Every Greek God Explained in 11 Minutes | The Paint Explainer | History Teacher Reacts

The Paint Explainer is back with another explainer video! This time he goes over the Greek Gods. Greek Mythology is wild isn't it?! Mr. Terry talks about how myths develop, and the connection between ancient people, nature, and religious beliefs.

Join my channel to get early-access to new videos!

Links:

[SoulTaker]

To answer your question about Hera taking her anger out on Zeus's children instead of him, he was just too powerful for her to do anything harmful without getting the crap beaten outta her. I think there was a coup against Zeus once and they kinda succeeded, but one of the hekatonchires came and helped him get free. And i think he kinda kicked every divine butt nearby except for Athena's. She's his favorite.

[ravageroosgamecorner]

Fun fact: Despite how he is often portrayed, Ares was a better father than his ever was, even brutally punishing those who attempted to rape his daughters.

[projectbelmont]

To answer one of your questions about what the most egregious crimes in Greek mythology are, two of the biggest ones were blood crimes (the killing of a relative, even by accident) and violating the law of Xenia (how a host treats their guests and vice versa).

One of the most infamous cases of someone who commited both of these crimes was that of Tantalus, who murdered his son and then invited the gods into his home and, unbeknownst to them, served them a stew containing his dead son's flesh. He was punished in Tartarus by being chained in a lake with fruit dangling above his head, but whenever he reached up to grab the fruit, it would retreat from his grasp, and when he'd stoop down to drink, the water would recede. This is where the word "tantalize" comes from.

[jmurray]

Fun fact about the Minotaur

Originally the bull thought the woman was too low for his standards so she requested the inventor daidelus to create a cow costume and that’s how that happened

This was the same guy who built the labrynth and who’s children have a bad relationship with gravity

[Huntress]

There are sooo many more Greek gods, both minor and major. Despite its inaccuracies, the Rick Riordon books Percy Jackson's Greek Gods and Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes go into so much more detail about the stories of these gods and their children. And the Riordon books in general have a plethora of information and names of and about all sorts of minor gods, the Giants, Titans, Tartarus, and the works.

[ArctophileGA]

Ancient Japanese mythology is really interesting and incredibly elaborate. Native American stories are amazing and because we're really talking about dozens of peoples there, there's tons to dive into and lots of great oral tradition stories. Babylonian is really fun and I love the heroic stories from it, that one I'd bet was the expansion of oral stories to the point they became gods.

[michealpadraigpriomhuaduin]

My favorite mythology is Celtic. I'd love to see more content made or inspired by their mythology as well as looking at their history and culture. I do agree that it seems plausible that these mythologies in some cases may be based on real people. It makes me wonder about some of the wacky, but naturally plausible elements that happen and if somebody actually did stuff like that. Trying to choose a favorite is a hard one, but I think I'll say Hestia, actually.

[OSUforlife]

Not only were the Greek gods very influential on their own, but they inspired the gods of other cultures as well most crucially, the Romans were inspired by the Greek gods.

[starcatcher]

Fun fact: the symbol used for Hera in the video is actually the symbol for Venus/Aphrodite. It is supposed to represent the mirror she uses to gaze at herself.

[windhelmguard]

on the subject of "why isn't she going after zeus" and similar question:
some stories stated that zeus did not allow the olympians to war among themselves. he was also the most powerful of them, so there wasn't really much hera could do to him, so harming the women he fancied and the children he fathered was the next best thing.

[halbaloney]

Mythologies are a downstream blending of local folk beliefs, philosophies, etc. They're stories that adapt to the storytellers. For example, Medusa was originally depicted as a natural-born monster, as were the other Gorgons – a canonized folk belief in child-eating, winged monsters in the dark, drawn/carved on shields and amulets for protection.

Then she started being depicted as a harmless maiden, particularly in drawings of her death at the hands of Perseus (likely drawn that way to belittle one of Athens' favorite heroes). This in turn resonated with Ovid, who probably thought it was a sad reflection of how women were treated in the past (the trial sequence was especially bleak). And nowadays she's usually a beautiful green woman with a snake body, because of Hollywood and feminism 🤷‍♂

[joshuawells]

"Myths are not stories that are untrue. Rather they are tales that don't fit neatly into the historical record, which serve as the foundation to a culture." - the opening of Extra Mythology videos.

[aniruddhbhatkal]

About Poseidon and horses... they believed that waves looked like manes of horses, which is why he got that title

[aurthurpendragon]

Terry: I'm an adult.

Press X to doubt. 😂😂

[DSzaks]

Aww, he barely even gave Hestia a passing mention. But as we all know, Hestia... is the bestia.

[WookbooKtheeKpopTrucker]

Poseidon, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and Horses.
Think of a herd of stampeding horses. Or an enemy's cavalry charging at you. Thats like a thundering storm.

[FluffyUnicornEX]

0:43 my favorite pantheon is probably the Japanese pantheon because of 2 reasons 1st anime, it makes sense for entertainment from japan have some historical myths and concepts but i like learning the history behind the concepts like in Naruto the move "ameterasu" just watching the show you just think "thats a cool move" but never realized its named after one of the major gods of the Japanese pantheon, my second reason is cuz the names are so ridiculously long and i find it amusing to try and pronounce in one go like "Umashilashikabihikoji"

[assimilation]

The elder Cyclopes forged The items in question. However Hephaestus forged many backup thunderbolts for Zeus that weren’t his main one. He also forged the Bronze giant Talos, a sort of giant robot of its day, the Colchis bulls, and Hermes’ winged sandals. Other things too that I can’t remember off hand

[brianwestermann]

you really picked the worst/best moment to take a sip of your drink.

[lukasvik]

One of the interesting Pantheon groups are mezo-american/south american civilizations. Due to different material conditions their pantheons put emphesis on different values and/or even simillar aspects asighned to specific gods are portraied with distinct importance of parts and connections to these aspects. And that brings “alian” (for European/US person) moral bases. Even relatively simillar acts practised by some European populations like human sacrifices have fundamentally different “tones”.

And specifically Mayan and Aztec pantheons could be interesting, cause we have relatively decent amount of sources compared to majority of other civilizations in those regions. And also they influenced each other (mostly from one side) when these populations coexisted (post classical Mayan populations after their main collapse for example adopted some dieties from Aztecs and so on.)

Also comparison of Incas mythology and egyptian mythology could be cool if focused on specific portions of histories of both populations.