Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (34 page)
Read Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Online
Authors: Bernard Evslin
THE CYCLOPES
For my brave boy,
ELI BURBANK
who has met monsters and wants to meet more
Characters
Monsters
The Cyclopes (SY klahps) (SY kloh peez) | Huge one-eyed smiths; the eldest children of Uranus and Gaia |
Hundred-handed Giants | Born of Mother Earth and her serpent lover |
Dragons | Gigantic leather-winged, fire-breathing lizards grown from worms who fattened themselves upon the blood of the murdered Uranus |
Brontes (BRAHN teez) | Cleverest of the Cyclopes; forged the first lightning bolt for Zeus |
Polyphemus (pahl ih FEE muhs) | A cannibalistic Cyclops encountered by Ulysses |
The Elder Gods
Uranus (u RAY nuhs) | Lord of the Sky and All Beneath; the Rain-giver |
Gaia (GAY uh) | Mother Earth; wife to Uranus and mother of the Cyclopes, the hundred-handed giants, the Titans, and Cronos |
Cronos (KROH nuhs) | Youngest of the Titans and king after Uranus; father of the Gods |
Rhea (REE uh) | Sister and wife of Cronos; mother of Hestia, Demeter, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, and Zeus |
The Pantheon
Zeus (ZOOS) | King of the Gods after Cronos, and all powerful; wielder of thunder and lightning |
Hera (HEE ruh) | Sister and wife of Zeus; mother of Hephaestus and Ares |
Hestia (HEHS tih uh) | Elder sister of Zeus; Goddess of the Hearth |
Demeter (de MEE tuhr) | Sister of Zeus; Goddess of the Harvest |
Hades (HAY deez) | Brother of Zeus; King of the Land Beyond Death |
Poseidon (poh SY duhn) | Brother of Zeus; God of the Sea |
Hephaestus (he FEHS tus) | Eldest son of Zeus and Hera; the Smith God |
Ares (AIR eez) | Second son of Zeus and Hera; God of War |
Athena (uh THEE nuh) | Daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Metis; Goddess of Wisdom |
Aphrodite (af ruh DY tee) | Goddess of Love and Beauty; her name means foam-born |
Apollo (uh PAHL oh) | Son of Zeus and Leto; the sun God; also God of Music and Healing and Lord of the Golden Bow |
Artemis (AHR tuh mis) | Twin sister of Apollo; Goddess of the Moon and the Chase and Maiden of the Silvern Bow |
Hermes (HUR meez) | Son of Zeus and Maia; the Messenger God as well as God of Commerce; patron of liars, gamblers, and thieves |
Heroes
Ulysses (u LIHS eez) | King of Ithaca and leading strategist of the Greek forces in the war against Troy; he is the renowned voyager who survives a series of dreadful ordeals flung at him by the gods who sided with the Trojans |
Others
Dione (dy OH nee) | An oak dryad who aids Zeus |
Leuce (LOO say) | A river nymph who serves Cronos and maddens Polyphemus |
Amalthea (am uhl THEE uh) | Enormous she-goat who suckles the infant Zeus |
Dryads (DRY uhdz) | Wood nymphs |
Naiads (NAY uhdz) | Nymphs of those waters that are not the sea. They inhabit rivers, lakes, streams, fountains, and springs |
Nereids (ne REE uhdz) | Sea nymphs, all of them beautiful |
Contents
1
The Maiming
Uranus, the First One, Lord of the Sky and Sender of Rain, married Gaia, whose name means Earth. He drew a golden cloud about them, and his rain started children in the cave of her womb.
“Oh, my Lord,” she cried, “these blessed babes of ours shall be the first born of love's embraceâcreatures so wondrously beautiful that all must worship them.”
“Beautiful, eh?” snarled Uranus to himself. “Then she may prefer them to me, me, me. Oh, no! Beautiful they shall not be, but so ugly that all will flee in horror.”
Thereupon he cursed the first fruits of her womb, fashioning this curse into the shape of a bat, which he sent flying into the cave where the unborn infants lay. The bat plucked an eye from each head and ate them like grapes.
Mother Earth went into labor. The plains quaked. Mountains gushed fire. The ocean floor shook, starting tidal waves. When the sea withdrew, two children loomed on the wet beach, a boy and a girl. Giants they were, born full-grown, tall as trees and magnificently muscled.
But their father, hiding behind a storm cloud, smiled when he saw them. For each had but one eye set right in the middle of the forehead.
“A fine pair of monsters,” chuckled Uranus to himself. “Not even their mother can love them.”
But his troubles with their mother were just starting. She looked upon the monsters she had borne and knew somehow that it was Uranus who had made them the way they were. To avenge herself she went dancing on the flickering edge of creation and entertained a giant serpent. Shortly thereafter she gave birth to a litter of hundred-handed giants, whom she hid from sight in one of her deepest caves.
Her rage grew. Spasms of anger shook the earth. She wept tears of lava. Tidal waves were her tantrum. And Uranus could not approach herânot until he had vowed that from then on their children would be as beautiful as she had dreamed.
Sure enough, after they stopped quarreling, Gaia produced one child a year. Her brood, the Titans, were godlike in their beauty but of savage temper.
