Roman mythology, it, borrows its religious and cultural designs from all the Mediterranean countries, and links its destiny with that of the State. The great contemporary religions claim with the universality, valid for people of different cultures. In Greece on the contrary, as in many ancient people and polytheists, the religion is related to the history and consubstantial with the culture.  

For the Greeks of Antiquity, religion and mythology were closely dependant. It is besides especially by the myths, such that we report them Homère and the classic authors, that the Greek religion is known for us. The gods of the Greek Pantheon, borrowed for the majority from the cultures of the people conquered by the Greeks, have an human form and very marked personalities, but for much are better known today us under the name than the Romans gave them: Jupiter and Zeus, for example, or Mars and Ares, Venus and Aphrodite. Between the moment of its origins, apart from Greece, and until the meeting with Christianity, the history of the Greek religion covers one period of approximately two thousand years.  

The texts which bring back the accounts of them to us, often badly connected, comprise a large number of alternatives, expressing different truths sometimes, assimilating popular, folk or geographical elements. The sources are very diverse, of the Homeric poems to works of Hésiode (VIIIe front century J. - C.) and of Pindare (Ve front century J. - C.). The tragedies of Eschyle, Sophocle and Euripide take them again, followed by the dialogs of Plato, who puts in Socrate scene trying to convince his disciples by calling upon the myths. The historians will not be in remainder, as testify some, inter alia, Hérodote, Strabon, Plutarque or Pausanias.  
Associated topics

Chaos with the birth of Zeus
At the beginning is Chaos, a crack dark, empty, indescribable, from where emergent Gaia, Earth, and Eros, most beautiful Love, the “of the immortal gods, him which weakens the members, overcomes in any god and any man the intelligence and the careful will”. Chaos is born also the Night from in top and Erèbe, the darkness of the Hells. Then Erèbe and the Night, linking one with the other, generates the Day, which light the mortals, and Ether, the light. As for Gaia, the Earth, it gives birth to Ouranos, the starry Sky, then the mountains and Pontos, the marine flood, male creature. It is linked then in Ouranos to give the day to twelve Titans, gigantic characters, divine beings but especially elementary forces, whose Cronos and Rhéa, parents of the Olympiens futures, are most famous.

Among the other Titans Océan appears, which surrounds the World on which fleet Earth, punt like a disc. Ocean is also the father of all the rivers. Gaia and Ouranos still generate the Cyclops, builders of colossal walls, whose names evoke the gleam of the flash, the shock of the lightning and the crash of the thunder. Lastly, they put at the world Hécatonchires, monsters with the hundred arms and the fifty heads. But Ouranos, fearing that one of his/her sons does not want to take his place, the constrained one all to remain in the depths of the Earth. This one, increasingly heavy, beseeches his/her children to deliver it and to be avenged for their father. It creates a steel sickle which only Cronos agrees to seize. And, at the time when the Sky wraps the Earth, it at a stretch slices the testicles of his father. The blood of the wound falling on the Earth will generate new monsters, Erinyes, winged goddesses with the hair intermingled with snakes, the Giants and Méliades, nymphs of the ashes.  

Cronos remains alone to reign on the world, because it hastened to plunge his brothers and sisters in the Hell. As for the children whom his Rhéa wife gives him, it devours them as of their birth: thus of Hestia, Déméter, Héra, then of Hadès and Poséidon. When Zeus is about to be born, Rhéa flees secretly towards Crete, where it puts the child at the world. And, giving to a stone the aspect of a newborn, it presents it to Cronos which swallows it without difficulty. Small Zeus grows by drinking the goat's milk Amalthée.  

Zeus, Master of the Olympus
Arrived at the adulthood, Zeus makes absorb in Cronos an emetic drug which makes him restore his/her children. Then it delivers the Cyclops and Hécatonchires of the Tartar - the Hell -, and all are linked in a war without mercy, “Titanomachie”, against Cronos. Cronos and the Titans are in their turn thrown in the Tartar. But Gaia, dissatisfied with the fate reserved for the Titans, fact call to the Giants who start to hold up ignited trees and enormous rocks. The Olympian ones intervene then with their own weapons: Zeus seizes the lightning, Athéna the aegis and the lance, Dionysos holds up the thyrse (long stick decorated with ivy and vineleaves, ending in a pine cone). Héraclès launches its arrows, and all contribute to one second victory.  

