KING MIDAS

THE ASS WITH THE GOLDEN TOUCH

You're 'it', King!

The first time I met King Midas, he was desperately trying to
convince some servants to play a game of tag with him, but
his slaves wanted nothing to do with that. No way! No matter
how he begged, cajoled, threatened or tried to bribe them,
the minions refused and ran away.
Can you blame the poor palace staff? Behind King Midas
stood frozen his beloved hunting dog, Muffler, now reduced to
literally a golden retriever. The King had just stooped to pet
his favorite canine and it had turned to solid gold! Midas
couldn't believe it!
Well, believe it or not, that was the good news. The bad news
was, ditto for the King's daughter: She too had been
transformed into a golden statue by the accursed touch of her
father.
Bummer. Hate when that happens. And to add insult to injury,
now nobody wanted to play tag with him. King Midas was
having a bad day.
I'm sure it's happened to you...
But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I can hear you asking,
Who is this forlorn King Midas, and why does everything he
touches turn to gold? Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?
What went wrong?
These were supposed to be the King's golden years, after all!

Ok, ok, let me rephrase that...

Baby Midas

The identity of Midas' parents was always a mystery and a

matter of heated debate late night down at the hangout of
the gods, Thanasi's Olympus Greek Restaurant. The common
consensus was that his mother was the great Rhea (Cybele),
mother of the gods, but I personally doubt that, for it would
make him half-brother to Zeus, and surely my 'godfather'
would have mentioned that to me. Nah. No way was Midas a
son of Rhea...
Well, at least we know who his father was, right? Wrong!
Many held that King Gordius (of Gordian Knot fame, more
on him later) was Midas' real father, but I know for a fact that
Gordie was only his step-father.
I can still hear uncle Homer and grandpa Hesiod, going at it
down at Thanasi's Olympus, way past closing time:
Homer: "His dad was Gordius."
Hesiod: "Knot!"
Homer: "Was so!"
Hesiod: "Was Knot!"

Homer: "Afraid sew!"

Hesiod: "A frayed Knot!"
Boys will be boys...Those two could never agree on
anything...But man, did I love them, they were so darn
clever...
People sensed that Midas was an odd one right off the bat.
The signs were easy to read: While still an infant, the
servants were amazed to witness a procession of ants
carrying grains of wheat up the side of his cradle and placing
them between his lips as he slept.
When the oracles were asked to explain this omen they said
that Midas was a special child who would amass great power
and wealth.
One oracle differed from the majority and claimed that he
thought it meant that Midas "has ants in the pants and he
needs to dance," but he was totally stoned on noxious fumes
at the time and was dismissed as a quack.

King Midas
Sure enough, Midas grew up to become the pleasure-loving
King of Macedonia, where he ruled over the Brigians (also
known as Moschians.) His reign was not unremarkable.
Among his numerous contributions to Greek society, one
could count the majestic throne that he donated to the Oracle
at Delphi, Apollo's prophetic seat. This magnificent throne

was of unparalleled quality and elevated the stature of Midas

among his subjects.
Midas was also responsible for discovering white and black
lead, which led most to believe that he was a man of keen
mind. He proved them wrong as soon we will see.
Perhaps the one thing that most distinguished King Midas was
his love of flowers, particularly roses. The King's gardens
were renowned and he was the first person ever to plant a
rose garden. He would spend countless hours each day on his
glorious grounds, and when he wasn't thus occupied, he
would while his time grooving on funky music and drinking
vintage wine.
Let's just say that the word "work" was alien to King Midas.
The dude had it made. What more could he ask for?
Cousin Danny

It just so happened that my cousin Dionysus, beloved god of

wine, was on his current campaign to Asia and India. He was
faithfully attended by a multitude of wild and crazy Satyrs
and a huge host of gorgeous Maenads, who were these
positively berserk party girls with absolutely no inhibitions
and even less clothing.
Ha! Let me tell you a bit about this astounding army of cousin
Danny. I went along on the expedition as official chronicler
and I'm pleased to report that I've nearly recovered from the

experience...
Once my brain cells return to normal, I may even one day
coherently write about this incredible trek...
Well. It was an incredible sight to behold this host of frenzied
and delirious souls for the first time, similar to a huge exotic
circus blasting into town, only a million times as loud and
exciting.
The frenetic Satyrs...The fevered Maenads...
The music...the wine... the dancing...
The fevered Maenads...
Did I mention the fevered Maenads?

Oh my...Let's just say cousin Danny never had a problem

signing up new recruits...
"Sir, no sir!"
Fall in, soldier! Here's your vintage weapon, a huge flask of
wine. Plenty of ammunition. In fact, endless ammunition.

Your comrades in arm will be these delirious and practically

naked women with the wild glint in their bloodshot eyes. Now
go out there and fight for your right to party!
"Sir, yes sir!"
Needless to say the lineup to enlist in the army of Dionysus
stretched from Greece to India and back, with a waiting list
as big as the Universe and steadily
fermenting...er...expanding...
They had the best marching songs to boot! The mad Satyrs
would start things off on the right foot:
We love drinking Danny's wine
chorus: We love drinking Danny's wine
'Cause it makes us feel so fine
'Cause it makes us feel so fine
Not to be outdone, the insane Maenads would chime in
adroitly, responding in equally worshipful fashion as they paid
homage to their god Dionysus:
Danny's Army doesn't lose
Danny's Army doesn't lose
You got swords but we got booze
You got swords but we got booze
Did I mention how much I liked hanging with the fevered
Maenads?
Cousin Danny. Got to love the handsome devil, even when he
officially changed his name to Bacchus, joined the Witness
Protection Program and slid over to Italy. What's up with that,
oh Danny boy? Greece not big enough for you?
Traitor! But I can't say I blame him...have you ever laid eyes
on a Roman Maenad?
Oh my...fevered to the max...

Silenus Gets Stoned...

So you can imagine the scenarios that would unfold as the
Army of Dionysus roared into cities and towns. Within hours
the entire region would be faithful converts and the
"conquering" legions would celebrate by holding a Bacchanal
that would do Bacchus proud.
Yes. I am here to tell you that cousin Danny knew how to
throw a splendid victory party.
It was during one of these post-victory bashes that Silenus, a
ridiculously fat and obtuse-looking old man with a strong
fondness for wine, who was in the retinue of Dionysus, got a
serious buzz on and strayed away from the rest of the rowdy
drunks ...er...victory celebrants.
Now, you must understand that Silenus wasn't just another
frenzied Satyr in the retinue of the god of wine. This old man
had been the one entrusted with the education of baby
Dionysus when the young god was hiding from the wrath of
Hera. Silenus had been instrumental in his upbringing and it
was little wonder that cousin Danny held his mentor in the
highest esteem.
But let's be straight here, even though it was my candidness
that got me tossed from Mount Olympus in the first place:
Silenus was a drunk! Fat dude was an alcoholic, make no
mistake about it.
So it was little wonder that the wise old fool wandered away

from the victory gathering and soon found himself completely

lost. No problem, Silenus was so stoned that he didn't even
realize his predicament. Hither and fro his (equally lost)
donkey carried its master, braying for a sign from god.
Braying for a sign from god.
Alas, no sign. Danny was far too busy with the newlyrecruited Maenads to notice Silenus was gone.

Well, wouldn't you know it. Eventually Silenus stumbled on

his ass to the palace of King Midas and proceeded to pass out
smack in the middle of the King's treasured rose bushes.
Ouch! Hate when that happens! Especially when I'm nude.
But Silenus was too gone to notice the thorns, and proceeded
to snore off his buzz snug in the rose garden. The old man
dreamt that he was sleeping on a bed of nails that for some
reason smelled simply divine. Silenus couldn't figure out the
dream, but it wasn't half bad...
That's where the King's gardeners discovered this odd man
the next morning, sleeping and snoring merrily, and you can

imagine their fear, shock and surprise.

"Yo, Dimitri! What in the name of Hades is that creature in
the rose bushes? It looks like a giant wild boar, but it's far too
ugly!"
"I don't know, Yanni, but the damn beast hasn't got a stitch
of clothing on. I think I'm going to lose my breakfast!"
The servants poked and prodded Silenus but he simply rolled
over and made himself more comfortable among the piercing
thorns. Bummer. At last losing their apprehension, the
gardeners neared the sleeping 'beauty' and proceeded to
cover his nakedness by laying garlands of flowers on his
head, and roses and other floral wreaths all over the fat
man's body.
I'm sure it's happened to you following a good party.
Can you say 'hilarious'? What a hoot! Thus ridiculously
attired, and finally semi-conscious, Silenus was brought
before King Midas and ordered to state his case. The good
King did well just managing to control his laughter at the
sight of this fat nature boy in floral drag, dried blood clotting
where the roses left their signatures.
But Silenus was no fool. A drunk, yes. A fool, no. As a matter
of fact he was the second best story teller in Danny's camp...
He told King Midas who he was and made it clear that the
great god Dionysus was quite fond of him.
"I have high friends in low places, your majesty!" he slurred.
"I was a Mentor before I went mental."
Okay.
To endear himself further with the King, Silenus then regaled
the Court with exquisite and exotic tales of the places that
Danny's Army had been and the wonderful people they had
met on the recent expedition to India.
For ten days and ten nights Silenus was the honored guest of
King Midas and I swear the old man didn't shut up the entire
time! He entertained the King and his Court with tale after
tale, simultaneously putting a major dent in the palace wine

cellar.
Ah, the stories Silenus spun...

Atlantis
He told the King mysterious stories about an immense
continent lying beyond the great Oceanus, unlike any known
before, where the beautiful inhabitants lived in rich and
splendid cities. These gigantic people enjoyed long and happy
lives, Silenus said, their educators were of the highest
possible caliber, and their legal system was remarkably just.
They did not believe in war, wisely preferring to share love,
and their knowledge and Awareness of life's inner mysteries
were unmatched. These offspring of very ancient gods
claimed that before anything could exist in physical reality,
first it must live inside the soul, and used their nightly
dreams to imaginatively and creatively fashion their daily
world.
They recognized that Nature and the animals were their
brothers and sisters and thus the Atlantians, as they were
called, lived in joyous union with the vibrant world they had
masterfully created. They never consciously took more than
they needed for sustenance, for they knew that to be a
violation of Nature.
They revered Mother Earth for they knew that she was
their child.
The concept of War for them had long ceased to exist,

because they realized that to kill was to be killed...

Thus, their only commandment to their fellows was that:
"Thou Shall Not Kill, Even In The Pursuit of Your
Ideals".
The Atlantians knew that we come upon the world, not by
chance but by design, said Silenus, and he raved and
marveled at their guilt-free compassion.
Between hearty chugs of primo vino Danny's mentor spoke
about the three other magnificent civilizations that
existed even before the time of Atlantis - long, long before,
said the Atlantians - and how they had all met their
catastrophic end, either through self-destruction, or when
Gaea, Mother Earth, in anger had shifted on her axis,
devouring them in her belly or beneath her waters and ice
packs.
The Atlantians had acquired much of their sophistication from
these Others and were keen on sharing the mysteries with
the humans who cohabited their planet, for in their wisdom
they knew that even their days were numbered. Incredibly,
their expected and inevitable demise did not concern them in
the least, Silenus said, shaking his head. In fact, they
seemed to long for the end, for they claimed that it signaled
the next step in their spiritual growth.
He filled the King's head with wondrous stories: These wise
inhabitants of the strange continent called Atlantis had once
set out in huge numbers - ten million or more! - in ships to
visit our lands and spread learning, awareness and culture,
Silenus said. They had radiated to all parts of the world, but
on arriving they had become disgusted with our barbaric and
benighted ways and had returned to their homeland, never to
be seen again.
Can you blame them? We weren't ready for the knowledge
yet. Good thing that before they departed our area the
Atlantians decided to build the Sphinx and some of the
Pyramids, as signposts and hints for future eons. Rather than
manual labor, these highly developed people used inner
sound to craft these wonders.
They also left a whole lot more of their divine fingerprints all
over the earth, but most of it is still buried under sand, ice or

water, guarded by Gaea, patiently waiting to be discovered.

Patiently waiting to be discovered...

The Creek of 'Greek Style'

Silenus also told Midas about a terrible whirlpool that trapped
all travelers. There were two streams that flowed nearby and
lovely fruit trees grew on the banks of each stream. Yet if
someone ate the fruit of one stream, he would lapse into a
sad and pitiful state and would cry and groan until he would
finally die of melancholy.
The fruit that grew by the other stream magically would
renew the youth of even the oldest traveler...but then he
would pass backwards through middle age, then would turn
into a young man, then an adolescent, and at last he would
become an infant...until he finally disappeared!
What a drag! Hate when that happens! How about you? One
time, way before the actual exile, my aunt Hera got real
angry at a poem I wrote about her and tossed me in the
midst of the latter stream, force-feeding me some of the
dastardly fruit.
Oh my...I literally saw my life flash before my
eyes...backwards!
Yes. Sure enough I went 'Greek style' through the stages of
man, and just as I thought that I would become a fetus and
rejoin mama Nyx (Night) in her wondrous womb, my hero
Hermes flew in, snatched me out of the stream, and delivered
me to safety back on terra firma.
Hera wasn't too happy with cousin Hermes for saving me,
needless to say, but she knew that Iris wasn't the most
dependable courier on Olympus (rather flighty, to say the
least), and she utilized Hermes far too often to risk messing
with the Messenger god. Man, do I love cuz Hermy! Homeboy
saved my satirical butt on more than one occasion, both he
and my nephew Hercules. Talk about a couple of solid dudes

in your corner!
But not even Hermes - nor my 'godfather' Zeus, for that
matter - could save me from the wrath of Hera when all was
said and done. But the story of my exile from Mount Olympus
is a sad myth I'd prefer to share with you another day...
What's that you ask? What did I write about Hera that moved
her to forcibly transport me to the 'Creek of Greek Style'?
Well (sure hope she's not reading this!) you know how my
aunt was always called cow-eyed by the ancient poets, as a
sign of reverence? Let's just say I took it a couple of steps
lower...(I can't say more, just in case Hera's reading this! In
fact, I think she is, so...)
C'mon, auntie Hera, to err is human, to moo is bovine...I
promise never to make fun of your anatomy again! I've been
too long in exile! How many more labors must I perform
before you forgive me?
But I digress...

Midas Gets the Touch

For ten days and ten nights Silenus regaled King Midas with
such stories and when he was ready to depart (the royal wine
cellar had run dry), the King ordered a guide to escort the
Satyr to Dionysus, who by now was worried out of his mind

for his beloved teacher.

Needless to say, Dionysus was very happy and grateful to see
Silenus return unscathed (save for the rose thorn wounds),
so he bought a round or six for the house, and then he sent
word with me to King Midas to name his reward - Midas could
have anything he wished for.
You should have seen the look of sheer glee on the King's
face once I delivered the news and the realization sank in
that he could have whatever his little old heart desired.
Say what?...Anything at all? Goody! Let's see...Well...
I grinned to myself as I watched the wheels spin in Midas'
cranium. My good buddy Apollo - who as the god of prophecy
knew everything before it happened - had confided to me the
ending of this morality play and I was awash in poetic irony. I
kind of felt sorry for the King but knew that I could not
interfere in the domain of the Fates.
It was up to King Midas to create his own reality. And how!
Ecstatic at his good fortune, King Midas impulsively replied
that he wished that anything he touched would turn to gold.
When I asked him if he was certain that's what he desired, he
said:
"That's my final answer, Momus..."
Oh my...Hate it when strangers call me Momus, I much
prefer Myth Man. Besides, Momus is persona non grata at
Olympus...Paradise lost, I'm afraid...Her words still ring in my
ears:
"Listen up, Momus: When thy opus becomes thy onus,
thou art out on thy anus."
Thus spake Hera, as she gave me the boot to earth that
fateful day. I've never used the name since. Call me Myth
Man or don't call me at all, unless we're real good friends!
But again I digress with personal musings. I asked Midas one
last time if indeed his wish was that all he touched turned to
gold.

