Greek myth
Orpheus & Eurydice
He went down to the underworld for love
The musician who descended to the underworld to retrieve his love and lost her by looking back one moment too soon.
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Love stories of Greece
The land of the myths that still explain love: Orpheus descending to the underworld, Eros and Psyche, faithful Penelope weaving twenty years of waiting for Odysseus.
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The land of the myths that still explain love: Orpheus descending to the underworld, Eros and Psyche, faithful Penelope weaving twenty years of waiting for Odysseus.
Love stories
Greek myth
Hades & Persephone
The love that divides the year into seasons
The god of the underworld who abducts — or seduces, depending on the version — Persephone; their pact of spending part of the year together and part apart explains the cycle of the seasons.
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Greco-Roman myth
Eros & Psyche
The soul that won love itself
The mortal so beautiful she enraged Venus; her son Eros falls for her and visits only in darkness. When Psyche lights a lamp to see him, she loses him, and must pass impossible trials to win him back.
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Greek myth · "The Odyssey"
Penelope & Odysseus
Twenty years weaving the wait
While Odysseus takes twenty years to return from Troy, Penelope holds off 108 suitors by weaving and unweaving a shroud to buy time, faithful until the reunion.
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Greek myth · "The Iliad"
Achilles & Patroclus
The love that decided the Trojan War
The greatest Greek warrior and his companion Patroclus, whose love antiquity read as a model of devotion; Patroclus's death unleashes the rage that defines "The Iliad."
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Greece · 7th–6th c. BCE
Sappho of Lesbos
The first voice of love between women
The poet of the island of Lesbos whose verses of love and desire for other women are so famous they gave the words "lesbian" and "sapphic" to language itself.
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Greek myth
Paris & Helen
The face that launched a thousand ships
The Trojan prince Paris abducts — or seduces — Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and wife of the king of Sparta, igniting the Trojan War.
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What are the great Greek love stories?
Some of the greatest are Orpheus & Eurydice, Hades & Persephone, Eros & Psyche.