Midas is known for two things: being given the ears of an ass, and turning everything he touched into gold. The latter of these was his reward from Dionysus, although he soon discovered that his gift was a bane rather than a blessing, and that he couldn’t even do simple […]
Perhaps the two most important and prominent qualities which dogs have symbolised in literature and myth down the ages are vigilance and loyalty. However, there are also some curious and lesser-known aspects of dog-symbolism which are worth probing; we’ll get to these in time. As the vast and informative The […]
The myth of Oedipus is one of the most famous tragedies in all of classical mythology. But how did this Greek myth come about? And what does it mean? Before we address these questions, it might be worth recapping the story of Oedipus in the form of a brief plot […]
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 […]
The story of Theseus and the Minotaur is one of the most famous and enduring myths of ancient Greece. Among other things, the tale helped to inspire the central premise of one of the most popular series of dystopian novels and films of the twenty-first century (of which more below).