The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (38 page)

Authors: Robert Graves

BOOK: The Greek Myths, Volume 1

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3
. Pliny, who describes the halcyon’s alleged nest in detail – apparently the zoöphyte called
halcyoneum
by Linnaeus – reports that the halcyon is rarely seen, and then only at the two solstices and at the setting of the Pleiades. This proves her to have originally been a manifestation of the Moon-goddess, who was alternately the Goddess of Life-in-Death at the winter solstice, and of Death-in-Life at the summer solstice; and who, every Great Year, early in November, when the Pleiades set, sent the sacred king his death summons.

4
. Still another Alcyone, daughter of Pleione (‘sailing queen’) by Atlas, was the leader of the seven Pleiades (see
39.
d
). The Pleiades’ heliacal rising in May began the navigational year; their setting marked its end, when (as Pliny notes in a passage about the halcyon) a remarkably cold north wind blows. The circumstances of Ceyx’s death show that the Aeolians, who were famous sailors, worshipped the goddess as ‘Alcyone’ because she protected them from rocks and rough weather: Zeus wrecked Ceyx’s ship, in defiance of her powers, by hurling a thunderbolt at it. Yet the halcyon was still credited with the magical power of allaying storms; and its body, when dried, was used as a talisman against Zeus’s lightning – presumably on the ground that where once it strikes it will not strike again. The Mediterranean is inclined to be calm about the time of the winter solstice.

TEREUS

T
EREUS
, a son of Ares, ruled over the Thracians then occupying Phocian Daulis – though some say that he was King of Pagae in Megaris
¹– and, having acted as mediator in a boundary dispute for
Pandion, King of Athens and father of the twins Butes and Erechtheus, married their sister Procne, who bore him a son, Itys.

b
. Unfortunately Tereus, enchanted by the voice of Procne’s younger sister Philomela, had fallen in love with her; and, a year later, concealing Procne in a rustic cabin near his palace at Daulis, he reported her death to Pandion. Pandion, condoling with Tereus, generously offered him Philomela in Procne’s place, and provided Athenian guards as her escort when she went to Daulis for the wedding. These guards Tereus murdered and, when Philomela reached the palace, he had already forced her to lie with him. Procne soon heard the news but, as a measure of precaution, Tereus cut out her tongue and confined her to the slaves’ quarters, where she could communicate with Philomela only be weaving a secret message into the pattern of a bridal robe intended for her. This ran simply: ‘Procne is among the slaves.’

c
. Meanwhile, an oracle had warned Tereus that Itys would die by the hand of a blood relative and, suspecting his brother Dryas of a murderous plot to seize the throne, struck him down unexpectedly with an axe. The same day, Philomela read the message woven into the robe. She hurried to the slaves’ quarters, found one of the rooms bolted, broke down the door, and released Procne, who was chattering unintelligibly and running around in circles.

‘Oh, to be revenged on Tereus, who pretended that you were dead, and seduced me!’ wailed Philomela, aghast.

Procne, being tongueless, could not reply, but flew out and, seizing her son Itys, killed him, gutted him, and then boiled him in a copper cauldron for Tereus to eat on his return.

d
. When Tereus realized what flesh he had been tasting, he grasped the axe with which he had killed Dryas and pursued the sisters as they fled from the palace. He soon overtook them and was on the point of committing a double murder when the gods changed all three into birds; Procne became a swallow; Philomela, a nightingale; Tereus, a hoopoe. And the Phocians say that no swallow dares nest in Daulis or its environs, and no nightingale sings, for fear of Tereus. But the swallow, having no tongue, screams and flies around in circles; while the hoopoe flutters in pursuit of her, crying ‘
Pou? Pou?
’ (where? where?). Meanwhile, the nightingale retreats to Athens, where she mourns without cease for Itys, whose death she inadvertently caused, singing ‘
Itu! Itu!
’
²

e
. But some say that Tereus was turned into a hawk.
³

1
. Apollodorus: iii. 14. 8; Thucydides: ii. 29; Strabo: ix. 3. 13; Pausanias: i. 41. 8

2
. Apollodoruss: iii. 14. 8; Nonnus:
Dionysiaca
iv. 320; Pausanias: i. 5. 4; i. 41. 8 and x. 4. 6; Hyginus:
Fabula
45; Fragments of Sophocles’s
Tereus
; Eustathius on Homer’s
Odyssey
xix. 418; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
vi. 426–674; First Vatican Mythographer: 217.

3
. Hyginus:
Fabula
45.

1
. This extravagant romance seems to have been invented to account for a series of Thraco-Pelasgian wall-paintings, found by Phocian invaders in a temple at Daulis (‘shaggy’), which illustrated different methods of prophecy in local use.

