A few poems mention Makaria, the daughter of Hades and Persephone. She was the goddess of blessed peaceful deaths, as opposed to painful, terrible, horrifying deaths, but there aren’t really any stories about her.
At any rate, Hades wasn’t always faithful to Persephone. He’s a god. What did you expect?
One time Hades was visiting the Titan Oceanus at the bottom of the sea. What he was doing there, I have no idea. Maybe he was checking on the salty springs that fed the River Styx. Anyway, while he was roaming around, he happened to meet a beautiful ocean nymph named Leuke, one of Oceanus’s daughters. She was tall and pale and lovely, and apparently she made a big impression. At the end of the visit, Hades abducted her and took her back to the Underworld.
It was just a fling, a momentary madness, but you can guess how Persephone reacted when she found out her husband had brought a souvenir girl home with him.
“She goes or I go,” Persephone snarled. “And don’t just send her back to the ocean. She stole my husband! She must die!”
“Um…okay,” Hades said. “I mean, yes! Of course, dear! What was I thinking?”
Hades ran down to the Fields of Asphodel, where Leuke was waiting for him.
“Well?” Leuke demanded. “You abducted me and brought me here. What do you plan to do with me?”
“Actually, it’s not going to work out,” Hades said. “My wife doesn’t approve.”
“What a shocker,” Leuke muttered. “Fine. Take me home!”
“I can’t,” Hades said. “Persephone wants you dead.”
Leuke turned even paler. “That—that isn’t right! You stole me!”
“It’s okay,” Hades assured her. “I have an idea. Instead of killing you, I’ll just change you into something—like a plant. Then you’ll live forever, and I can always remember you.”
“That’s a horrible idea!”
“Maybe a tree,” Hades mused.
“No!”
“A tall, pale, white tree,” Hades decided. “A tree as beautiful as you are.”
“I—”
POOF.
Leuke became the first poplar tree, and Hades hugged her trunk. “Thanks for understanding. I will always remember you.”
The poplar quickly multiplied, until the Fields of Asphodel were dotted with them—a little bit of beauty in the gloomy fields of Asphodel. The poplar became one of Hades’s sacred trees, and tended to grow especially thick along the banks of the Underworld rivers, maybe because Leuke remembered that she had come from the sea and was trying to grow her way back there. Good luck with that, Leuke.
After his failed romance with the poplar girl, Hades became depressed. One day he decided to take a long stroll along the River Cocytus, the River of Wailing, which is an odd place to walk if you’re trying to cheer yourself up.
Hades happened to see a lovely young woman in a pale-green dress sitting by the water. Her fragrance wafted toward him on the subterranean breeze—a sweet, subtle perfume unlike anything he’d ever smelled.
He walked over and stared at her in amazement. Hades tended to surprise people, being so dark and stealthy and all; so when the girl finally noticed him, she flinched in alarm.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Uh…” Hades found it hard to think. The woman’s eyes were pale green like her dress. “I’m Hades. You smell good. Who are you?”
The girl wrinkled her nose. “I’m Minthe, of course. Daughter of the River Cocytus.”
Hades frowned. “The Underworld rivers have naiads? I never knew that.”
“Well, maybe we’re not proud of it,” Minthe muttered. “It’s not easy being the nature spirit for a wailing river, you know. I’d much rather be in the upper world, where I could enjoy the sunlight and the fresh breeze.”
“I’ll take you there,” Hades blurted. “Just give me a kiss, and I’ll take you to the upper world.”
Minthe knit her eyebrows. “Why would you?”
“I love you,” Hades said foolishly, but he didn’t meet many beautiful women. Also, it was springtime. Persephone had gone to visit her mother in the mortal world, and Hades was lonely.
Minthe stood. She wasn’t sure what to think of this dark god, but a trip to the upper world sounded good. She said, “All right.”
She kissed him. Hades put his arms around her, and together they dissolved into shadows.
They appeared on the side of a hill near the Greek town of Pylos. Minthe gasped when she saw the blue sky and the sun, the green hills marching on forever.
