Clash of the Gods: EPIC BATTLE for Control of the Universe *3 HOUR MARATHON*

a son battles his father for control of the universe and seizes more power than any God ever had this is the story of Zeus Greek mythology Supreme Commander to us it's a myth but to the Ancients it was reality a way to make sense of a terrifying world some Greeks believed Zeus was the one true God centuries before Christ and that Nature's worst catastrophes were a sign of his Wrath this is the myth of Zeus as it was originally told and the surprising truth behind it [Music] if you control the sky you control the world in Greek mythology that power belongs to one God Zeus He Reigns as the enforcer of Justice the master of men and gods Zeus was the king of the Gods but he was also responsible for dispensing Justice both to the gods and to Mortals on the Earth this is something really cool about Greek mythology because one of the things that you were supposed to do as a Greek when you worship the gods was simply to do what was required to keep the gods from squashing you as commander of the Skies Zeus has the power of nature at his disposal [Music] that gives him the most devastating weapon of all the most powerful symbol of Zeus is the lightning bolt this is what Zeus carries it's his main accouterment and it's the thing that makes him the most powerful of all the divinities attributing lightning to Zeus was a way for the Greeks to explain the unexplainable in a time before science mythology put faces on the forces that shaped the world the Greeks used mythology to try and figure out why the world operates the way that it does they didn't have scientific explanations yet for how the world came into existence or why lightning strikes here but not there or why it strikes then and not some other time [Music] the natural world was very frightening to them so they Associated it with the Divine you know these were symptoms of the God's power that they could use to punish people who hadn't worshiped them properly yeah Zeus's command over nature would make him Greece's most feared God but how did he get there [Music] what we know of Zeus begins with the writings of the ancient Greek author hesid around 700 BC his book called theogony was the ancient Greek story of creation what the Book of Genesis is to our own world theogony is he see its attempt to make sense of the world to bring order to it by telling the story of a dynastic family rivalry that winds up in a well-ordered cosmos that is the world that you and I know today in the Mist Zeus doesn't start out as the king of the Gods he rises from obscurity to challenge his father for control of the universe and that won't be easy his father is Kronos he is King of the titans the most powerful gods in the universe the Titans are an older order of Greek god they're pretty rough around the edges they're not too bright they're also not very well civilized as leader of the Titans Cronus is expected to produce offspring so he mates with his own flesh and blood his sister and fellow Titan Reya incest shows up quite a bit in mythology among the gods there's really nobody else at the beginning for them to have sex with so they end up marrying one another there's an old-time aristocratic idea that says that no one else is good enough for our family except only our family and the Greek gods definitely seem to ascribe to this kind of a principle these two Titan siblings Cronus and Raya produce the next generation of Greek gods mythology's household names the Olympians among them are Hades Poseidon and Zeus [Music] but they will not simply inherit the earth they must fight for it Chronos worried about having son would be greater than him and would supplant him the father fears being replaced by the sun that's human psychology I mean go to Freud and actually Freud found it in classical mythology so this this fear of losing your power to the Next Generation was real if you had a kid and you had something worth taking at some point you needed to keep an eye on the kid so his solution to this problem was to swallow alive all of his offspring as soon as his wife gave birth he would actually ingest them yeah of course since they're Immortal the children that Chrono swallows are not dead they are just locked away inside of his belly he's trying to control them and keep them from developing a power base so they might be able to overthrow it to the Greeks who told the myth this was an appalling Act cannibalism was as deplorable then as now we see the Greek authors giving voice to their fears through mythology cannibalism sacrifice were horrible taboos but when you project these things onto the gods it gives you a safe place to explore the consequences of what might happen thank you Reya is horrified all five of her children have been swallowed alive now she is pregnant again but this time she has a plan looks away and gives birth in secret to a son the future king of the Gods [Music] Zeus but Cronus is expecting another child to swallow so Raya wraps a rock in a baby blanket and presents it to him without thinking twice he grabs the bundle and gulps it down so the plan of Reya is put into place Kronos has swallowed down the stone instead of Zeus Zeus then as an infant is Spirited Away and he's put in what the ancient myth tellers tell us is the folds of the Earth Zeus has been saved by his mother's cleverness it's a memorable story but could that secret cave at the heart of the myth really exist it seems the Ancients thought so [Music] they believed Zeus had been born on the island of Crete in this mountain cave the cave on the island of Crete is perhaps the most important Sanctuary for the veneration of of Zeus it was considered as one of the possible places where the baby Jews was kept hidden from its own father excavations at the cave have revealed that it was a major pilgrimage site for visitors from across the ancient world [Music] people would go to worship Zeus how do we know we've excavated thousands of dedications to Zeus and ritual objects to Zeus from all over the Mediterranean one find in particular ties directly into the myth of Zeus amongst material remains were these cool Shields that probably were along the walls and were put up there to indicate the clanging of shields that the people defending Zeus used to muffle his crying when he was a baby so that Kronos could not hear a chosen Sun hidden to save his life for Christians and Jews the story of Zeus's birth is very familiar Many religious and mythological Traditions have stories of sacred or Divine children who are hidden away in order to protect them so that they can grow to adulthood and fulfill their Destinies we think perhaps of Jesus who is hidden away in the manger so that Herod will not be able to get to him or of Moses who is hidden away in Egypt [Music] in the myth Zeus quietly comes of age inside the cave he has a kind of training period there out of the eyes of Kronos and is able to acquire his strength and develop into a man Zeus suspends his childhood preparing to fulfill his self-appointed destiny to challenge his father and the Titans for control of the universe Zeus has escaped the fate of his siblings who were all swallowed Alive by their father the Titan Cronus inside a remote cave Hideaway he has matured into a fully formed God now he is ready to begin the Epic power struggle he was born to wage to avenge his father's savagery to liberate his five Olympian siblings from his father's belly troll of the world from the Titans who now rule it [Music] the stakes for him are tremendously high if he succeeds he'll be master of the universe but if he fails he may well be the one that winds up down in Tartarus Tartarus the lowest level of Hades and the ancient Greek equivalent of Hell Tartarus was the part of Hades where the Damned when when people who were bad or committed offenses Against The Gods on Earth would be sent to Tartarus fails in his attempt to seize power from Cronus and the Titans he'll be damned to this place for all eternity but if he wins he'll command Gods and Men from his throne atop Mount Olympus in Greek myth Mount Olympus is the Towering home of the Gods but it's also a real location [Music] it's the highest peak in Greece Rising nearly ten thousand feet above sea level and it's a natural setting for Supernatural powers the Greeks really believed that their gods actually lived physically on Mount Olympus it was important for them to actually have a sense of where Heaven Was where the gods actually resided [Music] it was home base on Mount Olympus that Zeus Engineers his Rebellion against Cronus and the Titans Zeus is going to have to get others to come in and help him out so that he can achieve supreme power [Music] Family Feud and so it is to his own flesh and blood that Zeus turns first he knows his strongest allies will be his five siblings the Olympians now fully formed adults but still trapped deep inside cronus's stomach if they can be liberated the Olympians could tip the scales in Zeus's favor and help him destroy the Titans forever he wanted to free his brothers and sisters so he concocted a potion [Music] quietly glare and slipped the drug into his nightly cup of mead Cronus drinks it and becomes violently ill first he vomits up the stone his wife had given him in place of baby Zeus according to tradition lat rock is the Cornerstone of ancient Greece's most sacred site Temple of Delphi home of the oracle Delphi is a sanctuary in Greece where people would come from all around to consult with God it was a direct phone line up to heaven to ask the answer to anything you wanted thousands of you story was first told the stone that Cronus supposedly vomited is still there at the very center of the temple complex at Delphi is an egg-shaped stone that was understood to be the exact stone that played the role of being the substitute for Zeus that Chrono swallowed and if you go there today to the Temple of Delphi the locals will still tell you that the stone that's there is the actual one that was in kronos's belly in the myth after throwing up the sacred stone Cronus regurgitates Zeus's five siblings and they are ready to join Zeus's Revolution what marks Zeus as a different kind of leader from those that have come before is his intelligence he's able to persuade and convince those around him that he should be leader and he's able to build coalitions now has his siblings by his side but he still needs more muscle to take on the Titans and there are some other estranged members of the family who are out for Revenge forgotten Brothers of Cronus the Cyclops and the hundred handers but to find them Zeus has to go to hell Kronos had feared the powers of these hundred-handers in the cyclopses and he locked them down in a Tartarus Zeus knew that if you could get their power on his side he could Marshal it to his own ends he goes down and talks to the hundred handers and says I will pay you great respect and I know that my father Chronos has mistreated you now I freed you and now you owe me and even they are moved and they say yes great Zeus we realize not only are you very powerful but you also know how to treat people well so we appreciate that and we will now fight on your side in gratitude for being liberated the Cyclops present Zeus with a gift the power of lightning lightning is one of the most devastatingly powerful forces in nature when lightning arcs through the air the air is briefly raised to a temperature that can be more than 50 000 degrees that's five times the surface temperature of the Sun the lightning bolt gives Zeus the power to rule the universe with this lightning bolt no one's going to be able to overthrow him the battle lines are drawn the Titans will fight for Mount arthrus the Olympians from Mount Olympus between them lies the plane of thessaly but this isn't just a mythical Battlefield thessalese actually if we take into consideration the modern map of Greece is the central part of Greece it's the biggest plain and the most fertile plane in Greece from ancient times to today [Music] has a long bloody history stretching from the greco-persian wars of the 5th Century BC to the world wars of the 20th Century A.D it is here that the ultimate battle of the gods will play out armed with a weapon of mass destruction and an elite fighting force Zeus braces for an earth shattering body to this day a real place may still bear the scars mythology's defining moment is now at hand the battle between father and son is about to begin it's the old guard of Cronus and his Titans versus the new blood of Zeus and the Olympians the outcome will determine who controls everything from the top of Mount Olympus Zeus sends a fury of lightning down upon his father's Army the fighting shakes the Earth to its core the only way we can conceive of this battle is simply worlds colliding all the forces in the universe smashing together at once you've got the hundred handers over on one side that are ripping off huge hunks of mountain and throwing mountains at the other side from the Titans you've got a lot of just brute force and brute strength they're able to take a punch and keep coming back coming back coming back it's an apocalyptic scene and and not entirely a myth [Music] [Applause] experts have recently determined that a real event just as frightening actually happened in the ancient world about 3 600 years ago the Greek island of Santorini experienced one of the most devastating volcanic explosions ever its effects were felt as far away as California the volcanic blast was the single largest seismic event on Earth in the last 27 000 years to give you an idea of how massive it was imagine a mountain about three and a half miles tall being blown into the sky all at once in 2006 scientists discovered that the Santorini eruption was even larger than originally believed excavations uncovered deposits of volcanic ash piled 20 stories deep blanketing a 30-mile radius around the island based on this evidence it's now believed the eruption unleashed the equivalent power of 50 000 Hiroshima bombs an explosion that powerful would have annihilated much of the Greek world for the survivors who knew little about how volcanoes work It could only have been the Wrath of the Gods when the ancient myth tellers told the story of great cataclysmic battles that shook the Earth they weren't doing so in a vacuum there hadn't been massive seismic events that had happened in the memory of some of the earlier generations of Greeks before these myth tellers had written down their stories as the clash of the Gods plays out in the midst