96 pages • 3 hours read
Bernard EvslinHeroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths
Fiction | Short Story Collection | YA | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 2, Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Nature Myths”
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Narcissus and Echo”
A favorite of Aphrodite, Echo was a dryad beloved for her beauty, kindness, and talent for singing and storytelling. Narcissus was a handsome boy who had become arrogant because his beauty made girls faint. One day, Narcissus became lost in the same wood where Echo lived, and their paths crossed.
Echo was returning to her tree-hollow home when she noticed Zeus with a river nymph. A noise behind her proved to be Hera searching for her husband. Echo intercepted Hera, telling her that Zeus had been in the woods looking for her and, unable to find her, had returned to Olympus. Hera hurried off to find him, and a grateful Zeus gifted Echo a sapphire ring. After finding Zeus absent from Olympus, however, Hera realized that Echo had tricked her and cursed the dryad. Since Echo had used her voice to lie, Hera took it away. Now Echo would only be able to repeat the last works spoken to her by others.
In tears, Echo came upon Narcissus wandering through the woods and fell in love with his beauty. When he asked her for help finding his way home, Echo was only able to repeat the last words he said to her, and he became exasperated. Echo prayed to Aphrodite to make her disappear, and Aphrodite granted her request, allowing only Echo’s beautiful voice to remain. Angry at Narcissus for hurting Echo, Aphrodite caused him to “fall in love with someone who” he would “forever desire and never achieve”: his own reflection in the river. Narcissus stared at his reflection until he became part of the riverbank itself, where he can still be found in the form of the narcissus flower. Echo too can still be heard, “if you call to her in a certain way” (99).
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Eros and Psyche”
Psyche was a mortal princess whose striking beauty provoked Aphrodite’s jealousy. Determined to punish the girl for daring to be so beautiful, the goddess sent Eros to make Psyche fall in love with someone unsuitable. Reluctant Eros obeyed his mother, but when his arrow scratched the sleeping princess, she startled awake. Eros’s arrow slipped and scratched him, causing him to fall in love with Psyche himself.
Furious, Aphrodite imprisoned Psyche. In retaliation, Eros refused to shoot anyone with his arrow, meaning no one could fall in love. Without love, people lost the will to work or feed themselves. Without their praise, Aphrodite began to waste away, until finally she agreed to allow Eros to marry Psyche so that he would resume his work.
Meantime, Psyche’s worried parents sought an oracle, who informed them that Psyche was not “meant for mortal man” and advised them to leave her in the mountains (103). Thinking their daughter was destined to marry a monster, her parents obeyed the oracle. After they abandoned her on the mountain, the west wind, Zephyrus, carried her to her new home in a distant castle.
Invisible attendants met Psyche’s every need, and every night after dark, Eros visited her. Psyche was so happy with her husband that she longed to see him in the daytime, but he told her it was not yet time for them to see each other. He instead suggested that her sisters visit. When they did, they were so jealous of Psyche’s beauty, happiness, and wealth that they intentionally sabotaged her faith in her husband.
After they left, she became more determined than ever to see him. When he fell asleep one night, she fetched an oil lamp and saw for the first time that her husband was the god Eros himself. As she bent to kiss him, hot oil from her lamp dripped onto his shoulder, and he woke with a start. Telling Psyche that she was “not ready to accept love,” he vanished, along with “[a]ll the good things that had belonged to her” (111).
Evslin ends the myth with multiple possible endings. Some stories say that Psyche searches the woods to this day for her love, while others contend that Aphrodite transformed her into an owl or a bat “that haunts old ruins” (111). Some believe that Eros returned to forgive her and brought her to Olympus to work at his side, inspiring young love.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Arion”
The naiad Arion, a son of Poseidon, lived in Corinth and both longed and feared to travel. An oracle had warned him that he would never return home from any trip by ship. For his twentieth birthday, he received a golden lyre from Apollo, who favored Arion and taught him to play beautifully. Eager to test his new instrument at a music festival, Arion decided to risk the oracle’s message and traveled to Italy to compete at Tarentum. After winning many valuable prizes, he boarded the first ship bound for Corinth, despite the “huge, ugly, dangerous-looking” captain and “even uglier crew” (113).
