JOHN PINSENT Ireek

Home , Aphaea, Caeneus, Cercopes, Curetes (tribe), Nyctimus, Temenus (mythology)

JOHN PINSENT iREEK

Mythology was woven closely into the febrtc of the Hie and arts of ancient Greece. Most of the drama, poetry, painting

and sculpture of the Qreeks is based on stories of gods and heroes and of the mortal men and women with whom they dealt. The myths nf the early Qreek peoples had a religious "' quasl-sclenllfic meaning and formed ihF- essential background and cultural heritage "I later Qreek civilisations. They played nn important part in the creation of the glory Ihal wai Gropre

The author, in addition to narrating familiar and lesser-known stories, traces the development of particular myths from the most primitive times to the sophisticated civilisation that formed the Qolden Age ui Greece He shows that Qreek mythology wiis a dynamic expression of the people's r 'nscious or subconscious desires not a static unvarying canon of stories. The richness 'if Greek myths may be accounted for paniy dv the widely scattered places In which ihey developed on the Qreek mainland, on the Aegean Islands and in the Greek colonies of southern Italy. Some of the myths can be traced back to earlier nature religions. Others can be explained in terms of modern psychological theory

The stories of Greek mythology have been a source of Inspiration to artists even since they first gained currency. This book contains a superb selection of the best examples of Qreek vase paintings, sculpture and architecture, many of which have not before been reproduced In books designed for the general reader. The author, John Pinsant, who has made a special study of this subject.

Is lecturer In Qreek at the University of Liverpool

24 pages in colour Over 100 illustrations In black and white Index

Front jacket: Heracles wrestling with the sea-monster Triton ^'

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GREEK MYTHOLOGY

IL MYT ini L

JOHN PINSENT

PAULHAMLYN LONDON NEW YORK SYDNEY TORONTO coiDUR plate;

13 Bronze Core 46 Heracles bringing Cerberus 97 Amazons in battle 17 Temple of Apollo, Corinth to Eurystheus 101 Three-bodied serpent man 20 Temple at Selinus 62 Athena Promachos 101 Medea and Pelias 24 Temple of Aphaea, Aegina 66 Delphi 105 Theseus leaving Ariadne on Naxos 38 Dionysus on a goat 71 Bellerophon and the Chimaera 108 The sacred site at Olympus 38 Female statuette from Locri 76 The Calydonian Boar hunt 123 The judgement of Paris 42 Hermes and fertility goddess 80 Caeneus slain by the Centaurs 126 Temple at Agrigento 42 Wind shown as a running figure 81 Atalanta at the hunt 130 Achilles receiving his armour 42 Athena on coin of Syracuse 84 Man and Centaur 130 The blinding of Polyphemus

ontent:

INTRODUCTION THE CHILDREN OF 10 53 The exploits of Heracles 94 The ancient sources 14 lo 54 The quests of Heracles 95 The daughters of Danaus 56 Battle of gods and giants 99 Cadmus 57 Death of Heracles 100 THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD 16 The daughters of Cadmus 58 The creation myth 16 The birth of Dionysus 58 ATHENS lOZ The succession myth 16 Midas 63 Tereus and Procne 102 The birth of Zeus 22 Orpheus 63 The Titans 23 The apotheosis of Dionysus 63 THESEUS 104 Typhon 27 Crete 104 AEOLUS THE CHILDREN OF 65 The exploits of Theseus 106 THE FAMILY OF THE GODS 29 Athamas 65 Theseus and Hippolytus 107 68 Zeus and Hera 29 Pelias Sisyphus 69 Ares and Aphrodite 51 THE TROJAN WAR no Endymion 69 Athena 3 Tantalus no Poseidon 32 Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes 112 THE MONSTER-KILLERS 70 Demeter Leda 112 3 3 Bellerophon 70 Leto, Apollo and Artemis Achilles 114 35 Perseus 72 114 Orion 36 Trojan stories The judgement of Paris 117 Otus and Ephialtes 37 THE GREAT EXPLOITS 77 The sack of Troy 119 Hephaestus 57 Communal exploits 77 Hermes 39 The Calydonian Boar hunt 77 THE END OF THE HEROES 129 Pan 40 Melampus 79 The death of Agamemnon 131 Nymphs 40 Admetus 79 Jason and the Argonauts 82 Odysseus Neoptolemus EARLY MAN 45 THEBES 87 The return of the Heraclids 135 The Five Ages 45 Oedipus Prometheus 47 The Seven against Thebes 89 FURTHER READING LIST 136 Pandora 48 Deucalion 49 HERACLES 93 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 137 Lycaon 49 Amphitryon 93 The flood 51 Birth of Heracles 94 INDEX 158 t^y

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There is a great deal of Greek mytholo- icides, exiles, quarrels, seductions and gy, and this book does not contain it all. illegitimate births, many of them taking Almost all Greek art and literature either place inside the family circle. Greek took its subjects from mythology or mythology has its share of monsters, made reference to it. The Greeks told sto- but the humanist outlook of the Greeks ries about the family life of the gods, and generally rejected magic. In other re- they had a myth about the creation of the spects the myths do resemble fairy tales. world and how the present dynasty of A label is not, however, an explana- the gods came to power; but most of tion. One of the commonest of such their mythology is concerned with the motifs is the tale of the young man who heroic world. This world joined on to goes on a journey to a far country where the historical world of the Greeks in he is set a number of tasks or quests in time. It came to an end with the return order to win the hand of a maiden who of the children of Heracles to the Pelo- is the daughter either of a king or of an ponnese, the mythological equivalent of enchanter. Success brings him the king- the Dorian invasion, when the last wave dom sometimes at the cost of the death of Greek-speaking peoples entered of the enchanter, and he lives happily Greece and settled in Boeotia and Sparta. ever after. The Spartan kings traced their descent This pattern recurs in Greek mythol- back to these children of Heracles. logy with some significant differences. For the Greeks, heroic mythology The young man usually leaves home was ancient history. They constructed because of a family quarrel or homicide, genealogies which related all the human sometimes provoked by a step-mother. personages of the myths, and prepared The father of the princess is often afraid ABOVE The young Apollo. The central fig schematic mythological handbooks to of death at the hands of his daughter's of the western pediment of the explain references in the older authors. husband, himself engages in a con- and fifth century temple of Zeus at In the earlier periods, writers felt free test with her suitors. In other cases it is Olympia was Apollo, subduing a to improve and even invent myths, his daughter's son that represents the Centaur. Olympia Museum. doubtless maintaining that they were threat, and the child, almost always the simply telling for the first time the real son of a god, is exposed (occasionally LEFT Mount Olympus in Thessaly, truth. Their inventions, however, tended with his mother) to be miraculously the seat of the gods. to follow the patterns of existing myths. preserved and often suckled by wild

Such patterns are the first thing that beasts. In the end he brings about his strikes the student of Greek mythology. grandfather's death after having acquired

The second is the extraordinary char- a bride in the usual way.

acter of its content. It is all about hom- There is little doubt that these stories INTRODUCTION

RIGHT Bronze Core. This six-inch statuette of about 480 BC was very possibly identified as a goddess by some emblem, now lost, in the right hand.

It is more probable perhaps that it represented the donor perpetually

offering whatever it was she held. Traces of silver inlay remain on the

fringe of her dress as she holds it aside. At this stage in the development

of the art drapery is beautifully handled to suggest clearly the human form beneath, a technique which was more easily handled in bronze than in stone. British Museum.

ABOVE continue to be told because they satisfy period either by a new consort or by Bull-leaping. This famous Minoan some psychological need in the minds their daughter's husband, who was, of bronze statuette, until recently in the of their hearers. Psychological explana- course, completely unrelated to them by Spencer-Churchill collection, is part of the meagre evidence for the Cretan tions, usually Freudian, can be found blood. Some myths suggest that the sport of bull-leaping which has left for many myths and some have been king impersonated a god who might its trace in Greek mythology in the proposed in this book. But the familiar- also appear as an animal, and that in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. ity of the pattern sometimes obscures end he was made immortal by sacrifice, In all representations the human its chief characteristic: that sons never a fate which he could sometimes avoid figure is shown very small and the bull large, but this figure had its feet inherit from fathers. Many of the more by the sacrifice of his son. firmly on the back of the bull unpleasant features of the myths fall into If this state of affairs ever prevailed and might be in the act of landing place if they are seen as descriptions of in Greece it was during, and perhaps from a back somersault after seizing what inheritance in the female line looked early during, the Mycenaean period and the horns of the bull and being tossed upwards. Though just possible, the like to people who themselves prac- its immediate predecessor, after Greek- manoeuvre must have been extremely tised patrilinear succession. This hypothe- speaking people had entered Greece dangerous and the suspicion must sis finds some support in the number of about 1900 B.C. It was never congenial remain that the death of the victim Greek heroes who marry their brother's to the Greeks, and never seems to have was the intention, which might be daughter. been accepted by the Dorians, who avoided for a while by a skilful performer. Some of the representations The study of mythology seems to entered Greece about 1000 B.C. The may indeed show goring. This figure encourage the pursuit of extravagant Dorians perhaps brought with them a is clearly female, a bride of the god speculations that go far beyond the evi- new form of social organisation, based like Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur, dence. It is for the poet and novelist, upon the small nuclear family, in which and perhaps Europa, who is shown in Greek art as carried off by a very not for the scholar, to see mother- an autocratic father rules over his wife sedate Zeus-bull. British Museum. goddesses everywhere. None the less it and the children of the marriage. seems possible that some of the Greek The tensions that arise in this type myths do preserve traces of a period in of family are reflected in some of the

which kings owed their title to marriage myths and in the literature of classical with a queen, and were liable to be Greece, especially in Greek tragedy. violently overthrown at the end of a Anthropologists call this a 'guilt culture', INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION in which moral sanctions are enforced which are tentatively suggested, along Days, a didactic poem addressed to his by an internalised super-ego based on with others more traditional, in this brother, with whom he had quarrelled the child's experience of its father. It book, because they seem best to account over their inheritance. His father had superseded a 'shame culture' character- for some of the peculiarities of the returned from Asia Minor to Boeotia, istic of the extended family, in which the Greek myths. where there seems to have been a school child is brought up in an atmosphere of of epic poetry especially devoted to

benevolence by its brothers and lists and catalogues. The mythological diffused The ancient sources sisters and cousins, learning to rely en- poem, the Theogony, is generally attribut- tirely upon the approval and disapproval 1 The Iliad and the Odyssey, the oldest ed to Hesiod, but seems rather to be of its peers. In such a culture men project surviving works of Greek literature, are the work of one of his successors, who their rapidly changing emotions upon a both popularly attributed to one man, starts the poem with an account of his world of gods, and feel neither responsi- Homer, but the Odyssey is probably a graduation in the poetical school of bility nor guilt themselves. This type of good deal later than the Iliad. Both are Hesiod, perhaps as early as the eighth culture is reflected in the Homeric epics, organisations of older traditional mate- century. and the Greeks always retained elements rial, carried out in Asia Minor from 5 Pindar's Victory Odes, addressed to of it. It too is reflected in some of the about 800 B. c. onwards, but much of the winners in the Olympic and other Greek myths. mythological material they contain was games, are the only surviving lyric

It is explanations of this kind, psycho- humanised to suit contemporary taste. poetry with mythological content. He logical, anthropological and sociological, 2 Hesiod is the author of the Works and made use, in the first half of the fifth

LEFT Zeus brandishing a thunderbolt. This 6-inch statuette from Dodona almost exactly reproduces the pose of the 'Poseidon' of very much the same date, about 460 BC. The single difference is that the short heavy thunderbolt (which identifies Zeus) is thrown with a bent arm, unlike the longer javelin. Dodona was the site of a very ancient oracular shrine of Zeus the thunder god, who gave omens by the rustling of the leaves of the sacred oak tree. Thunderstorms are extremely common on the mountains of north-western Greece, and the oak tree is more frequently struck by lightning than any other tree. Former State Museums, Berlin.

RIGHT Snow on Mount Parnassus, late spring. The Mediterranean climate of Greece is characterised by a wet winter, which provides most of the water required for plant growth, a short beautiful spring, and a long arid summer. Some of the hills are high enough for the winter rain to remain as snow, even as late as early May, when the corn is in the ear though not yet ripe. Deciduous trees are rare, especially now that goats have turned much of the hills into scrub. Plutarch tells us that the women used to lead a winter procession into Parnassus in honour of Dionysus, and that one winter they were all overwhelmed by the heavy snows. INTRODUCTION century, of the mythological traditions places he visited, drawing his material any of the many modern translations of known to the Homeric poets and gath- from Athenian and Alexandrian genea- these works. The Victorian translations ered together by their epic successors and logical studies. He also reports all local of the Iliad by Lang, Leaf and Myers earlier lyric poets. He sometimes expur- ceremonies and myths, which are ex- and of the Odyssey by Butcher and Lang gated or invented myths to accord with tremely valuable, since they represent preserve the flavour of the original. his lofty ethical principles. the beliefs and practice of the ordinary And the annotated translation of 4 The great Athenian tragedians of the Greeks, less affected by literary treat- Apollodorus made for the Loeb Library fifth century, Aeschylus, Sophocles and ments of myth. by Sir James G. Frazer deserves special Euripides, took their plots from the 6 Apollodorus wrote a Library of myth- mention. Frazer's theories, to be found same sources as Pindar and used them ological information, arranged genea- in the Golden Bough, are nowadays unfash- to express their views of the nature of logically, about the same date. It is the ionable; but his translation still con- the world and its gods. Sometimes they only complete surviving Greek account tains a lot of good sense on mythology. used aetiological myths, which explain of mythology, and is therefore, though There is no good modern mytholog- a particular ritual by an account of its summary, extremely useful. In some ical dictionary in English. The old institution. They too modified and in- cases, however, its stories are based on three volume Dictionary of Greek and vented myths to suit their own purposes. tragic or invented Alexandrian versions Roman Biography and Mythology, edited by

still 5 Pausanias wrote a literary and artistic of the myth, and it should therefore be William Smith in 1876, is more ex- guidebook to Greece in about ad 170. treated with caution. haustive than the late H. J. Rose's He told the mythical history of all the It would be invidious to single out useful Handbook of Greek Mythology.

Ji/i(gjmiiiiiiii OF THE WORLD

When primitive peoples ask questions Ocean, from which the sun rises and into about the creation of the world they which he sets, returning every night in a normally answer them in one of two golden bowl, presumably on Ocean, are ways. Either the gods made the world superior beings, and are visited by the as a carpenter makes a chair out of immortals. Such are the blameless Ethio-

wood, or they begot it as a father begets pians in the south and the virtuous Hy- his children. These are primitive answers perboreans in the north, who live with strong psychological overtones, be- beyond the North Wind. cause the disquiet, which these answers There are traces in Homer that Ocean are given to settle, itself stems from a once played a larger role in an alternative

primitive level of the mind, and is cosmology. There are two references in therefore best satisfied by an answer the I/iad to 'Ocean, the source of the

given in those terms. It is at this level gods, and mother Tethys,' and one to

that much myth and literature is effective. 'Ocean, who has been made the source

of all things'. The idea that all things arose out of water can be paralleled in The creation myth other cosmogonies. It may have been

In Hesiod's cosmogony, first there were Ocean, rather than Poseidon, the later Aphrodite with goat. Gela, on the Chaos and Earth. From Chaos came god of the sea, who first bore the Homer- south coast of Sicily, was the most Erebus and Night; from Night the ic title 'earth-holder, shaker of earth': powerful city in Sicily at the turn Ether (upper air) and Day. Earth first for Ocean surrounds the earth and keeps of the sixth century. The clay produced the Sea, then Ocean, and it in place, so that like the earth snake plaque found there shows that, as in all the Greek colonies of the west, then the Titans, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, of Norse mythology he could easily the worship of the goddess was Theia, also cause it to quake. lapetus, Rhea, Themis, Mnemos- | apparently more important than yne, Phoebe, Tethys, and finally Cronus. that of the gods. The figure is identified Many of these figures are nothing more as Aphrodite by the he-goat, one of The succession myth her sacred animals. Ashmolean Museum. than personifications: Themis is a divine Ordinance; Mnemosyne is Memory, It is after this schematic creation myth Temple of Apollo, Corinth. This, the chief mother of the Muses; Hyperion, 'he that the Theogony becomes more natural- temple of the city, survived from that goes over', is the sun; and Phoebe, istic, and has psychological overtones J about 540 BC, when it was built at is distin- derived perhaps from the 'primal scene' the height of Corinthian commercial 'shining', is the moon. Oceanus y power, to the Roman conquest of guished from Pontus, the sea. He is the of parental intercourse as witnessed by it was burnt out. But 146 BC when stream which girdles the circular earth the child, as well as from the infant fear the columns survived, to make Corinth and beyond which man cannot sail be- of its huge and capricious parents armed, one of the most impressive sites of as it is not, with gnashing teeth. Children antiquity. Seven still remain at the cause there is nothing there except Ha- south-west corner. des. Those who live on the streams of can be observed to take an ambiguous

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The Ludovisi Throne, named after pleasure in biting games with their Earth, and from it in due course she the papal family on whose estates parents, who pretend to eat them up, bore the Furies and the Giants, and the it was found, with its pair, the Boston and these reactions illuminate the myth Ash nymphs, from whom the gods made Throne, is one of the most mysterious ancient works of art that have survived of Cronus and Uranus, 'Heaven', and the third race of men, the Bronze men. from the middle of the fifth century. Gaia, 'Earth'. But the parts fell on the sea, and from It seems to have decorated an altar Uranus hated his children and as the bloody foam was made a maiden, used in the cult of Persephone soon as each was born he hid him away and first she sailed to Cythera and then in southern Italy. Rejuvenation, in a hiding place of Earth and would to Cyprus. There the fair goddess stepped or the triumph of love over age, is the theme of the reliefs. The relief not let him come into the light. The from the sea, and grass grew under shown seems to represent the Return huge Earth groaned in pain and devised her soft feet, and gods and men call her of the Maiden, either from the sea, an evil trick. First she made adamant, Aphrodite, that is, 'Foam born'. This suggested by the pebbles on which and from it a sickle, and called upon her is a piece of folk etymology for there is the attendants stand, modestly veiling plausi- the lower limbs of the goddess, children to take vengeance on their another and in some ways more or from a ritual bath, or from the lewd father for his evil treatment of ble account of her genealogy in the Iliad. underworld. Museo dei Thermi, Rome. them. Only the youngest, Cronus of the Uranus called his sons Titans, 'Strain- bent counsel, had the courage to re- ers': for in their wantonness they had spond, and promised to do the deed. strained to do so great a deed. Earth took him into her bed, with the The Ash nymphs are there because sickle in his hand. When Uranus re- an ash plantation can, by suitable man- turned, bringing night, he lay upon Earth agement and regular if not annual in desire, and she was stretched out be- cutting down, be made to yield a supply neath him. Cronus reached out with his of tough, straight, strong stems for

left hand and seized his father, and with spear hafts, like the ashy stem of Peleus his right he castrated him with the sickle which only his son Achilles could wield. and flung the parts behind him with A race of spear-using heroes might well averted eyes. Blood gushed forth upon be made from the same wood as their THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD

LEFT Aphrodite at the bath. Greek sculpture, intended for public display, early settled for two main types, a naked male figure and a draped female. The former developed into such free statues of athletes as the 'Poseidon' from Artemisium; the latter into statues of goddesses represented in terracotta by the Aphrodite bearing Eros. Not until the fourth century did Praxiteles introduce the nude or semi-nude statue of the goddess, though female nudity appears earlier on small bronzes and vases for domestic use. This eighteen-inch marble statuette from the beginning of the first century BC reproduces a famous life-size bronze of the third century, which showed the goddess at the bath doing up, or letting down, her hair. It has an almost Victorian charm lacking in some of the larger statues of this type. Rhodes Museum.

weapons, and the regular pruning may Ea is his son. This family in some way ABOVE Votive statuette of Aphrodite, one have contributed something to the myth disturbed Tiamat, and Apsu resolved foot high. The little city of Medma, to destroy them, against her will. They of castration. on the western coast of the toe There are parallels to this myth in fell silent and Ea cast a magic spell of Italy, was founded from Locri. the Near East in the second millennium. upon Apsu, stripped him of his regalia Like its mother-city, it seems to have had a cult of a goddess, to judge Texts survive from about 1200 b. c. and his strength, and slew him. In this from this statuette. The goddess from the Hittite capital in Asia Minor; version the separation of heaven and is depicted in the humanised form until later: in the these contain a Succession Myth, as it earth do not come of the middle of the fifth century, is generally called, taken over from the Hittite it is not mentioned and appears and bears a small figure of a winged Hurrians of south-eastern Asia Minor. to be prior to the story. Eros to identify her, just as Athena is often depicted with a Victory. This tells how Anu the sky god over- The resemblance to the Greek myth Museo Nazionale, Reggio. threw Alalu and reigned for nine years, is certainly close, and extends also to after which Kumarbi strove with him, the myth of the overthrow of Cronus by chased him to heaven, bit off his genitals Zeus. Various theories have been put and swallowed them, but spat out part forward how and when direct or indi- from which a god Tamisu and the river rect borrowing might have taken place, Tigris were born. either during the Mycenaean period of A similar story, but earlier, is pre- the Bronze Age before 1200 B.C. or in served in various fragments from the the eighth century, the 'orientalising

official text used at the Babylonian New period' of Greek art. There can be little Year Festival. In this the first divine pair doubt that versions of earlier and eastern are Apsu, god of the fresh water, and stories were known to the tellers of Tiamat, the sea goddess, who initiate a versions of the Greek cosmogonies and genealogy of gods who all remain inside have influenced them. Oceanus and the mingled waters of their parents. Anu Tethys in the alternative cosmogony of

the sky god is their great-grandson and the Iliad mentioned above strongly sug- .'.'i

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The latest of the three temples which the people of Selinus constructed on the bluff overlooking their city and its harbour from the east. The first was built about 530 BC, not long after the archaic temple C in the city itself, and was almost immediately followed by a grandiose plan for another temple to the north. This was abandoned at the beginning of the fifth century, when Selinus joined the Carthaginians in the campaign that led to their defeat in 480. ibis temple, the only one surviving, may mark a change of government and the re-establishment of links with mainland Greece, and especially with Olympia. For the temple has some affinities with that of Zeus at Olympia, and the metopes of Zeus and Hera, Artemis and Actaeon, and Heracles and the Amazon exhibit the authentic and severe Greek classical THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD

gest Apsu and Tiamat. Their estrange- he always succeeded in averting this ment suggests the separation of heaven fate.

and earth which is often felt as implicit The Theogony tells how Rhea bore in the mutilation of Uranus. Cronus a number of children - Hestia, The castration of Anu by Kumarbi, Demeter, Hera and Hades, all of whom and the generation of a god and of the he swallowed, knowing that he would Tigris in the Hittite myth similarly be supplanted by his son. When the suggest the Greek, and may have been youngest, Zeus, was going to be born, edited out of the Babylonian to appear Rhea was sent by Gaia and Uranus to innocuously as a magic sleep and the Crete where she had the child in a cave theft of the regalia. But Earth plays no near Lyctus and gave Cronus a stone part in either of these other versions, to swallow.

and it is to her presence that the Greek The poet brings in Uranus and Gaia version owes the strong human and to explain why Cronus in his turn hated

psychological overtones which give it a his children. They advised Rhea how to quality quite lacking in those others. outwit him in order that Zeus might do The Oedipal element in the Greek the bidding of the Furies that sprang

myth is so strong as to suggest that it from the blood of Uranus. Fate is thus can have arisen only in the period of invoked to remove the responsibility Aphrodite arriving at Cyprus. A group the guilt culture derived from the nuclear of parricide from Zeus. The birth of of painters working from 475 bc family. The elements may have been Zeus took place in Crete because the in the workshop of the Penthesilea borrowed from the east, but the psy- Cretans gave the name of Zeus to the painter treated mythological subjects chology of the stories is purely Greek. young consort of one of their mother- with a realism sometimes descending to sentimentality, especially on Much of the cosmological significance goddesses, perhaps the Earth mother, toilet-boxes which were presumably of the myth is obscured in what appears and also acquired their proverbial fame or for women. The little bought by rather as a classical Oedipal fantasy, in as liars by pointing out the tomb of girl, running to be greeted by love, which the child succeeds in supplanting Zeus. is met by attendants who will bind her hair and dress. She can be certainly the father in his mother's bed with her The name Zeus is firmly Greek, and identified from other similar connivance. Hesiod does not say why so it must have been Greeks in Crete, treatments where the participants father and son were so hostile: in fact and not Minoans, who made the identi- are named as Aphrodite being they are rivals for the love of the mother. fication. But the cave near Lyctus was welcomed by the Hours after arriving Such is the explanation that can be superseded after the Bronze Age. This at Cyprus. Such a treatment is exceptional: Aphrodite was normally given at one level of the myth: others story must go back to that period when for the Greeks a dread goddess, who are not excluded. For Uranus is cut Greeks were in Crete in the Mycenaean j might punish a young man like with the sickle, an instrument which age, though they were clearly ready to Hippolytus for rejecting her. however well suited for the purpose modify the position and fate of their Metropolitan Museum of Art, may legitimately suggest that the story chief god into the dying consort of the Fletcher Fund, 1959. has been also influenced by stories of Cretan goddess. The infant Zeus was

the annual sacrifice of the corn or its fed by the milk of Amalthea the goat representative. As always in Greek myth, and on the honey of bees, w^hile his

with its complicated history, no one cradle was hung on a tree 'that it might

explanation may contain all the truth. be found neither in heaven nor in earth nor in the sea'. His cries were drowned by the armed dance of the Young Men, The birth of Zeus the Curetes, who clashed their arms in

The overtones so strong in the first part Cretan ritual. of the Greek succession myth are ab- Zeus grew- rapidly and Earth helped sent from the second. This time the him to overthrow Cronus. Cronus vom-

successful victor is Zeus, high god of ited up his children and last of all the the Greeks, and any suggestion of mu- stone, which Zeus set at Delphi. Again

tilation has been completely suppressed, the help of the mother is enlisted to or perhaps displaced to the previous rescue the son, but the machinery is

generation, where it could safely be left perhaps deliberately obscure. On attributed to Uranus. There were indeed the analogy of the Babylonian myth, in

legends that the reign of Zeus was not which it is at this point that Marduk son entirely secure, and that he feared he of Ea splits the body of Tiamat to make

might be supplanted in his turn. But heaven and earth, it might be supposed THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD

that Zeus slit open his father like a fairy tale hero. In the Hittite version the

weather god who is the equivalent of

Zeus is still inside Kumarbi, where he was engendered by the swallowed genitals of Anu. For some reason Kumarbi swallows a stone, after which the god emerges to engage in battle. Once again the differences are as striking as the similarities. The Greek myth concentrates its attention upon the

stone, which is identified as the sacred stone of Delphi. According to other versions this was the navel stone of earth (metaphorically rather than liter-

ally) which marked its dead centre. Zeus sent two eagles flying, one from the east and one from the west: they met over

Delphi. It is natural for men to think of their own land as the centre of the earth, and Delphi was becoming an important cult centre at the time of the

The Titans

One final parallel exists between the Greek cosmological myths and those of

the Near East. This is the need for the newly triumphant god to defend his

position first against gods and then against monsters sent up against him by Earth. The former are found only in the Greek and Hittite myths: in the Greek the gods are the Titans, who presumably resented the overthrow of their brother Cronus. But the battle, which lasted ten years, may have started as a revolt of the younger gods. They expelled the Titans from Olympus, for the possession of which the battle was fought in the plains of Thessaly. At this stage Earth was still on the side of Zeus and advised him that he could defeat the Titans with the help of the three Cyclops and the three Hundred- handers, her children by Uranus who had never been released. So, it seems, was Oceanus, to whom Rhea entrusted

Cronus and Rhea. Though a rather a stone even though it is here given Hera at this time, according to the alter- inferior vase of the later a rough human profile. The scene by one native 'cosmogony'. This is explicable mannerists, the Nausicaa painter, serves to identify the subject without if in this version Oceanus played the working from 450 bc, it is of great doubt. There was a sanctuary interest as one of the only two of Cronus and Rhea in Athens on the part of Uranus. illustrations of the myth. The other Ilissus near Helicon. A cake with It is a common motif in myth that is by an earlier painter of the same twelve knobs on it was offered to a great enterprise cannot be completed school. In both there is no doubt Cronus at the beginning of April. without the presence of a Helper, often that what is being presented to the male Metropolitan Museum of Art, specially endowed with particular talents figure, who greets it with horror Rogers Fund, 1906. Hundred-banders rather than joy, is not a baby but or weapons. The >J^_ THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD

Zeus and Typhon. In the last half of the sixth century a distinctive school of vase painting developed, probably in Etruria, though the artists were Greeks from Euboean colonies in Sicily. Their mythological illustrations are strong and vivid. Zeus is attacking the giant Typhon with a thunderbolt. Typhon is shown as a huge figure with a bestial face and pointed ears, wings and a double serpent below the waist. The poets were able to make his description even more fantastic, attributing to him a hundred serpent heads under his shoulders. Zeus' left leg is restored. Antikensammlungen, Munich.

played this role in the battle of the Titans, golden apples. At a later stage Atlas was Temple of Aphaea, Aegina. The goddess and it was their ability between them identified with the mountain that still Aphaea seems to have been a form of the pre-Greek mother-goddess, and to hurl three hundred rocks at a time bears his name in North Africa, just in myth she was associated with which enabled them to rout and pursue as his pillars were taken over by Her- Artemis. Her temple lay on the main the Titans to Tartarus. There they acles at the Straits of Gibraltar. Atlas mountain range of the island, at its guarded them for Zeus, though there was said to have been turned into stone north-east end, and gives views of the is a nasty suspicion that the by the head, not island of Salamis to the north. The Hundted- Gorgon's but by Per- classical town of Aegina lay on the handers were prisoners as well as seus since Heracles, Perseus' great- west of the island, looking to warders. grandson, sent him for the golden Epidaurus, and the isolation of the Since the world is to be regarded as a apples. temple, appropriate to a nature goddess, sphere, divided into two equal hemi- As early as the Odyssey the underworld has preserved the building. The temple spheres a flat circular was built about 510 bc, just before the by earth surround- has four great rivers, all suitably named. struggle of the Aeginetans with the ed by Ocean, Tartarus, which seems Most important is Styx, 'Hateful', which expanding Athenians. The goddess to be the bottom of the underworld, was identified with an icy waterfall seems later to have been identified in approaches earth at the west. For the in Arcadia, presumably one of the cult with Athena, either to symbolise underworld is always reached from underworld entrances. By Styx the gods the link between the two cities or at the desire of a pro-Athenian party. the west, the region of the setting sun, swore their most binding oath, to break rather than from any other of the theoret- which entailed keeping silence for a ically possible points of the compass. year and exile for nine (eight years by

Atlas stood in the west in the sea that our reckoning: this is a great year, when

is beyond Ocean, and is caUed Atlantic all the stars and planets return to their after him. He bore on his shoulders original position, a period that recurs either the heaven or the two pillars in Greek myth and ritual). Probably which kept apart earth and heaven. Styx was once the only river of Hades, There too the Hesperides guarded the since Cocytus, 'Wailing for the dead',

25 THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD

The temple of Poseidon on the is said to be its tributary. The other sickle and cut out the sinews from south-east tip of Attica, a sea mark two rivers are Acheron {Achos means Zeus' hands and feet, disabling him and for any ship sailing by the Cyclades, pain; but the white poplar, acherois, putting him in a cave in Cilicia where seems to have been designed by the to the sinews in a bearskin guarded architect who built the temple of like the white willow, seems have he hid Hephaestus. All these temples formed been sacred to Persephone) and Pyri- by a serpent woman Delphyna. But part of Pericles' plan to mark phlegethon, 'burning with the pyre'. Hermes stole them and revived Zeus, out Athens as the centre of the The fifth river Lethe, first in Aristo- who flew to heaven in a winged chariot league of island states. This phanes, seems to be associated with re- and pursued Typhon again to Mount view shows five of the nine restored columns of the southern side of the incarnation and a spring of memory. Nysa (which recurs in the legend of temple, which have been set up on a Dionysus) where the fates weakened modern artificial base and look west him by giving him mortal food. Only along the southern coast of Attica and Typhon then could Zeus drive him to Etna by across the Saronic Gulf in his marked the direction of Aegina. Earth was shocked by the punishment way of Thrace where blood of her sons the Titans, and, as she had the Bloody Mountain, Haemus. done once before, shifted her allegiance. The Greeks certainly explained vol- She bore a youngest son Typhoeus, canoes as the work of fire-breathing or Typhon, a serpent man who might monsters imprisoned under the earth. be expected to continue the succession. The theft of Zeus' sinews is paralleled Against Typhon Zeus employed for in the Hittite myth of the encounter

the first time the thunder and lightning with the dragon lUuyankas, who takes that the Cyclopes had made him, and the god's heart and eyes. His son gets pinned him under the volcano Etna. them back by marrying the dragon's

But the victory may not have been as daughter. This fairy tale motif is absent easy as the Theogony suggests. The version from the Greek version, where the task

of Apollodorus says that Typhon was is performed by the Thief God. Also born in Cilicia, where he fathered mon- in the Hittite, the giant Ullikummi is sters on the Gorgon's sister, the snake only countered by sawing off his legs woman Echidna: their children were with the bronze cutter that severed Orthus, the monstrous hound of three- earth and heaven in the beginning. bodied Geryon, Cerberus, the Hydra All this suggests a version of the suc- and the Chimaera. Zeus pursued him cession myth with the persons and the

to the borders of Syria with an adaman- results altered to make it applicable tine sickle, probably the one with which to the surviving god, who wins the Cronus mutilated Uranus, where he contest and even survives castration. grappled with him. Typhon got the Zeus and Hera. The Greek city of on the facade but on the ends of the RIGHT Selinus in the extreme south-west of interior building, the cella. They The Sacred Marriage of Zeus and Hera. Sicily owed its prosperity to its links show encounters between male and The German excavations in the with Carthage. From the end of female gods and heroes: the female sanctuary of Hera on Samos, the sixth century it built an impressive heads, arms and feet are of marble which started in the 1930s, revealed series of temples which have been carved by a different and superior some of the few surviving Greek preserved by their isolation. The sculptor. On this metope the goddess wooden statues, though it has not mid-fifth century temple E seems to Hera unveils herself for Zeus as a always been possible to save them from have been dedicated to Hera. The bride: the Sacred Marriage has been disintegration. The late sixth century metopes were placed not in the open humanised. Museo Nazionale, Palermo. bridal pair, now lost, probably

28 THE FAMILY OF TH:

In this way Zeus broke the succession myth : Dione, the mother of Aphrodite.

cycle and established his rule. There are, Dione's name is the exact counterpart however, persistent hints in the myths of his own and of the Latin Juno. both that Zeus feared in his turn being But generally in mythology Zeus' overthrown by his son and also that consort is Hera. Her name seems to be some of the gods tried to cast him the feminine of 'hero' and to mean down. The world was then divided 'the lady'. This is a perfectly proper title between the three sons of Cronus, Zeus, for the wife of the chief god. But Hera Poseidon and Hades. In the Theogony, had a cult of her own in Argos and is

it is Zeus who assigns the blessed gods unquestionably a survival of one of the their honours. In the Iliad Poseidon indigenous mother-goddesses of Greece. describes the division of the patrimony As such, she is closely assciated with among the three sons of a father who young heroes such as, originally, He-

has retired from active life, though racles, who is named after her 'glory

he is not necessarily dead. There is no of Hera', and also Jason. Otherwise, trace either of primogeniture (succession she appears almost exclusively as the of the eldest son) or of ultimogeniture jealous wife resentful of her husband's (succession of the youngest son). amours and bastards (of whom, in the There are indeed traces in Greek developed legend, Heracles was one). mythology of what may be called the Indeed, in an amusing passage of the Indo-European family of the gods: Iliad, Zeus invites Hera to bed, saying

that is, of a family of gods organised that he loves her more than any of a upon patriarchal principles. But among list of seven women, two of them

Greeks it is complicated by assimilation goddesses. This is in fact part of a to religious systems indigenous to Boeotian catalogue of what the Odyssey Greece. calls 'wives and daughters of heroes', and the mildly comic effect of a Don Juan is not intended. Zeus and Hera represents the Sacred Marriage, Some of the gods who were assimi- but in a style which suggests the love The word Zeus is connected with the lated to the sons and daughters of the of the divine couple when they were with Indo-European monogamous divine still young and in the house of their first part of the Latin Jupiter and parents, before Zeus overthrew the word for day. He is the sky god of the family had already mothers, if not fath- Cronus and claimed the sovereignty. bright sky, but also of the storm, and ers, of their own, and the former they Attention is focused on the breasts so is armed with the thunderbolt. He retained when their paternity was taken of the goddess, as in the terracotta expected to have an exactly over by Zeus. Similarly many heroes protome of Persephone or Demeter might be in had a respectable pedigree ending in on page 35. equivalent consort, and so he has one •^. ; oife*^-i:^

The Twelve Olympians. As the expanding Greek cities absorbed their smaller neighbours together with the local cults, they set up an official state cult of the Twelve Olympians to express this new sense of unity. An early fifth century relief, said to come from Tarentum, shows that the cult also spread to the rich Greek colonies in Sicily and southern Italy founded at the end of the eighth century. Apollo with his lyre leads the procession with Artemis and her bow. Then comes Zeus with the thunderbolt, Athena with her owl, Poseidon with the trident, Hera, Hades and Persephone who carries the ears of corn, helmetted Ares with Aphrodite holding a flower, Hermes in cap and with his wand, the caduceus, and finally a figure with a basket who is probably Demeter.

