Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths

by Bernard Evslin

  “I do, I do!” cried Phaethon. “Stand away, sire! The dawn grows old and day must begin! Go, horses, go!”

  And Apollo stood watching as the horses of the sun went into a swinging trot, pulling behind them the golden chariot, climbing the first eastern steep of the sky.

  At first things went well. The great steeds trotted easily along their path across the high blue meadow of the sky. And Phaethon thought to himself, “I can’t understand why my father was making such a fuss. This is easy. For me, anyway. Perhaps I’m a natural-born coachman though…”

  He looked over the edge of the chariot. He saw tiny houses down below and specks of trees. And the dark blue puddle of the sea. The coach was trundling across the sky. The great sun wheels were turning, casting light, warming and brightening the earth, chasing all the shadows of night.

  “Just imagine,” Phaethon thought, “how many people now are looking up at the sky, praising the sun, hoping the weather stays fair. How many people are watching me, me, me…?” Then he thought, “But I’m too small to see. They can’t even see the coach or the horses—only the great wheel. We are too far and the light is too bright. For all they know, it is Apollo making his usual run. How can they know it’s me, me, me? How will my mother know, and my sisters? They would be so proud. And Epaphus—above all, Epaphus—how will he know? I’ll come home tomorrow after this glorious journey and tell him what I did and he will laugh at me and tell me I’m lying, as he did before. And how shall I prove it to him? No, this must not be. I must show him that it is I driving the chariot of the sun—I alone. Apollo said not to come too close to earth, but how will he know? And I won’t stay too long—just dip down toward our own village and circle his roof three times—which is the signal we agreed upon. After he recognizes me, I’ll whip up the horses and resume the path of the day.”

  He jerked on the reins, pulled the horses’ heads down. They whinnied angrily and tossed their heads. He jerked the reins again.

  “Down,” he cried. “Down! Down!”

  The horses plunged through the bright air, golden hooves twinkling, golden manes flying, dragging the great glittering chariot after them in a long flaming swoop. When they reached his village, he was horrified to see the roofs bursting into fire. The trees burned. People rushed about screaming. Their loose clothing caught fire, and they burned like torches as they ran.

  Was it his village? He could not tell because of the smoke. Had he destroyed his own home? Burned his mother and his sisters?

  He threw himself backward in the chariot, pulling at the reins with all his might, shouting, “Up! Up!”

  And the horses, made furious by the smoke, reared on their hind legs in the air. Then leaped upward, galloping through the smoke, pulling the chariot up, up.

  Swiftly the earth fell away beneath them. The village was just a smudge of smoke. Again he saw the pencilstroke of mountains, the inkblot of seas. “Whoa!” he cried. “Turn now! Forward on your path!” But he could no longer handle them. They were galloping, not trotting. They had taken the bit in their teeth. They did not turn toward the path of the day across the meadow of the sky, but galloped up, up. And the people on earth saw the sun shooting away until it was no larger than a star.

  Darkness came. And cold. The earth froze hard. Rivers froze, and oceans. Boats were caught fast in the ice in every sea. It snowed in the jungle. Marble buildings cracked. It was impossible for anyone to speak; breath froze on the speakers’ lips. And in village and city, in the field and in the wood, people died of the cold. And the bodies piled up where they fell, like firewood.

  Still Phaethon could not hold his horses, and still they galloped upward dragging light and warmth away from the earth. Finally they went so high that the air was too thin to breathe. Phaethon saw the flame of their breath, which had been red and yellow, burn blue in the thin air. He himself was gasping for breath; he felt the marrow of his bones freezing.

  Now the horses, wild with change, maddened by the feeble hand on the reins, swung around and dived toward earth again. Now all the ice melted, making great floods. Villages were swept away by a solid wall of water. Trees were uprooted and whole forests were torn away. The fields were covered by water. Lower swooped the horses, and lower yet. Now the water began to steam—great billowing clouds of steam as the water boiled. Dead fish floated on the surface. Naiads moaned in dry riverbeds.

  Phaethon could not see; the steam was too thick. He had unbound the reins from his waist, or they would have cut him in two. He had no control over the horses at all. They galloped upward again—out of the steam—taking at last the middle road, but racing wildly, using all their tremendous speed. Circling the earth in a matter of minutes, smashing across the sky from horizon to horizon, making the day flash on and off like a child playing with a lamp. And the people who were left alive were bewildered by the light and darkness following each other so swiftly.

  Up high on Olympus, the gods in their cool garden heard a clamor of grief from below. Zeus looked upon earth. He saw the runaway horses of the sun and the hurtling chariot. He saw the dead and the dying, the burning forests, the floods, the weird frost. Then he looked again at the chariot and saw that it was not Apollo driving but someone he did not know. He stood up, drew back his arm, and hurled a thunderbolt.

  It stabbed through the air, striking Phaethon, killing him instantly, knocking him out of the chariot. His body, flaming, fell like a star. And the horses of the sun, knowing themselves driverless, galloped homeward toward their stables at the eastern edge of the sky.

