MythosData

comparison 29

• Aphrodite vs Venus

  Are Aphrodite and Venus the same goddess? In myth, yes — Venus caught with Mars, Venus mother of Aeneas, Venus wounded by Diomedes are all Aphrodite's stories in Latin. In what the name is for, no — Virgil's Venus is the ancestress of Rome who pleads for "empire without end", and Ovid's Venus deifies Julius Caesar; Livy knows an altar of Venus Murcia. Nothing Greek does that.

• Ares vs Mars

  Are Ares and Mars the same god? In myth, yes — Ovid's Mars is caught in Vulcan's net with Venus exactly as Homer's Ares is caught by Hephaestus. In standing, no — Zeus calls Ares "most hateful to me of all gods", while Mars is the father of Romulus, has his own priests, the Salii, and the Gates of War that Rome opens in his name.

• Artemis vs Diana

  Is Diana the same as Artemis? In myth, yes — Ovid's Diana turns Actaeon into a stag exactly as Apollodorus's Artemis does, and both are Leto's daughter, huntress and virgin. In cult, no — Diana had a temple on the Aventine built by Servius Tullius with the Latin League, and a grove at Aricia where horses were banned; and Latin poets fold Trivia and Luna into her name.

• Athena vs Minerva

  Are Athena and Minerva the same goddess? In the poems, yes — Ovid's Minerva is born of no mother, weaves the contest with Neptune for Athens and wears the Gorgon aegis Hesiod and Homer gave Athena. In cult, no — Minerva was an Italic goddess with her own festival, seated on the Capitol beside Jupiter and Juno, an arrangement Athens never had.

• Creation Myths Compared

  How the world begins in Hesiod, Ovid, the Poetic Edda and the Egyptian texts. The Greek and Roman accounts start from Chaos and proceed by birth or separation; the Norse starts from a giant, Ymir, whose butchered body becomes the earth; the Egyptian starts from a solitary god in the waters of Nu who creates by speaking names. Each is bound to its lines.

• Cronus vs Saturn

  Is Saturn the same as Cronus? In myth, yes — Ovid's Jove is "the Son of Saturn", Juno is "Saturn's daughter", and Saturn's reign is the golden age that Hesiod places under Cronus. In what happened after, no — Hesiod's Cronus is beaten and made to vomit his children; Virgil's Saturn flees Jove to Italy, hides in Latium, gives it laws and becomes the ancestor of the Latin kings.

• Demeter vs Ceres

  Is Ceres the same as Demeter? In myth, yes — Ovid's Ceres searches the world for Proserpine and withholds the crops exactly as the Homeric Hymn's Demeter does for Persephone. In usage, no — Virgil's Dido sacrifices to "law-bestowing Ceres", and in Latin "Ceres' gift" simply means bread; Ovid also gives Ceres the story of Erysichthon, which no Greek text here tells.

• Dionysus vs Bacchus

  Is Bacchus the same as Dionysus? In myth, yes — Ovid's Bacchus is born of Semele and Jove's thigh, turns the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins as in the Homeric Hymn, and has Pentheus torn apart as in Apollodorus. In Latin use, no — Virgil's Amata feigns "the madness Bacchus loves" to start a Latin war, and "Bacchus" in Latin can simply mean wine.

• End of the World Myths Compared

  Only the Norse texts narrate the end of the world. Voluspo tells Ragnarok stanza by stanza and the renewal after it. The Greek texts have no ending — Hesiod's Iron Age is the end of a race, and Zeus's threat is to destroy men, not the world. Ovid's Jove recalls a fated fire. The Egyptian texts read here promise the dead millions of years and describe no end.

• Flood Myths Compared

  The Greek flood of Deucalion is told by Apollodorus and Ovid; the Norse poems keep only a giant in a boat; the Egyptian story that is usually compared, the Destruction of Mankind, is not a flood at all — Ra sends Hathor to slaughter men and stops her with a lake of red beer. This page says what each text actually contains.

• Hades vs Pluto

  Is Pluto the same as Hades? In myth, yes — Ovid's Pluto carries off Proserpine as the Hymn's Aidoneus carries off Persephone, and Virgil's underworld is ruled by "Pluto, Stygian King". In the name, no — Greek Hades is a name to avoid, Latin Pluto and Dis mean "the rich one", and Rome gave Dis Pater an altar and games no Greek city gave Hades.

• Hephaestus vs Vulcan

  Is Vulcan the same as Hephaestus? In myth, yes — Ovid's "son of Juno" forges the net for Mars and Venus as Homer's Hephaestus does for Ares, and Virgil's Vulcan forges Aeneas's shield as Hephaestus forged Achilles's. In place and cult, no — Virgil moves the forge from Lemnos to Sicily, makes Cacus Vulcan's son, and Livy's Romans burn enemy spoils to Vulcan.

• Hera vs Juno

  Are Hera and Juno the same goddess? In the stories, yes — Ovid's Juno is Hera hounding Io, Callisto and Semele under a Latin name, and Virgil's Juno is still "Jove's sister and his spouse". In loyalties, no — Hera's cities are Argos, Sparta and Mycenae; Juno's is Carthage, and the Aeneid ends with her bargaining for the Latin name of Rome.

• Hermes vs Mercury

  Is Mercury the same as Hermes? In myth, yes — Virgil's Mercury binds on the golden sandals and takes up the sleep-giving wand in the very words Homer gives Hermes, and Ovid's Mercury slays Argus, the deed behind Hermes's Homeric epithet. The Roman surplus is genealogical: Virgil makes Mercury the ancestor of Evander, the Arcadian king on the Palatine.

• Hestia vs Vesta

  Is Vesta the same as Hestia? In identity, yes — both are the virgin goddess of the hearth, first-born of Cronus. In everything else, no — Hestia has almost no myth and no priesthood in the Greek texts, while Vesta has Rome's Vestal Virgins, a perpetual fire carried from Troy, and a mother of Romulus among her priestesses. This is the pair where the Roman side is heavier than the Greek.

• Love Goddesses Compared

  Aphrodite, Venus, Freyja and Hathor are the goddesses called "goddess of love" in four traditions. In the texts only Aphrodite's portion is love alone. Venus is Aphrodite with a dynasty to protect; Freyja is a goddess of love who also takes half the battle-dead; Hathor in the Egyptian texts is the Eye of Ra who slaughters mankind, and her "love" is a Greek identification.

• Mother Goddesses Compared

  Demeter, Isis, Frigg and Ceres are the mother goddesses of four traditions, and three of them share one story — a child lost, a search, a mother who tries to make a mortal child immortal by fire. Demeter and Ceres are the same goddess with different arithmetic for Persephone's year; Isis is the wife who reassembles her husband and hides her son; Frigg is the wife of Odin who knows every fate and weeps for Baldr.

• Odin vs Thor

  Odin and Thor are father and son, and the Poetic Edda stages their contrast directly in Harbarthsljoth, where Odin in disguise mocks Thor across a river. Odin is the god of the nobles, of war-making, seduction and magic; Thor is the god of the thralls, of giant-killing and the hammer. Both die at Ragnarok — Odin to the wolf, Thor to the serpent.

• Poseidon vs Neptune

  Is Neptune the same as Poseidon? In myth, yes — Ovid's Neptune floods the earth with the trident and Virgil's Neptune calms the storm as the brother who won the sea by lot. In cult, no — Livy's Romans hold games for "Equestrian Neptune", the Consualia, at which the Sabine women are seized; no Greek text ties Poseidon to that.

• Sun Gods Compared

  Helios, Apollo, Sol and Ra are the sun gods people compare, and the texts say only three of them are the sun. Helios is the all-seeing Titan's son who drives the chariot; Apollo in Homer and the Hymns is the archer of Delos and Delphi, not the sun; Sol is Helios in Latin, whom Ovid also calls Phoebus; Ra is the self-created king of the gods who crosses the underworld each night.

• Thunder Gods Compared

  Zeus, Jupiter and Thor are the thunder gods people compare. In the texts only two of them actually hold thunder — Zeus's bolt is Hesiod's gift of the Cyclopes and Jupiter's is the same bolt in Latin, with a Roman cult of lightning behind it. Thor's connection to thunder is his name; the Poetic Edda gives him a hammer and a shaking earth, never the word.

• Trickster Gods Compared

  Loki, Hermes and Set are the gods people file together as tricksters. The texts sort them apart. Hermes steals Apollo's cattle at a day old and is rewarded with an office; Loki helps the gods and destroys them, and ends bound; Set is not a trickster at all but the murderer of Osiris, whose one trick is a chest measured to his brother's body.

• Underworld Rulers Compared

  Hades, Pluto, Hel and Osiris rule the dead in four traditions, but they do not rule the same way. Hades holds the dark by lot and keeps the dead in; Pluto is Hades under a Latin name; Hel in the Poetic Edda is a place as much as a person; Osiris is a murdered king who rules because he died and who presides over a judgment the others never hold.

