Episode 72K – Party Pooper – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 72K Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, it’s finally time to meet Odysseus’ long-abandoned son and see how things are going back on the home front. You’ll discover that wannabe stepdads are the worst, that absentee fathers make it hard to be well-adjusted, and that Athena is a master of disguise. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll see the lengths that some gods will go to in order to thank sexy men the naughty way. 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 72K, “Party Pooper”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Before we get started, I’m coming off a very nasty cold so I apologize for my less-than dulcet tones this week. I’ll do my best to not sound like an angry goose god.
When we left the story last time, we’d picked up just after the end of the Trojan War. . Things had gone bad almost immediately, and wise Odysseus had led his men into disaster after disaster: getting bloodied after raiding a random city for shits and giggles, getting his men stoned on premium lotus, getting men killed in the home of Polyphemus the Cyclops and then getting cursed by said Cyclops because Odysseus was too prideful not to reveal his real name, and almost getting home after some help from the King of the Winds only to get blown off course again because his men can’t stop being greedy while Odysseus naps. Odysseus got most of his men eaten by cannibal giants, leaving only the soldiers on a single black ship alive to journey on. They met the demigoddess witch Circe, who turned half of the Ithacans into pigs before being seduced by Odysseus. After a year-long fling, Odysseus took a portal to the Underworld for some advice from a dead seer, then headed towards home by way of the sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis. Six more men were eaten by Scylla, prompting a mutiny and a forced landing on the island of the sun god despite warnings not to by both Circe and Tiresias. Storms stranded the Ithacans there for a solid month, prompting Odysseus to set out in search of godly wisdom, but all he found was another poorly-timed nap. While he slept, his men did the one thing he’d told them not to and slaughtered a bunch of Helios’ cows. Only Odysseus didn’t eat the cursed meat, so he was the only one to survive the thunderbolt hurled by Zeus once they were back on the open ocean. The last man standing now, Odysseus managed to survive a second encounter with Scylla and Charybdis only to wind up stranded on another island with another beautiful immortal woman hellbent on keeping him as her boy toy – Calypso. On the up side, Athena managed to get the gods on Odysseus’ side, which means he can finally make it home, 20 years after he first set out.
For the first time in his long, long journey home, Odysseus has the support of the gods on his side. Well, except for Poseidon but he’s out of town at the moment for a feast in his honor so his opinion doesn’t matter anymore. Naturally, that means it’s time to leave Odysseus for a while and meet some new characters.
Athena isn’t one to let any grass grow under her feet, so she set out for the mortal world as soon as her father Zeus gave her the nod. Lacing up her sandals and taking up her bronze spear, Athena swept down to Ithaca. In a flash, she stood before the gates of Odysseus’ home where, remember, he’s the king of the island. He’s also been gone for two decades, leaving his wife and baby son to mind the fort. Surely nothing bad has happened in his absence, right?
The Greek gods make something of a habit of wandering the earth in disguise, so Athena showed up at the gates as a random lord – Mentes, lord of the Taphians. It’s a shrewd choice; Mentes is powerful enough to go anywhere without being questioned, but not quite important enough to raise eyebrows. Opening the gate, the disguised Athena found the palace absolutely crawling with swaggering interlopers. Odysseus ruled over a choice little kingdom and with him missing in action and presumed dead, lots of ambitious lesser lords have come sniffing around. At this particular moment, Athena found them playing dice and lounging around on the hides of oxen from the Ithacan herd that they had helped themselves to. Servants bustled around them, serving a seemingly endless supply of wine, wiping the vomit off various surfaces, and setting out freshly-roasted meat. Picture a frat house during a toga party, and you won’t be far off.
None of the assembled leeches noticed Athena enter, but one intelligent young man did – Telemachus, son and heir of the lost Odysseus. The last time we saw the young prince was way, way back in Episode 26C when a much younger Odysseus had been pretending to have gone insane to try and avoid going to Troy in the first place (as a prophecy had hinted at all of the trouble he’s had getting home), but the clever messenger had used the young child to prove Odysseus was still sane. As such, Prince Telemachus has grown up with a very absentee father, with only stories from returning soldiers to say that Odysseus had even survived the war. It’s been years since anyone’s had word of the old tactician, and Telemachus has been forced to watch as a bunch of assholes started sniffing around his mother and trying to horn in on his father’s rightful place (not to mention his own inheritance). He spends a lot of his time daydreaming that his father would suddenly drop out of the clouds, beat the shit out of these mangy suitors, and reclaim his throne thus setting the world right once more.
