March 11, 2019

If your birthday is in March, you have two birthstones (gems associated with the month of your birth): aquamarine and bloodstone (a variety of chalcedony). Aquamarine is a light blue or bluish-green gem. It is cut in facets (polished flat surfaces) and used in all types of jewelry. Bloodstone is a dark green gem with red spots. It too is used in jewelry, but it is also associated with Christianity.

Aquamarine is one of two birthstones for the month of March. Credit: © Albert Russ, Shutterstock

Aquamarine is a variety of the mineral beryl. The most popular color is a clear sky-blue. Aquamarine is often treated with heat to improve its color. Almost all aquamarine is transparent. Aquamarines have been known since ancient times, when legends said the gems could help people relax or could act as an antidote to poison. The ancient Romans believed the gem could cure laziness and produce courage. The most important source of aquamarines is Brazil.

Bloodstone is another birthstone of March.
Credit: © Shutterstock

Bloodstone, a variety of the mineral Chalcedony, is related to agate, carnelian, and onyx. Chalcedony was named for the ancient town of Chalcedon, in what is now Turkey, which is near deposits of the mineral. Bloodstone is sometimes called Martyr’s Stone or Christ’s Stone because legend attributed the gem’s red spots to the blood of Jesus Christ. The ancient Greeks called bloodstone heliotrope (also a type of flower) for the way it reflects light. The Babylonians used bloodstone to make amulets, decorative vessels, and seals.

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Birthstones, according to tradition, bring good luck when worn by a person born in the associated month. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustrations by Paul D. Turnbaugh

According to tradition, a birthstone brings good luck to a person born in its month. Each birthstone also corresponds to a sign of the zodiac. The belief in birthstones may have come from a Bible story about Aaron, the first high priest of the Israelites. The story describes Aaron’s breastplate, which was decorated with 12 precious stones. Early writers linked these stones with the 12 months of the year and the 12 signs of the zodiac. The custom of wearing a stone that represented a person’s zodiac sign probably originated in Germany or Poland in the 1700′s.

April 2, 2018

Greek is the official language of Greece. Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family. About 13 million people speak Greek today, mainly in Greece and Cyprus, where it is an official language. Greek is also recognized as a minority language in parts of Italy, and in Albania, Romania, and Ukraine. Today, the Greek alphabet is used to write only Greek. However, at various times in the past, the alphabet has been used to write many languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish.

Greece flag. Credit: © Asuwan Masae, Shutterstock

Many of the world’s greatest poets, playwrights, and philosophers wrote in Greek during the 400’s B.C. They include the poet Homer; the dramatists Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles; and the philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Many English words are based on Greek, including architect, criticism, music, and poetry. Scientific words originating in Greek include astronaut, ecology, geography, and psychiatry.

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Greek alphabet. Credit: WORLD BOOK

Greek was first written in Mycenae, a city southwest of Athens. The language was written in an alphabet known as Linear B. It was used from about 1500 B.C. until the late 1100’s B.C., when the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. Writing then disappeared from Greece until the late 800’s to early 700’s B.C., when an alphabet was introduced based on the Phoenician language.

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Greece. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The history of early Greek has been divided into three periods. They are the Hellenic (about 500 to 300 B.C.), the Hellenistic (later 300’s to mid-100’s B.C.), and the Byzantine (about A.D. 330 to 1453). The classic Greek writers flourished during the Hellenic period. During the Hellenistic period, the language underwent major changes following the conquests of the great military leader Alexander the Great. Alexander carried a form of the language, along with Greek culture, far into western Asia. There it became the standard language of commerce and government, existing alongside many local languages. Greek was adopted as a second language by the native people of these regions and was ultimately transformed into what came to be called koiné (common) Greek.

Greek existed in several major dialects during the Hellenistic period. A combined dialect, now called Attic, eventually was produced. The Attic dialect dominated literature during the entire Byzantine era. The era began with the establishment of the city of Constantinople in 330 and ended in 1453, when Constantinople (now Istanbul) was captured by the Ottoman Empire. After Greece finally won its freedom from the Ottomans in 1830, a Greek kingdom was formed. At its core were Athens and a large peninsula west of Athens known as Peloponnesus. The dialects spoken in these areas became the basis for the spoken language, called demotic, used by Greeks today.

A Greek language called Katharevousa was a formal form of written Greek that emerged in the 1800’s. Until 1976, it was the official written language used in government and judiciary documents as well as in most newspapers and technical publications. It has now largely been replaced by written demotic.

