Ask Lemmy

Favorite: Orpheus busts Eurypedes out of Hades

Least favorite: Cronus eats all his babbies until one escape, grows up, kills him, and forces him to regurgitate all those other babbies.

Like: I guess I have to give it to Icarus and Daedalus. There's something so sympathetically tragic about a kid who was just so excited to be free flying too close to the sun.

Dislike: Zeus disguises self and commits adultery, take your pick.

Honorable mention to Hades and Persephone; when I first heard this myth as a kid, Hades was painted in a villainous light where he kidnapped Persephone and then tricked her into eating the pomegranate seeds so she could never leave. But I prefer the reframing of the myth I see more often these days, where Persephone actually loved the unfairly maligned Hades and chose to elope with him.

Homer's Odyssey is the best. Because it's the most epic.

The story of Medusa is the worst. Because of the victim blaming bullshit.

The myths surrounding Prometheus are my favorite

• He was willing to risk eternal torment just to share knowledge and/or further science, saying “fuck you” to Zeus
• Somehow the ancient Greeks knew that your liver is one of the few organs that can regenerate… somehow…
• His name possibly means “forethought” and he’s basically Athena and Hephaestus combined, literally the deity of technology and champion of mankind. What isn’t to love?
• He is saved from his eternal torment by Zeus’s own half human son Heracles, so it’s kind of like humanity repaid the favor and also said “fuck you” to god

The least favorite is Medusa because Athena literally punishes the victim of a rapist.

Technically I think the version of the story with rape was only described in Roman myths. However, even in the Greek ones she’s somehow the only mortal gorgon and is pregnant with Poseidon. So It seems very possible the origins of that Roman story were in Greek myths we don’t have written records of.

She was portrayed sympathetically in some of the Greek stories, which aids the idea that the version in which she is a victim predates the Roman writings. In a few of the Greek myths she is still portrayed as a maiden rather than inhuman monster, oh yeah and in those versions Perseus beheads while she’s sleeping, cause I guess killing sleeping women makes you a hero?

Was it the Greeks who had the god of just in case? A god they worshiped in case they missed one?

Like: The whole biography of Talos.

Dislike: The story of the Gordian knot.

I prefer the ones that are rooted in history, more than pure mythology. Notably the Iliad.

I dislike the myth of Orpheus, who got set up with the cruel rule of not looking back at his love when exciting Hades. It's so unfair the way she got taken from him and the gotcha way he loses his chance of being reunited with her.