The Twelve Olympians Read online

  The pre-Hellenic origin of this classically Hellenic god is not hard to trace. If Hestia was ‘fire’ in one sense—the natural home-kindled wood-fire on the hearth—Hephaistos was ‘Fire’ of quite another kind, for he was in origin Gas; he was Mineral Oil; he was Petroleum. Besides the great and famous Macedonian Mount Olympus, home of the gods, there were at least seventeen other Mounts Olympus,{63} and we must now consider one of their number situated in Lycia in the south-west corner of Asia Minor.

  The country known as Lycia is a mountain massif almost square in plan, which thrusts southward from the western end of Asia Minor. On the east coast of this country but well to the south was a mountain called Olympus, about 3,350 feet in height, which was famed in ancient times for a peculiar phenomenon. Early in the fourth century of our era a well-known Christian bishop named Methodios wrote an account of a fire which he had seen with his own eyes burning on the top of the mountain and springing from a vent in the earth, but which was harmless to the vegetation growing around. He compares it to the episode recorded in the Old Testament of Moses and the Burning Bush, and this very mountain is nowadays named Musa Dagh, meaning ‘the Mountain of Moses’. This impressive fire on the summit was observed by a traveller as late as 1811. Not far away, due north of the Lycian Mount Olympus, there is a similar phenomenon still to be seen at the present day—a strong jet of flaming gas which leaps up like a fountain from crevices in the rock. In antiquity several such fiery jets were known, and the site was called either Hephaisteion or Hephaistia, or ‘the Mountains of Hephaistos’.{64}

  There is reason to believe that at some period before 1,000 B.C. some inhabitants of Lycia and neighbouring regions emigrated to numerous Greek islands in the Ægean Sea, where they became known as Pelasgians, or ‘Peoples of the Sea’. One of the islands occupied seems to have been Lemnos, and those Lycians, or Pelasgians, who went to Lemnos were fortunate to discover on a mountain in that island a gaseous phenomenon exactly like the one they had left behind at Mount Olympus in their homeland. The flame issuing from the summit of Mount Mosychlos on the island was referred to by various ancient writers, to whom it was an inexplicable wonder. Here, just as in Lycia, they were perfectly aware that it was not in the least volcanic in origin, and they worshipped the mystery as God, just as for many centuries certain Parsees have worshipped as God the columns of fire among the great oil-fields of Baku, and just as, in classical times, the Persians revered ‘Fire’ above their other gods, since in places—now known as oil-fields—mysterious fire issued from the earth. Both in Lycia and in Lemnos the flame was the sanctuary and the very image of the godhead called Hephaistos—a belief which was naturally adopted by the Greeks.

  In the Near and Middle East one may observe on the map a roughly parallel series of oil-wells running from north to south with a slight swerve towards the east. The most famous of these is the long line which runs down between Mesopotamia and Persia. It appears that there was a lesser line running approximately parallel to this, but much farther west. At its northern end there is today the great complex of oil-wells in Rumania, and at its southern end the oil-wells of the Sinai peninsula and Eastern Egypt. Between these two groups and on the appropriate slightly swerving line there lie Lemnos and the Lycian Olympus region. The Rumanian fields produce some paraffin crude oil; and it is fair to assume that the oil which produced the Hephaistos-flames in Lemnos and in Lycia was asphaltic crude oil. This oil gives what is known as a ‘low-pressure field’, which generally results in a seepage of subterranean gas given off by the oil, which makes its way up through fissures in the rock and, when it appears at the surface, can become ignited. Since it has a low flash-point, it is found to burn with a comparatively cool flame, and vegetation fairly close to it is not scorched.{65} Thus we have the very phenomenon observed by the most reverend bishop, Methodios.

