Ngl Athena is based.
Hephaestus seems the most likely to leave me alone. The gods are so capricious that I’d prefer to not have their attention.
Dionysus, God of sex and alcohol!
Tyrion Lannister would be proud
Hekate for sure. Goddess of magic, necromancy, the crossroads. Plus you get doggies to hang out with you all the time!
This is me, too.
As a bonus, probably super easy to recruit for her. “Witchcraft and puppies” would get lots of people’s attention.
Hermes married Aphrodite after stealing cattle the day he was born. God of thieves and general mischief maker. A lot like Loki, but without all the Daddy issues.
Considering Zeus’s children are destined to overthrow him, I think daddy issues are baked in.
There’s a good chance I’m misremembering, or mixed two things together, but weren’t Zeus and his bros the children that overthrew Kronos and the Titans?
Yes, Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Hades, and Hestia are the children of Kronos and are the ones that killed him .
Also Demeter. 3 sons and 3 daughters.
I never studied the myths but I’ve always liked to think that the worship of Zeus et al was as messy as the worship of Jesus. The same way we have huge religious wars between Protestants and Catholics, there would have been people dying over whether Zeus was the God of Thunder or the God of Lightning.
Yeah, it’s kind of a cyclical thing. Kronos was destined to be overthrown by his son so he ate him. Zeus is also destined to be overthrown by one of his sons and is a tyrant because of it. He can’t help but screwing everything he sees though, so his character flaw will eventually end him.
I think it’s a commentary about sex being power and power seeking being the eventual downfall of the powerful.
Cool. That’s great info! Thank you!
Helios. The personification of the Sun. One of the few Titans the Gods didn’t even bother trying to wrest power from, and he’s also the guardian of oaths and sight. He was so powerful that driving his chariot wrong could destroy the earth by freezing or burning it simply by driving too closely to or too far away from the ground.
A loving father too. In the most prominent myth that features Helios, his son Phaëthon (the umlaut just means to pronounce the E) made a pilgrimage all the way East to confirm that Helios was actually his father. Phaëthon was extremely brave, but also boastful, to the point that somebody finally said something along the lines of, “Oh, whatever! I bet the sun god isn’t even your real father.” Cause he was a mortal, even if your mother and sisters are nymphs, hearing that your dad was the fucking sun is still a bit of a stretch enough for Phaëthon to have some doubt.
Helios confirmed Phaëthon’s parentage, and to dispel any leftover doubt, made an oath to his son that he would grant him a favor as long as it was within his power. Unfortunately, Eos the dawn had just pulled up with Helios’ glorious, gold and silver chariot pulled by 4 flaming horses so dude could make his daily run. At that moment, Phaëthon decided on the favor. his son asked to drive his father’s chariot. Helios, being the god of oaths, begged his son to reconsider but ultimately had to keep the oath he swore.
Being a mortal who also had no idea how to drive the chariot of the sun, Phaëthon lost control. At some points, he went so high he was almost stung by the constellation Scorpio, and those places became irreversibly frozen into tundras. At some points, the chariot drew so close to the earth that some places turned into deserts. Zeus saw what was happening, and to protect the rest of the world, shot Phaëthon down with a lightning bolt.
Phaëthon’s body fell into the river Eridanos, and his sisters who went to find his body mourned so intensely that either as a mercy killing from the gods or because magical biology just kinda works this way in Greek mythology, they turned into poplar trees and their tears became amber.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Great read. I’ll have a link to more stories/legends like this please. Or a book recommendation?
I can wholeheartedly recommend Stephen Fry’s books on Greek Mythology (Mythos, Heroes and Troy).
I wish I had a link, but I just wrote that on the fly when the coffee kicked in. It’s one of my favorite Greek myths, so I know it off the top of my head.
A really good book if you could get through all that would be Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. It’s a huge compilation of myths, primarily Greek with the tail end being Norse, and it’s a staple! Any library is bound to have it, but it’s well worth owning.
Just did a quick Google search, and a website called thriftbooks.com has it for as cheap as $3.59!!
EDIT: Also, thank you.
Off the top of your head, the way the information had been passed down for hundreds of years, love to see it!
Hades. Hardly ever leaves the Underworld, thus cutting down on the risk of me having to be his champion.
Until someone comes looking for the soul of their lost love.
Sure, but that’d be in the Underworld and therefore Hades’ own problem.
GOD how I love the animated Hercules movie. It’s a masterpiece.
Orpheus and Eurydice would like a word.
What if he is getting challenged in the underworld like bi weekly and he keeps sending your post cards with dates you need to come down and fight for him?
Dear Hades, I resign. I’m going to live with Circe on her island.
Caconically the wealthiest God, so you know the Saturnalia hamper will have an entire ham in there.
Prometheus for sure. The Titian that humble his kind, the Titan that modeled man from clay, that stole fire from the Olympians when he saw man had no other gifts, that freed hope from Pandora’s box.
Athenas and Hephaestus’s gifts are invaluable gods of wisdom, craftsmen, and artificial beings, but without fire from the defiant Titan we had nothing to really build our cities from.
Also, Prometheus paid a horrific price for helping humanity. Generally-speaking, the Greek pantheon is fairly self-interested, and not terribly interested in helping humanity in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/prəˈmiːθiəs/; Ancient Greek: Προμηθεύς, [promɛːtʰéu̯s], possibly meaning “forethought”)[1] is sometimes referred to as the God of Fire.[2] Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.
In some versions of the myth, he is also credited with the creation of humanity from clay.[3] Prometheus is known for his intelligence and for being a champion of mankind,[4] and is also generally seen as the author of the human arts and sciences.[5] He is sometimes presented as the father of Deucalion, the hero of the flood story.[6][7][8]
The punishment of Prometheus for stealing fire from Olympus and giving it to humans is a subject of both ancient and modern culture. Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, condemned Prometheus to eternal torment for his transgression. Prometheus was bound to a rock, and an eagle—the emblem of Zeus—was sent to eat his liver (in ancient Greece, the liver was thought to be the seat of human emotions). His liver would then grow back overnight, only to be eaten again the next day in an ongoing cycle.
I don’t think that any other character in the pantheon could realistically be called as sympathetic. I’m not sure that any other divine Greek figure deserves humanity’s gratitude.
Hera.
Lacking some of the more intriguing gimmicks, perhaps, but political clout out the wazoo. Get her on your side, ain’t nobody going to risk fucking with you.
I’d pick Apollo, the most sciency guy of the bunch.
Nyx. Her children are all the personifications of various negative aspects of life. I‘ve got a bit of a pessimistic attitude. Just seems fitting.
Fuck that’s like the one culture that didn’t just straight up steal my primary deity (Ishtar) upon hearing about her.
So I guess I’d go with Gaia. The great thing about Gaia is i know the earth exists
Hekate is a second though. Midnight rituals are great.
Hail Eris, Hail Discordia!
🌭
Dionysius.
He’s really fun at parties. Hates oppressive, overreaching powers. Destroys anyone that opposed the freedoms of his followers with a literal plant stem. I don’t see many drawbacks.
No Luna yet, you’re all heathens.
Luna is the Roman one, you mean Selene.
Thanks for the correction, I tend to use both indiscriminately
