Working with the limited scientific knowledge they had, the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations came up with a number of theories about the human body. While some were correct, most were not. As a matter of fact, some doctors, philosophers, and thinkers got it hilariously wrong.

10 Food Was Changed Into Blood By The Liver
Originator: Galen

Perhaps the greatest Roman (though, he was of Greek ethnicity) doctor ever, Galen published a vast number of writings on the human body and proposed many correct theories. One of the incorrect ones that he believed was that food was digested by the stomach and taken to the liver, where it was turned into blood. The biggest reason for many of Galen’s errors was that he’d never dissected a human body; in his time, it was outlawed by the Roman Empire. His theories were widely followed—practically blindly—until the 16th century, when Flemish doctor Andreas Vesalius began to question Galen’s findings.

9 Lambs Grew From Trees
Originator: Megasthenes

Megasthenes was a Greek explorer who returned from a trip he took to India and wrote a book about his travels. He referred to cotton plants that he saw as “trees on which grew wool,” which led to the misconception that lambs grew on trees. From that incorrect assumption, a number of other ancient thinkers, including Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder, mentioned “wool-bearing trees” in their writings, perpetuating the myth. As late as the 18th or 19th centuries, this was still a commonly believed theory, with books published on the subject and a number of expeditions undertaken in search of the mythical plant.

8 Light Came From The Eye
Originator: Plato

Plato, one of the greatest Greek philosophers, contributed greatly to medical knowledge—erroneously in a number of cases. Perhaps his worst error was the idea that “a stream of light or fire” emanated from the eye, rebounded off of an object, and combined with sunlight, allowing it to be seen by the eye. An object’s color was said to be “flame particles” that were let off its body. This was a commonly held notion until the 11th century, when Persian scientist Ibn al-Haytham developed his theory that the eye was merely an optical instrument in his writing The Book of Optics.

7 Veins Carried Blood, Arteries Carried Air
Originator: Praxagoras

An ancient Greek physician whose writings have been lost to humanity, Praxagoras is perhaps best known for being the first to realize that veins and arteries are different. However, he believed that air traveled through the arteries (probably due to the fact that blood tends to leave the arteries upon death and accumulates in the veins). Praxagoras explained away bleeding by saying the arteries attracted blood from the neighboring tissue when exposed to air. This theory was widely believed for hundreds of years.

6 Sleep Occurs When Blood Flows Away From The Surface
Originator: Alcmaeon

Another ancient Greek philosopher and doctor, Alcmaeon of Croton was the holder of a number of medical firsts, including the idea that the brain was the seat of understanding, rather than the heart. He also theorized that sensory organs are attached to the brain. However, he wasn’t always correct. He believed that sleep came to humans when their blood flowed from the surface of their bodies to the blood vessels farther in. Alcmaeon also believed that death occurred if all of the blood went deep into the body.

5 The Brain Was Just A Cooling Device
Originator: Aristotle

Aristotle believed the heart was the center of knowledge and the source of the sensations in the human body, rather than the brain, and he had an interesting theory about the brain. He felt that the brain was merely a cooling organ for the heart and an area for “spirit” to pool. Even though earlier Greeks, including Alcmaeon and Plato, had put forth a neuro-centric model of the human body, Aristotle ridiculed them for their “fallacious” views. In addition, he also thought women’s brains were smaller than men’s, another of his errors that persisted for a number of years.

4 Hemorrhoids Could Be Cured In Weird Ways
Originator: Pliny The Elder

Pliny the Elder was one of the greatest Roman authors and published Naturalis Historia, one of the earliest examples of an encyclopedia. Apparently, hemorrhoids were quite the problem for the ancient Romans, because there were a number of cures. Using an onion as a suppository was supposed to help, and eating garlic with wine but vomiting it back up was said to be beneficial to hemorrhoid sufferers as well. Using a fresh root of rosemary and rubbing it on the anus was also very effective (it also helped if you had a prolapsed rectum). Perhaps the strangest cure was a cream made from the lard of a pig and the rust of a chariot’s wheels.

