Gods:

Aphrodite:

Played by: Brittany S Pierce

Goddess of: love, beauty and sexuality

Symbols: Dolphin, Rose, Scallop Shell, Myrtle, Dove, Sparrow, Girdle, Mirror, and Swan

Roman Equivalent: Venus

Apollo:

Played by: Blaine Anderson

God of: music, poetry, plague, oracles, sun, medicine, light and knowledge

Symbols: Lyre, laurel wreath, python, raven, bow and arrows

Roman Equivalent: Apollo

Ares:

Played by: Noah Puckerman

God of: war

Symbols: spear, helmet, dog, chariot, boar, vulture

Roman Equivalent: Mars

Artemis:

Played by: Quinn Fabray

Goddess of: Hunt, Forests and Hills, the Moon

Symbols: Bow, arrows, stags, hunting dog and moon

Roman Equivalent: Diana

Athena*:

 Played by: Rachel Berry

Goddess of: wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill

Symbols: Owls, Olive trees, Snakes, Aegis, Armor, Helmets, Spears, Gorgoneion

Roman Equivalent: Minerva

Demeter*:

Played by: Mercedes Jones

Goddess of: agriculture, fertility, sacred law and the harvest

Symbols: Cornucopia, Wheat, Torch, Bread

Roman Equivalent: Ceres

Dionysus*:

Played by: Cooper Anderson

God of: Wine, Merry Making, Theatre and Ecstasy

Symbols: Thyrsus, grapevine, leopard skin, panther, tiger, leopard

Roman Equivalent: Bacchus

Hecate*:

Played by: Sugar Motta (originally supposed to be Mercedes, but having Unique as Persephone was just too good and Mercedes is obviously her mom.)

Goddess of: magic, crossroads, moon, ghosts and necromancy

Symbols: Paired torches, dogs and keys, and daggers

Roman Equivalent: Trivia

Hades:

Played by: Sebastian Smythe

God of: dead and riches, King of the Underworld

Symbols: Cerberus, Drinking horn, scepter, Cypress, Narcissus, key

Roman Equivalent: Pluto

Hephaestus:

Played by: Artie Abrams

God of: blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes.

Symbols: Hammer, Anvil, Tongs, and/or quail

Roman Equivalent: Vulcan

Hera*:

Played by: Teri Schuester

Goddess of: being pissed off. Also marriage, women and birth, Queen of the Gods

Symbols: Pomegranate, Peacock feather, Diadem, Cow, lily

Roman Equivalent: Juno

Iris*:

Played by: Marley Rose

Goddess of: rainbows, Messenger of the Gods

Roman Equivalent: Arcus

Hermes*:

Played by: Ryder Lynn

God of:  trade, thieves, travelers, sports, athletes, and border crossings, Guide to the Underworld

Symbols: Talaria, Caduceus, Tortoise, Lyre, Rooster

Roman Equivalent: Mercury

Pan*:

Played by: Jake Puckerman

God of: Nature, the Wild, Shepherds, Flocks, Goats, of Mountain Wilds, and is often associated with sexuality

Symbols: flute and goat

Roman Equivalent: Faunus

Persephone:

Played by: Unique Adams

Goddess of: vegetation, Queen of the Underworld

Symbols: Pomegranate

Roman Equivalent: Proserpina

Poseidon:

Played by: Sam Evans

God of: sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses

Symbols: Trident, Fish, Dolphin, Horse and Bull

Roman Equivalent: Neptune

Zeus:

Played by: Will Schuester

God of: sky, lightning, thunder, law, order, justice

Symbols: thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak

Roman Equivalent: Jupiter

* Not shown in story

Other:

Amazon Queen: Sue Sylvester

                Minions: Santana Lopez, Dani, other various Cheerios

Glossary:

Chapter 1:

Styx (“Styx,” he muttered, and then there was more singing.): A river that runs through the Underworld, said to circle it nine times. Deals were sworn on the River Styx to insure that you held up your end of the bargain. Used in this fic as a curse word, because it sounds vaguely like “shit”, fits the time period, and as a reference to the Percy Jackson series.

Fields of Punishments (Kill me, send me to the Fields of Punishments, but leave him out of it!): Part of the Underworld. You get sent there for crimes against the gods, with a punishment set up personally by Hades.

Underworld (But short of going to the Underworld yourself and begging Hades for help, there's nothing you can do): Greek Afterlife. No, it is not the same as hell. You get sent there regardless of your actions in your mortal life, but where you end up once your there is based on merit. In theory.

Godly aura (Apollo rubbed at his face, sighing heavily before looking resigned to the conversation. “I've been… I've been tamping down my… godliness? My powers. Aura. Whatever you want to call it.): A visual representation of a god's powers, and a way to differentiate them on sight between a mortal. Mostly, I just like making Blaine all glowy.

