Introduction 17

OKEANOS

EUROPE

Euxine
rak of

Sea
les
Heillars

ASIA
P

LIBYA
Nile

OKEANOS
Figure 1.2. View of the Earth from Above.

The center of the earths surface lies precisely in Apollons holy sanctuary at
Delphi, where a conical stone called the navel (omphalos) marked the spot. Its
location was ascertained by Zeus. Wishing to learn where the exact center of the
earth lay, he once arranged for two birds to fly due inland, one from the eastern
end of the earth and another from the western. The two birds met over Delphi,
in commemoration of which the navel stone as well as the figures of two birds
were set up.28 So the center of the earth lies in Greece. Just as the Greeks con-
ception of the three- or four-tiered universe is anthropocentric, their conception
of the surface of the earth is Hellenocentric. Humans live on the middle floor of
the cosmic house, and Greeks live in the center of the middle floor.
Not surprisingly, most events in classical mythology take place in Greece,
which consists in story as it did in reality of small, independent communities
situated amid stretches of uncultivated land. The geography of myths and leg-
18 Handbook of Classical Mythology

ends is much like that of European folktales: if you set out in any direction, you
will pass through a sort of no-mans-land and presently find yourself in a neigh-
boring kingdom, where happily the local language is the same as your own.
Each community is a little cosmos surrounded by a wilderness, just as each
household is a still smaller cosmos within the town, each cosmos being a place
of relative safety and order and predictability surrounded by a region of uncer-
taintybut also of excitement.
The excitement that awaits in the wilderness offers opportunity and also
danger. For one thing, the wilderness is a sexually charged place, the country-
side and mountains being home to nubile nymphs of different sorts, divinities
who, as their name implies (nymph = maiden of marriageable age), are sexu-
ally ripe, and many nymphs do indulge in sexual activity with abandon, dancing
and frolicking with satyrs and rural gods. The maiden huntress Artemis roams
the mountains, sometimes in the company of like-minded nymphs, a band of
athletic, man-avoiding females. On one occasion the god Zeus was attracted to
one of the chaste nymphs in Artemiss band, Kallisto; taking the form of
Artemis herself, he embraced her, reassumed his male form, and ravished her.29
On another occasion, the youth Aktaion, hunting in the countryside with his
dogs, came by chance upon Artemis and her nymphs as they bathed. The indig-
nant goddess transformed him into a stag, whereupon his own hounds tore him
apart. So the lands outside of human settlements amount to an extensive play-
ground of unregulated sexual opportunity and adventure (Forbes Irving 1990,
8286). Sexuality is free but also potentially dangerous.
At the same time, the wilderness is home to highwaymen and monsters. A
traveler may encounter robbers lying in wait for persons who are making their
way to a particular city or shrine. Different badmen, for example, prey upon
gods and pilgrims who journey to Delphi (Fontenrose 1959, 2245). Sometimes
they are not so much robbers as bizarrely evil characters, each with a special
trick, who challenge passersby for their lives. The youthful Theseus met several
predators of this sort as he traveled from Troizen to Athens. One was Sinis the
Pine-Tree Bender, who lived at the Isthmus of Corinth. He forced travelers to
bend pine trees down to the ground and hold them there; persons who were too
weak to hold them down were thrown into the air and perished. Theseus, of
course, treated Sinis to his own medicine.
Other sites are the dwelling places of individual monsters. A god wishing to
establish his cult or a hero wishing to found a city often encounters danger at
the site in the form of a hostile creature, whom he must slay before he can con-
struct his sanctuary or city. The god Apollon must overcome the dragon Python
before he can establish a temple for himself at Delphi, and the hero Kadmos is
similarly obliged to slay a resident dragon before he can found the city of