Gods in Love I

Greek Gods were humans with miraculous powers – and they used them to the full to seek love and escape it’s consequences. Among the characters in this first volume are a shepherd granted immortality to make love to the moon, a princess ravished by a clinging vine, a queen made pregnant by a bull, a dying lover turned into a flower and a nymph transformed into a constellation. Sometimes love goes unrequited: ayoung man dies because he cannot kiss his own reflection and a reluctant nymph becomes a tree. The ancient gods are gone, their temples long in ruins – yet their miracles of love live on.

Excerpt from the book:
Knowing for certain where her steps will lead, Pasiphae strides proudly through the fields and orchards of her kingdom. She is dressed as if to receive some person of importance: a long gown that leaves her breasts uncovered, its skirt shaped like a lily and dyed the deepest turquoise, and its scant top crocus-yellow. She wears a conical hat of the same shade as her skirt and is decked in precious jewels of coral and amber. Her scarlet sandals, of the softest leather, are dyed with cochineal. Against the fresh green of the pastureland she seems too vivid to be real.
The whole of her being is possessed by love, a love that glitters fiercely in her eyes. And these eyes, meticulously outlined with blacklamp and dark blue, stand out from a great distance. Her haste and her desire have surely no connection with her husband.
Her figure recedes as she leaves the fields behind and goes down to the shore, where her turquoise figure becomes one with the open sea. The words of Aphrodite are ringing in her ears: ‘He is coming. You will see him now’. And sure enough, the depths of the sea begin to boil with foam, and from that foam, majestic and slow-paced, a jet-black bull now looms, as splendid as a god. Pasiphae is certain – she knows from Aphrodite: this bull is none other than Poseidon.(…)

Photini Stephanidi