D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths

by Ingri d'Aulaire

  The shadows grew long and dusk settled over the world when Helios and his foaming team arrived. His five daughters, the Heliades, awaited them. They unharnessed the tired horses and let them plunge into the ocean for a cooling bath. Then the horses rested in their stables and Helios talked with his daughters and told them all he had seen that day.

  In the dark of the night, he boarded a vessel of gold with his team and sailed around the world, back to his palace in the east. The way was far shorter by sea than by air, so he had time to stay for a while in his morning palace too before he set out on another day’s journey.

  Helios had a son named Phaëthon. He was a mortal and very proud of his radiant father. One morning as Helios was about to set off on his daily journey across the sky, Phaëthon came to him and begged him to grant his dearest wish. Helios, who was very fond of his handsome son, rashly swore by the river Styx to give him any wish he might have, but when he heard Phaëthon’s wish, he sorely regretted his oath. He tried in vain to make his son change his mind, for what Phaëthon wanted was to drive the sun chariot for one day, and Helios knew that no one but he himself could handle the spirited steeds.

  Phaëthon was determined to have his wish, and Helios had to give in. Sadly, he put his golden rays on his son’s head and rubbed divine ointment on his skin so he could withstand the searing heat of the chariot. He barely had time to warn him to stay well in the middle of the heavenly path when the gates of the palace were thrown open, and the rearing horses were brought forth. Phaëthon leaped into the chariot, grasped the reins, and the horses rushed out.

  At first, all went well and Phaëthon stood proudly in the glowing chariot. But the fiery steeds soon felt that unskilled hands were holding the reins. They veered off the heavenly path and brushed by the dangerous constellations that lurked on both sides of it. The animals of the zodiac were enraged: the bull charged, the lion growled, the scorpion lashed out with its poisonous tail. The horses shied and Phaëthon was thrown halfway out of the chariot. Far down below he saw the earth and he grew so dizzy that he dropped the reins. Without a firm hand to guide them, the horses bolted. They raced so close to the earth that the ground cracked from the heat of the chariot and rivers and lakes dried up. Then upward they sped so high that the earth froze and turned to ice.

  Zeus stood on Olympus and shook his head. He had to stop the careening chariot to save the earth from destruction, and he threw a thunderbolt at it. In a shower of sparks, the chariot flew apart and Phaëthon plunged into the river Po. On the riverbanks his sisters mourned so long that Zeus took pity on them and changed them into poplar trees and their tears into drops of golden amber.

  Hephaestus had to work the whole night through to mend the broken chariot so Helios could drive it again the next day. Helios grieved over his lost son, and he never again allowed anyone to drive his chariot except for Apollo, the god of light.

  SELENE, the moon, came out at night to light up the world while her brother, Helios, was resting. Slowly she drove her milk-white horses across the sky, and her pale moonbeams fell gently on the sleeping earth where all was peace and quiet.

  One night Selene’s soft light fell on Endymion, a young shepherd, who was sleeping beside his flock. She stopped to look at him. He was smiling in his sleep and was so young and handsome that she completely lost her heart to him. She drove through the night, but she could not get him out of her mind.

  When her duties were over, she went to Zeus and asked him to grant Endymion eternal sleep so he would stay forever young and handsome. She had learned from her sister, Eos, not to ask for eternal life for a mortal and be left with a grasshopper on her hands.

  Zeus granted Selene’s wish and Endymion slept on and on, smiling in his sleep. He dreamed that he held the moon in his arms. But it was not a dream after all, for Selene bore her husband fifty daughters, all pale and beautiful as their mother and sleepy as their father.

  In Selene’s magic light, river-gods rose from silvery streams to inspect their river beds, and hills trembled under the hoofs of the wild centaurs. Laughing nymphs and bleating satyrs danced to the music of Pan, god of nature, master of them all.

