Olympus

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  Many men wanted to marry Atlanta, but she claimed she would marry the man who could outrun her in a race. Hippomenes begged Aphrodite to help him win Atlanta’s hand in marriage and so the goddess gave him a set of irresistible apples and a plan. During the race, every time Atlanta outran Hippomenes, he threw an apple in front of her. Unable to help herself, she would stop to pick up the apple and Hippomenes would run ahead, gaining lost ground. Thus Hippomenes won the race and Atlanta’s hand in marriage.

  But then the couple made the mistake of making love in a temple of Zeus, a crime for which they were turned into lions, which—according to folklore—cannot mate with each other. Thus they roamed the world together, but were never united in love.

  In the Mahabharata, Shikhandi is a woman who is trained to be a warrior. But unlike Atlanta, whose femininity and sexuality are acknowledged in the Greek myths, Shikhandi is raised as a man, allowed to enter the battlefield after she acquires male genitals from a yaksha.

  Powerful female characters in Greek mythology eschew sexual relationships with men, as if contact with men will drain them of their powers. Thus Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, are virgins. Atlanta takes the oath of virginity and dedicates herself to Artemis, yet she falls in love with Meleager and Hippomenes. In both instances, the relationship remains unfulfilled.

  In many versions, Atlanta does join the Argonaut expedition to be with Meleager who proved his love by abandoning his wife. She chases him by running on the sea. But they were forbidden to mate for the loss of her virginity would affect the voyage. Eventually she gives up and lets him go onward while she returns to land.

  A recurring theme in Greek mythology is the punishment Olympians mete out to those who desecrate temples by having sex in them. Though the Greek gods have intense sex lives, celibacy is valued. This idea had a huge impact on Christianity as well.

  Lemnos

  After the Argonauts set sail, the first island they came upon was Lemnos, where there were no men. The women were so happy to see the Argonauts that they took care of all their needs. So wonderful was the hospitality that the men forgot all about their mission. Jason married the leader of the women, and encouraged his fellow sailors to marry the other women. The women bore children and a new race known as the Minyans came into being.

  But Heracles was not so easily fooled. He investigated and found out that the women had murdered their husbands.

  These women had once angered Aphrodite who had then caused their bodies to emit a foul odour. Repulsed by them, their husbands sought the company of other women, who eventually became their secret wives. When the women discovered this, they murdered their husbands.

  Heracles pressured Jason and the Argonauts to leave the island, reminding them of the mission, which they did, albeit grudgingly.

  The fear of women’s sexuality and their trapping the hero is a consistent theme in Greek as well as Hindu mythology. In the Nath-yogi tradition, celibate yogis are constantly fighting the pull of the sensual yoginis.

  The phrase ‘Lemnian deeds’ refers to the vengeful slaughter of a group of people, often of the same gender. In the story of the Argonauts, women slaughter their unfaithful husbands. Herodotus tells the story of Pelasgian men who kidnapped Athenian women and took them to the island of Lemnos, determined to make them their wives. However, the women refused to submit and insisted on teaching their children Athenian, not Pelasgian, ways, angering their husbands, who killed the children first and then the defiant mothers. The Danaids were sisters who killed their husbands on their wedding night and so were cast into Tartarus, trying forever to fill a bucket of water using broken pots.

  Lemnos is also the island where Philoctetes is abandoned at the start of the Trojan War after he is bitten by a serpent that causes his foot to rot and smell foul. After ten years, the Greeks come to fetch him as it is foretold that Troy will not fall without Heracles’ bow, which is in Philoctetes’ possession.

  Doliones

  After it passed Hellespont, the Argo reached a peninsula which was home to a civilized and friendly race called the Doliones and the barbaric and hostile race of the six-armed Gegeines. The Doliones welcomed the Argonauts and told them where they could find food and how they should avoid the wild Gegeines.

  While the other Argonauts went off in search of food, Heracles decided to stay back and guard the ship; a good decision, as it turned out, for the Gegeines did attack the ship, but Heracles was able to fend them off.

