The idea of bargaining with immortality as a currency is a repeated theme in Greek mythology. Prometheus can leave Tartarus only when the immortal Chiron takes his place. Pollux shares his immortality so that he and his mortal twin, Castor, are always together.
Heracles has a tense relationship with centaurs. Once when visiting his friend Pholus, a centaur, he accidentally opened a jar of sacred wine whose scent caught the attention of other centaurs, who joined the party, drank unwatered wine, and got so drunk that they attacked Heracles. In the ensuing fight, Pholus ran away, Chiron suffered a never-healing wound, and many centaurs died.
Omphale
Having been liberated by Eurystheus, Heracles decided to find himself a wife. But no man was willing to give him his daughter and no woman was willing to marry a man who had killed his own children.
Then Heracles learned that Eurytus of Oechalia was offering his daughter, Iole, to any man who could beat him and his sons in an archery contest. Heracles participated in the contest and won, but Eurytus refused to give him his daughter. Angered, Heracles stole Eurytus’s cattle and killed his youngest son, Iphitus, who, ironically, admired him greatly.
As punishment for this crime, Heracles had to spend three years as a slave to Queen Omphale of Lydia. And she delighted in not just making him her lover, but also dressing him up as a woman.
The idea of a Greek hero wearing women’s clothes for the pleasure of an oriental queen disturbed many Greeks who were comfortable with man–boy love but not cross-dressing. In contrast, Hindu mythology is full of tales where Hindu gods cross-dress for the pleasure of their mothers and wives. In temples, Krishna is often made to wear the nose-ring of his beloved Radha, and tie his hair in a plait.
There were lost comedies of how Heracles is forced to wear women’s clothes and spin thread while Omphale wore his lion skin cloak and held his olive-wood club.
Lydia is modern-day Turkey. Long has the West held the view that the East emasculates men as evinced in the tale of Omphale cross-dressing Heracles.
Deianira
Finally, Heracles managed to get a wife in Calydon. Her name was Deianira. But marrying her was not easy. He had to first defeat the river god Achelous who also wanted to wed her.
Heracles and his new bride decided to make their home in the city of Trachis. On the way, they had to cross a river. Heracles could swim across it, but not his bride. Nessus, a centaur, offered to carry Deianira across on his back. Heracles accepted and put his bride on the centaur’s back before swimming across the river himself. When he reached the other bank, he saw that Nessus had stopped in the middle of the river and was fondling his wife, intent on raping her. Furious, he shot a poisoned arrow at Nessus, fatally wounding him.
As he was dying, Nessus looked at the innocent Deianira and whispered, ‘My blood is a love potion. Apply it on your husband’s clothes and when it seeps into his skin he will love you so much that he will never even think about killing you as he did his first wife.’
Using the centaur’s dead body as a raft, Deianira reached the other shore. But she also collected some of his blood to induce love in her mad but strong husband, of whom she was more than a little scared.
Hindu mythology has horse-headed beings known as Kimpurushas, but rarely creatures whose torso is that of a horse, like the centaurs of Greek mythology. From the mouth of horse-headed beings such as Hayagriva, Vedic wisdom is transmitted to sages.
Many post-Buddhist artworks found in Bodh Gaya, Sanchi and parts of Odisha have images of centaurs, suggesting a Greek influence.
Centaurs are known for their wild lascivious nature. Chiron, the wise teacher, is an exception. In art, heroes are often depicted fighting centaurs, as in the battle where Theseus fights centaurs alongside Lapiths.
Iole
After several years of being happily married, Heracles decided to avenge the insult inflicted on him by Eurytus of Oechalia who had denied him a wife. He raised an army and ransacked Oechalia, killing Eurytus and managing to secure Iole as his concubine. Iole tried to escape by jumping from the ramparts but her robes ballooned like a parachute and she fell safely to the ground, with no hope of escaping from Heracles.