3 Light Traveled Through The Ether
Originator: Aristotle

While Aristotle influenced civilization for thousands of years, it doesn’t give him a pass on some of his wilder theories. Chief among them was his idea that the entire universe was filled with an unknown substance called “the ether.” Aristotle proposed the theory because he believed light would be unable to move through an empty universe. Like many of his ideas, this one persisted, and the best and brightest of the scientific community failed to contradict it. It was widely believed until 1910, when Albert Einstein proved light didn’t need the ether with his theory of special relativity.

2 The Testicles Determined A Person’s Voice
Originator: Aristotle

Aristotle certainly had his fair share of incorrect theories. Not the least of these was that the testicles were a key factor in determining a person’s vocal pitch. Aristotle’s reasoning was that a boy’s voice tended to deepen during puberty, when his testicles dropped (a lot of this theory was dependent on his observations in animals as well). In addition, he noticed that men who were castrated before puberty maintained their “ladylike” voice, as well as a number of other traits. Obviously, we now know the larynx and the mucus membrane within it control the voice’s pitch.

1 The Womb Roamed Around A Woman’s Body
Originator: Hippocrates

Recognized as the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates had a number of incorrect theories, most notably his theory of humorism, which stated that the human body was made up of four elements that caused illnesses when out of balance. However, his craziest theory was the idea of a “wandering womb.” Hippocrates believed that a woman’s body craved warmth and moisture, so they needed to get laid often. If not, their womb would get bored and start to migrate around their body. In addition, an excess of “male activities,” could also cause the womb to wander. Depending on where it finally attached itself, various disorders could result, including hysteria. This was still a widely held theory until the Middle Ages.

The ancient Greeks are renowned today for their advanced thinking. We’ve all heard of Aristotle and Socrates, and the writings of the Greeks have influenced modern thought in almost every way possible—from how we write fiction to how we understand the world around us. They were hundreds of years ahead of their time in mathematics and politics.

But perhaps their greatest achievements were in the area of mechanics. From the first computers to the first clock tower, the ancient Greeks built some truly amazing machines, some of which wouldn’t exist again for another 1,000 years. Some were practical, while others were simply for fun or to aid in scientific demonstrations.

Let’s take a look at ten of the greatest examples of ancient Greek mechanical engineering.

10 The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism is an analog computer that was discovered in an ancient Greek shipwreck in 1901. Assembled sometime between 205 BC and 60 BC, it was designed to measure the movements of the heavens. It had a clock-like face with seven hands that tracked the movements of the planets and the Moon and also had mechanisms for tracking the phase of the Moon, the calendar, and the lunar and solar eclipses.^[1]

It turned our understanding of Greek engineering upside down when it was first properly identified in 2006, with its extremely precise and interlocking gear systems. It demonstrated that the ancient Greeks were capable of a level of precision engineering that was previously thought impossible. And it might not even be the oldest version of this machine—Cicero, the Roman writer, described Archimedes building a similar device in the third century BC.

Unfortunately, only fragments of the device were recovered, so key features of it—such as how the device drove the planetary pointers, which no doubt must have been very complex, considering how the planets’ paths through the sky vary—are still not understood.

9 The Diolkos

The ancient Greek city of Corinth was a center of maritime trade in the ancient world, and it saw hundreds of vessels in its port at any one time. It was also close to the narrowest bit of land in the Greek peninsula, which would have saved ships days of travel if they could take a shortcut through it.^[2]

Hence the construction of the Diolkos sometime around the fifth century BC, a special kind of portage road that allowed ships to be hauled overland, avoiding the long trip around the Peloponnese. In the past, it used to be thought of as a way of transporting cargo ships quickly from the Aegean sea to the Ionian and vice versa, but it is now widely believed that cargo ships would have been too large to use the Diolkos, which would explain the construction of the Corinthian Canal in AD 67.

Nonetheless, it probably played an important role as a cheap method of moving small ships and military vessels between the seas in a hurry and was probably used by wealthy Greeks with their own personal boats as a fast form of transport.

