by Stephen Fry
176. Laomedon was the son of Ganymede’s elder brother Ilos, the King of Troy.
177. A cicada in some versions. I was always taught a grasshopper perhaps because they are commonly found in Britain. Books for British children probably thought a cicada would be a harder insect for us to visualize. Oddly Tithonus’s name lives on biologically not as a cicada or grasshopper, but in a type of birdwing or swallowtail butterfly, Ornithoptera tithonus.
178. A happy thought inspired the geologist Albert Oppel to name one of the late Jurassic ages the Tithonian as a bow to Eos, for it is the age that marks the dawn of the Cretaceous. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Tithonus” is one of his most loved and anthologized poems. It takes the form of a dramatic monologue addressed to Eos, in which he begs her to deliver him from his senility.
. . . After many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream . . .
It contains a famous line that might be considered one of the great themes of Greek myth:
The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.
THE BLOOM OF YOUTH
The story of Eos and Tithonus can be considered a kind of domestic tragedy. Greek myth offers us many more stories of love between gods and mortals that more often fit into the genre “doomed romance,” sometimes with an element of rom-com, farce, or horror thrown in. In these love affairs the gods seem always to say it with flowers. The Greek for flower is anthos—so what follows is, quite literally, a romantic anthology.
HYACINTHUS
Hyacinthus, a beautiful Spartan prince, had the misfortune to be loved by two divinities, Zephyrus, the West Wind, and golden Apollo. Hyacinthus himself much preferred the beautiful Apollo and repeatedly turned down the wind’s playful but increasingly fierce advances.
One afternoon Apollo and Hyacinth were competing in athletic events and Zephyrus, in a fit of jealous rage, blew Apollo’s discus off course, sending it skimming at speed straight toward Hyacinth. It struck him hard on the forehead, killing him stone dead.
In a flood of grief Apollo refused Hermes the right to transport the youth’s soul to Hades, instead mixing the mortal blood that gushed from his adored one’s brow with his own divine and fragrant tears. This heady juice dropped into the soil and from it bloomed the exquisite and sweet-smelling flower that bears Hyacinth’s name to this day.
CROCUS AND SMILAX
Crocus was a mortal youth who pined without success for the nymph SMILAX. Out of pity, the gods (we don’t really know which one) turned him into the saffron flower that we call crocus, while she became a brambly vine, many species of which still flourish under the name Smilax.
According to another version of this myth, Crocus was the lover and companion of the god Hermes, who accidentally killed him with a discus and in his sorrow turned him into the crocus flower. This is so similar to the story of Apollo and Hyacinthus that you wonder if some bard somewhere got drunk or confused.
APHRODITE AND ADONIS
There was an early King of Cyprus called THEIAS who was renowned for his remarkable good looks. He and his wife CENCHREIS had a daughter SMYRNA, also known as MYRRHE or MYRRHA, who grew up harboring secret incestuous love for her handsome father.
Now, Cyprus was sacred to Aphrodite, being the island on which she first set foot after her birth from the foam of the sea, and it was a spiteful Aphrodite who had breathed into Smyrna this unnatural desire for her own father. It seems that the goddess had of late been aggrieved by the inadequacy of King Theias’s prayers and sacrifices to her. He had displayed the temerity to open a new shrine dedicated to Dionysus, a cult which was proving popular amongst the islanders. Aphrodite regarded the neglect of her temples as the worst possible crime, far worse than incest. In the minds of mortals, though, even those of the notoriously laissez-faire and decadent Cyprus, incest was a taboo of the gravest kind. An anguished Smyrna attempted to smother her guilty feelings. But Aphrodite, who really seemed determined to sow mischief, bewitched Smyrna’s maid HIPPOLYTE and brought the whole business to a disturbing crisis.
