As humanity expanded over the years, the temples that once were full of gifts began to crumble down. This angered most gods leading them to incite chaos and suffering through the centuries, while it led others to distance themselves from humanity, like Demeter. She created a cave with an entrance invisible only to humans and used it to remain hidden along with her sacred grove and Helios’ cattle. To thank her, Helios used his power to transform the roof of the dark cave into a warm summer sky and promised he would never harm her fertile lands with his heat.
During spring, a child named Aetheri stumbled upon the cave. When the goddess saw that little creature, she fell in love with her as she was the vivid image of young Persephone. Demeter decided to raise Aetheri as her daughter, who also grew to love the goddess as her mother.
One winter night, after Demeter left, two men, Ateneo and Hybros, fell into the cave while Aetheri was asleep. Ateneo had cleverly discovered it by following the tracks of animals who were also seeking shelter from the cold. They were both mesmerized by the world inside the cave, but this feeling did not last as Ateneo saw an owl staring at him fiercely. Knowing of the Gods, this was
enough to make him realize they had to leave. He quickly pulled Hybros out of the grove, warning him that that was a sacred place, but Hybros already had a malicious plan in mind.
The next night, Hybros returned and started chopping the oak trees. When Aetheri saw this, she desperately tried stopping him, but he easily tied her to a tree. Once he was done, he ate an ox, cooking it with the wood of the sacred trees while Aetheri painfully yelled “You will pay!”. Annoyed, Hybros knocked her quiet and without any reason he set the place on fire, leaving Aetheri to die as the flames and smoke slowly and painfully hugged her.
When Demeter returned the next morning, she felt a deep pain as she saw her grove destroyed along with Aetheri almost dead. Demeter ran outside with Aetheri, who was barely able to speak, in her arms to tell Helios what had happened. Enraged, Helios scouted the Earth in less than a second, but with more than six billion humans covering the Earth, the all-seeing god was not able to find Hybros.
However, Helios wanted revenge and decided all humanity would pay. Unlike in the past, he did not have to worry about Demeter’s fields, as she too wanted revenge at any cost.
Helios turned Aetheri’s last breath into an invisible force field that enveloped the world. The invisible layer would cause the Earth to get warmer and warmer by retaining Helios’ heat almost entirely. This would then cause glaciers to melt, expanding Poseidon’s domains, and fertile fields to become deserts in a matter of years. To contribute, Demeter started walking through Earth in such a sorrowful way, that the fruits inside Hades’ Cornucopia began vanishing.
At first, humans would not even notice the effects of this punishment, but those were the gods’ intentions. They wanted humans to suffer a slow, painful, and unstoppable fate, just like Aetheri had.
Analysis of “Aetheri’s Last Breath”
“Aetheri’s Last Breath” is an aetiological myth that explains the origin of Global Warming through the use of classical Greek gods along with new mortal characters and events based on other ancient Greek myths.
The story opens by mentioning the decay of the Greek gods throughout the progression of the world. As humanity advanced to the 20th century, the Greek gods had been overthrown by other religions like Christianity or Buddhism. This idea of the gods being forgotten was presented in works such as that of Plutarch’s Moralia (Plut. Mor. 17.403), where he makes a reference to this event by mentioning that rumors that the god Pan was dead were spread. Pan’s death can be interpreted as a reference to how the beliefs of the Greek gods were losing power with the fall of the Roman Empire.
In the same paragraph, it is then mentioned how the gods were furious with humanity for being disrespectful by not worshiping them. As seen in various myths, the greater the offense, the worse the punishment. For example, Agamemnon was forced to offer his daughter as a sacrifice for offending Artemis (Apollodorus, Bibl. Epit. 21.1-3), whereas Sisyphus was punished for eternity as he pushed a stone up a hill but never got to the top because he tricked the gods more than once (Hom. Od. 11.593-598). Based on this, one can imagine that if humanity were to disrespect most of the gods at the same time, they would make sure we suffered greatly.
The next paragraph mentions Demeter’s grove and Helios’ cattle, both of which are described in ancient myths. In Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter, it is told that Demeter had a grove full of magnificent trees (Callim. Hymn 6.25-26) where she kept “a great tree reaching to the sky” (Callim. Hymn 6.23) that was considered to be a sacred object to her. This is why, in “Aetheri’s Last Breath”, she decided to hide that grove from humanity and protect it at all costs.
Aside from punishing mortals when they offend her protected ones or herself directly, there are no myths where Demeter gets involved in major human conflicts. For instance, when Minthe stated that she was prettier than Persephone (Oppian, Halieutica. 3.4488-489) or Lyncus tried to kill Triptolemus (Ov. Met. 5. 653-655), her priest, she harshly punished them, but she did not take a major role in events like the Trojan War. These facts also help justify her decision of distancing from humanity.
The cattle of Helios is mentioned in myths such as the Odyssey where Odysseus arrives at Helios’ sacred island along with his men, who decide to eat some of his oxen (Hom. Od. 12.320-373). This action leads to the death of all of Odysseus’ men (Hom. Od. 12.374-453) and shows how much Helios cared for his cattle, giving us a valid reason to believe Helios would seek to protect his cattle by asking Demeter to hide it with her Grove.
In works such as Dionysiaca, Helios has displayed his power as the Sun God, being able to melt the ice with his radiant heat (Nonnus, Dion. 2.543-545), and “scourged” skin of people with no difficulty (Nonnus, Dion. 2.250-251). This serves to show how powerful Helios can be, proving he could easily use his power to warm the inside of a cave to resemble a summer sky. This also shows how threatening his power can be to the fertile fields of Earth. However, Demeter and Helios have never been shown to have conflicts. Helios actually helped Demeter when she was desperately searching for her daughter, Persephone (Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.67-89), which serves to justify their friendly interactions and why Demeter would want to help Helios by guarding his cattle.
