The Greek Myths, Page 26

  6. Troy and Antioch were also said to have been founded on sites selected by sacred cows (see 158. h and 56. d). But it is less likely that this practice was literally carried out, than that the cow was turned loose in a restricted part of a selected site and the temple of the Moon-goddess founded where she lay down. A cow’s strategic and commercial sensibilities are not highly developed.

  59

  CADMUS AND HARMONIA

  WHEN Cadmus had served eight years in bondage to Ares, to expiate the murder of the Castalian serpent, Athene secured him the land of Boeotia. With the help of his Sown Men, he built the Theban acropolis, named ‘The Cadmea’ in his own honour and, after being initiated into the mysteries which Zeus had taught Iasion, married Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares; some say that Athene had given her to him when he visited Samothrace.1

  b. This was the first mortal wedding ever attended by the Olympians. Twelve golden thrones were set up for them in Cadmus’s house, which stood on the site of the present Theban market place; and they all brought gifts. Aphrodite presented Harmonia with the famous golden necklace made by Hephaestus – originally it had been Zeus’s love-gift to Cadmus’s sister Europe – which conferred irresistible beauty on its wearer.2 Athene gave her a golden robe, which similarly conferred divine dignity on its wearer, also a set of flutes; and Hermes a lyre. Cadmus’s own present to Harmonia was another rich robe; and Electra, Iasion’s mother, taught her the rites of the Great Goddess; while Demeter assured her a prosperous barley harvest by lying with Iasion in a thrice-ploughed field during the celebrations. The Thebans still show the place where the Muses played the flute and sang on this occasion, and where Apollo performed on the lyre.3

  c. In his old age, to placate Ares, who had not yet wholly forgiven him for killing the serpent, Cadmus resigned the Theban throne in favour of his grandson Pentheus, whom his daughter Agave had borne to Echion the Sown Man, and lived quietly in the city. But when Pentheus was done to death by his mother, Dionysus foretold that Cadmus and Harmonia, riding in a chariot drawn by heifers, would rule over barbarian hordes. These same barbarians, he said, would sack many Greek cities until, at last, they plundered a temple of Apollo, whereupon they would suffer just punishment; but Ares would rescue Cadmus and Harmonia, after turning them into serpents, and they would live happily for all time in the Islands of the Blessed.4

  d. Cadmus and Harmonia therefore emigrated to the land of the Encheleans who, when attacked by the Illyrians, chose them as their rulers, in accordance with Dionysus’s advice. Agave was now married to Lycotherses, King of Illyria, at whose court she had taken refuge after her murder of Pentheus; but on hearing that her parents commanded the Enchelean forces, she murdered Lycotherses too, and gave the kingdom to Cadmus.5

  e. In their old age, when the prophecy had been wholly fulfilled, Cadmus and Harmonia duly became blue-spotted black serpents, and were sent by Zeus to the Islands of the Blessed. But some say that Ares changed them into lions. Their bodies were buried in Illyria, where Cadmus had built the city of Buthoë. He was succeeded by Illyrius, the son of his old age.6

  1. Pausanias: ix. 5. 1; Diodorus Siculus: v. 48; Apollodorus: iii. 4.2.

  2. Diodorus Siculus: v. 49 and iv. 65. 5; Pindar: Pythian Odes iii. 94; Pausanias: ix. 12. 3; Pherecydes, quoted by Apollodorus: iii. 4. 2.

  3. Diodorus Siculus: v. 49; Pausanias: ix. 12. 3

  4. Hyginus: Fabula 6; Apollodorus: iii. 4. 2; Euripides: Bacchae 43 and 1350 ff.

  5. Hyginus: Fabulae 184 and 240.

  6. Ovid: Metamorphoses iv. 562–602; Apollodorus: iii. 5.4; Ptolemy Hephaestionos; i; Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 517.

  1. Cadmus’s marriage to Harmonia, in the presence of the Twelve Olympian deities, is paralleled by Peleus’s marriage to Thetis (see 81. l), and seems to record a general Hellenic recognition of the Cadmeian conquerors of Thebes, after they had been sponsored by the Athenians and decently initiated into the Samothracian Mysteries. His founding of Buthoë constitutes a claim by the Illyrians to rank as Greeks, and therefore to take part in the Olympic Games. Cadmus will have had an oracle in Illyria, if he was pictured there as a serpent; and the lions, into which he and Harmonia are also said to have been transformed, were perhaps twin heraldic supporters of the Great Goddess’s aniconic image – as on the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae. The mythographer suggests that he was allowed to emigrate with a colony at the close of his reign, instead of being put to death (see 117. 5).

