Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

The Third Order

The shattered world was still smoking from the savagery of war. Zeus saw that it needed to heal and he knew that his own generation, the Third Order of divine beings, must manage better than the first two had done. It was time for a new order, an order purged of the wasteful bloodlust and elemental brutality that had marked earlier times.

To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet.

For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud-Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect.

Hestia

Of all the gods, Hestia – ‘First to be devoured and the last to be yielded up again’ – is probably the least well known to us, perhaps because the realm that Zeus in his wisdom apportioned to her was the hearth. In our less communal age of central heating and separate rooms for each family member, we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of ‘hearth and home’. Our word ‘hearth’ shares its ancestry with ‘heart’, just as the modern Greek for ‘hearth’ is kardia, which also means ‘heart’. In ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in words like ‘economics’ and ‘ecology’. The Latin for hearth is focus – which speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of words for a fireplace we have spun ‘cardiologist’, ‘deep focus’ and ‘eco-warrior’. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.

Refusing offers of marriage from the other gods, Hestia devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood. Placid, contented, kind, hospitable and domestic, she tended to stay away from the everyday power struggles and political machinations of the other gods.fn1 A modest divinity, Hestia is usually depicted in a plain gown offering up flame in a bowl or sitting on a coarse woollen cushion on a simple wooden throne. It was the custom in Greece to say a grace to her before every meal.

The Romans, whose name for her was VESTA, considered her so important that they had a school of priestesses devoted to her, the celebrated Vestal Virgins. Their responsibility, aside from life-long celibacy, was to make sure that the flame representing her was never extinguished. They were the original guardians of the sacred flame.

You can imagine then that there are not many great stories about this gentle and endearing goddess. I only know one, which we will hear before long. Naturally she comes out of it very well.

The Lottery

Zeus turned next to his dark and troublesome brothers, Hades and Poseidon. They had acquitted themselves with equal skill, bravery and cunning in the war against the Titans and he thought it only fair that they should draw lots for the two most important unassigned provinces – the sea and the underworld.

You will recall that Kronos had wrested control of all things in, under and over the sea from Thalassa, Pontus, Oceanus and Tethys. Now, Kronos was gone and the saltwater realm was in Zeus’s gift. As for the underworld – which included Tartarus, the mysterious Meadows of Asphodel (of which more later) and the subterranean darkness controlled by Erebus – it was time for those also to be subject to a sole presiding deity, one of Zeus’s generation.

Hades and Poseidon had no love for each other, and when Zeus put his hands behind his back and brought them out before him in closed fists, they hesitated. In cases of fraternal dislike each brother will usually want what the other wants.

‘Does Hades hope for the sea or the underworld?’ Poseidon wondered. ‘If he wants the underworld then I want that too, just to infuriate him.’

Hades thought along the same lines. ‘Whichever I choose,’ he said to himself, ‘I will shout in triumph, just to annoy that prick Poseidon.’

In each of Zeus’s outstretched fists lay concealed a precious stone: a sapphire as blue as the sea in one and a piece of jet as black as Erebus in the other. Poseidon did a jig of delight when he touched the back of Zeus’s right hand and saw it open to reveal the winking blue sapphire. ‘The oceans are mine!’ he roared.

‘That means – yes!’ cried Hades with a mighty fist-pump. ‘That means I have the underworld. Ha ha!’

Secretly, inside, he was sickened. Gods are such children.

Hades

This was the last time Hades was ever seen to laugh. From that moment on, any merriment or sense of fun deserted him. Perhaps the duties of King of the Underworld slowly ground away any youthful zest or lightness of touch that may once have been his.

Down to the depths he went to carve out his kingdom. While his name will always be associated with death and the afterlife, and the whole realm of the underworld (which shares his name) with pain, punishment and perpetual suffering, Hades also came to symbolize riches and opulence. The jewels and precious metals that are mined deep underground and the priceless crops of grain, vegetables and flowers that germinate beneath the earth are all reminders that from decay and death spring life, abundance and wealth. The Romans called him PLUTO and words like ‘plutocrat’ and ‘plutonium’ tell of this great opulence and power.fn2

Under Hades’ personal command came Erebus and Nyx and their son Thanatos (Death himself). A system of river deities, too dark and dreadful to flow in the open air, wound their way through this underworld. The principal was Styx (hate), a daughter of Tethys and Oceanus whose name and ‘stygian’ attributes are invoked to this day whenever we want to describe something dark, menacing and gloomy, something hellishly black and brooding. Into her seeped PHLEGETHON, the flaming river of fire, ACHERON, the river of woe, LETHE, the waters of forgetfulness, and COCYTUS, the stream of lamentation and wailing. Styx’s brother Charon was appointed ferryman, and for the time being he waited, leaning on his pole, by the banks of the Styx. He had dreamed that one day souls by the thousand would come to the shores of the river and pay him the price of transport across. One day soon.

Space was given by Hades to the Furies, the earth-born Erinyes, to live within the darkest heart of his kingdom. From there the three of them could fly to all corners of the world to exact their revenge on those transgressors whose crimes were foul enough to merit their violent attentions.

In time Hades acquired a pet, a gigantic snake-tailed, three-headed dog, offspring of those monstrous children of Gaia and Tartarus, Echidna and Typhon. His name was KERBEROS (although he answered to his Roman name, CERBERUS, too). He was the original hound of hell, the fearsome and tireless watchdog and guardian of the underworld.

At Lerna, a lake that could be used as one of the entrances to the underworld, Hades posted HYDRA, another child of Tartarus and Gaia. I mentioned before the frightening mutations possible when monsters mate, and the difference between Cerberus and his sister Hydra offers a striking example. On the one hand, a dog with a more or less manageable three heads and an elegantly snaky tail to wag; and on the other, his sister, a many-headed water-beast who was almost impossible to kill. Chop off one of her heads and she could grow back ten more in its place.

Despite these zoological atrocities Hades was for the time being a quiet place, ruled over by a god with little to do. In order for hell to be busy, mortal beings are needed. Creatures that die. So we will leave Pluto for the time being, seated on his cold infernal throne, brooding darkly, as hostile, chilly and remote as the planet that bears his name,fn3 and secretly cursing the good fortune that had given rule of the seas to his hated brother.

Poseidon

Poseidon was a very different kind of god to Hades. He could be as truculent, stormy, vain, capricious, inconsistent, restless, cruel and unfathomable as the oceans he commanded. But he could be loyal and grateful too. In common with his brothers and some of his sisters, he was also to exhibit urgent bodily lust, deep spiritual love and every feeling in between. Like all the gods, he was greedy for admiration, sacrifice, obedience and adoration. Once your friend, always your friend. Once your enemy, always your enemy. And he was ambitious for more than burnt offerings, libations and prayers. He always kept an eager, avaricious eye on the youngest of his brothers, the one who now called himself ‘eldest’ and ‘king’. Should the great Zeus make too many mistakes, Poseidon would be there to topple him from his throne.

The Cyclopes, just as they had forged thunderbolts for Zeus, now created a great weapon for Poseidon too – a trident. This massive three-pronged fishing spear could be used to stir up tidal waves and whirlpools – even to make the earth tremble with earthquakes, which gave Poseidon the soubriquet ‘Earth Shaker’. His desire for his sister Demeter caused him to invent the horse to impress and please her. He lost his passion for Demeter, but the horse remained sacred to him always.

Under what we would now call the Aegean Sea, Poseidon built a vast palace of coral and pearl in which he installed himself and his chosen consort, AMPHITRITE, a daughter of Nereus and Doris, or (some say) of Oceanus and Tethys. As a wedding gift, Poseidon presented Amphitrite with the very first dolphin. She bore him a son, TRITON, a kind of merman, usually depicted sitting on his tail and blowing with bulging cheeks into a large conch shell. Amphitrite, if truth be told, seems to have been rather colourless and appears in few stories of any great interest. Poseidon spent almost all his time pursuing a perfectly exhausting quantity of beautiful girls and boys and fathering by the girls an even greater number of monsters, demigods and human heroes – Percy Jackson and Theseus to name but two.

Poseidon’s Roman equivalent was NEPTUNE, whose giant planet is surrounded by moons that include Thalassa, Triton, Naiadfn4 and Proteus.fn5

Demeter

The next of Kronos’s children to be apportioned her divine duties was Demeter. Hair the colour of ripe wheat, skin like cream and eyes bluer than cornflowers, she was as richly dreamily beautiful as any of the goddesses, except perhaps … well, the question of who was the most beautiful goddess would turn out to be the most vexed, thorny and ultimately cataclysmic one ever asked.

So lovely was Demeter that she attracted the unwanted attention of her brothers Zeus and Poseidon. To avoid Poseidon she transformed herself into a mare, and to chase her he turned into a stallion. The issue of that union was a colt, ARION, who grew into an immortal horse magically endowed with the power of speech.fn6 By Zeus she had a daughter, PERSEPHONE, whose story comes along later.

