372: Greek Myths: Things as they Are

Quick disclaimer: We're back in Greek myths, so all the usual Greek myth disclaimers apply.

Please check out the post on mythpodcast.com for more info.

This week, on Myths and Legends, we'll learn why you shouldn't build a house with sacred timbers, how to make your baby grow into a big, strong adult in about 30 seconds, and the brutal origin of breathments.

The creature this week is why you shouldn't approach that spiky, swaying plant that looks like a bunch of angry, arguing snakes.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 372, Things As They Are.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins, and others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

This is the seventh part of our increasingly inaccurately named monthly series on the Olympians from Greek myth.

Today it's Demeter, one of Zeus's sisters, who has been around for it all.

We'll jump in at the very beginning at the origin of the cosmos and we'll see how pretty much everything has a very rough start.

Any birth is challenging.

Some can be borderline traumatic.

Some are traumatic traumatic.

I've received some emails over the years regarding my treatment of the baby Olympians, with some people saying, hey, talking babies are a fun take on the myths.

Some people saying that the Olympians were never babies.

How dare you have fun and interpret newborns as being newborns?

And a rare few being threatening, with people telling me I better be careful because the gods will not be mocked and they will have their revenge.

Yes, really.

Regardless, I think we can all agree that, in the stories of the Olympians, whether or not they're little 8-pound, pound, 6 ounce newborn infants with bald heads and chubby hands or full grown with long heads of hair and full beards for the guys, they're sentient.

And that would be horrifying.

I can imagine Demeter arriving in this world to her mother weeping, but not for the reasons that a new mother might weep, but because while the first thing Demeter saw was her mother, the second thing she saw was her father.

holding a knife and fork and wearing a bib tucked into his tunic.

As you no doubt know, but we'll run through it for the new people, there were a few generations of gods in Greek myth.

The first were the sort of primordial gods, Gaia, the earth, and her son slash husband, Uranus, the sky.

Uranus, fearing his children would overthrow him, pushed them right back in when they started to come out.

This did not end well for, well, Uranus at least, when he was castrated, and the children were born anyway.

Those children were Cronus and Rhea, and the other Titans, and Cronus learned from his dad's mistake.

But he didn't learn that much.

He allowed his children to be born only to eat them.

So, the fully sentient Demeter was transferred almost directly from her mother's womb to her father's stomach.

Demeter was child number two, which meant that she didn't even have the luxury of having dad's stomach all to herself.

And there would be three more occupants before, years later, Zeus would get dad to throw up all the babies.

Now not babies, but deities that had grown to adulthood in their father's abdomen.

I tried to think of an analogy like, oh, imagine being stuck with your siblings in the back seat of the car, but the car is a sticky, airless bag, and you have absolutely no room, and you're trapped there for decades.

Basically, we don't have the words to describe the horror.

I often, but rightfully, I might add, judge the Olympians for their horrible, horrible actions.

But...

Given that their formative years were back-to-back trauma, descending into a suffocating void of nightmare fuel, it kind of helps me understand them slightly better.

Surfing out on a wave of dad's vomit, prompted by their revolutionary youngest brother, Zeus, Demeter was glad the nightmare was finally over.

And now that she was out of her dad's stomach, he and his friends were actively trying to murder her.

Out of the frying pan and directly into the fire, or out of your dad's stomach and into the cosmos-spanning war, as the far more popular saying goes, Demeter did something.

Presumably.

One source says she looked after Oceanus and his wife slash sister Tethys.

They were both Titans, and their particular role during the Titanomachy, the big 10-year war between the Olympians and their parents, the Titans, seemed to be one of neutrality.

Still, Zeus had to be sure, so he posted a chaperone, his older sister Demeter.

Oceanus is, of course, the giant river that encircles the world.

And if you're thinking that, hey, that's a really wordy way to say ocean, well, that puts us right back at his name and the etymology of the word ocean.

Together, he and Tethys produced the Oceanids, as well as lakes, children of Oceanus cut off from their parents.

But they would sit the war out.

Watched by Demeter, the sister of the revolutionary leader, I imagine that it was a pretty chill job, with Demeter sitting around playing cards with the pair, like the federal agents with that informant from The Godfather Part 2.

