There have been several ages of man, or at least of creatures that we might recognize as human. But in between each age, a cosmic catastrophe more or less destroys the human race, and leaves little memory of the preceding age, and little continuity between them. Such is the history of man: progress cut short by catastrophe. So will it always be, until men learn to worship the gods and the earth aright.
First, in the era of Cronus, came the race of golden men, each sprung fully mature from the earth. They had no need to work, or even to cook, for Earth put forth all her bounty freely, and it was theirs for the taking. Nor did they fall ill or grow old: they remained in their prime, and just died one day gently in their sleep, returning to the earth from which they had been born. Of these men and their life of leisured ease no trace remains, unless any of them remain as kindly ghosts upon the earth. It’s hard to say even if they were like us in form, whether we would recognize them as human beings, since they were born from the earth, not of human mothers; for there were as yet no women. They preceded the formation of all animals by Zeus and the Olympian gods, and they came long before Prometheus’ gift of fire, by which we measure the foundation of the human species. For the earth was still very young.
But the next two races of men—the silver and the bronze, the first two races that benefited from Prometheus’ gift of fire—proved unsatisfactory. The men of silver were fair but witless; immature and irresponsible until they were a hundred years old, they then promptly died. And while they lived, like children, they abused one another and failed to recognize the gods. In due course of time Zeus did away with this race, but the bronze one that followed was little better. They were hulking men, with huge bodies; many had thick hides of bronze. They had limited intelligence, and delighted only in war, until they wiped one another off the face of the earth, and now they dwell forever in Hades.
Zeus sent a flood to finish off these brutes, but Prometheus ensured that the human race would continue. His son Deucalion and Epimetheus’ daughter Pyrrha repopulated the earth, and thereby became the ancestors of the next race, the race of heroes. Many of them too perished untimely in war or other ventures, but the earth thrived for a while, and there are many tales of the heroes to be told. Humankind had at last fulfilled the potential bestowed on it by Prometheus. But now, by a simple process of degeneration, we live in the Age of Iron, when human life is nothing but toil and suffering and early death. That’s all the Age of Iron has to offer. The gods no longer linger with mortal men on earth, as they did in the time of the heroes, but have removed themselves in carefree abandonment of the human race. Truly the poet sang: “Best not to have been born at all, or else to die as early as possible.”
Let one story of the hateful men of bronze suffice for them all. Lycaon, king of Arcadia, had many sons, and they were notorious for their subhuman savagery. By then Zeus had in any case endured enough of the depredations of their kind, and he visited Lycaon and his sons in the guise of a poor pilgrim, to see for himself how wicked they were. At the king’s banquet table, they served him the flesh and intestines of a recently slaughtered child. Zeus in disgust pushed the dish away and departed at once. He was now determined to eliminate the race of bronze; they had no redeeming features. He saw that the heart of that race was a pit writhing with serpents and maggots, and that if they were ever good it was only out of fear of him. So he gave them reason to fear him.
First, he locked up all the warring winds in a cave, so that they might not scatter the clouds, save only the wet south wind, whose beard and misty-white locks dripped with rain, and storm clouds hovered on his brow. The rain that fell smelled of promise and decay, but it was heavy enough to flatten crops within a few hours, and then flood the fields. Zeus called upon his brother Poseidon to help, and the earth-shaker commanded all the rivers to overflow their banks. The flood waters tore down trees, bore away cattle and men, houses and wagons. Streams became torrents, torrents became mighty rivers, rivers became lakes. Before long, even the tallest towers had vanished beneath the surging waves, and the whole surface of the earth was sea. Fish swam among the branches of trees, and turtles paddled where goats had grazed. Many of those who survived drowning later succumbed to starvation, since there was little food to be found anywhere.
But Deucalion was a rarity, a righteous man in the Age of Bronze, taught well by his father Prometheus. The Titan warned him of the impending deluge, and Deucalion built an ark, no more than an oversized chest, and stocked it with provisions for himself and his wife. The curious vessel bobbed along, at the mercy of the wind and the waves, and on the tenth day it struck one of the two peaks of Mount Parnassus, which were now lone islets in the endless expanse of sea. There Deucalion found a sanctuary of Themis, and he and Pyrrha prayed in tears for the restoration of the human race. And the goddess taught him, saying: “You and your wife are to veil your heads, and as you walk from my sanctuary, throw behind you the bones of your mother.”
The two of them, husband and wife, deliberated for a while about what the goddess might mean. Then they left the sanctuary, tossing over their shoulders behind them stones, the bones of the all-mother Earth. And immediately, as each stone landed on the earth with a thump, it softened and took shape. Those that Deucalion threw sprang up from the mountaintop as men, and those that Pyrrha tossed were women. All other creatures emerged from the warm mud as the waters receded. So all the men of the next era, the Age of Heroes, descend from Deucalion or some other fortunate survivor. For there were a few, but only a few. The will of Zeus was carried out.
“Those stones that Deucalion threw sprang up from the mountaintop as men, and those that Pyrrha tossed were women.”[23]
Deucalion and Pyrrha also had a son Hellen, from whom all the Greeks, the Hellenes, are descended. In their blood are mingled the spirits of both Prometheus and Epimetheus. The sons of Hellen were Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, whose sons were Ion and Achaeus. And so the tribes of the Greeks are the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, and the Achaeans.
Aeolus had many sons and daughters, who became in their turn the forebears of heroes. Some tales are told of his sons. Salmoneus got ideas above his station, and began to style himself Zeus. He rode around in a chariot that had been equipped, farcically, with bronze jars and pine torches, to imitate Zeus’ thunder and lightning. Zeus hurled him down into Tartarus, to suffer eternal torment, and he annihilated his followers, for many had obeyed the mad king’s injunctions to bow down and worship him. Only his daughter Tyro was spared, for she had fallen out with her father over his delusions. Poseidon lay with her in the curl of a wave, and she became the mother of Pelias and Neleus, while to her husband Cretheus she bore Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon—heroes all, but their children were even mightier.
