PIERIDES, THE The Muses, goddesses who embodied artistic inspiration, were sometimes called Pierides (as well as Pierian) after their birthplace Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus. Strictly speaking, Pierides is a patronymic, and means “children of Pierus.” As there was a tradition, recorded by the travel writer Pausanias, that Pierus, a king of Macedon, established the worship of the Muses, they could, in a metaphorical sense, be viewed as his daughters. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Pierus happened himself to have nine daughters who had lovely singing voices. His daughters made the fatal mistake of challenging the Muses to a singing contest and, upon their inevitable loss, were changed into chattering magpies.

(See also Macedon, Muses [the], Olympus [Mount], Pieria, and Pierus.)

PLEIADES, THE The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, were nymphs and children of Atlas and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus. Their siblings were the Hyades, who were also nymphs, and Hyas, their only brother. The Pleiades’ names are given as Alycone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope (or Asterope), and Taygete. Almost all of them had children by various gods. The most important of them are as follows: Oenomaus was born to Sterope/Asterope by Ares; Dardanus to Electra, and Hermes to Maia by Zeus. Merope, however, was impregnated by the mortal Sisyphus and, consequently, bore Glaucus (the hero, not the god of this name). The Pleiades became a star cluster, placed in the heavens by Zeus, either because the giant Orion pursued them, and Zeus raised them to the heavens to save them, or as compensation for their grief over the death of their sisters the Hyades. Of the seven, only six are visible. It was said that one of the sisters hid in shame or grief. If this was a grieving Electra, her sorrow resulted from the fall of Troy, which her son Laomedon had founded. If, on the other hand, this was Merope, she was ashamed at having borne a child to a mortal.

The name “Pleiades” is variously explained as derived from the Greek word for sailing and that for weeping. Whatever the case, the rising of the Pleiades corresponded with the beginning of sailing season and with spring sowing. Their setting, in turn, coincided with the harvest.

(See also Atlas, Dardanus, Electra [nymph], Glaucus [hero], Hyades [the], Laomedon, Maia, Merope [nymph], Oceanus, and Orion.)

PLUTO Pluto was another name for Hades, god of the Underworld. Derived from the Greek word for wealth, ploutos, this incarnation of the god emphasized a different aspect of his association with the Underworld, namely the depths of the earth as a source of bounty.

(See also Hades and Underworld [the].)

POLLUX Pollux, known in Greek as Polydeuces, was one of the divine twins, the Dioscuri, who ultimately became the constellation Gemini. Pollux and his brother, Castor, were sons of the Spartan queen Leda, and their sisters were Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, the faithless wife of king Agamemnon of Mycenae. Though both brothers were represented as horsemen, Pollux’s particular skill was boxing, in which art he distinguished himself while particpating in Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.

(See also Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Dioscuri [the], Gemini, Helen, Jason, Leda, Mycenae, Sparta, and Troy.)

POLYHYMNIA “Many-Hymned” Polyhymnia, goddess of many songs and/or of songs performed by many voices, was one of the Muses. Her spheres of influence included choral song and pantomime and extended to historiography and rhetoric, thus overlapping with Clio. There were obscure legends according to which she was the mother of the hero Triptolemus; the singer Orpheus, who was known also as the son of the Muse Calliope; and even, according to Plato, Eros.

(See also Calliope, Clio, Eros, Muses [the], and Triptolemus.)

POMONA Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruit (Latin pomum). According to the Roman poet Ovid, the beautiful Pomona had been devoted to gardens and orchards, which she tended with care, watering and pruning the plants. She had no interest in the world outside her garden, nor did she have an interest in love, though she had many suitors, particularly among the rustic deities and spirits: Priapus, Silenus, and Satyrs. When the god Vertumnus saw her, he was instantly smitten and tried to approach her in many guises: as a reaper, a herdsman, a vintner, an apple picker, a fisherman, and a soldier. At last, he disguised himself as an elderly woman and gestured toward an elm around which twined a burgeoning grapevine. He pointed out how the vine would decline if separated from the tree. Like the vine, he argued, she should not be alone. He told her the story of Iphis and Anaxarete, too—a story of tragic love. In the end, he won her heart, and she became his consort.

(See also Anaxarete, Iphis, Priapus, Satyrs [the], Silenus, and Vertumnus.)

POSEIDON Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea and thus necessarily the patron deity of navigation and maritime battles; as he had the ability to calm and stir up the seas, he was both savior and potential nemesis of sailors and fishermen. Poseidon was also the god of earthquakes, described by Homer as the “Earthshaker” who caused the earth to tremble when he struck it with his trident. Further, he was the god of horses, which he was believed to have created, and he was closely associated with horse breeding and racing. While the meaning of his name is uncertain, Poseidon was a god of great antiquity in Greece, notations of his name dating to the Bronze Age, a period extending from roughly 3000 to 1050 BCE. Given Poseidon’s realm of influence, a great many temples and sanctuaries sacred to him were located on coastal sites, as at Sunion in the territory of Athens and on the Isthmus of Corinth, site of the Pan-Hellenic Isthmian Games that were celebrated in his honor; however, sites sacred to him could also be found inland at places where there were clefts in the earth or springs.

