The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (66 page)

2
. But since asses were sacred to his benefactor Dionysus, who set a pair of them among the stars (Hyginus:
Poetic Astronomy
ii. 23), it is likely that the original Midas gloried in his ass disguise. A pair of ass’s ears at the tip of a reed sceptre was the token of royalty carried by all Egyptian dynastic gods, in memory of the time when ass-eared Set (see
35.
4
) ruled their pantheon. Set had greatly declined in power until his temporary
revival by the Hyksos kings of the early second millennium
B
.
C
.; but because the Hittites formed part of the great horde of northern conquerors led by the Hyksos, ass-eared Midas may well have claimed sovereignty over the Hittite Empire in Set’s name. In pre-dynastic times, Set had ruled the second half of the year, and annually murdered his brother Osiris, the spirit of the first half, whose emblem was a bull: they were, in fact, the familiar rival twins perpetually contending for the favours of their sister, the Moon-goddess Isis.

3
. It is likely that the icon from which the story of Midas’s barber derives showed the death of the ass-king. His sun-ray hair, the seat of royal power, is shorn off, like Samson’s (see
91.
1
); his decapitated head is buried in a hole to guard the city of Ancyra from invasion. The reed is an ambivalent symbol: as the ‘tree’ of the twelfth month (see
52.
3
), it gives him an oracular warning of imminent death; it also enroyals his successor. Because of the great magical potency of bull’s blood, only priestesses of the Earth-mother could drink it without harm (see
51.
4
and 155.
a
), and being the blood of Osiris, it would be peculiarly poisonous to an ass-king.

4
. The secret of the Gordian knot seems to have been a religious one, probably the ineffable name of Dionysus, a knot-cypher tied in the rawhide thong. Gordium was the key to Asia (Asia Minor) because its citadel commanded the only practicable trade route from Troy to Antioch; and the local priestess or priest will have communicated the secret to the King of Phrygia alone, as the High-priest alone was entrusted with the ineffable name of Jehovah at Jerusalem. Alexander’s brutal cutting of the knot, when he marshalled his army at Gordium for the invasion of Greater Asia, ended an ancient dispensation by placing the power of the sword above that of religious mystery. Gordius (from
gruzein
, ‘to grunt’ or ‘grumble’) was perhaps so named from the muttering at his oracular shrine.

5
. Why the story of the Atlantic Continent should have been attributed to the drunken Silenus may be divined from three incidents reported by Plutarch (
Life of Solon
25–9). The first is that Solon travelled extensively in Asia Minor and Egypt; the second, that he believed the story of Atlantis (see
39.
b
) and turned it into an epic poem; the third, that he quarrelled with Thespis the dramatist who, in his plays about Dionysus, put ludicrous speeches, apparently full of topical allusions, into the mouths of satyrs. Solon asked: ‘Are you not alarmed, Thespis, to tell so many lies to so large an audience?’ When Thespis answered: ‘What does it matter when the whole play is a joke?’, Solon struck the ground violently with his staff: ‘Encourage such jokes in our theatre, and they will soon creep into our contracts and treaties!’ Aelian, who quotes Theopompus as his authority, seems to have had access at second or third
hand to a comedy by Thespis, or his pupil Pratinas, ridiculing Solon for the Utopian lies told in the epic poem, and presenting him as Silenus, wandering footloose about Egypt and Asia Minor (see
27.
b
). Silenus and Solon are not dissimilar names and as Silenus was tutor to Dionysus, so Solon was tutor to Peisistratus who – perhaps on his advice – founded the Dionysian rites at Athens (see
27.
5
).

6
. It is possible that Solon during his travels had picked up scraps of Atlantian lore which he incorporated in his epic, and which lent themselves to theatrical parody: such as the Gaelic legend of a Land of Youth beyond the Ocean – where Niamh of the Golden Hair took Oisin, and whence he returned centuries later on a visit to Ireland. Oisin, it will be recalled, was disgusted with the degeneracy of his own people compared with Niamh’s, and bitterly regretted having come back. The unnavigable whirlpool is the famous one, assumed by ancient physicists, where the Ocean spills over the edge of the world into nothingness. Solon seems also to have heard geographers discussing the possible existence of an Atlantic Continent: Erathosthenes, Mela, Cicero, and Strabo speculated on it and Seneca foretold its discovery in the second act of his
Medea
– a passage which is said to have made a deep impression on the young Columbus.

84

CLEOBIS AND BITON

C
LEOBIS
and Biton, two young Argives, were the sons of Hera’s priestess at Argos. When the time came for her to perform the rites of the goddess, and the white oxen which were to draw her sacred chariot had not yet arrived from the pasture, Cleobis and Biton, harnessing themselves to the chariot, dragged it to the temple, a distance of nearly five miles. Pleased with their filial devotion, the priestess prayed that the goddess would grant them the best gift she could bestow on mortals; and when she had performed her rites, they went to sleep in the temple, never to wake again.
¹

b
. A similar gift was granted to Agamedes and Trophonius, sons of Erginus. These twins had built a stone threshold upon foundations laid by Apollo himself for his temple at Delphi. His oracle told them: ‘Live merrily and indulge yourselves in every pleasure for six days; on the seventh, your heart’s desire shall be granted.’ On the seventh day both
were found dead in their beds. Hence it is said: ‘Those whom the gods love die young.
²

c
. Trophonius was later awarded an oracle of his own at Lebadeia in Boeotia.
³

1
. Herodotus: i. 31; Pausanias: ii. 20. 2.