He is the only one to notice Athena’s entrance, and he also realizes that the lord she is pretending to be is a new face to the palace. Telemachus might not like the suitors, but he’s still a prince who knows his duty. He goes to greet this stranger, mortified that no one had properly greeted this guest. As has been noted a few times before, the concept of guest right is a Big Deal, and stories like this are a big part of why. There was always the chance that the stranger seeking courtesy at your house might be a god in disguise – and this time, it happened to be true. “Hail, stranger! Welcome to our royal house. Please, sit down, have some dinner, and tell me what you need.”
Telemachus ushered her into the hall and hung up her spear on a rack as a sign of good-faith, next to a rack of well-used spears left behind by the missing Odysseus (and nearly enshrined by the young Telemachus as part of his hero-worship of his absent father). He pulled up an elaborate chair draped in a clean cloth to a place of honor at the table and sat her down, then placed a stool under her feet to help her get more comfortable. For himself, he drew up a much plainer, lower chair though still richly painted as befitted his status as prince. He had set the two of them a little ways away from the loud, drunken mass of suitors so that their uproar wouldn’t disturb his guest’s appetite.
Admittedly, Telemachus also had something of an ulterior motive – he hoped that this new guest might bring some news of his missing, presumed-dead father. Before asking anything, he did his duty. A maid brought over a golden pitcher full of clean water and a silver basin to wash their hands before breaking bread together – the host’s onus to a guest. Seeing that food was being set on the table and wine was being poured, the suitors began to swagger over and elbow in on the action. Being uncouth asshats, the suitors reached out their grabby hands and seized whatever they wanted from the table, heedless of their host or new guest. Only once everything worth devouring or gulping down was gone did they wander off again to find some new amusement – singing, dancing, and generally being loud and obnoxious.
Once they were alone again, even if the room was loud with lute music, Telemachus leaned in close to speak with the mysterious stranger after a quick glance to make sure that no one else was listening in. “Look at those assholes! Not a care in the world but drinking and dancing. Easy to be carefree when you’re leeching off someone else’s kitchen, never mind that your host might be nothing more than a pile of bones bleaching in the sun somewhere or slowly rotting in the sunless depths of the sea. Of course, they’re only like this because the man himself isn’t here – if he walked in the door, they’d get the fuck out of here as fast as they could, probably dropping any stolen heavy gold bars slowing them down on the way.” He sighed. “Not that it matters. He’s certainly dead by now, his body lost forever. I’m not foolish enough to believe that he’s ever coming home after all these years.”
Telemachus shook himself, trying to rid himself of his melancholy, at least long enough to be a good host. “Sorry, stranger, I got lost in my thoughts there for a moment. Tell me about yourself. I’ve been too preoccupied to ask where you’re from, or even your name. You must have a reason for coming here, since it’s not like you walked out here to our little island by accident. Is this your first time to Ithaca, or are you maybe a friend of my father’s from the old days? I have vague memories of him here in this hall, surrounded by crowds of friends and admirers, back when he still walked in the land of the living.”
The boy had a good head on his shoulders and was still loyal to the father he barely remembered; Athena approved. Eyes flashing, she lied through her teeth about who she was and why she had come (because there’s no point in having a disguise if you’re not going to maintain the illusion). “Thank you for asking. My name is Mentes, son of Anchialus. I’m the lord of the seafaring Taphian men, and we’ve been sailing the wine-dark sea to plenty of foreign ports in search of bronze to trade for the fine iron in our hold. We moored our ship off the farmlands, far from the city, in Rithron Cove near the woods around Mount Nion.” Nothing says ‘I’m definitely lying’ quite like providing a bunch of very specific but utterly irrelevant details without being asked.
