The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (80 page)

v
. Ariadne was soon revenged on Theseus. Whether in grief for her loss, or in joy at the sight of the Attic coast, from which he had been kept by prolonged winds, he forgot his promise to hoist the white sail.
²⁶
Aegeus, who stood watching for him on the Acropolis, where the Temple of the Wingless Victory now stands, sighted the black sail, swooned, and fell headlong to his death into the valley below. But some say that he deliberately cast himself into the sea, which was thenceforth named the Aegean.
²⁷

w
. Theseus was not informed of this sorrowful accident until he had completed the sacrifices vowed to the gods for his safe return; he then buried Aegeus, and honoured him with a hero-shrine. On the eighth day of Pyanepsion [October], the date of the return from Crete, loyal Athenians flock down to the seashore, with cooking-pots in which they stew different kinds of beans – to remind their children how Theseus, having been obliged to place his crew on very short rations, cooked all his remaining provisions in one pot as soon as he landed, and filled their empty bellies at last. At this same festival a thanksgiving is sung for the end of hunger, and an olive-branch, wreathed in white wool and hung with the season’s fruits, is carried to commemorate the one which Theseus dedicated before setting out. Since this was harvest time, Theseus also instituted the Festival of Grape Boughs, either in gratitude to Athene and Dionysus, both of whom appeared to him on Naxos, or in honour of Dionysus and Ariadne. The two bough-bearers represent the youths whom Theseus had taken to Crete disguised as maidens, and who walked beside him in the triumphal procession after his return. Fourteen women carry provisions and take part in this sacrifice; they represent the mothers of the rescued victims, and their task is to tell fables and ancient myths, as these mothers also did before the ship sailed.
²⁸

x
. Theseus dedicated a temple to Saviour Artemis in the market place at Troezen; and his fellow-citizens honoured him with a sanctuary while he was still alive. Such families as had been liable to the Cretan tribute undertook to supply the needful sacrifices; and Theseus awarded his priesthood to the Phytalids, in gratitude for their hospitality. The vessel in which he sailed to Crete has made an annual voyage to Delos and back ever since; but has been so frequently overhauled
and refitted that philosophers cite it as a stock instance, when discussing the problem of continuous identity.
²⁹

1
. Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 5; Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
viii. 294; First Vatican Mythographer: 47; Pausanias: i. 27. 9; Plutarch:
Theseus
14; Hesychius
sub
Bolynthos.

2
. Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Callimachus:
Fragment
40, ed. Bentley; Ovid:
Remedies of Love
747.

3
. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 61; Hyginus:
Fabula
41; Apollodorus: iii. 1. 4; Pausanias. ii. 31. 1.

4
. Plutarch:
Theseus
17; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 7; Scholiast on Homer’s
Iliad
xviii. 590; Diodorus Siculus:
loc cit
.; Hellanicus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
19.

5
. Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Simonides, quoted by Plutarch:
loc. cit
.

6
. Plutarch:
Theseus
18; Demon’s
History
, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
23.

7
. Philochorus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
17; Simonides, quoted by Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Pausanias: i. 1. 2.

8
. Plutarch:
Theseus
18.

9
. Plutrach:
loc cit
.; Scholiast on Aristophanes’s
Knights
725.

10
. Pausanias: i. 42. 1; Hyginus:
Poetic Astronomy
ii. 5; Plutarch:
Theseus
29.

11
. Pausanias: i. 17. 3; Hyginus:
loc. cit
.

12
. Plutarch:
Theseus
29; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 8.

13
. Scholiast on Homer’s
Odyssey
xi. 322, quoted by Pherecydes; Homer:
Iliad
xviii. 590; Eustathius on Homer’s
Odyssey
xi. 320; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 9; Ovid:
Heroides
iv. 115; Pausanias: iii. 18. 7.

14
. Pausanias: ii. 31. 1; Pherecydes, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
19; Demon, quoted by Plutarch:
loc cit.

15
. Scholiast on Theocritus’s
Idylls
ii. 45; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 61. 5; Catullus: lxiv. 50 ff.; Plutarch:
Theseus
29; Hyginus:
Fabula
43.

16
. Pausanias: x. 29. 2; Diodorus Siculus. v. 51. 4; Scholiast on Theocritus:
loc.cit
.

