“Ready.”
Zeus’s mortal disguise burned away. He appeared in all his glory as a swirling pillar of fire and lightning, like a supernova, in Semele’s living room. The furniture went up in flames. The door blew off its hinges. The window shutters exploded.
Semele couldn’t handle it. She vaporized, leaving an afterimage scorch mark on the living room wall. However, the baby inside her did survive, probably because he was part god. The poor little guy was suddenly hovering in midair where his nice cozy mother used to be. Zeus took physical form just in time to catch him before he hit the floor.
Of course Zeus was in shock over Semele’s death, but he realized that the most important thing right now was the baby. The little dude wasn’t fully grown yet. He obviously needed a few more months to develop before he was ready to be born.
Zeus had to think quickly. He pulled out his lightning bolt and made an incision in his own right thigh. Must’ve hurt like crazy, but Zeus stuffed the baby into his thigh just like he was putting him in the pocket of a pair of cargo pants. Then he sewed his skin shut.
Guys…do not try this at home. It won’t work.
But I guess gods are different. Somehow the kid stayed alive in there and kept growing until he was ready to be born.
No word on whether the other gods said, “Hey, Zeus, why is your right thigh so huge, dude? You should really get that looked at.”
When the baby was ready, Zeus cut him out; and the kid became the god Dionysus. We’ll get to his story later on. His birth is the least strange thing about him.
Anyway, Hera got her revenge on Semele, and I wish I could tell you it was the harshest thing she ever did.
Unfortunately, she was just getting warmed up.
Another one of Zeus’s girlfriends was this lady named Aigina. Apparently, Aigina had heard the story about Semele, because she was not anxious to become Zeus’s special friend, even though he constantly flirted with her and showered her with gifts. Finally, Zeus convinced her to fly away with him to a secret island.
“No one will ever know,” he promised.
“What about Hera?” Aigina asked.
“Especially not her.” Zeus turned into a giant eagle and flew her to an island that now bears her name: Aigina.
Zeus almost got away with it. Hera didn’t find out about the affair until years later, after Aigina had passed away. By then, Aigina and Zeus’s son was the king of the island where he’d been born. I don’t know how Hera found out, but once she did, she was outraged that she couldn’t punish Aigina personally.
“How dare she die so that I can’t kill her!” Hera growled. “Well, I’ll just take out my anger on her son.”
His name was King Aeacus (I think he needs a few more vowels in his name. No idea how to pronounce it, so I’m going with Eye-AH-cuss.) Anyway, King Aeacus happened to be on the verge of war. He was getting his armies together to defend his kingdom.
Hera summoned a massive poisonous snake and dropped it into the headwaters of the island’s only river. The venom spread through the water supply, and soon most of the population of the entire island was dead.
Hey, that’s fair, right? Zeus sleeps with a mortal woman, so Hera finds the woman’s son and kills everyone in his kingdom. No, that’s not psychotic at all.
As you can imagine, Aeacus panicked. He went to his palace garden, where he could see the blue sky. He fell on his knees and prayed to Zeus, “Hey, Dad, I’m about to get invaded here, and your wife just pretty much killed every man in my army and most of the civilians.”
Zeus’s voice rumbled from the heavens: “Bummer. How can I help?”
Aeacus thought about that. He looked down at his flowerbeds and saw ants marching around, thousands of the little dudes, tireless and industrious like…like an army.
“You know what would be cool?” Aeacus asked. “If you could turn these ants into an army for me.”
“Done!” Zeus thundered.
Immediately the entire colony of ants grew into men—thousands of hardened warriors in gleaming red-and-black armor, already drilled to march in rows and fight with perfect discipline. They feared no enemy. They were incredibly strong and tough. They were called the Myrmidones, and they became the most famous elite fighting unit in Greece, like the Navy SEALs or the Green Berets of the ancient world. Later on, they would have a famous commander named Achilles. Maybe you’ve heard of him, or at least his heel.