• Underworlds Compared

  What happens after death in Greek, Egyptian and Norse myth, according to the texts. The Greek dead are shades in the house of Hades, sorted by Virgil into Tartarus and Elysium; the Egyptian dead cross the Duat with spells to reach the Field of Reeds and Osiris; the Norse dead go by manner of death — the slain to Odin's Valhalla, the rest to Hel.

• War Gods Compared

  Ares, Mars, Tyr and Sekhmet are the war gods of four traditions, and the texts give each a different relation to war. Ares is the god Zeus hates, beaten by Athena; Mars is the father of Romulus with priests and dancing Salii; Tyr is the one-handed god who lost his hand to the wolf and is invoked for victory-runes; Sekhmet is the lioness of plague who wades in the blood of mankind.

• Wisdom Gods Compared

  Athena, Minerva, Odin and Thoth are the gods of wisdom in four traditions, and the texts give each a different kind of wisdom. Athena's is inborn, from the swallowed Metis, and shows as craft and war-counsel; Minerva's is Athena's craft in Latin, tested against Arachne; Odin's is bought with an eye and nine nights on the tree; Thoth's is written — he invented writing, keeps the registers and judges the dead.

• Zeus vs Jupiter

  Are Zeus and Jupiter the same god? In myth, yes — the Latin poets retell Zeus's stories under Jupiter's name. In cult and character, no — Jupiter Optimus Maximus is the god of the Roman state, with titles, temples and a promise of empire that Zeus never had.

• Zeus vs Odin

  Is Odin the Norse Zeus? Both are called father of gods and men and both head their pantheon, but the texts make them different kinds of king. Hesiod's Zeus wins his throne in a war, wields the thunderbolt and never dies; the Poetic Edda's Odin buys knowledge with an eye and a hanging, fights with a spear and is fated to be swallowed by the wolf at Ragnarok.

• Zeus vs Thor

  Thor vs Zeus is the comparison people make because both are gods of storm and strength who fight serpents. The texts keep them apart on rank and on ending. Zeus is the king who rules by the thunderbolt and defeats Typhoeus for good; Thor is a king's son, the hammer-wielding champion of gods and men, who kills the Midgard serpent at Ragnarok and dies of its venom nine paces later.

entity 143

• Achilles

  Son of Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis, the best of the Achaeans at Troy and the subject of the Iliad's wrath; he chose a short life with imperishable renown, killed Hector to avenge Patroclus, and fell to Paris and Apollo at the Scaean gate. In Hades he says he would rather be a living serf; Pindar puts him on the island of the blessed.

• Aeneas

  Trojan hero, son of Venus and Anchises, who carried his father and his household gods out of burning Troy, wandered to Italy, descended to the underworld to see Rome's future, and killed Turnus for Lavinia's hand — the subject of Virgil's Aeneid. Livy gives him Lavinium, a two-fold arrival tradition and the title Jupiter Indiges; Ovid has Venus make him a god.

• Aeneid (Virgil)

  Virgil's Latin epic in twelve books on Aeneas's flight from Troy, his wanderings and his war in Italy, written under Augustus, whom it names in the underworld and at Actium. It is the fullest witness for the Roman Penates, Janus's Gates of War, Faunus's oracle and Bellona, and for Jupiter's promise of "empire without end". Read here in T. C. Williams's 1910 translation, cited by book and Latin line.

• Amun

  God of Thebes, "Lord of the throne of Egypt, Master of the Apts (Karnak)", whose name Manetho read as "concealed" — "He whose name is hidden is Amen". Herodotus says "the Egyptians call Zeus 'Amon'" and explains his ram's head with a story of Heracles; Plutarch agrees that Amoun is the Egyptian Zeus; the Karnak hymns make him king and father of the gods.

• Anubis

  Dog-formed god of embalming and of the weighing of the heart, son of Nephthys — by Osiris in Plutarch, by Set in the Egyptian creation legend Budge translates. Found by Isis with the help of dogs and made her guardian, he "protects the gods just as dogs protect men" and stands at the Gates of the Tuat.

• Aphrodite

  Goddess of love and desire with two incompatible births — grown from the foam around the severed members of Uranus in Hesiod, daughter of Zeus and Dione in Homer. Wounded by Diomedes at Troy, lender of the girdle that seduces Zeus, wife of Hephaestus and lover of Ares in the Odyssey, and, in her Homeric Hymn, made by Zeus to love the mortal Anchises and bear Aeneas. Cyprus and Paphos are hers.

• Apollo

  God of the bow, the lyre and prophecy, son of Zeus and Leto and twin of Artemis, born on Delos after nine days of labour while Hera kept Eileithyia away. The Homeric Hymn has him found his oracle at Crisa, kill the she-dragon whose rotting gave Pytho and "Pythian" their names, and bring Cretan sailors as his priests; the Iliad opens with his plague on the Greek camp.

• Ares

  God of war, son of Zeus and Hera. Homer's Ares is wounded by Diomedes, told by Zeus "most hateful to me art thou of all gods", felled by Athena with a boundary stone, and caught in Hephaestus's net with Aphrodite; he was once shut in a bronze jar for thirteen months. Hesiod makes him father of Panic and Fear; Apollodorus and Pausanias record his trial on the Areopagus.

• Artemis

  Virgin huntress with the golden bow, daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin of Apollo; "queen of the wild beasts", she shoots stags on the mountains and then leads the dances at Delphi. Apollodorus makes her the first-born and her mother's midwife; in the Iliad Hera boxes her ears and she runs weeping to Zeus. Ephesus was her greatest sanctuary.

• Asclepius

  Son of Apollo and "healer of sicknesses", born of Coronis daughter of Phlegyas; taught by Chiron, he raised the dead with the Gorgon's blood and was struck down by Zeus's thunderbolt for it. Apollodorus and Pausanias each record three birth stories; Epidaurus claimed him as its own.

• Athena

  Goddess of wisdom, war and crafts, born fully armed from the head of Zeus after he swallowed her mother Metis; "Tritogeneia", virgin "saviour of cities" who took Attica from Poseidon with the olive. In the Iliad she guides Diomedes's spear into Ares and fells the war god herself with a boundary stone; Pausanias describes her gold-and-ivory statue in the Parthenon.

• Atlas

  Son of the Titan Iapetus who "through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms" at the western edge of the earth, by the Hesperides and the house of Night — the lot Zeus assigned him. Homer makes him Calypso's father who holds the pillars; Apollodorus tells how Heracles briefly took the sky from him for the golden apples.

• Aurora

  Roman goddess of the dawn, rising "from Tithonus' saffron bed" in her rose-red chariot to open the gates of morning before the Sun. Ovid tells her grief for her son Memnon, killed by Achilles and turned by Jupiter's gift into the Memnonides, and her abduction of Cephalus; her tears are the dew. Counterpart of the Greek Eos.

• Bacchus

  Roman name of the god of wine and ecstasy, son of Jupiter and Semele, identified with the Greek Dionysus and also called Liber. Ovid is the witness — the birth from the thigh of Jupiter, the pirates, the death of Pentheus, the hymn of his names, the nurse Ino punished by Juno, the golden touch of Midas; Virgil shows the Latin queen Amata feigning "the madness Bacchus loves" and Dido toasting "Bacchus, lord of mirth".

• Baldr

  Son of Odin and Frigg, "the bleeding god", killed by his brother Hoth with a shaft of mistletoe; avenged by Vali, born for that purpose and one night old when he fought; mourned by Frigg in Fensalir; expected back after Ragnarok, when "Baldr comes back" to dwell with Hoth in the new world.

• Bastet

  The goddess of Bubastis, whom Herodotus calls Artemis and names "Bubastis" in Egyptian — daughter of Dionysus (Osiris) and Isis, sister of Apollo (Horus). Her festival was the greatest in Egypt, her temple "none more pleasing to the eye", and dead cats from all Egypt were embalmed and buried in her town.

• Bellona

  Roman goddess of war, Mars's companion in the Latin poets: "grim Bellona" calls Aeneas to the fighting in burning Troy, Juno promises Lavinia a bridal bed lit by "Bellona's blaze", and on the shield of Aeneas she "waves her sanguinary scourge" beside Discordia at Actium; in Ovid she drenches a wedding hall in blood.

• Bibliotheca of Apollodorus

  The Library, a Greek prose handbook of mythology in three books plus an Epitome, generally dated to the first or second century AD and falsely ascribed to Apollodorus of Athens; it runs from the rule of Sky to the death of Odysseus, names the older authors it follows, and records variants with "some say". Cited here as Apollod. book.chapter.section in Frazer's Loeb translation.

• Bragi

  God of poetry among the Aesir, "Bragi of skalds" as Yggdrasil is best of trees; runes were cut on "Bragi's tongue"; in Lokasenna he is the first god Loki insults — the "adorner of benches" who is brave in his seat and not in battle — and Idunn intervenes to calm him.