One evening, when Theias had got himself good and drunk, as he liked to do since his discovery of the vinous virtues of the god Dionysus, Hippolyte, under the spell of Aphrodite, led Smyrna to his chamber and into his bed. The king made greedy love to his daughter there, too intoxicated to question his good fortune. In the dark of night and the fog of wine he failed to recognize the fruit of his own loins; he only knew that a young, desirable, and passionately obliging girl had appeared to pleasure him like some kind of divine succubus.
After a week of these intense and joyful visitations Theias awoke one morning with a determination to know more about her. He put out word that he would reward with a mountain of gold anyone who could discover the identity of the mysterious stranger who had lately made his nights so wildly pleasurable.
Smyrna had been acting out her passion in a kind of mad dream of lust, but when she heard that all Cyprus was now trying to find out the secret of her nightly visits to Theias, she ran from the palace to hide in the woods. She wanted to die, but she could not forsake the child that she already felt growing inside her. Railing at the laws of man that made her love criminal, she begged heaven to take pity on her.179 In answer to her prayer, the gods transformed Smyrna into a weeping myrrh tree.
After ten months the tree burst open and disgorged a mortal baby boy. Naiads anointed the child with the soft tears that wept from the myrrh—a balm which remains the source of the most important birth and coronation oils to this very day—and he was given the name Adonis.
Smyrna’s baby grew up to be a youth of the most unparalleled physical attractiveness. Oh dear, I’ve written this too many times for you to believe me again. But it’s true that all who looked upon him were smitten forever and true also that his name lives on as a descriptor of paragons of male beauty. At the very least it’s necessary for us to know that Adonis was lovely enough to attract, as no other mortal ever had, the one who had done so much to bring about his birth: the goddess of love and beauty herself, Aphrodite.
They became lovers. It had been a wild and tortuous path to this coupling: The goddess, in a spirit of malicious revenge, had caused a father to commit a forbidden act with his daughter which brought forth a child whom Aphrodite loved perhaps more completely than any other being. A lifetime of therapy could surely not clear up such a psychic mess as that.
They did everything together, Adonis and Aphrodite. She knew that the other gods hated the boy—Demeter and Artemis could not bear to see so many girls sickening with love for him, Hera stonily disapproved of the issue of so shamefully and flagrantly indecent an affront to the sacred institutions of marriage and family, while Ares was stormily jealous of his lover’s intense infatuation. Aphrodite sensed all this and determined to keep Adonis safe from the harm her resentful family might do him.
Because her precious mortal lover, like most Greek boys and men, showed a great passion for hunting, the protective Aphrodite told him that while he was free to chase prey of manageable size and limited ferocity—hares, rabbits, doves, and pigeons, for example—he was absolutely forbidden from pursuing lions, bears, boars, and the larger stags. But boys will be boys, and when the girls are away they cannot resist reverting to type and showing off. And so it came about that, one afternoon, Aphrodite’s beloved found himself alone on the trail of a great boar (some say the boar was actually Ares himself in disguise). Adonis cornered the beast and was just pulling back his spear ready for the kill when it turned on him with a savage roar, tusks bristling. Adonis dropped his spear in fright as he leapt back, but he was a brave young man and managed to steady himself and plant his feet firmly enough to meet the boar’s charge. As it rushed forward, Adonis spun his body round in a graceful turn like a dancer—the brute missed him and Adonis seized it by the neck as it passed. But th
e boar was cunning. It dropped its head to the ground, letting the boy think he had subdued it. Kneeling down Adonis pushed with one hand against the animal’s head, feeling with his spare hand for the knife he kept in his belt. The boar sensed its chance and pulled its head up with a snarl, lifting and twisting its great tusks. They tore Adonis’s stomach open and he fell, mortally wounded, to the ground.
