Topic: Disinformation and the post-truth era
“Here he comes, ladies and gentlemen,” yelled the broadcaster, “The star of the race, Cedric flying to the finish line with such astounding speed that matches even Hermes himself! Annd your winner for this year’s marathon is once again Cedric! Congratulations!”
He waves at the cheering fans and gazes up at the sky. He catches a hawk circling above and thinks to himself, “You watching, Hermes? Impressed with this goldlike speed?”
“This concludes today’s events. Tomorrow, watch Cedric and many more compete against each other in a battle of the bow!”
“Ugh,” complained Cedric. Archery was the one thing he was never good at. He would have to pray to the gods hard later for the desperately needed luck. But for now, he hastily retreats from the arena and heads back to the hotel, unaware of the hare stalking him by the trees.
At night, he stands outside the balcony of his room, enjoying the night sky and the blinking stars. Cedric brings out his glorious lyre, a gift from his loving grandmother. Gently, Cedric begins playing his lyre and plays it so skillfully that the notes radiate outward to the ears of Apollo the Far-darter.
“What is this beautiful tune I hear,” exclaimed Apollo, “I must check upon this masterful lyre myself and the person behind it!” So he flew straight to the balcony and stood before Cedric.
“Oh! Apollo! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“That lyre, how do you play such beautifully with that lyre?”
“It’s a good lyre,” replied Cedric.
“Can I play a tune on it?” Apollo asked.
“Here you go,” said Cedric. As Apollo holds the lyre and sweeps his hands across the strings, the most magnificent tune came to life.
“This lyre,” marvelled Apollo,” this lyre plays better than the one Hermes gifted me. I must have this. I know you have an archery contest tomorrow. In exchange for his lyre, I will give you my golden bow and my strength with it so that you will win for sure.”
Cedric pondered on this but ultimately said, “Unfortunately, as much as I want to win tomorrow, I cannot give away the precious gift from my grandmother.”
Hearing this, Apollo the Far-darter disappointedly said, “Very well, Cedric, you have chosen your path.” With that, he disappeared again, leaving Cedric amazed by the events that had just occurred.
Hidden amongst the trees underneath, Hermes the prankster eavesdropped on the conversation between Apollo and Cedric. He, too, was captivated by the lyre’s magnificent tune and was filled with jealousy.
“How dare this mortal hold a lyre that’s better than mine,” thought Hermes, “how dare he sprints through the race with speeds I’ve never seen from a human! He must be punished!” With that, he devises and carries out his evil plan.
“Good morning, everyone and welcome back! First of all, we have some shocking news delivered from the almighty Hermes himself! He has informed us that the unstoppable Cedric has been cheating the whole time! He stole Herme’s winged boots and used them during the race yesterday! As a result, he is disqualified from the whole event!”
Shocked, Cedric yelled, “Nonsense! Hermes is playing a trick on you all! I won the race fair and square, and I’ve trained for years for this opportunity.”
Cedric yelled and yelled, but his voice is drowned by the crowd’s disbelief. Nothing can stop the decision, for Hermes has spoken, and the whole crowd believed his divine words.
The next day, every newspaper company has Hermes’ news on the front page. The great Cedric, once admired, is now furious at what Hermes did to him. This anger transformed into hatred for humans and how gullible they can be. As a result, Cedric, giving up on competing, now travels city to city doing what Hermes did to him: spreading false lies about anything and gaining satisfaction from other's misery.
Analysis
When I thought about the word ‘disinformation’, the first thing that came to my mind was deception. In Greek mythology, there is a god of deception called Dolos, a Gaia and Aether product. He has a short but interesting story where Dolos is Prometheus’ apprentice. One day, when Prometheus was sculpting Veritas, Dolos “fashioned with his sly fingers a figure of the same size and appearance as Veritas” (Aesop, Fables 530) when Prometheus was gone. Although this was a fascinating story, not much else is known about Dolos, so I chose Hermes, a well-known god and is also associated with deception amongst a list of other things. I decided to revolve my myth around Hermes and Apollo’s interaction as narrated in the Homeric Hymn To Hermes. Near the end of that hymn, Hermes says to Apollo, “Since, then, your heart bids you to play the lyre, then play and sing and let joys be your care, taking this gift from me, and to me, friend, give glory” (“To Hermes” 196). Soon after, Hermes gives his lyre to Apollo and they reconcile. My idea was that out of jealousy of Cedric’s lyre and his incredible speed, Hermes decides to ruin his career by spreading lies to people and having him disqualified from the competition. Therefore, in my myth, Hermes started the idea of ‘disinformation’ to gain satisfaction by hurting an innocent person.
