Greek mythology myth was central to classical Athenian drama. The tragic playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories (e.g. Agamemnon and his children, Oedipus, Jason, Medea, etc.) took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths, in "The Birds" and "The Frogs". Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions. Herodotus
Greek mythology in popular culture elements tantalum and niobium are always found together in nature, and have been named after the King Tantalus and his daughter Niobe. The element promethium also draws its name from Greek mythology, as does titanium, which was named after the titans who in mythology were locked away far underground, which reflected the difficulty of extracting titanium from ore. The U.S. Apollo Space Program to take astronauts to the moon, was named after Apollo, based the god's ability as an archer to hit his target and being the god of light and knowledge. Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau named his research ship, a