Hephaestus (Vulcan) God of fire, blacksmiths, and metalwork, Hephaestus is the son of Hera, and something of a trickster god, a typical role for gods of smiths and crafts in other mythologies as well. The identity of his father is a mystery, and at birth, he is dwarfish and disfigured with a limp, so his mother, Hera, throws him from Mount Olympus, and he falls into the sea. Another version blames Zeus, angry at apparently being cuckolded, for throwing Hephaestus into the sea, which cripples him.

Raised for years in a cave by nymphs who teach him the arts of metalwork, Hephaestus creates a magical golden throne as a gift for his mother. As soon as Hera sits in it, she is trapped in a fine golden mesh. Hephaestus only agrees to release her when Dionysus, the god of wine, gets him drunk and brings him back to Olympus. Hephaestus releases Hera on the promise that he can marry the beautiful Aphrodite, which makes them the odd couple of Olympus: beautiful, sexy Aphrodite and the crippled dwarf Hephaestus.

The divine craftsman, he also builds the palaces of the gods and plays a key role in a very important myth-the creation of the first woman, Pandora (see below, What was in Pandora's "box"?).

Hera (Juno) Hera, the queen of the gods, is presented in Hesiod's poems as the daughter of Cronus, but she may have originated as a pre-Greek earth goddess, and in the view of some modern scholars, may have been a widely worshipped deity in Greece before Zeus arrived with the Mycenaean invaders. Chiefly a goddess of marriage, women's sexuality, and fertility, like the Egyptian Hathor, Hera is associated with cattle and was often called "cow-eyed."

As Zeus's jealous wife, Hera is usually most preoccupied with his constant sexual misadventures. In wooing Hera, Zeus had disguised himself as a cuckoo bird in a rainstorm to win her sympathy. When she picks up the pitiful, wet bird, Zeus drops his disguise and rapes her. It was the beginning of their frequently stormy relationship, which is at the center of so many of the Greek myths. Yet, in the face of Zeus's many affairs, Hera never wavers in her commitment to her husband, and her fidelity has been taken to represent the ideal Greek wife, upholding monogamy-at least on the part of wives-and the orderly inheritance of property and rank in Greek culture. She has three children with Zeus: Ares, one of the Olympians; Eileithyia, a patron of midwives and childbirth; and Hebe, the embodiment of youth.

Hera and Zeus are also supposed to be the parents of the smith god Hephaestus. But in Hesiod's account of his origins, Hera conceives Hephaestus on her own, in an act of jealous revenge, so typical of the motivating force at the heart of many of the myths about Hera. Frequently betrayed by Zeus, Hera often turns her anger toward his lovers and many offspring. One lover, Semele, was burned up. Another, the young princess Io, whom Zeus had turned into a heifer to conceal her from Hera, is tormented by a gadfly and gallops all over the world with a perpetual itch. Hera may have reserved her greatest anger for the hero Heracles (see below, What kind of hero kills his wife and children?), the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, princess of Thebes.

Hermes (Mercury) Messenger of the gods, famed for his winged feet and helmet, Hermes is also the patron of travelers. His name has been thought to derive from the ancient word herm, for "stone heap," as it was a common practice for travelers to mark their trails by piling up stones, not as a guide to return but simply as a symbol of having passed by. (A common worldwide tradition, such stone piles, or cairns, appear in the Bible, ancient America, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the ancient world. Such markers are still traditionally left by modern hikers who "mark trail" by adding to stone piles.) But he is also a trickster, and from the moment of his birth, Hermes gets into mischief, starting by stealing the sacred cattle of his brother Apollo, an act which also cast him as the patron of thieves.

Hermes is the messenger of the gods, as well, and the protector of human messengers-men who had the dangerous but important job of traveling between hostile communities, delivering diplomatic messages. In ancient times, messengers were not supposed to be harmed, just as modern diplomats are supposed to travel with immunity.

Additionally, as god of travel, Hermes has the job of escorting the dead in their journey to Hades.

