Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

As he ambled down the slopes of Mount Cyllene this singular and sensational prodigy began to hum to himself. His humming turned into tuneful singing, which the nightingales in the woods around him immediately began to copy and have been trying to recapture ever since.

After he had travelled he knew not how far he found himself in a field where he was met by the wondrous sight of a herd of pure white cattle cropping the grass and lowing gently in the moonlight.

‘Oh!’ he breathed, entranced. ‘What beautiful moo-moos.’ For all his precocity he was still not above baby-talk.

Hermes looked at the cows and the cows looked at Hermes.

‘Come here,’ he commanded.

The cows stared for a while then lowered their heads and continued to graze.

‘Hm. So it’s like that is it?’

Hermes thought quickly and gathered up long blades of grass which he plaited together into something like a bovine version of horseshoes, attaching one to each hoof of every cow. Around his own tiny plump feet he wrapped laurel leaves. Finally he snapped off a branch of young willow and stripped it down into a long switch with which he easily and expertly tickled and stung the cows into a tight and manoeuvrable herd. As an extra precaution he drove them backwards, all the way up the slope and back to the mouth of the cave, where his astonished and alarmed mother had been worriedly standing ever since he had wandered so very calmly away.

Maia had had no experience of motherhood before this, but she was certain that the striking style and eccentric behaviour of her son were not usual – even amongst gods. Apollo, she knew, had defeated Pytho while still an infant, and Athena of course had been born fully armed, but creating fire out of nothing but stones? Driving cattle? And what was this he was dangling before her eyes – a tortoise? Was she dreaming?

‘Now, mother,’ said Hermes. ‘Listen. I’ve had an idea. I’d like you to stun the tortoise, scoop out the flesh and cook it. I expect it will make a delicious soup. I’d recommend adding plenty of wild garlic if I were you and perhaps a suspicion of fennel? And then there’ll be beef for mains, which I shall see to now. I’ll just borrow this knife and be with you again before you know it.’

With those words he disappeared to the back of the cave, off whose stone walls rang the appalling screams of a cow having its throat cut by a plump-fisted baby.

After what Maia had to confess was a truly delicious supper she summoned up the courage to ask her son what he might be up to now, for he was hanging out stringy lines of cow gut in front of the fire. While he waited for these foul-smelling strips to dry he busied himself with boring little holes along the edges of the tortoiseshell.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ was all he would tell her.

Apollo Reads the Signs

Hermes may or may not have known it, but on his first night on earth he had travelled quite a distance. All the way from his birthplace on Mount Cyllene north through the fields of Thessaly and as far as Pieria, where he had found and rustled the cattle. And back again. In baby steps that is quite a distance.

What Hermes certainly could not have known was that the white cattle belonged to Apollo, who prized them highly. When news reached the god of their disappearance he set off in fury to Pieria in order to follow what he assumed was a vicious gang of thieves to their lair. Wild dryads or fauns gone to the bad, he imagined. They would regret taking property from the god of arrows. He lay down in the cattle’s field to examine the ground with all the thoroughness of an experienced tracker. To his astonishment the brigands had left no useful traces at all. All he could see were random brush marks, meaningless whorls and swirls and – unless he was going mad – one tiny infant footprint. Any impressions that might have been formed by cow’s hoofs seemed to be heading, not away from the field, but towards it!

Whoever had stolen the cattle was mocking Apollo. They were practised and expert thieves, that much was clear. His sister Artemis was the most skilled hunter he knew: would she dare? Perhaps she had devised some cunning way to conceal her tracks. Ares didn’t have the wit. Poseidon wouldn’t be interested. Hephaestus? Unlikely. Who then?

He noticed a thrush preening on a branch not far away and in one smooth action drew his bow and brought the creature down. Slitting open its crop the god of oracles and augury peered forward to read the entrails.

From the colouration in the lower intestine, the kink in the right kidney and the unusual disposition of the thymus gland it was clear at once that the cattle were somewhere in Arcadia, not far from Corinth. And what was that clot of blood on the liver saying to him? Mount Cyllene. And what else? So! It had been a baby’s footprint after all.

Apollo’s usually smooth brow was drawn into a frown, his blue eyes blazed and his rose-red lips compressed themselves into a grim line.

Revenge would be his.