The Greek Myths

by Robin Waterfield

  Zeus sent a flood to finish off these brutes, but Prometheus ensured that the human race would continue. His son Deucalion and Epimetheus’ daughter Pyrrha repopulated the earth, and thereby became the ancestors of the next race, the race of heroes. Many of them too perished untimely in war or other ventures, but the earth thrived for a while, and there are many tales of the heroes to be told. Humankind had at last fulfilled the potential bestowed on it by Prometheus. But now, by a simple process of degeneration, we live in the Age of Iron, when human life is nothing but toil and suffering and early death. That’s all the Age of Iron has to offer. The gods no longer linger with mortal men on earth, as they did in the time of the heroes, but have removed themselves in carefree abandonment of the human race. Truly the poet sang: “Best not to have been born at all, or else to die as early as possible.”

  Let one story of the hateful men of bronze suffice for them all. Lycaon, king of Arcadia, had many sons, and they were notorious for their subhuman savagery. By then Zeus had in any case endured enough of the depredations of their kind, and he visited Lycaon and his sons in the guise of a poor pilgrim, to see for himself how wicked they were. At the king’s banquet table, they served him the flesh and intestines of a recently slaughtered child. Zeus in disgust pushed the dish away and departed at once. He was now determined to eliminate the race of bronze; they had no redeeming features. He saw that the heart of that race was a pit writhing with serpents and maggots, and that if they were ever good it was only out of fear of him. So he gave them reason to fear him.

  First, he locked up all the warring winds in a cave, so that they might not scatter the clouds, save only the wet south wind, whose beard and misty-white locks dripped with rain, and storm clouds hovered on his brow. The rain that fell smelled of promise and decay, but it was heavy enough to flatten crops within a few hours, and then flood the fields. Zeus called upon his brother Poseidon to help, and the earth-shaker commanded all the rivers to overflow their banks. The flood waters tore down trees, bore away cattle and men, houses and wagons. Streams became torrents, torrents became mighty rivers, rivers became lakes. Before long, even the tallest towers had vanished beneath the surging waves, and the whole surface of the earth was sea. Fish swam among the branches of trees, and turtles paddled where goats had grazed. Many of those who survived drowning later succumbed to starvation, since there was little food to be found anywhere.

  But Deucalion was a rarity, a righteous man in the Age of Bronze, taught well by his father Prometheus. The Titan warned him of the impending deluge, and Deucalion built an ark, no more than an oversized chest, and stocked it with provisions for himself and his wife. The curious vessel bobbed along, at the mercy of the wind and the waves, and on the tenth day it struck one of the two peaks of Mount Parnassus, which were now lone islets in the endless expanse of sea. There Deucalion found a sanctuary of Themis, and he and Pyrrha prayed in tears for the restoration of the human race. And the goddess taught him, saying: “You and your wife are to veil your heads, and as you walk from my sanctuary, throw behind you the bones of your mother.”

  The two of them, husband and wife, deliberated for a while about what the goddess might mean. Then they left the sanctuary, tossing over their shoulders behind them stones, the bones of the all-mother Earth. And immediately, as each stone landed on the earth with a thump, it softened and took shape. Those that Deucalion threw sprang up from the mountaintop as men, and those that Pyrrha tossed were women. All other creatures emerged from the warm mud as the waters receded. So all the men of the next era, the Age of Heroes, descend from Deucalion or some other fortunate survivor. For there were a few, but only a few. The will of Zeus was carried out.

  “Those stones that Deucalion threw sprang up from the mountaintop as men, and those that Pyrrha tossed were women.”[23]

  The Line of Deucalion

  Deucalion and Pyrrha also had a son Hellen, from whom all the Greeks, the Hellenes, are descended. In their blood are mingled the spirits of both Prometheus and Epimetheus. The sons of Hellen were Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, whose sons were Ion and Achaeus. And so the tribes of the Greeks are the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, and the Achaeans.

