Read Don’t Know Much About® Mythology Online
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
Why does Zeus send a great flood to destroy man?
Prometheus plays a supporting role in another Greek story, which may be less familiar than that of Pandora, but has important biblical parallels.
In
Works and Days
, Hesiod described the creation of humanity in five separate ages. First came a golden race of mortals, during the time of Cronus, which disappeared without explanation. Next, Zeus created a race made of the precious metal silver, but they refused to make sacrifices to the gods and were wiped out. A third age was made of bronze, but they proved to be so warlike that they wiped themselves out. The fourth age was the Heroic Age, populated by a race of demigods created by Zeus. When they died, many of these heroes either were placed in the heavens as constellations, became companions of the gods, or went to live on the mythical Island of the Blessed, which was ruled by Cronus.
It is later, in the age of iron, that Zeus finally created the present generation of humans. But, according to Roman poet Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, when Zeus (Jupiter to Ovid) walked among these humans, he was disgusted, especially by a king who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice. Zeus decided to destroy them. With the help of Poseidon, Zeus unleashed a tremendous flood and nearly all of humanity was killed. Two good souls, however, were saved. Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, and his wife, Pyrrha, who was the daughter of Pandora, had been warned by the prescient Prometheus of the imminent flood. Deucalion built a boat, sent out a bird—a dove, in his case—and, after the floodwaters subsided, the boat came to rest on a mountaintop.
All of these details, of course, echo both the Mesopotamian flood accounts and the biblical story. Like Noah, Deucalion and Pyrrha were allowed to live. But they were sad and lonely in an empty world. The voice of a goddess from a nearby cave told them to throw their “mighty mother’s bones” over their shoulders.
Puzzled at first, Deucalion realized that the command referred not to his own mother, but to Mother Earth—whose bones are rocks. Picking up stones, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw them over their shoulders, and they were turned into people, and Deucalion and Pyrrha were responsible for repopulating the earth. Among the “children” they created was their son Hellen, who gave his name to the entire Greek race, later known as the “Hellenes.”
Which mythical monster has the worst “bad hair day”?
First among the heroes of the Heroic Age was Perseus, the son of Zeus and his mortal lover Danaë. When Danaë’s father, a king, learns from an oracle that his own grandson will someday kill him, he sets Danaë and the infant Perseus adrift in a chest. They are saved by a fisherman, whose brother, Polydectes, rules the isle of Seriphus. Over time Polydectes falls in love with Danaë and wants to marry her, but she is unwilling. To prevent the marriage, the grown Perseus agrees to slay the Medusa, one of three monstrous sisters known as the Gorgons, whose ugliness turns men to stone. Once beautiful, Medusa had boasted of her beauty to Athena, who became jealous and changed her into a hideous monster with living snakes for hair. The Greeks carved images of Medusa’s head on their armor to frighten their enemies, and images of Medusa’s head were also used as charms to protect them from evil spells.
Aided by Hermes and Athena, Perseus sets off on his quest. He is given a curved sword, a cloak to render him invisible, Hermes’ winged shoes, and a leather bag to carry Medusa’s head. In the most familiar version of the myth, Perseus slays Medusa by looking at her reflection in his mirrorlike shield, although other accounts say that Athena guides his hand while he looks away. After he decapitates Medusa, who has been made pregnant by Poseidon, Perseus places the deadly head in the leather bag. As Medusa dies, the winged horse Pegasus springs from her body, and poisonous snakes rise from the blood that drips from her head. Athena saves the blood from Medusa’s body and later gives it to Asclepius, the god of healing (see below,
Which Argonaut was a god of healing?
). Although the blood from Medusa’s left side is deadly poison, that from her right side has the power to revive the dead.
On his way home, Perseus rescues a beautiful maiden, Andromeda, from a giant sea monster and marries her. Once back in Seriphus, he turns Polydectes to stone by showing him the head of the Medusa. Unfortunately, fulfilling this prophecy, Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather with a discus. Although he is entitled to become king of Argos after that, Perseus chooses instead to rule Tiryns, where he and Andromeda found a great dynasty. Among his descendants is the great hero Heracles.
