Greek mythology in order: from Chaos to the return of Odysseus

Greek mythology runs in four broad ages: the gods are born and fight for the cosmos, humans arrive and receive fire, the heroes rise from Perseus to Jason, and the Trojan War closes it with the voyages home. Each age hands its children to the next, so the order is also a family tree.

Our two mythology coloring books follow this same order. The Greek Mythology book carries you from the birth of the Olympians to Prometheus, Perseus, Heracles and Troy. The Odyssey picks up the moment the horse is wheeled through the gates.

In Hesiod’s Theogony, the world begins with Chaos, a yawning void. Gaia, the earth, appears next and gives birth to Uranus, the sky. Their children are the Titans. Cronus, the youngest, overthrows his father, and Zeus later overthrows Cronus in a ten-year war called the Titanomachy.

Cronus fears the same fate, so he swallows each child his wife Rhea bears. Rhea hides the last, Zeus, in a cave on Crete and hands Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead.

Grown, Zeus forces his father to bring up his brothers and sisters. He frees the Cyclopes, who forge his thunderbolt, and the Hundred-Handers, who hurl boulders three hundred at a time. The Titans fall into Tartarus.

The three brothers then draw lots for the world. Zeus wins the sky, Poseidon the sea and Hades the underworld, while the earth and Olympus stay shared. That division opens the journey of the Greek Mythology book: the birth of the Olympians.

Humans enter with Prometheus. A Titan who sided with Zeus, he tricks the gods at Mecone so that people keep the best meat of every sacrifice. Zeus withholds fire in revenge, and Prometheus steals it back in a fennel stalk. That theft is the moment humanity’s story truly starts.

The price is terrible. Zeus chains Prometheus to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle eats his liver every day and it grows back every night, until Heracles, generations later, shoots the eagle and sets him free.

Humans pay too. Zeus has the gods shape Pandora, the first woman, and sends her with a jar. She opens it, and every evil flies out into the world. Only hope stays inside.

Later Zeus floods the earth. Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and his wife Pyrrha float out the deluge in a chest, then repopulate the land by throwing stones over their shoulders. In the Greek Mythology book, Prometheus and his stolen fire get a page of their own.

The heroes come in generations. Perseus is the earliest of the great ones, then Bellerophon. Heracles, Theseus and Jason belong to roughly one generation, and they cross paths: Heracles sails with the Argonauts for part of the voyage. The Theban tragedies of Oedipus follow, one generation before Troy.

Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, borrows winged sandals from Hermes and a polished shield from Athena, cuts off Medusa’s head without meeting her gaze, and rescues Andromeda from a sea monster on the way home. His granddaughter Alcmene becomes the mother of Heracles.

Heracles, driven mad by Hera, kills his own children. To atone he serves King Eurystheus and performs the labors: the Nemean lion, the Hydra, the Augean stables, the apples of the Hesperides and, last of all, Cerberus dragged up from the underworld. Ten were set; two were refused, so he did twelve.

Theseus threads Daedalus’ labyrinth with Ariadne’s string and kills the Minotaur. Jason takes the Argo to Colchis for the Golden Fleece with Medea’s help. Among his crew sits Peleus, whose son will be Achilles. The Greek Mythology book gives you Perseus and Medusa, then Heracles and his labors.

The Trojan War starts at a wedding. Eris, uninvited, throws a golden apple marked for the fairest. Paris of Troy judges Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, picks Aphrodite, and wins Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. The Greeks sail for Troy, besiege it for ten years and take it by the wooden horse.

Agamemnon leads a thousand ships from Aulis, where he sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia for a fair wind. Homer’s Iliad covers only a few weeks of the tenth year: Achilles’ rage, the death of Patroclus, Hector killed before the walls and given back to his father Priam.

After the Iliad ends, Paris kills Achilles with an arrow to the heel, guided by Apollo. Odysseus then has the horse built, Greeks hide inside, and the Trojans drag it through their own gates. Virgil tells that night in Aeneid book 2.

The Greek Mythology book gives you the siege itself. The Odyssey book opens on the horse, so the two books meet exactly where the war ends. If you like seeing history this way, read why so many readers say history comes alive when you color it.

After Troy the Greeks sail home, and most homecomings go wrong. Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Odysseus takes ten more years to reach Ithaca: the Cyclops, Circe, the underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, seven years with Calypso, and finally the bow and the suitors.

In order: he raids the Cicones, escapes the Lotus-Eaters, and blinds Polyphemus the Cyclops, son of Poseidon, which earns him the sea god’s curse. Aeolus gives him a bag of winds his crew opens within sight of home.

The Laestrygonians sink all his ships but one. Circe turns his men into pigs, then hosts them for a year. He visits the land of the dead to hear Tiresias, ties himself to the mast to hear the Sirens, and loses six men to Scylla.

His crew eats the cattle of Helios and dies in the storm that follows. Odysseus alone washes up on Calypso’s island for seven years, then reaches the Phaeacians, who carry him home. Disguised as a beggar, he strings his own bow and kills the suitors who have occupied his house. The Odyssey book follows this route, from the Cyclops’s cave and the Sirens to Calypso’s island and the suitors.

Read Hesiod’s Theogony first for the birth of the gods, then the Homeric Hymns, then Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Fill in the heroes with Apollodorus’ Library, the closest thing to a complete ancient handbook, and Apollonius’ Argonautica. Add Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the tragedians once you know the frame.

For a modern way in, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology covers the whole sweep in one volume. Stephen Fry’s Mythos, Heroes and Troy retell the same ages with more humor and run in the order of the table above.

Reading in this order turns separate stories into one family saga. The best way to learn history is to give your hands a part in it, so keep a page of the matching scene beside you as you read.

Start with the Greek Mythology book, from the birth of the Olympians through Prometheus, Perseus, Heracles and Troy, then move on to The Odyssey for the voyage home. Read each caption first, color the scene, and you will hold the order of the myths for good.

Both books are instant PDFs, so you can print a scene tonight and reprint any page to try a new palette: bronze and blood red for the war, deep blues and sea greens for the voyage. Our guide on how to print a coloring book PDF covers the paper and settings.

Want more than Greece? Browse all our mythology coloring books, or, if you are buying for someone, see our best gifts for history lovers.

The myths make sense once they run in order: gods, then fire, then heroes, then Troy, then the long way home. Two books carry you through all of it, scene by scene, with the story behind every page.

Every scene is checked by a human before it ships. Print the first page tonight and start with the gods.