A Dream Come True

2. Creation

Creation

“What are we looking at?” Mateo asked Thanos. Keisha prided herself on being well read, but she had to admit Thanos was probably the most likely to know the answer in this case.

Thanos stared for a minute at the blur they could see through the window, a fuzziness so indistinct it made their eyes hurt to look at it. Though no light came from it, it somehow stood out against the surrounding darkness “In the beginning was Chaos.”

“I thought Chaos was a jumble of matter and energy,” said Yong, squinting at the blur.

“Later Roman writers like Ovid describe it that way, but early Greeks like Hesiod portray something more like what we’re seeing. Chaos originally meant chasm or void rather than confusion,” Thanos replied. “That’s why it’s so hard for us to look at—you can’t really see a void.”

“There are other things out there,” said Fatima, pointing at the window. “Unless I’m imagining them. It’s so hard to tell.”

“No, you’re right,” said Thanos. “That’s Gaia, the Earth.” He pointed to a large mass, gray and lifeless. “That one’s Tartarus.” He indicated a huge, dark pit, hard to see against the surrounding blackness. “Those two are Nyx and Erebus, night and darkness personified.” He waved his right hand in the general direction of two black masses, even harder to see than Tartarus.

“I must not have gotten this far in the book,” said Patrick, scratching his head.

“The creation story was in one of the first chapters,” said Mateo. Patrick ignored him.

A sudden flash caught them by surprise. It was so bright, especially in contrast to the preceding darkness, that it momentarily blinded them.

“Was that the sun being born?” asked Yasmin.

“No,” said Thanos, when their eyes had begun to recover. “Look more closely.”

For the first time, they could see a human figure. Well, sort of human, anyway. He was the most handsome guy Keisha had ever seen, and she could tell from the expressions on the other girls’ faces that they would not have argued the point. Of course, anyone would probably have looked good compared to chaos, darkness, and bottomless pits. Still, this newcomer drew her eyes like boy band concerts drew preteen girls.

“That’s Eros,” said Thanos, breaking the awkward silence. “You know, love,” he added in response to Patrick’s puzzled expression.

“Like Cupid?” asked Patrick.

“That’s the Roman name,” Yong pointed out.

“But I thought Cupid was a little baby,” Patrick said, scratching his head again.

Thanos smiled a little. “Eros was always portrayed as what we would think of as a teenager in early myths and art, I guess because that’s the age people tend to experience romantic love for the first time. It wasn’t until later that he was pictured as a baby, to show the irrationality of love.”

Keisha, usually a very attentive student, missed most of Thanos’s explanation, as did Yasmin and Fatima, each of whom looked as if she was thinking about being held tightly in Eros’s arms.

Thanos snickered and said something like, “fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men.” Keisha realized he was quoting the Greek poet, Hesiod—and that he had caught the girls with their eyes riveted to Eros.

“Everything is…different,” said Yasmin, perhaps trying to cover her embarrassment.

“Love changes everything,” said Thanos.

The glowing Eros was now echoed by light from other sources.

“Erebus and Nyx just became the parents of Aether (the upper air) and Hemera (day),” Thanos said, pointing to something like a sunrise, but without the sun.

“Still no light sources,” said Yasmin.

“Not very scientific,” said Yong, scowling a little. “Light just comes from nowhere.”

“Light comes from love,” suggested Thanos. “Early Greeks didn’t make much distinction between the physical and the spiritual. Later Greeks often used the physical to represent the spiritual.”

“Earth is different now,” said Mateo.

Sure enough, the Earth, which had been gray only moments before, was now green, and above it hung a recognizable sky, dotted with stars.

“Gaia brought forth Uranus, the sky,” explained Thanos.

“Not mine,” said Patrick. “That must be your…”

“Grow up!” snapped Yong. Patrick frowned at him and clenched his fists, but Mateo moved between them—a not very subtle hint to Patrick to leave Yong alone.

“Just as Mother Earth brought forth Father Sky, she also brought forth Pontus, the sea,” added Thanos quickly, being careful not to say Uranus again, just in case. Looking more closely, Keisha noticed the shimmering water forming on part of the earth’s surface.

“Then earth and sky made love, and from their union came many children, including the Titans,” Thanos continued.

