Greek myths

Here is a collection of phrases and memorable lines of Greek myth. Most of the material is anonymous except the works of the Iliad and the Odyssey, by Homer.

Quotes

• Φοβού τους Δαναούς και δώρα φέροντες.
  • Translation:(Beware Greeks even though are bearing gifts).
  • Trojan Horse or the Iliad

• The Greeks used a wooden horse to get into Troy.
  • Trojan Horse

• When Pandora opened the jar, all the evil flooded out into the world.
  • Pandora's box

• The only thing left inside the jar was Hope.
  • Pandora's Box

• Everything King Midas touched turned to gold.
  • King Midas

• King Minos built a labyrinth to house the monster.
  • Minotaur

• Flora and Fauna
  • Two Greek Goddesses, the first of plants, the second of animals.

• Icarus flew too close to the sun.
  • Daedulus and Icarus

• The Twelve Tasks of Heracles.
  • Heracles-later Romanised as the 'The Twelve Tasks of Hercules'

• A Sisyphean Task.
  • From the myth of Sisyphus-means a never ending task

• The phoenix rises from the ashes

• Aphrodite rose from the waves
  • The birth of Aphrodite (a well-known allusion)

Less Precise Quotes

Theseus (from "Heroes, Gods and Monsters" (a collection of Greek Myths & Legends))

Theseus: It's a complete honor to have my head bashed in with a club like this.

Theseus: (after killing Procrustes) So you have done to travellers, so shall you endure; you've made your bed, now lie on it.

• Pygmalion loathing their lascivious life,
  Abhorr'd all womankind, but most a wife:
  So single chose to live, and shunn'd to wed,
  Well pleas'd to want a consort of his bed.
  Yet fearing idleness, the nurse of ill,
  In sculpture exercis'd his happy skill;
  And carv'd in iv'ry such a maid, so fair,
  As Nature could not with his art compare,
  Were she to work; but in her own defence
  Must take her pattern here, and copy hence.
  Pleas'd with his idol, he commends, admires,
  Adores; and last, the thing ador'd, desires.
  A very virgin in her face was seen,
  And had she mov'd, a living maid had been:
  One wou'd have thought she cou'd have stirr'd, but strove
  With modesty, and was asham'd to move.
  Art hid with art, so well perform'd the cheat,
  It caught the carver with his own deceit:
  He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore,
  And still the more he knows it, loves the more:
  The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,
  Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.
  Fir'd with this thought, at once he strain'd the breast,
  And on the lips a burning kiss impress'd.
  'Tis true, the harden'd breast resists the gripe,
  And the cold lips return a kiss unripe:
  But when, retiring back, he look'd again,
  To think it iv'ry, was a thought too mean:
  So wou'd believe she kiss'd, and courting more,
  Again embrac'd her naked body o'er.

• Pygmallion Ovid Metamorphosis [1]

About Greek myths

• No fable made famous by the Greeks is to be neglected.
  • Hippolytus of Rome Philosophumena; or the Or The Refutation Of All Heresies Pg. 32

• The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips,
  Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair;
  The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,
  As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
  • Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies, II. 410. Ignorance of Man.