In terms of his mythology, Poseidon was a son of the Titan gods Cronus and Rhea. His siblings were Zeus, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, all of whom apart from Zeus were swallowed by their father upon their birth and later disgorged. When Cronus’s children prevailed over him and the older Titan gods, seizing rulership of the world from them, it was not a given that Zeus would be king of the gods, nor was it predetermined which part of the world each of the brothers would control. Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus accordingly drew lots from a helmet. Hades became lord of the Underworld, Zeus the lord of the heavens, and Poseidon lord of the sea, with an underwater palace near Aegae on the island of Euboea. Poseidon later became involved in a series of disputes with other Olympian gods over territories in Greece. With Athena he vied for patronage of Athens, engaging with her in a contest in order to win this land; Athena caused an olive tree to grow, and Poseidon, smiting the rock of the Acropolis with his trident, produced a saltwater spring, a symbol of naval power. Athena’s gift was deemed more valuable, and she became the patron deity of Athens. As a result of a dispute with the god Helios over Corinth, Poseidon was assigned the Isthmus, while Helios was given the height of Acrocorinth. Poseidon lost his bid for Argos to the goddess Hera.

While the sea goddess Amphitrite was called his consort, as well as mother by him of Triton, Poseidon had numerous extramarital amorous encounters. Among the best known of these was his pursuit of a grief-stricken Demeter, whom he pursued while she searched for her daughter, Persephone; in order to escape him, Demeter transformed herself into a mare, but Poseidon could not be deceived and, in turn, became a stallion, in this way fathering the immortal horse Arion, which would eventually pass to the ownership of Hercules and, later, to the hero Adrastus. Poseidon saved the lovely Danaid Amymone from assault by a Satyr, chasing it off with his trident, but in the process, he fell in love with her and, taking her by force, became father to her son Nauplius. Poseidon also impregnated Medusa with Pegasus and Chrysaor, both of whom were born from her neck when Bellerophon decapitated her. And on the same night that Aegeus slept with Aethra, Poseidon slept with her as well, in this way becoming a second father of the Athenian hero Theseus. With the nymph Thoosa, a daughter of the sea deity Phorcys, he became father to the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Among those who felt Poseidon’s wrath were the Trojans and Odysseus. The god’s hatred of the former stemmed from the period of his servitude to the Trojan king Laomedon, who refused to pay him and Apollo for building the city’s wall. As for Odysseus, he incurred Poseidon’s anger by blinding the monstrous Polyphemus, and as a consequence, the god ensured that Odysseus’s journey home from Troy would be both long and difficult, filled with perils from the sea. Minos, king of Crete, also incurred the god’s displeasure after asking Poseidon to ratify his claim to the throne by producing a bull from the sea. Poseidon obliged him, but Minos subsequently broke his promise to sacrifice the animal to the god. As a result, Poseidon caused Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, to develop a passion for the bull, an infatuation that resulted in the birth of the Minotaur.

As for Poseidon’s attributes and distinguishing characteristics, he was represented as a mature, bearded male holding a trident. Animals sacred to him included bulls, horses, and dolphins. As regards plants, he had a special connection with pine, which was particularly well suited for the production of ships’ masts.

The Romans identified their sea god Neptune with Poseidon.

(See also Adrastus, Aethra, Amymone, Apollo, Argos, Athena, Athens, Chrysaor, Corinth, Crete, Cronus, Danaids [the], Demeter, Hades, Helios, Hera, Hercules, Hestia, Laomedon, Medusa, Minos, Minotaur [the], Neptune, Odysseus, Pasiphae, Pegasus, Persephone, Phorcys, Polyphemus, Rhea, Satyrs [the], Theseus, Titans [the], Troy, and Zeus.)

PRIAPUS Priapus was a fertility god of Phrygian origin and thus an import from northwestern Asia Minor, where he remained more popular than in Greece and Italy. He was responsible for promoting the fertility of animals and plants along with that of humans and, for this reason, was important to the enterprises of animal husbandry and farming. As a fertility deity, he was also a guarantor of good fortune. His statues were believed to promote a bountiful harvest and, at the same time, protect sheep, goats, bees, vines, and garden produce from thieves as well as from the envious evil eye.

This lusty god was distinguished physically by an oversize erect phallus, and he was part of the entourage of the god Dionysus, along with Nymphs, Satyrs, and Silens. Reflecting his “nature,” Priapus’s parents were generally said to be the goddess Aphrodite and Dionysus, though the gods Hermes, Zeus, and Pan are also mentioned as his father and a nymph as his mother.

(See also Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hermes, Nymphs [the], Pan, Phrygia, Satyrs [the], Silens [the], and Zeus.)