17
. Pausanias: i. 20.2; Catullus: lxiv. 50 ff.; Hyginus:
Poetic Astronomy
ii. 5.

18
. Plutarch:
Theseus
20; Bacchylides: xvi. 116.

19
. Plutarch:
Romulus and Theseus Compared
; Philochorus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
15; Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
vi. 14; Philochorus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
19.

20
. Aristotle:
Constitution of the Bottiaeans
, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
16; Plutarch:
Greek Questions
35.

21
. Cleidemus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
19.

22
. Hesychius
sub
Aridela; Paeonius, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
21;
Contest of Homer and Hesiod
14.

23
. Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Pausanias: viii. 48.2 and ix. 40.2; Callimachus:
Hymn to Delos
312.

24
. Callimachus:
Hymn to Apollo
60 ff.; Plutarch:
loc. cit
. and
Which Animals Are the Craftier?
35.

25
. Plutarch:
Theseus
21; Callimachus:
Hymn to Delos
312 ff.; Homer:
Iliad
xviii. 591–2; Pausanias: ix. 40. 2; Pliny:
Natural History
xxxvi. 19; Scholiast on Homer’s
Iliad
xviii. 590; Eustathius on Homer’s
Iliad
p. 1166; Virgil:
Aeneid
v. 588 ff.

26
. Catullus: lxiv. 50 ff.; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 10; Plutarch:
Theseus
22.

27
. Catullus:
loc. cit
.; Pausanias: i. 22. 4–5; Plutarch:
loc. cit
. and
Romulus and Theseus Compared
; Hyginus:
Fabula
43.

28
. Pausanias: i. 22. 5; Plutarch:
Theseus
22 and 23; Proclus:
Chrestomathy
, quoted by Photius: 989.

29
. Pausanias: iii. 31. 1; Plutarch:
loc cit
.

1
. Greece was Cretanized towards the close of the eighteenth century
B
.
C
., probably by an Hellenic aristocracy which had seized power in Crete a generation or two earlier and there initiated a new culture. The straightforward account of Theseus’s raid on Cnossus, quoted by Plutarch from Cleidemus, makes reasonable sense. It describes a revolt by the Athenians against a Cretan overlord who had taken hostages for their good behaviour; the secret building of a flotilla; the sack of the unwalled city of Cnossus during the absence of the main Cretan fleet in Sicily; and a subsequent peace treaty ratified by the Athenian king’s marriage with Ariadne, the Cretan heiress. These events, which point to about the year 1400
B
.
C
., are paralleled by the mythical account: a tribute of youths and maidens is demanded from Athens in requital for the murder of a Cretan prince. Theseus, by craftily killing the Bull of Minos, or defeating Minos’s leading commander in a wrestling match, relieves Athens of this tribute; marries Ariadne, the royal heiress; and makes peace with Minos himself.

2
. Theseus’s killing of the bull-headed Asterius, called the Minotaur, or ‘Bull of Minos’; his wrestling match with Taurus (‘bull’); and his capture of the Cretan bull, are all versions of the same event.
Bolynthos
, which gave its name to Attic Probalinthus, was the Cretan name for ‘wild bull’. ‘Minos’ was the title of a Cnossian dynasty, which had a sky-bull for its emblem – ‘Asterius’ could mean ‘of the sun’ or ‘of the sky’ – and it was in bull-form that the king seems to have coupled ritually with the Chief-priestess as Moon-cow (see
88.
7
). One element in the formation of the Labyrinth myth may have been that the palace at Cnossus –the house of the
labrys
, or double-axe – was a complex of rooms and corridors, and that the Athenian raiders had difficulty in finding and killing the king when they captured it. But this is not all. An open space in front of the palace was occupied by a dance floor with a maze pattern
used to guide performers of an erotic spring dance (see
92.
4
). The origin of this pattern, now also called a labyrinth, seems to have been the traditional brushwood maze used to decoy partridges towards one of their own cocks, caged in a central enclosure, which uttered food-calls, love-calls, and challenges; and the spring dancers will have imitated the ecstatic hobbling love-dance of the cock-partridges (see
92.
2
), whose fate was to be knocked on the head by the hunter (
Ecclesiasticus
xi. 30).