Ephesus Gods
Ephesus gods and goddesses
Our ancestors created god figures in every sense. In this narrative, we will see the 12 most important gods in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. In addition, the goddess Artemis, one of these gods, had a temple of Artemis, one of the 7 wonders of the world, in the ancient city of Ephesus.
In ancient Ephesus, people felt the need to believe in superhuman powers when they encountered disasters caused by natural conditions after the fertile product nature provided them when they could not explain birth, death, and diseases to them, when they wished for the realization of their wishes and ambitions, and they formed the idea of god in their subconscious.
In societies that have completed their cultural and social development, people have created a god for every subject. Thus, Polytheism was born. Hellenic mythology is a polytheism formed in this way.
Hellenic mythology consisted of a kind of rumors and stories. There is no specific systematic. Also, myths are timeless, there is no before and after.
The myths include the relationships of gods and gods, their love, their struggles, the relationships of gods and mortals, and the adventures of demigods and heroes (Heros). It’s up to people to extract shares from narratives. It is up to believers, that is, mortals, to draw lessons from the quotations.
The intertwined lives of gods, goddesses, demigods, heroes, and people, feeling their actions, sorrows, and joys together, had a great impact on the people of the ancient world and Hellenic mythology became a part of the lives of people living in the ancient city of Ephesus.
In Hesiod’s “Theogonia”, information about Hellenic mythology was accepted. Accordingly, a schema related to gods and goddesses was created.
Based on Hesiod’s information; The children of the Ge-Uranus couple are Rhea and Kronos. From the marriage of these two, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus were born. The Ge-Uranus couple warned Rhea and Kronos that they would be eaten and subjugated by their children. Thereupon, Rheas and Kronos imprison their children in the darkness of the underworld, Tartarus.
However, their youngest child, Zeus, declares war on his father, Kronos. He defeats the Titans, who are on your father’s side. He saves the one-eyed giant (Kyklop) and his brothers. After that, the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades share the universe among themselves.
Accordingly, Zeus becomes the god of the sky and the spirit of life, Poseidon of the seas, and Hades the god of the underworld and life after life. This is how the system is established.
Hellenic mythology is then enriched by the relations of Zeus and other gods and goddesses with other gods, goddesses, and mortals. The people of the ancient world and the Ephesians formed cult centers for the gods they found close to them and believed in. They make sacrifices for them. Gods and goddesses with cults in Hellenic mythology and their brief definitions;
Gods and Goddess
God Zeus (Jupiter)
He is the god of the sky. Titles attributed to him; Rainy (Hyetios), Lightning (Astrapios), thundering (Bronton), and sending wind (Urios). Zeus is known as the father of gods and humans. Its symbols are the lightning bolt, the spear, the eagle, and the oak tree. In the depictions in the plastic arts, he is shown as a confident, strong, bearded middle-aged man holding a scepter in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other.
One of his most well-known characteristics is his flirtatiousness. Zeus, who can take the shape of anything he wants, a swan for Leda, satyr for Antiope, fire for Aegina, golden rain for Danae, in the guise of her husband for Alcmene, the cuckoo for Hera, in the form of the Virgin Goddess Artemis for Callisto, a handsome shepherd for Mnemosyne, Cloud for Io, deer for Demeter, bull for Europa is the best example of his might.
Zeus, the god of the gods, who can fall in love with everyone, mortal and immortal, is constantly followed by his wife Hera because of his debauchery. The main things that the god Zeus did for his throne are as follows: Swallowing his wife Metis, chaining Prometheus, and marrying Thetis to a mortal.
Zeus was kidnapped by his mother from his father, Kronos, and hidden by Rhea from Mount Ida on the island of Crete, and Zeus grew up there. Raised by Gaia.
The first name of the endless series of lovers of the god Zeus is Metis. Methys, who is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, is the goddess of reason and prudence on the one hand, and cunning and perfidy on the other. To escape Zeus, she took on various forms suited to the environment. She finally fell into the hands of Zeus and became pregnant from him. The child to be born was destined to dethrone his father and walk his ambitious path.
With the advice from the first couple, Zeus swallowed Metis, who was to sleep next to him, not only avoiding losing his strength but also gaining an endless source of wise advice. However, he suffered from unbearable headaches, and with the pain in which he fell, he uttered shrieks unlike those of humans.
All the gods and the universe were confused, but the arrival of Hermes and the short diagnosis of his illness were able to calm Zeus. The messenger god Hermes ordered Hephaestus to make a slit in the head of the god (Zeus). Thus, armed Athena was born not by her mother (Hera), but by her father (Zeus).
In his dealings with his godly lovers, Zeus was always torn between two impulses.
One of them was his sexual desire, and the other was his uneasiness that the child born from one of these unions would become the dominant power in the future and disrupt this hard-won order.
Although he was deeply in love with the great sea goddess, the gentle Tetohis, the daughter that Doris, who was descended from Oceanus, had given birth to from the “sea elder” Nereus, he had to renounce her for fear of losing his throne. However, this beautiful goddess, coveted by Poseidon, was destined for a mortal marriage.
Goddess Themis, whose word had the force of law, said that as a result of the union of the daughter of Nereus with a god, she would give birth to a god more powerful than the gods. The unhappy Prometheus was eager for such a thing to get rid of the punished situation he was in.
The god of the heavens gave up the hammer Tethys, if only he could keep his mind, and the girl was given to the mortal Peleus, with the matchmaker of Chiron, a Centaurus.
All the gods of Olympus rejoiced in this marriage, which will also be the source of Achiellius, the most powerful of people, and attended the wedding by presenting very nice gifts.
After the danger that Zeus escaped, without taking a break from his love life, this time he coveted Themis, the daughter of Uranus and Gaia. From this relationship, 3 daughters (hora) were born. These seasonal divinities were the watchmen who guarded the gates of heaven. Eunomia was tasked with discipline, Dike with justice, and Eirene with peace. From the same relationship were born the white-clothed Morai, whose task was to weave human destiny.
Klotho (Weaving), Lakhesis (Distribution), and Atropos (Indispensable). These girls had such power that even the god Zeus could not turn them away from their decision.
Eurynome, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and a bewitchingly beautiful goddess gave birth to three rosy-cheeked goddesses (Kharit) to Zeus. Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia. These girls, who will become virgin friends of Aphrodite in the future, are goddesses of harmony and beauty. The origin of the word “grace”, which means grace, grace, and delicacy in many languages, is based on Kharit.
The tireless Zeus was with the Titan daughter Mnemosyne for nine nights. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. She gave birth to Zeus’ nine Mousas. These are the goddesses of song, thought, eloquence, wisdom, history, mathematics, and all kinds of spiritual nourishment.
Names of the Mousas, the musical girls who hold the culture: Clio (history), Euterpe (music), Thalia (comedy), Melpomene (Tragedia), Terpsichore (Dance), Erato (lyrical chorus), Polyhymnia (religious music), Ourania (astronomy), Kalliope (epic poem and eloquence).
Zeus’ enthusiasm for love finds Phoibe’s daughter Leto, born of a Titan, Koios, this time. Leto gets pregnant from Zeus and gives birth to Apollo and Artemis. The illegality of their divine and earthly love was not in question for his marriage to Hera, and he married the angry, enraged, and not-so-godly feminine goddess of Olympus.
Zeus, the forerunner of Casanova, added many earthly loves to these many divine unions. Let us note that Zeus did not reveal his true essence or human form in the environments where love encounters took place. There it has the appearance of some sacred powers or sacred animals in nature.
For example, the beautiful, big-eyed Europhe, the daughter of the ruler Agenor and Telephassa, had turned into a very flamboyant white bull in Phoinike to smuggle it out from among her friends on the beach of Sayda.
He slowly approached the girl he fell in love with, and as soon as she got over her first fear and sat on the bull’s back, the bull started running toward the sea.
Europe was screaming and crying in despair, clutching the crescent-shaped horns, getting up and trying to turn back.
The run on the sea ended on the island of Crete, where Zeus gave the young princess a golden necklace. The necklace was made by Hephaestus as a wedding gift. In this adventure, 3 boys were born. These children, named Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon, were later adopted by Euprohe’s earthly husband, Asterios, ruler of Crete.
There is a similarity between this story and the story of Io because of the figure of the bull. Zeus loved Io, the daughter of the ruler Inakhos, and turned Io into an unborn cow to protect him from Hera’s jealousy. Hera gave the young cow to Argos to take care of.
After Argos was killed by Hermes, Hera infested the cow with a godlike horsefly, driving her to the brink of insanity.The cow, in a pitiful condition, hit the road and went from the Ionian Gulf to the Bosphorus, to Asia, and from there to Egypt. There she gave birth to Epaphus, the first of her kind in mythology.
The incorrigible licentious god Zeus also had a relationship with Leda in the form of a Swan. From their divine egg, Helene, the most beautiful woman in the world, was born. A crisis had his daughter Danae locked in a cell, fearing the fulfillment of an ominous prophecy.
Again, the god of the sky, Zeus, somehow found a way to appear to the girl in the form of a rain of gold, and from this union, Perseus, one of the greatest heroes of Greek mythology, was born.
Goddess Hera (Juno)
She is Zeus’ sister and wife. She is the grove goddess of femininity and marriage. She gave birth to Hephaestus, the god of fire, without having intercourse with her husband, Zeus. She is depicted as a middle-aged woman holding a flower from plastic art.
The greatest of the Olympian goddesses is Hera. As the legal wife of the chief god Zeus, she is under the protection and assurance of the marital bond. Because of Zeus’ fierce and vengeful jealousy of his lovers, the divinity he expresses is a frightening kind of divinity.
In the integrity and consistency of its nature, it carries all the qualities of the aggressive mother and wife. It goes as far as killing Zeus’ illegitimate children. The archaic figure of Hera certainly evokes the essence of the personality of the great Mediterranean mother goddess who could conceive alone in the richness of her mother’s quality.
But once she took her place next to Zeus, she placed her primary function of goddess-queen within the narrow framework of marriage without deviating from anything else.
Here, the daughter of Cronus and Rhea, the legal wife of Zeus, the “woman lord” goddess Hera is the highest female deity of Olympus. The goddess of marriage is the representative of married women and the marriage bond. Born on the island of Samos, Hera was destined from the very beginning to unite with the lord of the heavens as a sister-in-law.
Half of the various accounts of his marriage to the foremost of the Greek gods describe how the lover Zeus’ efforts to seduce the reluctant, indifferent goddess were crowned with success, while the other half reveals his keen initiative.
Already during the defeat of Kronos, the wedding of these two young people, who were being hosted next to Oceanos and Tethys, was held in secret.
After Zeus settled in Olympus and divided the duties and positions among the gods in a fair manner, he realized that the “cow-eyed” goddess was alone at a feast to which the gods were invited, and he went crazy.
After the girl, he climbs Mount Thornaks (Cuckoo mountain) in Arcadia, and there he passionately woos the girl, but to no avail. Thereupon, he disguised himself as a cuckoo and caused a storm. The trembling, cold, frightened cuckoo – the god lands on the goddess’s lap. He takes pity on the bird and covers it with his clothes.
Returning to his form instantly, Zeus attacks Hera and forces them to marry immediately. Many gods attended the wedding that followed. They came cheerfully and brought generous gifts. Rheia offered a tree of gold to Hera, whom she called “the first of all married women.” The Hesperides, or “evening maidens,” guarded that tree later, in Hera’s garden on Mount Atlas.
The first night of the wedding between two divine beings lasted three hundred years. After each union, the “queen goddess Hera” regained her virginity by bathing in the Kanathos spring near Argos. As the protector of married women, she balanced every positive quality with a negative one such as greed.
The goddess Hera wasn’t armed, but there wasn’t a single moment when she was soft and affectionate. With her angry, jealous, and vengeful nature, she never gave up on her husband’s lovers. He forbade Leto, the daughter of Koios, one of the Titans, to give birth anywhere in the world. Forced to emigrate without stopping, Leto was in a state of despair when he arrived in Delos.
The wandering island Delos consented to receive Leto. The lucky black goddess suffered for 9 days and 9 nights. Because Hera did not allow the birth goddess Eileithyia to leave Olympus and go to Delos. The other goddesses, who witnessed Leto’s labor pains, gave valuable gifts to persuade Eileithyia to come and sent the messenger of the gods, Iris. Iris and Eileithyia immediately landed on the island, and Leto’s pain subsided.
The children born were Artemis and Apollo. The island of Delos was rewarded by being firmly attached to the bottom of the sea using 4 pillars, and no one could disrespect it anymore, as it was a site of famous temples.
This time, the female lord of Olympus began to disturb Io, whom Zeus turned into an unborn cow to protect him from his grip. He delivered it first to Argos, then a horsefly infested him and wandered the world in a deranged state.
However, what best illustrates this resentment of the queen of the gods is probably the story of how she took revenge on Semele, the daughter of Cadmus and the mother of Dionysus. Driven by his jealousy, he persuades this girl whom Zeus loves, to ask his lover to appear with all her brilliance.
The god Zeus, who has promised to do whatever she wants, is forced to appear with his lightning bolts. In the end, Semele is struck by lightning so her death is at the hands of her lover.
The goddess Hera, who is both sister and wife in her relationship with Zeus, is also in hostility and oppositive. Even while donning Aphrodite’s magic belt, he does this to get Zeus into his hand and to make it easier for him to accept his wishes.
