Demigods and Monsters (25 page)

God of travelers, merchants, and thieves. A son of Zeus, Hermes was unusual in relying more on his quick wits, good luck, and intelligence than on superhuman strength. He was only a few hours old when he stole some cattle belonging to his half-brother Apollo by using winged sandals, one of his many cunning devices. He deflected Apollo's anger by giving him another of his cunning devices: the lyre. (Hermes invented many things, among them the alphabet, numbers, and weights and measures.) Hermes often wore a broad-rimmed winged hat and carried a magic wand, the Caduceus, with two snakes entwined around it that sent people to sleep. His smooth talk and notorious good luck made him the patron god of both merchants and thieves. In his capacity as the messenger god—for he was always swift-footed—he was kept busy carrying messages from Olympus down to Earth. He often traveled farther down still, for he also led the souls of the dead to Charon, the boatman on the River Styx in Hades. Hermes was also the protector-god
of travelers, and herms (stone statues) were set up by them in his honor on doors and at crossroads.

Daughters of Hesperis, goddess of the morning star, and the Titan Atlas. The Hesperides, who numbered three to seven depending on the version of the tale, were famed for their wonderful singing, and guarded a tree of golden apples given by Gaia (earth) to Hera. The magic apple tree grew on islands in the farthest west, beyond the reach of any normal human, but the hero Hercules succeeded in obtaining several apples with Atlas's help, after killing Ladon, the dragon who acted as watchdog.
(See Atlas, Hercules)

Beast with the foreparts of a horse and the tail, wings, and back legs of a rooster. Hippalektryons may be an earlier version of the winged horse Pegasus.

Mythical seahorses that pulled the chariot of Poseidon, god of the sea, or cavorted through the waves alongside him, in company with tritons (mermen) and mermaids.

Monster from the same alarming family as the Gorgons and Cerberus. Its father was the monster Typhon and its mother Echidna, and it had at least eight heads (some writers gave it 1,000), toxic blood, and breath so venomous that it poisoned all who breathed it. Hercules' second labor was killing it—a major task even for him. He had to drive it out of its lair by shooting burning arrows at it and cutting off its myriad heads. These kept sprouting back from the creature's many necks until he burnt them off. He buried the last head under a boulder.

An exceptionally attractive boy brought up by the hero Hercules. Hylas accompanied Hercules and Jason on the voyage of the
Argo
in the quest of the Golden Fleece. When they stopped at Cius on the Black Sea, the naiads, nymphs of the spring where Hylas was looking for fresh water, found him so delightful that they seized him and would not let him go. Hercules and his companions spent hours looking for him in vain.

Daedalus' son. Icarus escaped with his father from imprisonment in Crete by using the wings Daedalus had created, but despite his father's warning, flew too close to the sun. The heat caused the wax holding the wings together to melt, and Icarus fell to his death. The waters into which Icarus fell is called the Icarian Sea.

Blood of the gods. The gods were perfect superhuman beings, and they were also immortal. In battle they could be wounded but never killed, partly because they did not have human blood. In their veins flowed not blood but ichor, which was poisonous to mortals.

First of Homer's two great epic poems.
The Illiad
related scenes from the ten-year long Trojan War (Ilium was another name for Troy). Most Greeks thought it the greatest poem ever written and knew it by heart.

Goddess of the rainbow and mother of Eros, god of desire. Iris acted as a messenger of the gods, often being used by Zeus, and sometimes by Hera, to carry messages. She was called “wind-footed” and “stormy-footed” because her rainbow either warned of storms to come or showed that storms had passed.

Island kingdom of Odysseus, to which he constantly tried to return after the Trojan War. In Ithaca his ever-faithful wife Penelope waited for him, putting off the suitors who, believing Odysseus dead, wanted to marry her and so gain the kingdom. Ithaca is generally identified with the island that still bears that name in the Ionian Sea off the west coast of Greece. The description given by Homer in
The Odyssey
, however, does not match the island closely, so many people think the ancient kingdom was somewhere else.

God of doors and gates, and beginnings and endings. From Saturn, Janus received the gift of seeing both the past and future. He is most often depicted with two heads facing opposite directions, and is accordingly representative of the progression of time and transitions, as well as peace and war.

Among the greatest of Greek heroes, and the son of King Aeson of Iolcus. As King Aeson had been deposed by his brother Pelias, Jason was brought up in exile by the wise centaur Chiron. When Jason returned to Iolcus, he was soon recognized by his uncle, who sent
him on a perilous quest: to win the Golden Fleece from Colchis in the eastern Black Sea. Jason chose heroes such as Hercules and Theseus of Athens to crew his ship the
Argo
(thus their name, the Argonauts). Their quest was aided by two goddesses—Hera, who helped them fight off aerial attacks by the Harpies, and Aphrodite, who made Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, fall in love with Jason. The Colchian king gave Jason a task to prove himself worthy of Medea: He had to plow a field with wild bulls and sow it with dragon's teeth. When angry warriors sprang up from the dragon's teeth, Jason persuaded them to fight each other, not him. With Medea's help, Jason seized the Golden Fleece, and they both sailed off in the
Argo.
Jason became king of Corinth, a wealthy city, but soon left Medea for another woman. In fury, Medea torched the palace and killed most of the royal family, fleeing to Athens. Jason escaped unharmed, and was eventually killed when a beam of the by-then rotten
Argo
fell on his head.

