Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

BOOKS BY RICK RIORDAN

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book One:

The Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Two:

The Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Three:

The Titan’s Curse

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Four:

The Battle of the Labyrinth

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Five:

The Last Olympian

The Demigod Files

Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, illustrated by John Rocco

The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel

The Sea of Monsters: The Graphic Novel

The Titan’s Curse: The Graphic Novel

The Kane Chronicles Book One:

The Red Pyramid

The Kane Chronicles Book Two:

The Throne of Fire

The Kane Chronicles Book Three:

The Serpent’s Shadow

The Kane Chronicles Survival Guide

The Red Pyramid: The Graphic Novel

The Heroes of Olympus Book One:

The Lost Hero

The Heroes of Olympus Book Two:

The Son of Neptune

The Heroes of Olympus Book Three:

The Mark of Athena

The Heroes of Olympus Book Four:

The House of Hades

The Demigod Diaries

The Son of Sobek

The Staff of Serapis

Text copyright © 2014 by Rick Riordan

Illustrations copyright © 2014 by John Rocco

Cover design by Joann Hill

All rights reserved. Published by Disney
•
Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney
•
Hyperion Books, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4847-0218-5

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www.DisneyBooks.com

www.percyjacksonbooks.com

To my father, Rick Riordan, Sr., who read me my first book of mythology

—R.R.

To my heroes of illustration: N.
C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham, and Frank Frazetta

—J.R.

INTRODUCTION

I
 
HOPE
I
’M GETTING EXTRA CREDIT FOR THIS
.

A publisher in New York asked me to write down what I know about the Greek gods, and I was like, “Can we do this anonymously? Because I don’t need the Olympians mad at me again.”

But if it helps you to know your Greek gods, and survive an encounter with them if they ever show up in your face, then I guess writing all this down will be my good deed for the week.

If you don’t know me, my name is Percy Jackson. I’m a modern-day demigod—a half-god, half-mortal son of Poseidon—but I’m not going to say much about myself. My story has already been written down in some books that are total fiction (wink, wink) and I am just a character from the story
(
cough
—yeah, right—
cough
).

Just go easy on me while I’m telling you about the gods, all right? There’s like forty bajillion different versions of the myths, so don’t be all
Well, I heard it a different way, so you’re WRONG!

I’m going to tell you the versions that make the most sense to me. I promise I didn’t make any of this up. I got all these stories straight from the Ancient Greek and Roman dudes who wrote them down in the first place. Believe me, I couldn’t make up stuff this weird.

So here we go. First I’ll tell you how the world got made. Then I’ll run down a list of gods and give you my two cents about each of them. I just hope I don’t make them so mad they incinerate me before I—

AGGHHHHHHHHH!

Just kidding. Still here.

Anyway, I’ll start with the Greek story of creation, which by the way, is seriously
messed up
. Wear your safety glasses and your raincoat. There will be blood.

THE
BEGINNING
AND
STUFF

I
N THE BEGINNING
,
I wasn’t there. I don’t think the Ancient Greeks were, either. Nobody had a pen and paper to take notes, so I can’t vouch for what follows, but I can tell you it’s what the Greeks
thought
happened.

At first, there was pretty much nothing. A lot of nothing.

The first god, if you can call it that, was Chaos—a gloomy, soupy mist with all the matter in the cosmos just drifting around. Here’s a fact for you:
Chaos
literally means the
Gap
, and we’re not talking about the clothing store.

Eventually Chaos got less chaotic. Maybe it got bored with being all gloomy and misty. Some of its matter collected and solidified into the earth, which unfortunately developed a living personality. She called herself Gaea, the Earth Mother.

Now Gaea
was
the actual earth—the rocks, the hills, the valleys, the whole enchilada. But she could also take on humanlike form. She liked to walk across the earth—which was basically walking across herself—in the shape of a matronly woman with a flowing green dress, curly black hair, and a serene smile on her face. The smile hid a nasty disposition. You’ll see that soon enough.

After a long time alone, Gaea looked up into the misty nothing above the earth and said to herself: “You know what would be good? A sky. I could really go for a sky. And it would be nice if he was also a handsome man I could fall in love with, because I’m kind of lonely down here with just these rocks.”

Either Chaos heard her and cooperated, or Gaea simply willed it to happen. Above the earth, the sky formed—a protective dome that was blue in the daytime and black at night. The sky named himself Ouranos—and, yeah, that’s another spelling for Uranus. There’s pretty much no way you can pronounce that name without people snickering. It just sounds
wrong.
Why he didn’t choose a better name for himself—like Deathbringer or Jos
é—
I don’t know, but it might explain why Ouranos was so cranky all the time.

Like Gaea, Ouranos could take human shape and visit the earth—which was good, because the sky is way up there and long-distance relationships never work out.

In physical form, he looked like a tall, buff guy with longish dark hair. He wore only a loincloth, and his skin changed color—sometimes blue with cloudy patterns across his muscles, sometimes dark with glimmering stars. Hey, Gaea dreamed him up to look like that. Don’t blame me. Sometimes you’ll see pictures of him holding a zodiac wheel, representing all the constellations that pass through the sky over and over for eternity.

Anyway, Ouranos and Gaea got married.

Happily ever after?

Not exactly.

Part of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make.

Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus.

Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the
bottom
of the earth! That would be awesome!

So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn’t win any popularity contests.

The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos.

A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know.

According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation…in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I
do
know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with
very
mixed results.

First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show.

Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn’t visit. He didn’t help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad.

A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer….

I know, right? Bad idea.

She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead.

Talk about a face only a mother could love.
Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later.

When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!”

“They
are
your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!”