8 Philo’s Gimbal

The gimbal serves many purposes today—not least in the world of television, where its role in stabilizing handheld cameras keeps filming nice and smooth—but the very first gimbal was invented by Philo of Byzantium sometime around 200 BC, when he used it to make an inkwell that would never spill.^[3]

The ink was mounted in a container at the center of the device, surrounded by concentric circles that always held it upright, even when turned. The frame around the outside featured numerous holes to dip the pen into—so the writer could turn the inkwell over, or accidentally knock it, and still continue writing without spilling any ink.

In later eras, the gimbal became absolutely crucial for navigation, holding a compass steady on a rocking ship so that the compass point always accurately pointed north.

7 The Kleroterion

The ancient Greek version of democracy may look primitive to our modern eyes, but they used a very innovative device to ensure that juries were always made up of people who couldn’t be bribed or otherwise influenced: a randomization machine.^[4]

A kleroterion was a kind of slot machine with some funnels, a crank, a hole, and 500 small slits. When a jury was assembled for a trial, each juror brought with them a form of ID—a thin piece of bronze or wood with their identifier on it, called a pinakion. These were all inserted into the slits. An officer tipped a handful of balls into the funnels at the top of the device—some black, some white. He then pulled the crank, causing one ball to come out. If the ball was black, the row of pinakia were removed, and those jurors wouldn’t serve that day. If the ball was white, those jurors were eligible for duty. The official pulled the crank for each row of pinakia until they’d all been accepted or rejected. There was no way to predict which ball would come out for which row, thereby ensuring that no one could have guessed before the trial who would be on the jury, preventing them from influencing their decisions.

6 The Aeolipile

The aeolipile was, as far as we know, the world’s first steam engine—invented in the first century AD, roughly a millennium and a half before they became a common means of generating electricity.

It was invented by Heron of Alexandria. However, it certainly wasn’t intended to be an engine, and Heron never saw it as such. Rather, he used it as a simple device to demonstrate some of the principles of pneumatics, no doubt to aid in lessons or to attract the attention of curious visitors.

The engine itself was a hollow sphere mounted on two tubes it could rotate around. The tubes provided steam from a hot cauldron below the machine. As the steam filled the sphere, it escaped through another tube (sometimes two) that jutted out of the sphere. These tubes were angled sideways, so the force of the steam coming out caused the sphere to rotate.^[5]

5 The Crane (And Archimedes’s Claw)

The Greeks invented the crane around the year 500 BC, a simple wooden hoist-and-pulley system that made erecting tall, sturdy buildings much more practical. (The technology was later improved by the Romans, who spread it across most of Europe.) However, the Greeks could easily build advanced cranes of their own, as is proven by Archimedes’s Claw.

Archimedes’s Claw (depicted rather fancifully in the painting above) was a machine built in Syracuse by Archimedes sometime before the Roman siege of the city in 214 BC.^[6] According to ancient accounts, the claw was a kind of crane that could either push or lift ships out of the sea, toppling them and causing them to sink. It was mounted close to the city’s sea walls, preventing Roman ships from coming close to the city.

According to Plutarch, the claw terrified the besieging Romans, who began to feel like they were fighting against the gods, and many soldiers were frightened by the sight of any wooden frame above the city walls in case it was another one of Archimedes’s contraptions. They gave up any hope of taking the city by sea, resigning themselves to a long land-based siege.

4 The Tower Of The Winds

Built in roughly 50 BC, the Tower of the Winds in Athens is widely considered to be the world’s first meteorological station as well as the world’s first clock tower.^[7] In ancient times, it was topped by a weather vane that indicated the direction of the wind. The tower has eight walls, each facing one of the compass points, and features a massive sundial which could be used to track the time of day. It had a water clock inside, which kept track of time overnight or on cloudy days.

Its considerable height and its dominant position on the Roman Agora in the city both seem to suggest it was intended to function in much the same way as a clock tower would today, and the ancient Greeks themselves knew it as the Horologion: “Timepiece.”

The building still stands today and is remarkably intact, mostly due to restoration work. It has inspired many architects over the course of history, and smaller replicas are scattered across Europe.

3 The Showers Of Pergamum

The ancient Greeks are famous today for their love of athletics, seen most prominently in the Olympics and their modern-day revival. What they are less known for, however, are the facilities ancient athletes sometimes enjoyed.

