The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (67 page)

1
. The ‘narcissus’ used in the ancient wreath of Demeter and Persephone (Sophocles:
Oedipus at Colonus
682–4), and also called
leirion
was the three-petalled blue fleur-de-lys or iris: sacred to the Triple-goddess, and worn as a chaplet when the Three Solemn Ones (see 115.
c
), or Erinnyes, were being placated. It flowers in late autumn, shortly before the ‘poet’s narcissus’, which is perhaps why Leiriope has been described as Narcissus’s mother. This fanciful moral tale – incidentally accounting for the medicinal properties of narcissus-oil, a well-known
narc
otic, as the first syllable of ‘Narcissus’ implies – may be deduced from an icon which showed the despairing Alcmaeon (see 107.
e
), or Orestes (see 114.
a
), lying crowned with lilies, beside a pool in which he has vainly tried to purify himself after murdering his mother; the Erinnyes having refused to be placated. Echo, in this icon, would represent the mocking ghost of his mother, and Ameinius his murdered father.

2
. But –
issus
, like
–inthus
, is a Cretan termination, and both Narcissus and Hyacinthus seem to have been names for the Cretan springflower-hero whose death the goddess bewails on the gold ring from the Mycenaean Acropolis; elsewhere he is called Antheus (see 159. 4), a surname of Dionysus. Moreover, the lily was the royal emblem of the Cnossian king. In a painted relief found among the Palace ruins, he walks, sceptre in hand, through a lily-meadow, wearing a crown and necklace of fleur-de-lys.

86

PHYLLIS AND CARYA

P
HYLLIS
, a Thracian princess, was in love with Acamas a son of Theseus, who had gone to fight at Troy. When Troy fell, and the
Athenian fleet returned, Phyllis paid frequent visits to the shore, hoping to sight his ship; but this had been delayed by a leak, and she died of grief after her ninth fruitless visit, at a place called Enneodos. She was metamorphosed by Athene into an almond-tree, and Acamas, arriving on the following day, embraced only her rough bark. In response to his caresses the branches burst into flower instead of leaf, which has been a peculiarity of almond-trees ever since. Every year, the Athenians dance in her honour, and in his.
¹

b
. And Carya, daughter of a Laconian king, was beloved of Dionysus, but died suddenly at Caryae, and was metamorphosed by him into a walnut-tree. Artemis brought the news to the Laconians, who thereupon built a temple to Artemis Caryatis, from which Caryatids – female statues used as columns – take their name. At Caryae too, the Laconian women dance annually in the goddess’s honour, having been instructed by the Dioscuri.
²

1
. Lucian:
On the Dance
40; Hyginus:
Fabula
59; Servius on Virgil’s
Eclogues
v. 10; First Vatican Mythographer 159.

2
. Pausanias: iii. 10. 8 and iv. 16. 5; Servius on Virgil’s
Eclogues
viii. 29.

1
. Both these myths are told to account for the festal use of almond or walnut, in honour of Car, or Carya (see
57.
2
), otherwise known as Metis (see
1.
d
and
9.
d
), the Titaness of Wisdom; and are apparently deduced from an icon which showed a young poet worshipping a nut-tree in the goddess’s presence, while nine young women performed a round dance. Enneodos, which occurs also in the legend of the Thracian Phyllis who drove Demophon mad (see 169.
i
), means ‘nine journeys’, and the number nine was connected with nuts by the Irish bards, and nuts with poetic inspiration; and in their tree-alphabet (see
52.
3
) the letter
coll
(‘C’), meaning ‘hazel’, also expressed the number nine. According to the Irish
Dinnschenchas
, the fountain of inspiration in the river Boyne was overhung by the nine hazels of poetic art, and inhabited by spotted fish which sang. Another Caryae (‘walnut-trees’) in Arcadia, stood close to a stream reported by Pausanias to contain the same peculiar kind of fish (Pausanias: vii. 14. 1–3 and 21. 1; Athenaeus: viii. p. 331).

2
. The goddess Car, who gave her name to Caria, became the Italian divinatory goddess Carmenta, ‘Car the Wise’ (see
52.
5
;
82.
6
;
95.
5
and 132.
0
), and the Caryatids are her nut-nymphs – as the Meliae are ash-nymphs; the Mēliae, apple-nymphs; and the Dryads, oak-nymphs. Pliny has preserved the tradition that Car invented augury (
Natural History
viii. 57). Phyllis (‘leafy’) may be a humble Greek version of the Palestinian and Mesopotamian Great Goddess Belili; in the Demophon myth she is associated with Rhea (see 169.
j
).

87

ARION

A
RION
of Lesbos, a son of Poseidon and the Nymph Oneaea, was a master of the lyre, and invented the dithyramb in Dionysus’s honour. One day his patron Periander, tyrant of Corinth, reluctantly gave him permission to visit Taenarus in Sicily, where he had been invited to compete in a musical festival. Arion won the prize, and his admirers showered on him so many rich gifts that these excited the greed of the sailors engaged to bring him back to Corinth.

‘We much regret, Arion, that you will have to die,’ remarked the captain of the ship.

‘What crime have I committed?’ asked Arion.

‘You are too rich,’ replied the captain.

‘Spare my life, and I will give you all my prizes,’ Arion pleaded.

‘You would only retract your promise on reaching Corinth,’ said the captain, ‘and so would I, in your place. A forced gift is no gift.’