Goddess Hera’s bad temper, and her relentless hatred towards her rivals in love, become clear when she leads her to plot against her husband. Enraged by her husband’s immoral behavior, she brought all the gods of Olympus into this attempt, except Hestia, the virgin goddess.
While the god Zeus was asleep, they suppressed him and tied him with hundreds of knots with sturdy leather ties. Zeus could do nothing but struggle and threaten because his weapons were hidden. Tethys’ behavior was different, ignoring Zeus’ threats and the other gods’ amusement, and God took action to free Zeus.
He summoned Briareos and ordered him to untie Zeus. Since Hera was the chief responsible for this incident, the punishment to be given to Hera should have been exemplary. Zeus hung his wife and goddess Hera from the sky with 2 gold bracelets on their wrists.
God Zeus tied two golden anvils to the ankles of his wife, Goddess Hera. The screams of the goddess Hera resounded in Olympus. The god Zeus did not let his wife, the goddess, Hera, from the hanger, unless the gods swore openly and individually before him that they would be faithful to Zeus forever.
Another punishment was given to the god Apollo and the god Poseidon, who committed the crime of participating in the event. These gods were forced to serve the ruler Laomedon, and they were commissioned by the ruler Laomedon to build a wall on the city of Troy, the god Apollo, and the god Poseidon.
The feeling of hostility in Goddess Hera’s personality was not just born out of Zeus’ irresponsibility in his love life. Her target was not only mortal or godly women loved by their husbands, but she also did not spare the children born of those unions.
She had persistently turned her eyes to Dionysus and Epaphos, but her fiercest anger was directed at Heracles, whom she considered superior to the other children of the god Zeus, and had brought many troubles to Heracles.
Here, the “white-armed” goddess, was more of a scavenger of trouble and distress than of salvation and goodness. Sovereign husband and wife summoned Tiresias to arbitrate in a dispute. What they were discussing was that he should arbitrate over who had the greatest pleasure in making love. Goddess Hera thought that the man, and the god Zeus, the woman felt more pleasure.
When Tiresias said that the god Zeus was telling the truth, the god Zeus gave Tiresias a priesthood and a long life, but she was punished by blinding the goddess Hera, who was angry.
The goddess Hera, the wife of the god Zeus, who had all the qualities of a queen, would be in a terrible rage if anyone dared to inflict sensual violence on him. Out of wedlock, she hated “unclean” love. She hated the breaking of the marital bond so much that she viewed Porphrion’s and Ixion’s attempts to seduce her with great disgust and contempt.
However, what saved Hera from these attempts was the intervention of Zeus. It is rare to find examples where Hera, who is a wife in the true sense of the word, shows all the necessary qualities for that function when it comes to motherhood.
Goddess Hera did not intend maternity in marriage. Because she was a great goddess from the ancients, she alone, without a partner, could give birth to a living being.
For example, in response to Zeus, who alone gave birth to Athena, he, in turn, produced Typhon, the terrible, terrible punishment of mortals.
She gave birth to 4 children from the divine marriage of Goddess Hera with Zeus, the lord of the heavens. The “glorious lame” Hephaestus, the goddess of birth Eileithyia, the god of war Ares, and the goddess of youth Hebe.
In these, the goddess Hebe became the loving immortal wife of Heracles after Heracles ascended to Olympus. When Hebe, this descendant of the gods and the drink server of the gods, lost this task to Ganymedes, a very handsome young man from the Trojan ruling family, who was abducted by Zeus, who was surprised by his beauty, he was very upset.
Goddess Athena (Minerva)
She is the goddess of the mind. She is known as the protector and creator of art. She was born from Zeus’ head as a result of Zeus’ relationship with Metis. Titles: Champion (Promachos), Strong (Stenias), Warrior (Areia), Virgin (Parthenos), Very clever (Polymetis).
Its symbols are the shield with the head of Medusa, the helmet, and the spear. In the depictions in the plastic arts, she is depicted as an elegant and well-behaved young woman with a beautiful but strict facial expression, or a young woman with a helmet on her head and an owl, a symbol of wisdom, next to her feet.
Athena, a very ancient goddess of Greek culture, took place in the primitive earth temples, while the more subtle Ouranos (Sky) beliefs were passed on to them. A warrior virgin and wise protector of children and arts, Athena secures the cultures of ethnic groups. She is also the goddess of fertility and victory.
The goddess Athena gives unconditional support to the heroes of the Greek, Attic, and Ionian city-states. He revealed the combination of the intelligence that the thought works with and the pure power of the heroes. She has embraced both intelligence and strength.
The brilliance and charm created by the magnificent goddess appearance of Goddess Athena in Olympus reveal her wit. She has advanced in scientific discoveries with her wit. Part of the reason is that his mother is smart, resourceful, and clever Metis.
If we talk about the goddess Athena in general terms, we should know that, along with her warrior and frightening power, she also had fine and advanced skills in construction and weaving and a knack for taming horses. In Athena, the values of acting skillfully and prudently are united with a complete consciousness of civilization.
Zeus, the highest of the Olympians, was writhing in inexplicable pain, trying to fight his unbearable pain. His suffering left Zeus so helpless that he was in a terrible state of panting, screaming, and tears. The gods were hastily summoned to the meeting, but they were astonished and watched from afar.
Finally, one of the gods managed to put an end to Zeus’ unbearable suffering. When Hermes, the messenger of the gods, explained the situation to the god Hephaestus, Hephaestus immediately came to Zeus. The moment Zeus split his head with a powerful ax blow, Athena, armed from head to toe, shot out of Zeus’ head. As she sprang from Zeus’ head, Athena let out a cry that made the heavens and earth groan.
Athena, the princess goddess Athena, wearing golden armor and holding a sharp spear in her hand, put down her weapons, but she instilled great fear and terror into Olympus until she dropped them.
It was Triton, the river god, who trained Athena, the warrior maiden, equipped with a spear and shield and the famous fearsome goatskin. His playmate was Pallas, the daughter of the river god Trion. The two little goddess girls were accustomed to war games, but one day a real clash happened between them.
Pallas was about to strike Athena with his spear, when Zeus, fearing that his daughter would be injured, intervened and blocked the blow with his shield. Frightened when he saw the magic shield, Pallas could not escape the killing blow of Zeus’ shield.
The goddess Athena, very saddened by the death of her friend, wept for a long time in despair and decided to take her name, become Pallas Athena, and erect a statue in her name. He placed the frightening shield in the hand of his friend Pallas, to be honored as a goddess, next to Zeus. This statue, which is famous for the name Palladion, is of great importance in the establishment and destruction of the city of Troy.
Sea-green-eyed Athena was never portrayed unarmed, neither in painting nor in sculpture. He always has a helmet on his head, a spear, and a shield in his hand. Her maid is Nike, the goddess of victory. In the middle of the shield was a depiction of a terrifying Gorgoneion, the head of the slain Gorgo, a monster from the underworld. That’s why Athena was called Gorgophonos, that is, the one who killed Gorgo.
Since the goddess Athena is a warrior goddess, her role in the wars of the giants is of primary importance. First, he skinned and shielded the giant Pallas, then grabbed Enceladus by the hair and threw him onto the island of Sicily, rendering him unable to move.
Athena was also the protector of heroes, but not the goddess of war, but the opposite of Ares. She was always on the side of the warring, helping them and holding the hands of big cities and oppressed people, not of famous favorites like Odysseus, Achilles, Perseus, Theseus, Menelaos, and Heracles.
Although the goddess Athena was loved by her father, the god Zeus, she remained insensitive to the pleasures of love. Parthernos, or virgin, was so deeply ingrained in Athena that she blinded the young Teiresia, whom she mistakenly accused of seeing herself bathing. (However, it should be noted that to repair this mistake, Athena gave Teiresia the ability to see ahead and interpret).
Athena, who did not have a mother because she was born from the head of the god Zeus, did not have the pleasure of having a son or being with a wife.
It was said that the goddess Athena went to the god Hephaestus to buy weapons in the blacksmith’s workshop, and the god Hephaestus fell in love with Athena. Since his wife was abandoned by Aphrodite, he had a great desire for Athena, and just when he was about to have Athena, the goddess Athena, whose eyes were green, managed to get rid of Hephaestus and left Hephaestus’ seeds while she was scattering the ground.
The earth took those seeds and gave birth to Erysikhthon. His mother earth took no trouble to train Erysikhthon, a god who came out of the earth. The goddess Athena readily accepted him “with the virgin hand” and wanted to make her immortal without informing the other gods. He hid it in a basket and planted 2 snakes as guards on his head and entrusted it to Aglauros, one of the daughters of the Athenian ruler Kekrops.
Kekrops, the first ruler of Attica, became a completely positive administrator in the institutions he had built in Athens. Son of the earth, half human, half snake, this ruler lived in the Acropolis and had 3 daughters. Agrausros, Herse and Pandrosos. Pallas Athena, while giving this basket to the Kekrops family, forbade them to open the basket under any circumstances.
Only Pandrosos complied with this prohibition, the other girls Agrauros and Herse were curious and opened the basket. It cost them dearly to disobey the order of the goddess Athena. When they opened the basket, they saw the child, half of whom was a snake, and they ran frantically and threw themselves down from the acropolis. A crow brought this news to Athena.
The goddess Athena, who was very upset by this, made the crows that were white until then, into blackbirds. Raised directly by the goddess Athena herself, Erysikhthon became ruler of Athens. There is information that the Panathenaia games, which celebrate chariot races, the use of money in Athens, and the foundation of Athens in honor of the goddess, were started by Erysikhthon.
Athena Pallas, head of the court of Areios Pagos, or Ares Hill, in Athens, was the patroness of sailors, and craftsmen, especially precious metalworkers, sculptors, potters, and blacksmiths. Athena, who was also the muse of artists, was the goddess of artists interested in music.
She had invented the aulos, an instrument similar to the bagpipe. But she was an expert in all the arts more than anything else. She was the protector of weaving and weaving, she weaved what she wore, and she made the fabric herself.
Goddess Athena was so proud of this skill that one day, she saw that Arachne, the princess of the lands of Kolophon, which was connected to the state of Lydia, had embroidered the love scenes between the Olympians with perfect skill, on a very beautiful dress, and the goddess Pallas Athena, who was very upset and angry, said to Arachne.
He ripped her dress. Then he turned Arachne into a spider and the thread in Arachne’s hand into a cobweb. When Arachne climbed onto that wire, she was saved from death.
The skill and intelligence of the Goddess Athena were often geared toward keeping and maintaining peace. The conflict between Poseidon and Poseidon over the administration in Atikka ended with the victory of Athena. That is, although Poseidon threw his 3-toothed pitchfork (a wooden agricultural tool) at the Acropolis and opened a sea sense fountain, the goddess Athena planted an olive tree at the head of the spring.
In this competition, the referee was all the gods of Olympus, and these gods gave the reign of Attica to the goddess Athena.
God Apollon (Apollo)
He is the god of light, sun, music, health, and prophecy. He is the son of Zeus by Leto. It is a symbol of science and wisdom. His title is Radiant (Phoebus). Its iconic features are the bow and lyre. In the depictions in plastic arts, he is shown as a muscular young man in his 30s with ideal body lines
In Apollo, which is clearly in conformity with Anatolian patterns, we see an opposite double personality. It collects from itself the positive values of the sun god on the one hand and the frightening values of the vengeance god on the other. It manages to bring together such a profound opposition in a mixed but organic divine synthesis, and a gradual spiritualization of human impulses takes place at the level of ideas.
The god Apollo, who made the god of medicine great by giving birth to Asclepius, was also the most beautiful speaker of the gods and the chief spokesman of the god Zeus. This privilege has elevated him to the position of the wisest god, the legislator among men.
The god Apollo, who has an extremely complex personality, also symbolizes the dominance of human will over instincts. He is a god who has always managed to get rid of materiality with his instincts, by establishing a complete synthesis between impulse and common sense, violence, and serenity.
After a difficult and painful birth on Delos, Leto gave birth to the goddess Artemis and then the god Apollo. At the time of birth, Leto was kneeling in the meadow, clutching the island’s only tree. When the god Apollo was born, both the earth and the sky laughed. All the goddesses were running happily, voicing their surprise and joy aloud.
Then they washed the divine baby in clean water and wrapped it in cloths tied with golden ribbons. Instead of Leto’s milk, Themis made Apollo drink nectar, the drink of immortality, and eat ambrosia, the food of the gods. The little god baby immediately gained adult human strength and vigor.
Sweet and pleasant scents rose from the whole earth. Your swans, flying in the sky, circled the island 7 times, and were enchanted by the majestic flow of the Inopos River. Zeus himself gave his son many precious gifts as soon as he was born. These gifts were a gold cap, a musical instrument (rubab), and a chariot drawn by magic swans.
Then Zeus, the god, and ruler of the sky ordered Apollo to go to the city of Delphi. But the swans took Apollo to the land of the Hyperboreans first. Apollo stayed there for 1 year and was honored and worshiped as long as he stayed.
When the god Apollo returned to Greece, he went to Delphi. There he was greeted with dances and festivities of people and nature. Every living thing showed its enthusiasm, every river, spring, stream was flowing with enthusiasm as it had never flowed before. It was no accident that the god Apollo went to Delphi.