  Aeolus had many sons and daughters, who became in their turn the forebears of heroes. Some tales are told of his sons. Salmoneus got ideas above his station, and began to style himself Zeus. He rode around in a chariot that had been equipped, farcically, with bronze jars and pine torches, to imitate Zeus’ thunder and lightning. Zeus hurled him down into Tartarus, to suffer eternal torment, and he annihilated his followers, for many had obeyed the mad king’s injunctions to bow down and worship him. Only his daughter Tyro was spared, for she had fallen out with her father over his delusions. Poseidon lay with her in the curl of a wave, and she became the mother of Pelias and Neleus, while to her husband Cretheus she bore Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon—heroes all, but their children were even mightier.

  Poseidon slept too with Aeolus’ daughter Canace, and one of their sons was Aloeus, whose wife Iphimedea was also loved by Poseidon. Two strapping sons she bore him, Otus and Ephialtes, but they shared the arrogance of Salmoneus and resolved to overthrow the reign of Zeus and the Olympian gods. By the age of nine, the boys were nine fathoms tall and nine cubits wide. They feared only Ares, god of war, but through treachery they bound him in fetters and imprisoned him in an inescapable jar of bronze. Through treachery also the whereabouts of Ares was revealed to Hermes by the giants’ stepmother, and he released his brother, the god of war. When Otus and Ephialtes began their assault on heaven, by piling up mountains—Ossa on lofty Olympus, and Pelion on Ossa, a monstrous ladder by which to ascend to the heavens—they were summarily destroyed by the war god, cast down in a tangle of bloodied and broken limbs. For the new breed of men, the descendants of Deucalion, had almost as deep and wide a vein of hubris in their souls as their brazen predecessors.

  The famous Sisyphus was another son of Aeolus, but his fame rests on the torment devised for him. It was said that, despite being married to Merope, one of the seven daughters of Atlas, he secretly visited Anticlea, the wife of Laertes, and that she conceived Odysseus from the union, but concealed the fact and passed the baby off as Laertes’. But Sisyphus’ crime was this. Zeus was in love with Aegina, daughter of the river Asopus, and abducted her to the island that would bear her name, keeping her there as his concubine. Asopus searched everywhere for his daughter, but could find her nowhere. It was Sisyphus who told him the truth, and for this Zeus sent Death to him.

  But Sisyphus wrestled with Death and bound him fast; and the natural order of things ceased, for no one now could die. But dark-browed Ares released Death from his fetters and handed Sisyphus over to him.

  The son of Aeolus made one last attempt to cheat death: he forbade his wife to perform the customary funeral rites, so that Charon could not let him cross the river Styx and join the rest of the dead in the underworld. But Sisyphus had no more tricks to play, and eventually he died in earnest. Suspecting that he would try to escape again, Hades devised for Sisyphus a terrible punishment. Unceasingly, he is compelled to roll a heavy boulder up a hill; when he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down again to the bottom, and Sisyphus has to begin again. Thus men should know not to anger the gods.

  Sisyphus toils endlessly in Hades for trying to cheat Death and the will of Zeus.[24]

  The Argonauts and the Golden Fleece

  Athamas, son of Aeolus and king of Boeotia, took as his wife Nephele, the cloud, and she bore him two fine children, a boy and a girl, Phrixus and Helle. But Nephele returned to the sky, and Athamas took as his second wife Cadmus’ daughter Ino, who had nursed Dionysus. Ino hated her stepchildren, and determined to do away with them. Her opportunity came when throughout Boeotia the crops failed. The failure itself was Ino’s doing: she had persuaded all the women to spoil the seed in their husband’s stores, so that it wouldn’t sprout.

  Athamas sent to Apollo at Delphi to ask what he had to do to stop the famine,
but the envoys too were Ino’s men, and they returned saying that, according to Apollo, the only remedy was to sacrifice Phrixus. The boy nobly agreed to his own death, if it would bring life to others, and Athamas, tears streaking his cheeks, was just about to comply with the god’s terrible command, when Nephele snatched up her children and took them into the sky. When Athamas learned the truth, Ino hurled herself and her son off a cliff, but Dionysus made sure that his old wet-nurse did not die, and transformed her at the moment of her death into the sea-nymph Leucothea.

  Meanwhile, Nephele placed the children on a golden-fleeced ram, the offspring of Poseidon when he had mated as a ram with Theophane in the guise of a ewe. Away sped the magical ram eastward through the sky, but, as he passed the narrow strip of water that divides Europe from Asia, sweet Helle lost her grip and fell into the sea. Hence the strait is known as the Hellespont, the Sea of Helle, in memory of the wretched girl. But her brother flew on, knowing why both tears and the sea are salty.