Piers Zeus is finally about to seize control of the universe his powerful allies have tipped the balance and the Olympians are closing in on Victory but the Titans have one last weapon at their disposal from the depths of Tartarus they call forth a colossal Beast Typhon [Music] Typhon is a tremendously strong powerful monster that's challenging Zeus himself it's a last gasp effort and the final Master the final challenge he has to put down in order to secure his Reign Over the universe it is a supernatural Deathmatch a decisive struggle between Good and Evil and it will all come down to the Ultimate Weapon as Zeus and Typhon are engaged in this final epic battle Zeus eventually gets the upper hand and wins via his lightning bolt [Music] with one final assault Zeus drives Typhon and his Titan allies down into Tartarus where they are damned to spend eternity in a fiery Abyss [Music] [Applause] thank you according to the Ancients it was across the Mediterranean on the island of Sicily that Zeus's enemies descended into hell through the volcanic crater of Mount Etna local Legend says Typhon is still inside and has been behind all of the volcano's eruptions over the centuries Greeks use this myth as a way of explaining why lava was constantly pouring out of the volcano they explain that as either the remnants of Zeus's lightning constantly shooting out or of the Flames of typho who's still breathing just a little bit exploding flame out of the center of the volcano it is also said that Typhon causes destructive wind storms in fact his name is the basis for the word typhoon but in the myths the storm clouds have broken for the time being Zeus's victory over his father makes him the king of the Gods the absolute ruler of the universe so goes the myth but what is the link to reality in 2003 at the base of Mount Olympus a Lost Temple was discovered it was the centerpiece of an ancient city known as Dion it was dedicated to Zeus Dion was a city that was built at the base of Mount Olympus and so it's very close to the home of the Olympian gods and goddesses and where Zeus lived in Greek mythology in fact the the name of the town Dion means Zeus the Dion Temple dates back to the 5th Century BC the Golden Age of Greek mythology scattered around the site are marble blocks with unmistakable Engravings Eagles in ancient Greece Eagles were the Divine symbol of Zeus but there's more [Music] headless statue was found in a nearby riverbed carved into its 2400 year old base are three words Zeus the highest [Music] there's a debate among experts about what this reference to the highest means some believe this statue could be a missing link between Greece's worship of many gods and the single God philosophy of Christians and Jews and that this find is proof that the Greeks were embracing the idea of one God on their own before the arrival of Christianity the Greeks sometimes identified that highest god with Zeus after all the word Zeus in its data form Theos is where we get our word deos so there's an etymological reason to understand Zeus is the highest deity starting in about the third and second and first centuries BC we have different philosophical and Theological schools that arise and that start to propose a very strong view that there is only one God and that all the ancient stories and all the ancient Tales are actually just metaphors that reflect different aspects of what this Divinity is all about for the people who worshiped at Dion it's clear that Zeus was different from all the other Greek gods in fact he may well have been the only one that mattered in the myth Zeus has achieved the absolute power he has long sought [Music] but that power will soon be threatened by an unexpected foe the king of the Gods is about to be betrayed by the person closest to him [Music] Zeus has won his epic Clash with the Titans he now sits atop Mount Olympus as king of the Gods and master of mankind the ancient Greeks worshiped Zeus above all others and though he was fatally flawed the ancient Greek gods are very relatable they have faults they have strengths they have weaknesses they have all the things that normal human beings would in fact when the Greeks in these Early Times think about their gods one way of trying to understand it is that they see their gaza's being a lot like you and I just really really big according to the myth Zeus has one very human weakness that threatens to be his undoing an uncontrollable sex drive Zeus likes the ladies that's one of the most endearing and enraging things about him is that he has this very very human character that he just he never saw a girl that he didn't like Zeus will stop at nothing to seduce his conquests he even uses disguise Zeus visits mortal women in various guises whatever it takes to consummate the relationship so in different Tales we hear of Zeus turning into an eagle turning into a swan turning into a bull turning in all these different shapes turning into a human beings to mimic a woman's husband's face to trick the women as best he can into into having Union with him a beautiful young goddess named metis is the first to capture Zeus's attention he takes her as his wife medicine is a very attractive and appealing young woman and the quality that really sets her apart is she has practical wisdom in fact her name in Greek means practical wisdom when Zeus spies her he finds her very appealing but Zeus's affection for Menace is overshadowed by a dark prophecy that threatens his grip on power he is told that she will bear him a child who will one day seize his throne suddenly Zeus like his father must fear his offspring Zeus is representative of this awful tradition that starts literally from the dawn of time of Sun's destroying their fathers in order to take prominence but Zeus vows that this time will be different and he takes a drastic step to make sure of it swallows his wife alive [Music] once again family love Falls prey to power its history repeated but this horrifying act will make Zeus stronger and wiser by swallowing her Zeus internalizes Mattis or cunning and Prudence all at once she becomes a part of Zeus in a sense she's probably imprisoned in his stomach but he also takes on these greater qualities of intellectual ability this to us seems a little strange but it's important to remember that for the Greeks one of the places that some Greeks thought that They Carried their wisdom and their ideas was actually in their stomach so when Zeus swallows matus he actually takes her into the part of himself where really a lot of his best thinking was done with men is gone Zeus is in need of a new wife and like his father before him he finds one in his own family his sister and fellow Olympian Hera she's not like Zeus's earlier conquests these mythology's most powerful goddess the king of the Gods has met his match between Zeus and Hera a relationship which is between two people who are on some level equals so some of the conflicts between Zeus and Hera I think we can see as the Greeks culturally working out wow what would it look like if you actually had two people with equal power within a relationship she's the queen of the goddesses and she has wonderful Beauty she's supremely intelligent she's Mighty but she's also exceedingly jealous because Zeus is always running after other women the king of the Gods continues to step out with an endless string of sexual partners he conceives well over 100 Offspring with a host of lovers both Divine and mortal if I'm not mistaken Zeus never has an encounter with a woman that does not produce a child so in that sense it's extreme virility it's extreme power Zeus's ability to sleep with anybody matches a kind of fantasy of what ancient Greek males would hope or desire their lives to be men fantasized about such things and they thought if there was an all-powerful God out there well he would surely act on those fantasies Zeus's promiscuity provided a perfect way for Greeks to connect themselves to him every corner of the Greek world boasted of having its own Hometown love child as Zeus's Fame and power grow across ancient Greece more and more cities and towns want to be associated with them and they therefore claim that there was some kind of actual liaison between Zeus and some Mortal woman within their family tree that then produces The Offspring that produces the local ruling families together evidence of this connection can still be found in cities throughout the Greek World Athens Thebes magnesia Macedonia all are named after Children of Zeus but there is one individual who isn't happy about Zeus's abundant fertility in the myth his wife Hera has had enough she vows to make the king of the Gods paid dearly for his chronic philandering she doesn't like to be humiliated in front of the other gods so she will take it out on her husband Hera gathers the other Olympians together and lays the groundwork for a revolution Hera actually goes to the her fellow Olympian gods and says why is Zeus in charge he's a no more important or powerful than the rest of us if we all get together we can kick him out so in fact they rise up and they bind Zeus with chains Zeus awakes from a nap to find himself tied down a prisoner in his own bed it is the ultimate betrayal a conspiracy carried out by the siblings he once saved the Revolt was the greatest threat that Zeus ever faced there was never any sense that Mortals could challenge his power but the combined power of all of the Olympian gods really could have defeated him this was indeed one of the most horrifying moments in Zeus's career he was actually about to lose everything but just when all seems lost help comes in the form of an old Ally the hundred handers when they hear Zeus is in trouble they come to his rescue breaking his chains as the Olympians Run for Cover [Music] Zeus survives the coup attempt now it's time to exact his revenge [Applause] his wife Hera is sentenced to hang from the sky by golden chains his son Apollo and brother Poseidon are condemned to hard labor they are ordered to build one of the ancient world's most iconic monuments the massive walls of Troy it's another example of myth explaining the unexplainable to the ancient Greeks the walls of Troy seem too strong to have been built by man so Zeus's punishment of Apollo and Poseidon helped explain their existence their ruins survived to this day actually had been built by the gods or some kind of divine intervention on behalf of the Trojans in the myth Zeus has dealt Justice to those who crossed him but it will be human beings who bear the brunt of his Wrath that wrath will arrive in the form of a massive flood one that may even be linked to the biblical story of Noah [Music] Greece's most powerful God has survived a coup attempt he dealt Swift Justice to the conspirators but he's not through yet now mankind will experience the full measure of his rage in ancient times fear of Zeus's punishment kept a lot of Greeks out of trouble when people did something wrong they would have to be very very careful that Jesus did not Smite them with a thunderbolt there are many many examples in Greek history of Zeus destroying entire cities and civilizations because he felt that they had overreached themselves that they had blasphemed the gods that they had become too proud to be allowed to live any longer big Arthur he said wrote that without the fear of Zeus's Wrath humans would live like beasts and the weak would be in the hands of the strong noose is the order bringer Zeus is bringer of justice and the bringer of civilization [Music] when natural catastrophes occurred in the real world the Greeks believed that they were sent by Zeus to punish evil men often stories were invented to explain what had made the supreme god so angry [Music] according to the myth Zeus's most frightening moment of Wrath comes after he sees humans engaging in cannibalism was as important as it was in ancient Greek religion because they considered it to be so heinous [Music] in fact the identification of eating human flesh is something that you would attribute to wolves or to dogs but hardly to human beings Zeus is no stranger to cannibalism his own father Cronus once swallowed all of Zeus's siblings when he is confronted with the sight of Mortals doing the same thing he becomes enraged and vows to destroy the human race with a catastrophic flood [Music] nine days and nights pass the rain is relentless and the Earth slowly drowns [Music] the waters reached the peak of Mount Parnassus which stands over 8 000 feet high [Music] in all corners of the Earth human race perishes when the rain stops only two Mortals are still alive incredibly they have survived the storm by building an ark a raging flood an ark and only two surviving humans the parallels with the Old Testament are striking it could be the biblical flood of Noah it could be Zeus's Deluge it could be similar sorts of of giant watery disasters that we see figuring in a wide number of different cultures around the world all these stories go back to a natural catastrophe that affected the collective memory of people's living in the Eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea a deluge like the one described in these myths would have devastated Humanity but could such a flood have really happened in the past decade scientists have uncovered some stunning clues that prove it did research has shown that as the last ice age ended about 7 000 years ago runoff from melting glaciers surged into the Black Sea Basin violently submerging nearly 170 000 square miles of dry land for these people their entire world was flooding and it surely must have seemed like theyma had angered the gods to have brought down this kind of disaster upon themselves could this be the real life disaster that spawned the story of Zeus's flood [Applause] in the myth Zeus has held onto power in the face of strong opposition but there is one more Challenger he didn't count on Jesus Christ in the First Century A.D his message would take the World by storm and Dethrone Greece's dominant God when Christianity came and promised salvation in the afterlife so gave people something to believe in something that could happen to them after their death Christianity found many followers Zeus's Stranglehold on humankind faltered as this new religion spread across the Mediterranean World ultimately the same civilization that worshiped him would reject him in Antiquity there was no more powerful force than Zeus except for one fate not even Zeus himself could overturn it much as he wants to on occasion try to change fate or redirect it