PROMETHEUS Prometheus was a second-generation Titan god from a patrilinear perspective. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene, daughter of Iapetus’s brother Oceanus, and his siblings were Atlas, who would be compelled to carry the heavens; the short-lived sinner Menoetius; and the thoughtless Epimetheus. Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” was known both for his cunning and for his kindliness toward humans. On an occasion when the gods and mortals were at odds, Prometheus prepared a joint meal for them, asking Zeus to choose his own portion. The portion that Prometheus rightly suspected Zeus would choose consisted of an animal’s bones wrapped in glistening fat, which looked larger and richer than the portion consisting solely of meat. In anger that he had been outwitted and that humans had benefited from his choice of the less nutritious portion, Zeus decided to withhold fire from humans. In this instance, too, Prometheus outwitted him and stole fire for them, hiding some flames in a hollow fennel stalk. For this infraction, Zeus contrived a more lasting punishment: he instructed He-phaestus to create a woman, the first of her gender, as a gift not for Pro-metheus, who would guess that the gift was a hidden danger, but for Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. The woman was Pandora, who brought with her blessings of all kinds but also every kind of evil. As for Prometheus, Zeus placed him in shackles and drove a shaft through his body so as to anchor him to a rocky crag while an eagle (or vulture) ate perpetually of his eternally regenerating liver. Prometheus was eventually released from this torture by Zeus and Hercules. The latter consulted Prometheus, whom he found in the Caucasus Mountains, when seeking the Garden of the Hesperides, and as compensation for the guidance offered, Hercules killed the eagle that had been tormenting him. Zeus, for his part, released Prometheus from his shackles in exchange for advising him not to pursue the goddess Thetis, for it had been prophesied that a son born to her would be more powerful than her father. As the mythographer Hyginus reports, Zeus compelled Prometheus to wear a finger ring of iron fitted with a piece of the stone to which he had been chained as a reminder of his earlier presumption.

Given the importance of fire to the advancement of human civilization and culture, it is not surprising that Prometheus was not only presented as a benefactor of humankind but also as a culture hero credited, according to the tragedian Aeschylus, with introducing the arts of shelter-building, agriculture, mathematics, writing, animal domestication, and navigation. There was also a tradition that it was Prometheus who actually created humans, fashioning them out of earth and water.

(See also Atlas, Caucasus Mountains [the], Clymene, Epimetheus, Hephaestus, Hercules, Hesperides [the], Iapetus, Oceanus [god], Pandora, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

PROSERPINA Proserpina was the Roman name for Persephone, who, to the horror of her mother, Demeter, was abducted by Hades, King of the Dead, to become his queen.

(See also Hades [god], Persephone, and Underworld [the].)

PROTEUS Proteus was a sea deity who, logically, had close ties with the sea god Poseidon: he was said to be the herdsman of Poseidon’s flock of seals, and the mythographer Apollodorus reports that the god Poseidon was his father. Proteus was characterized as elderly and could change his shape as well as foretell the future, attributes that he had in common with the sea gods Nereus and Phorcys. Persons wishing to hear him foretell the future were required to seize him and retain their grip while he assumed every possible shape in order to escape the necessity of prophesying; if steadily held, he resumed his normal appearance and told the truth. Those who consulted Proteus successfully included the Spartan king Menelaus who, after arriving at the island of Pharos on his way home from Troy, followed guidance offered by Proteus’s daughter Eidothea: Menelaus, with the help of three companions all disguised as seals, was to seize the god at midday while he was napping in a cave with his seal flock. Proteus changed from a lion to a serpent, leopard, boar, water, and an enormous tree, but the men held fast. The god then revealed to Menelaus that he would need to make an offering of a hundred head of cattle to the gods so they would grant him safe passage home, and he disclosed the fate of Menelaus’s former companions at Troy, among them his brother Agamemnon and Odysseus. Another hero who consulted Proteus was the beekeeper Aristaeus, who availed himself of the god to learn why his bees had died.

There was also an Egyptian king named Proteus who appears in mythology and who may have become confused with the god and, as a result, called by the same name. King Proteus is chiefly known for having given sanctuary to Helen when the god Hermes, according to a variant of Helen’s Trojan adventures, brought her to him during the Trojan War.

(See also Agamemnon, Aristaeus, Helen, Hermes, Menelaus, Nereus, Odysseus, Phorcys, Poseidon, Sparta, and Troy.)

PSYCHOPOMPUS The name or epithet Psychompus (“Leader of Souls”) was applied to the god Hermes when he served in this capacity. It was Hermes who led the souls of the dead to the Underworld.

(See also Hermes and Underworld [the].)

PYTHIAN Pythian was an epithet for Apollo, the god of prophecy, music, archery, healing, and light. According to the so-called Homeric Hymn to Apollo, this descriptor was directly linked with the god’s slaying of the massive serpent, the Python, that once resided at Delphi and the slaying of which allowed Apollo to take control of the oracle there. Apollo’s priestess at Delphi, who served as mouthpiece of the god when he was consulted by those seeking prophecies, was called the Pythia, and Pytho was another name for Delphi.

(See Apollo, Delphi, and Python.)

QUIRINUS Quirinus was a Roman god who became identified with the deified Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. He may originally have been a Sabine war god and, when integrated into Roman state religion, represented the Roman citizen body as their protector.

(See also Rome, Romulus, and Sabines [the].)

