The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (82 page)

1
. Hyginus:
Fabula
244; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 11; Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
viii. 54; Euripides:
Hippolytus
34–7; Pausanias: i. 22. 2; i. 28. 10 and viii. 3. 1.

2
. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 61; Thucydides: ii. 15; Plutarch:
Theseus
24.

3
. Thucydides:
loc. cit
.; Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Scholiast on Aristophanes’s
Peace
962.

4
. Pausanias: viii. 2.1 and i. 22. 3; Plutarch:
loc cit
.

5
. Plutarch:
Theseus
25; Homer:
Odyssey
383 ff. and xix. 135; Plato:
Symposium
188d and
Republic
529e; Herodotus: vii. 31.

6
. Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Homer:
Iliad
ii. 552 ff.; Pausanias: i. 3. 2.

7
. Strabo: ix. 1. 6.

1
. The mythical element of the Theseus story has here been submerged in what purports to be Athenian constitutional history; but the Federalization of Attica is dated several hundred years too early; and Theseus’s democratic reforms are fifth-century propaganda, probably invented by Cleisthenes. Legal reforms made during the late Jewish monarchy were similarly attributed to Moses by the editors of the Pentateuch.

2
. Oxen provided the standard of value in ancient Greece, Italy, and Ireland, as they still do among backward pastoral tribes of East Africa, and the Athenians struck no coins until nearly five hundred years after the Trojan War. But it is true that Cretan copper ingots of a fixed weight were officially stamped with a bull’s head, or a recumbent calf (Sir Arthur Evans:
Minoan Weights and Mediums of Currency
p. 335); and the Butadae of Athens, who seem to have been largely responsible for the development of the Theseus myth, may have had this tradition in mind when they coined money stamped with the ox-head, their clan-device.

3
. The division of Attica into twelve communities is paralleled by a similar arrangement in the Nile Delta and in Etruria, and by the distribution of conquered Canaanite territory among the twelve tribes of Israel; the number may in each case have been chosen to allow for a monthly progress of the monarch from tribe to tribe. Greeks of the heroic age did
not distinguish between murder and manslaughter; in either case a blood-price had to be paid to the victim’s clan, and the killer then changed his name and left the city for ever. Thus Telamon and Peleus continued to be highly regarded by the gods after their treacherous murder of Phocus (see
81.
b
); and Medea killed Apsyrtus without antagonizing her new Corinthian subjects (see 153.
a
and 156.
a
). At Athens, however, in the Classical period, wilful murder (
phonos
) carried the death penalty: manslaughter (
akousia
), that of banishment; and the clan was bound by law to prosecute.
Phonos hekousios
(justifiable homicide) and
phonos akousios
(excusable homicide) were later refinements, which Draco probably introduced in the seventh century
B
.
C
.; the latter alone demanded expiation by ritual cleansing. The mythographers have not understood that Theseus evaded permanent exile for the murder of the Pallantids only by exterminating the entire clan, as David did with the ‘House of Saul’. A year’s absence at Troezen sufficed to rid the city of the pollution caused by the murder.

100

THESEUS AND THE AMAZONS

S
OME
say that Theseus took part in Heracles’s successful expedition against the Amazons, and received as his share of the booty their queen Antiope, also called Melanippe; but that this was not so unhappy a fate for her as many thought, because she had betrayed the city of Themiscyra on the river Thermodon to him, in proof of the passion he had already kindled in her heart.
¹

b
. Others say that Theseus visited their country some years later, in the company of Peirithous and his comrades; and that the Amazons, delighted at the arrival of so many handsome warriors, offered them no violence. Antiope came to greet Theseus with gifts, but she had hardly climbed aboard his ship, before he weighed anchor and abducted her. Others again say that he stayed for some time in Amazonia, and entertained Antiope as his guest. They add that among his companions were three Athenian brothers, Euneus, Thoas, and Soloön, the last of whom fell in love with Antiope but, not daring to approach her directly, asked Euneus to plead his cause. Antiope rejected these advances, though continuing to treat Soloön no less civilly than before,
and it was not until he had thrown himself into the river Thermodon and drowned, that Theseus realized what had been afoot, and became much distressed. Remembering a warning given him by the Delphic Oracle that, if he should ever find himself greatly afflicted in a strange country, he must found a city and leave behind some of his companions to govern it, he built Pythopolis, in honour of Pythian Apollo, and named the near-by river Soloön. There he left Euneus, Thoas, and one Hermus, an Athenian noble, whose former residence in Pythopolis is now mistakenly called ‘Hermes’s House’. He then sailed away with Antiope.
²

