Headscratchers / Classical Mythology

• Now, in the Gigantomachy, Gaea urged the Gigantes to fight the Olympians in order to restore the Titans from Tartarus, yes? Well, wasn't in Cronos who imprisoned the Gigantes shortly after they were "born" via Ouranous' castration? Why would they fight for people who trapped them there, and fight against those who (seemingly) freed them?
  • The Gigantes were born by Gaia after the Olympians had come into power; they hadn't been imprisoned by Cronus before then.
• In the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, wouldn't it get colder as they flew up? The sun's several million miles away, they'd have to be in outer space or something...
  • Science Marches On. The Greeks didn't know how far away the sun really was; whilst we know it would get colder, no-one at the time had been up that far, so it's only natural for them to think it would get warmer the closer they got to the sun.
• As his first labour, Heracles had to fight the Nemean lion, whose skin could not be pierced by anything. Depending on the Writer, he either bludgeoned the lion to death or strangled him. He then made himself an armor from the lion's skin. How did he do that?
  • He used the lion's own claws.
  • Maybe he hollowed the thing out and wore it like a onesie?
  • Some versions state that his cloak came from a lion he killed before undertaking the labors.
  • Some myths don't mention Heracles wearing the lion skin afterward at all. In the ones that go into detail, though, it is said that he failed at skinning the lion with any of his weapons, before using Athena's advice to pierce the hide with its own claws.
• What happens if Sisyphus just refuses to keep pushing the boulder?
  • Presumably, the rock rolls down through Tartarus, breaks the walls of wherever they're keeping the Hekatonchires and the Gigantes, and then we're all fucked.'
    • It'd roll over him. Then it'd keep coming back.
    • Isn't Sisyphus pushing it in something that resembles a halfpipe, anyway? I could swear I've seen at least one painting like that.
    • I believe it is implied in some versions that he could stop at any moment, but he was too damn proud to do it.
    • He can't. He'll keep pushing that boulder whether he wants to or not.
    • Percy Jackson's Greek Gods says that if Sisyphus stops pushing the rock, the Furies come and whip him until he starts pushing it again.
• What happens if Atlas lets Ouranos/Uranus hug his mother/wife Gaea?
  • The more detailed myths specify that there was a lot less room to move about on Earth back when Ouranos was alive and joined with Gaia all the time. If Atlas lets go, then everyone built upon the Earth will be crushed.
• Why was keeping Hope trapped in Pandora's Box considered a good thing? While the Evils were sealed in the box, humanity didn't know of them. When Pandora opens the box and releases them, humanity learns about Evil pretty damned quick. This in mind, wouldn't you want Hope to be freed as well? It's for this reason that this troper prefers a version of the myth that says the last thing in the box was Despair, which would have prevented people from having hope if it were released.
  • Hope is kept trapped in the box? Which version are you reading? I heard that Pandora trapped it and then it started complaining and she let it out.
    • Now you say that I'm not sure it was trapped, but every reference to the myth I've ever seen except the Despair one says that Hope was the last remaining thing in the box. Which still makes no sense as why would Hope be contained within a Can of Sealed Evils? I've never heard of the Hope complaining version before.
    • In the original telling by Hesiod (the important part here being that he was an arch-misogynist), Pandora was practically a time bomb containing every vice you could think of. Sharp-tongued, overbearing, over-curious...basically, if it's immiscible with Extreme Doormat, Pandora had it, and the theoi had intended her to be relentless woe for poor Epimetheos. Anyway, keeping Hope trapped in there? Hesiod thought this further proof that the theoi had created her as nothing but pure woe. (Now why on Gaea he didn't think the female deities were as bad as female humans...Demeter and Persephone spring to mind in a hurry as ones this troper is having trouble seeing as woe elementals.)
    • It's because you don't fuck with goddesses without being fucked with in return. Hesiod wasn't going to take that risk.
  • Greeks thought hope was bad since it usually lead to having hope in hopeless situations, or being disappointed, and inevitably having such hopes be dashed violently. Remember what happened to Orpheus? It's a greek thing. Then again, the version I heard had Hope fly out as a consolation prize to palliate the release of the other evils.
    • Exactly. There's an intentionally ambiguous element to it. Hope is an evil in with the other evils. It's just a special sort of evil.