His most notable offspring is Pan (Faunus), the pastoral god of woods and pastures and the protector of shepherds and their flocks. Half-man and half-goat, Pan is one of the few Greek deities who is not all human, but is also one of the most popular gods. Believed to have a wild, unpredictable-and especially lusty-nature, he can fill humans and animals with sudden, unreasoning terror, which is why the word "panic" comes from his name. Pan has many love affairs with nymphs and other minor deities, but when he pursues the nymph Syrinx, she runs away from him in terror and begs the gods to help her. The gods change her into a bed of reeds, from which Pan makes a musical instrument called the panpipe (though another myth credits Pan's father, Hermes, with that invention).

Eventually Hermes became the protector of merchants and was considered an important god as the Greeks moved from farming to more commercial pursuits.

Hestia (Vesta) The eldest child of Cronus and Rhea, Hestia is the sister of Zeus and the first child swallowed by Cronus. Her name means "hearth," and she is the traditional Greek protectress of the home and also guards the hearth fire, one of the crucial duties of a woman in a Greek home. Although she was worshipped in the home of every Greek, Hestia is perhaps the least significant of the Olympians, and there are few stories about her. She is, in essence, the first "stay at home" woman. As a result, she has little chance for adventure-or mischief. In later times, Hestia's place in Olympus among the twelve is taken by Dionysus.

Hestia was considered far more important in Rome, where she had been adopted as Vesta, and served as symbol of the city. Residing at her shrine in a temple in the Roman Forum were six vestal virgins, who tended an eternal flame. Chosen when they were between six and ten years old, they served for thirty years, and the punishment for losing their virginity was severe. A vestal virgin who broke the taboo was whipped and buried alive in a small chamber with only a bed. Over a thousand years, about twenty vestals were known to have been punished this way.

Poseidon (Neptune) One of the three sons of Cronus, Poseidon becomes ruler of the sea and is, in Homer's words, the "shaker of earth"-literally responsible for earthquakes, which were frequent and violent in Greece and the Aegean Sea region. Almost always depicted carrying his three-pronged spear, the trident, and driving a chariot, he is one of the most widely-and anciently-worshipped of the Greek gods.

Some scholars believe that Poseidon may have been an older god already worshipped in Greece when the Mycenaeans arrived, perhaps as a fertility god, associated with the water. But by the time of Homer and Hesiod, he is thought of as Lord of the Deep. A powerful figure who often resists his brother Zeus, he becomes one of the most significant figures in Homer's Odyssey, as the god who is most hostile to the hero Odysseus.

Zeus (Jupiter) King of the gods, god of thunder and weather, and originally bearing a name that meant "shining sky," Zeus is the son of the Titan Cronus, who had toppled his own father, Uranus. Similarly, Zeus brings his father down and supplants him as the chief deity. The only major Greek god whose Indo-European origins are undisputed, Zeus is connected with older gods who probably arrived in Greece with the people later known as Mycenaeans. Some scholars see parallels between his story and the Mesopotamian god-feud in which Enki killed Apsu. (See chapter 3.) There are also similarities between Zeus and Marduk, hinting that the Greeks may have been influenced by the earlier Mesopotamian myths. In Greek myth, this old god of the bright sky is transformed into Zeus, the weather god. After the great war with the Titans, Zeus draws lots with his brothers, and divides the world. He is lord of the sky; one of his brothers, Hades, becomes lord of the underworld; and the other, Poseidon, gets dominion over the sea.

Zeus's first wife is Metis, a sea nymph known for her wisdom, but Zeus is most famously married to Hera. Still, he is a notorious adulterer and has many lovers, both divine and human, and Hera deeply resents all of his many offspring. Some scholars believe that this was another vestige of the early rivalry between the male-dominated Zeus cult that arrived with the Mycenaeans and Hera's goddess/earth mother-religion, which may have predated the Mycenaean era. Whatever the sexual politics may have been, Zeus became ruler of the world, presiding over law and justice-which essentially meant Greek customs. In that role, he often metes out justice to those attempting to defy the right order of the world through hubris. A word commonly misidentified today as "excessive pride"-as in, "The Yankees lost to the Red Sox because of their hubris"-this Greek concept actually meant a form of insolence, or intentionally dishonorable behavior, a powerful term of condemnation in ancient Greece.

