96 pages • 3 hours read
Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths
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Part 2, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Nature Myths”
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Prometheus”
Prometheus, a young Titan god, asked Zeus why he created man but refused to give him fire, keeping him “in ignorance and darkness” (62). Zeus explained that every gift came with a price: Fire would improve some aspects of life, but it could also lead men to become overconfident and prideful. Rather than worshiping the gods, men might challenge them.
Dissatisfied with Zeus’s answer, Prometheus decided to bring men fire secretly. At first, mortals were frightened by fire, but Prometheus showed them how to feed a fire carefully to maintain a balanced size and how to use it to cook food. As time went by, men used fire to craft ships, houses, and whole towns with walls, eventually attracting Zeus’s attention. He knew exactly who was responsible. Promising to exact vengeance on men eventually, Zeus first captured Prometheus, chained him on a mountain in the Caucasus, and sent two vultures to eternally tear out his liver—though the hero Heracles would eventually release him.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Pandora”
After punishing Prometheus, Zeus turned his attention to punishing man. He instructed Hephaestus to create a girl modeled after Aphrodite. The gods called her Pandora, meaning “all the gifts,” which she received from them: musical skill from Apollo, gardening from Demeter, attracting men’s attention from Aphrodite. Poseidon gifted her a pearl necklace and Hermes a “beautiful golden box” that “she must never, never open” (67). Hera gave Pandora curiosity.
Hermes brought Pandora to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus, claiming she was a peace offering from Zeus. Pandora and Epimetheus married and were happy, but the mystery of the golden box ate away at Pandora. She tried to resist her curiosity, even locking it in a chest, burying it underground, and placing a large boulder over it.
Eventually, however, the temptation to open the box overcame Pandora. She retrieved and opened it. A swarm of “small scaly lizardlike creatures with bat wings and burning red eyes” flew out, scattering on the winds. Pandora slammed the lid shut, trapping one last creature in the box. This was “Foreboding,” which would have revealed to each human “exactly what misfortune was to happen every day of his life” (69). By preventing mortals from knowing the bad things in store for them, Pandora preserved hope for humanity.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “Phaethon”
Phaethon was a young son of Apollo who had never met his father. When a son of Zeus, Epaphus, questioned Phaethon’s parentage, Phaethon swore he would prove himself to be Apollo’s son by driving his father’s sun chariot the very next day. He grew lost, hungry, and exhausted on the way, but a group of birds carried him to his father on a carpet. People looking up saw a boy on a flying carpet, but did not notice the birds.
Apollo admired Phaethon’s rash, adventurous spirit and swore on the river Styx to give him whatever he wanted. Phaethon demanded to drive his father’s chariot across the sky. Apollo begged him not to ask for this, since only he, Apollo, could control the horses that pulled the chariot. Apollo warned his son that driving it would char the earth and be a death sentence for Phaethon, but the boy refused to change his mind.
Apollo cautioned the horses and Phaethon separately to keep to the middle road so the earth would neither freeze nor burn. At first, the trip went smoothly, but Phaethon began to worry that no one on the earth below—especially Epaphus—would know that he was the one driving the chariot. Imagining returning home to Epaphus’s mockery and disbelief, Phaethon ordered the horses to go lower. After a village burst into flames, Phaethon urged the horses upward again, but lost control of them. The horses galloped away from the earth until darkness and cold descended, then plunged back down, causing temperatures to rise. They regained the middle road but sped so quickly that daylight flashed “on and off like a child playing with a lamp” (80).
From Olympus, Zeus noticed the chaos, saw that Apollo was not driving the chariot, and struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt. He died instantly, falling from the chariot like a flaming star, while the driverless horses galloped back to their stables. To comfort Phaethon’s mourning sisters, Apollo transformed them into poplar trees, which still stand along the river’s shore. From then on, only Apollo was allowed to drive his chariot, but icecaps and volcanoes remain a testament to Phaethon’s ride.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Orpheus”
The son of a Thracian king and the Muse Calliope, Orpheus grew up on Mount Parnassus with his mother and her eight sisters. He received a lyre from Apollo and grew up to be a renowned poet and musician. His singing and lyre playing enchanted mortals, animals on land and sea, and even nature itself. His talent attracted many women, but one woman in particular followed him everywhere— Eurydice, with her “great slavish eyes” (84).