Because in Delphi, it would be the scene of a fierce conflict between Apollo and the snake named Python, which did not give any rest to the goddess Leto and guarded a sanctuary of Themis.
The god Apollo shot arrows several times in a row, but the injured beast chose to flee and took refuge in a temple. In the sanctuary where he would not be at all fit for a murder, Apollo killed Python. Of the temple, Mother Earth, who thought that she was insulted by such defilement, appealed to Zeus and demanded that Apollo be punished immediately. Angered by his father’s criticism and his sister Artemis’ contemptuous reminder of his duty, Apollo took action to correct his angered disrespect towards the temple.
In honor of the monster he killed, he started a periodical party called Python Games, a kind of festival. He seized the sanctuary of Themis, and there he consecrated a coffee table, and a tripod, as a symbol of his power of ignorance.
But Mother Earth was not satisfied. It was then that the young god Apollo went from Thessalia to Tempe, where he publicly confessed his guilt. But he believed in his heart that what he had done in Delphi was forgivable. Because the crime he committed was a crime against a despicable being.
The people of Delphi agreed. As a matter of fact, they would later hold a commemoration every eight years in honor of the killing of the beast and the purification of the young god Apollo.
The blessed coffee table also had an adventure. A quarrel broke out between both Leto’s son Apollo and Alcmene’s son Heracles. Both of them were fathered by the god Zeus, and with the intervention of Zeus, the problem was solved. He had struck a lightning bolt between his two sons and reconciled the god Apollo and the hero Heracles with the advice and help of the goddess Athena.
The god Apollon, a respectful son, was very devoted to his mother. Her mother, as a vulnerable woman, perhaps expected more care and attention than other mothers. One day, while he was calmly playing the musical instrument (rubab), he had to come to his mother’s aid once again.
Tityos, a giant who was fond of his masculinity, attempted to attack Leto, who was busy performing some religious duties in a grove, at the instigation of the goddess Hera. Artemis and Apollo heard the shrill cries of their mothers and ran with their weapons on. The punishment for the giant who died under the rain of arrows was brutal.
Tios would continue to suffer in Tartaros. Although Zeus was his father, he punished Tityos with terrible torture. Tityos, with his huge arms and legs, would forever remain firmly buried in the ground.
In addition to these, Apollon also has a story about the murder of Satyros named Marsyas, that is, the being with the human body and goat feet. One day, the goddess makes a double flute on antlers and plays this flute at a feast in Olympus. While all the gods there were ecstatic and listening to this beautiful music, the goddess Hera and the goddess Aphrodite laughed in an evil and mocking way and covered their faces with their hands.
Surprised and upset by this behavior, Athena retreated to a woodland and continued playing there, while looking at her reflection falling on a stream. His cheeks are swollen and he loses his confidence and joy when he sees his face go from color to color. She throws the musical instrument she has stolen, and whoever finds and plays this instrument will curse anyone, she does.
One day, Marsyas finds this flute by chance and starts playing it. Marsyas plays the flute so beautifully that he immediately achieves great fame and success. Whoever listens, accepts Marsyas as a better player than Apollo. Satyros Marsyas is very fond of these compliments and greets them with a timid smile. However, among the bad habits of the young god, Apollo is being extremely touchy and vengeful.
God Apollo calls Marsyas to competition and brings nine Mousas to the irresistible judgment and judgment. Apollo himself wins this time. However, his anger does not subside. He takes his revenge mercilessly. He skins poor Marsyas alive and hangs his pelt on a pine tree.
Apollo, the god of prophecy, informing the unknown, and music, expressed future information in the form of poetry. The competition he entered and won with Satryos Marsyas is not the only one. Another time he competed with the god Pan and defeated Pan in this match, whose referee was the ruler Midas.
Beyond his benevolence and guard, benevolence, hatred, and vengeance, Apollo was known, above all, for his striking handsomeness. With her full blonde hair formed by long shiny curls, her young and beautiful face, and her tall and thin body, she was admired by both women and goddesses. Despite his handsomeness and attractiveness, he has not always been happy in his romantic relationships.
The goddess Artemis, the twin sister of the god Apollo, is the only woman who is always with her brother god Apollo, whether in sacred entertainments, in times of great danger such as giant wars, rushing to the rescue of the Lapiths attacked by the Centaurus, Niobe destroying the children or killing Tityos. was personality. The prominence of his sibling nature has always pushed his not-so-bright love affairs with mortal women into the background.
Marpessa, the daughter of the ruler Euenos, chose a mortal as her husband, keeping Idas above the god Apollo, as she was afraid of being left when she got old. She then fled with Idas in a car provided by Poseidon.
Daphne, who is the daughter of a nymph in the Peneios River, asked her father to turn herself into a tree to avoid the lover god Apollon watching her. This is where the name of the laurel tree comes from.
Koronis, the daughter of Phlegyas, the ruler of the Lapiths, cheated on Apollo with a stranger when she was pregnant with Phoibos, the god Apollo. Angered at the disloyal woman’s behavior, the goddess Artemis also killed her to avenge the insulted love of the god Apollo. However, the still unborn baby was saved. This little boy later became the god of medicine with the name Asclepios.
Apollo and the other children are Soros from the graceful Phthia, the Korybans born to Thalia of the Mousas, Miletos from Aria, Ione the son of Creousa, and Aristaios born of Kyrene, a Mymphe.
Priam’s daughter fell in love with the graceful Cassandra, and in return for her blessings, Apollo wanted to give Cassandra the secrets of her art of foresight. But Cassandra, daughter of the ruler Priapos, refused to love Apollo after learning the art of foresight. Apollo also punished Cassandra for not being believed forever.
Apart from the many women he fell in love with, the god Phoibos Apollon did not neglect his sons either. The most famous mythology about them is that of Hyakinthos.
Thamyris, known as the world’s first homosexual, before Apollo, is in love with this very beautiful Spartan boy. To get rid of his rival, Apollo tells the Mousas that Thamyris is proud of being ahead of the Mousas in music and arts. The goddesses immediately punish Thamys immediately and terribly. They make poor Thamyris blind, deaf, and insane. The relationship between the two lovers again ends in pain.
Zephyrus (god of the west wind) is infatuated with Hyakinthos and is jealous of Apollo.
While Hyakinthos and Apollo are playing the discus throw, Zephyrus (the west wind god) changes the direction of the disc and directs it to the head of Hyakinthos, Hyakinthos dies. From the blood of the sinless child, the blue wildflower is born. The name of this flower is called Hyakinthos, that is, hyacinth.
Just as the Nymphs followed after his twin Artemis, there were always Mousas (the 9 fairies of Art) in pursuit of Apollo, the god of wisdom, poetry, and interpersonal harmony.
Because of Apollo’s son Asclepios, had to work hard on Earth. Just as Apollo was himself a healing god, his son Asclepios, the god of medicine and medicine, also took his medical lessons from Chiron, a half-man, half-horse being (Kentauros). Like most demigods, Asclepios spent his childhood with Centaurus even on Mount Pelion.
As a good doctor, Asclepios, who loved to do good to people compared to the gods he resembled, confused Olympus because he would have to submit to Hades, as it was interpreted as disrespecting the Parkas, the goddess of fate because he resurrected a dead man. Enraged by the transgression of divine laws, Zeus punished Asclepius at the instigation of his brother Hades. Zeus killed Asclepius by being struck by lightning.
God Phoibos Apollo’s reaction was directed at the Cyclops and he mercilessly destroyed them. Zeus was very angry with Apollo. He wanted to trap Apollo in Tartaros forever. But the mild-mannered Leto weeps, intervening for his beloved son Apollo.
Zeus reduced Apollo’s punishment a little. It was decided that Tantı Apollon should work in the service of a mortal for one year. God Apollo would pay the penalty for the murder of the Cyclops by descending to earth and grazing the flocks of Admetos, the ruler of Thessalia.
There is another mythology about the captivity of the god Apollo on Earth. After Goddess Hera’s plot to dethrone God Zeus failed, God Apollo was forced to work with Poseidon in the construction of the city walls of Troy. But after the work was done, the ruler of Troia, Laomedon, refrained from paying the previously agreed wage and threatened to maim the gods who lost their characteristics and sell them as captives in the market.
God Apollo, after regaining his divine power, sent a terrible plague to Troia as the God of death and plagues.
Goddess Artemis (Diana)
The goddess Artemis is the daughter of the god Zeus and the twin sister of the god Apollo. She is the goddess of fertility, fertility, and birth. She is the guardian of virginity. Its iconic features are the bow, arrow, and deer. She is depicted as a young girl holding a bow and arrow in plastic arts depictions.
Kubaba, from the Sumerian word Kug-Bau, was the mother goddess, and in time she took the name Cybele as the mother of the gods. It was very popular with the Hittites and Phrygians. Afterward, Artemis of Ephesus was Cybele of Anatolia.
Artemis, a disagreeable and vindictive girl, tends to resist sexuality and defend against the duality of sexual life. She is the first example of a goddess who dominates animals. She is the unurbanized goddess of nature, and she reinforces this superiority with her unmatched hunting skill.
Goddess Artemis has the appearance of a great and primary goddess. Primarily, he connects the personality, which is close to the vegetal realm, to the great goddess common in Persian, Semitic, and Hellenic cultures. She expresses her mystery (tremendum) with virginity, which is both attractive and repulsive.
The concept of virginity makes the goddess Artemis holy and independent and gives some tendencies that hide non-sexual characteristics beyond passion and love. The privilege that she has as the protector of pregnant and puerperal women are the basic values that allow her to mingle with both virgin and mother goddesses in Artemis.
The main qualities of the goddess Artemis, the daughter of Leto and Zeus and the twin sister of the god Apollo, were her virginity, her preference for open nature and forests as her living environment, and her skill in hunting as the queen of animals. Artemis was the goddess of great loneliness. Goddess Artemis was neither a city elder like the goddess Athena nor a temple protector like her twin sister Apollo. But he had an indisputable superiority in the animal and plant world. Goddess Artemis was the sultan of wildlife, her throne was built on a tree.
Since Leto was not in pain while giving birth to the goddess Artemis, women would mention Artemis’ name while giving birth, call Artemis and beg Artemis. In addition, it was thought that the goddess Artemis provided painless deaths, and it was known from Artemis that pregnant women died during childbirth.
The moment Artemis was born, she was faced with a situation that was both joyless and lacking in serenity. Being born before her twin, she kindly helped Leto give birth to Apollo. On the other hand, the celebrations related to this extraordinary birth on the island of Delos and the displays of happiness left the goddess Artemis emotionally indifferent.
Forever young, forever separate from the other sex, the goddess Artemis was above all a manifestation of strong vitality, the vitality of life, in contrast to the wise benevolent guardian-virgin Athena.
The goddess Artemis despised exclusively female tendencies, unnecessary talk, and gossip. With the assimilation of wildlife and independent nature, this goddess was fond of and the only thing that brought Artemis great pleasure was hunting.
When the goddess Artemis was a little girl, she only asked for a bow from her father, Zeus, who could give her everything. Then she went to the island of Lipari to the Cyclops and had very deadly and powerful arrows made for her. Weapons were not only symbolic, these arrows were also terrible tools of revenge and execution of justice. This was particularly evident in the case of the Niobe children.
The daughter of Tantalus, the ruler of Phrygia, Pelops’ sister Niobe and her husband Amphion had six sons and six daughters. The Theban ruling couple was very happy with this large family and they were proud of it to the end. This pride dazzled Niobe, who inherited not only divinity from her father, but also the excessive boasting that Zeus punished in Tantalus, and Leto became disdainful in public, with scarce offspring, a son and a daughter.
Not only that, Niobe tried to prevent the worship of the goddesses Artemis and Leto. The goddess Artemis and the god Apollo could not stand this disrespect to their mother any longer, so they took up arms and killed Niobe’s children. Niobe’s daughters were killed by the goddess Artemis, and her sons by the god Apollo.
After this disaster, Mother Niobe and Father Amphion did not live long. Amphion killed himself. Niobe, who was crying incessantly, turned to stone with pain. Then that stone turned into a rock from Siplos mountain in Phrygia, from which a spring of water was gushing.
The goddess Artemis, who was proud and looked down upon her surroundings, enjoyed skirmishes. He had participated in the war of giants and made a valuable contribution to the victory of his father, the god Zeus. He killed Giant Gration with the help of Heracles.
He had rescued the god Ares, whom the sons of Aloeus had imprisoned in a bronze jar. Although those two giant brothers, Otos and Ephialtes, wanted to reach Olympus by placing the Ossa hill on the Pelion Hill, they were blocked by the god Zeus and the goddess Artemis.
The excited, enthusiastic goddess Artemis, a hunter who wandered around with a bow and arrow in her hand, used the wild animals of which she was her queen, as weapons.
The ruler, who had failed to surpass him in the sacrificial affairs of Arcadia, sent a terrible and very large wild boar, Calydon, to burn down the lands of Oineus. Meleagros, son of Oineus, who wanted to hunt this huge wild boar, died as a result of the attack of Kalydon during the hunt.
She sent a poisonous scorpion to Orion, who tried to rape the goddess Artemis and had him killed.