"That's my final answer, Momus," he repeated. The chump.

Who wants to be a millionaire? King Midas does! And did he
ever hit the jackpot! He went into his garden and picked up a
stone and at once it turned into gold. He could hardly believe
his good fortune.

Same with his beautiful roses. As he touched them, they

would transform to pure gold...a tree - gold...a blade of grass
- solid gold! The bench he sat on - shining, precious gold!
Joy of joys! Praise be your name, Dionysus! He was delirious.
King Midas scooped up some sand and marveled to see it
turn into gold dust as he let it fall to the ground. This is so
unspeakably cool, he thought! I am rich beyond reason! I
now have everything!
I am a god, he wanted to add, but he saw me watching
bemused and checked himself. Still, I read his mind and
smirked knowingly at him. The best is yet to come, I wanted
to say to him. Just don't come ANYWHERE near me! I kept a
respectful distance from this loaded weapon.
For hours King Midas entertained himself in his gardens.
Chasing a butterfly, he giggled like a child when finally he
caught it and it changed into a golden brooch. Same with the
apple he plucked from the tree and the nightingale that
landed on his outstretched finger! Pure gold in seconds flat.
In time the King tired of the frolicking and grew hungry and
thirsty. Entering his palace, he ordered his enthralled minions
to prepare a particularly scrumptious feast, for he was in a
splendid state of mind and appetite. In his greedy little brain
ran amok visions of the power and the glory that would be
part and parcel of his new-found magic touch.
Today Greece, tomorrow Mount Olympus, he wanted to
shout...Solid gold, baby! Number One with a bullet! I rock! I
roll!

Yeah, I'm bad!

Well. "Between the morsel and the mouth, many things
may happen", as my good pal Cato the Censor once told me
down at Thanasi's Olympus...He had just dropped a
delectable chunk of Shiskabob on the floor, by the way...
Don't count your chickens before they cross the road, in other
words...I took a seat at the banquet hall (across the huge
table from Midas, as far away as I could possibly get from
him) and prepared to enjoy the fun that was about to ensue.
Enter Muffler, Midas' dog and beloved retriever. Rushing to his
master's side for the customary treat, Muffler froze in midmotion the instant that the King reached down to pet him. I
sat on the edge of my chair, cognizant of the chaos about to
ensue, and actually getting a perverse kind of pleasure out of
that knowledge, I'm ashamed to confess...
Yo, King! Just don't come near ME!
You had to be there to fully appreciate the impact of reality
on King Midas. Idiot! Think next time you get a free wish,
dodo!
The King looked down at his sparkling new golden retriever
then slowly brought his gaze upon his hands. His eyes
clouded over and a shudder coursed through him. Hey! What
just happened!
Suddenly parched, he picked up his wine goblet, which
instantly turned to gold. He nearly dropped it, and did indeed
let it fall to the floor when he poured its contents into his
mouth and the wine turned to cold liquid gold in his throat.
Hey! What's happening? There was terror etched on the
King's face.
How do I turn this damn thing off?
He picked up his favorite fruit to eat, only to see it transform
to cold hard inedible gold. Nice to look at, but impossible to
digest. Not to mention bad for the teeth...

Illustration by Giovanni Caselli

from The Age of Fable

That's when King Midas lost it. Letting out a horrible shriek,
heard all the way down at Danny's camp, he wailed about his
sorry state. This was no longer fun. His Highness was royally
hungry! His Highness was royally thirsty!
His Highness was royally screwed...
His beloved daughter Goldie, hearing his anguish and rushing
to her father's side to hug and comfort him, was next to get
Midasized. One moment she was a beautiful maiden, vibrant
flesh and blood, and the next instant she was a life-size fill-in
for Oscar...
Bummer. Hate when that happens. And the unprepared King
really had no acceptance speech at the ready. Keeping a
discreet distance, I observed and took mental notes so that I
could report back to cousin Danny. He was going to love this

tragicomedy!
Well, you can imagine the rest...There was King Midas, vainly
trying to bring back his daughter Goldie by re-touching her,
to no avail. Ditto for Midas' Muffler. That was one golden
retriever that would retrieve no more, I'm afraid. Inedible
food and undrinkable wine only made things worse.
And now none of the servants would consent to play tag with
him.
Did I mention that his Highness was royally screwed?
Midas Divinely Unscrewed
Now. I really didn't have to relate the story to Dionysus
because he had already heard about the fiasco as it was
unfolding - Helios had clued him in - and the gang had tuned
in the comedy on Olympus Vision. Needless to say, he and
the frantic Satyrs and the fevered Maenads nearly busted a
gut laughing at Midas' panicked antics. Danny hadn't had that
much fun since he came out of Zeus' thigh... The dude was in
stitches!
You see, King Midas was now running around the huge
banquet hall, trying to hail down his servants for assistance,
who were by this point astute enough to recognize that
getting close to their lord was deadly. He would lunge to grab
a minion for help and come up empty as the servant would
pirouette in panic out of danger.
The whole damn scene was surreal, I tell you! I thought I
spotted my good friend Salvador Dali in the corner busy
painting, but I may have been hallucinating. Eventually Midas
realized that his predicament was beyond mortal help and,
falling to his knees, he beseeched the great Dionysus to
remove this golden curse. With tears in his eyes, the King
assured cousin Danny that he had learned his lesson and was
now a changed man.
Dionysus was not a mean god and well he remembered
Midas' kindness toward his mentor, the crapulous Silenus. The
merciful god of wine knew that the King indeed had learned
his lesson, so laughing he appeared and told Midas to travel
to the source of the river Pactolus and to plunge his head and
body in, rinsing off his "golden touch" in the waters.

Dionysus instructed King Midas to also wash off his daughter

in the same river, thus restoring her back to her living human
form. But on one condition - The King had to personally carry
his daughter all the way across the country to the river.
Say what!? Do you realize how much a full-size golden statue
weighs, King Midas wanted to shout, but wisely he held his
tongue. Hey, considering the alternative, better not get
Danny mad...
He finally reached the river of his salvation and quickly dove
into the waters, belly-flopping in his hurry. Ouch! Before the
water's magic could work, Midas touched the sand at the
bottom of the river. To this day the sands of the river Pactolus
are bright with gold, to commemorate King Midas and his
Golden Touch. As for the King, now a little bit wiser, he
realized that there is much more to life than wealth and
gold....
And what about Midas' dog, Muffler, you ask? Well, the King
did love his golden retriever, but enough to carry the damn
thing all the way to Pactolus to bathe? I don't think so.
Besides, still greedy in spite of his lesson, King Midas figured
that Muffler was worth more gold than old...
Hey, he could always get another dog! But to this day, the
names Midas and Muffler are forever twined.

KING GORDIUS TIES THE KNOT

You would think that the golden opportunity wasted by King
Midas would be enough embarrassment to last a lifetime, but
alas the dumb King aptly displayed his lack of judgment yet
again, and this time he truly ended up feeling like an ass.
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song about how a
sinner can reform, but stupid is forever.
Following the golden touch wash-off Dionysus then rewarded

King Midas' kindness towards Silenus by helping him become

King of Phrygia, which was ruled by King Gordius. This ruler
had no children of his own and he immediately took a liking
to Midas, so he adopted him as his own son. When Gordius
died Midas took over the large kingdom.
A note here about King Gordius, for his is a fascinating story.
Born to poor peasants, Gordius one day was startled to see a
royal eagle perched comfortably on the pole of his ox-cart. No
matter where Gordius drove the cart all morning, the
majestic eagle seemed determined to stay put. I'm sure it's
happened to you.
Interpreting this as an omen, Gordius decided to drive his
team towards the nearest city, Phrygian Telmissus. He knew
that there was a respected oracle there and he hoped that
this seer would explain what the awesome eagle signified.
However at the gate of the city he met a young prophetess,
who upon seeing the royal eagle atop the ox-cart, freaked out
and insisted that Gordius immediately offer sacrifice to Zeus,
King of the Olympians. She beseeched Gordius to let her
accompany him and together they rode past the gates into
the city, but not before Gordius made the young woman
promise to marry him following their sacrifice to Zeus.
Did I mention that the woman was exceedingly beautiful?
Now, if only she could be trained not to go ballistic at the
sight of a divine eagle on an ox-cart...
Meanwhile, the current King of Phrygia had suddenly died
with no discernible cause, and the local oracle had
pronounced that the city's new King was "approaching with
his bride, seated in an ox-cart." Are you starting to get the
picture here? Talk about 'right place, right time'!
Sure enough just then Gordius and the young prophetess
entered the market place and the people rejoiced at the
arrival of their new King. The royal eagle that was still
majestically perched on the cart confirmed in their minds the
legitimacy of the oracle's words, and loudly Gordius was
proclaimed King of Phrygia.
Poor Gordius. Country bumpkin that he was, at first he
thought the adoring masses were out to lynch him, as they
pulled him off the ox-cart and onto the market square. He
even threw at them some of his tomatoes and onions, but

they construed that as gifts from their new king. It took a few
minutes for it all to sink in, but once Gordius realized the
miracle that just happened, it made his day.
In gratitude, Gordius dedicated the cart to Zeus, together
with its yoke, which he had fastened to the pole in a mighty
knot. An oracle then declared that the person who discovered
how to untie the knot would become the lord of Asia.
For centuries nobody was able to achieve this impossible
task, until finally Alexander the Great, during his mission to
conquer the world, stopped by Phrygia and was fascinated by
the gigantic knot, securely and intricately tied. When he was
told about the prophecy regarding the Gordian Knot, he
inspected it from all sides, not even attempting to untie it.
After a few moments Alexander the Great simply took out his
sword and with a great blow sliced right through the Gordian
Knot. That was the end of that.
"Any questions?" Alex asked with that impish grin. He was
one cool dude and fondly I recall the two years I spent in his
company as we toured the world. To this day I treasure his
parting gift, presented to me as a surprise half a year before
his untimely death at 33.

Fulfilling the oracle's prophecy, Alexander the Great became

the lord of Asia and the ruler of the world. The rest is history.
Athena's Magic Flute
But we've wandered away from our main subject, King Midas.
When Gordius died, his adopted son Midas assumed the
throne and elevated the worship of his patron, Dionysus. He
founded the great city of Ancyra, and from that day the kings
of Phrygia have been alternately named Midas and Gordius.
That's why many people have mistakenly described Midas as
a son of Gordius. Common error.
Now, you would think that Midas would have learned his
lesson and acted more prudently when it came to the gods.
But no...King Midas was chosen as one of the judges in the
famous musical contest between the great god Apollo and a
mortal upstart named Marsyas, and this ultimately led to the
King's death...
You see, the great goddess Athena had created a wonderful
double flute, made from stags' bones, and she had produced
enchanting sounds from it at a banquet of the Olympians. But
Athena was perplexed as to why her fellow goddesses, Hera
and Aphrodite, giggled and tried to disguise their mirth and

laughter whenever she played the flute.

It was comical. My favorite aunt, Athena, would blow into the
double flute and heavenly sounds would emanate, but the
harder and sweeter she played, the louder the guffaws from
the amused goddesses.
What's up with that? Are those girls drunk?
Going down to Phrygia, Athena played the double flute to
herself as she watched her reflection in the clear stream. At
once she realized the cause of the goddesses' amusement:
Each time she blew into the flute her cheeks would puff and
her face would turn red, making her look silly, bloated and
ridiculous.
I'm sure it's happened to you whenever you play the double
flute.
In anger Athena hurled the foolish flute into the reeds,
placing a curse on anyone who picked it up or dared ever to
play it.
Marsyas Finds the Flute
A man named Marsyas was walking along the river bank and
chanced upon Athena's double flute. He nearly didn't bother
to pick it up, but once he did Marsyas was amazed to hear
the melodious tunes coming from it as he held it to his lips.
Well, actually, Marsyas practically came out of his skin. The
last thing he expected to hear was great sound. The dude
was nearly tone-deaf when it came to music, but anyone who
played the magical instrument was at once transformed into
an accomplished musician. The magic flute, having been
crafted by Athena, still maintained its supernatural powers.
Marsyas traveled the land displaying his new-found talent and
enchanting the people, developing a terrific reputation and
quite a large bank account. Women of all ages would swoon
at his songs and in their passion many threw their
undergarments at him. Scoring a ticket to a Marsyas concert
was next to impossible and the new phenom was constantly
surrounded by a gaggle of adoring Maenad wannabes...
But soon Marsyas grew vain and thought himself the world's
best musician. The imbecile forgot the divine source of his

new-found musical excellence and actually thought that he

alone created the splendid songs.
In his arrogance, he even challenged the great Apollo to a
musical competition, with the winner free to do as he wished
to the loser. Bad move. Never, ever mess with the god of the
Muses, boys and girls.
Ever. I mean, it's no skin off my butt, but...
Marsyas Blows It
There are various versions as to whom judged the contest,
with some holding that it was umpired by the River-god
Tmolus (with the bystander Midas providing his opinion),
while others claim that it was Midas and the Muses who were
the arbiters of this "Battle of the Bands". I was there to
chronicle the event and can tell you that indeed River-god
Tmolus was the main judge, with Midas providing 'expert'
commentary.

As you can imagine, no matter how magical the double flute,

it was nonetheless no match for Apollo's lyre. The two of
them went at it "blow for blow", so to speak, with Marsyas at
first able to duplicate on Athena's wonder flute whatever
Apollo played on his lyre.
To this day I don't know who produced the most melodious
songs, for surely Athena's magic was at its best that moment.
But remember her curse...Remember her curse.
Apollo would play an enchanting melody and Marsyas - nay,
not Marsyas, the flute itself - would mirror the sound right
back at him. I was enraptured, for it was like nothing I had
heard before, and I even espied the Nine Muses, who were
never far from Apollo, busy taking musical notes. What a
great contest! Bravo! Encore!

You see, the double flute, inspired to great heights by the

divine song of Apollo, took on new power and charm with
each note played. They could have gone on all day. Actually it
began to darken, with a purplish mist adding an otherworldly
quality to the whole affair. Truly funky, in an electrically
mysterious way.
Taking stock of the woods, and these cats' skills, for a
moment I thought I was at Yasger's farm.
That's when my good buddy Apollo, having had his jest with
Marsyas, turned around and winked at me in the gathering
gloom. He had another gig that evening and he didn't want to
keep his fans waiting.
"Here, Marsy baby, see if you can do this," he grinned.
Turning his lyre upside down, Apollo's fingers flew over the
harp's strings as a strange and wonderful new sound
emanated from it.
"Purple haze is in my brain," sang Apollo, and Marsyas
stared at the god as if he had gone completely bonkers. The
darkening sky had turned into majestic multi-colored hues of
golden reddish purples. Smiling broadly at the panoramic
vista, Apollo closed out this concert for the ages:
"Excuse me while I kiss Uranus!" he crooned...
It was over save for the flaying. Well, not quite. Unable to
duplicate the upside down move (only one mythical mortal
ever did, eons later), Marsyas swallowed his pride and put
down his flute. End of contest.
Well. You won't believe what next ensued. Alone among all
the spectators, the dunce King Midas declared Marsyas the
winner.
Mother Earth to Midas. Come in, Midas. Is anybody there?
To punish Marsyas for his insolence in deigning to challenge
the gods, Apollo flayed him alive. Yes indeed. Took his skin
and left the poor man with nothing to hold his bones
together. Drastic but highly effective, since nobody dared
repeat the challenge.

