What does cosmogony explain about the ordered world?
How the ordered world came to be.
What does theogony explain about the gods’ origins and succession?
Their births, marriages, and succession.
In which work are world creation and divine succession one connected process?
Hesiod’s *Theogony*.
How does Hesiod’s *Theogony* connect world creation with divine succession?
It tells them as one connected process.
What does separation create in creation myths?
Room for events to occur.
What drives creation after separation in many myths?
Conflict between opposing forces.
Which opposing forces can generate conflict after separation?
Order and chaos, elder and younger, or male and female.
Where do many mythologies place ordinary human life?
In the middle world, between the divine upper world and the underworld.
What is the Greek succession of divine rulers?
Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus.
Whom does Cronos overthrow to become ruler?
Uranus.
What prophecy does Cronos face after overthrowing Uranus?
One of his children will overthrow him.
How does Rhea prevent Cronos from swallowing Zeus?
She gives Cronos a swaddled stone and hides Zeus in a cave on Crete.
Who protects and feeds Zeus in the cave on Crete?
Gaia protects him, and Amalthea feeds him.
Who fought Cronos and the Titans in the Titanomachy?
Zeus and his siblings.
Which allies did Zeus free to help in the Titanomachy?
The Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes.
Where were the defeated Titans confined after Zeus’s victory?
In Tartarus behind bronze gates guarded by the Hecatoncheires.
What punishment did Atlas receive after Zeus’s victory?
He was sentenced to hold up the sky.
Which four ages does Hesiod name, and what race is inserted before the Iron age?
Gold, Silver, Bronze, a separate race of heroes, and Iron.
What characterizes Hesiod’s Bronze race and Iron age, and what does Hesiod wish?
The Bronze race destroys itself through warfare, the Iron age brings toil and grief, and Hesiod wishes he had been born in another age.
Which author describes the Bronze race and Iron age and wishes for another age?
Hesiod.
How does Prometheus create humans, and how do they differ from the gods?
He shapes them from earth and water in the gods’ image, but without their power.
What act by Lycaon prompts Zeus to condemn humanity to a flood?
Lycaon serves Zeus human flesh while testing whether he is a god.
What do Deucalion and Pyrrha interpret their mother’s bones to mean?
Stones, since Earth is their mother.
What do the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha become?
People.
What does anthropomorphism mean in the theology of Greek gods?
The depiction of Greek gods in human form and character as a theological position.
Which human traits do Greek gods share with humans?
They experience pain, quarrel, deceive, and take sides.
How do Greek gods differ from humans in mortality and abilities?
They are immortal, do not age, possess superior knowledge, and can change shape or become invisible.
What distinguishes the Olympians from minor gods, demigods, and heroes?
The Olympians are twelve full gods with cults, temples, and seats on Olympus.
What distinguishes demigods and heroes from full gods?
They have one divine parent but remain mortal.
Which Roman goddess is identified with Hera?
Juno.
What is Hera the goddess of, rather than love?
Marriage.
How is Athena born after Zeus swallows Metis?
She emerges fully grown and armed from Zeus’s head.
What was prophesied about Metis’s child?
The child would be greater than its father.
Which attributes are associated with Athena?
A helmet, spear, shield or aegis, owl, and snake.
What domains are associated with Athena?
Practical wisdom, skills, strategy, and protection of heroes.
Who were Apollo’s parents?
Zeus and Leto.
What consequence follows Persephone eating pomegranate seeds in the underworld?
She can return to Demeter only part of the year.
How many months does Persephone spend with Demeter and her husband?
Eight months with Demeter and four with her husband.
What three domains are associated with Dionysus, also called Bacchus?
Wine, ecstasy, and rebirth.
Who are Dionysus’s parents in the account involving Semele?
Zeus and Semele.
What happens to Pentheus after he rejects Dionysus in the Theban story?
His mother Agave tears him apart.
Which work describes Odysseus consulting Tiresias in the sunless realm of the Ocean?
Homer’s Odyssey, Book 11.
Whom does Odysseus encounter among the dead in Odyssey Book 11?
His mother Anticlea, Greek heroes, and the phantom of Heracles.
In Plato’s Myth of Er, what do souls drink to forget their past?
Water from Lethe.
Which motifs describe primeval beginnings in creation myths?