2
. Pindar, quoted by Plutarch:
Consolation to Apollonius
14;
Homeric Hymn to Apollo
294–99; Menander:
Fragments of Greek Comedy
iv. 105, ed. Meinecke.

3
. Herodotus: i. 46; Euripides:
Ion
300.

1
. The myth of Cleobis and Biton apparently refers to the human sacrifices offered when a new temple was dedicated to the Moon-goddess: at Argos, twin brothers were chosen as surrogates for the co-kings, and harnessed to a moon-chariot in place of the white bulls, the usual sacrifice. They will have been buried under the temple threshold to keep away hostile influences (see 169.
h
); perhaps this was why the twins Castor and Polydeuces (see
62.
c
) were sometimes called Oebalides, which may mean ‘sons of the temple threshold’ rather than ‘of the speckled sheep-skin’. The priests of Apollo evidently adopted this practice at Delphi, although they denied the Moon-goddess, to whom the sacrifice should have been made, any foothold in the temple.

2
. The seventh day, which was sacred to the Titan Cronus (and to Cronian Jehovah at Jerusalem) had ‘repose’ as its planetary function; but ‘repose’ signified death in the goddess’s honour – hence the hero-oracle awarded to Trophonius (see
51.
1
).

85

NARCISSUS

N
ARCISSUS
was a Thespian, the son of the blue Nymph Leiriope, whom the River-god Cephisus had once encircled with the windings of his streams, and ravished. The seer Teiresias told Leiriope, the first person ever to consult him: ‘Narcissus will live to a ripe old age, provided that he never knows himself.’ Anyone might excusably have fallen in love with Narcissus, even as a child, and when he reached the age of sixteen, his path was strewn with heartlessly rejected lovers of both sexes; for he had a stubborn pride in his own beauty.

b
. Among these lovers was the nymph Echo, who could no longer use her voice, except in foolish repetition of another’s shout: a punishment for having kept Hera entertained with long stories while Zeus’s concubines, the mountain nymphs, evaded her jealous eye and made good their escape. One day when Narcissus went out to net stags, Echo stealthily followed him through the pathless forest, longing to address him, but unable to speak first. At last Narcissus, finding that he had strayed from his companions, shouted: ‘Is anyone here?’

‘Here!’ Echo answered, which surprised Narcissus, since no one was in sight.

‘Come!’

‘Come!’

‘Why do you avoid me?’

‘Why do you avoid me?’

‘Let us come together here!’

‘Let us come together here!’ repeated Echo, and joyfully rushed from her hiding place to embrace Narcissus. Yet he shook her off roughly, and ran away. ‘I will die before you ever lie with me!’ he cried.

‘Lie with me!’ Echo pleaded.

But Narcissus had gone, and she spent the rest of her life in lonely glens, pining away for love and mortification, until only her voice remained.
¹

c
. One day, Narcissus sent a sword to Ameinius, his most insistent suitor, after whom the river Ameinius is named; it is a tributary of the river Helisson, which flows into the Alpheius. Ameinius killed himself on Narcissus’s threshold, calling on the gods to avenge his death.

d
. Artemis heard the plea, and made Narcissus fall in love, though denying him love’s consummation. At Donacon in Thespia he came upon a spring, clear as silver, and never yet disturbed by cattle, birds, wild beasts, or even by branches dropping off the trees that shaded it; and as he cast himself down, exhausted, on the grassy verge to slake his thirst, he fell in love with his reflection. At first he tried to embrace and kiss the beautiful boy who confronted him, but presently recognized himself, and lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour. How could he endure both to possess and yet not to possess? Grief was destroying him, yet he rejoiced in his torments; knowing at least that his other self would remain true to him, whatever happened.

e
. Echo, although she had not forgiven Narcissus, grieved with him;
she sympathetically echoed ‘Alas! Alas!’ as he plunged a dagger in his breast, and also the final ‘Ah, youth, beloved in vain, farewell!’ as he expired. His blood soaked the earth, and up sprang the white narcissus flower with its red corollary, from which an unguent balm is now distilled at Chaeronea. This is recommended for affections of the ears (though apt to give headaches), and as a vulnerary, and for the cure of frost-bite.
²

1
. Ovid:
Metamorphoses
iii. 341–401.

2
. Pausanias: viii. 29.4 and ix. 31. 6; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
402–510; Conon:
Narrations
24; Pliny:
Natural History
xxi. 75.