I'm putting Demeter last among the big six Olympians because one, someone recently requested an episode on her and I thought it sounded fun.

And two, she wasn't actively involved in the war.

So when it was won and she was recalled to Olympus, the new mountain capital of the Olympians, she might have been the last to know that she was in fact an Olympian.

And as an Olympian, she was arguably one of the most powerful.

at least where humans were concerned.

Demeter assumed her role of goddess of agriculture and the harvest, both of which were extremely important to a budding agrarian society.

That was not a budding agrarian society quite yet.

We'll get to it.

So she had a lot of worshipers.

She was also associated with sacred law and divine order, which might help to explain her

new boyfriend.

He was a bit younger than her, but he was full of passion and life.

Long, flowing hair and chiseled features aside, he was the man in charge of everything.

He was

her younger brother.

And yeah, it's gross and weird, and it probably doesn't help to know that it gets both grosser and weirder, so stay tuned.

Maybe they were in love.

I'm cynical when it comes to Zeus, so I feel like he's just with her so he can solidify his power base, an ally with the goddess of sacred law and order, until he's so strong that no one can oppose him.

Regardless, they broke up, which isn't a spoiler, but not before Zeus left Demeter with the only thing she ever truly loved.

Cora.

Persephone's name was originally Cora.

She's a great girl.

I love her.

Thanks for coming here today.

Demeter rose in her grove.

She was in the guise of one of her own priestesses and a group of her Pelasgium worshippers had planted for her at Dodium.

Everyone adored the kind-hearted priestess, who seemed like a medium from the Olympians themselves, with the stories that she somehow knew.

When the grove was empty, Demeter took a deep breath and almost let the illusion fall when she heard someone behind her.

Ah, more worshippers.

Not so much, Erisic then said.

Axe aloft, he pointed to the sacred trees.

Take them all.

Nisipe, Demeter's priestess form, stepped in between the son of a king and the trees right as he was about to swing his axe.

Her soft voice floated among the trees.

This was a place of peace.

What would happen when Demeter found what they did?

The princeling laughed.

Demeter, what would she do?

Give him too much wheat?

What were even her powers?

Nisipe still wouldn't be deterred.

She said she couldn't stand by and allow the grove to be chopped down.

Nisipe felt the axe blade on her own throat.

Oh yeah?

And what was she going to do?

Demeter's shoulders slumped, and she sighed.

Take them all, Erisicthan cried.

I'm going for a dangerous sacrilege vibe for our new banquet hall, and forbidden timbers are perfect.

To Demeter, the months it took to build the new hall might as well have been hours, seeing as the immortal Olympians don't really experience time like the rest of us.

Eric Sichten sat in his banquet hall.

It had been finished for a few weeks now, but in that time, the young prince hadn't stopped eating.

His parents rushed more food into him because, surprise, the guy who threatened to behead a defenseless priestess for trying to get him to not cut down the sacred timbers he was a little sadistic.

He threatened violence any time anyone tried to stop his food from coming.

He was just so hungry.

Somehow, despite his appetite, he was still growing thinner and thinner, just like his parents' finances.

One of the richest families in the kingdom, they were now teetering on the edge of poverty.

Demeter smirked.

Gathering food was legitimately important, sure,

but doubly so if your sociopath's son never stopped eating.

Demeter thought they maybe had three weeks of solvency left.

She was off by about two and a half weeks.

Sometimes she was so effective that she even surprised herself.

When she last saw Ericsson,

he was little more than a walking skeleton, picking a half-eaten piece of rotten fruit out of donkey urine on the street, hesitating for only a moment before his intense hunger overruled his revulsion.

He chewed the already soggy apple and rooted around the refuse pit, looking for more.

Hecate sat up in bed.

Did anyone else hear that?

The Hecate behind her and the Hecate to her right said, yeah, they were just wondering that exact same thing.

Real quickly, Hecate, the goddess associated with crossroads, night, magic, witchcraft, protection from witchcraft, the moon, drugs, graves, and ghosts, is triple-bodied.

meaning that it was apparently impossible to sneak up on her because she was fused at the shoulders and back with two other versions of herself.

