Greek Gods Monsters Explained COMPILATION 2

There are surprisingly few unambiguous villains in Greek mythology. We mostly see messy conflicts between parties of gods and or noble-blooded mortals, operating on a very different moral paradigm than that of most modern day people. And then there's Typhon, the giant screaming monster made of snakes whose exclusive goal in life is to violently overthrow the gods and plunge the universe into chaos. We can safely call this guy problematic. Most classical sources tell us that Typhon was the offspring of Gaia, the primordial earth goddess, and Tartarus, the pit that makes up the lowest reaches of the Greek cosmos. And Gaia sent their son to usurp the Olympians as revenge for their subjugation of her Titan children, which they did because the Titans were subjugating her Cyclops and Hecatogory children. Gaia isn't very good at making her kids get along, and I haven't even made a video on the Gigantamachy yet. But according to Homeric Hymn number 3 to Apollo, and also the poet Stesichorus apparently, Typhon was actually immaculately conceived by Zeus's wife Hera. The story goes she was ticked off at her husband for giving birth to Athena from his head. So to get back at him, she decided to give birth to a kid of her own, who would be even stronger than Zeus. Interestingly, this mirrors the birth of Hephaestus told in Hesiod's Theogony. Except in that one, instead of an apocalyptic monster, she just had a kind of ugly baby. In Greek mythology, monsters are usually conceived of as perversions of nature. You might take a person or an animal and give it immense size, additional heads or limbs, and maybe slap on some traits from other creatures. Typhon is all those ideas cranked up to 11. He's the largest of all Gaia's giant children, he's got hundreds of limbs all made out of screaming serpents and dragons, he's got wings, he spits fire, he's the ultimate most monstrous monster of all monster kind. So as you can imagine, Typhon didn't have a very wide dating pool, so he paired up with Echidna. No, not that Echidna, and definitely not that one. I mean Echidna, the half-woman, half-serpent daughter of the sea gods Porcus and Ceto. And from her and Typhon's loins sprang some of the most notable monsters in Greek mythology. Many of them you'll remember from the adventures of our boy Heracles, who I made three videos about, like, comment, subscribe. There's Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld, the Lernaean Hydra, a serpent that grows two heads for each one cut off, and if you've heard of a different version of the Hydra, I made a video about that, the Nemean lion with its impenetrable, though unfortunately not strangle-proof, pelt, Orthus, the two-headed dog who guarded the red cattle of Garion, and the Hesperian dragon which guarded the golden apples. They also begot the Chimera, a fire-breathing monster with the combined body of a lion, a goat, and a dragon, which was trained by a guy named Amisodorus to terrorize the countryside and its livestock. And that was a real a**hole move by Amisodorus, I have no idea what his deal was. It would eventually be slain by the hero Bellerophon, son of Poseidon, riding on the winged horse Pegasus. Classical art and literature just have him spearing the Chimera or capping it with arrows, but the later 12th century medieval poet John Tsetses describes a much more interesting battle. By the way, shout out to Publius Covitus Naso from the OSP discord for translating this passage to English, that was extremely helpful. He describes Bellerophon being unable to pierce the skin of the Chimera, so he attaches a piece of lead to the tip of his spear, and melts it over the monster's flaming breath. Then the molten lead drips into the Chimera's mouth and solidifies inside, killing it. You've probably heard this version of the story before, and may have thought it came straight from ancient Greece. It is possible that Tsetses John was working with a now-lost Greek or Roman source. In the same passage, he mentions another detail to the story which he attributes to Lycius. But given that, as far as I can tell, there's not even any classical art depicting this version of the story, I'm leaning towards it being a medieval invention. If anyone has more information though, please let me know. I find it super neat when myths evolve beyond their classical sources, and then become so ingrained that we don't even notice. Hey, it's Jake from the future, uh, I got borged by the way, and I'm almost done editing this video, but I was just informed that there's actually an earlier source mentioning the story with the molten lead. It's from a 6th century commentary on the works of Gregory of Nanzianzus, who was the Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century. So it's possible that that version of the Chimera myth originated in very, very late pagan tradition, but it's still pretty inconclusive. So yeah, thank you people of the OSP Discord for being extremely helpful for my videos. Another child of Typhon and Echidna was the Sphinx, a winged half-woman half-lion creature who preyed on the people of Thebes who failed to guess the answer to her riddle. That is, until Oedipus managed to solve it and she decided to die. And then there was the Caucasian Eagle, which Zeus would send to torment Prometheus for stealing fire. Caucasian as in it