According to Ovid’s famous epic poem Metamorphosis, Phaedon is the son of Helios the sun god, who drives his blazing chariot across the sky every day. But Phaedon had never met his father. Instead, he lives with his mother in obscurity and his friends are scornful of his claim to be the god’s son.
Eventually, Phaedon
goes in search of Helios, who when they meet promises his son any gift he
really desires. “I want to drive your
chariot across the sky, just for one day,” said Phaedon. Helios is horrified and tries to persuade
Phaedon to take back his request, but in vain.
It is a disaster, of course, a mere boy has no chance of
controlling the Sun God's horses. The chariot went wildly towards the earth, crops
were burnt, rivers and lakes dried up and people went hungry. In the end, it was Gaia, the very old goddess of Earth herself who parched and weary called out in distress. Then Zeus heard her and sent a thunderbolt to kill the boy and stop his journey. At that time it was difficult to imagine what Ovid was describing.
The practical quality of myths is their ability to send us signals from the past. But these signals are there to be read at the present time and every time is different. Phaedon's myth has been read as a fable about youthful arrogance and folly. It shows the desperate search of a son for his missing father's love.
More recently, it seems obvious that a human who is caught up in his petty desires is so blind to the appalling environmental damage he is causing.
The tragedy of the myth is that Phaedon's desperation and his sense of loss and injustice are very comprehensible, so intensely human, but he is trapped in the smallness of his preview. And it is that inability to see more widely and to understand consequences that are so horrifying.
PLEASE DO BE VACCINATED AGAINST COCVID - 19 SO THAT YOUR BELOVED FAMILIES, FRIENDS, THE WORLD, AND YOU REMAIN HEALTHY AND SAFE DESPITE THE PANIC OVER THE OMICRON AND DELTA VARIANTS.
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