Theseus fighting the Minotaur
King Aegeus had no idea that the famed young stranger named Theseus was his son. But he feared that the youth was becoming so popular the people might overthrow him and make Theseus king. His wife at the time, a magician called Medea, who had once been married to Jason, proposed to poison Theseus. At the banquet in honor of the young hero, Medea handed him the poisoned cup. But Theseus, in his eagerness to be united with his father, drew his sword. King Aegeus recognized it at once and dashed the cup to the ground. Theseus chased Medea, who knew exactly the mischief she had almost succeeded in causing, but the enchantress escaped.
The king now proclaimed Theseus as his heir, and the young man immediately saw an opportunity to gain the love of the Athenians. Many years before, King Minos of Crete had sent his only son to Athens for a visit. King Aegeus had made the terrible mistake of sending the boy to kill a bull; but the bull killed the boy. Crazed with grief, Minos invaded Athens and threatened to burn it to the ground unless seven maidens and seven youths were sent to him once every nine years. The 14 young people were to be given to the Minotaur.
The Minotaur was the most unfortunate of beasts. Long ago the god Poseidon had given Minos a bull to be sacrificed to Poseidon himself. The bull was magnificent, and Minos couldn’t bear to kill it, so he kept it. Angered, Poseidon made Minos’ wife, Pasiphaë, fall in love with it. From their union came the Minotaur, a man with a bull head. Like the hybrid centaurs, the Minotaur was flesh-hungry. The 14 young Athenians were to be his meal.
Theseus arrived in Athens just days before the next group of 14 young people were to be carried off to Crete in a ship with the black sails of misery. He offered to go in place of one of the youths. As the boat took off, Theseus told his father he would kill the Minotaur and come home with white sails of joy.
Theseus entered the Labyrinth and managed to find his way out again, thanks to the wiles of Ariadne, who advised him to carry thread and unwind it to mark his path.
The Minotaur lived in the Labyrinth, a structure built especially for him, with paths that led in circles, so that no one could ever escape. As the Athenian youths were paraded through the streets on their way to this most terrifying doom, the people of Crete watched in a mix of horror and gratitude that the children of others were being sacrificed instead of their own. The king’s daughter, Ariadne, spied Theseus from her balcony and fell in love. She had him brought to her and said she’d tell him the way to escape, if he’d then marry her. Theseus agreed, and Ariadne gave him a ball of thread. He was to tie one end to the entrance door of the Labyrinth, then unwind as he walked. That way he could retrace his steps. She had learned this trick from Daedalus, the architect of the Labyrinth.
Theseus walked on careful feet, climbing over rocks silent as a goat kid. He found the Minotaur asleep, his head heavy with two thick horns, resting on his chest. As Theseus crept closer, the stench of the massive beast’s blood breath made his own blood race. It was kill or be devoured. Theseus beat him with his bare fists. The beast woke, eyes full of tragedy. Theseus beat with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings but the heft of wild horse hooves. He beat even when his fists were bloody stumps. He beat even when it was clear nothing moved but his fists—nothing else lived. The pitiable creature died dazed.
Theseus beat the Minotaur to death with his bare fists, rather than using a rock or a knife. Perhaps the savagery of the monster ignited his own bestial side.
Theseus followed the thread trail back to the Labyrinth door, leading the other Athenian youths. He found Ariadne and they all got in the ship and headed back toward Athens, stopping at Naxos, an island sacred to the god Dionysus. There Theseus had one of the least fine moments of his life. He looked at Ariadne, asleep on the beach, and realized he didn’t want a wife right now, or, at least not this wife. So he set sail, abandoning her there in her sleep. Fortunately for the girl, she and Dionysus got along well, and they married. In his rush home, Theseus forgot to change the black sails to white. King Aegeus saw the sails and imagined the Minotaur’s mouth dripping with the blood of his son. He threw himself from a cliff and died.