Dispensing justice for dishonorable behavior seems a strange notion coming from a god best known for being a "serial adulterer." His many notorious sexual escapades include both divine and mortal women. This makes him not only king of the gods, but father of quite a few of them as well. Among his lovers are the Titan Themis, with whom he has the three Horae (Seasons) and the Moirae (Fates); the goddess Mnemosyne (Memory), who produces the Nine Muses, who inspire poetry, dancing, music, and the other arts;* the grain goddess Demeter, who gives birth to Persephone; and the Titan Leto, mother of two of the greatest gods, Apollo and Artemis. Scholars believe that all of these affairs were allegorical tales meant to explain how the great "father" was responsible for creating the order of the world as it existed in the Greek mind.

But the tales that describe his exploits grew very colorful over the centuries. To seduce his many conquests, Zeus-a master of disguise-overcomes resistance by taking many different forms and shapes, perhaps most famously as a swan. That is how he appears to the queen of Sparta, Leda. Zeus mates with Leda in the form of a swan, and they conceive two children, one of them famed as Helen of Troy and the other Polydeuces (or Pollux). When Leda sleeps with her husband on the same night, she also conceives the mortals Castor (twin of Polydeuces) and Clytemnestra, who becomes the wife of King Agamemnon, commander in chief of the Greeks against Troy.

Among Zeus's many mortal lovers are young boys-which strikes the modern mind as unnatural, but was not unusual among elite Greeks of the Classical Period. One of his most famous male lovers is Ganymede, a prince of the royal Trojan house and the most beautiful of mortals. In one legend, Zeus, in the form of an eagle, abducts Ganymede and carries him to Olympus, where he serves as a cup bearer to the gods. This was how handsome young boys functioned in the Greek drinking-and-sex parties called symposia, where older men initiated young boys into sexual knowledge, a practice known as pederasty, and the subject of Plato's dialogue, Symposium.

MYTHIC VOICES.

He bound Prometheus the schemer in inescapable fetters a torment to bear, and through them he drove a mighty stone pylon, and sent a long-winged eagle to gnaw his incorruptible liver.

By day the bird fed upon it, but each night as much was replenished as was lost on the day before.

-HESIOD, Theogony The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! Besides its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe...it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He is a friend of man; stands between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Father and the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account.

-RALPH WALDO EMERSON on Prometheus How did man get fire?

In Hesiod's Creation story, not all of the Titans fought against Zeus. Prometheus-a Titan who was a fire god, master craftsman, and trickster whose name connoted "forethought"-joined Zeus in the war against the other Titans. But as time went by, Prometheus rebelled. He was offended when Zeus took a dislike to the first humans, whom Prometheus had molded out of clay. In an argument over sacrifices to the gods, Prometheus balked when Zeus decided to deprive men of fire.

Taking the side of man, Prometheus tricked Zeus into receiving only the bones and fat of sacrificed animals instead of their meat. He had disguised the bones under a layer of glistening fat that Zeus chose instead of a plate of meat hidden under the animal's stomach. (If that turns your stomach, don't order haggis, a traditional Scottish delicacy featuring the stomach of a sheep.) Outraged at the deceit, Zeus decided that man can have meat but not the fire to cook it. When Prometheus hid fire in the hollow of a dried stalk of fennel and gave it to mankind, Zeus retaliated by chaining the Titan to a mountain peak in the Caucasus Mountains, where each day an eagle pecked at his liver-and each night the liver grew back.

Destined to suffer this torture for eternity, Prometheus was only freed when he used his gift of forethought to assure Zeus he had nothing to fear from a seemingly threatening prophecy. Zeus let Prometheus go. But he had one more "trick up his toga" to spring on mankind. The Lord of Olympus instructed Hephaestus to sculpt a lovely girl from earth and water. When the craft god was finished, all the gods then contributed other gifts to the first woman. As in a scene from a fairy-tale "finishing school," Athena gave this creation beautiful clothes and taught her to weave on the loom. Aphrodite endowed her with beauty and charm, but the heartbreak and the sorrow of love as well. Finally Hermes-at Zeus's urging-instilled in her the ability to lie persuasively. (Hermes was instructed to give to the woman "thievish morals and to add the soul of a bitch"-in Hesiod's less than loving words.) So, Hermes "filled her with lies, with swindles, all sorts of thievish behavior," and she was named Pandora, which in Greek means "all gifts."

