Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus, ordered Argus to guard Io, the mistress of Zeus, after he had turned Io into a heifer to conceal her from Hera. The god Hermes, dispatched by Zeus to rescue Io, slew Argus by lulling him to sleep with music and then severing his head. In one version of the story, Argus subsequently became a peacock; in another, Hera transplanted his eyes on to the peacock's tail.

Augeas possessed an immense herd of cattle, including 12 white bulls sacred to Helios, kept in stalls that had not been cleaned for years. One of the 12 labours of the Greek hero Hercules was cleaning the stables, unaided, in a single day. He did this by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to run through them. Augeas had promised Hercules a tenth of his herd as payment but did not keep his word. Hercules then sent an army against him, slaying Augeas and his sons.

In contrast to the other gods, Hephaestus was lame and awkward. Shortly after his birth, he was cast out of Olympus, in some legends by Hera, who was repelled by his deformity, and in others by Zeus, because Hephaestus had sided with Hera against him. In most legends, however, he was soon honoured again on Olympus and was married to Aphrodite, goddess of love, or to Aglaia, one of the three Graces. As the artisan among the gods, Hephaestus made their armour, weapons, and jewellery. His workshop was believed to lie under Mount Etna, a volcano in Sicily. Hephaestus is often identified with the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.

Zeus wished to counteract the blessing of fire, which had been stolen from the gods by the Titan Prometheus and given to human beings. Endowed by the gods with every attribute of beauty and goodness, Pandora was sent to Epimetheus, who was happy to have her for his wife, although he had been warned by his brother Prometheus never to accept anything from Zeus. In bestowing their gifts on Pandora, the gods had given her a box, warning her never to open it. Her curiosity finally overcame her, however, and she opened the mysterious box, from which flew innumerable plagues for the body and sorrows for the mind. In terror, she tried to shut the box, but only Hope, the one good thing among many evils the box had contained, remained to comfort humanity in its misfortunes. In another legend, the box contained blessings that would have been preserved if Pandora had not allowed them to escape

Part animal, with the horns, hoofs, and ears of a goat, he was a lusty deity, the god of the shepherds and the goatherds. A wonderful musician, he accompanied, with his pipe of reeds, the woodland nymphs when they danced. He invented this pipe when the nymph Syrinx, whom he was pursuing, was transformed into a bed of reeds, enabling her to escape him; Pan then took reeds of unequal length and played on them. The god was always wooing one of the nymphs by playing on his pipes, but was always rejected because of his ugliness. Pan's haunts were the mountains and caves and all wild places, but his favourite spot was Arcadia, where he was born. The word panic is supposed to have been derived from the fears of travellers who heard the sound of his pipes at night in the wilderness.

The gods honoured Tantalus above all other mortals. He ate at their table on Olympus, and once they even came to dine at his palace. To test their omniscience, Tantalus killed his only son, Pelops, boiled him in a cauldron, and served him at the banquet. The gods, however, realized the nature of the food. They restored Pelops to life and devised a terrible punishment for Tantalus. He was hung forever from a tree in Tartarus and afflicted with tormenting thirst and hunger. Under him was a pool of water, but when he stooped to drink, the pool would sink from sight. The tree above him was laden with pears, apples, figs, ripe olives, and pomegranates, but when he reached for them the wind blew the laden branches away. The word tantalize is derived from this story.

Unable to capture the city after a siege of ten years, the Greeks resorted to a stratagem. Having built the horse and filled it with armed warriors, they sailed away a short distance, leaving the horse on the shore. Sinon, a Greek, pretended to the Trojans that he was a follower of Palamedes, who had been treacherously killed by Odysseus, and that he had been chosen as human sacrifice, in response to an oracle speaking for Apollo, in order to win the Greeks a favourable return journey. Sinon persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena and that taking it into the city would make Troy invulnerable. That night Sinon released the Greek warriors from the horse. They killed the guards and opened the gates to the returning Greeks, who captured and burned the city.