The Greek Myths

by Robin Waterfield, Kathryn Waterfield

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

The Greek Myths contains some of the most thrilling, romantic, and unforgettable stories in all human history. From Achilles rampant on the fields of Troy, to the gods at sport on Mount Olympus; from Icarus flying too close to the sun, to the superhuman feats of Heracles, Theseus, and the wily Odysseus, these timeless tales exert an eternal fascination and inspiration that have endured for millennia and influenced cultures from ancient to modern. Beginning at the dawn of human civilization, when the Titan Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and offered mankind hope, the reader is immediately immersed in the majestic, magical, and mythical world of the Greek gods and heroes. As the tales unfold, renowned classicist Robin Waterfield creates a sweeping panorama of the romance, intrigues, heroism, humour, sensuality, and brutality of the Greek myths and legends. The terrible curse that plagued the royal houses of Mycenae and Thebes, Jason and the golden fleece, Perseus and the dread Gorgon, the wooden horse and the sack of Troy - these amazing stories have influenced art and literature from the Iron Age to the present day. And far from being just a treasure trove of timeless tales, The Greek Myths is a catalogue of Greek myth in art through the ages, and a notable work of literature in its own right.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 381

Sample

The book you hold in your hands contains a retelling of the traditional Greek myths and legends. You will meet all the famous and familiar stories (and hopefully some new ones), but you may also find some unfamiliar details. Retelling the Greek myths is not a simple matter, above all because very few, if any, of the myths exist in a single version. Often, in fact, there are downright contradictions between extant versions of a tale. There is no such thing, then, as the definitive version of any myth; in fact, the more famous a story became, the more versions there were of it.

This variability is essential to the Greek myths. They did not exist in single, monolithic, or ‘authentic’ versions. Consider the work of the great tragedians of Athens in the fifth century BCE – Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They took the traditional tales and tweaked them for their own reasons – often to make a political or ethical point relevant to their immediate audience. As long as the heart of the story remained unchanged, or was intact in the background, writers were free to add and subtract as they chose.

This is how the stories retain their vitality. By the same token, Ovid’s often fanciful retellings in the early years of the first century CE; or Ariosto’s adaptation of the Perseus myth in Orlando furioso (early sixteenth century); or the 1967 Star Trek episode ‘Who Mourns for Adonis’; or Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 movie Troy; or Rick Riordan’s series of Percy Jackson books for children; or the thousands of other examples that could be given – all serve to perpetuate in their own ways and for their own purposes the vitality of the ancient Greek tales of war and adventure, magic and miracles, love, jealousy, murder, rape, and revenge.

The ancient Greeks loved stories – so much that they illustrated their walls, temples, high-end tableware, ceremonial armour, and even their furniture with artwork that was intended to tell tales. But for them the stories served additional purposes, over and above entertainment. When they told the myths to their children, they expected them to be educational as well as exciting: to teach about the nature of the gods and goddesses, and about their awesome powers; to illustrate right behaviour for mortal men; to see that, though the gods are relatively omnipotent, and Fate is unavoidable, it is still a mortal’s wilful activity that brings disaster down on his or her head. Other myths served more straightforwardly to give emotional power to the foundation of a community, to make a religious ritual more meaningful, or to speculate about the origin of the universe.

No myths endure unless they give a community an underlying layer of meaningfulness. Nevertheless, the ancient Greek myths and legends have proved to have the astonishing ability to transcend their origins, the particular cultural contexts in which they arose, and be relevant within our societies today, as if they tapped into some deep layer of the human mind. For us, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to enter the stream of classical myth, to allow it to flow through us and, we hope, to excite and engage further generations of readers.

ROBIN AND KATHRYN WATERFIELD

The gods were bored, becalmed in the ocean of time. It’s all very well being immortal, but time does start to weigh heavily after a few dozen millennia. Each of them had his or her own provinces and powers, as Aphrodite was the embodiment of sexual attraction, but long since she had exhausted all the possibilities of fun among her fellow deities.

