1.Theseus and the Minotaur

Key Names:

King Minos of Crete

King Aegeus of Athens

Theseus

Minotaur

Ariadne

King Minos of Crete is a cruel and wicked king. Every year he demands that the neighbouring kingdoms pay a tribute to him of seven young men and seven young women. King Minos takes these young people and feeds them to the Minotaur which he keeps imprisoned in a labyrinth under his palace.

When Theseus, the son of King Aegeus of Athens, hears about this he decides that he must go and defeat the Minotaur. His father reluctantly allows him to go but tells him to raise a white sail on his return if he is successful.

On his arrival the fourteen youths are shown before King Minos and Theseus volunteers to be the first to go down to the Minotaur. King Minos' daughter is impressed by Theseus' bravery and good looks and decides to help him.

Whilst Theseus is being taken away by the guards she secretly gives a ball of thread to Theseus so that he can find his way out of the labyrinth if he is successful in his quest to kill the Minotaur.

Theseus is grateful for her help and says that he could happily marry a girl as clever as Ariadne. He bravely goes into the maze unwinding the thread and he inches forward in the darkness. Eventually he runs into the dreaded monster and after a titanic struggle he succeeds in both killing the Minotaur and then finding his way out.

Waiting at the entrance to the maze is Ariadne and together they flee from Crete. Theseus' promise to marry Ariadne comes back to haunt Theseus and he goes off the idea when he gets a better look at her. When their boat puts in for supplies on their return to Athens Theseus sends Ariadne off to get some water. Whilst she is out of the way Theseus sets sail. However he is in such a hurry to get back to Athens that he forgets to raise the white sail as he had promised his father.

King Aegeus who has been waiting on the cliff for a sign of his son's return sees the ship with the black sail come into sight and fearing that his son is dead he dives into the sea to his death.

2.Perseus

Key Names:

King Acrisius

Danae

Perseus

Dictys

Polydectes

Fates

Pluto

Athena

Hermes

Andromeda

Gorgon Medusa

Plot:

Acrisius goes to fortune teller who tells him he will be killed by his grandson. As he has no grandson he locks his daughter Danae in a tower. Zeus visits and she gives birth to Perseus. When Acrisius finds out he puts Danae and Perseus in a chest and puts them out to sea. In another kingdom they are found by Dictys the fisherman who looks after them. King Polydectes takes a fancy to Danae and wants to marry her. She says no for 17 years. Polydectes eventually gets fed up and sends guards to capture her but they are beaten up by Perseus. Polydectes needs to get Perseus out the way so he says he will back off if Perseus can get the head of the gorgon Medusa. Perseus agrees and sets off. Gods decide to help and give gifts-winged sandals (Hermes), shield (Athena) Helmet of invisibility plus bag (Pluto). Sets off. Only the Fates can tell him where to go. Perseus steals their eye and forces them to tell him where to go. Medusa turns all who look at her into stone. Using shield as a mirror Perseus cuts off Medusa's head and sets off home. On way back he rescues Andromeda from sea monster and is going to marry her when her ex-fiance Phineas turns up. Perseus pulls head out of bag and turns them all to stone. When he gets back Polydectes just about to force Danae to marry him. Perseus pulls head out the bag and turns them all to stone. Danae marries Dictys. Big celebration- all king invited. Athletics tournament. Perseus enters discus. His discus flies into crowd and kills his grandfather Acrisius as foretold.

3. Troy- the Wooden Horse

The goddess Thetis is marrying Peleus. All the gods are invited except Discordia. She turns up anyway bringing with her a golden apple on which are inscribed the words ‘For the most beautiful'. All the goddesses squabble about who should receive it believing that they are the most beautiful. They decide to ask Zeus. Zeus does not wish to offend any of the goddesses so he instead says they should ask Paris-the Prince of Troy.

All they goddesses secretly go to Paris offering gifts of wisdom, power and the most beautiful woman in the World if he chooses them. Paris chooses Aphrodite and she gives him Helen the most beautiful woman in the World.

The only problem is that Helen is married to Menelaus. Menelaus is upset and with the support of Agamemnon they get a huge force together to sail to Troy to get Helen back.

For 10 years the lay siege to Troy without success until Odysseus comes up with the idea of the Wooden Horse. The Greeks build the horse and hide some of their soldiers inside. They then pretend to sail off leaving the horse on the shore.

The Trojans believe they have finally defeated the Greeks and drag the horse into Troy. When they are asleep the Greek soldiers climb out of the horse and open the gates of the city. In the meantime the rest of the Greeks have returned and capture the city.

The Greeks then sail home.

4.  The Odyssey

Odysseus had the idea of building the wooden horse which led to the downfall of Troy. He is renowned for his cunning.

