For in Thallo’s song, Bellerophon, flying toward Tiryns, grew drunk with pride and joy and suddenly decided that he, as a son of Poseidon, should pay a visit to his high relatives—should fly up to Mount Olympus and tell his great deeds to his uncle Zeus and aunt Hera. Yes, he would meet the brawling Ares and the wing-footed Hermes, so that they might be proud of their kinsman from Corinth.
But Zeus, looking down from his great height and seeing a mortal flying toward heaven on the back of a magnificent golden-winged stallion, thought to himself, “This is what I’ve always feared—a mortal grown so arrogant that he wants to storm Olympus.”
But according to the song, the angry god did not hurl his thunderbolt. He dispatched a gadfly instead. It was as large as a crow, with a sting like a dagger. It flew down and stung Pegasus under the tail. The horse bucked violently, and Bellerophon, whose pride had made him slack in the saddle, was thrown.
Down, down, he fell. When he hit the ground, he, like Thallo, shattered both legs.
Knowing that he was crippled for life, he dragged himself toward a forest, hoping to be eaten by a wild beast. But the faithful Sea Mist, who for many weeks had roamed the plains, waiting for his beloved master to return, found Bellerophon before he reached the wood. Nickering softly, he knelt so that the broken hero could climb upon his back.
A strange tale began to spread among the shepherds and farmers of Thessaly—a tale of a great gray stallion with a rider who never dismounted. The tale swelled, as years passed, into the legend of a creature half human, half horse, with the head and chest of a man and the body and legs of a horse. This was the first Centaur—and the tale told that it galloped to Tiryns, caught Proetus out hunting, kicked him to death, and galloped off with the young widow, Anteia. And she became the mother of the Centaur tribe, and their queen.
THE CYCLOPES
For my brave boy,
ELI BURBANK
who has met monsters and wants to meet more
Characters
Monsters
The Cyclopes
(SY klahps) sing.
(SY kloh peez) plur.
Huge one-eyed smiths; the eldest children of Uranus and Gaia
Hundred-handed Giants
Born of Mother Earth and her serpent lover
Dragons
Gigantic leather-winged, fire-breathing lizards grown from worms who fattened themselves upon the blood of the murdered Uranus
Brontes
(BRAHN teez)
Cleverest of the Cyclopes; forged the first lightning bolt for Zeus
Polyphemus
(pahl ih FEE muhs)
A cannibalistic Cyclops encountered by Ulysses
The Elder Gods
Uranus
(u RAY nuhs)
Lord of the Sky and All Beneath; the Rain-giver
Gaia
(GAY uh)
Mother Earth; wife to Uranus and mother of the Cyclopes, the hundred-handed giants, the Titans, and Cronos
Cronos
(KROH nuhs)
Youngest of the Titans and king after Uranus; father of the Gods
Rhea
(REE uh)
Sister and wife of Cronos; mother of Hestia, Demeter, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, and Zeus
The Pantheon
Zeus
(ZOOS)
King of the Gods after Cronos, and all powerful; wielder of thunder and lightning
Hera
(HEE ruh)
Sister and wife of Zeus; mother of Hephaestus and Ares
Hestia
(HEHS tih uh)
Elder sister of Zeus; Goddess of the Hearth
Demeter
(de MEE tuhr)
Sister of Zeus; Goddess of the Harvest
Hades
(HAY deez)
Brother of Zeus; King of the Land Beyond Death
Poseidon
(poh SY duhn)
Brother of Zeus; God of the Sea
Hephaestus
(he FEHS tus)
Eldest son of Zeus and Hera; the Smith God
Ares
(AIR eez)
Second son of Zeus and Hera; God of War
Athena
(uh THEE nuh)
Daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Metis; Goddess of Wisdom
Aphrodite
(af ruh DY tee)
Goddess of Love and Beauty; her name means foam-born
Apollo
(uh PAHL oh)
Son of Zeus and Leto; the sun God; also God of Music and Healing and Lord of the Golden Bow
Artemis
(AHR tuh mis)
Twin sister of Apollo; Goddess of the Moon and the Chase and Maiden of the Silvern Bow
Hermes
(HUR meez)
Son of Zeus and Maia; the Messenger God as well as God of Commerce; patron of liars, gamblers, and thieves
Heroes
Ulysses
(u LIHS eez)
King of Ithaca and leading strategist of the Greek forces in the war against Troy; he is the renowned voyager who survives a series of dreadful ordeals flung at him by the gods who sided with the Trojans
Others
Dione
(dy OH nee)
An oak dryad who aids Zeus
Leuce
(LOO say)
A river nymph who serves Cronos and maddens Polyphemus
Amalthea
(am uhl THEE uh)
Enormous she-goat who suckles the infant Zeus
Dryads
(DRY uhdz)
Wood nymphs
Naiads
(NAY uhdz)
Nymphs of those waters that are not the sea. They inhabit rivers, lakes, streams, fountains, and springs
Nereids
(ne REE uhdz)
Sea nymphs, all of them beautiful
Contents
CHAPTER I
The Maiming
CHAPTER II
The Sickle
CHAPTER III
The Betrayals
CHAPTER IV
The Cannibal God
CHAPTER V
Zeus
CHAPTER VI
Underground
CHAPTER VII
Family Reunion
CHAPTER VIII
The Magic Weapons
CHAPTER IX
Before the Battle
CHAPTER X
Different Fires
CHAPTER XI
To Death and Back
CHAPTER XII
Ulysses and the Cyclops
1
The Maiming
Uranus, the First One, Lord of the Sky and Sender of Rain, married Gaia, whose name means Earth. He drew a golden cloud about them, and his rain started children in the cave of her womb.
