was transformed in Athens into the Dionysia, a festival in which dancing choruses competed for prizes. At some point, a poet introduced the concept of a masked actor interacting with the chorus.

The playwright Aeschylus (525456 BCE) took this idea further by adding two actors, each playing different parts. This soon evolved into full-scale plays featuring many actors and a chorus, allowing for more complex plots. Following the defeat of the Persians in 479 BCE, Athens emerged as the Greek superpower, and the annual drama festival, or Dionysia, became both a celebration and a spectacle, lasting four or five days. Thousands of Athenians watched plays in an enormous outdoor theater that could seat 17,000 spectators. At the end of the festival, prizes were awarded to the tragedians. The word "tragedy" comes from the Greek word tragos, meaning "goat," the sacred symbolic animal of Dionysus. Much of the lore of Dionysus is based on The Bacchae (c. 407 BCE), a play by Euripides (c. 480406 BCE), one of the three great writers of Greek tragedy. In The Bacchae, he writes,

Mankind...possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth-whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep, with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery.

The other significant role of Dionysus is as a resurrected god. In one legend, Dionysus is ripped into seven parts by the Titans at Hera's request. They throw the parts into a cauldron, cook them, and eat them. But Dionysus is immortal and returns to life-though the exact method of his resurrection is unclear. His return from death connects Dionysus to the earlier resurrection gods, such as the Egyptian Osiris, as well as early Christian worship when it eventually spread to Greece.

Hades (Pluto) Son of Cronus and Rhea, the ruler of the underworld, Hades did not live on Mount Olympus, and he is not usually counted among the twelve Olympians. But he shared in ruling the universe with his two brothers, Zeus and Poseidon. His name, which originally meant "invisible" or "unseen," was considered unlucky, and the Greeks often referred to him instead as Pluton ("the rich one") or by other honorific names.

Although a grim figure, Hades is not considered evil, and his underworld realm, also called Hades, is not a hellish place, but a kingdom where Hades administers justice. Nor is he actually death, which the Greeks personified in the god Thanatos, a child of the goddess of night. The Greeks believed that the dead arrived in the underworld domain after being brought by Hermes to the banks of the River Styx (which meant "hateful"). The arrivals were expected to give the boatman, Charon, a coin to ferry them across the river-ancient Greeks buried their dead with a coin in their mouth as payment to Charon. Those who did not receive proper funeral rites were forced to wander along the riverbank for one hundred years before obtaining passage from Charon. The entrance to the underworld was guarded by the terrible three-headed dog Cerberus, who wagged his tail to welcome new arrivals but devoured those who tried to leave and return to the land of the living.

Unlike the later Christian version of hell, Hades was not originally a place of terror, but a hilly landscape, dotted with trees and flowing with rivers. One of these was the River Lethe, or Oblivion, where the events of life could be forgotten. In later Greek traditions, some of the dead went to the Elysian Fields, a paradise reserved for the distinguished, and to the Fields of Asphodel, where most souls wandered in the gloom, looking for flowers.

But then there was also Erebus, one of the original elements of the Creation, which was a region of the deep, dark Tartarus, reserved for the grossest sinners who had violated some divine law or otherwise crossed Zeus. One of these was a king named Tantalus, who commited the cardinal sin of talking about having once dined with the gods, or, in another version of the myth, having cooked his own son and served him to the gods to see if they could detect this forbidden food. This mythic moment may mark the rejection of both cannibalism and human sacrifice. For his crime, Tantalus was sentenced to stand in a pool of water, which drained away when he tried to drink, and with fruit dangling before his eyes, which was whisked away as soon as he reached to eat it. Tantalus was, in other words, eternally "tantalized."

The other famed denizen of Tartarus was Sisyphus, a clever king and founder of Corinth, who saw Zeus seduce a nymph and made the mistake of talking about it. Angry at Sisyphus for revealing his secret, Zeus told Thanatos to capture Sisyphus and place him in chains. But Sisyphus pulled a very old trick by convincing Thanatos to demonstrate how to put the chains on himself. With Thanatos out of action, "death takes a holiday," and no one could die in the land of mortals. Upset that nobody was dying in battle, the war god Ares stepped in, killing Sisyphus and freeing Thanatos.

But Sisyphus had one more trick up his sleeve. He had earlier instructed his wife not to bury him if he died. Since he hadn't been buried, he convinced Persephone that he shouldn't be in Hades, and she freed him, supposedly to attend his own funeral. Realizing that the gods had been tricked once more, Hades dragged Sisyphus back to the underworld, where three judges of the dead ordered his punishment. He was forced to push a boulder up a hill. Every time he reached the top, the stone would roll back down again, and Sisyphus had to start again-pushing the same stone up the hill for all eternity. The story of Sisyphus was converted into one of the great twentieth-century allegories of existentialism by Albert Camus, who saw the plight of modern man in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Camus wrote, "The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy."

The only mortal to defeat Hades and death was the fabled singer Orpheus, whose songs had supernatural powers. When his beloved wife, Eurydice, dies of a snakebite, Orpheus descends to the underworld and enchants Hades and Persephone with his singing. They allow Eurydice to leave, only Orpheus is instructed not to look back at her before leaving the underworld. But Orpheus can't resist a backward glance at his beloved, and she is lost forever.