A Treasury of Deception

by Michael Farquhar

  Appendix III

  Ten Classic Deceptions from Greek Mythology

  1. Cronus, lord of the universe, knew a son would someday supplant him, just as he had usurped his own father, Uranus. To avoid such a fate, Cronus swallowed each of his children as soon as his wife Rhea delivered them. They lived inside him, and there could do him no harm. Rhea was distressed by what Cronus did to their children, however. Five had already been swallowed, and she didn’t want to lose another. So when the sixth, named Zeus, was born, Rhea was ready. She wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus. The great god swallowed the deception, while the baby god Zeus was spirited away and hidden in a cave on the island of Crete.

  When Zeus grew to be a young man, he sought to defeat his father. But his wife Metis, goddess of prudence, warned him that he could not conquer Cronus alone; he needed allies. So Metis went to Cronus and tricked him into eating an herb that she said would make him invincible to all enemies. Instead, it made him so violently ill that he vomited up not only the stone he thought was Zeus, but his five other children as well. They were the gods Poseidon and Hades, and the goddesses Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. The divine siblings united against Cronus, who fled, and Zeus became lord of the universe.

  2. Zeus married his sister Hera, who became queen of the gods. She was a jealous spouse who hated all of Zeus’s other wives. Indeed, she had refused to marry him because of the other women, but the great god won her with a sly ruse. He created a thunderstorm and transformed himself into a little bird in distress. Hera took pity on the poor little creature when it flew into her arms for comfort during the storm and held it close to give it warmth. It was then that Zeus—who used similar tricks to win other women—reverted to himself, and Hera found herself snuggling her mighty brother.

  Zeus went to great lengths to hide his other wives from Hera’s jealous rages, but she usually saw through his deceptions. Once she spotted a storm cloud inside of which she suspected Zeus harbored one of his wives. She raced into the cloud and found her husband. With him, however, was not a woman but a beautiful cow. Hera wasn’t fooled, though she pretended to be, and asked Zeus to give her the cow. He could not deny such a simple request without betraying himself, so he acquiesced. Hera then took possession of the cow, who was really Zeus’s wife Io, and tormented her mercilessly.

  Hera also hated Zeus’s wife Semele, the mortal mother of Dionysus, god of wine. One day she appeared before Semele disguised as an old crone and pretended to be friendly. She asked Semele who her husband was, and what kind of man he might be. Semele proudly answered that he was none other than the great thunder god. Hera feigned skepticism, and suggested he might not be who he claimed. She then suggested that Semele ask Zeus to reveal himself in all his glory to prove that he really was lord of the universe. So when Zeus returned to her, Semele asked him to grant her a wish. He swore a sacred oath that he would give her anything, but was then horrified to learn what she wanted. No mortal could withstand the spectacle of Zeus in his full radiance, hundreds of times brighter than the sun. He begged Semele to change her mind, but the seed of doubt Hera had planted made her adamant. Distraught, but bound by his sacred promise, Zeus reluctantly revealed himself and Semele was instantly reduced to ashes.

  3. Zeus had many children, seven of whom shared his glory atop Mount Olympus. His son Hermes, god of thieves and others who lived by their wits, was the cleverest. When just a day old, he sneaked into the pasture of his brother Apollo, god of light and music, and selected fifty of Apollo’s best cows to steal. He wrapped the hoofs of the cows with bark to disguise their prints, and tied brooms to their tails so they would erase their own tracks. Hermes hid the cows in a grove, after sacrificing two of them to the gods, then raced back to his mother and pretended to be asleep. But Apollo wasn’t fooled. An oracle revealed to him who had stolen the cows, and he confronted Hermes. The baby god denied it, claiming to be too young to know what a cow was, let alone how to steal one. Enraged,Apollo chased Hermes up to Olympus, where their father, Zeus, benevolently told his younger son to give the cows back. Apollo was satisfied, until he realized two cows were missing. To quell his brother’s renewed fury, Hermes produced a lyre he had created by stringing the entrails of the sacrificed cows across the shell of a tortoise. Mesmerized by the music, Apollo offered Hermes his whole herd in exchange for the instrument. Hermes agreed, and harmony between the two divine brothers was restored.

