DOWNLOAD PDF EDITH HAMILTON MYTHOLOGY TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES

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1 Chapter 1 : Mythology - Edith Hamilton - Google Books Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. Chapter I â The Gods Unlike many other creation stories, in the Greek versions the gods are created by the universe instead of the other way around. In the beginning, two entities exist, Heaven and Earth. Their children are the Titans, whose children, in turn, are the Olympians, the main Greek gods. Shared by all the gods, Olympus is perfect. Rain never falls there, and the gods while away their time eating, drinking, and listening to music. There are twelve proper Olympians: Zeus; his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades; his two sisters, Hestia and Hera who is also his wife ; his children, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, and Artemis; and two gods sometimes considered his offspring, Hephaestus and Aphrodite. There are also lesser gods in Olympus, like Eros, the Graces, and the Muses. Several, like Hebe, goddess of Youth, are rarely mentioned in myths. There are also a few abstract forces personified, if not completely, who live on Olympus: Besides the Olympians, supernaturals also abound in the sea and underworld. There is a different god for every river, and the Titan Oceanâ lord of the mysterious river that encircles the earthâ lives there along with several other minor water gods. Hades and his queen, Persephone, are the only rulers of the underworldâ a place often simply referred to as Hades, after its king. A mysterious locale somewhere under the earth, it is the realm of the dead. Divided into two sections, Tartarus and Erebus, Hades has five famous rivers: A boatman named Charon ferries the dead from Erebus across the junction of the Acheron and the Cocytus to the gates of Tartarus, where they are judged by three former kings, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus. The wicked are sentenced to eternal torment, while the good are admitted to the Elysian Fields, a place of perfect bliss. Other dwellers of Hades include the Furies and the personified forces of Sleep and Death. Earth has its share of lesser gods as well. Pan and Silenus are mischievous and jovial earth gods. Pan rules over the Satyrs, a race of goat-men, and dances with the Dryads, the forest nymphs, and the Oreads, the mountain nymphs. Also on earth are the twins Castor and Pollux, sometimes spoken of as gods. The twins represent the ideal of brotherly devotion because, when an angry cattle-herder named Idas killed Castor, Pollux begged to die out of love for his brother. Rewarding this devotion, Zeus allows them to spend half the year in Hades and the other half on earth. Earth is also home to the wind gods: The earth is also home to many other nondivine supernatural beings, such as the Centaursâ half-men, half-horses, one of whom is Chiron, an important tutor to many eventual heroes. Two trios of sisters are also earth-bound: The Fates are not subject to the decrees of any of the gods, not even Zeus himself. Page 1

2 Chapter 2 : Mythology Quotes by Edith Hamilton Her "Mythology" tell the "Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" of classical mythology and this volume, first written in, is now a timeless classic itself. This was the first book of mythology that I ever read and it is still the best. Zeus Jupiter Zeus and his brothers drew lots for their share of the universe. The sea fell to Poseidon, and the underworld to Hades. Zeus became the supreme ruler. He was Lord of the Sky, the Rain-god and the Cloud-gatherer, who wielded the awful thunderbolt. His power was greater than that of all the other divinities together. Nevertheless he was not omnipotent or omniscient, either. He could be opposed and deceived. Poseidon dupes him in the Iliad and so does Hera. Sometimes, too, the mysterious power, Fate, is spoken of as stronger than he. Homer makes Hera ask him scornfully if he proposes to deliver from death a man Fate has doomed. 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. The explanation why such actions were ascribed to the most majestic of the gods is, the scholars say, that the Zeus of song and story has been made by combining many gods. When his worship spread to a town where there was already a divine ruler the two were slowly fused into one. His breastplate was the aegis, awful to behold; his bird was the eagle, his tree the oak. The Titans Ocean and Tethys brought her up. She was the protector of marriage, and married women were her peculiar care. But when any account of her gets down to details, it shows her chiefly engaged in punishing the many women Zeus fell in love with, even when they yielded only because he coerced or tricked them. It made no difference to Hera how reluctant any of them were or how innocent; the goddess treated them all alike. Her implacable anger followed them and their children too. She never forgot an injury. The Trojan War would have ended in an honorable peace, leaving both sides unconquered, if it had not been for her hatred of a Trojan who had judged another goddess lovelier than she. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her. Argos was her favorite city. The Greeks on both sides of the Aegean were seamen and the God of the Sea was all-important to them. His wife was Amphitrite, a granddaughter of the Titan, Ocean. Besides being Lord of the Sea he gave the first horse to man, and he was honored as much for the one as for the other. Storm and calm were under his control. But when he drove in his golden car over the waters, the thunder of the waves sank into stillness, and tranquil peace followed his smooth-rolling wheels. He was also called Pluto, the God of Wealth, of the precious metals hidden in the earth. He had a far-famed cap or helmet which made whoever wore it invisible. It was rare that he left his dark realm to visit Olympus or the earth, nor was he urged to do so. He was not a welcome visitor. He was unpitying, inexorable, but just; a terrible, not an evil god. His wife was Persephone Proserpine whom he carried away from the earth and made Queen of the Lower World. No mother bore her. Full-grown and in full armor, she sprang from his head. In the earliest account of her, the Iliad, she is a fierce and ruthless battle-goddess, but elsewhere she is warlike only to defend the State and the home from outside enemies. She was pre-eminently the Goddess of the City, the protector of civilized life, of handicrafts and agriculture; the inventor of the bridle, who first tamed horses for men to use. Of the three virgin goddesses she was the chief and was called the Maiden, Parthenos, and her temple the Parthenon. In later poetry she is the embodiment of wisdom, reason, purity. Athens was her special city; the olive created by her was her tree; the owl her bird. Even more than of these good and lovely endowments, he is the God of Light, in whom is no darkness at all, and so he is the God of Truth. No false word ever falls from his lips. Castalia was its sacred spring; Cephissus its river. It was held to be the center of the world, so many pilgrims came to it, from foreign countries as well as Greece. No other shrine rivaled it. The answers to the questions asked by the anxious seekers for Truth were delivered by a priestess who went into a trance before she spoke. The trance was supposed to be caused by a vapor rising from a deep cleft in the rock over which her seat was placed, a three-legged stool, the tripod. The laurel was his tree. Many creatures were sacred to him, chief among them the dolphin and the crow. She was one of the three maiden goddesses of Olympus. She was the Lady of Wild Things, Huntsman-in-chief to the gods, an odd office for a woman. In the later poets, Artemis is identified with Hecate. Hecate was the Goddess Page 2

3 of the Dark of the Moon, the black nights when the moon is hidden. The cypress was sacred to her; and all wild animals, but especially the deer. In most of the stories she is the wife of Hephaestus Vulcan, the lame and ugly god of the forge. The myrtle was her tree; the dove her birdâ sometimes, too, the sparrow and the swan. Perhaps there was some connection between that very early story of him and the fact that he was God of Commerce and the Market, protector of traders. In odd contrast to this idea of him, he was also the solemn guide of the dead, the Divine Herald who led the souls down to their last home. Homer calls him murderous, bloodstained, the incarnate curse of mortals; and, strangely, a coward, too, who bellows with pain and runs away when he is wounded. The Romans liked Mars better than the Greeks liked Ares. He never was to them the mean whining deity of the Iliad, but magnificent in shining armor, redoubtable, invincible. Ares figures little in mythology. He is not a distinct personality, like Hermes or Hera or Apollo. Appropriately, his bird was the vulture. The dog was wronged by being chosen as his animal. Among the perfectly beautiful immortals he only was ugly. He was lame as well. In one place in the Iliad he says that his shameless mother, when she saw that he was born deformed, cast him out of heaven; in another place he declares that Zeus did this, angry with him for trying to defend Hera. He was a kindly, peace-loving god, popular on earth as in heaven. With Athena, he was important in the life of the city. The two were the patrons of handicrafts, the arts which along with agriculture are the support of civilization; he the protector of the smiths as she of the weavers. She was the Goddess of the Hearth, the symbol of the home, around which the newborn child must be carried before it could be received into the family. Every meal began and ended with an offering to her. In Rome her fire was cared for by six virgin priestesses, called Vestals. The lesser gods of Olympus There were other divinities in heaven besides the twelve great Olympians. In the later poets he was her son and almost invariably a mischievous, naughty boy, or worse. He was often represented as blindfolded, because love is often blind. There are no stories about Hebe except that of her marriage to Hercules. They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child of the Titan, Ocean. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. But they never became real personalities. It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunnateâ not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is not deserved. Underground rivers, too, were his. His wife, also a Titan, was Tethys. The Oceanids, the nymphs of this great river, were their daughters. The gods of all the rivers on earth were their sons. His trumpet was a great shell. He was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. He had the power both of foretelling the future and of changing his shape at will. They dwelt in brooks and springs and fountains. It is often called by his name, Hades. It lies, the Iliad says, beneath the secret places of the earth. In later poets there are various entrances to it from the earth through caverns and beside deep lakes. Tartarus and Erebus are sometimes two divisions of the underworld, Tartarus the deeper of the two, the prison of the Sons of Earth; Erebus where the dead pass as soon as they die. In Homer the underworld is vague, a shadowy place inhabited by shadows. Nothing is real there. The later poets define the world of the dead more and more clearly as the place where the wicked are punished and the good rewarded. The path down to it leads to where Acheron, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. Page 3