Chapter 2:

Pomegranate (Knowing that he didn't have much time to get to the meeting point, he pulled a pomegranate out of the quiver and snacked on that as he walked, rather than stopping for an actual meal.): A fruit. You eat the seeds. It's the same fruit that Persephone ate in the Underworld that got her trapped there, and the fruit was then associated with the Underworld (which was Blaine freaked out when he saw Kurt eating one in Chapter 3).

Tagenites (He managed to eat his tagenites so quickly he wasn't sure if there was a taste.): Ancient Greek equivalent to a pancake.

Chapter 3:

River Lethe (“The future isn't an exact thing. I know that you could get a hero's death, decide to take a nice swim in the River Lethe, and come back to this wondrous world as a new person. It's a possibility.”): A river that runs through the Underworld. When a person dies, and their good deeds outweighed their bad, they had the option of swimming up Lethe, wiping all of their memories, and they could be reborn.

Chapter 4:

Flower or a Tree (“Are you going to be a flower or a tree?” Poseidon asked.): A reference to the fates of Apollo's former lovers. Daphne, a water nymph, gets shot by Cupid and ends up hating Apollo. When he continues to pursue her, she prays to her father for protection and gets turned into a laurel tree. Hyacinth was a Spartan prince who was one of Apollo's lovers. The two were playing the Ancient Greek!Frisbee, and the disk got blown off course by a jealous wind god, hitting the guy in the head and killing him instantly. Apollo, then turned his blood into a flower named after the guy. Basically, Poseidon is being a shit.

Medusa (“And how is Medusa doing these days?” Blaine muttered.): One of the three Gorgons. Medusa, either the oldest or the prettiest of her sisters, was a lover of Poseidon's. They, for reasons unknown to me, decided that the perfect place to have their affair was in Athena's temple. Athena disagreed. In response, she turned the three beautiful sisters into hideous monsters. (This incident is mentioned in Chapter 8 “Considering that no one here has snakes for hair, that's very obviously not true.”) Looking Medusa in the eye will turn you instantly to stone.

Amphitrite (“Excellent! Well Kurt, I'm going to have to kiss you. And you're going to have to not tell Amphitrite about it! She gets so very testy about such things.”): Poseidon's wife or consort, depending on who you ask.

Elysium (“If he's already done his great heroic accomplishment, then he'll get into Elysium and all of this is pointless anyway.”): A section of the Greek Underworld. If you did something especially heroic, and were friends with the gods, you would get sent here where you'd have an easy afterlife with no hard labors. People who got sent to Elysium had the option of swimming up the River Lethe to be reborn.

Chapter 5:

 Orion (“But why not? Is this her revenge for the whole Orion thing?”): Artemis was a virgin goddess who was under no circumstances allowed to take a lover. But she fell in love with her hunting partner Orion. In some versions of the myth, Gaia kills him, in others it's Artemis directly, and in a few others, Apollo tricks Artemis into doing it. For the purposes of this story, we're going with Apollo tricking Artemis. He turns Orion into a deer, and then challenges his sister into a hunting contest. Artemis wins by killing Orion in deer form.

Trojan War (Kurt tried pointing out that the Trojan War hardly sounded like a “minor fight”, but Blaine just changed the subject.): A war between the Trojans and the Greeks, which ended in that whole horse thing. Honestly, if you're reading this fic, I assume you've heard of this at least in passing. The gods hand waving the events might not be historically accurate, I just thought it would be funny if they act like it's not a big deal while Kurt's horrified.

A lesson in homosexuality in Ancient Greece! (“I am not his!” Kurt objected. |“He's right, I'm his,” Blaine said distractedly.): Relationships back then were fairly straight forward. At the age of about 14, you sell your daughter off to some man in his thirties and there's a glorious marriage. It was all about age. The younger partner was considered a submissive role. So how does this translate to same sex couples? Not well. There wasn't actually a word for homosexuality in Ancient Greece, and you were still expected to get a wife when you were old enough (and refusal labeled you as a “woman hater”) even if you never actually slept with her, even for the purposes of children. So if you were gay, or just weren't attracted to your wife, or decided she was too old, you would get much younger lovers of either gender. It was called pederasty, and the younger person (in this case boys from the age of 12-17) took on a passive sexual role. So if you were an adult male with a male lover of the same age, one of you were considered a bit off for taking a passive role in the bedroom at such an advanced age. It didn't matter what gender you were, so much, as what role you were sexually. Not entirely sure how that word for lesbian couples, but there you go. Younger boys (typically in their teenage years) were considered to be “experimenting” when they had sex with other boys their own age. It really was considered a phase, probably because girls of the same age group weren't usually allowed to leave their homes. (Please note this very brief summary is spanning a lot of different time periods where such things changed, and that different cities had different ways of doing things. If you would like more information, feel free to look it up!) To sum up: It was totally awesome to be gay as long as there was a huge age gap, and (depending on where you lived and in what time period) you also had a wife, and bottoming was considered “feminine” and therefore “bad”. Not much has changed, now that I think about it. What this means for the fic: Blaine was totes willing to bottom. Essentially. There's clearly a lot of stigma going along with that as my really roughly explained paragraph just outlined, so it was supposed to be a big deal to Blaine/Brittany that Blaine thought of himself as “Kurt's” rather than the other way around, especially considering that Blaine's a god. Wow that was a lot of explanation for two lines of dialogue.

