Oh My Gods, page 9
A few months later, Zeus removed the stitches in his leg and took out the baby, whom he named Dionysus. Since the child was delivered from two wombs, as it were, one mortal and one immortal, he became known as “twice-born.” Zeus gave the infant to Hermes, who took him to Semele’s sister Ino to be raised in secret, secure from the jealous eyes of Hera. The boy’s aunt even dressed Dionysus as a girl to keep him safe, but Hera was ever vigilant and vengeful. She drove Ino mad so that she killed her son Melicertes by throwing him into a boiling pot. In grief Ino then took the dead child and leapt into the sea, where she and the now-revived boy became sea gods, prayed to ever after by sailors in storms. Zeus found baby Dionysus before Hera could get her hands on him and turned him into a goat for his own protection. Then he spirited him away to distant Asia, where he was raised by the kindly nymphs of Nysa.
However, there is another story of the infancy of Dionysus told by the people of Laconia near Sparta. They say that Cadmus discovered his daughter was pregnant and scoffed at the idea that Zeus was the father. He was so angry that he took the girl and her newborn son and locked them both in a chest that he threw into the sea. The little craft drifted south along the coast until it was found by local villagers. They looked inside and found a dead girl holding her baby, weak and hungry but still alive. The villagers cared for the child until his aunt Ino came to their country in search of her sister and took the boy to raise herself. She nursed the child in a nearby cave and grove that became known as the Garden of Dionysus.
According to the more widely held tradition, however, after Dionysus had put aside his goat form and grown into a young god, he bade farewell to the nymphs who had raised him and set off to see the world. He had discovered the secret of making wine from grapes during his time in Nysa and wanted to spread this knowledge along with his religious cult throughout the world. He wandered far and wide until he came to the shores of the Aegean Sea. Wishing to cross to the island of Naxos, he hailed a ship of passing Etruscan pirates. Handsome young Dionysus was dressed in rich purple robes with dark hair sweeping down to his sturdy shoulders. The pirates took one look at him and decided they would make a pretty profit selling him into slavery in some distant land. They nodded to each other, then jumped off the ship as it approached the shore and grabbed the boy, forcing him on board. They planned to rape him as soon as they had him tied up, but the bonds kept slipping off his hands and feet. All the while Dionysus sat patiently on the deck, smiling.
The helmsman of the pirates, a pious man named Acoetes, alone understood what was happening and rebuked his shipmates: “You fools, don’t you see that you’ve taken a powerful god on board? No chains can hold him. He must be Poseidon or Apollo or perhaps Zeus himself. We must set him free at once and return him to the mainland or he will surely send a raging tempest to destroy us all.”
But the captain of the ship sneered and said, “Acoetes, you are an idiot. Pay attention to your sails and leave this boy to real men.”
But when the sails were hoisted, suddenly the mast of the ship began to sprout grapevines and the sails turned to ivy. Sweet wine flowed over the decks of the ship and wild animals appeared all around the pirates. Dionysus turned himself into a lion and roared with all his might. The sailors were terrified and leapt off the ship into the water. Their divine passenger then turned them all into dolphins, save for Acoetes, whom he spared. From that day forward dolphins have been kindly to humans since they themselves were once men.
Hera was not the forgiving sort and continued to pursue Dionysus in her anger. She drove the young god mad so that he wandered aimlessly through Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor until at last he came to the temple of the Great Mother goddess Cybele in Phrygia. With ecstatic rites of music and dancing, the priests and priestesses of the goddess cured Dionysus of his insanity and sent him gratefully on his way, followed by a faithful band of women known as the Bacchae (after Bacchus, another name for Dionysus), each carrying a thyrsus, a wooden wand wrapped in ivy leaves and crowned with a pine cone.