  PAN, the great god of nature, was not a handsome god. He had goat’s legs, pointed ears, a pair of small horns, and he was covered all over with dark, shaggy hair. He was so ugly that his mother, a nymph, ran away screaming when she first saw him. But his father, Hermes, was delighted with the strange looks of his son. He carried him up to Olympus to amuse the other gods and they all laughed and took him to their hearts. They called him Pan and sent him back to the dark woods and stony hills of Greece as the great god of nature. He was to be the protector of hunters, shepherds, and curly-fleeced sheep.

  Pan was a lonely and moody god. When he was sad, he went off by himself and hid in a cool cave. If a wanderer happened to come upon him and disturb him in his retreat, he would let out a scream so bone-chilling that whoever heard it took to his heels and fled in a fear that they called panic.

  But when Pan was in a good mood, and that was mostly on moonlit nights, he cavorted through glades and forests, and up steep mountain slopes playing on his shepherd’s pipe, and nymphs and satyrs followed dancing behind him. Sweet and unearthly were the tunes that floated over the hills.

  The satyrs much resembled their master, Pan, but they were mischievous and good for nothing except for chasing nymphs. Old satyrs, or sileni, were fat and too lazy to walk. They rode about on asses, but they often fell off, since they were fond of drinking wine.

  The lightfooted nymphs always looked young, though some of them were very old in years. Their life span was so long that they were almost immortal: they lived ten thousand times longer than man. There were water nymphs and nymphs of mountains and glens. There were nymphs who lived in trees and nymphs who lived in springs.

  When a tree grew old and rotted, the nymph who lived in it moved to another tree of the same kind. A wood chopper, about to fell a healthy tree, must remember first to ask permission of the tree nymph. If he did not, she might send out a swarm of bees to sting him, or she might turn the ax in his hands so he would cut his own leg instead of the tree trunk.

  A thirsty hunter must never drink from a spring without asking the water nymph’s permission. If he ignored the nymph, she might send a venomous water snake to bite him, or she might poison the water and make him sick.

  River-gods, too, had to be asked before anyone took water from their rivers. They were usually helpful and friendly to men and willingly shared their water, but woe to the one who tried to carry off their water-nymph daughters. They would rush out of their river beds and charge him in full river-god rage. They were dangerous opponents, for they grew oxhorns on their heads and could change their shapes at will. Zeus himself feared their rage, and Pan and the satyrs kept well out of their way, though Pan liked all nymphs and fell in love with many of them.

  ECHO was one of the nymphs with whom Pan fell in love. She was a gay nymph who chattered and prattled all day long and never kept quiet long enough for Pan to win her with music and poetry.

  One day Hera came down from Olympus to look for Zeus. She suspected that he was playing with the nymphs, but Echo detained her so long with idle chatter that Zeus, who really was there, was able to sneak away. Hera, in a rage, punished Echo by taking from her the gift of forming her own words. From then on poor Echo could only repeat the words of others.

  Now at last Pan thought he could win her by his words. But before he had a chance, she had lost her heart to another. He was Narcissus, and he was so handsome that every girl and every nymph he met fell in love with him. Unfortunately, he liked nobody but himself.

  Echo trailed silently behind Narcissus as he hunted in the woods, hoping to hear an endearing word from him that she could repeat. But he never so much as noticed her. At last toward nightfall, they came to a quiet pool, and as Narcissus was thirsty, he bent down to drink. Suddenly, he stopped and stared, for in the mirroring surface of the water he saw the handsom
est face he had ever seen. He smiled and the handsome face smiled back at him. Joyfully he nodded and so did the stranger in the water.

  “I love you,” said Narcissus to the handsome face.

  “I love you,” repeated Echo eagerly. She stood behind him, happy to be able to speak to him at last.

  But Narcissus neither saw nor heard her; he was spellbound by the handsome stranger in the water. He did not know that it was his own image that he had fallen in love with and he sat smiling at himself, forgetting to eat, forgetting to drink, until he wasted away and died. Hermes came and led him down to the realm of the dead, but where he had been sitting the lovely Narcissus flower sprang up. Echo stood beside the flower and grieved and pined until she too faded away.