Gaia makes a last attempt then, and, being linked with the Tartar, puts at the world Typhon, a monster more imposing than the Giants, whose head touches stars and who has instead of fingers hundred heads of dragon. The episodes of the combat proceed in the whole world until the moment when Zeus, using the thunder and of the lightning, crushes its adversary under Etna, in Sicily. From now on, the authority of Zeus is assured and the Olympian ones can share the power.  
 
The creation of the men

According to the two most current versions, the creation of the man is allotted either to the gods, or with Prométhée, one of the sons of Titan Japet, which, with clay, works the human race.  

Prométhée
Prométhée is especially known like the benefactor of the men, because he twice undertakes to mislead the gods. In order to decide which will be the food of the gods and that of the men, it sacrifices an ox which it divides in two unequal shares: on a side, it places the flesh and the entrails, hidden under the not very appetizing skin of the animal, other, the bones, covered with a thick layer of grease of beautiful appearance. Then he asks his Zeus cousin to choose his share. This one leaves to try by grease white, but when he realizes that it recovers only bones, he is taken of a terrible fury against Prométhée and the mortals. To punish them, he refuses fire enabling them to them to cook the tasty flesh which was allotted to them. Prométhée goes up then to the sky and conceals with the gods of the seeds of fire which it hides in a fennel stem. This time, the revenge on Zeus will be worthy of the made fault: Prométhée will be connected at the summit of the Caucasus where each day an eagle will come to devour the liver to him, always reappearing. The torment would have been without end if Héraclès had not cut down the eagle and had delivered Prométhée of its bonds.  

Pandora
Then Zeus undertakes to invent a “beautiful evil (...), terrible plague installed in the middle of the men mortals”, according to Hésiode. He asks Héphaïstos to create an unknown being, a woman - the first -, that the gods will decorate each one of a quality (except Hermes which makes him present lie), and which receives for name Pandore, “gift of all the gods”. Zeus the offer with Epiméthée, brother of Prométhée, with which this one required not to accept any gift of Zeus. But Epiméthée, whose name means “which reflected too late”, cannot resist the attraction of Pandora. This one, devoured curiosity for a mysterious earthenware jar which must remain closed, raises the lid, letting escape all the evils from which suffers since humanity. Remain at the bottom of the earthenware jar only the hope, the only consolation (illusory?) granted to the human ones.  

A flood of nine days and nine nights
A generation later, the Earth is populated men, race of bronze, who forsake the gods and practice the war. Zeus then decides to exterminate them and unchains a flood, which will save only two right, Deucalion, son of Prométhée, and Pyrrha, girl of Epiméthée and Pandora. It rains during nine days and nine nights: drowned Earth emerges only the Mount Parnassus. When Zeus orders with water to be withdrawn, Deucalion and Pyrrha are alone in their boat on the deserted ground. A voice appears, ordering to them to throw over their shoulders the bones of their mothers. Initially frightened by such an impiety, they understand that they are stones, the bones of the Earth, universal mother. The stones which Deucalion lance become men, those thrown by Pyrrha of the women. The Earth is thus repopulated by the ancestors of the Greek people, the races Dorian and wind, the Achaens and the Ionian ones, mythology joining the history. The Olympian ones can finally reign on the world.

The cycle of the Olympian ones

When the Olympian ones succeed the Titans, three of them divide the universe after drawing lot. Zeus obtains the sky, Poséidon the sea, and Hadès the underground world. They remain on the Olympus, kept by the Seasons, where they know a perfect happiness, alternating banquets and assembled, gorging itself with nectar and ambrosia to the sound of the quadrant of Apollo.  