  4. Sisyphus, king of Corinth, was clever enough to fool the gods. He had angered Zeus by revealing to the river-god Asopus where Zeus had taken Asopus’s daughter to elope. In his fury, Zeus asked his brother Hades, lord of the underworld, to take Sisyphus away to his dark realm and punish him for his insolence. But when Hades came to Sisyphus, the king asked him why Hermes, whose job it was to lead souls to the underworld, hadn’t come to fetch him. As Hades searched for an appropriate answer, Sisyphus deftly wound a chain around him and kept him prisoner. With Hades thus bound, the world was thrown into chaos. No one could die. It was only when the gods threatened to make Sisyphus’s life miserable that he let Hades go. Order was restored, and people could die as the Fates decreed.

  The first person to be claimed was, of course, Sisyphus. But the king was prepared with another trick when Hermes came for him. He told his wife not to hold a funeral or put a coin under his tongue to pay for passage across the river Styx into the underworld. Hades was shocked when Sisyphus arrived the way a poor beggar would. His wife had to be punished for her neglect, or a bad precedent might be set. So Hades sent Sisyphus back to the living world to teach his wife respect. This was just what Sisyphus wanted, and he was able to spend many more happy years with his wife. Hades had been fooled once again. In the end, though, the king, like all mortals, had to die. When he reached the underworld for the second time, he was given a task that would leave him little time to come up with any more tricks. He was made to push a boulder up a steep hill, but each time he neared the top, the boulder would slip from his hands and roll back down. And so it went for eternity.

  5. Heracles, a mortal son of Zeus, was the strongest man who ever lived. But because he was the son of one of Zeus’s other wives, Hera hated him and made him insane. Out of his mind, Heracles mistook his own children for wild beasts and killed them. He was horrified by his crime when his senses returned, and sought to atone by performing twelve tasks for his cousin Eurystheus, king of Mycene. Hera helped Eurystheus devise the most difficult tasks imaginable, one of which was to find the secret garden of the Hesperides and bring the king three golden apples from a tree that grew there. On the way to the garden, Heracles came across Prometheus, who had been chained to a mountain by Zeus as punishment for having given mankind fire. Heracles took pity on him and broke his chains, after which the grateful god warned him that only an immortal could pick the golden apples.

  Near the garden, the titan Atlas bore the sky on his shoulders. Heracles asked the god to pick the apples for him, which Atlas agreed to do, provided Heracles take the sky while he performed the task. Heracles did, but when Atlas returned he refused to take back the heavy burden. Heracles, known for his strength, not his brains, nevertheless managed to outwit the god. He feigned resignation, and asked that Atlas just hold up the sky briefly while he adjusted the padding on his shoulders to make the weight more bearable. Atlas found this reasonable enough, but when he took back the sky for what he thought would be a moment, Heracles triumphantly walked away with the apples.

  6. Heracles tricked Atlas, but later fell victim himself to a deadly deception. He married a princess from Caledonia named Deianira, and they made a happy couple. One day as they traveled, Heracles and Deianira came across a swollen stream. Heracles forded it easily, but Deianira was afraid. A centaur named Nessus came along and politely offered to carry her across. Now like all centaurs—creatures that were half men and half horse—Nessus was lustful and vulgar, and as he arrived with Deianira on the other shore he decided to carry her off. As he galloped away, Heracles sh
ot him with a poisonous arrow and he fell to the ground. Before he died, Nessus told Deianira to collect some of his blood and save it. If she ever felt she was losing her husband’s love, he said, all she had to do was rub some of the blood on his tunic and his ardor would be restored.

