Garner's Greek Mythology

The Judgment of Paris, a beauty contest between Greek goddesses, forms the lead-up to the Trojan War, with Hera, Athene and Aphrodite, and the episode re-introduces Eris, a nasty purveyor of war and destruction.

Odysseus, hero of the Odyssey and survivor of the Trojan War, navigates treacherous waters and deities on his ten-year journey home, meeting Circe, the Sirens, and the sea monsters that slow his passage.

On the island of Aeaea, the goddess Circe turned sailors who stumbled onto her beaches into wolves, wolves into swine, and swine into snakes, and her lasting fame grew when Odysseus, delayed after the Trojan war, became her lover.

Six cursed generations known as the House of Atreus span 800 miles from Troy to Athens in a classic Greek tragedy that begins with Zeus and unfolds into murder, deceit, incest, matricide and suicide.

Helen of Troy, the woman whose face launched a thousand ships, became a pawn of the gods in the Trojan War, and the effort to rescue her united the Greek city-states, though at least three versions of her story exist.

After almost 60 episodes on the golden years of ancient Greece and the end of worship of the gods, Patrick Garner goes back to the so-called Dark Ages of Greece, when the gods first revealed themselves to humans.

Patrick Garner follows Alexander's ten-year military career, the campaign that earned him the moniker Alexander the Great, under the banner that nothing ensures success like divine intervention, and that matters can go badly once it ends.

When Greece became part of the Roman empire in 146 BC, the still-dominant Olympic gods had already begun a willful retreat from the lives of mankind that this episode tracks.

Zeus, the greatest Olympic god, is revealed through many stories touching Danae, Perseus, Demeter, Hera, Io, Persephone, Athena, Sisyphus, Herakles, Prometheus and Pandora, each never quite the same after.

Hosts Ari and Foti of Greek AF Radio interview Patrick Garner about his creative background, his novels and the inspiration behind this mythology podcast, on a platform describing itself as the world's largest for everything Greek.

Athene, the so-called rational goddess of war, was complex and riddled with contradictions, and the episode also meets the ambitious Arachne, the craftsman Hephaistos, the wily Odysseus, the prophetess Kassandra and the blind prophet Teiresias.

Four little-known tales in one episode focus on the relationship between gods and men, and one may reveal the origin of werewolves, with Zeus, Demeter, Artemis and Hermes all making an appearance.

Artemis, protector of girls, women and nursing creatures, was a skilled hunter riddled with contradictions like Athene, renamed Diane by the Romans, associated with Hekate, patron saint of witches, and known for tracking stags and boars and founding sacred groves.

Gaia, the divinity behind the Greek creation story, goes back four to five billion years as the being who began time and created the conditions for life, and who can kill gods at her whim.

A visit by Zeus and Hermes to an old couple's home in ancient Greece sparked philoxenia, the Greek tradition of hospitality to strangers; inhospitality could bring divine punishment, and violating that tradition led to the Trojan war.

Thebes, soaked in blood among the Greek city-states, saw the hero Heracles kill his wife and children, the god Dionysus punish its king, and Oedipus meet his grim fate, before Alexander the Great ended the city in 335 BC.

Apollo, god of prophecy and healing, founded the temple at Delphi where the Pythia issued warnings for more than 1200 years, and though a god of contradictions like his sister Artemis, was honored by the Greeks and by Roman emperors.

Marcus Aurelius kept a private diary during his military campaigns against the empire's invaders, and a new translation of that text now prominently features the Greek gods, Patrick Garner notes.

Greek pottery carries unexpected themes about how gods and heroes are depicted, including the strange effigies of the god Hermes, presented here unlike any Hermes met before.

Persephone, queen of the Underworld, became the wisest of the divinities and on rare occasions invited humans into that dark place, including a visit recounted here with Parmenides, the pre-Socratic philosopher who influenced modern thought.