Demeter was known for loving her daughter so much that when Hades abducted her, she left everything to go in search of her (Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.32-34). Looking at a girl that looked just like her lovely Persephone would lead Demeter to want and take care of her like her own daughter. Furthermore, the name Aetheri is a reference to the primordial god Aether of the upper air (Hymn. Orph. 5.1-5). Aether was the air that covered mountain peaks to the stars, meaning it encloses the area where the Ozone Layer is located. This is the fact that serves later in the myth to justify the creation of Global Warming.
Later in the myth, we are presented with Ateneo and Hybros. They are based on Odysseus and Erysichthon, who were two mortal beings that experienced the wrath of the gods. Odysseus had his boat destroyed by Zeus because his crewmates ate Helios’ oxen (Hom. Od. 12.374-453). However, Odysseus, being a clever and wise man favored by the Goddess of Wisdom, tried to prevent this by warning them to leave the cattle in peace (Hom. Od. 12.320-373). Just like Odysseus, we can see that Athena also favored Ateneo, the Goddess from which I based his name, through the subtle appears of an owl. Owls were the sacred animal of this goddess (Ov. Met. 2.563-564) hence act as symbols of wisdom. In this myth, the appearance of the owl served as a warning, allowing Ateneo to make the wise choice of leaving the cave immediately.
On the other side, Erysichthon was punished for cutting Demeter’s sacred oak tree by being cursed to have an insatiable hunger (Callim. Hymn 6.55-66). However, unlike Odysseus, he ignored the Goddesses’ warnings and ruthlessly chopped her sacred oak (Callim. Hymn 6.46-50). Hybros, just like Erysichthon, did not only ignore the warnings he had been given but also directly defied Demeter and Helios by using the sacred oak to cook a sacred ox and killing the girl the goddess saw as her daughter. Being such a ruthless symbol of defiance, I chose this character’s name to be based on the goddess Hybris, who is the personification of violence (Hes. Works and Days, 212) and insolence (Pind. Ol. 13.9-10) to further highlight his true nature.
This allows us to see how Hybros represents the portion of humanity that is causing carbon emissions to increase, thickening the Ozone Layer. While Ateneo symbolizes the small population that tries to fight global warming but fails to make significant changes, just like Odysseus, failed to prevent the gods’ rage.
Aetheri’s death is analogous to what will happen to all of humanity in the future if we do not take any actions to slow global warming (since we have already gotten to a point that its effects have become unstoppable). One of the effects of global warming is the heating of the Earth. Just like Aetheri died suffocated by fire, the temperatures of Earth will keep rising until life will no longer be able to survive in the harsh environments.
In some myths like the Odyssey Helios is known as the “all-seeing God” (Hom. Od. 12.102); however, this was when humanity had not yet grown exponentially. In the 20th century, the world population had its greatest growth and reached six billion people. The gods are very powerful beings, but they have been tricked before by humans. For instance, Sisyphus tricked Thanatos and chained him to escape his death for some time (Thng. Elegy and Iambus, 699-718), but he could not escape punishment as he was condemned to roll a stone up a hill for eternity. In this case, Hybros avoided a direct punishment, but just like in Sisyphus myth, he was not able to escape Helios’ ultimate punishment as it affects everyone on earth.
Unlike in the Odyssey, where Helios threatens to stop shinning and Zeus is the one to punish Odysseus and his crewmates for their actions (Hom. Od. 12.374-453), in this myth, Helios is the one to punish humanity. He transforms Aetheri into an invisible force field to keep his heat trapped in Earth. This is an analogy to how the Earth is getting warmer due to the thickening of the Ozone as a result of carbon emissions. Along with drying fields, warming the Earth also caused glaciers to melt, increasing the sea levels to rise. This effect of Global Warming is stated when it is mentioned that the domains of Poseidon, ruler of the seas (Hymn. Orph.16.1-2), started growing.
Demeter’s part in the punishment includes her walking through Earth with so much pain and sorrow that instead of making crops grow, her presence started taking away the fertility of the fields. This would then lead to the start of famines which would be reflected in the cornucopia. The cornucopia or “Horn of Amaltheia” was mostly carried by Hades since he is also associated with all the things that rise from the earth (Cic. Nat. D. 2.188-189), and his alternative name Pluto means “the enriched one”. It was a symbol of abundance and was described as being filled with fruits (Diod. Sic. Bibl. 4.35.3-9). This is why the cornucopia slowly being emptied symbolizes the lack of food caused by Global Warming.
Finally, in the aetiological myth, “Aetheri’s Last Breath”, there is the recurring motif of mortals underestimating the power of the gods and suffering as a consequence of their actions. Most of the myths used as inspiration to create this myth, such as that of Erysichthon, Sisyphus, and part of the Odyssey along with the Iliad, are examples of events where mortals defied the authority of the Gods but were not able to escape without some type of punishment.
References
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Callimachus, Hymns, translated by A.W. Mair, London: William Heinemann, 1921.
Cicero, Natura Deorum, translated by H. Rackham, London: Loeb Classical Library, 1933.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, translated by C.H. Oldfather, Cambridge: Harvard
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Hesiod, Works and Days, translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, London Heinemann, 1914.
Homeric Hymn, S.R. Smith, Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, 1971.
Homer, Odyssey, translated by A.S. Kline, London: Poetry in Translation, 2004.
Orpheus, Orphic Hymn, translated by T. Taylor, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press,
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Nonnus, Dionysiaca, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940.
Oppian, Halieutica, translated by A.W. Mair, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by B. More, Boston: Cornhill Publishing Company, 1922.
Pindar, Olympian, translated by D.A. Svarlien, London: Yale University Press 1990.
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