Ixion

And if you've listened to our earlier episode this season about centaurs, you will know that Nephele was created by Zeus out of clouds to be a replica of Hera.

Mainly it was to trick this guy named Ixion who j- anyway, just go listen to that episode for the full story.

But Nephele continued to be alive even after this prank Zeus pulled was done.

And can you imagine your whole existence being a prank? Like, what are you supposed to do with your life after the punchline, you know? So Nephele learned to be a person and actually learned how to take care of herself.

Never yet have I been so overpowered by passion, neither for goddess nor mortal woman, as I am at this moment for yourself.

Not even when I was in love with the wife of Ixion, who bore me Perithous, peer of gods in council.

Nor yet with Danae, the daintily ankled daughter of Acrius, who bore me the famed hero Perseus.

Then there was the daughter of Phoenix, who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthus.

It is from his name that we get our own word tantalized for exactly this kind of endless and impossible temptation, always visible and never once attainable.

Ixion, a mortal king who had dared to pursue Hera herself, was bound forever afterward to a wheel of fire that spun without pause through the sky, a punishment recorded most fully by the poet Pindar, and a fate from which there was no possibility of ever being released.

The fifty daughters of Danaus suffered a punishment of their own, one rooted in a story that began generations earlier, with a woman named Eo, a priestess loved by Zeus himself, who, to hide the affair from a suspicious Hera, transformed her into a white heifer, only for Hera to demand the animal as a gift and set the hundred-eyed giant Argus to watch over her day and night, since Argus could sleep with some of his eyes still open and never lose sight of her.

Zeus sent Hermes to free her, and the god lulled every one of Argus' hundred eyes to sleep with a long, quiet story, before finally killing him, an act Hera honored afterward by taking the giant's many eyes and setting them into the tail of her own sacred bird, the peacock.

Playing his lyre as he went, his music was said to move even Charon, that grim and otherwise unmoving ferryman, to let him cross the river Styx without argument, and to briefly calm Cerberus himself, whose three heads for once fell silent and still as Orpheus passed by unharmed between them.

When he finally reached Hades and Persephone themselves, seated together on their dark thrones, His song moved even them to tears, an almost unheard-of thing in that silent and unfeeling realm.

And it is said that even the wheel of Ixion stopped turning for a moment, and Tantalus, for once, forgot his own endless thirst entirely to listen.

Hades agreed at last to release Eurydice back into the world above, on a single unbreakable condition.

Tantalus heard the music and ceased to strive for a drop of the forbidden water.

Ixion rested a moment beside his ever-revolving wheel, and Sisyphus stood listening while the rock which he must roll through all eternity fell from his wearied arms.

The daughters of Danaus lay down their urns beside the sieve into which they were forever pouring water, and as the mournful wailing of Orpheus's lyre told the story of his lost love, they wept then for a sorrow not their own.

So plaintive indeed was the music that all the shadowy forms that flitted endlessly by shed tears of sympathy for the player's grief, and even the cheeks of the Furies were wet.

Beyond Sisyphus lies Tityus, a giant whose huge body covers nine acres of ground.

He was condemned to the blackness of Tartarus because he dared to affront a goddess with his addresses, and so was doomed to suffer, like Prometheus, by being chained to a rock while a vulture tears at his liver.

Near him is Ixion, who was promised the hand of a certain maiden in marriage, on condition that he would give her father a large sum of money.

Ixion agreed, but when the maiden became his wife he refused to give the stipulated sum, in spite of her father's clamorous demands.

Never yet have I been so overpowered by passion, neither for goddess nor mortal woman, as I am at this moment for yourself.

Not even when I was in love with the wife of Ixion, who bore me Pirithous, peer of gods in council, nor yet with Danae, the daintily ankled daughter of Acrisius, who bore me the famed hero Perseus.

Then there was the daughter of Phoenix, who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthus.

There was Semele and Alcmene in Thebes, by whom I begot my lion-hearted son, Hercules, while Semele became mother to Bacchus, the comforter of mankind.

Tantalus heard the music and ceased to strive for a drop of the forbidden water.

Ixion rested a moment beside his ever-revolving wheel, and Sisyphus stood listening while the rock, which he must roll through all eternity, fell from his wearied arms.

The daughters of Danaus lay down their urns beside the sieve into which they were forever pouring water, and as the mournful wailing of Orpheus's lyre told the story of his lost love, they wept then for a sorrow not their own.

So plaintive indeed was the music that all the shadowy forms that flitted endlessly by shed tears of sympathy for the player's grief, and even the cheeks of the Furies were wet.

Beyond Sisyphus lies Tityus, a giant whose huge body covers nine acres of ground.

He was condemned to the blackness of Tartarus because he dared to affront a goddess with his addresses, and so was doomed to suffer, like Prometheus, by being chained to a rock while a vulture tears at his liver.

Near him is Ixion, who was promised the hand of a certain maiden in marriage on condition that he would give her father a large sum of money.

Ixion agreed, but when the maiden became his wife he refused to give the stipulated sum, in spite of her father's clamorous demands.

Anyway, thankfully, for right now, we're just gonna stick with centaurs.

The majority of the centaurs that were in the world were descended from Ixion, one of the few mortals who managed to talk their way onto Mount Olympus.

Now, King Ixion wasn't exactly a nice guy.

Ixion murdered his own father-in-law and was therefore shunned by both humans and gods.

Okay, he was definitely not a nice guy, but he prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed to Zeus and somehow was granted forgiveness from the king of the gods, probably because Zeus was flattered.

He could never resist a good compliment, you know? Eventually, Zeus even invited Ixion up to Mount Olympus to dine with the Olympians.

So you would think that Ixion would be aware that he had gotten really lucky, and he would be on his best behavior, right? Well, Ixion wasn't that kinda guy.

While he was on Olympus, Ixion fell madly in love with a beautiful goddess.