December 25, 2017

In ancient Greek mythology, there were many powerful gods and goddesses, but none was mightier than Zeus, the king of the gods. From his throne on Mount Olympus, Zeus ruled over Earth and sky. Ancient Greeks believed that this supreme god was all knowing and all seeing. They viewed him as a protective father figure. People (and other gods) were careful not to anger Zeus. His rages could produce frightening thunderstorms, and he slayed his enemies with thunderbolts. In art, Zeus is often depicted as a bearded and majestic man holding a thunderbolt.

The statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece, was probably the most famous statue made by the ancient Greeks. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration by Birney Lettick

Zeus was the son of Cronus and Rhea, members of an earlier race of ruling gods called the Titans. Zeus and his siblings defeated the Titans. Zeus then took Cronus’s place on Mount Olympus. There, he headed a family of 12 major gods and goddesses called the Olympians. Zeus’s brothers were the gods Hades and Poseidon. The goddesses Demeter, Hera, and Hestia were Zeus’s sisters.

Zeus first married Metis, a goddess of intelligence. Zeus was told in a prophecy that Metis would give birth to a daughter as strong as her father and as wise as her mother. The prophecy also warned that if Metis gave birth to a second child, it would be a son who would rule over all gods and humans. Zeus feared being overthrown by Metis’s second child. When Metis became pregnant with their first child, Zeus swallowed Metis whole to escape the prophecy. He soon suffered a terrible headache, and he asked the blacksmith god Hephaestus to split his head open with an ax to ease the pain. Hephaestus obeyed the powerful god’s order. The moment Zeus’ skull cracked open, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, sprang out of his head fully grown and wearing a suit of armor. Athena became Zeus’s favorite child.

Zeus’ second wife was Hera, the goddess of marriage and childbirth. Ares, a powerful god of war, was born of this union. However, it was a stormy marriage full of jealousy and trickery. Zeus had many secret love affairs. In return, Hera harshly punished him. She killed his mistresses or transformed them into beasts. Sometimes, Zeus would transform his lovers into sacred animals to hide them from his wife’s wrath. In one story, Zeus was courting a band of nymphs. A nymph named Echo saw Hera angrily approaching. Echo distracted Hera with charming chatter while Zeus and the other nymphs made their escape. When Hera realized Echo’s trick, she was enraged. She cursed Echo never to be able to speak again, except to repeat the words of others.

Despite Hera’s jealous rages, Zeus fathered many children with other goddesses and mortal women. His children included the goddess Aphrodite; the gods Apollo, Dionysus, and Hermes; and the mortal heroes Perseus and Heracles (Hercules in Latin).

December 11, 2017

In Greek mythology, Theseus was a young adventurer who became king of Athens. In the most well-known story about Theseus, he slew the fearful Minotaur—a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull.

Theseus. Credit: © Shutterstock

Theseus was the son of Aegus, the king of Athens. According to legend, Athens had to send seven young men and seven young women to Crete each year in tribute to that island’s King Minos. Minos sent the Athenian youths to their deaths in the Labyrinth, a confusing maze that housed the Minotaur. One year, Theseus was among the young Athenians forced to go to Crete. As Theseus left home, Aegus told him to change the sails of his ship from black to white on his return voyage to indicate that he had survived.

In Crete, King Minos’s daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus. She gave him a ball of thread to unwind as he traveled through the Labyrinth so that he could follow it back out again. Theseus explored the Labyrinth and soon located the Minotaur, which he killed. He then led the other Athenians out of the maze, following the thread to freedom.

In his haste to return to Athens, Theseus forgot to change the sails of his ship from black to white. When Aegus saw black sails on Theseus’s ship, the king thought Thesius had died. In sorrow, Aegus killed himself in sorrow. Some accounts say he threw himself from a cliff into the sea, a body of water—the Aegean Sea—named for the unfortunate king. Theseus then became king of Athens.

December 4, 2017

The Sphinx «sfihngks» was a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human, falcon, or ram. The Sphinx is found in both ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology. In Egyptian myth, the Sphinx was more of a symbol than an individual entity. It was a guardian figure, the protector of the pyramids, and the scourge of the enemies of Re, the sun god. It also represented the pharaoh and the pharaoh’s divine power. Sometimes the face of a carved or painted sphinx was meant to resemble a particular pharaoh.

