Mythology

by Edith Hamilton

  Hestia, in all dwellings of men and immortals

  Yours is the highest honor, the sweet wine offered

  First and last at the feast, poured out to you duly.

  Never without you can gods or mortals hold banquet.

  Each city, too, had a public hearth sacred to Hestia, where the fire was never allowed to go out. If a colony was to be founded, the colonists carried with them coals from the hearth of the mother-city with which to kindle the fire on the new city’s hearth.

  In Rome her fire was cared for by six virgin priestesses, called Vestals.

  THE LESSER GODS OF OLYMPUS

  There were other divinities in heaven besides the twelve great Olympians. The most important of them was the God of Love, EROS (Cupid in Latin). Homer knows nothing of him, but to Hesiod he is

  Fairest of the deathless gods.

  In the early stories, he is oftenest a beautiful serious youth who gives good gifts to men. This idea the Greeks had of him is best summed up not by a poet, but by a philosopher, Plato: “Love—Eros—makes his home in men’s hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs. His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.”

  In the early accounts Eros was not Aphrodite’s son, but merely her occasional companion. In the later poets he was her son and almost invariably a mischievous, naughty boy, or worse.

  Evil his heart, but honey-sweet his tongue,

  No truth in him, the rogue. He is cruel in his play.

  Small are his hands, yet his arrows fly far as death.

  Tiny his shaft, but it carries heaven-high.

  Touch not his treacherous gifts, they are dipped in fire.

  He was often represented as blindfolded, because love is often blind. In attendance upon him was ANTEROS, said sometimes to be the avenger of slighted love, sometimes the one who opposes love; also HIMEROS or Longing, and HYMEN, the God of the Wedding Feast.

  HEBE was the Goddess of Youth, the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Sometimes she appears as cupbearer to the gods; sometimes that office is held by Ganymede, a beautiful young Trojan prince who was seized and carried up to Olympus by Zeus’s eagle. There are no stories about Hebe except that of her marriage to Hercules.

  IRIS was the Goddess of the Rainbow and a messenger of the gods, in the Iliad the only messenger. Hermes appears first in that capacity in the Odyssey, but he does not take Iris’ place. Now the one, now the other is called upon by the gods.

  There were also in Olympus two bands of lovely sisters, the Muses and the Graces.

  THE GRACES were three: Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer). They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child of the Titan, Ocean. Except in a story Homer and Hesiod tell, that Aglaia married Hephaestus, they are not treated as separate personalities, but always together, a triple incarnation of grace and beauty. The gods delighted in them when they danced enchantingly to Apollo’s lyre, and the man they visited was happy. They “give life its bloom.” Together with their companions, the Muses, they were “queens of song,” and no banquet without them could please.

  THE MUSES were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. “They are all,” Hesiod says, “of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care. He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of the Muses to men.”

  In later times each had her own special field. Clio was Muse of history, Urania of astronomy, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy, Terpsichore of the dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love-poetry, Polyhymnia of songs to the gods, Euterpe of lyric poetry.

  Hesiod lived near Helicon, one of the Muses’ mountains—the others were Pierus in Pieria, where they were born, Parnassus, and, of course, Olympus. One day the Nine appeared to him and they told him, “We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know, when we will, to utter true things.” They were companions of Apollo, the God of Truth, as well as of the Graces. Pindar calls the lyre theirs as well as Apollo’s, “the golden lyre to which the step, the dancer’s step, listens, owned alike by Apollo and the violet-wreathed Muses.” The man they inspired was sacred far beyond any priest.

  As the idea of Zeus became loftier, two august forms sat beside him in Olympus. THEMIS, which means the Right, or Divine Justice, and DIKE, which is Human Justice. But they never became real personalities. The same was true of two personified emotions esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer and Hesiod: NEMESIS, usually translated as Righteous Anger, and AIDOS, a difficult word to translate, but in common use among the Greeks. It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunnate—not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is not deserved.

  It does not seem, however, that either Nemesis or Aidos had their home with the gods. Hesiod says that only when men have finally become completely wicked will Nemesis and Aidos, their beautiful faces veiled in white raiment, leave the wide-wayed earth and depart to the company of the immortals.

  From time to time a few mortals were translated to Olympus, but once they had been brought to heaven they vanished from literature. Their stories will be told later.

  THE GODS OF THE WATERS

  POSEIDON (Neptune) was the Lord and Ruler of the Sea (the Mediterranean) and the Friendly Sea (the Euxine, now the Black Sea). Underground rivers, too, were his.

  OCEAN, a Titan, was Lord of the river Ocean, a great river encircling the earth. His wife, also a Titan, was Tethys. The Oceanids, the nymphs of this great river, were their daughters. The gods of all the rivers on earth were their sons.

  PONTUS, which means the Deep Sea, was a son of Mother Earth and the father of Nereus, a sea-god far more important than he himself was.

