** Greek Myths & Gods**

[Asalbanoo]

Penelope was the daughter of Icarius and a first cousin of Helen of Troy. She was the wife of Odysseus and was famous for her cleverness and for her faithfulness to her husband.
When Odysseus failed to return from the Trojan War (he was delayed for ten years on his way home), Penelope was beset by suitors who wanted her to remarry. In order to delay them, she insisted that she could not remarry until she had finished weaving a shroud for Odysseus' father, Laertes. She worked each day at her loom, and then unravelled the cloth each night. After three years of successful delay, one of her servants revealed her deception, and the impatient suitors angrily demanded that she choose one of them for her husband immediately. At the prompting of Athene, Penelope said that she would marry the man who could string Odysseus' bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes. By this time, Odysseus himself had secretly returned, disguised as a beggar; he passed the test of the bow, and then proceeded to slaughter the suitors who had tormented his wife.

[jossy]

Hi dear
I really intrest for your work, I looked for this subject (Greek God) about 2 years ago
(بی معنی ) because they are very intrest for me it is very beatifull that every work has a special god but this is very
but thank you again

Can you send tree of their life?

[Bob_]

Apollo, the young sun god, was more glorious than tongue can describe or than mortal eye can behold. As he drove his golden chariot through the sky he dazzled the whole earth with his splendor. Small wonder, then, that the nymph, Clytie, fell in love with him, Apollo cared nothing for Clytie and would take no notice of her, so that at last her great longing for him drove her almost to madness. She refused to play with her sister nymphs any more, ate nothing, and drank only dew. All night she stood gazing at the heavens, waiting for her lord to appear. All day she followed him with her eyes as he moved slowly from East to West. At last the gods took pity on her, and since she could not die, they changed her into the tall, thin sunflower, which turns its face towards the sun all day as he moves across the sky.

Though Apollo was unkind to Clytie, he too could fall in love. One day in the woods he caught sight of the nymph, Daphne, daughter of a river god, Daphne was fair and white, as river nymphs are, and had rippling dark-green hair. she loved to roam the forests hunting with bow and arrow , and she had vowed to live unmarried like the huntress, Artemis. She, therefore, felt no more love for the god than he had felt for Clytie. Instead she was afraid of him, and when he approached her, she turned and ran from him, her long hair streaming in the wind. More beautiful than ever was she as she ran, and Apollo sped after her, begging her to stop and listen to him, offering her his throne and his palace, telling her not to be afraid. The nearer he came, the more terrified Daphne felt as she raced down the slope towards her father's stream. She felt the radiant warmth of the god behind her, and his hand stretched out to catch her hair. She shrieked to her father to save her, and the river god made answer the only way he could. Suddenly her body dwindled, her arms shot up, and as Apollo seized her in his arms, he found himself grasping a bush of laurel with shining leaves the color of Daphne's dark-green hair. For a second he felt the frightened heart of the nymph beat beneath the bark enclosing it. Then it was still.

Apollo sorrowed deeply for the loss of his love, and in memory of her he always wore a wreath of laurel. Laurel decorated his lyre, and at his festival the prize for athletes and musicians was a laurel crown.

[Bob_]

ETERNAL YOUTH :

Eternal life and eternal youth are gifts men have always wanted, but to the Greeks these belonged to the gods alone, and very few mortals were ever granted them. There was and afterlife in Hades, but there men were poor, thin ghosts with bat-like, twittering voices and little power to enjoy or fell. Even Achilles, greatest of heroes, who lived in the land of the blessed dead among pleasant woods and meadows of daffodil, declared that he would rather be the meanest and most miserable slave on earth than the great prince of Hades that he was. Several stories are told of eternal youth and how hard it is to attain it. Among these are love stories of Artemis, the moon huntress, and Eos, whom we know better by her Latin name Aurora, goddess of the dawn.
In most legends Artemis is the shy huntress who chases the deer and the wild boar on the mountains with her silver bow. She loves the company of her nymphs alone and has sworn to keep away from man. One hunter, Actaeon, who spied on her as she was bathing, was even changed into a deer and run down by his own dogs as a punishment for his daring.
Yet there is a story that Artemis fell in love with Endymion, a shepherd who kept watch among the hills. Great was the love between the handsome, dark-eyed shepherd and the silver goddess who caressed him nightly with her beams. But since men grow sick and old while goddesses are forever young, Artemis could not possess Endymion always in the vigor of his youth. Therefore while he was still young, she sent upon him an enchanted sleep in which he might lie eternally, unheeding the lapse of time. In the shelter of a little cave on a high mountain side, on a couch of leaves and grass lies Endymion, sleeping forever, still rosy and youthful as in life. Month by month when the silver light of the full moon steals quietly in and caresses him, he smiles in his dream, and the moon goddess smiles at him and then passes silently on.
The love of Aurora for Tithonus was more tragic than this. Tithonus was a prince of Troy and marvelously handsome, so that the golden Dawn carried him away to her palace in the East, there to live with her in joy forever . She even went up to Olympus to ask Zeus for the gift of immortality for her love, but though Zeus consented to her prayer, she forgot to ask also for the gift of eternal youth.
For a while the lovers lived in joy in the many colored house of Aurora, which stood by the ocean shore at the farthest edge of the world. At last, however, the hair of Tithonus grew grey, then white; his face became furrowed and his limbs bowed. For a long time he goddess tended him carefully, though more like a daughter than a wife. Finally the wits of the poor, toothless old man began to fail him, and his trembling legs would no longer support his frame, then the goddess lifted him gently up, laid him on a great bed in an inner room, and quietly closed the brazen doors.
There, one story says, he lies for ever, each year a little weaker and more shrunken, babbling foolishly in a high quaver to himself. Some say, however, that he was changed into the grasshopper and that the little creature with the high, shrill voice and lean, shrunken limbs is all that is left of Tithonus, who was once beautiful and lived with the gods.