My Final Paper

“Raising” questions about mythology

            Parents: they bring people and gods alike into the world, and unfortunately for many mythological characters, they occasionally try to take them out of it as well. A life threatening conflict between parent and child certainly serves to make a tale very dramatic, but for all of its excitement, and entertainment value, it often seems to end (or rather, never seems to end) in a perpetuation of the violence that sparked the conflict.

            The cyclical nature of the universe is not something mysterious, or unseen, but there does seem to be a strange force protecting this fragile loop. This force is the force of habit. It is comfort; the comfort of turning what has been into what will be again, that stays man from breaking the mold. It is knowing, reciting, and then living our myth that makes these tragic stories truly “the precedent behind every action.” (Calasso 383) It persists in the same way it began; with a father or mother who only wants power; with a child who will do anything to take their power away; and with an evolution, of a child who becomes a parent. The whole pattern of events, from Uranus down to modern times, has remained essentially the same.

            We will begin in ilo tempore, or simply, “in the beginning,” with the story of Kronos and his father Uranus. Uranus, the Sky, was the father of many powerful beings in Greek mythology. Among them were the Hundred Handed Ones, who each possessed 100 brutishly muscular arms, and 50 heads; The Cyclopes, who were alike the Gods in every way, save for their single eye; Echidna, the mother of most of Greece’s monsters; and finally, and surely most importantly, The Titans. There were many Titans, and all of them possessed tremendous strength, so Uranus, wanting with all his being to remain the supreme power, began to hide them all away inside the Earth’s great caverns. Earth, Gaia, the mother of all Sky’s children, devised a plan to exact a cruel, but fitting punishment on Sky: “Without delay she created the element of grey adamant, and made a great reaping-hook, and showed it to her children.

            “’Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say?” (Hesiod’s Theogony) This line portends millennium after millennium of the primitive philosophy of fighting fire with fire, as they say. This question has opened the door, not just to exacting a violent punishment for a violent crime, but for perpetuation of any crime. Ever hear the expression “An eye for an eye?” This question is the grey adamant, created by Gaia, it is the metal, the virtue, from which is shaped the follow up statement; the ever dreadful “reaping-hook.” “We could get redress for your father’s cruelty,” Said great Gaia, “After all, he was the one who started using violence!” There should be no doubt as to who is to blame for the crime of child abuse, but who is responsible for its continuation? It is just as much Gaia as Uranus, but then, is Kronos not also to blame? When all of Gaia’s other children cower at the thought of fighting with their father, Kronos alone stands up to be the “liberator” of his siblings, and so in liberating himself, he has locked mankind in a cycle of familial violence. “'Mother, I am willing to undertake and carry through your plan. I have no respect for our infamous father, since he was the one who started using violence.'” And Kronos did as he promised.

            This is a strange tale, certainly, but standing alone, it does not explain why child abuse tends to be a pattern in families, even in modern days. It fails to demonstrate the psychology of it as is, but when paired with the story of Kronos and Zeus, everything becomes clearer.

            Kronos, after claiming his father’s place as the most powerful of the deities, began to have children of his own by the Titaness Rhea. It was only once he had put himself in his father’s shoes that he saw clearly the reasons for Uranus’ wicked actions. Only once he was seated upon the throne at Olympus, did he realize how precarious that perch was. But Rhea was not the Earth. There was no way to hide the children he was fathering inside of her, so instead he hid them inside himself. He ate them. The abused son became the abusive father, not necessarily because it seemed like the best idea, but because it was the only behavior he knew, and he was not the ingenious type. One by one, he swallowed his children, in order to avoid being overcome by them. But Rhea had to be cleverer than Gaia. Her children weren’t around long enough to castrate their father with a sickle, so she had to hide one away until it was strong enough to battle for the throne. This lucky child was Zeus. Rhea stashed her baby away in a cave, (the precedent behind stashing wondrous treasures in caves perhaps?) and there, Zeus grew. Meanwhile, Rhea presented Kronos with a baby shaped rock, wrapped in cloth, which he swallowed whole, just like he had with all of his children, and there the rock rested, in the pit of his stomach, until the day the real Zeus would come, and strike his evil father down.

