The Greek Myths, Page 25

  1. Aristophanes: Frogs 288 ff.; Parliament of Women 1056 and 1094; Papyri Magici Graeci iv. 2334; Philostratus: Life of Apollonius of Tyana iv. 25; Suidas sub Empusae.

  1. The Empusae (‘forcers-in’) are greedily seductive female demons, a concept probably brought to Greece from Palestine, where they went by the name of Lilim (‘children of Lilith’) and were thought to be ass-haunched, the ass symbolizing lechery and cruelty. Lilith (‘scritch-owl’) was a Canaanite Hecate, and the Jews made amulets to protect themselves against her as late as the Middle Ages. Hecate, the real ruler of Tartarus (see 31. f), wore a brazen sandal – the golden sandal was Aphrodite’s – and her daughters, the Empusae, followed this example. They could change themselves into beautiful maidens or cows, as well as bitches, because the Bitch Hecate, being a member of the Moon-triad, was the same goddess as Aphrodite, or cow-eyed Hera.

  56

  IO

  Io, daughter of the River-god Inachus, was a priestess of Argive Hera. Zeus, over whom Iynx, daughter of Pan and Echo, had cast a spell, fell in love with Io, and when Hera charged him with infidelity and turned lynx into a wryneck as a punishment, lied: ‘I have never touched Io.’ He then turned her into a white cow, which Hera claimed as hers and handed over for safe keeping to Argus Panoptes, ordering him: ‘Tether this beast secretly to an olive-tree at Nemea.’ But Zeus sent Hermes to fetch her back, and himself led the way to Nemea – or, some say, to Mycenae – dressed in woodpecker disguise. Hermes, though the cleverest of thieves, knew that he could not steal Io without being detected by one of Argus’s hundred eyes; he therefore charmed him asleep by playing the flute, crushed him with a boulder, cut off his head, and released Io. Hera, having placed Argus’s eyes in the tail of a peacock, as a constant reminder of his foul murder, set a gadfly to sting Io and chase her all over the world.

  b. Iο first went to Dodona, and presently reached the sea called the Ionian after her, but there turned back and travelled north to Mount Haemus and then, by way of the Danube’s delta, coursed sun-wise around the Black Sea, crossing the Crimean Bosphorus, and following the River Hybristes to its source in the Caucasus, where Prometheus still languished on his rock. She regained Europe by way of Colchis, the land of the Chalybes, and the Thracian Bosphorus; then away she galloped through Asia Minor to Tarsus and Joppa, thence to Media, Bactria, and India and, passing south-westward through Arabia, across the Indian Bosphorus [the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb], reached Ethiopia. Thence she travelled down from the sources of the Nile, where the pygmies make perpetual war with the cranes, and found rest at last in Egypt. There Zeus restored her to human form and, having married Telegonus, she gave birth to Epaphus – her son by Zeus, who had touched her to some purpose – and founded the worship of Isis, as she called Demeter. Epaphus, who was rumoured to be the divine bull Apis, reigned over Egypt, and had a daughter, Libya, the mother by Poseidon of Agenor and Belus.1

  c. But some believe that Io bore Epaphus in a Euboean cave called Boösaule, and afterwards died there from the sting of the gadfly; and that, as a cow, she changed her colour from white to violet-red, and from violet-red to black.2

  d. Others have a quite different story to tell. They say that Inachus, a son of Iapetus, ruled over Argos, and founded the city of Iopolis – for Io is the name by which the moon was once worshipped at Argos – and called his daughter Io in honour of the moon. Zeus Picus, King of the West, sent his servants to carry off Io, and outraged her as soon as she reached his palace. After bearing him a daughter named Libya, Io fled to Egypt, but found that Hermes, son of Zeus, was reigning there; so continued her flight to Mount Silpium in Syria, where she died of grief and shame. Inachus then sent Io’s brothers and kinsfolk in search of her, warning them not to return empty-handed. With Triptolemus for their guide, they knocked on every door in Syria, crying: ‘May the spirit of Io find rest!’; until at last they reached Mount Silpium, where a phantasmal cow addressed them with: ‘Here am I, Io.’ They decided that Io must have been buried on that spot, and therefore founded a second Iopolis, now called Antioch. In honour of Io, the Iopolitans knock at one another’s door in the same way every year, using the same cry; and the Argives mourn annually for her.3

