The Greek Myths, Page 32

  6. In the second and simpler version of the myth, Perseus fights a Libyan queen, decapitates her, and buries her head in the market place of Argos. This must record an Argive conquest of Libya, the suppression there of the matriarchal system, and the violation of the goddess Neith’s mysteries (see 8. 1). The burial of the head in the market place suggests that sacred relics were locked in a chest there, with a prophylactic mask placed above them, to discourage municipal diggers from disturbing the magic. Perhaps the relics were a pair of little pigs, like those said in the Mabinogion to have been buried by King Lud in a stone chest at Carfax, Oxford, as a protective charm for the whole Kingdom of Britain; though pigs, in that context, may be a euphemism for children.

  7. Andromeda’s story has probably been deduced from a Palestinian icon of the Sun-god Marduk, or his predecessor Bel, mounted on his white horse and killing the sea-monster Tiamat. This myth also formed part of Hebrew mythology: Isaiah mentions that Jehovah (Marduk) hacked Rahab in pieces with a sword (Isaiah li. 9); and according to Job x. 13 and xxvi. 12, Rahab was the Sea. In the same icon, the jewelled, naked Andromeda, standing chained to a rock, is Aphrodite, or Ishtar, or Astarte, the lecherous Sea-goddess, ‘ruler of men’. But she is not waiting to be rescued; Marduk has bound her there himself, after killing her emanation, Tiamat the sea-serpent, to prevent further mischief. In the Babylonian Creation Epic, it was she who sent the Flood. Astarte, as Sea-goddess, had temples all along the Palestinian coast, and at Troy she was Hesione, ‘Queen of Asia’, whom Heracles is said to have rescued from another sea-monster (see 137. 2).

  8. A Greek colony planted at Chemmis apparently towards the end of the second millennium B.C., identified Perseus with the god Chem, whose hieroglyph was a winged bird and a solar disk; and Herodotus emphasizes the connexion between Danaë, Perseus’s mother, and the Libyan invasion of Argos by the Danaans. The myth of Perseus and the mushroom is perhaps told to account for an icon showing a hero studying a mushroom. Fire, mistaken for water, is spouting from it under a blazing sun. Here is tinder for his fire-wheel (see 63. 2).

  9. The second, simpler version of the myth suggests that Perseus’s visit to the Graeae, his acquisition of the eye, tooth, wallet, sickle, and helmet of darkness, and his pursuit by the other Gorgons after the decapitation of Medusa are extraneous to his quarrel with Acrisius. In the White Goddess (Chapter 13), I postulate that these fairy-tale elements are misreadings of a wholly different icon: which show Hermes, wearing his familiar winged sandals and helmet, being given a magic eye by the Three Fates (see 61. 1). This eye symbolizes the gift of perception: Hermes is enabled to master the tree-alphabet, which they have invented. They also give him a divinatory tooth, like the one used by Fionn in the Irish legend; a sickle, to cut alphabetic twigs from the grove; a crane-skin bag, in which to stow these safely; and a Gorgon-mask, to scare away the curious. Hermes is flying through the sky to Tartessus, where the Gorgons had a sacred grove (see 132. 3), escorted, not pursued, by a triad of goddesses wearing Gorgon-masks. On the earth below, the goddess is shown again, holding up a mirror which reflects a Gorgon’s face, to emphasize the secrecy of his lesson (see 52. 7). Hermes’s association with the Graeae, the Stygian Nymphs, and the helmet of invisibility proves that he is the subject of this picture; the confusion between him and Perseus may have arisen because Hermes, as the messenger of Death, had also earned the title of Pterseus, ‘the destroyer’.

  74

  THE RIVAL TWINS

  WHEN the male line of Polycaon’s House had died out after five generations, the Messenians invited Perieres, the son of Aeolus, to be their king, and he married Perseus’s daughter Gorgophone. She survived him and was the first widow to remarry, her new husband being Oebalus the Spartan.1 Hitherto it had been customary for women to commit suicide on the death of their husbands: as did Meleager’s daughter Polydora, whose husband Protesilaus was the first to leap ashore when the Greek fleet reached the coast of Troy; Marpessa; Cleopatra; and Evadne, daughter of Phylacus, who threw herself on the funeral pyre when her husband perished at Thebes.2

  b. Aphareus and Leucippus were Gorgophone’s sons by Perieres, whereas Tyndareus and Icarius were her sons by Oebalus.3 Tyndareus succeeded his father on the throne of Sparta, Icarius acting as his co-king; but Hippocoön and his twelve sons expelled both of them – though some, indeed, say that Icarius (later to become Odysseus’s father-in-law) took Hippocoön’s side. Taking refuge with King Thestius in Aetolia, Tyndareus married his daughter Leda, who bore him Castor and Clytaemnestra, at the same time bearing Helen and Polydeuces to Zeus.4 Later, having adopted Polydeuces, Tyndareus regained the Spartan throne, and was one of those whom Asclepius raised from the dead. His tomb is still shown at Sparta.5

