Olympus Read online

  The idea of bargaining with immortality as a currency is a repeated theme in Greek mythology. Prometheus can leave Tartarus only when the immortal Chiron takes his place. Pollux shares his immortality so that he and his mortal twin, Castor, are always together.

  Heracles has a tense relationship with centaurs. Once when visiting his friend Pholus, a centaur, he accidentally opened a jar of sacred wine whose scent caught the attention of other centaurs, who joined the party, drank unwatered wine, and got so drunk that they attacked Heracles. In the ensuing fight, Pholus ran away, Chiron suffered a never-healing wound, and many centaurs died.

  Omphale

  Having been liberated by Eurystheus, Heracles decided to find himself a wife. But no man was willing to give him his daughter and no woman was willing to marry a man who had killed his own children.

  Then Heracles learned that Eurytus of Oechalia was offering his daughter, Iole, to any man who could beat him and his sons in an archery contest. Heracles participated in the contest and won, but Eurytus refused to give him his daughter. Angered, Heracles stole Eurytus’s cattle and killed his youngest son, Iphitus, who, ironically, admired him greatly.

  As punishment for this crime, Heracles had to spend three years as a slave to Queen Omphale of Lydia. And she delighted in not just making him her lover, but also dressing him up as a woman.

  The idea of a Greek hero wearing women’s clothes for the pleasure of an oriental queen disturbed many Greeks who were comfortable with man–boy love but not cross-dressing. In contrast, Hindu mythology is full of tales where Hindu gods cross-dress for the pleasure of their mothers and wives. In temples, Krishna is often made to wear the nose-ring of his beloved Radha, and tie his hair in a plait.

  There were lost comedies of how Heracles is forced to wear women’s clothes and spin thread while Omphale wore his lion skin cloak and held his olive-wood club.

  Lydia is modern-day Turkey. Long has the West held the view that the East emasculates men as evinced in the tale of Omphale cross-dressing Heracles.

  Deianira

  Finally, Heracles managed to get a wife in Calydon. Her name was Deianira. But marrying her was not easy. He had to first defeat the river god Achelous who also wanted to wed her.

  Heracles and his new bride decided to make their home in the city of Trachis. On the way, they had to cross a river. Heracles could swim across it, but not his bride. Nessus, a centaur, offered to carry Deianira across on his back. Heracles accepted and put his bride on the centaur’s back before swimming across the river himself. When he reached the other bank, he saw that Nessus had stopped in the middle of the river and was fondling his wife, intent on raping her. Furious, he shot a poisoned arrow at Nessus, fatally wounding him.

  As he was dying, Nessus looked at the innocent Deianira and whispered, ‘My blood is a love potion. Apply it on your husband’s clothes and when it seeps into his skin he will love you so much that he will never even think about killing you as he did his first wife.’

  Using the centaur’s dead body as a raft, Deianira reached the other shore. But she also collected some of his blood to induce love in her mad but strong husband, of whom she was more than a little scared.

  Hindu mythology has horse-headed beings known as Kimpurushas, but rarely creatures whose torso is that of a horse, like the centaurs of Greek mythology. From the mouth of horse-headed beings such as Hayagriva, Vedic wisdom is transmitted to sages.

  Many post-Buddhist artworks found in Bodh Gaya, Sanchi and parts of Odisha have images of centaurs, suggesting a Greek influence.

  Centaurs are known for their wild lascivious nature. Chiron, the wise teacher, is an exception. In art, heroes are often depicted fighting centaurs, as in the battle where Theseus fights centaurs alongside Lapiths.

  Iole

  After several years of being happily married, Heracles decided to avenge the insult inflicted on him by Eurytus of Oechalia who had denied him a wife. He raised an army and ransacked Oechalia, killing Eurytus and managing to secure Iole as his concubine. Iole tried to escape by jumping from the ramparts but her robes ballooned like a parachute and she fell safely to the ground, with no hope of escaping from Heracles.

  Though Heracles insisted that Iole was merely a concubine, not a wife, Deianira was not so sure. She decided to use the blood of the centaur Nessus to rekindle passion in her husband. She smeared it on his cloak, expecting profusions of love when he draped it; instead he screamed in agony, for the blood of the centaur was poisonous and it burned his skin and his flesh.

  Heracles realized he would soon die. Too proud to be killed by another, he decided to take his own life. He climbed on to a pile of wood and asked the warrior Philoctetes to set it aflame.

  As the fires rose, Zeus looked down from heaven and, deciding that Heracles was the greatest of his sons, picked him up and brought him to Olympus. Here he was reconciled with Hera and given in marriage to Hebe and allowed to live like a god. Those on earth who searched his pyre for his bones found none.

  Though Heracles is compared with Krishna, the similarities are superficial. Heracles is a tragic hero-son of Zeus, while Krishna is God on earth, trying to enlighten humanity.

  One recurring motif in the story of Heracles is that he is denied what he feels he deserves: a happy married life with Megara, the throne of Mycenae on which sits the lout Eurystheus, payment after washing the Augean stables, payment after saving Hesione from a sea monster sent by the gods to devour her, and the hand of Iole after winning Eurytus’s archery contest.

  Euripides’ play Heraklides tells the story of Heracles’s children who are taken by his nephew, Iolaus, to Athens to protect them from Eurystheus. But the king of Athens cannot protect them as the oracles tell him that only the sacrifice of a young maiden to Persephone will ensure victory against Mycenae. The king refuses to sacrifice any Athenian and so Heracles’ daughter Mecaria offers herself to save her siblings. After her sacrifice, a war is fought, in which old Iolaus miraculously regains his youth and captures Eurystheus alive. The Athenians refuse to execute him as it is against their law but Eurystheus, humiliated in defeat, tells them to do it as it is prophesied that he will return as a guardian ghost of the city and protect Athens from the Spartans.

  After Eurystheus’s death, the throne of Mycenae passed on to Atreus, son of Pelops.

  House of Perseus

  Book Five

  Jason

  ‘Are all the heroes from your land the sons of gods?’ asked the gymnosophist.

  ‘Not all. Not Jason, who fetched the Golden Fleece from faraway Colchis in the east. But, unlike Heracles, he failed to win the admiration of the gods.’

  ‘Because his father was not an Olympian?’

  ‘No, because he owed his victory to an Eastern woman, a witch, whom he later betrayed.’

  Pelias

  Salmoneus, king of Elis, claimed that he was Zeus himself. That the torches burning on the sides of his chariot were lightning, and the noise of the kettledrums attached to and dragged by his chariot was thunder. Annoyed by this impertinence, Zeus hurled his thunderbolt at Salmoneus and reduced him, his chariot and his city to a pile of ash.

  Salmoneus’s daughter, Tyro, married Cretheus, king of Iolcus, and bore him a son whom they named Aeson.

  Tyro was also in love with a river god, but he rejected her advances. So the sea god Poseidon, who desired Tyro, took the form of the river god, and ravished her. From this union was born a son. He was called Pelias.

  Pelias grew up to be an ambitious man. He imprisoned his older brother, Aeson, and declared himself king of Iolcus. But he did not have Zeus’s favour for he was a son of Poseidon, and the grandson of Salmoneus. Worse, Hera did not like him because he had once desecrated her temple by killing people who had taken refuge there.

  The oracles warned Pelias that ‘a man who wears only one sandal’ would kill him. So all the guards in the palace and the city were told to look out for such a man. Little did he know that such a man was yet to be born, a