  1. Callimachus: On Birds, Fragment 100; Apollodorus: ii. 1. 3; Hyginus: Fabula 145; Suidas sub Io; Lucian: Dialogues of the Gods 3; Moschus: Idyll ii. 59; Herodotus: i. 1 and ii. 41; Homer: Iliad iii. 6; Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound 705 ff. and Suppliants 547 ff.; Euripides: Iphigeneia Among the Taurians 382; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 835 ff.

  2. Strabo: x. 1. 3; Stephanus of Byzantium sub Argura; Suidas sub Isis.

  3. John Malalas: Chronicles ii. p. 28, ed. Dindorff.

  1. This myth consists of several strands. The Argives worshipped the moon as a cow, because the horned new moon was regarded as the source of all water, and therefore of cattle fodder. Her three colours: white for the new moon, red for the harvest moon, black for the moon when it waned, represented the three ages of the Moon-goddess – Maiden, Nymph, and Crone (see 90. 3). Io changed her colour, as the moon changes, but for ‘red’ the mythographer substitutes ‘violet’ because ion is Greek for the violet flower. Woodpeckers were thought to be knocking for rain when they tapped on oak-trunks; and Io was the Moon as rain-bringer. The herdsmen needed rain most pressingly in late summer, when gadflies attacked their cattle and sent them frantic; in Africa, cattle-owning Negro tribes still hurry from pasture to pasture when attacked by them. Io’s Argive priestesses seem to have performed an annual heifer-dance in which they pretended to be driven mad by gadflies, while woodpecker-men, tapping on oak-doors and calling ‘Io! Io!’, invited the rain to fall and relieve their torments. This seems to be the origin of the myth of the Coan women who were turned into cows (see 137. s). Argive colonies founded in Euboea, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, Syria, and Egypt, took their rain-making dance with them. The wryneck, the Moon-goddess’s prime orgiastic bird, nests in willows, and was therefore concerned with water-magic (see 152. 2).

  2. The legend invented to account for the eastward spread of this ritual, as well as the similarity between the worship of Io in Greece, Isis in Egypt, Astarte in Syria, and Kali in India, has been grafted on two unrelated stories: that of the holy moon-cow wandering around the heavens, guarded by the stars – there is a cognate Irish legend of the ‘Green Stripper’ – and that of the Moon-priestesses whom the leaders of the invading Hellenes, each calling himself Zeus, violated to the dismay of the local population. Hera, as Zeus’s wife, is then made to express jealousy of Io, though Io was another name for ‘cow-eyed’ Hera. Demeter’s mourning for Persephone is recalled in the Argive festival of mourning for Io, since Io has been equated in the myth with Demeter. Moreover, every three years Demeter’s Mysteries were celebrated at Celeae (‘calling’), near Corinth, and said to have been founded by a brother of Celeus (‘woodpecker’), King of Eleusis. Hermes is called the son of Zeus Picus (‘woodpecker’) – Aristophanes in his Birds (480) accuses Zeus of stealing the woodpecker’s sceptre – as Pan is said to have been Hermes’s son by the Nymph Dryope (‘woodpecker’); and Faunus, the Latin Pan, was the son of Picus (‘woodpecker’) whom Circe turned into a woodpecker for spurning her love (Ovid: Metamorphoses xiv. 6). Faunus’s Cretan tomb bore the epitaph: ‘Here lies the woodpecker who was also Zeus’ (Suidas sub Picos). All three are rain-making shepherd-gods. Libya’s name denotes rain, and the winter rains came to Greece from the direction of Libya.