A system of showers was excavated at a gymnasium (built in the early second century BC) in Pergamum, which was one of the greatest ancient Greek cities.^[8] Now located in modern-day Turkey, it also hosted the greatest library outside of Alexandria, and its rulers consciously invested in the public works of their city to increase its prestige.

As such, it is unlikely that these shower systems were common across the Greek world, but they certainly existed. The Pergamum showers had seven bathing units, into which water flowed through an overhead mains system onto the bathers.

A shower system is also depicted on a vase from the fourth century BC, so by the time Pergamum’s showers were built, the ancient Greeks had been using showers for over a century. The image on the vase even depicts separate cubicles and rails for users to hang their belongings on.

2 Archimedes’s Screw

Archimedes is commonly considered to be the inventor of the Archimedes screw, a machine used even today for transporting water to a higher level with relatively little energy.^[9] The ancient Greek version was powered by treading, where human workers or slaves would use their weight to power the machine—the crank-operated version was invented in medieval Germany.

It is argued that Archimedes’s screw wasn’t the first such device to exist in the ancient world. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built circa 600 BC, were said to have been watered by screws. However, the earliest source who says this is Strabo, writing almost 600 years later—and long after the invention of Archimedes’s screw, so he may have been using his knowledge of the technology around him to theorize how the Hanging Gardens might have worked. The site of the Gardens is still a mystery even today, so there is no way of knowing for sure.

Even so, the machine didn’t become commonly used until Archimedes’s lifetime, when it started to be employed by the Greeks and, later, the Romans for irrigation or for draining ships.

1 Heron’s Fountain

Another device designed by Heron of Alexandria to demonstrate physics, Heron’s fountain used the principles of hydraulics and pneumatics to create a fountain that spurts water without power.^[10] It is used even today in physics classrooms to aid teaching.

Heron’s fountain is made of three components: an open bowl, an airtight water-filled container, and an airtight air-filled container, each stacked above the other. A pipe leads from the bottom of the bowl to the air container, another leads from the air container into the water container, and another leaves the water container and is positioned above the bowl. When water is poured into the bowl, it falls down the pipe into the air container. Pressure in the air container then pushes air into the water container, which pushes water up the pipe and back into the bowl, where it creates more pressure in the air container.

While not physically practical, like Heron’s other devices it shows the incredible grasp the ancient Greeks had on physics over 1,000 years before the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. The device is not technically a perpetual motion machine, though it can run for a very long time if constructed to the right specifications. Resetting it is as simple as draining the water from the air container back into the water container.

The Greeks were philosophers. They were the fathers of democracy, men of a more civilized time who lived lives of meaning in the pursuit of truth.

On paper, anyway. Everyday life, though, was less glamorous than the few shining moments that made their way into history. Real life in ancient Greece was difficult, dirty, and often truly disgusting.

10 Your Doctor Would Taste Your Earwax

When you visited a doctor in ancient Greece, you could pretty much count on him reaching into your ear and taking a little nibble of your earwax. That was how your doctor got a diagnosis: He’d taste your bodily fluids.

Of course, doctors had more diagnostic tricks than just tasting people’s earwax. The doctor would choose the test depending on the symptoms. For example, a doctor might run his fingers through your phlegm or lick your vomit to see how sweet it was.

All this started with Hippocrates—the man behind the Hippocratic oath. He believed that the body was a collection of fluids and that each bodily fluid had a specific taste. Greek doctors were taught what those bodily fluids should taste like so they could know if something was wrong.

According to Hippocratic medicine, urine was supposed to taste like fig juice. So if you felt a little under the weather, your doctor would take a little sip—and if your urine wasn’t tart enough, he knew there was a problem.

9 People Wiped Themselves With Stones

Toilet paper didn’t make its way to Europe until the 16th century. Before then, people had to find their own ways to clean up. Like the Romans, the Greeks would sometimes clean themselves with a sponge attached to a stick—but not every Greek was so lucky.

More often, the Greeks would clean themselves with stones. They kept a pile of pebbles at their lavatories and grated hard stone against their bodies to clean up. Apparently, these were hard to come by. The Greeks had a saying to encourage a little frugality in the bathroom: “Three stones are enough to wipe.”

