Mythos (2019 Re-Issue)

by Stephen Fry

  DISPOSER SUPREME AND JUDGE OF THE EARTH

  Zeus now moved to make sure the defeated Titans could never rise again to threaten his order. His strongest and most violent opponent in the war had not been Kronos but ATLAS, the brutally powerful eldest son of Iapetus and Clymene.33 Atlas had been at the center of every battle, rousing his fellow Titans into combat, shouting for one last supreme effort even as the Hecatonchires were battering them into submission. As punishment for his enmity, Zeus sentenced him to hold up the sky for eternity. This killed two birds with one stone. Zeus’s predecessors, Kronos and Ouranos, had been forced to waste much of their energy in separating heaven from earth. At a stroke Zeus relieved himself of that draining burden and placed it, quite literally, on the shoulders of his most dangerous enemy. At the junction of what we would call Africa and Europe the Titan strained, the whole weight of the sky bearing down upon him. Legs braced, muscles bunched, his mighty body contorted itself with this supreme and agonizing effort. For eons he groaned there like a Bulgarian weightlifter. In time he solidified into the Atlas Mountains that shoulder the skies of North Africa to this day. His straining, squatting image is to be found on copies of the very first maps of the world, which in his honor we still call “atlases.”34 To one side of him lies the Mediterranean and to the other the ocean still named “the Atlantic” after him, where the mysterious island kingdom of Atlantis is said to have flourished.

  As for Kronos—the dark unhappy soul who had once been Lord of All, the brooding and unnatural tyrant who ate his own children out of fear of prophecy—his punishment, just as his gelded father Ouranos had foretold, was ceaselessly to travel the world, measuring out eternity in inexorable, perpetual, and lonely exile. Every day and hour and minute was his to be marked out, for Zeus doomed Kronos to count infinity itself. We can see him everywhere even today, the gaunt sinister figure with his sickle. Now given the cheap and humiliating nickname “Old Father Time,” his sallow, drawn features tell us of the inevitable and merciless ticking of Cosmos’s clock, driving all to their end days. The scythe swings and cuts like a remorseless pendulum. All mortal flesh is as grass beneath the cruel sweep of its mowing blade. We find Kronos in all things “chronic” or “synchronized,” in “chronometers,” “chronographs,” and “chronicles.”35 The Romans gave this saturnine, sallow husk of a defeated Titan the name SATURN. He hangs in the sky between his father Uranus and his son Jupiter.36

  Not all the Titans were banished or punished. To many Zeus showed magnanimity and mercy, while on those few who had sided with him in the war he showered favors.37 Atlas’s brother Prometheus was chief amongst those who had had the prescience to fight for the gods against their own kind.38 Zeus rewarded him with his companionship, taking ever more delight in the young Titan’s presence until one day which was to have massive consequences for humankind, consequences we feel even now. The story of that friendship and its tragic end will be told soon.

  During the war, the Cyclopes had, as mentioned, given Zeus in respectful homage the weapon with which he is always associated: the thunderbolt. Their brothers the Hecatonchires, whose tremendous strength had secured victory, were rewarded by being sent back to Tartarus—not as prisoners this time, but as guardians of the gates to those imponderable depths. The Cyclopes’ reward was to be appointed by Zeus his personal artificers, armorers, and smiths.

  23. Hesiod, in the eighth century B.C., offers us the fullest extant account, but other poets also sang of it; an epic called the Titanomachia, by the eighth-century Eumelus of Corinth (or possibly the legendary blind bard Thamyris of Thrace), is tantalizingly mentioned in other texts, but remains lost to us. Hesiod describes the pitched battle that shook the earth like this: “The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and . . . reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle cry.”

  24. See Appendix on p. 315.

  25. The PIERIDES came from Pieria too. They were nine sisters who made the mistake of challenging the Muses, only to be turned into birds for their troubles. Alexander Pope refers to Pieria as the fount of all wisdom and knowledge in this well-known couplet from his Essay on Criticism:

  A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;

  Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring . . .

  26. To give the actors added height, and with it metaphorical stature too.

  27. Which also gave us (via the word for a flourishing green shoot) the element thallium, a favorite of crime writers and criminal poisoners.

  28. Sharing her name with the Muse of comedy.

  29. Sometimes just Auxo.

  30. Atropine, the poison derived from mandrakes and Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), gets its name from this last and most terrible of the sisters.

  31. Later Greeks considered the Fates to be not daughters of Night, but of Necessity—ANANKE. They bear a very strong resemblance to the Norns of Norse mythology.

  32. The TAGIDES were nymphs associated within just one river, the Tagus, but now that I’ve mentioned them we can forget all about them as we shan’t meet them ever again.

  33. Atlas’s brother MENOETIUS, whose name means “doomed might,” had been a furiously powerful and terrible opponent too, but Zeus had destroyed him with one of the very first thunderbolts.