Apollo was irate because he was late for the evening concert
and he hated making his fans wait, so one can almost forgive
his nastiness. You know how temperamental those music
types can be.
As for King Midas, Apollo dallied long enough to render
punishment most fitting upon this donkey. Looking hard and
sternly at the trembling King, who only then had realized his
faux pas, he declared that, since Midas had the musical
sensibility of an ass, he may as well have the ears to match.
So saying, he touched Midas on the head and sure enough,
two long donkey ears sprouted out of the King's skull. Midas
looked like a real ass, and that's exactly how he felt! Dude
never learned.
The Ears Have Walls...
Long and hairy the ears sprouted up, and Midas in a panic
covered them up with a tall Phrygian cap, hoping nobody ever
discovered his embarrassing secret.
Only his barber knew of this disgraceful matter, but Midas had
warned him that he would be put to death if ever he revealed
to anyone the asinine state of the King's ears. Midas would
have been better off shaving his head bald, for how on earth
do you keep news of that ilk to yourself?
Well, like grandpa Hesiod was fond of saying, "If you give a
bald man a comb, he will never part with it". Or, as uncle

Homer used to warn me, "Momus my boy, two can keep a

secret, if one of them is dead. But even then you're not
completely safe."
The barber found himself bursting with the lurid secret and
couldn't bear to keep the gossip to himself, but was afraid for
his life. So he dug a hole in the bank of the Pactolus river
and, after making certain that nobody was listening, he
whispered into the hole that "King Midas has an ass's
ears."
Filling up the hole to forever bury the secret, the barber went
away happy and at peace with himself.
All was well until the next spring, when a reed sprouted up
from the hole and whispered to the other reeds that King
Midas had the ears of a donkey. These reeds in turn
whispered the secret to all the creatures who passed. It was
the talk of the marsh and the animals had a blast making
muffled Midas wisecracks.
Soon the birds learned the news and brought it to a man
named Melampus, who knew the language of birds and who
found the information absolutely hilarious. Melampus told all
his friends and in no time the entire kingdom knew about
King Midas' miserable secret.
I'm sure it's happened to you.

Thus it came to be that when Midas came riding by in his

chariot all his people began to shout in unison: "Take off the
cap, King Midas, we want to see your ears!" What a drag!
Hate when that happens!
Unable to face this public humiliation, Midas first had the
head of his barber cut off, and then he either drank bull's
blood and thus perished in great pain, or else he hung himself
in shame.
And that was the end of poor, stupid King Midas, the man
with the Golden Touch, who kept making an ass of himself.
Indeed a sinner can reform, but stupid is forever...
EPILOGUE
A few years before he died King Midas demonstrated
his dullardism yet again. This time it cost him the life
of his beloved son, a handsome and brave young stud
named Anchurus. I swear, the jackass could never
quite figure out the important things in life...Let that
be a lesson to all of us...
King Midas had an only son named Anchurus with a woman
whose identity is unknown. One time the earth opened up
and a great hole in the ground was exposed at a place called
Celaenae, a city in the region of Caria. Just like that, out of
the blue, the huge bottomless crevice appeared, threatening

to swallow everything in the vicinity.

I'm sure it's happened in your neighborhood. Don't you just
hate it? Darn pot-holes!
Once everyone stopped freaking out and composed
themselves, they wondered how to get the abyss to close. It
was killing property values, damn it! The city elders called a
council and a committee was formed to find a solution. Many
imaginative theories were submitted, among them the
suggestion by a dreamer that my nephew Hercules be hired
to divert the waters of a nearby river, filling the bottomless
abyss and providing instant prime lakefront property.
"We'll make a killing, dudes!"
The man was laughed down and his solution called
preposterous. I believe his name was Trumpus. Donald
Trumpus. He later went on to fulfill his dreams in a faraway
land of liberty.
What to do? What to do? The wisest minds in the country
tackled the dilemma and came up with no concrete ideas,
until an oracle inhaled some noxious fumes and told Midas
that if he should throw his most precious possession into the
abyss, indeed it would close.
The oracle's name was Paine Webberus.
Oh. Do I really have to, thought Midas, looking around for the
man named Trumpus...suddenly the Donald's submission
sounded real good. Damn good!
All eyes were on the King; he had to act royally. Still not
having learned his life's lesson Midas then cast into the hole a
fortune in gold and silver but nothing happened. Kiss your
fortune goodbye, chump, you've just made a real bad
investment.
Dolt. When Paine Webberus talks, you should listen. Carefully.
Alas, King Midas still mistook wealth for worth. And the
gaping abyss yet yawned in deep indifference at the fool's
gold.
So his wise and valiant son Anchurus, correctly reasoning
that there is nothing more precious than a human life - he

had been tutored by the Atlantians - rode on his horse to the

edge of the precipice and plunged into the abyss. The earth
closed, taking with it the life of King Midas' son.
The chasm closed, taking with it the King's most valuable
possession.
His flesh and blood.
His only son.
In the prime of his life.
Alas, a sinner can reform. But stupid is forever...
Right, King Midas?

ZEUS
KING OF THE OLYMPIANS
(Roman names: Jupiter, Jove)

by Nick Pontikis
(with apologies to grandpa Hesiod and uncle Homer)

PART ONE
Yes, part one. The dude's huge!
At least a two-part harmony, more if the Muse co-operates...

What can I say about my godfather Zeus, the

greatest and most powerful of all the Olympians,
that hasn't been written a million times before? To
the ancient Greeks, he became the undisputed
master of the universe, and as the god of light, he
was the source of all heavenly manifestations.
Gods and mortals alike trembled at his terrible
wrath when he was younger, and worshipped his
benevolent kindness as he grew older and wiser.
He caused rain, drought, good weather and bad
weather. He commanded tempests and created
storms. I remember as a little boy running my
hand through his thick, white beard, and
wondering why everyone was so in awe of this
gentle and elderly soul. Not until much later did I
discover my godfather wasn't always the most
solid pillar on Olympus. As a matter of fact, when
he was young, he was quite the rebel. Pull up a
comfortable chair and let me tell you about the
colorful fables and foibles of Zeus, the king of the
Olympians.
(Now, Zeus wasn't really my godfather, he was my
great-great uncle. 'Godfather' was just a nickname
I laid on him when I was young, because everyone
treated him like Numero Uno. One night I caught
him watching The Godfather Part I on Olympus
Vision, and I'll be darned if he wasn't doing his
best Marlon Brando/Don Corleone
impersonation! I've called him 'Godfather' ever
since, it's our own little joke.)
I never saw Zeus without his scepter in his hand. It
was the insignia of his authority, that and the darn
huge eagle always perched at his feet! That bird
scared me silly, even as I grew older. It never did
anything, it just looked right through everyone
with those majestic and piercing eyes, and once in
a while it would stretch its enormous wings to
their full span, shrinking the room. You just knew,
though, that if you made one wrong move, or in
any way threatened Zeus, in an instant the eagle
would tear you to shreds and devour you just for
fun!
The only times I saw the eagle fly were to retrieve

Zeus' thrown thunderbolts. Sort of like playing

catch with your dog, only with much higher
stakes.
I often asked him if I could play with his favourite
weapons, the thunderbolts, or at least just hold
them, but my great-great-aunt Hera (Juno in
Latin) made him keep them locked up in the study
whenever we kids came to visit. I saw him use
them a few times, however, and I'm here to tell
you that he was deadly! Beware of Zeus'
thunderbolts!
One summer night down at Thanasi's Olympus
Greek Restaurant, uncle Zeus had slipped away
from his wife Hera to sow some wild oats, the old
rascal, and near the end of the evening he was
feeling no pain, having a jolly old time flirting
with his handmaiden, the beautiful nymph
Victoria. It was long past closing time, Orpheus
and his lyre had hours ago bid us fond adieu, and
to get rid of Zeus we told him that we had ran out
of both nectar and ambrosia, his two favourite
drinks. Last call was two hours ago, Big Guy. Go
home to Hera.
Man, was Zeus upset at
getting cut off! He
unleashed one of his
patented thunderbolts
and opened up an arch
between the Blue and
the Red rooms, where
there used to be a thick
concrete wall. A
fountain appeared on
both sides, spouting
nectar and ambrosia. To
this day we keep it
open as a reminder not
to mess with mighty
Zeus.

The Arch of Zeus at

Thanasi's Olympus

(Uncle Zeus felt badly

the next morning after
he sobered up, so he
had Hermes deliver us
a statue of Aphrodite

and Poseidon that we

placed in the new
fountains he created.
He was a real
thoughtful person,
albeit a terrible drunk.
The arch looks real
nice, by the way,
everyone agrees it's a
big improvement.
Besides, it makes for a
great conversation
piece.)

The birth of Zeus was a real howl. My great-greatuncle was the sixth son of Cronus (Saturn in
Latin) and Rhea (Ops in Latin). Remember
Cronus? He was the surgeon wannabe who
castrated his father Ouranos (Father Earth,
Uranus in Latin) and seized control of the universe,
way back when. That vile act no doubt made for
some rather tortured dreams, and Cronus constantly
worried that one of his offspring would in turn
supplant him. Matters were made worse when an
oracle warned him that indeed he was destined to be
deposed by one of his children. Cronus' meter was
ticking.
What's a paranoid god to do? Cronus didn't want to
be dethroned by his kid, so he ate all the children
that Rhea bore him immediately following their
birth. A very disgusting habit, if you ask me.
One by one, each child met the same fate. No
sooner were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and
Poseidon born, but they found themselves trapped
within father Cronus. I've heard of paternal bonding
after birth, but that's downright ridiculous!
Mama Rhea found this hard to swallow. 'If the big
lug wants to make lunch of my babies, let him carry
them in his belly for nine months, and let him feel

the excruciating joy of childbirth!' she would

mutter. 'Probably change his mind about what he
puts in his mouth!'
So Rhea tricked Cronus with the birth of Zeus by
replacing him with a stone wrapped in baby
comforters. Cronus swallowed down the stone and
thought himself safe.

Man, did that lead to some animated discussions

down at Thanasi's Olympus, between uncle Homer
and grandpa Hesiod...
"Ok, now you've gone too far, Hesiod! Who in
Hades is gonna believe that Cronus ate a stone and
thought it was Zeus he swallowed? How stupid can
he be? This is the ruler of the universe you're
talking about, man, and he doesn't know the
difference between a stone and a baby? Give me a
break!"
"Homer my boy, you must learn to relax. Have I
ever told you about the Eastern religions? Repeat
after me: Ommm...Waitress, some decaf Ambrosia
for my young friend, regular for me. Listen up, I'm
only going to say this once.
"This is mythology. None of it has to make any

sense, as long as it's got violence, sex, beautiful

nymphs, men built like gods, gods built like men,
lots of scheming and intrigue and the odd lesson
learned.
"The rest is up to your imagination. Go wild if you
must, make up all kind of stories about the origin of
natural phenomena, the public eats it up."
Grandpa Hesiod. How I loved him...he was cooler
than the other side of the pillow. He was the first
Greek to wonder how everything had happened, the
cause of the world, the seas and the sky, gods and
humans, and to try to come up with an explanation.
I remember him reading me his classic book, The
Theogony (Birth of the Gods), back when it was
still in rough draft. That's how I learned to read. For
centuries his account of the creation of the universe,
and the generations of gods, has been a must-read
for lovers of Greek mythology.
So Cronus swallowed Rhea's ruse, and the infant
Zeus was sent to Gaia (Mother Earth). She took
the baby to Lyctos on the island of Crete and hid
him in Dicte's cave, where the ash nymph
Adrasteia and her sister Ide were placed in charge
of his care. They guarded the child in the cave and
tried to prevent Cronus from discovering his
existence.
The ash nymphs took great pains to safeguard the
baby. They even hung Zeus in a cradle from a tree,
so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on
earth nor in the sea and, gathering youths, gave
them brazen shields and spears and asked them to
go around the tree clashing their shields and making
noise lest the cries of little Zeus be heard.
(Someone should have told them that's what was
making the baby cry in the first place! Dumb
Greeks!)
These Curetes, as they were known, were assisted
in his upbringing by the divine goat Amaltheia.
The goat's name means 'tender'.

I kid you not. The divine goat nymph he called Amy

loved Zeus tender and suckled him on Crete, and when
she died he used Amaltheia's skin to create the Aegis,
the legendary shield of Athena. Out of gratitude Zeus
also turned one of Amy's horns into the Cornucopia
("horn of plenty") which was always filled with
whatever goodies its possessor wished. (An inebriated
Zeus forgot it at Thanasi's one night, and we got to play
with the Cornucopia...let's just say the cellars and
storerooms got filled.)
Yet if you listened in on some late night debates down at
Thanasi's Olympus, you'd learn that Amaltheia was also
considered to be a nymph who nourished Zeus with
honey and the milk of a goat. Other versions have the
nymph Neda rearing Zeus. Face it, once he became king
of the gods, just about everyone wanted to associate
themselves with Zeus, and many women claimed to
have nursed him.
One way or another...
You decide for yourself. As for me, I'm all for the divine
goat version, I swear I've seen my godfather shed a tear
when he speaks of his little goat Amy.
Using the hide of Amaltheia as his armour, Zeus set out
to seize power. He went to Metis, who sent him on to
Rhea so that Zeus could be made a cup-bearer to the
unsuspecting Cronus. With Metis' help, Zeus laced one
of Cronus' cups with a drug that made him regurgitate
his swallowed children, the five brothers and sisters of

Zeus.
Needless to say, being gods, the kids were unharmed,
albeit a tad startled...after all, one moment you're
trapped inside dad's belly, hoping he lays off the garlic
tonight, and the next second you're asked to take part in
the revolt of the Eons. Oh my. It's enough to make you
throw up.
Zeus was a brilliant strategist. He first task was to free
the Cyclopes ('Cies' to us, they were these gigantic, oneeyed towers of power) and the Hecatonchires (One
Hundred Handed Ones, they were giants endowed with
100 hands and 50 heads. Nobody in Greece could
pronounce their darn name, 'Hecatonchires', so we
called them the 'E-Cats').
The Cies and E-Cats were held in Tartarus where
Cronus had imprisoned them, and they were so grateful
to be freed that they gave Zeus thunder and lightning as
a reward for releasing them. To Poseidon they gave his
lethal trident, and to Hades a helmet that rendered its
wearer invisible.
(Why didn't they just use the thunder, lightning, trident
and helmet to free themselves earlier? Good question.
You ask them.)
Thus began the reign of Zeus. Now the Big Guy was
armed. Together with his born-again siblings (sure hope
they had a nice long bath first!), who assembled under
Zeus' leadership, he found himself at the head of a real
army.
The war against father Cronus lasted ten long years, but
finally Hades snuck up unseen on dad, wearing his
funky helmet of invisibility, his bro Poseidon held
Cronus captive with his paralyzing trident, and my
godfather Zeus struck him dead with a bolt of lightning.
Talk about a 1-2-3 knock-out punch!
The death of Cronus was followed by an attack from
Atlas and the Titans, but with the help of the Cyclopes
and the handy E-Cats, Zeus' army prevailed and the
enemy was sunk.
You should have seen the Cies and E-Cats in action with
Zeus! While the Cyclopes 'kept an eye out' for attack

from the rear, the E-Cats sat in ambush armed with

boulders in each of their 100 hands. When the time was
right, Zeus retreated, drawing the Titans into the E-Cats'
ambush. They rained down thousands of rocks and
boulders with such fury that the Titans thought the
mountains were falling on them. They broke rank and
ran away, not even bothering to slow down and change
their underwear, giving Zeus and his motley crew
victory.

