The Immortals’ Gossip

Gods, heroes and tyrants behaving badly.

Nine hundred and seventy figures of the classical world — and the ones with the best stories rarely made the textbooks. The strangest here, each linking to its entry.

A whole town so dim its name meant "idiot." Abdera in Thrace bred famous men — Democritus, Protagoras — yet its citizens were so notorious for stupidity that Juvenal called Abdera *"the native land of blockheads,"* and Cicero, disgusted with the Roman Senate, styled Rome *"another Abdera."*Read it: Abdera
The tyrant's brazen bull claimed its own inventor first. Phalaris of Agrigentum had Perillus build him a hollow brass bull in which victims were roasted alive by a fire lit beneath — *"The first to be burnt in this manner was Perillus himself."*Read it: Phalaris
We may have learned weaving from the spider — and the myth admits it. Arachne out-wove Athena, was turned into a spider, and the book notes the fable *"seems to suggest that man learned the art of weaving from the spider, and that it was invented in Lydia."*Read it: Arachne
Byron settled a two-thousand-year-old dare by swimming the Hellespont. Doubters said Leander could never have swum nightly across to Hero; in 1810 Lord Byron swam the same strait *"to prove that the task was not impossible."* — leander / abydos — A+
"After thunder, rain generally falls." Socrates' wife Xanthippe, whose name became a byword for a shrew, once reviled him and then emptied a pot of dirty water over his head — to which the philosopher only remarked the line above. — vultur (Xanthippe entry) — A+
The Gordian knot really was cut, not untied. The oracle promised the empire of Asia to whoever loosed the impossibly cunning knot on Gordius's chariot; *"Alexander cut the knot with his sword."*Read it: Gordius
"Veni, vidi, vici" was a battle dispatch. After crushing Pharnaces at Zela, Julius Caesar reported his victory to Rome in three words: *"I came; I saw; I conquered."* — zama (Zela entry) — A+
Argus had a hundred eyes and never fully slept — only two eyes closed at a time — so Juno set him to guard Io; Mercury lulled every eye asleep with the lyre and killed him.Read it: Argus
The mother of nearly every Greek monster was one creature. Echidna, half woman and half serpent, bore the Chimaera, Cerberus, the Hydra, the Sphinx, Scylla, the hundred-headed dragon of the Hesperides, the eagle that ate Prometheus's liver, and the Nemean lion.Read it: Echidna
The Sphinx's riddle, and how Oedipus broke it. *"What animal walked on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"* Oedipus answered: a man — crawling as an infant, upright in his prime, leaning on a staff in age — and on hearing it *"the Sphinx destroyed herself."*Read it: Sphinx
The Greek alphabet arrived with a dragon-slayer. Cadmus, hunting his lost sister, killed a dragon and sowed its teeth — armed men sprang up and fought until five survived to help him build Thebes — and he *"introduced the use of letters in Greece — the alphabet… consisting of sixteen letters."*Read it: Cadmus
Midas got his wish, then begged to un-get it. Everything he touched turned to gold — until his food did too; washing in the river Pactolus rid him of the curse (and gilded its sands), and later, for judging Pan above Apollo, *"he had his ears changed into those of an ass."*Read it: Midas
Scaevola put his hand in the fire to make a point. Caught after a failed attempt to assassinate Porsenna, the Roman thrust his right hand into a flame to show Roman fortitude — and the astonished king pardoned him. — saxones (Scaevola entry) — A+
Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. Mistaking his image in a fountain for the nymph of the place and unable to reach it, he pined until he killed himself; *"his blood was changed into a flower which still bears his name."*Read it: Narcissus
Icarus and the sea named after him. Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax to escape Crete; his son Icarus flew too near the sun, the wax melted, and he fell into what has since been called the Icarian Sea.Read it: Daedalus
Archimedes set enemy ships on fire with mirrors — and lifted others out of the sea with machines during the siege of Syracuse — then was killed by a Roman soldier who *"did not know who he was."*Read it: Archimedes
The inventor of tragedy toured in a cart. Thespis performed his plays village to village from a wagon around 536 B.C.; from him we get the word *"Thespians"* for actors.Read it: Thespis
The Sirens drowned themselves in pique. When Ulysses passed their island — his crew's ears plugged with wax, himself lashed to the mast — the Sirens, cheated of their prey, *"drowned themselves."* — sinon (Sirens entry) — A
The man who never let a day pass without a line. The painter Apelles worked at his art every single day — *"hence the proverb of Nulla dies sine linea"* ("no day without a line").Read it: Apelles
"Crossing the Rubicon." When Caesar led his army over this small river out of his own province, he declared war on the Senate; the phrase now means *"an irrevocable step taken in any weighty matter."*Read it: Rubicon
"As rich as Croesus" was a real king — the last of the Mermnadae, reckoned the richest man in the world, whose court sheltered Aesop the fable-writer.Read it: Croesus
Sardanapalus burned down his own palace with himself inside rather than be captured — the luxurious last king of Assyria.Read it: Sardanapalus
Immortal, but not young forever. Aurora won Tithonus immortality but forgot to ask for eternal youth, so he shrank and withered endlessly — and a decrepit old man was proverbially called a "Tithonus."Read it: Tithonus
Where "stentorian" comes from. Stentor, a Greek at Troy, was so loud that his name became the word for a booming voice.Read it: Stentor
Where "mentor" comes from. Mentor was the trusted guide of Ulysses's son Telemachus; his name is now proverbial for any educator of the young.Read it: Mentor
Where "meander" comes from. The river Maeander in Asia Minor was so famous among poets for its windings that its name became the verb for any winding course.Read it: Maeander
The origin of the nightingale's lament. Tereus cut out Philomela's tongue and hid her; in revenge her sister served him his own son at a banquet, and the gods changed Philomela into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow, and Tereus into a hoopoe.Read it: Philomela (Daughter of Pandion king)
Alexander's horse knelt for him. Bucephalus would let no one else ride him and *"always knelt down for his master to bestride him"* — his name became proverbial.Read it: Bucephalus
"The common enemy of mankind." The emperor Caracalla killed his brother Geta in their mother's arms and tried to destroy Aristotle's writings; Gibbon called him the phrase above.Read it: Caracalla
Ovid was banished for a reason he never revealed. Augustus exiled the great poet to the Black Sea; *"The true cause of his banishment is not known,"* and he died there after seven or eight years, his friends' pleas refused. — ostia (Ovid entry) — B
The Greek flood story. Deucalion — a son of Prometheus — built a ship to survive a deluge Jupiter sent to punish mankind, drifting nine days before landing on Mount Parnassus.Read it: Deucalion
Emperor by body count. Aurelian was said to have *"killed 800 men with his own hand"* across his various battles.Read it: Aurelianus