  34. These later images, however, show him holding up not the sky but the world.

  35. To some mythographers Kronos (the Titan) and Chronos (Time) are quite separate entities. I prefer the versions that unite them.

  36. Astronomers consult classical scholars when they name the heavenly bodies in our solar system. The numerous moons of Saturn include Titan, Iapetus, Atlas, Prometheus, Hyperion, Tethys, Rhea, and Calypso. Then there are the Rings of Saturn. Perhaps they signify time, like the rings of a tree.

  37. Some of the Titanides were very attractive and—as lustful, highly sexed, and prone to falling in love as any being that has ever lived—Zeus already had designs on one or two of the more appealing ones.

  38. And “prescience” or “forethought” is just what the name Prometheus means . . .

  THE THIRD ORDER

  The shattered world was still smoking from the savagery of war. Zeus saw that it needed to heal, and he knew that his own generation, the Third Order of divine beings, must manage better than the first two had done. It was time for a new order, an order purged of the wasteful bloodlust and elemental brutality that had marked earlier times.

  To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet.

  For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect.

  HESTIA

  Of all the gods, Hestia—“First to be devoured and the last to be yielded up again”—is probably the least well known to us, perhaps because the realm that Zeus in his wisdom apportioned to her was the hearth. In our less communal age of central heating and separate rooms for each family member, we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of “hearth and home.” Our word “hearth” shares its ancestry with “heart,” just as the modern Greek for “hearth” is kardia, which a
lso means “heart.” In ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in words like “economics” and “ecology.” The Latin for hearth is focus—which speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of words for a fireplace we have spun “cardiologist,” “deep focus,” and “eco-warrior.” The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.

  Refusing offers of marriage from the other gods, Hestia devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood. Placid, contented, kind, hospitable, and domestic, she tended to stay away from the everyday power struggles and political machinations of the other gods.39 A modest divinity, Hestia is usually depicted in a plain gown offering up flame in a bowl or sitting on a coarse woollen cushion on a simple wooden throne. It was the custom in Greece to say a grace to her before every meal.

  The Romans, whose name for her was VESTA, considered her so important that they had a school of priestesses devoted to her, the celebrated Vestal Virgins. Their responsibility, aside from lifelong celibacy, was to make sure that the flame representing her was never extinguished. They were the original guardians of the sacred flame.

  You can imagine then that there are not many great stories about this gentle and endearing goddess. I only know one, which we will hear before long. Naturally she comes out of it very well.

  THE LOTTERY

  Zeus turned next to his dark and troublesome brothers, Hades and Poseidon. They had acquitted themselves with equal skill, bravery, and cunning in the war against the Titans, and he thought it only fair that they should draw lots for the two most important unassigned provinces—the sea and the underworld. You will recall that Kronos had wrested control of all things in, under, and over the sea from Thalassa, Pontus, Oceanus, and Tethys. Now, Kronos was gone and the saltwater realm was in Zeus’s gift. As for the underworld—which included Tartarus, the mysterious Meadows of Asphodel (of which more later), and the subterranean darkness controlled by Erebus—it was time for those also to be subject to a sole presiding deity, one of Zeus’s generation.

  Hades and Poseidon had no love for each other, and when Zeus put his hands behind his back and brought them out before him in closed fists, they hesitated. In cases of fraternal dislike, each brother will usually want what the other wants.

  “Does Hades hope for the sea or the underworld?” Poseidon wondered. “If he wants the underworld then I want that too, just to infuriate him.”

  Hades thought along the same lines. “Whichever I choose,” he said to himself, “I will shout in triumph, just to annoy that prick Poseidon.”

  In each of Zeus’s outstretched fists lay concealed a precious stone: a sapphire as blue as the sea in one and a piece of jet as black as Erebus in the other. Poseidon did a jig of delight when he touched the back of Zeus’s right hand and saw it open to reveal the winking blue sapphire. “The oceans are mine!” he roared.

  “That means—yes!” cried Hades with a mighty fist-pump. “That means I have the underworld. Ha ha!”

  Secretly, inside, he was sickened. Gods are such children.

  HADES

  This was the last time Hades was ever seen to laugh. From that moment on, any merriment or sense of fun deserted him. Perhaps the duties of King of the Underworld slowly ground away any youthful zest or lightness of touch that may once have been his.

  Down to the depths he went to carve out his kingdom. While his name will always be associated with death and the afterlife, and the whole realm of the underworld (which shares his name) with pain, punishment, and perpetual suffering, Hades also came to symbolize riches and opulence. The jewels and precious metals that are mined deep underground and the priceless crops of grain, vegetables, and flowers that germinate beneath the earth are all reminders that from decay and death spring life, abundance, and wealth. The Romans called him PLUTO and words like “plutocrat” and “plutonium” tell of this great opulence and power.40

  Under Hades’ personal command came Erebus and Nyx and their son Than-atos (Death himself). A system of river deities, too dark and dreadful to flow in the open air, wound their way through this underworld. The principal was Styx (hate), a daughter of Tethys and Oceanus whose name and “stygian” attributes are invoked to this day whenever we want to describe something dark, menacing, and gloomy, something hellishly black and brooding. Into her seeped PHLEGETHON, the flaming river of fire, ACHERON, the river of woe, LETHE, the waters of forgetfulness, and COCYTUS, the stream of lamentation and wailing. Styx’s brother Charon was appointed ferryman, and for the time being he waited, leaning on his pole, by the banks of the Styx. He had dreamed that one day souls by the thousand would come to the shores of the river and pay him the price of transport across. One day soon.

