96 pages • 3 hours read
Bernard EvslinHeroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths
Fiction | Short Story Collection | YA | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Demigods”
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “Perseus”
Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. When Danae was old enough to marry, an oracle told Acrisius that his daughter’s son would kill him. Rather than kill her and invite the gods’ anger, Acrisius imprisoned her in a tower. When it began to glow brightly, Acrisius discovered Danae had given birth to a son. Fearful that she was under a god’s protection, he put her and the baby into an oarless, sail-less boat and set them adrift. The next day, Danae and her child landed on the island of Sephiros, ruled by King Polydectes.
The child, Perseus, grew up strong and brave, listening to his mother’s stories about heroes and monsters. He especially enjoyed the story of the Gorgons, three sisters transformed into monsters by Athene. The youngest sister, Medusa, became so terrifying that anyone who looked into her face turned to stone. Perseus’s favorite story, though, was about his father, Zeus. Danae believed Zeus would return to her someday, and for this reason, refused to marry Polydectes.
Polydectes tricked Perseus into making a rash promise to deliver the king Medusa’s head. After praying for help, Perseus received a pair of winged sandals from Hermes, who told Perseus to visit the Gray sisters, three “hags” who shared one tooth and eye among them and quarreled constantly (127). As the sisters passed around the eye and tooth, Perseus grabbed them and refused to return them until the sisters helped him.
They sent him to the daughters of Atlas, who guarded Hera’s special tree of golden apples and “dark secrets” (130). No man could get past them because they would entrance him with music and wine until he was so befuddled that they could throw him off a cliff. Perseus kept his distance, avoided temptation, and received their help in the form of a sword, a cap that turned its wearer invisible, and a shield that would serve him as a mirror, so he could see Medusa’s reflection without looking into her face. Arriving at a stone orchard (of men Medusa had turned to stone), Perseus chopped off Medusa’s head and used his cap to speed invisibly away.
On his return journey, Perseus spent a night dancing and drinking with the nymphs. When Atlas grew angry at their revelry, Perseus used Medusa’s head to turn him into a stone mountain, called Mount Atlas to this day. Continuing homeward, Perseus passed the port of Joppa, where Andromeda, daughter of king Cepheus and queen Cassiopeia, was being sacrificed to a sea monster. Perseus slayed the monster and married Andromeda.
Perseus and Andromeda traveled together to Sephiros, where Polydectes was about to marry Danae. Perseus pulled out Medusa’s head, inadvertently fulfilling Acrisius’s original prophecy: Acrisius, who was attending the wedding as a guest, was turned to stone, along with the court, the guests, and Polydectes. Only Danae was spared. Perseus returned Athene’s shield along with the cap of invisibility but kept the sandals and sword. Medusa’s head he threw in the sea, where it “sank to the bottom,” where Evslin describes it still pushed by the tides, “making coral where it goes” (142).
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary: “Daedalus”
A favorite of the goddess Athene, Daedalus was an Athenian honored for his skill at crafts, but his pride was his downfall. After becoming jealous of his nephew and apprentice Talos, Daedalus lured him to Athene’s temple and pushed him off the Acropolis. As he fell, Athene turned Talos into a partridge and subsequently “withdrew her favor from Daedalus” (145). Though no one could prove Daedalus had killed Talos, the Athenians grew wary of him, and he moved to Crete, where Minos ruled.
Minos gives Daedalus an honored post and “a beautiful young slave girl for his own” (146). The king’s wife, Pasiphae, and his daughters, Ariadne and Phaedra, were especially fond of Daedalus and enjoyed visiting him in his workshop. When Daedalus revealed that he had left Athens after losing Athene’s favor, Pasiphae scoffed at the gods, calling them “old wives’ tales” and boasting that she was more beautiful than Aphrodite (146). Daedalus trembled with fear and urged Pasiphae to be cautious, but it was too late: Aphrodite heard her and “planned a terrible vengeance” (147).
