Olympus

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  He went to the oracle at Delphi who advised him to find a cow with the image of the moon on its side, and walk behind it until it sat down exhausted. The place where the cow sat down would be his home.

  Cadmus followed the oracle’s instructions and found near where the cow sat down a river that was guarded by a dragon. Cadmus fought the dragon and killed it, not realizing that the creature belonged to Ares and anyone who slayed it was doomed to suffer a curse for generations.

  Athena advised Cadmus to sow the teeth of the dragon in the soil. From it sprang a race of hostile and fully armed warriors. Cadmus threw a rock amongst them, causing them to quarrel and fight with each other, until only five survived.

  These five joined Cadmus to found the citadel of Thebes.

  Cadmus looks for Europa, while Castor and Pollux look for Helen. Brothers are thus seen as guardians of sisters, a theme also found in Hindu mythology, where Dhristadyumna keeps a lookout for the welfare of Draupadi, Balarama and Krishna watch over Subhadra, and Yama over Lakshmi.

  Cadmus is the mythic founder of Thebes though many have tried to prove he was a historical figure, a migrant from the Near East. Herodotus calculated that Cadmus lived 1600 years before his time, in 2000 BCE. But the Phoenician script, from which the Greek script came into being, was developed only around 1000 BCE.

  The city of Al-Qadmus in Syria is named after Cadmus.

  The phrase ‘Cadmean victory’ means a victory that involves ruin. Cadmus, while establishing his city, sends his people to fetch water from a river whose guardian dragon kills them. Though Cadmus slays the dragon, it is only after it has claimed the lives of those who were supposed to live in the city Cadmus was building.

  Cadmus brought the Phoenician script to Greece. The alphabet was sacred in Greece for it recorded the feats of heroes and thus granted immortality to great men. While the oral tradition depended on humans, the written tradition broke free from such dependence. This distinguishes Greek culture from Indic culture where until recent times, greater value was placed on the oral tradition.

  Harmonia

  Zeus felt sorry for Cadmus, who had failed in his mission to find his sister. So he decided to give him a wife: Harmonia.

  All the gods were invited to the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia. Amongst them was Hephaestus, who gave Harmonia a necklace as a wedding present. This necklace was cursed: it would cause madness, strife and suffering for generations in the House of Cadmus. Hephaestus did this cruel thing because he believed Harmonia was the child born of the union of his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares.

  So it came to pass that Harmonia’s son Polydorus died at an early age. Polydorus’s son, Labdacus, was killed by Dionysus’s followers for criticizing their god. In this period of turmoil, Nycteus, father-in-law of Polydorus, served as regent of Thebes. Labdacus’s son, Laius, was sent to Pisa, where he was raised in the House of Pelops.

  The idea that the quarrels of the gods (Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Ares) result in strife on earth (misfortune in the House of Cadmus) has no parallel in Hindu mythology. However, the idea that the deeds of ancestors (Cadmus killing Ares’s dragon) impact the lives of future generations (Polydorus, Labdacus) has parallels in Hindu mythology. In the epic Mahabharata, because Yadu disobeys his father Yayati, his descendants are cursed with death should they wear the crown and become kings themselves. Thus Yadu’s descendants, Krishna included, never crown themselves as rulers.

  Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, brings harmony, while Eris, daughter of Zeus and Hera, known to Romans as Discordia, beings disharmony.

  Cadmus was deeply troubled by the ill fortune that clung to his family and he blamed it on the dragon he killed to establish Thebes. Since the gods seemed to love a serpent so much, he wished to become one. The gods obliged. Harmonia clung to the serpent and begged the gods to turn her into one too. In art, Cadmus and Harmonia are often depicted as a pair of serpents.

  Nycteus and Lycus

  King Nycteus had a daughter called Antiope, who was a Maenad, a follower of Dionysus, whom Zeus ravished in the form of a satyr. Thus disgraced, a pregnant Antiope ran away from Thebes and married Epopeus of Sicyon.

  Unable to bear the shame, Nycteus killed himself. His brother, Lycus, then became regent of Thebes in his place. To avenge his brother Lycus attacked Sicyon, killed Epopeus and dragged Antiope back home. On the way, she gave birth to twin boys in a cave in the middle of a forest, but was forced by her uncle to abandon them.