“Oh, my Lord,” she cried, “these blessed babes of ours shall be the first born of love’s embrace—creatures so wondrously beautiful that all must worship them.”
“Beautiful, eh?” snarled Uranus to himself. “Then she may prefer them to me, me, me. Oh, no! Beautiful they shall not be, but so ugly that all will flee in horror.”
Thereupon he cursed the first fruits of her womb, fashioning this curse into the shape of a bat, which he sent flying into the cave where the unborn infants lay. The bat plucked an eye from each head and ate them like grapes.
Mother Earth went into labor. The plains quaked. Mountains gushed fire. The ocean floor shook, starting tidal waves. When the sea withdrew, two children loomed on the wet beach, a boy and a girl. Giants they were, born full-grown, tall as trees and magnificently muscled.
But their father, hiding behind a storm cloud, smiled when he saw them. For each had but one eye set right in the middle of the forehead.
“A fine pair of monsters,” chuckled Uranus to himself. “Not even their mother can love them.”
But his troubles with their mother were just starting. She looked upon the monsters she had borne and knew somehow that it was Uranus who had made them the way they were. To avenge herself she went d
ancing on the flickering edge of creation and entertained a giant serpent. Shortly thereafter she gave birth to a litter of hundred-handed giants, whom she hid from sight in one of her deepest caves.
Her rage grew. Spasms of anger shook the earth. She wept tears of lava. Tidal waves were her tantrum. And Uranus could not approach her—not until he had vowed that from then on their children would be as beautiful as she had dreamed.
Sure enough, after they stopped quarreling, Gaia produced one child a year. Her brood, the Titans, were godlike in their beauty but of savage temper.
Now Mother Earth had many children, but she was troubled, for they were unkind to each other, and cruelest of all to her firstborn, whom their father had robbed of an eye each.
The huge single eye of the Cyclopes, glowing like a weird gem in the middle of their foreheads, struck terror into everyone who looked at them. Even the serpent’s spawn, the hundred-handed giants who looked like enormous centipedes—even these hideous creatures disliked the sight of the Cyclopes and tried to avoid them. And the entire Titan tribe, who were very proud of their beauty, loathed the Cyclopes and kept planning ways to get rid of them forever, but didn’t dare come close enough to attack.
Only Gaia, their mother, pitied them. Still, even she did not really relish the sight of them and managed to see as little of her firstborn as possible.
So, feared and shunned by everyone, the Cyclopes twins had only each other in all the new-made world. To say that they loved each other is to say too little. From the first, they were like two halves of the same body. They craved each other with a need that could not be satisfied. As far as possible they tried to become each other. They were two-eyed at such times, and although the eyes were in different heads, their vision was single. Coming so close, merging so utterly, they were able to forget the pain of being maimed and hated and isolated.
Time passed. Mother Earth began roaming her caves. She was with child again and feeling very special about this pregnancy because she knew it would be her last. Now she was looking for a place to bear her child. She went deeper than she had ever gone before, cavern beneath cavern beneath cavern, right into the entrails of the earth. She heard a curious mewing sound and held her torch high.
Among the thronging shadows she saw a huge jewel catching the torchlight, and fracturing it. She searched the shadows and saw that the jewel was an eye, the huge single eye of the girl Cyclops, brimming now with a great crystal tear. But the tear was of happiness. Crawling over her like kittens were four naked babes, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead.
“Oh, horror, horror.… They’re breeding true,” murmured Earth to herself. “My blighted children are giving me blighted grandchildren. If they spawn like this, they will be as numerous as the Titans, who hate them so. They will turn, finally, upon their brothers and sisters. Heaven and earth will be torn by war. I must find some work for these terrible hands to do, some tools they can use instead of weapons.”
She sank down upon the stone floor of the cave, took her daughter’s ugly jeweled head onto her lap, and kissed her face. She gathered her grandchildren about her.
“These are fine children,” she said. “They look just like you. You must lend them to me for a while. I shall teach them a skill that will keep them busy and happy all their days.”