‘Very well,’ cried Arion resignedly. ‘But pray allow me to sing a last song.’

When the captain gave his permission, Arion, dressed in his finest robe, mounted on the prow, where he invoked the gods with impassioned strains, and then leaped overboard. The ship sailed on.

b
. However, his song had attracted a school of music-loving dolphins, one of which took Arion on his back, and that evening he overtook the ship and reached the port of Corinth several days before it cast anchor there. Periander was overjoyed at his miraculous escape, and the dolphin, loth to part from Arion, insisted on accompanying him to court, where it soon succumbed to a life of luxury. Arion gave it a splendid funeral.

When the ship docked, Periander sent for the captain and crew, whom he asked with pretended anxiety for news of Arion.

‘He has been delayed at Taenarus,’ the captain answered, ‘by the lavish hospitality of the inhabitants.’

Periander made them all swear at the dolphin’s tomb that this was the truth, and then suddenly confronted them with Arion. Unable to deny their guilt, they were executed on the spot. Apollo later set the images of Arion and his lyre among the stars.
¹

c
. Nor was Arion the first man to have been saved by a dolphin. A dolphin rescued Enalus when he leaped overboard to join his sweetheart Phineis who, in accordance with an oracle, had been chosen by lot and thrown into the sea to appease Amphitrite – for this was the expedition which the sons of Penthilus were leading to Lesbos as the island’s first colonists – and the dolphin’s mate rescued Phineis. Another dolphin saved Phalanthus from drowning in the Crisaean Sea on his way to Italy. Likewise Icadius, the Cretan brother of Iapys, when shipwrecked on a voyage to Italy, was guided by a dolphin to Delphi and gave the place its name; for the dolphin was Apollo in disguise.
²

1
. Herodotus: i. 24; Scholiast on Pindar’s
Olympian Odes
xiii. 25; Hyginus:
Fabula
194; Pausanias: iii. 25. 5.

2
. Plutarch:
Banquet of the Seven Wise Men
20; Pausanias: x. 13. 5; Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
iii. 332.

1
. Both Arion and Periander are historical characters of the seventh century
B
.
C
., and a fragment of Arion’s
Hymn to Poseidon
survives. The story is perhaps based partly on a tradition that Arion’s songs attracted a school of dolphins and thus dissuaded some sailors from murdering him for his money – dolphins and seals are notoriously susceptible to music – partly on a misinterpretation of a statue which showed the god Palaemon, lyre in hand, arriving at Corinth on dolphin-back (see
70.
5
). Mythic colour is lent to the story by making Arion a son of Poseidon, as was his namesake, the wild horse Arion (see
16.
f
), and by giving his name to the Lyre constellation. Pausanias, a level-headed and truthful writer, doubts Herodotus’s hearsay story about Arion; but reports that he has seen with his own eyes the dolphin at Poroselene, which was mauled by fishermen, but had its wounds dressed by a boy, coming in answer to the boy’s call and gratefully allowing him to ride on its back (iii. 25.
5
). This suggests that the ritual advent of the New Year Child was dramatically presented at Corinth with the aid of a tame dolphin trained by the Sun-priests.

2
. The myth of Enalus and Phineis is probably deduced from an icon which showed Amphitrite and Triton riding on dolphins. Enalus is also associated by Plutarch with an octopus cult, and his name recalls that of
Oedipus the Corinthian New Year Child (see 105.
1
), whose counterpart he will have been at Mytilene, as Phalanthus was in Italy. Taras, a son of Poseidon by Minos’s daughter Satyraea (‘of the satyrs’), was the dolphin-riding New Year Child of Tarentum, which he is said to have founded, and where he had a hero shrine (Pausanias: x. 10. 4 and 13. 5; Strabo: vi. 3. 2); Phalanthus, the founder of Dorian Tarentum in 708
B
.
C
., took over the dolphin cult from the Cretanized Sicels whom he found there.

3
. Icadius’s name, which means ‘twentieth’, is connected perhaps with the date of the month on which his advent was celebrated.

88

MINOS AND HIS BROTHERS

W
HEN
Zeus left Europe, after having fathered Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon on her in Crete, she married Asterius, the reigning king, whose father Tectamus son of Dorus had brought a mixed colony of Aeolian and Pelasgian settlers to the island and there married a daughter of Cretheus the Aeolian.
¹

b
. This marriage proving childless, Asterius adopted Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon, and made them his heirs. But when the brothers grew to manhood, they quarrelled for the love of a beautiful boy named Miletus, begotten by Apollo on the Nymph Areia, whom some call Deione, and others, Theia.
²
Miletus having decided that he liked Sarpedon best, was driven from Crete by Minos, and sailed with a large fleet to Caria in Asia Minor, where he founded the city and kingdom of Miletus. For the previous two generations, this country, then called Anactoria, had been ruled by the giant Anax, a son of Uranus and Mother Earth, and by his equally gigantic son Asterius. The skeleton of Asterius, whom Miletus killed and afterwards buried on an islet lying off Lade, has lately been disinterred; it is at least ten cubits long. Some, however, say that Minos suspected Miletus of plotting to overthrow him and seize the kingdom; but that he feared Apollo, and therefore refrained from doing more than warn Miletus, who fled to Caria of his own accord.
³
Others say that the boy who occasioned the quarrel was not Miletus but one Atymnius, a son of Zeus and Cassiopeia, or of Phoenix.
⁴