Why do we have summer and winter? Although we now have a much fuller understanding of how the orbit of the Earth around the Sun creates the various seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, our ancient ancestors did not have that detailed scientific knowledge.
The story of Philomela is well-known. And one of the most famous details of the myth of Philomela, her sister Procne, and King Tereus, is the fact that someone was turned into a nightingale. But who? And what is the meaning of this classical myth? Before we get to these […]
Perseus’ defeat of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, is well-known. Famously, to look upon snake-haired Medusa (the snakes were her punishment for being vain and proud of her hair) was enough to turn the viewer to stone, so Perseus cunningly used a mirrored shield to approach the Gorgon, Medusa, in […]
One of the great tragic love stories from Greek mythology, the tale of the musician Orpheus and his wife Eurydice features love, death, poetry, and the afterlife. But as with the tale of Echo and Narcissus, this is a doomed love story made more famous through Roman writers (Ovid, Virgil) […]
The story of Icarus is one of the most famous tales from Greek myth. The tale is often interpreted as being fundamentally about the dangers of hubris, with Icarus’ flight a metaphor for man’s overreaching of his limits (and coming to a sticky end as a result). But does the […]