An oracle had told King Acrisius of Argos that he would be killed by his future grandson. Upon hearing this, he locked away his only daughter, Danaë, to keep her from coming into contact with men. But Zeus, the father of the gods, desired the beautiful princess and entered her prison after taking the form of a shower of gold. He became one with her, and they conceived the demigod Perseus.

When Acrisius learned of Perseus’ birth, he feared the prophecy would come true and therefore cast his daughter and grandson out to sea in a wooden chest. The fisherman Dictys found the chest on the coast of the island of Serifos and took the pair in.
On Serifos, Perseus grew up into a strong young man. One day he was sent by Polydectes, the island’s wicked king, on a dangerous mission: Perseus was to bring Polydectes the head of the demon Medusa.

Perseus was able to rely on help from his patron goddess, Athena, and from Hermes, the messenger of the gods. First they took him to see the Graeae (three sisters who had been old women from birth), whom Perseus tricked into telling him the whereabouts of the nymphs. He needed the nymphs to give him some special equipment without which he would not be able to defeat the terrible Medusa. The nymphs lent him winged sandals, a magical bag and the Cap of Hades, which rendered him invisible. Hermes also gave Perseus a sickle-shaped sword. Athena gave him a brightly polished shield.

Perseus, now well equipped, flew in his winged sandals to the western edge of the world. This was where Medusa lived with her two sisters, Stheno and Euryale, on the banks of the River Oceanus. Their gaze could turn people and animals to stone. Perseus found the three Gorgons asleep. He crept up on them. Athena guided his hand as he cut off Medusa’s head, taking care to look at her only in the mirror of his polished shield. When the other demons awoke, he put on his Cap of Invisibility and fled.

On his way home, Perseus flew over the coast of Aethiopia. There he found the beautiful princess Andromeda chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Perseus bravely fought the monster, killed it, freed Andromeda and married her.

Back on Serifos, Perseus used Medusa’s head to turn Polydectes to stone and installed his foster father, Dictys, as the new king. Then he returned to Argos to visit his grandfather, Acrisius. However, fearful of the prophecy which had led him to cast Perseus out to sea, Acrisius fled to the city of Larissa. But you cannot outrun a prophecy. One day a big athletic contest was held in Larissa, and Perseus took part. Among the spectators was his grandfather, whom Perseus accidentally struck in the head with a discus, fatally wounding him.

After accidentally killing his grandfather, Perseus was loath to inherit his throne and become king of Argos. So he swapped thrones with the king of the neighbouring cities of Tiryns and Mycenae. He lived there happily as king with Andromeda and their children for the rest of his days. After his death, his father Zeus placed him in the sky as a constellation. Perseus still lights up the night sky: in Switzerland his constellation is visible from mid-July to mid-August.

Atalanta’s father had not wanted a daughter, so shortly after her birth he abandoned her in a forest. Fortunately, little Atalanta was found by a she-bear who suckled her with her milk. Later, hunters took the girl in and raised her to adulthood. She became an excellent archer and the fastest runner in the world. She lived in the forest free from societal constraints and worshipped Artemis, the goddess of hunting. She loved her freedom so much that she vowed never to marry.

Atalanta held her own in a male-dominated world. She was powerful, tough and determined. She competed – and won – against men even in wrestling matches.
She was the only female member of the Argonauts, a team of heroes with whom she travelled to Colchis on the east coast of the Black Sea in search of the Golden Fleece.
After she returned, her excellent hunting skills were needed in Calydon, as Artemis had sent a monstrous boar to the region to punish King Oeneus of Calydon for failing to make a sacrifice to her.

When the rampaging boar began laying waste to the region, Prince Meleager gathered together a group of the best heroes to hunt and kill the beast. Atalanta was the only woman among them.
No sooner had the hunting party tracked down the boar in the forest of Calydon than the men threw their spears at it and missed. Some heroes were killed; others fled. But Atalanta remained calm and focused. She struck the boar with her arrow, enabling Meleager to slay the wounded animal.

Meleager gave the boar’s hide to Atalanta as a hunting trophy in recognition of her excellent shot. But this gesture of deference towards a woman made most of the heroes very angry, and Meleager’s uncles were particularly outraged. A fight broke out in which Meleager killed two of his uncles. When Meleager’s mother learned of her brothers’ deaths, she was so angry that she caused Meleager to die too.

Atalanta’s valiant deeds had made her a heroine. Now her father finally started to warm towards his extraordinary daughter, and decided she ought to get married. Atalanta reluctantly agreed, but on one condition: she would only marry the man who could beat her in a race. She thought that this way she could hold onto her freedom. After all, there was no man in the world who could outrun her. Many men stepped up to race against Atalanta – but when they lost, their prize was death.

