The Greek Myths, Page 35

  4. Apollodorus: iii. 9. 2; Hyginus: Fabula 185; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 113; First Vatican Mythographer: 39.

  5. Hyginus: Fabulae 70, 99, and 270; First Vatican Mythographer: 174.

  6. Apollodorus: iii. 9. 2, quoting Euripides’s Meleager; Ovid: Metamorphoses x. 565 ff.; Tzetzes: Chiliades xiii. 453; Lactantius on Statius’s Thebaid vi. 563; Hyginus: Fabula 185.

  1. Greek physicians credited the marshmallow (althaia, from althainein, ‘to cure’) with healing virtue and, being the first spring flower from which bees suck honey, it had much the same mythic importance as ivy-blossom, the last. The Calydonian hunt is heroic saga, based perhaps on a famous boar hunt, and on an Aetolian clan feud occasioned by it. But the sacred king’s death at the onset of a boar – whose curved tusks dedicated it to the moon – is ancient myth (see 18. 3), and explains the introduction into the theory of heroes from several different Greek states who had suffered this fate. The boar was peculiarly the emblem of Calydon (see 106. c) and sacred to Ares, Meleager’s reputed father.

  2. Toxeus’s leap over the fosse is paralleled by Remus’s leap over Romulus’s wall; it suggests the widespread custom of sacrificing a royal prince at the foundation of a city (1 Kings xvi. 34). Meleager’s brand recalls several Celtic myths: a hero’s death taking place when some external object – a fruit, a tree, or an animal – is destroyed.

  3. Artemis was worshipped as a meleagris, or guinea-hen, in the island of Leros, and on the Athenian Acropolis; the cult is of East African origin, to judge from this particular variety of guinea-fowl – which had a blue wattle, as opposed to the red-wattled Italian bird introduced from Numidia – and its queer cluckings were taken to be sounds of mourning. Devotees of neither Artemis nor Isis might eat guinea-fowl. The Lerans’ reputation for evil-living may have been due to their religious conservatism, like the Cretan’s reputation for lying (see 45. 2).

  4. She-bears were sacred to Artemis (see 22. 4), and Atalanta’s race against Melanion is probably deduced from an icon wich showed the doomed king, with the golden apples in his hand (see 32. 1 and 53. 5), being chased to death by the goddess. A companion icon will have shown an image of Artemis supported by two lions, as on the gate at Mycenae, and on several Mycenaean and Cretan seals. The second version of the myth seems to be the older, if only because Schoeneus, Atalanta’s father, stands for Schoenis, a title of Aphrodite’s; and because Zeus does not figure in it.

  5. Why the lovers were punished – here the mythographers mistakenly refer to Pliny, though Pliny says, on the contrary, that lions vigorously punish lionesses for mating with leopards (Natural History viii. 17) – is a problem of greater interest than Sir James Frazer in his notes on Apollodorus allows. It seems to record an old exogamic ruling, according to which members of the same totem clan could not marry one another, nor could lion clansmen marry into the leopard clan, which belonged to the same sub-phratry; as the lamb and goat clans could not intermarry at Athens (see 97. 3).

  6. Oeneus was not the only Hellenic king who withheld a sacrifice from Artemis (see 69. b and 72. i). Her demands were much more severe than those of other Olympian deities, and even in Classical times included holocausts of living animals. These Oeneus will hardly have denied her; but the Arcadian and Boeotian practice was to sacrifice the king himself, or a surrogate, as the Actaeon stag (see 22. 1); and Oeneus may well have refused to be torn in pieces.

  81

  TELAMON AND PELEUS

  THE mother of Aeacus’s two elder sons, namely Telamon and Peleus, was Endeis, Sciron’s daughter. Phocus, the youngest, was a son of the Nereid Psamathe, who had turned herself into a seal while unsuccessfully trying to escape from Aeacus’s embraces. They all lived together in the island of Aegina.1

  b. Phocus was Aeacus’s favourite, and his excellence at athletic games drove Telamon and Peleus wild with jealousy. For the sake of peace, therefore, he led a party of Aeginetan emigrants to Phocis – where another Phocus, a son of Ornytion the Corinthian, had already colonized the neighbourhood of Tithorea and Delphi – and in the course of time his sons extended the state of Phocis to its present limits. One day Aeacus sent for Phocus, perhaps intending to bequeath him the island kingdom; but, encouraged by their mother, Telamon and Peleus plotted to kill him on his return. They challenged Phocus to a fivefold athletic contest, and whether it was Telamon who felled him, as if accidentally, by throwing a stone discus at his head, and Peleus who then despatched him with an axe, or whether it was the other way about, has been much disputed ever since. In either case, Telamon and Peleus were equally guilty of fratricide, and together hid the body in a wood, where Aeacus found it. Phocus lies buried close to the Aeaceum.2

