Discover Androgeus, the prince of Crete whose death in Athens launched the terrible tribute to the Minotaur and shaped the legend of Theseus - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Androgeus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἀνδρόγεως (Androgeus) Pronunciation an-DROH-jee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Son of Minos, The Slain Prince, The Cause of the Tribute, The Athlete of Athens, The Victim of Marathon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 13th-8th century BCE (legendary Bronze Age / Early Iron Age) Symbol Winners podium with laurel wreath Tags greek, androgeus, minos, theseus, minotaur, athens, tribute, marathonian-bull, crete Introduction - Overview Androgeus is the prince of Crete whose death in Athens set in motion the most terrible tribute in Greek myth, the sacrifice of fourteen young people to the Minotaur every nine years. He is the son of King Minos, the lawgiver whose judgements were so just that he became a judge of the dead, and Pasiphae, the sorceress queen cursed by Poseidon, the god of the sea and earthquakes, to bear the Minotaur. He is the athlete who travelled to Athens and won every contest at the Panathenaic games, the festival held in honour of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and craft who was patron of the city, only to be killed by jealousy or by a monster sent by a fearful king. He is the brother of Ariadne, the princess who gave Theseus the thread that led him through the Labyrinth, and Phaedra, who would later marry the same hero and die by her own hand. His death made him the catalyst for the entire Minotaur saga, the single life whose loss condemned a generation of Athenian youths to the jaws of a beast. And he is the prince whose murder turned a kingdom's pride into a kingdom's curse, a story that begins with victory and ends with vengeance. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Androgeus Androgeus was born in the palace at Knossos, the great labyrinthine complex that was the centre of Minoan power, to King Minos and Queen Pasiphae. His brothers and sisters included Ariadne, the princess who would later give Theseus the thread that guided him through the Labyrinth, Phaedra, who would marry Theseus and fall in love with his son Hippolytus, Catreus, Deucalion, and Glaucus. He also had a monstrous half-brother, the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man, born from Pasiphae's cursed union with a white bull sent by Poseidon. Androgeus grew up in the most powerful court in the Aegean, the sea between Greece and the coast of Asia Minor, trained in the arts of war, sport, and kingship. He was handsome, strong, and gifted, the pride of his father's house and the heir to a kingdom that dominated the seas. When Androgeus came of age, he travelled to Athens to compete in the great games held in honour of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and craft who was patron of the city. The Panathenaic games were the most prestigious athletic contest in Attica, the region around Athens, and victors were celebrated as heroes. Androgeus won every event he entered, defeating the best athletes of Athens with ease. His victories were so complete and so humiliating that they aroused the jealousy of the Athenian king Aegeus, who feared that this Cretan prince might become too popular among his own people. In some accounts, Aegeus sent Androgeus against the Marathonian Bull, the white beast that had been sent by Poseidon to Minos and had since gone mad and was ravaging the plain of Marathon near Athens. In other accounts, the Athenians themselves, enraged by his victories, ambushed and killed him on the road. Either way, the prince of Crete died on Attic soil, and his body was carried back to Knossos in grief. Minos, when he learned of his son's death, was consumed by rage. He gathered his fleet, the most powerful navy in the Aegean, and attacked Athens. The city could not withstand the Cretan forces, and Minos laid siege until the Athenians were forced to surrender. Rather than destroying the city outright, Minos imposed a terrible tribute. Every nine years, Athens would send seven young men and seven young women to Crete, where they would be cast into the Labyrinth, the vast maze built by Daedalus, the master craftsman, beneath the palace at Knossos, and devoured by the Minotaur, the monstrous offspring of Pasiphae and the divine bull. This tribute continued for two cycles, twenty-seven years of terror, until the third group arrived and among them was Theseus, the prince of Athens who volunteered to go and killed the Minotaur, ending the tribute forever. Androgeus's death also had consequences in Crete. In some traditions, his sons became the ancestors of the Cretan nobility, or his ghost was said to haunt the shores of Attica. The Athenians later worshipped him as a hero, building a shrine to him in the city, a remarkable act for the people who had caused his death. His tomb was shown in Attica, and sacrifices were made to him as a chthonic deity, a god of the underworld who had the power to bless or curse the land. The prince who had died a victim became, in death, a power that the Athenians sought to appease. His story was a reminder that the greatest athletic victories could provoke the deadliest envy, and that a single murder could chain two kingdoms together in a cycle of terror that only a hero could break. Summary Androgeus stands as the eternal catalyst, the prince whose death in Athens condemned a generation to the Minotaur and set Theseus on the path to glory. From the palace at Knossos to the games of Athens, from the plain of Marathon to the dark corridors of the Labyrinth, his story is one of triumph cut short by jealousy and vengeance that outlasted the killer. Every tribute of the innocent, every siege that punishes a city for one man's crime, and every hero who ends a cycle of violence carries the shadow of Androgeus, the son of Minos whose victor's crown became a kingdom's curse. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Androgeus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Aegeus Person Aegeus Theseus Person Theseus Minos Person Minos Pasiphae Person Pasiphae Minotaur Creature/Monster/Animal Minotaur Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 3, chapter 15 - Androgeus's death and the Athenian tribute - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Book 4, chapter 61 - Androgeus and the Minotaur tribute - Plutarch, Life of Theseus, chapter 15 - The death of Androgeus and Minos's revenge - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 1, chapter 27 - The tomb and worship of Androgeus in Attica - Herodotus, Histories, Book 7, chapter 170 - Minos and the tribute tradition - Bacchylides, Ode 17 - Theseus's descent and the Minotaur - Walker, Henry J., Theseus and Athens (1995) - Academic monograph on Theseus and the tribute tradition - Calame, Claude, Thesee et l'imaginaire athenien (1990) - Scholarly study of Theseus in Athenian cultural identity - Boardman, John, "Theseus in the Athenian Agora," Hesperia 71 (2002), pp. 669-674 - Peer-reviewed article on the iconography of the tribute Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover the Cath Palug, the monstrous Welsh Arthurian cat of Anglesey, born from dark waters and feared as one of Arthur's deadliest foes | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Cath Palug Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s The Cath Palug, Welsh: Cath Palug ("Palug's Cat/Clawing Cat"); also Cath Balug; Breton: Kazh Palug Pronunciation KATH PAL-ig Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Cath Paluc, Cath Balug, Cath Balwg, Chapalu, Capalu, Capalus, the Monster Cat, Palug's Cat Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period 6th century (literary emergence c. 950-1250 CE) Symbol Cat Eye Tags arthurian, monster, cat, beast Introduction - Overview Believing Beaumains to be no more than a kitchen servant, Percard intends to unhorse him and claim his horse and armour. Gareth declares that he is a gentleman of higher lineage than Percard and insists that he will pass. Their encounter becomes a deadly fight: Percard’s spear breaks, Gareth drives his own spear through Percard’s body, and the Black Knight continues fighting with his sword before collapsing and dying. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Cath Palug The earliest literary record of the Cath Palug appears in Pa Gur yv y Porthaur ("What man is the gatekeeper?"), Poem 31 of the Black Book of Carmarthen (written before 1250 CE)-one of the oldest surviving manuscripts composed entirely in Welsh and a crucial source for early Arthurian material. The poem takes the form of a dialogue between King Arthur and the gatekeeper Glewlwyd, in which Arthur introduces the heroes of his warband and recounts their monstrous deeds. Among these heroes stands Cei (Sir Kay), Arthur's foster brother, whose battle with the Cath Palug on Anglesey forms one of his proudest achievements. The poem states: "Cei the fair went to Mona, To devastate Llewon. His shield was ready Against Palug's Cat When the people welcomed him. Who pierced the Cath Palug? Nine score before dawn Would fall for its food. Nine score chieftains…" Here the text breaks off, the remainder lost to time, but the fragment preserves enough to demonstrate the Cath Palug's terrible power: 180 warriors (nine score) fell to the beast before Cei confronted it. The poem describes Cei's shield as mynud against the cat-interpreted as "polished" or "smooth," suggesting a mirrored surface. This detail connects to a Middle English tradition in the Lambeth manuscript where Arthur defeated monstrous cats by raising a polished shield, causing the creatures to attack their own reflections. Whether Cei slew the Cath Palug or merely drove it off remains ambiguous-the fragment's incompleteness has left scholars debating whether the beast survived its encounter with Arthur's foster brother. The Cath Palug's aquatic nature constitutes one of its most distinctive characteristics. Unlike ordinary cats, which famously hate water, the Cath Palug was semi-aquatic, haunting lakes, rivers, and the sea. This water-association carried across to the French tradition, where the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin places Arthur's battle with the monstrous cat (here called the Devil Cat of Lausanne) near Lake Bourget in the French Alps. According to this version, the cat originated as a black kitten caught by a fisherman who had broken a vow to God-keeping the first fish he caught for himself rather than offering it to the divine. The kitten grew into a monster that destroyed the fisherman's family and terrorized the region until Arthur confronted and slew it. French toponymy preserves this memory in names such as Col du Chat (Cat's Neck), Dent du Chat (Cat's Tooth), and Mont du Chat (Cat's Mountain). The most extraordinary French variant, recorded in the 12th-century Anglo-Norman Romanz des Franceis, claims that the cat Chapalu actually killed King Arthur and usurped his throne-a radical alternative tradition that suggests the Cath Palug's legend once contained a very different ending to Arthur's story. Summary The Cath Palug represents the raw, pre-Christian terror of Welsh Arthurian tradition-a monstrous cat born of the enchanted sow Henwen, raised on Anglesey by the sons of Palug, and grown into a semi-aquatic predator that devoured 180 warriors. The fragmentary Welsh poem Pa Gur records Sir Kay's battle against the beast, though the text breaks off before revealing the outcome. The creature's legend spread to France as Chapalu, where Arthur himself battled a diabolical feline near Lake Bourget, and where one extraordinary tradition claimed the cat actually slew the king. Whether fought by Kay in Welsh tradition or by Arthur in French romance, the Cath Palug stands as one of Arthurian legend's most primal monsters-a feline nightmare that bridged Welsh mythology and continental storytelling. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Cath Palug From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hen Wen Creature/Monster/Animal Hen Wen Kay Person Kay Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: Pa Gur yv y Porthaur, Black Book of Carmarthen, pre-1250; Welsh Triads (Trioedd Ynys Prydein), 13th century; Vulgate Estoire de Merlin, c. 1220-1235; Romanz des Franceis, 12th century; Wikipedia, "Cath Palug"; Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Deadliest monster in Greek mythology, a towering chaos beast with a hundred serpent heads who nearly destroyed the Olympian gods | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Typhon Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Τυφών / Τυφωεύς) Pronunciation TYE-fon Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Typhoeus, Typhaon, "Father of All Monsters," "The Storm Giant," "The Hundred-Headed One" Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Archaic Greek mythology (8th-5th century BCE); Homeric references Symbol Snake Spiral Tags greek, monster, chaos, storm, volcano, father-of-monsters Introduction - Overview Typhon is the greatest monster ever born in Greek mythology, a hundred-headed serpent giant with fire blazing from his eyes and a body so vast his head touched the stars. He is the final child of Gaia and Tartarus, born to challenge the rule of Zeus after the Titanomachy had ended and the Olympian gods thought themselves secure. He is the creature who made the gods flee in terror to Egypt, where they hid themselves as animals to escape his wrath. He is the monster who captured Zeus himself, cut the sinews from his hands and feet, and left him immobilized in a Cilician cave. He is the father of the most terrible monsters in all Greek myth: Cerberus, the Hydra, the Chimera, the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion, all born from his union with the she-dragon Echidna. And he is the prisoner buried beneath Mount Etna in Sicily, where his struggles still cause the volcano to erupt and thunder, a reminder that the earth itself holds a monster that once nearly overthrew the king of the gods. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Typhon After Zeus had driven the Titans out of heaven and cast them into the dark pit of Tartarus, Gaia the Earth was consumed with rage. She had already lost her first children the Titans to the war, and now her second brood the Giants had also been defeated by the gods. Determined to have one final revenge, she descended into the deepest abyss of Tartarus and lay with the primordial god of that pit, Tartarus himself. From this union was born Typhon, the youngest and most terrible of all her children. He was a mixture of man and beast, so large that he extended beyond all the mountains while his head often touched the stars themselves. Down to his thighs he was human in form, with one hand reaching to the west and the other to the east, but from his shoulders sprouted a hundred serpent heads, each with eyes that flashed fire and tongues that flickered with dark flame. From his thighs down, great coils of vipers extended to the top of his head, hissing mightily. His entire body was winged, and the hair that flowed from his head and cheeks was matted and dirty. From all his mouths came every sort of horrible sound: sometimes speech that the gods could understand, sometimes the bellowing of a proud-eyed bull, sometimes the roar of a shameless lion, sometimes the barking of dogs, and sometimes a whistle so piercing that the tall mountains re-echoed to it. When Typhon was fully grown, he set out to storm Mount Olympus and seize the throne of the gods. He hurled red-hot rocks at the sky itself and advanced with mixed hisses and shouts, while a great storm of fire boiled forth from his mouth. The other Olympian gods, struck with terror at the sight of him, fled from Olympus and ran to Egypt. There they transformed themselves into animals to hide from the monster. Zeus became a ram, the Egyptian god Ammon with curling horns. Apollo became a raven, the Egyptian god Horus. Dionysus became a goat, the Egyptian god Osiris. Artemis became a cat, the Egyptian goddess Bastet. Hera became a snow-white cow, the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite became a fish, the Syrian goddess Ashtarte. And Hermes became an ibis, the Egyptian god Thoth. Only Zeus, the king of the gods, stood his ground. He faced Typhon on Olympus and hurled his thunderbolts at the monster, but Typhon was so vast and so terrible that even the thunderbolts of Zeus could not bring him down immediately. The battle that followed shook the earth to its foundations. Zeus struck Typhon with thunderbolt after thunderbolt, and the earth groaned beneath them, and the heat and blaze from both of them was on the dark-faced sea. The ground and the sky and the sea boiled, and towering waves tossed and beat all up and down the promontories in the wind of these immortals. A great shaking of the earth came on, and Hades, the lord over the perished dead, trembled in his underworld kingdom, and even the Titans under Tartarus, who lived beside Cronus, trembled at the dread encounter and the unending clamour. But Typhon was not easily defeated. In some accounts, he captured Zeus in his serpentine coils, wrested the adamantine sickle from him, and cut out the sinews from Zeus's hands and feet, leaving the king of the gods immobilized and helpless. Typhon then dragged Zeus to the Corycian cave in Cilicia and left him there, hiding the sinews inside a bearskin and setting a she-dragon to guard them. But Hermes, the messenger god, and Aegipan, a rustic deity, stole the sinews back and restored them to Zeus. In other accounts, Zeus never fell and simply pursued Typhon across the earth, hurling thunderbolts until the monster was driven to the ground. In the most detailed version of the battle, Typhon fled from Olympus to Mount Casium, where he and Zeus clashed again. Zeus struck him with his thunderbolt, but Typhon fought back desperately, throwing entire mountains at the god. Zeus blasted the mountains apart with his thunderbolts and pursued the monster to Mount Nysa, where the Fates, the three goddesses who control the destiny of all beings, deceived Typhon into eating the fruits of Dionysus, which were wine grapes. They told him the fruit would give him strength, but it weakened him instead. Typhon fled again, and Zeus cornered him in Sicily. There Zeus dropped the entire mountain of Etna upon him, crushing him beneath its weight and imprisoning him in the earth. To this day, the eruptions of Mount Etna are said to be caused by Typhon's struggles beneath the mountain, his fire-breathing heads still roaring and his serpent coils still thrashing against the stone that holds him down. The smoke and lava that pour from the volcano are the breath and blood of the monster who once nearly overthrew the gods. Typhon's legacy lived on through his children. He took the she-dragon Echidna as his mate, a creature who was half beautiful woman and half monstrous serpent, who lived in a cave beneath a hollow rock far from both gods and mortals. From their union came the most terrible monsters in Greek mythology. First came Orthus, the two-headed hound of Geryon. Then came Cerberus, the fifty-headed hound of Hades who guarded the entrance to the underworld and ate raw flesh. Then came the Lernaean Hydra, the serpent with nine heads that grew two more whenever one was cut off, whom the hero Heracles would later slay. Then came the Chimera, a creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, who breathed raging fire. Then came the Sphinx, the winged monster with the face of a woman and the body of a lion, who plagued the city of Thebes with her riddles. Then came the Nemean Lion, whose hide was impenetrable to any weapon, and whom Heracles strangled with his bare hands. Then came the Caucasian Eagle, the creature that ate the liver of Prometheus every day, and the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides. And there were others: the Colchian Dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, the sow Phaia at Crommyon, and the sea monsters Scylla and the Gorgon. Every monster that a Greek hero ever faced could trace its lineage back to Typhon and Echidna, making Typhon truly the father of all monsters. Summary Typhon stands as the ultimate threat in Greek mythology, the monster who came closer than any other to overthrowing the Olympian order. From his birth in the depths of Tartarus to his imprisonment beneath Mount Etna, his story is one of pure, unbridled destruction: a creature so vast his head touched the stars, so terrible the gods themselves fled in terror, and so powerful he captured Zeus and left him helpless. Every volcano that erupts still carries his name in its thunder, and every monster that Greek heroes ever faced was his child. He is the father of all monsters, and the earth itself is his prison. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Typhon From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Echidna Creature/Monster/Animal Echidna Zeus Deity Zeus Cerberus Creature/Monster/Animal Cerberus Tartarus Deity Tartarus Gaia Deity Gaia Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Theogony (c. 700 BCE) - Lines 820-868 (birth of Typhon from Gaia and Tartarus, battle with Zeus, description of his form and voices) - Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 2, Lines 780-783 (Typhon in the land of the Arimoi, struck by Zeus's thunder) - Homer, Odyssey (c. 700 BCE) - Book 11, Lines 10-15 (land of the Cimmerians/Arimoi near the underworld) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 1, Chapters 39-44 (detailed battle narrative, capture of Zeus, sinews, pursuit across mountains) - Pindar, Pythian Ode 1 (c. 470 BCE) - Lines 16-28 (Typhon in the Cilician cave, buried under Etna, source of volcanic fire) - Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (c. 430 BCE) - Lines 351-372 (description of Typhon as hundred-headed, buried under Etna) - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 5, Lines 319-358 (flight of the gods to Egypt, transformation into animals) - Nonnus, Dionysiaca (5th century CE) - Book 1, Lines 145-170 (Typhon's parentage, battle with Zeus, Egyptian connection) - West, M. L., Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford University Press, 1966) - Commentary on the Typhonomachy and its place in the Succession Myth - Clay, Jenny Strauss, Hesiod's Cosmos (Cambridge University Press, 2003) - Chapter 4 (Typhon and the cosmic order) - Fontenrose, Joseph, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins (University of California Press, 1959) - Chapter 3 (Typhon and the dragon combat motif) Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Geb, the Egyptian earth god, father of Osiris and Set, whose laughter shook the land and whose throne every pharaoh inherited. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Geb Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s gbb (Egyptian) Pronunciation GEB Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Seb, Keb, Gebb, Cronus, Father of the Gods, the Great Cackler, Chief of the Ennead, He Who Lies Beneath Nut, Lord of the Earth, the Laughing One Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 2400 BCE (Pyramid Texts) - Roman period Symbol Rocks & Goose Tags egyptian, geb, earth-god, nut, heliopolis, shabaka-stone, earthquakes, great-cackler Introduction - Overview Geb is the earth itself, the solid ground of Egypt made into a god, the brown and green body on which everything that lives was built. He is the husband of the sky, the brother of Nut, torn away from her by their own father and left lying forever beneath her, still reaching upward after three thousand years. He is the laughing god, for the Egyptians heard the earthquakes as Geb's laughter rumbling through the land, and he is the Great Cackler, the primeval goose whose honk first broke the silence of creation and whose egg hatched the sun. He is the father of the five greatest gods of Egypt, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder, and the first true king to rule the land, who judged the terrible quarrel between his son Set and his grandson Horus and divided Egypt between them. And he is the god whose throne every pharaoh inherited, for the kings of Egypt did not call their seat the throne of any other god: for three thousand years they sat, by their own proud formula, upon the throne of Geb. Gallery Other depictions of Geb as a Goose. Main Article - Who or What was... Geb Geb was born into the first family of creation. His father was Shu, the god of the empty air, his mother was Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, and his grandfather was Atum, the self-created one who had risen from the dark waters at the dawn of time. Geb and his sister Nut, the sky, were twins, and they filled the whole of existence between them, for there was nothing but the ground below and the vault above. His body was the land: the black soil of the valley, the hills of the desert edge, the stone beneath the pyramids. Grain sprouted from his ribs, and the Egyptians said the harvest was his body feeding its children. His sacred bird was the goose, and the flocks that darkened the marshes were his own. And when the ground shook and the houses cracked and the Nile slopped against its banks, the Egyptians did not fear a stranger: they said Geb is laughing, and they listened to the earth god's mirth roll beneath their feet. The great wound of Geb was his separation from Nut. The earth and the sky had loved each other completely, and they lay pressed together so closely that nothing could grow or move between them. Then Shu thrust himself between his children, put his shoulder beneath his daughter, and heaved her into the heights, where she arches still. The image never left Egyptian art: Nut stretched above, Geb below, one knee