Demigods and Monsters (27 page)

Son of Danae, the daughter of King Acrisius of Argos, and Zeus, king of the gods, who seduced Danae by appearing to her in a blaze of gold. Perseus grew up with his mother on the island of Seriphus, whose king Polydectes fell in love with Danae. Danae disliked Polydectes, however, so Perseus agreed to go on a quest to kill Medusa, a hideous snake-haired creature whose stare turned men to stone, if Polydectes would leave his mother alone. With the help of the goddess Athena, who gave him a polished shield, and the god Hermes, who provided winged sandals and a magic cap that made Perseus invisible, Perseus surprised Medusa while she slept. He cut off her head, using the shield as a mirror to avoid her petrifying glare, and escaped on the winged horse Pegasus, which had sprung from Medusa's severed neck. Flying back with the Medusa's head, after capturing the eye of the Gray Sisters and forcing them to reveal the next stage in his quest, he saw the lovely princess Andromeda chained to a rock and guarded by a sea monster. Perseus turned the sea monster to stone by displaying the Medusa's head, freed Andromeda, and later married her. Back in Seriphus, he used the Medusa's head to turn Polydectes to stone, and then handed the head over to Athena. The goddess made it part of her aegis, worn around her neck, and Perseus ended his life
as king of Tiryns in the Peloponnese, a major kingdom in Greek myth.

Cyclops featured in
The Odyssey
. Polyphemus loved Galatea, a sea nymph, who preferred Acis, the son of Pan and a river nymph. Polyphemus crushed Acis with a rock but it didn't help him win Galatea's affections. Nor did he fare better in his encounter with Odysseus and his men. The cunning Greek hero managed to blind him while he slept in his cave and then escaped by clinging to the underside of the Cyclops's sheep. Once back on his ship, Odysseus taunted the blind giant—rashly, for Polyphemus threw huge boulders at him and called on his father the sea god to take revenge. Poseidon duly made the rest of Odysseus' voyage even harder.

God of earthquakes, horses, and the sea. Zeus' elder brother and second in majesty only to him. Poseidon was a formidable, half-savage deity. He became lord of the sea, while Zeus ruled the skies and their other brother Hades ruled the Underworld. Wielding a divine trident, Poseidon rode the waves in a chariot drawn by sea horses. He married Amphitrite, one of the Nereids, but had affairs with many other beings, human, divine, and bestial. Among his stranger children were the Cyclopes, one-eyed man-eating giants. Although Poseidon supported the Greeks in the Trojan War, he was an enemy of Odysseus and made his wanderings yet more difficult by sending storms. Sailors and fishermen prayed to Poseidon for fair weather, and a famous temple on the promontory of Sunium was dedicated to him. Poseidon failed to win the affection of the Athenians, however. In a competition with Athena, he offered the city a freshwater spring, while she offered an olive tree. The Athenians chose the latter; olive trees were a vital part of Athenian agriculture.

Gigantic brigand who lived on the Isthmus of Corinth and preyed on travelers. Procrustes forced his victims to lie on special beds he had made, and if his victims proved too short for these “beds of Procrustes,” he would stretch them until they fitted; if they were too long, he hacked off their limbs. His evil-doings were ended by the young prince Theseus, who overcame him and forced Procrustes onto one of his own beds.

Titan. Prometheus differed from his often mindless brothers in his cunning “forethought” (as his name implies). Neutral in the war between the Titans and Zeus, Prometheus was admitted to Olympus—but secretly he hated Zeus. He took his revenge on the gods with a cunning trick. The Greeks sacrificed animals to the gods, butchering and cooking them on fires outside temples, but some parts were left for the worshippers to eat. Prometheus, by hiding the best meat of a sacrificial ox he had cut up under its guts—which struck both gods and men as repellent—and putting the bones under a layer of appealing fat and skin, persuaded Zeus to agree to choose the latter. From then on in sacrifices the gods received only the fat and bones—which were burnt—and humanity got the best meat. Enraged, Zeus withdrew the gift of fire from mankind. But Prometheus, lighting a torch from the sun's fiery chariot, gave fire back. For this “theft,” Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains, where a vulture devoured his liver. Every night Prometheus' liver magically grew back, only to be eaten again the next day. He was finally freed from 30,000 years' torment by Hercules.