Melanion, a young local man, had fallen in love with Atalanta and wanted to try his luck. He was helped by Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who gave him three golden apples. Once the starting signal had sounded, Melanion followed Aphrodite’s advice and dropped the apples one by one during the race. Dazzled by the shining gold, Atalanta slowed down each time to pick up the apples. This allowed Melanion to win the race, and Atalanta became his wife.

Atalanta and Melanion’s marriage was a passionate one. One day they were overcome with lust inside a temple and ended up having sex at that sacred site. As a punishment for this act of sacrilege, the pair were turned into lions. And so, following her forced marriage, Atalanta ultimately returned to the wilderness as a lioness.

When Zeus, king of the gods, decided he wanted to father an illustrious child, he looked about for a suitable mother. His choice fell on the beautiful mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus took the form of Alcmene’s husband, Amphytrion, and slept with her. This led to the conception of the demigod Heracles. Thus Heracles had made a powerful enemy before he was even born: Hera, Zeus’ wife, was furious about her husband’s infidelity and intent on revenge. When Heracles was eight months old, she placed two snakes in his crib, which were supposed to kill him. But Heracles, who had superhuman strength even as a baby, strangled the snakes with his bare hands.

Heracles grew up in Thebes in Greece with his mother and his stepfather, Amphitryon. He was trained in charioteering, archery, wrestling and armed combat. Even as a young man his divine parentage was evident: he was tall and strong, but also hot-tempered and quick to anger. When his music teacher, Linus, reprimanded him for not practising enough, Heracles killed him. As punishment, Amphitryon sent Heracles to live in the countryside and tend cattle. There he grew up among shepherds.

Later Heracles married Megara, the daughter of King Creon of Thebes. They lived happily together in Thebes with their sons for several years. But Hera still harboured a fierce hatred of Heracles. She induced a fit of madness in him, causing him to kill his sons in a blind rage. When he returned to his senses, he asked the Oracle of Delphi what he should do. She told him he should go to Tiryns and serve its king, Eurystheus, for twelve years. After that he would become immortal.

King Eurystheus gave Heracles dangerous labours to perform during his twelve years in his service. For his first labour, he had to slay the Nemean Lion, whose invincible skin he wore from then on: it became his trademark. He completed the other eleven labours without complaint as well. The last one was particularly difficult: Heracles had to fetch the three-headed hellhound Cerberus out of the Underworld.

Heracles had countless other adventures and faced many more challenges. He freed Prometheus from his torture in the Caucasus Mountains, fought giants and robbers, served Queen Omphale as a slave for three years, and joined the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. He led the Olympian gods and goddesses to victory in the battle against the giants.

Eventually Heracles married his second wife, the Calydonian princess Deianira.
One day, when the centaur Nessus tried to abduct his beautiful wife, Heracles killed him with a poisoned arrow. Out of revenge, the dying Nessus led Deianira to believe that his poisoned blood was a love charm. He told her to collect some of his blood and use it on Heracles if she ever doubted his love for her.

Following his conquest of the city of Oechalia, Heracles became a little too interested in his prisoner of war Iole, prompting Deianira to make use of the supposed love potion. She soaked Heracles’ cloak in the centaur’s poisoned blood. When Heracles put it on he suffered agonising pain and hurled himself onto a pyre. But Athena carried him up to Mount Olympus where he became a god. There he reconciled with Hera and married Hebe, the goddess of youth.

Once, while King Aegeus of Athens was visiting the royal court of Troezen, he got drunk and slept with the Troezenian princess Aethra. When Aethra became pregnant with Theseus, Aegeus left his sword and sandals hidden beneath a rock for his unborn child to find. He told Aethra that his son should come to him in Athens as soon as he was big enough to lift the rock.

Once Theseus had grown into a young man, he lifted the rock and prepared to travel to Athens. Wanting to be as brave as his role model, Heracles, he did not take the safer sea route. Instead he chose to travel by the more dangerous land route, along roads plagued by bandits and robbers. Theseus killed them all. After arriving in Athens he had several more challenges to face, before his father Aegeus finally recognised him by his sword.

Shortly afterwards Minos, the king of Crete, once again demanded his cruel tribute: Athens had to send seven young women and seven young men to Crete as fodder for the bull-headed man-creature known as the Minotaur that was imprisoned in the Labyrinth. Determined to put an end to this horror, Theseus sailed with the young Athenians to Crete. King Minos’ daughter Ariadne soon fell in love with the attractive hero. She gave him a thread to unwind as he walked through the Labyrinth, to help him find his way back.

In the Labyrinth, Theseus eventually tracked down the Minotaur, killed it and led the young people out through the maze of passageways using Ariadne’s thread. When the Athenians fled Crete on their ship, Ariadne went with them. She left her homeland in order to marry Theseus. But when they made a stop on the island of Naxos, the god of wine, Dionysus, fell in love with the beautiful princess, and at his command Theseus was forced to leave Ariadne behind.

