Your Questions: The God of Sadness

Three young readers from the same classroom have sent in some excellent questions.

From Tyler: Who is the god of smarts?

The ancient Greeks thought intelligence-- smarts-- was the most important thing in the world. Strength could only get you so far. It was smarts that really made the difference. So there was more than one god of smarts.

The word for smarts in ancient Greek is metis (MAY-tiss).

There was a goddess named Metis. The god Zeus swallowed her so he could have her smarts. He is a very smart god who has the nickname "God of the best plans you'll ever see."

Athena is the daughter of Metis. When Metis gave birth to Athena, she had to come out of Zeus' head to be born. The god Hephaestus, another smarty who is good with tools, inventions and technology, split open Zeus' skull with an axe, and Athena came out. Zeus was fine. He is a god, after all.

Athena  is concerned with many  areas of smarts:  weaving wool, military strategy, politics, and the smart thing to eat and sell, olive oil.

God of tricky smarts: Hermes. He was the god of thieves, travelers, salespeople, and diplomats. All these folks had to use their mouths and minds to get out of difficult situations.

Those are the major gods and goddesses of smarts for you.

From Mitchell: Who is the god of vegetables?

This is a great question. The Greeks loved vegetables, and they always asked the gods to help their veggies get big, green and tasty.

To make vegetables, you need water, dirt, and seeds. Zeus, who is the god of the sky, provides the rain. Demeter, one of Zeus' wives, is the goddess of dirt. If you need fertilizer to make your vegetables big, ask Demeter. The goddess of seeds is Persephone. She is the daughter of Demeter and Zeus, and she lives three months of the year under the earth. When spring flowers bloom, Persephone leaps out from the earth, like a seed growing its first green stalk.

All three of these divinities together watch over the vegetables of the ancient Greeks.

From Derek: Is there a god of sadness?

The ancient Greeks had no god of sadness, because by nature the gods were always happy.

One of the names of the gods all together is "The Makarioi," or "The Blessed Ones."

Now humans in ancient Greece were often sad, but one hero made the Greeks-- especially moms-- saddest of all. Adonis was a young and very handsome teenager. He was so good-looking that Aphrodite (god of mush and romance) and Persephone fought to have him live with one of them. One day he went on a hunt for a wild boar. The boar used his tusks to stab Adonis, and he died of his wounds. Ever afterwards, Greek moms would get together to mourn Adonis, the young man who died too young. But don't feel too bad. After the women mourned Adonis, they always had a big party.

Tomorrow, after a little research, I'll answer a fourth question, about the Odyssey and Odysseus.

Thanks to you all for these questions that shows you guys have quite a bit of smarts.

Illustration: Landscape watercolors by Greek schoolchildren. Courtesy National Gallery, Athens, Greece.

Photo: Persephone holding a flower, courtesy vroma.org.

Comments

its very good website
for the goodess

[derek]

can you give me some differences between Pandora and Demeter

[Tyler]

what are some differences between padora and demeter?