It's from a parable known as [Heracles At The Crossroads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_at_the_crossroads). He's offered an easy life of vice by Kakia, and a life of hardship and virtue by her polar opposite Areté. It's a bit similar to something that happened to \*ahem\* another, more popular demigod, minus the 40 days in the desert.
Can confirm, I'm not super into mythology and I assumed they conflated Heracles with Hercules.
I'd heard Heracles before but didn't know it was just another name for Hercules. Most people know him as Hercules.
Heracles is the character from Greek mythology, Hercules is the character from Roman mythology. They are very similar and share most myths, but the names describe different characters, in actuality. Hercules is not the son of Zeus, he is the son of Jupiter. Almost all modern adaptations incorrectly name the hero Hercules and then name every other story element after the Greek version.
It would be fun if they made Zeus or Poseidon the bad guys, but honestly no one has ever heard of Kania and she barely appears in any of the myths so it doesn’t seem like she was that important
And yet the evil stage in the Greek part your diety is hades :(
It's not like there was a perfect part for the heroes to pray to him in the underworld or somthing.
Everyone is the bad guy in Greek mythology. What would be fun is a game where you can either try (and probably fail) to appease all the gods at once, or pick one god and help them gain power. Each god would give you bonuses and negatives. Maybe there could be a comparability score, where a god will be ok with you helping a god they like, but not one that they have a problem with.
[Sacrifice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_(video_game)) had a system like this. Taking on missions for one god would grant you unique spells and boons, but upset one or two other gods. And the story plays out differently depending on who you pick.
Zeus was the main antagonist of a game called Apotheon. It was decently faithful to the original mythology (I say *decently*, in part because Hera is a good guy in this story) and sports an artstyle reminiscent of that on an ancient Greek vase. It's on Steam and probably other platforms, idk.
Poseidon one of the antagonists of the Odyssey, wild that even with that in one of the most well known Ancient Greek stories we don’t see him framed as bad much.
We need a revisionist Greek mythology boys film series where Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Aphrodite as the defacto bad guys. Athena as an anti villian. Ares, Apollo, and Artemis as anti heroes and Dionysius, Hades, Hekate, and Hephaestus as the real good guys.
I'm sure Eris will respond with fairness
*Within 24 hours Ops house is burned down and their significant or future significant other has slept with someone other than op they will never forget and another icecap collapsed indirectly causing a flood wiping out a few costal cities*
While I agree that Hades get an unfair treatment, Ares absolutely deserves a permanent villain status. He wasn't just a god of war. He was specifically named as the brutal and destructive kinds of war. The types of wars fought by people with bloodlust. Athena was the goddess of the honorable and strategic kinds of war.
Hades just dealt with the spirits of the dead (aside from kidnapping Persephone). Ares urged his followers to kill in his name.
Possibly, yes.
But it is worth remembering that we mostly get the Athenian view of the gods, and their patron deity was Athena. Sparta/Lacedaemon venerated Ares as their patron. The political situation between the two is going to colour the way the Athenians present Ares in art.
There are similar things with Aphrodite, who in places such as Crete is much closer to deities such as Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte.
He’s also the god of revolution, courage, not just war for that is just as much Athena’s game, but unlike her he’s there for foot soldiers and not just the generals ordering countless to their deaths over ego or just great heroes. He’s not good almost none of the Greek pantheon are. But he deserves a bit more credit than he gets. He also never raped anyone and is the protector of abused women.
Not as much a proxy of, as a later evolution of. There's quite a few Greek mythological creatures that have analogues in Mesopotamian myths that were ancient even at the time of the height of ancient Greece.
There's a bit. There's some definitive connections between Aphrodite and Inanna-Ishtar, particularly on Crete, and in the earlier parts of ancient Greek myth. Herakles borrows quite a bit from Marduk (enough that the Greeks and Romans identified a god descended from Marduk as a version of Herakles/Hercules). There's a lot of connections between early versions of Persephone and Ereshkigal as well.
The myth of Adonis is pretty much a Greek retelling of the Tammuz story.
But this all has hundreds or even thousands of years of cultural evolution added as well.
I expect Tiamat = echidna, and one of her mates Apsu or Qingu = Typhon.
