The Greeks did not have all their stories written in one place. Instead, their mythology began as tales and were passed from generation to generation. The gods and goddesses from Greek Mythology ruled from their own personal heaven on top of Mount Olympus. These gods were believed to look just like any man or woman and felt emotions just as humans would. Before the Olmpians first came the all powerful Titans. The Titans were the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, mother earth and the god of the sky. Their first six children were hideous beast so Uranus locked them away down in the underworld. The couple continued to have children thirteen to be exact and Uranus thought them to be absolutley gorgeous, so he bestowed powerful gifts upon his children. …show more content…
Hera is Zeus 's wife so she is considered the queen of the gods, but she also the goddess of women and marriage. Aphrodite ,which had the looks to prove it, is worshipped as the goddess of beauty and love. Apollo is the god of prophesy, music, poetry and knowledge. Ares got an awesome power of being the god of war. Artemis is a good role model for women as she is the goddess of hunting, animals and childbirth. Athena is a very respectable woman as she had a man 's job but she made being the goddess of wisdom and defense seem easy. Demeter was given the task of blessing crops as she is the goddess of agriculture and grain. Dionysos probably had the best job as he is the god of wine, pleasure and festivity! Hephaistos is the god of fire, metalworking and sculpture , hich probably had a lot of worship when the artistic style of Greece changed. Hermes is basically Zeus errand boy, but what would a god expect when he is the god of travel, hospitality and trade. Poseidon is the god of the sea. Hades is the god of the underworld. Hestia is the goddess of home and family. Eros is the god of sex and minion to …show more content…
When the rich and poor started to fight against each other like they never had before a few citizens tried to make the government see the problem but were killed for their action. In the third century Rome could not seem to find its way out of trouble. Not only was their conflict inside the empire that was created by so many transitions of elected officials and those elected officials being slaughtered by those that put them in power Rome was also hit by outside forces. Rome was able to find calm, albeit temporary it was able to breathe all thanks to Diocletan. Not everything he did brought peace upon the empire. Diocletian divided the nation into two compartments and selected rulers to help him rule the two sections, east and west. When Diocletian and his helpers stepped down and left the reconnected nation to an individual soul , Constantine, the system they had built could not withstand the new ruler. Constantine did not give in to this defeat, instead he moved to the capital and changed its name to Constantinople and made the official Roman religion Christianity. Thirty years after Constantine death the empire would once again be split between east and west. The east continued to hold its own for ages to come. The western civilization destroyed itself with fighting in the nation, but eventually its downfall would be from the outside force that were pushing againist them. After years
From the beginning, the gods emerged from “cosmic forces” and slowly defined their individual personalities and forms, “their functions articulated in relation to each other” (Clay 105). The authority of Zeus forces the rest of the gods to keep their powers balanced by filling certain niches. In the Eumenides, Pythia begins by singing a prayer to honor the gods. Although she first honors Gaia, Pythia spends a few lines talking about Apollo and his relation to Zeus. When she calls on Zeus, she calls him “the Fulfiller, the highest god” (Aeschylus, Eumenides, p. 112, 17-19). Her approval and reverence towards Zeus is made clear immediately. Even before that, Pythia acknowledges that Apollo was “Zeus inspired” and the “spokesman of Zeus,” thus making him higher up in her hierarchy of gods (Aeschylus, Eumenides, p. 112, 17-19). Zeus is known for his many godly offspring who were all “Zeus inspired”. Along with Apollo, god of music and arts, this list also includes Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. Being made from the same cosmic forces, all of the gods developed their own strengths to fulfil certain niches (Clay 106) At the end of this individualization process, there is the “emergence of a stable, ordered, and harmonious cosmos” (Clay 106). As a result, new standards of conforming and being uniform became apparent through the
Nearing the fourth century, the Roman Empire had experienced a teetering struggle for uniformity under the rule of Diocletian and the tetrarchy. Though Diocletian’s goals had been to strengthen the empire, more division resulted and as a result, the Western Empire suffered. This back and forth transition in leadership left the Empire in political disarray. The attempts to assimilate by Germanic tribes into Roman territory also played a significant role in this chaos. In addition, the economy suffered considerably. An increased inflation resulted from “Diocletian’s attempts to establish a reliable currency” (Kagan 154). Romans struggled to pay their taxes, and subsequently grew resentful of the emperor. The economic differences that existed between the more rural West and commercial East further distanced the two empires from the others affairs. This separation continued beyond the Battle of Adrianople and the empire found itself in a spiraling state of turmoil.
