Pluto Is Not Amused

Aegyptus had fifty sons and his twin brother Danaus had fifty daughters, and the fifty sons demanded their fifty cousins in marriage. Danaus gave his daughters daggers with which forty-nine of them killed their husbands on the wedding night. In punishment for this, the Danaïdes were compelled to spend eternity trying to carry water in sieves. In one account the one daughter who did not kill her husband was Hypermnestra. Her husband was Lynceus and from their union sprang the royal house of Argos. In another it was Amymone.

[The idea of hell as eternal frustration is further illustrated by the fates of Tantalus, Ixion, and Sisyphus. Robert Graves believes, however, that the idea of the Danaïdes' punishment is a late misunderstanding of an icon which, in reality, depicts them as sprinkling water in order to induce rain by sympathetic magic.]

Son of Thyestes and Pelopia (Thyestes' own daughter) and hence cousin of Agamemnon and Menelaus. While Agamemnon was absent at the siege of Troy, Aegisthus became the lover of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife. In some accounts it is Aegisthus who killed Agamemnon on his return. In other it is Clytemnestra. After the murder they ruled the kingdom together until both were slain by Orestes.

The aegis was the shield of Zeus, made by Hephaestus and covered with the skin of the goat, Amalthea, which had suckled the infant Zeus. It was sometimes borne by Athena and when in her possession usually carried (veiled) the head of the Gorgon Medusa. When Zeus, the Thunderer, shakes the aegis, a thunderstorm ensues and men's hearts are seized with terror. It was sometimes represented as a shield and sometimes as a short, fringed cloak—the fringe presumably representing the trailing edges of the storm cloud. However represented, it was a manifestation of the awful power of Zeus and Athena, a power used for protection as well as for warning.

[The most common meaning of the word today—aside from the specific mythological meaning—is that of a protective influence, usually the favor of some powerful person.]

King of Athens and husband of Medea, by whom he had a son, Medus, the legendary ancestor of the Medes.

By an earlier union he was father of Theseus and he killed himself when, owing to a mistake, he believed Theseus had been killed by the Minotaur. Theseus had gone to Crete with the tribute of young men and maidens which Athens was compelled to pay yearly to Minos. The ship, to suit its melancholy errand, was equipped with black sails. Theseus hoped to overcome the Minotaur—to which the young people were offered as victims—and had agreed to change to white sails if his expedition had a favorable outcome. But he forgot and Aegeus, seeing the black sails of the approaching vessel, threw himself into the sea (hence called the Aegean).

Some versions of the legend state that Theseus deliberately left the black sails hoisted (knowing the consequences) so that he could inherit the kingdom.

Another name for Briareus.

King of Colchis, where the Golden Fleece hung on a tree, guarded by a dragon. He was father of Medea and Absyrtus.

Daughter of Pandareos. She envied her sister-in-law Niobe her six sons and six daughters (in some accounts seven sons and seven daughters, and in still others ten sons and ten daughters) and out of envious hatred resolved to kill one of them. But by mistake she killed Itylus (or Itys), her own and only child. In her grief she begged Zeus to let her cease to be a human being, and he changed her into a nightingale, in which form she forever voices her sorrow in plaintive melody.

The island of the sorceress Circe. Odysseus lived there with her for a year and she bore him a son, Telegonus.

Son of Zeus and Aegina and the father of Peleus, hence the grandfather of Achilles. He was a man of so great piety that the gods allowed him to judge disputes between them and after his death appointed him one of the judges of the underworld.

The only one of the Seven Against Thebes who survived the expedition. Ten years later he led the sons of the original Seven in a second attack against the city and this time captured it. However, his some was lost and Adrastus died of grief.

A beautiful young man beloved by Aphrodite, he was killed by a wild boar. Aphrodite begged Zeus to restore him to life, but Persephone had also become enamoured of him and would not let him go until Zeus decreed that he should spend half of each year in the upper world and the other half of each year in the underworld. In the spring the festival of his rebirth was celebrated, especially by women. He was also worshipped in Babylonia, under the name of Tammuz, and thence the cult spread into Palestine (Ezekiel 8) among "the dark idolatries of alienated Judah" (Milton).

King of Pherae. He was sick and an oracle stated that he would die unless someone offered to accept death in his place. His wife Alcestis offered herself and was being carried off to the underground when Hercules, a friend of Admetus, intervened and by force compelled death to let her remain alive.

[Milton's sonnet on his second wife—whom he married after he had become blind and who died within a year or so of the marriage—the sonnet beginning

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave—

is based on this myth. As often, however, he uses a pagan myth to illuminate a Christian doctrine, a practice of which Doctor Johnson sternly disapproved.]

A great hunter who had the misfortune to come, while hunting, upon Artemis, the goddess of chastity, as she was bathing. She changed him into a stag and he was pursued and torn to pieces by his own dogs.

Father of Danaë. He was killed accidentally by a blow from a quoit thrown by his grandson Perseus, a happening which had been foretold by an oracle.

One of the greatest of the Greek heroes who took part in the siege of Troy. He was the son of Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He is a warrior of irresistible prowess but is subject to violent fits of anger, in which fits he is barbarically cruel. In deed Honer announces, in the very first line of the Iliad, that the subject of his great epic is "the wrath of Peleus' son."

The most famous instance of this is his quarrel with Agamemnon over the maiden Briseis. When she is taken from him he sulks in his tent and refuses to fight until the death of his dearest friend, Patroclus, brings him to the battlefield seeking revenge. There he slays Hector and drags his body behind his chariot three times around the walls of Troy. Later, however, he is moved to generous pity when Priam, Hector's aged father, comes to beg his son's body so that it might receive due funeral rites.

One of the best-known stories about Achilles is that his mother, to make him invulnerable in battle, dipped him in the river Styx when he was a baby. During the process she held him by the heel and this remained his one vulnerable spot. He was killed by Paris (or Apollo disguised as Paris), who shot him in the heel with a poisoned arrow.