  c. Meanwhile, his half-brother Aphareus had succeeded Perieres on the throne of Messene, where Leucippus – from whom, the Messenians say, the city of Leuctra took its name – acted as his co-king and enjoyed the lesser powers. Aphareus took to wife his half-sister Arene, who bore him Idas and Lynceus; though Idas was, in truth, Poseidon’s son.6 Now, Leucippus’s daughters, the Leucippides, namely Phoebe, a priestess of Athene, and Hilaeira, a priestess of Artemis, were betrothed to their cousins, Idas and Lynceus; but Castor and Polydeuces, who are commonly known as the Dioscuri, carried them off, and had sons by them; which occasioned a bitter rivalry between the two sets of twins.7

  d. The Dioscuri, who were never separated from one another in any adventure, became the pride of Sparta. Castor was famous as a soldier and tamer of horses, Polydeuces as the best boxer of his day; both won prizes at the Olympic Games. Their cousins and rivals were no less devoted to each other; Idas had greater strength than Lynceus, but Lynceus had such sharp eyes that he could see in the dark or divine the whereabouts of buried treasure.8

  e. Now, Evenus, a son of Ares, had married Alcippe, by whom he became the father of Marpessa. In an attempt to keep her a virgin, he invited each of her suitors in turn to run a chariot race with him; the victor would win Marpessa, the vanquished would forfeit his head. Soon many heads were nailed to the walls of Evenus’s house and Apollo, falling in love with Marpessa, expressed his disgust of so barbarous a custom; and said that he would soon end it by challenging Evenus to a race. But Idas had also set his heart on Marpessa, and begged a winged chariot from his father Poseidon.9 Before Apollo could act, he had driven to Aetolia, and carried Marpessa away from the midst of a band of dancers. Evenus gave chase, but could not overtake Idas, and felt such mortification that, after killing his horses, he drowned himself in the river Lycormas, ever since called the Evenus.10

  f. When Idas reached Messene, Apollo tried to take Marpessa from him. They fought a duel, but Zeus parted them, and ruled that Marpessa herself should decide whom she preferred to marry. Fearing that Apollo would cast her off when she grew old, as he had done with many another of his loves, she chose Idas for her husband.11

  g. Idas and Lynceus were among the Calydonian hunters, and sailed in the Argo to Colchis. One day, after the death of Aphareus, they and the Dioscuri patched up their quarrel sufficiently to join forces in a cattle-raid on Arcadia. The raid proved successful, and Idas was chosen by lot to divide the booty among the four of them. He therefore quartered a cow, and ruled that half the spoil should go to the man who ate his share first, the remainder to the next quickest. Almost before the others had settled themselves to begin the contest, Idas bolted his own share and then helped Lynceus to bolt his; soon down went the last gobbet, and he and Lynceus drove the cattle away towards Messene. The Dioscuri remained, until Polydeuces, the slower of the two, had finished eating; whereupon they marched against Messene, and protested to the citizens that Lynceus had forfeited his share by accepting help from Idas, and that Idas had forfeited his by not waiting until all the contestants were ready. Idas and Lynceus happened to be away on Mount Taygetus, sacrificing to Poseidon; so the Dioscuri seized the disputed cattle, and other plunder as well, and then hid inside a hollow oak to await their rivals’ return. But Lynceus
had caught sight of them from the summit of Taygetus; and Idas, hurrying down the mountain slope, hurled his spear at the tree and transfixed Castor. When Polydeuces rushed out to avenge his brother, Idas tore the carved headstone from Aphareus’s tomb, and threw it at him. Although badly crushed, Polydeuces contrived to kill Lynceus with his spear; and at this point Zeus intervened on behalf of his son, striking Idas dead with a thunderbolt.12

  h. But the Messenians say that Castor killed Lynceus, and that Idas, distracted by grief, broke off the fight and began to bury him. Castor then approached and insolently demolished the monument which Idas had just raised, denying that Lynceus was worthy of it. ‘Your brother put up no better fight than a woman would have done!’ he cried tauntingly. Idas turned, and plunged his sword into Castor’s belly; but Polydeuces took instant vengeance on him.13

  i. Others say that it was Lynceus who mortally wounded Castor in a battle fought at Aphidna; others again, that Castor was killed when Idas and Lynceus attacked Sparta; and still others, that both Dioscuri survived the fight, Castor being killed later by Meleager and Polyneices.14

