Greek art and architecture (F1, F2)

Seeing that I've probably written about every Greek god and goddess you can think of, I'm going to write about Greek culture, art, and rulers throughout Greek history. This is a little different than my usual blogs, but the unfortunate case of limited choices is the reasoning for this change in the regular blogs I used to post.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Greeks, at least in my eyes, is all of the art and architecture. The Greeks, especially the Athenians were remembered for their styles in art and architecture. One of the most popular and well-known pieces of art is the Greek Parthenon. This Parthenon was built by the Ancient Greeks to show their worship to one of their Greek deities, Athena. (See I'm incorporating Greek mythology into this!). Athena is a Greek goddess, the daughter of Zeus. She is the wisest out of all of the Greek deities because she was born by the splitting of Zeus's head by the metal working god, Hephaestus. Athena and Poseidon fought over who was going to be the patron deity of the Athenians. It's pretty obvious who won out of the two gods seeing that ATHENs and ATHENa are extremely similar in their spelling. If you didn't get it, Athena became the patron deity for the Athenians and they named their capital after her, Athens. They built this out of marble, and it is slowly deteriorating due to the acid rain in the region. It took the Greeks a total of nine years to complete the building of the Parthenon before common era. The Parthenon generally comes to mind whenever someone hears about Ancient Greek architecture. It is the representation of other Greek achievements, such as the Athenian invention of the government system of democracy. The Athenian legacy obviously still lives on because here in the United States, our government system is democracy. The Parthenon is forty feet high.

Another form of Greek art and architecture was in the Greek sculptures of that time, Greek art was mainly prominent during the hellenistic age led by Alexander the Great in early centuries. Alexander the Great was a conqueror and as he conquered new lands, he spread culture and eventually united the people he conquered under one main culture, Hellenism. Hellenism is the blending of Persian and Greek cultures. This blending of cultures was a form of cultural diffusion because it was the spreading and combination in this case of different cultures from one group to another throughout Alexander the Great's vast and what was then a rapidly expanding empire.

Some of the most popular pieces of artwork during the Hellenistic Age and even before was of sculptures. The Greeks would usually create sculptures of their Greek gods and goddesses to show their worship of them. There would never be a sculpture of Hades, the god of the underworld, in Greece. This was because Hades was feared and no one wanted to worship the most brutal god and the god that watched over the dead.


These Greek sculptures are seen in later time periods, such as the Renaissance. An example of the would be Michaelangelo's David. This was created during the Renaissance and showed aspects of humanism and individualism. Humanism and individualism were seen mainly during the Renaissance and onward, not really in Ancient Greek societies.The Greeks also created other pieces of art for their Greek gods and goddesses, such as foundations or temples. An example of this would be the Parthenon, which I talked about in the beginning of this blog. Even though the Greeks created their art and architecture for mainly religious reasons, it's still interesting to see what the impact the Greeks had on society.

Beginning of myth 2/? (EE 1,2)

After the creation of everything in Greek myth, such as the belief in the creation of Chaos, the underworld, Gaia and her children that she had alone: Uranus, Pontus, and Ourea; Uranus came to power. He fathered children with Gaia, as mentioned in the last post, three Cyclopes, the Hundred Handed Giants (I think that there might be three of them as well), and the beginning of the Titans, such as the most known, Cronus. Uranus was a very cruel and brutal leader and he abused his power. He thought that the Hundred Handed Giants and the three Cyclopes would overpower him, so Uranus put them in the lowest layer in the underworld in order to preserve his title of being the supreme ruler of the Greek world. Uranus’s mother, who is also his wife, Gaia did not like how her son/husband was running the Greek world, and confronted Cronus, the most powerful of the children of Gaia and Uranus, and told him about how she wanted to get rid of Uranus’s brutality and selfish rule. Gaia mainly wanted her children, the Hundred Handed Giants and the three Cyclopes, to return from the underworld. Gaia missed them and wanted them back on Earth to be with her and the rest of her family.