4 Chapter 3 : Mythology Study Guide from LitCharts The creators of SparkNotes From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Mythology Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes, tests, and essays. Some of my favorite features include: Titans and Olympians Having children is never a good idea. Just ask the Titans. Dionysus Ah, the seductive Dion. The only god whose parents were not both divine. This strange god, the gay reveler, the cruel hunter, the lofty inspirer, was also the sufferer. He was the vine, which is always pruned as nothing else that bears fruits; every branch cut away, only the bare stock left; through the winter a dead thing to look at. Like Persephone Dionysus died with the coming of the cold. Unlike her, his death was terrible: He was always brought back to life; he died and rose again. It was his joyful resurrection they celebrated in his theater, but the idea of terrible deeds done to him and done by men under his influence was too closely associated with him ever to be forgotten. He was more than the suffering god. He was the tragic god. There was none other. Some time during his wanderings, Dionysus came upon the princess of Crete, Ariadne, when she was utterly desolate, having been abandoned on the shore of the island of Naxos by the Athenian prince, Theseus, whose life she had saved. Dionysus had compassion upon her. He rescued her, and in the end loved her. When she died Dionysus took a crown he had given her and placed it among the stars. Prometheus and Io Prometheus and Io briefly united in their hatred of Zeus and Hera and their shenanigans. They talked freely to each other. He told her how Zeus had treated him, and she told him that Zeus was the reason why she, once a princess and a happy girl, had been changed into a beast. Narcissus and Echo This is one of my favorite stories. The hero of it was a beautiful lad, whose name was Narcissus. His beauty was so great, all the girls who saw him longed to be his, but he would have none of them. He would pass the loveliest carelessly by, no matter how much she tried to make him look at her. Even the sad case of the fairest of the nymphs, Echo, did not move him. This was very hard, but hardest of all when Echo, too, with all the other maidens, loved Narcissus. She could follow him, but she could not speak to him. How then could she make a youth who never looked at a girl pay attention to her? One day, however, it seemed her chance had come. He was calling to his companions. But he turned away in angry disgust. She hid her blushes and her shame in a lonely cave, and never could be comforted. Still she lives in places like that, and they say she has so wasted away with longing that only her voice now is left to her. So Narcissus went on his cruel way, a scorner of love. As Narcissus bent over a clear pool for a drink and saw there his own reflection, on the moment he fell in love with it. But I cannot leave it. Only death can set me free. He pined away, leaning perpetually over the pool, fixed in one long gaze. The nymphs he had scorned were kind to him in death and sought his body to give it burial, but they could not find it. Where it had lain there was blooming a new and lovely flower, and they called it by his name, Narcissus. Cupid and Psyche A mysterious deity, a beautiful mortal maiden, a vengeful mother-in-law, jealous siblings, and a whole lot of misunderstanding. The tale of Cupid Eros and Psyche is perhaps the best known of all the Greek myths. When at last he lay sleeping quietly, she summoned all her courage and lit the lamp. She tiptoed to the bed and holding the light high above her she gazed at what lay there. Oh, the relief and the rapture that filled her heart. No monster was revealed, but the sweetest and fairest of all creatures, at whose sight the very lamp seemed to shine brighter. In her first shame at her lack of faith, Psyche fell on her knees and would have plunged the knife into her own breast if it had not fallen from her trembling hands. But those same unsteady hands that saved her betrayed her, too, for as she hung over him, ravished at the sight of him and unable to deny herself the bliss of filling her eyes with his beauty, some hot oil fell from the lamp upon his shoulder. She rushed out after him into the night. She could not see him, but she heard his voice speaking to her. He told her who he was, and sadly bade her farewell. Is he gone from me forever? If he has no more love left for me, at least I can show him how much I love him. She had no idea where to go; she knew only that she would never give up looking for him. Orpheus and Eurydice Orpheus, the greatest musician that ever lived, and his love, the beautiful Eurydice. The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice Page 4

