Greek Mythology

"The Greeks shape bronze statues so real they seem to breathe, And carve cold marble until it almost comes to life. The Greeks compose great orations, and measure The heavens so well they can predict the rising of the stars. But you, Romans, remember your great arts; To govern the peoples with authority, To establish peace under the rule of law, To conquer the mighty, and show them mercy once they are conquered."

– Virgil, Aeneid VI

"AND THEN ALONG CAME ZEUS"

– What happens in 99% of all Greek Myths

In the days when printing was not a thing, when people partook in wars and fought in arenas, there were poets and scriptors who's pen is yet unmatched by modern orators. In the ancient times of the Bronze Age, and even before, were forged tales of might, gods and heroes. Tragedies written in the name of immortal beings who ruled over every element of this very world. This was an age undreamed of. Without these tales, perhaps men would have not heard of magical stories, of divinity, of fantastic beasts and impressive feats beyond all that is earthly and orderly... And the many tall tales of gods fucking like rabbits.

This is Greek Mythology. Also known as Roman Mythology since they 'adapted' the stories.

No seriously, perhaps the closest we ever got to ancient ass fantasy lore (along with the lost texts of Norse Mythology) is this. Greek poets and artists from all across the land spent centuries, perhaps even beyond a millenia, forging the stories that would inspire modern authors, which would in time lead to the creation of the Fantasy genre as a whole.

The Roman Connection

The civilization of Rome had its own original native mythology. However, they also hugely admired the Greeks, their neighbors and also the guys who kind of beat them to the civilization game. With both civilizations being polytheists, the result was that the Romans did a lot of mythological cross-pollination, adopting many of the Greek gods as their own, just giving them different names and sometimes putting different spins on them. For example, we draw the current names of the planets in Earth's solar system - Mercury, Mars, Venus, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto - from the Roman names for Greek gods, such as Hermes, Ares, Aphrodites, Poseidon, Zeus and Hades. Greeks viewed Ares with disdain, denouncing him as the embodiment of bloodlust, savagery and the ugly brutalities of War, whilst the Roman Mars was a revered god of honor, courage, strength and leadership, closer more to the Greek Athena. A similar thing happened across the post-Alexander Hellenistic world, in which local dieties that loosely matched the Greek pantheon might be referred to by Greek names; one such example being "Zeus Olympios" to refer to the Greek Zeus as the leader of the gods, who would resemble various sun gods such as "Zeus Helioupolites" (Ba'al of Canaan), "Zeus Labrandos" (Teshub of Mesopotamia), etc, so this was a very common practice in the classical world.

Classical Mythology?

A common alternative name for Greek Mythology, after "Greco-Roman Mythology", is "Classical Mythology". That's because Greco-Roman Mythology is the one ancient pre-Christian religion that survived best during the rise of the Christian powers of Europe during the Dark Age. Whilst the Christians of the Roman Empire had stamped out the political powers once held by the pagan priesthoods, the lore of Rome and through it Greece was still very strongly baked into Roman culture, and it resisted the erasure that other pagan cultures like the various Celtic peoples of Europe or the Vikings would experience. Plus, the Greeks and the Romans wrote shit down, so there were lots and lots and we mean lots of texts written by pagan Greeks and Romans rather than all of the responsibility for passing on that lore being instead left to Christian monks who had... shall we say a certain bias about what they actually wrote down? That helped a lot in making sure there Greco-Roman myths and tales were never lost like the Celtic lores would be.

Enter the Renaissance, when the newly emerging non-Christian Monk-based scholarly class looked to these ancient Greek and Roman texts (often copies of copies traded over from the Islamic world), and basically went "wow, that's really neat!" Add to it the huge importance that being able to trace their roots back to the Roman Empire was given by the early Christian monarchies of Europe and the end result was that Greek and Roman Mythology experienced a resurgence of popularity throughout Europe, often being romanticised in all sorts of ways

This meant in turn that, until the mid-1900s or so, the Greek and Roman Mythologies were the only Pre-Christian Mythology that European students had to study, so they became associated heavily with the lost "golden age" of the Classical Period.

The "Canon" Timeline of Greek Mythos

Buckle up folks, this is going to be a wild ride. Greek mythos weren't written by nerds the likes of those working for the Black Library. These were mostly the results of decades of philosophical musings and rewritings. Prepare your anus.