  Some time later, after Heracles won a great victory while away at war, he sent a messenger home to pick up his best tunic for a victory celebration. Deianira believed, however, that Heracles wanted the garment to impress another woman. So before she sent it to him she coated it with some of the dead centaur’s blood. When Heracles put on the tunic he was overcome by a burning agony, for the centaur’s blood had extremely toxic poison in it from the arrow Heracles shot into him. And though he was too strong to succumb to the poison outright, the agony was so great that Heracles ordered his men to build a pyre and burn him upon it. As the flames grew around him, Zeus drew him up to Olympus to live with the gods forever.

  7. Daedalus was a marvelously skilled architect and inventor who built the great palace of Cnossus for King Minos of Crete. Underneath the palace Daedalus designed a labyrinth from which escape was impossible. There lived the Minotaur, a monstrous creature, half man and half bull, that ate only human flesh. Every nine years fourteen Athenian youths were sent to Crete and sacrificed to the Minotaur as a tribute to King Minos to prevent him from attacking Athens. One year a young hero named Theseus, vowing to slay the Minotaur, volunteered to go to Crete in place of one of the sacrificial youths. But when Ariadne, the beautiful daughter of King Minos, saw Theseus she despaired. She hated to see the handsome hero devoured by the monster and begged Daedalus to help him. The inventor gave Theseus a magic ball of thread that led him through the maze and to the Minotaur’s lair. There Theseus surprised the monster and killed it with his bare hands. He then freed the other Athenians and escaped from Crete with Ariadne.

  King Minos was enraged when he discovered his daughter had fled with the Athenians and imprisoned Daedalus. But the clever inventor fashioned wings from feathers and beeswax and escaped with his son Icarus (who flew too high and fell back to earth). Minos pursued Daedalus to Sicily, where the local king denied that he harbored the escaped man. Unconvinced, Minos devised a scheme to prove that Daedalus was at the king’s palace. He sent the king of Sicily a conch shell and offered a sack of gold to anyone who could wind a thread through the shell’s passages. The king enlisted the help of Daedalus, who after some thought found a solution. He tied the thread to the leg of an ant and placed the tiny creature at one end of the shell. On the other end he left a dab of honey. The ant smelled the honey and wound its way through the shell to get to it. When the king of Sicily claimed the gold, Minos had his proof that Daedalus was in the palace and demanded his surrender. No one else could have figured a way to thread the shell. Seeming to acquiesce, the king of Sicily invited Minos to dinner, after which he promised to deliver Daedalus. But as Minos bathed before the feast, as was customary, Daedalus sent boiling hot water through the faucet and scalded him to death.

  8. The beautiful sorceress Medea helped her love Jason through many perils in his quest for the Golden Fleece. But a trick she used to protect him from his uncle, King Pelias of Iolcus, earned her the wrath of the gods. The king had promised Jason his throne if he could obtain the fleece and bring it to him. Yet when he returned with the prize, Jason learned that Pelias had killed his father and meant to kill him as well. Medea intervened. Disguised as an old witch, she entered Iolcus and announced that she had magic herbs which could restore youth. When King Pelias insisted that she prove her claim, Medea took an old ram, cut it into pieces, put the pieces in a cauldron of boiling water, and sprinkled in her herbs.

  Pelias was amazed to see a young lamb emerge from the pot, and asked Medea to make him young again, too. The sorceress demurred. She told the king only his daughters could perform the necessary ritual. So the daughters of Pelias reluctantly cut their father to pieces, and put him in the boiling water. When they turned to Medea for the magic herbs, however, they were horrified to discover she was gone. The gods disdained Medea’s cruel trick and turned from her. Then, after all she had done for him, she eventually lost Jason’s love as well. To avenge herself, she sent Jason’s new wife a beautiful robe as a wedding present. It was tainted, and when the bride put it on she was consumed by flames. With her anger still aroused, Medea killed the two sons she had with Jason, and, as he cursed her, flew off in a chariot driven by dragons.

