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The Greek Myths Vol III


Το βιβλίο κυκλοφόρησε το 1955 σε τέσσερις τόμους. Συνεχίζει να κυκλοφορεί μέχρι και σήμερα και είναι διαθέσιμο από πολλές εκδόσεις σε Ελληνική μετάφραση.
Η σελιδοποίηση σχετίζεται με το κείμενο της πηγής 24grammata.com/Robert-Graves-The-Greek-Myths. Επιπροσθέτως έχει προστεθεί η μετάφραση μόνο των περιεχομένων και η σελιδοποίηση από την αρχική ελληνική μετάφραση (πηγή 3ου τόμου Πλειάς – Ρούγκας, 1979)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/91725302/Robert-Graves-Ελληνικοί-Μύθοι-Τρίτος-Τόμος

Contents

105 Oedipus
106 The Seven Against Thebes
107 The Epigoni
108 Tantalus
109 Pelops And Oenomaus
110 The Children Of Pelops
111 Atreus And Thyestes
112 Agamemnon And Clytaemnestra
113 The Vengeance Of Orestes
114 The Trial Of Orestes
115 The Pacification Of The Erinnyes
116 Iphigeneia Among The Taurians
117 The Reign Of Orestes
118 The Birth Of Heracles
119 The Youth Of Heracles
120 The Daughters of Thespius
121 Erginus
122 Madness Of Heracles
123 The First Labour: The Nemean Lion
124 The Second Labour: The Lernaean Hydra
125 The Third Labour: The Ceryneian Hind
126 The Fourth Labour: The Erymanthian Boar
127 The Fifth Labour: The Stables Of Augeias
128 The Sixth Labour: The Stymphalian Birds
129 The Seventh Labour: The Cretan Bull
130 The Eighth Labour: The Mares Of Diomedes
131 The Ninth Labour: Hippolyte’s Girdle
132 The Tenth Labour: The Cattle Of Geryon
133 The Eleventh Labour: The Apples Of The Hesperides
134 The Twelfth Labour: The Capture Of Cerberus
135 The Murder Of Iphitus
136 Omphale
137 Hesione
138 The Conquest Of Elis
139 The Capture Of Pylus
140 The Sons Of Hippocoön
141 AUGE
142 Deianeira
143 Heracles In Trachis
144 Iole
145 The Apotheosis Of Heracles
146 The Children Of Heracles
147 Linus

Οιδίπους – σελ 9
Επτά επί Θήβας – σελ 17
Οι Επίγονοι – σελ 25
Τάνταλος – σελ 30
Πέλοψ και Οινόμαος – σελ 38
Τα Παιδιά του Πέλοπα – σελ 49
Ατρεύς και Θυέστης – σελ 54
Αγαμέμνων και Κλυταιμνήστρα – σελ 63
Η Εκδίκηση του Ορέστη – σελ 70
Η Δίκη του Ορέστη – σελ 80
Ο Κατευνασμός των Ερινύων – σελ 89
Ιφιγένεια εν Ταύροις – σελ 92
Η Βασιλεία του Ορέστη – σελ 100
Η Γέννηση του Ηρακλή – σελ 106
Η Νεότητα του Ηρακλή – σελ 114
Οι Κόρες του Θέσπιου – σελ 121
Εργίνος – σελ 123
Ηρακλής Μαινόμενος – σελ 127
Πρώτος Άθλος : Ο Λέων της Νεμέας – σελ 131
Δεύτερος Άθλος : Η Λερναία Ύδρα – σελ 136
Τρίτος Άθλος : Η Κερυνίτις Έλαφος – σελ 140
Τέταρτος Άθλος : Ο Ερυμάνθιος Κάπρος – σελ 143
Πέμπτος Άθλος : Οι Στάβλοι του Αυγεία – σελ 147
Έκτος Άθλος : Οι Στυμφαλίδες Όρνιθες – σελ 151
Έβδομος Άθλος : Ο Κρητικός Ταύρος – σελ 154
Όγδοος Άθλος : Τα Άλογα του Διομήδη – σελ 155
Ένατος Άθλος : Η Ζώνη της Ιππολύτης – σελ 158
Δέκατος Άθλος : Τα Βόδια του Γηρυόνη – 168
Ενδέκατος Άθλος : Τα Μήλα των Εσπερίδων – σελ 185
Δωδέκατος Άθλος : Η Σύλληψη του Κέρβερου – σελ 195
Ο Φόνος του Ίφιτου – σελ 202
Ομφάλη – σελ 208
Ησιόνη – σελ 215
Η Κατάληψη της Ήλιδας – σελ 225
Η Κατάληψη της Πύλου – σελ 234
Οι Γιοί του Ιπποκόωντα – σελ 237
Αυγή – σελ 239
Δηιάνειρα – σελ 245
Ο Ηρακλής στην Τραχίνα – σελ 251
Ιόλη – σελ 256
Η Αποθέωση του Ηρακλή – σελ 258
Ηρακλείδες – σελ 265
Λίνος – σελ 272


p. 218
Oedipus

LAIUS, son of Labdacus, married Iocaste, and ruled over Thebes. Grieved by his prolonged childlessness, he secretly consulted the Delphic Oracle, which informed him that this seeming misfortune was a blessing, because any child born to Iocaste would become his murderer. He therefore put Iocaste away, though without offering any reason for his decision, which caused her such vexation that, having made him drank, she inveigled him into her arms again as soon as night fell. When, nine months later, Iocaste was brought to bed of a son, Laius snatched him from the nurse’s arms, pierced his feet with a nail and, binding them together, exposed him on Mount Cithaeron.

b. Yet the Fates had ruled that this boy should reach a green old age. A Corinthian shepherd found him, named him Oedipus because his feet were deformed by the nail-wound, and brought him to Corinth, where King Polybus was reigning at the time.

c. According to another version of the story, Laius did not expose Oedipus on the mountain, but locked him in a chest, which was lowered into the sea from a ship. This chest drifted ashore at Sicyon, where Periboea, Polybus’s queen, happened to be on the beach, supervising her royal laundry-women. She picked up Oedipus, retired to a thicket and pretended to have been overcome by the pangs of labour. Since the laundry-women were too busy to notice what she was about, she deceived them all into thinking that he had only just been born. But Periboea told the truth to Polybus who, also being childless, was pleased to rear Oedipus as his own son. One day, taunted by a Corinthian youth with not in the least resembling his supposed parents, Oedipus went to ask the Delphic Oracle what future lay in store for him. ‘Away from the shrine, wretch!’ the Pythoness cried in disgust. ‘You will kill your father and marry your mother!’

d. Since Oedipus loved Polybus and Periboea, and shrank from bringing disaster upon them, he at once decided against returning to Corinth. But in the narrow defile between Delphi and Daulis he happened to meet Laius, who ordered him roughly to step off the road and make way for his betters; Laius, it should be explained, was in a chariot and Oedipus on foot. Oedipus retorted that he acknowledged no betters except the gods and his own parents. ‘So much the worse for you!’ cried Laius, and ordered his charioteer Polyphontes to drive on. One of the wheels bruised Oedipus’s foot and, transported by rage he killed Polyphontes with his spear. Then, flinging Laius on the road entangled in the reins, and whipping up the team, he made them drag him to death. It was left to the king of Plataeae to bury both corpses

e. Laius had been on his way to ask the Oracle how he might rid Thebes of the Sphinx. This monster was a daughter of Typhon an Echidne or, some say, of the dog Orthrus and the Chimaera, and had flown to Thebes from the uttermost part of Ethiopia. She was easily recognized by her woman’s head, lion’s body, serpent’s tail, and eagle’s wings. Hera had recently sent the Sphinx to punish Thebes for Laius abduction of the boy Chrysippus from Pisa and, settling on Mount Phicium, close to the city, she now asked every Theban wayfarer riddle taught her by the Three Muses: ‘What being, with only one voice, has sometimes two feet, sometimes three, sometimes four, an is weakest when it has the most?’ Those who could not solve the riddle she throttled and devoured on the spot, among which unfortunates was Iocaste’s nephew Haemon, whom the Sphinx made haimon, or ‘bloody’ indeed. Oedipus, approaching Thebes fresh from the murder of Laius, guessed the answer. ‘Man,’ he replied, ‘because he crawls on all fours as an infant, stands firmly on his two feet in his youth, and leans upon staff in his old age.’ The mortified Sphinx leaped from Mount Phicium and dashed herself to pieces in the valley below. At this the grateful Thebans acclaimed Oedipus king, and he married Iocaste, unaware that she was his mother.

f. Plague then descended upon Thebes, and the Delphic Oracle, when consulted once more, replied: ‘Expel the murderer of Laius!’ Oedipus, not knowing whom he had met in the defile, pronounced curse on Laius’s murderer and sentenced him to exile.

g. Blind Teiresias, the most renowned seer in Greece at this time now demanded an audience with Oedipus. Some say that Athene, who had blinded him for having inadvertently seen her bathing, was moved by his mother’s plea and, taking the serpent Erichthonius from her aegis, gave the order: ‘Cleanse Teiresias’s ears with your tongue that he may understand the language of prophetic birds.’

h. Others say that once, on Mount Cyllene, Teiresias had seen two serpents in the act of coupling. When both attacked him, he struck at them with his staff, killing the female. Immediately he was turned into a woman, and became a celebrated harlot; but seven years later he happened to see the same sight again at the same spot, and this time regained his manhood by killing the male serpent. Still others say that when Aphrodite and the three Charites, Pasithea, Cale, and Euphrosyne, disputed as to which of the four was most beautiful, Teiresias awarded Cale the prize; whereupon Aphrodite turned him into an old woman. But Cale took him with her to Crete and presented him with a lovely head of hair. Some days later Hera began reproaching Zeus for his numerous infidelities. He defended them by arguing that, at any rate, when he did share her couch, she had the more enjoyable time by far. ‘Women, of course, derive infinitely greater pleasure from the sexual act than men,’ he blustered. ‘What nonsense!’ cried Hera. ‘The exact contrary is the case, and well you know it.’ Teiresias, summoned to settle the dispute from his personal experience, answered; ‘If the parts of love—pleasure be counted as ten, Thrice three go to women, one only to men.’ Hera was so exasperated by Zeus’s triumphant grin that she blinded Teiresias; but Zeus compensated him with inward sight, and a life extended to seven generations.

i. Teiresias now appeared at Oedipus’s court, leaning on the cornel-wood staff given him by Athene, and revealed to Oedipus the will of the gods: that the plague would cease only if a Sown Man died for the sake of the city. Iocaste’s father Menoeceus, one of those who had risen out of the earth when Cadmus sowed the serpent’s teeth, at once leaped from the walls, and all Thebes praised his civic devotion. Teiresias then announced further: ‘Menoeceus did well, and the plague will now cease. Yet the gods had another of the Sown Men in mind, one of the third generation: for he has killed his father and married his mother. Know, Queen Iocaste, that it is your husband Oedipus!’

j. At first, none would believe Teiresias, but his words were soon confirmed by a letter from Periboea at Corinth. She wrote that the sudden death of King Polybus now allowed her to reveal the circumstances of Oedipus’s adoption; and this she did in damning details. Iocaste then hanged herself for shame and grief, while Oedipus blinded himself with a pin taken from her garments.

k. Some say that, although tormented by the Erinnyes, who accuse him of having brought about his mother’s death, Oedipus continued to reign over Thebes for awhile, until he fell gloriously in battle. According to others, however, Iocaste’s brother Creon expelled him, but not before he had cursed Eteocles and Polyneices—who were at once his sons and his brothers—when they insolently sent him the inferior portion of the sacrificial beast, namely haunch instead of royal shoulder. They therefore watched dry-eyed as he left the city which he ha, delivered from the Sphinx’s power. After wandering for many years through country after country, guided by his faithful daughter Antigone, Oedipus finally came to Colonus in Attica, where the Erinnyes who have a grove there, hounded him to death, and Theseus buried his body in the precinct of the Solemn Ones at Athens, lamenting by Antigone’s side.




p. 222
The Seven Against Thebes

SO many princes visited Argos in the hope of marrying either Aegeia, or Deipyla, the daughters of King Adrastus, that, fearing to make powerful enemies if he singled out any two of them as his sons-in-law, he consulted the Delphic Oracle. Apollo’s response was: ‘Yoke to a two-wheeled chariot the boar and lion which fight in your palace.’

b. Among the less fortunate of these suitors were Polyneices and Tydeus. Polyneices and his twin Eteocles had been elected co-kings of Thebes after the banishment of Oedipus, their father. They agreed to reign for alternate years, but Eteocles, to whom the first term fell, would not relinquish his throne at the end of the year, pleading the evil disposition shown by Polyneices, and banished him from the city. Tydeus, son of Oeneus of Calydon, had killed his brother Melanippus when out hunting; though he claimed that this was an accident, it had been prophesied that Melanippus would kill him, and the Calydonians therefore suspected him of having tried to forestall his fate, and he was also banished.

c. Now, the emblem of Thebes is a lion, and the emblem of Calydon, a boar; and the two fugitive suitors displayed these devices on their shields. That night, in Adrastus’s palace, they began to dispute about the riches and glories of their respective cities, and murder might have been done, had not Adrastus parted and reconciled them. Then, mindful of the prophecy, he married Aegeia to Polyneices, and Deipyla to Tydeus, with a promise to restore both princes to their kingdoms; but said that he would first march against Thebes, which lay nearer.

d. Adrastus mustered his Argive chieftains: Capaneus, Hippomedon, his brother-in-law Amphiaraus the seer, and his Arcadian ally Parthenopaeus, son of Meleager and Atalanta, bidding them arm themselves and set out eastward. Of these champions, only one was reluctant to obey: namely Amphiaraus who, foreseeing that all except Adrastus would die fighting against Thebes, at first refused to go.

e. It happened that Adrastus had formerly quarrelled with Amphiaraus about Argive affairs of state, and the two angry men might have killed each other, but for Adrastus’s sister Eriphyle, who was married to Amphiaraus. Snatching her distaff, she flung herself between them, knocked up their swords, and made them swear always to abide by her verdict in any future dispute. Apprised of this oath, Tydeus called Polyneices and said: ‘Eriphyle fears that she is losing her looks; now, if you were to offer her the magic necklace which was Aphrodite’s wedding gift to your ancestress Harmonia, Cadmus’s wife, she would soon settle the dispute between Amphiaraus and Adrastus by compelling him to come with us.’

f. This was discreetly done, and the expedition set out, led by the seven champions: Polyneices, Tydeus, and the five Argives. But some say that Polyneices did not count as one of the seven, and add the name of Eteoclus the Argive, a son of Iphis.

g. Their march took them through Nemea, where Lycurgus was king. When they asked leave to water their troops in his country, Lycurgus consented, and his bond-woman Hypsipyle guided them to the nearest spring. Hypsipyle was a Lemnian princess, but when the women of Lemnos had sworn to murder all their men in revenge for an injury done them, she saved the life of her father Thoas: they therefore sold her into slavery, and here she was, acting as nursemaid to Lycurgus’ son Opheltes. She set the boy down for a moment while she guided the Argive army to the drinking pool, whereupon a serpent writhed around his limbs and bit him to death. Adrastus and his men returned from the spring too late to do more than kill the serpent and bury the boy.

h. When Amphiaraus warned them that this was an ominous sign, they instituted the Nemean Games in the boy’s honour, calling him Archemorus, which means ‘the beginner of doom’; and each of the champions had the satisfaction of winning one of the seven events. The judges at the Nemean Games, which are celebrated every four years, have ever since worn dark robes in mourning for Opheltes, and the victor’s wreath is plaited of luckless parsley.

i. Arrived at Cithaeron, Adrastus sent Tydeus as his herald to the Thebans, with a demand that Eteocles should resign the throne in favour of Polyneices. When this was refused, Tydeus challenged their chieftains to single combat, one after another, and emerged victorious from every encounter; soon, no more Thebans dared come forward. The Argives then approached the city walls, and each of the champions took up his station facing one of the seven gates.

j. Teiresias the seer, whom Eteocles consulted, prophesied that the Thebans would be victorious only if a prince of the royal house freely offered himself as a sacrifice to Ares; whereupon Menoeceus, the son of Creon, killed himself before the gates, much as his namesake and uncle had leaped headlong from the walls on a previous occasion. Teiresias’s prophecy was fulfilled: the Thebans were, indeed, defeated in a skirmish and withdrew into the city; but no sooner had Capaneus set a scaling-ladder against the wall and begun to mount it, than Zeus struck him dead with a thunderbolt. At this, the Thebans took courage, made a furious sally, killing three more of the seven champions; and one of their number, who happened to be named Melanippus, wounded Tydeus in the belly. Athene cherished an affection for Tydeus and, pitying him as he lay half-dead, hastened to beg an infallible elixir from her father Zeus, which would have soon set him upon his feet again. But Amphiaraus hated Tydeus for having forced the Argives to march and, being sharp-witted, ran at Melanippus and cut off his head. ‘Here is revenge!’ he cried, handing the head to Tydeus. ‘Split open the skull and gulp his brains!’ Tydeus did so, and Athene, arriving at that moment with the elixir, spilt it on the ground and retired in disgust.

k. Only Polyneices, Amphiaraus, and Adrastus now remained of the seven champions; and Polyneices, to save further slaughter, offered to decide the succession of the throne by single combat with Eteocles. Eteocles accepted the challenge and, in the course of a bitter struggle, each mortally wounded the other. Creon, their uncle, then took command of the Theban army and routed the dismayed Argives. Amphiaraus fled in his chariot along the banks of the river Ismenus, and was on the point of being thrust between the shoulders by a Theban pursuer, when Zeus cleft the earth with a thunderbolt and he vanished from sight, chariot and all, and now reigns alive among the dead. Baton, his charioteer, went with him.

l. Seeing that the day was lost, Adrastus mounted his winged horse Arion and escaped; but when, later, he heard that Creon would not permit his dead enemies to be buried, visited Athens as a suppliant and persuaded Theseus to march against Thebes and punish Creon’s impiety. Theseus took the city in a surprise attack, imprisoned Creon, and gave the dead champions’ corpses to their kinsfolk, who heaped a great pyre for them. But Evadne, Capaneus’s wife, seeing that her husband had been heroised by Zeus’s thunderbolt, would not be parted from him. Since custom demanded that a lightning-struck man should be buried apart from the rest, and his grave fenced off, she flung herself on the general pyre, and was consumed alive.

m. Now, before Theseus’s arrival at Thebes, Antigone, sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, had disobeyed Creon’s orders by secretly building a pyre and laying Polyneices’s corpse upon it. Looking out of his palace window, Creon noticed a distant glow which seemed to proceed from a burning pyre and, going to investigate, surprised Antigone in her act of disobedience. He summoned his son Haemon, to whom Antigone had been affianced, and ordered him to bury her alive in Polyneices’s tomb. Haemon feigned readiness to do as he was told but, instead, married Antigone secretly, and sent her away to live among his shepherds. She bore him a son who, many years later, came to Thebes, and took part in certain funeral games; but Creon, who was still King of Thebes, guessed his identity by the serpent mark on his body, borne by all descendants of Cadmus, and sentenced him to death. Heracles interceded for his life, but Creon proved obdurate; whereupon Haemon killed both Antigone and himself.




p. 225
The Epigoni

THE sons of the seven champions who had fallen at Thebes swore to avenge their fathers. They are known as the Epigoni. The Delphic Oracle promised them victory if Alcmaeon, son of Amphiaraus, took command. But he felt no desire to attack Thebes, and hotly disputed the propriety of the campaign with his brother Amphilochus. When they could not agree whether to make war or no, the decision was referred to their mother Eriphyle. Recognizing the situation as a familiar one, Thersander, the son of Polyneices, followed his father’s example: he bribed Eriphyle with the magic robe which Athene had given his ancestress Harmonia at the same time as Aphrodite had given her the magic necklace. Eriphyle decided for war, and Alcmaeon reluctantly assumed command.

b. In a battle fought before the walls of Thebes, the Epigoni lost Aegialeus, son of Adrastus, and Teiresias the seer then warned the Thebans that their city would be sacked. The walls, he announced, were fated to stand only so long as one of the original seven champions remained alive, and Adrastus, now the sole survivor, would die of grief when he heard of Aegialeus’s death. Consequently, the Thebans’ wisest course was to flee that very night. Teiresias added that whether they took his advice or no made no odds to him; he was destined to die as soon as Thebes fell into Argive hands. Under cover of darkness, therefore, the Thebans escaped northward with their wives, children, weapons, and a few belongings, and when they had travelled far enough, called a halt and founded the city of Hestiaea. At dawn, Teiresias, who went with them, paused to drink at the spring of Tilphussa, and suddenly expired.

c. That same day, which was the very day on which Adrastus heard of Aegialeus’s death and died of grief, the Argives, finding Thebes evacuated, broke in, razed the walls, and collected the booty. They sent the best of it to Apollo at Delphi, including Teiresias’s daughter Manto, or Daphne, who had stayed behind; and she became his Pythoness.

d. Nor was this the end of the matter. Thersander happened to boast in Alcmaeon’s hearing that most of the credit for the Argive victory was due to himself: he had bribed Eriphyle, just as his father Polyneices did before him, to give the order to march. Alcmaeon thus learned for the first time that Eriphyle’s vanity had caused his father’s death, and might well have caused his own. He consulted the Delphic Oracle, and Apollo replied that she deserved death. Alcmaeon mistook this for a dispensation to matricide and, on his return, he duly killed Eriphyle, some say with the aid of his brother Amphilochus. But Eriphyle, as she lay dying, cursed Alcmaeon, and cried our: ‘Lands of Greece and Asia, and of all the world: deny shelter to my murderers!’ The avenging Erinnyes thereupon pursued him and drove him mad.

e. Alcmaeon fled first to Thesprotia where he was refused entry, and then to Psophis, where King Phegeus purified him for Apollo’s sake. Phegeus married him to his daughter Arsinoë, to whom Alcmaeon gave the necklace and the robe, which he had brought in his baggage. But the Erinnyes, disregarding this purification, continued to plague him, and the land of Psophis grew barren on his account. The Delphic Oracle then advised Alcmaeon to approach the River-god Achelous, by whom he was once more purified; he married Achelous’s daughter Callirrhoë, and settled on land recently formed by the silt of the river, which had not been included in Eriphyle’s ban. There he lived at peace for awhile.

f. A year later, Callirrhoë, fearing that she might lose her beauty, refused Alcmaeon admittance to her couch unless he gave her the celebrated robe and necklace. For love of Callirrhoë, he dared to revisit Psophis, where he deceived Phegeus: making no mention of his marriage to Callirrhoë, he invented a prediction of the Delphic Oracle, to the effect that he would never be rid of the Erinnyes until he had dedicated both robe and necklace to Apollo’s shrine. Phegeus thereupon made Arsinoë surrender them, which she was glad to do, believing that Alcmaeon would return to her as soon as the Erinnyes left him; for they were hard on his track again. But one of Alcmaeon’s servants blabbed the truth about Callirrhoë, and Phegeus grew so angry that he ordered his sons to ambush and kill Alcmaeon when he left the palace. Arsinoë witnessed the murder from a window and, unaware of Alcmaeon’s double-dealing, loudly upbraided her father and brothers for having violated guest-right and made her a widow. Phegeus begged her to be silent and listen while he justified himself; but Arsinoë stopped her ears and wished violent death upon him and her brothers before the next new moon. In retaliation, Phegeus locked her in a chest and presented her as a slave to the King of Nemea; at the same time telling his sons: ‘Take this robe and this necklace to Delphic Apollo. He will see to it that they cause no further mischief.’

g. Phegeus’s sons obeyed him; but, meanwhile, Callirrhoë, informed of what had happened at Psophis, prayed that her infant sons by Alcmaeon might become full-grown men in a day, and avenge his murder. Zeus heard her plea, and they shot up into manhood, took arms, and went to Nemea where, they knew, the sons of Phegeus had broken their rerum journey from Delphi in the hope of persuading Arsinoë to retract her curse. They tried to tell her the truth about Alcmaeon, but she would not listen to them either; and Callirrhoë’s sons not only surprised and killed them but, hastening towards Psophis, killed Phegeus too, before the next moon appeared in the sky. Since no king or river-god in Greece would consent to purify them of their crimes, they travelled westward to Epirus, and colonized Acarnania, which was named after the elder of the two, Acarnan.

h. The robe and necklace were shown at Delphi until the Sacred War [fourth century BC], when the Phocian bandit Phayllos carried them off, and it is not known whether the amber necklace set in gold which the people of Amathus claim to be Eriphyle’s is genuine or false.

i. And some say that Teiresias had two daughters, Daphne and Manto. Daphne remained a virgin and became a Sibyl, bur Alcmaeon begot Amphilochus and Tisiphone on Manto before sending her to Apollo at Delphi; he entrusted both children to King Creon of Corinth. Years later, Creon’s wife, jealous of Tisiphone’s extraordinary beauty, sold her as a slave; and Alcmaeon, not knowing who she was, bought her as his serving-girl but fortunately abstained from incest. As for Manto: Apollo sent her to Colophon in Ionia, where she married Rhacius, King of Caria; their son was Mopsus, the famous soothsayer.




p. 227
Tantalus

THE parentage and origin of Tantalus are disputed. His mother was Pluto, a daughter of Cronus and Rhea or, some say, of Oceanus and Tethys; and his father either Zeus, or Tmolus, the oak-chapleted deity of Mount Tmolus who, with his wife Omphale, ruled over the kingdom of Lydia and had judged the contest between Pan and Apollo. Some, however, call Tantalus a king of Argos, or of Corinth; and others say that he went northward from Sipylus in Lydia to reign in Paphlagonia; whence, after he had incurred the wrath of the gods, he was expelled by Ilus the Phrygian, whose young brother Ganymedes he had abducted and seduced.

b. By his wife Euryannassa, daughter of the River-god Pactolus; or by Eurythemista, daughter of the River-god Xanthus; or by Clytia, daughter of Amphidamantes; or by the Pleiad Dione, Tantalus became the father of Pelops, Niobe, and Broteas. Yet some call Pelops a bastard, or the son of Atlas and the nymph Linos.

c. Tantalus was the intimate friend of Zeus, who admitted him to Olympian banquets of nectar and ambrosia until, good fortune turning his head, he betrayed Zeus’s secrets and stole the divine food to share among his mortal friends. Before this crime could be discovered, he committed a worse. Having called the Olympians to a banquet on Mount Sipylus, or it may have been at Corinth, Tantalus found that the food in his larder was insufficient for due company and, either to test Zeus’s omniscience, or merely to demonstrate his good will, cut up his son Pelops, and added the pieces to the stew prepared for them, as the sons of Lycaon had done with their brother Nyctimus when they entertained Zeus in Arcadia. None of the gods rifled to notice what was on their trenchers, or to recoil in horror, except Demeter who, being dazed by her loss of Persephone, ate the flesh from the left shoulder .

d. For these two crimes Tantalus was punished with the ruin of his kingdom and, after his death by Zeus’s own hand, with eternal torment in the company of Ixion, Sisyphus, Tityus, the Danaids, and others. Now he hangs, perennially consumed by thirst and hunger, from the bough of a fruit-tree which leans over a marshy lake. Its waves lap against his waist, and sometimes reach his chin, yet whenever he bends down to drink, they slip away, and nothing remains but the black mud at his feet; or, if he ever succeeds in scooping up a handful of water, it slips through his fingers before he can do more than wet his cracked lips, leaving him thirstier than ever. The tree is laden with pears, shining apples, sweet figs, ripe olives and pomegranates, which dangle against his shoulders; but whenever he reaches for the luscious fruit, a gust of wind whirls them out of his reach.

e. Moreover, an enormous stone, a crag from Mount Sipylus, overhangs the tree and eternally threatens to crush Tantalus’s skull. This is his punishment for a third crime: namely theft, aggravated by perjury. One day, while Zeus was still an infant in Crete, being suckled by the she-goat Amaltheia, Hephaestus had made Rhea a golden mastiff to watch over him; which subsequently became the guardian of his temple at Dicte. But Pandareus son of Merops, a native of Lydian or, it may have been Cretan, Miletus—if, indeed, it was not Ephesus—dared to steal the mastiff, and brought it to Tantalus for safe keeping on Mount Sipylus. After the hue and cry had died down, Pandareus asked Tantalus to return it to him, but Tantalus swore by Zeus that he had neither seen nor heard of a golden dog. This oath coming to Zeus’s ears, Hermes was given orders to investigate the matter; and although Tantalus continued to perjure himself, Hermes recovered the dog by force or by stratagem, and Zeus crushed Tantalus under a crag of Mount Sipylus. The spot is still shown near the Tantalid Lake, a haunt of white swan-eagles. Afterwards, Pandareus and his wife Harmothoë fled to Athens, and thence to Sicily, where they perished miserably.

f. According to others, however, it was Tantalus who stole the golden mastiff, and Pandareus to whom he entrusted it and who, on denying that he had ever received it was destroyed, together with his wife, by the angry gods, or turned into stone. But Pandareus’s orphaned daughters Merope and Cleothera, whom some call Cameiro and Clytië, were reared by Aphrodite on curds, honey, and sweet wine. Hera endowed them with beauty and more than human wisdom; Artemis made them grow tall and strong; Athene instructed them in every known handicraft. It is difficult to understand why these goddesses showed such solicitude, or chose Aphrodite to soften Zeus’s heart towards these orphans and arrange good marriages for them—unless, of course, they had themselves encouraged Pandareus to commit the theft. Zeus must have suspected something, because while Aphrodite was closeted with him on Olympus, the Harpies snatched away the three girls, with his consent, and handed them over to the Erinnyes, who made them suffer vicariously for their father’s sin.

g. This Pandareus was also the father of Aëdon, the wife of Zethus, to whom she bore Itylus. Aëdon was racked with envy of her sister Niobe, who rejoiced in the love of six sons and six daughters and, when trying to murder Sipylus, the eldest of them, she killed Itylus by mistake; whereupon Zeus transformed her into the Nightingale who, in early summer, nightly laments her murdered child,

h. After punishing Tantalus, Zeus was pleased to revive Pelops; and therefore ordered Hermes to collect his limbs and boil them again in the same cauldron, on which he laid a spell. The Fate Clotho then rearticulated them; Demeter gave him a solid ivory shoulder in place of the one she had picked clean; and Rhea breathed life into him; while Goat-Pan danced for joy.

i. Pelops emerged from the magic cauldron clothed in such radiant beauty that Poseidon fell in love with him on the spot, and carried him off to Olympus in a chariot drawn by golden horses. There he appointed him his cup-bearer and bed-fellow; as Zeus later appointed Ganymedes, and fed him on ambrosia. Pelops first noticed that his left shoulder was of ivory when he bared his breast in mourning for his sister Niobe. All true descendants of Pelops are marked in this way and, after his death, the ivory shoulder-blade was laid up at Pisa.

j. Pelops’s mother Euryannassa, meanwhile, made the most diligent search for him, not knowing about his ascension to Olympus; she learned from the scullions that he had been boiled and served to the gods, who seemed to have eaten every last shred of his flesh. This version of the story became current throughout Lydia; many still credit it and deny that the Pelops whom Tantalus boiled in the cauldron was the same Pelops who succeeded him.

k. Tantalus’s ugly son Broteas carved the oldest image of the Mother of the Gods, which still stands on the Coddinian Crag, to the north of Mount Sipylus. He was a famous hunter, but refused to honour Artemis, who drove him mad; crying aloud that no flame could burn him, he threw himself upon a lighted pyre and let the flames consume him. But some say that he committed suicide because everyone hated his ugliness. Broteas’s son and heir was named Tantalus, after his grandfather.





















p. 231
Pelops And Oenomaus

PELOPS inherited the Paphlagonian throne from his father Tantalus, and for awhile resided at Enete, on the shores of the Black Sea, whence he also ruled over the Lydians and Phrygians. But he was expelled from Paphlagonia by the barbarians, and retired to Lydian Mount Sipylus, his ancestral seat. When Ilus, King of Troy, would not leave him in peace even there, but ordered him to move on, Pelops went with fabulous treasures across the Aegean Sea. He resolved to find a new home for himself and his great horde of followers, but before he left, he sued for the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of King Oenomaus, the Arcadian, who ruled over Pisa and Elis.

b. Some say that Oenomaus had been begotten by Ares on Harpina, daughter of the River-god Asopus; or on the Pleiad Asteria, or on Asterope; or on Eurythoë, daughter of Danaus; while others call him the son of Alxion; or of Hyperochus.

c. By his wife Sterope, or Euarete, daughter of Acrisius, Oenomaus became the father of Leucippus, Hippodamus, and Dysponteus of Dyspontium; and of one daughter, Hippodameia. Oenomaus was famous for his love of horses, and forbade his subjects under the threat of a curse ever to mate mares with asses. To this day, if Eleans need mules, they must take their mares abroad to mate them.

d. Whether he had been warned by an oracle that his son-in-law would kill him, or whether he had himself fallen in love with Hippodameia is disputed; but Oenomaus devised a new way to prevent her from ever getting married. He challenged each of her suitors in turn to a chariot race, and laid out a long course from Pisa, which lies beside the river Alpheius, opposite Olympia, until Poseidon’s altar on the Isthmus of Corinth. Some say that the chariots were run by four horses; others say, by two. Oenomaus insisted that Hippodameia must ride beside each suitor, thus distracting his attention of the horses—but allowed him a start of half an hour or so earlier, before he himself sacrificed a ram on the altar of Warlike Zeus at Olympia. The chariots would then race towards the Isthmus and if the suitor would be taken, he must die; but should he win the race, Hippodameia would be his, and Oenomaus must die. Since, however, the wind-like mares, Psylla and Harpirma, which Pelops’s father Ares have given him, were immeasurably the best in Greece, being swifter even than North Wind; and since his chariot, skilfully driven by Myrtilus, was especially designed for racing, he had never yet failed to rival and transfixed him with his spear, another gift from Ares.

e. In this manner Oenomaus disposed of twelve or, some say thirteen princes, whose beads and limbs he nailed above the palace, while their trunks were flung barbarously in a heap on the ground. When he killed Marmax, the first suitor, he also butchered his mares, Parthenia and Eripha, and buffed them beside the river Parthenia, where their tomb is still shown. Some say that the second suitor, Alcathous, was buried near the Horse-scarer in the hippodrome at Olympia, and that it is his spiteful ghost which baulks the charioteers.

f. Myrtilus, Oenomaus’s charioteer, was the son of Hermes by Theobule, or Cleobule; or by the Danaid Phaethusa; but others say that he was the son of Zeus and Clymene. He too had fallen in love with Hippodameia, but dared not enter the contest. Meanwhile, the Olympians had decided to intervene and put an end to the daughter, because Oenomaus was boasting that he would one day build a temple of skulls: as Evenus, Diomedes, and Antaeus had done. When therefore Pelops, landing in Elis, begged his lover Poseidon, whom he invoked with a sacrifice on the seashore, either to give him the swiftest chariot in the world for his courtship of Hippodameia, or to stay the rush of Oenomaus’s brazen spear, Poseidon was delighted to be of assistance. Pelops soon found himself the owner of a winged golden chariot, which could race over the sea without wetting the axles, and was drawn by a team of tireless, winged, immortal horses.

g. Having visited Mount Sipylus and dedicated to Temnian Aphrodite an image made of green myrtle-wood, Pelops tested his chariot by driving it across the Aegean Sea. Almost before he had time to glance about him, he had reached Lesbos, where his charioteer Cillus, or Cellas, or Cillas, died because of the swiftness of the flight. Pelops spent the night on Lesbos and, in a dream, saw Cillus’s ghost lamenting his fate, and pleading for heroic honours. At dawn, he burned his body, heaped a barrow over the ashes, and founded the sanctuary of Cillaean Apollo close by. Then he set out again, driving the chariot himself.

h. On coming to Pisa, Pelops was alarmed to see the row of heads nailed above the palace gates, and began to regret his ambition. He therefore promised Myrtilus, if he betrayed his master, half the kingdom and the privilege of spending the bridal night with Hippodameia when she had been won.

i. Before entering the race—the scene is carved on the front gable of Zeus’s temple at Olympia—Pelops sacrificed to Cydonian Athene. Some say that Cillus’s ghost appeared and undertook to help him; others, that Sphaerus was his charioteer; but it is more generally believed that he drove his own team, Hippodameia standing beside him

j. Meanwhile, Hippodameia had fallen in love with Pelops and, from hindering his progress, had herself offered to reward Myrtilus generously, if her father’s course could by some means be checked. Myrtilus therefore removed the lynch-pins from the axles of Oenomaus’s chariot, and replaced them with others made of wax. As chariots reached the neck of the Isthmus and Oenomaus, in hot pursue was poising his spear, about to transfix Pelops’s back, the wheels of chariot flew off, he fell entangled in the wreckage and was dragged to death. His ghost still haunts at the statue of Horse-scarer at Olympia. There are some, however, who say that the swiftness of Poseidon’s win chariot and horses easily enabled Pelops to outdistance Oenomaus and reach the Isthmus first; whereupon Oenomaus either killed himself in despair, or was killed by Pelops at the winning-post. According to others, the contest took place in the Hippodrome at Olympia, Amphion gave Pelops a magic object which he buried by the Horse-scarer, so that Oenomaus’s team bolted and wrecked his chariot. But all agree that Oenomaus, before he died, laid a curse on Myrtilus, pray that he might perish at the hands of Pelops.

k. Pelops, Hippodameia, and Myrtilus then set out for an even drive across the sea. ‘Alas!’ cried Hippodameia, ‘I have drunk noth all day; thirst parches me.’ The sun was setting and Pelops called ashore at the desert island of Helene, which lies not far from the island Euboea, and went up the strand in search of water. When he returned with his helmet filled, Hippodameia ran weeping towards him, complaining that Myrtilus had tried to ravish her. Pelops severely rebuked Myrtilus, and struck him in the face, but he protested indignantly: ‘This is the bridal night, on which you swore that I should enjoy Hippodameia. Will you break your oath?’ Pelops made no reply, took the reins from Myrtilus and drove on. As they approached Cape Geraestus—the southernmost promontory of Euboea, now crown with a remarkable temple of Poseidon—Pelops dealt Myrtilus a sudden kick, which sent him flying head-long into the sea; and Myrtilus, as sank, laid a curse on Pelops and all his house.

l. Hermes set Myrtilus’s image among the stars as the constellation of the Charioteer; but his corpse was washed ashore on the coast Euboea and buried in Arcadian Pheneus, behind the temple of Hermes; once a year nocturnal sacrifices are offered him there as a hero. The Myrtoan Sea, which stretches from Euboea, past Helene, to the Aegean Sea is generally believed to take its name from Myrtilus rather than, as Euboeans insist, from the nymph Myrto.

m. Pelops drove on, until he reached the western stream of Oceanus, where he was cleansed of blood guilt by Hephaestus; afterwards he came back to Pisa, and succeeded to the throne of Oenomaus. He soon subjugated nearly the whole of what was then known as Apia, or Pelasgiotis, and renamed it the Peloponnese, meaning ‘the island of Pelops’, after himself. His courage, wisdom, wealth, and numerous children, earned him the envy and veneration of all Greece

n. From King Epeius, Pelops took Olympia, and added it to his kingdom of Pisa; but being unable to defeat King Stymphalus of Arcadia by force of arms, he invited him to a friendly debate, cut him into pieces, and scattered his limbs far and wide; a crime which caused a famine throughout Greece. But his celebration of the Olympian Games in honour of Zeus, about a generation after that of Endymion, was more splendid than any before.

o. To atone for the murder of Myrtilus, who was Hermes’s son, Pelops built the first temple of Hermes in the Peloponnese; he also tried to appease Myrtilus’s ghost by building a cenotaph for him in the hippodrome at Olympia, and paying him heroic honours. Some say that neither Oenomaus, nor the spiteful Alcathous, nor the magic object which Pelops buried, is the true Horse-scarer: it is the ghost of Myrtilus.

p. Over the tomb of Hippodameia’s unsuccessful suitors, on the farthest side of the river Alpheius, Pelops raised a tall barrow, paying them heroic honours too; and about a furlong away stands the sanctuary of Artemis Cordax, so called because Pelops’s followers here celebrated his victories by dancing the Rope Dance, which they had brought from Lydia.

q. Pelops’s sanctuary, where his bones are preserved in a brazen chest, was dedicated by Tirynthian Heracles, his grandson, when he came to celebrate the Olympian Games; and the Elean magistrates still offer Pelops the annual sacrifice of a black ram, roasted on a fire of white poplar-wood. Those who partake of this victim are forbidden to enter Zeus’s temple until they have bathed, and the neck is the traditional perquisite of his forester. The sanctuary is thronged with visitors every year, when young men scourge themselves at Pelops’s altar, offering him a libation of their blood. His chariot is shown on the roof of the Anactorium in Hiasia; the Sicyonians keep his gold-hilted sword in their treasury at Olympia; and his spear-shaped sceptre, at Chaeronea, is perhaps the only genuine work of Hephaestus still extant. Zeus sent it to Pelops by the hand of Hermes, and Pelops bequeathed it to King Atreus.

r. Pelops is also styled ‘Cronian One’, or ‘Horse-beater’; and the Achaeans claim him as their ancestor.




p. 235
The Children Of Pelops

IN gratitude to Hera for facilitating her marriage with Pelops, Hippodameia summoned sixteen matrons, one from every city of Elis, help her institute the Heraean Games. Every fourth year, ever since the Sixteen Matrons, their successors, have woven a robe for Hera and celebrated the Games; which consist of a single race between virgins of different ages, the competitors being handicapped according to the years, with the youngest placed in front. They run clad in tunics of than knee length, their right breasts bared, their hair flying free. Chloris, Niobe’s only surviving daughter, was the first victrix in these games, the course of which has been fixed at five-sixths of the Olympic circle. The prize is an olive wreath, and a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera, a victrix may also dedicate a statue of herself in her own name.

b. The Sixteen Matrons once acted as peace-makers between Pisans and the Eleans. Now they also organize two groups of dancers; one in honour of Hippodameia, the other in honour of Physcoa, an Elean. Physcoa bore Narcaeus to Dionysus, a renowned warrior, founded the sanctuary of Athene Narcaea and was the first Elean worship Dionysus. Since some of the sixteen cities no longer exist, Sixteen Matrons are now supplied by the eight Elean tribes, a pair each. Like the arbiters, they purify themselves, before the Games begin, with the blood of a suitable pig and with water drawn from Pierian Spring which one passes on the road between Olympia Elis.

c. The following are said to have been children of Pelops and Hippodameia: Pittheus of Troezen; Atreus and Thyestes; Alcathous, not one killed by Oenomaus; the Argonaut Hippalcus, Hippalemus, Hippalcimus; Copreus the herald; Sciron the bandit; Epidaurus Argive, sometimes called the son of Apollo; Pleisthenes; Dias; Cybosurus; Corinthius; Hippasus; Cleon; Argeius; Aelinus; Astydameia, whom some call the mother of Amphitryon; Lysidice, whose daughter Hippothoë was carried off by Poseidon to the Echinadian Islands, and there bore Taphius; Eurydice, whom some call the mother of Alcmene; Nicippe; Antibia; and lastly Archippe, mother of Eurystheus and Alcyone.

d. The Megarians, in an attempt to obliterate the memory of how Minos captured their city, and to suggest that King Nisus was peaceably succeeded by his son-in-law Megareus, and he in turn by his son-in-law, Alcathous son of Pelops, say that Megareus had two sons, the elder of whom, Timalcus, was killed at Aphidnae during the invasion of Attica by the Dioscuri; and that, when the younger, Euippus, was killed by the lion of Cithaeron. Megareus promised his daughter Euachme, and his throne, to whoever avenged Euippus. Forthwith, Alcathous killed the lion and, becoming king of Megara, built a temple there to Apollo the Hunter and Artemis the Huntress. The truth is, however, that Alcathous came from Elis to Megara immediately after the death of Nisus and the sack of the city; that Megareus never reigned in Megara; and that Alcathous sacrificed to Apollo and Poseidon as ‘Previous Builders’, and then rebuilt the city wall on new foundations, the course of the old wall having been obliterated by the Cretans.

e. Alcathous was the father of Ischepolis; of Callipolis; of Iphinoë, who died a virgin, and at whose tomb, between the Council Hall and the shrine of Alcathous, Megarian brides pour libations—much as the Delian brides dedicate their hair to Hecaerge and Opis; also of Automedusa, who bore Iolaus to Iphicles; and of Periboea, who married Telamon, and whose son Ajax succeeded Alcathous as King of Megara. Alcathous’s elder son, Ischepolis, perished in the Calydonian Hunt; and Callipolis, the first Megarian to hear the sorrowful news, rushed up to the Acropolis, where Alcathous was offering burnt sacrifices to Apollo, and flung the faggots from the altar in token of mourning. Unaware of what had happened, Alcathous raged at his impiety and struck him dead with a faggory

f. Ischepolis and Euippus are buried in the Law Courts; Megareus on the right side of the ascent to the second Megarian Acropolis. Alcathous’s hero-shrine is now the public Record Office; and that of Timalcus, the Council Hall.

g. Chrysippus also passed as a son of Pelops and Hippodameia; but was, in fact, a bastard, whom Pelops had begotten on the nymph Astyoche, a Danaid. Now it happened that Laius, when banished from Thebes, was hospitably received by Pelops at Pisa, but fell in love with Chrysippus, to whom he taught the charioteer’s art; and, as soon as the sentence of banishment was annulled, carried the boy off in his chariot, from the Nemean Games, and brought him to Thebes as his catamite. Some say that Chrysippus killed himself for shame; others, that Hippodameia, to prevent Pelops from appointing Chrysippus his successor over the heads of her own sons, came to Thebes, where she tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to kill the boy by throwing him to the well. When both refused to murder their father’s guest, Hippodameia at dead of night, stole into Laius’s chamber and, finding him asleep pulled down his sword from the wall and plunged it into his bedfellow’s belly. Laius was at once accused of the murder, but Chrysippus had visited Hippodameia as she fled, and accused her with his last breath.

h. Meanwhile, Pelops marched against Thebes to recover Chrysippus but, finding that Laius was already imprisoned by Atreus and Thyestes, nobly pardoned him, recognizing that only an affectionate love had prompted this breach of hospitality. Some say that Laius, and not Thamyris, or Minos, was the first pederast; which is why Thebans, far from condemning the practice, maintain a regiment, called the Sacred Band, composed entirely of boys and their lovers.

i. Hippodameia fled to Argolis, and there killed herself; but in accordance with an oracle, her bones were brought back to Olympia, where women enter her walled sanctuary once a year to offer sacrifices. At one of the turns of the Hippodrome stands Hippodameia bronze statue, holding a ribbon with which to decorate Pelops after his victory.




p. 237
Atreus And Thyestes

SOME say that Atreus, who fled from Elis after the death of Chrysippus, in which he may have been more deeply implicated than Pelops knew, took refuge in Mycenae. There fortune favoured him. His nephew Eurystheus, who was just about to march against the sons of Heracles, appointed him regent in his absence; and, when presently news came of Eurystheus’s defeat and death, the Mycenaean notables chose Atreus as their king, because he seemed a likely warrior to protect them against the Heraclids and had already won the affection of the commons. Thus the royal house of Pelops became more famous even than that of Perseus.

b. But others say, with greater authority, that Eurystheus’s father Sthenelus, having banished Amphitryon, and seized the throne of Mycenae, sent for Atreus and Thyestes, his brothers-in-law, and installed them at near-by Midea. A few years later, when Sthenelus and Eurystheus were both dead, an oracle advised the Mycenaeans to choose a prince of the Pelopid house to rule over them. They thereupon summoned Atreus and Thyestes from Midea and debated which of these two (who were fated to be always at odds) should be crowned king.

c. Now, Atreus had once vowed to sacrifice the finest of his flocks to Artemis; and Hermes, anxious to avenge the death of Myrtilus on the Pelopids, consulted his old friend Goat-Pan, who made a horned lamb with a golden fleece appear among the Acarnanian flock which Pelops had left to his sons Atreus and Thyestes. He foresaw that Atreus would claim it as his own and, from his reluctance to give Artemis the honour due to her, would become involved in fratricidal war with Thyestes. Some, however, say that it was Artemis herself who sent the lamb, to try him. Atreus kept his vow, in part at least, by sacrificing the lamb’s flesh; but he stuffed and mounted the fleece and locked it in a chest. He grew so proud of his life-like treasure that he could not refrain from boasting about it in the market place, and the jealous Thyestes, for whom Atreus’s newly-married wife Aerope had conceived a passion agreed to be her lover if she gave him the lamb, which, he said, has been stolen by Atreus’s shepherds from his own half of the flock. For Artemis had laid a curse upon it, and this was her doing.

d. In a debate at the Council Hall, Atreus claimed the throne of Mycenae by right of primogeniture, and also as possessor of the lamb Thyestes asked him: ‘Do you then publicly declare that its owner should be king?’ ‘I do,’ Atreus replied. ‘And I concur,’ said Thyestes smiling grimly. A herald then summoned the people of Mycenae to acclaim their new king; the temples were hung with gold, and their doors thrown open; fixes blazed on every altar throughout the city and songs were sung in praise of the horned lamb with the golden fleece. But Thyestes unexpectedly rose to upbraid Atreus as a vain-glorious boaster, and led the magistrates to his home, where he displayed the lamb, justified his claim to its ownership, and was pronounced the rightful king of Mycenae.

e. Zeus, however, favoured Atreus, and sent Hermes to him, saying: ‘Call Thyestes, and ask him whether, if the sun goes backward on the dial, he will resign his claim to the throne in your favour?’ Atreus did as he was told, and Thyestes agreed to abdicate should such a portent occur. Thereupon Zeus, aided by Eris, reversed the laws of Nature, which hitherto had been immutable. Helius, already in mid-career, wrested his chariot about and turned his horses’ heads towards the clam. The seven Pleiades, and all the other stars, retraced their courses in sympathy; and that evening, for the first and last time, the sun set in the east. Thyestes’s deceit and greed being thus plainly attested, Atreus succeeded to the throne of Mycenae, and banished him. When, later, Atreus discovered that Thyestes had committed adultery with Aerope, he could hardly contain his rage. Nevertheless, for awhile he feigned forgiveness.

f. Now, this Aerope, whom some call Europe, was a Cretan, the daughter of King Catreus. One day, she had been surprised by Catreus while entertaining a lover in the palace, and was on the point of being thrown to the fishes when, countermanding his sentence at the plea of Nauplius, he sold her, and his other daughter Clymene as well, whom he suspected of plotting against his life, as slaves to Nauplius for a nominal price; only stipulating that neither of them should ever return to Crete. Nauplius then married Clymene, who bore him Oeax and Palamedes the inventor. But Atreus, whose wife Cleola had died after giving birth to a weakly son, Pleisthenes—this was Artemis’s revenge on him for his failure to keep the vow—married Aerope, and begot on her Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Anaxibia. Pleisthenes had also died: the cut-throats whom Atreus sent to murder his namesake, Thyestes’s bastard son by Aerope, murdered him in error—Thyestes saw it.

