Greek Myths

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Who or what do you recognise in the ad?

What did the ancient Greeks believe in?

1. Clash of the Titans

= the genesis of the Greek Pantheon (world of the gods)

• How many gods are there? Indicate them.
• What did the gods do?

 It was said that in the beginning there was Chaos. Chaos existed without form or purpose. And from chaos there came Gaia who was the earth and who created all the land. She was the primordial being of the earth and she would give birth to the heavens, who was known as Uranus. Gaia and Uranus who were the earth and the sky became husband and wife and together had many children.

1. Clash of the Titans

What do those three gods represent?

 It was said that in the beginning there was Chaos. Chaos existed without form or purpose. And from chaos there came Gaia who was the earth and who created all the land. She was the primordial being of the earth and she would give birth to the heavens, who was known as Uranus. Gaia and Uranus who were the earth and the sky became husband and wife and together had many children.

1. The Clash of the Titans

Indicate the Titans in the text.

What do the Titans represent?

According to Hesiod, the Titan offspring of Uranus and Gaia were Oceanus (god of the oceans), Coeus (god of intelligence), Crius (god of animals and constellations), Hyperion (god of light), Iapetus (god of lifecycle), Theia (godess of sight and vision), Rhea (godess of fertility), Themis (godess of justice and law), Mnemosyne (godess of memory), Phoebe (godess of the moon), Tethys (godess of the rivers), and Cronus (god of time). Eight of the Titan brothers and sisters married each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe, Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two Titan brothers married outside their immediate family.

1. Clash of the Titans

What happened to Uranus?

Which prophecy was made about the Titans' future?

However, Uranus was a bad father and husband. [...] This angered Gaia and she plotted against Uranus. She made a flint sickle and tried to get her children to attack Uranus. All were too afraid except, the youngest Titan, Cronus.

Gaia and Cronus set up an ambush of Uranus as he lay with Gaia at night. Cronus grabbed his father and castrated him, with the stone sickle, throwing the severed genitals into the ocean. The fate of Uranus is not clear. He either died, withdrew from the earth, or exiled himself to Italy. As he departed he promised that Cronus and the Titans would be punished. [...] From the sea foam where his genitals fell came Aphrodite (godess of love, desire and beauty).

1. Clash of the Titans

What does "Clash of the Titans" mean?

Why did Chronos' worst fear turn out to be truth? Explain briefly.

Cronus became the next ruler. [...] He married his sister Rhea, under his rule the Titans had many offspring. He ruled for many ages. However, Gaia and Uranus both had prophesied that he would be overthrown by a son. To avoid this Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born. Rhea was angry at the treatment of the children and plotted against Cronus. When it came time to give birth to her sixth child, Rhea hid herself, then she left the child to be raised by nymphs. To conceal her act she wrapped a stone in swaddling cloths and passed it off as the baby to Cronus, who swallowed it.

This child was Zeus. [...] Zeus hated his father for what he had done and plotted revenge. He made his father vomit up the other five children: Poseidon (god of the sea), Hades (god of the underworld), Hera (godess of marriage), Hestia (godess of the hearth) and Demeter (godess of harvest and agriculture). Being gods, they were unharmed. Cronus was yet to be defeated. A war started between the Titans and Cronus' children, it went on for years and for a moment it seemed the Titans were winning. However, Zeus was cunning. He imprisoned the Titans and banished them to Tartarus in the underworld. 

2. The Greek gods - myths

The hero Heracles was a bastard son of Zeus. As an infant, Zeus laid him to be breastfed by the sleeping Hera, the goddess of marriage and Zeus's wife. She woke up and threw him away, causing a little bit of her milk to splash and create the galaxy with all its stars. Hence the name The Milky Way.

The Milky Way is 10 billion years old. The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy consisting of hundreds of billions of stars. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky when you see it in a really dark area. 

Which text is the myth? 

What is the myth's goal?

Myths