They married and Orpheus was so happy at home with Eurydice that he no longer went out to play his lyre and sing. Gossip began to circulate about his disappearance. One story claimed that a powerful sorceress had captured and chained him. An Athenian king and son of Apollo, Aristeus, decided to investigate, keeping watch over Orpheus’s house. When Eurydice emerged to bathe at a river, Aristeus chased her. Terrified, she ran, accidentally stepping on a nest of snakes. A snake bit her, and she died. Aristeus left her where she fell. When Orpheus later found her, Hermes had already conducted her soul to Hades.
Devastated, Orpheus refused to accept her death and went to Hades to retrieve her. With his lyre, Orpheus enchanted Charon the ferryman, Cerberus the guard dog, Sisyphus, Tantalus, and even Persephone herself. Each time Orpheus played, his listeners became so entranced that they recalled memories of their youth.
Orpheus convinced Hades to allow Eurydice to leave the underworld, but Hades agreed only on the condition that Orpheus lead her out of the underworld without looking back at her. Orpheus controlled his fear and curiosity until the last moment. Just as they were about to step into the light, he turned back to make sure Eurydice was behind him. Her hand reached toward him, but she turned into smoke and melted away.
Part 2, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The nature myths that Evslin retells explain elements of the natural world. The Prometheus myth explains how humanity received fire. Phaethon’s story describes why the sun appears to move across the sky and provides an origin for past natural disasters and geological features. The stories also explore human nature and the nature of power. The myth of Pandora’s box, for example, suggests why humans suffer, as well as why we hope.
The Prometheus and Pandora myths portray authority figures preoccupied with maintaining their power and capable of great cruelty and manipulation when they sense a potential threat to the stability of their reigns. When he discovers that Prometheus has defied him, for instance, Zeus’s punishment is brutal and long-lasting. Mortals are also punished for receiving Prometheus’s gift of fire, even though they neither requested nor initially welcomed it.
Zeus’s observation to Prometheus—that every gift comes with a price and that men might be happier in ignorance than they would be having the responsibilities and concerns that come with knowledge—reflects a perspective often voiced in ancient Greek versions of the myths. However, Zeus’s observation also suggests self-interest, since he subsequently worries that knowledge may make men overconfident and thus prone to challenge the gods for primacy. The implication is not that men present a legitimate threat to the gods, but that any small challenge to authority may threaten stability or reveal weaknesses that other, stronger challengers can exploit. Zeus’s preference for keeping mortals ignorant of power illustrates why mortals in these stories appeal to the gods for help and attempt to align the gods’ needs with their own even though godly attention often harms mortals instead of assisting them.
Historically, analysis of the Pandora myth has often focused on the ways that the story depicts women as evil. Evslin’s retelling, though, highlights elements of the oldest known version (in Hesiod’s “Works and Days”) that suggest a more nuanced perspective on the myth’s meaning. Evslin draws attention to the way Zeus uses woman as a pawn, designing Pandora to serve the gods’ punitive agenda. Both the box of woes and the curiosity that Pandora receives are gods’ gifts. Her situation—curious about the box but told not to open it—can be read as a set-up by gods who have the benefit of omniscience. When she realizes what the box contains, Pandora quickly attempts to salvage the situation, slamming the lid shut, preventing the escape of Foreboding, and thus preserving hope. Evslin’s depiction asks readers to consider whether Pandora should be blamed for the bad things that escaped into the world or pitied because the gods used her. Her story illustrates, again, how powerful authority figures manipulate and exploit the innocent.
Curiosity and other human failings cause Phaethon’s and Orpheus’s downfalls, too. Phaethon is both prideful and faithless, and pursues his goals to extremes. He wants to meet his father to prove to himself, as much as to Epaphus, that he truly is Apollo’s son. Phaethon’s insistence on driving Apollo’s chariot results from his lack of trust in his father’s advice, and he loses control of the chariot because he cannot bear to return home unless Epaphus has seen him holding the reins. Phaethon’s lack of restraint and desire for recognition cause destruction both to the earth and to himself.
Orpheus, meanwhile, could leave the underworld with Eurydice, but he does not trust that Hades will keep his word. Though Orpheus’s love for Eurydice overcomes many obstacles and almost saves her, his human uncertainty betrays him. As in his version of Pandora’s myth, though, Evslin hints that a god may in fact be responsible for a mortal’s failure. Given Hades’s wily reputation, Orpheus’s distrust is understandable. The outcome of the story could be inevitable, if the condition of Eurydice’s escape is a clever ruse that Hades designs to make Orpheus feel responsible for losing his wife a second time.
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