Persephone and Hades. The Greek colony at Locri, on the toe of Italy, was the site of an important cult of Persephone. A large number of votive plaques all produced between 480 and 450 bc were found in a number of pits. All bear subjects related to the mysteries. Persephone is shown enthroned with Hades though she is clearly the more important figure. Museo Nazionale, Reggio. ««>M^

vi.r '^¥ V>'

'ii^-

an ancestress, possible a mark of an in a famous story as the discomfited burdened with heavy chains, to sleep earlier society in which a man might lover of Aphrodite. in a bed with golden Aphrodite? quite normally call himself Parthenius, Ares gave Aphrodite many gifts, Hermes replied that he would not mind 'unmarried woman's son'. But in most and she shamed the bed of her lord even if the goddesses looked on. But cases, paternity was taken over by a god. Hephaestus. But the Sun, who sees Poseidon was not amused, and called

The god is often said to cast the maiden everything, told him what was going on Hephaestus to loose them, offering into a deep sleep before possessing her, on, and in anger he went to his forge to stand surety for the fine that Ares which might suggest some ritual use and made chains like spiders' webs, would have to pay for his conduct. of drugs in a rite of sacred marriage quite invisible, which he hung from the Ares went off to Thrace, but Aphrodite to a god or in some cases to his repre- bedposts as a kind of net, with a device to Cyprus, to Paphos, where are her grove sentative. for letting them down. Then he an- and smoking altar, and there the Graces The amours of Zeus thus reflect nounced his intention of going off to bathed her and anointed her with oil, either ritual or genealogy or both. Lemnos, the seat of his cult. He was no immortal oil, and they put on her But in the monogamous Indo-European sooner out of the house than Ares was lovely clothes, a wonder to see. family a wife was not expected to tolerate in, crying: her husband's concubines or bastards, 'Hither, dear, to the bed let us turn', Athena and when this social structure was a call to which Aphrodite responded projected upon heaven it produced a with alacrity. Down came the net and Hera and Poseidon are often associated shrewish Hera. back came Hephaestus, again warned with Athena as not overfriendly critics

by the Sun. In anger, he summoned of Zeus. Athena, Like Hera, is not a

father Zeus and the other gods, claiming name but a title. It means 'the Athenian Ares and Aphrodite that he was made a laughing stock by one' and refers to another manifestation The legitimate issue of Zeus and Hera Aphrodite because he was lame. The of the pre-Greek mother-goddess were in fact three, and only one of them male gods came, but the female ones worshipped, as she continued to be is a member of the divine family. This is stayed at home for shame. And Homeric worshipped, in the Parthenon on the Ares, god of war, who seems to have laughter arose among them at the sight Acropolis at Athens, She was, however, been in some way Thracian and to of the poetic justice by which the quite literally absorbed by Zeus, who by have presented to his sons savage man- tortoise had caught the hare. Apollo pure thought brought her to birth from eating mares for their chariots. He appears said to Hermes, 'would you be willing. his forehead, fully armed in his own THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

magic goat-skin, the aegis, though Hephaestus cleft his head with an axe to effect the delivery. The story, as old as the Theogonj, said that Zeus loved Metis ('counsel': a personification) but was warned by Earth that his son by her would supplant him and so he swallowed her. Athena

was the child of this union. This is not the only myth in which Zeus appears in the role of Cronus. But the story of Athena's birth in fact reflects the resentment felt in a patriarchal society for woman's one indispensable function, actually bearing the legitimate children of the father. At least, they cry, the father- god could have children by himself without the intervention of the mother. In human terms they devised the phys-

iological theory that the child is complete in the male seed, and that the

mother's contribution is no greater than that of the earth in which also they sowed seed. Psychologically, of course,

Athena is the virginal and unmarried warrior daughter as typical of the Indo-

European divine family as it may have been of the warrior society which that reflects.

Poseidon

Actual hostility between Poseidon, Hera and Athena on the one hand and

Zeus on the other is found in the story of how Hera, Poseidon and Athena bound Zeus. Thetis the sea nymph released him and brought the hundred- handed Briareus, or Aegaeon, to help him. This story seems to bear traces of an alternative succession myth.

Common to both is the presence of Briar- Bronze statue, perhaps of Poseidon. this statue appears rather to be hurling The seven-foot-high statue was a spear. It might represent an eus as Zeus' Helper, and there can be recovered in 1928 from the sea off idealised warrior rather than a god. little doubt that Thetis is here standing Artemisium, the cape on the north- National Museum, Athens. for Tethys (the two are linguistic var- western tip of Euboea where the iants) who played in this alternative Persians were defeated in a storm in 480 BC. Presumably a treasure ship cosmology the role taken by Gaia in the carrying art treasures to Rome standard version. It should follow that was wrecked on the same treacherous Ocean played the part taken by Uranus coast. The statue is not Attic. It and if so Poseidon may stand for him has been associated with the Aeginetan here, and the binding for the hiding Onatas, who made the statue of Hermes with the ram at Olympia. away of Uranus' children. The subject used to be talcen as Zeus Certainly Poseidon seems to be with the thunderbolt; now it is more the father of Briareus, who is here given frequently believed to be Poseidon an alternative name that links him with with the trident. But the trident the he like Atlas, is used for stabbing (as in the coin Aegean Sea, and may, of Paestum opposite), and have been the giant that stands in the THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

sea and holds the world. If, then, in

this version, Poseidon is Oceanus/Ura-

nus, Zeus, who is never referred to by that name in it, must stand in the place of Cronus in what was presumably a myth of single supplanting. As it is told in the Iliad, however, it is a tale of rivalry between the Olympian gods. But the terms in which it is told seem to go back to an older mythology.

Demeter

Like his titles, 'earth-holder, shaker of earth', the name of Poseidon points also to some such original role. It seems to mean 'Husband of Da' where

Da, like Ge and Gaia, is a pre-Greek name of the mother-goddess Earth. Da reappears as the first syllable of

Demeter, 'Da mother', who is in Greek religion the goddess of agriculture and a sister of Zeus. Demeter had a daughter, Persephone by name but often called

'girl'. was her father, simply Core, Zeus ABOVE exercising his paternal rights he and Obverse of stater of Paestum, 550 so. He is almost always bearded, though gave her in marriage to Hades. Gaia The Italian town of Paestum was that is not well indicated here. approved the marriage and sent up named after Poseidon and the Greek He holds the trident, a fishing spear, form of the name is Poseidonia. The not to be thrown but for stabbing flowers that tempted Persephone down god was always shown on the coinage down into the water. Over his shoulders a secluded valley which either led together with the first three letters he wears what may be a net. directly to Hades or where Hades raped of his name reading upwards. British Museum. her (flowers are the proper accompa- niment of a sacred marriage, and Gaia BELOW had specially created the narcissus, The birth of Athena was naturally which is a small sphinx, simply a popular subject among Athenian a space filler. the left are Hermes which like Core spends the winter in the To vase painters. Some versions show and a bearded Apollo with the lyre. earth) and from where he carried her Hephaestus cleaving the head of Zeus To the right are Ares dressed as a off. with an axe, but this, which belongs hoplite with Corinthian helmet Demeter heard the scream which to a group E close to the master fully on his head and a goddess who her daughter gave, and sought her over Exekias, and working about 560 BC, is perhaps Artemis, as Apollo's shows Athena received into the family sister, or Aphrodite, Ares' lover. the whole world, bearing the torches of Olympus despite her unorthodox Museum of Fine Arts, used in her ritual. In the shape of an old birth. Zeus with a decorative Boston, Pierce Fund. woman she came to Eleusis, and the thunderbolt sits on a stool, under king's daughters received her kindly, and brought her into the house to be nurse to their infant brother Demophoon. But in her sorrow she would not enter the house, but stood grieving until lambe made her smile with obscene jests and set her on a chair. But she refused wine, asking instead for a gruel of flour and pennyroyal. She stayed and nursed Demophoon, anointing him with ambrosia and at night putting him

in the fire, until one night his mother

Metaneira caught her at it and struck her. Thus Metaneira lost the gift of immortality for her son, and Demeter THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

BELOW RIGHT Fertility goddess. This early sixth Artemis. This gold votive plaque century statue from Megara Hyblaea in from Rhodes of the seventh century Sicily was painstakingly reconstructed B.C. shows oriental influences. The from 956 fragments. It is a powerful goddess is depicted winged, and with representation of the fertility goddess a head out of proportion to the body. who was, in one form or another, the The type is a variant of the Mistress chief deity of the Greek colonies in of Wild Beasts, for here the lions have Sicily. Here the goddess is firmly been tamed and overcome by the goddess. maternal, and suckling twins. She is She is presumably Artemis, though the Demeter, therefore, rather than Mistress is a pre-Greek goddess. Persephone, although the twins may The pomegranate flowers hanging from suggest a cult of Leto, mother the plaque suggest that in Rhodes she of Apollo and Artemis. Museo retained some of the attributes of a HArcheologico Nazionale, Syracuse. fertility goddess. Ashmolean Museum. THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

BELOW Persephone or Demeter. Big half figures, called prototnes, were made in large quantities in Boeotia during the fifth century and placed in graves. An almost identical figure, possibly from the same mould, was found at

Delphi where it may have been a dedication. The type is archaic, and may derive from a cult statue wearing the characteristic hat. The pose indicates a mother-goddess, holding a pomegranate bud in her left hand, either Persephone or Demeter as protectress of the dead. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Perkins Collection.

^ THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

Delphi. Apollo and Artemis saved their mother by shooting Tityus with their

arrows, and he is found in Hades being

punished by two vultures, which sit either side of him and gnaw his liver. Another of the great sinners punished

in. Hades, Ixion, is also there for an attempt on a goddess, Hera. But the birth and fate of Tityus strongly suggest the Titans, and his story seems to be another misplaced piece of a succession myth.

Orion

Even more curious is the story of the beautiful giant Orion, an earthborn child Reverse of stater of Pheneus, about Obverse of stater from Croton, about }6o BC. The people of the small 420 EC. The Italian colony of Croton, of Poseidon, who gave him the power Arcadian city of Pheneus, in an isolated at the western end of the gulf of of going through the sea, like Atlas and Tarentum, was founded at the direct and often flooded valley in the Briareus. In one version of his birth, north-east towards the Corinthian instance of Delphi, the clearing house Poseidon and other gods begot him by gulf, had always worshipped Hermes for early Greek geographical water a hide, then the god of the flocks as their chief god, knowledge, and so always showed making on which was and dedicated a statue of him the oracular tripod of Apollo on buried for nine months. This tale is at Olympia in the fifth century its coins. The tripod is ornamented an example of folk-etymology (urine = bearing a ram. When the Thebans with two twisted garlands, and on Orion). Orion became a mighty Boeo- defeated the Spartans and set up either side appear the infant Apollo tian hunter, and had a wife called Megalopolis as the federal city of and the coiled python which he shot Arcadia, the Pheneans put Hermes when he took over the shrine from 'Pomegranate' who was sent down to on their coins, but added the figure Earth. British Museum. Hades for rivalling Hera, and may there- of Areas, their ancestor, whom Hermes fore have been a kind of local Per- reared when Callisto bore him sephone. to Zeus. British Museum. Then Orion went to Chios and wooed the daughter of Oenopion, the 'wine- faced', who made him drunk and blinded BELOW which grows from her head as the him, perhaps for raping her before mar- Artemis and nymphs. Outside Athens Mistress of Beasts, later identified there had been, at the very beginning with Artemis. The two female figures riage. Orion went perhaps to Lemnos, of the sixth century, a technique under her protection are therefore where he picked up, if Hephaestus did of relief decoration of very large the nymphs of Artemis, though they not give him, a boy, the original 'pigmy storage pots. From the neck of such give the goddess a very maternal on the shoulder of a giant', who guided a vase found and very likely made appearance. She wears the same kind to the sunrise, where he got back at Thebes comes this model of a of head-dress as Demeter in the him goddess, clearly identified by the two Boeotian protome on page 35. National his sight. Orion rushed back to be re- lions who flank her and bv the vine Museum, Athens. venged on Oenopion, who escaped him by hiding in a brazen house under the ground made by Hephaestus. Then Dawn loved him, and carried him to Delos, where Artemis slew him with

her soft darts. But in some versions it was Artemis whom he loved, or one of her nymphs. There are a large number of primitive ritual elements in this story or stories, and many of them recur in other myths.

Blinding is often a literary substitute for castration, and there seems little doubt that Orion was originally the male figure in a number of fertility rites, in some of which his female partner may have been originally Artemis. The sto- THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

ries of Orion are known only from allusions and late sources, so that the various elements in them cannot easily be dis- entangled in detail. But the water- walking giant where the sun rises is certainly from a succession myth.

Otus and Ephialtes

Some of the characteristics of Orion are shared by Otus and Ephialtes, whose mother, a figure in the heroic genealogies, bore them to Poseidon. At nine years of age they were nine cubits broad and nine fathoms tall, and they tried to pile Ossa on Olympus and Pelium on Ossa to scale heaven. They were slain by Apollo, for they put Ares into a bronze jar, from which Hermes stole him. The object of their quest was, it seems, Hera and Artemis, and in less Apolline versions Artemis killed them herself; a hind ran between them at which they fired, and hit one another. Otus and Ephialtes seem also to have been figures in a fertility cult, particularly associated with the island Nax- os. They are sons of the threshing floor, or of a garden or vineyard (a/oe) and their female partners seem to have been identified with Hera and Artemis. ABOVE BELOW their The manner of death shows them Orion crossing the sea. Etruscan The bronze youth or Kouros from to have been hunters, and perhaps to bronzeware was famous even in Greece, the Piraeus of about 530 bc, /eft, is an standing figure have met some ritual death which re- to which it may have been exported example of the nude in exchange for Attic painted vases. with one leg advanced and arms by lieved everybody else of responsibility. Women were important in Etruscan the side: the majesty of the head shows society, which may account for why such figures were earlier identified rather, the god was Hephaestus the large production of finely decorated as Apollo: mirrors, from the sixth century sometimes depicted in the form of an admired youth. The charioteer at In one version of the myth of the birth onwards. An archaic example, perhaps from the late sixth century, shows Delphi, right, sixty years later of Apollo, Hera was said to have borne a beautiful naked youth running in 470 BC shows the same type, Typhon spontaneously in revenge for across the sea, indicated by a shoal exceptionally clothed, adapted to a the birth of Athena. This story is more of fishes. The youth is Orion, the statue commemorating a victory in commonly told of Hephaestus, a fire beautiful hunter, who has this special the chariot race. National Museum, power. British Museum. Athens; Delphi Museum. god of eastern origin who has been incorporated as an Olympian of the second generation and, since the Greeks learnt metal working from the East, as the

divine smith. As such, he is lame. For as a blind child can be apprenticed bard, so a lame one can work at the smithy, where he does not have to move about much and where the compensating over-

development of arms and shoulders is an advantage. The loss of an eye, from

sparks, is another occupational hazard of smiths, which may be the origin of the one-eyed Cyclops. THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

LEFT RIGHT Dionysus on a goat. A popular type Whatever the connection, however, Early fourth century seven-inch of terracotta statuette, especially it was enough for later artists, statuette found in a tomb at Locri in in the fourth century and later, who developed the type of the the hand of a female skeleton. is a god or goddess in association with youthful Dionysus to the point of If the tambourine originally belonged a possibly sacred animal. The effeminacy, a charge already brought to it and is not the result of a mend connection of Dionysus with the goat against the god and his devotees in antiquity (since the figure seems to may be ancient. He sometimes wears by Euripides in the Bacchae. But have three arms) it may identify a a goat skin himself and goats were the Greeks did not underestimate the Maenad and have some religious sacrificed to him in some rituals. power of a deity who became more significance from the Mysteries. But

But his satyrs were always in Attica and more associated with all ecstatic the pose is not wild, and it might be a regarded as horses not as goats, states, and not only those induced doll or favourite ornament buried and the explanation of tragedy as by the religious use of wine. with a young and perhaps unmarried 'goat song' is not entirely satisfactory. British Museum. woman. Museo Nazionale, Reggio.

58 THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

Apollo and Artemis as helmeted archers, the former with the animal skin often worn by monster slayers, drive off the giant Tityus from their mother Leto whom he attempted to rape. Tityus, who is represented as a 'wild man' with his body covered with hair, has been shot in the eye. Hermes, in winged boots, stands by, and for decorative purposes the artist has given the same boots to Apollo. The amphora is one of a group made in Athens in the early sixth century for the Etruscan market to cater for the taste there for vigorous and often gory scenes from mythology. Louvre.

In Homer, however, Hephaestus is mes' mother is Maia, a nymph, though Iris, the rainbow, is the messenger of the the regular son of Zeus and Hera, just her name 'mother' suggests a mother- gods, as in other mythologies. as perhaps Athena was the regular goddess whose original young consort But the sixth century hexameter daughter. He was born lame, and a Hermes might have been. He sometimes hymn to Hermes is concerned only with story is told in the Iliad how Hera cast appears as a god of the flocks of sheep, the first day in the Ufe of this precocious him out of heaven and he was kept for especially in Argos, where he stands in trickster who a great year (eight years) by Thetis. The an intimate relation with the house of 'born at dawn at midday played the story has slightly sinister overtones, not Atreus, and in Arcadia where he was lyre. only of exposure of unwanted children born. At evening he stole the oxen of far- but also, as often where Thetis is con- This association with the 'luck of the shooting Apollo'. cerned, of the primitive succession myth. flocks' extended to all forms of luck, Hermes was born in a cave on Mount

It looks as if, in one version, Hephaes- and Hermes was the god of all forms of Cyllene in Arcadia, where Zeus had tus was to be the god who overthrew magic and trickery, which the Greeks at visited his mother at night 'when sweet Zeus: indeed, in a myth attested only first admired rather than condemned. sleep held white-armed Hera', but left on vase paintings, on which it was as Perhaps because these were the charac- his cradle at noon already determined to one period extremely popular, one of teristics especially of travelling men, or seek the cattle of Apollo. At the thresh- the things that Hephaestus made during simply by identification with some other old he found a tortoise, the shell of his absence was a magic throne with now unknown deity, Hermes was also which, he saw at once, could be made which he took his revenge. For Hera the spirit of the piles of stones with into the sounding box of a lyre. So he sat on it, and could not be released which Greek travellers marked paths, went back into the cave and made the until Dionysus made Hephaestus drunk boundaries and holy places. first lyre, on which he proceeded to sing and persuaded him to return in triumph, As a traveller and trickster, Hermes of his own birth. riding on a donkey, in order to set free loved to accompany men, and to escort The theft of the cattle was thus his mother. them. He used a magic rod to stupefy postponed until the sun went down, the men while he practiced magic and decep- appropriate time: for Hermes had spent

tion. He used it also on the special the afternoon planning sheer guile in Hermes escort duty which he carried out as his heart, the sort of things that men

The last of the Homeric Olympians is 'Psychopompus', the 'Conductor of who are deceivers practise in the season

Hermes: for Dionysus is not mentioned Souls' to the underworld. When Her- of black night. He 'cut out' (a Greek in either the Iliad or Odyssey, except for mes became the general herald and metaphor as well) fifty of Apollo's cows a very few allusions, and is in any case messenger of the gods the rod became from Pieria, where the gods' cattle were unique in having a mortal mother who his badge of office. He has this role stalled every night, and drove them comes in the heroic genealogies. Her- already in the Odjssey; but in the Iliad, backwards over the sand to Triphyhan THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

Pylos in the neighbourhood of Olympia Pan in the north-western Peloponnese, where the story may originally have been Whether or not that particular analysis

located. He himself improvised a kind is valid in this case, there can be no of snow-shoe out of twigs, further to doubt that myths of different periods do confuse his tracks or perhaps originally reflect the changing status of cults. The to make walking easier on soft sand. introduction of the cult of Pan at Athens, There he sacrificed two oxen, making for example, is historically attested in a

fire by means of fire-sticks (perhaps an- famous story which incidentally shows other local story of the origin of fire), and the reahty of Greek faith in their myths. hid away the rest. Then he went back Before the battle of Marathon the Athe- to Cyllene and entered the cave through nians despatched the runner Philippides the keyhole in the form of a mist, and to Sparta to ask for help. On the way wrapped himself up again in swaddling he met Pan, who asked why the Athe- clothes in the cradle. nians neglected him. He was thus able to claim, when Pan, the 'Feeder' (of the flocks: the Apollo taxed him with the theft next word is related to 'pasture'), is described day, that he was not himself responsible, in a Hymn as son of Hermes by the nor had he seen anybody else. Unsatis- bride of the Arcadian Dryops, and as The infant Hermes, lying closely swaddled fied, Apollo haled him off to Olympus 'goatfooted, two-horned, noisy, laugh- on a kind of wheeled couch, denies to and accused him before Zeus, who of ing', which suggests that Hermes had the presence of his mother Apollo, in course knew the truth. But Hermes assumed the form not of a mortal but Maia and his father Zeus (who swore, quite correctly, that he had not of a goat. Pan seems in fact to be a more make up a very human family group), that Arcadian of that he has stolen some cattle. driven the cows home, nor had he set foot primitive form of god The cattle are shown hidden in a cave, on the threshold (which he had been at the flocks who also evolved into Her- the mouth of which is covered by pains to avoid treading on). This con- mes. His form resembles that of the an olive tree up which a hare has cern for the literal truth of the oath, goat-satyrs who attended Dionysus and succeeded in running. The vase while encouraging an opponent to deformed the chorus of the comic play seems directly inspired by the sixth century Hymn to Hermes. Louvre. ceive himself by false inferences, is typi- that followed the three tragedies of an cal of an early state of society, and was Athenian trilogy (the word 'tragedy' has much admired by the early Greeks. been explained as 'goat song' - with Zeus however reconciled the two gods: some plausibility). But these goat-satyrs, Hermes returned the cattle and gave like the horse-satyrs who are more Apollo the lyre and promised neither to common on vases, have human and not steal his bow (as in some versions he animal feet, perhaps because they are had done already) nor to usurp his posi- firmly derived from dancers impersonat- tion as oracular mouthpiece of Zeus. In ing animals. return Apollo sent Hermes to his own Though in Elizabethan madrigals elementary teachers of divination: satyrs are always associated with nymphs, 'For there are some Holy women, their proper prey is Maenads, the wild born sisters, Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus over unmarried, rejoicing in swift wings, the hills taming snakes and tearing wild three: on their heads they are sprin- animals in their frenzy. Many Greek kled with white, vases show Maenads fleeing from satyrs, and they dwell in their houses under repelling them with the thyrsus (a large the fold of Parnassus pine cone set upon a stick of fennel) or, far off teachers of prophecy which as less commonly, yielding to them. a herd boy while still a child I practised. Nymphs The hymn to Hermes has indeed been interpreted sociologically as record- Pan on the other hand is associated with ing a reconciliation between the old the nymphs, with whom he often shares established cult of Apollo, which grew a dedication, especially of a cave. These in importance with the increasing power nymphs seem to be local manifestations of the Delphic oracle, and the newer cult of the early goddesses some of whom of Hermes, which appealed to a lower were upgraded into Olympians including social class in sixth century Athens. Hera and Athena. Like Artemis, whom THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

Statuette of Hermes. Pious Greeks dedicated small bronze statues up to a foot high in their shrines in gratitude for favours received or in hopes of those to come. Sometimes the male or female figures may represent the donor: sometimes they are clearly the god. The winged boots and the traveller's hat and staff, now lost, identify Hermes. He is shown in the archaic style of the end of the sixth century (though the statuette may be later) as a bearded man. The ram also identifies him as god of the herds, perhaps the characteristic by which he won the gratitude of the Spartan dedicator. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund.

THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

they continued to attend, they are crea- course) asked for her favours, which she The religious symbolism of south tures of the wild, and like her and Pan, promised him, and said that a bee should Italian terracotta plaques and figures is they are dangerous to encounter. Pan come to tell him when to visit her (there very mysterious, and this early fifth causes irrational wild fear in the noonday is a connection between bees and nymphs century plaque from Locri (about 470- already in the Odyssey, and some pro- 460 Bc) still awaits authoritative silence of a deserted mountain side: the explanation. The figure on the right is nymphs can cause madness, nympholep- phetic priestesses were called 'bees'). But certainly Hermes, in winged boots and sy, which may also be prophetic inspir- when it came, Rhoecus was in the middle travelling hat, shown as a severe ation. of a game of draughts and spoke to it bearded figure surely as the Escorter of Greeks called brides 'nymphs', rudely; whereat the offended Dryad Souls. The little chariot which he enters The

is drawn by young male and female but whether this was because brides blinded him. Whether she also gave him figures, both perhaps winged, who have were held to be filled with some kind of the gift of prophecy is not recorded in been identified as Eros and Psyche. One divine power or because nymphs were the fragment. bears a bird, possibly a dove or a hen, supposed to be the brides of those they That was what happened to Tiresias, and the other holds an ointment jar. a son, though different stories Since Psyche is the soul, it seems seized, is not clear. The inspired Pythia nymph's liltely that the plaque is in some way at Delphi, the various Sibyls, and even are told to account for his blindness. figure has been funerary. The central such unfortunates as Cassandra, were all Charon's story, attractive though it is, identified as Aphrodite, or at any rate regarded as in some sense 'brides of the suggests a literary treatment of an orig- the south Italian goddess of fertility according inal something like that of Cassandra and death who has some of her god'. Nymphs were classified characteristics. Museo Nazionale, to the natural objects with which they in reverse, how a nymph granted Rhoe- Taranto. gift prophecy, which she were associated : Oreads with the moun- cus the of tains, Meliae with ash groves, Dryads could not recall even when he spurned BOTTOM LEFT with those of other trees, especially oaks, her favours. So she blinded him in The island of Peparethus off the coast Naiads with fresh water and Nereids, revenge. of Thessaly just north of Euboea daughters of Nereus, with the sea. None The Greek cosmogony with which was famous in antiquity for its wine is, at and oil. Both the vine and the olive of them are immortal, only, like the the previous section was concerned flourish in poor soil and are Sibyls, very long lived; how long is least in the literary form which alone spoiled by too much rain. told in a Hesiodic fragment of traditional survives and which was quoted there, at The consequent prosperity seems to 'counting rhyme' form: least as much of a deliberate piece of have enabled the inhabitants to strike story telling as that of Charon, and some a very good early coinage, and this 'Nine generations lives the chattering running figure was used as an crow of its sources can be pointed to with beginning of the fifth emblem at the as men grow old, the deer is four some degree of certainty. The process of century. It is probably a wind bearing crows, myth making is always the same: the garlands, perhaps Boreas the old, spirit in which it is done, however, va- North-East wind which gaVe an easy after three deers the raven grows run into the Thessalian gulf. but the phoenix ries greatly. Boreas was important for trade, but lives nine ravens: and ten phoenixes The author of the Theogony claimed a could also wreck ships on the we high moral purpose : in his language, he treacherous lee shore of Euboea. nymphs with fine plaits, was inspired by the Muses. He told his British Museum. daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus'. myths seriously and they can be shown BOTTOM RIGHT In this passage the generation may to have satisfied deep psychological The wealth and power of Syracuse mean a period of a hundred years, the needs in himself and in his hearers. Cha- always enabled it to attract the best Latin saeculum, the time of the longest ron of Lampsacus seems to be more of artists and writers of Greece and human life, which would make the life an entertainer, telling the sort of mar- its coinage was always superb. After romantic story that his au- the defeat of the Athenian expedition of a nymph very nearly a hundred vellous and to Syracuse in 412 bc, some four thousand years. dience liked to hear. He may, Uke his issued which seem drachma pieces were Even in this long life most nymphs younger contemporary Herodotus, have to show Athena surrounded by the were happy in having no mythological possessed a firm faith in 'the divine' : but dolphins normal on Syracusan coins. history. But Charon of Lampsacus, a he is not committed to his stories, which The signature of the artist, mythological' the bad re- Euaenetus, is on the helmet. The fifth century mythographer and histo- got for 'the type can just possibly be explained rian, told a story perhaps in the course putation that led Thucydides to expel it as a variant of the normal Arethusa his scientific history. A of his Persian history : A certain Rhoe- explicitly from type, showing the Syracusan cus of Cnidos, being for some reason great many myths, unfortunately, sur- nymph helmeted to signify the threat and an oak in danger of vive only in versions which have been its defeat. The spring Arethusa was in Nineveh, saw seen as a nymph who fled from faUing and bade his slaves prop it up. subjected to this kind of romantic

the river Alpheus at Olympia in Its Dryad appeared to him, thanked him embellishment which began as early as the Peloponnese. Alpheus pursued for saving her life (which in this story the fifth century, even though it is her under the sea and their waters is bound up with her tree), and offered especially typical of learned Alexandrian mingled in a freshwater spring. British Museum. him anything he liked to ask. He (of poetry. s^^

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fef*-*- iARLY MAN

The Tholos at Delphi. On the There does not seem to have been any the disapproval of his peer group, and left-hand side of the road approaching canonical story of the creation of man in Nemesis, the righteous indignation of Delphi from the east, just inside Greek mythology. There is a late tra- this group, are the forces preserving the town wall, was the sanctuary of dition that Prometheus made man out of morality in a shame culture. As the Athena before the temple, that is, authority of the peer group breaks down in front of the temple of Apollo. It clay, into which Athena breathed life and had been a shrine of the mother- spirit, and this is rather doubtfully at- in changing social conditions, there are Mycenaean period. goddess in the tributed to Hesiod. The earlier Greeks no moral restraints on the actions of the A temple of Athena was built in place seem simply to have supposed that men, strong until the Super-ego has been of it (on the extreme left of animals, arose spontane- 'internalised' as conscience, the moral the picture) in 600 BC, and replaced like plants and culture. in 500 BC. The surviving columns ously from the earth. Such 'earth-born' sanction of a guilt were destroyed by a landslide in 1905 men are said to have founded many But Hesiod was also living in an age after excavation. On the safer dynasties - all those in fact of which that habitually used iron for tools and west end of the site a circular building, the heroic genealogy did not start with weapons, but which knew itself to have which the Greeks called a Tholos, succeeded an age in which bronze was was built in the fourth century a god, and even when it did the mortal by an architect named Theodorus. He mother sometimes belongs to such an used at least for the latter. The bronze conventions first applied the 'earth-born' family. men, however, were already degenerate, building to a shape which of temple and notorious for their violence. Though had been used for domestic buildings this may appear a fair, if harsh, descrip- from the earliest period, and was The Five Ages not especially favoured for places where tion of the Homeric heroes, it would men met together to deliberate and But Hesiod systematised these races of do for Hesiod, for whom these were to eat. The round table solved men in a moral fable. His story of the juster and better than his contempo- problems of precedence and unified of Five Ages of Men is really part of his raries. So he interrupted his scheme the gathering. There was an generations, and interposed them as a earlier such building at Delphi, reaction to the hard times in which he the perhaps on the same site. These found himself, combined with the fourth race between the bronze and three columns were reconstructed after common observation of the elderly that iron. excavation for decorative effect. sons are not half the men their fathers The first race, then, that the immortals were. He imagines a steady degeneration made was of gold. They were in the like gods, in terms of the four metals in common time of Cronus, and they lived not use, gold, silver, bronze and iron. This without labour and pain. They did as if scheme was at first purely symbolic: suffer from old age, but died Hesiod knew himself to be living in the falling asleep, and the earth bore fruit for age of Iron because mens' hearts were them of her own accord in ungrudging hidden hard as iron. He knew too that he was quantity. Now that the earth has living in a guilt culture: for in this age, this race they are spirits, good ones mortal men he says, Aidos and Nemesis left earth. under the earth, guardians of Aidos, the shame that a man feels before and givers of wealth. fe 4» tn ^^,

V: EARLY MAN

It is tempting for those who know the they eat corn, but their stout minds were How, as such, he cheated Zeus is told in rich golden hoards of the Mycenean of adamant, and strong and violent they the Theogony. shaft graves (from about 1600 B.C. slew one another and went down to Formerly men and gods ate together onwards) to see here some memory of the mouldy hall of dank Hades, name- (and specially favoured mortals such as this period, especially since at least one less. They were then the object of no Tantalus continued to be admitted to the of the tombs was fitted with a funnel for cult: but their eating habits reflect the feasts of the gods). But when they were cult libations. But the belief in a past great shift that took place between he- separated, Prometheus slaughtered a golden age, Virgil's 'reign of Saturn', roic and classical Greece. The Homeric great ox, and divided it into two heaps. who was identified with Cronus, may heroes were meat eaters, as befits a cattle In one he put the meat and the offal be explained largely as a compensation breeding aristocracy : Homeric banquets inside the hide, covering it with the fantasy for the hard times of the present are of 'meats in profusion and sweet stomach and intestines, so that it looked period. drink'. Classical Greeks ate bread as a a nasty small heap. But he made a pile The second race was of silver. They staple with olives, cheese, pickled fish of the bones and covered them with the were far worse than the golden race, and garlic to make it go down. fat, a great big heap. Zeus complained quite unlike them in form and mind. Homeric heroes themselves are for the two heaps were not the same size, None the less they were long lived: a Hesiod the intrusive fourth race of men, so Prometheus generously let him choose child was suckled for a hundred years. who died in war, some at Thebes fight- which he would have. Deceived, Zeus But when they were fully grown their ing for the sheep of Oedipus, and some chose the larger. From that time men life was short: for in wanton violence at Troy. At their death they went to the burnt on the altars of the gods the fat they could not keep their hands off Isles of the Blest, the golden age all and the bones, and the rest they kept each other, and refused to worship the over again but now located far off in for themselves. gods or do them sacrifice. So Zeus hid space and not in time. Hesiod of course claims that Zeus them in his wrath. None the less they was not really deceived, and that his too are called 'blessed ones under the 'Never', then cries Hesiod, 'ought I wrath was excited by the intention to earth', second-class it is true, but they to have been among the fifth men deceive. This sophistication shows that receive continuous honours. It seems but either die before or be born after- the story is older than Hesiod: but he likely that in both these cases there is a wards, is right in seeing that the story explains reference to the earth burials of these for now is the race of iron, when the sacrificial ritual of his day. It is an earlier Greek cultures : in Homer and in never by day aetiological myth. The real reason why Hesiod cremation was the rule, and the they cease from toil and woe, nor the fat and the bones were burnt was dead are witless and twittering ghosts by night from being worn'. that sacrifice was originally a sacred meal and never the objects of cult, which was at which men either ate the god in the reserved for these buried heroes. But his chief concern is not for cares and form of his sacred animal, or shared a The third race of bronze men were labour, but for the injustice that divides meal with the god who was believed to in fact made out of the ash stems which family and has led to the departure of be present. They consumed or used all provided their spears but their houses, Shame and Indignation. Earlier he had the useful parts of the animal: the rest arms and tools were bronze. Nor did told a different myth to account not for was burnt because it was holy. When the injustice of the world but for its the gods were conceived of as living

evils. Chief among these, for Hesiod, is up in heaven, they were believed to take Heracles bringing Cerberus to work. pleasure in the sweet savour of a burnt Eurystheus. This fine example of the offering, and indeed to live off the smoke. highly coloured and slightly comic The holocaust was introduced, at which painting of the Ionian emigrant Prometheus was burnt for the god, who decorated vases at Caere was the whole victim discovered unbroken, presumably in Zeus limited the fruitfulness of the earth, and it became necessary to explain why, the tomb in which it was buried with angry because he had been cheated by in the regular sacrifice, the gods were its owner. The artist has chosen to the Titan Prometheus, son of lapetus given the worse part. The folk tale motif show Eurystheus cowering in a and brother of Atlas. Like Atlas he is of the Trickster was invoked, and the large pot before the latest monster Heracles has brought back. This motif eventually punished by being shackled deceit takes its place in the compUcated is more usually combined with the to a mountain in the Caucasus while his story of how the world came to be the exploit of the Erymanthian boar. liver is gnawed by an eagle. He is way it is. Cerberus is more often shown being thus one of the giants whose tortured For in retaliation Zeus either hid fire enticed by Heracles with the help of it the ash trees Athena. All three heads are shown writhings cause earthquakes. But the away or witheld from by this literal minded painter, each Greeks very early took his name to from which men extract it by fire sticks, distinguished by colour. Nine snakes mean 'Forethought' and gave him a which they rub together until the hidden grow from him, to indicate his infernal brother 'Afterthought', Epimetheus, and fire is revealed. But Prometheus, like a origin, three for each head. in many respects he behaves like the first good culture hero, stole it from heaven One snake survives in later two-headed representations. Louvre. man. Clever, with his brother FooUsh. where it can be seen in sun and stars. and from which it descends in lightning. you have no children to look after your in, among other places, the Peace, of

He carried it away, as men did, in the old age, and your relatives, and not your Aristophanes, where the hero Trygaeus, hollow stem of a dried fennel, stopped sons, divide your inheritance when you the man of the Vintage, releases Peace up with clay at either end so that the are dead. from the subterranean chamber in which pith should not smoulder away too Hesiod, in the Works and Days, says War has imprisoned her, and thereby quickly. that the woman was named Pandora, regains his youth. and Epimetheus accepted her although This suggests that Pandora was once Prometheus had warned him to accept a blessing rather than an evil, whose Pandora no gifts from Zeus. return released men from the starvation

But Zeus still had a trick in hand. He The name Pandora, which Hesiod ex- to which they were reduced. Indeed had Hephaestus make a clay figure like plains by the gifts with which she was Hesiod goes on to tell the well known a maiden, equipped with all kinds of endowed, shows that the story is based story by which Pandora was not herself monstrous guile, and Athena dressed upon religious ritual. For Pandora is the the evil, but simply the cause by which her, and Zeus gave her to foolish Giver of All, that is, the Earth goddess, evils came upon the earth, admittedly Epimetheus, who accepted her. For the and a vase painting, as so often, preserves through her feminine curiosity. For poet of the Theogony, in the tradition of a different and perhaps a more primitive Epimetheus had, or Pandora brought

Greek misogyny, there is no greater evil form of the myth. It shows Epimetheus, with her, a great storage jar, like those than the race of women, who are like armed with a hammer or possibly a dou- found in Cnossus, in which were all the drones in the hive, consuming a man's ble axe, releasing from some kind of evils that might attack man. Presumably substance. But you cannot cheat Zeus: underground chamber a Pandora who is Zeus, benevolent in this version, had for there is one thing worse than a wife, rising from the earth. This motif, which bottled them up and men were still and that is not having one. For then suggests the return of Persephone, recurs living in the Golden Age. But Woman

LEFT A vase in the severe classical style of about 450 BC depicting a ritual version of the myth of Pandora. She rises from the earth to be the bride of Epimetheus, as a Love hovers over her. Epimetheus' hammer is not a smith's hammer but the type that might be used to break open a prison or to break clods of earth. Hermes, as a young man with all his attributes including the winged hat, brings a flower from Zeus, perhaps to symbolise the charms of Pandora, but

appropriate too if she is the returning

spring. It is hardly a charm, as was the flower moly which Hermes gave to Odysseus to protect him from the wiles of Circe. Ashmolean Museum.