• Cerberus

  The hound of Hades, son of Typhon and Echidna, who fawns on those who enter and devours those who try to leave; fifty-headed in Hesiod, three-headed with a dragon's tail in Apollodorus and the Roman poets, nameless in Homer. Heracles dragged him up to Eurystheus and brought him back; the Sibyl drugged him for Aeneas.

• Ceres

  Roman goddess of grain and the ploughed field, mother of Proserpina and sister of Jupiter and Pluto, identified with the Greek Demeter. Ovid's fifth book is her fullest witness — the rape of Proserpina, the search with torches lit at Aetna, the appeal to Jupiter, the divided year, Triptolemus's mission — and his eighth adds Erysichthon; Virgil calls her "law-bestowing Ceres" and names grain and bread her gift.

• Chaos

  The first thing that came to be in Hesiod's Theogony — before Earth, Tartarus and Eros — and the parent of Erebus and Night; in later lines also a place at the edge of the world. Ovid's Chaos is something else, a shapeless mass of discordant elements that a god sorted into sky, sea and land.

• Cronus

  Youngest and "most terrible" of the Titans, who castrated his father Uranus with Earth's sickle, ruled the gods, swallowed his children by Rhea and was tricked with a stone; overthrown by Zeus after a ten-year war and bound under Tartarus — yet in Works and Days he rules the golden race and the Isles of the Blessed. The Romans called him Saturn.

• Cupid

  Roman god of love (Amor), the winged, arrow-bearing son of Venus in Ovid and Virgil: he shoots Apollo with the golden arrow and Daphne with the leaden one, pierces Pluto at his mother's bidding, and takes Ascanius's shape to make Dido love Aeneas. The Latin poets' Cupid is Venus's child, unlike Hesiod's primordial Eros.

• Cyclopes

  Two different one-eyed peoples share the name. Hesiod's Cyclopes are three sons of Earth and Heaven, Brontes, Steropes and Arges, who forged the thunderbolt for Zeus; Homer's are a lawless race of giant shepherds, among them Polyphemus son of Poseidon, whom Odysseus blinded. Later Greeks credited the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns to Cyclopes too.

• Demeter

  Goddess of grain and of the Eleusinian Mysteries, daughter of Cronus and Rhea and mother of Persephone by Zeus. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells her nine-day search with torches, her disguised service in the house of Celeus at Eleusis, the famine she imposed until Persephone was returned, and the rites she then taught the Eleusinian princes.

• Deucalion

  Son of Prometheus, husband of Pyrrha, king in Phthia; when Zeus drowned the men of the bronze age he floated in a chest for nine days to Parnassus and repeopled the earth by throwing stones over his shoulder. Ovid gives the flood its Roman telling with Themis's oracle; Pindar and Pausanias know the landing at Parnassus and the stone-born people.

• Diana

  Roman goddess of the hunt, the wild and the moon, "Latona's daughter", identified with the Greek Artemis and called Trivia, Phoebe and Cynthia by the poets. Livy records the temple of Diana that Servius Tullius had the Latins build in Rome; Virgil gives her the grove of Aricia and the warrior Camilla; Ovid retells Actaeon, Callisto and the Calydonian boar under her Latin name.

• Dionysus

  God of wine and ecstatic frenzy, son of Zeus and the mortal Semele — "a mortal woman an immortal son", says Hesiod. Apollodorus has Zeus sew the unborn child into his thigh after Semele is destroyed by his lightning; the Homeric Hymn shows him turning Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins; the Iliad and Apollodorus record the punishment of Lycurgus and Pentheus for resisting him.

• The Duat

  The Egyptian Other World (Budge writes "Tuat") — "a vast and difficult region" without roads, "black as the blackest night", which the dead must cross with spells and amulets to reach the Fields of Sekhet Aaru and the presence of Osiris, and which the Sun-god traverses each night in ten divisions. Thoth rules it for Ra; Anubis guards its Gates.

• The Ennead

  The "Nine Gods" of Heliopolis — Atum (Ra), Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys — the genealogy that the Egyptian creation text and the hymns Budge translates set out, and that Plutarch retells for its last generation as the five gods born on the five extra days. Herodotus counts Egypt's gods in eights and twelves and never in nines.

• Eos

  Dawn, daughter of Hyperion and Theia (or Euryphaessa), "rosy-fingered", who rises each day from beside Tithonus to bring light to gods and men; mother by Astraeus of the winds and the stars, by Tithonus of Memnon, and the goddess who won her lover immortality but forgot to ask for youth. The Roman Aurora is her counterpart.

• Eros

  Love, in Hesiod the fourth thing to come to be — after Chaos, Earth and Tartarus — "fairest among the deathless gods", who unnerves the limbs of gods and men; he attends Aphrodite from the moment of her birth. Pausanias records the rival view that made him the youngest god and Aphrodite's son. The Roman Cupid is his counterpart.

• Faunus

  Roman god of the wild and of prophecy, ancestor of the Latin kings: in the Aeneid he is Latinus's father, son of Picus and grandson of Saturn, the "fate-revealer" whose grove under Albunea gives oracles by incubation, and "Laurentum's god" who holds Aeneas's spear fast for Turnus. Identified with the Greek Pan, whose Lupercal cult Livy and Virgil describe.

• Fenrir

  The wolf, son of Loki and the giantess Angrbotha, brother of the Midgard serpent; he bit off Tyr's right hand and waits in fetters "By the mouth of the river" until Ragnarok, when the fetters burst, he swallows Odin and is torn apart by Odin's son Vithar; a brood of wolves sprung from him steals the sun and the moon.

• Flora

  Roman goddess of flowers and spring, served by her own flamen and honoured at the Floralia (28 April–3 May). She has no part in the Metamorphoses, the Aeneid or Livy's first book — her Roman story belongs to Ovid's Fasti, outside this corpus — so this object rests on the encyclopaedic record and says so.

• Fortuna

  Roman goddess of fortune and chance. In Livy she is the power that grants or withholds glory (only twice has she allowed the spolia opima); in the Aeneid she is the force Aeneas, Palinurus and Turnus are told to follow — "Fortune will help the brave" — and the "Fortune blind" Evander curses; Ovid's Sun commits Phaethon to her and Niobe boasts she is beyond her reach.

• Freyja

  Goddess of the Vanir, daughter of Njord and sister of Freyr, owner of the feather-dress and the Brisings' necklace; she rules Folkvang and takes half of the battle-dead, the other half going to Odin; the giant Thrym demands her as the price of Thor's hammer, and in Hyndluljoth she rides a golden boar to question a giantess.

• Freyr

  God of the Vanir, son of Njord and brother of Freyja, "foremost of the gods" and "Ingunar-Freyr"; Alfheim was his tooth-gift, Skithblathnir his ship; he gave up his sword to win the giantess Gerth (Skirnismol) and at Ragnarok, weaponless, goes to meet Surt.

• Frigg

  Wife of Odin and mother of Baldr, who dwells in Fensalir and weeps there for her son; she knows the fate of all though she does not speak it, counsels Odin before his journey to Vafthruthnir, and is invoked beside Freyja in the heroic lays.

• Gaia

  Earth, second of the first beings in Hesiod after Chaos and "the ever-sure foundation" of the gods; mother of Uranus without a mate, then by him of the Titans, Cyclopes and Hundred-handers; the planner of his castration, the hider of the infant Zeus, the prompter of his kingship, and by Tartarus the mother of Typhoeus.

• Geb

  The Earth-god (Budge writes "Keb"), son of Shu and Tefnut, consort of the sky-goddess Nut and father of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys; "the Erpat", hereditary chief of the gods, whom Ra made "sole lord of all the beings that lived and moved on and in his body, the earth". Plutarch tells the same births under the Greek name Cronus.

• Greek underworld

  The house of Hades and Persephone, won by Hades when the three brothers cast lots; reached in Homer across Oceanus and in Hesiod measured by a falling anvil, with Cerberus at its gates, the Styx as the gods' oath, Tartarus below for Titans and sinners, and a meadow of asphodel for the dead. Virgil adds Elysium; Pindar and Hesiod an island of the blessed.

• Hades

  Lord of the dead, "strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth", son of Cronus and Rhea. In the Iliad he won "the murky darkness" when the three brothers shook lots; the Cyclopes gave him his helmet. He carried off Persephone with Zeus's leave and kept her with a pomegranate seed; Cerberus guards his halls. Pausanias knew only one people, the Eleans, who worshipped him with a temple.

• Hathor

  "The Eye of Ra" — the goddess Ra sends to slaughter rebellious mankind, who wades in blood as Hathor-Sekhmet until beer dyed red makes her merry and she forgets to kill; also "lady of the turquoise" of Sinai and one of the Seven Hathors who decree fate. The Greek witnesses know only her name in Plutarch's "Athyri", which he gives to Isis.

• Hecate

  Daughter of Asteria and Perses, the goddess Hesiod says Zeus "honored above all", with a share of earth, sea and starry heaven and a portion in kingship, war, games, fishing, herds and the nursing of the young. In the Hymn to Demeter she alone hears Persephone's cry, meets Demeter with a torch, and becomes the Maid's companion; Pausanias says the Aeginetans worshipped her most and that Alcamenes first made her triple.

