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{{Useful Notes|wppage=Classical mythology}}
[[File:mount-
The mythology of ancient Greece and Rome is the [[Older Than Feudalism]] source of many tropes, as well as well-known gods, heroes and monsters. An important element of [[Ancient Greece]], [[The Roman Republic]] and [[The Roman Empire]].
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In Homer's portrayal, they were basically [[Physical God|super-powered humans]] without [[Comes Great Responsibility|the super-]] that comes standard with powers these days. Zeus, for example, was a philandering rapist, responsible for a large share of the [[Half-Human Hybrid|god-human hybrids]] running around. Many of these became great heroes, the most famous of which was '''Hercules/Heracles/Herakles'''. Though you'd think Zeus's wife and [[Brother-Sister Incest|sister]] Hera would be a sympathetic character, she spends most of her time taking out her frustrations on said heroes, probably because Zeus, said to be more powerful than all the other gods and goddesses combined, was beyond her ability to take any meaningful revenge on. Other gods engaged in similar behavior. Hades, while [[Hijacked by Jesus|not as]] [[Everybody Hates Hades|evil as his]] [[Theme Park Version]], got his wife by kidnapping his niece '''Persephone''' (with Zeus's approval and assistance). This prompted the girl's mother, Demeter, to [[Just-So Story|create summer in retaliation]]. Greece and Italy are considerably warmer than other parts of Europe, and their summers are much hotter, so as the myth moved north, it became the explanation for winter instead. And [[War God|Ares]]... Well, he ''defines'' [[Jerkass]].
The '''Titans''' were a previous generation of gods overthrown by Zeus, though in [[The Theme Park Version]] they tend to be treated as another class of beings entirely. There were also minor gods such as the '''Muses''', '''Graces''', and countless nymphs, plus various monsters which you can today read about in the ''[[Dungeons
Also there are the oft forgotten, primordial gods that preceded the Titans, '''Gaia''' being the most well known of them (though often [[Did Not Do the Research|mistaken for a titan]]).
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Characters from this period are universally recognizable to viewers thanks to a dress code heavy in drape-and-cinch unpatterned linens, plus, they've all made the uncanny decision to speak with a [[British Accent]].
For further details, see the [[Classical Mythology/Characters|character sheet]].
* ''[[Theogony]]''
* ''[[The Trojan Cycle]]''
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* Most of the works of ancient Greek tragic playwrights [[Aeschylus]], [[Sophocles]] and [[Euripides]].
* ''[[The Aeneid]]''
* ''[[The Metamorphoses]]''
{{tropenamer}}
Greek Mythology has been very influential in literature, art, and many other things so it's named a lot of Tropes. [[Trope Namers/Oral Tradition/Classical Mythology|See the list here.]]
* [[Achilles' Heel]]
* [[Achilles in His Tent]]
* [[An Aesop]]
* [[Answering Echo]]
* [[Cassandra Truth]]
* [[Hydra Problem]]
* [[Lotus Eater Machine]]
* [[Narcissist]]
* [[Scylla and Charybdis]]
{{tropelist}}
== A-C ==
* [[Achilles' Heel]]: [[Trope Namer]] that is surprisingly not ''[[The Iliad]]''. That is the story of his rage, but it doesn't cover many of the famous parts of the [[Trojan War]], including his death and the creation of the Trojan Horse (those are narrated in lost epics of the [[The Trojan Cycle|Trojan Cycle]]). In fact, the Achilles Heel myth is not even referenced in the text, and Achilles is more known for his skill, strength, speed, and ferocity than for being nigh-invulnerable.
* [[Achilles in His Tent]]: [[Trope Namer]] again, though not the only example.
* [[Actually, I Am Him]]: Odysseus disguised as a tramp.
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** There are a number of tales in which Zeus [[Casanova|seduces or forces himself on pretty girls]] while taking seemingly random shapes.
*** Ganymedes was an example of when he did that to a guy, he then made Gadymedes his cupbearer, kicking out Hebe, his daughter by Hera. Ganymede was Trojan, giving Hera yet another reason to hate Troy. [[Hair-Trigger Temper|Then again she tends to hate everything.]]
