The Song of Orpheus

by Tracy Barrett

  So it’s no wonder the first potter was an important character in the tales that my people told. This potter’s name was Prometheus, and he was a Titan. Titans are hard to explain. They’re immortal, so they’re a kind of god, but they came in between the really early gods—like Tethys and Ananke—and the Olympians that most people think of when they talk about Greek gods.

  One thing that hasn’t changed since my time is that everyone likes it when a practical joke is played on someone really important. I think that people who listened to this next tale probably enjoyed seeing the great Prometheus being fooled, even if he eventually figured out that someone was trying to trick him.

  Prometheus is best known for being the guy who created the human race. He made his people out of clay and stole fire from the heavens as a gift to them. He’s still being punished in the underworld for that. Another story tells how he once fooled Zeus into accepting a sacrifice that wasn’t very good and kept the better one for himself. So it’s odd that despite stealing from the gods and cheating their king, Prometheus valued honesty so highly that he decided to make a daimona (a female daimon, or spirit) out of clay, to be a kind of living symbol of Truth.

  Even today, it’s hard to make a full-size clay statue. The potter has to form the parts of the body separately and join them together after they’re baked, or fired, as potters call it. Large pieces sometimes shatter in the high heat of the kiln—the very, very hot oven they’re hardened in—and the different parts shrink as the water is baked out of them. The potter has to calculate the shrinkage precisely, so that pieces that fit together before firing will still fit together afterward. Prometheus was really good at this, obviously, and he also had a skilled helper, named Dolos. Even so, it took a long time before he was ready to put the finishing touches on his beautiful statue of Truth.

  Just as Prometheus was about to settle down to work on it again, he received a summons from Zeus. It was impossible to ignore a command from the king of the gods, but Prometheus hated to leave his work when it was so close to completion.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dolos. “You’ve already done the hard part. I’ll finish it up while you’re gone.”

  Prometheus wasn’t sure he should allow that. The apprentice came of good parents; his father was the air and his mother was Gaia, the earth. But the rest of Dolos’s family didn’t exactly inspire confidence: His brothers and sisters included Pain, Anger, Lamentation, and Fear. The potter had another reason to worry. His apprentice’s name means “trickery.”

  As the Titan hesitated, Dolos said, “I’ll do a good job; I promise.” So, against his better judgment, Prometheus agreed.

  But he had been right to be suspicious, because Dolos had no intention of completing Prometheus’s work. He had hatched a plan to make his master look foolish. Why? I don’t know. I guess if your name is Trickery, you just like playing tricks. Anyway, as soon as Dolos was sure that the Titan was gone, he set about sculpting a second statue that would be identical to the first one.

  Dolos had learned a lot in his apprenticeship with Prometheus, and he was skilled. Tricksters have to be good at what they do, or they don’t fool anyone. Under his skilled fingers, the new statue took shape. Like the real statue, this figure was nude, because the ancient Greek word for truth, aletheia (αλήθεια), literally means “without concealment.” Her face and body were flawless, because the truth is unblemished. She looked beautiful and strong, and she wore an expression of fearlessness.

  Dolos worked hard, hoping that Prometheus wouldn’t return until he was done. He fit the various pieces—arms, legs, head, torso—to one another so he could see what they’d look like when they were fired and joined together. He was almost through when something happened that ruined his whole plan: He ran out of clay.

  What would he do now? Dolos had finished everything but the statue’s feet, but he didn’t have time to get more clay, because just then, he heard Prometheus approaching. Dolos quickly hid the statue Prometheus had been working on behind a screen and put his own creation in its place. Then he got busy cleaning implements, stacking firewood for the kiln, and sweeping the floor.

  When Prometheus entered and surveyed his studio, at first the great potter saw nothing amiss. Suddenly, he realized that, while at first glance his statue looked the same as when he had left it, it seemed to have lost its feet.

  “What happened here?” Prometheus asked, too bewildered at first to suspect his helper of doing anything to his work. He leaned in and examined the statue as Dolos held his breath.

