Medea (57 page)

King Phrixos, grandson of Minyas (therefore 'Minyans') was about to be sacrificed on Mt Laphystios for attempting to ravish his aunt (he hadn't, it was a scenario like the biblical Potiphar's wife) when Herakles appeared, objecting that Zeus does not accept human sacrifice. Then a winged golden ram - made by Hermes and sent by Hera - appeared, and Phrixos climbed aboard and was carried away with his sister Helle (who fell off it into the eponymous Hellespont).

Phrixos went on to Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus the deliverer. He and the skin remained in Colchis, where he married Medea's older sister, Chalkiope, and had four sons by her. Aetes banished the four sons. Before all of this, Phrixos had lived in Iolkos and sired Kreutheus, Jason's grandfather.

 

Herakles is Hera's man. The guardian of women, doesn't rape anyone, and spends a lot of his life in expiation of things done during battle fury. One writer suggests that Hera is his enemy, but Professor Kerenyi suggests she is his friend. This has a lot to do with the Argonauts, because Hera is also Jason's friend (and 'Iason', or healer, is also one of Herakles' titles).

Herakles is begotten by Zeus on Alkmene, in the form of her husband. Hermes then tricks Hera into giving him her breast to suck (and he bites her). Jealous Hera sends snakes to his cradle and he strangles them - clearly a sturdy little person. [A recent child in Deer Park (Australia), who was discovered by his horrified mother with a tiger snake's head crushed in his mouth, indicates that this is not impossible. The snake must have been so surprised that it neglected to bite the tot until it was too late.]

Young Herakles is sent out from Tiryns to be a herdsman and kills a lion which is slaughtering the flocks, thus acquiring his trademark lion skin. His club is made of an olive tree with a few branches trimmed off. He roams around until he comes to Tiryns and undertakes the following labours for Eurystheus - each one designed to kill him - in expiation for the murder of Herakles' own children in a battle rage; which sounds like the Norse 'berserk' fury. The 'labours of Herakles' are:

1 The Nemean Lion

2 The Hydra (where Eteocles was killed)

3 Capture the Cerynean Stag

4 Capture the Erimanthean Boar

5 Clean the stables of Augeus

6 Get rid of the Stymphalian Birds

7 Tame the mares of Diomedes

8 Pen the Cretan Bull

9 Seize the girdle of Hippolyte the Amazon

10 Take Geryon's Cattle

11 Fetch the golden apples

12 Lead Cerberus out of Hades

 

After this he kills his brother, Iphicles; and sells himself into slavery with Queen Omphale who, finding that he is no use whatsoever in spinning and weaving, sensibly employs him to wipe out her bandits. He also murders the children of Laomedon of Troy, because the king tries to cheat him out of his just fee for killing a sea monster.

By the time Herakles goes voyaging with Jason he is an elderly hero and is tired and worried about Hylas. He feels responsible to Hylas because he killed Hylas' father in a fit of that same battle-rage. He has yet to find Deianeira and go home to Thebes, where he offers Medea sanctuary because she cured him of his fits of fury.

Some writers put the Jason voyage after the Erimanthean boar - in fact a good story is made of him reading Jason's announcement in a market-place, dropping the boar and striding off to join the
Argo,
leaving the surprised boar to terrorise the town. I've followed the commentators who put it as his last deed. Herakles then acquires Deianeira, by meeting her relative in Hades; and she causes his death by soaking his shirt in the blood of the centaur, Nessus, because she feels that his affections are wavering.
³

 

This is just arguable on linguistic grounds, and provides a pretty continuation of the Hylas/Herakles friendship. Hylas, in my version, leaves the nymphs and goes back to find Herakles dying in the shirt of Nessus. Foolish but well-meaning Deianeira kills herself, leaving Hylas to defend Herakles' children with his life.

 

I am not learned enough - or rather, I will never be learned enough - to enter into any arguments about whether the Orphic song-cycle (which may or may not be of the right period) is actually Orphean; or whether it was a later invention by scholars who desperately wanted there to have been Orphean Mysteries.

There were Orphean Mysteries and there it is. Orpheus went on the original
Argo
; but I've cut the numbers down, and left Orpheus ashore, taking instead the Orphic bard, Philammon, who is part of the original cast. Orpheans did not eat meat, have sex or shed blood.

Their basic mystery was the net - the belief that all things are connected. A touch on one part of the net will set all the threads vibrating and cause changes on the other side of it. This concept sounds surprisingly modern in these days of Chaos Theory, but it is genuinely ancient.

Their instrument was the lyre, a sound-box made of tortoise shell, a pair of curved arms and a bar across the top. It had between three and seven strings of different thicknesses, stopped with pegs and was strummed or plucked with the fingers. It sounds a bit like a Celtic harp strung with gut strings - soft but thrilling. Its range is that of the human voice and it can be retuned by slackening or tightening the strings.

 

This religious ceremony has some Orphean overtones as well, because Philammon takes the Argonauts to the island of Samothrace. The 'mysteries' appear to be related to the mystic marriage of Kadmos (or Kadmon) and Omonia (Harmony); or Persephone and Hades. This must have been a 'showing' - all mysteries were a showing - but, honourably, all the initiated have refused to reveal their experience. The closest I have found to an exposition of what a mystery was like is in Apuleius,
The Golden Ass
, where the narrator has the most beautiful lyric invocation of Isis - an Egyptian version of Aphrodite with the sterner aspects of Hera. The Argonauts' association with this mystery might explain why Jason ended up with Kadmos' tasks - the dragon's teeth and the earth-born men. I have for that reason omitted them. Jason has enough trouble as it is.