Though Heracles insisted that Iole was merely a concubine, not a wife, Deianira was not so sure. She decided to use the blood of the centaur Nessus to rekindle passion in her husband. She smeared it on his cloak, expecting profusions of love when he draped it; instead he screamed in agony, for the blood of the centaur was poisonous and it burned his skin and his flesh.
Heracles realized he would soon die. Too proud to be killed by another, he decided to take his own life. He climbed on to a pile of wood and asked the warrior Philoctetes to set it aflame.
As the fires rose, Zeus looked down from heaven and, deciding that Heracles was the greatest of his sons, picked him up and brought him to Olympus. Here he was reconciled with Hera and given in marriage to Hebe and allowed to live like a god. Those on earth who searched his pyre for his bones found none.
Though Heracles is compared with Krishna, the similarities are superficial. Heracles is a tragic hero-son of Zeus, while Krishna is God on earth, trying to enlighten humanity.
One recurring motif in the story of Heracles is that he is denied what he feels he deserves: a happy married life with Megara, the throne of Mycenae on which sits the lout Eurystheus, payment after washing the Augean stables, payment after saving Hesione from a sea monster sent by the gods to devour her, and the hand of Iole after winning Eurytus’s archery contest.
Euripides’ play Heraklides tells the story of Heracles’s children who are taken by his nephew, Iolaus, to Athens to protect them from Eurystheus. But the king of Athens cannot protect them as the oracles tell him that only the sacrifice of a young maiden to Persephone will ensure victory against Mycenae. The king refuses to sacrifice any Athenian and so Heracles’ daughter Mecaria offers herself to save her siblings. After her sacrifice, a war is fought, in which old Iolaus miraculously regains his youth and captures Eurystheus alive. The Athenians refuse to execute him as it is against their law but Eurystheus, humiliated in defeat, tells them to do it as it is prophesied that he will return as a guardian ghost of the city and protect Athens from the Spartans.
After Eurystheus’s death, the throne of Mycenae passed on to Atreus, son of Pelops.
House of Perseus
Book Five
Jason
‘Are all the heroes from your land the sons of gods?’ asked the gymnosophist.
‘Not all. Not Jason, who fetched the Golden Fleece from faraway Colchis in the east. But, unlike Heracles, he failed to win the admiration of the gods.’
‘Because his father was not an Olympian?’
‘No, because he owed his victory to an Eastern woman, a witch, whom he later betrayed.’
Pelias
Salmoneus, king of Elis, claimed that he was Zeus himself. That the torches burning on the sides of his chariot were lightning, and the noise of the kettledrums attached to and dragged by his chariot was thunder. Annoyed by this impertinence, Zeus hurled his thunderbolt at Salmoneus and reduced him, his chariot and his city to a pile of ash.
Salmoneus’s daughter, Tyro, married Cretheus, king of Iolcus, and bore him a son whom they named Aeson.
Tyro was also in love with a river god, but he rejected her advances. So the sea god Poseidon, who desired Tyro, took the form of the river god, and ravished her. From this union was born a son. He was called Pelias.
Pelias grew up to be an ambitious man. He imprisoned his older brother, Aeson, and declared himself king of Iolcus. But he did not have Zeus’s favour for he was a son of Poseidon, and the grandson of Salmoneus. Worse, Hera did not like him because he had once desecrated her temple by killing people who had taken refuge there.
The oracles warned Pelias that ‘a man who wears only one sandal’ would kill him. So all the guards in the palace and the city were told to look out for such a man. Little did he know that such a man was yet to be born, a
nd it would be his own nephew, Jason, son of Aeson.
Just as Zeus kills Salmoneus for imitating him, Krishna slays the king of Pundra for pretending to be the ‘true’ Vasudeva by wearing yellow silk and a crown with a peacock feather. In the end both pretenders are killed by real weapons wielded by the gods: Salmoneus by Zeus’s thunderbolt, and the false Vasudeva by Krishna’s Sudarshan-chakra.
