The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (65 page)

1
. Aristaeus’s origins have been embroidered upon by Pindar, to flatter a descendant of Battus who, in 691
B
.
C
., led a colony from Thera to Libya, where he founded Cyrene, and was the first king of a long dynasty. The Cyreneans claimed their ancestor Aristaeus – according to Justin (xiii. 7), Battus (‘tongue-tied’) was only his nickname – as the son of Apollo, because Apollo had been worshipped in Thera; and the port of Cyrene was consequently called Apollonia. But Cyrene was a mythological figure long before Battus’s time. Her association with the Centaurs shows that she was goddess of a Magnesian horse cult imported to Thera; for Cheiron’s name also appears in early Theran rock inscriptions. The myth of Idmon’s birth from Cyrene and Ares refers to this earlier goddess.

2
. Myrtle is originally a death-tree (see 109.
4
), and the Myrtle-nymphs were therefore prophetesses capable of instructing young Aristaeus; but it became symbolic of colonization, because emigrants took myrtle-boughs with them to demonstrate that they had ended an epoch.

3
. Aristaeus was a cult-title of Arcadian and Cean Zeus; and elsewhere of Apollo and Hermes. According to Servius (on Virgil’s
Georgics
i. 14) Hesiod called Aristaeus ‘a pastoral Apollo’. At Tanagra in Boeotia (Pausanias: ix. 22. 1) Hermes was known as ‘Ram-bearer’, and fish were sacred to him at Pharae in Achaea (Pausanias: vii. 22. 2). Thus a tomb-painting at Cyrene shows ‘Aristaeus’ surrounded by sheep and fish and carrying a ram. His wanderings are offered in explanation of the cult-title Aristaeus, which occurs in Sicily, Sardinia, Ceos, Boeotia, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Arcadia. The Dog-star is the Egyptian god Thoth, identified with Hermes, who was known as Aristaeus by the Ceans.

4
. His raising of bees from the carcasses of cattle has been mistold by
Virgil. They will have swarmed, rather, from the lion which Cyrene killed, or which was killed in her honour. This myth, like that of Samson’s bees which swarmed from a lion’s carcass, seems to be deduced from a primitive icon showing a naked woman tussling amorously with a lion, while a bee hovers above the carcass of another lion. The naked woman is the Lion-goddess Cyrene, or Hepatu the Hittite, or Anatha of Syria, or Hera the Lion-goddess of Mycenae, and her partner is the sacred king, who is due to die under the midsummer sign of Leo, emblemized by a knife in the Egyptian Zodiac. Like Theseus or Heracles, he wears a lion mask and skin, and is animated by the spirit of the dead lion, his predecessor, which appears as a bee (see
90.
3
). This is spring-time, when bees first swarm, but afterwards, as the Midsummer Bee-goddess, she will sting him to death, and emasculate him (see
18.
3
). The lion which the sacred king himself killed – as did both Heracles and his friend Phylius (see 153.
e-f
) in the Peloponnese; or Cyzicus on Mount Dindymum in the Sea of Marmara (see 149.
h
); or Samson in Philistia (
Judges
xiv. 6); or David at Bethlehem (1
Samuel
xvii. 34) – was one of the beasts which challenged him to a ritual combat at his coronation.

5
. Virgil’s account of Aristaeus’s visit to the river Peneius illustrates the irresponsible use of myth: Proteus, who lived at Pharos off the Nile Delta, has been dragged into the story by the heels – there was a famous Oracle of Apollo at Tempe, which Aristaeus, his son, would naturally have consulted; Arethusa, a Peloponnesian stream, had no business in the Peneius; and Aristaeus is shown different chambers in the Naiads’ palace where the sources of the Tiber, the Po, the Anio, the Phasis, and other widely separated rivers are kept – a mythologically absurd conception.

6
. Exports of oil to Sicily will have been more profitable to the Cretans than that of olive-grafts; but once Hellenic colonies had been founded on the southern coast in late Mycenaean times, olive-culture was established there. The Aristaeus who visited Sicily may be identified with Zeus Morius, who was responsible for distributing grafts of the sacred olive-trees descended from the one planted by Athene on the Athenian Acropolis (see
16.
c
). He may also have introduced the science of bee-keeping which came to Athens from Minoan Crete, where professional bee-keepers had a bee and a glove as their trade device, and used terracotta hives. The Greek word for bee-bread,
cerinthos
, is Cretan; and so must all the related words be, such as
cērion
, ‘honey-bomb’,
cērinos
, ‘waxen’, and
cēraphis
, ‘bee-moth’ – a kind of locust. Cer, in fact, whose name (also spelt
Car
or
Q’re
) came generally to mean ‘fate’, ‘doom’, or ‘destiny’ – multiplied into
ceres
, ‘spites, plagues, or unseen ills’ – must have been the Cretan Bee-goddess, a goddess of Death in Life. Thus the Sphinx-goddess of Thebes is called by Aeschylus (
Seven Against Thebes
777) ‘the man-snatching Cer’.