Poseidon slept too with Aeolus’ daughter Canace, and one of their sons was Aloeus, whose wife Iphimedea was also loved by Poseidon. Two strapping sons she bore him, Otus and Ephialtes, but they shared the arrogance of Salmoneus and resolved to overthrow the reign of Zeus and the Olympian gods. By the age of nine, the boys were nine fathoms tall and nine cubits wide. They feared only Ares, god of war, but through treachery they bound him in fetters and imprisoned him in an inescapable jar of bronze. Through treachery also the whereabouts of Ares was revealed to Hermes by the giants’ stepmother, and he released his brother, the god of war. When Otus and Ephialtes began their assault on heaven, by piling up mountains—Ossa on lofty Olympus, and Pelion on Ossa, a monstrous ladder by which to ascend to the heavens—they were summarily destroyed by the war god, cast down in a tangle of bloodied and broken limbs. For the new breed of men, the descendants of Deucalion, had almost as deep and wide a vein of hubris in their souls as their brazen predecessors.
The famous Sisyphus was another son of Aeolus, but his fame rests on the torment devised for him. It was said that, despite being married to Merope, one of the seven daughters of Atlas, he secretly visited Anticlea, the wife of Laertes, and that she conceived Odysseus from the union, but concealed the fact and passed the baby off as Laertes’. But Sisyphus’ crime was this. Zeus was in love with Aegina, daughter of the river Asopus, and abducted her to the island that would bear her name, keeping her there as his concubine. Asopus searched everywhere for his daughter, but could find her nowhere. It was Sisyphus who told him the truth, and for this Zeus sent Death to him.
But Sisyphus wrestled with Death and bound him fast; and the natural order of things ceased, for no one now could die. But dark-browed Ares released Death from his fetters and handed Sisyphus over to him.
The son of Aeolus made one last attempt to cheat death: he forbade his wife to perform the customary funeral rites, so that Charon could not let him cross the river Styx and join the rest of the dead in the underworld. But Sisyphus had no more tricks to play, and eventually he died in earnest. Suspecting that he would try to escape again, Hades devised for Sisyphus a terrible punishment. Unceasingly, he is compelled to roll a heavy boulder up a hill; when he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down again to the bottom, and Sisyphus has to begin again. Thus men should know not to anger the gods.
Sisyphus toils endlessly in Hades for trying to cheat Death and the will of Zeus.[24]
Athamas, son of Aeolus and king of Boeotia, took as his wife Nephele, the cloud, and she bore him two fine children, a boy and a girl, Phrixus and Helle. But Nephele returned to the sky, and Athamas took as his second wife Cadmus’ daughter Ino, who had nursed Dionysus. Ino hated her stepchildren, and determined to do away with them. Her opportunity came when throughout Boeotia the crops failed. The failure itself was Ino’s doing: she had persuaded all the women to spoil the seed in their husband’s stores, so that it wouldn’t sprout.
Athamas sent to Apollo at Delphi to ask what he had to do to stop the famine, but the envoys too were Ino’s men, and they returned saying that, according to Apollo, the only remedy was to sacrifice Phrixus. The boy nobly agreed to his own death, if it would bring life to others, and Athamas, tears streaking his cheeks, was just about to comply with the god’s terrible command, when Nephele snatched up her children and took them into the sky. When Athamas learned the truth, Ino hurled herself and her son off a cliff, but Dionysus made sure that his old wet-nurse did not die, and transformed her at the moment of her death into the sea-nymph Leucothea.
Meanwhile, Nephele placed the children on a golden-fleeced ram, the offspring of Poseidon when he had mated as a ram with Theophane in the guise of a ewe. Away sped the magical ram eastward through the sky, but, as he passed the narrow strip of water that divides Europe from Asia, sweet Helle lost her grip and fell into the sea. Hence the strait is known as the Hellespont, the Sea of Helle, in memory of the wretched girl. But her brother flew on, knowing why both tears and the sea are salty.
A magical ram with a golden fleece flew young Phrixus to far Colchis.[25]
On and on, over the south coast of the Black Sea he flew, until he came to Colchis, where King Aeëtes, son of the sun, made him welcome. In thanksgiving for his deliverance, Phrixus sacrificed the fantastic ram to Zeus, and gave the fleece to Aeëtes, who hung it on an oak tree in a grove sacred to Ares, and set as its guard a fearsome serpent, whose eyes never closed in rest. But Aeëtes had been warned against strangers bearing, or bearing off, a golden fleece, as a sign that his reign would come to an end, and he killed Phrixus to avoid this destiny, not knowing that he was not the stranger to whom the oracle alluded.
So might matters have rested forever, were it not for the villainy of Pelias, son of Tyro, in distant Greece. At the death of Cretheus, brother of Athamas, he usurped the throne of Iolcus from its rightful king, his own brother, Aeson. In fear, Aeson smuggled his son Jason out of the city, and sent him to the hills, to be brought up by the Centaur Cheiron. But Pelias was afraid of Jason, for he knew of an oracle that foretold his death at the hands of a descendant of Aeolus. Even though Aeolus had many descendants, the field was narrowed down by an oracle that was more precise, if somewhat bizarre: “Beware of a man with one sandal!”
* * *
When Jason came of age, he returned to Iolcus. On the way he came to a river whose water was swollen by rain. An old woman stood helpless beside the raging torrent, and Jason took pity on her and offered to carry her across. Unknown to Jason, the old woman was Hera in disguise, and henceforth he found favor in her eyes. But the current was strong and his burden not so light; the mud of the stream-bed sucked off one of his sandals, and the turbulent water carried it away downstream.
Jason limped into the palace of Iolcus, wearing his single sandal, and Pelias was terrified. Jason demanded the throne of Iolcus as his birthright, now that he was a fully grown man, and Pelias agreed, on one condition: that Jason was to bring back the golden fleece from Colchis. Pelias saw this as a chance to get rid of the young pretender once and for all, but Jason, mighty hero and confident youth, saw a quest worthy of his mettle, and agreed to undertake the task.