he himself is even subject to its dictates before the rise of Christianity Zeus's myth captivated the Greek world for thousands of years and made him the most feared and respected of all the gods but he was only one of many from Greece and Beyond who would leave their mark on mankind some are still familiar names Hercules Hades Medusa and each of their stories is a window into a long lost world a code waiting to be deciphered these myths reveal to us in a uniquely powerful way the hidden strata that lay underneath our conscious awake lives our understanding of the world and like an archeology of the human mind we can dig into them and see the Deep recesses of human psyches and I think that's what makes these myths so powerful he is the greatest action hero in mythology his name his Hercules a man tormented by a horrifying sin driven to take on 12 impossible challenges in a quest for Redemption to us it is myth but to the Ancients it was reality a legend based on an actual Warrior filled with hidden codes about the real world this is the truth behind the myths of Hercules [Music] [Music] in a strange and unfamiliar world something stirs just below the water line it breaks the surface a giant serpent with not one but nine dragon-like heads it spews poisonous Vapors and then eats its victims alive [Music] but today the monster has met its match strongest hero who ever lived mythology's ideal man Hercules [Music] he is the most popular hero in history a half God half mortal with superhuman strength who is destined to rid the Greek world of evil but that's only the beginning of his story Hercules was something special and at the same time extremely ordinary he was a man of the people he was a little bit like Babe Ruth in American mythology he was a womanizer he was a heavy drinker and it was an extraordinary athlete he was a little bit like a god but he was very definitely a human being today a lot of people think Heroes Have superhuman strength they get the girl they have superhuman powers can fly through the air it's a different conception in the Greek World a hero is someone who has superhuman strength but someone that has to suffer and Hercules is the consummate hero in Greek society he's destined to suffer more than anyone else France a legion of terrifying enemies endures suffering on a scale no human has ever known Story begins with Zeus the sex crazed King of the Gods having an illicit affair Hercules is the son of Zeus an immortal woman named alchemini classical mythology is loaded with stories of gods who impregnate mortal women and give birth to gods or demigods so this damn a good idea means that this person has some features that are very Godly some Divine Powers but at the same time he is Mortal he can die invented this idea be they wanted to reach the gods as much as possible to create images of themselves that are closer and closer to the Gods Hercules would grow up to be Greece's model hero but he has one powerful enemy who wants to see him destroyed Zeus's wife the goddess Hera she's the queen of the goddesses and she has wonderful Beauty she's supremely intelligent she's Mighty but she's also exceedingly jealous because Zeus is always running after other women Zeus father's countless children with a variety of mortal women and Hera hates them all but she decides it is Hercules who must pay the ultimate price for the sins committed by Zeus [Music] Hercules is actually very very irrational it's almost as if she knew that he was going to challenge her favor in heaven in some way worse thing about Hercules that was different than the other children and maybe she felt threatened by this but every day of his life he seemed to have been paying for this hatred of hers one night while Hercules is still a baby Paris sends two poisonous snakes into his Nursery [Music] he's got one snake in each hand and he's squeezing them to death little tiny infant squeezing to death these two giant serpents everyone knew at that point that there was something a little bit different about Hercules this is one of the reasons why hero will hate him because cannot kill him and make his life wretched cannot kill him because Destiny says he will become immortal and even a God has to obey destiny but Hera is just getting started her Vendetta against Hercules will determine the course of his life from the Cradle to the Grave so goes the myth but what is the link to reality [Music] February 2004 in a Greek town called Thebes archaeologists discover stunning evidence that sheds new light on the story of Hercules birth they uncover a buried Temple beneath an ordinary residential lot Center are the remains of an altar around the altar are hundreds of ceramic vases and small statues they all portray one thing Hercules after the discovery researchers linked the findings to a 2500 year old text that describes a mysterious House of Hercules at Thebes just outside the gates of the ancient city the description and the site match perfectly but there's more the ancient text says that this shrive was erected on the precise spot of Hercules birth could the hero have been real the hunt for Clues leads back to the myth as the story continues Hercules comes of age a man God straddling Two Worlds the human and the supernatural he is 2 strong to be a human he's sort of like a god trapped in a human's body often he accidentally does bad things to people around him like he accidentally kills people he accidentally damages property he can't really control himself the Superhuman strength makes it impossible for Hercules to blend into Greek society he was unable to form emotional contacts with anyone in fact there seems to have been a kind of schizophrenic quality to his makeup he was half human and half divine and yet he had a father who would not protect him from the terrible trials and tribulations that Hera inflicted upon him he was left alone suspended Between Heaven and Earth and having nowhere to go desperate for some semblance of normalcy Hercules marries a beautiful princess who Bears him two sons but his domestic Bliss is short-lived his Nemesis Hera soon returns determined to make sure he never knows happiness this time she'll transform him from family man to murderer by driving him mad Ness children are his enemies in the dead of night Hercules commits an unspeakable horror [Music] when Hercules wakes up from this madness from this ravenous Madness [Music] he finds himself covered in the blood of his own family doesn't really even know that he's the one that did it but nevertheless he has the blood stains on him it is the physical Mark of guilt and this is the guilt he must bear and it's from this horrible incident that the rest of Hercules story unfolds the strongest man on Earth has slaughtered his entire family [Music] when his blind rage subsides it is replaced with intense remorse a horrible anguish that will plague him forever the ancient Greeks called this a blood guilt in Antiquity a blood guilt was understood to be a kind of curse that clung to you from the blood of the person whose murder you were involved in this like a kind of Christian Penance where you do certain good acts on the earth in order to make up for bad things that you might have done [Music] from here on he's going to have to try to get rid of this stain of blood guilt from this horrible act that this is the very pivot of Hercules whole life purify his soul Hercules will have to survive the most excruciating series of Challenges ever confronted by man or the gods it is a journey that will take him across the Greek world and Beyond I leave a trail of real evidence that sheds new light on the truth behind the myth [Music] mythology superhero Hercules has just butchered his wife and children under a spell cast by his stepmother Hera now the strongest man on Earth must atone for his crime but he is lost disoriented for guidance seeks out ancient Greece's greatest prophetess Hercules's crime is so great that only one of the most powerful religious authority of his time could help him solve it and that's the Oracle Delphi Delphi its sacred Temple plays a key part in many Greek myths but it's not just a mythical place ruins of the Oracle Temple can still be found in the mountains of Central Greece 2500 years ago a priestess stood here in a trance-like state as mysterious Vapors rose up around her he spoke in riddles and supposedly channeled the word of the Gods it was a direct phone line up to heaven to ask the answer to anything you wanted Discovery May reveal with the oracle's powers originated [Music] a recent Geological Survey has shown that the Delphi Temple sits precisely on the intersection of two fault lines this may explain the magical Vapors that surrounded the prophetess the new evidence suggests that movements of the Earth around these faults might actually have released ethylene gas that would have leaked through these cracks in the Earth people who breathe a lot of ethylene will fall into a trance that sounds almost exactly like what the Oracle Adelphi experienced so basically the Oracle Adelphi was a stoner that everyone in ancient Greek society trusted a lot at Delphi the Oracle tells Hercules that only a terrible Penance can absolve him of his crimes to receive that penance he must go to his cousin and arch rival King euristius [Music] but it's a trick Hera is using the Oracle and King eurystheas to crush Hercules Kara will pursue him with everything she has hero will be his implacable enemy and the dangers the enemies she will put in his way will not cease eurystheus assigns Hercules 12 challenges all designed by Hera they will forever be known as the labors of Hercules in them the hero is challenged to rid the Greek world of its greatest evils to confront its most Savage beasts forces of nature evil tyrants monsters no man could be expected to survive even one of these challenges but Hercules must overcome 12. these labors serve a function their primary function is to remove the pollution from having killed his family you will need to purify himself to purify his hands to purify his soul later on of the Grievous crime he has committed it seems a little unfair to us because Penance for instance for madness sent to him by his stepmother Hera in the Greek mind it didn't really matter that it wasn't his fault he still needed to perform these acts to wash away the stain of these violent acts that he committed the Quest for Redemption begins with the first labor to kill a Savage Beast that symbolizes Mankind's animal instincts the lion of anemia the problem for Hercules is even though he's a magnificent Archer the Lion's skin is impervious to his arrows [Music] so it's only through brute's strength that he manages to overcome the lion and when he does he skins the lion and he adopts it as his own armor that he begins wearing so from then on Hercules is always depicted wearing the Lion's skin which protects him from harm King euristius is stunned he thought Hercules first labor would be his last now he lays out a series of even more monstrous challenges sure to put an end to the hero a theme becomes evident in these early labors it's man versus nature the ancient Greeks viewed nature as a scary place they wanted to live in harmony with it but nature was a that if you didn't watch would kill you and that was their view they did not have a romantic view of nature there are a few great Heroes Hercules is prominent among them who can tame nature who can actually bring it under control and this is the mark of a truly great hero to bring this Unstoppable Force to heed the second labor challenges Hercules to kill another monstrous freak of nature the dreaded nine-headed Hydra a poisoned spitting serpent that devours men in one bite Hercules draws his sword and attacks he slices through one of the hydra's necks then another decapitating the monster one head at a time but as soon as each head is cut off who more grow in its place this represents the human Lust For Pleasure which the Greeks believe to be unkillable the more you attack it the more you cut its heads off the more heads you have to deal with foreign [Applause] needs a new strategy against this enemy his success hinges on more than muscle Hercules grabs a torch and scorches the skin of the Beast he comes up with the idea of burning off the stumps to cauterize the neck so that a head can't grow back in there with a final thrust Hercules severs the last head from the body it is a stunning Triumph of man over monster so after he slain the Hydra Hercules dips his arrows into the blood of the Hydra and from then on he has poison arrows our word toxic meaning poisonous comes from the Greek word toxon which is a bow that you fire arrows with and so toxicos in Greek simply means relating to the bow so it is it's a strange word in English because it preserves The Legend of Hercules inside the word two labors conquered like a fighter in training Hercules is honing the skills necessary to survive in a hostile World physical strength mental toughness and Relentless endurance in these labors Hercules is overcoming evil and he comes as an Avenger and a bringer of Justice in his next two labors Hercules conquers another pair of Nature's Most formidable beasts the golden stag of Artemis an animal so fast it could outrun an arrow in flight and a vicious man eating more a monster Hercules manages to capture alive eurystheus who said him these tasks never expected any of them to be accomplished so we start to see Hercules as the the prototypical Superhuman he seems Unstoppable at this point you break the hero's momentum tinguristius tries changing tactics he introduces a different kind of natural obstacle [Music] raw sewage for his fifth laborer Hercules must take on a dirty job that symbolizes the foul side of human nature he must clean out a massive complex of manure-filled stables now this labor is is different from the others because it involves menial labor in a way that Hercules hadn't really submitted to before in the earlier labors he has to slay beasts that are ravaging the countryside and he's trying to protect human beings or to promote civilization but in this one it's simply a matter of cleaning dung out of a stable that hasn't been cleaned in many years and he has one day to accomplish the task Hercules notices that these repulsive Stables lie between two powerful Rivers and he gets an idea he does is you his great strength he diverts two different rivers and have them flood into the stables and flush everything out [Music] one labor at a time Hercules is making amends for killing his family so far he