  The cult of Hephaistos may be traced from Lycia to Lemnos; and there can be little doubt that it passed from Lemnos to Athens at some period before Homer wrote about the god, whom he already looked upon as one of the Twelve Olympians, and as the magical smith and the creator of fine art. There were legends of a ‘Pelasgian’ settlement in Attica, and it is difficult to dissociate these particular ‘Peoples of the Sea’ from Lemnians, since by no other means can the advent of Hephaistos be explained. In Athens he remained, though there was no miraculous Fire with which to associate him; in Athens he grew in importance and distinction; and in Athens there still stands, upon an eminence dominating the region where craftsmen and artists worked, the most perfectly preserved of all extant Greek temples, which is wrongly named the ‘Theseum’, for it is in reality the ‘Hephaisteion’, or temple of Hephaistos, built between 450 and 440 B.C. But to the north on the slope of the hill there once existed the temple of his first wife, Aphrodite Ourania or Heavenly Aphrodite. Within the Hephaisteion there stood two statues: the one of Hephaistos himself, and the other of his second ‘wife’, Athene Hephaistia.

  The hymn in his honour is brief, but to the point, and may have been written about the time when the temple was built.

  Sing, clear-voiced Muse, of Hephaistos famed for inventions.

  With bright-eyed Athene he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world—

  Men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts,

  But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaistos the famed worker,

  Easily they live a peaceful life in their own homes the whole year round.

  Be gracious, Hephaistos,

  And grant me success and prosperity!{66}

  Apart from Lemnos and Athens, the cult of the god was quite insignificant in other states of old Greece, for such seepages as might be observed in Greece in post-Homeric times were not associated with him; and when his worship did pass to the Western Greeks of Sicily and South Italy it underwent a complete change. The Italian peninsula, rich in so much, is almost without any mineral oil, for there is only one small unimportant oil-field in the very north—never discovered until recent times. But there were other manifestations of nature less gentle than the friendly gas-jets which enlivened the heights of Lemnian Mosychlos and Lycian Olympus. There were great and active volcanoes like Etna and Stromboli as well as lesser, though sinister, volcanic terrors, all thought by the inhabitants to be produced by a local subterranean deity whom they named Volkanus or Vulcanus.

  Volcanic activity being full of terror, the cult of a volcano-god is marked by nervous fear and anxiety to appease. The Romans kept on assuring him that he was in reality a ‘gentle monster’, gave him the sobriquets of ‘Soother’, ‘Quiet One’—Mulciber, Quietus—and married him to a goddess called ‘Steady Mother’, Mater Stabilis. Moreover, it occurred to them that when he did get rough there was one part of creation beyond his reach—the world of fish. Therefore they would on occasion prepare a sacrifice of appeasement, lighting a fire by the river-side and flinging in it for his delectation live fish. This is ‘nursery stuff’ such as fear of a volcano seems to induce even today. It is not long since the inhabitants of Cremano under Vesuvius became angry with their patron saint, San Giorgio, when they were aware of a stream of lava rolling towards their township. Accordingly, they took his silver-plated image from its shrine and planted it in front of the advancing molten mass, as though to say, “Save us, San Giorgio, or burn yourself!” The lava stopped; and he is now a highly respected godling.

  All this is very remote from Greek conceptions and emotions concerning Hephaistos. But when Greeks settled in Sicily they began to use the name of their Fire-god for the local volcano-god, and so it came about that the actual Forge where the Great Artificer worked with the help of the Cyclopes was alleged to be situated underneath Mount Etna in Sicily.

  The myths about Hephaistos are mainly concerned with three things: his birth, his lameness (a deformity which made him seem almost ugly to the other Olympians), and his absolute genius as a creator of works of art and craftsmanship. He had no father, and this is most appropriate for a g
od who is a flame of fire rising from a hole in Mother Earth. Hera, who inherited so much from the primitively imagined Earth-goddess, was his mother, “Hera”, as Hesiod tells in his Birth of the Gods, “without union with Zeus—for she was very angry and quarrelled with her mate—bare famous Hephaistos, who is skilled in crafts more than all the descendants of Ouranos.”{67} Later, when he was fully grown, another quarrel was under way, and Hephaistos presumed to interfere on his mother’s behalf and suffered hard punishment. At the end of the first book of the Iliad Hephaistos tells of his misfortune:

  Zeus seized me by the foot and hurled me from the threshold of Heaven. I flew all day, and as the sun sank I fell half-dead in Lemnos, where I was picked up and looked after by the Sintians.

