The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (84 page)

1
. The incident of Phaedra’s incestuous love for Hippolytus, like that of Potiphar’s wife and her adulterous love for Joseph (see
75.
1
), is borrowed either from the Egyptian
Tale of the Two Brothers
, or from a common Canaanite source. Its sequel has been based upon the familiar icon showing the chariot crash at the end of a sacred king’s reign (see
71.
1
). If, as in ancient Ireland, a prophetic roaring of the November sea warned the king that his hour was at hand, this warning will have been pictured as a bull, or seal, poised open-mouthed on the creast of a wave. Hippolytus’s reins must have caught in the myrtle, rather than in the sinister-looking olive later associated with the crash: the myrtle, in fact, which grew close to his hero shrine, and was famous for its perforated leaves. Myrtle symbolized the last month of the king’s reign: as appears in the story of Oenomaus’s chariot crash (see 109.
j
); whereas wild olive symbolized the first month of his successor’s reign.
Vir bis
is a false derivation of Virbius, which seems to represent the Greek
hierobios
, ‘holy life’ – the
h
often becoming
v
: as in
Hestia
and
Vesta
, or
Hesperos
and
Vesper
. In the
Golden Bough
Sir James Frazer has shown that the branch which the priest guarded so jealously was mistletoe; and it is likely that Glaucus son of Minos (see
90.
c
), who has been confused with Glaucus son of Sisyphus (see
71.
a
), was revived by mistletoe. Though the pre-Hellenic mistletoe and oak cult had been suppressed in Greece (see
50.
2
), a refugee priesthood from the Isthmus may well have brought it to
Aricia. Egeria’s name shows that she was a death-goddess, living in a grove of black poplars (see
51.
7
and 170. l).

2
. Hippolytus’s perquisite of the bride’s lock must be a patriarchal innovation, designed perhaps to deprive women of the magical power resident in their hair, as Mohammedan women are shaved on marriage.

3
. The concealment of Hippolytus’s tomb is paralleled in the stories of Sisyphus and Neleus (see
67.
3
), which suggests that he was buried at some strategic point of the Isthmus.

102

LAPITHS AND CENTAURS

S
OME
say that Peirithous the Lapith was the son of Ixion and Dia, daughter of Eioneus; others, that he was the son of Zeus who, disguised as a stallion, coursed around Dia before seducing her.
¹

b
. Almost incredible reports of Theseus’s strength and valour had reached Peirithous, who ruled over the Magnetes, at the mouth of the river Peneus; and one day he resolved to test them by raiding Attica and driving away a herd of cattle that were grazing at Marathon. When Theseus at once went in pursuit, Peirithous boldly turned about to face him; but each was filled with such admiration for the other’s nobility of appearance that the cattle were forgotten, and they swore an oath of everlasting friendship.
²

c
. Peirithous married Hippodameia, or Deidameia, daughter of Butes – or, some say, of Adrastus – and invited all the Olympians to his wedding, except Ares and Eris; he remembered the mischief which Eris had caused at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Since more feasters came to Peirithous’s palace than it could contain, his cousins the Centaurs, together with Nestor, Caeneus, and other Thessalian princes, were seated at tables in a vast, tree-shaded cave near by.

d
. The Centaurs, however, were unused to wine and, when they smelled its fragrance, pushed away the sour milk which was set before them, and ran to fill their silver horns from the wine-skins. In their ignorance they swilled the strong liquor unmixed with water, becoming so drunk that when the bride was escorted into the cavern to greet them, Eurytus, or Eurytion, leaped from his stool, overturned the
table, and dragged her away by the hair. At once the other Centaurs followed his disgraceful example, lecherously straddling the nearest women and boys.
³

e
. Peirithous and his paranymph Theseus sprang to Hippodameia’s rescue, cut off Eurytion’s ears and nose and, with the help of the Lapiths, threw him out of the cavern. The ensuring fight, in the course of which Caeneus the Lapith was killed, lasted until nightfall; and thus began the long feud between the Centaurs and their Lapith neighbours, engineered by Ares and Eris in revenge for the slight offered them.
⁴

f
. On this occasion the Centaurs suffered a serious reverse, and Theseus drove them from their ancient hunting grounds on Mount Pelion to the land of the Aethices near Mount Pindus. But it was not an easy task to subdue the Centaurs, who had already disputed Ixion’s kingdom with Peirithous, and who now, rallying their forces, invaded Lapith territory. They surprised and slaughtered the main Lapith army, and when the survivors fled to Pholoë in Elis, the vengeful Centaurs expelled them and converted Pholoë into a bandit stronghold of their own. Finally the Lapiths settled in Malea.

g
. It was during Theseus’s campaign against the Centaurs that he met Heracles again for the first time since his childhood; and presently initiated him into the Mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis.
⁵

1
. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 70; Eustathius on Homer p. 101.

2
. Strabo:
Fragment
14;
Vatican Epitome
; Plutarch:
Theseus
30.

3
. Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 21; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 70; Hyginus:
Fabula
33; Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
vii. 304.

4
. Pindar:
Fragment
166f, quoted by Athenaeus: xi. 476b; Apollodorus:
loc. cit
.; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
xii. 210 ff.; Homer
Odyssey
xxi. 295; Pausanias: v. 10. 2.

