Episode 72B – Reefer Madness – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 72B Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, it’s an ancient PSA on the dangers of drugs. You’ll learn that you should never overstay your welcome, that you should just say no to the lotus, and that real friends will drag you home no matter what you want. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll dip into the darker side of the god of wine. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 72B, “Reefer Madness”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
When we left the story last time, we’d picked up just after the end of the Trojan War. Brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon had disagreed about whether to leave right away or after some extra sacrifices. Soldiers had gotten drunk, tempers had gotten frayed, and the army split into two camps, with Menelaus leading the group who sailed immediately for home (with Nestor, Diomedes, and Odysseus setting out with him). Things had gone bad almost immediately, and wise Odysseus had decided to head back to Agamemnon at Troy just as the weather turned deadly. Diomedes had gotten his ass killed by the one-two punch of hubris and an angry god, but Nestor had made it home in one piece. Menelaus meanwhile had fucked off to Egypt and gotten stranded, forcing him to wrestle the shape-shifting god Proteus for information on how to get home safely with the infamous Helen of Sparta (formerly Helen of Troy) in tow.
So now, we’re all caught up on all of the major surviving heroes from the Greek side of the war (except for Agamemnon, but you can hear the end of his story back in Episode 26O if you’re curious), which means it’s time to join Odysseus. When last we saw him, he’d decided to head back to Troy to join with Agamemnon’s group in making additional sacrifices to the gods in thanks for victory to try and ensure a smooth passage home. For the most part, it worked fairly well. Shortly after returning to Troy, Agamemnon decrees that everything should be good and they all set sail. The winds are brisk, carrying the ships swiftly across the sea.
As we’ve already seen with Menelaus, the Greek warlords were always on the lookout for promising towns to sack and pillage – Odysseus is no different. Not long after leaving Troy (which is probably the ruined city of Hisarlik in modern-day Turkey), his 12 black ships (likely carrying around 600 men total) come across the city of Ismarus (which was situated near Lake Ismaris, which most historians identify as the modern Lake Mitrikon), home of the Cicones. They fell on the city like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky, killing the men and taking the women as slaves before plundering anything that wasn’t nailed down. Odysseus was a fair general by the standards of the day, and he shared the stolen bounty between all of his men evenly so that no man would feel deprived and consider a mutiny.
It worked, but only sort of. The spoils in the city were rich, and they had to be divided among far fewer people than Troy had, which was good. Unfortunately, ‘everything that isn’t nailed down’ is an awful lot of shit, and that kind of a haul takes time to actually round up. As night began to fall, Odysseus urged his men to load up whatever they had already gathered and get out while the getting was good, but they were in no mood to listen. There was just too much wealth here that hadn’t been stolen yet, and no one was ready to leave until they’d gotten every last goddamned gold piece (not to mention drinking all of the wine they could find and slaughtering all of the cows to bring along for the trip).
In what is going to be a running theme for this entire epic, the soldiers really should have listened to Odysseus. While his Ithacan soldiers were drinking themselves blind, the surviving Cicones were spreading out to the neighboring cities inland where they had friends and neighbors and relatives. As the sun rose over the sacked city of Ismarus, it glinted off the weapons, armor, and chariots of a much, much larger force of Cicone warriors. They rode out of the morning mist with a roar, forcing the Ithacan army to band together against their ship and counterattack.
The fight lasts all day, with Odysseus and his men fighting bravely despite being gravely outnumbered. As the sun wheeled overhead and began to dip down towards the horizon again, the superior numbers of the Cicones finally overtook the plucky Greek invaders (who had it coming, given that they had attacked a city with no warning for just being along their route). Their line breaks and they are forced to retreat to the ships and get the fuck out of there (leaving a great deal of plunder behind that could have been on the ships already if they’d listened to Odysseus). They make it out of Ismarus, but at a cost of six soldiers per ship. They’ve only just started for home, and they’ve already lost 72 men – not what I’d call an auspicious start.
They row their small, nimble ships far enough away from the city to be out of bowshot, and then Odysseus calls for a salute for each of their fallen comrades. Their ships roll with the waves as they give a triple cry for each man cut down by the fierce Cicones. As I’ve mentioned, Zeus had cooked up the Trojan war in the first place to try and thin the ranks of Greek heroes, and he’s not about to let Odysseus have an easy go of it. As the ships sailed away, he threw a massive storm at them on the North Wind – a demonic hurricane that drove waves so high they towered over the fragile ships. Even worse, night was falling, forcing the ships to sail blind. Their best bet would have been to land and ride it out on shore, but they’d murdered their way out of that option, so they had no choice but to sail into the teeth of the storm, which ripped their sails to rags.