Many Greek gods were seen as both benefactors and tormentors, typically it depends on which god or goddess you are researching about. The seemingly contradictory behavior of the gods, acting as both benefactors and tormentors of man, can readily be explained when viewed in light of the prime directive for man, to worship the gods and not “overstep,” and the ensuing “Deus ex Mahina” which served to coerce man to fulfill his destiny as evidenced by the myths: “Pandora,” “Arachne, and “Odysseus.” Humankind and it’s range of vision over the gods beauty and power portrayed them to be benefactors but unseemingly it depicted their affliction towards humans.
In The Iliad, the gods and goddesses have completely different roles. The females are usually the ones in the battle fighting, while the male gods are putting courage into hearts, but that isn’t to say that is all that they do. This is a completely different role than the mortals have. While the men are out in battle, the women are knitting and cooking. The women are also described so that it seems like they are property and not humans, and that they don’t have any feeling. Where the female gods act and are treated as if they are equal, if not ranked higher.
Many people would blatantly state that the importance of the gods in Greek society derives from the fact that Gods in any society are usually used to explain phenomenon that people cannot logically comprehend, but in ancient Greece gods were actually entities that took part in the workings of society itself. Even simple aspects of day-to-day life such as sex and disputes between mortals were supposedly influenced by godly workings. Unlike modern religions such as Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, where an omnipotent force supposedly controls the workings of the world, a hierarchy of Gods characterized religion in ancient Greece. Working as one big family, which they actually were, each one of the Greek gods governed a certain aspect of the world in a way that usually reflected their own humanlike personalities. These unique personalities also contained many human flaws such as envy and greed, and were where the Greek God’s importance lay. Greek religion was more concentrated on the way an individual dealt with situations that popped up in the world around him than on understanding the world itself. In other words the Greeks were more interested in the workings of the mind than in the workings of the environment around them.
The religious tolerance and cultural acceptance Rome demonstrated during its conquest which kept its inhabitants reasonably happy allowed the seeds of Christianity to be sewn into the empire. Eventually Christianity grew and became the official religion of the empire and ultimately created a culture of disloyalty to the government and apathy to earthly troubles. The economy built on cheap labor and sustainable farming practices left the country out to dry when both of these resources dried up and could no longer support the empire. And Rome’s vast empire became in itself too large to maintain and what was once a small fortified empire grew into a massive and vulnerable one. Ancient Rome is one of history 's great civilizations but it’s inability to overcome it’s own, mostly internal, problems was eventually too much for it to
The ancient Greeks knew little of any real people except those who lived in the countries to the immediate east and south of their country. Their imagination filled the rest of the land with mystical and supernatural beings. The ancient Greeks believed the earth to be a flat circular disk., with their country being in the middle of it. The disk was divided into two equal parts by the Sea(the Mediterranean). They believed the River Ocean flowed around the world from south to northen the western side of the world and vice versa on the eastern side. The Sea and all rivers around the world received water from it. The northern portion of the earth was thought to be inhabited by a happy race named the Hyperboreans. They dwelled in endless bliss and an endless spring. They never aged, knew any disease or other unpleasant things of such. Their caverns supposedly sent piercing blasts of the north wind to the people of Greece. Their country could not be reached by land or sea. On the south side of the earth lived the Ethiopians. They were favored highly by the gods.They were as happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. On the western part of the earth was another happy place called Elysian Plain. Mortals favored by the gods were transported here without having to know death or anything but bliss.