  When it was time to leave, the Doliones bade the Argonauts farewell. The Argo set sail, but at night, a storm pushed the ship back towards the peninsula.

  In the darkness, the Doliones mistook the Argonauts for raiders. The Argonauts too did not realize they had returned to the same shore whence a few hours earlier they had set sail. In the skirmish that followed, many were slain, including Cyzicus, the young king of the Doliones.

  In the morning light, when the truth was discovered, there was great sorrow. The queen of the Doliones was so upset that she killed herself. A great funeral was organized in honour of the dead on both sides, but it did not assuage their grief.

  The queen of the Doliones kills herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Greek mythology occasionally refers to women killing themselves to share the death of their husbands. Was this practice—what is known as sati in Hinduism—a custom of the Indo-European or Aryan race that spread both to Greece and India?

  Cyzicus had killed one of the lions of Cybele and the goddess arranged for the ‘accidental’ slaughter of his people by the Argonauts.

  Hylas

  When the Argo was ready to set sail again, Heracles did not join the ship. His manservant and arms-bearer, Hylas, who had gone inland foraging for food, had not returned, and Heracles refused to leave without him. Although Jason insisted that the quest could not wait for just one man, Heracles was resolute. Telamon and Peleus, sons of Aeacus, also joined him, abandoning the Argonaut mission.

  Hylas was the son of Theiodamas, whose wife had had an affair with Heracles. When the relationship was discovered it led to a duel in which Theiodamas was killed. Perhaps out of guilt, or genuine affection for the beautiful boy, Heracles took Theiodamas’s son under his wing as his arms-bearer.

  Hylas was never found. While fetching water from a stream for his master, he had caught the eye of a group of water nymphs who were so enamoured by his beauty that they abducted him.

  Heracles, after a long but fruitless search, decided to return home to Greece, via the famed city of Troy.

  The idea of man–boy love is conspicuous by its absence in Hindu mythology. This form of homoerotic expression was common in Greek mythology. In Hindu mythology, homoerotic expression takes the form of gender transformation: a man becomes a woman as in the case of Ila and Narada, or a woman becomes a man as in the folklore of Bahucharji mata in Gujarat, each time after they fall into a waterbody or enter an enchanted forest.

  The love Heracles bore for Hylas is parental according to the Greek poet Theocritus who wrote 2300 years ago, though Christopher Marlowe refers to it as homoerotic in his play Edward II (1593), similar to the relationship between Zeus and Ganymede.

  Heracles chooses Hylas over the Argonaut expedition. Some scholars claim that he does this in a spirit of generosity, to avoid overshadowing Jason’s leadership.

  The similarity of the Greek word melon for both apple and sheep has led people to see parallels between Heracles’ quest for the golden apples at Hesperides in the north and Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece at Colchis in the east.

  Castor and Pollux

  The next stop on the Argo’s voyage was the land of the Bebryces, whose ruler, Amycus, welcomed the Argonauts and after offering them refreshments, invited them to a game of boxing. Only, this was no game, as the Argonauts soon discovered; Amycus fought to kill. And no one was allowed to leave his kingdom until they played the game.

  The first of the Argonauts to rise to Amycus’s challenge was Castor. He a
nd his twin, Pollux were born of the same mother but had been sired by different fathers: Castor by the mortal Tyndareus and Pollux by the immortal Zeus. When Castor lost to Amycus, Pollux took up the challenge. Unlike his twin, Pollux was immortal, and he managed to avenge his brother and box Amycus to death.

  Watching Pollux grieve over Castor, Zeus offered him a place on Mount Olympus where he could drink ambrosia and find happiness. But the thought of life without his twin was unbearable, so Pollux begged his father to grant half his immortality to Castor. Zeus agreed, and the two brothers lived half their days on Olympus and half their days in Hades, alternating their places with each other. He also cast the two brothers in the sky where they continue to live as stars in the constellation Gemini, sharing immortality.

  Hindu mythology has stories of two inseparable and invincible asura brothers, Sunda and Upasunda, who cannot be killed unless they quarrel with each other. And so the devas send the beautiful Tilottama who makes the brothers compete for her love, and they end up killing each other.