  • You're completely misinterpreting it. The idea wasn't that hope was trapped in the box, it's that out of all the things the box held, one of them stayed behind. That is, while all of the troubles in the box flew far and wide to fill the world, hope remained with humanity. The implication was supposed to be that in a perfect world, hope would be unneeded, so hope is a virtue unique to a flawed world.
  • A version I read had Foreboding replace Hope as the final 'spite', much like your Despair version. Another version said that Hope was put there as a last salvation of sorts, by whom I don't know.
    • This troper also read a version (the Evslin and Evslin retellings of Greek myth for kids) ages ago that said Foreboding was the only evil still trapped in the box, which of course meant humans could keep hope. To this day that version seems to me to make the most sense.
  • I think the symbolic message is simpler than all that. It's just that, when all those evils were loosed on the world, humanity barely managed to hold onto hope. On a literal level, had hope escaped from the box too, it probably would've vanished forever. As for why it was in the box at all, symbolically, hope doesn't mean anything in a perfect world because there's nothing to hope for; it's only when things are bad (i.e. when the box was opened) that hope for a better life becomes important. Literally, Zeus probably felt a little bad about the box at the last minute, and decided that if he was going to curse humanity, he'd at least make it bearable.
    • That was what this troper always thought it was - the moral was no matter how terrible things got, there always was Hope to help people get through it. One good thing, no matter how small, to help get through the many evils.
  • For that matter, the obvious misogyny in the myth of Pandora ("Women and their curiosity are the root of all evil!") just bugs me.
    • There are some traces of alternate traditions, mostly in artwork, that hint at a very different version of the Pandora myth, though, including one that strongly hints that her husband was the one to open the jar.
    • There's also the fact that the gods specifically designed Pandora to be ultra-curious and thus open the box. It's not like she was that way on her own.
    • I heard in a version that it was Hermes, with parallels as a Trickster God, who gave Pandora ultra-curiosity
    • Okay, let's settle this ONCE AND FOR ALL. First, it's "hope" in the sense of "there's still hope", as in "there's still a chance", not "hope" as in the emotion of hope, which doesn't amount to diddly dick in and of itself without the other kind also theoretically existing. And the "evils" trapped in the box are not evil (singular) as in "immorality" but evils (plural), which means "ills"—or contextually, something like "curses" or "scourges". Second, I distinctly remember hearing (at least in some versions of the story) that someone (I don't remember who) had deliberately made sure that hope got in there as a safety measure, a "just in case". Third, in some versions (the oldest, I'm pretty sure) it was a jar instead of a box and it contained blessings instead of curses, which escaped and fled from the world when it was opened, and the thing was closed up in time only for the last one (hope) to be left in there. I guess that one makes more sense. Finally, one single woman making one single mistake does not brand all women as inherent fuck-ups, especially when not explicitly labeled as such. Knock it off with the Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory.
    • Except the Hesiod version (the oldest) does spell that out. She was created as the first woman to punish mankind as a further torment to Prometheus (the creator and patron of humans) for giving them fire. Also, it is definitely curses in the jar and hope trapped with them. There were earlier versions that very little is known about (and are mainly only even proposed as explanations for the inconsistencies in his version), but all later tellings are based off Hesiod's version. The main variation is that pretty much only Hesiod ever tried to play this off as a good thing, as with the other parts of the creation story later Greek writers read it as Zeus just being a complete dick.
  • This may be all wrong but here is the version I'm familiar with. Prometheus stole all of what made the gods better than men and gave them in the box to his brother. The gods made Pandora, the all gifted, so his brother would fall in love with her. He did but never left her alone with the box because he knew she was basically an evil sex bot sent by the gods. But in the end Pandora lowered his guard down for one second and she opened the titular box. In this story the moral is that even great smart men can be fooled by a pair on nice legs. Hope becomes just another thing the Olympians had that we did not. And it is interpreted as the ability to understand things that are not real and in front of you, it's complex though as explained by ancient storytelling. Before Prometheus this iteration of man was little more than beast.
  • Isn't there a version of the myth that had Prometheus be Crazy-Prepared and place Hope in the box along with all the evils ahead of time, knowing that Zeus would eventually scheme for it to be opened?