The handsome Aktaion, who said that he was a better hunter than Artemis, ended up with a terrible death. While he was sleeping after a tiring hunt, the goddess Artemis spread a freshly killed deer skin on Aktaion, and the unfortunate Aktaion was torn apart by the fifty hunting dogs that belonged to him and he was always proud of.
Powerful, introverted, and ignorant of the laws of love, the goddess Artemis expected the same serious virgin behavior from the Nymphs. The most beautiful of the nymphs, the sweet Kallisto, after being together with Zeus once, could not relax, feeling the uneasiness that Artemis would hear about it. Poor Kallisto, daughter of Lykaon, had realized that she had conceived just as she had calmed down.
Callisto began to avoid confrontation with the goddess Artemis, stopped participating in the hunts, and eventually became unseen. Realizing that her favorite Nymph, Kallisto, was often lost in the forest, Artemis became suspicious and hid among the trees near the mouth of the river. Seeing that Kalliston, who came to bathe, was pregnant after undressing, Artemis, enraged, turned the beautiful Nymphe Kallisto into a bear and drove her before the dogs.
This seeing god, Zeus, intervened and transformed Kalliston into a constellation, sending him into the sky and saving the child in his womb. This baby, whose name is Arkas, has grown. Arcadia is also the land of the descendants of Arkas.
Apart from these, there is also the story of the river god Alpheios, son of Tethy, falling in love with the goddess Artemis with a very deep love. The god Alpheios, who at first was content with watching Artemis from afar and admiring her face, later began to disturb the goddess Artemis and wooed very close to Artemis.
He followed Artemis from one end of Hellias to the other, but as a result of a mocking trap arranged by the goddess Artemis to dissuade Alpheios, Alpheios left Artemis.
The goddess Artemis, who went to the city of Elis, painted her face and the faces of the Nymphes with white plaster, making herself indistinguishable from the Nymphs. Thus, Alpheios, who was ridiculed and could not find solace, accepted his defeat, could not stand the mocking laughter of the girls, and once again gave up his love for the goddess Artemis.
The goddess Artemis, who was of a rather stern disposition, softened in her dealings with her brother Apollo and her mother Leto. He had a protective, reassuring attitude toward them. Most of the time, she was armed with Apollo, be it defensive or offensive.
For example, the goddess Artemis did so in the case of the betrayals of Orion’s daughters, Metiokhe and Menippe. Her mother Leto, who was attacked by the giant Tityos, came to the aid of the goddess Artemis, earning the title of Tityophonos, who killed Tityos.
There was a time when the Goddess Artemis was gentle and loving. This was the case, for example, in the case of the beautiful Mycenaean princess Iphigeneia. The Goddess Artemis’ resentment towards the Atreus lineage was further increased after Agamemnon watched and killed a beautiful deer blindly during a hunt. The Mycenaean king Agamemnon went too far, happily saying that he was better at hunting than the goddess Artemis.
Thereupon, the goddess Artemis stopped the wind, which was very important for the ships that were on their way to Troy for the war, and caused trouble for those who participated in this expedition. Teiresias, who was consulted on what to do, said that to please the goddess Artemis, Agamemnon should sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia.
While the mild-mannered beautiful girl was crying on the sacrificial altar, the goddess Artemis found this cruel sacrifice unbearable. The goddess Artemis kidnapped Iphigeneia and took her to Tauris and made her a priestess of her temple.
The Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 wonders of the world built for the goddess Artemis in Ephesus, the Greek poet Sidon‘s BC. In his poetry of the 2nd century,
In Babylon, I saw the city walls rising to the sky,
on which horse-drawn carriages ride,
I saw Zeus in Alpheios,
A giant statue of Helios
And the hanging gardens
The magnificent structures of the pyramids on the Nile,
And I saw the mighty monument of Mousolos.
But finally, when
I saw the temple of Artemis rising to those clouds,
My figure flew away.
And I said; “Helios’ eyes are outside the high Olympus
Did you see anything else worth comparing like this?”
The prestige of the city of Ephesus was closely related to the city goddess Artemis and its reputation stemming from the sanctuary of Artemis. Artemis, beyond the borders of Ionia as an economic, cultural, and religious center, spread over a wide area in every period of Antiquity and had a great meaning. Artemision; Due to its Late Classical structure, size, quality of the material used in its construction, and unusual artistic appearance, it deserved to be a world wonder of the Ancient Age.
God Hermes (Mercury)
The god Hermes is the son of the god Zeus by Nympha Maia. He is the messenger of the gods, the protector of traders and thieves, the god of roads, and the bearer of spirits. Its symbols are the wide-brimmed hat (Petasos), sometimes the winged magic stick (Kerykeion), the magic scepter (Cadeceus), wings on his feet, and a money bag.
In the depictions in the plastic arts, he is shown as a younger man with an ideal body, and softer muscles than the god Apollo, with a hat on his head and wings on his feet, a magic stick in his hand, or a money bag.
He was a nimble, a thief, and a musician, but the most prominent feature of the god Hermes was his goodwill. Everything he did was the product of a lively and highly intelligent mind. The god Hermes had turned cynicism into art. The god of travelers, Hermes, who himself traveled at night, symbolized the divine bond between the sky and the earth, mutual exchange.
Living beings were referred to as Psykopompos, the epithet of the gods responsible for passing them to the next world. At the same time, the god Hermes is associated with strong sexuality, as he is also the god of productivity. This feature is indicated in the stone and wooden phallus figures with the head of the god Hermes on the ends.
Considering that the god Hermes is named after the columns with the god’s head figure on them, it is seen that the god Hermes is the guardian of the lands. Hermes, with a complex mythological personality, also added remarkable powers of speech and foresight to his multiple talents.
Perhaps the most beloved deity of the Hellenic Pantheon, Hermes is the son of the god Zeus, born of Maia, a nymph. Maia was the youngest of seven daughters of Atlas and the Pleiades. Maia, who has an illicit relationship with Zeus, had kept their relationship in secret from the very beginning to avoid the obvious revenge of the jealous Hera. Of all the gods, Hermes had fallen into his mother’s womb at night only under the knowledge of darkness and sun. Nine months later, it was time to give birth.
Hermes was born at dawn on the hill of Kyllene, south of Arcadia. Curly-haired Nymhe Maia immediately swaddled Hermes and laid him in a basket. When his mother, Maia, left Hermes alone, he got up from his wicker cradle and began to pursue adventure as an extremely precocious little god.
He arrived in Thessaly. From there, the god Apollo fell in love with Hymenaios, the son of Magnes, and shepherded the flock of the ruler Admetos without tiring himself. Taking advantage of this situation, Hermes stole a dozen adult cows, a hundred unbranded cows, and a bull. With the skill of a master thief, he took this flock through all of Greece to Pylos and hid it in a cave.
Hermes, the master thief, pulled the animals to the back so as not to leave any traces, and since he had no boat, he made sandals from tamarind wood and a myrtle branch. After sacrificing the two animals, he divided them into 12 pieces and presented them to the gods of Olympus. Hermes was worried that in his absence, he would be noticed and watched by his mother, Maia. So he set out to return to his cave.
On the way home, Hermes saw and killed a turtle on the way. Then he attached 2 sticks to the shell of the dead turtle and wires obtained from the intestines of the killed animals. This musical instrument (the lyre instrument) he invented made such soft and beautiful sounds that everyone who heard this sound was happy about it.
Meanwhile, the god Apollo searched all of Greece and went after the lost animals. When Kyllene reached her peak, she sternly asked Maia to return her lost herd. Maia was first surprised and then angry because she was faced with such a request and was slandered. He pointed to the child sleeping in his cradle and scolded Apollo for suspecting things that would not happen.
Leto’s son, the god Apollo, resisted and wanted to interrogate the newborn baby Hermes. As for the petty thief, Hermes, he lied, saying that he had no responsibility in this business. The god Apollo, feeling insulted and preparing to leave, noticed the drying lint hanging in the cave and found his suspicions confirmed. He took little Hermes by the ear and brought him before chief justice Zeus.
Appearing to be enraged, he ordered Hermes to return the stolen property in a serious and threatening voice. Meanwhile, the god Apollo saw the musical instrument made of gut and tortoiseshell and was so surprised by the sound it made that he offered Hermes an exchange.
Hermes would be able to keep the animals on the condition that he gives him the beautiful lyre. The two brothers agreed. This deal was repeated another day. At that time, that is, in the second exchange, Hermes invented the flute and received from Apollo the spiral staff (Cadeceus) in the form of a double serpent, which today is an allegory of medicine.
The persuasive Hermes, who speaks well and is convincing, became the messenger of the immortals. He could go from Olympus to the Earth, to the sea, and to the nether world with his magic golden shoes. He was often helpful in declaring commandments and severe punishments. The appearance of Hermes was considered a sign of salvation.
The children of Iphimedeia and Poseidon (sons of Aloeus) were a giant. Their names were Ephialtes and Otos. These brothers caught the god Ares and threw him into a big jar. God Hermes saved the god Ares. He also brought Persephone, who was kidnapped by the god Hades, back to her mother Demeter.
However, the god Hermes is most famous for slaying the hundred-eyed giant Argos, whom Hera commissioned to spy on Io, who was transformed into a cow. He was saved by the god Hermes in his fight with the god Zeus and Typhon.
The god Hermes was also very skilled in warfare. He wore the helmet of invisibility of the god Hades and participated in the war of giants and managed to kill the giant Hippolytus without being seen.
Being the spokesperson for the god’s will, whenever Hermes appeared on any matter, resistance, and tension arose at the thought that Zeus had made a negative decision. While this mischievous and playful god was only the messenger of his father, the god Zeus, he later became the executor of Zeus’ wishes.
Stones dedicated to the god Hermes were erected at road junctions since not only travelers with financial difficulties but also thieves and bad guys were gods. However, there were no writings or descriptions on these stones.
The god Hermes, a true traveler, would travel without borders. So much so that his voluntary descent into the land of the dead made the god Hermes accompany the spirits on their way.
Hermes was a very famous god, with his gregarious and thief behavior, his magical shiny shoes, and his magic jewelry with the double serpent spiral image that allowed him to sleep and wake up whenever he wanted. Because all of these powerful magic pieces were in the god Hermes. Anyone on his deathbed knew that he would make his journey with Hermes, that sweet soul companion who both enchanted and took life, and it was a reward for mortals.
The benevolent god Hermes was never the object of the anger of Zeus, the god of the gods. So much so that the title of pure-hearted (Eriounios) was used for the god Hermes. He had another title, Kriophoros, meaning the bearer of sheep and rams, as the land that fed the herds was the caretaker of the pastures in Arcadia.
The main element of the god Hermes figure was that it was masculine. In various practices, phallus organs made of stone or wood were dedicated to the god Hermes. However, the very fun and fast god Hermes has no love affairs other than his relationship with Dryops’ daughter Dryope. From the relationship of Hermes with Dryope, Pan, the masculine god of the countryside, full of exuberance, was born.
The other sons of the mischievous god Hermes are Autolykos, a first-class thief, and Daphnis, who is a gentle and calm spirit. Daphnis, a good friend of the god Apollo, learned to play the flute from his brother Pan. He was infatuated with a jealous Nymph named Nomia, who haunted him with unfounded suspicions.
When Chimaira, also a Nymph, got the faithful Daphnis drunk to do her will, Nomia blinded Daphnis in revenge. The god Hermes, deeply saddened by the calamity of his son, turned Daphnis into a spring.
Iris was the god Hermes’ partner in the duties he had to fulfill and the privileges he enjoyed. Iris, the messenger of the gods, was separated from the god Hermes because of the harshness she used in the practices of the divine commands. Iris was primarily subordinate to Hera, the chief woman of Olympus, and was Hera’s servant. Helping and protective features were not uncommon, she.
He was the son of Electra, daughter of Oceanus, by Thaumas. She was called the huge golden-winged Iris. The figure of the iris is generally considered to be associated with the light of the 7-color rainbow and therefore the bond that connects the earth, the sky, and the gods with humans.
It has wings, wears colorful tulle, and flies in the sky alone and unarmed. His sisters, the Harpyians, are winged beings with a godlike hellish personality associated with storms and hard death.
God Ares (Mars)
Ares is the god of war. He is the son of the god Zeus and the goddess Hera. It is a symbol of violence and brute force. Its symbols are helmet, spear, and armor. In the depictions in the plastic arts, he is shown as a helmeted, warrior-like youth.
Ares, the patron god of fertility and war-related ceremonies, is probably a figure from pre-Olympic mythology. The sullen, brutish Ares is also the god of youth eager to fight and conquer, and of spring, the season when wars flare up.
The god Ares, who is of Thracian origin but also seen in Celtic culture, is a god whose ferocity and ferocity do not change even when he does well. With his irrational and imprudent behavior, he often succumbs to the intelligence of other divine powers in encounters.
Over time, the character of Ares, the god of war, showed a spiritual development and softened his rough violence. With this softening, a bond was established between him and Themis, the goddess of justice, and as a result, Ares became a practitioner of justice, his moral attitude set an example for the rulers, and he began to be known as the power and forgiving of male power.
The ferocity of Ares, the god of war, was heightened by the size of his body and by the frightening, terrifying cries he uttered as he descended on the battlefield. Like Bronze, Ares was certainly a savage figure of the war. On the one hand, his animal instincts, on the other hand, the most distinctive feature of Ares from the moment he was born was cutting and cutting.