Zeus gave Demeter responsibility for the harvest and with it sovereignty over growth, fertility and the seasons. Her Roman name was CERES, from which we get our word ‘cereal’.fn7

Like Hestia, Demeter is one of the divinities less clear in our minds today as a personality than others of her passionate and charismatic family. But, as with Hestia, her domain was of paramount importance to the Greeks; shrines and cults dedicated to her far outlasted those devoted to the more superficially glamorous gods. The one great story devoted to Demeter, her daughter and the god Hades is as beautiful as it is dramatic, far-reaching and true.

Hera

Hera came out of Rhea second to last.fn8 Words that are still applied to her, and which would have maddened her greatly, include ‘proud’, ‘imperious’, ‘jealous’, ‘haughty’ and ‘vengeful’. In art and common reference she is often saddled with the extra indignity of three upsetting ‘-esques’: statuesque, Rubenesque and – courtesy of her Roman appellation – Junoesque.

Fate and posterity have been unkind to the Queen of Heaven. Unlike Aphrodite or Gaia she has no planet named in her honour,fn9 and she must bear the burden of a reputation that portrays her as more reactive than active – reactive always to the errant infidelities of her husband-brother Zeus.

It is easy to dismiss Hera as a tyrant and a bore – jealous and suspicious, storming and ranting like the very picture of a scorned harridan wife (one imagines her hurling china ornaments at feckless minions), exacting spiteful revenge on nymphs and mortals who have displeased her, failed to burn enough animals on her altars or, most fatally of all, committed the crime of consorting with Zeus (whether they had been willing or unwilling she never forgave them and could hold a grudge for lifetimes). But, ambitious, snobbish, conservatively protective of hierarchy and impatient of originality and flair as she certainly was – the archetype of many a literary aunt and cinematic dowager dragon – Hera was never a bore.fn10 The force and resolution with which she faced up to a god who could disintegrate her with one thunderbolt shows self-belief as well as courage.

I am very fond of her and, while I am sure I would stammer, blush and swallow awkwardly in her presence, she finds in me a devoted admirer. She gave the gods gravity, heft and the immeasurable gift of what the Romans called auctoritis. If that makes her seem a spoilsport, well, sometimes sport needs to be spoiled and the children called in from the playground. Her special province was marriage; the animals associated with her were the peacock and the cow.

Over the course of the war against the Titans she and Zeus developed into a natural couple, and it became apparent to him that she was the only one with enough presence, dignity and command to stand as his consort and bear him new gods.

Crackling with tension, impatience and distrust, theirs was nonetheless a great marriage.

A New Home

Zeus’s ambition for a new era, a new dispensation for the cosmos, encompassed more than the simple distribution of powers and provinces amongst his brothers and sisters. Zeus imagined something more enlightened, and rationally constituted than the bloody and brutal tyrannies that had gone before.

He envisioned an assembly of twelve major gods – a dodecatheon as he Greekly put it to himself.fn11 So far we have met six, the children of Kronos and Rhea. There was already another deity to call upon of course, one who was older than any of them – foam-born Aphrodite. The moment the Titanomachy erupted, Zeus collected Aphrodite from Cyprus, aware that she would constitute a great prize if kidnapped, ransomed or recruited by the Titans. For the last ten years she had contentedly been living amongst them and thus the gods now numbered seven.fn12

As the Titans had made Othrys their mountain home, so Zeus now chose for his headquarters Mount Olympus, Greece’s highest peak. He and his gods would be known as the OLYMPIANS and they would rule as no divine beings ruled before or since.

The Runt

Hera was pregnant when the gods moved to Olympus. She could not have been more satisfied. Her ambition was to bear Zeus children of such majestic power, strength and beauty that her place as Queen of Heaven would be assured for eternity. She knew that Zeus had a roving eye and she was determined not to let any other parts of him rove either. First she would give birth to the greatest of the gods, a boy whom she would call HEPHAESTUS, and then Zeus would marry her properly and submit himself for ever to her will. This was her plan. The plans of the immortals, however, are as subject to the cruel tricks of Moros as are the plans of mortals.

When her time came, Hera lay down and Hephaestus was born. To her dismay the child turned out to be so swarthy, ugly and diminutive that, after one disgusted glance, she snatched him up and hurled him down the mountainside. The other gods watched the wailing baby bounce once off a cliff and then disappear into the sea. There was a terrible silence.

We will find out what happened to Hephaestus soon enough, but for the moment let us stay on Olympus, where Hera soon became pregnant by Zeus again. This time she took every care to look after herself, eating healthy foods and exercising gently but regularly, in accordance with all the approved precepts and practices of pregnancy and parturition. She wanted a proper son, not a runt fit only to be thrown away.

It’s War

In due time Hera was indeed delivered of the lusty, strong and handsome child she had set her heart on.

ARES, for so she called him, was from the beginning a pugnacious, violent and aggressive boy. He picked quarrels with everyone and thought of nothing but the clash of arms and horses, chariots, spears and martial arts. It was natural that Zeus, who disliked him from the first, should appoint him god of war.

Ares – MARS to the Romans – was unintelligent of course, monumentally dense and unimaginative for, as everyone knows, war is stupid. Nevertheless even Zeus acknowledged with grudging consent that he was a necessary addition to Olympus. War may be stupid, but it is also inevitable and sometimes – dare one say it? – necessary.

As Ares grew swiftly to manhood he found himself irresistibly attracted to Aphrodite – as which gods weren’t? More perplexingly perhaps, she was equally drawn to him. She loved him, in fact; his violence and strength appealed to some deep part of her. He in turn grew to love her, so far as such a violent brute was capable of the emotion. Love and war, Venus and Mars, have always had a strong affinity. No one quite knows why, but plenty of money has been made trying to find an answer.

The Enchanted Throne

To cement her position as the universally recognized Queen of Heaven and undisputed consort of Zeus, Hera felt the need to institute a nuptial feast, a grand public ceremony that would for ever bind her in wedlock to Zeus.

Hera’s twin impulses of propriety and ambition motivated almost everything she did. She had been pleased to see her son falling for Aphrodite, yet she did not trust the goddess. If Aphrodite agreed to make a public commitment to Ares, as Zeus was to do to Hera, then that would make everything binding and official, setting a permanent seal on her triumph. The world’s first wedding would therefore solemnize two marriages.

A date was set and invitations sent out. Presents began to arrive, the most spectacular of which, all agreed, was a marvellous golden chair addressed personally to Hera. Never had so glorious and gorgeous an object been seen. Whoever the anonymous sender might be, it was obvious, Hera declared, that he or she had the most exquisite taste. Smiling with satisfaction, she lowered herself onto the throne. Instantly its arms came to life and sprang inwards, enclosing her in a tight embrace. Struggle as she might she could not escape, the arms had locked themselves around her and she was trapped. The screams were appalling.

The Lame One

There is doubt, disagreement and speculation about what happened to Hephaestus after he had been cast down from heaven. Some say the infant god was cared for by the Oceanid Eurynome and either the Titaness Tethys, Eurynome’s mother, or perhaps by THETIS, a Nereid (daughter of Nereus and Doris) who was to give birth to achilles many years later. It seems certain, though, that Hephaestus grew up on the island of Lemnos, where he learned how to forge metal and make exquisite, intricate objects. He quickly showed a remarkable talent for the fashioning of useful, ornamental and even magical artefacts, which – allied to his strength with the bellows and apparent immunity from scorching in the intense heat of the forges – combined to make him the greatest of smiths.

In bouncing off the Olympian mountainside he had damaged his foot, which left him with a permanent limp. With his awkward gait, slightly contorted features and disordered black curls, he was a fearful sight. His later reputation, however, was for faithfulness, kindness, good humour and equable temper. Greek myth is replete with infants cast into the wilderness or abandoned on mountaintops to die, either because some prophecy foretold they would one day bring disaster on their parents, tribe or city, or because they were considered accursed, ugly or malformed. Such outcasts seemed always to survive and return to fulfil the prophecy or win back their birthright.

Hephaestus longed to come back to Olympus, which he knew to be his home by right, but he was aware that he could not do so without bitterness or on proper terms unless he allowed himself one measured act of revenge, which would prove his strength of personality, his right to divinity and serve as his calling card to heaven.

So, as Hephaestus learned his trade and worked his bellows, his quick and clever mind devised the plan that his quick and clever fingers would turn into startling reality.

The Hand of Aphrodite

Bound fast on the golden throne, Hera howled with rage and frustration. Neither her power, nor even that of Zeus himself had been able to release her from its curse. How could she invite the immortal world to a feast in which she sat pinioned like a criminal in the stocks? It would be grotesque and undignified. She would be laughed at. What magic was at work here? Who had done this to her? How could she be released from the spell?

The hapless Zeus, bombarded by a shrieked fusillade of questions and complaints, turned to the other gods for help. Whoever managed to release Hera, he proclaimed, could take Aphrodite’s hand in marriage, the greatest matrimonial prize there was.