  • There's hinted to be another version of the myth that explains Hope's presence in the box as a good thing. Rather than the box being filled with curses and misfortunes, instead it was filled with blessings and virtues and other good things, and their presence in the box was what allowed mankind to experience them. According to the myth, when the box was opened, all these virtues are said to have fled back to Olympus while hope remained with humanity, thereby explaining why Pandora's act released so many evils upon mankind without having them be inside the box beforehand.
• So why do fiction always portray Kronos as potentially being alive or resurrecting, but Ouranos is Deader than Dead? Wouldn't he kind of want revenge as well?
  • Kronos is imprisoned in Tartarus. Ouranos is dead enough to... well, a guy up there put it very well.
  • Would you want to live as a castrated giant constantly looking down on the guy who did it? Besides, manhood (literally and figuratively) was of the utmost importance to a man and losing it is a Fate Worse than Death. Also Ouranos was simply a placeholder to explain the Vicious Cycle with no cult while Kronos was a harvest deity that became co-opted by the Romans into Saturn.
• When did Chronos have Chiron? And why didn't he swallow him?
  • I suppose the prophecy made an exception for centaurs.
  • In the version I read, Chiron descended from Ixion and Nephele like the other centaurs, but was the only noble and immortal one among them.
• The Hydra grows two heads if you chop off one. What's the definition of decapitation here? What if you severe it at the jawline instead of the neck, leaving the lower jaw intact and still attached? Also, what if just bash its skull in?
  • Ignoring the fact that we're both arguably missing the point, you have to remember that didn't happen. The hydra had killed men who chopped off its heads at the neck only to find two more grow back in their place. Clearly nobody ever tried either of the above as when the hydra was finally defeated it didn't have that many heads. Assuming the heads were permanent, that means that very few people ever actually cut off any of its heads. Probably they were devoured before they thought to bash its head in. Not to mention that would be unnecessary as cauterizing the stump apparently worked just as well.
  • This troper heard in one version of the myth, the hydra would bite off any of its own heads that were FUBAR'd so that they could grow back again.
  • But then why not just disembowel the dang thing instead?
    • Most versions and adaptations of the myths demonstrate that the Hydra's body is well-protected by its heads. It's too hard to get in close enough for disembowelment with them snapping at you, further exacerbated by the swampy marsh it lived in according to the myths of Heracles.
• Promethus has his liver torn out by an eagle, but his Healing Factor keeps him alive so that it is eaten again and again. Uranus though, just gets a forceful castration and dies almost instantly. Both of them are supposedly immortal beings, so why was Uranus so easily killed?
  • Prometheus's liver was a specific part of his punishment, not because of any Healing Factor the gods naturally have. The gods are quite capable of being injured and wounded, and need medical attention like anyone else would. In The Iliad, Ares is at one point wounded by an entirely mortal warrior's entirely mundane spear and has to retreat back up to Olympus to be healed.
    • Aphrodite too, and she complains about it. They can be injured, they just can't die.
    • It bears mentioning: Chronos is explicitly more powerful than Ouranos. More powerful and destined to overthrow him. No way that eagle is more powerful than Prometheus - not powerful enough to destroy, just enough to have a snack.
    • Said eagle was at the same level as the Hydra and the Chimaera (being their brother and all), beings that even the gods are careful at being involved with.
    • Okay, Ouranos did NOT die. Gods can't die unless they choose to 'retire' (as with Khiron, who was suffering unbearable agony after Herakles accidentally poisoned him with a hydra's blood arrow). In fact, directly after his castration, he cursed his five traitorous sons (The eldest son, Okeanos did not take part in the, uh...errection insurrection) and deemed them 'Titanes Theoi' or 'Straining Gods' which is why they are later called Titans in the first place (before that, they would simply have been called the Ouranides). He then retreated into the heavens and never took physical form again. The point is that he didn't die, but suffered the unbearable shame of emasculation. It was also Ouranos' prophecy (probably delivered via his prophetic son Koios) that Kronos' son would rise up and supplant him just as Kronos had done. Once again, Ouranos didn't die, otherwise there'd BE no heavenly dome above.