was from the Caucasus region, not Caucasian like, you know, me. And that's just to name a few. Someone get Echidna a Mom of the Year award. And a nap. And so, after Typhon was done with all that procreating, he barreled up to Olympus to make battle with Zeus. And when this happened, some of the later sources tell us that the other gods were scared, so they ran away to Egypt and disguised themselves as animals. Hermes disguised as an ibis, Apollo a hawk, Artemis was a cat, etc. And I just find that to be a very cute attempt at explaining Hellenistic syncretism. Anyway, Zeus came at Typhon wielding the adamant sickle once used by his father Cronus. But then, surprise, Typhon kicked Zeus' ass, took the sickle, and cut out all his muscle sinews, rendering him unable to move. Remember, most Greek gods can't die, so you need to get creative if you want to depose them. This would have marked a permanent end to Zeus' reign, except Hermes and Pan came to the rescue and stole back his sinews, allowing for the two adversaries to have a rematch. And while researching sources for this story, I found a fun but obscure excerpt from 2nd century poet Appian, where Pan then lures Typhon with a banquet of fish, allowing Zeus to jump in for a surprise attack. And I thought that was hilarious, so I'm including it here. Now, the final fate of Typhon differs depending on the source. Hesiod has Zeus strike him with his thunderbolt, sending him down into Tartarus for all of eternity. Except he can still annoy people with wind, apparently. But others, like Aeschylus, say that Zeus took Mount Etna and threw it on top of Typhon, pinning him underneath. And to this day, he's trapped there spewing fire from the mountain's peak, this obviously serving as an ideological myth explaining Mount Etna's high volcanic activity. The fate of Typhon's lady love, Echidna, also varies. If you ask Hesiod, her divine heritage made her immortal, and she just chills in her cave most of the time. Not too shabby. But according to the Hymn to Apollo, the same that puts Hera as Typhon's mother, Echidna wasn't so lucky. That source tells of how Apollo shot her with an arrow, sending her into a rolling fit of agony, until she died and rotted away in the hot sun. That, I gotta admit, is pretty shabby. That's too bad for her. I see a whole lot of confusion on the internet surrounding the Gorgon Medusa from classical mythology, regarding her personal background and what her story is meant to represent. Now, most people understand that myths were originally transmitted through oral tradition, and therefore there's no definitive version of any given story or character. Mythology evolves and branches off with each generation, and that process continues to this day. I'll be honest, though, it kind of bugs me how uncritical most people are when they encounter a variant of a myth that they're unfamiliar with, or that contradicts the one they know. More often than not, they simply shrug off their confusion by saying, huh, I guess that's just a different version of the story. But that could mean a whole lot of different things depending on what cultural context a myth variant originated in. With classical mythology, that could be anywhere from Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire. And beyond those periods, people have continued to iterate, revise, and spin off classical mythology into the modern day. Distinguishing the time and place a variant came from matters because that knowledge affects how we view the real people who lived there. So, in explaining Medusa, I want to carefully track her evolution over the years, step by step. The oldest traces of the Gorgon appear in prehistoric Aegean art, and when I say old, I mean old. The earliest Gorgonian, that is a depiction of a Gorgon's face without a body, is a ceramic mask found in Thessaly, which dates back to sometime between 5800 to 5300 BC, several millennia before any of our classical mythological sources. This visage, as adorable as it is, might not remind you too strongly of Medusa, but its defining traits, bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, and a wide open mouth, belong to a pattern seen throughout prehistoric Aegean artwork leading up to the Archaic Gorgon. This is the type of Gorgon we see in the Greek Archaic period, a woman with a wide face sporting almost comically grotesque features including a beard, tusks, a lolling tongue, as well as snakes in her hair and wings. The Gorgonian is probably the most striking image seen all throughout Archaic Greek artwork. Unlike most characters whose faces are shown in side profile, the Gorgon is looking straight forward, seemingly staring through the fourth wall at the viewer. It was believed that its intense gaze warded off evil, so Gorgonia appear all over the place on architecture, pottery, coins, shields, amulets, and other common items. My personal favorite are the bowls with faces at the bottom, so when you finish your meal, you get a spooky surprise. Side note, surprisingly, the words Gorgon and Gargoyle do not have a shared etymology, even though they sound similar and basically serve the same function. I just thought that was neat and worth mentioning. Anyway, regarding the mythology of the Gorgons in Archaic Greece, in Hesiod's Theogony, the sea gods Phorcus and Ceto are the parents of the three sisters Steno, Euryale, and