Part 1: Narrative
The Moirai have come to visit Ouranos, they come bearing the destiny of a man that may pique Ourano’s interest. They say a mortal man has been born with extraordinary strength that can dethrone even Ouranos. Ouranos was baffled, surely a mere mortal cannot take down a god. The Moirai continue stating that the mortal man has Gaia’s likeness and therefore holds divine blood.
Ouranos is outraged and hurries to confront his wife Gaia. How dare she look elsewhere in their marriage and above all spawn a child to dethrone him. Ouranos furiously berates Gaia and threatens to kill her child. Gaia is frightened by Ouranos’s threats and scrambles to warm her son.
Gaia calls out to Hybris, her son. She informs him of Ouranos’s intentions and tells him it is best that he go into hiding. Hybris snickers at his mother’s request, he is an aspiring hero that will not cower in fear to anyone. Instead, Hybris tells his mother to arrange for a meeting between the two. He wanted the meeting to be under the guise that Hybris wished to make peace with Ouranos. Hyrbis sees the great kleos he could be awarded if he were to overthrow Ouranos. Hybris believed his tremendous strength would be talked about for years to come. Gaia reluctantly agrees.
Hybris travels to meet Ouranos. On the way, the Goddess Athena comes to him and advises him to change his course of action, as severe consequences would follow a mortal who challenges a god. Hybris brushes her off, and meets with Ouranos. Hybris doesn’t keep the façade of a friendly meeting on for long, he draws his sword and fights Ouranos. Indeed, as the Moirai had prophesized, Ouranos was over powered and defeated. But Hybris was not done yet, he took his sword and castrated Ouranos, throwing him into the sea.
Hybris travelled back to his town as news spread of his actions. However, Ouranos’s flesh in the white capped sea gave rise to a divinity called Rhamnousia. She was born from her father’s rage and made to avenge him. Rhamnousia went to the other gods and spoke of Ouranos’s demise at the hands of a mortal. The Gods were outraged by Hybris’s actions and his mother’s apparent acquiescence to the matter. The Gods equipped Rhamnousia with tools to exact her revenge, Apollo gave her a jar filled with a strong plague, Aphrodite gives her a beautiful veil.
Rhamnousia approaches Hybris who is captivated by her beauty. As Hybris lets his guard down Rhamnousia takes off her veil and reveals herself as Ouranos’s daughter. She then proceeds to open the box given to her by Apollo. Hybris calls out to his mother in a panic. Gaia responds to her sons calls and shields him from the disease with her own body. Gaia becomes infected, the temperature of her body rises.
Hybris wails at his mother’s state and calls out to Apollo to lift this plague. Apollo says Hybris’s conduct was unforgivable and that he will forever stay by his mother’s side trying to bring her temperature down.
Part 2: Analysis
My aetiological myth accounts for the phenomenon of global warming. Who’s origins in my myth is due to Gaia succumbing to an illness that causes her body temperature to rise, like it does for many of us when we become ill. As mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony, Gaia is the personification of the Earth (Hes. Theog. 117). Thus, her body warming is what leads to global warming in this narrative. To come to this ending, we must start from the beginning, where Gaia has a child with a human man and gives birth to a mortal man named Hybris. This follows the disparity in sexual unions between gods and mortals, as we saw with the union between mortal Peleus and Deity Thetis giving rise to a mortal named Achilles (Hes. Theog. 244). Yet the union between Zeus and Acleme, lead to Hercules who became a god. The reason why the narrative followed this gender disparity was so I could bring about the themes of hubris, that are committed by mortal men. The birth of Hybris is what leads the Moirai to tell Ouranos that there is a child who can dethrone him. This is similar to the prophecy that the Moirai give Zeus, in which Thetis will birth a son that is stronger than their father (Aeschyl. Prom. 511-515). Although, Hybris is not Ourano’s child, he still holds the ability to dethrone Ouranos. The purpose of this is to draw upon the male principle that wants to stop birth and the intergenerational change and instability it brings. Gaia is also seen to follow the female principle, where she is always on the side of birth that leads to changes that destabilize the cosmos. Gaia follows the generative principle by taking the side of her son throughout the narrative.
The name Hybris takes after the term hubris, this is where mortal men do not realize that they are just men and not gods (Britannica 2017). They demonstrate overweening pride, arrogance and use violence to humiliate and degrade. Hubris follows the actions of those who have challenged the gods resulting in the protagonist’s downfall. Hybris acts in this manner many times throughout the narrative. For instance, when Hybris tricks Ouranos into a fight then castrates him. Such conduct goes against the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos. He even disregards Athena’s warnings. The reason Athena is included is because she is a patron goddess of heroes and she similarly warns Achilles to hold his temper (Homer, Iliad 1.198–235). In both cases, Athena can be seen as a personification of wisdom. So, Hybris ignoring Athena can also mean that his pride is so overweening that he ignores logic, further exemplifying his hubris. This ultimately leads to Hybris’s downfall.
