In late 2020, towards the end of my work on my compendium of Greek myths, I was editing my version of the story of Phaethon. The source is Ovid’s famous epic poem about transformations, Metamorphoses. Phaethon is the son of the sun-god Helios, who drives his blazing chariot across the sky every day. But Phaethon has never met his father. Instead, he lives with his mother in obscurity, and his friends are scornful of his claim to be a god’s son. Eventually, Phaethon goes in search of Helios, who, when they at last meet, promises the boy a gift—anything he wants. “I want to drive your chariot across the sky, just for one day,” says Phaethon. Helios is horrified, and tries to persuade Phaethon to take the request back in vain.
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It is a disaster, of course. A mere boy, he has no chance of controlling the sun-god’s horses. The chariot veers wildly towards the Earth. Crops blacken, rivers dry up, mountains burn, people go hungry. In the end, it is Gaia—the age-old goddess of the Earth herself—who, parched and weary, calls out in distress. The king of the gods, Zeus, hears her, and sends a thunderbolt to kill the boy and arrest his journey.
At the time, I didn’t have to strain to imagine what the poet was describing: all I had to do was to look at news reports from California, where the sky was stained orange and black with the flames and smoke of wildfires.
The particular quality of myths is their ability to send us signals from an unfathomably deep past. But these signals are there to be read in our present, in our moment; and every moment’s reading is different. The Phaethon story has long been read as a fable about youthful arrogance and folly. When I first read it, many years ago, I interpreted it as about a son who is desperate for an absent father’s love. More recently, though, it’s seemed to me inescapably obvious that it asks to be read through an ecological lens: as about a human who is so caught up in his own petty desires…
Source : time