The bereaved Theseus became king of Athens. But he didn’t savor power. Instead, he gathered the people together and told them to vote for what they wanted. He created the first democracy of the known world. And he behaved with a new wisdom, quite different from the behavior he had shown as a young man when he had disposed of the robbers. When the city of Thebes had a war with the Argives and refused to bury the dead Argive soldiers, Theseus marched against them. He conquered Thebes and made the Thebans bury the dead, but then he left, without harming Thebes at all. When his cousin Heracles went mad and killed his family, Theseus stood by him and said wrong done in a maddened state was not evil, and Heracles should not kill himself, but should seek a source of peace. No more eye-for-an-eye justice; Theseus had learned humanity.
Theseus and his cousin Heracles fought the Amazons, killing many. But Theseus married the pretty Amazon princess Antiope and brought her back to Athens.
Never did he give up his love of danger, though. He accompanied Heracles to fight the infamous women warriors known as Amazons and took one for his wife. He joined King Pirithous to fight the centaurs after they had gotten drunk at a wedding and assaulted the bride. He became infatuated with a very young but very beautiful maiden from Sparta named Helen, and kidnapped her, knowing full well that the Spartans were the most vicious army on Earth. He intended to marry her, but while he was off in Tartarus on another adventure, the Spartans invaded Athens and took Helen back.
Like Heracles, the hero Theseus met a terrible end. Somehow he lost favor with the Athenians and was driven away to the land of Scyros, where the king, Lycomede, threw him to his death in an abyss.
King Peleus of Phthia married the nymph goddess Thetis, whose feet slipped over land like silver moonglow. They invited gods and goddesses to their wedding—all but one, Eris, the goddess of discord, because she was known for ruining everything. Eris smarted. She determined to ruin the wedding anyway. She threw an apple into the midst of the guests with the label “for the fairest.” All the goddesses wanted it, naturally. But in the end none but the three most powerful put themselves forward: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They asked Zeus to choose. Only an idiot would have accepted the task. Zeus immediately thought of Paris, the prince of the distant city of Troy. The prince’s mother, Hecuba, had had a terrible dream, which his father, King Priam, interpreted in the worst way: The dream meant his son would one day bring fiery ruin to the country. So King Priam had sent Paris to Mount Ida to keep sheep and stay out of trouble. The exiled prince married the nymph Oenone and seemed happy. Paris was a dimwit, as far as Zeus could see. He was the perfect idiot for this task. Zeus told the three goddesses to go ask Paris.
The goddesses were callous about it; beauty wasn’t an objective matter anyway. They offered bribes. Hera offered political power: Paris could become leader of Europe and Asia. Athena offered military power: Paris could lead the Trojans in war against Greece and win. Aphrodite offered love power: Paris could marry the most beautiful human woman. Paris chose Aphrodite and went off to claim his wife, with never a backward glance at the poor nymph Oenone.
FEMMES Fatales
Mythical women of intoxicating beauty come up in many cultures. Celtic lore had Queen Maeve. Hindu lore had enchanting Mohini. And the ancient Greeks had Aphrodite and Helen. Often these beauties have admirable strengths: Queen Maeve was a powerful warrior. But often these beauties lead men into bad situations; such a beauty is called a “femme fatale.” For love of Helen, war was waged for ten years, with many warriors slaughtered on both sides. Helen might be the most “fatale” of “femmes.”
Helen looking down
Who was the most beautiful human woman? A daughter of Zeus, of course. Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, had the whitest arms, legs, neck. Her eyes were black pitch, her mouth red blood, her tongue the color of pomegranate juice. She moved as thou
gh gliding on water, peaceful, aloof. A perfect target. Zeus came in the form he thought befit her, a huge white swan. In a single night four children began growing inside Leda: the boy Castor and the girl Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, and the boy Polydeuces and the girl Helen, children of Zeus.
By the time Helen was ten, word of her beauty had spread. She had the grace of her mother, but something else, too, something more profoundly moving. She made men feel like their bones had turned to water. By the time she was twelve, suitors came. The great Theseus even stole her away, only to have her be stolen back by her brothers. King Tyndareus was afraid fights might break out if he chose among the throngs of suitors, so he made the men promise to support whoever became Helen’s husband. Then Tyndareus chose Menelaus, brother to King Agamemnon of Mycenae. King Tyndareus abdicated the throne and Menelaus became king of Sparta. Helen bore him a daughter, Hermione. Motherhood only served to make her eyes appear deeper, her cheeks fuller—she was altogether more beautiful.
