I Can’t Sleep - Greek Mythology | Calm Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Relax with this calm bedtime reading on Greek mythology, created to ease insomnia and bring peace to sleepless nights. In this soothing episode, Benjamin explores the timeless stories of the Greek gods, heroes, and myths that have shaped literature, art, and culture for centuries. His steady, gentle narration provides both knowledge and relaxation—no whispers, no hypnosis, just calm, fact-filled storytelling to quiet the mind. Whether you’re dealing with stress, anxiety, or sleeplessness, press play, unwind, and drift into restful sleep while discovering the fascinating world of Greek mythology. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Greek Mythology, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Greek Mythology. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Greek Mythology. Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks and a genre of ancient Greek folklore

today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures, and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cold and ritual practices. Modern scholars studied the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself. The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral poetic tradition, most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC.

Eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral traditions of Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the theogyny, and the works and days, contain accounts of the Genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the epic cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the 5th century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Posenius. Aside from this narrative, Deposit in ancient Greek literature, pictorial representations of gods, heroes, and mystic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings, and the decorations of votive gifts and many other artifacts.

Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century BC depict scenes from the epic cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture, art, and literature of Western civilization, and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes.

Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the geometric period from circa 900 BC to circa 800 BC onward. In fact, literary and archaeological sources integrate, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict. However, in many cases, the existence, of this corpus of data is a strong indication that many elements of Greek mythology have strong factual and historical roots.

Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the library of pseudo-apalodorus. This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from circa 180 BC to circa 125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection.

However, the library discusses events that occurred long after his death, hence the name pseudo-apalodorus. Among the earliest literary sources are Homer's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the epic cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric hymns have no direct connection with Homer. The oldest are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called lyric age. Hesiod, a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his theogyny, Origin of the Gods,

the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths, dealing with the creation of the world, the origin of the gods, titans, and giants, as well as elaborate genealogies, oak tales, and ideological myths. Hesiod's works and days, a didactic poem about farming life,

also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Five Ages. The poet advises on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered yet more dangerous by its gods. Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more elusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacalydes, and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bayon, relate individual mythological incidents. Additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama. The tragic playwrights, Escalis, Sophocles, and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the Age of Heroes and the Trojan War.

Many of the great tragic stories, e.g. Agamemnon and his children, Etypice, Jason, Medea, etc., took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths in the birds and the frogs. Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus and geographers, Posenius and Strabo, who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions. Herodotus in particular searched the various traditions, he encountered, and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East. Herodotus attempted to reconcile

origins in the blending of differing cultural concepts. The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise. Nevertheless, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of 1. The Roman poets Ovid, Statius, Valerus Flacus, Seneca and Virgil with Servius' commentary. 2. The Greek poets of the late antique period, Nonus, Antionus Liberalis, and Quintus Mirneus. 3. The Greek poets of the Hellenistic period. Apollonius of Rhodes, Calimachus, Pseudoerastonis, and Parthenius. prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleus, Petronius, Lillianus, and Heliodorus.

Two other important non-poetical sources are the Fabule and Astronomica of the Roman writer, styled as pseudohigenus, the imagines of Philistratus the elder and Philostratus the younger, and the descriptions of Callistratus. Finally, several Byzantine Greek writers, provide important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works. These preservers of myth include Arnobius, Hesichius, the author of the Suda, John Setzes, and Eustethius. They often treat mythology from a Christian moralizing perspective. The discovery of the Miocinian civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Einrich Schliemann

in the 19th century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the 20th century helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of the mythological details about gods and heroes. The evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the linear B script, an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece, was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified. Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the Adventures of Heracles.

These visual representations of myths are important for two reasons. Firstly, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources. On the 12 labors of Heracles, for example, only the Serbius adventure occurs in a contemporary literary text. Secondly, visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not attested in any extant literary source. In some cases, the first known representation of a myth and geometric art, predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry by several centuries. In the archaic, circa 750 to circa 500 BC, classical, circa 400 to 323 BC,

and Hellenistic, 323 to 146 BC periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time, to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cutherson, 1975, has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people,

who, using animism, assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula invaded, they brought with them a new pantheon of gods, based on conquest, force, prowess in battle, and violent heroism. Other older gods of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders, or else faded into insignificance.