  When Prometheus straightened, Dolos saw that he was furious. “Did anyone come in while I was gone?” the potter growled. Dolos shook his head. “Did you leave at any time?”

  Dolos was too terrified to answer. If Prometheus found out what he had done, he would punish him in ways too terrible to contemplate. Why he hadn’t thought about what would happen when his trick was revealed, I don’t know. Maybe he’d just been carried away with the thought of how much fun it would be to fool the guy who had created the human race.

  Prometheus inspected the statue again, and when he faced his apprentice this time, Dolos could tell that he had figured out what happened. “I can see I taught you well,” the Titan said, and Dolos was so relieved at his master’s calmness that he let out the breath he had been holding.

  “The one you made is behind that screen,” he said quickly. “I’ll just destroy mine and—”

  Now it was Prometheus’s turn to shake his head. “No, let’s keep it. I’ll fire them both in the kiln and breathe life into them, the way I did to make my humans come alive. The statue I made will be called Truth, and yours will be Falsehood. For Falsehood sometimes manages to start a lie circulating, but without feet, she can’t move very far, whereas Truth will always spread throughout the land.”

  Watch Out for These Guys

  A prayer to Athena lists five unpleasant “potters’ spirits” who interfere with a potter’s work: Syntribos the Crusher, Smaragos the Smasher, Asbetos the Burner, Sabaktes the Shatterer, and Omodamos the Underbaker.

  II.

  LIFE’S BIG MOMENTS:

  BIRTH, LOVE, DEATH

  THE BEST GOD

  Four down, thirteen to go—I’m almost a quarter of the way there! I can’t tell you how good it will feel to apologize to Eurydice for being such an idiot. Have you ever done anything stupid? I mean really, really stupid? Sometimes you can fix it, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do, right? You can’t undo it. All you can do is apologize and hope the other person is nicer than you were stupid. That’s how it was in my day, and I bet that’s how it is today.

  I know that parts of your lives are different from mine in ways I can’t even imagine, but from what I’ve seen and overheard through the centuries, some of the most important things about humans haven’t changed much at all. You still wonder about life, death, why people fall in love, how we stay alive in a tough world—that kind of thing. Stories can be a good way to answer those questions. A lot of times, the Greeks answered a question about how humans learned to do something—build a fire, say, or make pots—by claiming that the gods taught them. But why would the gods give these gifts to humanity?

  Sometimes love was the reason. In the myths told by my people, the gods and goddesses often fell in love with humans. Usually it was the beauty of the man or woman that attracted them. The sun god, Apollo, was a little different from the others. Once, he fell in love with a girl whose looks weren’t the prime attraction, and out of their love came great gifts to humanity.

  Apollo happened to be traveling in central Greece when an unusual sight caught his eye. A young woman had trapped a lion in a net and was wrestling with it. Her blond hair whipped around her head as she dodged the animal’s huge teeth and slashing claws. Normally, Apollo would have simply grabbed her and tried to kiss her; but something about the girl—her strength, her skill, the fact that she liked to wrestle lions, who knows?—intrigued him. He left her to finish her battle and sought out t
he famous half-horse, half-human centaur, Chiron, who lived in a cave nearby.

  “There’s only one maiden in this area who fits that description,” Chiron said after Apollo told him what he had seen. “It must be Kyrene, one of the daughters of the king around these parts. There’s been talk of a lion attacking cattle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kyrene took it on herself to deal with it. She had the beast trapped in a net and was wrestling it, you say?”

  Apollo nodded, and Chiron laughed. “Sounds like Kyrene. She’s so strong and so skilled at the hunt, she probably boasted that she didn’t even need a spear and could kill the lion with her bare hands. But….” He paused. “Do I have your permission to speak freely?”

  “You do,” Apollo said.

  “Kyrene has little interest in marrying.” That was understandable. While it was rare for a princess to enjoy any kind of sport, it was acceptable so long as she didn’t neglect her responsibilities at home. But ancient Greek girls in general—and princesses in particular—had a duty to marry, and marriage would have brought an end to Kyrene’s hunting. It would have been unheard of for a woman to leave her husband and children to spend all day at the risky business of tracking and killing ferocious beasts. So Kyrene had to choose one or the other—married life or hunting—and she had chosen hunting.