A white bull appeared at the palace, delighting Minos, who did not know Aphrodite had sent it. Pasiphae immediately fell “violently, monstrously, in love with the bull” and asked Daedalus to help her (148). He fashioned a bull costume for Pasiphae to hide in to meet the bull in his pasture. Some time later, Pasiphae gave birth to a child who was half bull. Minos’s subjects derisively referred to him as the Minotaur, meaning “Minos’s bull.” Furious, Minos ordered Daedalus to build a maze, called the Labyrinth, in which he imprisoned Daedalus, Pasiphae, and the Minotaur.
Daedalus’s son Icarus remained loyal to his father, choosing to live in the Labyrinth with him. When he grew tired of their cloistered life, he convinced his father to build wings that they could use to escape. After attaching them to his son with wax, Daedalus ordered Icarus not to fly too low, which would allow ocean spray to dampen his wings, or too high, which would allow the sun to melt the wax. Icarus’s skill at flying with his man-made wings caused him to grow recklessly confident. Daedalus grew anxious watching his son but was so exhausted that he succumbed to sleep. Icarus then flew closer to the sun, to discover its true nature. His wax wings melted, and he fell into the sea. His shouts awakened Daedalus just in time to see his son sink under the water.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “Theseus”
Though his father was the Athenian king Aegeus, Theseus grew up in Troezen with his mother, training relentless to overcome his small size. A gull visited Theseus in a dream and told him to use his opponents’ size and strength against them. Using this technique on the largest boys in his village, he was thrilled to discover it worked.
The gull revealed that Theseus’s true father was Poseidon, who had visited Theseus’s mother disguised as her husband, Aegeus. Now Poseidon had great plans for Theseus, if he was brave enough. The gull instructed Theseus to take “the dangerous overland route” to Athens to begin his adventure (158). The following day, a sword embedded in a large rock appeared with a message from the oracle at Delphi: whoever had the strength to pull out the sword was a king’s son. Theseus surprised the villagers by pulling out the sword.
The route from Troezen to Athens was filled with dangerous creatures who exploited vulnerable travelers: Corynetes bashed travelers to death with his brass club; Sciron tricked travelers into washing his feet at the edge of a cliff, then kicked them over it into the open mouth of a giant killer turtle; Pityocamptes tricked travelers into trying to hold down a pine tree that would fling them to their deaths; Procrustes tricked travelers into lying on a bed on which he would either stretch or chop them to death. Encountering each of these creatures, Theseus turned their tricks against them and continued his journey.
Arriving in Athens, Theseus discovered it was not yet time to fight for his father’s throne and convinced him to send Theseus to Crete. Because it had lost a war against Crete, Athens was obligated to send tributes there: seven young men and women to be fed to the Minotaur. Theseus promised his father that if he was able to return successfully to Athens, he would raise a white sail on his way home, so Aegeus would know he was safe. On the ship to Crete, Theseus urged the dejected tributes to change their attitude and train as a military unit. He promised them that “one day ‘Athenian’ [would] be the proudest name in the world” (168).
In Crete, Theseus asked Minos to help him kill the Minotaur, while Minos asked Theseus to marry Ariadne and become the king’s heir. Theseus turned him down, preferring to fight the Minotaur. To demonstrate his power, Minos proved that he was the son of Zeus. In return, Theseus proved that he was the son of Poseidon, making Minos fearful and determined to see Theseus dead.
Meantime, Daedalus gave Ariadne a magical ball of thread that enabled her to find her way out of the Labyrinth. She secretly offered to lead Perseus safely through the Labyrinth if he would take her back to Athens with him. Theseus agreed. The following day, Ariadne led Theseus through the maze. She tried to convince him not to fight, since he had no weapons, but Theseus was determined: He tricked the Minotaur into knocking himself out, then pulled out one of his horns and stabbed him with it.
Shocked to see Theseus emerge from the Labyrinth. Minos was forced to allow him to leave, along with Ariadne and Phaedra. On his return journey, Theseus forgot to raise the white sail. Watching from a hilltop for the ship, Aegeus saw the black sail and threw himself into the sea, determined to go immediately to Theseus in the underworld and beg his forgiveness for allowing him to go to his death. That sea still bears his name: the Aegean Sea. Theseus, meanwhile, became a successful king of Athens and eventually returned to Crete to claim Minos’s crown.