g. Atreus now sent a herald to lure Thyestes back to Mycenae, with the offer of an amnesty and a half-share in the kingdom; but, as soon as Thyestes accepted this, slaughtered Aglaus, Orchomenus, and Callileon, Thyestes’s three sons by one of the Naiads, on the very altar of Zeus where they had taken refuge; and then sought out and killed the infant Pleisthenes the Second, and Tantalus the Second, his twin. He hacked them all limb from limb, and set chosen morsels of their meet to a dish boiled in a cauldron, before Thyestes, to welcome him on his rerun When Thyestes had eaten heartily, Atreus sent in their bloody heads and feet and hands, laid out on another dish, to show him what was now inside his belly. Thyestes fell back, vomiting, and laid an inevitable curse upon the seed of Atreus.

h. Exiled once more, Thyestes fled first to King Thesprotus in Sicyon, where his own daughter Pelopia, or Pelopeia, was a priestess. For, desiring revenge at whatever cost, he had consulted the Delphic Oracle and been advised to beget a son on his own daughter. Thyestes found Pelopia sacrificing by night to Athene Colocasia and, being loth to profane the rites, concealed himself in a near-by grove. Presently Pelopia, who was leading the solemn dance, slipped in a pool of blood that had flowed from the throat of a black ewe, the victim, and stained her tunic. She ran at once to the temple fish-pond, removed her tunic and was washing out the stain, when Thyestes sprang from the grove and ravished her. Pelopia did not recognize him, because he was wearing a mask, but contrived to steal his sword and carry it back to the temple, where she hid it under the pedestal of Athene’s image; and Thyestes, finding the scabbard empty and fearing detection, escaped to Lydia, the land of his fathers.

i. Meanwhile, fearing the consequences of his crime, Atreus consulted the Delphic Oracle, and was told: ‘Recall Thyestes from Sicyon.’ He reached Sicyon too late to meet Thyestes and, falling in love with Pelopia, whom he assumed to be King Thesprotus’s daughter, asked leave to make her his third wife; having by this time executed Aerope. Eager for an alliance with so powerful a king, and wishing at the same time to do Pelopia a service, Thesprotus did not undeceive Atreus, and the wedding took place at once. In due course she bore the son begotten on her by Thyestes, whom she exposed on a mountain; but goatherds rescued him and gave him to a she-goat for suckling—hence his name Aegisthus, or ‘goat-strength’. Atreus believed that Thyestes had fled from Sicyon at news of his approach; that the child was his own; and that Pelopia had been affected by the temporary madness which some times overtakes women after childbirth. He therefore recovered Aegisthus from the goatherds and reared him as his heir.

j. A succession of bad harvests then plagued Mycenae, and Atreus sent Agamemnon and Menelaus to Delphi for news of Thyestes, whom they met by chance on his return from a further visit to the Oracle. They haled him back to Mycenae, where Atreus, having thrown him into prison, ordered Aegisthus, then seven years of age, to kill him as he dept.

k. Thyestes awoke suddenly to find Aegisthus standing over him, sword in hand; he quickly rolled sideways and escaped death. Then he rose, disarmed the boy with a shrewd kick at his wrist, and sprang to recover the sword. But it was his own, lost years before in Sicyon! He seized Aegisthus by the shoulder and cried: Tell me instantly how this came into your possession?’ Aegisthus stammered: ‘Alas, my mother Pelopia gave it me.’ ‘I will spare your life, boy,’ said Thyestes, ‘if you carry out the three orders I now give you.’ ‘I am your servant in all things,’ wept Aegisthus, who had expected no mercy. ‘My first order is to bring your mother here,’ Thyestes told him.

l. Aegisthus thereupon brought Pelopia to the dungeon and, recognizing Thyestes, she wept on his neck, called him her dearest father, and commiserated with his sufferings. ‘How did you come by this sword, daughter?’ Thyestes asked. ‘I took it from the scabbard of an unknown stranger who ravished me one night at Sicyon,’ she replied. ‘It is mine,’ said Thyestes. Pelopia, stricken with horror, seized the sword, and plunged it into her breast. Aegisthus stood aghast, not understanding what had been said. ‘Now take this sword to Atreus,’ was Thyestes’s second order, ‘and tell him that you have carried out your commission. Then return!’ Dumbly Aegisthus took the bloody thing to Atreus, who went joyfully down to the seashore, where he offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Zeus, convinced that he was rid of Thyestes at last.

m. When Aegisthus returned to the dungeon, Thyestes revealed himself as his father, and issued his third order: ‘Kill Atreus, my son Aegisthus, and this time do not falter!’ Aegisthus did as he was told, and. Thyestes reigned once more in Mycenae.

n. Another golden-fleeced horned lamb then appeared among Thyestes’s flocks and grew to be a ram and, afterwards, every new Pelopid king was thus divinely confirmed in possession of his golden sceptre; these rams grazed at ease in a paddock enclosed by unscaleable walls. But some say that the token of royalty was not a living creature, but a silver bowl, on the bottom of which a golden lamb had been inlaid; and others, that it cannot have been Aegisthus who killed Atreus, because he was only an infant in swaddling clothes when Agamemnon drove his father Thyestes from Mycenae, wresting the sceptre from him.

o. Thyestes lies buried beside the road that leads from Mycenae to Argos, near the shrine of Perseus. Above his tomb stands the stone figure of a ram. The tomb of Atreus, and his underground treasury, are still shown among the ruins of Mycenae.

p. Thyestes was not the last hero to have his own child served up to him on a dish. This happened some years later to Clymenus, the Arcadian son of Schoenus, who conceived an incestuous passion for Harpalyce, his daughter by Epicaste. Having debauched Harpalyce, he married her to Alastor, but afterwards took her away again. Harpalyce, to revenge herself, murdered the son she bore him—who was also her brother—cooked the corpse and laid it before Clymenus. She was transformed into a bird of prey, and Clymenus hanged himself.




p. 242
Agamemnon And Clytaemnestra

SOME say that Agamemnon and Menelaus were of an age to arrest Thyestes at Delphi; others, that when Aegisthus killed Atreus, they were still infants, whom their nurse had the presence of mind to rescue. Snatching them up, one under each arm, she fled with them to Polypheides, the twenty-fourth king of Sicyon, at whose instance they were subsequently entrusted to Oeneus the Aetolian. It is agreed, however, that after they had spent some years at Oeneus’s court, King Tyndareus of Sparta restored their fortunes. Marching against Mycenae, he exacted an oath from Thyestes, who had taken refuge at the altar of Hera, that he would bequeath the sceptre to Agamemnon, as Atreus’s heir, and go into exile, never to return. Thyestes thereupon departed to Cythera, while Aegisthus, fearing Agamemnon’s vengeance, fled to King Cylarabes, son of King Sthenelus the Argive.

b. It is said that Zeus gave power to the House of Aeacus, wisdom to the House of Amythaon, but wealth to the House of Atreus. Wealthy indeed it was: the kings of Mycenae, Corinth, Cleonae, Orneiae, Arathyrea, Sicyon, Hyperesia, Gonoessa, Pellene, Aegium, Aegialus, and Helice, all paid tribute to Agamemnon, both on land and sea.

c. Agamemnon first made war against Tantalus, King of Pisa, the son of his ugly uncle Broteas, killed him in battle and forcibly married his widow Clytaenmestra, whom Leda had borne to King Tyndareus of Sparta. The Dioscuri, Clytaenmestra’s brothers, thereupon marched on Mycenae; but Agamemnon had already gone as a suppliant to his benefactor Tyndareus, who forgave him and let him keep Clytaemnestra. After the death of the Dioscuri, Menelaus married their sister Helen, and Tyndareus abdicated in his favour.

d. Clytaenmestra bore Agamemnon one son, Orestes, and three daughters: Electra, or Laodice; Iphigeneia, or Iphianassa; and Chrysothemis; though some say that Iphigeneia was Clytaemnestra’s niece, the daughter of Theseus and Helen, whom she took pity upon and adopted.

e. When Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, abducted Helen and thus provoked the Trojan War, both Agamemnon and Menelaus were absent from home for ten years; but Aegisthus did not join their expedition, preferring to stay behind at Argos and seek revenge on the House of Atreus.

f. Now, Nauplius, the husband of Clymene, having failed to obtain requital from Agamemnon and the other Greek leaders for the stoning of his son Palamedes, had sailed away from Troy and coasted around Attica and the Peloponnese, inciting the lonely wives of his enemies to adultery. Aegisthus, therefore, when he heard that Clytaemnestra was among those most eager to be convinced by Nauplius, planned not only to become her lover, but to kill Agamemnon, with her assistance, as soon as the Trojan War ended.

g. Hermes, sent to Aegisthus by Omniscient Zeus, warned him to abandon this project, on the ground that when Orestes had grown to manhood, he would be bound to avenge his father. For all his eloquence, however, Hermes failed to deter Aegisthus, who went to Mycenae with rich gifts in his hands, but hatred in his heart. At first, Clytaemnestra rejected his advances, because Agamemnon, apprised of Nauplius’s visit to Mycenae, had instructed his court bard to keep close watch on her and report to him, in writing, the least sign of infidelity. But Aegisthus seized the old minstrel and marooned him without food on a lonely island, where birds of prey were soon picking his bones. Clytaemnestra then yielded to Aegisthus’s embraces, and he celebrated his unhoped for success with burnt offerings to Aphrodite, and gifts of tapestries and gold to Artemis, who was nursing a grudge against the House of Atreus.

h. Clytaemnestra had small cause to love Agamemnon: after killing her former husband Tantalus, and the new-born child at her breast, he had married her by force, and then gone away to a war which promised never to end; he had also sanctioned the sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis—and, this she found even harder to bear—was said to be bringing back Priam’s daughter Cassandra, the prophetess, as his wife in all but name. It is true that Cassandra had borne Agamemnon twin sons: Teledamus and Pelops, but he does not seem to have intended any insult to Clytaemnestra. Her informant had been Nauplius’s surviving son Oeax who, in vengeance for his brother’s death, was maliciously provoking her to do murder.

i. Clytaemnestra therefore conspired with Aegisthus to kill both Agamemnon and Cassandra. Fearing, however, that they might arrive unexpectedly, she wrote Agamemnon a letter asking him to light a beacon on Mount Ida when Troy fell; and herself arranged for a chain of fires to relay his signal to Argolis by way of Cape Hermaeum on Lemnos, and the mountains of Athos, Macisms, Messapius, Cithaeron, Aegiplanctus, and Arachne. A watchman was also stationed on the roof of the palace at Mycenae: a faithful servant of Agamemnon’s, who spent one whole year, crouched on his elbows like a dog, gazing towards Mount Arachne and filled with gloomy forebodings. At last, one dark night, he saw the distant beacon blaze and ran to wake Clytaemnestra. She celebrated the news with sacrifices of thanksgiving; though, indeed, she would now have liked the siege of Troy to last forever. Aegisthus thereupon posted one of his own men in a watchtower near the sea, promising him two gold talents for the first news of Agamemnon’s landing.

j. Hera had rescued Agamemnon from the fierce storm which destroyed many of the returning Greek ships and drove Menelaus to Egypt; and, at last, a fair wind carried him to Nauplia. No sooner had he disembarked, than he bent down to kiss the soil, weeping for joy. Meanwhile the watchman hurried to Mycenae to collect his fee, and Aegisthus chose twenty of the boldest warriors, posted them in ambush inside the palace, ordered a great banquet and then, mounting his chariot, rode down to welcome Agamemnon.

k. Clytaemnestra greeted her travel-worn husband with every appearance of delight, unrolled a purple carpet for him, and led him to the bath-house, where slave-girls had prepared a warm bath; but Cassandra remained outside the palace, caught in a prophetic trance, refusing to enter, and crying that she smelt blood, and that the curse of Thyestes was heavy upon the dining-hall. When Agamemnon had washed himself and set one foot out of the bath, eager to partake of the rich banquet now already set on the tables, Clytaemnestra came forward, as if to wrap a towel about him, but instead threw over his head a garment of net, woven by herself, without either neck or sleeve-holes. Entangled in this, like a fish, Agamemnon perished at the hands of Aegisthus, who struck him twice with a two-edged sword. He fell hard, into the silver-sided bath, where Clytaemnestra avenged her wrongs by beheading him with an axe. She then ran out to kill Cassandra with the same weapon, not troubling first to close her husband’s eyelids or mouth; but wiped off on his hair the blood which had splashed her, to signify that he had brought about his own death.

l. A fierce battle was now raging in the palace, between Agamemnon’s bodyguard and Aegisthus’s supporters. Warriors were slain like swine for a rich man’s feast, or lay wounded and groaning beside the laden boards in a welter of blood; but Aegisthus won the day. Outside, Cassandra’s head rolled to the ground, and Aegisthus also had the satisfaction of killing her twin sons by Agamemnon; yet he failed to do away with another of Agamemnon’s bastards, by name Halesus, or Haliscus. Halesus contrived to make his escape and, after long wandering in exile, founded the Italian city of Falerios, and taught its inhabitants the Mysteries of Hera, which are still celebrated there in the Argive manner. This massacre took place on the thirteenth day of the month Gamelion [January] and, unafraid of divine retribution, Clytaemnestra decreed the thirteenth day a monthly festival, celebrating it with dancing and offerings of sheep to her guardian deities. Some applauded her resolution; but others hold that she brought eternal disgrace upon all women, even virtuous ones. Aegisthus, too, gave thanks to the goddess who had assisted him.

m. The Spartans claim that Agamemnon is buried at Amyclae, no more than a small village, where are shown the tomb and statue of Clytaemnestra, also the sanctuary and statue of Cassandra; the inhabitants even believe that he was killed there. But the truth is that Agamemnon’s tomb stands among the ruins of Mycenae, close to those of his charioteer, of his comrades murdered with him by Aegisthus, and of Cassandra’s twins.

n. Menelaus was later informed of the crime by Proteus, the prophet of Pharos and, having offered hecatombs to his brother’s ghost, built a cenotaph in his honour beside the River of Egypt. Returning to Sparta, eight years later, he raised a temple to Zeus Agamemnon; there are other such temples at Lapersae in Attica and at Clazomene in Ionia, although Agamemnon never reigned in either of these places.




p. 245
The Vengeance Of Orestes

ORESTES was reared by his loving grandparents Tyndareus and Leda, and, as a boy, accompanied Clytaemnestra and Iphigeneia to Aulis. But some say that Clytaemnestra sent him to Phocis, shortly before Agamemnon’s return; and others that on the evening of the murder, Orestes, then ten years of age, was rescued by his noble-hearted nurse Arsinoë, or Laodameia, or Geilissa who, having sent her own son to bed in the royal nursery, let Aegisthus kill him in Orestes’s place. Others again say that his sister Electra, aided by her father’s ancient tutor, wrapped him in a robe embroidered with wild beasts, which she herself had woven, and smuggled him out of the city.

b. After hiding for awhile among the shepherds of the river Tanus, which divides Argolis from Laconia, the tutor made his way with Orestes to the court of Strophius, a firm ally of the House of Atreus, who ruled over Crisa, at the foot of Mount Parnassus. This Strophius had married Agamemnon’s sister Astyochea, or Anaxibia, or Cyndragora. At Crisa, Orestes found an adventurous playmate, namely Strophius’s son Pylades, who was somewhat younger than himself, and their friendship was destined to become proverbial. From the old tutor he learned with grief that Agamemnon’s body had been flung out of the house and hastily buried by Clytaemnestra, without either libations or myrtle-boughs; and that the people of Mycenae had been forbidden to attend the funeral.

c. Aegisthus reigned at Mycenae for seven years, riding in Agamemnon’s chariot, sitting on his throne, wielding his sceptre, wearing his robes, sleeping in his bed, and squandering his riches. Yet despite all these trappings of kingship, he was little more than a slave to Clytaemnestra, the true ruler of Mycenae. When drunk, he would leap on Agamemnon’s tomb and pelt the head-stone with rocks, crying: ‘Come, Orestes, come and defend your own!’ The truth was, however, that he lived in abject fear of vengeance, even while surrounded by a trusty foreign bodyguard, never passed a single night in sound sleep, and had offered a handsome reward in gold for Orestes’s assassination.

d. Electra had been betrothed to her cousin Castor of Sparta, before his death and demi-deification. Though the leading princes of Greece now contended for her hand, Aegisthus feared that she might bear a son to avenge Agamemnon, and therefore announced that no suitor could be accepted. He would gladly have destroyed Electra, who showed him implacable hatred, lest she lay secretly with one of the Palace officers and bore him a bastard; but Clytaemnestra, feeling no qualms about her part in Agamemnon’s murder, and scrupulous not to incur the displeasure of the gods, forbade him to do so. She allowed him, however, to marry Electra to a Mycenaean peasant who, being afraid of Orestes and also chaste by nature, never consummated their unequal union.

e. Thus, neglected by Clytaenmestra, who had now borne Aegisthus three children, by name Erigone, Aletes, and the second Helen, Electra lived in disgraceful poverty, and was kept under constant close supervision. In the end it was decided that, unless she would accept her fate, as her sister Chrysothemis had done, and refrain from publicly calling Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra ‘murderous adulterers’, she would be banished to some distant city and there confined in a dungeon where the light of the sun never penetrated. Yet Electra despised Chrysothemis for her subservience and disloyalty to their dead father, and secretly sent frequent reminders to Orestes of the vengeance required from him.

f. Orestes, now grown to manhood, visited the Delphic Oracle, to enquire whether or not he should destroy his father’s murderers. Apollo’s answer, authorized by Zeus, was that if he neglected to avenge Agamemnon he would become an outcast from society, debarred from entering any shrine or temple, and afflicted with a leprosy that ate into his flesh, making it sprout white mould. He was recommended to pour libations beside Agamemnon’s tomb, lay a ringlet of his hair upon it and, unaided by any company of spearmen, craftily exact the due punishment from the murderers. At the same time the Pythoness observed that the Erinnyes would not readily forgive a matricide, and therefore, on behalf of Apollo, she gave Orestes a bow of horn, with which to repel their attacks, should they become insupportable. After fulfilling his orders, he must come again to Delphi, where Apollo would protect him.

g. In the eighth year—or, according to some, after a passage of twenty years—Orestes secretly returned to Mycenae, by way of Athens, determined to destroy both Aegisthus and his own mother. One morning, with Pylades at his side, he visited Agamemnon’s tomb and there, cutting off a lock of his hair, he invoked Infernal Hermes, patron of fatherhood. When a group of slave-women approached, dirty and dishevelled for the purposes of mourning, he took shelter in a near-by thicket to watch them. Now, on the previous night, Clytaemnestra had dreamed that she gave birth to a serpent, which she wrapped in swaddling clothes and suckled. Suddenly she screamed in her sleep, and alarmed the whole Palace by crying that the serpent had drawn blood from her breast, as well as milk. The opinion of the soothsayers whom she consulted was that she had incurred the anger of the dead; and these mourning slave-women consequently came on her behalf to pour libations upon Agamemnon’s tomb, in the hope of appeasing his ghost. Electra, who was one of the party, poured the libations in her own name, not her mother’s; offered prayers to Agamemnon for vengeance, instead of pardon; and bade Hermes summon Mother Earth and the gods of the Underworld to hear her plea. Noticing a ringlet of fair hair upon the tomb, she decided that it could belong only to Orestes: both because it closely resembled her own in colour and texture, and because no one else would have dared to make such an offering.

h. Torn between hope and doubt, she was measuring her feet against Orestes’s foot-prints in the clay beside the tomb, and finding a family resemblance, when he emerged from his hiding place, showed her that the ringlet was his own, and produced the robe in which he had escaped from Mycenae. Electra welcomed him with delight, and together they invoked their ancestor, Father Zeus, whom they reminded that Agamemnon had always paid him great honour and that, were the House of Atreus to die out, no one would be left in Mycenae to offer him the customary hecatombs: for Aegisthus worshipped other deities.

i. When the slave-women told Orestes of Clytaemnestra’s dream, he recognized the serpent as himself, and declared that he would indeed play the cubing serpent and draw blood from her false body. Then he instructed Electra to enter the Palace and tell Clytaemnestra nothing about their meeting; he and Pylades would follow, after an interval, and beg hospitality at the gate, as strangers and suppliants, pretending to be Phocians and using the Parnassian dialect. If the porter refused them admittance, Aegisthus’s inhospitality would outrage the city; if he granted it, they would not fail to take vengeance. Presently Orestes knocked at the Palace gate, and asked for the master or mistress of the house. Clytaemnestra herself came out, but did not recognize Orestes. He pretended to be an Aeolian from Daulis, bearing sad news from one Strophius, whom he had met by chance on the road to Argos: namely, that her son Orestes was dead, and that his ashes were being kept in a brazen urn. Strophius wished to know whether he should send these back to Mycenae, or bury them at Crisa.

j. Clytaemnestra at once welcomed Orestes inside and, concealing her joy from the servants, sent his old nurse, Geilissa, to fetch Aegisthus from a near-by temple. But Geilissa saw through Orestes’s disguise and, altering the message, told Aegisthus to rejoice because he could now safely come alone and weaponless to greet the bearers of glad tidings: his enemy was dead. Unsuspectingly, Aegisthus entered the Palace where, to create a further distraction, Pylades had just arrived, carrying a brazen urn. He told Clytaemnestra that it held Orestes’s ashes, which Strophius had now derided to send to Mycenae. This seeming confirmation of the first message put Aegisthus completely off his guard; thus Orestes had no difficulty in drawing his sword and cutting him down. Clytaemnestra then recognized her son, and tried to soften his heart by baring her breast, and appealing to his filial duty; Orestes, however, beheaded her with a single stroke of the same sword, and she fell beside the body of her paramour. Standing over the corpses, he addressed the Palace servants, holding aloft the still blood-stained net in which Agamemnon had died, eloquently exculpating himself for the murder of Clytaemnestra by this reminder of her treachery, and adding that Aegisthus had suffered the sentence prescribed by law for adulterers.

k. Not content with killing Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, Orestes next disposed of the second Helen, their daughter; and Pylades beat off the sons of Nauplius, who had come to Aegisthus’s rescue.

l. Some say, however, that these events took place in Argos, on the third day of Hera’s Festival, when the virgins’ procession was about to begin. Aegisthus had prepared a banquet for the Nymphs near the horse-meadows, before sacrificing a bull to Hera, and was gathering myrtle-boughs to wreathe his head. It is added that Electra, meeting Orestes by Agamemnon’s tomb, would not believe at first that he was her long-lost brother, despite the similarity of their hair, and the robe he showed her. Finally, a scar on his forehead convinced her; because once, when they were children together, chasing a deer, he had slipped and fallen, cutting his head upon a sharp rock.

m. Obeying her whispered instructions, Orestes went at once to the altar where the bull had now been slaughtered and, as Aegisthus bent to inspect its entrails, struck off his head with the sacrificial axe. Meanwhile, Electra, to whom he presented the head, enticed Clytaemnestra from the palace by pretending that, ten days before, she had borne a son to her peasant husband; and when Clytaemnestra, anxious to inspect her first grand-child, visited the cottage, Orestes was waiting behind the door and killed her without mercy.

n. Others, though agreeing that the murder took place at Argos, say that Clytaemnestra sent Chrysothemis to Agamemnon’s tomb with the libations, having dreamed that Agamemnon, restored to life, snatched his sceptre from Aegisthus’s hands and planted it so firmly in the ground that it budded and put forth branches, which overshadowed the entire land of Mycenae. According to this account, the news which deceived Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra was that Orestes had been accidentally killed while competing in the chariot race at the Pythian Games; and that Orestes showed Electra neither a ringlet nor an embroidered robe, nor a scar, in proof of his identity, but Agamemnon’s own seal, which was carved from a piece of Pelops’s ivory shoulder.

o. Still others, denying that Orestes killed Clytaemnestra with his own hands, say that he committed her for trial by the judges, who condemned her to death, and that his one fault, if it may be called a fault, was that he did not intercede on her behalf.




p. 249
The Trial Of Orestes

THE Mycenaeans who had supported Orestes in his unheard-of action would not allow the bodies of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus to lie within their city, but buried them at some distance beyond the walls. That night, Orestes and Pylades stood guard at Clytaemnestra’s tomb, lest anyone should dare rob it; but, during their vigil, the serpent-haired, dog-headed, bat-winged Erinnyes appeared, swinging their scourges. Driven to distraction by these fierce attacks, against which Apollo’s bow of horn was of little avail, Orestes fell prostrate on a couch, where he lay for six days, his head wrapped in a cloak—refusing either to eat or to wash.

b. Old Tyndareus now arrived from Sparta, and brought a charge of matricide against Orestes, summoning the Mycenaean chieftains to judge his case. He decreed that, pending the trial, none should speak either to Orestes or Electra, and that both should be denied shelter, fire, and water. Thus Orestes was prevented even from washing his bloodstained hands. The streets of Mycenae were lined with citizens in arms; and Oeax, son of Nauplius, delighted in this opportunity to persecute Agamemnon’s children.

c. Meanwhile, Menelaus, laden with treasure, landed at Nauplia, where a fisherman told him that Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra had been murdered. He sent Helen ahead to confirm the news at Mycenae; but by night, lest the kinsmen of those who had perished at Troy should stone her. Helen, feeling ashamed to mourn in public for her sister Clytaenmestra, since she herself had caused even more bloodshed by her infidelities, asked Electra, who was now nursing the afflicted Orestes: ‘Pray, niece, take offerings of my hair and lay them on Clytaenmestra’s tomb, after pouring libations to her ghost.’ Electra, when she saw that Helen had been prevented by vanity from cutting off more than the very tips of her hair, refused to do so. ‘Send your daughter Hermione instead,’ was her curt advice. Helen thereupon summoned Hermione from the palace. She had been only a nine-year-old child when her mother eloped with Paris, and Menelaus had committed her to Clytaemnestra’s charge at the outbreak of the Trojan War; yet she recognized Helen at once and dutifully went off to do as she was told.

d. Menelaus then entered the palace, where he was greeted by his foster-father Tyndareus, clad in deep mourning, and warned not to set foot on Spartan soil until he had punished his criminal nephew and niece. Tyndareus held that Orestes should have contented himself with allowing his fellow-citizens to banish Clytaemnestra. If they had demanded her death he should have interceded on her behalf. As matters now stood, they must be persuaded, willy-nilly, that not only Orestes, but Electra who had spurred him on, should be stoned to death as matricides.

e. Fearing to offend Tyndareus, Menelaus secured the desired verdict. But at the eloquent plea of Orestes himself, who was present in court and had the support of Pylades (now disowned by Strophius for his part in the murder), the judges commuted the sentence to one of suicide. Pylades then led Orestes away, nobly refusing to desert either him or Electra, to whom he was betrothed; and proposed that, since all three must die, they should first punish Menelaus’s cowardice and disloyalty by killing Helen, the originator of every misfortune that had befallen them. While, therefore, Electra waited outside the walls to execute her own design—that of intercepting Hermione on her return from Clytaemnestra’s tomb and holding her as a hostage for Menelaus’s good behaviour—Orestes and Pylades entered the palace, with swords hidden beneath their cloaks, and took refuge at the central altar, as though they were suppliants. Helen, who sat near by, spinning wool for a purple robe to lay as a gift on Clytaemnestra’s tomb, was deceived by their lamentations, and approached to welcome them. Whereupon both drew their swords and, while Pylades chased away Helen’s Phrygian slaves, Orestes attempted to murder her. But Apollo, at Zeus’s command, rapt her in a cloud to Olympus, where she became an immortal; joining her brothers, the Dioscuri, as a guardian of sailors in distress.

f. Meanwhile, Electra had secured Hermione, led her into the palace, and barred the gates. Menelaus, seeing that death threatened his daughter, ordered an immediate rescue. His men burst open the gates, and Orestes was just about to set the palace alight, kill Hermione, and die himself either by sword or fire, when Apollo providentially appeared, wrenched the torch from his hand, and drove back Menelaus’s warriors. In the awed hush caused by his presence, Apollo commanded Menelaus to take another wife, betroth Hermione to Orestes, and return to rule over Sparta; Clytaemnestra’s murder need no longer concern him, now that the gods had intervened.

g. With wool-wreathed laurel-branch and chaplet, to show that he was under Apollo’s protection, Orestes then set out for Delphi, still pursued by the Erinnyes. The Pythian Priestess was terrified to see him crouched as a suppliant on the marble navel-stone—stained by the blood from his unwashed hands—and the hideous troop of black Erinnyes sleeping beside him. Apollo, however, reassured her by promising to act as advocate for Orestes, whom he ordered to face his ordeal with courage. After a period of exile, he must make his way to Athens, and there embrace the ancient image of Athene who, as the Dioscuri had already prophesied, would shield him with her Gorgon-faced aegis, and annul the curse. While the Erinnyes were still fast asleep, Orestes escaped under the guidance of Hermes; but Clytaemnestra’s ghost soon entered the precinct, raking them to task, and reminding them that they had often received libations of wine and grim midnight banquets from her hand. They therefore set off in renewed pursuit, scornful of Apollo’s angry threats to shoot them down.

h. Orestes’s exile lasted for one year—the period which must elapse before a homicide may again move among his fellow-citizens. He wandered far, over land and sea, pursued by the tireless Erinnyes and constantly purified both with the blood of pigs and with running water; yet these rites never served to keep his tormentors at bay for more than an hour or two, and he soon lost his wits. To begin with, Hermes escorted him to Troezen, where he was lodged in what is now called the Booth of Orestes, which faces the Sanctuary of Apollo; and presently nine Troezenians purified him at the Sacred Rock, close to the Temple of Wolfish Artemis; using water from the Spring of Hippocrene, and the blood of sacrificial victims. An ancient laurel-tree marks the place where the victims were afterwards buried; and the descendants of these nine men still dine annually at the booth on a set day.

i. Opposite the island of Cranaë, three furlongs from Gythium, stands an unwrought stone, named the stone of Zeus the Reliever, upon which Orestes sat and was temporarily relieved of his madness. He is said to have also been purified in seven streams near Italian Rhegium, where he built a temple; in three tributaries of the Thracian Hebrus; and in the Orontes, which flows past Antioch.

j. Seven furlongs down the high road from Megalopolis to Messene, on the left, is shown a sanctuary of the Mad Goddesses, a title of the Erinnyes, who inflicted a raging fit of madness on Orestes; also a small mound, surmounted by a stone finger and called the Finger Tomb. This marks the place where, in desperation, he bit off a finger to placate these black goddesses, and some of them, at least, changed their hue to white, so that his sanity was restored. He then shaved his head at a near-by sanctuary called Ace, and made a sin-offering to the black goddesses, also a thank-offering to the white. It is now customary to sacrifice to the latter conjointly with the Graces.

k. Next, Orestes went to live among the Azanes and Arcadians of the Parrhasian Plain which, with the neighbouring city formerly called Oresthasium after its founder Orestheus, son of Lycaon, changed its name to Oresteium. Some, however, say that Oresteium was formerly called Azania, and that he went to live there only after a visit to Athens. Others, again, say that he spent his exile in Epirus, where he founded the city of Orestic Argos and gave his name to the Orestae Paroraei, Epirots who inhabit the rugged foothills of the Illyrian mountains.

l. When a year had passed, Orestes visited Athens, which was then governed by his kinsman Pandion; or, some say, by Demophoön. He went at once to Athene’s temple on the Acropolis, sat down, and embraced her image. The Black Erinnyes soon arrived, out of breath, having lost track of him while he crossed the Isthmus. Though at his first arrival none wished to receive him, as being hated by the gods, presently some were emboldened to invite him into their homes, where he sat at a separate table and drank from a separate wine cup.

m. The Erinnyes, who had already begun to accuse him to the Athenians, were soon joined by Tyndareus with his grand-daughter Erigone, daughter of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; also, some say, by Clytaenmestra’s cousin Perilaus, son of Icarius. But Athene, having heard Orestes’s supplication from Scamander, her newly-acquired Trojan territory, hurried to Athens and, swearing-in the noblest citizens as judges; summoned the Areiopagus to try what was then only the second case of homicide to come before it.

n. In due course the trial took place, Apollo appearing as council for the defence, and the eldest of the Erinnyes as public prosecutrix. In an elaborate speech, Apollo denied the importance of motherhood, asserting that a woman was no more than the inert furrow in which the husband man cast his seed; and that Orestes had been abundantly justified in his act, the father being the one parent worthy of the name. When the voting proved equal, Athene confessed herself wholly on the father’s side, and gave her casting vote in favour of Orestes. Thus honourably acquitted, he returned in joy to Argolis, swearing to be a faithful ally of Athens so long as he lived. The Erinnyes, however, loudly lamented this subversal of the ancient law by upstart gods; and Erigone hanged herself for mortification

o. Of Helen’s end three other contradictory accounts survive. The first: that in fulfilment of Proteus’s prophecy, she returned to Sparta and there lived with Menelaus in peace, comfort, and prosperity, until they went hand in hand to the Elysian Fields. The second: that she visited the Taurians with him, whereupon Iphigeneia sacrificed them both to Artemis. The third: that Polyxo, widow of the Rhodian King Tlepolemus, avenged his death by sending some of her serving women, disguised as Erinnyes, to hang Helen.




p. 252
The Pacification Of The Erinnyes

IN gratitude for his acquittal, Orestes dedicated an altar to Warlike Athene; but the Erinnyes threatened, if the judgement were not reversed, to let fall a drop of their own hearts’ blood which would bring barrenness upon the soil, blight the crops, and destroy all the offspring of Athens. Athene nevertheless soothed their anger by flattery: acknowledging them to be far wiser than herself, she suggested that they should take up residence in a grotto at Athens, where they would gather such throngs of worshippers as they could never hope to find elsewhere. Hearth-altars proper to Underworld deities should be theirs, as well as sober sacrifices, torchlight libations, first-fruits offered after the consummation of marriage or the birth of children, and even seats in the Erechtheum. If they accepted this invitation she would decree that no house where worship was withheld from them might prosper; but they, in return, must undertake to invoke fair winds for her ships, fertility for her land, and fruitful marriages for her people—also rooting out the impious, so that she might see fit to grant Athens victory in war. The Erinnyes, after a short deliberation, graciously agreed to these proposals.

b. With expressions of gratitude, good wishes, and charms against withering winds, drought, blight, and sedition, the Erinnyes—henceforth addressed as the Solemn Ones—bade farewell to Athene, and were conducted by her people in a torchlight procession of youths, matrons, and crones (dressed in purple, and carrying the ancient image of Athene) to the entrance of a deep grotto at the south-eastern angle of the Areiopagus. Appropriate sacrifices were there offered to them, and they descended into the grotto, which is now both an oracular shrine and, like the Sanctuary of Theseus, a place of refuge for suppliants.

c. Yet only three of the Erinnyes had accepted Athene’s generous offer; the remainder continued to pursue Orestes; and some people go so far as to deny that the Solemn Ones were ever Erinnyes. The name ‘Eumenides’ was first given to the Erinnyes by Orestes, in the following year, after his daring adventure in the Tauric Chersonese, when he finally succeeded in appeasing their fury at Carneia with the holocaust of a black sheep. They are called Eumenides also at Colonus, where none may enter their andent grove; and at Achaean Cerynea where, towards the end of his life, Orestes dedicated a new sanctuary to them.

d. In the grotto of the Solemn Ones at Athens—which is closed only to the second-fated, that is to say, to men who have been prematurely mourned for dead—their three images wear no more terrible an aspect than do those of the Underworld gods standing beside them, namely Hades, Hermes, and Mother Earth. Here those who have been acquitted of murder by the Areiopagus sacrifice a black victim; numerous other offerings are brought to the Solemn Ones in accordance wit Athene’s promise; and one of the three nights set aside every month for the Areiopagus for the hearing of murder trials is assigned to each of them.

e. The rites of the Solemn Ones are silently performed; hence the priesthood is hereditary in the clan of the Hesychids, who offer the preliminary sacrifice of a ram to their ancestor Hesychus at his hero-shrine outside the Nine Gates.

f. A hearth-altar has also been provided for the Solemn Ones: Phlya, a small Attic township; and a grove of evergreen oaks is sacred to them near Titane, on the farther bank of the river Asopus. At the Phlyan festival, celebrated yearly, pregnant sheep are sacrificed, libations of honey-water poured, and flowers worn instead of the usual myrtle wreaths. Similar rites are performed at the altar of the Fate which stands in the oak-grove, unprotected from the weather.




p. 254
Iphigeneia Among The Taurians

STILL pursued by such anger of the Erinnyes as they had turned deaf ears to Athene’s eloquent speeches, Orestes went in despair to Delphi, where he threw himself on the temple floor and threatened to take his own life unless Apollo saved him from their scourgings. In reply, the Pythian priestess ordered him to sail up the Bosphorus and northward across the Black Sea; his woes would end only when he had seized an ancient wooden image of Artemis from her temple in the Tauric Chersonese, and brought it to Athens or (some say) to Argolis.

b. Now, the king of the Taurians was the fleet-footed Thoas, a son of Dionysus and Ariadne, and father of Hypsipyle; and his people, so called because Osiris once yoked bulls (tauroi) and ploughed their land, came of Scythian stock. They still live by rapine, as in Thoas’s days; and whenever one of their warriors takes a prisoner, he beheads him, carries the head home, and there impales it on a tall stake above the chimney, so that his household may live under the dead man’s protection. Moreover, every sailor who has been shipwrecked, or driven into their port by rough weather, is publicly sacrificed to Taurian Artemis. When they have performed certain preparatory rites, they fell him with a club and nail his severed head to a cross; after which the body is either buried, or tossed into the sea from the precipice crowned by Artemis’s temple. But any princely stranger who falls into their hands is killed with a sword by the goddess’s virgin-priestess; and she throws his corpse into the sacred fire, welling up from Tartarus, which burns in the divine precinct. Some, however, say that the priestess, though supervising the rites, and performing the preliminary lustration and hair-cropping of the victim, does not herself kill him. The ancient image of the goddess, which Orestes was ordered to seize, had fallen here from Heaven. This temple is supported by vast columns, and approached by forty steps; its altar of white marble is permanently stained with blood.

c. Taurian Artemis has several Greek titles: among them are Artemis Tauropolus, or Tauropole; Artemis Dictynna; Artemis Orthia; Thoantea; Hecate; and to the Latins she is Trivia.

d. Now, Iphigeneia had been rescued from sacrifice at Aulis by Artemis, wrapped in a cloud, and wafted to the Tauric Chersonese, where she was at once appointed Chief Priestess and granted the sole right of handling the sacred image. The Taurians thereafter addressed her as Artemis, or Hecate, or Orsiloche. Iphigeneia loathed human sacrifice, but piously obeyed the goddess.

e. Orestes and Pylades knew nothing of all this; they still believed that Iphigeneia had died under the sacrificial knife at Aulis. Nevertheless, they hastened to the land of the Taurians in a fifty-oared ship which, on arrival, they left at anchor, guarded by their oarsmen, while they hid in a sea-cave. It was their intention to approach the temple at nightfall, but they were surprised beforehand by some credulous herdsmen who, assuming them to be the Dioscuri, or some other pair of immortals, fell down and adored them. At this juncture Orestes went mad once more, bellowing like a calf and howling like a dog; he mistook a herd of calves for Erinnyes, and rushed from the cave, sword in hand, to slaughter them. The disillusioned herdsmen thereupon overpowered the two friends who, at Thoas’s orders, were marched off to the temple for immediate sacrifice.

f. During the preliminary rites Orestes conversed in Greek with Iphigeneia; soon they joyfully discovered each other’s identity, and on learning the nature of his mission, she began to lift down the image for him to carry away. Thoas, however, suddenly appeared, impatient at the slow progress of the sacrifice, and the resourceful Iphigeneia pretended to be soothing the image. She explained to Thoas that the goddess had averted her gaze from the victims whom he had sent, because one was a matricide, and the other was abetting him: both were quite unfit for sacrifice. She must take them, together with the image, which their presence had polluted, to be cleansed in the sea, and offer the goddess a torchlight sacrifice of young lambs. Meanwhile, Thoas was to purify the temple with a torch, cover his head when the strangers emerged, and order everyone to remain at home and thus avoid pollution.

g. Thoas, wholly deceived, stood for a time lost in admiration of such sagacity, and then began to purify the temple. Presently Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades conveyed the image down to the shore by torchlight but, instead of bathing it in the sea, hastily carried it aboard their ship. The Taurian temple-servants, who had come with them, now suspected treachery and showed fight. They were subdued in a hard struggle, after which Orestes’s oarsmen rowed the ship away. A sudden gale, however, sprang up, driving her back towards the rocky shore, and all would have perished, had not Poseidon calmed the sea at Athene’s request; with a favouring breeze, they made the Island of Sminthos.

h. This was the home of Chryses, the priest of Apollo, and his grandson of the same name, whose mother Chryseis now proposed to surrender the fugitives to Thoas. For, although some hold that Athene had visited Thoas, who was manning a fleet to sail in pursuit, and cajoled him so successfully that he even consented to repatriate Iphigeneia’s Greek slave-women, it is certain that he came to Sminthos with murderous intentions. Then Chryses the Elder, learning the identity of his guests, revealed to Chryses the Younger that he was not, as Chryseis had always pretended, Apollo’s son, but Agamemnon’s, and therefore half-brother to Orestes and Iphigeneia. At this, Chryses and Orestes rushed shoulder to shoulder against Thoas, whom they succeeded in killing; and Orestes, taking up the image, sailed safely home to Mycenae, where the Erinnyes at last abandoned their chase.

i. But some say that a storm drove Orestes to Rhodes where, in accordance with the Helian Oracle, he set up the image upon a city wall. Others say that, since Attica was the land to which he had been instructed to bring it, by Apollo’s orders, Athene visited him on Sminthos and specified the frontier city of Brauron as its destination: it must be housed there in a temple of Artemis Tauropolus, and placated with blood drawn from a man’s throat. She designated Iphigeneia as the priestess of this temple, in which she was destined to end her days peacefully; the perquisites would include the clothes of rich women who had died in childbed. According to this account, the ship finally made port at Brauron, where Iphigeneia deposited the image and then, while the temple was being built, went with Orestes to Delphi; she met Electra in the shrine and brought her back to Athens for marriage to Pylades.

j. What is claimed to be the authentic wooden image of Tauric Artemis may still be seen at Brauron. Some, however, say that it is only a replica, the original having been captured by Xerxes in the course of his ill-fated expedition against Greece, and taken to Susa; afterwards, they add, it was presented by King Seleucus of Syria to the Laodicaeans, who worship it to this day. Others, again, loth to allow credit to Xerxes, say that Orestes himself, on his homeward voyage from the Tauric Chersonese, was driven by a storm to the region now named Seleuceia, where he left the image; and that the natives renamed Mount Melantius, where the madness finally left him, Mount Amanon, that is ‘not mad’, in his memory. But the Lydians, who have a sanctuary of Artemis Anäeitis, also claim to possess the image; and so do the people of Cappadocian Comana, whose city is said to take its name from the mourning tresses (comai) which Orestes deposited there, when he brought the rites of Artemis Tauropolus into Cappadocia.

k. Others, again, say that Orestes concealed the image in a bundle of faggots, and took it to Italian Aricia, where he himself died and was buried, his bones being later transferred to Rome; and that the image was sent from Aricia to Sparta, because the cruelty of its rites displeased the Romans; and there placed in the Sanctuary of Upright Artemis.

l. But the Spartans claim that the image has been theirs since long before the foundation of Rome, Orestes having brought it with him when he became their king, and hidden it in a willow thicket. For centuries, they say, its whereabouts were forgotten; until, one day, Astrabaeus and Alopecus, two princes of the royal house, entering the thicket by chance, were driven mad at the sight of the grim image, which was kept upright by the willow-branches wreathed around it—hence its names, Orthia and Lygodesma.

m. No sooner was the image brought to Sparta, than an ominous quarrel arose between rival devotees of Artemis, who were sacrificing together at her altar: many of them were killed in the sanctuary itself, the remainder died of plague shortly afterwards. When an oracle advised the Spartans to propitiate the image by drenching the altar with human blood, they cast lots for a victim and sacrificed him; and this ceremony was repeated yearly until King Lycurgus, who abhorred human sacrifice, forbade it, and instead ordered boys to be flogged at the altar until it reeked with blood. Spartan boys now compete once a year as to who can endure the most blows. Artemis’s priestess stands by, carrying the image which, although small and light, acquired such relish for blood in the days when human sacrifices were offered to it by the Taurians that, even now, if the floggers lay on gently, because the boy is of noble birth, or exceptionally handsome, it grows almost too heavy for her to hold, and she chides the floggers: ‘Harder, harder! You are weighing me down!’

n. Little credence should be given to the tale that Helen and Menelaus went in search of Orestes and, arriving among the Taurians shortly after he did, were both sacrificed to the goddess by Iphigeneia.




p. 257
The Reign Of Orestes

AEGISTHUS’S son Aletes now usurped the kingdom of Mycenae, believing the malicious rumour [spread by Oeax] that Orestes and Pylades had been sacrificed on the altar of Tauric Artemis. But Electra, doubting its truth, went to consult the Delphic Oracle. Iphigeneia had just arrived at Delphi, and [Oeax] pointed her out to Electra as Orestes’s murderess. Revengefully she seized a firebrand from the altar and, not recognizing Iphigeneia after the lapse of years, was about to blind her with it, when Orestes himself entered and explained all. The reunited children of Agamemnon then went joyfully back to Mycenae, where Orestes ended the feud between the House of Atreus and the House of Thyestes, by killing Aletes; whose sister Erigone, it is said, would also have perished by his hand, had not Artemis snatched her away to Attica. But afterwards Orestes relented towards her.

b. Some say that Iphigeneia died either at Brauron, or at Megara, where she now has a sanctuary; others, that Artemis immortalized her as the Younger Hecate. Electra, married to Pylades, bore him Medon and Strophius the Second; she lies buried at Mycenae. Orestes married his cousin Hermione—having been present at the sacrificial murder of Achilles’s son Neoptolemus, to whom she was betrothed. By her he became the father of Tisamenus, his heir and successor; and by Erigone his second wife, of Penthilus.

c. When Menelaus died, the Spartans invited Orestes to become their king, preferring him, as a grandson of Tyndareus, to Nicostratus and Megapenthes, begotten by Menelaus on a slave-girl. Orestes who, with the help of troops furnished by his Phocian allies, had already added a large part of Arcadia to his Mycenaean domains, now made himself master of Argos as well; for King Cylarabes, grandson of Capaneus, left no issue. He also subdued Achaea but, in obedience to the Delphic Oracle, finally emigrated from Mycenae to Arcadia where, at the age of seventy, he died of a snake bite at Oresteium, or Orestia, the town which he had founded during his exile.

d. Orestes was buried at Tegea, but in the reign of Anaxandrides, co-king with Aristo, and the only Laconian who ever had two wives and occupied two houses at the same time, the Spartans, in despair because they had hitherto lost every battle fought with the Tegeans, sent to Delphi for advice, and were instructed to possess themselves of Orestes’s bones. Since the whereabouts of these were unknown, they sent Lichas, one of Sparta’s benefactors, to ask for further enlightenment. He was given the following response in hexameters: Level and smooth the plain of Arcadian Tegea. Go thou Where two winds are ever, by strong necessity, blowing; Where stroke rings upon stroke, where evil lies upon evil; There all—teeming earth doth enclose the prince whom thou seekest. Bring thou him to the, house, and thus be Tegea’s master! Because of a temporary truce between the two states, Lichas had no difficulty in visiting Tegea; where he came upon a smith forging a sword of iron, instead of bronze, and gazed open-mouthed at the novel sight. ‘Does this work surprise you?’ cried the jovial smith. ‘Well, I have something here to surprise you even more! It is a coffin, seven cubits long, containing a corpse of the same length, which I found beneath the smithy floor while I was digging yonder well.’

e. Lichas guessed that the winds mentioned in the verses must be those raised by the smith’s bellows; the strokes those of his hammer; and the evil lying upon evil, his hammer—head beating out the iron sword—for the Iron Age brought in cruel days. He at once returned with the news to Sparta, where the judges, at his own suggestion, pretended to condemn him for a crime of violence; then, fleeing to Tegea as if from execution, he persuaded the smith to hide him in the smithy. At midnight, he stole the bones out of the coffin and hurried back to Sparta, where he re-interred them near the sanctuary of the Fates; the tomb is still shown. Spartan armies have ever since been consistently victorious over the Tegeans.

f. Pelops’s spear-sceptre, which his grandson Orestes also wielded, was discovered in Phocis about this time: lying buried with a hoard of gold on the frontier between Chaeronea and Phanoteus, where it had probably been hidden by Electra. When an inquest was held on this treasure-trove, the Phanotians were content with the gold; but the Chaeroneans took the sceptre, and now worship it as their supreme deity. Each priest of the spear, appointed for one year, keeps it in his own house, offering daily victims to its divinity, beside tables lavishly spread with every kind of food.

g. Yet some deny that Orestes died in Arcadia. They say that after his term of exile there, he was ordered by an oracle to visit Lesbos and Tenedos and found colonies, with settlers gathered from various cities, including Amyclae. He did so, calling his new people Aeolians because Aeolus was their nearest common ancestor, but died soon after building a city in Lesbos. This migration took place, they say, four generations before the Ionian. Others, however, declare that Orestes’s son Penthilus, not Orestes himself, conquered Lesbos; that his grandson Gras, aided by the Spartans, occupied the country between Ionia and Mysia, now called Aeolis; and that another grandson, Archelaus, took Aeolian settlers to the present city of Cyzicene, near Dascylium, on the southern shores of the Sea of Marmara.

h. Tisamenus meanwhile succeeded to his father’s dominions, but was driven from the capital cities of Sparta, Mycenae, and Argos by the sons of Heracles, and took refuge with his army in Achaea. His son Cometes emigrated to Asia.




p. 260
The Birth Of Heracles

ELECTRYON, Son of Perseus, High King of Mycenae and husband of Anaxo, marched vengefully against the Taphians and Teleboans. They had joined in a successful raid on his cattle, planned by one Pterelaus, a claimant to the Mycenaean throne; which had resulted in the death of Electryon’s eight sons. While he was away, his nephew King Amphitryon of Troezen acted as regent. ‘Rule well, and when I return victorious, you shall marry my daughter Alcmene,’ Electryon cried in farewell. Amphitryon, informed by the King of Elis that the stolen cattle were now in his possession, paid the large ransom demanded, and recalled Electryon to identify them. Electryon, by no means pleased to learn that Amphitryon expected him to repay this ransom, asked harshly what right had the Eleans to sell stolen property, and why did Amphitryon condone in a fraud? Disdaining to reply, Amphitryon vented his annoyance by throwing a club at one of the cows which had strayed from the herd; it struck her horns, rebounded, and killed Electryon. Thereupon Amphitryon was banished from Argolis by his uncle Sthenelus; who seized Mycenae and Tiryns and entrusted the remainder of the country, with Midea for its capital, to Atreus and Thyestes, the sons of Pelops.

b. Amphitryon, accompanied by Alcmene, fled to Thebes, where King Creon purified him and gave his sister Pealmede in marriage to Electryon’s only surviving son, Licynmius, a bastard home by a Phrygian woman named Midea. But the pious Alcmene would not lie with Amphitryon until he had avenged the death of her eight brothers. Creon therefore gave him permission to raise a Boeotian army for this purpose, on condition that he freed Thebes of the Teumessian vixen; which he did by borrowing the celebrated hound Laelaps from Cephalus the Athenian. Then, aided by Athenian, Phocian, Argive, and Locrian contingents, Amphitryon overcame the Teleboans and Taphians, and bestowed their islands on his allies, among them his uncle Heleius.