  Apollo must have shown his disappointment, for the centaur, who was a seer—that is, someone who can predict the future—said, “Don’t despair. I see that the two of you will be married not long from now. You will live together in a far-off land, where you and Kyrene will have two sons. One will become a famous seer, and the other will bring wonderful gifts to humanity.”

  This was encouraging. Apollo hurried from Chiron’s cave back to the plain where the girl had been wrestling the lion. The beast lay tied up behind the maiden, who was receiving the congratulations and thanks of the farmers whose sheep and cattle would now be safe.

  Apollo introduced himself to the princess and told her that, unlike mortal men, he was fine with having a wife who hunted. Kyrene was so dazzled at the sight of the god, and at the prospect of continuing to do what she loved to do and having a family, that she agreed to marry him that very day.

  Off they went to the African country of Libya, where everything happened as the wise centaur had foreseen. Kyrene became Libya’s queen, well loved by her people and by her immortal husband. Their first son did grow up to become a seer. He foresaw his own death if he joined an adventurous group of sailors called the Argonauts, but he joined them anyway. I was an Argonaut and I knew him, and sure enough, he was killed by a boar during a voyage. Too bad. He was a nice guy.

  But it was their second son who made a name for himself. What that name was isn’t clear. He’s called Anthokos (Flowering), Nomios (God of Shepherds), and Argaios (the Argive, a person from the region of Argos), but he’s usually known as Aristaios—The Best.

  What did Aristaios do to earn this title? Was he a brave warrior, vanquishing his enemies in ferocious battles? Did he bring renown to his country by composing wonderful music, writing beautiful poetry, sculpting lovely statues? Did he honor the gods, causing them to shower Libya with favors?

  No. What made this prince the best person ever was that he invented bee-keeping, cheese-making, and how to make olive oil.

  These gifts might not seem terribly important to you. Honey is delicious, but if you don’t have any, you can always use sugar, right? Wrong, at least in ancient Greece. Sugar didn’t reach Greece until the fourth century BCE at the earliest, and it remained scarce and expensive until modern times. Honey was really our only sweetener. It was also used in medicine, because it kills some germs, and in religious festivals.

  And cheese—again, it’s fine, but what’s the big deal? The big deal is that a lot of people in my time didn’t have much to eat, and cheese concentrates just about all the nutrition of milk into an easily stored form.

  Olive oil is good for you, too, but in my day, people also used it to make soap, perfume, medicine, and other important things. Rich people could have light in their homes after sundown, thanks to lamps filled with olive oil. You still hold the Olympic Games, where the winners are given medals, right? In my day, the winners were crowned with olive wreaths, and at other games, they were often awarded huge jars of olive oil. That shows you how precious it was.

  So Aristaios deserves all the admiration we used to give him. I’m sorry nobody seems to know of him today.

  Geography

  To the ancient Greeks, “Libya” meant North Africa, not today’s country of that name. The Greeks also referred to much of central and southern Africa as Ethiopia.

  BUT DOES SHE REALLY LOVE YOU?

  So that makes five, right? I’m starting to get anxious. See how low the sun is getting? It’s shining in my eyes. Do you mind moving over to make a shadow?

  How about a change of pace? You okay with something sad? My people specialized in sad stories. This myth starts with yet another love story between a human and a god. We were kind of obsessed with that idea, I don’t know why. When a god falls in love with a mortal, there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.

  Usually, the human was fine with leaving his or her life—including a family, if any—and going off with the god. If you think about it, it would be hard to say no, wouldn’t it? Kyrene was happy to marry Apollo, but this tale is different. This time, the human didn’t just trot off when the immortal beckoned; the man who caught a goddess’s eye in this myth took some persuading. It would have been better for him if—oh, never mind. Listen and see what you think.