5
. Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Homer:
Iliad
ii. 470 ff; Diodorus Siculus:
loc. cit
.; Herodotus, quoted by Plutarch:
loc. cit
.

1
. Both Lapiths and Centaurs claimed descent from Ixion, an oak-hero, and had a horse cult in common (see
63.
a
and
d
). They were primitive mountain tribes in Northern Greece, of whose ancient rivalry the Hellenes took advantage by allying themselves first with one, and then with the other (see
35.
2
;
78.
1
; and
81.
3
).
Centaur
and
Lapith
may be Italic words:
centuria
, ‘war-band of one hundred’, and
lapicidae
, ‘flint-chippers’. (The usual Classical etymology is, respectively, from
centtauroi
, ‘those who spear bulls’, and
lapizein
, ‘to swagger’.) These mountaineers seem to have had erotic orgies, and thus won a reputation for
promiscuity among the monogamous Hellenes; members of this neolithic race survived in the Arcadian mountains, and on Mount Pindus, until Classical times, and vestiges of their pre-Hellenic language are to be found in modern Albania.

2
. It is, however, unlikely that the battle between Lapiths and Centaurs – depicted on the gable of Zeus’s temple at Olympia (Pausanias: v. 10. 2); at Athens in the sanctuary of Theseus (Pausanias: i. 17. 2); and on Athene’s aegis (Pausanias: i. 28. 2) – recorded a mere struggle between frontier tribes. Being connected with a royal wedding feast, divinely patronized, at which Theseus in his lion-skin assisted, it will have depicted a ritual event of intimate concern to all Hellenes. Lion –skinned Heracles also fought the Centaurs on a similarly festive occasion (see 126.
2
). Homer calls them ‘shaggy wild beasts’, and since they are not differentiated from satyrs in early Greek vase-paintings, the icon probably shows a newly-installed king – it does not matter who – battling with dancers disguised as animals: an event which A. C. Hocart in his
Kingship
proves to have been an integral part of the ancient coronation ceremony. Eurytion is playing the classical part of interloper (see 142.
5
).

3
. Whether Ixion or Zeus was Peirithous’s father depended on Ixion’s right to style himself Zeus. The myth of his parentage has evidently been deduced from an icon which showed a priestess of Thetis – Dia, daughter of Eioneus, ‘the divine daughter of the seashore’ – halter in hand, encouraging the candidate for kingship to master the wild horse (see
75.
3
). Hippodameia’s name (‘horse-tamer’) refers to the same icon. Zeus, disguised as stallion, ‘coursed around’ Dia, because that is the meaning of the name Peirithous; and Ixion, as the Sun-god, spread-eagled to his wheel, coursed around the heavens (see
63.
2
).

103

THESEUS IN TARTARUS

A
FTER
Hippodameia’s death Peirithous persuaded Theseus, whose wife Phaedra had recently hanged herself, to visit Sparta in his company and carry away Helen, a sister of Castor and Polydeuces, the Dioscuri, with whom they were both ambitious to be connected by marriage. Where the sanctuary of Serapis now stands at Athens, they swore to stand by each other in this perilous enterprise; to draw lots for Helen when they had won her; and then to carry off another of Zeus’s daughters for the loser, whatever the danger might be.
¹

b
. This decided, they led an army into Lacedaemon; then, riding ahead of the main body, seized Helen while she was offering a sacrifice in the Temple of Upright Artemis at Sparta, and galloped away with her. They soon outdistanced their pursuers, shaking them off at Tegea where, as had been agreed, lots were drawn for Helen; and Theseus proved the winner.
²
He foresaw, however, that the Athenians would by no means approve of his having thus picked a quarrel with the redoubtable Dioscuri, and therefore sent Helen, who was not yet nubile – being a twelve-year-old child or, some say, even younger – to the Attic village of Aphidnae, where he charged his friend Aphidnus to guard her with the greatest attention and secrecy. Aethra, Theseus’s mother, accompanied Helen and cared well for her. Some try to exculpate Theseus by recording that it was Idas and Lynceus who stole Helen, and then entrusted her to the protection of Theseus, in revenge for the Dioscuri’s abduction of the Leucippides. Others record that Helen’s father Tyndareus himself entrusted her to Theseus, on learning that his nephew Enarephorus, son of Hippocoön, was planning to abduct her.
³

c
. Some years passed and, when Helen was old enough for Theseus to marry her, Peirithous reminded him of their pact. Together they consulted an oracle of Zeus, whom they had called upon to witness their oath, and his ironical response was: ‘Why not visit Tartarus and demand Persephone, the wife of Hades, as a bride for Peirithous? She is the noblest of my daughters.’ Theseus was outraged when Peirithous, who took this suggestion seriously, held him to his oath; but he dared not refuse to go, and presently they descended, sword in hand, to Tartarus. Avoiding the ferry-passage across Lethe, they chose the back way, the entrance to which is in a cavern of Laconian Taenarus, and were soon knocking at the gates of Hades’s palace. Hades listened calmly to their impudent request and, feigning hospitality, invited them to be seated. Unsuspectingly they took the settee he offered, which proved to be the Chair of Forgetfulness and at once became part of their flesh, so that they could not rise again without self-mutilation. Coiled serpents hissed all about them, and they were well lashed by the Furies and mauled by Cerberus’s teeth, while Hades looked on, smiling grimly.
⁴