Widely considered one of the strongest of the ancient empires to grace Earth, the Roman Empire stood for over one thousand years. Through its humble beginnings along the Tiber river, Rome expanded through near-perpetual aggression to become the dominant force throughout the Mediterranean, Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East for almost a millennia. As the empire aged, thought, so too did it’s center of focus change. Once rich and prosperous, the Western Roman Empire, and the city of Rome itself, eventually became useful only as a namesake, their wealth and prestige long gone, and with them, the power of the Western Empire. Meanwhile, Rome, as a whole, shifted it’s focus to the prosperous east, which had continued to flourish despite the continued economic struggles of the Empire. At this time, Constantine I creating a new capital at Byzantium, renaming the city to Constantinople. Once Constantinople was established as the center of the empire, the west was mostly forgotten, both by the people and the emperor. The majority of Rome’s Citizens and wealth now hailed from the east, so the western empire was soon treated as an aside by the Eastern Empire and slowly fell into further decline. Many Historians would name a specific event or chain of events that spelled the end for the western half of the Roman empire, but I would argue that the Western Roman Empire did not suddenly collapse because of any one event, rather, it slowly fell over the course of several decades as a result of a multitude of failures. No one body was entirely responsible for Rome’s collapse, instead a combination of a decaying political structure, infighting, a continuously weakened economy, and consistent assaults by germanic tribes eventually caused the ...
The Roman Gods have a lot of differences to the Greek Gods. For instance, the Greek Gods came around 700 years before the Roman civilisation and the Roman Gods came 1000 years after the Greeks. So the two types of Gods, didn’t intervene in each other. The literary source is also a difference. The Greek myths, including in the Gods, were chronicled in the book the Illiad by Homer. The Roman myths chronicled in book Aeneid. The Greek Gods are based on human personality traits such as love, honour, hatred and dignity. The Roman Gods are named after objects like planets. The two different types of Gods had special traits. The Greek Gods were as Gods were based on human traits they each had characteristics that determined their actions. Their revered traits are that he creativity is more important than physical works, they revered the poet. The Roman Gods were not central to the myths because they are not gender specific. Their revered traits are focused on actions rather than words, they revered the warrior as sacred. Also the Greek Gods were individualistic: actions of the individual were of more consequences that action of the group, Roman Gods are not. The main difference is that Greek Gods were an attraction with very beautiful features and the Roman Gods did not have a physical appearance, only represented in the imagination of the people.
Over the course of about 50 years (234-285 A.D.), before its split, Rome had about 35 different emperors, according to most historians. All these short reigns did not help the unity of the empire, as it suffered invasions, civil war, and economic problems, among other things. Historians say that the emperors were assassinated one after another by citizens of high class who fought to be Rome’s next leaders, though they were never really approved to be its rightful representative. This civil war worried the population, corrupted their education, and soon, the taxes and prices rose, leading the empire into poverty. Finally, in the year 285 A.D., Diocletian was proclaimed Rome’s new emperor and a few years later (392 A.D.), he strategically splits the immense Roman Empire in half, each with a senior and junior emperor, also known as “tetrarchy” government and a capital. The idea of having this kind of government was to try to stop people from claiming themselves emperors. The East side of Rome was renamed Byzantine with Constantinople as its capital, (named after Constantine) and the West, Rome. It was split due to the Empire’s
The portrayal of the goddesses in many myths was that of a beautiful and majestic
The tales of Greek heroes and the gods are older than all of us. Most of these tales are thought to be myths, but every interpretation of Greek mythology and the stories that it contains correlates with something in the real world today. The story of the creation of the world, and the stories of the heroes Hercules, Perseus and Theseus, are only but a few of the compelling stories Greek mythology has to offer.
The idea of gods and goddesses began as far back as the ancient Egyptians, but the ancient Greeks were the first group to form a religion based on gods and goddesses. They believed that the gods and goddesses were not different from humans. Some of the few ways humans were different from gods were that the gods were stronger and lived forever. Since the Greeks believe in many gods, they are Polytheists.
The gods and goddesses were shown to be part animals and part human(Anubis watched over the dead and his head was a jackal)
Throughout all Greek myths, the gods were always created in the image of man. This shows how Greeks viewed men in a positive way and thought that they were more powerful and superior to women. In addition, they thought men and women are unequal and that men were given jobs that required more physical strength. Although women played a role in Greek myths, they were not as important as men. Women had a more easier and feminine jobs than men. In the Greek creation myth, we see Hades as the god of underworld and Aphrodite as the goddess of love. The difference between th...