The god Ares was fully armed and armored. He preferred to fight standing up rather than on horseback.
Most of the time, devil grooms followed him, these grooms were sons of the god Ares. His inseparable friends were Enyo, the god of carnage, and Eris, the goddess of strife.
The god Ares lived in Thrace. Thrakia was a place for the god Ares, fit for his harsh, savage disposition. At the same time, the god Ares and his daughters from Harmonia, who was Nmyhe, lived in the lands of the Amazons.
The Amazons, a community of female warriors, had drawn to their father Ares with their passion for war. Defying all sorts of order, these girls had the impudent savage features of their father, the god Ares.
The god of war, Ares, almost always met with failure in his conflicts, which would increase the negativities in Ares’ nature and make his negative traits more evident.
For example, Ares, the arrogant war god, fell into a very ridiculous situation when he was defeated by the sons of Aloeus, who wanted to put the Ossa hill on the Pelion hill and reach Olympus.
In this case, the sons of Aloeus, Ephialtes, and Otos, captured the god of war Ares, and imprisoned him in a huge bronze jar. Ares, the god of war, stayed in the jar for 13 months and was finally able to get out after Hermes caught up and saved him.
There was one more thing that worsened the fate of the god of war, Ares, who was always defeated, and that was the constant disgust and hatred of the goddess Athena towards the god of war Ares.
While Ares was fighting against Diomedes with his life in the Trojan War, Owl-eyed Pallas Athena, who was rendered invisible by Hades’ magic helmet, had Diomedes shoot, Ares. The god of war, Ares, who was wounded and groaning in pain, took refuge in Olympus.
In the Trojan War, there is a situation where the god of war Ares, and the goddess Athena come face to face. Although the event is different, the result is the same. The goddess Athena throws a stone at the god Ares and the stone hits Ares. Thereupon, Ares flees to Olympus again.
In another event, while Ares’ son Cyknos, the giant, and Zeus’ son Herkales, were fighting, Ares, the god of war, wanted to intervene. Athena, on the other hand, gives wise advice to Ares so that the events arranged by fate do not change.
However, Athena, seeing that her advice was in vain, intervened and told Heracles to beat Ares himself, not Kyknos, the son of the god of war Ares. Afterward, Heracles beats Ares and Ares flees to Olympus in disgrace.
Two of the mortal heroes, Ares, who was defeated by Diomedes and Heracles and even twice by Heracles (one of them was the case of Cyknos, the other was the case of Pylos), was not a god who had victorious successes and victories. His opposition to order was manifested in his disregard for the law and the courts. However, one day the god of war also had to submit to those laws.
On the Ares hill (Areios Pagos) in Athens, while Poseidon’s son Halirrothios was trying to get Alkippe, the daughter of Ares, and Aglauros, the grandson of Kekrops, the god Ares heard the girl’s screams and killed Halirrothos without mercy. He is brought before the court for murder, and he denies the accusation, saying that he intervened to protect the honor of the Athenian princess.
Since there is no witness other than Alkippe, who confirms what Ares and his father said, the court decides that Ares is innocent and released.
The god of war Ares had an affair with Aphrodite, who was also his sister and the wife of Hephaestus. From this relationship, she gave birth to a girl named Harmonia (Harmony), who is very similar to her mother in grace and beauty, and 4 boys named Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Intimidate), Eros (Love), and Anteros (Reciprocal love).
The god of war, Ares, had a violent and bloodthirsty child. This hideous beast guarding a spring in Thebes had impregnated one of the fearsome Erinys. The killing of the beast by Cadmus drew the anger of Ares Thebes, and this situation only ended when Theban prince Meniocus sacrificed himself to make Ares’s heart.
But this time, Ares’s terrible reaction was directed at Kadmos and Kadmos had to endure an ordeal of slave life for 8 years. At the end of this punishment, the gods suggested that Harmonia, the daughters of Ares and Aphrodite, be married to Cadmus, and they got married as a result.
Three of the sons of Ares, the god of war, were killed by Heracles. These were the bandit Cyknos, who beheaded travelers, Diomedes, the ruler of Thrakia, who fed his horse’s human flesh, and Lykaoun, the smug ruler of Arcadia.
God Hephaestus (Vulcan)
The god Hephaestus is the god of fire. He is the husband of the goddess Aphrodite. He is the highest of craftsmen. He is the son of the goddess Hera. According to some historians, the goddess Hera gave birth to her son Hephaestus without a father.
Hephaestus was lame because his mother, Hera, threw his son Hephaestus off Mount Olympus. Its symbols are the anvil and the hammer. In the depictions in the plastic arts, he is shown as a young firework and a blacksmith.
God Hephaestus, apart from being a divine creator, is the god of fire and metals. He is not a very victorious god figure, both because he has a physical disability and because his wife Aphrodite constantly betrayed her husband, the god Hephaestus.
The god Hephaestus, who had a naturalist feature, was a very popular god because he helped people develop civilization.
His powers over the earth and underworld were unmatched by his fire arts and mastery of metalworking. This creator god, who added magical properties to the works he created, was not interested in the spiritual power that would rule the unique works he produced.
The god Hephaestus could make both jewelry and weapons, and he did not discriminate between them. Although the god Hephaestus had success in his love life that could not be compared with other gods, he was able to make up for his disability in the body with the abilities he had at the time of science.
He is a primary god from the pre-Olympic period and is one of the dominant masculine ones. There is a very deep relationship between mother earth and the god Hephaestus that cannot be clearly understood. The fact that it is related to the use of fire within the earth shows the power of the god Hephaestus to reach the deep and the mystery of it.
According to another account, after 300 years of sexual intercourse between the god Zeus and the goddess Hera, she fell into the womb and was born prematurely. The goddess Hera, who was ashamed of giving birth to a weak and frail child, first tried to hide her son Hephaestus from other gods, then she could not stand the ugliness of Hephaestus and threw it down from Olympus.
However, Hephaestus, who fell into the sea, was not harmed much and was saved by Thetis (the sea goddess) and Eurynome. These two goddesses raised Hephaestus in a cave under the sea with intense love. The boy Hephaestus soon turned this underwater cave into a blacksmith’s workshop.
The blacksmith god Hephaestus stayed with the goddesses who were his saviors for 9 years and made such wonderful and perfect jewelry to show his gratitude for the warm love they showed him that this jewelry soon won the favor of the gods.
Goddess Hera admired a very attractive and beautiful breastpin from this jewelry and asked the goddess Thetis who made this jewelry. When the goddess Hera learned the sad truth from the goddess Tethis, she was shocked to learn that her son was still alive.
The goddess Hera, who removed the prejudice about her son, the god Hephaestus, due to her son’s strong features, summoned her son, the god Hephaestus, to Olympus and had a magnificent and very large blacksmith workshop prepared for her son, the god Hephaestus, in Olympus. Since he reconciled with his mother Hera, he started to play an active role in the life of the gods in Olympus by doing divine crafts.
Unlike his brother, Ares, the god of war, the god Hephaestus did not get into arguments. One day, while his mother, Hera, who was fighting, wanted to get with his father Zeus, Zeus got angry and threw his son Hephaistos down from Olympus. The fall of Hephaestus took an entire day.
Both of his legs, already weak and misshapen, were broken. The decline finally ended on the island of Lemnos (Lemnos island). The Sintians, the natives of the island of Lemnos, treated Hephaestus.
It is also rumored that the god Hephaestus took revenge on his mother, who rejected him as soon as he was born, secretly and slowly. The god Hephaestus, very famous for his mastery of metalworking, had made a beautiful golden throne. However, for the poor person sitting on this throne, this throne was turning into a trap.
This throne invited his mother Hera, and the more happy Hera was when she received the throne gift, the more she saw that her fortunes had turned upside down the moment she sat on the throne. It was as if they were tied with thin but very strong chains. He felt like he would never be able to rise from the throne again.
The gods were very surprised by this. Especially when the gods asked him to dethrone his mother, Hera, when the god Hephaestus said “I don’t have a mother”, they saw that they were helpless by accepting that there was nothing they could do. Although Hephaestus’ brother Ares wanted to intervene and do something, he fled in shame, afraid of Hephaestus’ fire.
Finally, the stubbornness of the vengeful son Hephaestus was broken by Semele’s son, Dionysus. However, he did not choose a very honest path, he chose the path of deceiving Hephaestus. Hephaestus had drunk Hephaestus and had him ride a donkey out of Olympus amid the procession of all the gods.
Although under the influence of the drink, Hephaestus, who was not completely infiltrated, put forward the condition that the beautiful Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, be given to him as his wife in exchange for freeing his mother.
Against his physical formlessness, the god Hephaestus has great success in love. The number of beauties among his seducers is very high. He was married to Kharis, who symbolized the highest level of elegance, and also to Aglaia, the smallest of the Khatites and the embodiment of the concept of ornament.
However, his love affair with Pallas Athena, which the gods, titans, and giants chase after and fail, ends unhappily. He had told his father, Zeus, that he wanted to marry Athena as soon as he was born, and later developed an irresistible passion for Athena.
During the Trojan War, when the goddess went to the workshop of this skilled blacksmith to make weapons, master Hephaestus wanted to rape Athena. This harsh and rude behavior was inappropriate for the god and master Hephaestus.
Hephaestus would not have attempted such a thing if the god Poseidon had not made an inappropriate joke and told the blacksmith master Hephaestus that he would take advantage of the goddess Athena as he wished.
Uncontrollably, Hephaestus ejaculated on the leg of the goddess Athena, who was fluttering in disgust at being caught. The goddess Athena, who wiped the seeds from herself and threw them to the ground, thus fertilized the earth’s mother. From this conception, Erechtheus, the leader of the Athenians, was born.
The older and more famous is Hephaestus’ relationship with Aphrodite, his legal wife given to him by Zeus. In a short time, the goddess Aphrodite, who was held by Ares, flies away and betrays her husband Hephaestus indifferently.
When Helios, who sees everything, wakes up one morning, he sees Ares and Aphrodite on a bed in Ares’ palace in Thrace. Angry at this indecent and immoral scene, she runs and tells the situation to Aphrodite’s husband, Hephaestus.
The god Hephaestus immediately sets up a plan to show the shame of the adulterous couple Aphrodite and Ares and to make a joke of them in the presence of the immortals. He makes a very fine bronze spider web on his bed, from which no one can escape, and spreads this web on his bed. When the unfaithful goddess Aphrodite and the god of war Ares make love in this bed, the net envelops them on the bed and catches Ares and Aphrodite naked.
All the gods witnessed this event. Thereupon, the god Hephaestus threatens to divorce the goddess Aphrodite, and as compensation, he demands back a large amount of bribe money he gave while marrying Aphrodite. He appeals to his father, Zeus, to immediately cover his damage.
But when the eyes of the god Hephaestus fell on his unfaithful wife and saw Aphrodite’s naked body covered with nothing but blush from embarrassment, they realized that he could not be without her, and they soon reconciled.
They were wonderful works of art produced by master craftsman Hephaestus, who produced carefully calculated works. There was a magical side to his creative qualities. Some of the creations of Master Hephaestus were movable, such as the Golden dogs waiting at the gate of Alkinoos or the statue of Talos in Minos.
On another occasion, Hephaestus made a group of young boys, all of gold, to assist him. Being the robots of today, these boys were able to handle the most difficult tasks. The golden tables, which were used in the feasts of gods and served the gods with their three-wheeled legs, were the work of the great master god Hephaestus.
The mysterious workshop of this immortal blacksmith god made his presence known by what he produced in Etna, Vesuvius, and the volcano in Lipara or Lemnos. The bond that united Hephaestus’s god that shines during the day with the underground and underground fire was very strong. However, Hephaestus’ title of lord of fire has been overshadowed by the title of a craftsman god.
Hephaestus, who learned to process metals from Kedalion, was also a master in jewelry, bronze forging, and similar crafts. He used to work with his assistants Kabeirs and Cyclops in his workshop. Very beautiful and very special works such as the weapons of Achilles and Heracles, the shield of Zeus, the 3-toothed spear of Poseidon, the gilded ship of Helios, and the jewelry of the goddesses came out of the workshop of Hephaestus.
The god Hephaestus, who was the first mortal woman and made Pandora, known as Zeus’ punishment to humanity. The task of chaining Prometheus, splitting the head of the god Zeus with an ax to ensure the birth of Athena, and Hephaestus, as he was the blacksmith of Olympus, fell to the master.
Because he was strong and strong, he participated in the war of the Giants, killed the giant Clytios with an incandescent iron in that war, and burned Mimas badly. His weapon was very deadly. In the conflict with the Skamandros (Küçük meander) river, he defeated his opponent by drying up his waters with a powerful and unexpected blaze.
Goddess Aphrodite (Venus)
Goddess Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. Aphrodite was born in the sea of Cyprus (Aphros) from the foamy seeds that fell into the sea in the genitals of his father, Uranus. The goddess Aphrodite was born from Zeus’ hip as a result of Zeus’ relationship with Semele.
Homer describes the goddess Aphrodite as the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Its iconic features are the apple and the mirror. She is depicted as a very beautiful young girl, mostly naked or half-naked, in her expressions in the plastic arts.