RHEA In mythology, Rhea was a Titan goddess and a daughter of Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”). Her brother Cronus was her consort, and, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, she bore to him Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Having learned from his parents that he was destined to be overpowered by his own son, Cronus swallowed each of his children as they emerged from their mother’s womb, apart from Zeus. For, by that time, Rhea had asked her parents what she could do to outwit Cronus and save her youngest child. On their advice, she went to Crete, where she hid her newborn child in a cave, and to Cronus she gave a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed, not guessing that he had been tricked. When grown, Zeus, with the help of Rhea (or, by some accounts, his first wife Metis), would trick Cronus into vomiting up both the stone and his siblings and then successfully wage war against him and the other Titan gods. The mythographer Apollodorus supplies additional detail to the story of Zeus’s birth to Rhea: it was in the cave of Dicte that Rhea hid Zeus, and she gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastea and Ida to nurse. In that cave the nymphs fed the child with the milk of a goat called Amalthea, and the Curetes danced about clashing their spears against their shields so that Cronus might not hear the baby crying.

In Greek religion and culture more broadly, Rhea was an earth-mother goddess, of whom Hera, Demeter, and Aphrodite were also at least to some degree incarnations or refractions. As a Great Mother, Rhea was inherently a goddess of life and fertility who was associated, at the same time, with death. As her mythology suggests, she appears to have enjoyed particular prominence on the island of Crete, and her assimilation with the Phrygian fertility goddess Cybele, whose worship was orgiastic and ecstatic in nature, underscores the notion of a common Anatolian (western-Asian) origin of the two. In Roman religion, Rhea was identified with the goddess Ops.

(See also Adrastea, Aphrodite, Crete, Cronus, Curetes [the], Cybele, Demeter, Gaia, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Ida [nymph], Metis, Ops, Phrygia, Poseidon, Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

SATURN Saturn was an Italian fertility god, possibly of Etruscan or Sabine origin. As his name, which Roman authors derived from the word sator (“one who sows”), indicates, his particular realm was the fertility of the fields and, thus, agriculture. At the same time, he was viewed as a culture hero who established both planting practices and other mainstays of good social order, such as laws, writing, and coinage. Consequently, the temple built at the foot of Rome’s Capitoline Hill in his honor served as an archive for laws as well as the seat of the Roman treasury.

Saturn was identified with the Greek god Cronus, father of Zeus and the other Olympian gods. As an equivalent of Cronus, his consort was Ops (“Wealth” or “Resource”), who was herself viewed as the Roman equivalent of the Greek mother-goddess Rhea. Saturn was thought to have established himself as a ruler among the Italians when, partly on the succession model of Cronus and Zeus, he was driven from the heavens by his son. His rule constituted a Golden Age of peace and plenty. Saturn’s son, according to the Roman poet Virgil, was Picus, grandfather of the Laurentine king Latinus, whose daughter Lavinia the Trojan hero Aeneas wed.

The originally seven-day December festival of the Saturnalia celebrated in this god’s honor marked the wintertime end of work in the fields and served as a model for aspects of the Christian observation of Christmas.

(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Cronus, Latinus, Lavinia, Olympus [Mount], Ops, Picus, Rhea, and Zeus.)

SATYRS, THE Satyrs were woodland spirits who were originally conceived of as part horse and part human. Over time, they assumed the features of a goat.

(See Satyrs [Hybrid Creatures].)

SELENE Selene, goddess of the Moon and the moon’s personification, was said by the Greek poet Hesiod to be a daughter of the Titan Hyperion, a sun deity, her sisters being Helios (“Sun”) and Eos (“Dawn”). According to the mythographer Apollodorus, she fell in love with the handsome Endymion, the son of Aethlius, founder of Elis, or of Zeus. The gods granted Endymion a wish, and what he chose was to sleep forever, remaining both deathless and ageless.

(See also Endymion, Helios, Hyperion, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

SOL Sol, “sun” in Latin, was the Roman counterpart of the Greek sun god Helios. In the religious and broader cultural thought of the Roman world, Sol was a judge and champion of law, but also a deity of sun, fire, and light as well as a rainmaker responsible for promoting the growth of plants.

(See also Apollo and Helios.)

SOMNUS Somnus was a personification and the Roman god of sleep. He was identified with the Greek god Hypnus.

(See Hypnus.)

STEROPE Sterope was one of the Pleiades, seven nymphs born of Atlas and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus. The mythographer Apollodorus records that she became mother to the bird-women known as the Sirens and, by the war god Ares, of Oenomaus, a king of Pisa, who became enamored of his own daughter and found a way to kill all of her suitors but Pelops, the last.

(See also Ares, Atlas, Oceanus [god], Oenomaus, Pelops, Pleiades [the], and Sirens [the].)

SYLVANUS Sylvanus (or Silvanus) was Italian spirit of the woods but also a god of agriculture, cultivated fields, and flocks who straddled and negotiated the divide between nature and culture. His origins are debated, and he has been variously called a particular manifestation of the god Mars, in the guise of a deity of fields and farming, or of Faunus, as well as an outright reflection of the derivation of his name: silva in Latin is the word for “forest.” He was sometimes identified with the rustic god Pan, and ancient images depict him as an elderly, bearded male wearing an animal skin and holding pine cones, fruit, pine branches, or a sickle.

(See also Faunus, Mars, and Pan.)