  Prokris was the daughter of the king of Athens. She was happily married to a man named Kephalos, who often went hunting early in the morning. One day, as Eos, the Titan goddess of the dawn, was bringing light to the world, she saw Kephalos as he headed into the woods and immediately fell in love with him. She flew down and dazzled him with her goddessly splendor.

  “Come away with me,” Eos begged. “I’ll ask Zeus to make you immortal, and we’ll be together forever.”

  Kephalos was tempted by the goddess’s beauty, and especially by the thought of living forever, but he loved Prokris very much. So he told Eos that he wouldn’t go with her. He just couldn’t be untrue to his wife.

  Eos was furious when Kephalos refused her for love of a mere mortal. “You’re a fool,” she told him. “Your wife doesn’t care for you. Why, she would be unfaithful to you for nothing—a trinket.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Kephalos said, but the goddess seemed so sure of herself that a small flame of doubt flickered within him. Did Prokris really love him as much as he loved her?

  Eos saw his uneasiness. “I can prove it,” she told him. “I’ll change your appearance, and you can go to your wife pretending to be a stranger. Offer her a gift if she’ll be unfaithful to her husband, and see what she does.”

  Kephalos was reluctant, but once Eos had lit the fire of doubt in his mind, he had to do as she suggested or forever be tormented wondering if his wife really loved him. So he allowed the goddess to disguise him. Once Eos was satisfied no one would recognize him, she gave Kephalos a golden crown and told him to offer it to his wife if she would go off with him.

  Kephalos returned home and entered his house, where Prokris sat weaving. He expected her to be frightened, since he looked nothing like himself, and at first, she was frightened. She started to run away, but he called out and begged her to stay. When she saw how handsome the stranger was, and especially when he got down on one knee and held the golden crown out to her, she waited to hear what he had to say.

  Kephalos cleared his throat. “Lovely lady,” he said, hoping his wife wouldn’t recognize his voice, “you don’t know me, but I have loved you from afar for a long time. I beg you to leave your husband and come away with me. I’ll treat you like a queen. Here, take this crown and wear it to show that you’ll accept me.”

  Did Prokris hesitate? Did she think of her husband, to whom she had sworn to be faithful?

&nbs
p; Apparently not. She took the crown from the hand of the “stranger” and placed it on her dark curls.

  Kephalos couldn’t believe his eyes. He stood up, enraged. Eos, who was watching from a hiding place, changed him back to his normal appearance. When Prokris recognized her husband, she laughed nervously, trying to hide her embarrassment and guilt. “I knew all along it was you,” she said. “Here, take this silly crown back. I don’t want it. I was just going along with your joke.”

  But Kephalos didn’t believe her. Without a word, he strode from his house, heartbroken and furious. He went off with Eos and eventually they had a son. But he was never really happy. He missed Prokris and his old life.

  Prokris was so ashamed of her willingness to be false to her husband that she couldn’t bear to stay where people would mock her. She ran away to the island of Crete, where she met the famous King Minos. He lived in a palace where a great maze hid a monstrous half-man, half-bull called the Minotaur. The king fell in love with Prokris and gave her wondrous gifts: a spear that never missed its mark and a hound named Lailaps that never failed to catch his quarry. The goddess Artemis herself, mistress of the hunt, had given the spear and the dog to Minos. (Remember Lailaps and the spear; they’re in another story I want to tell you.)

  After a while, Prokris grew worried that Minos’s wife, who was a powerful priestess as well as being the queen, would become jealous and kill her. So she disguised herself as a boy and, calling herself Pterelas, escaped back to Athens, taking the hound and the spear with her.

  Meanwhile, Kephalos had never forgotten Prokris. After a few years, he left Eos (who had apparently forgotten her promise to make him immortal) and spent all his time hunting, roaming aimlessly from place to place. He missed his wife more and more every day and regretted that he had ever tempted her with the golden crown. In his wanderings, he met up with a boy named Pterelas and they became hunting companions. Kephalos never suspected that the handsome boy was really his beloved wife, and she was too ashamed to reveal her true identity to him.