The goddess of Eastern origin, Aphrodite, is the great goddess of productivity and vigorous forces. We see the intense sexuality and productivity of the goddess Aphrodite, along with the goddess-mother relationship, as well as the important mythological elements of the Mediterranean. She is the goddess of love in the most elegant sense, she is the symbol of the will to live and taste from the senses.
It is the mother of pure sexuality, independent of reproduction, and the joy of living with pure emotions. He trusts his instincts, revealing violence and anger when he is treated negatively in worship and situations of jealousy during the intense attention paid to other gods. His revenge often hit the community rather than individual individuals, and it would cause great disasters by favoring one side. The best example of this is the Trojan War.
Holding a terrible and very sharp sickle in his right hand, Kronos grasped his father’s phallus with his left hand and gave a swift blow. This unloving Titan cut off the genitals of his father, Ouranos, and threw them into the sea.
Kronos intended that the sea wanted to bury the Titans and Ouranos’ wish to have another child forever in the depths. The genitals of the immortal Ouranos drifted for a long time in the sea until white foam (aphros) formed around it.
The goddess of beauty and fertility rose from this divine foam and lay in a magical seashell until she came ashore. He reached Kythera, but because the island was small, he continued to find a larger settlement for himself. When she came to Cyprus, she decided to stay in Cyprus. As soon as she set foot on the island, colorful flowers began to bloom. Themis was furious that she was naked, and her daughters rushed for hours or seasons to dress and adorn Aphrodite.
Goddess Aphrodite had very sweet skin pleasure, softness, deep smile and received enthusiastic acceptance from the gods of Olympus. As the goddess of love and sexuality, she had a belt that she kept jealously. Anyone who wore this belt would fall in love. Everyone would run after her.
The winged figure of Ephebos (young boys), Himeros (desire for love), and the winged figure of eros, which always determines everything, as Peregoros (consumer of the pains of love), Anteros (requited love). The weapons of the Kytheran goddess were mildness and temptation. Those at his service were Peitho (Persuasion), Apathe (Trust), and Philotas (Love bond).
There were only 3 goddesses who could withstand the magical power of the goddess Aphrodite. These are Athena, Artemis, and Hestia.
By a trick of fate, the chief god Zeus had married the most beautiful of the goddesses to the lame, master, god Hephaestus. But Ourania, or Aphrodite, is madly in love with the god of war Ares, who is fierce and aggressive, ready to unite with a female at any moment, and from this relationship, Deimos, Phobos, and Harmonia are born.
Unaware of being deceived, the master of blacksmiths and miners and the god Hephaestus does not doubt his wife’s honor. However, when the god Helios, who appeared at dawn, saw the two lovers entwined in Ares’ palace in Thrakia, he informed the god Hephaestus. After that, what happened?
The god Hephaestus, who was very upset at first by the blow of the harsh truth, immediately turns the pain of his betrayal into revenge and goes to his workshop with a limp and immediately prepares a net of fine bronze chains and spreads this net over the marriage bed, which has been destroyed.
Then the unfaithful goddess Aphrodite smiled and said that she was going to the island of Lemnos for a short rest. Then he starts to wait for his plan. When the god Hephaestus sets out, the goddess Aphrodite immediately summons the god of war Ares, and goes to bed.
The trap of the lame god Hephaestus had been perfect. The chains close over the sleeping couple, leaving no openings for them to escape. The anger of the god Hephaestus is very harsh. He invites the gods to see that disgusting scene and asks them to witness how his honor has been defiled.
The unfaithful woman humiliates the goddess Aphrodite and says she will not release her unless she gets the bride price back from Zeus.
The goddesses remained in the palace because they were ashamed, but the gods gathered in the palace of Hephaestus, admiring the mastery of making the sinister web and laughing at this strangely embarrassing sight.
Meanwhile, the god Apollo and the god Hermes make some evaluations about the naked body of the Cypriot goddess Aphrodite, while the god Poseidon was ecstatic, speechless, and stunned by the beauty of Aphrodite.
The god Zeus does not intend to throw his hand into his purse, no matter how much money he will give. As a guarantor for the punishment that Poseidon and Ares, who is in love with the goddess Aphrodite, will pay instead of Zeus, he proposes that the lovers dissolve.
As soon as Ares, the god of war, is freed from the chains, he runs and takes refuge in Thrakia. The unfaithful goddess Aphrodite, on the other hand, goes to Cyprus to bathe and regain her virginity by rubbing the immortality oil of the Kharits.
The goddess Aphrodite, who liked the beautiful words of the god Hermes and fell for these words, donated one night’s love to the god Hermes, and Hermaphrodite was born from this love. This child is a divine being who symbolizes bisexuality. Later, the unfaithful goddess Aphrodite also gave two sons to Poseidon, the god of the seas. Rhodes and Heraphilos.
This very beautiful goddess had many lovers. He was met with unhappiness in his love for the charming Adonis, a mortal born out of a sinful relationship with Myrra, the daughter of Cyniras, the ruler of Cyprus.
The goddess Aphrodite had entrusted this young man to Persephone as a child, but Persephone also fell in love with Adonis and refused to give it back. The quarrels of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, over Adonis, were brought to the judgment of Zeus, the arbiter of all conflicts.
As a result of the decision taken afterward, Adonis would spend one-third of the year alone, the other third of the year with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and the remaining third of the year with Persephone.
For this reason, Adonis would be killed by a wild boar every year and red Manisa tulips would be born from his blood. From Aphrodite Adonis, the god of love was born the very beautiful Beroe, who founded Beroia in Thrace with the Golgoi ancestor on the island of Cyprus.
Another young lover of Cupid Aphrodite is Phaethon of the sun god Helios. This unhappy charioteer dared to drive his sun chariot too close to the ground and was swift to his death just as he was about to reunite with the goddess.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, gave birth to Aineias from Anchises, a Trojan prince. This love arose from a punishment given by the god Zeus for the love goddess Aphrodite to taste the pain of love.
As soon as Aphrodite, the goddess of love, saw Anchises on the top of Mount Ida, she found him very handsome and was enthralled. Then Aphrodite, the goddess of love, returned to the city of Paphos on the island of Cyprus, and came before her like a graceful mortal, scented to meet the Anchises she liked.
After the night of love, when Aphrodite showed herself in her goddess beauty, Anchises was very sad and upset about this situation. The young prince was very frightened. Since no mortal meeting with a goddess can be healthy and happy from that relationship, he begged Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to have pity and forgiveness for him.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was insulted and disillusioned and regretted that she had thoughtlessly fallen for a mortal. The goddess of love, Aphrodite, decided not to see Prince Anchises again. However, he would continue to take care of his son, Aineias.
Being a goddess of love as well as blind passion, Aphrodite knew how to seduce with the magic power of her belt, as in the case of Phaon, a modest boatman. It could also cause people to perish, as it did to Medea, who betrayed her father and killed her children.
The goddess of love, Aphrodite, had great cosmic power. She could also show her dominance and dominance upon will and madness. In her anger, she slammed the goddess of dawn, Eos, for yielding to the wishes of the god of war, Ares.
n addition, the goddess Aphrodite punished all the women on the island of Lemnos to produce such bad odors that their husbands preferred foreign women. The reason is that the women of the island of Lemnos stated that they would not worship the goddess of love Aphrodite because of the betrayal of the goddess of love Aphrodite, her husband, the god and master Hephaestus.
The women of the island of Lemnos could not stand this situation and killed all the men on the island and established a women’s society. However, with the arrival of the passengers of the Argo ship on the island, they started to have relationships with men and give birth to children again.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, later forced Kinyras’ daughters to be with strangers. To avenge the sun god Helios, who cultivated his relationship with the god of war Ares to Hephaestus, he inflicted an unnatural love in his heart for his daughter Pasiphae. He made Pasiphae fall in love with the Cretan bull, which Poseidon, the god of the sea, presented to the island of Minos.
His grace, like the hatred of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, could be sinister. At the wedding dinner of Tethys and Peleus, Eris, the goddess of incompatibility, threw a golden apple with the inscription “to the most beautiful girl” on a table.
Thereupon, a dispute broke out between the goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Thereupon, the god Zeus ordered the god Hermes to take these 3 goddesses to Mount Ida and apply for the arbitration of Prince Paris, the son of Priamos, there.
Each of the goddesses tried to influence the outcome. The goddess Hera promised wealth and power to Prince Paris in exchange for the golden apple. The goddess Athena promised wisdom and invincibility in battle in exchange for the golden apple. The goddess Aphrodite, on the other hand, first enchanted the referee Paris, then the Trojan prince offered Paris the love of Queen Helene, the most beautiful of mortals.
The winner of the contest was the goddess Aphrodite, and after the abduction of Queen Helen by the Trojan prince Paris, a long and painful war, the Trojan War, broke out. Against all the efforts and efforts of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, the Trojan prince Paris died and the city of Troia was destroyed.
Nevertheless, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, provided the salvation of Aeneas. Aeneas continued the Trojan lineage in Rome with his father Anchises and his son Iulus. The goddess of love became a highly respected goddess in Rome.
Goddess Hestia (Vesta)
The goddess Hestia is the goddess of domestic fire. She is the guardian of the home and family sanctity. Its symbolic features are the plate, the stone, and the fire. She is shown as a young woman with her head covered in the depictions of plastic art.
The goddess Hestia, a very ancient personality, is the goddess of both the private hearth of the family and everyone who is the property of the administration. It is immobile and of low importance in mythology, the coherent unity of the community, the human form of its emotion. The narratives and descriptions of the goddess Hestia are positive, as she is a benevolent goddess who ensures harmony between people.
The goddess Hestia is nobody’s wife or mother, as she specifically asked the god Zeus to preserve her virginity.
The first daughter of Kronos and Rhea, Hestia is the goddess of “January”, who was defeated by her father, who was obsessed with her being demoted, along with her siblings. After Zeus became the father of the gods, the goddess, Hestia, from the father of the gods, Zeus, although the god Apollo and the god Poseidon were falling on the goddess Hestia, the goddess Hestia wanted to remain a virgin forever, and the god Zeus accepted this.
God Zeus accepted this request of the goddess Hestia and dedicated the first of every sacrifice to be given to the gods of Olympus to the goddess Hestia.
One day, at a rich feast, Priapus, the god of reproduction and fertility, attempts to attack the goddess Hestia. The event took place as follows. The guest gods ate, drank, satiated in the abundance of the table, and then passed out and fell asleep. Priapos, the god of reproduction and fertility, is awake and in love, despite being drunk. He slowly approaches the goddess Hestia, and just then a donkey shouts. Goddess Hestia wakes up with a start and, seeing that the masculine god Priapos is about to pounce on her, begins to wail, and Priapos is frightened and ridiculously flees.
A gentle and humble goddess, Hestia wanted to avoid the quarrels of the undead.
He did not participate in the tricks of the goddess Hera to dethrone her husband, the god Zeus, nor in any bad event that would disturb the atmosphere in Olympus.
Goddess Hera very strongly defended her virginity. She remained as pure as the fire she guarded. None of the plays made by the goddess Aphrodite were in the goddess Hestia. A very humble goddess, Hestia did not criticize any god or goddess for their behavior or aspects, either positive or negative.
She didn’t brag about her character either. The peacemaker was a gentle goddess. Neither love nor a grudge event that would bring movement to his life had passed through him.
The place where the goddess Hestia, who is the protector of the house, reigns, is the house and its surroundings. What the goddess Hestia loves is not the fire itself, but her hearth, which she sees as the altar of the house.
Goddess Hestia’s authority covers the entire administration of the house. The goddess Hestia is Tamia, that is, she is a proxy who controls the work done at home and savings such as food and drink. The guests and asylum seekers were under the protection of the goddess Hestia, as the hearth was a symbol of hospitality and the right to seek asylum.
Since she did not have a temple of her own, the goddess Hestia had a venerated place of worship in each temple. Each temple had a constantly burning fire for the goddess Hestia.
The oval stone (omphalos) found in Delphi and considered the throne of the goddess Hestia was considered the center of the world.
God Dionysus (Bachus)
Dionysus is the god of wine and fertility. He was born from the hip of his father as a result of the relationship between the god Zeus and the goddess Semele. Its iconic feature is the vine tree. In psychology, it represents the manic-depressive mood. In the depictions in the plastic arts, he is shown as an old, smiling, bearded man.
It is a mythological whole among the events presented by the god Dionysus on the subjects of birth, death, and rebirth, it has an extraordinary and very ostentatious power, and it always announces its reality along with these cycles.
He is the god of the plant world, of the renewal of the seasons, but more than that of human and animal reproduction and productivity. It is representative of passion and enthusiasm.
The divine identity of collective entertainment, relaxation, and drunkenness together, supports the release of behavioral impulses that exist in human beings but are hindered by moral and social rules. With its overflowing identity of productivity and vitality, it is the constant resister of the established order.
On the one hand, it represents the outward orientation (these outward turns are embodied in the so-called Dionysian realms), and on the other hand, the re-emergence of the original Chaos.
To realize the sexual taste that stands out in the worship of Dionysus, it should not be forgotten that the symbol taken at the beginning of the ceremonial passages is a phallus and that the god Dionysus revealed his first purpose of existence with two reproductions of his own.
Dionysus was about to be the daughter of the god Zeus. This time it was something else physically that he was in the grip of. The sweet princess thought of Semele’s countenance, of her softness, of how absurd and unscathed Semele had left her death. It was these memories that crushed and hurt the god Zeus.