King Midas of Phrygia had received him warmly, so before he left the land of Cybele, Dionysus offered to grant the ruler his heart’s desire. The king was more kind than wise, so he immediately asked his divine visitor to make whatever he touched turned to gold. Dionysus agreed and Midas excitedly began to test his new gift. He touched an oak branch and saw it turn into a golden twig. Then he touched a stone, then the lofty pillars of his palace, all of which turned to gold. The king was thrilled and ran around his city touching everything he could find, to the amazement of his subjects.
At last the king grew weary and called for food and drink. The royal servants brought him platters of delicious food and goblets of sweet wine, but everything turned to gold when it touched the lips of Midas. The king was soon starving and his throat parched, but there was nothing he could do to satisfy his needs. He realized then how foolish he had been and prayed to Dionysus to lift this dreaded power from him. The god heard his prayer and told him to go and wash in a nearby stream. The king did as he was told and plunged into the river. The rocks in the streambed turned to gold, but the gift—or curse—of the golden touch left Midas forever.
Not every king was as welcoming to Dionysus as Midas had been. When the god crossed into Thrace, King Lycurgus seized the Bacchae and chased the young god into the sea. But Dionysus soon had his revenge. He freed his Bacchae and drove Lygurgus mad so that the king struck his own son with an ax, thinking he was a grapevine. Only after the boy was cut to pieces did Lycurgus recover his sanity and realize what he had done. The subjects of the king were so horrified at his actions that they tied the king to horses to be torn apart.
When Dionysus moved south into Greece he was welcomed by the inhabitants of Orchomenus, but the daughters of King Minyas wanted nothing to do with his wild new religion. They remained in their chambers like proper ladies and scorned those who followed the god into the mountains, wearing animal skins to dance and behave in such a vulgar and unseemly manner. Dionysus appeared to them in the form of a young girl and tried to persuade them that his rites were not an affront to the old ways. Wine was not evil, he explained, but was in fact necessary to achieve balance in life.
The daughters of Minyas, however, would hear nothing of it. Dionysus then filled the room with the sound of beating drums and tambourines. Milk and nectar dripped from the ceiling and an irresistible madness seized the women. They selected one of their own children by lot and tore him to pieces, greedily eating the raw flesh with their hands. Then they ran off to the mountains to join the other Bacchae in celebration of the god, after which Dionysus turned them into bats.
The daughters of King Proetus of Argos were just as unreceptive to the new ways of the god. They refused to worship him, so he struck them with madness. Along with the other women of the city, they killed their own children and ran into the mountains, until finally a healer named Melampus cured them in exchange for a large share of their father’s kingdom.
When Dionysus returned at last to his hometown of Thebes, he expected to be welcomed with open arms by all—but a prophet is seldom honored in his own country. His grandfather Cadmus and the seer Tiresias embraced his cult, but the women of the city and his cousin Pentheus, now the young king of Thebes, scorned him. Dionysus therefore drove the women mad and sent them into the hills with his followers, but for the king he had other plans.
To Pentheus, the worship of Dionysus was just a silly indulgence of the lustful and irrational nature of women. He believed the adoration of the god by the matrons of Thebes was simply an excuse to have an orgy in the forest: “It’s Aphrodite they’re devoted to, not Bacchus! I’ve captured some and put them under guard at the jail, but I’ll hunt down the rest in the mountains, even my mother Agave, and throw them into iron cages. I’ll put a stop to this filthy business, this worship of the so-called god Dionysus.”
Even when wise old Tiresias tried to explain to Pentheus that the proper worship of the god was all about finding balance in life, the king refused to listen. A spy, sent into the woods to report on the activities of the wayward women, reported back that they were merely drinking moderate amounts of wine and dancing to the flute, but Pentheus had already made up his mind that this new god was a dire threat to the social order of the city.
