The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (19 page)

²
Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplios,
*
to be sold in foreign lands. Pleisthenes married one of the sisters, Aerope,
*
and fathered two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaos, while Nauplios married Clymene and became the father of Oiax and Palamedes.

Later, when he was gripped by old age, Catreus was anxious to transfer the kingdom to his son Althaimenes, and travelled to Rhodes with that in mind. When he disembarked, however, with the Cretans at a desolate spot on the island, he was driven back by the cowherds, who thought that pirates had landed. When he tried to tell them the truth of the matter, they were unable to hear him because of the barking dogs, and as they were pelting him, Althaimenes arrived and killed him with a javelin throw, not realizing that he was Catreus. Afterwards, when he discovered what had happened, he was swallowed up by a chasm in answer to his prayer.

^l
To Deucalion were born Idomeneus
*
and Crete, and an illegitimate

3

son, Molos.

Now Glaucos,
*
when he was still a young child, fell into a jar of honey while he was chasing a mouse, and was drowned. After his disappearance, Minos conducted a thorough search and consulted diviners about how he could find him. The Curetes told him that in his herds he had a three-coloured cow, and that the person who could suggest the best image to describe its colours would also be able to return his son to him alive. When the diviners were assembled, Polyidos,
*
son of Coiranos, compared the cow’s colouring to a blackberry,
*
and when he was made to search for the child, he discovered him by a certain kind of divination.
*
Minos declared, however, that he wanted him back alive, and Polyidos was shut in with the dead body. When he was at his wit’s end, he saw a snake approach the body; and fearing that he himself would be killed if any harm came to the body, he threw a stone at the snake and killed it. But then another snake appeared, and seeing that the first one was dead, it went off and then came back again carrying a herb, which it applied to the whole body of its
fellow. No sooner was the herb applied than the first snake came back to life. Viewing all this with wonderment, Polyidos applied the same herb to the body of Glaucos and brought him back to life.
²
Minos had now recovered his son, but all the same, he would not allow Polyidos to depart to Argos until he had taught Glaucos the art of divination. So under compulsion, Polyidos taught him; but as Polyidos was sailing off, he told Glaucos to spit into his mouth, and when Glaucos did so, he forgot all knowledge of divination. As regards the descendants of Europa, this is where we must call a halt.

¹
When Telephassa died, Cadmos saw to her burial, and after

4

receiving hospitality from the Thracians, went to Delphi to enquire about Europa. The god told him that he should not worry about Europa, but should take a cow to guide him, and found a city at the place where it fell down exhausted. After receiving this oracle, he travelled through Phocis, and coming across a cow from the herds of Pelagon,
*
he followed in its footsteps. It passed through Boeotia, and sank to the earth where the city of Thebes now lies. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athene, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares; but the spring was guarded by a dragon, which was said by some to be the offspring of Ares, and it killed most of those who were sent for the water. Angered by this, Cadmos killed the dragon, and then, following the advice of Athene, sowed its teeth. No sooner were they sown than fully armed men sprang up from the earth, who were called the
Spartoi
*
They killed one another, some entering into conflict deliberately,
*
and some out of ignorance. According to Pherecydes, however, when Cadmos saw fully armed men springing up from the earth, he hurled stones at them, and they, believing that they were being pelted by one another, fought amongst themselves. Five of them survived, namely, Echion, Oudaios, Chthonios, Hyperenor, and Peloros.
²
To atone for the killing, Cadmos served Ares as a labourer for an everlasting year
*
(for a year in those times lasted eight of our own).

After the completion of his servitude, Athene consigned the
kingdom to him, and Zeus gave him Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, as a wife. And all the gods left the sky to take part in the wedding feast on the Cadmeia
*
and join in the singing. Cadmos gave his wife a robe and the necklace fashioned by Hephaistos, which according to some accounts had been given to him by Hephaistos himself, though according to Pherecydes it was given to him by Europa, who had received it from Zeus. Cadmos had four daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, and Agave, and a son, Polydoros. Ino became the wife of Athamas, Autonoe the wife of Aristaios, and Agave the wife of Echion.

