Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths

Throughout Evslin’s collection, gods and mortals both show themselves capable of extreme emotions and actions that lead to tragic outcomes, while moderation and restraint are portrayed as sources of success and happiness.

Gods’ extreme emotions and responses repeatedly lead to tragic outcomes. Demeter’s extreme despair leads to an innocent child’s death. Apollo’s jealousy provokes him to engineer Marsyas’s brutal death. Artemis punishes Actaeon with death for a mistake. Aphrodite torments Psyche because she is beautiful. Prometheus cannot resist bringing fire to men, against Zeus’s explicit command, with devastating consequences. And the gods create Pandora to deliver grief to men, causing human suffering on a large scale.

Except in the case of Prometheus, who disobeys Zeus, each of these cases involves an innocent mortal (or all of humanity) suffering because of something they could not have known about or controlled. Men do not ask Prometheus for fire, and Pandora has no choice in the gifts she receives. The child Demeter turns into a lizard does not understand that the goddess has lost her daughter. Marsyas and Psyche cannot help being talented and beautiful. Actaeon is not spying on Artemis but accidentally stumbles onto the scene where she is bathing.