• Heimdall

  "Whitest of the gods", warder of heaven who dwells in Himinbjorg and stands guard "With back held stiff"; his horn the Gjallarhorn lies hidden under the holy tree and sounds at Ragnarok; born of nine giant mothers at the world's edge; mankind are "Heimdall's sons", the link that makes him Rig of the Rigsthula.

• Hel

  In the Poetic Edda "Hel" is first a realm of the dead beneath one root of Yggdrasil, with a high house, gates and a rust-red cock, to which Odin rides on Sleipnir; the poems also speak of "the people of Hel" who sail with Loki at Ragnarok. Hel as a person, Loki's daughter, is the Prose Edda's account.

• Helios

  The Sun, son of Hyperion and Theia, who drives his golden-yoked chariot from the east to Ocean and sees and hears all things — the witness of oaths, the informer who tells Demeter where Persephone went, the master of the cattle Odysseus's men slaughter on Thrinacia, and the father of Circe and Aeetes. The Roman Sol is his counterpart.

• Hephaestus

  Lame smith of the gods, "skilled in crafts more than all the sons of Heaven"; born of Hera alone in Hesiod, of Zeus and Hera in Homer. The Iliad has him thrown from Olympus twice — by Zeus in book 1, by his mother in book 18 — and shows his workshop with self-moving tripods and golden handmaids, where he forges the shield of Achilles. In the Odyssey he nets Ares and Aphrodite.

• Hera

  Queen of the gods, daughter of Cronus and Rhea, sister and last wife of Zeus in Hesiod's catalogue; mother of Hebe, Ares and Eileithyia, and of Hephaestus by herself. In the Iliad she binds Zeus with Poseidon and Athena, seduces him on Ida with Aphrodite's girdle, and names Argos, Sparta and Mycenae as her dearest cities; her great sanctuary is the Argive Heraeum.

• Heracles

  Son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, born in Thebes, the strongest of heroes; driven mad by Hera, he served Eurystheus and performed the Labours, freed Prometheus, brought Cerberus up from Hades, died on the pyre of Oeta and was received on Olympus as Hebe's husband. Herodotus counted two of him, a god and a hero.

• Hermes

  Messenger of the gods, son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, born in a cave on Cyllene. On his first day, says the Homeric Hymn, he made the lyre from a tortoise and stole Apollo's cattle, then traded the lyre for the herds and a golden staff. "Slayer of Argus" with the golden wand, he is the one god appointed messenger to Hades, and it is he who brings Persephone back to Demeter.

• Herodotus, Histories Book 2

  The Egyptian book of Herodotus's Histories (fifth century BC) — the oldest surviving Greek account of Egyptian religion, based on conversations with the priests of Memphis, Thebes and Heliopolis. It is the source of the Greek-name equations (Amon is Zeus, Osiris is Dionysus, Isis is Demeter, Horus is Apollo, Bubastis is Artemis) and of the rule that Herodotus will not name the god of the dead.

• Hestia

  Goddess of the hearth, first-born of Cronus and Rhea — and "youngest too", since Cronus disgorged her last. The Hymn to Aphrodite says she refused Poseidon and Apollo and swore by Zeus's head to remain a maiden, receiving instead "her place in the midst of the house"; every banquet pours to her first and last, and at Olympia she was sacrificed to before Zeus.

• Homeric Hymns

  A collection of thirty-three hexameter hymns to Greek gods, attributed in antiquity to Homer and mostly dated by modern scholars to the seventh and sixth centuries BC; four long narrative hymns (Demeter, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite) and short invocations to the rest of the pantheon, preserving variants such as Hera's solitary birth of Typhaon. Read in Evelyn-White's translation.

• Horus

  Son of Osiris and Isis, born in the papyrus swamps, hidden at Buto, trained by his dead father and victor over Typhon (Set) after a war of many days; Herodotus calls him Apollo and makes him the last divine king of Egypt. The Edfu text tells of an older Horus, the winged disk, whom the scribes merged with the son of Isis.

• Hyperion

  Titan son of Earth and Heaven and father of the three lights — Helios, Selene and Eos — by his sister Theia in Hesiod, or by Euryphaessa in the Homeric Hymn to Helios. In Homer the name is the Sun's own: "Helios Hyperion".

• Iapetus

  Titan son of Earth and Heaven, father by the Oceanid Clymene (Hesiod) or Asia (Apollodorus) of Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus and Epimetheus; the patronymic "son of Iapetus" is how Hesiod names Prometheus. Homer places him with Cronus in deep Tartarus, without sun or breeze.

• Idunn

  Goddess of the Aesir, "Ithun" in Bellows, wife of Bragi and keeper of the apples that keep the gods young. In the Poetic Edda she appears only in Lokasenna, defending Bragi; the apples and her abduction by the giant Thjazi are told in the Prose Edda, which is why this object draws on a derived source.

• Iliad

  Homer's epic of the wrath of Achilles in the tenth year at Troy, from his quarrel with Agamemnon to the funeral of Hector, in twenty-four books; it does not narrate Troy's fall. Its digressions are primary witnesses for many other myths, and Herodotus, who dated Homer four hundred years before himself, argued from its lines about which poems were Homer's. Read in Murray's Loeb translation.

• Isis

  Sister and wife of Osiris, mother of Horus, "mistress of words of power": she searches for the chest, nurses the king's child at Byblus, gathers the scattered body, protects the infant Horus in the papyrus swamps and wrings from Ra his secret name. Herodotus calls her Demeter and describes her cow-horned images; Plutarch devotes his whole treatise to her.

• Janus

  Two-faced Roman god of gates and thresholds with no Greek counterpart. Livy makes his temple Numa's index of war and peace (open at war, shut at peace); Virgil gives him the Gates of War in Latium and a place among the ancestral kings beside Saturn; Ovid makes him father of the nymph Canens and puts a hot spring beside his shrine.

• Jason

  Son of Aeson of Iolcus, the "man with a single sandal" whom Pelias sent for the Golden Fleece; leader of the Argonauts, he yoked the brazen bulls and took the fleece with Medea's help, returned in four months, and lost Medea and his children at Corinth. Homer knows him only as the man Hera loved; Hesiod as Medea's husband.

• Jormungandr

  The Midgard serpent, "the girdler of all the earth", brother of Fenrir; Thor hooks it with an ox-head from Hymir's boat and strikes it, and it sinks back into the sea; at Ragnarok it writhes "In giant-wrath", Thor kills it and dies of its venom nine paces on. Bellows's spelling is Mithgarthsorm.

• Juno

  Queen of the Roman gods, wife and sister of Jupiter, daughter of Saturn. Virgil's Aeneid opens with her "sleepless wrath" against the Trojans and closes with her reconciliation to a Rome that keeps its Latin name; Ovid retells Hera's persecutions of Semele, Io and Ino under the Latin name. Jupiter foretells that she will one day protect the Romans herself.

• Jupiter

  Supreme god of the Roman state, "Jupiter Optimus Maximus", lord of sky, thunder and oaths; identified by the Romans with the Greek Zeus, whose myths the Latin poets retell under his name, while his cult — Feretrius, Stator, Capitolinus — is Rome's own.

• Lares

  Roman guardian spirits of the house, the crossroads and the city. Virgil keeps the Latin word when Hector's ghost hands Aeneas "her Lares and her people", and Livy's Albans leave "their hearths and household gods"; what the Lares were — ancestors, hearth-guardians, protectors of place — the primary texts here do not explain, so the definition is drawn from the encyclopaedic record.

• Leto

  Daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, "always mild … gentlest in all Olympus", who bore Apollo and Artemis to Zeus. The Hymn to Apollo tells her search for a birthplace, Delos's bargain and the nine days of labour Hera prolonged; Apollodorus adds Hera's pursuit, Artemis as midwife and the assault of Tityus.

• Loki

  Son of Laufey, "Lopt", blood-brother of Odin and companion of Thor, a giant by birth who lives among the gods; father of the wolf Fenrir and of Sleipnir, the mocker of every god in Lokasenna, the one who admits the blame for Baldr's death, bound with his son's bowels until Ragnarok, when he steers the ship of Hel's people against the gods.

• Luna

  The Roman moon-goddess, the Sun's sister who drives her own team. Ovid names her in one breath with Diana and Trivia as "the goddess of the triple form"; Medea invokes her and boasts of drawing her down from the sky; Virgil's Nisus prays to the moon as Latona's child; her bloodied chariot is among the omens of Caesar's death. Counterpart of the Greek Selene.

• Maat

  Goddess of truth and law who embraces Ra "at morn and at eve", lays down his course with Thoth, and gives her name to the Hall of the Two Maati where Osiris and the Forty-two judges weigh the heart; the dead man's "I live upon truth. I feed upon truth" is addressed to her order. No Greek witness names her.