Chapter 6:

Phlegethon (“Oh, Apollo is going to drown in Phlegethon at this rate.”): A river that runs through the Underworld and eventually into Tartarus. It's made of fire.

Tartarus (“Since it seems that Apollo has decided to blow all of our rules to Tartarus, you can call me Artie.”): Not actually a part of the Underworld, Tartarus is a part that's under it, where the worst of the worst get sent. The Titans currently reside there, and according to Homer, Chronus became King of the place.

Amazonians (I built this for Brittany a few years ago. She had a falling out with some Amazon woman she was… I'm not going to think about it.): A group of warrior women who kicked serious amounts of ass. That's it. That's the description. 

Chapter 7:

Hippolytus (“Do you not remember Hippolytus at all? Did you think this was going to end well?!”): A mortal that Apollo resurrected from the dead. As punishment for this, Zeus killed Apollo's son Asclepius with a lightning bolt because he was a supportive and loving grandpa like that. For revenge, Apollo killed the Cyclops who had made the lightning bolt, and as punishment Zeus tried to send him to Tartarus. Leto begged him not to, and Apollo was sentenced to a year of hard labor.

Stheno (He's your whole world and you're just going to let him die because my sister is even less pleasant than Stheno!): One of the Gorgons. She was the most murderous of the three.              

Chapter 8:

Isles of the Blessed (Do you know how rare that is? Isles of the Blessed are tiny.): The hotspot of the Greek Underworld. If you manage to get into Elysium three times, you're sent to the Isles of the Blessed and were granted eternal paradise.

Warding off Evil gesture (Blaine made a three fingered gesture at her that made Kurt laugh and Quinn roll her eyes.): A gesture used to fend off evil spirits, it's the closest equivalent of flipping someone off I could think of, even if it wasn't actually used as such. It's more of a “you are actually evil, stop it” rather than “fuck you”. And yes, it's another reference to Percy Jackson.

Fields/Meadows of Asphodel (Or he could die in his next life before I find him and be sent to the Fields before I tracked him down.): Part of the Underworld. It's where you were sent if you didn't do anything particularly bad or good.

Chapter 9:

Paeans (“Sure, do you know any paeans?”): Hymns sung to Apollo.

Charon (“Don't use that name again, mortal, or you'll get an express ticket straight to Charon with no coin.”): The Ferryman of the Underworld. When you died, and your family loved you, they'd place coins on your eyelids so that you could pay the toll to get into the Underworld.

Chapter 10:

Acheron (“That's Acheron,” he explained as they walk. “Charon ferries the dead on it, so keep an eye out for him. It's probably best that he doesn't see us.”): A river that runs through the Underworld, known as the River of Pain. Charon ferries the dead on it, so it's probably best that he doesn't see intruders walking alongside it.

Cerberus (“Cerberus! Here boy! Who's a good dog?”): Three headed guard dog of the Underworld. He makes sure that souls don't try to escape, and is apparently adorable if you're Blaine. Given, I think if you were Blaine, most things would be adorable.

Food of the Underworld (“Don't eat anything,” Blaine warned him. “Eating things from the Underworld will trap you here, and touching anything from Unique's garden will make the stay largely unpleasant.”): Gaia decided to set her son up with his niece because she felt bad that he was all alone, so Hades found Persephone dancing in a field of flowers. Or something. He took her back to the Underworld to become his bride, despite her protests. While she was there she ate three (or six, depending on the area you live in) pomegranate seeds. Her mother, Demeter, found out and got pissed that her daughter was stuck in the Underworld, and tried to make Zeus (her brother/King/father of Persephone) set her free. But because she'd eaten the food of the Underworld, she was stuck there. Demeter, being the goddess of Harvest that she is, refused to let anything grow while Persephone was hanging out in the Underworld, so they came to a compromise of split custody. Persephone spends three months (or six, depending) in the Underworld, and the rest with her mother. And nothing grows while she's there, and that's how winter came to be (unless you lived close to the equator, then it was times that it was too hot for things to grow, hence the six instead of three).

Chapter 11:

Delphi (A bigger city, maybe? Corinth or Delphi?): A city sacred to Apollo.

Cronus (“Why? Because you know I'm right? You're worse than Cronus!”): A titan. Father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter… he had a lot of kids, okay? And he tried to eat them, it didn't end well, he got cut up into hundreds of thousands of little pieces and scattered around Tartarus. And eventually pulled himself together enough to rule over it, if Homer can be trusted.

Chapter 12:

Malaka(s) (Maybe asking the King of Malakas to punish him instead of Blaine was a bit… rash): While not Ancient Greek, it is a Greek word that translates to… wanker. It's just really hard to find Ancient Greek curse words, okay? And modern English insults felt out of place.

PDF Link: http://www.mediafire.com/view/e8hgc7y36hh8m08/Ballads_in_the_Sunlight.pdf