  In Thebes, Antiope suffered the cruel treatment meted out by Lycus’s wife, Dirce, for years until she managed to escape. She found her children, the twin boys Amphion and Zethus, in the cave, being raised by hunters. Amphion, son of Zeus, had grown up to be a fine musician while Zethus, son of Epopeus, was a herdsman.

  Antiope roused her sons to wage war against her uncle who had treated her so badly. The brothers waged war and defeated Lycus, and forced him to declare the brothers the new rulers of Thebes. They would have killed Lycus, but Hermes forbade them to. So they turned their attention to his wife, Dirce, tormentor of their mother. They tied her hair to the horns of a bull and let the animal drag her to her death.

  Rape is not a common theme in Hindu mythology. It is associated with villains, not gods. In the Bhagavata Purana, Kansa is conceived when his mother is raped by a gandharva, so the mother curses that this child of rape will be killed by a true descendant of Yadu. In the Ramayana, Ravana rapes Rambha who curses Ravana that if he forces himself on a woman his head will split into a thousand pieces. In the Mahabharata, King Danda rapes Araja, the daughter of Shukra, as a result of which he is cursed: his kingdom will be consumed by a sandstorm and turned into a wilderness called Dandaka-aranya.

  As the word ‘rape’ evokes violence, some authors prefer the phrase ‘seduction by the gods’. But in many of these stories, the women resist the advances of the gods, who do not take kindly to being spurned and take the women by force, in which case it is not seduction, but rape.

  Satyrs have human torsos and the hind legs of a goat. That Zeus takes this form explains the close association Antiope has with Dionysus in the Greek tradition. She is often described as a Maenad.

  Fathers killing themselves because their daughters have brought shame to the family is common in patriarchal societies where women are seen as property. Antiope’s disobedience is threefold: through her relationships with Dionysus, Zeus and Epopeus.

  Antiope bears two sons: one divine and one mortal. Amphion is the son of Zeus while Zethus is the son of Epopeus. Amphion, the musician, is contemplative, while Zethus is the active herdsman. They are like the Dioscuri, two brothers, horsemen, worshipped as a pair for good luck and protection. The theme of a woman bearing twin children, one by god and one by man, one immortal and one mortal, is a popular theme in Greek mythology.

  Antiope, the Theban princess, mother of Amphion and Zethus, must be distinguished from Antiope, the Amazon, mother of Hippolytus.

  Amphion and Zethus

  Amphion and Zethus decided to build walls around Thebes. While Zethus, the herdsman, used his beasts of burden to carry the rocks, Amphion used his song and music to make rocks move. The wall that encircled Thebes was famous for its seven gates.

  Amphion married Niobe who bore him seven sons and seven daughters. Unfortunately, Apollo and Artemis killed them because Niobe dared to mock Leto, the mother of the twin Olympians, declaring that as she had borne more children she was more fertile than Leto. Driven by grief, Amphion attacked Apollo, and was also slain.

  Zethus married Thebe who bore him one son, but in a fit of madness, she killed her own son and then killed herself, driving Zethus to commit suicide.

  Thus the rule of the twin sons of Antiope came to an end.

  Lycus, now old, then sent for Laius, son of Labdacus, who had been raised in Pisa, in the House of Pelops, to return home and rule Thebes.

  The rivalry of Leto and Niobe over who has more children mirrors the rivalry seen in the Mahabharata between the two wives
of rishi Kashyapa. Vinata, the mother of all birds, has two children who she hopes will be greater than the many children of Kadru, the mother of snakes.

  Sappho’s poetry suggests before they became mothers, Leto and Niobe were once the best of friends.

  Niobe displays hubris and so invites the wrath of Leto for disrupting the cosmos.

  Jocasta

  Laius returned to Thebes bearing a curse: for he had broken the rules of hospitality in Pisa when he ravished Pelops’s son, Chrysippus.

  Crowned king, he married Jocasta but was clear that he wanted no children, for he was cursed, and the oracles of Delphi had warned him that his son would kill him. But Jocasta was determined to be mother. She got Laius drunk one night and forced him to have sex with her. In due course, she gave birth to a son.

