The Song of Orpheus (12 page)

Did I do it? Did I miscount? Was that seventeen?

I think I did it! Or we did it. You and me. I can’t wait to tell everyone how a human kid happened to wander through the woods at just the right time. You saved my life, you know that? Well, not really my life. Rocks aren’t alive. Listen to me—I’m so nervous, I’m babbling!

There goes the sun. There’s just a tiny little sliver of red left! Surely the gods wouldn’t be so cruel as to make me tell all those stories and then not reward me. Oh, no! It’s almost gone!

Wait—who is that coming toward me? Do you see her? She looks the way I remember her, but I haven’t seen her for three thousand years, so I can’t be sure. Ah! The light of the setting sun is shining on her face! She’s smiling and waving, and it looks like—is it—could it be—Eury—

The talking rock falls silent, and as the last rays of the sun strike it, you see that it is now just an ordinary stone, lying quietly next to a stream, with nothing special to set it apart from any other stone. Somehow you know that you won’t hear any more stories from this gray lump, down the front of which run two deep clefts where moss has gathered. The moss is still damp, but water no longer runs through the channels.

Stand near the rock, though, and wait until the birds and squirrels have fallen silent and the night creatures have not yet begun to stir. In those few moments of stillness, listen closely. If you’re lucky, you’ll hear the merry sounds of a lyre and flute playing a wedding song, and you’ll hear the laughter of the newlyweds and the cheers and congratulations of the guests.

If you’re fortunate enough to hear the party for the wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice, walk away quietly and don’t disturb them. They’ve waited three thousand years to be together, after all, and they deserve their celebration.

English-speaking fans of Greek myths are familiar with some Greek names and words such as Hercules, siren, and centaur. But these are English versions of the Latin spelling of Greek names, and they’re different from the Greek originals.

The Greek and Latin alphabets were similar—in fact, the Greek alphabet was the ancestor of the Latin alphabet—but there are some differences between them. For instance, Greek used the letter “κ” (kappa). Latin didn’t have a “k,” but that didn’t matter, since for most of their history, Romans pronounced the letter “c” like “k.” This means that the Romans could use a “c” where Greek had a kappa. For example, the Romans wrote the Greek κένταυρος (kentauros) as
centaurus
. (Words that end in –os [-ος] in ancient Greek usually end in –us in Latin.)

The Latin language lacked some of the sounds in the Greek language, so the Romans left out some important Greek letters (φ and ψ, for example), since they didn’t need them for Latin words. When the Romans wrote Greek words, they used “ph” and “ps” to represent the sounds made by φ and ψ.

At first, the Romans left three more Greek letters out of their alphabet, because they thought they would never need them. Later, when they changed their minds, they tacked these three letters (“x” [ξ], “y” [υ], and “z” [ζ]) onto the end of their alphabet. Greek had two forms of the letter “e,” with slightly different pronunciations (ε and η), and two forms of the letter “o” (ο and ω). The Romans ignored the small differences in pronunciation and used “e” for both ε and η (sometimes η became “a”), and “o” for both ο and ω. And that’s how words with those letters have come into English.

The Romans who retold and wrote down Latin translations of Greek writings did the best they could with the spelling of Greek names—sometimes changing only a letter or two, sometimes more. English speakers, who usually read the Roman versions of Greek myths, generally adopted a variation of the Roman spelling. One thing they did was to lop the ending off most Greek nouns, whether they came through Latin or straight from Greek. Getting back to κένταυρος (kentauros), then, we have κένταυρος (Greek)
→
centaurus (Latin)
→
centaur (English).

In this book, you’ll see the standard English spelling (the one based on Latin) for people, gods, and place names if the more Greek-like version would be difficult for someone already familiar with Greek myths to recognize. The Greek version—or at least as close as you can get with the Latin alphabet—is used in all other cases.

What is the modern English equivalent of these ancient Greek names? (Ignore the accent marks above the letters!)

Ἀθηνᾶ

Εὐρυδίκη

Κύκλωψ

Ὀρφεύς

Today nobody can be sure exactly how ancient Greek was pronounced, although linguists (people who study language) have some good ideas about it. Most English-speakers don’t try to pronounce all of the names of ancient Greek people, animals, and gods the way linguists think the Greeks did, but have come up with their own pronunciations for the most common ones of them. There can be several options for pronouncing some of the names, and often people in one English-speaking country will say them differently from people in another English-speaking country. Most people in Britain, for example, call the half-man, half-bull monster the “MY-nuh-tor,” whereas most people in the United States say “MIN-uh-tor.”

The list below shows how a lot of English speakers would expect to hear some of the Greek words used in this book pronounced. If a name isn’t on this list, pronounce “ch” like “k” and “ph” like “f,” say most “e’s” at or near the end of a word like “ee”, usually pronounce “a” like the “a” in “hat,” and the “o” to rhyme with “toe” except in the endings “-os” and “-on,” which roughly rhyme with “boss” and “on,” and you’re on the right track.

