English Expressions Derived from Greek Mythology?

[khfrekek]

I need to do an english assignment where i need to find what these expressions mean, and what greek myth they came from, and i cant find a couple of them, I just need these last ones:
Winning laurels
A Pandora’s box
An Amazon
A harpy
Extending an olive branch
Argonauts
A cupid

Any help would be great,
Thanks

[The_Doc_Man]

Laurels... the winning participants in athletic competition were given crowns made of branches of the laurel tree. Look up the early olympic games.

Pandora? Look for that in wikipedia.org. Pandora was given a box that held all the world's ills. She had excessive curiosity so OPENED the demned thing and let out all kinds of trouble. The phrase now means the same thing as "opening up a can of worms" or any other phrase meaning "here comes lots of trouble."

Amazon? Ditto on the wikipedia lookup. They were unusually strong women warriors who adopted some male qualities.

Harpy? They were the original "external consciences" who tormented people for their bad deeds. When people did bad things and went nuts (psychotic), they were said to be "ridden by the harpies" - also "hag-ridden" because harpies were described as old hag-like winged woman-creatures. You should be able to find "harpy" on wikipedia.

Olive branch - a symbol of peace, the opposite of raising a sword

Argonauts? Look up Jason and the Golden Fleece.

Cupid? Didn't think he was Greek. Roman? The Greek god would have been Eros, not Cupid.

[Nick K]

1. Apollo chasing Daphne who turned herself into a laurel tree
2. ??? various
3. Jason and the Argonauts/ the Aenied
4. Athena v. Posiedon for the city of Athens
6. Jason adn the Argonauts, Argo was the one who built the ship, and so the ship was named after him.
7. Cupid was the son of Aphrodite. Fell in love with the girl Psyche.