A void or chasm, limitless water, a formless waste, and a cosmic egg.
What is Yggdrasil in Norse mythology?
The world ash whose roots extend through three realms.
What creatures occupy the lower and upper parts of Yggdrasil?
A serpent is below, and an eagle is above.
How do the Erinyes arise?
From Uranus’s blood falling on Gaia.
How is Aphrodite born according to the Titan succession myth?
From foam around Uranus’s severed body parts cast into the sea.
What weapon did the Cyclopes forge for Zeus?
Zeus’s thunderbolt.
What role did the Hecatoncheires play in the Titanomachy?
They helped Zeus’s side.
Which divine succession does the source associate with the Norse?
Giants followed by Odin and his brothers.
Which interpretation of Zeus’s victory is contested?
Patriarchy’s victory over matriarchy.
Under Cronos, how do people in the Gold age die?
They die as if falling asleep.
What becomes of people in the Gold age after death?
They become guardian spirits.
What happens to the Silver race after its century of childhood?
It enters a short, foolish adulthood and is destroyed for refusing to honor the gods.
What do the names Prometheus and Epimetheus mean, and what does Epimetheus accept?
Prometheus means forethought; Epimetheus means afterthought and accepts Pandora.
Which couple survives the flood as the just survivors?
Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Which work attributes Zeus’s choice of flood over fire to fear for the heavens?
Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*.
Why does Zeus choose a flood over fire in Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*?
He fears fire might catch the heavens.
Which domains are assigned to the Greek gods named in the course?
Their domains include sky and kingship, grain, craft, sea, strategy, travel, the dead, prophecy, wine, marriage, hunting, love, hearth, and war.
What limits Zeus’s authority despite his dominance among the Greek gods?
His authority is not always supreme.
Who are Zeus’s brothers, and what domains do they rule?
Poseidon rules the sea, and Hades rules the underworld.
Which Moira spins the thread of birth and everything in a life?
Clotho, the Spinner.
Which Roman goddess is identified with Hestia?
Vesta.
What domain does Hestia represent?
The hearth.
Which Roman god is identified with Hephaestus?
Vulcan.
What divine role does Hephaestus fulfill?
He is the divine artisan.
Which Roman god is identified with Ares?
Mars.
How does Athena win the city of Athens?
She wins it in a contest with Poseidon.
After whom is Athens named?
Athena.
When was the Parthenon built on the Acropolis?
From 447 to 432 BC.
Which Roman, Mesopotamian, Syrian or Phoenician, and Sumerian goddesses were identified with Aphrodite?
Venus, Ishtar, Astarte, and Inanna.
Which work distinguishes Aphrodite Urania from Aphrodite Pandemos?
Plato’s *Symposium*.
How does Plato’s *Symposium* distinguish Aphrodite Urania from Aphrodite Pandemos?
Urania is heavenly; Pandemos is the Aphrodite of all the people.
What happens to Pygmalion’s ivory sculpture after he prays to Aphrodite?
She becomes warm and alive.
Who could participate in the Eleusinian Mysteries?
Anyone who could be initiated.
How long were the Eleusinian Mysteries among the Greek world’s most important rites?
Two thousand years.
How does Zeus carry Dionysus to term after rescuing him?
Sewn into his thigh.
Who are Dionysus Zagreus’s parents in the alternative account?
Zeus and Persephone.
How is Dionysus Zagreus reborn after the Titans tear him apart?
Zeus saves and consumes his heart.
What instruments accompany music and dance in Dionysian worship?
Drums, bells, and flutes.
How does Nietzsche characterize the Dionysian in contrast to the Apollonian?
The Dionysian is ecstatic and irrational, unlike the ordered and rational Apollonian.
Which work describes Tartarus as a terrible, gasping hole nine days from Earth?
Hesiod’s account.
Who dwells at Tartarus’s threshold in Hesiod’s account?
Night, Death, and Sleep.
Which work recounts soldier Er awakening on his funeral pyre after ten days?
Plato’s The Republic.
Which work describes Aeneas traveling to Cumae to meet his father?
Vergil’s Aeneid, Book 6.
What does Charon ferry souls across the Styx for?
A coin.
Answer 37 questions on Greek Mythology and Its Stories.
1. What distinguishes cosmogony from theogony?
2. How does Hesiod connect world creation with divine rule in the Theogony?
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