Medusa, the latter of whom was mortal, unlike her deathless sisters. Hesiod also says that Medusa had sex with the god Poseidon, quote, "...in a soft meadow among spring flowers." This imagery may strike you as surprisingly romantic. As far as we can tell, this was a mutually consensual affair. It's important to keep in mind, however, that this is Hesiod, aka the women-are-the-source-of-all-human-suffering guy telling the story. As is unfortunately often the case with the many sexual affairs of Greek mythology, we can't be entirely certain whether or not the woman was a willing participant, because the male writer probably didn't consider that an important enough detail to clarify. Regardless, from Poseidon, Medusa conceives the winged horse Pegasus and the less well-known winged boar Chrysaor, who are birthed from her neck after she's decapitated by the hero Perseus. Homer, meanwhile, describes his version of the Gorgon as a bodiless monster from Hades whose face is brandished on the Aegis. A shield or goatskin garment used by Zeus and Athena to incite fear in their enemies. Homer also mentions Perseus, but never anything about his quest to retrieve Medusa's head, so it's possible that this story never reached him. It's generally thought that Homer lived slightly before Hesiod, but there's no hard evidence for when exactly either of them were born. They both probably lived sometime in the 8th century BC and may very well have been contemporaries. As for where they lived, Homer is believed to be from the island of Ionia close to modern-day Turkey. While Hesiod was from Boeotia in mainland Greece. So based on their distance from each other, you can see how they could have been working with considerably different mythological traditions. Another side note, I surprisingly had trouble finding references from this era to the idea that looking at a Gorgon's face turns you to stone. There's a recurring notion that the Gorgon's gaze could incite terror or even strike you dead, and some of the earliest art of Perseus shows him turning his head away while decapitating Medusa, so he clearly had reason to avoid making eye contact with her. But specifically regarding petrification, the earliest quotation I could find was from Pindar in the 5th century BC, describing how Perseus brought Medusa's head wreathed in its serpent locks to strike stony death on the islanders. I'm not super clear whether that was an intentional pun or just a fancy choice of words that were later taken literally. But by at least the 3rd century BC, we start to see explicit references to the Gorgon's petrification powers. Anyway, so the archaic Gorgon is unambiguously a monster. But that perception started to change as the years went on. As we move into the classical period, we see a greater and greater emphasis on idealized representations of the human body in art, and not even fearsome monsters could escape this broad stylistic shift. Think about every fantasy setting you've seen where male orcs look like Dave Bautista if he ate another Dave Bautista, meanwhile the female orcs are Victoria's Secret models with underbites. Turns out that's nothing new. The classical period Gorgon, takes on a more ideally feminine form, with all her typical grotesque features stripped away, leaving a conventionally pretty woman with just snake hair and maybe wings. This style of Gorgon also comes off as notably more passive. Depictions of Perseus and Medusa have him attacking her in her sleep, and many Gorgonia are now looking bashfully off to the side as opposed to giving a more assertive front-facing stare. This shift gave rise to a much more sympathetic take on Medusa's story, first seen in Ovid's Metamorphosis. In Ovid's version, Medusa was originally a human woman with beautiful hair, but after being assaulted by the god Neptune in Minerva's temple, the goddess punished her by turning her hair into snakes. Though this new backstory seems to be entirely an invention of Ovid's as a work of fiction, it's since been incorporated into the broader Medusa mythos. So while Medusa originated as a monster meant to instill fear, as her story evolved, it became impossible for us now to view her as anything but a tragic victim. She was an innocent woman who was assaulted by a man, unjustly punished for it by another woman, and then killed in her sleep by some random guy. It's no surprise then that Medusa's story resonated strongly with members of the second-wave feminist movement, and the Gorgonian once again became used as a protective symbol, now specifically for women, her grotesque visage representing rage against the injustice she suffered. And at some point after Medusa's adoption as a feminist symbol, a new interpretation emerged of Ovid's backstory, where Minerva transformed her not as a twisted form of victim-blaming punishment, but rather as a gift. With the ability to turn men to stone, Medusa would be safe from unwanted lust. But tragically, this newfound strength only turned her into a target for Perseus, who killed her to take the power for himself. I don't actually know where this particular modern revision came from. As far as I can tell, it's been circulating on the internet for the past several years. If anyone knows who first introduced it, let me know in the comments. Medusa is a perfect example of how mythology continuously evolves, even to this