What kind of hero kills his wife and children?
If you only heard of one Greek god or hero when you were a kid, it was probably Hercules, whose name in Greek legends was Heracles. The leading character in many a B-movie featuring brawny, bad actors, Heracles was a legendary figure of the Heroic Age, who probably was just as popular in ancient Greece as he is today. Heracles was born in Thebes, the son of the mortal princess Alcmene and the philandering Zeus. Because he is another of Zeus’s illegitimate offspring, Heracles incurs the wrath of Hera, who has it in for any child born from Zeus’s cheating ways.
Hera’s spite takes on some creative forms. First, she causes the birth of Heracles to be delayed so that he is not the firstborn child, cannot wear the crown, and, in fact, is made a slave. Hera then sends two snakes to kill Heracles as he sleeps, but the baby boy amazes everyone by strangling them with his bare hands. Fond of the boy, Zeus intervenes to try to put a stop to Hera’s sabotage. The Olympian places the infant Heracles at the sleeping Hera’s breast so that he will receive the mother’s milk of the gods. But Heracles bites down so hard that Hera wakes up and pushes the baby away—denying Heracles complete immortality. When her breast milk spills, it spreads across the sky as the Milky Way.
The semidivine Heracles goes on to become a warrior of great strength and skill. After helping the Thebans defeat an enemy, Heracles marries the Theban king’s daughter Megara, and has three children, who become Hera’s new targets. Seeing an opportunity to do harm, she causes Heracles to suffer a fit of madness, in which he lets fly his arrows, killing his whole family. Seeking to purify himself and atone for this crime, Heracles goes to the Oracle at Delphi and learns he must serve his cousin, Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. Over the course of twelve years, he performs twelve labors—which in the original Greek were conveyed by the word
athoi
. It meant “contest” and was the source of the word “athletics.”
Here are the labors of Heracles, which have been described over the centuries with many variations:
1. The Nemean Lion
Heracles takes on the fierce lion of Nemea, which has been killing all the flocks near Mycenae. At first, his arrows simply bounce off the animal’s skin, so Heracles chases the lion and kills it with his bare hands.
*
He keeps the lion’s impenetrable skin as a trophy and is often depicted in art with the lion’s jaws covering his head like a helmet.
2. The Lernean Hydra
Heracles takes on a many-headed snake with the body of a hound, whose mere breath can kill and whose heads grow back as soon as they are cut off. The deadly Hydra lives in the swamps of Lerna, also near Mycenae, where it kills livestock. At first, Heracles makes no progress in his fight with the beast, and Hera even sends a giant crab to bite him as he fights. But Heracles’ nephew Iolaüs pitches in. As Heracles cuts off a head, Iolaüs seals each neck with fire to prevent it from growing back. After killing the Hydra, Heracles dips his arrows in the beast’s blood to make them even deadlier. Hera later raises both the Hydra and the crab into the sky, where they are known as the constellations Hydra and Cancer.
3. The Erymanthian Boar
Heracles captures this huge boar who lives in the central Peloponnesus region of Arcadia with little difficulty. But later, when he stops to eat and drink with some centaurs—the half-man, half-horse beasts—they end up in a drunken brawl. During the fight, Heracles kills several of the centaurs with his poison arrows, including his friend, the centaur Pholus, who dies accidentally when an arrow falls on his foot. The centaur Nessus, who escapes this free-for-all, will reappear in Heracles’ story with disastrous consequences.
4. The Ceryneian Deer (also called the Arcadian Stag)
Ordered to capture a deer, famed for its golden antlers and metal hoofs, Heracles succeeds after tracking the animal for a year. But when Heracles meets Apollo, the god claims the deer is sacred to his sister, Artemis. Heracles apologizes and later releases the animal.
5. The Stymphalian Birds
Near a lake in Arcadia lives a flock of vicious birds with wings that fire arrows, beaks that can pierce armor, and whose droppings are lethal to crops. After Heracles startles the birds by banging some metal castanets, they fly into the sky, and he kills them with his poisoned arrows.