has proven himself greater than any obstacle that Hera and her puppet King eurystheus have dreamed up and with each struggle he is only getting stronger foreign to the ancient Greeks his success in the face of such overwhelming odds was an inspiring story could it have been more than just a story intriguing historical Clues suggest Hercules was not a myth but a real hero [Music] Hercules is mythology's Ultimate superhero the combination of strength and suffering in the same character made him relatable to the people of the ancient world they saw in Hercules a hero to be both pitied and admired someone whose tragic story was connected to their own reality Miss reflect uh historical events that have long since been passed so they are a kind of code and ancient history that gets passed down from generation to generation the stories of Hercules come together from people getting together in different cultures and sharing their own Tales of Local Heroes that they know who overcome great difficulties and as they share these stories they start to realize wait a minute our strong man seems to be a little bit like your strong man and then the the Traditions all weave together in ancient Greece Hercules was the model for the ideal man but did he actually exist [Music] it might be possible that behind each of these great Greek Heroes there is some single historical figure but history has frustrated all of our attempts to find and locate the actual persons versions of the Hercules myth say his family came from a Greek settlement called tirins and ancient sources suggest it was once home to a real Warrior who was renowned for his great strength and even thought to have a direct connection to the Gods this Warrior whose name is lost to history serve the ruler of a powerful Kingdom called mycenae Hercules also serves the king of mycenae his cousin eurystheus who assigns him the 12 labors is this coincidence or something more other clues about The Man Behind The Myth can be found at one of Greece's most legendary sites this is Olympia in the year 776 BC the first Olympic Games were held here are hundreds of games around the Greek world but the Olympics with a with a finest and and the most prestigious if you wanted the Olympic Games it was being elevated in a way amongst men and it was as close as a mortal could get to uh to the Gods [Applause] there are striking parallels between the challenges Hercules faced in his labors had those of the games both were Feats of strength and endurance that only the most disciplined athlete could achieve but the connection between Hercules and the Olympics may run deeper Hercules reportedly founded the Olympic Games after one of his labors so the laborers are directly connected with the original foundation of the games these are the remains of the stadium at Olympia its track measures 600 feet according to the ancient Greeks that 600 of Hercules's own feet according to Legend Hercules himself paced out the stadium which was 600 little steps and it's 192.27 meters so historians have deduced that Hercules feet were actually 12.6 inches long that's a size 13 shoe more traces of Hercules can also be seen in the main Temple here reliefs salvaged from the exterior walls depict his 12 Labors he was revealed by all athletes and one measured oneself up against Hercules well it's very important to the Greeks never to surrender so many athletes died rather than than give up [Music] in the myth it is the same perseverance that sustains Hercules Hercules message is always one of keep going and you'll eventually succeed no matter how tough things seem success is possible in his sixth flavor Hercules must face a flock of ferocious man-eating Birds who symbolize Mankind's unreachable goals he drives them off with his poisonous arrows and reaches an important Milestone the halfway mark in his 12 Labors but six more challenges still remain and each one will only get tougher his stepmother Hera will make sure of it as the labors go on they become more and more extreme and they make him go to further and further in more mystical places the next three labors will take Hercules Beyond Greece for the first time and pit him against powerful foreign enemies stories like these resonated with the ancient Greeks in an age when they were anxious to expand their empire the Greeks pressed by land hunger are beginning to colonize as far out as the south of France and they're sending colonies throughout the Mediterranean and reports are coming back about various monsters or various things for his seventh labor Hercules travels to the island nation of Crete defined and capture the prized Bull of the king minus the ball is a code for Crete's dominance over Mainland Greece at the time when the myth was created Bronze Age to important power in that part of the Mediterranean the places that in the Classical period like Athens and Sparta which would have a lot of importance and would really become the most significant Powers really weren't anything very important at all in fact they had to pay tribute to Crete because it was the major power in the in the region [Music] in the myth Hercules is about to change time tracks down King minus his ball wrestles it into submission and sales it back home no longer will Greece answer to Crete seven labors down with his conquest of the cretan bull Hercules has won his war against nature now it will be man versus man in the earlier labors Hercules was performing services that benefited mankind ridding them of pests and beasts and these other various things but at this point we start to see a darker side of Hercules and it may be foreshadows things to come in his next set of labors Hercules confronts two foreign rulers who pose a threat to Greece first he targets diomedes the tyrannical king of Estonia diomedes has trained his horses to eat the Flesh of his enemies Hercules makes him their next meal [Music] this labor sent a powerful message to the ancient Greeks that the evil you create will ultimately destroy you this is the first labor where Hercules actually kills someone this is the pivotal moment for the first time that he's actually drawn human blood The Killing Spree continues in his next Labor when Hercules slays the Amazons a ferocious tribe of female warriors after stealing the belt of their leader hippolyta with that Hercules has completed nine of his 12 Labors his bravery strength and stamina have carried him through the most impossible series of tasks ever attempted but the final battles will prove to be the hardest they will take Hercules beyond the outer limits of the known world through territory no Greek has ever seen in search of a realm with intriguing parallels to the biblical Garden of Eden [Music] the mythical hero Hercules has endured nine daunting labors in a quest to atone for the crime of killing his family every challenge represents a tougher test of his strength stamina and resolve his Labor's as kind of a crescendo of difficulty that Hercules is able to overcome even harder and harder labors shows him to be incredibly powerful in a way that no other ancient hero is able to do but as the challenges go on it becomes clear that no amount of physical pain can ease his mental anguish Hercules is a prisoner of his own guilt no matter how many labors he performed no matter how much heroism he exhibited no many no matter how extraordinary his physical strengths were inside of him there was no peace there was no satisfaction three more tests remain for Hercules they will take him to the edge of the Earth and into an abyss of death and what happens is that Hercules continually has to go further and further afield from Greece the further you go out into the unknown you actually cross the plane between mortal world and Immortal World in his tenth labor Hercules sets out to capture the cattle of the Juria a vicious monster with three sets of legs three hits and a little pedigree he's actually the grandson of Medusa so he too is a kind of semi-monsterous figure and he's not going to let these cattle go without a fight but destroying Nigerian is only half of the challenge the other half is getting there to reach the jirian Hercules must Venture beyond the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean but one massive obstacle stands in his way a mountain range that joins Europe and Africa into one continent and seals off the sea from the ocean Hercules decides not to go around the mountain he goes through it he splits the mountain in two with one Blow from his sword this part of the myth was created to explain how the Atlantic and Mediterranean were joined The Cliffs on each side are forever linked to Hercules The Straits of Gibraltar are known to the ancient Greeks as the pillars of Hercules and no one could go beyond there no one knew what was beyond there to the people of the ancient world the pillars of Hercules were not just a Gateway into an unexplored ocean they were a portal between reality and myths for a Greek to talk about somewhere beyond the pillars of Hercules is kind of like you and I talking about Somewhere Over the Rainbow and that Hercules has actually gone there and come back would have only added to his reputation all ancient Sailors Bound for the Atlantic had to sail between the pillars of Hercules and one recent discovery suggests there were many who dropped anchor here to pay respects to the hero himself in a cave on the Rock of Gibraltar archaeologists have turned up hundreds of artifacts believed to be linked to Hercules so we took samples and sent them away for radiocarbon dating and they're all perfect matches within each other and they all seem to point to a period of about 400 years from about 800 BC to about 400 BC these were objects that were being placed very specifically for a particular reason and we're quite confident that what we have here is a big shrine experts believe Greek Sailors came to the shrine to pray for their lives as they prepared to follow Hercules into the unknown they did not know why if anything lay beyond the pillars foreign faces the same uncertainty as he crosses this threshold into the unknown beyond the pillars the three-headed durian and his cattle await the monster comes out fighting hurling huge Boulders down the mountain at Hercules but Hercules has a secret weapon arrows dipped in the poisonous venom of an earlier Conquest the Hydra yeah he takes aim and fires The jirian Falls dead and Hercules claims his cattle 10 labors down next her PES must go to the edge of the world to steal golden apples from a garden guarded by a dragon with a hundred heads a garden and a dangerous serpent this labor parallels the biblical story of Adam and Eve there are early Christians who made a comparison between the apple of the Hesperides and the Tree of Life In The Garden that's one of those things dealing with ancient material is that these folks talk to each other and they knew each other's stories in the Hercules story there's a deadly twist the apples he seeks belong to his enemy the goddess Hera not only do these apples belong to Hira but they are signs of her sacred marriage to Jews apples and marriage are very commonly combined in Greek mythology Hercules wanders for years in search of Hera's apples with no luck [Music] finally he reaches the end of the world and meets a god with a heavy burden to bear [Music] Atlas Alice was one of the Titans and his job is that he needs to carry on his shoulders the weight of the world literally he Bears the world on his shoulders This Modern Day phrase carry the world on your shoulders is derived directly from the myths of Atlas Hercules is exhausted and lost but Atlas knows where the golden apples are so Hercules volunteers to hold the world while he retrieves them [Music] Atlas eventually returns with the apples but there's a catch [Music] tells Hercules that he doesn't want to take the Earth and Sky back atlas of course says thanks very much I've been trying to get rid of that for a long time and is about to walk away Hercules says oh you know you're right I'm I'm really sorry do you mind it could you just take it back for just a second I'm going to pad my shoulders with my lion skin [Music] the world back and Hercules walks away [Music] vegged Hera by stealing her precious apples now he is one challenge away from winning his freedom and it will send him to a place no mortal has returned from alive the Land of the Dead Hades [Music] Hercules has confronted 11 of the toughest Challenges ever attempted by man or the gods he's fought wild beasts evil Kings hideous monsters and crossed over to an unknown world in a Relentless quest to make amends for killing his family Hercules spends his life toiling trying to get rid of a guilt that he doesn't really feel like he uh has earned always suffering always enduring now one last test remains for his 12th and final labor Hercules must find his way to the mysterious underworld of the Dead there he must capture Cerberus the three-headed guard dog at the gates Hercules final labor is by far the most outrageous humans had never done anything like this before Heroes couldn't typically go to the underworld Hades master of death is the keeper of all human Souls Cerberus is his enforcer now the dog isn't so much to keep you the living from going in because if you're crazy enough to do that that's your problem it's to keep the dad from coming out one of the biggest problems you have in most ancient civilizations is the fear that if someone dies they may not realize they're dead and come back to you Hercules tries a diplomatic approach with Hades he asks for permission to take his guard dog up to Earth on one condition Hercules most overpower the Beast with nothing but his fists this is the final Moment of Truth [Music] Hercules wrestles The Dog to the ground [Music] and beats it into submission [Music] the fact that he was able to bring Cerberus back from hell is an extraordinary event because what it was showing was that a Greek hero could go in and break the cycle of life and death at last Hercules has completed his penance he has conquered every obstacle that has been put in his path and endured physical and mental torment beyond measure by All rights he should finally be at peace Hercules is someone who struggles who overcomes he suffers but he always gets back up and there's some vague promise that life is going to be better for him after this adventure is completed but of course it never is [Music] Hera holds an undying grudge against Hercules for being Zeus's illegitimate son foreign there is only one escape from her curse death