RIGHT The little temple of Athena Nike ('Victory') stands on the site of an old Mycenaean bastion which covered the entrance to the Acropolis and enabled the defenders to throw at the unprotected right side of the attackers. It was an appropriate site for such a shrine, and as early as 449 BC there were plans to build a temple to commemorate the role of the goddess in the victories of the Persian War. But they interfered with Pericles' designs for the Propylaea and were not carried out until 421, with the Erechtheum and in the same Ionic style. It is in fact the most prominent building on the restored Acropolis. It looks west over the Areopagus and Pnyx, the two assembly hills of Athens. EARLY MAN took out the bung, just as the compa- Deucalion The flood is variously motivated. nions of Odysseus undid the goat-skin Some ingeniously connected it with the which held all the contrary winds, and The mythical chronology of these sto- fate of Phaethon, the 'sorcerer's appren- out they all got. But Hope clung to the ries of the creation of man is quite un- tice', who begged to drive the chariot of lip of the jar and did not get out, for certain and inconsistent. For Pandora is his father the sun, but, failing to control the woman put back the bung before clearly supposed to be the first woman, it, plunged to his death: his mourning she could get out. Hope was not always and yet men already existed in the reign sisters were turned into poplars dripping tears into the Po, the southern end regarded as a blessing by the Greeks : for of Cronus. But at this stage they join amber while desire pushes them from behind, on to the heroic genealogies of the of the over-land amber route from the it leads them on from in front to commit Greeks. For the daughter of Epimetheus Baltic. In the course of his erratic career acts of folly. But the point of view may and Pandora is said to be Pyrrha, who Phaethon came too near the earth, and have shifted rapidly, as is possible in was the wife of Deucalion, 'the Greek besides, presumably, turning the negroes myths, and the traditional explanation Noah' who alone survived the flood black, he set it on fire. This gave Zeus may be right, that Hope has stayed with with which Zeus destroyed the men of the excuse to destroy the Bronze men men and alone reconciles them to their Bronze. They re-peopled the earth by by deluging the earth with rain under evil plight. Diseases originally had voices throwing over their shoulders the bones the pretext of putting out the fire started and gave audible warning of their of their mother, that is, the stones of by Phaethon. approach, so that men could avoid them. the earth, which became men and women But now Zeus, angry for some reason according to whether Deucalion or Lycaon with men, has taken away their voices, Pyrrha threw them. The stones are folk and they can attack men without warning etymology, since the Greek word re- Others said that the flood was occa- by day and night. sembles that for people (/aas and /aos). sioned by the impiety of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, which was then called him. Then he overwhelmed the earth lucky enough to hand over the post to a Pelasgia after Lycaon's father, the with rain. successor. earthborn Pelasgus. 'The men of those This is another aetiological myth, The priest was in fact a rain-maker: days', Pausanias says, 'were guests and explaining the gruesome ceremonies for there was a spring on Mount Ly- shared the same table with the gods for which survived on Mount Lycaeus ap- caeus which flowed in summer as well their justice and piety, and they openly parently to the time of Pausanias, who as winter (which is not true of all springs met at the gods' hands with honour, says that they sacrificed there in secret to in Greece). When there was a drought, those who were good, and those who Lycaean Zeus, but 'officiously to pry into the priest agitated the surface of this had done wrong similarly with wrath'. the rites of the sacrifice was not to my spring with an oak branch, whereupon into a cloud, But then Zeus visited the Arcadians in taste : let it be as it is and has been fron a mist arose, which turned the guise of a work-man, and wanting the beginning'. It was believed that ever which attracted others and brought rain to test whether it really was Zeus, either since then, one man at the sacrifice to Arcadia. It is not surprising, there- Lycaon or his fifty sons mixed with the turned into a wolf, and remained in that fore, that Lycaon's sacrifice produced a flesh of the sacrifice the entrails of a baby. form for nine years or for ever if during flood. This so angered Zeus that he turned that period he tasted human flesh. The The poor and inhospitable hills of Lycaon into a wolf, overturned the table were-wolf was probably the man who ate Arcadia were always the most primitive at the place named after it Trapezus, at the sacrifice the portion that had in it part of Greece. There are many primi- and blasted with thunderbolts the sons the baby's entrails, -and he may have tive survivals in the myth and the cere- of Lycaon, all but the youngest, Nycti- become the wolf-priest of Zeus until mony, which may have started as the mus, who was saved when Earth caught the next sacrifice, when, unless the regular sacrifice and ritual cannibalism hold of Zeus' right hand and appeased distribution was fixed, he might be of a sacred king impersonating the god: EARLY MAN

to relics later he invested his son with the sover- nine days and nights (perhaps originally sacrifice. There seem be some eignty and sacrificed him (as the baby years, another great year) before landing of rain magic in the story of the flood. confined sacrificed by Lycaon is sometimes said on the top of Mount Parnassus which was Flood myths are not, however, to have been his son), uhimately to be apparently never submerged and to to Greece, and though they may also be succeeded by the youngest son of his which the inhabitants of Lycoreia, 'Wolf memories of real local inundations, such mother. Eventually the sacral kingship Mountain', claimed to have been led to as the famous one that buried Ur under was down-graded to a priesthood, and safety by the howling of (sacred?) twelve feet of silt, they may equally an unwanted baby substituted for the wolves. Similarly the Megarians claimed reflect the infantile fantasies of the child fears that sacrifice. There are many traces of this that their founder Megarus, son of learning bladder control, who type of ritual in other Greek myths, Zeus and a local Sithnid water-nymph, he may drown the world in an uncon- he which will be noted in their place. had been led to the summit of the nearest trollable flood, and his relief when mountain by the cry of cranes. Others realises that the world has been deliv- brought the chest to rest on a mountain ered from this awful fate. As always, the The flood in Thessaly, perhaps the original site, myth can be explained in different terms Deucalion, however, lived in Phthia, on Mount Athos, or even on Mount at different levels. of in Thessaly, where the original Hellas Etna in Sicily. But the fame of Delphi The descent of Athamas, the son of was and which has some claims to be and Parnassus naturally made it the Aeolus, the son of Hellen, the son these the original home of many Greek tra- canonical site. Deucalion and Pyrrha, shows how to the ditions. When the rains came, Deucalion The motif of escape in a floating chest timeless creation myths join on which was advised by his father Prometheus to recurs in the myth of Perseus and Danae, heroic genealogies of the Greeks, build a chest in which he floated for and might reflect a ritual way of avoiding must be dealt with next.

Mycenae is one of the two great Bronze Age fortified sites in Argos. Though the site is overlooked by two taller hills these were out of range of ancient weapons. Two royal grave circles have been discovered. The one shown, surrounded by a continuous roofed passage-way of thin upright blocks, contains the famous Shaft Graves which, when opened by Schliemann, were full of gold.

RIGHT The temple of Hephaestus at Athens

is still popularly called the Theseum. It owes this name to the four metopes, two on each side at the east end, which depicted exploits of Theseus, and to an early assumption that the Athenians would have commemorated their great founder. But temples were built only to gods, and in fact the ten metopes of the east end showed ten labours of Heracles. The temple overlooked the market place,

from which it was designed to be seen at its best and from where this photograph was taken. It stood by the quarter of the smiths and bronzeworkers, whose patrons were Hephaestus and Athena. Built about 449 bc, it is the oldest temple built entirely of marble. \ THE CHILDREN OF

Genealogical interest is typical of very There were then kings or nobles in many primitive societies, and important the neighbourhood of Troy who claimed questions of status, precedence and prop- descent from Aeneas, and for this reason erty ownership may depend upon the (they were perhaps potential patrons of accurate establishment of descent. The epic poetry) Aeneas had to survive the Maori chiefs of the end of the nineteenth fighting at Troy and its fall. It was his century could recite their pedigrees, survival which made him such a con- apparently quite accurately, right back venient ancestor for a number of doubt- to the Polynesian invasion of New Zea- fully Greek cities on the way to Italy, land. Attempts have been made to where he was already known in the establish a genealogical chronology of fifth century, and ultimately for the the pre-Dorian period by using the Romans when they wished, perhaps after Homeric pedigrees. defeating Pyrrhus, who could claim de- But these pedigrees were not only scent from Achilles, to establish their preserved in the metrical formulae of standing among the Greeks with a contin- heroic ancestor. ABOVE hexameter poetry ; they were also Hermes and Argus. The painting ued into the historic period. For many Systematised catalogues were charac- shows a naked Hermes, identified royal and noble families in Greece and teristic of Boeotian poetry. A similar only as a traveller with hat on his baclc, Asia Minor traced their descent from process was carried out for the heroes in attacking with a sword a naked heroes on both the Greek and the sixth and fifth centuries, when the unarmed Argus, who has only one Homeric in social prerogatives of aristocratic birth face but eyes all over his body. To the Trojan side. Aeneas is twice rescued logogra- right the bull can only be Zeus, battle by the gods, once by Aphrodite were being challenged. These unless it simply represents Argus' from Diomede and once from Achilles phers, as they are called to distinguish characteristic of cowherd. Museum respect- by Poseidon. In the first case Aphrodite them from the surviving and fiir Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. substitutes an image of him to be fought able historians Herodotus and Thucydi- over, which suggests that he may have des, started the practice of filling out a genealogy by turning places and tribes Europa and the bull. The city of Selinus been killed in the original tradition. But estab- in Sicily was finally sacked in 409 BC in the second Poseidon gives an explicit into people, and did their best to by the Carthaginians, in support motive for his intervention, 'that the lish a consistent relation between dif- of Segesta, another Sicilian settlement. poets race of Dardanus might not perish to ferent mythological figures. But the They hastily repaired the fortifications, seed: for Cronides and dramatists still felt quite free to destroying an old mid-sixth century destruction without and there limestone temple to provide stone. loved him above all his other sons. invent their own traditions, quite different A metope, which was recovered almost Now the might of Aeneas shall lord it are, for example, several undamaged, shows Zeus, in the form over the Trojans, and so shall his accounts of the fate of Haemon and An- of a bull, carrying off Europa to Crete children's children, who shall come after tigone. over a sea symbolised by dolphins. Alexandrian scholars continued Museo Nazionale, Palermo. him'. The THE CHILDREN OF 10

the work of systematisation, and on the founder of Thebes, and Danaus, who basis of their efforts Eratosthenes calcu- became ruler of Argos (the foundation lated the date of the Sack of Troy as the of Mycenae was reserved for a descend-

equivalent of 1 1 84 b. c. This Alexandrian ant, Perseus), are represented as immi- scholarship lies behind the extensive grants from Phoenicia and Egypt re- genealogies in ApoUodorus. But com- spectively. But both are provided with plete consistency was never obtained: respectable Greek antecedents through variants and contradictions abounded, their great common ancestress lo, and

and loose ends were left. That is why Danaus is certainly the eponym of the the emperor Tiberius could quite serious- Danaans, a tribe who have provided ly ask his scholarly friends, the Greek another name for the Greeks in the Iliad 'grammarians' 'Who was Hecuba's moth- and also seem to have been known to er?' and 'What song the Sirens sang, the Egyptians. or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among the women?'. lo Some genealogies went very far back and are linked with the two great centres lo was priestess at the Heraeum, the of Mycenaean Greece, Boeotian Thebes famous and ancient shrine of Hera at and Argive Mycenae. Both Cadmus, Argos, being the daughter of the local THE CHILDREN OF 10

river Inachus (though she was also pro- in Homer frequently appear and disap- vided with a long artificial genealogy pear in this form, and there was a legend which gave eponyms and a history to that Zeus himself seduced Hera first in many of the places in the whole Pelo- the form of a cuckoo, as he did Leda in ponnese). Zeus loved her, and she was the form of a swan. turned into a heifer, either by Zeus, to This then explains the appearance of conceal her from Hera after he had lain Zeus in the form of a bird. Hermes is with her in the form of a cloud or had made to kill Argus, rather than exercise covered the place with a cloud to hide his traditional craftiness, to explain his this sacred marriage of Sky-father and title Argeiphontes, which may really Earth-mother, or by Hera, to keep her mean 'slayer of Argus', though not nec- from Zeus, who therefore assumed the essarily originally of this Argus. form of a bull. The Egyptian connection has some- At some stage lo was tethered to an times been taken seriously, and it is true olive tree in the grove of the Myce- that very early Greek contacts with naeans and guarded by the All-seeing Egypt seem to be implied by the Ho- Argus, who himself wore a bull's hide meric references to Egyptian Thebes, and had eyes all over his body, and (in which ceased to be the capital of Egypt some versions) two faces. Zeus, in the in about 1400 b. c. More probably at form of a hawk or a woodpecker, guided some stage the Greeks were impressed Apis, Head of lo. Terracotta antefixes Hermes to the spot. Hermes charmed by the Egyptian bull cult of and in Greek and Italian temples had a Argus, with the music of the pipe though the cow goddess Isis, with whom they religious purpose as well as the practical perhaps originally with his magic rod, identified lo. Her son Epaphus provided one of concealing the ends of the tiles and stole lo away from Argus, whom he ancestors for many of the eastern na- and protecting the wooden roofs. They also Hera tions. His daughter Libya bore twins to protected the building spiritually, slew with the cast of a stone. Then either by depicting a deity, such as sent a gadfly which drove lo by a cir- Poseidon; of these Agenor went to the Dioscuri, or by frightening off evil cuitous route to Egypt. In Egypt she Phoenicia and Belus (Ba'al) married a spirits with a gorgon mask, a bore her son and called him Epaphus, daughter of the Nile and also begot favourite early subject. In the fourth either because by a touch (which is what twins, Egyptus and Danaus. century the heads of other mythological excited su- characters were used. The head of lo the word means) Zeus restored her to Human twins have always from Tarentum preserves traces of the her real shape, or because she had con- perstition, and in some parts of England type from which it is derived in the ceived simply at a touch. used to be taken as proof of the wife's round face, the curly hair and the Almost all the amours of Zeus reflect infidelity. In Greece the second husband horns. Metropolitan Museum of Art, as genealogy and it is not implied in this view was taken to be a Rogers Fund, 1910. ritual as well difficult to see how the myth of lo could god, and one of the pair is sometimes be explained in terms of the ritual of the mortal: alternatively, only a god is strong Argive Heraeum. There are clear traces in enough to beget two sons at once. myth of a bull cult of Zeus, who assumed Twins therefore occur very frequently in have that form to abduct Europa, and of Greek mythology : not all of them the identification of lo with Hera herself, divine parents, for some may reflect the who retains in Homer the traditional institution of dual kingship which sur- epithet normally translated as 'ox-eyed' vived at Sparta in the historical period. but probably originally meaning 'cow- Dual kingship may have been a de- faced'. The mating of the sacred bull to a vice for reconciling two systems of inhe-

sacred heifer might lie behind the myth, ritance. Two brothers marry two unre- and might have been preceded by the lated heiresses, each thus acquiring title ritual slaughter of the new bull's pre- to a kingdom in the female Hne. In each decessor, who turns up as Argus in his succeeding generation the son of one bull hide. house marries the daughter of the other, Nothing of this, of course, was so that the kingdoms are exchanged re- known to any of the Greek narrators of gularly, but each grandfather is succeed- the developed myth, who simply repeated ed by his grandson in the male line. the traditional elements in any order This grandson often appears in the sto- that suited them, and included elements ries, somewhat inconsistently, as his from other rituals. Some Mycenaean daughter's son, though by strict matri- monuments suggest that they visualised linear succession he should be the grand- the descent of a god as a bird. The gods daughter's husband. This hypothesis THE CHILDREN OF 10

(for that is all it is) has the merit of reported for Attica: there too Poseidon providing a single simple explanation created a spring on the Acropolis, but for a number of the more puzzling struc- of salt water. The well sounded like the tural features of the stories, though the sea when the south-west wind blew and

complete pattern is rarely if ever found there was the mark of a trident on a in any one myth. near-by rock. But Athena created the olive and was awarded the land. These contests may legitimately be taken to The daughters of Danaus reflect conflict between the patriarchal Danaus and Egyptus had each the tradi- religion of the Greeks and earlier moth-

tional fifty children, Egyptus sons and er-goddesses. Danaus daughters. A marriage was pro- It is not clear why Danaus or his posed between the two, but either Da- daughters were so opposed to marriage

naus or his daughters rejected it and with their cousins, which was approved fled to Argos, where the Argives accept- by Greek law for reasons of inheritance. ed Danaus as king after Apollo sent a It might be a reminiscence of Egyptian Obverse of stater from Gortyna, wolf to kill an Argive bull as an omen. brother-sister marriage, of which the 500 BC. The Cretan cities marked The sons of Egyptus pursued their brides Greeks did disapprove. But perhaps it their coinage with symbols taken from the mythical past of their land, which across the sea, and Danaus feigned was marriage and not children that the also had a live ritual significance. consent to the marriage, but ordered his Danaids objected to, and perhaps they

The water-loving willow-tree daughters to kill their husbands on the killed their husbands after intercourse suggests that the local Europa was, marriage night and bring him their and not to preserve their virginity. The like Helen in Rhodes, a tree goddess, heads, which he buried separately. Then suggestion that Danaus quarrelled with visited by Zeus, as Leda was, in the form of a bird, but an eagle and not a he found his daughters husbands by giv- Egyptus over the kingdom is the trans- swan. Here, as so often, ritual diverges ing them away as prizes in a foot-race. ference of a common motif in the history literary myth. from the But after their death these Danaids were of twins, but cannot provide sufficient punished in Hades: they had to carry motivation. A similar motif is the foot-

water in sieves to fill a leaking pot. But race for brides: there is normally only one Danaid refused to kill her husband, one winner who supplants his father-in- Lynceus, who eventually became king law, the situation of Hypermnestra and after Danaus. Lynceus. Elements in their story were A number of recurrent motifs appear connected with landmarks in Argos and for the first time in this story, though with various rituals. The separate burial not very clearly, together with some mo- of the heads may simply be a device to

tifs that are peculiar to it. The Greeks account for the existence of two sepa-

did not believe in punishment after rate 'tombs of the suitors'. Or it might death until the time of Plato, except for be magic, to lay their ghosts or to protect a few notable sinners, including the Da- the land. naids. But the form of their punishment Danaus then was Linked with Argos suggests that they were originally spring- in this way, like his great ancestress lo. nymphs, or priestesses with magical The other branch of lo's descendants powers for finding springs. One of them, was brought to Crete and to Thebes, Amymone, appears as exercising just and retained the bull cult which in Argos that power. When Poseidon and Hera seems to have been superseded by that contended for the land of Argos, Ina- of the wolf god Apollo Lyceius, whose

chus adjudged it to Hera, and Poseidon intervention secured Danaus the king-

in anger dried up all the springs. Da- dom. Agenor became king of Tyre, naus sent Amymone to draw water on where Europa and Cadmus were either their arrival. She occupied her search his children or grand-children. Zeus by hunting, and throwing at a deer hit loved Europa, and came for her in the a sleeping satyr. Poseidon saved her from form of a bull, carrying her off to Crete the satyr's advances, only to press on her where a bull cult is copiously illustrated. his own. In return, he revealed to her the The monuments seem to show bull-leap- perennial springs of Lerna, important in ing, but this may be a euphemistic way the summer drought of Greece. of referring to goring. The name Euro- A similar contest between Poseidon pa, 'broad-faced', is quite appropriate for and the mother-goddess of the land is THE CHILDREN OF 10

Cadmus One of the Greek tribes that came to for a wife, and whose wedding the gods Thebes seems to have followed the same attended.

Cadmus, with his mother and brothers, custom, and it is the cow which has Harmonia is one of the attendants on set out to look for Europa, and settled led to the association with Europa. Aphrodite like Hebe ('youth'), the Hours in various places to which they gave Cadmus himself was associated with (actually plural of Hore, season of spring their names. Cadmus himself followed snakes and with Ares. The spring on the or youth) and Graces. Harmonia came a cow, later said to be marked on the Cadmea was sacred to Ares, and, as such with a divine dowry, a robe and a flank with a moon, until it lay down: springs often are, was guarded by a snake necklace, the latter made by Hephaestus irresistible love-charms. there he founded a city - the Cadmea, (not a dragon : the Greek dracon is fierce and containing the citadel of the later Thebes. The Del- and mythical but still a snake). Cadmus Like the golden apple 'for the fairest', phic oracle claimed that he was follow- killed it and sowed its teeth in the earth, which appeared at the wedding of Peleus

ing its advice: but the Italic ver sacrum, from which armed men sprang up, who and Thetis, it did not bring good luck. or sacred spring, provides a close par- fell to fighting, either spontaneously or At the end of their lives Cadmus and allel. This was a device for dealing with when Cadmus cast a stone among them. Harmonia left Thebes and led a tribe over-population in the poor but empty Five survived, the ancestors of the The- called Eel-men to victory against the

hill country of central Italy. Every so ban aristocracy, who called themselves lUyrians, of whom they became the king

often all the live births, human and ani- Sparti, 'sown men', and clearly prided and queen, being turned into great ser- mal, of a year were vowed to the god. themselves on being autochthonous, pents. That is to say they were identified, When they came to maturity, they went earth born. Cadmus served Ares for a probably not before the time of Euripi- out to found a new tribe, following an great year to atone for killing his snake, des, with the snake gods of an Illyrian ox or other sacred animal, which they or possibly to win his daughter Har- tribe. In fact, as deified ancestors, they sacrificed at the new tribal centre, which monia. For Cadmus, like Peleus, is one received offerings as snakes, very likely was therefore called Bovianum, 'Oxton'. of the mortals who is allowed a goddess in Thebes itself.

Cadmus and the serpent. The local potters working in Paestum in the fourth century produced some fine large vases with mythological subjects. Python, about 340 BC, produced this copy of an earlier vase showing Cadmus killing the serpent which guarded the sacred spring on the site of Thebes. But he has added the huge pile of stones with one of which Cadmus, whose cap marks him as a foreigner, kills the snake. In his other hand he holds the water pot. The figure above the mirror is probably Harmonia, admiring the necklace she was given when she became Cadmus's bride. Hermes and Pan are introduced as spectators. Louvre. LEFT Death of Actaeon. The Pan painter, a master of the severe style of Attic vase painting about 460 bc, was able to depict with intensity the terrifying heartlessness of the gods as they were conceived in the fifth century and in Greek tragedy.' There is no trace of the original ritual. Artemis points her plague arrows at the offending Actaeon, who is merely identified by the hounds, since he is dying already. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund.

RIGHT Death of Actaeon. Almost contemporary with the Pan painter's vase is a metope of the same scene from Temple E at Selinus. But the spirit of the work is quite different, because the very young Artemis looks on at the automatic consequence of her violated privacy with horrified compassion for her victim. The transformation of Actaeon into a stag is suggested by the horns which are indicated above him, and the dogs are naturistically treated. Museo Nazionale, Palermo.

The daughters of Cadmus The birth of Dionysus of a man, a bull or a goat. Impersona- tion, of the god or his sacred animals, Onl)' Cadmus' daughters appear in the Ino also has Thessalian connections, for was a part of the ritual and the germ stories of the next generation at Thebes. she married Athamas, one of the sons of drama. Their names were Autonoe, Ino, Semele of Aeolus, with whom her fate was The Phrygian god was particularly and Agave. Autonoe married Aristaeus, linked. The story of the other two sisters the god of the vine: for wine induces a rustic deity who presides over bee- is that of the god Dionysus. Semele is the ecstatic sense of release which was keeping and olive-growing and sends his mother: but she was not originally experienced by the worshippers of Dio- forty days of cooling winds in the sum- the daughter of Cadmus, for her name nysus, and which led to the rapid spread mer. He was the son of a Thessalian is that of the Phrygian earth-mother, of the cult, especially among women. It huntress, whom Apollo loved when he Zemelo, and she is one of the Phrygian compensated for the hard times and so- saw her wrestling with a lion: later he elements in the cult of an originally cial tensions of the guilt culture of the was said to have carried her to Libya Thracian god. Agave was the mother, dark ages of Greece after the end of where the city of Cyrene was named by one of the sown men, of Pentheus, Mycenaean culture. The Mycenaeans did after her. Their son, Actaeon, was a whose name seems to mean 'man of apparently know a god called Dionysus, mighty hunter of the type of Orion. He sorrows'. For his opposition to the but the rapid expansion of his ecstatic was devoured by his own hounds for Bacchic worship of Dionysus he suffered cult was almost certainly later, and his boasting that he was a better hunter the fate of being ritually torn to pieces peculiar divine status is reflected in the than Artemis. He also wanted to marry by Maenads, which was once the fate of fact that he is the only one of the Olym- her and is therefore the male consort in the god whose substitute or surrogate he pians who is said to have been born of a fertility rite, who ends up by being is. For Dionysus is a blend of the Thra- a mortal woman. ritually torn to pieces. But when Arte- cian and Phrygian gods of vegetation All Greek gods were born: but it is mis becomes the virgin huntress his fate and fertility, who were ritually torn to almost the definition of Greek divinity is a punishment for seeing her naked. pieces by their worshippers in the form that the gods are ageless and immortal.

* I'

««. 1^

.V i- :

THE CHILDREN OF 10 all that men would wish themselves to be. A 'dying god', perfectly at home in Thrace or Phrygia, was a theological impossibihty in Greece. So the myths of Dicnysus are full of human surrogates who suffer his fate for him. Their stories and those of other dying heroes were enacted in his honour at the dramatic festivals of Athens. Semele, Dionysus' mother, was loved by Zeus, who promised to grant her whatever she might ask, perhaps out of pleasure in her pregnancy. Semele asked him to appear to her in his divine form she may have been put up to this by Hera, who appears as the jealous wife, or perhaps she was merely following the early practice by which the reigning pair imitated (or impersonated, or were held to be incarnations of) Zeus and Hera. Such mortal presumption shocked the later Greeks, and was always punished by the gods jealous of their prerogatives. So when Zeus, who could not escape from his promise, appeared to Semele she was consumed by the fire of his thunderbolt. Her tomb continued to

smoulder: it may have contained a sacred flame marking the place where lightning had struck. But Zeus snatched his unborn son from his mother's womb and sewed him into his own thigh, from where in due course he was born. Like the tale of the

birth of Athens, this is a male myth ex- pressing resentment and jealousy of woman's role in childbirth. Dionysus' name certainly contains the name of Zeus, and

it may mean 'son of Zeus', just as Athena

is the 'daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus'.