The last thing about Hera—and I really don’t get this—is how quickly she could change from being somebody’s enemy to his friend, or vice versa. Take Poseidon, for instance.
At first, they didn’t get along. In fact, they both had their eye on the same Greek kingdom, called Argos. See, it was a big deal back then to be the patron god of this city or that city. Like, it was a huge honor if you could claim to be the god of New York City. If you were the god of Scranton, Pennsylvania…not so much. (Okay, sorry, everybody in Scranton. But you get the idea.)
I guess Argos was a nice place, because both Hera and Poseidon wanted to be its patron. The king decided to go for Hera. Probably he didn’t want his population dying off from snake poison.
Hera was delighted. Poseidon wasn’t. He flooded the entire kingdom, and when Hera complained, Poseidon said, “Fine. I’ll take back the water. I’ll take back all of it.” The sea receded, and all the springs and rivers in the whole country went dry.
Hera complained again. The two of them were on the verge of an epic smackdown. Finally Poseidon relented and let some of the water come back, but Argos is still a very dry place. Many of the rivers have no water unless it rains. Hera became the patron of Argos, which was helpful later on for a dude named Jason, who led a crew of heroes called the Argonauts. But that’s another story.
My point is that Hera changed her tune shortly afterward. She and Poseidon had a sit-down and decided that Zeus was getting out of control as a leader. They plotted the first-ever Olympian rebellion.
But we’ll get to that when we talk about Poseidon.
Now we have to visit the Underworld and see how it’s going with our favorite creepy stalker death god, Hades.
HADES DOES HOME
IMPROVEMENT
I FEEL FOR THE GUY.
No, seriously.
Hades might be a creep, but there’s no doubt he got the short end of the universe. Despite being Rhea’s oldest son, he was always counted as the youngest, since the gods went by the order they got barfed from Kronos’s gut.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when the gods rolled dice to divide up the world, Hades got the least desirable part—the Underworld.
Of course, Hades was kind of a gloomy dude to begin with, so you could argue that he was destined to hang out underground. He was always brooding and dressed in black. His dark hair covered his eyes like one of those emo dudes from Japanese manga. Once he became lord of the Underworld, all the color drained out of his complexion, because he was leaving the mortal world behind.
Even if the other gods wanted to keep in touch with him (which they didn’t), the Underworld had really bad phone service and zero Wi-Fi. When Hades was down there, he had no idea what was going on in the world above. His only news came from the spirits of the recently dead, who would fill him in on the latest gossip.
In fact, in Ancient Greek times, whenever you invoked the name of Hades, you had to bang your fist against the ground, because that was the only way to get his attention. Kind of like, Hey, I’m talking to you!
Why would you want to get Hades’s attention? I’m not sure.
Eventually the entire Underworld would be called Hades after the god Hades, which made things confusing; but the Underworld had actually been around much longer than the god. Its original name was Erebos, and when Hades took over, the place was a real fixer-upper.
Let’s start with the plumbing. Five different rivers flowed into the Und
erworld, and you wouldn’t want to use any of them for taking a bath or brushing your teeth. The least dangerous was the Cocytus, the River of Wailing, which looked tame enough. Its dark-blue waters wound peacefully through the plains of Erebos, with plenty of nice-looking spots on the riverbank for a picnic; but if you got too close, you would hear the cries of tortured souls churning in the current.
See, the Cocytus was fed by the tears of the damned. Just being near it would send you into a state of depression. If you actually touched the water…well, trust me, you didn’t want to do that. No amount of cute puppy videos on the Internet would ever lift your spirits again.
The second river was the Phlegethon, the River of Fire. It roared through the Underworld caverns like a torrent of burning gasoline, cutting channels through the black volcanic rock, lighting everything bloodred, filling the air with smoke and fumes until finally the river plummeted as a fiery waterfall into the deeper abyss of Tartarus, which was like the basement of the basement.
So, yeah…when Hades turned on the hot water in his shower, he got a face full of burning Phlegethon. No wonder the guy was always in a bad mood.