  Phaethon’s yellow-haired sisters grieved for the beautiful boy. They could not stop weeping. They stood on the bank of the river where he had fallen until Apollo, unable to comfort them, changed them into poplar trees. Here they still stand on the shore of the river, weeping tears of amber sap.

  And since that day no one has been allowed to drive the chariot of the sun except the sun god himself. But there are still traces of Phaethon’s ride. The ends of the earth are still covered with icecaps. Mountains still rumble, trying to spit out the fire started in their bellies by the diving sun.

  Orpheus

  HIS FATHER WAS A Thracian king; his mother, the Muse, Calliope. For awhile he lived on Parnassus with his mother and his eight beautiful aunts and there met Apollo, who was courting the laughing Muse, Thalia. Apollo was taken with Orpheus and gave him a little golden lyre and taught him to play. And his mother taught him to make verses for singing.

  So he grew up to be a poet and musician such as the world had never known. Fishermen used to coax him to go sailing with them early in the morning and had him play his lyre on the deck. They knew that the fish would come up from the depths of the sea to hear him and sit on their tails and listen as he played, making it easy to catch them. But they were not caught, for as soon as Orpheus began to play, the fishermen forgot all about their nets and sat on deck and listened with their mouths open—just like the fish. And when he had finished, the fish dived, the fishermen awoke, and all was as before.

  When he played in the fields, animals followed him, sheep and cows and goats. And not only the tame animals but the wild ones too—the shy deer, and wolves, and bears. They all followed him, streaming across the fields, following him, listening. When he sat down, they would gather in a circle about him, listening. Nor did the bears and wolves think of eating the sheep until the music had stopped, and it was too late. And they went off growling to themselves about the chance they had missed.

  And as he grew and practiced, he played more and more beautifully, so that now not only animals but trees followed him as he walked, wrenching themselves out of the earth and hobbling after him on their twisted roots. In Thrace now there are circles of trees that still stand, listening.

  People followed him too, of course, as he strolled about, playing and singing. Men and women, boys and girls—particularly girls. But as time passed and the faces changed he noticed that one face was always there. She was always there—in front, listening—w
hen he played. She became especially noticeable because she began to appear among his other listeners, among the animals and the trees who listened as he played. So that finally he knew, that wherever he might be, wherever he might strike up his lyre and raise his voice in song, whether people were listening, or animals or trees and rocks—she would be there, very slender and still, with huge dark eyes and long black hair, her face like a rose.

  Then one day he took her aside and spoke to her. Her name was Eurydice. She said she wanted to do nothing but be where he was, always; and that she knew she could not hope for him to love her, but that would not stop her from following him and serving him in any way she could. She would be happy to be his slave if he wanted her to.

  Now, this is the kind of thing any man likes to hear in any age, particularly a poet. And although Orpheus was admired by many women and could have had his choice, he decided that he must have this one, so much like a child still, with her broken murmurs and great slavish eyes. And so he married her.

  They lived happily, very happily, for a year and a day. They lived in a little house near the river in a grove of trees that pressed close, and they were so happy that they rarely left home. People began to wonder why Orpheus was never seen about, why his wonderful lyre was never heard. They began to gossip, as people do. Some said Orpheus was dead, killed by the jealous Apollo for playing so well. Others said he had fallen in love with a river nymph, had gone into the water after her, and now lived at the bottom of the river, coming up only at dawn to blow tunes upon the reeds that grew thickly near the shore. And others said that he had married dangerously, that he lived with a sorceress, who with her enchantments made herself so beautiful that he was chained to her side and would not leave her even for a moment.

  It was the last rumor that people chose to believe. Among them was a visitor—Aristeus, a young king of Athens, Apollo’s son by the nymph Cyrene, and a mighty hunter. Aristeus decided that he must see this beautiful enchantress, and stationed himself in the grove of trees and watched the house. For two nights and two days he watched. Then finally he saw a girl come out. She made her way through the grove and went down the path toward the river. He followed. When he reached the river, he saw her there, taking off her tunic.

  Without a word he charged toward her, crashing like a wild boar through the reeds. Eurydice looked up and saw a stranger hurtling toward her. She fled. Swiftly she ran—over the grass toward the trees. She heard him panting after her. She doubled back toward the river and ran, heedless of where she was going, wild to escape. And she stepped full on a nest of coiled and sleeping snakes, who awoke immediately and bit her leg in so many places that she was dead before she fell. And Aristeus, rushing up, found her lying in the reeds.

  He left her body where he found it. There it lay until Orpheus, looking for her, came at dusk and saw her glimmering whitely like a fallen birch. By this time Hermes had come and gone, taking her soul with him to Tartarus. Orpheus stood looking down at her. He did not weep. He touched a string of his lyre once, absently, and it sobbed. But only once—he did not touch it again. He kept looking at her. She was pale and thin, her hair was disheveled, her legs streaked with mud. She seemed more childish than even He looked down at her, dissatisfied with the way she looked, as he felt when he set a wrong word in a verse. She was wrong this way. She did not belong dead. He would have to correct it. He turned abruptly and set off across the field.