His mother is of no great importance in the myth, unlike other mother-goddesses. The newly born Dionysus was put

out to nurse, first with Ino, his mother's sister, who dressed him in girl's clothes (a common custom to avert the evil eye, but here said to be intended to hide the child from Hera), then with the nymphs of the legendary Mount Nysa, sometimes

in the form of a kid. This story is very like that of the infancy of Zeus, on which it might conceivably have been based. But two strange stories in Pausanias suggest a ritual. The inhabitants of Prasiae on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese said that the dead Semele and the infant THE CHILDREN OF 10

Death of Actaeon. Dionysus were cast up by the sea in a Only some twenty years after the chest, like that of Danae and the infant by the Pan painter, that treatment Perseus. They buried Semele, and Ino of the Lycaon painter shows an increase appeared in her wanderings to nurse in sensationalism which may owe something to drama. Artemis no longer Dionysus. acts, but stands by in a ritual pose A similar chest, with an image of gives with a torch while Zeus Dionysus in it, was given to a Thessa- approval from the other side. But the lian, Eurypylus, as his share of the spoils hounds are maddened by Lyssa, of Troy. The image drove him mad, and Madness, who appears as a character in the Heraclei Mad of Euripides, and he made his way to Patrae, where he put Actaeon, with horns like Pan, tries to an end to the annual sacrifice of a bridal himself with his spears. The defend pair to Artemis and became a hero at hounds may even have been figments the annual festival of Dionysus. These of his imagination. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. stories suggest a regular ritual at which an infant Dionysus was brought to land in a chest, and then nursed. It was in Phrygia that Dionysus discovered the vine, and taught men to

make wine from it. From there he set out to convert the world, punishing those who refused to accept him. This Hermes and the infant Dionysus. pattern is a ritual one. The rout of Hermes, recognised by his travelling hills cloak and hat, magic staff, and what women who went out into the was look like formalised wings on his a normal part of the cult of Dionysus. boots, holds the infant Dionysus, who They may have been taking out the old reaches out towards a Maenad with year and bringing in the new one, a a thyrsus. The nurses of Dionysus play type of ceremony well attested in Eu- a part in many ritual myths. In narrative mythology they were localised rope. But the stories may also reflect on Mount Nysa in Asia Minor, with real opposition to a new and socially which the name of the god was disruptive religion. The first such story connected, and are described as nymphs. is told in the Iliad. Lycurgus attacked British Museum. the nurses of Dionysus, who fled into the sea where Thetis protected him. The gods punished Lycurgus with blindness

and a short life. Here the ritual role of the 'nurses'

is clear : they are the Maenads who have found the new baby and brought him back. Dionysus flees into the sea because

in other rituals it was from there that he came. As in the story of his infancy, The capture of Silenus was a popular there are reminiscences of the succession subject in Greek vase painting, but representations of the actual event are myth, with Thetis playing the grand- rare. This late sixth century vase mother role that she did for Zeus in by the Achelous painter is highly the story of Briareus. dramatic. The Silenus (not in any The Iliad has as usual suppressed the of the of the vases identified as the fat Death of Orpheus. The work fate Lycurgus. the serene old Pappa Silenus but as a regular gorier details of the of Achilles painter reflects Periclean sculpture. It freezes horse satyr) is taken by two hunters He went mad and attacked his son with style of into calm the action of a violent armed with two throwing spears an axe, thinking he was pruning a vine. Orpheus. in the very act of drinking at the subject, the death of The land became barren, and was made fountain running with wine, which A severe Thracian woman, identified fruitful again when Lycurgus was torn her left forearm, stands before a stylised olive tree. It is by the tattoos on from possible that a genre scene 'Hunters to pieces by horses on Mount Pangaeus. prevents the dying Orpheus his lyre or striking her with surprise a satyr' preceded its association Doubtless he was ritually eaten, and destroying runs down with it. Blood from a spear thrust Midas and later moralisation, pieces of him strewn on the fields, hint of though an earlier vase shows a bound his right side. There is no though the horses seem to come from floating satyr brought before the king. ritual tearing or of the head Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers the ritual of the Thracian Ares, whose down the river. Museum of Fund. Fund, 1949. sons, like the Thracian Diomede, often Boston, Special THE CHILDREN OF lO

The goddess Athena as Defender of the City, Promachos, she who fights

for it, is naturally associated strongly with Athens, the city from which the goddess in fact talces her name. Pericles set up a colossal bronze statue of the goddess in this pose beside the Parthenon as part of his redevelopment of the Acropolis. It was reproduced in large numbers of small votive statues of varying date and competence, and copied over much of the Greek and Roman world. In her left hand she holds a hoplite shield, almost horizontal to keep the opponent at as great a distance as possible, while she threatens him with the stabbing spear held in the right. The goddess dispenses with the breastplate, instead of which she sometimes wears the aegis, or divine goatskin with the gorgon's head. But she is normally helmeted. This version, in which the high plume suggests Italy, has a certain coarse strength about it. British Museum.

own man-eating mares. The other elements clearly describe the Thracian vegetation cult. The son is also called Dryas, 'tree-man', and an Attic vase shows Dionysus worshipped in this form. But the best known story is that of Di- onysus' return to his birth-place, Thebes. Rejected there, Dionysus maddened the women and drove them to Mount Cithaeron, where they routed the troops sent against them. Pentheus imprisoned the effeminate male leader of the Bac-

chantes (who is clearly distinguished from Dionysus in the play), or he thought he did - in fact they caught a bull. The leader escaped, and persuaded Pentheus to put on women's dress and spy on the Bacchantes on the mountains. To do this he climbed a pine tree, which the Bacchantes uprooted and then tore him ritually to pieces, led by his mother Ag- ave. She returned in triumph with the head of her son as a trophy, only to come to herself and learn the sad lesson of all Greek tragedies: mortal submission to the will of the stronger gods. In Attica the worship of Dionysus was easily assimilated to a local cult, but the ritual death could not be avoided. Icarius gladly accepted the gift of the THE CHILDREN OF 10 vine, and in the proper missionary spirit Dionysus, and Orpheus is always re- Semele and conduct her to Olympus gave wine to some shepherds, who in presented as one of his followers. His under her Greek name Thyone, the ignorance drank it unmixed like water mythological chronology varies, but 'possessed'. Persephone or Core, and in

(the Greeks normally diluted it with at Aristaeus, husband of one of the daugh- one version also Pandora, rise from the least three parts of water). In their ters of Cadmus, appears in one of his earth in this way, bringing back the madness, the shepherds, thinking they stories. Orpheus was the son of Calliope, spring, and Eurydice must be a deity were poisoned, killed Icarius, whose the muse of epic poetry (for his verses of the same type. Dionysus descended daughter hanged herself when she found were in hexameters, like the I/iad and through the bottomless Alcyonian lake his body. This story explains the Athe- the Odyssey and the Boeotian poems of in Argos by the spring of Lerna where nian festival, paralleled in Italy, at which the school of Hesiod). He had a magic annual mysteries were performed at small images were set swinging in the lyre, with which he charmed trees and night, the nature of which Pausanias branches of trees in the heat of summer, rivers as well as the wild beasts: even refuses to divulge. when Erigone, the daughter 'born in stones gathered round him and danced, The arrival of Dionysus by sea may the spring', had been killed by the hot which sounds like another explanation lie behind the myth told in the hexameter summer's drought. of stone circles. Hymn and illustrated on a famous vase. Orpheus loved a wood nymph, Dionysus was kidnapped by Etruscan Eurydice, whom Aristaeus also loved and pirates (in a later version he took passage Midas chased at her wedding. As she ran from with them for Naxos, where he had a In the course of his travels Dionysus him she trod upon a snake and was stung cult involving Ariadne), who persisted encountered both Midas and Orpheus. to death. Inconsolate, Orpheus followed in their intention even when they were

Midas is a kind of King of Fairyland in her to Hades, and charmed Persephone unable to tie him up and despite the popular Greek fables, the richest man in into letting Eurydice go, on condition advice of the pious steersman. Out at the world. His kingdom was finally that he did not look behind him until sea suddenly the sail was wreathed in a settled as Phrygia, to where his fabulous he got her safely on the earth. Of course fruiting vine and the mast and oars were rose-gardens were transferred from their he failed to fulfil the condition and, twined in ivy. Ivy was much used in original place in Macedonia. To these rejecting all other women, he wandered Bacchic rites, probably because it is rose-gardens Silenus turned aside, the with a band of Thracians preaching his evergreen and preserves the life of the eldest of the satyrs, a fat old man with own mysteries and those of Dionysus, vegetation spirit during the dead season. the snub nose and low forehead which until he was torn to pieces by Thracian The god became a lion on the fore- was the Greek convention for such wild Maenads, who were jealous for the hon- deck, and made a she-bear appear and lustful creatures. He fell asleep in our of their sex. They cast his head into amidships, driving the sailors to the Midas' garden, where a fountain had the river Hebrus, and it sang 'Eurydice, stern where they huddled round the been filled with wine to catch him. Midas Eurydice' as it floated to the sea. pious steersman. The lion seized their feasted him, and returned him to Dio- The story of Orpheus has attracted leader, and they all jumped into the nysus, who granted him the boon he writers ever since Virgil, who ends his sea and were turned into dolphins. But asked, that everything he touched might Georgics with the story and is the first Dionysus stopped the steersman from turn to gold. surviving author to bring in the romantic following their example, revealed him- But like a man who swears an oath, motif of Aristaeus. He probably got self to him and made him rich. Presum- he was held to the literal meaning of his this from the Alexandrian scholars but ably he too became a Dionysiac mis- words, and when even the food he put it might have a basis in a ritual sacrifice sionary. to his lips turned to gold he was forced of a virgin. Eurydice's sisters took their The story is partly intended to explain to ask that the gift be rescinded, a well revenge by making all Aristaeus' bees the well-known friendliness of dolphins, known fairy tale motif. He was told to die: he learnt how to get a new swarm who rescued the poet Arion in similar wash in the sands of the river Pactolus, from the decaying carcass of a bullock, circumstances (an example of a myth

all the sands of which turned to gold, a superstition (for the bees are really a being transferred to a historical person- thus fulfilling a prophecy made in his form of fly) shared by the ancient age). But chiefly it exhibits the manifest infancy, when ants carried grains of corn Hebrews. The prohibition on looking power of the god, who is shown by the into his mouth while he was sleeping, back is a folk-tale motif. Cronus in the painter Exekias as a huge bearded figure showing that he would be the richest succession myth and Deucalion after the in a sailing ship like a dolphin, with man on earth. flood both threw things over their two dolphins painted on its side fore shoulders without looking back. The and aft, and a bird-beaked stern. This

singing head is a similar motif. is the early form in which the god is Orpheus depicted, full of that quality which the The mysteries of Orpheus were another Greeks never failed to attribute to their The apotheosis of Dionysus ecstatic cult which spread in Greece in gods, whatever the stories they told of the hard times of the seventh century Dionysus too was said to have descended them, a quality that aroused in men onwards. They resembled the cult of into Hades to bring up his mother feelings of reverent worship.

63 The Erechthcum, as it was called by was left open to the heaven and the Greek traveller Pausanias in the protected from flooding by the porch second century ad, is the most recent of the maidens. Outside, next to the building on the Acropolis in Athens, olive, was the tomb of the serpent constructed during the Peloponnesian man Cecrops. Two other heroes also war from about 420 bc. But its site had shrines in the temple further was the most sacred and oldest on the east. Then came a wall, completely Acropolis, where a number of very cutting off a temple of Athena, ancient cults were sited, and this where the ancient wooden image of the accounts for its odd shape. goddess was kept, perhaps removed To the left, facing north, a normal there from the older temple which temple facade led into the ancient the Parthenon had succeeded in all shrine of Poseidon and Erechthcus, but sanctity. This temple was entered also entered from the door to be seen at a different level from a normal by the sacred olive of Athena, and facade, which was balanced on from stairs leading from the porch the west by the false fa(;ade which of the maidens. Here were the can be seen above the door by marks of Poseidon's trident, and the the olive. The olive itself stood in 'sea' or brackish pool which he created a shrine of one of the daughters of there. Here the cleft of the oracular Cecrops, who may also be symbolised hero Erechtheus, struck by lightning. in the Caryatids of the porch.

64 THE CHILDREN OF AEOLU

Unlike Cadmus, Aeolus had sons as over his wife and the kingdom. Then well as daughters. The stories about them sons avenge their father's death by kill- seem to contain saga, that is, genuinely ing their mother. historical material however garbled and This bald catalogue of incest, adul- misplaced, as well as ritual elements. tery, parricide and matricide provides A large number of primitive motifs the raw material for most Greek trag- recur, and suggest a modified patriarchal edies, which took their plots from system. Genealogies are normally reck- heroic mythology. The tragedians' con- oned in the male line, but sons rarely centration on such themes reflects the succeed fathers: they often marry their tensions of Athenian social and family brother's daughter, as if that gave them Ufe. But the original stories are not to a better title. They are more often sac- be explained only in terms of individual rificed, sometimes by boiling in a psychology or of essential human wick- cauldron, or they leave the country edness. In many cases they are simply and marry another king's daughter, the consequence of the strong interaction Phrixus and the Golden Ram. The with whom, of course, they get the of two completely incompatible social artistic type of the god or goddess kingdom. structures. riding upon an animal is one that Conversely, kings often fear death The important children of Aeolus may go back to a period when god closely at the hand of their daughter's son and are four sons and three daughters: the and animal were even more identified. It recurs in a number take fruitless steps to avoid this fate. rest seem to be genealogical fictions. of myths of heroes, such as Europa and Sometimes set ritual contests for The four sons are Athamas, Sisyphus, they up the bull and, as here, Phrixus on the their daughter's hand, but their daugh- Salmoneus and Cretheus, and the three Golden Ram, and even perhaps ter betrays them to the right man. daughters Alcyone, Canace, and Calyce. Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops' This late version in terracotta, Sometimes they prevent their daughter's cave. perhaps towards 435 BC, shows Phrixus marriage, but she is impregnated by a Athamas not riding but holding on to a ram god. Then they expose the child, but it that appears to be swimming the is miraculously preserved to return as Athamas, king of Orchomenus, a My- Hellespont. It may have been balanced which the promised supplanter. Their actions cenaean site on the Thessalian side of on the large wooden chest for it was designed (it is ten inches long) are often said to be motivated by an Boeotia, seems to have practised rain by a figure of Helle on the ram, for incestuous love of their own daughter, magic like his ancestor Deucalion. Atha- an earlier figure of her, shown seated and at least one hero actually fathered a mas married Nephele, whose name on the ram like Europa on her bull, left. Metropolitan Museum son in this way, at least keeping the means 'cloud' : she may have been a fairy faces of Art, Rogers Fund, 191 2. succession in the male line. Their wives like the Swan-maiden, whom Athamas too join in the conspiracy against them, captured by stealing her clothes, though inviting young men who visit their such stories are told in Greek only of

husbands to kill their host and take sea nymphs like Thetis. At any rate she ^ ^ '-^r

'^'^i IT- -

4 THE CHILDREN OF AEOLUS

is evidence for her husband's concern Delphi. The reconstructed columns with rain-making. In a drought he proof the fourth century temple are seen from above, looking south-east up posed to sacrifice his son Phrixus on the valley to the pass. Mount Laphystius but Zeus sent a golden ram on which Phrixus made his escape with his sister Helle. He reached Col- chis at the far end of the Black Sea,

where Aeetes was king. Helle fell off

on the way and the Hellespont is named after her. But Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus of Escapes, to whom also Deucalion had sacrificed after the flood,

and hung up its fleece in a sacred grove. Later in Thessaly, Athamas was about to suffer the same fate of sacrifice to Zeus Laphystius when his grandson, who had returned from Colchis, rescued him. In consequence, the eldest male of the line of Athamas and Phrixus had for some time been liable to sacrifice if he entered the council chamber there, an act by which he was presumably

deemed to have become king. It is

doubtful, however, if the sacrifice was ever more than simulated in the time of Herodotus, who reports the custom. This sacrifice does not seem to be part of the rain magic. Athamas was liable to be sacrificed at the end of his

term, or when he lost his virility, or in emergency, like any sacred king in the Golden Bough. He was sacrificing his son as his surrogate or substitute. The golden ram seems to have been an emblem of sovereignty, with which Phrixus was temporarily invested, and not 'a ram caught in a thicket' and substituted for him. Later the sacrifice of Phrixus was accounted for by the wiles of a wicked step-mother. Athamas took as his second wife Ino the daughter of Cadmus. By her he had two children, in whose interests their mother wanted to be rid of Phrixus and Helle. So she parched /^7^. the seedcorn and persuaded the oracle (always the sign of a later version) to require their sacrifice to cure the famine. For their part in rearing Dionysus, Athamas and Ino were driven mad and killed their children: Melicertes was boiled in a cauldron and then Ino jumped into the sea with him. They were worshipped, especially at Corinth, as Leucothea, the White Goddess, and ^^'i, the infant Palaemon, and are in fact a mother-goddess and consort, the former

67 THE CHILDREN OF AEOLUS

the winter, and during these 'halcyon days' the sea remained calm. The lake by which Dionysus entered Hades was called Alcyonian, and the story may therefore have reminiscences of the chest that brought the child to land.

Pelias

Sisyphus is said, in an obscure story, to have hated Salmoneus, and to have

been told that if he had children by Salmoneus' daughter Tyro they would avenge him. In fact. Tyro appears as married to the other brother, Cretheus. She bore twins to a god, Poseidon, who assumed the form of the river Enipeus, for which she conceived a passion. One of the sons, Pelias, avenged her on Cretheus' second wife, who mistreated her (perhaps the second wife in such cases was married under the patriarchal rules) and probably on Cre- theus as well, since Pelias inherited the

kingdom. He is, of course, represented as a villainous usurper, who killed Sidero on the altars of Hera. He was in turn supplanted, and indeed sacrificed by boiling in a cauldron, by Cretheus' grandson, Jason. Pelias and his brother were exposed in a chest, but saved by the herdsman in charge of a troop of brood mares when one of them drew his attention to the children by kicking Pelias in the face. Poseidon often appears in the form of a stallion, just as Demeter, his original

consort, appears in that of a mare : so it is possible that Pelias was the divine twin and marked as such by his father. When they were fully grown they returned Labour of Sisyphus. The same painter Hades himself (the Greeks spoke to lolcus, the city of Cretheus, where who depicted the capture of Silenus always of the house of Hades, never of they were recognised by the tokens of page 60 also drew this picture Hades as a place) is portrayed as a on identity which they had worn when of Sisyphus punished in the underworld. white-haired old man with a staff. they were exposed. It was then that Persephone holds four huge ears of Antikensammlungen, Munich. corn in one hand and two in the other. Pelias avenged his mother. But he quarrelled with his mortal brother Neleus

identified with the nurse of Dionysus, and her husband Ceyx called each other who went off to Pylos. perhaps because the child came from Hera and Zeus. This identification - rath- There has obviously been some sub- this part the sea. Athamas killed the other child er than impersonation - was required stitution and suppression in and went into exile in Thessaly. of early kings. But the later Greeks of the story of the sons of Aeolus and exhibits Salmoneus also seems to have prac- considered it blasphemous. Salmoneus their families, but it none the less tised rain-magic, imitating Zeus by was blasted by real lightning, and Alcy- many features of the pattern of inter- dragging cauldrons behind his chariot one and Ceyx were turned into the sea acting forms of succession. Apart from for thunder and throwing out torches birds whose names they bear. The the one obscure story, the role of for lightning. So too his sister Alcyone halcyon was said to nest on the sea in Sisyphus has been completely lost, and THE CHILDREN OF AEOLUS

all the other myths about him contain tor Ormenides. Such helmets are known rolled back to the bottom. This punish- fairy-tale motifs. from the shaft graves excavated by ment suggests the Titans under their SchLiemann at Mycenae: so perhaps mountains. Autolycus was a tomb-robber. But Sisyphus Sisyphus outwitted him. When Auto- Endymion Sisyphus, with the keenest eye for profit lycus stole his cattle and changed their of any man, lived at Corinth where his colour, Sisyphus marked their hooves, The other two daughters of Aeolus tomb was, 'though even of the Corin- and so recognised his own and got them belong rather to religion. Canace bore thians of his own time there were few back. This looks like a rationalised ver- four sons to Poseidon, one of whom, who knew where it was'. The sons of sion of the exploit of Hermes, Autolycus' Aloeus, married his brother's daughter Aeolus were widely dispersed in Greece: father, and of the invention of branding Iphimedia. But her children were sons

Salmoneus went to Elis, and it is likely (the Corinthians used Q, the original of Poseidon, Otus and Ephialtes who that the quarrel he or Cretheus had with form of the first letter of their town). piled Pelion on Ossa. Calyce was the Sisyphus was about the inheritance. Finally Sisyphus cheated Death and mother of Endymion, another of the Such quarrels, especially between twin took him prisoner, so that nobody died Handsome Hunters carried off by a brothers, are another recurrent motif in until Ares released him. Then Sisyphus goddess. The Moon took him to Asia the stories, and they too are probably told his wife to leave his body unburied, and bore him fifty daughters. He sleeps a consequence of the social structure. and persuaded Hades to let him return for ever eternally young in a cave on Because of his reputation, Sisyphus to repair this impious omission, prob- Mount Latmus in Caria. Presumably, is brought into association with two ably swearing some crafty oath which like all such sleepers, he will awake one other heroes of similar character, Auto- made Hades think he would return at day. But his tomb was also shown in the lycus, 'who surpassed other men in once, instead of on some future occasion. stadium at Olympia in Elis, and he is thieving and the oath', and Odysseus, No details are preserved of this folk- said to have made his sons hold chariot whose mother was Autolycus' daughter tale, a kind of story generally alien to races for the inheritance. There is also and whose real father was sometimes the temper of Greek mythology. But a story that he was admitted to Olympus, said to be Sisyphus. One of Autolycus' he is one of the great sinners whom but expelled and cast asleep for an thefts was that of a boars' tusk helmet, Odysseus saw punished in Hades, push- attempt on Hera: this is appropriate which he took from Eleon sonofAmyn- ing up a hill a stone which continually behaviour for a mighty hunter.

.'V \

Stater from Corinth, 325-508 bc. a Corinthian, caught it and bridled it back to show the face and not down The winged horse Pegasus, on the with the help of Athena. The as in war, has the leather neckpiece obverse, though born from the Corinthians put Pegasus and Athena showing under it. The boar and the Gorgon's blood in the African desert, on their coinage, only bringing the letter P (the Greek R) are mint marks was always at home in Corinth, type up to date from time to time. dating the issue. The Q under Pegasus where Bellerophon, himself originally Athena's helmet, on the reverse, worn stands for Corinth.

69 DNSTER=KILLE

There is no lack of monsters in very stories; for Acrisius then drove out ous Joseph: but the wife is not originally early Greece, whether in Minoan and Proetus, who went to Lycia (where wanton, merely playing her part in a Mycenaean art or in mythology, in there are Mycenaean settlements) and regular succession pattern. Bellerophon's which Typhon, the opponent of Zeus married the king's daughter. But his refusal is a deliberate rejection of that in the succession myth, is the great- father-in-law lobates restored Proetus pattern, but in an earlier version he may grandfather of all monsters. This and to Tiryns, while Acrisius continued to have killed his host. other conflicts with monsters have all rule at Argos. As it was, Proetus was convinced, sometimes been derived from religious The only unusual element in this though the rules of hospitaUty prevented ritual of the Near East, where the artistic story, which falls into a regular pattern, him from killing Bellerophon himself. type of hero and monster is very early. is the mention of Lycia. There were a Instead 'he sent him to Lycia, and gave Certainly the great period for monsters number of epic traditions about Lycia. him baleful signs, having graved on a in Greek art is the seventh century, The Lycians play a large, but geogra- folded tablet many spirit-destroying when Gorgons (with or without Per- phically unlikely, part in the fighting things', orders for his own death which seus), Sphinxes, Sirens and, but less of the Iliad, much of it against the he was to show to the king of Lycia. commonly, Chimaeras abound in the Myrmidons under Patroclus. This might The 'baleful signs' are certainly a refer- 'orientalising' art of the time. But the reflect Mycenaean settlement there rather ence to writing, the power of which myths are earlier than this: the two than the later Greek migrations to Asia impressed an illiterate people when they great mortal monster-killers, Bellerophon Minor. first encountered it, but they are hardly, and Perseus, are already known in Ho- as has been suggested, the sole surviving meric and Hesiodic poetry. They involve recollection of the Mycenaean Linear B. Bellerophon both Aeolids and Danaids, though the lobates made a number of fruitless genealogies will not synchronise. Bellerophon was the grandson of Sisy- attempts to arrange Bellerophon's death. Perseus was a descendant of Danaus phus. He left Corinth, exiled for the First he sent him against the Chimaera, by Acrisius, one of the twin grandsons murder of his brother, and came to a monstrous goat with the head of a of Hypermnestra, the virtuous Danaid Proetus at Tiryns. He was later recog- lion and the tail of a snake. Bellerophon who did not kill her husband. The twins, nised as 'being the noble offspring of a killed her from the back of Pegasus, Acrisius and Proetus, strove even in the god', Poseidon, who in his horse form the gift of his father Poseidon, on which womb. But there is no story of their was also the father of the winged horse indeed he may have come from Greece. begetting, which might be expected to Pegasus by Medusa, the mortal Gorgon. For Pegasus is firmly located at Corinth, have been the work of a god: perhaps Bellerophon was remarkable for his where BeUorophon caught him and the story was suppressed in the interests beauty. The wife of Proetus, Antia in Athena bridled him: the winged horse of a genealogy in the male line. Later, Homer, later Sthenoboea, asked him is the badge of the coins of Corinth. when fully grown, they fought for the to lie with her and, when he refused, Then Bellerophon was sent on two kingdom. The result was a draw, and accused him before Proetus, saying expeditions, one against the Solymians the two brothers were reconciled. This 'May you die, O Proetus, or kill Beller- and one against the Amazons. On the was probably a trick, as in other similar ophon'. This is the motif of the virtu- way back from the latter he was ambushed THE MONSTER-KILLERS

A 'Melian relief of Bellerophon front legs were missing, but the type of horse and rider was adapted and the Chimaera. It was made in the restorations can be regarded as certain. for other mythological subjects, such middle of the fifth century bc either Bellerophon's posture, which suggests as Perseus and the Gorgon and Helle as decoration for a chest or for Mithras killing the bull, is made on the ram. British Museum. suspension on the wall as a decoration. necessary by the goat's head which It has been restored from other has turned an ordinary lioness into the examples of the same type. monster, with the addition of a snake's Bellerophon's body and the horse's head at the end of her tail. The LEFT Danae and the Shower of Gold. In the fifth century some Attic vase painters illustrated the more human aspects of the legend of Perseus, perhaps reflecting Attic drama. Danae is preparing for bed, untying one of the scarves that hold her hair, when she is surprised by the descent of the gold. The pose suggests the earth fertilised by the rain. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

ABOVE Obverse of four drachma piece from Athens, 530-520 Bc. When the Athenians began their commercial

expansion about 5 20 bc, they introduced the famous coinage with the head of Athena and the owl that was known all over the Greek world as 'Attic owls'. The earlier and purely local coinage used other symbols, such as this gorgon's head, which existed as a charm long before it was attached to the Gorgon. In this case

it probably suggests the aegis of Athena

A very fierce and convincing Chimacra by a picked band of Lycians: none of Bellerophon's daughter lay with Zeus appears on an amphora by the Swing them returned home, for Bellerophon and bore Sarpedon, for whose death painter in the second half of the slew the lot. After this genuine at bloody drops of sixth century. It is nearly as tall as saga of Troy Zeus 'poured a man, and a wild goat rears out of Lycian war, which has been assimilated rain to the earth honouring his dear its back, so that it can attack two men to the pattern of exploits by which the son, whom Patroclus was going to at once. There is, however, no trace king's supplanter is selected, Bellero- kill'. The twin brothers, Sleep and of the snake on its tail. The type of phon married the king's daughter and Death, carried his body back to Lycia Bellerophon and the Chimaera was well established by this time, and though became king of Lycia. But he came to for embalming and burial. But Sarpe- Chimaeras appear alone, there is no a bad end: first he returned to Greece don's mother died at the hands of other picture of a Chimaera hunt and carried off Sthenoboea, whom he Artemis, probably a piece of ritual sur- like this. The figure on the right with cast into the sea from the back of Pega- vival, just as it seems likely that Belle- a club has been identified as Heracles, sus; then he tried to ride to originally died at the hands of and the other on the left, with some up heaven, rophon kind of bent weapon, hardly a sword, an impiety for which he was thrown off his supplanter Sarpedon. as his companion lolaus. There is Pegasus and lamed when he fell to earth. indeed a nude Heracles without After that he wandered about as an attributes on the other side of the vase Perseus outcast, although to go to heaven and but no surviving legend associates Heracles with the Chimaera. dine with the gods was originally the This was the fate also of Acrisius at the British Museum. prerogative of a divine king. hands of Perseus, the 'Destroyer', per-

7i .41 (.'.••^'---t;-

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THE MONSTER-KILLERS

Perseus the Gorgon Medusa was a Marsyas, who challenged Apollo to a monster to be slain. She had a horrible musical duel, pipes against lyre, and head with two tusks and a protruding was winning until Apollo reversed the tongue, and snakes for hair. Yet Po- lyre and continued playing, a trick seidon had loved her, and she bore him which Marsyas could not do with the two children, the winged horse Pegasus pipes. Whereupon Apollo flayed Mars- and the giant Chrysaor. This and her yas alive, cutting off all his skin with name, which means 'ruler', suggest that a knife, a fate which might reflect some she was once the earth-mother in the primitive and barbaric Asian sacrificial form of a horse from a version of the ritual. Midas was the judge of a similar succession myth in which Poseidon was musical contest between Pan and Apollo, the chief god. and for deciding against Apollo was Perseus killed the Gorgon in fairy- punished with ass's ears, which he tried tale manner with the help of marvellous to conceal under his Phrygian cap. He magic gifts from the gods or from some revealed their existence only to his bar- nymphs. They comprised winged sandals ber, who tried to relieve himself of the from Hermes; the cap of Hades, which intolerable burden of the secret by made him invisible; a wallet called digging a hole in the earth in a secluded cibisis into which he put the head but spot, into which he whispered the secret. which may originally have been a never- But the reeds which grew up from the failing magic source of supplies for the hole broadcast the secret. journey; a polished shield, in which to Returning from killing the Gorgon, see the Gorgon without being turned Perseus was involved in yet another ABOVE Perseus and the Gorgon. On a wine to stone; and a special weapon, the supplanter story to get himself a bride. jug, the great painter Amasis, harpe, half sword, half sickle, which Cassiopeia, wife of Cepheus, king of who has signed the jug on the left, possibly suggests the original succession Joppa, now Jaffa, boasted that she was produced one of the most fearful myth. fairer than the daughters of Nereus, gorgons ever depicted, entirely justifying Thus equipped, he made his way to which probably means that she imper- Perseus' averted gaze, as he stabs her in the mouth. For her mask is almost the Gorgon and her sisters who were sonated or was identified with a sea lionlike, with a huge white gash of a usually located in the African desert. goddess. Poseidon punished this blas- mouth and four tusks as well as the There they were guarded by the three phemy by sending a sea monster, from tongue protruding. Her matted locks aged sisters, who shared a single eye. which Perseus delivered the king's suggest a mane or a beard and four snakes curve decoratively but Perseus stole the eye, and thus either daughter, Andromeda, by turning it to threateningly from her head, while evaded the sisters or blackmailed them stone with the Gorgon's head (a story two larger ones are entwined in her belt. into letting him pass and showing him probably told to explain an off-shore To the right a bearded Hermes assists, the way. Thus he was enabled to come rock). He also had to save her from perhaps subduing the monster with upon the Gorgon asleep. her father's brother, who wanted to his wand to assist the young and beardless Perseus. British Museum. Various legends are attached to the marry her. death of the Gorgon. Many of them Then Perseus returned to Seriphus LEFT the Gorgon. concern Athena, who wore the Gorgon's and turned Polydectes and his court into Perseus slaying The second sixth century temple at Selinus head on her goatskin aegis (an early a stone circle. His action is variously (temple C) still survives and the of shield: is form the Gorgon's head a justified: either he saved his mother metopes have been excavated in favourite device on hoplite shields) as whom the king was trying to starve to fragments from it. They are in a far befits a war goddess. Medusa's children death at the altar where she had taken heavier style than those of the earlier temple, one of which showed Europa were said to have sprung from her dying refuge (it was no sacrilege to deny a and the Bull (page 5;), and ail the body, probably, like the Furies and suppliant food) or he was asked to characters are shown full face. Uranus, spilt from her blood. Chrysaor, bring his contribution to a banquet and It is for this reason who was named after the golden sword teased into taking out the Gorgon's and not to avoid being turned to stone, the his father left as token of paternity, head. When Perseus returned with his that Perseus is not looking at Gorgon, whose head is in the form himself fathered the three-bodied giant mother and bride to Argos, Acrisius of the old gorgon mask. He kills her Geryon whom Heracles killed. fled to Larissa in Thessaly, where Per- with a simple sword, but is shown Athena invented the pipes to imitate seus visited him, only to cause his death with the winged boots of Hermes. the dying hiss of the snakes in the by an unlucky cast of the discus. This The goddess behind him, who may have the aegis, is Athena. Gorgon's hair. But when she saw how death suggests a form of contest, to worn Medusa holds an unwinged Pegasus, her cheeks were distended in playing decide the supplanter, which was 'fixed' her child by Poseidon who presumably them, cast she them away. The aban- in order that the blood guilt might fall visited her in the form of a stallion. doned pipes were picked up by a satyr. upon an inanimate object. Museo Nazionale, Palermo. THE MONSTER-KILLERS

which is as The Calydonian Boar hunt. This Frangois vase which in many dog on top of the boar, tall as a man, is appropriately is the other side of the band cup signed ways may have been its model. 'Whitey'. The mangled by two potters or potter and painter, To the right are Meleager with his called Leucius, of Podes lie below. Archicles and Glaucytes, which is bitch Thcro, Peleus (who killed his remains Munich. shown in black and white on page '107. host Eurytion by mistake), Melanion Antikensammlungen, Two of the most popular exploits and Cimon with a dog Podargos in archaic art, about 540 bc, are (swift-foot). On the other side are shown on the vase: Theseus and the Castor and Pollux, Mopsus the seer, and Minotaur on the other side and the Jason and Idasus (perhaps = Idas) Calydonian Boar hunt on the side with the dogs Gorgus and Charon. shown. All the characters and their The names show that the literary dogs are labelled, but there is no sign tradition of the hunt as a communal of Atalanta as there is on the earlier exploit was well known. The white REAT exploit:

Bellerophon and Perseus performed in- games of Oedipus, which belong to a the attacks on Thebes. One consequence dividual exploits and became the found- Theban cycle which culminated in the of the sack of Thebes was that Thebans ers of ruling dynasties, in Lycia and in failure of the Seven against Thebes play little part in the siege of Troy. The Mycenae. For Perseus did not take up and the success of their sons, the Epi- Trojan war is the culminating episode the inheritance of Acrisius in Argos, goni, 'those born after'. of Greek mythology. But the exploits but exchanged kingdoms with Mega- The Odyssey was conceived as a later of the Calydonian Boar hunt and the penthes, the heir of Proetus at Tiryns. sequel to the I/iad, and succeeds in Voyage of the Argonauts are fitted on

From there he is said to have founded dealing incidentally with the fates of to the heroic genealogies especially of Mycenae. Various stories were told to almost all the heroes who fought at the children of Aeolus. account for the name, the ending of Troy in the course of narrating that of

fell But the story of his wander- which is pre-Greek. Either the cap Odysseus. The Calydonian Boar hunt off his scabbard, or he picked a mush- ings, though very largely made up of room, thus discovering a spring. The motifs from fairy and folk tales, seems The dynasty at Calydon in Aetolia

Greek for both objects is myces. The also to have drawn on the last of these claimed descent from Aeolus by Endym- exchange of kingdoms suggests the dual lost epics, which told the tale of the ion. It has its share of the sons of kingship and picks up the rivalry of Argo and Jason's quest for the Golden gods: Evenus was son of Ares, and Acrisius and Proetus. Fleece. therefore the owner of (probably man- These communal enterprises may be eating) mares with which he ran chariot partly a literary device to group the races against the suitors of his daughter Communal exploits stories of a number of heroes around a Marpessa. When they lost he nailed The exploits of the generations after central theme. But they may also reflect their skulls to his house walls. He was Bellerophon and Perseus are more fre- something of the political organisation defeated by the divine one of a pair of quently co-operative. A number of the of Greece under the Mycenaeans, who Spartan twins, Idas, brother of Lynceus. heroes of one generation, in addition built their cities at points of strategic Idas was son of Poseidon, who gave to their personal mythology, are brought importance, linked them with at least him a winged chariot with which he together for some great communal the rudiments of a communications beat Evenus, and carried off his daughter. enterprise which seems, in most cases, system, and fortified them not only, The race, or the pursuit, ended at a river, to have formed the material of an epic perhaps, against each other but also which Idas could presumably cross in poem. The I/iad, describing essentially, against a subject population. For all his winged chariot. In disgust Evenus himself though in its own highly sophisticated these sagas are connected with Myce- killed his horses and threw literary way, the history of the Trojan naean cities, Thebes, Orchomenus and and them into the river which was

war, is the only one of these epics which the port lolcus, Argos and Mycenae given his name. has survived. (together with Troy which is culturally This variant of the myth of the sup-

It also refers to Meleager, chief related). planter is clearly based on a local ritual hero of the Calydonian Boar hunt, and The Theban stories stand apart from of chariot race and sacrifice, which makes one reference to the funeral the rest, though Argives took part in recurs in the story of Pelops and lies behind some of the Olympic games. But primitive wine-god. But the daughter ing this monster, though at some cost the story of Idas is further complicated, Deianeira drove a chariot as a war- to themselves, but a quarrel arose over because he then fell in with Apollo, and maiden, and so her father may in some the spoils. Artemis saw to it that the fought him for the hand of Marpessa. versions have been Ares, who was also whole enterprise (like all the rest of Zeus separated them and allowed Mar- said to have been the father of Oeneus' these great communal exploits) brought pessa to choose the one she wanted. son Meleager. Meleager led the heroes no good to any of those engaged in it. She chose Idas, for she feared that Apollo in the Calydonian Boar hunt, as a result The quarrel in fact arose over Ata- would desert her in her old age. In one of which he himself met his fate. lanta, a virgin huntress who is obviously version Apollo begot a son on Marpessa Artemis was angry with Oeneus be- a form of Artemis and as such needed to supplant Evenus. cause he had failed to sacrifice to her the for the Boar hunt. In her story, elements The cousin of Evenus in the male first-fruits of his vine-yard. This is the from the myths of Artemis and her line was Oeneus, 'wine man', said to motif of the neglected fairy : for he had nymphs are mixed with others taken have been the first to receive the vine sacrificed to the other gods. But some from those of the sons of gods. Thus from Dionysus. He got it, and his vine-yard ritual may lie behind the story. she was exposed by her father, who nickname, by abandoning his wife for She sent a huge boar which ravaged the wanted a son, but was suckled by a bear, Dionysus to beget a daughter, a version land, especially, no doubt, the vines. Artemis' animal. She made her suitors which suggests that he started as a The combined heroes succeeded in kill- run a foot race for her hand, and put THE GREAT EXPLOITS

Jason and the snake. This cup by them to death if they lost, but was which seem to derive from the sacrifice the great painter Douris is perhaps a punished for the eventual loss of her of a son, probably as a surrogate for his little earlier than the vase depicting virginity by being turned into a lion. father, to save the city in a grave emer- the Golden Fleece, but it attests Athenian interest in the myth in the Like Callisto, she is said to have violated gency. early fifth century. Both vases show a sanctuary of Zeus, perhaps that on Many of the heroes who were present the protection of Athena, Jason under Mount Lycaeus. Those who entered it at the Calydonian Boar hunt also appear but this one, in which Jason is lost their shadows and were hunted to as Argonauts. Jason, their leader, is the identified by name, brings out some death or exile as 'stags' like Actaeon. grandson of Cretheus in the male line, of the ritual implications of the myth. For if Jason was swallowed and One of the two alternative genealogies and the Quest for the Golden Fleece is regorged by the snake it suggests of Atalanta made her Arcadian, the other the test by which the supplanter is that his quest was, as befits a man a Boeotian descendant of Aeolus. selected. Like Perseus, Jason is tricked whose name is 'Healer', for The famous golden apples with into going for it: Pelias asked him how immortality, and that he, like Pelias, died and was rejuvenated. which Melanion prevented Atalanta he would destroy an enemy, and Jason Vases, even if they are derived from from overtaking him are a fairy tale answered, 'by sending him for the drama, often depict earlier versions motif, like the magic objects thrown out Fleece'. of a myth than are preserved in the in the 'flight from the enchanter' to literary tradition. Museo Gregoriano become impenetrable thickets and moun- Etrusco, Vatican. Melampus tains. They have become apples, and the gift of Aphrodite, because an apple was Melampus, Jason's cousin, learnt the

the traditional love gift of the Greeks. language of birds and animals : for when They have really nothing to do with the an oak was felled, he saved the young

Hesperides. Despite her marriage, Ata- snakes that lived in it, and in gratitude lanta's son was called Parthenopaeus, they cleaned out his ears with their 'unmarried woman's child', and the tongues. He used this knowledge to get father was sometimes said to be Ares his brother Bias a bride, the daughter or Meleager. of Neleus. The bride-price was the cattle The quarrel over the spoils of the of Phylacus, which were guarded by a Calydonian Boar was caused by Melea- wonderful hound which nothing could ger's love for Atalanta. Atalanta was escape. Melampus let himself be caught

the first to hit the boar, but Meleager and put into prison. There he heard

killed it. So he was awarded the skin, the worms saying that they would which he gave to Atalanta. His mother's gnaw through the beam the next night, brothers (who are always important in and established his reputation by asking societies organised on matrilinear prin- for a new cell. Impressed, Phylacus

ciples) objected, and claimed it by family asked how to cure the impotence of his right. In the ensuing war Meleager son, which had been magically caused killed them, and his mother cursed him, when he put a gelding knife in a sacred so that he withdrew from the fighting oak, as a bird told Melampus. The rust and locked himself into his chamber of that knife cured the wound it had with his wife. He refused to come out, caused. As his reward, Melampus got despite the pleas of his father and mother, the oxen, and his brother his bride. until the city was about to be sacked, when he yielded to the pleas of his wife Admetus and delivered the city, presumably at

the cost of his own life. Admetus was another cousin of Jason. For his mother did more than merely Apollo served him as cowherd, and made curse him. She prayed for the death all his cows drop twins. This special of her son, a prayer which the Fury relationship was explained as Apollo's heard. She actually caused his death by penance for killing the Cyclops who

putting back on to the fire the brand made the thunderbolt with which Zeus in which the 'external soul' of Meleager killed Asclepius for raising the dead. was lodged, and which she had taken This deed had offended Hades and made

from the fire when he was seven days men immortal like gods. Asclepius was old. Meleager was in fact put to death Apollo's son by a mortal woman, Cor- for refusing to accept the claims of onis, who later played him false with matrilinear descent, though his story, another mortal. This story, like that of

as told in the Iliad, contains elements Marpessa, may reflect the theory that ^.ki.c:u.>i:w5 ^'ii'^'d^A' THE GREAT EXPLOITS

LEFT ABOVE Caeneus slain by the Centaurs. A Atalanta. The earliest mosaic number of vase painters borrowed pavements are found in Greece the name of the great Thasian painter from 400 BC made from natural pebbles. Polygnotus, the friend of Sophocles But the developed art is Hellenistic famous for his painting of the sack and it became extremely popular among of Troy. All of them may have applied the Romans. In the fourth century ad his innovations to vase painting, hunting scenes were especially liked, as in this vase of about 440 bc. The and Atalanta was portrayed as the type invincible Caeneus disappears into of the huntress. Her quarry in this the lower frame of the painting as two mosaic was not the Calydonian Boar Centaurs hammer him into the ground but a lion, now lost, and she was as the only way to destroy him. balanced by Meleager hunting One has a pole, the other uses a skin a leopard. At the other end of a in the old way as a shield, while he large room in a villa at Halicarnassus prepares to use a rock. Caeneus is a was a mosaic of the hunt of Dido hoplite with a very deep shield and is and Aeneas. This combination of using his secondary armament, Greek and Roman mythological motifs, the sword. Musees Royaux d'Art and of eroticism and hunting is et d'Histoire, Brussels. notable. British Museum. THE GREAT EXPLOITS

one twin had a divine father and the But he already bore the mark of which Both Caeneus and Pirithous, however,

other a mortal one. But Apollo killed Pehas had been warned to beware. He appear as Argonauts, just as Jason is Coronis, and either he or Hermes was the 'single-sandalled man'. This was educated by the immortal Chiron. For snatched the child from her womb on in fact particularly an Aetolian custom, despite their extremely primitive origins, the pyre. designed to give a better foothold when the Centaurs are in the heroic tradition.