  9. The gods gathered for the wedding of Peleus, the king of Thessaly, and the sea-nymph Thetis. Only Eris, goddess of strife, wasn’t invited, and in her fury she threw a golden apple of discord among the wedding guests with the announcement that the fairest goddess should have it. Hera, Athena (goddess of wisdom), and Aphrodite (goddess of love) all fought over the apple, and the dispute became so heated that Zeus decided Paris, a handsome prince of Troy, should settle it by awarding the apple to the one he thought was the fairest. Each goddess made extravagant promises to Paris if he would select her, but the prince settled on Aphrodite because she promised him the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world.

  Now it so happened that Helen of Troy was the most beautiful, but she was already married to Menelaus, king of Sparta—one of many who had sought Helen’s hand. All of her suitors had vowed to her father that they would abide by his decision as to who would marry her, and to help the victor defend her if anyone should ever try to take her away. So, when Paris came to Sparta and took Helen—after Aphrodite’s son Eros helpfully shot an arrow of love into her heart—her previous suitors were bound by their oath to help Menelaus reclaim her. Most came forward immediately when called, except Odysseus, who was happily married to Helen’s cousin Penelope and had no wish to engage in such a troublesome affair. He pretended to be insane when a Greek leader named Palamedes was sent for him. He yoked an ass and an ox to his plough and began to sow salt. Palamedes saw through the deception, however, and tested Odysseus by placing his infant son in the path of the plough. When Odysseus swerved to avoid his child, he showed he wasn’t mad and thus could no longer escape his vow.

  Achilles was another reluctant warrior. His mother, Thetis, at whose wedding Eris had tossed the apple of discord, warned him that he would be killed if he joined the expedition against Troy and hid him in the court of King Lycomedes disguised as a woman. Odysseus, charged with finding Achilles, learned where he was and came to the king’s court dressed like a merchant. Among his wares were beautiful ornaments for women, mixed in with various arms of war. While the women of the court were enthralled by the ornaments, Achilles handled the arms and thereby betrayed himself. Odysseus then persuaded him to do his duty.

  10. The Olympian gods actively took sides in the epic clash between the Greeks and Trojans that followed the abduction of Helen. Hera and Athena, for example, favored the Greeks, while Zeus was sympathetic to the Trojans. The immortals used deception in a number of instances, sometimes against one another, to assist whichever side they championed.

  As Poseidon, lord of the seas, assisted the Greeks—against the will of Zeus—Hera sought to distract her husband from the battle. Her plan was to seduce him and then make him sleep. She went to Aphrodite, who favored the Trojans, and tricked her into lending her a girdle that made anyone who wore it irresistible. She told the goddess of love she was going to use it to help reconcile two other gods who had been feuding, when in truth she wanted to dazzle Zeus. Thus armed, she appeared before her husband, who was monitoring the battle from Mount Ida. Zeus found Hera enchanting, like when he first fell in love with her, and they had sex, after which Hera enlisted Morpheus to put him into a deep sleep. As the great thunder god dozed, Poseidon led the Greeks to victory.

  Appendix IV

  Ten Egregious Examples of Modern American Doublespeak

  1. President Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler in 1974 on whether a certain batch of Watergate tapes was still intact: “I would feel that most of the conversations that took place in those areas of the White Ho
use that did have the recording system would in almost their entirety be in existence, but the special prosecutor, the court, and, I think, the American people are sufficiently familiar with the recording system to know where the recording devices existed and to know the situation in terms of the recording process, but I feel, although the process has not been undertaken yet in preparation of the material to abide by the court decision, really, what the answer to that question is.”

  2. NASA official on whether shuttle performance had improved after the 1986 Challenger explosion: “I think our performance in terms of the orbital performance, we knew more about the envelope we were operating under, and we have been pretty accurately staying in that. . . . I think we have been able to characterize the performance more as a function of our launch experience as opposed to it improving as a function of time.”

  NASA also euphemistically described the shuttle explosion as “an anomaly,” the bodies of the astronauts as “recovered components,” and the astronauts’ coffins as “crew transfer containers.”

  3. State Department spokesperson Christine Shelley when asked in 1994 if the mass killing of ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda was a genocide: “The use of the term ‘genocide’ has a very precise legal meaning, although it’s not strictly a legal determination. There are other factors in there as well.”