Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

fn11 Atlas’s brother MENOETIUS, whose name means ‘doomed might’, had been a furiously powerful and terrible opponent too, but Zeus had destroyed him with one of the very first thunderbolts.

fn12 These later images, however, show him holding up not the sky but the world.

fn13 To some mythographers Kronos (the Titan) and Chronos (Time) are quite separate entities. I prefer the versions that unite them.

fn14 Astronomers consult classical scholars when they name the heavenly bodies in our solar system. The numerous moons of Saturn include Titan, Iapetus, Atlas, Prometheus, Hyperion, Tethys, Rhea and Calypso. Then there are the Rings of Saturn. Perhaps they signify time, like the rings of a tree.

fn15 Some of the Titanides were very attractive and – as lustful, highly sexed and prone to falling in love as any being that has ever lived – Zeus already had designs on one or two of the more appealing ones.

fn16 And ‘prescience’ or ‘forethought’ is just what the name Prometheus means …

THE THIRD ORDER

fn1 Hospitality, or xenia, was so extraordinarily esteemed in the Greek world that Hestia shared the care of it with Zeus himself, who was on occasion given the name Zeus Xenios. Sometimes the gods tested human ‘guest friendship’, as we shall see in the story of Philemon and Baucis. This was known as theoxenia. Xenophobes, of course, do not extend the hand of friendship to strangers …

fn2 You will sometimes see the name DIS (a Latin word for ‘rich’) used for him or his Judaeo-Christian descendant, LUCIFER. Dante in his Inferno called the city of hell Dis. Today only cryptic crossword setters use the name with any frequency.

fn3 Or ‘dwarf planet’ as it is now disrespectfully designated. The moons of Pluto are Styx, Nyx (or Nix), Charon, Kerberos and Hydra.

fn4 Which is strange, as naiads, of course, were freshwater nymphs, unlike the salty Nereids and Oceanids. Perhaps the astronomers in this case failed to consult a classicist before allocating names.

fn5 PROTEUS, the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea, herded sea-beasts and knew much. To get information from him you had to wrestle him, which was tricky as he could quickly and frustratingly change himself into any number of new shapes – from lizard to leopard, from dolphin to dormouse. From this slippery ability we get the word ‘protean’.

fn6 Not to be confused with ARION the singer songwriter, whom we will meet later.

fn7De-meter is often translated as ‘barley mother’ or ‘corn mother’, although it is now thought more likely that it originally signified ‘earth mother’, showing just how thoroughly Zeus’s generation of gods had wrested the reins from Gaia.

fn8 Anagrammatically ‘Rhea’ does indeed come out of ‘Hera’; at least so I hear, but we won’t chase that hare.

fn9 We shouldn’t forget that Gaia is a planet too: she is our home world. Latinized as Tellus or Terra Mater she is Saxonized for us as ‘Earth’ (cognate with the Germanic goddess Erde, Erda, Joeth or Urd).

fn10 I would suggest that Marie Dressler, Lady Bracknell and Aunt Agatha, to name three great examples, can all trace their lineage back to Hera.

fn11 Since Zeus took that decision the number twelve seems to have taken on important properties. It is divisible by two, three, four and six of course, making it twice as composite as the stupid number ten. The dozen can still be seen around us in the Zodiac, the day’s hours, in months and inches and pennies (well, when I was a boy, it was twelve pennies to the shilling, anyway) not to mention the Tribes of Israel, Disciples of Jesus, Days of Christmas and the Asian twelve-year cycle. It’s a duodecimal world.

fn12 The gods were – if you think it through – Aphrodite’s nephews and nieces. They were born of Kronos and she was the direct issue of the ejaculate of Ouranos.

fn13 An important principal is demonstrated here, one that we will encounter many times. No god can undo the spells, transformations, curses or enchantments of another.

fn14 Vulcan the planet and its people – notably Commander Spock – are not connected, so far as I can establish. The Romans sometimes referred to Vulcan as MULCIBER, smelter, in recognition either of his power to soften metal for working or his ability to soothe the anger of volcanoes.

fn15 The Greeks still add pine resin to wine, call it retsina and offer it to visitors. No one knows why a normally kind and hospitable people should do such a thing. It tastes like what it essentially is, the kind of turpentine artists use to thin their oil paints. I love it.

fn16 Of course, this is not the last time we shall witness Zeus playing with oaths and wriggling out of commitments.

fn17 Or Cos, home of the type of romaine lettuce that bears its name and is one of the essential ingredients of a Caesar salad.