Oedipus, a tragic figure bested by the Fates despite his best efforts, meets the divine sphinx who terrified Thebes with impossible riddles; although he prevails, he cannot escape his dismal destiny.

Dionysos, the wine-god the Romans called Bacchus, was alternately celebrated and feared as the exotic god of ecstasy and dance, and his marriage to the princess Ariadne was celebrated in Greece like Romeo and Juliet in Italy 3,000 years later.

Persephone alone ruled the ancient underworld after Hades dragged her there, and among the gods she became the treasury of dark knowledge that today's Wiccans, neopagans and witches still look to as a touchstone into mysteries.

2,500 years ago Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, was the most sacred island in Greece and also the region's largest slave market, where traders grew rich on slaves taken by pirates until that wealth became the island's ruin.

Violence was everywhere for the ancient Greeks: men constantly warring, gods randomly exerting their power, Olympic gods fighting each other, war waged to replenish slaves, and mortals punished for thinking too highly of themselves.

Nymphs, semi-divine young girls who protected every waterway, spring and sacred grove, could live for centuries across Greece, Sicily, Crete and the Cycladic islands of the Aegean, some remaining virgins and others becoming lovers to the Olympic gods, including Zeus.

The Eleusinian Mysteries, a gift to mortals from the goddess Demeter, promised a pleasant afterlife and were held in Eleusis for more than a thousand years under vows of secrecy backed by death sentences.

Hephaistos, known to the Romans as Vulcan but to the ancient Greeks as the fire-god, turned his disability into a genius that wowed gods and men, his workshops full of robots called automatons, while Zeus called on him for thunderbolts.

Aphrodite, whom the Greeks knew as the eternal Goddess of Love though others picture her as Venus, devoted herself to the arts of love, and of all the gods and goddesses remains the most engaged in the modern world.

Poseidon and Hades, Zeus' brothers, ruled the sea and the underworld: Poseidon, known to the Romans as Neptune, created the horse and struck earth and seas with his trident, while Hades judged the dead at the river Styx.

Orpheus, Apollo's son, was famed for extraordinary music and poetry yet unable to find love until he met the nymph Eurydice; when she died, he descended to Hades' underworld to bring her back, and there he succeeded, and failed.

A hiker stumbles on a strange scene that may involve Athene, Artemis or Aphrodite, meets the same woman in a coffee shop, and again witnesses what seems a re-creation of worship and sacrifice from thousands of years ago.

Medea, daughter of the sun god Helios and perhaps the most powerful woman in Greece, was the sorceress wife of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, and mastermind behind his heroic acts, until he betrayed her and Medea sought revenge.

Hermes, the winged-foot god of fertility and patron of thieves and dreams, shares the episode with Hera, queen of the heavens and vindictive wife of Zeus, and Hestia, goddess of home and hearth who chose to be nobody's wife.

The Pythia, perhaps Greece's most astonishing figure, served as Apollo's voice of prophecy at Delphi, and for more than 1,000 years is never recorded as making a wrong prediction, advising generals, politicians and tyrants.

Patrick Garner asks what happened to the Greeks after death and what other people believed around 500 BC, comparing the afterworld of Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Buddhists and Chinese.

Patrick Garner conjures the goddess Artemis through an old Ouija board, and over many hours she remembers Athena, Poseidon, Hecate and her brother Apollo, largely narrated by a new voice named Lily.

In the politics of Athens' new democracy, the goddess Peitho reigned as the unheralded power of persuasion, her influence brought down the philosopher Socrates, and her favorites became powerful, silver-tongued orators.

The god Dionysus returns to his mother's home in Thebes seeking revenge, converts the city's women and girls into Bacchae, followers of Bacchus, and is arrested by the young King Pentheus before events go downhill.

The Amazons, sired by the war god Ares and almost unstoppable as fighting machines, confronted Greece's greatest heroes and over almost a thousand years opposed Heracles, Theseus, Achilles, and even partied with Alexander the Great.

