Demigods and Monsters (24 page)

Goddess of strife or discord. Eris was the daughter of Nyx (night) and the mother of Toil, Pain, Strife, and Lies. She was also the sister of Ares, the war god. By stirring up jealousy between the three great Olympian goddesses, Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera, she was partly responsible for the Trojan War.

Giant savage pig that lived on the slopes of Mount Erymanthus in the Peloponnese. The boar ravaged the lands around until it was captured by Hercules, who tied it up and took it back to Tiryns, his home. There, its size so terrified Eurystheus, the king who had sent Hercules to capture it, that he jumped into a bronze jar to hide.
(See Hercules)

Son of Ares, and guardian of Geryon's cattle. Hercules slayed Eurytion in order to take Geryon's cattle.

Daughters of Nyx (night) who embodied the inevitable fate for every human being. Also known as the Moirai, they were three in number: Clotho, who spun life's thread; Lachesis, who represented the element of chance in everyone's life; and Atropos, inescapable fate. Even the gods—even Zeus himself—were not entirely free of their powers, having to accept what was fated.

A sort of grassland in the Underworld where the spirits of most of the dead, even illustrious heroes, went.

Daughters of Nyx (night) and among the most feared supernatural beings. There were three Furies, or Erinnyes: Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. They were dark, elemental forces, older than any Olympian god, and avenged crimes such as patricide, matricide, and perjury, hunting the guilty across the face of the Earth. Portrayed as repulsively ugly, with wings and snakes instead of hair, they were at times euphemistically called the Kindly Ones, or Eumenides, to disguise their horrific nature. In Aeschylus' play
Eumenides
they were tamed by the goddess Athena and made benevolent guardians of justice in Athens.

Son of King Tros of Phrygia (now western Turkey). Zeus, king of the gods, was so charmed by this beautiful boy that he swept down in the form of an eagle—his special bird—and carried Ganymede off to Mount Olympus. There he became cupbearer (wine waiter) to the gods during their eternal banquets. In return King Tros was given some marvelous horses.

Medusa's grandson, a much-feared giant who lived on the island Erytheia. Geryon had three bodies, including three heads with human faces and six arms, and took the form of a warrior. He owned a magnificent herd of red cattle that Hercules was sent to acquire as his tenth labor. When Geryon tried to battle Hercules (after the hero first slayed Geryon's two-headed dog, Orthus, and Eurytion, the cattle's guard, in order to take the cattle), he was killed by Hercules' poison arrow.

Fleece from a magical flying ram on which Phrixus and Helle, children of King Athamas of Boeotia, had fled from their wicked stepmother. Helle fell off the ram's back but Phrixus reached the distant land of Colchis in the Black Sea, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus. Its fleece was a hung in a river where it soon filled with gold dust. It became world-famous but was guarded by a terrible dragon. When Jason and the Argonauts arrived on their quest to find the fleece, they were helped by Medea, the king's daughter, to overcome the dragon. They then returned to Greece with the fabulous fleece.

Three hideous hags, gray-haired from birth, who were related to the Gorgon sisters. Also called the Graiai (“crones/old women”) in Greek, the Gray Sisters' names reflected their horrific appearance: Deino, or Dread; Enyo, or Horror; and Pemphredo, or Terror. They had writhing, snake-like hair, gnashing fangs, and a deadly glare. But as they only had one eye and one tooth between them, which they had to take turns to use, they were vulnerable. Perseus caught their eye as it was being passed around and so forced the Graiai to reveal the next stage in his quest.

Weapon developed in c. 700 A.D. by the Byzantine Greeks to help protect Constantinople (now Istanbul) against Arab attack. Like an early flame-thrower, it jetted a stream of flame onto ships. Its inextinguishable fire was made of a mix of petroleum, sulphur, and nitre.

Hades was the name given both to the god of the Underworld and to his realm, where he ruled over the spirits of the dead. Hades was the son of Rhea and Kronos and fought alongside his brothers Zeus and Poseidon against the Titans, but had none of their majestic splendor. Hades evoked only fear and his name was mentioned with reluctance by the living. To find a wife, he had to kidnap Persephone, Demeter's beautiful daughter, whom he kept imprisoned underground for half of every year. Hades was seldom seen outside his kingdom, partly because he had a cap made of wolf skin that made him invisible. Down in the bowels of the earth, he piled up riches—one of his names was
Pluton
, meaning “wealth”—which he gained from buried treasure and from the earth's minerals. The realm of Hades, the Underworld where the ghosts of the dead flitted around restlessly like bats, was where most dead Greeks went. It was a dismal place, bound by the River Styx, across which the boat-men Charon ferried the dead, and guarded by Cerberus, the hideous many-headed watchdog. In Hades, King Minos of Crete and his brother Rhadamanthys, lords of legendary wisdom, judged the dead. While a lucky few found bliss in the Elysian Fields, a grim fate was reserved for the very wicked: They were imprisoned in Tartarus, the lowest part of Hades.

Three terrifying half-human creatures who had scaly wings, sharp curved claws, and long flowing hair. Flying faster than any bird, these daughters of the monster Typhon would descend with shrill
cries like vultures at feasts to snatch away the food and break up the party. They attacked Jason and the Argonauts on their quest.