            So it was written, so is hath been. Zeus grew strong within the cave, and one day he emerged, a most comely, and powerful god. The full story of the battle of Zeus and Kronos is much too long to tell, but in the abridged version, Rhea beguiles her husband into accepting Zeus as an Olympian, to be his cupbearer. Zeus then gives Kronos a special drink, which causes him to vomit up all of the children he had previously swallowed whole, and they joined Zeus in a tremendous battle against the Titans, which ended with the Olympian God’s claiming their thrones, and a new order being established. (Hunt) But what was it that made this new order so different from the old? What was it about Zeus that allowed him to break the pattern of damaged children becoming bad fathers? When examined closely, there are a couple details that stand out as being different. In the Story of Kronos and Uranus, it is not only the father, but also the mother who is violent, even though they are oppositely so. Therefore, Kronos is given only negative examples of how to parent. In the myth of Zeus and Kronos, Rhea simply hides Zeus away to be raised by nymphs, which was apparently the ancient version of foster parenting. Then one nymph, Metis (Wisdom), prepares a special drink for Zeus to give to his father, which makes him vomit up all of his swallowed children. It is then Zeus who decides that a battle must be fought, and it is not only Zeus and Kronos, but all of the Olympians and Titans who fight. And so there is no singular point of guilt for violent action, but rather the behavior, and therefore the blame, is dispersed. This war de-emphasized the importance of a father/son conflict, and created instead, a conflict based on the principal of freedom. It is the notion of freedom, and the aid of Wisdom that makes Zeus the exception, allowing him to temporarily break the loop. But as long as there is myth, stories trickle down, and precipitate a reenactment of their contents. So it hath been, so it shall be.

            Tantalus was a very rich king and a very powerful king indeed. Some even believed he was Zeus’ own son. So despite the fact that he was an annoyance to everyone who knew him, Zeus continued to invite him to feast with the gods on Olympus. One day, Tantalus opened up his own humble palace to the gods, and decided to serve them a very rare meal indeed; his own son, Pelops. (Calasso 177) In this story we have several pieces of the myth of Zeus and Kronos. We have a powerful king, eating his son to stay in power. Make no mistake, just because Pelops wasn’t about to kill Tantalus and steal his kingdom does not mean that this wasn’t about power. Tantalus wanted to stay in favor with the gods, which is a greater power than any mortal can create for himself, so he tried to do so by feeding his own son to Zeus, the god who does not eat children. Again, Zeus refused to eat the son. Instead Zeus and the other gods pieced Pelops back together, and where Demeter had accidentally eaten a piece of his shoulder while lamenting the loss of her own daughter, there was a new shoulder blade, made of sparkling ivory. The gods marveled at how beautiful this boy was, and again it was Rhea who preserved the son, and the order of good nature, by breathing life into the reassembled Pelops. Pelops was whisked away to be a cupbearer on Olympus, just as Zeus had been before him, but he was the cupbearer of Zeus’ brother, Poseidon; and their relationship was one of love, not of calculating malice. So again, we see here a cycle. Surely the cycle has been transformed, but it is nonetheless, still a cycle that has not been broken, only tweaked.

            The story of Pelops’ family does not end there, but rather epitomizes the cyclical nature of bad parenting in the mythological world. The family continues to kill within itself, and yet still refuses to die, all the way down to Orestes. But what of Orestes? What is special about him? To fully understand, we must follow Pelops’ lineage a few more generations. First, Pelops begot many sons, two of whom play major roles in the cycle. These two sons were Thyestes, and Atreus, whose mother had a very familiar request of them. She told them that their father had not been fair, that he favored their bastard brother over them, and that they should use violence to solve their problems. So again we see the mother ask the question, “Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say…?” The new Gaia, Hippodameia, suggested that they kill their half brother, Chrysippus, so that one of her own sons may claim the power. Again, perhaps the details have changed, but in the precipitating events, it is the request of the mother using violence that causes the acts to persist in the next generation. After the deed was done, it was unclear who would get to rule over Pelops’ lands once the king had died, so the two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, began to feud. To quote Brandon Boyd, “success is a devilish opiate…” Once Atreus had already established his success; once he already had the upper hand in his conflict with Thyestes, he invites Thyestes to a banquet, where one can guess, based on the story of Tantalus and Pelops, what is to be served. Thyestes’ own children were bubbling away in the pot, and though they were not Atreus’ sons, they were, nonetheless, children in his family. The conflict has many other examples of bad parenting, but in order to get to the end of the cycle we must look at one of Atreus’ sons, or rather, one of Thyestes’ sons, whom Atreus believes to be one of his own, Agamemnon. Agamemnon needed to get to Troy, and had only one way to do it; sacrifice a virgin. Who did he choose? His own Daughter. His grandmother orders the death of her step son, his father, Atreus, kills and eats all of Agamemnon’s cousins (who were really his half brothers and sisters), his true father, Thyestes, rapes his own daughter, and now Agamemnon slits the throat of his daughter, Iphigenia, sacrificing her to the gods, so that he may bring death to the foot of the great walls of Ilius. The virgin’s mother, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, has the mind to avenge her daughter, and so she fashions a reaping hook of her own design, and the mother’s violent intentions will lead the next generation, her son Orestes, to violence once again.