  Pollux is the Roman name for the Greek Polydeuces.

  The twins Castor and Pollux, also known as the Discouri, were popular deities in Greece and Rome and were associated with pear trees, war dances and with the constellation Gemini. As helmeted horsemen who carry spears, the twins are often compared with the Ashwini twins of Hindu mythology.

  Amycus is a son of the sea god Poseidon by a nymph. That he is killed by a son of Zeus, Pollux, reflects the rivalry of the two Olympians for control over earth.

  Castor and Pollux share the same mother as Helen and her twin sister, Clytemnestra. According to Homer, Castor and Pollux fight and die while trying to bring Helen back from Troy. In this version, Amycus is a Trojan.

  Harpies

  After Bebryces, the Argonauts beached on an island that was home to Phineus, king of Thrace, who had the gift of foresight. In exchange for the ability to tell humans the future, the gods had deprived Phineus of eyesight and they sent the Harpies to torment him.

  When the Argonauts asked Phineus the way to Colchis, he said, ‘I can only answer if I eat and I cannot eat because of the dreaded Harpies. Every time food is served to me, they come and eat a third of it, carry off another third, and excrete upon what is left so that it cannot be consumed. Thus the gods punish me, slowly starving me to death, preventing me from sharing my knowledge of the future with humankind.’

  Amongst the Argonauts were the brothers Calais and Zetes, two winged youths often addressed as the Boreads as they were sons of the wind god Boreas. They kept guard while the Argonauts laid out food before Phineus. Just as Phineus was about to eat, the Harpies appeared to ruin his meal. Only, this time the flying twins stopped them. Not just that, the Boreads decided to capture the Harpies and chased after them as they flew out into the sea. Iris, the rainbow goddess, told the flying twins to stop pursuing the Harpies, as the Olympians did not want the creatures to die, but she promised that the Harpies would no longer bother Phineus. So the Boreads agreed to let the Harpies go.

  Unfortunately, it was foretold that the Boreads, children of Boreas, would die if they failed to catch whatever they pursued. And so they could not return to the Argonauts and forewarn them about the dangers that they would encounter on the sea route to Colchis. They simply fell into the sea and drowned.

  Harpies are depicted as having the heads of women and the bodies of birds. They are imagined as forms of wind, violent storms like tornadoes that carry everything away.

  Greek storytellers speak of two Harpies. Virgil, the Roman, refers to a third in his epic Aeneid.

  In some versions, the Harpies fly so far out into the sea that they fall into the sea from exhaustion and drown, as do Calais and Zetes. In other versions, Heracles kills the twins for it is they who convince the Argonauts to set sail, leaving Heracles behind while he is searching for Hylas.

  The ‘floating rocks’ (Symplegades) came to be known as the ‘turning rocks’ (Strophades) to mark the spot where the sons of the wind god Boreas ‘turned away’ from their pursuit of the Harpies.

  Symplegades

  With the Harpies finally gone, Phineus ate to his heart’s content and then told the Argonauts how to reach Colchis.

  ‘You will have to go past the Symplegades,’ he said, ‘two floating rocks that mark the entrance to the Black Sea. They crush all things that pass between them, which is why no sailor from the west has ever been able to travel so far east. Only the ram of Phrixus, flying high above in the sky, succeeded in getting past them. But there is a way to outsmart the Symplegades.’

  As advised by Phineus, on reaching the floating rocks Jason released a dove that flew between the rocks. The floating rocks rushed forward to crush the bird, but it managed to escape, losing only the tip of its tail in the process. The Argonauts now knew how fast the floating rocks moved and could calculate the speed at which they would have to row if they wished to pass through unharmed.

  Sure enough, the Argonauts, rowing faster than they ever had, managed to clear the floating rocks, with only slight damage to the rear end of the ship.