• Mars

  Roman god of war and father of Romulus, called Gradivus and Mavors by the poets; identified with the Greek Ares. Livy reports the claim that a Vestal "named Mars as their father" with open scepticism, and records Numa's flamen and the twelve Salii of Mars Gradivus. Virgil and Ovid keep the Greek stories — the net of Vulcan, the dragon of Thebes — and add Roman ones, above all Mars carrying Romulus to heaven.

• Medusa

  The one mortal Gorgon, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, who lay with Poseidon and was beheaded by Perseus; from her neck sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, and her head became the emblem on Athena's aegis. Ovid adds the punishment that made her hair snakes; Pausanias records a version in which she was a Libyan queen.

• Mercury

  Roman messenger god, son of Jupiter and Maia, identified with the Greek Hermes and called "Cyllene's god" and "Caduceus-Bearer" by the poets. In the Aeneid Jupiter sends him twice to tear Aeneas from Carthage; in Ovid he lulls and beheads Argus, turns the spy Battus and the envious Aglauros to stone, and visits Baucis and Philemon with Jove. His tools are the winged sandals, the brimmed hat and the sleep-giving wand.

• Metamorphoses (Ovid)

  Ovid's Latin poem in fifteen books on "forms transformed to bodies new", running from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar under Augustus. It retells the Greek myths under Roman names and ends on Italian soil with Aeneas, Pomona, Romulus's apotheosis and Numa. Read here in Brookes More's 1922 translation, cited by book and Latin line.

• Mimir

  Keeper of the well of wisdom under the tree, in which Odin's eye is pledged and from which Mimir drinks each morning; at Ragnarok Odin takes counsel from "the head of Mim", and the Sigrdrifumol says the head spoke "words of truth". The poems never say what kind of being he is; this object files him among the giants, as the tradition does, and says so.

• Minerva

  Roman goddess of wisdom, crafts and war, daughter of Jupiter, identified with the Greek Athena; also called Pallas and Tritonia by the Latin poets. Ovid gives her the weaving contest with Arachne, the basket of Erichthonius, the Cave of Envy and the punishment of Medusa; Virgil gives her the Palladium whose theft doomed Troy and the Gorgon-shield she wears as Troy falls. Her aegis is forged in Vulcan's cave.

• Minotaur

  Asterius, "called the Minotaur", the bull-headed son of Pasiphae and the bull Poseidon sent to Minos; shut by Minos in the Labyrinth of Daedalus and fed on Athenian youths and maidens until Theseus killed him with his fists and found the way out by Ariadne's clue. Not to be confused with the Cretan bull of Heracles's labour.

• Mnemosyne

  Memory, a Titaness born to Earth and Heaven, who lay with Zeus for nine nights in Pieria and after a year bore the nine Muses, "a forgetting of ills and a rest from sorrow"; the fifth of Zeus's consorts in Hesiod's catalogue.

• The Moirai

  The Fates — Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos — "who give men at their birth both evil and good to have". Hesiod gives them two parentages in one poem, daughters of Night and daughters of Zeus and Themis; Apollodorus keeps the second; Homer never names three but speaks of Fate and "the dread Spinners" who spin a man's thread at birth.

• Mount Olympus

  The seat of the gods in Homer and Hesiod, at once the snowy Thessalian mountain and a place above weather where Zeus sits apart on the topmost peak, the Hours keep the gates and the Muses dance near the summit; common ground of the three brothers, and the home Heracles earned. Its opposite pole is Tartarus.

• The Muses

  Nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne — Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Urania and Calliope, "the chiefest of them all" — born in Pieria after nine nights, who dance on Helicon and Olympus, taught Hesiod his song, give kings their eloquence, and are the authority every epic poet invokes.

• Nephthys

  Youngest of the five children of Nut and Geb, wife of Typhon (Set) and mother of Anubis by Osiris, who mistook her for Isis; with Isis she is the second of the two mourning sisters whose Lamentations were sung at the Osiris festival. Plutarch glosses her name as "Finality" and reads her as the barren land at the edge of the Nile flood.

• Neptune

  Roman god of the sea, son of Saturn and brother of Jupiter and Pluto, identified with the Greek Poseidon. In the Aeneid he calms the storm Juno raised, once built and then wrecked the walls of Troy, and grants Aeneas safe passage for "one life in lieu of many"; in Ovid he floods the earth with his trident and loses Athens to Minerva's olive. Livy records the Consualia, Romulus's games for "Equestrian Neptune".

• Nike

  Victory, daughter of Styx and Pallas, who with her siblings Zelus, Cratos and Bia "dwell always with Zeus" because Styx brought them first to his side against the Titans. At Athens she was worshipped as Wingless Victory so that she would never leave; at Olympia Zeus holds her in his hand.

• The nine worlds

  The Norse cosmos as the Poetic Edda names it: "Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree", says the seeress, and the giant Vafthruthnir has been "To nine worlds ... to Niflhel beneath". The poems never list the nine; they name Mithgarth, Jotunheim, Alfheim, Niflhel and Hel, and Alvissmol speaks of the separate tongues of men, gods, Vanir, giants, elves, dwarfs and the dead.

• Njord

  God of the Vanir, "Njorth", sent to the Aesir as a hostage after the war of the gods and fated to return to the Vanir at the world's end; father of Freyr and Freyja, dweller in Noatun, "The sinless ruler of men"; Skadi, the giant's daughter, is the god's bride who lives in her father's Thrymheim.

• Nut

  The Sky-goddess, daughter of Shu and Tefnut, consort of Geb and mother of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys; the Pyramid Texts pray her to spread herself over the dead king and make him "an imperishable star", and the legend of Ra's withdrawal has her carry the sun to heaven as a cow, held up by Shu. Plutarch calls her Rhea.

• Nyx

  Night, born of Chaos with Erebus in Hesiod; mother by Erebus of Aether and Day, and without a mate of Doom, Death, Sleep, the Dreams, the Fates, Nemesis, Strife and the rest of the dark brood. Her house stands by Tartarus, where she and Day pass each other at the threshold; even Zeus, says Homer, feared to displease her.

• Oceanus

  The world-encircling river and the first-named Titan in Hesiod, son of Earth and Heaven and husband of Tethys, father of all rivers and of three thousand daughters, chief among them Styx. Homer's Hera calls him the one "from whom the gods are sprung"; Apollodorus says he alone of the Titans refused to attack their father.

• Odin

  Chief of the Norse gods ("Othin" in Bellows), "Allfather" and "Valfather"; father of Thor and Baldr, husband of Frigg, lord of Valhalla, who hung nine nights on the windy tree to win the runes, pledged an eye at Mimir's well, and is fated to be swallowed by the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarok.

• Odysseus

  King of Ithaca, "the man of many devices", son of Laertes; the Iliad's best speaker and the Odyssey's hero, who devised the Wooden Horse, blinded Polyphemus and earned Poseidon's wrath, questioned the dead, passed the Sirens and Scylla, and killed the suitors on his return. Apollodorus adds his feigned madness and four versions of his death.

• Odyssey

  Homer's epic of Odysseus's return from Troy in twenty-four books; the hero tells his own wanderings (Cyclops, Circe, the dead, Sirens, Scylla) to the Phaeacians, then kills the suitors and is recognised by Penelope. Its eleventh book is the oldest Greek description of the dead, and its eighth the oldest account of the Wooden Horse. Read in Murray's Loeb translation.

• Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris

  Plutarch's treatise (De Iside et Osiride, c. AD 100), addressed to the Delphic priestess Clea — the only continuous ancient narrative of the Osiris myth (sections 12–19), followed by a survey of the physical, astronomical and philosophical readings the Egyptians and Greeks gave it. Its author is a Greek priest who warns that none of it "actually happened in the manner in which they are related".

• Orpheus

  Thracian singer, son of the Muse Calliope by Oeagrus (or, in name, by Apollo), whose songs moved stones and trees; an Argonaut who out-sang the Sirens, he went down to Hades for his wife Eurydice and lost her by looking back, was torn apart by Thracian women, and was credited with founding mysteries. Ovid gives the fullest telling.

• Osiris

  King of Egypt who civilised mankind, was shut in a chest by his brother Typhon (Set), dismembered, sought and reassembled by his wife Isis, and became ruler of the dead; eldest son of Nut and Geb, father of Horus. Herodotus calls him Dionysus, Plutarch tells the whole story, and the Egyptian hymns call him Un-Nefer, lord of Abydos and Busiris.

• Pan

  Goat-footed, two-horned god of shepherds and mountain places, son of Hermes in the Homeric Hymn — named Pan because his birth "delighted all" the gods — and son of Zeus in Apollodorus; piper, dancer with the nymphs, the god who promised Philippides to fight at Marathon. The Roman Faunus is his counterpart.

• Pandora

  The first woman, made of clay by Hephaestus at Zeus's order as "the price for fire" after Prometheus's theft; dressed by Athena and given a deceitful nature by Hermes, she was sent to Epimetheus and opened the jar from which every ill escaped, Hope alone remaining. Hesiod tells it twice, with and without her name and the jar.