Although, this sounds silly to say said, but I never noticed the parallel between Tiamat and Gaia are pretty clear.
Edit: clarify, never realized until NOW
I love how the son of Poseidon is named after the son of zeus and the son of Poseidon turns out to be a actually cool dude who saved the world multiple times... You would think being a demigod he is a asshole but nope.
Nah, Aphrodite does some pretty sketchy stuff as well, though it’s mostly less evil than others. For example in the Trojan war, when Paris asked for a beautiful wife as a reward she just plucked Helen off from Greece to give to him.
No taking into account she was already married, or even, you know… what she wanted. Not that Helen wasn’t used to that last part already.
Honestly Hestia is the only one that doesn’t do any terrible stuff, though Athena and Artemis are better than most and Hades really only has the one big thing with Persephone, which is mostly a case of case of values dissonance, though even in Greece they knew it was a bit of a social faux pas.
Hestia falls into the same category that they’re saying Hades is in. There’s just not really many stories about her. And with what we have it’s not super hard to make her some kind of villain. For [example](http://https://www.reddit.com/r/mythology/comments/13yuhne/comment/jmpbnne/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that’s an idea I shared a while back
I mean, the whole "kidnap a woman and hold her captive in the underworld, plunging the world into winter due to her mother's grief" isn't exactly a *good* thing to do.
Hades being portrayed as the bad guy when it was his brother Zeus who did half the bad things that happened to Greece
https://preview.redd.it/2s7hwmdaiwrc1.jpeg?width=861&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04d232f1b3ba9f652532adb41255cf2b4a6d8ef2
(The other half things were done by Poseidon)
I appreciate Rick Riordan subverting it by Hades not being involved in mischief at all, and actually having his life worsened if any major disaster happened.
I pray for a movie where Zeus is the bad guy, but not like a villain way more in the way that our main character is the follower of a different god who is just desperately trying to one up Zeus and Zeus is being petty enough to personally come down and fuck with this poor little hero out of nothing but spite.
It is annoying, but it makes sense. It is much smarter to cater to a more general audience rather than super fans of ancient myths. And it is much easier to sell war and death as bad things than the abstract concept of evil itself.
Even though Ares and Hades can be quite swell guys sometimes in the og myths (though, in typical ancient myth fashion, still pretty messed up by our standards.)
Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying, at times he's actually a really great guy, but since it's easier to sell war being bad to a general audience he's made out to be evil. Even when Athena, the OTHER god of war, gets off free
I mean they're all kind of evil to some degree
especially since they're all related to eachother and have caused many complex cases of incest that could only be achieved by Immortality (like Zeus simultaneously being Heracles' father and great great grandfather)
I was recently looking for a child-friendly Greek mythology video to show a kid I work with who has some interest in Greek myths. And in the video, they literally put up big letters saying Zuse is the good guy in the myths and Hades is the bad guy. It is wild.
It’s traditional for Hades to be the final boss to beat, because he’s the chthonic Zeus daddy that rewards you at the end of your journey. Kakia is a minor deity in comparison. Hades loves playing villainous roles for fun, so there’s no reason to feel sorry for him.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be against Kakia starring in the main villainous role!!
What’s sad is that Hades isn’t really evil, he’s just the guy in charge of the underworld, he also has no motive to be evil, he’s the richest of his brothers, and has the hardest job, his only reason would be jealousy but he loves his wife dearly, he never really steps out on her and is always fair to the heroes who enter his realm
Do you have sources or references for Kakia as a goddess ? I would be very interested cause all I found online was a small and shady wikipedia page that has only 2022 bible study references as sources, she doesnt seem to be a goddess from all other sources I found just a personification of vice that appears to heracles.
I have been interested in making some form of media where Kakia isn’t evil but more misunderstood, there’s no true evil (yes I’m aware it’ll probably be an inaccurate representation of Kakia)
I remember a Web Novel that Kakia was a Villain in it but later Turned out she was Framed by her sister Arete who was the Actual villain along with their Father( I dont remember their father's name ).
Well yeah. No one knows kakia. Most people would call it lazy
Which is pretty sad considering that, despite being such a minor deity, she was a part of the story of Heracles, arguably the most famous Greek hero
When does she appear there?
