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  “I am Zeus, the highest and wisest. Learn how much stronger I am than the rest of you immortals.”

  But like his brother, Poseidon did not confine his sexual urges to his wife. He pursued goddesses and mortal women with a callousness and violence that surpassed even that of Zeus.

  When dawn came at last, Aphrodite arose and once again put on the shining form of a goddess.

  He slowly flayed the satyr alive, Marsyas screaming in agony until the end. No one ever again challenged Apollo to a contest of musical skill.

  Athena was so furious that she grabbed a wooden shuttle and began to beat the girl senseless. Arachne was in such pain that she took a rope and hanged herself from the cottage roof.

  The Greek and Roman myths have never died out; in fact they are as relevant today as ever. For thousands of years these myths have inspired plays, operas, paintings, movies, and television programs. They are fascinating tales that tell us about ourselves—about our hopes, fears, and desires, which are as ancient as mankind. Many of these myths are deeply disturbing; others are sublimely beautiful. All of them move us still, as they did the Greeks and Romans hundreds of generations ago.

  Oh My Gods is a retelling of some of the most popular myths by a gifted scholar and writer. These tales of errant gods, fantastic creatures, and human heroes are brought to life in fresh and contemporary versions.

  Have there ever been stories to rival the myths about the creation of the universe and the wars among the earliest gods? Or about the Olympian gods themselves: powerful Zeus, king of the gods, possessed of a wandering eye; his wife, Hera, queen of marriage and childbirth, perpetually outraged by her husband’s many affairs; Poseidon, god of the sea, brother of Zeus; their other brother, Hades, god of the underworld; and all the other gods and goddesses—talented Apollo, beautiful Aphrodite, fierce Athena, swift Hermes, and many more. And the dauntless heroes Theseus and Hercules, the doomed lovers Hero and Leander or Orpheus and Eurydice, whose stories can still break our hearts. From the astonishing tales of the Argonauts to the immortal narrative of the Battle of Troy, these ancient myths have inspired writers from Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling.

  Philip Freeman’s vibrant, contemporary retelling makes us appreciate again why these wonderful tales have lasted thousands of years and charmed young and old readers alike.

  PHILIP FREEMAN is the Qualley Professor of Classics and chair of the classics department at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He is the author of many books, among them St. Patrick of Ireland, The Philosopher and the Druids, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great. Visit him at philipfreemanbooks.com.

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  ALSO BY PHILIP FREEMAN

  Alexander the Great

  Julius Caesar

  The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts

  St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography

  War, Women, and Druids: Eyewitness Reports and Early Accounts of the Ancient Celts

  The Galatian Language: A Comprehensive Survey of the Language of the Ancient Celts in Greco-Roman Asia Minor

  Ireland and the Classical World

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  Copyright © 2012 by Philip Freeman

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Freeman, Philip, 1961-

  Oh my gods : a modern retelling of Greek and Roman myths / Philip Freeman.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Mythology, Greek. 2. Mythology, Roman. I. Title.

  BL782.F73 2012

  398.20938—dc23

  2011039704

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0997-4 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0999-8 (eBook)