Sphinxes figure in stories of ancient people from Egypt, Greece, and the Middle East. The Great Sphinx, shown here, is a huge limestone statue created near Giza, Egypt, about 4,500 years ago. Credit: © Dreamstime

In Greek mythology, the Sphinx was a monster. Some accounts note that it had the body and tail of a lion, the face of a woman, and the wings of a bird. It was an offspring of Echidna and Typhon, who also bore such other monsters as the Hydra, the Chimera, the many-headed dog Orthus, and the nasty Gorgons.

In the story of Oedipus, the goddess Hera sent the Sphinx to plague the people of the ancient city of Thebes. This was punishment for an ancient crime, possibly the failure to atone for the crimes of a former king of Thebes. The Sphinx sat perched on a mountain cliff near the ancient city. The creature guarded Thebes with a riddle that she had learned from the Muses. Each time a traveler failed to solve her riddle, she devoured them, effectively preventing anyone from leaving or entering the city.

The riddle? “What being has four legs, then two, and then three?” Some accounts write it, “What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?” After many people guessed incorrectly and were killed, the king of Thebes announced that he would give the kingdom to anyone who could solve the riddle. The road past Mount Phicion, where the Sphinx awaited her victims, was strewn with the bones of people who had failed to find the right answer. Eventually, Oedipus, fleeing Corinth, solved the riddle. He answered, “Man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two legs, and finally needs a cane in old age.” Upon hearing the correct answer, the Sphinx jumped from the cliff to her death. The plague of Thebes was lifted.

October 23, 2017

Poseidon was the powerful god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses in ancient Greek mythology. The Romans identified him with their god Neptune. Poseidon was the son of Rhea and Cronus, members of an old race of gods called the Titans. The gods Zeus and Hades were his brothers. When the three brothers divided up the universe, Poseidon received the sea as his domain, Zeus the heavens, and Hades the underworld. All three brothers ruled Earth, but Zeus was in charge.

Statues of Poseidon usually include his trademark trident. Credit: © Shutterstock

In art, ancient Greeks depicted Poseidon as a large, strong man with wild hair. He drove a chariot drawn by two golden-maned horses, and his palace beneath the sea was made of gold. Poseidon himself wore golden clothing. He carried a three-pronged spear called a trident, with which he struck the ground to create earthquakes. He was a mighty god with a violent temper.

In one legend, Poseidon and Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, competed with each other for control over a city in the Greek peninsula of Attica. They stood upon a rocky hill called the Acropolis, ready to woo the Atticans and the judging gods with their powers. Poseidon struck the rocky floor of the Acropolis with his trident, and produced a salt spring there. Athena magically produced the first olive tree. The crowds and judges were impressed by Poseidon’s display, but it was Athena’s lovely and useful tree that won them over. The people named their city Athens in honor of their new patron goddess. At first, Poseidon was enraged and flooded Athens. However, the Athenians appeased the angry sea god by worshiping him and honoring the spring at the Acropolis as sacred.

Poseidon chose Amphitrite, a Nereid, as his wife. The Nereids were a race of immortal nymphs who kept watch over the sea. At first, Amphitrite rejected the sea god’s romantic advances. She fled to Atlas, the titan who bore the weight of the sky on his shoulders, asking him to protect her from the powerful god. However, Poseidon sent a dolphin to find her and retrieve her. She returned and the two were married. Poseidon turned the dolphin into the constellation Delphinus as thanks.

Poseidon and Amphitrite had two daughters, Rhode and Benthesicyme, and a son, the sea god Triton. Poseidon also had children from many love affairs. These offspring included the magical horses Pegasus and Arion, the giant Antaeus, and the cyclops (one-eyed giant) Polyphemus. In the epic poem the Odyssey, Poseidon hated the Greek hero Odysseus for blinding Polyphemus. In some myths, Poseidon was also the father of Theseus, a mortal hero and great king of Athens.

September 25, 2017

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superhorse! If you have ever stargazed in the Northern Hemisphere, you might have noticed Pegasus, a constellation resembling part of a horse. As commonly drawn, the constellation—named for Pegasus, the immortal winged horse of Greek mythology—appears to be galloping upside down across the heavens. Pegasus was among dozens of constellations cataloged by the ancient Greek mathematician Ptolemy about A.D. 150 in his great work Mathematike Syntaxis. Here on Earth, Pegasus the flying horse is one of the more interesting figures of mythological lore.

