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alt title(s): Greek Mythology
The mythology of Greece and Rome is the source of many tropes, as well as well-known gods, heroes and monsters. An important element of Ancient Greece.
Classical mythology is sometimes referred to as Greek Mythology by people who don't think the Romans contributed much.
For the record: the main alteration of the Romans was to rename all the characters, and produce the Aeneid, an anvilicious piece of imperial propaganda which chronicles the Romans' claim to a Trojan pedigree and fabricate prophecies of the rise of the Caesars. (This is not to deny the ''Aeneid's'' widely recognized literary merits, just to say that it was also an anvilicious piece of imperial propaganda).
However, contrary to common belief, Roman mythology isn't completely identical and according to Rome's own legends became closer to Greek mythology around the end of the monarchy and the foundation of The Republic. Before that, Roman mythology was probably (though records are sparse) more similar to that of their closer neighbors - the Etruscans. Take, for instance, the emphasis on complicated divination methods that were alien to the Greeks or the fact that some of their gods, such as Mars or Saturn, are largely different from their Greek counterparts.
Essentially, think of the Roman version as a Continuity Reboot if that helps. It's not really, but it's a close enough analogy.
The Aeneid was a sequel to and imitation of the Greek Iliad, which is attributed to Homer. The Odyssey was the original sequel to The Iliad, written in Greek and supposedly by the same guy who wrote The Iliad, though we really don't know. (Especially since Homer was a blind, illiterate poet who relied solely on oral recitations.)
The central figures of Greek mythology were the Twelve Olympians: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hestia. In Homer's portrayal, they were basically super-powered humans without the super- that comes standard with powers these days. Zeus, for example, was a philandering rapist, responsible for a large share of the god-human hybrids running around. Many of these became great heroes, the most famous of which was Hercules Heracles Herakles. Though you'd think Zeus's wife (and sister) Hera would be a sympathetic character, she spends most of her time taking out her frustrations on said heroes. Other gods engaged in similar behavior. Hades, while not as evil as his theme-park version, got his wife by kidnapping her (with Zeus's approval and assistance). This prompted the girl's mother, Demeter, to create winter in retaliation.
The Titans were a previous generation of gods overthrown by Zeus, though in The Theme Park Version they tend to be treated as another class of beings entirely. There were also minor gods such as the muses, graces, and nymphs, and various monsters which you can today read about in the Dungeons And Dragons Monster Manual.
It should be noted that Greek and Roman religious ideas were not monolithic. In later years, people began worshiping all kinds of newfangled eastern gods. Plato wanted to outlaw Homer's epics because he thought their gods were bad role-models. (Considering their lack of Comes Great Responsibility, he may have had a point.) Philosophers exercised various degrees of skepticism towards the old myths, to the point that the Epicureans were accused of atheism. Some historians, notably Euhemerus, tried to reinterpret the gods as having originally been great kings. The Epicurean writer Lucian of Samosata was already deconstructing popular religious stories in the second century AD. Belief in classical mythology gradually waned between the second and fifth centuries, largely due to the spread of the then-new religion Christianity.
In addition to all this, the Greeks (and, later, the Romans) had a habit of identifying and referring to other people's gods by the names of their own deities. So a Germanic tribe might be said to said to worship Mercury if their principal god was similar enough to the guy. There was also strong regional variation in worship of individual gods, both in emphasizing individual gods and particular attributes of the various gods.
Tropes:
- Achilles Heel: Trope Namer that is surprisingly notThe Iliad. That is the story of his rage, but it doesn't cover many of the famous parts of the Trojan War, including his death and the creation of the Trojan Horse. In fact, the Achilles Heel myth is not even referenced in the text, and Achilles is more known for his skill, strength, speed, and ferocity than for being nigh-invulnerable.
- Achilles In His Tent: Trope Namer again, though not the only example.
- Actually I Am Him: Odysseus disguised as a tramp.
- Adam And Eve Plot: Deucalion and Pyrrha
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Trope Maker in the version of the myth where Hippolyta falls in love with Hercules.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: After marrying the homely smith-god Hephaestus, Aphrodite had an affair with Ares, the god of war, behind his back.
- All Men Are Perverts: The myths are so filled with perversion that it might be harder to find one where no man does anything perverse.
- In one classic tale, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite are having a competition to see who was the fairest. They choose some yokel shepherd prince, a fellow named Paris, to judge. Each offers bribes: Athena wisdom and martial prowess, Hera success and fame, and Aphrodite a chance to get laid with the hottest woman alive. Paris thinks with his smaller brain and goes for the girl. Turns out she was already married and didn't much care for him, but what's the worst that could happen? Incidentally, some versions of the story have him already married to a nymph named Oenone.