  While ships play a major role in Greek mythology, in Hindu mythology one finds references to flying chariots and small river boats. In the vrata-kathas there are tales of Indian sailors whose wives pray for the well-being of their husbands who are seafaring merchants. About 1500 years ago, for some mysterious reasons, Hindus were forbidden to travel across the sea. Sea trade was then outsourced to the Arabs who were later replaced by Europeans.

  The Symplegades or ‘floating rocks’ are located in the present-day Bosphorus Strait that connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

  The floating rocks are a popular metaphor. For example, in Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement, published in 1929, I.A. Richards describes excessive intuitive reading and excessive literal reading of poetry as the Symplegades or the floating rocks that wreck understanding of poetry.

  Aeetes

  Aeetes, king of Colchis, welcomed Jason and on learning of his mission said, ‘You can have the Fleece, but you must prove you are worthy of it. First, you must plough a field with the help of fire-breathing bulls. Then sow the teeth of a dragon in the field. And finally, defeat the never-sleeping serpent that guards the tree on which the Golden Fleece rests.’

  As Jason wondered how he would achieve these feats, help came from an unexpected quarter: the daughter of Aeetes, a sorceress called Medea, who had fallen in love with him.

  Medea gave him a special ointment to apply on his body that would allow him to withstand the fire of the bulls. Thus anointed, Jason was able to subdue the beasts, yoke them and make them drag the hoe across the field to plough it.

  When Jason sowed the dragon teeth in the field, a whole bunch of demon warriors sprouted from the ground. They would have surely killed Jason had he not done as Medea had advised and thrown a boulder in their midst, confusing them as to whom to attack. Blaming one another for hurling the boulder, the demons attacked each other, leaving Jason unscathed.

  Jason then sprayed the serpent guarding the tree with a potion given to him by Medea. The dragon fell asleep, giving Jason just enough time to pull the fleece from the branches of the tree.

  Thus, thanks to Medea’s help, Jason succeeded in fetching the legendary Golden Fleece.

  The Sanskrit Adbhuta Ramayana, composed 500 years ago, tells the story of the many adventures of the monkey-god Hanuman in Patala, the subterranean world, as he tries to rescue Ram who has been abducted by the sorcerer Mahiravana. In this story, which follows a rather linear structure like most Greek myths, Hanuman encounters and overpowers many demons and monsters. Like most Greek heroes, Hanuman is the son of a god, Vayu, the Vedic god of wind, and a mortal mother, Anjana, who raises him with her mortal husband, Kesari.

  As Ariadne helps Theseus out of love, so does Medea help Jason. Is the victory of Jason then the work of Aphrodite?

  As for many Greek myths, the source of this story is not just written works but als
o artwork found on vases. Many of these illustrations show Jason emerging from the mouth of the never-sleeping serpent of Colchis, which does not match the description found in the written sources. Also, in these, he is helped by Athena, not Medea.

  The tale of seeds giving birth to warriors mirrors the story of Cadmus sowing dragon teeth. In Greek mythology, humans are born of clay. That is how Prometheus created mankind. However, they can also be created by sowing dragon teeth. Deucalion and Pyrrha created a new line of humanity after Zeus’s great flood by throwing rocks over their shoulders.

  Poseidon ravished a nymph taking the form of a ram to sire the flying ram with Golden Fleece given by Nephele to her children.

  Rationalists, who see myth as proto-history, interpret the myth of the Argonaut expedition as indicative of bringing animal husbandry or grain cultivation from the East to Greece. Or it might have been about ‘washing gold’ from streams using sheepskin.

  Apsyrtus

  Aeetes, who was convinced that Jason would fail in his mission, was furious when the lad triumphed. He was angrier still when he learned that his own daughter had helped Jason succeed. He ordered his soldiers to stop Jason from escaping from Colchis by any means. Unfortunately, by the time the soldiers reached the port, the Argo had already set sail, with Jason aboard and Medea by his side.

  Aeetes decided to pursue the Argo and bring back both the Fleece and his treacherous daughter. His ships were the fastest in the sea and caught up with the Argo in no time. But as his ship approached the Argo, he found pieces of flesh floating on the sea: they were parts of a human body that Aeetes recognized as his dear son, Apsyrtus.