The little Cyclopes grew with monstrous speed and were full-grown in two months. When they came into their strength, Gaia led them among the mountains to a certain chasm where veins of greenish iron streaked the rocks. There, she taught them to quarry and smelt the ore. She gave them an old crater for their smithy. The smoldering volcanic flames were their forge fire; an enormous table stone, their anvil.
First, she taught them toolmaking: how to uproot trees, trim the trunks, and fit the great wooden shafts into lumps of iron, making huge sledgehammers. She was pleased to see they could use their brutal baling-hook fingers as daintily as a spider spinning a web. Under her instruction they learned to heat the ingots red-hot, lay them on their stone anvil, and shape them with the earth-shaking blows of their sledgehammers. And finally, they learned to work the metal as delicately as lace.
The Cyclopes made tools and weapons of iron—hammers, hooks, shovels, swords, spears, and knives. They made ornaments of tin and copper, silver and crystal, as well as lovely baubles of gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.
2
The Sickle
Gaia bore her child. He was called Cronos, and gave his name to Time.
Mother Earth favored her youngest son. She doted on him and he grew into a youth of blinding beauty. But she knew that her husband was growing jealous again.
She had Cronos meet her in a secret place and said, “Your father hates you, my boy.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you too much.”
“It is possible to love too much?”
“It is, and I do. And he hates you for it. And his hatred is a thing to dread. He robbed my first children of an eye each and made them so ugly they turned into monsters. Now he will rob you of your life.”
“I am a god, you have told me. I cannot die.”
“No, but you can be chopped into a hundred little pieces and buried in a hundred different places—and vanish from my sight as sure as death.”
“He would do that to me?”
“Unless you do it to him first.”
“You counsel me to chop my father into a hundred pieces?”
“As many as it takes, my son.”
“He is very big and very powerful. The flash of his eye is lightning. His footfall is thunder. He shakes hurricanes out of his beard. How can I overcome him?”
“I have made certain preparations. The Cyclopes are as skillful as they are ugly; they work in metal. And I have had them forge an iron sickle sharp enough to cut through the hardest rock as if it were rotten wood—sharp enough to shear through the mighty bones of Uranus.”
“What will he be doing while I’m swinging that sickle?”
“Trust me, Cronos. I have also had my smiths forge a chain of massive iron links. When you are ready to act—and it must be soon, soon—I’ll whistle up your half brothers, the hundred-handed giants, who will take that chain and bind Uranus to the root of a mountain. Shackled to this granite pillar, he will be ready for dismemberment.”
“Are you sure of this, mother?”
“Great enterprise requires great risk, my son. But I know your father, and, believe me, your peril is far greater if you don’t do this than if you do. Think, think—would you rather be king of the gods, ruler supreme of heaven and earth, or a hundred bleeding gobbets of flesh scattered so wide and buried so deep that even I, for all my love, will not be able to gather you up and put you back together?”
Earth’s children obeyed their mother. The Cyclopes forged and honed their iron sickle. Working furiously in the crater that was their smithy, they cast lumps of iron into the volcano’s flames, drew out the red-hot ingots with iron tongs, laid them on the enormous slab of basalt that was their anvil, and hammered out massive rings, which they bent into each other until they had a chain strong enough to hold a god in his agony.
When sickle and chain were ready, Mother Earth whistled up her secret children, the hundred-handed giants. They came to her and she told them what to do.
That night, Uranus wrapped himself in a fleecy cloud and lay down to sleep on a plateau atop Mount Olympus. He awoke from a dream of falling to find himself actually underground in a dungeon cave of Tartarus, later to become the home of the dead. His massive body was chained to a granite pillar, and for all his titanic strength he could not break the links. Giant shapes stood guard. He recognized the glowing single eyes of the Cyclopes and realized with a terrible pang of grief that his mutilated children had risen against him. What a surprise, then, to see that his youngest son, the beautiful Cronos, was the one stepping toward him now, swinging a huge blade.
“Why you?” cried Uranus. “I have never harmed you.”
“And never shall, dear father. My mother has taught me what to do.”
“Spare me!” cried Uranus.
“Farewell,” said Cronos. He swung his sickle, shearing the head of Uranus from his body.
As the head rolled in the dust, it spoke, saying: “You murder me now and take my throne. But a son of yours shall do the same to you. Live in fear, Cronos, for a severed head never lies.”
3
The Betrayals
Now Cronos was king of the gods, Lord of the Sky and All Beneath, wielding awful power. Nevertheless, he could not forget those words uttered from the bloody dust and did indeed live in fear. The fear grew worse at night. He remembered it was at night that his father had been whisked from his mountain-top to the place of execution. So Cronos slept poorly and was tormented by nightmares. Finally, he complained to his mother.
“Get married,” she said.
“Why?”
“A good wife brings dreamless sleep.”
“My father thought he had a good wife, and look what happened to him.”
“Ungrateful wretch!” shouted Gaia. “Do you dare reproach me? Me, your mother, who saved you from your father’s deadly jealousy and showed you how to become king of the gods?”
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Page 26