The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus trip back from Troy to Ithaca where he was king and where his queen Penelope waits faithfully for him.

His ships are blown off course and he ends up having a series of adventures. Some of the main ones are discussed below.

The Cyclops-Polyphemus

Odysseus stops at an island to ask directions and to get provisions. They find a cave stocked with food. They eat and wait for the owner to return to ask the way. The owner of the cave is a Cyclops called Polyphemus. He is angry when he finds intruders and eats two of them and falls asleep. Next day he wakes up, kills two more and leaves to tend his sheep leaving a massive boulder across the entrance of the cave thus trapping Odysseus and his companions. When he returns at night he eats two more. Odysseus confronts him and tells him his name is Noman or Nobody. He gives him wine to drink and eventually the Cyclops falls asleep. Whilst he is asleep Odysseus take a stake, harden the end in a fire and plunge it into the eye of the Cyclops. He calls out. Other Cyclops come but when they ask what has happened he replies that nobody has hurt him so they leave. Next day Odysseus and his friends escape by clinging to the underneath of the sheep. Odysseus taunts Polyphemus when he has left and Polyphemus calls on his father Neptune to hamper Odysseus' journey home.

Circe

Circe is the sister of King Aeetes of Colchis. She is a sorceress and lives on a magical island, Odysseus sends companions to explore. They meet Circe who turns them into pigs. Odysseus is concerned and sets out to find them. On the way he meets Hermes who gives him the herb Moly which helps Odysseus to resist Circe's magic. He persuades her not to harm him but she bewitches him and he ends up staying for a year. They part on good terms and Circe gives him lots of helpful information which helps him on his return journey. She tells him he must visit the Underworld to speak with the blind prophet Teiresias.

Scylla and Charybdis

Odysseus needs to go through the straits of Messina off Sicily. It is guarded by the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is a twelve footed monster with 6 necks each with a head with 3 rows of teeth. It lives on a cloud capped mountain and eats anything it can reach. On the other side of the channel is Charybdis- a whirlpool that sucks ships down to the bottom of the sea before spitting them out.

Odysseus decides to take on Scylla and some of his men are eaten.

His ship is later caught in the vortex of Charybdis and he escapes by clinging to a fig tree unto the whirlpool calms and later escapes to the island of Ogygia.

Eventually he makes it back to Ithaca but his palace has been taken over by suitors who wish to claim the kingdom and marry his queen Penelope. Odysseus meets up with his son Telemachus they make a plan to do away with them. Penelope has been keeping the suitors at bay by saying that she will choose a husband when she has finished weaving a funeral shroud for Odysseus' father. At night she slows down the time of decision by unpicking the work she has done in the day. Odysseus arrives at the palace disguised as a beggar. He tells Telemachus to tell Penelope to set the suitors a challenge which is to string and draw his bow. None are able to do it. Odysseus still dressed as a beggar then has a go, strings the bow and kills all the suitors.

5.Hercules/Heracles

Birth

Hercules was the Roman name for the greatest hero of Greek mythology -- Heracles. Like most authentic heroes, Heracles had a god as one of his parents, being the son of the supreme deity Zeus and a mortal woman. Zeus's queen Hera was jealous of Heracles, and when he was still an infant she sent two snakes to kill him in his crib. Heracles was found prattling delighted baby talk, a strangled serpent in each hand.

The Labors

When he had come of age and already proved himself an unerring marksman with a bow and arrow, a champion wrestler and the possessor of superhuman strength, Heracles was driven mad by Hera. In a frenzy, he killed his own children. To atone for this crime, he was sentenced to perform a series of tasks, or "Labors", for his cousin Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns and Mycenae. By rights, Hercules should have been king himself, but Hera had tricked her husband Zeus into crowning Eurystheus instead.

Labor One: The Nemean Lion

As his first Labor, Heracles was challenged to kill the Nemean lion. This was no easy feat, for the beast's parentage was supernatural and it was more of a monster than an ordinary lion. Its skin could not be penetrated by spears or arrows. Heracles blocked off the entrances to the lion's cave, crawled into the close confines where it would have to fight face to face and throttled it to death with his bare hands. Ever afterwards he wore the lion's skin as a cloak and its gaping jaws as a helmet.

Labor Two: The Hydra

King Eurystheus was so afraid of his heroic cousin that when he saw him coming with the Nemean lion on his shoulder, he hid in a storage jar. From this shelter he issued the order for the next Labor. Heracles was to seek out and destroy the monstrous and many-headed Hydra. The mythmakers agree that the Hydra lived in the swamps of Lerna, but they seem to have had trouble counting its heads. Some said that the Hydra had eight or nine, while others claimed as many as ten thousand. All agreed, however, that as soon as one head was beaten down or chopped off, two more grew in its place.