As if on cue, the view through the window shifted, so that the earth was much closer, and upon the green surface they could now see a group of godlike beings.

“The most important of the early Titans were Cronus and Rhea, who married and became the parents of the first Olympian gods,” said Thanos. He pointed to a female Titan who looked somehow comforting and maternal—hardly a match for the male Titan standing next to her, handsome but hard-featured. Rhea looked like someone you might want to have for a mother, but Cronus was far from being anyone’s ideal father.

“But weren’t they brother and sister?” asked Mateo. “The ancient Greek believed in incest?”

“Not among people,” said Keisha. “Like every other society, they had a strong incest taboo. However, early Greeks viewed the gods as being above human morality. Remember that the Greeks didn’t understand genetics and had no idea what consequences inbreeding would have.”

“Cronus and Rhea weren’t the only brother-sister marriage, either,” said Thanos. “Hyperion and Theia married and became the parents of Eos, the dawn; Helios, the sun; and Selene, the moon.”

“Light sources—finally!” said Yong.

For a while, they watched the radiant Helios and Selene alternately driving their chariots across the sky while Eos glowed rosily on the eastern horizon.

“The ancient Greeks thought the world was flat?” asked Fatima.

“Yeah, most ancient people did in the beginning,” Keisha replied.

They had already seen water on part of the earth’s surface as Pontus had come forth, but now they also noticed water completely encircling the earth.

“That’s Oceanus, another Titan,” said Thanos. “He married his sister, Tethys, and they fathered the Oceanids, nymphs of the outer sea, as well as the Potamoi, river gods.”

“So they had a god of the sea and a god of the ocean?” asked Yasmin. “That seems weird.”

“Early Greeks probably thought of Pontus as being the Mediterranean Sea and Oceanus as being the larger body of water they had heard was beyond the Straits of Gibraltar—what we would think of as the Atlantic Ocean,” Thanos explained. “Originally, those were the only two large bodies of water they knew about.”

“There are a lot of other overlaps like that in Greek mythology,” Keisha said. Some scholars think the early Greeks were a combination of many smaller groups. Each group had its own gods and goddesses, and when the groups came together, some duplicates may have been merged, but others were left as separate gods, even though they represented the same thing or had the same function.

“It’s also possible that the same god might have been known by different names in different places, and over time people began to treat each name as a separate being.”

“Boring!” announced Patrick after faking a very loud yawn. “Boring, and probably not on the test.”

“Another Titan brother-sister combination was Coeus and Phoebe,” said Thanos, probably figuring the best way to deal with Patrick might be to ignore him. “They became the parents of Asteria, goddess of falling stars, or comets, as we would say; and Leto, who later became the mother of Apollo and Artemis.”

“Iapetus, however, did not marry his sister,” continued Thanos.

“Well, it’s nice someone didn’t,” said Mateo.

“He married Clymene, an Oceanid and therefore his niece, though,” Thanos pointed out. “Their children were Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, names that will probably sound familiar.”

“Nope!” said Patrick, though he was looking more and more worried as the flood of names kept coming.

Keisha was happy her reading enabled her to distinguish those siblings by their looks. Atlas was bulging with muscle but had a vacant expression on his face—a little like Patrick, actually. Prometheus looked thoughtful as he stared off into the distance. Epimetheus, by contrast, didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was happening around him, foreshadowing the trouble Keisha knew he would get into later.

“Crius married Eurybia, a daughter of Gaia and Pontus, and they became the parents of Perses, the destroyer; Pallas, Titan of warcraft; and Astraeus, the Titan of dusk and balance for Eos, the dawn.”

“I wish I had something to take notes on,” said Fatima, looking around unhappily.

“It’s a dream,” Mateo pointed out. “It’s not as if you’ll have them when you wake up.”

Keisha was beginning to wonder how something so complicated could possibly be a dream, but she kept the doubts to herself.

“Are any of those last guys really important?” asked Patrick impatiently.

Thanos sighed. “We know them mostly because of their children. Perses married Asteria, his cousin, and they became the parents of Hecate.”

“Never heard of her,” said Patrick.

Keisha and Yong shared disgusted glances, but both refrained from saying what they were thinking.