Other times, they’d take broken shards of ceramic pots and scrape themselves clean with that. Particularly vengeful Greeks might etch their enemies’ names onto a piece of pottery, shatter it, and use it to wipe their own butts.

It might not be a coincidence that hemorrhoids were a major problem in ancient Greece.

8 Older Men Would Trade Roosters For Sex With Boys

Greek men would take young boys as lovers. The older man would always take the initiative. Usually, he’d present himself before a young, prepubescent boy and offer him a live rooster—a surefire way to win anyone’s affections that still works today.

The elder partner would act like a father to his new lover boy, teaching him the ways of the world. In a way, that might almost seem like a justification—but it’s not like these men were sleeping with young boys out of a sense of civic duty. The men wouldn’t pick the boys who most needed instruction. They’d pick the best-looking ones they could find.

The boy would be the older man’s constant companion—until the boy started to grow facial hair. Once a boy could grow hair on his face, the older man viewed the boy as getting on in years and booted him out.

When he grew a beard, the boy became a man. Now it was his turn to pick a boy of his own and keep the whole twisted tradition going.

7 Athletes Sold Their Sweat

Before competing, Greek athletes would take off all their clothes and cover themselves in oil. That was how they performed. Whether they were running or grappling with another man, Greek athletes would do it naked.

By the end, they would usually be covered in filth. So afterward, the athletes scraped all that sweat, filth, and dead skin off their bodies. It would be gross to watch—but a lot worse if your job was to help out.

A group of slaves working as gloios-collectors would have to do just that. They would run around collecting all the scrapings and bottling up all the weird, disgusting things that fell off the athletes’ bodies.

These scrapings would then be sold as medicine. People would rub the sweat of athletes on their skin. They believed that it calmed aches and pains—which it probably didn’t do particularly well.

If nothing else, though, the Greek people, after rubbing sweat and dirt on their skin, got to smell like an Olympian.

6 Women’s Illnesses Were Treated In The Filthiest Ways Possible

The Greeks believed that women had a unique susceptibility to the impure. Disgusting things, they believed, affected women in a way that they did not affect men.

That didn’t just mean that women were more easily grossed out—this was an idea that became part of their medicine. When a woman had a disease, the Greeks believed that there was no better treatment than disgusting filth.

A woman suffering from a discharge, for example, would drink a mix of “roast mule excrement” and wine. If she had a miscarriage, they’d put cow dung on her. This occurred because of another weird belief: that a woman’s womb could move around the body. They believed that the womb would be so disgusted by the smell of the dung that it would run away.

5 Sneezing Was Promoted As An Effective Birth Control Method

The Greek physician Soranus taught that birth control was a woman’s responsibility. If a woman got pregnant, he felt, it was her own fault. After all, it was a little unreasonable to expect men to do anything to stop that from happening.

In reality, if a Greek woman got pregnant, it probably was a man’s fault—specifically, Soranus’s. He told women that they could just sneeze instead of using contraceptives. After making love, Soranus told women that they just needed to squat, sneeze, and rinse and they wouldn’t get pregnant.

Obviously, it didn’t work. Soranus had a few backup ideas, though. He also suggested rubbing honey or cedar resin on your genitals before making love—which, if nothing else, probably discouraged people from having sex in the first place.

4 Slaves Had To Wear Chastity Belts

The Greeks didn’t want their slaves to waste their time making love under the stars. If you were a slave in ancient Greece, there was a decent chance your owner would make you wear a chastity belt just to make sure.

Greek slaves would often have to endure something called infibulation. That meant that a metal ring would be wrapped around their genitals. It would seal them shut tightly enough that even getting excited would be painful, and it could only be taken off with a key.

If your master made you wear a chastity belt, you knew it could have been a lot worse. This was really just an alternative to becoming a eunuch.

3 They Thought Lesbians Had Giant Clitorises

When it came to women’s rights, ancient Greece wasn’t exactly the most progressive country. They didn’t really believe in listening to what women had to say—and so the ancient Greeks had some pretty weird ideas.

