Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (35 page)

Earth's children obeyed their mother. The Cyclopes forged and honed their iron sickle. Working furiously in the crater that was their smithy, they cast lumps of iron into the volcano's flames, drew out the red-hot ingots with iron tongs, laid them on the enormous slab of basalt that was their anvil, and hammered out massive rings, which they bent into each other until they had a chain strong enough to hold a god in his agony.

When sickle and chain were ready, Mother Earth whistled up her secret children, the hundred-handed giants. They came to her and she told them what to do.

That night, Uranus wrapped himself in a fleecy cloud and lay down to sleep on a plateau atop Mount Olympus. He awoke from a dream of falling to find himself actually underground in a dungeon cave of Tartarus, later to become the home of the dead. His massive body was chained to a granite pillar, and for all his titanic strength he could not break the links. Giant shapes stood guard. He recognized the glowing single eyes of the Cyclopes and realized with a terrible pang of grief that his mutilated children had risen against him. What a surprise, then, to see that his youngest son, the beautiful Cronos, was the one stepping toward him now, swinging a huge blade.

“Why you?” cried Uranus. “I have never harmed you.”

“And never shall, dear father. My mother has taught me what to do.”

“Spare me!” cried Uranus.

“Farewell,” said Cronos. He swung his sickle, shearing the head of Uranus from his body.

As the head rolled in the dust, it spoke, saying: “You murder me now and take my throne. But a son of yours shall do the same to you. Live in fear, Cronos, for a severed head never lies.”

3

The Betrayals

Now Cronos was king of the gods, Lord of the Sky and All Beneath, wielding awful power. Nevertheless, he could not forget those words uttered from the bloody dust and did indeed live in fear. The fear grew worse at night. He remembered it was at night that his father had been whisked from his mountain-top to the place of execution. So Cronos slept poorly and was tormented by nightmares. Finally, he complained to his mother.

“Get married,” she said.

“Why?”

“A good wife brings dreamless sleep.”

“My father thought he had a good wife, and look what happened to him.”

“Ungrateful wretch!” shouted Gaia. “Do you dare reproach me? Me, your mother, who saved you from your father's deadly jealousy and showed you how to become king of the gods?”

“I'm sorry, mother. I know how much I owe to your loving care. Whom shall I marry?”

“There's only one wife for you—my strongest, wisest, most beautiful daughter, the goddess Rhea, who will become Mother Earth after me.”

“Very well. Prepare the wedding.”

For a while after his marriage Cronos slept soundly and did not dream. But then a thought hit him.

“Was it really wise to get married?” he muttered to himself. “Rhea will surely give me sons, and it was a son my father warned me against. Or am I jumping at shadows? My mother loves me best. Had there been danger in wedlock, she would never have made me marry. Nevertheless, there are certain steps I can take. After all, I needed powerful allies to dispose of my father. I'll see to it that no rebellious son of mine will have the same help.”

Whereupon Cronos performed his second great act of treachery. He visited the crater smithy where the Cyclopes wrought their marvelous tools and weapons and ornaments. He stood on the anvil and spoke to the giant figures whose single eyes were like pits of red light in the flickering forge fires. And he made his voice as sweet as the wind blowing off the mountain to sing among the pines and cedars.

“Brothers, sisters, dear Cyclopes clan, I owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be paid. In my youth you helped me against my savage sire, who was bent on my destruction. I remember … I remember … and have always loved you for what you did on that night long ago. Now, dearest kinfolk, I am in danger again. Enemies plot against me. Once again I need the help that only you can give. Matchless smiths that you are, use your skill, I pray, to fashion an iron cage with bars so massively wrought that no creature in heaven, on earth, or beneath it, no leviathan that prowls the depths of the sea shall be able to break out of that cage once its gate is bolted. Brothers, sisters, will you once again help your king in his hour of need?”

Cronos knew this was the way to handle the great, simple-hearted brutes. He knew that they were so parched for affection, so raw inside from being disliked by everyone, that they would believe anything he said if he praised them first and pretended to like them.