The triple Hecate is a later version, but it's fun, so we'll do it here.

She emerged, squinting in the sunlight, and six ears working in all directions,

yeah, there was a cry on the wind.

At first it sounded like an animal, something hurt, wounded.

But no,

it was a person.

Someone needed help.

She squinted up to the sky, to the man pulling the sun with his cart.

Helios.

She flew.

Helios was flustered and bowed.

Hecate, what was she doing?

She slept during the day, right?

Goddess of the night as she was.

That's why they never saw each other.

That's why she was unexpected.

Hecate greeted Helios, the son of the Titans Hyperion and Thea, and the god who pulled the sun across the sky and asked if he heard that.

What was going on?

You don't really want to know what's going on, right?

Helios asked.

Hecate informed him that no, she really did.

That's why she asked.

He said no,

she didn't.

His job made it necessary to be within earshot.

They thought she would be sleeping.

She she should just go back to sleep.

She said she wouldn't be cowed, and now she wasn't asking.

Tell her who that was.

The cries were still ringing out, though they were growing weaker, getting farther and farther away, almost muffled.

Helios looked left and right.

Okay, it was it was Zeus.

He was giving his daughter Cora, aka Persephone, away in marriage.

At least that's what Helios heard.

It kinda doesn't sound like she wants to go, Hecate observed.

Helios laughed.

Yeah, you think?

Uh no, but it was horrifying.

Um he was ordered, though, to just

keep on going, to not stop, and to not tell anyone what he heard.

He didn't hear nothing, and if she didn't want to draw the ire of the Olympians, neither did she.

Hecate knew.

She knew the best thing for her was to just walk away, that she never heard anything.

But she knew Cora, or Persephone, and she knew Demeter.

That poor young woman's mother would spend the rest of her life, her infinite life, wondering what happened to her daughter, and Persephone would spend the rest of her equally immortal life in whatever horror was happening right now.

It was what Hecate would want for her daughter, for herself.

So, risking the rage of the gods, Hecate went to find Demeter.

We'll see the hunt for Persephone, but that will be right after this.

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Persephone never showed.

She was supposed to return to her mother after going out in the fields, picking flowers with her friends, and she never showed.

It had been nine days.

Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Demeter was known for her kind, mild demeanor.

She hadn't been warped like her siblings.

She hadn't let the horrible things that happened to her define her.

She was the perennial sunshine in everyone's life, the warm spring day that never left the world.

That was before Persephone left.

That changed her.

She spent nine days wandering the earth, crying out for Persephone.

The ones she talked to didn't know anything, and those who knew anything weren't talking, except Hecate, but they were ships in the night.

And even though the goddess of witchcraft wanted to help, she was always where Demeter had been, never where she was.

Demeter didn't know how she ended up in the house of King Seleus, in Eleusis, but 11 days after Persephone went missing, and One day after a horrifying encounter with her brother, Poseidon, when they were both in the form of a horse, she found herself sipping barley water around a fire.

She was sitting by the fire with the workers, and admittedly, she was something of a downer.

I mean, it had been a pretty terrible fortnight, so that could be one reason for it.

But Babo, the middle-aged woman, saw her crying by the fire.

She knelt down.

Aw, was the traveler having a hard time?

She had just the remedy for that.

Demeter, almost letting her disguise slip, said remedy.

Did this mortal dare to...

she started to say, but found herself looking directly at, well, at a butt.

Babo's butt.

Demeter

cracked a smile.

Always works, Babo said, turning around.

No ifs, ands, or yes, butts about it.

Demeter tried to stifle another laugh, but she couldn't.

I told you, Babo said to one of the servants who paid up.

It's called anesirma, she said.

The raising of a skirt or kilt to show what's underneath, front or back.

She lowered her skirt to Demeter, just cracking up.

Babo explained that it was mostly used as a lewd joke and should be seen as different from indecent exposure.

This

was supernatural.

According to Pliny, a woman could stop hailstorms and lightning.

A naked woman walking through a field can cause caterpillars, worms, and insects of all types to fall off the plants, or she can lull the sea if she's by an ocean.

Now, though, it made a goddess smile for the first time in far too long.