The Titans who had fought against him were exiled by

my godfather to Tartarus. I heard that Tartarus was as
morbid as the Underworld, but without plumbing. Nice
place to stay out of. One time our teachers lost their
collective minds and tried to take us there on a field trip,
but only three parents signed the consent form...
The Titan's leader, Atlas, was singled out for special
punishment by being assigned the task of holding the
world on his shoulders. Ha, I can still hear uncle Homer
shouting at grandpa Hesiod late at night down at
Thanasi's Olympus...
"Hesiod, your presence here is depriving some village of
its idiot! How in Hades is Atlas supposed to hold up the
world on his shoulders? Where would he stand, you
fool? Besides, how big can Atlas be, to actually support
the entire earth? What's in that nectar you're drinking?
Vicki, cut him off!"
"I knew you'd like that one Homer, my boy. My village
was so small, we all had to take turns being the idiot.
Atlas is holding up the sky, not the whole world.
Besides, my Atlas is full scale - one inch equals one

inch, so obviously he's as large as the earth, Homey..."

Oh how grandpa Hesiod liked teasing uncle Homer.
They were the best of friends, but their artistic
competitiveness urged them both to greater heights. And
Hesiod never could resist pulling Homer's leg,
especially after he beat him in that famous debating
contest. He loved calling uncle Homer 'Homey', knew it
drove him absolutely nuts. Never missed a chance to use
it.

Ah, but with the defeat of the Titans, the fun was just
beginning. Gaia (Mother Earth), now angry that her
adorable little Titans had in turn been imprisoned, gave
birth to one last offspring, a horrid creature named
Typhoeus (Also known as Typhoon and Typhon. We
called him Ty, he reminded us of a ball player who
played on the Olympus Tigers). How ugly was Ty? Let's
just say that when he was small, Gaia would tie a pork
chop around his neck just so that Cerberus, the threeheaded dog, would play with him...
Grandpa Hesiod had the most apt description of Ty:
'Typhon was the largest, most dangerous and most
grotesque of all creatures. Nothing but coiled serpents
from the thighs down, Typhon possessed the head of an
ass and arms that stretched one hundred leagues in each
direction, with serpents' heads where hands should be.'

(You just know that drove uncle Homey crazy!)

When the gods saw Typhoon and his wife Echidna (she
was a real beaut herself, you should hear the goddesses
shred her, up at Adonis' Mount Olympus hair salon)
coming at them like a King Kong - Godzilla tag team,
the Olympians did the only sensible thing. They
changed themselves into animals and ran and hid by the
Pyramids down in Egypt. Lots of hiding spots inside the
Pyramids, some of them yet to be discovered by man...
Well! Now is that any way for bona fido...er...bona fide
gods to behave? Heavens no! My great-aunt Athena,
always the bravest of the warriors, was the only one to
stand up to Typhoon. She so humiliated my godfather
Zeus that he eventually regained his courage and a
terrible battle raged, which left hardly a living creature
on earth. Absolute carnage.
Zeus stunned Typhoon with a thunderbolt, then used
Uranus' castrating sickle to wound the beast. As
Typhoon tore up huge Mount Aetna to hurl, Zeus used
the thunder and lightning given him by the Cyclopes.
Unleashing one hundred well-aimed lightning bolts at
the mountain, he fell back, pinning Typhoon underneath.
Typhoon was buried under Mount Aetna in Sicily and
there he lies to this day, belching fire, lava and smoke
through the top of the mountain.
His hideously disgusting mate, the lovely Echidna, was
spared her life by Zeus and took up residence in a cave,
lying in wait of unsuspecting travellers. I once asked
Zeus what's up with that, and he told me that he let her
and her children live as challenges to future heroes.
Give them something to slay.
What a thoughtful gesture, Zeus! Letting Echidna and
her offspring (The Nemean Lion, Cerberus, Ladon,
Chimera, Sphinx and Hydra) live just so Heracles and
the gang can get their Boy Scout badges!
Much later a final challenge to Zeus' rule was made by
the Giants. These gigantic critters sprang up when the
blood from the newly-euniched Uranus fell upon the
earth (Gaia, Mother Earth). The Giants even tried to
invade Mount Olympus, piling mountain upon mountain
in an effort to reach the top. But the gods had grown

strong and with the help of Heracles (Hercules), the

Giants were subdued or killed. Zeus had them buried
underneath volcanoes and to this day you can often hear
them rumble and roar.
Did I mention that a couple of Titans refused to take part
in the fight against Zeus? Besides Oceanus, the Titans
Prometheus and Epimetheus (Pro and Epi we called
them) wisely chose not to side with their fellow Titans
against the Olympians, and for that they were spared
imprisonment in Tartarus. Instead they were given the
daunting task of creating man.
But being Greeks, they got it all backwards. Epimetheus
went first and he gave all the good qualities to the
animals of the earth - swiftness, cunning, strength, fur,
wings; in short all the finer virtues, and those needed for
survival, went to the creatures.
But resources are not endless...By the time Epi got to
man, all the good qualities were gone and none were left
for good ol' Homo Sapiens. What's a poor Titan to do?
Epi turned to a true Pro for help. Prometheus took over
the task of creation and sought a way to make man
superior. To give him an advantage he decided that man
should stand upright like the gods did and then, in a
spark of brilliance, he gave them fire.

Opa! With his new found flame and stature, man did the
upright thing and began to prosper, building homes,
opening restaurants, cooking his meals, and keeping
warm in the winter. Fire...What a concept! Well done,
Pro. You the man!
Prometheus did little to disguise the fact that he much
preferred man to the Olympians. After all, most of his
family had been banished to Tartarus following their
Titanic sinking in the battle versus my godfather. Pro
was looking for a way to get back at Zeus, and soon an
opportunity presented itself.
As his bounty from man, Zeus decreed that a portion of
each animal they sacrificed be given to him. Hey, he's
the godfather! Are you going to deny him his cut?
That's when brave Prometheus decided to hustle Zeus.
He created two piles as his offering, one with plain old
bones hidden inside some juicy fat, the other with the
good edible parts concealed in the ugly hide, disguising
them further by piling entrails on top. Gutsy move. He
then asked Zeus to pick one pile, and that would be his
future offering.
Door #1 or door #2, Big Guy?
Guess what? Yup, Zeus fell for Pro's slick move - He
picked the bones and had to accept that as his share of
all future sacrifices. Thereafter only fat and bones were
burned to the gods upon their altars, men kept the good
meat for themselves.
(In this particular sharing of the wealth, Man got the
elevator, Zeus got the shaft, grandpa Hesiod liked to
say...Proves his point that Zeus really developed no
brains until Athena was born out of his forehead. Leave
it to my great-aunt to smarten up the numero uno Wise
Guy...)
And was Zeus ever humiliated! For months he was the
butt of endless late night jokes down at Thanasi's
Olympus Greek Restaurant.
I recall the immortal Greek tragicomedist,
Lettermanius of Sparta, cracking up the room with his
Top Ten Reasons Zeus Picked Bones Over Meat. Of
course, he always waited until Zeus split for the night,

you don't want to mess with the godfather. (Zeus once

told me that he knew Lettermanius poked fun at him
after hours at Thanasi's, the moon goddess Selene had
told him, but the dude was so darn funny, he didn't have
the heart to strike him dead with a bolt...)

Lettermanius of Sparta's
TOP 10 REASONS
ZEUS PICKED PRO'S BONES OVER MEAT

10. Athena hadn't been born yet

9. He wasn't the sharpest spear in the armoury
8. Eeenieee, Meenieee, Minieee, Moeee...
7. Had spent the previous night hanging with
Dionysus
6. He really said "hide", but the ref heard "bones"
5. He didn't have the stomach for intestines!
4. "The Oracle made me do it!"
3. "I thought it was two-out-of-three!"
2. If you can't trust your head Pro, whom can you
trust?
And the #1 Reason Zeus Picked Pro's Bones Over
Meat:
1. "Aphrodite had just strolled by in nothing but her
golden girdle!"

Smarting at his slim pickings, and still trying to wipe the

fat off his beard, my godfather did what he was famous
for in his younger days - he flipped his lid!

Not one to put up with being swindled, Zeus took back

the fire that Prometheus had given man, perhaps the
single most devestating thing he could have done, short
of sending a flood or something (that came a little bit
later, I'm sure we'll get to it in Part II...)
Prometheus wasn't going to idly sit by and watch man
shiver, even though Zeus had warned Pro to chill out
and not get involved. As the seasons changed, and
winter hit hard, he saw his beloved man starving and
freezing to death.
Without fire, stone cold and unable to cook, man was on
the verge of perishing. We all felt terrible, except for
that macabre god, the one we called "The Undertaker",
my great-great-uncle Hades, who had suddenly hit the
jackpot. Should have seen his glee as he clicked his
people counter in hell's waiting room!
Prometheus looked with sorrow upon his handiwork,
and knew he was bound for destiny. He lit a torch from
the sun and secretly brought it back again to man. It
nearly blew out so many times during the stealthy trek
down Olympus, and had it gone out in the wind, with it
would have been extinguished forever all the hopes of
mankind.
He finally made it, and handed the flame to Muhhamad
Ali, who somehow managed to light the Olympic
torch....er...sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Well, you just knew that Zeus would find out in no time
that man once again had fire. We think that big-mouth
Helios spilled the beans. Either that or he smelled the
barbecue lamb chops down at Thanasi's. So Zeus set
about getting revenge on both man and Prometheus. And
did he ever! Dig this...
To punish man, Zeus had Hephaestus, the incredibly
skilled god of smiths, create a mortal of stunning beauty,
a sweet and lovely thing to look upon. I once asked
uncle Hephaestus for the recipe, and the joker said he
used earth and water only. Yeah, right unc! Man, if I
could only get my hands on those ingredients!
The gods bestowed on this mortal many gifts of wealth:
Silvery rainment and a broidered veil, and bright
garlands of blooming flowers and a crown of gold that

radiated great beauty. Hermes endowed her with the gift

of persuasion, Apollo gave her the gift of musical talent
and Aphrodite made her yet more beautiful. She was
perfect! Almost...
This creation of Hephaestus was Pandora, the first
woman. She was so named because of what the gods
had given her - Pandora means 'the gift of all'. When
Pandora was complete, Zeus brought her out and
wonder took hold of gods and men when they beheld
her. My godfather then sent her to Epimetheus as a
present.
Some punishment, you say. Hang on, this gets real good.
You see, the gods had given Pandora a wonderful golden
box, but had warned her never to open it. Under no
circumstance was Pandora to look inside the box, they
made this clear.
Wouldn't you know it? Those practical jokers had each
placed something harmful inside the box, and they
forbade her ever to open it, knowing that would drive
Pandora mad.
Now wise Prometheus, knowing full well that Zeus was
angry at him for sneaking fire back to man, had warned
Epi not to accept any gifts from Zeus. Yeah right... One
look at the gorgeous Pandora and Titan Epi was
smitten... his knees buckled and he went down like the
Titanic. Her beauty and charm were so great that he
disregarded Pro's advice and allowed her to stay.
Besides, his biological clock was ticking double-time.
So Epi said "I do!"
Can you say 'trouble in paradise'? Daily, Pandora's
curiosity grew as to the contents of the forbidden box.
Knowing that she wasn't allowed to open it tormented
her. Finally succumbing to the relentless need to know,
she opened the box just a little, to have a tiny, tiny
peek...

The horror! Out flew countless plagues, misery, hate,

jealousy, mischief and just about every sorrow and
pestilence known to humankind. In terror Pandora
slammed the lid down, but too late! Paradise lost!
Pandora was mortified at the evil which her curiosity
had unleashed upon the earth. But hark! All is not lost!
Trapped deep down in the bottom of the box was one
more thing - Hope. It was the only good thing in the box
given to Pandora by the gods, and remains to this day
humankind's sole comfort in times of sorrow and
misfortune.
Oh, but did my politically correct uncle Homer ever
freak on grandpa Hesiod:
"Hesiod, you male chauvinist pig! Are you blaming the
unleashing of plagues and sorrows on Woman?!?
Buddy, I swear your wheel is spinning but the hamster is
dead! You're gonna be crucified by the Feminists! And
I'm gonna enjoy every bit of it! Ha!"
"Homey, Homey, Homey...Curiousity killed the cat, but
for a while, Pandora was a suspect...Remember when
my ex-wife took the kids, the chariot, both houses and,
worst of all, the goats? I warned her then that I would
get even. Pandora's a metaphor for my ex, and the witch

knows it!
"Nobody takes my goats!"
Oh my...I rarely saw my grandpa Hesiod so
animated...Messy divorces will do that to you I guess...
A greater punishment lay in store for Prometheus. When
he was done exacting his revenge on men, Zeus turned
his vengeful eye on the arch-sinner Pro. The ruler of the
universe remembered how much he owed Prometheus
for helping him conquer the other Titans, but how
quickly he forgot his debt! In this case, it was a "What
have you done for me lately?" sort of thing.
My godfather called on his servants, Force and
Violence - Let me tell you about these oafs. They were a
couple of big ugly thugs, no necks, real light in the
smarts department, but strong as Hades and not overly
conducive to polite conversation.
The tough guys forcefully seized my man Pro and
violently delivered him high atop Mount Caucasus.
There they chained Prometheus
To a high-piercing, headlong rock
In adamantine chains that none can break
and just to rub it in, they told him:
Forever shall the intolerable present grind you down.
And he who will release you is not born.
Such fruit you reap for your man-loving ways.
A god youself, you did not dread God's anger,
But gave the mortals honor not their due.
And therefore you must guard this joyless rock -No rest, no sleep, no moment's respite.
Groans shall your speech be, lamentation your only
words.
(Needless to say, Force and Violence weren't quite so
loquacious.
The above are grandpa Hesiod's words.)
You'd think that was punishment enough, right?
Noooo...High atop the mountain, the bound Prometheus
was tormented every day by an eagle sent by Zeus, that
would feast on his liver. To make matters worse, Pro's

liver would grow back overnight, providing yet another

smorgasbord for the bird the very next day.
Talk about an all-you-can-eat buffet! I hate when that
happens!

