Geryon
Medusa’s grandson, a much-feared giant who lived on the island Erytheia. Geryon had three bodies, including three heads with human faces and six arms, and took the form of a warrior. He owned a magnificent herd of red cattle that Hercules was sent to acquire as his tenth labor. When Geryon tried to battle Hercules (after the hero first slayed Geryon’s two-headed dog, Orthus, and Eurytion, the cattle’s guard, in order to take the cattle), he was killed by Hercules’ poison arrow.
(See Eurytion, Hercules, Orthus)
Golden Fleece
Fleece from a magical flying ram on which Phrixus and Helle, children of King Athamas of Boeotia, had fled from their wicked stepmother. Helle fell off the ram’s back but Phrixus reached the distant land of Colchis in the Black Sea, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus. Its fleece was a hung in a river where it soon filled with gold dust. It became world-famous but was guarded by a terrible dragon. When Jason and the Argonauts arrived on their quest to find the fleece, they were helped by Medea, the king’s daughter, to overcome the dragon. They then returned to Greece with the fabulous fleece.
(See Hylas, Jason, Medea, Orpheus)
Gray Sisters
Three hideous hags, gray-haired from birth, who were related to the Gorgon sisters. Also called the Graiai (“crones/old women”) in Greek, the Gray Sisters’ names reflected their horrific appearance: Deino, or Dread; Enyo, or Horror; and Pemphredo, or Terror. They had writhing, snake-like hair, gnashing fangs, and a deadly glare. But as they only had one eye and one tooth between them, which they had to take turns to use, they were vulnerable. Perseus caught their eye as it was being passed around and so forced the Graiai to reveal the next stage in his quest.
(See Perseus)
Greek Fire
Weapon developed in c. 700 A.D. by the Byzantine Greeks to help protect Constantinople (now Istanbul) against Arab attack. Like an early flame-thrower, it jetted a stream of flame onto ships. Its inextinguishable fire was made of a mix of petroleum, sulphur, and nitre.
H
Hades
Hades was the name given both to the god of the Underworld and to his realm, where he ruled over the spirits of the dead. Hades was the son of Rhea and Kronos and fought alongside his brothers Zeus and Poseidon against the Titans, but had none of their majestic splendor. Hades evoked only fear and his name was mentioned with reluctance by the living. To find a wife, he had to kidnap Persephone, Demeter’s beautiful daughter, whom he kept imprisoned underground for half of every year. Hades was seldom seen outside his kingdom, partly because he had a cap made of wolf skin that made him invisible. Down in the bowels of the earth, he piled up riches—one of his names was Pluton, meaning “wealth”—which he gained from buried treasure and from the earth’s minerals. The realm of Hades, the Underworld where the ghosts of the dead flitted around restlessly like bats, was where most dead Greeks went. It was a dismal place, bound by the River Styx, across which the boat-men Charon ferried the dead, and guarded by Cerberus, the hideous many-headed watchdog. In Hades, King Minos of Crete and his brother Rhadamanthys, lords of legendary wisdom, judged the dead. While a lucky few found bliss in the Elysian Fields, a grim fate was reserved for the very wicked: They were imprisoned in Tartarus, the lowest part of Hades.
(See Demeter, Helm of Darkness, Hercules, Hermes, Kronos, Minos, Mount Olympus, Orpheus, Persephone, Poseidon, River Lethe, River Styx, Theseus, Titans, Zeus)
Harpies
Three terrifying half-human creatures who had scaly wings, sharp curved claws, and long flowing hair. Flying faster than any bird, these daughters of the monster Typhon would descend with shrill cries like vultures at feasts to snatch away the food and break up the party. They attacked Jason and the Argonauts on their quest.
(See Jason)
Hecate
Goddess of the moon and the night. Hecate could be either terrifying or benevolent, and her “triple aspects”—shown in her statues with three heads—represented the three phases of the moon: waxing, full, and waning. As the daughter of Asteria, a star goddess who was the sister of Leto, Hecate was a first cousin of Apollo and Artemis, and honored as such, but she was never one of the official Olympian deities. Instead, she was often worshipped outside the city at crossroads and in graveyards, with sacrifices of goats and fish. (The usual offerings for a god or goddess were bulls, sheep, or chickens. Both goats and fish were considered a bit offbeat.) Hecate could be portrayed as a blood-drinking sorceress with serpent-hair and baying hellhounds, as she was linked with suicides and other violent deaths. Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, sacrificed to Hecate, and she long remained an infernal goddess; she is invoked by the three witches in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (1605).