he builds a huge funeral pyre foreign s just as he endured it the heroic death the proper death of a hero he wants to burn on a funeral pyre well when this happens it seems to be the final cleansing what burns away is not Hercules what burns away is his mortal flesh and this releases his soul so he himself ascends to the heavens in deaths Hercules is finally redeemed Zeus the king of Gods believes his son has suffered enough he invites him to join the Immortals on Mount Olympus at his Nemesis Hera finally relents what we see here I think is that Hercules is the hero of Heroes he's the greatest of the great and at the very end of it all Zeus says okay Hercules you suffered enough and you're so great I'm actually going to go ahead and just make you a god [Music] Hercules is finally going to get a kind of reward that will last forever the suffering is finally over in the end Hercules is resurrected and joins his father in The Eternal Kingdom it is an ending with an eerie similarity to another Divine mortal Jesus Christ Hercules Final Act is one of self-sacrifice and again there's an interesting Christian parallel with the hero who has to suffer to obtain immortality and when he fights himself on fire it burns away all the mortality and all that's left is his Essence and that's what ascends into heaven this is the myth of Hercules a Timeless story of strength suffering and Redemption it's the kind of story people like to hear because everyone has experienced trouble and toil and suffering in their lives they've all faced Monumental tasks that they don't think they'll be able to to complete or a story of someone who's been through that has still gotten through and made it into the end that Hercules can achieve uh success at the end it points out to us that there's a kind of always a possibility of success no matter how difficult our life might seem [Music] this is the Land of the Dead this is its master Hades a God so feared no one would speak his name his myth reveals how the ancient Greeks viewed death it is a chilling vision of the one fate no mortal can escape and it has Eerie links to the real ancient world curses ghosts and secret Cults prepare to descend into the underworld and experience the story as the Ancients heard it this is the truth behind the myth of Hades [Music] in a lush green pasture a beautiful young woman picks flowers her name is Persephone [Music] and she is being watched foreign in Greek mythology when a young Maiden is plucking flowers in the meadow something bad is about to happen [Music] suddenly the ground breaks open the hand reaches up from the darkness drags her down into the underwear underwear Hades god of the Dead has chosen his Queen [Applause] [Music] thank you Hades is mythology's Warden of death He commands the vast and frightening realm that all Mortals good and bad must enter when they die it is his job to make sure they never Escape tea is the god of the dead and none of us want to die he is to be feared his power is awesome the Greeks wanted nothing to do with Hades because to know him is to be dead the Greeks tended not to depict or represent Hades there are not temples built to him he's someone that has kept at arm's length like a kind of Uncle whose business you're not sure about and don't want to talk about too much main idea is that for the ancient Greeks to be dead is not a very good thing [Applause] the myth of Hades was created to make sense of what happens after we die stories reflect human yearning to hold on we can see in them how the Greeks thought about death what their hopes and fears were about death a lot of religious traditions try and supply a way in which Your Existence can continue in the next world and Greek religious Traditions are no different thank you according to the myth dead Souls enter a vast and gloomy underworld a realm named after its Master Hades it is the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven hell and limbo all Under One Roof we we text think that what happens to you after death has to do with what you've done here on Earth if you've been a good person then you go to heaven if you've been a bad person you go to hell for the Greeks actually those places were all located in one place they were all the underworld it's the one place we can't ever see we can make up stories about what might be going on there the great punishments that are occurring or the Terrible Things That might be happening but we never know and so we continue to wonder in the myth there are three levels of Hades most of the Dead descend to the fields of asphidel the dreary resting place of the nameless masses the fate of the average person in the Underworld is just to have to wander around a gray shade and live a not very exciting or interesting life it's a kind of sad place to be it was sort of like the the Catholic conception of limbo a sort of Twilight place quiet and peaceful but full of morning trees where the soul would simply wander aimlessly and then there is the place reserved for those who've most offended the Gods Avast Abyss 40 000 miles deep a dungeon of suffering and eternal torment surrounded by a Flaming River very bad people would be sent to Tartarus which is quite like our the Christian conception of hell in fact Tartarus was so closely linked with Hell by the early Christians that it was even mentioned in the New Testament it appears in a verbal form in second Peter having to do with people being thrown into Tartarus then there were a few who were terribly Wicked who were punished in Tartarus and that I think is the origin of what Christians know as hell for the fortunate few Paradise awaits in the Third Realm of Hades the islands of the Blessed the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven Everything grows by itself and you can eat your fill with no work there is absolutely no work there is constant rejoicing there are round dances there are streams and there is pure friendship so they're lives in the myth all human beings must eventually succumb to Haiti's command some that day comes far too soon Hades has kidnapped a young Maiden named Persephone he holds her captive in the Underworld Hades has taken her away to his realm to be his wife forever but Persephone is not forgotten in the world above her powerful mother is searching for her she is Demeter goddess of the Harvest the woman who feeds the world [Music] is one myth that defines one of the most sensual aspects of the universe the meter is able to destroy humankind she can rip the world apart Greeks believed Demeter was responsible for the changing of the seasons and that Persephone's disappearance started the cycle she ET fertility to the land so plants withered and dyed human beings no longer gave birth the Earth descended into the deepest deepest of winters faced with the prospect of an endless Frost the other gods command Hades to return Persephone but Hades has a plan Hades knew that if he could get her to eat food belonging to the underneath that she would then become part of the underneath he offers Persephone a snack of pomegranate seeds she naively accepts and seals her fate [Music] foreign it is a mistake for which the entire planet will pay he must now spend three months of every year in the Underworld one month for every seed she ate the rest of the year she can spend with her mother when Persephone is down in the Underworld Demeter doesn't give Earth the fertility that it needs and that is what the Greeks understood as winter when Persephone returns to her mother Demeter rejoices and that's what we have as spring and summer the ancient Greeks believed Persephone traveled to and from the underworld with each change of seasons but how did she get there the answer lies in a cave near the Greek Town of eluses just Northwest of Athens to the Ancients this wasn't just a cave it was a portal of death according to the myth Demeter met with her daughter Persephone right here Persephone came out from the underworld through this cave a boundary between the land of the living and the Land of the Dead and between real life and myth but this wasn't the only passage into Hades there were lots of entrances to the underworld in ancient Greece in fact it was sort of a competing industry it was a little bit like the way that Americans used to say George Washington slept here every Locale wanted to be able to say we have an entrance to the underworld this was a place of great importance to the ancient Greeks in fact experts determined that the ruins found near the cave entrance were the remains of a temple among the artifacts discovered there was a stone relief with an inscription reading simply to the god and goddess it was a dedication to a God who couldn't be called by name a shrine to the angel of death himself Hades you need to remember that temples to Hades are not common because of who he is and what his worship is there aren't many reasons to build temples in fact the way you would get his attention is you smashed on the ground and say hey Hades so the fact that there's a temple at eluses it's just striking [Music] it was here at eluses that ancient Greece's largest religious cult me ant to worship a secret society obsessed with death [Music] we know historical personages who would go there and stay and go through the initiation Plato Cicero Socrates that tells you the importance of it [Music] surviving texts reveal that the cult members came here in search of a shortcut to Paradise a path to Eternal Bliss in the realm of Hades Colts would give you the information you needed to find your way to the islands of the Blessed you lived it out in relative Splendor with great abundance of food and parties and wine experts believe the cult adeluses may have influenced another religion that promises life after death Christianity we know that the cloud helped to liberate people from the fear of death a very interestingly prepared the ground for Christianity it sowed the seeds of a universal cult that revolved around the defeat of death [Music] [Applause] to the ancient Greeks this was the face of death [Music] in the myth Hades is a merciless master of Souls but he was not always this way [Music] he has undergone a dramatic transformation from forgotten child to feared God in fact he was cursed from the moment of birth when he was eaten alive by his own father Hades is the ancient Greek god of the underworld a dark lord who controls all dead Souls [Music] always so menacing foreign s a baby's cries Pierce The Silence a newborn son his name is Hades [Music] his father is Cronus king of Greece's ruling gods the Titans Cronus was told in a prophecy that one of his children would murder him and he is determined to make sure that doesn't happen the father fears being replaced by the sun that's human psychology pronounce a solution to the problem was eat your kids [Music] in one swift motion Cronus consumes his newborn son infanticide wasn't really common in ancient Greece so the idea of a father actually deliberately trying to kill his children would have been very shocking to them now of course since they're Immortal the children that Chrono swallows are not dead they are just locked away inside of his belly Hades and most of his siblings grow up inside their father's stomach but one child was able to escape cronus's Wrath his name is Zeus he returns as a grown God freeze his trapped brothers and sisters the siblings now unite to form the Olympians troll of the Universe from their parents in a final Clash with the Titans [Music] after the overthrow of the titans the Olympians have the job of trying to figure out now who does what in this new order Hades Poseidon and Zeus the three male Olympians agree to divide The Spoils of Conquest it is a defining moment for Hades one that will forever determine the power structure of the Gods [Music] Hades is the oldest child and according to the real Greek law of the time that gives him an advantage throughout most of the Greek world the law of Planet janitor was the practice which means the oldest born the Hades but by right inherited the largest chair but Zeus the youngest brother has his own Ambitions to rule the world it is a clash between Zeus's ambition and Hades Birthright the brothers decide to draw Lots whoever wins the heavens will become the king of the Gods in ancient Greek custom the drawing of lots was a typical procedure used to divide things up that were otherwise very difficult to discern and everybody would have recognized that the drawing of lots was a legitimate way to make a tough call like this foreign draw [Music] Poseidon claims the Seas Zeus claims the heavens thus becoming mythology's Supreme Commander draws the Short Straw he is left with the Land of the Dead [Music] this was not something he chose for himself it was faded him he did it but it bent him in some ways made him not a happy God it is a tragic turning point for Hades he could have ruled the universe instead he is condemned to the realm of the Dead in ancient Greece the attitudes towards death was not so different to our feelings today towards death so people would not worship Hades as much as they did Poseidon and Jews other gods do not come to see him because death is hateful to the Gods Haiti's new home is dark blue and filled with the sadness of dead Souls ancient texts describe it as a dank expanse of caves and rivers it is a place that is a dark and gloomy its rivers are full of mist has the stench of Decay it's a very forbidding place it's a place where if you go you do not come back from so goes the myth but could it be based on reality [Applause] [Music] this is duros a network of caves that runs from Miles beneath Greece its Maze of rivers and caverns match the ancient descriptions of Hades perfectly caves functioned as in between spaces they were clearly understood to be potential points of transition between the upper world and the underworld caves are exceedingly important throughout the Greek world because the first humans who lived there lived in caves even after they move out and start building and practicing agriculture these caves retain their sacred significance the experience of entering and being in such a gloomy Place definitely affected the imagination of Greeks and their construction of what Hades and the underworlds must have looked like yeah [Music] the ancient Greeks were terrified of Hades and his morbid Realm but they were even more afraid of the Dead Souls who were denied access to it according to the myth these rejected Spirits would return to haunt The Living ghosts according to Greek myth the god Hades