SYRINX The Naiad (water nymph) Syrinx was the origin of, and gave her name to, the reed pipe played by the nature god Pan. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Syrinx, who lived in the mountains of Arcadia, was spotted one day by Pan, who desired her. Syrinx, wishing to remain a virgin like the goddess Artemis, fled the god’s advance and, upon coming to the river Ladon, asked the water nymphs, her sisters, to help her. Her wish was granted. The moment that the god laid hands on her, she became a handful of reeds. As the god breathed upon them, the reeds rustled sweetly in response. Captivated by the sound and wishing in this way to continue communicating with her, Pan bound reeds of graduated lengths, fastening them with wax. The result was the Pan pipe, syrinx in Greek.

(See also Arcadia, Artemis, Naiads [the], and Pan.)

TARTARUS Tartarus was the name given to the darkest, gloomiest depths of the earth, and was the part the Underworld reserved for sinners. While Tartarus was known primarily as a “place,” he is (at least to some degree) a personified primordial deity in the poet Hesiod’s account of the origins of the world and its gods. According to Hesiod, Tartarus and Gaia (“Earth”) were the first components of the world to come into being from Chaos (“Void”). With Gaia, a personified Tartarus became the father of the monstrous Typhon and Echidna. According to later authors, he was also the father of Zeus’s sacred eagle as well as of Thanatos (“Death”) and even the sorceress-goddess Hecate.

(See also Chaos, Echidna, Gaia, Hecate, Thanatos, Typhon, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

TERMINUS Terminus was a personification of boundary markers (whether stones or buried logs) and the tenacious Roman deity of property boundaries, which were established and safeguarded not only by law but also by this god. According to Roman lore, Terminus would not yield his place on the Capitoline Hill in Rome even for the god Jupiter when Jupiter’s temple was being built, this being the reason that the temple enclosed Terminus’s sacred boundary stone. The legendary Roman king Numa (or Titus Tatius) was credited with having established the worship of Terminus, whose festival, the Terminalia, was celebrated on February 23.

(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Jupiter, Numa, and Rome.)

TERPSICHORE Terpsichore, “She Who Delights in the Choral Dance,” was one of the nine Muses. She became viewed specifically as the patron goddess of choruses, groups that sang and danced, and of choral song, her attributes being the flute and lyre. Like her sisters Calliope, Euterpe, and Urania, she was named as a mother of the famed bard Linus, and both she and Urania were identified as mothers of the marriage god Hymen. Either she or her sister Melpomene was said to have given birth to the Sirens.

(See also Calliope, Euterpe, Hymen, Linus, Melpomene, Muses [the], Sirens [the], and Urania.)

TETHYS Tethys was one of the Titan gods, the first set of children born to Gaia and Uranus. To her brother Oceanus, Tethys bore the 3,000 Oceanid nymphs, as well as the river gods, all of them male. She is sometimes described as a sea goddess but was also known as the source of Oceanus’s sweet waters. She and her consort, Oceanus, took the goddess Hera into their care when Zeus was at war with his father, Cronus.

(See also Cronus, Gaia, Hera, Oceanids [the], Oceanus [god], Tethys, Titan, Uranus, and Zeus.)

THALIA There were several deities called Thalia (or Thaleia), “Blooming One.” The most prominent of these was the Muse of that name who became the patron deity of comedy and other light literary genres (versus tragedy and epic, for example). The comic mask was her attribute.

The other Thalias were a Nereid nymph, one of the three Graces, and a nymph who bore the Sicilian gods called the Palici.

(See also Graces [the], Muses [the], and Nereids [the].)

THANATOS Thanatos was the personification of death in Greek mythology. He was the son of Nyx (“Night”) and the brother of Hypnus (“Sleep”). He was early on depicted as a winged youth but, over time, was thought of as a grizzled elderly man.

(See also Hypnus.)

THEMIS Themis, whose name means “custom” or “sacred law,” was, logically, a personification of custom and law as established by nature or the gods versus human law created through legal proceedings. She was one of the Titan gods who were offspring of Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”). According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Themis became Zeus’s second wife after Metis, and she bore to him the Horae (“Seasons”), Eunomia (“Good Order”), Dike (“Justice”), Eirene (“Peace”), and the Moirae (“Fates”), who determine what good things and what misfortunes will come to humans in the course of their lives. All of these children reflect principles or mechanisms that ensure an orderly existence. According to the tragic poet Aeschylus, Themis was given control of the famous oracle at Delphi by Gaia, its original owner; Themis would pass it on to Phoebe, who in turn would pass it on to Apollo. Themis had close ties with Zeus in his role as guarantor of righteousness and good governance; as the poet Pindar writes, she sat on a throne next to him. Themis also had very close ties with her mother, Gaia, as a result of which she was regarded as an earth or fertility goddess and also as a deity having prophetic powers. Among those mythological characters that she helped in her capacity as a prophetic deity were Deucalion and Pyrrha, the sole survivors of the Great Flood; Atlas, who was forewarned of a future attempt to steal the apples of the Hesperides; and Zeus, who ceased to pursue Thetis when he learned that her child would be more powerful than its father. With her Titan brother Iapetus, Themis was also said to be mother to the second-generation Titan Prometheus, the benefactor of humankind.