Ancient female earth serpent (or dragon) killed by the young Apollo when he made Delphi his main shrine. The Python's name and aura lived on, however, in the Pythoness, the priestess who gave cryptic answers to the questions that people brought to Delphi, the greatest of Greek oracles. Traditionally the Pythoness sat in the innermost sanctuary on a tripod above an immeasurably deep chasm. The fumes rising from the chasm threw her into a trance, in which the god spoke through her in verses so ambiguous they could never be proved wrong, no matter how events turned out.

One of the rivers of Hades, the Underworld. The River Lethe flowed around the Elysian Fields, the brightest parts of the Underworld, and then around Tartarus, the Underworld's most gruesome quarter. Any spirits who drank from its “lethal” waters forgot everything about their former life on Earth.

Another of the rivers of Hades, the Underword. The black waters of the River Styx surrounded the Underworld with nine loops, one of which was the river Acheron. To cross it the shades of those who had recently died had to pay the infernal boatman Charon an obol, a small coin traditionally buried with the dead.

Exuberant, mischievous, exclusively male creatures who had a goat's horns, pointed ears, tail, and cloven hooves, but were otherwise
human. They were among the followers of Dionysus the wine god, and were often drunk and always chasing women—both mortals and nymphs. Pan had many of the characteristics of a satyr. Often seen carousing with satyrs was Silenus, a fat but jolly old man who was so drunk he kept falling off his donkey.

Goddess of the moon and daughter of Helios, the sun god. Selene rode a lunar chariot that was drawn through the sky by silver horses. She fell in love with the incredibly handsome youth Endymion, a mortal son of Zeus. When Selene begged Zeus to keep Endymion immortally young, Zeus granted her wish, but caused Endymion to sleep nonstop. Despite this slumber, Endymion remained Selene's sole lover.

First recorded
femmes fatales
, literally fatal to sailors who heard their alluring songs. With birdlike bodies and fish tails, but the faces and busts of beautiful women, the three Sirens inhabited an island near Scylla and Charybdis, where the shores were extremely dangerous. Warned by the witch Circe, Odysseus stuffed his sailors' ears with wax and ordered them to tie him to the mast as they approached the area. This ensured that, though he could hear the Sirens' sweet voices, he would not be lured to his doom. Despite begging his men to let him free the crew obeyed his orders and Odysseus escaped. Later, when Jason and the Argonauts passed by the Sirens, the poet Orpheus launched into a counter-song so powerful that the Sirens themselves were turned to rocks.

Hybrid monster with a woman's breasts and face, a lion's body and claws, and a serpent's tail and wings that originated in Egypt but was
adopted by the Greeks. The Sphinx lived outside Thebes in central Greece, terrorizing travelers with baffling enigmatic riddles. Finally Oedipus, on his way from Corinth, answered the Sphinx's riddles correctly. (The most famous riddle asked:
What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?
The answer is a human being, who crawls as a baby, walks as an adult, and uses a stick in old age.) As a result, the Sphinx either committed suicide or died at Oedipus' hands, depending on the version of the tale.

Man-eating birds with iron claws and beaks that infested Stymphalus, a city in the Peloponnese. Hercules killed them as his sixth Labor.

Giant animated bronze figure made by blacksmith god Hephaestus to guard the princess Europa and the shores of Crete. The Talos could throw stones an immense distance. Its vital fluid was kept in a magic membrane within its foot; Medea cast the Talos into a deep sleep with her spells and then killed it by cutting this membrane.

