Greatest Love Stories in Greek Mythology

Who Tells These Stories, and How the Versions Differ

Several of the most famous love stories reach us through a single Latin author, and the details people quote are often his. Cupid and Psyche survives as a long tale inside Apuleius' second-century novel The Golden Ass (properly Metamorphoses); no earlier literary version exists, although winged Psyche figures appear in Greek art. Pygmalion comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 10, where the statue has no name at all. The name Galatea was attached to her only in the eighteenth century, most influentially in Rousseau's Pygmalion. In Ovid, too, Pygmalion is not a casual misogynist: he is repelled by the Propoetides, women of Cyprus who denied Venus' divinity and were turned to stone.

The race of Atalanta has two traditions. Ovid names the suitor Hippomenes and has the couple desecrate a shrine of Cybele, who yokes them as lions to her chariot. Apollodorus names him Melanion and says they made love in a precinct of Zeus. Ceyx and Alcyone vary as well. In Ovid they are a devoted couple parted by a shipwreck and reunited as kingfishers, and the god of sleep sends Morpheus to Alcyone in her husband's shape. In Apollodorus the transformation is a punishment, because they called each other Zeus and Hera.

Even Orpheus and Eurydice did not always end in loss. Euripides' Alcestis mentions Orpheus' journey to the dead, and some scholars think the earliest form of the story allowed him to succeed. The famous backward glance is told most fully by Virgil in the Georgics and by Ovid.

More Love Stories Worth Knowing

Alcestis and Admetus. Apollo arranged for King Admetus of Pherae to escape death if someone would die in his place. His aged parents refused; his wife Alcestis agreed. In Euripides' play Alcestis (438 BC), Heracles wrestles Death at her tomb and brings her back veiled, and Admetus has to be tricked into accepting a "stranger" before he recognises her. Plato's Symposium holds her up as the model of love willing to die for another.

Protesilaus and Laodamia. Protesilaus was the first Greek to leap ashore at Troy and the first to be killed. His wife's grief was so great that the gods let him return for a few hours. When he left again, she took her own life. Ovid gives her a letter in the Heroides, and Wordsworth wrote the poem "Laodamia" about her.

Eos and Tithonus. The dawn goddess Eos asked Zeus to make her Trojan lover immortal but forgot to ask for eternal youth. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite describes how she cared for him as he aged until he could not move, then shut him in a chamber where his voice babbled on. Later writers turned him into a cicada.

Selene and Endymion. The moon goddess Selene fell for Endymion, who was granted endless sleep, either at his own request or as her wish, so that she could visit him forever unchanged. Sappho is said to have written about them, and the cave on Mount Latmus in Caria was associated with the story.

Baucis and Philemon. In Ovid an elderly Phrygian couple share their meagre meal with disguised gods, Zeus and Hermes, after richer neighbours have turned them away. Their wish is to die at the same moment, and they become an oak and a linden growing side by side.

Hero and Leander. Leander swam the Hellespont nightly to reach Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, guided by her lamp. One stormy night the lamp blew out and he drowned; Hero threw herself from her tower. The fullest version is the late Greek poem by Musaeus, and Ovid wrote paired letters for the lovers in the Heroides. Lord Byron swam the strait in 1810 to prove it could be done.

Pyramus and Thisbe. Two young Babylonians whispering through a crack in a wall arrange to meet at a mulberry tree. A lioness, a bloodied veil and a misunderstanding lead to a double suicide, and the mulberry's fruit turns dark red in mourning. It is Ovid's story and the obvious ancestor of Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare also parodied it in A Midsummer Night's Dream. See Pyramus and Thisbe.

What Ancient Readers Meant by Love

Greek love stories are rarely about courtship as modern romance imagines it. Many begin with a god's desire that ignores the mortal's will, as with Apollo and Daphne, and end in transformation rather than union. The marriages that are celebrated, like Odysseus and Penelope's or Alcestis and Admetus', are praised for loyalty and for homophrosyne, the "like-mindedness" Odysseus wishes upon Nausicaa in Odyssey Book 6, more than for passion. For couples with happier and more troubled endings, see couples of Greek mythology and forbidden love.

Ancient sources

• Ovid, Metamorphoses — the main source for Pyramus and Thisbe (Book 4), Baucis and Philemon (Book 8), Orpheus, Pygmalion and Atalanta's race (Book 10), and Ceyx and Alcyone (Book 11).
• Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) 4.28–6.24 — the only full ancient telling of Cupid and Psyche, framed as a story told by an old woman to a captive girl.
• Euripides, Alcestis — the tragedy of the wife who dies for her husband and is rescued from Death by Heracles.
• Homer, Odyssey Book 23 — Penelope's test of the bed and her reunion with Odysseus.
• Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite — tells the story of Eos and Tithonus as a warning, within Aphrodite's own affair with Anchises.
• Apollodorus, Library — gives the alternative versions of Atalanta (with Melanion) and of Ceyx and Alcyone as a punishment for presumption.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous love story in Greek mythology?

Orpheus and Eurydice is probably the most retold, followed closely by Cupid and Psyche. Odysseus and Penelope is the most celebrated married couple, and Paris and Helen the most consequential, since their affair set off the Trojan War.

Which Greek love stories have happy endings?

Cupid and Psyche, Odysseus and Penelope, Pygmalion and his statue, and Alcestis and Admetus (in Euripides) all end well. Baucis and Philemon receive the ending they ask for, dying together.

Was Galatea the statue's name in the original myth?

No. Ovid never names Pygmalion's statue. The name Galatea, originally a sea nymph loved by the Cyclops Polyphemus, was given to the statue in the eighteenth century and has stuck ever since.

Is Romeo and Juliet based on a Greek myth?

Not directly, but its plot closely echoes Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe: young lovers kept apart by their families, a secret meeting, a mistaken belief that one is dead, and a double suicide.