Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

The Beautiful and the Damned

ANGRY GODDESSES

Actaeon

The Cadmean house was one of the most important dynasties of the Greek world. First Cadmus, as founder of Thebes and bringer of the alphabet, and then his family were all central in the making of Greece. But, like many of the great houses, there was a curse attached to it. The killing of the water dragon allowed the city to be built, but it cast the curse of Ares over it too. The Fates seldom allowed glory and triumph without the accompaniment of suffering and sorrow.

Cadmus’s daughter Autonoë had a son, Actaeon, by a minor god called ARISTAEUS, much venerated in Boeotia (he was sometimes referred to as ‘the Apollo of the fields’). Like many of the later heroes, Actaeon was tutored and trained by the great and wise centaur Chiron. He grew up to become a much admired huntsman and leader, renowned for his fearlessness in the chase and the skill and tender strength with which he handled his beloved hounds.

One day, having lost the scent of an especially noble stag, Actaeon and his fellow huntsmen separated to pick up the trail. Stumbling through some bushes Actaeon happened on a pool where Artemis was bathing. As she was the goddess of his favourite pursuit, hunting, Actaeon should have known better than to stare dumbstruck at her nakedness. She was also the fierce queen of celibacy, chastity and virginity. But so beautiful was she, so much more lovely than any being Actaeon had ever beheld, that he stood rooted to the spot, his mouth open and his eyes – and not only his eyes – bulging.

It may have been a twig snapping beneath his foot, it may have been the sound of Actaeon’s drool hitting the ground, but something made Artemis turn. She saw a young man standing there ogling, and her blood was fired. The thought of anyone spreading the word that they had seen her naked was so abhorrent to her that she called out.

‘You, mortal man! Your staring is a profanity. I forbid you ever to speak. If you utter just one syllable your punishment will be terrible. Indicate to me that you understand.’

The unhappy youth nodded. Artemis disappeared from view and he was left alone to consider his fate.

Behind him a halloo started up as his fellow huntsmen announced that they were once more upon the scent. Instinctively Actaeon called out. The moment he did so Artemis’s curse descended and he was changed into a stag.

Actaeon raised his head, now heavy with antlers, and galloped through the woods until he came to a pool of water. He looked down into the pool, and at the sight of himself he gave what should have been a groan but which came out as a mighty bellow. The bellow was answered by a great baying and yipping. Within seconds his own pack of hounds had streamed into the clearing. They had been trained by Actaeon himself to rip out a stag’s throat and feast on its steaming blood for their reward.fn1 As the yowling and snarling creatures leapt up at him snapping their jaws Actaeon raised his forelegs in the direction of Olympus, as if beseeching the gods for pity. They either did not hear or did not heed. In seconds he was torn to pieces. The hunter hunted!

Erysichthon

The goddess Demeter is associated with fruitful abundance and the generous bounty of nature, but if pushed beyond her usual forbearance she could be as vengeful as Artemis, as this tale of her ruthless punishment of ERYSICHTHON, King of Thessaly, clearly shows.

In need of timber for the construction of new apartments in his palace, the bold, fearless and impatient Erysichthon one day led a party of woodmen out to the forest, where they came upon a flourishing grove of oaks.

‘Excellent,’ he cried. ‘Swing your axes, boys.’

But his men drew back muttering and shaking their heads.

Erysichthon turned to his foreman. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

‘These trees are sacred to Demeter, sire.’

‘Nonsense. She has more than she knows what to do with. Bring them down.’

More muttering.

Erysichthon snatched the foreman’s whip, which its owner only ever really waved for show, and cracked it menacingly over the heads of the foresters.

‘Chop those trees down, or feel its sting!’ he cried.

With their king cracking the whip and urging them on, the men reluctantly chopped down the trees. But when they came to a giant oak that stood alone at the end of the grove they stopped again.

‘Why, this is the tallest and broadest of them all!’ said Erysichthon. ‘That alone will provide the timber for the rafters and columns of my throne room and still leave enough over for a great bed for me.’

The foreman pointed a trembling finger at the oak’s branches, which were hung with garlands.

The king was unimpressed. ‘And?’

‘My lord,’ whispered the foreman, ‘each wreath stands for a prayer that the goddess has answered.’

‘If the prayers have already been answered she will have no need of flower arrangements. Cut it down.’

But seeing that the foreman and his team were too afraid to proceed, the impetuous Erysichthon snatched up an axe and set about it himself.

He was a strong man and, like most rulers, he loved to show off his will, skill and sinew. It was not long before the trunk creaked and the mighty oak began to sway. Did Erysichthon hear the plaintive cries of a hamadryad in the boughs? If he did he paid no heed but swung his axe again and again, until down crashed the tree – branches, votive wreaths, garlands, hamadryad and all.

As the oak died, so died its hamadryad. With her last breath she cursed Erysichthon for his crime.

Demeter heard of Erysichthon’s sacrilege and sent word to Limos. Limos was one of the vile creatures that had flown from Pandora’s jar. She was a demon of famine who might be regarded as Demeter’s inverse, the goddess’s necessary opposite in the mortal world. One the fecund and bountiful herald of the harvest, the other the mercilessly cruel harbinger of hunger and blight. Since the two existed in an irreconcilable matter–antimatter relationship, they could never meet in person, so Demeter sent a nymph of the mountains as her envoy, to urge Limos to deliver the hamadryad’s curse on Erysichthon, a task the malevolent demon was only too happy to undertake.

Limos had, according to Ovid, rather let herself go. With sagging, withered breasts, an empty space for a stomach, exposed rotten bowels, sunken eyes, crusted lips, scaly skin, lank, scurfy hair and swollen pustular ankles, the figure and face of Famine presented a haunting and dreadful spectacle. She stole that night into Erysichthon’s bedroom, took the sleeping king in her arms and breathed her foul breath into him. Her poison fumes seeped into his mouth, throat and lungs. Through his veins and into every cell of his body slid the terrible, insatiable worm of hunger.

Erysichthon awoke from strange dreams feeling very, very peckish. He surprised his kitchen staff with an enormous breakfast order. He consumed every morsel, yet still his appetite was unsated. All day he found that the more he ate the more ravenous he became. As days and then weeks passed, the pangs of hunger gnawed deeper and deeper. No matter how much he consumed he could never be satisfied, nor gain so much as an ounce of weight. Food inside him acted like fuel on a fire, causing the hunger to burn ever more fiercely. For this reason his people began referring to him behind his back as AETHON, which means ‘burning’.

He was perhaps the first man ever to eat himself out of house and home. One by one all his treasure and possessions, and even his palace, were sold off to buy food. But still this wasn’t enough, for nothing could appease his colossal appetite. At last, he was reduced to selling his daughter MESTRA to raise money to quieten the remorseless demands of his unassuageable appetite.

This was a more cunning and less barbarous act than perhaps it sounds: the beautiful Mestra had once been a lover of Poseidon’s, who had rewarded her with the ability to alter her shape at will – a power in the especial gift of the god of the ever changing sea. Every week Erysichthon would offer his daughter to a rich suitor and accept the bride-money. Mestra would accompany her fiancé to his home, escape in the shape of one animal or another and return to Erysichthon, ready to be sold again to a fresh gullible suitor.

Even this arrangement proved insufficient to tamp down the dreadful flames of hunger, and in desperation one day he chewed off his left hand. The arm followed, then his shoulder, feet and hams. Before long, King Erysichthon of Thessaly had eaten himself all up. Demeter and the hamadryad were avenged.