Though Prometheus warned his brother Epimetheus-a not-so-sharp tool whose name means "afterthought"-not to accept this gift from Zeus, Epimetheus was enchanted and married Pandora, who arrived bearing a package.

What was in Pandora's "box"?

First of all, it wasn't a "box," but a covered jar. But that's another story, and we'll come to it in a bit.

The Greek equivalent of the biblical Eve, Pandora was the first woman, and according to the myth, created by Zeus as a punishment for men. Just as Zeus had been tricked by Prometheus with skin and bones that had been concealed under some enticingly glistening fat-an offering that looked good on the outside-Zeus returned the favor by sending Pandora, a "package" that seemed well wrapped but concealed trouble. Zeus also sent along a somewhat mysterious jar.

When Hermes delivered Pandora to Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus, he was smitten by her, even though she was a "curse to men who must live by bread," in Hesiod's woman-hating words. In spite of Prometheus's warnings against accepting anything from Zeus, Epimetheus welcomed Pandora. Hesiod never says that Pandora was told not to open the jar. But plagued by insatiable curiosity, Pandora opened the jar given to Epimetheus by Zeus. Out flew all the ills that torment mankind-hard work, pain, and dreadful diseases that bring death. They all escaped from the jar to plague humanity.

The curious twist to Hesiod's story is that only hope did not escape from the jar. Pandora put the lid back on the jar before hope could escape. But there is some ambiguity in that. Does it mean man has hope because it has not flown away? Or is it trapped within the jar? Hesiod does not explain. What is clear is that he takes a dim view of women, much like the authors of the biblical folktale in Genesis who blame the suffering of the world on Eve. Of Pandora, Hesiod says in Theogony, "From her descends the ruinous race and tribe of women."

Commenting on Pandora and the Greek view of women, classicist Barry Powell wrote in Classical Mythology, "Among the Greeks, misogyny seems to be based not so much on primitive magical terror, or economic resentment as...on a male resentment of the institution of monogamy itself. Greek myth is obsessed with hostile relations between the sexes, especially between married couples.... We need to remember that...ancient literature, and myth, was composed by men for men in an environment ruled by men."

As for the common expression "Pandora's box," it has a long history. In 1508, the Dutch author Desiderius Erasmus first used the phrase "Pandora's box" instead of the original pithos in Greek, a traditional jar for storing grain. And since then, "Pandora's box" has come to symbolize any object or situation that seems harmless on the outside but has a great potential for discord, evil, and unlimited harm.

MYTHIC VOICES.

He hastily stored away the thunderbolts, forged by Cyclopes, and conceived a different design, of opening dark heavy rain clouds, In every quarter of heaven, and drowning mankind in the waters.

-OVID, Metamorphoses Why does Zeus send a great flood to destroy man?

Prometheus plays a supporting role in another Greek story, which may be less familiar than that of Pandora, but has important biblical parallels.

In Works and Days, Hesiod described the creation of humanity in five separate ages. First came a golden race of mortals, during the time of Cronus, which disappeared without explanation. Next, Zeus created a race made of the precious metal silver, but they refused to make sacrifices to the gods and were wiped out. A third age was made of bronze, but they proved to be so warlike that they wiped themselves out. The fourth age was the Heroic Age, populated by a race of demigods created by Zeus. When they died, many of these heroes either were placed in the heavens as constellations, became companions of the gods, or went to live on the mythical Island of the Blessed, which was ruled by Cronus.

It is later, in the age of iron, that Zeus finally created the present generation of humans. But, according to Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, when Zeus (Jupiter to Ovid) walked among these humans, he was disgusted, especially by a king who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice. Zeus decided to destroy them. With the help of Poseidon, Zeus unleashed a tremendous flood and nearly all of humanity was killed. Two good souls, however, were saved. Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, and his wife, Pyrrha, who was the daughter of Pandora, had been warned by the prescient Prometheus of the imminent flood. Deucalion built a boat, sent out a bird-a dove, in his case-and, after the floodwaters subsided, the boat came to rest on a mountaintop.