Fabulously wealthy king of Sipylus (in modern-day Turkey). One of the first mortals honored by being allowed to dine with the gods, Tantalus offended Zeus by stealing the ambrosia served at the divine feasts and giving it to mortals, as well as by reporting the gods' gossip. He also chopped up his son Pelops and served his meat in a stew, although only Demeter, distracted by the loss of her daughter Persephone, ate any. To punish these crimes, Zeus chained Tantalus in a pool with a fruit tree just above his head. Whenever Tantalus
tried to eat any of its fruit, the tree was raised out of his reach. Whenever he bent to drink any water, it shrank away from him. Thus was Tantalus eternally “tantalized.”

Deepest region or pit of the Underworld. Enclosed within bronze gates and triple walls, Tartarus was a penal colony for the dead, where the especially wicked, such as the Titans who had revolted against Zeus, were incarcerated forever.

Sea spirits often described as having flippers instead of hands and dogs' heads. The Telekhines were skilled metal workers and created Poseidon's trident. They are sometimes considered to be related to the Hekatonkheires because of their ability to control the weather. When they began to use their powers for evil, Zeus sent them to their destruction in the depths below the sea.

Archetypal Athenian hero and the city's great legendary king. Theseus reputedly had two fathers: the sea god Poseidon, and Aegeus, king of Athens. Aegeus had slept one night with Aethra, unmarried daughter of king Pittacus of Troezen, and left his sword and sandals under a huge rock on his departure the next morning. When he was sixteen, Theseus lifted this boulder and discovered the identity of his (mortal) father. Armed with the royal sword, he set out for Athens. On the way he killed Procrustes, the robber plaguing the Isthmus. When he reached Athens, Medea, his father's new wife, tried to poison Theseus, but failed and fled. Aegeus recognized Theseus as his heir, but he had problems: King Minos of Crete, in revenge for the murder of his son, had imposed a yearly tribute on Athens of seven youths and seven maidens, who were sacrificed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Volunteering to go himself, Theseus
led the Athenians to Crete. There the princess Ariadne fell in love with him, and gave him a ball of thread to guide him back out through the Labyrinth once he had killed the Minotaur. After, he married Ariadne and fled from Crete with her, only to abandon her on the island of Naxos. As his ship neared Athens, he forgot to change its black sail to white as he had promised his father, and in despair, thinking his son dead, Aegeus killed himself. So Theseus became king. He united Attica (Athens's territory) but he himself still roved far and wide, going east to the Black Sea. There he abducted the Amazon queen Antiope (or Hippolyta), which caused the Amazons to later invade Attica. He also went adventuring with his friend Pirithous, a Thessalian prince. Trying to abduct Persephone from the Underworld, he was trapped by Hades and only freed by Hercules (Pirithous was left to rot in Hades). Theseus' second marriage, to Princess Phaedra of Crete, Ariadne's sister, proved disastrous, for she fell in love with Hippolytus, Theseus' son by Antiope. When Hippolytus, who had sworn a vow of celibacy, refused her advances, Phaedra told Theseus Hippolytus had tried to rape her. Enraged, Theseus called on Poseidon to kill Hippolytus, only discovering his son's innocence too late. Theseus finally died in Scyros island, whose jealous king killed him. But at the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., Theseus' ghost re-appeared to fight alongside Athenian soldiers against the Persian invaders.

Among the first primeval gods; the children of Gaia (earth) and Ouranos (sky). Traditionally they were very large and strong but not very bright, with the exception of Prometheus. Among notable Titans were Atlas, Hyperion (light), and Kronos. Kronos was the father of several Olympian gods. Because he feared they would supplant him as he had his own father, he swallowed each of his children
as his wife Rhea gave birth to them. Rhea substituted a stone for Zeus, however, and with Rhea's help Zeus later forced Kronos to vomit back up the others. When the Titans revolted against the Olympians' new order, Zeus, helped by his brothers Poseidon and Hades, crushed them, imprisoning most of the Titans in Tartarus.
(See Atlas, Briares, Hades, Hekatonkheires, Kronos, Mount Othrys, Ophiotaurus, Ouranos, Prometheus, Tartarus, Zeus)