(See Artemis, Empousai)
Helen
Greatest beauty in Greek legend. The daughter of Zeus, who disguised as a swan had seduced her mother Leda, Helen was born from an egg. As Greece’s most beautiful woman, she was wooed by many heroes before she chose Menelaus, the powerful and muscular king of Sparta. But although Menelaus was a great warrior, Helen fell in love and ran off with the handsome Prince Paris of Troy when he visited Sparta. Helen’s flight—or abduction, depending on the storyteller—sparked the ten-year Trojan War, as the Greeks united under Agamemnon, King of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, to avenge the insult. When Troy was finally captured and Paris killed, Helen returned peacefully to Sparta with Menelaus to live out her days.
(See Aphrodite, Elysian Fields/Elysium, Trojan War, Zeus)
Helios
God of the sun, later identified with Apollo, the god of light and reason. Helios was especially worshipped on the island of Rhodes, where a huge statue, the “Colossus of Rhodes” (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) was erected in his honor at the harbor entrance. Reputedly it was so tall that ships could sail between its legs. Each day Helios rose from the east and, in a chariot drawn by eight winged horses, traversed the skies before setting in the western ocean. He then returned east every night in a barque, a type of sailing vessel. One day Helios’s son Phaethon insisted on driving the heavenly chariot himself. But he proved unable to control the fiery steeds, who flew so close to the sun that the chariot was scorched. Finally Zeus had to kill Phaethon with a thunderbolt. After that, Helios took the reins again.
(See Apollo, Circe, Medea, Selene)
Hekatonkheires
Giants with fifty heads and 100 arms each. The Hekatonkheires aided Zeus against the Titans’ attack. In Latin poetry, the Hekatonkheires were known as the Centimani, which translates to “Hundred-Handed Ones.” As storm gods, they represent the major forces of nature, such as earthquakes and sea waves.
(See Briares, Kampê, Telekhines)
Helm of Darkness
Part of Perseus’ magical equipment when he set off on his quest to kill the Medusa. Originally created by a Cyclops for Hades, lord of the Underworld, the helmet made the wearer invisible, as if it were night—hence its name, the Helm of Darkness.
Hephaestus
God of fire and metal-working. Hephaestus was sweaty, ugly, and lame, quite unlike the other glamorous Olympian gods. He became lame when, as a child, he intervened in an argument between his parents, Zeus and Hera, and Hera threw him from Mount Olympus. Falling down into the sea, he was rescued by Thetis, a sea nymph. In revenge he created a magical gold throne for Hera. She sat on it and became trapped, unable to move. After Dionysus persuaded Hephaestus finally to free his mother, the soot-stained god demanded as his reward marriage to Aphrodite, the love goddess. But Aphrodite soon fell in love with Ares, the war god, making Hephaestus ragingly jealous. He forged a net of gossamer-light steel and draped it over the sleeping lovers. They awoke trapped in their bed by the steel net, as the other Olympians gathered to laugh. Usually, however, Hephaestus was busy at his furnace, which was situated beneath Mount Etna in Sicily, an active volcano (Hephaestus’ Latin name was Vulcan), and he was much admired for his skills. He built wonderful palaces for the gods on Mount Olympus and mad
e the armor for the Greek warrior Achilles, since Achilles’ mother Thetis had helped the god when he was in the sea, taking care of him until he had recovered enough to return to land.
(See Aphrodite, Ares, Cyclopes, Hera, Mount Etna, Mount Olympus, Talos)
Hera
Goddess of childbirth and marriage, mother of Ares and Hephaestus and both the sister and wife of Zeus, king of the gods. Hera, as queen of Olympus, was majestic rather than beautiful. This encouraged the notoriously promiscuous Zeus to pursue other females, mortal and divine, which fueled Hera’s sometimes deadly jealousy and their terrible rows. At one point Zeus in exasperation hung his wife upside down from Mount Olympus, but usually Hera could more than hold her own against any of the Olympian deities. She intervened to great effect against the Trojans in the Trojan War (because Prince Paris of Troy had preferred Aphrodite to her in the Judgment of Paris). The triple crown that Hera often wears reveals her links with the pre-Greek Great Goddess of Asia—each part of the crown represents one aspect of a woman’s life: maiden, mother, crone. Hera was also often accompanied by a peacock, another of the Great Goddess’s attributes.
