The Song of Orpheus (11 page)

The sailors didn’t understand the sacred language that Medea used in her chant, nor did they see the hideous fanged spirits that flew to Talos at her bidding, but they could tell that something powerful was happening.

Talos, standing on the cliff holding a boulder high above his head, was bewildered. What was that little purple human doing? And why was he suddenly being bombarded with gruesome visions? He lowered the boulder and backed away from the spirits. As he did so, his ankle grazed the sharp edge of a rock, pulling out the nail that held in his precious bodily fluid.

As the ichor poured out of his vein, Talos’s vision grew dim and his head spun. The strength fled from his limbs, and he crashed to the earth like a gigantic tree felled by a woodsman’s axe.

And that was the end of the bronze man of Crete. We went ashore and filled our water barrels, and then the oarsmen rowed away as fast as they could.

We’re almost there! Just two more, and I’ll be done, as long as the sun doesn’t set first.

I wonder if Eurydice misses me. It’s been three thousand years, after all. Only one way to find out—I have to think of more stories.

Let’s see, there’s been too much death lately. How about something funny, a story that shows someone tricking the gods? That way, even if I don’t make it to the underworld today, at least I’ll have a laugh.

The brothers Ephialtes (his name means “nightmare”) and Otos (“doom”) were sons of Poseidon, the god of the sea. They were called the Aloadae—the Crushers—and they were huge. When they were nine years old, they were already twenty-seven cubits tall, which is about forty feet in your measurements, and they kept on growing.

One day, the Aloadae appeared before the throne of Zeus, at the palace of the immortals on Mount Olympos. Zeus hadn’t invited them to visit and was a little startled to see them, but he decided to be polite. They were his nephews, after all, since Poseidon was his brother, and so he ordered food and drink to be served. The Olympians gathered at the table but soon lost their appetites when Ephialtes wolfed down an entire cow. Otos, who wasn’t quite so hungry, was satisfied with a whole pig. The two giants consumed whole loaves of bread and pitcher after pitcher of wine.

When they were finally satisfied, Zeus asked the brothers, “To what do I owe the, er, pleasure of this visit?”

Ephialtes belched and Otos wiped his greasy hands on a passing sheep. “We need wives,” he said.

Zeus was confused. “And what can I do to help you with that?”

Ephialtes leaned back and pointed at Zeus’s wife, Hera, who couldn’t hide her disgust. “I want
her
.” Hera’s disgust instantly turned to fury.

“And I’ll take this one.” Otos grabbed the goddess of the moon, Artemis, who had grown bored and was trying to sneak away to go on a hunt. She twisted out of his grasp and stood fuming behind her father.

“Now, boys,” Zeus protested, “this isn’t funny. Come, tell me what you really want. Name any girl on earth—or any nymph—and I’ll see that she’s yours.”

“I want
her
,” Ephialtes repeated, leering at the queen of the gods, and Otos said, “And I said I’ll take that feisty one.” Artemis eluded his grasp this time.

Zeus rose from his throne and thundered, “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!” He flung his arm at the Aloadae, and lightning crackled from his fingertips.

The brothers tumbled down the slopes of Mount Olympos. But faster than seemed possible for such enormous beings, they were soon on their feet again and racing up the mountain.

“Quick!” Hermes shouted, flapping the wings on his sandals. He shot up into the air, followed hastily by the rest of the gods. They settled onto a cloud and watched as Ephialtes and Otos roared in frustration, leaping up to grab at the feet that the gods dangled just out of their reach.

“They’ll get bored and go home soon,” Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, said reassuringly. The gods settled down to wait.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the huge brothers went trotting down the mountain. The relieved gods were preparing to go back home when, to their dismay, they saw that the Aloadae had reappeared, carrying something enormous between them. Apollo leaned dangerously far over the edge of the cloud to see what it was. When he sat up again, he appeared perplexed.

“They’re bringing another mountain,” he said. The gods peered down and saw the brothers drop the mountain on top of Mount Olympos, which brought the new mountain’s peak alarmingly close to them.

A bewildered-looking shepherd and a flock of sheep that had been grazing on the topmost slope of the newly-arrived mountain stared up at the gods. “I would get out of there if I were you,” the wise goddess Athena advised him. The man scampered down the hill, driving his flock in front of him. He was just in time, for an instant later, a third mountain landed right where he had been standing. Now the Aloadae were almost within reach of the cloud where the gods were huddled.

“What are we going to do now?” little Ganymede, the cupbearer of the gods, asked anxiously.

“I’m not going to put up with this!” the war god, Ares, shouted, and he flew at the brothers, his sword drawn. But Ephialtes grabbed him. He stuffed the furious god into an empty wine jar and put a stopper in its mouth. He and Otos laughed until they cried at the muffled shouts of “Let me out of here!” that came from the jar.

At last, the Aloadae became bored with their attempt to reach the gods. But they didn’t go home. For the next thirteen months, they lay around on the mountain, grabbing and roasting sheep from passing flocks, stealing wine from farmers, and in general making a nuisance of themselves. Meanwhile, Ares shouted and pounded in the wine jar, and the rest of the gods remained trapped on the cloud.

When Artemis couldn’t stand it anymore, she dropped two of her spears, accidentally on purpose, off the cloud. When the brothers picked them up with glee, she flew down, making sure they didn’t see her. She landed behind a bush and turned herself into a deer.