- Fridge Logic on his part. 1) That really isn't an equivalent offer to the other two! 2) If he was a Chessmaster, he could have gotten her using a Xanatos Gambit! 3) To be more specific didnt Hera actually offer what amounts to world domination? As Emperor of the World, he could of got a whole harem! 4) Athena offered omniscience which could of led to the same thing! I would have went with HERA!
- There are a number of tales in which Zeus seduces or forces himself on pretty girls while taking seemingly random shapes.
- Ganymedes was an example of when he did that to a guy, also a rare occasion where Hera did not get jealous! Her jealousy must be gender specific?
- Practically the only subversion of these in the whole mythos is with Perseus, who, as far as the tales go, has only ever slept with a single woman and was pretty much the only male who never raped anybody, once again proving himself the only decent classical hero in all of Greek Mythology.
- All Of The Other Reindeer: The other gods ostracized, mocked and pitied Hephaestus because he was ugly; despite him being the creator of all their Iconic Items.
- All Star Cast: About half the point of the story of the Argo and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar were to gather a ridiculous number of well-known heroes together in one place.
- Angel Unaware: Zeus and Hermes did this in the legend of Baucis and Philemon.
- Anything That Moves: Zeus's appetite for pretty mortal girls is quite storied.
- Attempted Rape: When Poseidon's son Alirrothios tried to rape Ares's daughter Alkippe, Ares killed him. Poseidon tried to prosecute him, but he was acquited.
- Back From The Dead: Persephone, Bacchus, and Orpheus, just to name a few.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Midas
- Bed Trick: Herakles' conception.
- Bolt Of Divine Retribution: Zeus was known for hurling thunderbolts at people who annoyed him.
- Blind Seer: Tiresias
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Sisyphus managed to cheat death by chaining up Thanatos. However, doing so messed up the whole cycle of life and death. So eventually the impulsive Ares frees Thanatos, and Sisyphus was dragged to underworld. His punishment? Sisyphus must roll a boulder up a steep hill... But it will always roll back down again whenever he's almost at the top, forcing him to perform this pointless task forever.
- Broken Aesop: Considering how many of the gods and goddesses are KarmaHoudinis in their stories, there aren't really any good lessons taught by them, aside from "Don't piss us off." Not to mention that they were frequently pissed by people just being born as beautiful as they are or more.
- The Greek gods pretty much epitomized the idea of "do as we say, not as we do" even before Values Dissonance gets added in.
- The Gods' behavior was exactly why they were gods in the first place. Incest was illegal among humans, but not the gods... Why? Because they're the gods! They practiced incest to show they were gods and above such petty laws of mortals.
- Brother Sister Incest: Classical Myth has an interesting take on this: Zeus (Jupiter/Jove) is married to his sister, Hera (Juno). Though they have children together, she is often exasperated at her husband's philandering, most notoriously in the case of Herakles (Hercules). Indeed, that much-vaunted hero's name was an attempt to placate Hera. In addition, both Zeus and his brother Poseidon (Neptune) have children by another sister, Demeter (Ceres).
- Cassandra Truth: Trope Namer
- Chained To A Rock: Andromeda and Hesione
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Hera is a Jealous Wife, but rightfully so, because her job as goddess of family and marriage runs in direct opposition to her husband's very promiscuitive ways.
- Persephone turned the nymph Minthe into the mint plant as revenge for sleeping with her husband.
- Clingy Mac Guffin: The Ring of Polycrates.
- The Crown: Athena.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: Surprising in a world of Jerkass Gods and excessive heroes, but one actually exists in Classical Myth with the story of Baucis and Philemon: after being the only people in their village to grant a disguised Zeus and Hermes the Sacred Hospitality despite their poverty, they are granted a wish for doing so. They wish to die at the same moment so that they would never be widowed. As if that wasn't enough, Zeus throws them something extra: when they do die, they are turned into trees with branches entwined forever to symbolize their love.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Usually it is, but Hades and a few other death related entities appear as being neutral if not downright helpful towards humans.
- Death By Sex: most of the immortals' human consorts... if they were lucky
- Death Takes A Holiday: Sisyphus and Thanatos
- Depending On The Writer: Lots of characters, lots of writers, lots of variation
- Did Not Do The Research: a character, Paris, who (if he had) might've realized that his current squeeze, Helen of Troy, was actually protected by an oath amongst many leading Greek heroes, all of whom had competed for her hand in marriage but feared that, if they won, the others would gang up on him. Finally Odysseus said, "Let's all swear that, whoever she chooses, we'll all defend that man against interlopers if necessary." They did. This is how her husband managed to convince a not-really-unified collection of city-states to go to war against Troy.
- Different For Girls: Achilles in a disguise.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Maybe they all want to make an example of those foolish mortals?
