![]() But Aphrodite was constantly unfaithful to Hephaestus, and at one point conducted an affair with the not-too-bright but very manly Ares, the god of war. ![]() In anger, he forced her to marry the ugly Hephaestus, by which he also rewarded Hephaestus for his skill in forging the thunderbolts which Zeus hurled around whenever he got mad. She rejected the advances of Zeus himself even though he was the grand poobah of all the gods and was accustomed to having anything he wanted. She herself had many crushes, always on very good looking but not very intelligent youths, and she usually spurned older, less handsome men. Moral: Don’t Underestimate Unattractive People.Īphrodite was the gorgeous god- dess of love and all men desired her. The throne was cleverly crafted as a trap so when Hera sat in it she couldn’t get off until she readmitted Hephaestus to Olympus to free her. He then made a golden throne which he sent to his mother Hera as a gift. On earth, Hephaestus mastered the craft of metallurgy. One of their children, Hephaestus, was born an ugly runt which mortified his mother so much that in a fit of pique she physically hurled him down to earth from her home on Mount Olympus. Finally, the tough-minded but gorgeous goddess Hera agreed to marry him. Zeus then sought another wife, but after the unfortunate business with Metis most of the goddesses tended to shy away from him. It got worse and worse until his head split open and, tataa, out popped Athena, goddess of wisdom. He devoured her and, I assume, washed her down with a lot of very fine wine.Īs a result, he suffered some gastric indisposition and, worse, a pounding migraine. One day, probably irritated by one-toomany of her clever, biting, belittling comments, he’d had enough. ![]() The first wife of Zeus was Metis, the goddess of cleverness. Yet it seems that there were still some moral lessons that accompanied some of the uglier incidents in their never-ending lives. They quarreled among themselves and with humans about their looks, their privileges, and their status, and they waxed very petulant and angry whenever things didn’t go their way. Another brother, Hades, god of the underworld, apparently had personal issues that resulted in a tendency to abuse women.Īnd there can be no question that most of the Greek gods were spoiled and vain, even to the point of narcissism and sociopathy. Zeus’ brother Poseidon, god of the sea and rivers, was the same way, with those humongous floods that he would sometimes let loose over the land whenever he was peeved about one thing or other. It might have stemmed from abuse as a child when his father, Cronus, attempted to eat him and his siblings, an incident that is well-documented in ancient literature. Various books on Greek mythology make it abundantly clear that many of them had what today we’d call serious personality disorders.įor example, the top god, Zeus, seemed much given to sudden tantrums during which he would hurl lightning bolts all over the place, or else devour someone who was irritating him. Eos pursues Tithonus in this Ancient Greek depiction.Anyone who contemplates ancient statues of the Greek gods is struck by their apparent embodiment of good health and equanimity.
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