Ares was loudly annoyed by this peremptory decree. Was it not understood that he was to wed Aphrodite?

‘Calm yourself,’ said Zeus. ‘You are stronger than all the other gods put together. Your union is safe.’

Aphrodite was confident too and pushed her lover forward with encouraging words. But none of Ares’ pulling and pushing and kicking and swearing had the slightest effect. If anything, it seemed that the more he strained, the tighter the throne’s hold on Hera became. Poseidon (despite already having Amphitrite as his consort) made a spirited attempt that likewise came to nothing. Even Hades rose up from the underworld to try his hand at freeing Hera from her increasingly embarrassing predicament. All to no avail.

As Zeus himself tugged frantically and uselessly at the arms of the throne, enduring yet more insults from the humiliated and enraged Hera, a polite but insistent cough cut through the commotion. The assembled gods turned.

In the very hall of heaven, a gentle smile on his lopsided face, stood Hephaestus.

‘Hello, mother,’ he said. ‘Having problems?’

‘Hephaestus!’

He limped forward. ‘I understand that there is some sort of reward …?’

Aphrodite looked at the ground, chewing her lip. Ares growled and started forward, but Zeus held him back. The other gods parted to let the ugly little creature hobble through to where Hera sat imprisoned in her throne of gold. At one touch of his fingers the arms of the golden throne swung open and Hera was free.fn13 She rose to her feet, adjusted her gown and straightened herself in a manner that told the world the whole situation had been under control the whole time. Colour flew to Aphrodite’s cheek. This could not be!

It was a moment of sweet revenge for Hephaestus, but his essential good nature kept him from gloating. Despite – or perhaps because of – the pangs of rejection he had endured all his life, he was motivated not by anger or resentment but only by a desire to please, to make himself useful and give delight. He knew that he was ugly and he knew Aphrodite did not love him. He knew that if he claimed her as his prize she would betray him and slip often into the bed of his brother Ares. But he was simply happy to be home.

As for Hera – rather than acknowledge that she had been paid back for her cruel and unnatural betrayal of the maternal instinct, she maintained a dignified and frosty silence. Secretly the better part of her was rather proud of her elder boy, and in time she grew genuinely fond of him, as did all Olympus.

Hephaestus would make gifts for Aphrodite and for all the gods and prove himself a worthy member of the twelve. He was given one whole valley of the mountain for his own forge. It was to become the greatest and most productive workshop in the world. For assistants he chose the Cyclopes, themselves craftsmen of the highest order, as we have seen. Anything Hephaestus did not yet know they could teach him, and together, working to his designs, they would fashion remarkable objects that would change the world.

Hephaestus – god of fire, and of blacksmiths, artisans, sculptors and metalworkers – was home. His Roman name is VULCAN, which lives on in volcanoes and vulcanized rubber.fn14

The Wedding Feast

Fresh invitations to the marriage of Zeus and Hera, hastily amended to include the wedding of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, were now sent out. All who were summoned to the double wedding accepted with excited pleasure. Such a thing had never been known in all creation, but then creation had never known a goddess like Hera, with her great sense of propriety and intense feeling for order, ceremony and familial honour.

Nymphs of the trees, rivers, breezes, mountains and oceans talked of nothing but the wedding for weeks. The wood spirits too – the lustful fauns as well as the tough barky dryads and hamadryads – made their way to Olympus from every forest, copse and spinney. In celebration of the nuptials Zeus went so far as to pardon some of the Titans. Not Atlas, of course, nor the long exiled Kronos; but the least threatening and violent, Iapetus and Hyperion amongst them, were forgiven and allowed their freedom.

To add zest to an already frenziedly anticipated occasion, Zeus issued a challenge: whoever could devise the best and most original wedding dish could ask any favour of him. The lesser immortals and animals went wild with excitement at this chance to shine. Mice, frogs, lizards, bears, beavers and birds all put together recipes to bring before Zeus and Hera. There were cakes, buns, biscuits, soups, eel-skin terrines, porridges made of moss and mould. All things sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savoury were placed on small trestle tables for the King and Queen of the Gods to judge.

But first the marriages took place. Aphrodite and Hephaestus were wed, then Hera and Zeus. The service was conducted with charming simplicity by Hestia, who anointed each of the four with aromatic oils, wafting perfumed smoke and singing in a low musical voice hymns to companionship, service and mutual respect. Family and guests looked on, many of them sniffing and blinking back tears. A faun who made the tactless error of declaring between gulping sobs that Aphrodite and Hephaestus made a lovely couple was given a swift and violent kick in the backside by a glowering Ares.

That official business over, it was time to find the winner of the great culinary competition. Zeus and Hera walked slowly up and down, sniffing, tapping, prodding, tasting, sipping and licking their way round the entries like professional food critics. The competitors behind the trestle tables held their breath. When Zeus nodded approvingly at a wobbling hibiscus, beetle and walnut jelly, its creator, a young heron called Margaret, gave a single shriek of excitement and fainted clean away.

But hers was not the prize. The winner was the seemingly modest submission of a shy little creature named MELISSA. She offered up for the gods a very small amphora filled almost to the top with a sticky, amber-coloured goo.

‘Ah yes,’ said Zeus, dipping his finger in with a knowledgeable and approving nod. ‘Pine resin.’fn15

But it was not pine resin in the little jar, it was something quite other. Something new. Something gloopy without being unguent, slow-moving without being stodgy, sweet without being cloying, and perfumed with a flavour that drove the senses wild with pleasure. Melissa’s name for it was ‘honey’. It seemed to Hera that when she took a spoonful the scent of the loveliest meadow flowers and mountain herbs danced and hummed inside her mouth. Zeus licked the back of the spoon and mmm-ed with delight. Husband and wife glanced at each other and nodded. No more consultation was needed.

‘Um, the … er … standard has been … has been agreeably high this year,’ said Zeus. ‘Well done all. But Queen Hera and I are agreed. This … ah … honey takes first place.’

The other creatures, trying to hide their disappointment, put on sporting expressions of pleasure as they formed a large semicircle and watched Melissa zip forward to claim her prize – a wish that was to be granted by the King of the Gods himself.

Melissa was very small and looked even smaller as she approached the winner’s podium. She flew (for she could fly, despite looking as if she might be too bulky and bulgy in the wrong places to be able to) as close to Zeus’s face as she dared and buzzed to him these words:

‘Dread lord, I am pleased that you like my delicacy, but I must tell you it is quite extraordinarily hard to make. I have to zoom from flower to flower to collect the nectar deep inside. Only the smallest amount can be sucked up and carried. All day, for as long as Aether grants me light to see by, I must sip, search and return to the nest, sip, search and return to the nest, often travelling huge distances. Even then, at day’s end, I will only have the tiniest possible fraction of nectar to convert – using my secret process – into the confection that has so pleased you. Just that little amphora you are holding took me four and a half weeks to fill, so you can see that this is a most laborious business. The smell of honey is so intense, so ravishing and so irresistible that many come to raid my nest. They do so with impunity, for I am small, and all I can do is buzz angrily at them and urge them to leave. Imagine, a whole week’s work can be lost with just one swipe of a weasel’s paw or one lick of a bear cub’s tongue. Only let me have a weapon, your majesty. You have equipped the scorpion, who makes no foodstuffs, with a deadly sting, while the snake, who does nothing but bask in the sun all day, him you granted a venomous bite. Give me, great Zeus, such a weapon. A fatal one, that will kill any who dare to steal my precious stock of honey.’

Zeus’s eyebrows gathered in a dark and troubled frown. There was a rumbling in the sky and black clouds began to bank and billow above. The animals fidgeted, watching in alarm as the light dimmed and frets of wind flapped the festive tablecloths and ruffled the goddesses’ shimmering gowns.

Zeus, like most busy and important beings, had no patience with fussiness or self-pity. This silly, flighty dot of a creature was demanding a mortal sting, was she? Well, he would show her.

‘Wretched insect!’ he thundered. ‘How dare you demand so monstrous a prize? A talent like yours should be shared out, not jealously hoarded. Not only shall I deny your request –’

Melissa broke in with a high-pitched drone of displeasure. ‘But you gave your word!’

There was a gasp from the whole assembly. Could she really have dared to interrupt Zeus and question his honour?

‘I beg your pardon, but I think you’ll find that I proclaimed …’ growled the god with an icy self-restraint that was far more terrifying than any outburst of temper ‘… that the winner could ask any favour. I made no promise that such a request would be granted.’

Melissa’s wings drooped in disappointment.fn16

‘However,’ Zeus said, raising his hand, ‘from this moment forward the gathering of your honey will be made easier by my decree that you shall not labour alone. You will be queen of a whole colony, a whole swarm of productive subjects. Furthermore, I shall grant you a fatal and painful sting.’

Melissa’s wings pricked up perkily.

‘But,’ Zeus continued, ‘while it will bring a sharp pain to the one you sting, it is to you and your kind that it will bring death. So let it be.’

Another rumble of thunder and the sky began to clear.