Above all, the Greeks really didn’t understand lesbians. They couldn’t conceive of any two people making love without somebody penetrating somebody else. They refused to believe that women were doing anything else.

And so, they concluded that lesbians must all be born with gigantic clitorises. They referred to it as the “female penis” and figured that it was the cause of female homosexuality.

That idea held on for a lot longer than it should have. No more than 100 years ago, even Sigmund Freud believed that the clitoris was behind this whole lesbian phenomenon.

2 They Used Crocodile Dung As Skin Cream

Crocodiles were a bigger part of life for the Greeks than they are for us, and that led to some weird details in Greek medicine. One medical treatise, for example, offers a warning for victims of crocodile bites.

If the crocodile walks back into the patient’s home after biting him and—because ancient Greek crocodiles were jerks—pees on the wound, the patient will die. Apparently, this happened often enough that they had to write about it.

Crocodiles weren’t just a threat, though. They were a cure, too. The Greeks recommended treating scars around the eyes by applying a little crocodile dung as eye shadow. “Levigate the dung of the land crocodile with water,” a Greek medical document recommends, “and anoint.”

1 They Held Phallic Parades

Once a year, the roads of Athens would be alive with penises. Men and women would march down the streets, holding gigantic phalli proudly above their heads as a tribute to their god.

This was an integral part of a Dionysian celebration—a festival held in honor of the god of wine. Dionysus’s followers would get drunk out of their minds and lead a phallic procession to the temple, singing songs about penises and yelling rude jokes at people as they went.

According to Aristotle, phallic processions were the birthplace of comedic theater. He claimed that people adapted the jokes they’d yell during the parades into full stage plays. If Aristotle’s right, all comedy began with Greeks carrying gigantic cartoon dicks.

Greek mythology is a treasure trove of outlandish and incredible stories. At the forefront of these tales, spearheading the ridiculousness, are the Greek gods. The Greek pantheon is infamous for its ruthlessness and cruelty, especially toward mortals and lesser gods.

In this list, we’ll take a look at 10 of the pettiest punishments ever doled out by the gods atop Mount Olympus.

Related: 10 Weirdly Specific Gods Your Mythology Class Left Out

10 Hades

The god of the underworld is often portrayed as the ultimate evil of Greek mythology in modern media. Ironically, Hades is likely one of the more reasonable gods, and compared to his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, he might as well be a saint. That being said, Hades is no stranger to being petty in his dealings with humans and gods alike. Though I suppose I’d be irritable too if I lived all my life in the dark underworld.

A hero named Peirithous traveled to the underworld in hopes of charming and absconding with the queen of the underworld, Persephone. Hades knew of Peirithous’s intentions and set a trap for the man. When Peirithous arrived, Hades hospitably offered him a stone throne, but as he sat, Hades bound him with snakes to his seat.

Peirithous was forced to stay where he sat for all eternity. Eventually, his body grew into the seat. A cruel punishment indeed, but nowhere near the pettiest Greek mythology has to offer. Thus, Hades finds himself at #10 on this list.^[1]

9 Apollo

Despite his reputation as the punisher of the wicked and overbearing, the music-loving, prized son of Zeus isn’t always on his best behavior. Spurred on by the insatiable lust he inherited from his father, Apollo is often found chasing women. Unfortunately, his reaction to rejection is usually less than savory, to say the least.

In an attempt to charm Cassandra, his latest fixation, Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. Cassandra was grateful but not enough to sleep with the god. Bitter about the rejection, Apollo made it such that no one believed Cassandra’s prophecies, despite their truth. Thus Cassandra bore witness to the fall of Troy but was powerless to warn anyone. In the aftermath, she was captured, assaulted, and eventually murdered. I suppose that’s one harsh way to deal with unrequited love.

Apollo was also a terrible winner. He once bested a human named Marsyas in a musical competition. Irritated that a mere mortal had the audacity to challenge his skill, Apollo sought to punish Marsyas for his hubris. How, you might ask? The god decided it would be a just punishment to flay Marsyas alive. Ironically, Apollo is also referred to as a god of healing and protection.^[2]

8 Aphrodite

Love is often messy and cruel; thus, it’s only fitting that the goddess of love is often found inflicting cruel consequences on those who cross her. Aphrodite, like many gods, does not take kindly to disrespect, especially if done by mortals. That being said, her wrath toward disrespect could often be quite cruel.

