Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths

Zeus brought the twins to Olympus, instructing Hephaestus to craft a golden bow, arrows, and chariot for Apollo. Zeus asked Artemis what she wanted, and she asked to be a maiden forever, with a silver bow and arrows, a short tunic suitable for running, wood nymphs to hunt with, ocean nymphs to sing for her, and a pack of swift hunting dogs. She also asked for many names, for the mountains to be designated her sacred place, and for a city. Zeus granted every request and invited her to hand-pick her gifts.

Artemis and her nymphs travelled to the Cyclopes’s workshop for her silver bow and arrow. Brontes, the lead Cyclops, tried to make her sit in his lap, but she pulled out his chest hair. She visited Pan in Arcadia to collect a pack of dogs. Eyeing her nymphs, he initially asked for something in return. When she told him that they had taken an unbroken vow of chastity, he gave her his ten best dogs. Eager to try out her new gifts, she went hunting with her dogs and nymphs and destroyed “a city of unjust men” with one arrow (43).

Her presence riding over the mountains with her bow, nymphs in tow, earned her many names, among them “Goddess of the Moon,” “Lady of the Wild Things,” and “the Maiden” (43). She permitted no man near her. One young man called Actaeon saw her bathing, and she turned him into a stag that was then torn apart by his own dogs. Her nymphs were not always able to keep their vow. Zeus seduced one called Callisto. Artemis turned her into a bear and would have had her dogs tear the bear apart, but Zeus intervened, setting Callisto among the stars.

Apollo in his golden chariot was god of the sun and later “became patron of music, poetry, mathematics, and medicine” (44). As an established god, Apollo would grow to preach prudence and moderation, but in his youth, he was cruel and wild, angering Zeus and threatening his place among the gods.

His first act upon receiving his bow and arrow was to chase Python, the serpent who had tormented his mother while she was pregnant. Apollo killed Python but in the process violated the sacred shrine where Mother Earth’s oracles lived. Even the gods consulted the oracles—priestesses who told future events in riddles. Apollo ordered them “to prophesy in his name,” prompting Mother Earth to complain to Zeus (45). To appease her, Apollo instituted competitive games at Delphi, naming them the Pythian Games after his defeated enemy.

Apollo could also act cruelly. He challenged Marsyas, a satyr who earned praise for his musical talent, to a contest judged by the Muses. After the Muses declared a draw in the first round, Apollo added a challenge he knew Marsyas could not fulfill: to play his instrument upside-down. When Marsyas failed the challenge, the Muses declared Apollo the winner, and Apollo killed Marsyas by flaying him alive.

During his competition with Marsyas, Apollo attracted Thalia, the Muse of festivities, and with her fathered the Corybantes, who danced at rituals (47). With Cyrene, a huntress, Apollo fathered a son called Aristeus who taught mortals about beekeeping, olive and cheese cultivation, and other arts. To get close to the nymph Dryope without her gossipy companions noticing, Apollo turned himself into a tortoise and then a hissing snake. They had a son called Amphissus, who founded cities and built temples.

Apollo’s most famous son was Asclepius, born to Coronis, a Thessalian princess who was in love with the Arcadian prince Ischys. While Coronis was pregnant, Apollo travelled to Delphi, leaving a white crow to watch over her. At Delphi, the oracle revealed that Coronis and Ischys were together. Shortly after, the crow arrived with the same news. Furious, Apollo cursed the crow, scorching its feathers black and all crows’ feathers likewise. Apollo ordered Artemis to kill Coronis with one of her arrows, then delivered their son from Coronis’s dead body and gave the child to Hermes. Impressed with the child’s intelligence, Hermes gave him to the centaur tutor Chiron to raise.

Chiron taught Asclepius about medical care, herbs, and hunting, and Asclepius earned his father’s approval by becoming famous for his skills in these areas. Apollo sent Asclepius to Athene to learn the secrets of mortality. She gifted him a vial of Gorgon’s blood that could raise the dead, angering Hades, who complained to Zeus that he was being robbed of souls. Zeus killed Asclepius with his thunderbolt, sending Apollo into a raging fury. Apollo stormed into Hephaestus’s forge and killed the Cyclops who had crafted the thunderbolt. Zeus was going to banish Apollo to Tartarus, but Leto intervened. Instead, Zeus brought Asclepius back to life, warning him not to offend the gods in future.

Jealous of Zeus’s attention to Apollo, Aphrodite caused her son, Eros, to pierce Apollo with an arrow of love and to pierce the nymph Daphne with an arrow of indifference. When Apollo chased her, Daphne cried out to her father, the river god Penaeus, to save her. He turned her into a laurel tree, and the tree gave Apollo a gift: a wreath of laurel leaves with which “to crown heroes and poets and young men who win games” (51).

Precocious and mischievous, Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia. Minutes after being born, he snuck out of the cave where he lived with his mother to steal the cattle of his brother Apollo, carefully covering his tracks. Some time later, Apollo heard a beautiful sound coming from a cave and stopped to investigate. There, he discovered Hermes using cow gut to string an instrument—a lyre—crafted from a tortoise shell. Apollo was angry at his brother for stealing his cattle, but Hermes deflected his brother’s anger by telling him that he sacrificed one of the cows to the twelve Olympian gods. When Apollo pointed out that there were only eleven, Hermes declared his intention to become the twelfth.

Hermes traded his lyre and a set of pipes he created to Apollo in exchange for Apollo’s herdsman’s staff and its domain. Apollo also agreed to teach Hermes augury and to take him to Olympus to meet their father. Charmed by Hermes’s “wit and impudence,” Zeus agreed to make the boy the messenger of the gods (55). Hermes’s domains grew to include lying, thieving, gambling, commerce, treaties, and traveling, including leading the souls of the dead to the underworld.

Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and of Hera, who hoped for a beautiful child to overshadow Zeus’s demigod children. Hephaestus, however, was “shriveled and ugly, with an irritating bleating wail” (56). Appalled, Hera threw him off the side of Olympus. A full day passed before he hit the ground at the seashore and broke both his legs. A wave eventually swept him out to sea, and he sank to the bottom, falling into the arms of a naiad, Thetis, who cared for him in her grotto.

Hephaestus’s skill at crafting jewelry impressed Thetis. She wore one of his necklaces to a festival, attracting Hera’s admiration. When Thetis described the child who fell into the sea, Hera realized it was her son and brought him back to Olympus. In exchange for Hephaestus’s crafts Hera gave him forges and bellows, Cyclopes as assistants, and Aphrodite as his bride. He became the god of smithing and mechanics.

Aphrodite, the goddess of desire, love, and beauty, was the most celebrated of all gods and mortals and was “never distracted from her duties” (58). Her birth resulted from “the primal murder”: When Cronos murdered his father, Ouranos, and threw the dismembered compose into the sea, Aphrodite rose out of the foam rose and Poseidon’s white horses carried her to Cythera island.

When Zeus brought Aphrodite to Olympus, Hera cautioned him to marry her off quickly. Zeus invited suitors to offer Aphrodite gifts. First Poseidon promised her the sea’s treasures and powers. Apollo offered her a golden chariot, Muses as her handmaidens, and a crown crafted of sun-gold. Hermes pledged “a rich pageant of adventure and gossip so that she would never grow bored” (60). Finally, Hera brought forth Hephaestus, who told her that he worked late and would “make a good husband for a girl like you” (60). Aphrodite chose Hephaestus and later whispered to her other suitors that they could still bring her their gifts.