(See Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus, Eris, Hephaestus, Hercules, Hesperides, Iris, Jason, Kronos, Zeus)
Hercules
Archetypal Greek hero. Hercules had a divine father, Zeus, king of the gods, and a mortal mother, Princess Alcmene. Though his exploits inspired later heroes such as Alexander the Great, they made for a gruelling life, despite help from the goddess Athena. Hercules was harassed from birth by Hera, ever-jealous of the children of Zeus’ lovers. She sent two snakes to kill him in his crib but the muscular infant easily strangled both. Later Hera drove him so mad that he killed his wife Meagre and his family. To atone for this terrible crime, Apollo ordered Hercules to perform Twelve Labors to benefit humanity. These tasks, beyond the powers of any normal human, traditionally were: 1. To kill the man-eating Nemean Lion, whose hide Hercules then wore, making him almost invincible.
2. To kill the Hydra of Lerna, a many-headed dragon.
3. To capture the Golden Hind (deer) of Cerynaea.
4. To capture the Erymanthian Boar.
5. To clean the filthy Augean stables in one day.
6. To destroy the iron-clawed Stymphalian Birds.
7. To capture the Cretan Bull.
8. To steal the wild horses of Diomedes.
9. To steal the girdle of Hippolyta, the Amazon queen.
10. To obtain the Cattle of Geryon.
11. To steal the Golden Apples of the Hesperides in the farthest west.
12. To descend to the Underworld, capture Hades’ guard dog Cerberus, and bring him back.
In all these he was triumphant. Hercules’ end, however, was horrific. He was persuaded to wear a tunic soaked in the blood of Nessus, a centaur he had killed for trying to force himself on Hercules’ second wife Denaira, and the poison it contained tormented him. In agony, he set fire to the shirt, killing himself. But his soul rose up to heaven as a constellation, and he was worshipped as divine after his death.
(See Amazons, Antaeus, Ares, Atlas, Centaur, Cerberus, Charybdis and Scylla, Echidna, Erymanthian Boar, Eurytion, Geryon, Hesperides, Hydra, Hylas, Jason, Nemean Lion, Orthus, Pankration, Prometheus, Stymphalian Birds, Theseus)
Hermes
God of travelers, merchants, and thieves. A son of Zeus, Hermes was unusual in relying more on his quick wits, good luck, and intelligence than on superhuman strength. He was only a few hours old when he stole some cattle belonging to his half-brother Apollo by using winged sandals, one of his many cunning devices. He deflected Apollo’s anger by giving him another of his cunning devices: the lyre. (Hermes invented many things, among them the alphabet, numbers, and weights and measures.) Hermes often wore a broad-rimmed winged hat and carried a magic wand, the Caduceus, with two snakes entwined around it that sent people to sleep. His smooth talk and notorious good luck made him the patron god of both merchants and thieves. In his capacity as the messenger god—for he was always swift-footed—he was kept busy carrying messages from Olympus down to Earth. He often traveled farther down still, for he also led the souls of the dead to Charon, the boatman on the River Styx in Hades. Hermes was also the protector-god of travelers, and herms (stone statues) were set up by them in his honor on doors and at crossroads.
(See Aphrodite, Circe, Medusa, Pan, Persephone, Perseus, Typhon)
Hesperides
Daughters of Hesperis, goddess of the morning star, and the Titan Atlas. The Hesperides, who numbered three to seven depending on the version of the tale, were famed for their wonderful singing, and guarded a tree of golden apples given by Gaia (earth) to Hera. The magic apple tree grew on islands in the farthest west, beyond the reach of any normal human, but the hero Hercules succeeded in obtaining several apples with Atlas’s help, after killing Ladon, the dragon who acted as watchdog. (See Atlas, Hercules)
Hippalektryons
Beast with the foreparts of a horse and the tail, wings, and back legs of a rooster. Hippalektryons may be an earlier version of the winged horse Pegasus.