Part I - Creation

In the begining, there was nothing... but Chaos, a complete hazardous mess of nothingness and random, and also a girl. From it were born the first primordial deities; Gaea, personification of the Earth, and Tartarus, personification of the Underworld. Both female, they didn't do a lot of shit from there, only creating the land on which we walk by making it rain atoms. And then, Eros was born, the literal embodiment of love, the sexual one. So naturally, Gaea and Chaos banged. Whether they're sisters or mother and daughter, we'll leave that your incestual imagination.

From this copious amount of fornication were born other personifications; Erebus, the embodiment of Darkness, and Nyx, the embodiment of Night. They fucked, too. From this forbidden union were born Aether, the upper air (or the sky, depending on who you ask), and Hemera, the embodiment of Day. Later on, perhaps Nyx realised that incest wasn't wincest and decided to make children by her own means, thus creating Thanatos (Quiet and peaceful death), Hypnos (Sleep), Oneiroi (Dreams), Ker (DOOOOOOOOOM), Geras (Old age), Oizus (Pain), Nemesis (Revenge), Eris (Strife), Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Sexual Pleasure, oh yeah you thought it was Aphrodites who was in charge of this one, huh?), Momos (Blame!) and FINALLY the Hesperides, Daughters of the Evening.

So all of this were mostly the tall tales of Hesiod, and it's pretty clear that lot of these name dropped deities aren't gonna pop back up any time soon. Think of all of them as the Endless from Sandman. They're here, but not very active.

Now things got a lot more physical. There's a world now, and the Titans are born. And unlike Nyx's offspring or the rest of the Primordial ones, they have some form of physicality. So Gaea birthed Uranus and consequently married him. With this union, they birth three of the first Cyclops, three of the Hecatoncheires (that's a mouthful) and the twelve Titans. Uranus being a shit dad, he stuck 'em all up Gaea's womb, as in deep underground. This obviously made Mother Earth particularly mad. She gave her children an adamant sickle, called the Harpe, and told them to go hog wild on their dad. None of them had the balls to do it, except one; madlad Cronus. So him and Gaea ambushed Uranus and cut off his balls and threw 'em in the ocean. Depending on who you ask either Uranus died or he became Italian, although that's not really important. What is important however is thanks to this incident, the blood of his balls permitted the birth of the Giants, the Meliae and the Erinyes. Later on down the line, Aphrodites would be born from Ura's balls.

Now that the place of supreme ruler was free, Cronus took it and became King of the Titans. He even married one; Rhea, his sister mind you, and had children with her. Cronus' first decision was to imprison the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires in Tartarus. Good so far. And then Cronus, being a humanitarian, started to eat his children because he thought someone would depose him just like he did Uranus. Rhea wasn't too please about this. She decided to plot against him, just like he did with his own father, and went into hiding with her sixth child; Zeus. Yes, that Zeus.

Turns out eating children to stop a prophecy just makes it self-fulfilling, who knew?

Part II - The Titanomachy

Once Zeus grew of age, he began serving Cronus as the Titan's cupbearer and waiting for the opportunity to earn his trust. When that moment came, Zeus fed his dad a mixture of mustard and wine that was apparently so repulsive that it caused the Titan to vomit out his other children (Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Demeter), all of them having apparently matured in Cronus' gut. After freeing the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, the three races waged wars against their Titan forebears.

This massive war took ten years before it ended, but once it did the Olympians had secured dominion of the world while the surviving Titans were either exiled or banished to Tartarus. With the world theirs, the three brothers of Cronus decided to divvy up their territories amongst themselves, with Zeus owning the skies and becoming undisputed leader of the gods, Poseidon laying claim to the seas and the other bodies of water, and Hades was given wardenship of the Underworld. The earth, meanwhile, was left as a common space shared between all the gods where they could do as they pleased unless one of the big three was forced to intervene.

Gods

Primordial Gods

• Chaos
• Uranus
• Gaea

Titans

• Cronos : The leader of the Titans by right of being the one to take charge when tasked to castrate Uranus. While he initially started off as a well-respected ruler of the world, eventually he grew paranoid that his own children would overthrow him like he did to his own father, hence the baby-swallowing. This would eventually prove to be his undoing when Zeus fed him something to throw up his children and then united the Olympians, Cyclopes, and Hecatonchires against the Titans. He would eventually lose, though his punishment is a bit unclear between Tartarus or being locked away in a dungeon for eternity.
• Rhea : Wife and sister to Cronos, meaning that she is also the mother of the original Olympians. Unfortunately, this didn't stop Cronos from swallowing all of her children so she replaced Zeus with a rock while hiding her last son in Crete to grow up. After the Titanomachy, her fate was rather kind, as she remained a steadfast ally of Olympus.
• Atlas : Another Titan who was a significant leader of the Titans during the Titanomachy. When the Titans lost, Atlas was punished by being forced to uphold the heavens for eternity, being the origin of both astronomy and the root of the term for a collection of maps.

