The Greek Myths, Volume2 Read online

  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.5

  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.6

  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 Aeolis 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 Pen-thilus, 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.7

  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.8

  1. Hyginus: Fabula 122.

  2. Euripides: Iphigeneia Among the Taurians 1464 and 915; Pausanias: i. 43.1 and x. 24.4–5; Hellanicus, quoted by Pausanias: ii. 16. 5; Hyginus: Fabula 123; Strabo: ix. 3.9.

  3. Apollodorus: Epitome vi. 28; Cinaethon, quoted by Pausanias: ii. 18. 5; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1374.

  4. Pausanias: ii. 18. 5 and viii. 5. 1–3; Asclepiades, quoted by scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 1647; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Tzetzes: loc. cit.

  5. Pausanias: iii. 3.7; iii. 11. 8; iii. 3.5–7 and viii. 54.3; Herodotus: i. 67–8.

  6. Pausanias: ix. 40. 6.

  7. Pindar: Nemean Odes xi. 33–5; Hellanicus, quoted by Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1374; Pausanias: iii. 2. 1; Strabo: xiii. 1. 3.

  8. Pausanias: ii. 8.6–7 and vii. 6.21.

  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 (see 123. e), identifiable with Opheltes of Nemea (see 106. g); Munitus son of Athamas (see 168. e); Mopsus the Lapith (see 154.f), 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 (see 92. 10). The Arcadian Orestes was, in fact, a Pelasgian with Libyan connexions.

  2. Artemis’s rescue of Erigone from Orestes’s 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 vi. 28), 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 (see 104. i). 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 (see 88. 3) 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 (see 53. 2).

  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 651); 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 matrilinear. 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 cen
tury B.C.

  118

  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.1

  b. Amphitryon, accompanied by Alcmene, fled to Thebes, where King Creon purified him and gave his sister Perimede in marriage to Electryon’s only surviving son, Licymnius, a bastard borne by a Phrygian woman named Midea.2 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.3 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 offto 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.4 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, Alcmene 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.5

  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 nightfall 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.6

  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.7

  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.8

  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.9

  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.10

  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.11

  1. Apollodorus: ii. 4. 5–6; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 932; Hesiod: Shield of Heracles 11 ff.

  2. Apollodorus: loc. cit.

  3. Hesiod: Shield of Heracles 1–56; Apollodorus: ii. 4.7–8; Hyginus: Fabula 28; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 33 and 932; Pindar: Isthmian Odes vii. 5.

  4. Lucian: Dialogues of the Gods x.

  5. Hesiod: Shield of Heracles 1–56; Apollodorus: ii. 4.7–8; Hyginus: Fabula 29; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 33 and 932; Pindar: Isthmian Odes vii. 5.

  6. Hesiod: Shield of Heracles i. 35, 56, and 80; Homer: Iliad xix. 95; Apollodorus: ii. 4–5; Theocritus, quoted by scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes i. 36; Plautus: Amphitryo 1096; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 10; Tzetzes: O
n Lycophron 662.

  7. Homer: Iliad xix. 119 ff. and 91; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 9 and 14.

  8. Hesiod: Shield of Heracles 4 ff. and 26 ff.; Pherecydes, quoted by Athenaeus: xi. 7; Athenaeus: xi. 99; Plautus: Amphitryo 256 ff.

  9. Pausanias: ix. 11. 1–2; Ovid: Metamorphoses ix. 285 ff.; Aelian: Nature of Animals xii. 5; Antoninus Liberalis: Transformations 29.

  10. Aelian: Nature of Animals xv. 11; Antoninus Liberalis: loc. cit.

  11. Philochorus: Fragment 177; Ovid: Metamorphoses ix. 285 ff.; Theocritus: Idylls xxiv. 11–12.

  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 (iii. 73) 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 iii. 16); Varro to forty-four (Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid viii. 564). Herodotus (ii. 42) says that when he asked for Heracles’s original home, the Egyptians referred him to Phoenicia. According to Diodorus Siculus (i. 17 and 24; iii. 73), 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 Jupiter 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: 63). 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 (see 132. c). Heracles finds the magic herb of immortality (see 35. b) as Gilgamesh does, and is similarly connected with the progress of the sun around the Zodiac.