Rampage! (32 page)

Orpheus was a master-musician whose lyre-playing was
so beautiful that it charmed the birds from the skies, the wolves from the woods and made the trees boogie on down. As one of the Argonauts, his sensational strumming smothered the songs of the ship-sinking sirens, meaning that the crew sailed safely home.

This festival, held in ancient Athens, celebrated Athena's birthday and was famous for its procession of heroes, musicians and poets, all wishing the goddess many happy returns. Her presents included a gigantic dress for her gigantic statue and lots of animal sacrifices. Some people think that one of the marble friezes on her temple, the Parthenon, shows the event. However, despite extensive examinations of the remaining chunks of stone, archaeologists haven't found a single picture of a birthday cake or a balloon. Well, some birthday, I must say.

Pegasus was a beautiful white flying horse that put the ‘up' in ‘Giddy up!' and the ‘rise' in ‘rising trot'. Always a bit of a show-off, he enjoyed hoofy-dancing high in the sky, where he performed kicks and twirls in the clouds. However, his spectacular dressage could occasionally lead to an accidental flurry of doo-doo
mess
-age, which ultimately led to the invention of the fabulous Athenian-reinforced umbrella.

Penelope, the wife of the hero, Odysseus, waited many years for her husband to return from the War of Troy. During that time, lots of other suitors, who believed he'd died, wished to marry her, but she declined, saying that she would only choose a new husband when she had finished her tapestry. This she unpicked every night so that the picture – a delightful harbour in Ithaca, filled with fishing boats, gulls and snappy-clatters of crabs line-dancing on the shore – would never be completed, leaving her free to stitch and twitch until her husband finally returned.

Poseidon, god of the sea, lived far beneath the waves in a glittering palace of coral. When he was happy, the sea was calm. But when he was angry, he made it rage. Whipping the water into a fury, he'd rise up from the froth to jab things with his trident. Such tantrums caused earthquakes, shipwrecks and tidal waves, not to mention playing absolute havoc with the jellyfish, which were left spinning for days.

Pythagoras was an Ancient Greek mathematician, most famous for thinking about triangles, and one day your maths teacher might well mention him. The old Greek's work on geometry involved lots of pacing about on the
beach, assisted by Adder, who still blushes to recall the day that the old man finally cracked the puzzle, flung his robes up over his wrinkly knees and performed an early version of the cancan in the sea. However, since this is not recorded in the history books, your maths teacher will probably say it never happened.

Charybdis's best buddy – see above.

Sisyphus was a fiendish Greek king who loved lying and deceiving others and topped off his treachery by murdering his guests. For these crimes, he was sent to Tartarus, the Underworld's terrifying prison. Here, he was sentenced to push a backbreaking boulder to the top of a steep hill. However, as soon as he'd achieved this agonising feat, the boulder rumbled back down the slope again to the bottom, condemning him to repeat his task over and over for eternity. This made him the original King of Rock and Roll.

The Greek Sphinx was a mythical creature with the head of a woman and the body of a lion. She was said to guard the city of Thebes and wouldn't let anyone pass unless they could answer her annoying riddles. If they failed, she ate them. Her most famous brainteaser was:
‘Which creature has four feet, then two feet, then three?' Any ideas?
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The Stymphalian Birds were the pets of Ares, the god of war. However, unlike other pet birds, such as parrots, they ate people, pooped poison and had beaks made of bronze. Worse, anyone foolish enough to ask them ‘Who's a pretty boy then?' never found out the answer because it's impossible to hear when your head is stuck halfway down a bird's throat.

Theseus was the man who killed the Minotaur, a monster who was half-man and half-bull. In order to defeat it, he needed all of his Greek fighting skills, together with a good dollop of bullfighting know-how. Luckily for him, he was as graceful as a matador and swift as a picador. However, once he'd done the deed, he then needed to find-a-door since he was still stuck inside the creature's maze-like prison. This he did by following the trail of wool he'd unravelled behind him on his way in.