Immediately Melissa felt a strange movement inside her. She looked down and saw that something long, thin and sharp like a lance was pushing its way out of the end of her abdomen. It was a sting, as finely pointed as a needle but ending in a wicked and terrible barb. With a wild twitch, a buzz and a final droning wail she flew away.

Meliss is still the Greek word for the honeybee, and it is true that its sting is a suicide weapon of last resort. If it should try to fly away after the barb has lodged in the pierced skin of its victim, a bee will tug out its own insides in the effort of freeing itself. The much less useful and diligent wasp has no such barb and can administer its sting as many times as it likes without danger to itself. But wasps, annoying as they are, never made selfish, hubristic demands of the gods.

It is also true that science calls the order of insects to which the honeybee belongs Hymenoptera, which is Greek for ‘wedding wings’.

Food of the Gods

Perhaps it was more than just temper and impatience that caused Zeus to punish Melissa – whose honey really was quite marvellously delicious – with such severity. Perhaps it had been policy. The whole assembled world of immortals was there to witness the moment. It had been a lesson for them in the implacability of the King of the Gods.

The silence that now fell on the wedding feast was as dark and forbidding as the storm clouds that had massed earlier. Zeus raised the amphora of honey high above his head.

‘For my queen and my beloved wife, I bless this amphora. It shall never empty. Eternally shall it feed us. Whosoever tastes its honey shall never grow old or die. It shall be the food of the gods and, when mixed with the juice of fruits, it shall be the drink of the gods.’

A great cheer went up, doves flew overhead, the clouds and the silence were dispelled. The Muses Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore stepped forward and clapped their hands. Music played, hymns of praise were sung and the dancing began. Many plates were broken in ecstasy, a tradition that is carried on to this day wherever Greeks gather to eat, celebrate and earn tourist money.

The Greek for ‘immortal’ is ambrotos and ‘immortality’ itself is AMBROSIA, which became the name of the specially blessed honey. Its fermented drinkable form, a kind of mead, they called NECTAR in honour of the flowers whose sweet gift it was.

Bad Zeus

Hera’s cup was running over – literally, at the moment, for an attentive naiad was filling her goblet with nectar up to and over the brim – but figuratively too. Her oldest son had made a brilliant marriage and Zeus had sworn oaths of fidelity and fealty to her before all who mattered in the world.

She did not notice that, even now, her insatiable lord was watching with lustful eyes the dancing of LETO, a most beautiful nymph from the island of Kos.fn17 Leto was a daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus, themselves grateful recipients of Zeus’s recent amnesty and present at the feast.

A voice murmured in Zeus’s ear. ‘You are thinking that my cousin Leto owes you her life and should therefore be willing to share her bed with you.’

Zeus looked up into the wise, humorous eyes of his tutor Metis, the Oceanid whose wit, guile and insight were unmatched anywhere. Metis, whom he still loved and who he was sure loved him. His blood, already warmed by nectar and ambrosia, had been heated further by the dancing and the music.fn18 The spark that had always jumped between him and Metis threatened to burst into a great fire.

She saw this and raised a hand. ‘Never, Zeus, never. I have been like a mother to you. Besides, this is your wedding day – are you lost to all sense of decency?’

All sense of decency was exactly what Zeus was lost to. He touched Metis under the table. Alarmed, she moved away. Zeus got up and followed her. She quickened her pace, turned a corner and darted down the mountainside.

Zeus ran in pursuit, transforming himself first into a bull, then a bear, next a lion and then an eagle. Metis hid behind a pile of boulders deep in a cave, but Zeus, turning himself into a snake, managed to slither through a gap in the rocks and wrap his coils around her.

Metis had always loved Zeus and, both worn down and touched by his persistence, she finally consented. Yet even as they came together something bothered Zeus. A prophecy he had heard from Phoebe. Something about a child of Metis rising to overcome the father.

Afterwards, as playful pillow talk, they fell into a conversation on the subject of transformations – metamorphoses as they are called in Greek. How a god or Titan might be able to turn others, or themselves, into animals, plants and even solid objects, just as Zeus had done as he had chased Metis. She congratulated him on his skill at this art.

‘Yes,’ said Zeus, with some self-satisfaction. ‘I pursued you as bull, bear, lion and eagle, but it was as a snake that I captured you. You have a reputation for cunning and guile, Metis, but I outsmarted you. Admit it.’

‘Oh, I’m sure I could have beaten you. Why, if I had turned myself into a fly you could never have caught me, could you?’

Zeus laughed. ‘You think not? How little you know me.’

‘Go on, then,’ Metis taunted. ‘Catch me now!’ With a buzz and whizz she turned into a fly and darted about the cave. In a twinkle Zeus transformed himself into a lizard and with a quick flick of a long sticky tongue Metis (along with any possible child of Zeus’s that even now might be forming in her womb) had been safely transferred to his interior. His father Kronos’s unkind habit of eating anyone prophesied to conquer him seemed to have been passed down to Zeus.

When he slipped back to Olympus in his own shape, congratulating himself at how much cleverer than the supposedly cunning Metis he was, the music and dancing were in full swing and his wife didn’t seem to have noticed a thing.

The Mother of All Migraines

The King of the Gods had a headache. Not a hangover from the wedding feast, nor a headache in the sense of an annoying problem that needed solving – as a leader he always had plenty of those – but a headache in the sense of a real ache in the head. And what an ache. Each day the pain grew until Zeus was in the most acute, searing, blinding, pounding agony that had ever been suffered in the history of anything. Gods may be immune from death, ageing and many of the other horrors that afflict and affright mortals, but they are not immune from pain.

Zeus’s roars, howls and screams filled the valleys, canyons and caves of mainland Greece. They rang around the grottoes, cliffs and coves of the islands until the world wondered if the Hecatonchires had come up from Tartarus and the Titanomachy had started all over again.

Zeus’s brothers, sisters and other family members clustered concernedly about him on the seashore, where they had found him begging his nephew Triton, Poseidon’s eldest, to drown him in seawater. Triton declined to do any such thing, so everyone racked their brains and tried to think of another solution while poor Zeus stamped and yelled in torment, squeezing his head in his hands as if trying to crush it.

Then Prometheus, Zeus’s favourite young Titan, came up with an idea which he whispered to Hephaestus, who nodded eagerly before limping back to his smithy as fast as his imperfect legs could carry him.

What was happening inside Zeus’s head was rather interesting. It was no wonder that he was suffering such excruciating pain, for crafty Metis was hard at work inside his skull, smelting, firing and hammering out armour and weaponry. There was enough iron and other metals, minerals, rare earths and trace elements in the god’s varied, healthy and balanced diet to allow her to find in his blood and bones all the ingredients, all the ores and compounds, she needed.

Hephaestus, who would have approved of her rudimentary but effective metalworking, returned to the crowded beach carrying a huge axe, double-bladed in the Minoan style.

Prometheus now persuaded Zeus that the only way to alleviate his agony was to take his hands away from his temples, kneel down and have faith. Zeus muttered something about the trouble with being the King of the Gods was that there was no one higher to pray to, but he dropped obediently to his knees and awaited his fate. Hephaestus spat cheerfully and confidently on his hands, gripped the thick wooden haft and – as the hushed crowd looked on – brought it down in one swift swinging movement clean through the very centre of Zeus’s skull, splitting it neatly in two.

There was a terrible silence as everyone stared in stunned horror. The stunned horror turned to wild disbelief and the wild disbelief to bewildered amazement as they now witnessed, rising up from inside Zeus’s opened head, the tip of a spear. It was followed by the topmost plumes of a russet crest. The onlookers held their breaths as slowly there arose into view a female figure dressed in full armour. Zeus lowered his head – whether in pain, relief, submission or sheer awe nobody could be certain – and, as if his bowed head had been a ramp or gangway let down for her convenience – the glorious being stepped calmly onto the sand and turned to face him.

Equipped with plated armour, shield, spear and plumed helmet, she gazed at her father with eyes of a matchless and wonderful grey. A grey that seemed to radiate one quality above all others – infinite wisdom.

From one of the pines that fringed the shoreline an owl flew out and perched on the shining she-warrior’s shoulder. From the dunes an emerald and amethyst snake slid forward and coiled itself about her feet.

With a slightly unpleasant slurping sound Zeus’s head closed up its wound and healed itself.

It was clear at once to all present that this new goddess was endowed with levels of power and personality that raised her above all the immortals. Even Hera, who realized that the newcomer could only be the issue of an adulterous affair that must have taken place very close to her wedding day, was nearly tempted to bend her knee.

Zeus gazed at the daughter who had caused him so much pain and smiled a warm smile. A name came to him and he spoke it.

‘Athena!’

‘Father!’ she said, smiling gently in return.