Boredom isn’t stillness; boredom is sameness. The gods’ lives flowed on with endless monotony; no century was really any different from any other century, and there was no prospect that the next century would be any different from the last. They needed amusement and entertainment, but it wasn’t just that: they found themselves longing even for opposition. Opposition would spark interest, create twists and knots in the smooth unwinding yarn of the years.

They decided to populate the earth. It would be the great experiment. Perhaps this would give their lives meaning; if not, they could always scrap that attempt and start again. Zeus, king of the gods, enjoined his extended family to get busy, and they fell to their task with relish. Before long, they had moulded all the creatures of the earth out of clay. Once all had their shapes, the gods gave Prometheus the job of equipping each species with its powers.

Now, Prometheus was a Titan, one of the elder gods who had been overthrown by Zeus and his fellow Olympians. The Titans, led by Zeus’ father Cronus, had not given up without a struggle, but they had lost the war. Prometheus’ brothers, Menoetius and Atlas, had been severely punished – Menoetius cast down into the dungeons of Tartarus, and Atlas, the largest of the Titans, forced to carry on his shoulders the burden of the heavens for all eternity.



The Titans Atlas and Prometheus; each paid a heavy price for challenging Zeus’ authority.[1]

But Prometheus had persuaded his mother Themis, the goddess of right and order, to side with Zeus during the war, and so he and his twin brother had escaped punishment and were living in the palaces and high halls of Olympus, along with the other immortals. Prometheus was smart, his mind endlessly shimmering with ideas and schemes. His brother was quite the opposite. In fact, Epimetheus was … average. He could carry out assigned tasks well enough, but lacked creativity and moved dully. He was inclined to make mistakes if left to his own devices.

So Zeus gave the job of equipping the animal species to Prometheus. But Epimetheus was jealous: ‘You get all the fun jobs,’ he complained. ‘Let me have this one.’ When Prometheus hesitated, Epimetheus said: ‘When I’ve finished, you can inspect my work. You’ll have the last say.’

Prometheus agreed on these terms, and Epimetheus set to work. To some creatures he gave strength, but not speed; others, those he left weaker, he made fleet of foot. Small ones were protected by their ability to take off into the air, or burrow inside the earth; large ones were protected by their sheer size. Some had tusks or claws, while others had thick hides to save them from tusks and claws. Their outsides were designed in various ways to shield them from the extremes of heat and cold to which they would be exposed. Their insides were designed to cope with all the various foodstuffs of the earth, with no species in danger of exhausting its supply: some preferred roots, others leaves or grass, and yet others the blood and flesh of weaker creatures. But then the weaker creatures gained the boon of deep hiding places and many offspring, while the stronger ones produced fewer.

Epimetheus was pleased with his work. He had ensured the perpetuation of all species. His masters would be delighted. But first he had to satisfy his brother. And Prometheus was pleasantly surprised. His brother had indeed done a good job. He inspected all the animal prototypes, hearing Epimetheus’ explanations and nodding in agreement. But there, right at the end: there was the problem.

Lost in the shadows and dust of Epimetheus’ workshop, Prometheus found a neglected clay form. Naked, with no hoofs or claws, no speed or strength, no natural home for refuge, no ability to live well on raw food, no impenetrable hide – nothing. This lump of clay had nothing. But it was time. The day appointed by Zeus for the population of the earth was at hand.

‘What about this one? What are your plans for it? Anyway, what is it?’

‘It’s a human being,’ replied Epimetheus, close to tears as he realized his foolish mistake. ‘And I have no plans for it. I just forgot it, and now I’ve used up all the powers we were given. There’s nothing left for it.’ Prometheus thought for a little while. ‘All right. There’s nothing to be done now. Zeus wants the earth populated right away, with all the species, and we’ll just have to let this … human … fend for itself for a while. Meanwhile, I’ll try to think of something.’ And so, out of the gods’ boredom, the earth was populated with all the animal species.

