Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (81 page)

^*
The original sun god of ancient Greece was known as
Helios
, who drove his chariot across the sky each day, journeying back each night in a chariot. Although regarded with reverence, Helios was not a major cult figure. In one legend, his half-mortal son,
Phaeton
, once asked if he could drive the sun chariot for a day, and Helios agreed. But the boy could not control the horses, which threatened to set the world on fire, so Zeus killed Phaeton with a thunderbolt.

^*
The famed temple’s sacred status changed with history. The Parthenon was converted into a Christian church about 500 CE, and then a mosque, after the Ottoman Empire captured Athens in the mid-1400s. A sculptural frieze from the front of the Parthenon remains an artistic controversy. Known as the Elgin Marbles after the English Lord Elgin, who removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in 1816, they are now held by the British Museum. But the Greek government believes that the Elgin Marbles are a Greek treasure that should be returned to their rightful place. Their unsuccessful plea was repeated during the 2004 Olympics.

^*
There is another myth thought to explain the seasons. Another “foreign import,”
Adonis
was the child of an incestuous relationship, an exceedingly handsome young man who originated in the ancient Near East and was adapted by the Greeks. The name “Adonis” derives from the Semitic word for “lord,” and he is connected with Dumuzi/Tammuz of Mesopotamian fame. Taken by his beauty, Aphrodite finds the infant Adonis and places him in a chest and gives him to Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for safekeeping. Enchanted with the youth, Persephone refuses to return him. Zeus ruled that Adonis would spend part of the year with Aphrodite and part of the year with Persephone. When Adonis stayed with Aphrodite on earth, plants and crops flourished. During his time in the underworld, vegetation died; Adonis supposedly fits into the “dying-rising” vegetation-god theory.

^*
The Muses are Clio (history), Euterpe (flute playing), Thalia (comedy), Melpomene (tragedy), Erato (love lyrics), Terpsichore (dance), Polyhymnia (pantomime), Urania (astrology), and Calliope (epic poetry).

^*
This is one of several parallels between the feats of Heracles and those of the biblical Samson, another ancient strongman, who also killed a lion and was renowned for his hefty sexual appetites.

^*
Asclepius was identified with a single snake. Perhaps because of its ability to shed its skin, it was viewed in ancient times as a sign of immortality. The staff with two snakes, chosen by the American Medical Association as an emblem, is actually the wand of Hermes, called a caduceus, which he used to conduct the dead to Hades.

^*
The Academy started in a grove of olive trees shared with a public
gymnasium
, or place of nude exercise. The Academy was shut down by the Byzantine Roman emperor Justinian, who thought he was stamping out paganism.

^*
The daughter of Priam, Cassandra is so beautiful that Apollo falls in love with her and gives her the power of prophecy. But she rejects him, and Apollo punishes Cassandra by ordering that no one will ever believe her prophecies, including her own Trojan people when she advises them to return Helen. After Troy falls, Agamemnon takes Cassandra to Mycenae as a slave and ignores her prophecy of his death. After Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, has the king killed, Cassandra is also murdered. Her name is now used to describe any prophet of doom.

^*
“Indo-European” generally refers to people who lived in the area north of the Black Sea, in southeastern Europe. This culture worshipped a warrior god who ruled the sky. One group of Indo-Europeans migrated westward to what is now Greece and Rome. Another group migrated southward into northern India. Called the Aryans, they developed the warlike sky god Indra and are discussed in chapter 6.

^*
In some versions it is a basket, an interesting parallel to the stories of Moses, the Mesopotamian Sargon, and the Persian Cyrus, great leaders who were all abandoned in baskets on rivers.

^*
The NBA’s famed Boston franchise is commonly pronounced
sehl-tics
, but the word “Celts” is more accurately pronounced
kelts
, though some authorities prefer
shelts
.

^*
Among the many Celtic offshoots were the people addressed by St. Paul in his Epistle to Galatia, a region around what is now Ankara, Turkey. This significant letter made clear that, in Paul’s view, Gentiles (non-Jews) did not have to become Jews before becoming Christians. And Paul included a very specific catalog of vices that may have been commonplace in Galatia, among them fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, envy, drunkenness, and carousing. But the Galatians—and other Celts—surely had no monopoly on this sort of behavior in the first-century world.

^*
The sacredness of water to Celts is also attested to by the thousands of coins found in the springs of Bath. We know the Celtic practice of throwing an object into the water was widespread, based on discoveries of many objects—including swords and shields—in lakes and wells near Celtic sites. This vestige of Celtic belief lives on in the commonplace practice of throwing coins in wishing wells and fountains.

^*
Perhaps this helps explain why the Irish Celts so readily accepted the teachings of St. Patrick (c. 389-461 CE) when he explained that Jesus had also sacrificed his life to save his people. That concept may have appealed to the Celts, along with the three-leafed shamrock that Patrick supposedly used to illustrate the idea of a Holy Trinity, as three was a number sacred to all Celts.