• Why, exactly, did such misfortune befall on the line of Cadmus? Semele, Agave, Ino, Labdacus, Laius, Oedipus, Polynices, Eteocles, Antigone, Laodamas, Thersander... Did I miss anyone? In Greek mythology, curses on bloodlines are usually karmic punishments — what did Cadmus or his descendants do to deserve this?
  • Remember Cadmus killing the dragon to sow the dragon's teeth? Yeah, that dragon was sacred to Ares. Cadmus also ended up marrying Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and Hephaestus, none too pleased at his wife's affair, gave Harmonia a rather famous cursed necklace that got passed down the family line.
    • This actually bugs me too: if the dragon was sacred to Ares, how did Cadmus end up marrying his daughter? In the version I read, Ares and Aphrodite came to congratulate Cadmus for freeing Harmonia from the dragon, and it was only when Cadmus and Harmonia found the cursed necklace in the dragon's hoard that the troubles started.
    • I know that when I researched this myth, I found so many different versions it's not even funny. For one thing, no one seems to have agreed on who Harmonia's parents are in the first place, or how the cursed necklace got involved, and whether or not the slaying of the dragon had anything at all to do with the troubles of that family. Many people seem to place the blame solely on the necklace, and say that the necklace was Hephaestus' attempt to get back at Aphrodite by cursing her daughter, but I've seen at least two other presenters named.
  • Don't forget Pentheus and Actaeon. Arguably, Agave and Ino bring their troubles on themselves by denying Zeus's divinity (and thereby more importantly denying Dionysus's divinity), as does Pentheus. Semele and Actaeon are both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laius was cursed because he raped and killed a young boy, IIRC. The line of Cadmus seems to be ten different myths which happen to members of the same family, as opposed to, say, the Atreides, whose troubles as a family all spring from the same source.
    • A specific example of their misfortune: Laius rapes a Spartan prince, he's then cursed and Oedipus is cursed because of him (sins of the father and all that). It's all rather unfair. Oedipus' poor sprogs are cursed due to his actions, which were caused by the cursing of his father. Every case is connected somehow. Their family is too big and too varied to have one single source of misfortune, but there's causation at work.
• Exactly how do divine genetics work anyway? Both Zeus and Poseidon have had relationships with six of the seven Pleiades (minor goddesses who are daughters of Atlas). In most cases, the resulting offspring are mortal humans (my guess is that divinity is based on how far you are genealogically from the original Titans), but when Zeus does it with Maia, their son Hermes becomes a major member of the pantheon. Was Hermes born a mortal but turned into a god by Parental Favoritism or what?
  • Perhaps there are processes involved with becoming a full god that don't have to do just with blood. Maybe weaker or more distant relations of the original gods, as well as demigods, are born mortal but must be made a god by the current rulers, or somesuch. Heracles supposedly became a god after death, and I'm reminded of the scene in the Clash of the Titans remake where Zeus offers Perseus the chance to come to Olympus and become a god. Maybe a lot of these supposed immortals are born mortal, but make the full ascension as soon as Zeus says, "You're in."
    • There's also the interesting case of Dionysus: his mother was mortal, and there's at least one story of someone (his cousin Pentheus) denying his divinity, with predictably awful results. And Hermes actually tricked/bargained his way into the pantheon - look at the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Divinity almost seems to be something you earn or are gifted, at least once you get beyond the first Olympians. (Not always, but often enough.) Of course, given that in several myths mankind is directly descended from Titans (after the flood), and you do have all those many, many stories about gods and goddesses procreating with humans, it could be recessive genes for divinity cropping up here and there.
    • In some myths, the gods gain their divinity by eating ambrosia and drinking nectar - such as Psyche (who was originally totally mortal, until Eros fell in love with her)
    • In Glaucus' case, he was a fisherman who ate an herb that made him a merman and immortal, and later had Oceanus and Tethys give him the rank of god. So it may be a combination of genetics and rank (which may itself confer power?).
• The story goes that Archimedes was asked by a king to find out if a certain crown was made of gold or not. (Without melting it down obviously.) Now the story of how he discovered displacement in the bathtub is well known, but does anyone know if the crown turned out to be fake or not?
  • Probably not. Given what the discovery implied, Archimedes probably forgot all about the original request immediately after and decided to do more sciency things afterwards instead.
  • According to Wikipedia the test proved that the crown was not made of solid gold.
