“Have you noticed something seems off in the world… some sort of shift in balance” questioned Cornelius.
“How so? The sky is as blue as ever and the grass luscious green” responded Omi.
“The Caribou are migrating north much earlier and the tides are coming in closer” observed Cornelius.
“You are giving too much thought… it’s probably nothing” Omi exclaims.
“He is right…. The world is changing” came a voice from within the forest, the branches rustled as the thing came closer, the thumping grew louder.
“Who goes there!?” questioned Cornelius.
The bush split as sprung through it a head, the head of a man. “I am Vizen, I am the protector of these woodlands and its creatures”, the Satyr stepped through the bush revealing his entirety, his horse like body which founds his man like torso. “You are correct, the world is changing, and it is because of man… man like you” explained Vizen.
“man? How can we alter the balance of nature?” questioned Omi.
“The acts of Man have angered not 1 but 3 gods. Men are clearing forests and inhabiting the many other species with which man must cohabit. Mother earth, Gaia herself is furious as these species are being forced to extinction. The more nature that is destroyed the more Gaia gets angry, as Gaia gets angry, she radiates more and heat. As a result, the land becomes warmer and warmer. The heated crust of the ocean boils the water, increasing the temperature of the sea, melting the ice bodies and slowly destroying the arctic. The man of the sea himself, Poseidon, refuses to help man as he himself has a tooth to pick. Man is dumping their waste upon the Oceans and polluting the sea, disrespecting the home of the sea creatures” Vizen told the men.
“Why would Poseidon not want to help man if his own oceans are being boiled?” questioned Cornelius.
“If the ocean boils far enough, all the ice caps will melt, rising the waters, eventually flooding all land of earth. Man will be wiped out and the water temperatures will return to normal, and Poseidon will have the entire earth to rule as his home. There is one more god you have angered…. The god of gods, Zeus. Man is burning wood amongst other things polluting the sky, clouding the sky. Zeus is unhappy that the skies he rules are being dirtied by ordinary man. His rage is heating up the atmosphere changing the seasons, which explain why the Caribou are migrating earlier as the warming of the atmosphere has forced spring to come earlier”.
“oh… I did not realize the damage we were doing, is there anything that we can do about this now?” Inquired Cornelius.
“Yeah! There must be something we can do!?” added Omi.
“Man must start to respect nature and earth upon which they live, be respectful to the creatures in the forest and do not take away their homes. Stop polluting the sea and the sky and pray to the gods asking for their forgiveness. This may calm the gods and restore balance upon the world” Explained Vizen.
Analysis
In my piece I have decided to go with the basics of what each of the gods represent. When we have the topic of global warming, the first thing we think about is the earth, the earth in Greek mythology is represented with the goddess Gaia. Gaia represents the earth, and she is said to be the feeder of all creatures in the world [1]. As mother nature, it makes sense why Gaia would be angry when man is destroying forests, dishabituating creatures, and even making some creatures go extinct. The proof that Gaia cares about the creatures and could go to such extremes is when Orion threatened to destroy all creatures of earth and she out of anger sent a scorpion to kill him [2]. From this example we can draw a conclusion about Gaia, she cares about the creatures which live on the Earth and feels anger when the creatures are endangered. I have taken this concern Gaia processes and connected it to the physical world. The anger she feels has been taken from an emotional state and put into a physical state where her anger is radiating through her across the lands.
The sea is on top of the earth so it makes some logical sense that when Gaia is mad the surface bed of the ocean heats up and can heat up the water. The addition of Poseidon kind of made sense since we were dealing with the seas and the waters, as he is the god of the sea and therefore floods. The aspect of Poseidon wanted to rule the entire earth was just made up and not true. I added that aspect to bring some drama into the myth. As the ruler of the sea, it would make sense if he were mad about the oceans being polluted and would want to get revenge.
Zeus is known as the god of weather [3], so I decided to add the aspect of air pollution into the myth to give it some modern relevance. Zeus is known to get angry and often try taking revenge, for example when Zeus tries to get back at Prometheus for stealing his fire and works on creating Pandora [4]. Zeus’ revengeful nature can be seen in the following quote as well “To the Daimon [Zeus]. Thee, mighty ruling Daimon dread, I call, mild Zeus, life-giving, and the source of all: great Zeus, much wandering, terrible and strong, to whom revenge and tortures dire belong….” [5]. We can see how the text talks about both sides of Zeus, they call him terrible and strong, call him life-giving but someone for whom revenge and torture dire belong. In the time of the ancient stories there was not really a concept of air pollution, air pollution has really risen in awareness upon the industrial era. If Zeus is the ruler and protector of the sky and weather, we can presume that he would not be happy with the humans polluting the sky with their carbon. As a god air pollution would probably not really be a problem for Zeus to deal with but it is the actions that may trigger his anger and create anomalies in the weather.
In the myth I utilized the Satyr as the messenger of the mythology as the Satyr is a creature of nature [6]. In the following ancient text we can see Zeus speaking about how Satyrs can secure the earth, "I [Zeus] have my Demigods (semidei), my Fauni [Panes] and Satyri (Satyrs), my Nymphae (Nymphs) and Rustic Sprites (mumina rustica) of wold and wood, not worthy yet to win the sky, but sure the earth, their portion, we must prove secure."[7]. Here Zeus speaks about how Satyrs are not yet worthy to win the sky but they have the ability to secure and protect the earth. The Satyr, Vizen, encompasses this characteristic and acknowledges the damage being done to nature by man and tries to educate man on what they are doing. Satyrs are known to be friendly with man as they are half man themselves, so It would make sense why Vizen would choose to speak to the men calmly and explain their mistake instead of being aggressive.
In my myth I tried to incorporate modern elements and some level of truth to the reasoning of global warming. I took the 3 main things that cause global warming and replace the actual scientific reasoning with the angering of gods. I wanted this Myth to send an actual message so people can relate it to the Ancient Myths but also get the actual point across. When naming the characters, I wanted to give them a unconventional feel, I tried to make them more Greek by using O’s and Z’s, so I choose Omi and Vizen. For Cornelius since he was actually able to sense that something was wrong, I decided to give him a longer more sophisticated name, giving a sense of intellectuality. I allowed the ability for the global warming effect to be undone and reversed since I wanted the myth to be somewhat informational and the youth can learn from it, maybe making a change in the real world today.
Bibliography
Homeric Hymn XXX to Gaea (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.)
The Hesiodic Astronomy, Fragment 4 (from Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catast. fr. xxxii) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th B.C.)
Theogony Il. xvii. 593
ferula, narthêx, Aeschyl. Prom. 110
Orphic Hymn 73
Schol. ad Theocrit. iii. 2, vii. 72
Ovid, Metamorphoses 1. 192 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)
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