Pygmy (Greek mythology) Pygmy (Greek mythology) The Pygmies ( "Pygmaioi", from the adjective πυγμαῖος from πυγμή "pygmē", "the length of the forearm") were a tribe of diminutive humans in Greek mythology. According to the Iliad, they were involved in a constant war with the cranes, which migrated in winter to their homeland on the southern shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus. One story describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, and was transformed into a crane. In art the scene was popular with little Pygmies
Greek mythology in popular culture Lord Tennyson's "Oenone" is her lament that Paris deserted her for Helen. When poets of the German Romantic tradition, such as Friedrich Schiller, wrote about the Greek gods, their works were frequently "erotically charged", "openly sensual and hedonistic". In his poem "The Waste Land", T. S. Eliot incorporates a range of elements and inspirations from Greek mythology to pop music to Elizabethan history to create a ""tour-de-force" exposition of Western culture, from the elite to the folk to the utterly primitive". The Indian poet Henry Louis Vivian Derozio's work was heavily influenced by Greek mythology. Nina Kosman published a book