** There are very few subversions in any of the myths. Perseus is one, as are Hector and Protesilaus. Eros and Psyche avert the
*** And Bellerophon who had an entire city's women strip off and throw themselves at him (he was threatening to use his father Poseidon's power to destroy the city). He panicked and fled.
* [[All of the Other Reindeer]]: The other gods ostracized, mocked and pitied Hephaestus because he was ugly, despite him being the creator of all their [[Iconic Item
** Some myths state his own mother (Hera) threw him out of Olympus after his birth when she saw that he was deformed... Fortunately there were some nice nymphs that raised him (and he gets his revenge on her later on when he returns to Olympus).
** Sometimes Hades as well.
* [[All-Star Cast]]: About half the point of the story of the ''Argo'', Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, and the Battle of the Lapiths were to gather a ridiculous number of well-known heroes together in one place.
* [[Alternate Company Equivalent|Alternate Mythology Equivalent
** Also Apollo and [[Norse Mythology|Freyr]], Hades and [[Finnish Mythology|Tuoni]] and etc.
** The weekdays Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after the Norse/Germanic gods Tiw, Wodan, Thor, and Freya. In the Romance languages, their names are different: For example, in Italian, they're called Martedi (Mars), Mercoledi (Mercury), Giovedi (Jove/Jupiter), and Venerdi (Venus). The implication is that Mars is equivalent to Tiw, Mercury to Wodan, Jupiter to Thor, and Venus to Freya. (Incidentally, it also means that the names of the days of the week are named after [[The Solar System|the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn]]
* [[Amazon Admirer]]: One of Heracles's twelve labors was to deliver Hippolyta's belt to the king that he served. Hippolyta was more than fine with that because she truly liked him. She handed over the belt, no argument or negotiation required. Alas, Hera intervened and staged a fight when she framed Heracles for kidnapping Hippolyta. In some versions of the myth, Heracles killed Hippolyta in the skirmish before she could defuse the situation. During others, he handed her to Theseus for safekeeping, but she married Theseus of her own volition.
* [[And I Must Scream]]: Those [[Taken for Granite|unfortunate enough]] to gaze upon the face of Medusa.
** Which is where we get the word petrified
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* [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny]]: Atalanta, who's distracted from a footrace by [[How Do You Like Them Apples?|sparkly golden apples.]]
* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]: While [[Hypocritical Heartwarming|Zeus himself]] does a lot of morally ambiguous things to [[Casanova|mortals]], if anyone besides him tries to make a move on Hera (or Leto), he reacts instantly and violently.
* [[Back
** Though in Orpheus's case, he came back from Hades, and hadn't really died.
** Persephone does this every year, but doesn't count since she's a goddess.
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* [[Born as an Adult]]: Athena, who is perhaps one of the most [[Just for Pun|classic]] examples of this trope.
* [[Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu]]: Sisyphus managed to cheat death by chaining up Thanatos. However, doing so messed up the whole cycle of life and death. So eventually the impulsive Ares frees Thanatos (because a war without death would be boring), and Sisyphus was dragged to underworld. He then gets back again by telling Hades that he has to punish his wife because she didn't bury him properly (he told her to do so, the cheater) and lived on like some insurance cheater for some decades until finally dying once and for all. His punishment? Sisyphus must roll a boulder up a steep hill... But it will always roll back down again whenever he's almost at the top, forcing him to perform this pointless task forever.
* [[Broken Aesop]]: Considering how many of the gods and goddesses are [[Karma Houdini
** The Greek gods pretty much epitomized the idea of "do as we say, not as we do" even ''before'' [[Values Dissonance]] gets added in.
* [[Brother-Sister Incest]]: Like most mythologies, Classical Myth also has lots of pairings between family members, as the various generations of gods are siblings and children of the previous one. Starting with Gaea and Uranus (mother and son), to their children Kronos (Saturn) and Rhea, to their children who are the current generation of gods. Notable sibling pairs among them are e.g. Zeus (Jupiter/Jove) and Hera (Juno), Demeter (Ceres) with both Zeus and Poseidon (Neptune), etc.
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* [[Cardboard Prison]]: Arguably, Hades.
* [[Chained to a Rock]]: Andromeda and Hesione.
* [[Chaos Entity]]:
** Chaos is the first thing that existed, and the Titans such as Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros were born from it.