To make matters worse, the Hydra's very breath was lethal. Even smelling its footprints was enough to kill an ordinary mortal. Fortunately, Heracles was no ordinary mortal. He sought out the monster in its lair and brought it out into the open with flaming arrows. But now the fight went in the Hydra's favor. It twined its many heads around the hero and tried to trip him up. It called on an ally, a huge crab that also lived in the swamp. The crab bit Heracles in the heel and further impeded his attack. Heracles was on the verge of failure when he remembered his nephew, Iolaus, the son of his twin brother Iphicles.

Iolaus, who had driven Heracles to Lerna in a chariot, looked on in anxiety as his uncle became entangled in the Hydra's snaky heads. Finally he could bear it no longer. In response to his uncle's shouts, he grabbed a burning torch and dashed into the fray. Now, as soon as Heracles cut off one of the Hydra's heads, Iolaus was there to sear the wounded neck with flame. This kept further heads from sprouting. Heracles cut off the heads one by one, with Iolaus cauterizing the wounds. Finally Heracles lopped off the one head that was supposedly immortal and buried it deep beneath a rock.

Labor Three: the Cerynitian Hind

The third Labor was the capture of the Cerynitian hind. Though a female deer, this fleet-footed beast had golden horns. It was sacred to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, so Heracles dared not wound it. He hunted it for an entire year before running it down on the banks of the River Ladon in Arcadia. Taking careful aim with his bow, he fired an arrow between the tendons and bones of the two forelegs, pinning it down without drawing blood. All the same, Artemis was displeased, but Heracles dodged her wrath by blaming his taskmaster Eurystheus.

Labor Four: the Erymanthian Boar

The fourth Labor took Heracles back to Arcadia in quest of an enormous boar, which he was challenged to bring back alive. While tracking it down he stopped to visit the centaur Pholus. This creature -- half-horse, half-man -- was examining one of the hero's arrows when he accidentally dropped it on his foot. Because it had been soaked in poisonous Hydra venom, Pholus succumbed immediately. Heracles finally located the boar on Mount Erymanthus and managed to drive it into a snowbank, immobilizing it. Flinging it up onto his shoulder, he carried it back to Eurystheus, who cowered as usual in his storage jar.

Labor Five: The Augean Stables

Eurystheus was very pleased with himself for dreaming up the next Labor, which he was sure would humiliate his heroic cousin. Heracles was to clean out the stables of King Augeas in a single day. Augeas possessed vast herds of cattle which had deposited their manure in such quantity over the years that a thick aroma hung over the entire Peloponnesus. Instead of employing a shovel and a basket as Eurystheus imagined, Heracles diverted two rivers through the stableyard and got the job done without getting dirty. But because he had demanded payment of Augeas, Eurystheus refused to count this as a Labor.

Labor Six: The Stymphalian Birds

The sixth Labor pitted Heracles against the Stymphalian birds, who inhabited a marsh near Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia. The sources differ as to whether these birds feasted on human flesh, killed men by shooting them with feathers of brass or merely constituted a nuisance because of their number. Heracles could not approach the birds to fight them - the ground was too swampy to bear his weight and too mucky to wade through. Finally he resorted to some castanets given to him by the goddess Athena. By making a racket with these, he caused the birds to take wing. And once they were in the air, he brought them down by the dozens with his arrows.

Labor Seven: the Cretan Bull

Queen Pasiphae of Crete had been inspired by a vengeful god to fall in love with a bull, with the result that the Minotaur was born -- a monster half-man and half-bull that haunted the Labyrinth of King Minos. Pasiphae's husband was understandably eager to be rid of the bull, which was also ravaging the Cretan countryside, so Hercules was assigned the task as his seventh Labor. Although the beast belched flames, the hero overpowered it and shipped it back to the mainland. It ended up near Athens, where it became the duty of another hero, Theseus, to deal with it once more.

Labor Eight: the Mares of Diomedes

Next Heracles was instructed to bring Eurystheus the mares of Diomedes. These horses dined on the flesh of travelers who made the mistake of accepting Diomedes' hospitality. In one version of the myth, Heracles pacified the beasts by feeding them their own master. In another, they satisfied their appetites on the hero's squire, a young man named Abderus. In any case, Heracles soon rounded them up and herded them down to sea, where he embarked them for Tiryns. Once he had shown them to Eurystheus, he released them. They were eventually eaten by wild animals on Mount Olympus.