After the middle of the archaic period, myths about relationships between male gods and male heroes became more and more frequent, indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty, thought to have been introduced around 630 p.C. Pre-existing myths such as those of Achilles and Patroclus also then were cast in a pederastic light. Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally, literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire,

often re-adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion. The achievement of epic poetry was to create story cycles, and as a result to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus, Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans. while self-contradictions in these stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. The resulting mythological history of the world may be divided in the three or four broader periods. One, the myths of origin or age of gods, theogenes, births of gods, myths about the origins

of the world, the gods, and the human race. 2. The Age When Gods and Mortals Mingled Freely Stories of the Early Interactions between Gods, Demigods, and Mortals. 3. The Age of Heroes, Heroic Age. Where divine activity was more limited. The last and greatest of the heroic legends is the story of the Trojan War and After, which is regarded by some researchers as a separate fourth period. while the age of gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth, the Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for the age of heroes,

establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the questions of how the world came into being were explained. For example, the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed the divine-focused Theogy and Homeric hymns in both size and popularity. Under the influence of Homer, the hero cult leads to a restructuring in spiritual life, expressed in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead, heroes. Of the Chathonic from the Olympian, in the works and days, Hesiod makes use of the scheme of four ages of man, or races, golden, silver, bronze, and iron. These races or ages are separate creations of the gods, the golden age belonging to the reign of chronos, the subsequent race to the creation of Zeus. The presence of evil was explained by the myth of Pandora, when all of the best of human capabilities, save hope, have been spilled out of her overturned jar.

In metamorphoses, Ovid follows Hesiod's concept of the four ages. Myths of origin or creation myths represent an attempt to explain the beginnings of the universe in human language. The most widely accepted version at the time, although a philosophical account of the beginning of things, is reported by Hesiod in his theogyny. He begins with chaos, a yawning nothingness. Next comes Gaia, Earth, the ever sure foundation of all, and then Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed earth, and Eros, love, fairest among the deathless gods.

Without male assistance, Scylla gave birth to Uranus, the sky, who then fertilized her. From that union were born first the Titans, six males, Caius, Cres, Cronus, Hyperion, Hyopidas, and Oceanus, and six females, Nemocini, Phoebe, Reya, Thea, Themis, and Tethus. After Cronus was born, Gaia and Uranus decreed no more Titans were to be born. They were followed by the one-eyed cyclops and the Hecatonschires of hundred-handed ones,

who were both thrown into Tartarus by Uranus. This made Gaia furious. Cronus, the wily youngest and most terrible of Gaya's children, was convinced by Gaya to castrate his father. He did this and became the ruler of the Titans with his sister-wife Reya as his consort, and the other Titans became his court. A motif of father-again-son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son Zeus. Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same,

And so each time Rea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it. Raya hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was full grown, he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit, throwing up Rea's other children, including Poseidon, Aedes, Estia, Demeter, and Hera, and the stone, which had been sitting in Cronus's stomach all this time. Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last was the help of the Cyclops whom Zeus freed from Tartarus.

Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus. Zeus was plagued by the same concern, and after a prophecy that the offspring of his first wife, Metus, would give birth to a god greater than he, Zeus swallowed her. She was already pregnant with Athena, however, and she burst forth from his head fully grown and dressed for war. The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogenes to be prototypical poetic genre, the prototypical mythos, and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus, the archetypal poet, also was the archetypal singer of theogenes, which he uses to calm seas and storms, in Apollonius' Argonautica, and to move the stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent

to Hades. When Hermes invents the lyre and the Homeric hymn to Hermes, the first thing he does is seeing about the births of the gods. Hesiod's theogyny is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods, but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poets' function, with its long preliminary invocation of the muses. Theogeny also was the subject of many lost poems, including those attributed to Orpheus, Mesaus, Epimedes, Abaris, and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery rites. There are indications that Plato was familiar with some version of the Orphic Theogony.

A silence would have been expected about religiously, rights and beliefs, however, and that nature of the culture would not have been reported by members of society while the beliefs were held. After they ceased to become religious beliefs, few would have known the rights and rituals. Allusions often existed, however, to aspects that were quite public. Images existed on pottery and religious artwork that were interpreted and more likely misinterpreted in many diverse myths and tales. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations of neoplatonist philosophers and recently unearthed papyrus scraps. One of these scraps, the derveni papyrus, now proves that at least in the 5th century BC,

a theogenic cosmogonic poem of Orpheus was in existence. The first philosophical cosmologist reacted against, or sometimes built upon, popular mythical conceptions that had existed in the Greek world for some time. Some of these popular conceptions can be gleaned from the poetry of Homer and Hesiod. In Homer, the earth was viewed as a flat disk afloat on the river of Oceanus and overlooked by a hemispherical sky with sun, moon, and stars. The sun, Helios, traversed the heavens as a charioteer, and sailed around the earth in a golden bowl. at night. Sun, earth, heaven, rivers, and winds could be addressed in prayers and called to witness oaths. Natural fissures were popularly regarded as entrances to the subterranean house of

