At last Zeus was compelled to yield, and Prometheus was set free. Then he told the danger that hung over Zeus, and how it could be avoided. And by following the advice that Prometheus gave, Zeus was saved from losing his throne.
Because Prometheus had done so much for the race of men, and had suffered so much in their cause, the Greeks were always very grateful to him. But as he was not one of the great gods who ruled the world, they did not build temples to him or worship him, as they did the gods of Mount Olympus.
Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea
The other Titan who helped Zeus in the great war of the gods was named Oceanus. He had been one of the old sea-gods; and when Poseidon became the god of the sea, he let Oceanus and all his many children have part under him in ruling the great ocean and the other waters of the earth.
The most interesting of all the children of Oceanus was his son Proteus, whose duty is was to care for Poseidon’s sea-calves, as the Greeks called the seals. Every day he led them up on the land, where they lay and slept on the rocks and the warm sea-sands. The Greeks never though of Proteus as being young and beautiful like the gods of Mount Olympus. Instead of that they represented him in their pictures and in their stories as an old, old man, covered with the foam of the ocean, and with sea-weed and sea-shells clinging to his beard and his long gray hair.
One of the wonderful things that this old sea-god could do was to change into the shape of anything he wished. Once the ship0s of a famous Greek king, while they were sailing back from a great war, were blown about for a long while, so that he could not reach home. The king was told that some god was angry with him, and that the only way to reach home would be to seize the god Proteus, and force him to tell him what to do.
So at daybreak one morning the king and three of the bravest and strongest of his men set out for a cave by the shore, where Proteus came every day. There they made hollows in the sand, and lay down in them, and covered themselves with the skins of some sea-calves that they had brought with them. In a little while great numbers of sea-calves came out of the water, and lay down beside them in the cave and went to sleep. At noon Proteus himself came and counted his flock, and then he, too, lay down to sleep in their midst.
Then the king and his men sprang up, and seized the old sea-god. To escape from them, Proteus tried all his changes. First he became a great lion with a shaggy mane Then he became a panther. Then he changed to a snake, and twisted and turned in their hands. Then he became a tree, covered with rustling leaves. Then he changed into flaming fire; and last of all he turned into flowing water.
But in spite of all these wonderful changes, the king and his three brave men held fast to the god. Then Proteus saw that he was beaten. So he changed back to his own form, and told the king all that he wished to know. After this the king got safely home at last.
Eros, the Love-God
The Greeks told many wonderful stories about Eros, the love-god, some of which are very hard to understand. Long before Zeus, or Cronus, or Uranus, was the king of the gods,—indeed, before these gods were born, and before there were any plants or animals,—Eros was a god as powerful as he was in the later days when the Greeks wrote their stories about him.
They said that in the beginning the whole world was all one mass of stone, and there was no earth or sky or sea. Then Eros, or Love, was the only living thing; and just as the mother-hen warms her eggs till the little chicks peep out, so the Greeks said Love brooded over the world until living things appeared, and the world began to take shape.
Although he was so very, very old, the Greeks thought that Eros always remained a youth, never growing up as the other gods did. And they represented him in their pictures as a beautiful lad, with a golden bow and a quiver full of arrows. Some of his arrows were sharp and of the whitest silver. Whoever was wounded with one of these at once began to love the person that Eros wished him to love. Others were blunt and made of lead; and if a person was struck with one of these, he did just the opposite, and disliked whomsoever Eros wished.
One of the stories which the Greeks liked to tell about Eros was of his love for a young girl, and the way in which she became immortal through it. This girl’s name was Psyche, which means "the should;" and she was so beautiful that as soon as Eros saw her he fell deeply in love with her.
She was only a mortal, however, while he was a god; so when they were married he could not take her to Mount Olympus with him, nor even let her know who he was. For many months they lived together very happily in a beautiful palace of marble and gold, though Psyche was never allowed to see her husband by daylight nor to light a lamp by night.
Indeed, Psyche was so happy that her sisters began to be jealous of her good fortune, and said that her husband must be some dreadful monster, who was afraid to let her look upon his face. Psyche did not believe this, of course; but, in order to prove that they were mistaken, she did something that took away her happiness for a long time.
After Eros had fallen asleep one night, she lighted a lamp, and brought it to the bedside When she saw that her husband was the god Eros, she was so startled that a drop of hot oil fell from her lamp upon his face, and he awoke. Then he saw that she had disobeyed him; and, after giving her one sad look, he was gone.
Poor Psyche was heart-broken, for she knew that he would not come back again. She wandered about for a long time, going from temple to temple, trying to find some way to make up for her fault and regain her husband. At last she came to the temple of Aphrodite, where she was given a number of hard and dangerous things to do.
First she was shown a great heap of beans, barley, wheat, and other grains, all mixed together, and told that she must sort out the different kinds before the sun set At once thousands of ants came to help her, so that before evening the task was done. The next day she was sent to a distant grove to get a lock of wool from a flock of fierce, golden-colored sheep that fed there. When she came to the river by the grove, a reed whispered to her that when the sun went down the sheep lost their fierceness, and then she would find bits of the wool caught in the bushes all around; and so she finished this task successfully. Last of all, she was sent down into the dark under-world to get some of Persephone’s beauty for Aphrodite. This, too, she was able to do, by following the wise directions which the winds whispered to her, and with the help that Eros gave to her unseen.
Having finished all her tasks, Psyche was forgiven her fault, and was then made immortal by the gods so that she might never die; and ever after that she lived happily with Eros in the beautiful home of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Heracles
Heracles was not one of the immortal gods, like Hermes or Pan. He was the son of a Greek king, and only became immortal because of his great deeds while living upon the earth. From his babyhood Heracles was much stronger and braver than his comrades, and as he grew to be a youth he became the wonder of his father’s city He was not always thoughtful, however, in the use of his great power over others; and sometimes he used all the strength of his powerful body without thinking at all what would be the result.
As Heracles was a prince, he was taught all there was to be learned in those days. He had masters for all his studies, and even had a music teacher who was to teach him to play upon the lyre. One day, as the teacher was giving Heracles his lesson, he was obliged to correct him for mistakes that he had made. This made Heracles very angry, and without thinking what he was doing he struck his teacher with the instrument upon which he had been playing.
His blow was so sudden and fierce that the man fell dead, and then Heracles wished that he had not grown so strong. Of course his father, the king, was very angry at what he had done. He said, that , as Heracles could not control his temper and keep from harming other people, he had no longer any right to be a prince. So he sent him away from his palace to a lonely mountain to be a shepherd there.