  Laius bound the newborn’s ankles and pierced them with a hook, just as a hunter pierces the feet of hunted game, and gave him to his gamekeeper with instructions to take the child to the forest and hang him from a tree as food for animals. Luckily, the infant was found by another hunter, who gave him to the childless king of Corinth who raised him as his own.

  They named the child Oedipus, meaning ‘large feet’, since his ankles were swollen.

  Oedipus grew up blissfully unaware that he was adopted, until one day a beggar called him a ‘foundling’. He decided to find out the truth by consulting the oracle at Delphi. However, the oracle told him something even more horrifying: ‘You will kill your father and marry your mother.’ Hearing this, Oedipus, determined to change his fate, decided not to return to his parents’ house in Corinth.

  Homosexual, or homoerotic, love is a consistent theme in Greek mythology: Zeus and Ganymede, Apollo and Hyacinthus, Minos and Atymnius, Theseus and Pirithous. But it was not always reciprocated as we learn in the story of Laius and Chrysippus.

  In the Bhagavata Purana, Kansa kills his newborn nephews, the sons of Devaki, to save himself from imminent death. This mirrors Laius’s fear that compels him to kill his own son. In the story of Perseus, his grandfather tries to kill his mother, Danae, as it is foretold that she will give birth to his killer.

  Laius does not want to have sex with his wife. It is not clear if this is because he prefers men or because he wants to avoid fathering a son who, it is prophesied, will kill him.

  The overpowering nature of fate and prophecies and the helplessness of man before this cosmic force is a key theme in the story of Oedipus.

  Laius

  As Oedipus travelled far away from the house of his parents, he came upon a bridge that was wide enough for only one chariot to pass. He had almost crossed the bridge when a man rode on to the bridge on his chariot from the other side and demanded right of passage.

  ‘It will be faster if you just wait and let me pass,’ said Oedipus, but the man on the chariot, a king no doubt, was too arrogant to wait for a commoner. He blocked Oedipus’s passage and demanded that he turn back instead. When Oedipus refused, the man swung his whip and lashed at him.

  A fight ensued, and the man on the chariot perished. Oedipus ran away, not realizing the man he had just killed was Laius, king of Thebes, his father.

  In ancient mythologies, the right of passage over a narrow bridge is a key trope that shows the conflict between pride and humility. In the Mahabharata, Vasistha’s son Shakti demands right of passage but the king Saudasa refuses to give it to him. So Shakti turns Saudasa into an ogre. The ogre then attacks Shakti and kills him.

  Laius is buried where he is murdered and his kingdom is cursed because his murderer is not punished.

  The Sphinx

  Laius had been on his way to the oracle at Delphi to figure out how to save Thebes from the menace of the Sphinx, a creature with a woman’s head, a lion’s body and vulture’s wings that guarded the entrance to the city. She did not let anyone pass through the gates unless they answered her riddle correctly, but allowed people to leave. If this continued, Laius had realized, the city would either starve to death, as no farmer or shepherd or trader could enter, or be deserted, as its hungry citizens would be forced to flee.

  Oedipus continued on his path and reached Thebes and found himself being riddled by the Sphinx. ‘What walks on four feet at dawn, on two feet all day, and on three feet at dusk? Answer or die!’

  Oedipus answered, ‘Man, who crawls on all fours as a child, walks on two feet for most of his adult life, and then stoops over a stick in old age.’

  The Sphinx was furious. She asked another question, ‘Who are the sisters who give each other birth? Answer or die!’

  Oedipus answered, ‘Day and night, of course.’

  Accepting defeat, the Sphinx killed herself. The joyful Thebans hailed Oedipus as the saviour of the city.

  Soon news reached Thebes that their king had been killed in a duel on the way to Delphi. ‘Let us make Oedipus, saviour of our city, our new king. Let him marry Jocasta, the widow of Laius,’ the people shouted. And so it came to pass that Oedipus married Jocasta, not realizing that she was his mother.

  In Hindu mythology, a sphinx is called purusha-mriga or vyagra-pada, half-human with the legs of a lion or tiger. They are known to be devotees of Shiva.