A female monster with a female head and torso and a scorpion's tail, sometimes described as having wings. She guarded the Hekatonkheires and Cyclopes when Kronos trapped them in Tartarus, and was killed by Zeus when he rescued them for help in the battle against the Titans.

Youngest of the Titans, son of Uranus and Gaia, who castrated and overthrew his father. Kronos married his sister Rhea, who gave birth to many of the Olympian gods (Demeter, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus). Fearing that his children would overthrow him as
he had overthrown his own father, Kronos swallowed them all as babies except the youngest, Zeus, for whom Rhea substituted a stone. Later Zeus led a revolt against his father, making Kronos vomit back up all the gods he had swallowed. Kronos was then imprisoned in Tartarus, the depths of the Underworld. Paradoxically, Kronos's reign was later also remembered as a Golden Age, a utopian era in which there was universal peace and humanity did not have to work, as the earth produced food for free.

Maze built on the island of Crete to hide the Minotaur, the half-bull, half-human offspring of Queen Pasiphae and a bull. King Minos ordered the Athenian master craftsman Daedalus to create an impenetrable maze with countless twists and turns to conceal this monster of royal birth, and the Minotaur grew up in the Labyrinth's center, living off of the sacrificial victims that were sent to feed him. Thrust into the Labyrinth, these victims became hopelessly lost in its corridors until the beast loomed up out of the darkness to devour them. The word “labyrinth” possibly derives from the same root as
labrys
, the ancient name for a double-headed ax, a common Cretan religious symbol.

Cannibalistic giants who lived in the land of Lamus, somewhere in the western Mediterranean. Odysseus and his sailors, going ashore for water and food during their long wandering, encountered the Laistrygonians. Two of them were eaten by the Laistrygonians before the rest of the crew managed to escape.

Plant with leaves sacred to Apollo, the god of poetry, sport, and music. Crowns of laurel leaves were usually given to victors in poetry and athletic contests (and were the only prizes given to winners at the ancient Olympic Games). Today national poets are often called
poets laureate
after this tradition.

Plant with leaves that, when eaten, make you forget all desires. Odysseus on his long voyages around the Mediterranean came to the mysterious Land of the Lotus Eaters (which may have been in modern Tunisia, north Africa), whose inhabitants lived idle, contented lives thanks to their diet of lotus leaves. Some of Odysseus' sailors who tried eating the lotus plant lost all their longing to return home and had to be dragged back to the ships by their comrades.

Manic, intoxicated female followers of the wine god Dionysus. Maenads took part in drunken
orgia
(orgies) on the mountainside outside Greek cities, dancing alongside the god of ecstasy to the sound of drums and flutes. It was death to any man to stand against them, as Pentheus, king of Thebes, and the grieving poet Orpheus discovered: Both men were torn apart by these raving female worshippers.

Final, most awesome weapon of Zeus, which he only unleashed after consulting with the other gods.

Granddaughter of Helios, the sun god, and daughter of the king of Colchis, home of the Golden Fleece. As the niece of Circe, the witch who turned Odysseus' men into swine, Medea had magic in her blood, and knew the lore of sacred herbs and potions. She helped Jason win the Golden Fleece before sailing off with him to become queen of Corinth. When Jason left her for another woman, however, she revealed her full fury. She murdered Jason's new bride and also her own children by him, then flew off to Athens in a winged chariot drawn by dragons. In Athens she seduced the elderly King Aegeus and tried to poison Aegeus' young son Theseus when he turned up in disguise. Foiled just in time when Theseus revealed his true identity, Medea again took off in her chariot, returning to Colchis.

One of the three Gorgons. Medusa and her sisters Stethno and Euryale had wings, bronze claws, and glaring eyes, and their horrific appearance alone was enough to turn all who looked on them into stone. She was killed by the hero Perseus, who with the help of the goddess Athena and the god Hermes surprised her while she slept and cut off her head. From Medusa's severed neck sprang the winged horse Pegasus, on which Perseus fled from the other enraged Gorgons.

Legendary king of Crete who lived three generations before the traditional date of the Trojan War. The son of Zeus and Europa, a princess whom Zeus had carried off from her home, Minos was renowned for his kingly wisdom. He drew up laws with his brother Rhadamanthys and, in the Underworld, was said to judge the dead. But he wasn't always wise. One day Minos prayed to Poseidon, god
of the sea, to send him a fine bull to sacrifice. Minos was so impressed by Poseidon's bull that he decided to keep it—an unfortunate decision, for his wife Pasiphae became besotted with it. From her passion was born the half-human Minotaur, which was kept in the Labyrinth. Minos also built the first navy that ruled the waves, making him
thalassocrat
, sea ruler. When the Athenians killed his son Androgeus, he made them send an annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, which continued until Theseus killed the monster. The name Minoan is used by modern archaeologists for the whole ancient Cretan civilization of the Bronze Age.

Son of Queen Pasiphae of Crete and a bull sent to Pasiphae's husband, King Minos, by Poseidon, god of the sea. It had a bull's head and legs but the body of a man. King Minos of Crete, appalled by his queen's monstrous offspring, had the Labyrinth built to contain it. The Minotaur lived in its center, and was fed on a diet of human sacrifices from Athens. The Minotaur, though possessed of immense strength, finally met his match in Theseus, the Athenian hero who killed him with the aid of Princess Ariadne, the Minotaur's half-sister.