When the women of the island Lemnos refused to pay homage to Aphrodite, the goddess cursed them with a horrible odor. Their men on the island fell out of love with them and turned to their slaves to replace their wives. Enraged, the women murdered their husbands and fathers. All this death and violence because Aphrodite felt unappreciated.

To scorn love was to scorn Aphrodite herself. A woman named Anaxarete thoroughly rejected Iphis, the man who loved her, and this drove him to hang himself. When the woman felt nothing watching his funeral, Aphrodite took offense and turned the woman to stone to mimic her cold heart.

Even interfering with the love of animals angered Aphrodite. Glaukos, king of Korinthos, prevented his mares from mating at his father’s funeral. Aphrodite drove the mares into a mad frenzy, and they tore Glaukos to pieces.^[3]

7 Hermes

The messenger of the gods, Hermes is the god of many disciplines, including herds, travelers, and hospitality, to name a few. However, less commonly known is his habit of thievery and causing mischief. Although not as vicious as other gods on this list, Hermes’s punishments often feel unearned, making them distinctly spiteful.

Hermes was a natural-born thief. Soon after his birth, he stole cattle belonging to Apollo’s brother and fellow god. Unfortunately, a shepherd by the name of Battus caught Hermes in the act. Hermes bribed the man never to reveal what he had seen, but he was skeptical of the man. Thus, Hermes returned to Battus in the form of a human and bribed him to reveal what he knew of the theft. Battus took the bribe and betrayed Hermes, who promptly turned the shepherd into a stone, ending his life.

As the messenger of the gods, Hermes was responsible for summoning all life to witness the wedding of Zeus and Hera. However, a lazy nymph of the mountain named Chelone ignored Hermes’s summons and mocked the wedding. Insulted that any would dare be absent at his father’s wedding, Hermes destroyed Chelone’s home and turned her into the first tortoise as punishment.^[4]

6 Poseidon

As with most gods, the chariot-riding god of the sea and earthquakes is often found wreaking havoc on humanity. Poseidon, however, was particularly ill-tempered and often took out his minor frustrations on entire cities of innocents, decimating thousands at the slightest of irritations.

One such example of Poseidon’s horrible temper was when he fought the goddess Athena for possession of the city of Attica. Zeus and the other Olympian gods were to decide whose claim was stronger. Poseidon gifted them a spring, while Athena grew them an olive tree. The gods voted to give Athena possession of the city, and she renamed it Athens. Enraged by this result, Poseidon flooded the city and buried it under the sea, killing all who inhabited it.

Poseidon once ordered Minos, the king of Crete, to sacrifice a special bull that he had brought up from the ocean. Minos admired the bull’s beauty and didn’t wish to sacrifice it, so he substituted it with an ordinary bull. Poseidon took great offense, and in retribution, he cursed Minos’s wife to fall in love with the special bull. Poseidon filled the bull with fury, and it ravished Minos’s wife. From this union, the monstrous Minotaur was born, and Minos was forced to lock it away.^[5]

5 Athena

Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is known for her wise counsel and aid of heroes such as Perseus and Heracles. Despite this rosy reputation, Athena might be one of the most wrathful and unfair Olympian gods. Her punishments could often be needlessly cruel and misdirected.

One such cruel punishment was that of Medusa. Many know Medusa as a pale monster with snakes as hair and a petrifying stare. Medusa wasn’t always a monster; she was once a beautiful maiden. Unfortunately, her beauty caught the eye of Poseidon. He chased her into the temple of Athena and violated her. Despite Medusa being the victim, Athena punished her by transforming her into the iconic snake-haired monster.

