Greek / story↔ Versions
How the Greek world takes shape
Hesiod makes a cosmos through births and conflict; Ovid begins by separating a mixed mass.
3 min readA connection needs a source.
Choose an entry, then switch textual witnesses to see which connections change. Every diagram includes an equivalent cited list.
These are maps of particular claims.
We keep contradictory accounts separate. A missing edge means it is not part of this selected diagram; it does not prove that the source explicitly denies the relationship. Node positions are for readability, not chronology or geography.
Greek / story↔ Versions
Persephone’s divided year
A mother’s refusal forces a settlement after her daughter is taken into the underworld.
2 min readGreek / story↔ Versions
Two beginnings for Aphrodite
A goddess rising from the sea and a daughter comforted by Dione belong to different poetic genealogies.
2 min readGreek / creature↔ Versions
Typhon / Typhoeus
A many-voiced challenger exposes how much depends on the survival of Zeus’s rule.
2 min readGreek / story↔ Versions
Orpheus tries to recover Eurydice
Music wins a conditional return from death, but Virgil and Ovid give the loss different causes and conclusions.
3 min readGreek / creature↔ Versions
Medusa
The mortal Gorgon has different histories in Hesiod’s genealogy and Ovid’s account of her changed hair.
2 min readGreek / figure↔ Versions
Ariadne
The woman who enables Theseus’s escape has sharply different endings as a dead heroine and an immortal bride.
2 min readNorse / story↔ Versions
A world made from Ymir
Before the gods establish their world, the body of a primordial being becomes its landscape.
2 min readNorse / story↔ Versions
Thor fishes for the world-serpent
An immense catch puts Thor face to face with the serpent that encircles the human world.
2 min readNorse / story↔ Versions
The death of Baldr
A seemingly harmless plant defeats a mother’s attempt to secure her son against every danger.
2 min readNorse / story↔ Versions
Ragnarök: destruction and renewal
The gods meet their foreknown enemies, but the surviving accounts also imagine life beyond the catastrophe.
2 min readNorse / story↔ Versions
Skírnir’s embassy to Gerðr
Freyr’s longing sends a messenger to Gerðr, whose refusals are met with increasingly forceful threats.
3 min readNorse / figure↔ Versions
Kvasir
Two accounts connect exceptional wisdom with peace, but one creates its bearer while the other exchanges him as a hostage.
2 min readEgyptian / story↔ Versions
Creation in more than one voice
A self-generating sun god and a creator who thinks and speaks offer different ways to imagine a world taking form.
2 min readEgyptian / story↔ Versions
Osiris: loss, care, and a disputed inheritance
The restoration of Osiris gives death a social answer: the dead need mourners, protectors, and a recognized successor.
2 min readEgyptian / creature↔ Versions
Apep: the enemy who must be overcome again
The serpent opposing solar order belongs to recurring ritual struggles, with different agents performing the defeat.
2 min readEgyptian / figure↔ Versions
Nut: the sky that carries and gives birth
An elevated cow in one composition and a constrained mother in another show different ways of imagining the sky goddess.
2 min readFolktales / story↔ Versions
Cinderella: two paths to recognition
A glass slipper and a golden shoe lead through two different accounts of help, grief, and status.
2 min readFolktales / story↔ Versions
Little Red Riding Hood
A journey to a grandmother’s house changes dramatically when a storyteller supplies a rescuer.
2 min readFolktales / story↔ Versions
Anansi and the sticky trap
Two named Jamaican storytellers give Anansi different ways out of the same predicament.
2 min readFolktales / story↔ Versions
Sleeping Beauty: the story after the awakening
A century of sleep ends, but Perrault’s princess must survive another danger after her marriage.
2 min readJapanese / story↔ Versions
Food from a slain goddess: two different accounts
The Kojiki and one Nihon Shoki writing give different actors to a disturbing explanation of staple foods.
2 min read