Classical Mythology Homeschool History Course Sample
Classical Mythology
(or Percy Jackson’s Family History)
Week 2
- Day 1: The Lesser Gods, Part 1: Helius and his sisters
- Day 2: The Lesser Gods, Part 2: Hecate and Styx
- Day 3: The Lesser Gods, Part 3: Pan
- Day 4: The Lesser Gods, Part 4: Asclepius
- Day 5: Weeks 1 and 2 Review
Day 1
Now that you are familiar with the major players on Mount Olympus, it’s time for you to meet some of the minor players, other gods with lesser powers, most of whom pre-dated the Olympians.
The story of today’s deities picks up where we left off back on Week 1, Day 2. Recall the following from that lesson:
The twelve Titan offspring of Sky and Earth were as follows:
Daughters:
- Theia (a goddess of light)
- Rhea (an earth goddess and eventually the mother of the Olympian Gods)
- Themis (another earth goddess like her mother and sister, Rhea)
- Mnemosyne (Memory)
- Phoebe (a moon goddess)
- Tethys (the most ancient goddess of the sea)
Sons:
- Oceanus (the first born of the Titans; the god of the River Oceanus, a freshwater river that circled the whole Earth and was the source of all of Earth’s fresh water; the river itself)
- Coeus (Query)
- Crius (Ram)
- Hyperion (a god of light)
- Iapetus (Spear Wound)
- Cronus (the youngest of the Titans; Time)
Also from the Week 1, Day 2 lesson:
More than anything, Sky desired power, and so afraid was he of losing that power that he tried to get rid of the Titans as he had the Giants and Cyclopes. Whenever a Titan was born, Sky would immediately thrust the child back into the darkness of Earth’s womb. By the twelfth time this happened, Mother Earth had had enough, and her maternal instincts kicked in. Along with her children, Earth devised a plan to punish Sky, but none of the children volunteered to execute the plan except Cronus. So Cronus waited until the time that he could act, and when he did, he castrated Sky with an iron sickle. Sky then vowed to someday avenge the act and warned Cronus that his own children would someday rise against him, too.
So now the Titans were free with Cronus as their king, and they freed their siblings, the Giants and the Cyclopes, as well. The freedom of the six latter siblings was short lived, however, as Cronus soon sent them back to Tartarus when he feared they would rise up against him.
Now freed, the Titan siblings began to pair up. For example, Theia and Hyperion (both light deities) married and produced a son, Helius (Sun), and two daughters, Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn) . . .
(end of review section)
Aetiology Alert!
As the sun god, Helius was said to have driven a sun chariot pulled by four horses across the sky each day, beginning in the east and ending in the west. Then at night, he rode the river Oceanus around the perimeter of the earth back to the east so that his journey across the sky could begin anew the next morning. His sister, Eos (Dawn), accompanied him on his journeys.
The story goes that during the ten-year war between the Titans and the Olympians that ended in Zeus’ taking reign, Helius had remained neutral. As a reward, Zeus granted Helius an island, Rhodes*, that Helius wanted.
On his journey across the sky each day, Helius saw everything that happened on earth, and he was sometimes quick to tell others what he saw and learned. Because the ancient Greeks believed no one could hide from the all-seeing sun god, they often swore oaths by him.
*A Modern-Day Connection
Rhodes is a real place, and the people of the island later erected a statue (circa 280 BC) of Helius overlooking the arbor. The statue, which stood 98 feet high and came to be known as the “Colossus of Rhodes,” became one the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and survived only until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BC.
The Statue of Liberty was modeled after the Colossus of Rhodes, and the latter is even referred to in the poem by Emma Lazarus which is engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Fittingly, Lazarus’ poem is titled “The New Colossus.”
On December 23, 2015, The Telegraph reported that Greece plans to rebuild the statue as a symbol “of the country’s determination to emerge from the [current] economic crisis.” The new statue will reportedly be five times larger than the original, standing 443 feet tall.
For the full article about the new statue, please visit this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/12067713/Colossus-of-Rhodesone-of-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world-to-return.html.
A Tale of Two Sisters
Besides Helius, Hyperion and Theia had two daughters, Eos (Dawn) and Selene (Moon).
As mentioned above, Dawn was thought to accompany her brother Sun across the sky, but first she would daily rise from her throne in her palace in the east to announce the coming of her brother.
Like her brother, Moon drove a chariot drawn by horses across the sky, but of course, she did it at night while Sun was making his way back to the east via the river Oceanus.
Roman Equivalents
Helius: Sol
Eos: Aurora
Selene: Luna
Based on this information, how do the following words relate? Reminder: add them to your dictionary.
solar, solarium, solarize, insolation, solstice
aura, auroral; the periodic table symbol for gold, Au
lunar, lunacy, lunatic
What other words can you think of that are associated with the Roman names of these deities?
Helius is also spelled “Helios.” What words can you think of that have been derived from this Greek deity’s name?
Most of us are probably not familiar with the words derived from “Selene” (I wasn’t anyway). Use a dictionary to define the following words:
aposelene
geoselenic
paraselene
periselene
selenecentric/selenocentric
selenodesy
selenodont
selenofault
selenograph
selenographer
selenographic/selenographist/selenography/selenographical
selenoid
selenolatry
selenologist/selenology/selenological
selenomancy
selenomania
selenomorphology
selenophobia
selenotrope/selenotropic
selenotropism
selenozone
To view a full sample of the class, click here.
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