Dionysus then appeared to Pentheus disguised as one of his own priests and offered to take him to the mountains to see the Bacchic worship for himself. But first the king would have to dress as a woman and promise to watch the activities quietly from a tree. Like a lamb led to the slaughter, Pentheus agreed and followed Dionysus into the woods. No sooner had the pair arrived among the Bacchae than the god revealed the king’s true identity. The women, driven mad by Dionysus, pulled Pentheus out of the tree and began to tear off his limbs while he was still alive. His mother was at the forefront of the attack, first ripping off his arm at the shoulder then helping to butcher him. The ladies of Thebes laughed as they tossed parts of Pentheus back and forth as if it were all a game.
When at last the bloody affair was over, the women marched back to Thebes, Agave carrying her son’s head in her arms, believing that she had killed a lion. She looked all around the palace for Pentheus to show him her prize, but as the spell wore off, she realized the horrible truth. Dionysus then appeared and declared that it was all her fault, along with the rest of the stubborn Thebans, for rejecting him: “If you had only known how to keep your minds balanced, I, the son of Zeus, would have brought good fortune to you—but you would not welcome me.”
To drive home his harsh punishment, Dionysus then transformed his faithful grandfather Cadmus into a snake and his gentle grandmother Harmonia into a wild beast before sending them into exile along with Agave.
As cruel as Dionysus was to his grandparents and aunt, however, he loved his mother, Semele, very much. He lamented that she was confined to the dismal realm of Hades while he was allowed to live as a god. He therefore decided to journey to the underworld to rescue Semele and bring her back to the land of the living. The only problem was that he didn’t know the way. He searched high and low in vain for an entrance to Hades, until at last he came to an elderly man named Hypolipnus, who offered to show him a secret door. But in return, the lecherous guide demanded that the handsome young god have sex with him. Dionysus was in such a hurry that he agreed, but only after he had returned to the surface. After a long journey, the god found Semele and brought her back, but by this time Hypolipnus had died of old age. Still, a promise was a promise. The god took a branch from a nearby fig tree, carved an impressive likeness of his own penis, and put it in the tomb of Hypolipnus. Then at last he led his mother up to Mount Olympus, where Zeus and the other gods welcomed her and her son ever after as immortals.
CUPID
In some stories Eros was one of the first gods, born from Chaos after Mother Earth herself. This Eros was a primal force of procreation that drove all the other powers of the cosmos to mate and reproduce. But in later stories, Eros was the young son of Aphrodite who flew about the world shooting arrows of love into unwilling victims, such as Apollo or Zeus himself. This Eros was also known as Cupid and of him one of the best-loved myths of ancient times was told.
Once upon a time a king and a queen in a distant land had three young daughters of marriageable age. The oldest two were quite pretty and were sought by many potential husbands, but the youngest girl, named Psyche, possessed a beauty so astonishing that she drew visitors from many lands just for a glimpse of her face. Pilgrims came to the royal city to watch the girl pass by and threw garlands at her feet as if she were a goddess. Soon the temples and shrines of Aphrodite were neglected, for the people could see divine beauty in the mortal girl walking among them. Her sisters soon married, but Psyche was so lovely that no man thought himself worthy to seek her as a wife. She sat alone in her room weeping and miserable, wondering if she would forever be a virgin.
When Aphrodite found out that she was being ignored, she was furious.
“Here I am, the creator of all that is, the origin of the primordial elements, the mother of the whole world, forced to share my worship with a mortal woman!”
The goddess sent for her son Cupid and told him to get his arrows ready. Then she told him to shoot Psyche and make her fall madly in love with the meanest, vilest, most disgusting man who walked the face of the earth. She didn’t care who, she didn’t care how, as long as it guaranteed her a wretched life.
The girl’s father soon began to worry that having such a beautiful daughter might indeed be a curse from the gods. He sent to a sacred oracle and asked what he should do about Psyche. The message he received was frighteningly clear:
King, put the girl on a lofty mountain cliff dressed in her finest gown for a wedding—or a funeral. Your son-in-law will come to her there, but he won’t be a mortal. Indeed, he will be a savage, wild, and evil beast that flies through the air on wings and troubles the world with fire and sword. He is so terrible that Zeus and the gods shake at his approach, the rivers roll back, and all the shades in Hades tremble.
