Clash of the Gods: Medusa; viewing guide
1. Medusa’s gaze petrifies you from the inside out.
2. Medusa has snakes instead of hair, and usually her tongue is hanging out.
3. Ancient Greeks used myths to make sense of a confusing world.
4. The Medusa myth illustrates how men can be afraid of strong women.
5. Medusa starts out as a beautiful/ravishing woman.
6. Medusa can’t get married because she is a priestess of Athena.
7. Athena is a virgin
goddess. She is beyond the reach of the mortal/male world.
8. The Parthenon, or “Place of the Virgin”, was completed in 430 B.C. In the center
of this temple, there was a statue of Athena that was 40 feet tall.
9. Poseidon, god of the sea, is interested in Medusa. After her rape, Athena
becomes angry with Medusa.
10. Medusa’s changed appearance is based on the look of a human corpse.
11. The final blow of the curse is that she is banished to a desolate island for life.
12. Medusa is turned into a gorgon, a monster inspired by death.
13. Some features of gorgons include: wide-open eyes and protruding tongue.
14. Perseus is the warrior who finally defeats Medusa.
15. King Acrisius locks his daughter, Danaë in a tower. She becomes impregnated
by the god, Zeus. He appears to her as a shower of gold.
16. The shower of gold may have been inspired by a real natural phenomenon
called Peruses Meteor shower.
17. Perseus is half god and half man. This is called a demi-god.
18. Even real-life generals wanted Medusa’s head.
19. Medusa’s name also means guardian.
20. In ancient times, Medusa’s face was also used to ward off danger.
21. Perseus and his mother were supposed to die at sea. Zeus saves them.
22. Perseus promises to get Medusa’s head for his king to save his mom.
23. Mycenæ was a great city founded by Peruses. It was long thought to be a
legend, but it was discovered in the late 19th century.
24. When he gets lost, Perseus prays. Zeus sends Hermes to him and he gives him a
set of winged sandals .
25. Perseus has to ask three hags how to find some nymphs, and the hags share
one eye.
26. Connection to reality: Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has looked to the
heavens to explain the past, present, and future.
27. Perseus gets the sword of Zeus, the shield of Athena, and the helmet of Hades,
the god of the dead.
28. In order to get Medusa’s head, Perseus travels thousands of miles.
29. Perseus walks backwards to Medusa, looking in his shield the whole time.
30. Even after Medusa’s head had been removed, it still had the power to turn
people into stone.
31. As Perseus drips Medusa’s blood on the ground, thousands of poisonous snakes
appear.
32. Perseus’ journey turns him from a boy into a man.
33. The story of Medusa and Perseus ends where it begins, in the Parthenon.
Odysseus: Curse of the Sea; viewing guide
1. The Odyssey is the ultimate adventure story.
2. The Cyclops is a monster with one eye(s). 10 men are trapped inside his cave. The
monster has already eaten 2 of their friends.
3. The story of Odysseus, the Odyssey, was written by a poet named Homer in the eighth
century, B.C.
4. Odysseus represented the modern adventurer.
5. Odysseus’ story begins on the island of Ithaca, where he is the king.
6. Odysseus takes 12 ships to Troy, and the war rages on for 10 years.
7. The wall around the city are so large people think they were built by gods. Odysseus
and his men build a huge, horse to get inside the city of Troy.
8. The remains of an ancient city and a massive wall with a large palace was discovered
near the site where Troy is thought to have been making one wonder if there is any
truth to the story of Troy and Odysseus.
9. The people of Troy, or Trojans, were known for their ability in breeding horses.
10. The Greeks strike in the middle of the night and they burn Troy to the ground.
11. Odysseus was a hero who was celebrated because he was crafty and intelligent, not
like the normal heroes who were thought to be strong and a great warrior.
12. From Troy to Ithaca, Odysseus had to travel 565 miles, a journey of a few weeks.
13. After fighting in the Trojan War for 10 years, it takes Odysseus an extra ten years to get
home. He left for Ithaca with 12 ships and 600 men.
14. In 1988, a ship 60 feet long and 22 feet wide was discovered off the coast of Sicily
and dates back within 2 centuries of The Odyssey. In 2008 it was discovered to match
the descriptions in The Odyssey.
15. Since Odysseus has been gone, his house has been overrun by suitors who want
Odysseus’ wife and throne.
16. After drinking too much, Odysseus loses 72 of his men to the inhabitants of the island
that he believed had been defeated. When they finally get back on the boat, they
are lost at sea for two weeks because of a hurricane.
17. The land of the Lotus-Eaters was meant to show how people could get lost because
of their drug use.
18. Odysseus is trying to get home to his wife and son, when he stops on the island of the
Cyclops, a man-eating monster.
