Prometheus

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, Prometheus was a Titan -- one of the pre-Olympian beings -- who allied himself with Zeus and the later gods in their war against the Titans. At the request of Zeus, he created the first humans from clay. Later, he stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, a divine gift that gave them god-like powers.

To punish him, Zeus decreed that he would be chained to a rock, where every day an eagle would eat out his liver. Each night, the liver would regrow, so that the next day, Prometheus would again be punished by having the eagle eat his liver again.

English word:In English, promethean means "life-giving, daringly original, creative." A reference to Prometheus also occurs in the original title of the novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley.

Pax

In the ancient Roman pantheon, Pax was the goddess of peace (Greek, Eirene). She was the embodiment of peace, who carried an olive branch and a cornucopia.

English word: From the name of this ancient goddess come our words peace and pacific.

Pegasus

In both Greek and Roman myth, Pegasus was a winged horse that sprang from the blood of Medusa at her death. Athena caught Pegasus, tamed him, and gave him to the Muses. When he struck his hoof against the ground, the Hippocrene spring, which was sacred to the Muses. Later, Pegasus became the horse of Bellerophon, the ancient Greek hero who killed the Chimera.

English word: We use Pegasus to refer to the class of mythical winged horses. Pegasus is famous as an advertising icon for a gasoline company.

Phaeton

In ancient Latin as well as Greek, Phaeton was the sun of the sun god, Helios. When Helios allowed Phaeton to drive the sun chariot, Phaeton drove so close the earth almost burned up. To prevent that, Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt.

English word: Our word phaeton means a type of light, four-wheeled carriage with no sidepieces. It also means a type of open car body with two cross seats.

Phantasus

In ancient Greek myth, Phantasus was one of the gods of dreams, the sons of Morpheus, the god of sleep. Phantasus, in particular, brought dreams of inanimate objects.

English word: Several of our words stem from Phantasus, including phantasm -- a product of fantasy, an illusion; and phantasmagoria -- a complex, constantly shifting scene of things seen or imagined. Some common words that stem from the same source are fantasy, fancy, and fantastic.

Pluto

To the ancient Romans, Pluto (Greek Hades) was the god of the underworld, the dead, and fabled wealth.

English word: Pluto is the name of what used to be called the ninth planet, and now is called a minor planet. From Pluto we also get plutocracy, government by the wealthy, and plutonium, a heavy, radioactive element.

Pontus

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, Pontus was a god of the sea, especially the Black Sea. He preceded the Olympian gods.

English word: Several words derive from Pontus, starting with pontoon. a floating, bridgelike structure. We also have pontiff, a word for the Pope, related to being a "bridge" between humans and God. From that, we have pontificate, "to officiate as a pontiff, or to speak in the manner of or as with the authority of a pontiff. We also get punt, a narrow, flat-bottomed boat with square ends, usually propelled with a pole. Punt also means to propel by pushing with a pole, and to kick a football before it touches the ground when dropped from the hands, and the act of punting a football.

Polyhymnia

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, Polyhymnia was one of the nine muses. She was the goddess of sacred music.

English word: Our word derived from this source is hymn, a sacred song.

Portus

Portus was the ancient Roman god of harbors. The port just south of Rome, and its surrounding town, were named after him.

English word: As you might expect, from Portus we get the word port, a harbor or a haven.

Procrustes

In ancient Greek myth, and later in Roman myth, Procrustes was a bandit who tied his victims to an iron bed. If they didn't fit the length of the bed, he either cut off their legs or stretched them out to fit it. Eventually, the mythical hero Theseus defeated Procrustes and subjected him to the same treatment, except Theseus cut off his head as well as his legs.

English word: Our English word derives directly from the myth. Procrustean harsh or inflexible in fitting someone or something to a preconceived idea or system. We also have the phrase Procrustean bed, with the same meaning as in the original story.

Proteus

For both the ancient Greeks and Romans, Proteus was a god of the sea. He always spoke the truth, and he prophesied. If someone seized him, he changed shape, and could assume the shape of anything he chose.

English word: Our word Proteus refers to someone who easily changes appearance or principles. We also use the word protean for someone or something that easily assumes different shapes or forms.

Psyche

The ancient Greeks and Romans both had a folk-tale about Psyche, a woman so beautiful that the goddess of love (Venus to the Romans, Aphrodite to the Greeks, ) became jealous of her. The goddess told her son, Cupid to the Romans, Eros to the Greeks) to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man on earth.

However, when Cupid saw Psyche, he accidentally stuck himself with one of own arrows, and fell in love with her himself. No mortal man would marry Psyche. Her parents consulted an oracle, who told them to leave her on a mountain, because she was so beautiful, she was meant for a god. On the mountain, Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, carried Psyche to a beautiful palace, where invisible servants waited on her all day.

At night, in the dark, Cupid came to her, and they made sweet love. Cupid told her that he would only come to her at night, and she could never see him. However, Cupid allowed her two sisters to visit her during the day. The sisters were jealous, and told Psyche that the reason her husband wouldn't let her see him was that he was a monster. They told her he would eat her and the child that she was expecting.

Psyche didn't believe her sisters, but she wondered about the true identity of her husband. And so, she prepared herself with both a lamp and a dagger, to see her husband, and to kill him or herself if he proved to be the monster they predicted.

