Olympus

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  Theseus is a founding hero who overpowers forces of previous religions, embodiments of chaos, to establish the Olympian order.

  Theseus’s Six Labours make him a forerunner of Heracles who was asked to perform twelve labours.

  The killing of thieves and establishing order in Athens led to Theseus being identified with establishing democracy in Athens.

  Ariadne

  Upon his arrival in Crete, as luck would have it, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, fell in love with Theseus. Determined to save him, the princess went to Daedalus and asked his advice. Daedalus said, ‘Theseus may be strong enough to kill the Minotaur, but no man is skilled enough to find his way out of my labyrinth. Tell him to take a ball of thread and tie one end around his waist and let the ball of thread unravel behind him, marking the path he takes into the maze. After killing the monster, he can trace back his path out of the labyrinth by simply following the thread.’

  Theseus did as advised and traced his path into the labyrinth with the ball of thread. The way was littered with bones, remains of Athenian boys and girls who had been sent as tributes over the years. After a long-winding journey through dark, smelly, cavernous corridors, Theseus finally came face-to-face with the dreaded monster. The two wrestled for a long time. Finally, Theseus exhausted and overpowered the Minotaur. Finding his way out was easy, thanks to Ariadne’s thread. When Theseus emerged from the labyrinth triumphant with the head of the Minotaur in his hand, Minos had no choice but to let him go.

  As a peace offering, Minos gave his daughter Phaedra as wife to Theseus, much to the irritation of Ariadne, who also insisted on travelling to Athens with the man she loved.

  Theseus, however, abandoned Ariadne on the island of Nixos, and proceeded home with only Phaedra by his side. Why did he do that? Perhaps because he did not really love Ariadne. Or perhaps because she had already been promised to Dionysus, and Theseus of Athens had no intention of angering the god of wine and madness.

  Giddy with victory and love, Theseus forgot to replace the black sails of his ship with white ones. An anxious Aegeus assumed his son had been killed by the Minotaur and, grief-stricken, jumped from the cliffs into the sea.

  The prophecy of Aegeus being killed by his own son was thus fulfilled. From that day, the sea near Athens came to be known as the Aegean Sea, after Aegeus.

  In traditional Hindu lore, a hero’s success depends on three factors: shakti (strength), yukti (strategy) and bhakti (devotion). Theseus succeeds not only because he is strong but because, thanks to Ariadne, he has strategy, and thanks to his parentage, which includes an Olympian, Poseidon, he has the support of celestial forces.

  Theseus’s journey from Crete to Athens is the journey from Dionysus to Apollo, from intuition to rationality, from fluidity to structure.

  The clash of Minos and Theseus is also the clash between a son of Zeus and a son of Poseidon. But Zeus cannot help Minos for he broke his word, a grave crime in the eyes of the Olympians.

  Theseus abandons Ariadne on learning that she is dedicated to Dionysus. In popular lore, on Athena’s advice, he leaves her while she is sleeping.

  In Etruscan art, Dionysus is often depicted with his consort, Ariadne, who bears him children who embody grapes and wine.

  Ariadne was probably an ancient mother goddess whose cult was first linked to the hero Theseus, and later with the god Dionysus.

  Theseus, a son of Poseidon, kills the Minotaur, the offspring of the bull sent to Crete by Poseidon.

  The ship of Theseus was kept in Athens for centuries. Over time, each rotting piece of the ship was replaced by a fresh one. Eventually, every inch of the ship came to be made of materials that were not part of the original. Was this ship then truly the ship of Theseus? This was the famous paradoxical question raised by Greek philosophers.

  Perdix

  After Theseus’s departure from Crete, Minos learned about the ball of thread he had used to get out of the labyrinth. The idea could not have been Ariadne’s; she was not that smart. The idea had to be that of Daedalus, who had built the labyrinth. Since the inventor was originally from Athens it was quite possible he wanted to help the handsome Athenian prince.