  He entered Tartarus at the nearest place, a passage in the mountains called Avernus, and walked through a cold mist until he came to the river Styx. He saw shades waiting there to be ferried across, but not Eurydice. She must have crossed before. The ferry came back and put out its plank, and the shades went on board, each one reaching under his tongue for the penny to pay the fare. But the ferryman, Charon, huge and swart and scowling, stopped Orpheus when he tried to embark.

  “Stand off!” he cried. “Only the dead go here.”

  Orpheus touched his lyre and began to sing—a river song, a boat song, about streams running in the sunlight, and boys making twig boats, and then growing up to be young men who go in boats, and how they row down the river thrusting with powerful young arms, and what the water smells like in the morning when you are young, and the sound of oars dipping.

  And Charon, listening, felt himself carried back to his own youth—to the time before he had been taken by Hades and put to work on the black river. And he was so lost in memory that the great sweep oar fell from his hand, and he stood there, dazed, tears streaming down his face—and Orpheus took up the oar and rowed across.

  The shades filed off the ferry and through the gates of Tartarus. Orpheus followed them. Then he heard a hideous growling. An enormous dog with three heads, each one uglier than the next, slavered and snarled. It was the three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the gates of Tartarus.

  Orpheus unslung his lyre and played. He played a dog song, a hound song, a hunting song. In it was the faint far yapping of happy young hounds finding a fresh trail—dogs with one graceful head in the middle where it should be, dogs that run through the light and shade of the forest chasing stags and wolves, as dogs should do and are not forced to stand forever before dark gates, barking at ghosts.

  Cerberus lay down and closed his six eyes, lolled his three tongues, and went to sleep to dream of the days when he had been a real dog, before he had been captured and changed and trained as a sentinel for the dead. Orpheus stepped over him and went through the gates.

  Through the Field of Aspholdel he walked, playing. The shades twittered thin glee, like bats giggling. Sisyphus stopped pushing his stone, and the stone itself poised on the side of the hill to listen and did not fall back. Tantalus heard and stopped lunging his head at the water; the music laved his thirst. Minos and Rhadamanthys and Aeacus, the great judges of the dead, heard the music on their high benches and fell dreaming about the old days on Crete where they had been young princes, about the land battles and the sea battles and the white bulls and the beautiful maidens and the flashing swords, and all the days gone by. They sat there, listening, eyes blinded with tears, deaf to litigants.

  Then Hades, king of the underworld, lord of the dead, knowing his great proceedings disrupted, waited sternly on his throne as Orpheus approached.

  “No more cheap minstrel tricks,” he cried. “I am a god. My rages are not to be assuaged, nor my decrees nullified. No one comes to Tartarus without being sent for. No one has before, and no one will again, when the tale is told of the torments I intend to put you to.”

  Orpheus touched his lyre and sang a song that conjured up a green field and a grove of trees and a slender girl painting flowers and all the light about her head, with the special clearness there was when the world had just begun. He sang of how that girl made a sight so pleasing as she played with the flowers that the birds overhead gossiped of it, and the moles underground—until the word reached even gloomy Tartarus, where a dark king heard and went up to see for himself. Orpheus sang of that king seeing the girl for the first time in a great wash of early sunlight, and what he felt when he saw that stalk-slender child in her tunic and green shoes moving with her paintpot among the flowers; of the fever that ran in his blood when first he put his mighty arm about her waist, and drank her screams with his dark lips and tasted her tears; of the grief that had come upon him when he almost lost her again to her mother by Zeus’s decree; and of the joy that filled him when he learned that she had eaten of the pomegranate.

  Persephone was sitting at Hades’ side. She began to cry. Hades looked at her. She leaned forward and whispered to him swiftly. The king turned to Orpheus. Hades did not weep, but no one had ever seen his eyes so brilliant.

  “Your verse has affected my queen,” he said. “Speak. We are disposed to hear. What is it you wish?”

  “My wife.”

  “What have we to do with your wife?”

  “She is here. She was brought here today. Her name is Eurydice. I wish to take her back with me.”

/>   “Never done,” said Hades. “A disastrous precedent.”

  “Not so, great Hades,” said Orpheus. “This one stroke of unique mercy will illumine like a lightning flash the caverns of your dread decree. Nature exists by proportion, and perceptions work by contrast, and the gods themselves are part of nature. This brilliant act of kindness, I say, will make cruelty seem like justice for all the rest of time. Pray give me back my wife again, great monarch. For I will not leave without her—not for all the torments that can be devised.”

  He touched his lyre once again, and the Eumenides, hearing the music, flew in on their hooked wings, their brass claws tinkling like bells, and poised in the air above Hades’ throne. The terrible hags cooed like doves, saying, “Just this once, Hades. Let him have her. Let her go.”

  Hades stood up then, black-caped and towering. He looked down at Orpheus and said, “I must leave the laurel leaves and the loud celebrations to my bright nephew Apollo. But I, even I, of such dour repute, can be touched by eloquence. Especially when it attracts such unlikely advocates. Hear me then, Orpheus. You may have your wife. She will be given into your care, and you will conduct her yourself from Tartarus to the upper light. But if during your journey, you look back once, only once—if for any reason whatever you turn your eyes from where you are headed and look back toward where you were—then my leniency is revoked, and Eurydice will be taken from you again, and forever. Go…”