For two solid days, the sea is turned into a torrent of raging water that makes it impossible to know where the sea ends and the storm clouds begin. Even so, they were impressive sailors, and they managed to keep their ships pointed in more or less the right direction such that, when dawn finally came on the third day, they were close to home. They might have even made it, but Zeus hurled another, fiercer storm at them, along with contrary riptides, driving them way off course past Cythera. Nine days this storm raged, and it was all they could do to stay afloat. On the tenth, the seas finally calmed again and they spotted land. Desperate to make repairs, Odysseus and his men dragged their ships onto the beach of an unknown island (which has been placed by ancient historians such as Polybius and Strabo as Djerba, Tunisia).
Everything seemed pretty idyllic at first glance: soft grass covering gentle hills dotted with fruit trees practically sagging under the weight of ripe fruit. The soft breeze was delicately perfumed with the intoxicating aroma of the lotus flowers that grew everywhere, which were loaded with their own honey-sweet fruit. The Ithacan soldiers drew their ships up onto the beach, drew fresh water from the island springs, and made a meal of dried meat and fresh fruit. Once everyone had eaten and rested from their ordeal, Odysseus picked two strong soldiers and a fast runner to scout ahead for any signs of life.
Time passed, but the trio didn’t return. Worried that something had happened, he sent another, larger group. They also failed to return. Afraid that his men were being devoured by monsters or slain by some dread warriors, Odysseus rounded up the rest of his army and headed inland, armed for bear. They soon arrived at a small village and…it was completely peaceful. The villagers, far from being a threat, had greeted Odysseus’ men and fed them their favorite meal – fruit of the lotus. The missing men were all there, just sort of…chilling. Everyone was sitting on the ground, eating sweet fruit, and getting baked out of their fucking minds.
Now, the Greek word ‘lotos’ can refer to multiple plants, so there’s no real clarity on what exactly the lotus is beyond really good shit. There are a number of candidates, but none of them have the crazy trippy vibes of the one mentioned here, so it’s anyone’s guess (and may, in fact, be entirely made up).
Whatever it might have been, the fruit of the lotus was powerful. When the original trio of messengers had arrived, they’d been greeted by friendly stoners who, rather than being rightfully suspicious of the very warlike Ithacan soldiers (who had already sacked one hapless town for the fun of it), they had offered their new bestest friends some lotus fruit. You know that scene in a movie where someone accidentally gets really, really high and the camera does a tight zoom and rack focus on their eyes as the world goes trippy? That’s basically the feel here. The three soldiers completely space on their mission and have absolutely zero interest in heading back to Odysseus to report in. Honestly, they might be too zonked out to even remember that Odysseus even exists.
The next group had shown up to find the first three sitting on the ground with the friendly lotus-eaters (as they are commonly known). They too are offered the fruit of the lotus, get super stoned, and forget to report back. Odysseus is furious when he arrives on the scene to find that his men aren’t injured or in danger, they’re just fucked up. He orders them back to the ships, but his men refuse. “That’s, like, super bogus dude. You need to chill, man. Oh, I know – have some lotus fruit. You’ll feel waaaaay better bro.” According to the story, everyone who ate the honey-sweet lotus lost all interest in anything except sitting there and eating more lotus. They forgot their comrades, their commander, even their homes and families.
Odysseus orders them again, but he’s, like, harshing their mellow. Odysseus is officially Over This Shit. He orders his sober soldiers to grab their stoned comrades and physically drag them back to the ships with Odysseus screaming orders at them the whole time. The new lotus addicts (that shit gets you hooked fast) wailed and cried, but were too fucked up to fight back. They were carried back to the ships and chained to the rowing benches to keep them from jumping back off the ship and swimming back to the island of the Lotus Eaters. The sober soldiers dragged the ships back into the water, climbed aboard, and took up their oars. Despite the protests of their fellows, they rowed away from the island and headed back out to the open sea.
His men will eventually sober up and remember why they were trying to get home, but it’s going to take a little time and it’s not going to be pretty, so we’re going to leave Odysseus to handle it and sail off to Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is Dionysus.
So yes, this is the same Dionysus who was the god for last episode. As I briefly touched on last time, Dionysus is a god of duality (reflecting the duality of wine itself). Dionysus is usually pictured as a friendly party drunk, but the dude had a serious dark side, and there are two good, short stories that show this. The first is his encounter with Lycurgus of Thrace, but to tell that story, we need to back up a little to a story famously adapted in The Bacchae by Euripides.