  Daedalus had to leave Athens after he committed a terrible crime. He was upset when he discovered that his young nephew, Perdix, was a better inventor than his own son, Icarus. In fact, people said that the nephew had the potential to outshine even his talented uncle. In a fit of jealousy, Daedalus pushed Perdix to his death from the roof of his house. He then fled with Icarus and sought refuge in Crete.

  Jealousy is a common theme in Hindu mythology too. Ravana is jealous of his brother, Kubera, who builds the golden city of Lanka. Duryodhana is jealous of his cousins, the Pandavas, who build the city of Indraprastha.

  Daedalus is the archetypal skilled craftsman who is said to have invented carpentry.

  Athena saved Perdix and turned him into a bird, a partridge that avoids building nests in high places.

  A crater on the far side of the moon is named Daedalus.

  The journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences is called Daedalus.

  Icarus

  Minos, angry with Daedalus’s treachery, had him imprisoned in a tower. To escape, Daedalus designed wings for himself and his son, Icarus, using bird feathers and beeswax. Father and son strapped on the wings, jumped out of the tower and began flapping until they were able to glide on the wind like birds. They made it out of the city, out of the island and over the sea.

  But then Icarus grew too confident and felt the urge to fly towards the sun. As he flew higher, the beeswax in the artificial wings began to melt. The feathers came undone and he fell into the sea and drowned. Daedalus could do nothing to save his son and so flew alone to faraway Sicily.

  In the Ramayana, we hear the tale of the vulture brothers Jatayu and Sampati, who challenge each other to fly higher. Sampati spreads his wings to stop Jatayu from flying too close to the sun and burns his own wings in the process. The now-flightless Sampati stands on the ocean shore and is able to see Lanka with his keen eyesight.

  Daedalus embodies maturity in an artist while Icarus embodies impetuousness.

  The story of men riding high only to be struck down is an oft-repeated motif in Greek mythology: Icarus falls when he flies too high, Phaeton is struck by a thunderbolt when he tries to fly his father’s sun-chariot, and Bellerophon is struck down when he tries to fly towards Olympus on his flying horse. These were seen as acts of hubris, excessive pride that makes people forget their place in the cosmos, thus causing chaos.

  In Sumerian mythology, Etana is the equivalent of Icarus. He rode towards heaven on the back of an eagle, seeking a magical herb, but then looked down and lost his balance.

  People who are dangerously over-ambitious are said to suffer from an Icarus complex.

  Perdix, whom Daedalus envies, is turned into a bird by the gods, while Icarus, whom Daedalus loves, cannot fly with his man-made wings. Perdix flies up and survives, while Icarus tumbles down and dies.

  Daedalus

  Minos was determined to find Daedalus. So he sent his spies to kings around the Mediterranean Sea with a puzzle: How did one thread a spiral shell? It was a problem that Minos knew no one other than Daedalus could solve.

  Sometime later, news came that the king of Sicily had succeeded. Someone in his court had told the king to tie a thread to an ant, make it enter one end of the shell and lure it out the other end with a drop of honey. Minos was pleased, for only Daedalus could have thought of that.

  He demanded that the king of Sicily hand over the inventor. The king agreed and invited Minos to a banquet where Daedalus would be presented to him. Before the banquet he asked his beautiful daughters to give Minos a bath. As soon as Minos got into the tub, the king’s daughters, guided by Daedalus, poured boiling water on Minos and scalded him to death.

  Just as Minos uses a puzzle to draw out Daedalus from his hiding place, in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Damayanti gets spie
s to use puzzles to locate her husband, Nala, who abandoned her in the forest.

  Minos had reason to be angry with Daedalus: he helped Minos’s wife Pasiphae have sex with Poseidon’s bull using a lifelike statue of a cow; and he told Minos’s daughter Ariadne how Theseus could escape the labyrinth with a simple ball of string.

  It was important for Athenians to tell the story of how the great king of Crete was killed by an Athenian as there was historical rivalry between them over control of the waters and trading routes of the Mediterranean.

  After his death, Minos was made the judge of the dead, along with his brother, Rhadamanthus, and his half-brother, Aeacus. Rhadamanthus judged the easterners; Aeacus judged the westerners; Minos had the casting vote.

