1. Pandora's Box
Pandora was the first earthly woman in Greek mythology. After Prometheus stole the skyfire from the world, Zeus, the Lord God, ordered God to mold a beautiful young and hypocritical girl out of clay, named Pandora, which means "a woman with all talents", gave her a gift box, and then betrothed her to Prometheus' younger brother Epimetheus (meaning "the latter").
regardless of taboos, Epimetheus took the gift box, and Pandora took the opportunity to open it, so all kinds of bad habits, disasters and diseases immediately flew out of it. There is only one beautiful thing left in the box-hope. But before hope could fly out, Pandora closed the box forever. Pandora's box is used as a metaphor for the root cause of the disaster.
2. Sword of Damocles
Damocles was a favorite of the tyrant Dionis Theseus in Greek mythology. He often said that emperors were blessed to please them. On one occasion, Dionis Hughes let him sit on the throne of the emperor, with a sword tied with only a horsehair hanging on his head, to tell him that although he is on the throne, the sword may fall at any time, and the emperor is not blessed, but there is always worry.
People often use this allusion to describe a potential crisis that may happen at any time.
3. Muse
Muse is the general name of nine goddesses of literature and science in Greek mythology. They are all daughters of the Lord and the goddess of memory. They are headed by Apollo, the god of music and poetry, and are in charge of history, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, dance, epic, love poetry, ode and astronomy respectively.
Poets and singers in ancient Greece called to the Muse for inspiration. Later, people often use "muse" to compare literature, writing and inspiration.
4. The Mystery of the Sphinx
The Sphinx is a monster in Greek mythology that harms people with hidden mysteries, and he is the largest sphinx in Egypt before pyramid of khufu. The question he asked Oedipus was: What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon and three feet at night? Oedipus replied: it is a person.
In the morning of life, he is a child, crawling on two legs and two hands; At the noon of his life, he became a mature man and walked with only two legs; In the evening of his life, he was old and weak, and had to walk with crutches, so he was called three feet. Oedipus got it right. Sphinx fell off a cliff in shame and died. The riddle of the Sphinx is often used as a metaphor for complex, mysterious and incomprehensible problems.
5. Pygmalion
Pygmalion is the king of Cyprus in Greek mythology. He hated women and decided never to get married. He carved a beautiful ivory statue with magical skills and fell in love with her.
He caressed her like his wife, dressed her up, and begged God to let her be his wife. Aphrodite, the god of love, was moved by him, gave life to the statue and married them.
"pygmalion effect" was later used in educational psychology, also known as "expectation effect" or "Rosenthal effect", which means that teachers have different expectations of students, and different methods are applied to them, so students are affected differently.