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Castor (mythology)
Castor; grc, Κάστωρ, Kástōr, beaver. and Pollux. (or Polydeukes). are twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri.; grc, Διόσκουροι, Dióskouroi, sons of Zeus, links=no, from ''Dîos'' ('Zeus') and '' koûroi'' ('boys'). Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers; Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, while Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who raped Leda in the guise of a swan. The pair are thus an example of heteropaternal superfecundation. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins") or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids.. Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anakeion
The Anakeion or Anacaeum (from the Greek ), also known as the Sanctuary of the Dioskouroi, was a temple in Athens, which was situated near the Acropolis and dedicated to Castor and Pollux. Name and location The name of the temple derives from the Greek (an archaic form of , "lords" or "kings"), the title by which the Dioskouroi, Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Zeus and Leda, were commonly known in Attica. The Old Agora, the predecessor of the Classical Agora, was used in the fifth century and before as a rallying point, and references in Andokides and Thucydides to musters at the Anakeion in 415 and 411 BCE have led scholars to conclude that the Anakeion may have lain within the vicinity of the Old Agora, perhaps to the east of the Acropolis. Decoration The decoration of the Anakeion, according to Pausanias, fell to Mikon and Polygnotos. The former depicted the Argonauts, the followers of Jason, with particular attention to Akastos and his horses. Polygnotos depicted t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gemini (constellation)
Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the northern celestial hemisphere. It was one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century AD astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. Its name is Latin for ''twins'', and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. Its old astronomical symbol is (♊︎). Location Gemini lies between Taurus to the west and Cancer to the east, with Auriga and Lynx to the north, Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south and Orion to the south-west. In classical antiquity, Cancer was the location of the Sun on the first day of summer (June 21). During the first century AD, axial precession shifted it into Gemini. In 1990, the location of the Sun on the first day of summer moved from Gemini into Taurus, where it will remain until the 27th century AD and then move into Aries. The Sun will move through Gemini from June 21 to July 20 through 2062. Gemini i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herakles
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through Amphitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. Amphitryon's own, mortal son was Iphicles. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pindar
Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet himself. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. Life The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (''see § Dating below''). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in ''Works and Days'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Iliad'', the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero cult, Greek hero Odysseus, king of Homer's Ithaca, Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crew mates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a Suitors of Penelope, group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The ''Odyssey'' was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In Classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's ''Iliad'' centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The ''Odyssey'' chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Cycle
The Epic Cycle ( grc, Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, Epikòs Kýklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the ''Cypria'', the '' Aethiopis'', the so-called ''Little Iliad'', the ''Iliupersis'', the ''Nostoi'', and the ''Telegony''. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics, the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', among the poems of the Epic Cycle, but the term is more often used to specify the non-Homeric poems as distinct from the Homeric ones. Unlike the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', the cyclic epics survive only in fragments and summaries from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. The Epic Cycle was the distillation in literary form of an oral tradition that had developed during the Greek Dark Age, which was based in part on localised hero cults. The traditional material from which the literary epics were drawn treats Mycenaean Bronze Age culture from the perspective of Iron A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cypria
The ''Cypria'' (; grc-gre, Κύπρια ''Kúpria''; Latin: ''Cypria'') is a lost epic poem of ancient Greek literature, which has been attributed to Stasinus and was quite well known in classical antiquity and fixed in a received text, but which subsequently was lost to view. It was part of the Epic Cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic hexameter verse. The story of the ''Cypria'' comes chronologically at the beginning of the Epic Cycle, and is followed by that of the ''Iliad''; the composition of the two was apparently in the reverse order. The poem comprised eleven books of verse in epic dactylic hexameters. Date and authorship The ''Cypria'', in the written form in which it was known in classical Greece, was probably composed in the late seventh century BCE, but there is much uncertainty. The Cyclic Poets, as the translator of Homerica, Hugh G. Evelyn-White noted "were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer," one of the reasons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version, and was written in dactylic hexameter. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The ''Iliad'' is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature. The ''Iliad'', and the ''Odyssey'', were likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Homer's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoebe (mythological Characters)
In Greek mythology, Phoebe ( ; grc, Φοίβη, Phoíbē, associated with ''phoîbos'', "shining") was the name or epithet of the following characters: * Phoebe (Titaness), one of the Titans, grandmother of Apollo and Artemis. * Phoebe (daughter of Leucippus), daughter of Leucippus. * Phoebe, a hamadryad who became one of King Danaus' many wives or concubines and possible mother of some of these Danaïdes: Hippodamia, Rhodia, Cleopatra, Asteria, Glauce, Hippomedusa, Gorge, Iphimedusa and Rhode.Apollodorus2.1.5/ref> Apollodorus only identified these daughters of Danaus by Phoebe and Atlantia (another hamadryad), not specifying who was the daughter of the other. These ten women joined the sons of Aegyptus who were begotten on an Arabian woman. Later on, these princesses slew their cousin-husbands during their wedding night. According to Hippostratus, Danaus had all of his progeny by a single woman, Europe, daughter of the river-god Nilus. In some accounts, he married his c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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