Agamemnon: a-ga-MEM-non

Aphrodite: a-fro-DI-tee

Apollo: a-PAH-lo

Arachne: a-RAK-nee

Ares: AIR-ees

Artemis: AR-tem-is

Cerberus: SER-ber-us

Chiron: KI-ron

Dionysos: di-oh-NI-sus

Epimetheus: e-pi-MEE-thee-us

Eros: EH-ros

Europa: yoo-RO-pa

Gaia: GEE-a or GUY-a

Ganymede: GA-nuh-meed

Hades: HAY-deez

Medea: mu-DEE-a

Minos: MEE-nos or MY-nos

Odysseus: oh-DISS-ee-us

Orpheus: OR-fee-us

Persephone: per-SEF-uh-nee

Poseidon: puh-SI-dun

Priam: PRI-am

Prometheus: pro-MEE-thee-us

Theseus: THEE-zee-us

Zeus: ZOOS

Delos: DEE-los or DEH-los

Mycenae: my-SEE-nee

Nemea: nuh-MEE-a

dryad: DRI-ad

Minotaur: MIN-uh-tor or MY-nuh-tor

naiad: NI-ad

(Names and words marked with an asterisk are identified elsewhere in the glossary)

The Titans were a race of gods who came before (and often were the parents of) the more familiar Olympian gods. Despite the importance of the Titans, no Greek temples are dedicated to them and there’s no record of any festivals in their honor. As soon as worship of the Olympians became common, the Titans pretty much dropped out of sight, only occasionally entering into a myth. These are the Titans who are mentioned in this book:

Eos
(Ἠώς or Ἕως; Roman Aurora): the goddess who brought the dawn to the earth each day. The dew sometimes found on grass in the morning was said to be made of her tears. Some think that her name is related to the English word
Easter
, because Easter comes in the spring, which is the dawn of the year.

Epimetheus
(Ἐπιμηθεύς; see Prometheus)

Gaia
(Γαῖα) or
Ge
(Γῆ; Roman Terra): the goddess of the earth, as well as the earth itself. She and her husband Uranus, who was both the sky god and the sky, must have had a lively household, since among their children were most of the rest of the Titans, the Cyclopes (savage one-eyed giants), Thunder, Lightning, and three sons who had one hundred arms and fifty heads each.

Okeanos
(Ὠκεανός): the primordial ocean and the god who represented it. Sometimes this ocean is pictured as encircling the part of the earth that, as far as the Greeks knew, was inhabited. Later, the Greeks imagined that Okeanos was like a belt around the earth’s equator. If you think the Greeks believed the world was flat, it might surprise you to learn that they knew about the equator. Actually, starting in the sixth century BCE, some Greeks thought that the earth was probably round. By the third century BCE, Greek astronomers had confirmed this theory and even estimated pretty accurately how big our planet is.

Prometheus
(Προμηθεύς): a Titan who stole fire from the forge of Hephaistos* to give to humans, whom he had created out of clay. His brother Epimetheus created animals. Early Greek writers thought that “Prometheus” meant “forethinker” and “Epimetheus” meant “afterthinker.” But many modern scholars think that “Prometheus” comes from a word meaning “thief,” and that the character of Epimetheus was made up by the poet Hesiod.

These deities are often referred to as Olympian gods, because they lived on top of Mount Olympos, in Greece. These are some of the Olympians mentioned in this book. There are many more.

Aphrodite
(Ἀφροδίτη; Roman Venus): the goddess of love. Her father was either Uranus (the sky) or Zeus*. In the myth that says her father is Uranus, there’s no mother involved; Aphrodite is born out of the sea. In the myth where Zeus is her father, her mother is a Titan* named Dione. Curiously, “Dione” (Διώνη) is the feminine form of “Zeus” (in the way that Charlotte is the feminine form of Charles, and Andrea is the feminine form of Andrew). In that sense, this myth may be saying that Zeus/Dione was Aphrodite’s father
and
her mother, so no matter which myth you follow, the goddess of love is the daughter of Zeus only. She was married to Hephaistos*.

Apollo
(Ἀπόλλων; Roman Apollo or Phoebus): the god of the sun (well, one of them), music, and poetry. Apollo had a lot of other duties, too. Among them were welcoming boys into manhood, bringing plagues on people, and speaking through specially chosen women to deliver prophecies. One of Apollo’s epithets (a kind of nickname or second, descriptive name) is “Smintheus” (Σμινθεύς), which means either “from the town of Sminthos” or something to do with mice (ancient Greek for “mouse” is
sminthos
, or σμίνθος). If it’s the mice, does this mean that Apollo was the mouse god? The mouse exterminator? Something to do with mice as carriers of plague? Nobody knows. His father was Zeus* and his mother was a Titan*; his twin sister was Artemis*.

Ares
(Ἄρης; Roman Mars): the god of destructive war. He was ferocious and bloodthirsty. His parents were Zeus* and Hera*. His own father hated him, and even though he was the god of war, he didn’t always win his battles. In the Trojan War, he was on the losing (Trojan) side.

Artemis
(Ἄρτεμις; Roman Diana): the goddess of the moon and the hunt, and the queen of the nymphs. Her father was Zeus* and her mother was a Titan*; her twin brother was Apollo*. She took a vow never to marry. She watched over the various stages of a woman’s life, welcoming her into adulthood and taking care of her in childbirth. She was such an expert in childbirth that when she was just a few minutes old, she acted as a midwife to help her mother give birth to Apollo.

Eros
(Ἔρως; Roman Cupid): the god of love. The earliest myths say that he was born before any other deity, including Eurynome and Okeanos (see “The Big Bang,” page TK). Later, some said that Eros was the son of Aphrodite*, or else that he was born from the sea along with her. Anyone he shot with a golden arrow would fall in love with the next person she or he saw. But he also had arrows made of lead, and those caused hatred instead.

Hephaistos
(Ἥφαιστος; Roman Vulcan): the god of every craft that has to do with hot metal (blacksmithing, sculpting, metal casting, etc.). He made lightning, as well as the gods’ thrones and armor. He created robots to do some of his work for him; these included three-legged pots called tripods that walked to Mount Olympos* and back to the forge again. His parents were Zeus* and Hera,* or maybe just Hera. He was born with a shriveled leg or broke a leg when one of his parents tossed him off Mount Olympos—either way, he walked with a limp. He was married (unhappily) to Aphrodite*.