They did believe him and were eager to please him. They worked night and day until they had built an enormous cage, strong enough to hold a herd of wild elephants. The Cyclopes sent word to Cronos that the cage was finished and ready to receive his enemies.

Cronos came to the smithy, but not alone. He had instructed the hundred-handed giants to follow him to the crater and wait hidden on the slope until he called them. He entered the smithy and laughed with joy when he saw the huge cage. It was set on wheels, as he had asked, and its gate was bolted by an iron shackle whose link was as thick as the bars.

“Good work!” he cried. “But is it really as strong as it looks?”

“Stronger!” they shouted.

“Let's test it,” he said. “It is very well known that you Cyclopes are the most powerful creatures in the entire world. If the cage can hold you, it can hold anyone. Please enter the cage, all of you. I'll chain the gate and you must try to break out. It's the only way to test what you have made.”

The Cyclopes yelled and clanged their tools; they were pleased with themselves. They filed into the cage laughing because they knew it was made so strong that even they, with all their volcanic force, could not escape. When the last one had entered, Cronos wrapped the chain around the sliding gate and stuck the great bolt through its links.

“Try to get out!” he called.

The Cyclopes flung themselves at the bars. They seized them with their enormous hands and tried to bend them. The bars held. Some of them had brought their sledgehammers inside. They swung the mallets, striking the bars, the gate and chain. Metal rang against metal in a hideous din. The very walls of the crater shook. But the cage held.

“It is strong, brother!” they called. “Stronger than strong! Now let us out. Open the gate and let us out.”

No one answered. They peered through the bars and saw only the forge fire and the dancing red shadows. Cronos had vanished.

“Cronos!” they cried. “Brother! King! Come open the gate!”

Thick shapes blotted the shadows. They saw the hundred-handed giants slithering into the smithy like giant centipedes. Silently, the invaders reached with their hundred hands. Silently, they seized the cage and rolled it out of the crater and down a chain of rocky passages—down, down to the deepest cavern that lies at the root of the mountain called Olympus. And there they left the cage and its cargo of leaping, howling, weeping Cyclopes.

Midway up the cavern chain, they met Cronos coming down. “Oh, best of giants,” he cried, “handiest of helpers! You have done me a great service this day. You have helped me rid myself of the monsters who dared plot against me. And now I shall reward you. Follow me down again and I shall lead you to my richest treasure vault, which is stacked high with bars of gold and chests of diamonds and rubies and emeralds. All shall be yours!”

Greedily, the giants followed him. They didn't know that they, in turn, were being followed. They were so drunk with visions of treasure that they didn't realize they were being trailed down the rocky tunnel by a band of Titans, those elder brothers of Cronos, who had become his court and served him in all ways.

Cronos led the giants down to a cave that had a narrow mouth but widened suddenly into a great chamber. It was just one level up from where the Cyclopes were penned—close enough, indeed, so that the giants could hear a faint shrieking as it drifted up through the rock floor. But they paid no heed. They rushed into the dark chamber, which grew darker still as the Titans came racing down the tunnel and rolled an enormous boulder across the mouth of the cave.

The giants milled about in the vanishing light, stunned that Cronos, who had used them to imprison the Cyclopes, was now imprisoning them.

But the realization grew. They knew they were being sealed up in the bowels of the earth. They raged and frothed, leaped and shouted. They pounded at the rock until their many hands were lumps of bloody gristle. But the rock stood against their blows. The Titans trundled other boulders down the tunnel, wedging them against the first great rock that blocked the portal, until the whole corridor was choked with boulders and the only way to free the captives would be to tear the mountain up by its roots.

4

The Cannibal God

With the Cyclopes and the giants now buried beneath tons of earth, Cronos slept peacefully again. But after a while he began to hear a faint shrieking at night. It seemed to be seeping out of the earth and floating up to the top of Mount Olympus, and he realized that the caged Cyclopes and the sealed-up giants must be howling underground.

