The Greek Myths

by Robin Waterfield

  What was done there that day was final, as decreed irrevocably by Zeus. Forever afterward, the gods had to be satisfied with receiving the lesser portion of every blood sacrifice, with the smoke bearing it up to the palaces and high halls of Olympus, along with the prayers and petitions of mortal men. For so it was done on the Day of Fire.

  But Zeus was furious when he discovered the trick, and decided to wipe humankind off the face of the earth. He would not do this by flood or famine or overwhelming disaster. He wanted them to suffer, and he wanted Prometheus to see them suffer. He simply withdrew his offer of fire. Without fire, and without the arts and crafts that fire could supply, humankind would die out. It would take time, as the other creatures preyed on them, but that would only make it more interesting, and a more fitting punishment.

  Prometheus chose a desperate expedient. He knew the consequences, knew that he was destined to be the wounded healer. He accompanied the rest of the gods back to Olympus, and immediately stole into the workshop of Hephaestus, the blacksmith god. There was always fire to be found there. Concealing and preserving the precious flower of fire in the stalk of a giant fennel plant, he brought it down from heaven to earth. It was still the Day of Fire: what was done that day was final. Prometheus gave fire, life, and civilization to mankind, and it could not be taken back. Men raised high the burning brands and danced all night in celebration. They were safe now; they would survive, and even, in ages to come, make themselves the dominant species on the broad face of the earth.

  But the wrath of Zeus fell fiercely on Prometheus. Hephaestus forged adamantine chains and Prometheus, bound, was dragged from Olympus down to earth, to the Caucasian mountains. There he was splayed out naked, and pinned to the rock by his wrists and ankles with the adamantine chains, which for security were driven lengthwise through the center of a mighty pillar and deep into the bedrock of the mountain. He had no chance of escape, but that was not the worst of it. Every day a gigantic eagle came and tore open his stomach and gorged on his liver; every night the wound healed again, to feed the monstrous bird the next day. There was no end to this torment: Prometheus was immortal. Death could not limit his pain, and he was sustained only by the joyful thought of how much grief he had caused the gods.

  Even the gods’ anger abates in time. After thirty thousand years had gone by, Zeus reprieved the tormented trickster, sending his favorite son Heracles to kill the eagle. True, Prometheus was still unable to move, but half of his agony was over. In gratitude, he gave Heracles information that would help him complete one of his labors, as we shall see.

  Still the remorseless years rolled by, and the time came when Zeus conceived a desire for the sea goddess Thetis. This was the moment Prometheus had been waiting for, for he knew a secret: that Thetis was destined to bear a son who would be greater than his father. If Zeus was the father, then, his son by Thetis would overthrow him, just as Zeus had overthrown his own father Cronus. He bargained the information for his release, which Zeus allowed him, provided that he never again made trouble. He was to wear a garland forever, encircling his head in remembrance of the chains that had bound him. Prometheus was content to sink into obscurity: along with his intelligence, his human wards had inherited the power to tease and trouble the gods. His work was done.

  For the theft of fire, Zeus punished Prometheus, but men suffered his wrath as well. Of course: he couldn’t allow such a direct threat to his authority to pass as if unnoticed. But the time hasn’t yet come for that tale. Let’s turn now to the immortal gods. Let’s leave humankind, for a while, with some hope.

  Prometheus was chained to the Caucasian mountains, where an eagle feasted daily upon his liver.[2]

  Chapter Two

  THE ASCENT OF THE OLYMPIAN GODS

  In the Beginning

  In the beginning, there was … nothing. Picture it as a gap, a void filled with swirling movement, not emptiness. There was nothing that held together, nothing distinct, nothing measurable by any form of measurement. There were no borders or limits, but within the void appeared Gaia, the Earth, just as when building a house the foundation comes first.

  And in the depths at the lowest extent of deep-rooted Gaia was Tartarus, the place of punishment, the world beneath the world. Earth and Tartarus emerged spontaneously, but Love is the fundamental creative force. Love, coeval with Gaia, governs the subsequent stages of creation.