Babo invited Demeter inside, where Demeter learned that the strange mooning servant wasn't a servant at all, but the queen herself.

Babo told Demeter that she wanted to help the woman.

Full disclosure, there is no one version of this particular story.

In some, Babo is an old nurse.

In others, she's the mother of a future prince, which would imply that she's the queen.

Some have her making Demeter laugh with, yes, her butt.

Others have that being an enslaved woman named Iam.

And in others, I am as the sickly princess who just made a joke.

Basically, I'm streamlining it, but know that it's way more complicated than I'm making it by just giving the queen the nickname Babo when she wants to hang out with the servants and show her butt to strangers to cheer them up, and also maybe stop hailstorms.

Anyway, Babo said that humor was the only thing that gave her comfort.

Her son, Dryptolemus, was sick.

Demeter looked to the ground.

She said that her own daughter had been taken.

That's why she was forlorn to the point that only butts could make her feel better.

She thanked Babo for that.

Demeter actually had a whole backstory and fake name, because she was not traveling like a goddess.

She, too, looked like a woman of middle age, and she gave the name Doso.

She said she had come from Crete, and she and her daughter had been abducted on the beach by pirates.

She was put to work.

She knew nothing of her daughter.

Doso had been sold and sold again until she could manage to slip away on mainland Greece.

But she feared she would never see her girl again.

Her daughter, Cora's trail, had gone cold, and she liked Babo's wacky energy.

Would it be okay if she stayed here to help?

Babo said she would love to take the woman on, but they already had a full house.

What could Demeter do?

Demeter would have responded, but she had a sharp pain in her lower abdomen.

Wait.

Oh, no way.

Babo shook her head.

What?

At that moment, a baby dropped out from under her skirt.

Both of them were perplexed, looking at the infant on the floor, before Demeter scooped the girl up, and Babo rushed for some shears to cut the umbilical cord.

Demeter's face soured when she realized who the father of the child was.

Poseidon.

The baby was cleaned and swaddled, and Demeter, holding the cooing immortal next to her, said, Um, were they looking for a wet nurse?

Demeter, aka Doso, held the baby to her chest.

All right, she warned the infant.

It's gonna get weird.

She had been putting off her role as wet nurse because, well, she knew what would happen if she did her job.

What was, in fact, about to happen.

The baby.

Not her child.

Her child could take it.

This was Triptolemus, who, despite the best medicine the ancient world had to offer, was still tragically halfway to Hades himself.

That wasn't what would happen today, though.

The baby latched.

Mendozo, aka Demeter, sat back.

Tryptolemas began drinking, and Demeter knew she had to be careful, couldn't let him get too much.

Turned out it was easy to not let him get too much.

Giant, hairy legs and arms shot out from the swaddling cloth.

The area above the boy's lips sprouted first fuzzy, downy hair, and then thick black hair, until, eyes widening among the flowing head hair and full beard, the completely grown Triptolemus dropped from Demeter's arms.

and hit the floor.

What what the the young man looked left and right.

What happened?

Where was he?

Why was he suckling?

What is going on?

I told you things were going to get weird, but you probably don't remember that because you were a baby.

It was about 40 seconds ago.

Demeter smiled.

They grow up so fast.

Wiping the milk from the corners of his mouth, Triptolemus, a towering 5'8, staggered from the room, a healthy man.

You're welcome.

Demeter shook her head.

Some people.

She sighed and, face illuminated by the fire, she pulled out a poker and began to move the logs.

She took up her second charge, Little Demophon, Tryptolemus' younger brother, and another prince.

So before this kicks off, a very obvious don't try this at home.

There are some versions of the Achilles myth where he is dropped in the river Styx for immortality, and the reason why his heels are his weak spot is because his mother had to hold him somewhere.

Most myths, though, have him being well lately roasted.

Children in the hands of a capable mortal can be given immortality by fire and that was what Demeter was doing to the youngest prince, Demophon.

Unfortunately, she was not a great multitasker.

You never think that when you're holding a baby over fire, roasting them, that they'll come to harm.

Of course, you probably shouldn't have just aged the baby's brother 20 years with a few gulps of breast milk.

The door flew open, and Babo demanded to know why her son was almost as old as she was now and what was Demeter doing.