Zeus
In the Olympus, Zeus is the sovereign god, “Father of the gods and the men”. In his name, one finds an Indo-European root meaning “the day”. Its field of competence is the sky and time, from where it fires its particular weapon, the lightning. Equipped with magic powers, it governs the celestial demonstrations, causes the rain, launches the lightning and the flashes, but its functions also extend to the unit from the fields from the human life: it maintains the order and justice in the world, and guarantees the oaths. This ethical dimension is very apparent in the parts of Eschyle. Introduced by the Greek invaders, Zeus also absorbed the Minoan male divinity. The myths of its childhood refer to ritual Cretan and Minoan ones.

Zeus has as a wife her sister Héra, goddess of the marriage and the women, and whose evolution starting from the goddess of the Minoan ground clearly appears in the crowned marriage that described Iliade (XIV deliver, towards 346-351). But mythology allots many other unions to him, during which it often adopts animal forms; the impious way in which these hybrid unions are treated in the Greek literature does not withdraw anything with its authority nor with its fundamental dignity.  

Poséidon, Hadès and Hestia
Poséidon is a Greek god chthonien, undoubtedly originally related to the fertility of the ground, whose nature changes with the establishment of the Greeks near the sea. Consequently, he becomes the god of the ocean and reign on water. God of the sea, he remains however that of the earthquakes, he orders the storms, but he shakes the rocks and makes spout out the sources. He can also cause marine monsters which emergent water. He is also associated with the horses. He was implied in a quarrel with Athéna for the possession of Athens: at a stretch of its three-pronged fork, it had made spout out a source but this one was salted, and it is thus Athéna, which had planted an olive-tree, which carried it. Of rage, Poséidon had flooded the close plain.  

Hadès, for its part, as a god of the underground world, preserves a character primarily chthonien: he is the Master of the kingdom of deaths, but also of the richnesses of the basement. Its name means “the Invisible one”, and no furnace bridge is dedicated to him. It is a pitiless Master who does not allow any of his subjects to return among the alive ones. One indicates it by the euphemism “Pluto”, i.e. “the Rich person”, because the Greeks fear, by pronouncing his name, to excite its anger. Harmful as a god of deaths, it gives to the ground its fruitfulness. This double concern of the Greek religion chthonienne for deaths and the fruitfulness of the ground, is illustrated by the myth of Déméter, whose girl, Korê (“the Young girl”), are removed by Hadès and control in the underground world, where it becomes the queen of deaths under the name of Perséphone. She however is released in spring for two thirds of the year; Déméter, happy to find it, sends abundant harvests then.  

Hestia, the last of the six children of Cronos, is of Greek origin, as the place shows it which the Mycenaean ones in the megaron (big room) grant to him their palates. Little personalized, it is often replaced by Dionysos among the twelve Olympian divinities. She is the goddess of the hearth, in front of which any new-born child must be deposited before being allowed in his family.  

Héra
Legitimate wife of Zeus, the sovereign of the gods, it is protective married women. Is jealous of, violent and vindicatory, it is caught some to the women that Zeus courts, going until continuing its hatred the newborns of these unions: Héraclès, in particular, will be the object of its ire.  

Let us quote also the “old hand” gods - Athéna, Artémis and Hermes -, which go back to the Minoan religion, and groups it “young people” - Ares, Aphrodite, Héphaïstos, Apollon and Dionysos -, resulting from the nonGreek areas of north and is.  

Athéna
Goddess-snake Cretan, Athéna becomes a Mycenaean warlike goddess. Protective hero like Ulysses, it is also owner of the cities. At Homère, she lives the palate of Erechthée, god of Athens. Later, its principal function will be that of Athéna Polias, protective city. Born on the edges from the lake Tritonis, in Libya, girl of Mongrel (Wisdom) and left very armed with the head her father Zeus, Athéna chairs moreover arts and the literature, peace and the reason.  

Artémis
The Homeric goddess of the wild animals and hunting, returns to the Minoan mistress of the animals, but, in traditional mythology, it is virgin, like Athéna, whereas the Minoan goddess had a husband. Artémis d' Ephèse had several udders, but the Greeks transform this figure old and grotesque into a “queen and huntress, pure and beautiful”, who will be a great success in art and the Western literature. It is associated with the life of the women, and in particular with the birth, like the moon. Twin sister of Apollo, it likes herself only hunting, to prosecutor of her arrows the animals, without forgetting the human ones, to which it inflicts a soft death.  