c. Meanwhile, Zeus, taking advantage of Amphitryon’s absence, impersonated him and, assuring Alcmene that her brothers were now avenged—since Amphitryon had indeed gained the required victory that very morning—lay with her all one night, to which he gave the length of three. For Hermes, at Zeus’s command, had ordered Helius to quench the solar fires, have the Hours unyoke his team, and spend the following day at home; because the procreation of so great a champion as Zeus had in mind could not be accomplished in haste. Helius obeyed, grumbling about the good old times, when day was day, and night was night; and when Cronus, the then Almighty God, did not leave his lawful wife and go off to Thebes on love adventures. Hermes next ordered the Moon to go slowly, and Sleep to make mankind so drowsy that no one would notice what was happening. Alcmene, wholly deceived, listened delightedly to Zeus’s account of the crushing defeat inflicted on Pterelaus at Oechalia, and sported innocently with her supposed husband for the whole thirty-six hours. On the next day, when Amphitryon returned, eloquent of victory and of his passion for her, Alcmcne did not welcome him to the marriage couch so rapturously as he had hoped. ‘We never slept a wink last night,’ she complained. ‘And surely you do not expect me to listen twice to the story of your exploits?’ Amphitryon, unable to understand these remarks, consulted the seer Teiresias, who told him that he had been cuckolded by Zeus; and thereafter he never dared sleep with Alcmene again, for fear of incurring divine jealousy.

d. Nine months later, on Olympus, Zeus happened to boast that he had fathered a son, now at the point of birth, who would be called Heracles, which means ‘Glory of Hera’, and rule the noble House of Perseus. Hera thereupon made him promise that any prince born before nightfell to the House of Perseus should be High King. When Zeus swore an unbreakable oath to this effect, Hera went at once to Mycenae, where she hastened the pangs of Nicippe, wife of King Sthenelus. She then hurried to Thebes, and squatted cross-legged at Alcmene’s door, with her clothing tied into knots, and her fingers locked together; by which means she delayed the birth of Heracles, until Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, a seven-months child, already lay in his cradle. When Heracles appeared, one hour too late, he was found to have a twin named Iphicles, Amphitryon’s son and the younger by a night. But some say that Heracles, not Iphicles, was the younger by a night; and others, that the twins were begotten on the same night, and born together, and that Father Zeus divinely illumined the birth chamber. At first, Heracles was called Alcaeus, or Palaemon.

e. When Hera returned to Olympus, and calmly boasted of her success in keeping Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, from Alcmene’s door, Zeus fell into a towering rage; seizing his eldest daughter Ate, who had blinded him to Hera’s deceit, he took a mighty oath that she should never visit Olympus again. Whirled around his head by her golden hair, Ate was sent hurtling down to earth. Though Zeus could not go back on his word and allow Heracles to rule the House of Perseus, he persuaded Hera to agree that, after performing whatever twelve labours Eurystheus might set him, his son should become a god.

f. Now, unlike Zeus’s former human loves, from Niobe onwards, Alcmene had been selected not so much for his pleasure—though she surpassed all other women of her day in beauty, stateliness, and wisdom—as with a view to begetting a son powerful enough to protect both gods and men against destruction. Alcmene, sixteenth in descent from the same Niobe, was the last mortal woman with whom Zeus lay, for he saw no prospect of begetting a hero to equal Heracles by any other; and he honoured Alcmene so highly that, instead of roughly violating her, he took pains to disguise himself as Amphitryon and woo her with affectionate words and caresses. He knew Alcmene to be incorruptible and when, at dawn, he presented her with a Carchesian goblet, she accepted it without question as spoil won in the victory: Telebus’s legacy from his father Poseidon.

g. Some say that Hera did not herself hinder Alcmene’s travail, but sent witches to do so, and that Historis, daughter of Teiresias, deceived them by raising a cry of joy from the birth chamber—which is still shown at Thebes—so that they went away and allowed the child to be born. According to others, it was Eileithyia who hindered the travail on Hera’s behalf, and a faithful handmaiden of Alcmene’s, the yellow-haired Galanthis, or Galen, who left the birth chamber to announce, untruly, that Alcmene had been delivered. When Eileithyia sprang up in surprise, unclasping her fingers and uncrossing her knees, Heracles was born, and Galanthis laughed at the successful deception—which provoked Eileithyia to seize her by the hair and turn her into a weasel. Galanthis continued to frequent Alcmene’s house, but was punished by Hera for having lied: she was condemned in perpetuity to bring forth her young through the mouth. When the Thebans pay Heracles divine honours, they still offer preliminary sacrifices to Galanthis, who is also called Galinthias and described as Proetus’s daughter; saying that she was Heracles’s nurse and that he built her a sanctuary.

h. This Theban account is derided by the Athenians. They hold that Galanthis was a harlot, turned weasel by Hecate in punishment for practising unnatural lust, who when Hera unduly prolonged Alcmene’s labour, happened to run past and frighten her into delivery.

i. Heracles’s birthday is celebrated on the fourth day of every month; but some hold that he was born as the Sun entered the Tenth Sign; others that the Great Bear, swinging westward at midnight over Orion—which it does as the Sun quits the Twelfth Sign—looked down on him in his tenth month.




p. 263
The Youth Of Heracles

ALCMENE, fearing Hera’s jealousy, exposed her newly-born child in a field outside the walls of Thebes; and here, at Zeus’s instigation, Athene took Hera for a casual stroll. ‘Look, my dear! What a wonderfully robust child!’ said Athene, pretending surprise as she stopped to pick him up. ‘His mother must have been out of her mind to abandon him in a stony field! Come, you have milk. Give the poor little creature suck!’ Thoughtlessly Hera took him and bared her breast, at which Heracles drew with such force that she flung him down in pain, and a spurt of milk flew across the sky and became the Milky Way. ‘The young monster!’ Hera cried. But Heracles was now immortal, and Athene returned him to Alcmene with a smile, telling her to guard and rear him well. The Thebans still show the place where this trick was played on Hera; it is called ‘The Plain of Heracles’.

b. Some, however, say that Hermes carried the infant Heracles to Olympus; that Zeus himself laid him at Hera’s breast while she slept; and that the Milky Way was formed when she awoke and pushed him away, or when he greedily sucked more milk than his mouth would hold, and coughed it up. At all events, Hera was Heracles’s foster mother, if only for a short while; and the Thebans therefore style him her son, and say that he had been Alcaeus before she gave him suck, but was renamed in her honour.

c. One evening, when Heracles had reached the age of eight or ten months or, as others say, one year, and was still unweaned, Alcmene having washed and suckled her twins, laid them to rest under a lamb-fleece coverlet, on the broad brazen shield which Amphitryon had won from Pterelaus. At midnight, Hera sent two prodigious azure-scaled serpents to Amphitryon’s house, with strict orders to destroy Heracles. The gates opened as they approached; they glided through, and over the marble floors to the nursery—their eyes shooting flames, and poison dripping from their fangs.

d. The twins awoke, to see the serpents writhed above them, with darting, forked tongues; for Zeus again divinely illumined the chamber. Iphicles screamed, kicked off the coverlet and, in an attempt to escape, rolled from the shield to the floor. His frightened cries, and the strange light shining under the nursery door, roused Alcmene. ‘Up with you, Amphitryon!’ she cried. Without waiting to put on his sandals, Amphitryon leaped from the cedar-wood bed, seized his sword which hung close by on the wall, and drew it from its polished sheath. At that moment the light in the nursery went out. Shouting to his drowsy slaves for lamps and torches, Amphitryon rushed in; and Heracles, who had not uttered so much as a whimper, proudly displayed the serpents, which he was in the act of strangling, one in either hand. As they died, he laughed, bounced joyfully up and down, and threw them at Amphitryon’s feet.

e. While Alcmene comforted the terror-stricken Iphicles, Amphitryon spread the coverlet over Heracles again, and returned to bed. At dawn, when the cock had crowed three times, Alcmene summoned the aged Teiresias and told him of the prodigy. Teiresias, after foretelling Heracles’s future glories, advised her to strew a broad hearth with dry faggots of gorse, thorn and brambles, and burn the serpents upon them at midnight. In the morning, a maid-servant must collect their ashes, take them to the rock where the Sphinx had perched, scatter them to the winds, and run away without looking back. On her return, the palace must be purged with fumes of sulphur and salted spring water; and its roof crowned with wild olive. finally, a boar must be sacrificed at Zeus’s high altar. All this Alcmene did. But some hold that the serpents were harmless, and placed in the cradle by Amphitryon himself; he had wished to discover which of the twins was his son, and now he knew f.. When Heracles ceased to be a child, Amphitryon taught him how to drive a chariot, and how to turn corners without grazing the goal. Castor gave him fencing lessons, instructed him in weapon drill, in cavalry and infantry tactics, and in the rudiments of strategy. One of Hermes’s sons became his boxing teacher—it was either Autolycus, or else Harpalycus, who had so grim a look when fighting that none dared face him. Eurytus taught him archery; or it may have been the Scythian Teutarus, one of Amphitryon’s herdsmen, or even Apollo. But Heracles surpassed all archers ever born, even his companion Alcon, father of Phalerus the Argonaut, who could shoot through a succession of rings set on the helmets of soldiers standing in file, and could cleave arrows held up on the points of swords or lances. Once, when Alcon’s son was attacked by a serpent, which wound its coils about him, Alcon shot with such skill as to wound it mortally without hurting the boy.

g. Eumolpus taught Heracles how to sing and play the lyre; while Linus, son of the River-god Ismenius, introduced him to the study of literature. Once, when Eumolpus was absent, Linus gave the lyre lessons as well; but Heracles, refusing to change the principles in which he had been grounded by Eumolpus, and being beaten for his stubbornness, killed Linus with a blow of the lyre. At his trial for murder, Heracles quoted a law of Rhadamanthys, which justified forcible resistance to an aggressor, and thus secured his own acquittal. Nevertheless Amphitryon, fearing that the boy might commit further crimes of violence, sent him away to a cattle ranch, where he remained until his eighteenth year, outstripping his contemporaries in height, strength, and courage. Here he was chosen to be a laurel-bearer of Ismenian Apollo; and the Thebans still preserve the tripod which Amphitryon dedicated for him on this occasion. It is not known who taught Heracles astronomy and philosophy, yet he was learned in both these subjects.

h. His height is usually given as four cubits. Since, however, he stepped out the Olympian stadium, making it six hundred feet long, and since later Greek stadia are also nominally six hundred feet long, but considerably shorter than the Olympic, the sage Pythagoras decided that the length of Heracles’s stride, and consequently his stature, must have been in the same ratio to the stride and stature of other men, as the length of the Olympic stadium is to that of other stadia. This calculation made him four cubits and one foot high—yet some hold that he was not above average stature.

i. Heracles’s eyes flashed fire, and he had an unerring aim, both with javelin and arrow. He ate sparingly at noon; for supper his favourite food was roast meat and Doric barley-cakes, of which he ate sufficient (if that is credible) to have made a hired labourer grunt ‘enough!’ His tunic was short-skirted and neat; and he preferred a night under the stars to one spent indoors. A profound knowledge of augury led him especially to welcome the appearance of vultures, whenever he was about to undertake a new Labour. ‘Vultures’, he would say, ‘are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.’

j. Heracles claimed never to have picked a quarrel, but always to have given aggressors the same treatment as they intended for him. One Termerus used to kill travellers by challenging them to a butting match; Heracles’s skull proved the stronger, and he crushed Termerus’s head as though it had been an egg. Heracles was, however, naturally courteous, and the first mortal who freely fielded the enemy their dead for burial.




p. 266
The Daughters of Thespius

IN his eighteenth year, Heracles left the cattle ranch and set out to destroy the lion of Cithaeron, which was havocking the herds of Amphitryon and his neighbour, King Thespius, also called Thestius, the Athenian Erechtheid. The lion had another lair on Mount Helicon, at the foot of which stands the city of Thespiae. Helicon has always been a gay mountain: the Thespians celebrate an ancient festival on its summit in honour of the Muses, and play amorous games at its foot around the statue of Eros, their patron.

b. King Thespius had fifty daughters by his wife Megamede, daughter of Arneus, as gay as any in Thespiae. Fearing that they might make unsuitable matches, he determined that every one of them should have a child by Heracles, who was now engaged all day in hunting the lion; for Heracles lodged at Thespiae for fifty nights running. ‘You may have my eldest daughter Procris as your bed-fellow,’ Thespius told him hospitably. But each night another of his daughters visited Heracles, until he had lain with every one. Some say, however, that he enjoyed them all in a single night, except one, who declined his embraces and remained a virgin until her death, serving as his priestess in the shrine at Thespiae: for to this day the Thespian priestess is required to be chaste. But he had begotten fifty-one sons on her sisters: Procris, the eldest, bearing him the twins Antileon and Hippeus; and the youngest sister, another pair.

c. Having at last tracked down the lion, and despatched it with an untrimmed club cut from a wild-olive tree which he uprooted on Helicon, Heracles dressed himself in its pelt and wore the gaping jaws for a helmet. Some however say that he wore the pelt of the Nemean Lion; or of yet another beast, which he killed at Teumessus near Thebes; and that it was Alcathous who accounted for the lion of Cithaeron.








p. 267
Erginus

SOME years before these events, during Poseidon’s festival at Onchestus, a trifling incident vexed the Thebans, whereupon Menoeceus’s charioteer flung a stone which mortally wounded the Minyan King Clymenus. Clymenus was carried back, dying, to Orchomenus where, with his last breath, he charged his sons to avenge him. The eldest of these, Erginus, whose mother was the Boeotian princess Budeia, or Buzyge, mustered an army, marched against the Thebans, and utterly defeated them. By the terms of a treaty then confirmed with oaths, the Thebans would pay Erginus an annual tribute of one hundred cattle for twenty years in requital for Clymenus’s death.

b. Heracles, on his return from Helicon, fell in with the Minyan heralds as they went to collect the Theban tribute. When he enquired their business, they replied scornfully that they had come once more to remind the Thebans of Erginus’s clemency in not lopping off the ears, nose, and hands of every man in the city. ‘Does Erginus indeed hanker for such tribute?’ Heracles asked angrily. Then he maimed the heralds in the very manner that they had described, and sent them back to Orchomenus, with their bloody extremities tied on cords about their necks.

c. When Erginus instructed King Creon at Thebes to surrender the author of this outrage, he was willing enough to obey, because the Minyans had disarmed Thebes; nor could he hope for the friendly intervention of any neighbour, in so bad a cause. Yet Heracles persuaded his youthful comrades to strike a blow for freedom. Making a round of the city temples, he tore down all the shields, helmets, breastplates, greaves, swords, and spears, which had been dedicated there as spoils; and Athene, greatly admiring such resolution, girded these on him and on his friends. Thus Heracles armed every Theban of fighting age, taught them the use of their weapons, and himself assumed command. An oracle promised him victory if the noblest-horn person in Thebes would take his own life. All eyes turned expectantly towards Antipoenus, a descendant of the Sown Men; but, when he grudged dying for the common good, his daughters Androcleia and Alcis gladly did so in his stead, and were afterwards honoured as heroines in the Temple of Famous Artemis.

d. Presently, the Minyans marched against Thebes, but Heracles ambushed them in a narrow pass, killing Erginus and the greater number of his captains. This victory, won almost single-handed, he exploited by making a sudden descent on Orchomenus, where he battered down the gates, sacked the palace, and compelled the Minyans to pay a double tribute to Thebes. Heracles had also blocked up the two large tunnels built by the Minyans of old, through which the river Cephissus emptied into the sea; thus flooding the rich cornlands of the Copaic Plain. His object was to immobilize the cavalry of the Minyans, their most formidable arm, and carry war into the hills, where he could meet them on equal terms; but, being a friend of all mankind, he later unblocked these tunnels. The shrine of Heracles the Horsebinder at Thebes commemorates an incident in this campaign: Heracles came by night into the Minyan camp and, after stealing the chariot horses, which he bound to trees a long way off, put the sleeping men to the sword. Unfortunately, Amphitryon, his foster-father, was killed in the fighting.

e. On his return to Thebes, Heracles dedicated an altar to Zeus the Preserver; a stone lion to Famous Artemis; and two stone images to Athene the Girder-on-of-Arms. Since the gods had not punished Heracles for his ill-treatment of Erginus’s heralds, the Thebans dared to honour him with a statue, called Heracles the Nose-docker.

f. According to another account, Erginus survived the Minyan defeat and was one of the Argonauts who brought back the Golden Fleece from Colchis. After many years spent in recovering his former prosperity, he found himself rich indeed, but old and childless. An oracle advising him to put a new shoe on the battered plough coulter, he married a young wife, who bore him Trophonius and Againeries, the renowned architects, and Azeus too.




p. 269
Madness Of Heracles

HERACLES’ defeat of the Minyans made him the most famous of heroes; and his reward was to marry King Creon’s eldest daughter Megara, or Megera, and be appointed protector of the city; while Iphicles married the youngest daughter. Some say that Heracles had two sons by Megara; others that he had three, four, or even eight. They are known as the Alcaids.

b. Heracles next vanquished Pyraechmus, King of the Euboeans, an ally of the Minyans, when he marched against Thebes; and created terror throughout Greece by ordering his body to be torn in two by colts and exposed unburied beside the river Heracleius, at a place called the Colts of Pyraechmus, which gives out a neighing echo whenever horses drink there.

c. Hera, vexed by Heracles’s excesses, drove him mad. He first attacked his beloved nephew Iolaus, Iphicles’s eldest son, who managed to escape his wild lunges; and then, mistaking six of his own children for enemies, shot them down, and flung their bodies into a fire, together with two other sons of Iphicles, by whose side they were performing martial exercises. The Thebans celebrate an annual festival in honour of these eight mail—clad victims. On the first day, sacrifices are offered and fires burn all night; on the second, funeral games are held and the winner is crowned with white myrtle. The celebrants grieve in memory of the brilliant futures that had been planned for Heracles’s sons. One was to have ruled Argos, occupying Eurystheus’s palace, and Heracles had thrown his lion pelt over his shoulders; another was to have been king of Thebes, and in his right hand Heracles had set the mace of defence, Daedalus’s deceitful gift; a third was promised Oechalia, which Heracles afterwards laid waste; and the choicest brides had been chosen for them all—alliances with Athens, Thebes, and Sparta. So dearly did Heracles love these sons that many deny now his guilt, preferring to believe that they were treacherously slain by his guests: by Lycus, perhaps, or as Socrates has suggested, by Augeias.

d. When Heracles recovered his sanity, he shut himself up in a dark chamber for some days, avoiding all human intercourse and then, after purification by King Thespius, went to Delphi, to enquire what he should do. The Pythoness, addressing him for the first time as Heracles, rather than Palaemon, advised him to reside at Tiryns; to serve Eurystheus for twelve years; and to perform whatever Labours might be set him, in payment for which he would be rewarded with immortality. At this, Heracles felt into deep despair, loathing to serve a man whom he knew to be far inferior to himself, yet afraid to oppose his father Zeus. Many friends came to solace him in his distress; and, finally, when the passage of time had somewhat alleviated his pain, he placed himself at Eurystheus’s disposal.

e. Some, however, hold that it was not until his return from Tartarus that Heracles went mad and killed the children; that he killed Megara too; and that the Pythoness then told him: ‘You shall no longer be called Palaemon! Phoebus Apollo names you Heracles, since from Hera you shall have undying fame among men!’—as though he had done Hera a great service. Others say that Heracles was Eurystheus’s lover, and performed the Twelve Labours for his gratification; others again, that he undertook to perform them only if Eurystheus would annul the sentence of banishment passed on Amphitryon.

f. It has been said that when Heracles set forth on his Labours, Hermes gave him a sword, Apollo a bow and smooth-shafted arrows, leathered with eagle feathers; Hephaestus a golden breast-plate; and Athene a robe. Or that Athene gave him the breast-plate, but Hephaestus bronze greaves and an adamantine helmet. Athene and Hephaestus, it is added, rivalised with one another throughout in benefiting Heracles: she gave him enjoyment of peaceful pleasures; he, protection from the dangers of war. The gift of Poseidon was a team of horses; that of Zeus, a magnificent and unbreakable shield. Many were the stories worked on this shield in enamel, ivory, electrum, gold, and lapis lazuli; moreover, twelve serpents’ heads carved about the boss dashed their jaws whenever Heracles went into battle, and terrified his opponents. The truth, however, is that Heracles scorned armour and, after his first Labour, seldom carried even a spear, relying rather on his club, bow and arrows. He had little use for the bronze-tipped club which Hephaestus gave him, preferring to cut his own from wild-olive: first on Helicon, next at Nemea. This second club he later replaced with a third, also cut from wild-olive, by the shores of the Saronic Sea: the club which, on his visit to Troezen, he leaned against the image of Hermes. It struck root, sprouted, and is now a stately tree.

g. His nephew Iolaus shared in the Labours as his charioteer, or shield-bearer.




p. 271
The First Labour: The Nemean Lion

THE First Labour which Eurystheus imposed on Heracles, when he came to reside at Tiryns, was to kill and flay the Nemean, or Cleonaean lion, an enormous beast with a pelt proof against iron, bronze, and stone.

b. Although some call this lion the offspring of Typhon, or of the Chimaera and the Dog Orthrus, others say that Selene bore it with a fearful shudder and dropped it to earth on Mount Tretus near Nemea, beside a two-mouthed cave; and that, in punishment for an unfulfilled sacrifice, she set it to prey upon her own people, the chief sufferers being the Bambinaeaus.

c. Still others say that, at Hera’s desire, Selene created the lion from sea foam enclosed in a large ark; and that Iris, binding it with her girdle, carried it to the Nemean mountains. These were named after a daughter of Asopus, or of Zeus and Selene; and the lion’s cave is still shown about two miles from the city of Nemea.

d. Arriving at Cleonae, between Corinth and Argos, Heracles lodged in the house of a day—labourer, or shepherd, named Molorchus, whose son the lion had killed. When Molorchus was about to offer a ram in propitiation of Hera, Heracles restrained him. ‘Wait thirty days,’ he said. ‘If I return safely, sacrifice to Saviour Zeus; if I do not, sacrifice to me as a hero.

e. Heracles reached Nemea at midday, but since the lion had depopulated the neighbourhood, he found no one to direct him; nor were any tracks to be seen. Having first searched Mount Apesas—so called after Apesantus, a shepherd whom the lion had killed; though some say that Apesantus was a son of Acrisius, who died of a snake-bite in his heel—Heracles visited Mount Tretus, and presently descried the lion coming back to its lair, bespattered with blood from the day’s slaughter. He shot a flight of arrows at it, but they rebounded harmlessly from the thick pelt, and the lion licked its chops, yawning. Next, he used his sword, which bent as though made of lead; finally he heaved up his club and dealt the lion such a blow on the muzzle that it entered its double-mouthed cave, shaking its head—not for pain, however, but because of the singing in its ears. Heracles, with a rueful glance at his shattered club, then netted one entrance of the cave, and went in by the other. Aware now that the monster was proof against all weapons, he began to wrestle with it. The lion bit off one of his fingers; but, holding its head in chancery, Heracles squeezed hard until it choked to death.

f. Carrying the carcass on his shoulders, Heracles returned to Cleonae, where he arrived on the thirtieth day, and found Molorchus on the point of offering him a heroic sacrifice; instead, they sacrificed together to Saviour Zeus. When this had been done, Heracles cut himself a new club and, after making several alterations in the Nemean Games hitherto celebrated in honour of Opheltes, and rededicating them to Zeus, took the lion’s carcass to Mycenae. Eurystheus, amazed and terrified, forbade him ever again to enter the city; in future he was to display the fruits of his Labours outside the gates.

g. For a while, Heracles was at a loss how to flay the lion, until by divine inspiration, he thought of employing its own razor-sharp claws, and soon could wear the invulnerable pelt as armour, arid the head as a helmet. Meanwhile, Eurystheus ordered his smiths to forge him a brazen urn, which he buried beneath the earth. Henceforth, whenever the approach of Heracles was signalled, he took refuge in it and sent his orders by a herald—a son of Pelops, named Copreus, whom he had purified for murder.

h. The honours received by Heracles from the city of Nemea in recognition of this feat, he later ceded to his devoted allies of Cleonae, who fought at his side in the Elean War, and fell to the number of three hundred and sixty. As for Molorchus, he founded the near-by city of Molorchia, and planted the Nemean Wood, where the Nemean Games are now held.

i. Heracles was not the only man to strangle a lion in those days. The same feat was accomplished by his friend Phylius as the first of three love-tasks imposed on him by Cyenus, a son of Apollo by Hyria. Phylius had also to catch alive several monstrous man-eating birds, not unlike vultures, and after wrestling with a fierce bull, lead it to the altar of Zeus. When all three tasks had been accomplished, Cyenus further demanded an ox which Phylius had won as a prize at certain funeral games. Heracles advised Phylius to refuse this and press for a settlement of his claim with Cyenus who, in desperation, leaped into a lake; thereafter called the Cyenean lake. His mother Hyria followed him to his death, and both were transformed into swans.




p. 273
The Second Labour: The Lernaean Hydra

THE Second Labour ordered by Eurystheus was the destruction of the Lernaean Hydra, a monster born to Typhon and Echidne, and reared by Hera as a menace to Heracles.

b. Lerna stands beside the sea, some five miles from the city of Argos. To the west rises Mount Pontinus, with its sacred grove of plane-trees stretching down to the sea. In this grove, bounded on one flank by the river Pontinus—beside which Danaus dedicated a shrine to Athene—and on the other by the river Amymone, stand images of Demeter, Dionysus the Saviour, and Prosymne, one of Hera’s nurses; and, on the shore, a stone image of Aphrodite, dedicated by the Danaids. Every year, secret nocturnal rites are held at Lerna in honour of Dionysus, who descended to Tartarus at this point when he went to fetch Semele; and, not far off, the Mysteries of Lernaean Demeter are celebrated in an enclosure which marks the place where Hades and Persephone also descended to Tartarus.

c. This fertile and holy district was once terrorized by the Hydra, which had its lair beneath a plane-tree at the seven-fold source of the river Amymone and haunted the unfathomable Lernaean swamp near by—the Emperor Nero recently tried to sound it, and failed—the grave of many an incautious traveller. The Hydra had a prodigious dog-like body, and eight or nine snaky heads, one of them immortal; but some credit it with fifty, or one hundred, or even ten thousand heads. At all events, it was so venomous that its very breath, or the smell of its tracks, could destroy life.

d. Athene had pondered how Heracles might best kill this monster and, when he reached Lerna, driven there in his chariot by Iolaus, she pointed out the Hydra’s lair to him. On her advice, he forced the Hydra to emerge by pelting it with burning arrows, and then held his breath while he caught hold of it. But the monster twined around his feet, in an endeavour to trip him up. In vain did he batter at its heads with his club: no sooner was one crushed, than two or three more grew in its place.

e. An enormous crab scuttered from the swamp to aid the Hydra, and nipped Heracles’s foot; furiously crushing its shell, he shouted to Iolaus for assistance. Iolaus set one corner of the grove alight and then, to prevent the Hydra from sprouting new heads, seared their roots with blazing branches; thus the flow of blood was checked.

f. Now using a sword, or a golden falchion, Heracles severed the immortal head, part of which was of gold, and buried it, still hissing, under a heavy rock beside the road to Elaeus. The carcass he disembowelled, and dipped his arrows in the gall. Henceforth, the least wound from one of them was invariably fatal.

g. In reward for the crab’s services, Hera set its image among the twelve signs of the Zodiac; and Eurystheus would not count this Labour as duly accomplished, because Iolaus had supplied the firebrands.




p. 275
The Third Labour: The Ceryneian Hind

HERACLES’ Third Labour was to capture the Ceryneian Hind, and bring her alive from Oenoe to Mycenae. This swift, dappled creature had bronze hooves and golden horns like a stag, so that some call her a stag. She was sacred to Artemis who, when only a child, saw five hinds, larger than bulls, grazing on the banks of the dark-pebbled Thessalian river Anaurus at the foot of the Parrhasian Mountains; the sun twinkled on their horns. Running in pursuit, she caught four of them, one after the other, with her own hands, and harnessed them to her chariot; the fifth fled across the river Celadon to the Ceryneian Hill, as Hera intended, already having Heracles’s Labours in mind. According to another account, this hind was a masterless monster which used to ravage the fields, and which Heracles, after a severe struggle, sacrificed to Artemis on the summit of Mount Artemisium.

b. Loth either to kill or wound the hind, Heracles performed this Labour without exerting the least force. He hunted her tirelessly for one whole year, his chase taking him as far as Istria and the Land of the Hyperboreans. When, exhausted at last, she took refuge on Mount Artemisium, and thence descended to the river Ladon, Heracles pinned her forelegs together with an arrow, which passed between bone and sinew, drawing no blood. He then caught her, laid her across his shoulders, and hastened through Arcadia to Mycenae. Some, however, say that he used nets; or followed the hind’s track until he found her asleep underneath a tree. Artemis came to meet Heracles, rebuking him for having ill-used her holy beast, but he pleaded necessity, and put the blame on Eurystheus. Her anger was thus appeased, and she let him carry the hind alive to Mycenae.

c. Another version of the story is that this hind was one which Taygete the Pleiad, Alcyone’s sister, had dedicated to Artemis in gratitude for being temporarily disguised as a hind and thus enabled to elude Zeus’s embraces. Nevertheless, Zeus could not long be deceived, and begot Lacedaemon on her; whereupon she hanged herself on the summit of Mount Amyclaeus, thereafter called Mount Taygetus. Taygete’s niece and namesake married Lacedaemon and bore him Himerus, whom Aphrodite caused to deflower his sister Cleodice unwittingly, on a night of promiscuous revel. Next day, learning what he had done, Himerus leaped into the river, now sometimes known by his name, and was seen no more; but oftener it is called the Eurotas, because Lacedaemon’s predecessor, King Eurotas, having suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of the Athenians—he would not wait for the full moon before giving battle—drowned himself in its waters. Eurotas, son of Myles, the inventor of water mills, was Amyclas’s father, and grandfather both of Hyacinthus and of Eurydice, who married Acrisius.




p. 276
The Fourth Labour: The Erymanthian Boar

THE Fourth Labour imposed on Heracles was to capture alive the Erymanthian Boar: a fierce, enormous beast which haunted the cypress-covered slopes of Mount Erymanthus, and the thickets of Arcadian Mount Lampeia; and ravaged the country around Psophis. Mount Erymanthus takes its name from a son of Apollo, whom Aphrodite blinded because he had seen her bathing; Apollo in revenge turned himself into a boar and killed her lover Adonis. Yet the mountain is sacred to Artemis.

b. Heracles, passing through Pholoë on his way to Erymanthus where he killed one Saurus, a cruel bandit—was entertained by the Centaur Pholus, whom one of the ash-nymphs bore to Silenus. Pholus set roast meat before Heracles, but himself preferred the raw, and dared not open the Centaurs’ communal wine jar until Heracles reminded him that it was the very jar which, four generations earlier, Dionysus had left in the cave against this very occasion. The Centaurs grew angry when they smelt the strong wine. Armed with great rocks, up-rooted fir-trees, firebrands, and butchers’ axes, they made a rush at Pholus’s cave. While Pholus bid in terror, Heracles boldly repelled Ancius and Agrius, his first two assailants, with a volley of firebrands. Nephele, the Centaurs’ cloudy grandmother, then poured down a smart shower of rain, which loosened Heracles’s bow-string and made the ground slippery. However, he showed himself worthy of his former achievements, and killed several Centaurs, among them Oreus and Hylaeus. The rest fled as far as Malea, where they took refuge with Cheiron, their king, who had been driven from Mount Pelion by the Lapiths.

c. A parting arrow from Heracles’s bow passed through Elatus’s arm, and stuck quivering in Cheiron’s knee. Distressed at the accident to his old friend, Heracles drew out the arrow and though Cheiron himself supplied the ruineraries for dressing the wound, they were of no avail and he retired howling in agony to his cave; yet could not die, because he was immortal. Prometheus later offered to accept immortality in his stead, and Zeus approved this arrangement; but some say that Cheiron chose death not so much because of the pain he suffered as because he had grown weary of his long life.

d. The Centaurs now fled in various directions: some with Eurythis to Pholoë; some with Nessus to the river Evenus; some to Mount Malea; others to Sicily, where the Sirens destroyed them. Poseidon received the remainder at Eleusis, and hid them in a mountain. Among those whom Heracles later killed was Homadus the Arcadian, who tried to rape Eurystheus’s sister Alcyone; by thus nobly avenging insult offered to an enemy, Heracles won great fame.

e. Pholus, in the meantime, while burying his dead kinsmen, drew out one of Heracles’s arrows and examined it. ‘How can so robust creature have succumbed to a mere scratch?’ he wondered. But the arrow slipped from his fingers and, piercing his foot, killed him the and then. Heracles broke off the pursuit and returned to Pholoë, where he buried Pholus with unusual honours at the foot of the mountain which has taken his name. It was on this occasion that the river Anigrus acquired the foul smell which now clings to it from its very source on Mount Lapithus: because a Centaur named Pylenor, whom Heracles had winged with an arrow, fled and washed his wound there. Some, however, hold that Melampus had caused the stench some year before, by throwing into the Anigrus the foul objects used for purifying the daughters of Proetus.

f. Heracles now set off to chase the boar by the river Erymanthus. To take so savage a beast alive was a task of unusual difficulty; but he dislodged it from a thicket with loud halloos, drove it into a deep snow-drift, and sprang upon its back. He bound it with chains, and carried alive on his shoulders to Mycenae; but when he heard that the Argonauts were gathering for their voyage to Colchis, dropped the boar outside the market place and, instead of waiting for further orders from Eurystheus, who was hiding in his bronze jar, went off with Hylas to join the expedition. It is not known who despatched the captured boar, but its tusks are preserved in the temple of Apollo at Cumae.

g. According to some accounts, Cheiron was accidentally wounded by an arrow that pierced his left foot, while he and Pholus and the young Achilles were entertaining Heracles on Mount Pelion. After nine days, Zeus set Cheiron’s image among the stars as the Centaur. But others hold that the Centaur is Pholus, who was honoured by Zeus in this way because he excelled all men in the art of prophesying from entrails; The Bowman in the Zodiac is likewise a Centaur: one Crotus who lived on Mount Helicon, greatly beloved by his foster-sisters, the Muses.




p. 278
The Fifth Labour: The Stables Of Augeias

HERACLES’S Fifth Labour was to cleanse King Augeias’s filthy cattle yard in one day. Eurystheus gleefully pictured Heracles’s disgust having to load the dung into baskets and carry these away on his shoulders. Augeias, King of Elis, was the son of Helius, or Eleius, by Naupiadame, a daughter of Amphidamas; or, some say, by Iphinoë. Others call him the son of Poseidon. In flocks and herds he was the wealthiest man on earth: for, by a divine dispensation, his were immune against disease and inimitably fertile, nor did they ever miscarry. Although in almost every case they produced female offspring, he nevertheless had three hundred white-legged black bulls and two hundred red stud—bulls; besides twelve outstanding silvery-white bulls: sacred to his father Helius. These twelve hundreds defended his herds against marauding wild beasts from the wooded hills.

b. Now, the dung in Augeias’s cattle yard and sheep-folds had not been cleared away for many years, and though its poisonous stench not affect the beasts themselves, it spread a pestilence across the whole Peloponnese. Moreover, the valley pastures were so deep in dung that they could no longer be ploughed for grain.

c. Heracles hailed Augeias from afar, and undertook to cleanse the yard before nightfall in return for a tenth part of the cattle. Augeias laughed incredulously, and called Phyleus, his eldest son, to witness Heracles’ offer. ‘Swear to accomplish the task before nightfall,’ Phyleus demanded. The oath which Heracles now took by his father’s name the first and last one he ever swore. Augeias likewise took an oath to keep his side of the bargain. At this moment, Phaëthon, the leader of the twelve white bulls, charged at Heracles, mistaking him for a lion; whereupon he seized the bull’s left horn, forced its neck downwards, and floored it by main strength.

d. On the advice of Menedemus the Elean, and aided by Iolaus, Heracles first breached the wall of the yard in two places, and next diverted the neighbouring rivers Alpheus and Peneius, or Menius, so that their streams rushed through the yard, swept it clean and then went on to cleanse the sheep-folds and the valley pastures. Thus Heracles accomplished this Labour in one day, restoring the land to health, and not soiling so much as his little finger. But Augeias, on being informed by Copreus that Heracles had already been under orders from Eurystheus to cleanse the cattle yards, refused to pay the reward and even dared deny that he and Heracles had struck a bargain.

e. Heracles suggested that the case be submitted to arbitration; yet when the judges were seated, and Phyleus, subpoenaed by Heracles, testified to the truth, Augeias sprang up in a rage and banished them both from Elis, asserting that he had been tricked by Heracles, since the river-gods, not he, had done the work. To make matters even worse, Eurystheus refused to count this Labour as one of the ten, because Heracles had been in Augeias’s hire.

f. Phyleus then went to Dulichium; and Heracles to the court of Dexamenus, King of Olenus, whose daughter Mnesimache he later rescued from the Centaur Eurytion.




p. 279
The Sixth Labour: The Stymphalian Birds

HERACLES’S Sixth Labour was to remove the countless brazen-beaked, brazen-clawed, brazen-winged, man-eating birds, sacred to Ares which, frightened by the wolves of Wolves’ Ravine on the Orchomenan Road, had flocked to the Stymphalian Marsh. Here they bred and waded beside the river of the same name, occasionally taking to the air in great flocks, to kill men and beasts by discharging a shower of brazen feathers and at the same time muting a poisonous excrement, which blighted the crops.

b. On arrival at the marsh, which lay surrounded by dense woods, Heracles found himself unable to drive away the birds with his arrows; they were too numerous. Moreover, the marsh seemed neither solid enough to support a man walking, nor liquid enough for the use of a boat. As Heracles paused irresolutely on the bank, Athene gave him a pair of brazen castanets, made by Hephaestus; or it may have been a rattle. Standing on a spur of Mount Cyllene, which overlooks the marsh, Heracles clacked the castanets, or shook the rattle, raising such a din that the birds soared up in one great flock, mad with terror. He shot down scores of them as they flew off to the Isle of Ares in the Black Sea, where they were afterwards found by the Argonauts; some say that Heracles was with the Argonauts at the time, and killed many more of the birds.

c. Stymphalian birds are the size of cranes, and closely resemble ibises, except that their beaks can pierce a metal breast-plate, and are not hooked. They also breed in the Arabian Desert, and there cause more trouble even than lions or leopards by flying at travellers’ breasts and transfixing them. Arabian hunters have learned to wear protective cuirasses of plaited bark, which entangle those deadly beaks and enable them to seize and wring the necks of their assailants. It may be that a flock of these birds migrated from Arabia to Stymphalus, and gave their name to the whole breed.

d. According to some accounts, the so-called Stymphalian Birds were women: daughters of Stymphalus and Ornis, whom Heracles killed because they refused him hospitality. At Stymphalus, in the ancient temple of Stymphalian Artemis, images of these birds are hung from the roof, and behind the building stand statues of maidens with birds’ legs. Here also Temenus, a son of Pelasgus, founded three shrines in Hera’s honour: in the first she was worshipped as Child, because Temenus had reared her; in the second as Bride, because she had married Zeus; in the third as Widow, because she had repudiated Zeus and retired to Stymphalus.




p. 281
The Seventh Labour: The Cretan Bull

EURYSTHEUS ordered Heracles, as his Seventh Labour, to capture the Cretan Bull; but it is much disputed whether this was the bull sent by Zeus, which ferried Europe across to Crete, or the one, withheld by Minos from sacrifice to Poseidon, which sired the Minotaur on Pasiphaë. At this time it was ravaging Crete, especially the region watered by the river Tethris, rooting up crops and levelling orchard walls.

b. When Heracles sailed to Crete, Minos offered him every assistance in his power, but he preferred to capture the bull single-handed, though it belched scorching flames. After a long struggle, he brought the monster across to Mycenae, where Eurystheus, dedicating it to Hera, set it free. Hera however, loathing a gift which redounded to Heracles’s glory, drove the bull first to Sparta, and then back through Arcadia and across the Isthmus to Attic Marathon, whence Theseus later dragged it to Athens as a sacrifice to Athene.

c. Nevertheless, many still deny the identity of the Cretan and Marathonian bulls.




p. 282
The Eighth Labour: The Mares Of Diomedes

EURYSTHEUS ordered Heracles, as his Eighth Labour, to capture the four savage mares of Thracian King Diomedes—it is disputed whether he was the son of Ares and Cyrene, or born of an incestuous relationship between Asteria and her father Atlas—who ruled the warlike Bistones, and whose stables, at the now vanished city of Tirida, were the terror of Thrace. Diomedes kept the mares tethered with iron chains to bronze mangers, and fed them on the flesh of his unsuspecting guests. One version of the story makes them stallions, not mares, and names them Podargus, Lampon, Xanthus, and Deinus.

b. With a number of volunteers, Heracles set sail for Thrace, visiting his friend King Admetus of Pherae on the way. Arrived at Tirida, he overpowered Diomedes’s grooms and drove the mares down to the sea, where he left them on a knoll in charge of his mignon Abderus, and then turned to repel the Bistones as they rushed in pursuit. His party being outnumbered, he overcame them by ingeniously cutting a channel which caused the sea to flood the low-lying plain; when they turned to run, he pursued them, stunned Diomedes with his club, dragged his body around the lake that had now formed, and set it before his own mares, which tore at the still living flesh. Their hunger being now fully assuaged—for, while Heracles was away, they had also devoured Abderus—he mastered them without much trouble.

c. According to another account Abderus, though a native of Opus in Locris, was employed by Diomedes. Some call him the son of Hermes; and others the son of Heracles’s friend, Opian Menoetius, and thus brother to Patroclus who fell at Troy. After founding the city of Abdera beside Abderus’s tomb, Heracles took Diomedes’s chariot and harnessed the mares to it, though hitherto they had never known bit or bridle. He drove them speedily back across the mountains until he reached Mycenae, where Eurystheus dedicated them to Hera and set them free on Mount Olympus. They were eventually destroyed by wild beasts; yet it is claimed that their descendants survived until the Trojan War and even until the time of Alexander the Great. The ruins of Diomedes’s palace are shown at Cartera Come, and at Abdera athletic games are still celebrated in honour of Abderus—they include all the usual contests, except chariot-racing; which accounts for the story that Abderus was killed when the man-eating mares wrecked a chariot to which he had harnessed them.




p. 282
The Ninth Labour: Hippolyte’s Girdle

HERACLES’S Ninth Labour was to fetch for Eurystheus’s daughter Admete the golden girdle of Ares worn by the Amazonian queen Hippolyte. Taking one ship or, some say, nine, and a company of volunteers, among whom were Iolaus, Telamon of Aegina, Peleus of Iolcus and, according to some accounts, Theseus of Athens, Heracles set sail for the river Thermodon.

b. The Amazons were children of Ares by the Naiad Harmonia, born in the glens of Phrygian Acmonia; but some call their mother Aphrodite, or Otrere, daughter of Ares. At first they lived beside the river Amazon, now named after Tanais, a son of the Amazon Lysippe, who offended Aphrodite by his scorn of marriage and his devotion to war. In revenge, Aphrodite caused Tanais to fall in love with his mother; but, rather than yield to an incestuous passion, he flung himself into the river and drowned. To escape the reproaches of his ghost, Lysippe then led her daughters around the Black Sea coast, to a plain by the river Thermodon, which rises in the lofty Amazonian mountains. There they formed three tribes, each of which founded a city.

c. Then as now, the Amazons reckoned descent only through the mother, and Lysippe had laid it down that the men must perform all household tasks, while the women fought and governed. The arms and legs of infant boys were therefore broken to incapacitate them for war or travel. These unnatural women, whom the Scythians call Oeorpata, showed no regard for justice or decency, but were famous warriors, being the first to employ cavalry. They carried brazen bows and short shields shaped like a half moon; their helmets, clothes, and girdles were made from the skins of wild beasts. Lysippe, before she fell in battle, built the great city of Themiscyra, and defeated every tribe as far as the river Tanais. With the spoils of her campaigns she raised temples to Ares, and others to Artemis Tauropolus whose worship she established. Her descendants extended the Amazonian empire westward across the river Tanais, to Thrace; and again, on the southern coast, westward across the Thermodon to Phrygia. Three famous Amazonian queens, Marpesia, Lampado, and Hippo, seized a great part of Asia Minor and Syria, and founded the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyrene, and Myrine. Other Amazonian foundations are Thiba and Sinope.

d. At Ephesus, they set up an image of Artemis under a beech-tree, where Hippo offered sacrifices; after which her followers performed first a shield dance, and then a round dance, with rattling quivers, beating the ground in unison, to the accompaniment of pipes—for Athene had not yet invented the flute. The temple of Ephesian Artemis, later built around this image and unrivalled in magnificence even by that of Delphic Apollo, is included among the seven wonders of the world; two streams, both called Selenus, and flowing in opposite directions, surround it. It was on this expedition that the Amazons captured Troy, Priam being then still a child. But while detachments of the Amazonian army went home laden with vast quantities of spoil, the rest, staying to consolidate their power in Asia Minor, were driven out by an alliance of barbarian tribes, and lost their queen Marpesia.

e. By the time that Heracles came to visit the Amazons, they had all returned to the river Thermodon, and their three cities were ruled by Hippolyte, Antiope, and Melanippe. On his way, he put in at the island of Paros, famous for its marble, which King Rhadamanthys had bequeathed to one Alcaeus, a son of Androgeus; but four of Minos’s sons, Eurymedon, Chryses, Nephalion, and Philolaus, had also settled there. When a couple of Heracles’s crew, landing to fetch water, were murdered by Minos’s sons, he indignantly killed all four of them, and pressed the Parians so hard that they sent envoys offering, in requital for the dead sailors, any two men whom he might choose to be his slaves. Satisfied by this proposal, Heracles raised the siege, King Alcaeus and his brother Sthenelus, whom he took aboard his ship. Next, he sailed through the Hellespont and Bosphorus to Mariandyne in Mysia, where he was entertained by King Lycus the Paphlagonian, son of Dascylus and grandson of Tantalus. In return, he supported Lycus in a war with the Bebrycans, killing many, including their king Mygdon, brother of Amycus, and recovered much Paphlagonian land from the Bebrycans; this he restored to Lycus, who renamed it Heracleia in his honour. Later, Heracleia was colonized by Megarians ant Tanagrans on the advice of the Pythoness at Delphi, who told them to plant a colony beside the Black Sea, in a region dedicated to Heracles.

f. Arrived at the mouth of the river Thermodon, Heracles cast anchor in the harbour of Themiscyra, where Hippolyte paid him a visit and, attracted by his muscular body, offered him Ares’s girdle as a love gift. But Hera had meanwhile gone about, disguised in Amazon dress, spreading a rumour that these strangers planned to abduct Hippolyte; whereupon the incensed warrior-women mounted their horses and charged down on the ship. Heracles, suspecting treachery, killed Hippolyte off-hand, removed her girdle, seized her axe and other weapons, and prepared to defend himself. He killed each of the Amazon leaders in turn, putting their army to flight after great slaughter.

g. Some, however, say that Melanippe was ambushed, and ransomed by Hippolyte at the price of the girdle; or contrariwise. Or that Theseus captured Hippolyte, and presented her girdle to Heracles who, in return, allowed him to make Antiope his slave. Or that Hippolyte refused to give Heracles the girdle and that they fought a pitched battle; she was thrown off her horse, and he stood over her, club in hand, offering quarter, but she chose to die rather than yield. It is even said that the girdle belonged to a daughter of Briareus the Hundred-handed One.

h. On his return from Themiscyra, Heracles came again to Mariandyne, and competed in the funeral games of king Lycus’s brother Priolas, who had been killed by the Mysians, and for whom dirges are still sung. Heracles boxed against the Mariandynian champion Titias, knocked out all his teeth and killed him with a blow to the temple. In proof of his regret for this accident, he subdued the Mysians and the Phrygians on Dascylus’s behalf; but he also subdued the Bithynians, as far as the mouth of the river Rhebas and the summit of Mount Colone, and claimed their kingdom for himself. Pelops’s Paphlagonians voluntarily surrendered to him. However, no sooner had Heracles departed, than the Bebrycans, under Amycus, son of Poseidon, once more robbed Lycus of his land, extending their frontier to the river Hypius.

i. Sailing thence to Troy, Heracles rescued Hesione from a sea-monster; and continued his voyage to Thracian Aenus, where he was entertained by Poltys; and, just as he was putting to sea again, shot and killed on the Aenian beach Poltys’s insolent brother Sarpedon, a son of Poseidon. Next, he subjugated the Thracians who had settled in Thasos, and bestowed the island on the sons of Androgeus, whom he had carried off from Paros; and at Torone was challenged to a wrestling match by Polygonus and Telegonus, sons of Proteus, both of whom he killed.

j. Returning to Mycenae at last, Heracles handed the girdle to Eurystheus, who gave it to Admete. As for the other spoil taken from the Amazons: he presented their rich robes to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and Hippolyte’s axe to Queen Omphale, who included it among the sacred regalia of the Lydian kings. Eventually it was taken to a Carian temple of Labradian Zeus, and placed in the hand of his divine image.

k. Amazons are still to be found in Albania, near Colchis, having been driven there from Themiscyra at the same time as their neighbours, the Gargarensians. When they reached the safety of the Albanian mountains, the two peoples separated: the Amazons settling at the foot of the Caucasian Mountains, around the river Mermodas, and the Gargarensians immediately to the north. On an appointed day every spring, parties of young Amazons and young Gargarensians meet at the summit of the mountain which separates their territories and, after performing a joint sacrifice, spend two months together, enjoying promiscuous intercourse under the cover of night. As soon as an Amazon finds herself pregnant, she returns home. Whatever girl-children are born become Amazons, and the boys are sent to the Gargarensians who, because they have no means of ascertaining their paternity, distribute them by lot among their huts. In recent times, the Amazon queen Minythyia set out from her Albanian court to meet Alexander the Great in tiger-haunted Hyrcania; and there enjoyed his company for thirteen days, hoping to have offspring by him—but died childless soon afterwards.

l. These Amazons of the Black Sea must be distinguished from Dionysus’s Libyan allies who once inhabited Hespera, an island in Lake Tritonis which was so rich in fruit-bearing trees, sheep and goats, that they found no need to grow corn. After capturing all the cities in the island, except holy Mene, the home of the Ethiopian fish-eaters (who mine emeralds, rubies, topazes, and sard) they defeated the neighbouring Libyans and nomads, and founded the great city of Chersonesus, so called because it was built on a peninsula. From this base they attacked the Atlantians, the most civilized nation west of the Nile, whose capital is on the Atlantic island of Cerne. Myrine, the Amazonian queen, raised a force of thirty thousand cavalry and three thousand infantry. All of them carried bows with which, when retreating, they used to shoot accurately at their pursuers, and were armoured with the skins of the almost unbelievably large Libyan serpents.