** Eris is the Greek goddess of discord and strife but wasn't known to have a temple in ancient Greece; thus, often, she acts more like a personification. She is famous for initiating the Trojan War using the Apple of Discord inscribed with the phrase “To the Fairest One” for the goddesses to argue over. Paris, the prince of Troy, was chosen by Zeus to choose Helen, the wife of Menelaus of Sparta, and doomed his city, which led to its destruction.
* [[Clingy Jealous Girl]]: Hera is a Jealous Wife, but rightfully so, because her job as goddess of family and marriage runs in direct opposition to her husband's ''very'' promiscuous ways. She even torments the poor girls Zeus rapes.
** Persephone turned the nymph Minthe into the mint plant as revenge for trying to sleep with her husband.
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* [[Conjoined Twins]]: Depending who you ask, Geryon is a group of conjoined ''triplets.''
* [[Continuity Snarl]]: Even if you stick to just the Roman or just the Greek myths, ''don't'' expect consistency.
* [[Contrasting Sequel Character]]: The current gods, mainly Zues and the gang, got different personalities, got human appearing appearances, and even have powers that are in stark contrast to their predecessors, the titans, who were just giants or appears as typical monsters.
== D-F ==
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* [[Different for Girls]]: Achilles in a disguise.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: [[Wild Mass Guessing|Maybe they all want to make an example of those foolish mortals?]]
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130913093624/http://regretfulmorning.com/2009/02/8-overkill-punishments-dished-out-by-greek-gods/ This list] of [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|the 8 Overkill Punishments]] Dished Out By Greek Gods goes to show that if the gods are not acting towards hubristic humans the way a human king would act towards a disrespectful subject, they are laying elaborate traps that make escape from punishment impossible.
* [[Divine Date]]: Zeus was notorious for doing this behind Hera's back, though a fair number of other gods were willing to give it a try.
* [[Divine Parentage]]: lots and lots of examples. Many were children of Zeus, like Perseus, Heracles and Helen. Aeneas was a son of Aphrodite.
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** Also Narcissus, who was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection by Aphrodite as punishment for cruelly rejecting all the girls (and [[Erastes Eromenos|guys]]) who fancied him. Realising he could never love anyone else so much, he either stabbed himself or threw himself into a river.
** This trope is hardly uncommon, especially in Greek tragedy: going back to Oedipus, Jocasta did not take the news of the revelation well. Then later we have Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice... and that's just the Oedipus trilogy.
* [[Dude, She's Like, in a Coma]]: Endymion and Selene, except that it's ''Endymion'' (the ''[[Gender
* [[Due to the Dead]]: Good guys bury the dead properly. Always. Insofar as you fail, you are not a good guy until you straighten out your act.
** Or you die because you actually DID it (or because of laws that want to prevent that)... ask [[Antigone]]...
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** Hephaestus bested Ares using his skills as a smith, considerable wit and formidable strength. Not bad for a guy often considered a joke by the other Gods.
* [[Girl in a Box]]: Danae.
* [[Girls with Moustaches]]: Even period art depicts the Chimera as having a mane, even though it was female.
* [[God Is Evil]]: Zeus, the king of the gods, appears often as a rapist and a [[Manipulative Bastard]] in some myths, despist his modern [[Sadly Mythtaken|usually benevolent portrayal]]. His father Chronus/Kronos and his grandfather Uranus weren't any better... if not worse. See also [[Jerkass Gods]].
* [[The Great Flood]]: Deucalion and Phyrra again, as well as two other stories.
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* [[Happily Married]]: Baucis and Philemon. Also Hades and Persephone.
** As previously mentioned, Eros and Psyche, surprisingly.
* [[Happy Ending]]: Though often overshadowed by [[Bittersweet Ending
* [[Has Two Mommies]]: According to a Roman myth, Juno (Greek name: Hera) became pregnant with Mars (Ares) after being touched by a herb grown by the goddess Flora. She did this to get her own back at Jupiter (Zeus) for giving birth to Minerva (Athena).
* [[Hereditary Curse]]: Tantalus prepared his own son Pelops as food for the gods. Not only was he himself punished for this gruesome act (but this is another story...) but also a curse was laid upon the next four generations of his house. How did this curse manifest itself? Let's just say that the House of Atreus (named after Tantalus' grandkid) took being a [[Dysfunctional Family]].
