Triple a Mythology

Mythology has evolved in every culture.  Mythology comes from the Greeks, Celts, Asia and other lands rich with stories and legends.  There are some we are familiar with, even in just a name, such as Aphrodite, Hercules, and Zeus.  And there are those we are not quite familiar with such as Clytemnestra, Elatha, and Oedipus.

 Beginning with Apollo, the son of Zeus and the Titaness Leto.  Apollo is the twin brother of the goddess Artemis, the virgin huntress.  He’s an important god in both the Greek and Roman religion.   He is the god of prophecy, archery, and music.  A great fight with the Python at Delphi gave Apollo his seat of his most famous oracle.  Python was the offspring of Gaia, mother earth.  The Pythia could give answers to any kind of questions asked.  After Apollo killed Python, he took its place.  He had to do penance in Thessaly for the killing.  Zeus forced him twice to be the slave to a mortal man to pay for his crimes.

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Artemis, daughter of Zeus and Leto, and twin sister to Apollo.  Artemis was a virgin goddess and of the wild.  Her followers used to give animals sacrifices to her. She liked to walk around in the mountains with a companion band of nymphs.  Artemis resented any kind of intrusion into her domain or any harm to come to the animals she favored.  The King Agamemnon of Mycenae, killed a stag that was sacred to her.  He found his fleet stranded at Aulis, a port of east-central Greece.  Only a promise to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, was enough for the goddess.  Another mortal punished by Artemis was Actaeon.  While hunting Actaeon stumbled upon her as she was bathing.  She changed him into a stag and he was then chased and killed by his own hunting dogs.

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Alcestis is from Greek mythology.  She was the daughter of King Pelias of Thessaly, the central section of the mainland Greece.  When Alcestis was old enough to marry, many suitors arrived and her father decided to test them to find a suitable husband.  They had to yoke a lion and a boar to a chariot.  With the help of Apollo, Admetus, the neighboring monarch, succeeded the impossible task.  Unfortunately at the wedding, he forgot to make the necessary sacrifice to Artemis and his wedding bells were full of snakes.  Apollo once again helped out by making the Fates drunk, taking from them a promise that anyone else would die on Admetus behalf, and he could continue to live.  No one was willing to volunteer except one person.

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Alcestis gave her life for him.  Persephone, the underworld goddess, saw and was impressed with the absolute devotion then she restored Alcestis to Admetus.  They were together and had two sons.