She smiled and threw her arms around Hades, and for about twenty seconds they were very much in love. Minthe’s fragrance was intoxicating.
Then something changed. Hades tensed. Maybe the fresh air cleared his mind.
“What am I doing?” he wailed, pushing Minthe aside. “It’s springtime. My wife will be around here somewhere, making plants grow and whatnot. She’ll find us!”
“Who cares?” Minthe asked. “You said you loved me.”
“I—I—” Hades gulped.
Minthe’s green eyes were gorgeous. She was very pretty and she smelled good, but now Hades realized their love was hopeless. He remembered the murderous look in Persephone’s eyes when she’d heard about Leuke.
“I’ve got to get back to Erebos,” Hades said. “Enjoy the upper world.”
“You’re coming back, right?” Minthe demanded.
“Um…” Hades chickened out and dissolved into shadows.
Minthe should’ve forgotten him. She’d made it to the mortal world! She could’ve found a new river to bind her life force to. She could’ve lived forever in the beautiful forests and hills of Greece.
But nope. Too easy!
Being dumped on the hillside made her angry. It dawned on her that she’d wrapped the god Hades around her little finger without even trying. She really must be beautiful. And she did smell great. She deserved to be a queen.
“Hades loves me!” she shouted to the wind. “He’s going to come back and get me and make me the queen of the Underworld! I am more beautiful than Persephone, and more wonderful, and I smell better, and—”
The hillside rumbled. Grass and flowers swirled into a massive funnel cloud of petals. The goddess Persephone appeared as a fifty-foot-tall colossus.
At that point, Minthe realized she’d made a mistake.
“YOU, PRETTIER THAN ME?” Persephone boomed. “YEAH, RIGHT! YOU DO SMELL GOOD, THOUGH. PERHAPS I CAN FIND A USE FOR YOU AMONG THE PLANTS!”
Persephone raised her giant sandaled foot and squashed Minthe flat. When she smeared her foot across the hillside, tiny green plants sprang up. Their leaves smelled wonderful whenever they were crushed. Persephone decided to call them mint plants, and the hill near Pylos where they first grew is still called Mount Minthe.
So next time you have mint chocolate chip ice cream, you can thank Persephone, though it can be a little hard to eat the stuff when you realize it’s made from smashed river nymph.
After that, Hades didn’t have many affairs. He mostly stayed in his palace and minded his own business.
Mortal heroes didn’t always leave him alone, though. They kept popping down, demanding things. One hero wanted his dog, Cerberus. Another hero wanted Hades to return his dead sweetheart to life. Another hero even tried to abduct Persephone. Maybe I’ll tell you those stories another time, but all this gloomy Underworld stuff is making me claustrophobic.
I need some fresh sea air. Let’s pop over to the Mediterranean, and I’ll introduce you to my dad—the one and only Poseidon.
POSEIDON GETS SALTY
I’M BIASED.
But if you’re going to have a Greek god for a parent, you couldn’t do better than Poseidon. Sure, I’ve had my problems with him. He’s not the most attentive dad. But, hey, none of the Greek gods is.
At least Poseidon has awesome powers and a laid-back attitude (most of the time).
He’s amazingly cool, considering how hard it was for him as a young god. He was the middle boy. He was always being compared to his brothers, like: Wow, you’re almost as handsome as Zeus! You’re almost as powerful as Zeus! Or sometimes: You’re not as much of a loser as Hades!
That can really grate on a guy after a few centuries.
Back when Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades threw dice to divide up the world, Poseidon got the second-best roll. He had to accept his brother Zeus’s becoming lord of the universe and telling him what to do for all eternity, but Poseidon didn’t complain. He’d won the sea. That was fine with him. He liked the beach. He liked swimming. He liked seafood.
True, Poseidon wasn’t as flashy or powerful as Zeus. He didn’t have lightning bolts, which were like the nuclear arsenal of Mount Olympus. But Poseidon did have his magical trident. He could stir up hurricanes, summon tidal waves, and make a mean smoothie. Since the seas wrapped around the earth, Poseidon could also cause earthquakes. If he was in a bad mood, he could level whole cities or make islands sink beneath the waves.