rules a dark and dank universe the underworld of the Dead and begins to metamorphize the afterlife into a kingdom and the function of any just Monarch is to punish the wicked and to reward the good Hades assembles a gang of enforcers to watch over his dead Souls Cerberus a ferocious three-headed guard dog the hundred handers prison guards of Tartarus and the principal henchmen of ease Karen he patrols the river sticks the Waterway of hate [Music] Caron has a job of faring Souls from one side of the world that is the world of living to the other side of the River Styx which is the world of the underworld proper or the world of the Dead skeletal figure very demonic and shadowy he in essence is the border between life and death he's decay in terms of popular culture he comes down as the Grim Reaper he comes down as the one who will Point his finger and and take you there is no way into Hades except through Karen and no one can cross the river sticks for free every dead Soul must offer a coin for passage if the soul doesn't have that money to pay the fairy man it wanders forever or unable to rest on the shore of the sticks why ancient Greece place a coin either under the tongue or on the eyelids of the corpse of the the dead person this ritual was essential to the ancient Greeks if the coin wasn't placed the deceased would never find peace there is no doubt that the Ancients took this seriously many states had laws that punished people who did not fulfill their duty to bury the dead the family had obligations to make sure that the dead were cut off from this world and sent to the next because if they didn't the dead would be ghosts in this world and that affected everyone [Music] the dead could come back hunt ask for something cry complain hurt destroy all of these ideas are found from the earliest sources we have until now this is the myth but what is the evidence the Greeks left behind a clue about their belief in ghosts ancient voodoo doll archaeologists Excavating graves in Greece have discovered the tiny lead figurines with their hands and feet bound together and they are all enclosed in small coffins etched with curses inscribed on these are magical spells that are intended to call up the dead and the Gods in charge of the Dead to basically torture people who are still living if you were competing in a boxing match you might ask the dead to restrain the arm of your opponent another realm in which they were frequently used as business so if you are a a leather Tanner and the other leather Tanner down the street is doing better business you ask the dad to somehow screw up his business these voodoo dolls were placed in the graves of those who most likely never made it to Hades they were known as the Restless Dead people who had died too young people who had died violently for example by being murdered or people who had not received proper burial these ghosts could not get into the underworld and so these ghosts were restless and unhappy and angry and it would be easier to get one of them to do something nasty for you those Souls who did make it into the underworld were locked away for good Haiti's punishment for any who tried to leave would be relentless [Music] but that didn't stop some from trying an old weakened man stands wearily at the bottom of a mountain sweat streams down his face veins explode from his skin his name is Sisyphus and he is the first Soul who ever dared to defy the will of Hades just before his life on Earth ended Sisyphus made plans to cheat death says to his wife please don't bury me he knows that if his wife doesn't bury him he won't go all the way through to the other side of Hades he'll be stuck in this kind of no man's land who has not imagined tricking death Sisyphus through his rhetorical art to his intelligence to his sheer wit he is able to convince the god of death or to find a way out of hell Sisyphus knew better than to try deceiving the king of the Dead instead he went to the queen the first complained to Persephone the queen of the underworld that his wife had done this terrible thing how could she possibly have treated his body in such a terrible Way Persephone felt sympathetic and and felt angry with the wife and gave Sisyphus permission to go back up to the world above in order to scold his wife of course once Sisyphus is back in the world above he has no intention of returning to Hades [Music] Sisyphus has done the impossible he has tricked death and turned the natural cycle of Life on its head but the lord of the underworld will have his revenge no one cheats ideas and lives to tell about it Hades the God of the Dead releases no one but a soul named Sisyphus has slipped through his grasp when Hades finds out he has been deceived he is furious he immediately dragged Sisyphus back to the underworld Sisyphus thought that he could outwit the gods that he could outwit death that he could outwit nature to the ancient Greeks such an attitude was dangerous any Soul who tried to cheat death was a threat to society Greeks believe that when someone died they needed to be put in their place and kept there the Assumption there was that the dead were seeking life from the living and draining them of life if the dead were always present they'd suck your life out [Music] in the myth the punishment for trying to cheat death is painful and permanent Haiti's condemned Sisyphus to the hell of the ancient world Tartarus there in the scorching Heat he is forced to push a huge boulder up a mountain at the end of each day he reaches reaches exhausted and in agony and watch is helpless as his Boulder rolls back down he suffers the same punishment every day eternity from the story of Sisyphus in which we have a person who's engaged in an absolutely pointless Endeavor for eternity we get the Modern English word of sisyphean which describes some kind of a task that seems very arduous and also entirely pointless the story of Sisyphus sent a strong message to the ancient Greeks let no one can outwit death or its master Hades is the one that humans most try to trick or deceive or get around and we can understand this Hades is that God whose will over you and whose power over you is absolute no one can negotiate their way out of death but even after Sisyphus there are still those who try one of them is Orpheus a musician who makes the sweetest music in the world it will become his weapon against the lord of the Dead Orpheus was the founder of the musical tradition he was the person who invented poetry and invented music he was particularly Adept with the liar which was an ancient musical instrument a stringed instrument shaped sort of like a u with a bar across the top and strengths coming down one of the important things you need to remember about the word music in Greek it means both song but it also means magical incantation so Orpheus engaged in Magic when he sung [Music] there is only one thing Orpheus loves more than music His stunning Young Bride eurydice one of the the profoundly sad things about the Orpheus and eurydice story is just how perfectly happy and in love they were and one of the things about the Greeks is that if you're happy something's going to happen because it's it doesn't belong to Mortals to be that happy one day as eurydice picks fruit in a Grove she's spotted by a Seder a hideous half goat half-man Beast known for its uncontrollable sex drive [Music] seders represented the male force of nature uncontrolled it was pure appetite it was a desire to procreate and mate the Seder lunges for eurydice she tries to escape but the Seder Corners her she backs away terrified and slips into a pit of poisonous vipers this is where Orpheus finds her but he is too late she is in the clutches of Hades Orpheus is so in love with eurydice that he Grieves her as no human being has ever grieved anyone Orpheus refuses to accept his wife's deaths he resolves to challenge Hades and bring back his wife alive cannot possibly go on without eurydice with his liar as an only weapon he resolves to go down to beyond the world [Music] Orpheus begins a treacherous descent into the depths of the Earth failure in his quest will Doom his wife forever success will make him a hero it's almost as if you can't be a truly Greek hero unless you have been to the underworld and back it is a very frequent theme in Greek literature it was something they liked to think about death is something that everyone shares we can't help but think about it with his beautiful and sad songs Orpheus charms his way past The Boatman Karen and across the river stinks but another terrifying obstacle awaits him on the other side Cerberus the three-headed guard dog of Hades [Music] Cerberus was stationed at the gates of the underworld he was there to monitor those who came in and out no one could get in or out without going past this dog This ferocious dog had three hats and was big much bigger than other dogs and much stronger than other dogs it's a beast that they see and tremble before with trembling fingers Orpheus strums his liar Cerberus is Spellbound and the musician has his opening but his true test is inside the gates Hades himself he's going up to the great god Hades and just hoping that his command of music will make Hades do what he wants but his faith his confidence is not in him as the musician but in the power of music Orpheus will attempt to do what no mortal ever has to enchant the lord of the Dead his song was so beautiful and so grief-stricken that everyone including Hades wept and this is the god of the dead he doesn't weep easily another figure watches from the Shadows orpheus's dead wife eurydice [Music] Hades is so moved by the music he decides to give Orpheus a chance to win his wife's freedom Hades recognizes the power of love and loss for the first time he cannot understand lost love because he's Immortal but the song connects with him and because of that power because of that song Orpheus is allowed to bring eurydice back [Music] on one condition Orpheus has to walk out of Hades trust that eurydice is following behind it but if he looks back to make sure he will lose her forever as Orpheus and eurydice are making their way to the world above Orpheus begins to doubt he begins to wonder is eurydice really there um is Hades playing some kind of terrible trick on him and as he gets closer and closer and closer to the world above this doubt grows and grows and grows in him and eventually just as they are about to break through to the surface he can't take it anymore and he turns around and he sees eurydice and when he does and catches eyes with her she instantly gets dragged back down into the underworld Hades has proven once again that his power over the dead is absolute but his authority will soon be challenged by a power far greater than him it will be the Ultimate Clash of the Gods recorded for all time in the Book of Revelation [Music] Hades has proven once again that his power over the dead is absolute he has taken orpheus's wife eurydice Orpheus is desolate after returning from the underworld the musician travels deep into the wilderness and sings to everyone he meets about the tragedy of death this is the myth but what is the connection to reality an amazing archaeological find is shedding new light on how the ancient Greeks viewed the master of death and his domain over the last two centuries mysterious gold inscriptions have been discovered in ancient grave sites many many of them have been found corpse when the corpse was buried and they're shaped like lips and so it's almost as if the inscription on the tablet is meant to be speaking on behalf of the Dead they are covered with references to Hades the God and the place they read like directions into the underworld from someone who's been there [Music] you will find to the left of the House of Hades a spring as soon as the soul has left the light of the sun go to the right being very careful these texts have been described as passports to the underworld and they described what happened What stages the dead would go through what Guardians they would meet and what they had to say to the gardens in order to pass and to reach the underworld they are real life inscriptions inspired by myth visions of the afterlife believed to be derived from the mythical poems of Orpheus it was believed that while he was in the Underworld he learned a great deal about the way it worked so when he came back to the upper world without his wife he wrote poems about the underworld and these poems then were passed down from person to person what they should do in the Underworld what they shouldn't do and it's in fact portions of these poems that are inscribed upon the gold tablets the Ancients used the poems of Orpheus as an instruction manual for life after death a way to understand and navigate the realm of Hades [Music] for thousands of years of the afterlife endured but in the first few centuries A.D a new set of ideas revolutionized the way the ancient world looked at death the god Hades was about to come face to face with a powerful new Force Jesus Christ Christian tradition tells of an epic battle between the old order and the new a final clash of the Gods at the center of The Showdown stands Hades and Christ has come to collect his Souls there's a rewriting of the Gospel of Nicodemus it's called the desensis Christie The Descent of Christ into Hades after Jesus's death he goes and confronts Hades Jesus comes in as the king of glory and opens the gates and leads all of the people in Hades into Paradise [Music] in Hades Jesus preaches to Greece's dead Souls message is clear to both the living and the dead reject Hades and embrace the new savior but what will become of the master of the Dead in this new order the final moments of Hades are described in the Bible's Book of Revelation which foretells the end of days show his power over death according to Revelation Jesus will destroy Hades and death itself when Christ returns with the last judgment he will cast the warden of death into a lake of fire he gives by the destruction of Hades the destruction of the realm of the Dead a victory over death not for the individual for all of creation ultimately Hades is destined to share in the fate of all the souls under his command even he can't escape the clutches of death the potency of the stories about Hades is we can see how we as humans look at death how we as humans hope perhaps to either cheat death or to find a way to survive what we fear is our existence coming to an end the underworld is Fascinating People like to imagine what might happen there because it's it's