Pathetic Hero Deaths in Greek Mythology
I spent this week thinking about the sad, ignominious ways some of the Greek heroes met their ends. Why such pathetic deaths for these great men? The more I looked into each individual legend, the more the death appeared to be a comeuppance for some sin the hero committed in life.
Let's take a look at the ends of five great and lesser heroes and see what we can learn:
- Theseus: This hero of Athens is overthrown as king by a cousin, Menestheus, after the ill-advised abduction of a young Helen of Sparta. He finds himself seeking the protection of Lykomedes, king of the tiny, rocky isle of Skyros where Thetis would later hide an adolescent Achilles. Theseus meets his end when he leaps, or is pushed, off a cliff. Not a particularly heroic way to go, but perhaps this strange death is meant to answer for the death of his father, Aegeus, who leapt from the Rock of Athens when Theseus forgot to change his sail from black to white. Or did Theseus forget? There's always that possibility that the Minotaur-slayer deliberately betrayed his father in a bid for the kingship he wanted or thought he deserved.
- Achilles: This ultimate, testosterone-fueled killing machine met his end with an arrow through that part of the heel we now call the Achilles tendon. Given the spectacular goriness of his many kills, that Achilles is brought down by what should have been a survivable wound delivered (with some help by Apollo, granted) by playboy wuss Paris, of all people, makes this a particularly cringe-worthy death. Perhaps the arrow was poisoned, or the wound became infected, or it was as another legend of Achilles states, that the only vulnerable part of Achilles was his heel. If you look at the armor of the period, particular the famous Dendra Panoply, a Mycenaean warrior's only vulnerable spot would have been the heel. Perhaps the death of Achilles represents a dim bardic memory of an actual event, or maybe it serves a thematic purpose. In the works of the Trojan War cycle, Achilles slaughters a great many individuals unnecessarily; some are noncombatants, including women and children. Possibly the ignominious manner of his death mirrors the ugly way in which he slew those who did not deserve to die.
- Jason: This prince of Iolkos, king of Corinth, and leader of the Argonauts dies a broken, lonely old hermit when the stern of the rotting Argo, under which he was sleeping, broke off and crushed his skull. Though he starts out with great promise, Jason loses favor with Hera when he betrays Medea. Once he loses the favor of his patron goddess, he proceeds to lose his wife, his children, and his kingdom. All he has left is the worn-out hulk of the Argo. The ship is a relic, like him, and both die together.
- Orestes: A minor hero, whose cult of madness and purification was observed down into Classical times. His death by snakebite in old age is one of those WTF moments until one realizes that in ancient Greek lore snakes were associated with women/goddesses, and that the snakebite may be an indication that the Erinyes/his mother's ghost got revenge at last.
There are other heroes who meet such ends. There's Bellerophon, left blind and wandering after Zeus's thunderbolt causes Pegasus to rear and hurl the arrogant young hero to the earth below; he deserves his fate. Even Agamemnon, whose death I described in my last post as one of the most Metal Deaths in Greek Myth, dies the way he lived: treacherously and by the sword. I would not quite put Odysseus in the same category; his death is the result of a tragic misunderstanding--and the fulfillment of a prophecy stating that his death would come from the sea.