Hitting on Zeus’ Wife Gets a Man Condemned to Everlasting Torture
Ixion, in Greek mythology, was a son of the war god Ares and a mortal woman. He became a king of the Lapiths tribe in Thessaly, in northern Greece, and from early on, he built up an infamous reputation as somebody who was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Because of his misdeeds on earth – and up in the heavens as well – the gods condemned him to eternal torment.
Ixion’s first major trespass that offended the gods was against his father-in-law. He had promised his father-in-law a valuable present as a bride price – wealth paid by the groom to the parents of his bride – but reneged and failed to pay up after the marriage. So the father-in-law seized some of Ixion’s valuable horses as security for the promised bride price. Ixion pretended to shrug it off, invited his father-in-law to a feast, and there, murdered him by shoving him into a bed of burning coals.
That murder was particularly odious in Greek eyes because it violated Xenia – the laws of hospitality governing the relationship between guests and hosts. The breach of Xenia left Ixion defiled, shunned by fellow Greeks and unfit to live amidst men. Nobody was willing to perform the necessary religious rituals that would cleanse him of his guilt and restore him to good standing, so Ixion was forced to live in the wilderness as an outlaw.
Zeus however took pity on Ixion, and although promotion of Xenia was part of the chief Olympian god’s portfolio, he cleansed him of the defilement, and invited him to Mount Olympus, to dine at the table of the gods. However, when Ixion was introduced to Zeus’ wife, Hera, he fell passionately in love and lusted after her. So behind Zeus’ back, he started hitting on and pursuing Hera.
That was another big breach of Xenia: lusting after and pursuing your host’s wife was a major violation of a guest’s obligations to his host – that was how the Trojan War started, when Paris seduced Helen while a guest of her husband. When Zeus heard, he couldn’t believe that Ixion, whom he had rescued and cleansed of his guilt, then honored by hosting him in heaven, could be so ungrateful and brazen.
So he made a cloud in the shape of Hera, and sent her Ixion’s way to see what his guest would do. Sure enough, Ixion ravished the fake Hera – a union that ultimately produced the centaurs. The astonished and livid Zeus expelled the ingrate from Olympus, and blasted his former guest with a thunderbolt. He then ordered the messenger god, Hermes, to seize Ixion and bind him to a wheel of fire, condemned to spin forever across the heavens.