Greek Myths Behind Netflix’s Kaos

By Emily Hauser/The Conversation

Kaos is a modern-day, darkly comic reworking of Greek myth. If, like me, you got hooked on it, you might be wondering what was actually taken from myth and what was creative license taken by Kaos’s writer, Charlie Covell.

Well, I’m here to help. I’m a Greek myth expert and my upcoming book, Mythica, is all about uncovering the real history behind the Greek myths. And in my day job as a classicist, I get to spend my time looking at (and reading) modern retellings of ancient myths. It’s not a bad life when you can say you get to watch Kaos for work.

(This article contains spoilers for Kaos.)

Here are five aspects of the show that you might have questioned, and the links to the myths behind them:

1. Hera’s Bees

Verdict: sort of myth

Ok, so Hera doesn’t actually turn any of Zeus’ victims into bees in the Greek myths. (And let’s take a moment for some honesty: the women Zeus impregnates in the Greek myths are near-universally rape victims.)

But she does turn some of them into animals. Most famous is probably Io, whom Hera (or, in some versions, Zeus) transforms into a cow as punishment for being raped by Zeus. In an imaginative turn that matches Kaos’ Hera for inventive cruelty, Io is also forced to wander the Earth goaded by a plague of flies.

So, what are the bees doing here? Well, interestingly, they’re linked to the myth of Eurydice (Riddy in Kaos), which was relayed in the ancient world as part of a beekeeping manual by the Roman poet Virgil. Eurydice died, so the myth goes, running from a beekeeper who was trying to rape her when she got bitten by a venomous snake.

All his bees then get killed as punishment – just like Hera’s do in Kaos. Rape, death and revenge through bees? Sounds like a similar cocktail and likely why Kaos’s Hera takes up beekeeping.

2. Dionysus’s Cat

Verdict: sort of myth

Sorry to disappoint, but Dionysus doesn’t have a cat in Greek myth. (I know, I know, this was one of my favorite bits too.) In Kaos, the god Dionysus picks up Riddy and Orpheus’s kitten, Dennis, and ends up carrying him around in a way that is both utterly cute and (when you know what happens at the end) heart-rending.

But Dionysus is associated with great cats in Greek myth – specifically, panthers and leopards. He’s often seen on Greek vases and mosaics wearing leopard skins, or even riding the animals.

Another delightful easter egg here: the name Dennis actually means “follower of Dionysus” (via Latin Dionysius to French Denis). So this fluffy cutie is Dionysus’ first disciple.

3. Zeus’s Daddy Issues

Verdict: definitely myth

Zeus’s daddy issues are something of a running theme throughout Kaos. That’s no surprise if you know much about Greek mythology, but it also makes a crucial link back to the series’ title, Kaos (an alternative spelling of the Greek Chaos).

Zeus killed his father who killed his father to become the ruler of all. Kaos plays with this inherited sense of patricide. (Justin Downing/Netflix)

In the Greek creation myth, things started off with Chaos, a Greek word that doesn’t really mean “disorder” but more just a sort of yawning void. From Chaos we get Earth (Gaia) and Sky (Ouranos), who’s overthrown by youngest son Cronus when he cuts off his genitals (welcome to Greek myth).

Cronus is understandably paranoid about being overthrown himself so, less understandably, tries to eat his kids. Zeus’s mother, however, outwits him, and Zeus overpowers Cronus in his turn.

Zeus’s paranoia that he will one day fall is, of course, the driving force behind his obsessive behavior in Kaos. What’s interesting is that writer Charlie Covell pushes the cycle of destruction further towards the fall of Zeus and the return of Chaos/Kaos that’s hinted at but never actually realized in the Greek myth world.

4. The Frame/The Nothing

Verdict: sort of myth

In large part, the Frame and the Nothing are Covell’s invention, part of the engine of Kaos’s plot that drives the threat to Zeus. The Frame is sold as a way for the dead to be reincarnated yet is really a way to harvest souls and the secret of the gods’ immortality. But (and it’s a big but) it is a kind of reinvention of something we find in the ancient world.

Orpheus makes it across the Styx to get his wife back. Those who believe in Orphism. (Justin Downing/Netflix)

Known as “the transmigration of souls”, the doctrine of souls going down to the Underworld and waiting in line before being born back into the world crops up most famously in Virgil’s epic The Aeneid, in which the titular hero wanders down to the Underworld, just like Orpheus.

But this idea also has roots in Greek philosophy and religious cults, including a particularly popular cult called Orphism, named after Orpheus, which promised reincarnation after death. So it’s a nice link back to the musical man whose descent into the Underworld, in Kaos, triggers the change in the Frame.

5. The Ballboys

Verdict: sort of myth

They weren’t ballboys, as the servants in Kaos are, but Zeus definitely liked having young men around Olympus in the Greek myths. One in particular is famous: Ganymede, a particularly gorgeous young Trojan who Homer tells us Zeus (disguised as an eagle) snatched away to Olympus to be his “cup-bearer”. That is, he poured Zeus’s drinks – just as the ballboys pour Meander water in Kaos.

The rifle-shooting scene, however (as darkly comic as it is), wouldn’t have worked in Greek myth: Ganymede was given immortality when he came to Olympus.

Top image: Hera and her bees in Kaos.  Source: Justin Downing/Netflix

This article was originally published under the title ‘Five aspects of Kaos that might or might not be from Greek myth – according to an expert’ by Emily Hauser on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.