Page 34 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

1.1 Phaethon, from the series The Four Disgracers (1588) by Hendrick Goltzius
(Netherlandish, 1558–1617). Icarus, Ixion, and Tantalus are also called “disgracers” for their
overweening ambition.

harvest is ablaze! But these are small things. Great cities perished, with their walls
and towers; whole nations with their people were consumed to ashes! The forest-
clad mountains burned. . . . Then Phaeton beheld the world on fire, and felt the
heat intolerable. The air he breathed was like the air of a furnace and full of burning
ashes, and the smoke was of a pitchy darkness. (65–66)

With the Earth on fire, the oceans at risk, and the poles smoking, Atlas did more
than shrug—he fainted. The Earth, overcome with heat and thirst, implored
Zeus to intervene, “lest sea, Earth, and heaven perish, [and] we fall into ancient
Chaos. Save what yet remains to us from the devouring flame. o, take thought
for our deliverance in this awful moment” (67). Zeus responded by shooting
the devious charioteer out of the sky with a fatal lightning bolt as Helios looked
on in shock and dismay (figure 1.1). A utilitarian ethic applies in the myth. After

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