The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (31 page)

1
. Hesiod:
Theogony
819 ff.; Pindar:
Pythian Odes
i. 15 ff.; Hyginus:
Fabula
152.

2
. Apollodorus: i. 6. 3.

3
. Nonnus:
Dionysiaca
i. 481 ff.; Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 706.

4
. Apollodorus:
loc. cit
.; Pindar:
loc. cit
.

1
. ‘Corycian’, said to mean ‘of the leather sack’, may record the ancient custom of confining winds in bags, followed by Aeolus (see 170.
g
), and preserved by medieval witches. In the other Corycian Cave, at Delphi, Delphyne’s serpent-mate was called Python, not Typhon. Python (‘serpent’) personified the destructive North Wind – winds were habitually depicted with serpent tails – which whirls down on Syria from Mount Casius, and on Greece from Mount Haemus (see
21.
2
). Typhon, on the other hand, means ‘stupefying smoke’, and his appearance describes a volcanic eruption; hence Zeus was said to have buried him at last under Mount Aetna. But the name Typhon also meant the burning Sirocco from the Southern Desert, a cause of havoc in Libya and Greece, which carries a volcanic smell and was pictured by the Egyptians as a desert ass (see
35.
4
and
83.
2
). The god Set, whose breath Typhon was said to be, maimed Osiris in much the same way as Python maimed Zeus, but both were finally overcome; and the parallel has confused Python with Typhon.

2
. This divine flight into Egypt, as Lucian observes (
On Sacrifices
14), was invented to account for the Egyptian worship of gods in animal form – Zeus-Ammon as ram (see 133.
j
), Hermes-Thoth as ibis or crane (see
52.
6
), Hera-Isis as cow (see
56.
2
), Artemis-Pasht as cat, and so on; but it may also refer historically to a frightened exodus of priests and priestesses from the Aegean Archipelago, when a volcanic eruption engulfed half of the large island of Thera, shortly before 2000
B
.
C
. Cats were not domesticated in Classical Greece. A further source of this legend seems to be the Babylonian Creation Epic, the
Enuma Elish
, according to which, in Damascius’s earlier version, the goddess Tiamat, her consort Apsu, and their son Mummi (‘confusion’), let loose Kingu and a horde of other monsters against the newly-born trinity of gods: Ea, Anu, and Bel. A panic flight follows; but presently Bel rallies his brothers, takes command and defeats Tiamat’s forces, crushing her skull with a club and slicing her in two ‘like a flat-fish’.

3
. The myth of Zeus, Delphyne, and the bear-skin records Zeus’s humiliation at the hands of the Great Goddess, worshipped as a She-bear, whose chief oracle was at Delphi; the historical occasion is unknown, but the Cadmeians of Boeotia seem to have been concerned with preserving the Zeus cult. Typhon’s ‘ephemeral fruits’, given him by the Three
Fates, appear to be the usual death-apples (see
18.
4
;
32.
4
;
33.
7
, etc.). In a proto-Hittite version of the myth the serpent Illyunka overcomes the Storm-god and takes away his eyes and heart, which he recovers by a stratagem. The Divine Council then call on the goddess Inara to exact vengeance. Illyunka, invited by her to a feast, eats until gorged; whereupon she binds him with a cord and he is despatched by the Storm-god.

4
. Mount Casius (now Jebel-el-Akra) is the Mount Hazzi which figures in the Hittite story of Ullikummi the stone giant, who grew at an enormous rate, and was ordered by his father Kumarbi to destroy the seventy gods of Heaven. The Storm-god, the Sun-god, the Goddess of Beauty and all their fellow-deities failed to kill Ullikummi, until Ea the God of Wisdom, using the knife that originally severed Heaven from Earth, cut off the monster’s feet and sent it crashing into the sea. Elements of this story occur in the myth of Typhon, and also in that of the Aloeids, who grew at the same rate and used mountains as a ladder to Heaven (see
37.
b
). The Cadmeians are likely to have brought these legends into Greece from Asia Minor (see
6.
1
).

37

THE ALOEIDS

E
PHIALTES
and Otus were the bastard sons of Iphimedeia, a daughter of Triops. She had fallen in love with Poseidon, and used to crouch on the seashore, scooping up the waves in her hands and pouring them into her lap; thus she got herself with child. Ephialtes and Otus were, however, called the Aloeids because Iphimedeia subsequently married Aloeus, who had been made king of Boeotian Asopia by his father, Helius. The Aloeids grew one cubit in breadth and one fathom in height every year and, when they were nine years old, being then nine cubits broad and nine fathoms high, declared war on Olympus. Ephialtes swore by the river Styx to outrage Hera, and Otus similarly swore to outrage Artemis.
¹

b
. Deciding that Ares the God of War must be their first capture, they went to Thrace, disarmed him, bound him, and confined him in a brazen vessel, which they hid in the house of their stepmother Eriboea, Iphimedeia being now dead. Then their siege of Olympus began: they made a mound for its assault by piling Mount Pelion on Mount Ossa, and further threatened to cast mountains into the sea until
it became dry land, though the lowlands were swamped by the waves. Their confidence was unquenchable because it had been prophesied that no other men, nor any gods, could kill them.

