When we think of the beginnings of the Western civilization, there is one place that comes to our minds right away: Greece. Before the Romans, before the medieval and even before the American ruled the world, there was one group of people that, organized in cities, or polis as they called them, became the ones that could decide over everybody’s destiny in the space where they had power (that is the Mediterranean specially).
Greeks did not become rulers throughout violence even though that condition existed. They could dominate the world they known due to their highly developed intellectual and political way of understanding it. Greeks created what we know today as philosophy, grammar, mathematics, and many other sciences. They also developed a very specific art style that is one of the pillars in western art and that has been reinvented and recreated al along human history, made out of simple lines and soft curves, folds and a spiritual beauty.
Greeks also created the political form that we are used to live in nowadays: democracy. Even though it differed from the actual one, Greek democracy set the bases for participative forms of government that are today seen as the most proper ones to conduct social life after centuries of absolutism and monarchical forms.
One of the most important aspects of Greek society and culture was its religion and its strong belief in the outer space as a reality that was clearly and directly related to human life. In this sense, Greeks believed in many gods, what we call polytheism, and each one of them was seen as an immortal entity that, different to what monotheist religions believe, had virtues and weaknesses, that could fall in love with humans (and even form families with them) or hate them, that could help them or destroy them and that permanently lived in that dichotomy towards humans and what they represented for their ethereal world.
Greek religion was not only made out of immortal gods, but also from primordial deities that were previous than those gods in the Olympus (the place where Greek gods lived in and where all their lives took form), from titans, nymphs and giants, all celestial creatures that coexisted with human in conflicted or pacific ways depending on their mood.
Greeks had therefore a specific god or goddess for each feeling or virtue and this is why there was a god for the sky, another one for the sea, one for the agriculture and fertility, another one for the beauty, one for music and one for war, one for the underworld and one for wisdom and crafts. Greek religion had always been seen as a rich and complex religion and the fact that the immortal beings were sometimes put at the same level as humans is one of those things that make it utterly interesting.
Greek names and Greek god names
Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemio, Athena, Demeter, Hades, Hephaestus, Hermes, Hestia, Poseidon, Circe, Dionysus, Persephone, Thanatos, Aether, Chaos, Chornos, Erebus, Eros, Gaea, Hemera, Nyx, Tartarus, Uranos, Alastor, Antheia, Calypso, Eos, Eurynome, Glaucus, Heracles, Iris, Morpheus, Nike, Proteus, Thetis, Helios, Prometheus, Hebe
We hope you enjoy this article about Greek god names and general information about Greek history.