  A magical ram with a golden fleece flew young Phrixus to far Colchis.[25]

  On and on, over the south coast of the Black Sea he flew, until he came to Colchis, where King Aeëtes, son of the sun, made him welcome. In thanksgiving for his deliverance, Phrixus sacrificed the fantastic ram to Zeus, and gave the fleece to Aeëtes, who hung it on an oak tree in a grove sacred to Ares, and set as its guard a fearsome serpent, whose eyes never closed in rest. But Aeëtes had been warned against strangers bearing, or bearing off, a golden fleece, as a sign that his reign would come to an end, and he killed Phrixus to avoid this destiny, not knowing that he was not the stranger to whom the oracle alluded.

  So might matters have rested forever, were it not for the villainy of Pelias, son of Tyro, in distant Greece. At the death of Cretheus, brother of Athamas, he usurped the throne of Iolcus from its rightful king, his own brother, Aeson. In fear, Aeson smuggled his son Jason out of the city, and sent him to the hills, to be brought up by the Centaur Cheiron. But Pelias was afraid of Jason, for he knew of an oracle that foretold his death at the hands of a descendant of Aeolus. Even though Aeolus had many descendants, the field was narrowed down by an oracle that was more precise, if somewhat bizarre: “Beware of a man with one sandal!”

  * * *

  When Jason came of age, he returned to Iolcus. On the way he came to a river whose water was swollen by rain. An old woman stood helpless beside the raging torrent, and Jason took pity on her and offered to carry her across. Unknown to Jason, the old woman was Hera in disguise, and henceforth he found favor in her eyes. But the current was strong and his burden not so light; the mud of the stream-bed sucked off one of his sandals, and the turbulent water carried it away downstream.

  Jason limped into the palace of Iolcus, wearing his single sandal, and Pelias was terrified. Jason demanded the throne of Iolcus as his birthright, now that he was a fully grown man, and Pelias agreed, on one condition: that Jason was to bring back the golden fleece from Colchis. Pelias saw this as a chance to get rid of the young pretender once and for all, but Jason, mighty hero and confident youth, saw a quest worthy of his mettle, and agreed to undertake the task.

  But how to reach Colchis, which lay at the edge of the known world? No one had yet invented a vessel that was capable of such a long voyage. Jason called on the goddess of craft, the lady Athena, and begged her to solve the problem. The quick-witted goddess thought for a while and her thoughts readily acquired shape. She infused her knowledge into the mind of the artisan Argus, and the ship he constructed was called the Argo, whose name means “swift.” But the goddess herself fashioned the prow from the living oak of Zeus’ oracle at Dodona, and endowed it with the power of speech.

  The journey would be long and dangerous, plying unknown waters past unknown lands filled, most likely, with lawless monsters. It was exactly the quest that the heroes of Greece had been waiting for, and Hera urged their hearts to respond eagerly to Jason’s call for crew to man the sleek vessel and share the hazardous journey. Before long, Jason had a full complement of fifty men, all of them fine warriors and sage counselors, surpassing all others in their skills.

  Heracles was there, and Idas, his rival in size and strength, who once fought Apollo himself for the right to bed fair Marpessa; and Meleager and Menoetius, bold hunters and men of war. So was Peleus of Aegina and his comrade Telamon of Salamis, who matched oars on either side of the bow. The soothsayers Idmon and Mopsus accompanied the Argonauts, as did Euphemus, son of Poseidon, who could run so swiftly over the surface of the waves that his feet remained dry. Neither Castor the horseman nor his twin brother Polydeuces the boxer could resist the challenge, and the shape-changer Periclymenus too made his special skill available to Jason. Tiphys was the helmsman, while far-seeing Lynceus took the prow, and Orpheus himself carried the beat for the oarsmen.