* * *

The gods were truly delighted with their new toys. Every aspect of life on the earth came into existence on that day. Goodness was henceforth defined as whether the brief part danced by a creature on the earth’s stage was pleasing in the gods’ eyes. It amused the gods to remind their creatures, in various ways, who their masters were, and to test their goodness. Just when everything was going well, they would cause a flood, or earthquake, or famine, or personal disaster. And they devised more and more complex dances for their toys.

Prometheus pondered ceaselessly the problem of what to do to ensure the survival of human beings. He felt a strange kinship with these creatures, as though he had made them himself. He felt that they had the potential to resemble himself and his brother – to reach the same heights of brilliance and depths of criminal negligence. But, as things were, their lives were little better than those of the dumb beasts around them. They soon learnt to huddle together in caves, to afford themselves some kind of protection rather than going out in search of food one by one, but still it wouldn’t take long for the other creatures of the earth to eliminate these defenceless men. As a first measure, then, Prometheus simply invested them with his own essence.

It came like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the dark places. It came like the most beautiful dawn, rising up out of the sea. It came like a two-edged sword, dividing and yet forging the possibility of a higher union. It was called intelligence, and with intelligence came speech. At first, the sounds they made were meaningless and confused, but they slowly developed articulate words. By agreeing among themselves which sounds stood for which objects, they established means by which they could communicate and pass on knowledge about the world, starting with their own safety. They began to develop rules to govern their behaviour, so that they could live together peaceably, without preying on one another.

But with Promethean intelligence, these first men (for there were as yet no women) also gained the ability to fear the future and felt the need to protect themselves against mere possibilities. Now, the gods were not aware that the intelligence of these human creatures had been the gift of Prometheus; they assumed that this was their special ability, just as other creatures were strong or swift or otherwise formidable. But they were quick to see its potential. Men now feared the future, and the gods had the power to make the future better or worse. So, they said, let’s make it so that men have to ask us, to beg us, to plead with us, for the better instead of the worse. And let’s make it so that they have to ask us in the right way, otherwise we shall just ignore their requests. This idea pleased all the gods. It would afford them endless amusement.

So the gods invented sacrifice. Men were to pray to them for what they felt they needed, and their prayers were to be wafted up to the heavens by the smoke of sacrifice. The sacrificial victim should be something valuable, a gift freely given to the gods. The richer the sacrifice, the thicker the smoke, and the better the chances that the gods on Olympus would smell the prayer. But none of this was going to happen unless men had fire.

Prometheus was not slow to understand the importance of fire to his wards. Fire could make up for his brother’s carelessness by giving humans the essential tool for their survival and development. They could cook their food to make it digestible; heat kilns to make pottery; keep warm in winter; forge metals. Fire is the key that opens all these doors and lays the foundation of human life. Without it, there is no possibility of advancement or civilization. With it, and with Promethean intelligence, who knew whether men might not become as gods themselves? At any rate, fire would be the foundation of a civilized and communal life, which would protect them from other creatures.

So the gods came down from the palaces and high halls of Olympus to earth, to see that this idea of theirs was carried out in the right way. With Prometheus himself acting as the champion of his people, the negotiations were soon over. Zeus would give men fire, and in return men were to sacrifice to the gods, giving the gods the best bits of the sacrificial victim. ‘And let what is done here today be final,’ Zeus proclaimed, his voice like thunder, echoing from the surrounding hills. ‘This is the Day of Fire!’

An unblemished cow was found for the first sacrifice. Zeus left it to Prometheus to divide the beast into two halves, a portion for the gods and a lesser portion for men. Ever anxious to look after the interests of men, whom he loved, Prometheus the prankster played a trick on Zeus. He wrapped all the fine bits of meat in the cow’s stomach, so that it resembled a gigantic haggis, which should contain only offal; and he covered the cow’s skeleton with a layer of gleaming fat, and stuck the hide back on, to make it look an attractive whole. And Zeus chose the fair-seeming, but less nutritious portion. Not that he or the gods needed meat; they wanted only the smoke of a sweeter sacrifice.