Olympian Gods

• Zeus : The Big Guy in Charge, the man who hurls his thunderbolt. Ruling over the Olympians on Mount Olympus, Zeus has a habit of being a very undecisive but very effective leader. Effective because problems tend to stop whenever he steps in, undecisive however because he has tough time wondering when is the right time to strike. Rulers of the Sky as well, he's in charge of the weather! Somewhat. The Greeks considered that everytime there was thunder or a massive shitstorm, that was because Zeus was beyond pissed. Other than that, Zeus has recently got himself a reputation of being a womanizer and a rapist. And also an otherkin god. He banged all kinds of women as all kinds of animals and other types of stuff; Bulls, Birds, Clouds, Fishes, Ants... And in most cases it gave birth to either a monster or a demi-god.
• Hera : The All-powerful queen of the Gods, and goddess of marriage. Most ironic that she has the most infaithful husband in all of mythology (and arguably, all of fiction). Hera is known as a foul mouthed jealous goddess who has gone to punish women for absolutely no reason, and torment poor Heracles and his many wives because he was born off the wrong guy.
• Ares : The God of War. Although not like her sister Athena, he's more like Khorne or Gork and Mork. The Greeks disliked him for being a bringer of utter bullshit, whereas the Romans absolutely adored the guy and hallowed his name. Arguably because both nations had very different views on war.
• Aphrodites : The Goddess of Love... In every sense of the term. Also a worshipped Warrior Goddess in Laconia. She doesn't do much, besides being one of the three reasons why the War of Troy began (the two other being Hera and Athena, funnily enough), although she's been known as the Goddess of beauty in general. So consider the fact that the mere sight of her might be enough to put your dick in a wheelchair. Which is fairly tame by the standards of this article.
• Apollo : God of Arts, Music, Poetry, Hunks and Light. There's not much to him, but he's known as the conductor of the Muses, and also a famous proclaimer of Heroes. Among other things, he's also famous for having spent a significant amount of time in none other than fucking Hyperborea. He's also one of the few who sided with the Troyans during the siege of Troy.
• Athena : Goddess of Wisdom, Strategy, Handicraft and School teachers. Usually depicted as an Owl when disguised. Wisest of the Olympians, and definetely one of the reverred Gods along with Poseidon and Zeus. Perhaps even moreso than these two since she got her own city. And that's a pretty huge prestige. She has been guiding a whole lot of heroes, most famously Ulysses during the Siege of Troy and during his escapades on the high seas. She's also directly responsible for punishing Medusa for being more beautiful than she is, which is strangely out of character for her, but hey, consistency is not of Greek Mytho's forte.
• Artemis : Goddess of Hunting, Savagery and Birthing. Odd job, right? One of the first bastard child of Zeus, she made a name for herself as one of the busiest gods out there. She's capable of creating plagues and sicknesses, but also giving the cure to treat them. Kind of like a second hand great equalizer. She's very close to young children and animals. And also a great protector of roads, ports and the likes.
• Demeter : Goddess of Agriculture. Famously known as the mother of Hades' wife, Persephones. Besides the myth of her daughter getting kidnapped, there ain't much about her. That being said, she gave birth to a whole lot of other gods, like Ploutos the God of Wealth, and is one of the most level-headed Olympians. She was very much adored by the Greek, as if it weren't for her, they would all starve to death.
• Dionysius : Aight, so -hic- th-this fella righ- right there? -hic- He's da -hic- God of Parties and -hic- Alcohol! -hic- He's actually not a lazy bum, -hic- and he's more like -hic- a softcore Slaanesh, right? -hic- Just minus the boobs -hic-. Anyway, like, he gave birth to -hic- a bunch of lesser Olympians by fucking with -hic- Aphrodites, maybe? -hic-, I dunno anymore. Oh! -hic- Being a god of booze, he's -hic- in charge of all the Ambrosia -hic-, the drink that makes you -hic- immortal... -hic-!
• Hades : God of the Underworld, which also shares his name and wears a helmet of invisibility. Though he's often considered to be a massive asshole (and to be fair, the incident with Persephone was a massive dick move), he's usually a lot more chill.
• Hephaestus : God of Blacksmithing. While he was born to Zeus and Hera, he was thrown off Olympus for his deformities. Despite this, he's an incredibly talented artisan, creating everything from thrones and weapons to the first Automata.
• Poseidon : God of the Seas and Storms, but his portfolio also curiously contains horses as well, which is why he has his own chariot carried by Hippocampuses, horses with the back halves of their bodies being those of fish. Wields a magical Trident which allows him to control the tides. While he hadn't stirred up as much controversy over what he's banged, he's also managed to create his own harem and array of bastard children and monsters.