^*
In legend, the author of the
Táin
, Fergus, is another Irish hero of superhuman size, strength, and sexual appetites. He was the king of Ulster before Conchobar. When one of his lovers agrees to sleep with him only if her son can be king of Ulster for a year, Fergus consents. But the son, Conchobar, proves to be so popular that Fergus is not permitted to return to the throne. Fergus and Conchobar later argue over Conchobar’s cruelty to Deirdre, a young woman who throws herself to death under the wheel of a chariot rather than marry at Conchobar’s command, leading Fergus to join the rival armies of Connacht and become Queen Medb’s lover.

^*
“Fenian” becomes an important name later in Irish history. Beginning in the 1850s, it was used by Irish nationalists struggling to free the country from British rule. Many Fenians also belonged to a revolutionary secret society called the Irish Republican Brotherhood, founded in the United States. The Fenians had a great influence on a later generation of Irish nationalists, and after years of rebellion and guerrilla warfare, Ireland won independence in 1921—although the province of Ulster remained in British control. Political heirs of the Fenians, the nationalist party Sinn Féin (“we ourselves”) began as a self-reliance movement in 1905.

^*
A scholar of medieval poetry and myth, Tolkien taught Norse and Germanic literature and mythology at Oxford University for more than thirty years while writing
The Hobbit
and the
Ring Trilogy
. His books are steeped in these Norse and Germanic myths, and the name of his wizard, Gandalf—sometimes likened to the Norse god Odin—comes from Norse poetry. The scene of the
Ring Trilogy
, Middle Earth, is also drawn from Norse myth, in which the world of men is called Midgard.

^†
They even reached North America, establishing settlements in Canada five hundred years before Columbus arrived. But their stay there was temporary and left no permanent impact on the Americas.

^*
Composed over a period between 1853 and 1874, the cycle begins with
Das Rheingold
(
The Rhine Gold
), which serves as a prologue to the three main operas:
Die Walküre
(
The Valkyrie
),
Siegfried
, and
Die Götterdämmerung
(
The Twilight of the Gods
). All four works were first performed as a cycle in 1876 for the opening of the Festival Opera House, built by Wagner in Bayreuth, Germany.

^*
The Making of the Atomic
, Richard Rhodes, p. 676.

^*
Due to its unfortunate association with Hitler and Nazism, the word “Aryan” has acquired a taint. Hitler and the Nazis used the term to refer to Germans and other northern Europeans, whom they considered racially superior to all other people. This racist use of the term continues among white supremacist groups, such as the Aryan Nation in the United States. Even the swastika, adapted as the symbol of Nazi power, has its roots in a similar ancient but benign Hindu symbol, which originally meant “let good things happen.” Among the other people who referred to themselves as Aryans were the Iranians; the name “Iran” itself comes from the word “Aryan.”

^*
Dalits, or untouchables, have traditionally held such occupations as tanning, street sweeping, and other menial jobs forbidden to members of the four castes. In 1950, untouchability was constitutionally outlawed, but discrimination against the Dalits is deeply ingrained and a form of caste-based “apartheid” still exists in India, where, according to Human Rights Watch, Dalits are often the victims of violence. “Pariah,” a Tamil word used for people with no caste, has also come to mean a social outcast.

^*
There is a school of mythology called ritualism, which suggests that rituals precede myths—merely stories created to justify the ritual. A “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” debate, the ritualist concept does not alter the fact that rituals and myths combine as powerful forms of belief and social order.

^*
Unfortunately, the Ganges has also become an industrial chemical dump, an open municipal sewer for the millions who live along its great length, and a depository for animal carcasses and human remains. It may indeed be a divine river, but it is a river seriously soiled by human hands.

^*
Mitra
was a minor Hindu Vedic sun god worth mention because he eventually travels far beyond India. His twin brother was
Varuna
, the guardian of the cosmic order, and both were thought to be young, handsome, shining deities. Mitra ruled the day while Varuna ruled the night. The god of friendship and contracts, Mitra was good-natured and seen as a mediator between the gods and man. While Mitra occupied a more significant place in pre-Vedic times, his prominence faded with the coming of the Indo-Aryans. But in Persia, he had a longer run as Mitra, a Persian god who was later adoped by the Romans as Mithra. (See page 169, “
What are three Persian magicians doing in Bethlehem on Christmas?”
)

^*
The existing Great Wall of China dates from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 CE). But records of wall-building by the Chinese go back as far as 600 BCE, and the idea to construct a large Great Wall began during the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE).

^*
With the reforms that have come to China during nearly thirty years since China was “reopened” in the post-Mao era, government attitudes toward religion have softened considerably. Now recognizing the value of the Confucian emphasis on correct moral behavior, the Party has returned some temples to the control of religious groups. But religion in China is still very much in official hands. The government initially approved of a movement that combined Buddhist and Taoist philosophies with deep breathing and martial arts exercises. However, Falun Gong, as it is known, has come under official attack since 1999, when 10,000 of its followers demonstrated in front of Party headquarters.