  3. Zeus’s fathering of Epaphus, who became the ancestor of Libya, Agenor, Belus, Aegyptus, and Danaus, implies that the Zeus-worshipping Achaeans claimed sovereignty over all the sea-peoples of the south-eastern Mediterranean.

  4. The myth of pygmies and cranes seems to concern the tall cattle-breeding tribesmen who had broken into the upper Nile-valley from Somaliland and driven the native pygmies southward. They were called ‘cranes’ because, then as now, they would stand for long periods on one leg, holding the ankle of the other with the opposite hand, and leaning on a spear.

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p; 57

  PHORONEUS

  THE first man to found and people a market-town was Io’s brother Phoroneus, son of the River-god Inachus and the Nymph Melia; later its name, Phoronicum, was changed to Argos. Phoroneus was also the first to discover the use of fire, after Prometheus had stolen it. He married the Nymph Cerdo, ruled the entire Peloponnese, and initiated the worship of Hera. When he died, his sons Pelasgus, Iasus, and Agenor divided the Peloponnese between them; but his son Car founded the city of Megara.1

  1. Hyginus: Fabulae 143 and 274; Apollodorus: ii. 1. 1; Pausanias: i. 39. 4–6; ii. 15. 5 and iv. 40. 5.

  1. Phoroneus’s name, which the Greeks read as ‘bringer of a price’ in the sense that he invented markets, probably stands for Fearinus (‘of the dawn of the year’, i.e. the Spring); variants are Bran, Barn, Bergn, Vron, Ephron, Gwern, Fearn, and Brennus. As the spirit of the alder-tree which presided over the fourth month in the sacred year (see 28. 1 and 5; 52.3 and 170. 8), during which the Spring Fire Festival was celebrated, he was described as a son of Inachus, because alders grow by rivers. His mother is the ash-nymph Melia, because the ash, the preceding tree of the same series, is said to ‘court the flash’ – lightning-struck trees were primitive man’s first source of fire. Being an oracular hero, he was also associated with the crow (see 50. 1). Phoroneus’s discovery of the use of fire may be explained by the ancient smiths’ and potters’ preference for alder charcoal, which gives out more heat than any other. Cerdo (‘gain’ or ‘art’) is one of Demeter’s titles; it was applied to her as weasel, or fox, both considered prophetic animals. ‘Phoroneus’ seems to have been a title of Cronus, with whom the crow and the alder are also associated (see 6. 2), and therefore the Titan of the Seventh Day. The division of Phoroneus’s kingdom between his sons Pelasgus, Iasus, and Agenor recalls that of Cronus’s kingdom between Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades; but perhaps describes a pre-Achaean partition of the Peloponnese.

  2. Car is Q’re, or Carius, or the Great God Ker, who seems to have derived his title from his Moon-mother Artemis Caria, or Caryatis.

  58

  EUROPE AND CADMUS

  AGENOR, Libya’s son by Poseidon and twin to Belus, left Egypt to settle in the Land of Canaan, where he married Telephassa, otherwise called Argiope, who bore him Cadmus, Phoenix, Cilix, Thasus, Phineus, and one daughter, Europe.1

  b. Zeus, falling in love with Europe, sent Hermes to drive Agenor’s cattle down to the seashore at Tyre, where she and her companions used to walk. He himself joined the herd, disguised as a snow-white bull with great dewlaps and small, gem-like horns, between which ran a single black streak. Europe was struck by his beauty and, on finding him gentle as a lamb, mastered her fear and began to play with him, putting flowers in his mouth and hanging garlands on his horns; in the end, she climbed upon his shoulders, and let him amble down with her to the edge of the sea. Suddenly he swam away, while she looked back in terror at the receding shore; one of her hands clung to his right horn, the other still held a flower-basket.2