• Penates

  The ancestral gods of the household and of the Roman state, the "Phrygian gods" Aeneas carried out of burning Troy in his father's arms and in his ships to Italy. In the Aeneid they speak to him in a dream on Crete and send him to Hesperia; Livy has Latinus seal the marriage of Lavinia before his own tutelary gods; Ovid's Aeneas bears the "holy images" with Anchises.

• Persephone

  Daughter of Zeus and Demeter, carried off by Hades with her father's consent while gathering flowers, and queen of the dead — "dread Persephone", "august Persephone" in the Odyssey. Because she ate the pomegranate seed she spends a third of every year below and two thirds with her mother. Apollodorus records a variant that makes Styx her mother; Pausanias says the Maid's real name is Persephone, as Homer says.

• Perseus

  Son of Zeus and Danae, cast adrift in a chest with his mother and reared on Seriphus; sent by Polydectes for the Gorgon's head, he beheaded Medusa with the help of Hermes and Athena, rescued Andromeda, killed his grandfather Acrisius by accident and founded Mycenae. Ancestor of Heracles.

• Pluto

  Roman king of the underworld, "Jove's brother" and son of Saturn, who drew "the last award" when the three realms were divided; identified with the Greek Hades, and called Dis and "Stygian King" by Virgil. Ovid tells how Cupid's arrow made him seize Proserpina and how Jupiter divided her year; Virgil shows the open door of Dis, Aeneas's sacrifice to him, and the Fury Alecto whom "her father Pluto loathes".

• Poetic Edda

  The collection of anonymous Old Norse poems — Voluspo, Hovamol, Vafthruthnismol, Grimnismol, Lokasenna, Thrymskvitha and the rest — preserved chiefly in the 13th-century Codex Regius and read here in Henry Adams Bellows's 1923 translation, whose poem names and stanza numbers the claims of this corpus cite. The primary witness for the Norse pantheon.

• Pomona

  Latin nymph-goddess of fruit trees and orchards, named from the fruit she tends. Ovid alone tells her story: skilled with the pruning-knife and the graft, walled into her orchard against all suitors, she is courted by the shape-changing Vertumnus in the guise of reaper, ploughman, soldier, fisherman and old woman, and won when he shows his true form.

• Poseidon

  God of the sea and of earthquakes, Hesiod's "loud-crashing Earth-Shaker", son of Cronus and Rhea. In the Iliad he won the grey sea when the three brothers shook lots; the Cyclopes gave him the trident. Husband of Amphitrite and father of Triton, builder of Troy's wall for Laomedon, persecutor of Odysseus for the blinding of his son Polyphemus, and loser of the contest with Athena for Attica.

• Prometheus

  Son of the Titan Iapetus who tricked Zeus at Mecone, stole fire in a fennel stalk and was chained with an eagle at his liver until Heracles freed him; the price of his fire was Pandora. Aeschylus makes him the giver of every human art, Apollodorus the moulder of men from earth and water. His mother is Clymene, Themis or Asia, depending on the witness.

• Prose Edda

  The Icelandic textbook of poetics attributed to Snorri Sturluson (c. 1220), in four parts — Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skaldskaparmal, Hattatal — and the fullest single source for Norse myth. This corpus could not read a translation of it in the authoring environment, so this object rests on a derived summary and is tiered accordingly; claims elsewhere that cite "the Prose Edda" mean this tradition, not a passage read.

• Proserpina

  Roman queen of the underworld, daughter of Ceres and Jupiter, seized by her uncle Pluto and made his wife; identified with the Greek Persephone, whose name Ovid himself uses once. Ovid tells the abduction near Henna, the seven pomegranate seeds and the year divided in halves; Virgil makes her "infernal Queen" to whom the golden bough is sacred and to whom Aeneas sacrifices before entering the dead's realm.

• Ptah

  Creator-god of Memphis, "Ptah of the Beautiful Face" and "of his South Wall", who "fashioned thy members" and forms with Amen and Ra the triad in which "his body is Ptah". Herodotus visited his temple at Memphis but knew its god only as Hephaestus; Plutarch and the late creation papyrus do not mention him at all.

• Quirinus

  Roman god of the archaic triad with Jupiter and Mars, served by his own flamen from Numa's reign and invoked as "Janus Quirinus" in the fetial formula; Ovid makes him the deified Romulus, given "the shape divine of Quirinus clad in the trabea", with Hersilia as his consort Hora. Livy tells the apotheosis without using the name.

• Ra

  Sun-god and king of gods and men in the Egyptian texts Budge translates: self-created, "Khepera in the morning, Ra at noon, and Temu in the evening", who sends his Eye (Hathor) against rebellious mankind, loses his secret name to Isis, and withdraws to heaven on the back of the cow Nut. Herodotus and Plutarch know only "the sun" and never write his name.

• Ragnarok

  The fate of the gods as Voluspo 44–66 and Vafthruthnismol 44–55 tell it: the wolf breaks free, Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn, Yggdrasil shakes, Loki steers the ship of Hel's people, Surt comes with fire; Odin is swallowed by the wolf and avenged by Vithar, Thor and the serpent kill each other, the sun turns black and earth sinks — then rises green again, with Baldr returned.

• Rhea

  Titaness, daughter of Earth and Heaven, wife of Cronus and mother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus; seized by "unceasing grief" as each was swallowed, she sought her parents' counsel and bore Zeus in Crete. Homer has her hand the infant Hera to Oceanus and Tethys; the Hymn to Demeter makes her Zeus's envoy to her daughter.

• Romulus

  Founder and first king of Rome, twin son of the Vestal Rea Silvia and — she said — Mars; exposed in the Tiber, suckled by a she-wolf, killer of his brother Remus at the new wall, abductor of the Sabine women, and taken up in a storm to become the god Quirinus. Livy tells it with his doubts recorded; Virgil prophesies him; Ovid deifies him.

• Saturn

  Roman god identified with the Greek Cronus, father of Jupiter, Juno, Neptune and Pluto and husband of Ops. The Latin poets do not retell his Greek crimes; they make him the exiled king who hid in Latium — "hid land" — gave its people laws and ruled the golden age, ancestor of the Latin kings through Picus and Faunus, whose sceptre Augustus is to restore. Ovid places the Golden Age before Saturn "had been banished into night".

• Sekhmet

  The destroying aspect of the Eye of Ra — "Hathor-Sekhmet", who waded three nights in the blood of men — and the goddess of pestilence whom a king's terror is compared to and whom the wise are warned not to provoke as "the Lady of the Plague". Attested only in the Egyptian texts; neither Herodotus nor Plutarch names her.

• Selene

  The Moon, daughter of Hyperion and Theia (or Euryphaessa), who bathes in Ocean, yokes her shining team and drives at full speed at mid-month when her orbit is full — "a sure token and a sign to mortal men"; mother by Zeus of Pandia. The Roman Luna is her counterpart.

• Set

  Brother and murderer of Osiris, husband of Nephthys, enemy of Horus; the Greek writers call him Typhon and Plutarch records that "the Egyptians regularly call Typhon Seth". Born by bursting through his mother's side, red-haired, linked with the ass, crocodile and hippopotamus, he is drought and the sea to the interpreters and "the god of evil" to Budge.

• Skadi

  Daughter of the giant Thjazi, "Skathi" in Bellows, who lives in her father's hall Thrymheim as "the god's fair bride"; she answers Loki in Lokasenna with a cold counsel from her fields and recalls that the gods will bind him with his son's bowels; counted among the goddesses though a giantess by birth.

• Sleipnir

  Odin's horse, "the best of steeds", borne by Loki to the stallion Svathilfari; Odin saddles him to ride down to Niflhel and the house of Hel in Baldrs draumar; runes were cut on his teeth. The eight legs are the Prose Edda's detail and are not mentioned in the poems.

• Sol

  The Roman sun-god. In Ovid's Phaethon story he is "the Sun" and "Phoebus", enthroned in a jewelled palace among the Hours and Seasons, who swears by the Styx, lends his son the chariot Vulcan made, and darkens the world in grief; in Virgil he is the first witness of Aeneas's oath. The Roman counterpart of the Greek Helios.

• Tartarus

  The abyss beneath the earth — third of Hesiod's first beings, as far below the earth as heaven is above it, fenced with bronze and triple night, the prison of the Titans — and also a god, who with Earth fathers Typhoeus. Homer's Zeus threatens to hurl the gods there; Apollodorus calls it "a gloomy place in Hades".

• Terminus

  Roman god of the boundary stone, the one deity who would not leave the Capitol when Tarquin cleared it for the temple of Jupiter — an omen, Livy says, that Rome's boundaries would stand firm. Livy's single chapter is the narrative core; the Terminalia and the boundary-stone rite come from the encyclopaedic record.