  c. Telamon took refuge in the island of Salamis, where Cychreus was king, and sent back a messenger, denying any part in the murder. Aeacus, in reply, forbade him ever again to set foot in Aegina, though permitting him to plead his case from the sea. Rather than stand and shout on the rocking deck of his ship anchored behind the breakers, Telamon sailed one night into what is now called the Secret Harbour, and sent masons ashore to build a mole, which would serve him as rostrum; they finished this task before dawn, and it is still to be seen. Aeacus, however, rejected his eloquent plea that Phocus’s death was accidental, and Telamon returned to Salamis, where he married the king’s daughter Glauce, and succeeded to Cychreus’s throne.3

  d. This Cychreus, a son of Poseidon and Salamis, daughter of the river Asopus, had been chosen King of Salamis when he killed a serpent to end its widespread ravages. But he kept a young serpent of the same breed which behaved in the same destructive way until expelled by Eurylochus, a companion of Odysseus; Demeter then welcomed it at Eleusis as one of her attendants. But some explain that Cychreus himself, called ‘Serpent’ because of his cruelty, was banished by Eurylochus and took refuge at Eleusis, where he was appointed to a minor office in Demeter’s sanctuary. He became, at all events, one of the guardian heroes of Salamis, the Serpent Isle; there he was buried, his face turned to the west, and appeared in serpent form among the Greek ships at the famous victory of Salamis. Sacrifices were offered at his tomb, and when the Athenians disputed the possession of the island with the Megarians, Solon the famous law-giver sailed across by night and propitiated him.4

  e. On the death of his wife Glauce, Telamon married Periboea of Athens, a grand-daughter of Pelops, who bore him Great Ajax; and later the captive Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who bore him the equally well-known Teucer.5

  f. Peleus fled to the court of Actor, King of Phthia, by whose adopted son Eurytion he was purified. Actor then gave him his daughter Polymela in marriage, and a third part of the kingdom. One day Eurytion, who ruled over another third part, took Peleus to hunt the Calydonian boar, but Peleus speared him accidentally and fled to Iolcus, where he was once more purified, this time by Acastus, son of Pelias.6

  g. Acastus’s wife, Cretheis, tried to seduce Peleus and, when he rebuffed her advances, lyingly told Polymela: ‘He intends to desert you and marry my daughter Sterope.’ Polymela believed Cretheis’s mischievous tale, and hanged herself. Not content with the harm she had done, Cretheis went weeping to Acastus, and accused Peleus of having attempted her virtue.

  h. Loth to kill the man whom he had purified, Acastus challenged him to a hunting contest on Mount Pelion. Now, in reward for his chastity, the gods had given Peleus a magic sword, forged by Daedalus, which had the property of making its owner victorious in battle and equally successful in the chase. Thus he soon piled up a great heap of stags, bears, and boars; but when he went off to kill even more, Acastus’s companions claimed the prey as their master’s and jeered at his want of skill. ‘Let the dead beasts decide this matter with their own mouths!’ cried Peleus, who had cut out their tongues, and now produced them from a bag to prove that he had easily won the contest.7

  i. After a festive supper, in the course of which he outdid all others as a trencherman, Peleus fell fast asleep. Acastus then robbed him of his magic sword, hid it under
a pile of cow-dung, and stole away with his followers. Peleus awoke to find himself deserted, disarmed, and surrounded by wild Centaurs, who were on the point of murdering him; however, their king Cheiron not only intervened to save his life, but divined where the sword lay hidden and restored it to him.8

  j. Meanwhile, on the advice of Themis, Zeus chose Peleus to be the husband of the Nereid Thetis, whom he would have married himself, had he not been discouraged by the Fates’ prophecy that any son born to Thetis would become far more powerful than his father. He was also vexed that Thetis had rejected his advances, for her foster-mother Hera’s sake, and therefore vowed that she should never marry an immortal. Hera, however, gratefully decided to match her with the noblest of mortals, and summoned all Olympians to the wedding when the moon should next be full, at the same time sending her messenger Iris to King Cheiron’s cave with an order for Peleus to make ready.9