c
. Antiope’s sister Oreithyia, mistaken by some for Hippolyte whose girdle Heracles won, swore vengeance on Theseus. She concluded an alliance with the Scythians, and led a large force of Amazons across the ice of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, then crossed the Danube and passed through Thrace, Thessaly, and Boeotia. At Athens she encamped on the Areiopagus and there sacrificed to Ares; an event from which, some say, the hill won its name; but first she ordered a detachment to invade Laconia and discourage the Peloponnesians from reinforcing Theseus by way of the Isthmus.
³

d
. The Athenian forces were already marshalled, but neither side cared to begin hostilities. At last, on the advice of an oracle, Theseus sacrificed to Phobus, son of Ares, and offered battle on the seventh day of Boedromion, the date on which the Boedromia is now celebrated at Athens; though some say the festival had already been founded in honour of the victory which Xuthus won over Eumolpus in the reign of Erechtheus. The Amazons’ battle-front stretched between what is now called the Amazonium and the Pnyx Hill near Chrysa. Theseus’s right wing moved down from the Museum and fell upon their left wing, but was routed and forced to retire as far as the Temple of the Furies. This incident is recalled by a stone raised to the local commander Chalcodon, in a street lined with the tombs of those who fell, and called after him. The Athenian left wing, however, charged from the Palladium, Mount Ardettus and the Lyceum, and drove the Amazon right wing back to their camp, inflicting heavy casualties.
⁴

e
. Some say that the Amazons offered peace terms only after four months of hard fighting; the armistice, sworn near the sanctuary of Theseus, is still commemorated in the Amazonian sacrifice on the eve of his festival. But others say that Antiope, now Theseus’s wife, fought heroically at his side, until shot dead by one Molpadia, whom Theseus
then killed; that Oreithyia with a few followers escaped to Megara, where she died of grief and despair; and that the remaining Amazons, driven from Attica by the victorious Theseus, settled in Scythia.
⁵

f
. This, at any rate, was the first time that the Athenians repulsed foreign invaders. Some of the Amazons left wounded on the field of battle were sent to Chalcis to be cured. Antiope and Molpadia are buried near the temple of Mother Earth, and an earthen pillar marks Antiope’s grave. Others lie in the Amazonium. Those Amazons who fell while crossing Thessaly lie buried between Scotussaea and Cynoscephalae; a few more, near Chaeronaea by the river Haemon. In the Pyrrhichan region of Laconia, shrines mark the place where the Amazons halted their advance and dedicated two wooden images to Artemis and Apollo; and at Troezen a temple of Ares commemorates Theseus’s victory over this detachment when it attempted to force the Isthmus on its return.
⁶

g
. According to one account, the Amazons entered Thrace by way of Phrygia, not Scythia, and founded the sanctuary of Ephesian Artemis as they marched along the coast. According to another, they had taken refuge in this sanctuary on two earlier occasions: namely in their flight from Dionysus, and after Heracles’s defeat of Queen Hippolyte; and its true founders were Cresus and Ephesus.
⁷

h
. The truth about Antiope seems to be that she survived the battle, and that Theseus was eventually compelled to kill her, as the Delphic Oracle had foretold, when he entered into an alliance with King Deucalion the Cretan, and married his sister Phaedra. The jealous Antiope, who was not his legal wife, interrupted the wedding festivities by bursting in, fully armed, and threatening to massacre the guests. Theseus and his companions hastily closed the doors, and despatched her in a grim combat, though she had borne him Hippolytus, also called Demophoön, and never lain with another man.
⁸

1
. Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 16; Hegias of Troezen, quoted by Pausanias: i. 2. 1.

2
. Pindar, quoted by Pausanias: i. 2. 1; Pherecydes and Bion, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
26; Menecrates, quoted by Plutarch:
loc cit
.

3
. Justin: ii. 4; Hellanicus, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
26–7; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 28; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 16; Aeschylus:
Eumenides
680 ff.

4
. Plutarch:
Theseus
27;
Etymologicum Magnum: sub
Boedromia; Euripides:
Ion
59; Cleidemus, quoted by Plutarch:
loc. cit
.

5
. Cleidemus, quoted by Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Plutarch:
loc. cit
.; Pausanias: i. 41. 7; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 28.

6
. Plutarch:
loc cit
.; Pausanias: i. 2. 1; i. 41. 7; iii. 25. 2 and ii. 32. 8.

7
. Pindar, quoted by Pausanias: vii. 2. 4.

8
. Hyginus:
Fabula
241; Apollodorus:
Epitome
i. 17; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 62; Ovid:
Heroides
121 ff.; Pausanias: i. 22. 2; Pindar, quoted by Plutarch:
Theseus
28.