86 pages • 2 hours read
Edith HamiltonMythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Stories of Love and Adventure”
Chapter 1 Summary: “Cupid and Psyche”
Psyche was a princess whose surpassing beauty caused people to worship her and neglect Venus. The vengeful goddess sent her son Cupid to cause Psyche to fall in love “with the vilest and most despicable creature” in the world, but he fell in love with her himself (122). Her sisters married kings, but Psyche remained alone, “only admired, never loved” (122). After receiving an oracle, her father ordered Psyche to be abandoned on a mountain top, where “a fearful winged serpent” would claim her for his wife (123). Instead, gentle Zephyr carried her to a fragrant meadow near a beautiful palace, where Cupid came to her each night.
They were happy together until she longed to see the sisters. Cupid warned her that they would bring her destruction, but she insisted. He relented but cautioned her that she should never try to see him. The sisters’ initial joy at reunion gave way to bitter jealousy and “devouring curiosity” (124). When they asked Psyche what her husband looked like and she was unable to answer, the sisters claimed that he must be the dreadful serpent of the prophecy and advised her to kill him. Fear overtook love, and Psyche decided to sneak a look at him by lamplight, discovering that he was “the sweetest and fairest of all creatures” (126). As she gazed adoringly at him, a drop of oil fell on his shoulder, waking him. Realizing she had betrayed his trust, he fled. Psyche resolved to search for him for the remainder of her life.
Cupid returned to his mother to have his wound treated and revealed all, leaving Venus furious. Psyche decided to throw herself at the goddess’s feet. Venus gave her a succession of impossible tasks—to sort a variety of seeds mixed together, to fetch the wool of fierce golden sheep, and to collect water from the river Styx—but each time Psyche succeeds with help from ants, a reed, and an eagle respectively.
Finally, Venus orders Psyche to bring back a box with some of Proserpine’s beauty. With guidance from a tower, Psyche fulfilled the task, but overcome with curiosity and the desire to make herself beautiful, she opened the box and instantly fell into a deep sleep. By this time, Cupid has missed her and gone in search of Psyche. He woke her up and, after scolding her, sent her back to Venus with the box, then went to appeal to Jupiter, who granted his request to marry Psyche and make her immortal. Venus could not object, and the union of “Love and Soul (for that is what Psyche means) […] could never be broken” (132).
Chapter 2 Summary: “Eight Brief Tales of Lovers”
“Pyramus and Thisbe”
The myth provides an origin story to explain why mulberries, once white, are red. Pyramus and Thisbe lived in Babylon in neighboring houses separated by a common wall. Their parents forbade them from marrying despite their love for each other, but the lovers communicated through a crack in the wall and arranged to meet. Thisbe arrived first but was frightened away by a lioness, bloodied from her recent kill. As Thisbe fled, she dropped her cloak, which the lioness ripped apart before departing. Pyramus discovered the cloak when he arrived and, assuming the lioness had killed Thisbe, “plunged [his sword] into his side,” dyeing the white mulberries red (135). Thisbe returned, sharing one last kiss before Pyramus succumbed to death. Determined to deny death the power to separate them, Thisbe killed herself with Pyramus’s sword. The red mulberry “is the everlasting memorial” of the two lovers (135).
“Orpheus and Eurydice”
Orpheus was the son of a Thracian prince and a Muse. Among mortals, he had no equal in musical skill; only the gods, the earliest musicians, could rival him. His irresistible music could move rocks and tame wild beasts. On the quest with Jason and the Argonauts, Orpheus used his lyre to rouse his companions when their strength was flagging, soothe their anger when quarrels broke out, and save them from falling victim to the Sirens. How he met Eurydice is unknown, but their marriage was cut short when a viper stung and killed her. Orpheus journeyed to the underworld to recover her, casting a spell on all in the underworld with his voice and lyre. He was permitted to take Eurydice back, provided he does not look back until they both emerged into the light. Orpheus turned back too soon, and Eurydice was pulled back into the underworld. Orpheus spent the rest of his life wandering alone with his lyre until a group of frenzied Maenads tore him apart. The Muses buried his head at a sanctuary on Lesbos and his limbs “in a tomb at the foot of Mount Olympus,” where “to this day the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else” (139).
