Olympus

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  Eris’s apple results in the world’s first beauty contest. Troy is located in Asia while Greece is in Europe. While Asia succumbs to the passion embodied in Aphrodite, Europe chooses Athena and Hera, who embody skill and domestication.

  Priam

  Troy was named after its king, Tros. It was Tros’s son Ganymede whom Zeus claimed as a lover, and in lieu of whom gifted many magnificent horses to the city.

  Tros had another son, Ilus, after whom Troy was also known as Ilium. Ilus had a son called Laomedon who, unwittingly, became an employer of the gods. Poseidon, to be precise.

  The sea god had once dared to raise his voice against Zeus, and an angry Zeus had stripped Poseidon of his divine powers and cast him down to earth to serve as Laomedon’s servant.

  Unaware that he was addressing a god, Laomedon, observing his prodigious strength, asked Poseidon to build great walls around Troy. Since walls built by gods can never be breached, Zeus sent his son Aeacus, father of Telamon and Peleus, to assist Poseidon. While the portion of the wall built by Aeacus could be breached, the Fates decreed that only the sons of Aeacus would be able to do so, none other.

  After the stipulated duration of punishment, when it was time to return, Poseidon refused to leave without collecting wages due to him. Laomedon, in keeping with habit, always looking for an excuse to pay less or not pay at all, argued that the walls around Troy were not entirely built by Poseidon; he had had Aeacus’s help. He did not realize he was bargaining with a god, who expected full payment. Troy would pay a terrible price for their king’s cupidity.

  A furious Poseidon sent a sea monster to torment Troy. It would not go away until the king offered as sacrifice his favourite child, his daughter Hesione.

  That was the time when Heracles was passing by Troy. He was returning home after the Argo had sailed on without him while he was looking for Hylas. With him were Telamon and Peleus, sons of Aeacus.

  Laomedon begged the mighty Heracles to rescue his daughter. In exchange, Heracles demanded the celestial horses that Zeus had given Troy as payment for Ganymede. Laomedon agreed, but once Poseidon’s sea monster had been defeated and Hesione had been rescued, he went back on his word.

  So Heracles attacked Troy and with Telamon’s help breached the great walls around the city. Heracles then proceeded to kill Laomedon and all his sons. Only one son, Laomedon’s youngest, Podarces, was spared, for whom Hesione paid a huge ransom. Later he came to be known as Priam, the ransomed one.

  Telamon claimed Hesione as his prize for breaching the walls of Troy and took her with him to Greece, where she lived as his concubine.

  Zeus sends Aeacus to build part of the Trojan wall so that it is not eternally impregnable. Thus he introduces a flaw in perfection. This idea is found in Hindu mythology too: since no one is granted the boon of immortality, the asuras who invoke Brahma always ask for boons that make them near-invincible. But there is always a loophole that the devas then exploit and kill the asura.

  Non-payment of dues inevitably results in the wrath of the gods. Similar themes are found in Hindu mythology. Harischandra angers Varuna when he refuses to sacrifice his son even though Varuna has cured him of dropsy. Repaying deva-rina, or debt to the gods, is a key theme in Hindu rituals.

  Zeus makes Ganymede immortal by casting him in the sky as the constellation Aquarius, the cup-bearer of the zodiac. Ganymede is also the name of one of Jupiter’s moons, alongside Io, Europa and Leda.

  The story of the building of the Trojan wall by two Olympians (Apollo joins Poseidon in many versions of the tale) and a mortal (Aeacus) comes from the Greek poet Pindar who lived 2500 years ago.

  The story of Heracles saving Hesione from a sea monster mirrors the story of Perseus saving Andromeda from another sea monster. Hesione’s father offends Poseidon, the sea god, while Andromeda’s mother upsets the Nereids, the sea nymphs.

  In his many adventures, Heracles often demands payment for his services, diminishing his stature as a hero. That he fails to get his due in many cases contributes to his frustration.

  Heracles wanted to breach the famous Trojan walls himself but could not. When he learned that Telamon had done so, he became angry and wanted to kill Telamon. But Telamon, anticipating Heracles’ insecurity, built an altar using stones from the broken wall to honour Heracles, pleasing the hero immensely; thus Heracles forgot all about his desire to hurt Telamon.

