III.

Principal Gods, Heroes, and Other Mythological Figures

Given the plurality of myths that circulated in Greece, it is impossible to select a single canonical version of the genealogy of the gods. However, if the account of Hesiod’s Theogony is combined with that in the Library attributed to the mythographer Apollodorus, the result is a narrative that most Greeks would have recognized as plausible.

A.

Genealogy and Powers of the Gods

The foundation of all things was Chaos (“Gaping Void”). Next came Gaea (“Earth”), the bottomless depth known as Tartarus, and Eros (“Love”), needed to draw divinities together in order to propagate. Chaos produced Night, while Gaea bore Ouranos first of all, and after that mountains, sea, and the gods known as Titans, who strove to commit arrogant deeds; the youngest of these was Cronus. Also born to Gaea were the Cyclops, one-eyed giants who made thunderbolts.

Ouranos tried to block any succession to his own supremacy by forcing back into Gaea the children whom she bore. But Cronus thwarted his father, castrating him with a sickle and tossing his genitals into the sea; from the bloody foam Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love, was born. Sovereignty then passed to Cronus, but he in turn feared that he would be supplanted by his son. When his sister-wife Rhea gave birth to offspring (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon), Cronus swallowed them. Only the youngest, Zeus, escaped this fate, when Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in place of the baby.

When fully grown, Zeus forced his father to disgorge those he had swallowed; with their help, and armed with the thunderbolt, Zeus made war on Cronus and the Titans, and overcame them. A new regime was established, that of the Olympians, based on Mount Olympus. Zeus ruled the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the Underworld.

Zeus married his sister Hera, and among their children was Ares, whose sphere of influence was war. However, Zeus also had numerous children by other women, both mortal and immortal. By Semele he had Dionysus, a god associated with wine and with other forms of intoxication and ecstasy. By Leto, a Titan, Zeus fathered Apollo and Artemis, two of the greatest Olympian divinities. Artemis remained a virgin, and took hunting as her special province; Apollo was associated with music, ritual purification, and prophecy, above all with the oracular shrine at Delphi. By the nymph Maia, Zeus became father of Hermes, the trickster god who had the power to cross all kinds of boundaries: he guided the souls of the dead down to the Underworld, carried messages between gods and mortals, and drifted a magical sleep upon the wakeful.

Two other Olympian divinities, Hephaestus and Athena, had unusual births. Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, was conceived by Hera without a male partner. Subsequently he suffered the wrath of Zeus, who once hurled him from Olympus for coming to the aid of his mother; this fall down on to the island of Lemnos crippled Hephaestus. The birth of Athena was even more anomalous. Zeus had intercourse with Metis (“Cunning Intelligence”), daughter of the Titan Ocean; but Zeus had been warned by Gaea that, after giving birth to the girl with whom she was pregnant, Metis would bear a son destined to rule Heaven. To avoid this, Zeus swallowed Metis (as Cronus had previously tried to block the succession to himself by swallowing his own children). Metis’ child Athena was born from Zeus’ head, which Hephaestus split open with an axe. Athena, another virgin goddess, embodied the power of practical intelligence in warfare and craftsmanship. She was the patron deity of the city of Athens.

Another of Zeus’ children was Persephone; her mother was Demeter, goddess of corn and vegetation. Once, when Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, Hades, god of the Underworld, saw and abducted her, taking her down to the Kingdom of the Dead to be his bride. Her grief-stricken mother wandered the world in search of her; as a result, fertility left the earth. Zeus commanded Hades to release Persephone, but Hades had cunningly given her a pomegranate seed to eat; having consumed food from the Underworld, she was obliged to return below the earth for part of each year. This myth was told especially in connection with the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which offered initiates the hope of symbolic rebirth in the same way as Persephone had been reborn after staying with Hades.

As well as reporting the exploits of the principal Olympians, Greek myths refer to a rich variety of other divinities, each with their particular sphere of influence. Many were children of Zeus, symbolizing the fact that they belonged to the new order of Zeus’ regime. The Muses, children of Zeus and Mnemosyne (“Memory”), presided over song, dance, and music; the Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—and the Horae—Eirene, Eunomia, and Dike (“Peace”, “Good Order”, and “Justice”)—were appropriately the children of Zeus and Themis (“Right”). Far different in temperament were the Erinyes (Furies), ancient and repellent goddesses who had sprung from the earth where it had been impregnated with the blood of Ouranos’ severed genitals. Yet, abhorrent though they were, the Erinyes too had a legitimate role in the world: to pursue those who had murdered their own kin.

Human existence is characterized by disorder as well as order, and many of the most characteristic figures in Greek mythology exert a powerfully disruptive effect. Satyrs—imagined as part human, part horse (or part goat)—led lives dominated by wine and lust; myths depicted them in drunken pursuit of nymphs in a wild landscape. Images of satyrs are found on many vases used at symposia (drinking-parties). Equally wild, but more threatening, were the centaurs, who were prone to uncontrolled aggression (their combat with the Lapiths, depicted on the Parthenon, was caused by the centaurs’ attempt to carry off Lapith women at a wedding feast). A different sort of threat was posed by the Sirens, usually portrayed as birds with women’s heads. These island-dwelling enchantresses lured mariners to their deaths by the irresistible beauty of their song. Odysseus alone was able to survive this temptation, by ordering his companions to block their own ears, to bind him to the mast of his ship, and to ignore all his entreaties to be allowed to follow the lure of the Sirens’ song.