What was done there that day was final, as decreed irrevocably by Zeus. For ever afterwards, the gods had to be satisfied with receiving the lesser portion of every blood sacrifice, with the smoke bearing it up to the palaces and high halls of Olympus, along with the prayers and petitions of mortal men. For so it was done on the Day of Fire.

But Zeus was furious when he discovered the trick, and decided to wipe humankind off the face of the earth. He would not do this by flood or famine or overwhelming disaster. He wanted them to suffer, and he wanted Prometheus to see them suffer. He simply withdrew his offer of fire. Without fire, and without the arts and crafts that fire could supply, humankind would die out. It would take time, as the other creatures preyed on them, but that would only make it more interesting, and a more fitting punishment.

Prometheus chose a desperate expedient. He knew the consequences, knew that he was destined to be the wounded healer. He accompanied the rest of the gods back to Olympus, and immediately stole into the workshop of Hephaestus, the blacksmith god. There was always fire to be found there. Concealing and preserving the precious flower of fire in the stalk of a giant fennel plant, he brought it down from heaven to earth. It was still the Day of Fire: what was done that day was final. Prometheus gave fire, life, and civilization to mankind, and it could not be taken back. Men raised high the burning brands and danced all night in celebration. They were safe now; they would survive, and even, in ages to come, make themselves the dominant species on the broad face of the earth.

But the wrath of Zeus fell fiercely on Prometheus. Hephaestus forged adamantine chains and Prometheus, bound, was dragged from Olympus down to earth, to the Caucasian mountains. There he was splayed out naked, and pinned to the rock by his wrists and ankles with the adamantine chains, which for security were driven lengthwise through the centre of a mighty pillar and deep into the bedrock of the mountain. He had no chance of escape, but that was not the worst of it. Every day a gigantic eagle came and tore open his stomach and gorged on his liver; every night the wound healed again, to feed the monstrous bird the next day. There was no end to this torment: Prometheus was immortal. Death could not limit his pain, and he was sustained only by the joyful thought of how much grief he had caused the gods.

Even the gods’ anger abates in time. After thirty thousand years had gone by, Zeus reprieved the tormented trickster, sending his favourite son Heracles to kill the eagle. True, Prometheus was still unable to move, but half of his agony was over. In gratitude, he gave Heracles information that would help him complete one of his labours, as we shall see.

Still the remorseless years rolled by, and the time came when Zeus conceived a desire for the sea goddess Thetis. This was the moment Prometheus had been waiting for, for he knew a secret: that Thetis was destined to bear a son who would be greater than his father. If Zeus was the father, then, his son by Thetis would overthrow him, just as Zeus had overthrown his own father Cronus. He bargained the information for his release, which Zeus allowed him, provided that he never again made trouble. He was to wear a garland for ever, encircling his head in remembrance of the chains that had bound him. Prometheus was content to sink into obscurity: along with his intelligence, his human wards had inherited the power to tease and trouble the gods. His work was done.

For the theft of fire, Zeus punished Prometheus, but men suffered his wrath as well. Of course: he couldn’t allow such a direct threat to his authority to pass as if unnoticed. But the time hasn’t yet come for that tale. Let’s turn now to the immortal gods. Let’s leave humankind, for a while, with some hope.



Prometheus was chained to the Caucasian mountains, where an eagle feasted daily upon his liver.[2]

In the beginning, there was… nothing. Picture it as a gap, a void filled with swirling movement, not emptiness. There was nothing that held together, nothing distinct, nothing measurable by any form of measurement. There were no borders or limits, but within the void appeared Gaia, the Earth, just as when building a house the foundation comes first.

And in the depths at the lowest extent of deep-rooted Gaia was Tartarus, the place of punishment, the world beneath the world. Earth and Tartarus emerged spontaneously, but Love is the fundamental creative force. Love, coeval with Gaia, governs the subsequent stages of creation.