- Double Standard: See Calypso's rant at the beginning of the Odyssey about how gods get to sleep around, but goddesses don't. Note that bad things can happen to consorts of either.
- The Double Standard was reversed in those days from what we're used to: I'm A Woman, I Can't Help It.
- On the other hand, in Homeric Hymns, we are told that while Hestia, Athena, and Artemis are immune to Aphrodite's power, Aphrodite had mated every god with mortal women, and every other goddess with mortal men. The hymn then recounts how Zeus saw to it that she got mated to a mortal man, to avoid too much trouble in Olympus.
- Downer Ending: Many myths have this kind of ending, although there are some that have a somewhat happy ending.
- Dressing As The Enemy: The Iliad
- Driven To Suicide: When Oedipus answers the riddle correctly, the sphinx is so upset that she kills herself.
- Also Narcissus, who was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection by Aphrodite as punishment for cruelly rejecting all the girls who fancied him. Realising he could never love anyone else so much, he stabbed himself.
- Dude Shes Like In A Coma: Endymion and Selene, except that it's Endymion (the dude) who is asleep.
- Due To The Dead: Good guys bury the dead properly. Always. Insofar as you fail, you are not a good guy until you straighten out your act.
- Eldritch Abomination: Khaos, according to Ovid, is "rather a crude and indigested mass, a lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed, of jarring seeds and justly Chaos named". And also Typhon.
- Emotionless Couple: Hades and Persephone. Persephone was once a cheerful girl but adopt this trope since she become queen of underworld.
- Femme Fatale: Aphrodite - perhaps the original model.
- Food Chains: Persephone (Roman: Proserpine), whose ill-timed snack in the Underworld dooms her to stay there.
- Generation Xerox: The Titan Uranus was afraid of being overthrown by his children so he imprisoned them until one of them, Cronos escaped and castrated him. Cronos was afraid of being overthrown by his children, so he ate them until he was defeated by one of them, Zeus, who tricked him into vomiting up the others. Zeus heard of a prophesy that he would be overthrown by one of his children, so he turned the mother into a fly and ate her. The child, the goddess Athene, developed in Zeus' body and was born through his head. Since Athene was a virgin goddess, the cycle finally ended at this point.
- Gender Bender: Tiresias again
- Also the myth of Iphis and Ianthe.
- Also Caeneus nee Caenis, who was raped by Neptune, who then turns her into a Nigh Invulnerable man when she wishes that no one would ever do it again.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Ares doesn't get much respect for his savage nature. As Mars, the Roman think his brute is hardcore.
- Girl In A Box: Danae
- God Is Evil: Zeus, the king of the gods, appears often as a rapist and a Manipulative Bastard in some myths, despiste his modern usually benevolent portrayal. His father Chronus/Kronos and his grandfather Ouranus weren't any better if not worse
- Gorgon Gazing: the Trope Namer.
- The Great Flood: Deucalion again, as well as two other stories
- Happily Married: Baucis and Philemon
- Hes Back: Odysseus.
- Hot Blooded: Heracles, at his best.'Nuff said.
- Ho Yay: Achilles and Patroclus, and a whole lot more in general.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Medusa, Scylla, Arachne, about half the cast of Ovid's Metamorphoses
- It Was A Gift
- Jerkass: Umm... have you been reading this page? Gods and men alike tend to fall in here.
- Jerkass Gods: None of the Greek pantheon were capital E evil (well, maybe Ares), but they could all be petty, spiteful, vindictive, and a host of other unpleasant adjectives.
- Karma Houdini: Many gods and goddesses have a tendency to screw up the lives of various people and get away with it. One example, when Medusa had sex with Poseidon (or in some versions of the story, got raped by Poseidon) in Athena's temple, Athena punished the mortal Medusa by turning her into a snake-haired monster... Poseidon was never punished for this.
- Also worth noting is Medea, who although was screwed by Jason, did an over-the-top revenge and left Jason alone. The Gods sided with Medea instead, and Jason was left in a Fate Worse Than Death. Many historians, Dante included, agreed that Jason was the bad guy and also sided with Medea.
- Lawful Neutral/ Dark Is Not Evil: Hades, who contrary to modern adaptations was the stoic and gloomy but non-evil ruler of the dead who had no designs (that we're aware of) on his brother's throne. He was actually one of the less selfish or petty gods.
- Helps he pretty much got the raw end of the deal, he's overworked (thanks to all the Greek Heroes and gods) no one likes him, and the prime reason why he kidnaped his wife was out of loneliness.
- Loads And Loads Of Races: Easily has more fantastical races than any other mythology.