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary: “Atalanta”
When Atalanta was born, her father ordered that she be abandoned on a mountainside, where a mother bear found and raised her. Across the valley lived Meleager, son of the king of Calydon and his wife, Althaea. When Meleager was a baby, Atropos, one of the three Fates, warned Althaea that her son’s life would last only so long as a specific piece of wood remained unburned. Althaea quickly locked the wood in a brass chest.
Meleager grew into a skilled hunter and insisted that he would only marry a woman who could hunt with him. One day, he killed a bear who turned out to be Atalanta’s brother. He fell in love with Atalanta at first sight, but she attacked him. As they wrestled, Atalanta realized that she and Meleager were alike and fell in love with him. They began hunting together and were so successful that they drew comparisons to Artemis, who was infuriated by the comparison. Artemis set a deadly boar loose to terrorize the Calydonian countryside. Meleager’s father invited all of Greece’s heroes, including Althaea’s two brothers, to join Meleager and Atalanta on a hunt.
Atalanta was the first to hit the boar with one of her arrows, while Meleager struck the mortal blow. After skinning the boar, Meleager offered its valuable pelt to Atalanta. Offended, Meleager’s uncles berated Meleager and cursed Atalanta, provoking Meleager to slice their heads off with his sword. When the queen heard that her brothers were dead, she threw the stick she had locked away into the fire. As it burned, Meleager died.
Grief-stricken, Atalanta returned to Arcadia, where her aged father recognized and welcomed her. Now that she was a princess with an inheritance, heroes arrived to court her, but she refused to marry. Fearful that the heroes would take the castle by force, her father urged Atalanta to pick a husband. She agreed to marry any man who could beat her in a foot race, and stipulated that anyone who lost would be killed.
Despite the harsh terms, many men accepted the challenge, losing both the race and their lives. One hero who had been at the boar hunt, Hippomenes, had fallen so desperately in love with Atalanta that he had quietly followed her back to Arcadia. The brutal deaths of Atalanta’s suitors left him with mixed feelings: sadness that they had lost their lives but happiness that he could offer himself to Atalanta because they had failed. Everyone tried to discourage the “gentle young man” who “did not look much like anyone’s idea of a hero” from going through with the race, but he insisted on attempting it (196).
Hippomenes prayed to Aphrodite for help him, and she appeared to him in a dream, giving him three apples to throw behind him during the race. These would distract Atalanta and allow him to take the lead. During the race, the ruse worked. Atalanta could not resist stopping to pick up the apples. Hippomenes won and they were married.
Part 3 Analysis
The texts that contain the ancient Greek heroes’ stories were composed from approximately the eighth century BC to the second century AD. Tales of heroes were told and retold in a variety of ways in both Greek and Latin, but one facet remained consistent: the belief that the heroes belonged to an earlier age of humanity, directly descended from the gods, who remained in direct communication with their immortal progenitors. The heroes’ close ties with the gods amplified both their flaws and their gifts, alternately inviting the gods’ favor and their enmity. As Hermes tells Perseus in Evslin’s collection, “God-seed and human make a stranger mixture, a ferment in the blood; leads to great exploits or great folly” (126). In other words, heroes had extraordinary strength, or virtue, or cunning, but these same gifts could become flaws because they were extreme, immoderate, and out of balance.
Evslin portrays this essential extremism and its consequences in the heroes’ relationships with the gods. When Perseus asks his mother what being Zeus’s son makes him, she replies, “A hero. Or a very great scoundrel. […] But let us hope that you too will rescue maidens and thwart mad kings” (122). The distinction between hero and scoundrel is not always clear-cut in Evslin’s narratives. Like the other heroes Evslin portrays, Perseus does behave like a scoundrel, but in the process also rescues maidens and thwarts mad kings. He threatens to crush the Gray Ladies’ eye to force them to reveal information they are afraid to give him, and he turns Atlas into a mountain when his complaints get in the way of Perseus’s fun. On the other hand, Perseus also saves Andromeda from a monster and his mother from a forced marriage.