  60

  BELUS AND THE DANAIDS

  KING BELUS, who ruled at Chemmis in the Thebaid, was the son of Libya by Poseidon, and twin-brother of Agenor. His wife Anchinoë, daughter of Nilus, bore him the twins Aegyptus and Danaus, and a third son, Cepheus.1

  b. Aegyptus was given Arabia as his kingdom; but also subdued the country of the Melampodes, and named it Egypt after himself. Fifty sons were born to him of various mothers: Libyans, Arabians, Phoenicians, and the like. Danaus, sent to rule Libya, had fifty daughters, called the Danaids, also born of various mothers: Naiads, Hamadryads, Egyptian princesses of Elephantis and Memphis, Ethiopians, and the like.

  c. On Belus’s death, the twins quarrelled over their inheritance, and as a conciliatory gesture Aegyptus proposed a mass-marriage between the fifty princes and the fifty princesses. Danaus, suspecting a plot, would not consent and, when an oracle confirmed his fears that Aegyptus had it in his mind to kill all the Danaids, prepared to flee from Libya.2

  d. With Athene’s assistance, he built a ship for himself and his daughters – the first two-prowed vessel that ever took to sea – and they sailed towards Greece together, by way of Rhodes. There Danaus dedicated an image to Athene in a temple raised for her by the Danaids, three of whom died during their stay in the island; the cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Cameirus are called after them.3

  e. From Rhodes they sailed to the Peloponnese and landed near Lerna, where Danaus announced that he was divinely chosen to become King of Argos. Though the Argive King, Gelanor, naturally laughed at this claim, his subjects assembled that evening to discuss it. Gelanor would doubtless have kept the throne, despite Danaus’s declaration that Athene was supporting him, had not the Argives postponed their decision until dawn, when a wolf came boldly down from the hills, attacked a herd of cattle grazing near the city walls, and killed the leading bull. This they read as an omen that Danaus would take the throne by violence if he were opposed, and therefore persuaded Gelanor to resign it peacefully.

  f. Danaus, convinced that the wolf had been Apollo in disguise, dedicated the famous shrine to Wolfish Apollo at Argos, and became so powerful a ruler that all the Pelasgians of Greece called themselves Danaans. He also built the citadel of Argos, and his daughters brought the Mysteries of Demeter, called Thesmophoria, from Egypt and taught these to the Pelasgian women. But, since the Dorian invasion, the Thesmophoria are no longer performed in the Peloponnese, except by the Arcadians.4

  g. Danaus had found Argolis suffering from a prolonged drought, since Poseidon, vexed by Inachus’s decision that the land was Hera’s, had dried up all the rivers and streams. He sent his daughters in search of water, with orders to placate Poseidon by any means they knew. One of them, by name Amymone, while chasing a deer in the forest, happened to disturb a sleeping satyr. He sprang up and tried to ravish her; but Poseidon, whom she invoked, hurled his trident at the satyr. The fleeing satyr dodged, the trident stuck quivering in a rock, and Poseidon himself lay with Amymone, who was glad that she could carry out her father’s instructions so pleasantly. On learning her errand, Poseidon pointed to his trident and told her to pull it from the rock. When she did so, three streams of water jetted up from the three tine-holes. This spring, now named Amymone, is the source of the river Lerna, which never fails, even at the height of summer.5

  h. At Amymone the monstrous Hydra was born to Echidne under a plane-tree. It lived in the near-by Lernaean Lake, to which murderers come for purification – hence the proverb: ‘A Lerna of evils.’6

  i. Aegyptus now
sent his sons to Argos, forbidding them to return until they had punished Danaus and his whole family. On their arrival, they begged Danaus to reverse his former decision and let them marry his daughters – intending, however, to murder them on the wedding night. When he still refused, they laid siege to Argos. Now, there are no springs on the Argive citadel, and though the Danaids afterwards invented the art of sinking wells, and supplied the city with several of these, including four sacred ones, it was waterless at the time in question. Seeing that thirst would soon force him to capitulate. Danaus promised to do what the sons of Aegyptus asked, as soon as they raised the siege.7