  j. It is generally agreed, at least, that Polydeuces was the last survivor of the two sets of twins and that, after setting up a trophy beside the Spartan race-course to celebrate his victory over Lynceus, he prayed to Zeus: ‘Father, let me not outlive my dear brother!’ Since, however, it was fated that only one of Leda’s sons should die, and since Castor’s father Tyndareus had been a mortal, Polydeuces, as the son of Zeus, was duly carried up to Heaven. Yet he refused immortality unless Castor might share it, and Zeus therefore allowed them both to spend their days alternately in the upper air, and under the earth at Therapne. In further reward of their brotherly love, he set their images among the stars as the Twins.15

  k. After the Dioscuri had been deified, Tyndareus summoned Menelaus to Sparta, where he resigned the kingdom to him; and since the House of Aphareus was now also left without an heir, Nestor succeeded to the throne of all Messenia, except for the part ruled over by the sons of Asclepius.16

  l. The Spartans still show the house where the Dioscuri lived. It was afterwards owned by one Phormio, whom they visited one night, pretending to be strangers from Cyrene. They asked him for lodging, and begged leave to sleep in their old room. Phormio replied that they were welcome to any other part of the house but that, regrettably, his daughter was now occupying the room of which they spoke. Next morning, the girl and all her possessions had vanished, and the room was empty, except for images of the Dioscuri and some herbbenjamin laid upon a table.17

  m. Poseidon made Castor and Polydeuces the saviours of shipwrecked sailors, and granted them power to send favourable winds; in response to a sacrifice of white lambs offered on the prow of any ship, they will come hastening through the sky, followed by a train of sparrows.18

  n. The Dioscuri fought with the Spartan fleet at Aegospotamoi, and the victors afterwards hung up two golden stars in their honour at Delphi; but these fell down and disappeared shortly before the fatal battles of Leuctra.19

  o. During the second Messenian War, a couple of Messenians aroused the Dioscuri’s anger by impersonating them. It happened that the Spartan army was celebrating a feast of the demi-gods, when twin spearmen rode into the camp at full gallop, dressed in white tunics, purple cloaks, and egg-shell caps. The Spartans fell down to worship them, and the pretended Dioscuri, two Messenian youths named Gonippus and Panormus, killed many of them. After the battle of the Boar’s Grave, therefore, the Dioscuri sat on a wild pear-tree, and spirited away the shield belonging to the victorious Messenian commander Aristomenes, which prevented him from pressing on the Spartan retreat, and thus saved many lives; again, when Aristomenes attempted to assault Sparta by night, the phantoms of the Dioscuri and of their sister Helen turned him back. Later, Castor and Polydeuces forgave the Messenians, who sacrificed to them when Epaminondas founded the new city of Messene.20

  p. They preside at the Spartan Games, and because they invented the war-dance and war-like music are the patrons of all bards who sing of ancient battles. In Hilaeira and Phoebe’s sanctuary at Sparta, the two priestesses are still called Leucippides, and the egg from which Leda’s twins were hatched is suspended from the roof.21 The Spartans represent the Dioscuri by two parallel wooden beams, joined by two transverse ones. Their co-kings always take these into battle and when, for the first time, a Spartan army was led by one king alone, it was decreed that one beam should also remain at Sparta. According to those who have seen the Dioscuri, the only noticeable difference between them is that Polydeuces’s face bears the scars of boxing. They dress alike: each has his half egg-shell surmounted by a star, each his spear and white horse. Some say that Poseidon gave them their horses; others, that Polydeuces’s Thessalian charger was a gift from Hermes.22

  1. Pausanias: iv. 2. 2 and iii. I. 4; Apollodorus: i. 9. 5.

  2. Cypria, quoted by Pausanias: iv. 2. 5; Pausanias: iii. I. 4.

  3. Apollodorus: i. 9. 5; Pausanias: loc. cit.

  4. Pausanias: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: iii. 10. 5–7.

  5. Panyasis, quoted by Apollodorus: iii. 10. 3; Pausanias: iii. 17. 4.

  6. Pausanias: iii. 26. 3 and iv. 2. 3; Apollodorus: iii. 10. 3.

  7. Apollodorus: iii. 11. 2; Hyginus: Fabula 80.

  8. Apollodorus: loc. cit. and iii. 10. 3; Homer: Odyssey xi. 300; Pausanias: iv. 2. 4; Hyginus: Fabula 14; Palaephatus: Incredible Stories x.

  9. Hyginus: Fabula 242; Apollodorus: i. 7. 8; Plutarch: Parallel Stories 40; Scholiast and Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad ix. 557.

  10. Plutarch: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: loc. cit.

  11. Apollodorus: i. 7. 9.

  12. Apollodorus: i. 8. 2; i. 9. 16 and iii. 11. 2; Theocritus: Idylls xxii. 137 ff.; Pindar: Nemean Odes x. 55 ff.

  13. Hyginus: Fabula 80.

  14. Ovid: Fasti v. 699 ff.; Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 22; Theocritus: loc. cit.; Scholiast on Homer’s Odyssey xi. 300.