The Greeks called him the Earthshaker, and they went to a lot of trouble to keep him happy, because no matter whether you were on land or at sea, you didn’t want Poseidon mad at you.
Fortunately, Poseidon was usually calm. His mood reflected the Mediterranean Sea, where he lived, and most of the time the Mediterranean was smooth sailing. Poseidon would let the ships travel where they wanted. He’d bless fishermen with good catches. He’d chill on the beach, sip his umbrella drink from a coconut shell, and not sweat the small stuff.
On nice days, Poseidon would ride his golden chariot across the waves, pulled by a team of white hippocampi, which were horses with golden manes, bronze hooves, and fish tails. Everywhere he went, the sea creatures would come out to play around his chariot, so you’d see sharks and killer whales and giant squids all frolicking together, gurgling, “Hooray, Poseidon is in the house!” or whatever.
But sometimes the sea got angry, and Poseidon was the same way. When that happened, he was a totally different dude.
If you were a ship’s captain and you forgot to sacrifice to Poseidon before you set sail, you were a major-league derp. Poseidon liked at least one bull sacrificed in his honor per ship. Don’t ask me why. Maybe at one point Poseidon had told the Greeks, Just pour me a Red Bull and we’ll call it even, and the Greeks thought he wanted an actual red bull.
If you forgot to sacrifice, there was a good chance your ship would get smashed on the rocks, or eaten by a sea monster, or captured by pirates with bad personal hygiene.
Even if you never traveled by sea, that didn’t mean you were safe. If your town somehow offended Poseidon…well, say hello to Hurricane Derp.
Still, Poseidon kept it together most of the time. He tried to follow Zeus’s orders, though Zeus annoyed him constantly. Whenever those two started arguing, the other gods buckled their seat belts, because a fight between the sky and the sea could rip the world apart.
Mother Rhea must’ve sensed the tension early on. Shortly after the gods took over the world, she suggested that Poseidon get out of Olympus and explore his new domain. She sent him to live on the ocean floor with a tribe of aquatic weirdos called the telkhines.
This was a strange suggestion, since the telkhines were twisted little dudes. They’d once been land dwellers, until they did something to anger Zeus; so he tossed the worst ones into Tartarus and exiled the rest to the bottom of the sea.
What did they do? Not sure; but the telkhines were known for sorcery and crafting dangerous stuff. They could summon sleet, rain, or even snow (which you don’t get much in Greece), and call down sulfurous rain that destroyed plants and burned flesh, which was kind of cool in a gross, smelly way.
Some stories say that the telkhines invented metalworking, and even made Kronos’s scythe at Gaea’s request. Could be true. They were greedy, and would do anything for the right price.
After Zeus threw them into the ocean, their forms changed so that they looked like a cross between dogs, seals, and humans, with canine faces, stunted little legs, and half-flipper hands that were nimble enough for metalwork but still made great Ping-Pong paddles.
When Poseidon came to live with them, the telkhines showed him around and taught him the ways of the ocean: These are fish! This is coral! One especially nasty trick they taught him was how to use his trident as a lever. Poseidon learned how to wedge the trident’s points under the base of an island and flip it so that the whole landmass disappeared under the sea. In combat, he could do this with mountains on dry land. A couple of times he flipped mountains right on top of his enemies, crushing them flat. See, I told you he was a boss.
Eventually, Poseidon got tired of the telkhines and decided to build his own palace. (Good move, Dad.)
He went to the bottom of the Aegean Sea and used his earthshaking, wave-making powers to raise a big mansion made of pearl, sea stone, and abalone shell. His gardens were full of exotic sea plants, with luminescent jellyfish drifting around like Christmas lights. He had great white sharks for guard dogs and mermen for servants; and his doorways were huge, because every once in a while the whales and sea monsters would float through to pay their respects.