  k. Now, Cheiron foresaw that Thetis, being immortal, would at first resent the marriage; and, acting on his instructions, Peleus concealed himself behind a bush of parti-coloured myrtle-berries on the shores of a Thessalian islet, where Thetis often came, riding naked on a harnessed dolphin, to enjoy her midday sleep in the cave which this bush half screened. No sooner had she entered the cave and fallen asleep than Peleus seized hold of her. The struggle was silent and fierce. Thetis turned successively into fire, water, a lion, and a serpent;10 but Peleus had been warned what to expect, and clung to her resolutely, even when she became an enormous slippery cuttle-fish and squirted ink at him – a change which accounts for the name of Cape Sepias, the near-by promontory, now sacred to the Nereids. Though burned, drenched, mauled, stung, and covered with sticky sepia ink, Peleus would not let her go and, in the end, she yielded and they lay locked in a passionate embrace.11

  l. Their wedding was celebrated outside Cheiron’s cave on Mount Pelion. The Olympians attended, seated on twelve thrones. Hera herself raised the bridal torch, and Zeus, now reconciled to his defeat, gave Thetis away. The Fates and the Muses sang; Ganymedes poured nectar; and the fifty Nereids performed a spiral dance on the white sands. Crowds of Centaurs attended the ceremony, wearing chaplets of grass, brandishing darts of fir, and prophesying good fortune.12

  m. Cheiron gave Peleus a spear; Athene had polished its shaft, which was cut from an ash on the summit of Pelion; and Hephaestus had forged its blade. The Gods’ joint gift was a magnificent suit of golden armour, to which Poseidon added the two immortal horses Balius and Xanthus – by the West Wind out of the Harpy Podarge.13

  n. But the goddess Eris, who had not been invited, was determined to put the divine guests at loggerheads, and while Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite were chatting amicably together, arm in arm, she rolled a golden apple at their feet. Peleus picked it up, and stood embarrassed by its inscription: ‘To the Fairest!’, not knowing which of the three might be intended. This apple was the protocatarctical cause of the Trojan War.14

  o. Some describe Peleus’s wife Thetis as Cheiron’s daughter, and a mere mortal; and say that Cheiron, wishing to honour Peleus, spread the rumour that he had married the goddess, her mistress.15

  p. Meanwhile Peleus, whose fortunes the kindly Cheiron had restored, and who now also acquired large herds of cattle as a dowry, sent some of these to Phthia as an indemnity for his accidental killing of Eurytion; but, when the payment was refused by the Phthians, left them to roam at will about the countryside. This proved to have been a fortunate decision, because a fierce wolf which Psamathe had sent after them, to avenge the death of her son Phocus, so glutted its hunger on these masterless cattle that it could hardly crawl. When Peleus and Thetis came face to face with the wolf, it made as if to spring at Peleus’s throat, but Thetis glowered balefully, with protruded tongue and turned it into a stone, which is still pointed out on the road between Locris and Phocis.16

  q. Later, Peleus returned to Iolcus, where Zeus supplied him with an army of ants transformed into warriors; and thus he became known as King of the Myrmidons. He captured the city single-handed, killed first Acastus, then the cowering Cretheis; and led his Myrmidons into the city between the pieces of her dismembered body.17

  r. Thetis successively burned away the mortal parts of her six sons by Peleus, in order to make them immortal like herself, and sent each of them in turn up to Olympus. But Peleus contrived to snatch the seventh from her when she had already made all his body, except the ankle-bone, immortal by laying it on the fire and afterwards rubbing it with ambrosia; the half-charred ankle-bone had escaped this final treatment. Enraged by his interference, Thetis said farewell to Peleus, and returned to her home in the sea, naming her son ‘Achilles’, because he had as yet placed no lips to her breast. Peleus provided Achilles with a new ankle-bone, taken from the skeleton of the swift giant Damysus, but this was fated to prove his undoing.18

  s. Too old to fight at Troy himself, Peleus later gave Achilles the golden armour, the ashen spear, and the two horses which had been his wedding presents. He was eventually expelled from Phthia by Acastus’s sons, who no longer feared him when they heard of Achilles’s death; but Thetis instructed him to visit the cave by the myrtle-bush, where he had first mastered her, and wait there until she took him away to live with her for ever in the depths of the sea. Peleus went to the cave, and eagerly watched the passing ships, hoping that one of them might be bringing his grandson Neoptolemus back from Troy.19

  t. Neoptolemus, meanwhile, was refitting his shattered fleet in Molossia and, when he heard of Peleus’s banishment, disguised himself as a Trojan captive and took ship for Iolcus, there contriving to kill Acastus’s sons and seize the city. But Peleus, growing impatient, had chartered a vessel for a voyage to Molossia; rough weather drove her to the island of Icos, near Euboea, where he died and was buried, thus forfeiting the immortality which Thetis had promised him.20

  1. Apollodorus: iii. 12. 6; Pindar: Nemean Odes v. 13.

  2. Plutarch: Parallel Stories 25; Pausanias: x. 1. 1 and ii. 29. 7; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; The Alcmaeonis, quoted by scholiast on Euripides’s Andromache 687; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 175; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 72.