  NEREUS was called the Old Man of the Sea (the Mediterranean)—“A trusty god and gentle,” Hesiod says, “who thinks just and kindly thoughts and never lies.” His wife was Doris, a daughter of Ocean. They had fifty lovely daughters, the nymphs of the Sea, called NEREIDS from their father’s name, one of whom, Thetis, was the mother of Achilles. Poseidon’s wife, AMPHITRITE, was another.

  TRITON was the trumpeter of the Sea. His trumpet was a great shell. He was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite.

  PROTEUS was sometimes said to be Poseidon’s son, sometimes his attendant. He had the power both of foretelling the future and of changing his shape at will.

  THE NAIADS were also water nymphs. They dwelt in brooks and springs and fountains.

  LEUCOTHEA and her son PALAEMON, once mortals, became divinities of the sea, as did also GLAUCUS, but all three were unimportant.

  THE UNDERWORLD

  The kingdom of the dead was ruled by one of the twelve great Olympians, Hades or Pluto, and his Queen, Persephone. It is often called by his name, Hades. It lies, the Iliad says, beneath the secret places of the earth. In the Odyssey, the way to it leads over the edge of the world across Ocean. In later poets there are various entrances to it from the earth through caverns and beside deep lakes.

  Tartarus and Erebus are sometimes two divisions of the underworld, Tartarus the deeper of the two, the prison of the Sons of Earth; Erebus where the dead pass as soon as they die. Often, however, there is no distinction between the two, and either is used, especially Tartarus, as a name for the entire lower region.

  In Homer the underworld is vague, a shadowy place inhabited by shadows. Nothing is real there. The ghosts’ existence, if it can be called that, is like a miserable dream. The later poets define the world of the dead more and more clearly as the place where the wicked are punished and the good rewa
rded. In the Roman poet Virgil this idea is presented in great detail as in no Greek poet. All the torments of the one class and the joys of the other are described at length. Virgil, too, is the only poet who gives clearly the geography of the underworld. The path down to it leads to where Acheron, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. An aged boatman named Charon ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farther bank, where stands the adamantine gate to Tartarus (the name Virgil prefers). Charon will receive into his boat only the souls of those upon whose lips the passage money was placed when they died and who were duly buried.

  On guard before the gate sits CERBERUS, the three-headed, dragon-tailed dog, who permits all spirits to enter, but none to return. On his arrival each one is brought before three judges, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, who pass sentence and send the wicked to everlasting torment and the good to a place of blessedness called the Elysian Fields.

  Three other rivers, besides Acheron and Cocytus, separate the underworld from the world above: Phlegethon, the river of fire; Styx, the river of the unbreakable oath by which the gods swear; and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

  Somewhere in this vast region is Pluto’s palace, but beyond saying that it is many-gated and crowded with innumerable guests, no writer describes it. Around it are wide wastes, wan and cold, and meadows of asphodel, presumably strange, pallid, ghostly flowers. We do not know anything more about it. The poets did not care to linger in that gloom-hidden abode.

  THE ERINYES (the FURIES) are placed by Virgil in the underworld, where they punish evildoers. The Greek poets thought of them chiefly as pursuing sinners on the earth. They were inexorable, but just. Heraclitus says, “Not even the sun will transgress his orbit but the Erinyes, the ministers of justice, overtake him.” They were usually represented as three: Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.

  SLEEP, and DEATH, his brother, dwelt in the lower world. Dreams, too, ascended from there to men. They passed through two gates, one of horn through which true dreams went, one of ivory for false dreams.

  THE LESSER GODS OF EARTH

  Earth herself was called the All-Mother, but she was not really a divinity. She was never separated from the actual earth and personified. The Goddess of the Corn, DEMETER (CERES), a daughter of Cronus and Rhea, and the God of the Vine, DIONYSUS, also called BACCHUS, were the supreme deities of the earth and of great importance in Greek and Roman mythology. Their stories will be found in the next chapter. The other divinities who lived in the world were comparatively unimportant.

  PAN was the chief. He was Hermes’ son; a noisy, merry god, the Homeric Hymn in his honor calls him; but he was part animal too, with a goat’s horns, and goat’s hoofs instead of feet. He was the goatherds’ god, and the shepherds’ god, and also the gay companion of the woodland nymphs when they danced. All wild places were his home, thickets and forests and mountains, but best of all he loved Arcady, where he was born. He was a wonderful musician. Upon his pipes of reed he played melodies as sweet as the nightingale’s song. He was always in love with one nymph or another, but always rejected because of his ugliness.

  Sounds heard in a wilderness at night by the trembling traveler were supposed to be made by him, so that it is easy to see how the expression “panic” fear arose.

  SILENUS was sometimes said to be Pan’s son; sometimes his brother, a son of Hermes. He was a jovial fat old man who usually rode an ass because he was too drunk to walk. He is associated with Bacchus as well as with Pan; he taught him when the Wine-god was young, and, as is shown by his perpetual drunkenness, after being his tutor he became his devoted follower.

  Besides these gods of the earth there was a very famous and very popular pair of brothers, CASTOR and POLLUX (Polydeuces), who in most of the accounts were said to live half of their time on earth and half in heaven.