  Gaia and Tartarus were surrounded by the darkness of night, but Night blended with Darkness and bore Brightness and Day. And so time came into being, measured by the onward-rolling day and night. By herself Gaia, the Earth, bore Uranus, the Heaven, to cover her completely. Heaven lay with Earth, and she conceived and bore Ocean, the water encircling the continents of Earth, and Tethys, the waterways within the continents of Earth.

  From the prolific mingling of the waters the earth was clothed, and from the mingling of Earth and Uranus there emerged, among many other children, the Titans, twelve in number: Cronus and Rhea, Hyperion and Theia, Iapetus (the father of Prometheus), and the rest of the gods of old. Their names now are mostly unfamiliar, for these were the days of yore. Under the rule of Cronus the world was of a different order, and it is not easy to comprehend it, except to say that it was primitive.

  Wide-shining Theia bore for Hyperion the blazing sun, the radiant moon, and the rosy-fingered light of dawn, which gently fills the sky even before the sun rises. Helios the sun-god drives his golden chariot from east to west, and sails in a golden vessel each night on Ocean back again to the east. Helios had a son called Phaethon, the gleamer, who was allowed by his father, in a moment of weakness, to drive his chariot for one day, much later in the earth’s history. But none apart from Helios can control the blazing chariot drawn by four indefatigable steeds, and Phaethon hurtled to earth in a ball of flame. Much of the earth’s surface was scorched and became desert, and the skin of those dwelling there was burned black for all time. Phaethon’s sisters were turned into trees, and the heavy tears of grief they shed for their brother solidified as amber.

  Disaster struck when Helios allowed Phaethon to drive the Sun chariot for a day.[3]

  In later times, sisters Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn, fell in love with mortal men. Endymion was a shepherd, who slept each night in a mountainside cave in Caria. Selene caught a glimpse of him from on high, and as her pale gleam fell on his features she fell too, such is the force of love’s attraction. Every night she lay with him while he lay cradled in sleep, not knowing that his reality was stranger than any dream. Selene loved him so much that she could not bear the thought that he would age and die. She implored Zeus to let him remain as he was, and the father of gods and men granted Endymion eternal youth and eternal sleep—except that he awoke each night when Selene visited him to satisfy her longing.

  Eos enjoyed numerous affairs, for once she went to bed with Ares, and in jealous anger Aphrodite condemned her to restless ardor. One of those with whom she fell in love was the proud hunter, Tithonus, as handsome as are all the princes of Troy; and she begged Zeus that her mate should live forever.

  Zeus granted her wish, but the love-befuddled goddess had forgotten to ask also for eternal youth for her beloved. In the days when their passion was new, the graceful goddess bore Memnon, destined to rule the Ethiopians for a time and meet his end before the walls of Troy. But as the years and centuries passed, Tithonus aged and shrank, until he was no more than a grasshopper, and Eos shut him away and loved him no more. If asked, he would say that death was his dearest wish.

  And Helios too dallied for a while with a mortal maid, Leucothoe by name. He thought of nothing but her, and for the sake of a glimpse of her beauty he would rise too early and set too late, after dawdling on his way, until all the seasons of the earth were awry. The god had to consummate his lust, or the chaos would continue. He appeared to her as her own mother, and dismissed her handmaidens, so that he could be alone with her. Then he revealed himself to her; she was flattered by his ardent attention and put up
no resistance. But when her father found out he buried her alive by night, so that the sun might not see the deed, and by the time morning came there was nothing he could do to revive his beloved. But, planted as she was in the soil, he transformed her into the frankincense bush, so that her sweet fragrance should please the gods for all time.

  Now, Uranus, the starry sky, loathed his children—not just the twelve Titans, but the three Cyclopes, one-eyed giants, and the three monstrous Hecatonchires, each with fifty heads and a hundred hands. Every time a child was born, Uranus seized it and shoved it back inside its mother’s womb, deep in the darkness of Earth’s innards.

  In the agony of her unceasing labor pains, Earth called out to the children within her, imploring their help. But they were still and cowered in fear of their mighty father, all except crafty Cronus, the youngest son. Only he was bold enough to undertake the impious deed. He took the sickle of adamant that his mother had forged and lay in wait for his father. Soon Uranus came to lie with Earth and spread himself over her completely. Cronus emerged from the folds where he was hiding, wielding his sickle, and with one mighty stroke he sliced off his father’s genitals and tossed them far back, over his shoulder.