“Ceyx and Alcyone”
King of Thessaly Ceyx and his wife Alcyone never wanted to be parted, but troubled times forced Ceyx to take a sea journey to visit an oracle. Alcyone begged to go with him, but Ceyx did not want to put her in danger. His first night at sea, a storm battered and sank his ship. Meantime, Alcyone prayed for his safe return to Juno, who ordered Somnus (Sleep) to send Alcyone a dream revealing Calyx’s fate. Alcyone woke up the following day knowing that Ceyx was dead and went out to the shore where she had watched him depart. His body washed ashore, and as she rushed into the water to meet it, she was flying, having been transformed into a bird. The gods transformed Ceyx likewise, and the two “are always seen together, flying or riding the waves” (142). Every winter, seven days of “perfect peace” come, and they are called “Halcyon days” after her (143).
“Pygmalion and Galatea”
Pygmalion was a talented sculptor in Cyprus, who hated women and vowed never to marry. Yet he devoted himself entirely to perfecting his sculpture of a woman until it no longer resembled a statue but a real living woman with whom Pygmalion fell desperately in love. He would dress her, bring her gifts, and tuck her into bed at night, “as little girls do their dolls,” but she remained lifeless and he “utterly and hopelessly wretched” (144). Venus decided to help him, and on her feast day, when unhappy lovers came to seek her favor, she gave him a sign of support. When he returned home pondering the good omen, he found his statue warm to the touch. He kissed her, felt her lips soften under his, and knew Venus had made it so. He named the statue Galatea. The goddess attended their wedding, and Pygmalion and Galatia’s son, Paphos, “gave his name to Venus’s favorite city” (145).
“Baucis and Philemon”
In Phrygia, kindly Baucis and Philemon lived in a humble hut. Poor but happy, they welcomed Jupiter and Mercury who had come to Phrygia in disguise to test the locals’ hospitality. Baucis and Philemon were the only ones to welcome them warmly, despite having little to share. The couple cheerfully offered the gods a meal, repeatedly refilling their wine. When they noticed that the wine jug kept refilling itself, they realized they were in the presence of gods and began to tremble, but the gods revealed that they would be rewarded for their pious hospitality and their wicked neighbors punished. Their hut and surroundings dissolved, reforming into a lake with a beautiful temple. Jupiter promised to fulfill whatever wish they requested, and the couple asked to be the priests of his temple and never to be apart from each other. They remained at his temple until their deaths, when they were simultaneously transformed into a linden and an oak tree, which people from far and wide came to honor.
“Endymion”
Young and beautiful Endymion was a shepherd, or alternately a hunter or king, who Selene, the Moon, fell in love with. She came down from Heaven to kiss and lie beside him while he slept. He remained in a “magic slumber,” immortal but forever unconscious (151). They say the Moon “lulled him to sleep so that she might always find him and caress him as she pleased,” but “her passion [brought] her only a burden of pain” (151).
“Daphne”
Spying Daphne when she was out hunting, Apollo fell in love with her and chased her. A fast runner, Daphne took off in terror, becoming even more afraid when he called out to her that he was a god. Though she knew that she could never escape a god, “she was determined to struggle to the very end” (153). Seeing her father’s river before her, she called out to him for help, and immediately her transformation into a laurel tree began. Apollo grieved her loss and vowed to make her his tree, saying “Apollo and his laurel shall be joined together wherever songs are sung and stories told” (153). The tree “seemed to nod its waving head as if in happy consent” (153).
“Alpheus and Arethusa”
Arethusa is a sacred spring on the island of Ortega, part of the city of Syracuse in Sicily, but formerly she had been a huntress and follower of Artemis. Swimming alone in a clear stream one day, Arethusa “seemed to feel something stir in the depths beneath her” (154). Frightened, she sprang out of the water and ran through the woods. The river god, Alpheus, chased her, calling out that he loved her. Aware that she would not be able to outrun him, Arethusa prayed to Artemis, who transformed her into a spring of water and created an underwater tunnel from Sicily to Greece. Arethusa plunged into the tunnel, emerging in Ortega, sacred to Artemis. However, she did not escape Alpheus entirely: In his river form, the god followed her, and their waters mingle together.