* [[He's Back]]: Odysseus (finally).
* [[High
* [[Horned Humanoid]]: Minotaurs and Satyrs.
* [[Hot-Blooded]]: Heracles, at his best. 'Nuff said. [[Unstoppable Rage|When at his WORST, tho...]]
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* [[Instrument of Murder]]: During a music lesson from the lyrist Linus, Hercules once took some criticism the wrong way, and bashed Linus' head in with his own lyre.
* [[It Was a Gift]]
== J-L ==
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** Eros, after a quarrel with Apollo, got back at him by shooting him with an arrow that made him fall in love with Daphne at first sight, after he shot Daphne with an arrow that made her (in simplest terms) hate at first sight.
** Narcissus was considered so beautiful that every woman who looked upon his face fell instantly in love with him, but he would always spurn such people and break their hearts. He was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection after spurning several nymphs this way.
*** And in other versions, falling in love with his own reflection was punishment for spurning probably much older * male* suitors. [[Values Dissonance]]? Perhaps.<ref>
*** No matter who else got rejected by Narcissus, the last person is always Echo in an exceptionally cruel manner. Since she had the misfortune of getting cursed to repeat only what people said to her, it was a big problem when Narcissus needed directions to the nearest city. He had no way of knowing she was cursed, but it doesn't mean he should have called Echo an idiot and gone out of his way to avoid her. Rather understandable that Aphrodite considered this the last straw — especially since Echo was so in love with him that she couldn't bear to cause him harm, even to seek justice for herself.
** Hades and Persephone. A bit one-sided, but basically he (also) gets shot with Eros' arrow of love. Instant attraction and abduction ensues.
*** Oddly enough, they end up the most stable (and presumably happy) couple in Greek mythology. It probably helped that he lavished gifts and non-sexual attention on her to genuinely win her over — and unlike Zeus, he (practically) never cheats
** Even Eros was not immune to this. Aphrodite, Eros' mother, because she was jealous of the beautiful Psyche, asked Eros to shoot her with an arrow so that she would fall in love with someone repulsive at first sight, but Eros ended up falling in love at first sight with Psyche. Fortunately for him it was not one-sided.
* [[Love Makes You Crazy]], [[Love Makes You Dumb]]: Helen of Troy,<ref>"Helen of Sparta" is technically correct as she was Menelaus' wife. "Helen of Troy" is technically correct as well, at least after her defection (or kidnapping) to Troy. As to why people think of her as "Helen of Troy" regardless... chalk it up to [[Memetic Mutation]]. The whole Troy business ''is'' what she's most well-known for.</ref>
* [[Lover and Beloved]]: Goes hand-in-hand with the [[Ho Yay]].
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* [[The Trickster]]: Prometheus functioned as a pro-human trickster god until Zeus locked him up. Hermes has tricks and moral transgressions as one of his hats.
* [[Troll]]: What Eris does best.
* [[True Art Is Realistic]]: Pygmalion tells Aphrodite this trope is the reason for not marrying, he simply refuses to marry until he made the most realistic depiction of the most beautiful woman in the world. Basically her. The ending takes the trope further, {{spoiler|The [[Love God|goddess of love]] brings Pygmalion's statue to life just for him to marry, since his masterpiece had become so real to him that he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life, so literally his "art" became "realistic". Plus, Aphrodite was pleased with this request.}}
* [[Truly Single Parent]]: Nyx (although exactly which ones are just hers and which ones she had by Erebus are disputed). Also her daughter Eris, to either a lesser or further extent, depending on whether you're counting number of kids had or percentage of kids born by parthenogenesis.
* [[Twincest]] [[Incest Subtext|Subtext]]: Apollo was ''not'' happy when he heard about Artemis and Orion. It didn't end well for Orion.
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* [[You Can't Go Home Again]]: ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'', ''[[The Aeneid]]''.
* [[You Can't Fight Fate]], because
** [[You Cannot Change the Future]]: An [[Aesop]] in just about every Greek story. Otherwise unstoppable [[Designated Hero
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Trope Overdosed]]
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[[Category:Classical Mythology]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
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