KHEIRON (or ) was the eldest and wisest of the , a tribe of half-horse men. But unlike the rest of this tribe he was an immortal god, a son of the Titan Kronos and half-brother of . Kheiron's mother was the who was coupling with Kronos when his wife suddenly appeared on the scene. To escape notice he transformed himself into a horse, and in this way sired a half-equine son. Some time later when a tribe of Kentauroi (or Centaurs) were spawned on Mount by the cloud nymph , Kheiron and his daughters took them into their care and raised them as their own.

The Kentauros was a great teacher who mentored many of the great heroes of myth including , , Asklepios , Aristaios and Akhilleus. Eventually, however, he passed away from the earth, after accidentally being wounded by Herakles with an arrow coated in Hydra -venom. The wound was incurable, and unbearably painfall, so Kheiron voluntarily relinquished his immortality and died. However, instead of being consigned to Haides, he was given a place amongst the stars by Zeus as the constellation Saggitarius or .

Kheiron's name was derived from the Greek word for hand ( kheir ), which also meant "skilled with the hands." The name was also closely associated in myth with kheirourgos or surgeon. In Athenian vase painting Kheiron was depicted with the full- body of a man, from head to foot, clothed in chiton and boots, with a horse-body attached to the human rump. The image probably reflected his appearance in Greek drama, where costume-limitations reduced his centaurine-form somewhat. By contrast the other Kentauroi, who do not appear in Athenian drama, were depicted unclothed with fully equine forms below the waist.

ARGOS PANOPTES was a hundred-eyed giant who lived in the region of Argolis in the Peloponnese. Once when Zeus was consorting with the Nymph Io , his wife arrived on the scene. The god quickly transformed his lover into a white heifer, but the goddess was not deceived. She demanded the animal for a gift and set Argos Panoptes as its guard.

Zeus sent to surreptitiously rescue his lover. The god first tried to lull the giant to sleep with his music, but failing that, slew him with his sword. It was from this endeavour that he earned his familiar title Argeiphontes (literally "the slayer of Argos"). Hera rewarded Argos for his service by placing his hundred eyes on the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock.

THE GORGONES (or Gorgons) were three powerful, winged daemons named Medousa (), Sthenno and Euryale. Of the three sisters only Medousa was mortal, and so it was her head which King Polydektes of Seriphos commanded the young hero to fetch. He accomplished this with the help of the gods who equipped him with a reflective shield, curved sword, winged boots and helm of invisibility. When he fell upon Medousa and decapitated her, two creatures sprang forth from the wound - the winged horse Pegasos and the giant Khrysaor. Perseus fled with the monster's head in a sack, and with her two angry sisters following close upon his heels.

According to late classical poets, Medousa was once a beautiful maiden who was transformed by into a monster as punishment for lying with in her shrine. However, early Greek writers and artists, simply portray her as a monster born of a monstrous family.

The three Gorgones were depicted in vase painting and sculpture as winged women with broad round heads, serpentine locks of hair, large staring eyes, wide mouths, the tusks of swine, lolling tongues, flared nostrils, and sometimes short coarse beards. Medousa was humanised in late classical art with the face of a beautiful woman. In mosaic art her full face was wreathed around with coiling snakes and adorned with a pair of small wings sprouting from the brow.

The poet seems to have imagined the Gorgones as reef-creating sea-daemones, personifications of the deadly submerged reefs which posed such a danger to ancient mariners. As such he names the three petrifyers daughters of dangerous sea-gods. One also bears a distincty marine name, Euryale, "she of the wide briny sea". Later writers continue this tradition when they speak of reefs being created where Perseus had set the Gorgon's head and where he had turned a sea monster to stone. In other motifs, the Gorgon Medousa was a portrayed as a storm daemon whose visage was set upon the storm-bringing aigis- shield of Athene. The two ideas were probably connected, with sea storms driving ships to destruction upon the reefs. Some say there was a but a single goat-like Gorgon, a daughter of the Sun-God, who was slain by Zeus at the start of the Titan-War to form his stormy aigis shield. In older motifs the Gorgones were probably connected with Erinys (the Fury) and the three . These were the bringers of drought, the withering of crops and the coming of famine. In myth the beheading of Medousa saw the release of two beings - Pegasos (of the springs) and Khrysaor (golden blade). This story might have represented the ending of drought with the release of the waters of springs (pegai) and the growth of golden (khryse) blades of grain. Demeter herself was titled Khrysaoros in Homeric poetry, further suggesting a close link between the name and blades of corn.