So. Was our hero Prometheus bound for a life of eternal

torment? Could Zeus really be that cruel? Would the
eagle tire of a daily dose of fresh Titan liver? Inquiring
Hellenes wanted to know. Greece was abuzz with
Prometheus rumours, stories and innuendo.
'Pro's Prose', a compilation of his writings, overnight
shot to #1 on the New Athenian Times Best Sellers list,
and stayed there for eons. In the more learned sections
of Greece, graffiti reading 'Quid Pro Quo!' defaced Zeus'
temples.
Little Greeks everywhere refused to eat liver!
My godfather was quick to respond to the negative PR after all, the revered Oracle of Gallup revealed that
Zeus' popularity and approval rating among humans had
dipped to an unheard-of 1% post Pro, compared to a
comfortable 96% prior to his unpopular sentencing.
(Margin of error was 4% either way, so I personally
think the 1% approval was really much lower.)
To silence the venom of humans, Zeus gave Prometheus
two ways out of this eternal torment. Since Pro was the
only one who knew the name of the child that would
dethrone him, Prometheus could spill the beans to Zeus

and he would be set free. Right, as if Pro was about to

snitch and have Zeus swallow someone else!
My godfather sent his messenger Hermes to ask
Prometheus to disclose the secret. This is what our
protagonist answered him:
Go and persuade the sea wave not to break.
You will persuade me no more easily.
There is no force which can compel my speech.
So let Zeus hurl his blazing bolts,
And with the white wings of the snow,
With thunder and with earthquake,
Confound the reeling world.
None of this will bend my will.
Was Pro the kind of guy you want on your side in an
alley fight, or what! Our warrior wasn't going to cry
'uncle', damn the torpedoes!
Ok, then the stubborn mule could meet two conditions,
Zeus told him via Hermes: First, that an Immortal must
volunteer to die for Prometheus. Second, that a mortal
must kill the eagle and unchain him.
Sure, and then the Tooth Fairy would bring Prometheus
a treat! Come on, Zeus, can you make it any harder on
our protagonist? What Immortal would sacrifice his life
for a Titan? And what mortal is strong enough to slay
the eagle and break the adamantine chains?
Well, look under your pillows, boys and girls!
Eventually, Chiron the Centaur agreed to die for him,
and my nephew Heracles (also known as Hercules, we
called him 'Herc' for short) killed the eagle and unbound
Pro. I'm saving that story for when I tell you about the
exploits of mighty Herc, my absolute favourite nephew.
Prometheus' name has stood through the centuries, from
ancient Greek days to our own, as the great rebel against
injustice and authority of power. He was brave enough
to stand up to mighty Zeus and by so doing ensured the
survival of humans.
I love when that happens...

But let's get back to Zeus. The stone that Cronus expelled
along with Zeus' siblings became the centerpiece of the
Delphic Oracle, which was a form of ancient Dial-APsychic. (Their slogan was "For every seer there is a
sucker.")
My friends and I once checked out the place, but it was a
complete waste of good drachmas. The famous Oracle of
Delphi turned out to be just a bunch of spaced-out freaks
sitting lotus-like around a stone, inhaling noxious fumes,
listening to the same Grateful Dead album over and over,
convulsing and raving wildly, and in the name of 'divine
inspiration' trying to tell you your business.
And the darn Oracles never had good news, it seems,
always terrorizing gods and mortals alike with their morbid
and dire predictions: 'Your firstborn will grow up and sleep
with his mother, then mortified he will gouge out his eyes.
You can prevent this by murdering your children as they're
born. That'll be 100 drachmas, please.'
See what I mean? It's enough to give Oedipus a complex.
Who needs it? I've often said that the Oracles of Delphi are
priests and priestesses who will take your sundial, then tell
you what time it is. For a price. Today we call them
'consultants'.
The main players in the conflict then drew lots to divide the
spoils of victory: Zeus got the heavens; Poseidon the sea;
and Hades the underworld (Hey! You forgot the earth!)
So Zeus established his supremacy among the Olympians,
but initially his reign was a rocky one, full of conflict and
sexual misadventures.
Zeus first sought to seduce Metis, who tried to discourage
the union by continually changing form, trying to escape

him. Some guys just can't take 'no' for an answer, and
young Zeus was one of them. He pursued Metis
mercilessly, altering his form right along with her. "See,
baby, I can change for you!" we heard him yell, but she
wasn't convinced. His reputation preceded him.
He finally caught up to the exhausted Metis, who briefly
considered charging him with stalking. Zeus married and
impregnated her, but when he found out from Mother Earth
that any son Metis produced would dethrone him, Zeus
swallowed his wife. Shortly thereafter, Athena sprung out
of his head, fully armed and clothed, shouting a war cry
heard in the heavens and earth. You can get the complete
story of goddess Athena, and then some, by reading
January's Myth of the Month.
Even though initially she gave him a major headache, my
great-aunt Athena was Zeus' favourite child, and eventually
he turned over to her his Aegis, the protective shield which
used to be Amy. Athena accessorized it by adding Medusa's
head to it. She was the only one permitted full use of Zeus'
weapons, including his devestating thunderbolts. My
grandpa Hesiod said that Zeus had no brains until Athena
was born out of his head, making him instantly wise. My
beloved aunt always had that kind of influence on people,
she enriched your life and mind.
But before Zeus smartened up, he embarked on a journey of
frenzied debauch that eventually turned his fellow
Olympians against him. First he sought out his twin sister,
Hera, came to her in a disguise and ravished her. They were
married and spent a wedding night that was said to have
lasted three hundred years.

"Three hundred year long wedding night?! Hesiod, your

name rhymes with idiot! I don't care how beautiful Hera
was, there's not a male who can stand being alone with a
woman in a room for three days, let alone three hundred
years! Are you drunk? Have you no clue, sir? Victoria, no
more Ambrosia for Hesiod, I'm afraid he's skunked. Please
take away his chariot keys."
My uncle Homer always over-reacted to grandpa Hesiod's
claims, much to the delight and amusement of Hesiod, who
loved pulling his leg. I swear he came up with the most
improbable ideas just to get a rise out of Homer, who
always bit...
"Yes, Homey, three hundred year long wedding night. You
got a problem with that? He was assisted throughout by the
satyr Viagra, Greek god of Virility."
When his mother Rhea advised Zeus against marriage, to
Hera or anyone else, Zeus ravished Rhea in the form of a
snake. Then things got real ugly. Zeus embarked on a
drunken and out of control rampage, wreaking havoc
wherever he went, indiscriminately firing off thunderbolts
at whim, and seducing anything wearing a toga. Talk about

a rebel without a cause! Easy on the crack pipe, Zeus! Man,

was he ever wired...

ZEUS II
KING OF THE OLYMPIANS
(Roman name: Jupiter, Jove)

by Nick Pontikis
(with apologies to grandpa Hesiod and uncle Homer)

PART TWO
Yes, part two. The dude's huge!
At least a two-part harmony, more if the Muse co-operates...
(PS: If you haven't read Part I yet, do so first,
or much of Part II will be Greek to you!)

HONK IF YOU'VE SLEPT WITH ZEUS!

(popular bumper sticker on ancient chariots)
My godfather Zeus was a pervert. There, I've said it, and may he strike me

dead with a thunderbolt if I'm lying! But there's no avoiding the fact that, when
he was young, the king of the Olympians "...lacked restraint in the
gratification of his various lusts," to put it mildly.
Why don't you send the little ones to bed, pour yourself a cup of Nectar, and
snuggle up for a bit, while I tell you about the amorous fables and foibles of
Zeus, the king of the Casanovas...I'll try to keep it clean, but I'm not promising
anything.
After overthrowing papa Cronus, kicking some Giant and Titan butt, and
splitting the spoils three ways with his siblings Hades and Poseidon (see Part
I), Zeus set himself up as the unchallenged Numero Uno. But too much power
corrupts, and there was nobody to restrain young Zeus. He embarked on a
journey of seduction and frenzy that thundered around the Universe...

ZEUS' LOVERS SWAP WAR STORIES DURING THEIR ANNUAL RE-UNION

Only Zeus, the father of heaven, could yield the thunderbolt, and it was the
threat of this awesome weapon that kept his quarrelsome and rebellious family
of Mount Olympus under control. When his mother Rhea, foreseeing what
trouble his lust would cause, forbade him to marry, Zeus threatened to violate
her. At once she turned into a menacing serpent. Undaunted, Zeus became a
male serpent, twined around his mom in a tight knot, and made good his threat.
Bummer. Hate when that happens...
Thus began his long series of adventures in love. With Themis he fathered the
Seasons and the Three Fates; sired the Charites (Graces) with Eurynome; and
he had the Muses with Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory, with whom he
lay for nine nights (she never forgot that!) Even Persephone, the Queen of the
Underworld, was his child by the nymph Styx...or was she his daughter with

Demeter? He wasn't sure, it was so hard to keep track.

"Honk If You've Slept With Zeus!" indeed...

HERA

Deciding to keep things in the family, Zeus first sought to seduce his twin
sister Hera. Not being incestuously inclined, Hera rebuffed her brother's
advances, and his courting fell on deaf ears. So guess what my godfather did:
Playing the pathos card to the max, he transformed himself into a sad-looking
and bedraggled cuckoo, shivering from the cold rain. Hera took pity on the
poor bird and tenderly warmed him in her bosom.
Bingo! That's when Zeus resumed his true shape and ravished her, so that she
was shamed into marrying him. He's been driving her cuckoo ever since...
Their wedding day was the biggest bash ever and Hera's gifts included a tree
with golden apples from Mother Earth (Gaea), the same one later guarded by
the Hesperides in Hera's orchard on Mount Atlas. They spent their wedding
night on the island of Samos, and it lasted three hundred years. Afterwards,
Hera bathed in the spring of Canathus, near Argos, and thus renewed her
virginity. Knowing how much Zeusy liked virgins, she returned each year to
re-purify herself. Aphrodite enjoyed the idea so much that she annually
renewed her own virginity at Paphos.
(Someone should have opened a resort, and called it the "You Lose It, We Find

It Vestal Spa.")
With Hera, Zeus fathered Ares, Hephaestus and Hebe, although there are other
versions of their births, particularly Hephaestus, who was a parthenogenous
child. (That's just a fancy way of saying he had a virginal birth.) Uncle
Hephaestus didn't believe it when Hera broke the news of his birth to him, he
thought she just didn't like the sickly child, so he crafted and imprisoned her in
a funky mechanical chair with arms that folded and held the sitter, thus forcing
her to swear by the river Styx that she did not lie. You should have heard her
swear!
Hera and my godfather bickered constantly. Incensed by his infidelities, she
often humiliated him by her scheming ways. Though he would confide his
secrets to her, and sometimes accept her advice, he never fully trusted Hera,
and she knew that if offended beyond a certain point he would flog or even
hurl a thunderbolt at her.
So she resorted to ruthless intrigue and sometimes even borrowed my cousin
Aphro's golden girdle, to excite his passion and thus weaken his will. But that
didn't stop Zeus from shamelessly tramping around every chance he got...

A PASSION FOR MORTALS

No less than four great Olympian deities were born to him of mortal women.
First came Hermes, who was to assist Zeus on countless escapades. The lucky
mom was Maia, daughter of Atlas, who bore him in a cave in Arcadia.
Even though the mother of Zeus's son Dionysus was said to be either Demeter
or Io, some said it was Dione. Or Persephone, whom Zeus ravished in the form
of a serpent, or even Lethe. Poor Dionysus (we called him Danny) wasn't sure
to whom he should send a mother's day card each year, so to be safe, he sent
one to all of them!
Including Zeus! Yes, the widely accepted version of Danny's birth was that
Zeus, disguised as a mortal, had a secret love affair with Semele ('moon'),
daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes. Jealous Hera disguised herself as an old
neighbor and advised Semele, then already six months pregnant, to make her
mysterious lover a request: that he should reveal himself in his true nature and
form, proving he was no monster.
When Zeus refused her plea, she cut him off. Then, in anger, he appeared in all
his glory, flashing thunder and lightning, and instantly she was burned to a
crisp. Luckily, Hermes saved Dionysus, her six-month-old son, by sewing him
up inside the thigh of Zeus, like a fine wine to mature there for three more
months. In due time he was born, and Hermes helped deliver him. Thus Danny
is called 'twice-born', or 'the child of the double door'.

I'm here to tell you that it really upset my godfather when Dionysus called him
'mom.' Danny even got drunk one night and had 'MOM' tattooed on his arm,
underneath a picture of Zeus...

LETO
Crete to Athens, to the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf, to Athos in
Thrace, to Mount Pelion in Thessaly, to the Aegean island of Samos off the
western coast of Asia Minor, to the island of Peparethus north of Euboea, to
Mount Ida, to the city of Phocaea in Asia Minor, to the island of Imbros in
northern Aegean Sea, to Lemnos, to the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea
opposite the coast of Asia Minor, to the island of Chios off the coast of Ionia in
Asia Minor, to Mount Mimas opposite Chios, to the rock Corycius on the coast
of Asia Minor in Cilicia, to Clarus near Ephesus, to the promontory Mycale in
Ionia on the mainland opposite Samos, to Miletus in Caria, to Cos off the
southwestern coast of Asia Minor, to Cnidos, Naxos, Paros and many other
lands.
Whew!
A six-month Greek Island voyage on the Olympic Cruise Lines? No. These are
some of the places Leto visited while trying to find a spot to deliver her twins
Artemis and Apollo. Now that's hard labor! Listen to this story:
Leto was the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. Not being content with
simply seducing her, kinky Zeus transformed himself and her into quails when
they coupled. He never explained that one to me, probably too embarrassed to
talk about it. Hey, don't we all have some youthful episodes we'd just as soon
forget?
Hera was not amused at Zeus's bird-brained tactic. In a foul mood, she sent the
serpent Python to pursue Leto all over the world, and decreed that she should
not be delivered of her twins in any place where the sun shone.
(Actually, she said to Leto to stick her and Zeus's twins "In a place where the
sun don't shine," but Leto misunderstood...)
So Zeus let the North Wind (Boreas) carry her away and the wind bore her to
Poseidon, who protected her without violating Hera's decree, by taking her to
the island of Ortygia which he covered with waves. That is why Python could
not find her, and when this dragon had returned to Mount Parnassus, Poseidon
brought the island to the surface of the sea.
It is said that several goddesses were present when Leto was about to give
birth, among them Rhea, Themis and Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife. But after
nine days of travail the goddess of childbirth Ilithyia had not yet arrived, for
she was kept in heaven by the envy of Hera. But the goddesses who kept Leto

company bribed the heavenly messenger Iris with a necklace strung with
golden threads, and she brought Ilithyia to Delos.
On her arrival Leto cast her arms around a palm tree (though some say she was
clinging to an olive tree - hey, palm tree, olive tree, Christmas tree, after nine
days of labor all trees look alike!) and, kneeling on the meadow, gave birth,
first to Artemis and then, with the help of Artemis' midwifery, to Apollo. And
so after her travail she bathed in the river Cenchrius.
The immortal Pindar described what happened when Leto was about to give
birth thus:
"When Leto in the frenzied pangs of childbirth set foot upon Delos, then
did four pillars, resting on adamant, rise perpendicular from the roots of
the earth, and on their capitals sustain the rock. And there she gave birth
to, and beheld, her blessed offspring."
Her troubles did not stop after giving birth, for it is said that Leto, having
arrived with her newborns to a certain place in Lycia in Asia Minor where
there was a lake, was forbidden by the inhospitable locals to quench her thirst.
No matter how much she begged the chumps to let her drink, they would still
forbid her to touch the water, and as Leto insisted the Lycian peasants
threatened her and soiled the pool with their feet and hands, stirring up the
mud from the bottom.

