Our last entry of 2022 covered the subject of theoxenia―or how to properly behave when receiving gods at home―. If the tale of Philemon and Baucis showed us the rewards and benefits of being gracious hosts, that of Ixion, king of the Lapiths, exemplifies the consequences of being mythology’s worst house guest.
Ixion is one of those characters with no redeeming qualities, whose appalling actions eventually catch up with him and lead him to eternal damnation. His evildoing begins when he kills his father-in-law Eioneus, the Perrhaebian, by throwing him into a fire pit to avoid paying the bride price for his daughter Dia. As the first human guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology, he is shunned by society for this atrocious murder until Zeus―who had a soft spot for crimes of passion―purifies him and bestows him with a rare invitation to feast in Olympus with the gods. Ixion finds no better way to celebrate his impunity and undeserved good fortune than by trying to seduce the goddess Hera―Zeus’ wife, queen of the gods―while still a guest at their court.
To prove Ixion’s flagrant indecency, Zeus creates a decoy of Hera made from air called Nephele (“cloud”), conceived solely to bait Ixion’s lust. She would not be the first or last sex doll to be found in Greek mythology, if you consider Pandora, Galatea, and even the replica of Helen that Hera herself would later build (also out of a cloud―practice makes perfect) to be taken to Troy in her stead.
Ixion forces himself on Nephele first chance he gets and is immediately expectorated from Olympus, cast down by a thunderbolt and damned to an eternity of suffering in the underworld, bound to the spinning wheel of fire for which he is known.1
Although Nephele would later marry the Boeotian king Athamas and mother the twins Helle and Phrixus of Golden Fleece-fame, she is mythology’s first decoy, an artificial object placed in the heights of Olympus with the sole purpose of looking like something it is not, in order to openly provoke an enemy’s reaction.
February 4, 2023
Struck from the skies by a US F-22 Raptor, a Chinese weather-balloon-that-nobody-believed-was-just-a-weather-balloon falls into the shallow waters off the coast of South Carolina. Having unapologetically flaunted itself as an unwelcome guest in US national airspace, President Biden’s government is unable to contain the urge to take it out Top Gun-style.
Foreseeably, the Chinese Foreign Minister condemns the aggression by responding that this was “a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice,” asserting that Beijing reserved the right to make “further responses that are necessary.”
"It's possible that being spotted was the whole point", said Arthur Holland Michel from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. After all, what better way to force a political reaction than by breaking the mythic code of theoxenia?
To wrap up the streak of r/AwfulEverything, Zeus sleeps with Ixion’s wife Dia to engender the mythical douchebag Pirithous who, following the steps of both his fathers, tries to seduce both an underage Helen of Troy and the goddess Persephone while visiting her court in the Underworld.