But how to reach Colchis, which lay at the edge of the known world? No one had yet invented a vessel that was capable of such a long voyage. Jason called on the goddess of craft, the lady Athena, and begged her to solve the problem. The quick-witted goddess thought for a while and her thoughts readily acquired shape. She infused her knowledge into the mind of the artisan Argus, and the ship he constructed was called the Argo, whose name means “swift.” But the goddess herself fashioned the prow from the living oak of Zeus’ oracle at Dodona, and endowed it with the power of speech.
The journey would be long and dangerous, plying unknown waters past unknown lands filled, most likely, with lawless monsters. It was exactly the quest that the heroes of Greece had been waiting for, and Hera urged their hearts to respond eagerly to Jason’s call for crew to man the sleek vessel and share the hazardous journey. Before long, Jason had a full complement of fifty men, all of them fine warriors and sage counselors, surpassing all others in their skills.
Heracles was there, and Idas, his rival in size and strength, who once fought Apollo himself for the right to bed fair Marpessa; and Meleager and Menoetius, bold hunters and men of war. So was Peleus of Aegina and his comrade Telamon of Salamis, who matched oars on either side of the bow. The soothsayers Idmon and Mopsus accompanied the Argonauts, as did Euphemus, son of Poseidon, who could run so swiftly over the surface of the waves that his feet remained dry. Neither Castor the horseman nor his twin brother Polydeuces the boxer could resist the challenge, and the shape-changer Periclymenus too made his special skill available to Jason. Tiphys was the helmsman, while far-seeing Lynceus took the prow, and Orpheus himself carried the beat for the oarsmen.
The Argonauts set out on the first high-seas quest—to find the Golden Fleece.[26]
After leaving the Greek mainland, their first adventure took place on the island of Lemnos, inhabited only by women and ruled by Queen Hypsipyle. The Lemnian women had neglected the worship of Aphrodite, and in punishment the goddess had made them emit a smell that repulsed their husbands and drove them into the arms of their slaves. All Greek men assume the right to sleep with their female slaves, but the Lemnians ignored their legitimate families, and set up new homes. In retaliation, the women killed or banished all their menfolk. By the time the Argonauts got there, the women had not known men for some time. They refused to let the Argonauts land until they had promised to tarry with them. The heroes stayed a full year, before Heracles tore them from their life of ease and they continued on their way; and many fine sons and daughters were born on the island of Lemnos.
They stopped next at the Cyzicus peninsula, where they helped the king defeat some earth-born giants who were terrorizing his people, the Doliones. After celebrating their victory with a feast, the Argonauts cast off, but adverse winds drove them back to Cyzicus in the night. Their new friends mistook them for enemies in the darkness and driving rain, and a fight took place in which Jason himself killed the king, and many other Doliones died. In the morning, the king’s daughter hanged herself in grief, and the heroes were prevented from leaving by storms, until Mopsus used his powers to divine the will of the gods, and told them they must sacrifice to Rhea. Only she, ancient goddess, could heal the terrible wounds.
They were still far from their destination when they lost Heracles. He was so strong that he had broken an oar, just by pulling on it, and the voyagers made land at Cius where he could find timber for a replacement. But while he was ashore, cutting and shaping the trunk, his beloved Hylas disembarked to draw water. Far he wandered into the forest, until he came to a pool of crystal water. But when he knelt down at the water’s edge and looked into the pool, he saw no reflection of his face. Closer and closer he leaned down—and then, in the depths, he glimpsed a bevy of the most beguiling and beautiful girls he had ever seen. He was never seen again; the water nymphs had made him theirs. But Heracles spent so long searching for his lost boy that the rest of the heroes carried on without him, and still the hills and forests around Cius echo the name of Hylas, as if from the lingering cries of Heracles.
In Bithynia they stopped to consult blind Phineus, the most famous soothsayer in the world. Because he was such an outstanding seer, and knew too much of the gods’ minds, Zeus himself had blinded the old man and set the Snatchers on him, black-winged monsters with the faces of hags, swift as the storm wind. In return for his advice Phineus charged the heroes with driving off the horrid monsters. For every time he sat at table, they swooped down and stole the food from under his nose, or befouled it, and the man was wasting away. The Argonauts succeeded in chasing away the Snatchers, and in gratitude Phineus gave them good advice about how to win their way through the hazards that still awaited them. Above all, he told them how to escape the Clashing Rocks at the entrance to the Black Sea, which came together faster than the wind and crushed all shipping. Even dolphins were sometimes caught in the granite jaws. Phineus told them to release a dove to fly between the rocks, so that they could time their own passage. They did as he suggested, following the dove, and the bird lost its tail-feathers to the rocks, but the surge of the waves rebounding from the looming cliffs prevented the passage of the Argo.
Now the rocks were closing in on the heroes again. They could see the grain of the stone and the spray dripping from the menacing face of the dark cliff. But Hera herself, Jason’s protectress, held apart the jagged precipices while they scraped through, as the rocks crashed together for the last time, taking only the tail end of the stern.
After further adventures, the heroes reached their destination, Colchis. Aeëtes superficially made them welcome, but secretly recognized in Jason the stranger foretold by the oracle, the one who would bring his reign to an end. Jason politely asked him for the fleece, and explained the circumstances of the quest he had been set by Pelias, but Aeëtes saw this only as a way to engineer Jason’s death. He promised him the fleece if he succeeded in carrying out two tasks. But the tasks were meant to be impossible: even if Jason somehow managed to survive the first one, the second would surely kill him; and once Jason was dead, Aeëtes planned to do away with the rest of the Argonauts.