  The Argonauts set out on the first high-seas quest—to find the Golden Fleece.[26]

  After leaving the Greek mainland, their first adventure took place on the island of Lemnos, inhabited only by women and ruled by Queen Hypsipyle. The Lemnian women had neglected the worship of Aphrodite, and in punishment the goddess had made them emit a smell that repulsed their husbands and drove them into the arms of their slaves. All Greek men assume the right to sleep with their female slaves, but the Lemnians ignored their legitimate families, and set up new homes. In retaliation, the women killed or banished all their menfolk. By the time the Argonauts got there, the women had not known men for some time. They refused to let the Argonauts land until they had promised to tarry with them. The heroes stayed a full year, before Heracles tore them from their life of ease and they continued on their way; and many fine sons and daughters were born on the island of Lemnos.

  They stopped next at the Cyzicus peninsula, where they helped the king defeat some earth-born giants who were terrorizing his people, the Doliones. After celebrating their victory with a feast, the Argonauts cast off, but adverse winds drove them back to Cyzicus in the night. Their new friends mistook them for enemies in the darkness and driving rain, and a fight took place in which Jason himself killed the king, and many other Doliones died. In the morning, the king’s daughter hanged herself in grief, and the heroes were prevented from leaving by storms, until Mopsus used his powers to divine the will of the gods, and told them they must sacrifice to Rhea. Only she, ancient goddess, could heal the terrible wounds.

  They were still far from their destination when they lost Heracles. He was so strong that he had broken an oar, just by pulling on it, and the voyagers made land at Cius where he could find timber for a replacement. But while he was ashore, cutting and shaping the trunk, his beloved Hylas disembarked to draw water. Far he wandered into the forest, until he came to a pool of crystal water. But when he knelt down at the water’s edge and looked into the pool, he saw no reflection of his face. Closer and closer he leaned down—and then, in the depths, he glimpsed a bevy of the most beguiling and beautiful girls he had ever seen. He was never seen again; the water nymphs had made him theirs. But Heracles spent so long searching for his lost boy that the rest of the heroes carried on without him, and still the hills and forests around Cius echo the name of Hylas, as if from the lingering cries of Heracles.

  In Bithynia they stopped to consult blind Phineus, the most famous soothsayer in the world. Because he was such an outstanding seer, and knew too much of the gods’ minds, Zeus himself had blinded the old man and set the Snatchers on him, black-winged monsters with the faces of hags, swift as the storm wind. In return for his advice Phineus charged the heroes with driving off the horrid monsters. For every time he sat at table, they swooped down and stole the food from under his nose, or befouled it, and the man was wasting away. The Argonauts succeeded in chasing away the Snatchers, and in gratitude Phineus gave them good advice about how to win their way through the hazards that still awaited them. Above all, he told them how to escape the Clashing Rocks at the entrance to the Black Sea, which came together faster than the wind and crushed all shipping. Even dol
phins were sometimes caught in the granite jaws. Phineus told them to release a dove to fly between the rocks, so that they could time their own passage. They did as he suggested, following the dove, and the bird lost its tail-feathers to the rocks, but the surge of the waves rebounding from the looming cliffs prevented the passage of the Argo.

  Now the rocks were closing in on the heroes again. They could see the grain of the stone and the spray dripping from the menacing face of the dark cliff. But Hera herself, Jason’s protectress, held apart the jagged precipices while they scraped through, as the rocks crashed together for the last time, taking only the tail end of the stern.

  After further adventures, the heroes reached their destination, Colchis. Aeëtes superficially made them welcome, but secretly recognized in Jason the stranger foretold by the oracle, the one who would bring his reign to an end. Jason politely asked him for the fleece, and explained the circumstances of the quest he had been set by Pelias, but Aeëtes saw this only as a way to engineer Jason’s death. He promised him the fleece if he succeeded in carrying out two tasks. But the tasks were meant to be impossible: even if Jason somehow managed to survive the first one, the second would surely kill him; and once Jason was dead, Aeëtes planned to do away with the rest of the Argonauts.

  It was a good plan. What Aeëtes didn’t know, however, was that his daughter Medea had fallen head over heels in love with Jason. Hera and Aphrodite between them had slyly seen to that, by supplying Jason with a potent lovecharm. Jason surreptitiously gave the charm to Medea as one of the guest-gifts he had brought for her and her father. The young woman couldn’t understand it: she had hardly met him and yet she knew she did not want to see this quietly confident stranger die. There was something about him … Medea was a useful ally: she was a priestess of Hecate, skilled in sorcery and charms known only to the wicked and the wise.