5 proves that love is stronger than death. Where he first met and how he wooed the maiden he loved, Eurydice, we are not told, but it is clear that no maiden he wanted could have resisted the power of his song. They were married, but their joy was brief. Directly after the wedding, as the bride walked in a meadow with her bridesmaids, a viper stung her and she died. He could not endure it. He determined to go down to the world of death and try to bring Eurydice back. I will bear her away from Hades. Persephone and Hades Persephone, the lovely Goddess of Spring. Hades, the dreaded God of the Underworld. Did Persephone fall in love with Hades, and go with him willingly or was she abducted? We may never know. She was gathering flowers with her companions in the vale of Enna, in a meadow of soft grass and roses and crocus and lovely violets and iris and hyacinths. Suddenly she caught sight of something quite new to her, a bloom more beautiful by far than any she had ever seen, a strange glory of a flower, a marvel to all, immortal gods and mortal men. A hundred blossoms grew up from the roots, and the fragrance was very sweet. She stole toward it, half fearful at being alone, but unable to resist the desire to fill her basket with it. Wondering she stretched out her hands to take the lovely plaything, but before she touched it a chasm opened in the earth and out of it coal-black horses sprang, drawing a chariot and driven by one who had a look of dark splendor, majestic and beautiful and terrible. He caught her to him and held her close. The next moment she was being borne away from the radiance of earth in springtime to the world of the dead by the king who rules it. Daedalus Have you ever heard the phrase, flying too close to the sun? Daedalus was the architect who had contrived the Labyrinth for the Minotaur in Crete, and who showed Ariadne how Theseus could escape from it. When King Minos learned that the Athenians had found their way out, he was convinced that they could have done so only if Daedalus had helped them. Accordingly he imprisoned him and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth. But the great inventor was not at a loss. He told his son, Escape may be checked by water and land, but the air and the sky are free, and he made two pairs of wings for them. They put them on and just before they took flight Daedalus warned Icarus to keep a middle course over the sea. If he flew too high the sun might melt the glue and the wings drop off. However, as stories so often show, what elders say youth disregards. The wings had come off. He dropped into the sea and the waters closed over him. More than a thousand years before Christ, near the eastern end of the Mediterranean was a great city very rich and powerful, second to none on earth. The name of it was Troy and even today no city is more famous. The judgment of Paris Paris was chosen by Zeus to determine which of three goddesses was the most beautiful. The contestants were Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Hera offered to make him king, Athena offered wisdom and victory in battle, Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Guess what Paris chose? Of course all the goddesses wanted it, but in the end the choice was narrowed down to three: Aphrodite, Hera, and Pallas Athena. They asked Zeus to judge between them, but very wisely he refused to have anything to do with the matter. His amazement can be imagined when there appeared before him the wondrous forms of the three great goddesses. The choice was not easy. Hera promised to make him Lord of Europe and Asia; Athena, that he would lead the Trojans to victory against the Greeks and lay Greece in ruins; Aphrodite, that the fairest woman in all the world should be his. Paris, a weakling and something of a coward, too, as later events showed, chose the last. He gave Aphrodite the golden apple. Chapter 4 : "Mythology, timeless tales of gods and heroes", by Edith Hamilton Mythology Intro + Chapter 1 1 Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes By Edith Hamilton Intro to Classical Mythology Greek and Roman mythology is quite generally. Chapter 5 : Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton Poseidon (Neptune) He was the ruler of the sea, Zeus's brother and second only to him in eminence. The Greeks on both sides of the Aegean were seamen and the God of the Sea was all-important to them. Page 5

6 Chapter 6 : SparkNotes: Mythology Mythology Stories Test Book:The Classical Bestseller Mythology Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes By Edith Hamilton Myths Include:Pandora, Demeter & Persephone 55, Europa, Cupid and Psyche Chapter 7 : Mythology (book) - Wikipedia Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. an overview of the novel. STUDY. and served to the gods Mythology- Hamilton. OTHER SETS BY THIS CREATOR. Chapter 8 : Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes - The Soul of Atlas Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes is a book written by Edith Hamilton, published in by Little, Brown and blog.quintoapp.com has been reissued since then by several publishers. Chapter 9 : SparkNotes: Mythology: Part One, Chapters Iâ II Her books include The Greek Way, The Roman Way, The Prophets of Israel, Three Greek Plays, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, and The Golden Age of Greek Literature. In, at the age of 90, she traveled to Greece for the first time, where the city of Athens made her an honorary citizen. Page 6