6. The Augean Stables
Ordered to clean the enormous stables of King Augeas, Heracles finds himself knee-deep in dung. Heracles cleverly punches holes in the sides of the stable and diverts a river to flow through the stables, cleaning them overnight.
7. The Cretan Bull
Told to capture the sacred bull of King Minos, Heracles goes to the island of Crete. “Seizing the bull by its horns,” he tosses it into the sea and then rides it, rodeo-style, back to Mycenae, where he releases the bull, which is later killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. (This version of the story conflicts with the more famous tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. See below,
Was Atlantis ever discussed in Greek myth?
)
8. The Horse of Diomede
Heracles captures Diomede, Ares’s son and the barbarous king of Thrace who owns four deadly horses that feed on human flesh. Heracles feeds the wicked king to his horses, whom he tames and sets loose. They are later killed by wolves.
9. The Girdle of Hippolyta
Heracles is asked to obtain the girdle—a sash or belt—of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazon women warriors who, according to myth, severed a breast so that it would not interfere with drawing a bow. Expecting a fierce battle, Heracles gathers a small army. But smitten by the hunky hero, Hippolyta simply agrees to give Heracles the belt. In some interpretations, taking the girdle would have been viewed as a metaphor for rape, while surrendering it was seen as consensual sex.
Infuriated at this turn of events, Hera takes the guise of an Amazon warrior and leads an attack. Heracles strangles Hippolyta in battle, thinking that she has betrayed him.
10. The Cattle of Geryon
Heracles is sent to get a flock of magical cattle belonging to Geryon, a three-headed monster who lives at the western edge of the known world (modern Spain). The great hero trudges across northern Africa until he reaches the spot where the cattle are kept—the point where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. He erects two great columns of stone—the Rock of Ceuta in Tangiers and the Rock of Gibraltar, afterwards known as the Pillars of Heracles. Killing the herders who keep the cattle, he drives them all the way across Europe, to Mycenae, where he sacrifices them to Hera. (This is the first of the labors set outside Greece, and it is thought that these “foreign” adventures were told as a way of describing the wider world as the Greeks sailed to the farthest reaches of the Mediterranean.)
11. The Apples of the Hesperides
While looking for the golden apples that grew on a magical tree of life, Heracles finds Prometheus nailed to the rock. He kills the eagle that torments the Titan and sets Prometheus free. In gratitude, Prometheus tells Heracles how to get the apples from the Hesperides, the daughters of Atlas, who possess them. Heracles offers to hold up the sky while Atlas gets the apples. Freed from his backbreaking and onerous task, Atlas decides to leave Heracles where he is, stuck with his job. Heracles outsmarts the rather dimwitted Titan by asking him to hold the sky for just a moment. Atlas obliges and Heracles takes back the apples.
12. Cerberus, the Hound of Hades
In his most daunting feat, Heracles must descend into Hades to steal the three-headed dog Cerberus, who guards the gates of the underworld. There are different versions of how Heracles does this. In one account, he fights with the lord of the underworld himself and wounds him. While Hades is off getting his wound healed, Heracles captures the dog, and brings it back to the upper world. In “defeating” death, Heracles supposedly gains immortality. But in another version, Hades is more compliant, and allows Heracles to take the dog as long as he uses no weapons. Protected by his lion skin, Heracles wrestles the dog, chains it, and drags it to the land of the living. Having accomplished this, he returns Cerberus to Hades.
After completing the twelve labors, Heracles marries the princess Deianira—a name that means “man-killer.” As they travel together, they come to a river where they meet the centaur Nessus—one of the group that Heracles had fought with during the labors. For a small fee, Nessus ferries travelers across the river. While carrying Heracles’ bride, Nessus tries to rape Deianira, and Heracles shoots him with a poisoned arrow. As he lies dying, the centaur convinces Deianira to take some of his now-poisoned blood and semen and smear it on Heracles’ robe if she ever wants a love potion to keep her husband faithful.