Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Sisyphus is still there in the halls of Tartarus, pushing that boulder up the hill and getting almost to the top before it rolls back down and he has to start once again. He will be there until the end of time. He still believes he can do it. Just one last supreme effort and he will be free.

Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind’s courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.

Hubris

To the Greeks hubris was a special kind of pride. It often led mortals to defy the gods, bringing about inevitable punishment of one kind or another. It is a common, if not essential, flaw in the makeup of the heroes of Greek tragedy and of many other leading characters in Greek myth. Sometimes the failing is not ours but the gods’, who are too jealous, petty and vain to accept that mortals can equal or surpass them.

All Tears

You may remember that Pelops was not the only child of Tantalus and Dione. They also had a daughter, Niobe. Despite the terrible fate that befell her father and the bleak adventures of her brother, she was a proud, confident woman. She had met and married Amphion, the son of Zeus and Antiope. He was a former lover of Hermes, you may recall, one of the twins who had constructed the walls of Thebes, enchanting the stones with his singing and strumming of the lyre.fn1 Between them Niobe and Amphion had seven daughters and seven sons, the Niobids.

Swollen with dangerous levels of conceit and self-regard, Niobe liked to tell all who would listen how important she was and just how royal and divine her bloodlines were.

‘On my mother’s side I claim descent from Tethys and Oceanus – they’re first-generation Titans, you know. On my father’s side, well there’s TMOLUS, of course, the most highborn of all the Lydian mountain deities. My dear husband Amphion is a son of Zeus, and of Antiope, the daughter of King NYCTEUS, one of the original Theban Spartoi who sprang from the dragon’s teeth. So my darling sons and daughters really can boast the most distinguished lineage, one feels justified in saying, of any family in the world. Not that I ever allow them to boast, of course. The well bred are never puffed up.’

Such foolishness might have been no more than faintly sad were it not that Niobe even presumed to compare herself to the Titaness Leto, mother of gods. On the very day that the people of Thebes gathered annually to sing Leto’s praises and tell the story of Artemis and Apollo’s miraculous birth on Delos – on that very day, sacred to the Titaness and her dignity – Niobe unburdened herself of her haughtiest broadside.

‘I mean, I’d be the first to admit that Leto’s dear twins Artemis and Apollo are charming and fully divine, of course they are. But only two children? One girl and one boy? Good heavens, how she can even call herself a mother I fail to understand. And who’s to say that of my seven sons and seven daughters there won’t be some, if not all, who will ascend to divine and immortal rank?fn2 Given their birth I think it rather more likely than not, don’t you? In my view, celebrations of such a lazy, vulgar and unproductive mother as Leto are in extremely poor taste. Next year I shall make sure the festival is cancelled altogether.’

When word reached Leto that this jumped-up Theban was insulting her in such a fashion, and daring to set herself up over her, she burst into tears in front of her sympathetic twins.

‘That terrible, boastful, conceited woman,’ she choked. ‘She called me lazy for having only two children … She said I was unproductive … and she called me vulgar. She said she would prevent the people of Thebes from celebrating my f-f-festal day …’

Artemis put an arm round her while Apollo paced up and down, slamming the ball of his fist into his palm.

‘She has fourteen children,’ wailed Leto, ‘so I suppose, compared to her, I am inadequate …’

‘Enough!’ said Artemis. ‘Come, brother. She has made our mother weep. It is time this woman knew the meaning of tears.’