"Don't spit in the soup, we've all got to eat," is advice the Lycians never
learned. Seeing them so tight-fisted and mean, and at the same time so in love
with the pool, Leto turned them into frogs so that they could live in its depth,
forever enjoying the water and the mud.
Among the first things the twin gods Apollo and Artemis did as soon as they
were born was to punish all the men of that time who, when Leto was pregnant
and in the course of her wanderings, refused to receive her when she came to
their land.
Paybacks are a bitch!
Only four days after his birth Apollo went to Mount Parnassus and killed the
dragon Python, thus avenging his mother, though others say the dragon was at
Delphi keeping the oracles of Themis. Four days old? Those ancient Greeks
sure developed fast!
Leto was once attacked by the giant Tityus, son of Gaea (Mother Earth), or son
of Zeus & Elare. I suspect that Hera sent him against Leto and he attempted to
rape the goddess. But the twins Artemis and Apollo killed him, or perhaps the
thunderbolt of Zeus, and he is still being punished in the Underworld for
having tried to violate Leto.
There, a couple of vultures, or as some say a serpent, eat his liver, which grows
with the moon, for ever. Ever-thoughtful Prometheus once sent Titius a "Been
there - Done that, got the scars to prove it!" postcard.
Leto was also insulted by Queen Niobe, wife of King Amphion, who boasted
that she was more blessed with children than Leto and besides that, they were
more beautiful. Bad, bad move.
You see, Niobe got so full of herself, and with the prosperity of the kingdom,
that she began to wonder how people could be so stupid to worship the power
and wealth of the gods, which is of an invisible kind, instead of being devoted
to the tangible things they had in front of their eyes. She thought it convenient
to introduce reforms in the religious rites and ordinances, so that their subjects
could attain a more down to earth form of understanding.
In other words, why worship mere Leto, when you can worship glorious
Niobe, fools!
Coming to the temple of Leto, she addressed the worshippers:
"What madness this, to prefer gods whom you have only heard of to those
whom you have seen?"
And after displaying her own family tree she explained to the people that in
her palace there were great stores of wealth, that her own beauty was worthy of

a goddess, and that whatever story had been told about Leto, it could not be
compared with the splendor of her own biography. For, among other things,
while she Niobe had many children, Leto had but two, and somewhat suspect
too, because Artemis was girt in a man's attire and Apollo wore long hair and
used a woman's robe.
She didn't come right out and say it, but the insinuation was there that she
considered Artemis a lesbian and Apollo gay.
Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Niobe, history's first recorded homophobe.
And to remind the people that her words were backed by power, Niobe ordered
the worshippers to take off the laurel wreaths from their hair and leave the
temple. So those who prayed, fearing religious intolerance, left the temple
without a word, but as it often happens, with unchanged mind.
Apollo and Artemis swiftly made it their mission to avenge their insulted
mother.
"Let's go show the good lady the type of mayhem a couple of queers can
perpetrate, sis!" said Apollo.
And coming down from heaven they shot their arrows from afar against the
children of Niobe, who one after the other fell dead.

During nine days the Niobids lay in pools of blood, for there was no one to
bury them because Zeus had turned the people into stone. So it was only in the
tenth day that the gods buried them themselves and then Niobe, who was
exhausted because of her grief, started eating again.
However some have said that not all of them perished, the Niobids Amyclas

and Chloris having been spared by the gods because of their prayers to Leto.
Chloris, who never lost the paleness that the fright caused her, became Queen
of Pylos in Messenia after having married Neleus, and their son Nestor was
granted by Apollo an unusual long life because the god wished to give back the
years he had taken from these young men and women.
And that was the end of the house of Amphion, who killed himself because of
grief at the death of his children, and as some add, he is also being punished in
Hades for having mocked Leto and her children. Also Zethus, Amphion's twin
brother died, as they say, of a broken heart.
The Niobids were buried at Thebes but Niobe left the city after the death of her
children and went to her father's place at Sipylus, near Smyrna in Asia Minor,
and there she was transformed by Apollo into a stone from which tears flow
night and day. Those who have been at this place in Mount Sipylus had said
that the rock lacks any resemblance to a woman when the observer is close to
it, but that going further away one can see the form of a woman in tears, with
her head bowed down.
During the Trojan War Leto and her children sided with the Trojans, and she,
together with her daughter healed the wounded Aeneas in a sanctuary, while
Apollo fashioned a wraith in his likeness to delude the warriors in the
battlefield.

IO

Next in line was a beauty called Io. She was the daughter of the river god

Inachus, the first King of Argos, and a priestess in one of her father's temples
to Hera.
Now, there was fair Io, minding her own virginity, when my lustful godfather
spotted her. Rumor had it that Iynx, daughter of Pan and Echo, cast a spell on
Zeus and made him fall hopelessly in love with Io, but hers was such a pure
beauty that magic wasn't really necessary. Pain-in-the-neck Hera turned Inyx
into a wryneck as punishment. (A wryneck is a gray-brown woodpecker with
an annoying habit of stretching and twisting its neck.)
The Oracles (remember those spaced-out shysters from Part I?) made it clear
to daddy Inachus that Zeus would wreak havoc on his kingdom if his daughter
Io wasn't immediately expelled, so that my godfather could have his way with
her. What's a concerned father to do? Without even bothering to get a second
opinion, Inachus kicked Io out! What a jerk! I suppose the river god didn't
want to go against the flow...
Quick to seize the
vulnerable moment,
Zeus wrapped the
earth in a black cloud
so dark and thick that
night seemed to
envelop the day. Thus
he hoped to hide
himself and Io, using
the cloud cover to
ravish the unfortunate
girl.
Duh. Man, was my
godfather dense when
the testosterone ruled!
Aunt Hera, being
alerted by the sudden
mid-day darkness that
hubby was up to no
good, knew perfectly
well the score. She
paged him all over
Olympus, and when he
didn't return her calls,
swiftly she glided
down to earth to have
a peek, ordering the
black cloud begone!
Zeus' sixth sense

warned him of
impending doom, so
hurriedly he
transformed Io into a
beautiful white heifer,
much to Io's dismay.
"I know I got to lose a couple of pounds," Io thought to
herself, "but this is udderly ridiculous! I feel like such a
cow!"

When Hera inquired as to the nature of the beast, Zeus

swore to her that he was simply passing by and the darn
cow just appeared out of the ground!
"Imagine my surprise, dear!"
Yeah, sure Zeus. Needless to say, aunt Hera wasn't
fooled. In her sweetest voice, she expressed admiration
for the beauty of the animal, and asked Zeusy if she
could please, pretty please, have her. Hard to get fresh
milk up at Olympus, don't you know, ever since
Dionysus moved in.
What's my godfather to do? If he told his wife that he
had other plans for the cow, surely that would arouse her
suspicion. Still, Zeus felt badly for Io. Besides, he wasn't
finished with her yet - Cowtus interuptus, natch!
As the saying goes, to err is human - to moo is bovine.
Better sense won out, and he reluctantly let Hera have
her, whereupon my triumphant aunt, gloating at the
timeliness of her appearance, and at her slick move, led

Io away.
Still not trusting Zeus, Hera assigned her watchman
Argus to keep an eye on Io. Seeing as Argus had one
hundred eyes, the arrangement was most suitable for my
aunt. He could sleep with some eyes and keep on guard
with the rest.
"Tether this beast secretly to an olive-tree at Nemea," she
told the hundred-eyed Argus.
(Argus was kind of proud of his freaky looks, but man
did he get ripped off whenever he ordered a pair of
prescription eye-glasses! He was only doing the rent-acop gig for Hera because she promised to pay his optical
bills...)
Zeus was helpless. He watched Io's misery, transformed
into a beast and driven from her home, with that monster
Argus always ogling her. What a creep! Can't a heifer get
some privacy already?! What kind of perverse Orwellian
nightmare is this?, she wondered.
Still, the cowed Zeus dared not come to her aid; his fear
of Hera's wrath inhibited his actions.
Finally Zeus sent for Hermes, the clever messenger god,
and told him that he was putting a contract out on the
head of Argus, and would dear, faithful Hermes please
perform the hit.
"Major IOU, Hermy! Just don't let Hera hear of it!"
Since Hera had hidden Io so well, Zeus changed himself
into a woodpecker, of all things, and showed Hermes the
way.
Eager to oblige the Big Guy, the cantankerous Hermes
disguised himself as a peasant. Closely following
'woody', he located Io, then appeared on earth, playing
very sweetly upon a pipe of reeds borrowed from his
buddy Pan (the original, not Peter).
Mannerless oaf that he was, Argus nevertheless was
moved by the music and, once he realized there was no
cover charge, he beseeched Hermes to come nearer and
sit by him on the rocks, playing right into Hermes' ploy.

Lots of free cheese in a rat trap.

By Jove, we have a problem! For hours the skilled
Hermes played, trying to tire Argus, and then he droned
on and on, talking as drowsily and monotonously as he
could, to no avail. Some of Argus' hundred eyes would
go to sleep, but some were always awake. Bummer.

In a sudden flash of bovine inspiration, Hermes began

playing a medley of Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits.
Within moments, Argus had fallen asleep, whereupon
Hermes proceeded to execute the hit. He swiftly crushed
him with a boulder, cut off his head and released Io.
(Cocktail party trivia: In tribute, Hera took the hundred
eyes of Argus and set them in the tail of the peacock, her
favorite bird. Is that cool or what?)
So poor Io was free, right? Afraid not. Hera at once sent
a gadfly to plague her, which stung her to madness. She
proceeded to meander all over the earth, looking for a
store that sold RAID, vainly trying to lose the pest.
When Io ran into the bound Prometheus on her many
journeys to escape from the gadfly, she told him:
He drives me all along the long sea strand.
I may not stop for food or drink.
He will not let me sleep.
To comfort her, Prometheus told Io that in the distant
future she would reach the Nile, where Zeus would by

his divine touch restore her human form. She would bear
him a son named Epaphus, and live forever after happy
and honored. And
Know this, that from your race will spring
One glorious with the bow, bold-hearted
And he shall set me free.
He was referring of course to Heracles (Hercules), the
greatest of heroes, to whom Pro would owe his freedom.
More on my nephew Herc later.
Her son by Zeus, Epaphus, became in time king of Egypt
and founded the city of Memphis, and it is said that from
him sprang the Libyans and the Ethiopians. But Hera
wasn't done tormenting Io just yet. She sent the Curetes,
part of her posse, to kidnap Epaphus, which they did. My
godfather Zeus got so angry at this that he struck the
Curetes dead with his thunderbolts.
So once again off went Io, this time hoofing it in search
of her son. Eventually she found Epaphus and returned
to Egypt with him. There she built a statue and temple to
Demeter, introducing the goddess whom the Egyptians
called Isis.
(If you were privy to some late-night debates down at
Thanasi's Olympus Greek Restaurant, you'd learn that
Zeus turned Io into a goddess to make up for the grief
he'd caused her, and it was actually her whom the
Egyptians worshipped as Isis. The Persians on the other
hand claim that Io was one of the women kidnapped by
Phoenician merchants and brought to Egypt to be sold.
Supposedly this was the first link of a long chain of
kidnappings of women - Europa, Medea, and Helen
being the most notable.)
Io is one of the Three Main Ancestors, and her children
were the founders of important cities like Mycenae,
Thebes and Argos. Her offspring dominated also Crete,
Laconia and perhaps Arcadia. The Heraclides were
descendants of Io. So were, among others, Cadmus,
Perseus and my nephew Heracles.
Io also made a geographic impact, as many of the places
she visited while trying to shoo the gadfly were named
after her, including Ionia (the western coast of Asia

Minor) and the Bosphorus (Ford of the Cow).

As Isis, she married the great Egyptian god Osiris, and
together they lived in peace ever after. Don't you just
love happy endings?

EUROPA
Sometimes Hera was pre-occupied, and Zeus was free to
do as he pleased. One morning, as he idly surveyed the
earth, my godfather saw a young maiden named Europa,
daughter of the King of Sidon. The young beauty was
troubled: Just before dawn, she had the strangest dream,
that two continents, each in the shape of a woman, had
tried to possess her.
One of the continents was Asia, but Europa couldn't
determine who the other one was.
Unable to get back to sleep, Europa roused her
companions, noble girls her own age, and told them that
they were going to pick some flowers in the blooming
meadows by the sea. Often they went there, to dance and
bathe their fair bodies and gather flowers.
They filled their baskets with sweet-smelling narcissus
and hyacinths and violets and yellow crocus, and most
radiant of all, the crimson splendor of the wild rose. The
girls delighted in gathering the flowers, wandering hither
and fro over the meadow. Zeus in heaven watched with
lust the young maidens, each one more fair than the
other, yet none as radiant as Europa.
Well. Who should chance by but my second cousin
Aphrodite, goddess of love, in the escort of her
mischievous son Eros (Cupid). One well-aimed arrow
from Cupid, and Zeus was instantly in love with Europa.
He just had to have her!
Even though wife Hera was away, my godfather had
learned to be cautious, so he transformed himself into a
bull. But not just any bull, but one beautiful beyond all
bulls that ever were, pure white, with a silver circle on
his brow and horns like the crescent of the moon.
Struck by his beauty, and finding him gentle as a lamb,
Europa mastered her fear and began to play with him.

She put flowers in his mouth and hung garlands in his

horns. It was a scene right out of Woodstock...
I'll let the Alexandrian poet Moschus tell the story:
He seemed so gentle as well as so lovely that the girls
were not frightened at his coming, but gathered around
to caress him and to breathe the heavenly fragrance that
came from him, sweeter even than that of the flowering
meadow. It was Europa he drew toward, and as she
gently touched him, he lowed so musically, no flute
could give forth a more melodious sound.
Then he lay down before her feet and seemed to show
her his broad back, and she cried to the others to come
with her and mount him.
For surely he will bear us on his back,
He is so mild and dear and gentle to behold.
He is not like a bull, but like a good, true man,
Except he cannot speak.
Famous last words, or what? 'Good true man' indeed!
'Trust me dear, I'll respect you in the morning.' Ha!
Smiling, she climbed upon his shoulders and let him
amble down with her to the edge of the sea. But when he
reached the water, before the others could join them, the
bull at full speed rushed into the wide water.
As he went the waves grew smoother before him and a
whole procession rose up from the deep and
accompanied them - Strange sea gods, Nereids riding
upon dolphins, Tritons blowing their horns, and all kinds
of similar creatures. Even the god of the sea, Zeus'
brother Poseidon, showed up to see if there was any
action for him.
Europa, scared silly equally by the wondrous sea
creatures she saw and the moving waters all around,
clung to the bull and shouted to her friends for help.