(See also Atlas, Delphi, Deucalion, Dike, Gaia, Hesperides [the], Metis, Moirae [the], Phoebe, Prometheus, Pyrrha, Thetis, Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

TISIPHONE Tisiphone, whose name means “Avenger of Murder,” was one of the Erinyes (or Furies, in Latin), who were fearsome, snake-haired spirits of vengeance. Her sisters were Megaera (“Envious One”) and Alecto (“Implacable One”). For the Roman poet Virgil, Tisiphone was guardian of the gates to Tartarus, a region in the Underworld reserved for sinners, and she, together with her sisters, was tasked with executing punishments allotted by the Underworld’s judge Rhadamanthus.

(See also Alecto, Erinyes [the], Furies [the], Rhadamanthus, Tartarus, and Underworld [the].)

TITANS, THE As the universe and its gods were born, Gaia (“Earth”) produced Uranus (“Heaven”) to cover her on every side, and with this elemental male deity, she produced several groups of children, among them the three one-eyed Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-Handers”), and the twelve Titans, six male and six female: the brothers Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus; and the sisters Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. The best known of the Titans, some of whom are elemental and/or personifications, are the world-river Oceanus; Rhea, who married her brother Cronus and gave birth to Zeus and his siblings; Themis (“Divine Law”); Mnemosyne (“Memory”), who became the mother of the Muses; Tethys, who married Oceanus and bore the Oceanids; and Iapetus, who became father to Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.

The origins and power struggles of the Titans were described in some detail by the Greek poet Hesiod. Uranus detested the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes at first sight, and pressed the newborn monsters back inside their mother, Gaia, causing her enormous distress. Gaia called upon the Titans to help her, and only one was bold enough to volunteer. This was Cronus, the youngest of the group, who lay in hiding until Uranus came to lie with Gaia at night and castrated his father. This act resulted not only in the birth of Aphrodite and the fearsome Erinyes but also in Cronus’s becoming the king of the gods. Cronus then married his sister Rhea and with her produced Zeus and his siblings, who would become known as the Olympian gods. Having heard that one of his sons was destined to overpower him, Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born, with exception of Zeus, whom Rhea saved by handing Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. A ten-year power struggle between the Titans and the Olympian gods, which was called the Titanomachy (and was even in antiquity confused with the Gigantomachy, “battle between the gods and Giants”), ensued. So intense was the fight that heaven, earth, and sea were shaken. Zeus enlisted the aid of the Hecatoncheires and prevailed over the Titans, whom he imprisoned in Tartarus, with the Hecatoncheires as guards. Later sources specify that not all the Titans were involved in the Titanomachy and, as a result, not all were imprisoned.

The children and grandchildren of the Titans are also often called “Titans,” though they are technically a second or, in some cases, third generation of this group of deities.

(See also Aphrodite, Atlas, Coeus, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Epimetheus, Erinyes, Gaia, Giants [the], Hecatoncheires [the], Hyperion, Iapetus, Mnemosyne, Muses [the], Oceanids [the], Oceanus, Olympus [Mount], Phoebe, Prometheus, Rhea, Tethys, Themis, Uranus, and Zeus.)

TRITON The sea god Triton was the son of the god Poseidon by the Oceanid Amphitrite and resided in the depths of the sea. He was also known to spend time in Lake Tritonis (hence the lake’s name) in Libya, where Jason and the Argonauts encountered him. Triton was hybrid in form, having the torso of a human and the tail of a fish. The Roman poet Ovid describes the bearded Triton has being blue-green in color, having barnacle-clad shoulders, and possessing a shell on which he blew to cause the Great Flood’s waters to recede when the world had, due to humanity’s evil, become one great ocean.

The travel writer Pausanias mentions not one but several Tritons and recounts two strange tales that he heard in Boeotia. A Triton was said to have stolen cattle and to have attacked small ships in the region until the local populace plied him with wine and, when he was asleep, beheaded him. This beheaded Triton, Pausanias opines, appears to have inspired a local headless statue of the creature, who clearly was no longer considered immortal. The second story involves local women who wished to purify themselves in the sea to prepare for worshipping Dionysus. A Triton attacked them, and the creature was driven off by Dionysus himself when the women called for help. In Rome, Pausanias adds, he saw a Triton that had green, matted hair, with the appearance of marsh frogs. His body, ending in a dolphin’s tail, was covered with scales like a fish, and he had gills beneath the ears, but he had a human nose. His mouth was broad and bestial; his eyes blue; his hands, fingers, and fingernails like murex shells.

(See also Amphitrite, Argonauts [the], Boeotia, Dionysus, Jason, Oceanids [the], Poseidon, and Rome.)

URANIA Urania (or Ourania), “The Heavenly One,” was one of the Muses, deities who inspired artistic expression. She became identified as the patroness of astronomy and astrology and, as a result, was associated with the natural sciences and philosophy. She was described as the mother both of the famed singer Linus (as, incidentally, was her sister Calliope) and of Hymen, the personification of marriage hymns.

There were several other Uranias in Classical mythology. One was an Oceanid nymph, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. The goddesses Hera, Hecate, Hebe, Artemis, and Nemesis were also referred to as Urania in the sense that they were “heavenly” and resided on Mount Olympus. Urania as a cult title of Aphrodite appears to be a reference to her role as a fertility goddess and offspring of Uranus.

(See also Aphrodite, Artemis, Hebe, Hecate, Hera, Nemesis, Oceanids [the], Oceanus [god], Olympus [Mount], Tethys, and Uranus.)