Hermes
Son of Zeus and Maia, it is born in Arcadie, where it was known before the arrival of the Greeks. Its name probably comes from the Greek herma (“stone heap”), who indicates a Minoan origin. Showing a great precocity, it begins like god from the Robbers, the day of his birth, by concealing with his Apollon brother the herds of which this one had the guard. Zeus orders to him to return them, but Apollon gives up them at Hermes in return for the quadrant which it has just manufactured with the carapace of a tortoise and the intestines of an ox as cords. Messenger of the gods, Hermes carries winged sandals which enable him to move in the airs. Companion and guide of the travellers in this low world, it also receives from Zeus the mission of accompanying with the Hells the hearts by deaths; it also takes care on the merchants and (under his immoral aspect) on the liars.  

Apollo
Apollo - venerated in particular in the Panhellenic centers of Delphes and Délos - is Hellenic of the gods, even if his name is not Greek and that the myths which surround it return to Asia Mineure and, before that, north of Asia. Son of Zeus and Léto, it is born on the island from Délos. Crowned swans take it along in the country of the Hyperborean ones, where the sun never lies down and where happiness reigns. Then it goes to Delphes, where it comes to end from the guard from an old oracle, the Python snake, which devastates the area. Apollo seizes oracle and installs in his cave the Pythea, which transmits the answers of the god to the men. Apollo has divinatory powers, and the Greek statesmen consult his oracle with Delphes before making important decisions. The ecstatic character of the prophecies returned by the Pythea, reveals it under a nonrational aspect, not Greek. Its late arrival among the Greeks is illustrated moreover by the fact that it is the fourth oracle to take possession of Delphes. Apart from his functions of soothsayer, Apollon purifies the homicides, as the myth of Oreste shows it, treaty in particular by Eschyle in Euménides. Lastly, the legend of Hyacinthe, in Amyclées, watch clearly that Apollon supplanted an older god: Hyacinthe, indeed (the termination in - nthos is pre-Greek), was a local god of the fertility which became the lover (and the accidental victim) of the new god.  

Also illustrating the Greek ideal of moderation - the temple of Delphes carried the currency médên sea-wrack (“nothing too”) - Apollo takes care on these civilized activities that are the music and poetry, and directs the chorus of the Muses. As a Phoibos (“that which shines”), it is associated with the sun. God of the Light, he is also that of the Truth. It is finally a divinity healer, since it was the first to learn to the men art of medicine.  

Art represents it in the shape of an young man in his earliest youth, incarnating the male ideal, either under its virile and strong aspects, as in Olympie (470 av. J. - C.), or under an aspect more sentimentalized, as in the sculpture of the IV E century.  

Ares
God of the War, Arès is of thrace origin. He is the son of Zeus and Héra, which both, according to Homère, hated it. The poet depicts it under one day little sympathetic nerve: murderer, made thirsty of the blood of the mortals, but coward however, and misled sometimes by other gods or in the heroes. It is the subject of few myths, and its worship is much less widespread than that of its Roman equivalent, the god Mars.  

Aphrodite
Aphrodite is in the beginning an Asian goddess-mother. The worship which is dedicated to him to Paphos (Cyprus) is not Greek at the beginning and, in its myth, the episode of Adonis is a version of the Syrian legend of Tammouz. According to Hésiode, it was born from the immortal seed of Ouranos, from which the sexual organs sliced by Cronos fell into the sea (the Greek term aphros means “scum”); at Homère, it is the girl of Zeus and Dioné. Carried by Zephyr with Cythère then in Cyprus, it is avoided and crowned of gold by the Hours, which then transport it on the Olympus. Goddess of the beauty to the multiple loves (it misleads her Héphaïstos husband, in particular with Arès), it personifies the radiant beauty and the irresistible seduction. It played also important role in Trojan War, since it promised in Pâris, which indicated it like most beautiful of the three goddesses present, the love of Helene. The legends which associate it with the romantic love and, in particular, in Eros (here the equivalent of Cupid) are late and darken its primitive nature.

