Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘You’re good with your hands. Another Hephaestus. My idea is that you would model these creatures out of … out of clay, for example. They should be shaped in our image, anatomically correct in every detail, but on a smaller scale. Then we could animate them, give them life, replicate them and release them into nature to see what happens.’

Prometheus pondered this idea.

‘Would we engage with them, speak to them, move about with them?’

‘That would be exactly the point. To have an intelligent – well, semi-intelligent – species to praise and worship us, to play with us and amuse us. A subservient, adoring race of little miniatures.’

‘Male and female?’

‘Oh, good heavens no, just male. You can imagine what Hera would say otherwise …’

Prometheus could indeed imagine what Hera’s reaction might be if the world were suddenly filled with more females for her errant husband to involve himself with. He saw that Zeus was very excited by his grand scheme. Once he was set upon a course, Prometheus knew, even one as novel and strange as this, not even the Hecatonchires and Gigantes combined could sway his friend from it.

Not that Prometheus was against the idea. It was an exciting experiment, he decided. Playthings for the immortals. When you came to think of it, it was really rather an enchanting notion. Artemis had her hounds, Aphrodite her doves, Athena her owl and serpent, Poseidon and Amphitrite their dolphins and turtles. Even Hades kept a dog – albeit a perfectly disgusting one. It was only fitting that the chief of gods should design his own special kind of pet, more intelligent, loyal and endearing than the others.

Kneading and Firing

History does not agree on exactly where Prometheus and Zeus went to find the best clay for realizing the plan. Early sources, like the traveller Pausanias in the second century AD, claimed that Panopeus in Phocis was the place. Later scholars say that the pair journeyed east of Asia Minor, all the way down to the fertile lands that lie between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.fn1 The most recent scholarship maintains that the search took them right down past Nilus, crossing the Equator and ending up in East Africa.

Wherever it was, they found at last what Prometheus pronounced to be the perfect spot: a river whose slimy banks oozed with just the kind of mud and minerals he wanted for consistency, texture, durability and colour.

‘This is good clay,’ he told Zeus. ‘No, don’t settle down. I need to work in peace and free of all distraction. But before you go I shall require some of your saliva.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘If these creatures are to live and breathe they will need something of you in the composition.’

Zeus saw the justice of this and was happy enough to hawk up and fill a dried out waterhole with his divine spittle.

‘I’ll need to line up my little clay figures one by one on the riverbank to be baked in the heat of the sun,’ said Prometheus. ‘So be back by evenfall and they should be nicely ready.’

Zeus would have liked to watch, but he knew enough about the artistic temperament to leave Prometheus to it. Leaping upwards in the form of an eagle he flew away, leaving his friend alone with his art.

Prometheus began tentatively, first rolling out sausages of clay, each roughly four podes long.fn2 On top of these he stuck a ball of spit-moistened clay for a head. It was then a question of teasing, twisting and tweaking, mushing, moulding and massaging, pulling, prising and pinching, until something like a small version of a god or Titan appeared. The more he worked, the more excited he became. Zeus had not been exaggerating when he compared Prometheus to Hephaestus – he did possess real skill. In fact what he exhibited now as he pressed and shaped was more than skill, it was artistry.

Mixing the clay with different pigments he built up a diverse and colourful array of life-like masculine creatures. His first effort had been a small being whose skin closely matched the sun-kissed complexions of the gods. Next he made one in shining black, then another who was more a creamy ivory tinged with pink, then came figures of amber, yellow, bronze, red, green, beige, vivid purple and the brightest blue.

A Reduced Set

As evening fell Prometheus stood and stretched with a yawn and that special groan of weariness and satisfaction that follows a long session of concentrated labour.

The afternoon sun had warmed his work into the supple, malleable consistency known in the world of ceramics as ‘cheese-ware’. This was perfect timing on Prometheus’s part, for if the finished creations had been exposed to fiercer midday heat they would have dried into ‘biscuit-ware’, rendering them too friable and frangible for any of the last-minute modifications that his royal and divine patron would be sure to demand. Longer ears, twice the number of genitals, that kind of thing. Gods are nothing if not capricious.