 

Dark Mother, Scylla the Black Bitch, the black aspect of the Mother. But she's not all bad. She was also responsible for the newborn, pigs and journeys.

 

Men must have felt entirely unsafe in Ancient Greece. No wonder homosexuality was so popular. You know where you are with men. But just think of the hazards involved with women; especially if you happen to be Agamemnon, Jason or Herakles.

Clytemnestra, the Royal Woman, might - at your most vulnerable moment - bisect you with an axe, just because you sacrificed her daughter (and yours, Agamemnon) for a fair wind to Troy. And perhaps because you killed her first husband and their baby.

Medea, the wise woman, might (if you believe the rewritten texts) wipe out your progeny, attacking your heritage, just because you decided to put her aside and marry another younger, well-connected woman.

And even the dumb blonde of the ancient world, dim little virgin Deianeira, promised to Herakles by her dead relative, might - quite without meaning to hurt you - clothe you in a shirt which will burn your bones to ash.
³

Perilous creatures, women. The only good one (according to the men who write about such things) is patient Penelope. And all she gets to do is ignore the attentions of freeloading suitors, while waiting forever for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War.

The Middle Ages loved Penelope because they thought she resembled one of the most annoying characters in all folklore or literature: the ever-forgiving patient Griselda, a creature whose self-abnegation was definitely pathological.

Even Chaucer found the story trying. And so did your author; as a folk-singer, having to mouth eighteen nauseous verses of
The Forester
- a ballad version of the same thing - or the even longer Scottish version called
Fair Ellen
.

 

¹
Foreword, Picador edition, p.xvi

²
Graves suggests that armies routinely fought with a bare left foot - I can't imagine why and it sounds very unlikely. Even if the other foot is shod for kicking the enemy, both feet shod for the same purpose would surely be more intelligent. Also, what use is an army that limps on one foot, due to thorns, flints, etc? The lack of one sandal therefore has to be unusual or the prophecy could have been fulfilled by any passing soldier and the story would have been sent askew. Of course, the gods were directing it, so I suppose it would have been Jason anyway. It's hard to tell with gods.

³
Any woman who believes that a dying centaur, who has just been shot by her husband with a well-placed arrow - to save her from being raped by said centaur - will tell her the truth about anything is a fool. And to believe that he means to do her a favour when he tells her to collect his blood and semen and soak a shirt in it, to give to her husband to wear when his affection strays is an idiot. Anyone who actually carries this out is a certified moron.

Apollonius Rhodios,
Argonautica,
Penguin, London, 1984.

Apuleius,
The Golden Ass,
trans. R. Graves, Penguin Classics, London, 1964.

Euripides
, Medea
, Penguin Classics, London, 1974.

Herodotus,
The Histories
, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin Classics, London, 1935.

Pausanius,
Guide to Greece
, Vol. 2, trans. Peter Levi, Penguin Classics, London, 1979.

Cavendish, Richard (ed.),
Man, Myth and Magic
, Purnell, London, 1972.

Graves, Robert,
The Greek Myths
(combined edition), Penguin, London, 1992.

Kerenyi, C.,
The Heroes of the Greeks
, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978.

Licht, Hans,
Sexual Life in Ancient Greece
, Routledge, London, 1949.

McEvedy, C
., The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History
, Penguin, London, 1983.

Neeson, Eoin,
Irish Myths and Legends
, Mercier, Dublin, 1978.

Page, Denys L.,
Euripides' Medea: Introduction and Commentary
, Oxford University Press, London, 1955 (the definitive introduction to the play).

de Pisan, Christine,
The Book of the City of Ladies
, trans. E.J. Richards, introduction by Marion Warner, Picador, London 1983.

de Pisan, Christine,
The Treasure of the City of Ladies
or
The Book of the Three Virtues
, trans. Sarah Lawson, Penguin, London, 1985

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

(Contains everything you ever wanted to know about sailing a bronze-age boat, on Jason's course, to what is now Soviet Georgia. Severin is a shining example and a reproach to all who merely theorise. The easiest way to prove or disprove a theory about how something was done or made is to do it. He did it, for which this author is eternally grateful.)

Baines, Anthony,
Bagpipes
, Occasional Papers in Technology, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, 1979.

Horniman Museum Publications
, Musical Instruments
, Inner London Education Authority, London, 1977.

Jenkins, Jean,
Man and Music,
Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, 1983.

Jeankins, Jean, and Olsen, Paul,
Music and Musical Instruments in the World of Islam
, Horniman Museum, London, 1976.

Touma, Habib Hassan,
La Musique Arabe
, Institut International D'Etudes Comparatives de la Musique, Editions Buchet / Chastel, Paris, 1977.

Music in the World of Islam, 2. Lutes, 4. Flutes and Trumpets
, and
5. Reeds and Bagpipes
. Recordings by Jean Jenkins and Paul Olsen. Tangent Records, London, 1972.

Folktracks, an Anthology of Spanish Folk Music
, collected by Alan Lomax and Jeanette Bell, recorded in Spain in 1952 and issued on Folktracks 60-616 (cassette tape), 1981.

Instrumental Families, Folk Instruments From Around The World
, collected by Unesco in 1950, Folktracks 90-7000 (cassette tape), 1985.

Kerry Greenwood
is the author of fifty-eight novels and five non-fiction books.

Medea
, the first in her
Delphic Women
trilogy, is followed by
Cassandra
and
Electra
.

Kerry's passion for re-imagining ancient history extends beyond the Mediterranean shores inhabited by heroic Greeks and Trojans, to the fabulous world of ancient Egypt where her novel
Out of the Black Land
is set.

An honorary Greek and a historian, Kerry has worked as a folk-singer, a translator, a costume-maker, and an editor. She is also qualified as a solicitor.