Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘Go on, then,’ Metis taunted. ‘Catch me now!’ With a buzz and whizz she turned into a fly and darted about the cave. In a twinkle Zeus transformed himself into a lizard and with a quick flick of a long sticky tongue Metis (along with any possible child of Zeus’s that even now might be forming in her womb) had been safely transferred to his interior. His father Kronos’s unkind habit of eating anyone prophesied to conquer him seemed to have been passed down to Zeus.

When he slipped back to Olympus in his own shape, congratulating himself at how much cleverer than the supposedly cunning Metis he was, the music and dancing were in full swing and his wife didn’t seem to have noticed a thing.

The Mother of All Migraines

The King of the Gods had a headache. Not a hangover from the wedding feast, nor a headache in the sense of an annoying problem that needed solving – as a leader he always had plenty of those – but a headache in the sense of a real ache in the head. And what an ache. Each day the pain grew until Zeus was in the most acute, searing, blinding, pounding agony that had ever been suffered in the history of anything. Gods may be immune from death, ageing and many of the other horrors that afflict and affright mortals, but they are not immune from pain.

Zeus’s roars, howls and screams filled the valleys, canyons and caves of mainland Greece. They rang around the grottoes, cliffs and coves of the islands until the world wondered if the Hecatonchires had come up from Tartarus and the Titanomachy had started all over again.

Zeus’s brothers, sisters and other family members clustered concernedly about him on the seashore, where they had found him begging his nephew Triton, Poseidon’s eldest, to drown him in seawater. Triton declined to do any such thing, so everyone racked their brains and tried to think of another solution while poor Zeus stamped and yelled in torment, squeezing his head in his hands as if trying to crush it.

Then Prometheus, Zeus’s favourite young Titan, came up with an idea which he whispered to Hephaestus, who nodded eagerly before limping back to his smithy as fast as his imperfect legs could carry him.

What was happening inside Zeus’s head was rather interesting. It was no wonder that he was suffering such excruciating pain, for crafty Metis was hard at work inside his skull, smelting, firing and hammering out armour and weaponry. There was enough iron and other metals, minerals, rare earths and trace elements in the god’s varied, healthy and balanced diet to allow her to find in his blood and bones all the ingredients, all the ores and compounds, she needed.

Hephaestus, who would have approved of her rudimentary but effective metalworking, returned to the crowded beach carrying a huge axe, double-bladed in the Minoan style.

Prometheus now persuaded Zeus that the only way to alleviate his agony was to take his hands away from his temples, kneel down and have faith. Zeus muttered something about the trouble with being the King of the Gods was that there was no one higher to pray to, but he dropped obediently to his knees and awaited his fate. Hephaestus spat cheerfully and confidently on his hands, gripped the thick wooden haft and – as the hushed crowd looked on – brought it down in one swift swinging movement clean through the very centre of Zeus’s skull, splitting it neatly in two.

There was a terrible silence as everyone stared in stunned horror. The stunned horror turned to wild disbelief and the wild disbelief to bewildered amazement as they now witnessed, rising up from inside Zeus’s opened head, the tip of a spear. It was followed by the topmost plumes of a russet crest. The onlookers held their breaths as slowly there arose into view a female figure dressed in full armour. Zeus lowered his head – whether in pain, relief, submission or sheer awe nobody could be certain – and, as if his bowed head had been a ramp or gangway let down for her convenience – the glorious being stepped calmly onto the sand and turned to face him.

Equipped with plated armour, shield, spear and plumed helmet, she gazed at her father with eyes of a matchless and wonderful grey. A grey that seemed to radiate one quality above all others – infinite wisdom.

From one of the pines that fringed the shoreline an owl flew out and perched on the shining she-warrior’s shoulder. From the dunes an emerald and amethyst snake slid forward and coiled itself about her feet.

With a slightly unpleasant slurping sound Zeus’s head closed up its wound and healed itself.

It was clear at once to all present that this new goddess was endowed with levels of power and personality that raised her above all the immortals. Even Hera, who realized that the newcomer could only be the issue of an adulterous affair that must have taken place very close to her wedding day, was nearly tempted to bend her knee.

Zeus gazed at the daughter who had caused him so much pain and smiled a warm smile. A name came to him and he spoke it.