B.

Mortals

Various conflicting stories were told about the creation of humanity. Some myths recounted how the populations of particular localities had been autochthonous, that is, had sprung directly from the earth. The Arcadians claimed this distinction for their “first man”, Pelasgus (see Pelasgians), while the Thebans boasted descent from earthborn men who had sprung from the spot where Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, had sown the ground with the teeth of a sacred serpent. According to another tale it was Prometheus who fashioned the first mortal from water and earth, though in the more usual version of the story Prometheus did not actually create humanity, but simply lent it assistance through the gift of fire.

Another tale dealt with humanity’s re-creation. When Zeus planned to destroy a primordial race living on Earth, he sent a deluge. However, Deucalion and Pyrrha—the Greek equivalents of Noah and his wife—put provisions into a chest and climbed into it. Carried across the waters of the flood, they landed on Mount Parnassus. When the waters receded, the couple gratefully sacrificed to Zeus. His response was to send Hermes to instruct them how to repopulate the world. They should cast stones behind them: those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women.

From Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, there descended (according to one genealogy) Dorus, Aiolus, and Xouthos, and from Xouthos, Achaios and Ion; all were eponymous heroes of various regional or linguistic groups among the Hellenes. These figures, in their turn, produced offspring who, along with children born of unions between divinities and mortals, made up that disparate collection of heroes and heroines whose exploits constitute a central part of Greek mythology.

C.

Heroes: Prowess and Violence

Several myths relate to quests or combats involving expeditions by groups of heroes.

Meleager was the son of King Oeneus of Calydon and his wife Althaea. At Meleager’s birth the Fates predicted that he would die when a log burning on the hearth was completely consumed. His mother snatched the log and hid it in a chest. Meleager grew to manhood. One day, his father accidentally omitted Artemis from a sacrifice; in revenge she sent a mighty boar to ravage the country. Meleager set out to destroy it, accompanied by some of the greatest heroes of the day, including Peleus, Telamon, Theseus, Jason, and Castor and Pollux. The boar was killed but, in a quarrel about who should receive the boarskin, Meleager killed his mother’s brothers. In her anger Althaea threw the log on to the fire, so ending her son’s life; she then hanged herself.

The same generation of heroes took part in the Argonautic expedition. King Pelias of Iolcus had been warned by an oracle to beware of a man with only one sandal. When a young man called Jason arrived having lost a sandal while crossing a river, Pelias sent him away on an apparently impossible quest to win the Golden Fleece, which was guarded by a serpent in the far-off land of Colchis, on the Black Sea. Thanks to the magical powers of Medea, daughter of the ruler of Colchis, Jason won the Fleece and returned with it to Iolcus; Medea then took horrible revenge on Pelias by tricking his own daughters into cutting him up and boiling him in a cauldron. Medea’s story continued to involve horrific violence: when rejected by Jason in favour of another woman, she once more used her magic to avenge herself with extreme cruelty.

The greatest expedition of all was that which resulted in the Trojan War. The object of this quest was Helen, a Greek woman who had been abducted by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. Helen’s husband Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon led an army of Greeks to besiege Troy. After ten years, with many heroes dead on both sides, the city fell to the trick of the Trojan Horse. For the Trojans defeat meant death or enslavement; for the Greeks it meant the chance to return home, whether to a welcome from a faithful wife (Penelope and Odysseus) or to murder by an adulterous one (Clytemnestra and Agamemnon).

A central theme of Greek mythology is the conflict between civilization and wild savagery, a conflict exemplified by the deeds of Heracles (see Hercules) and Theseus. Each confronted and overcame monstrous opponents, yet neither enjoyed unclouded happiness. Heracles left the Argonautic expedition after being plunged into grief at the loss of his squire Hylas; in another story, a fit of madness led him to kill his own wife and children. Theseus successfully slew the Minotaur, yet on his voyage home to Athens he forgot to hoist the white sails which would have signified that his exploit had been successful; his heartbroken father Aegeus committed suicide.

No hero has fascinated students of Greek mythology more than Oedipus. He too destroyed a monster, the Sphinx, by answering its riddle; yet his ultimate downfall served as a terrifying warning of the instability of human fortune. As a baby, he had been abandoned on a mountainside by his parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, because of a prophecy that the child would grow up to kill its father and marry its mother. Saved by the pity of a shepherd, the child—its identity unknown—was reared by the king and queen of the neighbouring city of Corinth. In due course, Oedipus unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy, matching the horrific crimes he had committed with the equally ghastly self-punishment of piercing his own eyes with Jocasta’s brooch-pins.