In it, Dionysus returns from Asia to his birthplace of Thebes at the head of what might be the first triumphant procession (at least from the Greek perspective). He’d met with success in introducing himself as a god there, but met with more resistance in Greece. You know, on account of the madness that was part and parcel of his new religion. His cousin, Pentheus, is in charge of Thebes, and he is not at all down with his cousin being a god. Along with his mother Agave and his aunts Ino and Autonoe, they doubt his story of his divine birth (and his mother is super dead, so she can’t corroborate his story). They are warned by the blind prophet Tiresias, but they ignore these warnings (which is never a good idea in a Greek myth). Pentheus bans the cult of Dionysus and denounces him for inspiring the women of Thebes to madness.
Dionysus…doesn’t take it well. Pissing off the god of madness is never a good idea. Dionysus uses his divine powers to drive Pentheus insane (thus getting revenge and proving his divinity in one fell swoop) then offers to help his cousin spy on the secret rituals of the Maenads (who you might remember from the end of Episode 68). Pentheus is enthusiastic, and hides in a tree – he’s hoping to get a little peep at some lesbian orgy action. It goes poorly. The Maenads are wild and feral, and they sniff out him and his inappropriate erection almost immediately. Driven to ecstatic madness by Dionysus, they see Pentheus as a lion and they go wild. Normally, they wouldn’t need any encouragement from Dionysus to brutally murder someone for intruding, but this particular group of Maenads includes Agave, Ino, and Autonoe. They rip Pentheus to bloody shreds with their bare hands and his mother Agave mounts her son’s head on a spike then presents it to her father Cadmus. Dionysus arrives and reveals himself in his true, divine form, then banishes Agave, Ino, and Autonoe from the city and transforms Cadmus and his wife Hamonia into serpents. Dionysus does not fuck around.
Leaving Thebes after this little adventure, Dionysus heads to Thrace to take another stab at getting his cult up and running. King Lycurgus learns of his presence and, having learned absolutely nothing from the example of Pentheus, has the Maenads rounded up and imprisoned. Dionysus, being a fucking god, escapes and seeks refuge with Thetis (mother of Achilles and a figure who popped up several times in the Iliad). Thus spared, he covers the land in a drought, then drives King Lycurgus insane as well. The people begin to revolt against the now-mad king. Lycurgus sees a patch of ivy outside his home and, since it is a plant considered holy to Dionysus, he decides to fuck it up with an axe. Only after the deed is done does he realize that it wasn’t ivy at all, but his son that he butchered with an axe.
An oracle declares that the drought will continue, leaving the land dry and barren as long as Lycurgus lives. His people, already sick of his shit, drag Lycurgus from his home then have him drawn and quartered brutally. Dionysus is appeased by the death of Lycurgus and lifts his curse from the land. In an alternate version of the story, Lycurgus instead tries to kill a follower of Dionysus named Ambrosia. To protect his people, Dionysus transforms Ambrosia into a vine, which climbs up the enraged king and strangles him to death slowly and painfully.
And to complete the triptych of ‘seriously – don’t fuck with the god of madness’, Dionysus was later spotted on a seashore minding his own business. The sailors believed him to be a prince and decided to kidnap him and either ransom him or sell him into slavery (it seems like these sailors would fit right in with Odysseus and his crew). The helmsman Acoetes was the only one to recognize Dionysus as a god and tried to warn his fellows, but was laughed off as crazy. The sailors see a quick buck and aren’t going to let it go easily. Annoyed, the god let himself be taken on board, but the confused sailors found that no rope seemed to hold him. Smiling a toothy smile as they realized that this was no mere mortal they had captured, Dionysus transforms into a lion and pulls a bear out of thin air. Together, they rampage across the ship, slaughtering everyone in their path.
A lucky few (who were less gung-ho about kidnapping a prince and hadn’t been clustered around him trying to tie his ass up) managed to jump overboard to avoid the marauding predators. They were changed into dolphins, who would follow ships ever after in longing for the lives they once lived. Another version of the story has him hiring a ship to sail him to Naxos (or being found as a child in Ovid’s Metamorphoses), only the ship captain takes him to Asia instead to sell him as a slave. Instead of turning into a lion, he turns the mast and oars into snakes, fills the ship with ivy, and drives the sailors mad with the sound of drums and flutes, causing them to leap off the ship and into the waves, turning into dolphins. In Ovid, the child transforms into a mature adult during the chaos, signifying his maturation as a god. So the next time you have a glass of wine, make sure you thank Dionysus for his gift so that he doesn’t drive you mad in vengeance.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
I want to give a shoutout to the Legendary Africa podcast for their lovely review on iTunes recently. If you’re looking for a different take on the incredibly rich folklore of Africa, check it out!
Next time, we’ll hit the high seas with Odysseus and his men as they get into deeper shit as they try to get home. You’ll learn that monsters can be demigods too, that you should always check underneath your sheep, and that good wine can be a lifesaver. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the man with the golden arm and an ass’ ears. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.