Myth
In a kingdom by the warm seas was the beautiful Celeste, admired by all she met for her fair looks and intelligence. Though she spent her youth in this land of green fields and lasting summer, she married a man from a far northern place who had come far to win her hand over many suitors. To the ice she travelled with him, and though she loved her husband she was unhappy. She missed the warmth of her home, the birdsong in the trees and the sweet golden fruit borne by the tree all year round. Most of all her heart ached for the sun that shone over her native land, where golden Helios came closer to the Earth in driving his chariot across the sky than he did elsewhere, for he was enamoured of the lovely Celeste and delighted to see her loveliness each day. But in this dull sky the sun was a dying oil-lamp, and though the ice glittered like Dian’s bow and the winter offered all its frozen wonder, Celeste wept for the light she had lost.
Now Helios, noticing her absence, believed at first that she had spurned his affections and thus had travelled north. But when he heard her laments for his golden rays, northwards he sped and came upon the land where cold Boreas makes his abode amid the dark cliffs. Then Celeste of the fair tresses rejoiced to feel the warmth of the sun in that wintry place, and at once golden Helios knew that she loved him too.
As he drove his fiery team across the sky, the heat turned to water the ice that had lain frozen for millennia. Each day the ice melted further, and lovely Khione trembled with rage to see her works so destroyed and her beauty so discredited. To Poseidon she sped, by whom she was loved, and told him of this insult. Then the Earth-Shaker sent great waves and floods to Celeste’s homeland, drowning the bountiful fields and washing the walls of her childhood home out to sea. Such was the wrath of the son of Cronos, and of divine Khione.
In her grief for her home, lovely Celeste asked Helios to keep his distance from the ice but she could not bring herself to send him away completely, nor could divine Helios keep himself from she whom he loved. So though he ascended further in the sky, with each day he drove his chariot lower than he had the previous day to bring himself closer to slim-ankled Celeste. Thus, each day the ice melted further, and cold Khione’s anger brought the ruinous floods of Poseidon upon the lands of Celeste’s father’s allies.
And Celeste’s children, who were lovelier even than she, and their children, were all loved by divine Helios. For them, he warmed the place which never before had felt such heat, and the effect of this love was felt around the world for all the years to come.
Analysis
In classical mythology, powerful gods and deities govern and drive all the natural processes of the earth, but despite their divine status, they are not immune to temptations and emotion. Rather, their responsibilities as immortals make their susceptibility to anger, love, and jealousy particularly dangerous for humans. It is only logical, then, that a process as devastating and widespread as global warming would be caused by a god falling prey to some passion or the other. My narrative draws on myths of climate catastrophe caused by the sun chariot coming too close to the earth to explain global warming as a result of a very common occurrence in ancient stories: gods falling in love with mortals. Specific choices made in the characterization of the divine figures, along with the setting and plot details serve to explain heating and its long-lasting global effects.
The choice of mythological figures included in this aetiological myth as well as their portrayal was also a conscious decision made to effectively explain global warming. The change in temperatures and climate is emphasized by the contrasting figures of Helios, the sun god who represents heat, and Khione, the goddess of snow, as well as her father Boreas, the North Wind. Like most gods, Helios can monitor the events on distant places on Earth. Travelling across the sky each day, he is privy to all the happenings of the ground, as seen in his discovery of Aphrodite’s adultery with Ares in Homer’s Odyssey (8.260). Thus, Helios is able to hear Celeste’s cries in the far north and can travel there to bring her the sun. In this way, Helios’ all-seeing nature explains why global warming occurs and how it is able to affect cold places.
The idea of severe climate change and warming caused by driving the sun chariot too close to the Earth draws on the myth of Phaethon, a son of Helios who persuaded his father to let him drive the chariot across the sky for a day. Unable to manage the fiery horses, Phaethon accidentally allowed the sun to come too close to the ground and “brought the scorching rays to many parts of the inhabited earth” (Diod. Sic. 5.23.2). In Phaethon’s story, the instigator of warming is his hubris as he seeks to prove his divine parentage to his peers by driving his father’s chariot, which Ovid describes as something “to which even the gods may not aspire” (Met. 1.2.50). However, as the driver of the chariot in my version is Helios himself, I replaced hubris and hopes of kleos aphthiton with another flaw, this one of the gods, that causes trouble for mortals: the tendency to fall in love with humans. Ovid describes Helios’ doomed affair with the mortal Leucothoe, which leads to the girl being sentenced to death by her father who learns that she has been raped by Helios from the god’s jealous lover (Met. 4.234-256). Helios’ infatuation also has negative implications on other humans, causing days to become irregular in length and plunging some places into darkness as he is concerned only with admiring Leucothoe (4.196-203). This weakness for beautiful mortals and the devastating consequences it often brings is a common element of classical narratives, one I have recreated in my myth. The focus on devastation due to heat, rather than light, allows my story to give an explanation for global warming.