  Cronus then, along with his brothers, sisters, and his mother, overruled the brutal Titan and took control. Because they couldn’t kill Uranus, because the Greeks believed that all gods and goddesses were immortal, they dismembered him and through his limbs into the River Styx, which was seen as the sacred river for the Greek gods and goddesses. Some people believed that when Uranus was “killed” and thrown into the River Styx that foam rose out of the River. In this belief, which was seen in many other very different ways, Aphrodite was born out of the foam. Another way people believe that Aphrodite was born was that her father was Zeus, Uranus’s grandchild or great grandchild? I don’t know how that would work seeing that Uranus married Gaia and had the Titans with her, but he was also the son of Gaia, so… Cronus then became the leader of the Greek world, given permission by his mother, Gaia, to rule. Cronus released the Hundred Handed Giants and the Cyclopes from the underworld immediately after the war between the Titans and Uranus.

Cronus received of prophesies by what would be a fortune teller in modern times, that one of his children would overrule him and take over the throne. Cronus was also a brutal leader like his father, but no one knew that would happen until they declared him the ruler of the Greek world. He put the Hundred Handed Giants and the Cyclopes (I still think that there were three of them) back into the underworld, where Uranus originally put them. Cronus then married his sister, Rhea and they had the six Olympians. They are probably the most well-known out of the Greek gods and goddesses. These children were Zeus, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Poseidon, and Demeter. Because Cronus was afraid to lose his place on the throne, he ate his children. He couldn’t actually eat his children seeing that the children are gods and goddesses, making them immortal. Cronus consumed the children and they were trapped in his stomach for a number of years. Rhea became considerably more depressed after she handed over each child to Cronus to consume, before she took action. When Cronus asked to see the final child, Zeus, Rhea gave him a rock covered in a baby blanket instead of the child to trick him.

Beginning of myth 1/? (D1, D2)

In the beginning of Greek mythology, the Ancient Greeks that believed in this form of polytheism through the worship of multiple gods and goddesses believed that the beginning of time just started with Chaos. Chaos was just complete emptiness. This is similar to the scientific belief of the Big Bang Theory, where there was just emptiness until there was suddenly everything. In the Greek point of view, they believed that Gaia was the first to exist out of all of the gods. Gaia was seen as Mother Goddess and created planet Earth and the entirety of the universe itself. By herself Gaia had a total of three children. They were called Uranus (the sky), Pontus (the sea), and Ourea (the mountains). Her children together were the factors of planet Earth; therefore she is seen as the creator of the Earth. It makes sense if you think about it. Uranus also ended up becoming the husband of his mother, Gaia. There was a lot of interbreeding and incest in Greek myth because they had a little amount of gods and goddesses at the time, but it continues throughout all Greek mythology through popular gods and goddesses. For example, Aphrodite and Hephaestus (in the case in which Zeus is the father of Aphrodite rather than some beliefs that Uranus was the true father of Aphrodite); Zeus and Hera; Hades and Persephone (Persephone was his niece); etc. etc. She ended up having many more children with Uranus.

The children Uranus had with Gaia were the three Cyclopes; the Hundred Handed Giants; the Titans: Cronus, Rhea, Tethus, Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Crius, Iapetus, Mnenosyne, Phoebe, and Themis; and then in some cases Uranus is seen as the father of Aphrodite rather than some beliefs that Zeus is the father of Aphrodite. In the point of view and belief that Uranus was the father of Aphrodite, she was born from the water in which Uranus’s body was thrown into after it was dismembered. In some other cases also she is believed to be born from foam from the ocean, in which in this point of view, Poseidon would be seen as the father rather than Uranus or Zeus. The first children Uranus and Gaia had together had been the three Cyclopes and the Hundred Handed Giants. Uranus received of prophesies that one of his children would overpower him and take over his throne as the ruler. Because of this reason, he took his children that consisted of the three Cyclopes and the Hundred Handed Giants and jailed them in the Underworld. The people of Ancient Greece also believed that the Underworld was created when planet Earth, Gaia and her first children: Uranus, Pontus, and Ourea were created. They believed that the Underworld was as old as the entirety of the Universe and planet Earth. That is in the Christian point of view, hell in which the devil rules over. In the Greek point of view, they also see it as hell or as a place of misery, but in this case it is ruled by Hades, the most despised out of all of the gods and goddesses in Greek mythology. The people of Greece didn’t want to meet Hades for obvious reasons; they would have to die in order to meet him. The people feared death, and Hades was their symbol for death and the afterlife, and the people of Greece obviously didn’t want to die anytime soon. Hades, talked about in a previous blog entry of mine, was one of the children of Rhea and Cronus and was given the underworld to rule after losing the sky and seas to his brothers, but that’s a different story.