Greek myths

Pandora

Pandora: The first woman, a sentence to mankind:
When Prometheus stole fire from the heavens and gave it back to men, angry Zeus was determined to punish mankind for receiving this stolen gift. And his punishment had to be a beautiful and enchanting one, but so deceitful that men would welcome it as gift. It was a woman, the first woman.
According to the myth, Zeus commanded Hephaestus to create Pandora, a beautiful but wicked woman whose children would torment the race of men. After Hephaestus molded her from clay and fire, Athena clothed her in a silver gown and every Olympian god offered her a unique gift. Athena taught her needle craft and weaving, Aphrodite shed grace upon her head but Hermes gift was different… Hermes gave her cunningness and treachery. He gave her the power of speech: putting in her "lies and crafty words" He was also the one who named her “Pandora”, the all-gifted.
He then sent her to Epimetheus to be his wife. Prometheus, his bother warned him not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but he ignored the warnings. Zeus also offered Pandora a sealed box and he demanded she did not open it for any reason. Of course Pandora could not overcome her curiosity to find out what lies inside the box. Not after Zeus’s “warning”… When she opened the box, toil, sickness and diseases and myriad other pains were spread across the earth and the sea. Pandora closed the box in-time only to keep one thing contained, hope.

Painting

Theofilos (Chatzimichail):

A self-taught folk painter with inspiration and sensitivity that went far beyond the conventionalism of folk art. Born in Mitilini, he spent most of his life there and in the villages of Mt. Pilio, painting the walls of private dwellings and shops and, more rarely, the surfaces of portable objects. He portrayed historical subjects and genre scenes in a unique combination of iconographic symbols.

Theofilos (Chatzimichail)

His talent lays in the assimilation of past conventions into a personal style that evokes a deep faith in his visions, apparent in all his works. With an exceptional feeling for color, the immediacy and simplicity of his figures, recalled the artistic conceptions of Matisse and Fauvism. It is amazing how he conveyed the sense of space and analogies, in a way that made all seem dreamy and poetic. The great poets, Seferis and Elytis, wrote of his power to give expression to the true face of Greece. For Tsarouhis, he "belongs in the company of wise men and lunatics whose blessed megalomania smashed the confines of academicism". A unique persona dressed as Alexander the Great in a traditional "foustanela", half-crazed and removed in his own world, he broke the aesthetic barriers of Modern Greek art and pointed to a new direction of unique self-expression. The generation of the 1930s owes a lot to his work.

Greek myths

Pegasus

Pegasus: The winged horse:

Pegasus is neither a god nor a mortal. He is a divine winged horse, the offspring of Medusa and Poseidon. It is one of the most notable creatures of Greek mythology with great appeal in art and literature. His birth was none of the ordinary like with many other divine creatures. It is said that he was born at a single birthing when Perseus decapitated his mother Medusa.
The most notable myth about Pegasus is the one of Bellerophon. When Bellerophon sleeked to kill Chimera the Lycian seer Polyeidos told Bellerophon that he would need Pegasus to accomplish his end. Bellerophon approached Pegasus as he was drinking water from the Pierian Spring and tamed him. Bellerophon then rode Pegasus and slew the Chimera, but he was greedy. Upon his success he tried to ride the Pegasus to the top of Mount Olympus to glimpse the Olympian Gods. Zeus could let no man step foot on the heavens, and so sent a fly to sting Pegasus causing Bellerophon to fall.
According to the myth when Pegasus hurt his hoof on the Mountain Helicon a spring burst on the spot named the Hippocrene (horse spring). He was also Zeus’s most faithful horse carrying his thunderbolts to Olympus. Zeus in return for his service transformed him into a constellation bearing his name.

Mythology (III)

Apollo: Bringing the Best in Everybody:

Apolo

The worship of Apollo is the most widely diffused. His birth was adventurous as his mother, Leto, was chased by the serpent Python (Hera's intrigue); he grew up miraculously fast (in seven months he assumed the appearance of a grown man); he avenged his mother's tortures (killed the Python) and learned the art of prophecy from the goat-legged god Pan; he killed Tityos for trying to violate his mother Leto and Marsyas for showing hybris. He never married, but he fathered many children. Not always a successful pursuer of women (he lost the nymph he loved more than anyone, Daphne), he fell in love with a young prince of Sparta, Hyacinthos, making him the first god to express homosexual tendencies. When his son Asclepios, the physician, tried to resurrect a dead man and was killed by Zeus for his hybris, he learned a great lesson in modesty and humility.
He was an old god, more ancient than the Iliad, where he appeared as god of the Trojans (Sminthian Apollo) and particularly unfriendly to Achilles. He was both the god of the Doric race-Apollo Carneios-and of the Ionic-Apollo Patroos. He was the protector and guide of the people sent to colonize new lands and supporter of the amphiktyonic spirit, as he provided sanctity to their meetings. His attributes included his prophetic powers, music, medicine and the sun. Numerous temples and oracles testify to his popularity.

