Woman in Myths (7): Woman... in the Life of the Gods

The goddesses looked upon mortals and loved them... and mortal woman tempted the gods, so they loved them and took them in marriage.

And is it strange that there should be relations between woman and the gods—when woman is woman, having in our world her influence over every human being, however high his rank or low, however exalted or humble his social station; and the gods are merely people upon whom divinity has been bestowed, in whom the love of majesty is greater than in us, and in whose folds lie more passions and inclinations than lie in ours?

Woman played her part in the life of the gods just as the goddesses played their part in the life of mortals; and in both cases this part was neither reforming nor edifying, as one would expect of gods and goddesses; rather the element of sex worked in it, and at bottom it aimed at the satisfaction of their appetite.

And though the gods used to overlook the lapses of their lady colleagues, these would set heaven and earth astir when they learned of a god's love for a woman, taking revenge or attacking the gods, who were then compelled to punish their mistresses—upon whose heads the calamity would fall.

... And in contrast to the sober, chaste Hera, Zeus, lord of the gods, plunged into an abundant number of love affairs. Listen to the roll of the women who played with his mind and snared him in their nets, and who suffered what they suffered from his wife's revenge:

Danaë: it was foretold of her that her son would slay her father, so the latter hid her away in a room whose locks he made fast; but Zeus entered it in a hidden form, and she bore him Perseus.

Alcmene: he loved her, and she bore him Hercules; Hera made war on him from the day of his birth, and was always against him.

Leda: she bore him Pollux and Helen of Troy—and for that reason Hera took the side of the Greeks in the war.

Io: Hera surprised her husband with this one, so he turned her straightway into a cow; but the wife saw through the trick and begged her of him as a gift, against his inclination, and set over her as guard a giant with a hundred eyes. The war between the god and the goddess swayed back and forth—she tormenting the cow, he delivering her—until the two made peace, and Hera at last set Io free.

Callisto: Zeus loved her, so Hera changed her into a she-bear and brought her son, the hunter, to the very point of killing her; whereupon Zeus raised her as a star in the sky—the Great Bear.

Europa: he carried her off to Europe from this Lebanese shore; her brother Cadmus followed her, braved the terrors, and built Thebes.

Semele: she was the daughter of Cadmus. Against her Hera used a new method, making her ask Zeus to meet her in his full divine form; he came with his thunder and his lightning, and the poor thing died of fright.

Aegina: Zeus carried her off, and strife flared up between him and her people on the one side, and between Hera and the beloved on the other.

Antiope: she bore him the legendary musician Amphion.

After Zeus comes Phoebus. Among his loves was Marpessa, who preferred a mortal to him and spoke her immortal sentence: I prefer love to divinity; and Daphne, who would not grant him his desire, so he pursued her, and when he laid hold of her she turned into a laurel tree.

Woman, then, influenced the gods—but by this influence of hers she destroyed the gods. For these legends of the gods' carnal relations with mortals, and of the base level to which they sank, made the poets and the philosophers and the thinkers doubt that the gods could do such things—nay, deny the existence of the gods.

They created woman a goddess; but mortal woman destroyed the immortal gods...