  j. A mass-marriage was arranged, and Danaus paired off the couples: his choice being made in some cases because the bride and bridegroom had mothers of equal rank, or because their names were similar – thus Cleite, Sthenele, and Chrysippe married Cleitus, Sthenelus, and Chrysippus – but in most cases he drew lots from a helmet.8

  k. During the wedding-feast Danaus secretly doled out sharp pins which his daughters were to conceal in their hair; and at midnight each stabbed her husband through the heart. There was only one survivor; on Artemis’s advice, Hypermnestra saved the life of Lynceus, because he had spared her maidenhead; and helped him in his flight to the city of Lyncea, sixty furlongs away. Hypermnestra begged him to light a beacon as a signal that he had reached safety, undertaking to answer it with another beacon from the citadel; and the Argives still light annual beacon-fires in commemoration of this pact. At dawn, Danaus learned of Hypermnestra’s disobedience, and she was tried for her life; but acquitted by the Argive judges. She therefore raised an image to Victorious Aphrodite in the shrine of Wolfish Apollo, and also dedicated a sanctuary to Persuasive Artemis.9

  l. The murdered men’s heads were buried at Lerna, and their bodies given full funeral honours below the walls of Argos; but, although Athene and Hermes purified the Danaids in the Lernaean Lake with Zeus’s permission, the Judges of the Dead have condemned them to the endless task of carrying water in jars perforated like sieves.10

  m. Lynceus and Hypermnestra were reunited, and Danaus, deciding to marry off the other daughters as fast as he could before noon on the day of their purification, called for suitors. He proposed a marriage race starting from the street now called Apheta: the winner to have first choice of a wife, and the others the next choices, in their order of finishing the race. Since he could not find enough men who would risk their lives by marrying murderesses, only a few ran; but when the wedding night passed without disaster to the new bridegrooms, more suitors appeared, and another race was run on the following day. All descendants of these marriages rank as Danaans; and the Argives still celebrate the race in their so-called Hymenaean Contest. Lynceus later killed Danaus, and reigned in his stead. He would willingly have killed his sisters-in-law at the same time, to avenge his murdered brothers, had the Argives permitted this.11

  n. Meanwhile, Aegyptus had come to Greece, but when he learned of his sons’ fate, fled to Aroe, where he died, and was buried at Patrae, in a sanctuary of Serapis.12

  o. Amymone’s son by Poseidon, Nauplius, a famous navigator, discovered the art of steering by the Great Bear, and founded the city of Nauplius, where he settled the Egyptian crew that had sailed with his grandfather. He was the ancestor of Nauplius the Wrecker, who used to lure hostile ships to their death by lighting false beacons.13

  1. Herodotus: ii. 91; Euripides, quoted by Apollodorus: ii. 1. 4.

  2. Apollodorus: ii. 1. 5; Hyginus: Fabula 168; Eustathius on Homer, p. 37.

  3. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: ii. 1. 4; Herodotus: ii. 234; Diodorus Siculus: v. 58. 1; Strabo: xiv. 2. 8.

  4. Pausanias: ii. 38. 4 and 19. 3; Euripides, quoted by Strabo: viii. 6. 9; Strabo: loc. cit.; Herodotus: ii. 171; Plutarch: On the Malice of Herodotus 13.

  5. Hyginus: Fabula 169; Apollodorus: ii. 1. 4.

  6. Pausanias: ii. 37. 1 and 4; Strabo: viii. 6. 8.

  7. Hyginus: Fabula 168; Apollodorus: ii. 1. 5; Strabo: viii. 6. 9.

  8. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 170.

  9. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: ii. 25. 4; 19. 6 and 21. 1.

  10. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Lucian: Marine Dialogues vi; Hyginus: Fabula 168; Ovid: Heroides xiv; Horace: Odes iii. 11. 30.

  11. Pindar: Pythian Odes ix. 117 ff.; Pausanias: iii. 12. 2; Hyginus: Fabula 170; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid x. 497.

  12. Pausanias: vii. 21. 6.

  13. Apollonius Rhodius: i. 136–8; Theon on Aratus’s Phenomena 27; Pausanias: iv. 35. 2.

  1. This myth records the early arrival in Greece of Helladic colonists from Palestine, by way of Rhodes, and their introduction of agriculture into the Peloponnese. It is claimed that they included emigrants from Libya and Ethiopia, which seems probable (see 6. 1 and 8. 2). Belus is the Baal of the Old Testament, and the Bel of the Apocrypha; he had taken his name from the Sumerian Moon-goddess Belili, whom he ousted.