However, once she realized that her companions were

useless, she turned her attention to the abductor. This
can't be an ordinary bull, thought Europa, but most
certainly a god. Having descended from Io, and knowing
that woman's peripatetic torment, she spoke pleadingly
to my godfather, begging him to pity her and not leave
her in some strange place all alone.
Zeus then revealed his identity and assured her that she
had no cause for fear. Out of love for her he said, he was
taking her to his place of birth, Crete, and there she
would bear him
Glorious sons whose scepters shall hold sway
Over all men on earth.
Sure enough, Crete came into view. They landed, and the
Seasons, the gatekeepers of Olympus, took Europa and
prepped her for Zeus. (Nice perfume, girls, but must you
marinate her in it?)
Their passionate union produced many famous sons,
including the fabled Minos and Rhadamanthys, who
were rewarded for their justice on earth by being
appointed judges in the Underworld, as well as
Sarpedon, who was killed in the Trojan War. (Wonder if
his bros. got to try his case. Fix!)
Zeus loved his Europa, but his 'incontinence' when it
came to Hera eventually moved him to return to
Olympus. But not before bestowing a number of fine

gifts upon his lover, including a dog, Laelaps, which

could outrun any animal; a javelin which never missed
its mark; and the bronze man, Talos, to act as her
guardian.
(Talos was a man of bronze, made by Hephaestus, whom
Zeus gave to Europa after he kidnapped her and took her
to Crete. Crete was a gated community it seems: Talos
became its guardian, circling the island three times each
day and throwing huge stones at any ship which
approached its shores. He had a devestating fastball,
clocked at over one-hundred miles per hour, and his
curveball was a real killer.
He had a single vein, which ran from his neck to his
ankle and was closed by a single bronze nail. When the
Argo approached Crete on the way back from stealing
the Golden Fleece, Medea cast a spell on Talos and then
removed the bronze nail; all of Talos' blood ran out and
he died, thus enabling the ship to land. Just thought
you'd like to know.)
Europa afterwards married Asterius, the king of Crete,
and lived happily ever after. How many joyful endings
can we take?
(Grandpa Hesiod had a great time pulling uncle Homer's
leg over the identity of the bull that kidnapped Europa:
"Yes, Homey, the bull who carried Europa to Crete was
the same Cretan bull that Heracles faced in one of his
labors, which in turn is the same bull that was sent by
Poseidon to King Minos of Crete, and that later,
consorting with the king's wife Pasiphae, became the
progenitor of the Minotaur. No bull! I've seen the mug
shots, and all the bulls have that identical silver spot on
their foreheads."
"Hesiod, I swear you only open your mouth to change
feet! Are you nuts, man? Have you a death wish? The
bull was Zeus, and that's that! Keep talking trash and
you'll wind up with a thunderbolt upside the head!"

CALLISTO

Callisto was a nymph (or, according to some sources, the

daughter of Lycaon) who was in the service of the
goddess of the hunt, Artemis. Young women who were
devoted to the goddess hunted with her regularly, and
remained virgins, like Artemis herself. Callisto had
upheld these maidenly ideals faithfully, and she quickly
became Artemis favorite.
While Callisto spent her days and nights with Artemis
other followers, she caught the eye of Zeus. Knowing
that the maiden had taken a vow of chastity, my
godfather once again resorted to deception to get at
Callisto. He came to her disguised as Artemis, and the
young huntress let down her guard. Seizing the
opportunity Zeus raped her.

Callisto became pregnant, and tried desperately to

conceal her condition from the goddess. After all, she
had, in a way, broken her vow to the goddess and she
feared her anger. She succeeded for a while, but then a
day came when all of the young women who followed

Artemis disrobed to bathe together in a spring. By now

Callisto was beginning to show, and once she was naked
her secret was revealed. Artemis was furious and she
banished the young woman from her fold. Callisto
wandered off to have her child alone.
Hera decided that this was the time to exact her revenge.
She gripped Callistos hair and threw her to the ground
where the new mother was transformed into a bear. The
hunter became the hunted. The child that Callisto had by
Zeus was spirited away by Hermes to be raised by his
mother, Maia. He was named Arcas, meaning bear,
and he grew up to be a fine hunter himself. Some sources
have the bear captured and taken to Callistos own
father, Lycaon.
According to others Artemis herself killed the bear that
was once Callisto, but it is usually accepted that when
Arcas was out hunting as a young man he encountered
the bear. Callisto recognized the handsome youth as the
son she could not raise herself. Forgetting her present
form, she tried to come near him, but her loving
mothers arms were now strong, furry paws, and her
once soothing voice was now a rumbling growl.
The bear scared Arcas, and he took aim at her with his
spear. Zeus took pity on his former victim and
intervened. He placed Callisto in the sky as the
constellation Ursa Major, or great bear, and then took
Arcas and placed him in the sky near his mother as Ursa
Minor, the little bear.
Hera was not pleased with this arrangement, especially
since Callisto was another of her husbands infidelities.
She went to her nurse, Tethys, the wife of Oceanus, and
beseeched her to punish Callisto and Arcas. Tethys
decided to deprive the pair of water, and so the great
bear and the little bear are cursed to circle in the skies,
never to dip below the horizon for a refreshing bath or a
cool drink.

PALACE REVOLT!

In time, my godfather's pride, petulance and voracious

sexual appetite became so intolerable that Hera,
Poseidon, Apollo, and all the other Olympians, with the
exception of Hestia, decided to depose the Big Guy.
They surrounded him suddenly as he lay asleep on his
couch and tied him up with rawhide thongs, knotted into
a hundred knots, so that he was immobile. The enraged
Zeus threatened them with death most vile, but they had
stashed his thunderbolts out of reach, and they
laughingly mocked and insulted his impotence. Man,
was my godfather angry! Sparks were shooting from his
eyes!
But while the Olympians were celebrating their victory
over a barrel of nectar, and jealously arguing who was to
be his successor, the Nereid Thetis, anticipating a civil
war on Olympus, hurried in search of the hundredhanded E-Cat, Briareus. (Remember the E-Cats, the cool
dudes with the darn unpronounceable name Hecatoncheires - from Part One, and how they, along
with the Cies (Cyclopes) helped Zeus sink the Titans?)
Faithful Briareus raced to Olympus and swiftly untied
the thongs, using every hand at once. Before the other
gods and goddesses could react, his master was free and
once again re-united with his beloved thunderbolts!
Oh my. Can you imagine the soiled godly undergarments
in the room? The Olympians scattered like mad, but to
no avail. Zeus easily corralled them and then lay down
his law.
Because it was Hera who had led the conspiracy against
him, my godfather, the Marquis de Zeus, hung her from
the sky. A golden bracelet was tied to each of her wrists,
and a heavy anvil fastened to either ankle. Can you say
'pain'? Does 'discomfort' ring any bells?

Fondly I recall the animated arguments, late, late at night

down at Thanasi's Olympus Greek Restaurant, between
my grandpa Hesiod, my uncle Homer and the rest of the
ancient literary gang:
"Hesiod, your 'suspended from the sky' premise is about
as credible as your Atlas holding up the earth! Exactly
where is the golden bracelet attached on the sky, man?
From the clouds? Aren't you stretching it a bit, pardon
the pun? Vicki, please call a chariot for Hesiod, no way
he's driving himself home!"
"Homer, Homer, calm down before you go blind. I'll
confide in you, but please keep it to yourself. Remember
when I got royally screwed during my divorce, and lost
the works, including the goats? Ever since, it's been my
fantasy to tie up and hang my wife so that she's helpless,
and then torment and harass her until she comes to her
senses and returns the goats."
"Hmmm...I see you point, Hes. Sorry. Still, you're not
going to win the Feminists' sympathy vote. I suggest you
give it a happy ending. Would you like me to re-write it
for you?"
The other deities were extremely vexed at the
mistreatment of Hera, but valuing their own skin, and
definitely not wanting to switch places with her, they
dared not make an attempt at rescue. For days she hung
like smoked meat, and her pitiful moans and cries filled
the heavens. At last my godfather, unable to sleep due to
the horrible sounds, undertook to cut her down.
But first he made the Olympians swear never again to
rebel against him, which they grudgingly did. He
punished Poseidon and Apollo by exiling them from
Olympus for one year, and placing them as servants to
King Laomedon, for whom they built the city of Troy.
Being a softie deep down, he pardoned the other
Olympians, claiming that they had acted under Hera's
duress.
Needless to say, the near-coup only intensified his sexual
ardor. Once again my horny godfather set off in search
of fresh blood...and boy did he find it!

Trojan War

The Legend of the Trojan War

(c) Ian Johnston, Malaspina University-College, 1996
Note: This summary is a brief account of a number of different old stories about the
Trojan war. There are often several different, even contradictory, versions of events.
There is no one authoritative narrative of the whole war. Many of these stories were
obvious current before Homer, and the story continued to be embellished by the
Romans and Medieval writers.
1. The gods Apollo and Poseidon, during a time when they were being punished by
having to work among men, built the city of Troy for Priam's father, Laomedon. They
invited the mortal man Aeacus (the son of Zeus and Aegina and grandfather of
Achilles) to help them, since destiny had decreed that Troy would one day be captured
in a place built by human hands.
2. When newly constructed, Troy was attacked and captured by Herakles (Hercules),
Telamon (brother of Peleus and therefore the uncle of Achilles; father of Telamonian
Ajax and Teucros), and Peleus (son of Aeacus and father of Achilles), as a punishment
for the fact that Laomedon had not given Hercules a promised reward of immortal
horses for rescuing Laomedon's daughter Hesione. Telamon killed Laomedon and
took Hesione as a concubine (she was the mother of Teucros).
3. Priam, King of Troy and son of Laomedon, had a son from his wife Hekabe (or
Hecuba), who dreamed that she had given birth to a flaming torch. Cassandra, the
prophetic daughter of Priam, foretold that the new-born son, Paris (also called
Alexandros), should be killed at birth or else he would destroy the city. Paris was
taken out to be killed, but he was rescued by shepherds and grew up away from the
city in the farms by Mount Ida. As a young man he returned to Troy to compete in the
athletic games, was recognized, and returned to the royal family.
4. Peleus (father of Achilles) fell in love with the sea nymph Thetis, whom Zeus, the
most powerful of the gods, also had designs upon. But Zeus learned of an ancient
prophecy that Thetis would give birth to a son greater than his father, so he gave his
divine blessing to the marriage of Peleus, a mortal king, and Thetis. All the gods were
invited to the celebration, except, by a deliberate oversight, Eris, the goddess of strife.
She came anyway and brought a golden apple, upon which was written "For the
fairest." Hera (Zeus's wife), Aphrodite (Zeus's daughter), and Athena (Zeus's

daughter) all made a claim for the apple, and they appealed to Zeus. He refused to
adjudicate a beauty contest between his wife and two of his daughters, and the task of
choosing a winner fell to Paris (while he was still a herdsman on Mount Ida, outside
Troy). The goddesses each promised Paris a wonderful prize if he would pick her;
Hera offered power, Athena offered military glory and wisdom, and Aphrodite offered
him the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife. Paris gave the apple, in the
famous Judgement of Paris, to Aphrodite.
5. Helen, daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, was also the daughter of Zeus, who had
made love to Leda in the shape of a swan (she is the only female child of Zeus and a
mortal). Her beauty was famous throughout the world. Her father Tyndareus would
not agree to any man's marrying her, until all the Greeks warrior leaders made a
promise that they would collectively avenge any insult to her. When the leaders made
such an oath, Helen then married Menelaus, King of Sparta. Her twin (non-divine)
sister Klytaimnestra (Clytaemnestra), born at the same time as Helen but not a
daughter of Zeus, married Agamemnon, King of Argos, and brother of Menelaus.
Agamemnon was the most powerful leader in Hellas (Greece).
6. Paris, back in the royal family at Troy, made a journey to Sparta as a Trojan
ambassador, at a time when Menelaus was away. Paris and Helen fell in love and left
Sparta together, taking with them a vast amount of the city's treasure, and returning to
Troy via Cranae, an island off Attica, Sidon, and Egypt, among other places. The
Spartans sent off in pursuit but could not catch the lovers. When the Spartans learned
that Helen and Paris were back in Troy, they sent a delegation (Odysseus, King of
Ithaca, and Menelaus, the injured husband) to Troy demanding the return of Helen
and the treasure. When the Trojans refused, the Spartans appealed to the oath which
Tyndareus had forced them all to take (see 5 above), and the Greeks assembled an
army to invade Troy, asking all the allies to meet in preparation for embarkation at
Aulis. Some stories claimed that the real Helen never went to Troy, for she was
carried off to Egypt by the god Hermes, and Paris took her double to Troy.
7. Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, was educated as a young man by Chiron, the
centaur (half man and half horse). One of the conditions of Achilles's parents'
marriage (the union of a mortal with a divine sea nymph) was that the son born to
them would die in war and bring great sadness to his mother. To protect him from
death in battle his mother bathed the infant in the waters of the river Styx, which
conferred invulnerability. And when the Greeks began to assemble an army, Achilles's
parents hid him at Scyros disguised as a girl. While there he met Deidameia, and they
had a son Neoptolemos (also called Pyrrhus). Calchas, the prophet with the Greek
army, told Agamemnon and the other leaders that they could not conquer Troy without
Achilles. Odysseus found Achilles by tricking him; Odysseus placed a weapon out in
front of the girls of Scyros, and Achilles reached for it, thus revealing his identity.
Menoitios, a royal counsellor, sent his son Patroclus to accompany Achilles on the
expedition as his friend and advisor.
8. The Greek fleet of one thousand ships assembled at Aulis. Agamemnon, who led
the largest contingent, was the commander- in-chief. The army was delayed for a long
time by contrary winds, and the future of the expedition was threatened as the forces
lay idle. Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis by an impious boast, and
Artemis had sent the winds. Finally, in desperation to appease the goddess,

Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia. Her father lured her to Aulis on the
pretext that she was to be married to Achilles, but then he sacrificed her on the high
altar. One version of her story claims that Artemis saved her at the last minute and
carried her off to Tauris where she became a priestess of Artemis in charge of human
sacrifices. While there, she later saved Orestes and Pylades. In any case, after the
sacrifice Artemis changed the winds, and the fleet sailed for Troy.
9. On the way to Troy, Philoctetes, the son of Poeas and leader of the seven ships from
Methone,suffered a snake bite when the Greeks landed at Tenedos to make a sacrifice.
His pain was so great and his wound so unpleasant (especially the smell) that the
Greek army abandoned him against his will on the island.
10. The Greek army landed on the beaches before Troy. The first man ashore,
Protesilaus, was killed by Hector, son of Priam and leader of the Trojan army. The
Greeks sent another embassy to Troy, seeking to recover Helen and the treasure.
When the Trojans denied them, the Greek army settled down into a seige which lasted
many years.
11. In the tenth year of the war (where the narrative of the Iliad begins), Agamemnon
insulted Apollo by taking as a slave- hostage the girl Chryseis, the daughter of
Chryses, a prophet of Apollo, and refusing to return her when her father offered
compensation. In revenge, Apollo sent nine days of plague down upon the Greek
army. Achilles called an assembly to determine what the Greeks should do. In that
assembly, he and Agamemnon quarrelled bitterly, Agamemnon confiscated from
Achilles his slave girl Briseis, and Achilles, in a rage, withdrew himself and his forces
(the Myrmidons) from any further participation in the battle. He asked his mother
Thetis, the divine sea nymph, to intercede on his behalf with Zeus to give the Trojans
help in battle, so that the Greek forces would recognize how foolish Agamemnon had
been to offend the best soldier under his command. Thetis made the request of Zeus,
reminding him of a favour she had once done for him, warning him about a revolt
against his authority, and he agreed.
12. During the course of the war, numerous incidents took place, and many died on
both sides. Paris and Menelaus fought a duel, and Aphrodite saved Paris just as
Menelaus was about to kill him. Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors, slew
Cycnus, Troilus, and many others. He also, according to various stories, was a lover
of Patroclus, Troilus, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, Helen, and Medea. Odysseus and
Diomedes slaughtered thirteen Thracians (Trojan allies) and stole the horses of King
Rhesus in a night raid. Telamonian Ajax and Hector fought a duel with no decisive
result. A common soldier, Thersites, challenged the authority of Agamemnon and
demanded that the soldiers abandon the expedition. Odysseus beat Thersites into
obedience. In the absence of Achilles and following Zeus's promise to Thetis (see 11),
Hector enjoyed great success against the Greeks, breaking through their defensive
ramparts on the beach and setting the ships on fire.
13. While Hector was enjoying his successes against the Greeks, the latter sent an
embassy to Achilles, requesting him to return to battle. Agamemnon offered many
rewards in compensation for his initial insult (see 11). Achilles refused the offer but
did say that he would reconsider if Hector ever reached the Greek ships. When Hector
did so, Achilles's friend Patroclus (see 7) begged to be allowed to return to the fight.

