Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Over the course of the war against the Titans she and Zeus developed into a natural couple, and it became apparent to him that she was the only one with enough presence, dignity and command to stand as his consort and bear him new gods.

Crackling with tension, impatience and distrust, theirs was nonetheless a great marriage.

A New Home

Zeus’s ambition for a new era, a new dispensation for the cosmos, encompassed more than the simple distribution of powers and provinces amongst his brothers and sisters. Zeus imagined something more enlightened, and rationally constituted than the bloody and brutal tyrannies that had gone before.

He envisioned an assembly of twelve major gods – a dodecatheon as he Greekly put it to himself.fn11 So far we have met six, the children of Kronos and Rhea. There was already another deity to call upon of course, one who was older than any of them – foam-born Aphrodite. The moment the Titanomachy erupted, Zeus collected Aphrodite from Cyprus, aware that she would constitute a great prize if kidnapped, ransomed or recruited by the Titans. For the last ten years she had contentedly been living amongst them and thus the gods now numbered seven.fn12

As the Titans had made Othrys their mountain home, so Zeus now chose for his headquarters Mount Olympus, Greece’s highest peak. He and his gods would be known as the OLYMPIANS and they would rule as no divine beings ruled before or since.

The Runt

Hera was pregnant when the gods moved to Olympus. She could not have been more satisfied. Her ambition was to bear Zeus children of such majestic power, strength and beauty that her place as Queen of Heaven would be assured for eternity. She knew that Zeus had a roving eye and she was determined not to let any other parts of him rove either. First she would give birth to the greatest of the gods, a boy whom she would call HEPHAESTUS, and then Zeus would marry her properly and submit himself for ever to her will. This was her plan. The plans of the immortals, however, are as subject to the cruel tricks of Moros as are the plans of mortals.

When her time came, Hera lay down and Hephaestus was born. To her dismay the child turned out to be so swarthy, ugly and diminutive that, after one disgusted glance, she snatched him up and hurled him down the mountainside. The other gods watched the wailing baby bounce once off a cliff and then disappear into the sea. There was a terrible silence.

We will find out what happened to Hephaestus soon enough, but for the moment let us stay on Olympus, where Hera soon became pregnant by Zeus again. This time she took every care to look after herself, eating healthy foods and exercising gently but regularly, in accordance with all the approved precepts and practices of pregnancy and parturition. She wanted a proper son, not a runt fit only to be thrown away.

It’s War

In due time Hera was indeed delivered of the lusty, strong and handsome child she had set her heart on.

ARES, for so she called him, was from the beginning a pugnacious, violent and aggressive boy. He picked quarrels with everyone and thought of nothing but the clash of arms and horses, chariots, spears and martial arts. It was natural that Zeus, who disliked him from the first, should appoint him god of war.

Ares – MARS to the Romans – was unintelligent of course, monumentally dense and unimaginative for, as everyone knows, war is stupid. Nevertheless even Zeus acknowledged with grudging consent that he was a necessary addition to Olympus. War may be stupid, but it is also inevitable and sometimes – dare one say it? – necessary.

As Ares grew swiftly to manhood he found himself irresistibly attracted to Aphrodite – as which gods weren’t? More perplexingly perhaps, she was equally drawn to him. She loved him, in fact; his violence and strength appealed to some deep part of her. He in turn grew to love her, so far as such a violent brute was capable of the emotion. Love and war, Venus and Mars, have always had a strong affinity. No one quite knows why, but plenty of money has been made trying to find an answer.

The Enchanted Throne

To cement her position as the universally recognized Queen of Heaven and undisputed consort of Zeus, Hera felt the need to institute a nuptial feast, a grand public ceremony that would for ever bind her in wedlock to Zeus.

Hera’s twin impulses of propriety and ambition motivated almost everything she did. She had been pleased to see her son falling for Aphrodite, yet she did not trust the goddess. If Aphrodite agreed to make a public commitment to Ares, as Zeus was to do to Hera, then that would make everything binding and official, setting a permanent seal on her triumph. The world’s first wedding would therefore solemnize two marriages.