In early Greek cosmogony TARTAROS was the great pit beneath the earth. The cosmos was imagined as a great sphere or ovoid, with the upper half of its shell formed by the dome of heaven, and the lower half by the pit of Tartaros. Inside, this cosmic sphere was divided in two by the flat disc of earth. Above was the dwelling place of gods and men, and below was the gloomy, storm-wracked prison of the Titanes .

Haides , the realm of the dead, was originally quite distinct from the pit of Tartaros. The Hadean realm was located either at the very ends of the earth, beyond the river Okeanos and the setting of the sun; or in the hollow depths of earth's belly. Tartaros on the other hand, lay as far beneath Haides (i.e. beneath the deepest recesses of the flat earth) as the sky lay above the earth.

Tartaros was secured with a surrounding wall of bronze set with a pair of gates, guarded by the hundred-handed Hekatonkheir , warders of the Titanes.

Through the gates of Tartaros passed (goddess of the Night) who emerged to wrap the earth in darkness, and also her daughter (Day), who scattered the mists of night.

The Pit sired a child, Typhoeus , a monstrous serpentine storm-giant who attempted to seize heaven. Zeus vanquished the creature and cast it back down into the Pit. From Typhoeus came hurricanes and storm-winds, which issued forth from Tartaros when Zeus commanded the gates be opened.

The protogenos (or primordial deity) of the Pit was Tartaros , a figure who unlike his agemates (the Earth) and Ouranos (the Sky) scarcely figures in myth. These ancient deities were purely elemental, Tartaros, for example, was the pit, rather than simply the god of it.

Later classical writers reimagined Tartaros as the hellish prison-house of the evil.

THE HARPYIAI (or ) were the spirits of sudden, sharp gusts of wind. They were known as the hounds of Zeus and were despatched by the god to snatch away ( harpazô ) people and things from the earth. Sudden, mysterious dissappearances were often attributed to the Harpyiai. The Harpies were once sent by Zeus to plague King of Thrake as punishment for revealing the secrets of the gods. Whenever a plate of food was set before him, the Harpies would swoop down and snatch it away, befouling any scraps left behind. When the came to visit, the winged Boreades gave chase, and pursued the Harpies to the Strophades Islands, where the goddess commanded them to turn back and leave the storm-spirits unharmed. The Harpies were depicted as winged women, sometimes with ugly faces, or with the lower bodies of birds.

THE KHIMAIRA (or ) was a monstrous beast which ravaged the countryside of Lykia in Anatolia. It was a composite creature, with the body and maned head of a lion, a goat's head rising from its back, a set of goat-udders, and a serpentine tail.

The hero Bellerophon was commanded to slay it by King Iobates. He rode into battle against the beast on the back of the winged horse Pegasos and, driving a lead-tipped lance down the Khimaira's flaming throat, suffocated it.

The Khimaira may have once been identified with the winter-rising Constellation Capricorn (the -tailed goat). The constellation Pegasos appears to drive her from the heavens in spring.

Late classical writers represent the beast as a metaphor for a Lycian volcano.

THE MINOTAUROS (or ) was a bull-headed monster born to Queen Pasiphae of Krete after she had coupled with a bull. The creature resided in the twisting maze of the labyrinth, where he was offfered a regular sacrifice of youths and maids to satisfy his cannibalistic hunger. He was eventually destroyed by the hero .