• Tethys

  Titaness, daughter of Earth and Heaven and wife of Oceanus, who "bore to Ocean eddying rivers" and the Oceanids; Homer's "mother Tethys" who with Oceanus nursed the infant Hera. Hesiod and Apollodorus give different lists of her daughters, and disagree about Amphitrite.

• Themis

  Titaness of divine order, daughter of Earth and Heaven, Zeus's second wife and mother of the Horae and the Moirai; the goddess who summons the gods' assembly in Homer, holds the Delphic oracle before Apollo in Apollodorus, feeds the newborn Apollo in the Hymn, and in Aeschylus is Prometheus's mother, "one form" with Earth.

• Theogony

  Hesiod's poem on the birth of the gods, in which the poet names himself and says the Muses taught him on Helicon; it runs from Chaos through the castration of Heaven, the swallowing and rescue of Zeus, the Titanomachy, Typhon and the acclamation of Zeus to his marriages, and breaks off into a catalogue of goddesses and women. Read here in Evelyn-White's Loeb translation.

• Theseus

  Athenian hero, son of Aegeus (and, the same night, of Poseidon) by Aethra of Troezen; he cleared the road to Athens of brigands, killed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth with Ariadne's clue, caused his father's death by forgetting the white sail, went down to Hades with Peirithous and was brought up again by Heracles.

• Thor

  Son of Odin and of Earth (Jorth, Fjorgyn), the hammer-god of the Aesir: "Vingthor", "Hlorrithi", husband of Sif, wielder of Mjollnir, slayer of giants, who fishes up the Midgard serpent, recovers his stolen hammer dressed as a bride, and at Ragnarok kills the serpent and dies of its venom nine paces on.

• Thoth

  Ibis-headed inventor of writing and numbers, "clerk of the gods", recorder of the weighing of the heart and advocate who cleared Osiris and Horus of Set's charges; son of Ra and his deputy in the Tuat. Plutarch and Herodotus call him Hermes — the god who won the five extra days from the moon at draughts.

• Titanomachy

  The ten-year war of Zeus and the children of Cronus, fighting from Olympus, against the Titans on Othrys, won when Zeus freed the Hundred-handers and Cyclopes at Earth's advice; the Titans were buried under three hundred rocks and shut in Tartarus behind bronze gates. Apollodorus adds the drug of Metis and the lots; Aeschylus makes Prometheus the counsellor of Zeus.

• Trojan War

  The ten-year siege of Troy by the Greeks under Agamemnon to recover Helen, whom Paris took after the judgement on Ida; the Iliad tells only the wrath of Achilles in it, the Odyssey the Wooden Horse and the returns, Apollodorus's Epitome the whole from the apple of Strife to the sack. Herodotus, from Egyptian priests, denied Helen was ever in Troy.

• Typhon

  Youngest child of Earth and Tartarus (Hesiod) or of Hera alone (Homeric Hymn to Apollo), a hundred-headed fire-breathing monster who fought Zeus for the rule of gods and men and was blasted with the thunderbolt and cast into Tartarus or under Etna. Father, by Echidna, of Cerberus, the Hydra and Orthus. The Greeks also used his name for the Egyptian Set.

• Tyr

  One-handed god of the Aesir, whose right hand the wolf Fenrir "rent from" him; in Hymiskvitha he guides Thor to the giant Hymir, whom he calls his father, to fetch the great kettle; the Sigrdrifumol names him as the god to call on for victory-runes.

• Uranus

  Heaven, born of Earth alone "equal to herself", the first ruler of the world in Apollodorus and the father of the Titans, Cyclopes and Hundred-handers; castrated by his son Cronus with Earth's sickle, from which fall the Erinyes, the Giants and — in the sea — Aphrodite. He gave the Titans their name in reproach.

• Valhalla

  Odin's hall of the slain, "Valhall" in Bellows, in Glathsheim: roofed with shields, raftered with spears, a wolf at the western door and an eagle above; five hundred and forty doors, through each of which eight hundred warriors will march to fight the wolf; the heroes fight daily and are healed to feast on Sæhrimnir's flesh and the goat Heithrun's mead.

• Venus

  Roman goddess of love, mother of Aeneas and of Cupid, daughter of Jupiter and wife of Vulcan; identified with the Greek Aphrodite and called Cytherea, Erycina and Idalian Venus by the poets. In the Aeneid she pleads for Aeneas before Jupiter, meets him as a huntress, and obtains his arms from Vulcan; in Ovid she is caught in Vulcan's net, sends Cupid against Pluto, makes Aeneas a god and turns Caesar into a star.

• Vesta

  Roman goddess of the hearth fire, identified with the Greek Hestia. In these texts she is almost entirely Roman — Livy records that Numa founded the Vestal virgins, an order "originally in Alba", and that the mother of Romulus was a Vestal; Virgil has Hector hand Aeneas "Vesta's ever-bright, inviolate fire" to carry from Troy; Ovid calls her "Trojan goddess Vesta" and counts her among Caesar's gods.

• Vulcan

  Roman god of fire and the forge, son of Juno and husband of Venus, identified with the Greek Hephaestus; Virgil calls him "the Lord of Fire" and "the Lemnian god", Ovid also Mulciber. In the Aeneid he forges the arms and prophetic shield of Aeneas with the Cyclopes under Vulcania; in Ovid he nets Mars and Venus and builds the palace of the Sun. Livy records enemy spoils burnt as an offering to Vulcan.

• Works and Days

  Hesiod's poem of advice to his brother Perses after a lawsuit over their inheritance, containing the two Strifes, Prometheus and Pandora, the five ages of man, the fable of the hawk and the nightingale, the praise of justice, a farmer's and sailor's calendar, and the lucky and unlucky days; it also holds the only facts about Hesiod's life. Read in Evelyn-White's translation.

• Yggdrasil

  The world ash, "The best of trees", wet with white water and green by Urth's well, with three roots over Hel, the frost-giants and mankind; the gods ride to it daily to give judgment; a squirrel, four harts, an eagle and the dragon Nithhogg live on and under it; it shakes when Ragnarok comes. Odin's "windy tree" of the Hovamol is generally taken to be it.

• Ymir

  The primordial giant of the Norse creation, alive when there was neither sea nor earth "But a yawning gap"; from his flesh, bones, skull and blood the gods made earth, mountains, sky and sea; "from Ymir sprang the giants all". Vafthruthnismol calls the first giant Aurgelmir and tells how he bred without a wife.

• Zeus

  King of the Greek gods and lord of the sky and thunder; youngest child of Cronus and Rhea, saved from being swallowed by a stone, victor of the Titanomachy, and father of Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and many others.

faq 4

• Egyptian gods FAQ: the questions people ask, answered by Herodotus, Plutarch and the Egyptian texts

  Who is the king of the Egyptian gods, who killed Osiris, who is the mother of Horus, is Anubis the god of death, what did the Greeks call Amun, what is the Ennead, who weighs the heart — each answered from Herodotus, Plutarch or the Egyptian texts as Budge printed them, with the passage.

• Greek gods FAQ: the questions people ask, answered by the texts

  Who is the king of the gods, who is the oldest Olympian, is Hades an Olympian, how was Athena born, who is Aphrodite's father, what is the difference between Titans and Olympians, who are the parents of Zeus, how many Olympians are there — each answered from Hesiod, Homer, Apollodorus or Herodotus with the passage, and with the disagreements kept.

• Norse gods FAQ: the questions people ask, answered by the Poetic Edda

  Who is Thor's father, is Loki Odin's brother, who kills Odin at Ragnarok, what is Yggdrasil, who are the Aesir and Vanir, what is Mjollnir, who is Hel, does Thor die at Ragnarok — each answered from the Poetic Edda in Bellows's translation with the poem and stanza, and with a note where the familiar answer comes only from the Prose Edda.

• Roman gods FAQ: the questions people ask, answered by the Latin texts

  Is Jupiter Zeus, who is the Roman god of war, who is Pluto, are Cupid and Eros the same, who is Saturn, why is Vesta important, who founded Rome and who was his father — each answered from Ovid, Virgil and Livy with the passage, and with the Greek witness beside it where the question is really about equivalence.

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• Aesir

  The principal family of Norse gods — Odin, Thor, Frigg, Baldr, Tyr, Heimdall, Bragi and the rest — whose home is Asgard and who "met at Ithavoll" and built the world. Bellows's translation renders the word simply as "the gods"; the Old Norse Æsir (singular Áss) is the modern scholarly name, set against the Vanir, the giants and the elves.

• Apotheosis

  The elevation of a mortal to godhood — Heracles, who "lives amongst the undying gods" after his labours; Ariadne, made "deathless and unageing" for Dionysus; Romulus, hailed "a god, the son of a god" after vanishing in a storm; Aeneas, washed of his mortal part by the river Numicius. The texts also record the doubt (the senators who tore Romulus apart) and the reverse case (Tantalus, sent back to the race of men).

