A Book of Myths
sky from whence fierce heat beat down upon his golden head.
"Behold, my father drives his chariot across the heavens!" he proudly
proclaimed. "In a little while I, also, will drive the four snow-white
steeds."
His elders heard the childish boast with a smile, but when Epaphos,
half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it many times and beheld the
child, Phaeton, grow into an arrogant lad who held himself as though
he were indeed one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day
he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:
"Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art
thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy
sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the
vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet."
For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was stricken into
silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young voice shaking with rage
and with bitter shame, he cried aloud: "Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. I
have but to ask my father, and thou shalt see me drive his golden
chariot across the sky."
To his mother he hastened, to get balm for his hurt pride, as many a
time he had got it for the little bodily wounds of childhood, and with
bursting heart he poured forth his story.
"True it is," he said, "that my father has never deigned to speak to
me. Yet I know, because thou hast told me so, that he is my sire. And
now my word is pledged. Apollo must let me drive his steeds, else I am
for evermore branded braggart and liar, and shamed amongst men."
Clymene listened with grief to his complaint. He was so young, so
gallant, so foolish.
"Truly thou art the son of Apollo," she said, "and oh, son of my
heart, thy beauty is his, and thy pride the pride of a son of the
gods. Yet only partly a god art thou, and though thy proud courage
would dare all things, it were mad folly to think of doing what a god
alone can do."
But at last she said to him, "Naught that I can say is of any avail.
Go, seek thy father, and ask him what thou wilt." Then she told him
how he might find the place in the east where Apollo rested ere the
labours of the day began, and with eager gladness Phaeton set out upon
his journey. A long way he travelled, with never a stop, yet when the
glittering dome and jewelled turrets and minarets of the Palace of the
Sun came into view, he forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep
ascent to the home of his father.
Phoebus Apollo, clad in purple that glowed like the radiance of a
cloud in the sunset sky, sat upon his golden throne. The Day, the
Month, and the Year stood by him, and beside them were the Hours.
Spring was there, her head wreathed with flowers; Summer, crowned with
ripened grain; Autumn, with his feet empurpled by the juice of the
grapes; and Winter, with hair all white and stiff with hoar-frost. And
when Phaeton walked up the golden steps that led to his father's
throne, it seemed as though incarnate Youth had come to join the court
of the god of the Sun, and that Youth was so beautiful a thing that it
must surely live forever. Proudly did Apollo know him for his son, and
when the boy looked in his eyes with the arrogant fearlessness of
boyhood, the god greeted him kindly and asked him to tell him why he
came, and what was his petition.
As to Clymene, so also to Apollo, Phaeton told his tale, and his
father listened, half in pride and amusement, half in puzzled
vexation. When the boy stopped, and then breathlessly, with shining
eyes and flushed cheeks, ended up his story with: "And, O light of the
boundless world, if I am indeed thy son, let it be as I have said, and
for one day only let me drive thy chariot across the heavens!" Apollo
shook his head and answered very gravely:
"In truth thou art my dear son," he said, "and by the dreadful Styx,
the river of the dead, I swear that I will give thee any gift that
thou dost name and that will give proof that thy father is the
immortal Apollo. But never to thee nor to any other, be he mortal or
immortal, shall I grant the boon of driving my chariot."
But the boy pled on:
"I am shamed for ever, my father," he said. "Surely thou wouldst not
have son of thine proved liar and braggart?"
"Not even the gods themselves can do this thing," answered Apollo.
"Nay, not even the almighty Zeus. None but I, Phoebus Apollo, may
drive the flaming chariot of the sun, for the way is beset with
dangers and none know it but I."
"Only tell me the way, my father!" cried Phaeton. "So soon I could
learn."
Half in sadness, Apollo smiled.
"The first part of the way is uphill," he said. "So steep it is that
only very slowly can my horses climb it. High in the heavens is the
middle, so high that even I grow dizzy when I look down upon the earth
and the sea. And the last piece of the way is a precipice that rushes
so steeply downward that my hands can scarce check the mad rush of my
galloping horses. And all the while, the heaven is spinning round, and
the stars with it. By the horns of the Bull I have to drive, past the
Archer whose bow is taut and ready to slay, close to where the
Scorpion stretches out its arms and the great Crab's claws grope for a
prey...."
"I fear none of these things, oh my father!" cried Phaeton. "Grant
that for one day only I drive thy white-maned steeds!"
Very pitifully Apollo looked at him, and for a little space he was
silent.
"The little human hands," he said at length, "the little human
frame!--and with them the soul of a god. The pity of it, my son. Dost
not know that the boon that thou dost crave from me is Death?"
"Rather Death than Dishonour," said Phaeton, and proudly he added,
"For once would I drive like the god, my father. I have no fear."
So was Apollo vanquished, and Phaeton gained his heart's desire.
From the courtyard of the Palace the four white horses were led, and
they pawed the air and neighed aloud in the glory of their strength.