The Minotauros' proper name Asterion, "the starry one," suggests he was associated with the constellation Tauros.

ARAKHNE (or Arachne) was an arrogant girl from the Greek town of Kolophon in Lydia who once dared challenge the goddess Athena to a contest in weaving. In the match Athena portrayed the gods seated in glory upon high thrones, while Arakhne represented them in the guise of animals chasing after mortal girls. Athena was furious at her impiety and beat the girl with her shuttle, driving Arakhne to hang herself in despair. The goddess then transformed her into a spider (Greek arakhnês ).

EKHIDNA (or ) was a monstrous she- (drakaina ) with the head and upper body of a woman. She probably represented or presided over the corruptions of the earth : rot, slime, fetid waters, illness and disease.

She was often equated with (the rotting one), a dragon born of the fetid slime left behind by the great Deluge. Others call her the Tartarean lamprey, and assigned her to the dark, swampy pit of Tartaros beneath the earth. Hesiod, makes her a daughter of monstrous sea-gods, and presumably associates her with rotting sea-scum and fetid salt-marshes. In all cases, she was described as the consort of Typhoeus , a monstrous storm-daemon who challenged Zeus in heaven. Together they spawned a host of terrible monsters to plague the earth.

Other closely related she- included the Argive Ekhidna and Poine , the Tartarean Kampe , and the Phokian Sybaris . In the image (right), Ekhidna is equated with Python. seated on the omphalos stone slays her with his arrows : in the motif of healing god (Paian) destroying plague-bringing demon.

IRIS was the goddess of the rainbow, the messenger of the Olympian gods. She was often represented as the handmaiden and personal messenger of Hera . Iris was a goddess of sea and sky--her father "the wondrous" was a marine-god, and her mother Elektra "the amber" a cloud-nymph. For the coastal-dwelling Greeks, the rainbow's arc was most often seen spanning the distance beteween cloud and sea, and so the goddess was believed to replenish the rain-clouds with water from the sea. Iris had no distinctive mythology of her own. In myth she appears only as an errand-running messenger and was usually described as a virgin goddess. Her name contains a double meaning, being connected both with iris , "the rainbow," and eiris , "messenger."

Iris appears in ancient Greek vase painting as a beautiful young woman with golden wings, a herald's rod ( kerykeion ), and sometimes a water-pitcher ( oinochoe ) in her hand. She was usually depicted standing beside Zeus or Hera, sometimes serving nectar from her jug. As cup-bearer of the gods Iris is often indistinguishable from in art.

The word oracle in Greek can mean several related things. It means a god who predicts the future, like Apollo . It also means the priest who hears the message, and the message itself, and the place where the priest hears the message. Most often it means the priest or the message. The Greeks believed (like all other ancient people ) that you could communicate with the gods at certain places, at certain times, through certain people, and that the gods would give you advice and maybe tell you what was going to happen in the future. This is certainly no stupider than calling the Psychic Hotline, which thousands of people do every day. Actually, it probably makes more sense than that. First of all, both the Greek oracles and the Psychic Hotline have in common that they hear the same questions over and over, and they listen all day to people telling more or less the same kinds of stories over and over. "Will my boyfriend leave me?" "Will my kids turn out bad?" "Will I get this job?" After you have some experience, you can predict pretty well what will happen just because you have already seen the same thing happen to so many other people.

But the Greek oracles had a couple of advantages too. First, you didn't just come and ask your question. You had to hang around the temple for a while, talking to the priests, so they could get to know you. And they could see you, not just hear your voice on the telephone. Second, everybody came to the same few oracles for help, and the priests at these oracles (unlike the Psychic Hotline) compared notes with each other. So if you asked "Should I get married?" and the oracle said "Yes," and then next week your girlfriend comes and she asks, "Will Gorgias ask me to marry him?" then the oracle already knows the answer to that one. There is every reason to think that the oracles were worth the money they charged.

The most important Greek oracle was the oracle of Apollo at , though there were many others.