creepy it's Eerie it's utterly unlike anything that happens in this world stories they're more than just local Ms local stories to scare children or to make you feel better their what it is to be human in that most fundamental way and that is to meet your own mortality [Applause] a half man half bull monster locked in a giant maze waiting for its next meal of human flesh this is the bizarre myth of the Minotaur an angry Savage freak of nature that endures as a Timeless symbol of the Beast inside all men but beneath its story lurks a stunning reality a real world of human sacrifice bestiality War and the remains of an actual Labyrinth this is the myth of the Minotaur and the Truths Behind it a heavy door clanks shut behind you a dimly lit Maze of corridors lie ahead the stench of death hangs heavy in the air [Music] you are trapped in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur [Music] there is no way out [Applause] the story of the Minotaur was a horror story um for the ancient Greeks the Labyrinth was a chamber of death those that got locked inside of it knew there was only one fate and that's to be devoured by a horrible ravenous man-eating Beast all right this half-man half animal would rip you piece to peace and consume your flesh [Music] the Minotaur is the mutant child of a human mother and a bullfather he has the body of a an enormously strong powerful man but then the head of a bull with horns [Music] on the one hand it's part beast and this Beast is ravenous and hungry and kills and even eats the Flesh of people that it is killed on the other hand the Minotaur is half human and it has a kind of vulnerability from that in which its humanity is trapped inside of its bestiality at its core this myth represents the battle between reason and savagery between Order and Chaos the ancient Greeks who told the story prided themselves on being civilized one of the things that the Greeks really did believe in was that human reason could do a lot but the Minotaur was the enemy of Reason [Music] a symbol of the animal instincts trapped inside all men [Music] the Minotaur the monster was the untameable part of nature that the Greeks were trying to get a hold of this was the one thing that they could not control [Music] according to the myth this is where the Minotaur lives on the island of Crete at the time when the story takes place Crete dominates the Greek world the way the Minotaur dominates the labyrinth in the late Bronze Age Crete really was the most important power in that part of the Mediterranean the places like Athens and Sparta which in The Classical period would really become the most significant Powers really weren't anything very important at all in fact they had to pay tribute to Crete because it was the major power in the in the region in the myth the Minotaur was created to punish the king of Crete minus after he tried to outwit a god every year it was customary that King minus sacrificed his most prized bull as an offering to the sea god one year his herd produced a calf so beautiful so perfect that minus couldn't bear to part with it he sacrificed a lesser Bull in its place but Poseidon was watching anytime you try in Greek mythology doubtsmart to God you're gonna lose when Poseidon saw this he said okay you like your bull so much I'm going to make your woman like your bull and so he made minasa's wife Lust For The Bull minus his wife pacify falls in love with the bull pacifi's desire for the bull I think symbolizes a kind of animalistic lust all of us like to think of ourselves as very rational creatures but in reality all of us know at our core there's some piece of us that's driven by pure animalistic desire hatches an elaborate plan to seduce the bull she climbs into a cow costume and lingers in the pasture where it grazes waiting for the Beast to approach cause pacify essentially engages in an act of bestiality she's in love with this bull she wants to have sex with this bull I wanted to be a preoccupation of ancient Greeks and Romans as to what the proper mode of sexual behavior was and having sex with animals was one of those taboos that got kind of richly worked out in their mythology in the real world we see these mythic scenes famous scenes of ancient bestiality are performed in the Coliseum we would have women slaves who would be forced to copulate with Bulls in order to entertain [Music] [Applause] often in these real-life spectacles the Ancients were acting out Queen pacifies mythical encounter with the bull in the story it isn't long before her strategy succeeds the ball Spicer is overcome with Amherst desire mounts her nine months later you've got yourself a Minotaur [Applause] [Music] the birth of monsters is very often associated with sinfulness or some other kind of wrongdoing certainly this is both of those things because minnows didn't keep his end of the bargain because pacifier indulged in an unnatural desire the child is born monstrous and deformed a half-human half bull baby boy destined to become a horror he's a monster that's how we know him but at the same time he seems to be a victim of his fate and that's why I have mixed feelings about the minister I cannot really condemn him the Minotaur has a strange name his father isn't Minos but the first half of his name comes from the name minos the second half Tao Rose is the Greek word for a bull saminatar means the bull of Minos to the Ancients this man bull hybrid was a powerful and frightening concept Bulls were a central part of Greek civilization fact they were even worshiped as gods there were a lot of sacrifices and rituals around bold Cults all across is the Mediterranean a bowl represents male virility and strength and that's exactly what the bull was religiously an icon representing male potency and fertility great strength and power as well [Music] the memory of the power of the bull carried through into judeo-christian times and we see in pictures of the Nativity the bull breathing in to the baby Jesus with its life force [Music] according to the myth the tyrannical King minus is furious when the Minotaur is born and decides to use it as a weapon against anyone who dares to challenge his power he devises a Sinister plan to build the world's most terrifying prison and makes his beastly stepson its man eating Wharton to build it minus turns to his resident engineering genius Daedalus the world's most famous ancient Builder he's like Thomas Edison and Frank Lloyd Wright rolled into one able to construct beautiful monuments and he's able also to construct uh flying machines wonders of ancient technology Daedalus makes plans for a prison with no barred cells just a massive winding maze it would be so vast so impossible to navigate that even he could barely make it out alive and in its heart would lie the Minotaur waiting for its prey it was a series of passages and stairways there is some sort of mystical or strange effect inside the Labyrinth that so confuses those who walk through it that they don't know where they are in a short time [Music] dark disoriently deadly this mythical Labyrinth would be terrifying but is it more than just a myth today there's an underground maze on the island of Crete with an eerie resemblance to the Labyrinth of the Minotaur the cave of masara it's an ancient underground Quarry that according to local lore may have inspired the myth winding passageways stretch for over two miles in no particular order in fact most people who dare to enter run a cable with them to make sure they don't get lost the same tactic will prove crucial for the minotaur's victims later in the myth [Music] drizzle marks found along these tunnel walls prove the caves are man-made that they were dug with ancient tools for centuries visitors who came to explore this place were convinced they had found the home of the Minotaur many of them left their mark today explorers still take on the challenge of navigating the Labyrinth their objective is to reach this Central room where it is said the Minotaur once dwelled they come here to beat their fears and if they win they accomplish the mission they write their names on it and go out happy it would be very nice if it were the Labyrinth I mean everybody wants to know where the idea of the labyrinth came from and when you see caves like this right away the idea must have come to the people that this might have been the lair of the Minotaur an ancient man-made maze on the same island where the myth is said to have taken place it's the perfect candidate for the minotaur's labyrinth in every way but one most experts think the myth is older than the cave it was worked very late in Greek Roman times and there are recorded visits by many pilgrims during this period but the actual myth of a labyrus and a Minotaur came much much earlier if masara isn't the place that inspired the myth of the labyrinth what is the hunt for Clues leads back to the myth with his horrifying maze complete treats King minus shifts his focus and hunts for its first victims [Music] it's meal time for the Minotaur [Music] according to an ancient myth the island of Crete is home to a half-man half bull monster hungrily patrols a dark Labyrinth the Labyrinth itself is so confusing even its Builder can barely find the way out inside the Minotaur awaits its first victims hungry for human flesh [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you meanwhile 200 miles north in a small city-state called Athens athletes have gathered from all over the Mediterranean to compete in a series of sporting challenges it's an early precursor to the Olympic Games among the competitors is Prince androgius son of Crete's King minus and the half-brother of the Minotaur won every contest running throwing singing he was a star and it's so upset a number of the Athenian youth that they got into a drinking bra and went and killed him the son of a king murdered in Cold Blood This Means War once the news reaches minnows of course his grief is overwhelming and his rage and thirst for revenge is enormous King minus decides to punish the Athenians in the worst possible way he will feed them to the Minotaur the cretan Navy drops anchor at Athens and delivers an ultimatum Minos demanded that they send seven male virgins and seven female virgins to be sacrificed to the Minotaur virgins were reprised commodity in the ancient world because it was believed their purity made them closer to the Gods oh they would be put on a ship and the ship would take them in very degrading circumstances to Crete they would be led crying and in great tears into the Labyrinth where they would be consumed by the monster [Music] so goes the myth but what is the connection to reality here the story symbolizes an actual historical conflict an epic struggle between an aging superpower and an up-and-coming state early in Greek history Athens and Crete were real-life enemies but Crete's massive Navy gave it a decided advantage in both myth and reality it was David versus Goliath in the Minotaur myth is pretty clearly a symbolic overlay of real history Creed was a very powerful civilization and they kind of lorded it over the city-states on Mainland Greece when Minos made this outrageous demand what it was was a reflection of the cretan dominance of that entire area Indians told the Minotaur story as political propaganda the Minotaur represented the tyranny of Crete the Labyrinth was Crete's nearly inescapable power and the victims symbolized suffering of Athens [Music] the myth's purpose was to make the cretans seem barbaric and Evil and it worked for the Greeks themselves who embellished this story over the centuries it was a very important proof that they and their gods and their rational thinking were superior to the cretans and their bulls and their monsters [Music] in the myth Athens is forced to send human sacrifices to the Minotaur every nine years or face all-out war with Crete but why nine years seems from their records They had an understanding of the movement of the Moon through various constellations that go through about a nine year cycle and that would be then the basis of the nine year sacrifice whenever a full moon falls on the Equinox it'll be time to send fresh sacrifices to the Beast [Applause] the first victims are being locked inside the Labyrinth pivotal event is unfolding across the sea and a small Kingdom 50 miles from Athens a baby boy is being born his name is Theseus he is one of the first great Heroes of Greek myth the one who is destined to challenge the Minotaur the birth of Theseus is a preeminence importance in terms of Athenian national identity Theseus belongs to an older order of Heroes they are characterized by tremendous strength tremendous bravery and also great brain power Theseus is the son of a beautiful Greek princess and not one but two powerful fathers on the night he was conceived his mother had sex with both Aegis king of Athens and Poseidon god of the sea what usually happens is that the mother will sleep with the human father and also sleep in the same time frame with the Divine father so that the child is fertilized by two people simultaneously having dual paternity allows him to both inherit the throne from ajias as well as have access to things like besides special favors this too far the scenario was a common plot line in ancient myths it's even something real-life rulers often claimed for themselves one of the perhaps best known is Alexander the Great who celebrates himself as being partially divine later on in the Roman period the Roman Emperor is starting with Augustus claim that they became gods it gives you a kind of authority if you can say I'm actually the child of a god [Music] according to the myth when Theseus is born King Aegis buries his sandals and a sword beneath a huge Rock he tells theseus's mother that when the boy is strong enough to lift that rock he should come to claim his rightful place as Prince of Athens [Music] nine years later Creed again demands that seven men and seven women be sent as tribute to die in The minotaur's Labyrinth [Music] the kingdom needs a hero foreign the third time Crete demands its tribute Theseus is ready [Music] he is finally strong enough to lift the rock that hides his father's sword and sandals vows to enter the Labyrinth battle the Minotaur and free Athens from the tyranny of Crete it's the classic Face-Off between monster and hero [Music] and modern evidence is revealed some shocking truth behind it the city of Athens is in mourning once again it is time to send human sacrifices to the Minotaur the innocent victims demanded by King minus