Demeter wasn't fearful of anything.

She did not, however, like jump scares or surprises.

And, well,

she baubbled Babo's baby.

Like we talked about last week, limited or incomplete immortality is not, in fact, immortality at all.

It's just regular mortality.

And not even the quick-thinking immortal could snatch little Demophon before he hit the flames.

The spell was broken, and the child was ash.

Babo was ashen faced as Demeter realized that she needed to get control of the situation.

Her disguised as Doso melted away, and Babo was left with Demeter, an Olympian, in all of her glory.

Demeter commanded her to back away.

How dare she question the will of the gods?

And also slightly spooked Demeter when she's holding a baby over a fire, despite that being a pretty natural reaction to someone holding a baby over a fire.

Demeter shouted some things about her blessing Seleus and the queen's other children before running from the room in a flash of light.

As she ran off into the darkness of the hills at night, the same feeling she felt when she started her journey, when she arrived in this kingdom, resurfaced.

She could run, but she couldn't outpace them.

Like the child she had tried to help, her daughter was gone.

Unlike the child, she still had no idea what happened to Persephone, and no family that she found would ever replace Persephone, even the actual child she had, which just disappears from the story at this point.

Now, again, Demeter was alone.

Demeter Demeter did make good on her promise to bless Babo's children.

Triptolemus would be special.

Currently, on the earth, people didn't farm.

They didn't know you could take the seeds, put them in the ground, cultivate them, and all that.

If you're wondering how you get to kingdoms and cities before having the agriculture to support that sort of population, well, we just had godly breast milk turn a baby into a full-grown man in under a minute.

You might be focusing on the wrong things here.

Back to Triptolemus, though.

He was was going to be Demeter's messenger to the world, telling everyone about the wonders of farming.

And so, he traveled to all sorts of cities after Demeter's education.

But it wasn't long before he was back.

And he was back because he had news.

Hecate,

all three of them, had been searching the world over for Demeter, and Hecate had found her messenger.

We'll see where she's been, even though you probably already know, but that will be right after this.

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What did you do?

Demeter strode up to Olympus, double-headed axe in hand.

Helios had known the identity of the kidnapper, and he was finally persuaded to do the right thing.

I mean, witchcraft and an axe did most of the heavy lifting in persuading him, so don't give him too much credit.

But he named names, mainly those of Zeus and Hades, Demeter's younger brothers.

You're disgusting, Demeter spat at Zeus.

You're gonna have to be way more specific, Zeus laughed, but then he saw his ex with the axe wasn't in the mood for jokes.

The edges of Zeus' mustache drooped to rejoin his beard, and he said that he was a father.

He did what fathers do.

She was abducted.

All the earth heard her cry out, and when I confronted him, he said, you gave him the go-ahead.

Demeter spun the axe.

She was my daughter to give away in marriage to whomever I wanted.

I'm a good dad.

Zeus.

Thought about it.

He might be evil, but he wasn't delusional, and he wasn't going to lie to the only person he really loved.

Himself.

I'm a dad, Zeus corrected.

Demeter said, but but him, Hades?

He's so oh, what?

Would you rather she goes to Poseidon or me?

Ugh, Demeter, you're the gross one now.

How does it feel?

Why does she have to marry any of her uncles?

Demeter's axe flew to the ground, getting lodged in the marble of Olympus.

She could see that Zeus legitimately never considered that.

Hades had come out of the ground and found me on Olympus.

Hades is a little inexperienced.

Not a whole lot of ladies down there.

Not a lot of gentlemen either.

Just shades.

Hmm.

Not even sure if you can date a shade.

Might, uh, might have to try that out.

Anyway, I digress.

He came to me because he was in love with the girl with trim ankles.

Ankles.

Demeter grimaced.

Oh, yeah.

Zeus smirked.

He's an ankles guy.

No judgments.

Everybody's got something.

I have many somethings, as you know.

Anyway, her trim ankles, or delicate, as some public domain translations say, really pulled our boy out of the ground.

So you gave her away.

Zeus held up his hands.

He did no such thing.

He anticipated this conversation, so he made no official ruling, so Demeter couldn't be mad at him.