Theseus was so distraught about Ariadne that he forgot to change the black sails of his ship for white ones. He had agreed with his father that he would put up white sails if he triumphed over the Minotaur. When King Aegeus saw the black sails on the horizon, he thought his son was dead and threw himself into the sea.
On his return to Athens, Theseus was fêted as a hero, and became king. He came to be seen as a just and progressive king who united the region and introduced equal rights for all citizens.

Despite his royal duties, Theseus still felt the lure of adventure. He fought with Heracles against the Amazons, and with his friend Pirithous against the Centaurs. Following the tragic suicide of his wife, Phaedra, Theseus set out with Pirithous in search of new wives. First they abducted the beautiful princess Helen from Sparta and took her to Athens. Then they descended into the Underworld to abduct Hades’ wife. But this venture ended in disaster. Theseus was rescued by Heracles, but Pirithous had to stay in the Underworld.

Meanwhile, the Spartans had rescued Helen from Athens and put Theseus’ rival on the throne there. When Theseus returned from his adventures, he was driven out of the city. He went into exile on the island of Skyros and was murdered by its king, Lycomedes. Not until centuries later did the Athenians bring Theseus’ remains back to the city. They gave him a dignified burial and built a sanctuary to him. Slaves, and others who had been cruelly treated, found asylum there.

Odysseus was the son of King Laertes and his wife, Anticlea. He grew up on the island of Ithaca, took over his father’s throne as a young man and married the clever Penelope of Sparta. Their son, Telemachus, was only a baby when Odysseus was forced to go off and fight with the Greek armies in the Trojan War.

Odysseus distinguished himself more through his intellectual prowess than his physical strength. In the Greek army he served as an advisor, a mediator, an envoy and a spy. He was also a gifted orator and played a pivotal role in the Trojan War. Using trickery and cunning, he managed to do what none of the best Greek warriors had been able to achieve by violent means.

After the Greeks had laid siege to Troy for ten years without success, Odysseus – inspired by Athena – had a brilliant idea: they would build a giant wooden horse in which the best warriors would hide while the rest of the Greek army pretended to withdraw. When the Trojans found their enemy’s camp empty except for the giant horse, they thought it was a votive offering to Athena and pulled it inside the city. During the night, the Greeks crept out of the body of the horse and opened the city gates to their comrades. Troy’s fate was sealed.

Odysseus’ journey home became the proverbial odyssey – a long voyage full of adventure, danger and temptation. His encounter with the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus (a son of the sea god Poseidon) at the beginning of his journey would prove particularly fateful. When Polyphemus trapped Odysseus and his companions in a cave, they drove a stake into his one eye so that they could escape undetected. But Poseidon was determined to avenge his son. He caused Odysseus to sail the seas for ten years, gradually losing all of his companions.

Following a storm, Odysseus was washed ashore on the island of Phaeacia, exhausted and alone. The Phaeacians gave him a warm welcome, and Odysseus told them of all the adventures he had had on his long journey: of the sorceress Circe, who had turned his companions into pigs; of the singing Sirens who lured ships onto the rocks; of the voracious Scylla, the whirlpool Charybdis and the seductive nymph Calypso with whom he spent seven years.

Odysseus was away from home for so long that suitors arrived at the court of Ithaca hoping to marry Penelope and take Odysseus’ place as king. As the suitors grew more and more insistent, however, the clever Penelope employed a cunning ruse to keep them at bay. She announced that she would choose one of them as a husband as soon as she had finished the shroud she was weaving for her father-in-law, Laertes. To delay the shroud’s completion, she wove it by day and undid it by night.

When Odysseus finally returned home after an absence of twenty years, he slaughtered the scrounging suitors and celebrated his reunion with Penelope and Telemachus. Odysseus died happy and content as an old man on his native island of Ithaca.

Medea was descended from the Titans, the pre-Olympian gods; Helios the sun god was her grandfather. She was a powerful sorceress and a princess of the kingdom of Colchis on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. She could use her magic to heal people and render them invincible, put dragons to sleep, subdue fires and make rivers flow backwards to their sources. She was famous for her rejuvenation spell, which gave old people back their youth.

The myth of Medea is closely intertwined with that of the Argonauts. Jason and his team of heroes sailed from Iolcus to the remote kingdom of Colchis at the behest of King Pelias. They were tasked with finding the golden fleece of a ram and bringing it back to Greece. The famous Golden Fleece was in the possession of Medea’s father, Aeëtes. It was guarded by a dragon that never slept.

Nobody realised that the goddess Hera was actually pulling the strings in the background. She was angry with King Pelias because he had not made any sacrifices to her. So she came up with an insidious plan to get her revenge. When Jason arrived in Colchis, Hera caused Medea to fall deeply in love with him. The lovestruck Medea used her magic powers to help the young hero steal the Golden Fleece, and she then fled with him to Greece.