Athena

The qualities that ATHENAfn19 embodied were ones that would become the paramount virtues and accomplishments of the great city state that would bear her name: Athens. Wisdom and insight were inherited from her mother, Metis. Handicraft, warcraft and statecraft were hers. Law and justice too. She took a share in what had been uniquely Aphrodite’s domains of love and beauty. Athena’s kind of beauty was expressed in aesthetics, in the apprehension of its ideal in art, representation, thought and character, rather than in the more physical, obvious and perhaps superficial kinds that would always be the business of Aphrodite. The love that Athena stood for had a less heated and physical emphasis too; it was the kind that would later become known as ‘Platonic’. The Athenians were to prize these attributes of Athena above all others, just as they prized her, their patroness, over all existing immortals. I say ‘existing’ for – as we shall discover – two other Olympian deities, as yet unborn, would soon play their part in defining what it was to be an Athenian and a Greek.

In later years Athena and Poseidon would vie for the special patronage of the city of Cecropia. He struck his trident into the high rock on which they stood and produced a spring of seawater; an impressive trick, but its saltiness rendered it more or less useless as anything more than a picturesque public fountain. Athena’s simple gift was the first olive tree. The citizens of Cecropia in their wisdom saw the manifold benefits of its fruit, oil and wood and chose her as their presiding deity and protectress, changing the name of their city to Athens in her honour.fn20

In Rome she was worshipped as MINERVA, but without really that special personal connection that the Greeks felt for her. Her favoured animals were the owl, that dignified symbol of watchful wisdom, and the serpent – in which guise her father had won her mother. The olive tree, whose soft and versatile fruit proved to be such a blessing to Greece, was sacred to her also.fn21

The apparent gentleness of those grey eyes belied a new kind of ideal, one which combined physical power with strength of character and strength of mind. It was not wise to anger her. Besides, if you crossed Athena, you crossed Zeus. He was besotted with his daughter and she could do no wrong in his eyes. Ares, his least favourite child, made an interesting contrast to his new half-sister. They were both gods of war, but Athena’s interests lay in planning, tactics, strategy and the intelligent art of war, while Ares was a god of battles, combat and all forms of fighting. He understood only violence, force, aggression, conquest and coercion. It is distressing but essential to recognize that neither was as powerful when not allied with the other.

Athena was often given the forename PALLAS, and as Pallas Athena she protected her city Athens. The symbol of her guardianship was called the palladium, a word that has somehow found its way into the naming of theatres as well as giving us the element Pd. The original Pallas was a daughter of the sea god Triton and a dear childhood friend of Athena’s. They would play semi-serious war games together. On one occasion, when Pallas was winning against Athena, Zeus (ever watchful and protective of his darling) intervened and, setting one of his thunderbolts to stun, knocked Pallas unconscious. Athena, in the heat of the moment, administered the coup de grâce and killed her friend. For ever after she bore Pallas’s name as a sorrowful token of her enduring affection and remorse.

Athena, like Demeter, remained untouched by man.fn22 Her childless, single life and her youthful relationship with Pallas have led some to maintain that she should stand as a symbol of feminine same-sex love.

Metis Within

When Zeus had tricked Athena’s mother into becoming a fly in order to use his lizard tongue to reel her in, Metis had been uncharacteristically foolish. Or so it seemed.

In fact she had not been tricked at all. She had done the tricking. Metis means ‘craft’ and ‘guile’ after all. She had quite deliberately allowed herself to be consumed by Zeus – more than that, she had duped him into doing so. She saw that, if she sacrificed her freedom and remained inside him always, she could assume the role of a wise counsellor, a kind of consigliere, for ever able to whisper advice to him. Whether he liked it or not.

Those who speak truth to power usually end up in chains or an early grave, but inside Zeus’s head Metis could never be silenced. She would be a prudent check on the reckless excesses and headlong passions that often threatened to get the god of thunder into trouble. His storms of temper, lust and jealousy needed to be balanced by her calm voice, a voice that could urge his instincts into more rational and enlightened channels.

Whether Metis sacrificed her freedom out of a sense of duty and responsibility, or out of love for the Zeus whom she had always adored, I cannot conclusively state. I like to think it was a mixture of the two. It was, as a Greek might say, her moira both to serve and to love.

Combined with Zeus’s other positive characteristics – charisma,fn23 heart, native guile and (usually) a strong sense of justice, fairness and right – the shrewd inner guidance of Metis helped raise him into a great ruler whose attributes far outshone those of his father and grandfather, Kronos and Ouranos. In fact so much a part of him did Metis become that Homer sometimes referred to Zeus as Metieta – ‘wise counsellor’.

Seeking sanctuary

Wisdom, in the form of Metis, may have whispered to Zeus in one ear, but in the other he always heard the hot urgings of passion. When beautiful girls and women – and sometimes youths – crossed his path, nothing could stop him from chasing them from one end of the earth to the other, even if he had to transform himself into any number of animals to do it. Once the lustful fit was on him, Metis could no more control him than a whisper can quieten a tempest, while Hera’s wild shrieks of jealous rage had no more power to call him back than the wingbeats of a butterfly can blow a ship off course.

I have mentioned that Zeus’s passionate glance had already fallen once on Leto, demure daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus. I should imagine that ‘demure’ is an annoying word for a woman to hear applied to herself (one rarely hears of demure men after all), but Leto was to become a kind of minor deity representing precisely the quality of modest dignity that the word ‘demure’ evokes.fn24 Nevertheless Zeus soon chased her down and had his way with her.

An unshowy Titaness, Leto (LATONA to the Romans) was later worshipped as a goddess of motherhood as well as a paragon of modesty. Probably this was in honour of a pregnancy which, once Zeus had finished with her, turned out to be a most courageous triumph over adversity. For when Hera found out that her husband had got Leto with child, she commanded her grandmother Gaia to deny Leto any land on which to give birth. It was maddening enough to Hera that the baseborn Athena should have taken precedence in Zeus’s affections over her noble and darling sons Hephaestus and Ares (she seemed to have forgotten in her sudden burst of maternal feeling for her firstborn that she had once hurled him down from heaven), and she was not about to let another bastard godling come muscling in to disturb Olympus’s proper order. There is much about Hera that brings to mind the Roman emperor Augustus’s wife Livia or the wives of certain English kings and mafia dons. Always looking to the dynasty and the bloodlines, always prepared to do anything for honour and family, lineage and legacy.

Denied landfall, poor pregnant young Leto sailed the seas looking for somewhere to give birth. She tried to find shelter with the wild Hyperboreans, who dwelt beyond the North Wind,fn25 but fearing the wrath of Hera they would not let her stay. At sea in every sense, Leto cast up prayers to Zeus, who had got her into this dreadful pickle in the first place; but, as King of the Gods, his authority rested on accepting and endorsing the other gods’ right to rule their own spheres and exercise their own will. He could not interfere and countermand Hera’s edict or undo her awful spell. Leaders, kings and emperors always complain that they are the least free of their subjects, and there is some truth to this. Certainly Zeus, for all his might and majesty, was always constrained by the cabinet government principles of consensus and collective responsibility that allowed him to rule.

The best that he could manage for Leto now was to persuade his brother Poseidon to cause an upswell of waves to guide her boat to Delos, a small uninhabited island floating in the eddies and swirl of the Cyclades, unanchored to the seabed and therefore immune from Hera’s curse.

Twins!

Leto made an exhausted landfall on the hospitable floating island of Delos with barely enough strength to crawl up beyond the dunes to shelter beneath a straggling line of pine trees that fringed the shore. The few pine nuts and grasses she could eat there would not feed the active life she felt kicking inside her and so she made her way to a green valley that she could see in the distance. There, beneath Mount Cynthos, she subsisted for a month on fruits and seeds, living like a wild creature but safe from the curse of Hera. Her stomach swelled so much during this time that she feared she was carrying a monster or giant. But still she foraged, ate and rested, foraged, ate and rested.

One day the pangs of hunger gave way to new and sharper stabs of pain. Alone and unaided Leto gave birth to a girl, the most lovely baby yet.fn26 Leto gasped out the name ARTEMIS for her. Strong, endowed with a most astonishing silvery quickness and supple strength, the infant girl found herself put to immediate and miraculous work even on this, her first day alive. For Leto now understood why her pregnancy had been so hard and so heavy – there was another child inside her, and this younger twin had become lodged sideways in the birth canal, causing her terrible agonies. Artemis proved to have an instinctive sense of how a baby should most easily be delivered and assisted with the birth of a glorious twin brother.

Mother and daughter cried out with joyful surprise when the boy gave his first choking cries. For the hair on his head was not jet black like his sister’s or mother’s, it was blond – an inheritance from his maternal grandmother, the shining Phoebe. Leto named the child APOLLO. ‘Delian Apollo’, he was sometimes called in honour of his birthplace, and ‘Phoebus Apollo’ in deference to his Titaness grandmother and his own radiant, golden beauty, for Phoebus means ‘shining one’.

Artemis

Zeus loved Artemis almost as much as he loved Athena and took great pains to protect her from the wrath of Hera, who could not bear to look upon yet another child of adultery, especially one whom she loftily characterized as a hoydenish tomboy and a disgrace to the dignity of feminine divinity.

