Some other Greek Myths

So last week we looked at the twelve greek olympian gods, to follow that up this week we will be looking at other gods and monsters of note in greek mythology. Even dividing the topic into two posts I am not even scratching the surface of all that is encompassed in Greek mythology but I hope to give a good overview of the topic between these two posts.

Hades- The greek god of the underworld he was the firstborn child of Cronus and Rhea. In spite of his importance he is not included in the olympian gods because managing the dead in the underworld was a full time job so he could not live in Olympus. He became the ruler of the underworld when Zeus, Poseidon, decided to divide up control of the sky, seas, and underworld. To do this the three drew lots and Hades received the underworld and was very strict in keeping the souls that entered it from leaving. Aside from this though he was generally a very passive god who rarely interfered with things outside his domain. Those who did try to leave his realm were often punished immensely as we see with the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was a greek king and is said to have founded the city of Corinth he is most well known for the stories of his cheating death once. It was said that before he died he asked his wife to throw his body naked into a public square if she truly loved him. Then after his death he went to Hades wife Persephone and told her that his wife had disgraced his corpse and he sought to return to life to scold his wife for not giving him a proper funeral. Persephone agreed but after he scolded his wife Sisyphus refused to return to the underworld so the gods took him there by force. As a punishment for his deception he was then forced to roll a boulder up a mountain and every time he got it to the top it would fall down again and he would have to start over for the rest of eternity.

Cerberus: Not a god but rather the loyal pet of Hades Cerberus was a three headed hound with a mane of snakes and serpents tail as well as the guardian of the underworld. He was the child of the monsters Typhon and Echidna. He is featured in many greek myths as the heros would have to defeat or sneak past him if they wanted to enter the underworld while still alive. One of the most famous stories about him is part of the twelve labors of Heracles as his final task to redeem himself for killing his family Heracles had to capture the monster bare handed and bring it back to Eurystheus. When Heracles did so though Eurystheus was so afraid of he monster that he jumped into a large piece of pottery and begged Heracles to return it to the underworld.

Typhon: Known as the father of all monster Typhon was a being feared even by the gods. He can be seen on the right above facing zeus as having many serpents in place of legs and giant wings he was also said to have hundreds of serpents for heads though. He was said to be the father of the chimera, hydra, Ladon a serpent like dragon, and the sphinx among many others. The most famous story about Typhon himself though is that he once challenged Zeus and the other olympian gods and won forcing them to flee to egypt where they hid themselves by taking the forms of animals. Athena provoked Zeus to fight back against Typhon by calling him a coward and in their second battle Zeus was able to win by trapping Typhon under a mountain.

Thanatos: The god of death and twin brother of hypnos the god of dreams. He shared the duty of guiding dead to the underworld with Hermes. He also played a important role in the events leading up to Sisyphus' escape from the underworld. Prior to his death Sisyphus had bound Thanatos in order to escape death however doing so prevented all people from dying which angered Ares as he could no longer kill people. As a result Ares freed Thanatos from Sisyphus' binding and Sisyphus used this time to tell his wife to leave his corpse in the public square.