When Ouranos is castrated his flesh gives rise to the goddess Rhamnousia. This is similar to the Goddess Aphrodite who was born from the castration of Ouranos in the Theogony. But in the narrative, it is not the goddess of sexual attraction, but Rhamnousia who is born (Hes. Theog. 190-195). Rhamnousia, also known as Nemesis, is regarded as an avenging or punishing divinity. She particularly punishes those with hubristic boasts. For example, when Prometheus utters taunts against Zeus. He is told that “Wise are they who do homage to Adrasteia (the Inescapable." (Aeschyl, Prom. 932 ff). Here Adrasteia is Rhamnousia, and they are saying it is wise for Prometheus to bow down to Rhamnousia in order to avoid the consequences of boastful speech. Thus, Ourano’s avenger in my narrative was the punisher of hubris acts herself.
When Rhamnousia approaches the other gods to seek her revenge, she is prepared similarly to how Pandora was made in the Theogony, with each god providing her with gifts (Hes. Theog. 576-580). Pandora in the Theogony and Rhamnousia in the narrative, both receive items from Aphrodite which make them irresistible to men. Rhamnousia uses her gift from Aphrodite to approach Hybris with his guard down. In the narrative Rhamnousia receives a gift from Apollo, which is a box filled with a strong plague. This portion is referring to Apollo answering Chryses prayers during the Trojan war. Apollo set a plague on the Greeks as a response to his prayers (Homer, Iliad 1.198–235). In the narrative, the plague is released on Gaia and Apollo refuses to lift the plague. This results in Hybris’s ultimate punishment, where he must eternally care for his sickened mother as a result for his boastfulness. Hybris who was trying to become a hero, with great kleos and Time will ultimately not be able to gain any of those things. Homeric warriors fight for two main reasons, which are time (tangible representations of honor) and kleos (gory or fame). Even Hybris saw his battle with Ouranos as a way for him to receive glory. As we saw in the Iliad, Achilles was singing the glories of heroes in war (Homer, Iliad 9.186-194). Epic poetry as the songs about heroes are the vehicle for kleos. Even though most heroes are mortals and will eventually die, through kleos their names will live on well past their lifetimes, offering a sense of immortality. So, by taking away Hybris’s kleos he is truly reminded his limits as a human, who will die and be forgotten in his lifetime. Thus, this aetiological myth refers to Hybris’s hubris being the origin of global warming.
Finally, when Hybris is cursed to care for his ill mother for the rest of his life he is forced to abandon his pursuit for kleos. Instead he is forced to repeat a task over and over again. This is similar to the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus. Both men are seen in Hades, where “Tantalus can never catch the water, never grasp the overhanging branches; Sisyphus chases and heaves the boulder doomed to roll forever back” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 451 ff). Tantalus was a king who was initially favored by gods and welcomed to eat with them, but when he stole ambrosia (meaning immortality) and nectar he was punished through eternal torment (Atsma 2017). For Tantalus, every time he attempted to take a sip of water it would vanish away from him. Also, every time he attempted to reach out toward a branch full of bright fruits, the wind would toss them away (Homer. Odyssey 11.582-593). Sisyphus is similarly condemned to forever push a boulder up a hill, because as soon as he heaves it overtop the crest of the hill, the weight would turn it back down again. (Homer. Odyssey 11.593-601). Sisyphus’s punishment comes as a result of him attempting to cheat death by escaping Hades and then by capturing the spirit of death. He was recaptured and punished with this never-ending task (Atsma 2017). In both cases, Tantalus and Sisyphus were punished for their hubris. Sisyphus and Tantalus are mortals who disregarded their place in the cosmos and the divinely fixed limits on humans, in which they cannot achieve immortality. Thus, each case of overweening presumption was met with a punishment of eternally trying to accomplish a never-ending task. Thus, it is fitting that Hybris, who fittingly to his name, demonstrated great hubris was also punished with a similar never-ending task for eternity.
Reference List
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Atsma, Aaron J. “DEIFIED MORTALS.” Deified Mortals | Theoi Greek Mythology, Theoi Project, 2017, www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/deified-mortals.html.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Hubris". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 May. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/hubris. Accessed March 2021.
Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Murray, A T. Loeb Classical Library Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.
Hesiod. 1943. Works and days; and Theogony. Translated by S. Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Homer. 2009. Iliad, Translated by A. S. Kline. Poetry in Translation.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translation by Melville, A. D. Oxford: Oxford University Press.