day, and each addition to her story makes her a more and more interesting character. However, I think we should be careful not to be so fixated on her most recent iteration that we lose sight of her rich history. Each iteration of Medusa is a reflection of the people who helped form her, from proto-Red Pill in Selhesiad to 20th century feminist writer Alana Di- Uh... I don't know if I can say her name on YouTube. So there's this neat thing called syncretism that happens in polytheistic religions, where similar gods from different cultures can, over years of exchange, merge into one figure. And when two gods combine with each other, so do their family trees. And so, when you have centuries of exchange between patriarchal societies, each of whom have their own chief god with his own far-reaching royal lineage, well, you get Zeus. Or at least this is one popular explanation for why he has such a hard time keeping it in his tunic. Zeus, of course, had a number of children with his queen wife Hera, most notably Ares, the god of war, bloodlust, and courage. Ares wasn't exactly Zeus's favorite offspring. In fact, Homer puts Zeus on record saying his ass would have been kicked out of Olympus if he wasn't his son. But while he was certainly a fearsome god, and from what we can tell, relatively unpopular in cult worship, he still has his role as a deity as we see in Homeric hymn number 8 to Ares, where he's called on to grant courage and victory to those in turmoil. Zeus and Hera also had a daughter named Aletheia, goddess of childbirth. When the hero Heracles was about to be born, Zeus announced that the next male born of his line would rule as king over his homeland. But Hera, never a big fan of her husband's love children, commanded Aletheia to prolong Alcmene's labor long enough so that Eurystheus, another descendant of Zeus, could be born first, thus stealing Heracles's birthright. Zeus and Hera's other daughter was Hebe. Her name literally means youth, and as cupbearer of the Olympians, she represented the god's eternal youthfulness. After Heracles ascended to godhood, Hera offered him Hebe's hand in marriage as a peace offering to end their long-running feud. Also, according to Pseudo-Apollodorus, Zeus and Hera were the parents of the craftsman god Hephaestus. However, other sources say he was immaculately conceived by Hera after Zeus birthed Athena. I made other videos going into detail on each of those gods' births. Now, if we look outside of wedlock, Zeus, of course, has many, many, many more kiddos. One notable love affair of Zeus's was that with the Theban princess Semele, with whom he conceived the god Dionysus. Despite his best efforts to hide his lechery, Hera, of course, found out about Semele and went to her in disguise. Under Hera's advice, she made Zeus swear an oath to grant her one wish, and then demanded that he court her in the way he would with his godly wife. Needless to say, Zeus's full-on god form was a bit much for her to handle, and she died of fright and was vaporized by his lightning. Luckily, though, Zeus snatched up their fetus son Dionysus and stuck him inside his leg to finish baking. Now, Dionysus is a complicated god with a lot of disconnected myths from various localized cults, but pseudo-Apollodorus attempted to arrange some of these myths to form a coherent narrative of the god's early career. After Dionysus was born from Zeus's leg, he was sent to be raised by a king and queen named Ino and Athamas, until Hera drove them into a child-murdering frenzy. So Zeus turned Dionysus into a kid, the goat kind, not the human kind, and brought him to live with some nymphs on a faraway mountain called Nysa. Other sources state that this was actually his original birthplace, likely as an attempt to etymologize his name as meaning God of Nysa. As a young god, his first accomplishment was, of course, inventing wine. But soon afterward, Hera struck him mad. She really likes doing that. And he spent the next several years traveling around the world, partying, starting mystery cults, and sending people into murderous frenzies. Teenagers always have their phases. At one point, he was kidnapped by some pirates. So to escape, he unleashed otherworldly horrors upon them and then turned them into dolphins. After this episode, he was finally recognized as a god and took his place among the Olympians. Another hookup of Zeus's was with the titan goddess Leto. But when Leto was in labor with the twin gods Artemis and Apollo, Hera, of course, made it her mission to make her life as difficult as possible and forbid any land from letting her give birth there. After wandering for a while, she ended up on the island of Delos, where she was finally accepted. But her trouble wasn't over yet, because Hera also distracted Aletheia from leaving Olympus to grant Leto's children birth. So Leto's labor persisted for nine nights until the messenger goddess Iris showed up to tell Aletheia her services were needed. And finally, the gods Artemis and Apollo were born. Apollo was quite a well-rounded god. His talents included music, archery, medicine, oracular prophecy, and being a huge slut. Apollo's first notable accomplishment was slaying Python, a giant serpent guarding the Oracle of Delphi, after which he became the patron deity of the sacred region of Delphi and the highest god of prophecy. Another notable escapade of