Electra (38 page)

We hired free workers to cut stone for us. When our house was finished, we hauled Eumides out of the waterfront tavern and half-carried him up the hill. The house-building had been a bad influence on our friend. Now that he had a place to stay that did not sell wine, he might sober up.

If remonstrated with, he would protest that the fishing was done for the day, king Staphylos had invented wine and he was merely honouring his royal and semi-divine memory.

Our house had three whitewashed rooms. Later we might be able to afford a fresco, but now the walls were clean and bare. There was a central room with a raised hearth and chimney and two sleeping rooms, one for us and one for guests. Our floor was of well-laid island stone, cool to the bare feet. There was a bath, and we had not even had to introduce the workmen of Staphylos to the concept of drainage.

Our roof was sound, our lamp lit, our loft stored with firewood, and baskets of dried herbs, roots and flowers. The most beautiful well-made bedding that I could find was laid out on the wooden furniture. On the square table was our one reminder of Troy, a piece of blue cloth, patterned with dancing dolphins.

I brought the consecrated flame from the Mother's temple toward the hearth. Once lit, it would never be allowed to die again as long as we lived.

Eumides and Chryse knelt down, one on either side of me. They cupped their hands as I lowered the ember, and the fire caught and burned high, washing all our faces with golden light.

'Oh, my loves,' I said. Chryse smiled at me.

'Was it a good bargain, Eumides?' he asked.

The sailor said in an awed whisper, 'A very good bargain.'

She was born when the leaves fell, my autumn child. I laid my doll Pallas in her cradle. Pylades was delighted, and held her up to the stars, proclaiming 'This is my child!'

She was a good baby. She hardly cried, except when she was wet or hungry. She was ten months old and sitting up when Orestes sent to us to come as see his coronation as King of Mycenae.

We made the journey. The city had been laid waste by the departing soldiers, as my Lord had predicted. There were pavers working in the streets, and slaves white-washing the insides of houses and sweeping out leaves and rat's nests. Two priests stood at the door of the new temple of Athene.

The Palace was devoid of terror for me now, leaning on Lysane's arm. No Erinyes danced on the roof, proclaiming torture and death for the matricide. No blood stained the marble floor of the king's hall.

Orestes looked pale and determined as he walked into the city, as my father had walked so long ago, armoured, clanking up the path under the Lion Gate. Orestes moved with grace and strength through the ritual challenge of the sentries.

Still not entirely joyful, my solemn son and brother. He did not speak of it, but Hermione said that he sometimes had bad dreams. But today he was sure, kingly and beautiful, and the elders of the city and the priests crowned him, not with Agamemnon's crown, which had been lost, but with a new golden fillet figured with laurel leaves.

We joined in the feasting but retired early. Pylades, lying beside me, slid an arm under my shoulders and said, 'My Lady?'

'My Lord?' I asked, kissing him.

'Would you like to stay here, Electra? Your brother is king.'

'No,' I said surprised. 'I have to get home, the baby will be forgetting me, the spinning isn't half done. Neptha has given me a new recipe for solid honey sweets - thank you for allowing me to bring her home with us, Pylades, she will be wonderful with Tisimene - and Abantos will enjoy making them. The pruning isn't half done and there's all the olives to pickle in brine - and I don't like the quality of the salt that Clonius always buys if I'm not there. There are all the preparations to make for winter, cloth to sew and boots to mend. And Tauros is sure to have bitten someone again. I must go home.'

'So you do not regret it, Electra? Leaving your home and your royalty and marrying me?'

'You are a prince of the royal house of Phocis,' I said, thinking about it, 'though that would not matter. Regret it, my Lord?' I kissed him again. 'Even if we die tonight, I never thought that the sins of the House of Atreus could ever merit a fortunate ending.'

'Lady,' said Pylades, smiling, my beloved husband.

'My Lord?'

'Are you happy?'

I thought about it. Then I said something that I never thought I would say.

'Yes, I am happy.'