  House of Priam

  Paris

  Priam married Hecabe and she bore him fifty children, amongst them Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, Polyxena, Laodice and Polydorus.

  At the time of Paris’s birth, it had been foretold that he would cause the fall of Troy. And so his father Priam ordered his men to leave him in the forest at the mercy of the wild animals. But a shepherd took pity on the infant and took him home and raised him as his own.

  Paris grew up to be a very handsome and talented young man, so much so that when he participated in the Trojan games, he earned the love of the king, who was overjoyed to learn that the lad was actually his own son.

  Soon after this, Priam ordered an expedition to Greece to bring back his sister Hesione, who was being forced to serve Telamon as his concubine in Salamis. Telamon, however, refused to let her go. This Greek refusal to let the Trojan princess go would eventually play a key role in igniting the Trojan War.

  Paris, who was part of this expedition, decided to take a detour to Sparta, eager to meet the woman described to him by Aphrodite. There he learned that she was married to another. But neither that, nor the existence of his own wife, Oenone, a nymph whom he had married when he lived as a shepherd, unaware of his royal origins, mattered at that moment. For Helen truly was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Helen too fell in love with the handsome Trojan prince as soon as she saw him and agreed to elope with him to Troy, leaving her husband behind.

  At first the news of their elopement upset the Trojans for they feared a war with the Greeks. But when they saw Helen, the people adored her and agreed that her place was in Troy.

  In some versions of the tale, Hera and Athena hide the real Helen and replace her with a phantom Helen. Thus, the Helen who leaves with Paris is a pseudo-Helen. A similar theme is found in a version of the Ramayana where the Sita whom Ravana kidnaps is a pseudo-Sita, a phantom, while the real Sita is protected by Agni, the fire god. However, where Ravana forcibly abducts Sita, Helen willingly elopes with Paris. And so equating Helen with Sita is a false equivalence.

  Priam, king of Troy, and his queen, Hecabe, have fifty children, of whom twelve are daughters. Dhritarashtra, king of Hastinapur, and his queen, Gandhari, have a hundred sons, and one daughter. In both epics, the father of the enemy is seen as highly fertile.

  Paris is also known as Alexander. Unlike his ancestors who went back on their word in matters of wages, Paris is known to be fair in his judgement and true to his word. But all his integrity vanishes when he succumbs to Aphrodite’s enchantment.

  Gigantic male statues used as columns are often called telamons.

  Telamon fathers Ajax on his Greek wife Periboea and Teucer on his Trojan concubine, Hesione. The two half-brothers fight on the Greek side.

  Menelaus

  On learning of Helen’s elopement, every Greek king rushed to Sparta, determined to help Menelaus retrieve his wife from Troy. They came because they were all in love with Helen, and also because they were bound by an oath sworn long ago at the time of Helen’s marriage.

  For the Greeks, Helen had not eloped. She had been abducted, and so had to be rescued. Bound by their oath to her husband, and love for her, the kings of Greece rallied around Menelaus.

  Menelaus was a simple man who knew that he was no leader. So he appointed his more capable and more ambitious brother, Agamemnon, as the commander of this Greek enterprise.

  Hindu mythology speaks of the swayamvara, or a girl’s groom-selection ritual, which was popular in warrior communities. Men would gather in the girl’s father’s house, show their skill
in archery and then let her choose her husband. Later, the power of choice was taken away from the daughters and given to the fathers. This is how Ram wins the hand of Sita in the Ramayana and Arjuna wins the hand of Draupadi in the Mahabharata. Helen’s groom-selection ritual has led to speculation that this was an ancient Indo-European, or Aryan, practice that spread from Eurasia to Europe in the west and India in the east.

  Zeus orchestrates wars such as the Theban and Trojan wars to rid the world of its excessive population. A similar theme is found in Hindu mythology where Vishnu, the preserver of the world, promises to cause war between humans to reduce the burden on the earth.

  In Homer’s Iliad, Menelaus is presented as a brave warrior, braver than Paris, who defeats Paris in a duel and helps recover the body of Patroclus, the male companion and lover of Achilles.