his was his music contest with the satyr Marcius. The goddess Athena invented the flute, but when she realized she looked silly while playing it, she tossed it away. When Marcius found it, he went to Apollo and challenged him to a contest where the winner could do whatever he wanted to the loser. Apollo then flipped the flute and played it upside down, a feat which Marcius couldn't hope to match. And Apollo was the clear winner. But don't worry, I'm sure Marcius got off easy. We also can't forget Apollo's many, many loves, like Daphne, who didn't exactly reciprocate his affection, and while running from his advances, asked Zeus to turn her into a laurel tree. Or Apollo's boyfriend Hyacinth, who unfortunately died in a tragic frisbee accident. Apollo isn't great at maintaining long-term relationships. This, of course, didn't stop him from being by far one of the most popular gods in the entire Greek pantheon, popular enough even to apparently steal other gods' jobs. Remember what I mentioned about syncretism? Well, early tradition identifies Helios as a distinct god who drives his sun chariot across the sky each day. As time goes on, however, we start to see his role taken up by Apollo, with Helios either considered an elder titan god who was replaced, or an alternate form of Apollo himself. Then, of course, there was Apollo's twin sister, Artemis, who was a bit more of a black sheep. As a child, she asked for her father Zeus's permission to never marry, and went to live in the forest with her entourage of gal pals. Interpret that how you will. Her passion in life was hunting, but her main duty as a deity was to be a patron and protector of young women until their marriage, and to give aid to women in childbirth. Artemis usually didn't have a great relationship with men. Once, a hunter named Atreon spied on her while she was bathing. When she noticed him, she transformed him into a stag, and then his hunting dogs tore him apart. She did, however, make friends with Orion, the giant son of Poseidon who could walk on water. Unfortunately, their friendship didn't last long. According to Hesiod, Orion was such a good hunter that the earth goddess Gaia got angry and sent a giant scorpion to kill him. However, in a much later version from the Astronomica, it's said that Artemis loved Orion so much she considered breaking her vow never to marry. To prevent this, Apollo took her out to shore while Orion was strolling far out into the sea, and was like, Hey, I bet you can't hit that ambiguous large object far off in the horizon. Oh, just you wait, bucko. Ow, I'm Artemis's best friend Orion, and now I'm dead. I feel so betrayed, blah. Oh, what have I done? So yeah, I guess both those siblings have crappy love lives. And that's just to name a very small portion of Zeus's offspring. I actually wanted to cover a lot more in this video, but I'm a bit pressed for time right now because there are some other projects I'm eager to get started on over the next couple months. I'm glad, though, I was able to introduce you to a couple new gods, as well as revisit some older ones in more thorough detail. And thankfully, there's still plenty more material I can work with for a future video on this subject. Because Zeus, um, well, he's Zeus. So I got some things wrong in my last couple videos, and I figure I should acknowledge them because, like, integrity or whatever. In my Medusa video, I said Homer was from the island of Ionia, which is a dubious claim considering there is no island called Ionia. This is the Greek island of Chios, which was home to a municipality called Ionia, until 2011 when it was dissolved in an administrative reform. But that's beside the point because this isn't even the Ionia where Homer is believed to be from. That would have been this whole coastal region of Western Turkey where several Greek city-states existed in the Archaic Period. This region did actually include Chios, for what that's worth, so it's not implausible that Homer lived there specifically. I'm gonna give myself half credit for that one. Another mistake I made in that video was spelling Pegasus Pegaeus. Obviously, that was just a typo that slipped under my nose. A pretty reasonable mistake. However, in my video on Zeus's kids, I made a complete and utter blunder with my description of Apollo's music contest with Marcius. I said that Apollo won by flipping Marcius's flute and playing it upside down, but in the original myth, he actually played his lyre backwards. You know, the instrument I drew him to be constantly playing? And then he challenged Marcius to do the same with his flute, which obviously he couldn't do. It clearly says lyre in the quote that I copy-pasted from Pseudo-Apollodorus's library, so I don't have an excuse. Every time I've read this story, I've just mentally processed it as Apollo playing the flute because I guess it just made more sense to me that if they were doing a music contest, they'd be playing the same instrument, and I realize it's physically impossible to play the double flute upside down. Like, where would your mouth even go? But I thought that was the point, because Apollo's a god, so he can just do whatever he wants, even if it doesn't make sense, and that's why Marcius shouldn't have done a hubris. But no, it turns out he was doing something actually clever, and I was doing something stupid, because I can't