“She was a versatile goddess, one who had power in the sky, on the earth, and in the sea,” Thanos explained. “No one knows why she was so powerful, but later, when Zeus took over, she was the only Titan to retain all of her earlier authority.

“No one knows why her reputation changed, either, but slowly she became a goddess of the dark phase of the moon, of witchcraft and of evil. Instead of being revered, she was feared by all.

“Pallas had a more varied group of kids. He married Styx, nymph of one of the Underworld rivers, and became the father of Zelus (glory), Nike (victory), Cratus (strength), and Bia (force). Astraeus, the dusk, married Eos, the dawn, and they became the parents of the four winds, as well as the stars and planets the ancient Greeks knew about. The planets were named after other gods, but they were also gods themselves.”

“That’s hardly confusing at all,” said Mateo.

“It’s no different from anything else about Greek mythology,” muttered Patrick.

“Some of the Titan women don’t seem to have husbands,” said Fatima.

“Some of the brothers married someone other than a sister,” said Yong. “I wonder if the ones left over were lonely.”

“Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, seemed content to study, but she was not alone forever,” Thanos explained. “Eventually Zeus made her the mother of the nine Muses, for all the arts and sciences ultimately depended on memory.”

“Zeus was a total player,” said Patrick, actually right for once.

“Themis, the personification of divine order and law, was likewise eventually loved by Zeus and became the mother of the Horae, or seasons.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” objected Mateo.

“It doesn’t have to make sense; it’s mythology,” said Patrick gloomily.

“Why would an abstraction give birth to an aspect of nature like that? Wouldn’t it make more sense if Gaia had given birth to the seasons?” Mateo asked.

“Perhaps the original storytellers were thinking about the fact that the seasons were part of the natural order,” suggested Yong. “They might not have been making the same kind of distinction between nature and human society we would.”

“Some stories also make the Morae (Fates), children of Zeus and Themis, again a blend of the natural—life and death—with the overall order of the universe,” Thanos continued. “However, different storytellers made different associations, and in their view, the Fates were among the gloomy children of Nyx, I suppose because of how much people fear death.”

“Night and Darkness had a lot of kids?” asked Mateo. “I wouldn’t have expected them to be thought of as sources of life.”

“A lot of people have s*x in the dark,” Patrick said. Keisha didn’t admit it out loud, but that wasn’t a completely stupid idea about how early people might have thought about darkness. Maybe Patrick wouldn’t be completely hopeless—if he actually did his work.

“So who else did Nyx and Erebus give birth to?” asked Yasmin.

“Actually, Nyx by herself,” replied Thanos. “Nemesis, the grim goddess of retribution; Moros (doom); Ker (destruction); the Keres (goddesses of violent death) Thanatos (death in general when he’s by himself, but peaceful death when he appears with the Keres); Momus (blame); Oziys (pain); Apate (deceit); Geras (old age); and, worst of all, Eris (discord), the opposite of Eros. Eros brings together, but Eris pulls apart.”

“But you said earlier that Erebus and Nyx were the parents of Aether and Day, both positive,” said Yong.

“It’s true that their children are a little more of a mixed bag,” agreed Thanos. “Hidden away in the grim mob are also the Hesperides (nymphs of sunset); Hypnos (sleep, and our current host); and Philotes (friendship).”

“I don’t get it,” said Mateo. “There’s no logic to that at all. Why would they have such different children?”

Thanos shrugged. “Haven’t you ever seen siblings who were different from each other? I think you may be confusing the Greek concept with later religions that had a tendency to split everything into good and evil. Think about Christianity, for example, with the clear line between God and Satan, angels and demons. In early Greek thinking, there is no such split. Day and night don’t represent good and evil. Even death isn’t evil exactly; it just is. Remember that ancient Greeks had no devil.

Fatima shuddered and took a step back from the window. “Something weird is happening,” she whispered. “I…I feel it.”

Thanos squinted at the window, which had darkened noticeably. “The early gods and Titans lived together peacefully for a while, but eventually conflicts developed.”

“How could that be, since they were all one family?” asked Mateo.

“Family members sometimes have fights,” Keisha pointed out.

“Hopefully, not as bad as these, though,” said Thanos. “These led to murder—and to war.”

“Finally, we’re getting to the good part!” said Patrick. “At last they’ll be some gore!”

Fatima shuddered again, harder this time.