Paris, prince of Troy, set off to claim Helen. He arrived in Sparta with many ships. King Menelaus entertained him graciously, unaware of the prince’s intentions. On the tenth day of his visit, the king left for a funeral in Crete, and Paris convinced Helen to flee with him that night, abandoning her family.
Menelaus turned to Helen’s past suitors for support. That included nearly all the powerful men of Greece. They had promised Tyndareus; it was time to keep that promise. A thousand ships prepared to set sail eastward.
When the Trojan prince Paris stole the Greek queen Helen, ships carrying Greek soldiers crossed the Aegean Sea to wage war on Troy. Ten years of death and misery ensued.
But the winds wouldn’t blow; the ships sat idle. King Agamemnon of Mycenae—brother of Menelaus, husband of Helen’s sister Clytemnestra—was commander of the whole force. He made the incredibly stupid and tragic mistake of killing a stag and boasting he was a better hunter than the goddess Artemis. It was Artemis who kept the winds from blowing. She demanded that Agamemnon sacrifice the first girl he saw before she’d let the boats sail. Agamemnon’s chariot turned the bend, and there was his sweet daughter, Iphigenia, niece of Helen. Distraught, the trapped king had his daughter beheaded, a hideous task.
The winds howled and the ships sailed. A youth, but 15 years old, the son of King Peleus and the nymph Thetis, whose wedding had started this whole affair—this youth was in charge of the fleet. His name was Achilles. His mother had dipped the boy as an infant in the River Styx in Tartarus to make him immortal. But she held him by one heel, and that heel remained his point of vulnerability. When the war was declared, Thetis, convinced he’d die in battle, had dressed Achilles as a girl and sent him to another court for safety. But the soldier Odysseus laid a trap for the disguised Achilles. He went to the court and showed the women beautiful jewels and sharp daggers. One girl cared nothing for the jewels but spent all her time looking at the daggers—and so Odysseus hauled the young Achilles off to war.
Over in Troy, thousands of young men assembled to fight for their country’s honor. King Priam’s son Hector, brother of Paris, was the greatest Trojan warrior. Unlike Paris, Hector was trustworthy and thoughtful. He knew, just as the Greek Achilles knew, that this war meant certain death, yet he took up his arms with courage.
Warriors gathered, shields and swords ready. The youth of two nations fought out of honor and loyalty but, sadly, in a battle that served more to amuse the gods than anything else.
See them? See these fine young people, armed to the teeth, hearts full of valor and hope, but heads knowing rivers of blood would flow. See them battle month after month, year after year—egged on by gods and goddesses who saw them as pawns in a giant game. See their sense of loyalty tested. See their knowledge of honor develop. Cry for them. Cry for soldiers everywhere. Cry for their families. Cry for the world.
The god Apollo, egotistical to the point of mania, refused to let the war end. For nine years one side was winning, then the other. Achilles killed the dear and true Hector and dragged his body through the mud, for war can make one crazy. Then Paris killed the great warrior Achilles. Both sides had lost really. But they kept fighting, mindlessly, numbly.
In the tenth year, a prophet said Troy could not be taken without the bow and arrows of Heracles. Heracles had already died, burned on a pyre of his own making. But he had given his bow and arrows to his friend Philoctetes. Philoctetes had set out for Troy ten years before, but when his ship stopped at the island of Lemnos, a sea serpent had bitten him. Everyone knew a sea serpent’s bite was fatal; the ship abandoned Philoctetes. Now Odysseus led a party back to Lemnos to look for the bow and arrows. Amazingly, they found Philoctetes still alive. They brought him back to Troy, and Philoctetes killed Paris with an arrow.
But the war still didn’t end, for Helen was hidden somewhere behind the walls of Troy and King Menelaus wanted her back. Odysseus had a moment of genius: He proposed the Greeks build a giant wooden horse and conceal their best warriors inside it. Then the rest of them hid in the field.