The daughter of the ruler Cadmus and the Goddess Harmonia immediately liked the gentle princess of Thebes, and disguised as a mortal, the god Zeus began to meet with the princess Semele.
The relations between the god Zeus and Princess Semele were very passionate and happy, but the relations between the gods were as smooth as possible. As soon as the goddess Hera learned of this affair with her husband, Zeus, she immediately took action. The female lord of Olympus provoked the young woman Semele, who was six months pregnant at the time, to ask her lover Zeus for something.
What Princess Semele wanted was that she should appear to Princess Semele as the god Zeus looked to the goddess Hera. The god Zeus was reluctant at first and turned down Princess Semele’s request.
But since he had previously promised the prince that he would grant Semele’s every wish, the god Zeus could no longer resist the insistence of his beautiful lover, Princess Semele, and when the thunders appeared among the lightning bolts, the beautiful Semele was burned to death at that moment when she was struck by lightning.
The god Zeus took his unborn child from the deceased princess Semele and put it on her hip and went to Olympus. The boy stayed in Olympus for 3 months. When the moment of birth came, Zeus went to the eastern hill of Nysa and gave birth to the child on the hill of Nysa. The god Dionysus came out of his father’s hip and came under the loving patronage of Hermes.
The god Hermes entrusted the god Dionysus to the Nymphs, who were semi-divine beings, neither mortal nor immortal. The life of the nymphs depended on the life of the trees. The drying of the tree meant the death of the Nymphs. Therefore, the Nymphs, who were afraid of Hera’s wrath, fled before they could look at the god Dionysus.
The god Hermes then took the godchild Dionysus to Semele’s sister Ino and her husband Athama, the Aeolian ruler of the city of Orkhomenos. They readily accepted the little godchild Dionysus and sent the godchild Dionysus to avoid Hera’s wrath. They dressed her as a girl and hid them in the royal palace.
But the goddess Hera, the female lord of Olympus’s learned everything and took her revenge again. First, he drove the ruler Athamas mad. The insane ruler Athamas drew his bow and killed his son Learchus with an arrow, and then dismembered Learchus’ body. Thereupon, Ino took his other son, Melikertes, with him and fled.
During the time of the child god Dionysus, he got involved in this event and saved the life of Ino and his son by blinding the ruler Athamas and making him shoot a deer. After the unbearable disaster that fell on his nest, Ino threw him and his son Melikertes into the sea from the cliff.
But the god Zeus did not want to let the hospitality and kindness of Ino to the child god Dionysus go unrequited. Therefore, he did not allow Ino and his son to go to Hades and added Ino to the immortals. Ino became “Ino Leukothea”, the protector of the sailors who were in trouble.
Ino’s son, Melikertes, mounted a dolphin and went to the isthmus of Corinth. Festivals and entertainments called Isthmus games or Isthmos games are semi-religious performances dedicated to Melikertes.
Among the great gods, the flesh god Dionysus, whose mother is mortal, has ivy wrapped around his body. Had he not been born by the god Zeus, he would have been one of the heroes, not a god. The jealousy of the goddess Hera in all areas of life did not fail to harm the god Dionysus.
So much so that the goddess Hera can be called “the ordeal of Dionysus”. When he was younger, Dionysus was at the age to play five stones, hopscotch, and ball, and at the instigation of the goddess Hera, the god Dionysus was attacked by the Titans and was torn apart by them. It is said that the Titans cut the god Dionysus into 7 parts.
They put the pieces of the god Dionysus in a cauldron and boiled them on a steel plate. The Titans, the god Dionysus, started to fry the pieces that were broken and boiled later.
Hearing the smell of frying, the god Zeus rushed to the place where the monster feast of the Titans would take place and burned the Titans by being struck by lightning.
Fortunately, Pallas Athena saw the death of the god-child Dionysus, saved his beating heart, and hid it in a drawer. Here, the god-child Dionysos Zagreus was born from this heart. That’s why the god Dionysos is called Trigonos, meaning “born three times”. Trigonos Dionysus, born of Princess Semele, from the hip of the god Zeus, and his own heart was protected by the goddess Pallas Athena.
The godchild Dionysus spent his life on the Nysa hill in Helikon, under the protection of the Nymphs, who hid him in a cave and fed him with honey. God Trigonos Dionysus had produced wine, which would be a means of comfort to death and the key to open the way to ecstasy, on the hill of Nysa, far from civilization.
Despite the feminine behavior of the god Dionysus to hide his clothes and personality after he grew up, the goddess Hera realized who Dionysus was and became completely enraged and mad. Afterward, the god Dionysus was on the road in trouble. The god Dionysus took with him the faithful Silenos and a group of ponytailed Satyros, the goat-tailed Silenos, and the Mainads.
Proteus, the righteous ruler of Egypt, welcomed the god Dionysus in a friendly way. God Dionysus offers wine to the ruler Proteus. Afterward, he fought a war with the support of the Amazons against the Titans, who had deposed the ruler Amon at the mouth of the Nile (Neilos) river, and won that war. God Dionysus headed east, met the ruler of Damascus there, defeated him, and skinned the ruler of Damascus alive.
Later, the god Trigonos Dionysus arrived in India and introduced viticulture to the people there and laid down proper laws. When she arrived in Phrygia on her way back, her grandmother Rheia had now purified the god Dionysus of his crimes and the curse of the god Hera.
But Lykourgos, the ruler of the Aedons in Thrakia, brutally attacked the god Dionysus and his companions, and the god Dionysus was afraid of this attack and threw himself into the sea.
The goddess Thetis acted thoughtfully and saved the god Dionysus, and sentenced the ruler Lykourgos to lose his mind. Sovereign Lykourgos, thinking he was chopping down a vine, killed his son Dryas with an ax, savagely dismembering the corpse before he realized what he had done.
This terrible murder committed by the ruler Lykourgos terrified the people of Thrace, and then the people began to suffer a severe famine. So much so that the whole of nature was badly affected by this disaster. When the god Dionysus came out of the sea and said that unless the guilty ruler Lykourgos died, the unproductiveness of the land would not improve, the people of Thrakia inflicted a terrible punishment on their ruler Lykourgos.
They took the ruler Lykourgos to the mountain of Pangaion, tied his body to the angry, enthusiastic wild horses, and had him torn to pieces.
When the god Dionysus returns to Greece, he meets Pentheus, the ruler of Thebes, once again, but the ruler Pentheus does not want the god Dionysus to enter the country. The ruler Pantheus is the son of Agaue, one of the three sisters of the mother of the god Dionysus.
Her other two siblings are Autonoe and Ino, the first of them is the mother of Aktaion, who was torn apart by her dogs when she tried to act like the goddess Artemis, and the second is the mother of Melikertes, who took the name Leukothea with her identity as the sea goddess.
The ruler Pentheus, disliking the messy and disorderly life led by the god Dionysus, arrested Dionysus and his friends. But he suddenly lost his mind and tied a bull instead of Dionysus. By this time, the Maenads were also in a frenzy, running up and down the hills, shouting and killing and tearing the calves.
At the head of these women, ecstatic with wine, was Agaue. As Agaue’s son and ruler Pentheus tried to resist them, he was torn apart by his ecstatic mother, Agaue. Added to this brutal murder of the ruler of Thebes was the helplessness and horror in which the murderer was his mother, and her mother Agaue fell.
When Agaue passed away from her drunkenness and saw the head of her son, the ruler of Thebes, Pentheus, in her hand, she understood the horror of her worship.
The god Dionysus, who passed from there to Tiryntos, also blew the minds of the daughters of the ruler Proitos. All three girls fell into an inexplicable frenzy because they did not want to accept the rules of the Dionysian rites. Their bodies were covered with white spots. In their madness, they not only got carried away by nasty fun but also believed that they were cows and that they could mate with the bull god Dionysus.
The oracle Melampus claimed that if the ruler gave Proitos a third of his reign, he could heal his daughters. But when the ruler Proitos turned down this offer, this madness and desolation began to spread all over the country like a dangerous epidemic.
All the women of the country were insane, killing their children and then throwing themselves into the forest. Ruler Proitos had to give Melampus what he wanted. The priest Melampus healed all the women in the land of Tiryntos.
The god Dionysus gave a terrible reaction even though the daughters of Minyas, the ruler of the city of Orkhomenos in Boeotia, also disrespected him. When these princess girls refused to participate in immoral rituals and dances, they lost their minds and began to wander in the mountains, unable to restrain their sexual desires. Minyas’ daughters later became night owls.
During their adventurous journey, the god Dionysus and his friends stopped by the island of Naxos, where he had to fight the greedy pirates of the Tyrren Sea. These rude men deceived the god, Dionysus, took him on the pirate ship, and then turned their route to Asia. They intended to sell the god Dionysus as a slave.
However, no pirate could hold the god Dionysus they had deceived with a rope and a willow branch. The god Dionysus could not help but laugh at the ignorance of the pirates, who did not know that the person they had captured was a god.
Later, he began to amuse himself by distracting himself with spells and enchantments. He wrapped a vine stump with lots of bunches on the main mast of the ship, forming ornamental wreaths.
The vines of the vine did not stop, spreading all over the ship. Then the god Dionysus turned into a lion surrounded by wild animals. The pirates had to jump off the ship. All the pirates on the ship turned into dolphins.
There were always dancing Mainads or drunken Silenos around this mysterious god, Dionysus, who did not look like many of the Olympians. They would go from place to place between the leaps of panthers, lions, and wild goats. Wherever he appeared, the god Dionysus would attract everyone and arouse awe and awe.
Even if it was well-intentioned, it was rare that your work did not yield disastrous results.
One day, the god Dionysus, in disguise, was a guest in the modest house of Attica farmer Ikarios and gave him a vine stump. This gift did not bring good luck. Several shepherds, to whom farmer Ikarios gave wine, came together and killed farmer Ikarios under the influence of the drink. Because these shepherds were the first to meet this drink in Attica, and they thought they were poisoned and killed the couple by smashing Ikarios to pieces.
The god Dionysus, a young man with a coy manner and almost a woman’s delicacy, spread joy to his admirers, distracted them from their pains and sorrows, and made them breathe amidst their troubles. However, in addition to this apparent calmness, there was also his disparaging nature, which did not come near anyone too much.
His arrogant indifference to the suffering of both men and gods was evident in his indifference during the War of the Giants. However, in that war, the god Dionysus killed the Giant Eurytos in one hit with Thyrsos (his unique stick with a wall ivy and an apple-shaped top wrapped around a vine).
Because of his frightening personality, the god Dionysus was also called Zeus born from the fire of lightning (Bromios). The god Dionysus never appeared as a savior god. Despite the sexual enthusiasm that characterizes him, he has not had great love affairs.
The wife of the god Dionysus was not a goddess but a Cretan princess named Ariadne. The god Dionysus made his wife, Princess Ariadne, a protector from death and aging. The mother and father of Ariadne, the only real-life companion of this bearded god Dionysus, are Pasiphae, the daughter of the ruler Helios, and the ruler Minos.
Ariadne had a crush on Theseus and helped him get out of the labyrinth by killing the bull-headed Minotaur, who was also born by Pasiphae.
The young hero of Athens, Theseus, had promised to marry Princess Ariadne. After the Minotaur died, the two of them boarded the ship and escaped. After docking at Dia, the island of Naxos, Theseus sailed away alone, leaving Ariadne asleep on the beach.
The god Dionysus went to comfort Ariadne, cheered her up with his music, and offered to marry and save her. Princess Ariadne accepted this offer from the god Dionysus and became the wife of the god Dionysus. However, we can also think that the god Dionysus had his eye on Ariadne in advance and waited for the right time to come.
Goddess Demeter (Ceres)
Goddess Demeter is the goddess of fertility. She is the sister of the god Zeus. The symbols of the goddess Demeter are the horn of fertility and the ear of wheat. She is depicted as a young woman carrying a cornucopia and an ear of wheat in depictions in the plastic arts.
The Goddess Demeter is a great divine being who embodies virginity and motherhood, which are two opposite qualities.
The core of the religious games of the city of Eleusis, the mythology of the abduction, release, and ransom payment of Persephone (Kore), the daughter of the goddess Demeter, brings with it very remarkable deep interpretations.
First of all, it is not easy to bring Demeter to the level of a universally powerful goddess. The Goddess Demeter can be identified with mother earth and cultivated soil. The myth of Demeter established a system of allegories that easily solved the mysteries of the cultivated land.
Kore– The Demeter identity is a personality that emerges with the myth of a divine virgin, the wife of a second god, in the sense of the greening of the land, generally in cultures for cultivating the land. It should be noted that the bond that unites Persephone (Kore) with Demeter is an identity.
These features are two different aspects of the universally large and single female figure, which manifests itself in the ambivalence that is contradictory both as a girl-woman and as a virgin-mother.
The old woman, who seemed to have suffered severe injustice from her appearance, was watching her four beloved girls, who noticed her loneliness and helped her, with a tired and indifferent attitude. These 4 young girls, who had come to get water from the nearby holy fountain with a bronze jug, saw the wrinkled-faced woman sitting on the side of the road, and they acted kindly and took care of the old woman.
The four young girls were the daughters of the Eleusinian ruler Keleos. These girls added to the freshness of their youth with unmatched grace and kindness. The old woman was very upset about this situation, and they immediately took care of the old woman and took her to the palace and offered to take her to the palace as a nanny.