It was a good plan. What Aeëtes didn’t know, however, was that his daughter Medea had fallen head over heels in love with Jason. Hera and Aphrodite between them had slyly seen to that, by supplying Jason with a potent lovecharm. Jason surreptitiously gave the charm to Medea as one of the guest-gifts he had brought for her and her father. The young woman couldn’t understand it: she had hardly met him and yet she knew she did not want to see this quietly confident stranger die. There was something about him … Medea was a useful ally: she was a priestess of Hecate, skilled in sorcery and charms known only to the wicked and the wise.
Jason’s first task was to sow a field with dragon’s teeth. It sounded easy enough—but the field had to be plowed by a team of fire-breathing oxen with lethal bronze hoofs and aggression to match. But Medea made Jason a salve which would temporarily protect him from fire and metal. Jason boldly disrobed and smeared his body; naked and gleaming, he approached the oxen unscathed. Staring them in the eyes, he bowed them to his will. They submitted to the sturdy yoke, and he plowed the field, scattering the dragon’s teeth from his helmet.
But no one—except cunning Aeëtes—expected what happened next. No sooner had the dragon’s teeth been sown than fully armed warriors sprang from the soil and formed up to attack Jason. Medea, looking on, was terrified: she hadn’t anticipated this and had no potion prepared that would save her beloved from the warriors’ spears. But Jason was equal to the task. Thinking quickly (and, if he did but know it, imitating Cadmus), he picked up a boulder and tossed it into the hostile throng. Supposing they were under attack from their own midst, the warriors fell to fighting among themselves, and the slaughter continued until none remained.
So Jason had survived his first test. The second was simply to take the fleece—but in order to do so he first had to get past the sentinel and into the thicket where the fleece was hanging. Medea brewed a drug and gave it to Jason. “This will put the creature to sleep,” she said, “but he has to take it in deeply. You will have to let it swallow you.”
“Medea was a priestess of Hecate, skilled in sorcery and charms known only to the wicked and the wise.”[27]
Jason steeled his nerves and did exactly as she had told him. Clutching the phial of potion, he approached the monster—it was larger than a warship, and venomous spume dripped from its mouth—and let it swallow him whole. As soon as the drug began to take effect, the dragon vomited Jason up from the disgusting depths of its stomach. Then it lay down beneath the tree that held the fleece, and fell fast asleep. Once he had recovered his composure and rinsed the vile stench from his limbs, Jason took the wonderful fleece down from the tree where it was hanging, and ran straight for the Argo, with willing Medea holding tightly onto his hand. All his men were waiting there, for the soothsayer Idmon had guessed Aeëtes’ designs and warned Jason that they must make a swift departure.
Aeëtes speedily set sail in pursuit. But Medea had taken her little brother Aspyrtus with her as well and she devised a terrible way to delay her father. As they were sailing from Colchis down the Phasis river to the sea, she killed Aspyrtus, chopped his corpse into pieces, and threw it limb by limb over the side of the ship. It took Aeëtes a long time to retrieve enough of the body to ensure that the boy could be given a proper funeral, a father’s first priority. So the Argonauts made their escape.
Their route back to Thessaly, to claim the throne of Iolcus from Pelias, was tortuous. Storm winds and adverse deities often drove them from their path, even to the waters of Ocean. On Crete, they encountered Talos, the tireless guardian of the island, capable of striding around it three times in a single day. A survivor from the Age of Bronze, he was invincible—except that there was a patch of ordinary skin on his ankle, unprotected by bronze. Medea brought all her powers to bear, and uttered curses and charms that caused the monster to slip and graze his ankle on a sharp rock as he was seeking boulders to hurl at the Argonauts. “Keep away! Keep away!” he shouted. But then, like a tall tree that has been hewn in the forest, Talos swayed on his feet. Looking down, he saw the ichor flowing out of his wound like molten lead, and crashed lifeless to the ground, shaking the entire island and causing a freak wave that threatened to swamp the Argo.
The eastern slopes of Pelion loomed ever larger as the Argo sped toward her destination. Jason knew that, despite his recovery of the fleece, Pelias had no intention of handing the throne over to him when he returned. His uncle had already killed Jason’s remaining close kin, and the hero understood that only one of them would survive this clash. He confided his concerns to Medea, and she hatched a plan to get rid of Pelias for good.
When they got close to Iolcus, they beached the ship out of sight, and Medea went on ahead, disguised as a priestess of Artemis. Before long, she had befriended Pelias’ daughters, and had found out that their greatest desire was for their elderly father to be young again. They were enjoying their royal luxury, and didn’t want to see it come to an end soon. Medea told them that she knew just what to do.
For nine days and nine nights she searched high and low on her dragon-drawn chariot for the herbs she needed, and plucked them without metal in moonlight to preserve their powers. Then, to convince the gullible girls that she knew what she was doing, she demonstrated her skill on an aged ram. Wide-eyed with horror, Pelias’ daughters looked on as she slit the ram’s throat, drained it of blood, and then put the body in a cauldron of elixir made from her special herbs and roots. Three times she circled the cauldron righthandwise, and three times lefthandwise. After a while, the girls were astonished to hear a gentle bleating from inside the cauldron—and Medea pulled out a lamb!
Certain of Medea’s skill, the very next day the girls persuaded Pelias to accompany them to Medea’s chamber. As soon as they were inside, two of them seized their father’s wrists, while the third slit his throat. The hot blood gushed out and Pelias collapsed to the ground, with a look on his face more of puzzlement than pain. The girls couldn’t wait to stuff his body inside the cauldron. Three times they circled the cauldron righthandwise, and three times lefthandwise. But in the night Medea had drained the cauldron and replaced the rejuvenating elixir with useless soup. Needless to say, the sorceress too had disappeared overnight.
All the heroes reassembled for the magnificent funeral games in honor of the dead king. The winners were Zetes and Calaïs in the long footraces—but then, as sons of the north wind, they had a distinct advantage; Castor won the sprint, while his brother Polydeuces totally dominated the boxing event; Telamon out-threw all-comers with the discus, as Meleager did with the javelin; Peleus wrestled all his opponents to exhaustion, even fair Atalanta; Iolaus easily won the chariot race, and of course no one could match Orpheus at the lyre.