m. Invading the land of the Atlantians, Myrine defeated them decisively and, crossing over to Cerne, captured the city; she then put every man to the sword, enslaved the women and children, and razed the city walls. When the remaining Atlantians agreed to surrender, she treated them fairly, made friends with them and, in compensation for their loss of Cerne, built the new city of Myrine, where she settled the captives and all others desirous of living there. Since the Atlantians now offered to pay her divine honours, Myrine protected them against the neighbouring tribe of Gorgons, of whom she killed a great many in a pitched battle, besides taking no less than three thousand prisoners. That night, however, while the Amazons were holding a victory banquet, the prisoners stole their swords and, at a signal, the main body of Gorgons who had rallied and hidden in an oak-wood, poured down from all sides to massacre Myrine’s followers.

n. Myrine contrived to escape—her dead lie buffed under three huge mounds, still called the Mounds of the Amazons—and, after traversing most of Libya, entered Egypt with a new army, befriended King Horus, the son of Isis, and passed on to the invasion of Arabia. Some hold that it was these Libyan Amazons, not those from the Black Sea, who conquered Asia Minor; and that Myrine, after selecting the most suitable sites in her new empire, founded a number of coastal cities, including Myrine, Gyme, Pitane, Palerie, and others farther inland. She also subdued several of the Aegean Islands, notably Lesbos, where she built the city of Mitylene, named after a sister who had shared in the campaign. While Myrine was still engaged in conquering the islands, a storm overtook her fleet; but the Mother of the Gods bore every ship safely to Samothrace, then uninhabited, which Myrine consecrated to her, founding altars and offering splendid sacrifices.

o. Myrine then crossed over to the Thracian mainland, where King Mopsus and his ally, the Scythian Sipylus, worsted her in fair fight, and she was killed. The Amazon army never recovered from this setback: defeated by the Thracians in frequent engagements, its remnants finally retired to Libya.




p. 287
The Tenth Labour: The Cattle Of Geryon

HERACLES’s Tenth Labour was to fetch the famous cattle of Geryon from Erytheia, an island near the Ocean stream, without either demand or payment. Geryon, a son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoë, a daughter the Titan Oceanus, was the King of Tartessus in Spain, and reputed the strongest man alive. He had been born with three heads, six hands and three bodies joined together at the waist. Geryon’s shambling cattle, beasts of marvellous beauty, were guarded by the herdsman Eurytion, son of Ares, and by the two-headed watchdog Orthrus, formerly Atlas’s property—born of Typhon and Echidne.

b. During his passage through Europe, Heracles destroyed many wild beasts and, when at last he reached Tartessus, erected a pair of pillars facing each other across the straits, one in Europe, one in Africa. Some hold that the two continents were formerly joined together, and that he cut a channel between them, or thrust the cliffs apart; others say that, on the contrary, he narrowed the existing straits to discourage the entry of whales and other sea-monsters.

c. Helius beamed down upon Heracles who, finding it impossible to work in such heat, strung his bow and let fly an arrow at the god. ‘Enough of that!’ cried Helius angrily. Heracles apologized for his ill-temper, and unstrung his bow at once. Not to be outdone in courtesy, Helius lent Heracles his golden goblet, shaped like a water-lily, in which he sailed to Erytheia; but the Titan Oceanus, to try him, made the goblet pitch violently upon the waves. Heracles again drew his bow, which frightened Oceanus into calming the sea. Another account is that Heracles sailed to Erytheia in a brazen urn, using his lion pelt as a sail.

d. On his arrival, he ascended Mount Abas. The dog Orthrus rushed at him, barking, but Heracles’s club struck him lifeless; and Eurytion, Geryon’s herdsman, hurrying to Orthrus’s aid, lied in the same manner. Heracles then proceeded to drive away the cattle. Menoetes, who was pasturing the cattle of Hades near by—but Heracles had left these untouched—took the news to Geryon. Challenged to battle, Heracles ran to Geryon’s flank and shot him sideways through all three bodies with a single arrow; but some say that he stood his ground and let loose a flight of three arrows. As Hera hastened to Geryon’s assistance, Heracles wounded her with an arrow in the right breast, and she fled. Thus he won the cattle, without either demand or payment, and embarked in the golden goblet, which he then sailed across to Tartessus and gratefully returned to Helius. From Geryon’s blood sprang a tree which, at the time of the Pleiades’ rising, bears stoneless cherry-like fruit. Geryon did not, however, die without issue: his daughter Erytheia became by Hermes the mother of Norax, who led a colony to Sardinia, even before the time of Hyllus, and there founded Nora, the oldest city in the island.

e. The whereabouts of Erytheia, also called Erythrea, or Erythria, is disputed. Though some describe it as an island beyond the Ocean stream, others place it off the coast of Lusitania. Still others identify it with the island of Leon, or with an islet near-by, on which the earliest city of Gades was built, and where the pasture is so rich that the milk yields no whey but only curds, and the cattle must be cupped every fifty days, lest they choke for excess of blood. This islet, sacred to Hera, is called either Erytheia, or Aphrodisias. Leon, the island on which present city of Gades stands, used to be called Cotinusa, from its olives, but the Phoenicians renamed it Gadira, or ‘Fenced City’. On western cape stands a temple of Cronus, and the city of Gades; on eastern, a temple of Heracles, remarkable for a spring which ebbs at flood tide, and flows at ebb tide; and Geryon lies buried in the city, equally famed for a secret tree that takes diverse forms.

f. According to another account, however, Geryon’s cattle were not pastured in any island, but on the mountain slopes of the farther part of Spain, confronting the Ocean; and ‘Geryon’ was a title of the renowned King Chrysaor, who ruled over the whole land, and whose three strong and courageous sons helped him in the defence of his kingdom, each leading an army recruited from warlike races. To confront these, Heracles assembled a large expedition in Crete, the birthplace of his father Zeus. Before setting out, he was splendidly honoured by Cretans and, in return, rid their island of bears, wolves, serpents, other noxious creatures, from which it is still immune. First, he sailed to Libya, where he killed Antaeus, slaughtered the wild beasts that infested the desert, and gave the country unsurpassed fertility. Then he visited Egypt, where he killed Busiris; then he marched westward across North Africa, annihilating the Gorgons and the Libyan Amazones, as he went, founded the city of Hecatompylus, now Capsa, in southern Numidia, and reached the Ocean near Gades. There he set up pillar on either side of the straits and, ferrying his army across to Spain, fought that the sons of Chrysaor, with their three armies, were encamped in some distance from one another. He conquered and killed them, in turn, and finally drove off Geryon’s famous herds, leaving government of Spain to the most worthy of the surviving inhabitants.

g. The Pillars of Heracles are usually identified with Mount Calpe in Europe, and Abyle, or Abilyx in Africa. Others make them the islets near Gades, of which the larger is sacred to Hera. All Spaniards and Libyans, however, take the word ‘Pillars’ literally, and place them in Gades, where brazen columns are consecrated to Heracles, eight cubits high and inscribed with the cost of their building; here sailors carry sacrifices whenever they return safely from a voyage. According to people of Gades themselves, the King of Tyre was ordered by oracle to found a colony near the Pillars of Heracles, and sent out three successive parties of exploration. The first party, thinking that the oracle had referred to Abyle and Calpe, landed inside the straits, where the city of Exitani now stands; the second sailed about two hundred miles beyond the straits, to an island sacred to Heracles, opposite the Spanish city of Onoba; but both were discouraged by unfavourable omens when they offered sacrifices, and returned home. The third party reached Gades, where they raised a temple to Heracles on the eastern cape and successfully founded the city of Gades on the western.

h. Some, however, deny that it was Heracles who set up these pillars, and assert that Abyle and Calpe were first named ‘The Pillars of Cronus’, and afterwards ‘The Pillars of Briareus’, a giant whose power extended thus far; but that, the memory of Briareus (also called Aegaeon) having faded, they were renamed in honour of Heracles, perhaps because the city of Tartessus, which stands only five miles from Calpe, was founded by him, and used to be known as Heracleia. Vast ancient walls and ship-sheds are still shown there. But it must be remembered that the earliest Heraclides had also been called Briareus. The number of Heracles’s Pillars is usually given as two; but some speak of three, or four. So—called Pillars of Heracles are also reported from the northern coast of Germany; from the Black Sea; from the western extremity of Gaul; and from India.

i. A temple of Heracles stands on the Sacred Promontory in Lusitania, the most westerly point of the world. Visitants are forbidden to enter the precinct by night, the time when the gods take up their abode in it. Perhaps when Heracles set up his pillars to mark the utmost limits of legitimate seafaring, this was the site he chose.

j. How he then drove the cattle to Mycenae is much disputed. Some say that he forced Abyle and Calpe into temporary union and went across the resultant bridge into Libya; but, according to a more probable account he passed through the territory of what is now Abdera, a Phoenician settlement, and then through Spain, leaving behind some of his followers as colonists. In the Pyrenees, he courted and buried the Bebrycan princess Pyrene, from whom this mountain range takes its name; the river Danube is said to have its source there, near a city also named in her honour. He then visited Gaul, where he abolished a barbarous native custom of killing strangers, and won so many hearts by his generous deeds that he was able to found a large city, to which he gave the name Alesia, or ‘Wandering’, in commemoration of his travels. The Gauls to this day honour Alesia as the hearth and mother-city of their whole land—it was unconquered until Caligula’s reign and claim descent from Heracles’s union with a tall princess named Galata, who chose him as her lover and bred that warlike people.

k. When Heracles was driving Geryon’s cattle through Liguria, two sons of Poseidon named Ialebion and Dercynus tried to steal them from him, and were both killed. At one stage of his battle with hostile Ligurian forces, Heracles ran out of arrows, and knelt down, in tears, wounded and exhausted. The ground being of soft mould, he could find no stones to throw at the enemy—Ligys, the brother of Ialebion, was their leader—until Zeus, pitying his tears, overshadowed the earth with a cloud, from which a shower of stones hailed down; and with these he put the Ligurians to flight. Zeus set among the stars an image of Heracles fighting the Ligurians, known as the constellation Engonasis. Another memorial of this battle survives on earth: namely the broad, circular plain lying between Marseilles and the mouths of the river Rhodane, about fifteen miles from the sea, called ‘The Stony Plain’, because it is strewn with stones the size of a man’s fist; brine springs are also found there.

l. In his passage over the Ligurian Alps, Heracles carved a road fit for his armies and baggage trains; he also broke up all robber bands that infested the pass, before entering what is now Cis-alpine Gaul and Etruria. Only after wandering down the whole coast of Italy, and crossing into Sicily, did it occur to him: ‘I have taken the wrong road!’ The Romans say that, on reaching the Albula—afterwards called the Tiber—he was welcomed by King Evander, an exile from Arcadia. At evening, he swam across, driving the cattle before him, and lay down to rest on a grassy bed. In a deep cave near by, lived a vast, hideous, three-headed shepherd named Cacus, a son of Hephaestus and Medusa, who was the dread and disgrace of the Aventine Forest, and puffed flames from each of his three mouths. Human skulls and arms hung nailed above the lintels of his cave, and the ground inside gleamed white with the bones of his victims. While Heracles slept, Cacus stole the two finest of his bulls; as well as four heifers, which he dragged backwards by their tails into his lair.

m. At the first streak of dawn, Heracles awoke, and at once noticed that the cattle were missing. After searching for them in vain, he was about to drive the remainder onward, when one of the stolen heifers mewed hungrily. Heracles traced the sound to the cave, but found the entrance barred by a rock which ten yoke of oxen could hardly have moved; nevertheless, he heaved it aside as though it had been a pebble and, undaunted by the smoky flames which Cacus was now belching, grappled with him and battered his face to pulp.

n. Aided by King Evander, Heracles then built an altar to Zeus, at which he sacrificed one of the recovered bulls, and afterwards made arrangements for his own worship. Yet the Romans tell this story in order to glorify themselves; the truth being that it was not Heracles who killed Cacus, and offered sacrifices to Zeus, but a gigantic herdsman named Garanus, or Recaranus, the ally of Heracles.

o. King Evander ruled rather by personal ascendancy than by force: he was particularly reverenced for the knowledge of letters which he had imbibed from his prophetic mother, the Arcadian nymph Nicostrate, or Themis; she was a daughter of the river Ladon, and though already married to Echenus, bore Evander to Hermes. Nicostrate persuaded Evander to murder his supposed father; and, when the Arcadians banished them both, went with him to Italy, accompanied by a body of Pelasgians. There, some sixty years before the Trojan War, they founded the small city of Pallantium, on the hill beside the river Tiber, later called Mount Palatine; the site having been Nicostrate’s choice; and soon there was no more powerful king than Evander in all Italy. Nicostrate, now called Carmenta, adapted the thirteen-consonant Pelasgian alphabet, which Cadmus had brought back from Egypt, to form the fifteen-consonant Latin one. But some assert that it was Heracles who taught Evander’s people the use of letters, which is why he shares an altar with the Muses.

p. According to the Romans, Heracles freed King Evander from the tribute owed to the Etruscans; killed King Faunus, whose custom was to sacrifice strangers at the altar of his father Hermes; and begot Latinus, the ancestor of the Latins, on Faunus’s widow, or daughter. But the Greeks hold that Latinus was a son of Circe by Odysseus. Heracles, at all events, suppressed the annual Cronian sacrifice of two men, who were flung into the river Tiber, and forced the Romans to use puppets instead; even now, in the month of May, when the moon is full, the chief Vestal Virgin, standing on the oaken-timbered Pons Sublicius, throws whitewashed images of old men, plaited from bulrushes, and called ‘Argives’, into the yellow stream. Heracles is also believed to have founded Pompeii and Herculaneum; to have fought giants on the Phlegraean Plain of Cumae; and to have built a causeway one mile long across the Lucrine Gulf, now called the Heracleian Road, down which he drove Geryon’s cattle.

q. It is further said that he lay down to rest near the frontier of Rhegium and Epizephyrian Locris and, being much disturbed by cicadas, begged the gods to silence them. His prayer was immediately granted; and cicadas have never been heard since on the Rhegian side of the river Alece, although they sing lustily on the Locrian side. One day a bull broke away from the herd and, plunging into the sea, swam over to Sicily. Heracles, going in pursuit, found it concealed among herds of Eryx, King of the Elymnians, a son of Aphrodite by Butes. Eryx, who was a wrestler and a boxer, challenged him to a fighting contest. Heracles accepted the challenge, on condition that Eryx’ stake his kingdom against the runaway bull, and won the first events; finally, in the wrestling match, he lifted Eryx high into the air and dashed him to the ground and killed him—which taught the Sicilians that not everyone born of a goddess is necessarily immortal. In this manner, Heracles won Eryx’s kingdom, which he left the inhabitants to enjoy until one of his own descendants should come to claim it.

r. Some say that Eryx—whose wrestling-ground is still shown—had a daughter named Psophis, who bore Heracles two sons: Echephron and Promachus. Having been reared in Erymanthus, they renamed it Psophis after their mother; and there built a shrine to Erycinian Aphrodite, of which today only the ruins remain. The hero-shrines of Echephron and Promachus have long since lost their importance, and Psophis is usually regarded as a daughter of Xanthus, the grandson of Arcas.

s. Continuing on his way through Sicily, Heracles came to a plain where now stands the city of Syracuse; there he offered sacrifice and instituted the annual festival beside the sacred chasm of Cyane, through which Hades snatched Core to the Underworld. To those who honoured Heracles in the Plain of Leontini, he left undying memorial of his visit. Close to the city of Agyrium, the hoof marks of his cattle has been found imprinted on a stony road, as though in wax; and, regarded as an intimation of his own immortality, Heracles accepted from inhabitants those divine honours which he had hitherto consistently refused. Then, in acknowledgement of their favours, he dug a lake of four furlongs in circumference outside the city walls, and established sanctuaries of Iolaus and Geryon.

t. Returning to Italy in search of another route to Greece, He drove his cattle up the eastern coast, to the Lacinian Promontory, where the ruler, King Lacinius, was afterwards able to boast that he had put Heracles to flight; this he did merely by building a temple to Hera, at the sight of which Heracles departed in disgust. Six miles farther on, Heracles accidentally killed one Croton, buried him with every honour, and prophesied that, in time to come, a great city would rise, called by his name. This prophecy Heracles made good after his deification: he appeared in a dream to one of his descendants, the Argive Myscelus, threatening him with terrible punishments if he did not lead a party of colonists to Sicily and found the city; and when the Argives were about to condemn Myscelus to death for defying their embargo on emigration, he miraculously turned every black voting-pebble into a white one.

u. Heracles then proposed to drive Geryon’s cattle through Istria into Epirus, and thence to the Peloponnese by way of the Isthmus. But at the head of the Adriatic Gulf Hera sent a gadfly, which stampeded the cows, driving them across Thrace and into the Scythian desert. There Heracles pursued them, and one cold, stormy night drew the lion pelt about him and fell fast asleep on a rocky hillside. When he awoke, he found that his chariot-mares, which he had unharnessed and put out to graze, were likewise missing. He wandered far and wide in search of them until he reached the wooded district called Hylaea, where a strange being, half woman, half serpent, shouted at him from a cave. She had his mares, she said, but would give them back to him only if he became her lover. Heracles agreed, though with a certain reluctance, and kissed her thrice; whereupon the serpent-tailed woman embraced him passionately, and when, at last, he was free to go, asked him: ‘What of the three sons whom I now carry in my womb? When they grow to manhood, shall I settle them here where I am mistress, or shall I send them to you?’

v. ‘When they grow up, watch carefully!’ Heracles replied. ‘And if ever one of them bends this bow—thus, as I now bend it—and girds himself with this belt’—thus, as I now gird myself—choose him as the ruler of your country.’ So saying, he gave her one of his two bows, and his girdle which had a golden goblet hanging from its clasp; then went on his way. She named her triplets Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The eldest two were unequal to the tasks that their father had set, and she drove them away; but Scythes succeeded in both and was allowed to remain, thus becoming the ancestor of all royal Scythian kings who, to this day, wear golden goblets on their girdles. Others, however, say that it was Zeus, not Heracles, who lay with the serpent-tailed woman, and that, when his three sons by her were still ruling the land, there fell from the sky four golden implements: a plough, a yoke, a battle axe, and a cup. Agathyrsus first ran to recover them, but as he came close, the gold flamed up and burned his hands. Gelonus was similarly rejected. However, when Scythes, the youngest, approached, the fire died down at once; whereupon he carried home the four golden treasures and the elder brothers agreed to yield him the kingdom.

w. Heracles, having recovered his mares and most of the strayed cattle, drove them back across the river Strymon, which he clammed with stones for the purpose, and encountered no further adventures until the giant herdsman Alcyoneus, having taken possession of the Corinthian Isthmus, hurled a rock at the army which once more followed Heracles, crushing no less than twelve chariots and double that number of horsemen. This was the same Alcyoneus who twice stole Helius’s sacred cattle: from Erytheia, and from the citadel of Corinth. He now ran forward, picked up the rock again, and this time hurled it at Heracles, who bandied it back with his club and so killed the giant; the very rock is still shown on the Isthmus.




p. 294
The Eleventh Labour: The Apples Of The Hesperides

HERACLES had performed these Ten Labours in the space of eight years and one month; but Eurystheus, discounting the Second and the Fifth, set him two more. The Eleventh Labour was to fetch fruit from the golden apple-tree, Mother Earth’s wedding gift to Hera, with which she had been so delighted that she planted it in her own divine garden. This garden lay on the slopes of Mount Atlas, where the panting chariot-horses of the Sun complete their journey, and where Atlas’s sheep and cattle, one thousand herds of each, wander over their undisputed pastures. When Hera found, one day, that Atlas’s daughters, the Hesperides, to whom she had entrusted the tree, were pilfering the apples, she set the ever-watchful dragon Ladon to coil around the tree as its guardian.

b. Some say that Ladon was the offspring of Typhon and Echidne; others, that he was the youngest-born of Ceto and Phorcys; others again, that he was a parthogenous son of Mother Earth. He had one hundred heads, and spoke with diverse tongues.

c. It is equally disputed whether the Hesperides lived on Mount Atlas in the Land of the Hyperboreans; or on Mount Atlas in Mauretania; or somewhere beyond the Ocean stream; or on two islands near the promontory called the Western Horn, which lies close to the Ethiopian Hesperiae, on the borders of Africa. Though the apples were Hera’s, Atlas took a gardener’s pride in them and, when Themis warned him: ‘One day long hence, Titan, your tree shall be stripped of its gold by a son of Zeus,’ Atlas, who had not then been punished with his terrible task of supporting the celestial globe upon his shoulders, built solid walls around the orchard, and expelled all strangers from his land; it may well have been he who set Ladon to guard the apples.

d. Heracles, not knowing in what direction the Garden of the Hesperides lay, marched through Illyria to the river Po, the home of the oracular sea-god Nereus. On the way he crossed the Echedorus, a small Macedonian stream, where Cycnus, the son of Ares and Pyrene, challenged him to a duel. Ares acted as Cycnus’s second, and manhailed the combatants, but Zeus hurled a thunderbolt between them and they broke off the fight. When at last Heracles came to the Po, the river-nymphs, daughters of Zeus and Themis, showed him Nereus asleep. He seized the hoary old sea-god and, clinging to him despite his many Protean changes, forced him to prophesy how the golden apples could be won. Some say, however, that Heracles went to Prometheus for this information.

e. Nereus had advised Heracles not to pluck the apples himself, but to employ Atlas as his agent, meanwhile relieving him of his fantastic burden; therefore, on arriving at the Garden of the Hesperides, he asked Atlas to do him this favour. Atlas would have undertaken almost any task for the sake of an hour’s respite, but he feared Ladon, whom Heracles thereupon killed with an arrow shot over the garden wall. Heracles now bent his back to receive the weight of the celestial globe, and Atlas walked away, returning presently with three apples plucked by his daughters. He found the sense of freedom delicious. ‘I will take these apples to Eurystheus myself without fail,’ he said, ‘if you hold up the heavens for a few months longer.’ Heracles pretended to agree but, having been warned by Nereus not to accept any such offer, begged Atlas to support the globe for only one moment more, while he put a pad on his head. Atlas, easily deceived, laid the apples on the ground and resumed his burden; whereupon Heracles picked them up and went away with an ironical farewell.

f. After some months Heracles brought the apples to Eurystheus, who handed them back to him; he then gave them to Athene, and she returned them to the nymphs, since it was unlawful that Hera’s property should pass from their hands. Feeling thirsty after this Labour, Heracles stamped his foot and made a stream of water gush out, which later saved the lives of the Argonauts when they were cast up high and dry on the Libyan desert. Meanwhile Hera, weeping for Ladon, set his image among the stars as the constellation of the Serpent.

g. Heracles did not return to Mycenae by a direct route. He first traversed Libya, whose King Antaeus, son of Poseidon and Mother Earth, was in the habit of forcing strangers to wrestle with him until they were exhausted, whereupon he killed them; for not only was he a strong and skilful athlete, but whenever he touched the earth, his strength revived. He saved the skulls of his victims to roof a temple of Poseidon. It is not known whether Heracles, who was determined to end this barbarous practice, challenged Antaeus, or was challenged by him. Antaeus, however, proved no easy victim, being a giant who lived in a cave beneath a towering cliff, where he feasted on the flesh of lions, and slept on the bare ground in order to conserve and increase his already colossal strength. Mother Earth, not yet sterile after her birth of the Giants, had conceived Antaeus in a Libyan cave, and found more reason to boast of him than even of her monstrous elder children, Typhon, Tityus, and Briareus. It would have gone ill with the Olympians if he had fought against them on the Plains of Phlegra.

h. In preparation for the wrestling match, both combatants cast off their lion pelts, but while Heracles rubbed himself with oil in the Olympic fashion, Antaeus poured hot sand over his limbs lest contact with the earth through the soles of his feet alone should prove insufficient. Heracles planned to preserve his strength and wear Antaeus down, but after tossing him full length on the ground, he was amazed to see the giant’s muscles swell and a healthy flush suffuse his limbs as Mother Earth revived him. The combatants grappled again, and presently Antaeus flung himself down of his own accord, not waiting to be thrown; upon which, Heracles, realizing what he was at, lifted him high into the air, then cracked his ribs and, despite the hollow groans of Mother Earth, held him aloft until he died.

i. Some say that this conflict took place at Lixus, a small Mauretanian city some fifty miles from Tangier, near the sea, where a hillock is shown as Antaeus’s tomb. If a few basketsful of soil are taken from this hillock, the natives believe, rain will fall and continue to fall until they are replaced. It is also claimed that the Gardens of the Hesperides were the near-by island, on which stands an altar of Heracles; but, except for a few wild-olive trees, no trace of the orchard now remains. When Sertorius took Tangier, he opened the tomb to see whether Antaeus’s skeleton were as large as tradition described it. To his astonishment, it measured sixty cubits, so he at once closed up the tomb and offered Antaeus heroic sacrifices. It is said locally either that Antaeus founded Tangier, formerly called Tingis; or that Sophax, whom Tinga, Antaeus’s widow, bore to Heracles, reigned over that country, and gave his mother’s name to the city. Sophax’s son Diodorus subdued many African nations with a Greek army recruited from the Mycenaean colonists whom Heracles had settled there. The Mauretanians are of eastern origin and, like the Pharusii, descended from certain Persians who accompanied Heracles to Africa; but some hold that they are descendants of those Canaanites whom Joshua the Israelite expelled from their country.

j. Next, Heracles visited the Oracle at Ammon, where he asked for an interview with his father Zeus; but Zeus was loth to reveal himself and, when Heracles persisted, flayed a ram, put on the fleece, with the ram’s head hiding his own, and issued certain instructions. Hence the Egyptians give their images of Zeus Ammon a ram’s face. The Thebans sacrifice rams only once a year when, at the end of Zeus’s festival, they slay a single ram and use its fleece to cover Zeus’s image; after which the worshippers beat their breasts in mourning for the victim, and bury it in a sacred tomb.

k. Heracles then struck south, and founded a hundred-gated city, named Thebes in honour of his birthplace; but some say that Osiris had already founded it. All this time, the King of Egypt was Antaeus’s brother Busiris, a son of Poseidon by Lysianassa, the daughter of Epaphus or, as others say, by Anippe, a daughter of the river Nile. Now, Busiris’s kingdom had once been visited with drought and famine for eight or nine years, and he had sent for Greek augurs to give him advice. His nephew, a learned Cyprian seer, named Phrasius, Thrasius, or Thasius, son of Pygmalion, announced that the famine would cease if every year one stranger were sacrificed in honour of Zeus. Busiris began with Phrasius himself, and afterwards sacrificed to him chance guests, until the arrival of Heracles, who let the priests hale him off to the altar. They bound his hair with a fillet, and Busiris, calling upon the gods, was about to raise the sacrificial axe, when Heracles burst his bonds and slew Busiris, Busiris’s son Amphidamas, and all the priestly attendants.

l. Next, Heracles traversed Asia and put in at Thermydrae, the harbour of Rhodian Lindus, where he unyoked one of the bullocks from a farmer’s cart, sacrificed it, and feasted on its flesh, while the owner stood upon a certain mountain and cursed him from afar. Hence the Lindians still utter curses when they sacrifice to Heracles. Finally he reached the Caucasus Mountains, where Prometheus had been lettered for thirty years—or one thousand, or thirty thousand years—while every day a griffon-vulture, born of Typhon and Echidne, tore at his liver. Zeus had long repented of his punishment, because Prometheus had since sent him a kindly warning not to marry Thetis, lest he might beget one greater than himself; and now, when Heracles pleaded for Prometheus’s pardon, granted this without demur. Having once, however, condemned him to everlasting punishment, Zeus stipulated that, in order still to appear a prisoner, he must wear a ring made from his chains and set with Caucasian stone—and this was the first ring ever to contain a setting. But Prometheus’s sufferings were destined to last until some immortal should voluntarily go to Tartarus in his stead; so Heracles reminded Zeus of Cheiron, who was longing to resign the gift of immortality ever since he had suffered his incurable wound. Thus no further impediment remained, and Heracles, invoking Hunter Apollo, shot the griffon-vulture through the heart and set Prometheus free.

m. Mankind now began to wear rings in Prometheus’s honour, and also wreaths; because when released, Prometheus was ordered to crown himself with a willow wreath, and Heracles, to keep him company, assumed one of wild-olive.

n. Almighty Zeus set the arrow among the stars as the constellation Sagitta; and to this day the inhabitants of the Caucasus Mountains regard the griffon-vulture as the enemy of mankind. They burn out its nests with flaming darts, and set snares for it to avenge Prometheus’s suffering.




p. 298
The Twelfth Labour: The Capture Of Cerberus

HERACLES’S last, and most difficult, Labour was to bring the dog Cerberus up from Tartarus. As a preliminary, he went to Eleusis where he asked to partake of the Mysteries and wear the myrtle wreath. Nowadays, any Greek of good repute may be initiated at Eleusis, but since in Heracles’s day Athenians alone were admitted, Theseus suggested that a certain Pylius should adopt him. This Pylius did so and when Heracles had been purified for his slaughter of the Centaurs, because no one with blood-stained hands could view the Mysteries, he was duly initiated by Orpheus’s son Musaeus, Theseus acting as his sponsor. However, Eumolpus, the founder of the Greater Mysteries, had decreed that no foreigners should be admitted, and therefore the Eleusinians, loth to refuse Heracles’s request, yet doubtful whether his adoption by Pylius would qualify him as a true Athenian, established the Lesser Mysteries on his account; others say that Demeter herself honoured him by founding the Lesser Mysteries on this occasion.

b. Every year, two sets of Eleusinian Mysteries are held: the Greater in honour of Demeter and Core, and the Lesser in honour of Core alone. These Lesser Mysteries, a preparation for the Greater, are a dramatic reminder of Dionysus’s fate, performed by the Eleusinians at Agrae on the river Ilissus in the month Anthesterion. The principal rites are the sacrifice of a sow, which the initiates first wash in the river Cantharus, and their subsequent purification by a priest who bears the name Hydranus. They must then wait at least one year until they may participate in the Greater Mysteries, which are held at Eleusis itself in the month Boedromion; and must also take an oath of secrecy, administered by the mystagogue, before being prepared for these. Meanwhile, they are refused admittance to the sanctuary of Demeter, and wait in the vestibule throughout the solemnities.

c. Thus cleansed and prepared, Heracles descended to Tartarus from Laconian Taenarum; or, some say, from the Acherusian peninsula near Heracleia on the Black Sea, where marks of his descent are still shown at a great depth. He was guided by Athene and Hermes—for whenever, exhausted by his Labours, he cried out in despair to Zeus, Athene always came hastening down to comfort him. Terrified by Heracles’s scowl, Charon fortied him across the river Styx without demur; in punishment of which irregularity he was lettered by Hades for one entire year. As Heracles stepped ashore from the crazy boat, all the ghosts fled, except Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa. At sight of Medusa he drew his sword, but Hermes reassured him that she was only a phantom; and when he aimed an arrow at Meleager, who was wearing bright armour, Meleager laughed. ‘You have nothing to fear from the dead,’ he said, and they chatted amicably for awhile, Heracles offering in the end to marry Meleager’s sister Deianeira.

d. Near the gates of Tartarus, Heracles found his friends Theseus and Peirithous fastened to cruel chairs, and wrenched Theseus free, but obliged to leave Peirithous behind; next, he rolled away the stone under which Demeter had imprisoned Ascalaphus; and then, wishing to gratify the ghosts with a gift of warm blood, slaughtered one Hades’s cattle. Their herdsman, Menoetes, or Menoetus, the son Ceuthonymus, challenged him to a wrestling match, but was seized around the middle and had his ribs crushed. At this, Persephone, who came out from her palace and greeted Heracles like a brother, intervened and pleaded for Menoetes’s life.

e. When Heracles demanded Cerberus, Hades, standing by his wife’s side, replied grimly: ‘He is yours, if you can master him without using your club or your arrows.’ Heracles found the dog chained to the gate of Acheron, and resolutely gripped him by the throat—from which rose three heads, each maned with serpents. The barbed tail flew up strike, but Heracles, protected by the lion pelt, did not relax his grip until Cerberus choked and yielded.

f. On his way back from Tartarus, Heracles wove himself a wreath from the tree which Hades had planted in the Elysian Fields as a mere memorial to his mistress, the beautiful nymph Leuce. The outer leaves of the wreath remained black, because that is the colour of the Underworld, but those next to Heracles’s brow were bleached silver-white by his glorious sweat. Hence the white poplar, or aspen, is sacred to him: colour signifying that he has laboured in both worlds.

g. With Athene’s assistance, Heracles recrossed the river Styx safely, and then half-dragged, half-carried Cerberus up the chasm in Troezen, through which Dionysus had conducted his mother Semele. In the temple of Saviour Artemis, built by Theseus over the mouth this chasm, altars now stand sacred to the infernal deities. At Troezen also, a fountain discovered by Heracles and called after him is shown front of Hippolytus’s former palace.

h. According to another account, Heracles dragged Cerberus, born with adamantine chains, up a subterrene path which leads to the gloomy cave of Acone, near Mariandyne on the Black Sea. As Cerberus resisted averting his eyes from the sunlight, and barking furiously with all three mouths, his slaver flew across the green fields and gave birth to poisonous plant aconite, also called hecateis, because Hecate was the first to use it. Still another account is that Heracles came back to the upper air through Taenarum, famous for its cave-like temple with an image of Poseidon standing before it; but if a road ever led thence to the Underworld, it has since been blocked up. Finally, some say that reemerged from the precinct of Laphystian Zeus, on Mount Laphystius, where stands an image of Bright-eyed Heracles.

i. Yet all agree at least that, when Heracles brought Cerberus to Mycenae, Eurystheus, who was offering a sacrifice, handed him a slave’s portion, reserving the best cuts for his own kinsmen; and that Heracles showed his just resentment by killing three of Eurystheus’s sons: Perimedes, Eurybius, and Eurypilus.

j. Besides the aconite, Heracles also discovered the following simples: the all-heal heracleon, or ‘wild origanum’; the Siderian heracleon, with its thin stem, red flower, and leaves like the coriander’s, which grows near lakes and rivers, and is an excellent remedy for all wounds inflicted by iron; and the hyoscyamos, or henbane, which causes vertigo and insanity. The Nymphaean heracleon, which has a club-like root, was named after a certain nymph deserted by Heracles, who died of jealousy; it makes men impotent for the space of twelve days.




p. 301
The Murder Of Iphitus

WHEN Heracles returned to Thebes after his Labours, he gave Megara, his wife, now thirty-three years old, in marriage to his nephew and charioteer Iolaus, who was only sixteen, remarking that his own union with her had been inauspicious. He then looked about for a younger and more fortunate wife; and, hearing that his friend Eurytus, a son of Melanius, King of Oechalia, had offered to marry his daughter Iole to any archer who could outshoot him and his four sons, took the road there. Eurytus had been given a fine bow and taught its use by Apollo himself, whom he now claimed to surpass in marksmanship, yet Heracles found no difficulty in winning the contest. The result displeased Eurytus excessively and, when he learned that Heracles had discarded Megara after murdering her children, he refused to give him Iole. Having drunk a great deal of wine to gain confidence, ‘You could never compare with me and my sons as an archer,’ he told Heracles, ‘were it not that you unfairly use magic arrows, which cannot miss their mark. This contest is void, and I would not, in any case, entrust my beloved daughter to such a ruffian as yourself! Moreover, you are Eurystheus’s slave and, like a slave, deserve only blows from a free man.’ So saying, he drove Heracles out of the Palace. Heracles did not retaliate at once, as he might well have done; but swore to take vengeance.

b. Three of Eurytus’s sons, namely Didaeon, Clytius, and Toxeus, had supported their father in his dishonest pretensions. The eldest, however, whose name was Iphitus, declared that Iole should in all fairness have been given to Heracles; and when, soon afterwards, twelve strong-hooved brood-mares and twelve sturdy mule-foals disappeared from Euboea, he refused to believe that Heracles was the thief. As a matter of fact, they had been stolen by the well-known thief Autolycus, who magically changed their appearance and sold them to the unsuspecting Heracles as if they were his own. Iphitus followed the tracks of the mares and foals and found that they led towards Tiryns, which made him suspect that Heracles was, after all, avenging the insult offered him by Eurytus. Coming suddenly face to face with Heracles, who had just returned from his rescue of Alcestis, he concealed his suspicious and merely asked for advice in the matter. Heracles did not recognize the beasts from Iphitus’s description as those sold to him by Autolycus, and with his usual heartiness promised to search for them if Iphitus would consent to become his guest. Yet he now divined that he was suspected of theft, which galled his sensitive heart. After a grand banquet, he led Iphitus to the top of the highest tower in Tiryns. ‘Look about you!’ he demanded, ‘and tell me whether your mares are grazing anywhere in sight.’ ‘I cannot see them,’ Iphitus admitted. ‘Then you have falsely accused me in your heart of being a thief!’ Heracles roared, distraught with anger, and hurled him to his death.

c. Heracles presently went to Neleus, King of Pylus, and asked to be purified; but Neleus refused, because Eurytus was his ally. Nor would any of his sons, except the youngest, Nestor, consent to receive Heracles, who eventually persuaded Deiphobus, the son of Hippolytus, to purify him at Amyclae. However, he still suffered from evil dreams, and went to ask the Delphic Oracle how he might be rid of them. The Pythoness Xenoclea refused to answer this question. ‘You murdered your guest,’ she said. ‘I have no oracles for such as you!’ ‘Then I shall be obliged to institute an oracle of my own!’ cried Heracles. With that, he plundered the shrine of its votive offerings and even pulled away the tripod on which Xenoclea sat. ‘Heracles of Tiryns is a very different man from his Canopic namesake,’ the Pythoness said severely as he carried the tripod from the shrine; she meant that the Egyptian Heracles had once come to Delphi and behaved with courtesy reverence.

d. Up rose the indignant Apollo, and fought Heracles until Zeus parted the combatants with a thunderbolt, making them clasp hands in friendship. Heracles restored the sacred tripod, and together they founded the city of Gythium, where images of Apollo, Heracles, Dionysus now stand side by side in the market place. Xenoclea then gave Heracles the following oracle: ‘To be rid of your affliction you must be sold into slavery for one whole year and the price you fetch must be offered to Iphitus’s children. Zeus is enraged that you hay violated the laws of hospitality, whatever the provocation.’ ‘Whose slave am I to be?’ asked Heracles humbly. ‘Queen Omphale of Lydia will purchase you,’ Xenoclea replied. ‘I obey,’ said Heracles, ‘but on day I shall enslave the man who has brought this suffering upon me and all his family too!’ Some, however, say that Heracles did not return the tripod and that, when one thousand years later, Apollo heard that it had been taken to the city of Pheneus, he punished the Pheneans by blocking the channel which Heracles had dug to carry the heavy rains, and flooded their city.

e. Another wholly different account of these events is current according to which Lycus the Euboean, son of Poseidon and Dirce attacked Thebes during a time of sedition, killed King Creon, an, usurped the throne. Believing Copreus’s report that Heracles had died, Lycus tried to seduce Megara and, when she resisted him, would have killed her and the children had Heracles not returned from Tartarus in time to exact vengeance. Thereupon Hera, whose favourite Lycus was, drove Heracles mad: he killed Megara and his own sons, also the Aetolian Stichius. The Thebans, who show the children’s tomb, say that Heracles would have killed his foster-father Amphitryon as well, if Athene had not knocked him insensible with a hug stone; to which they point, saying: ‘We nick-name it “The Chaste her”.’ But Amphitryon had, in fact, died long before, in the Orchomenan campaign. The Athenians claim that Theseus, grateful to Heracles for his rescue from Tartarus, arrived at this juncture with Athenian army, to help Heracles against Lycus. He stood aghast at the murder, yet promised Heracles every honour for the rest of his life, and after his death as well, and brought him to Athens, where Medea cured his madness with medicines. Sicalus then purified him once more.




p. 304
Omphale

HERACLES was taken to Asia and offered for sale as a nameless slave by Hermes, patron of all important financial transactions, who afterwards handed the purchase money of three silver talents to Iphitus’s orphans. Nevertheless, Eurytus stubbornly forbade his grandchildren to accept any monetary compensation, saying that only blood would pay for blood; and what happened to the silver, Hermes alone knows. As the Pythoness had foretold, Heracles was bought by Omphale, Queen of Lydia, a woman with a good eye for a bargain; and he served her faithfully either for one year, or for three, ridding Asia Minor of the bandits who infested it.

b. This Omphale, a daughter of Jordanes and, according to some authorities, the mother of Tantalus, had been bequeathed the kingdom by her unfortunate husband Tmolus, son of Ares and Theogone. While out hunting on Mount Carmanorium—so called in honour of Carmanor son of Dionysus and Alexirrhoë, who was killed there by a wild boar—he fell in love with a huntress named Arrhippe, a chaste attendant of Artemis. Arrhippe, deaf to Tmolus’s entreaties, fled to her mistress’s temple where, disregarding its sanctity, he ravished her on the goddess’s own couch. She hanged herself from a beam, after invoking Artemis, who thereupon let loose a mad bull; Tmolus was tossed into the air, fell on pointed stakes and sharp stones and died in torment. Theoclymenus, his son by Omphale, buried him where he lay, renaming the mountain ‘Tmolus’; a city of the same name, built upon its slopes, was destroyed by a great earthquake in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.

c. Among the many bye-works which Heracles performed during this servitude was his capture of the two Ephesian Cercopes, who had constantly robbed him of his sleep. They were twin brothers named either Passalus and Acmon; or Oius and Eurybatus; or Sillus and Triballus—sons of Oceanus by Theia, and the most accomplished cheats and liars known to mankind, who roamed the world, continually practising new deception. Theia had warned them to keep clear of Heracles and her words ‘My little White-bottoms, you have yet to meet the great Black-bottom!’ becoming proverbial, ‘white-bottom’ now means ‘cowardly, or lascivious’. They would buzz around Heracles’s bed in the guise of bluebottles, until one night he grabbed them, forced them to resume their proper shape, and bore them off, dangling head-downwards from a pole which he carried over his shoulder. Now, Heracles’s bottom, which the lion’s pelt did not cover, had been burned as black as an old leather by exposure to sun, and by the fiery breaths of Cacus and of the Cretan bull; and the Cercopes burst into a fit of immoderate laughter to find themselves suspended upside-down, staring at it. Their merriment surprised Heracles, and when he learned its cause, he sat down upon a rock and laughed so heartily himself that they persuaded him to release them. But though we know of an Asian city named Cercopia, the haunts of the Cercopes and a rock called ‘Black Bottom’ are shown at Thermopylae; this incident therefore is likely to have taken place on another occasion.

d. Some say that the Cercopes were eventually turned to stone for trying to deceive Zeus; others, that he punished their fraudulence by changing them into apes with long yellow hair, and sending them to the Italian islands named Pithecusae.

e. In a Lydian ravine lived one Syleus, who used to seize passing strangers and force them to dig his vineyard; but Heracles tore up the vines by their roots. Again, when Lydians from Itone began plundering Omphale’s country, Heracles recovered the spoil and razed their city. And at Celaenae lived Lityerses the farmer, a bastard son of King Minos, who would offer hospitality to wayfarers but force them to compete with him in reaping his harvest. If their strength flagged, he would whip them and at evening, when he had won the contest, would behead them and conceal their bodies in sheaves, chanting lugubriously as he did so. Heracles visited Celaenae in order to rescue the shepherd Daphnis, a son of Hermes who, after searching throughout the world for his beloved Pimplea, carried off by pirates, had at last found her among the slave-girls of Lityerses. Daphnis was challenged to the reaping contest, but Heracles taking his place outreaped Lityerses, whom he decapitated with a sickle, throwing the trunk into the river Maeander. Not only did Daphnis win back his Pimplea, but Heracles gave her Lityerses’s palace as a dowry. In honour of Lityerses, Phrygian reapers still sing a harvest dirge closely resembling that raised in honour of Maneros, son of the first Egyptian king, who also died in the harvest field.

f. Finally, beside the Lydian river Sagaris, Heracles shot dead a gigantic serpent which was destroying men and crops; and the grateful Omphale, having at last discovered his identity and parentage, released him and sent him back to Tiryns, laden with gifts; while Zeus contrived the constellation Ophiuchus to commemorate the victory. This river Sagaris, by the way, was named after a son of Myndon and Alexirrhoë who, driven mad by the Mother of the Gods for slighting her Mysteries and insulting her eunuch priests, drowned himself in its waters.

g. Omphale had bought Heracles as a lover rather than a fighter. He fathered on her three sons, namely Lamus; Agelaus, ancestor of a famous King Croesus who tried to immolate himself on a pyre when the Persians captured Sardis; and Laomedon. Some add a fourth, Tyrrhenus, or Tyrsenus, who invented the trumpet and led Lydian emigrants to Etruria, where they took the name Tyrrhenians; but it is more probable that Tyrrhenus was the son of King Atys, and a remote descendant of Heracles and Omphale. By one of Omphale’s women, named Malis, Heracles was already the father of Cleodaeus, or Cleolaus; and of Alcaeus, founder of the Lydian dynasty which King Croesus ousted from the throne of Sardis.

h. Reports reached Greece that Heracles had discarded his lion pelt and his aspen wreath, and instead wore jewelled necklaces, golden bracelets, a woman’s turban, a purple shawl, and a Maeonian girdle. There he sat—the story went—surrounded by wanton Ionian girls, teasing wool from the polished wool-basket, or spinning the thread; trembling, as he did so, when his mistress scolded him. She would strike him with her golden slipper if ever his clumsy fingers crushed the spindle, and make him recount his past achievements for her amusement; yet apparently he felt no shame. Hence painters show Heracles wearing a yellow petticoat, and letting himself be combed and manicured by Omphale’s maids, while she dresses up in his lion pelt, and wields his club and bow.

i. What, however, had happened was no more than this. One day, when Heracles and Omphale were visiting the vineyards of Tmolus, she in a purple, gold-embroidered gown, with perfumed locks, he gallantly holding a golden parasol over her head, Pan caught sight of them from a high hill. Falling in love with Omphale, he bade farewell to the mountain-goddesses, crying: ‘Henceforth she alone shall be my love!’ Omphale and Heracles reached their destination, a secluded grotto, where it amused them to exchange clothes. She dressed him in a net-work girdle, absurdly small for his waist, and her purple gown. Though she unlaced this to the fullest extent, he split the sleeves; and the ties of her sandals were far too short to meet across his instep.

j. After dinner, they went to sleep on separate couches, having vowed a dawn sacrifice to Dionysus, who requires marital purity from his devotees on such occasions. At midnight, Pan crept into the grotto and, fumbling about in the darkness, found what he thought was Omphale’s couch, because the sleeper was clad in silk. With trembling hands he untucked the bed-clothes from the bottom, and wormed his way in; but Heracles, waking and drawing up one foot, kicked him across the grotto. Hearing a loud crash and a howl, Omphale sprang up and called for lights, and when these came she and Heracles laughed until they cried to see Pan sprawled in a comer, nursing his bruises. Since that day, Pan has abhorred clothes, and summons his officials naked to his rites; it was he who revenged himself on Heracles by spreading the rumour that his whimsical exchange of garments with Omphale was habitual and perverse.




p. 307
Hesione

AFTER serving as a slave to Queen Omphale, Heracles returned to Tiryns, his sanity now fully restored, and at once planned an expedition against Troy. His reasons were as follows. He and Telamon, either on their way back from the country of the Amazons, or when they landed with the Argonauts at Sigeium, had been astonished to find Laomedon’s daughter Hesione, stark naked except for her jewels, chained to a rock on the Trojan shore. It appeared that Poseidon had sent a sea-monster to punish Laomedon for having failed to pay him and Apollo their stipulated fee when they built the city walls and tended his flocks. Some say that he should have sacrificed to them all the cattle born in his kingdom that year; others, that he had promised them only a low wage as day-labourers, but even so cheated them of more than thirty Trojan drachmae. In revenge, Apollo sent a plague, and Poseidon ordered this monster to prey on the plains folk and ruin their fields by spewing sea water over them. According to another account, Laomedon fulfilled his obligations to Apollo, but not to Poseidon, who therefore sent the plague as well as the monster.

b. Laomedon visited the Oracle of Zeus Ammon, and was advised by him to expose Hesione on the seashore for the monster to devour. Yet he obstinately refused to do so unless the Trojan nobles would first let him sacrifice their own daughters. In despair, they consulted Apollo who, being no less angry than Poseidon, gave them little satisfaction. Most parents at once sent their children abroad for safety, but Laomedon tried to force a certain Phoenodamas, who had kept his three daughters at home, to expose one of them; upon which Phoenodamas harangued the assembly, pleading that Laomedon was alone responsible for their present distress, and should be made to suffer for it by sacrificing his daughter. In the end, it was decided to cast lots, and the lot fell upon Hesione, who was accordingly bound to the rock, where Heracles found her.

c. Heracles now broke her bonds, went up to the city, and offered to destroy the monster in return for the two matchless, immortal, snow-white horses, or mares, which could run over water and standing corn like the wind, and which Zeus had given Laomedon as compensation for the rape of Ganymedes. Laomedon readily agreed to the bargain.

d. With Athene’s help, the Trojans then built Heracles a high wall which served to protect him from the monster as it poked its head out of the sea and advanced across the plain. On reaching the wall, it opened its great jaws and Heracles leaped fully-armed down its throat. He spent three days in the monster’s belly, and emerged victorious, although the struggle had cost him every hair on his head.

e. What happened next is much disputed. Some say that Laomedon gave Hesione to Heracles as his bride—at the same time persuading him to leave her, and the mares, at Troy, while he went off with the Argonauts—but that, after the Fleece had been won, his cupidity got the better of him, and he refused to let Heracles have either Hesione or the mares. Others say that he had made this refusal a month or two previously, when Heracles came to Troy in search of Hylas.

f. The most circumstantial version, however, is that Laomedon cheated Heracles by substituting mortal horses for the immortal ones; whereupon Heracles threatened to make war on Troy, and put to sea in a rage. First he visited the island of Paros, where he raised an altar to Zeus and Apollo; and then the Isthmus of Corinth, where he prophesied Laomedon’s doom; finally he recruited soldiers in his own city of Tiryns.

g. Laomedon, in the meantime, had killed Phoenodarnas and sold his three daughters to Sicilian merchants which come to buy victims for the wild-beast shows; but in Sicily they were rescued by Aphrodite, and the eldest, Aegesta, lay with the river Crimissus, who took the form of a dog—and bore him a son, Aegestes, called Acestes by the Latins. This Aegestes, aided by Anchises’s bastard son Elymus, whom he brought from Troy, founded the cities of Aegesta, later called Segesta Entella, which he named after his wife; Eryx; and Asea. Aegesta is said to have eventually returned to Troy and there married one Capys, to whom she became the mother of Anchises.

h. It is disputed whether Heracles embarked for Troy with eighteen long ships of fifty oars each; or with only six small craft and scanty forces. But among his allies were Iolaus; Telamon son of Aeacus; Peleus; the Argive Oides; and the Boeotian Deimachus.

i. Heracles had found Telamon at Salamis feasting with his friends. He was at once offered the golden wine-bowl and invited to pour the first libation to Zeus; having done so, he stretched out his hands to heaven and prayed: ‘O Father, send Telamon a fine son, with a skin as tough as this lion pelt, and courage to match!’ For he saw that Periboea Telamon’s wife, was on the point of giving birth. Zeus sent down his eagle in answer, and Heracles assured Telamon that the prayer would be granted; and, indeed, as soon as the feast was over, Periboea gave birth to Great Ajax, around whom Heracles threw the lion pelt, thus making him invulnerable, except in his neck and armpit, where the quiver had interposed.