Personifications

• Kratos : Personification of Strength, being one of Zeus' enforcers alongside his siblings and being a massive dick. More famous because of a certain video game by Sony Santa Monica, which radically shifts his story to that of an asshole of a (demi)god who killed Ares for his place only to become manipulated by the rest of Olympus before getting fed up and destroying it all and fleeing elsewhere...to repeat with the Norse pantheon.

Demi-Gods

• Heracles : Or Hercules if you're roman or uncultured (Honey, you mean HUNKules?). Illegitimate son of Zeus and bearer of the greatest power that ever was in Greek Mythology: Plot Armor! Just kidding, it's his super strenght. Heracles had a number of misadventures and a whole lot of extremely terrible stuff happened to his loved ones, primarily because he was the favorite torture toy of Hera, absolutely livid goddess that she is. He lost all of his wives (and arguably husband too), and was forced to do the dirtiest of jobs around Greece. While he still has some qualities and definitely is one of the most "Goodie-two-shoes" heroes of Greek myths, his stories are quite anti-climatic. Well, it is pretty tragic to see him enter a fenzy because of Hera's fuckery, but the guy just dispose of every adversary he meets by punching them once. His fight with the Lion of Nemea? He strangled him. That's all he did. Eventually, when he was done with his twelve tasks, he was poisoned by his fourth wife (although it was all a misunderstanding), but was allowed Immortal life and a place on Olympus by his dad. Much to Hera's chagrin.

Monsters and Nonhuman Races

• Minotaur - Originally known as "King Minos' Beast", a towering giant man with a bull's head and a hunger for flesh. In the beginning, Minos ruled Crete with his wife, but when he refused to sacrifice a white bull in order to fulfill a bargain with Posiedon, the spiteful god forced his wife to fuck the bull and give birth to a monster that was promptly locked in a maze dungeon, where it was fed several young men and women every few years as sacrifices. Was eventually slain when Theseus entered the dungeon.
• Medusa and the Gorgons - The Gorgons were a race of snake-like women with serpents for hair and petrifying gazes. Medusa was merely the most famous among them alongside her sisters Stheno and Euryale, but unlike them, she was originally a beautiful human women. When Posiedon raped her in Minerva's temple, Minerva cursed her to become a gorgon. Was slain by Perseus, with her head being turned into a shield-mounting and her body turning into a freaking Pegasus for some reason (since Posideon is associated with horses we can assume he's why).
• Harpy - Massive birds with the bodies of human women. Essentially considered spirits of the wind and often spirited away people to feed to the Erinyes.
• Centaur - The horses with men (or in more modern versions women)for upper bodies. Largely representative of being untamed animals, though some like Chiron were actually incredibly intelligent.
• Nymph - Oread, Dryad, Naiad
• Satyr
• Faun
• Hydra - The multi-headed monstrosity who grew more heads when one gets cut off. Was slain as one of Heracles' Labors.
• Men of Gold - First race of humans, created by Kronos to be free of sin. Sadly, this meant they were celibate and they all died out within a generation. Their souls became the first Daemons, which in Greek Mythology are quite different from Warhammer Daemons.
• Daemons - Spirits of Earth and Air, born of the souls of Just and Noble men. The first were the souls of the Men of Gold.
• Men of Silver - Second Generation of humans. Created to replace the Men of Gold. Unfortunately, too much sin was added into the batch this time, and whilst they could reproduce, they were apparently Always Chaotic Evil, and the gods were so horrified at what they had created they wiped them out.