Aphrodite was unique among the heavenly brood because she had not even one physical parent—that is unless you can count the bits that Cronos cut off his father Uranus. These were cast into the sea not far from Cyprus, and they acted like a ton of dynamite. A huge water-spout leapt up and for miles around the sea was churned into foam. From this foam Aphrodite sprang to life, already grown up and endowed with breathtaking beauty. She was one of those languorous types, with so much S.A. that no man could resist her, and being the hottest ever of hot-mommas she couldn't keep her hands off the men either. She even took to having parties with that oaf Ares when he winked a bloodshot eye at her, but Hephaestus got to hear of it and played a neat trick on them. One afternoon when he was hard at it in his forge, Ares came lumbering into Aphrodite's boudoir, gave the V sign and said: 'What about it?' She smiled back and replied: 'O.K. by me.' So they both took their clothes off, went over to her couch and lay down on it. But the cunning Hephaestus had fashioned a net so fine that it was invisible, yet so strong that it could not be broken, and fixed it up above his wife's couch. Under the pressure of their combined weight a spring beneath the couch released the net which fell round it, trapping them. After they had had their fun they dozed for a bit, until it was time for Ares to make himself scarce. Then they both nearly threw a fit because they found they were in a cage.
Now it's a funny thing, but the Immortals were really a very modest lot and, except when making love, were ashamed to be seen with their clothes even a little disarranged, let alone wkh no t • vl °n at a11, Hephaestus came home from work, saw that his trick had worked, then brought everyone he could find on Olympus to come and have a look at the guilty couple. At the sight of them both starko and red with shame trapped on the couch, all the other Immortals laughed themselves nearly sick, and afterwards Aphrodite and Ares could hardly hold up their heads for months. Still it didn't cure Aphrodite from being unfaithful, because she was made that way. But for the future she took handsome mortals as her lovers, and any number of lucky chaps spent nights with her that must have left them wondering in the morning what had hit them.
With Zeus in the Chair, the gods and goddesses I have described, except for those who did not dwell on Olympus, were the Twelve who formed the Great Council of the Gods. But there were many other Immortals, and I will mention a few of the better-known ones before closing this chapter.
Prometheus was a cousin of Zeus. It was he who made Man, by modelling a piece of clay into a body, copied from those of the gods, but of course very much smaller, then giving it life. He was so pleased with his toy that to help it support itself on earth he stole for it from Olympus the invaluable gift of Fire. As Fire was considered sacred, when Zeus heard of this sacrilege he blew his top. He had the wretched Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus and sentenced him to have his liver picked out by an eagle every day for thirty thousand years. For the old man to be so vindictive he must have been terribly put out, but perhaps this happened on a day when he had been chasing a pretty nymph and she had changed herself into a hedgehog, or something, just as he got to her. Anyhow, he was so peeved about the whole affair that, to cancel out Prometheus's gift, he had Hephaestus make Woman, and sent her down to bring every sort of trouble to Man.
Pandora was the name given to her, and Zeus's children, feeling that their papa had been an awful meanie, rallied round to soften up her impact. Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo taught her how to sing, Hermes instructed her in artfulness and so on. But Zeus still had a card up his sleeve. He gave her a beautiful box and told her not to open it. Of course, the cunning old so-and-so knew jolly well that she would not be able to resist the temptation to look inside, and sure enough she did. Out flew plague, jealousy, deceit and all the vices and ills that afflict mankind.
Atlas was another of Zeus's cousins. He sided with Cronos in the war against Olympus, and as a punishment Zeus condemned him to hold earth and sky apart for ever with his mighty shoulders.
Asclepius was a son of Apollo. To him his father delegated the power of healing. This Doctor god got so good at it that he went too far and began to restore the dead to life. Zeus took that as a frightful piece of cheek, so consigned him to oblivion, but not before he had had time to pass on his knowledge to his daughter
Hygeia, and the many temples to him scattered all over Greece show how jolly grateful everybody was for what he'd done for them.
Orpheus was another of Apollo's sons, and was trained by his father to become a great musician. He had most rotten luck in a love affair, but I'll tell you about that later.
Cupid was Aphrodite's son. He usually took the form of a laughing cherub, and it was his job to make people fall in love. Anyone wounded by one of his arrows did so with the next person he or she set eyes on. He must have had a very busy time of it, but he had a lot of fun arfcusing passions that often led to most comical situations.
Pan was the son of Hermes who, for some strange reason, in order to enjoy Pan's mother, turned himself into a goat. This resulted in Pan being born with the legs of a goat and little horns sticking out of his curly head. Although this was obviously Hermes's fault, he was so ashamed of his son that the boy was never allowed to join in the jollifications up on Olympus, but was left to fend for himself in the woods. Compared to most of the other members of the Royal Family, Pan was at first very small fry, but later he made a name for himself that was to continue to ring a bell many centuries after those of most of his relations had come to mean nothing to the majority of people. As half-goat, half-man, he could give even his old grandfather points in chasing likely lasses round the bushes, and as he attached himself to Dionysus there was nothing anyone could tell him about drunken orgies. It was no doubt because of that, and the fact that he became a great Master of Magic, which accounts for the Christians later regarding him as the embodiment of Evil, or even the Devil in person.
Of course there were minor gods and goddesses of all sorts, and other Immortals like the Furies and the Fates who at times made things very uncomfortable for people. We shall come across most of them when I tell you about the extraordinary adventures of the Heroes, as I hope to do later on. Anyhow, gentle reader, what I have written so far should give you a good background to the Royal Family that between them ran ancient Greece.
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As Robbie laid his exercise book down, his brown eyes shone, no longer with tears but with happiness. Reading that first chapter had restored his belief in himself. As there were not many long words in it, he thought it was probably not very high-class English; but he felt that he had made up for that quite a bit by using some very impressive Americanisms picked up from the gangster paper-backs he had been reading in recent months. In any case, the pictures of the characters he wished to describe B 29 were perfectly clear to him. and, being so fascinated by them himself, he felt confident that other people would find what he had written interesting. Therefore, it was going to be a good book; and as neither his uncle nor Euan had yet read any of it, they had no right to say otherwise.