“Ridiculous,” he said to himself. “Why should I let these sounds bother me? They can't get out no matter how they howl.”

After some time the howling stopped, or he stopped hearing it, and Cronos almost forgot his prisoners. But now mighty oaks had grown from certain patches of earth where pieces of Uranus were buried, and when the wind blew, the oak leaves seethed, murmuring: “Beware, Cronos, beware.…”

In his sleep, Cronos heard the trees talking, and he was seized again by nightmare—which grew worse when Rhea told him she was pregnant.

“Will our firstborn be a son?” he whispered to himself. “Is this the one who will try to overthrow me as my father foretold? Hah! I'll give the seditious brat no chance. If it's a boy, I'll drown him like a kitten. A daughter I may let live, for I am tender-hearted.”

But when his first child appeared, Cronos was in such a hurry to get rid of it that he didn't wait to find out whether it was a boy or a girl, nor did he take the time to drown it. He simply swallowed it whole, as a cat swallows a grasshopper. It all happened so quickly that Rhea believed him when he told her that the infant had been born dead and that he had swiftly disposed of it so that she would not be saddened by the sight of the tiny corpse.

And she believed him the second time she gave birth and the babe vanished. She half believed him the third time. But by the fourth time she was growing mistrustful. She tried to fight against her suspicions. Her husband was displaying greater grief at the loss of each child, and this confused her.

Then her fifth infant vanished before she could hold it in her arms. Cronos, weeping, told her that this one had also been born dead and that he had quickly burned the body to save her from distress. This time she found she could not believe him. He was sobbing loudly but his eyes were gleaming, and not with tears. Besides, she realized that he seemed a little fatter after each child vanished.

Rhea went to old Mother Earth and told her tale. “I have been wondering about this,” said Gaia. “All the rest of my Titan brood is very fertile; they have given me hundreds of grandchildren—big, beautiful ones. You and Cronos alone have given me none.”

“Oh, mother, what shall I do?”

“Send Cronos to me.”

Cronos came to her and she said, “Have you been murdering your children?”

“They were born dead. Didn't Rhea tell you?”

“She told me much. Now you must tell what it means.”

“Well, mother, your youngest daughter, the wife you chose for me, seems incapable of producing a live infant. But I'll pretend no grief. For you must know what my father foretold with his last breath: that a son of mine would do to me what I was doing to him.”

“Then you
have
been killing them?”

“No need. They were born dead.”

“You're a liar, my son.”

“I am king. The truth is what I say it is.”

“Cronos, I have loved you well, too well. For your sake I have committed crimes. I taught you to defend yourself against a murderous, evil father, thinking that your beauty was a sign of goodness and that you would reign justly and wisely over the boiling seas and the new-made earth and all the different kinds of things coming in to being. Now, alas, I see you turning into the very image of your bloody father. Stop, son. Stop, now! Don't devour your children. Let them live and grow. And I shall forgive you. Rhea will forgive you. The blessings of the earth and its fountains shall be upon you. And you shall reign happily and well.”

“I am king, mother.”

“So was your father.”

“I am king and intend to remain king. I am the one to forgive or condemn, to bless or curse, to bestow life or death, as I please.”

Gaia left him and went to Rhea. “You must be brave, my daughter,” she said. “There is a way to save your next child, but it will require a great deal of courage on your part.”

“Tell me what to do.”

“When you become pregnant again, pretend you're not until you can no longer conceal your condition. Then lie to him about the date so that he won't be expecting you to go into labor until some time after you actually do. No one will know the truth except you and me. I shall attend your labor and be your midwife, and when the child is born, I shall take it to a safe place. Afterward, you will tell your husband that you have miscarried.”

“But my child, my first live one, how can I bear not to have it with me?”

“You shall visit him every day. I promise.”

“Will it be a boy?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I can't tell you, but I will tell you this: when I know something without knowing how, it always comes true. If we properly deceive your husband, you shall have a son and a mighty one—the next king of the gods, if all goes well.”