In the Greek world, the destiny of a man is bound by the Fates and the whims and rivalries of the Olympians. That Jason will eventually kill Pelias is pre-decided and has nothing to do with Jason’s free will. This idea distinguishes Greek mythology from Abrahamic mythology where humans have the free will to choose God or submit to evil. The Hindu world is governed by kama, desire, as well as karma, destiny determined by past deeds. Additionally, in devotional schools, the possibility of God’s intervention to realize desires or to change destiny exists.
Jason
Aeson’s wife Alcimede was pregnant with Jason when Pelias became king. She was sure Pelias would kill her child as soon as he was born. So, at the birth, she told the midwives to cry as if the babe was stillborn, then smuggled the infant out of the palace and gave him to Chiron, the centaur, to be raised and educated in secret.
Years passed. When Jason came of age, Chiron told him the story of his birth, and advised him to participate in the games held in honour of Poseidon organized by the usurper of his father’s throne, King Pelias of Iolcus.
On his way, Jason helped an old woman cross a river, and lost one of his sandals while doing so. The old woman was the goddess Hera and she blessed Jason with success and fortune.
When Jason arrived at the games, the guards announced him as ‘the man wearing only one sandal’. The oracle’s warning echoing in his mind, Pelias decided to send this man—his would-be killer—on a quest that would surely kill him.
Pelias asked Jason, ‘What is the most dangerous quest today for a man aspiring to be a hero?’
Jason replied, ‘Fetching the Golden Fleece from Colchis.’
‘Then be a hero and fetch me the Golden Fleece.’
Jason had no choice but to accept the challenge. He had been tricked by the man who was holding his parents prisoner.
Making the most of the situation, Jason invited young men from all over Greece to join him on this adventure. Few Greeks had travelled as far east as Colchis, the land where the sun rose. Those who had dared, had never returned. It was located beyond Hellespont, the sea that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.
On recognizing his killer (‘the man with one sandal’), Pelias protects himself by sending Jason on a dangerous quest from which he may never return. Similarly, Shishupala’s mother tries to protect him from Krishna by extracting a promise from the lord (that he will forgive the first hundred of Shishupala’s transgressions) when she recognizes him as the man destined to kill her son (when Krishna picks up her son, his birth defects disappear). But in both cases, destiny prevails.
These stories reveal the geographical knowledge of ancient times when the eastern edge of the Black Sea, where the country of Georgia is now located, was believed to be the land from where the sun rises.
The story reveals the great discomfort of the Greeks with the unknown East, a fear that continues even today.
Helle
Hellespont was named after Helle, the daughter of King Athamas of Boeotia, and the cloud nymph Nephele. Helle had a brother called Phrixus. One day, Athamas fell in love with a woman called Ino, and cast his wife aside. So Nephele left Boeotia, while Ino became the queen.
Ino was determined to get rid of her stepchildren. She went to the city’s granary and secretly roasted all the grain meant for sowing. When the seeds did not germinate despite the rains, the frustrated and anxious farmers consulted the oracle, who— having been bribed by Ino—told them that only a sacrifice of the king’s children would appease the angry gods.
Athamas protested but his subjects rushed past him into the palace to grab the royal children. Luckily for the children, their celestial mother presented them with a flying ram, with fleece that was golden. ‘Sit on this and escape east to Colchis across the sea. No one will follow you there and you will be safe,’ Nephele told them. ‘And remember, while you are flying over the sea, do not look down towards the earth, for you may lose your balance, and fall.’
During the flight, Phrixus followed his mother’s instructions, but not Helle. She looked down, lost her balance, and fell into the sea. The spot where she fell came to be known as Hellespont, the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, beyond which no Greek had ever sailed.
On reaching Colchis, Phrixus sacrificed the flying ram, as his mother had advised, to Zeus, and gave its fleece to the local king, Aeetes, who gave him shelter.
Tales of children whose lives are threatened by stepmothers is a common theme in mythologies around the world. In the Buddhist Dashrath Jataka, Dashrath sends his son Ram to exile in the forest as he fears Ram’s stepmother, Kaikeyi, plans to kill him.