All of these details, of course, echo both the Mesopotamian flood accounts and the biblical story. Like Noah, Deucalion and Pyrrha were allowed to live. But they were sad and lonely in an empty world. The voice of a goddess from a nearby cave told them to throw their "mighty mother's bones" over their shoulders.

Puzzled at first, Deucalion realized that the command referred not to his own mother, but to Mother Earth-whose bones are rocks. Picking up stones, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw them over their shoulders, and they were turned into people, and Deucalion and Pyrrha were responsible for repopulating the earth. Among the "children" they created was their son Hellen, who gave his name to the entire Greek race, later known as the "Hellenes."

Which mythical monster has the worst "bad hair day"?

First among the heroes of the Heroic Age was Perseus, the son of Zeus and his mortal lover Danae. When Danae's father, a king, learns from an oracle that his own grandson will someday kill him, he sets Danae and the infant Perseus adrift in a chest. They are saved by a fisherman, whose brother, Polydectes, rules the isle of Seriphus. Over time Polydectes falls in love with Danae and wants to marry her, but she is unwilling. To prevent the marriage, the grown Perseus agrees to slay the Medusa, one of three monstrous sisters known as the Gorgons, whose ugliness turns men to stone. Once beautiful, Medusa had boasted of her beauty to Athena, who became jealous and changed her into a hideous monster with living snakes for hair. The Greeks carved images of Medusa's head on their armor to frighten their enemies, and images of Medusa's head were also used as charms to protect them from evil spells.

Aided by Hermes and Athena, Perseus sets off on his quest. He is given a curved sword, a cloak to render him invisible, Hermes' winged shoes, and a leather bag to carry Medusa's head. In the most familiar version of the myth, Perseus slays Medusa by looking at her reflection in his mirrorlike shield, although other accounts say that Athena guides his hand while he looks away. After he decapitates Medusa, who has been made pregnant by Poseidon, Perseus places the deadly head in the leather bag. As Medusa dies, the winged horse Pegasus springs from her body, and poisonous snakes rise from the blood that drips from her head. Athena saves the blood from Medusa's body and later gives it to Asclepius, the god of healing (see below, Which Argonaut was a god of healing?). Although the blood from Medusa's left side is deadly poison, that from her right side has the power to revive the dead.

On his way home, Perseus rescues a beautiful maiden, Andromeda, from a giant sea monster and marries her. Once back in Seriphus, he turns Polydectes to stone by showing him the head of the Medusa. Unfortunately, fulfilling this prophecy, Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather with a discus. Although he is entitled to become king of Argos after that, Perseus chooses instead to rule Tiryns, where he and Andromeda found a great dynasty. Among his descendants is the great hero Heracles.

What kind of hero kills his wife and children?

If you only heard of one Greek god or hero when you were a kid, it was probably Hercules, whose name in Greek legends was Heracles. The leading character in many a B-movie featuring brawny, bad actors, Heracles was a legendary figure of the Heroic Age, who probably was just as popular in ancient Greece as he is today. Heracles was born in Thebes, the son of the mortal princess Alcmene and the philandering Zeus. Because he is another of Zeus's illegitimate offspring, Heracles incurs the wrath of Hera, who has it in for any child born from Zeus's cheating ways.

Hera's spite takes on some creative forms. First, she causes the birth of Heracles to be delayed so that he is not the firstborn child, cannot wear the crown, and, in fact, is made a slave. Hera then sends two snakes to kill Heracles as he sleeps, but the baby boy amazes everyone by strangling them with his bare hands. Fond of the boy, Zeus intervenes to try to put a stop to Hera's sabotage. The Olympian places the infant Heracles at the sleeping Hera's breast so that he will receive the mother's milk of the gods. But Heracles bites down so hard that Hera wakes up and pushes the baby away-denying Heracles complete immortality. When her breast milk spills, it spreads across the sky as the Milky Way.