Statue of Pegasus. Credit: © Shutterstock

The Pegasus of mythology was the offspring of the Gorgon Medusa, a monstrous woman with snakes for hair, and Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea and earthquakes—and horses. The Gorgons were three sisters in Greek mythology whose ugliness could turn a viewer to stone. Pegasus was born when Perseus, a hero in Greek mythology, slew the pregnant Medusa by cutting off her head. Pegasus sprang fully grown from Medusa’s head—or from her neck or her blood or the soil fertilized by her blood, depending on the account. Pegasus was born along with a brother, Chrysaor, sometimes described as a giant and bearing a golden sword. Pegasus had a half-brother, Arion, who also was a magical horse and a son of Poseidon.

Mercury (a.k.a Hermes) rides Pegasus in the Jardin des Tuilieries Paris, France. Credit: © Zoran Karapancev, Shutterstock

The Greek legendary hero Bellerophon tamed Pegasus with help from the goddess Athena. One story tells that a prophet advised Bellerophon to sleep on Athena’s altar. There, Bellerophon dreamed that Athena gave him a golden bridle and ordered him to make a sacrifice to Poseidon. When he awoke, Bellerophon found a bridle on the altar. He sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and discovered Pegasus at a spring, waiting to be bridled.

Bellerophon and Pegasus had many adventures together. In one, the Lycian King Iobates sent Bellerophon to kill the Chimera, a fire-breathing monster that was part lion, part goat, and part serpent. Pegasus and Bellerophon flew over the Chimera, and Bellerophon slaughtered the monster with arrows. Pegasus also helped Bellerophon defeat the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women, and another tribe called the Solymoi. Bellerophon, a mortal human being, later tried to ride Pegasus up Mount Olympus, the home of the gods. Zeus, the ruler of the gods, became angry and sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus. The horse bucked, throwing Bellerophon down to Earth and crippling him. Pegasus then lived on Olympus, where he served Zeus by carrying the god’s thunderbolts.

Pegasus’s name may have come from the Greek word pêgê, meaning spring, and it is said that he created springs by striking the ground with a hoof. One of these springs, the Hippocrene spring on Mount Helicon, is associated with poetic inspiration. Some sources say that Zeus eventually turned Pegasus into the constellation that bears his name. If you would like to see the celestial superhorse for yourself, the constellation is best viewed in the northern sky from September through November.

September 18, 2017

The word horseman is simple enough: in common speech, it means a person who is skilled in riding or taking care of horses. The term may conjure strikingly different images, however, for readers of religious texts, popular fiction of yesteryear, or ancient myths. The Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation tells of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who represent hardships that humans must endure before the end of the world. The American author Washington Irving told of a ghostly headless horseman who so frightens the schoolteacher Ichabod Crane that Crane flees Sleepy Hollow forever. But an even older story—a legend of ancient Greek mythology—described perhaps an even stranger kind of horse-man: the quadrupedal centaur. (A quadruped is an animal with four feet.)

No back lawn is complete without a centaur statue. Credit: © Shutterstock

The centaurs were mythological half-man, half-horse creatures that lived in the mountainous Thessaly region of northern Greece. Most depictions of the centaurs show them with a human torso atop the body of a horse. The centaurs were not known for their good manners, and not just for wearing their shoes indoors and munching up all your sugar cubes. The centaurs—their powers of reason overwhelmed by animal instincts—highly valued strong drink, fighting with branches, and other boisterous passions. At the wedding feast of King Pirithous of the Lapiths (the peace-loving people of Thessaly) and his bride, Hippodameia, the centaurs became drunk and tried to kidnap the Lapith women. A great melee followed, and the Lapiths finally drove away the centaurs. Lapith grandmothers thus gained veto power over wedding guest lists for generations to come.

Not all centaurs were uncivilized brutes, however. Chiron, perhaps the most well-known centaur, was wise and just and famous for his skill in medicine. Chiron was also a valued educator who listed Ajax, Aeneas, Achilles, Jason, and Perseus among his pupils.

August 28, 2017

Odysseus was a famous king of Ithaca and a brave and cunning hero in Greek mythology. His name is Odysseus in Greek and Ulysses in Latin. Odysseus was especially noted for his cleverness. In early Greek writings, he also was generous and noble. Odysseus lived through some hard times, however, and his travails liven the pages of two of the greatest works of ancient literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

This ancient Greek painting shows the bearded Odysseus giving the armor of Achilles to Achilles’s warrior son Neoptolemus. Credit: Red-figure painting on a cup (about 490 B.C.) by Douris; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Interfoto Pressebildagentur/Alamy Images)

The Iliad and the Odyssey, both by the Greek poet Homer, describe events during and after the Trojan War, a conflict between Greece and the city of Troy. The Iliad tells of the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey recounts Odysseus’s adventures as he returns home after the war.