Now Mother Earth had many children, but she was troubled, for they were unkind to each other, and cruelest of all to her firstborn, whom their father had robbed of an eye each.
The huge single eye of the Cyclopes, glowing like a weird gem in the middle of their foreheads, struck terror into everyone who looked at them. Even the serpent's spawn, the hundred-handed giants who looked like enormous centipedesâeven these hideous creatures disliked the sight of the Cyclopes and tried to avoid them. And the entire Titan tribe, who were very proud of their beauty, loathed the Cyclopes and kept planning ways to get rid of them forever, but didn't dare come close enough to attack.
Only Gaia, their mother, pitied them. Still, even she did not really relish the sight of them and managed to see as little of her firstborn as possible.
So, feared and shunned by everyone, the Cyclopes twins had only each other in all the new-made world. To say that they loved each other is to say too little. From the first, they were like two halves of the same body. They craved each other with a need that could not be satisfied. As far as possible they tried to
become
each other. They were two-eyed at such times, and although the eyes were in different heads, their vision was single. Coming so close, merging so utterly, they were able to forget the pain of being maimed and hated and isolated.
T
ime passed. Mother Earth began roaming her caves. She was with child again and feeling very special about this pregnancy because she knew it would be her last. Now she was looking for a place to bear her child. She went deeper than she had ever gone before, cavern beneath cavern beneath cavern, right into the entrails of the earth. She heard a curious mewing sound and held her torch high.
Among the thronging shadows she saw a huge jewel catching the torchlight, and fracturing it. She searched the shadows and saw that the jewel was an eye, the huge single eye of the girl Cyclops, brimming now with a great crystal tear. But the tear was of happiness. Crawling over her like kittens were four naked babes, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead.
“Oh, horror, horror.⦠They're breeding true,” murmured Earth to herself. “My blighted children are giving me blighted grandchildren. If they spawn like this, they will be as numerous as the Titans, who hate them so. They will turn, finally, upon their brothers and sisters. Heaven and earth will be torn by war. I must find some work for these terrible hands to do, some tools they can use instead of weapons.”
She sank down upon the stone floor of the cave, took her daughter's ugly jeweled head onto her lap, and kissed her face. She gathered her grandchildren about her.
“These are fine children,” she said. “They look just like you. You must lend them to me for a while. I shall teach them a skill that will keep them busy and happy all their days.”
The little Cyclopes grew with monstrous speed and were full-grown in two months. When they came into their strength, Gaia led them among the mountains to a certain chasm where veins of greenish iron streaked the rocks. There, she taught them to quarry and smelt the ore. She gave them an old crater for their smithy. The smoldering volcanic flames were their forge fire; an enormous table stone, their anvil.
First, she taught them toolmaking: how to uproot trees, trim the trunks, and fit the great wooden shafts into lumps of iron, making huge sledgehammers. She was pleased to see they could use their brutal baling-hook fingers as daintily as a spider spinning a web. Under her instruction they learned to heat the ingots red-hot, lay them on their stone anvil, and shape them with the earth-shaking blows of their sledgehammers. And finally, they learned to work the metal as delicately as lace.
The Cyclopes made tools and weapons of ironâhammers, hooks, shovels, swords, spears, and knives. They made ornaments of tin and copper, silver and crystal, as well as lovely baubles of gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.
2
The Sickle
Gaia bore her child. He was called Cronos, and gave his name to Time.
Mother Earth favored her youngest son. She doted on him and he grew into a youth of blinding beauty. But she knew that her husband was growing jealous again.
She had Cronos meet her in a secret place and said, “Your father hates you, my boy.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you too much.”
“It is possible to love too much?”
“It is, and I do. And he hates you for it. And his hatred is a thing to dread. He robbed my first children of an eye each and made them so ugly they turned into monsters. Now he will rob you of your life.”
“I am a god, you have told me. I cannot die.”
“No, but you can be chopped into a hundred little pieces and buried in a hundred different placesâand vanish from my sight as sure as death.”
“He would do that to me?”
“Unless you do it to him first.”
“You counsel me to chop my father into a hundred pieces?”
“As many as it takes, my son.”
“He is very big and very powerful. The flash of his eye is lightning. His footfall is thunder. He shakes hurricanes out of his beard. How can I overcome him?”
“I have made certain preparations. The Cyclopes are as skillful as they are ugly; they work in metal. And I have had them forge an iron sickle sharp enough to cut through the hardest rock as if it were rotten woodâsharp enough to shear through the mighty bones of Uranus.”
“What will he be doing while I'm swinging that sickle?”
“Trust me, Cronos. I have also had my smiths forge a chain of massive iron links. When you are ready to actâand it must be soon, soonâI'll whistle up your half brothers, the hundred-handed giants, who will take that chain and bind Uranus to the root of a mountain. Shackled to this granite pillar, he will be ready for dismemberment.”
“Are you sure of this, mother?”
“Great enterprise requires great risk, my son. But I know your father, and, believe me, your peril is far greater if you don't do this than if you do. Think, thinkâwould you rather be king of the gods, ruler supreme of heaven and earth, or a hundred bleeding gobbets of flesh scattered so wide and buried so deep that even I, for all my love, will not be able to gather you up and put you back together?”