Long, long ago, the brave and handsome Jason learned that he was the true king of Iolkos, a city-state in Ancient Greece. However, his wicked uncle Pelias had crowned himself king many years before and when Jason demanded his rightful place back, Pelias agreed to step down on one condition: that Jason sail across the sea to bring him back the Golden Fleece.

The Fleece was a ram’s coat made of pure gold and the most valuable thing on Earth. It belonged to King Aetes of Kolkis, who sought to keep it safe by hanging it at the top of a tall tree in a magical glade, where it was guarded by a gigantic, man-eating snake. The serpent never slept. Instead, with its coils wrapped tightly about
the tree’s trunk, it watched, night and day, for intruders, its snout resting on the scatter of bones and armour that was all that was left of the men who’d tried in the past. And so Pelias felt certain that since the quest was so dangerous Jason would never return to bother him again.

But, determined to win back his crown, Jason sailed valiantly with fifty of Greece’s noblest heroes, as captain of the
Argo
, and after an eventful and terribly dangerous voyage presented himself at King Aetes’ palace.

Of course, Aetes had no intention of giving up his precious Fleece, but since it would not be kingly to flatly refuse, he agreed that if Jason could yoke the fire-breathing bulls and plough a field with special seeds, then the Fleece would be his. Aetes laughed secretly to himself, certain that Jason would perish in the attempt.

However, the king had reckoned without his daughter, the beautiful Medea, who was a sorceress. Falling deeply in love with Jason, she set out to protect him with her magic.

The next day, Jason stepped into the field with the fire-breathing bulls, furious beasts that blasted jets of flames at anyone who stepped near them. Aetes smiled to himself, confident that Jason would be scorched to a crisp in trying to put on their iron harness. However, Medea had given Jason a magical salve to protect his skin from the searing heat, and whilst everyone else ran away from the fire and the smoke and the fierce clattering of bronze hooves, he bravely yoked the bulls without harm. Then he stepped behind the plough and
began guiding the terrible beasts across the field without injury or fear.

The king was horribly frustrated, but smiled and handed Jason a bag of seeds to sow across the new furrows. But the seed was no ordinary seed. Each seed was a dragon’s tooth and as they fell on to the freshly turned soil, an army of bone soldiers leaped up and raced towards Jason, swinging their swords. But Jason cleverly thought to pick up a stone and throw it amongst them. The soldier it hit immediately thought his neighbour had attacked him and fought him instead, and in the following chaos every soldier smashed one another to pieces.

The king was secretly furious at Jason’s cleverness and courage, but to keep up appearances he promised him and the Argonauts a feast to celebrate Jason’s success in winning the Fleece. But that night Medea warned Jason that her father really intended to kill him and his men, and led him to the sacred oak, where she sent the snake to sleep so that Jason could clamber fearlessly up its slithering, terrible coils to collect his prize.

Triumphant, and a true hero of Greece, Jason carried the Fleece back down through the branches of the tree and returned to the
Argo
, and with his men and his new bride, Medea, sailed home to be crowned King of Iolkos.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Those of you who like a good snootle through a history book will discover that whilst Wat was indeed shot by Spanish soldiers as he quested for El Dorado, he was not shot in the Amazon in Brazil, but in Venezuela, which is another country in South America. Tweaking the truth like this is called ‘artistic licence’ and is where writers, who spend all their time making things up, decide to make up a little bit more.

AND FINALLY, A NOTE ON THE AMAZON RAINFOREST

You might be surprised to discover that the Amazon gets its name from the fabby old Greek myths and the Amazons, who were a tribe of ferocious women-warriors. These feisty females spent their days bashing up anyone that annoyed them, such as Herakles, who had run off with their queen’s girdle as one of his Twelve Labours. However, it wasn’t until hundreds of years later, long after the fall of old Greece, that the tribe’s name became linked to the river. This happened in the late sixteenth century, when some Spanish explorers searching for – you’ve guessed it – El Dorado, ended up sick, hungry and horribly lost in the jungle. Worse, just to top off their disastrous trip, a tribe of wild women who, the Spaniards said, looked exactly like the Amazons they’d read about at school, ran squealing from the trees and clobbered them. The Spaniards’ tale spread far into South
America and beyond, and the river quickly became known as
Rio Amazonas,
the River of the Amazons. Nowadays, it is simply called The Amazon.