83

MIDAS

M
IDAS
, son of the Great Goddess of Ida, by a satyr whose name is not remembered, was a pleasure-loving King of Macedonian Bromium, where he ruled over the Brigians (also called Moschians) and planted his celebrated rose gardens.
¹
In his infancy, a procession of ants was observed carrying grains of wheat up the side of his cradle and placing them between his lips as he slept – a prodigy which the soothsayers read as an omen of the great wealth that would accrue to him; and when he grew older, Orpheus tutored him.
²

b
. One day, the debauched old satyr Silenus, Dionysus’s former pedagogue, happened to straggle from the main body of the riotous Dionysian army as it marched out of Thrace into Boeotia, and was found sleeping off his drunken fit in the rose gardens. The gardeners bound him with garlands of flowers and led him before Midas, to whom he told wonderful tales of an immense continent lying beyond the Oceans stream – altogether separate from the conjoined mass of Europe, Asia, or Africa – where splendid cities abound, peopled by gigantic, happy, and long-lived inhabitants, and enjoying a remarkable legal system. A great expedition – at least ten million strong – once set out thence across the Ocean in ships to visit the Hyperboreans; but on learning that theirs was the best land that the old world had to offer, retired in disgust. Among other wonders, Silenus mentioned a frightful whirlpool beyond which no traveller may pass. Two streams flow close by, and trees growing on the banks of the first bear fruit that causes those who eat it to weep and groan and pine away. But fruit growing by the other stream renews the youth even of the very aged: in fact, after passing backwards through middle age, young manhood, and adolescence, they become children again, then infants – and finally disappear! Midas, enchanted by Silenus’s fictions, entertained him for five days and nights, and then ordered a guide to escort him to Dionysus’s headquarters.
³

c
. Dionysus, who had been anxious on Silenus’s account, sent to ask how Midas wished to be rewarded. He replied without hesitation: ‘Pray grant that all I touch be turned into gold.’ However, not only stones, flowers, and the furnishings of his house turned to gold but,
when he sat down to table, so did the food he ate and the water he drank. Midas soon begged to be released from his wish, because he was fast dying of hunger and thirst; whereupon Dionysus, highly entertained, told him to visit the source of the river Pactolus, near Mount Tmolus, and there wash himself. He obeyed, and was at once freed from the golden touch, but the sands of the river Pactolus are bright with gold to this day.
⁴

d
. Midas, having thus entered Asia with his train of Brigians, was adopted by the childless Phrygian King Gordius. While only a poor peasant, Gordius had been surprised one day to see a royal eagle perch on the pole of his ox-cart. Since it seemed prepared to settle there all day, he drove the team towards Phrygian Telmissus, now a part of Galatia, where there was a reliable oracle; but at the gate of the city he met a young prophetess who, when she saw the eagle still perched on the pole, insisted on his offering immediate sacrifices to Zeus the King. ‘Let me come with you, peasant,’ she said, ‘to make sure that you choose the correct victims.’ ‘By all means,’ replied Gordius. ‘You appear to be a wise and considerate young woman. Are you prepared to marry me?’ ‘As soon as the sacrifices have been offered,’ she answered.

e
. Meanwhile, the King of Phrygia had died suddenly, without issue, and an oracle announced: ‘Phrygians, your new king is approaching with his bride, seated in an ox-cart!’

When the ox-cart entered the market place of Telmissus, the eagle at once attracted popular attention, and Gordius was unanimously acclaimed king. In gratitude, he dedicated the cart to Zeus, together with its yoke, which he had knotted to the pole in a peculiar manner. An oracle then declared that whoever discovered how to untie the knot would become the lord of all Asia. Yoke and pole were consequently laid up in the Acropolis at Gordium, a city which Gordius had founded, where the priests of Zeus guarded them jealously for centuries – until Alexander the Macedonian petulantly cut the knot with his sword.
⁵

f
. After Gordius’s death, Midas succeeded to the throne, promoted the worship of Dionysus, and founded the city of Ancyra. The Brigians who had come with him became known as Phrygians, and the kings of Phrygia are alternately named Midas and Gordius to this day; so that the first Midas is now mistakenly described as a son of Gordius.
⁶

g
. Midas attended the famous musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, umpired by the River-god Tmolus. Tmolus awarded the prize to Apollo who, when Midas dissented from the verdict, punished
him with a pair of ass’s ears. For a long time, Midas managed to conceal these under a Phrygian cap; but his barber, made aware of the deformity, found it impossible to keep the shameful secret close, as Midas had enjoined him to do on pain of death. He therefore dug a hole in the river-bank and, first making sure that nobody was about, whispered into it: ‘King Midas has ass’s ears!’ Then he filled up the hole, and went away, at peace with himself until a reed sprouted from the bank and whispered the secret to all who passed. When Midas learned that his disgrace had become public knowledge, he condemned the barber to death, drank bull’s blood, and perished miserably.
⁷

1
. Hyginus:
Fabula
274; Philostratus:
Life of Apollonius of Tyana
vi. 27; Herodotus: i. 14 and viii. 138.

2
. Cicero:
On Divination
i. 36; Valerius Maximus: i. 6. 3; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
xi. 92–3.

3
. Aelian:
Varia Historia
iii. 18.

4
. Plutarch:
Minos
5; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
xi. 90 ff.; Hyginus:
Fabula
191; Virgil;
Eclogues
vi. 13 ff.

5
. Arrian:
Anabasis of Alexander
ii. 3.

6
. Justin: xi. 7; Pausanias: i. 4. 5; Aelian:
Varia Historia
iv. 17.

7
. Ovid:
Metamorphoses
xi. 146 ff.; Persius:
Satires
i. 121; Strabo: i. 3. 21.

1
. Midas has been plausibly identified with Mita, King of the Moschians (‘calf-men’), or Mushki, a people of Pontic origin who, in the middle of the second millennium
B
.
C
., occupied the western part of Thrace, afterwards known as Macedonia; they crossed the Hellespont about the year 1200
B
.
C
., broke the power of the Hittites in Asia Minor, and captured Pteria, their capital. ‘Moschians’ refers perhaps to a cult of the bull-calf as the spirit of the sacred year. Midas’s rose gardens and the account of his birth suggest an orgiastic cult of Aphrodite, to whom the rose was sacred. The story of the golden touch has been invented to account for the riches of the Mita dynasty, and for the presence of gold in the Pactolus river; and it is often said that the ass’s ears were suggested by Midas’s representation as a satyr, with hideously lengthened ears, in Athenian comic drama.