Narcissus

Taken from The Greek Gods, by Evslin, Evslin, & Hoopes.


No one celebrated the birth of Hephaestus. His mother, Hera, had awaited him with great eagerness, hoping for a child so beautiful, so gifted, that it would make Zeus forget his heroic swarm of children from lesser consorts. But when the baby was born she was appalled to see that he was shriveled and ugly, with an irritating bleating wail. She did not wait for Zeus to see him, but snatched the infant up and hurled him off Olympus.

For a night and a day he fell, and hit the ground at the edge of the sea with such force that both of his...

Typhon was the last child of Gaia. After the defeat of his brothers Gigantes, Gaia urged him to avenge them, as well as his other brothers, the Titans.

Typhon started destroying cities and hurling mountains in a fit of rage. In the panic fear of Typhon, the gods fled to Egypt, where, in order to hide, they turned into a variety of animals: Zeus into the ram (leader), Hera into the cow, Aphrodite into a fish, Hephaestus into the ox, Heracles into a bird ibis. Only Athena stood on Mount Olympus, and she began a rebuke of Zeus because of cowardice, untill he again took his real face. Others say...

Zeus, the ruler of Mount Olympus and king of the gods; god of sky, weather, thunder, lightning, law, order, and fate; had held a banquet in celebration of Peleus and Thetis' marriage, them being the parents of Achilles. Eris, however, was not invited since she would make the party unpleasant for everyone - being the goddess of discord.

Eris was angered by the rude snub, of course, and arrived at the party with a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides, the word "Kallisti" inscripted into it, meaning "for the fairest". Three goddesses claimed the apple, they were: Hera (queen of marriage,...

Unlike every other offspring of an Olympian pairing of deities, Persephone has no stable position at Olympus. Persephone used to live far away from the other deities, a goddess within Nature herself before the days of planting seeds and nurturing plants. In the Olympian telling, the gods Hermes, Ares, Apollo, and Hephaestus, had all wooed Persephone; but Demeter rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of the Olympian deities. Thus, Persephone lived a peaceful life before she became the goddess of the underworld, which, according to Olympian mythographers, did not...