Who is Achilles? And what was his role in myth? How should we analyse his character, and the meaning of the story of Achilles? And where did the phrase ‘Achilles heel’ come from? Let’s take a closer look at the stories about Achilles from Greek mythology. Before we come to […]
The story of Diana and Actaeon and his band of hounds is a well-known tale from classical myth, especially thanks to Ovid, who included the story in his great anthology of myths involving transformations of various kinds, the Metamorphoses.
The story of Arachne is one of the most famous of the Greek myths dealing with young women. Or at least, it is perhaps the most famous one not to involve the young woman either being carried off by Zeus (who had something of a reputation for doing that) or […]
The poster-boy of existentialism, Sisyphus has become associated with laborious and pointless tasks, because he was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only for the boulder to roll back down to the bottom just as he was about to complete the task. He was thus doomed to repeat […]
The story of Hero and Leander is not the most famous tragic love story from classical mythology, but after all, there are quite a few other such stories to choose from. When it comes to classical myth, we might turn to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Dido and Aeneas, […]