  In Homer’s version, Helen regrets her decision and wants to reunite with Menelaus eventually. But other authors disagree and see her as enjoying the carnage that follows her abduction. Many authors believed that Helen never loved Menelaus, and even manipulated him till the very end. In Euripides’s play Helen husband and wife are united after death in the Isle of the Blessed.

  In Homeric epics, the Greeks are referred to as Argives, as they all have roots that can be traced to Argos, the city of the original mother, Io. Later, the Argives came to be known as Hellenes, descendants of Hellene, son of Deucalion. The Hellenes were renamed Greeks by Aristotle.

  Laodice

  Agamemnon sent a delegation of Greek soldiers to Troy to fetch Helen back through diplomatic means. Acamas of Athens, son of Theseus, was also part of this mission.

  Priam, however, refused to let Helen go. ‘The Greeks took my sister Hesione and forced her to be Telamon’s concubine,’ he said. ‘Why then should my son, a Trojan prince, not keep Helen as his wife? The exchange is fair.’

  During his stay at Troy, Acamas fell in love with Laodice, Priam’s most beautiful daughter, who was wedded to a Trojan nobleman. But it was a love that remained unfulfilled, ripped apart by the winds of war. Unlike Helen, Laodice felt that an elopement would be inappropriate.

  In the Mahabharata, before the war at Kurukshetra, there are intense negotiations for peace. There is an entire chapter called Udyoga Parva devoted to the negotiations.

  Laodice’s husband, Telephus, king of Mysia, was a son of Heracles, and therefore Greek, but related to the Trojans by marriage. He was torn between fighting the Greeks and helping them. In some tales, he fights the Greeks when they stop at Mysia on their way to Troy. But Achilles injures him and he can only be healed if touched by Achilles’ spear. When cured, he helps the Greeks find their way to Troy. Thus he supports both sides.

  That Troy is continuously associated with payment, fair and unfair, suggests that the Trojans were traders. Zeus takes Ganymede and in exchange gives horses to his father, the Trojan king; Laomedon promises but does not pay Poseidon and Heracles for their services; and Helen is seen as fair trade for Hesione.

  Achilles

  With the failure of diplomacy, war was inevitable. So Agamemnon ordered the Greek kings to gather with their ships in the port of Aulis. He knew that only a descendant of Aeacus could breach the walls of Troy; just as Telamon had breached it for Heracles, he would need the help of Peleus, or maybe his son, Achilles.

  Soon after his birth, Achilles’ mother, the sea nymph Thetis, tried to make him invulnerable by dipping him in the River Styx. Every part of his body touched by the waters of that river, which separates the land of the living from the land of dead, became impervious to weapons. However, the heel by which Thetis held her son was untouched by the Styx, and hence remained vulnerable.

  Thetis then sent Achilles to train as a warrior under the centaur Chiron, where he matured into a gifted and exceptional warrior. It was during his training that he met a young man called Patroclus and fell passionately in love with him. The two became inseparable.

  Patroclus, a prince of Opus, had accidentally killed a child during a game, and so had been exiled from his father’s house. He had no home to go back to. When news came that the Greeks had declared war against the Trojans, he decided to accompany Achilles and his Myrmidons to Troy.

  But Thetis did not want Achilles to go to Troy, for it had been foretold that he would die there. Determined to save her son, she took him from his father’s house to the island of Scyros where she hid him in the women’s quarters, dressed in women’s clothes.

  Spies found out that Aeacus’s grandson was probably hiding amongst the women in Scyros. So Odysseus came to the island disguised as a merchant and presented his wares to the women there: jewellery, cosmetics, cloth, perfumes and a sword! At a prearranged signal, a trumpet was sounded giving the impression that the island was being attacked. The girls screamed and ran for cover. All except one—Achilles!

  The moment Achilles grabbed the sword, his identity was revealed, and despite Thetis’s protests, he was taken to Aulis.

  In the Mahabharata, the archer Arjuna disguises himself as a eunuch-dancer and lives in the women’s quarters of the palace of Virata, the king of Matsya. But he rides into battle to protect the city when it is threatened by the Kauravas, thus revealing his true identity. The tale mirrors the story of Achilles who pretends to be a girl and hides in the women’s quarters until there is a crisis and a call to arms.