  c. Wading ashore near Cretan Gortyna, Zeus became an eagle and ravished Europe in a willow-thicket beside a spring; or, some say, under an evergreen plane-tree. She bore him three sons: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon.3

  d. Agenor sent his sons in search of their sister, forbidding them to return without her. They set sail at once but, having no notion where the bull had gone, each steered a different course. Phoenix travelled westward, beyond Libya, to what is now Carthage, and there gave his name to the Punics; but, after Agenor’s death, returned to Canaan, since renamed Phoenicia in his honour, and became the father of Adonis by Alphesiboea.4 Cilix went to the Land of the Hypachaeans, which took his name, Cilicia;5 and Phineus to Thynia, a peninsula separating the Sea of Marmara from the Black Sea, where he was later much distressed by harpies. Thasus and his followers, first making for Olympia, dedicated a bronze statue there to Tyrian Heracles, ten ellshigh, holding a club and a bow, but then set off to colonize the island of Thasos and work its rich gold mines. All this took place five generations before Heracles, son of Amphitryon, was born in Greece.6

  e. Cadmus sailed with Telephassa to Rhodes, where he dedicated a brazen cauldron to Athene of Lindus, and built Poseidon’s temple, leaving a herditary priesthood behind to care for it. They next touched at Thera, and built a similar temple, finally reaching the land of the Thracian Edonians, who received them hospitably. Here Telephassa died suddenly and, after her funeral, Cadmus and his companions proceeded on foot to the Delphic Oracle. When he asked where Europe might be found, the Pythoness advised him to give up his search and, instead, follow a cow and build a city wherever she should sink down for weariness.

  f. Departing by the road that leads from Delphi to Phocis, Cadmus came upon some cowherds in the service of King Pelagon, who sold him a cow marked with a white full moon on each flank. This beast he drove eastward through Boeotia, never allowing her to pause until, at last, she sank down where the city of Thebes now stands, and here he erected an image of Athene, calling it by her Phoenician name of Onga.7

  g. Cadmus, warning his companions that the cow must be sacrificed to Athene without delay, sent them to fetch lustral water from the Spring of Ares, now called the Castalian Spring, but did not know that it was guarded by a great serpent. This serpent killed most of Cadmus’s men, and he took vengeance by crushing its head with a rock. No sooner had he offered Athene the sacrifice, than she appeared, praising him for what he had done, and ordering him to sow the serpent’s teeth in the soil. When he obeyed her, armed Sparti, or Sown Men, at once sprang up, clashing their weapons together. Cadmus tossed a stone among them and they began to brawl, each accusing the other of having thrown it, and fought so fiercely that, at last, only five survived: Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus, who unanimously offered Cadmus their services. But Ares demanded vengeance for the death of the serpent, and Cadmus was sentenced by a divine court to become his bondman for a Great Year.8

  1. Apollodorus: iii. 1. 1; Hyginus: Fabulae 178 and 19; Pausanias: v. 25. 7; Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 178.

  2. Ovid: Metamorphoses ii. 836 ff; Moschus: Idylls ii. 37–62.

  3. The Coins of Gortyna; Theophrastus: History of Plants i. 9. 5; Hyginus: Fabula 178.

  4. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: iii. 1. 1 and 14. 4.

  5. Herodotus: vii. 91.

  6. Pausanias: v. 25. 7; Herodotus: iv. 47 and ii. 44.

  7. Pausanias: ix. 12. 1–2.

  8. Hyginus: Fabula 178; Apollodorus: iii. 4. 1–2.

  1. There are numerous confusing variations of the genealogy given above: for instance, Thasus is alternatively described as the son of Poseidon, Cilix (Apollodorus: iii. 1. 1), or Tityus (Pindar: Pythian Odes iv. 46). Agenor is the Phoenician hero Chnas, who appears in Genesis as ‘Canaan’; many Canaanite customs point to an East African provenience, and the Canaanites may have originally come to Lower Egypt from Uganda. The dispersal of Agenor’s sons seems to record the westward flight of Canaanite tribes early in the second millennium B.C., under pressure from Aryan and Semitic invaders.

