Greek and Roman Myths
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Greek and Roman Myths’
Heracles seems to be the only one who can keep Poseidon’s rampaging white bull under control.
News that a mad bull is loose on Crete and destroying crops and livelihoods reaches Eurystheus, and naturally he thinks at once that the gods have given him another opportunity to dispose of his cousin Heracles.
Our hero is sent to deal with some man-eating birds, but cannot reach their lakeside refuge.
Still working off his debt to the gods after killing his children in a blind rage, Heracles is now despatched by his envious cousin King Eurystheus to rid a village of some man-eating birds. However, not everyone is against him.
Oedipus flees home in an attempt to escape a dreadful prophecy, unware that it is following at his heels.
One of the great myths of ancient Greece, the tragedy of Oedipus tells how the King of Thebes and a shepherd boy each tried to evade their destinies, and how their destinies refused to be changed.
Heracles shows his capacity for thinking outside the box, but spoils it by trying to be just a little bit too clever.
Heracles has murdered his children in a fit of anger, and is performing a series of ‘Labours’ for his cousin King Eurystheus, to work off his guilt. Eurystheus would be just as happy if Heracles perished in his Labours, and in sending him now to clean out the stables of Augeas, King of Elis, appears to hope he can disgust him to death.
Snaring a wild boar turns out to be much less dangerous than keeping centaurs away from their wine.
Heracles is performing a series of ‘Labours’ for King Eurystheus, who regards his cousin as a rival and would not be sorry to see him dead. But ever since Heracles came back wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion, Eurystheus’s nerves have been jangling and he now keeps a capacious wine-jar, half buried in the ground, as a place of refuge.
The wronged hero vanquishes a dreadful monster with the help of a winged horse, but then it all goes to his head.
The detailed myth of Bellerophon comes from a variety of ancient sources, but the basic tale is found in Homer’s ‘Iliad’. It is a tale of the ‘pride that goeth before a fall’ (Proverbs 16:18), and has a starring role for that most noble of all mythological figures, Pegasus, the winged horse.