Disney cartoons are an American cultural icon. Sadly, Disney has a habit of taking age-old stories, changing everything about them, and making cartoons of them. Then, unfortunately, the Disney version somehow automatically becomes the “official,” orthodox version of the story, even though the Disney versions often have very little at all in common with the originals.
This has happened with the story of “Aladdin” from The One Thousand and One Nights, and, most recently, with Hans Christian Andersen’s story of “The Snow Queen.” Most devastating of all, however, is possibly the damage that Disney’s Hercules has wrought upon Greek mythology. The film portrays virtually everything about the myths in precisely the opposite way of how they really were. For instance, the film portrays Hera as Herakles’s loving mother, whereas, in the original myths, she was a jilted wife constantly seeking to annihilate her husband’s illegitimate son. Similarly, it falls back on the old misconception about Hades being the villain of Greek mythology, a misconception I have already debunked.
Thankfully, in most cases, people who have actually bothered to read about the myths have not been fooled by Disney’s hopelessly inaccurate portrayals. In one case, however, almost everyone, even those who have read about the myths, have been fooled.
Disney’s Hercules portrays the Fates, or Moirai, from Greek myth, except it conflates them with the Graiai, another, totally unrelated, set of three goddesses.
In Greek myth, the Moirai were imagined as three goddesses clothed in white robes who wove the thread of life and apportioned how long each mortal was destined to live. They appear throughout many different myths. The first Moira Klotho was said to spin the thread of life from wool using a distaff. The second one Lachesis held a measuring rod, which she used to measure each string to precisely the appropriate length. Then, the final sister Atropos would cut the thread using her set of iron shears.
Although no Greek depictions of the Moirai have survived, in later European art, a standard iconography for them was developed. Klotho was always portrayed as young and beautiful, holding a distaff in her hand. Lachesis was portrayed as middle-aged, but adorned with flowers and jewelry, holding a measuring rod. Atropos was portrayed as old and withered with a sorrowful expression on her face, holding a set of iron shears.
This is not at all how the three Moirai are depicting in Disney’s Hercules, however. Instead, their appearances are conflated with the Graiai, the “Grey Ones,” sisters of the Gorgon Medousa encountered by the hero Perseus. All three Graiai were portrayed as old, withered, and gray-haired. They had only one tooth and one eye that were shared between the three of them. They would pass the eye back and forth so that each one would be able to see and would pass the tooth back and forth so that each one would be able to eat.
Perseus and the Graeae by Edward Burne-Jones (1892)
The two sets of goddesses were originally totally unrelated… or at least until Disney stepped in. Since then, confusion has reigned about what exactly the Moirai were supposed to look like. In Rick Riordan’s popular young adult series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, he correctly distinguishes between the Moirai and the Graiai, but fails to portray the Moirai using the traditional iconography. Instead, he follows Disney’s Hercules in portraying all three of them as old hags.
On the other hand, we cannot blame Disney too much; after all, these sorts of conflations are precisely the same sort of the thing the Greeks themselves committed on occasion. In early myths, for example, there was a clear-cut distinction between the god Apollon and the god Helios. In later myths, however, Apollon and Helios became so conflated with each other that the distinction between them ceased to be evident and the same thing happened with Artemis and Selene. This is perhaps the best known example, but there are also many others. The gods Zagreus, Iakchos, and Sabazios were all originally separate deities who were later syncretized with Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and drunkenness.
In any case, although Disney and Rick Riordan may be conflating separate deities, they are nonetheless unknowingly participating in a very old tradition started by the ancient Greeks themselves.
IMAGE CREDITS
The featured image for this article is the painting The Three Fates by Paul Thumann, which was painted in the late nineteenth century. The painting is notable for the fact that it is a clear depiction of the common iconographic representation of the Moirai followed by most writers and artists prior to the release of Disney’s Hercules. All images used in this article were retrieved from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain in the United States of America.