If you ask me, Poseidon’s crib was way cooler than Hades’s or Zeus’s, and when Poseidon was sitting on his polished coral throne, he felt pretty good about himself. The entire sea was under his control. The fish adored him. All the sailors in the Mediterranean made offerings to him and prayed for safe passage. Everybody seemed to love him.
So Poseidon thought, Hey, I should go up top and offer to be the patron for one of the mortal cities!
Like I mentioned earlier, this was a big deal for gods. The more mortals who prayed to you, the stronger you got. If you could get a whole city dedicated to you—with statues, and temples, and souvenir T-shirts in all the tourist shops—that was the ultimate in bragging rights.
Poseidon decided to try for the capital of Attica on the Greek mainland, which was one of the biggest and most important cities in Greece. Hey, go big or go home, right?
He showed up at the city’s acropolis, which was the main fortress on the top of the tallest hill. The earth shook. Poseidon appeared in a swirling column of salt and mist. He struck his trident against the nearest rock, splitting it open and creating a geyser of salt water.
“Behold!” he shouted to the crowds. “I am Poseidon, here to become patron of your city!”
Pretty good entrance. Unfortunately, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, had shown up a few seconds before with the exact same offer. She was standing nearby in her gray robes, her battle helmet tucked under her arm, conducting negotiations with the city elders.
“Ah,” Poseidon muttered. “Awkward.”
The city elders gaped at the sea god with his glowing trident, and at the massive geyser of salt water that now spouted from the hilltop.
“Lord Poseidon!” one said. “Oh…um…”
The poor mortals looked back and forth between the two gods. I can’t blame them for being nervous. You never want to be forced to choose between gods. No matter which you pick, the other one is likely to stomp you as if you were a cockroach.
Poseidon wasn’t sure what to do either. How dare this upstart goddess Athena, this second-generation Olympian, steal his idea? He was tempted to chase her off with his trident; but before he could, Athena cried, “I know how we can settle this peacefully!”
Typical. Athena always had some sneaky idea. Poseidon wasn’t interested in peace at the moment, but the mortals all looked very relieved, and he didn’t want to act like a bad sport in front of his future followers.
“Well?” he grumbled. “What is your plan?”
“A contest,” Athena said. “You and I will each create one gift for the city. The elders will judge between
them. Whichever god gives the city the most valuable gift will be its patron. The other god will accept the elders’ judgment and leave in peace. Agreed?”
Thousands of mortal eyes turned to Poseidon. He still wanted to smack Athena into the sea, but she had put him on the spot. He couldn’t exactly say no.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Okay.”
Athena gestured to him courteously. “Gentlemen first.”
Poseidon frowned. What would be a valuable gift for these mortals? A box of pearls? Some pet jellyfish? Perhaps a stable of trained whales they could ride? Hmm. Parking the whales downtown might be a problem.
Perhaps another form of animal…something strong and fast, but adapted to land-dwelling humans?
Poseidon gazed at the waves breaking on the beach far below. As the whitecaps raced and crashed, he got an idea. He began to smile.
“Watch this,” he said.
He pointed his trident, and the waves began to take shape. When they reached the shore, they became majestic animals with four long legs and flowing manes. They ran straight onto the beach, whinnying and prancing.
“I call them horses!” Poseidon shouted. “They are fast and strong. You can ride them anywhere. They carry heavy stuff, pull plows or wagons. You can even ride them into war and trample your enemies. Plus, they just look really cool.”
The mortals murmured and clapped politely. Horses were obviously a valuable gift, though a few of the townspeople looked disappointed, like maybe they’d been hoping for pet jellyfish.
Everyone turned to Athena.
The goddess raised her hand. A sickly-looking shrub broke through the nearby rocks. It had gray-green leaves and green knobby fruits the size of warts.
Poseidon couldn’t help laughing. “What the spume is that?”
“It’s an olive tree,” Athena said.
The mortals shifted uneasily. The olive tree didn’t look very impressive, but nobody wanted to say that to Athena.