But Jason did not take part, for he was not there. The killing of an uncle, however wicked he had been, polluted Jason and Medea with the miasma of sin, and they had to leave Iolcus in the hands of Pelias’ son Acastus. Otherwise, the pollution would spread and infect the whole city with pestilence and famine. They settled in Corinth and lived there for a few years in peace, until Jason decided that, in order to improve his position, he should put aside his foreign wife and marry Glauce, the princess of Corinth, daughter of King Creon. Medea seethed inwardly with rage and jealousy, but disguised it well. “This is the right decision,” she said, “for you and for our children.” But she was lying through her teeth. She sent Glauce and Creon presents for the wedding, a gorgeous robe for Glauce and a crown for Creon, and they accepted the gifts with joy.
No sooner had they donned these items of clothing than the poison with which Medea had imbued them went to work. Glauce’s robe began to burn her, and she tried to rip it off, but it clung to her like a second skin. She ran shrieking to the nearest water—still known as Glauce’s spring—and hurled herself into the pool, seeking relief. But it was no good. Her flesh blistered and her blood boiled, and she died in sheer agony.
Meanwhile, Creon’s crown tightened on his head like a vice, and still it went on squeezing, until his skull was crushed and the gray matter of his brains puddled on the ground below the throne where he slumped. Medea then slit her own children’s throats, to spite Jason, and flew off in her dragon-drawn chariot to Athens, where she had been offered refuge by King Aegeus. And apart from the rumor of an attempt on her stepson Theseus’ life there, the ill-famed sorceress passes out of the memory of man.
As for Jason, some claim that he took his own life, grieving over the murder of his children. Others say that he never recovered his luck, and one day, as he entered the temple of Hera, the cracked stern-piece of the Argo he had dedicated there in gratitude fell from its plinth and killed him. Those who have been chosen by the gods for great deeds rarely live to a peaceful old age.
The Fates attend all those who bleed and dream—the heroes of legend no less than us. Fair Althaea, descended from Aeolus, was cousin and consort of Oeneus, king of Calydon in Aetolia. But one night Ares himself, the god of war, came and lay in love with Althaea, and in due course of time she gave birth to a son, and she called him Meleager. But when the boy was no more than seven days old, the implacable Fates paid her a visit and predicted that Meleager would die when a particular piece of wood in the fireplace had burned up. “We have allotted the same span of life,” said the ghastly crones, “to your son and to this log.” Naturally, Althaea snatched the blazing log from the fire and, once she had extinguished the flames, she hid it away in a chest that only she knew about. And the boy grew to be a hardy warrior, strong and proud.
But Fate cannot be averted. The chain of events began when Oeneus angered the lady Artemis, chaste Mistress of Animals. In his folly, he sacrificed to all the other gods, but ignored or forgot her. She sent a boar to ravage his land—and not just any boar, but a monstrous brute, as large as a hulking bull, capable of uprooting whole trees as it pawed the soil for food. Meleager, expert with javelin and spear, summoned a true band of heroes to help him hunt down the beast. Peleus and Telamon came, Castor and Polydeuces, Jason, the inseparable pair Theseus and Pirithous, Admetus, the soothsayer Amphiaraus, and many others. There also arrived the fair huntress Atalanta, whom Hippomenes one day would wed by guile—but, for now, no sooner had Meleager set eyes on her than he fell in love.
So they set out after the rampaging boar. They found traces of it everywhere: fallen trees, trunks gashed by tusks, acres of ground churned into a useless mess, trampled crops. All other wildlife had fled in terror. For seven days they tracked it, hardly resting even at night. The rocks and logs of the harsh wilderness served as their only pillows, leaves were their mattresses, and a gibbous moon was all their illumination.
Heroes gathered at Calydon when angry Artemis plagued the land with a rampaging boar.[28]
At last they had the beast boxed up in a thicket, and they spread their strong nets to prevent its escape. But a boar is easily enraged, and fights back when threatened. For all their stature as heroes, several fell, gored in the groin or the belly by its savage tusks, bright blood staining the leaf-strewn ground. Eupalemon and Pelagon fell, and so did Hyleus, Hippasus, and Enaesimus, while Eurytion was killed by accident, when Peleus sped his spear too hastily into the dark and tangled thicket. But then, with a bellow of rage, the monstrous creature charged into the open—straight at Nestor of Pylos. No one even had time to shout out a warning, and it looked as though his doom was assured, but he cannily used his spear to vault into the safety of a tree’s branches.
Despite the encouragement Nestor shouted down to his comrades, it looked as though the boar would prevail, and even escape to continue its destruction of Calydon. But then Atalanta drew back her trusty bow, and the arrow grazed the boar’s back and lodged in the folds of its neck. The sight of red blood made Ancaeus bold. “Let’s see what a man can do,” he boasted. “This is no work for women.” As the boar charged at him he let fly with his spear, but missed. The enraged beast ripped out his bowels with its tusks, and he fell, gasping out his last breath along with his steaming entrails on the blood-stained ground. Then Meleager stepped up and released his javelin; it took the beast through the mouth and brought it crashing in a cloud of dust to the ground, instantly dead. The hide and tusks belonged by right to Meleager, as the killer of the boar. But to honor the first strike, and because he desired her, he gave the spoils of the hunt to fair Atalanta. But his uncles were there, the brothers of Althaea, and they taunted him for being less than a man. Meleager’s mettle was up, and his father’s blood flowed dark and strong in his veins. Before any of those present could draw breath, his mother’s brothers joined the scattered corpses on the hunting ground.
In the depths of her grief, Althaea went to the old chest, the one in which she had hidden the log all those years ago. She removed the log from its hiding-place and threw it on the fire, calling upon the Furies as avengers of kindred slaughter. Meleager immediately felt a burning sensation deep within, and he faded and died as quickly as an aged log burns in the fire.