  3. Apollodorus : iii. 12.7; Pausanias : ii. 29.7; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.

  4. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hesiod, quoted by Strabo: ix. 1. 9; Stephanus of Byzantium sub Kychreios Pagos; Eustathius on Dionysius’s Description of the Earth 507; Plutarch: Solon 9; Lycophron: Cassandra 110; Pausanias: i. 36. 1.

  5. Apollodorus: loc. cit.

  6. Ibid.: iii. 13. 1–2; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 175; Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad ii. 648.

  7. Pindar: Nemean Odes v. 26 ff. and iv. 59; Scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes iv. 54 and 59; Zenobius: Proverbs v. 20; Apollodorus: loc. cit.

  8. Apollodorus: iii. 13. 3; Hesiod, quoted by Scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes iv. 59.

  9. Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 790 ff.; Pindar: Isthmian Odes viii. 41ff.

  10. Ovid: Metamorphoses xi. 221 ff.; Sophocles: Troilus, quoted by scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes iii. 35; Apollodorus: iii. 13. 5; Pindar: Nemean Odes iv. 62; Pausanias: v. 18. 1.

  11. Tzetzes: On Lycophron 175 and 178; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius i. 582; Herodotus: vii. 191; Philostratus: Heroica xix. 1.

  12. Euripides: Iphigeneia in Aulis 703 ff. and 1036 ff.; Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 790; Catullus: xliv. 305 ff.

  13. Apollodorus: iii. 13. 5; Homer: Iliad xvi. 144; xviii. 84 and xvi. 149; Cypria quoted by scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xvi. 140.

  14. Hyginus: Fabula 92; Fulgentius: iii. 7.

  15. Apollonius Rhodius: i. 558; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius iv. 816.

  16. Antoninus Liberalis: Transformations 38; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 175 and 901.

  17. Tzetzes: On Lycophron 175; Homer: Iliad xxiv. 536; Pindar: Nemean Odes iii. 34; Apollodorus: iii. 13. 7; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: i. 224.

  18. Ptolemy Hephaestionos: iv, quoted by Photius: p. 487; Apollodorus: iii. 13. 6; Lycophron: Cassandra 178 ff.; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xvi. 37.r />
  19. Homer: Iliad xviii. 434 and xvi. 149; Euripides: Trojan Women 1128, with scholiast; Andromache 1253 ff.

  20. Dictys Cretensis: vi. 7–9; Stephanus of Byzantium sub Icos; Palatine Anthology vii. 2. 9 ff.

  1. The myth of Aeacus, Psamathe (‘sandy shore’), and Phocus (‘seal’) occurs in the folklore of almost every European country. Usually the hero sees a flock of seals swimming towards a deserted shore under a full moon, and then stepping out of their skins to reveal themselves as young women. He hides behind a rock, while they dance naked on the sand, then seizes one of the seal skins, thus winning power over its owner, whom he gets with child. Eventually they quarrel; she regains her skin and swims away. The dance of the fifty Nereids at Thetis’s wedding, and her return to the sea after the birth of Achilles, appear to be fragments of the same myth – the origin of which seems to have been a ritual dance of fifty seal-priestesses, dedicated to the Moon, which formed a proem to the Chief-priestess’s choice of a sacred king. Here the scene is set in Aegina but, to judge from the story of Peleus’s struggle near Cape Sepias, a similar ritual was performed in Magnesia by a college of cuttle-fish priestesses – the cuttle-fish appears prominently in Cretan works of art, including the standard weight from the Royal Treasury at Cnossus, and also on megalithic monuments at Carnac and elsewhere in Brittany. It has eight tentacles, as the sacred anemone of Pelion has eight petals: eight being the number of fertility in Mediterranean myth. Peleus (‘muddy’) may have become the sacred king’s title after he had been anointed with sepia, since he is described as the son of Endeis, ‘the entangler’, a synonym for the cuttle-fish.

  2. Acastus’s hunting party, the subsequent banquet, and the loss of Pelcus’s magic sword seem to be mistakenly deduced from an icon which showed the preliminaries to a coronation ceremony: coronation implying marriage to the tribal heiress. The scene apparently included the king’s ritual combat with men dressed as beasts, and the drawing of a regal sword from a cleft rock (misinterpreted by the mythographer as a heap of cow dung) – as in the myths of Theseus (see 95. e) and King Arthur of Lyonesse. But the ashen spear cut by Cheiron from Mount Pelion is an earlier symbol of sovereignty than the sword.