raised, still reaching up toward the wife he lost, while Shu stands between them with his arms raised to hold her off forever. The groaning that men heard in the earthquakes was his longing, and the laughter was his patience. From their union, in the five days that Thoth the scribe won for Nut in a game against the moon, came the five children who would rule the Egyptian imagination: Osiris, the king who would be murdered; Horus the Elder; Set, the storm; Isis, the enchantress; and Nephthys, the mourner. Geb was the Father of the Gods, and everything that happened afterwards in heaven and on earth was the story of his family. Before he was a father, Geb was a maker of worlds. In the oldest telling of creation at Heliopolis, the city of the sun, he was the Great Cackler, the primeval goose whose cry was the first sound ever made, echoing over the waters of the beginning. The goose laid an egg, and from that egg broke the sun. The egg of Geb became one of the holiest images in Egypt, the shell that had contained all light, and the dead prayed to be counted worthy of its protection. The goose itself was kept sacred in his name, and when the priests of later ages gave the title Great Cackler to other gods, they were borrowing the honour of the earth. It was as a king, though, that Geb mattered most to Egypt. When Ra, the sun god, grew old and withdrew into the sky, and Shu ruled after him, it was Geb who inherited the earth as its first true earthly king, the elder of the Ennead, the council of nine gods descended from Atum. Centuries later, when his family tore itself apart in the feud between his son Set, the red god of the desert, and his grandson Horus, the falcon son of the murdered Osiris, it was Geb who judged the case. The carved stone of King Shabaka, a black slab preserved in Memphis, records his verdict: first he divided the land in two, giving the south to Set and the north to Horus, and then, repenting, he gave the whole inheritance to Horus, for the son of the elder line should not lose his father's portion. That judgment became the charter of Egyptian kingship. Every pharaoh who ever ruled styled himself the heir of Geb, the living Horus upon the throne of Geb, and the right to the crown ran through the earth god's blood. The king was not merely a ruler of the land: he was the land's own heir. And as he received the gods, Geb receives the dead. Every Egyptian grave was a return into his body, the tomb a door into the darkness of the earth, and the texts of the pyramids begged him to welcome the dead king as his child, to open the ground gently, and to lift him up among the gods. The fields above the graves were his skin, and the grain fed the living from the same body that sheltered the dead. He raised no vast temples and gathered no armies of priests, because he needed none: no Egyptian could walk a single step without treading on him. He was the floor of the world, the first ancestor, the judge in the stone, the laughter in the ground, and the goose whose egg was the sun. Summary Geb endures as the ground beneath everything, the patient earth who lost his sky, laughed in the earthquakes, fathered the gods, and fixed the laws of kingship on a stone of black granite. From the primeval egg to the divided inheritance of Horus and Set, from the throne that bore his name for three thousand years to the graves that returned every Egyptian to his body, he is the most solid of all gods. The Greeks who met him called him Cronus, and heard in his family war the echo of their own ancient battles for heaven. In the human imagination, Geb remains the old father of the soil, the god you are standing on now. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Geb From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Horus Deity Horus Osiris Deity Osiris Nut Deity Nut Set Deity Set Shu Deity Shu Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts (5th-6th Dynasties, c. 2345 BCE) - Geb as father, protector, and receiver of the dead king - Coffin Texts (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - Geb's laughter in the earthquakes and the separation from Nut - Book of the Dead (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - spells invoking the primeval egg of the Great Cackler - Shabaka Stone (25th Dynasty, c. 710 BCE) - Geb's judgment dividing Egypt between Horus and Set, and the charter of kingship - Greenfield Papyrus (21st Dynasty, c. 950 BCE) - Geb lying beneath Nut with Shu between them - Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (c. 100 CE) - Geb as Cronus, father of the five gods - Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003) - Geb's iconography, the goose, and the throne of Geb - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2002) - Geb's mythology, kingship, and earthquakes Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Nephele, the cloud phantom shaped like Hera to deceive Ixion, whose union with the punished king produced Centaurus and the wild race of Centaurs. Previous Greek Next > Nephele the Phantom of Ixion Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Νεφέλη (Nephelē), The Cloud Phantom Pronunciation NEF-uh-lee thuh FAN-tum of ik-SY-un Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Hera-Shape, The Phantom Bride, The Mother of the Centaurs, The Deception of Ixion, The Cloud of Punishment, The False Hera Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period Primordial (literary attestation c. 5th century BCE) Symbol Cloud in the Shape of a Queen & Burning Wheel Tags greek, nephele-the-phantom-of-ixion, deity, ixion, hera, zeus, cloud, centaurs, lapiths, thessaly Introduction - Overview Nephele the Phantom of Ixion is the cloud-woman whom Zeus shaped from mist and air to deceive Ixion, the king who lusted after the queen of Olympus and paid for that lust with an eternity on a burning wheel. She is not a goddess born but a goddess made, a construct of vapor and divine craft who was so perfect in her imitation that Ixion, the guest of Zeus, could not tell the difference between the phantom and the real Hera. She is the mother of Centaurus, the first of the horse-men who mated with the mares of Mount Pelion and produced the race of Centaurs, the wild creatures who were half-human and half-horse and who would one day nearly destroy the civilised world. She is the proof that the gods do not merely punish the guilty but turn their crimes into new forms of life, that a king's lust can become a cloud, and that a cloud can become a race of monsters. And she is the only being in Greek mythology who was created specifically to be deceived with, a divine tool who outlived her purpose and became the ancestor of one of the most famous tribes of creatures the Greeks ever imagined. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Nephele the Phantom of Ixion Nephele the Phantom of Ixion was born not from a womb but from a god's hand. Ixion, the king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly in northern Greece, had committed a crime that should have ended his life. He had murdered his father-in-law, Deioneus or Eioneus, after promising him a bride-price of valuable gifts and then hurling him into a pit of burning coals when the old man came to collect. The murder was treacherous, the violation of guest-friendship absolute, and no city in Greece would shelter Ixion from the pollution that clung to him. He wandered as an outcast until Zeus, the king of the gods, took pity on him and invited him to Mount Olympus to be purified and to dine at the table of the immortals. It was an act of divine mercy that Ixion would repay with the grossest ingratitude in all Greek myth. On Olympus, Ixion saw Hera, the queen of the gods, the wife of Zeus, the most powerful goddess in the cosmos, and he desired her. His lust was not the casual admiration that mortals felt when they saw a beautiful goddess. It was an obsession, a madness that drove him to plot how he might possess the wife of the god who had saved him. Some accounts say that he boasted to the other guests at the divine feast that he would lie with Hera. Others say that he tried to force himself upon her in a secluded chamber of the palace. In every version, his intention was clear: he would repay Zeus's hospitality by violating his wife. Zeus was not a god who tolerated such insults. But he was also a god who enjoyed the poetry of punishment, and he devised a revenge that was more cunning than simple death. He took a cloud, a nephos from the sky above Olympus, and he shaped it with his own hands into the perfect likeness of Hera. He gave it her face, her form, her voice, her scent, and her manner of moving. The phantom was so exact that even the other gods, had they not known the trick, might have been deceived. Zeus placed this cloud-woman, this Nephele, in a bedchamber and arranged for Ixion to find her there. Ixion, blind with lust and wine, entered the chamber and lay with the phantom, believing that he was possessing the queen of Olympus herself. The deception was complete. Ixion fell asleep beside the cloud-woman, and when he woke, Zeus confronted him with the truth. The king of the gods showed him the phantom, still lying in the bed, and revealed that Ixion had not touched Hera but a cloud, a thing of mist and air that had no more substance than a morning fog. The shame was worse than any torture. Ixion, who had thought himself the equal of the gods, was exposed as a man who could not even tell a goddess from a vapor. Zeus bound him to a burning wheel, a wheel of fire that spins eternally through the sky, and Ixion's screams became the sound of thunder in the upper air. He is still spinning, in the Greek telling, and will spin forever, the eternal advertisement of what happens to those who lust after the wives of gods. But Nephele did not dissolve when her purpose was served. She had taken on something of divine substance in the making, and she was pregnant with Ixion's child. She gave birth to a son named Centaurus, a creature who was not fully human nor fully divine but something in between, a being whose form was never clearly described in the earliest sources but who was associated with the mountains of Thessaly. Centaurus grew to manhood, or to whatever maturity his hybrid nature allowed, and he wandered the slopes of Mount Pelion, the great mountain that rises above the Thessalian plain. There he encountered the wild mares that roamed the mountain's meadows, and from his union with them was born the race of Centaurs, the horse-men who were half-human and half-equine, wild creatures of prodigious strength and violent temperament who would one day fight the Lapiths at the wedding of Pirithous, Ixion's own son, and who would produce the most famous individual Centaur of all, Chiron, the wise teacher of Achilles, Asclepius, and Heracles. Nephele's role after the birth of Centaurus is not described in the surviving sources. She may have returned to the sky, dissolving back into the clouds from which she was made, or she may have remained on Olympus as a minor deity, a goddess of mist and deception. The Greeks did not worship her with temples or sacrifices, for she was not a goddess of the people but a goddess of the story, a figure who existed to make a point about the consequences of lust and the cunning of divine revenge. But her descendants, the Centaurs, were everywhere in Greek myth. They fought at the wedding of Pirithous, they attacked Heracles, they were defeated by the Lapiths, and they haunted the mountains of Thessaly as symbols of the wildness that civilisation must always hold at bay. Summary Nephele the Phantom of Ixion endures as the most extraordinary creation in Greek mythology, a cloud shaped into a queen to deceive a lustful king and then transformed into the mother of a race of monsters. From the bedchamber on Olympus to the meadows of Mount Pelion, from the burning wheel of Ixion to the hooves of the Centaurs who would one day battle the Lapiths, her story is one of divine craft that outlasted its purpose. A detail worth remembering: Nephele was the only being in the Greek cosmos who was made to be lied with, and in that terrible purpose she proved that the gods do not merely punish crimes but turn them into new forms of life, making the sinner the ancestor of his own punishment. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Nephele the Phantom of Ixion From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Ixion Person Ixion Hera Deity Hera Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pindar, Pythian Ode 2.21-48 (c. 462 BCE) - primary poetic account of Ixion's lust, the cloud phantom, and the eternal wheel - Scholia to Pindar, Pythian 2.39 (c. 5th century BCE - later) - commentary on Nephele as the cloud and mother of Centaurus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome 1.20 (1st-2nd century CE) - Ixion's murder of his father-in-law, his purification by Zeus, and his punishment - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Book 4.69.3-5 (c. 1st century BCE) - Ixion's attempt on Hera and the creation of the cloud phantom - Hyginus, Fabulae 62 (c. 2nd century CE) - Ixion bound to the wheel and the birth of the Centaurs from the cloud - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 5.17.9 (c. 150 CE) - the chest of Cypselus depicting Ixion on the wheel - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of the Ixion and Nephele tradition - Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin, 1955, revised 1960) - the Centaur genealogy and the role of Nephele in Thessalian mythology Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Proetus, the King of Tiryns who sent Bellerophon to his death and watched his daughters driven mad by Hera - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Proetus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Προῖτος (Proitos) Pronunciation PREE-tus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles King of Tiryns, The Twin of Acrisius, The Husband of Anteia, The Father of the Proetides, The Man Who Sent Bellerophon to Die Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th century BCE (Homeric tradition); Bronze Age setting Symbol The walls of Tiryns Tags greek, proetus, tiryns, acrisius, bellerophon, proetides, melampus, argos Introduction - Overview Proetus is the king of Tiryns who shared his mother's womb with his mortal enemy and spent his life fighting the brother he could never escape. He is the son of Abas, the king of Argos, and the twin of Acrisius, the grandfather of Perseus, the hero who would one day slay the Gorgon Medusa and rescue the princess Andromeda from a sea monster. He is the husband of Anteia, or Stheneboea in some tellings, the queen who desired Bellerophon and then accused him of assault when he refused her. He is the king who sent Bellerophon to his father-in-law Iobates, the king of Lycia, with a sealed letter that commanded the recipient to murder the bearer. He is the father of the Proetides, the daughters who were driven mad by the goddess Hera and wandered the hills of Argolis believing themselves to be cattle, until the seer Melampus cured them at the price of a third of the kingdom. He is the lord who ruled from Tiryns, the city whose massive walls were built by the Cyclopes, the one-eyed giants who served the gods. And he is the ancestor of Glaucus, the Lycian hero who fought beside the Trojan prince Hector in the Trojan War, a legacy that stretched from the quarrels of twins to the walls of Troy. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Proetus Proetus was born in Argos, the greatest city of the Argolid, the region of the Peloponnese that jutted into the Aegean Sea. His father was Abas, the king of Argos, and his mother was Ocalea, or Aglaia in some tellings. But Proetus was not born alone. His mother carried twins, and from the moment they stirred in her womb, they were at war. The two brothers fought each other before they ever saw the light, and their hatred continued after birth. When Abas died, the twins could not share the throne. They divided the kingdom by force, and Acrisius, the elder, took Argos itself, while Proetus was driven into exile. He wandered to the court of Iobates, the king of Lycia, a kingdom in the south-west of Asia Minor, and there he found refuge. Iobates gave him his daughter Anteia, or Stheneboea in some tellings, in marriage, and together they had children. But Proetus did not forget his birthright. He returned to the Argolid with an army and laid siege to Tiryns, a fortress city on the coast, and with the help of the Cyclopes, the one-eyed giants who were master builders, he made it his own. The walls they raised were so massive that later Greeks believed only giants could have placed the stones, and to this day they are called Cyclopean walls. Acrisius kept Argos, and Proetus ruled Tiryns, and the two brothers glared at each other across the plain until death. Proetus's marriage to Anteia was the source of his greatest shame. She was a queen of fierce passions, and when the young prince Bellerophon came to Tiryns, a guest under the sacred protection of xenia, the ancient bond that made every host responsible for the safety of his guest, Anteia desired him. Bellerophon was the son of Glaucus and the grandson of Sisyphus, the cunning king of Corinth who had cheated death twice and was punished in Tartarus, the dark pit beneath the earth, by being forced to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. He was handsome, skilled, and honourable, and when Anteia tried to seduce him, he refused her out of loyalty to his host. Enraged by his rejection, Anteia went to Proetus and told him that Bellerophon had tried to assault her. Proetus believed his wife, or perhaps he chose to believe her because the alternative was too terrible to face. He could not kill Bellerophon himself, for that would violate the sacred laws of xenia and bring the wrath of Zeus, the king of the gods who protected all guests, upon his head. So he devised a subtler punishment. He gave Bellerophon a sealed tablet and sent him to Lycia, to his father-in-law Iobates, with instructions to deliver it personally. The tablet contained a message written in the old script: kill the man who brings this letter. Iobates, bound by guest-friendship to Proetus, received the letter and set Bellerophon impossible tasks, but the hero survived them all, and in the end Iobates gave him half his kingdom and his own daughter in marriage. Proetus's plan had failed, and Bellerophon had become greater than the king who had tried to destroy him. But Proetus's troubles were not limited to his wife's treachery. He had daughters, and they were cursed. The Proetides, as they were called, were three in number: Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, though some tellings name them differently. The goddess Hera, the queen of Olympus and wife of Zeus, struck them with madness, either because they had rejected her worship or because they had boasted that their beauty surpassed her own. The girls wandered the hills of Argolis, their hair wild, their clothes torn, believing themselves to be cattle. They lowed like cows and grazed on the grass, and their father could do nothing to cure them. He offered a great reward to any man who could restore their sanity, and the seer Melampus, a prophet who could understand the speech of animals, came forward. Melampus knew that the cure required courage and sacrifice. He took a band of young men and pursued the maddened girls through the mountains, driving them with shouts and whips toward the city of Argos. One of the girls, Iphinoe, died in the chase, but the others were cured by a purifying ritual that Melampus performed. For his service, Melampus demanded a third of Proetus's kingdom, and Proetus, desperate to save his remaining daughters, agreed. The seer became a king, and the Proetides were restored to their father's house, though they never forgot the hills where they had grazed like beasts. In the later years of his reign, Proetus watched as the world around him changed. His brother Acrisius had a daughter, Danae, whom he locked in a bronze tower to prevent a prophecy that said her son would kill him. But Zeus visited her in a shower of gold, and she bore Perseus, the hero who would one day slay the Gorgon Medusa, the creature whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone, and who would accidentally fulfil the prophecy by killing Acrisius with a discus. Proetus outlived his brother, but his own line was less fortunate. His daughters married and had children, but the curse of Hera lingered over the house. In the end, Proetus died and was buried in Tiryns, and his kingdom passed to his descendants. But his name lived on through Bellerophon, the hero he had tried to kill, and through Glaucus, the Lycian warrior who would fight at Troy, carrying the blood of Proetus into the greatest war of the age. Summary Proetus stands as the king whose own household destroyed him, the twin who could not share, the husband who believed a lie, and the father who watched his daughters go mad. From the womb of Ocalea to the walls of Tiryns, from the sealed tablet of Lycia to the hills where the Proetides grazed, his story is a chronicle of the curses that fall upon those who cannot master their own domain. Every kingdom divided against itself, every guest betrayed by a host, every father who cannot save his children carries something of his fate. He is the reminder that the greatest dangers to a king often come not from his enemies but from the people who share his table and sleep beneath his roof. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Proetus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Acrisius Person Acrisius Hera Deity Hera Bellerophon Person Bellerophon Stheneboea Person Stheneboea Iobates Person Iobates Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 6, Lines 152-211 (Proetus as king of Ephyre and the Bellerophon story) - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women (c. 7th century BCE) - Fragment 129 (Proetus and Acrisius as twins, division of Argos) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 2.2.1 (Proetus and Acrisius divide the kingdom) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 2.2.2 (the madness of the Proetides and Melampus) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 2.3.1 (Proetus, Anteia, and Bellerophon) - Pausanias, Description of Greece (c. 150 CE) - Book 2.25.7 (tomb of Proetus at Tiryns) - Pausanias, Description of Greece (c. 150 CE) - Book 2.18.4 (the Proetides and their cure) - Herodotus, Histories (c. 440 BCE) - Book 9.34 (Melampus and the division of the kingdom) - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - Volume 1, pp. 295-301 (Proetus, Acrisius, and the Argive royal house) - Hall, Jonathan M., Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1997) - Chapter on Argive genealogy and the Proetid myth Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Erichthonius, the earth-born king of Athens raised by Athena, hidden in a forbidden chest and remembered as the founder of the Panathenaic festival. Previous Greek Next > Erichthonius Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἐριχθόνιος (Erichthonios) Pronunciation er-ik-THOH-nee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Earth-Born King, The Child of the Chest, The Snake-Boy, The First Athenian, The Horse-Tamer, The Founder of the Panathenaea Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Serpent, Chest & Chariot Tags greek, erichthonius, person, athens, acropolis, autochthonous, athena, hephaestus, cecrops, panathenaea Introduction - Overview Erichthonius is the earth-born king of Athens, the child who had no mother but was born from the seed of a god and the body of the earth itself, and who grew up to become the ancestor of every Athenian who ever claimed to be autochthonous, born from the soil of Attica rather than from any immigrant stock. He is the son of Hephaestus, the lame smith-god whose forge burned beneath the volcanoes of the Aegean, and Gaia, the earth-goddess whose body received the divine seed when Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom, refused to submit to the smith's advances. He is the infant whom Athena hid in a chest and gave to the daughters of Cecrops, the first king of Athens, with a strict command never to open the lid, a command they disobeyed at the cost of their sanity and their lives. He is the king who invented the chariot to hide his serpentine lower body, who founded the Panathenaea, the great festival of Athens, and who was buried within the city he ruled, a privilege granted to no other mortal. And he is the ancestor of Erechtheus, the later king who gave his name to the Erechtheion, the most sacred temple on the Athenian Acropolis, so that the two names and the two kings became one in the memory of the city. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Erichthonius Erichthonius was born in Athens, or rather beneath it, in the smithy of Hephaestus on the Acropolis itself. Hephaestus, the god of fire and metalworking, had fallen in love with Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom and war, and had tried to force himself upon her. Athena, the daughter of Zeus who had sprung fully armed from her father's forehead, was not a goddess who submitted to any male, divine or mortal. She fought Hephaestus off, and in the struggle his seed fell upon the earth, upon Gaia, the primordial mother whose body was the soil of Greece itself. Gaia received the seed and brought forth a child, a boy who was half-human and half-serpent, his lower body coiled like a snake, his upper body the image of a divine infant. He was autochthonous, born from the chthon, the earth, with no mortal mother to claim him, and in this he was the perfect symbol of Athens, the city that prided itself on being the oldest in Greece because its people had always lived on the same soil. Athena took pity on the child, or perhaps she recognised in him a weapon against those who would question her virginity. She placed the infant in a small chest or casket, a larnax of woven wicker, and set a serpent to coil around him as his guardian. Then she carried the chest to the daughters of Cecrops, the first king of Athens, a man who was himself half-serpent, born from the autochthonous soil of Attica before the flood. Cecrops had three daughters, Aglaurus, Herse, and Pandrosus, and Athena entrusted the chest to them with a solemn command: they must not open it. They must not look inside. They must guard it with their lives and tell no one what it contained. The daughters agreed, and Athena departed, leaving the chest in their keeping on the Acropolis, in the shadow of her own temple. The daughters of Cecrops could not resist. Curiosity, or perhaps divine compulsion, drove them to lift the lid of the chest and peer inside. What they saw drove them mad. Some accounts say they saw the infant Erichthonius with the serpent coiled around him, a sight so terrible that their minds broke. Other accounts say that Athena had set two additional serpents inside the chest as guardians, and the girls were bitten and died. In the most common version, Aglaurus and Herse were driven mad by the sight and threw themselves from the Acropolis, falling to their deaths on the rocks below, while Pandrosus, the youngest, either survived or was turned to stone for her part in the transgression. The serpent that guarded Erichthonius survived, and Athena took the child back and raised him herself, or gave him to the wife of Cecrops to nurse in secret. When Erichthonius grew to manhood, he became king of Athens, succeeding Cecrops or his successor Cranaus, depending on which king-list one follows. His reign was prosperous and innovative. He invented the chariot, not merely as a vehicle of war but as a means of concealing his serpentine lower body from the gaze of mortals, who might have been driven mad by the sight of his true form as the daughters of Cecrops had been. He harnessed four horses to his chariot and rode through the streets of Athens in state, the first king to do so, and the chariot became the symbol of Athenian royalty. He also founded the Panathenaea, the great festival in honour of Athena that was celebrated every four years with athletic contests, musical competitions, and a sacred procession along the Panathenaic Way to the Acropolis, where a new robe was presented to the goddess's ancient wooden statue. Erichthonius was buried in Athens, a singular honour. Most Greek cities forbade burial within the walls, fearing pollution, but Erichthonius was autochthonous, born from the earth of the Acropolis, and it was fitting that he should return to it. His tomb lay within the precinct of the temple of Athena Polias, the most sacred spot on the Acropolis, and his serpent guardian continued to dwell there, receiving offerings of honey cakes from the priests. When the Erechtheion was built in the fifth century BCE, the temple incorporated both his tomb and the sacred serpent, and the name of Erichthonius was gradually conflated with that of his descendant Erechtheus, a later king who fought a war against Eleusis and was killed by Poseidon's trident. The two names became one in Athenian cult, and the Erechtheion housed the shrines of both, along with the wooden statue of Athena that Erichthonius himself was said to have dedicated. Summary Erichthonius endures as the primal king of Athens, the earth-born child whose serpentine body and divine parentage made him the perfect symbol of a city that claimed to be the oldest in Greece. From the smithy of Hephaestus to the chest of Athena, from the madness of Cecrops's daughters to the chariot that concealed his snake-tail, his story is one of autochthonous power and the terrible price of looking upon the divine. A detail worth remembering: the Athenians buried him within their walls, the only mortal so honoured, because they believed he was not a man who had come to their city but the city itself, born from its own soil. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Erichthonius From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Athena Deity Athena Hephaestus Deity Hephaestus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.6 (1st-2nd century CE) - birth of Erichthonius from Hephaestus and Gaia, the chest, and the daughters of Cecrops - Hyginus, Fabulae 166 (c. 2nd century CE) - Erichthonius raised by Athena, given to Cecrops's daughters, and his later reign - Euripides, Ion, lines 20-27, 267-272 (c. 410 BCE) - Erichthonius as autochthonous ancestor of the Athenian royal line - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 1.2.6, 1.14.6, 1.18.2 (c. 150 CE) - tomb of Erichthonius, the Erechtheion, and the Panathenaic festival - Homer, Iliad, Book 2.546-551 (c. 8th century BCE) - Erichthonius as rich in horses and founder of Athenian chariot tradition - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of Erichthonius in early Greek literature and art - Robert Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford University Press, 1996) - scholarly study of Erichthonius's cult and autochthonous ideology in Athens - Jenifer Neils, "Erichthonius and the Three Daughters of Cecrops" in Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) - iconographic and cultic analysis of the Erichthonius myth Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Broceliande, the enchanted Breton forest of Merlin's prison, the storm-raising Fountain of Barenton, and the Valley of No Return. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Broceliande Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Brecheliant, Bresillanda, Brucellande (medieval spellings); Paimpont (the modern forest) Pronunciation broh-say-lee-AHND Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Enchanted Forest, the Forest of Wonders, the Forest of Merlin, the Forest of the Fountain, the Wood of the Valley of No Return, the Breton Wilderness Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details French/Breton Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Location Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender N/A Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic Arthurian period); literary tradition 12th-15th centuries CE Symbol A golden basin hanging from a pine above an emerald stone, where poured water calls down a storm Tags arthurian, broceliande, forest, brittany, merlin, viviane, barenton, paimpont Introduction - Overview Broceliande is the most enchanted forest in Arthurian legend, the wild Breton wood where magic is not a visitor but a resident. It is the forest of the Fountain of Barenton, where a golden basin hangs from a pine above a slab of emerald stone, and anyone who pours water on the stone summons a storm of thunder, wind, and hail terrible enough to shake the world. It is the wood where the knight Calogrenant was shamed by the fountain's defender, and where Yvain went to avenge him and found a queen, a lion, and a life's worth of adventures. It is the place where the prophet Merlin first saw the young huntress Viviane, taught her all his magic, and was sealed by her spells inside an invisible tower or beneath a great stone, where he sleeps to this day. It is the site of the Valley of No Return, where the enchantress Morgan le Fay trapped every faithless knight in Britain until Lancelot broke the spell. And it is a real forest: the woods of Paimpont in Brittany, where the fountain, the valley, and the tomb still stand. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Broceliande Broceliande first appears in writing around 1160, in the Roman de Rou of Wace, a Norman poet chronicling the dukes of Normandy. Wace had heard the Breton tales: that in Broceliande there was a fountain called Barenton beside which fairies could be seen, that hunters who blew their horns there encountered wonders, and that the whole forest breathed enchantment. So he went to see for himself. He found the fountain and the great stone, he blew no horn, he saw no fairy, and he came home, as he admits, feeling a fool for having looked. That confession is the forest's perfect introduction: the marvels of Broceliande reveal themselves to knights on quests, not to sightseers. The fountain gets its full legend in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, the romance composed around 1180 by Chretien de Troyes, the master poet of Arthurian France. At Arthur's court the knight Calogrenant tells how he rode into Broceliande, found the basin of gold hanging from the fairest pine ever grown, and poured water from it onto the emerald stone below. At once the sky split: thunder cracked, hail and wind lashed the forest, and when the storm passed, birds filled the tree with song and a knight in black armour thundered out of the wood to defend his fountain. He unhorsed Calogrenant and sent him home on foot. Yvain, the king's knight and Calogrenant's cousin, steals away to avenge the shame, pours the water, survives the storm, and mortally wounds the fountain's defender, Esclados the Red. Chasing the dying man to his castle, Yvain is trapped between two portcullises and saved by a lady's magic ring; he falls in love with the dead knight's widow, Laudine, and wins her, becoming the new defender of the fountain in Broceliande. The forest's deepest secret belongs to Merlin, the prophet and enchanter who guided Arthur's father. In the French prose romances of the thirteenth century, Merlin rides into Broceliande and meets at the fountain a beautiful young huntress named Viviane, the girl the world will know as the Lady of the Lake. She beguiles him into teaching her his arts, and he, who can see the whole future and still walks into it, shows her spell after spell, including the enchantment that binds without chains. When she has learned all, she works that spell upon him: in one version she seals him in a tower of air in the forest, visible to no one but her; in another she lays him under a great stone in Broceliande's depths. The forest that taught him nothing and kept everything becomes his last address. It is also the childhood home of Lancelot, the greatest knight of the Round Table, raised beneath the waters of Viviane's lake in the same enchanted wood. Broceliande's strangest corner is the Valley of No Return. Morgan le Fay, Arthur's half-sister and an enchantress of terrible power, was betrayed by a lover, and in her rage she wove a spell over a valley in the forest: no knight who had ever been false in love could ride out of it. The flowers bloomed, the streams sang, and the unfaithful of Britain wandered there for years, more than two hundred of them, until Lancelot - the one great knight who had never broken a vow of love - rode in and shattered the enchantment. The vale is still shown in Brittany today, a moor of golden gorse above the forest of Paimpont. For the forest is real. Since the later Middle Ages, readers have identified Broceliande with the woods of Paimpont, west of Rennes, and the Bretons have mapped the legend onto the land: the Fountain of Barenton still rises in a clearing by a slab of stone, the Valley of No Return still glows with heather, and an ancient oak stands where Merlin's tree is said to have grown. Whether the poets found the magic in the forest or the forest borrowed the magic from the poets, no one now can say, and the Bretons see no need to choose. Summary Broceliande endures as the wilderness heart of the Arthurian world, the forest where every road to wonder begins and one great road ends, under Merlin's stone. The monument long shown as Merlin's Tomb at Paimpont was a genuine prehistoric gallery grave until a treasure-hunting landowner blew most of it apart in the nineteenth century, a loss that somehow suits the legend. From Wace's foolish pilgrimage to Yvain's storm, from Viviane's lessons to the Valley of No Return, it remains the proof that some forests are not scenery but characters, and this one has never given up its secrets. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Broceliande From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Yvain Person Yvain Morgan Le Fay Person Morgan Le Fay Merlin Person Merlin Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Wace, Roman de Rou, c. 1160 - primary source; the first written mention of Broceliande and the marvels of the fountain - Chretien de Troyes, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, c. 1177-1181 - primary source; the fountain of Barenton, the storm, and the adventures of Yvain - The Vulgate Cycle (Estoire de Merlin), c. 1215-1235 - primary source; Merlin's meeting with Viviane at the fountain and his enchantment in the forest - The Vulgate Lancelot, c. 1215-1235 - primary source; Lancelot's childhood beneath the lake and the Valley of No Return - Saunders, Corinne J., The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden (D. S. Brewer, 1993) - scholarly study of the enchanted forest in romance tradition - Lacy, Norris J. (ed.), The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (Garland, 1991) - scholarly reference on Broceliande, Barenton, and the Breton tradition - Markale, Jean, Broceliande et l'enigme du Graal (Pygmalion, 1989) - scholarly and archaeological study of the forest of Paimpont and its Arthurian sites Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Leto, the Titan goddess who wandered the earth in labour until Delos gave her refuge and she bore Apollo and Artemis - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Leto Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Λητώ (Lētō), Latona (Roman) Pronunciation LEE-toh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Mother of the Twins, The Hidden One, The Wandering Goddess, The Lady of Delos, The Daughter of Coeus, The Titaness of Night Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Titan Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period c. 8th century BCE (Homeric Hymn to Apollo); Archaic period Symbol The palm tree of Delos Tags greek, leto, apollo, artemis, delos, titan, hera, motherhood Introduction - Overview Leto is the Titan goddess of motherhood who wandered the earth in labour for nine days and nine nights because Hera, the queen of Olympus, forbade any land to give her shelter. She is the daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, two of the primordial Titans who ruled before the Olympian gods, and the mother of Apollo, the god of music and light, and Artemis, the virgin huntress who roamed the wilderness with her bow. She is the woman who found refuge on a floating island that was not anchored to the earth, where a palm tree bent to shade her as she gave birth to the twin gods who would shape the Greek world. She is the goddess who turned the peasants of Lycia into frogs for refusing her water, and whose name was invoked by Niobe, the queen of Thebes, in the boast that cost Niobe fourteen children. She is the hidden power behind two of the most formidable Olympians, the mother whose suffering gave birth to divine vengeance and divine healing. And she is the patron of Delos, the sacred island that became the centre of Apollo's worship and one of the most important religious sites in the ancient world. Every palm tree that bends over water, every island that drifts in the mind, and every mother who has struggled to find a place to give birth carries her memory. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Leto Leto was born to Coeus and Phoebe, two of the twelve Titans who had ruled the cosmos before the rise of Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled from Olympus with his thunderbolt. Coeus was the Titan of the inquisitive mind, and Phoebe was the Titaness of the moon and prophecy, the grandmother of Apollo through whom his gift of prophecy would flow. Leto grew up in the twilight of the Titan age, and when the Titanomachy, the war between the old Titans and the young Olympian gods, ended with Zeus's victory, she was spared the punishments that fell upon her kin. She was beautiful and gentle, and she attracted the eye of Zeus himself. The king of the gods desired her, and she conceived twin children: a boy and a girl who would become two of the most powerful deities in the Greek pantheon. But Hera, the queen of Olympus and goddess of marriage, learned of the affair and was consumed by jealousy. She was Zeus's wife and sister, and she had sworn to punish every woman who bore his children. Her vengeance against Leto was absolute and cruel. She sent the monstrous serpent Python, a creature born from the mud left after the great flood, to pursue the pregnant Titaness across the earth. More terribly, she decreed that no land fixed beneath the sun, no earth anchored to the foundations of the world, would allow Leto to give birth upon it. Leto wandered from place to place, her belly swollen with the twins, begging every island and every shore for shelter. But Hera's command was feared even more than Zeus's love, and every land refused her. The earth itself had been warned, and the waters rose to prevent her from touching solid ground. For nine days and nine nights Leto wandered in agony, her labour pains growing sharper with every hour. She crossed the Aegean, the sea between Greece and the coast of Asia Minor, and she came at last to a tiny island called Ortygia, a floating rock that drifted upon the waves and was not anchored to the earth beneath. The island was barren and windswept, but it was not fixed land, and Hera's curse did not apply. Leto fell upon the shore and grasped the trunk of a palm tree that grew there, bending it with her weight as the first birth pang seized her. The island accepted her, and in that moment it became sacred. Some said that Poseidon, the god of the sea and earthquakes, raised the island from the waves with his trident to give her refuge; others said that Zeus himself commanded the winds to carry her there. Leto gave birth first to Artemis, the goddess who would become the huntress, and then, with Artemis's own infant hands assisting, to Apollo, the god who would become the sun of the Greek world. The moment the twins were born, the island fixed itself to the earth with four pillars of adamant, and from that day it was called Delos, the revealed one, the place that had been hidden no more. The birth was not the end of Leto's trials. Hera's jealousy continued, and she kept Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, away from Delos, prolonging Leto's labour until the other goddesses bribed Hera with a golden necklace and Eileithyia was allowed to come. After the birth, Leto and her children were not safe. The island of Cos tried to welcome her, but Hera drove her away. She wandered to Lycia, a kingdom on the coast of Asia Minor, and came thirsty to a pool where peasants were drawing water. She begged for a drink, but the peasants, fearing Hera's wrath, stirred the mud of the pool to make it undrinkable. Leto, enraged by their cruelty, transformed them into frogs, condemning them to live in the murky water they had made foul, croaking and leaping forever. The pool became a marsh, and the frogs of Lycia were said to be the descendants of those peasants to this day. In time, Apollo and Artemis grew to adulthood with supernatural speed. Apollo claimed Delphi, the sacred oracle on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, by slaying the serpent Python that had pursued his mother. He established his temple there, and the Pythian Games were held in honour of his victory. Artemis claimed the wilderness, the mountains and forests where she hunted with her nymph companions, and she became the protector of young women and the bringer of swift death. Leto remained in the background, the mother of two gods who had outgrown her need. But she was honoured at Delos, where her temple stood beside Apollo's, and the island became a place of pilgrimage. Every four years the Delia festival was held, celebrating the birth of the twins, and athletes and musicians came from across the Greek world to compete in their honour. Leto's story also intersected with one of the most terrible tragedies in Greek myth. Niobe, the queen of Thebes and daughter of Tantalus, the king who was condemned to eternal hunger in Tartarus, the deepest pit of the Underworld, boasted that she was greater than Leto because she had fourteen children while Leto had only two. Leto heard the boast from her sanctuary on Delos and cried out to her children. Apollo and Artemis answered with arrows of gold and silver, and they slew all fourteen of Niobe's children in a single day. Leto did not order the massacre, but she did not prevent it. The gods had made her suffering the foundation of their power, and her honour was not to be questioned by any mortal. Summary Leto stands as the eternal mother of endurance, the Titaness who wandered the earth in labour until a floating island gave her refuge and the world received its twin gods of light and the hunt. From the curse of Hera to the palm tree of Delos, from the frogs of Lycia to the arrows that answered Niobe's boast, her story is one of suffering that gives birth to power. Every palm tree that bends over sacred ground, every island that becomes a sanctuary, and every mother who has been turned away carries the memory of Leto, the hidden goddess who revealed the greatest of the Olympians. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Leto From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Niobe Person Niobe Zeus Deity Zeus Apollo Deity Apollo Artemis Deity Artemis Hera Deity Hera Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo (c. 7th century BCE) - lines 1-178 - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes (c. 6th century BCE) - lines 100-101 - Hesiod, Theogony (c. 700 BCE) - lines 404-410, 918-920 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (c. 100 BCE) - Book 1, chapter 4, sections 1-2 - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 6, lines 146-312 - Pausanias, Description of Greece (c. 150 CE) - Book 1.31.1, 2.35.2, 8.37.1 - Callimachus, Hymn to Delos (c. 3rd century BCE) - lines 1-326 - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (1985) - Harvard University Press, pp. 143-147 - Clay, Jenny Strauss, The Politics of Olympus (1989) - Princeton University Press, pp. 18-45 - Brillante, Carlo, "Leto e la nascita di Apollo" in Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 32 (1989), pp. 7-28 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore the Palladium of Troy, the sacred wooden image of Athena whose theft by Odysseus and Diomedes removed the divine protection guarding the city of Troy. Previous Greek Next > Palladium of Troy Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Παλλάδιον (Palladion) Pronunciation puh-LAY-dee-um of TROY Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Wooden Image of Pallas, The Luck of Troy, The Fallen Statue, The Guardian of Ilium, The Image of Athena, The Trojan Palladium Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Artifact/Object/Weapon Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period Bronze Age (mythic); literary tradition from 8th century BCE Symbol Statue of Athena Tags greek, palladium, troy, athena, odysseus, diomedes, aeneas, vesta, rome Introduction - Overview The Palladium of Troy is the wooden image of Athena that fell from heaven and made the city of Troy invincible for as long as it stood within her walls, the luck of a kingdom carved from the sacred olive wood of the goddess herself. It is the statue that Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca, and Diomedes, the prince of Argos, stole by night, crawling through a sewer and slaying the guards who watched over it, the theft that doomed Troy to fall. It is the image that the Trojan hero Aeneas, the son of the goddess Venus and the mortal Anchises, carried from the burning city to Italy, and that became the sacred guardian of Rome itself, housed in the temple of Vesta where the eternal flame burned. It is the statue that the Greeks believed had once been the height of a man, then shrank over the centuries, and that the Romans swore was still kept in the imperial palace as the safeguard of the empire. And it is the ancestor of every luck-bringer, every guardian icon, and every national treasure that a people believe protects them from destruction, the original proof that a city stands or falls by the god it keeps. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Palladium of Troy The Palladium was born from the hands of Athena herself, or so the Trojans believed. Some said the goddess had carved it from the wood of a sacred olive tree on the citadel of Troy, shaping it in her own image with spear in hand and distaff at her side, a figure of war and weaving, of protection and domestic order. Others said it had fallen from the sky, dropped by Zeus as a gift to his favoured city, a divine sign that Troy was under the protection of heaven. Still others said it had been made by the craftsman Daidalos, the same man who built the labyrinth for the Minotaur on Crete, and that he had given it to the Trojans as a gift. Whatever its origin, the statue was small, no taller than a man, and it was made of wood, not gold or marble, which made it all the more sacred, for the Greeks believed that the gods loved simple offerings more than costly ones. The Palladium stood in the temple of Athena on the citadel of Troy, the highest point of the city, where the goddess could watch over her people. An oracle had declared that as long as the image remained within the walls, Troy could never fall. The Trojans guarded it with their lives. Priests tended it day and night, and the kings of Troy, from Laomedon to his son Priam, offered sacrifices before it before every battle. The statue was not merely a religious object. It was the soul of the city, the visible proof that the gods had chosen Troy to stand forever, and its presence made the Trojans fight with a courage that no Greek army could break. For nine years the Greeks besieged the city, and for nine years the walls held, because the Palladium stood on the citadel and Athena's eye was upon it. But the Greeks were cunning as well as strong. The prophet Calchas, who had revealed the cause of Apollo's plague at the beginning of the war, now revealed the secret of Troy's invincibility. The city could not fall while the Palladium remained within its walls. The Greek leaders, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and commander of the armies, and Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca whose ten-year voyage home would become the subject of Homer's Odyssey, devised a plan. They would send two men into the city by stealth to steal the image, and without it Troy would be vulnerable to any attack. Odysseus and Diomedes volunteered for the mission. Diomedes was the prince of Argos and one of the greatest Greek warriors, a man who had once wounded Ares, the Olympian god of war, in single combat with Athena's help. Odysseus was the craftiest man in Greece, the inventor of the wooden horse that would one day breach the walls of Troy itself. Together they crept through the night, disguised as beggars or crawling through a sewer, depending on which poet tells the tale, and made their way up to the citadel. The guards were few, for the Trojans believed their city was impregnable, and Odysseus and Diomedes slew them silently. They entered the temple of Athena, and there stood the Palladium, small and wooden and ancient, its painted eyes staring into the darkness. Diomedes reached for it, but some say Odysseus wanted the glory of the theft for himself and tried to kill Diomedes once the image was in his hands. Others say Diomedes struck first. In the end they carried it out together, and the luck of Troy went with them. The theft of the Palladium was the turning point of the war. With the image gone, the divine protection of Troy was broken, and the Greeks knew that the city could now fall. But the walls were still high and the Trojans still brave, and a direct assault would cost thousands of lives. Odysseus devised the wooden horse, a giant hollow statue built from the timbers of the Greek ships, and the Greeks hid their best warriors inside it. The Trojans, believing the horse was a gift to Athena, dragged it within their walls, and that night the Greeks emerged, opened the gates, and burned the city to the ground. The Palladium was gone, and Troy fell in flames. Some said that the Greeks took the statue back to Argos or Sparta as a trophy, but the more important tradition held that it was never in Greek hands at all. For in the chaos of the sack, the Trojan hero Aeneas, the son of Venus and the mortal Anchises, whose union had been blessed by Aphrodite herself, carried the Palladium from the burning temple. Aeneas was one of the few Trojans to escape the destruction, and he took with him his father, his son, and the sacred image of Athena. He sailed across the Mediterranean, wandering for years as Odysseus would later wander, until he reached Italy and founded the city that would become Rome. The Palladium went with him, and when Rome rose to power the statue was housed in the temple of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, where the eternal flame burned and the Vestal Virgins tended it day and night. The Romans believed that as long as the Palladium remained in Rome, the city would stand forever, just as the Trojans had believed the same of Troy. The image had travelled from one empire to another, and its power had never faded. In later ages, the word palladium came to mean any safeguard or protection, any object or institution that keeps a people safe from harm. The British called their empire a palladium of liberty, and the Americans called their constitution the same. The statue itself was said to have been transferred to Constantinople when the Roman Empire moved east, and then to have been lost in the chaos of history, but its name lived on. Every national relic, every sacred banner, and every symbol that a people believe protects them from destruction carries something of the wooden image that Athena carved or that fell from the sky, the small statue that made Troy invincible and then, when it was stolen, let the city burn. Summary The Palladium of Troy stands as the most consequential statue in Western mythology, the wooden image of Athena whose presence made a city invincible and whose theft doomed it to flames. From the citadel of Troy to the temple of Vesta in Rome, from the hands of Diomedes to the arms of Aeneas, its story is the story of how a people live and die by the gods they keep. Every sacred relic that a nation guards as the source of its fortune, and every word that calls a safeguard a palladium, descends from the small wooden figure that stood on the Trojan citadel, a reminder that the luck of a city is a fragile thing, and that the gods watch only while they are watched in return. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Palladium of Troy From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Aeneas Person Aeneas Athena Deity Athena Odysseus Person Odysseus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad (c. 8th century BCE) - Book 6.297-311 (the temple of Athena at Troy and the Palladium) - Homer, Odyssey (c. 8th century BCE) - Book 8.499-520 (the fall of Troy and the wooden horse) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 3.12.3 (the Palladium and its theft); Book E.5.13 (Aeneas carries it from Troy) - Pausanias, Description of Greece (2nd century CE) - Book 2.23.5 (the Palladium at Argos) - Virgil, Aeneid (19 BCE) - Book 2.162-179, Book 2.293-295 (Aeneas and the Palladium in the burning city) - Ovid, Fasti (c. 8 CE) - Book 6.417-458 (the Palladium in the temple of Vesta) - Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities (1st century BCE) - Book 1.68-69 (the transfer of the Palladium to Rome) - Livy, Ab Urbe Condita (1st century BCE - 1st century CE) - Book 5.52 (the Palladium and the sack of Rome by the Gauls) - Erskine, Andrew, Troy between Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2001) - Chapter 4 (the Palladium in Roman ideology) - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - Volume 2, pp. 624-629, 650-655 (the fall of Troy and the Palladium) - Wiseman, T. P., The Myths of Rome (University of Exeter Press, 2004) - Chapter 3 (Aeneas, the Palladium, and Roman origins) - Beard, Mary, The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, 2007) - Chapter 2 (sacred objects and Roman identity) Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore the Field of Reeds, the ancient Egyptian paradise where the justified dead lived forever in a perfect green Egypt ruled by Osiris. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Field of Reeds Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s aArw (Egyptian: Aaru), Sekhet-Aaru Pronunciation FEELD of REEDZ Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Aaru, Aalru, the Field of Offerings, Sekhet-Hetepet, the Domain of Osiris, the Egyptian Paradise, the Fields of Peace Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Location Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period c. 2055 BCE (Coffin Texts) - Roman period Symbol Reeds & River Tags egyptian, field-of-reeds, aaru, afterlife, osiris, paradise, shabti, book-of-the-dead Introduction - Overview The Field of Reeds is the Egyptian heaven, the paradise where the justified dead lived forever in a perfect Egypt of green fields, full canals, and wheat that grew seven cubits tall, twice the height of a man. It is the destination of every soul that passed the Weighing of the Heart, the judgment where the heart was balanced against the feather of truth, ruled over by Osiris, the green-skinned king of the dead. It is the mirror of the Nile valley at its best, where the blessed ploughed and sowed and reaped, feasted, sailed, and played senet, the board game of the afterlife, in a land that never knew drought or debt. It is the heaven with servants, for every Egyptian took small statues called shabtis into the grave to answer for them when labour was called, so that eternity could be spent in leisure. It is the paradise that had to be earned twice, once by a blameless heart and once by the passwords and spells that opened its demon-guarded gates. And it is the oldest fully pictured heaven in human religion, the green original from which every later paradise, Elysian or otherwise, borrowed its colour. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Field of Reeds The Egyptians imagined their heaven not as a city of cloud and harp but as home perfected. The Field of Reeds, which they called Aaru, and its twin district the Field of Offerings, lay in the realm of Osiris, the murdered and risen king who judged the dead, in the blessed West where the sun goes down into the Duat, the underworld. It was Egypt without its sorrows: the Nile ran full, the canals never silted, the fields of emmer wheat and barley stood higher than a man on horseback, and the islands of the blessed rose green from the water, each with its shrine and its harbour. To dwell there a person had to be justified, declared true of voice at the judgment, and from that moment the dead were named for their ruler: every blessed man and woman became an Osiris, one with the god. Kings had once claimed the afterlife as their private estate, but by the Middle Kingdom the gates of the field stood open to scribes, soldiers, farmers, and weavers alike, and paradise became the common hope of Egypt. Getting there was an expedition, and the Book of the Dead, the great collection of afterlife spells buried with the dead, was its guidebook. The road ran through gates guarded by knife-wielding demons whose names had to be spoken exactly, for a name was power, and across waters where a surly ferryman called Mahaf, He Who Looks Behind Him, had to be woken and persuaded to row the soul over, but only after the traveller proved worthy by naming every plank and rope of his boat. The final gate was the Hall of the Two Truths, where the heart was weighed against the feather of Maat, the goddess of truth. The light-hearted passed into the field. The heavy-hearted were thrown to Ammit, the devouring monster who waited by the scales, and simply ceased to exist, for the Egyptians had no hell of fire, only the horror of oblivion, the second death from which no spell could bring a soul back. Life in the Field of Reeds was life at its sweetest, and the spells describe it without shame: to plough and to sow, to reap and to eat, to drink, to sail the canals, and to love, all beneath a sun that never scorched and a flood that never failed. The dead were reunited with their families and their servants, sat down to offering tables heaped by the living, played senet in the shade, and kept their rank and their clothes and their names. They were not ghosts but citizens, and the living knew it. Families wrote letters to their dead, bowls inscribed with requests to a mother or a husband who had crossed over, asking them to intercede in sickness and lawsuits, for the blessed in the field were near to Osiris and their influence reached back across the water. Offerings flowed the other way, from the tables of the living to the altars of the dead, in a commerce of bread and prayer that bound the two banks of the river of death. Yet the Egyptians were practical even in paradise. Eternal abundance meant eternal harvests, and somebody had to bring them in, so they invented the most Egyptian solution imaginable: the shabti, a small mummiform statue with hoes on its back and a seed basket in its hands, inscribed with the spell that made it answer. When the dead were called to labour in the fields of the hereafter, the shabti was to rise and say, here I am, send me. Nobody entered the afterlife without them: commoners took a few, nobles took dozens, and kings took armies. Tutankhamun, the boy king of the golden tomb, was buried with more than four hundred, and Taharqa, the Nubian pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the seventh century BCE, took over a thousand, with overseer shabtis carrying whips to keep the others at their work. Heaven, in other words, came with outsourced labour, and the dead were free to enjoy the green eternity they had earned. The Field of Reeds is the first paradise in human records that we can walk through in detail, and its green fingerprints are on every heaven that came after. When the Greeks dreamed of Elysium, the perfect plain at the world's edge where heroes live on in ease, they were dreaming a dream Egypt had dreamed two thousand years earlier. The gardens of later faiths, the rivers, the fruit, the reunion of families, all carry something of its shape. It faded with the temples, and its spells slept unread until the hieroglyphs were deciphered in the nineteenth century, but its central idea has never died: that heaven is not an escape from life but life made whole, the harvest day that never ends. Of all the heavens humanity has imagined, none is more human than the Field of Reeds. Summary The Field of Reeds endures as the most human paradise ever imagined, a heaven that looked exactly like home on its best day, ruled by a god who died and rose to prove the journey could be made. Its blessed dead were not idle: the luckiest were welcomed aboard the barque of Ra, the sun god, sailing with him through the night sky to rise with him at dawn. Every green heaven, every vision of reunion beyond the grave, every hope that the best of life lasts forever carries a seed of its wheat. In the human imagination, the Field of Reeds remains the eternal harvest, the promise that home lies across the water, and the crossing is worth it. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Field of Reeds From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Ammit Creature/Monster/Animal Ammit Osiris Deity Osiris Book of the Dead Artifact/Object/Weapon Book of the Dead Duat Location Duat Maat Deity Maat Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Coffin Texts, the Book of Two Ways (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - the earliest maps of the Field of Offerings and the roads to it - Book of the Dead, Spell 110 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - life, labour, and pleasure in the Field of Reeds - Book of the Dead, Spell 149 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - the fourteen districts of the Field of Offerings - Book of the Dead, Spell 6 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - the shabti spell, the answerer for the labour of the hereafter - Letters to the Dead (Old to New Kingdom, c. 2100-1200 BCE) - the living writing to the blessed dead for help - Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 1999) - the geography and meaning of the blessed realm - John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001) - judgment, shabtis, and daily life in the Field of Reeds - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2002) - the paradise tradition and its place in Egyptian belief Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Bronze automaton forged by Hephaestus guarding Crete. Circled the island thrice daily, hurling boulders at ships til Argonauts took him down | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Talos Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Τάλως) Pronunciation TAY-loss Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Talus, The Bronze Man, The Cretan Automaton Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A (masculine form) Time Period c. 3rd century BCE (literary record in Apollonius Rhodius's Argonautica) Symbol Bronze Guard Tags greek, guardian, bronze-sentinel, relentless, protector, protect Introduction - Overview Talos is the bronze giant who circled the island of Crete three times each day, hurling boulders at any ship that approached its shores, the last survivor of the bronze race of men and the most terrifying guardian in all of Greek mythology. He is the automaton forged by Hephaestus, the divine smith whose forge lay beneath a volcano and whose skill with hammer and anvil could craft wonders beyond mortal imagination, or given by Zeus, the king of the gods and wielder of the thunderbolt, to his lover Europa, the Phoenician princess whom the god had carried to Crete in the form of a white bull, to protect her and her descendants. He is the giant whose body was made entirely of bronze, impenetrable to sword or spear, and whose single vein of ichor, the golden blood of the gods, ran from his neck to his ankle, sealed at the end by a bronze nail or a membrane of skin. He is the sentinel who was finally destroyed by the witch-goddess Medea, the sorceress princess of Colchis who had helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece and who used her magic to drive Talos mad or to remove the nail that sealed his lifeblood, causing the ichor to drain out and the giant to fall dead upon the Cretan rocks. He is the ancestor of every robot and automaton in Western imagination, the first artificial being in literature, a creature of metal and divine craft that walked, thought, and died like a man. And he is the symbol of the boundary between the age of bronze and the age of heroes, the last remnant of an older world that the gods had replaced with flesh and blood. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Talos Talos was born in the earliest age of the world, when the gods had not yet created mortal men as they would later be known. According to Hesiod, the poet who sang of the origins of the gods and the cosmos, there were five ages of man: the golden age, when men lived like gods without toil or pain; the silver age, when men were foolish and impious; the bronze age, when men were made of bronze and destroyed themselves with war; the age of heroes, when the great warriors of Greek myth lived and died; and the iron age, the present age of toil and sorrow. The bronze race was a generation of men born from the ash trees, hard and warlike, their weapons and their armor and their very bodies made of bronze. They were terrible and strong, and they destroyed one another in endless combat until none remained. But Talos, or so the later poets said, was the last of this race, preserved by the gods to serve as a guardian rather than a warrior, a sentinel rather than a soldier, and he was given to Europa, the Phoenician princess whose beauty had so moved Zeus that he had transformed himself into a magnificent white bull, carried her across the sea to Crete, the large island south of the Greek mainland, and made her the mother of Minos, the legendary king who would build the Labyrinth and rule the first great sea empire of the ancient world. Talos's body was a marvel of divine craftsmanship, or of natural wonder, depending on the telling. He stood as tall as a mountain, or as tall as a man, the sources disagree, but his form was always of bronze, not flesh, and his strength was beyond any mortal's. He circled the island of Crete three times each day, walking the coast with giant strides, his bronze feet striking sparks from the rocks, his eyes scanning the horizon for any ship that dared to approach. When he saw a vessel, he tore boulders from the cliffs and hurled them with the force of a catapult, smashing hulls and drowning crews before they could land. He was not malicious but dutiful, a guardian who knew no other purpose, and the Cretans left offerings for him at the shore, knowing that his vigilance protected them from pirates and invaders. Some said he was a gift from Hephaestus to Minos, forged in the divine smith's volcano-forge and animated by the gods' power. Others said he was the last survivor of the bronze race, preserved by Zeus as a favor to Europa. Still others said he was the son of the Cretan smith Kres, or of the goddess Thetis, the sea-nymph who was the mother of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. But all agreed on his nature: he was a being of metal and ichor, not flesh and blood, and his death would come not from battle but from the loss of the divine fluid that animated him. The destruction of Talos came during the voyage of the Argonauts, the band of heroes led by Jason who sailed in the ship Argo to claim the Golden Fleece from the distant kingdom of Colchis. On their return journey, the Argonauts approached Crete, hoping to land and take on fresh water and supplies. But Talos saw them from the cliffs and began his attack, hurling boulders that smashed the water around the Argo and threatened to sink her. The heroes could not fight him, for his bronze body was impenetrable, and no sword or arrow could harm him. It was Medea, the witch-princess of Colchis who had joined the Argonauts after helping Jason steal the fleece with her magic, who devised the means of his death. Medea was a sorceress of terrifying power, the granddaughter of Helios, the sun god who drove his blazing chariot across the sky, and she knew the secrets of drugs, poisons, and spells that could bend the will of gods and men. She approached Talos, or sent her magic against him, and in the most famous version of the story, she used her powers to drive him mad, promising him immortality if he would remove the bronze nail that sealed the vein of ichor at his ankle. Talos, in his confusion, did so, and the golden blood of the gods poured out like molten metal, draining his life away. He fell upon the rocks of Crete with a crash that shook the island, and the bronze giant moved no more. In another version, Medea did not deceive Talos but attacked him directly with her magic. She cast a spell of binding upon him, or sent a demon to torment him, and while he was distracted, the hero Poeas, an Argonaut of great skill with the bow, shot an arrow that struck the membrane covering the vein at his ankle, causing the ichor to leak out. In yet another version, the Argonauts themselves managed to wrestle Talos to the ground and hold him while Medea removed the nail. But all versions agree on the essential fact: Talos was destroyed by the loss of his ichor, the divine blood that animated his bronze form, and that without it, he was nothing but a statue, a hollow shell of metal upon the rocks. The Argonauts landed safely, took what they needed, and sailed away, leaving the giant's body where it fell, and the Cretans mourned the loss of their guardian, for no other power could replace him. Talos has haunted the Western imagination for three thousand years as the first artificial being in literature, the ancestor of every robot, android, and automaton that followed. The Greeks did not have a word for robot, but they had the concept: a being made by craft rather than nature, animated by divine power rather than birth, and capable of thought and action but not truly alive. Talos was not a man, for he was made of bronze, but he was not a statue, for he walked and watched and threw boulders. He existed in the uncanny valley between the living and the made, and his death raised questions that still resonate today: what is the difference between a creature and a machine? Can a being of metal have a soul? And if it can, does its destruction count as murder? The myth of Talos was revived in the Renaissance, when automata became fashionable in European courts, and again in the modern age, when science fiction has made the robot a central figure of anxiety and wonder. Every story of a machine that thinks, every debate about artificial intelligence and consciousness, every fear of the made thing that turns against its maker, carries the shadow of Talos, the bronze giant who guarded Crete until a witch and an arrow brought him down, and whose fall marked the end of the age of bronze and the beginning of the age of heroes, when men were made of flesh and their guardians were made of courage rather than metal. Summary Talos endures as the primal automaton, the bronze sentinel whose destruction marks the boundary between divine craft and mortal courage, between the age of metal men and the age of flesh. From the forge of Hephaestus to the cliffs of Crete, from the boulders that smashed ships to the ichor that drained upon the rocks, his story is a meditation on what it means to be alive, what it means to be made, and what happens when the made thing outlasts the age that created it. Every robot in fiction, every fear of artificial intelligence, every wonder at the machine that moves like a man has its ancestor in Talos, the bronze giant who circled Crete three times a day and fell to a single nail. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Talos From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Jason Person Jason Medea Person Medea Europa Person Europa Hephaestus Deity Hephaestus Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 140-155 (c. 700 BCE) - the five ages of man, the bronze race - Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Book 4, lines 1638-1688 (3rd century BCE) - Medea and the destruction of Talos - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 1, chapter 9.26 (1st-2nd century CE) - Talos as the last of the bronze race, guardian of Crete - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 1, chapter 21.4 (2nd century CE) - bronze statue of Talos at Olympia - Simonides, Fragment 568 (6th-5th century BCE) - early reference to Talos as the Cretan guardian - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Book 4, chapter 77.1 (1st century BCE) - Talos as the son of Kres, the Cretan smith - Mayor, Adrienne, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (Princeton University Press, 2018) - comprehensive study of Talos and ancient automata in Greek myth - Kang, Minsoo, Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2011) - discussion of Talos as the ancestor of the robot in Western literature Previous --- End of Record --- Next >