But Althaea repented of what she had done, and tore her cheeks, and hanged herself in sorrow deeper than the sea, while her daughters were turned by Artemis into guinea hens, and mourn their brother forever with plaintive cries. But Gorge and Deianeira were spared at the request of Dionysus, for Deianeira was destined to become the second wife of Heracles; but Gorge bore Tydeus from incestuous union with her father.
The great city of Argos, rich in horses and cattle, is in the care of Hera, as Athens is of gray-eyed Athena. Now, Io was the daughter of the river-god Inachus and a priestess of Hera at Argos. As Night’s chariot winged its way across the sky, and the bright foam from his horses’ mouths settled on the earth as dew, Io was troubled by dreams in which she seemed to hear a voice. “Foolish girl,” cajoled the voice, deep and serene. “Why do you guard your virginity, when you could have the greatest of lovers, Zeus himself?”
Night after night the dreams returned, and eventually she gave in to their insistent clamor. When Zeus visited her, she opened to him not just her arms, but also her heart. But his behavior had aroused the suspicion of Hera, and she came in search of him. Just before she caught the lovers, Zeus detected her approach and changed Io into a cow, as a concrete plea of innocence: “There’s no one here, just this cow.” But Hera could feign innocence as well as her husband, and she asked to keep the cow herself. Zeus had no choice but to let her take it.
Hera summoned Argus, an earth-born giant with a hundred eyes that could see in all directions, already famous for making the district safe against lawless monsters. She tethered Io to an olive tree within her sanctuary, and set Argus to guard her, giving him the gift, or curse, of sleeplessness, so that none of his eyes would ever be tamed by weariness. But Zeus sent Hermes to free Io from captivity, and once the wily god had lulled Argus the all-seeing to sleep with his soothing pipes, he promptly cut off his head. But Hera retrieved Argus’ eyes and put them in the tail of her favored bird, the peacock.
Zeus sent Hermes to kill Argus and free Io; yet jealous Hera continued tormenting her.[29]
Hera’s dark rage had not yet run its course, however, and she sent a gadfly which tormented Io so badly that she wandered, as a cow, all over the earth, denied rest by the irritating bug. Every time she imagined it had gone, it would return and prick her with its sting. At last she came to Egypt, where with a mere brush of his fingers, Zeus restored her to human form; and when her son was born, she called him Epaphus, because she had been impregnated by the tender touch of Zeus. The royal lines of Egypt and Phoenicia, of Argos, Thebes, and Crete, all look back to Epaphus as their ancestor.
In Egypt, the great grandsons of Epaphus were Danaus and Aegyptus, fathers respectively of fifty daughters and fifty sons. Danaus hated his brother, and took himself and his daughters off to live in exile in Argos. Aegyptus, however, naturally expected that his sons would marry their cousins and followed them to Greece. This was a reasonable expectation, and Danaus was not in a position to stand in his brother’s way—except that he ordered his daughters to kill their husbands on the very night of the mass wedding, before their husbands had taken their virginity.
The vile deed took place as planned—or almost as planned: one of the Danaids, Hypermestra, could not go through with it. She spared her husband Lynceus and their descendants became the rulers of Argos. But her sisters couldn’t avoid marriage forever. Danaus arranged a footrace for all their suitors, and the first across the line took his first choice of woman, the second chose second, and so on, until all forty-nine were accounted for. Nor could the Danaids avoid punishment for their terrible crime: in Hades they are condemned eternally to try to prepare their bridal baths by fetching water in sieves.
Hypermestra, the Danaid who spared her groom, bore him a son. They called him Abas, and he in his turn had two sons, Proetus and Acrisius. These brothers fought even in the womb and later divided the realm of Argos between them, with Acrisius becoming lord of Argos, and Proetus king of Tiryns. Acrisius had a daughter, Danae, while Proetus had several daughters, whose terrible ten-year madness is a lesson in not insulting the gods. For abusing her temple, Hera caused them to dress like slatterns, and to wander the hills imagining themselves cows. The wise shaman Melampus cured them and received in return a share of Proetus’ kingdom and a princess bride to bear his children.
Now, Acrisius loved his daughter Danae, but naturally he wanted a son and heir for Argos. He consulted far-shooting Apollo at Delphi, and the news was bitter: he would have no sons, and a son born of his daughter would kill him. They say that love conquers all, but Acrisius let fear overcome love: he imprisoned his dear daughter within an underground chamber of bronze, leaving only a narrow aperture through which Danae took her meals and breathed sweet air. But Zeus conceived a passion for Danae, and no prison made by the hands of man can keep him out. He turned himself into a shower of liquid gold, and poured himself through the slit. Thus the great god lay in love with Danae.
Zeus came to imprisoned Danae as a shower of gold, and so she conceived Perseus.[30]
In due course of time a secret son was born, and Danae named him Perseus. The baby lived with his mother inside their brazen dungeon, but one day Acrisius heard the metallic echoes of the young boy at play, and Danae’s secret was discovered. Acrisius laid ungentle hands on his daughter, demanding to know who the father was. “It was Zeus!” she cried, but Acrisius didn’t believe her. He locked both mother and child in a wooden chest and tossed them into the sea, so that he would be absolved of their deaths. But the frail vessel caught in the net of a fisherman called Dictys, and he took Danae and Perseus to his home on the island of Seriphos and let them stay with him. The years passed and Perseus grew up lithe and sleek; it was clear that he was favored by the gods.
Now, honest Dictys’ brother Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, lusted after fair Danae. But confident in the protection of her son, she always spurned his unwelcome advances. Polydectes therefore decided to get rid of Perseus, and the proud youth foolishly made it easy for him. Polydectes invited him, along with all the important men of the island, to a banquet, supposedly to elicit contributions for the wedding of Pelops and Hippodamia. Every man was to provide a horse, but Perseus was not rich enough to own one. The young man nervously quipped that he could as easily bring Polydectes the head of the Gorgon as a horse. Seizing his opportunity, Polydectes held him to his word: he was to fetch the Gorgon’s head. That would remove Perseus from the scene for a long time—perhaps permanently—and in the meantime Polydectes could have his way with Danae.