The crazy thing was, Phlegethon water wouldn’t kill you, even if you were mortal. Sure, it would burn like radioactive chili peppers sautéed in acid. It would make you wish you were dead. But the river was actually designed to keep its victims alive so that they could suffer forever—hooray! Many damned souls had to swim through it for all eternity, or be stuck in the fiery water up to their necks.
According to some legends, the Phlegethon could eventually burn away your sins and let you go free if you were really, really sorry for the things you’d done. If you want to test that theory, go ahead and jump in. Me, I think I’ll pass.
River number three, the Acheron, was the River of Pain. If you guessed it was painful, you win a cookie! The Acheron started in the mortal world, near a temple of the dead in Epirus. Maybe that’s why ghosts were drawn to it and filled the river with their own pain and suffering. The Acheron meandered along until it plunged underground and tumbled into Erebos. There it widened into a dark, steamy, swampy expanse that caused pain to anyone unlucky enough to touch its waters or even hear its current. After a while, the Acheron split into two smaller rivers—the Cocytus and the Styx—that flowed in opposite directions until they both spilled into Tartarus.
River number four was my least personal favorite: the Lethe, River of Forgetfulness. (I’ve had some bad experiences with amnesia. Long story.) Anyway, the Lethe looked harmless. In most places it was a gentle span of milky-white water that rolled over a shallow bed of stones, softly gurgling in a way that made your eyes feel heavy. You would think you could wade across this river, no problem. My advice? Don’t.
A single drop of Lethe water would wipe your short-term memory. You wouldn’t remember anything that happened in the last week. Take a full drink, or wade into those waters, and your mind would be completely erased. You wouldn’t remember your own name, or where you came from, or even that the New York Yankees are obviously better than the Boston Red Sox. I know—terrifying, right?
For some spirits of the dead, however, the Lethe was actually a blessing. Crowds of ghosts were always gathered at the banks, drinking from the river so that they could forget their former lives, because you can’t miss what you don’t remember. Occasionally spirits were even allowed to reincarnate—to be reborn in the mortal world for another life. If you took that chance, you had to drink from the Lethe first so that you wouldn’t remember your old life. Because, seriously—who would want to go through twelve boring years of school again if you remembered doing it before?
Poppies grew all along the banks of the Lethe, which is why poppy juice has the power to put people to sleep and dull their pain. (We call that opium, children. And don’t do drugs, because DRUGS ARE BAD. Okay, I had to put that in there.) At one point, the Lethe curved around the entrance of a dark cave where the god Hypnos lived—the god of sleep. What was it like inside? No one has ever described it, probably because anyone stupid enough to go in fell asleep and never came out again.
The fifth river of the Underworld was the Styx, the River of Hate. It was definitely the most famous river, but the name alone sort of dampened any chance for tourism. “Hey, kids, we’re going to the River of Hate for spring break!” “Yay!”
The Styx flowed through the deepest, darkest parts of the Underworld. Some legends claimed it was created by the water Titan, Tethys, and was fed by salty springs from the bottom of the ocean.
The Styx circled Erebos like a moat, so you pretty much had to cross it to get into the Underworld. (Some stories say the Acheron was the river you had to cross, but since the Styx was a branch of the Acheron, I guess both versions are correct.)
The current was dark and sluggish, always shrouded in foul-smelling mist, and the water was corrosive to mortal flesh. Mix sulfuric acid with sewage and a splash of liquid hatred, and you’ve got the Styx.
So you’re wondering: Why would anybody want to get into the Underworld? I don’t know. But ever since humans were created, whenever they died, their souls just sort of instinctively drifted down to Erebos, like lemmings jumping off a cliff, or tourists flocking to Times Square. You could tell them all you wanted that it was a stupid idea, but they just kept doing it.
The problem was, the souls had no reliable way to cross the River Styx. A few managed to swim it. Others tried, only to dissolve in the water. Many just wandered along the mortal side of the river, wailing and pointing at the other side like, I wanna go that way!