• Chthonic

  Of the earth and the underworld (Greek chthon, earth), as opposed to Olympian — Hades "who dwells under the earth" and Persephone who rules the dead with him in the Odyssey; used by Pausanias as a cult title, "Demeter Chthonia (of the Lower World)", and by Plutarch of Anubis as "a deity of the lower world as well as a god of Olympus". Hesiod's Hecate, often called chthonic, holds a share of earth, sea and heaven.

• Epithet

  A fixed descriptive name attached to a god — Zeus "the aegis-holder" and "son of Cronos", Athena "Tritogeneia" and "bright-eyed", Hera "gold-shod", Odin "Valfather" — which in the poems identifies the god as surely as the name, and in Roman cult (Jupiter Stator, Feretrius, Optimus Maximus) names a distinct temple and function.

• Interpretatio graeca

  The ancient practice of naming a foreign god by the Greek god taken to be the same — Amun as Zeus, Osiris as Dionysus, Isis as Demeter — first documented in Herodotus's account of Egypt; the Roman counterpart is the interpretatio romana.

• Interpretatio romana

  The Roman practice of calling a foreign god by the name of the Roman god taken to be the same — above all the wholesale renaming of the Greek pantheon that lets Ovid write "the Son of Saturn" for Zeus and Virgil "Jupiter" for the god who promises Rome empire without end; the counterpart of the Greek interpretatio graeca.

• Jotunn

  A giant of Norse myth (Old Norse jötunn, plural jötnar), the race that "from Ymir sprang", living in Jotunheim across the river Ifing from the gods, kin to them by marriage and their enemies at the end of the world. Bellows translates the word as "giant" and "frost-giant"; the giants are wise (Vafthruthnir), dangerous (Thrym, Hymir) and, in Skadi and Gerth, the gods' wives.

• Olympian

  A god who dwells on Olympus — in Hesiod the Muses and Zeus are "Olympian", and the children of Cronus fight the Titans "from Olympus"; in Homer "the Olympians" are the gods who go down to the battle at Troy. The term excludes Hades, who "dwells under the earth", and the Titans, who fight "from high Othrys"; the canonical Twelve is a later count of them.

• Pantheon

  The whole company of a people's gods considered as a set — the "holy race of the deathless gods" Hesiod's Muses sing, the gods Zeus gathers to his house in the Iliad, the "twelve gods" and "eight gods" Herodotus counts in Egypt, the gods who meet at Ithavoll in the Voluspo, and the "Great Company of the Gods" of the Egyptian texts. The word is Greek (pan, all; theoi, gods) and modern in this sense; the sets are ancient.

• Primordial deity

  A god who exists before the generations of gods begin — in Hesiod the four who simply "came to be" (Chaos, Earth, Tartarus, Eros) and the children of Chaos and Night (Erebus, Night, Aether, Day), who have no father. The modern term groups them against the Titans and Olympians, who are born of parents; the Norse Ymir and the Egyptian watery Nu play the same part in their own texts.

• Psychopomp

  A guide of souls to the world of the dead — the role Hermes plays when he leads the suitors' spirits "down the dank ways" in the last book of the Odyssey, and Anubis in the Egyptian texts, who presides over embalming and stands at the scales. The Greek word (psychopompos, "conductor of souls") is used in modern comparative study for any such figure; the Norse texts have choosers of the slain rather than guides.

• Syncretism

  The merging of gods from different traditions, or of different gods within one, into a single figure — Serapis, the Ptolemaic god made from Osiris-Apis and a Greek Pluto; Zeus Ammon, the ram-horned Zeus of the Libyan oracle; and the compound names of the Egyptian texts themselves, Amen-Ra, Ptah-Seker-Tem, Hathor-Sekhmet. Where interpretatio names one god with another's name, syncretism makes a new god of the two.

• Theogony (the term)

  An account of the birth and genealogy of the gods (Greek theos, god; gonos, birth). The type is Hesiod's poem of that name, which asks the Muses "how at the first gods and earth came to be"; the Voluspo's history of the world and the Heliopolitan creation story of the Egyptian texts are theogonies in the same sense, and Herodotus turns the Egyptian one into a chronology of divine dynasties.

• Titan

  One of the twelve children of Earth and Heaven whom Hesiod names — Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Cronus — and, by extension, their children such as Atlas and Prometheus. Heaven called them "Titans (Strainers) in reproach"; they ruled before Zeus and were bound in Tartarus after the ten-year war.

• Vanir

  The second family of Norse gods — Njord, Freyr and Freyja — who fought the first war against the Aesir and were joined to them by hostages. Bellows translates the word as "the Wanes"; they are "wise", know the future, have their own names for things, and Njord "at the fall of the world shall fare once more home to the Wanes".

guide 10

• Egyptian gods and their Greek names: Herodotus's equivalence table, sentence by sentence

  The table of Egyptian–Greek equivalences as the ancient witnesses made them — Amun as Zeus, Osiris as Dionysus, Isis as Demeter, Horus as Apollo, Bubastis as Artemis, the goddess of Sais as Athena, Buto as Leto, Mendes as Pan, Papremis as Ares, Ptah as Hephaestus, Set as Typhon, Thoth as Hermes, Serapis as Pluto — each row bound to the passage of Herodotus, Plutarch or Budge that states it.

• Egyptian gods: the major deities, their spheres and their Greek names

  The principal gods of Egypt — Ra, Amun, Ptah, Thoth, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, Nephthys, Anubis, Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Maat, Geb and Nut — with the sphere each holds in the texts, the Greek name Herodotus or Plutarch gave them, and the passage of Herodotus, Plutarch or Budge behind each line.

• Greek and Roman gods: the equivalence table with its passages

  The master table of Greek and Roman divine names — Zeus/Jupiter through Cronus/Saturn, with Eros/Cupid, Helios/Sol, Selene/Luna, Eos/Aurora, Pan/Faunus, Persephone/Proserpina, Nike/Victoria and Moirai/Parcae — each row bound to a Greek passage and a Latin passage where the name is actually used, with the rows where the equation is weaker marked as such.

• Greek gods family tree: Hesiod's genealogy line by line

  The genealogy of the Greek gods as Hesiod's Theogony gives it — Chaos, then Gaia and Uranus, the twelve Titans, the children of Cronus and Rhea, and the children of Zeus — with the line of the poem behind every edge, and the places where Apollodorus and Homer draw the tree differently.

• How to cite mythology sources: the reference conventions of this corpus

  The citation forms used across mythosdata — Theog. line, Il. book.line, Apollod. book.chapter.section, Met. book.line, Poetic Edda poem and stanza in Bellows's numbering, Hdt. book.chapter.section, Plut. Is. section, Budge Lit. chapter — with one worked example of each drawn from the texts, and why "according to whom" is the question that decides whether a mythology answer is right.

• Norse gods family tree: what the Poetic Edda says, and what only Snorri says

  The kinships of the Norse gods as the Poetic Edda states them — Ymir and the giants, Bur's sons, Odin's sons, Loki's brood, Njord's children, the nine mothers — stanza by stanza in Bellows's numbering, with the edges that exist only in the Prose Edda marked as such.

• Primary sources of Egyptian mythology: Pyramid Texts, Book of the Dead, Herodotus, Plutarch

  Where Egyptian mythology is actually written down — the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead and the temple legends as Budge printed them, Herodotus's second book, and Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris — with what each carries, how this corpus cites it, and an honest note on why Budge is used here and what a modern reader should reach for instead.

• Primary sources of Greek mythology: which text tells which myth

  The ancient texts behind Greek mythology — Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, the Homeric Hymns, the Iliad and Odyssey, Pindar, Aeschylus, Apollodorus, Pausanias, and Ovid as the Roman witness — with what each one actually tells, the passages this corpus cites from it, and its approximate date.

• Primary sources of Norse mythology: the Poetic Edda poem by poem, and the Prose Edda

  What each poem of the Poetic Edda actually covers — Voluspo, Hovamol, Vafthruthnismol, Grimnismol, Skirnismol, Harbarthsljoth, Hymiskvitha, Lokasenna, Thrymskvitha, Alvissmol, Baldrs Draumar, Hyndluljoth — with the stanzas this corpus cites, and what the Prose Edda of Snorri adds that the poems do not say.

• The Twelve Olympians: the list, and where each god's parentage is attested

  The canonical twelve gods of Olympus — Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes and Dionysus (or Hestia) — with the primary passage that gives each one's birth and parents, and the two places where the ancient witnesses disagree.

Machine surfaces

Everything a human can read here, an agent can read as data. Each link below is a real file served from this origin.

• /llms.txt llms-index
• /llms-full.txt llms-full
• /llms-full/index.json llms-full-shards
• /sitemap.xml sitemap
• /robots.txt robots
• /feed.json feed-json
• /feed.xml feed-rss
• /graph.json graph
• /api/index.json entity-index
• /api/sources.json source-registry
• /openapi.json openapi
• /status.json status
• /.well-known/mcp/server.json mcp-manifest
• /skill.json skill-manifest
• /skill/SKILL.txt skill
• /skill/SKILL.md skill-alias

Agents can also query this corpus over MCP — see the agent interface.