  2. The story of Inachus’s sons and their search for Io the moon-cow (see 56. d) has influenced that of Agenor’s sons and their search for Europe. Phoenix is a masculine form of Phoenissa (‘the red, or bloody one’), a title given to the moon as goddess of Death-in-Life. Europe means ‘broad-face’, a synonym for the full moon, and a title of the Moon-goddesses Demeter at Lebadia and Astarte at Sidon. If, however, the word is not eur-ope but eu-rope (on the analogy of euboea), it may also mean ‘good for willows’ – that is, ‘well-watered’. The willow rules the fifth month of the sacred year (see 52. 3), and is associated with witchcraft (see 28. 5) and with fertility rites throughout Europe, especially on May Eve, which falls in this month. Libya, Telephassa, Argiope, and Alphesiboea are all, similarly, titles of the Moon-goddess.

  3. Zeus’s rape of Europe, which records an early Hellenic occupation of Crete, has been deduced from pre-Hellenic pictures of the Moon-priestess triumphantl
y riding on the Sun-bull, her victim; the scene survives in eight moulded plaques of blue glass, found in the Mycenaean city of Midea. This seems to have been part of the fertility ritual during which Europe’s May-garland was carried in procession (Athenaeus: p. 678 a–b). Zeus’s seduction of Europe in eagle-disguise recalls his seduction of Hera in cuckoo-disguise (see 12. a); since (according to Hesychius) Hella bore the title ‘Europia’. Europe’s Cretan and Corinthian name was Hellotis, which suggests Helice (‘willow’); Helle (see 43.1 and 70. 8) and Helen are the same divine character. Callimachus in his Epithalamion for Helen mentions that the plane-tree was also sacred to Helen. Its sanctity lay in its five-pointed leaves, representing the hand of the goddess (see 53. a), and its annual sloughing of bark; but Apollo borrowed it (see 160.10), as the God Esmun did Tanit’s (Neith’s) open-hand emblem (see 21. 3).

  4. It is possible that the story of Europe also commemorates a raid on Phoenicia by Hellenes from Crete. John Malalas will hardly have invented the ‘Evil Evening’ at Tyre when he writes: ‘Taurus (“bull”), King of Crete, assaulted Tyre after a sea-battle during the absence of Agenor and his sons. They took the city that same evening and carried off many captives, Europe among them; this event is still recalled in the annual “Evil Evening” observed at Tyre’ (Chronicles ii. p. 30, ed. Dindorff). Herodotus (1. 2) agrees with Malalas (see 160. 1).

  5. Tyrian Heracles, whom Theseus worshipped at Olympia, was the god Melkarth; and a small tribe, speaking a Semitic language, seems to have moved up from the Syrian plains to Cadmeia in Caria – Cadmus is a Semitic word meaning ‘eastern’ – whence they crossed over to Boeotia towards the end of the second millennium, seized Thebes, and became masters of the country. The myth of the Sown Men and Cadmus’s bondage to Ares suggest that the invading Cadmeans secured their hold on Boeotia by successfully intervening in a civil war among the Pelasgian tribes who claimed to be autochthonous; and that they accepted the local rule of an eight-year reign for the sacred king. Cadmus killed the serpent in the same sense as Apollo killed the Python at Delphi (see 21. 12). The names of the Sown Men – Echion (‘viper’); Udaeus (‘of the earth’); Chthonius (‘of the soil); Hyperenor (‘man who comes up’) and Pelorus (‘serpent’) – are characteristic of oracular heroes. But ‘Pelorus’ suggests that all Pelasgians, not merely the Thebans, claimed to be born in this way; their common feast being the Peloria (see 1. 2). Jason’s crop of dragon’s teeth was probably sown at Iolcus or Corinth, not Colchis (see 152.3).