- Lotus Eater Machine: Trope Namer from The Odyssey
- Love Makes You Crazy, Love Makes You Dumb: Helen of Troy, at the very least. Happily married until some upstart prince and the goddess of love come along...
- Mister Seahorse: Zeus, at least twice, particularly in how Athena came along
- Murder The Hypotenuse: Hera, Hera, Hera... well she's goddess of marriage, so she can't exactly let that go...
- Nigh Invulnerability: Achilles.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Prometheus
- Older Than Dirt: Many of the stories from Classical Mythology.
- Orphans Plot Trinket
- Our Giants Are Bigger: The gigantes, who once waged war against the gods. The Titans may also count, though they were an older set of gods.
- This troper seems to recall hearing once that Greek gods and heroes in general (men and women alike) were often described as being twice or three times the height of an ordinary man. It went along with the whole "human, but MORE" idea.
- Prophecy Twist: Too numerous to list
- Rape Is Okay If Its Divine On Mortal
- Rage Against The Heavens: Olympus is attacked more than once, and Heracles was known to get into fights with several gods.
- Gaia did it the most; first she plotted to have her husband, Ouranos, overthrown and killed by Cronus because he locked away the cyclopses and the hecatonchires for their ugliness. Then, when Cronus is stupid enough to lock away the newly freed giants after they were just freed (not to mention devour his children) she plots for Zeus to kill him. Then, as vengeance for the Olympians killing her children, the Titans (which she herself pretty much caused by the previous plot), she sets Typhon onto the Olympians. Basically, she took offense to pretty much every generation of the gods, even when she got them into power in the first place.
- Ravens And Crows
- The Red Sonja: Hippolyta, Atalanta, Thetis
- Riddle Of The Sphinx: From the story of Oedipus
- Sacred Hospitality
- Scylla And Charybdis: Trope Namer from The Odyssey
- Sealed Evil In A Can: Pandora's Box, the Titans
- Self Fulfilling Prophecies: No kidding. Someone along the line should have learned that trying to prevent, kill, or throw away an infant with bad prophecy is a surefire way of it coming back and, often completely unaware, do exactly what you tried to prevent it from doing (e.g. Perseus, Paris, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, and many more.)
- The Scrappy: Ares. Being the god of war, responsible for immeasurable death and destruction for the sake of his own pleasure, it's not surprising he was the least popular Olympian among mortals. The other gods - including his father Zeus - weren't too fond of him either.
- It extends somewhat beyond "weren't too fond of him." In The Iliad, Zeus flat out tells Ares that of all his children, Zeus hates him the most, and if he saw reason for it he wouldn't hesitate to kill the God of War and never regret it. Ares' actions that caused Zeus's outburst? Complaining that Athena had helped the mortal Diomedes try to kill him, causing him to suffer a severe stomach wound.
- A severe stomach wound he was suffering at that same moment.
- Thicker Than Water
- To Hell And Back: Orpheus, Heracles, Odysseus, Psyche, Aeneas, even Theseus and Pirithous (though Heracles had to give them a hand) ... apparently Hades has Lex Luthor Security
- Well, yeah. The method of getting past Cerberus in one myth is feeding him a cake.
- Trash Of The Titans: Heracles having to deal with Augias' stables.
- Ugly Guy Hot Wife: Hephaestus and Aphrodite
- Depending on the version, it was to stop the marriage squabbles over her or that he impressed her with his craftsmanship
- Unstoppable Rage: "the wrath of Achilles"
- At his worst, Hercules is also known for this as well as being a more unstoppable.
- Values Dissonance: The cause of Achilles' sulk was a much bigger deal in his milieu
- Also, the way nearly everybody treated women, the way kings sometimes treated their subjects, and the way hospitality was taken so extremely seriously
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Thetis has Achilles hide among Lycomedes' daughters, fearing he'll die at Troy.
- Whos On First: Odysseus
- Who Wants To Live Forever: Tithonos, who was granted eternal life as a favour to his lover Eos, the goddess of the dawn. He was not granted eternal youth, so he withered away and eventually became a grasshopper or some other noisy insect.
- Wild Child: Romulus and Remus
- Winged Humanoid: Ancient Greece imported the "winged humanoid" imagery from Mesopotamic cultures, resulting in various gods and personifications with (usually feathered bird-) wings. E.g.: Nike, Eros, and the rest of Aphrodite's gang the Erotes, many of the Wind Gods. Eros' lover Psyche, as an exception from the usual bird wings, is depicted with butterfly wings.
- And there is also a mound of usually non-winged animals and creatures with wings: Pegasos, gryphons, sphinxes, then there's the harpies, and the Sirens (Before they were warped into mermaids).
- Worlds Strongest Man: Heracles
- You Cant Go Home Again: The Odyssey, The Aeneid
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