read. I'm five years old. I pee my pants every day. I'm a baby. The Olympian god Hermes was conceived by Zeus and Maia, the daughter of the titan god Atlas. According to Homeric hymn number four to Hermes, Maia was shy and gave birth to her son alone in a cave in a mountain called Selene. Hermes was a little rascal right from the start, and soon after being born, busted out of his swaddling and wandered outside. There he saw a tortoise which he killed and used to invent the lyre. After a quick jam session, Hermes then set out to the region of Paeria where the cattle of his half-brother Apollo grazed. He made soft sandals to hide his footprints and then drove 50 of Apollo's cattle away from their pasture, having them walk backwards to make them harder to track. On his way, Hermes passed by an old man tending to his vineyard and made a polite bribe slash threat to buy his silence. Then Hermes hid the cows away near the river Alpheus, but not before sacrificing two and spreading their hides on rocks. He then returned home and slipped back into his swaddling clothes. Son, were you just up to some cunning mischief? No. I'm gonna get smited, aren't I? The next day, Apollo realized some of his cattle were missing and set to searching for them. He came upon the same old man and asked him if he'd seen anything. And stuck between the wrath of a vindictive god and the wrath of a vindictive god, he decided to snitch on Hermes. Apollo then showed up in Maia's cave and demanded a confession from Hermes or else he'd be tossed into Tartarus. But Hermes was just like, What? I didn't steal any cows. I'm just a wittle baby. I don't even know what a cow is, teehee. Apollo wasn't buying this, so the two brothers went up to Olympus for Zeus to judge their case. Hermes managed to better call Saul his way out of self-incrimination, much to Zeus' amusement. Nonetheless, he commanded Hermes to show Apollo where he hid the cattle without any more trickery. As the brothers arrived at the river Alpheus, Apollo saw the two hides left from Hermes' sacrifice and became a little freaked out imagining how strong Hermes would become if he could already skin two whole cows as a newborn baby. So Apollo attempted to tie Hermes up with two branch wives, only for him to pull his uno reverse card and command the branches to grow and encircle the cattle. Then, in order to pacify the situation, Hermes busted out his lyre and started playing some sick tunes. Whoa, those are some sick tunes. You can have all these cows if you give me that instrument. And so Hermes gave Apollo the lyre in exchange for the cattle and the two quickly became besties for life. And Hermes became the messenger of the Olympian gods as well as of Hades and a patron to travelers, herders, messengers, thieves, and all others who used the roads. Even the dead on their way to the afterlife. Now, you're probably familiar with the story of the birth of Aphrodite as first told by Hesiod, where Cronus, leader of the Titans, castrated his father Uranus and flung his severed genitals into the ocean. This produced foam, which over time formed into the goddess, who then washed up on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This is by far the most well-known myth of Aphrodite's origin. However, other sources, including none other than Homer, believed her to actually be yet another daughter of Zeus and the Titan goddess, Dione. In a way, Aphrodite could be considered one of the most powerful Olympians, as she had the ability to inspire ravenous lust in all of the gods. The only ones outside of her influence were the maiden goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia, each of whom vowed never to marry. Clearly, she got a real kick out of making Zeus, in particular, fall in love with mortals. I mean, I had to start this multi-part video series just to cover some of his most famous kids, after all. But one time, Zeus decided to turn the tables on her. In Homeric hymn number 5 to Aphrodite, he made her fall madly in love with a handsome Trojan man named Anchises. Now, you may find yourself asking, wait, how does Zeus have the power to do that if he's not a love god? And, well, this story is a good example of why terms like god of love, god of the sky, god of whatever, aren't always useful. In general, I wouldn't think of gods as having a set of super-specific powers exclusive to their domains. In practice, gods can bend the laws of nature however they want, and their god of X title is more of an indicator of the ways they usually choose to exercise their abilities. What I'm saying is, Greek gods aren't, like, Pokemon. Anyway, Aphrodite was super down bad for Anchises, but didn't want to be seen lusting after a mortal. So she disguised herself as a human and went to him claiming to be a Phrygian princess betrothed to him by order of Hermes. However, after they finished doing the thing that gets YouTube videos demonetized, she revealed her true godly form to Anchises and told him she would bear his son, the Trojan hero Aeneas, and place him in the care of the mountain nymphs for the first five years of his life before being returned to his father. But should Anchises ever tell someone that he, a mere mortal, begot a son by the goddess Aphrodite, he'd get the living shitsmited out of him. So Anchises probably didn't appreciate that someone wrote a hymn about this story. Aphrodite