Hades and his predecessors, Home of the Dead. Influences from other cultures always afforded new themes. According to classical era mythology, after the overthrow of the texorough of the texswain, Titans, the new pantheon of gods and goddesses was confirmed. Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians, residing on Mount Olympus under the eye of Zeus. The limitation of their number to 12 seems to have been a comparatively modern idea. Besides the Olympians, the Greeks worshipped various gods of the countryside, the Seder god Pan, nymphs, spirits of rivers, Niyads, who dwelt in springs, triads who were spirits of the trees, nereids who inhabited the sea, river gods, satyrs, and others.

In addition, there were the dark powers of the underworld, such as the Aronis or furies, said to pursue those guilty of crimes against blood relatives. In order to honor the ancient Greek pantheon, poets composed the Homeric hymns, a group of 33 songs. Gregory Naji, 1992, regards the larger Homeric hymns as simple preludes, compared with theogyny, each of which invokes one god. The gods of Greek mythology are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies. According to Walter Berker, the defining characteristic of Greek anthropomorphism is that the Greek gods are persons,

not abstractions, ideas, or concepts. Regardless of their underlying forms, the ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities. Most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances. The Greeks considered immortality as the distinctive characteristic of their gods. this immortality as well as unfading youth was ensured by the constant use of nectar and ambrosia by which the divine blood was renewed in their veins

each god descends from his or her own genealogy pursues differing interests as a certain area of expertise and is governed by a unique personality however these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another. When these gods are called upon in poetry, prayer, or cult, they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves, e.g. Apollo Mucyids is Apollo as leader of the Muses. Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god.

sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epic of Greece. Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. Ares was the god of war, Aedes, the ruler of the underworld, and Athena, the goddess of wisdom and courage. Some gods, such as Apollo and Dionysus, revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions,

while others such as Hestia, literally Arth, and Helios, literally Sun, were little more than personifications. The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to a limited number of gods, who were the focus of large Pan-Hellenic cults. It was, however, common to individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to minor gods. Many cities also honored the more well-known gods with unusual local rights and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere. During the heroic age, the cult of heroes, or demigods, supplemented that of the gods. The origins of humanity were ascribed to various figures,

including Zeus and Prometheus. Bridging the age when gods lived alone, and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited, was a transitional age in which gods and mortals moved together. These were the early days of the world when the groups mingled more freely than they did later. Most of these tales were later told by Ovid's metamorphosis, and they are often divided into two thematic groups, tales of love and tales of punishment.

Tales of love often involved incest or the seductical, or rape of a mortal woman by a male god, resulting in heroic offspring. The stories generally suggest that relationships between gods and mortals are something to avoid. Even consenting relationships rarely have happy endings. In a few cases, a female divinity mates with a mortal man, as in the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, where the goddess lies within Kaises to produce Aeneas. The second type, tales of punishment, involves the appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, when Tantalus steals nectar and

ambrosia from Zeus's table and gives it to his subjects, revealing to them the secrets of the gods, when Prometheus or Le Ceyone invents sacrifice, when Demeter teaches agriculture and the mysteries to Triptolemus, Owen Marcius invents the alos and enters into a musical contest with Apollo. Ian Morris considers Prometheus' adventures as a place between the history of the gods and that of man. An anonymous papyrus fragment dated to the third century vividly portrays Dionysius' punishment of the king of Thrace, Lycurgus, whose recognition of the new god came too late, resulting in horrific penalties that extended into the afterlife. The story of the arrival of Dionysus to establish his colt in Thrace

was also the subject of an Asclean trilogy. In another tragedy, Euripides, the Bacchi, the king of Thebes, Pentheus, is punished by Dionysus because he disrespected the god in spite on Asminads the female worshippers of the god. In another story based on an old folk tale motive and echoing a similar theme, Demeter was searching for her daughter, Persephone, who had taken the form of an old woman called Doso, and received a hospitable welcome from Silus, the king of Eleusus in Attica.

