12 of the Best Stories from Greek Myth absence from the land led to the failure of crops,

and everyone began to starve.

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Hades was told by Zeus to return Persephone to
Ancient Greek mythology is full of classic stories Demeter above-ground, but (thanks to Hades’ trick
which have become part of Western literature and which involved, effectively, drugging Persephone
culture; these stories have even given us some with some pomegranate seeds), eventually a
well-known words and phrases commonly used in compromise was reached, whereby Persephone
English, and in other languages. would spend the winter months in Hades and the
rest of the year with Demeter. And this explains the
Below, we introduce 12 of the greatest and best- origins of the seasons.
known tales from the world of Greek mythology,
from curious women to brave men, people who 4. Theseus and the Minotaur
overreached themselves and people whose greed
got the better of them. In the vast Labyrinth on the island of Crete, built by
the cunning Daedalus for King Minos, there dwelt
1. Pandora’s Box the Minotaur: a man with the head and tail of a
bull.
Everyone knows about the myth of Pandora’s box –
except it wasn’t a box at all, but a jar, as we reveal Minos demanded seven Athenian men and seven
in our discussion of this classic story (linked above). Athenian maidens be given to the Minotaur to be
devoured on a regular basis (some accounts say
Pandora was the first woman in Greek mythology, every seven years, while others state this was an
and Hesiod tells us that her curiosity led her to take annual treat for the Minotaur). This mythic story,
the lid off the jar (not box) containing all of the by the way, inspired Suzanne Collins’s idea of
world’s ills, unleashing them upon the world in the ‘tributes’ in The Hunger Games.
process.
Anyway, Theseus was a brave Athenian man who,
2. Prometheus with the help of Ariadne (who gave him a ball of
thread so he could find his way back out of the
Another important ‘origin-story’ from Greek myth, Labyrinth), went into the Cretan maze and slew the
the tale of Prometheus – whose name literally Minotaur. Unfortunately, after Ariadne had helped
means ‘forethought’ in some interpretations – is him to accomplish his task, his abandoned her …
well-known because it explains how mankind came but that’s another story.
into possession of fire, thus enabling man to form
civilisation as we know it. 5. Daedalus and Icarus

Prometheus, a Titan or god, stole fire from his The story of Icarus is one of the most famous tales
fellow gods and gave it to humanity, and for this from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus,
act he was punished by Zeus: chained to a rock and the craftsman who built the Labyrinth from the
then subjected to the agonising ordeal of having his Minotaur story recounted above. Ever the inventor,
liver pecked out by an eagle. His liver would grow Daedalus fashioned some wings out of feathers and
back every night, so Prometheus would have to wax, for him and his son to use to fly their way off
endure the same fate every day for eternity. Ouch. the island of Crete.

3. Persephone and Hades However, Icarus got carried away and flew too
close to the sun, which melted the wax in his wings.
As well as explaining where man came from and He fell to his death, drowning in the Aegean. Now,
how we came to create civilisation, the Greeks also Icarus’ name is a byword for one of the Greeks’
used their myths to explain the origins of natural most favourite themes: hubris, or overreaching
phenomena, such as the seasons. Why do we have oneself.
summer and winter?
6. Perseus and the Gorgon Medusa
For the ancient Greeks, it was thanks to
Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Perseus’ defeat of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, is
Persephone was abducted by Hades, god of the well-known. Famously, to look upon snake-haired
Underworld, and taken away with him; because Medusa (the snakes were her punishment for being
she was connected to vegetation, Persephone’s vain and proud of her hair) was enough to turn the
viewer to stone, so Perseus cunningly used a Echo into the tale of Narcissus appears to have
mirrored shield to approach Medusa in her cave so been the invention of a Roman poet, Ovid, in
that he could cut her head off without looking his Metamorphoses. But the figures are so closely
directly at her. associated with Greek myth that we felt they
should be included here.
7. Orpheus and Eurydice
10. Sisyphus
One of the great tragic love stories from Greek
mythology, the tale of the musician Orpheus and The poster-boy of existentialism, Sisyphus has
his lover Eurydice features the Underworld. But as become associated with laborious and pointless
with the tale of Echo and Narcissus (see below), tasks, because he was condemned to roll a boulder
this is a doomed love story made more famous up a hill, only for the boulder to roll back down to
through Roman writers (Ovid, Virgil) than Greek the bottom just as he was about to complete the
originals. task. He was thus doomed to repeat this action
forever.
The lyrist Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful
Eurydice, only for her to die shortly after; Orpheus 11. King Midas and the Golden Touch
made the journey into Hades, the Underworld, to
try to bring his beloved back. Midas is known for two things: being given the ears
of an ass, and turning everything he touched into
His wish was granted – but on the condition that he gold. The latter of these was his reward from
mustn’t look back at Eurydice as she followed him Dionysus, although he soon discovered that his gift
out of Hades, until they were both safely back in was a bane rather than a blessing, and that he
the land of the living. Orpheus couldn’t resist one couldn’t even do simple things like take a drink
quick glance … and Eurydice was lost to him without the water turning into gold.
forever.
Curiously, like many other classic myths, this one
8. The 12 Labours of Heracles may have arisen as an origin story to explain the
rich gold deposits in the river Pactolus.
Better-known as Hercules (the Latin version of his
Greek name), Heracles was the all-round action 12. Scylla and Charybdis
hero of Greek mythology. He was ordered to carry
out his famous ‘Twelve Labours’ as penance for the To be ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’ is, if you will,
murder of his own wife and children, while he was to be caught between a rock and a hard place – in
in the service of the king Eurystheus. other words, between two equally unappealing
dangers or pros.pects. The phrase derives from two
A few of them are quite famous – Heracles killing dangerous entities found in the Mediterranean sea,
the Nemean lion, or stealing the golden apples of which Homer tells us about in his Odyssey.
the Hesperides – but others, such as slaying the
Stymphalian birds, are more obscure. They were supposedly found on opposite sides of
the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria,
9. Echo and Narcissus with Scylla being a monster with six heads and
Charybdis being a deadly whirlpool. Ships had to
Narcissus was a beautiful youth – so beautiful, in navigate between these two dangerous forces
fact, that he fell in love with his own reflection, when travelling through this part of the
which he saw while gazing down at the surface of Mediterranean sea.
the water while drinking one day. Echo loved
Narcissus, but he shunned her because he only had
eyes for himself, and Echo pined away until only
her voice remained.

Echo found it hard to tell Narcissus how she felt for

him, in any case, because she had already been
cursed so that she could only repeat what others
said, rather than speak for herself.

Although we feature this classic mythological tale

on this list of best Greek stories, the introduction of