During his trip home to Ithaca—the ten-year journey described in the Odyssey—Odysseus and his shipmates endured many trials and tribulations as they sailed from island to island. Relying on the resourcefulness and cunning of Odysseus, they navigated troubles with such legendary mythological figures as the daydreaming lotus-eaters, the one-eyed Cyclopes, the cannibalistic Laestrygones, beguiling Circe, the enchanting Sirens, the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, and the sea nymph Calypso—all while dealing with the wrath of angry gods and stormy seas. There are many reasons why the Odyssey is such good reading!

Odysseus finally made it back to Ithaca, but he had been gone so long he was given up for dead. He found his long-suffering wife, Penelope, at the center of a competition for her hand in marriage. Furious, Odysseus entered the contest—a feat of strength and archery prowess—in disguise. Odysseus won the competition, revealed his identity, and slaughtered the other contestants. At long last reunited with his wife, an exhausted Odysseus resumed his rightful place on the throne of Ithaca.

August 14, 2017

Nymphs, in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, were minor goddesses or semidivine beings represented as lovely maidens. The word nymph comes from Greek and Latin words describing a young girl of marriageable age, or a young bride. In ancient stories, the nymphs inhabited and guarded the different realms of nature. For example, oreads watched over hills and mountains. Dryads and hamadryads took care of trees and forests. Nereids (daughters of the sea god Nereus) kept watch over the Mediterranean Sea, and the Oceanids (daughters of the Titan Oceanus) protected the oceans. Naiads were nymphs of brooks, rivers, and streams. Some nymphs were associated with a particular hill, tree, or other natural feature, to which their lives were linked. Nymphs lived for a long time but usually were not considered immortal.

Statues of dancing nymphs grace a fountain in the gardens of the Royal Palace of Caserta in southern Italy. Credit: © Antonio Gravante, Shutterstock

Nymphs often figured in stories about love, as the pursuer or the pursued. Some nymphs or groups of nymphs shied away from amorous affairs, but others were passionate—and sometimes vengeful—lovers. They became involved with both gods and humans. Nymphs often were represented as associating with satyrs and fauns, mischievous, playful, goatlike gods of the countryside and forest.

Metamorphoses, a collection of stories in verse by the ancient Roman poet Ovid, includes multiple tales of relentless lovers pursuing nymphs who transform to escape. The work’s title—Metapmorphoses—means transformations. In one story, the god Eros shot the god Apollo with an arrow that made him fall in love with the nymph Daphne. Eros shot Apollo in revenge for insulting his skill as an archer. He also shot Daphne with an arrow that made her flee Apollo. Daphne, pursued by Apollo, prayed for escape and was transformed into a laurel tree. Apollo made the laurel his sacred tree and wore a crown of laurel leaves on his head in her honor. In another tale, the god Pan tried to start an affair with the nymph Syrinx, but she ran away from him in terror and begged the gods to help her. The gods changed Syrinx into a bed of reeds, from which Pan made a musical instrument called a panpipe. He became famous for the beautiful music he played on the panpipe.

In some ancient tales, nymphs pursued young men and would not take “no” for an answer. Some nymphs were downright dangerous. In the story of the Argonauts, a group of heroes on a quest for the golden wool of a flying ram, the ship Argo stopped at a place called Mysia. There, the handsome young hero Hylas left the ship to find fresh water. Nymphs attracted by his beauty lured Hylas away and abducted him. In another story, a young Sicilian herdsman named Daphnis pledged his loyalty to a nymph. But a princess tricked Daphnis into becoming her own lover instead. The betrayed nymph then blinded or killed Daphnis in revenge. The Odyssey, a work by the Greek poet Homer, tells of the Sirens, sea nymphs whose sweet singing lured sailors to destruction on rocky shores. The hero Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin) put wax in his sailors’ ears so they could not hear the Sirens. Then Odysseus was tied to the mast so he could listen to the Sirens safely. The Argonauts also encountered the Sirens. They escaped because the hero Orpheus’s beautiful singing countered the Sirens’ song and saved his comrades. These and many other ancient stories describe the often perilous attraction of the nymphs.