Gaia and Tartarus were surrounded by the darkness of night, but Night blended with Darkness and bore Brightness and Day. And so time came into being, measured by the onward-rolling day and night. By herself Gaia, the Earth, bore Uranus, the Heaven, to cover her completely. Heaven lay with Earth, and she conceived and bore Ocean, the water encircling the continents of Earth, and Tethys, the waterways within the continents of Earth.



From the prolific mingling of the waters the earth was clothed, and from the mingling of Earth and Uranus there emerged, among many other children, the Titans, twelve in number: Cronus and Rhea, Hyperion and Theia, Iapetus (the father of Prometheus), and the rest of the gods of old. Their names now are mostly unfamiliar, for these were the days of yore. Under the rule of Cronus the world was of a different order, and it is not easy to comprehend it, except to say that it was primitive.

Wide-shining Theia bore for Hyperion the blazing sun, the radiant moon, and the rosy-fingered light of dawn, which gently fills the sky even before the sun rises. Helios the sun-god drives his golden chariot from east to west, and sails in a golden vessel each night on Ocean back again to the east. Helios had a son called Phaethon, the gleamer, who was allowed by his father, in a moment of weakness, to drive his chariot for one day, much later in the earth’s history. But none apart from Helios can control the blazing chariot drawn by four indefatigable steeds, and Phaethon hurtled to earth in a ball of flame. Much of the earth’s surface was scorched and became desert, and the skin of those dwelling there was burnt black for all time. Phaethon’s sisters were turned into trees, and the heavy tears of grief they shed for their brother solidified as amber.



Disaster struck when Helios allowed Phaethon to drive the Sun chariot for a day.[3]

In later times, sisters Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn, fell in love with mortal men. Endymion was a shepherd, who slept each night in a mountainside cave in Caria. Selene caught a glimpse of him from on high, and as her pale gleam fell on his features she fell too, such is the force of love’s attraction. Every night she lay with him while he lay cradled in sleep, not knowing that his reality was stranger than any dream. Selene loved him so much that she could not bear the thought that he would age and die. She implored Zeus to let him remain as he was, and the father of gods and men granted Endymion eternal youth and eternal sleep – except that he awoke each night when Selene visited him to satisfy her longing.

Eos enjoyed numerous affairs, for once she went to bed with Ares, and in jealous anger Aphrodite condemned her to restless ardour. One of those with whom she fell in love was the proud hunter, Tithonus, as handsome as are all the princes of Troy; and she begged Zeus that her mate should live for ever.

Zeus granted her wish, but the love-befuddled goddess had forgotten to ask also for eternal youth for her beloved. In the days when their passion was new, the graceful goddess bore Memnon, destined to rule the Ethiopians for a time and meet his end before the walls of Troy. But as the years and centuries passed, Tithonus aged and shrank, until he was no more than a grasshopper, and Eos shut him away and loved him no more. If asked, he would say that death was his dearest wish.

And Helios too dallied for a while with a mortal maid, Leucothoe by name. He thought of nothing but her, and for the sake of a glimpse of her beauty he would rise too early and set too late, after dawdling on his way, until all the seasons of the earth were awry. The god had to consummate his lust, or the chaos would continue. He appeared to her as her own mother, and dismissed her handmaidens, so that he could be alone with her. Then he revealed himself to her; she was flattered by his ardent attention and put up no resistance. But when her father found out he buried her alive by night, so that the sun might not see the deed, and by the time morning came there was nothing he could do to revive his beloved. But, planted as she was in the soil, he transformed her into the frankincense bush, so that her sweet fragrance should please the gods for all time.

Now, Uranus, the starry sky, loathed his children – not just the twelve Titans, but the three Cyclopes, one-eyed giants, and the three monstrous Hecatonchires, each with fifty heads and a hundred hands. Every time a child was born, Uranus seized it and shoved it back inside its mother’s womb, deep in the darkness of Earth’s innards.

