The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Sending a hero off to ‘certain death’ never seems to work out...
The goddess Hera hated Heracles, so the ancient Greek myths tell, because he was one of the many love-children fathered by her consort Zeus, king of the gods of Olympus. But time after times, her efforts to destroy him were frustrated.
Wielding the Gorgon’s head, Perseus saves a beautiful maiden from a ravening sea-monster.
Polydectes, King of Seriphos, has sent young Perseus to get the head of Medusa the Gorgon, the very sight of which will turn any man to stone. His hope is that the boy will never come back, clearing the way for him to marry Perseus’s mother, Danaë. But Perseus is on his way home even now...
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, pursued a bitter and relentless vengeance upon a king who carelessly slighted her.
Calydon was an ancient city in Aetolia, on the west coast of mainland Greece near modern Missolonghi. The tale tells how Artemis, goddess of the hunt, took spiteful revenge on a king who slighted her.
When he caught his wife with her lover, the ugly blacksmith of the gods showed that he was not without his pride.
While Odysseus is in the court of King Alcinous, a court musician entertains them with the story of Hephaestus. He was the lame and ugly blacksmith to the gods, whom Zeus instructed Aphrodite to marry so that the other gods would stop fighting over her — a solution which did not solve anything at all.