Parallel Myths (28 page)

Icarus then leaped off the tower and began flying like a bird. To his amazement, this was great fun. He swooped out over the ocean,
diving and rising again. He made a great circle around the tower. Then he tried flying a little higher, and he made circles so high in the sky that his father could barely see him. Exhilarated by his successes, rather than use common sense and return to the tower, Icarus tried to fly still higher and higher until, as his father had predicted, the wax melted and the lad plunged to his death in the ocean.

This is why the gods never allow human beings to fly: They cannot stay within their limits. If they communicate with the gods, they become overly familiar and forget their place. Humans were given reason and skill, but still they use their hands to make weapons to kill each other off. One is well-advised to heed Daedalus’s warning and not fly too high or too low.

ARACHNE

O
f all the human sins that annoy the gods, the worst of all is hubris, or arrogant pride. This is the sort of attitude that leads human beings to contest the gods and defy them. Arachne was one such foolish mortal.

Arachne was a peasant girl who was famous throughout Greece for her skills as a weaver and spinner. No one could spin as well or as fast as Arachne—among mortals at least. The cloth that she produced was the finest ever seen.

It was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who first invented the arts of spinning and weaving. Arachne began to boast that her patroness, Athena, was probably not able to make as fine a cloth as she. At first the goddess laughed and ignored the vain girl. But then people began to believe these boasts, ignoring the temples and festivals of Athena. The usually peaceful and patient goddess became very angry.

Athena came to earth and appeared to Arachne, challenging her to a spinning match. The girl and the goddess each began spinning with as much speed and skill as they could. Arachne’s results were impressive, and Athena was surprised to find her a worthy contender. And if Arachne had been humble and silent during the contest, all
might have been well. Instead, Arachne had loudly proclaimed her spinning to be superior to that of Athena, in the very presence of the goddess.

Athena looked at Arachne (which means “spider”) and told her, “If it is spinning you do best, you may do it forever!” And with that, Arachne became a spider. And Arachne’s children spin to this very day.

MIDAS

W
hen King Midas was an infant, a curious omen took place. While the baby was sleeping, ants gathered up grains of wheat and marched them up to his lips, presaging that Midas would be a wealthy man.

Dionysus, the god of the grapes, has a debauched son named Silenus,
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who is very rarely sober and tends, when drunk, to forget where he is. This worries his father terribly. While sojourning in Midas’s kingdom Silenus, per usual, got drunk and stumbled about confusedly. In that area there was a terrible whirlpool that had claimed the lives of even many sober men. Silenus stumbled into the waters and would have perished had Midas not saved him.

In gratitude, Dionysus offered the king whatever he wanted. Midas asked that the touch of his hand would turn everything to gold. Dionysus asked him. “Are you sure?” But Midas was insistent. At that, everything that the king touched turned to gold.

At first, Midas found this wonderful; he turned flowers, stones, trees, and other objects to gold. However, he became hungry. As he sat down to eat, his food turned to gold. His daughter came to embrace him; she also turned to gold. Midas was grieved and feared that he would starve to death. Dionysus had known that this would happen; the god hoped that Midas would learn the lesson of greed.
Hearing the pitiful pleas of King Midas, Dionysus removed the golden touch.

As well-known as the story of Midas is, there is another tale that demonstrates the results of pride: Midas became reknowned for his wealth and for his wisdom as a ruler. Once the king attended a musical contest between Apollo and the mortal Marsyas that was judged by a river god named Tmolus. Tmolus, of course, awarded the prize to Apollo. However, the arrogant Midas dissented and argued with the river god, saying that Marsyas was a match for the god. At which point Apollo turned the king’s ears into those of an ass.

For a long time after, Midas was able to hide this punishment by wearing a cap, and he extracted a promise from his barber never to reveal this secret under pain of death. It was virtually impossible for the barber to keep from laughing when he cut Midas’s hair. When the barber could bear it no longer, he dug a hole in a riverbank and whispered into it, “Midas has the ears of an ass.”

Sometime later, however, a tiny reed grew out of that very hole and whispered the secret to every passerby. Midas then had the barber killed. But the ass’s ears remained.

NARCISSUS

N
arcissus may possibly be the most handsome male who ever lived. At his birth, the blind seer Teiresias prophesied that Narcissus would enjoy a long life only if he never knew himself or saw his own reflection. By the age of sixteen, Narcissus already had left a string of broken hearts, both male and female as he found no one good enough for him.

Among those who sought Narcissus’s favors was the nymph Echo. Hera, the wife of Zeus, had punished Echo by not allowing her to speak but only to repeat what she heard. This was because Echo had detained Hera by telling long stories, allowing Zeus to carry on trysts with the nymphs while Hera was thus distracted.

Narcissus called out, “Is anyone here?” “Here! Here!” cried Echo.
Then Narcissus said, “Come over here.” “Here! Here!” cried Echo. Narcissus walked in the direction that the voice seemed to come from and said, “Don’t avoid me!” Echo answered “Don’t avoid me!” Then Narcissus saw Echo run from her hiding place to meet him. When he saw her, she wasn’t good enough. So Narcissus called out, “You’ll never lie with me!” to which Echo responded, “Lie with me! Lie with me!” To no avail; Narcissus was not interested. Because of this misunderstanding, Echo was yet another rejected lover.

One male suitor of Narcissus was Ameinius, who was repeatedly shunned by him. Narcissus sent Ameinius a sword as a present, to placate him. Because he had been rejected, Ameinius used the gift to kill himself, calling on the gods to avenge his death. The gods were more than happy to oblige this request. They were thoroughly tired of Narcissus’s egotism, cruelty to his suitors, and heartless attitude toward others.

This is how the death of Ameinius was avenged and the prophecy of Teiresias fulfilled: Narcissus went to sit by a riverbank and fell in love with his own reflection in the water. When he bent down to kiss his own reflection, he fell into the water and drowned.

Another version is that Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in the river, then he spent hours trying to make the image speak to him. When the man in the river, the first person he had ever fallen in love with, did not answer him, he plunged his own dagger into his heart, serving justice upon the youth who had caused so many suicides of rejected lovers.

From his blood came the white flower called the narcissus, which recalls his great beauty.

TANTALUS

T
he story of Tantalus is a lesson for gluttons and social climbers. King Tantalus was of both mortal and divine parentage and may even have been, according to some versions, a son of Zeus himself, fathered on one of the god’s many mortal lovers. In any case,
Tantalus was, for a time, a favorite of the gods. He was allowed to feast in the halls of Olympus on nectar and ambrosia, which were usually reserved only for the gods. When he was there, he gorged himself.

Tantalus decided that his neighbors would be most impressed if he invited the gods to his own home at Corinth for dinner. In checking his larder, he found that he did not have enough food to go around. Having once invited the gods, he could hardly retract his invitation, so he committed a terrible crime; he killed his own son and made him into stew.

As if that wasn’t wicked enough, Tantalus stupidly thought that the gods would think the meat came from a young goat. But of course they knew better. And the punishment suited the crime.

Tantalus lost his kingdom and was killed by Zeus himself. In the Underworld, Tantalus spends all eternity hanging in a tree laden with fruit, but as soon as the fruit is close enough to pick, it moves out of reach. At his feet are the sweetest waters in the universe; they continually rise up to his chin but, as he bends down to take a drink, they subside. Thus, Tantalus is forever hungry and thirsty in the midst of plenty.

One good thing that Tantalus did, however, was give us the English word
tantalizing.

(Blackfoot Indian)