This legend assimilates the birth of fighting in mud. But Jason is said to On their voyage the Argonauts met Asclepius to that of Dionysus. But the have lost the sandal when ferrying an with a number of adventures, which, like

Epidaurians, who had a cult of Asclepius old woman across a stream. She re- all Greek mythology, contain elements involving 'incubation', sleeping in the vealed herself as Hera and promised her of different kinds. Some may be genuine temple to learn the cure by a dream, help, a fairy-tale motif. Jason's absence traditions from voyages of exploration; told a typical story of exposure, on a is accounted for by the story that he others are based on ritual, and yet mountain called Nipple, and feeding by had been entrusted to Chiron the Cen- others are there to enable the Helpers

goats. Various men were listed as having taur for his education and safe custody, to display their special skills. The first been raised from the dead by Asclepius. a tale told of many heroes. stop was at Lemnos, always important

Some of them may have been originally The Centaurs were wild men of the because it is on the island-hopping route 'dying gods' whose stories included Thessalian hills, lustful and easily in- to the Dardanelles. Here they found resurrection, like Lycurgus the surrogate flamed with wine, relations of the La- only women who, 'because they did of Dionysus. piths, whose enemies they were. They not honour Aphrodite', had been af- Apollo won for Admetus his bride, were the off^spring of Ixion, whose son flicted with a bad smell, which drove Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, by perform- Pirithous was king of the Lapiths, but their husbands to fetch women from ing for him the required exploit of who seems himself to be a very primitive mainland Thrace. For this insult their

yoking a lion and a boar to a chariot. divine king. For he is one of those in- wives killed them. There was an annual But Admetus was doomed to an early vited to Zeus' table, despite having ceremony of mourning on Lemnos, dur-

death, and found the marriage chamber murdered his wife's father by making ing which all fires were put out for nine full of snakes sent by Artemis. Apollo him fall into a pit of burning coals when days and no ship might land. It was made the Fates drunk, and extracted he came for the promised bride-price. presumably part of a fertility cult, cul- from them the concession that Admetus Zeus purified him from this murder, minating in an orgy such as doubtless might live if any could be found to die which was probably originally a sacrifice. took place when the Argonauts landed.

for him. Only his wife would do so : but Ixion repaid the kindness by an The myth provided a historical expla- Persephone sent her up to earth again. attempt on Hera, which was foiled when nation for the ceremony. Euripides introduces Heracles to wrestle Zeus made a duplicate of her in cloud, A similar ceremony lies behind the with Death for the life of Alcestis, but upon which Ixion begot the first Cen- story of Hylas, the boy favourite of in the original story can be seen the taur. Ixion's action was regarded as Heracles. He was carried off by water sacred king, with whom is bound up impiety and he was punished in Hades nymphs and vainly sought by Heracles, the fertility of the realm, and whose wife by being bound to a wheel, flaming who 'cried "Hylas" o'er the hills', a impersonates the Girl and returns from like the pit in which his wife's father died. custom annually followed in Mysia. the underworld in the spring. But Chiron, the one good Centaur, was Heracles was only attached to the expe- given a different parentage, by Cronus, dition in order that this episode might

in the form of a horse, out of a daughter explain the ritual. No other use is made Jason and the Argonauts of Oceanus. Behind both these myths of his special qualities. Whereas Pollux,

Admetus appears as one of Jason's there seems to lie a ritual in which a the boxer, defeated a savage king who

Argonauts: Bias and Melampus do not, god could assume the form of a horse. challenged all comers to a fight, a ritual though the latter possesses a special The war of the Lapiths and Centaurs contest perhaps originally held in Greece. skill. For though the saga of the Argo- originated at the wedding of Pirithous, Similarly Zetes and Calais, winged nauts may contain some recollections of when the Centaurs got at the wine and sons of the North wind, chased away the real voyages of exploration, it also has tried to carry off the women. In the Harpies who were persecuting the blind many folk-tale motifs, one of which is a fight the invulnerable and impious Caen- Phineus. In gratitude, he showed the crew of Helpers, the special talents of eus was battered into the ground by Argonauts the way to Colchis. Phineus each of whom must originally have been the Centaurs. Caeneus had been a wom- plays the role taken in the story of Per- required. The Quest itself is such a an. Poseidon raped her, and then seus by the aged sisters. There are many motif: its object is the emblem of sov- turned her into an invulnerable man to sides to the Harpies, who are represented ereignty, and not the fleece in which prevent anybody from following his like the Sirens as birds with women's the Colchians collected gold-dust from example. Caeneus' impiety was shown heads. They are snatching winds, or a river, a rationalisation already current by his refusal to worship anything but ghosts who carry off the living, but they in antiquity. his own spear stuck into the ground. are also like the Gorgons, and like Jason arrived at the court of Pelias Here, as in the myth of Ixion, there seems Medusa they bear wind-swift horses to as a stranger, as the supplanter often is. to be some primitive ritual. Poseidon. Delphi perhaps owed its reputation divide and Oedipus killed his father, large archaic temple. On this site and as a sacred shrine to the landscape. and south-west down to the sea. to the same plan a fourth century A stream and a spring descend in a The sacred site looks south. temple was built in 320 bc after the cleft between the Phaedriades Rocks, The precinct was walled in the middle earlier one had collapsed in 373. with Parnassus rising behind them. of the sixth century bc, when a large The six reconstructed columns of The cleft joins a narrow but polygonal wall was built, partly this last temple are shown, looking remarkably fertile valley which leads destroying the earlier sanctuary of south to the hills across the east up to the pass where the roads Gaia, the earth, in order to support a valley which hides the sea.

THE GREAT EXPLOITS

The blindness of Phineus is variously brought into contact with as many explained. In the original version it was other myths as possible. caused by the sun, either because Phineus On his return, Jason dealt with preferred long life to sight, or because Pelias by boiling him in a cauldron, as he had already revealed the way to Ino had done to Melicertes, who be- Colchis to Phrixus. This suggests a came a god. Pelias was persuaded that version in which Phrixus was not the man Medea would rejuvenate him, as she who took the Golden Fleece to Colchis, did an old ram, and his daughters ac- but the man who brought it back from tually performed this task, thus removing there, and Phineus was the guardian of blood-guilt from Jason. This form of the secret home of the child of the sun. sacrifice of the divine king, which is

The way there was further guarded by what it clearly is, seems to have been the Clashing Rocks, which even de- that preferred by those whose god (Zeus stroyed one of the doves which brought or Hermes) could appear in the form of ambrosia to Zeus. a ram, the emblem of sovereignty. It

The motif of the doves is also used recurs in the history of the house of to explain how the Argo passed through Atreus. ABOVE these rocks, by sending out a dove which The rejuvenation motif shows that, Jason seizing the Golden Fleece. brought them together and following as in the case of Melicertes, the sacrifice Only two Greek vases illustrate it through as the rocks rebounded. The was followed by 'resurrection', as of the story of Jason and the Golden doves suggest an original Quest for the those heroes who were raised from the Fleece. The vase painted by the Orchard painter, about 470-460 BC, may have Water of Life, which kept the gods dead by Asclepius. The magic herbs been inspired by a play, possibly immortal. The rocks have sometimes used by Medea suggest the Herb of by Aeschylus, since it is parodied been identified as icebergs. Life found in the epic of Gilgamesh in another vase which shows a satyr After arriving at Colchis, Jason had and in other Greek myths. Like the playing the role of Jason under the protection of Dionysus. This vase too to perform traditional exploits to win Water of Life this is often the object of has a slightly comic appearance as the king's daughter and the Golden a Quest to save the life of the Princess' a tiny Jason reaches up to seize the Fleece. The wizard's daughter, Medea, father. The myth of Jason suggests that Fleece from under the head of the herself a witch, fell in love with him this Quest may not have been as benef- snake which surrounds the tree. and helped him to yoke the fire-breathing icent and disinterested as it appears on The cloaked figure with his hand on the stern of the Argo must, from bulls, sow the Dragon's teeth, and de- the surface. his size, be another deity, perhaps the stroy the armed men who sprang up. Pelias was succeeded by his son, river Phasis which is going to give Then she charmed the snake which whereupon Jason and Medea went to the ship a good shove off to help guarded the Fleece, helping Jason to Corinth, where Jason acquired another Jason escape. The female head might escape by a gruesome variant of the bride in the king's daughter. But he be the speaking bough from Dodona built into the Argo where it could Flight from the Enchanter. For what never enjoyed her, for Medea burned address the rowers. Metropolitan she threw in the path of her father were her to death in a magic garment, killed Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane chopped up pieces of her brother Apsyr- her children, and fled to Athens in a Dick Fund, 1934. tus, who may have started as the victim chariot drawn by winged snakes. Jason in some fertility cult. died at Corinth, killed when the stern Man and Centaur. The bronze statuette, The required exploits are paralleled of the Argo fell upon him while he was only four-and-half inches high, and perhaps derived from other stories. asleep. is one of the earliest Greek metal Apollo yoked a lion and a boar to win Corinth was an early and important statuettes surviving. It was probably perhaps as Pelias' daughter for Admetus, and heroes naval city, and the Corinthians perhaps dedicated at a shrine early as the beginning of the eighth are always dealing with monstrous bulls, identified Jason with the hero of a local century BC, but there is no record lions and boars. The sown men come ritual. An annual ceremony mourned of where it was found. The Centaur from the Theban legend. the slain children, and seven boys and is shown in the early style, a man The route by which the Argonauts seven girls in black with shorn hair from whose back a horse's body emerges. The encounter is probably returned was varied to accommodate (the Greek mark of mourning, a form of hostile rather than friendly, as there increasing geographical knowledge. One self-punitive activity) spent the year in are traces on the Centaur's body of the way was up the river Phasis east from a sanctuary, a ritual which suggests the end of what seems to have been a Colchis to Ocean, on which they turned story of the Athenian victims sent to sword in the man's right hand. south to the Nile, and back by Libya, Crete for the Minotaur. Medea may An anonymous Lapith and Centaur seem the most likely identifications. colonised in the seventh century. An- have been originally the goddess there: But the encounter could be given other route took them north and west, such fairy brides, like Thetis, always a friendly interpretation, as in vases by the rivers Danube and Po, the old eventually desert their husbands in Greek of Chiron receiving the infant Jason. amber routes. On the way they were mythology. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ABOVE BELOW The Parthenon was built at Athens The sculptures on the pediment Agrigento, the ancient Acragas, was under Pericles in the 440s BC on the showed the conflict of Athena and founded early in the sixth site of an earlier temple destroyed Poseidon for the land of Attica, century from Gela to extend Greek by the Persians. The Athenians used but only the figures of Cecrops control westwards on the south coast some of the money paid as tribute and one of his daughters are left on of Sicily. After the defeat of the by the Greek islands for defence the temple. The metopes below, Carthaginians in 480 BC an aggressive against the Persians, and deliberately which are still in place, showed the democracy turned the acropolis into constructed on the Acropolis battle of the Athenians and Amazons. a monumental display of power, a monumental display of the power The processional way from the entrance with a huge temple of Zeus of Athens that had kept the Persians led round to the eastern end of flanked by five temples along the city out of the Aegean. The western the Parthenon, from which the shrine wall. Of these. Temple F, seen here fa9ade of the Parthenon, shown here, was entered which housed the from the north-east, is contemporary was that seen from the entrance porch. huge gold and ivory statue of Athena. with the Parthenon but older in style. After the death of Cadmus, a second One daughter, however, is said to

foundation story is told of Thebes, in- have been spared to marry Neleus, volving the divine twins Amphion and Pelias' brother. She became the mother Zethus, sons of Zeus. They are the of the long-lived Nestor, who was given children of Antiope, who seems orig- all the years lost to his mother's kin. inally to have been the daughter of Antiope is said to have been the the local river Asopus. Her sons are daughter of Nycteus, who came to almost completely without descendants, Thebes from Orchomenus. When she

that is, they are outside the heroic gen- became pregnant, she was expelled, and ealogies and may have been some kind in some versions she married Epopeus, of ancient cult figures in the city of king of Sicyon, from whom she was Thebes. forcibly recovered by Lycus, Nycteus' The only surviving descendant of the brother. He imprisoned her at the in- line was one of the daughters of Niobe, stance of his wife Dirce, who hated whom Amphion had married. Niobe her, and eventually proposed to kill her wild bull The earliest, dating from the beginning likened herself to, or identified with, by tying her to the horns of a of the fifth century, of a series of Leto, who, she said, had but two chil- in a Dionysiac orgy on Cithaeron. From illustrations of Oedipus and the dren, while she had six sons and six this fate she was rescued by the twins Sphinx. Oedipus is shown as a mature daughters. Apollo and Artemis punished she had earlier exposed there, who bearded traveller and the Sphinx is this killing all the had been reared by shepherds. Dirce monumental. The scene suggests a presumption by cemetery in which a traveller meditates children of Niobe, 'and they lay nine suffered the fate she had intended for upon human life. Later, Oedipus days in their gore, nor was there any Antiope, and her dead body was thrown appears as a young man armed with one to bury them; for Zeus had made into a spring that took her name. sword or spear, and the Sphinx becomes the people stones'. Eventually Niobe These complicated stories are the in- more lifelike. Vatican. too was turned into a stone, which still ventions of fifth century Athenian tra-

wept for its children: it was later identi- gedians, who habitually cast their plots fied with one on Mount Sipylus in Lydia, into the pattern of the myth of the sup- and Niobe was made daughter of Tan- planter, elements of which they may talus. But the story originally belonged have already attached to the stories. The to a Theban cult similar to that in Corinth three strains in Greek mythology come

which mourned the children of Medea. out very clearly in this story : the simple The stones suggest a stone circle, or a myth which explains a ritual, its literary misapplication of the story of Deucalion, elaboration with the addition of other who made people from stones after the ritual elements, and the genealogies flood. The dripping stone may be a piece which connected the subjects of different of water magic. myths.

87 The best known features of the story to manhood, Oedipus was taunted by a of Amphion and Zethus come from the drunk with not being the true son of his literary tradition. Amphion the musician father, and himself went to the oracle at

is contrasted with Zethus the farmer Delphi for information, only to be told

and warrior, the former of course being that he would marry his mother and kill preferred by the poets, who added the his father. Resolved never to return to Orphic detail that Amphion fortified Corinth, he set out for Thebes. He was Thebes by charming the stones with his forced from the road by an old man in lyre. More primitive legends were at- a waggon, whom he killed. He found tached to places: Dionysus punished Thebes beset by the Sphinx (the Stran- Antiope for the death of his devotee, gler) whose riddle he was able to solve, Dirce, and sent her mad to Phocis where becoming king in place of Laius, who she was buried. The tomb of her sons had been killed by robbers on a journey. was at Thebes, and in the spring the Oedipus then married the queen, Jo- Phocians tried to steal earth from it and casta, who bore him two sons and two

sprinkle it on Antiope's tomb, to make daughters.

their crops good and harm those of It is possible to see how at some time Thebes. A fertility cult lies behind this the myth of Oedipus was modified to

survival; but it may not have been orig- create a motif of incest and parricide

inally attached to Amphion and Zethus which may have been absent in its orig-

and their mother. inal form. For the Oedipus story is created by combining the two forms of the story of the supplanter. In one, Oedipus Oedipus is the stranger who performs The great Theban dynasty was that of the exploit of defeating the Sphinx and

the Labdacids, to which Oedipus be- is thus chosen to marry the queen (or longed. Labdacus, founder of the line, the king's daughter) and inherit the

is only artificially linked to the house kingdom : in the other, he is the divinely

of Cadmus, but his mother is the daugh- begotten grandson, the grand-daughter's

ter of one of the Sown men. In all Theban husband who becomes king. It is the myths the inheritance in the female line combination of the two which gives

is much clearer than it is in any other the situation of Oedipus its particular

stories, perhaps because the myths are horror. The incest motif is normally

older. Nycteus and Lycus, and Amphion absent, and that of parricide is disguised and Zethus, are fitted in as regents or by making the child the son of a god, usurpers, Nycteus sometimes as one of the murdered father a grandfather or the Sown men himself. Labdacus has uncle, and the murder itself no more

Punishment of Niobe. This masterpiece no mythology and may be only a cipher: than an accident. of the severe classic style of painting his name suggests the Greek letter When Oedipus discovered he had about 460 BC has given its name lambda, 'L'. Laius, Oedipus' father, is killed his father and married his mother, to the Niobid painter. The terrifying sent into exile to Elis, where he carried Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus and unpitying figures of Artemis off Pelops' son while teaching him to blinded himself. His wife's brother, that and Apollo dominate the scene as they complete the slaughter of the sons drive a chariot. Pelops' curses were the important figure in matrilinear societies, and daughters of Niobe, who dared cause of the fate of the Labdacids. The ruled in Thebes until Oedipus' sons, to compare herself with Leto. Louvre. homosexuality theme must be late: Eteocles and Polynices, came of age, Laius behaves as a typical supplanter, when they quarrelled over the joint BOTTOM Oedipus slaying the Sphinx. like Pelops, and suffers, again while kingship, as if they were twins. Oedipus In this late fifth century driving a chariot, the same fate himself. cursed them and went to Athens, where treatment of the myth by one of the The oracle warned Laius that he his buried corpse defended the frontier circle of the painter Midias, Oedipus would die at the hands of his son: in against the Thebans who had rejected is shown in the act of killing the consequence, his child was exposed on him. Polynices went into exile to Argos, Sphinx. She crouches before him exposing her neck for the coup de grace, Cithaeron with his feet pinned together where he married the daughter of Adras- as he leaps upon hoplite her with a by a spike. But the child was found by stus the king. Adrastus had been told | spear. Beside " the column shepherds of the childless king of Cor- to yoke his daughters to the lion and the sits Apollo holding his bay. inth, Polybus, who reared the child as boar, and he recognized in Polynices presiding over the fate of Oedipus, his called 'Swell- the lion. that Theban em- whom he sent to Thebes by his own and him Oedipus, For he bore British Museum. foot', because of his mutilation. Grown blem on his shield. :

The Seven against Thebes Atalanta's son Parthenopaeus also oracular hero when Zeus opened a joined the attack on Thebes, as an Ar- cleft in the earth with a thunderbolt be-

This is the occasion of the next great cadian rather than a Boeotian, and the fore him as he fled from Thebes defeat- communal enterprise of the Heroic Age, tomb of Oecles, father of the reluctant ed, and he vanished down it. In the the two attacks on Thebes by the Seven seer Amphiaraus, was also shown in fifth century the Thebans transferred and their sons. It seems to be genuine Arcadia. Amphiaraus was reluctant to the cult to the border town of Oropus, saga, reflecting political rivalry between join the attack because he knew that, of which they disputed possession with Mycenae and Thebes. Hesiod says that like so many of these communal enter- the Athenians, in order that the oracular some of the heroes died at Thebes prises, it was bound to fail. But his hero might protect the frontier. fighting for the sheep of Oedipus. In wife, Eriphyle, was bribed with the All the Seven died except Adrastus, the epic tradition the first attack may necklace of Harmonia and she sent her who escaped on his magic horse Arion. have been made in the lifetime of husband to his death. In fact, Amphiar- Tydeus was invited alone into Thebes,

Oedipus, and be the cause of his death aus was probably bound by the rule of beat them all at athletic contests, and and the last evil brought upon him by a matrilinear society to follow Adrastus then slew all but one of a fifty-man the Furies invoked by his mother's who was his wife's brother. ambush on the way back. This suggests curse. On their way to Thebes the Seven an exploit, like that of Bellerophon. In The attack was led from Argos in the founded the Isthmian games, in honour the attack of the Seven, which the The- interests of a Theban pretender. But of Opheltes Archemorus, the Corinthian bans repulsed by sacrificing the son of there was a Calydonian contingent which king's infant son, devoured by a serpent king Creon, Tydeus was fatally wounded links this communal exploit with that when his nurse showed the Seven a by Melanippus, who was also killed. of the Calydonian Boar hunt. Tydeus, spring. His name suggests that he was Athena would have made Tydeus im- son of Oeneus, was also in exile for himself a snake, Ruler of Death, and mortal, but he disgusted her by eating killing some close male relative. He the object of a local cult. Games, of the brains of his dead adversary before married the other daughter of Adrastus course, commemorate a dead man as he died, an act of ritual cannibahsm for on his shield was emblazoned the well as selecting his supplanter. which may originally have been the very Calydonian Boar. Amphiaraus also received cult as an means of immortality.

Not all late Roman carving is equally tremendous emotional power, which the pathos of brother killing brother successful as art, and many later is enhanced by the presence of the is much stronger. It was a theme sarcophagi can be dreary and fussy. winged figure (possibly the curse of known to the Roman experience from But this alabaster urn from Chiusi, Oedipus) staring directly out their frequent civil wars, fought which is plausibly identified as the with almost Byzantine intensity. largely by a professional army which dying Eteocles and Polynices, combines In earlier ancient accounts, it is the often contained relatives, who found the two figures, in identical but impiety of the brothers, especially themselves on opposite sides. reversed postures, in a scene of of Polynices, that is stressed : here Museo Archaeologico, Florence. "'^'^^^^!RS|H

Polynices fought his brother Ete- vowed the fairest of the spoils. This ocles at one of the seven gates of Thebes. looks like a variant of the common Both were killed, but Polynices was left motif of the home-comer's vow. Alcmae- to rot unburied on the orders of Creon. on returned home and avenged his Antigone disobeyed his orders, for her father's death by kiUing his mother, brother Polynices was more important for which the Furies drove him mad. to her than husband or child would Exile to Psophis, with marriage to the have been. Antigone was walled up in king's daughter, did not cure him: a cave to die without polluting her instead, the earth refused to bear fruit. killers: Creon's son died with her, for Finally he settled on a land that had love. not existed when he did the deed, the The Theban victory had been what islands freshly laid down at the mouth the Greeks called a Cadmean victory, of the river Achelous. This literal ap- which like a Pyrrhic victor\' was too proach is found also in the story of the costly to the winners. Ten years later birth of Apollo and Artemis on Delos. the sons of the Seven succeeded in Alcmaeon married the river's daugh- restoring Thersander, son of Polynices. ter, CaUirhoe, who wanted the necklace This time victory was promised them of Harmonia which Alcmaeon had given under the leadership of Alcmaeon, son to Arsinoe. He asked for it back, pre- of Amphiaraus, who defeated the The- tending he was going to dedicate it at bans in a pitched battle at GUsas where Delphi, but his wife's brothers discov- their tombs were shown. Then Tiresias ered the deception and murdered him. advised them to abandon Thebes, and Callirhoe then prayed that her infant they went out in waggons and joined sons, whose father may have been Zeus, the tribe of the Illyrians to which Cadmus might at once become full grown to and Harmonia had gone before. avenge Alcmaeon's death. This they did, Tiresias, the Theban prophet, appears and took the necklace at last to Delphi. in every Greek tragedy set in Thebes, There are early and late elements in from the Bacchae to the Antigone. He this story, which was dramatised by both was already famous enough for Odysseus Sophocles and Euripides. The Delphic to make a special, but unnecessary', oracle is late. But the swift-growing journey to Hades to get from him in- children are giants like Otus and Ephial- formation which Circe also gave him: tes, and the role of the wife's brother for he was the only man to retain his belongs to matriUnear society. But ma- intelligence among the dead. He was tricide is the crime of a patriarchal soc- a nymph's son, given the gift of prophecy iety', in which a wife's infidelity is to when he was bhnded for seeing Athena be punished with death. naked, a legend that may have been The stories of the two great matri- deliberately modelled on that of Act- cides, Alcmaeon and Orestes, although aeon. they may have influenced one another, In what is probably the earUer legend may, like the stories in which gods Tiresias saw and disturbed two snakes strive for possession of a land, reflect coupling, and was turned into a woman. the conflict between patriarchal and mat- This enabled him to settle a quarrel rilinear societies and their respective between Zeus and Hera by testifying rituals and customs. from personal experience that in love a man enjoys only a tenth of the woman's pleasure. This assertion, part of a pat- sixth century temple at riarchal societ}''s resentment and envy of The C Selinus stood on the Acropolis on women, so angered Hera by its reve- the edge of the sea, to the west lation of women's secrets that in revenge of the ancient port in the estuary. she turned Tiresias back into a man, Only the north side of the temple has or else he saw and disturbed the same been rebuilt: it collapsed early in the Christian era, when Selinus was snakes again. a decayed village. The photograph Tiresias finally died when Thebes shows it from the inside. The was evacuated. His daughter was sent entrance was to the right, and the to Delphi, to which the Argives had surviving metopes were on its fagade.

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The third metope from the temple an attack. The ambiguities of love helmet as he prepares the coup de grace of Hera at Selinus shows Heracles and death contained in this legend with his club (now lost). Museo about to kill the Amazon Queen fascinated the artists of the Periclean Nazionale, Palermo. Hippolyta. She had promised to yield period. Heracles uses his lion skin him her girdle willingly, but Hera as a shield to ward off the axe blows provoked the other Amazons into of the Amazon, and seizes her oriental

92 HERACL]

The story of Heracles is another that Amphitryon killed him in an 'accident': connects Thebes and Argos. But this his club bounced off the horns of a is because a Tirynthian hero, a descend- charging cow. So Amphitryon went to ant of Perseus in the junior line and Thebes and the fourth son of Perseus, vassal of the lord of Mycenae, has been Eurystheus, took over Mycenae. identified with a Theban hero called In Thebes, too, Amphitryon behaved Alcaeus, 'Mighty'. To his story have like a typical supplanter. First he deliv- been added folk-tales of a strong man of ered the land from a monstrous vixen insatiable appetites, capable of fathering which could never be caught. It had fifty sons in a night. been sent by Dionysus and children had

to be exposed to it. Amphitryon sent

against it a wonderful hound like that Amphitryon with which Phylacus guarded his cattle.

Amphitryon, Heracles' father, went It never failed of its quarry, and the from Argos to Thebes in a typical story gods resolved this folk-tale dilemma by of exile. Perseus' grand-daughter Hip- turning them both to stone, probably pothoe, 'Swift Mare', was carried off a pair of standing stones. by Poseidon and bore him Pterelaus, Then Amphitryon resumed the war king of the Teleboans, whom his father against the Teleboans, because Alcmena, made immortal by putting his external with proper matrilinear piety, refused to soul into a golden hair on his head. yield her virginity until he had avenged

If he was blond it was indistinguishable the death of her brothers, killed in from the rest, and it is clear that only the previous war. Pterelaus' daughter his daughter knew which one it was. Comaetho fell in love with Amphitryon

In the genealogies, Poseidon's son is and killed her father by pulhng out the called Taphius, but he is inserted only golden hair to which her name refers to identify the Teleboans with an exist- (come = hair). By all the rules Amphi- Syracusan gold loo litra ing tribe: the golden hair shows that tryon should have married her: instead, Reverse of piece, 590-380 BC. Heracles Pterelaus was originally the god's son. like a good patriarchal hero, he killed wrestles with the Nemean lion Pterelaus' sons claimed Mycenae from her for her treachery and returned to whose skin he later wore. their mother's uncle, Electryon, who Alcmena. But he found that he had been BOTTOM went off to fight them. He left his anticipated by Zeus, who had taken his Reverse of stater from Croton about 350 BC. In the fourth kingdom, his cattle and his daughter form and prolonged the night to the century the youthful Heracles, to his wife's brother Amphitryon, mak- length of three to beget the mighty resting after a labour, was replaced on ing him swear to respect Alcmena's Heracles. Amphitryon then begot the coins by the child strangling the snakes virginity. But when Electryon got back mortal twin, Iphicles. sent against him by Hera. Birth of Heracles Heracles was eventually admitted to Thebes. At eighteen he killed the lion Olympus and became the object of cult, of Cithaeron, whose skin he always When Heracles was to be born, Zeus though only rarely as a god, mostly as wore, and begot fifty sons in one night vowed that the next Perseid born should a kind of very superior hero. A legend on the fifty daughters of Thespius. He rule Mycenae, intending it to be Hera- was told to show how he was prepared won one of them. Thespius fed the others cles. But Hera sent Ilithyia, who presided for this fate in infancy. At the same time in to him in relays, though he thought over childbirth, to stop the birth by it brings him into a fihal relation with it was always the same one. He also sitting cross-legged, a common piece of Hera, whose name he bears, though in won Creon's daughter, as a reward for magic, until Sthenelus' wife bore Eurys- the developed legend she is his implac- delivering the Thebans from a tribute theus as a seven month child. Ilithyia able enemy. Zeus lulled Hera to sleep, paid to Orchomenus, perhaps a genuine did not go away until somebody gave and Hermes put Heracles to her breast: piece of historical information. But he a cry of joy as if Alcmena had been de- but he bit it and awoke her, and she went mad and killed his children and livered, which she then was. This story thrust him off", spilling her milk over so was sent to perform Labours for was told to explain how it was that the the firmament as the Milky Way. This Eurystheus in penance. Thus again a mighty Heracles had to serve Eurystheus, has the appearance of a late Alexandrian variation on a traditional theme was just as the compUcated series of perhaps myth. Hera also sent snakes to the cradle used to get Heracles back to Argos. traditional tales about Amphitryon were of the twins: Iphicles is shown on a But Alcmena, who was probably used to get Heracles born in Thebes in vase painting as cowering, while Hera- originally a name or title of a mother- the period after the death of Oedipus. cles strangled them. goddess, remained located at Thebes, But Heracles' position may really re- where two curious legends were told The exploits of Heracles flect the political fact that Tiryns was about her. One tells how Amphitryon subordinate to Mvcenae. Heracles' earliest exploits are located at condemned her to be burnt to death for

BELOW LEFT BELOW RIGHT Heracles and the Stymphalian birds. Heracles and the cattle of Geryon. three-headed hound and one of the Heracles was always one of the most The technique of red-figured painting, bodies of Geryon, advances with his popular subjects of Attic vase painting, which allowed the artist to put club on the other two. Geryon looks and especially so in the sixth century, in details on the figures, was like three hoplites in line : two shield when Athens was still strongly discovered about 530 bc. Around emblems can be seen, a winged pig aristocratic. In this amphora by 510 both painter Euphronius and and an octopus. Athena, with the a predecessor of the great master potter Cachrylion signed a cup on the gorgon on her shield, hastens to his Exekias, about 560 bc, Heracles is outside of which Heracles' exploit aid, leaving lolaus and the wounded attacking the Stymphalian birds against Geryon is shown. Heracles, Eurytion in reserve. Antikensammlungen, with a sling. British Museum. having used his bow to kill the Munich. :

her supposed infidelity when he was the hydra, which had nine heads, each also single exploits. He overcame the

fighting the Teleboans. But Zeus ex- of which was replaced by two when it Cretan Bull, a sacred animal, which was tinguished the pyre with a miraculous was cut off, Heracles enlisted the help either that which carried Europa or one shower of rain, perhaps originally a of lolaus, but only because Hera sent sent out of the sea by Poseidon. He also piece of rain magic. The other legend a crab to bite his heel and 'even Heracles tamed the man-eating Mares of Diomede tells how Hermes stole her from the cannot fight two' as the Greek proverb of Thrace, captured the Cattle of Geryon, bier when she was dead, and substitut- said. lolaus seared the roots with fire and even brought up the three-headed ed a stone which the Thebans rever- as each head was cut off. dog Cerberus from Hades. Diomede was enced, while Zeus took her to the Isles With the hydra's poison Heracles a son of Ares, and so might be expected of the Blessed. This is partly an aetio- anointed the arrows of the bow with to have used his mares to race the suitors logical myth, partly the result of a which, exceptionally for a hero, he was of his daughters, and then to tear them feeling that the mother of Heracles de- normally armed and not with the tra- apart, possibly in honour of Dionysus. served special treatment. ditional club. With these arrows he This motif has been suppressed in the Almost all Heracles' Labours are var- drove off the drunken Centaurs with interests of Heracles. But a son of Her- iants of the single exploit by which whom he lodged when fetching the mes was dragged to death by the mares the hero vanquishes a monster. The first boar. He accidentally wounded Chiron, when Heracles left them with him. five are all localised in the Peloponnese who traded his immortality with the the Nemean lion, the Lernaean hydra, Titan Prometheus (another late legend, The quests of Heracles the Ceryneian hind with its golden horns, for Titans normally seem to be immor-

the Erymanthian boar, and the Stym- tal). The birds he scared with brazen The other Labours are quests, which phalian birds. To all of these various castanets made by Hephaestus. took Heracles progressively further other legends are attached. To deal with Some of Heracles' other Labours are afield and even outside the world of

Heracles and the Centaurs. The city of Assos occupies an impregnable site on the mainland of Asia Minor opposite the island of Lesbos, and was the first site ever to be excavated by the American Institute of Archaeology. A late sixth century temple was found there. Following Ionian practice, the architrave immediately above the columns was sculptured as well as the metopes, while the pediment was left bare. The hard volcanic stone partly accounts for the primitive appearance of this relief, which shows Heracles with his bow driving off the Centaurs. While seeking the Erymanthian boar he lodged in Arcadia with Pholus, seen on the left with a cup of the wine which he specially opened for Heracles. The wine maddened the Centaurs, and they attacked Heracles. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of the Archeological Institute of America. RIGHT Heracles bringing Cerberus from the underworld. The type of the youthful Heracles was known as early as the end of the sixth century, and appears in this plate by Paseas, who has simply appplied to the circular area at his disposal part of a frieze of figures, filling the bottom with a palmette. Aided by Hermes, who conducts men to the underworld and is identified by the caduceus and hat, Heracles, waving his bow and dressed in an apparently headless lion skin, leads up Cerberus. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund. men. One of the Peloponnesian Labours may have started as a quest, the cleans- ing of the cowsheds of Augeas, which Heracles accomplished by diverting a river. For Augeas in some versions was the child of the Sun and the task is of the type of impossible ones which have to be performed to win the Magician's daughter. In a fairy tale it would be done for him by animals which he had befriended. More prosaically, the Labour has elements of a simple cattle raid. So has that of the Cattle of Geryon, the three-bodied giant. But he lived beyond Ocean, on which Heracles sailed in the Sun's Golden Bowl. He got the Bowl by threatening to shoot the Sun with his arrows, and when Ocean tried to swamp it, he threatened him too. These are the acts of the god in a succession myth, and the cattle, even if originally those of the Sun, are not entirely in place, though ApoUodorus solemnly has Heracles embark them too in the Bowl to bring them back. A slightly more traditional quest is that for the Girdle of Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, who yielded it to him willingly. It was given to Hippolyta by Another metope irrom the late sixth upside down on a pole over his Ares because of the warlike prowess of century temple C at SeUnus shows shoulders. In that position they had the Ama2ons, who lived without men Heracles with the two Cercopes. a good view of his hairy rump and met their neighbours only once a These mischievous monkey men stole and they recognised Heracles' as he slept on a rock the black bottom of which their year for procreation. They reared only bow at Thermopylae. But when he woke, mother had warned them to beware. the girls, cutting off the right breast so he caught them and hung them Museo Nazionale, Palermo. that it should not get in the way when they drew the bow-string or threw the spear, a detail usually ignored in art.