  Milton, always in two minds about the ancient world—abhorrent to the puritan, adorable to the poet—was fascinated by this episode. Vulcan he knew, and found his Latin title Mulciber fitting for a fallen angel turned devil, and so tacked on to his satanic creature the tale of Hephaistos’ fall.

  From Morn

  To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,

  A Summer’s day; and with the setting

  Sun Dropt from the Zenith like a falling star,

  On Lemnos, th’ Ægean Ile.”

  It was after this that he was said to have been married to Aphrodite—the ugliest god to the loveliest goddess—a kind of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ myth, which had an allegorical twist to it.

  All the trouble had started for poor Hephaistos because he had tried to help his mother. Yet, when after long convalescence he returned, a limping god with a crooked foot, she hated him; and in the eighteenth book of the Iliad we find him complaining: “After my great fall my wicked mother tried to do away with me because I was a cripple!” Homer’s gods have the faults and foibles of a spoilt aristocracy, and his choleric Zeus bears as slender a relationship to the Zeus of Cleanthes{68} as does Baal to the Yahweh of the great Hebrew prophets.{69}

  The genius of the divine smith for making works of art is a constant and popular theme. Weapons for Athene, a sceptre for King Agamemnon, a necklace for Harmonia—he can make them all; but his delight was in pleasing Thetis, who had been kind to him, by making the splendid and famous armour for her son, Achilles—armour the description of which is the main theme of the eighteenth book of the Iliad. It is here too that we can read the description of his own delectable residence.

  Thetis of the Silver Feet made her way to the palace of Hephaistos, which the god of the Crooked Foot had built, with his own hands, of imperishable bronze. It shines like a star and stands out among the houses of the gods. She found Hephaistos hard at work and sweating as he bustled about at the bellows in his forge. He was making a set of twenty three-legged tables to stand round the walls of his well-built hall. He had fitted golden wheels to all their legs, so that they could run by themselves to a meeting of the gods and amaze the company by running home again...

  Hephaistos raised his monstrous bulk from the anvil. He limped, but he was nimble enough on his slender legs. He removed the bellows from the fire, collected all the tools he used, and put them in a silver chest. Then he sponged his face and hands, his sturdy neck and hairy breast, put on his tunic, picked up a thick staff and came limping from the forge. Golden maidservants hastened to help their Master. They looked like real girls and could not only speak and use their limbs but were endowed with intelligence and trained in handwork by the immortal gods. Supported by his toiling escort, the Lord Hephaistos made his clumsy approach to the spot where Thetis was seated, and himself sat down on a polished chair, took her hand in his and greeted her.{70}

  Here is poetic imagination to perfection. And is there prophecy (whatever prophecy may be)? His ‘robots’ are no cube-headed monsters, radio-activated, but golden girls that look real and use their limbs. What of his three-wheeled run-about tables? It may divert us to toy with the notion that here is the forerunner of the motor-car made by that very god who—we have seen—was himself the actual divine gas, the essence, the petrol which activates the internal-combustion engine.

  VIII—ARES

  THERE is no deity in the whole august company of immortal gods, evolved and worshipped by anxious humanity, who is more deserving of our commiseration than is Ares. This was the most unloved of all the divine aspects and concepts invented by mankind, which too often approaches godhead in ignominious fear, but rarely with such veiled hostility and suspicion as were the lot of Ares. The poets delighted to present him in unpleasant situations. It will be well to illustrate this by two stories from the Ares-myth, especially as they both belong likewise to the Hephaistos-myth with which we ended the last chapter.

  The divine smith of the crooked foot was deeply hurt at his mother’s unkindness and planned a punishment, so he fashioned exquisitely a chair for her, and sent it as a gift to high Olympus. But he had put a magic spell upon it so that once the Queen of Heaven had seated her royal person she could not rise again. And he, Hephaistos, alone of all gods and mortal men, knew the spell that could release her. Ares, her favourite son, attempting to lift her off by force, only made things worse; so he armed himself, and entering the divine smithy threatened the lame god—all to no purpose, for of what use is the finest of rapiers when your opponent advances on you with a great bar of white-hot iron?