  For my students

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CREATION

  GODS

  ZEUS

  POSEIDON

  HADES

  APOLLO

  HEPHAESTUS

  ARES

  HERMES

  PAN

  HELIOS

  DIONYSUS

  CUPID

  GODDESSES

  HERA

  DEMETER

  ARTEMIS

  APHRODITE

  HECATE

  HESTIA

  ATHENA

  EOS

  THE MUSES

  THE FATES

  CYBELE

  HEROES

  PERSEUS

  THESEUS

  DAEDALUS AND ICARUS

  BELLEROPHON

  MELAMPUS

  ATALANTA

  PROCNE AND PHILOMELA

  LOVERS

  NARCISSUS AND ECHO

  PYRAMUS AND THISBE

  CEYX AND ALCYONE

  GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA

  HERO AND LEANDER

  HYPERMNESTRA AND LYNCEUS

  BAUCIS AND PHILEMON

  ALPHEUS AND ARETHUSA

  POMONA AND VERTUMNUS

  ENDYMION AND SELENE

  ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

  HERCULES

  OEDIPUS

  ARGONAUTS

  TROY

  MYCENAE

  ODYSSEUS

  AENEAS

  ROME

  ROMULUS AND REMUS

  THE HORATII BROTHERS

  ONE-EYED HORATIUS

  SCAEVOLA

  CLOELIA

  LUCRETIA

  GENEALOGIES

  GREEK AND ROMAN GODS

  GLOSSARY

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  INDEX

  OH MY GODS

  INTRODUCTION

  Like most children, I loved stories of ancient gods and heroes. Zeus wielding his mighty thunderbolt, Hercules slaying monsters, battles raging before the walls of Troy—all these were favorite bedtime reading before my mother made me turn out the light. As I grew older, I continued to enjoy classical myths, so much so that I made the ancient world the focus of my life’s work as a college teacher. In the classroom I talk about the stories that so enchanted me with students who have signed up for mythology as a much-needed break from chemistry and calculus. They also read the myths as children and are now rediscovering in them the magic of a strange and distant world that echoes so clearly in their favorite modern stories by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and J. K. Rowling.

  Mythology is every bit as fascinating to the students now as it was when they were younger, but the stories we talk about in class are more surprising and shocking than those they knew from childhood. Likewise when I give presentations to visiting high school students, parents, or members of the community, the room is always full to overflowing if the topi
c is classical mythology. We talk about the familiar stories they read as boys and girls, but I include all the mayhem, madness, and sensuality of the original tales. Some always linger at the end of a presentation and confess that they still have their childhood book of myths carefully tucked away on a shelf. Then they ask where they can read more about the stories as the Greeks and Romans first told them. I always try to direct them to appropriate books, but aside from scholarly works, there hasn’t been much written on classical mythology for readers past childhood.

  Thus this book was born. In it I try to present the major Greek and Roman myths with all the sublime beauty and disturbing twists of the original stories so that readers can enjoy and appreciate the ancient tales as they were written long ago. We all know that Zeus was king of the gods, but did he use his immense power solely for good? Was Jason really a great hero who sailed across the sea to find the Golden Fleece or a selfish lout who succeeded only with the help of a clever and resourceful woman he later betrayed? And why did a young Roman wife named Lucretia feel she had to kill herself after she was raped by her husband’s best friend? These and many other vital aspects of mythology were understandably left out or glossed over in the stories we read as children. But for anyone ready to dig deeper, they provide astonishing insights into the Greek and Roman imagination.

  When we use the word “myth” today we usually mean a story that isn’t true, such as the claim that giant alligators live in the sewers of New York City. The ancient Greeks used the word mythos to mean anything spoken, though sometimes they applied the term more narrowly to a legendary tale as opposed to a strict historical account. Even modern scholars who spend their lives studying myths can’t agree on a precise definition, but most would say that a myth is a traditional story that possesses significant meaning. Whether or not a myth reflects a historical event is beside the point since it is the underlying message that matters. The power of the Trojan War story, for example, does not depend on whether or not there really was such a conflict between Greeks and Trojans at a particular time and place, but lies in the universal themes of love and loss, courage and anguish, life and death, that the tale preserves.

  There is a kind of natural selection that takes place among myths. Those that capture something essential to the human condition can be preserved for thousands of years. Those that are relevant only to a few are lost forever. The truly enduring myths may change over time as new generations discover their own lessons from the stories, but the core of the tales remains. The Greeks and Romans told countless stories that do not survive simply because no one found them compelling enough to keep alive. But those myths that spoke to the fundamental hopes and fears of humanity never died. Indeed, this is the very reason we read them still today.

  The classical world derived its myths from many sources. When the Greeks first entered the Balkan peninsula perhaps four thousand years ago, they brought with them stories inherited from their Indo-European ancestors. But these newcomers to the Aegean world were quick to embrace myths from the great centers of Near Eastern and African civilization. Minoans from Crete; Hittites and other Anatolian peoples from modern-day Turkey; Phoenician traders from the eastern Mediterranean; Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians from Mesopotamia; and Egyptians from the Nile valley all deeply influenced Greek mythology. It is no coincidence that Greek myths of creation bear a striking resemblance to the Babylonian Enuma Elish epic or that the Kumarbi Cycle of Hittite mythology parallels the struggle for divine supremacy among the Greek gods, just as echoes of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh are found in Homer. The Romans were likewise great borrowers, whether from their Etruscan neighbors or from the Greeks themselves.

  The flow of myth across cultures and through time is one of its most striking features. Mythology is never static, but takes on new shapes as it moves across generations and continents, yet it always preserves its fundamental message as it evolves. The latest Hollywood movies based on classical myths may use spectacular computer-generated effects, but it is the stories they tell as first recorded by ancient authors that bring these movies to life for modern audiences.