  Nothing was left of Echo but her voice, which to this day can be heard senselessly repeating the words of others.

  Pan grieved for a while, but then another pretty nymph crossed his path and he forgot all about Echo. Her name was Syrinx.

  SYRINX ran away from Pan; she thought he was so ugly. Pan chased after her, and, to escape from him, she changed herself into a reed. She stood among hundreds of other reeds on the riverbank, and Pan couldn’t find her. As he walked through the reed patch, sighing and looking for her in vain, the wind blew through the reeds. They swayed and bent and made a plaintive whistling sound. Pan listened, enchanted. “Thus you and I shall always sing together,” he said.

  He cut ten reeds into unequal lengths, tied them together, and made the first panpipe. He called the new instrument his syrinx, for every time he played on it he thought he heard the melodious voice of his beloved nymph. Again Pan was lonesome and he retreated to his cool cave, deep in the woods, and scared away all passers-by with his unearthly screams.

  Splendid Apollo himself fared no better than Pan when he fell in love with a nymph called Daphne. Daphne had a cold heart, she had vowed never to marry, and when Apollo wooed her, she would not listen to the sound of his golden lyre and ran away. As she fled, she was lovelier still, with her golden hair streaming behind her, and Apollo could not bear to lose her. He set off in pursuit, beseeching her to stop. Daphne ran toward the bank of a river that belonged to her father, the river-god Ladon, calling to him to save her from her pursuer. Ladon had no time to rise out of his river bed and come to his daughter’s rescue, but the moment Daphne’s toes touched the sand of the riverbank, he changed them into roots. Apollo, who was close at her heels, caught up with her, but the instant he threw his arms about her, her arms changed into branches, her lovely head into the crown of a tree, and she became a laurel. Still, inside the hard bark, Apollo could hear the beating of Daphne’s frightened heart.

  Apollo carefully broke off some twigs and made a wreath of the shining leaves.

  “Fair nymph,” he said, “you would not be my bride, but at least consent to be my tree and your leaves shall crown my brow.”

  Ever after, the greatest honor an artist or a hero could be given was to be crowned with a wreath from Apollo’s sacred tree, the laurel.

  Daphne would rather be an unmoving tree than the bride of the great god Apollo, but all the other nymphs loved to sit at his feet and listen to his enchanting music, and were very honored when he or any of the other great Olympian gods chose one of them as a bride.

  THE WILD AND VULGAR CENTAURS did not honor any of the gods. They were half men and half horses, as cunning as wild men and as savage as untamed horses. They had inherited the worst dispositions of both.

  The first centaurs had come tumbling out of a cloud that their father, Ixion, King of the Lapith people, had married, mistaking it for the goddess Hera. Zeus had created the cloud to test the ungodliness of the wicked king who wanted to carry off Hera. Ixion was severely punished for his ungodliness. He was condemned to whirl about forever in the underworld, tied to a flaming wheel, but his offspring, the centaurs, remained on earth as a scourge to the Lapith people.

  The centaurs lived without law and order, stormed over fields, trampled crops, and carried off the Lapith women, and they ate raw meat. The young centaurs were no better than their elders. They were poorly brought up by parents who kicked them and spanked them and left them to fend for themselves.

  There was one centaur who was kind and wise and was fond of children. His name was Chiron. Though he looked like the other centaurs, he wasn’t related to them at all. He was the son of Cronus the Titan and was immortal. Chiron was famous as the greatest teacher in Greece. Kings brought their small sons to him so he could raise them in the true spirit of heroes.

  In his quiet cave on Mount Pelion, he taught them manly sports and how to use the healing herbs of the earth and how to read the stars in the sky. All his pupils returned to their homes exceeding their fathers in courage and knowledge.

  One day Apollo brought to Chiron his little mortal son, Asclepius. His mother, a Lapith princess, had died, and Apollo asked Chiron to raise the boy.