  2. The three Danaids, also known as the Telchines, or ‘enchanters’, who named the three chief cities of Rhodes, were the Triple Moon-goddess Danaë (see 54. 1 and 73. 4). The names Linda, Cameira, and Ialysa seem to be worn-down forms of linodeousa (‘binder with linen thread’), catamerizousa (‘sharer out’), and ialemistria (‘wailing woman’) – they are, in fact, the familiar Three Fates, or Moerae, otherwise known as Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos (see 10. 1) because they exercised these very functions. The classical theory of the linen-thread was that the goddess tied the human being to the end of a carefully measured thread, which she paid out yearly, until the time came for her to cut it and thereby relinquish his soul to death. But originally she bound the wailing infant with a linen swaddling band on which his clan and family marks were embroidered and thus assigned him his destined place in society.

  3. Danaë’s Sumerian name was Dam-kina. The Hebrews called her Dinah (Genesis xxxiv), also masculinized as Dan. Fifty Moon-priestesses were the regular complement of a college, and their duty was to keep the land watered by rain-making charms, irrigation, and well-digging; hence the Danaids’ name has been connected with the Greek word dānos, ‘parched’, and with danos, ‘a gift’, the first a of which is sometimes long, sometimes short. The twinship of Agenor and Belus, like that of Danaus and Aegyptus, points to a regal system at Argos, in which each co-king married a Chief-priestess and reigned for fifty lunar months, or half a Great Year. Chief-priestesses were chosen by a foot race (the origin of the Olympic Games), run at the end of the fifty months, or of forty-nine in alternate years (see 53. 4). And the Near Year foot race at Olympia (see 53. 3), Sparta (see 160. d), Jerusalem (Hooke: Origin of Early Semitic Ritual, 1935, p. 53), and Babylon (Langdon: Epic of Creation, lines 57 and 58), was run for the sacred kingship, as at Argos. A Sun-king must be swift.

  4. The Hydra (see 34.3 and 60. h), destroyed by Heracles, seems to have personified this college of water-providing priestesses (see 124. 2–4), and the myth of the Danaids apparently records two Hellenic attempts to seize their sanctuary, the first of which failed signally. After the second, successful attempt, the Hellenic leader married the Chief-priestess, and distributed the water-priestesses as wives among his chieftains. ‘The street called Apheta’ will have been the starting-point in the girls’ race for the office of Chief-priestess; but also used in the men’s foot race for the sacred kingship (see 53. 3 and 160. d). Lynceus, a royal title in Messene too (see 74. 1), means ‘of the lynx’ – the caracal, a sort of lion, famous for its sharp sight.

  5. ‘Aegyptus’ and ‘Danaus’ seem to have been early titles of Theban co-kings; and since it was a widespread custom to bury the sacred king’s head at the approaches of a city, and thus protect it against invasion (see 146. 2), the supposed heads of Aegyptus’s sons buried at Lerna were probably those of successive sacred kings. The Egyptians were called Melampodes (‘black feet’) because they paddled about in the black Nile mud during the sowing season.

  6. A later, monogamous, society represented the Danaids with their leaking water-pots as undergoi
ng eternal punishment for matricide. But in the icon from which this story derived, they were performing a necessary charm: sprinkling water on the ground to produce rain showers by sympathetic magic (see 41. 5 and 68. 1). It seems that the sieve, or leaking pot, remained a distinguishing mark of the wise woman many centuries after the abolition of the Danaid colleges: Philostratus writes (Life of Apollonius of Tyana vi. 11) of ‘women with sieves in their hands who go about pretending to heal cattle for simple cowherds.’

  7. Hypermnestra’s and Lynceus’s beacon-fires will have been those lighted at the Argive Spring Festival to celebrate the triumph of the Sun. It may be that at Argos the sacred king was put to death with a long needle thrust through his heart: a comparatively merciful end.

  8. The Thesmophoria (‘due offerings’) were agricultural orgies celebrated at Athens (see 48. b), in the course of which the severed genitals of the sacred king, or his surrogate, were carried in a basket; these were replaced in more civilized times by phallus-shaped loaves and live serpents. Apollo Lycius may mean ‘Apollo of the Light’, rather than ‘Wolfish Apollo’, but the two concepts were connected by the wolves’ habit of howling at the full moon.