Perseus’ quest began in despair. He knew about the Gorgons: there were three of them—Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa—and they had originally been the beautiful daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, children of Earth and Sea. Stheno and Euryale were fully immortal, but Medusa was as a mortal woman, only far more fair. But Medusa fell foul of Athena. She claimed her looks rivaled Athena’s own beauty, and she further angered the chaste goddess by coupling with Poseidon in her holy sanctuary.
For punishment, all three Gorgons were turned into stubby-winged monsters, with drooling and engorged tongues, tusks projecting from their mouths, decaying skin, and poisonous snakes for hair. They were creatures from a nightmare, and Medusa’s once-alluring eyes turned all who looked directly at them into stone, forever.
So Perseus wandered to a lonely part of the island and sat down to think. Gulls wheeled and cried overhead in the salt breeze. And there came to him two mighty gods, Hermes and Athena, telling him to have no fear. “But what can I do?” he said. “I can’t just confront the Gorgons.” The gods agreed, and recommended an oblique course.
“Did you know that the Gorgons have sisters?” they asked. “If anyone knows a sister’s weaknesses, it’s another sister. You should find the Graeae, and compel them to tell you how to defeat the Gorgons.” They told him about the three Graeae, who had been born and lived as crones, hunched with age, as gray and chilling as the foam of the sea from which they came; and forestalled his next nervous question by giving him directions for finding them.
When Perseus reached the distant seashore where the Graeae lived, he asked them at once for help. “But who are you?” demanded Pemphredo, staring in his direction out of eyeless sockets, ghastly to behold.
“It’s a young man,” croaked her sister Deino. “I’ve got the eye, so I can see.”
“Give it here, then,” rasped Pemphredo. There was a soft sucking noise as Deino pried the slick orb out of her socket and handed it to her sister. The eye sank into her head with a squelch, and after taking stock of Perseus she passed the eye over to her other sister, Enyo. “Swap you for the tooth,” she said. “I’ve still got a bit of raw octopus left to chew.”
As Perseus submitted to the scrutiny of the strange creatures, he blushed—but an idea occurred to him. He could see that the Graeae had only the one tooth and the one eye between them, and depended on them utterly. Slowly, carefully, he edged closer to the grizzled women. His moment came when both the eye and the tooth were in transit from one Graea to another: Perseus grabbed them and stepped back. The shrieks of the crones were terrible to hear—at once like a seagull’s harsh scream and the wind keening over storm waves. “Give them back, give them back, give them back!” they cried.
“No!” said Perseus. “Not until you tell me how your sisters can be defeated.” At first the Graeae refused, out of loyalty to their kin. Perseus, calling their bluff, began to walk away with the hostage bits, his feet crunching on the shingle, but he hadn’t gone far when they called him back and agreed to help him. He pressed the eye and the tooth into the unseeing hands of Deino, and the grizzled creatures burst into sing-song voice.
“Far distant is the home of our sisters,” they said, “on the western shores of Ocean, close to the entrance to the underworld. Months will pass in the journey, or even years, unless you have some magical means of transport. And beware! Their senses are very acute: it would be best to be invisible. Furthermore, even if you succeed in decapitating our sister Medusa, what will you do with the head? You can’t leave it uncovered, because it will turn everything that looks at it—including you, perhaps—into stone forever.” Perseus found their advice distinctly unhelpful. His task seemed even more impossible than before. “So I’ve got to be able to fly,” he said, “and be invisible, and safely transport the Gorgon’s lethal head. Unfortunately, I can’t do any of these things.”
Perseus kept the one eye of the three Graeae until they aided him in his quest for Medusa.[31]
“But fortunately,” said the Graeae, “we know how you can acquire these abilities. After the transformation of our sisters, Poseidon entrusted certain items to some of his daughters, the sea nymphs. He was worried in case the Gorgons might run amok and terrify the world, so he had to leave the means of their destruction in safe keeping.” And they told Perseus how to find the nymphs.
Away he sped on his mission, and the nymphs saw in him a true hero and graciously loaned him a cap of darkness, a pair of winged sandals, and a special satchel. Hermes gave him a wickedly sharp sword, and when he drew it from its sheath a cold wind whistled across the blade, and it showed no reflection of the moon’s shining.
Perseus flew with his sky shoes to the edge of the world, near the source of the vast river Ocean that sweeps around the continents of the earth, and found the foul Gorgons asleep. Once he had spotted them from on high, he donned his cap of invisibility and swooped down. Acting on the advice of Athena and Hermes, he used his bronze shield as a mirror, to avoid the direct gaze of Medusa. Even with this handicap, he managed to cut off her head cleanly, with one slice. Immediately, through the Gorgon’s severed neck, leapt her children by Poseidon: the winged horse Pegasus, and the horse’s human twin, Chrysaor, the father of Geryon.
All this turmoil awoke Medusa’s sisters, and the snakes on their heads seemed to have the power to penetrate the aura of invisibility with which he was surrounded. Perseus quickly stuffed the head into the satchel and flew off, while the hideous twins screeched and raved futilely, and their serpent hair writhed and hissed. As he flew over the desert of Africa, drops of blood fell from the satchel and the ground thus inseminated gave birth to all the poisonous snakes that dwell there.
All who gaze at the Gorgon Medusa turn to stone forever.[32]
* * *
When Perseus reached the coast of Palestine, an extraordinary sight greeted his eyes. A young woman was struggling helplessly against chains that bound her to a jagged rock, so close to the water’s edge that salt spray mingled with the tears on her face. The curious hero landed, tucked away his cap of darkness, and made inquiries in the local town. The woman was Andromeda, the daughter of the king, Cepheus. And it was he, her reluctant father, who had ordered her to be bound and left for a savage sea monster to devour, because this, he had been told, was the only way to stop its ruinous raids on his land. The monster had been sent by sea nymphs, because Andromeda’s mother had boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than them. Sometimes, the sins of the mother are visited upon the daughter.
