Greek Mythology is the Beatles

On Creativity (Not) Springing from the Head of Zeus

I think we can all agree that the Beatles, the music group led by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, is a creative phenomenon that has rarely been seen in history.

But did their music spring out of the head of Paul and John, like Athena from the head of Zeus?

Oh, definitely not.

It’s a big tradition in music, especially rock n’ roll, to trace the influences that led musicians to fashion and polish their own unique voice and sound.

Image from WIkimedia Commons

And for the Beatles, the influence was undoubtedly Black R&B.

Lennon is quoted (click on this, a very good article) as saying, “I'll never stop acknowledging it: Black music is my life."

Is it taking away from the brilliance of the Beatles to say that they were influenced by earlier creativity in music?

Not at all.

This is a clip from the movie Diner (1982), which I absolutely adore, partly because of the brilliance of the performance of Ellen Barkin as Beth. The young married couple in the clip are arguing over the husband’s music collection. Note what Shrevie (Daniel Stern), who is an early form of a music hipster, says:

Every one of my records means something. The labels, the producers. The year it was made. Who was copying whose style. Who was expanding on that.

I’m like Shrevie with Greek mythology, interested in who was copying whose style and who was expanding on that.

But I’m in the minority.

A lot of people think that Greek mythology sort of spontaneously sprung out of the brains of Greek poets.

But it isn’t taking away from the genius of Greeks storytellers to acknowledge that other cultures had a huge influence on what ended up being a worldwide phenomenon.

Just like it doesn’t take away from the genius of Lennon and McCartney to celebrate what inspired them.

Greek poets knew this, because it became a tradition among them to give credit to the Muses, the goddesses of inspiration, for their stories.

Hesiod, who tells the story of Athena’s birth from Zeus’s head, is well within the Muse tradition.

And his tale is well worth reviewing, as a parable of how creativity works.

Once upon a time, there was a goddess named Metis (MAY-tiss).

Metis was the goddess of cunning intelligence. This type of intelligence, to ancient Greeks, was the kind of cleverness that you needed to get along in the world. The people with metis were not just smart. They didn’t just know things. They couldn’t just recite their times tables.

People with metis were schemers, people who figured things out.

Educators call it critical thinking, but it was a bit more than that. It also might involve trickery, misdirection, or outright lying, depending on the kind of metis involved.

And yes, there was more than one kind of metis. Poikilometis could be translated as “variegated metis,” or the kind of flexible, improvisatory metis you need to get out of scrapes.

Then there’s ankulometis, which is “crooked metis,” or the kind that involves brewing up sinister plots that lead to others’ downfall.

One of the hero Odysseus’s major characteristics was his metis, his ability to think himself out of harm’s way.

Basically, creativity.

That’s metis.

So Metis was a goddess who knew a thing or two about cunning intelligence.

And according to Hesiod, before Zeus married Hera, he had a relationship with Metis.

Now Zeus, king of the gods, made Metis his wife first, most knowledgeable among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to bring forth the goddess bright-eyed Athena, Zeus craftily deceived her with seductive words and put her in his own belly, as Earth and starry Heaven advised. For they advised him so, to the end that no other should hold royal sway over the eternal gods in place of Zeus; for very wise children were destined to be born of her, first the maiden bright-eyed Athena, equal to her father in strength and in thoughtful counsel; but afterwards Metis was to bear a son of overbearing spirit, king of gods and men. But Zeus put her into his own belly first, that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil.

(translation from here, with a few changes)

This passage is just chock-full of words having to do with intelligence, creativity, deception, smarts.

The phrase translated as ”seductive words” is a literal translation of haimuloisi logoisi, where logos can mean “a clever word” or “story.” The “craftily deceiving” part comes from the root word apatē, which means trick, fraud, deceit, or wiles.

So Zeus has some native smarts.

But when he swallows Metis, he literally adds cunning intelligence to his bag of tricks, which the poet explains in the last line, “that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil,” with the word for “devise” being a derivative of phrazdo, which means in general to do some thinking and considering.

The “very wise” children to come from Metis are periphron, which we can loosely translate as “always on the lookout.”

But Zeus forestalled getting overthrown by his own “very wise” children by swallowing Metis and thereby stopping her from giving birth to them.

Metis’s creativity is usurped by Zeus.

Athena, for her part, is often thought of as the goddess of wisdom, which is sort of on the right track. In the passage above, she is equal to her father in strength and “thoughtful counsel,” or (we might say) creative problem solving.

So Athena coming from Zeus’s head is another vivid metaphor for the idea that he is solely responsible for bringing to light the wisest goddess of the Olympians. But adding the whole preamble with Metis her mother being swallowed by Zeus gives a different picture.

The wonderfully wise, creative problem-solver Athena is actually a collaboration of Metis and Zeus, and, like John Lennon using and modifying Black R&B for his purposes, Zeus’s advantage is in having Metis at his disposal, in his control.

Kudos to Hesiod for explaining Zeus’s inspiration. I believe this is another way that Hesiod acknowledges that he himself didn’t get his tales strictly from his own head, but had inspiration from elsewhere.

Where does the Metis and Athena story come from? More research on my part is needed on that, but I love this picture of the birth of Athena, which is done in the style of West Asian art.

Cover taken from Princeton University Press website.

Pretty odd, isn’t it? Stay tuned for more.