Labor Nine: Hippolyte's Belt

The ninth Labor took Heracles to the land of the Amazons, to retrieve the belt of their queen for Eurystheus' daughter. The Amazons were a race of warrior women, great archers who had invented the art of fighting from horseback. Heracles recruited a number of heroes to accompany him on this expedition, among them Theseus. As it turned out, the Amazon queen, Hippolyte, willingly gave Hercules her belt, but Hera was not about to let the hero get off so easily. The goddess stirred up the Amazons with a rumor that the Greeks had captured their queen, and a great battle ensued. Heracles made off with the belt, and Theseus kidnapped an Amazon princess.

Labor Ten: the Cattle of Geryon

In creating monsters and formidable foes, the Greek mythmakers used a simple technique of multiplication. Thus Geryon, the owner of some famous cattle that Heracles was now instructed to steal, had three heads and/or three separate bodies from the waist down. His watchdog, Orthrus, had only two heads. This Labor took place somewhere in the country we know as Spain. The hound Orthrus rushed at Heracles as he was making off with the cattle, and the hero killed him with a single blow from the wooden club which he customarily carried. Geryon was dispatched as well, and Heracles drove the herd back to Greece, taking a wrong turn along the way and passing through Italy.

Labor Eleven: the Apples of the Hesperides

The Hesperides were nymphs entrusted by the goddess Hera with certain apples which she had received as a wedding present. These were kept in a grove surrounded by a high wall and guarded by Ladon, a many-headed dragon. The grove was located in the far-western mountains named for Atlas, one of the Titans or first generation of gods. Atlas had sided with one of his brothers in a war against Zeus. In punishment, he was compelled to support the weight of the heavens by means of a pillar on his shoulders. Heracles, in quest of the apples, had been told that he would never get the them without the aid of Atlas.

The Titan was only too happy to oblige. He told the hero to hold the pillar while he went to retrieve the fruit. But first Heracles had to kill the dragon by means of an arrow over the garden wall. Atlas soon returned with the apples but now realized how nice it was not to have to strain for eternity keeping heaven and earth apart. Heracles wondered if Atlas would mind taking back the pillar just long enough for him to fetch a cushion for his shoulder. The Titan obliged and Heracles strolled off, neglecting to return.

Labor Twelve: the Capture of Cerberus

As his final Labor, Heracles was instructed to bring the hellhound Cerberus up from Hades, the kingdom of the dead. The first barrier to the soul's journey beyond the grave was the most famous river of the Underworld, the Styx. Here the newly dead congregated as insubstantial shades, mere wraiths of their former selves, awaiting passage in the ferryboat of Charon the Boatman. Charon wouldn't take anyone across unless they met two conditions. Firstly, they had to pay a bribe in the form of a coin under the corpse's tongue. And secondly, they had to be dead. Heracles met neither condition, a circumstance which aggravated Charon's natural grouchiness.

But Heracles simply glowered so fiercely that Charon meekly conveyed him across the Styx. The greater challenge was Cerberus, who had razor teeth, three (or maybe fifty) heads, a venomous snake for a tail and another swarm of snakes growing out of his back. These lashed at Heracles while Cerberus lunged for a purchase on his throat. Fortunately, the hero was wearing his trusty lion's skin, which was impenetrable by anything short of a thunderbolt from Zeus. Heracles eventually choked Cerberus into submission and dragged him to Tiryns, where he received due credit for this final Labor.

6.  Jason and the Golden Fleece

Key names:

Jason

Pelias and Aeson

Aeetes

Colchis

Phineus

Harpies

Medea

Plot:

Pelias seizes throne of kingdom of Iolcos from his brother Aeson and imprisons him. Aeson smuggles his son Jason out of the kingdom to avoid Pelias killing him. Jason is raised by the centaur Cheiron. When Jason is grown up he goes back to Iolcus to face Pelias. Pelias says he will step down if Jason can prove himself worthy. In order to do this he has to get back the golden fleece from King Aeetes of Colchis. Jason builds a ship the Argo and gets together 50 heroes the Argonauts and sets off. To find the way he first has to visit the blind king Phineus who tells him the way to go and how to get through the clashing cliffs in return for ridding the kingdom of the Harpies -vicious birds with women's heads who eat all the food from Phineus' table.

Phineus tells Jason to release a dove between the rocks and if it gets through safely then to follow. He does this and the get through. He then makes his way to Cochis where he asks King Aeetes to surrender the fleece. King Aeetes is reluctant to do this and drops dragon's teeth on the floor who then turn into warriors. Jason defeats them and heads off to get the fleece. He is aided by Medea- King Aeetes' daughter who has magical powers and helps drug the dragon which guards the fleece. They return to Iolcus and Pelias is forced to surrender the throne. Aeson doesn't want to take over but Medea gives him a potion which rejuvenates him. Pelias also wants a potion to rejuvenate him but she gives him another brew which sends him to sleep forever.