Guide
Stories That Have Made People Weep for 3,000 Years
The greatest musician in the world descended to the Underworld to bring back his dead wife. Hades, moved to tears by his song, agreed on one condition: don't look back. Steps from freedom, Orpheus looked back. Eurydice was pulled into the darkness forever. He lost her twice, and the second time there was no appeal.
Achilles withdrew from the Trojan War over a slight to his honour. His closest companion Patroclus borrowed his armour to rally the Greeks and was killed by Hector. Achilles' scream of grief was so loud it drove the Trojans back from the Greek camp. He avenged Patroclus but knew his own death would follow soon. He chose to die anyway.
Niobe, queen of Thebes, boasted that she was superior to the goddess Leto because she had fourteen children while Leto had only two. Those two children were Apollo and Artemis. They killed all fourteen of Niobe's children with arrows. Niobe wept until she turned to stone, and the stone continued to weep. A rock formation on Mount Sipylus in Turkey was identified in antiquity as the weeping Niobe.
Hector, the noblest warrior in Troy and defender of his city, knew he could not defeat Achilles. He ran from him three times around the walls of Troy before Athena tricked him into standing his ground. He died begging Achilles to return his body to his father. Achilles refused and dragged his corpse behind his chariot for days. When old King Priam came alone to beg for his son's body, even Achilles wept.
A boy escaped imprisonment on wings his father built from feathers and wax. Drunk on the joy of flight, he soared too high. The sun melted the wax. He fell screaming into the sea. His father circled overhead, calling his name, and saw nothing but scattered feathers floating on the waves.
The nymph Echo fell in love with the beautiful Narcissus but was cursed to only repeat others' words. She could never tell him how she felt. When Narcissus rejected her, she faded away until only her voice remained. Narcissus, cursed in turn, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool and wasted away staring at it, unable to reach what he loved.
After Achilles killed Hector and desecrated his body, the aged King Priam crossed the battlefield alone at night, entered the tent of his son's killer, and kissed the hands that had murdered his child. He begged for Hector's body so he could bury him properly. The scene in the Iliad where Achilles and Priam weep together, enemy and enemy, is considered one of the most emotionally powerful passages in Western literature.
After Oedipus blinded himself and was exiled from Thebes, his daughter Antigone guided him through years of wandering. Later, when her brother Polynices died attacking Thebes and the king forbade burial, Antigone buried him anyway, knowing it meant her death. She chose family duty over survival and was sealed alive in a tomb.
Every autumn, Persephone descends to the Underworld and Demeter's grief kills the harvest and brings winter. Every spring, Persephone returns and the world blooms again. It is the story of every parent who must let their child go, repeated endlessly in the cycle of the seasons.
Hera drove Heracles temporarily insane. In his madness he murdered his own wife Megara and their children, believing they were enemies. When sanity returned, he saw what he had done. The twelve labours were his penance. The strongest man who ever lived, broken by grief over something he could never undo.
Cross-referenced with multiple classical sources for accuracy.
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