By the Gods!

Atlas

The big man with the mother of all back pain, Atlas is one of the more famed Titans from the world of Greek myth. He was the son of Iapetus and Asia by Hesiod’s account (Hesiod being the author of the famed Theogony, from which a great deal of our info on Greek myth comes), but Hyginus believed him to be the son of Aether and Gaia. Regardless of his parentage, Atlas was a big strong fella who found himself on the losing team after the war between the Olympians and the Titans (the Titanomachy).

Atlas was undoubtedly a serious force for the Titans, but they still couldn’t quite get it done, due in part to Atlas’ brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus betraying their own kind to form an alliance with the Olympians. When Zeus and his cohorts had won out, they banished most of the Titans to Tartarus, the abyssal dungeon beneath even the Underworld. Atlas, however, with a nod to his incredible strength and apropos parentage, was sentenced to the western edge of the world and charged with holding up Uranus (the sky) on his shoulders forever. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy.

Though he’s often shown supporting the earth, this is an incorrect portrayal. He was originally depicted shouldering a great celestial orb, speckled with the sun, stars, and other knick-knacks of the firmament.

Atlas, in some stories, was turned to stone, and his tremendous body formed the Atlas mountain range in Northern Africa. In another tale, Heracles has a wacky adventure with the tragically trapped Titan, with hilarious results.

The Minotaur

Half-man half-bull, all awesome. I’m sure you’re all familiar with his labyrinth tenure, but the Minotaur’s story actually begins with King Minos of Crete. After he ascended to the throne, Minos prayed to Poseidon, beseeching him to send a white bull as a sign of his good will and approval. Minos was supposed to sacrifice the bull in honour of Poseidon and the ancient Greek custom of re-gifting, but Minos thought the bull was just too handsome to give up.

Poseidon is a lot of things, but a push-over isn’t one of them. In response to this slight he had Aphrodite make Minos’ wife fall in love with the bull, and not just in the way your girlfriend “loves” cats either. Pasiphae was so into ol’ Ferdinand that she had a hollow wooden cow constructed. She then climbed inside her clever disguise and then bull and woman consummated their forbidden love. Mere mortals cannot comprehend how awkward this must have made things between Minos and Pasiphae.

The moral of this story is NEVER mess with Poseidon. His tricks put him right at the top of the “creative vengeance” list with legends like Zeus and Van Wilder.

The product of this icky passion was the monstrous Minotaur. It was an unnatural being, and as such could not be sustained by natural means. It gave up on nursing pretty quickly and developed a taste for man-flesh. The beast was so dangerous that under the advice of the oracle  at Delphi, king Minos commissioned Daedalus to construct the infamous labyrinth. Within the many twists and turns of the maze dwelt the mighty Minotaur, feeding on the sacrifices of Athenian youths until his famed battle with Theseus. 

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion called: “The Story of Theseus: A demi-god who tolerates no Bull-sh*t” next time on, By The Gods!

An Introduction to Greek Myth

I was recently asked by a follower to provide a brief outline and intro to Greek mythology. What follows is that introduction. 

Well hey there— sorry it’s taken a few days to get back to you… we have an enormously crowded inbox here at By the Gods, and we usually don’t have time to send out individual requests, but I can’t resist indulging a burgeoning interest in Greek Mythology, the gateway-mythos. 

So, what is it you’d like to know? As for an “introduction,” I suppose the easiest way to go about it is to provide you with a mindset or attitude to keep in mind when reading any of the litany of Greek stories we have access to. Most of the tales that would weave themselves into the fabric of “Greater Greek Myth” as it’s known today would have been recited and recorded anywhere between maybe as far back as 1000 BCE, right up the days of the Roman Empire controlling the Mediterranean.

You’ll notice that the gods, while being divine and powerful, are very human in their actions and attitudes. They make mistakes, they have “low” or “petty” emotions like jealousy, greed, and anger. As with most polytheistic pantheons, they represent the ideals, fears, and views of their patron culture. Every story is meant to explain something about the fabric of our universe (like why the sun moves across the sky, how the stars got there, or why animals behave the way they do), but they also capture a uniquely human perspective through their representation.

