Uh so I don’t know a whole lot of Greek mythology literally at all, but I learned some shit from Greece and I thought I’d share what I remember. It’s not much and most of it might be inaccurate!
Once upon a time, there was this god named Zeus. He had like 56 wives or some shit, and was kind of a man-slut. He also had a bunch of kids with said wives. One of these kids was a super hot chick named something that starts with a P that I don’t remember or possibly another letter. Zeus thought she was super sexy even though that’s gross because he’s her dad. But he didn’t care about silly things like that, and banged her. Apparently gods don’t like to use protection, because as it turned out, hot P chick got preggers from her dad. Zeus was like oh shit, I gotta do something about this. Not because he felt, like gross about it, but because he was worried that little baby god would be a lot more powerful than him. So he did what any sane person would do: he ate hot P chick.
Yeah. That’s how gods choose to solve their problems. By eating the daughters they impregnate.
Whelp, I’m not sure why nobody was like, where the hell is hot P chick? Or like, hey Zeus, did you maybe eat her? (If you find this fascinating, please refer to the short story by Roald Dahl entitled “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Sorry if I just ruined the ending for you.) Either way, awhile later, Zeus started complaining about a really bad headache. It must’ve been a pretty hardcore migraine, because he hired another axe-wielding god (whose name I can’t remember) to split his head open. He does, and OUT POPS ANOTHER GOD!! Her name was Athena. Zeus dies but not really. Just his body, his spirit goes on living. Which is confusing because I didn’t know gods were corporeal beings but whatever.
Athena was basically exactly what Zeus thought she would be: super powerful. Meanwhile, there’s this other god named Poseidon, who is Zeus’s brother and the god of the sea. He was like yo bitch, I’m more powerful. Look what I can do! And he slams his pitchfork into the ground and some thermal springs pop up. And then Athena’s like mmm no, and stamps her foot, and some olive trees grow. I think she won the pissing contest because they already had water but they didn’t have olive trees? Not sure, something like that. Anyway, they decided that Athena was the most important god and built her lots of temples and shit.
There’s another story about King Aegius and this dickhead Minotaur which is a fake animal that has a bull’s head and a man’s body. The Minotaur was stealing sheep and stuff, and King Aegius was like hey guys, we gotta do something about this monster, he’s ruining our lives. So he sends this giant guy, along with some other guys including his son, to go kill it. But before they sail out, he’s like okay guys, if things are all good, on the way home raise a white flag! They’re like yeah mate, got it, and off they go.
The giant guy kills the Minotaur, and everyone lives and things are good. They take the minotaur’s bull head and celebrate their success. They drink a bunch of wine and probably find some prostitutes and things are great. But they are super distracted on their way back home, due to all the alcohol and road-head (ocean-head?) and totes mcgotes forgot about the whole white-flag-raising deal.
Meanwhile, King Aegius is back at home on the shore, anxiously awaiting the return of his son. Finally, he sees the ship and gets super psyched about it! But then he’s like aw shit, you guys, there’s no white flag, obviously that means my son is dead. And because people in mythology don’t use logic, he didn’t wait for the boat to get back to ask what actually happened. Instead, he decided it would be a better use of his time to throw himself off the shore onto the rocks below to his death. I guess he really liked his son.
Anyway, so the ship comes back, and everyone’s all healthy, but they’re all pretty bummed that the king prematurely killed himself. So they’re like, uh, well, I guess we could name this sea after him? That seems like a good compromise? So they did. Hence, the Aegean Sea was born.
There is your important mythology lesson. I hope you learned something that may or may not be correct!