When the Trojans saw the horse alone on the battlefield, they thought the Greeks had fled, leaving a gift of appeasement. They opened the city gates and pulled the horse inside. Cassandra—sister of dead Hector and dead Paris, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba—warned that the horse was full of warriors who would destroy Troy. No one believed her. That was her gift, to see the future. That was her curse, never to be believed.
The Greeks built a giant horse and hid inside. The Trojans accepted the “gift” and rolled it within their walls. And so the war finally ended, with a brilliant hoax.
Helen looked at the horse warily. She walked around it, calling out the soldiers’ names using the voices of their wives. Within the horse, the Greek soldiers squirmed; they were almost tricked. But Odysseus made them all stay quiet. And Helen went to sleep, having assured herself that Cassandra was wrong.
As the Trojans slept, the Greeks climbed out. They opened the city gates so that the armies waiting outside could come in. The Greek soldiers slaughtered the Trojan soldiers in their beds as they slept. Menelaus found Helen and took her to his ship. The Greeks burned the city to the ground and left.
Helen grieved for the slaughter she had caused by giving in to Paris’ seduction. But all of it—from Helen’s luminous beauty to the interminable war—was the doing of gods with too much time on their hands.
This map shows the locations of the ancient sites mentioned in the book.
1900 B.C.
Indo-European tribes known as Mycenaeans overrun Greece and introduce their language. Ancient Greek (the language our myths were originally written in) gradually forms around this time.
1400 B.C.
The Mycenaeans extend their control to the island of Crete. Athens becomes an important trade center.
1100 B.C.-800 B.C.
The Mycenaean civilization is gradually overcome and replaced by the civilization that embraces the mythology presented in this book. City-states (that is, cities with walls around them that had their own governments) arise.
800 B.C. (roughly)
The Greek alphabet is formed. From this point on, most major works in Greece are written in the Greek alphabet.
750-650 B.C.
The ancient Greek poets Hesiod and Homer write the stories that give us our first information about Greek mythology. Hesiod’s Theogony tells about the origins of the world and of the gods. Homer’s Iliad tells about the Trojan War and his Odyssey tells about the travels of Odysseus as he returns from Troy to Greece.
550 B.C.
Athens is widely recognized as the cultural center of Greece. Greece, particularly Athens, becomes a center for dramatic theater for the next 300 years.
525-455 B.C.
The playwright Aeschylus lives. He writes tragedies that are still studied and performed today. His play The Oresteia, is about the curse on the house of the King Atreus.
497-406 B.C.
The playwright Sophocles
lives. He writes tragedies, also well-known today. One of his most famous is called Oedipus, about a young man who falls in love with his mother.
480-406 B.C.
The playwright Euripides lives. He writes tragedies that are unusual in that the women characters play prominent, strong roles, slaves are often presented as intelligent, and gods and heroes are often laughed at.
469-399 B.C.
The philosopher Socrates lives. His writings lay the foundation for Western philosophy.
428-348 B.C.
Plato, a student of Socrates, lives. His written dialogues become central to philosophy, language, mathematics, logic, and ethics.
29-19 B.C.
The Roman poet Virgil writes The Aeneid, the story of the travels of the Trojan soldier Aeneas after the Trojan War. Aeneas is the mythological ancestor of the ancient Romans.
0 B.C./A.D. (roughly)
In the years before and after the year zero, the Roman poet Ovid produces works that give us much information about native Roman mythology as well as Roman mythology imported from Greece.
GODS & GODDESSES
Greek Name: APHRODITE
Roman Name: Venus
Title: Goddess of Love & Beauty
Generation: Olympian
Symbols: scallop shell, myrtle, dove, sparrow, girdle, mirror, swan
Birthplace: in the sea, near Cyprus
Married to: Hephaestus
Parents: Uranus
Greek Name: APOLLO
Roman Name: Apollo
Title: God of Music
Generation: Olympian
Symbols: lyre, crown of laurel, hawk, raven, fawn
Treasury of Greek Mythology Page 8