More on Castor, Pollux

Last week, we talked about the sci­ence behind the two bright­est stars in the con­stel­la­tion Gem­ini, the Twins. This week, I promised to dis­cuss the ancient story told about Cas­tor and Pol­lux. I do so with some trepidation.

At a pro­gram at Perkins, an oth­er­wise pleas­ant Chris­t­ian called me the “last Zeus wor­ship­per in cen­tral Ohio.” I felt the sting of that complaint.

Just for the record, I’m not. How­ever, I do feel that the old sto­ries have some­thing to teach us, not only about the ancient cul­tures, our intel­lec­tual and emo­tional fore­bears, that spawned them but also about our­selves. Thus, here goes:

It is unusual to have two stars of such sim­i­lar bright­ness so close together in the sky, so the ancients named them after a pair of famous mytho­log­i­cal twins. Most likely, the story existed long before its asso­ci­a­tion with the two stars, by the way. Often the story seems attached to the stars arti­fi­cially in part to help stu­dents of the sky to learn and remem­ber the con­stel­la­tions. They cer­tainly had that effect on me when I was a neo­phyte stargazer.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Here’s the story. Cas­tor and Pol­lux were the twin sons of Leda, the queen of Sparta. Zeus, the head man on Olym­pus, appeared in Leda’s bed­cham­ber in the form of a swan. Later that night, the king of Sparta also vis­ited Leda (Leda really got around).

Nine months later, if you know what I mean and I think you do, Cas­tor and Pol­lux were born. Cas­tor was the son of the mor­tal king, and Pol­lux was the son of Zeus. Thus, the “twins” were about as dif­fer­ent as they could be.

Cas­tor a mor­tal man and Pol­lux an immor­tal god.

What made them spe­cial and got them their own hunk of sky was that they loved each other very deeply—but only in a clean, decent, broth­erly sort of way, mind you.

Cas­tor and Pol­lux were great heroes to the Greeks. Cas­tor was known for his abil­ity to train and ride horses. Pol­lux was a great boxer. Roman sol­diers would swear oaths “by Gem­ini,” and that phrase sur­vives, more or less, as the oath “by jiminy.” Does any­body still say that anymore?

Cas­tor and Pol­lux par­tic­i­pated in the attack against Athens to res­cue their half sis­ter, the beau­ti­ful Helen, who was kid­napped by Theseus.

They sailed with Jason and the Arg­onauts on their mis­sion to steal the golden fleece. It is per­haps from this expe­di­tion that they became the patron gods of ancient sailors. Upon their death, Posei­don, the god of the sea, gave them con­trol over the winds and the waves. Many ships have borne their names, and sailors looked to them for pro­tec­tion from the dan­gers of the sea.

Their great­est bat­tle was their last. Cas­tor and Pol­lux got in a scrape with their cousins, Idas and Lynceus. Because he was a god and a great fighter, Pol­lux killed Lynceus. But the mor­tal Cas­tor was slain by Idas. Zeus inter­vened and killed Idas with a light­en­ing bolt. (You’d think he could have done it a few min­utes ear­lier and saved Castor’s life, but the gods were capri­cious, to say the least.)

Pol­lux was heart­bro­ken. He told Zeus he could not walk the earth with­out the com­pan­ion­ship of his brother. He offered to renounce his immor­tal­ity to join Cas­tor in the under­world, Hades. Zeus was so touched that he allowed Cas­tor and Pol­lux to stay together. For all eter­nity they spend part of their time in Hades and part in Olympus.

Their dual sta­tus is sym­bol­ized by their pres­ence in the sky as twin stars. In the win­ter months they stand high in the heav­ens, quite lit­er­ally “heaven” to the Greeks. As the sum­mer months approach, they sink below the hori­zon into the underworld.

Thus, they finally have become truly twins ­ mor­tal yet both touched by the breath of immortality.

Tom Burns is direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tory in Delaware. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Feb 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.