Reminders of Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses Are All Around Us

Our formal knowledge of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses can be traced back to the writings of the famous poet Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey who lived in Greece around 800 BC. Although they seem to be things of the past, reminders of them are all around us. Some planets were named after the them. They also represent a unique view of religion held by ancient Greeks.
There are many ancient Greek gods and goddesses in Greek mythology and each had their own task and own immortal lives to tell about. They are composed of many deities, minor and major. There are literally hundreds of minor gods.
The most powerful Greek gods were known as the Olympians. There were twelve major ancient gods, called by the Greeks the Olympian gods, which came to be recognized as the most important deities, and were thence worshiped by the Romans prior to Christian conversion. Six of them were the offspring of the titan siblings, Chronos and Rhea, but only four of them ruled in Olympus. Zeus, the supreme ruler of Olympus and the leader of the ancient Greek gods, controls the weather, especially fierce weather, when he hurls lightning bolts from the sky. As his father had predicted, Zeus overthrew him and the other Titans, rescued his swallowed brothers and sisters, and became the ruler of the Olympians, the new Greek Gods to rule the earth. Zeus became ruler of the Olympians and their home was Mount Olympus in northern Greece, the throne of Zeus and their home.
To unite conflicting theologies, the ones representing the weather would be married to the town's mother goddess, which promoted harmony in worship and caused less resistance among the conquered townspeople. Hephaestus was blacksmith for them and sibling to Ares. Greeks honored all the ancient Greek gods, but could worship one more than the others mostly by personal choice. The greatest of the them lived and ruled from a beautiful palace high on Mount Olympus. Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of Love. Amor vincit omnia (Love Conquers All), a depiction of the god of love, Eros. Regardless of their underlying forms, the ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities, most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease, and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances. The Greek gods resembled human beings in their form and in their emotions, and they lived in a society that resembled human society in its levels of authority and power. The island of Rhodes or Rhodos as it is pronounced in Greek, was initially inhabited during the Neolithic age, apart from legends involving the gods. Helios then scattered his sun rays all over the island and its beauty caused the envy of the other Greek gods.
The ancient Greek gods normally took on human form and lived in a society similar to human society. The most significant difference between them and humans was that the gods were immortal and human beings were not.
The Greek Pantheon was a polytheistic system of thought and religion that assumed its Greek Gods and Goddesses existed independently and individually. Compared to one-deity gods in many modern religions, they had a surprising number of human limitations and weaknesses.

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The Forgotten Greek Gods

Mention Greek gods and people immediately think of Zeus and the like. Before these well-known gods came on the scene, however, there were another group of Gods.
There were many figures featured in the Greek mythological world, from gods and goddesses to mythical fantasy creatures. While the gods and goddesses themselves often got the most attention, it was the mythical characters that really made the stories work. Without the interaction of the god figures, mortals and these creatures, the stories told would not have been fully fleshed. One of these groups of characters was the Titans, and their story is an interesting one.
The Titans were a race of gods and goddesses that ruled Greece during the Golden Age. There were originally twelve Titans, with a thirteenth Titan coming into play after a literary appearance in the Bibliotheke. The mother and father of the Titans were Uranus and Gaia, and Uranus was overthrown by his son Cronus, who was the youngest of the group. Additionally, the Titans gave birth to more Titans, including Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas and Menoetius; these were the sons of Iapetus.
The Titans preceded the twelve gods of Mount Olympus, who were headed by Zeus and battled them in the Titanomachy (War of the Titans). The Titans lost this war, and were imprisoned by the Olympic gods in Tartarus, the lowest points of the underworld. The twelve Titans were grouped in pairs, or couples; they included Oceanus and Tethys, Hyperion and Theia, Coeus and Phoebe, Cronus and Rhea and four separate gods: Mnemosyne, Themis, Crius and Iapetus. The thirteenth Titan was Dione, who was a double of Theia.
It is said that Chronos was the most monstrous and cunning of the twelve, and when he was born to his mother Gaia, he formed an intense hatred of his father. Uranus sensed this, and imprisoned his son in the bowels of the Earth. Once there, Chronos enlisted the help of the Cyclopses and other creatures and escaped; then he castrated his father Uranus and took the beautiful Rhea for his bride. From this union, the new generation of gods was born, including Zeus.
The Titans played an important role in the creation myth of the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, and while they themselves did not mean much in the religious arena past the Classical Age of Greece, the fact that they birthed the Mount Olympus deities made them an important part of Greek culture.

Richard Monk is with http://www.factsmonk.com - a site with facts about everything.

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