Hippocampi
Mythical seahorses that pulled the chariot of Poseidon, god of the sea, or cavorted through the waves alongside him, in company with tritons (mermen) and mermaids.
Hydra
Monster from the same alarming family as the Gorgons and Cerberus. Its father was the monster Typhon and its mother Echidna, and it had at least eight heads (some writers gave it 1,000), toxic blood, and breath so venomous that it poisoned all who breathed it. Hercules’ second labor was killing it—a major task even for him. He had to drive it out of its lair by shooting burning arrows at it and cutting off its myriad heads. These kept sprouting back from the creature’s many necks until he burnt them off. He buried the last head under a boulder.
(See Hercules, Typhon)
Hylas
An exceptionally attractive boy brought up by the hero Hercules. Hylas accompanied Hercules and Jason on the voyage of the Argo in the quest of the Golden Fleece. When they stopped at Cius on the Black Sea, the naiads, nymphs of the spring where Hylas was looking for fresh water, found him so delightful that they seized him and would not let him go. Hercules and his companions spent hours looking for him in vain.
I
Icarus
Daedalus’ son. Icarus escaped with his father from imprisonment in Crete by using the wings Daedalus had created, but despite his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun. The heat caused the wax holding the wings together to melt, and Icarus fell to his death. The waters into which Icarus fell is called the Icarian Sea.
(See Daedalus)
Ichor
Blood of the gods. The gods were perfect superhuman beings, and they were also immortal. In battle they could be wounded but never killed, partly because they did not have human blood. In their veins flowed not blood but ichor, which was poisonous to mortals.
Iliad, The
First of Homer’s two great epic poems. The Illiad related scenes from the ten-year long Trojan War (Ilium was another name for Troy). Most Greeks thought it the greatest poem ever written and knew it by heart.
(See Trojan War)
Iris
Goddess of the rainbow and mother of Eros, god of desire. Iris acted as a messenger of the gods, often being used by Zeus, and sometimes by Hera, to carry messages. She was called “wind-footed” and “stormy-footed” because her rainbow either warned of storms to come or showed that storms had passed.
(See Zephyr)
Ithaca
Island kingdom of Odysseus, to which he constantly tried to return after the Trojan War. In Ithaca his ever-faithful wife Penelope waited for him, putting off the suitors who, believing Odysseus dead, wanted to marry her and so gain the kingdom. Ithaca is generally identified with the island that still bears that name in the Ionian Sea off the west coast of Greece. The description given by Homer in The Odyssey, however, does not match the island closely, so many people think the ancient kingdom was s
omewhere else.
(See Odyssey, Odysseus)
J
Janus
God of doors and gates, and beginnings and endings. From Saturn, Janus received the gift of seeing both the past and future. He is most often depicted with two heads facing opposite directions, and is accordingly representative of the progression of time and transitions, as well as peace and war.
Jason
Among the greatest of Greek heroes, and the son of King Aeson of Iolcus. As King Aeson had been deposed by his brother Pelias, Jason was brought up in exile by the wise centaur Chiron. When Jason returned to Iolcus, he was soon recognized by his uncle, who sent him on a perilous quest: to win the Golden Fleece from Colchis in the eastern Black Sea. Jason chose heroes such as Hercules and Theseus of Athens to crew his ship the Argo (thus their name, the Argonauts). Their quest was aided by two goddesses—Hera, who helped them fight off aerial attacks by the Harpies, and Aphrodite, who made Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, fall in love with Jason. The Colchian king gave Jason a task to prove himself worthy of Medea: He had to plow a field with wild bulls and sow it with dragon’s teeth. When angry warriors sprang up from the dragon’s teeth, Jason persuaded them to fight each other, not him. With Medea’s help, Jason seized the Golden Fleece, and they both sailed off in the Argo. Jason became king of Corinth, a wealthy city, but soon left Medea for another woman. In fury, Medea torched the palace and killed most of the royal family, fleeing to Athens. Jason escaped unharmed, and was eventually killed when a beam of the by-then rotten Argo fell on his head.