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  When Polyphonte joined Artemis as a virgin priestess, the goddess Aphrodite was so upset that she cursed that the young woman would be ravished by a bear and bear it children. The sons of Polyphonte and the bear turned out to be cannibals who were eventually killed by Zeus.

  Zeus took the form of Artemis to seduce Callisto, one of the goddess’s virgin companions. On discovering this, Artemis drove her away, and Hera turned her into a bear. In time, Callisto gave birth to a human child who grew up to be a hunter and hunted down a she-bear, not realizing the animal was his own mother.

  In Hindu mythology, the goddess Durga rides into battle on a lion, carrying weapons in her many hands. But she is also referred to as mother. In folklore, as in the story of Kanya-kumari, a goddess often stays a virgin to retain the power to kill demons.

  In Roman mythology, Artemis is known as Diana. Artemis got her bow and arrow from Hephaestus and her hunting hounds from Hermes. She captured golden-horned stags to pull her chariot. She is associated with groves of oak trees.

  Like Athena, this daughter of Zeus was sworn to celibacy. In Hindu mythology, though, celibacy is associated with men, not women. Women are expected to be chaste.

  At Ephesus in Ionia, Turkey, there once stood a temple to a fertility goddess with multiple breasts, who was ironically identified with the virginal Artemis, but was in all probability the goddess Cybele, or Rhea.

  The three Roman goddesses Diana (Artemis), Minerva (Athena) and Vesta (Hestia) vowed to remain virgins forever. The fire of Vesta was maintained by Vestal Virgins in ancient Rome. Mars (Ares) sired twin boys on one of these women—Romulus and Remus, who became the founders of Rome.

  The scorpion sent to kill the arrogant Orion became the zodiac sign Scorpio. In some versions of the story, Artemis sends the creature to kill Orion who claims to be a better hunter. In others, Gaia sends the creature, annoyed by the hunter’s masculine arrogance.

  Hermes

  Hermes was born from the union of Zeus and the daughter of the Titan Atlas, Maia, who hid the child in a cave to protect him from Hera’s wrath.

  On the first night of his birth, the child caught a tortoise and used its shell to create a musical instrument called the lyre. The next night, he stole cows that belonged to Apollo, making the animals walk backwards into his cave so that Apollo could not track them. But when Apollo complained, Hermes made peace by gifting him the lyre.

  Hermes was slippery in action and sweet of tongue, and so Zeus declared he would be the god of thieves, traders, travellers and inventors. Zeus gave him winged sandals and a staff with two serpents coiled around it, as he often served as messenger to, and herald of, the Olympians. He was made responsible for taking the ghosts of the dead across the River Styx to the kingdom of Hades.

  With Aphrodite, Hermes had a son called Hermaphroditus who was so beautiful that the nymph Salmacis fell in love with him instantly. She clung to him passionately while he was bathing naked in a pool and refused to let him go. Finally, the Olympians fused their bodies and turned them into a single creature with both male and female sexual parts. It was ordained that whosoever entered the pool of Hermaphroditus would also acquire genitals of both genders.

  Hermes is linked to Budh, god of the planet Mercury, and to the ability to communicate. Budh is often visualized as a combination of male and female principles.

  In Roman mythology, Hermes is called Mercury. Hermes has a winged cap and a pair of winged shoes. In his hand he holds the caduceus, a staff around which two serpents are coiled, as he conducts the living to the land of the dead.

  Just as Hermes is associated with winged sandals and a winged helmet, the Ramayana speaks of ‘vimana’ which is imagined as a winged chariot.

  As the god of roads and boundaries, Hermes was turned to ‘herma’ or a pile of stones placed at crossroads and boundaries, to which travellers would add more stones. Later, it became a pillar mounted with a head on top and a phallus on the side.

  Hermes’s children included Pan whose mother ran away at his birth after seeing his goat-like legs; Priapus, the god of male genitalia; and Autolycus the thief, who was Odysseus’s grandfather.

  The ancient cult of Hermaphroditus was popular in Crete and festivals involved ceremonies where men and women exchanged each other’s clothes.

  The Phrygian deity Agdistis is similar to Hermaphroditus. But Agdistis is feared by the gods and is so split into male and female forms.

  The Hindu concept of Ardhanareshwara can be connected with Hermaphroditus as a composite being created from the union of male and female principles.

  Pan

  Hermes fell in love with a nymph called Dryope and she bore him a strange child with the legs and horns of a goat. The sight of this child caused the midwives to panic and there was complete pandemonium in Olympus, which was why the child came to be known as Pan.

  Pan was a wild woodland spirit embodying the untameable side of nature. He had an insatiable appetite for sex and chased nymphs all the time. One of them, Syrinx, weary of his attentions, begged the river god to turn her into a river reed. Pan collected the reed that was once his beloved Syrinx, cut it into uneven lengths and created a musical instrument called the panpipe that he used to enchant other nymphs.

  In Hindu mythology, as in Greek mythology, there are many creatures that are part human and part animal. But while in Hindu mythology the trend is to depict such creatures as having an animal head and a human body, in Greek mythology it is usually reversed.

  In Roman mythology, Pan was called Faunus.

  Pan embodies the rural landscape that is not under the control of man.

  While fighting the monster Typhon, Pan jumped in a river and the part of his body above the water turned into a goat, and the part below turned into a fish. Thus came into being the zodiac sign Capricorn. Amalthea, Zeus’s wet nurse who was a goat, is also identified with Capricorn.

  According to ancient Greek historian Plutarch, Pan is the only Greek god who died. Many Christian theologians believe this ‘death of Pan’ coincides with the ‘birth of Christ’.

  Pan’s association with untamed wilderness eventually led to his association with Satan, who is imagined as having goat legs.

  Dionysus

  Zeus fell in love with the mortal Semele, princess of Thebes, and fathered a child on her.

  When Hera learned of the affair and the pregnancy she decided to punish Semele in the most awful way. She told the girl, ‘If Zeus truly loves you, ask him to show you his godly form, not the human form he takes when he makes love to you at night.’

  Thus, at their next tryst, Semele demanded that Zeus show her his godly form. Despite his warnings, she insisted on it, and Zeus showed her his godly form. It was so grandly radiant that Semele’s body burst into flames.

  Hermes rescued the unborn child from Semele’s burning flesh and placed it inside Zeus’s thigh. A few months later, Zeus ‘delivered’ this child born of two wombs: his mother’s and father’s. He was named Dionysus.

  Dionysus was given to Semele’s sister Ino who raised the boy, dressing him as a girl to avoid the gaze of Hera. But Hera learned the truth and drove both Ino and Dionysus mad. Ino in her madness boiled her son Melicertes alive; on discovering what she had done, she leapt to her death from a cliff overlooking the sea.

  Zeus turned Dionysus into a goat and took him to faraway Asia where he was raised by nymphs. As he grew up, he discovered how to make wine from grapes, and the power of music; he made friends with all kinds of wild forest creatures. Women in particular loved his company for he inspired them to dance and sing and to challenge all rules. They called him Bacchus and themselves, the Bacchae.

  When Dionysus was older and learnt how he had been cast out of his home by the machinations of Hera, he decided to return, armed with wine, music, intoxication and his new friends, the Bacchae. This meant travelling through Phrygia and then across the sea to Greece.

  In Phrygia, in the spirit of amusement, Dionysus fulfilled the deepest desire of t