Classical Mythology/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Every myth comes in at least two or three variants, and that is just the ones handed down to the present! Of note are:
  • One of Ares' Hymns described him as kind of a Proud Warrior Guy while the other described him as more of the Blood Knight that people are more familiar with.
  • Either Persephone was tricked into eating pomegranate seeds so that she'd have to split her time, or she chose to eat them so she could stay with Hades and just claimed she was tricked in order to get My Beloved Smother off her back. Some versions of the story even indicate that Persephone was equally attracted to Hades (mostly because of his power) and knew what she was doing when she plucked the flower that brought on her abduction
  • Plato think Orpheus is a coward who mocked the gods by trying to go to Hades and get his lover back alive, instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he loved.
  • Loads and loads for Odysseus. Is he one of the most cunning and admirable heroes because he was faithful to his men, loyal towards his wife (relatively) and ultimately hated warfare, and was a Badass Guile Hero on top of it? Or is he a slimy, low-life coward for exactly those same traits, making him a womanly wimp who would never win in a square fight?
  • If you see the Titans as good and the Olympians as evil this guy must be the angel Gabriel analogue then.
  • Some believe Achilles and Patroclus to have been not just best friends but lovers, which may add another dimension to Achilles' behavior after Patroclus' death. Since nearly Everyone Is Bi it is very much likely to have been the case.
  • Athene did not punish Medusa. She turned her to a monster to exact revenge on all men.
  • Hera is almost always seen as the enemy of Heracles. However, there were other interpretations in which they have more of a positive relationship with each other. (After all, Hera was the patron deity of where Heracles lived)
• Complete Monster:
  • Ares was considered this by the Athenians. On the other hand, the Spartans loved him. Granted, the Spartans weren't exactly saints, themselves.
  • Tantalus served his own son to the gods for dinner. And then there's Sisyphus with a list of crimes as long as your arm.
• Counterpart Comparison: There are plenty of people that mistake Hades as the God of Death instead of the Dead (Death was Thanatos' and the Keres' position).
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Hades, who contrary to modern adaptations was the stoic and gloomy but non-evil ruler of the dead who had no designs (that we're aware of) on his brother's throne. He was actually one of the less selfish or petty gods.
  • Helps he pretty much got the raw end of the deal, he's overworked (thanks to all the Greek heroes and gods), no one likes him, and the prime reason why he kidnapped his wife Persephone was out of loneliness. At least the marriage worked out.
    • Ancient Greece considered marriage to be an abduction of a woman from her family. So in truth, back then, Hades wouldn't have been considered to be kidnapping Persephone, merely marrying her.
  • And then there's the fact that Hades could and did occasionally bend the rules for mortals, such as with Orpheus and Eurydice. And when he did screw around with mortals, he was actually justified in doing so -- Theseus and Peirithous tried to kidnap Persephone, Sisyphus (see above) tried to cheat death, and Zeus blasted Asclepius because Hades complained that Asclepius's efforts were cheating him of new subjects for his kingdom. In general, if you didn't bother Hades, he wouldn't bother you.
    • According to some versions of the story, Hades had no problem with a kickass healer like Asclepius until he started going from curing the deathly ill and mortally wounded to actually raising the dead. From his perspective, medicine is fine, but stealing Hades's subjects without his express permission is a Bad Idea.
  • Not to mention, one thing that's not commonly mentioned (Except in Rick Riordan's works or the city-building game Zeus) is that Hades was lord of the dead and the underworld, but also the lord of everything in the earth, including mineral wealth. (His roman name even comes from the word meaning wealth) Death itself was actually Thanatos, one of his servants.
• Designated Hero: Whether you were a hero in Greek myth was not dependent on how Jerkass you were, how many babies you killed, or whatever.
• Designated Villain: Medusa. After being turned ugly by the jealous Athena for having sex for Poseidon, all she wanted was to be with her sisters in isolation. But, people had to come and give a reason for Perseus to kill her.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Among modern fans of Greek myths, Hades is generally accepted as one of the nicer gods of the pantheon.
  • Endovelicus is the only Lusitanian god still remembered by the Portuguese people, and also very popular as a recipient of worship in the Western Roman Empire.
• Fandom Rivalry: Different Greek city-states (poleis) chose different gods as especially important and different heroes to claim as their own. Also, every city had to have at least one mythical founder, preferably a demigod or god, whose name frequently tied in with the city's name. This of course led to quite a few conflicting myths which basically showed that "our town's deity or our local hero can beat their deity or hero" or "this great hero really is our local boy, not theirs". For instance, Thebes and Argos quarreled over Herakles; unfortunately we only know the Theban version (partly because the Thebans were on better terms with the Athenians), but quite possibly the villainous role played by Hera is due to the fact that the Argeians were great worshippers of Hera.
• Fridge Horror: The story of King Midas plays on this trope: "OK, yippee, everything you touch turns to gold. Now go try to eat your dinner. Or hug your daughter."