Finally, one industrious daimon named Charon decided to go into business. What’s a daimon? It’s not a devil-type demon with a pitchfork and a tail and red skin. Daimons were immortal spirits, kind of like lesser gods. Some looked like monsters or mortals. Some were good. Some were bad. Some just kind of hung around.
This dude Charon was a son of Nyx, the goddess of night. Charon could take different forms, but most of the time he appeared as an ugly old man in tattered robes, with a greasy beard and a cone-shaped hat. If it was me and I could change shape, I would walk around looking like Brad Pitt; but I guess Charon didn’t care about impressing the ghosts.
At any rate, one day Charon realized that all these mortal souls were clamoring to get to Erebos, so Charon built himself a boat and started ferrying people across.
Not for free, of course. He accepted gold, silver, and most major credit cards. Since the Underworld had no regulations, Charon just charged whatever he wanted to. If he liked you, he might let you across for a couple of coins. If he didn’t like you, he’d demand a fortune. If you were unlucky enough to be buried without any money—oh, well! You’d have to wander around on the mortal side of the Styx forever. Some of the dead even drifted back to the mortal world to haunt the living as ghosts.
Even if you got across the Styx, you’d find Erebos in complete chaos. The ghosts were supposed to divide into different groups according to how good they’d been in their lives. If they were real scum suckers, they went to the Fields of Punishment to enjoy special torture for eternity. If they were good, they went to Elysium, which was like Paradise, Las Vegas, and Disneyland rolled into one. If the spirits hadn’t been particularly good or bad in life but had just sort of existed (which was most people), they were forced to wander forever in the Fields of Asphodel, which wasn’t a horrible place—just incredibly, mind-numbingly boring.
That’s how spirits got sorted, in theory. Unfortunately, before Hades took over, nobody was policing the Underworld. It was kind of like a school day when all your teachers are sick and you have nothing but subs who don’t know the rules, so naturally the kids take total advantage. Doomed souls from Punishment sneaked into Asphodel and no one stopped them. The spirits from Asphodel crashed the party in Elysium. And some really dumb but noble spirits bound for Elysium took a wrong turn, ended up in Punishment, and either couldn’t get out or were too nice to complain
about it.
To make matter worse, even the spirits who went where they were supposed to go didn’t always deserve to be there, because before Hades took over, you were judged for the afterlife while you were still alive.
How did that system work? I have no idea. Apparently a panel of three living judges interviewed you right before you died and decided if you deserved the Fields of Punishment, Elysium, or Asphodel. Don’t ask me how the judges knew you were about to die. Maybe they guessed. Maybe the gods told them. Maybe the judges just yelled at random people, “Hey, you! Get over here! It’s your turn to croak!”
Anyway, the judges listened to your testimony and decided your eternal fate. Guess what happened. People lied. They bribed the judges. They showed up in their best clothes, smiled and flattered and acted nice so the judges would think they were nice. They brought in witnesses to say, “Oh, yeah. This guy lived a totally awesome life. He hardly ever tortured anybody.” Stuff like that.
A lot of evil people managed to charm their way into Elysium, and a lot of good people who didn’t kiss up to the judges landed in the Fields of Punishment.
You get the idea…the Underworld was a mess. When Hades took over, he looked around and said, “Nuh-uh! This ain’t gonna work!”
So he went to Olympus and explained the situation to Zeus. Having to get Zeus’s approval for what he planned to do kind of rankled Hades, but he knew he’d need to get the Big Guy’s thumbs-up for any major changes to the afterlife, especially since humans were involved. The gods considered humans shared property.
Zeus listened and frowned thoughtfully. “So what do you propose?”
“Well,” Hades said, “we could keep the panel of three judges, but—”
“The audience could vote!” Zeus guessed. “At the end of each season, the winning mortal could be crowned Elysian Idol!”
“Uh, no,” Hades said. “Actually, I was thinking the judges could be spirits of the dead rather than living people. And each mortal soul would only be judged once it enters the Underworld.”