19. In ancient Greece, it was customary to give a gift to visiting strangers.
20. The Cyclops ate two of Odysseus’ men, not even leaving the bones.
21. Odysseus is unlike other heroes, because he thinks before he acts.
22. Three facts that could have inspired the monster: 1)Cyclopia is a real thing where a
baby is born with one eye, 2) a volcano’s “red eye”, and 3) The Greeks found a fossil
of an elephant skull and it looked like it had only one eye.
23. Odysseus gives the Cyclops wine that makes him drunk and sleepy. Once the
monster is asleep, Odysseus and his men stab him in the eye with a sharp stake.
24. In order to escape the Cyclops’ cave, Odysseus and his men sneak out on the belly
of the Cyclops’ sheep. It is another case of brain over brawn.
25. The Cyclops, angry and beaten, is the son of Poseidon, the sea god, and asks for
revenge.
26. He now faces two daunting challenges: survive the wrath of a god and make it
home before another man steals his wife.
27. Odysseus receives a bag full of wind as a present from King Aeolus. A mile from
home/Ithaca, his men open the bag and they are blown off course.
28. When Odysseus gets back to Æolus, he asks the king for wind/help again. The king
tells him, “You are cursed by the gods.”
29. When Odysseus and his men are attacked by the giant cannibals, he loses most/hundreds
of men and most/all but one/11 of his ships.
30. Odysseus is a marked man because Poseidon has put a bounty on his head.
Odysseus: Warrior’s Revenge, a viewing guide
1. The story of Odysseus is special because he is not a god, but a regular man.
2. Odysseus’ journey is a race against time. His wife Penelope wonders if she has become
a sailor’s widow.
3. Penelope is surrounded by men who want to marry her. Custom says that the suitor
who wins the queen will also win the crown.
4. Homer’s poem, The Odyssey was more than just fiction, it was a guide book for living in
a dangerous world.
5. At the time The Odyssey was written, the Greek empire was just beginning to expand
across the seas. Greece was a very poor place.
6. Odysseus does not just surrender in the face of adversity. He always gets back up. He
must make it through on his intelligence alone.
7. When Odysseus makes landfall, he sends out a party who discover a stone palace that
is surrounded by wolves and lions.
8. The men meet Circe, who offers them a feast. She teaches them a lesson by turning
them into pigs/swine. One man escapes the spell and tells Odysseus.
9. On his way to Circe, Odysseus comes across Hermes, the messenger god who is his
ally. This god gives Odysseus a drug/holy moly, and he is not turned into a swine.
10. Odysseus agrees to go to Circe’s bed on the condition that she turn his men back
into human beings.
11. In ancient Greece, women had to be faithful/loyal while men could have affairs.
12. Odysseus is on Circe’s land for one year.
13. After leaving Circe’s land, Odysseus must travel through the underworld of the dead.
By this time, he has already been away from his home for 12 years.
14. In order to free himself from the curse, Odysseus must get help from the blind prophet.
The only problem is that the prophet is dead.
15. Odysseus must make an unplanned stop in the underworld of Hades. He is scared
because no humans had ever gone to Hades and survived.
16. The ancient Greeks thought of the underworld as being misty and cool.
17. The blind prophet tells Odysseus not to eat the cattle of the Sun God, Helios. This
advice comes back to haunt Odysseus. He becomes the only man to survive a trip to
Hades.
18. Odysseus must face the Sirens, whose songs are so beautiful that they pull you off
course. Odysseus has his men plug their ears with wax, but he does not.
19. The Sirens have since been thought that they could be the sounds of monks seals
that were very common centuries ago.
20. Penelope is keeping the suitors at bay by promising to marry one of them when she
finishes weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus’s father; each night she unweaves what
she did during the day.
21. Odysseus must choose whether to face the wondering rocks or go between sea
monsters and a massive whirlpool. By choosing the hard place, Odysseus must
choose between death to some or death to all. He loses 6 men.
22. In the mid-1800s, corpses of quaint squid wash ashore and is believed to have been
sea monster and a whirlpool zone in the narrow strait between Sicily and Italy.
23. The last meal Odysseus’ men ever eat is Helios’ cattle. Helios asks Zeus to punish those
who ate his cattle.
24. The Gods liked using their power to punish mortals. Odysseus is the only person who
avoids the punishment of Zeus.
25. Odysseus lands on the island of a nymph. He stays there for 7 years.
26. Calypso promises Odysseus immortality if he stays with her forever. Odysseus refuses
Calypso to fulfill his destiny as a man.
27. To escape the nymph’s land, Odysseus must build his own boat.
28. Odysseus has spent nearly 20 years away from home at this point.
29. When he arrives at Ithaca, he disguises himself as a beggar.
30. To pick a new husband for Penelope, an archery contest is arranged.
31. Odysseus kills all of the suitors bothering his wife.
32. In Greek, Odysseus means man of pain.