The progenitor of this singularly doomed family was Tantalus, son of Zeus, who liked offending the Gods. He stole nectar and ambrosia and sold it to men. He also gossiped about Olympus. He cooked and served up his son, Pelops, to Zeus, who took offence, and sent him to stand in crystal water but never be able to drink, to be in biting range of apples and never eat. Zeus resurrected Pelops, replacing his cooked shoulder with an ivory one.

Pelops, King of Phrygia, inherited these mischievous tendencies. He courted Hippodameia, Princess of Pisa. Her father challenged each suitor to a chariot race which he always won. She got tired of this and sawed the royal axle half through. The wheel fell off, Pelops won and killed Oenomaus. Hippodameia married Pelops and bore Thyestes and Atreus.

Atreus married Aerope but she fell in love with Thyestes and bore him two children, who Atreus cooked and served up to his brother at a reconciliation supper. At this point the Gods cursed the House of Atreus, and one wonders at their patience in waiting until this dreadful deed amongst such a profusion of dreadful deeds.

Atreus' sons were Menelaus of Mycenae, who married Elene, and Agamemnon, who married Elene's mortal sister, Clytemnestra.

Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, at Aulis for a wind to Troy. Clytemnestra subsequently took up with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's nephew - the incestuous child of Thyestes and his own daughter, born as a revenger for his father.

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus then killed Agamemnon when he came home from Troy.

The children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra were Chrysothemis, Laodice called Electra and (technically) Orestes. Orestes and Electra murdered Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Orestes was pursued by the Furies and finally acquitted by the Gods. Then Orestes killed Neoptelemus, son of Achilles, and reclaimed his betrothed, Hermione - daughter of Elene and Menelaus - whom he married. They produced one son, Tisander.

Electra married her cousin, Pylades of Phocis, and bore several children. With the peaceful transition of power to Orestes, King of both Mycenae and later Sparta, since Menelaus died without an heir, the tale of the House of Atreus had a happy ending, against all the conceivable odds.

In the Aeschylus play
The Libation Bearers
, Athene explains that mother-murder can be forgiven because men are the important sex, women being 'just the field for the seed'; an unacceptable argument which I suggest reflected the opinions of the playwright rather than the Goddess. She talks the Erinyes out of revenge by explaining that there was someone else to enforce moral law, and that, I believe, is the ratio decedendi, the pith, of Orestes' defence.

I have left out the anti-female bias and the pro-Athenian one, which places the trial on the Acropolis and establishes Athene as Athene Polias, the city's patron. It would have been very popular with the Athenian audience, but the home of the Gods was definitely Olympus.

Mount Olympus burns with a cold white light, so bright that one cannot look at it even through sunglasses at about 5pm in the spring. I have seen it myself.

I have taken the bold step of assuming that the children of Atreus had a motive, apart from pure revenge, for killing their mother and stepfather. I have studied modern cases of matricide and found that it is usually carried out either by psychopaths or by children attempting to stop or revenge abuse.

In the north of present-day Greece, Epirus had a bad reputation. Strabo says it was savage, dirty and barbarous; and Herodotus, most tolerant of all historians, says it was strange and its customs 'unusual'. This from a man who took cannibalism, sacred prostitution and animal sacrifice in his stride. A sample quote, 'In that village recently a goat tupped a woman - a most unusual sight.' If Herodotus thought that Epirus was unusual, it must have been very strange indeed.

I have derived most of my herbs through Dioscorides who, although he was 4
^th
century and with the Roman army, has been extensively quoted by Culpeper, and therefore I am sure of which plant he is describing. Hippocrates' herbs are also identified by Dioscorides (there must be an easier way to do this) and the maxims are from Hippocrates.
The Complete Herbal and English Physician
by Culpeper is reprinted by Harvey Sales, London 1981.

NOTE: HERBAL RECIPES IN THIS BOOK ARE NOT RECOMMENDED BY THE AUTHOR.