  Space was given by Hades to the Furies, the earth-born Erinyes, to live within the darkest heart of his kingdom. From there the three of them could fly to all corners of the world to exact their revenge on those transgressors whose crimes were foul enough to merit their violent attentions.

  In time Hades acquired a pet, a gigantic snake-tailed, three-headed dog, offspring of those monstrous children of Gaia and Tartarus, Echidna and Typhon. His name was KERBEROS (although he answered to his Roman name, CERBERUS, too). He was the original hound of hell, the fearsome and tireless watchdog and guardian of the underworld.

  At Lerna, a lake that could be used as one of the entrances to the underworld, Hades posted HYDRA, another child of Tartarus and Gaia. I mentioned before the frightening mutations possible when monsters mate, and the difference between Cerberus and his sister Hydra offers a striking example. On the one hand, a dog with a more or less manageable three heads and an elegantly snaky tail to wag; and on the other, his sister, a many-headed water-beast who was almost impossible to kill. Chop off one of her heads and she could grow back ten more in its place.

  Despite these zoological atrocities, Hades was for the time being a quiet place, ruled over by a god with little to do. In order for hell to be busy, mortal beings are needed. Creatures that die. So we will leave Pluto for the time being, seated on his cold infernal throne, brooding darkly, as hostile, chilly, and remote as the planet that bears his name,41 and secretly cursing the good fortune that had given rule of the seas to his hated brother.

  POSEIDON

  Poseidon was a very different kind of god to Hades. He could be as truculent, stormy, vain, capricious, inconsistent, restless, cruel, and unfathomable as the oceans he commanded. But he could be loyal and grateful too. In common with his brothers and some of his sisters, he was also to exhibit urgent bodily lust, deep spiritual love, and every feeling in between. Like all the gods, he was greedy for admiration, sacrifice, obedience, and adoration. Once your friend, always your friend. Once your enemy, always your enemy. And he was ambitious for more than burnt offerings, libations, and prayers. He always kept an eager, avaricious eye on the youngest of his brothers, the one who now called himself “eldest” and “king.” Should the great Zeus make too many mistakes, Poseidon would be there to topple him from his throne.

  The Cyclopes, just as they had forged thunderbolts for Zeus, now created a great weapon for Poseidon too—a trident. This massive three-pronged fishing spear could be used to stir up tidal waves and whirlpools—even to make the earth tremble with earthquakes, which gave Poseidon the soubriquet “Earth Shaker.” His desire for his sister Demeter caused him to invent the horse to impress and please her. He lost his passion for Demeter, but the horse remained sacred to him always.

  Under what we would now call the Aegean Sea, Poseidon built a vast palace of coral and pearl in which he installed himself and his chosen consort, AMPHITRITE, a daughter of Nereus and Doris, or (some say) of Oceanus and Tethys. As a wedding gift, Poseidon presented Amphitrite with the very first dolphin. She bore him a son, TRITON, a kind of merman, usually depicted sitting on his tail and blowing with bulging cheek
s into a large conch shell. Amphitrite, if truth be told, seems to have been rather colorless and appears in few stories of any great interest. Poseidon spent almost all his time pursuing a perfectly exhausting quantity of beautiful girls and boys and fathering by the girls an even greater number of monsters, demigods, and human heroes—Percy Jackson and Theseus to name but two.

  Poseidon’s Roman equivalent was NEPTUNE, whose giant planet is surrounded by moons that include Thalassa, Triton, Naiad,42 and PROTEUS.43

  DEMETER

  The next of Kronos’s children to be apportioned her divine duties was Demeter. Hair the color of ripe wheat, skin like cream, and eyes bluer than cornflowers, she was as richly, dreamily beautiful as any of the goddesses, except perhaps . . . well, the question of who was the most beautiful goddess would turn out to be the most vexed, thorny, and ultimately cataclysmic one ever asked.

  So lovely was Demeter that she attracted the unwanted attention of her brothers Zeus and Poseidon. To avoid Poseidon she transformed herself into a mare, and to chase her he turned into a stallion. The issue of that union was a colt, ARION, who grew into an immortal horse magically endowed with the power of speech.44 By Zeus she had a daughter, PERSEPHONE, whose story comes along later.

  Zeus gave Demeter responsibility for the harvest and with it sovereignty over growth, fertility, and the seasons. Her Roman name was CERES, from which we get our word “cereal.”45