Before Medusa was the monster whose glance could turn men to stone, she was a beautiful temple attendant seduced and punished; Zeus later fathers the Greek hero Perseus, who kills Medusa and becomes one of Greece's most famous heroes.

Demeter, goddess of agriculture, gives bountiful harvests and all rejoice, and when her kidnapped daughter is returned, the grateful goddess gives the Greeks the promise of a happy afterlife.

The Goddess Tyche, largely forgotten today, was believed 2,500 years ago to determine the day-to-day fortunes of every Greek, dishing out fortune, chance and luck to sailors tossed by storms and to those who stumbled on hidden treasure.

The old gods come to the suburbs of Pennsylvania, as the three Fates, Artemis, Athene, Aphrodite and the goddess Nyx appear to thwart scientists on the verge of discovering immortality, ending in conflagration and rebirth.

Among the crude, half-horse Centaurs the ancient Greeks imagined, the wise centaur Kheiron taught Asklepios, Peleus, Jason and Achilles, befriended the hero Heracles, and though immortal chose death after a poisoned arrow wound became too agonizing to bear.

The Muses, nine goddesses and daughters of Zeus, lit the fire behind every masterpiece 3,000 years ago and inspired artists and scientists alike; Pythagoras, the father of mathematics, credited them with many of his innovations.

The mighty Spartans dominated the Greek world in war, their society founded by a man named Lycurgus, or perhaps by Apollo, or from a bloodline running from the sons of Heracles, across a mere 300 years of glory.

This episode asks what happened to the revered Greek gods, treated by historians as myths, and follows Gaia, Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hestia, Hermes, Hades, Hera, Hephaistos and Dionysus as they retreat during the collapse of the Roman empire.

Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, carved a statue of a beautiful woman and prayed to Aphrodite for a woman as beautiful, but instead the goddess breathed life into the statue itself, which stepped off its base and into his arms.

Asklepios, a demi-god and son of Apollo, preceded Hippocrates as a healer by 800 years and specialized in cures that reset a patient's age, akin to today's anti-aging breakthroughs typified by Harvard's David Sinclair.

Ancient war formed the Greek notion of the ideal hero: young men expected to die valiantly, generals who more frequently than not led the charge, and potters, farmers and philosophers expected to fight at a moment's notice.

Zeus shared the sky with the sun god Helios and the moon goddess Selene until a greater force bested these sky gods: science, a new way to explain the world without divine powers and personalities that continues to this day.

The Fates and the Furies were daughters of Nyx and granddaughters of Chaos; the Fates presided at every birth, and the Furies enforced natural laws, avenged unforgivable crimes, and are said to have drunk their victims' blood.

Hekate, patron of today's witches and close friend to both Hades and the huntress Artemis, slipped easily between the living and the dead, while the remorseless war god Ares drove men into the darkness of death.

In 1976 psychologist Julian Jaynes published a book arguing that before modern consciousness humans heard voices they took for gods, a shift dated to around 1200 BC, after which the Delphic Oracle stayed relevant by channeling Apollo.

Priestesses were among the most exalted and powerful mortal women in Greece, serving goddesses and in some cases gods, conducting sacrifices, leading festivals throughout the year, and acting as intermediaries connecting ancient Greek women to the divine.

Pythagoras, a 6th century BC genius avowedly the son of Apollo, is remembered as the father of mathematics and the mystic founder of a revolutionary society where men and women were equals under his strange rules of behavior and diet.

This episode asks whether the Greek gods, said by scholars to be myths, simply walked away after tiring of the affairs and squabbling on Mt. Olympus, since as immortals they could go anywhere and be anything.

Satyrs, a combination of four or five animals including humans, live by the motto Drink, dance and be merry, collide with a one-eyed cyclopes, encounter Greece's wily warrior Odysseus, and are considered worthless by the ancient writer Hesiod.