The biggest river in the world, and the second longest after the Nile,
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it is about four thousand miles long. It rises in the Andes Mountains of Peru and flows through Venezuela, Ecuador, Columbia, Guyana, Bolivia and Brazil. It carries more water than any other river on Earth and flows up to six miles wide, stretching to thirty miles across in the rainy season. Its mouth (where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean) is around one hundred and fifty miles across. This is why the Amazon is sometimes called ‘the River Sea’.

Around it, the rainforest is one of the most spectacular places on Earth, and brims with thousands and thousands of plants. It home to sloths, vampire bats, jaguars, caimans, monkeys, armadillos, poison frogs, boa constrictors and anaconda. More than 1,500 species of birds, including Mr Potoo, live there, together with over two million species of insects and more than two thousand species of fish. Over half of all the creatures on Earth live in rainforests.

According to Greenpeace, one hectare of Amazon jungle can contain three hundred species of tree, compared to a measly old ten in a hectare in England. And just one tree can house more species of ant than
can be found in the entire United Kingdom. However, we are not going to talk about that, because I’ve had quite enough of ants in this book, thank you very much.

The Amazon rainforest is called ‘the lungs of the planet’ because it gives us one-fifth of the world’s oxygen by processing carbon dioxide with its billions of leaves. These plants have also given us more than a quarter of all the medicines we take in the West. In fact, seventy per cent of the plants that we use to treat cancer grow there, yet scientists have so far only investigated a teensy little bit of the jungle.

So, who knows what other wonderful cures might be found?

Well, unfortunately, probably not us, if the rainforest continues to be chopped down at the rate of three football pitches a minute. That’s right. Sky Forest Rescue and the World Wildlife Fund have calculated that that’s the area being hacked away every minute of every day for furniture, paper, doors, windows and fences, and even fancy coffins. Some land is used to farm or graze animals, but with the poor soil of the Amazon, the ground soon becomes nothing more than a dusty wasteland. Meaning that in roughly the time it’s taken you to read this far through my note on the Amazon rainforest, another patch of jungle about ten football fields big has vanished for good, taking with it all the thousands of animals, birds and insects that thrive there, some of whom will be lost for ever, together with the ancient homelands of
tribes who have lived there for hundreds of years in harmony with the jungle.

Losing the rainforest would be utterly disastrous for the world. That’s why governments and conservation organisations are trying hard to save them, for us and for all our future generations, before it’s too late. But it’s a tough battle. You can find out more about the work they are doing, and what you too could do to help the rainforest, at:

www.rainforestrescue.sky.com
www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/amazon
www.savetherainforest.com

I would like to thank Tilda Johnson, Debbie Hatfield and the team at Piccadilly Press. Thank you, too, to Helen Boyle from Templar, and to my agent, Jo Williamson, who together first unleashed Aries, snorting, into bookshops and classrooms across the world. A great big round of applause is due to my partner, Jim Chandler, who, with Stephanie Clifford and David Allen, read through the final draft; to Professor Armand D’Angour of Jesus College, Oxford, who put my Latin straight; and to my dear friend Helen Gee, for her historical insights. Thank you to my aunt, Yvonne Bird, for her encouragement, and, of course thank you to my sister, Jennifer, for all the support and chocolate brownies through the post. Last, but certainly not least, an Aries-sized thank you to Melissa Hyder, my super-talented editor on both
Fleeced!
and
Rampage!
for her wisdom, constancy and rammy-cheerleading throughout – not to mention a comprehensive knowledge of The Muppets and cake.