  After Cronus defeated his father Uranus, his siblings were freed from Gaia’s tortured womb.[4]

  The blood as it scattered here and there, and spilled on the soil, gave rise to the Giants and the Furies, the ghouls who sometimes, with grim irony, are called the Eumenides, the kindly ones. They protect the sacred bonds of family life, and hunt down those who deliberately murder blood kin. They drink the blood of the victim and hound the hapless criminal to madness and the blessed release of death. They are jet black, their breath is foul, and their eyes ooze suppurating pus.

  But the genitals themselves fell into the surging sea near the island of Cythera and were carried on currents to sea-girt Cyprus. From the foam that spurted from the genitals grew a fair maiden, and as she stepped out from the white-capped waves onto the island grass grew under her slender feet. The Seasons attended her and placed on her head a crown of gold, and fitted her with earrings of copper and golden flowers; around her neck they placed finely wrought golden necklaces, that the eyes of all might be drawn to her shapely breasts.

  Her name was Aphrodite, the foam-born goddess, and there is none among men and gods who can resist even her merest glance. She is known as the Lady of Cythera and the Lady of Cyprus; and henceforth Love became her attendant.

  Cronus, the youngest of the children of Uranus, usurped his father’s place as ruler of the world—but inherited his fear, the typical fear of a tyrant. For his parents warned him that he in his turn would be replaced by one of his sons. Each time, then, that a child was born to Rhea, his sister-wife, he swallowed it to prevent its growth. Five he swallowed in this way: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Pregnant once more, Rhea appealed to her mother Earth, who promised to rear the sixth child herself. And so, when her time came, Rhea went and bore Zeus deep inside a Cretan cave, while to Cronus she gave a boulder, disguised in swaddling clothes, for him to swallow.

  Each time Rhea bore a child to Cronus he consumed it.[5]

  In the cave on Mount Dicte, the infant Zeus was fed by bees and nursed by nymphs, daughters of Earth, on goat’s milk, foaming fresh and warm from the udder. Young men, mountain-dwelling Curetes, wove outside the cave a martial dance and clashed their spears on their shields to cover the sound of infant wailing. As he grew older, Amalthea, the keeper of the goat, brought the boy all the produce of the earth in an old horn.

  And so the mountains of Crete are sacred ground, and even now the Cretans summon the god by means of dance, and he replenishes their hearts and their crops. And Zeus flourished and grew in might, but in his heart he nurtured his mother’s dreams of vengeance.

  War against the Titans

  Zeus laid his plans with skill and cunning—with his witchy consort Metis, whose name means “skill” and “cunning.” There was nothing this shape-shifting daughter of Ocean and Tethys didn’t know about herbs, and she concocted for Zeus a powerful drug, strong enough to overcome even mighty Cronus. Together, and with the help of grandmother Earth, they drugged Cronus with narcotic honey. And while he was comatose they fed him the emetic.

  The result was exactly as intended: Cronus vomited up in order first the boulder, still wrapped in moldering rags, and then Zeus’ brothers Poseidon and Hades, and then his sisters Hera and Demeter, and finally Hestia, oldest and youngest. For the forthcoming war—for war was inevitable—these were Zeus’ bosom allies. Cronus, for his part, was joined by all his fellow Titans and their offspring, with the notable exception of Themis, for right was on Zeus’ side and victory was destined to be his.

  Zeus made his headquarters on Mount Olympus in northern Greece, while Cronus chose Mount Othrys, a little to the south. This was the first war in the world, and there has been none like it since. For ten years the conflict raged ceaselessly and without result; for ten years earth and heaven resounded and shook with the frightful din of battle. Neither the Titans nor the Olympians could gain the advantage.

