Make popping candy
21 February 2026
Make your edible space dust We’re going to make our own version of space dust! Whaaaaat?! Surely you need a
Many Greek myths featured a hero – that is, a strong, manly central character who usually had to perform superhuman feats such as killing monsters or fulfilling impossible quests. The names of some of the most famous heroes were:
Odysseus
Herakles (known as Hercules to the Romans)
Jason
Perseus
Achilles
Some stories had more than one hero. In fact, two of the most famous, The Iliad and Argonautica (Jason and the Argonauts to you and me) had loads of heroic male characters in them – the Greeks couldn’t get enough of them!
Of course, Greek myths wouldn’t be half as exciting without LOADS of monsters! There was the Cyclops, a giant with one eye who ate people. The Hydra was a monster with hundreds of heads – trouble was, if you cut off one of its heads, two would grow back in its place! And we can’t forget the horrible Medusa, a beast who had snakes for hair, and if you made the mistake of making eye contact, her gaze would turn you into stone. Luckily these monsters were all killed by our heroes – see if you can match the hero to the monster in the quiz below:
One of the most famous books in Ancient Greece was The Odyssey. It was the story of one of our heroes, Odysseus, a Greek soldier who fought in the Trojan War. The story is about his journey home to Greece. The gods decided to make his journey very difficult, and it ended up lasting ten years – taking him on adventures through distant lands, meeting gods, monsters and witches along the way. It’s a really exciting read from start to finish – the original version was a very long poem written by a man called Homer, but you can easily find newer versions rewritten especially for children and young people (so you don’t have to learn ancient Greek to read it!)
Spiders are called arachnids after a woman called Arachne. She was so good at weaving, she rivalled the goddess Athena in her talent. Athena was very angry about this so she turned Arachne into a spider, which meant all she could ever do was weave.
Narcissus was a young man who fell in love with his reflection in a pond. Eventually, he wasted away watching himself. When his sisters came looking for him, they couldn’t find a body – just a beautiful yellow flower where he had sat. That’s where we get Narcissus, another word for a daffodil. (The psychological term narcissist comes from this myth too – that is, someone who loves themselves too much!)
Alexander the Great loved The Iliad so much that he carried it around with him everywhere, keeping it in a box by his bed. He is said to have identified himself with the hero Achilles.
The other important characters in Greek myths, aside from heroes, were the gods and goddesses. Lots of Greek myths were based on gods chasing after human females, or goddesses taking jealous revenge on their rivals (see Arachne). They also spent a lot of time fighting each other! Their special powers often made things a lot more interesting for the human characters.
The Greeks often used myths to explain things that happened in the natural world. An example is the story of Persephone. She was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and was tricked into marrying Hades, the god of the Underworld (where people went to live after they died). The trouble was, Demeter was so sad that her daughter had gone to live in the Underworld that all the plants in the world stopped growing. This meant that everyone began to starve, and more importantly for the gods, the people stopped offering them sacrifices. Eventually, they arranged for Persephone to spend half the year with her husband, and half the year on earth with her mother.
This is why for half the year, in winter, nothing grows – because Persephone’s mother is missing her.
1. Jason and the Argonauts went on an epic journey to bring home the Golden what?
A) Fleece
B) Police
C) Wildebeest
2. When the legendary King Midas touched anything, what did it turn into?
A) Cheese
B) Diamonds
C) Gold
3. Who died when he was shot in the heel with an arrow?
A) Achilles
B) Herakles
C) Odysseus
4. How was the goddess Athena born?
A) Out of a shoe
B) Out of her father’s head
C) Out of her mother’s nose
5. The Minotaur was a beastly sort of a guy. He had the body of a man, but what animal’s head did he have?
A) A bull
B) A snake
C) A unicorn
If you enjoyed this journey through ancient Greece, check out a subscription to AQUILA magazine!
Words: The AQUILA team.
Answers:
Match the hero to the monster
Using a shield as a mirror, Perseus avoided looking directly at Medusa and headed her.
Thee second labour of Heracles was to kill the Lernean Hydra: as he cut off the heads, his friends burnt the stumps to prevent more heads from growing.
Odysseus killed the Cyclops by plunging a hot pointed log of wood into its one eye.
Greek Myths and Legends quiz
1 b) They brought home the Golden Fleece, after surviving many adventures with giants, dragons, Sirens and magic.
2 a) King Midas realised that having the ‘Golden Touch’ was not so good when he needed to eat or wanted to hug his daughter. Eventually Dionysus told him to bathe in the River Pactolus to undo the magic.
3 c) Achilles’ mother dipped him in the River Styx as a baby, to protect him from harm, but she had to hold on to his heel and this was the only place he could be hurt.
4 c) Her father Zeus swallowed her mother so she wouldn’t have any children who could overthrow him. But her mother was already expecting a baby – Athena – who burst out of her father’s head
5 a) Our cover shows Theseus killing the Minotaur in the labyrinth of King Minos of Crete.
Make your edible space dust We’re going to make our own version of space dust! Whaaaaat?! Surely you need a
Can We Really Live on Mars? The Science of Terraforming What are we going to do when we have finished
Alien Brains When you imagine an alien, what do you see? Do you see a little green person with big
Flying Saucer Automata https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wX7H9WPjQao Words: The AQUILA team. Search Popular Keywords Categories No Record Found View All Results
Greek Myths Explained: Heroes, Monsters and Gods of Ancient Greece Heroes Many Greek myths featured a hero – that is,
Make an excellent eight-page zine A zine is a self-published print work, comic or book, produced in very small numbers.