  They were the sons of LEDA, and are usually represented as being gods, the special protectors of sailors,

  Saviors of swift-going ships when the storm winds rage

  Over the ruthless sea.

  They were also powerful to save in battle. They were especially honored in Rome, where they were worshiped as

  The great Twin Brethren to whom all Dorians pray.

  But the accounts of them are contradictory. Sometimes Pollux alone is held to be divine, and Castor a mortal who won a kind of half-and-half immortality merely because of his brother’s love.

  LEDA was the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, and the usual story is that she bore two mortal children to him, Castor and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife; and to Zeus, who visited her in the form of a swan, two others who were immortal, Pollux and Helen, the heroine of Troy. Nevertheless, both brothers, Castor and Pollux, were often called “sons of Zeus”; indeed, the Greek name they are best known by, the Dioscouri, means “the striplings of Zeus.” On the other hand, they were also called “sons of Tyndareus,” the Tyndaridae.

  They are always represented as living just before the Trojan War, at the same time as Theseus and Jason and Atalanta. They took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt; they went on the Quest of the Golden Fleece; and they rescued Helen when Theseus carried her off. But in all the stories they play an unimportant part except in the account of Castor’s death, when Pollux proved his brotherly devotion.

  The two went, we are not told why, to the land of some cattle owners, Idas and Lynceus. There, Pindar says, Idas, made angry in some way about his oxen, stabbed and killed Castor. Other writers say the cause of the dispute was the two daughters of the king of the country, Leucippus. Pollux stabbed Lynceus, and Zeus struck Idas with his thunderbolt. But Castor was dead and Pollux was inconsolable. He prayed to die also, and Zeus in pity allowed him to share his life with his brother, to live,

  Half of thy time beneath the earth and half

  Within the golden homes of heaven.

  According to this version the two were never separated again. One day they dwelt in Hades, the next in Olympus, always together.

  The late Greek writer Lucian gives another version, in which their dwelling places are heaven and earth; and when Pollux goes to one, Castor goes to the other, so that they are never with each other. In Lucian’s little satire, Apollo asks Hermes: “I say, why do we never see Castor and Pollux at the same time?”

  “Well,” Hermes replies, “they are so fond of each other that when fate decreed one of them must die and only one be immortal, they decided to share immortality between them.”

  “Not very wise, Hermes. What proper employment can they engage in, that way? I foretell the future; Aesculapius cures diseases; you are a good messenger—but these two—are they to idle away their whole time?”

  “No, surely. They’re in Poseidon’s service. Their business is to save any ship in distress.”

  “Ah, now you say something. I’m delighted they’re in such a good business.”

  Two stars were supposed to be theirs: the Gemini, the Twins.

  They were always represented as riding splendid snow-white horses, but Homer distinguishes Castor above Pollux for horsemanship. He calls the two

  Castor, tamer of horses, Polydeuces, good as a boxer.

  THE SILENI were creatures part man and part horse. They walked on two legs, not four, but they often had horses’ hoofs instead of feet, sometimes horses’ ears, and always horses’ tails. There are no stories about them, but they are often seen on Greek vases.

  THE SATYRS, like Pan, were goat-men, and like him they had their home in the wild places of the earth.

  In contrast to these unhuman, ugly gods the goddesses of the woodland were all lovely maiden forms, the OREADS, nymphs of the mountains, and the Dryads, sometimes called HAMADRYADS, nymphs of trees, whose life was in each case bound up with that of her tree.

  AEOLUS, King of the Winds, also lived on the earth. An island, Aeolia, was his home. Accurately he was only regent of the Winds, viceroy of the gods. The four chief Winds were BOREAS, the North Wind, in Latin AQUILO; ZEPHYR, the West Wind, which had
a second Latin name, Favonius; Notus, the South Wind, also called in Latin AUSTER; and the East Wind, EURUS, the same in both Greek and Latin.

  There were some beings, neither human nor divine, who had their home on the earth. Prominent among them were:—

  THE CENTAURS. They were half man, half horse, and for the most part they were savage creatures, more like beasts than men. One of them, however, CHIRON, was known everywhere for his goodness and his wisdom.

  THE GORGONS were also earth-dwellers. There were three, and two of them were immortal. They were dragonlike creatures with wings, whose look turned men to stone. Phorcys, son of the Sea and the Earth, was their father.

  THE GRAIAE were their sisters, three gray women who had but one eye between them. They lived on the farther bank of Ocean.

  THE SIRENS lived on an island in the Sea. They had enchanting voices and their singing lured sailors to their death. It was not known what they looked like, for no one who saw them ever returned.

  Very important but assigned to no abode whether in heaven or on the earth were THE FATES, Moirae in Greek, Parcae in Latin, who, Hesiod says, give to men at birth evil and good to have. They were three, Clotho, the Spinner, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, the Disposer of Lots, who assigned to each man his destiny; Atropos, she who could not be turned, who carried “the abhorrèd shears” and cut the thread at death.