Perseus was so taken by the girl that he was inclined to agree with her mother’s assessment of her charms, and he began to negotiate with Cepheus: the hand of Andromeda if he could get rid of the monster. The bargain struck, Perseus didn’t hesitate. He returned straight away to the rock and freed fair Andromeda … just in time, for already they could see the creature breasting the foam, forging a furrow in the sea toward them as straight as a plow in soft and stoneless earth.
Perseus rescued Andromeda from a grisly fate as an offering to a sea monster.[33]
Perseus rose into the air on his winged sandals, and drove the creature mad with fury by hovering just out of reach of its snapping jaws. Time and again he returned to earth, each time to collect ever larger boulders, with which he stunned the monster and drove it off. He and Andromeda returned in joy to the palace, already committed to each other, but when Perseus claimed his prize, Cepheus’ brother Phineus objected, for he wanted Andromeda for himself. He lured the young man into an ambush—but nimble Perseus found time to close his eyes and yank the petrifying head out of its satchel. Perseus swept Andromeda into his arms and together they flew back to Seriphos. There they found Danae and Dictys huddled fearfully at an altar, to which they had fled for refuge from Polydectes’ violence. Both, in their different ways, had been abused by the king, and they greeted the returning hero with tears of hope. Perseus strode into Polydectes’ palace, the uninvited guest, the bringer of death. He found the king at banquet, surrounded by his supporters, in his lofty reception hall.
“And did you get me the Gorgon’s head?” the king taunted. Perseus reached in and pulled the ghastly object out of his satchel, while averting his gaze. Polydectes and all the others were instantly turned to stone, the mocking laughter frozen forever on their sneering lips. A quick smile flitted across Perseus’ face.
After he had returned the magical objects to Hermes, Perseus gave the Gorgon’s head to Athena, who set it in the middle of her aegis forever.
She is a terrible goddess, and anyone who sees her as she is freezes in awe and fear. Then the young hero returned with Danae and Andromeda to Argos. Acrisius, hearing of their arrival, fled, but Perseus set out in pursuit. He caught up with his grandfather in Thessaly, and the two were reconciled, but there is no escaping the word of Fate. Perseus agreed to take part in an athletic competition, and the discus that he threw accidentally struck and killed Acrisius. Polluted even by this unintentional murder, Perseus exiled himself from Argos, but took nearby Tiryns as his seat after his great-uncle Proetus’ death. He also founded golden Mycenae, and in both places the Cyclopes built the massive defensive walls for him, which still stand after all this time.
As Perseus stands to Argos, Theseus to Athens, and Heracles to the Peloponnese as a whole, so Bellerophon stands to Corinth, the greatest of its heroes. His grandfather was Sisyphus, and his mother had been loved by Poseidon, whose child she said he was. But he was compelled to leave the land of his birth after accidentally killing a brother, and he settled in Tiryns, under King Proetus.
The handsome youth attracted the fancy of the queen, Stheneboea. She began by flirting with him in secret, which was tolerable, if uncomfortable, but in the end she demanded an assignation. Bellerophon refused her, but hell truly has no fury like a woman scorned, and Stheneboea told her husband that Bellerophon had tried to rape her. Blinded by his desire for revenge, Proetus sent Bellerophon to his wife’s father Iobates, king of Lycia, with a sealed letter containing Stheneboea’s charges—and the request that Iobates get rid of his young visitor, permanently. In order to encompass his death, Iobates therefore set him to cleanse Lycia of its plagues. By rights, any one of the tasks should kill him. Iobates could only win: either Bellerophon would die, or, if he succeeded, Lycia would at least have been freed from terror.
Bellerophon, however, was beloved of the gods. Poseidon gave him his son Pegasus, the white, winged horse that had sprung from Medusa’s severed neck. But Pegasus was wild and untamed, and nothing Bellerophon could do would make the proud steed obedient to his commands. Keen-eyed Athena, noticing the boy’s trouble, and wanting to help, came down by night from Olympus with a magic bridle, and with this he was able to mount and control the splendid creature. After a bit of practice, he found that he could fire his arrows with deadly accuracy, while gripping the flanks of the winged horse with his knees and thighs, and he soared up to the heavens and swooped toward the earth in delight. As he sped through the air, his dark cape flowed gracefully out behind him, and peasants working in the fields stared up at the sky in awe and amazement.
All his labors met with success. First he shot down the fire-breathing Chimera, dread offshoot of Typhoeus, which was ravaging Iobates’ land—three deadly arrows in quick succession, one for each of the creatures that made up its body. Then he expelled the wild Solymi, the first inhabitants of Lycia, and drove them into the mountain fastnesses where they still live. Finally, he quelled the Amazons, for the warrior women were raiding Iobates’ territory.
Destroying the fire-breathing Chimera—equal parts lion, she-goat, and snake—was Bellerophon’s first task.[34]
Having singlehandedly done all that Iobates wanted, Bellerophon set out in triumph back to the king’s palace. But the treacherous king, true only to Proetus’ request, sent a strong force of his men to conceal themselves and take the young hero unawares. Not one of the ambushers returned alive, and at last Iobates was forced to recognize that Bellerophon was under the special protection of the gods. He realized that his daughter had been lying, and in recompense gave Bellerophon half his kingdom and another daughter’s hand in marriage. When she learned that her shamelessness and lies had been revealed, Stheneboea killed herself rather than live with the humiliation.
But being dear to the gods is not a sufficient shield against arrogance. Men encompass their own destruction. Bellerophon took it into his head one day to ride on Pegasus’ back up to heaven, to remonstrate with the gods about the injustice of life on earth. Who among us has not wished to do such a thing? But the great steed, mindful of his father, refused to have anything to do with such a foolish enterprise, and bucked his rider off to the ground. Bellerophon broke both hips and spent the rest of his life as a wretched cripple. Perhaps in the end he learned wisdom, but the storytellers do not say.