had a number of other lovers, both mortal and immortal, but she still can't hold a candle to Zeus's body count, probably partially because Zeus was even willing to hook up with his own siblings, not just his queen wife Hera, but also Demeter, goddess of the harvest. The two of them had Persephone, who was then betrothed to her uncle Hades. I covered that classic story in another video. Persephone is often called goddess of spring, but that's another misleading title. It's really her mother who ushers in springtime when she returns from the underworld each year. Persephone's primary role, based on surviving evidence, was as queen of the underworld. In mythology, we often see her passing judgment on mortals, sometimes showing favor to heroes like Heracles and Orpheus, who ventured into the underworld on daring quests, or imposing eternal punishment on those who disrespected her in life, like Pirithous, who had his ass permanently stuck to a stone for attempting to seduce the goddess. Now, it was also with Persephone, his own daughter, that Zeus decided to take his sexual depravity a step further and conceived the Orphic god Zagreus. Yes, that Zagreus. He was an extremely obscure god, most closely associated with the Orphic cults, and very little was written about him. Which is easy to understand. The chief god committing double incest probably would have been a little too much for mainstream Hellenic culture to swallow. And that's saying something. Though for what it's worth, there's one early fragmentary source claiming his father was actually Hades, which Supergiant gladly took and ran with. Most surviving accounts of Zagreus come at the very tail end of classical antiquity, as polytheism was fading away in the Greek and Roman world. And in these sources, there's clear influence from the Egyptian Osiris myth, which probably came into play during the Hellenistic period. The most detailed source covering Zagreus is the Dianossaca, a 5th century epic poem by Nonnus, which seems to stitch together various earlier accounts in an attempt to form a coherent narrative of the god's life. How well this reconstructed narrative actually reflects Orphic tradition, I have no idea. Our tale begins with Persephone hidden away in a cave by her mother to protect her from suitors. Zeus, however, took on the form of a serpent and snuck inside to assault her, and then she gave birth to Zagreus. As a baby, Zagreus climbed onto Zeus' Olympian throne, brandishing thunderbolts, a clear omen he was destined to inherit his father's status as king of the gods. This was of course a major threat to Hera, who would be replaced as Zeus' highest consort if another woman bore her husband's heir. So she goaded the Titans into doing away with the kid. They disguised their faces with chalk and then went to the godling, distracting him with toys. And then once Zagreus let his guard down, the Titans chopped him up into pieces. Zeus then took his son's torn-up heart and mixed it into a drink, and gave it to Semele, who then conceived Dionysus. And now, if you're curious about Zagreus' sister, Melanoe, also a child of Zeus and Persephone, you can check out this other video I've already made. Hey, I'm pretty good at this YouTube algorithm thing. So the heroic bard Orpheus was the son of the muse Calliope and Oegrus, king of Thrace, though there were also traditions that claimed his father was the Olympian god Apollo. Orpheus was the greatest musician of his time, able to spell by not just humans with his lyre but also plants, animals, and even inanimate rocks. His skills were invaluable to Jason and the Argonauts, who he accompanied on their journey to retrieve the Golden Fleece. I'll probably make a video about those adventures at some point before the heat death of the universe. He also was said to have visited Egypt and learned the secret rites of Dionysus, which he then brought back to Greece and formed the Orphic mystery cults. This story was probably created to explain perceived similarities between Greek and Egyptian cult worship. Of course, by far the most famous story involving Orpheus was of his love for his late wife Eurydice. Unfortunately, Greek writers like Diodorus Siculus and Pseudo-Apollodorus only give us short summaries of this myth. The best and most detailed classical account comes from the Roman poet Ovid. On the day of Orpheus and Eurydice's wedding, Orpheus invited the marriage god Hymen, don't laugh, to attend. But once arriving, he couldn't manage to light his ceremonial torch, signaling bad omens for the bride and groom. Shortly after the wedding, Eurydice was walking in the grass with her Nyad gal pals when she got bit on the ankle by a viper and immediately dropped dead. Orpheus was utterly crushed by the loss of his wife, and after realizing that his mourning would never end so long as they were separated, he resolved to get her back. He traveled all the way into the underworld and came before Hades and Persephone, or I guess it would have been Dispater and Persephone, cause Ovid was Roman. Orpheus then performed a passionate song, pleading with Hades to return Eurydice to the world of the living, reasoning that since all humans must spend eternity in the underworld, allowing them a few more fleeting years together shouldn't make much of a difference to the god of the dead. He also alluded to Dis and Proserpina's