RIGHT Heracles and the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. The sculptured metopes of the early fifth century temple of Zeus at Olympia were not under the pediment, but over the porches in front of and behind the shrine. Twelve in number, they seem to have shown the Twelve Labours of Heracles, founder of the Olympian games and the great hero of the Dorians, who developed the games during the eighth century. Heracles did not get the Golden Apples of the Hesperides himself. The giant Atlas got them for him wliile Heracles supported the vault of heaven on a cushion. Athena, shown here as a severe maiden, helped him, taking the weight with her left hand. At this period, the hero is clearly inferior to the gods. Archaeological Museum, Olympia.

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A silver relief found at Perugia, which and their ability to manufacture for a their rearing horses are an appropriate formed part of the decoration of a market, since it is perhaps unlikely that decoration for a war chariot. The right- chariot ornamented with plaques of the chariot was exported as well. The hand warrior appears to be spearing bronze and silver. It was made in Ionia, Amazons (if they are indeed female the fallen figure on the ground, which possibly at Clazomenae, in the sixth since the hair is little longer and the is also being trodden by the horses. century, and its journey illustrates the bust no more developed than that of British Museum. extent of Greek contacts with Etruria, many undoubtedly male statues) on Heracles and the tripod of Delphi. One of the earliest surviving vases in the red-figure technique, by the Andocides * painter, shows the fight between Apollo and Heracles for the tripod of Delphi. When Heracles killed the son of Eurytus, who refused him his daughter, he went to Delphi to be purified. When the Pythia, the priestess, refused, Heracles stole the tripod and carried it off with the approval of Athena. Staatliche Museen, Antikenabteilung, Berlin.

CENTRE Heracles and the Erymanthian boar. Heracles is presenting the boar head down to a completely terrified Eurystheus who cowers in a huge pithos buried almost to the neck in the earth. Athena on one side stretches out her left hand, beautifully extending the aegis fringed with snakes. On the other side a bearded lolaus holds the club (the bow and arrows are on Heracles' back). British Museum.

RIGHT Heracles with his family. The decorations on oil-flasks are often either sepulchral or domestic, reflecting their two chief uses. The genre scene of the son reaching out for his father from his mother's lap is given piquancy by its application to Heracles, not the most domestic of heroes. He is resting on his club with his bow probably unstrung and strapped to the quiver. His wife Deianeira holds their son Hyllus, who survived Heracles to become the ancestor of the Dorians. Ashmolean Museum.

Whatever their origin in beardless orien- There were originally ten, all of bears heaven and earth, taking over tal warriors, the Amazons are a male which, including the contests with mon- that burden from Atlas, who fetched fantasy of role reversal, and are extreme- sters, have this much of the quest about him the apples. He made Atlas take it ly popular in art. them that Heracles brings all the objects back by a trick, saying that he would In another legend, Heracles served back to Eurystheus, who cowers in fetch a pad and return, the motif of the Omphale, a Lydian Queen, for three terror in a brazen pot which he buries in Trickster. This myth is the origin of years in expiation for a murder, during the earth. Later the canon was made up the pillars of Heracles, from which, which time he wore women's dress, to twelve by the addition of two more wreathed with the snake that guarded perhaps to deceive the ghost. The epi- which are much more other-wordly. the apples, the dollar sign is derived. sode with the Amazons looks like a Eurystheus is said to have rejected two They were transferred to the story of variant of this. It may have been bor- of the Labours, the Cowsheds of Augeas Geryon, which was located in Spain, rowed from the myth of Theseus, who and the Lernean hydra, the one because where the symbol was often used on plays an important part in the war that it was done for pay and the other be- coins.

Hera is said to have stirred up, though cause Heracles had help. After this Heracles went to Hades such borrowings are usually the other First Heracles was sent for the Golden to bring back the dog Cerberus, whose way round. Little is made of the Labour, Apples of the Hesperides, perhaps a three heads suggest that Geryon also, except to provide an opportunity for variant of the Water of Life with the with his three bodies, really lived there Heracles' visits to Troy, and to make same sinister implications. For a moment too. A number of Greek heroes, and up the canonical number of Labours. Heracles plays the part of the giant who the god Dionysus, 'harrow hell' in this way. The story seems to contain a Tripod. This suggests that Apollo may like Otus and Ephialtes, they have been number of themes: the Quest for the have been originally involved in some transferred to the time of the heroes Water of Life, the Death and Resurrec- way in the contest for the daughter of in order to make use of Heracles. One tion of the Hero, and the Return of the Eurytus, who was, like him, an archer. early motif survives. There was a herb

Girl in the Spring, the last appearing This is the context of Heracles' service which would make the Giants completely in the story of Alcestis. with Omphale, which provides also the immortal (obviously the Herb of Life): Heracles' other adventures are closer occasion for his second visit to Troy, but Zeus forbade Sun and Moon to to the traditional pattern of the sup- where his role, to be discussed with the shine, and picked the herb himself, to planter, suggesting that he has been other Trojan stories, was originally that stop Earth getting it. identified with a number of local heroes. of a supplanter. The succession myth and the myth First he gave his wife Megara to lolaus, of the supplanter are in fact the same his assistant, and wooed lole, daughter story appearing in a divine and in a The battle of the gods and giants of Eurytus, beating her father at archery. human context. The human may have When Eurytus refused to pay up, on the On his return from Troy, Heracles was impersonated the god, as many heroes reasonable grounds that Heracles might co-opted as the gods' Helper in their are exphcitly punished for doing. If so, go mad again and kill his children, Hera- fight with the Giants, who could be the myth originated in ritual, though cles killed Eurytus' son and went to defeated only by a mortal. The Giants, it continued to be told because of the Delphi to be purified. There he was born of Earth by the blood of Uranus, psychological satisfaction it provided. involved in a fight with Apollo over the belong to the succession myth. But, Elements of it were therefore added to other mythical stories, all of which

show a tendency to fall into that arche- typal pattern. It seems very possible that such a ritual of succession was at some time carried out at least at some places in Greece. Two of the Giants perform deeds that recur in other myths: Alcyoneus stole the cattle of the Sun, and Por- phyrion tried to rape Hera. They were defeated on the Phlegraean plains in Thessaly, near Mount Olympus. But

Heracles' position is ambiguous, be-

cause at Pylos, where he slew all the descendants of Neleus except Nestor, he fought with the gods, wounding Hades with his arrows, hitting Hera in her right breast, and gashing Ares in ABOVE BELOW the thigh. Pylos seems to have been an Heracles in the garden of the This late (about 410 Bc) and vigorous entrance to the Underworld, but other- Hesperides. The Athenian vase painter painting of Heracles rescuing Deianeira wise Heracles is himself behaving like Midias, at the end of the fifth century, from the Centaur Nessus is an exact decorated a water pot copy of a vase signed by both potter a Giant. with two bands, and painter, Erginus and But most of his opponents are Giants, one on the shoulder and one below Aristophanes. In earlier who keep on turning up in his stories. the handle. In the centre of the versions Heracles has the lion skin, One of the most famous is Antaeus, latter Heracles is sitting on his lion but he is always armed with the club, skin on a rock in the garden of the though in the literary tradition who regained his strength when he Hesperides. He is looking at one he used his arrows, the poison from touched his mother, the Earth, and was of them named Lipara, 'shining', who which turned Nessus' blood into the dealt with by being held in the air until already holds an apple. Behind Heracles charm that caused Heracles' he died. A pair of divine twins, sons of is his squire lolaus, and the garden death. Museum of Fine Arts, Poseidon, were turned into a two- is full of Argonauts (not shown Boston, Pierce Fund. in this detail). British Museum. bodied giant called 'the MoUone'. He also overthrew an Egyptian king who practised human sacrifice and tried it on Heracles.

The death of Heracles

Finally Heracles himself met his fate, at the hands of a woman and a dead man. He wrestled with the river Achelous, who took the form of a bull-headed snake, for the hand of Deianeira. But he took her into exile because he committed another 'accidental' murder at

the wedding : it was said to be that of a cup-bearer, but must have been originally the father of the bride. On the way the centaur Nessus carried Deianeira across a river and then tried to rape her. Heracles killed him with his poisoned arrows, but, before he died, he gave Deianeira a charm to keep her husband's

love. She used it when Heracles sacked the city of Eurytus and sent back lole as his prize. But Nessus' charm, his blood with which she was to anoint a garment (the Shirt of Nessus), was in fact a poi- The decoration of the pediment of a Greelc temple presented a number of problems to the sculptor who wished to create a unified scheme. One of the greatest was how to fill the two sides where they slope to a narrow point. In the old Athena temple, associated with the tyrant Pisistratus and dating probably from about 560 BC, these spaces were filled by monstrous figures, which could easily be adapted to any area. At one end Heracles wrestled with a Triton. At the other appeared this three-bodied serpent man with wings. Benevolent though he looks, such three-bodied figures are in mythology almost always hostile, and he could possibly be another opponent of Heracles, even Geryon himself. Acropolis Museum, Athens. BELOW boiling cauldron, beneath which Medea and Pelias. The later Jason adds a brand to the fire. son which burned him up, similar to Athenian black-figure vase painters, Medea to the left looks at the aged bc, Pelias, one of whose daughters watches that which Medea gave to Jason's in- like the Leagros group of 530-510 had to compete with red figure, not in concern. The ram became a lamb. tended bride. Like that, it is a magic entirely successfully. This crowded But when his daughters performed equivalent of the pyre upon which scene shows Medea at the start of the operation on Pelias, he only Heracles, recognising and consenting her proof to Pelias that she can became immortal perhaps, but to his fate, immolated himself on rejuvenate him. The ram is in the certainly dead. British Museum. Mount Oeta. He handed on to the man who Ht the pyre his magic bow and arrows which were the symbols of his sovereignty.

There is a folk-tale motif in this story partly exphcit and partly implicit. It was Heracles' fate to die at the hands of no man living, a hteral ambiguity. It may have originally meant at the hands of the supplanter who brought the Water or Herb of Life from the land of the

dead. But in the story it means at the hand of a dead man. Deianeira's will- ingness to employ the charm may have

been similarly explained if Nessus told

her that, when it was used, Heracles would never love another woman.

The death of all heroes may once have meant their immortality. In Hera-

cles the theme is made explicit, and he ascends to Olympus from the pyre in the form of an eagle, the bird of Zeus whose son he was. There he was reconciled to Hera, possibly his original mother, and given eternal youth, Hebe, the cupbearer of the gods, to wife. But on earth he never received divine honours, only those paid to heroes. In Greek theology the race of gods and the race of men, though born of a single mother, were always separate, and woe betide any mortal who tried to overstep the bounds of his mortality. ATHEN

Geographically, Attica, the eastward- gave it to the three daughters of Ce-

facing peninsula in mainland Greece, crops forbidding them to open it. Two has always been one of the poorer and of them did so, were driven mad by the less important regions of Greece. It sight of a serpent in the chest, and hurled

does not even lie on the main line of themselves down from the Acropolis. communications between Boeotia and The idea that the virgin goddess the Peloponnese, which passes through Athena should bear a child was repug- Corinth. Though Athens was a Myce- nant to the developed theology of the naean settlement, the isolation of Attica, Greeks. The story is essentially that of

which also preserved it from disturbance, the nurses of Dionysus, though the

is reflected in the comparative paucity Athenian myth comes close to the orig- of Attic mythology. The later impor- inal state of affairs in which the divine tance of Athens was based on sea power. child was born of the goddess without

Its harbour, the Piraeus, is ideally situ- a father. ated for a sea port trading not only with the Black Sea, but also with the south Birth of Erichthonius. Gaia, 'Earth', Tereus and Procne hands a baby to Athena while Nike, and east. It is no accident, then, that holds out the swaddling 'Victory', Athenian mythology is closely linked The Athenian king Usts contained a band. Zeus holding a stylised with that of Crete. As Schhemann number of names which were brought thunderbolt looks on, supported by followed Homer to Troy and to My- into arbitrary genealogical relation to a girl over whose head is written 'Oinanthe is beautiful'. She is probably cenae, so Sir Arthur Evans was led by each other. One of them is Pandion, to one of the daughters of Cecrops, the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur whom is attached a fable about the took over the infant Erichthonius. who to discover the centre of the great Mi- hoopoe, the nightingale and the swallow, The scene shows that Erichthonius noan civilisation at Cnossus. which explains their songs in terms of was originally the son of the mother- goddess, a role Athena lost at Athens, The first inhabitant of Attica was an a fate which is made up of some of the where she remained 'nurse of earthborn serpent-man called Cecrops. elements of a supplanter myth. Procne youths'. British Museum. He was the judge in the contest be- and Philomela were sisters, daughters tween Athena and Poseidon for posses- of Pandion, who married Procne to

sion of the land, and awarded it to Tereus, Idng of Thrace. Tereus begot Athena for her creation of the olive. on her a son Itys, but then raped her The daughters of Cecrops were the sister Philomela and cut out her tongue to nurses of Erichthonius, another serpent- prevent her telling what had happened. man who was in a sense the son of But she wove the story into a tap- Athena. For he was born from the earth estry, and in this way told Procne, who when Hephaestus tried to rape Athena. took her revenge by serving up Itys as Athena put the baby into a chest, and a meal for his father. Tereus pursued them with an axe, and the gods turned carried off by the North Wind, who The Acropolis at Athens. Greece consists of a series of small plains, them into birds. Philomela is the night- helped the Athenians by destroying the many of them on the sea, surrounded ingale, calls alternately Tereus ships of their enemies and begot on her who upon by mountains. For protection from and Itys, Procne is the swallow, who Zetes and Calais, who were Argonauts. pirates, Greek cities were founded twitters unintelligibly, trying to tell her She was said to have been carried off around easily defensible outcrops of limestone. Later, fate, and Tereus is the hoopoe, who from the banks of the Ilissus while such a hill was called an acropolis. pursues them crying 'Pou pou pou', gathering flowers, like Persephone: it That of Athens is the most famous, 'Where, where, where?' would be appropriate if she had cast and in the fifth century Pericles turned

Another king is Erechtheus, a kind herself down from the Acropolis into it into the sacred centre of Athens. of human coianterpart of Erichthonius. the arms of her lover. The other daugh- On the left, to the west, is the formal entrance, the Propylaea, The daughters of Erechtheus met fates ters sacrificed themselves to ensure vic- in the centre the Parthenon and which seem to be versions of those of tory for their father in a war with between them the Erechtheum. the daughters of Cecrops. Orithyia was Eleusis. Aegeus was the putative father of The- In some of the stories about Theseus

seus, the great Athenian hero. Perhaps his father is Poseidon, who in late

because of his name, which could mean sources is explicitly stated to have lain 'Founder', Theseus was honoured as with Aethra the same night. Theseus' the man responsible for the creation of father left his sword under a rock as the cit}'-state of Athens by persuading a token of his paternity, as Poseidon all the local rulers to come and live did when he lay with Medusa the Gor-

together in Athens and accept him as gon and begot Chrysaor. But there is their overlord. As Heracles was taken no trace of a mortal twin. That a man's

over, especially by the Spartans, as the wife should bear a son to the god is, of Dorian hero, so Theseus was built up course, one way in which succession in as his Ionian counterpart. Heracles was the female line can be reconciled with made to found the Olympic games to a patriarchal system. commemorate one of his exploits, since athletic contests were the chief cultural CreU activity of the Dorian aristocracy. The

Athenians were never distinguished in Aegeus then returned to Athens, and it

The story of Heracles and Old Age these; but in everything else Theseus is here that the Cretan connection first is a folk tale known only from art appears as either the companion or the appears in the person of Androgeus, and not from literature. Several vases imitator of Heracles. son of Minos. Minos may have really show Heracles in all his accoutrements that the title the divine king of attacking a dwarf figure labelled But the Cretan connection shows been of 'Old Age'. This Etruscan bronze mirror, Theseus is more than a fictional hero Crete and not a name. But all the stories the other side of which was originally representing Athenian aspirations, and are told of one man, the son of Zeus highly polished, may show an it must constitute the oldest part of the and Europa, who survived to the genera- idealised version, perhaps derived from myth. It starts before his birth in the tion before the Trojan war. He had a a comedy, in which 'Old Age' was a giant. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. reign of Aegeus, who had no son. The brother, perhaps a twin, Rhadamanthys, Delphic oracle told Aegeus not to loose whose name is definitely pre-Greek. He TOP RIGHT the wineskin before he got home. Not went into exile, ending with Minos as Wall painting of Theseus leaving understanding this, he visited Pittheus a judge in Hades, married to Alcmena. Ariadne on Naxos. Roman wall painting at Troezen his way back, made At first they merely judged between follows Hellenistic models no less on who than Roman mosaic, and mythological him drunk and loosed on him his daugh- the dead, continuing the activity for erotic panels such as this example ter Aethra. Laius too is said to have which they were famous in life, perhaps from Herculaneum, overwhelmed begotten Oedipus when drunk. Like an aspect of Minoan culture that had in the eruption of ad 79, are common him, Aegeus was begetting his supplant- impressed the Greeks. in both media. Ariadne awakes on the island of Naxos to find that er and the wine-skin may reflect a ritual BuUs feature in the story of Minos. Theseus has deserted her. British Museum. as well as symbolising sexual intercourse. He got title to the kingdom when Po-

104 seidon sent a bull from the sea in answer In return, Procris got the wonderful a deer but was in fact his wife Procris. to his prayer. For his failure to sacrifice dog that Cephalus took to Thebes, The cured Minos begat sons and it he suffered many evils. First was an where it caught the monstrous vixen, daughters on his wife Pasiphae, daughter

unpleasant affliction that made it im- together with a spear that never missed of the Sun and sister of Aeetes king of possible for him to beget children: for its mark. But it caused her death. For Colchis. But she fell in love with the he emitted not semen but snakes, scor- when Dawn carried Cephalus off, he bull that should have been sacrificed. pions and milhpedes, which killed any pined for his wife, and Dawn sent him Daedalus, who had left Athens for kill- woman. He was cured by Procris, the back disguised to see if Procris was ing an apprentice who had surpassed wife of Cephalus, who made an artificial faithful. He was able to seduce her, and him, made her an artificial cow inside

woman which drew off all the animals, she went to Crete, but when she came which she gratified her passion and after which he was able to beget children back played a similar trick, disguising conceived the Minotaur. Daedalus also normally. The legends of Crete are full herself as a boy and giving both hound designed the Labyrinth, named after the of mechanical marvels like this. Another and spear to Cephalus for a promise of his Cretan double-axe, but perhaps rather of them was Talos, the burning brazen favours. Though they were reconciled, a ritual maze than a folk-memory of the man who patrolled Crete. Medea killed Procris secretly followed her husband Palace of Cnossus. him when the Argonauts passed, by as he went hunting each morning, and Minoan sea power is reflected in the opening the vein in his leg and letting Dawn took her revenge by causing him story of Minos' son Catreus. His sonAl- out his magic blood. to cast the spear at what he took to be thaemenes went to Rhodes to avoid be- THESEUS

Reverse of stater from Cnossus, 350-325 RIGHT Bc. Cnossus, site of the palace of Theseus killing the Minotaur. The Minos, adopted as its decoration of an Attic wine cup symbol the labyrinth, a ritual maze became more difficult as the stem with one path to the centre which got longer and the cup shallower. leads right round the whole pattern. From 550 BC the band between the Such mazes are known from all over handles was decorated with a frieze Europe and have been found engraved of miniature figures, as in the vase on megalithic monuments. They signed by the potter Glaucytes. Both may be diagrams of a ritual dance. sides of the vase show great exploits: On either side are an arrowhead and on one the Calydonian Boar hunt a thunderbolt, both probably (page 76); on the other Theseus emblems of Zeus. British Museum. killing the Minotaur. Theseus wears an animal skin like Heracles, the great

monster slayer, and the exploit is watched by Ariadne on the right and Athena on the left. Behind each of them is a procession of alternate women and men. Antikensammlungen, Munich.

coming his father's murderer : of course Like a goddess, she turned into a sea probably by tearing them apart between he failed, killing Catreus 'by accident' bird. Not even the sacrifice of three two of the trees. The Athenians claimed when he visited Rhodes. He also kicked sisters (they were not the king's daugh- that Theseus had founded the Isthmian his sister to death when she was raped ters, though probably victims of the Games in honour or expiation of Sinis. by Hermes, who only caught her by same ritual as the daughters of Cecrops) Sciron kicked men over the chff to a spreading fresh bull hides in her path could save the Athenians from Minos' man-eating turtle below: he suffered the to make her slip. This must reflect a fleet, and they were forced to agree to same sacrificial fate himself and the turtle Rhodian ritual. Another of Minos' sons, supply seven youths and maidens a year was turned to a rock.

Glaucus,was drowned in a jar of honey to be thrown to the Minotaur : there was Polypemon Procrustes hammered

(the Minoans seem to have embalmed a somewhat similar ritual at Corinth. men into shape to fit his bed: Theseus their dead in great jars). A prophet, This was the tribute that Theseus joined. was the man who fitted it exactly and Polyidus, found the body after correctly He slew the Minotaur, and by this thus turned the tables on Procrustes. describing the colour of a marvellous exploit won the king's daughter, who Cercyon was a wrestler whom Theseus cow as a test, and was asked to revive it, betrayed her father and helped him. lifted into the air, perhaps because like which he did when he saw a snake Antaeus he gained strength from the bring the Herb of Life to the body of earth. The Crommyonian sow, called The exploits of Theseus its dead mate. A Cretan ritual from the Phaea, 'grey', looks like a duphcate of story of the supplanter seems to lie For when he was full grown Theseus Heracles' Erymanthian boar, and some- behind this tale. recovered the sword from under the times appears mascuhne in vase paint-

Minos' third son Androgeus died at stone where his father had left it, and ings. But all the rest reflect Athenian the horns of a bull. After triumphing set out for Athens by the coast road claims to the area, and the restoration of at the Panathenaic festival, he was sent along the Isthmus. On the way he dealt law and order is an appropriate activity against the bull of Marathon, identified with six robbers and monsters which for Theseus the political hero. with the Bull from the Sea, which Hera- plagued the road, thus conveniently per- Theseus then successfully performed cles had taken from Crete and turned forming half the number of labours one exploit. He killed the Bull of Mar- loose in Attica after showing it to Eurys- required to equal those of Heracles. The athon which Heracles had set free. But theus. The news of his death was used other six seem to be the Bull of Mara- his chief exploit was the killing of the to account for a ritual on the island of thon, which Theseus finally disposed of Minotaur, in which he was helped by

Faros, where they sacrificed to the Graces when he got to Athens as his first Minos' daughter Ariadne. She gave him without garlands or flutes. It was said exploit, the Minotaur, the Amazons, the the ball of thread that would enable him that Minos had started to sacrifice there, Centaurs, the rape of Helen and the to return successfully from the centre and in his grief at the news tore off' his descent into Hades. In these last three of the ritual Labyrinth after kiUing the garland and stopped the flutes. he is associated with Pirithous, king of Minotaur with his bare hands. After-

Minos later made war on Athens. the Lapiths. wards he left Ariadne, asleep on Naxos. First he captured Megara through the There are elements of folk tale in the She was soon consoled by Dionysus. In treachery of the king's daughter Scylla. stories of the robbers, some of whom the local ritual of Dionysus she was his For love of Minos she pulled out the may be decayed giants. Periphetes had consort. hair that was her father's external soul. an iron club which Theseus took over A variant of the exploit, appropriate But Minos drowned her, tying her feet in imitation of Heracles. Sinis killed for a son of Poseidon, may appear in to a ship's stern, perhaps a ritual death. his victims by means of pine trees, the story of the contest between Theseus and Minos on the voyage to Crete. Zeus and it seems just possible that the Am- BELOW Lapith and Centaur. The metopes on thundered in a clear sky to attest his azon legend was originally Athenian the south side of the Parthenon all fatherhood of Minos. Theseus by his and not part of the story of Heracles. had a single theme, the battle of the father's aid recovered a golden ring that Then Theseus joined Pirithous in the Lapiths and Centaurs. The figures have Minos threw into the sea, and a golden war of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, the sad repose of developed classical art. Centaur has nothing bestial crown as well. But whatever form the which, like the war of the gods and the The about him, but is the ideal type of exploit took, it ended predictably in the Giants, was used in the fifth century to an older man, as the Lapith is of a 'accidental' death of Aegeus. Theseus symbolise the triumph of Athenian civ- young man. Elgin Marbles, 'forgot' to change the sails to the colour ilisation over the barbarian. British Museum. that would announce success, and Ae- Also with Pirithous he carried out geus threw himself down from the point his last two exploits, both of which on the Acropolis from which the sea mm can be seen. His death is clearly related to the similar fates of kings' daughters at Athens. Minos shut up Daedalus in the Laby- rinth of which he had given the secret to Ariadne. But he and his son Icarus escaped on wings (another Cretan invention). Icarus emulated Phaethon and went too near the sun. The glue of his wings melted and he was precipitated into the sea. Minos pursued Daedalus to Sicily, where he discovered him by a typical piece of Daedalic technology, a shell threaded with the help of an ant. But the local king's daughters saved Daedalus by boiling Minos immortal after his bath, like the daughters of Pelias.

Theseus and Hippolytus

The rest of Theseus' life is anti-climax. He went with Heracles against the Ama- zons, and carried off the queen as his bride, defeating the Amazon invasion of Athens that he had thus provoked. Theseus' son, Hippolytus, was named after his mother, the Amazon queen, .\ v,->

J--*^ LEFT The sacred site at Olympia.

TOP RIGHT Castor and Pollux. The artist Psiax used both the red and the black figure technique about 530 BC. On this vase the figures are not named, but the two young cavalrymen in leather helmets, which leave the ear open to hear orders, and in some kind of riding breeches, could well be twins and therefore Castor and Pollux, who appear named on a famous vase by Exekias. If so, the old man on the stool is Tyndareus and the woman their mother Leda. The twin sons of Zeus, the Dioscuri were the patrons of the horseriding aristocracy. Museo Civico Romano, Brescia.

ABOVE Theseus and the Minotaur. This vase of about 550 BC shows a robust Theseus killing a subdued Minotaur with his sword in the vulnerable part of the neck where the helmet joined the breastplate in an armoured hoplite. The six Attic youths, one with a fillet in his hand, three of the others with wreaths, stand on either side of him, and he has put his cloak down on a rock. Ashmolean Museum.

BOTTOM RIGHT Theseus carrying off Helen. Pirithous draws his sword to ward off opposition as Helen's servant vainly tries to save her. Antikensammlungen, Munich.

sister of Ariadne, fell in love with Hip- with an oath, and he was unable to rebut dragged to death over the rocks. Finally polytus, and her nurse tried to procure the accusations. Whereupon Theseus the virgin goddess Artemis appeared to him for her. invoked one of the curses given by his reconcile father and son, and to institute But Hippolytus, like Bellerophon and father Poseidon, and another Bull from the cult of her favourite Hippolytus. later Peleus, played the virtuous Joseph. the Sea came to cause Hippolytus' death But behind the chaste figures of goddess Ashamed, Phaedra hanged herself, pre- in a manner appropriate to his name and devote it is possible to discern the serving her good name with a letter 'Horse loosed'. His frightened team consort of a crueller goddess, who re- accusing Hippolytus. Theseus at once bolted with him as he drove into exile gularly chooses the men who shall accused his son of trying to supplant along the coast road which Theseus supplant him, slaying him after or dur- him. The nurse had bound Hippolytus had himself taken to Athens, and he was ing the course of a ritual chariot race. TROJAN W^

Achilles and Penthesilea. Terracotta The last great communal enterprise of who passed it on to Hermes. From there was the preferred material for sculptural the Greek heroes was the Sack of Troy. it went first to Pelops, striker of horses, details in early Greece because of its Though it succeeded in its aim, the then to Atreus, shepherd of hosts, and cheapness and the ease with which difficulties were great, air of his death to Thyestes, of many lambs, it could be modelled. It is and an on virtually indestructible, though failure and defeat hangs over it all. Few and finally to Agamemnon. This is not fragile, and is not liable, like stone, of the heroes returned to find their the same as the genealogy, which begins to reworking. Part of an early Attic kingdoms secure, and few of the dyn- with Pelops* father Tantalus in Lydia. relief, of about 600 BC, decorated asties survived for more than a few the tomb of a warrior, since it shows generations. For this there is a historical Achilles, the ideal warrior, victorious Tantalus in a duel. He is shown facing left so reason. Many of the leaders came from that the gorgon head of his shield new families with much shorter genea- Tantalus is one of those divine kings may be seen. Part of a dead warrior logies than those of the children of adinitted to the table of Zeus and event- at his feet is labelled Aenea, so that his opponent must have been an Amazon, Cadmus, of Aeolus and of Danaus. ually punished for some act of presump- presumably Penthesilea, the queen Greece had presumably already been tion, like Ixion and perhaps Bellerophon. who led the Amazons to Troy to help unsettled by further migrations, and the He is the son of Zeus, though there were the Trojans. Greek artists preferred new situation may be reflected in the some attempts to link him with Thebes, to illustrate episodes from the legends rise of Mycenae rather than Thebes as where his daughter Niobe seems to of the Trojan war and not from the Iliad. Metropolitan Museum of Art. the dominant power in Greece. My- have belonged. There are various ac- Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1942. cenaean settlements have been found counts of his sin, that he revealed the

all over the eastern Mediterranean, on counsels of the gods or stole ambrosia

the coast of Asia Minor, in Cyprus and to give to men: but they all add up to

in Syria. It is likely that Mycenaean the ritual that made the king's son im- Greeks controlled Crete during the last mortal as the king's surrogate. great period of the Palace at Cnossus. In a variant Tantalus, like a Titan, is

Something of this may lie behind the buried under Mount Sipylus, for perjury, myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, just or perhaps abuse of his oath, like Sisy- as the sack of Troy may reflect an epi- phus. The story concerns the theft sode in the period of the expansion. But of a golden dog from the shrine of Zeus myth and epic are not history. in Crete by Pandareus, who entrusted

The great leader of the Greek exped- it to Tantalus. But when he asked for

ition is Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. it back, Tantalus swore some oath to

His place in a list of what seem to be Zeus which denied all knowledge of it. shepherd kings, deriving their authority Pandareus, to whom Demeter had grant-

from Hermes, the god of flocks, is ed the ability to eat anything without

given very early in the Iliad. Hephaestus suffering for it, may have been involved

made the sceptre, and gave it to Zeus in the punishment, for his daughters \:

•-i*^ THE TROJAN WAR

'l!,. i/'^: THE TROJAN WAR

twin Lynceus. But Zeus loved Leda, they laid an ambush for Idas and Lyn- Two marble groups of the Dioscuri formed the projecting decorations and came to her in the form of a swan. ceus, but the latter's keen sight discov- at either end of the pediment of the Quite exceptionally, she is said to have ered it. Both mortal twins were killed. Ionic temple at Locri, a Greek colony borne two sets of twins, one of each But Zeus struck Idas with lightning, on the toe of Italy and the last port of pair being mortal and one immortal: which should mean he received cult call before Syracuse. The groups one pair was female, Helen and Clytem- as a hero in Hades, and carried Pollux belong to the end of the fifth century, the period of Locri's greatest prosperity, nestra, the only set of female twins in up to heaven. But for love of his brother and have been influenced in style Greek mythology. Even more excep- he spent one day with him in Hades, and by the sculptures of the Parthenon. tionally, Leda is said to have laid either the next took him up into heaven with Modern taste makes them face one one or two eggs. him. This accounts for the two kinds another: in antiquity they probably faced outwards, as here. They show The quarrel of Castor and Pollux of cult received by the Dioscuri. the two Dioscuri, the divine twin with Idas and Lynceus arose when they All the heroes of Greece came to horsemen who were extremely popular carried off the daughters of Leucippus, woo Helen, but the contest, if there ever objects of cult in Italy as gods of 'White Horse', who had been promised was one, has been suppressed. Instead both sailors and horsemen. They are the aid to the other pair. Another version maizes there is another folk tale, of the suitors' shown dismounting, with of two Tritons, in order to reside in them quarrel over the division of the oath, which is used to account for the Locri and bless its inhabitants. spoils of a cattle raid, and contains folk- expedition of all the Greeks against Museo Nazionale, Naples. tale elements making use of the special Troy. Tyndareus feared to favour one talents of Idas, who could eat anything suitor over another, until Odysseus ad- at high speed, and Lynceus, who was vised him to make them all swear loy- keen-sighted. Idas cut one of the cows alty to the chosen one. This was Mene- into four parts, and proposed that half laus, whose brother, Agamemnon, was the booty go to the man who finished already married to Clytemnestra, Helen's

his portion first, and half to the second. mortal twin. Both the sons of Atreus, Then he gobbled up his and his brother's therefore, owed their kingdoms to their before the Dioscuri even started. So wives. THE TROJAN WAR

Achilles have been suppressed and have contained a contest. Acastus stole Peleus' Though the Trojan war was triggered share of the spoils of the hunt, but Peleus

off by the rape of Helen, its origins lav- proved his title to them by producing further back in the house of Achilles, the tongues which he had cut out, a the greatest of the Greek heroes at Troy. common folk-tale motif.

