Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Zeus enjoyed visiting Echo’s sister oreads and cousin naiads in secret and Echo enjoyed being a confidante and best friend to them all. It rather thrilled her to think that her relations and companions were having liaisons with Zeus, the Cloud-Gatherer and King of the Gods himself. It was a secret she loved to hug to herself.

Hera had always been suspicious of Zeus’s absences, but recently they had become prolonged. She heard from a chaffinch loyal to her that it was the lower slopes of Helicon that her husband had been visiting, so she decided one golden afternoon to make her way there and see if she could catch him in the act of betrayal. She had barely dismounted from her chariot when a mountain nymph skipped up to her, bubbling with inconsequential chatter. It was Echo in full voluble flow.

‘Queen Hera!’

Hera drew up her eyebrows. ‘Do I know you?’

‘Oh, majesty!’ cried Echo, falling to her knees. ‘How lucky we are to see you here! What honour you do us! And in your chariot, too! Is it permitted to feed the peacocks? To have a god of Olympus here! I cannot remember the last time an Olympian deigned to take notice of us. It is such –’

‘Surely my husband Zeus is a regular visitor to these woods and waters?’

Echo knew full well that Zeus was not far away on a riverbank doing improper things with a pretty river nymph. Her love of intrigue, drama and romance now drove her to protect the pair. With tumbling torrents of inconsequential babble gushing from her like water from a fountain, she guided the goddess’s footsteps in the direction away from the river.

‘There is a very fine ilex tree just in this clearing, majesty, which I was thinking of consecrating to you, with your permission … Excuse me – Zeus? Oh no, I’ve never seen him here.’

‘Really?’ Hera fixed Echo with a hard stare. ‘I heard a rumour that he was here now. This very day.’

‘No, no, my queen! No, no, no! In fact … a servant of the Muses came down from Helicon just half an hour ago to draw water from our stream and he mentioned specifically that today mighty Zeus is in Thespiae today, honouring his temple there.’

‘Oh. I see. Well, I thank you.’ Hera nodded curtly and uncomfortably, returned to her chariot and flew off into the clouds. It is mortifying to be witnessed trying to catch your husband out.

Echo skipped away, pleased to have been useful to her fellow nymph and to Zeus. In all fairness she would have been just as happy to have been protecting a mortal pair of lovers. It delighted her to ease the path of all lovers everywhere. She had never really felt love herself, except the love of helping others to love, which she felt was the highest love of all. So selfless was she that she never even bothered to tell Zeus or her sister of her useful act, which someone hoping for a reward would most certainly have done. She sang as she gathered flowers and felt that the life of a nymph was a good life.

Echolalia

The next day, back on Olympus, Hera sent for the chaffinch that had first whispered to her of Zeus’s infidelity.

‘You lied to me,’ she shrieked. ‘You made me look a fool!’

Hera grasped the bird by the beak so that he could hardly breathe and was about to punish him in some strange and dreadful way that would for ever have altered our conception of chaffinches, when his mate fluttered about her ears and hair bravely calling out. ‘But dread queen, he told you true! I saw King Zeus there myself. Even as you were talking to that nymph Echo, he was lying with a naiad not half a mile away. If you don’t believe me, the butterflies and herons can tell you. Ask the priestesses at the temple at Thespiae when he last visited them. He hasn’t been there for three moons!’

Hera relaxed her grip and the bird, who had gone almost scarlet, breathed again, but male chaffinches still sport pink breasts to this very day.

Echo was paddling playfully in a stream when Hera and her peacock carriage descended once more. The nymph splashed and skipped her way up the riverbank to greet the goddess, a wide and welcoming grin splitting her perfectly dimpled features. The smile of welcome quickly turned to a rounded ‘O’ of fear when she saw the look of rage on Hera’s face.

‘So,’ said the goddess, with icy calm. ‘You say my husband has not been here. You say he was not here yesterday. You say he was in Thespiae sanctifying a temple.’

‘That’s – that’s certainly my understanding,’ stammered a frightened Echo.

‘You foolish, gossiping, chattering, scheming liar! How dare you try to deceive the Queen of Heaven? Who do you think you are?’

‘I – …’ For once in her life Echo could think of nothing to say.

‘Well may you stutter and stammer. You love the sound of your voice, don’t you? Hear this …’

Hera drew herself up and raised her arms high. Her eyes seemed to shine with a purple light. Echo quailed before the grandeur of the sight and wished the ground could swallow her up.