When they arrived in Iolcus, Medea became the unwitting instrument of Hera’s vengeful schemes. The lovestruck sorceress was now also determined to take revenge on Pelias for causing the deaths of Jason’s family. She told Pelias’ daughters that she could make their father young again. Medea demonstrated the spell on an old ram. She cut the ram into pieces and threw it into the magic potion – and out jumped a little lamb. Convinced of the potion’s effectiveness, Pelias’ daughters cut their father into pieces and threw him into a cauldron. But Medea prevented the spell from working.

After Pelias’ death, Medea and Jason fled to Corinth. They lived there with their two sons until Jason left Medea for the Corinthian princess Creusa. Medea took revenge for Jason’s betrayal. First she poisoned Creusa with a dress soaked in poison. Then she killed her own children to rob Jason of his heirs.
Medea fled to Athens, married King Aegeus and tried in vain to poison Theseus, the heir to Aegeus’ throne. Eventually she returned to her homeland. In the afterlife, Medea lived in the Elysian Fields, on the Isles of the Blessed, where she married the hero Achilles.

In early versions of the myth, Medea appears as a powerful sorceress with good intentions. Over time, however, a dark side to her character emerged. In his tragedy Medea, performed for the first time in 431 BC, Euripides portrayed Medea as a child killer, and this was the image of her that would go down in history. Since then, countless authors have been inspired by the myth. In her 1996 novel Medea: Stimmen, which was published in English as Medea. A Modern Retelling, Christa Wolf drew on the early version of the Medea myth, in which Medea is not a child murderer.

Medea’s homeland, the ancient kingdom of Colchis, was located in the western part of what is now Georgia. Colchis was a highly developed society and its land was fertile and rich in precious metals, especially gold. Modern-day Georgia is proud of its ancient past, and uses the Medea myth as a symbol of its identity. Anchored in the Caucasus whilst also constituting an intrinsic component of Europe’s cultural heritage, Medea is a symbol of Georgia’s affiliation with European culture.

An oracle prophesied to King Laius of Thebes that he would be killed by his own son. Despite this warning, Laius and his wife, Jocasta, conceived a child and Jocasta gave birth to a son. Fearing that the prophecy would come true, the king and queen gave the baby – who was named Oedipus – to a shepherd, and told him to abandon the child on a mountainside. But the shepherd took pity on the baby and gave him to another shepherd from Corinth, who in turn gave him to the Corinthian king and queen. Oedipus grew up with his foster parents, unaware of his true parentage.

As a young man, Oedipus heard a rumour that he was a foundling. Confused, he travelled to Delphi to ask the oracle about his origins. She told him he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother. To protect the people he thought were his parents, Oedipus decided not to return to Corinth. Instead he went travelling, and at a crossroads one day he encountered his biological father, Laius, the king of Thebes. They quarrelled and Oedipus ended up killing his father, unaware of his true identity.

At that time, Thebes was being terrorised by a monster. The Sphinx, a winged creature with the head of a woman and the body of a lioness, sat perched on a rock outside the gates of the city, where she waited for travellers. She told a riddle to anyone that passed by. If the poor soul could not solve the riddle, she would strangle and devour them.

When fate led Oedipus to Thebes, the Sphinx told him her famous riddle. Oedipus solved it, whereupon the Sphinx threw herself off her rock and died. As thanks for liberating the city, Oedipus was made king of Thebes and given the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta in marriage – but little did he know he was actually marrying his biological mother. The couple lived together for almost twenty years and had two sons and two daughters.
One day, when a plague struck Thebes, Oedipus had someone consult an oracle on his behalf. The oracle said the city could only be saved if King Laius’ murderer was found and driven out of the city.

Unaware that he himself was the murderer, Oedipus started investigating. In Sophocles’ tragic play Oedipus Rex, the hunt for the murderer is written like the plot of a crime thriller. Dramatic interrogations finally brought the truth to light: Oedipus was his father’s killer and his mother’s husband. Faced with the horrifying truth, Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus blinded himself with her brooch.

In the tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles explores Oedipus’ subsequent fate. After the grim truth was revealed, Oedipus had to give up the throne of Thebes and go into exile. With his daughter Antigone he wandered around Greece – poor, blind and wretched. When the two arrived at Colonus, which was a suburb of Athens, they were taken in by King Theseus. Here Oedipus would live out the rest of his tragic life in peace.

In life, Oedipus could not escape his destiny. After he died, however, the gods were forgiving. “Only when I am no more, then shall I be a hero?” he asked shortly before his death. Oedipus was a tragic figure in life, but in the afterlife he became a hero. At his grave in Colonus, people venerated him as a protector of Athens, whose king Theseus had granted him asylum and his final resting place.