In the ///W he is often called Aeacides, As a reward for his chastity the gods not son but grandson of Aeacus, who gave Peleus the hand of Thetis, for was the most just of all the Greeks and whom Zeus and Poseidon had contend- ended up in Hades as the third judge ed, but both abandoned her when they with Minos and Rhadamanthys. His re- learnt that her son was to be mightier putation for justice seems to rest on his than his father. As always where Thetis

fame as a rain-maker. Greece was afflict- is concerned, this is a watered down ed by a drought attributed to the impious version of the succession myth. In other

deed of Pelops, who murdered an Ar- versions Thetis is a t3'pical water nymph,

cadian king and scattered his limbs over who is captured by the hero and held the land. Aeacus then ascended the through her various transformations.

mount of all the Greeks on Aegina, and After this he might keep her as his wife prayed successfully to his father Zeus provided she never spoke to him. for rain. Traces of the ritual survive in The gods came to the wedding of the story of his children. Peleus and Thetis, but Strife, presum- His mother was the nymph Aegina, ably because she was not invited (an- and his people, the Myrmidons, were other folk-tale motif), cast among them ants whom Zeus turned into men, in a a golden apple inscribed 'for the fairest', variant of the myth of Deucalion and the contest for which occasioned the Pyrrha, when Aeacus was alone on the Trojan war. The surviving child of the island. Aeacus had two sons, Peleus marriage was Achilles. Thetis had de-

and Phocus: a third, Telamon, is really stroyed six previous children by putting

Peleus treed by a lion and a boar. a local hero of Salamis, if he is not them on the fire or boiling them in a Greek black-figure vases were simply the belt which supports the cauldron to make them immortal. When sometimes drawn on a white ground shield-hero Ajax. The mother of Phocus, she was doing the same to AchiUes which covered the red clay, as in a and originally perhaps of Peleus as well, Peleus interrupted her, and she spoke wine jug of the late sixth century was a seal-maiden; sea nymphs recur in to him and had to return to the sea. by the painter of London. It shows Peleus taking refuge in a tree from the family history. The two sons quar- She had made him immortal and invul- the attack of a lion and a boar after relled (one should be the son of a god) nerable except for the heel, which Peleus his host Acastus had robbed him and Peleus killed Phocus 'accidentally' supphed like Pelops' shoulder blade, but of his magic spear. Acastus' wife by a cast of the discus: there are a from the bone of a swift-footed giant. had tried to seduce Peleus and, failing, accused him to her husband. But lion number of familiar ritual motifs here. The version that AchiUes was dipped and boar recur as sacred animals in Peleus went into exile and appeared in the water of the Styx is much later. many exploits, and the vase, as often as a potential supplanter in two places. happens, suggests an earlier ritual First in Phthia, where he married the in which Peleus was the supplanter Trojan stories king's daughter, he 'accidentally' killed who killed Acastus. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase; 1946, his host with his spear at the Calydonian Troy, the modern Hissarlik, was a forti- Joseph Pulitzer Bequest. Boar hunt. Then at lolcus, where he fied palace site from the beginning of wrestled with Atalanta at the funeral the Bronze Age. It had cultural links games of Pelias (which looks like an with Greece from the time of the first exploit), he played the virtuous Joseph Greek speakers about 1900 B.C., who with his host's wife. His host could not may have entered Greece from Asia

kill Peleus, but took him hunting on Minor through Troy. So it is not surpris- Mount Pelion and stole away his ash ing that the genealogical Ust of Trojan

spear, which was probably magic, and kings is as long as that of the Thebans, which none but him could wield. Peleus or that the mythical history of Troy is escaped from the beasts up a tree, from interwoven with that of Greece. Indeed,

which he was rather tamely rescued by the first king, Dardanus, is said to have Chiron the good centaur, who had orig- been a brother of the culture hero lasion, inally given him the spear. a consort of Demeter. In one version The original ending of the tale may lasion was struck by lightning for his THE TROJAN WAR

in this horse-breeding, which reflects the historical fact that the plain of Troy

was one of the places where it was possible to pasture horses in large numbers. Zeus gave mares, the best in the east, as the price of Ganymede, son of Tros and brother of Ilus, when he carried him off to heaven to be his cupbearer. But the story was probably

first that of the sacrifice of a son. Laomedon, the son of Ilus, promised those mares to Heracles, who touched at Troy when returning with the girdle of the Ama2on Hippolyte, and saved Hesione, Laomedon's daughter, from a sea monster to which she was exposed. But he was cheated of his reward. The story, modelled on that of Perseus and Andromeda, may in fact have been borrowed to motivate Heracles' second visit to Troy when he sacked the city. But Laomedon had a reputation as a cheat. He also cheated Apollo and Po- seidon of their wages when they had to serve him for a year as punishment for the conspiracy from which Thetis saved Zeus. Apollo herded Laomedon's cows, as he had done those of Admetus, while Poseidon built an impregnable wall round Troy. Laomedon not only refused to pay them their agreed wages, but threatened to sell them into slavery Peleus wrestling with Thetis was presumption, and Dardanus, like his with their ears cut off to mark their a favourite subject of Greek vase brother a son of Zeus, floated across to status. It was in revenge for this treat- painters, and from imported vases it Asia on a raft of inflated hides. There ment that Poseidon sent the sea-monster was copied by the engravers of Etruscan ships until mirror-backs, for which it formed a' were no Danaus invented to Troy. suitably erotic subject. As time went by them to escape with his daughters from Heracles returned to sack Troy in these engravings became increasingly Egypt. what may be a piece of genuine saga, Etruscan in style, as is that shown Much of the early genealogy is arti- evidence for continuous hostility be- which dates from perhaps the fourth Troy. took with rather than the fifth century. Thetis ficial, though already known to the tween Greece and He is beginning to be assimilated to the Iliad. Dardanus and his grandson, Tros, him Telamon, who was the first to style of a winged Etruscan female are derived from the names Dardanians breach the wall because he knew the demon. Peleus is a boy and not a man. and Trojans used in the Iliad. His great- one piece of it that had been built not British Museum. grandson Ilus is derived from the city by Poseidon but by his father Aeacus.

of Ilium, the site of which, like Thebes, Heracles would have slain him for this was indicated by a cow. The name of presumption, but he averted his fate by

his son, Erichthonius, is more appropri- the timely dedication of an altar to ate to an earthborn king. Erichthonius Heracles the Glorious Victor. In grati- was very rich, as befits a son of earth, tude, Heracles assigned him Laomedon's not in cattle but in horses. He was daughter Hesione, who should have said to have had three thousand mares been Heracles' reward on his previous at pasture in the marshes of the river visit, if the pattern of the supplanter Scamander. The best of the colts were were followed. When she was allowed sired by the North wind, and were so to ransom one of the captives, she chose fast that they did not bend the ears of her brother. Telamon's bastard son by

corn when they ran over them. It is Hesione is more Trojan than Greek. possible that Poseidon also had a hand Though he fought for the Greeks at

THE TROJAN WAR

Troy he used the eastern bow, and that destroyed the city, and the child ended up in Cyprus. His name Teucer was therefore exposed, only to be suck-

is that of a Trojan king, and may be led by a bear and brought up by a shep- that of an eastern god. herd. No god is associated with a Priam's brother Tithonus was one bear, only Artemis, which suggests that of the consorts of Dawn, like Orion Paris was once, like Aeneas, a goddess's

is that and Cephalus : indeed he was sometimes son. It therefore not surprising said to be the son of Cephalus. She the other three goddesses made him the begged for him the gift of immortality, judge when they strove for the golden but the jealous gods granted only the apple inscribed 'for the fairest' that letter of her prayer, withholding eternal Strife cast among them at the wedding youth, as they did from the Sibyl. So of Peleus and Thetis. Aphrodite offered Tithonus withered away and Dawn shut Paris lust, and he praised her, rejecting him up in his chamber, where he may the other goddesses, Hera and Athena, have turned into a grasshopper. who offered him kingship and victory A similar consort may be seen in in war respectively. Ganymede and the eagle. Seals were Anchises, a descendant of Assaracus, Behind the story, which is alluded used in the ancient world Ilus Ganymede. The to in the Iliad in the slightly contemp- brother of and in most circumstances where nowadays goddess Aphrodite actually bore him tuous form given above (though only a signature attests the genuineness a son, Aeneas, the only son of an the gift of Aphrodite is mentioned), can of a letter or a money transaction. The gem engraver's work was therefore Olympian goddess by a mortal known be seen the son and consort of a moth- highly confidential, and his art to Greek mythology. Aeneas was im- er-goddess, who has made him every was partly for this reason highly darling. wife Helen seems portant to later genealogies. The story woman's His regarded in antiquity. Lilte all other of his rescue of his father from Troy once to have been a Spartan tree- Greek art forms, a high proportion appears early. But in the Hymn to Aph- goddess, and he went to Sparta to carry of the subjects are taken from mythology. This garnet of the first rodite, Anchises knows that the consorts her off as if he were a supplanter. century BC shows Ganymede and the a flourishing Menelaus with Agamemnon gathered of goddesses do not have eagle which, according to one version, hfe, and Aphrodite warns him that if most of the heroes of Greece with the carried him off to heaven. He is giving he discloses the maternity of his son exception of the Thebans and the Athen- the eagle a drink from a cup, a clear reference to his task in heaven. But he will be struck by lightning. It is a ians. There was a persistent tradition he sits on a rock under a tree, dressed reasonable inference that Anchises too that Troy was not taken until the twen- as a shepherd in a Trojan cap, a type the ended up as the object of cult, and the tieth year after rape of Helen. The used also for Paris, and the scene desire among those who claimed descent delay is accounted for in two ways. is therefore on earth. It was only from Aeneas to continue this cult may First, it took some time to persuade all for the actual abduction that Zeus assumed the form of an eagle, be the explanation of the stories of the the suitors to come on the expedition. lonides Collection. rescue of Anchises. The family also Odysseus at least was reluctant. He had claimed the divine Trojan mares, saying advised Tyndareus to exact the oath LEFT The body of a terracotta statue of Zeus that Anchises had stolen them from because he wanted to marry Penelope, and Ganymede found in excavations Laomedon. daughter of Tyndareus' brother Icarius, since the Second World War fitted The Trojan royal house has much who tried to persuade him to settle in a head found at the end of the closer and more frequent dealings with Sparta. But Odysseus carried Penelope nineteenth century. It retains traces The black- the gods than any Greek family. This off in his chariot, followed by Icarius, of the original colours. bearded Zeus has a red cloak with relationship continues in the time of who kept on begging her to stay but black border. Ganymede carries she veiled her face. Priam, whose daughter Cassandra is a gave up when the cock which Zeus has given him as 'bride of Apollo', an inspired prophetess. Agamemnon went to Ithaca, off the a love gift. The whole stands o\er But because she refused the god her west coast of Greece, to persuade Odys- three feet high, and adorned the top of the pediment of a small temple or favours he spat in her mouth, that seus to join him. shrine. It was made by a Peloponnesian nobody might believe her, and she Odysseus was reluctant to join the in Corinthian clay about 470 bc. could safely prophesy the doom of Troy expedition and at one time was said to Archaeological Museum, Olympia. without in any way altering the course have feigned madness, yoking an ox of history. and an ass to the plough and sowing his fields with salt. The stratagem was discovered when the Greeks put Te- The judgement of Paris lemachus in the path of the plough.

There is a story about Priam's son Paris This is a decayed version of the exploit that suggests a supplanter. His mother of yoking beasts, and of the sacrifice of Hecuba dreamed she bore a firebrand a son. Odysseus himself discovered THE TROJAN WAR

The sacred island of Delos, where Achilles, whom his mother had hidden to leave Aulis in Boeotia, though an hold the lonians gathered together to among the women on Scyros, hoping omen told them that Troy would fall a festival of Apollo on the island in this way to save him from an early in the tenth year. A snake devoured where he was born, lies to the eight sparrows together with their moth- south-west of Mykonos. The sacred death. site lay on the north-west coast The second reason for the delay in er, representing the nine full years they of Delos, under the sacred mountain taking Troy was that the Greeks got would consume at the siege, and then of Cythnus on which Zeus and Athena lost and went to Mysia to the south of was turned to stone. The fleet was held were worshipped. The ancient path it. There Telephus the king repulsed by contrary winds until Agamemnon's up the mountain lay to the left of that Iphigenia was sacrificed to prominent in the picture. To the them, until Dionysus tripped him with daughter north of the sanctuary was a sacred a vine branch and Achilles wounded Artemis. She was brought under the lake, just off the left of the picture, him in the thigh. Telephus was Heracles' pretence that she was going to be married overlooked by a terrace of sacred lions, son and a typical supplanter, who was to Achilles. set up at the end of the 7th century exposed and suckled by a doe, killed Various not very convincing reasons by the Naxians, who dominated the island at that time. Naxos is the his mother's uncles and came to Mysia, are given why a sacrifice was required. largest of the Cyclades, the islands where he seems to be a figure in a fer- One version linked it with the ritual at that continue the line of Attica between tility cult. For the wound would not Brauron (page 35), another with that Crete and Turkey, and the first to heal until, like the magic impotence of the Sacred Spring, when everything revolt when the Athenians made Delos a year was vowed to the god. the sacred and administrative inflicted on his son by Phylacus when born in centre of their empire. gelding rams, it was touched with the In fact, in Greek mythology and espe- rust of the spear that made the wound. cially at Athens, daughters are often Telephus came to the Greek camp, and sacrificed for the victory of an army, promised to navigate the Greeks to or sacrifice themselves. This is just an- Troy in return. other case, softened by the story that a Even so the Greek fleet was unable deer was substituted at the last moment THE TROJAN WAR by the goddess, who carried off Iphi- The sack of Troy BELOW Sacrifice of Iphigenia. genia to be her priestess among the This was a subject that Tauri of the Crimea, where human The Iliad is a straightforward story of appealed to dramatists throughout sacrifices could safely be attributed to the fighting at Troy, told in personal the fifth century. It also inspired a barbarians. terms. Achilles quarrels with Agamem- famous painting - not a vase - by the fourth century artist Timanthes. The Greeks went first to Tenedos, non because his honour is slighted when But both literature and art stressed where Achilles killed the king, a son of his prize, Briseis, is taken to replace the pathos of the scene and the grief his early Chryseis, whom Agamemnon is forced Apollo, thus ensuring own of the father. This vase is quite calm, death. On Tenedos, Philoctetes was to return to her father. He withdraws and fully aware of the divine bitten by a snake and marooned on to his tent, but allows his friend Pat- intentions for Iphigenia. The presence of Apollo, top left, balancing Lemnos because the Greeks could not roclus to help the Greeks when Zeus his sister Artemis with her bow and bear the smell of the suppurating wound. permits the Trojans to reach the ships. with the typical crossed bands of vases The bow of Heracles, which Philoc- He rejoins the fight for personal reasons of this kind, may point to his tetes had been given as a reward for when Patroclus is killed, and kills Hector instructions to Orestes to rescue Crimea. As it is, igniting his pyre, was necessary to the as an act of personal revenge. He mis- his sister from the Iphigenia seems almost to be turning capture of Troy, and this story conveni- treats Hector's body, dragging it round into the deer which stands behind the but is finally to restore ently gets it and him out of way. Troy, moved her rearing up on to the altar, and

When they finally reached Troy, the it to Priam, who reminds him of the which is clearly the target of the Trojans refused to return Helen and father he will never see again. Various sacrificial knife wielded by a man whose lack of distress identifies him broke the truce when Menelaus won episodes can sometimes be explained as Calchas rather than Agamemnon. the single combat with Paris that was in terms of myth and ritual - even On the left an attendant holds the supposed to settle the issue. Then the perhaps the chase of Hector round the garlands for the victim and perhaps Greeks settled down to the long siege walls of Troy, since Achilles is con- the flour that was sprinkled on it. of Troy. ventionally 'swift-footed' - but such British Museum.

BOTTOM RIGHT Achilles slaying a Trojan. Towards the end of the fourth century bc the native Etruscan style of vase painting introduced a new character into many scenes, a native demon. This does not represent a new development in Etruscan religion; rather, as long as the artists followed their Greek models strictly, there was no room for a demon in the pictures. Here Charon, the Greek name adopted from the boatman who ferried souls across the Styx to the underworld, stands by with his hammer as Achilles, mislabelled AIFAS, that is Ajax, kills one of the Trojan captives at the tomb of Patroclus with a downward stab into the jugular. Achilles appears as a brutal Italian, but the scene has the direct power sometimes lacking in more refined Greek vases. Bibliotheque Nationale. THE TROJAN WAR

explanatiotis are irrelevant to the poem. The myths of the Trojan war are Suicide of Ajax. This bronze outside the Iliad, and are often con- statuette from Etruria was attached cerned with the conditions that had to be to the rim of some bronze object, perhaps acting as one fulfilled before Troy could be taken. of the handles. Ajax's attitude Thus the first man to land was fated that he was appealing to suggests to be killed. It was Protesilaus, who somebody on the other side of the received cult at his tomb in Thrace object, perhaps Athena, who had elms grew in the pre- tried to save him from the opposite Troy; consequence of his madness. cinct, and their leaves faded when they Museo Archeologico, Florence. could see Troy. Thus, too, Achilles ambushed the young Troilus and killed him. If Troilus reached twenty Troy was safe, so no doubt he was killed on the very eve of the fatal birthday. Odysseus and Diomede stole the horses of the Thracian Rhesus on the night he arrived at Troy: if they but drank the waters of Scamander Troy was safe. Rhesus sounds as though he may have been a 'son of Ares' once: he was probably the object of cult in an oracular cave. As Patroclus died for killing Sar- pedon, the son of Zeus, so Hector's death was avenged by that of Achilles. But before that, Achilles killed two of the exotic allies of the Trojans. The first was Memnon, son of the Dawn and Tithonus. He was buried on the Helles- pont, and once a year birds went to sweep the grave and sprinkle it with water. There was evidently a tendency to assume that all the local cult-heroes had met their death at Troy. The 'birds' may have been women performing a bird dance. The other victim was Pen- thesilea, queen of the Amazons, who came to Troy to be purified for the 'accidental' murder of her sister Hippolyte, mother of Hippolytus. The pattern suggests that she may have been re- TOP RIGHT BOTTOM RIGHT ally marrying one of the silver cup cruited as an by Achilles sparing Priam. The other side of Odysseus, Priam's sons. Thersites accused Achilles Some metal vessels have survived from Hoby. his hat, is trying put from ancient times by being buried recognisable by of violating the body, and himself to persuade the injured Philoctetes, for security in unsettled times out its eyes with his spear. For this, or shown as a beggar with staff and countries. A silver cup of the some treasure, bow, possibly for stealing Roman period signed both in Greek and bandaged foot but no could not Achilles killed him, knocking off his and Latin by Cheirisophus to return to Troy which him. Odysseus blow. Though Thersites (the name means 'Hand-wise') be taken without head with one identity, and used was found at Hoby in Denmark. concealed his in the Iliad is a deformed demagogue the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, One side shows the classic scene properly chastised by Odysseus, he Philoctetes. When persuasion which ends the Iliad, and exploits to work on was in fact a kinsman of Diomede, and failed, Heracles resolved the its poignancy rhetorically. reminding his death caused dissension in the Greek Priam kisses the hands that slew his resulting impasse by will of the son, and Achilles spares him, Philoctetes that it was the camp. fall and that when he thinks of the aged father gods that Troy should Achilles was shot in his vulnerable turn mourn he should contribute. who would in his heel by Paris in a battle at the gates of the dead Achilles. National Museum, National Museum, Troy. Apollo guided the shaft, for in a Copenhagen. Copenhagen.

THE TROJAN WAR

Suicide of Ajax. The Etruscan gem shame culture success as well as failure engravers seem to have taken their projected on to the gods to avoid is subjects from Greek vases, which personal responsibility disruptive of so- were imported into Etruria in large ciety, just as ritual killings are always quantities and later imitated there, Greek gems. But a 'accidental'. A later romantic version rather than from fifth century example, of which told of Achilles' love for Priam's daugh- the impression is shown, is very well ter, Polyxena, and of secret and treach- adapted to its medium. The suicide erous meetings and betrayals. This at- of Ajax, when he was not awarded mosphere of dissension and failure can the arms of Achilles, was a subject whose cruelty particularly appealed even be detected in the Iliad, where the to the Etruscans. Museum of Fine Arts, Greeks on occasions contemplate with- Boston, Bartlett Fund. drawal. Clearly the expedition was not unqualified success. an Diomede with the Palladium. Because to Achilles' arms were awarded they were intended as seals, most Odysseus, and not to Ajax who, at the Greek ringstones, like this fourth one, are engraved loss of more face than he could reason- century chalcedony in intaglio to produce an effective ably be expected to bear, turned on relief impression. Diomede, who has the aggression which social himself just succeeded in stealing the pressures prevented him from directing Palladium or sacred image from the against the Greek leaders, and committed Temple of Athena in Troy, is stealthily tiptoeing with drawn sword to avoid suicide. He found some difficulty as discovery. The Palladium is shown Heracles is said to have made him in- as a tiny but perfect image. Such part his vulnerable in all but one of totems were really either meteoric body by wrapping him in the lion's stones fallen from heaven or a primitive tree trunk skin. The body of Ajax was buried, not and roughly shaped containing the god whose presence burnt, and he was the object of cult both made the city inviolable. Museum where his grave was by in the Troad, of Fine Arts, Boston, Bartlett Fund. the sea side and contained huge bones, where it was and at Salamis his home, RIGHT associated with that of his son Eury- The Judgement of Paris. The Penthesilea unlike saces, 'Broad shield'. There was a story painter, working from 475 BC, of his followers, could that the armour of Achilles was washed some decorate a toilet box with an ashore from the shipwreck of Odysseus, appropriate subject without descending grave in the and came to rest on Ajax's into sentimentality. The Judgement Troad. of Paris, with the inscription twice The Greeks then brought to Troy repeated 'The boy is beautiful', runs right round the jar. Paris is seen the helper necessary to the successful sitting on a rock, wearing a travelling conclusion of the enterprise, Philoctetes hat and carrying a club. Behind him is with the bow of Heracles. The Trojan an older man with a thin stick. He Helenus, who had quarrelled with his may be only a spectator to fill the space, or Priam. Hermes, brother for the hand of Helen after possibly Zeus bearded and similarly dressed as a Paris' death, revealed three further con- traveller, but identified by his attributes,

: the bones of Pelops should ditions that comes to fetch him to the goddesses, be returned to Asia Minor whence he who face one another on the other Museum came, that the son of Achilles should side of the vase. Metropolitan of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907. fight, and that the Palladium, a magic image of Athena, should be stolen. Diomede and Odysseus. Opposite Neoptolemus was fetched from Scyros, Diomede Odysseus, shown as always where he had been begotten, and, clad bearded and in a cap, holds his sword in his father's armour, was prominent and cloak in the left hand and indicates the feet of a guard in the sack of Troy : the motif suggests with his right Between them is a the success of the sons of the Seven he has killed. similar statue of Poseidon on a column, against Thebes. the next to a stylised representation of said to have been The Palladium was walls of Troy, outside which, in this made by Athena to represent her female version of the myth, Odysseus companion Pallas, whom she accidentally awaited Diomede. Ashmolean Museum. killed and whose name she took. Zeus THE TROJAN WAR N^, ,-%

L^^ LEFT

Laocoon and the sea serpents is perhaps the most famous statue of antiquity. It was discovered in Rome during the Renaissance. It was the work of three sculptors of Rhodes in the first century BC, when a developed technique of sculpture was put to the service of sensational realism. The Rhodians, prosperous merchants and sailors, were allies of the Romans, who claimed descent from the Trojans via Aeneas, and this may have led to the choice of the subject. The priest Laocoon warned the Trojans against the wooden horse and was destroyed together with his sons by sea serpents for attempting to interfere with the fated course of events. Vatican Museum.

RIGHT Marble statue of Athena. The pediments of the temple of Aphaea on Aegina both show Athena presiding over scenes of battle, perhaps between Greeks and Trojans (for there is an archer in one scene), symbolising the victory over the Persians in which the Aeginetans joined with the Athenians. Aphaea was identified with Britomartis, one of the forms of the Artemis worshipped in Crete. But the temple suggests she may also have had qualities that could lead to her identification with Athena. The statue of about 480 BC from the pediment was originally painted and decorated with bronze or gold for which the holes can be seen. The breast of the goddess probably bore the gorgon head and her right hand held a spear. Antikensammlungen, Munich. THE TROJAN WAR

grave of Achilles. The Greeks cast it down to Troy where Ilus built the sacked the sleeping city, not without im- it a temple. It had to be stolen because slew Priam at the i no city can be taken as long as its gods pieties. Neoptolemus altar where he had taken refuge. remain in it. The Romans, who claimed of Zeus Cassandra before that Aeneas had brought the real Pal- Locrian Ajax raped Astyanax, infant ladium to Rome, had a special ceremony the image of Athena. cast from the battle- of evocation to entice enemy gods to son of Hector, was Rome. So Odysseus and Diomede stole ments like a sacrifice. And Polyxena was sacrificed the tomb of Achilles, the it as they had joined in killing the horses on of their love. of Rhesus. Odysseus used the trick of germ of the romantic story disguising himself as a beggar and en- listing the help of Helen. He also devised the wooden horse in which the heroes entered Troy by a trick. It may be a recollection of some kind of siege engine, which breached the walls at, no doubt, the one place where they had not been built by gods and were therefore vulnerable - another device for throwing the responsibility of defeat off the defenders. Or it may represent treachery in Troy, the normal way in which the Greeks took walled

cities: certainly Antenor and Aeneas were spared by the Greeks, though they were needed for genealogical reasons. All the Greeks but those in the horse retired to Tenedos, pretending that they were finally withdrawing and that the horse was a thank-offering to Athena

(though it ought to have been to Po- seidon, who built the walls and often appears in the form of a horse). The Trojans dragged it into the city, of course disbelieving the prophecies of Cassandra and also neglecting the ambiguous warning of Apollo, who sent two snakes to devour the sons of La- ocoon, who had begotten them on his wife in the sanctuar\. The Greeks in the horse, whose number varies from twenty-three to three thousand, were all frightened ex- temples at Agrigento, cept for Neoptolemus. Their presence The last of the the ancient Acragas, is almost was suspected by Helen, who went contemporary with the Parthenon and, addressing each in the tones of round like it, survived as a Christian church. his wife. Odysseus bade them all keep It was dedicated to Saints Peter and from the silence and strangled Anticlus, the only Paul, who perhaps took over Castor and Pollux. one who was going to cry out. Helen twin Dioscuri, National pride and the desire to impress was accompanied by her second hus- visitors with the power and wealth of her role is ambig- band, Deiphobus, and the city, was a powerful motive for uous, for 'some god wanted to give temple building in the ancient world, tyrants was one glory to the Trojans'. and Acragas under its of the strongest cities in Sicily during The first out of the horse was killed the fifth century. Several temples lie The rest admitted the leaping down. along the southern city wall, looking Greek army, which had been guided towards the sea, and this is the furthest from Tenedos by a beacon lighted on to the west. THE TROJAN WAR THE TROJAN WAR

Murder of Aegisthus. This painting RIGHT conventionally nude, stands on one of the murder is earlier (500-475 BC) Orestes and Electra. At the beginning side of the memorial pillar on the tomb than any of the surviving dramatic of the fourth century the local potters of Agamemnon, supported by his treatments of the story. It suggests of the Greek colonies in Italy began friend Pylades. On the other side that Orestes came openly and armed, to imitate the Attic red figured vases Electra brings a fillet to the tomb though Aegisthus, who is dragged off they had been importing. An amphora which she is visiting on her way from his throne, was evidently not by a painter working in Paestum the fountain, at which she will fill expecting the attack. The horrified from 550-310 BC illustrates a the water pot she carries. The girl is Chrysothemis, the younger performance of a play, probably the recognition is imminent. Above two sister who stayed with her mother, and Electra of Sophocles. Orestes, shown Furies watch the scene. Museum not Electra, who is associated with of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund. the murder only in drama. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. THE END OF THE HERO

Perhaps because of their various acts the capture of Thebes by the sons of of impiety, few of the heroes had a the Seven. The contest was to guess safe or profitable return home, with the number of figs on a tree, and the the exception of Diomede and Nestor. number of pigs in a sow's unborn farrow.

Menelaus was at first determined to kill The story is Ionian propaganda in favour Helen for her infidelity, but because of of the local oracle of Apollo at Clarus her beauty (and her divine status) was near Colophon. unable to do so, and set out with the The impious Ajax, like Menelaus, other two. But he was delayed by the suffered shipwreck. Ancient scholars death of his helmsman off Sunium, and tried to fix the exact time and date of the off the south-west promontory of the fall of Troy. It may have taken place Peloponnese a north-westerly drove him dangerously late in the summer, at the to Crete and Egypt. He spent the next setting of the Pleiads, when the sailing eight years accumulating wealth in the season ends in Greece and the autumn eastern Mediterranean. Finally he was winds begin to blow. Thus there may becalmed off Pharos, an uninhabited be a perfectly natural explanation of off-shore island which the Odyssey en- these calamities. Ajax succeeded in get- visages as a long sail from Egypt, to ting to shore and boasted that he had which Menelaus had to return, on the escaped against the will of the immortal advice of Proteus, an Old Man of the gods, who promptly proved him wrong. Sea, before he could make Sparta. All Poseidon broke off the rock upon which early navigation depended on starting he was sitting and drowned him. An from a known landmark. At home he annual Locrian ceremony, in which a

continued to live in immense prosperity fire ship was launched with black sails, with his divine wife, looking forward was explained as mourning for the dead to the Islands of the Blest. Most of Ajax.

this is a realistic account of freeboot- A number of the Greeks returned ing true enough of any period from the to find that they had been supplanted Mycenaean to the eighth century. in the affections of their wives during Some of the Greeks did not return their absence. This happened to Idom-

at all. Calchas the prophet went overland eneus of Crete, but another or addi- to Colophon, to die in a kind of magical tional story was told to account for his conflict (a folk-tale motif) with Mopsus, exile, that to escape from a storm he

the son of a 'bride of Apollo', Manto vowed to sacrifice the first thing he met the daughter of Tiresias. She had emi- on his return, which was of course his grated there with some Argives after son or daughter. A plague resulting ABOVE This fragment from 560-550 BC by Nearchos has often recalled the passage in the Iliad when Achilles' horses are suddenly able to answer his reproaches for deserting Patroclus by reminding him of his own rapidly approaching fate, which Achilles has long known and which makes his quest for glory the more urgent. But the horses' names are not the same, and in fact the vase showed Thetis and Hephaestus bringing Achilles his armour. National Museum, Athens.

RIGHT Blinding of Polyphemus. A huge early Attic amphora four and a half feet high was found in excavations at Eleusis in 1954. The neck shows the blinding of Polyphemus, in a flamboyant style. The painting's chief interest is its Homeric subject. The stick has two points, as in some illustrations which assume a two-eyed Cyclops, but both seem to terminate in the one eye, which is not central and may reflect the Cyclops' origin in the smith who has lost an eye by a spark. Eleusis Museum.

130 THE END OF THE HEROES

from this impious sacrifice led the people to banish him. In this folk-tale motif of the Home-comer's Vow, the order of events has been deliberately altered to conceal the normality of the practice, and to absolve Idomeneus of the re-

sponsibility for having willed it.

The death of Agamemnon

The classic case of the betrayed husband

is Agamemnon himself, who was supplanted by Aegisthus, who had already killed Atreus, his father's brother. In seducing his cousin's, wife, Aegisthus was only doing what Thyestes had done to Atreus. He may have had some real claim to the kingdom. The murder of

Agamemnon is simply an episode in the

gory history of the Pelopids. It contains elements derived ultimately from ritual: for Clytemnestra murdered him in the bath-house after a bath, striking him three blows, possibly with a double axe, after catching him in a hunting net more appropriate to a sacred animal than tc a man. Zeus, through the oracle of his son Purification of Orestes. This fourth and with the sword in his right wards century south Italian vase shows the two off an invisible Fury. Apollo Apollo at Delphi, ordered Orestes to chief figures, Orestes and Apollo. performs the purification with two avenge the murder of his father by kill- Orestes, with his conical hat off his laurel leaves which he has dipped in the ing his mother Clytemnestra and her head, clasps the navel stone with the bowl full of presumably pig's blood. lover Aegisthus. He did so and returned left arm, in which he holds his scabbard, British Museum. from exile with the' help of his almost incestuously devoted sister Electra and Odysseus er. In some of them Penelope seems under the protection of Hermes. Orestes to have recognised her husband by some was purified of the murder of his mother The fate of Agamemnon, and the filial token and to have connived in the by Apollo at Delphi. But the Furies duty of Orestes, are in the Odyssey con- destruction of his rivals. But the poet were unaffected and continued to pursue trasted with that of Odysseus, and held has transferred this to the aged nurse, him. Orestes fled to Athens and took up as a model to his son Telemachus. who recognises Odysseus by a scar on refuge at the image of Athena, who Odysseus returned from Troy after ten his thigh, and to the faithful hound instituted the Athenian homicide court years of wanderings, to find his substance Argus, who dies after greeting his mas- of the Areopagus to decide the issue. being devoured by the nobility of Ithaca, ter. Even after the suitors have been Her own presiding vote went to Orestes. who were pressing his wife Penelope slain, Penelope refuses to believe it is This made the votes equal, and, accord- to marry one of them. She kept them at her husband returned until she has tested ing to the practice of the court, Orestes bay until his return by insisting that she him by claiming that his marriage bed was aquitted. The Furies were persuaded must finish the shroud she was weaving has been moved, an impossibihty since to accept cult at Athens, becoming the for Odysseus' father Laertes. This Odysseus in making it had incorporated Kindly Ones, Eumenides, earth-god- shroud she unpicked each night. Odys- an olive tree which grew on the site of desses rather like the daughters of seus returned in time to defeat all the his palace. Cecrops. suitors in the exploit to determine Pe- The myths in the Odjssey appear in Iphigenia had been carried off to the nelope's husband. He used a great the account of his wanderings which Crimea. Orestes went there to bring bow, which he alone was able to string, Odysseus gives at the court of the Phae- back his sister to Athens with the image to shoot them down at a feast. acians, a race of ideahsed sailors whose of Artemis. He was taken prisoner and The story of the Return of Odysseus swift and silent ships find their own way

Iphigenia recognised her brother only is made up of a number of different and may once have ferried men to the in the nick of time to prevent his traditional versions of what may have land of the dead. Angered at their habit sacrifice. been originally the myth of the supplant- of giving free passage to all, including his enemy Odysseus, Poseidon turned

their ship into a rock on its return^ a myth that explains natural features of an island traditionally identified as Corfu. Odysseus was cast up there by a shipwreck and befriended by the king's

daughter Nausicaa. He defeated all the Phaeacian nobles in an athletic contest.