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Ares doesn't get much respect for his savage nature. As Mars, the Romans and Spartans thought he was hardcore. Though that may be a little bit of Crazy Prepared. A city at war as often as Rome might prefer to have his favor after all. And after all one could argue that Mars was grateful to Rome.
  • For that matter, the Spartans loved Ares and considered him their patron. We get stories of him as The Scrappy because the vast majority of Greek myth we have comes from the Athenians, and he was the rival of their patron.
• Hell Is That Noise: Pan loved to scare the shit out of lonely travelers by hiding nearby and letting out a bloodcurdling scream. Ever wonder where we get the word "panic?" Now you know. This, combined with his enormous penis and insatiable sex drive, makes Pan a god you never want to mess with.
• Ho Yay: Achilles and Patroclus, and a whole lot more in general.
  • Like Apollo and Hyacinth(us), Heracles and Hylas, Zeus and Ganymede.
• Jerkass: Umm...have you been reading this page? Gods and men alike tend to fall in here.
• Magnificent Bastard: Odysseus. His possible father, Sisyphus as well.
  • The Romans were ambivalent about him because on one hand he was responsible for the fall of Troy and they claimed to be descended from the Trojans; on the other hand they also believed they were descended from Ulysses through his grandsons Latinus (son of Telemachus and Circe) and Italus (son of Telegonos and Penelope).
• Memetic Badass: Every Greek hero either became this or sought to become this. Who would win in a fight between Achilles and Leonidas, again?
• Memetic Molester/Memetic Sex God: Zeus. There's a reason he's the page image for Double Standard Rape (Divine on Mortal). Notably, though, most depictions of him leave out such things as Ganymede...even if those works which depict him without his bisexuality will happily show female-on-female action.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Hubris. That was the cardinal sin; you could do just about anything else (yes, even rape and murder with a good enough excuse) and come out a hero.
  • The big three were Hubris (See above), impiety, and violation of xenias. Hubris and xenias were often a part of impiety; people indulging in hubris often didn't limit themselves and put down on the gods, which tended to get negative attention. And xenias was the domain of Zeus himself, making repeated, willful violations of hospitality as good as direct affronts to the authority of the Lord of Olympus. Honoring xenias honored Zeus, trampling the tenants of hospitality was an insult to him.
• Running the Asylum: There was no single specific canon in Greek times or even Roman, and though every poet claimed the Muses for inspiration, they nonetheless didn't always listen to each other's continuity, and each city had its own preferred traditions (the Athenians bashed on Ares, the Spartans loved him).
• The Scrappy: The Spartans and the Romans were both much more fond of Ares (or his local Expy) then the Greeks were (the Greeks tended to favor the strategic war goddess Athena over Ares). On the other other hand, modern media seems to be learning enough from Sadly Mythtaken portrayals to have Ares as the God of Evil rather than Hades. Properly speaking, if you're looking for a Greek god of evil you won't find one: however; there are Kakia (vice), Hubris (see above), Dyssebia (impiety), Dysnomia (anarchy or political corruption, the correct interpretation is not known), Koros (greed and a rare male example of good or evil), Ate (foolishness) and others.
  • To the ancient Greeks themselves, Hades was The Scrappy. Thanks to Values Dissonance, however, he's (usually) the nicest Greek God nowadays. Hell, even one of his Sadly Mythtaken |portrayals is an Ensemble Darkhorse!
• Squick: Best example: How Kronos castrated his father Uranos. Think about it (if you dare): At first, Uranos made sure that Gaia's children never were born, by constantly having sex with her, so their way out was...blocked. So Gaia gave unborn Kronos a weapon (How?? The mind boggles...), and Kronos did the deed while Uranos was doing the other deed.
  • Poseidon's various escapades in stallion guise with the mares of Greece, fathering many of the supernatural horses populating the mythic world (Including Pegasus, via his rape of Medusa, although he was probably in human form this time). Of course, once again he's got nothing on his younger brother Zeus.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The ancient Greeks never intended for Ares, Hades, or Hephaestus to be sympathetic - they never even really liked them. Although it was more justifiable in Ares' case, Hades was hated by the Greeks because they feared death, and Hephaestus was loathed because he was an ugly cripple. Th modern audiences, however, Hades and Hephaestus are often viewed as the nicest of the Greek Gods, while the gods the Greeks adored, such as Zeus, Hera, and Aphrodite, often come across as Jerkass Gods at best. Ares, on the other hand, was adored by the Spartans, and the Romans conflated him with Mars - he got a Mythological Hero Upgrade.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The cause of Achilles's sulk was a much bigger deal in his milieu.
  • Also, the way nearly everybody treated women, the way kings sometimes treated their subjects, and the way hospitality was taken so extremely seriously.
  • Some would notice that Achilles' sulk is also an example of a lack of a soldierly sense of duty to his comrades.