The poor father loved his daughter dearly and could not bear to abandon her to such a fate, but it was Psyche herself who led the way to the cliff dressed as a bride of death. She saw in the oracle the vengeful hand of Aphrodite and knew that it was pointless to resist. Then her brokenhearted parents and sisters left her there on the mountain to face her doom alone, knowing that it was impossible to fight the will of heaven.
For a long time Psyche waited for something terrible to happen, when without warning a gentle wind lifted her from the cliff and carried her down to the valley far below. There she saw a beautiful palace that she knew immediately was created by divine hands. She entered and saw that the walls were made of gold and even the floors were covered with precious jewels. A voice then spoke from somewhere in the castle saying that he was one of many servants of his lord and all she beheld was hers. If she desired anything, she had only to ask. The invisible servants prepared a fine dinner for their new mistress and drew her bath, then showed her the way to her bedchamber.
Alone in her room, Psyche began to fear for what would happen next. She had been instructed by her mother and sisters how to behave on her wedding night, but as a maiden she had no experience with ordinary men let alone gods or monsters, whoever might be the master of this house. The sun slowly set and the room grew dark as the hours passed, but still Psyche lay in her bed waiting. Suddenly she felt a presence next to her and gasped as an unseen man took her in his arms. Her husband made passionate love to her all through the night, but was gone before the first rays of the sun entered the windows of the chamber. This happened again the next night, then again the next, until at last Psyche began to look forward to the visits of her invisible lover.
One night as they lay together, Psyche’s unseen husband warned her that under no circumstances could she ever see his face. She was pregnant, he revealed, and her child would be a god—if she made no attempt to discover his identity. Psyche was reluctant, but promised she would obey. But please, please, couldn’t she bring her sisters here for a visit just to show them she was safe?
Her lover agreed but urged her yet again not to give into temptation. The next day, when the two sisters of Psyche arrived at the very cliff where she had waited for her doom, the wind gently picked them up and carried them to the castle far below where Psyche was waiting. She embraced them and eagerly showed both the wonders of the grand palace. Her visitors sat down to a glorious feast and enjoyed luxuries they could never have imagined. As the sun began to set, Psyche bade them farewell and the wind carried them back to the top of the mountain.
It was then that envy seized the two sisters.
“Cruel fate,” said the elder of the pair. “Our little sister enjoys the life of a goddess while I share my bed with a fat old husband as bald as a pumpkin!”
“That’s nothing,” replied the other. “My husband is bent double with arthritis. I spend my days more as a nurse than wife, rubbing his joints with some disgusting salve that burns my delicate hands. I don’t care if she is our sister, it’s not fair that Psyche should share the embraces of a handsome young god in a glorious palace. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see that she loses everything she has!”
The elder sister agreed and they began to make their plans. The next day the wind bore them from the cliff to visit Psyche again, but this time the evil pair were determined to strike fear into their sister’s heart. They told her stories of neighboring farmers who had seen a giant snake slithering through the forest on his way to her castle. They warned the girl that he was just waiting until she was ready to deliver her child so that he could eat her alive as a plump, tasty meal. Psyche was horrified and denied it was true, but when the sisters had left, she began to wonder.
That night after her husband had fallen asleep beside her, she took an oil lamp and sharp knife and approached the still figure. Holding the lamp up to his face, she was ready to cut off the monster’s head—but she saw instead the loveliest man she could ever imagine lying in her bed. His cheeks were fair and rosy, while his hair flowed down in ringlets onto his perfect body. At his feet were a bow and arrow that she picked up, pricking herself on the sharp point of one dart. As if she needed any prodding, immediately she fell deeply in love with her sleeping husband, whom she now knew was Cupid himself.
