Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

fn9 Neil Gaiman’s Sandman character, Dream, is also known as Morpheus, and formed the inspiration for the character Morpheus played by Laurence Fishburne in the Wachowskis’ Matrix films.

fn10Four exceptions perhaps. Hypnos is not so bad after all. The longer you live, the fonder you become of him. And talking of living long – perhaps Geras isn’t too awful either. So five.

fn11 Their names signify not their size but their chthonic origins – generated from the earth, ‘Gaia-gen’ if you will. Gaia’s name, incidentally, became worn down to Ge in later Greek. She is still there in earth sciences like ‘geology’ and ‘geography’, not to mention the later environmental studies that have restored her full name – James Lovelock and his popular ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ being a prime example.

fn12 The sugars of the ‘manna ash’, which still grows in southern Europe, give their name to today’s sweetener Mannitol.

fn13 At least the deposed Sky Father has the consolation of the planet Uranus named in his honour – it being the convention that the planets take the Roman names of the gods they represent.

fn14 The females of the race can be called ‘Titanesses’.

fn15 In fact the area of central Greece where Mount Othrys stands is called Magnesia to this day: it gave its name to magnesium, magnets and, of course, magnetite. Manganese too, through a spelling mistake.

fn16 As is often the case with extraordinarily attractive people. It is incumbent upon us to apologize or look away when our beauty causes discomfort.

fn17 The question of how long it took for immortals to be weaned, to walk, talk and grow into adulthood is a vexed one. Some sources maintain that Zeus grew from a baby into young manhood in a single year. Divine time and mortal time seem to have run differently, just like those of dogs and humans do, or elephants and flies, for example. It is probably best for us not to concentrate in too literal a fashion on the temporal structure of myth.

fn18 Zeus was often playful. The Romans called him JUPITER or JOVE, so he had quite literally a jovial disposition. ‘The Bringer of Jollity’, Gustav Holst calls him in his orchestral suite The Planets.

fn19 The potion was prepared by Metis and it would be nice to think that is where our word ‘emetic’ comes from, but I don’t think it does.

fn20 Although in birth order Hera had been the last to be born before Zeus, she now counted as the second child. A kind of reverse seniority operated as they emerged from Kronos’s gullet. Zeus became officially the eldest of the children while Hestia, having been the firstborn, was now considered the youngest. It makes sense if you are a god.

CLASH OF THE TITANS

fn1 Hesiod, in the eighth century BC, offers us the fullest extant account, but other poets also sang of it; an epic called the Titanomachia, by the eighth-century Eumelus of Corinth (or possibly the legendary blind bard Thamyris of Thrace), is tantalizingly mentioned in other texts, but remains lost to us. Hesiod describes the pitched battle that shook the earth like this: ‘The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and … reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry.’

fn2 See Appendix here.

fn3 The PIERIDES came from Pieria too. They were nine sisters who made the mistake of challenging the Muses, only to be turned into birds for their troubles. Alexander Pope refers to Pieria as the fount of all wisdom and knowledge in this well-known couplet from his Essay on Criticism:

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring …

fn4 To give the actors added height, and with it metaphorical stature too.

fn5 Which also gave us (via the word for a flourishing green shoot) the element thallium, a favourite of crime writers and criminal poisoners.

fn6 Sharing her name with the Muse of comedy.

fn7 Sometimes just Auxo.

fn8 Atropine, the poison derived from mandrakes and Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), gets its name from this last and most terrible of the sisters.

fn9 Later Greeks considered the Fates to be not daughters of Night, but of Necessity – ANANKE. They bear a very strong resemblance to the Norns of Norse mythology.

fn10 The TAGIDES were nymphs associated within just one river, the Tagus, but now that I’ve mentioned them we can forget all about them as we shan’t meet them ever again.