  • The TLDR version of the story is that Archimedes proved that the crown was diluted by the dishonest goldsmith using cheaper silver than the amount of gold that the king paid for. The density of a golden crown with silver mixed in was less than that of a lump of gold of the same weight, so the differences between them became clear whether they displaced different amounts of water when they were tossed in or whether they were balanced on a scale then put in water. (Galileo confirmed that the latter method would work, as some scholars question whether the bathtub story is true.) The real question is what the king did to the crooked goldsmith.
• The Odyssey: something always bugged me about the climax of the story. Odysseus proves he is the rightful king by stringing his bow, something apparently none of the other suitors can do. But something about that situation doesn't quite jibe with the rest of Odysseus's characterization. Odysseus is always characterized as The Smart Guy rather than The Big Guy; he's more about brains than brawn. He's certainly not a wimp - he was a warrior-king of Ancient Greece, after all - but he's not a superpowered bruiser demigod like Heracles or Achilles. He's probably not even the strongest mortal in Ithaca; at the very least, he's his late thirties when he finally makes it home, and many of Penelope's suitors are younger men in their physical prime. And yet, none of them can beat the old man in what is basically a classic "feat of strength". Did Odysseus have a custom bow, and there was some kind of trick to stringing it that only he knew?
  • Pretty much, yeah. Modern archers have noted that Odysseus' bow doesn't sound like a standard longbow, but a recurve bow. Recurves are VERY hard to string for people who aren't used to them—you'd have to bend it completely in the other direction from its unstrung state, which would be tricky on its own, and with a massive war-bow like Odysseus'? It would certainly seem impossible for Greeks who are only used to normal bows. Plus, the first recurve bows taken to Europe from North America were broken by the archers who were unknowingly stringing them backwards—this is definitely in the line of something Odysseus would do. Stringing a recurve bow is a test of skill (that requires a lot of strength).
  • Just because he is The Smart Guy doesn't mean he is physically unimpressive. Think of Odysseus as the Ancient Greek version of Batman: a careful and savvy planner, but also well-trained and at peak condition. Supernatural feats like holding up the sky may truly necessitate the strength of someone like Heracles (who is pretty much Ancient Greek Superman), but stringing a battle-bow, however sturdy, is hardly outside the realm of what men can feasibly do.
  • I always interpreted it as a Gordian knot situation - if you took time to think about it, it would be easy; however, all the suitors present were too focused on trying to marry Odysseus's wife to realize the solution.
• Perseus used Medusa's head to turn Atlas into stone, creating the Atlas mountains. Perseus begat Alcaeus and Electryon, one of whom begat Alcmene, who begat Heracles. One of Heracles' labors involved talking to Atlas and covering for Atlas temporarily while Atlas fetched the Golden Apples. The continued presence of the Atlas Mountains indicates that no, he didn't ever recover from his stoning. So, how was he up and about to get involved in the Eleventh Labor, if Heracles' great grandfather turned him into a mountain?
  • Either it is talking mountains or the effects wear off in you are immortal. Also there is the practices of assimilating the local gods and stories into the main pantheon thus lots of contradictions.
  • In Roger Lancelyn Green’s retelling, it was Athena (whom Perseus gave Medusa’s head) who turned Atlas to stone after returning the apples to Hera.
• The Judgment of Paris takes place after Eris leaves the golden apple on the wedding of Achilles' parents. And this is how this entire mess with the Trojan War starts. But Achilles fights in the Tojan war as a fully grown man. So either Paris waited several years to pick up Helen, or Aphrodite waited several years to tell him which woman he was suppose to take or the Judgment took place several years after the wedding.
  • Most likely Option Number 3: the Judgement took place long after the wedding, and the three Goddesses just kept bickering and arguing for a few decades before Zeus finally got sick of it and told them to go seek a Mortal's judgement. That kind of thing is certainly not out of character for an Olympian.
    • Also, let's face it. Zeus had to choose between Hera (his wife with a known temper problem who already did horrible things to people related to Zeus when mad at him), Athena (his favorite daughter and very creative with revenge) and Aphrodite (whose love powers allow her to jerk Zeus around just as easily as anyone else who wasn't a virgin goddess). Even for the king of gods who is overpowered even against all of the rest, that was NOT a comfortable situation to be in. No wonder he first stalled judgment and then bailed altogether. He probably hoped the ladies would just calm down if he refused to decide for a while.