They drew the chariot whose axle and pole and wheels were of gold,
with spokes of silver, while inside were rows of diamonds and of
chrysolites that gave dazzling reflection of the sun. Then Apollo
anointed the face of Phaeton with a powerful essence that might keep
him from being smitten by the flames, and upon his head he placed the
rays of the sun. And then the stars went away, even to the Daystar
that went last of all, and, at Apollo's signal, Aurora, the
rosy-fingered, threw open the purple gates of the east, and Phaeton
saw a path of pale rose-colour open before him.
With a cry of exultation, the boy leapt into the chariot and laid hold
of the golden reins. Barely did he hear Apollo's parting words: "Hold
fast the reins, and spare the whip. All thy strength will be wanted to
hold the horses in. Go not too high nor too low. The middle course is
safest and best. Follow, if thou canst, in the old tracks of my
chariot wheels!" His glad voice of thanks for the godlike boon rang
back to where Apollo stood and watched him vanishing into the dawn
that still was soft in hue as the feathers on the breast of a dove.
Uphill at first the white steeds made their way, and the fire from
their nostrils tinged with flame-colour the dark clouds that hung over
the land and the sea. With rapture, Phaeton felt that truly he was the
son of a god, and that at length he was enjoying his heritage. The day
for which, through all his short life, he had longed, had come at
last. He was driving the chariot whose progress even now was awaking
the sleeping earth. The radiance from its wheels and from the rays he
wore round his head was painting the clouds, and he laughed aloud in
rapture as he saw, far down below, the sea and the rivers he had
bathed in as a human boy, mirroring the green and rose and purple, and
gold and silver, and fierce crimson, that he, Phaeton, was placing in
the sky. The grey mist rolled from the mountain tops at his desire.
The white fog rolled up from the valleys. All living things awoke; the
flowers opened their petals; the grain grew golden; the fruit grew
ripe. Could but Epaphos see him now! Surely he must see him, and
realise that not Apollo but Phaeton was guiding the horses of his
father, driving the chariot of the Sun.
Quicker and yet more quick grew the pace of the white-maned steeds.
Soon they left the morning breezes behind, and very soon they knew
that these were not the hands of the god, their master, that held the
golden reins. Like an air-ship without its accustomed ballast, the
chariot rolled unsteadily, and not only the boy's light weight but his
light hold on their bridles made them grow mad with a lust for speed.
The white foam flew from their mouths like the spume from the giant
waves of a furious sea, and their pace was swift as that of a bolt
that is cast by the arm of Zeus.
Yet Phaeton had no fear, and when they heard him shout in rapture,
"Quicker still, brave ones! more swiftly still!" it made them speed
onwards, madly, blindly, with the headlong rush of a storm. There was
no hope for them to keep on the beaten track, and soon Phaeton had his
rapture checked by the terrible realisation that they had strayed far
out of the course and that his hands were not strong enough to guide
them. Close to the Great Bear and the Little Bear they passed, and
these were scorched with heat. The Serpent which, torpid, chilly and
harmless, lies coiled round the North Pole, felt a warmth that made it
grow fierce and harmful again. Downward, ever downward galloped the
maddened horses, and soon Phaeton saw the sea as a shield of molten
brass, and the earth so near that all things on it were visible. When
they passed the Scorpion and only just missed destruction from its
menacing fangs, fear entered into the boy's heart. His mother had
spoken truth. He was only partly a god, and he was very, very young.
In impotent horror he tugged at the reins to try to check the horses'
descent, then, forgetful of Apollo's warning, he smote them angrily.
But anger met anger, and the fury of the immortal steeds had scorn
for the wrath of a mortal boy. With a great toss of their mighty heads
they had torn the guiding reins from his grasp, and as he stood,
giddily swaying from side to side, Phaeton knew that the boon he had
craved from his father must in truth be death for him.
And, lo, it was a hideous death, for with eyes that were like flames
that burned his brain, the boy beheld the terrible havoc that his
pride had wrought. That blazing chariot of the Sun made the clouds
smoke, and dried up all the rivers and water-springs. Fire burst from
the mountain tops, great cities were destroyed. The beauty of the
earth was ravished, woods and meadows and all green and pleasant
places were laid waste. The harvests perished, the flocks and they who
had herded them lay dead. Over Libya the horses took him, and the
desert of Libya remains a barren wilderness to this day, while those
sturdy Ethiopians who survived are black even now as a consequence of
that cruel heat. The Nile changed its course in order to escape, and
nymphs and nereids in terror sought for the sanctuary of some watery
place that had escaped destruction. The face of the burned and
blackened earth, where the bodies of thousands of human beings lay
charred to ashes, cracked and sent dismay to Pluto by the lurid light
that penetrated even to his throne.
All this Phaeton saw, saw in impotent agony of soul. His boyish folly
and pride had been great, but the excruciating anguish that made him
shed tears of blood, was indeed a punishment even too heavy for an
erring god.
From the havoc around her, the Earth at last looked up, and with
blackened face and blinded eyes, and in a voice that was harsh and
very, very weary, she called to Zeus to look down from Olympus and