2
. The cutting-out of Procne’s tongue misrepresents a scene showing a prophetess in a trance, induced by the chewing of laurel-leaves; her face is contorted with ecstasy, not pain, and the tongue which seems to have been cut out is in fact a laurel-leaf, handed her by the priest who interprets her wild babblings. The weaving of the letters into the bridal robe misrepresents another scene: a priestess has cast a handful of oracular sticks on a white cloth, in the Celtic fashion described by Tacitus (
Ger-mania
x), or the Scythian fashion described by Herodotus (iv. 67); they take the shape of letters, which she is about to read. In the so-called eating of Itys by Tereus, a willow-priestess is taking omens from the entrails of a child sacrificed for the benefit of a king. The scene of Tereus and the oracle probably showed him asleep on a sheep-skin in a temple, receiving a dream revelation (see
51.
g
); the Greeks would not have mistaken this. That of Dryas’s murder probably showed an oak-tree and priests taking omens beneath it, in Druidic fashion, by the way a man fell when he died. Procne’s transformation into a swallow will have been deduced from a scene that showed a priestess in a feathered robe, taking auguries from the flight of a swallow; Philomela’s transformation into a nightingale, and Tereus’s into a hoopoe, seem to result from similar misreadings. Tereus’s name, which means ‘watcher’, suggests that a male augur figured in the hoopoe picture.

3
. Two further scenes may be presumed: a serpent-tailed oracular hero, being offered blood-sacrifices; and a young man consulting a bee-oracle. These are, respectively, Erechtheus and Butes (see
47.
1
) who was the most famous bee-keeper of antiquity, the brothers of Procne and Philomela. Their mother was Zeuxippe, ‘she who yokes horses’, doubtless a Mare-headed Demeter.

4
. All mythographers but Hyginus make Procne a nightingale, and Philomela a swallow. This must be a clumsy attempt to rectify a slip made by some earlier poet; that Tereus cut out Philomela’s tongue, not
Procne’s. The hoopoe is a royal bird, because it has a crest of feathers; and is particularly appropriate to the story of Tereus, because its nests are notorious for their stench. According to the Koran, the hoopoe told Solomon prophetic secrets.

5
. Daulis, afterwards called Phocis, seems to have been the centre of a bird cult. Phocus, the eponymous founder of the new state, was called the son of Ornytion (‘moon bird’ – see
81.
b
), and a later king was named Xuthus (‘sparrow’ – see
43.
1
). Hyginus reports that Tereus became a hawk, a royal bird of Egypt, Thrace, and North-western Europe.

ERECHTHEUS AND EUMOLPUS

K
ING
P
ANDION
died prematurely of grief when he learned what had befallen Procne, Philomela, and Itys. His twin sons shared the inheritance: Erechtheus becoming King of Athens, while Butes served as priest both to Athene and Poseidon.
¹

b
. By his wife Praxithea, Erechtheus had four sons, among them his successor, Cecrops; also seven daughters: namely Protogonia, Pandora, Procnis, wife of Cephalus, Creusa, Oreithyia, Chthonia, who married her uncle Butes, and Otionia, the youngest.
²

c
. Now, Poseidon secretly loved Chione, Oreithyia’s daughter by Boreas. She bore him a son, Eumolpus, but threw him into the sea, lest Boreas should be angry. Poseidon watched over Eumolpus, and cast him up on the shores of Ethiopia, where he was reared in the house of Benthesicyme, his half-sister by the Sea-goddess Amphitrite. When Eumolpus came of age, Benthesycime married him to one of her daughters; but he fell in love with another of them, and she therefore banished him to Thrace, where he plotted against his protector, King Tegyrius, and was forced to seek refuge at Eleusis. Here he mended his ways, and became priest of the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, into which he subsequently initiated Heracles, at the same time teaching him to sing and play the lyre. With the lyre, Eumolpus had great skill; and was also victorious in the flute contest at Pelias’s funeral games. His Eleusinian co-priestesses were the daughters of Celeus; and his well-known piety at last earned him the dying forgiveness of King Tegyrius, who bequeathed him the throne of Thrace.
³

d
. When war broke out between Athens and Eleusis, Eumolpus brought a large force of Thracians to the Eleusinians’ assistance, claiming the throne of Attica himself in the name of his father Poseidon. The Athenians were greatly alarmed, and when Erechtheus consulted an oracle he was told to sacrifice his youngest daughter Otionia to Athene, if he hoped for victory. Otionia was willingly led to the altar, whereupon her two eldest sisters, Protogonia and Pandora, also killed themselves, having once vowed that if one of them should die by violence, they would die too.
⁴

e
. In the ensuing battle, Ion led the Athenians to victory; and Erechtheus struck down Eumolpus as he fled. Poseidon appealed for vengeance to his brother Zeus, who at once destroyed Erechtheus with a thunderbolt; but some say that Poseidon felled him with a trident blow at Macrae, where the earth opened to receive him.

f
. By the terms of a peace then concluded, the Eleusinians became subject to the Athenians in everything, except the control of their Mysteries. Eumolpus was succeeded as priest by his younger son Ceryx, whose descendants still enjoy great hereditary privileges at Eleusis.
⁵

g
. Ion reigned after Erechtheus; and, because of his three daughters’ self-sacrifice, wineless libations are still poured to them today.
⁶