• Achilles's heel is vulnerable because that's what his mother was holding when she dipped him in the river Styx. So why didn't she then grab some other part of his body and dip the heel in?
  • Depending on which version of the myth you read, there are two stories. In one version she planned to flip Achilles over and dip his heels, but was interrupted by her husband, who didn't understand what she was doing and banished her for trying to "drown" his son. Indeed, there are some versions of the story that state that Achilles wasn't Thetis's first child; he was just the first one to survive being dipped in the river. So Peleus's reaction - "Sweet Mother of Zeus, my crazy wife is trying to kill another of my children!" - is pretty understandable. In another version she simply forgot. The heel is such an seemingly-insignificant part of the body, after all...and the Ancient Greeks did invent Irony.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians interprets it as a precondition of the Styx-dipping - not only is it incredibly painful, but you have to concentrate on a single physical flaw (which usually corresponds to a single character flaw) or the river will straight-up kill you.
  • Interestingly, I don't remember Achilles's complete invulnerability (minus the toe ofc) being mentioned anywhere in the Iliad proper. Some dude on the Trojan side even managed to draw blood from Achilles's elbow during the fighting in Scamander's waters.
• In spite of Zeus' reputation for having his way with mortal women, why did Hera always take her wrath out on his offspring instead of setting Zeus straight for womanizing behind her back? Doesn't make much sense as Zeus continued his womanizing regardless of what misery Hera inflicted on those he affected.
  • She could have (and there are probably some myths where she does) but the thing is, Zeus wouldn't have really cared. The Olympians in general aren't known for taking others into consideration, and Zeus is one of the worst. Plus, punishing Zeus' affairs probably made her feel good.
  • Not to mention the fact that Zeus is supposed to be way overpowered compared to the rest of the Olympians put together as well. This page mentions the one times they rebelled against Zeus, they had to tie him up while he slept and had a massive Oh, Crap! when he got out, and as punishment, Zeus hung Hera above the pit of Chaos and used her for target practice. She will have been unwilling to stand up to him in person afterwards, to say the least.
• Gaea and Rhea go through pretty similarly awful stuff at the hands of their husbands, but whereas Rhea is always treated with sympathy, Gaea gets more than a few eyebrows raised for getting one of her sons to plan out the murder of his own father ^note Theogony, to name a huge source, openly includes her creating the first scythe and asking her children "All right who's gonna kill him?!" (as does said son for being willing to go along with it in the first place.) Is this because most assume, since she vanishes from most versions after the baby-to-stone switcheroo, that Rhea was watched too closely in Kronos' palace to be able to sneak to Crete to Zeus and if he spent his early years hearing about how terrible his father was and how he has to defeat him and save his siblings, it wasn't from her (exulting her from the suspicion of rearing him for patricide?)
  • Because Zeus didn't make the same mistakes Chronos did.
    • Except Athena's birth has two versions. One where she was born just out of Zeus' mind without any outside influence, and one where she had a mother, Metis, who (already pregnant with Athena at this point) told Zeus that a son of hers would be more powerful than his father, so Zeus turned her into a fly or tricked her into turning herself into one, then swallowed her then gave birth in there somehow.
• Why does Apollo, the divinely beautiful god of light, music, prophecy and so forth, have so much trouble getting laid? Daphne would rather be a tree; Castalia drowned herself; even Cassandra, a mortal blows him off and two other lovers cheat on him. Seriously Apollo seems to have a real problem here.
  • Because Apollo, not surprisingly for an Olympian, is a bit of a dick. Daphne and Castalia were fleeing an Attempted Rape. He killed his sister's mortal lover Orion in an extremely cruel and convoluted manner just because he didn't want his sister to have a mortal lover. Beautiful he may be, but he's still an asshole, and assholes often have trouble getting laid without resorting to rape and/or trickery.
  • He's also the god of disease, remember? Zeus knows that he's carrying.
  • From a modern perspective, Apollo is basically a slightly lackadaisical, dorky, but sentimental and overly romantic teenage pretty-boy. Basically he’s the kind of precocious guy who tries too hard to woo people, but comes onto them so strongly that it circles around to being unappealing. He probably could settle pretty easily for someone who actually likes him, except he’s always too fixated on the kinds of people who don’t.