That that ended up with Hades feeling emboldened to pull her underground, well, that had nothing to do with him.

So why didn't you tell him no?

Demeter asked Zeus.

Zeus said that Hades was Zeus' older brother and also Hades smelled like dead people and Zeus wanted him off Olympus before the stench took root.

Hades is a good kid though.

He'll treat our girl right.

Okay, no, a relationship that begins with kidnapping, that's not treating our girl right.

Make him give her back, Demeter demanded.

Zeus looked at her.

Uh no.

No?

Nope.

Don't want to, not gonna, you can't make me.

No.

Zeus decided to lay out all the arguments in a toddler's inventory with the key difference being that, while he may technically be in the form of a man, this toddler could strike things down with lightning bolts.

So everyone had to do what he said.

Demeter picked her axe up from the marble and slung it over her shoulder.

This wouldn't be the last he heard from her.

Zeus shouted back and said that made sense.

They were literally immortal and co-workers and siblings and exes who had a kid together.

They were bound to run into each other eventually.

Bye.

Zeus laughed.

Whatever.

His sister slash ex-wife was mad at him.

Wasn't the end of the world.

Zeus watched the man collapse on the road.

Parents weeping because they couldn't feed their children.

Everyone really got into agriculture in a big way and, well, it was backfiring hard.

It was kind of the end of the world.

Demeter had powers Zeus couldn't even begin to understand, despite them being kind of obvious if you think about it.

The goddess of the harvest and agriculture could cause the harvest to not yield anything.

She could also command the trees not to bear fruit, the fields not to provide grain, and the vines to keep their grapes.

And humanity was starving.

I mean,

you could just start over, Hermes gestured.

No, that means she wins.

Sure, I could just kill them all, and you know I have zero problems with that.

I kind of like it, but I only like it on my terms.

No, Iris, Zeus shouted, calling over Iris, the messenger of the Olympians, who arrived in a flutter of rainbow.

Deliver a message, Zeus commanded.

Iris nodded.

Demeter, what the heck?

Cut it out.

Gosh, I hate you.

Stop being so uncool.

Stop it.

Now.

Love Zeus.

Dictated but not read.

He waved Iris away and resumed seething.

She was back in barely a moment because, well, the message was bounced back.

Off the door to Demeter's cave hideaway in Eleusius.

She refused delivery.

She wouldn't hear Zeus.

She has to hear me.

Zeus stomped his sandals, but everyone looked to everyone else.

She

kinda didn't.

Okay, can't I just thunderbolt her then?

Hermes said, sure,

but did he know how to speak Ent or whatever got the trees to flower and produce fruit?

Zeus said that he did not.

So what were they going to do?

An extinction is not an option.

Again, Hermes shrugged.

It kinda seemed like a checkmate here.

Demeter got him.

Hermes.

Well, Hermes would go talk to Hades.

Hey, nerd, your girl's gotta go.

Hermes barged through Hades' door.

Hades said he knew it.

The uptick.

His minions were working around the clock trying to keep up with the surge.

He knew that this was a bad idea, that it was unjust.

He knew he shouldn't have gone up there to be like Zeus and abduct a wife.

Oh yeah, great lesson to learn.

If you're a wuss.

Hermes didn't actually believe that.

It was just fun pushing Hades around.

Maybe you don't kidnap the daughter of the woman who can starve the earth.

You to give her back, though, and apologize.

Well, as long as she didn't eat anything.

She didn't eat anything, right?

Hades said no, of course not.

Now, unrelated, he was just going to go talk to one of his gardeners who apparently had some urgent news for him when he heard that sentence.

Like he said, probably unrelated to Persephone eating anything in the underworld.

Nothing to worry about.

Go ahead and take her on your fancy chariot.

It was Persephone's homecoming on Olympus.

The trees all around the world were coming into bloom.

A massive famine was still taking place because food doesn't just grow instantly.

Everyone starving to death could take solace that next year's harvest would be amazing, though.

But now, Persephone was home.

Demeter's long quest to bring her back was over.

As Hermes' chariot pulled up, Demeter saw the beautiful face of her daughter and the stowaway, a man clinging to the back of the chariot, a gardener.