  • Hades' kidnapping of Persephone, as mentioned earlier, was considered a Greek wedding. By today's standards, it would be kidnapping, but an appropriate modern interpretation of the events would be Hades and Persephone eloping behind Demeter's back. And that's not even getting into whether you prefer Persephone as the sweet little innocent who gets kidnapped or the smothered teen who intentionally seduced Hades.
    • Hell, everything about Hades qualifies. Even though he was one of the only two gods who could be remotely considered decent people by modern morals (the other being Hephaestus - and he was hated by the Greeks simply because he was ugly), the Greeks hated him even more than Hollywood does! Why? Because, well...he was the God of Death, and nobody wants to die. They'd avoid saying his name and look away when making sacrifices - temples to Hades weren't even named because venerating death was seen as a bad thing. Nowadays, though, he's viewed as being a relative Nice Guy in a world full of Jerkass Gods - unless you're reading Wonder Woman or watching |Hercules, where he's the God of Evil.
• What an Idiot!:
  • There were occasions where, given the circumstances, mortals did things so thoroughly stupid and/or pig-headed that the gods' typical Disproportionate Retribution was hard to bat an eye at. For example, the crew of the Odyssey (save Odysseus himself) perished under Poseidon's wrath after killing and eating the sacred cattle of Hyperion Helios. Which the blind seer Tiresias had specifically warned them not to do. On top of that, they had already made Poseidon mad beforehand.
  • Also, Theseus and Pirithous' plan to abduct Persephone from the Underworld was widely recognised as absolutely hare-brained. Hades got pissed, tied them both up in chains of forgetfulness, and only agreed to let Theseus go when Hercules arrived to rescue them.
    • Depends on the text. Some claim Theseus knew it was a bad idea. But he was bound by oath and couldn't refuse Pirithous.
  • Laomedon, Priam's father and a king of Troy, had Apollo and Poseidon working for him as part of their punishment for ticking off Zeus in some way. So he had Apollo watch his herds and Poseidon build a wall. And then he tried to welsh on paying them. Apollo sent a plague that killed thousands of people, and Poseidon sent a sea monster to eat one of Laomedon's daughters, but Laomedon managed to talk Heracles into killing the beast. And then tried to welsh on paying him. So Heracles and his comrades sacked Troy.
  • Ixion. Dear Gods, Ixion.
  • As well as all those mortals, Cronus, leader of the Titans, counts too. After defeating Uranus to free the Gigantes, Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, you'd think he would try to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Instead, he goes and reimprisons them with no well-recorded reason, pissing off Gaia all over again and inciting her to raise Zeus to overthrow Cronus.
• The Woobie:
  • Both Hades and Hephaestus. One is the lonely (until he got his wife), overworked, generally disliked and often-misunderstood god of the Underworld. The other is the equally-disliked, equally-overworked, crippled, undeniably brilliant smith-god with a hot wife who's screwing everyone but him.
    • They weren't considered Woobies by the Greeks, though - they hated and feared Hades enough to try and not even worship him, while Hephaestus was hated simply because he was plug-ugly.
  • Io got a crappy deal too. After being desired by Zeus, she had to be turned into a cow to hide from Hera's wrath. And Hera still found her and had her tethered and guarded by the hundred-eyed watchman Argus. And even after Hermes beheaded Argus and saved Io, Hera sent a gadfly to chase her out of Greece and into Egypt. Only then did Io find peace as a priestess of Isis.
  • Tiresias became blind after accidentally coming across Athena in the nude. And the sisters Medusa, Euryale and Stheno got turned into Gorgons after Medusa was raped (in some versions of the myth, in others it was consensual) by Poseidon in Athena's temple - and of course we all know Medusa's final fate at the hands of Perseus, with Athena's help
  • There is no version of Tiresias that was not put upon by the world. Once a priest of Zeus, he's said to have been turned to a woman for interrupting snakes mating. She then spent several years as either a priestess of Hera, a prostitute, or both. She is later turned back to a male by leaving another set of snakes alone, but this gets the attentions of an arguing Zeus and Hera. They're having an argument about who enjoys sex more: Zeus says women get more pleasure out of it, and Hera says the man gets more pleasure. They ask Tiresias (Who clearly has experience on both ends), and he lets out the secret that a woman's climax is ten times better than a man's climax. Hera strikes him blind. Zeus can't undo the blindness, instead giving him prophesy to make up for it. Which makes Tiresias miserable, because peoples like Oedipus waste his time by demanding his help and then ignoring his advice.
  • The original cyclopes. Their father locked them in Tartarus since birth. Their older brother Cronus doesn't bother to free them after his rebellion. When Zeus frees them, they return his favor by forging weapons for the gods and finally live peacefully working as Hephaestus's helpers. That's until Zeus kills Asclepius and a vengeful Apollo doesn't have the guts to turn against his father, so he kills the group of cyclopes who forged Zeus's lightning bolt instead.

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