Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

The great sun-steeds were pacified by the absence of the panicky boy’s yells and violent tugs at their traces and at last settled into their proper altitude and course, making their way instinctively to the land of the Hesperides in the far west.

Phoebus Apollo was not a good or affectionate father, but the death of his son hit him very hard. He vowed never again to drive the chariot of the sun, passing the duty on to the grateful and enthusiastic Helios, who for ever after became the sun’s sole charioteer.fn5

Phaeton’s affectionate friend Cygnus went to the River Eridanos, into whose waters poor dead Phaeton had plunged. He sat there on the bank mourning the loss of his lover with such a plaintive wail that a distraught Apollo struck him dumb and finally, out of pity and remorse for the youth’s ceaseless but now silent and inconsolable suffering, transformed him into a beautiful swan. This species, the mute swan, became holy to Apollo. In remembrance of the death of the beloved Phaeton the bird is silent all its life until the very moment of its death, when it sings with terrible melancholy its strange and lovely goodbye, its swan song. In honour of Cygnus the young of all swans are called ‘cygnets’.

And what of Epaphus? Did he look up and see Phaeton high above him steering the great chariot, or was he too busy eating dates and flirting with nymphs on board the ship sailing him and his friends to their holiday beach in North Africa? One would like to think that he did look up and that the glare of the chariot blinded him, a suitable punishment for his cruel taunts. In fact Epaphus went on to become a great patriarch. He married Nilus’s daughter MEMPHIS, after whom he named the city that he had founded. They had a daughter, LIBYA, and his line, which included his great-grandson AEGYPTUS, went on to rule Egypt for generations.

Phaeton himself was eventually placed amongst the stars in the consolation constellation called Auriga, the Charioteer.fn6 The French named a very sporty, lightweight, dangerous racing carriage the phaéton in his honour. It was the preferred conveyance of hot-headed young men of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who, unwittingly re-enacting the myth of Phaeton in their youthful impetuosity, very often overturned their carriages, to the fury of their long-suffering fathers.

The American classicist and teacher Edith Hamilton offered this as Phaeton’s epitaph:

Here Phaeton lies who in the sun-god’s chariot fared.

And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.

Cadmus

The White Bull

Thanks to Phaeton desert wastes and icy polar regions now gave mankind extremes of temperature to cope with, on top of the cycle of seasons caused by Persephone’s stay in the underworld. The lesson of Phaeton did not stop humankind from reaching ever higher, however. No lesson, no matter how grim, ever seems to deter us. All over Greece kingdoms continued to rise and fall. The Grecian world encompassed Asia Minor too in those days, that bulge of land east of Greece that encompasses what we now call Turkey, as well as Syria and the lands of the Levant (modern-day Lebanon). The influence of this part of the world on Greek culture and myth was immense, bringing great trade, alphabetic writing and eventually the founding of the first example of the polis, the city state that was to reach its greatest pitch with the establishment of Troy, Sparta and Athens. It is a story of Zeus, transformations, a dragon, snakes, a city and a marriage.

The King of the Levantine city of Tyre, AGENOR (a son of Poseidon and Libya), and his Queen TELEPHASSA (a daughter of Nilus and the cloud nymph NEPHELE) had five children: a daughter, Europa, and four sons, CADMUS (or sometimes, in the more Greek spelling, KADMOS), CILIX, PHOENIX and THASOS.

The children of Agenor were playing in a flower-filled meadow one afternoon when Europa wandered off and became separated from her brothers. Her eye had been caught by a beautiful white bull grazing in the long grass. As she approached, the animal lifted its head to look at her. Something in its gaze fascinated her. She moved closer. The bull’s breath was sweet and its nose soft and strokeable. She threaded garlands of flowers around its horns and ran her fingers through its thick, warmly inviting coat. Then, without quite knowing why, she lifted herself onto its back. She leaned forward and took a horn in each hand.

‘Oh, you beautiful thing,’ she breathed into its ear. ‘So strong and wise and kind.’

With a toss of its huge head the animal started to trot forward. The trot soon became something close to a gallop. Europa laughed and urged him on.