the Tyrant of Crete those chosen are sure to die but there is one who vows to challenge fate the prince of Athens Theseus he is anxious to prove his bravery and to free his kingdom all heroes have to commit great acts in order to gain their status so he needs to go out and do something great and that is going to be to stop the Athenians from having to submit to Minos and submit their children to the Minotaur stage is set heroic symbol of man at his best against the Minotaur The Savage reflection of man at his worst before Theseus departs for Crete his father gives him an important order when and if he returns to Athens he must Hoist the white sail instead of the black that way when the ship appears on the horizon the king will know his son is safe according to the myth this is where Theseus was headed nurses the capital city of King minus and the cretans the ancient Greeks believed this was the home of the Minotaur a scene of horrific crimes against humanity today it's ruins still hold clues about the reality behind the myth height of Crete's power between 1700 and 1450 BC this city was home to 100 000 people at its Center was a vast palace with a complex layout in fact some experts believe it was the original inspiration for the Labyrinth it must have been extremely difficult for anyone to find their way all around that huge Palace which had something like a thousand rooms in it and five stories in some places there were many passageways in it there were no Halls the passageways went from one little room to another little room so you could not find a direct line anywhere my guess is that when the Greeks first saw this they couldn't make sense of it so that's where the notion of the labyrinth came from they would have imagined it as a dungeony dark series of corridors that violated the Greek sense of symmetry Greeks like symmetry modern excavations inside the palace have only strengthened its connection to the Minotaur myth throughout the site signs of bull worship can be found Fresco found in the palace even depicts a young man battling a bull it's a scene that seems torn almost directly from the myth the depiction from the canasos Palace shows a naked young man somersaulting over the top of a bull with large horns it seems to be enraged and chasing them an ancient Palace that looks like a maze filled with artifacts related to Bulls it's easy to see how this place might have inspired the myth but the connections do not end there archaeologists have Unearthed evidence suggesting the existence of a real king minus a throne room with its seat still perfectly intact it's the oldest ever found in Europe dating back 3 500 years also found was an inscription in an ancient language that may even mention the King by name in The Archives of the Temple of Crete there were stone tablets which have inscribed on them Words which look to be like the name of King Minos it's one word minute a second word we knew Roja which could mean minos the king Roja is a title for royalty these Clues suggest King minus may have actually lived but the most intriguing connection to the Minotaur myth appears on another tablet found at the site it depicts an offering to a so-called Mistress of the labyrinth here in writing is a direct reference to the Maze of the Minotaur it's an unmistakable connection between the city of nasus and the myths but who was this Mistress of the labyrinth her identity is an intriguing mystery experts believe it was a woman of great importance at the palace a high-ranking priestess or even the daughter of the king in the myth King minus daughter is ariadne and she plays an important role in the rest of the story we don't know who the Mistress of the labyrinth was but it could have been ariadne in as much as she was entitled to be the Priestess of the temple because she was the first daughter of King Minos from the moment Theseus arrives in Crete to be sacrificed princess ariadne is drawn to him Ariana notices Theseus is bearing his courage his unblinking gaze and is immediately smitten with him you just sort of overcome by the power of her love for Theseus and she immediately decides that she's going to help him because she doesn't want him to die in The Labyrinth as all the other figures do but ariadne must act fast she seeks out Daedalus the designer of the labyrinth and begs him to explain how to escape it what he gives her is a clue in Old English translations of this myth the word clue means a ball of twine this is what Daedalus gives to ariadne and it's how the modern word clue originated and Daedalus said why don't you just use a ball of twine tie one end to the door and then unravel it as you go into the Labyrinth once you're in the center you can find your way back out by following the twine we have continued to use balls of twine and underwater exploration the divers will tie the end of the twine to an opening in Iraq or a cave go inside explore and then follow the twine back out again reason which is what the Greeks honored more than anything else is the thing that solves the problem a very simple answer to what seems to be an impossible situation ariadne secretly visits Theseus in his holding cell and offers him her clue on one condition he must marry her if he survives when Theseus meets ariadne he's sort of in a bind right he's going into the middle of a labyrinth about to be eaten alive by a Minotaur and when arianny volunteers to help him he really doesn't have much of a choice it's either do what she asks or takes chances and he's not going to take chances [Music] [Music] the next morning 14 victims are locked inside the Labyrinth [Music] Lambs ripe for the slaughter this bowl of twine in hand leads the way into the maze Theseus ties off the ball of twine at the door and starts to walk step by step through this dark dank tunnel Theseus has been offered as a human sacrifice a concept that is hard to Fathom today but evidence suggests that the real ancient cretans not only sacrificed humans they also may have eaten them [Music] Odysseus the prince of Athens is leading his fellow victims deeper into the Labyrinth determined to confront the Minotaur head on he has a ball of twine a clue so that he can find his way back out as the beastly growls of the Minotaur grow louder Theseus is resolute but those trapped with him are beginning to unravel [Music] as the victims walk through the Labyrinth one can imagine how terrified they must have been just think about going into that dark space then as you wandered not being able to see anything they knew that somewhere else in this maze there was this horrible man-eating creature that would devour them foreign you never know at what point you're going to encounter the monster deep inside the maze the Minotaur stirs he hears the screams of frightened victims headed his way he's ready for his next Feast of Flesh [Music] this is the enemy Theseus must defeat in order to free Athens from the tyranny of Crete so goes the myth but what is the link to reality the tension between Athens and Crete during the Bronze Age is well documented but were the cretans really as Savage as the myth suggests at NASA's Palace excavations have turned up possible evidence that suggests some truth behind the story inscriptions found at the site have been interpreted by some as offerings made to the Gods human offerings there are records of a a female servant being offered and also 10 males being offered real people killed in ritual sacrifice just like the victims of the Minotaur in the myth [Music] suggestion is that there actually was Human Sacrifice being practiced on Crete but the evidence extends Beyond inscriptions [Music] there are also bones that bear the markers of cold-blooded murder in 1979 over 300 of them were Unearthed in nasus unbelievably all of them belonged to children about 25 of them bore cut marks made by a fine Blade the type that would have been used to remove flesh from bone bones had the marks of knives they had cut marks on the sides of the bones so it's hard to get around the fact that there was Butchery going on here perhaps even cannibalism I don't know how else one could interpret this kind of evidence sheep bones were also uncovered in the same place as the human bones all were slashed in a similar manner it's great marks look a lot like the kind of marks that result from Butchery of animals that are being prepared to eat this suggests that the ancient cretans were not only sacrificing humans but eating them The minotaur's Thirst for human flesh an encoded message about cannibalism it's the most repulsive and abhorrent crime we can ever even imagine perfect way to demonize someone so we can imagine that the ancient Greeks would have told this story about their great anime Crete that not only were they horrible people they were monsters and even still they were cannibals the myth continues [Music] the labyrinth's corridors are cloaked in darkness possible for Theseus to find his way by sight Grunts and growls of the Minotaur are getting louder they are his compass his ball of twine his clue is small now a quarter the size it was when the Theseus entered the maze the Beast is near he smells the stench of Blood on the walls he sees the bones of the poor Beast prior victims he rounds a corner and sees a sleeping Hulk the breath of the Minotaur fills him with fear but this is the difference between Heroes and US ordinary folks the hero feels the fear Masters it and pursues the great deed feces ambushes catching the beast half asleep easiest approaches the minotaur's startle jumps up and attacks ax meets sword as man battles Beast the future of Athens and Crete hangs in the balance [Music] in the pre-dawn hours the sounds of struggle pierced the night inside the Labyrinth Theseus has the Minotaur cornered he then pounces on it attacks before the Beast even knows what hit him Theseus has the upper hand the Minotaur struggles and gasps [Music] the hero goes in for the kill the Minotaur this tortured trapped terrible soul is dead Theseus son of Poseidon and Prince of Athens has destroyed the curse of King minus you can imagine that as hard as pounding as adrenaline is pumping he's covered with the muck and blood of this dead beast and all the other human beings that this Beast has ingested over the years that the forces of reason as embodied by Theseus overcame the forces of irrationality as embodied by the Minotaur but there's no time to celebrate his victory Daybreak is approaching Theseus needs to move fast if he's going to escape the wrath of King minus once he's killed the Minotaur it's not quite over because Minos is not going to be happy about this of course so he has to retrace his steps get out of the labyrinth and then get back onto the ship [Music] he follows his thread back out and leads the still living youths of Athens out of the labyrinth [Music] I can imagine the joy that must have come over the kids when they saw that their faith was not what they expected that the Fed was actually changed by the deed of the hero [Music] foreign the princess of Crete has spent a restless night listening for any sign of theseus's survival he's promised to marry her if he escapes the Minotaur alive and she intends to hold him to it Just Before Dawn she joins him and their ship set sail for Athens it's a defining moment in Greek mythology when Theseus slays the Minotaur the action is really a symbolic act in which we have a hero of Athens who's finally overthrowing the Yoke of Crete it's a symbol of Greece beating Crete it's a symbol of human bravery and Ingenuity so all the stories they inspired the young citizens to be faithful to the country to be able to sacrifice themselves for their City's glories and ultimately to become true citizens of a democratic City thank you Theseus leaves Crete the hero but his voyage home will end in tragedy when he left to fight the Minotaur Theseus promised his Earthly father King Aegis that he would hoist a white sail if he returned home alive to Signal his victory every morning for months agius would visit the same Seaside Cliff looking for any sign of the ship but when it finally appears on the horizon sailed as black the king is inconsolable thinking his son has been devoured by the Minotaur in his grief Aegis leaps to his death in the sea below to this day that sea is called The Aegean after theseus's father when Theseus fails to raise the white sail the original ancient tale it doesn't tell us any motivations as to why he forgets but in the end the original myth seems to suggest a kind of carefreeness of Youth that's the easiest explanation he was so excited by his victory he was on his way home and he simply just forgot to do it aegis's sudden death is a shocking development Theseus comes ashore not only as the Liberator of Athens but as its new king the king who according to the myth would transform the city from a Backwater Outpost into a regional superpower in this myth athens's rise to power is definitely credited to Theseus in fact the myth seems to have been written in part to prove this in adopting Theseus as their founding hero the Athenians were really making a statement they were saying that this long time domination of Crete was now over and that there was a new Top Dog in town and it was Athens Athens would go on to become the Greek world's dominant city-state while Crete would collapse and be conquered but long after both kingdoms have faded into history the myths of Theseus and the Minotaur endures and like every good myth that reveals insights into human nature that are as relevant today as they were three thousand years ago there's a lot of things that one can read in a minute or story you can imagine the Labyrinth as being the human mind a dark place that we constantly explore in our conscious State the animal nature the nature that compels us to kill these myths reveal to us in a uniquely powerful way parts of ourselves that we otherwise keep hidden hidden urges and desires hidden means by which we deal with the world the most fundamental struggles of Human Experience

Channel: HISTORY

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Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries, history channel documentaries, ghosts, demons, aliens, ufo, paranormal activity, creepy, scary, psychic, medium, gods, thor, clash of the gods, watch clash of the gods, clash of the gods full episodes, clash of the gods scenes, clash of the gods episodes, clash of the gods clips, demi-gods, mythology

Id: 90G2HXtm-AA

Length: 179min 33sec (10773 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023