  Chiron, the centaur, who lives on Mount Pelion, is the teacher of many Greek heroes: Achilles, Jason, Perseus, Heracles, Theseus, Peleus, Telamon and even, some say, Dionysus. Unlike other centaurs who are unruly and lascivious, Chiron is restrained, noble and wise.

  While on the island of Scyros, Achilles befriends the daughters of King Lycomedes, and fathers a child on one of them, Deidamia. The son born thus is Pyrrhus, who plays a key role in the Trojan War. Pyrrhus is also known by another popular name, Neoptolemus.

  The asteroids around the planet Jupiter are classified as belonging to the Greek camp and the Trojan camp. Patroclus is the only asteroid named after a Greek in the Trojan camp and Hector is the only asteroid named after a Trojan in the Greek camp.

  House of Aeacus

  Iphigenia

  It was a gathering of kings and warriors and ships like no other. There was Menelaus of Sparta and his brother Agamemnon of Mycenae. Achilles came with his lover Patroclus, and his cousins Ajax and Teucer, sons of Telamon, and a group of the finest Myrmidon warriors, renowned for their ant-like discipline. There was another Ajax from Locris, known as Ajax, the lesser, as he was not as big and strong as Telamon’s son who was popularly addressed as Ajax, the greater. The cunning Odysseus came from Ithaca. Palamedes, who had outwitted Odysseus and ensured his recruitment, joined as well. There was old King Nestor from Pylos. And Philoctetes who had lit Heracles’ funeral pyre; he came bearing weapons gifted to him by Heracles himself. Then there were Idomeneus of Crete, Protesilaus of Phylace, and Diomedes of Argos, and from Athens, the sons of Theseus, Demophon and Acamas. Agamemnon specially invited the oracle Calchas.

  But the ships could not set sail. A huge storm prevented them from leaving the port, raging on as it did for months. At last Calchas revealed that Artemis was furious with Agamemnon for he had once boasted that he could throw a spear further than her. The only way to appease the goddess and end the storm was by offering her as sacrifice what Agamemnon loved most in the world: his daughter Iphigenia.

  Reluctantly, Agamemnon sent word to his wife Clytemnestra to send Iphigenia to Aulis. Instead of the truth, he told her that he had managed to convince Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, to marry their daughter.

  The queen of Mycenae was thrilled with the match and quickly brought her daughter to Aulis, only to watch in horror as her husband sacrificed her to Artemis with his own hands.

  In Tamil retellings of the Mahabharata, the sacrifice of a perfect youth is necessary to enable the victory of the Pandavas over the Kauravas and so Arjuna’s son, Aravan, is offered to the goddess of the battlefield.

  It seems odd that while Zeus p
unishes Tantalus for sacrificing his son and offering his flesh as food for the god, Artemis would demand from Agamemnon the sacrifice of his daughter. Clearly, classical Greeks were ambiguous about human sacrifice, indicating it was an old practice, perhaps related to the Goddess, that was on the wane.

  In some versions of the tale, Artemis saves Iphigenia and takes her to Tauris where she serves as the goddess’s priestess.

  The idea of a god demanding the sacrifice of a child is found in Abrahamic mythologies too, as in the story of the prophet Abraham who is asked by God to sacrifice his dear son, only to be stopped at the last minute.

  The killing of Iphigenia fractures the relationship between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra forever; this unfolds after the Trojan War.

  Philoctetes

  Moments after the sacrifice, the storm died down and the Greek fleet that had been waiting for several months finally set sail. They were guided by a mysterious sailor known as Corythus, the son of Paris by his first wife Oenone, whom the Trojan prince had abandoned after the arrival of Helen in Troy.

  On the way, the Greeks stopped at the island of Lemnos to offer sacrifices to the gods. Here Philoctetes was bitten by a snake sent by the goddess Hera, whose loathing for Heracles—which extended to his friend as well— trumped her hatred for the Trojans. Although the poison did not kill him, Philoctetes’ foot began to swell and rot, emitting a horrible odour.