Gray Station Middle School
Kennedy Marshall
8th Grade Gifted FIRE Project
February 11th
Introduction | Rationale | Research | Conclusion
Greek mythology is the story of ancient tales, legends, and myths created by the Greeks. They mainly focused on explaining the universe using different stories containing gods, goddesses, monsters, and heros. When the romans defeated the Greeks, most Greek religious beliefs and roman beliefs combined. For example, in "greekgodsandgoddesses: You can learn more about the similarities between Greek and roman gods here. The Romans also adopted gods from other cultures which they conquered". Sometimes roman gods and Greek gods were the same being but had different roman or Greek names. Like in "theoi: Hebes roman name was Juventas" This led to many different versions of stories and confusion over what really happened. Some of the versions of stories were just forgotten entirely or change to the point where it sounded senseless and crazy. The conflicts from beliefs and confusion slowly started to erode the stories until finally nobody believed in the tales and religion. Now these days it is purely known as Greek mythology. The ironic thing is that myth is Greek for mythos or fake. Ha! Tell that to Momus, God of irony. Of course, a few people believe in this theory. But in modern day, it's officially called Hellenism. It is most common in- you guessed it- Greece. Some people kept on believing and the religion was officially recognized in Greece in 2017.
My interest in Greek mythology-along with other things- all came from one very catchy song. It ended up on my for you page on Instagram and I looked it up on Spotify. I learned the name of it, then the artist, then the other songs, and finally the videos that came with it. This song was one of the forty very catchy songs that explained Odysseus's journey home from the trojan war. After watching EPIC, the musical (that's what it's called) I had some questions about the story and went on to do research on the subject, coming across other Greek myths in the process. Once I knew everything about Odysseus's journey, I learned about the other stories. Ideas led to books, leading me to movies, which led to me knowing all about Greek mythology and loving it so much deciding I wanted to do my fire project on it. Now I know every single song by heart and can name all the symbols representing each and every god and goddess.
I had many different types of research; a good amount of it came from personal interest on the topic and learning more Greek mythology, but most came from fictional books such as the Percy Jackson series, Circe, the song of Achilles, the games gods play, Ariadne, Elektra, Ithaca, the last song of Penelope, house of Odysseus, stone blind, a thousand ships, Hercules the movie, clash of the titans the movie. I also really enjoyed the different articles I read. It was absolutely amazing to know that people had so much passion toward these stories and beliefs from so long ago, and the articles were also very reliable. The reliability of reading fictional books was not very good since it is from the authors point of view and most Greek mythology books and movies come up with their own versions of the stories to entice the audience. But knowing actual facts and versions of the different stories is a lot more reliable, so I mostly focused on that information. It is good to remember that even if there are different versions of Greek mythology tales it does not make the version one person chooses to be wrong, because religion and beliefs are a choice of what is understood and can never really be said "wrong". It is just better to focus on the more common versions of Greek mythology, in my opinion, because this is what the Greeks believed to explain the universe, not what a romance novelist believes to make the book a bit more known.
All in all, I have learned and grown from this project and brought my passion even closer to me. It has also brought up the different versions and stories of Greek mythology that have captured my interest and helped me to know and understand even more about the Greeks. When I first started this project, I had thought I was an expert on the topic (full of myself, right. I had so much more to learn, and I still do) But now I know even more from the different versions and will continue to learn more so I can benefit from and share my passion. It's good to remember now that these weren't just tales and stories like they are today. For the Greeks and even the romans for a bit of a time, this was how they saw the world and explained the wonders that became of their lives. They grew up believing these stories and died thinking the same. They went to war for their beliefs, trusting whole heartedly that if they sacrificed a lamb and prayed in the name of Artemis or Ares that they would be slaughtered with honor and dignity and go to a blessed place in the underworld. Some really thought that they were decedents of gods and that they were heros. What we see as "myths" or fake brought them honor and some even died for their beliefs. That might have been their weakness -or Achilles' heel- but they wanted to die and there honor and be remembered.
Greek gods list • names of the greek gods (2025) Greek Gods & Goddesses. Available at: https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/ (Accessed: 10 February 2026).
Theoi Greek mythology (no date) THEOI GREEK MYTHOLOGY - Exploring Mythology in Classical Literature & Art. Available at: https://www.theoi.com/ (Accessed: 10 February 2026).