The episode is clearly modelled on the myth of the supplanter. Only the exi- gencies of the plot prevent him from marrying Nausicaa. He does appear however as the tem- porary consort of two nymphs or goddesses in the course of his wanderings. Many of the motifs that occur during his journey seem to have been taken from the Argonautic saga, and may contain some information about north-

ern waters. But they all seem to be located in the western Mediterranean, an area in which the Greeks showed increasing interest from the eighth century. It was also the scene of some of the exploits of Heracles. After leaving Troy, Odysseus touched ABOVE BELOW at Thrace, where he sacked the city of Orestes and the Furies. This early Odysseus in Circe's house. The Apulian bell crater from the beginning vigorous free style employed on the Cicones, sparing only the priest of of the fourth century bc is one of the vases from 450 bc, even when very Apollo, who gave him in return some most dramatic illustrations of the story sketchy in style, as here, could exceptional wine that could be diluted of Orestes, a favourite subject. The produce an effective illustration with twenty parts of water. Thence he painting seems to be closely related to of action. Odysseus rises from his to Aeschylus' play the Eumenides. The chair and draws his sword when Circe was blown North Africa, to the land ghost of Clytemnestra is seen awaking tries to turn him into a beast, of the Lotus-eaters, whose food caused the sleeping Furies, showing that like his companions behind him, all that tasted it to forget home and the purification performed by Apollo is one with a pig's head, one with an family. Then in Sicily the Cyclops Poly- powerless against the ancient curse ass's. The herb moly, given him phemus imprisoned him in his cave of blood. Apollo, half girt in a richly by Hermes, had rendered Odysseus embroidered tragic garment, holds his immune to her spells, and and ate his companions. Odysseus made bay in one hand and in the other she flees before him, dropping him drunk with his Thracian wine and a pig over the head of Orestes, not to the mixing bowl in which put out his one eye, escaping in the illustrate but to symbolise the she had mixed the wine, and the morning under the belly of the Cyclops' purification he has performed with rod with which she had stirred it. its ram. blood ; for the purification was not Metropolitan Museum of Art, shown on stage. Louvre. Gift of Amelia E. White, 1941. The Cyclopes were originally the smiths of Zeus, who made the thunderbolt. For the purposes of the Odyssey they have been turned into uncivilised shepherds, sons of Poseidon, whose anger Odysseus provokes by blinding Polyphemus. But they have retained the

single eye typical of smiths which is necessary to the plot. The traditional motif of the magic ring, which betrays the position of the escaped hero to the blinded giant and can be removed only

with the finger on which it has been

put, is absent. Instead Odysseus betrays himself and his name by his own boast-

ing. He had previously concealed it and tricked the Cyclops by saying that he was 'No man'. But he succeeded in escaping the rocks which the Cyclops hurled at him and proceeded to the next ad- venture. Aeolus, king of the winds, got him within sight of Ithaca by tying up all the contrary winds in a goatskin. Then Odysseus went to sleep, and his comrades, thinking the sack contained treas-

ure, untied it so that they were blown back west again. They reached the land of the giant cannibal Laestrygonians. Some of Odysseus' comrades encounter

the king's daughter, but little is made of the episode because Odysseus must be preserved for further adventures, in the extreme west. There lay the island of Circe, daughter of the Sun. Circe turned Odysseus' comrades into pigs, but Odysseus was protected against her spells by the magic herb moly which Hermes found for him. It must originally have been the Herb of Life, and Circe the enchanter's daughter who assists the hero in his ABOVE quest. But all the ritual elements which Odysseus and the Sirens. This rather Odysseus escaping from Polyphemus. lie behind these stories have been con- rough vase in the late archaic style of This small archaic bronze relief verted into fiction. Odysseus did, how- the first quarter of the fifth from the end of the sixth century was still perhaps made to be fixed to a piece ever, become the consort of Circe, after century shows the Sirens as essentially birds whose faces alone of furniture dedicated in the sanctuary threatening her with his sword and are human. Odysseus of Apollo at Delphi. not to harm him. making her swear has passed the Sirens safely, while It shows Odysseus escaping from She sent him to consult the soul of himself enjoying their song, the giant Cyclops Polyphemus under Tiresias so that Odysseus as a typical and in chagrin at this, like the Sphinx the ram that was the bell riddle was guessed, wether of the flock and the only hero descended into Hades, where he when her alone. one is hurling herself into the sea, one large enough to bear a man encountered his own crew-man El- her eyes closed already in death. The others were tied together penor who had taken a swift route to Sirens, Sphinx and Harpies all in threes with one man between them. Hades by falling to his death off the perhaps originate in an exploit by The relief attests the popularity of the Odyssey, though the artist has roof of Circe's palace. which the hero overcomes death. British Museum. altered a detail, making Odysseus On his way back from Aeaea, Circe's tie himself to the ram instead of safely by the island, Odysseus passed simply holding on to it. Delphi. Sirens, stopping the ears of the rowers with wax and having himself tied to the mast. He also survived the monsters Scylla and Charybdis, whom he preferred to the Clashing Rocks which only the Argo could survive. Scylla was a kind of monstrous bitch rather like a giant squid, with twelve feet and six long necks, each with a horrible head

on it with three rows of teeth. Even so she was better than Charybdis, the whirlpool which sucked in water and

belched it out again three times a day. Scylla and Charybdis are traditionally located in the straits of Messina between Italy and Sicily, but they may equally THE END OF THE HEROES

Reverse of four drachma piece of Acragas, 420-415 bc. The symbols of the city of Acragas were the eagle of Zeus, in whose honour the people built a colossal temple, and the crab, which, perhaps because it was proverbial for crooked dealing, they later supplemented with a fish or other symbol of the sea. On this coin they added the sea monster Scylla, who lived in the straits of Messina. Her name means 'whelp', and there is no trace here of the six heads on long necks which devoured six of Odysseus' men. As always, the monsters of Greek art are more human than those of literature.

well be tales deliberately told by Phoeni- out on his travels again, to keep his genuine ritual survivals. It is, however, cians sailors to keep the Greeks from vows. Following Tiresias' instructions, significant that Odysseus had no succes- passing the Strait of Gibraltar. Odysseus he found the people who took an oar sor in Ithaca. Almost all the heroic steered close to Scylla, accepting the for a winnowing fan in north-west dynasties died out in the generation loss of six of his men to save the ship Greece. There he married the queen of after the Trojan War. Neoptolemus and the rest. the Thesprotians, only returning to joined up with Helenus, the renegade But Odysseus' companions finally Ithaca when his son by her was old Trojan soothsayer who had told the met their fate through their own folly enough to inherit the kingdom. The Greeks the conditions that they had when they killed and ate the magic later Thesprotians claimed descent from to fulfil before Troy could be taken, cattle of the Sun, a type of impiety more Odysseus, and told this story to account and had caused them to send for Neop- usually committed by Giants. Zeus for it. tolemus. Either on his advice or that of struck the ship with a thunderbolt, but In Ithaca finally he met his death at Thetis, he avoided shipwreck by return- allowed Odysseus, who is necessary to the hand of his son by Circe, Telegonus. ing to Greece by land through Epirus. the plot, to survive clinging to the mast. He came to Ithaca to seek his father and There he became king over the Molos- It was sucked into Charybdis and belched 'accidentally' slew him with a spear sians, having been advised to settle where out again, while Odysseus clung to a tipped with the spine of a sting-ray, the he found a house with foundations of wild fig tree which grew above the gentle death from the sea which Tiresias iron, walls of wood and a roof of wool. whirlpool. From there he was cast up had prophesied for him. When Tele- Neoptolemus found the Molossians on the island of Calypso, the Hider, gonus discovered what he had done he camping under blankets or fleeces sup- who kept him as her unwilling consort took the corpse to Circe, who made it ported on spears of which the iron tips for seven years until the gods told her immortal. He married Penelope and were stuck into the ground. There he to send him home on a raft. Poseidon Telemachus married Circe. Circe's other begot them an ancestor Molossus on wrecked the raft, but Odysseus was son by Odysseus was said to be Latinus, Andromache, w-ho had been his share saved by the White Goddess Leucothea. by whose daughter Aeneas became an- of the Trojan spoils. He returned to She gave him her veil which carried cestor of the Romans. Phthia and reclaimed his kingdom from him safely to the land of the Phaeacians. the sons of Acastus, who had expelled Landing there with the help of a kindly Peleus. But even though in one version Neoptolemus river god, he threw the veil back into he married Hermione, daughter of Helen the sea, doubtless without looking back, Most of these stories are typical of the and Menelaus, Neoptolemus got no son and the goddess took it up again. later continuations of the great epics. to succeed him there, and died in sordid

Thus Odysseus survived all his wan- Many of them are fictions to provide a circumstances at Delphi, brawling with derings and came back safely to Ithaca respectable heroic ancestry for later the attendants over the flesh of the to reclaim his kingdom. Then he set peoples, though they may contain some offerings. The story may conceal the THE END OF THE HEROES

Odysseus and the shade of Elpenor. In the age of Pericles, from 460-430 BC, Greek vase painting shows the serene classical style of the sculptures of the Parthenon, especially of the frieze. Perspective and landscape are indicated and not shown. In this masterpiece of the Lycaon painter, Odysseus has been escorted to Hades by a bearded and booted Hermes and sacrificed the two rams which lie dead behind the rock on which he sits. Then he is confronted by the unburied shade of Elpenor, who had fallen from the roof of Circe's palace and reached Hades more swiftly on foot than Odysseus in his black ship. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Amory Gardner Fund.

last ritual death of a hero in Greek Gulf and take the Three Eyed Man as settlements over the eastern Mediter- mythology: for Neoptolemus was killed guide. After some trouble caused by ranean may have weakened them at with a sacrificial knife and buried near the murder of a soothsayer, they crossed home, and their strength seems to have the temple of Apollo, who was responsi- from Naupactus, which took its name been further dissipated by freebooting ble for his death. There he received from the ships they built there, in three and viking ventures. Such ventures are annual offerings as a hero. tribes led by four descendants of Hera- represented in myth by the siege of cles, Temenus, Cresphontes and the Troy and in history by the concerted twin sons of Aristomachus. They found attack on Egypt by the 'Peoples of the The return of the Heraclids a man sitting on a one-eyed horse. With Sea', which was repulsed by Rameses 11

Orestes is the only one of these heroes him as their guide, they defeated Ti- in 1 192 B.C. who was succeeded by a son. This was samenus and killed him. The weakness of the Mycenaean dy- Tisamenus, and when he was king of They took possession of the whole nasties may have given the opportunity Sparta the Heraclids (descendants of of the Peloponnese, for which they drew to new bands of Greeks to make their Heracles) returned to the Peloponnese lots, setting up three altars to the Zeus way by land and sea into the rich pasture to claim their inheritance. At Heracles' of their fathers, first for Argos, then for lands of Boeotia and the Peloponnese, death they had fled from Eurystheus Sparta and lastly for Messene. Cres- driving out the existing inhabitants to and found only the Athenians to pro- phontes wanted Messene, and so he settle in Asia Minor, or confining them tect them. Eurystheus was slain in a cast into the pitcher of water not a stone to the poorer lands of Attica and Arcadia. battle in Attica and his head and his but a piece of mud. The mud dissolved, They replaced the great Mycenaean body were buried separately, like those so that the lots of the other two were palaces with more primitive settlements of the husbands of the Danaids, to bound to come out first, and he got where small closely knit patriarchal fam- protect the strategic routes to Athens. what he wanted. Temenus got Argos, ilies combined. The sack which pre- Then the Heraclids returned, but were and the twin sons Sparta, where the served in its flames the current accounts driven out by a plague and told by an dual kingship survived. On the altars of the Mycenaean kingdom of Nestor oracle to await the third crop before they found signs which foretold the at Pylos, written on clay, may represent trying again. They took this to mean subsequent history of the three regions, an episode in the invasion of the Dorians, the third year, and were again repulsed a toad for Argos, to warn them to stay as the newcomers are called from their when Hyllus, son of Heracles, was de- at home, a wily fox for Messene, but dialect. But traces and traditions of the feated in single combat at the Isthmus. a serpent for the Spartans who were earlier period survived in the stories A hundred years later the Heraclids terrible in attack. which the Greeks continued to tell, and received the same oracle, now interpreted The Mycenaeans had over-extended which they brought to an end with to mean the third generation, and they themselves in the unsettled period at their own version of the Dorian Inva- were advised to cross the Corinthian the end of the second millennium. Their sion, the Return of the Heraclids. : :

FURTHE] lADIM

1 Dictionaries and works of 2nd edition 1927; Merlin Press, 1963. Rohde, E. Psyche. Routledge and reference Murray, Gilbert. 'Early Greek Epic', Kegan Paul, 8th edition, 1925; Smith, W. (ed.) A Dictionary of Greek in Anthropology and the Classics, reprinted 1950 and Roman Biography and Mythology. ed. Marett, R. R. Oxford University is an earlier classic from a different

3 vol., London 1876: still the most Press, 1908. school of mythological scholarship. exhaustive work in English. These three authors founded the 4 Psychological studies: Gary, M., etc. (ed.) The Oxford anthropological comparative study of Kerenyi, C. The Gods of the Greeks. Classical Dictionary. Oxford, 1949: Greek mythology. Two volumes Thames & Hudson, 1951 and selected articles with further in the American series 'Our Debt The Heroes of the Greeks. bibliography. to Greece and Rome' provide short Thames & Hudson, 1959 introductions to the larger works are re-tellings of the Greek myths Rose, H. J. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. Methuen, 1958 and also cited above: 'for adults'. Professor Kerenyi has in Methuens University Paperbacks. Harrison, Jane. Mythology. Harrap. worked with Jung on the 2 Greek myths have been retold at Halliday, W. R. Greek and Roman psychology of myths. various levels and for different Folklore. Harrap, 1927. Otto, W. F. The Homeric Gods. classes of readers many times since The following are also introductory Thames & Hudson, 1955. the Renaissance. Two recent studies: Stokes, Adrian. Greek Culture and Ego,

examples are: Rose, H. ]. Primitive Culture in Greece. Tavistock Publications Ltd, 1958 Graves, R. Greek Myths. Cassell and Methuen, 1925. is the work of a Freudian. Penguin, many reprints since the Halliday, W. R. Indo-European 5 Studies of particular myths

first editions of 1958 and 1955 Folk-Tales and Greek Legend. Harrison, Jane. Myths of the respectively. Cambridge University Press, 1933. Odyssey in Art and Literature. Robert Graves adds a stimulating A modern classic, and one of the London, 1882; personal commentary on the myths. most important works of classical with M. de G. Verrall Mythology Grant, M. Myths of the Greeks and scholarship to have appeared and Monuments of ancient Athens, Romans. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, since 1945, is Macmillan, 1890. 1962; Mentor Books, New EngHsh Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Hartland, E. S. The Legend of Perseus. Library, 1965. Irrational. University of California London, 1894-1896. Voyage the 3 General books on mythology Press, 1951; 2nd edition 1959 also Bacon, J. R. The of and Greek culture: in paperback. Argonauts. Methuen, 1925. shamanistic elements which Nilsson, M. P. Mjcenean Origin of Frazer, Sir J. G. The Golden Bough, The abridged edition, Macmillan, 1922 Dodds found in some myths have Greek Mythology. Cambridge and subsequent reprints. been very speculatively developed University Press, 1932; Harrison, Jane. Prolegomena to the in the following two books: Oldbourne, 1964. Study of Greek Religion. Cambridge Lindsay, Jack. The clashing rocks. Brown, N. O. Hermes the Thief, University Press, 1903; 3rd edition Chapman & Hall, 1965. {the Evolution of a Myth). University 1932; Merlin Press, 1961. Butterworth, E. A. S. Some Traces of Wisconsin Press, 1947. a Study Harrison, Jane. Themis: a Study of of the pre-Olympian World in Greek Woodward, J. M. Perseus: the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Literature and Myth, de Gruyter, in Greek Art and Legend. Cambridge University Press, 1912; Berlin, 1966. Cambridge University Press, 1937.

1,6 : :

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the 122 bottom. Bibliotheque Nationale: 119 ropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 22,

following sources for permission to repro- bottom. Boissonnas-Borel : 10, 50. The 23, 54, 60 bottom, 65, 85, III, 114, 132 duce the illustrations indicated: Trustees of the British Museum: 12, 37 bottom. Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, top, 60 centre, 72 bottom left, 75, 88 bot- Hamburg: 53. Museum of Fine Arts, Bos- Colour tom, 94 bottom left, 99 left, 100 top, 102, ton: 35 bottom, 35 bottom, 41, 58, 60 top, 107 bottom, 112, 115, 119 top, 131, 133 61, 94 top, 95, 100 bottom, 104, 122 top, The Trustees of the British Museum: 62, top. F. Bruckmann, Munich: 30-31. J. Al- 122 centre, 129, 135. National Museum, 71, 81, loi bottom. Hirmer Fotoarchiv: lan Cash: 90-91, 103. Deutsches Archaeo- Denmark: 121 top, 121 bottom. Picture 38 right, 42 top, 42 bottom left, 42 bottom logisches Institut, Athens: 29, 75. Ehe- Point: 15, 26, 44, 86 top, 118. Soprinten- right, 76. 80, loi top, 126-127, 130 top, mals Staatliche Museen, Berlin: 14. Kon- denza alle Antichiti della Calabria: 30 bot- 130 bottom, front jacket. M. Holford: 38 rad Helbig-Bavaria : 51. Hermitage, Lenin- tom. Soprintendenza alle Antichita della left, 97, 105. D. Hughes-Gilbey : 13. La- grad: 72 top left. Hirmer Fotoarchiv: end- Sicilia Orientale: 34. Soprintendenza alle rousse: 46. Metropolitan Museum of Art, papers, 6 left, 6 right, 18, 19 left, 19 right, Antichita dell'Etruria: 89, 120. Staatliche New York: 84, 123. W. K. Miiller-Bavaria 28, 32, 33 top, 36 top left, 36 top right, 56 Museen Antikenabteilung, Berlin: 98. Nick 17, 66-67. ^- Pedone-Bavaria : 20-21. Pic- bottom, 52, 56, 59, 69 left, 69 right, 72 Stournaras, Athens: 97 bottom right, 133 ture Point: 24, 108. ZFA: back jacket. right, 74, 78, 83, 86 bottom, 92, 93 top, bottom. T.A.P., Athens, 37 bottom left.

93 bottom, 96 bottom, 106, 109 top, 113 Dietrich Hans Teuffen-Bavaria : 64. Black and White left, 113 right, 116, 124, 125, 134. Kunst- Antikensammlungen, Munich: 25, 68, 94 historisches Museum, Vienna: 128. Mansell: The illustration on page 117 is from En- bottom right, 107 top, 109 bottom. Archi- II. Mansell-Alinari : 57, 132 top. Mansell- graved Gems: The lonides Collection by John ves Photographiques : 40. Ashmolean Mu- Anderson: 87, 96 top. Mansell-Giraudon Boardman published by Thames and Hud- seum: 16, 35 top, 48, 99 right, 109 left, 39, 88 top. Enrico Mariani-Bavaria : 49. Met- son, photograph by Robert L. Wilkins. 1

INDEX

Figures in italics refer to captions Androgeus 104, 106 Asopus, river 87 Callisto 35, )6, 79 Acastus 114, 134 Andromache 134 Assaracus 117 Calyce 65, 69 Achelous, painter 61 Andromeda 75, 115 Astyanax 126 Calydonian Boar Hunt 77, 78, 79, Achelous, river 90, 100 Antaeus 100, 106 Atalanta /(f, 78-79, Si, 89, 114 89, 106, 114 Acheron, river 27 Antenor 126 Athamas 51, 58, 65, 67, 68 Calypso 134 ip, jo, Canace 65, Achilles 18, 53, 54, no, 112, 114, Antia 70 Athena 25, 31, 32, j^, 35, 69 118, 119, 120, 122, 126, IJO Anticlus 126 37, 43. 45. 47, 48, 60, 62, 64, Carthaginians /^ Cassandra n2, 117, 126 Acrisius 70, 72, 73, 75, 77 Antigone 90 69, 70, 7-2. 7i. 75. 79, S6, 89, 94, 43, 9S, 112, iiS, Cassiopeia Actaeon 21, 58, 61, 79, 90 Antigone 53, 90 96, 102, 106, 117, 75 Castor 108, 109, 113, 126 Admetus 79, 82, 85, 115 Antiope 87, 88 120, I2J, 126, 131 /6, Adrastus 88, 89 Anu 19, 22, 23 Athena Nike 102 Catreus 105, 106 Aeacides 114 Aphaea, goddess 25 temple of 4S Cecrops 64, 86, 102, 103, 106, 131 81, 82,

158 5 1 5

Hippothoe Cronus i6, i8, 19, 22, 25, 27, 29, Epaphus 55 Gorgons 70, 71, 72, 75, 82 93 blood 69 Hittite 19 32. 45. 47. 49. 63, 82 Ephialtes 37, 69, 90, 99 Cuictes 22 Epic of Gilgamesh 85 head 25, 62, 75, 12; myth 22, 23, 27 sister Homer 14, 16, Cyclops 25, 37, tf;, 79, 152, 153 Epimetheus 47, 48, 49 27 37, 47, 55 Hope Cyllene, Mount 39 Epopeus 87 Gorgus, dog 76 49 Hours Eratosthenes 54 Graces, the 31, 57, 106 22, 57 Culture' Hundred-handers 23, 25 Da 33 Erebus 16 'Guilt 12, 45, 58 Hurrians Daedalus 105, 107 Erechtheus 64, 105 19 Hydra Danaans 34 Erichthonius 102, 103, 115 Hades 16, 22, 25, 29, }0, 33, 34, 27 Hylas 82 Danae 51, 60, 72, 73 Erigone 63 35, 36, 47. 56, 63, 68, 69, 73, Hyllus 98, Danaids 56, 70, 135 Eriphyle 89 79, 82, 90, 95, 98, 100, 104, 135 108, 112, Hyperion 16 Danaus 54, 55, 56, 70, no Eros 19, 4} io6, 113, 114, 133, Hypermnestra Danube, river 85 Erymanthian boar 47, 95, ^S, 106 0/ 56, 70 Dardanus 53 Escorter of souls 4} Haemon 55 lambe Dawn 36, 105, 117, 120 Eteocles 88, .??, 90 Haemus, Bloody Mountain 27 33 lapetus 16, Day 16 Ether 16 Handbook of Greek Mythology 1 47 lasion Dead, goddess of the 35 Etna, Mount 27, 5 Harmonia 57, 89, 90 54 Icarius 62, 63, 107, 117 Death 69, 72, 82 Euaenetus 4} Harpies 82, 112, i)} Idas 78 Deianeira 78, ^S, 100, loi Euboea 35 Hebe 57, loi 77, Idasus Deiphobus 126 F.iimenides (Aeschylus) /_;_' Hebrus, river 63 76 Idomeneus 129, 131 Delphic Oracle 40, 57, 88, 104, 131 Eumenides 131 Hector 119, 120, 126 Iliad 16, 18, Delphyna 27 Euphronius 94 Hecuba 54, 112, 117 14, 15, 19, 29, 33, 37, 122, 61. 63. 70. 77. 79. "o. Demeter 22, 251, )o, jz, 33, 34, 35, Euripides 15, )S, 57, 61, 82, 90 Helen j6, 108, 109, 113, 119, 39. 54. 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 122, 68, no, U2 Europa 12, 53, /;, 56, 57.

Dryops 40 Furies 18, 22, 75, 79, 89, 90, 112, Heracles Mad (Euripides) 61 68, 79, 82, 85, 128, 131, Ij2 Heraeum 54 Jason 29, 76, 77, lOI Ea 19, 22 Heras 108 Jocasta, Queen 88 Earth 16, 18, 22, 23, 27, 32, 35, j6, Gaia 18, 22, 32, 33, 102 Herb of life 85, 99, loi, 106, 133 Joseph 70 50, 99, 100 sanctuary of 8) Herds, god of the 41 Judgement of Paris 122 goddess 48 Ganymede 115, 117 Hermes 27, )0, 31, )2, }}, )6, 37, 6', Juno 29 mother 55 Ge 33 39-40, 41, 43, 48, !), 55, ;/, no, Jupiter 29 mother-goddess 33 Georgics (Virgil) 63 69, 75, 82, 85, 94, 95, 106,

mother, Phrygian 58 Geryon 27, 75, 1)4, 98 112, 122, 151, i}2, 133, /;;/ Kouros Echidna 27 cattle of 95, 96 Hermione 134 )7 Kumarbi 22, 23 Ecstatic cult 63 Gilgamesh, epic of 85 Herodotus 43, 53, 67 19,

Egyptus 55, 56 Girl, deity 34, 82, 108 Heroic Age 89 Labdacus 88 Eilithyia 35 Glaucus 106 Hesiod 14, 16, 22, 45, 47, 48, 63, Labyrinth 105, 106, 107 Elara 35 Glaucytes 76, 106 89 Laertes Electra 128, 131 Glisas, battle of 90 Hesione 115, 117 131 Laestrygonians 133 Electra 12S Gold, age of 45 Hesperides 25, 79, ?6 Laius 88, 104 Electryon 93 Golden Apples 79 garden of 100 Laocoon i2j, 126 Eleon 69 of Hesperides ^6, 98 golden Apples of 96, 98 Laomedon 115 Eleusis 103 Golden Bough (Sir James Frazer) 15, Hestia 22 Laphystius, Mount 67 Elpenor 133 67 Hippodameia 112 Lapith loi shade of /;;/ Golden Bowl 96 Hippolyta, Queen 92 Latinus 134 Enchanter 133 Golden Fleece 68, 77, 85 Girdle of 96 Latmus, Mount 69 Endymion 69, 77 quest of 79 Hippolyte 115, 120 Leda ^6, 109, 112, n Enipeus, river 68 Golden ram 6j, 67 Hippolytus .'.', 107, 108, 109, 120 55, 1 1 3 5

Lerna, springs of 56, 63 Naiads 45 Parnassus, Mount 14, 51, 8) Porphyrion 100 Pomegranate Lernaean hydra 95, 98 Nausicaa 132 Parthenon 31, 64, 86, lO}, 113, 126, 36 Lethe, river 27 Neleus 68, 79, 87, 100 ')! Poseidon 16, if, 29, )0, 51, 32, 53, Parthenopaeus 68, Leto 32, 35, )9, 87, SS Nemean Lion )), 95 79, 89 35. 56. 37. 53. 55. 56, 69,

1 Nemesis Parthenos 7°. 75. 77. 82, 86, 93, 95, too, Leucippus 1 45 35 Leucius 76 Neoptolemus 120, 122, 126, 134, Pascas y/ 102, 104, 105, 109, 112, 114, Leucothea 67, 134 i?5 Pasiphae 12, 105 115, 122, 126, 129, 131, 132,

Library (Apollodorus) 1 Nephele 65 Patroclus 70, 72, 119, 120, i)0 134 Paul, Saint 126 temple of 27 Libya 55 Nereids 43 Linear B, Mycenaean 70 Nereus 43, 75 Pausanias- 15, 50, 60, 63, 64 shrine of 64 Lipara 100 Nessus 100, loi Peace 48 Praxiteles if Locrian Ajax 112, 126 Nestor, 87, 100, 129 Pegasus, the winged horse 6), 70, Pre-Dorian period 53 Ludovisi Throne iS New Year Festival, Babylonian 19 72. 75 Priam 117, 119, 120, 122, 122, 126 Lycaeus, Mount 50, 79 Night 16 Pelasgus 50 112 Lycaon 49-51, 112 Nile, river 55, 85 Peleus i8, 57, 76, 109, 114, ///, Procne 102, 103, painter 61 Niobe 87, 88, no, 112 "7 Procris 105 Proetus Lynceus 56, 77, 11} Nipple, Mount 82 Pelias 68, 79, 82, 85, 87, loi, 107, 70, 77 Lycurgus 61, 82 North wind 82, 103, 115 134 Promachos 62 Prometheus Lycus 87, 88 Nycteus 87, 88 Pelion, Mount 69, 114 45, 47, 51, 95 Lyssa 61 Nyctimus 50 Pelium 37 Protesilaus 120 Nysa, Mount 27, 60, 61 Pelops 77, 88, no, 112, 114, 122 Proteus 129 Psiax Maenads 40, 58, 61, 63 Penelope 117, 131, 154 10) Marathon, battle of 40 Ocean 16, 32 Penthesilea no, 120 Psyche 4) bull of 106 Oceanus 16, 19, 23, 33, 82 Pentheus 58, 62 Psychopompus 59 Pterelaus Marduk 22 Odysseus 49, 6), 69, 77, 90, iiz, Pericles 2j, 48, 62, 86, lO), ij! 93 118, 120, 122, 126, Periphetes 106 Pylades 128 Mares of Diomede 95 113, 117, Pyriphlegethon, river 27 129, 132, 133, 134, /;;/ Persephone 18, 27, 2p, }0, 35, 34, Maia 39, 40 Odyssey 68, 82, 108 Pyrrha 49, 51, 114 Manto 129 14, 15, 25, 29, 35, 39, 43, 35, 36, 48, 63, 103, 4>, 63, 77, 131, 132, I}) cult of io Pyrrhic victory 90 Marpessa 77, 78, 82 Oecles 89 Perseus 25, 51, 54, 61, 70, 7/, 72- Pyrrhus 5 3 Marsyas 75 Oedipal element in Greek my- 75. 77. 79. 82, 93, 115 Pythia 43 Medea 85, 87, 100, loi, 105 thology 22 Peter, Saint 126 Python 35, // Medusa 70, 73, 75, 82, 104 Oedipus 47, 77, 8}, 8j, 88, 89, 94, Phaea 106 Megara 99, 106 104 Phaedra 108 Rameses II 135 Megarians 5 Oeneus 78, 89 Phaethon 49, 107 Return of the Maiden 18 Megarus 5 Oenomaus 112 Phasis, river 85 Rhadamanthys 104 Melampus 79, 82 Oenopion 36 Philippides 40 Rhea 16, 22, 23 Melanion 76, 79 Oeta, Mount loi Philoctetes 119, 120, 122 Rhesus 120, 126 Melanippus 89 Oinanthe 102 Philomela 102, 103 Rhoecus of Cnidos 43 Meleager 76, 77, 78, 79, Si Old Man of the Sea 129 Phineus 82, 85 Meliae 43 Troy no, 112 Olympia 21, 4), )6, lof Phocus 114 Sack of 54, Melicertes 67, 85 Spring 118 Olympus, Mount //, 23, 34, 35, Phoebe 16 Sacred Memnon 1 20 Salmoneus 68, 37, 40, 63, 69, 100, loi Pholus 9! 65, 69 Menelaus 112, 113, 117, 119, 129, Sarpedon 120 Omphale 98, 99 Phrixus ((/, 67, 85 72, 154 Onatas }2 Phrygian cap 75 Saturn 47 Menestheus 108 120 Ophertes Archemorus 89 Phylacus 79, 118 Scamander, river 115, Metaneira 33 Orchomenus 94 Pindar 15 Sciron 106 Metis ij4 32 Oreads 43 Pirithous 82, 106, 107, 108, /oy Scylla 106, 133, Midas 61, 63; 75 Orestes 90, 119, 128, 151, 1)2, Pisistratus loi Sea 16 Asia Minor Midias SS, 100 135 Pittheus 104 Sea goddess, 19 Milky 28 Way 94 Orion 56, 37, 58, 117 Plato 56 Selinus 21, Minos 104, 105, 106, 107, 114 Orithyia 103 Pleiads 129 Semele 58, 60, 61, 63 Thebes Minotaur 12, y6, 85, 102, 105, 106, Orpheus 63 Pluto 34 Seven against 77, 89, 90, 10), no Orthus 27 Plutus 34 122, 129 culture 122 Mistress of Beasts }2, )6 Ossa 37, 69 Po, river 49, 85 Shame 14, 45, Mithras 7/ Otus 37, 69, 90, 99 Podargos, dog 76 Shepherd god 35 Mnemosyne 16 Podes 76 Sibyl n7 Molione, the 100 Pactolus, river 65 Pollux 76, 82, 108, 10^, n3, 126 Sidero 68 Molossus 154 Palaemon 67 Polybus 88 Silenus 61, 63, 68 of Moon 69, 99 Palladium 122, 125 Polydectes 75 Silver, age 47 Mopsus 76, 129 Pallas 125 Polydegmon 54 Sinis 106 Mother-goddess Mount no 29, 31, 35, ^/, 56, Pan 40, 43, //, 61, 75 Polygnotus 81, 112 Sipylus, 87, 102, 117 cult of 40 Polyidus 106 Sirens 70, 82, 133 Muses 43 Pan painter j8, 61 Polynices 88, 8p, 90 Sisyphus 65, 68, 69, 70, no Mycenae // Pandareus no Polypemon Procrustes 106 Sithnid 51 Mycenaean Linear B 70 Pandion 102 Polyphemus 132, ijj Sky god, Asia Minor 19 Myrmidons 70 Pandora 48-49, 63 blinding of ijo Greek 29 Myrtilus uz Pangaeus, Mount 61 Polyxena 112, 122, 126 Sleep 72 Mysteries, ritual of 34 Paris 117, 119, 120 Pontus 16 Snake god, lUyrian 57

140 1 5 5

Solymians 70 Temcnus 135 Tiresias 43, 90, 129, 133, 134 I ic/orj Odes (Pindar) 1 Sophocles 15, Si, 90, 129 Tereus loz, 105 Tisamenus 13; Vine, Phrygian god of the 58 Sown men 88 Tethvs 16, 19, 32 Titans 16, 18, 23, 27, 47, 69 Virgil 47, 63 Sparti, myth of 57 Theia 16 battle of 25 Sphinxes 80, S7, 88, ij) Themis 16, 55 Tithonus 117, 120 War 48 Sthenelus 94 Theodorus 4J Tityus 35-36, jp Water of life 85, 98, 99, loi Sthenoboea 70, 72 Theogony (Hesiod) 14, 16, 22, 25, Triptolemus 34 White goddess see Leucothea see also Antia 27. 29. 32. 43. 47. 48 Troilus 120 Wooden horse of Troy 126

Storm 1 god 29 There 7^ Tros 1 W'orks and Days (Hesiod) 14, 48 Strife 114, 117 Thersander 90 Trygaeus 48 World, creation of the 16 Stymphalian birds p4, 95 Thersites 120 Twelve Labours of Heracles pi

Styx 25 Theseum 5 Twelve Olympians jo Zemelo 58

Succession myth Theseus 12, //, /6, 98, 102, 104, Twins, in Greek mythology 55 Zetes 82, 103 Asia Minor 19, 22, 27 106, 107, 108, 109, no Tydeus 89 Zethus 87, 88

Greelv 32, 35, 56, 37, 39, 63, Thcspius 94 Tyndareus !op, 112, 113, 117 Zeus 14, 19, 2/, 22, 23, 2;, 27, 2

70, 96, 99, 114 Thetis 32, 39, 57, 61, 65, 85, 114, Typhoeus see Typhon 29, JO, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, jiS, original 75 115, 117, !jo, 134 Typhon 2;, 27, 35, 37 57. 39. 40. 47. 48, 49. 5°. 51. Sun Thief 51, 34, 85, 96, 99, 105, 133 god 27 giant 70 /i. 5 5. 56. 60, 6i, 67, 68, 70, cattle of the 100, 134 Three eyed man 135 Tyro 68, 73 72. 73. 78. 79. 82. 85, 87, 89, Supplanter, myth of the 87, 88 Throne, Boston iS 90, 93, 94, 95, pi, 99, lol, 102, Ludovisi iS UUikummi 27 104, loj, 107, 108, 109, no, Talos 105 Thucydides 43, 53 Underworld 18, 25, 39, 6S, 100 112, 113, 114, 115, ir/, iiS, Tamisu 19 Thunder god 14 Uranus 18, 22, 23, 27, 32, 33, 75, 119, 120, 122, 125, 126, 132, Tantalus 47, 87, no, 112 Thyestes no, 112, 131 99 134, 135 Taphus 93 Thyone 65 temple of S6 Telamon 114, 115, 117 Tiamat 19, 22 Vegetation Zeus-bull 12

Telegonus 1 54 Tiberius, Emperor 54 Phrygian gods of 58 Zeus helper 32 Telemachus 118, 131, 134 Tigris, river 19, 22 Thracian gods of 58 Zeus Laphystius 67 Telephus 118 Timanthes up Vegetation cult, Thracian 62 Zeus of escapes 67

^v.X i '^A

(Wilfred Ltt)

John Pinsent was born at Winchcomb, Gloucestershire, in 1922. He read 'Greats' at Oriel College, Oxford. He completed his

degree after World War II and accepted an offer to do research instead of rejoining the Royal Air Force. He did. however, remain an active member of the Volunteer Reserve and is now a Squadron Leader. He has been teaching Greek at Liverpool University since 1950. But he still considers himself a Roman historian, and is writing a commentary on Livy which has developed from his doctoral thesis. He finds Greek literature perpetually interesting and stimulating. This book has arisen from extra-mural lectures in which he tried to relate literature to the social structure

of Greek life. For the interpretation of his subject to the general public Is an Important part of the duties of a university lecturer. Dr. Pinsent has three children and lives in Liverpool. ;^