himself.” She bowed,
and the dew on a fern at dawn could not rival the
beauty of the dew
on Athena’s delicate lashes. Aphrodite wept aloud, shamelessly, melted by Athena’s words. Even Hera was
softened.
As the sea whispers in the quiet of the night when
gentle waves
lap sandy shores, so the great hall whispered with the
sniffling of immortal gods.
But Zeus sat still as a mountain, unimpressed, his hand
covering
his eyes. The gods stood waiting.
At last, with a terrible sigh,
he lowered the hand. From the sadness in his eyes,
the crushed-down shoulders,
you’d have thought he’d heard nothing the beautiful
Athena said. He frowned,
then, darkly, spoke:
“All of you shall have your will,” he said.
“Aphrodite, your cruel and selfish wish is that Jason
and Medeia
be remembered forever as the truest, most pitiful of
lovers, saints
of Aphrodite. It shall be so, in the end. As for you,
Athena,
dearest of my children for the quickness of your mind—
and most troublesome—
you ask that Jason be granted the throne of Corinth,
glittering
jewel in your vain array. So he will, for a time, at least. No king gets more. And as for you, my docile queen— seductress, source of all earthly growth, terrible
destroyer—
you ask that he have all his wish. That he shall, and
more. It’s done.”
With that word, casting away the darkness which
he alone knew,
he called for Apollo and his harp. Apollo came, as
brilliant
as the sun on the mirroring sea. He stroked his harp
and sang.
The gods put their hands to their ears, listening. He
seemed to ignore them.
He looked at Zeus alone, when he looked at anyone, and Zeus gazed back at him, solemn as the night
where mountains tower,
dark and majestic, casting their cold, indifferent shade on trees and glens, old bridges, lonely peasant huts, travellers hurrying home. It seemed to me they shared some secret between them, as if they saw the whole
world’s grief
as plain as a single star in a winter’s sky.
He sang
of the age when great Zeus first overcame the dragons.
The halls
of the gods, he said, were cracked, divoted, blackened
by fire.
All the gods of the heavens sang Zeus’s praise, their
voices
ringing like golden bells, extolling his victory. Elated in his triumph and the knowledge of his power,
Zeus summoned the craftsman
of the gods, Hephaiastos, and commanded that he
build a splendid palace
that would suit the unparalleled dignity of the gods’
great king.
The miraculous craftsman succeeded in building, in a
single year,
a dazzling residence, baffling with beautiful chambers,
gardens,
lakes, great shining towers.
Apollo smiled and looked
at Zeus. He sang:
“But as the work progressed, the demands of Zeus
grew more exacting, his unfolding visions more vast.
He required
additional terraces and pavilions, more ponds, more
poplar groves,
new pleasure grounds. Whenever Zeus came to examine
the work
he developed range on range of schemes, new marvels
remaining
for Hephaiastos to contrive. At last the divine craftsman was crushed to despair, and he resolved to seek help
from above. He would turn
to the demiurgic Mind, great spirit beyond Olympos, past all glory. So he went in secret and presented
his case.
The majestic spirit comforted him. ‘Go in peace,’
he said,
‘your burden will be relieved.’
“Then, while Hephaiastos
was scurrying down once more to the kingdom of Zeus,
the spirit
went, himself, to a realm still higher, and he came
before
the Unnamable, of whom he himself was but a
humble agent.
In awesome silence the Unnamable spirit gave ear,
and by
a mere nod of the head he let it be known that the wish of Hephaiastos was granted.
“Early next morning, a boy
with the staff of a pilgrim appeared at the gate of Zeus
and asked
admission to the king’s great hall. Zeus came at once.
It was
a point of pride with Zeus that he wasn’t as yet
too proud
to meet with the humblest of his visitors. The boy
was slender,
ten years old, radiant with the luster of wisdom. The
king
discovered him standing in a cluster of enraptured,
staring children.
The boy greeted his host with a gentle glance of his dark and brilliant eyes. Zeus bowed to the holy child — and, mysteriously, the boy gave him his blessing. When Zeus had led the boy inside and had offered him wine and
honey,
the king of the gods said: ‘Wonderful Boy, tell me
the purpose
of your coming.’
“The beautiful child replied with a voice as deep
and soft as the slow thundering of far-off rainclouds.
‘O Glorious
King, I have heard of the mighty palace you are
building, and I’ve come
to refer to you my mind’s questions. How many years will it take to complete this rich and extensive
residence?
What further feats of engineering will Hephaiastos be asked to perform? O Highest of the Gods’—the
boy’s luminous
features moved with a gentle, scarcely perceptible
smile—
‘no god before you has ever succeeded in completing
such a palace
as yours is to be.’
“Great Zeus, filled with the wine of triumph,
was entertained by this merest boy’s pretensions to
knowledge
of gods before himself. With a fatherly smile, he asked: Tell me, child, are they then so many — the Zeuses
you’ve seen?’
The young guest calmly nodded. Oh yes, a great
many have I seen.’
The voice was as warm and sweet as milk, but the
words sent a chill
through Zeus’s veins. ‘O holy child,’ the boy continued, ‘I knew your father, and your father’s father, Old
Tortoise Man,
and your great-grandfather, called Beam of Light, and
his father, called Thought,
and the father beyond — him too I know.
“ ‘O King of the Gods,
I have known the dissolution of the universe. I have
seen all perish
again and again! O, who will count the universes passed away, or the creations risen afresh, again and again, from the silent abyss? Who will number
the passing ages
of the world, as they follow endlessly? And who will
search
the wide infinities of space to number the universes side by side — each one ruled by its Zeus and its ladder of higher powers? Who will count the Zeuses in all
of them,
side by side, who reign at once in the innumerable
worlds,
or all those Zeuses who reigned before them, or even
those
who succeed each other in a single line, ascending
to kingship,
one by one, and, one by one, declining?
“ ‘O King,
the life and reign of a single Zeus is seventy-one aeons, and when twenty-eight Zeuses have all expired, one