  ASCLEPIUS grew up in Chiron’s cave, raised with loving care, and, being the son of Apollo, he soon surpassed his foster father in his knowledge of healing the sick.

  When he was grown, he left Chiron’s cave and went down from the mountain to help the people of Greece. He became the first great physician. People flocked to him from far and near, and many who came on crutches went away skipping and dancing. His patients adored him and showered treasures upon him, and it wasn’t long before they worshiped him as a god and built temples in his honor. Asclepius put beds in his temples and they became the first hospitals. There he went about from bed to bed, pleased to be looked upon as a god, leaning on a staff entwined with sacred serpents. Serpents knew all the secrets of the earth and often told him the causes and cures for diseases. Sometimes he put his patients to sleep with a magic draught and listened to what they muttered in their dreams. Their words often revealed to him what caused their ailments, and he could then find a cure for them.

  Asclepius had a wife and seven children, and all the children followed in their father’s footsteps. His sons were his assistant physicians, his daughters were his nurses. Hygeia, one of his daughters, washed and scrubbed her patients from morning to night, and it was a marvel to see how fast they regained their health. Before Hygeia’s time, it was thought that soap and water would kill the sick.

  Asclepius grew famous, rich, and pink-faced, and as time went on, he grew so skilled in his art that he could even bring the dead back to life. The Fates became upset and complained to Zeus that they measured and clipped the threads of life in vain. Hades too was angry, for he was being cheated out of dead souls. Apollo pointed out to Zeus how much good his son was doing for mankind, and for a while Zeus was lenient. But when Asclepius accepted gold for bringing the dead back to life, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at him.

  Nothing but a small heap of ashes was left of Asclepius, the first great doctor. But his temples and his teachings of medical science remained, and the gods put his image among the stars as a constellation.

  Apollo was furious with Zeus for killing his son and wanted revenge. He did not dare to raise his hand against his mighty father, but he slew the Cyclopes who had given Zeus the thunderbolt. Zeus, in his turn, had to revenge the Cyclopes. He punished Apollo by making him serve for a year as a slave on earth.

  Apollo found a good master and suffered no hardship. But the gods on high Olympus missed him and his music, the nine Muses most of all.

  THE NINE MUSES were daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne. Their mother’s memory was as long as her beautiful hair, for she was the goddess of memory and knew all that had happened since the beginning of time. She gathered her nine daughters around her and told them wondrous tales. She told them about the creation of earth and the fall of the Titans, about the glorious Olympians and their rise to power, about Prometheus, who stole the heavenly fire, about the sun and the stars, and most of all about the greatness and wisdom of their father, Zeus. The nine Muses listened to her with wide, sparkling eyes and turned her stories into poems and songs so they w
ould never be forgotten.

  Apollo, the god of music, trained them and taught them to sing harmoniously together. He led the choir of Muses through the halls of Olympus and over the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and their music rang so pure and fine that even the songbirds fell silent to listen.

  Each of the Muses had her own special art. Calliope, the Muse of heroic poetry, was the first among them. She had a mortal son named Orpheus, and he sang almost as beautifully as the Muses themselves. When he was grown, he left his mother and his eight loving aunts and went to live in his father’s kingdom of Thrace to bring the joy of music to earth. His voice rang so pure and true that the fiercest warriors put down their swords and savage beasts lay spellbound at his feet. Trees pulled up their roots and moved closer to listen, and even hard rocks rolled up to him.

  ORPHEUS’ music was joyful and gay, for he was in love with Euridice, a sweet young maiden, and she loved him in return. On the day of their wedding, his songs swelled out, filled with happiness as his bride danced on light feet through the meadow. Suddenly, she trod on a snake and sank to the ground, dead of its poisonous bite. Hermes gently closed her eyes and led her away to the underworld. No more songs came from Orpheus’ throat, no more tunes rang out from his lyre. All joy had gone out of his life. He had to have his Euridice back.