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Shaw Mythology
Classical Allusions
Question | Answer |
---|---|
Achilles | his mother dipped him in the river Styx to give him immortality but neglected to include the heel she held him by |
Adonis | a mortal youth who was loved by Aphrodite for his great beauty and later killed by a wild boar |
Aphrodite / Venus | goddess of love and beauty |
Apollo / Sol | god of the sun; patron of healing |
Arachne | mortal who was a great weaver and very arrogant of her ability; Athena turned her into a spider |
Ares / Mars | god of warfare |
Artemis / Diana | sister of Apollo; drives a chariot that carries the moon; goddess of the hunt |
Athena / Minerva | goddess of wisdom and warfare; was “born” full-grown and wearing armor |
Centaur | race of being half man and half horse |
Cerberus | three-headed watchdog who guards the entrance to Hades |
Chaos | the void which came into being before anything else |
Cronos | he castrated his father and became ruler of the universe |
Cyclops | race of one-eyed giants |
Daedalus and Icarus | imprisoned in a labyrinth; built wings from wax and feathers; the son fell but the father escaped safely |
Dionysus / Bacchus | god of wine and revelry |
Eros / Cupid | god of love; pictured as a winged boy |
Europa | a princess whom Zeus raped and abducted |
Hades / Pluto | God of the Underworld; god of wealth |
Haphaestus / Vulcan | god of fire; a blacksmith; the only god who is deformed |
Hercules | son of Zeus and a mortal; famous for his great strength and endurance |
Medusa | young woman whose crowning glory was her hair; Athena turned her hair into snakes and gave her the power to turn anyone who looked directly at her into stone |
Mercury | the messenger of the gods |
Midas | was given his wish that everything he touched would turn to gold |
Minotaur | half man half bull, wild and violent, demands sacrifices yearly of Greek youths and maidens; imprisoned in the labyrinth |
Narcissus | gorgeous man who admired himself; he got stuck peering into a pond, admiring his reflection, and became a flower that grows there |
Echo | cursed with not being table to speak her own thoughts but only repeating what others said |
Nemesis | goddess of retributive justice or vengeance |
Odysseus / Ulysses | name means “man of wrath"; hero of the Odyssey; masterminded the Trojan horse |
Oedipus | abandoned at birth by his parents who were trying to avoid a horrible prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother |
Pan / Satyr | half man and half goat, with a tail, pointy ears, and an immoral nature, usually plays pipes |
Pandora | first mortal woman; sent to Earth as punishment to Man; opens a box which releases all human ills into the world |
Paris | son of the last king of Troy; forced to award a golden apple to one of three women whom he considers the most beautiful; steals Helen and starts the Trojan war |
Persephone | daughter of Demeter whom Hades marries and takes to Hades; spends six months of the year below ground with Hades and six months above ground with her mother |
Demeter / Ceres | the goddess of agriculture and fruitfulness; guardian of marriage |
Phoenix | a bird that is immortal, but dies in self-guilt pyre every 500-600 years and then is reborn from the ashes; a symbol of rebirth and / or immortality |
Poseidon / Neptune | god of the sea |
Prometheus | a Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to Man |
Psyche | goddess of emotion; great mortal beauty whom Venus is very jealous of because of her beauty |
Sisyphus | sentenced by Zeus to forever push a boulder up a hill, only to fail before it reaches the top |
Styx | the river that divides the land of the living from Hades, the land of the dead |
The Sirens | a group of nymphs who lived on an island and lured men to their destruction |
The Titans | ruled the world after having dethroned their father Uranus, the first ruler of the universe |
Zephyr | the west wind |
Zeus | king of the gods |