  When the Greeks arrived on the shores of the Aegean, they encountered far more civilized people than themselves. Foremost among these were the Minoans from the nearby island of Crete, who lived in palaces with grand courtyards, labyrinthine passageways, and beautifully painted frescoes of female figures, raging bulls, and idyllic scenes from nature. Though they spoke a completely different language, the Minoans were great sailors and merchants who traveled the seas bringing luxury goods and undoubtedly stories as well to the Greeks on the mainland. The Minoans were also literate, though their writing system etched on baked clay tablets is still a mystery to scholars. Their civilization was strong enough to survive the tremendous volcanic explosion on the small island of Thera (Santorini) just north of Crete. The memory of this cataclysm may have given birth to the legend of Atlantis, recorded over a thousand years later by Plato.

  Two centuries after much of Thera sank beneath the waves, Greeks from the mainland seized control of Crete and established kingdoms at palace centers on the mainland such as Mycenae, Thebes, Pylos, Athens, and Sparta. These were independent realms ruled by aristocratic families who sometimes warred with one another and sometimes cooperated in raids on other kingdoms. It is no coincidence that almost all these Bronze Age towns feature prominently in later Greek myth. They were to the classical Greeks what Camelot is to us today. In the greatest of all Greek stories—the tale of the Trojan War—Agamemnon of Mycenae leads a coalition of other Greek kings against the wealthy city of Troy at the entrance to the Black Sea to recover the fabled princess Helen. While it is doubtful any Greek king would go to war over a woman, the promise of glory and plunder may well have launched a thousand ships (or at least a few dozen) against the Trojans at the end of the Bronze Age.

  We have no written myths from Mycenaean times, though the Greeks of the period did make use of a syllabic writing system borrowed from the Minoans. Mycenaean clay tablets are rare as they survived only by accident in the hardening fires of burned palaces, but the limited information they contain is intriguing. They preserve the names of gods well known from later Greek mythology, such as Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, and Dionysus. Surprisingly, they don’t mention Demeter or Aphrodite, though this may simply be due to the small number of surviving tablets. The Mycenaean records reveal the existence of divine cults and organized worship, perhaps even human sacrifice, though the evidence for this is inconclusive. The tablets also contain names given to heroes in later myths, such as Achilles, Hector, Theseus, and Jason.

  Most of the Bronze Age palaces of Greece fell to outside invaders or internal dissension not long after 1200 B.C., but Greek culture and mythology continued to flourish throughout the next three centuries, a period known to modern scholars as the Dark Age of Greek history. It was dark only in the sense that written records disappeared, but in towns and villages throughout Greece and now across the Aegean where Greek colonists settled on the western coast of Asia Minor, the stories of gods and heroes flourished. With increasing contact at this time between Greeks and peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, stories flowed into Greece from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the interior of Asia Minor. When Phoenician traders introduced their alphabet to the Aegean about 800 B.C., the Greeks quickly adapted the Semitic symbols to their own language and set the stage for an explosion of creativity.

  Sometime around the year 750 B.C., a poet named Homer gathered together the stories of the great war against Troy and its aftermath and wove them into two extraordinary poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, that would become the touchstone for all of Greek mythology. These two epics were soon recorded in the new alphabet and quickly spread throughout the expanding Greek world. For later Greeks, who memorized much of the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation of their education, Homer was the master bard who first sang the wrath of Achilles, the love between Helen and Paris, and the adventures of Odysseus agai
nst the one-eyed Cyclops, deadly Sirens, and alluring goddesses in his long struggle to find his way home.

  But Homer was not the only Greek maker of myth. A shepherd named Hesiod was tending his flock on Mount Helicon one day when he says the Muses called to him to sing the stories of gods and mortals. Whether he was divinely inspired or not, his Theogony became the accepted account of creation in the classical world. His Works and Days, aside from offering a catalog of pithy advice to young men (i.e., “Marry a virgin who lives nearby,” and “Don’t urinate while walking down the road”), tells of the god Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven, and the beautiful maiden Pandora, who unleashed woe on men when she foolishly opened a jar full of evil (“box” is a later mistranslation). Soon after Hesiod, a whole collection of short poems erroneously labeled the Homeric Hymns spread throughout Greece. These popular songs celebrated the Olympic gods and provide us our earliest narrative stories of divinities such as Demeter, Apollo, and Aphrodite.