³
As for Semele, Zeus fell in love with her, and slept with her in secret from Hera. Now Zeus had engaged to do whatever Semele asked, and as the result of a deception by Hera,
*
she asked him to come to her just as he had come when he was courting Hera. Unable to refuse, Zeus came to her bedchamber in a chariot to the accompaniment of lightning and thunder, and hurled a thunderbolt. Semele died of fright, but Zeus snatched her aborted sixth-month child from the fire, and sewed it into his thigh. (After Semele’s death, the other daughters of Cadmos spread the tale that Semele had slept with a mortal but falsely laid the blame on Zeus, and that she had been struck down with a thunderbolt because of that.
*
) When the appropriate time arrived, Zeus brought Dionysos to birth by untying the stitches, and handed him over to Hermes, who took him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to bring him up as a girl. But Hera in her fury drove them mad,
*
and Athamas hunted his eldest son Learchos in the belief he was a deer and killed him, while Ino threw Melicertes into a cauldron of boiling water, and carrying it with her dead child inside, leaped into the sea. She is known as Leucothea
*
and her son is known as Palaimon—these were the names given to them by mariners, who receive help from them when they are caught in storms. The Isthmian Games were founded in honour of Melicertes
*
on the orders of Sisyphos.

As for Dionysos, Zeus rescued him from the anger of Hera
by turning him into a kid; and Hermes gathered him up and took him to some nymphs who lived at Nysa in Asia, those whom Zeus later turned into a constellation, naming them the Hyades.
*

⁴
Autonoe and Aristaios had a son, Actaion, who was brought up by Cheiron to be a hunter and was later devoured on Cithairon by his own dogs. According to Acousilaos, he met such a death because Zeus was angry with him for courting Semele, but most authors ascribe it to the fact that he saw Artemis bathing.
*
The goddess, they say, transformed him instantly into a deer and drove his pack of fifty dogs into a frenzy, causing them to devour him without recognizing who he was. Once he was dead, the dogs searched for their master, howling all the while, until their search brought them to the cave of Cheiron, who made an image of Actaion, which brought their grief to an end†

¹
After his discovery of the vine, Dionysos was driven mad

5

by Hera
*
and roamed around Egypt and Syria. He was welcomed first by Proteus, king of the Egyptians, but then arrived at Cybela in Phrygia, and after he had been purified by Rhea and learned the rites of initiation,
*
and had received the [initiate’s] robe from her, he hurried through Thrace to attack the Indians. Lycourgos,
*
son of Dryas, the ruler of the Edonians, who live by the River Strymon, was the first to insult and expel him. Dionysos sought refuge in the sea with Thetis, daughter of Nereus, while the Bacchai
*
were taken prisoner along with the crowd of Satyrs
*
who followed in his train. But later the Bacchai were suddenly set free, and Lycourgos was driven mad by Dionysos. During his madness, Lycourgos, believing that he was pruning a vine branch,
*
killed his son Dryas with blows from his axe and had cut off his limbs by the time he recovered his senses. When the land remained barren, the god declared in an oracle that it would become fruitful again if Lycourgos were put to death. On hearing this, the Edonians took him to Mount Pangaion and tied him up, and there he died through the will of Dionysos, killed by horses.

²
After travelling through Thrace and the whole of India, where he set up pillars,
*
he arrived in Thebes,
*
where he forced the women to desert their houses and abandon themselves to
Bacchic frenzy on Mount Cithairon. But Pentheus, a son of Echion by Agave, who had inherited the throne from Cadmos, tried to put an end to these practices, and when he went to Mount Cithairon to spy on the Bacchai, he was torn to pieces by his mother Agave, who, in her frenzy, took him for a wild beast. Having shown the Thebans that he was a god, he went to Argos, and there again, when they failed to honour him, he drove the women mad, and they carried their unweaned children into the mountains and feasted on their flesh.

³
Wanting to make the sea-passage from Icarios to Naxos, he chartered a pirate ship with a crew of Tyrrhenians. When they had him on board,
*
however, they sailed past Naxos and pressed on towards Asia hoping to sell him. But he changed the mast and oars into snakes and filled the craft with ivy and the sound of flutes; and the pirates went mad, and jumped into the sea, where they turned into dolphins.