j. On disembarking near Troy, Heracles left Oides to guard the ships, while he himself led the other champions in an assault on the city. Laomedon, taken by surprise, had no time to marshal his army, but supplied the common folk with swords and torches and hurried then down to build the fleet. Oides resisted him to the death, fighting a noble rear-guard action, while his comrades launched the ships and escaped Laomedon then hurried back to the city and, after a skirmish with Heracles’s straggling forces, managed to re-enter and bar the gate behind him.

k. Having no patience for a long siege, Heracles ordered an immediate assault. The first to breach the wall and enter was Telamon, who chose the western curtain built by his father Aeacus as the weakest spot, but Heracles came hard at his heels, mad with jealousy. Telamon, suddenly aware that Heracles’s drawn sword was intended for his own vitals, had the presence of mind to stoop and collect some large stones dislodged from the wall. ]What are you at?’ roared Heracles. ‘Building an altar to Heracles the Victor, Heracles the Averter of Illness!’ answered the resourceful Telamon. ‘I leave the sack of Troy to you.’ Heracles thanked him briefly, and raced on. He then shot down Laomedon and all his sons, except Podarces, who alone had maintained that Heracles should be given the immortal mares; and sacked the city. After glutting his vengeance, he rewarded Telamon with the hand of Hesione, whom he gave permission to ransom any one of her fellow captives. She chose Podarces. ‘Very well,’ said Heracles. ‘But first he must be sold as a slave.’ So Podarces was put up for sale, and Hesione redeemed him with the golden veil which bound her head: hence Podarces won the name of Priam, which means ‘redeemed’. But some say that he was a mere infant at the time.

l. Having burned Troy and left its highways desolate, Heracles set Priam on the throne, and put to sea. Hesione accompanied Telamon to Salamis, where she bore him Teucer; whether in wedlock or in bastardy is not agreed. Later she deserted Telamon, escaped to Asia Minor, and swam across to Miletus, where King Arion found her hidden in a wood. There she bore Telamon a second son, Trambelus, whom Arion reared as his own, and appointed king of Telamon’s Asiatic kinsmen the Lelegians or, some say, of the Lesbians. When, in the course of the Trojan War, Achilles raided Miletus, he killed Trambelus, learning too late that he was Telamon’s son, which caused him great grief.

m. Some say that Oides did not fall at Troy, but was still alive when five Erinnyes drove his grandson Alcmaeon mad. His tomb is shown in Arcadia, near the Megalopolitan precinct of Boreas.

n. Heracles now sailed from the Troad, taking with him Glaucia, a daughter of the river Scamander. During the siege, she had been Deimachus’s mistress, and when he fell in battle, had applied to Heracles for protection. Heracles led her aboard his ship, overjoyed that the stock of so gallant a friend should survive: for Glaucia was pregnant, and later gave birth to a son named Scamander.

o. Now, while Sleep lulled Zeus into drowsiness, Hera summoned Boreas to raise a storm, which drove Heracles far off his course to the island of Cos. Zeus awoke in a rage and threatened to cast Sleep down from the upper air into the gulf of Erebus; but she fled as a suppliant to Night, whom even Zeus dared not displease. In his frustration he began tossing the gods about Olympus. Some say that it was on this occasion that he chained Hera by her wrists to the rafters, tying anvils to her ankles; and hurled Hephaestus down to earth. Having thus vented his ill-temper to the full, he rescued Heracles from Cos and led him back to Argos, where his adventures are variously described.

p. Some say that the Coans mistook him for a pirate and tried to prevent his approach by pelting his ship with stones. But he forced a landing, took the city of Astypalaea in a night assault, and killed the king, Eurypylus, a son of Poseidon and Astypalaea. He was himself wounded by Chalcodon, but rescued by Zeus when on the point of being despatched. Others say that he attacked Cos because he had fallen in love with Chalciope, Eurypylus’s daughter.

q. According to still another account, five of Heracles’s six ships foundered in the storm. The surviving one ran aground at Laceta on the island of Cos, he and his shipmates saving only their weapons from the wreck. As they stood wringing the sea water out of their clothes, a flock of sheep passed by, and Heracles asked the Meropian shepherd, one Antagoras, for the gift of a ram; whereupon Antagoras, who was of powerful build, challenged Heracles to wrestle with him, offering the ram as a prize. Heracles accepted the challenge but, when the two champions came to grips, Antagoras’s Meropian friends ran to his assistance, and the Greeks did the same for Heracles, so that a general roughwand-tumble ensued. Exhausted by the storm and by the number of his enemies, Heracles broke off the fight and fled to the house of a stout Thracian matron, in whose clothes he disguised himself, thus contriving to escape.

r. Later in the day, refreshed by food and sleep, he fought the Meropians again and worsted them; after which he was purified of their blood and, still dressed in women’s clothes, married Chalciope, by whom he became the father of Thessalus. Annual sacrifices are now offered to Heracles on the field where this battle was fought; and Coan bridegrooms wear women’s clothes when they welcome their brides home—as the priest of Heracles at Antimacheia also does before he begins a sacrifice.

s. The women of Astypalaea were offended at Heracles, and abused him, whereupon Hera honoured them with horns like cows; but some say that this was a punishment inflicted on them by Aphrodite for daring to extol their beauty above hers.

t. Having laid waste Cos, and all but annihilated the Meropians, Heracles was guided by Athene to Phlegra, where he helped the gods to win their battle against the giants. Thence he came to Boeotia where, at his insistence, Scamander was elected king. Scamander renamed the river Inachus after himself, and a near-by stream after his mother Glaucia; he also named the spring Acidusa after his wife, by whom he had three daughters, still honoured locally under the name of ‘Maidens’.




p. 310
The Conquest Of Elis

NOT long after his return, Heracles collected a force of Tirynthians and Arcadians and, joined by volunteers from the noblest Greek families, marched against Augeias, King of Elis, whom he owed a grudge on account of the Fifth Labour. Augeias, however, foreseeing this attack, had prepared to resist it by appointing as his generals Eurytus and Cteatus, the sons of his brother Actor and Molione, or Moline, a daughter of Molus; and by giving a share in the Elean government to the valiant Amarynceus, who is usually described as a son of the Thessalian immigrant Pyttius.

b. The sons of Actor are called Moliones, or Molionides, after their mother, to distinguish them from those of the other Actor, who married Aegina. They were twins, born from a silver egg, and surpassed all their contemporaries in strength; but, unlike the Dioscuri, had been joined together at the waist from birth. The Moliones married the twin daughters of Dexamenus the Centaur and, one generation later, their sons reigned in Elis jointly with Augeias’s grandson and Amarynceus’s son. Each of these four commanded ten ships in the expedition to Troy. Actor already possessed a share of the kingdom through his mother Hyrmine, a daughter of Neleus, whose name he gave to the now vanished city of Hyrmine.

c. Heracles did not cover himself with glory in this Elean War. He fell sick, and when the Moliones routed his army, which was encamped. In the heart of Elis, the Corinthians intervened by proclaiming the Isthmian Truce. Among those wounded by the Moliones was Heracles’s twin brother Iphicles; his friends carried him fainting to Phencus in Arcadia, where he eventually died and became a hero. Three hundred and sixty Cleonensians also died bravely, fighting at Heracles’s side; to them he ceded the honours awarded him by the Nemeans after he had killed the lion. He now retired to Olenus, the home of his friend Dexamenus, father-in-law of the Moliones, whose youngest daughter Deianeira he deflowered, after promising to marry her. When Heracles had passed on, the Centaur Eurytion asked for her hand, which Dexamenus feared to refuse him; but on the wedding day Heracles reappeared without warning, shot down Eurytion and his brothers, and took Deianeira away with him. Some say, however, that Heracles’s bride was named Mnesimache, or Hippolyte; on the ground that Deianeira is more usually described as the daughter of Oeneus. Dexamenus had been born at Bura, famous for its dice-oracle of Heracles.

d. When Heracles returned to Tiryns, Eurystheus accused him of designs on the high kingship in which he had himself been confirmed by Zeus, and banished him from Argolis. With his mother Alcmene, and his nephew Iolaus, Heracles then rejoined Iphicles at Pheneus, where he took Laonome, daughter of Guneus, as his mistress. Through the middle of the Pheneatian Plain, he dug a channel for the river Aroanius, some fifty furlongs long and as much as thirty feet deep; but the river soon deserted this channel, which has caved in here and there, and returned to its former course. He also dug deep chasms at the foot of the Phenean Mountains to carry off flood water; these have served their purpose well, except that on one occasion, after a cloud-burst, the Aroanius rose and inundated the ancient city of Pheneus—the high-water marks of this flood are still shown on the mountainside.

e. Afterwards, hearing that the Eleans were sending a procession to honour Poseidon at the Third Isthmian Festival, and that the Moliones would witness the games and take part in the sacrifices, Heracles ambushed them from a roadside thicket below Cleonae, and shot both dead; and killed their cousin, the other Eurytus, as well, a son of King Augeias.

f. Molione soon learned who had murdered her sons, and made the Eleans demand satisfaction from Eurystheus, on the ground that Heracles was a native of Tiryns. When Eurystheus disclaimed responsibility for the misdeeds of Heracles, whom he had banished, Molione asked the Corinthians to exclude all Argives from the Isthmian Games until satisfaction had been given for the murder. This they declined to do, whereupon Molione laid a curse on every Elean who might take part in the festival. Her curse is still respected: no Elean athlete will ever enter for the Isthmian Games.

g. Heracles now borrowed the black-maned horse Arion from Oncus, mastered him, raised a new army in Argos, Thebes, and Arcadia, and sacked the city of Elis. Some say that he killed Augeias and his sons, restored Phyleus, the rightful king, and set him on the Elean throne; others, that he spared Augeias’s life at least. When Heracles decided to repeople Elis by ordering the widows of the dead Eleans to lie with his soldiers, the widows offered a common prayer to Athene that they might conceive at the first embrace. This prayer was heard and, in gratitude, they founded a sanctuary of Athene the Mother. So widespread was the joy at this fortunate event that the place where they had met their new husbands, and the stream flowing by it, was called Bady, which is the Elean word for ‘sweet’. Heracles then gave the horse Arion to Adrastus, saying that, after all, he preferred to fight on foot.

h. About this time, Heracles won his title of Buphagus, or ‘Ox-eater’. It happened as follows. Lepreus, the son of Caucon and Astydameia, who founded the city of Lepreus in Arcadia (the district derived its name from the leprosy which had attacked the earliest settlers), had foolishly advised King Augeias to fetter Heracles when he asked to be paid for having cleansed the cattle-yards. Hearing that Heracles was on his way to the city, Astydameia persuaded Lepreus to receive him courteously and plead for forgiveness. This Heracles granted, but challenged Lepreus to a triple contest: of throwing the discus, drinking bucket after bucket of water, and eating an ox. Then, though Heracles won the discus-throw and the drinking-match, Lepreus ate the ox in less time than he. Flushed with success, he challenged Heracles to a duel, and was at once clubbed to death; his tomb is shown at Phigalia. The Lepreans, who worship Demeter and Zeus of the White Poplar, have always been subjects of Elis; and if one of them ever wins a prize at Olympia, the herald proclaims him an Elean from Lepreus. King Augeias is still honoured as a hero by the Eleans, and it was only during the reign of Lycurgus the Spartan that they were persuaded to forget their enmity of Heracles and sacrifice to him also; by which means they averted a pestilence.

i. After the conquest of Elis, Heracles assembled his army at Pisa, and used the spoil to establish the famous four-yearly Olympic Festival and Games in honour of his father Zeus, which some claim was only the eighth athletic contest ever held. Having measured a precinct for Zeus, and fenced off the Sacred Grove, he stepped out the stadium, named a neighbouring hillock ‘The Hill of Cronus’, and raised six altars to the Olympian gods: one for every pair of them. In sacrificing to Zeus, he burnt the victims’ thighs upon a fire of white poplar wood cut from trees growing by the Thesprotian river Acheron; he also forreded a sacrificial hearth in honour of his great-grandfather Pelops, and assigned him a shrine. Being much plagued by flies on this occasion, he offered a second sacrifice to Zeus the Averter of Flies: who sent them buzzing across the river Alpheius. The Eleans still sacrifice to this Zeus, when they expel the flies from Olympia.

j. Now, at the first full moon after the summer solstice all was ready for the Festival, except that the valley lacked trees to shade it from the sun. Heracles therefore returned to the Land of the Hyperboreans, where he had admired the wild olives growing at the source of the Danube, and persuaded Apollo’s priests to give him one for planting in Zeus’s precinct. Returning to Olympia, he ordained that the Aetolian empire should crown the victors with its leaves: which were to be their only reward, because he himself had performed his Labours without payment from Eurystheus. This tree, called ‘The Olive of the Fair Crown’, still grows in the Sacred Grove behind Zeus’s temple. The branches for the wreaths are lopped with a golden sickle by a nobly-born boy, both of whose parents must be alive.

k. Some say that Heracles won all the events by default, because none dared compete against him; but the truth is that every one was boldly disputed. No other contestants could, however, be found for the wrestling match, until Zeus, in disguise, condescended to enter the ring. The match was drawn, Zeus revealed himself to his son Heracles, all the spectators cheered, and the full moon shone as bright as day.

l. But the more ancient legend is that the Olympic Games were founded by Heracles the Dactyl, and that it was he who brought the wild olive from the land of the Hyperboreans. Charms and amulets in honour of Heracles the Dactyl are much used by sorceresses, who have little regard for Heracles son of Alcmene. Zeus’s altar, which stands at an equal distance between the shrine of Pelops and the sanctuary of Hera, but in front of both, is said to have been built by this earlier Heracles, like the altar at Pergamus, from the ashes of the thigh-bones he sacrificed to Zeus. Once a year, on the nineteenth day of the Elean month Elaphius, soothsayers fetch the ashes from the Council Hall, and after moistening them with water from the river Alpheius—no other will serve—apply a fresh coat of this plaster to the altar.

m. This is not, however, to deny that Heracles the son of Alcmene refounded the Games: for an ancient walled gymnasium is shown at Elis, where athletes train. Tall plane-trees grow between the running-tracks, and the enclosure is called Xystus because Heracles exercised himself there by scraping up thistles. But Clymenus the Cretan, son of Cardis a descendant of the Dactyl, had celebrated the Festival, only fifty years after the Deucalionian Flood; and subsequently Endymion had done the same, and Pelops, and Amythaon son of Cretheus, also Pelias and Neleus, and some say Augeias.

n. The Olympic Festival is held at an interval alternately of forty-nine and fifty months, according to the calendar, and now lasts for five days: from the eleventh to the fifteenth of the month in which it happens to fall. Heralds proclaim an absolute armistice throughout Greece for the whole of this month, and no athlete is permitted to attend who has been guilty of any felony or offence against the gods. Originally, the Festival was managed by the Pisans; but, after the final return of the Heraclids, their Aetolian allies settled in Elis and were charged with the task.

o. On the northern side of the Hill of Cronus, a serpent called Sosipolis is housed in Eileithyia’s shrine; a white-veiled virgin-priestess feeds it with honey-cakes and water. This custom commemorates a miracle which drove away the Arcadians when they fought against the holy land of Elis: an unknown woman came to the Elean generals with a suckling child and gave it to them as their champion. They believed her, and when she sat the child down between the two armies, it changed into a serpent; the Arcadians fled, pursued by the Eleans, and suffered fearful losses. Eileithyia’s shrine marks the place where the serpent disappeared into the Hill of Cronus. On the summit, sacrifices are offered to Cronus at the spring equinox in the month of Elaphius, by priestesses known as ‘Queens’.




p. 314
The Capture Of Pylus

HERACLES next sacked and burned the city of Pylus, because the Pylians had gone to the aid of Elis. He killed all Neleus’s sons, except the youngest, Nestor, who was away at Gerania, but Neleus himself escaped with his life.

b. Athene, champion of justice, fought for Heracles; and Pylus was defended by Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and Ares. While Athene engaged Ares, Heracles made for Poseidon, club against trident, and forced him to give way. Next, he ran to assist Athene, spear in hand, and his this way lunge-pierced Ares’s shield, dashing him headlong to the ground; then with a powerful thrust at Ares’s thigh, he drove deep into the divine flesh. Ares fled in anguish to Olympus, where Apollo spread soothing unguents on the wound and healed it within the hour; so he renewed the fight, until one of Heracles’s arrows pierced his shot-rider, and forced him off the field for good. Meanwhile, Heracles had also wounded Hera in the right breast with a three-barbed arrow.

e. Neleus’s eldest son, Periclymenus the Argonaut, was gifted by Poseidon with boundless strength and the power of assuming whatever shape he pleased, whether of bird, beast, or tree. On this occasion he turned himself first into a lion, then into a serpent and after a while, to escape scrutiny, perched on the yoke—boss of Heracles’s horses in the form of an ant, or fly, or bee. Heracles, nudged by Athene, recognized Periclymenus and reached for his club, whereupon Periclymenus became an eagle, and tried to peck out his eyes, but a sudden arrow from Heracles’s bow pierced him underneath his wing. He tumbled to earth, and the arrow was driven through his neck by the fall, killing him. Some say, however, that he flew away in safety; and that Heracles had attacked Poseidon on an earlier occasion, after the murder of Iphitus, when Neleus refused to purify him; and that the fight with Hades took place at the other Pylus, in Elis, when Heracles was challenged for carrying off Cerberus without permission.

d. Heracles gave the city of Messene to Nestor, in trust for his own descendants, remembering that Nestor had taken no part in robbing him of Geryon’s cattle; and soon came to love him more even than Hylas and Iolaus. It was Nestor who first swore an oath by Heracles.

e. The Eleans, though they themselves rebuilt Pylus, took advantage of the Pylians’ weakness to oppress them in petty ways. Neleus kept his patience until one day, having sent a chariot and a prize-winning team of four horses to contest for a tripod in the Olympic Games, he learned that Augeias had appropriated them and sent the charioteer home on foot. At this, he ordered Nestor to make a retaliatory raid on the Elean Plain; and Nestor managed to drive away fifty herds of cattle, fifty flocks of sheep, fifty droves of swine, fifty flocks of goats, and one hundred and fifty chestnut mares, many with foal, beating off the Eleans who opposed him and blooding his spear in this his first fight. Neleus’s heralds then convoked all in Pylus who were owed a debt by the Eleans, and when he had divided the booty among the claimants, keeping back the lion’s share for Nestor, sacrificed lavishly to the gods. Three days later, the Eleans advanced on Pylus in full array—among them the two orphaned sons of the Moliones, who had inherited their title—and crossed the Plain from Thryoessa. But Athene came by night to warn and marshal the Pylians; and when battle had been joined, Nestor, who was on foot, struck down Amarynceus, the Elean commander and, seizing his chariot, rushed like a black tempest through the Elean ranks, capturing fifty other chariots and killing a hundred men. The Moliones would also have fallen to his busy spear, had not Poseidon wrapped them in an impenetrable mist and spirited them away. The Eleans, hotly pursued by Nestor’s army, fled as far as the Olenian Rock, where Athene called a halt.

f. A truce being then agreed upon, Amarynceus was buried at Buprasium, and awarded funeral games, in which numerous Pylians took part. The Moliones won the chariot race by crowding Nestor at the turn, but he is said to have won all the other events: the boxing and the wrestling match, the foot-race and the javelin-throw. Of these feats, it is only fight to add, Nestor himself, in garrulous old age, was the principal witness; since by the grace of Apollo, who granted him the years of which his maternal uncles had been deprived, he lived for three centuries, and no contemporary survived to gainsay him.




p. 316
The Sons Of Hippocoön

HERACLES decided to attack Sparta and punish the sons of Hippocoön. They had not only refused to purify him after the death of Iphitus, and fought against him under Neleus’s command, but also murdered his friend, Oeonus. It happened that Oeonus son of Licymnius, who had accompanied Heracles to Sparta, was strolling about the city when, just outside Hippocoön’s palace, a huge Molossian hound ran at him; in self-defence, he threw a stone which struck it on the muzzle. Out darted the sons of Hippocoön and beat him with cudgels. Heracles ran to Oeonus’s rescue from the other end of the street, but arrived too late. Oeonus was cudgelled to death, and Heracles, wounded in the hollow of his hand and in the thigh, fled to the shrine of Eleusinian Demeter, near Mount Taygetus; where Asclepius hid him and healed his wounds.

b. Having mustered a small army, Heracles now marched to Tegea in Arcadia and there begged Cepheus the son of Aleus to join him with his twenty sons. At first, Cepheus refused, fearing for the safety of Tegea if he left home. But Heracles, whom Athene had given a lock of the Gorgon’s hair in a brazen jar, presented it to Cepheus’s daughter Aerope: should the city be attacked, he said, she was to display the lock thrice from its walls, turning her back to the enemy, who would immediately flee. As events proved, however, Aerope had no need of charm.

c. Thus Cepheus joined the expedition against Sparta, in which, by ill forttree, he and seventeen of his sons fell. Some say that Iphicles was also killed, but this is likely to have been the Aetolian Argonaut of that name, not Amphitryon’s son. Heracles’s army suffered few other casualties, whereas the Spartans lost Hippocoön and all his twelve sons, with numerous other men of high rank; and their city was taken by storm. Heracles then restored Tyndareus, leaving him the kingdom in trust for his own descendants.

d. Since Hera, inexplicably, had not thwarted him in this campaign, Heracles built her a shrine at Sparta, and sacrificed goats, having no other victims at his disposal. The Spartans are thus the only Greeks who surname Hera ‘Goat-eating’, and offer goats to her. Heracles also raised a temple to Athene of the Just Deserts; and, on the road to Therapne, a shrine to Cotylaean Asclepius which commemorates the wound in the hollow of his hand. A shrine at Tegea, called ‘The Common Hearth of the Arcadians’, is remarkable for its statue of Heracles with the wound in his thigh.




p. 317
AUGE

ALEUS, king of Tegea, the son of Apheidas, married Neaera, a daughter of Pereus, who bore him Auge, Cepheus, Lycurgus, and Aphidamas. An ancient shrine of Athene Alta, founded at Tegea by Aleus, still contains a sacred couch of the goddess.

b. When, on a visit to Delphi, Aleus was warned by the Oracle that Neaera’s two brothers would die by the hand of her daughter’s son, he hurried home and appointed Auge a priestess of Athene, threatening to kill her if she were unchaste. Whether Heracles came to Tegea on his way to fight King Augeias, or on his return from Sparta, is disputed; at all events, Aleus entertained him hospitably in Athene’s temple. There, flushed with wine, Heracles violated the virgin-priestess beside a fountain which is still shown to the north of the shrine; since, however, Auge made no outcry, it is often suggested that she came there by assignation.

c. Heracles continued on his way, and at Stymphalus begot Eures on Parthenope, the daughter of Stymphalus; But meanwhile pestilence and famine came upon Tegea, and Aleus, informed by the Pythoness that a crime had been committed in Athene’s sacred precinct, visited it and found Auge far gone with child. Though she wept and declared that Heracles had violated her in a fit of drunkenness, Aleus would not believe this, He dragged her to the Tegean market place, where she fell upon her knees at the site of the present temple of Eileithyia, famed for its image of ‘Auge on her Knees’. Ashamed to kill his daughter in public, Aleus engaged King Nauplius to drown her. Nauplius accordingly set out with Auge for Nauplia; But on Mount Parthenius she was overtaken by labour-pangs, and made some excuse to turn aside into a wood. There she gave birth to a son and, hiding him in a thicket, returned to where Nauplius was patiently waiting for her by the roadside. However, having no intention of drowning a princess when he could dispose of her at a high price in the slave-market, he sold Auge to some Carian merchants who had just arrived at Nauplia and who, in turn, sold her to Teuthras, king of Mysian Teuthrania.

d. Auge’s son was suckled by a doe on Mount Parthenius (where he now has a sacred precinct) and some cattle-men found him, named him Telephus, and took him to their master, King Corythus. At the same time, by a coincidence, Corythus’s shepherds discovered Atalanta’s intent son, whom she had borne to Meleager, exposed on the same hillside: they named him Parthenopaeus, which is ‘son of a pierced maidenhead’, because Atalanta was pretending to be still a virgin.

e. When Telephus grew to manhood, he approached the Delphic Oracle for news of his parents. He was told: ‘Sail and seek King Teuthras the Mysian.’ In Mysia he found Auge, now married to Teuthras, from whom he learned that she was his mother and Heracles his father; and this he could well believe, for no woman had ever borne Heracles a son so like himself. Teuthras thereupon gave Telephus daughter Argiope in marriage, and appointed him heir to the kingdom.

f. Others say that Telephus, after having killed Hippothous and Nereus, his maternal uncles, went silent and speechless to Mysia in search of his mother. ‘The silence of Telephus’ became proverbial; but Parthenopaeus came with him as spokesman. It happened that the renowned Argonaut Idas, son of Aphareus, was about to seize the Mysian throne, and Teuthras in desperation promised to resign it to Telephus and give him his adopted daughter in marriage, if only Idas were driven away. Thereupon Telephus, with Parthenopaeus’s help, routed Idas in a single battle. Now, Teuthras’s adopted daughter happened to be Auge, who did not recognize Telephus, nor did he know that she was his mother. Faithful to Heracles’s memory, she took a sword into her bedroom on the wedding night, and would have killed Telephus when he entered, had not the gods sent a large serpent between them. Auge threw down the sword in alarm and confessed her murderous intentions. She then apostrophized Heracles; and Telephus, who had been on the point of matricide, was inspired to cry out: ‘O mother, mother!’ They fell weeping into each other’s arms and, the next day, returned with Teuthras’s blessing to their native land. Auge’s tomb is shown at Pergamus beside the river Caicus. The Pergamenians claim to be Arcadian emigrants who crossed to Asia with Telephus, and offer him heroic sacrifices.

g. Others say that Telephus married Astyoche, or Laodice, a daughter of Trojan Priam. Others, again, that Heracles had lain with Auge at Troy when he went there to fetch Laomedon’s immortal horses. Still others, that Aleus locked Auge and her infant in an ark, which he committed to the waves; and that, under Athene’s watchful care, the chest drifted towards Asia Minor and was cast ashore at the mouth of the river Caicus, where King Teuthras married Auge and adopted Telephus.

h. This Teuthras, hunting on Mount Teuthras, once pursued a monstrous boar, which fled to the temple of Orthosian Artemis. He was about to force his way in, when the boar cried out: ‘Spare me, my lord! I am the Goddess’s nursling!’ Teuthras paid no attention, and killed it, thereby offending Artemis so deeply that she restored the boar …missing a small part of text




p. 319
Deianeira

AFTER spending four years in Pheneus, Heracles decided to leave the Peloponnese. At the head of a large Arcadian force, he sailed across to Clayton in Aeolian, where he took up his residence. Having now no legitimate sons, and no wife, he courted Deianeira, the supposed daughter of Oeneus, thus keeping his promise to the ghost of her brother Meleager. But Deianeira was really the daughter of the god Dionysus, by Oeneus’s wife Althaea, as had become apparent when Meleager died and Artemis turned his lamenting sisters into guinea-fowl; for Dionysus then persuaded Artemis to let Deianeira and her sister Gorge retain their human shapes.

b. Many suitors came to Oeneus’s palace in Pleuron, demanding the hand of lovely Deianeira, who drove a chariot and practised the art of war; but all abandoned their claims when they found themselves in rivalry with Heracles and the River-god Achelous. It is common knowledge that immortal Achelous appears in three forms: as a bull, as a speckled serpent, and as a bull-headed man. Streams of water flow continually from his shaggy beard, and Deianeira would rather have died than marry him.

c. Heracles, when summoned by Oeneus to plead his suit, boasted that if he married Deianeira, she would not only have Zeus for a father-in-law, but enjoy the reflected glory of his own Twelve Labours. Achelous (now in bull-headed form) scoffed at this, remarking that he was a well-known personage, the father of all Greek waters, not a footloose stranger like Heracles, and that the Oracle of Dodona had instructed all visitants to offer him sacrifices. Then he taunted Heracles: ‘Either you are not Zeus’s son, or your mother is an adulteress!’ Heracles scowled. ‘I am better at fighting than debating,’ he said, ‘and I will not hear my mother insulted!’

d. Achelous cast aside his green garment, and wrestled with Heracles until he was thrown on his back, whereupon he deftly turned into a speckled serpent and wriggled away. ‘I strangled serpents in my cradle!’ laughed Heracles, stooping to grip his throat. Next, Achelous became a bull and charged; Heracles nimbly stepped aside and, catching hold of both his horns, hurled him to the ground with such force that the right horn snapped clean off. Achelous retired, miserably ashamed, and hid his injury under a chaplet of willow-branches. Some say that Heracles returned the broken horn to Achelous in exchange for the horn of Goat Amaltheia; and some, that it was changed into Amaltheia’s by the Naiads, and that Heracles presented it to Oeneus as a bridal gift. Others say that in the course of his Twelfth Labour, he took the horn down to Tartarus, filled by the Hesperides with golden fruit and now called the Cornucopia, for Plutus, Tyche’s assistant.

e. After marrying Deianeira, Heracles marched with the Calydonians against the Thesprotian city of Ephyra—later Cichyerus—he overcame and killed King Phyleus. Among the captives was Phyleus’s daughter Astyoche, by whom Heracles became the father of Tlepolemus; though some say that Tlepolemus’s mother was Astidameia, daughter of Amyntor, whom Heracles abducted in Ephyra, a city famous for its poisons.

f. On the advice of an Oracle, Heracles now sent word to his friend Thespius: ‘Keep seven of your sons in Thespiae, send three to Thebes and order the remaining forty to colonize the island of Sardinia.’ Thespius obeyed. Descendants of those who went to Thebes are honoured there; and descendants of those who stayed behind in Thespiae, the so-called Demuchi, governed the city until recently. The forces led to Sardinia by Iolaus included Thespian and Athenian contingents, this being the first Greek colonial expedition in which kings came of different stock from the common people. After defeating the Sardinians in battle, Iolaus divided the island into provinces, planted olive-trees, and made it so fertile that the Carthaginians have since been prepared to undergo immense troubles to come in its possession. He founded the city of Olbia, and encouraged the Athenians to found that of Ogryle. With the consent of the sons of Thespius, who regarded Iolaus as their second father, he called the colonists after himself, Iolarians; and they still sacrifice to Father Iolaus, as Persians do to Father Cyrus. It has been said that Iolaus returned to Greece, by way of Sicily, where some of his supporters settled and awarded him hero rites; but according to the Thebans, who should know, none of the colonists ever came back.

g. At a feast three years later, Heracles grew enraged with young kinsman of Oeneus, variously named Eunomus, Eurynomus, Eunomus Archias, or Chaerias, the son of Architeles, who was reluctant to pour water on Heracles’s hands, and clumsily splashed it on his legs. Heracles boxed the boy’s ears harder than he intended, and killed him. Even if forgiven by Architeles for this accident, Heracles decided due penalty of exile, and went away with Deianeira, ant Hyllus, to Trachis, the home of Amphitryon’s nephew Ceyx.

h. A similar accident had occurred at Phlius, a city which lies east of Arcadia, when Heracles returned from the Garden of Hesperides. Disliking the drink set before him, he struck Cyathus, the cupbearer, with one finger only, but killed him none the less. A chapel to Cyathus’s memory has been built against Apollo’s Phlian temple.

i. Some say that Heracles wrestled against Achelous before the murder of Iphitus, which was the cause of his removal to Trachis; others, that he went there when first exiled from Tiryns. At all events, he came with Deianeira to the river Evenus, then in full flood, where the Centaur Nessus, claiming that he was the gods’ authorized ferryman and chosen because of his righteousness, offered, for a small fee, to carry Deianeira dry-shod across the water while Heracles swam. He agreed, paid Nessus the fare, threw his club and bow over the river, and plunged in. Nessus, however, instead of keeping to his bargain, galloped off in the opposite direction with Deianeira in his arms; then threw her to the ground and tried to violate her. She screamed for help, and Heracles, quickly recovering his bow, took careful aim and pierced Nessus through the breast from half a mile away.

j. Wrenching out the arrow, Nessus told Deianeira: ‘If you mix the seed which I have spilt on the ground with blood from my wound, add olive oil, and secretly anoint Heracles’s shirt with the mixture, you will never again have cause to complain of his unfaithfulness.’ Deianeira hurriedly collected the ingredients in a jar, which she sealed and kept by her without saying a word to Heracles on the subject.

k. Another version of the story is that Nessus offered Deianeira wool soaked in his own blood, and told her to weave it into a shirt for Heracles. A third version is that he gave her his own blood-stained shirt as a love-charm, and then fled to a neighbouring tribe of Locrians, where he died of the wound; but his body rotted unburied, at the foot of Mount Taphiassus, tainting the country with its noisome smell—hence these Locrians are called Ozolian. The spring beside which he died still smells foetid and contains dots of blood.

l. By Deianeira, Heracles had already become the father of Hyllus, Ctesippus, Glenus, and Hodites; also of Macaria, his only daughter.




p. 322
Heracles In Trachis

STILL accompanied by his Arcadian allies, Heracles came to Trachis where he settled down for awhile, under the protection of Ceyx. On his way, he had passed through the country of the Dryopians, which is overshadowed by Mount Parnassus, and found their king Theiodamas, the son of Dryops, ploughing with a yoke of oxen. Being hungry and also eager for a pretext to make war on the Dryopians—who, as everyone knew, had no right to the country—Heracles demanded one of the oxen; and, when Theiodamas refused, killed him. After slaughtering the ox, and feasting on its flesh, he bore off Theiodamas’s infant son Hylas, whose mother was the nymph Menodice, Orion’s daughter. But some call Hylas’s father Ceyx, or Euphemus, or Theiomenes; and insist that Theiodamas was the Rhodian ploughman who cursed from afar while Heracles sacrificed one of his oxen.

b. It seems that Phylas, Theiodamas’s successor, violated Apollo’s temple at Delphi. Outraged on Apollo’s behalf, Heracles killed Phylas and carried off his daughter Meda; she bore him Antiochus, founder of the Athenian deme which bears his name. He then expelled the Dryopians from their city on Mount Parnassus, and gave it to the Malians who had helped in its conquest. The leading Dryopians he took to Delphi and dedicated them at the shrine as slaves; but, Apollo having no use for them, they were sent away to the Peloponnese, where they sought the favour of Eurystheus the High King. Under his orders, and with the assistance of other fugitive compatriots, they built three cities, Asine, Hermione, and Eion. Of the remaining Dryopians, some fled to Euboea, others to Cyprus and to the island of Cynthos. But only the men of Asine still pride themselves on being Dryopians; they have built a shrine to their ancestor Dryops, with an ancient image, and celebrate mysteries in his honour every second year.

c. Dryops was Apollo’s son by Dia, a daughter of King Lycaon, for fear of whom she hid the infant in a hollow oak; hence his name. Some say that Dryops himself brought his people from the Thessalian river Spercheius to Asine, and that he was a son of Spercheius by the nymph Polydora.

d. A boundary dispute had arisen between the Dorians of Hestiaeotis, ruled by King Aegimius, and the Lapiths of Mount Olympus, former allies of the Dryopians, whose king was Coronus, a son of Caeneus. The Dorians, greatly outnumbered by the Lapiths, fled to Heracles and appealed for help, offering him in return a third share of their kingdom; whereupon Heracles and his Arcadian allies defeated the Lapiths, slew Coronus and most of his subjects, and forced them to quit the disputed land. Some of them settled at Corinth. Aegimius then held Heracles’s third share in trust for his descendants.

e. Heracles now came to Itonus, a city of Phthiotis, where the ancient temple of Athene stands. Here he met Cycnus, a son of Ares and Pelopia, who was constantly offering valuable prizes to guests who dared fight a chariot duel with him. The ever-victorious Cycnus would cut off their heads and use the skulls to decorate the temple of his father Ares. This, by the way, was not the Cycnus whom Ares had begotten on Pyrene and transformed into a swan when he died.

f. Apollo, growing vexed with Cycnus, because he waylaid and carried off herds of cattle which were being sent for sacrifice to Delphi, incited Heracles to accept Cycnus’s challenge. It was agreed that Heracles should be supported by his charioteer Iolaus, and Cycnus by his father Ares. Heracles, though this was not his usual style of fighting, put on the polished bronze greaves which Hephaestus had made for him, the curiously wrought golden breast-plate given him by Athene, and a pair of iron shoulder-guards. Armed with bow and arrows, spear, helmet, and a stout shield which Zeus had ordered Hephaestus to supply, he lightly mounted his chariot.

g. Athene, descending from Olympus, now warned Heracles that, although empowered by Zeus to kill and despoil Cycnus, he must do no more than defend himself against Ares and, even if victorious, not deprive him of either his horses or his splendid armour. She then mounted beside Heracles and Iolaus, shaking her aegis, and Mother Earth groaned as the chariot whirled forward. Cycnus drove to meet them at full speed, and both he and Heracles were thrown to the ground by the shock of their encounter, spear against shield. Yet they sprang to their feet and, after a short combat, Heracles thrust Cycnus through the neck. He then boldly faced Ares, who hurled a spear at him; and Athene, with an angry frown, turned it aside. Ares ran at Heracles sword in hand, only to be wounded in the thigh for his pains, and Heracles would have dealt him a further blow as he lay on the ground, had not Zeus parted the combatants with a thunderbolt. Heracles and Iolaus then despoiled Cycnus’s corpse and resumed their interrupted journey; while Athene led the fainting Ares back to Olympus. Cycnus was buried by Ceyx in the valley of the Anaurus but, at Apollo’s command, the swollen river washed away his headstone.

h. Some, however, say that Cycnus lived at Amphanae, and that Heracles transfixed him with an arrow beside the river Peneius, or at Pegasae.

i. Passing through Pelasgiotis, Heracles now came to Ormenium, a small city at the foot of Mount Pelion, where King Amyntor refused to give him his daughter Astydameia. ‘You are married already,’ he said, ‘and have betrayed far too many princesses for me to trust you with another.’ Heracles attacked the city and, after killing Amyntor, carried off Astydameia, who bore him Ctesippus or, some say, Tlepolemus.




p. 323
Iole

AT Trachis Heracles mustered an army of Arcadians, Melians, and Epienemidian Locrians, and marched against Oechalia to revenge himself on King Eurytus, who refused to surrender the princess Iole, fairly won in an archery contest; but he told his allies no more than that Eurytus had been unjustly exacting tribute from the Euboeans. He stormed the city, fiddled Eurytus and his son with arrows and, after burying certain of his comrades who had fallen in the battle, namely Ceyx’s son Hippasus, and Argeius and Melas, sons of Licymnius, pillaged Oechalia and took Iole captive. Rather than yield to Heracles, Iole had allowed him to murder her entire family before her very eyes, and then leaped from the city wall; yet she survived, because her skirts were billowed out by the wind and broke the fall. Now Heracles sent her, with other Oechalian women, to Deianeira at Trachis, while he visited the Euboean headland of Cenaeum. It should be noted here that when taking leave of Deianeira, Heracles had divulged a prophecy: at the end of fifteen months, he was fated either to die, or to spend the remainder of his life in perfect tranquillity. The news had been conveyed to him by the twin doves of the ancient oak oracle at Dodona.

b. It is disputed which city of Oechalia was mentioned on this occasion: whether the Mesennian, the Thessalian, the Euboean, the Trachinian; or the Aetolian. Messenian Oechalia is the most probable of these, since Eurytus’s father Melaneus, King of the Dryopes—skilled archer, and hence called a son of Apollo—came to Mesenne the reign of Perieres, son of Aeolus, who gave him Oechalia as his residence. Oechalia was called after Melaneus’s wife. Here, in a sacred grove, heroic sacrifices to Eurytus, whose bones are preserved in a brazen urn, initiate the Great Goddess’s Mysteries. Others identify Oechalia with Andania, a mile from the cypress—grove, where the Mysteries were formerly held. Eurytus was one of the heroes who the Messenians invited to dwell among them when Epaminondas restored their Peloponnesian patrimony.




p. 324
The Apotheosis Of Heracles

HAVING consecrated marble altars and a sacred grove to his father Zeus on the Cenaean headland, Heracles prepared a thanksgiving sacrifice for the capture of Oechalia. He had already sent Lichas back to ask Deianeira for a fine shirt and a cloak of the sort which he regularly wore on such occasions.

b. Deianeira, comfortably installed at Trachis, was by now resigned to Heracles’s habit of taking mistresses; and, when she recognized Iole as the latest of these, felt pity rather than resentment for the fatal beauty which had been Oechalia’s ruin. Yet was it not intolerable that Heracles expected Iole and herself to live together under the same roof? Since she was no longer young, Deianeira decided to use Nessus’s supposed love-charm as a means of holding her husband’s affection. Having woven him a new sacrificial shirt against his safe return, she covertly unsealed the jar, soaked a piece of wool in the mixture, and rubbed the shirt with it. When Lichas arrived she locked the shirt in a chest which she gave to him, saying: ‘On no account expose the shirt to light or heat until Heracles is about to wear it at the sacrifice.’ Lichas had already driven off at full speed in his chariot when Deianeira, glancing at the piece of wool which she had thrown down into the sunlit courtyard, was horrified to see it burning away like saw-dust, while red foam bubbled up from the flag-stones. Realizing that Nessus had deceived her, she sent a courier post—haste to recall Lichas and, cursing her folly, swore that if Heracles died she would not survive him.

c. The courier arrived too late at the Cenaean headland. Heracles had by now put on the shirt and sacrificed twelve immaculate bulls as the first-fruits of his spoils: in all, he had brought to the altar a mixed herd of one hundred cattle. He was pouring wine from a bowl on the altars and throwing frank-incense on the flames when he let out a sudden yell as if he had been bitten by a serpent. The heat had melted the Hydra’s poison in Nessus’s blood, which coursed all over Heracles’s limbs, corroding his flesh. Soon the pain was beyond endurance and, bellowing in anguish, he overturned the altars. He tried to rip off the shirt, but it clung to him so fast that his flesh came away with it, laying bare the bones. His blood hissed and bubbled like spring water when red-hot metal is being tempered. He plunged headlong into the nearest stream, but the poison burned only the fiercer; these waters have been scalding hot ever since and are called Thermopylae, or ‘hot passage’.

d. Ranging over the mountain, tearing up trees as he went, Heracles came upon the terrified Lichas crouched in the hollow of a rock, his knees clasped with his hands. In vain did Lichas try to exculpate himself: Heracles seized him, whirled him thrice about his head and flung him into the Euboean Sea. There he was transformed: he became a rock of human appearance, projecting a short distance above the waves, which sailors still call Lichas and on which they are afraid to tread, believing it to be sentient. The army, watching from afar, raised a great shout of lamentation, but none dared approach until, writhing in agony, Heracles summoned Hyllus, and asked to be carried away to die in solitude. Hyllus conveyed him to the foot of Mount Oeta in Trachis (a region famous for its white hellebore), the Delphic Oracle having already pointed this out to Licymnius and Iolaus as the destined scene of their friend’s death.

e. Aghast at the news, Deianeira hanged herself or, some say, stabbed herself with a sword in their marriage bed. Heracles’s one thought had been to punish her before he died, but when Hyllus assured him that she was innocent, as her suicide proved, he sighed forgivingly and expressed a wish that Alcmene and all his sons should assemble to hear his last words. Alcmene, however, was at Tiryns with some of his children, and most of the others had settled at Thebes. Thus he could reveal Zeus’s prophecy, now fulfilled, only to Hyllus: ‘No man alive may ever kill Heracles; a dead enemy shall be his downfall.’ Hyllus then asked for instructions, and was told: ‘Swear by the head of Zeus that you will convey me to the highest peak of this mountain, and there burn me, without lamentation, on a pyre of oak-branches and trunks of the male wild-olive. Likewise swear to marry Iole as soon as you come of age.’ Though scandalized by these requests, Hyllus promised to observe them.

f. When all had been prepared, Iolaus and his companions retired a short distance, while Heracles mounted the pyre and gave orders lot its kindling. But none dared obey, until a passing Aeolian shepherd named Poeas ordered Philoctetes, his son by Demonassa, to do as Heracles asked. In gratitude, Heracles bequeathed his quiver, bow, and arrows to Philoctetes and, when the flames began to lick at the pyre, spread his lion-pelt over the platform at the summit and lay down, with his club for pillow, looking as blissful as a garlanded guest surrounded by wine-cups. Thunderbolts then fell from the sky and at once reduced the pyre to ashes.

g. In Olympus, Zeus congratulated himself that his favourite son had behaved so nobly. ‘Heracles’s immortal part’, he announced, ‘is safe from death, and I shall soon welcome him to this blessed region. But if anyone here grieves at his deification, so richly merited, that god or goddess must nevertheless approve it willy-nilly!’ All the Olympians assented, and Hera decided to swallow the insult, which was clearly aimed at her, because she had already arranged to punish Philoctetes, for his kindly act, by the bite of a Lemnian viper.

h. The thunderbolts had consumed Heracles’s mortal part. He no longer bore any resemblance to Alcmene but, like a snake that has cast its skin, appeared in all the majesty of his divine father. A cloud received him from his companions sight as, amid peals of thunder, Zeus bore him up to heaven in his four-horse chariot; where Athene took him by the hand and solemnly introduced him to her fellow deities.

i. Now, Zeus had destined Heracles as one of the Twelve Olympians, yet was loth to expel any of the existing company of gods in order to make room for him. He therefore persuaded Hera to adopt Heracles by a ceremony of rebirth: namely, going to bed, pretending to be in labour, and then producing him from beneath her skirt—which is the adoption ritual still in use among many barbarian tribes. Henceforth, Hera regarded Heracles as her son and loved him next only to Zeus. All the immortals welcomed his arrival; and Hera married him to her pretty daughter Hebe, who bore him Alexiares and Anicetus. And, indeed, Heracles had earned Hera’s true gratitude in the revolt of the Giants by killing Pronomus, when he tried to violate her.

j. Heracles became the porter of heaven, and never tires of standing at the Olympian gates, towards nightfall, waiting for Artemis’s return from the chase. He greets her merrily, and hauls the heaps of prey out of her chariot, frowning and wagging a finger in disapproval if he finds only harmless goats and hares. ‘Shoot wild boars,’ he says, ‘that trample down crops and gash orchard-trees; shoot man-killing bulls, and lions, and wolves! But what harm have goats and hares done us?’ Then he flays the carcasses, and voraciously eats any titbits that take his fancy. Yet while the immortal Heracles banquets at the divine table, his mortal phantom stalks about Tartarus, among the twittering dead; bow drawn, arrow fitted to the string. Across his shoulder is slung a golden baldric, terrifyingly wrought with lions, bears, wild boars, and scenes of battle and slaughter.

k. When Iolaus and his companions returned to Trachis, Menoetius, the son of Actor, sacrificed a ram, a bull, and a boar to Heracles, and instituted his hero-worship at Locrian Opus; the Thebans soon followed suit; but the Athenians, led by the people of Marathon, were the first to worship him as a god, and all mankind now follows this glorious example. Heracles’s son Phaestus forrod that the Sicyonia were offering his father hero-rites, but himself insisted on sacrificing him as a god. To this day, therefore, the people of Sicyon, after killing a lamb and burning its thighs on the altar to Heracles the god, dedicate part of its flesh to Heracles the hero. At Oeta, he is worshipped under the name of Cornopion, because he scared away the locusts which were about to settle on the city; but the Ionians of Erythrae worship him Heracles Ipoctonus, because he destroyed the ipes, which are worms that attack vines in almost every other region.

l. A Tyrian image of Heracles, now in his shrine at Erythrae, is said to represent Heracles the Dactyl. It was found floating on a raft in the Ionian Sea off Cape Mesate, exactly halfway between the harbour Erythrae and the island of Chios. The Erythraeans on one side and the Chians on the other, strained every nerve to tow the raft to their shore—but without success. At last an Erythraean fisherman named Phormio, who had lost his sight, dreamed that the women of Erythrae must plait a rope from their shorn tresses; with this, the men would be able to tow the raft home. The women of a Thracian clan that has settled in Erythrae complied, and the raft was towed ashore; and only their descendants are now permitted to enter the shrine where the rope is laid up. Phormio recovered his sight, and kept it until he died.




p. 328
The Children Of Heracles

ALCMENE, the mother of Heracles, had gone to Tiryns, taking some of his sons with her; others were still at Thebes and Trachis. Eurystheus now derided to expel them all from Greece, before they could reach manhood and depose him. He therefore sent a message to Ceyx, demanding the extradition not only of the Heraclids, but also of Iolaus, the whole house of Licymnius, and Heracles’s Arcadian allies. Too weak to oppose Eurystheus, they left Trachis in a body—Ceyx pleading that he was powerless to help them—and visited most of the great Greek cites as suppliants, begging for hospitality. The Athenians under Theseus alone dared defy Eurystheus: their innate sense of justice prevailed when they saw the Heraclids seated at the Altar of Mercy.

b. Theseus settled the Heraclids and their companions at Tricorythus —a city of the Attic tetrapolis—and would not surrender them to Eurystheus, which was the cause of the first war between Athens and the Peloponnese. For, when all the Heraclids had grown to manhood, Eurystheus assembled an army and marched against Athens; Iolaus, Theseus, and Hyllus being appointed to command the combined Athenians and Heraclids. But some say that Theseus had now been succeeded by his son Demophon. Since an oracle announced that the Athenians must be defeated unless one of Heracles’s children would die for the common good, Macaria, Heracles’s only daughter, killed herself at Marathon, and thus gave her name to the Macarian spring.

c. The Athenians, whose protection of the Heraclids is even today a source of civic pride, then defeated Eurystheus in a pitched battle and killed his sons Alexander, Iphimedon, Eurybius, Mentor, and Perimedes, besides many of his allies. Eurystheus fled in his chariot, pursued by Hyllus, who overtook him at the Scironian Rocks and there cut off his head, from which Alcmene gouged the eyes with weaving-pins; his tomb is shown near by. But some say that he was captured by Iolaus at the Scironian Rocks, and taken to Alcmene, who ordered his execution. The Athenians interceded for him, though in vain, and before the sentence was carried out, Eurystheus shed tears of gratitude and declared that he would reveal himself, even in death, as their firm friend, and a sworn enemy to the Heraclids. ‘Theseus;’ he cried. ‘You need not pour libations or blood on my tomb: even without such offerings I undertake to drive all enemies from the land of Attica!’ Then he was executed and buried in front of Athene’s sanctuary at Pellene, midway between Athens and Marathon. A very different account is that the Athenians assisted Eurystheus in a battle which he fought against the Heraclids at Marathon; and that Iolaus, having cut off his head beside the Macarian spring, close to the chariot road, buried it at Tricorythus, and sent the trunk to Gargettus for burial.

d. Meanwhile, Hyllus and the Heraclids who had settled by the Electrian Gate at Thebes invaded the Peloponnese, capturing all its cities in a sudden onset; but when, next year, a plague broke out and an oracle announced: ‘The Heraclids have returned before the due time!’ Hyllus withdrew to Marathon. Obeying his father’s last wish, he had married Iole and been adopted by Aegimius the Dorian; he now went to ask the Delphic Oracle when ‘the due time’ would come, and was warned to ‘wait for the third crop’. Taking this to mean three years, he rested until these had passed and then marched again. On the Isthmus he was met by Atreus, who had meanwhile succeeded to the Mycenaean throne and rode at the head of an Achaean army.