  The Lady Hera would have been sitting upon the beautiful magic throne even to this day had not another god—the youngest of the Olympians—thought of something better than military compulsion. Dionysos and a rout of his jovial Seilenoi, well equipped with skins of wine, visited the forge upon a hot day; nor was it long before they brought Hephaistos to so genial a frame of mind that he was ready to forgive and to forget. Mounted upon a magnificent donkey, he was conducted by his new friends up to Olympus, where he pronounced the liberating spell, and Hera was able to rise from the chair.

  The story is old, for it was already familiar in Athens by about 550 B.C., when the painter Kleitias set the scene in black-figure upon a big Athenian mixing-bowl made of glazed pottery (Plates VI and VII). The tale is clearly told, for all the divine actors are named. On the left is Ares in full armour, crouching upon a block of stone, his whole attitude confessing his inadequacy. Athene looks back at him, but her right forefinger points to the approaching visitors. Hera, seated rigidly upon the throne, seems about to clap her hands with pleasure at the hope of rescue. Dionysos—not shown in our picture—leads the big donkey, on the back of which rides Hephaistos astride, his near foot pointing forward and his farther foot, bent feebly backwards, appearing under the animal’s belly. While he smiles engagingly he points back with two fingers at one of several following horse-legged Seilenoi, who carries a full skin of wine, and he seems to say, “These people brought me here!” Perhaps the strangest thing about this stylised painting is the artist’s success in making us feel sorry for the soldier-god who is so ashamed of his failure. So few early Greek pictures exist of either Hephaistos or Ares that this vase-painting is a precious document that enlightens us on the attitude of Athenians to both these gods.

  The other story in which Ares gets the worst of it in a situation of great embarrassment is an heroic tale known as ‘The Lay of the Minstrel Demodokos’, which is incorporated in the eighth book of the Odyssey.

  Then to his harp uplifting his beautiful voice did the minstrel

  Sing of the passion of Ares for fair-crowned Queen Aphrodite,

  How they as lovers at first held tryst at the house of Hephaistos

  Secretly meeting; and how by his gifts he prevailed, and dishonor

  Brought on the bed of her lord. But as messenger hastened to tell him

  Helios, he who had noted them meeting in tender embracement.

  Then did Hephaistos, as soon as the grievous tidings had reached him,

  Go to his forge, devising revenge in the depths of his bosom.

  Here on the stithy he set the enormous anvil and forged him

  Fetters not to be broken or loosed, to entrap and
to hold them.

  Now when at last he had fashioned the toils, in his anger at Ares,

  Into the chamber he entered wherein, as of old, was his bedstead.

  Here to the posts of the bed, all round it, he fastened the netting;

  Much of it also he fastened above it, attached to a rafter,

  Fine as the web of a spider, that none could ever perceive it

  E’en of the blessed immortals: so cunningly fine was it fashioned.

  So, when at last he had fastened the toils all over the bedstead,

  Then he pretended to go to the well-built city of Lemnos,

  Land that was dear to his heart—far dearer than every other.

  Neither was blind as a watcher the god, gold-glittering Ares.

  Seeing Hephaistos, the worker renowned, set forth on a journey,

  Speedily unto the house of the far-famed god he betook him

  Filled with the longing of love for the fair-crowned queen Cytherea.

  Newly arrived from the home of her father, Zeus the almighty,

  Resting she quietly sat; and he entering into the mansion

  Tenderly clung to her hand; then he opened his lips and addressed her:

  “Come, let us go, my beloved, and lie on the bed and enjoy us!

  Nowhere nigh is Hephaistos, but started already for Lemnos,

  Gone to the Sintian folk, that people of barbarous language.”

  Thus did he speak, and a thing right pleasant it seemed to the goddess.

  So they ascended the bed and reclined them; but the netting