The Fall of Ixion

Before you can understand why Zeus is blasting Ixion off of Mount Olympus with a thunderbolt to then be bound to an eternally spinning wheel of fire, you need to understand how Ixion came to be on Mount Olympus in the first place.  Ixion was a classic A-hole.  It all started when Ixion decided to not pay Deioneus for his daughter's hand in marriage, which might seem like a progressive move on Ixion's part, but he was doing it for purely selfish reasons.  Deioneus, now Ixion's father-in-law, decided to take the bride price in the form of a few horses stolen from Ixion's stables, and Ixion decided to push his father-in-law into bed of of smoldering coals, burning him alive.  Even though he was an a-hole, Ixion couldn't help but go mad from the guilt of slaying his own kin.  Zeus, King of the Gods, felt bad for Ixion (maybe because Zeus was something of an a-hole himself) and invited him to hang out on Mount Olympus, home of the gods.  Now, as bad as most of us agree it is to put the moves on your host's spouse, it's important to note that the Ancient Greeks put a special moral weight on host-guest relations, a principle they called "Xenia" or "Hostpitium."  So, when Ixion tried to take Hera, Zeus' wife and Queen of the Gods, to Bonertown, this was an especially severe offense.  Zeus though, being a good host (one of his titles was "Zeus Xenios," as the patron of hospitality), wanted make sure he wasn't just jumping to conclusions, so he made a cloud that looked just like Hera to see if he was just messing around or if Ixion was actually planning to go the plat rumpscuttle and clapperdepouch with his wife.  He was, and he did.  Apparently not a practitioner of safe sex, the fluids of Ixion's efforts with the cloud passed right through her and down Mount Olympus which somehow resulted in the first centaurs (in another version of the story, the cloud got pregnant and gave birth to the first centaur, but either one is weird).  This is why Ixion is now being blasted with a thunderbolt off of Mount Olympus to then be tied to an eternally spinning wheel of fire.  Perhaps we can all learn something from this.

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