Aphrodite arrived in time to see her lover bleeding to death and the boar—or was it Ares?—grunting in triumph as it galloped away deep into the forest. There was nothing the weeping goddess could do but hold Adonis and watch him choke out his last in her arms. From his blood and her tears sprang up bright red anemones named after the winds (anemoi in Greek) that so quickly blow away the petals of this exquisitely lovely flower, which is known to be as short-lived as youth and as fragile as beauty.180
179. “Human civilization has made spiteful laws, and what nature allows, the jealous laws forbid.” is her complaint, according to Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
180. Shakespeare’s long poem Venus and Adonis retells the myth, basing itself on the version Ovid tells in his Metamorphoses. In Shakespeare’s rendition the death of Adonis causes Venus to curse love and decree that henceforward it should always be tinged with tragedy. As she prophesies in her grief:
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend . . .
It shall be cause of war and dire events
And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire . . .
They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.
A prophecy that seems to have come all too true.
ECHO AND NARCISSUS
TIRESIAS
The best known of all the stories that involve the transformation of a youth into a flower begins with a worried mother taking her son to see a prophet. As well as the soothsayers and Sibyls who spoke on behalf of the divine oracles, there existed certain select mortal beings whom the gods also privileged with the gift of prophecy. Arranging a consultation with one of these was not unlike making an appointment to see a doctor.
The two most celebrated seers of Greek myth were CASSANDRA and TIRESIAS. Cassandra was a Trojan prophetess whose curse was to be entirely accurate in her prognostications yet always just as entirely disbelieved. The Theban Tiresias underwent an equally stressed existence. Born male, he was turned female by Hera as a punishment for striking two mating snakes with a stick, something which annoyed her greatly at the time, for reasons best known to herself. After seven years of serving Hera as a priestess, Tiresias was returned to his original male form, only to be struck blind by Athena for looking on her naked while she bathed in the river.181 That is one story that explains his blindness, but I prefer the variant that tells how he was brought up to Olympus to arbitrate in a wager between Zeus and Hera. They had been arguing over which gender enjoyed sex the most. Since Tiresias, having been both male and female, was in a unique position to answer this question, it was agreed that his judgment would be final.
Tiresias declared that in his experience sex was nine times more enjoyable for females than males. This enraged Hera, who had bet Zeus that men got the most pleasure from the act. Perhaps she was basing her opinion on the inexhaustible libido of her husband and her own more moderate sex drive. For his pains Hera rewarded Tiresias by striking him blind. One god can never reverse the effects of another, so the best Zeus could do for Tiresias was to award him the compensatory faculty of second sight, the gift of prophecy.182
NARCISSUS
There was once a naiad called LIRIOPE, who coupled with the river god CEPHISSUS and gave birth to a son, NARCISSUS, whose beauty was so remarkable that she worried for his future. Liriope had seen enough of life to know that extreme beauty was an awful privilege, a dangerous attribute that could lead to dire and even fatal consequences. When Narcissus reached the age of fifteen and started to attract unwanted attentions, she decided to act.
“We are going to Thebes,” she told him, “to see Tiresias and have your fortune told.”
And so mother and son walked for two weeks all the way to Thebes and joined the queue to see the prophet that formed every morning outside the temple of Hera.
“Although you are blind and cannot see my son,” she explained to Tiresias when their turn came at last, “you may take my word for it that all who do see him are dazzled by his looks. No more beautiful mortal ever trod the earth.”
Narcissus blushed to his golden roots at this and shuffled his feet in an agony of embarrassment.
“I know enough of the gods,” continued Liriope, “to fear that such beauty might be more curse than blessing. The world knows what happened to Ganymede, to Adonis, Tithonus, Hyacinth, and all those other boys far less beautiful than my son. So I would have you tell me, great seer, if Narcissus will live a long and happy life. Is it his moira to reach a contented old age?183 You who are blind see all that is invisible to the rest of us. Tell me, I beg, my beloved son’s destiny.”
Tiresias put out his hands and traced the outlines of Narcissus’s face.
“Fear not,” he said. “So long as he fails to recognize himself, Narcissus will live a long and happy life.”