There are a number of possible destructive effects of the heat from the sun chariot, and my decision to highlight rising temperatures comes from the aetiological purpose of my narrative. In Philostratus the Elder’s version of the Phaethon myth, the earth goddess Gaia “raises her hands in supplication, as the furious fire draws near her” (Imag. 1.11). The focus in this and most other versions of Phaethon’s story is often fire, and the description of destruction is centred around the earth, which usually represents fertility and life. The burning and scorching of the land, therefore, makes for an effective image of the ruinous impact of the sun. However, the phenomenon I seek to explain is more closely related to heat than fire, calling for a different kind of destruction as well as a different figure to demand an end to it. Therefore, I have replaced Gaia with Khione in the hope that global warming will be best explained by its most obvious consequence: the melting of the ice caps. The setting, too, was chosen to emphasize the change caused by heating. Callimachus describes the home of Boreas, or the North Wind, as being on Mount Haimos in Thrace; however, I have used the abode of Boreas to indicate a cold northern place in general (Hymn 4 60-61). Nevertheless, keeping in mind the geography common to the north, I have referred to “dark cliffs” that are reminiscent of the mountains to highlight the cold setting and the changes caused by global warming.
Further, a defining aspect of global warming is that its effects must be far-reaching. For this reason, I chose to draw on the connection between Khione and Poseidon, the god of the sea and crucially, bringer of water-related destruction. Apollodorus writes of the sexual encounter between these two gods (Bibl. 3.201), and I have extended this relationship to portray Khione’s revenge. Being insulted, Khione seeks help from a more powerful god with whom she shares a personal connection and whose control over the sea gives him the ability to destroy Celeste’s coastal childhood home. Moreover, Poseidon is often easily angered in classical stories when those close to him are insulted, most notably when he “laid up wrath in his heart” against Odysseus for blinding the god’s son Polyphemus (Hom., Od. 11.100). Poseidon acts as a major destructive force in Odysseus’ journey home, and I have incorporated this hot-tempered nature of the sea god in my myth to explain the global effects of raised temperatures.
Apart from the portrayals of the gods themselves, I have also deviated from classical depictions of relationships between gods and mortals. In mythology, the gods usually return to their divine duties after siring children and do not spend time with them or their descendants. However, the Helios of my myth continues to bring the sun to Celeste’s descendants after her death. This choice was made to account for the long-term action of global warming, explaining why it is a continuing process and why its effects can be felt even today. Further, another difference from classical portrayals is the absence of sexual relations between Helios and Celeste in my myth. Usually, the affairs between male immortals and human women result in either the birth of heroes or the tragic death of the woman, often following a sexual encounter, as seen in the story of Helios and Leucothoe (Ov., Met. 4.234-256). However, I have chosen to change this in my story, mostly due to my modern views of gender equality in relationships.
Thus, the characters and setting of the myth were chosen to highlight the process of global warming, with inspiration drawn from several climate change-focused myths. Nearly all the major figures in my narrative such as Helios and Poseidon are from ancient stories, and I have tried to keep their characters consistent with their depictions in other myths as I imagined how they would behave here. Some deviations from the traditional portrayals of relationships between gods and mortals in my narrative account for the long-lasting impacts of global warming and are also a product of my own beliefs as a writer from the twenty-first century.
Works Cited
Apollodorus. The Library of Greek Mythology. Translated by Keith Aldrich, Coronado Press, 1975.
Callimachus. Hymns and Epigrams. Translated by A.W. & G.W. Mair, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1921.
Diodorus Siculus. Library of History. Translated by C.H. Oldfather, vol. 3, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1939.
Homer. Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray, vol. 1, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1919.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A.D. Melville, Oxford UP, 1986.
Philostratus the Elder. Imagines. Translated by Arthur Fairbanks. Loeb-Harvard UP, 1931.
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