URANUS Uranus, known in Greek as Ouranos, was a personification of the Heavens or sky as well as the sky itself. According to the poet Hesiod’s account of the origin of the gods and the universe, Gaia, the elemental goddess Earth, produced Uranus to cover her on all sides and to be a place of residence for the gods (who were not yet born). Together Gaia and Uranus had several groups of children: the twelve Titan gods, the three one-eyed Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-Handers”). The six newborn monsters were so distasteful to Uranus that he pressed them back inside their mother, causing her terrible pain. For this outrage she sought vengeance, and she persuaded Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, to carry out her plot. When Uranus next came to lie with her at night, Cronus crept out of his place of hiding and castrated his father, whereby Uranus ceased also to be the most powerful male deity. Uranus’s severed genitalia fell into the sea, and from the foam arising around them was born Aphrodite. From the blood that fell on the earth sprang the Giants and the Erinyes, spirits of vengeance. Cronus would, in turn, be overpowered by his own son Zeus, who ultimately became king of all the gods. This succession myth (Uranus-Cronus-Zeus) has Near Eastern parallels that point strongly to a common origin of these stories.

(See also Aphrodite, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Erinyes [the], Gaia, Giants [the], Hecatoncheires [the], Titans [the], and Zeus.)

VESTA Vesta was the Roman counterpart of the Greek Hestia, goddess of the hearth. There is no mythology associated with Vesta per se. In the Roman world, Vesta presided over both the family hearth and also the central hearth of the city and state, thus being the symbolic heart of the family and collaborative groups of families. In the city of Rome, the six priestesses of Vesta tended her sacred fire, which resided unextinguished in a circular temple in the Roman forum. These priestesses, six in number, were appointed between the ages of six and ten and served the goddess for a period of thirty years, at which point they were free to marry. Vestals who were discovered to have broken their vows of chastity, a rare occurrence, were buried alive.

(See also Hestia and Rome.)

VULCAN Vulcan (or Volcanus) was a Roman god of fire, especially of its destructive aspects. He was called upon as Mulciber (“Mitigator”), Quietus (“Peaceful One”), and Mitis (“Gentle One”) in his capacity to control conflagrations and their outbreak. Vulcan was a god of great antiquity in Rome, but his origins are unknown; it has been posited that he was originally an Etruscan deity who arrived in Italy via the eastern Mediterranean. His consort was a goddess named Maia, who was distinct from the daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes. Being a deity of importance to the Romans, Vulcan had a shrine, the Volcanal, at the base of the Capitoline Hill in the Roman Forum and a temple in the Campus Martius that was constructed later. The Volcanalia, a festival celebrated annually in his honor on August 23, involved the sacrifice of live fish from the Tiber that were thrown on the god’s flames.

Vulcan was identified with Hephaestus, the Greek god of the forge as well as of volcanoes and subterranean fires, as early as the fourth century BCE and, accordingly, assumed the latter’s characteristics and mythology. As an equivalent of Hephaestus, the god Vulcan could be represented wearing a workman’s cap and equipped with a smithy’s tongs, anvil, and hammer.

(See also Atlas, Capitoline Hill [the], Hephaestus, Hermes, Maia, Rome, and Tiber River [the].)

ZEPHYR Zephyr, also known as Zephyrus or Zephyros, was a personification and god of the west wind, which was both warm and gentle, harbinger of welcome spring and the rebirth of vegetation. The Romans identified him with Favonius. Along with the winds Boreas and Notus, he is described by the Greek poet Hesiod as being a child of Eos, goddess of the dawn, and her consort Astraeus.

We learn from Homer that Zephyr mated with stormy Podarge, “She of the Swift Feet,” as she was grazing along the river Oceanus. Their union resulted in the birth to Podarge of Achilles’s immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios. Podarge, it should be noted, is known from other sources as one of the Harpies, bird-women who appear, at least originally, to have personified the sudden, grasping nature of wind blasts. Winds were sometimes represented as horses, and it would make sense that she and Zephyr, both in horse form, would produce swift, immortal horses.

A different tale involving Zephyr is preserved by the mythographer Apollodorus: Zephyr and Apollo both vied for the affection of the handsome Spartan youth Hyacinth. Sensing Hyacinth’s preference for Apollo, a jealous Zephyr caused a discus thrown by his rival to hit Hyacinth’s head, killing him. As a memorial to him a hyacinth flower, with words of mourning inscribed on its petals, sprang from the ground where he had fallen. Another related story of flowers was Zephyr’s pursuit of the nymph Chloris (“Greenery”), whom he married and appointed the goddess of flowers, known thereafter as Flora. It was Flora, according to the poet Ovid in his Fasti, who actually created the hyacinth.

(See also Achilles, Apollo, Boreas, Favonius, Flora, Hyacinth, Notus, Oceanus [place], and Sparta.)