e. To avoid needless slaughter Hyllus challenged any opponent of rank to single combat. ‘If I win’, he said, ‘let the throne and kingdom be mine. If I lose, we sons of Heracles will not return along this road for another fifty years.’ Echemus, King of Tegea, accepted the challenge, and the duel took place on the Corintho-Megarian frontier. Hyllus fell, and was buried in the city of Megara; whereupon the Heraclids honoured his undertaking and once more retired to Tricorythus, and thence to Doris, where they claimed from Aegimius that share of the kingdom which their father had entrusted to him. Only Licymnius and his sons, and Heracles’s son Tlepolemus, who was invited to settle at Argos, remained in the Peloponnese. Delphic Apollo, whose seemingly unsound advice had earned him many reproaches, explained that by the ‘third crop’ he meant the third generation.

f. Alcmene went back to Thebes and, when she died there at a great age, Zeus ordered Hermes to plunder the coffin which the Heraclids were carrying to the grave; and this he did, adroitly substituting a stone for the body, which he carried off to the Islands of the Blessed. There, revived and rejuvenated, Alcmene became the wife of Rhadamanthys. Meanwhile, finding the coffin too heavy for their shoulders, the Heraclids opened it, and discovered the fraud. They set up the stone in a sacred grove at Thebes, where Alcmene is now worshipped as a goddess. But some say that she married Rhadamanthys at Ocaleae, before her death; and others, that she died in Megara, where her tomb is still shown, on a journey from Argos to Thebes—they add, that when a dispute arose among the Heraclids, some wishing to convey her corpse back to Argos, others to continue the journey, the Delphic Oracle advised them to bury her in Megara. Another so-called tomb of Alcmene is shown at Haliartus.

g. The Thebans awarded Iolaus a hero-shrine, close to Amphitryon’s, where lovers plight their troths for Heracles’s sake; although it is generally admitted that Iolaus died in Sardinia.

h. At Argos, Tlepolemus accidentally killed his beloved grand-uncle Licymnius. He was chastising a servant with an olive-wood club when Licymnius, now old and blind, stumbled between them and caught a blow on his skull. Threatened with death by the other Heraclids, Tlepolemus built a fleet, gathered a large number of companions and, on Apollo’s advice, fled to Rhodes, where he settled after long wandering and many hardships. In those days Rhodes was inhabited by Greek settlers under Triops, a son of Phorbas, with whose consent Tlepolemus divided the island into three parts and is said to have founded the cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Cameirus. His people were favoured and enriched by Zeus. Later, Tlepolemus sailed to Troy with a fleet of nine Rhodian ships.

i. Heracles begot another Hyllus on the water-nymph Melite, daughter of the River-god Aegaeus, in the land of the Phaeacians. He had gone there after the murder of his children, in the hope of being purified by King Nausithous and by Macris, the nurse of Dionysus. This was the Hyllus who emigrated to the Cronian Sea with a number of Phaeacian settlers, and gave his name to the Hyllaeans.

j. The latest-born of all the Heraclids is said to have been the Thasian athlete Theagenes, whose mother was visited one night in the temple of Heracles by someone whom she took for his priest, her husband Timosthenes, but who proved to be the god himself.

k. The Heraclids eventually reconquered the Peloponnese in the fourth generation under Temenus, Cresphontes, and the twins Proeles and Eurysthenes, after killing the High King Tisamenes of Mycenae, a son of Orestes. They would have succeeded earlier, had not one of their princes murdered Carnus, an Acarnanian poet, as he came towards them chanting prophetic verses; mistaking him for a magician sent against them by Tisamenes. In punishment of this sacrilege the Heraclid fleet was sunk and famine caused their army to disband. The Delphic Oracle now advised thorn ‘to banish the slayer for ten years and take Triops as a guide in his place.’ They were about to fetch Triops son of Phorbas from Rhodes, when Temenus noticed an Aetolian chieftain named Oxylus, who had just expiated some murder or other with a year’s exile in Elis, riding by on a one-eyed horse. Now, Triops means ‘three-eyed’, and Temenus therefore engaged him as guide and, landing on the coast of Elis with his Heraclid kinsmen, soon conquered the whole Peloponnese, and divided it by lot. The lot marked with a toad meant Argos and went to Temenus; that marked with a serpent meant Sparta and went to the twins Proeles and Eurysthenes; that marked with a fox meant Messene and went to Cresphontes.




p. 331
Linus

THE child Linus of Argos must be distinguished from Linus, the son of Ismenius, whom Heracles killed with a lyre. According to the Argives, Psamathe, the daughter of Crotopus, bore the child Linus to Apollo and, fearing her father’s wrath, exposed him on a mountain. He was found and reared by shepherds, but afterwards torn in pieces by Crotopus’s mastiffs. Since Psamathe could not disguise her grief, Crotopus soon guessed that she was Linus’s mother, and condemned her to death. Apollo punished the city of Argos for this double crime by sending a sort of Harpy named Poene, who snatched young children from their parents until one Coroebus took it upon himself to destroy her. A plague then descended on the city and, when it showed no sign of abating, the Argives consulted the Delphic Oracle, which advised them to propitiate Psamathe and Linus. Accordingly they offered sacrifices to their ghosts, the women and maidens chanting dirges, still called linoi; and since Linus had been reared among lambs, named the festival arnis, and the month in which it was held arneios. The plague still raging, at last Coroebus went to Delphi and confessed to Poene’s murder. The Pythoness would not let him return to Argos, but said: ‘Carry my tripod hence, and build a temple to Apollo wherever it falls from your hands!’ This happened to him on Mount Geraneia, where he founded first the temple and then the city of Tripodisci, and took up residence there. His tomb is shown in the market place at Megara; surmounted by a group of statuary, which depicts Poene’s murder—the most ancient sculptures of that kind still surviving in Greece. This second Linus is sometimes called Oetolinus, and harpists mourn him at banquets.

b. A third Linus likewise lies buried at Argos: he was the poet whom some describe as a son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope—thus making him Orpheus’s brother. Others call him the son of Apollo and the Muse Urania, or Arethusa, a daughter of Poseidon; or of Hermes and Urania; others, again, of Amphimarus, Poseidon s son, and Urania; still others, of Magnes and the Muse Clio. Linus was the greatest musician who ever appeared among mankind, and jealous Apollo killed him. He had composed ballads in honour of Dionysus and other ancient heroes, afterwards recording them in Pelasgian letters; also an epic of the Creation. Linus, in fact, invented rhythm and melody, was universally wise, and taught both Thamyris and Orpheus.

c. The lament for Linus spread all over the world and is the theme, for instance, of the Egyptian Song of Maneros. On Mount Helicon, as one approached the Muses grove, Linus’s portrait is carved in the wall of a small grotto, where annual sacrifices to him precede those offered to the Muses. It is claimed that he lies buffed at Thebes, and that Philip, father of Alexander the Great, after defeating the Greeks at Chaeronea, removed his bones to Macedonia, in accordance with a dream; but afterwards dreamed again, and sent them back.


p. 220
1. The story of Laius, Iocaste, and Oedipus has been deduced from set of sacred icons by a deliberate perversion of their meaning. A myth which would explain Labdacus’s name (‘help with torches’) has been lost; but it may refer to the torchlight arrival of a Divine Child, carried by cattlemen or shepherds at the New Year ceremony, and acclaimed as a son of the goddess Brimo (‘raging’). This eleusis, or advent, was the most important incident in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and perhaps also the Isthmian, which would explain the myth of Oedipus’ arrival at the court of Corinth. Shepherds fostered or paid homage to many other legendary or semi-legendary infant princes, such as Hippothous, Pelias, Amphion, Aegisthus, Moses, Romulus, and Cyrus, who were all either exposed on a mountain or else consigned to the waves in an ark, or both. Moses was found by Pharaoh’s daughter when she went down to the water with her women. It is possible that Oedipus, ‘swollen foot’, was originally Oedipais, ‘son of the swelling sea’, which is the meaning of the name given to the corresponding Welsh hero, Dylan; and that the piercing of Oedipus’s feet with a nail belongs to the end, not to the beginning, of his story, as in the myth of Talus.

2. Laius’s murder is a record of the solar king’s ritual death at the hands of his successor: thrown from a chariot and dragged by the horses. His abduction of Chrysippus probably refers to the sacrifice of a surrogate when the first year of his reign ended.

3. The anecdote of the Sphinx has evidently been deduced from an icon showing the winged Moon-goddess of Thebes, whose composite body represents the two parts of the Theban year—lion for the waxing part, serpent for the waning part—and to whom the new king offers his devotions before marrying her priestess, the Queen. It seems also that the riddle which the Sphinx learned from the Muses has been invented to explain a picture of an infant, a warrior, and an old man, all worshipping the Triple-goddess: each pays his respects to a different person of the triad. But the Sphinx, overcome by Oedipus, killed herself, and so did her priestess Iocaste. Was Oedipus a thirteenth-century invader of Thebes, who suppressed the old Minoan cult of the goddess and reformed the calendar? Under the old system, the new king, though a foreigner, had theoretically been a son of the old king whom he killed and whose widow he married; a custom that the patriarchal invaders misrepresented as parricide and incest. The Freudian theory that the ‘Oedipus complex’ is an instinct common to all men was suggested by this perverted anecdote; and while Plutarch records (On Isis and Osiris) that the hippopotamus ‘murdered his sire and forced his dam’, he would never have suggested that every man has a hippopotamus complex.

4. Though Theban patriots, loth to admit that Oedipus was a foreigner who took their city by storm, preferred to make him the lost heir to the kingdom, the truth is revealed by the death of Menoeceus, a member of the pre-Hellenic race that celebrated the Peloria festival in memory of Ophion the Demiurge, from whose teeth they claimed to have sprung. He leaped to his death in the desperate hope of placating the goddess, like Mettus Curtius, when a chasm opened in the Roman Forum (Livy); and the same sacrifice was offered during the War of the ‘Seven Against Thebes’. However, he died in vain; otherwise the Sphinx, and her chief priestess, would not have been obliged to commit suicide. The story of Iocaste’s death by hanging is probably an error; Helen of the Olive-trees, like Erigone and Ariadne of the vine cult, was said to have died in this way—perhaps to account for figurines of the Moon-goddess which dangled from the boughs of orchard trees, as a fertility charm. Similar figurines were used at Thebes; and when Iocaste committed suicide, she doubtless leaped from a rock, as the Sphinx did.

5. The occurrence of ‘Teiresias’, a common title for soothsayers, throughout Greek legendary history suggested that Teiresias had been granted a remarkably long life by Zeus. To see snakes coupling is still considered unlucky in Southern India; the theory being that the witness will be punished with the ‘female disease’ (as Herodotus calls it), namely homosexuality; here the Greek fabulist has taken the tale a stage further in order to raise a laugh against women. Cornel, a divinatory tree sacred to Cronus, symbolized the fourth month, that of the Spring Equinox; Rome was founded at this season, on the spot where Romulus’s cornel—wood javelin struck the ground. Hesiod turned the traditional two Charites into three, calling them Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia (Theogony)—Sosostratus’s account of the beauty contest makes poor sense, because Pasithea Cale Euphrosyne, ‘the Goddess of Joy who is beautiful to all’, seems to have been Aphrodite’s own title. He may have borrowed it from the Judgement of Paris.

6. Two incompatible accounts of Oedipus’s end survive. According to Homer, he died gloriously in battle. According to Apollodorus and Hyginus, he was banished by Iocaste’s brother, a member of the Cadmean royal house, and wandered as a blind beggar through the cities of Greece until he came to Colonus in Attica, where the Furies hounded him to death. Oedipus’s remorseful self-blinding has been interpreted by psychologists to mean castration; but though the blindness of Achilles’s tutor Phoenix was said by Greek grammarians to be a euphemism for impotence, primitive myth is always downright, and the castration of Uranus and Attis continued to be recorded unblushingly in Classical text books. Oedipus’s blinding, therefore, reads like a theatrical invention, rather than original myth. Furies were personifications of conscience, but conscience in a very limited sense: aroused only by the breach of a maternal taboo.

7. According to the non-Homeric story, Oedipus’s defiance of the City-goddess was punished by exile, and he eventually died a victim of his own superstitious fears. It is probable that his innovations were repudiated by a body of Theban conservatives; and, certainly, his sons’ and brothers’ unwillingness to award him the shoulder of the sacrificial victim amounted to a denial of his divine authority. The shoulder-blade was the priestly perquisite at Jerusalem (Leviticus) and Tantalus set one before the goddess Demeter at a famous banquet of the gods. Among the Akan, the right shoulder still goes to the ruler.

8. Did Oedipus, like Sisyphus, try to substitute patrilineal for matrilineal laws of succession, but get banished by his subjects? It seems probable. Theseus of Athens, another patriarchal revolutionary from the Isthmus, who destroyed the ancient Athenian clan of Pallantids, is associated by the Athenian dramatists with Oedipus’s burial, and was likewise banished at the close of his reign.

9. Teiresias here figures dramatically as the prophet of Oedipus’s final disgrace, but the story, as it survives, seems to have been turned insideout. It may once have run something like this: Oedipus of Corinth conquered Thebes and became king by marrying Iocaste, a priestess of Hera. Afterwards he announced that the kingdom should henceforth be bequeathed from father to son in the male line, which is a Corinthian custom, instead of remaining the gift of Hera the Throttler. Oedipus confessed that he felt himself disgraced as having let chariot horses drag to death Laius, who was accounted his father, and as having married Iocaste, who had enroyalled him by a ceremony of rebirth. But when he tried to change these customs, Iocaste committed suicide in protest, and Thebes was visited by a plague. Upon the advice of an oracle, the Thebans then withheld from Oedipus the sacred shoulder-blade, and banished him. He died in a fruitless attempt to regain his throne by warfare.










p. 224
1. Apollo’s lion-and-boar oracle will have originally conveyed the wisdom of forming double kingdoms; in order to prevent political strife between the sacred king and his tanist, such as brought about the fall of Thebes. But the emblem of Thebes was a lion, because of the lion-bodied Sphinx, its former goddess; and the emblem of Calydon was a boar, probably because Ares, who had a shrine there, liked to adopt this disguise. The oracle has therefore been applied to a different situation. Shields with animal devices were regularly used in early Classical times.

2. The mythographers often made play with the syllable eri in a name, pretending that it meant eris, ‘strife’, rather than ‘plentiful’. Hence the myths of Erichthonius and Erigone. Eriphyle originally meant ‘many leaves’, rather than ‘tribal strife’. Hesiod (Works and Days.) says that Zeus wiped out two generations of heroes, the first at Thebes in the war for Oedipus’s sheep, the second at Troy in the war occasioned by fair-haired Helen. ‘Oedipus’s sheep’ is not explained; but Hesiod must be referring to this war between Eteocles and Polyneices, in which the Argives supported an unsuccessful candidate for the throne of Thebes. The cause of a similar dispute between brothers was the golden fleece, for which Atreus and Thyestes contended; its possession set the owner on the throne of Mycenae. Also, Zeus had golden-fleeced rams on Mount Laphystium, which seem to have been the royal insignia of neighbouring Orchomenus and which caused much bloodshed.

3. Hypsipyle (‘high gate’) was probably a title of the Moon-goddess’s, whose course describes a high arch across the sky; and the Nemean Games, like the Olympian, will have been celebrated at the end of the sacred king’s term, when he had reigned his fifty lunar months as the Chief-priestess’s husband. The myth preserves the tradition that boys were sacrificed annually to the goddess, as surrogates for the king; though the word Opheltes, which means simply ‘benefactor’, has here been given a forced sense: ‘wound about by a serpent’, as though it were derived from ophis, ‘serpent’ and eilein, ‘to press together’. Neither does Archemorus mean ‘the beginning of doom’, but rather ‘original olive stock’, which refers to cuttings from Athene’s sacred olive, presumably those used in the Games as crowns for the victors of the various events. After the disasters of the Persian War, the use of olive was discontinued at the Nemean Games in favour of parsley, a token of mourning (Scholiast on Pindar’s Argument to the Nemean Games). Parsley was unlucky, perhaps because of its notoriety as an abortificient—the English proverb has it: ‘parsley grows rank in cuckolds’ gardens.’ It grew rank in the death-island of Ogygia.

4. Tydeus’s gulping of Melanippus’s brains is reported as a moral anecdote. This old-established means of improving one’s fighting skill, introduced by the Hellenes and still practised by the Scythians in Classical times (Herodotus), had come to be regarded as barbarous. But the icon from which the mythographers deduced their story probably showed Athene pouring a libation to Melanippus’s ghost, in approval of Tydeus’s action. The lost epic of the Seven Against Thebes must have closely resembled the Indian Mahabharata, which glorifies the Maryannu soldier-caste: the same theme of kinsman pitted against kinsman occurs, the conduct of the fighters is nobler and more tragic than in the Iliad, the gods play no mischievous part, suttee is honoured, and Bhishma, like Tydeus, drinks his enemy’s blood.

5. Amphiaraus’s end provides yet another example of the sacred king’s death in a chariot crash. The descent of Baton (‘blackberry’) to Tartarus in his company seems to be told to account for the widespread European taboo on the eating of blackberries, which is associated with death.

6. Evadne’s self-immolation recalls the myth of Alcestis. Relics of a royal cremation found in a bee-hive tomb at Dendra near Mycenae suggest that, in this particular instance, the king and queen were buried at the same time; and A. W. Persson believes that the queen died voluntarily. But they may both have been murdered, or died of the same illness, and no similar Mycenaean burial is reported elsewhere. Suttee, in fact, which seems to have been a Hellenic practice, soon went out of fashion . Lightning was an evidence of Zeus’s presence, and since ‘holy’ and ‘unclean’ mean much the same in primitive religion—the tabooed animals in Leviticus were unclean because they were holy—the grave of a man struck by lightning was fenced off, like that of a calf that has died of anthrax on a modern farm, and he was given heroic rites. The graveyard near Eleusis where the champions are said by Pausanias to have been eventually interred, has now been identified and opened by Professor Mylonas. He found one double burial surrounded by a stone circle, and five single burials; the skeletons, as was customary in the thirteenth century BC, to which the vase fragments are attributable, showed no signs of cremation. Early grave-robbers had evidently removed the bronze weapons and other metallic objects, originally buried with the bodies; and it may have been their finding of two skeletons in the stone circle, and the anomaly of the circle itself, which suggested to the people of Eleusis that this was the grave of Capaneus, struck by lightning, and of his faithful wife Evadne.

7. The myth of Antigone, Haemon, and the shepherds seems to have been deduced from the same icon as those of Arne and Alope. We are denied the expected end of the story: that he killed his grandfather Creon with a discus.



























































p. 227
1. This is a popular minstrel tale, containing few mythic elements, which could be told either in Thebes or Argos without causing offence; which would be of interest to the people of Psophis, Nemea, and the Achelous valley; which purposed to account for the founding of Hestiaea, and the colonization of Acarnania; and which had a strong moral flavour. It taught the instability of women’s judgement, the folly of men in humouring their vanity or greed, the wisdom of listening to seers who are beyond suspicion, the danger of misinterpreting oracles, and the inescapable curse that fell on any son who killed his mother, even in placation of his murdered father’s ghost.

2. Eriphyle’s continuous power to decide between war and peace is the most interesting feature of the story. The true meaning of her name, ‘very leafy’, suggests that she was an Argive priestess of Hera in charge of a tree-oracle, like that of Dodona. If so, this tree is likely to have been a pear, sacred to Hera. Both the ‘War of the Seven Against Thebes’, which Hesiod calls the ‘War of Oedipus’s Sheep’, and its sequel here recounted, seem to have preceded the Argonautic expedition and the Trojan War, and may be tentatively referred to the fourteenth century BC.









































































































p. 229
1. According to Strabo, Tantalus, Pelops, and Niobe were Phrygians; and he quotes Demetrius of Scepsis, and also Callisthenes, as saying that the family derived their wealth from the mines of Phrygia and Mount Sipylus. Moreover, in Aeschylus’s Niobe (cited by Strabo) the Tantalids are said to have had ‘an altar of Zeus, their paternal god, on Mount Ida’; and Sipylus is located ‘in the Idaean land’. Democles, whom Strabo quoted at second hand, rationalizes the Tantalus myth, saying that his reign was marked by violent earthquakes in Lydia and Ionia, as far as the Troad: entire villages disappeared, Mount Sipylus was overturned, marshes were converted into lakes, and Troy was submerged (Strabo). According to Pausanias, also, a city on Mount Sipylus disappeared into a chasm, which subsequently filled with water and became Lake Salon, or Tantalis. The ruins of the city could be seen on the lake bottom until this was silted up by a mountain stream (Pausanias). Pliny agrees that Tantalis was destroyed by an earthquake (Natural History), but records that three successive cities were built on its site before this was finally flooded (Natural History).

2. Strabo’s historical view, however, even if archaeologically plausible, does not account for Tantalus’s connection with Argos, Corinth, and Cretan Miletus. The rock poised over him in Tartarus, always about to fall, identifies him with Sisyphus of Corinth, whose similarly perpetual punishment was deduced from an icon which showed the Sun-Titan laboriously pushing the sun-disk up the slope of Heaven to its zenith. The scholiast on Pindar was dimly aware of this identification, but explained Tantalus’s punishment rationalistically, by recording that: ‘some understand the stone to represent the sun, and Tantalus, a physicist, to be paying the penalty for having proved that the sun is a mass of white-hot metal’ (Scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes). Confusingly, this icon of the Sun-Titan has been combined with another: that of a man peering in agony through an interlace of fruit-bearing boughs, and up to his chin in water—a punishment which the rhetoricians used as an allegory of the fate meted out to the rich and greedy (Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid). The apples, pears, figs, and such-like, dangling on Tantalus’s shoulders are called by Fulgentius ‘Dead Sea fruit’, of which Tertullian writes that ‘as soon as touched with the finger, the apple turns into ashes.’

3. To make sense of this scene, it must be remembered that Tantalus’s father Tmolus is described as having been wreathed with oak, and that his son Pelops, one of whose grandsons was also called Tantalus, enjoyed hero-rites at Olympia, in which ‘Zeus’s forester’ took part. Since, as is now generally agreed, the criminals in Tartarus were gods or heroes of the pre-Olympian epoch, Tantalus will have represented the annual Sacred King, dressed in fruit-hung branches, like those carried at the Oschophoria, who was flung into a river as a pharmacos—a custom surviving in the Green George ritual of the Balkan countryside, described by Frazer. The verb tantalize, derived from this myth, has prevented scholars from realizing that Tantalus’s agony is caused not by thirst, but by fear of drowning or of subsequent immolation on a pyre, which was the fate of his ugly son Broteas.

4. Plato (Cratylus) may be right when he derives Tantalus from talan tatos, ‘most wretched’, formed from the same root, tla, as ‘suffering’, or ‘enduring’, which yields the names of Atlas and Telamon, both oak-heroes. But talanteuein means ‘to weigh out money’, and may be a reference to his riches; and talanteuesthai can mean ‘to lurch from side to side’, which is the gait of the sacred king with the lame thigh. It seems, then, that Tantalus is both a Sun-Titan and a woodland king, whose worship was brought from Greece to Asia Minor by way of Crete —Pandareus is described as a Cretan—in the mid-second millennium and reimported into Greece towards its close, when the collapse of the Hittite Empire forced wealthy Greek-speaking colonists of Asia Minor to abandon their cities.

5. When the mythographers recorded that Tantalus was a frequent guest on Olympus, they were admitting that his cult had once been dominant in the Peloponnese; and, although the banquets to which the gods invited Tantalus are carefully distinguished from the one to which he invited them, in every case the main dish will have been the same umble soup which the cannibalistic Arcadian shepherds of the oak cult prepared for Wolfish Zeus. It is perhaps no coincidence that, in Normandy, the Green George victim is called ‘Green Wolf’, and was formerly thrown alive into the midsummer bonfire. The eating of Pelops, however, is not directly connected with the wolf cult. Pelops’s position as Poseidon’s mignon, his name, ‘muddy face’, and the legend of his ivory shoulder, point rather to a porpoise cult on the Isthmus—‘dolphin’ in Greek includes the porpoise—and suggests that the Palladium, said to have been made from his bones, was a cult object of porpoise ivory. This would explain why, according to the scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes, Thetis the Sea-goddess, and not Demeter, ate Pelops’s shoulder. But the ancient seated statue of Mare-headed Demeter at Phigalia held a dove in one hand, a dolphin (or porpoise) in the other; and, as Pausanias directly says: ‘Why the image was thus made is plain to anyone of ordinary intelligence who has studied mythology’. He means that she presided over the horse cult, the oak cult, and the porpoise cult.

6. This ancient myth distressed the later mythographers. Not content with exculpating Demeter from the charge of deliberate man-eating, and indignantly denying that all the gods ate what was set before them, to the last morsel, they invented an over-rationalistic explanation of the myth. Tantalus, they wrote, was a priest who revealed Zeus’s secrets to the uninitiated. Whereupon the gods unfrocked him, and afflicted his son with a loathsome disease; but the surgeons cut him about and patched him up with bone-graftings, leaving scars which made him look as if he had been hacked in pieces and joined together again (Tzetzes: On Lycophron). Pandareus’s theft of the golden mastiff should be read as a sequel to Heracles’s theft of Cerberus, which suggests the Achaeans’ defiance of the death curse, symbolized by a dog, in their seizure of a cult object sacred to the Earth-goddess Rhea (Tantalus’s grandmother), and conferring sovereignty on its possessor. The Olympian goddesses were clearly abetting Pandareus’s theft, and the dog, though Rhea’s property, was guarding the sanctuary of the annually dying Cretan Zeus; thus the myth points not to an original Achaean violation of Rhea’s shrine, but to a temporary recovery of the cult object by the goddess’s devotees.

8. The nature of the stolen cult object is uncertain. It may have been a golden lamb, the symbol of Pelopid sovereignty; or the cuckoo-tipped sceptre which Zeus is known to have stolen from Hera; or the porpoise-ivory Palladium; or the aegis bag with its secret contents. It is unlikely to have been a golden dog, since the dog was not the cult object, but its guardian; unless this is a version of the Welsh myth of Amathaon ap Don who stole a dog from Arawn (‘eloquence’) King of Annwm (‘Tartarus ‘) and was by its means enabled to guess the secret name of the god Bran (White Goddess).

9. The three daughters of Pandareus, one of whom, Cameiro, bears the same name as the youngest of the three Rhodian Fates, are the Triple-goddess, here humiliated by Zeus for her devotees’ rebellion. Tantalus’s loyalty to the goddess is shown in the stories of his son Broteas, who carved her image on Mount Sipylus, and of his daughter Niobe, priestess of the White Goddess, who defied the Olympians and whose bird was the white swan-eagle of Lake Tantalis. Omphale, the name of Tantalus’s mother, suggests a prophetic navel-shrine like that at Delphi.

10. The annual pharmacos was chosen for his extreme ugliness, which accounts for Broteas. It is recorded that in Asia Minor, the pharmacos was first beaten on the genitals with squill to the sound of Lydian flutes. Tantalus (Pausanias) and his father Tmolus (Ovid: Metamorphoses) are both associated in legend with Lydian flutes then burned on a pyre of forest wood; his ashes were afterwards thrown into the sea (Tzetzes). In Europe, the order seems to have been reversed: the Green George pharmacos was first ducked, then beaten, and finally burned.




p. 234
1. According to Pausanias and Apollodorus, Tantalus never left Asia Minor; but other mythographers refer to him and to Pelops as native kings of Greece. This suggests that their names were dynastic titles taken by early Greek colonists to Asia Minor, where they were attested by hero-shrines; and brought back by emigrants before the Achaean invasion of the Peloponnese in the thirteenth century BC. It is known from Hittite inscriptions that Hellenic kings reigned in Pamphylia and Lesbos as early as the fourteenth century BC. Pelopo-Tantalids seem to have ousted the Cretanized dynasty of ‘Oenomaus’ from the Peloponnesian High Kingship.

2. The horse, which had been a sacred animal in Pelasgian Greece long before the cult of the Sun-chariot, was a native European pony dedicated to the Moon, not the Sun. The larger Trans-Caspian horse came to Egypt with the Hyksos invaders in 1850 BC—horse chariotry displaced ass chariotry in the Egyptian armed forces about the year 1500 BC—and had reached Crete before Cnossus fell a century later. Oenomaus’s religious ban on mules should perhaps be associated with the death of Cillus: in Greece, as at Rome, the ass cult was suppressed when the sun-chariot became the symbol of royalty. Much the same religious reformation took place at Jerusalem (Kings), where a tradition survived in Josephus’s time of an earlier ass cult (Josephus: Against Apion). Helius of the Sun-chariot, an Achaean deity, was then identified in different cities with solar Zeus or solar Poseidon, but the ass became the beast of Cronus, whom Zeus and Poseidon had dethroned, or of Pan, Silenus, and other old-fashioned Pelasgian godlings. There was also a solar Apollo; since his hatred of asses is mentioned by Pindar, it will have been Cillaean Apollo to whom hecatombs of asses were offered by the Hyperboreans (Pindar: Pythian Odes.).

3. Oenomaus, who represented Zeus as the incarnate Sun, is therefore called a son of Asterië, who ruled Heaven, rather than a similarly named Pleiad; and Queen Hippodameia, by marriage to whom he was enroyalled, represented Hera as the incarnate Moon. Descent remained matrilineal in the Peloponnese, which assured the good-will of the conservative peasantry. Nor might the King’s reign be prolonged Beyond a Great Year of one hundred months, in the last of which the solar and lunar calendars coincided; he was then fated to be destroyed by horses. As a further concession to the older cult at Pisa, where Zeus’s representative had been killed by his tanist each mid-summer, Oenomaus agreed to die a mock death at seven successive mid-winters, on each occasion appointing a surrogate to take his place for twenty-four hours and ride in the sun-chariot beside the Queen. At the close of this day, the surrogate was killed in a chariot crash, and the King stepped out from the tomb where he had been lurking, to resume his reign. This explains the myth of Oenomaus and the suitors, another version of which appears in that of Evenus. The mythographers must be mistaken when they mention ‘twelve or thirteen’ suitors. These numbers properly refer to the lunations—alternately twelve and thirteen—of a solar year, not to the surrogates; thus in the chariot race at Olympia twelve circuits of the stadium were made in honour of the Moon-goddess. Pelops is a type of lucky eighth prince, spared the chariot crash and able to despatch the old king with his own sceptre-spear.

4. This annual chariot crash was staged in the Hippodrome. The surrogate could guide his horses—which seem, from the myth of Glaucus, to have been maddened by drugs—down the straight without coming to grief, but where the course bent around a white marble statue, called the Marmaranax (‘marble king), or the Horse-scarer, the outer wheel flew off for want of a lynch-pin, the chariot collapsed, and the horses dragged the surrogate to death. Myrtle was the death-tree, that of the thirteenth month, at the close of which the chariot crash took place: hence Myrtilus is said to have removed the metal lynch-pins, and replaced them with wax ones—the melting of wax also caused the death of Icarus, the Sun-king’s surrogate—and laid a curse upon the House of Pelops.

5. In the second half of the myth, Myrtilus has been confused with the surrogate. As interrex, the surrogate was entitled to ride beside the Queen in the sun-chariot, and to sleep with her during the single night of his reign; but, at dawn on the following day, the old King destroyed him and, metaphorically, rode on in his sun-chariot to the extreme west, where he was purified in the Ocean stream. Myrtilus’s fall from the chariot into the sea is a telescoping of myths: a few miles to the east of the Hippodrome, where the Isthmian Games took place, the surrogate ‘Melicertes’, in whose honour they had been founded, was flung over a cliff and an identical ceremony was probably performed at Geraestus, where Myrtilus died. Horse-scarers are also reported from Thebes and Iolcus, which suggests that there, too, chariot crashes were staged in the hippodromes. But since the Olympian Hippodrome, sacred to solar Zeus, and the Isthmian Hippodrome, sacred to solar Poseidon, were both associated with the legend of Pelops, the mythographers have presented the contest as a cross-country race between them. Lesbos enters the story perhaps because ‘Oenomaus’ was a Lesbian dynastic title.

6. Amphion’s entry into this myth, though a Theban, is explained by his being also a native of Sicyon on the Isthmus. ‘Myrto’ will have been a title of the Sea-goddess as destroyer, the first syllable standing for ‘sea’, as in Myrtea, ‘sea—goddess’; Myrtoessa, a longer form of Myrto, was one of Aphrodite’s titles. Thus Myrtilus may originally mean ‘phallus of the sea’: myr-tylos.

7. Pelops hacks Stymphalus in pieces, as he himself is said to have been treated by Tantalus; this more ancient form of the royal sacrifice has been rightly reported from Arcadia. The Pelopids appear indeed to have patronized several local cults, beside that of the Sun-chariot: namely the Arcadian shepherd cult of oak and ram, attested by Pelops’s connection with Tantalus and his sacrifice of a black ram at Olympia; the partridge cult of Crete, Troy, and Palestine, attested by the cordax dance; the Titan cult, attested by Pelops’s title of ‘Cronian’; the porpoise cult; and the cult of the ass-god, in so far as Cillus’s ghost assisted him in the race.

8. The butchering of Marmax’s mares may refer to Oenomaus’s coronation ceremony, which involved mare-sacrifice. A ‘Cydonian apple’, or quince, will have been in the hand of the Death-goddess Athene, to whom Pelops sacrificed, as his safe-conduct to the Elysian Fields; and the white poplar, used in his heroic rites at Olympia, symbolized the hope of reincarnation after he had been hacked in pieces—because those who went to Elysium were granted the prerogative of rebirth. A close parallel to the bloodshed at Pelops’s Olympic altar is the scourging of young Spartans who were bound to the image of Upright Artemis. Pelops was, in fact, the victim, and suffered in honour of the goddess Hippodameia.











































































p. 237
1. The Heraean Games took place on the day before the Olympic Games. They consisted of a girls’ foot race, originally for the office of High-priestess to Hera, and the victrix, who wore the olive as a symbol of peace and fertility, became one with the goddess by partaking of her sacred cow. The Sixteen Matrons may once have taken turns to officiate as the High-priestess’s assistant during the sixteen seasons of the four-year Olympiad—each wheel of the royal chariot represented the solar year—and had four spokes, like a fire-wheel or swastika. ‘Narcaeus’ is clearly a back-formation from Athene Narcaea (‘benumbing’), a death-goddess. The matrons who organized the Heraean Games, which had once involved human sacrifice, propitiated the goddess with pig’s blood, and then washed themselves in running water. Hippodameia’s many children attest the strength of the confederation presided over by the Pelopid dynasty—all their names are associated with the Peloponnese or the Isthmus.

2. Alcathous’s murder of his son Callipolis at the altar of Apollo has probably been deduced from an icon which showed him offering his son as a burnt sacrifice to the ‘previous builder’, the city-god Melicertes, or Moloch, when he refounded Megara—as a king of Moab also did (Joshua). Moreover, like Samson and David, he had killed a lion in ritual combat. Corinthian mythology has many close affinities with Palestinian.

3. The myth of Chrysippus survives in degenerate form only. That he was a beautiful Pisan boy who drove a chariot, was carried off like Ganymedes, or Pelops himself (though not, indeed, to Olympus), and killed by Hippodameia, suggests that, originally, he was one of the royal surrogates who died in the chariot crash; but his myth has become confused with a justification of Theban pederasty, and with the legend of a dispute about the Nemean Games between Thebes and Pisa. Hippodameia, ‘horse-tamer’, was a title of the Moon-goddess, whose mare-headed statue at Phigalia held a Pelopid porpoise in her hand; four of Pelops’s sons and daughters bear horse-names.















































































p. 240
1. The Atreus—Thyestes myth, which survives only in highly theatrical versions, seems to be based on the rivalry between Argive co-kings for supreme power, as in the myth of Acrisius and Proetus. It is a good deal older than the story of Heracles’s Sons—the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, about the year 1050 BC—with which Thucydides associates it. Atreus’s golden lamb, withheld from sacrifice, recalls Poseidon’s white bull, similarly withheld by Minos; but is of the same breed as the golden-fleeced rams sacred to Zeus on Mount Laphystium, and to Poseidon on the island of Crumissa. To possess this fleece was a token of royalty, because the king used it in an annual rain-making ceremony. The lamb is metaphorically golden: in Greece ‘water is gold,’ and the fleece magically produced rain. This metaphor may, however, have been reinforced by the use of fleeces to collect gold dust from the rivers of Asia Minor; and the occasional appearance, in the Eastern Mediterranean, of lambs with gilded teeth, supposedly descendants of those that the youthful Zeus tended on Mount Ida. (In the eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu investigated this persistent anomaly, but could not discover its origin.) It may also be that the Argive royal sceptre was topped by a golden ram. Apollodorus is vague about the legal background of the dispute, but Thyestes’s claim was probably the same as that made by Maeve for the disputed bull in the fratricidal Irish War of the Bulls: that the lamb had been stolen from his own flocks at birth.

2. Euripides has introduced Eris at a wrong point in the story: she will have provoked the quarrel between the brothers, rather than helped Zeus to reverse the course of the sun—a phenomenon which she was not empowered to produce. Classical grammarians and philosophers have explained this incident in various ingenious ways which anticipate the attempts made by twentieth—century Protestants to account scientifically for the retrograde movement of the Sun’s shadow on ‘the dial of Ahaz’ (Kings). Lucian and Polybius write that when Atreus and Thyestes quarrelled over the succession, the Argives were already habitual star—gazers and agreed that the best astronomer should be elected king. In the ensuing contest, Thyestes pointed out that the sun always rose in the Ram at the Spring Festival—hence the story of the golden lamb—but the soothsayer Atreus did better: he proved that the sun and the earth travel in different directions, and that what appear to be sunsets are, in fact, settings of the earth. Whereupon the Argives made him king. Hyginus and Servius both agree that Atreus was an astronomer, but make him the first to predict an eclipse of the sun mathematically; and say that, when the calculation proved correct, his jealous brother Thyestes left the city in chagrin (Hyginus: Fabula; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid). Socrates took the myth more literally: regarding it as evidence of his theory that the universe winds and unwinds itself in alternate cycles of vast duration, the reversal of motion at the close of each cycle being accompanied by great destruction of animal life (Plato: The Statesman).

3. To understand the story, however, one must think not allegorically, nor philosophically, but mythologically; namely in terms of the archaic conflict between the sacred king and his tanist. The king reigned until the summer solstice, when the sun reached its most northerly point and stood still; then the tanist killed him and took his place, while the sun daily retreated southward towards the winter solstice. This mutual hatred, sharpened by sexual jealousy, because the tanist married his rival’s widow, was renewed between Argive co-kings, whose combined reigns extended for a Great Year; and they quarrelled over Aerope, as Acrisius and Proetus had done over Danaë. The myth of Hezekiah, who was on the point of death when, as a sign of Jehovah’s favour, the prophet Isaiah added ten years to his reign by turning back the sun ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz (Kings and Isaiah), suggests a Hebrew, or perhaps a Philistine, tradition of how the king, after the calendar reform caused by adoption of the metonic cycle, was allowed to prolong his reign to the nineteenth year, instead of dying in the ninth. Atheus, at Mycenae, may have been granted a similar dispensation.

4. The cannibalistic feast in honour of Zeus, which appears in the myth of Tantalus, has here been confused with the annual sacrifice of child surrogates, and with Cronus’s vomiting up of his children by Rhea. Thyestes’s rape of Pelopia recalls the myth of Cinyras and Smyrna, and is best explained as the king’s attempt to prolong his reign beyond the customary limit by marriage with his step-daughter, the heiress. Aerope’s rescue from the Cretan fishes identifies her with Dictynna-Britomartis, whom her grandfather Minos had chased into the sea. Aegisthus, suckled by a she-goat, is the familiar New Year child of the Mysteries.

5. The story of Clymenus and Harpalyce—there was another Thracian character of the same name, a sort of Atalanta—combines the myth of Cinyras and Smyrna with that of Tereus and Procne. Unless this is an artificial composition for the theatre, as Clymenus’s unmythical suicide by hanging suggests, he will have tried to regain a title to the throne when his reign ended, by marrying the heiress, technically his daughter, to an interrex and then killing him and taking her himself. Alastor means ‘avenger’, but his vengeance does not appear in the myth; perhaps the original version made Alastor the victim of the human sacrifice.















































































































p. 244
1. The myth of Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Clytaemnestra, and Orestes has survived in so stylized a dramatic form that its origins are almost obliterated. In tragedy of this sort, the clue is usually provided by the manner of the king’s death: whether he is flung over a cliff like Theseus, burned alive like Heracles, wrecked in a chariot like Oenomaus, devoured by wild horses like Diomedes, drowned in a pool like Tantalus, or killed by lightning like Capaneus. Agamemnon dies in a peculiar manner: with a net thrown over his head, with one foot still in the bath, but the other on the floor, and in the bath-house annex—that is to say, ‘neither clothed nor unclothed, neither in water nor on dry land, neither in his palace nor outside’—a situation recalling the midsummer death, in the Mabinogion, of the sacred king Llew Llaw, at the hands of his treacherous wife Blodeuwedd and her lover Gronw. A similar story told by Saxo Grammaticus in his late twelfth-century History of Denmark suggests that Clytaemnestra may also have given Agamemnon an apple to eat, and killed him as he set it to his lips: so that he was ‘neither fasting, nor feasting’ (White Goddess). Basically, then, this is the familiar myth of the sacred king who dies at midsummer, the goddess who betrays him, the tanist who succeeds him, the son who avenges him. Clytaemnestra’s axe was the Cretan symbol of sovereignty, and the myth has affinities with the murder of Minos, which also took place in a bath. Aegisthus’s mountain beacons, one of which Aeschylus records to have been built of heather, are the bonfires of the midsummer sacrifice. The goddess in whose honour Agamemnon was sacrificed appear in triad as his ‘daughters’: Electra (‘amber’), Iphigeneia (‘mothering strong race’), and Chrysothemis (‘golden order’).

2. This ancient story has been combined with the legend of a dispute between rival dynasties in the Peloponnese. Clytaemnestra was a Sparta royal heiress; and the Spartans’ claim, that their ancestor Tyndareus raise Agamemnon to the throne of Mycenae, suggests that they were victorious in a war against the Mycenaeans for the possession of Amyclae, where Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra were both honoured.

3. ‘ Zeus Agamemnon’, ‘very resolute Zeus’, will have been a divine title borne not only by the Mycenaean kings, but by those of Lapersae and Clazomene; and, presumably, also by the kings of a Danaan or Achaean settlement beside the River of Egypt—not to be confused wit the Nile. The River of Egypt is mentioned in Joshua as marking the boundary between Palestine and Egypt; farther from the coast, at Ascalon and near Tyre, there were other Danaan or Achaean settlements.

4. The thirteenth day, also observed as a festal day in Rome, where it was called the Ides, had corresponded with the full moon at a time when the calendar month was a simple lunation. It seems that the sacrifice of the king always took place at the full moon. According to the legend, the Greek fleet, returning late in the year from Troy, ran into winter storm—Agamemnon therefore died in January, not in June.























































































































p. 247
1. This is a crucial myth with numerous variants. Olympianism had been formed as a religion of compromise between the pre-Hellenic matriarchal principle and the Hellenic patriarchal principle; the divine family consisting, at first, of six gods and six goddesses. An uneasy balance of power was kept until Athene was reborn from Zeus’s head, and Dionysus, reborn from his thigh, took Hestia’s seat at the divine Council; thereafter male preponderance in any divine debate was assured—a situation reflected on earth—and the goddesses’ ancient prerogatives could now be successfully challenged.

2. Matrilineal inheritance was one of the axioms taken over from the pre-Hellenic religion. Since every king must necessarily be a foreigner, who ruled by virtue of his marriage to an heiress, royal princes learned to regard their mother as the main support of the kingdom, and matricide as an unthinkable crime. They were brought up on myths of the earlier religion, according to which the sacred king had always been betrayed by his goddess-wife, killed by his tanist, and avenged by his son; they knew that the son never punished his adulterous mother, who had acted with the full authority of the goddess whom she served.

3. The antiquity of the Orestes myth is evident from his friendship for Pylades, to whom he stands in exactly the same relation as Theseus to Peirithous. In the archaic version, he was doubtless a Phocian prince who ritually killed Aegisthus at the close of the eighth year of his reign, and became the new king by marriage to Chrysothemis, Clytaemnestra’s daughter.

4. Other tell-tale traces of the archaic version persisting in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Aegisthus is killed during the festival of the Death-goddess Hera, while cutting myrtle-boughs; and despatched, like the Minos bull, with a sacrificial axe. Geilissa’s rescue of Orestes (‘mountaineer’) in a robe ‘embroidered with wild beasts’, and the tutor’s stay among the shepherds of Tanus, together recall the familiar tale of a royal prince who is wrapped in a robe, left ‘on a mountain’ to the mercy of wild beasts, and cared for by shepherds—the robe being eventually recognized, as in the Hippothous myth. Geilissa’s substitution of her own son for the royal victim refers, perhaps, to a stage in religious history when the king’s annual child-surrogate was no longer a member of the royal clan.

5. How far, then, can the main features of the story, as given by the Attic dramatists, be accepted? Though it is improbable that the Erinnyes have been wantonly introduced into the myth—which, like that of Alcmaeon and Eriphyle, seems to have been a moral warning against the least disobedience, injury, or insult that a son might offer his mother—yet it is equally improbable that Orestes killed Clytaemnestra. Had he done so, Homer would certainly have mentioned the fact, and refrained from calling him ‘god-like’; he records only that Orestes killed Aegisthus, whose funeral feast he celebrated jointly with that of his hateful mother (Odyssey). The Parian Chronicle, similarly, makes no mention of matricide in Orestes’s indictment. It is probable therefore that Servius has preserved the true account: how Orestes, having killed Aegisthus, merely handed over Clytaemnestra to popular justice—a course significantly recommended by Tyndareus in Euripides’s Orestes. Yet to offend a mother by a refusal to champion her cause, however wickedly she had behaved, sufficed under the old dispensation to set the Erinnyes on his track.

6. It seems, then, that this myth, which was of wide currency, had placed the mother of a household in so strong a position, when any family dispute arose, that the priesthood of Apollo and of Zeus-born Athene (a traitress to the old religion) decided to suppress it. They did so by making Orestes not merely commit Clytaemnestra to trial, but kill her himself, and then secure an acquittal in the most venerable court of Greece: with Zeus’s support, and the personal intervention of Apollo, who had similarly encouraged Alcmaeon to murder his treacherous mother Eriphyle. It was the priests’ intention, once and for all, to invalidate the religious axiom that motherhood is more divine than fatherhood.

7. In the revision patrilocal marriage and patrilineal descent are taken for granted, and the Erinnyes are successfully defied. Electra, whose name, ‘amber’, suggests the paternal cult of Hyperborean Apollo, is favourably contrasted with Chrysothemis, whose name is a reminder that the ancient concept of matriarchal law was still golden in most parts of Greece, and whose ‘subservience’ to her mother had hitherto been regarded as pious and noble. Electra is ‘all for the father’, like the Zeus-born Athene. Moreover, the Erinnyes had always acted for the mother only; and Aeschylus is forcing language when he speaks of Erinnyes charged with avenging paternal blood (Libation-bearers). Apollo’s threat of leprosy if Orestes did not kill his mother, was a most daring one: to inflict, or heal, leprosy had long been the sole prerogative of the White Goddess Leprea, or Alphito (White Goddess). In the sequel, not all the Erinnyes accept Apollo’s Delphic ruling, and Euripides appeases his female audience by allowing the Dioscuri to suggest that Apollo’s injunctions had been most unwise (Electra).

8. The wide variations in the recognition scene, and in the plot by which Orestes contrives to kill Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, are of interest only as proving that the Classical dramatists were not bound by tradition. Theirs was a new version of an ancient myth; and both Sophocles and Euripides tried to improve on Aeschylus, who first formulated it, by making the action more plausible.















































































































p. 251
1. The tradition that Clytaemnestra’s Erinnyes drove Orestes mad cannot be dismissed as an invention of the Attic dramatists; it was too early established, not only in Greece, but in Greater Greece. Yet, just as Oedipus’s crime, for which the Erinnyes hounded him to death, was not that he killed his mother, but that he inadvertently caused her suicide; so Orestes’s murder seems also to have been in the second degree only: he had failed in filial duty by not opposing the Mycenaeans’ death sentence. The court was easily enough swayed, as Menelaus and Tyndareus soon demonstrated when they secured a death sentence against Orestes.

2. Erinnyes were personified pangs of conscience, such as are still capable, in pagan Melanesia, of killing a man who has rashly or inadvertently broken a taboo. He will either go mad and leap from a coconut palm, or wrap his head in a cloak, like Orestes, and refuse to eat or drink until he dies of starvation; even if nobody else is informed of his guilt. Paul would have suffered a similar fate at Damascus but for the timely arrival of Ananias. The common Greek method of purging ordinary blood guilt was for the homicide to sacrifice a pig and, while the ghost of the victim greedily drank its blood, to wash in running water, shave his head in order to change his appearance, and go into exile for one year, thus throwing the vengeful ghost off the scent. Until he had been purified in this manner, his neighbours shunned him as unlucky, and would not allow him to enter their homes or share their food, for fear of themselves becoming involved in his troubles; and he might still have to reckon with the victim’s family, should the ghost demand vengeance from them. A mother’s blood, however, carried with it so powerful a curse, that common means of purification would not serve: and, short of suicide, the most extreme means was to bite off a finger. This self-mutilation seems to have been at least partially successful in Orestes’s case; thus also Heracles, to placate the aggrieved Hera, will have bitten off the finger which he is said to have lost while tussling with the Nemean Lion. In some regions of the South Seas a finger-joint is always lopped off at the death of a close relative, even when he or she has died a natural death. In the Eumenides Aeschylus is apparently disguising a tradition that Orestes fled to the Troad and lived, untroubled by the Erinnyes, under Athene’s protection on silt land wrested from the Scamander and therefore free from the curse. Why else should the Troad be mentioned?

3. Wine instead of blood libations, and offerings of small hair-snippings instead of the whole crop, were Classical amendments on this ritual of appeasement, the significance of which was forgotten; as the present day custom of wearing black is no longer consciously connected with the ancient habit of deceiving ghosts by altering one’s normal appearance.

4. Euripides’s imaginative account of what happened when Helen and Menelaus returned to Mycenae contains no mythical element, except for Helen’s dramatic apotheosis; and Helen as the Moon-goddess had been a patroness of sailors long before the Heavenly Twins were recognized as a constellation. Like Aeschylus, Euripides was writing religious propaganda: Orestes’s absolution records the final triumph of patriarchy, and is staged at Athens, where Athene—formerly the Libyan goddess Neith, or Palestinian Anatha, a supreme matriarch, but now reborn from Zeus’s head and acknowledging, as Aeschylus insists, no divine mother—connives at matricide even in the first degree. The Athenian dramatists knew that this revolutionary theme could not be accepted elsewhere in Greece: hence Euripides makes Tyndareus, as Sparta’s representative, declare passionately that Orestes must die; and the Dioscuri venture to condemn Apollo for having prompted the crime.