Héphaïstos
Héphaïstos, god of the fire to which it orders under its creative aspects, is a god who comes from Asia Mineure. The center of its worship was the volcanic island of Lemnos. Very popular, main God of arts of the forging mill and the work of metals, the volcanos are its workshops. It is the divine craftsman par excellence, always ready to carry out some extraordinary order, shield, arms, chain. In mythology, he is the lame husband of Aphrodite. He owes his infirmity with an argument between Zeus and Héra, during which he had taken the party of his mother; to punish it, his/her father had precipitated it from the top of the Olympus.  

Déméter
Goddess of the cultivated Earth, it is closely associated to her Perséphone daughter, is designed with Zeus and is removed by Hadès, which involved it with the Hells. Déméter, in search of his/her daughter, prevents the trees from pushing, making little by little the unproductive land. Zeus decides to send Hermes to the Hells to seek Perséphone, but this one tasted the food of deaths: it is thus definitively related to the infernal world. A compromise is finally found: Perséphone will share its time between Déméter and the Hells, from where it will go back to the arrival of spring. Mysteries were devoted to Déméter, in particular in Eleusis.  

Dionysos
Son of Zeus and Sole, Dionysos is the last of the gods to being entered the Olympus. His/her mother, a princess thebaine (but, at the origin, a Phrygian goddess of the ground), treacherously inspired by Héra, devoured jealousy, asked Zeus to appear with it in all her splendor. Zeus knows that no mortal can support the glare of his divinity, but he is prisoner of the oath which he made in Sémélé. This one dies struck down. But Zeus has time to tear off his/her child close being born to him. It carries it in its thigh until its birth. In its early childhood, Dionysos, like Zeus, will be collected by nurses. Euripide, whose Bacchantes constitutes our independent source of information on the myth and the ritual Dionysiac ones, locates the childhood of the god in Crete, and makes dance around him young people. The element “Dio-” of its name corresponds to the Phrygian name of Zeus; it is thus not astonishing that Dionysos was identified in the Zeus of the Cretan one.  

At the adulthood, discovering the vine and the wine, Dionysos is struck of madness by Héra and starts to wander of share the world, of Persia in Asia, via Phrygie. Delivered its madness by Cybèle, it approaches in Thrace, from where its mystical worship, often accompanied by orgies, is propagated quickly through all Greece.  

Dionysos is especially associated with the ecstatic and orgiastic worships, and the manifestations of the madness. Come from north, he is however the god of the vine and the wine, and its worship involves the faithful ones to lose their spirits in the nature even of the god. The “insanity” which often characterizes it arises clearly each time one seeks to be opposed to him, as in the myth of Penthée and Sisal plant, where the divine possession leads a mother to kill her son. However, the Greeks will rationalize and tame Dionysos, with the point to associate it with Apollon with Delphes, while in Athens, of great festivals of theater are held in its honor within the framework of Large Dionysies. Dionysies rural, more primitive, honor it in the form with a god with the fertility.  

The myths of Dionysos show the unslung nature of its worship, with its processions the faithful ones (in particular of the women, called Bacchantes or Ménades), which dance until reaching the mystical ecstasy. The attributes of the god are the thyrse (stick surrounded by ivy and vine branch) and the nébride (skin of fawn), and the satyrs which accompany it, mid--men mid--animals, point out the Minoan dancers dressed in skins. The ecstasy and the union with the god offered certainly a hope of immortality, but this character does not appear at Homère nor at Euripide, because, at that time still, the line of demarcation between the gods and the mortals were clearly established. However, the Dionysiac worship is well of a mystical nature, because it leads to “enthusiasm”, i.e. with the possession by the god. Dionysos will be later associated with the doctrines with the orphism.  

Minor divinities
The Pantheon of the large gods of traditional Greece understands fourteen divinities. The twelve divinities of the Olympus constitute the family of the Homeric gods; Hadès does not appear there, and Dionysos often replaces Hestia there. But there exist a large number of minor gods and other divinities to which worships are returned, among which Pan, the pastoral god mid--animal of Arcadie, and the foreign divinities like Cybèle, the Asian Great Mother.  