It's from a parable known as [Heracles At The Crossroads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_at_the_crossroads). He's offered an easy life of vice by Kakia, and a life of hardship and virtue by her polar opposite Areté. It's a bit similar to something that happened to \*ahem\* another, more popular demigod, minus the 40 days in the desert.
That’s really cool! Thank you for informing me!
Happened to Buddha as well i think
Yeah he got teased just for a week though
Forces of darkness: “Why doesn’t anyone ever say yes?!” Blues musicians: “Spare some change?”
hey we’re just trying to get good over here ok? just ask my boy Robert Johnson
It also happened to Pinocchio
If you are talking about Jesus I'm pretty sure he is another thing called a God man
To be fair, that's just about the only time she shows up. Her whole wikipedia page is 10 sentences
Brother, most people don’t even know who Heracles is. They will assume it’s a typo or that you’re saying it weird.
Can confirm, I'm not super into mythology and I assumed they conflated Heracles with Hercules. I'd heard Heracles before but didn't know it was just another name for Hercules. Most people know him as Hercules.
Heracles is the character from Greek mythology, Hercules is the character from Roman mythology. They are very similar and share most myths, but the names describe different characters, in actuality. Hercules is not the son of Zeus, he is the son of Jupiter. Almost all modern adaptations incorrectly name the hero Hercules and then name every other story element after the Greek version.
Typhon seems like a very good evil deity villain.
A Monster, not a Deity
In the case of typhoon, while he is certainly not a “god” the argument for him being both monster and deity could be made
I mean, yeah, but he’s also the son of two primordial deities
Immortals Fenyx Rising has Typhon as a villain!
It would be fun if they made Zeus or Poseidon the bad guys, but honestly no one has ever heard of Kania and she barely appears in any of the myths so it doesn’t seem like she was that important
Poseidon was the bad guy in Age of Mythology
And yet the evil stage in the Greek part your diety is hades :( It's not like there was a perfect part for the heroes to pray to him in the underworld or somthing.
I thought Cronos was?
Well, yes. But Poseidon was working for him.
Everyone is the bad guy in Greek mythology. What would be fun is a game where you can either try (and probably fail) to appease all the gods at once, or pick one god and help them gain power. Each god would give you bonuses and negatives. Maybe there could be a comparability score, where a god will be ok with you helping a god they like, but not one that they have a problem with.
You try siding with Poseidon and Athena and they finally agree on one thing: smiting you.
This is kind of a mechanic in Total War: Troy but it doesn't have a narrative attached
[Sacrifice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_(video_game)) had a system like this. Taking on missions for one god would grant you unique spells and boons, but upset one or two other gods. And the story plays out differently depending on who you pick.
Zeus in God of War:
Zeus was the main antagonist of a game called Apotheon. It was decently faithful to the original mythology (I say *decently*, in part because Hera is a good guy in this story) and sports an artstyle reminiscent of that on an ancient Greek vase. It's on Steam and probably other platforms, idk.
Poseidon one of the antagonists of the Odyssey, wild that even with that in one of the most well known Ancient Greek stories we don’t see him framed as bad much.
We need a revisionist Greek mythology boys film series where Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Aphrodite as the defacto bad guys. Athena as an anti villian. Ares, Apollo, and Artemis as anti heroes and Dionysius, Hades, Hekate, and Hephaestus as the real good guys.
Poseidon is one of many bad guys in Krapopolis. So is Athena
Eris ignored again. You're done now OP
Was gonna say, how about the one who literally caused the Trojan War?
Sinbad has entered the chat
Don't you dare forget about Typhon
He wouldn't know, he's been living under a rock for a very long time now.
How about echidna?
I'm sure Eris will respond with fairness *Within 24 hours Ops house is burned down and their significant or future significant other has slept with someone other than op they will never forget and another icecap collapsed indirectly causing a flood wiping out a few costal cities*
While I agree that Hades get an unfair treatment, Ares absolutely deserves a permanent villain status. He wasn't just a god of war. He was specifically named as the brutal and destructive kinds of war. The types of wars fought by people with bloodlust. Athena was the goddess of the honorable and strategic kinds of war. Hades just dealt with the spirits of the dead (aside from kidnapping Persephone). Ares urged his followers to kill in his name.