Another exhibit of Athena’s pettiness was when a young girl named Arachne arrogantly challenged the goddess to a weaving contest. When the two finished their tapestries, Athena inspected the girl’s, and it was flawless. Jealous of the girl’s prowess and angry that her tapestry depicted the misdeeds of the gods, Athena ripped it apart. The girl, in her despair, tried to hang herself, but Athena would not let her die and loosened her noose. Athena then transformed the girl into a spider, and she wove her web in this form for all eternity.^[6]

4 Artemis

The virgin goddess of hunting and protector of young girls was not one to shy away from ruthless punishments. Her brother Apollo often punished those who rejected his advances. However, almost polar to Apollo, Artemis’s wrath was usually reserved for those who made advances on her and those who insulted her chastity. As a virgin goddess, such transgressions were met with fierce retribution.

While hunting, a young prince named Acteon came across the goddess bathing in a stream. Enamored by her figure, Acteon failed to avert his eyes. Enraged that the prince dared gaze upon her body, Artemis transformed the prince into a stag, and his hounds tore him to pieces.

The virgin goddess of the breeze, Aura, once approached Artemis as they bathed. Witnessing Artemis bathe, she felt that Artemis’s figure was too womanly for a virgin. Arrogantly, Aura boasted at length that her more masculine body made her the superior virgin goddess. Artemis would not stand for Aura’s slander and arranged for the god Dionysus to violate Aura, robbing her of her chastity. This drove Aura to madness such that when her twins were born, she devoured the first, then cast herself into the sea.^[7]

3 Leto

It is fitting that the mother of Apollo and Artemis be featured alongside her divine children on this list of petty misdeeds. Most myths featuring the titan goddess depict her as a victim of the queen of gods, Hera. However, just like her children, Leto dispensed quite a number of her own cruelties.

Niobe, the wife of the King of Thebes, was one such victim of Leto’s wrath. Niobe was the mother of seven sons and seven daughters. Due to the large number of children she had nurtured, Niobe boasted that she was superior to Leto, who had only nurtured two children. Insulted by Niobe’s arrogance, Leto encouraged her divine children to destroy Niobe’s children. Apollo killed all the sons, while Artemis dealt with the daughters. Niobe, stricken with grief, begged to be turned to stone and, for all eternity, wept for her deceased children.

During her persecution by Hera, none were permitted to assist Leto or her children for fear of Hera’s wrath. Leto, thirsty from her wandering, happened upon a spring. When she tried to drink from it, the local farmers forbade her from doing so, going as far as to muddy the water with their feet. Furious, Leto cursed the farmers to reside in the muddy spring for all eternity as frogs.^[8]

2 Zeus

The god of thunder is, without doubt, the most despicable of the Olympian gods. Thus it is no surprise that he finds himself in the top half of a list citing acts of petty revenge.

Metis was instrumental in Zeus’s victory over his father and the rest of the Titans. Grateful, Zeus took her as his wife. However, Zeus learned that Metis would eventually birth a child who would surpass Zeus in power and take his place as king of the gods. Despite all she had done for him, Zeus was unwilling to allow the birth of such a child and devoured Metis whole.

To test the hospitality of man, Zeus visited 1,000 homes disguised as a vagrant seeking refuge. When only one household offered him any hospitality, Zeus declared the region wicked and flooded the area, murdering all but two of its inhabitants. In a similar vein, Zeus, at some point, became discontent with mankind’s degeneracy and sent a great flood that decimated all of Greece, leaving but one couple to repopulate the earth.^[9]

1 Hera

They say behind every successful man is a woman; it would seem the same applies to cruelty. The queen of the gods is infamous for her petty grudges against her husband’s many lovers. The severity of her punishments toward these women and their illegitimate children is unmatched by any other god.

When Hera learned of Leto’s pregnancy by Zeus, she exiled her from Olympus and forced her to wander the earth. Hera then forbade humanity from sheltering Leto and placed a curse upon her that prevented the goddess from giving birth on any firm land. Thus, Leto spent many days in labor before finding an island where she could give birth. During this time, Hera sent monsters to attack and violate her, distracting the goddess of childbirth in order to prolong Leto’s labor.

The hero Heracles was an illegitimate child of Zeus; thus, Hera resented him. In his infancy, she sent two snakes to strangle Heracles. Hera also cursed Heracles, who was now a husband and a father, with madness such that he murdered his wife and children. Heracles began his 12 labors as penance for his actions. Even during his labors, Hera interfered greatly, causing the hero substantial strife and injury.^[10]