One afternoon, when Artemis was still a very young girl, Zeus found her playfully catching and releasing mice and frogs in the undergrowth down at the base of Mount Olympus. He sat on a rock beside her and hoisted her onto his knee.

She tugged at his beard for a while before she asked, ‘Father, do you love me?’

‘Artemis, what a question! You know I do. You know I love you with all my heart.’

If you are the child of a faithless reprobate of a father there is almost nothing you cannot get him to agree to. Artemis now twisted Zeus around her fingers just as she twisted the hairs of his beard.

‘Do you love me enough to grant me a wish?’

‘Of course, my dear.’

‘Hm. Come to think, that’s nothing. You grant wishes to the smallest and least significant nymphs and water sprites. Would you grant me several wishes?’

Inwardly Zeus groaned. The whole world seemed to believe that being the all-powerful one, sitting upon the throne of Olympus and commanding the heavens and the earth, was the easiest job there was. What did they know of paternal guilt, sibling rivalry, power struggles and jealous wives? Please one member of the family and you maddened another.

‘Several wishes? Goodness! Surely you have everything a girl could want? You are immortal and once you reach your moment of greatest beauty you will never age. You are strong, clever, swift and – ow!’ This last exclamation was in reaction to a hair that had been plucked with some violence from his chin.

‘They aren’t difficult wishes, daddy. Just the smallest things.’

‘Very well, let’s hear them.’

‘I never ever want to have a boyfriend or husband or have a man touch me, you know, in that way –’

‘Yes, yes … er … I fully understand.’

This may have been the first time Zeus ever blushed.

‘Also, I want lots of different names, like my brother has. “Appellations”, they’re called. Also a bow, which I notice he has a whole collection of but I don’t because I’m a girl which is totally unfair. I’m the older twin after all. Hephaestus can make me a really special one as a birth present just like he did for Apollo, a silver bow with silver arrows please. And I want a knee-length tunic for hunting in, because long dresses are stupid and impractical. I don’t want dominion over towns or cities, but I do want to rule mountainsides and forests. And stags. I like stags. And dogs, hunting dogs anyway, not lap dogs which are useless. And, if you’d be very very kind, I’d like a choir of young girls to sing my praises in temples and a group of nymphs to walk the dogs and look after me and help protect me from men.’

‘Is that it?’ Zeus was almost giddy at this recitation.

‘I think so. Oh, and I’d like the power to make childbirth easier for women. I’ve seen how painful it is. In fact it is actually quite sincerely gross and I want to help make it better.’

‘Goodness me. You don’t ask for the moon, do you?’

‘Oh, what a good idea! The moon. Yes, I’d love the moon, please. That will be all. I’ll never ask for anything ever again ever.’

Zeus granted every wish. How could he not?

Goddess of the chase and the chaste, of the untutored and the untamed, of hounds and hinds, of midwives and the moon, Artemis duly became. The queen of archers and huntresses grew to value her independence and her celibacy above all things. The kindness with which she expressed her sympathy for women in childbirth was countered by the ferocity with which she pursued game and punished any man who presumed to come too near. Feared, admired and adored across the ancient world, she was sometimes known, in honour of the mountainside of her birth, as CYNTHIA. The Romans called her DIANA. Her special tree was the cypress. Inasmuch as Athena was goddess of things cultivated, made, crafted and thought through, Artemis – in her dominion over the natural, instinctive and wild – stood as her opposite. They shared, however – along with Hestia – a passion for their own chastity.

Apollo

If Artemis was silver, her twin Apollo was all gold. If Artemis was the moon, he was the sun. His radiant features captivated all who beheld them. His proportions and lineaments remain to this day the very ideal of a certain kind of male beauty. I say ‘a certain kind’, for Apollo was striking not only in his fair complexion but in his beardless face and hairless chest, a rarity amongst Greeks or their gods. Like Jacob in the Bible he was a smooth man, but no less manly for that.

Apollo was lord of mathematics, reason and logic. Poetry and medicine, knowledge, rhetoric and enlightenment were his realm. In essence he was the god of harmony. The idea that the base material world and its ordinary objects had divine properties and could resonate with the heavens, this was Apollonian, whether expressed in the magical properties of squares, circles and spheres or in the perfect modulation and rhythms of a voice or a chain of reasoning. Even meaning and destiny themselves can be read in ordinary things, if you have the gift. Apollo had it in abundance, allied to an inability ever to lie. This made him a natural choice for taking charge of oracles and prophecy too. The python was sacred to him, of course, and the laurel. His particular animals were the dolphin and the white raven.fn27

It would be a fool who mistook Apollo’s golden beauty for a sign of weakness. He was a supreme archer and when necessary as fierce and fiery a warrior as any on Olympus: like all his close relations he was capable of cruelty, meanness, jealousy and spite. Unusually for a god he was worshipped by the Romans under his Greek name without any alterations. Apollo was Apollo wherever you went in the ancient world.

The Wrath of Hera

On the floating island of their birth, the newborn twins Apollo and Artemis had found themselves the focus of the Queen of Heaven’s continuing fury. Hera had done everything possible to prevent the birth of these living reminders of Zeus’s infidelity and her frustrated rage at her failure knew no bounds. So she tried again.

When the twins were just days old she sent the snake Python to consume them. You remember the magnetite stone the pregnant Rhea had duped Kronos into swallowing instead of the infant Zeus? The one that he had later vomited up and which Zeus cast far from Othrys? Well, it had landed at a place called Pytho on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Lodged fast in the earth it would in time become the Omphalos or navel-stone of Greece – the Hellenic belly-button, its spiritual centre and point of origin. From exactly the spot where it fell, at the command of Gaia, for whom this place was already sacred, there had emerged out of the ground a huge dragon-like serpent to serve as the stone’s guardian. Taking the name of his birthplace he was called Python, as have been many snakes in his honour since.

Hera in her anger now sent Python to the isle of Delos to kill Leto and her children. Zeus took the risk of incensing Hera even further by secretly whispering this news to the wind, which passed it on to the infant Apollo, who in turn sent a desperate message to Hephaestus, begging for the best bow and arrow his half-brother could fashion. Hephaestus toiled at the forge for seven days and seven nights, at the end of which time a matchlessly beautiful and powerful weapon and a set of golden arrows were despatched to Delos, just in time for Apollo to take delivery of them, conceal himself behind the dunes and await the great serpent’s arrival. The moment Python emerged from the sea and slithered onto the sand Apollo stepped from his hiding place and shot him through the eye with an arrow. He sliced the dead body into pieces there on the beach and sent up a great cry of triumph to the sky.

You might think Apollo had every justification to protect his sister, his mother and himself from such a deadly creature, but Python was chthonic – he sprang from the earth – making him a child of Gaia and as such under divine protection. Zeus knew that he must punish Apollo for the slaying of the serpent or lose all authority.

In truth, the punishment he chose for Apollo was not so very harsh. Zeus exiled the young god for eight years to the snake’s birthplace beneath Mount Parnassus to atone for his crime. As well as replacing the snake-monster Python as guardian of the Omphalos, Apollo was tasked with organizing a regular athletics tournament there. The Pythian Games were duly held every four years, two either side of the Olympic meeting.fn28

Apollo also established at Pytho (whose name he changed to Delphifn29) an oracle where anyone could come to ask the god or his appointed priestess (known sometimes as a SIBYL or the PYTHIA) questions about the future. In a trancelike state of prophetic ecstasy the priestess would sit out of sight of her interrogator, above a chasm in the ground which channelled down to the womb of the earth itself, and call her ambiguous prognostications up into the chamber above where the anxious petitioner awaited her proclamation. In this way Apollo and the Sibyl were seen to draw their oracular powers in part from Gaia herself, Apollo’s great-grandmother. Vapours were said to rise from beneath the ground that many took to be Gaia’s actual breath.fn30 The spring of Castalia bubbles up here, whose waters are said to inspire poetry in those who drink them or hear their whispers.fn31

So Delian Apollo became Delphic Apollo too. People still travel to Delphi to ask him about their future. I have done so myself. Apollo never lies, but nor does he ever give a straight answer, finding it amusing to reply with another question or a riddle so obscure as only to make sense when it is too late to act upon it.

To atone for his grievous assault on the proper way of things and to allow the slain Pytho to sleep the eternal sleep of death in the arms of his mother Gaia, Zeus finally fixed the serpent’s resting-place, the island of Delos, to the earth. While it no longer floats free, those who visit the island can testify to this day that it is tough to sail to, being beset by violent Etesian winds and treacherous meltemi currents. Anyone who travels there is likely to suffer the most awful sea-sickness. It is as if Hera has still not forgiven Delos for the part it played in the birth of the LETOIDES, the glorious twins Artemis and Apollo.

Maia Maia

How many Olympians were there now? Let’s do a quick headcount.