The man hit the marble of Olympus and rolled before righting himself and throwing himself in between mother and daughter.

I bear witness, Ascalophus screeched, waving his arms frantically and then

Wow, oh my gosh, the air smelled so nice up here.

And what that was the sun?

That's amazing.

It's got to be way easier to be a gardener up here than the literal underworld.

Zeus's threat crackled in his hand as he told the man to bear witness to whatever he was going to say, or Zeus would send him back to the underworld one way or another.

The man pointed over his shoulder to Persephone and then turned to face her.

She ate something.

Hades thought she didn't, but she ate a few pomegranate seeds.

And he was telling.

Demeter's face grew grim.

No.

Persephone asked what?

It was just a few seeds.

She was hungry.

Demeter sighed.

It was it it was enough for her to have to stay in the underworld.

Around the world, trees began to wither.

Zeus leapt to his feet in protest, but Persephone had an idea.

She was up there now, though, right?

What if she stayed only part of the year?

That was the deal, right?

That she couldn't be up here permanently.

Demeter let it all soak in.

It made sense, she guessed.

Zeus shrugged.

Yeah, that tracked.

She would be Persephone, the queen of Tartarus.

Can everything please go back to normal now?

So, Persephone would return to the underworld for three months out of the year to spend time with her not-atall consensual husband, Hades.

During that time, thinking about what her daughter was going through and having to spend time in that place with him, Demeter couldn't bring herself to allow things to grow on Earth, for things to be beautiful and green.

This new event happened that was called winter.

It was cold and dismal, but they were in central Greece, so for them it really wasn't even that bad.

The years went by like this, and even though Demeter hated missing her daughter and hated that her brothers could just act unilaterally to take whatever mattered most to her, she and Demeter could live with this situation.

But then, a problem, a new problem.

Hades

well, it turns out that Hades had an ex-girlfriend.

Who are you texting?

Demeter asked.

The beautiful Naiad, the nymph, dangled her feet in the Cocitus River.

Mynth, the nymph, looked up from her phone.

Sorry, what did the old lady say?

Demeter smirked.

The nymph was right.

Demeter was old.

She was old enough to know how the world worked.

There was no perfect, ideal life.

Only the one you had.

Disappointment was endemic.

People let you down.

Happiness and sorrow moves in a cycle.

Death gives way to rebirth like the winter gives way to spring.

Ugh, I hate winter.

The young woman still wasn't looking up from her phone.

Demeter sighed, yeah.

Yeah, so did she.

More than anyone would ever know.

But you find people you love and you hold on to them.

You do anything for them.

The nymph looked up.

Sorry, she wasn't listening.

Could the old lady start from the beginning, but somewhere else, somewhere not here?

Thanks.

You think he loves you?

Demeter asked.

The nymph narrowed her eyes.

What did this strange old woman know about who the nymph was texting?

He's married, you know, Demeter said, walking closer to Minthe.

Minthe smiled.

Yeah,

she's gone like nine months out of the year.

It gets cold and lonely down there.

You've been talking about how he's going to leave her for you, Demeter grimaced.

How you're more beautiful.

That's not gonna happen, because you...

well,

you are not going to leave this riverbank.

The young woman's eyes widened, but Demeter's foot found her ankle with a crunch.

Minthe screamed out, but there was no one around to hear her.

Demeter picked up a stick, a club.

Minthe asked why Hades was the one who was cheating.

Why punish her?

Demeter nodded.

Yeah,

she had wanted to hold Hades to account, tried to, but she couldn't.

All she wanted was her daughter's happiness.

And while she couldn't keep Hades' eyes from wandering, she could remove the temptation.

If her daughter had to go to the underworld, three months out of the year, she wouldn't sit embarrassed, as Hades took up with another queen.

Demeter said she was sorry it had come to this.

If it was any consolation, she would have much preferred Minthe to be with Hades than her daughter.

Uh, it's really not, Minthe cried out, before catching a club to the head.

She fought more than Demeter thought she would, but Demeter made good in her promise and ground the nymph into the dirt.

She trampled Minthe with her feet.

The daughter of Rhea and Cronus, the mother of Persephone, and the sister of Zeus, left Minthe where she lay, but not before seeing that she had an unread message from Hades.

