The Asclepion of Epidaurus was as big a draw as the town’s celebrated theatre is today. Those who visit it can still see records of the illnesses, treatments, diets and cures of the patients who flocked there.
Crime and Punishment
The regular appearance, interference and intercourse of the gods with human society, which would be so remarkable, thrilling and troubling to us if it happened today, was sometimes taken for granted by the more foolish and self-important mortals of the Silver Age. Some kings were so puffed up that they ignored the most elementary precepts of the gods and exhibited the most flagrant disrespect towards them. Such blasphemous acts of lese-majesty seldom went unpunished. Like parents admonishing children with gruesome moral fables, or like Dante or Hieronymus Bosch with their cautionary hellscapes, the ancient Greeks seemed to relish the details and delightful aptness of the often elaborate and excruciating tortures that Olympus and Hades reserved for those men and women whose transgressions most aggravated them.
Ixion
There was no graver sin in Zeus’s eyes than the betrayal of xenia, the sacred duty of hosts towards guests, and guests towards hosts. Few mortals showed more contempt for its principles than Ixion, King of the Lapiths, an ancient tribe from Thessaly.
His first crime was one of simple greed. We are familiar with the idea of dowries, the practice of families of prospective brides paying to have their daughters taken off their hands. In the very earliest days things were done the other way around: prospective husbands paid the bride’s family for the right to marry their daughter. Ixion wed the beautiful DIA but refused to pay her father, King DEIONEUS of Phocis, the agreed bride-price. In retaliation the affronted Deioneus sent a raiding party to take a herd of Ixion’s best horses. Hiding his vexation beneath a wide smile Ixion invited Deioneus to dinner at his palace in Larissa. When he arrived Ixion pushed him into a fiery pit. This flagrant breach of the rules of hospitality was trumped by the even grosser sin of blood killing. The slaying of a family member was considered a taboo of the most heinous kind. With this action Ixion had committed one of the first blood murders; unless he was cleansed of his transgression, the Furies would pursue him until he went mad.
The princes, lords and neighbouring landowners of Thessaly had cause to dislike Ixion and none offered to perform the catharsis, the ritual process of purification that would redeem him. The King of the Gods, though, was in a surprisingly forgiving mood. The people of Thessaly had acted quickly to show their revulsion at Ixion’s double crime of xenia abuse and kin-slaying. Zeus was minded to be merciful. He not only released Ixion from his torment but went so far as to invite him to a banquet on Olympus.
Such an honour was rare for mortals. The glamour and grandeur of an Olympian feast were beyond anything Ixion would have seen before. He was especially bowled over by the queenly beauty of Hera. Whether it was the intoxicating effects of the great occasion or the wine, nobody could afterwards decide – perhaps it was nothing more than congenital boorish idiocy – but far from behaving with the modest gratitude you might expect of any mortal invited to the immortal dinner table, Ixion committed the catastrophic error of trying to seduce the Queen of Heaven. He blew Hera kisses, winked at her, tried to nibble her ear, whispered lewd remarks and made concerted grabs at her breasts. He not only insulted the most dignified and proper of the Olympians but he once more transgressed the laws of xenia. Failing in the duties as a guest was considered as heinous as failing in the duties of a host.
After Ixion had staggered down from Olympus, slapping backs and belching out thanks, an offended Hera told Zeus of the outrage upon her honour. Zeus was equally incensed. He decided to lay a trap for Ixion. The Cloud Gatherer gathered a cloud and sculpted it into an anatomically exact and fully working likeness of Hera. He blew on it, animating it into life and sent it down to a meadow outside Larissa, where he had seen Ixion sprawled asleep on the grass, snoring off the effects of the banquet.
When Ixion awoke to find Hera beside him, he rolled over and coupled with her there and then. At the sight of this unspeakable blasphemy Zeus sent down a thunderbolt and a fiery wheel. The thunderbolt blasted Ixion into the air and pinned him to the wheel, which Zeus sent spinning across the heavens. In time the firmament was deemed too good for him and Ixion, bound to his wheel of fire, was sent down to Tartarus, where he revolves, spread-eagled and roasting in agony to this very day.
The Hera-Cloud was given the name NEPHELE. Her union with Ixion produced a son, CENTAUROS, an ugly and misshapen boy who grew into a lonely and unhappy man who took his pleasure, not with humans, but with the wild mares of Mount Pelion, where he liked to roam. The untameable and savage progeny of this unnatural union between man and horse were named, after him, ‘centaurs’.fn1
Consequences
Many of the Greek myths lead to cascades of consequences. As we have already seen, leading figures in one story will go on to marry and found dynasties from whom are born yet more legendary heroes. And there are plenty of subsidiary myths that spin off from the Wheel of Ixion.
While on the subject of Mount Pelion, for example, it is worth mentioning the story of IPHIMEDIA, who was so in love with Poseidon that she would regularly sit by the shore, scooping up seawater and pouring it over her breasts and into her lap. Poseidon was touched by this show of adoration and swept out of the ocean in an embracing wave to conjoin with her. Twin sons were born, OTUS and EPHIALTES. They were true giants in our modern sense: as boys they grew by the breadth of a human hand every month. It was clear that when they reached manhood they would be the largest beings alive.
As you will recall, the jealous and ambitious Poseidon had always kept in mind the possibility that one day his younger brother Zeus might slip up and be toppled from his throne. The sea god put in the heads of his fast-growing boys the idea of challenging heaven by creating their own mountain from which to rule the world. Their plan was to pull up Mount Ossa and heap it on Olympus. On top of Ossa they would pile Mount Pelion. But before the twins had grown to the full height and strength necessary to achieve this, word reached Zeus of the possibility of their rebellion and Apollo was sent to fell them with arrows. Their punishment in the underworld was to be bound to pillars with writhing snakes.
Just to run the thread of the narrative right through to one of its conclusions (and as a further example of how one story could lead on to other, even more significant and far-reaching, myths), you should know that Nephele, the cloud image of Hera, went on to marry a Boeotian king called ATHAMAS,fn2 by whom she bore two sons, PHRIXUS and HELLE. Nephele had cause to save the life of Phrixus – an Isaac to his father’s Abraham – when Athamas tied his son to the ground and made to sacrifice him. Just as the Hebrew god revealed a ram in a thicket to Abraham and saved Isaac’s life, so Nephele sent a golden ram to rescue her son Phrixus. The golden fleece of that ram gave rise to the great quest of Jason and his Argonauts. All on account of a drunken degenerate king who had the temerity to make eyes at Hera.