Zeus sat on the throne, with Hera at his side, that’s two. Around them were ranged Hestia, Poseidon (who liked to come inland and keep an eye on Zeus), Demeter, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, Athena, Artemis and Apollo – that’s eleven. Hades doesn’t count because he spent all his time in the underworld and had no interest in taking a seat in the dodecatheon. Eleven. One more then, before Olympus reaches its quorum of twelve.

Hardly had the dust settled, and the shrieking recriminations from the Python debacle abated to sulks and glowers, than Zeus saw the path of his duty clear before him. He must father the twelfth and final god. Or, to put it another way, his sex-crazed glance fell on yet another appetizing immortal.

During the Titanomachy, Atlas, the most ferocious champion of the Titans, had fathered seven daughters by the Oceanid PLEIONE. In her honour the Seven Sisters were known as the PLEIADES, although sometimes, out of respect for their father, they might be addressed as the ATLANTIDES too.

The eldest and loveliest of these dark-eyed sisters was called MAIA. She lived as a shy and happy oread on the pleasant Corinthian slopes of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia.fn32 Happy, that is, until the night the great god Zeus appeared to her and got her with child. With great stealth – for word of Hera’s attitude to Zeus’s bastard children had got out and struck fear into every beautiful girl in Greece and beyond – Maia in due time gave birth in a remote and hidden cave to a healthy boy, whom she named HERMES.

The Infant Prodigy

Hermes proved himself to be the most extraordinarily pert and precocious baby that ever drew breath. Within a quarter hour of his birth he had crawled from one side of the cave to the other, throwing out comments to his startled mother as he did so. Five minutes later he had requested a light so that he might better examine the cave’s walls. Being offered none he struck two stones together over twists of straw and kindled a flame. This had never been done before. Now standing upright (and still not half an hour old), this remarkable infant announced that he was going for a walk.

‘The close confines of this cramped cavern are occasioning me uncomfortably acute claustrophobia,’ he said, inventing both alliteration and the family of ‘-phobia’ words as he spoke. ‘I shall see you presently. Get on with your spinning or knitting or whatever it is, there’s a good mother.’

As he ambled down the slopes of Mount Cyllene this singular and sensational prodigy began to hum to himself. His humming turned into tuneful singing, which the nightingales in the woods around him immediately began to copy and have been trying to recapture ever since.

After he had travelled he knew not how far he found himself in a field where he was met by the wondrous sight of a herd of pure white cattle cropping the grass and lowing gently in the moonlight.

‘Oh!’ he breathed, entranced. ‘What beautiful moo-moos.’ For all his precocity he was still not above baby-talk.

Hermes looked at the cows and the cows looked at Hermes.

‘Come here,’ he commanded.

The cows stared for a while then lowered their heads and continued to graze.

‘Hm. So it’s like that is it?’

Hermes thought quickly and gathered up long blades of grass which he plaited together into something like a bovine version of horseshoes, attaching one to each hoof of every cow. Around his own tiny plump feet he wrapped laurel leaves. Finally he snapped off a branch of young willow and stripped it down into a long switch with which he easily and expertly tickled and stung the cows into a tight and manoeuvrable herd. As an extra precaution he drove them backwards, all the way up the slope and back to the mouth of the cave, where his astonished and alarmed mother had been worriedly standing ever since he had wandered so very calmly away.

Maia had had no experience of motherhood before this, but she was certain that the striking style and eccentric behaviour of her son were not usual – even amongst gods. Apollo, she knew, had defeated Pytho while still an infant, and Athena of course had been born fully armed, but creating fire out of nothing but stones? Driving cattle? And what was this he was dangling before her eyes – a tortoise? Was she dreaming?

‘Now, mother,’ said Hermes. ‘Listen. I’ve had an idea. I’d like you to stun the tortoise, scoop out the flesh and cook it. I expect it will make a delicious soup. I’d recommend adding plenty of wild garlic if I were you and perhaps a suspicion of fennel? And then there’ll be beef for mains, which I shall see to now. I’ll just borrow this knife and be with you again before you know it.’

With those words he disappeared to the back of the cave, off whose stone walls rang the appalling screams of a cow having its throat cut by a plump-fisted baby.

After what Maia had to confess was a truly delicious supper she summoned up the courage to ask her son what he might be up to now, for he was hanging out stringy lines of cow gut in front of the fire. While he waited for these foul-smelling strips to dry he busied himself with boring little holes along the edges of the tortoiseshell.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ was all he would tell her.

Apollo Reads the Signs

Hermes may or may not have known it, but on his first night on earth he had travelled quite a distance. All the way from his birthplace on Mount Cyllene north through the fields of Thessaly and as far as Pieria, where he had found and rustled the cattle. And back again. In baby steps that is quite a distance.

What Hermes certainly could not have known was that the white cattle belonged to Apollo, who prized them highly. When news reached the god of their disappearance he set off in fury to Pieria in order to follow what he assumed was a vicious gang of thieves to their lair. Wild dryads or fauns gone to the bad, he imagined. They would regret taking property from the god of arrows. He lay down in the cattle’s field to examine the ground with all the thoroughness of an experienced tracker. To his astonishment the brigands had left no useful traces at all. All he could see were random brush marks, meaningless whorls and swirls and – unless he was going mad – one tiny infant footprint. Any impressions that might have been formed by cow’s hoofs seemed to be heading, not away from the field, but towards it!

Whoever had stolen the cattle was mocking Apollo. They were practised and expert thieves, that much was clear. His sister Artemis was the most skilled hunter he knew: would she dare? Perhaps she had devised some cunning way to conceal her tracks. Ares didn’t have the wit. Poseidon wouldn’t be interested. Hephaestus? Unlikely. Who then?

He noticed a thrush preening on a branch not far away and in one smooth action drew his bow and brought the creature down. Slitting open its crop the god of oracles and augury peered forward to read the entrails.

From the colouration in the lower intestine, the kink in the right kidney and the unusual disposition of the thymus gland it was clear at once that the cattle were somewhere in Arcadia, not far from Corinth. And what was that clot of blood on the liver saying to him? Mount Cyllene. And what else? So! It had been a baby’s footprint after all.

Apollo’s usually smooth brow was drawn into a frown, his blue eyes blazed and his rose-red lips compressed themselves into a grim line.

Revenge would be his.

Half-Brothers

By the time Apollo arrived at the foot of Mount Cyllene his temper had frayed almost to breaking point. The world knew the cows were sacred to him. It was obvious that they were a rare and valuable breed. Who would dare?

A hamadryad drooping herself from the branches of her aspen could offer no clue but informed him that further up an assorted gaggle of nymphs had gathered around the mouth of Maia’s cave. Maybe he would find his answer there? She would go herself if only she could leave her tree.

When Apollo reached the top of the mountain he saw that the whole population of Cyllene had congregated at the cave. As he drew nearer he became aware of a sound emerging from it – a sound such as he had never heard before. It was as if sweetness and love and perfection and all that was beautiful had come to life and were gently coursing through his ears and into his very soul. Just as the scent of ambrosia enticed a god to table and made him sigh with glorious anticipation, just as the sight of a comely nymph caused the hot ichor in his veins to sing and fizz until he felt he could burst, just as the warm touch of skin on skin thrilled him to his deeps – so now these invisible noises seduced and bewitched the god until he thought he might go mad with joy and desire. If only he could pluck them from the air and absorb them into his breast, if only …

The magical sound abruptly stopped and the spell was broken.

The crowd of naiads and dryads and other spirits that had clustered around the cave’s entrance now dispersed, shaking their heads in wonder as they went, as if emerging from a trance. Shouldering through them, Apollo saw that, beside the mouth of the cave, on piles of stone, two vast sides of beef were on display, sliced into neat steaks. His furious outrage resurfaced.

‘Now you will pay!’ he roared as he rushed inside. ‘Now you will –’

‘Sh!’

Apollo’s cousin, the oread Maia, was sitting in a basket chair sewing. She put a finger to her lips and inclined her head in the direction of a crib by the fire in which a rosy-cheeked baby gurgled in its sleep.

Apollo was not to be put off. ‘That demonic child stole my cattle!’

‘Are you mad?’ said Maia. ‘My little angel is not so much as a day old.’

‘Little angel my foot! I know how to read a thrush’s entrails. Besides, I can hear the beasts stamping and lowing in the back. I’d know their moo anywhere. That baby is a thief and I demand –’

‘You demand what?’ Hermes had sat up and was now staring at Apollo with a quelling eye. ‘Can’t a boy get a wink of sleep? I had a heavy night of it transporting cattle and the last thing I need is for –’

‘You admit it!’ yelled Apollo, striding towards him. ‘By Zeus, I’ll strangle the life out of you, you little –’

But as he picked Hermes up, ready to do who knows what to him, a strange device made of wood and tortoiseshell fell from the crib. In falling it made a noise that instantly recalled the magical sound that had so transfixed Apollo when he stood outside the cave.

He dropped Hermes back into his cot and snatched up the device. Two thin bars of wood had been attached to the tortoiseshell and lines of cattlegut strung tightly across them. Apollo picked at one string with his thumb and again the marvellous sound came to him.

