Kerkopen

The Kerkopen are characters from Greek mythology , two sons of Theia and Oceanus , who are said to have originally helped Zeus in his fight against Kronos and the Titans .

However, since they constantly made fun of him, they were turned into monkeys, with whom they should have looked like anyway. Without mentioning this story, Robert von Ranke-Graves gives their names as Passalos and Akmon , Olos and Eurybatos or Sillos and Triballos - "the most masterful swindlers and liars" the world has ever known. Theia's warning - "My little white asses, you have to hit the big black ass first!" - has become proverbial. You should keep with their warning rather than as they are in the form of blowflies at Heracles - who at the time of the slave of Omphale was - approach made to rob him of the night's sleep or to steal his armor, he attacked the two and on his hike they hung upside down on his back on a stick, where they stared at his backside and began to laugh uproariously, because it was full of black hair - or burned by the fiery breath of the kako , the Cretan bull or just the sun was. In any case, Heracles was surprised by their disrespect and finally gave them freedom when he had learned the reason for their laughter and had to laugh himself afterwards.

As Kerkopen also pests were called, which haunted people in the form of nightmares and could be driven out by calling on Heracles.

literature

• Michael Grant and John Hazel, Lexikon der Antique Mythen und Gestalten , Munich (dtv) 1980. ISBN 3-423-32508-9
• Karl Kerényi , The Mythology of the Greeks - The Heroes Tales ; Munich (dtv) 1992. ISBN 3-423-30031-0
• Robert von Ranke-Graves , Greek Mythology , Reinbek near Hamburg (Rowohlt) 2003. ISBN 3-499-55404-6

Web links

• Kerkopen in the Theoi Project (English)