ZEUS Zeus was the supreme god of the Greeks in both religion and myth, having precedence over the gods who lived with him on Mount Olympus and all others as well. He was “Hypatos” (the “Highest”), and as Homer describes him, he was the omnipotent “father of gods and men.” Zeus’s origins are indisputably Indo-European, his name being derived from the root dieu “to gleam.” He was, first and foremost, the bright god of the sky and of atmospheric phenomena, including rain, thunder, and lightning. As mountains are the geologic features of Earth closest to the sky, mountains were sacred to him, particularly the lofty Mount Olympus. Importantly, Zeus was also a civic god, deeply concerned with the establishment and maintenance of the city as an ordered community as well as with the order of individual households and their members. As the deity sustaining interpersonal relationships, he was the protector of suppliants, guarantor of oaths, and sponsor of hospitality. As a reflection of his many functions, he possessed many epithets and epikleseis (names by which he was called upon in prayer and cult), among them Ombrios (“Rainmaker”), Nephelegeretes (“Cloud-Gatherer”), Keraunios (“Thunderer”), Olympios (“of Mount Olympus”), Agoraios (“God of the Assembly”), Xenios (“God of Hospitality”), Hikesios (“God of Suppliants”), and Horkios (“God of Oaths”). Zeus was worshipped throughout Greece and protected all cities equally; for this reason, he was not the patron deity of any particular city. His most important cultic festival, complete with Panhellenic games, was held at Olympia in the Peloponnese, and it was the temple built there in his honor that contained his best-known cult statue, the colossal gold-and-ivory creation of the famed sculptor Phidias. In addition to being the supreme weather and civic god, Zeus possessed prophetic powers, his oldest and most prominent oracle being located at Dodona in Epirus, where his utterances were believed to have been conveyed through the fluttering of his sacred oak’s leaves and through the flight or calls of doves settling in this tree.

In mythology, Zeus was the son of the Titan gods Cronus and Rhea, and his siblings were Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter. Having learned that he would be dethroned by one of his children, Cronus swallowed each of them as they were born, apart from Zeus, whom Rhea saved by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow in Zeus’s place. The infant Zeus, for his part, was taken to Mount Ida (or Dicte) on the island of Crete, where he was nursed by the nymphs Adrastea and Ida while the Curetes hid his cries by clashing their weapons. When Zeus reached maturity, a decade-long battle between the older-generation Titan gods and Zeus and his siblings, the so-called Olympian gods, raged until Zeus, with the aid of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, prevailed. The Titans were now imprisoned in Tartarus, and it was left to Zeus and his brothers to divide the world between them. To this end, they drew lots, Zeus in this way becoming lord of the heavens, Hades lord of the Underworld, and Poseidon lord of the sea.

Zeus married his sister, Hera, and with her became father to Ares, god of war; Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth; and Hebe, goddess of youth. Zeus also had a great many other consorts and lovers, divine and mortal, among them the goddess Metis, whom he swallowed while she was pregnant and with whom he became the father of Athena. The twin gods Apollo and Artemis were his children with the second-generation Titan goddess Leto; Hermes with the nymph Maia; Dionysus with the Theban princess Semele; Persephone with Demeter; and the nine Muses with Mnemosyne. By some accounts, he was the father of Aphrodite with Dione. His best-known mortal child was Hercules, whom he co-fathered with Amphitryon, both god and mortal having slept with Alcmena, Hercules’s mother, on the same night. In two spectacular instances, Zeus himself gave birth to the children he had fathered: Athena, who sprang from his head; and Dionysus, whose pregnant mother, Semele, Zeus had killed with a thunderbolt and who, after a period of gestation, emerged from his thigh.

Zeus was known to resort to unorthodox means of seduction, notably transforming himself into a shower of golden rain in order to gain access to an imprisoned Danae, who by him became mother of Perseus. He abducted the Tyrian princess Europa in the form of a lovely, tame white bull, and assumed the appearance of the goddess Artemis in order to approach Callisto, that goddess’s chaste devotee. In order to seduce Leda, who would bear to him Helen of Troy, Zeus disguised himself as a swan. However, it was the god’s sacred eagle, and not the god himself, that carried off the handsome Trojan prince Ganymede.

Those who incurred his wrath included the second-generation Titan Prometheus, Lycaon, and the entire human Race of Iron, as the current, wicked race of mortals was known. Zeus felt that Prometheus was too great a benefactor of humankind and for that reason he was placed in chains, his liver eternally eaten by vultures. The evil king Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a consequence of his bestial behavior, and humankind, which Zeus had determined to be utterly evil, was extinguished by a great flood apart from the devout Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Zeus’s distinguishing characteristics and attributes were his scepter, lightning bolts, and his sacred bird, the eagle. Among plants, it was the regal oak that was most sacred to him.

The Romans identified their supreme god Jupiter with Zeus.

(See also Alcmena, Amphitryon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Callisto, Crete, Cronus, Curetes [the], Cyclopes [the], Danae, Demeter, Deucalion, Dione, Dionysus, Dodona, Eileithyia, Europa, Ganymede, Hades, Hebe, Hecatoncheires [the], Helen, Hera, Hercules, Hermes, Hestia, Ida [Mount], Jupiter, Leda, Leto, Lycaon, Maia, Metis, Mnemosyne, Muses [the], Olympia, Olympus [Mount], Persephone, Perseus, Poseidon, Prometheus, Pyrrha, Rhea, Rome, Semele, Titans [the], Troy, and Underworld [the].)