Ancient practice was somewhat different from today's. Go and see a practising qualified herbalist.

I traced Orestes' path through Greece in April and May 1995. Sometimes I have had to guess at roads and distances between ancient settlements. Purists are implored to forgive me.

Luckily, although there is still little known of the Elusinian Mysteries, a lot of the others were written down.

When I was at Delphi I saw the places where the original temples had been built, of clay and beeswax and feathers and laurel boughs. The ancient authors described the formalities in consulting the oracle, and I have followed them.

Much digging at Dodona has revealed what looks like an Earth Mother cult later taken over by a father, which explains the Zeus/Oak Tree and the association with the Sky-Father of the attributes of the Earth Mother.

Herodotus is my main source for ceremonies. He mentions them often because he was constitutionally interested in everything.

Minoan religion had no animal sacrifice. Its ruling deity was Gaia, the Earth Mother, Mistress of Animals. The male God was the irresponsible but powerful Dionysos, the dancer.

I posited in
Cassandra
, the previous book in the Delphic women series, that Troy was settled by the Minoans, who fled Crete when the volcano Thera erupted. Some Minoans would have been washed up on Staphylos' Island at about the same time.

A stadion was about one hundred and eight metres. The plural is stadia.

The present day Skopelos, this is the most beautiful of Greek islands. It is also called the Blue-Green Island, has few tourists, and is otherwise as described, having been settled by first Minoan and then Argive people. They are digging up the ruins of Staphylos' palace at the moment, and there are a few stones left of the temple of Asclepius to the right of the bay.

English pronounces all Greek names with a long 'e', as in IrEEnEE. Actually it's a short 'e', more like the 'I' in 'bit'.

Very approximately, and Greek speakers must try to forgive me, this how Greek sounds. All 'c's are pronounced 'k' and 'ch' is a soft sound, like the 'ch' at the end of 'loch'. All 'g's are hard. 'Au' is 'ow'.

No one is sure how Phrygian was pronounced, so Cassandra was probably pronounced as it is spelt. The 'd' in Diomenes and Eumides is a voiced 'th', as in 'thing'.

Transliterating a language always produces problems, and some places are spelt diversely. For example, Chania in Crete is also spelt Chanea and Hania and is pronounced HanEEa. I've picked whatever spelling seemed to reflect the way the word is pronounced.

Re: Abused children and homicide

Easteal, Patricia,
Voices of the Survivors
, Spinifex Press, Melbourne, 1994.

Leyton, Elliott,
Hunting Humans
, Penguin, London, 1990.

Leyton, Elliott,
Sole Survivor
, Penguin, London, 1990.

Mones, Paul,
When A Child Kills
, Star Books, New York, 1994.

Wilson, Colin and Pitman, Patrica,
An Encyclopaedia of Murder
, Pan Books, London, 1964.

Wilson, Colin and Shearman, Donald,
An Encyclopedia of Modern Murder
, Pan Books, London, 1983.

Re: Ships and Galleys

Models and maps from the Naval Museum
, Sitia, Crete and the War Museum, Athens.

Severin, Tim,
The Jason Voyage
, Hutchison, London, 1985.

Severin, Tim,
The Ulysses Voyage
, Hutchison, London, 1987.

Primary Sources

Hippocrates,
Hippocratic Writings
, Penguin, London, 1983.

Homer,
The Iliad
, Penguin, London, 1965.

Homer,
The Odyssey
, Penguin, London, 1967.

Secondary Sources

Kerenyi C.,
Heroes of the Greeks
, Thames and Hudson, London, 1974.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Greece
, Lonely Planet, Melbourne, 1994, which I unreservedly recommend, not least for its excellent commentary on ancient sites and ancient history.

Numerous works on archaeology beginning with Arthur, Evans and Schliemann to digs presently happening in Albania.

Pomeroy, Sarah B.,
Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves
, Pimlico, London, 1994.

Maps and guidebooks produced by the Greek Government.