“Be careful, daughter,” Zeus breathed from his perch in the clouds. He had no idea what she was planning, but
something
had to be done.

Her small hooves making scarcely any noise, Artemis came out from behind the bush. Then she deliberately stepped on a twig, which cracked loudly enough to catch the attention of the Aloadae. She approached the brothers on her slender deer legs, her huge brown eyes watching them as they fumbled with the spears she had dropped, which looked like tiny toys in their enormous hands.

Suddenly, she ran between them. Simultaneously, the brothers shouted, “I’ve got her!” and hurled their weapons just at the moment that Artemis made a mighty leap to safety. Ephialtes’s spear landed in Otos’s chest, and Otos’s spear pierced Ephialtes’s, and both of them dropped dead.

Artemis turned herself back into her normal form and freed Ares. He didn’t even stop to thank her, just went screaming out and up into the heavens, shaking his bow and arrows in fury that his tormentors had died before he’d had a chance to take his revenge.

The Aloadae didn’t escape punishment, however. I saw them when I was in the realm of the dead, and they’re miserable. They’re spending eternity tied back-to-back to a column, on top of which sits a screech owl that makes so much noise, day and night, that the brothers never find peace.

Just one more to go! It’s about time, too. See how low the sun is? If I don’t tell you another story you haven’t heard in the next few minutes, I’ll lose all chance of seeing Eurydice again. I’ll be stuck here, just another rock in another forest somewhere in the world, and the water running down my front really will be my tears.

Okay, honestly? They’ve been tears the whole time. I just said they were condensation because nowadays some people think it’s a sign of weakness for a man to cry. I prefer my own time, when manly tears were nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway, if I fail, at least I won’t need to tell stories anymore, which I guess will be a relief. Maybe I’ll wait until people come by and yell “Boo!” just to see them jump. But I’d rather be released from this rock and go back to the realm of the dead, for good this time, and be with my dear Eurydice forever.

Let’s see, one more. What shall I tell you about? I’m all talked out. This is really the end.

What do you mean, I should tell you about that? About what? Oh, about the end! I see—I started off by telling you how the world and everything else came into being. So you think I should finish by telling you how humans will come to an end, according to the Greeks? Have you heard that one?

Notice I didn’t say “how the world will come to an end” but “how
humans
will come to an end.” That’s because we Greeks thought that the world itself is eternal. Humanity is another matter. The poet Hesiod, the first person anyone knows of who wrote down the myths in Greece, talked about the “progression” of mankind in his book
Works and Days
.

According to Hesiod, the gods created the first humans, the “golden race,” with their own hands. The gods loved their creation, and the first people loved the gods. This golden-age generation lived surrounded by fruits and vegetables, and the people watched over plentiful flocks. They never suffered from illness, and death came to them peacefully at the end of a long, happy life. Eventually, all the golden-age people died, but their spirits remain on earth to watch over humanity.

But the gods were unhappy, since no one was left alive to worship them. So they tried creating humans again. The resulting “silver race” wasn’t quite as successful as their first attempt. Each of its members spent one hundred years as a foolish child and died soon after reaching adulthood. Worst of all, the silver-age people neglected the gods, so Zeus destroyed them. They became the gloomy spirits of the underworld.

The next try was an utter disaster. Zeus worked alone this time, but he didn’t do very well. The new people, the “bronze race,” were arrogant, hard-hearted, and violent. The gods didn’t have to bother to destroy them, because they killed one another. Their spirits went to the deepest part of the underworld. I think I saw some of them there, but they weren’t the kind of people I felt like hanging around with, so I didn’t stay long enough to make sure.

Race number four worked out better. The people that Zeus created in his second solo attempt were the ones we know from mythology: the heroes and demi-gods who did magnificent deeds and founded great cities. Unfortunately, they also tended to kill one another in dreadful wars. The members of the heroic race who survived are still alive today, Hesiod says, but they live far away from us, at the ends of the earth. They dwell on the shore of Okeanos, the eternal ocean that existed even before the gods came into being, where the fields and trees bear fruit in three separate springs every year. Remember Okeanos, from the first story I told you?

When the heroic race turned out to be a bust, Zeus ordered a fifth generation to be made, and that’s us. We, according to Hesiod, are the “race of iron.” We work hard, and many of us suffer. Still, we have some good things in our lives to keep us happy. But, Hesiod warns, things will get really bad. Babies will already be old when they’re born. Parents and children will fight with one another, the laws of hospitality will be forgotten, evildoers will be praised, and envy, “with a scowling face,” will go among humans.

At that point, the spirits who make up human conscience, Aidos (“shame over bad behavior”) and Nemesis (“righteous indignation”), will give up on mankind and depart from the earth to join the gods. Society will fall apart, and all that will remain to people is sorrow.

Hesiod doesn’t say how—or even if—our generation of iron will end or whether another one will come after us. Instead, he follows his chapter on the ages of man with a short fable. It’s about a hawk that has seized a nightingale in its talons and scolds it when it cries out. The hawk says, “It’s up to me whether to eat you or to let you go. It’s stupid to try to fight against someone stronger than you, because you’re not going to win. You’ll just get hurt worse and will make a fool of yourself. So you might as well shut up and at least keep your dignity, and maybe I’ll take pity on you and let you go.” Perhaps the poet is telling us there’s a glimmer of hope that the iron race won’t be destroyed, as long as we don’t complain and carry on as best we can.