• Gods turning their enemies into Forced Transformations I get but they also transform people out of pity or as a reward. Wouldn't being stuck as a sunflower forever be a Fate Worse than Death?
  • That actually depends on your situation and becoming some sort of flower would actually at least give you a pretty short rest of your life to suffer through. Example 1, Daphne. She asked to be transformed to be saved from Apollo raping her. Fair enough, trees cannot be raped and he gave up on getting his way with her even if he was still in love with Daphne. Some versions also say Kallisto's son was turned into a bearcub because Zeus was invoking Mama Bear literally and hoped Kallisto, in bear form at the time, won't kill him. It worked. Arachne, however, was turned into a spider by Athena after their weaving contest- depending on the version, it could have been out of pity or trying to save her, but most (see the Percy Jackson books) imagine Arachne was even more furious at the goddess after this trick than she was before.
• How tall are the Olympians compared to mortals?
  • Easy answer? They are shapeshifters so however tall they want to be. You also have to keep in mind their true form is deadly to mortals so it is literally impossible to get a frame of reference.
• I know there are weirder notions to be found in Greek mythology, but why is Harmonia, whom some sources identify as a patron of marital harmony, described as being the child of Ares and Aphrodite, meaning she was born as a literal result of discord between a married couple? The myths even talk about how Hephaestus despised her so much that he gave her a cursed necklace as a gift, meaning she brought the opposite of "marital harmony" to his marriage to Aphrodite.
  • Because the harmony she symbolizes is not from Aphrodite and Hephaestus' relationship. It's from Aphrodite and Ares', because they are Harmonia's parents, not Aphrodite and Hephaestus.
    • But Aphrodite and Ares aren't married. Theirs' isn't a harmonious marital relationship.
  • Alternatively: Aphrodite's regular trysts with others could be a result of Aphrodite liking to be watched and Hephaestus liking to watch. It's entirely possible that Harmonia actually represents a fragment of Hephaestus and Aphrodite's marital happiness. As proven when Hephaestus tricks Ares with the net: Aphrodite very much enjoyed being on display and proceeded to basically force Ares to finish AGAINST HIS WILL. Because... She wasn't done yet.
  • That's a little like how I like picturing their relationship - where Hephaestus humiliating Aphrodite and her lovers represents his pride at her being his wife above all else, and Aphrodite has these trysts with other men despite knowing it will make her husband angry, because she rationalizes his anger as being a sign that he does love her, in some sense, and that's all that matters to her. But it doesn't really match up with Hephaestus taking his rage out on Harmonia if she's supposed to be a symbol of their weird, twisted marital bliss.
• The myth surrounding the birth of Dionysus begins with Hera being jealous of Zeus’s affair with Semele, who was Dionysus’s mother. In disguise, Hera convinces Semele to ask to see Zeus in his true divine form, which Zeus knows will incinerate her, but she made him swear an unbreakable oath on the River Styx before asking him...What is her thought process, exactly? I find myself feeling for Zeus here; in the version I read, he tells her straight-up that what he’s doing will kill her, but she leaves him no other choice because she refuses to ask for anything else, insisting that looking upon his divine form is the only way that she can verify his identity. Does she somehow think that she can survive seeing his true form?
  • It's possible she doesn't believe his claim that she'll be killed trying to look upon his true form, and thinks it's a bluff to keep him from having to prove himself. If not that, hubris is a common theme in the myths. If she really thought she was being courted by the king of the gods, and was carrying his child, her getting a bit of a big head about the situation and thinking she can survive something "ordinary mortals" couldn't isn't necessarily out of the question.
• Why is it that in many depictions of Medusa, or in fact any character with the power of Taken for Granite, do the victims clothes turn to stone with them? Shouldn't the end result be the clothes remaining the same material, worn by a statue that's basically naked underneath?
  • Considering there aren't any surviving depictions of the petrification through which we could see whether the clothes were turned to stone in the original myths, it's possible they did imagine that only the victim's own body was affected back in ancient times. Whether that's the case, nowadays it's likely done differently so that the mood of the scene isn't tainted by the inherent comedy of seeing a statue fully dressed with a set of clothes.