5. Orestes’s name, ‘mountaineer’, has connected him with a wild, mountainous district in Arcadia which no King of Mycenae is likely to have visited.

6. These alternative versions of Helen’s death are given for different reasons. The first purports to explain the cult of Helen and Menelaus at Therapne; the second is a theatrical variation on the story of Orestes’s visit to the Taurians; the third accounts for the Rhodian cult of Helena Dendritis, ‘Helen of the Tree’, who is the same character as Ariadne and the other Erigone. This Erigone was also hanged.





























































































































p. 253
1. The ‘hearts’ blood’ of the Erinnyes, with which Attica was threatened, seems to be a euphemism for menstrual blood. An immemorial charm used by witches who wish to curse a house, field, or barn is to run naked around it, counter-sunwise, nine times, while in a menstrual condition. This curse is considered most dangerous to crops, cattle, and children during an eclipse of the moon; and altogether unavoidable if the witch is a virgin menstruating for the first time.

2. Philemon the Comedian did right to question the Athenian identification of the Erinnyes with the Solemn Ones. According to the more respected authorities, there were only three Erinnyes: Tisiphone, Alecto and Megaera, who lived permanently in Erebus, not at Athens. They had dogs’ heads, bats’ wings, and serpents for hair; yet, as Pausanias points out, the Solemn Ones were portrayed as august matrons. Athene’s offer, in fact, was not what Aeschylus has recorded; but an ultimatum from the priesthood of Zeus-born Athene to the priestesses of the Solemn Ones—the ancient Triple-goddess of Athens—that, unless they accepted the new view of fatherhood as superior to motherhood, and consented to share their grotto with such male underworld deities as Hades and Hermes, they would forfeit all worship whatsoever, and with it their traditional perquisites of first-fruits.

3. Second-fated men were debarred from entering the grotto of the Underworld goddesses, who might be expected to take offence that their dedicated subjects still wandered at large in the upper world. A similar embarrassment is felt in India when men recover from a deathlike trance on their way to the burning ghat: in the last century, according to Rudyard Kipling, they used to be denied official existence and smuggled away to a prison colony of the dead. The evergreen oak, also called the kern-oak, because it provides the kern-berries (cochineal insects) from which the Greeks extracted scarlet dye, was the tree of the tanist who killed the sacred king, and therefore appropriate for a grove of the Solemn Ones. Sacrifices of pregnant sheep, honey, and flowers would encourage these to spare the remainder of the flock during the lambing season, favour the bees, and enrich the pasture.

4. The Erinnyes’ continued pursuit of Orestes, despite the intervention of Athene and Apollo, suggests that, in the original myth, he went to Athens and Phocis for purification, but without success; as, in the myth of Eriphyle, Alcmaeon went unsuccessfully to Psophis and Thesprotia. Since Orestes is not reported to have found peace on the reclaimed silt of any river—unless perhaps of the Scamander—he will have met his death in the Tauric Chersonese, or at Brauron.



























p. 256
1. The mythographers’ anxiety to conceal certain barbarous traditions appears plainly in this story and its variants. Among the suppressed elements are Artemis’s vengeance on Agamemnon for the murder of Iphigeneia, and Oeax’s vengeance, also on Agamemnon, for the murder of his brother Palamedes. Originally, the myth seems to have run somewhat as follows: Agamemnon was prevailed upon, by his fellow-chieftains, to execute his daughter Iphigeneia as a witch when the Greek expedition against Troy lay windbound at Aulis. Artemis, whom Iphigeneia had served as priestess, made Agamemnon pay for this insult to her: she helped Aegisthus to supplant and murder him on his return. At her inspiration also, Oeax offered to take Orestes on a voyage to the land reclaimed from the river Scamander and thus help him to escape the Erinnyes; for Athene would protect him there. Instead, Oeax put in at Brauron, where Orestes was acclaimed as the annual pharmacos, a scapegoat for the guilt of the people, and had his throat slit by Artemis’s virgin-priestess. Oeax, in fact, told Electra the truth when they met at Delphi: that Orestes had been sacrificed by Iphigeneia, which seems to have been a title of Artemis.

2. Patriarchal Greeks of a later era will have disliked this myth—a version of which, making Menelaus, not Orestes, the object of Artemis’s vengeance, has been preserved by Photius. They exculpated Agamemnon of murder, and Artemis of opposing the will of Zeus, by saying that she doubtless rescued Iphigeneia, and carried her away to be a sacrificial priestess—not at Brauron, but among the savage Taurians, for whose actions they disclaimed responsibility. And that she certainly did not kill Orestes (or, for the matter of that, any Greek victim) but, on the contrary, helped him to take the Tauric image to Greece at Apollo’s orders.

3. This face-saving story, influenced by the myth of Jason’s expedition to the Black Sea—in Servius’s version, Orestes steals the image from Colchis, not the Tauric Chersonese—explained the tradition of human throat-slitting at Brauron, now modified to the extraction of a drop of blood from a slight cut, and similar sacrifices at Mycenae, Aricia, Rhodes, and Cornaria. ‘Tauropolus’ suggests the Cretan bull sacrifice, which survived in the Athenian Buphonia (Pausanias); the original victim is likely to have been the sacred king.

4. The Spartan fertility rites, also said to have once involved human sacrifice, were held in honour of Upright Artemis. To judge from primitive practice elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the victim was bound with willow-thongs, full of lunar magic, to the image—a sacred tree-stump, perhaps of pear-wood, and flogged until the lashes induced an erotic reaction and he ejaculated, fertilizing the land with semen and blood. Alopecus’s name, and the well-known legend of the youth who allowed his vitals to be gnawed by a fox rather than cry out, suggest that the Vixen-goddess of Teumessus was also worshipped at Sparta.

5. Meteorites were often paid divine honours, and so were small ritual objects of doubtful origin which could be explained as having similarly fallen from heaven—such as the carefully worked Neolithic spear heads, identified with Zeus’s thunderbolts by the later Greeks (as flint arrows are called ‘elf shots’ in the English countryside), or the bronze pestle hidden in the head-dress worn by the image of Ephesian Artemis. The images themselves, such as the Brauronian Artemis and the olive-wood Athene in the Erechtheum, were then likewise said to have fallen from heaven, through a hole in the roof. It is possible that the image at Brauron contained an ancient sacrificial knife of obsidian—a volcanic glass from the island of Melos—with which the victims’ throats were slit.

6. Osiris’s ploughing of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), seems forced; but Herodotus insists on a close link between Colchis and Egypt, and Colchis has here been confused with the land of the Taurians. Osiris, like Triptolemus, is said to have introduced agriculture into many foreign lands.


















































































































p. 259
1. Iphigeneia seems to have been a title of the earlier Artemis, who was not merely maiden, but also nymph—‘Iphigeneia’ means ‘mothering a strong race’—and crone, namely the Solemn Ones or Triple Hecate. Orestes is said to have reigned in so many places that his name must also be regarded as a title. His death by snake bite at Arcadian Oresteia links him with other primitive kings: such as Apesantus son of Acrisius, identifiable with Opheltes of Nemea; Munitus son of Athamas; Mopsus the Lapith, bitten by a Libyan snake; and Egyptian Ra, an aspect of Osiris, also bitten by a Libyan snake. These bites are always in the heel; in some cases, among them those of Cheiron and Pholus the Centaurs, Talus the Cretan, Achilles the Myrmidon, and Philoctetes the Euboean, the venom seems to have been conveyed on an arrow-point. The Arcadian Orestes was, in fact, a Pelasgian with Libyan connections.

2. Artemis’s rescue of Erigone from Orestes’ vengeance is one more incident in the feud between the House of Thyestes, assisted by Artemis, and the House of Atreus, assisted by Zeus. Tisamenus’s name (‘avenging strength’) suggests that the feud was bequeathed to the succeeding generation: because, according to one of Apollodorus’s accounts (Epitome), he was Erigone’s son, not Hermione’s. Throughout the story of this feud it must be remembered that the Artemis who here measures her strength with Zeus is the earlier matriarchal Artemis, rather than Apollo’s loving twin, the maiden huntress; the mythographers have done their best to obscure Apollo’s active participation, on Zeus’s side, in this divine quarrel.

3. Giants’ bones, usually identified with those of a tribal ancestor, were regarded as a magical means of protecting a city; thus the Athenians, by oracular inspiration, recovered what they claimed to be Theseus’s bones from Scyros and brought them back to Athens). These may well have been unusually large, because a race of giants—of which the Hamitic Watusi who live in Equatorial Africa are an offshoot—flourished in Neolithic Europe, and their seven-foot skeletons have occasionally been found even in Britain. The Anakim of Palestine and Caria belonged to this race. However, if Orestes was an Achaean of the Trojan War period, the Athenians could not have found and measured his skeleton, since the Homeric nobles practised cremation, not inhumation in the Neolithic style.

4. ‘Evil lying upon evil’ is usually interpreted as the iron sword that was being forged on an iron anvil; but stone anvils were the rule until a comparatively late epoch, and the hammer-head as it rests upon the sword is the more likely explanation—though, indeed, iron hammers were also rare until Roman times. Iron was too holy and infrequent a metal for common use by the Mycenaeans—not being extracted from ore, but collected in the form of divinely-sent meteorites—and when eventually iron weapons were imported into Greece from Tibarene on the Black Sea, the smelting process and manufacture remained secret for some time. Blacksmiths continued to be called ‘bronze workers’ even in the Hellenistic period: But as soon as anyone might possess an iron weapon or tool, the age of myth came to an end; if only because iron was not included among the five metals sacred to the goddess and linked with her calendar rites: namely, silver, gold, copper, tin, and lead.

5. Pelops’s spear-sceptre, token of sovereignty, evidently belonged to the ruling priestess; thus, according to Euripides, the spear with which Oenomaus was killed—presumably the same instrument—was hidden in Iphigeneia’s bedroom; Clytaemnestra then claims to possess it (Sophocles: Electra); and Electra is said by Pausanias to have brought it to Phocis. The Greeks of Asia Minor were pleased to think that Orestes had founded the first Aeolian colony there: his name being one of their royal titles. They may have been relying on a tradition that concerned a new stage in the history of kingship: when the king’s reign came to an end, he was now spared death and allowed to sacrifice a surrogate—an act of homicide that would account for Orestes’s second exile—after which he might lead a colony overseas. The mythographers who explained that the Spartans preferred Orestes to Menelaus’s sons because these were born of a slave-woman, did not realize that descent was still matrilineal. Orestes, as a Mycenaean, could reign by marriage to the Spartan heiress Hermione; her brothers must seek kingdoms elsewhere. In Argolis a princess could have free-born children by a slave; and there was nothing to prevent Electra’s peasant husband at Mycenae from raising claimants for the throne.

6. The psalmist’s tradition that ‘the days of a man are three score and ten,’ is founded not on observation, but on religious theory: seven was the number of holiness, and ten of perfection. Orestes similarly attained seventy years.

7. Anaxandrides’s breach of the monogamic tradition may have been due to dynastic necessity; perhaps Aristo, his co-king, died too soon before the end of his reign to warrant a new coronation and, since he had ruled by virtue of his marriage to an heiress, Anaxandrides substituted for him both as king and husband.

8. Hittite records show that there was already an Achaean kingdom in Lesbos during the late fourteenth century.












p. 262
1. Alcmene {‘strong in wrath’) will have originally been a Mycenaean title of Hera, whose divine sovereignty Heracles (‘glory of Hera’) protected against the encroachments of her Achaean enemy Perseus (‘destroyer’). The Achaeans eventually triumphed, and their descendants claimed Heracles as a member of the usurping House of Perseus. Hera’s detestation of Heracles is likely to be a later invention; he was worshipped by the Dorians who overran Elis and there humbled the power of Hera.

2. Diodorus Siculus writes of three heroes named Heracles: an Egyptian; a Cretan Dactyl; and the son of Alcmene. Cicero raises this number to six (On the Nature of the Gods); Varro to forty-four (Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid). Herodotus says that when he asked for Heracles’s original home, the Egyptians referred him to Phoenicia. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Egyptian Heracles, called Som, or Chon, lived ten thousand years before the Trojan War, and his Greek namesake inherited his exploits. The story of Heracles is, indeed, a peg on which a great number of related, unrelated, and contradictory myths have been hung. In the main, however, he represents the typical sacred king of early Hellenic Greece, consort of a tribal nymph, the Moon-goddess incarnate; his twin Iphicles acted as his tanist. This Moon-goddess has scores of names: Hera, Athene, Auge, Iole, Hebe, and so forth. On an early Roman bronze mirror Juppiter is shown celebrating a sacred marriage between ‘Hercele’ and ‘Juno’; moreover, at Roman weddings the knot in the bride’s girdle consecrated to Juno was called the ‘Herculean knot’, and the bridegroom had to untie it (Festus). The Romans derived this tradition from the Etruscans, whose Juno was named ‘Unial’. It may be assumed that the central story of Heracles was an early variant of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic which reached Greece by way of Phoenicia. Gilgamesh has Enkidu for his beloved comrade, Heracles has Iolaus. Gilgamesh is undone by his love for the goddess Ishtar, Heracles by his love for Deianeira. Both are of divine parentage. Both harrow Hell. Both kill lions and overcome divine bulls; and when sailing to the Western Isle Heracles, like Gilgamesh, uses his garment for a sail. Heracles finds the magic herb of immortality as Gilgamesh does, and is similarly connected with the progress of the sun around the Zodiac.

3. Zeus is made to impersonate Amphitryon because when the sacred king underwent a rebirth at his coronation, he became titularly a son of Zeus, and disclaimed his mortal parentage. Yet custom required the mortal tanist—rather than the divinely-born king, the elder of the twins—to lead military expeditions; and the reversal of this rule in Heracles’s case suggests that he was once the tanist, and Iphicles the sacred king. Theocritus certainly makes Heracles the younger of the twins, and Herodotus, who calls him a son of Amphitryon, surnames him ‘Alcides’—after his grandfather Alcaeus, not ‘Cronides’ after his grandfather Cronus. Moreover, when Iphicles married Creon’s youngest daughter, Heracles married an elder one; although in matrilineal society the youngest was commonly the heiress, as appears in all European folktales. According to Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles), Iphicles humbled himself shamefully before Eurystheus; but the circumstances, which might throw light on this change of roles between the twins, are not explained. No such comradeship as existed between Castor and Polydeuces, or Idas and Lynceus, is recorded between Heracles and Iphicles. Heracles usurps his twin’s functions and prerogatives, leaving him an ineffective and spiritless shadow who soon fades away, unmourned. Perhaps at Tiryns, the tanist usurped all the royal power, as sometimes happens in Asiatic states where a religious king rules jointly with a war-king, or Shogun.

4. Hera’s method of delaying childbirth is still used by Nigerian witches; the more enlightened now reinforce the charm by concealing imported padlocks beneath their clothes.

5. The observation that weasels, if disturbed, carry their young from place to place in their mouths, like cats, gave rise to the legend of their viviparous birth. Apuleius’s account of the horrid performance of Thessalian witches disguised as weasels, Hecate’s attendants, and Pausanias’s mention of human sacrifices offered to the Teumessiau Vixen, recall Cerdo (‘weasel’ or ‘vixen’), wife of Phoroneus, who is said to have introduced Hera’s worship into the Peloponnese. The Theban cult of Galinthias is a relic of primitive Hera-worship, and when the witches delayed Heracles’s birth they will have been disguised as weasels. This myth is more than usually confused; though it appears that Zeus’s Olympianism was resented by conservative religious opinion in Thebes and Argolis, and that the witches made a concerted attack on the House of Perseus.

6. To judge from Ovid’s remark about the Tenth Sign, and from the story of the Erymanthian Boar, which presents Heracles as the Child Horus, he shared a midwinter birthday with Zeus, Apollo, and other calendar gods. The Theban year began at midwinter. If, as Theocritus says, Heracles was ten months old at the close of the twelfth, then Alcmene bore him at the spring equinox, when the Italians, Babylonians, and others, celebrated New Year. No wonder that Zeus is said to have illumined the birth chamber. The fourth day of the month will have been dedicated to Heracles because every fourth year was his, as founder of the Olympic Games.



















































p. 265
1. According to another account, the Milky Way was formed when Rhea forcibly weaned Zeus. Hera’s suckling of Heracles is a myth apparently based on the sacred king’s ritual rebirth from the queen-mother.

2. An ancient icon on which the post-Homeric story of the strangled serpents is based, will have shown Heracles caressing them while they cleansed his ears with their tongues, as happened to Melampus, Teiresias, Cassandra, and probably the sons of Laocoön.. Without this kindly attention he would have been unable to understand the language of vultures; and Hera, had she really wanted to kill Heracles, would have sent a Harpy to carry him off. The icon has been misread by Pindar, or his informant, as an allegory of the New Year Solar Child, who destroys the power of Winter, symbolized by the serpents. Alcmene’s sacrifice of a boar to Zeus is the ancient midwinter one, sullying in the Christmas boar’s head of Old England. Wild olive in Greece, like birch in Italy and North-western Europe, was the New Year tree, symbol of inception, and used as a besom to expel evil spirits; Heracles had a wild—olive tree for his club, and brought a sapling to Olympia from the land of the Hyperboreans. What Teiresias told Alcmene to light was the Candlemas bonfire, still lighted on February 2nd in many parts of Europe: its object being to burn away the old scrub and encourage young shoots to grow.

3. The cake-eating Dorian Heracles, as opposed to his cultured Aeolian and Achaean predecessors, was a simple cattle-king, endowed with the limited virtues of his condition, but making no pretensions to music, philosophy, or astronomy. In Classical times, the mythographers, remembering the principle of mens sana in corpore sano, forced a higher education upon him, and interpreted his murder of Linus as a protest against tyranny, rather than against effeminacy. Yet he remained an embodiment of physical, not mental, health; except among the Celts, who honoured him as the patron of letters and all the bardic arts. They followed the tradition that Heracles, the Idaean Dactyl whom they called Ogmius, represented the first consonant of the Hyperborean tree-alphabet, Birch or Wild Olive, and that ‘on a switch of birch was cut the first message ever sent, namely Birch seven times repeated’ (White Goddess).

4. Alcon’s feat of shooting the serpent suggests an archery trial like that described in the fifteenth-century Malleus Maleficarum: when the candidate for initiation into the archers’ guild was required to shoot at an object placed on his own son’s cap—either an apple or a silver penny. The brothers of Laodameia, competing for the sacred kingship, were asked to shoot through a ring placed on a child’s breast; but this myth must be misreported, since child-murder was not their object. It seems that the original task of a candidate for kingship had been to shoot through the coil of a golden serpent, symbolizing immortality, set on a head-dress worn by a royal child; and that in some tribes this custom was changed to the cleaving of an apple, and in others to the shooting between the recurred blades of a double axe, or through the crest-ring of a helmet; but later, as marksmanship improved, through either a row of helmet-frogs, the test set Alcon; or a row of axe-blades, the test set Odysseus. Robin Hood’s merry men, like the German archers, shot at silver pennies, because these were marked with a cross; the archer-guilds being defiantly anti-Christian.

5. Greek and Roman archers drew the bow-string back to the chest, as children shoot, and their effective range was so short that the javelin remained the chief missile weapon of the Roman armies until the sixth century AD, when Belisarius armed his cataphracts with heavy bows, and taught them to draw the string back to the ear, in Scythian fashion. Heracles’s accurate marksmanship is therefore accounted for by the legend that his tutor was Teutarus the Scythian—the name is apparently formed from teutaein, ‘to practise assiduously’, which the ordinary Greek archer does not seem to have done. It may be because of the Scythians’ outstanding skill with the bow that they were described as Heracles’s descendants: and he was said to have bequeathed a bow to Scythes, the only one of his sons who could bend it as he did.

































































p. 267
1. Thespius’s fifty daughters—like the fifty Danaids, Pallantids, and Nereids, or the fifty maidens with whom the Celtic god Bran (Phoroneus) lay in a single night—must have been a college of priestesses serving the Moon-goddess, to whom the lion-pelted sacred king had access once a year during their erotic orgies around the stone phallus called Eros (‘erotic desire’). Their number corresponded with the lunations which fell between one Olympic Festival and the next. ‘Thestius’ is perhaps a masculinization of thea hestia, ‘the goddess Hestia’; but Thespius (‘divinely sounding’) is not an impossible name, the Chief-priestess having an oracular function.

2. Hyginus (Fabula) mentions only twelve Thespiads, perhaps because this was the number of Latin Vestals who guarded the phallic Palladium and who seem to have celebrated a similar annual orgy on the Alban Hill, under the early Roman monarchy.

3. Both the youngest and the eldest of Thespius’s daughters bore Heracles twins: namely, a sacred king and his tanist. The mythographers are confused here, trying to reconcile the earlier tradition that Heracles married the youngest daughter—matrilineal ultimogeniture—with the patrilineal rights of primogeniture. Heracles, in Classical legend, is a patrilineal figure; with the doubtful exception of Macaria, he begets no daughters at all. His virgin-priestess at Thespiae, like Apollo’s Pythoness at Delphi, theoretically became his bride when the prophetic power overcame her, and could therefore be enjoyed by no mortal husband.

4. Pausanias, dissatisfied with the myth, writes that Heracles could neither have disgraced his host by this wholesale seduction of the Thespiads, nor dedicated a temple to himself—as though he were a god—so early in his career; and consequently refuses to identify the King of Thespiae with the Thespiads’ father. The killing of a lion was one of the marriage tasks imposed on the candidate for kingship.

5. Heracles cut his club from the wild-olive, the tree of the first month, traditionally used for the expulsion of evil spirits.




p. 268
1. Heracles’s treatment of the Minyan heralds is so vile—a herald’s person being universally held sacrosanct, with whatever insolence he might behave—that he must here represent the Dorian conquerors of 1050 BC, who disregarded all civilized conventions.

2. According to Strabo, certain natural limestone channels which drained the waters of the Cephissus were sometimes blocked and at other times freed by earthquakes; but eventually the whole Copaic Plain became a marsh, despite the two huge tunnels which had been cut by the Bronze Age Minyans—Minoanized Pelasgians—to make the natural channels more effective. Sir James Frazer, who visited the Plain about fifty years ago, found that three of the channels had been artificially blocked with stones in ancient times, perhaps by the Thebans who destroyed Orchomenus in 368 BC, put all the male inhabitants to the sword, and sold the women into slavery (Pausanias). Recently a British company has drained the marshland and restored the plain to agriculture.

3. When the city of Thebes was in danger, the Theban Oracle frequently demanded a royal pharmacos; but only in a fully patriarchal society would Androcleia and Alcis have leaped to death. Their names, like those of Erechtheus’s daughters, said to have been sacrificed in the same way, seem to be titles of Demeter and Persephone, who demanded male sacrifices. It looks as if two priestesses paid the penalty instead of the sacred king—thereafter renamed Antipoenus—who refused to follow Menoeceus’s example. In this sense the Sphinx leaped from the cliff and dashed herself to pieces.

4. ‘Heracles the Horse-binder’ may refer to his capture of Diomedes’s wild mares, and all that this feat implied.

5. Athene Girder-on-of-Arms was the earlier Athene, who distributed arms to her chosen sons; in Celtic and German myths, the giving of arms is a matriarchal prerogative, properly exercised at a sacred marriage.











































p. 270
1. Madness was the Classical Greek excuse for child-sacrifice; the truth being that the sacred king’s boy-surrogates were burned alive after he had lain hidden for twenty four hours in a tomb, shamming death, and then reappeared to claim the throne once more.

2. The death of Pyraechmus, torn in two by wild horses, is a familiar one. Heracles’s title Palaemon identifies him with Melicertes of Corinth, who was deified under that name; Melicertes is Melkarth, the Lord of the City, the Tyrian Heracles. The eight Alcaids seem to have been members of a sword-dancing team whose performance, like that of the eight morris-dancers in the English Christmas Play, ended in the victim’s resurrection. Myrtle was the tree of the thirteenth twenty-eight day month, and symbolized departure; wild-olive, the tree of the first month, symbolized inception. Electryon’s eight sons may have formed a similar team at Mycenae.

3. Heracles’s homosexual relations with Hylas, Iolaus, and Eurystheus, and the accounts of his lustrous armour, are meant to justify Theban military custom. In the original myth, he will have loved Eurystheus’s daughter, not Eurystheus himself. His twelve Labours, Servius points out, were eventually equated with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac; although Homer and Hesiod do not say that there were twelve of them, nor does the sequence of Labours correspond with that of the Signs. Like the Celtic God of the Year, celebrated in the Irish Song of Amergin, the Pelasgian Heracles seems to have made a progress through a thirteen-month year. In Irish and Welsh myth the successive emblems were: stag, or bull; flood; wind; dew-drop; hawk; flower; bonfire; spear; salmon; hill; boar; breaker; sea-serpent. But Gilgamesh’s adventures in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic are related to the signs of the Zodiac, and the Tyrian Heracles had much in common with him. Despite Homer and Hesiod, the scenes pictured on ancient shields seem not to have been dazzling works of art, but rough pictograms, indicative of the owner’s origin and rank, scratched on the spiral band which plated each shield.

4. The occasion on which the twelve Olympians heaped gifts on Heracles was doubtless his sacred marriage, and they will have all been presented to him by his priestess-bride—Athene, Auge, Iole, or whatever her name happened to be—either directly, or by the hands of attendants. Here Heracles was being armed for his Labours, that is to say, for his ritual combats and magical feats.
















































p. 272
1. The sacred king’s ritual combat with wild beasts formed a regular part of the coronation ritual in Greece, Asia Minor, Babylonia, Syria; each beast representing one season of the year. Their number varied with the calendar: in a three-seasoned year, they consisted, like Chimaera, of lion, goat, and serpent—hence the statement the lion of Cithaeron was the Chimaera’s child by Orthrus the Dog; or of bull, lion, and serpent, which were Dionysus’s seasonal changes, according to Euripides’s Bacchae; or of lion, horse and dog, like Hecate’s heads. But in a four-seasoned year, they have been bull, ram, lion, and serpent, like the heads of Phanes (see described in Orphic Fragment); or bull, lion, eagle, and seraph, as in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekieli); or, more simply, bull, lion, scorpion, water-snake, the four Signs of the Zodiac which once fell at the equinoxes and solstices. These last four appear, from the First, Fourth, Seventh, Eleventh Labours, to be the beasts which Heracles fought; though boar has displaced the scorpion—the scorpion being retained only is story of Orion, another Heracles, who was offered a princess in marriage if he killed certain wild beasts. The same situation recurs in the story of Cyenus and Phylius—with its unusual substitution of vultures for the serpent—though Ovid and Antoninus Liberalis have given homosexual twist. Theoretically, by taming these beasts, the king rained dominion over the seasons of the year ruled by them. At Thebes, Heracles’s native city, the Sphinx-goddess ruled a two-seasoned year, she was a winged lioness with a serpent’s tail; hence he wore a lion pelt and mask, rather than a bull—mask like Minos. The lion was shown with the other calendar beasts in the new moon ark, an icon which, it seems, gave rise both to the story of Noah and the Flood, and to that of Dionysus and the pirates; Selene (‘the Moon’) is said to have created it.

2. Photius denies that Heracles lost his finger in fighting the lion; Ptolemy Hephaestionos says (Nova Historia), that he was poisoned. But it is more probable that he bit it off to placate the ghosts of his children—as Orestes did when pursued by his mother’s Erinnyes. Another two-mouthed cave is mentioned incidentally in Odyssey, as one near which Odysseus first slept on his return to Ithaca at the head of the Bay of Phorcys. Its northern entrance was for men, the southern for gods; and it contained two-handled jars used as hives, stone basins, and plentiful spring-water. There were also stone looms—stalactites?—on which the Naiads wove purple garments. If Porphyry (On the Care of the Nymphs) was right in making this a cave where rites of death and divine rebirth were practised, the basins served for blood and the springs for lustration. The jars would then be burial urns over which souls hovered like bees, and the Naiads (daughters of the Death-god Phorcys, or Orcus) would be Fates weaving garments with royal clan-marks for the reborn to wear. The Nemean Lion’s cave is two-mouthed because this First Labour initiated Heracles’s passage towards his ritual death, after which he becomes immortal and marries the goddess Hebe.

3. The death of three hundred and sixty Cleonaeans suggests a calendar mystery—this being the number of days in the sacred Egyptian year, exclusive of the five set apart in honour of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, and Horus. Heracles’s modifications of the Nemean Games may have involved a change in the local calendar.

4. If the King of Mycenae, like Orion’s enemy Oenopion of Hyria, took refuge in a bronze urn underground and emerged only after the danger had passed, he will have made an annual pretence at dying, while his surrogate reigned for a day, and then reappeared. Heracles’s children were among such surrogates.

5. Apesantus was one of several early heroes bitten in the heel by a viper. He may be identified with Opheltes of Nemea, though what part of Opheltes’s body the serpent bit is not related.





















p. 274
1. The Lernaean Hydra puzzled the Classical mythographers. Pausanias held that it might well have been a huge and venomous watersnake; but that ‘Pisander had first called it many-headed, wishing to make it seem more terrifying and, at the same time, add to the dignity of his own verses’. According to the euhemeristic Servius (On Virgil’s Aeneid), the Hydra was a source of underground rivers which used to burst out and inundate the land: if one of its numerous channels were blocked, the water broke through elsewhere, therefore Heracles first used fire to dry the ground, and then dosed the channels.

2. In the earliest version of this myth, Heracles, as the aspirant for kingship, is likely to have wrestled in turn with a bull, a lion, a boar, or scorpion, and then dived into a lake to win gold from the water-monster living in its depth. Jason was set much the same tasks, and the helpful part played by Medea is here given to Athene—as Heracles’s bride-to-be. Though the Hydra recalls the sea-serpent which Perseus killed with a golden falchion, or new-moon sickle, it was a fresh-water monster, like most of those mentioned by Irish and Welsh mythographers—piastres or avancs—and like the one recorded in the Homeric epithet for Lacedaemon, namely cetoessa, ‘of the water-monster’, doubtless haunting some deep pool of the Eurotas. The dog-like body is a reminiscence of the sea-monster Scylla, and of a seven-headed monster (on a late Babylonian cylinder-seal) which the hero Gilgamesh kills. Astrologers have brought the crab into the story so as to make Heracles’s Twelve Labours correspond with the Signs of the Zodiac; but it should properly have figured in his struggle with the Nemean lion, the next Sign.

3. This ritual myth has become attached to that of the Danaids, who were the ancient water-priestesses of Lerna. The number of heads given the Hydra varies intelligibly: as a college of priestesses it had fifty heads; as the sacred cuttle-fish, a disguise adopted by Thetis—who also had a college of fifty priestesses—it had eight shaky arms ending in heads, and one head on its trunk, together making nine in honour of the Moon-goddess; one hundred heads suggest the centuriae, or war bands, which raided Argos from Lerna; and ten thousand is a typical embellishment by Euripides, who had little conscience as a mythographer. On Greek coins, the Hydra usually has seven heads: doubtless a reference to the seven outlets of the river Amymone.

4. Heracles’s destruction of the Hydra seems to record a historical event: the attempted suppression of the Lernaean fertility rites. But new priestesses always appeared in the plane-tree grove—the plane-tree suggests Cretan religious influence, as does the cuttle-fish—until the Achaeans, or perhaps the Dorians, burned it down. Originally, it is clear, Demeter formed a triad with Hecate as Crone, here called Prosymne, ‘addressed with hymns’, and Persephone the Maiden; but Dionysus’s Semele ousted Persephone. There was a separate cult of Aphrodite-Thetis by the seaside.







p. 275
1. This Third Labour is of a different order from most of the others. Historically it may record the Achaean capture of a shrine where Artemis was worshipped as Elaphios (‘hind-like’); her four chariot-stags represent the years of the Olympiad, and at the close of each a victim dressed in deer-skins was hunted to death. Elaphios, at any rate, is said to have been Artemis’s nurse, which means Artemis herself (Pausanias). Mythically, however, the Labour seems to concern Heracles the Dactyl, identified by the Gauls with Ogmius (Lucian: Heracles), who invented the Ogham alphabet and all bardic lore. The chase of the hind, or roe, symbolized the pursuit of Wisdom, and she is found, according to the Irish mystical tradition, harboured under a wild-apple tree (White Goddess). This would explain why Heracles is not said by anyone, except the ill-informed Euripides, to have done the roe any harm: instead he pursued her indefatigably without cease, for an entire year, to the Land of the Hyperboreans, experts in these very mysteries. According to Pollux, Heracles was called Melon (‘of apples’), because apples were offered to him, presumably in recognition of his wisdom; but such wisdom came only with death, and his pursuit of the hind, like his visit to the Garden of the Hesperides, was really a journey to the Celtic Paradise. Zeus had similarly chased Taygete, who was a daughter of Atlas and therefore a non-Hellenic character.

2. In Europe, only reindeer does have horns, and reports of these may have come down from the Baltic by the Amber Route; reindeer, unlike other deer, can of course be harnessed.

3. The drowning of Taygete’s son Himerus, and of her father-in-law Eurotas, suggests that early kings of Sparta were habitually sacrificed to the Eurotas water-monster, by being thrown, wrapped in branches, into a deep pool. So, it seems, was Tantalus, another son of Taygete (Hyginus: Fabula). Lacedaemon means ‘lake demon’, and Laconia is the domain of Lacone (‘lady of the lake’), whose image was rescued from the Dorian invaders by one Preugenes and brought to Patrae in Achaea (Pausanias). The story behind Taygete’s metamorphosis seems to be that the Achaean conquerors of Sparta called themselves Zeus, and their wives Hera. When Hera came to be worshipped as a cow, the Lelegian cult of Artemis the Hind was suppressed. A ritual marriage between Zeus as bull and Hera as cow may have been celebrated, as in Crete.

4. Nights of promiscuous revel were held in various Greek states, and during the Alban Holiday at Rome: a concession to archaic sexual customs which preceded monogamy.










p. 277
1. Boars were sacred to the Moon because of their crescent—shaped tusks, and it seems that the tanist who killed and emasculated his twin, the sacred king, wore boar-disguise when he did so. The snow drift in which the Erymanthian Boar was overcome indicates that this Labour took place at midwinter. Here Heracles is the Child Horus and avenges the death of his father Osiris on his uncle Set who comes disguised as a boar; the Egyptian taboo on boar’s flesh was lifted only at midwinter. The boar’s head Yuletide ceremony has its origin in this same triumph of the new sacred king over his rival. Adonis is murdered to avenge the death of Erymanthus, the previous year’s tanist, whose name, ‘divining by lots’, suggests that he was chosen by lot to kill the sacred king. Mount Erymanthus being sacred to Artemis, not Aphrodite, Artemis must have been the goddess who took her bath, and the sacred king, not his tanist, must have seen her doing so.

2. It is probable that Heracles’s battle with the Centaurs, like the similar battle at Peirithous’s wedding, originally represented the ritual combat between a newly-installed king and opponents in beast disguise. His traditional weapons were arrows, one of which, to establish his sovereignty, he shot to each of the four quarters of the sky, and a fifth straight up into the air. Frontier wars between the Hellenes and the pre-Hellenic mountaineers of Northern Greece are also perhaps recorded this myth.

3. Poisoned arrows dropped upon, or shot into, a knee or foot, caused the death not only of Pholus and Cheiron, but also of Achilles, Cheiron’s pupil: all of them Magnesian sacred kings, whose souls the Sirens naturally received. The presence of Centaurs at Malea derives from a local tradition that Pholus’s father Silenus was born there (Pausanias); Centaurs were often represented as half goat, rather than half horse. Their presence at Eleusis, where Poseidon hid them in a mountain, suggests that when the initiate into the Mysteries celebrated a sacred marriage with the goddess, hobby-horse dancers took part in the proceedings.























































p. 279
1. This confused myth seems to be founded on the legend that Heracles, like Jason, was ordered to tame two bulls, yoke them, clean an overgrown hill, then plough, sow, and reap it in a single day—the usual tasks set a candidate for kingship. Here, the hill had to be cleared not of trees and stones, as in the Celtic versions of the myth, but of dung—probably because the name of Eurystheus’s herald, who delivered the order, was Copreus (‘dung-man’). Sir James Frazer commenting on Pausanias, quotes a Norse tale, ‘The Master” in which a prince who wishes to win a giant’s daughter must fix three stables. For each pitch-fork of dung which he tosses out, ten reappear. The princess then advises him to turn the pitchfork upside-down the handle. He does so, and the stable is soon cleansed. Frazer suggests that, in the original version, Athene may have given Heracles this advice; more likely, however, the Norse tale is a variant of this Labour. Augeias’s cattle are irrelevant to the story, except to account for the mass of dung to be removed. Cattle manure, as the myth shows, wasn’t valued by Greek farmers. Hesiod, in his Works and Days, does not mention it; and H. Mitchell (Economics of Ancient Greece) shows that the cattle on fallow land is prohibited in several ancient leases. The dog Argus did, indeed, lie on a midden used for dunging the land (Odyssey), but wherever the Odyssey may have been written—and it certainly was not on the Greek mainland—the references to agriculture and arboriculture suggest a survival of Cretan practice. According to some mythographers, Augeias was the son of Eleius, which means more than ‘King of Elis’; according to others, a son of Poseidon suggests that he was an Aeolian. But Eleius has here been confused with Helius, the Corinthian Sun-god; and Augeias is therefore credited a herd of sacred cattle, like that owned by Sisyphus. The of number of heads in such herds was 350, representing twelve complete lunations less the sacred five-day holiday of the Egyptian year; that they were lunar cattle was proved by their red, white, and black colours; and the white bulls represent these twelve lunations. Such cattle were often stolen—as by Heracles himself in his Tenth Labour—and the sequel to his quarrel with Augeias was that he won these bulls as well.

2. The Fifth Labour, which properly concerns only ploughing, sowing and reaping tasks has, in fact, been confused with two others: Tenth, namely the lifting of Geryon’s cattle; and the Seventh, namely the capture of Poseidon’s white Cretan bull—which was not used for ploughing. In the cult of Poseidon—who is also described as Augeias father—young men wrestled with bulls, and Heracles’s struggle Phaëthon, like Theseus’s against the Minotaur, is best understood as coronation rite: by magical contact with the bull’s horn, he was capable of fertilizing the land, and earned the title of Potidan, or Posidon, given to the Moon-goddess’s chosen lover. Similarly, in a love dispute Heracles fought the river Achelous, represented as a bull-headed and broke off his cornucopia. The deflection of the Alpheius suggests that the icon from which this incident is deduced shows Heracles twisting the Cretan Bull around by the horns, beside the bank of a river, where numerous cattle were grazing. This bull was mistaken for a river-god, and the scene misread as meaning that he had deflected the river in order to cleanse the field, for ploughing.







p. 280
1. Though Athene continues to help Heracles, this Labour does not belong to the marriage—task sequence but glorifies him as the healer who expels fever demons, identified with marsh-birds. The helmeted birds shown on Stymphalian coins are spoon-bills, cousins to the cranes which appear in English mediaeval carvings as sucking the breath of sick men. They are, in fact, bird-legged Sirens, personifications of fever; and castanets, or rattles, were used in ancient times (and still are among primitive peoples) to drive away fever demons. Artemis was the goddess who had power to inflict or cure fever with her ‘merciful shafts’.

2. The Stymphalian marsh used to increase in size considerably whenever the underground channel which carried away its waters became locked, as happened in Pausanias’s time; and Iphicratus, when besieging the city, would have blocked it deliberately, had not a sign from heaven prevented him (Strabo). It may well be that in one version of the story Heracles drained the marsh by freeing the channel; as he had previously drained the Plain of Tempe (Diodorus Siculus).

3. The myth, however, seems to have a historical, as well as a ritual, meaning. Apparently a college of Arcadian priestesses, who worshipped the Triple-goddess as Maiden, Bride, and Crone, took refuge at Stymphalus, after having been driven from Wolves’ Ravine by invaders who worshipped Wolfish Zeus; and Mnaseas has plausibly explained the expulsion, or massacre, of the Stymphalian Birds as the suppression of this witch-college by Heracles—that is to say, by a tribe of Achaeans. The name Stymphalus suggests erotic practices.

4. Pausanias’s ‘ strong-beaked Arabian birds’ may have been sun-stroke demons, kept at bay by bark spine-protectors, and confused with the powerfully beaked ostriches, which the Arabs still hunt. Leucerodes, ‘white heron’, is the Greek name for spoon-bill; an ancestor of Herod the Great is said to have been a temple slave to Tyrian Heracles (Africanus, quoted by Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History), which accounts for the family name. The spoon-bill is closely related to the ibis, another marsh-bird, sacred to the god Thoth, inventor of writing; and Tyrian Heracles, like his Celtic counterpart, was a protector of learning, which made Tyre famous (Ezekiel). In Hebrew tradition, his priest Hiram of Tyre exchanged riddles with Solomon.









p. 281
1. The combat with a bull, or a man in bull’s disguise—one of the ritual tasks imposed on the candidate for kingship—also appears in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and of Jason and the fire-breathing bulls of Aeëtes. When the immortality implicit in the sacred kingship was eventually offered to every initiate of the Dionysian Mysteries, the capture of a bull and its dedication to Dionysus Plutodotes (‘giver of wealth’) became a common rite both in Arcadia (Pausanias) and Lydia (Strabo), where Dionysus held the title of Zeus. His principal theophany was as a bull, but he also appeared in the form of a lion and a serpent. Contact with the bull’s horn enabled the sacred king to fertilize the land in the name of the Moon-goddess by making rain—the magical explanation being that a bull’s bellow portended thunderstorms, which rhombi, or bull-roarers, were accordingly swung to induce. Torches were also flung to simulate lightning and came to suggest the bull’s fiery breath.

2. Dionysus is called Plutodotes (‘wealth-giver’) because of his cornucopia, torn from a bull, which was primarily a water charm; he developed from Cretan Zagreus, and among Zagreus’s changes are lion, a horned serpent, a bull, and ‘Cronus making rain’.




p. 282
1. The bridling of a wild horse, intended for a sacrificial horse feast, seems to have been a coronation rite in some regions of Greece. Heracles’s mastery of Arion—a feat also performed by Oncus and Adrastus (Pausanias)—is paralleled by Bellerophon’s capture of Pegasus. This ritual myth has here been combined with a legend of how Heracles, perhaps representing the Teans who seized Abdera from the Thracians (Herodotus), annulled the custom by which wild women in horse-masks used to chase and eat the sacred king at the end of his reign; instead he was killed in an organized chariot crash. The omission of chariot-racing from the funeral games at Abdera points to a ban on this revised sacrifice. Podargus is called after Podarge the Harpy, mother of Xanthus, an immortal horse given by Poseidon to Peleus as a wedding present; Lampus recalls Lampon, one of Eos’s team. Diodorus’s statement that these mares were let loose on Olympus may mean that the cannibalistic horse cult survived there until Hellenistic times.

2. Canals, tunnels, or natural underground conduits were often described as the work of Heracles.





























p. 285
1. If Admete was the name of the princess for whose sake Heracles performed all these marriage tasks, the removal of her girdle in the wedding chamber must have marked the end of his Labours. But first Admete will have struggled with him, as Hippolyte did, and as Penthesileia struggled with Achilles, or Thetis with Peleus—whose introduction into the story is thus explained. In that case, she will have gone through her usual transformations, which suggests the cuttle-fish—like Hydra was Admete—the gold-guarding serpent which he overcame being Ladon—and that she may also have turn into a crab, a hind, a wild mare, and cloud before he contrived to win her maidenhead.

2. A tradition of armed priestesses still lingered at Ephesus and other cities in Asia Minor; but the Greek mythographers, having forgotten the former existence of similar colleges at Athens and other cities in Greece itself, sent Heracles in search of Hippolyte’s girdle to the Black Sea, who matriarchal tribes were still active. A three-tribe system is the general rule in matriarchal society. That the girdle belonged to a daughter of Briareus (‘strong’), one of the Hundred-handed Ones, points to ancient setting of the marriage-test story in Northern Greece.

3. Admete is another name for Athene, who must have appeared the icons standing by, under arms, watching Heracles’s feats and helping him when in difficulties. Athene was Neith, the Love-and-Battle goddess of the Libyans; her counterpart in Asia Minor was the great Moon-goddess Marian, Myrine, Ay-Mari, Mariamne or Marienna, who gave her name to Mariandyne—‘Marian’s Dune’—and to Myrine, the city of the gynocratic Lemnians; and whom the Trojans worshipped as ‘Leaping Myrine’ (Homer: Iliad). ‘Smyrna’ is ‘Myrine’ again, preceded by the definite article. Marienna, the Sumerian form, means ‘High fruitful Mother’, and the Ephesian Artemis was fertility-goddess.

4. Myrine is said to have been caught in a storm and saved by the Mother of the Gods—in whose honour she founded altars at Samothrace—because she was herself the Mother of the Gods, and her rites save sailors from shipwreck. Much the same mother-goddess was anciently worshipped in Thrace, the region of the river Tanais (Don), Armenia, and throughout Asia Minor and Syria. Theseus’s expedition to Amazonia, a myth modelled on that of Heracles, confuses the issue and has tempted mythographers to invent the fictitious invasion of Athens by Amazons and Scythians combined.

5. That the Amazons set up an image under an Ephesian beech is a mistake made by Callimachus who, being an Egyptian, was unaware that beeches did not grow so far south; it must have been a date-palm, symbol of fertility, and a reminder of the goddess’s Libyan origin, since her statue was hung with large golden dates, generally mistaken for breasts. Mopsus’s defeat of the Amazons is the story of the Hittites’ defeat by the Moschians about 1200 BC; the Hittites had originally been wholly patriarchal, but under the influence of the matriarchal societies of Asia Minor and Babylonia had accepted goddess-worship. At Hattusas, their capital, a sculptural relief of a battle-goddess has recently been discovered by Garstang; who regards the Ephesian Artemis cult as of Hittite origin. The victories over the Amazons secured by Heracles, Theseus, Dionysus, Mopsus, and others, record, in fact, setbacks to the matriarchal system in Greece, Asia Minor, Thrace, and Syria.

6. Stephanus of Byzantium (sub Paros) records the tradition that Paros was a Cretan colony. Heracles’s expedition there refers to a Hellenic occupation of the island. His bestowal of Thasos on the sons of Androgeus is a reference to its capture by a force of Parians mentioned in Thucydides: this took place towards the close of the eighth century Euboeans colonized Torone at about the same time, representing Torone (‘shrill queen’) as a daughter of Proteus (Stephanus of Byzantium sub Torone). Hippolyte’s double axe (labrys) was not, however, placed in Labradean Zeus’s hand instead of a thunderbolt; it was itself a thunderbolt, and Zeus carried it by permission of the Cretan goddess who ruled in Lydia.

7. The Gargarensians are the Gogarenians, whom Ezekiel calls Gog (Ezekiel).

8. In his account of Myrine, Diodorus Siculus quotes early Libyan traditions which had already acquired a fairy-tale lustre; it is established, however, that in the third millennium BC Neolithic emigrants went out from Libya in all directions, probably expelled by an inundation of their fields. The Nile Delta was largely populated by Libyans.

9. According to Apollonius Rhodius, Titias was “one of the only three Idaean Dactyls (“fingers”) who dispense doom’. He names another Dactyl ‘Cyllenius’. I have shown (White Goddess) that in finger-magic Titias, the Dactyl, represented the middle finger; that Cyllenius, alias Heracles, was the thumb; and that Dascylus, the third Dactyl, was the index-finger, as his name implies. These three raised, while the fourth and little finger are turned down, made the ‘Phrygian blessing’. Originally given in Myrine’s name, it is now used by Catholic priests in that of the Christian Trinity.

10. Tityus, whom Apollo killed, may be a doublet of Titias. Myrine’s capture of the island of Cerne seems a late and unauthorized addition to the story. Cerne has been identified with Fedallah near Fez; or with Santa Cruz near Cape Ghir, or (most plausibly) with Arguin, a little south of Cabo Blanco. It was discovered and colonized by the Carthaginian Harmo, who described it as lying as far from the Pillars of Heracles as these lay from Carthage, and it became the great emporia of West African trade.

11. So much for the mythical elements of the Ninth Labour. Heracles’s expedition to the Thermodon and his wars in Mysia a Phrygia must not be dismissed as wholly unhistorical. Like the voyage of the Argo, they record Greek trading ventures in the Black Sea perhaps as far back as the middle of the second millennium BC; a the intrusion of Minyans from Iolcus, Aeacans from Aegina, and Argives in these waters suggests that though Helen may have been beautiful, and may have eloped with Paris of Troy, it was not her face that launched thousand of ships, but mercantile interest. Achilles the son of Peleus, Ajax the son of Telamon, and Diomedes the Argive were among the Greek allies of Agamemnon who insisted that Priam should allow them the free passage through the Hellespont enjoyed by their fathers—unless wished his city to be sacked as Laomedon’s had been, and for the same reason. Hence the dubious Athenian claims to have been represented in Heracles’s expedition by Theseus, in the voyage of Argo by Phalerus, and at Troy by Menestheus, Demophon, and Acaman. These were intended to justify their eventual control of Black Sea trade which the destruction of Troy and the decline of Rhodes had allow them to seize.






























































































p. 292
1. The main theme of Heracles’s Labours is his performance of certain ritual feats before being accepted as consort to Admete, or Auge, or Athene, or Hippolyte, or whatever the Queen’s name was. This wild Tenth Labour may originally have been relevant to the same theme, if it records the patriarchal Hellenic custom by which the husband bought his bride with the proceeds of a cattle raid. In Homeric Greece, women were valued at so many cattle, and still are in parts of East and Central Africa. But other irrelevant elements have become attached to the myth, including a visit to the Western Island of Death, and his successful return, laden with spoil; the ancient Irish parallel is the story of Cuchulain who harrowed Hell—Dun Scaith, ‘shadow city’—and brought back three cows and a magic cauldron, despite storms which the gods of the dead sent against him. The bronze urn in which Heracles sailed to Erytheia was an appropriate vessel for a visit to the Island of Death, and has perhaps been confused with the bronze cauldron. In the Eleventh Tablet of the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, Gilgamesh makes a similar journey to a sepulchral island across a sea of death, using his garment for a sail. This incident calls attention to many points of resemblance between the Heracles and Gilgamesh myths; the common source is probably Sumerian. Like Heracles, Gilgamesh kills a monstrous lion and wears its pelt; seizes a sky-bull by the horns and overcomes it; discovers a secret herb of invulnerability; takes the same journey as the Sun; and visits a Garden of the Hesperides where, after killing a dragon coiled about a sacred tree, he is rewarded with two sacred objects from the Underworld. The relations of Gilgamesh and his comrade Enkidu closely resemble those of Theseus, the Athenian Heracles, and his comrade Peirithous who goes down to Tartarus and fails to return; and Gilgamesh’s adventure with the Scorpions has been awarded to the Boeotian Orion.

2. Pre-Phoenician Greek colonies planted in Spain, Gaul, and Italy under Heracles’s protection have contributed to the myth; and, in the geographical sense, the Pillars of Heracles—at which one band of settlers arrived about the year 1100 BC—are Ceuta and Gibraltar.