  In the Mahabharata, Yudhishtira is asked questions by a yaksha or forest creature that takes the form of a heron. For each correct answer, the creature promises to bring one of Yudhishtira’s dead brothers back to life. Thus failure to solve the riddle of the yaksha results in death, a theme similar to the riddle of the Sphinx.

  In Greek mythology, the gods have human form. All creatures who are not fully human are survivors of an earlier mythology. Half-human and half-animal creatures like Pan were seen as remnants of chaos.

  The Sphinx was depicted as a woman with the haunches of a lion, the wings of an eagle and a tail made of a serpent. She was a child of Typhon, like many monsters of Greek mythology such as the Chimera and Cerberus.

  In ancient Egypt, sphinxes were said to guard tombs and temples, and protect their mysteries. The presence of the Sphinx in Greek mythology suggests close contact with ancient Egypt through trade.

  The Greeks considered the Sphinx as being of foreign origin, from Ethiopia.

  Tiresias

  Unlike Laius, who avoided her bed, Oedipus loved Jocasta very much and gave her four children: two boys and two girls. Theirs was a happy family for nearly twenty years.

  But then the city was struck by an epidemic. When the Delphic oracle was consulted, she said the gods were angry as the killer of Laius had not yet been caught and punished. Oedipus swore he would do it.

  ‘But no one saw who killed my poor husband,’ said Jocasta.

  ‘Let us invite the blind seer Tiresias who sees more than mortals do,’ Oedipus suggested. It was a decision he would regret.

  Tiresias was not born blind. The son of a shepherd and a nymph, he once struck dead the female of a pair of copulating serpents. As a result, he became a woman and lived as one for seven years before coming upon another pair of copulating serpents. This time he killed the male and was transformed back into a man.

  Tiresias was the only person in the world to have had sex both as a man and as a woman and so only he knew the answer to the question which eluded even Zeus and Hera: ‘Who gets more pleasure during sex: men or women?’ Tiresias answered that women do.

  Zeus laughed and said perhaps that was why men were unfaithful to their wives, to compensate in quantity what could not be achieved in quality. Hera, however, was not amused and she directed her rage at Tiresias, making him blind. Zeus felt sorry for Tiresias and touched his ears. As a result, the blind Tiresias could hear the language of birds and animals and know what no humans would ever know. And he knew who had killed Laius.

  The desire to know the future is an indicator of humanity. All cultures have people who speak of the future. In Hindu mythology, kings often consult sages and astrologers to know what the future has in store.

  Tiresias is the archetypal soothsayer in Greek mythology.

  Tiresia
s is blind and hermaphroditic, indicating his connection with the invisible world of spirits—he can see things that others cannot see, hear things that others cannot hear, and move between spaces that are out of bounds for others.

  In some stories, Tiresias is blinded as he stumbles upon a pond where Athena is bathing naked. He sees her nakedness and so is cursed to lose his sight. On the intervention of his mother, Athena cleans his ears so that he can understand birdsong and practise divination.

  Creon

  ‘Laius was killed by his own son who then married his own mother. You, Oedipus, are the son of Laius, and Jocasta, your wife, is also your mother. This disgusts the gods who therefore have cast the spell of disease on the city of Thebes,’ revealed Tiresias.

  Oedipus refused to believe him. ‘My father and my mother live in Corinth. I may have killed Laius and married his widow, but he was no father of mine.’

  Messengers were sent to Corinth. The king had died and his widow was not ashamed to reveal the truth: Oedipus was an adopted child, found hooked to a tree in the forest by hunters.

  Unable to handle the truth, Jocasta killed herself.

  Oedipus’s sons, Eteocles and Polynices, mocked their father, even as he mourned the death of his wife. ‘So should we call you our father or our brother?’ they said. Worse, at the funeral meal, they offered him the haunches of the sacrificed animal instead of the shoulder that was meant for the king. Angry, Oedipus muttered a curse that his sons would never get along and would kill each other.

  Full of disgust and shame and heartbreak, Oedipus blinded himself with the pin of Jocasta’s brooch, for what good are eyes that cannot see the truth?