Part 2, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
In this section, Hamilton collects eight myths under the banner of love stories. Their ancient renderings can be rather more sinister than romantic, in particular the myths told by Ovid. All eight ancient sources were produced in empires: Cupid and Psyche is taken from the Roman prose writer Apuleius, Endymion from Alexandrian poet Theocritus, and the rest from Ovid (though another Alexandrian poet, Moschus, provides the ending for the Alpheus and Arethusa myth). Because the majority of the myths come from Roman sources, Hamilton opts to use Roman names. Across the book, she alternates according to whether her primary myth source is Roman or Greek, with the exception of Hercules, who she consistently refers to by his Roman name.
The myth of Cupid and Psyche is one of several stories told within Apuleius’s bawdy, comedic novel The Golden Ass, the only Roman novel to survive complete, which is believed to have been based on a Greek precedent. The plot revolves around a man desperate to learn magic so he can transform himself into a bird. In the process of attempting to do so, he is accidentally turned into an ass. He undergoes wandering, kidnapping, and exploitation in his quest to recover his mortal form. The Egyptian goddess Isis eventually intervenes on his behalf, and he joins her cult. As Hamilton mentions, Apuleius is the only surviving source for the Cupid and Psyche myth. Because it is contained within a larger story and presumably shaped accordingly, it is difficult to determine how other versions might have been told differently. In Apuleius, Psyche’s wandering and suffering echoes that of the novel’s main character.
Though Hamilton expressed in her introduction that she preferred to rely on Ovid as little as possible, his Metamorphoses is the primary source for these love stories. In his poem, the stories can seem to reflect on how powerful figures impact artists, which has a self-referential suggestion. Several of the myths in Metamorphoses depict artists as the victims of divine envy, including the musician Marsyas, who falls afoul of Apollo, and Arachne, who infuriates Minerva (both recounted in Part 6). Orpheus’s violent end fits the broad theme but with a twist as the Muses ultimately give him honors.
Ovid’s meditations on power, especially on its inescapability, feature prominently in two of the love stories Hamilton retells in the section. The myth of Daphne and Apollo is told in book one of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The poem was composed during the reign of Augustus Caesar, who claimed Apollo as his patron god; laurel crowns graced the heads of military and civic leaders. Ovid also, in his book one, draws a parallel between Augustus and Jupiter, which he follows with a story portraying Jupiter as a philandering husband, who sacrifices a mortal woman he has already victimized to prevent his wife from finding out his misdeeds. Apollo is similarly characterized as a figure who is so powerful that he is unable to account for how abusively he behaves. Ovid portrays him persistently chasing Daphne, who knows she cannot escape him but decides to go down fighting. Ovid’s Apollo seems incapable of realizing that Daphne does not want him and mourns her transformation. Rather than releasing her, however, her transformation ensures that she will forever be in the service of the very god from whom she was trying to escape. Hamilton ends Daphne’s story by describing her tree-self seeming “to nod its waving head as if in happy consent” (153). Ovid’s Latin is more equivocal: It is not entirely clear whether the tree is nodding “in happy consent” (as Hamilton puts it) or trembling in fear, and in any case, Ovid’s implication is that Apollo would likely neither notice nor care if there were a difference (153).
The myth of Alpheus and Arethusa develops a similar theme in Ovid. Arethusa is swimming alone when she feels a presence approach her. She attempts to evade her pursuer and is offered what seems to be an escape, but the escape ends up entrapping her more completely. Her waters and those of her pursuer mingle together and cannot be separated. In the context of Ovid’s larger project, to provide an account of the cosmos, from its creation to Augustus’s ascension, a myth that would already be oppressive on an individual level becomes so on a cosmic scale: The presumption is that Augustus, when he leaves his mortal body, will be deified along with his father and the heroes of the mythic past, making his power eternally inescapable.