  Long ago, in the early days of the war, Prometheus, resident on Olympus with his mother Themis, had offered Zeus some advice. Still imprisoned deep within Gaia were the Hundred-handers and the Cyclopes. Zeus considered them too monstrous, too hard to control, but now he was desperate to break the deadlock. He extracted from them the most solemn oath, that if he released them and armed them, they would be his grateful allies. The former could hurl boulders the size of hills with their hundred hands, while the latter, cave-dwelling smiths, would create for Zeus his weapon of choice, the thunderbolt—the missile that accompanies a flash of lightning. And at the same time they made weapons for his brothers in their forge: a trident for Poseidon and a cap of invisibility for Hades. The earth, the seas, and the heavens resounded as hammers met anvils; the sparks were as the stars in the sky.

  Now Zeus sallied forth from Olympus, the acropolis of the world, and confronted the enemy face to face. Hurling lightning and thunderbolts in swift succession, he overwhelmed the enemy. The land blistered and blazed with fire and the waters boiled; steam and flame rose and filled the sky. It sounded as though Earth and Heaven had collapsed into each other with a ghastly crash. It looked as though all the subterranean fires of the earth had boiled up from the depths and erupted on the surface of the earth.

  The heat of Zeus’ missiles enveloped the Titans, and the blazing lightning blinded them. Meanwhile, Aegicerus, half goat and half fish, the foster brother of Zeus from the Cretan cave, blew a trumpet blast on his magical conch-shell and sowed panic in the Titan ranks. And now the Hundred-handers played their part. As thick and fast as hailstones, huge boulders rained down on the Titans, darkening the sky and crushing even Cronus. Overcome, the Titans were bound and sent down to the gloom of Tartarus, from where nothing and no one can escape but through the pardon of the Ruler of All. It is like a gigantic jar, with walls of impenetrable bronze, and its entrance is stopped with three layers of darkness and guarded by the Hundred-handers. It is the place of uttermost punishment, lying as far beneath the earth as the heaven is above it. Nine days it would take a blacksmith’s anvil to fall from the edge of heaven to the earth, and a further nine days still to reach Tartarus. But easy though the descent may be, the return journey is impossible.

  And so the sons of Uranus mostly pass from our knowing, for no bard sings in praise of the defeated. The noble but misguided Atlas, for allying himself with his uncle Cronus, is forever compelled to shoulder the tremendous burden of the heavens. The female Titans—Leto, Memory, Tethys, Phoebe, Themis, Theia, and Rhea—were allowed to remain under the upper sky, honoring the will of loud-thundering Zeus. Leto bowed to his desire and on the sacred island of Delos bore him the twin deities Artemis and Apollo; Memory lay with Zeus and from her were delivered the divine Muses, nine immortal daughters, patronesses of culture and all the arts; and Themis gave birth to the three reverend Fates, whom the unfor
tunate castigate as blind hags.

  The Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, determine the length of a life.[6]

  Among the Muses who dwell on Mount Helicon, the province of Calliope is epic poetry; of Clio, history; of Urania, science; of Euterpe, the music of the pipes; of Melpomene, tragedy; of Thalia, comedy; of Terpsichore, lyric poetry and dance; of Erato, love poetry; and of Polymnia, sacred music.

  Sweet Muses, delighting in song and dance, but they know also that true sadness may inspire poets to their greatest work, and like all deities they are proud of their domain. The nine daughters of Pierus of Pella challenged the goddesses to a singing contest, and were turned into chattering magpies for their presumption when they lost. And once Thamyris of Thrace, the foremost musician of his age, desired to sleep with the Muses, all nine; and his eyes, one blue, one green, sparkled at the thought. The Muses agreed—if he could demonstrate his superiority to them as a musician. He lost the contest, and they took his eyes from him along with his talent. There is a lesson here for a pious man, if he takes the time to ponder it. It’s a fool who vies against the immortals.

  Of the three Fates, Clotho sits with her spindle and whorl, twisting and spinning out the thread that is assigned for every creature from birth to death. At her left hand, her sister Lachesis, the dispassionate apportioner, marks the length of the thread. By their side stands the implacable Atropos, ready to cut the thread at the chosen point and bring a life to an end. Just as the Fates determine the length of mortal life, so also the ancient goddesses decide how long prosperity, health, and peace are to last. And know this: if the length of a life is already determined, men must act with courage, for they will die anyway when it is their time.