c
. On Apollo’s advice, Artemis sent the Aloeids a message: if they raised their seige, she would meet them on the island of Naxos, and there submit to Otus’s embraces. Otus was overjoyed, but Ephialtes, not having received a similar message from Hera, grew jealous and angry. A cruel quarrel broke out on Naxos, where they went together: Ephialtes insisting that the terms should be rejected unless, as the elder of the two, he were the first to enjoy Artemis. The argument had reached its height, when Artemis herself appeared in the form of a white doe, and each Aloeid, seizing his javelin, made ready to prove himself the better marksman by flinging it at her. As she darted between them, swift as the wind, they let fly and each pierced the other through and through. Thus both perished, and the prophecy that they could not be killed by other men, or by gods, was justified. Their bodies were carried back for interment in Boeotian Anthedon; but the Naxians still pay them heroic honours. They are remembered also as the founders of Boeotian Ascra; and as the first mortals to worship the Muses of Helicon.
²

d
. The siege of Olympus being thus raised, Hermes went in search of Ares, and forced Eriboea to release him, half-dead, from the brazen vessel. But the souls of the Aloeids descended to Tartarus, where they were securely tied to a pillar with knotted cords of living vipers. There they sit, back to back and the Nymph Styx perches grimly on the pillar-top, as a reminder of their unfulfilled oaths.
³

1
. Apollodorus: i. 7. 4; Pausanias: ii. 3. 8; Pindar:
Pythian Odes
iv. 88–92.

2
. Homer:
Odyssey
xi. 305–20;
Iliad
v. 385–90; Pausanias: ix. 29.1–2.

3
. Apollodorus: i. 7. 4; Hyginus:
Fabula
28.

1
. This is another popular version of the Giants’ Revolt (see
35.
b
). The name Ephialtes, the assault on Olympus, the threat to Hera, and the prophecy of their invulnerability, occur in both version. Ephialtes and Otus, ‘sons of the threshing-floor’ by ‘her who strengthens the genitals’, grandsons of ‘Three Face’, namely Hecate, and worshippers of the wild Muses, personify the incubus, or orgiastic nightmare, which stifles and outrages sleeping women. Like the Nightmare in British legend, they are associated with the number nine. The myth is confused by a shadowy
historical episode reported by Diodorus Siculus (v. 50 ff.). He says that Aloeus, a Thessalian, sent his sons to liberate their mother Iphimedeia and their sister Pancratis (‘all-strength’) from the Thracians, who had carried them off to Naxos; their expedition was successful, but they quarrelled about the partition of the island and killed each other. However, though Stephanus of Byzantium records that the city of Aloeium in Thessaly was named after the Aloeids, early mythographers make them Boeotians.

2
. The twins’ mutual murder recalls the eternal rivalry for the love of the White Goddess between the sacred king and his tanist, who alternately meet death at each other’s hands. That they were called ‘sons of the threshing-floor’ and escaped destruction by Zeus’s lightning, connects them with the corn cult, rather than the oak cult. Their punishment in Tartarus, like that of Theseus and Peirithous (see
103.
c
), seems to be deduced from an ancient calendar symbol showing the twins’ heads turned back to back, on either side of a column, as they sit on the Chair of Forgetfulness. The column, on which the Death-in-Life Goddess perches, marks the height of summer when the sacred king’s reign ends and the tanist’s begins. In Italy, this same symbol became two-headed Janus; but the Italian New Year was in January, not at the heliacal rising of two-headed Sirius (see
34.
3
).

3
. Ares’s imprisonment for thirteen months is an unrelated mythic fragment of uncertain date, referring perhaps to an armistice of one whole year – the Pelasgian year had thirteen months – agreed upon between the Thessalo-Boeotians and Thracians, with war-like tokens of both nations entrusted to a brazen vessel in a temple of Hera Eriboea. Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus are all mountains to the east of Thessaly, with a distant view of the Thracian Chersonese where the war terminated by this armistice may have been fought.

38

DEUCALION’S FLOOD

D
EUCALION
’
S
Flood, so called to distinguish it from the Ogygian and other floods, was caused by Zeus’s anger against the impious sons of Lycaon, the son of Pelasgus. Lycaon himself first civilized Arcadia and instituted the worship of Zeus Lycaeus; but angered Zeus by sacrificing a boy to him. He was therefore transformed into a wolf, and his house struck by lightning. Lycaon’s sons were, some say, twenty-two in number; but others say fifty.
¹