Achilles gave him permission, advising Patroclus not to attack the city of Troy itself.
He also gave Patroclus his own suit of armour, so that the Trojans might think that
Achilles had returned to the war. Patroclus resumed the fight, enjoyed some dazzling
success (killing one of the leaders of the Trojan allies, Sarpedon from Lykia), but he
was finally killed by Hector, with the help of Apollo.
14. In his grief over the death of his friend Patroclus, Achilles decided to return to the
battle. Since he had no armour (Hector had stripped the body of Patroclus and had put
on the armour of Achilles), Thetis asked the divine artisan Hephaestus, the crippled
god of the forge, to prepare some divine armour for her son. Hephaestus did so, Thetis
gave the armour to Achilles, and he returned to the war. After slaughtering many
Trojans, Achilles finally cornered Hector alone outside the walls of Troy. Hector
chose to stand and fight rather than to retreat into the city, and he was killed by
Achilles, who then mutilated the corpse, tied it to his chariot, and dragged it away.
Achilles built a huge funeral pyre for Patroclus, killed Trojan soldiers as sacrifices,
and organized the funeral games in honour of his dead comrade. Priam travelled to the
Greek camp to plead for the return of Hector's body, and Achilles relented and
returned it to Priam in exchange for a ransom.
15. In the tenth year of the war the Amazons, led by Queen Penthesilea, joined the
Trojan forces. She was killed in battle by Achilles, as was King Memnon of Ethiopa,
who had also recently reinforced the Trojans. Achilles's career as the greatest warrior
came to an end when Paris, with the help of Apollo, killed him with an arrow which
pierced him in the heel, the one vulnerable spot, which the waters of the River Styx
had not touched because his mother had held him by the foot (see 7) when she had
dipped the infant Achilles in the river. Telamonian Ajax, the second greatest Greek
warrior after Achilles, fought valiantly in defense of Achilles's corpse. At the funeral
of Achilles, the Greeks sacrificed Polyxena, the daughter of Hecuba, wife of Priam.
After the death of Achilles, Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax fought over who should
get the divine armour of the dead hero. When Ajax lost the contest, he went mad and
committed suicide.
16. The Greeks captured Helenus, a son of Priam, and one of the chief prophets in
Troy. Helenus revealed to the Greeks that they could not capture Troy without the
help of Philoctetes, who owned the bow and arrows of Hercules and whom the Greeks
had abandoned on Tenedos (see 9 above). Odysseus and Neoptolemus (the son of
Achilles) set out to persuade Philoctetes, who was angry at the Greeks for leaving him
alone on the island, to return to the war, and by trickery they succeeded. Philoctetes
killed Paris with an arrow shot from the bow of Hercules.
17. Odysseus and Diomedes ventured into Troy at night, in disguise, and stole the
Palladium, the sacred statue of Athena, which was supposed to give the Trojans the
strength to continue the war. The city, however, did not fall. Finally the Greeks
devised the strategy of the wooden horse filled with armed soldiers. It was built by
Epeius and left in front of Troy. The Greek army then withdrew to Tenedos, as if
abandoning the war. Odysseus went into Troy disguised, and Helen recognized him.
But he was sent away by Hecuba, the wife of Priam, after Helen told her. The Greek
soldier Sinon stayed behind when the army withdrew and pretended to the Trojans
that he had deserted from the Greek army because he had information about a murder
Odysseus had committed. He told the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena

and that the Greeks had built it to be so large that the Trojans could not bring it into
their city. The Trojan Laocoon warned the Trojans not to believe Sinon ("I fear the
Greeks even when they bear gifts"); in the midst of his warnings a huge sea monster
came from the surf and killed Laocoon and his sons.
18. The Trojans determined to get the Trojan Horse into their city. They tore down a
part of the wall, dragged the horse inside, and celebrated their apparent victory. At
night, when the Trojans had fallen asleep, the Greek soldiers hidden in the horse came
out, opened the gates, and gave the signal to the main army which had been hiding
behind Tenedos. The city was totally destroyed. King Priam was slaughtered at the
altar by Achilles's son Neoptolemos. Hector's infant son, Astyanax, was thrown off the
battlements. The women were taken prisoner: Hecuba (wife of Priam), Cassandra
(daughter of Priam), and Andromache (wife of Hector). Helen was returned to
Menelaus.
19. The gods regarded the sacking of Troy and especially the treatment of the temples
as a sacrilege, and they punished many of the Greek leaders. The fleet was almost
destroyed by a storm on the journey back. Menelaus's ships sailed all over the sea for
seven years--to Egypt (where, in some versions, he recovered his real wife in the court
of King Proteus--see 6 above). Agamemnon returned to Argos, where he was
murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Cassandra, whom
Agamemnon had claimed as a concubine after the destruction of Troy, was also killed
by Clytaemnestra. Aegisthus was seeking revenge for what the father of Agamemnon
(Atreus) had done to his brother (Aegisthos' father) Thyestes. Atreus had given a feast
for Thyestes in which he fed to him the cooked flesh of his own children (see the
family tree of the House of Atreus given below). Clytaemnestra claimed that she was
seeking revenge for the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia (see 8 above).
20. Odysseus (called by the Romans Ulysses) wandered over the sea for many years
before reaching home. He started with a number of ships, but in a series of
misfortunes, lasting ten years because of the enmity of Poseidon, the god of the sea,
he lost all his men before returning to Ithaca alone. His adventures took him from
Troy to Ismareos (land of the Cicones); to the land of the Lotos Eaters, the island of
the cyclops (Poseidon, the god of the sea, became Odysseus's enemy when Odysseus
put out the eye of Polyphemus, the cannibal cyclops, who was a son of Poseidon); to
the cave of Aeolos (god of the winds), to the land of the Laestrygonians, to the islands
of Circe and Calypso, to the underworld (where he talked to the ghost of Achilles); to
the land of the Sirens, past the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, to the
pastures of the cattle of Helios, the sun god, to Phaiacia. Back in Ithaca in disguise,
with the help of his son Telemachus and a some loyal servants he killed the young
princes who had been trying to persuade his wife, Penelope, to marry one of them,
and who had been wasting the treasure of the palace and trying to kill Telemachus.
Odysseus proved who he was by being able to string the famous bow of Odysseus, a
feat which no other man could manage, and by describing for Penelope the secret of
their marriage bed, that Odysseus had built it around an old olive tree.
21. After the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytaemnestra (see 19 above), his
son Orestes returned with a friend Pylades to avenge his father. With the help of his
sister Electra (who had been very badly treated by her mother, left either unmarried or
married to a poor farmer so that she would have no royal children), Orestes killed his

mother and Aegisthus. Then he was pursued by the Furies, the goddesses of blood
revenge. Suffering fits of madness, Orestes fled to Delphi, then to Tauri, where, in
some versions, he met his long-lost sister, Iphigeneia. She had been rescued from
Agamemnon's sacrifice by the gods and made a priestess of Diana in Tauri. Orestes
escaped with Iphigeneia to Athens. There he was put on trial for the matricide. Apollo
testified in his defense. The jury vote was even; Athena cast the deciding vote in
Orestes's favour. The outraged Furies were placated by being given a permanent place
in Athens and a certain authority in the judicial process. They were then renamed the
Eumenides (The Kindly Ones). Orestes was later tried for the same matricide in
Argos, at the insistence of Tyndareus, Clytaemnestra's father. Orestes and Electra
were both sentenced to death by stoning. Orestes escaped by capturing Helen and
using her as a hostage.
22. Neoptolemus, the only son of Achilles, married Hermione, the only daughter of
Helen and Menelaus. Neoptolemus also took as a wife the widow of Hector,
Andromache. There was considerable jealously between the two women. Orestes had
wished to marry Hermione; by a strategy he arranged it so that the people of Delphi
killed Neoptolemus, carried off Hermione, and married her. Menelaus tried to kill the
son of Neoptolemus, Molossus, and Andromache, but Peleus, Achilles's father rescued
them. Andromache later married Helenus. Orestes's friend Pylades married Electra.
23. Aeneas, the son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite and one of the important
Trojan leaders in the Trojan War, fled from the city while the Greeks were destroying
it, carrying his father, Anchises, his son Ascanius, and his ancestral family gods with
him. Aeneas wandered all over the Mediterranean. On his journey to Carthage, he had
an affair with Dido, Queen of Carthage. He abandoned her without warning, in
accordance with his mission to found another city. Dido committed suicide in grief.
Aeneas reached Italy and there fought a war against Turnus, the leader of the local
Rutulian people. He did not found Rome but Lavinium, the main centre of the Latin
league, from which the people of Rome sprang. Aeneas thus links the royal house of
Troy with the Roman republic.
The Cultural Influence of the Legend of the Trojan War
No story in our culture, with the possible exception of the Old Testament and the story
of Jesus Christ, has inspired writers and painters over the centuries more than the
Trojan War. It was the fundamental narrative in Greek education (especially in the
version passed down by Homer, which covers only a small part of the total narrative),
and all the tragedians whose works survive wrote plays upon various aspects of it, and
these treatments, in turn, helped to add variations to the traditional story. No one
authoritative work defines all the details of the story outlined above.
Unlike the Old Testament narratives, which over time became codified in a single
authoritative version, the story of the Trojan War exists as a large collection of
different versions of the same events (or parts of them). The war has been interpreted
as a heroic tragedy, as a fanciful romance, as a satire against warfare, as a love story,
as a passionately anti-war tale, and so on. Just as there is no single version which
defines the "correct" sequence of events, so there is no single interpretative slant on

how one should understand the war. Homer's poems enjoyed a unique authority, but
they tell only a small part of the total story.
The following notes indicate only a few of the plays, novels, and poems which have
drawn on and helped to shape this ancient story.
1. The most famous Greek literary stories of the war are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey,
our first two epic poems, composed for oral recitation probably in the eighth century
before Christ. The theme of the Iliad is the wrath of Achilles at the action of
Agamemnon, and the epic follows the story of Achilles's withdrawal from the war and
his subsequent return (see paragraphs 11, 12, 13, and 14 above). The Odyssey tells the
story of the return of Odysseus from the war (see 20 above). A major reason for the
extraordinary popularity and fecundity of the story of the Trojan War is the
unquestioned quality and authority of these two great poems, even though they tell
only a small part of the total narrative. The Iliad was the inspiration for the
archaeological work of Schliemann in the nineteenth century, a search which resulted
in the discovery of the site of Troy at Hissarlik, in modern Turkey.
2. The Greek tragedians, we know from the extant plays and many fragments, found
in the story of the Trojan War their favourite material, focusing especially on the
events after the fall of the city. Aeschylus's famous trilogy, The Oresteia
(Agamemnon, Choephoroi [Libation Bearers], and Eumenides [The Kindly Ones]),
tells of the murder of Agamemnon and Cassandra by Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus,
the revenge of Orestes, and the trial for the matricide. Both Sophocles and Euripides
wrote plays about Electra, and Euripides also wrote a number of plays based on parts
the larger story The Trojan Women, The Phoenissae, Orestes, Helen, and Iphigeneia in
Tauris (see 21 and 22 above). Sophocles also wrote Philoctetes (see 16) and Ajax (see
15) on events in the Trojan War.
3. Greek philosophers and historians used the Trojan War as a common example to
demonstrate their own understanding of human conduct. So Herodotus and
Thucydides, in defining their approach to the historical past, both offer an analysis of
the origins of the war. Plato's Republic uses many parts of Homer's epics to establish
important points about political wisdom (often citing Homer as a negative example).
Alexander the Great carried a copy of the Iliad around with him in a special royal
casket which he had captured from Darius, King of the Persians.
4. The Romans also adopted the story. Their most famous epic, Virgil's Aeneid, tells
the story of Aeneas (see 23). And in the middle ages, the Renaissance, and right up to
the present day, writers have retold parts of the ancient story. Odysseus (Ulysses) and
Diomedes appear in Dante's Inferno. Of particular note are Chaucer's and
Shakespeare's treatments of the story of Troilus and Cressida. Modern writers who
have drawn on the literary tradition of this ancient cycle of stories include Sartre (The
Flies), O'Neill (Mourning Becomes Electra), Giradoux (Tiger at the Gates), Joyce
(Ulysses), Eliot, Auden, and many others. In addition, the story has formed the basis
for operas and ballets, and the story of Odysseus has been made into a mini-series for
television.
5. For the past two hundred years there has been a steady increase in the popularity of
Homer's poems (and other works dealing with parts of the legend) translated into

English. Thus, in addition to the various modern adaptations of parts of the total
legend of the Trojan war, the ancient versions are still very current.
The Royal House of Atreus
The most famous (or notorious) human family in Western literature is the House of
Atreus, the royal family of Mycenae. To follow the brief outline below, consult the
simplified family tree in p. 279 of the text of Aeschylus's play. Note that different
versions of the story offer modifications of the family tree.
The family of Atreus suffered from an ancestral crime, variously described. Most
commonly Tantalus, son of Zeus and Pluto, stole the food of the gods. In another
version he kills his son Pelops and feeds the flesh to the gods (who later, when they
discover what they have eaten, bring Pelops back to life). Having eaten the food of the
gods, Tantalus is immortal and so cannot be killed. In Homer's Odyssey, Tantalus is
punished everlastingly in the underworld.
The family curse originates with Pelops, who won his wife Hippodamia in a chariot
race by cheating and betraying and killing his co-conspirator (who, as he was
drowning, cursed the family of Pelops). The curse blighted the next generation: the
brothers Atreus and Thyestes quarrelled. Atreus killed Thyestes's sons and served
them to their father at a reconciliation banquet.
To obtain revenge, Thyestes fathered a son on his surviving child, his daughter
Pelopia. This child was Aegisthus, whose task it was to avenge the murder of his
brothers. When Agamemnon set off for Troy (sacrificing his daughter Iphigeneia so
that the fleet could sail from Aulis), Aegisthus seduced Clytaemnestra and established
himself as a power in Argos.
When Agamemnon returned, Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus killed him (and his captive
Cassandra)--Aegisthus in revenge for his brothers, Clytaemnestra in revenge for the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia. Orestes at the time was away, and Electra had been disgraced.
Orestes returned to Argos to avenge his father. With the help of a friend, Pylades, and
his sister Electra, he succeeded by killing his mother, Clytaemnestra, and her lover,
Aegisthus. After many adventures (depending upon the narrative) he finally received
absolution for the matricide, and the curse was over.
Many Greek poets focused on this story. Homer repeatedly mentions the murder of
Agamemnon in the Odyssey; Aeschylus's great trilogy, The Oresteia, is the most
famous classical treatment of the tale; Sophocles and Euripides both wrote plays on
Orestes and Electra.
One curious note is the almost exact parallel between the story of Orestes in this
family tale and the story of Hamlet. These two stories arose, it seems, absolutely
independently of each other, and yet in many crucial respects are extraordinarily
similar. This match has puzzled many a comparative literature scholar and invited all
sorts of psychological theories about the trans-cultural importance of matricide as a
theme.