The local heroes have their legends and their worships; among them most famous are perhaps Héraclès and Asclépios. The first is the only being of Greek mythology to pass from the state of mortal to that of immortal. Homère, which sees a paradox there, places the phantom of Héraclès in the underground world, while Héraclès itself feasts in the middle of the immortal gods; Pindare calls it the god-hero. Asclépios, god of medicine and son of Apollo, were venerated in Epidaure, but its association with the snake (its emblem), the episode of its death and the localization of its worship reveal its true nature chthonienne.  

Certain divinities of group correspond primarily to abstract concepts: it is the case of the three Moires (them Parques Romans), of the three Erinyes (Furies) and of the nine Muses. Others are more concrete, the such nymphs: beautiful divine but not always immortal young women, they are equipped with superhuman powers and, in the legends, they are the wives of innumerable gods and hero. Often associated with natural elements, they are omnipresent, like nature itself. They often intervene in the religion of the humble peasants.  
 

The Greeks thus have the same gods, and many their sanctuaries are known as Panhellenic since, whatever their origin, they meet there for festivals or “plays” (Délos, Olympie, Delphes, Némée) or around an oracle (Delphes, Dodone).  

A multiplicity of gods
It would be false, however, to conclude some with a standardization from the religion: the Apollo of Delphes and that of Délos are very different one from the other, and Artémis “with the many udders” of Ephèse yields the place, in clean Greece, with the “Mistress of the animals” and the divinity who takes care jealously on the young people of the two sexes. Artémis Eileithyia, as for it, specializes in the protection of the women in labor, and there exists many other local versions of this particularly effective divinity. Each god can, like it, to change face and especially of function.  

The Greek religion expresses an astonishing provision with the reception. After the large Eastern divinities that Homère, already, integrated into the Olympian family (such Aphrodite, transposition of Astarté of the Phoenicians), it is Hécate, another large Asian “mother”, and Phrygian Cybèle which are adopted as of the antiquated religion. Later will settle, through an increasingly syncretistic religion, Adonis, Attis and Sabazios, Bendis thrace and Isis, without speaking of all the foreign gods who will flow with the conquest of the East by Alexandre. This religion polytheist strongly anthropomorphized nourishes the imaginary Greek of myths in which the gods, like the men, quarrel or feast, like or are made the war. These myths help the Greeks to be in the universe.  

Crowned and layman
Crowned and layman seem to merge: many priesthoods are civic functions, like are the other magistratures, which, on the other hand, comprise religious aspects; any meeting of the assembly or the council opens by a sacrifice. In Athens, the stage performances organized by the city are also religious celebrations.

Processions, dances, gymnastic, musical or poetic contests, the worship take varied forms and the festivals are numerous throughout the year. Any ceremony understands the bloody, average sacrifice par excellence to restore - thus Hésiode explains it - the commensality with the gods, broken by the double fault of Prométhée: the unequal division of ox and flight of fire.  

Communication between men and gods
The gods and the men nourish themselves with the same source: smoke of greases and the extreme bone on the furnace bridge for the ones, flesh divided and eaten jointly at the time of the sacrificial banquet for the others. Cook ritualized (the same term of mageiros appoints the butcher and the sacrificer), narrow overlap, once more, of the monk and the food practices. Such are the standards of the life in city which so much the Pythagorean ones reject admittedly, which refuses any flesh-colored mode, that the Dionysiac sects, which with their orgies and their scenes of omophagie (where the raw flesh is eaten) are located on the side of the wild world being unaware of of the cooking of food.  
 
Heroic cycles

If the legends concerning the divinities as a whole are unstitched enough, it is not the same for the heroic cycles, which present a certain coherence. Four major cycles inspired poets and artists. They are attached to Mycenaean civilization, and their localization, which covers everyone Greek antique, corresponds to archeological sites gone back to this time: mythology and history are closely dependant there.  

Jason and the conquest of the Golden Fleece
The hero thessalien is the first to undertake a long voyage by sea, preceding Ulysses by a generation. His/her Aeson father was dethroned by his Pélias half-brother and had to exile himself. Raised by the Chiron centaur, Jason is allocated to the court, fitted of only one sandal. Pélias remembers then an oracle which recommended to him to be held away from a man thus fitted. He declares in Jason that he will return the throne to him provided that the young man brings back the Golden Fleece to him, that of a winged ram sacrificed to Zeus in Colchide. The very perilous voyage announcing itself, Pélias is persuaded that Jason will never return.  