The foreign old woman entered the residence of the ruler Keleos, dressed in mourning clothes, with her face covered. This old woman was greeted by the ruler Keleos’ wife, Metaneira. Queen Metaneira had her child Demophon in her arms.
As the sad and ugly-faced old woman passed through the door of the ruler, her divine identity, with its superhuman dimensions and brilliance, was revealed.
The godly power displayed by the goddess in her old and ugly appearance created great respect, astonishment, and sacred fear among the people in the palace.
The terrified and suspicious Queen Metaneira wanted to put the goddess on her throne, but the goddess refused this offer. One of Queen Metainera’s servants, a servant named Iambe, brought a chair for the old and ugly-looking goddess Demeter to sit and rest. She laid green wool on the chair. The lonely, wounded goddess, who had suffered and remembered her daughter Persephone, fell into a quiet sadness without moving.
He could not forget the heartbreaking cries of the beautiful Persephone, which an eerie fate had snatched from him. While Persephone was playing with the daughters of Oceanus in a grove of fragrant flowers, Hades suddenly had a beautiful daffodil bloom.
The little goddaughter was astonished and admired this daffodil flower. Just as Persephone was getting ready to pluck the daffodil, the ground cracked and the god Hades, riding in a black chariot pulled by immortal horses, came out of the crevice.
Hades, the god of the underworld, who got permission from his brother god Zeus to kidnap Persephone, kidnapped the little girl who was crying and trying to resist but her screams were not enough and took her to the underworld.
With Persephone’s pleas, she was calling out to her father, the god Zeus, but Zeus was of no use to Persephone. But Helios and Hecate, the glorious son of Hyperion and Theia, heard these pleas. After listening to Helios and Hecate in Goddess Demeter, she set out to look for her daughter Persephone in despair, with unbearable pain.
But no one, whether god or human, wanted to help the goddess Demeter. The seas roamed the hills until the goddess Demeter, with her black clothes, said the all-seeing eye, the sun god Helios, the name of the one who kidnapped Persephone, the goddess Demeter’s daughter, for 9 days and 9 nights. The anger and resentment of the goddess Demeter had turned into a strong desire for revenge.
Goddess Demeter refused to live in Olympus because of her constant pain. Unbound on earth and wandering around with a disguised appearance, she finally arrived in Eleusis.
The fact that the ruler Keleos and his family respected and accepted the goddess Demeter did not affect the goddess Demeter at all. He did not want to accept the food and drink offered in the name of the goddess Demeter and any opportunity that would allow the goddess Demeter to stay in the city of Eleusis. The goddess Demeter was still grieving for her kidnapped daughter and was embittered.
Meanwhile, Queen Metainera’s old servant Iambe managed to brighten up the goddess Demeter’s face by making interesting jokes and saying witty words. He offered her a glass of wine, but Demeter turned it down because she was in mourning. She couldn’t say no to the hot mint barley water offered instead, and she accepted his offer to be a nanny for little Demophon.
Now the goddess Demeter was lovingly caring for the newborn Demophon and rubbing her body with an Olympian ointment to make the little Demonhop immortal, she kept it in the flames of a sacred fire every night. One night, Queen Metaneira saw this ritual performed by the goddess Demeter on her son Demonhop and wanted to put an end to it by falling into unwarranted anger.
Then the goddess Demeter became enraged and turned into a goddess. She was dazzling with her immortal beauty, but she could not bear the narrow-mindedness of mortals, and she could not bear it. The goddess Demeter was enraged at this, and she openly told Queen Metaneira who she was and ordered that a temple be built in her name, saying that this evil done to her would not go unpunished.
Goddess Demeter, who was also the protector of messengers and messengers, not only did not want to return to Olympus but also prevented the buds of plants in the world from growing. The Goddess Demeter’s willful expulsion from her homeland had caused a great famine. The land was barren. The work of the oxen and the plows did not work.
Hermes, the messenger of the gods, sent the goddess Iris to summon the goddess Demeter. However, the goddess Demeter did not reverse her decision. The god Zeus then sent a delegation to Demeter, one of the gods of Olympus, to present very nice gifts, but this attempt was also unsuccessful.
Zeus, the eldest of the sons of Kronos, had no choice but to turn to Hades, the god of the underworld. The god Hermes was commissioned to descend into the depths of the nether world.
Hermes descended into the underworld and sweetened Hades, the god of the underworld and poverty, to persuade the god Hades to release his daughter Persephone so that the anger of Persephone’s mother, the goddess Demeter, would subside and she would cease to seek vengeance.
The dark, curly-haired god Hades wasn’t too bothered by what was asked of him. He didn’t even seem to mind that his young wife, Persephone, had left. He even helped his wife, Persephone, with a smiling face, while Hermes was getting into his car.
However, the ruler of the underworld had previously offered a pomegranate seed to the young goddess Persephone, and Persephone ate the pomegranate seed because she was unaware of the laws of Avernus. In doing so, the goddess Persephone was forced to spend a third of the year underground. The remaining two-thirds of the goddess Persephone would be able to spend with her mother, the goddess Demeter.
The meeting of the mother-daughter passed in an atmosphere of joy, in which everyone participated. Happiness and joy were universal. At the request of the blonde goddess Demeter, the barren lands were revived and covered with abundant and lush plants.
Demeter had calmed down now. Before going back to Olympus, she taught Keleos’ son Triptolemus secrets that only he knew. During the cultivation phases of the land, the goddess Demeter directly trained her student Triptolemus. Demeter gave Triptolemus wheat germ, a wooden plow, and a chariot drawn by magical snakes. In addition, the goddess Demeter commissioned her student Triptolemus to introduce and spread agriculture among the people.
Although Demeter’s maternal tendencies were strong, she had few necessary qualifications to be a wife. She had many lovers, but she did not have a husband who was always by her side. She gave birth to a beautiful and despised daughter, Persephone (Korea), without the consecration of marriage from her relationship with the god Zeus, who was also her brother.
At the wedding feast of Cadmus and Harmonia, Demeter fell in love with Iasion, a young mortal hunter from Crete. The lovers, immersed in the air of revelry and intoxicated with the flowing drink at the feast, went to a three-plowed field and made love there.
It was obvious what they were doing when they returned to the feast, and there was so much mud on their clothes that the god Zeus, who dared to sleep with his sister, was very angry with Iasion because of this arrogance and struck him with lightning. Born Ploutos, he became the god of home wealth and abundance, and comfort in the lives of the villagers.
At another time, Poseidon, the god of the seas, had fallen in love with the goddess Demeter, who was desperately searching for her daughter Persephone. Demeter, who was very upset and exhausted, did not want to get together with Poseidon. Trying to escape from Poseidon afterward, Demeter disguised herself as a mare.
While grazing calmly among the cattle of Onkos ruler Thelphousa in Arcadia, Poseidon, disguised as a stallion, raped Demeter. From this union, the unnamed Nymphe, called Despoina, meaning only lady and the horse god Areion was born. The goddess Demeter was enraged by her sister’s attack.
Due to the attack of her sister Poseidon, the goddess Demeter was very angry, so the goddess Demeter was called Demeter Erinys, giving the goddess Athena and the goddess Artemis the title of the terrible Gorgo. The goddess Demeter, who had to bathe in the river of Ladon to get rid of the hatred and anger that gripped her, was only then able to return to her former soft spirit.
But these are different appearances of the goddess Demeter from her real identity. Goddess Demeter has always been respected by people, primarily with her motherly suffering, benevolent and civilized personality.
The wide reign of the goddess Demeter on earth began at the point where the reign of the wild nature, the great virgin goddess Artemis, who was outside the civilized world, ended.
God Hades (Pluoton)
Let’s also give some very important information. Hades, the god of the underworld, whom we all know closely from the mythology world, is not shown among the gods living in 12 Olympus, since he does not live in Olympus.
The god Hades is the god of the underworld who rules over the dead. He is the sister of the chief god Zeus and the god Poseidon, the goddess Hera, the goddess Hestia and the goddess Demeter. Its symbols are Cerberus and the helmet of invisibility. In plastic arts, he is depicted as a black-haired and bearded man using a scepter and a crown.
The name of the god Hades means invisible. The gloomy palace where it sits underground has marble doors and bronze sills. Anyone who has crossed those thresholds once and passed through those doors can never come back. The god Hades was locked in his palace and did not appear on earth again, except for the event that the goddess.
Demeter abducted her daughter, the goddess Persephone. He is the god of the dead and the underworld, and from the very beginning, he is assumed to be a productive divinity depending on the abundance and the periodicity of the seasons. His wife is the beautiful goddess Persephone (Korea), who is the daughter of the goddess Demeter.
The 3 sons of Kronos (Zeus – Poseidon – Hades) divided the universe between them after dethroning their father. They had extracted the symbols of various properties from a single helmet, promising each other that these results were irreversible.
According to this division, the land would be the common property of all. The sky fell to the god Zeus, the sea to the god Poseidon, and the underground to the god Hades. The god Hades had become the undisputed lord of the black earth, the plantless and lightless place of pain and sorrow. His palace, located at the end of the world amid terrible rivers and unknown swamps, was surrounded by eternal darkness.
Mysterious rivers flowed through the underworld, Cocytos, the river of groans, Akheron, the great river of rotten and stagnant water, through which Charon crossed in his boat, and the river Styx, whose waters were immortal.
When the souls of the dead descended into Hades, dead human souls would always have 2 obols with them. The relatives of the deceased would not neglect to put this money next to the corpse. The dead would pay this fee to the sullen Kharon when they arrived at the Tartaros gate, which was difficult to pass because the dead had no other way back. Charon took the souls of the dead and passed them to the other side of the river Styx.
The river Styx curved westward, encircling Tartaros. Kerberos, the three-headed dog on the west side, ruthlessly smashed and devoured the living that wanted to get in and the dead that wanted to get out. The souls that finally arrived in Tartaros were separated according to where they came from.
Rhadamanthys, the ruler of Knossos, gave the judgment on the Asians, and Aiakos on the Europeans. More obscure events were assigned to Minos, Rhadamanthys’ brother, and legislator of Crete.
There were 3 paths on the path of the judged souls. It was the place where the souls of the dead, moderate in good and evil, while alive, went to the gloomy meadow with Asphodelos grass on it. The souls of the evil dead were sent to Tartarus, the darkness of the mists. The souls of the righteous and the righteous and well-dead went to the Garden of Elysion, where joy reigned. The Garden of Elysion was given to Kronos.
Among the strange beasts and mighty of the underworld, Adonis reigned over the unknown peoples. It had a magnificent, dark, and dominant identity. Adonis was called Katakhthonios Zeus, meaning underground. With his scruffy beard and messy hair, his disregard for his appearance would make his face even harder.
One day, Asclepius, the god of medicine, resurrected a human, but Adonis complained harshly to the god Zeus, who was very angry that one of his people was missing. Thereupon, the god Zeus killed the good-hearted Asclepius with a lightning strike and drew the anger of his father, the god Apollo.
The god Hades generally disagreed with the god’s rules, and he rarely appeared on Earth. Almost every outing was due to a love affair. Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter, was also the niece of Hades. While Persephone was playing with her friends, the god Hades kidnapped Persephone.
Persephone’s (Kore) father, the god Zeus, could not prevent the kidnapping of his brother Hades. On the other hand, the god Zeus could not prevent the vengeance of the goddess Demeter, who went into law with the pain she felt for the loss of the girl.
Goddess Demeter was stubborn and not a single bud was blooming in the world. When the god Zeus ordered his daughter Persephone to be sent back to her mother, the goddess Demeter, the god Hades submitted to his brother, the god Zeus, but gave Persephone a pomegranate seed and forced her to return to the underworld, Avernus. Persephone, queen of the underworld, would spend a third of the year underground with her husband. The god Hades and the goddess Persephone had no children from their union.
In another event, when the god Hades was about to seduce a nymph, Minthe, Hades’ wife Persephone came and immediately turned Minthe into a fragrant herb, mint. Another event is when Leuke, who is also a nymph, turns into a white poplar when he is attacked by Hades, the lord of the nether world. This white poplar rose beside the Fountain of Memory (Mnemosyne).
Hades participated in the Battle of the Titans, despite being an incompetent and escaped god in society. This helmet was made by the Cyclops for the god Hades, who was invisible when he put it on his head. He did not participate in the War of Giants. His character was unclear, but he had a ruthless personality. He enjoyed the suffering of others.
He collided with Heracles and was defeated. The hero Heracles injured the god Hades by hitting him on the shoulder with an arrow, and the god Hades had to take shelter in Olympus afterward. In Olympus, Paion, the physician of the gods, healed the suffering god with a magical ointment.
Queen Persephone, who knew how to behave well, but who did not fall short of her husband in cruelty, had Hades nicknamed Plouton from the word Ploutos, which means wealth. Because this hell couple combined the Korean productivity of the ground with the underground Hades realm, which hides precious and mysterious metals.
There are many gods, goddesses, and mythologies to be told at length. We know the importance of gods in the ancient world, and we are trying to understand the communication of gods and goddesses with each other, as well as between mortals and humans. I tried to explain the gods and goddesses in the shortest way possible. The main question is, among the gods and goddesses of the ancient world, which of the characteristics suits you?