Zeus, the King of the Olympians, god of the Sky and Lightning, spends more time being afraid of someone taking the throne from him than he does anything else. Besides that, he constantly cheats on his wife, rapes mortal women (because he’s way too mighty for them to resist), and sires bastards all over the place. Sounds a lot like a great many kings throughout history, yes? By portraying their gods with so many vices and bad habits, it explains (and some would argue goes so far as to excuse) the behaviour of mankind.

Well, there you have it. That’s my intro to the tenor of Greek myth. As for an introduction of the actual content, it all starts with a man called Hesiod. He wrote something called the Theogony, which explains the origin of the universe, the first gods, and where we all came from.

Chaos was the original primordial deity, on a level FAR BEYOND that of Zeus and the Olympians, who didn’t even exist yet. From Chaos, a swirling storm of nothingness, came Gaia, the goddess of earth. She represents the very living fabric of the world, and was, herself, the planet earth.

Now, Gaia birthed (by herself) a litter of powerful gods. Ouranos, Nyx, Oceanus, and the Erinyes to name a few. Every night, Ouranos, who was the sky itself, would come down and mate with Gaia, against her will. Every time it would get her pregnant, and every time Ouranos would cram the baby back inside her. Gross, right?

Eventually, Gaia spoke to her newest son, Cronus, and hatched a plan with him. That night, when Ouranos came down and put his member inside Gaia, Cronus was waiting inside her, and sliced his genitals off. Ouranos screamed and retreated, and his genitals fell into the sea. The genitals mixed with the water and the seafoam, and from this was born Aphrodite.

Now, Cronus and his brothers and sisters, (who were called The Titans) were free, and escaped Gaia’s insides. Cronus became king of the world and the Titans, and wed Rhea, his sister. He also locked up the most dangerous and powerful of his brothers and sisters in the pits of Tartarus, so they would not disobey him. It was foretold in prophecy that  one of Cronus’ sons would overthrow him, and, fearing this, Cronus devoured all of his children as Rhea birthed them. Eventually, fearing for the life of her youngest son, Zeus, Rhea tricked Cronus and fed him a rock instead of her baby, sending Zeus away.

Zeus eventually freed Cronus’ siblings from Tartarus, and with them waged a war against Cronus. Zeus won the fight, freed his brothers and sisters that Cronus had swallowed, and proclaimed himself king of the Gods, taking his seat atop Mt. Olympus.

Whew! That’s all I’ve got time for now, but hopefully it lays a good foundation for you!

Lamia

Lamia is another character from Greek mythology that ran into trouble when she met up with Zeus. A queen of Libya and daughter of Poseidon, her affair with the king of the gods put her on Hera’s radar as another competitor for Zeus’ affection. Not being the forgiving sort, Hera slew Lamia’s children, driving her insane with grief. Hera also transformed Lamia into a baby-eating monster with the lower body of a snake, or, depending on the source, a half-woman half-cat with snake scales.

Lamia was unable to get the image of her slaughtered children out of her mind, which meant that the sight of other children unbearable for her. Clearly, eating them was the only rational choice. At this point Zeus felt he was maybe at least partially responsible for Lamia’s misfortune, and decided to intervene: instead of restoring her children, her human form, or her sanity, Zeus decided to grant Lamia the ability to remove her own eyes. What a champ of an ex-boyfriend.

Some stories go on to say that Lamia had more crazy monster children afterwards, all sporting the same appearance: top half of a beautiful woman, lower half of a snake. These nightmarish land-mermaids are known as lamias with a lowercase “L” and appear in every good fantasy universe to this day. 

Arachne 

Known far and wide for her incredible weaving talent, nobody loved Arachne more than Arachne. The story comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the mortal girl Arachne boasts of her weaving ability to such an extent that Athena (Minerva, in Ovid’s Roman work), the Greek goddess of wisdom and crafts, is offended. You see, Arachne refuses to acknowledge that her gifts in weaving come, at least in part, from the gods (and from Athena, specifically). Athena then challenges Arachne to a weaving competition (a “weave-off,” perhaps) and Arachne accepts.

Now things start to get messy: Arachne weaves a tapestry depicting the transgressions and loves of the gods. It’s gorgeous, sure, but the subject matter offends Athena. Besides that, the goddess is horrified to see that the mortal’s tapestry outshines her own. In a rage, Athena destroys the tapestry, and turns the prideful Arachne into––you guessed it––a skittery little spider. I guess she was the first one. Athena invented spiders, you guys; she’s pretty creative, after all. But where was that creativity in the weaving competition, Athena!?