This one gathers a large number of companions and makes build a magic ship, Argo, whose prow is a oak of Dodone, endowed of the power to prophesy. Arrived, after multiple adventures, in king Aiétês, in Colchide, Jason claims the Golden Fleece to him. This one then imposes to the hero a series of tests: to overcome two bronze bulls, of an extreme ferocity, to plow with them a field and to sow there the teeth of a dragon which will make emerge from the ground of the armed warriors. Helped by the girl of Aiétês, the Médée magician, who gave him a balsam making it invulnerable, Jason discharges these tests successfully and seizes the Golden Fleece, then re-embarks on board Argo accompanied by Médée, which it will give up later.

Adventures of Ulysses
One of the most known heroes is Ulysses, whose return of Troy was reported by Homère in the Odyssey. Separated moreover fleet by the storm, Ulysses arrives to Thrace, with the country of Lotophages, where the inhabitants nourish themselves of a fruit which destroys any will, then in Sicily, fatherland of the Cyclops. He will escape from it by the trick (by bursting the eye of the Cyclops Polyphème), but he will see himself constantly diverted his road towards Ithaque by unfavourable winds, caused by Poséidon, the father of the Cyclops. He thus reaches the kingdom of the Circé magician, who has as a practice to transform into animals all the foreigners who present themselves at his sight. A magic grass provided by Hermes makes it possible to Ulysses to deliver his companions of the magic spell, but they will remain one year at Circé. Escaping from little the songs which bewitch from the Sirens, Ulysses only arrives to the Calypso nymph, which, at the request of the gods, lets it set out again. He approaches in the island of Phéaciens, where the king gets the means to him of turning over to Ithaque. There, disguised while begging and with the assistance of his son, Télémaque, he massacres the applicants who coveted his wife, Pénélope, and finds his throne.  

Exploits of Héraclès
This hero, most popular of all traditional mythology, is especially known for the twelve work ordered by his Eurysthée cousin as a punishment for murder of his own children, made under the impulse of the madness of which had struck it Héra. Zeus had indeed conceived Héraclès with Alcmène, woman of Host. Most this work are held in the Peloponnese, where it chokes the lion of Némée, considered invulnerable, cuts the heads of the hydra of Lerne, brings back living wild boar of the Erymanthe mount by exhausting it to run in snow, just like the hind of Cérynie, cuts down the birds of the lake Stymphale, and diverts two rivers to clean the stables of Augias. Then the hero travels: he captures in Crete a bull which devastates the island, offers in grazing ground to mares cannibals their owner, king Diomède, obtains from the queen of Amazones the magic belt which she carries, brings back oxen of Géryon, controls the Cerbère dog with the Hells and, finally, must go to gather gold apples of the garden of Hespérides. But twelve work constitutes only one of the aspects of the legend of Héraclès, which understands many other exploits and forwardings (descent into Hell to return Alceste to her husband, Admète; delivery of Prométhée, inter alia).  

Thésée, hero of Athens
Contemporary, according to certain traditions, of Héraclès, Thésée represents the hero of the Attic par excellence. He belongs to the royal family of Athens and passes to his youths to Trézène, in Argolide, to escape possible treacheries from his cousins, applicants with the throne. At the sixteen years age, it must prove its force by moving a rock under which a sword and sandals dissimulated by his/her Pitthée grandfather are. It then takes to the road for Athens, infested brigands, from which it comes to end without difficulty.  

When it is presented in front of his father, Egée, this one, which is under the domination of the Médée magician, is let persuade to kill this unknown young man. He recognizes his son, just in time, only with the sword which he carries. Médée is exiled, and his/her cousins, Pallantides, are massacred until the last. Thésée then leaves to Crete to deliver the island of Minotaure, monster mid--man mid--bull locked up in the Labyrinth. But with the return, he forgets to hoist the white sail who was to announce by far his victory with his father. Egée, of despair, is thrown in the sea which since door its name, and Thésée becomes king d' Athènes.