own romance to hopefully tug on the heartstrings a little. His song was so moving that all the tormented spirits of Tartarus stopped to listen, and not even the Furies could hold back tears. Dis then decided to allow Eurydice to leave the underworld with her husband, but not without a condition. Orpheus would have to lead the way back to the surface with his back to Eurydice at all times, and should he at any point in their journey turn around to look at her, she would have to return to the underworld. The two of them traveled silently all the way to the threshold between the lands of the living and dead. But just as he was about to pass through, Orpheus was overtaken by a sudden fear that Eurydice had fallen behind and gotten lost. And he turned around, only to watch his beloved wife disappear again into the shadows of the underworld, this time for good. Wallowing in a brand new wave of depression, Orpheus decided to officially swear off relationships with women, Gotta love those ancient Greeks. Imagine getting so red-pilled you become a pedophile. Anyway, three years after the loss of Eurydice, Orpheus put on an angsty concert for the local forest creatures, singing of handsome young men loved by the gods and women who were punished by the gods for their lustfulness. In doing so, he attracted the attention of a group of Mayonads, female worshippers of Dionysus, who in their Bacchic frenzy became enraged at Orpheus for rejecting the love of women and tore him apart. And in death, his soul returned to the underworld to permanently reunite with Eurydice, making for a beautifully bittersweet ending to this tale. So, can we talk about that whole pedophile phase he went through? So the first king of the gods was Uranus the Sky. Yes, I choose to pronounce his name like that. His mom wife was Gaia the Earth, and they had a bunch of kids together, namely the many-limbed Hecatonchires, the one-eyed Cyclopes, and the more or less normal-looking Titan gods. Uranus tossed his Cyclops and Hecatonchire children into Tartarus because of their ugliness, much to Gaia's dismay. So Gaia gave her Titan son Cronus a sickle so he could chop off his dad's junk and become the new king of the gods and set his siblings free. But once released, Cronus saw them and said, oh wow, you guys really are ugly as f**k, never mind, and sent them right back to Tartarus. So then Gaia helped the Olympian gods free their uncles and usurp their father. But once Zeus was in charge, he tossed the Titans into Tartarus, and Gaia said, okay, apparently I haven't made it clear enough that I don't want to see any of my kids imprisoned in a primordial abyss. That's kind of been the whole idea behind these divine rebellions, but I guess no one got that. Now, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, when Uranus was castrated, some drops of schlong blood landed on the Earth, and from these, Gaia eventually gave birth to the Giants. Then in Pseudo-Apollodorus' narrative, she sent these Giants to usurp the Olympians. The gods received a prophecy that the Giants could only be defeated with the help of a mortal hero. So they enlisted the aid of Heracles and set out to do battle. The giant Alcioneus was invincible due to a totally broken healing buff as long as he was within the land of his birth. So under Athena's advice, Heracles picked him up and brought him over the borders of Pelene, where he died. The giant Porphyrion was defeated when Zeus made him fall in love with his wife Hera, and while distracted, he got his ass smited by a thunderbolt-poison arrow combo attack. Heracles also teamed up with Apollo to kill the giant Ephialtes. Dionysus bonked Eurydos with his staff, Hecate burned Cletus with her torches, and Hephaestus yeeted some hot iron at Mimas. Athena skinned the god Pallas to create armor for her battle with the giant Enchilados, though this act alone was apparently enough for him to nope out of the fight. So she tossed the island of Sicily on top of him. Polybodys also was pinned under the island of Nicaeron, thrown by Poseidon. Hermes took Hades' cap of invisibility and took out the giant Hippolytus with a stealth attack. Artemis shot Gradion, and even the Fates stepped into the ring to help kill Agrius and Thoas. The rest were killed by Zeus and Heracles. This wasn't the last time the gods would have to deal with giants, though. One time, a Thessalian princess named Iphimedia fell in love with Poseidon, and the two of them hooked up and conceived sons named Otis and Ephialtes, no relation to the Ephialtes from earlier. These two brothers quickly grew to massive size, reaching over 50 feet in height by the time they were nine years old. They were also strong enough to defeat Ares, who they bound and stuffed inside a jar. He'd spend three months in there until Hermes arrived to let him loose. Otis and Ephialtes decided they wanted to take the goddesses Hera and Artemis as wives, so they began stacking mountains on top of each other in order to reach Olympus. However, Artemis transformed herself into a deer and left between the giants. The two of them, not wanting to pass up some good old-fashioned impromptu game hunting, fired their bows at the animal, only to shoot each other dead. Whew! Well, that's the last time I have mutually consensual intercourse. You're right. That's certainly the lesson we should be taking from this. Ugh.