“As for your father, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been friends for ages. If he were here, he’d agree with me.” In this, I think Athena is actually telling a version of the truth. She’s always had a fondness for the clever tactician and, for his part, he’s always placed his trust in Athena when things got dicey. “You could even go ask old Laertes if you want – I bet he’d remember me. I’ve heard that he lives out on his farm all alone these days; well, alone except for the equally old serving woman who takes care of him.” Which is an oddly specific detail for someone who supposedly just rolled into town from a foreign country to just rattle off and should really be a bit of a tip off. “I have to admit that bronze isn’t the only reason I’ve come to Ithaca – I’d heard that your father was back, but I appear to have been mistaken. You’re wrong about one thing though – Odysseus isn’t dead. He yet lives, captive somewhere out on the vast seas, held against his will by savage men.”
Telemachus’ eyebrows shot up at this bold pronouncement, but the disguised Athena kept right on talking without giving him a chance to interrupt. “The immortal gods have planted a prophecy in my mind, a true one. I mean, I’m not a seer or anything, and I’ve never seen anything in the birds flying overhead but a chance at dinner, but I know this much to be true – Odysseus is coming home, and soon. I am certain that he is plotting his return even as we speak, and not even iron shackles can keep him away much longer. Your father is a clever man, and he’s always got at least one more trick up his sleeve.
“But enough about me and my out of the blue prophecy that is probably all you can think about now – tell me about yourself. Are you truly Odysseus’ son? You were so tiny the last time I saw you, but now that I look at you, I can see the resemblance. You have your father’s eyes. It’s almost like seeing the man himself as he was those decades ago before he sailed for Troy with the best of Greece. We haven’t set eyes on each other since that day.” Which is partially true, I guess.
Telemachus was a bit overwhelmed by all of these very shocking revelations, reasonably enough. Still, he had to say something. “I’ll do my best to answer, friend. As far as I know, I’m his son. At least, mother has always said Odysseus is my father, but obviously I can’t know for sure since he hasn’t exactly been here to confirm it for me. It’s not like I can remember it myself. It’s been…rough having him gone almost my entire life. I sometimes wish I’d been born to a happy, boring man who grew old in his home without going on adventures. I feel like the unluckiest person ever born. But, um, to answer your question, everyone tells me that I’m his son.”
“Fairly said but trust me, the gods haven’t marked you and yours for such an unsung fate, not if Penelope has raised a man like you. I have to ask though: what’s with the drunken banquet thing you’ve got going on? Everyone except you seems to be stuffing their faces with food and trying to drown themselves in wine. Why? Is this, like, a wedding feast? Maybe a festival of some kind? It kind of seems like they’re eating you out of house and home without bringing anything to the party, which is kind of rude. The longer I watch them, the more they annoy me.”
Telemachus nodded morosely. “You’re not wrong. This used to be a rich house and a fine estate, back when my father still lived here. It would have been easier on everyone, especially me, if he’d died gloriously in battle or made it home only to die here in our arms. At least then we’d know what happened to him, and everyone could have gathered around his tomb and toasted his fame. Instead, he just fucking vanishes, leaving me with questions and a nagging hope that won’t let me really move on. And the worst part is that I don’t even have the time or energy to grieve him properly anymore. No, cruel fate has decided I wasn’t quite miserable enough and invented some brand new troubles to plague me.”
He gestured at the drunken assholes currently trashing his absent father’s home. “All of the minor lords of rocky shitholes have come here to court my mother and try to win my father’s place in Ithaca. One and all, they gather here to try and woo her, and eating and drinking all of our money in the process. As soon as one of them gets enough power, you can be damn sure they’ll grind me down right along with my father’s legacy.”
Athena had been aware of this, what with being the goddess of wisdom and all that, but hearing it all laid out by the son of one of her all-time favorite people like that really pissed her off. I mean, Athena does genuinely like Odysseus, which is why she’s been working so hard to get Zeus on her side in this instead of on Poseidon’s. “Those bastards! You really do need Odysseus to make his grand reappearance already. If he were here, he’d beat the ever-loving shit out of these brazen suitors and drive them from his home. I can practically see him now, exactly as he was the first time I laid eyes on him: standing there in his glittering helmet, holding his stout shield and a pair of deadly spears. I remember it well. He’d just come back from visiting Ilus on Ephyra, where he’d been searching for a deadly poison to dip his swift arrows in, making him all the more dangerous. Ilus had refused, terrified that this would earn him the wrath of the gods, but my father had been happy to give Odysseus as much as he wanted. Can you imagine the red slaughter if that Odysseus were to suddenly appear in this hall right now? It would really be a red wedding alright, and their quick deaths would be too good for them. Of course, at this point, his vengeance depends on the whims of the undying gods.