Liriope laughed aloud. “So long as he fails to recognize himself!” Such a strange pronouncement could have no serious application. How can anyone recognize themselves?
ECHO
We leave Liriope joyfully thanking Tiresias at the temple of Hera in Thebes and travel a short distance over to the foothills of Mount Helicon, where the streams and meadows outside the township of Thespiae were filled with the comeliest nymphs in all Greece. So comely that they often received visitations from Zeus himself, whose weakness for a comely nymph we have already noted.
The oread ECHO was not the least comely of these, but she did have one personality trait which caused Zeus and other potential suitors to be wary of her—she was the most tremendous talker. A compound of village gossip, nosy neighbor, and oversolicitous best friend, Echo found it impossible to hold her tongue. There was nothing malicious about her prattling, indeed she often went out of her way to speak up for her friends, to cover for them, praise them, and paint them in the best light. There was an element of vanity here, for she had a lovely voice, pretty in both speech and song. Like many people gifted with a mellifluous tongue, she loved to exercise it. She was protected to some extent by the goddess Aphrodite who admired her singing, which was always in praise of love. In short, Echo was a romantic. Her detractors might call her sentimental and even slushy, mushy, and gushy, but they could not deny her good intentions and fullness of heart.
Zeus enjoyed visiting Echo’s sister oreads and cousin naiads in secret and Echo enjoyed being a confidante and best friend to them all. It rather thrilled her to think that her relations and companions were having liaisons with Zeus, the Cloud-Gatherer and King of the Gods himself. It was a secret she loved to hug to herself.
Hera had always been suspicious of Zeus’s absences, but recently they had become prolonged. She heard from a chaffinch loyal to her that it was the lower slopes of Helicon that her husband had been visiting, so she decided one golden afternoon to make her way there and see if she could catch him in the act of betrayal. She had barely dismounted from her chariot when a mountain nymph skipped up to her, bubbling with inconsequential chatter. It was Echo in full voluble flow.
“Queen Hera!”
Hera drew up her eyebrows. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, majesty!” cried Echo, falling to her knees. “How lucky we are to see you here! What honor you do us! And in your chariot, too! Is it permitted to feed the peacocks? To have a god of Olympus here! I cannot remember the last time an Olympian deigned to take notice of us. It is such—”
“Surely my husband Zeus is a regular visitor to these woods and waters?”
Echo knew full well that Zeus was not far away on a riverbank doing improper things with a pretty river nymph. Her love of intrigue, drama, and romance now drove her to protect the pair. With tumbling torrents of inconsequential babble gushi
ng from her like water from a fountain, she guided the goddess’s footsteps in the direction away from the river.
“There is a very fine ilex tree just in this clearing, majesty, which I was thinking of consecrating to you, with your permission . . . Excuse me—Zeus? Oh no, I’ve never seen him here.”
“Really?” Hera fixed Echo with a hard stare. “I heard a rumor that he was here now. This very day.”
“No, no, my queen! No, no, no! In fact . . . a servant of the Muses came down from Helicon just half an hour ago to draw water from our stream and he mentioned specifically that today mighty Zeus is in Thespiae today, honoring his temple there.”
“Oh. I see. Well, I thank you.” Hera nodded curtly and uncomfortably, returned to her chariot and flew off into the clouds. It is mortifying to be witnessed trying to catch your husband out.
Echo skipped away, pleased to have been useful to her fellow nymph and to Zeus. In all fairness she would have been just as happy to have been protecting a mortal pair of lovers. It delighted her to ease the path of all lovers everywhere. She had never really felt love herself, except the love of helping others to love, which she felt was the highest love of all. So selfless was she that she never even bothered to tell Zeus or her sister of her useful act, which someone hoping for a reward would most certainly have done. She sang as she gathered flowers and felt that the life of a nymph was a good life.
ECHOLALIA
The next day, back on Olympus, Hera sent for the chaffinch that had first whispered to her of Zeus’s infidelity.