The semidivine Heracles goes on to become a warrior of great strength and skill. After helping the Thebans defeat an enemy, Heracles marries the Theban king's daughter Megara, and has three children, who become Hera's new targets. Seeing an opportunity to do harm, she causes Heracles to suffer a fit of madness, in which he lets fly his arrows, killing his whole family. Seeking to purify himself and atone for this crime, Heracles goes to the Oracle at Delphi and learns he must serve his cousin, Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. Over the course of twelve years, he performs twelve labors-which in the original Greek were conveyed by the word athoi. It meant "contest" and was the source of the word "athletics."

Here are the labors of Heracles, which have been described over the centuries with many variations: 1. The Nemean Lion Heracles takes on the fierce lion of Nemea, which has been killing all the flocks near Mycenae. At first, his arrows simply bounce off the animal's skin, so Heracles chases the lion and kills it with his bare hands.* He keeps the lion's impenetrable skin as a trophy and is often depicted in art with the lion's jaws covering his head like a helmet.

2. The Lernean Hydra Heracles takes on a many-headed snake with the body of a hound, whose mere breath can kill and whose heads grow back as soon as they are cut off. The deadly Hydra lives in the swamps of Lerna, also near Mycenae, where it kills livestock. At first, Heracles makes no progress in his fight with the beast, and Hera even sends a giant crab to bite him as he fights. But Heracles' nephew Iolaus pitches in. As Heracles cuts off a head, Iolaus seals each neck with fire to prevent it from growing back. After killing the Hydra, Heracles dips his arrows in the beast's blood to make them even deadlier. Hera later raises both the Hydra and the crab into the sky, where they are known as the constellations Hydra and Cancer.

3. The Erymanthian Boar Heracles captures this huge boar who lives in the central Peloponnesus region of Arcadia with little difficulty. But later, when he stops to eat and drink with some centaurs-the half-man, half-horse beasts-they end up in a drunken brawl. During the fight, Heracles kills several of the centaurs with his poison arrows, including his friend, the centaur Pholus, who dies accidentally when an arrow falls on his foot. The centaur Nessus, who escapes this free-for-all, will reappear in Heracles' story with disastrous consequences.

4. The Ceryneian Deer (also called the Arcadian Stag) Ordered to capture a deer, famed for its golden antlers and metal hoofs, Heracles succeeds after tracking the animal for a year. But when Heracles meets Apollo, the god claims the deer is sacred to his sister, Artemis. Heracles apologizes and later releases the animal.

5. The Stymphalian Birds Near a lake in Arcadia lives a flock of vicious birds with wings that fire arrows, beaks that can pierce armor, and whose droppings are lethal to crops. After Heracles startles the birds by banging some metal castanets, they fly into the sky, and he kills them with his poisoned arrows.

6. The Augean Stables Ordered to clean the enormous stables of King Augeas, Heracles finds himself knee-deep in dung. Heracles cleverly punches holes in the sides of the stable and diverts a river to flow through the stables, cleaning them overnight.

7. The Cretan Bull Told to capture the sacred bull of King Minos, Heracles goes to the island of Crete. "Seizing the bull by its horns," he tosses it into the sea and then rides it, rodeo-style, back to Mycenae, where he releases the bull, which is later killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. (This version of the story conflicts with the more famous tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. See below, Was Atlantis ever discussed in Greek myth?) 8. The Horse of Diomede Heracles captures Diomede, Ares's son and the barbarous king of Thrace who owns four deadly horses that feed on human flesh. Heracles feeds the wicked king to his horses, whom he tames and sets loose. They are later killed by wolves.

9. The Girdle of Hippolyta Heracles is asked to obtain the girdle-a sash or belt-of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazon women warriors who, according to myth, severed a breast so that it would not interfere with drawing a bow. Expecting a fierce battle, Heracles gathers a small army. But smitten by the hunky hero, Hippolyta simply agrees to give Heracles the belt. In some interpretations, taking the girdle would have been viewed as a metaphor for rape, while surrendering it was seen as consensual sex.