“If you want my advice, I’d say you should spend some time thinking about how to drive these vermin from your halls. Here’s what you do: at dawn, call an official assembly of the Ithacan lords and tell the suitors to go the fuck home in front of man and gods. As for your mother, if she wants to remarry, she can go back to her father’s house. He’s still a powerful man, and her family can arrange a new match without clogging up your inheritance in the process. After you announce this, get yourself a good ship and set out in search of news of your father. Something tells me that you’ll hear something, maybe even a rumor straight from Zeus himself. I’d advise you to head for Pylos first and see Odysseus’ old comrade King Nestor then head over to visit that old ginger Menelaus in Sparta. He was the last of the Achaeans to return from Troy and may know something of what has befallen Odysseus.
“If you hear some news, you can hold onto hope for another year. If you find out he’s dead like you fear, then come back home, raise a monument in his honor, and hold a funeral to give yourself some closure. If your mother wants to remarry, you can give her away. Once you’ve gotten your affairs in order, it’s time to figure out how to slaughter all of those assholes ruining your estate. You’re a man now, Telemachus, and it’s time to leave childish things behind. Surely you’ve heard the stories of the glory Prince Orestes won by killing that devious bastard Aegisthus, who murdered his father?” As I’ve mentioned before, that story is a lot more complicated than Athena is making it seem but she’s also definitely trying to build him up to doing what Odysseus would do in this situation. “Okay, enough from me. Time that I went back to my ship. Good luck, and try not to worry about how weird it is that I showed up out of the blue and left again having done nothing but given you some unasked for advice. Bu-bye!”
“Thank you, stranger – you’ve been almost like the father I never had. I’ll ruminate on your advice. You really don’t have to run so soon – you just got here, after all. You should at least stay long enough to wash the salt off your skin and get some rest. I’ll even send you back to your ship with a rad gift of some kind. Something to thank you for your advice, friend to friend.” Athena smiled, eyes flashing in their characteristic way, but had no real interest in hanging out on Ithaca. She had other things to do. “I really need to be going. I appreciate the gift though. Why don’t you keep it here for when I swing back again on my way back home? Find something good, and I promise you that good fortune will find you for your generosity.”
With that, Athena slipped out of the palace and vanished, flying off back to Olympus. Telemachus was nobody’s fool and he was absolutely aware that there was something very strange about this whole encounter. He was sure that he had been visited by a god (and as we know, that’s exactly what has just happened). A god had given him advice and he was damn well going to follow that advice.
Things are about to get very interesting for young Telemachus, but we’re going to have to wait to find out why because it’s time for 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 hero is Prosymnus.
Back in Episode 72A, we talked about the birth of Dionysus and the really shitty fate of his mother Semele. At the time, we left her as she was burned to ash after being tricked by Hera into demanding to see Zeus in his full godly appearance like something right out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The ancient Greek historians mostly leave the story there and follow Dionysus as he’s sewed into Zeus’ thigh and goes on to his many shenanigans, but Semele’s story does have a rather unusual coda. The original versions of the story didn’t survive the ravages of time, but we know something of what happened, ironically thanks to the efforts of Christian writers to discredit the pagan religions (as well as the ancient parody of this journey kept alive in Aristophanes’ play The Frogs). Specifically, we can thank Clement of Alexandria and, to a lesser extent, Diodorus Siculus for preserving the tale. That said, given their very explicit bias, the stories they tell need to be taken with a massive grain of salt as far as accuracy to the original text. Despite their intent, the story they relate is wildly entertaining and I wanted to share it with you.
As Dionysus grew into young manhood (a somewhat unique situation, given his status as demigod who rises to full godhood as we previously covered) he began to have questions about his mother. Like where the fuck had she been literally his entire life. It’s lost to time how he found out what exactly had happened, but he eventually learned that his mother’s name was Semele and that she was dead, her soul departed to the sunless realm of Hades.