In this way, men came to know that he was a god and paid due honour to him; and after he had brought his mother up from Hades and named her Thyone, he ascended to heaven in her company.

⁴
Cadmos left Thebes with Harmonia and went to the land of the Encheleans.
*
Now the Encheleans were being attacked by the Illyrians, and the god had revealed to them in an oracle that they would obtain victory over the Illyrians if they had Cadmos and Harmonia as their leaders. In obedience to the god, they engaged them as their leaders against the Illyrians, and gained the upper hand. Cadmos became king of the Illyrians and had a son, Illyrios. Later he was turned into a snake
*
together with Harmonia, and sent to the Elysian Fields by Zeus.

⁵
When Polydoros became king of Thebes, he married Nycteis, the daughter of Nycteus, [son of] Chthonios, and had a son, Labdacos, who lost his life after Pentheus because he thought in much the same way
*
as him. He left a one-year-old child, Laios, but Lycos, the brother of Nycteus, seized control of the government as long as Laios remained a child.
*
The
two brothers had fled [from Euboea] because they had kilted Phlegyas, son of Ares and Dotis the Boeotian, and had settled at Hyria;
*
and [from there, they had moved to Thebes,
*
] where they became citizens as a result of their friendship with Pentheus. So it came to pass that Lycos, after being chosen as polemarch
*
by the Thebans, seized supreme power, and ruled for twenty years until he was murdered by Zethos and Amphion, for the following reason.

Antiope was a daughter of Nycteus; and Zeus had intercourse with her. When she turned out to be pregnant and her father threatened her, she ran away to Epopeus
*
in Sicyon, and became his wife. Nycteus was thrown into such despondency that he killed himself,
*
ordering Lycos to punish Epopeus and Antiope. So Lycos marched against Sicyon, killed Epopeus, and took Antiope prisoner. On the way back, she gave birth to two sons at Eleutherai in Boeotia. They were exposed, but a cowherd discovered them and brought them up, calling one of them Zethos and the other Amphion. Zethos devoted himself to cattle-rearing, while Amphion practised singing to the lyre (for he had been given a lyre by Hermes). As for Antiope, Lycos and his wife Dirce kept her in confinement and ill-treated her. One day, however, without her jailers knowing it, her bonds untied themselves of their own accord, and she made her way to her sons’ farmhouse, hoping to find refuge with them. Recognizing her as their mother, they killed Lycos, and bound Dirce to a bull, and then, when she was dead, hurled her body into the spring that bears the name of Dirce on her account.

After taking power, they built a wall around the city (the stones followed the sound of Amphion’s lyre
*
) and they expelled Laios. He went to live in the Peloponnese as a guest of Pelops; and while he was teaching Pelops’ son Chrysippos how to drive a chariot, he fell in love with him and carried him off.

⁶
Zethos married Thebe, from whom the city of Thebes derives its name, and Amphion married Niobe, daughter of Tantalos, who bore him seven sons, Sipylos, Eupinytos, Ismenos, Damasichthon,
Agenor, Phaidimos, and Tantalos, and the same number of daughters, Ethodaia (or according to some, Neaira), Cleodoxa, Astyoche, Phthia, Pelopia, Astycrateia, and Ogygia. According to Hesiod, however, they had ten sons and ten daughters, while Herodoros says that they had two male and three female children, and Homer
*
that they had six sons and six daughters. Having so many children, Niobe said that she was better blessed with children than Leto; and Leto was so angered by this that she incited Artemis and Apollo against them, and Artemis shot down the female children inside the house, and Apollo all the male children as they were hunting on Mount Cithairon. Of the males, Amphion alone survived,
*
and of the females, only the eldest, Chloris,
*
who later became the wife of Neleus (though according to Telesilla, those who survived were Amyclas and Meliboia, and Amphion was amongst their victims). Niobe herself left Thebes and went to stay with her father Tantalos at Sipylos; and there, in response to her prayers to Zeus, she was transformed into a stone
*
that streams with tears by night and day.