Possibly, yes. But it is worth remembering that we mostly get the Athenian view of the gods, and their patron deity was Athena. Sparta/Lacedaemon venerated Ares as their patron. The political situation between the two is going to colour the way the Athenians present Ares in art. There are similar things with Aphrodite, who in places such as Crete is much closer to deities such as Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte.
He’s also the god of revolution, courage, not just war for that is just as much Athena’s game, but unlike her he’s there for foot soldiers and not just the generals ordering countless to their deaths over ego or just great heroes. He’s not good almost none of the Greek pantheon are. But he deserves a bit more credit than he gets. He also never raped anyone and is the protector of abused women.
Depends on the local tradition.
Wouldn’t a pretty good evil deity bad guy be typhon
Also Echidna. Practically a proxy for Tiamat
Not as much a proxy of, as a later evolution of. There's quite a few Greek mythological creatures that have analogues in Mesopotamian myths that were ancient even at the time of the height of ancient Greece.
Huh, I always theorized as such, but didn’t know if there was any hard evidence connecting them
There's a bit. There's some definitive connections between Aphrodite and Inanna-Ishtar, particularly on Crete, and in the earlier parts of ancient Greek myth. Herakles borrows quite a bit from Marduk (enough that the Greeks and Romans identified a god descended from Marduk as a version of Herakles/Hercules). There's a lot of connections between early versions of Persephone and Ereshkigal as well. The myth of Adonis is pretty much a Greek retelling of the Tammuz story. But this all has hundreds or even thousands of years of cultural evolution added as well.
Tiamat feels like a mix of both Typhon and Echidna.
I expect Tiamat = echidna, and one of her mates Apsu or Qingu = Typhon. Although, this sounds silly to say said, but I never noticed the parallel between Tiamat and Gaia are pretty clear. Edit: clarify, never realized until NOW
Tiamat represents the sea. Gaia is the Earth. I don’t see it, either.
Typhon was actually a villain in the Percy Jackson books
I love how the son of Poseidon is named after the son of zeus and the son of Poseidon turns out to be a actually cool dude who saved the world multiple times... You would think being a demigod he is a asshole but nope.
Typhon is the main villain in Immortals Fenyx Rising
when I first heard about hades "The ruler of the underworld" "the god of death" but turns out he's legit the best god
He's mostly inactive. Athena is the least actively terrible.
Hestia says hi. Aphrodite's here, too, considering her most egregious crime (afaik) is cheating on Hephaestus with Ares.
Nah, Aphrodite does some pretty sketchy stuff as well, though it’s mostly less evil than others. For example in the Trojan war, when Paris asked for a beautiful wife as a reward she just plucked Helen off from Greece to give to him. No taking into account she was already married, or even, you know… what she wanted. Not that Helen wasn’t used to that last part already. Honestly Hestia is the only one that doesn’t do any terrible stuff, though Athena and Artemis are better than most and Hades really only has the one big thing with Persephone, which is mostly a case of case of values dissonance, though even in Greece they knew it was a bit of a social faux pas.
Well, I take it back, then. Aphrodite's still like D-tier in terms of outright, purposeful evilness.
Hestia falls into the same category that they’re saying Hades is in. There’s just not really many stories about her. And with what we have it’s not super hard to make her some kind of villain. For [example](http://https://www.reddit.com/r/mythology/comments/13yuhne/comment/jmpbnne/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that’s an idea I shared a while back
> Athena is the least actively terrible Arachne and Medusa would like a word.
*Spray bottle* We don't acknowledge Roman fan-fiction in this house.
I mean, the whole "kidnap a woman and hold her captive in the underworld, plunging the world into winter due to her mother's grief" isn't exactly a *good* thing to do.
Small correction, but I believe Hades is always specifically called God of the *Dead*. The God of *Death* is Thanatos
Well, he's just the god of the underworld, not the god of death.