That night, Cupid came to visit her, as usual. After he went to sleep, Psyche lit the lamp, and held it up to see her husband. Instead of a monster, she saw a most beautiful youth, bearing wings, and she knew he was a god. She felt such love for him, she wanted to give herself to him. However, she spilled some burning oil from the lamp on him. He awoke, and immediately flew away.

After that, Psyche was consumed with the need to win him back. She went to many temples, praying for his return. The goddess Ceres told her she must pray to the goddess Venus to allow him to come to her.

Psyche sought out a temple to Venus, and prayed for the forgiveness of the goddess. Venus was glad to wreak her vengeance on Psyche, and told her she must perform several tasks in order to win forgiveness. First, Venus told Psyche, she must separate all the grains in a large pile of different kinds of grains, into their unique kinds, and present each one into a bundle offered to Venus.

Venus did her best to separate the grains -- a great pile of wheat, barley, millet, vetches, beans, and lentils -- each into its own kind. An ant saw what she was doing, and offered it services, and those of its kind, to separate the grains. At the end of the day, the ants had sorted the grains, and placed them into piles. When Venus appeared to Psyche, she had to accept that Psyche had performed the task assigned to her.

However, Venus next assigned a second task: to gather the wool from some golden sheep that were very dangerous. When Psyche went to accomplish the task, a river god warned her that the sheep were dangerous while they were awake, but if she waited until later in the day, the sheep would be asleep, and so she could gather some of their fleece that stuck to the branches and bark of the trees. Psyche gathered the wool, as the river god told her, and presented it to Venus.

At last, Venus told her she must go to the Underworld, and ask Persephone, the goddess of that place, to give Venus a bit of her beauty, in a box that Venus gave Psyche. Venus claimed that the care she had to give her son, because of Psyche's fault, had made lose some of her beauty.

Psyche made her very dangerous way into the Underworld, where she asked Persephone, as Venus had requested. Persephone placed her gift to Venus into the box, and told Psyche to go.

When Psyche returned to the Earth plane, however, she could not resist opening the box, so she could share some of the beauty Persephone gave Venus. However, Persephone had filled the box with an eternal sleep, which overcame Psyche.

When Cupid saw what had overcome Psyche, he went to her and wiped the eternal sleep from her eyes. He then went to Jupiter, the king of the gods, and begged him to grant immortality to his wife, Psyche. Jupiter then called a full and formal council of the gods, and declared it was his will that Cupid might marry Psyche. The gods then granted them permission to marry, and allowed Psyche to drink of the ambrosia that gave her eternal life.

English word: Psyche gives us many words, starting with psyche, itself, meaning the soul or spirit. Also, it gives us psychology, the science of the spirit, and psychiatry, the science of the mind along with a medical degree, and its related words, psychiatrist and psychiatric. It also gives us psychic, meaning perceiving by mind and spirit. In addition, we find the phrase Psyche's knot, referring to the hair-style of Psyche, and psychometry, the process of detecting information about the owner of objects using only the mind, and psychosis, a sickness of the mind.

Pygmalion

In an ancient Greek and Roman myth, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus who created a atatue of a maiden so beautiful he fell in love with it. Aphrodite (Roman Venus) answered his prayer by granting life to the statue, Galatea.

English word: We use Pygmalion for someone who creates a beautiful woman. George Bernard Shaw's play, "Pygmalion" was based on this myth. That play was the basis for the musical "My Fair Lady."

Pygmy

To both the ancient Greeks and the Romans, pygmies were a tribe of tiny people who attacked Hercules while he lay sleeping. By "tiny," I mean thumb-sized. They were angry because Hercules had killed their earth-brother, a giant named Antaeus. As Hercules slept, they piled up brush around his head and set it on fire. That, of course, awakened Hercules.

When he finally saw the tiny people, and talked to them, he admired them for their courage. And so, he left them where he had encountered them, and took no vengeance on them.

English word: Our word pygmy refers to a tribe of dwarf people living in central Africa, and has come to be used for any dwarf or unusually small creatures.

Python

To the ancient Greeks, Python was an enormous serpent that arose from the mud left after a great flood. It lived in the caves of Mount Parnassus, where Apollo killed it. The pythoness of Delphi was a priestess who gave oracular messages.

English word: The word python means a large snake that constricts its prey, like a boa.

Saturn

To the ancient Romans, Saturn (Greek, Cronos or Uranus) was the chief of the Titans, those original deities who preceded the gods of Olympus. Saturn was the father of Jupiter (Greek Zeus), the king of the gods of Olympus.

English word: Saturn gives us many words in English, starting with the planet Saturn, and including Saturday. Also it gives us saturnalia, which was originally a festival, and now means any period of general license and excessive vice. It also gives us saturnine meaning "heavy, grave, gloomy, dull."

Satyr

To the ancient Greeks, satyrs were part man and part horse. They were woodland deities associated with the great god Pan, and with Dionysus, the god of wine. Satyrs were "given to riotous merriment and lasciviousness."

In ancient Rome, satyrs became conflated with fauns, the Roman woodland deities that were half man and half goat. Therefore, satyrs are often depicted as having horns on their heads and feet with hooves.

English word: We use satyr to refer to a lecherous man. Satyriasis means "an insatiable venereal appetite in the male."