Heroes display overweening arrogance, and the gods often punish them for it. Daedalus loses Athene’s favor because he murders Talos out of jealousy at his skill. Icarus dies because he believes he can use the wings his father crafts to discover the true nature of the sun. Pasiphae mocks the gods, doubting their existence and denying their power, which provokes Aphrodite’s vengeance. Theseus insists on fighting the Minotaur as a means of achieving glory, even though Minos and Ariadne each offer him a way out of the fight. Later, Theseus becomes so preoccupied with celebrating his great deeds that he forgets to put up the white sail, leading to his father’s suicide. Atalanta and Meleager are a slightly different case, in that they do not court comparison with Artemis, but their excessive skill as hunters invites others to compare them to the goddess, which leads to the boar hunt that results in Meleager’s death.
On the positive side, being the son of Poseidon infuses Theseus with courage and a sense of purpose that set him on a course of heroism. This is possible not only because of Theseus’s parentage but also because Theseus is wise enough to recognize the gull as a divine messenger and to follow its advice. He rids the route between Troezen and Athens of harmful bandits and brings Athens’ devastating tribute to Crete to an end. Other heroes also cultivate positive relationships with gods. Perseus gains the help and admiration of Hermes and Athene due to his prayers, which in turn convince Atlas’s daughters to help him. Similarly, Aphrodite appreciates Hippomenes’s prayer and helps him win the race that leads to his marriage to Atalanta.
In antiquity, heroes’ experiences were educational texts that transmitted cultural beliefs and values. Evslin’s retellings similarly embody values and lessons for readers’ consideration. Some of these lessons inspire positive behavior. In his advice to fellow tributes on the way to Crete, Theseus declares that how they think about themselves will affect their fate. If they believe themselves to be victims, then they will become victims. Theseus and Hippomenes demonstrate the positive outcomes that result from showing proper respect for divine authority. Theseus respects the gull as a divine messenger and in turn benefits from its wise advice to use his opponents’ strengths against them. A rare gentle and soft-spoken hero, Hippomenes achieves the end he desires by drawing on these qualities to endear himself to Aphrodite.
Conversely, the stories of Daedalus, Pasiphae, and Icarus demonstrate how flouting authority figures can lead to tragic outcomes. Daedalus’s sacrilegious murder of his nephew at Athene’s temple provokes her fury and she withdraws her favor, which forces Daedalus to flee to Crete. There he enters another cycle of disastrous events provoked by Pasiphae’s refusal to believe the gods have any power. Icarus ignores his father’s advice and pays with his life.
The heroes’ stories also demonstrate that prophecies and destiny will inevitably be fulfilled. Acrisius takes drastic measures to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecy that his grandson will kill him, but it is eventually fulfilled in a most unexpected way, when he happens to be visiting Polydectes at the same time that Perseus returns to save his mother from a marriage she does not want. In Theseus’s case, he is eager to fulfill the prophecy that he is a king’s son and demonstrates the bravery and cunning to do so, despite his small stature. Althaea believes she can safeguard the wood that represents the length of her son’s life, but ironically brings about the prophecy’s fulfillment herself out of anger at Meleager.
Evslin’s retellings of the demigods’ stories also explain notable natural events. Perseus’s myth provides the story of Mount Atlas: It was once a god who held up the sky, until Perseus, in anger, transformed him into stone. Coral is the by-product of Medusa’s head, which Perseus dropped into the sea. The Aegean Sea is named for Aegeus, who drowned there. A more subtle reference to the natural world, on which the glossary at the end of the book elaborates, is the word Icarian, meaning bold ambition, which derives from Icarus’s ill-fated attempt to discover what the sun is.
Finally, the myth of Perseus also highlights the motif of storytelling. The personal anecdote Evslin shares in the introduction about his uncle reading the Iliad and the Odyssey to him when he was a child echoes in the way Evslin shapes the story of Perseus, whose mother tells him stories about the same mythological figures that Evslin’s readers encounter in this book.