There were a few ideas that I wanted to incorporate into my myth—the first one being that the gods always had an eye on events in the world. This was well known and explicit in all the myths we have studied so far. For example, it was obvious in the Illiad when the gods were present on the scene: “The havoc continued, and when Hera noticed that the Greeks were being crushed in battle, her words flew past Pallas Athena” (Homer, Illiad 5.762-765). To display this in my myth, I decided to use animals associated with Hermes instead of the actual appearance of him. The idea of gods transforming is also explicitly shown in the Illiad when they want to stir up trouble or boost the fighters’ morale during the war: “Iris position herself nearby and made her voice sound like Polites’”(Homer, Iliad 2.905-906). Usually, they would transform into figures of other people, but I chose animals in this context because this way it makes it seem like Hermes is stealthily watching Cedric in spite rather than in admiration; he is cowering behind the figures of the animals in order to not show his emotions as humans do.
The most important motif that I wanted to incorporate in this myth is the fact that gods, like humans, have emotions too, and that is what fuels their actions. For example, in the Odyssey, Poseidon attacks Odysseus’ ships in retaliation of the eye of Polyphemus that Odysseus stabbed: “The sea billowed up where the rock hit the water, and the wave pushed us forward all the way to the island where our other ships waited clustered on the shore” (Homer, Odyssey 9.537-540). As narrated in this quote, it was anger that fueled the god’s actions to destroy Odysseus’ ships. Another example would be in the stories of Heracles when Apollodorus said that, “When Heracles was eight months old, Hera sent two enormous serpents into his bend because he wanted to destroy the infant” (Apollodorus, Bibliotheke K1). Because Zeus and Alcmene slept together and made Heracles, Hera got jealous and wanted to kill their child. It is evident that most problems in myths are created by the emotions of the gods. I wanted to show that in my myth by making the conflict happen because of Hermes’ jealousy of Cedric’s speed and his lyre. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, it was said that Hermes was the inventor of the lyre: “He cut to measure stalks of reed and stretched round it the hide of an ox and put in the horns of the lyre, and to both he fitted the bridge and stretched seven harmonious strings of sheep-gut” (“To Hermes” 189). Since he is the inventor of the lyre and a god, he feels he should have the best lyre. However, when Apollo said to Cedric that his lyre was the best, it made Hermes get jealous and angry at Cedric. This motivated him to spread the lie of Cedric stealing Herme’s boots and using them in the race. The idea of a god spreading disinformation out of jealousy is synonymous with why humans spread disinformation. We spread it out of a negative feeling towards someone/ something, and it’s the power of modern technology and people’s unsurpassable emotions that the effect of disinformation has compounded and the post-truth era to upon us. The last motif I included was the idea of hubris in Greek mythology. There are a lot of examples of which the main character’s hubris causes tremendous grief for that character. For example, in Euripides’ Bacchae, Pentheus’ self-confidence and eagerness to contain the bacchic rituals ultimately result in his gruesome death. In the beginning, when Tiresias warns him about going against Dionysus, Pentheus shrugs it off and says, “Go play the revelling bacchant but don’t wipe that folly of yours off on me!” (Euripides, Bacchae 340-345). This dialogue from Pentheus displays his pride and ignorance of the situation. It is his hubris that causes him to completely disregard the warnings of both Tiresias and Cadmus and to order the guards to capture Dionysus. I wanted to implement a similar situation in my myth, so after the race in the beginning I displayed Cedric as overconfident and made him ‘taunt’ Hermes for his speed. Therefore, Cedric’s downfall can be thought of as his hubris towards Hermes.
The idea of this myth being an aetiological myth becomes clear in the last paragraph when Cedric starts using Hermes’ strategy on others. In summary, the origin of disinformation is the event of Hermes’ getting Cedric removed from the tournament. The idea of disinformation spreads because Cedric, previously the victim, is now the person spreading false lies of others.
Works Cited
Aesop. Fables. Translated by Laura Gibbs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
“To Hermes.” The Homeric Hymns, Translated by M. Trzaskoma, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2016
Homer. Iliad. Translated by Stanley Lombardo, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002
Apollodorus. Bibliotheke. Translated by M. Trzaskoma, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002
Homer. Odyssey. Translated by Stanley Lombardo, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002
Euripides, Bacchae. Translated by Stephen Esposito, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company
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