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Castor And Pollux
Castor and Pollux (or Polydeuces) are twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri or Dioskouroi. 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 seduced 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 ("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 regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo's fire. They were also associated with horsemanship, in keeping with their origin as ... [...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 (mythology), Leda, were commonly known in Attica. The Old Agora, the predecessor of the Ancient Agora of Athens, Classical Agora, was used in the fifth century and before as a rallying point, and references in Andocides, 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 (geographer), Pausanias, fell to Micon, Mikon and Polygnotos. The former depicted the Argonauts, the followers of ... [...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 (constellation), Taurus to the west and Cancer (constellation), Cancer to the east, with Auriga (constellation), Auriga and Lynx (constellation), Lynx to the north, Monoceros (constellation), Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south, and Orion (constellation), Orion to the south-west. In classical antiquity, Cancer was the location of the Sun on the June solstice, northern solstice (June 21). During the first century AD, axial precession shifted it into Gemini. In 1990, the location of the Sun at the northern solstice moved from Gemini into Taurus, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theseus
Theseus (, ; ) was a divine hero in Greek mythology, famous for slaying the Minotaur. The myths surrounding Theseus, his journeys, exploits, and friends, have provided material for storytelling throughout the ages. Theseus is sometimes described as the son of Aegeus, king of Athens, and sometimes as the son of the god Poseidon. He is raised by his mother, Aethra (mother of Theseus), Aethra, and upon discovering his connection to Aegeus, travels overland to Athens, having many adventures on the way. When he reaches Athens, he finds that Aegeus is married to Medea (formerly wife of Jason), who plots against him. The most famous legend about Theseus is his slaying of the Minotaur, half man and half bull. He then goes on to unite Attica under Athenian rule: the ''synoikismos'' ('dwelling together'). As the unifying king, he is credited with building a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis. Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias reports that after ''synoikismos'', Theseus establishe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herakles
Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> 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 descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. 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. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Origin Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being the twelve Labours of Hercules; Alexandrian poets of the He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pindar
Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, 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 himsel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hesiod
Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Griffin, "Greek Myth and Hesiod", J.Boardman, J.Griffin and O. Murray (eds.), ''The Oxford History of the Classical World'', Oxford University Press (1986), p. 88. Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety. Among these are ''Theogony'', which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus's rise to power, and ''Works and Days'', a poem that describes the five Ages of Man, offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such as Pandora's box. Hesiod 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 relig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; ) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'' is divided into 24 books. It follows the heroic king of Ithaca, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, and his homecoming journey after the ten-year long Trojan War. His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which time he encounters many perils and all of his crewmates are killed. In Odysseus's long absence, he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Penelope and son Telemachus to contend with a group of unruly suitors competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The ''Odyssey'' was first written down in Homeric Greek around the 8th or 7th century BC; by the mid-6th century BC, it had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship was taken as true, but contemporary sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient 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. Despite doubts about his authorship, Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. The ''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 Homer's Ithaca, Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the ''Odyssey'' especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through the punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language that shows a mixture of features of the Ionic Greek, Ionic and Aeolic Greek, Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kastor Niobid Krater Louvre G341
Kastor may refer to: *Castor and Pollux, twin brothers in Greek and Roman mythology * Kastor und Pollux, a complex of two towers in Frankfurt, Germany, named after the mythological characters * Kastor of Rhodes, a Greek grammarian and rhetorician *Kastor, an unrelated character in the 2002 video game ''Age of Mythology ''Age of Mythology'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released on October 31, 2002 in North America and on November 14, 2002 in Europe. A spin-off from the ''A ...'' Kastor is also the surname of: *Adolph Kastor, a founder of Camillus Cutlery Company *Deena Kastor (born 1973), an American long-distance runner See also *Castor (other) *Gastor (other) *Kastro (other) {{Disambiguation, surname ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Cycle
The Epic Cycle () 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 Age and later Greece. In modern scholarship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cypria
The ''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 for dating the final, literary form of ''Cypr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) 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 was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. The ''Iliad'' is often regarded as the first substantial piece of Western literature, European literature and is a central part of the Epic Cycle. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the war's final weeks. In particular, it traces the anger () of Achilles, a celebrated warrior, from a fierce quarrel between him and King Agamemnon, to the death of the Trojan prince Hector.Homer, ''Iliad, Volume I, Books 1–12'', translated by A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library 170, Cambridge, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