Mythology (II)

Zeus and Hera:

Zeus and Hera

According to the "Theogonic" order, Zeus came after Cronos and Ouranos, but in the poems of Hesiod and Homer as well as in the minds of the Greek people, Zeus occupied the predominant position. He was the greatest god, the one who maintained the supervision of all others. The patriarchal element of the Greek religion turned him into an insatiable womanizer so that he maintains total control of his environment and bears many children (perhaps this amorous side, with both goddesses and mortal, is supplied to him by the kings, thus ensuring a divine lineage to their genealogy). He rapes, thus referring to the destruction of the old religion by the new. When he lusted after Metis (Titan) he produced goddess Athena (who sprang out of her father's head after he had swallowed her mother out of fear that she would give birth to a patricide son.
He married Hera, his twin-sister, daughter of Cronos and Rhea; her name meaning "Protector" and being the pre-Hellenic "Great Goddess", she maintained some of her attributes such as the concept of fertility and rejuvenation through the annual renewal of her virginity in the waters of the spring Canathos. Her marriage to Zeus symbolized the end of the pre-Hellenic, matrilineal societies and their submission to the new patriarchal world. Their union produced Ares, Hephaestos and Hebe. Their marriage was marked by constant fighting and intrigues generated by Zeus' infidelity, as in the case of Leto, the mother of Artemis and Apollo (Hera sent the serpent Python to chase her not allowing her to deliver wherever the sun shone) or Semele, mother of Dionysus (whom she tricked into asking Zeus to appear before her in his true form - as thunder and lightning - thus consuming her).

Mythology (I)

Poseidon

Poseidon: The god of the sea:

Poseidon was the son of Chronus and Rhea, brother to Zeus, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter. When Zeus overthrew his father Chronus and assumed power the siblings divided the world among themselves.

Poseidon became the ruler of the seas and all waters. Since water is essential to agriculture many of his myths are related to Demeter. Although older in age than Zeus he never claimed power and always respected his wishes.
    

He resides in a Golden Kingdom in the bottom of the ocean in the city of “Aiges”. The whereabouts of this city are unknown. Despite spending most of his time underwater Poseidon often ascended to mount Olympus to participate the summits of the Olympian Gods. His consort was Amphitrite with whom he had two children, Triton and Rhodos. He did however had many more children with other consorts, among them famous Theseus and the winged horses Pegasus and Arion. 


He was the ruler of the sea but also the master of all natural phenomena related to it. He controlled storms and winds and with his trident could ignite explosions and earthquakes, sometimes even create islands. Poseidon was also the protector of fishermen, bringer of good wind and calm sea. Because of his children Pegasus and Arion, Poseidon was also attributed to be the patron of horses and horse-racing. His symbols are the Trident, Fish, Dolphin, Horse and Bull.

Painting

Greek Painting:

David and Goliath

Macedonian art:
Macedonian art (sometimes called the Macedonian Renaissance) was a period in Byzantine art which began with the reign of the Emperor Basil I of the Macedonian dynasty in 867. The period followed the lifting of the ban on icons (iconoclasm) and lasted until the fall of the dynasty in the mid-eleventh century. It coincided with the Ottonian Renaissance in Western Europe. 

El Greco

Cretan School:
The term Cretan School describes an important school of icon painting,flourished while Crete was under Venetian rule during the late Middle Ages, reaching its climax after the Fall of Constantinople, becoming the central force in Greek painting during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The Cretan artists developed a particular style of painting under the influence of both Eastern and Western artistic traditions and movements; El Greco, was the most successful.

Religion

Artemisa

Religion in ancient Greek

Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These different groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared similarities. Also, the Greek religion extended out of Greece and out to other islands.
Many Greek people recognized the major gods and goddesses: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, Hestia and Hera though philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to posit a transcendent single deity. Different cities often worshipped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature.

Poseidon

The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille). Greek religion was tempered by Etruscan cult and belief to form much of the later Ancient Roman religion.