Funny Holidays - Day of the Search for the Missing Echo

January 15 marks a very strange and unusual holiday - the Day of the Search for the Lost Echo It is believed that on this day the echo disappears without a trace, and many go in search of it In fact, different peoples and cultures had their own explanations for the physical effect of the reflection of sound waves One of the most interesting versions is offered by the ancient Greeks In their mythology, the story of Echo is a true tragedy with betrayal, unhappy love and death After the Titanomachy in Ancient Greece, Zeus, the mighty god of thunder and sky, became the supreme god He took his sister Hera as his wife, the goddess who patronized marriage Alas, everything in their family life was not so smooth Unlike his more faithful brother Aidoneus, who relatively rarely cheated on his wife, Zeus was extremely voluptuous and susceptible to female charms Legends were made about his love affairs, and chroniclers painstakingly perpetuated each affair in a separate myth Zeus had a lot of children He easily fell in love with other goddesses, ordinary women and nymphs Zeus had a lot of adultery with the latter Jealous Hera was never able to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity She could not influence him, so the goddess took out her anger on her rivals, chasing them, turning them into different animals and casting curses In the distant mountains, a rocky cliff gave birth to a mountain nymph, who received the name Echo When she grew up and became a beautiful oread, the girl fell in love with the forest spirit Pan, from whom she gave birth to a daughter, Yamba She is also credited with giving birth to Yinx, another daughter of Pan, but ancient Greek mythology details another story of her love that led to tragedy When Zeus once again became interested in one of the nymphs, Hera quickly found out about it The angry wife of the supreme god rushed in search of her unfaithful husband and his passion Zeus turned to Echo for help He asked the oread to distract his wife while he and his new lover went into hiding Echo fulfilled the request of the god of sky and thunder She met Hera and distracted her with conversation, but the main goddess figured out their cunning plan and took her anger out on Echo It took her voice away Echo could no longer be the first to start a conversation Hera left her only the opportunity to repeat the endings of other people's words The cursed nymph wandered the earth until she accidentally met the most beautiful of young men named Narcissus Once upon a time, as a child, a blind soothsayer in Thebes named Tiresias predicted a happy life for him until the young man saw his reflection Narcissus was already sixteen Both boys and girls fell in love with him Narcissus's heart remained cold and unapproachable He did not know love and rejected the feelings of everyone who ever confessed to him Echo, captivated by the handsome face of the young man, also told him about her feelings and was refused Everyone who ever fell in love with Narcissus died from grief and the pangs of unrequited love Driven to despair, Echo turned to Nemesis, the goddess of retribution The nymph asked her to punish Narcissus for the suffering of all who were tormented by his callousness The goddess decides to reward him with the same strong love that others felt for him, but to deprive him of the right to possess the object of his desire Nemesis arranged everything so that during the next hunt, the beautiful young man stopped near the river When he leaned over the water to wash himself, he saw his own reflection Narcissus could no longer take his eyes off him He fell in love with his own appearance so much that he died by the river from thirst and hunger, not having the strength to get up and move away In the place where Narcissus died, a flower of the same name grew The act of retribution did not ease Echo's suffering Desperate, she hid in one of the mountain caves, where she dried out All that was left of the once beautiful mountain nymph was a voice that could repeat the endings of others’ phrases Since then, he has been rushing between the rocks, recalling the sad fate of Echo, who was in love and destroyed by this feeling There is another version put forward by the ancient Greek writer Longus in the 2nd century AD According to his work, Echo was mortal Her father was an ordinary person, and her mother was a nymph The chaste girl was hiding from the encroachments of the forest spirit Pan, who in a rage drove the shepherds crazy, and they tore her to pieces Gaia, the goddess of the earth, managed to preserve only the voice of the murdered woman Since then, he imitates those around him at the behest of the muses, but most of all this angers Pan, who, barely hearing him, rushes off to look for the source