  15. Pausanias: iii. 14. 7; Apollodorus: iii. 11. 2; Pindar: Nemean Odes x. 55 ff.; Lucian: Dialogues of the Gods 26; Hyginus: loc. cit.

  16. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: iv. 3. 1.

  17. Pausanias: iii. 16. 3.

  18. Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 22; Euripides: Helen 1503; Homeric Hymn to the Dioscuri 7 ff.

  19. Cicero: On Divination i. 34. 75 and ii. 32. 68.

  20. Pausanias: iv. 27. 1; iv. 16. 2 and v. 27. 3.

  21. Pindar: Nemean Odes x. 49; Cicero: On Oratory ii. 8. 86; Theocritus: Idylls xxii. 215–20; Pausanias: iii. 16. 1–2.

  22. Plutarch: On Brotherly Love i; Herodotus: v. 75; Lucian: Dialogues of the Gods 26; Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 22; Ptolemy Hephaestionos: viii. quoted by Photius: p. 409.

  1. In order to allow the sacred king precedence over his tanist, he was usually described as the son of a god, by a mother on whom her husband subsequently fathered a mortal twin. Thus Heracles is Zeus’s son by Alcmene, but his twin Iphicles is the son of her husband Amphitryon: a similar story is told about the Dioscuri of Laconia, and about their rivals, Idas and Lynceus of Messenia. The perfect harmony existing between the twins themselves marks a new stage in the development of kingship, when the tanist acts as vizier and chief-of-staff (see 94. 1), being nominally less powerful than the sacred king. Castor therefore, not Polydeuces, is the authority on war – he even instructs Heracles in military arts, thus identifying himself with Iphicles – and Lynceus, not Idas, is gifted with acute vision. But until the double-kingdom system had been evolved, the tanist was not regarded as immortal, nor granted the same posthumous status as his twin.

  2. The Spartans were frequently at war with the Messenians and, in Classical times, had sufficient military power, and influence over the Delphic Oracle, to impose their twin heroes on the rest of Greece, as enjoying greater favour with Father Zeus than any other pair; and the Spartan kingdom did indeed outlast all its rivals. Had this not been so, the constellation of the Twins might have commemorated Heracles and Iphicles, or Idas and Lynceus, or Ac
risius and Proetus – instead of merely Castor and Polydeuces, who were not even the only heroes privileged to ride white horses: every hero worthy of a hero-feast was a horseman. It is these sunset feasts, at which a whole ox was eaten by the hero’s descendants, that account for the gluttony attributed to Lepreus (see 138. h) and Heracles (see 143. a); and here to Idas, Lynceus and their rivals.

  3. Marriage to the Leucippides enroyalled the Spartan co-kings. They were described as priestesses of Athene and Artemis, and given moon-names, being, in fact, the Moon-goddess’s representatives; thus, in vase-paintings, the chariot of Selene is frequently attended by the Dioscuri. As the Spirit of the Waxing Year, the sacred king would naturally mate with Artemis, a Moon-goddess of spring and summer; and his tanist, as Spirit of the Waning Year, with Athene, who had become a Moon-goddess of autumn and winter. The mythographer is suggesting that the Spartans defeated the Messenians, and that their leaders forcibly married the heiresses of Arene, a principal city of Messenia, where the Mare-headed Mother was worshipped; thus establishing a claim to the surrounding region.

  4. Similarly with Marpessa: apparently the Messenians made a raid on the Aetolians in the Evenus valley, where the Sow-mother was worshipped, and carried off the heiress, Marpessa (‘snatcher’ or ‘gobbler’). They were opposed by the Spartans, worshippers of Apollo, who grudged them their success; the dispute was then referred to the central authority at Mycenae, which supported the Messenians. But Evenus’s chariot-race with Idas recalls the Pelops-Oenomaus (see 109. j) and the Heracles-Cycnus (see 143. e-g) myths. In each case the skulls of the king’s rivals are mentioned. The icon from which all these stories are deduced must have shown the old king heading for his destined chariot crash (see 71. 1) after having offered seven annual surrogates to the goddess (see 42. 2). His horses are sacrificed as a preliminary to the installation of the new king (see 29. 1 and 81. 4). The drowning of Evenus is probably misread: it shows Idas being purified before marriage and then riding off triumphantly in the Queen’s chariot. Yet these Pelasgian marriage rites have been combined in the story with the Hellenic custom of marriage by capture. The fatal cattle-raid may record a historical incident: a quarrel between the Messenians and Spartans about the sharing of spoil in a joint expedition against Arcadia (see 17. 1).