3. In a mystical Celto-Iberian sense, however, the Pillars are alphabetical abstractions. Marwnad Ercwlf, an ancient Welsh poem in the Red Book of Hergest, treats of the Celtic Heracles—whom the Irish called ‘Ogma Sunface’ and Lucian, ‘Ogmius’—and records how Ercwlf raised ‘four columns of equal height capped with red gold,’ apparently the four columns of five letters each, which formed the twenty-lettered Bardic alphabet known as the Boibel-Loth (White Goddess). It seems that, about the year 400 BC, this new alphabet, the Greek letter-names of which referred to Celestial Heracles’s journey in the sun-goblet, his death on Mount Oeta, and his powers as city-founder and judge (White Goddess), displaced the Beth-Luis-Nion tree-alphabet, the letter-names of which referred to the murderous sacrifice of Cronus by the wild women (White Goddess). Since the Gorgons had a grove on Erytheia—’Red Island’, identified by Pherecydes with the island of Gades—and since ‘trees’ in all Celtic languages means ‘letters’, I read ‘the tree that takes diverse forms’ as meaning the Beth-Luis-Nion alphabet, whose secret the Gorgons guarded in their sacred grove until Heracles ‘annihilated’ them. In this sense, Heracles’s raid on Erytheia, where he killed Geryon and the dog Orthrus—the Dog-star Sirius—refers to the suppression of the Cronus-alphabet by the Heracles-alphabet.

4. Hesiod (Theogony) calls Geryon tricephalon, ‘three-headed’; another reading of which is tricarenon, meaning the same thing. ‘Tricarenon’ recalls Torvos Trigaranus, the Celtic god with two left hands, shown in the company of cranes and a bull on the Paris Altar, felling a willow-tree. Geryon, a meaningless word in Greek, seems to be a worn-down form of Trigaranus. Since alike in Greek and Irish tradition cranes are associated with alphabetical secrets, and with poets, Geryon appears to be the Goddess’s guardian of the earlier alphabet: in fact, Cronus accompanied by the Dactyls. At the sepulchral island of Erytheia, Cronus-Geryon, who was once a sun-hero of the Heracles-Briareus type, had become a god of the dead, with Orthrus as his Cerberus; and the Tenth Labour, therefore, has been confused with the Twelfth, Menoetes figuring in both. Though the ‘stoneless cherry-like fruit’ sprung from Geryon’s blood may have been arbutus-berries, native to Spain, the story has been influenced by the sacredness to Cronus-Saturn of the early-fruiting cornel-cherry (White Goddess), which yields a red dye like the kern-berry. Chrysaor’s part in the story is important. His name means ‘golden falchion’, the weapon associated with the Cronus cult, and he was said to be the Gorgon Medusa’s son.

5. Norax, Geryon’s grandson by Erytheia and Hermes—Hermes is recorded to have brought the tree-alphabet from Greece to Egypt, and back again—seems to be a miswriting of Norops, the Greek word for ‘Sun-face’. This genealogy has been turned inside-out by the Irish mythographers: they record that their own Geryon, whose three persons were known as Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba—a form of Mitra, Varuna, and Indra—had Ogma for a grandfather, not a grandson, and that his son was the Celt-Iberian Sun-god Lugh, Llew, or Lugos. They also insisted that the alphabet had come to them from Greece by way of Spain. Cronus’s crow was sacred to Lugos, according to Plutarch who records (On Ricers and Mountains) that ‘Lugdunum’—Lyons, the fortress of Lugos—‘was so called because an auspice of crows suggested the choice of its site; lug meaning a crow in the Allobrigian dialect.’

6. Verrius Flaccus seems to have been misreported by Servius; he is more likely to have said that ‘three—headed Garanus (Geryon), not Cacus, was the name of Heracles’s victim, and Evander aided Heracles.’ This would fit in with the account of how Evander’s mother Carmenta suppressed the thirteen-consonant alphabet, Cronus’s Beth-Luis-Nion, in favour of Heracles-Ogma’s fifteen-consonant Boibel-Loth (White Goddess). King Juba, whom Plutarch quotes as saying that Heracles taught Evander’s people the use of letters, was an honorary magistrate of Gades, and must have known a good deal of local alphabetic lore. In this Evander story, Heracles is plainly described as an enemy of the Cronus cult, since he abolishes human sacrifice. His circumambulation of Italy and Sicily has been invented to account for the many temples there raised to him; his five-fold contest with Eryx, to justify the sixth century colonizing expeditions which Peniathlus of Cnidos, the Heraclid, and Dorieus the Spartan, led to the Eryx region. The Heracles honoured at Agyrium, a Sicel city, may have been an ancestor who led the Sicels across the straits from Italy about the year 1050 BC (Thucydides). He was also made to visit Scythia; the Greek colonists on the western and northern shores of the Black Sea incorporated a Scythian Heracles, an archer hero, in the omniumgatherum Tenth Labour. His bride, the serpent-tailed woman, was an Earth-goddess, mother of the three principal Scythian tribes mentioned by Herodotus; in another version of the myth, represented by the English ballad of The Laidley Worm, when he has kissed her three times, she turns into ‘the fairest woman you ever did see.’

7. The Alcyoneus anecdote seems to have become detached from the myth of the Giants’ assault on Olympus and their defeat at Heracles’s hands. But Alcyoneus’s theft of Helius’s cattle from Erytheia, and again from the citadel of Corinth, is an older version of Heracles’s theft of Geryon’s cattle; their owner being an active solar consort of the Moon-goddess, not a banished and enfeebled god of the Dead.

8. The arrow which Heracles shot at the noon-day sun will have been one discharged at the zenith during his coronation ceremony.































































































































































































































p. 296
1. The different locations of the Hesperides represent different views of what constituted the Farthest West. One account placed the scene of this Labour at Berenice, formerly called the city of the Hesperides (Pliny: Natural History), Eusperides (Herodotus), or Euesperites (Herodotus), but renamed after the wife of Ptolemy Euergetes. It was built on Pseudopenias (Strabo), the western promontory of the Gulf of Sirte. This city, washed by the river Lathon, or Lethon, had a sacred grove, known as the ‘Gardens of the Hesperides’. Moreover, the Lathon flowed into a Hesperian Lake; and near by lay another, Lake Tritonis, enclosing a small island with a temple of Aphrodite (Strabo; Pliny), to whom the apple-tree was sometimes said to belong (Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid). Herodotus describes this as one of the few fertile parts of Libya; in the best years, the land brought forth one hundred-fold.

2. Besides these geographical disputes, there were various rationalizations of the myth. One view was that the apples had really been beautiful sheep (melon means both ‘sheep’ and ‘apple’), or sheep with a peculiar red fleece resembling gold, which were guarded by a shepherd named Dragon to whom Hesperus’s daughters, the Hesperides, used to bring food. Heracles carried off the sheep (Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid; Diodorus Siculus) and killed (Servius) or abducted, the shepherd (Palaephatus). Palaephatus makes Hesperus a native of Carian Miletus, which was still famous for its sheep, and says that though Hesperus had long been dead at the time of Heracles’s raid, his two daughters survived him.

3. Another view was that Heracles rescued the daughters of Atlas, who had been abducted from their family orchard by Egyptian priests; and Atlas, in gratitude, not only gave him the object of his Labour, but taught him astronomy into the bargain. For Atlas, the first astronomer, knew so much that he carried the celestial globe upon his shoulders, as it were; hence Heracles is said to have taken the globe from him (Diodorus Siculus). Heracles did indeed become Lord of the Zodiac, but the Titan astronomer whom he superseded was Coeus (alias Thoth), not Atlas.

4. The true explanation of this Labour is, however, to be found in ritual, rather than allegory. It will be shown that the candidate for the kingship had to overcome a serpent and take his gold; and this Heracles did both here and in his battle with the Hydra. But the gold which he took should not properly have been in the form of golden apples—those were given him at the close of his reign by the Triple-goddess, as his passport to Paradise. And, in this funerary context, the Serpent was not his enemy, but the form that his own oracular ghost would assume after he had been sacrificed. Ladon was hundred-headed and spoke with diverse tongues because many oracular heroes could call themselves ‘Heracles’: that is to say, they had been representatives of Zeus, and dedicated to the service of Hera. The Garden of the three Hesperides—whose names identify them with the sunset—is placed in the Far West because the sunset was a symbol of the sacred king’s death. Heracles received the apples at the close of his reign, correctly recorded as a Great Year of one hundred lunations. He had taken over the burden of the sacred kingship from his predecessor, and with it the title Atlas—‘the long-suffering one’. It is likely that the burden was originally not the globe, but the sun-disk.

5. Nereus’s behaviour is modelled on that of Proteus, whom Menelaus consulted on Pharos (Homer: Odyssey). Heracles is said to have ascended the Po, because it led to the Land of the Hyperboreans. We know that the straw-wrapped gifts from the Hyperboreans to Delos came by this route (Herodotus). But though their land was, in one sense, Britain—as the centre of the Boreas cult—it was Libya in another, and the Caucasus in another; and the Paradise lay either in the Far West, or at the back of the North Wind, the mysterious region to which the wild geese flew in summertime. Heracles’s wanderings illustrate this dubiety. If he was in search of the Libyan Paradise, he would have consulted Proteus King of Pharos; if of the Caucasian Paradise, Prometheus (which is, indeed, Apollodorus’s version); if of the Northern, Nereus, who lived near the sources of the Po, and whose behaviour resembled that of Proteus.

6. Antaeus’s bones were probably those of a stranded whale, about which a legend grew at Tangier: ‘This must have been a giant—only Heracles could have killed him. Heracles, who put up those enormous pillars at Ceuta and Gibraltar!’ A wrestling match between the candidate for kingship and local champions was a widely observed custom: the fight with Antaeus for the possession of the kingdom, like Theseus’s fight with Sciron, or Odysseus’s with Philomdeides, must be understood in this context. Praxiteles, the sculptor of the Parthenon, regarded the overthrow of Antaeus as a separate labour (Pausanias).

7. An ancient religious association linked Dodona and Ammon; and the Zeus worshipped in each was originally a shepherd-king, annually sacrificed, as on Mounts Pelion and Laphystius. Heracles did right to visit his father Zeus when passing through Libya; Perseus had done so on his way to the East, and Alexander the Great followed suit centuries later.

8. The god Set had reddish hair, and the Busirians therefore needed victims with hair of that colour to offer Osiris, whom Set murdered; redheads were rare in Egypt, but common among the Hellenes (Diodorus Siculus; Plutarch: On Isis and Osiris )—Heracles’s killing of Busiris may record some punitive action taken by the Hellenes, whose nationals had been waylaid and killed; there is evidence for an early Hellenic colony at Chemmis.

9. Curses uttered during sacrifices to Heracles recall the well—established custom of cursing and insulting the king from a near-by hill while he is being crowned, in order to ward off divine jealousy. Roman generals were similarly insulted at their triumphs while they impersonated Mars. But sowers also cursed the seed as they scattered it in the furrows.

10. The release of Prometheus seems to have been a moral fable invented by Aeschylus, not a genuine myth. His wearing of the willow-wreath—corroborated on an Etruscan mirror—suggests that he had been dedicated to the Moon-goddess Anatha, or Neith, or Athene. Perhaps he was originally bound with willow thongs to the sacrificial altar at her autumn festival.

11. According to one legend, Typhon killed Heracles in Libya, and Iolaus restored him to life by holding a quail to his nostrils (Eudoxus of Cnidus: Circuit of the Earth, quoted by Athenaeus. But it was the Tyrian Heracles Melkarth, whom the god Esmun (‘he whom we evoke’), or Asclepius, restored in this way; the meaning is that the year begins in March with the arrival of the quails from Sinai, and that quail orgies were then celebrated in honour of the goddess.












































































p. 300
1. This myth seems to have been deduced from an icon which showed Heracles descending to Tartarus, where Hecate the Goddess of the Dead welcomed him in the form of a three-headed monster—perhaps with one head for each of the seasons—and, as a natural sequel to her gift of the golden apples, led him away to the Elysian Fields. Cerberus, in fact, was here carrying off Heracles; not contrariwise. The familiar version is a logical result of his elevation to godhead: a hero must remain in the Underworld, but a god will escape and take his jailer with him. Moreover, deification of a hero in a society which formerly worshipped only the Goddess implies that the king has defied immemorial custom and refused to die for her sake. Thus the possession of a golden dog was proof of the Achaean High King’s sovereignty and escape from matriarchal tutelage. Menoetes’s presence in Tartarus, and Heracles’s theft of one of Hades’s cattle, shows that the Tenth Labour is another version of the Twelfth: a harrowing of Hell. To judge from the corresponding Welsh myth, Menoetes’s father, though purposely ‘nameless’, was the alder-god Bran, or Phoroneus, or Cronus; which agrees with the context of the Tenth Labour (White Goddess).

2. The Greater Eleusinian Mysteries were of Cretan origin, and held in Boedromion (‘running for help’) which, in Crete, was the first month of the year, roughly September, and so named, according to Plutarch (Theseus), to commemorate Theseus’s defeat of the Amazons, which means his suppression of the matriarchal system. Originally, the Mysteries seem to have been the sacred king’s preparation, at the autumnal equinox, for his approaching death at midwinter—hence the premonitory myrtle wreath—in the form of a sacred drama, which advised him what to expect in the Underworld. After the abolition of royal male sacrifices, a feature of matriarchy, the Mysteries were open to all judged worthy of initiation; as in Egypt, where the Book of the Dead gave similar advice, any man of good repute could become an Osiris by being purified of all uncleanness and undergoing a mock death. In Eleusis, Osiris was identified with Dionysus. White poplar leaves were a Sumerian symbol of renascence and, in the tree-calendar, white poplar stood for the autumnal equinox.

3. The Lesser Mysteries, which became a preparation for the Greater, seem to have been an independent Pelasgian festival, also based on the hope of rebirth, but taking place early in February at Candlemas, when the trees first leaf—which is the meaning of Anthesterion.

4. Now, since Dionysus was identified with Osiris, Semele must be Isis; and we know that Osiris did not rescue Isis from the Underworld, but she, him. Thus the icon at Troezen will have shown Semele restoring Dionysus to the upper air. The goddess who similarly guides Heracles is Isis again; and his rescue of Alcestis was probably deduced from the same icon—he is led, not leading. His emergence in the precinct of Mount Laphystius makes an interesting variant. No cavern exists on the summit, and the myth must refer to the death and resurrection of the sacred king which was celebrated there—a rite that helped to form the legend of the Golden Fleece.

5. Aconite, a poison and paralysant, was used by the Thessalian witches in the manufacture of their flying ointment: it humbed the feet and hands and gave them a sensation of being off the ground. But since it was also a febrifuge, Heracles, who drove the fever-birds from Stymphalus, became credited with its discovery.

6. The sequence of Heracles’s feats varies considerably. Diodorus Siculus and Hyginus arrange the Twelve Labours in the same order as Apollodorus, except that they both place the Fourth before the Third, and the Sixth before the Fifth; and that Diodorus places the Twelfth before the Eleventh. Nearly all mythographers agree that the killing of the Nemean Lion was the First Labour, but in Hyginus’s sequence of ‘the Twelve Labours of Heracles set by Eurystheus’ (Fabula), it is preceded by the strangling of the serpents. In one place, Diodorus Siculus associates the killing of Antaeus and Busiris with the Tenth Labour; in another, with the Eleventh. And while some writers make Heracles sail with the Argonauts in his youth (Silius Italicus); others place this adventure after the Fourth Labour (Apollonius Rhodius); and others after the Eighth (Diodorus Siculus). But some make him perform the Ninth (Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica) and Twelfth Labours, and break the horns of both bulls before he sailed with the Argonauts; and others deny that he sailed at all, on the ground that he was then serving as Queen Omphale’s slave (Herodotus, quoted by Apollodorus).

7. According to Lycophron, Heracles was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries before setting out on the Ninth Labour; but Philochorus (quoted by Plutarch: Theseus) says that Theseus had him initiated in the course of its performance, and was rescued by him from Tartarus during the Twelfth Labour (Apollodorus). According to Pausanias, Theseus was only seven years old when Heracles came to Troezen, wearing the lion pelt; and cleared the Isthmus of malefactors on his way to Athens, at the time when Heracles was serving Omphale (Apollodorus). Euripides believed that Heracles had fought with Ares’s son Cycnus before setting out on the Eighth Labour (Alcestis); Propertius, that he had already visited Tartarus when he killed Cacus; and Ovid (Fasti), that Cheiron died accidentally when Heracles had almost completed his Labours, not during the Fourth.

8. Albricus lists the following Twelve Labours in this order, with allegorical explanations: defeating the Centaurs at a wedding; killing the lion; rescuing Alcestis from Tartarus and chaining Cerberus; winning the apples of the Hesperides; destroying the Hydra; wrestling with Achelous; killing Cacus; winning the mares of Diomedes; defeating Antaeus; capturing the boar; lifting the cattle of Geryon; holding up the heavens.

9. Various Labours and bye-works of Heracles were represented on Apollo’s throne at Amyclae (Pausanias); and in the bronze shrine of Athene on the Spartan acropolis (Pausanias). Praxiteles’s gable sculptures on the Theban shrine of Heracles showed most of the Twelve Labours, but the Stymphalian Birds were missing, and the wrestling match with Antaeus replaced the cleansing of Augeias’s stables. The evident desire of so many cities to be associated with Heracles’s Labours suggests that much the same ritual marriage-task drama, as a preliminary to coronation, was performed over a wide area.








p. 303
1. In matrilineal society, divorce of a royal wife implies abandonment of the kingdom which has been her marriage portion; and it seems likely that, once the ancient conventions were relaxed in Greece, a sacred king could escape death at the end of his reign by abandoning his kingdom and marrying the heiress of another. If this is so, Eurytus’s objection to Heracles as a son-in-aw will not have been that he had killed his children—the annual victims sacrificed while he reigned at Thebes—but that he had evaded his royal duty of dying. The winning of a bride by a feat of archery was an Indo-European custom: in the Mahabharata, Arjuna wins Draupadi thus, and in the Ramayana, Rama bends Shiva’s powerful bow and wins Sita. Moreover, the shooting of one arrow towards each cardinal point of the compass, and one towards the zenith, formed part of the royal marriage rites in India and Egypt. The mares as surrogate flung from the Theban walls at the end of every year, or at any other time in placation of some angry deity.

2. Heracles’s seizure of the Delphic tripod apparently records a Dorian capture of the shrine; as the thunderbolt thrown between Apollo and Heracles records a decision that Apollo should be allowed to keep his Oracle, rather than yield it to Heracles—provided that he served the Dorian interests as patron of the Dymanes, a tribe belonging to the Doric League. It was notorious that the Spartans, who were Dorians, controlled the Delphic Oracle in Classical times. Euripides omits the tripod incident in his Heracles because, in 421 BC, the Athenians had been worsted by the Treaty of Nicias in their attempt to maintain the Phocians’ sovereignty over Delphi; the Spartans insisted on making it a separate puppet state which they themselves controlled. In the middle of the fourth century, when the dispute broke out again, the Phocians seized Delphi and appropriated some of its treasures to raise forces in their own defence; but were badly beaten, and all their cities destroyed.

3. The Pythoness’s reproach seems to mean that the Dorians, who had conquered the Peloponnese, called themselves ‘Sons of Heracles’, and did not show her the same respect as their Achaean, Aeolian, and Ionian predecessors, whose religious ties were with the agricultural Libyans of the Egyptian Delta, rather than with the Hellenic cattle-kings; Xenoclea’s predecessor Herophile (‘dear to Hera’), had been Zeus’s daughter by Lamia and called ‘Sibyl’ by the Libyans over whom she ruled (Pausanias; Euripides: Prologue to Lamia). Cicero confirms this view when he denies that Alcmene’s son (i.e. the pre-Dorian Heracles) was the one who fought Apollo for the tripod (On the Nature of the Gods). Attempts were later made, in the name of religious decency, to patch up the quarrel between Apollo the Phocian and Heracles the Dorian. Thus Plutarch, a Delphic priest, suggests (Dialogue on the E at Delphi) that Heracles became an expert diviner and logician, and ‘seemed to have seized the tripod in friendly rivalry with Apollo.’ When describing Apollo’s vengeance on the people of Pheneus, he tactfully suppresses the fact that it was Heracles who had dug them the channel.



























































p. 306
1. Carmanor will have been a title of Adonis, also killed by a boar. Tmolus’s desecration of the temple of Artemis cannot be dated; neither can the order that Heracles should compensate Eurytus for his son’s murder. Both events, however, seem to be historical in origin. It is likely that Omphale stands for the Pythoness, guardian of the Delphic omphalus, who awarded the compensation, making Heracles a temple-slave until it should be paid, and that, ‘Omphale’ being also the name of a Lydian queen, the scene of his servitude was changed by the mythographers, to suit another set of traditions.

2. The Cercopes, as their various pairs of names show, were ceres, or Spites, coming in the shape of delusive and mischievous dreams, and could be foiled by an appeal to Heracles who, alone, had power over the Nightmare. Though represented at first as simple ghosts, like Cecrops (whose name is another form of cercops), in later works of art they figure as cercopithecoi, ‘apes’, perhaps because of Heracles’s association with Gibraltar, one of his Pillars, from which Carthaginian merchants brought them as pets for rich Greek and Roman ladies. No apes seem to have frequented Ischia and Procida, two islands to the north of the Bay of Naples, which the Greeks called Pithecusae; their name really refers to the pithoi, or jars, manufactured there (Pliny: Natural History).

3. The vine-dressers’ custom of seizing and killing a stranger at the vintage season, in honour of the Vine-spirit, was widespread in Syria and Asia Minor; and a similar harvest sacrifice took place both there and in Europe. Sir James Frazer has discussed this subject exhaustively in his Golden Bough. Heracles is here credited with the abolition of human sacrifice: a social reform on which the Greeks prided themselves, even when their wars grew more and more savage and destructive.

4. Classical writers made Heracles’s servitude to Omphale an allegory of how easily a strong man becomes enslaved by a lecherous and ambitious woman; and that they regarded the navel as the seat of female passion sufficiently explains Omphale’s name in this sense. But the fable refers, rather, to an early stage in the development of the sacred kingship from matriarchy to patriarchy, when the king, as the Queen’s consort, was privileged to deputize for her in ceremonies and sacrifices—but only if he wore her robes. Reveillout has shown that this was the system at Lagash in early Sumerian times, and in several Cretan works of art men are shown wearing female garments for sacrificial purposes—not only the spotted trouser-skirt, as on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, but even, as on a palace-fresco at Cnossus, the flounced skirt. Heracles’s slavery is explained by West African matriarchal native customs: in Loango, Daura, and the Abrons, as Briffault has pointed out, the king is of servile birth and without power; in Agonna, Latuka, Ubemba, and elsewhere, there is only a queen, who does not marry but takes servile lovers. Moreover, a similar system survived until Classical times among the ancient Locrian nobility who had the privilege of sending priestesses to Trojan Athene; they were forced to emigrate in 683 BC from Central Greece to Epizephyrian Locri, on the toe of Italy, ‘because of the scandal caused by their noblewomen’s indiscriminate love affairs with slaves’. These Locrians, who were of non-Hellenic origin and made a virtue of prenuptial promiscuity in the Cretan, Carian, or Amorite style (Clearchus), insisted on strictly matrilineal succession (Dionysius: Description of the Earth; Polybius). The same customs must have been general in pre-Hellenic Greece and Italy, but it is only at Bagnara, near the ruins of Epizephyrian Locri, that the matriarchal tradition is recalled today. The Bagnarotte wear long, pleated skirts, and set off barefoot on their commercial rounds which last for several days, leaving the men to mind the children; they can carry as much as two quintals on their heads. The men take holidays in the spring swordfish season, when they show their skill with the harpoon; and in the summer, when they go to the hills and burn charcoal. Although the official patron of Bagnera is St. Nicholas, no Bagnarotte will acknowledge his existence; and their parish priest complains that they pay far more attention to the Virgin than even to the Son—the Virgin having succeeded Core, the Maid, for whose splendid temple Locri was famous m Classical times.















































































p. 310
1. This legend concerns the sack of the fifth, or pre-Homeric, city of Troy: probably by Minyans, that is to say Aeolian Greeks, supported by Lelegians, when a timely earthquake overthrew its massive walls. From the legend of the Golden Fleece we gather that Laomedon had opposed Lelegian as well as Minyan mercantile ventures at Black Sea, and that the only way to bring him to reason was to destroy his city, which commanded the Hellespont and the Scamander plain where the East-West fair was annually held. The Ninth Labour refers to Black Sea enterprises of the same sort. Heracles’s task was assisted by an earthquake, dated about 1260 BC.

2. Heracles’s rescue of Hesione, paralleled by Perseus’s rescue of Andromeda, is clearly derived from an icon common in Syria and Asia Minor: Marduk’s conquest of the Sea-monster Tiamat, an emanation of the goddess Ishtar, whose power he annulled by chaining her to a rock. Heracles is swallowed by Tiamat, and disappears for three days before fighting his way out. So also, according to a Hebrew moral tale apparently based on the same icon, Jonah spent three days in the Whale’s belly; and so Marduk’s representative, the King of Babylon, spent a period in demise every year, during which he was supposedly fighting Tiamat. Marduk’s or Perseus’s white solar horse here becomes the reward for Hesione’s rescue. Heracles’s loss of hair emphasizes his solar character: shearing of the sacred king’s locks when the year came to an end, signified the reduction of his magical strength, as in the story of Samson. When he reappeared, he had no more hair than an infant. Hesione’s ransom of Podarces may represent the Queen—mother of Seha’s (Scamander?) intervention with the Hittite King Mursilis on behalf of her scapegrace son Manapadattas.

3. Phoenodamas’s three daughters represent the Moon-goddess in triad, ruling the three-cornered island of Sicily. The dog was sacred to her as Artemis, Aphrodite, and Hecate. Greek-speaking Sicilians were attached to the Homeric epics, like the Romans, and equally anxious to claim Trojan ancestry on however insecure grounds. Scamander’s three daughters represent the same goddess in Boeotia. Glaucia’s bearing of a child to Scamander was not unusual. According to the pseudo-Aeschines (Dialogues), Trojan brides used to bathe in the river, and cry: ‘Scamander, take my virginity!’; which points to an archaic period when it was thought that river water would quicken their wombs.

4. To what Hellenic conquest of the Helladic island of Cos Heracles’s visit refers is uncertain, but the subsequent wearing of women’s dress by the bridegroom, when he welcomed his bride home, seems to be a concession to the former matrilocal custom by which she welcomed him to her house, not contrariwise. A cow-dance will have been performed on Cos, similar to the Argive rite honouring the Moo-goddess Io. At Antimacheia, the sacred king was still at the primitive stage of being the Queen’s deputy, and obliged therefore to wear female dress.

5. Laomedon’s mares were of the same breed as those sired at Troy by Boreas.

6. The Inachus was an Argive river; Plutarch seems to be the sole authority for a Boeotian Inachus, or Scamander.


































































































































































p. 313
1. This myth apparently records an unsuccessful Achaean invasion of the Western Peloponnese followed, at the close of the thirteenth century BC, by a second, successful, invasion which has, however, been confused with the Dorian invasion of the eleventh century BC—Heracles having also been a Dorian hero. The murder of Eurytion may be deduced from the same wedding-icon that showed the killing of Pholus. Heracles’s digging of the Arcadian channel is paralleled by similar feats in Elis, Boeotia, and Thrace; and the honours paid to the three hundred and sixty Cleonensians probably refer to a calendar mystery, since three hundred and sixty are the number of days in the Egyptian year, exclusive of the five sacred to Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.

2. The leprosy associated with Lepreus was vitiligo, a skin disease caused by foul food, which the Moon-goddess of the white poplar could cure (White Goddess); true leprosy did not reach Europe until the first century BC. 3, Heracles’s title of Buphagus originally referred to the eating of an ox by his worshippers.

4. Sosopolis must have been the ghost of Cronus after whom the hillock was called, and whose head was buried on its northern slopes, to protect the stadium which lay behind it, near the junction of the Cladeus and Alpheius. His British counterpart Bran similarly guarded Tower Hill, commanding London. The spring equinox, when fawns are dropped, occurs during the alder-month of the tree-calendar, also called Elaphius (‘of the fawn’), and peculiarly sacred to Cronus-Bran (White Goddess). This suggests that, originally, the Elean New Year began at the spring solstice, as in parts of Italy, when the King of the old year, wearing horns like Actaeon, was put to death by the wild women, or ‘Queens’; Heracles the Dactyl belongs to this cult. The Pelopians seem to have changed the calendar when they arrived with their solar chariot and porpoise, making the funeral games celebrate the midsummer murder and suppression of Zeus, the sacred king, by his tanist—as the king revenged himself on the tanist at midwinter. In Classical times, therefore, the Elean New Year was celebrated in the summer. The mention of Pelops suggests that the king was sacrificially eaten and the ashes of his bones mixed with water to plaster the Goddess’s altar. He was called the Green Zeus, or Achilles, as well as Heracles.

5. Wild olive, used in Greece to expel old-year demons and spites, who took the form of flies, was introduced from Libya, where the cult of the North Wind originated, rather than the North. At Olympia, it will have been mistletoe (or loranthus), not wild-olive, which the boy lopped with a golden sickle; wild-olive figured in the Hyperborean tree-calendar. The girls’ footrace for the position of priestess to Hera was the earliest event; but when the single year of the king’s reign was prolonged to a Great Year of nominally a hundred months—to permit a more exact synchronization of solar and lunar time—the king reigned for one half of this period, the tanist for the other. Later, both ruled concurrently under the title Moliones, and were no less closely united than the kings of Sparta. It may be that a case of Siamese twins had occurred in Greece reinforce the metaphor. But Augeias’s division of Elis, reported by Homer, shows that at a still later stage, the sacred king retained a third part of his kingdom when he was due to retire; as Proetus did at Argos. Amarynceus’s share was evidently gained by conquest.

6. Molione is perhaps a title of the Elean Moon-goddess, the patroness of the Games, meaning ‘Queen of the Moly’; the moly being a herb which elsewhere defied moon-magic. She was also known as Agamede (‘very cunning’); and this is the name of Augeias’s sorceress daughter, who ‘knew all the drugs that grow on earth’ (Homer: Iliad). In Classical Greece, ‘Athene the Mother’ was a strange and indecent concept and had to be explained away, by the Elean tradition suggests that erotic orgies had been celebrated in her honour beside the river Bady.

7. The mastery of Arion, it seems, formed part of the coronation rite in Arcadian Oncus.








































































































































p. 315
1. The capture of Pylus seems to be another incident in the thirteenth century Achaean invasion of the Peloponnese. Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and Ares, the elder deities, are aiding Elis; the younger ones, Athene reborn from Zeus’s head, and Heracles as Zeus’s son, oppose them. Heracles’s defeat of Periclymenus, the shape-shifter, may mark the suppression of a New Year child-sacrifice; and Periclymenus’s power to take the shape of any tree refers, apparently, to the succession of thirteen months through which the interrex passed in his ritual ballet, each month having an emblematic tree, from wild-olive to myrtle. The wounding of Hades presents Heracles as the champion destined to cheat the grave and become immortal; moreover, according to Homer (Iliad), he wounded Hades’ at Pylus, among the corpses’—which could equally mean: ‘at the gate, among the dead’; the gate being that of the Underworld, perhaps in the Far North. If so, Hades is a substitute for Cronus, whom Heracles defeated in the sepulchral island of Erytheia, and the encounter is a doublet of the Twelfth Labour, when he harrowed Hell. Heracles’s Pylian allies, significantly aided by Athene, are described by Homer (Iliad) as Achaeans, though Neleus’ dynasty was, in fact, Aeolian.

2. Heracles’s wounding of Hera in the right breast with a three-barbed arrow seems to allegorize the Dorian invasion of the Western Peloponnese when the three tribes, who called themselves Sons of Heracles, humbled the power of the Elean Goddess.



























































p. 317
1. Here the Heracles myth is lost in saga; and pseudo-myth is introduced to explain such anomalies as Goat-eating Hera, Hollow-of-the-Hand Asclepius, Heracles of the Wounded Thigh, and Tegea’s long immunity from capture. But Hera’s wild women had once eaten Zagreus, Zeus, and Dionysus in wild-goat form; Asclepius’s statue probably held medicines in the hollow of the hand; the wound in Heracles’s thigh will have been made by a boar; and the Tegeans may have displayed a Gorgon’s head on their gates as a prophylactic charm. To assault a city thus protected was, as it were, to violate the maiden-goddess Athene: a superstition also fostered by the Athenians.

2. Whenever Heracles leaves an Achaean, Aerolian, Sicilian, or Pelasgian city in trust for his descendants, this is an attempted justification of its later seizure by the Dorians.




































p. 318
missing a small part of …
1. …. a sacred king to ensure good crops. Relics of this custom were found in Heracles’s temple at Rome, where his bride was called Acca—counterpart of the Peloponnesian White Goddess Acco—and at Jerusalem where before the religious reforms of the Exile, a sacred marriage seems to have been celebrated every September between the High-priest, a representative of Jehovah, and the goddess Anatha. Professor Raphael Patai summarizes the evidence for the Jerusalem marriage in his Man and Temple. The divine children supposedly born of such unions became the Corn-spirits of the coming year; thus Athene Alta was a corn-goddess, patroness of corn-mills. The numerous sons whom Heracles fathered on nymphs witness to the prevalence of this religion theory. He is credited with only one anomalous daughter, Macaria (‘blessed’). The Auge myth has been told to account for an Arcadian emigration to Mysia, probably under pressure from the Achaeans; also for Tegean festivities in honour of the New Year god as fawn which, to judge from the Hesiod fragment, had their counterpart in the Troad.

2. That Auge and her child drived in an ark to the river Caicus—a scene illustrated on the altar of Pergamus, and on Permanence coins—means merely that the cult of Auge and Telephus had been imported into Mysia by Tegean colonists, and that Auge, as the Moon-goddess, was supposed to ride in her crescent boat to the New Year celebrations. Athene’s subsequent change from orgiastic bride to chaste warrior-maiden has confused the story: in some versions Teuthras becomes Auge’s bridegroom, but in others he piously adopts her. Hyginus’s version is based on some late and artificial drama.

3. The myth of the golden boar refers partly to the curative properties of the antipathies stone on Mount Teuthras; partly, perhaps, to a Mysian custom of avenging the death of Adonis, who had been killed by Apollo in the form of a boar. It looks as if Adonis’s representative, a man wearing a boar’s hide with golden tusks, was now spared if he could take refuge from his pursuers in the sanctuary of Apollo’s sister Artemis. The kings of Tegea, Auge’s birthplace, were, it seems, habitually killed by boars.

4. Phil’s adventure with the jay is an anecdotal fancy, supposed to account for the name of the spring, which may originally have been sacred to a jay totem-clan.
























































p. 321
1. The story of Meleager’s sisters is told to account for a guinea-fowl cult of Artemis on Leros.

2. Deianeira’s love of war reveals her as a representative of the pre-Olympian Battle-goddess Athene, with whose sacred marriages in different localities this part of the Heracles legend is chiefly concerned.

3. Heracles’s contest with Achelous, like that of Theseus with the Minotaur, should be read as part of the royal marriage ritual. Bull and Serpent stood for the waxing and the waning year— ‘the bull who is the serpent’s father, and the serpent whose son is the bull’—over both of which the sacred king won domination. A bull’s horn, regarded from earliest times as the seat of fertility, enroyalled the candidate for kingship who laid hold of it when he wrestled either with an actual bull, or with a bull-masked opponent. The Babylonian hero Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s mortal twin, and devotee of the Queen of Heaven, seized the Bull of Heaven by the horns and killed it with his sword; and the winning of a cornucopia was a marriage-task imposed on the Welsh hero Peredur in the Mabinogion. In Crete, the bull cult had succeeded that of the wild-goat, whose horn was equally potent. But it seems that the icon which showed this ritual contest was interpreted by the Greeks as illustrating Heracles’s struggle with the River Achelous: namely the dying and draining of the Paracheloitis, a tract of land, formed of the silt brought down by the Achelous, which had slowly been joining the Echinachan Isles to the mainland; and the consequent recovery of a large area of farmland. Heracles was often credited with engineering feats such as these (Strabo; Diodorus Siculus). The sacrifice ordered by the Dodonian Oracle will hardly have been to the river Achelous; more likely it was prescribed for Achelois, the Moon-goddess ‘who drives away pain’.

4. Eunomus and Cyathus will have been boy-victims: surrogates for the sacred king at the close of his reign.

5. Nessus’s attempted rape of Deianeira recalls the disorderly scenes at the wedding of Peirithous, when Theseus (the Athenian Heracles) intervened to save Hippodameia from assault by the Centaur Eurytion. Since the Centaurs were originally depicted as goat-men, the icon on which the incident is based probably showed the Queen riding on the goat-king’s back, as she did at the May Eve celebrations of Northern Europe, before her sacred marriage; Eurytion is the ‘interloper’, a stock-character made familiar by the comedies of Aristophanes, who still appears at Northern Greek marriage festivities. The earliest mythical example of the. interloper is the same Enkidu: he interrupted Gilgamesh’s sacred marriage with the Goddess of Erech, and challenged him to battle. Another interloper is Agenor, who tried to take Andromeda from Perseus at his wedding feast.

6. The first settlers in Sardinia, Neolithic Libyans, managed to survive in the mountainous parts; subsequent immigrants—Cretans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, and Jews—attempted to hold the coastal districts, but malaria always defeated them. Only during the last few years has the mortality been checked by spraying the pools where the malarial mosquito breeds.

7. ‘Ozolian’ (‘smelly’), a nickname given to the Locrians settled near Phocis, to distinguish them from their Opuntian and Epizephyrian kinsfolk, probably referred to their habit of wearing undressed goat-skins which had a foetid smell in damp weather. The Locrians themselves preferred to derive it from ozoi, ‘vine shoots’ (Pausanias), because of the first vinestock planted in their country.










































































p. 323
1. Heracles’s sacrifice of a plough ox, Theiodamas’s cursing, and the appearance of the infant Hylas from a furrow, are all parts of the pre-Hellenic sowing ritual. Ox blood propitiates the Earth-goddess, curses avert divine anger from the sprouting seeds, the child represents the coming crop—namely Plutus, whom Demeter bore to Iasius after they had embraced in the thrice-ploughed field. Theiodamas is the spirit of the old year, now destroyed. The annual mourning for the doomed tree-spirit Hylas has here been confused with mourning for the doomed corn-spirit.

2. Heracles’s expulsion of the Dryopians from Parnassus with Dorian assistance, and the Dryopian emigration to Southern Greece, are likely to have taken place in the twelfth century BC, before the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. His combat with Cycnus recalls Pelops’s race with Oenomaus, another son of Ares, and equally notorious as a head-hunter. In both cases one of the chariots contained a woman: namely Oenomaus’s daughter Hippodameia (the subject of his contention with Pelops) and Athene, who is apparently, the same character—namely the new king’s destined bride. Cycnus, like Spartan Polydeuces, is a king of the swan cult whose soul flies off to the far northern otherworld.

3. Aegimius’s name—if it means ‘acting the part of a goat’—suggests that he performed a May Eve goat—marriage with the tribal queen, and that in his war against the Lapiths of Northern Thessaly his Dorians fought beside the Centaurs, the Lapiths’ hereditary enemies who, like the Satyrs, are depicted in early works of art as goat-men.

4. Cypselus the tyrant of Corinth, famous for his carved chest, claimed descent from the Lapith royal house of Caeneus.













































































p. 324
1. Eurytus had refused to yield Iole on the ground that Heracles used to be a slave. Though Iole’s suicidal leap makes a plausible fable—Mycenaean skirts were bell-shaped, and my father once told a story of a Victorian suicide saved by her vast crinoline—it has most probably been deduced from a Mycenaean picture of the goddess hovering the army as it assaulted her city. The name Oechalia, ‘house of flour’, indicates that the goddess in whose honour the mysteries were held was Demeter.


































p. 327
1. Before sacrificing and thus immortalizing the sacred king—as Calypso promised to immortalize Odysseus—the Queen will have stripped him of his clothes and regalia. What floggings and mutilations he suffered until he was laid on the pyre for immortalization, is not suggested here, but the icons from which the account seems to be deduced probably showed him bleeding and in agony, as he struggled into the white linen shirt which consecrated him to the Death-goddess.

2. A tradition that Heracles died on the Cenaean headland has been reconciled with another that had him die on Mount Oeta, where early inscriptions and statuettes show that the sacred king continued to be burned in effigy for centuries after he ceased to be burned in the flesh. Oak is the correct wood for the midsummer bonfire; wild-olive is the wood of the New Year, when the king began his reign by expelling the spirits of the old year. Poeas, or Philoctetes, who lighted the pyre, is the king’s tanist and successor; he inherits his arms and bed—Iole’s marriage to Hyllus must be read in this way—and dies by snake—bite at the end of the year.

3. Formerly, Heracles’s soul had gone to the Western Paradise of the Hesperides; or to the silver castle, the Corona Borealis, at the back of the North Wind—a legend which Pindar has uncomprehendingly included in a brief account of the Third Labour. His admission to the Olympian Heaven—where, however, he never secured a seat among the twelve, as Dionysus did—is a late conception. It may be based on the misreading of the same sacred icon which accounts for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, for the so-called rape of Ganymedes, and for the arming of Heracles. This icon will have shown Athene, or Hebe, the youthful queen and bride, introducing the king to twelve witnesses of the sacred marriage, each representing a clan of a religious confederacy or a month of the sacred year; he has been ritually reborn either from a mare, or (as here) from a woman. Heracles figures as a heavenly porter because he died at midsummer—the year being likened to an oaken door which turned on a hinge, opened to its widest extent at the midsummer solstice, then gradually closed, as the days began to shorten (White Goddess). What kept him from becoming a full Olympian seems to have been the authority of Homer: the Odyssey had recorded the presence of his shade in Tartarus.

4. If the Erythraean statue of Heracles was of Tyrian provenience, the rope in the temple will have been woven not of women’s hair but of hair shorn from the sacred king before his death at the winter solstice—as Delilah shore that of Samson, a Tyrian sun-hero. A similar sun-hero had been sacrificed by the Thracian women who adopted his cult. The statue was probably towed on a raft to avoid the harrowing of a merchant vessel and its consequent withdrawal from trade. ‘Ipoctonus’ may have been a local variant of Heracles’s more usual title Ophioctonus, ‘serpent-killing’. His renovation by death ‘like a snake that casts its slough,’ was a figure borrowed from the Egyptian Book of the Dead; snakes were held to put off old age by casting their slough, ‘slough’ and ‘old age’ both being geros in Greek. He rides to Heaven in a four-horse chariot as a solar hero and patron of the Olympic Games; each horse representing one of the four years between the Games, or one season of a year divided by equinoxes and solstices. A square image of the sun, worshipped as Heracles the Saviour, stood in the Great Goddess’s precinct at Megalopolis (Pausanias); it was probably an ancient altar, like several square blocks found in the palace at Cnossus, and another found in the West Court of the palace at Phaestus.

5. Hebe, Heracles’s bride, may not, perhaps, be the goddess as Youth, but a deity mentioned in the 48th and 49th Orphic Hymns as Hipta the Earth-mother, to whom Dionysus was delivered for safe-keeping. Proclus says (Against Timaeus) that she carried him on her head in a winnowing basket. Hipta is associated with Zeus Sabazius in two early inscriptions from Maeonia, then inhabited by a Lydo-Phrygian tribe; and Professor Kretschmer has identified her with the Mitannian goddess Hepa, Hepit, or Hebe, mentioned in the texts from Boghaz-Keui and apparently brought to Maeonia from Thrace. If Heracles married this Hebe, the myth concerns the Heracles who did great deeds in Phrygia, Mysia, and Lydia; he can be identified with Zeus Sabazius. Hipta was well known throughout the Middle East. A rock-carving at Hattusas in Lycaonia shows her mounted on a lion, about to celebrate a sacred marriage with the Hittite Storm-god. She is there called Hepatu, said to be a Hurrian word, and Professor B. Hrozny (Civilization of the Hittites and Subareans) equates her with Hawwa, ‘the Mother of All Living’, who appears in Genesis as Eve. Hrozny mentions the Canaanite prince of Jerusalem Abdihepa; and Adam, who married Eve, was a tutelary hero of Jerusalem (Jerome: Commentary on Ephesians).

























































































p. 330
1. The disastrous invasion of the Mycenaean Peloponnese by uncultured patriarchal mountaineers from Central Greece which, according to Pausanias and Thucydides, took place about 1100 BC, was called the Dorian because its leaders came from the small state of Doris. Three tribes composed this Dorian League: the Hylleids, who worshipped Heracles; the Dymanes (‘enterers’), who worshipped Apollo; and the Pamphylloi (‘men from every tribe’), who worshipped Demeter. After overrunning Southern Thessaly, the Dorians seem to have allied themselves with the Athenians before they ventured to attack the Peloponnese. The first attempt failed, though Mycenae was burned about 1100 BC, but a century later they conquered the eastern and southern regions, having by now destroyed the entire ancient culture of Argolis. This invasion, which caused emigrations from Argolis to Rhodes, from Attica to the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, and apparently also from Thebes to Sardinia, brought the Dark Ages into Greece.

2. Strategic burial of a hero’s head is commonplace in myth: thus, according to the Mabinogion, Bran’s head was buried on Tower Hill to guard London from invasion by way of the Thames: and according to Ambrose (Epistle), Adam’s head was buried at Golgotha, to protect Jerusalem from the north. Moreover, Euripides (Rhesus) makes Hector declare that the ghosts even of strangers could serve as Troy’s guardian spirits. Both Tricorythus and Gargettus lie at narrow cleaves commanding the approaches to Attica. Iolaus’s pursuit of Eurystheus past the Scironian Rocks seems to have been borrowed from the same icon that suggested the myth of Hippolytus.

3. The land of the Phaeacians was Corcyra, or Drepane, now Corfu, off which lay the sacred islet of Macris; the Cronian Sea was the Gulf Of Finland, whence amber seems to have been fetched by Corcyrian enterprise—Corcyra is associated with the Argonaut amber-expedition to the head of the Adriatic.

4. Triops, the Greek colonist of Rhodes, is a masculinization of the ancient Triple-goddess Danaë, or Damkina, after whose three persons Lindus, Ialysus, and Cameirus were named. According to other accounts, these cities were founded by the Telchines, or by Danaus.

5. Alcmene being merely a rifle of Hera’s, there was nothing remarkable in the dedication of a temple to her.

6. Polygnotus, in his famous painting at Delphi, showed Menelaus with a serpent badge on his shield (Pausanias)—presumably the water-serpent of Sparta. A fox helped the Messenian hero Aristomenes to escape from a pit into which the Spartans had thrown him (Pausanias); and the goddess as vixen was well known in Greece. The toad seems to have become the Argive emblem, not only because it had a reputation of being dangerous to handle, and of causing a hush of awe among all who saw it (Pliny: Natural History), but because Argos was first called Phoronicum; in the syllabary which preceded the alphabet at Argos, the radicals PHRN could be expressed by a toad, phryne.







































































































p. 331
1. Pausanias connects the myth of the Child Linus with that of Maneros, the Egyptian Corn-spirit, for whom dirges were chanted at harvest time; but Linus seems to have been the spirit of the flax-plant (linos), sown in spring and harvested in summer. He had Psamathe for mother because, according to Pliny (Natural History), ‘they sowed flax in sandy soil.’ His grandfather, and murderer, was Crotopus because —again according to Pliny—the yellowing flax-stalks, after having been plucked out by the roots, and hung up in the open air, were bruised with the ‘pounding feet’ of tow-mallets. And Apollo, whose priests wore linen, and who was patron of all Greek music, fathered him. Linus’s destruction by dogs evidently refers to the maceration of the flax-stems with iron hatchets, a process which Pliny describes in the same passage. Frazer suggests, although without supporting evidence, that Linus is a Greek mishearing of the Phoenician ai lanu, ‘woe upon us’. Oetolinus means ‘doomed Linus’.

2. The myth has, however, been reduced to the familiar pattent of the child exposed for fear of a jealous grandfather and reared by shepherds; which suggests that the linen industry in Argolis died out, owing to the Dorian invasion or Egyptian underselling, or both, and was replaced by a woollen industry; yet the annual dirges for the child Linus continued to be chanted. The flax industry is likely to have been established by the Cretans who civilized Argolis; the Greek word for flax-rope is merinthos, and all ‘inthos’ words are of Cretan origin.

3. Coroebus, when he killed Poene (‘punishment’), probably forbade child sacrifices at the Linus festival, and substituted lambs, renaming the month ‘Lamb Month’; he has been identified with an Elean of the same name who won the foot-race at the First Olympiad (776 BC). Tripodiscus seems to have no connection with tripods, but to be derived from tripodizein, ‘to fetter thrice’.

4. Since the flax-harvest was the occasion of plaintive dirges and rhythmic pounding, and since at midsummer—to judge from the Swiss and Suabian examples quoted in Frazer’s Golden Bough—young people leaped around a bonfire to make the flax grow high, another mystical Linus was presumed: one who attained manhood and became a famous musician, the inventor of rhythm and melody. This Linus had a Muse mother, and for his father, Arcadian Hermes, or Thracian Oeagrius, or Magnes, the eponymous ancestor of the Magnesians; he was, in fact, not a Hellene, but guardian of the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian culture, which included the tree-calendar and Creation lore. Apollo, who tolerated no rivals in music—as he had shown in the case of Marsyas—is said to have killed him off-hand; but this was an incorrect account, since Apollo adopted, rather than murdered, Linus. Later, his death was more appropriately laid at the door of Heracles, patron of the uncivilized Dorian invaders.

5. Linus is called Orpheus’s brother because of a similarity in their fate. In the Austrian Alps (I am informed by Margarita Schön-Wels) men are not admitted to the flax-harvest, or to the process of drying, beating, and macerating, or to the spinning-rooms. The ruling spirit is the Harpatsch: a terrifying hag, whose hands and face are rubbed with soot. Any man who meets her accidentally, is embraced, forced to dance, sexually assaulted, and smeared with soot. Moreover, the women who beat the flax, called Bechlerinnen, chase and surround any stranger who blunders to their midst. They make him lie down, step over him, tie his hands and feet, wrap him in tow, scour his face and hands with prickly flax-waste, rub him against the rough bark of a felled tree, and finally roll him downhill. Near Feldkirch, they only make the trespasser lie down and step over him; but elsewhere they open his trouser-flies and stuff them with flax-waste, which is so painful that he has to escape barelegged. Near Salzburg, the Bechlerinnen untrouser the trespasser themselves, and threaten to castrate him; after his flight, they purify the place by burning twigs and clashing sickles together.

6. Little is known of what goes on in the spinning-rooms, the women being so secretive; except that they chant a dirge called the Flachses Qual (‘Flax’s Torment’), or Leinen Klage (‘Linen Lament’). It seems likely, then, that at the flax-harvest women used to catch, sexually assault, and dismember a man who represented the flax-spirit; but since this was also the fate of Orpheus, who protested against human sacrifice and sexual orgies, Linus has been described as his brother. The Harpatsch is familiar: she is the carline-wife of the corn harvest, representative of the Earth-goddess. Sickles are clashed solely in honour of the moon; they are not used in the flax harvest. Linus is credited with the invention of music because these dirges are put into the mouth of the Flax-spirit himself, and because some lyre-strings were made from flaxen thread.