Perseus was the son of Danae, the daughter of King Acrisius,
and Zeus. King Acrisius had been told by a prophet that his grandson would kill
him, so he locked his daughter in a brass tower so she could not have children.
Despite this, she secretly married Zeus and became pregnant. When King Acrisius
found out about the baby, he was frightened. Not wanting to kill them, he put
Danae and Perseus into a chest and cast them into the sea. The chest washed up
onto an island in the Aegean Sea called Seriphos, where a fisherman called
Dictys let them out and looked after them while Perseus grew up.
The
Challenge: The
King of Seriphos, Polydectes, was a cruel man, and when he met Danae he was
enchanted with her beauty. He did everything he could to persuade her to marry
him. Scared, Danae refused, but Polydectes would not leave her alone. He was
trying to force her to marry him, by pretending to marry another woman. When
Perseus turned up at the wedding without a wedding present, Polydectes scorned
him for being a lazy good-for-nothing. Perseus reacted furiously, boasting that
he could get anything in the world that the king wanted; the king demanded the
head of a Gorgon. Perseus recoiled in horror, but accepted the challenge,
impossible though it seemed. The king had succeeded in getting rid of Perseus.
He thought Perseus would never return.
The Gorgons:
There were three
Gorgons: Medusa, Stheno and Euryate. All were once very beautiful women. So
beautiful that Poseidon seduced Medusa in one of Athena's temples. As Athena was
already jealous of Medusa's looks, she turned Medusa and her sisters into
hideous monsters. They had bronze wings, claw-like hands, tusks for teeth, and
live snakes for hair. Anyone who looked into their eyes would be turned to stone
forever. Perseus knew that he would probably die trying to get the Gorgon's
head, but he had to try for his mother's sake. As he left the king, he was
surprised by two figures suddenly appearing before him. It was Athena, Goddess
of Wisdom, and Hermes, Messenger of the Gods...
Alexander the Great, whose tomb has been missing for nearly 2,000 years, could be buried in Broome in Western Australia, a Perth man says. Macedonian-born Tim Tutungis told ABC Kimberley that he first heard the 'Broomer' from his old mate, Lou Batalis."We just got onto the subject of Alexander The Great's tomb, and he said, 'They'll never ever find it, no matter where they look, because Alexander the Great is buried in Broome, in Western Australia'," Mr Tutungis said. "Approximately 50 years ago, some guy went into a cave in Broome and he saw some inscriptions inthere and they looked like ancient Greek."He reported it to the government, then the government went and saw it and they confirmed there were some inscriptions there. "They went to the Greek community and they asked the community, 'Is there anyone here who can read ancient Greek?'
"Naturally
Louis Batalis put his hand up and said, 'Yes, I went to school in
Egypt, I got educated, I can read it'.
So they took him up there and he
defined the inscriptions as saying, in ancient Greek, 'Alexander the
Great'.
"The government did say to him at that time, 'You didn't see this, OK, this never happened'."
History's mystery
Alexander the Great died on June 11, 323 BC, probably from malaria, alcoholism orpoisoning.
One traditionally accepted
story says his body was placed in two gold caskets in a gold carriage.
Another says his body was preserved in a clay jar filled with honey and
that this was placed in a glass coffin.
Some historians say
Alexander's general and friend, Ptolemy, stole the body and took it to
Alexandria, while others say Roman Emperor Caligula looted the tomb and
stole Alexander's breastplate.
According to some sources,
Emperor Septimius Severus closed Alexander's tomb about 200 AD, and
little is known of the body's whereabouts after that.
Mr Tutungis says he is 99
per cent convinced Mr Batalis told him the truth, because people "have
looked everywhere" for Alexander's grave, to no avail.
He says his friend is a very old man now and has virtually lost hismemory,......
It's not hard to see why Zeus was such a popular god with the ancient Greeks. He not only wielded a thunderbolt, but he also got into all sorts of trouble, including liaisons with humans and goddesses - much to the annoyance of his wife, Hera.Greek gods were figures people could relate to, said archaeologist David Romano of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. And worshiping Zeus apparently involved some serious partying. Working at the remote Mount Lykaion in Greece, Romano has found"evidence of a drinking party and possibly feasting" around a famous altar built on the 4,500-foot peak.
These relics go back 3,200 years, about the time the earliest stone tablets started to refer to Zeus as the godfather of the gods."What's new is this mountaintop altar had cult activity that's continuous from the Mycenaean to the Hellenistic periods," Romano said, meaning between the 14th and second centuries B.C. At various depths, he and colleagues have unearthed silver coins and other Zeus icons, including a tiny bronze hand with a silver lightning bolt.
Romano will speak on his latest finds tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Penn Museum.
Mount Lykaion is mentioned
in myth as the birthplace of Zeus,Romano said, and it appears no one
lived on the desolate peak, though the view is spectacular. For
hundreds of years, people apparently hiked there for religious
ceremonies and feasts.
Last year, Romano announced
that the site contained primitive pottery shards that go back to the
end of the Neolithic or New Stone Age period, more than 5,000 years
ago, before the first Greek-speaking people arrived. He suspects this
material stems from some sort of religious or cult activity. But no one
knows if the deity before Zeus was a party animal, too.
As near as anyone can calculate, Hercules became a god in 1226 B.C. He wasn't supposed to. His original destiny was to simply become king of Mycenae. But a series of behind-the-scenes treacheries put his evil twin, Eurystheus, on the throne. Worse yet, this bad brother-king required Hercules to perform a series of seemingly impossible tasks.Greek mythology has a way of righting injustices, though, and the very labors meant to destroy Hercules served to make him a hero instead: The name of Hercules became synonymous with strength and daring. Nobody ever heard of Eury-something-us.As for Mycenae, it remains, equal parts myth and stone, on ahilltop in Greece's Peloponnesian Peninsula.
It's one of three essential stops on a circuit of classical Greece archaeological sites beyond Athens.
Olympia
gets more coverage, especially during an Olympic Games year. And Delphi
inspires more curiosity because of its oracle. Both of those places
attract bigger crowds. But at Mycenae, the course of Western
civilization shifted to embrace the heroic.
Between the mysterious
doings of the Minoan culture of Crete, which ruled the Aegean before,
and the hyper-logical mind-set of the Athenians afterward, Mycenae held
sway. To pass through its much-photographed Lion Gate is to enter an
age of giants.
Mycenae
The ruins of Mycenae
(pronounced my-see-nee) sit on a hill that today faces a wide, flat
valley ofcitrus and olive groves: the plain of Argolis. Its back is
protected by a low mountain range in the eastern reaches of the
Peloponnesian Peninsula. Getting here from Athens means crossing the
Corinth Canal, the digging of which technically turned the peninsula
into an island.
There's an eerie quality
about Mycenae. Guides who elsewhere bellow for the attention of their
followers speak more softly here. Tourists tread lighter on the
walkways and whisper among themselves rather than prattle out loud. The
midafternoon sun doesn't burn as hot as on other hillsides, for a stiff
wind carries its heat away.
For a long time, the
experts were sure Mycenae was just so much storytelling on the part of
Homer. To accept it as historic fact also would have required at least
entertaining the possibility that it was populated with
larger-than-lifecharacters.......
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