The inspiration behind this project is twofold. It began as one of great personal interest: I studied Classics in undergrad and a focus on ancient Mediterranean literature and culture allowed me to come up against Greek mythology constantly. And one of the most frustrating aspects that you come across in this area is the fact that, for all these dozens of major gods, no one can ever agree on who their parents are. Is Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus and Dione, or of Ouranos and Hemera? Or was she born from the sea foam caused by the castration of Ouranos's genitals (as more than five ancient authors claim)?
I thought there must be some way to collect the conflicting sources to begin to make sense of how many differing perspectives there really were.
Then, as an informational professional, the conflicting nature of the gods' family trees, which had always delighted and confused me, became an interesting opportunity to explore different ways of teaching information literacy. How can we situate good research practices in an information setting that doesn't turn to white noise as soon as the phrase "fake news" is uttered? Using well-known mythical figures (to a Western audience) offers an easily-digestible entry point to the idea of comparing, contrasting, and confirming facts and their multiple sources.
Python and its web-scraping capabilities enabled me to take this project into its first visualization and give me inspiration for more visualizations to come. More information about my use of Python can be found on the Process page and on the project's repository on GitHub.
This project is ongoing! When completed, the Olympian Gods project will include a second data visualization, which looks more in-depth at the particular sources found as a result of the second web-scraping (more information about that on the Process page).
In the future, I hope to return to this project, expanding it to connect the names of the parental deities themselves to the gods named here, with the sources pulled being used to bridge the two.