As a gift to Seleus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make his son Demophon a god, but she was unable to complete the ritual, because his mother, Metanira, walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed and fried, which angered Demeter, who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand the concept and ritual. The age in which the heroes lived is known as the heroic age. The epic and genealogical poetry created cycles of stories clustered around particular heroes or events and established the family relationships between the heroes of different stories.

They thus arrange the stories in sequence. According to Ken Dowden, 1992, there is even a saga effect. We can follow the fates of some families and successive generations. After the rise of the hero cult, gods and heroes constitute the sacral sphere and are invoked together in oaths and prayers which are addressed to them. Berkert, 2002, notes that the roster of heroes, against in contrast to the gods, is never given fixed in final form. Great gods are no longer born, but new heroes can always be raised up from the army of the dead. Another important difference between the hero cult and the cult of gods is that the hero becomes the center of the local group identity.

The monumental events of Heracles are recorded as the dawn of the Age of Heroes. To the heroic age are also ascribed three great events, the Argonautic expedition, the Theban Cycle, and the Trojan War. Some scholars believe that behind Heracles' complicated mythology, there was probably a real man, perhaps a chieftain vassal of the kingdom of Argos. Some scholars suggest the story of Heracles is an allegory for the story. sun's yearly passage through the 12 constellations of the zodiac. Others point to earlier myths from other cultures, showing the story of Heracles as a local adaptation of hero myths already well

established. Traditionally, Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alchemine, granddaughter of Perseus. His fantastic solitary exploits with their many folktale themes provided much material for popular legend. According to Berker 2002, he is portrayed as a sacrificer, mentioned as a founder of altars, and imagined as a voracious eater himself. It is in this role that he appears in comedy. While his tragic end provided much material for tragedy, Heracles is regarded by Talia Papadapalau as a play of great significance in examination of other European dramas.

In art and literature, Heracles was represented as an enormously strong man of moderate height. His characteristic weapon was the bow, but frequently also the club. Vase paintings demonstrate the unparalleled popularity of Heracles, his fight with the lion being depicted many hundreds of times. Hercules also entered a truss in a Roman mythology in cult, and the exclamation, Mehecule, became as familiar to the Romans as Heracles was, to the Greeks. In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traitors, although others also

prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger. Heracles attained the highest social prestige through his appointment as official ancestor of the Dorian kings. This probably served as a legitimation for the Dorian migrations into the Peloponnese. Hylus, the eponymous hero of one Dorian file, became the son of Heracles and one of the Heraclady or Heraclids, a numerous descendants of Heracles, especially the descendants of Hylus. Other Heracladeae, including Maccaria, Lamos, Manto, Pionor,

Tlopulamus, and Telofus. These Heraclids conquered the Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae, Sparta and Argos, claiming, according to legend, a right to rule them through their ancestor. Their rise to dominance is frequently called the Dorian invasion. The Lydian and later the Macedonian kings, as rulers of the same rank, also became Heraclady. Other members of the earliest generation of heroes such as Perseus, Ducalion, Theseus, and Belarophon have many traits in common with Heracles. Like him, their exploits are solitary, fantastic, and bordering fairy tale as they slay monsters such as the chimera and Medusa.

Belaerophon's adventures are commonplace types, similar to the adventures of Heracles and Theseus. Sending a hero to his presumed death is also a recurrent theme of his early hero of tradition, used in the cases of Perseus and Belaerophon. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica of Apollonius, of Rhodes, epic poet, scholar, and director of the Library of Alexandria, tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the golden fleece from the mythical land of Colchus. In the Argonautica, Jason is impelled on his quest by King Pahlius, who receives a prophecy that a man with one sandal would be his nemesis.

Jason loses a sandal in the river, arrives at the court of Palius, and the epic is set in motion. Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason in the ship Argo to fetch the golden fleece. This generation also included Theseus, who went to Crete to slay the Minotor, Atlanta, the female heroine, and Meliager, who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey. Bendar, Apollonius, and the bibliotheca endeavor to give full lists of the Argonauts. Although Apollonius wrote his poem in the 3rd century BC, the composition of the story of the Argonauts is earlier than Odyssey,

which shows familiarity with the exploits of Jason. The wandering of Odysseus may have been partly founded on it. In ancient times, the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Black Sea to Greek commerce and colonization. It was also extremely popular, forming a cycle to which a number of local legends became attached. The story of Medea in particular caught the imagination of the tragic poets.