Oops, guess she was gonna ghost him.

Demeter looked back to the body of Menthe and saw a small, weak herb growing from it.

Demeter plucked it and rubbed it between her fingers.

Hmm.

Yeah, nice of you to show, Zeus said at the meeting of the Olympians.

The round forum at the peak of Olympus, where everyone sat on their thrones.

And then Zeus sniffed the air.

That's nice.

Fresh, vibrant scent.

Where'd she come up with that?

Demeter said that she, well, she had to take care of a problem.

Something for her daughter.

It was settled, though, now.

Oh, okay,

I don't care, actually.

We have a lot of problems, Zeus said, both with the humans and us.

Trojan War, why are you guys taking part in it?

He was reminded about the episode with his other daughter, Eris, where she she threw a golden apple at a wedding to which she hadn't been invited and sparked a massive world-spanning war.

He went down the list as to who was supporting who, and then came to his older sister.

Alright, what about you, Demeter?

Zeus asked her.

Demeter said, War, peace, life, death.

It all came and went.

The earth, the seasons, didn't care for humans.

They were here before humans.

They will be here after humans.

It wasn't good.

It wasn't bad.

It just was.

Okay, crushing nihilism.

Cool.

I'll put you down as neutral.

There is more to Demeter's story, but this feels like a good place to end it.

Mainly because this episode's long already, but also because it never really ends.

I like Demeter's somewhat depressing arc of going from a peaceful outsider to the system that her siblings operate in, to so opposed to it that she would put humanity in jeopardy, to finally, because she wants to look after her daughter in the only way she now can, violently reinforcing the status quo.

And that is the origin of Mint, in case you were wondering, though it does vary between who was the one who crushed Minte, Demeter or Persephone.

Next week, it's something of a spiritual prequel to The Little Mermaid with the bizarre and violent love story that inspired the creation of the famous Cryptid.

If you'd like to support the show, there's still a membership thing on the site.

For less than the price of a mullet headband, a headband that will give you a mullet, you can get extra episodes and ad-free versions of the show that won't make you weirdly trendy in 2023.

I don't get it, but I guess the mullets are making a comeback.

Anyway, check out mythpodcast.com slash membership for more info on the membership.

The creature this time is the Yatebeo, from the folklore of people who have traveled Central and South America in the 1800s.

From poison ivy to hemlock to broccoli's horrible taste, toxic plants aren't anything new.

But what if a plant took it one step further?

Well, even plants that consume things aren't all that notable.

What with Venus flytraps and pitcher plants?

But what if a plant wasn't content with hunting insects?

What if a plant wanted people?

First catalogued in an 1874 book containing unspecified sources, saying that they saw this plant, the Atebeo, alternatively called the Brazilian devil tree, the Brazilian monkey trap tree, the Mexican snake tree, and the Nicaraguan dog-devouring tree, The tree looks like, quote, many huge serpents in angry discussion, you know, as serpents do.

If you chance upon upon a tree that looks like angry snakes swaying back and forth, I can't think of a possible reason to get close enough to that thing for it to touch you.

That being said, if you do, it's already too late.

It's very poisonous, it's covered in vicious spines to the point that it's been compared to the equally mythical medieval torture device, the Iron Maiden, and well, according to the first reports of this plant, it is, quote, a gore-loving creature, and it will wring you out like an old dish rag, drinking up your blood.

The creature will toss the dry human carcasses to the side, so even more reason to avoid this plant.

You know, the giant swaying plant that looks like pointy snakes surrounded by desiccated corpses.

The plant is known to Spanish speakers as yatebeo, which translates to, I already see you.

Not sure how that applies, given that the tree doesn't really have eyes.

One place says its hissing sound sounds like the Spanish phrase, but to me that makes even less sense.

I'm not sure how that would really sound.

The original writing about this plant remarks that it's pretty amazing that the field of botany had completely missed the yatebeo when so many trustworthy European and American explorers had seen it firsthand.

Yes, a truly puzzling question.

I wonder what the answer could be.

That's it for this time.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Wiser.

Our theme song is is by Broke for Free.

And the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Combs.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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