‘How …?’

‘What, this old thing?’ said Hermes, raising his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Just a little nonsense I put together last night. I call it a “lyre”. You can get some interesting effects from it though. If you pluck it just right. Or you can strum if you like. You press down on a couple of strings and – here, give it me, I’ll show you.’

They were soon picking, plucking, slapping, strumming, twanging and swapping new chords like excited teenagers. Hermes was in the process of demonstrating the principle of natural harmonics when Apollo, entranced as he was by the feelings stirred in him by this extraordinary device, came to himself. ‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ he said, ‘but what about my bloody cattle?’

Hermes eyed him quizzically. ‘You must be, let me see … don’t tell me … Apollo, right?’

Not to be recognized was a new experience for Apollo and one that he found he didn’t quite like. Being spoken to in superior tones by a day-old baby was another on his list of least favourite experiences. He was about to crush this cocky little squirt with a cutting remark and possibly a swift right hook to the chin when he found himself facing a dimpled outstretched hand.

‘Put it there, Pol. Delighted to meet you. Hermes, latest addition to the divine roster. You’ll be my half-brother, I think? Mother Maia here took me through the family tree last night. What a nutty bunch we are, eh? Eh?’

Another new sensation for Apollo was being playfully poked in the ribs. He felt he was losing control of the situation.

‘Look, I don’t care who you are, you can’t go round stealing my cattle and not expecting to pay for it.’

‘Oh, I’ll pay you back, don’t worry about that. But I just had to have them. Best quality guts. If I was going to make a lyre for my beloved half-brother I wanted only the finest strings.’

Apollo looked from Hermes to the lyre and from the lyre to Hermes. ‘You mean …?’

Hermes nodded. ‘With my love. Yours are the lyre and the art that lies behind it. I mean you’re already god of numbers, reason, logic and harmony. Music fits into that portfolio rather well, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You can say, “Thank you, Hermes,” and, “By all means keep the cattle, brother mine.” ’

‘Thank you, Hermes! And by all means, yes, keep the cattle.’

‘Kind of you, old man, but I actually only needed two. You can have the rest back.’

Apollo pressed a bewildered hand to his perspiring brow. ‘And why did you need only two?’

Hermes hopped down onto the floor. ‘Maia told me how gods love to be worshipped, you see, and how much animal sacrifices mean to them. So I butchered two of the cattle and offered up eleven slices of burning meat from one of them to Olympus. Mum and I shared the twelfth steak last night. There’s some left over if you’d like it cold? Very good with a preparation of mustard-seed paste I’ve developed.’

‘Thank you, no,’ said Apollo. ‘It was thoughtful of you to send up smoke to the gods like that,’ he added. Apollo loved a votive offering as much as the next god. ‘Very proper.’

‘Well,’ said Hermes, ‘let’s see if it’s worked, shall we?’ Without warning he leapt up into Apollo’s arms, gripping him by the shoulders.

This remarkable baby’s lightning fast mind, body and manner were making Apollo dizzy. ‘See if what has worked?’

‘My plan to ingratiate myself to our father. Take me up to Olympus and introduce me around,’ said Hermes. ‘That vacant twelfth throne has got my name on it.’

The Twelfth God

Everything about Hermes was quick. His mind, his wit, his impulses and his reflexes. The gods of Olympus, already flattered by the fine savoury smoke that had risen to their nostrils the previous night from Mount Cyllene, were entranced by the newcomer. Even Hera presented a cheek to be kissed and declared the child enchanting. He was on Zeus’s lap and pulling at his beard before anyone had noticed. Zeus laughed and all the gods laughed along with him.

What were to be this god’s duties? His fleetness of mind and foot suggested one immediate answer – he should become the messenger of the gods. To make Hermes even faster, Hephaestus fashioned what would become his signature footwear, the talaria – a pair of winged sandals that allowed him to zip from one place to another more swiftly than an eagle. Hermes was so unaffectedly delighted with them, and clasped Hephaestus to him with such warm and grateful affection, that the god of fire and forges immediately limped back to his workshop and, after a day and a night’s furious work, returned with a winged helmet with a low crown and a flexible brim to go with the talaria. This lent Hermes a touch of grandeur and showed the world that this pert and handsome youth represented the dread majesty of the gods. For extra élan and glamour Hephaestus presented him with a silver staff topped with wings and entwined with two snakes.fn33

The stories of Hermes’ exploits tickled Zeus greatly, then and thenceforward. The guile and duplicity he had shown in stealing Apollo’s cattle made Hermes a natural choice for god of rascals, thieves, liars, conmen, gamblers, hucksters, jokers, story-tellers and sportsmen. The grander side to liars, jokers and story-tellers gave him a share in literature, poetry, oratory and wit too. His skill and insight allowed him to hold sway in the fields of science and medicine.fn34 He became the god of commerce and trade, of herdsmen (of course) and of travel and roads. Despite music being his invention he did, as promised, present the divine responsibility for it as a gift to Apollo. Apollo simplified the lyre’s structure by replacing the tortoiseshell with the elegant bracketed frame of gold with which we associate the classic instrument.

In the same way that I suggested Artemis and Athena might be considered to represent opposites (wild v. cultivated, impulsive v. considered, etc.) so the mutability, swiftness and energetic impulses of traffic and exchange personified by Hermes might be said to present an exact counter to the serenity, permanence, order and centred domestic sufficiency of Hestia.

Aside from the staff, hat and winged sandals that Hephaestus fashioned for Hermes, his symbols included the tortoise, the lyre and the cockerel. The Romans called him MERCURY and worshipped him with almost as much fervour as the Greeks. He was smooth of skin like his favourite half-brother Apollo (they were now the firmest of friends) and like him he was a deity of light. His light was not golden like Apollo’s, but silver – quicksilver. Indeed the element named ‘mercury’ after him is still sometimes called ‘quicksilver’, and all things mercurial remind us of this most delightful of gods. Later, Hermes would take on perhaps his most important divine responsibility, but for the moment we will seat him in the twelfth chair and survey the grandeur of Megala Kazaniafn35, the great stage at the summit of Mount Olympus.

The Olympians

Two great thrones face ten smaller ones. Each is now occupied by a god or goddess. Zeus reaches out his left hand for Hera to take.

Megala Kazania, the amphitheatre scooped out of Olympian rock by the Hecatonchires during their great battering of the Titans, is spread out before the gods.fn36 A great cheer goes up from the crowd of immortals gathered there to witness this great occasion, Zeus’s supreme moment.

The Queen of Heaven takes his hand. She is content. She and her wayward husband have had a Conversation. There are to be no new gods. There will be no more seduction and impregnation of nymphs or Titanesses. The dodecatheon is complete and Zeus will now turn to the serious business of establishing his rule in perpetuity. She, Hera, will always be there to support and guide him, to uphold order and decorum.

As he surveys the ten smiling gods ranged in front of them Zeus feels Hera squeezing his hand and understands just what that firm pressure means. He salutes the crowd of pardoned Titans and swooning nymphs massed below. Cyclopes, Gigantes, Meliae and Oceanids jostle each other to get a good view. The Charites and Horai shimmer shyly. Hades, the Erinyes and other dark creatures of the underworld bow low. The three hundred hands of the Hecatonchires wave their fierce loyalty.

Now, to signify the start of the Reign of the Twelve, Hestia steps down from her throne and sets light to the oil in a great gleaming bowl of beaten copper. A huge cheer rings around the mountain. An eagle flies overhead. Thunder rumbles across the sky.

Hestia returns to her throne. Zeus watches her calmly smoothing the skirt of her gown and transfers his gaze to the others, one by one – Poseidon. Demeter. Aphrodite. Hephaestus. Ares. Athena. Artemis. Apollo. Hermes. These gods and all creation are bowing down before him. All his enemies are scattered, destroyed, imprisoned or tamed. He has created an empire and a rule the like of which the world has never seen. He has won. Yet he feels nothing.

He looks up and on the far edge of the mountain sees silhouetted against the sky a figure whose dark clothes billow in the wind. His father Kronos has come. The blade of his scythe catches the light of the flames below as he slowly swings it back and forth like a pendulum. Although even Zeus cannot possibly make it out so far away in such poor light he is sure that there is a cruel, taunting grimace on his father’s gaunt and ravaged face.

‘Wave, Zeus. And for heaven’s sake, smile!’ Hera’s hissed undertone jerks him away. When he looks back the dark silhouette of his father has gone. Perhaps he only imagined it.

More cheers arise. To the growl of thunder is added a rumble from the earth itself. Gaia and Ouranos are adding their congratulations. Or perhaps their warnings. The cheering will not stop. Everything alive worships and adores him. This should be the happiest day of his life.

Something is missing. Something … he frowns and thinks. Suddenly a great lightning bolt stabs down from the sky and strikes the ground, sending up a violent puff of smoke and burnt dust.

‘Don’t do that, dear,’ says Hera.

But Zeus isn’t listening. He has had an idea.