mythology
... jealous, envious, spiteful, and petty. Among them only Zeus was known as the Just. The ancient Greeks were very creative storytellers. Their stories may not seem very believable, but they were satisfied with having them as their explanation to what was going on and what had happened. The stories are very detailed and they let you know everything. This way the reader feels like they are right there in the action. It keeps the readers attention and makes it very hard to put the book down. Cupid and Psyche was one of the stories read. This story showed that gods and goddesses were usually more beautiful than humans, but Psyche was an exception. She was the most beautiful human and people came from far and wide to see her beauty. This did not make Venus the goddess of love and beauty to happy. People stopped visiting her temples because she was no longer the most attractive. She sends her son, Cupid (god of love), to destroy her love life. Instead of listening to his mother, he falls in love with Psyche. Eventually these two marry but Psyche can never see was her husband sees. Eventually her sisters make her curious to look and Cupid disappears to his mother’s. Psyche knew that the only way to get him back was to plead to Venus. Venus makes her do horrible task, but in the end Psyche finds herself back in Cupid’s arms. This story shows that the gods did get very jealous of humans. They did not like when a human had any quality equal or greater than their own, in this case it was beauty. The gods also had humans do impossible task if they needed something or if they just annoyed the god. One of the tasks that Psyche was to do was separate grain. This task seemed impossible but the tiny creatures helped her out, and it was done by the time that Venus returned to her. The gods also make exceptions to make their own kind happy. Cupid did not approve of his mother’s madness and so he went forth to Jupiter (the father of gods and men). Jupiter knew that Cupid really loved this woman and so he made her a goddess. There was no way that Venus could object to a goddess for a daughter-in-law. Today this story is much like the Disney films Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Often many of these stories go along with Disney movies. We also get many of our words from the Greeks. We get psychology from Psyche and we get Valentine’s Day from cupid and his motives. More than likely other things that we use today come from this story, but I could not think of them. The other story read was Perseus. This is a story of King Acrisius, who yearned for a son to take his place as king. Instead it was his destiny to have a daughter, Danae, whose son would kill him. He tried to stop this by locking his daughter up. Zeus made her pregnant and so she had a son. Danae tried to hide this from her father and when he found out he was outraged and had them sent away. Eventually Perseus and his mom were adopted by couple that had rescued them. She then found a man that she wanted to marry but her son was not crazy about him. Perseus went out to get him the gift he always wanted. This was the head of medusa. This head was said to be impossible to get. Just looking at this gorgon would turn a human into stone. Perseus would be able to get it though. Through a lot of work he was able to get it because unlike most humans, he was half immortal and he had 2 great gods watching over him. After he retrieved the head he returned to his father to be and turned him into stone and yet again it was just Perseus, his mother and Dictys, who saved them and had been like a father to him. This was just the way he wanted it. This story is much li...