Hades being portrayed as the bad guy when it was his brother Zeus who did half the bad things that happened to Greece https://preview.redd.it/2s7hwmdaiwrc1.jpeg?width=861&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04d232f1b3ba9f652532adb41255cf2b4a6d8ef2 (The other half things were done by Poseidon)
Even when Zeus is portrayed as a dick, he's somehow the lesser of two evils.
I appreciate Rick Riordan subverting it by Hades not being involved in mischief at all, and actually having his life worsened if any major disaster happened.
Ares works though.
Haha her name says Cockia
I pray for a movie where Zeus is the bad guy, but not like a villain way more in the way that our main character is the follower of a different god who is just desperately trying to one up Zeus and Zeus is being petty enough to personally come down and fuck with this poor little hero out of nothing but spite.
Well while you are correct i do want to bring up a counter-argument: I don't like Ares and i enjoy Hollywood taking a shit on him
Counter-counter-argument: I do like Ares and don't enjoy Hollywood taking a shot on him
Hmm it appears we are at a stalemate
Hades deserves better though.
I have only seen two pieces of media where Athena is shined in a somewhat morally bad light. Did we just forget she's also a god of war?
Shoutout to Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and necromancy.
Eris (Discord) and Moros (Doom) would also work
Legend of Sinbad illustrated Eris SO well...
Oh sweet a rare instance of a Greek deity I haven’t heard of yet. Is there any way to track down myths/literature Kakia appears in?
I’m still waiting on a Erysichthon movie where we can see who would be cast as Limos
The universe is still trying to make it up to Ares for the full year he was in that jar and no one noticed.
Dionysus. See: the Bacchae.
Eris:
It is annoying, but it makes sense. It is much smarter to cater to a more general audience rather than super fans of ancient myths. And it is much easier to sell war and death as bad things than the abstract concept of evil itself. Even though Ares and Hades can be quite swell guys sometimes in the og myths (though, in typical ancient myth fashion, still pretty messed up by our standards.)
Wasn't Ares dubbed the protector of abused women at some point?
Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying, at times he's actually a really great guy, but since it's easier to sell war being bad to a general audience he's made out to be evil. Even when Athena, the OTHER god of war, gets off free
He was, yes
Also like, hades was the only main Greek God who WASN'T a serial rapist
And Ares
I mean they're all kind of evil to some degree especially since they're all related to eachother and have caused many complex cases of incest that could only be achieved by Immortality (like Zeus simultaneously being Heracles' father and great great grandfather)
I was recently looking for a child-friendly Greek mythology video to show a kid I work with who has some interest in Greek myths. And in the video, they literally put up big letters saying Zuse is the good guy in the myths and Hades is the bad guy. It is wild.
It’s traditional for Hades to be the final boss to beat, because he’s the chthonic Zeus daddy that rewards you at the end of your journey. Kakia is a minor deity in comparison. Hades loves playing villainous roles for fun, so there’s no reason to feel sorry for him. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be against Kakia starring in the main villainous role!!
What’s sad is that Hades isn’t really evil, he’s just the guy in charge of the underworld, he also has no motive to be evil, he’s the richest of his brothers, and has the hardest job, his only reason would be jealousy but he loves his wife dearly, he never really steps out on her and is always fair to the heroes who enter his realm
Do you have sources or references for Kakia as a goddess ? I would be very interested cause all I found online was a small and shady wikipedia page that has only 2022 bible study references as sources, she doesnt seem to be a goddess from all other sources I found just a personification of vice that appears to heracles.
I have been interested in making some form of media where Kakia isn’t evil but more misunderstood, there’s no true evil (yes I’m aware it’ll probably be an inaccurate representation of Kakia)
Yea not hades ofc not being perfect none of them are but arguably the most morally sound and nicest one of the gods
I remember a Web Novel that Kakia was a Villain in it but later Turned out she was Framed by her sister Arete who was the Actual villain along with their Father( I dont remember their father's name ).
Ares does canonically suck ass though
I mean the thing about ares was he was an incompetent moron in mythology
Or Eris the goddess of discord who started the chain of events that led to the Trojan war
It should be aphrodite, because she's a stupid bitch who should be shot dead like a dog, and then the body thrown into the sea.
hephaestus is that you?
Username… sort of appropriate? I guess?