Free The Song of Orpheus by Tracy Barrett Page B

Mountains ran with snowmelt. Forests were destroyed, rivers boiled, cities fell. Still the king of the gods showed no mercy, and he continued to attack the earth.
    Zeus didn’t stop his ferocious assault until his daughter Athena appeared before him, holding something out to him. He paused in his furious attack long enough to take a look, and on her outstretched palm, he saw a small red heart, beating.
    The heart had to belong to someone or something immortal, for no mortal heart can continue to beat outside its body. The king of the gods looked at Athena with sudden hope, and she nodded. “It’s your son’s heart,” she said softly. “His mother snatched it from the flames and gave it to me to bring to you.”
    Zeus laid down his quiver and carefully carried his son’s tiny heart to a princess with whom he had recently fallen in love. (He had already forgotten Zagreus’s mother.) He inserted Zagreus’s still-beating heart in her chest, and in a few months, the princess gave birth to the same baby boy, only this time, they named him Dionysos.
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    Games Ancient Greeks Played
    Babies and children in ancient Greece played with many toys that are familiar today: dolls (some with jointed arms and legs), clay or wooden animals on wheels that could be pulled with a string, yo-yos, dice, balls (the balls didn’t really bounce, so the Greeks mostly played catch and similar games with them), tops, hobbyhorses (a stick with a carved animal’s head at one end), puppets, and wagons. They played games similar to tag, kick the can, rock-paper-scissors, jacks, capture the flag, spud, and basketball.

III.
GODS AND HUMANS

FROM MORTAL TO GODDESS
    So according to the story I just told you, the god of wine, Dionysos, was born from the heart of a burned-up god named Zagreus. Zagreus’s father was Zeus, king of the gods, and his mother was Persephone, queen of the dead.
    In the myth that’s coming up, Zagreus’s father was still Zeus, but his mother was a human princess. According to this version, Dionysos wasn’t born from the heart of Zagreus that was implanted in the chest of a princess, but from his own self implanted in his father’s thigh. Clear? I didn’t think so.
    It’s probably easier not to worry about where Dionysos came from or whether he was one god or two, and just listen to the story. If you’ve heard part of it, just be patient. Most of it is new—I hope. I’m running out of time. I really need to tell Eurydice how bad I feel for what I did. If you’ve ever had a fight with your best friend and they moved away before you could apologize, you know what I mean.
    So Zeus was having a romance with a princess named Semele. When Zeus’s wife, Hera, found out that Semele was going to have a baby, she became jealous, understandably. She convinced Semele to ask Zeus to prove that he was truly the king of the gods and ruler of the sky, as he had told her he was. Hera knew that challenging the proud lord of the immortals was risky. She hoped that Semele would be injured or killed if Zeus did what she asked, and Hera wouldn’t have to take the blame for her death.
    At first, Zeus said no, he wouldn’t prove who he was—that if she really loved him, she’d take his word for it. But Semele was stubborn, and she became so insistent that he reluctantly agreed to appear to her in his true form. He tried to protect her from his immortal splendor, but even revealing himself only partially proved fatal: His glory was so brilliant that she burned to death.
    Zeus saved the unborn Dionysos from his mother’s ashes and sewed the tiny body into his own thigh until his son was ready to be born. Somehow, the baby turned out healthy, but the king of the gods still had a problem: what to do with his little son? How to keep him safe from the furious Hera? Zeus’s mind turned to Semele’s favorite sister, Ino. Semele had always said that Ino was kind and willing to help people.
    Ino was married to a king named Athamas. He had a