  Antiope

  Meanwhile, in Athens, with Phaedra by his side, Theseus established democracy, a new form of governance where the authority of the king was tempered by the collective wishes of the people.

  In times bygone, the priest-king was obliged to take care of the city, ensure its security and its prosperity, and in exchange he received the obedience of the people. Now Theseus created an assembly, the polis, where people spoke their mind and decisions were taken by consensus. This balanced the excesses of the king, and helped him choose a course of action when he could not make up his mind.

  What followed was a period of great harmony. Everyone in Athens admired Theseus. Instead of fighting with his neighbouring kings, he took the novel step of inviting them to an assembly so that everyone could live together in amity.

  It was in this period that Theseus encountered the tragic Oedipus, and helped him die in peace, burying him secretly near Athens. Later, he also buried the Seven who were killed when they attacked Thebes. Thus, Theseus and Athens became renowned for generosity and humanity.

  But good times make heroes restless. And so was the case with Theseus, who longed for adventure, and thus decided to visit the land of the Amazons.

  The Amazons lived in the east, in Asia. They were female warriors who used men only to procreate. Any male offspring were returned to the fathers but the female ones were kept and raised as Amazons. Theseus offered himself to the queen Antiope and she bore him a son, Hippolytus. Father and son were then asked to leave but Theseus decided he would take Antiope with him, and abducted her.

  The enraged Amazons chased him to Athens and launched an attack on the city. During the fight, they realized that their besotted queen was fighting on the side of the Athenians. The Athenians managed to push the Amazons back, but not before one of the attackers’ arrows killed Antiope, the woman who was once their queen.

  Plutarch wrote in the first century CE about how Theseus established democracy in Athens, and identified Romulus of Rome with Theseus.

  In Hindu mythology, Krishna belonged to the Yadu clan which had no kings, but where decisions were arrived at through consensus by a council known as Dasarhi.

  In Indian folklore, there is a reference to stri-rajya, or the land of women, where no man may enter. It is ruled by Pramila and is sometimes called kadali-vana, the banana grove. The only man who succeeds in entering this place is Matsyendranath, the great yogi, who is enchanted by the women there until he is rescued by his student, Goraksha-nath.

  A battalion of female warriors guarded Chandragupta Maurya. The Greek ambassador Megasthenes identified them as Amazons.

  Amazon means ‘without a breast’. This tribe of women supposedly cut off their right breasts to enable them to shoot arrows better. Amazons were said to live in the East, probably in Turkey or Scythia (Persia), or in Africa.

  In the Alexander Romances, fantasy adventure tales based on the life of Alexander that became popular in Europe in medieval times, Alexander meets and gives a child to the Amazon queen named Thalestris.

  Hippolytus

  Antiope’s son, Hippolytus, grew up to be a handsome man, but he decided to serve Artemis and live as a virgin. This upset Aphrodite, who caused Theseus’s first wife, Phaedra, to fall in love with her stepson. Phaedra invited Hippolytus to her bed, and when he refused, she accused him of trying to rape her.

  An angry Theseus invoked Poseidon who sent a monster from the sea to startle the horses pulling Hippolytus’s chariot, causing him to fall from it. Hippolytus’s feet got entangled in the reins, and as the horses bolted, he was dragged along the ground. His head smashed against the roadside rocks and he died.

  On learning that Theseus had caused Hippolytus’s death, a guilt-ridden Phaedra killed herself. By the time Theseus learned the truth it was too late.

  The story of a king’s wife falling in love with a stepson is a recurring theme in Indian folklore as well. In India’s Nath traditions, we find the story of Chaurangi-nath whose hands and feet were cut off and who was thrown into a dry well after he was falsely accused by his stepmother of desiring her. By the grace of the Nath sages, he became a sage himself with magical powers and eventually forgave his stepmother.

  In some versions of this tale, Artemis resurrects Hippolytus with the help of Asclepius, the divine healer, and he becomes part of a cult where girls who are about to get married offer hair as proof of their chastity.