• When Heracles is doing the Twelve Labors, Eurystheus refuses to accept his killing the Hydra as legitimate because Iolaus helped him do it. Yet when Heracles took a bunch of other warriors to help him retrieve Queen Hippolyta's girdle for his ninth labor, Eurystheus doesn't object. Why is it cheating to have one guy's help on one labor, but it's fair to have a whole bunch of guys helping you on another?
  • In every version of the story I've seen, Heracles obtains the girdle through his own means and merits. Hyppolyta agrees to give it to him because she's impressed with his physical prowess, and when Hera turns the Amazons against him, he kills Hippolyta with his own two hands and takes the girdle by force. The presence of whatever companions he might've had with him didn't actually affect the outcome of the labor.
  • That said, there are other labors that Heracles definitely only completes with the help of another, such as stealing the golden apples of the Hesperides, wherein most versions he holds up the sky for Atlas while Atlas goes and gets the apples for him. We could just assume that he doesn't tell Eurystheus how he completed those labors, being forewarned from the second labor that they can be disqualified if the king knows he didn't do them himself.
  • It could also be an Exact Words type of deal. When Eurystheus tells Heracles "Go kill the Hydra," implicit in that (or at least not too far off) is that Heracles has to do it himself. But telling him "Bring me the girdle of Hippolyta" only means he has to bring him the girdle, regardless of how he gets his hands on it.
  • Regarding the girdle, the reason Eurystheus sent Heracles to get it was because his daughter wanted to possess it. The other labors were done for the sake of killing or humiliating Heracles with seemingly impossible tasks, but this one actually had a clear-cut reason behind it.
• Why was Gaia upset that Cronos and the Titans were imprisoned? She plotted his downfall after he refused to free his monstrous siblings.
  • In what myth did Gaia plot Cronus's downfall, or express upset that he and his kin were imprisoned? In the story of the Titanomachy, it was Cronus's wife, Rhea who started his downfall when she plotted to save Zeus from being devoured.
• Wait, why on earth would Zeus & Hades let Cronus of all people rule over Elyseum? At least in the tradition of Hesiod (see Works and Days), Cronus is described as later ruling over the demigods after he was released from his bonds. Why? Zeus and Hades were mistreated by Cronus, why would they not only release him but have him rule over heroes? Did Cronus have some off-screen change of heart that Hesiod forgot to mention? Did Zeus just forgive him off-screen for everything? What happened?
  • Cronus was often described as having ruled over a Golden Age of mankind wherein the people of the world lived peacefully and prosperously. In those myths, his only glaring flaw was that he sought to devour his children to keep them from overthrowing him. Once the Olympians are firmly established and in power, there'd be no harm in letting him rule over the paradise of Elysium, especially since it lessens the risk of any bitter feelings developing in the future.
• Why is Hera never depicted having at least some resentment towards Hermes? In almost every case when Zeus has a child from an affair, she either torments the mother, the child or both. Other gods aren't exempt from this as she tried to stop Leto from giving birth to Artemis and Apollo. While Zeus was able to keep the affair secret until Hermes was born, it still doesn't explain why she's never shown to have any beef with Hermes or his mother Maia who Zeus had the affair with.
  • One reason is because she would surely hold less power over another god than she would a comparatively feeble demigod. Screwing over mortals is probably a lot easier for her. And unlike, say, Heracles or Perseus, the gods Hermes, Artemis and Apollo are worshiped for their individual merits and attributes rather than their parentage. "Atremis, goddess of the hunt" doesn't have as strong of an association with Zeus's infidelity as "Heracles, the mighty son of Zeus." That's probably why one triggers Hera much more than the other.
• Why in Tartarus did Zeus think marrying Aphrodite to Hephaestus would help stop other gods from fighting over her? Given Hephaestus isn't one of the heavy hitters and Zeus himself is a chronic adulterer, why would he think the plan would work?
  • Because the prize for fighting over her was specifically her hand in marriage, which is what giving her to Hephaestus held off. It was not meant to keep the other gods from sleeping with her on the side, since Aphrodite is already keen to allow that.
  • Also, some versions of the myth read that Zeus wed Aphrodite off to Hephaestus to punish her for her pride in refusing all of the other gods.

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