It’s all Greek to these students

It was a dysfunctional day on Mt. Olympus. Zeus and Hera, the rulers of the Greek gods, sat scowling on thrones as their family members surrounded them, complaining about life and asking if they could preside over the world for a little while. Naturally, the fight boiled down to who could reign supreme.

“The children are always annoying, and hunting isn’t that great, either,” snapped Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.

Athena, the goddess of wisdom, countered with a surprisingly juvenile retort: “I’m your favorite!”

Finally, Zeus came up with a solution: the gods would compete in a series of games, and the winner would succeed him on the throne. The competition, however, looked like a tossup, as Hermes won the 50-meter dash, Artemis took first in javelin-throwing and Poseidon, the god of the sea, somehow topped the horse race.

So who got to be the new head of the universe? The gods huddled around the throne and asked.

“It was all a joke!” exclaimed Zeus. “I wanted to hold the Olympic games for my own amusement.”

A classic tale by Homer? Sophocles? Shakespeare? No, chalk that one up to Debra Muniz’s sixth-grade students at Kaiser Elementary School, who wrote and acted out their own Greek myths as part of a history unit this spring.

Today, the old Greek legends exist primarily on the page, either in classic poems or in rewritten versions. Two thousand years ago, however, they were favorites in the theater as well ? and that was the approach that Muniz’s students took last week, when they donned masks and togas in the school multipurpose room and presented their modern takes on the classic characters.

“A lot of Greek gods have personalities like people on earth, except that they live on a mountain up above everything,” said Morgan Smith, 12.

Well, maybe not that much above everything. In Greek mythology, not only do the gods frequently meddle in human affairs, but they’re also prone to jealousy, rage, lust and other mortal foibles. Since human nature hasn’t changed much in two millenniums, the Kaiser students had little difficulty concocting new mythical tales.

In one sketch, two star-crossed lovers sneaked away from their families and implored the gods to let them live together. Hades, the god of the underworld, made them a deal that they finally accepted: they could pair up for eternity, but only in exchange for their souls. Another sketch had brothers Zeus and Poseidon fighting for power ? with Zeus declaring, “Go soak your head!” after knocking his opponent back to the sea.

After each sketch, Muniz asked her students, “What’s the moral of the story?” The Greek myths, she and her students noted, were often designed to impart messages.

“They’re usually not to be too proud, because people get punished by the gods,” said Jordan Pickard, 11.