Goddess of the moon and the night. Hecate could be either terrifying or benevolent, and her “triple aspects”—shown in her statues with three heads—represented the three phases of the moon: waxing, full, and waning. As the daughter of Asteria, a star goddess who was the sister of Leto, Hecate was a first cousin of Apollo and Artemis, and honored as such, but she was never one of the official Olympian deities. Instead, she was often worshipped outside the city at crossroads and in graveyards, with sacrifices of goats and fish. (The usual offerings for a god or goddess were bulls, sheep, or chickens. Both goats and fish were considered a bit offbeat.) Hecate could be portrayed as a blood-drinking sorceress with serpent-hair and baying hellhounds, as she was linked with suicides and other violent deaths. Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, sacrificed to Hecate, and she long remained an infernal goddess; she is invoked by the three witches in Shakespeare's play
Macbeth
(1605).

Greatest beauty in Greek legend. The daughter of Zeus, who disguised as a swan had seduced her mother Leda, Helen was born from an egg. As Greece's most beautiful woman, she was wooed by many heroes before she chose Menelaus, the powerful and muscular king of Sparta. But although Menelaus was a great warrior, Helen fell in love and ran off with the handsome Prince Paris of Troy when he visited Sparta. Helen's flight—or abduction, depending on the storyteller—sparked the ten-year Trojan War, as the Greeks united under Agamemnon, King of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, to avenge the insult. When Troy was finally captured
and Paris killed, Helen returned peacefully to Sparta with Menelaus to live out her days.

God of the sun, later identified with Apollo, the god of light and reason. Helios was especially worshipped on the island of Rhodes, where a huge statue, the “Colossus of Rhodes” (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) was erected in his honor at the harbor entrance. Reputedly it was so tall that ships could sail between its legs. Each day Helios rose from the east and, in a chariot drawn by eight winged horses, traversed the skies before setting in the western ocean. He then returned east every night in a barque, a type of sailing vessel. One day Helios's son Phaethon insisted on driving the heavenly chariot himself. But he proved unable to control the fiery steeds, who flew so close to the sun that the chariot was scorched. Finally Zeus had to kill Phaethon with a thunderbolt. After that, Helios took the reins again.

Giants with fifty heads and 100 arms each. The Hekatonkheires aided Zeus against the Titans' attack. In Latin poetry, the Hekatonkheires were known as the Centimani, which translates to “Hundred-Handed Ones.” As storm gods, they represent the major forces of nature, such as earthquakes and sea waves.

(See Briares, Kampê
,
Telekhines)

Part of Perseus' magical equipment when he set off on his quest to kill the Medusa. Originally created by a Cyclops for Hades, lord of the Underworld, the helmet made the wearer invisible, as if it were night—hence its name, the Helm of Darkness.

God of fire and metal-working. Hephaestus was sweaty, ugly, and lame, quite unlike the other glamorous Olympian gods. He became lame when, as a child, he intervened in an argument between his parents, Zeus and Hera, and Hera threw him from Mount Olympus. Falling down into the sea, he was rescued by Thetis, a sea nymph. In revenge he created a magical gold throne for Hera. She sat on it and became trapped, unable to move. After Dionysus persuaded Hephaestus finally to free his mother, the soot-stained god demanded as his reward marriage to Aphrodite, the love goddess. But Aphrodite soon fell in love with Ares, the war god, making Hephaestus ragingly jealous. He forged a net of gossamer-light steel and draped it over the sleeping lovers. They awoke trapped in their bed by the steel net, as the other Olympians gathered to laugh. Usually, however, Hephaestus was busy at his furnace, which was situated beneath Mount Etna in Sicily, an active volcano (Hephaestus' Latin name was Vulcan), and he was much admired for his skills. He built wonderful palaces for the gods on Mount Olympus and made the armor for the Greek warrior Achilles, since Achilles' mother Thetis had helped the god when he was in the sea, taking care of him until he had recovered enough to return to land.

Goddess of childbirth and marriage, mother of Ares and Hephaestus and both the sister and wife of Zeus, king of the gods. Hera, as queen of Olympus, was majestic rather than beautiful. This encouraged the notoriously promiscuous Zeus to pursue other females, mortal and divine, which fueled Hera's sometimes deadly jealousy and their terrible rows. At one point Zeus in exasperation hung his wife upside down from Mount Olympus, but usually Hera could more than hold her own against any of the Olympian deities. She
intervened to great effect against the Trojans in the Trojan War (because Prince Paris of Troy had preferred Aphrodite to her in the Judgment of Paris). The triple crown that Hera often wears reveals her links with the pre-Greek Great Goddess of Asia—each part of the crown represents one aspect of a woman's life: maiden, mother, crone. Hera was also often accompanied by a peacock, another of the Great Goddess's attributes.

Archetypal Greek hero. Hercules had a divine father, Zeus, king of the gods, and a mortal mother, Princess Alcmene. Though his exploits inspired later heroes such as Alexander the Great, they made for a gruelling life, despite help from the goddess Athena. Hercules was harassed from birth by Hera, ever-jealous of the children of Zeus' lovers. She sent two snakes to kill him in his crib but the muscular infant easily strangled both. Later Hera drove him so mad that he killed his wife Meagre and his family. To atone for this terrible crime, Apollo ordered Hercules to perform Twelve Labors to benefit humanity. These tasks, beyond the powers of any normal human, traditionally were:

In all these he was triumphant. Hercules' end, however, was horrific. He was persuaded to wear a tunic soaked in the blood of Nessus, a centaur he had killed for trying to force himself on Hercules' second wife Denaira, and the poison it contained tormented him. In agony, he set fire to the shirt, killing himself. But his soul rose up to heaven as a constellation, and he was worshipped as divine after his death.