  The desire of a stepmother for her stepson is called the Phaedra complex in psychoanalysis.

  Pirithous

  Following the death of his wives, Antiope and Phaedra, and his beloved son, Theseus lost all interest in governance. But then an unlikely friendship reignited the spark of adventure.

  It so happened that Pirithous, king of Lapiths, was getting married and Theseus had been invited to the wedding feast, as had many kings, gods and even centaurs.

  Centaurs were creatures that had the body of a horse but the torso of a human; an unruly bunch, they were so smitten with the bride that they tried to kidnap and rape her, but were stopped by the noble Theseus.

  A fight followed between the centaurs and the Lapiths, with Theseus fighting alongside Pirithous. The two succeeded in killing the centaurs. Comradeship and victory sparked an unlikely friendship between the noble king of Athens and the not-so-noble king of Lapiths.

  When Pirithous’s wife died during childbirth, he sought comfort in the company of his friend Theseus, also a widower. One day, both decided to help each other find new wives.

  ‘Help me abduct Helen, daughter of Zeus, who is being raised in Sparta. I have been told she is the most beautiful woman in the world,’ said Theseus. Pirithous agreed, and the two of them went to Sparta and kidnapped Helen, who was still a little girl.

  ‘I too want a daughter of Zeus as my wife. Athena and Artemis would not be interested, but maybe Persephone, wife of Hades,’ said Pirithous.

  So the two friends made their way to the underworld to achieve this audacious feat. A furious Hades imprisoned both of them and tied them to chairs from which they could not get up. Years later, during his journey to the land of the dead, Heracles managed to free Theseus, but not Pirithous.

  When Theseus came back to the land of the living, and returned to Athens, the citizens refused to let him enter. For in his absence, the city had been threatened by war. The twins Castor and Pollux had raised an army of Spartans and marched to Athens to rescue their sister, Helen. Luckily the noble Akademos had prevented war by pointing the brothers to the place where Helen had been hidden. They found Helen being cared for by Theseus’s mother, Aethra. Seeing Helen cling to Aethra, the brothers decided to take Aethra with them to Sparta to serve as their sister’s slave. The Athenians blamed Theseus for causing the Spartans and, before them, the Amazons to attack their city and banished him from Athens.

  So a homeless, wifeless, childless, motherless Theseus wandered across Greece, from city to city, until one of the kings, tired of his smugness, or perhaps jealous of his fame, pushed him over a cliff and he fell to his death in the sea.

  In Hindu mythology, securing wives by abducting them is called rakshasa-vivah, and by rape is called pisacha-vivah.

  The battle of the centaurs and Lapiths is a popular theme in Graeco-Roman
art. The deformed, monstrous centaurs symbolize uncontrollable lust.

  The tragic end of Theseus is the result of his restlessness in a life of peace, and his arrogance and pride, or what the Greeks called hubris. It is his pride that makes him crave unattainable women like the queen of the Amazons and the young Helen, daughter of Zeus. Their hubris is the downfall of many heroes, for it draws the attention of Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution. It is not a coincidence that Nemesis is the mother of Helen in some versions of her story.

  Theseus’s mother Aethra serves Helen as a maid and accompanies her to Troy, from where she is finally liberated by her grandsons, Demophon and Acamas, sons of Theseus and Phaedra, who come to Troy with the Greek army.

  House of Theseus

  Book Three

  Oedipus

  ‘The arrogance of man is a terrible thing, born of a feeling of inadequacy. It goads men towards ambitions that ensure their downfall,’ said the gymnosophist, thinking of the fall of Minos and Theseus.

  ‘My teachers called this hubris, which we see even in those of aristocratic birth who think they are entitled to more. The oracles ask us to submit to the thread spun by the Fates, over which even the gods seem to have no control,’ said Alexander. ‘The Fates make fools of men, display our helplessness, and turn us into tragic heroes, like Oedipus.’

  Cadmus

  Cadmus was told by his father to go in search of his sister, Europa, and not return until he had found her. He scoured beaches and grottos and mountains but found no trace of her. Eventually, he gave up the search and decided to make Greece his home.