When the captain and crew attempted to rob and kill him, Arion did not panic. He offered to sing for them and performed a dithyramb, a type of praise song that he had invented at the festival. He praised Poseidon, the sea, and all the creatures who live in it, and while he sang, dolphins rose out of the water. Arion jumped into the sea with his lyre and the dolphins carried him back to Corinth.
There, Arion told his friend Periander, the king of Corinth, everything that had happened to him. When the captain and crew arrived in Corinth, guards captured them and brought them to the king. After the men were hanged, Arion’s treasure was retrieved from their ship, and he shared it with Periander. The king was reluctant to accept the treasure, but Arion wanted to “travel light” (115). His musical fame grew until he was compared to Orpheus. After Arion died, Apollo placed him, his lyre, and the dolphins in the constellations.
Part 2, Chapters 5-7 Analysis
The three nature myths in this section continue to develop the themes of the previous four. Evslin consciously connects mythical narratives with objects in the natural world that modern readers experience. In uniting with the riverbank, Narcissus transforms into the narcissus flower. Hera’s punishment of Echo introduces the repeated waves of reflected sound that still exist in the contemporary world, while Aphrodite’s dissolution of Echo’s body completes the process, making an echo a sound without a physical origin of its own. Evslin invites readers to associate each echo they hear with Echo’s tragic story—to perceive ancient Greek myths in the natural world.
The gods’ cruelty and caprice manifests, in these three myths, primarily in punishments: Hera’s of Echo and Aphrodite’s of Psyche. Echo redirects Hera, preventing her from catching Zeus with a nymph. As a result, Hera redirects her rage onto Echo. Whether Hera has legitimate cause to be angry with Echo is left for the reader to decide. In Psyche’s case, Aphrodite is jealous of the young girl’s beauty. Psyche does not boast of her beauty, attempt to challenge Aphrodite, or otherwise call attention to herself. However, her existence itself angers the goddess. Similarly, Eros falls in love with Psyche by accident, when his arrow scratches his arm. Psyche does nothing to invite his love but is punished for it nevertheless. Both Echo’s and Psyche’s punishments suggest that it is dangerous to stand out or in any way call attention to oneself around powerful, divine forces and their extreme reactions.
While Echo and Psyche are subject to the whims of the gods, who see them as enemies, both also have supporters among the powerful forces in their world. Aphrodite loves Echo’s voice and cannot bear to have it disappear from the earth. Thus she grants Echo’s request to make her body disappear but preserves her voice. Eros’s love for Psyche similarly inspires him to take a stand in her defense, until his mother is forced to concede to his desire to marry Psyche. Sometimes, the narrative suggests, even the most powerful make concessions, especially when those in subordinate positions leverage their assets or make a convincing case.
Aspects of human nature the myths explore include faith and skepticism, seen primarily in the myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche’s parents show such faith in the oracle that they obey it even when doing so means abandoning their daughter to what they believe will be a terrible fate. One could conclude that their faith is rewarded in that the “monstrous,” inhuman force their daughter is destined for is love itself. Psyche’s faith in her husband proves less resilient than her parents’ faith in the oracle. As with other mythical figures, like Orpheus, Psyche needs to see in order to believe, and this need causes her to lose everything.
Unlike Psyche’s parents, Arion reacts to an unfavorable oracle by throwing caution to the wind, but like them, he trusts in divine powers. When he decides to accept the risk of setting forth by sea, Arion’s faith in Apollo’s gifts and in Poseidon’s love for his son is rewarded. Arion does not, in fact, have a successful sea voyage home, but he does arrive home safely. The implied message is that oracles can be ambiguous: Rather than fight them, it is better to accept that their meaning may unfold in ways mortals cannot predict. As one man against many, Arion is vulnerable to exploitation, but when faced with a threat, he remains calm and strategizes his escape by calling the gods to his aid. These actions lead to his return home, where the friendship he has nurtured with the king of Corinth further ensures his safety.
Across antiquity, the same basic myths were told in very different ways. Evslin does not usually acknowledge variant versions within his narratives, choosing to retell the stories with closed endings. His retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth is an exception in which he explicitly references variant endings. By doing so, he offers multiple opportunities for contemporary readers to find resonance with the story, through multiple images of how love persists in the present: in the form of Psyche’s ghost in the woods, as a nocturnal bird, or as a force that inspires love from on high.