Nephele is the cloud nymph created by Zeus in the very likeness of Hera. Ixion tries to rape this cloud nymph mistaking her to be Hera. For his audacity, Ixion is cast in Tartarus.
The ram that carries Phrixus to Colchis is sacrificed to Zeus. It is turned by the Olympians into the constellation Aries of the zodiac.
Aeetes is the son of the Titan Helios, the sun. Aeetes’s brother, Phaeton, once wanted to ride their father’s celestial chariot. Helios indulged him but Phaeton lost control, as a result of which the sun came so close to the earth that it scorched the ground and burned most of the trees, angering Zeus who killed Phaeton with a bolt of thunder.
Argonaut
Many Greek warriors joined Jason’s quest: some because they were too famous to refuse, and others because they hoped the quest would make them famous.
Amongst those who came were the great hero Heracles, and his arms-bearer, Hylas; Calais and Zetes, the winged sons of the North Wind; the musician Orpheus, and the mighty Bellerophon; Telamon and Peleus, the sons of Aeacus; and the fierce Spartan warriors Castor and Pollux, brothers of Helen. Jason was the designated captain, though many believed Heracles was more worthy of leading the men.
Jason got one Argus to design a sturdy ship for him, and in this task the shipwright was helped by the goddess Athena. Parts of the vessel were made using wood from the groves of Dodona. These groves were frequented by oracles who sought to decipher the will of the gods by listening to Zeus whispering through the rustle of oak trees. By using wood from these trees the ship itself was bestowed with prophetic powers. It often warned the sailors of dangers that they could face if they did not set sail, or go ashore, in time. Since it was built by Argus, the ship came to be known as the Argo, and sailors as the Argonauts.
The Argo was so heavy that the sailors could not drag it into the sea, but Orpheus played his music and the ship moved on its own, ready to sail and take the Argonauts on their adventure.
The trope of unrelated men coming together for a mission appears frequently in Greek mythology, such as the hunt for the Calydonian boar, the quest for the Golden Fleece and, finally, the Trojan War. Such a collaboration is rare in Hindu mythology. In the Mahabharata, during the great war, kings take sides depending on family obligations and individual vendettas. In the Ramayana, it is the animals of the forest, monkeys and bears mainly, that come together to help Ram rescue Sita from the island of Lanka.
The story of the Argo and its sailors is the theme of the Greek epic Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius, composed 2300 years ago.
Unlike most Greek heroes, Jason shows signs of brooding and depression, making him more human, a detail that earned him and his story much criticism.
Ancient writers were of the opinion that the Argo was amongst the first ships to sail on the high seas. Earlier ships sailed along the coast.
Atlanta
Atlanta, a female warrior, wanted to join the Argonauts but Jason did not allow it, fearing the presence of a woman would di
stract the all-male crew.
Atlanta’s father had abandoned her at birth because he wanted a son. She had been suckled by a she-bear and later raised by hunters. She could run at great speeds, so fast that she could even run on water.
Tales of the effect Atlanta had had on the men who were hunting the Calydonian boar were fresh in everyone’s memory.
The fierce Calydonian boar had been sent by Artemis to torment King Oeneus who had insulted the goddess by denying her offerings he had promised her. Warriors from all over Greece were invited to hunt this creature but they had failed both individually and collectively. When Atlanta came, her presence was fiercely opposed by all. Only Meleager, son of Oeneus, supported her, for he fell in love with her, despite being married. Atlanta managed to strike the first blow on the boar, and Meleager eventually killed the beast. Meleager then offered the head and hide of the boar to Atlanta, angering his uncles who took this gift away from her by force. Enraged, Meleager killed his uncles, only to be slain by his mother, who then took her own life, unable to bear the loss of her brothers and her son. King Oeneus concluded that Atlanta, like the wild boar, had been sent by the goddess to destroy his family.
It was perhaps to forget Meleager that Atlanta wanted to join the Argonaut expedition. She even chased the ship by running on the waves behind it. But finally she gave up the chase and returned to land.