In the agony of her unceasing labour pains, Earth called out to the children within her, imploring their help. But they were still and cowered in fear of their mighty father, all except crafty Cronus, the youngest son. Only he was bold enough to undertake the impious deed. He took the sickle of adamant that his mother had forged and lay in wait for his father. Soon Uranus came to lie with Earth and spread himself over her completely. Cronus emerged from the folds where he was hiding, wielding his sickle, and with one mighty stroke he sliced off his father’s genitals and tossed them far back, over his shoulder.



After Cronus defeated his father Uranus, his siblings were freed from Gaia’s tortured womb.[4]

The blood as it scattered here and there, and spilled on the soil, gave rise to the Giants and the Furies, the ghouls who sometimes, with grim irony, are called the Eumenides, the kindly ones. They protect the sacred bonds of family life, and hunt down those who deliberately murder blood kin. They drink the blood of the victim and hound the hapless criminal to madness and the blessed release of death. They are jet black, their breath is foul, and their eyes ooze suppurating pus.

But the genitals themselves fell into the surging sea near the island of Cythera and were carried on currents to sea-girt Cyprus. From the foam that spurted from the genitals grew a fair maiden, and as she stepped out from the white-capped waves onto the island grass grew under her slender feet. The Seasons attended her and placed on her head a crown of gold, and fitted her with ear-rings of copper and golden flowers; around her neck they placed finely wrought golden necklaces, that the eyes of all might be drawn to her shapely breasts.

Her name was Aphrodite, the foam-born goddess, and there is none among men and gods who can resist even her merest glance. She is known as the Lady of Cythera and the Lady of Cyprus; and henceforth Love became her attendant.

Cronus, the youngest of the children of Uranus, usurped his father’s place as ruler of the world – but inherited his fear, the typical fear of a tyrant. For his parents warned him that he in his turn would be replaced by one of his sons. Each time, then, that a child was born to Rhea, his sister–wife, he swallowed it to prevent its growth. Five he swallowed in this way: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Pregnant once more, Rhea appealed to her mother Earth, who promised to rear the sixth child herself. And so, when her time came, Rhea went and bore Zeus deep inside a Cretan cave, while to Cronus she gave a boulder, disguised in swaddling clothes, for him to swallow.



Each time Rhea bore a child to Cronus he consumed it.[5]

In the cave on Mount Dicte, the infant Zeus was fed by bees and nursed by nymphs, daughters of Earth, on goat’s milk, foaming fresh and warm from the udder. Young men, mountain-dwelling Curetes, wove outside the cave a martial dance and clashed their spears on their shields to cover the sound of infant wailing. As he grew older, Amalthea, the keeper of the goat, brought the boy all the produce of the earth in an old horn.

And so the mountains of Crete are sacred ground, and even now the Cretans summon the god by means of dance, and he replenishes their hearts and their crops. And Zeus flourished and grew in might, but in his heart he nurtured his mother’s dreams of vengeance.

Zeus laid his plans with skill and cunning – with his witchy consort Metis, whose name means ‘skill’ and ‘cunning’. There was nothing this shape-shifting daughter of Ocean and Tethys didn’t know about herbs, and she concocted for Zeus a powerful drug, strong enough to overcome even mighty Cronus. Together, and with the help of grandmother Earth, they drugged Cronus with narcotic honey. And while he was comatose they fed him the emetic.

The result was exactly as intended: Cronus vomited up in order first the boulder, still wrapped in mouldering rags, and then Zeus’ brothers Poseidon and Hades, and then his sisters Hera and Demeter, and finally Hestia, oldest and youngest. For the forthcoming war – for war was inevitable – these were Zeus’ bosom allies. Cronus, for his part, was joined by all his fellow Titans and their offspring, with the notable exception of Themis, for right was on Zeus’ side and victory was destined to be his.

Zeus made his headquarters . . .