The Myth of Alcione

Alcyone, was a beautiful girl and daughter of the god and king of the winds Aeolus. Alcyone married Ceyx, the king of Trachis, and they lived happily in his city. According to legend, Ceyx especially loved fishing and often fished in the sea near Trachida. Once, Alcyone begged him to for one day defy his favorite habit and stay with her, but he did not listen to her and left to go fishing in his boat. The hours passed and Ceyx did not return.

Alcyone, mad with anxiety, did everything she could to look for him. At first he searched for his boat; then, when the hours turned to days, she began to search for his body. But she always came back empty-handed, immense pain and sorrow.

The gods of Olympus watched from their high abode what was happening and began to feel sorry for the girl and sympathize with her pain.

When the situation reached an impasse, they decided to transform Alcyone into a bird to ease her pain, a theory offered to us – without the identity of its creator being completely ascertained – by Lucian in his work “Alcyon”.

But this version of the story is not the only one. So according to the legend that reaches modern times from Ovid, Alcyone saw in the sea the boat of Cykes tossing about until a lightning struck it and broke it apart and the man drowned in the foaming waves. Soon, his corpse appeared on the shore while Alcyone stood looking at it from the top of a rock. Out of her grief, and unable to bear this loss, she jumped off the cliff and killed herself.

At this point the Gods intervene again, who, impressed by the woman’s true and pure love for her lost partner, transformed them both into birds. Alcyone laid her eggs every year from then on the seashore, where she saw the dead body of her lover, but the strong waves swept the chicks away and they drowned.

Zeus himself took pity on her again, and so every year, at the time when she brought her young into the world, the father of the gods sent a brief period of unceasing sunshine and summer, commanding Aeolus to hold back the mighty north winds so that she could give birth and to protect her young.

In the third and most “spicy” version of the story, as the ancient Greeks always did, Alcyone and Ceyx when they married used to call themselves Zeus and Hera, in an attempt to emulate the immortal gods and their legendary love , believing that they themselves were gods.

Zeus, being the jealous man that he was, was angered by the habit of mortals and sent that thunderbolt which struck the boat of her husband and killled him. Morpheus transferred the black mantas to Alcyone, having taken the form of Ceyx and twisting the knife into her heart.

The death of her lover led Alcyone to commit suicide, jumping from the high cliff and meeting her husband’s corpse at the last moment. Then again the gods took pity on them and transformed them both into birds.

In addition to similar theories based on the girl and her partner’s death, there are others, according to which the Alcyonids, the seven daughters of the Giant Alcyoneus, committed suicide by jumping into the sea after killing their father, and then transformed in birds by Poseidon’s wife, Amphitrite.

But again there are other sources for this warm period, and this time they come from space, specifically from the constellation Alcyon of the Pleiades which bears the name of the sea bird of the same name (Alcedo atthis). During these days, the constellation mesurans, i.e. it is at its zenith during the night hours. So the days when the constellation is visible at night at the highest point of the dome, were called Alcyonides.

Halcyon Days

A more unified scientific explanation wants the phenomenon of the Halcyon Days to be due to Greece’s position in the south-east of Europe, at a point where, for a short period of winter, there is a balance in the barometric pressures of southern and northern Europe, which translates into intense apnea and clear weather, with significant sunshine and a temperature that can even exceed 20ºC. More likely dates for the appearance of the phenomenon are during the second half of January until the first half of February, without this meaning that the phenomenon is strictly observed every year.

Whether we consider that the legend derives from any version of the story of Alcyone and her lover, whether we see it as a consequence of the observation of meteorological and physical phenomena by the ancients, or whether we consider the possibility that the myth is based on the constellation of the Pleiades, or the most logical and modern interpretation of weather phenomena based on meteorology.

The only thing certain is that Halcyon Days are a phenomenon in which in the heart of winter, in the cold and frost, during the time when the natural world is blissfully asleep and awaits the life-giving spring, some days offer a new lease of life, a tiny but mighty hope that the future is destined to be bright. A hope of life, an oasis of light and comfort in a world that lies immersed in darkness. Perhaps this is their true message after all, and the only one of real value.

The Alcyone bird

The Alcyone bird and the older narratives and myths listed above are also used by Aesop in one of his educational fables, metaphorically using the bird’s tactic to protect itself from the people and not so much from the waves of the sea, a metaphor related to man and who his true enemy is.