            As the great wheel of bad parenting turns, Clytemnestra sits on Agamemnon’s throne, while Agamemnon lies dead on the floor. She has just killed her husband, with the help of her lover Aegisthus, who is the product of Thyestes raping his own daughter, Pelopia, and so, as Roberto Calasso so eloquently states, “The blood flows from Thyestes, at the hand of Thyestes, from one son of Thyestes, at the hands of another son of Thyestes.” (Calasso 188). And as a result of Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus’ violent actions, Orestes comes in, and kills them both; his own mother, and his own uncle. And so, we are back to Kronos killing Uranus. And as has been the case this whole time, the players are rearranged, but the game is still exactly the same: parent is abusive, or violent in some way, and child kills parent. But without Metis around, without wisdom, how can Orestes break this cycle which has been his curse; handed down to him from his father, and from his father’s father, all the way back to his father’s father’s father’s father, Tantalus? Luckily for Orestes, Metis has been preserved in the strangest of ways.

            Although Zeus avoided making the same mistakes as his father, that is, he avoided eating his own children, he did eat the mother of his child. Once Zeus had paired with Metis, he was compelled to ingest her, in order to keep his own children from uprooting him from his throne, (sound familiar? Even when he seemingly breaks the cycle, Zeus ends up preserving it). So he ate Metis, who was with child at the time, and this child was Athena. It would appear to all on Olympus, that Zeus had fathered Athena by himself, from his own head. Funny, the daughter of Wisdom comes from the head of the god, not the hand; from his source of intentions, not his source of actions. And so it is that Metis, Wisdom, lives on in Athena. Athena, daughter of Wisdom, is the one who finally helps Orestes to end the cycle of familial violence in the family of Pelops, when she acquits him for the murder of his mother. So it is that the key to breaking a harmful cycle has always been, and will always be, wisdom.

            Every parent has a choice to make, about how to raise their children, but for either road they take, myth has already been there, laying the bricks for millennia. Each caregiver chooses which road they would like to take, and each choice provides a separate destiny for generations to come. Nowadays we don’t say that a parent has chosen the road of Uranus, we say that they are abusive, and we swoop in like Rhea, to whisk the victimized children away to the path of Zeus, but it is all too often that these stories end up taking the path of Kronos, and for all our best efforts, we must wait at least one more generation before Wisdom presents herself in whatever fashion, and a child is raised in a way that will break the cycle, for at least one more family.

Sources Cited

Boyd, Brandon Charles. "If Not Now, When?...From Brandon." Incubus World Headquarters.

Incubus, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.enjoyincubus.com/us/news/if-not-now-when-brandon>.

Calasso, Roberto. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Print.

Eliade, Mircea. From Primitives to Zen. N.p.: Nebulous Cargo Productions, 1996. N. pag. From

Primitives to Zen. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/>.

*"Family Tree of the Greek gods." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. WIkipedia, 13 Sept. 2011.

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Hunt, J. M. "Creation of the World." Greek Mythology Story Creation of the World. N.p., n.d.

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West, M. L. Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. Oxford, NY: Oxford World's  Classics,

2008. Print.

*NOTE: The Family Tree of the Greek Gods, although not specifically referenced in the paper, was used as a resource for fact checking, more than anything else.