According to the version told by Hyginus, Dionysus decided to go and ask his father Zeus for permission to make an attempt at rescuing his mother from death. Zeus, who probably felt more than a little guilty about having gotten the mortal woman killed with his wandering dick, agreed to let the young man try. As the dead belonged to the realm of his brother Hades however, Zeus had no authority to offer any aid in this quest. As it had been for Orpheus and Odysseus and all the others who had or would make the journey, part of the test of worthiness for entering the Underworld was finding the entrance in the first place.
Dionysus began to search in earnest for a way to descend into the Land of the Dead. Eventually, his wanderings bring him to the attention of a man named Prosymnus. Also known as Polymnus in some translations, Prosymnus was a shepherd living near the Alcyonian Lake, fed from the Lernian spring – a magical place as it had been an apology gift from Poseidon for raping Amymone. It features in the story of Heracles and the hydra, which we will get to another day, but it was also said that the dark lake apparently had no bottom. It was a perilous place for swimmers: treacherous currents beneath the seemingly placid waves would drag the unsuspecting down into the unending depths to drown, which was convenient for their now-dead souls as the lake also happened to be one of the hidden entrances to the Underworld.
Prosymnus the shepherd goes to Dionysus, who is described as being a beautiful young man, and says he can show Dionysus the way to the kingdom of Hades. In return, he asks for the right to a night of wild fucking with the young demigod. Dionysus is down. He’s the god of the wild revelry and of passion, the god of the stranger and the Other and religious ecstasy. He’s been claimed by many in the LGBTQ community as a trans and genderqueer icon since he was born male, murdered (as we saw in Episode 72A), reborn and raised as a girl in secret, and as an adult mostly rejected either gender norm (which may be a result of the god’s likely origin outside of Greece, likely Ancient Egypt). All of his major stories involve the upending of norms and the empowering of the powerless (the Maenads are a prime example of this), so it should come as no surprise that Dionysus was DTF. Prosymnus had those broad working shoulders and Dionsysus was Into It. He readily agreed to the price, promising to fulfill the bargain once he returned with his mother safely in tow.
Much of the actual rescue is lost, unfortunately. From references in other works, we know that there was some form of bargaining with Hades, though the specifics are unclear. We do know that he was successful in talking Hades into letting his mother Semele return with him and that he took her up to Mount Olympus to live amongst the gods. There has been some speculation that the goddess Hestia gave up her seat in the palace of the gods so that Dionysus might have a seat, preventing a divine civil war, but this mainly comes from the fact that Hestia is sometimes included in the 12 Olympians and sometimes Dionysus is, but no surviving myth actually tells such a tale, so it is pure conjecture.
His mother safely ensconced in the heavens, Dionysus returned to the mortal world to go find Prosymnus and fuck the ever-loving shit out of him in thanks for his help. He heads towards the Alcyonian Lake, but upon arriving, learns the sad news that Prosymnus has died while Dionysus was on his quest (the cause of death is not specified). This won’t do. Dionysus had made a promise to a sexy man to say thank you the naughty way, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he’d found a way to do so.
Seething with a mix of sad and horny, Dionysus headed to Prosymnus’ tomb. A large fig tree grew next to the monument (other sources say it was an olive tree), it’s limbs spreading protectively over the body. Using his godly powers, Dionysus took a branch from the tree growing from his dead would-be lover’s tomb and shaped it into a very smooth and very realistic dildo. Seriously. Dionysus then climbed onto the tomb and fucked himself in the ass with his new fig dildo, ritualistically fulfilling the dead man’s wish. The story was used as an explanation for the fig-wood phalluses used in the course of the Dionysian Mysteries, which naturally horrified the Christian writers when they learned the tale. Fortunately for us, it upset them enough that they felt a need to write it down and mock it, which is the reason it survives today.
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.
Next time, we’ll watch as Telemachus screws his courage to the sticking place. You’ll see that there’s an art to interpreting prophecy, that gods pick the best crews, and that when the tide turns, it really fucking turns. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn how you can have a baby goddess all by yourself. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.