The Greek Myths

by Robert Graves

  4. ‘Proetus’ seems to be another name for Ophion, the Demiurge (see 1. a). The mother of his daughters was Stheneboea, the Moon-goddess as cow – namely Io, who was maddened in much the same way (see 56. a) – and their names are titles of the same goddess in her destructive capacity as Lamia (see 61. 1), and as Hippolyte, whose wild mares tore the sacred king to pieces at the end of his reign (see 71. a). But the orgy for which the Moon-priestesses dressed as mares should be distinguished from the rain-making gadfly dance for which they dressed as heifers (see 56. 1); and from the autumn goat-cult revel, when they tore children and animals to pieces under the toxic influence of mead, wine, or ivy-beer (see 27. 2). The Aeolians’ capture of the goddess’s shrine at Lusi, recorded here in mythic form, will have put an end to the wild-mare orgies; Demeter’s rape by Poseidon (see 16. 5) records the same event. Libations poured to the Serpent-goddess in an Arcadian shrine between Sicyon and Lusi may account for the story of Iphinoë’s death.

  5. The official recognition at Delphi, Corinth, Sparta, and Athens of Dionysus’s ecstatic wine cult, given many centuries later, was aimed at the discouragement of all earlier, more primitive, rites; and seems to have put an end to cannibalism and ritual murder, except in the wilder parts of Greece. At Patrae in Achaea, for instance, Artemis Tridaria (‘threefold assigner of lots’) had required the annual sacrifice of boys and girls, their heads wreathed with ivy and corn, at her harvest orgies. This custom, said to atone for the desecration of the sanctuary by two lovers, Melanippus and Comaetho priestess of Artemis, was ended by the arrival of a chest containing an image of Dionysus, brought by Eurypylus (see 160. x) from Troy (Pausanias: vii. 19. 1–3).

  6. Melampodes (‘black feet’), is a common Classical name for the Egyptians (see 60. 5); and these stories of how Melampus understood what birds or insects were saying are likely to be of African, not Aeolian, origin.

  73

  PERSEUS

  ABAS, King of Argolis and grandson of Danaus, was so renowned a warrior that, after he died, rebels against the royal House could be put to flight merely by displaying his shield. He married Aglaia, to whose twin sons, Proetus and Acrisius, he bequeathed his kingdom, bidding them rule alternately. Their quarrel, which began in the womb, became more bitter than ever when Proetus lay with Acrisius’s daughter Danaë, and barely escaped alive.1 Since Acrisius now refused to give up the throne at the end of his term, Proetus fled to the court of Iobates, King of Lycia, whose daughter Stheneboea, or Anteia, he married; returning presently at the head of a Lycian army to support his claims to the succession. A bloody battle was fought, but since neither side gained the advantage, Proetus and Acrisius reluctantly agreed to divide the kingdom between them. Acrisius’s share was to be Argos and its environs; Proetus’s was to be Tiryns, the Heraeum (now part of Mycenae), Midea, and the coast of Argolis.2

  b. Seven gigantic Cyclopes, called Gasterocheires, because they earned their living as masons, accompanied Proetus from Lycia, and fortified Tiryns with massive walls, using blocks of stone so large that a mule team could not have stirred the least of them.3

  c. Acrisius, who was married to Aganippe, had no sons, but only this one daughter Danaë whom Proteus had seduced; and, when he asked an oracle how to procure a male heir, was told: ‘You will have no sons, and your grandson must kill you.’ To forestall this fate, Acrisius imprisoned Danaë in a dungeon with brazen doors, guarded by savage dogs; but, despite these precautions, Zeus came upon her in a shower of gold, and she bore him a son named Perseus. When Acrisius learned of Danaë’s condition, he would not believe that Zeus was the father, and suspected his brother Proetus of having renewed his intimacy with her; but, not daring to kill his own daughter, locked her and the infant Perseus in a wooden ark, which he cast into the sea. This ark was washed towards the island of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys netted it, hauled it ashore, broke it open and found both Danaë and Perseus still alive. He took them at once to his brother, King Polydectes, who reared Perseus in his own house.4

  d. Some years passed and Perseus, grown to manhood, defended Danaë against Polydectes who, with his subjects’ support, had tried to force marriage upon her. Polydectes then assembled his friends and, pretending that he was about to sue for the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of Pelops, asked them to contribute one horse apiece as his love-gift. ‘Seriphos is only a small island,’ he said, ‘but I do not wish to cut a poor figure beside the wealthy suitors from the mainland. Will you be able to help me, noble Perseus?’

  ‘Alas,’ answered Perseus, ‘I possess no horse, nor any gold to buy one. But if you intend to marry Hippodameia, and not my mother, I will contrive to win whatever gift you name.’ He added rashly: ‘Even the Gorgon Medusa’s head, if need be.’

  e. ‘That would indeed please me more than any horse in the world,’ replied Polydectes at once.5 Now, the Gorgon Medusa had serpents for hair, huge teeth, protruding tongue, and altogether so ugly a face that all who gazed at it were petrified with fright.

  f. Athene overheard the conversation at Seriphos and, being a sworn enemy of Medusa’s, for whose frightful appearance she had herself been responsible, accompanied Perseus on his adventure. First she led him to the city of Deicterion in Samos, where images of all the three Gorgons are displayed, thus enabling him to distinguish Medusa from her immortal sisters Stheno and Euryale; then she warned him never to look at Medusa directly, but only at her reflection, and presented him with a brightly-polished shield.

  g. Hermes also helped Perseus, giving him an adamantine sickle with which to cut off Medusa’s head. But Perseus still needed a pair of winged sandals, a magic wallet to contain the decapitated head, and the dark helmet of invisibility which belonged to Hades. All these things were in the care of the Stygian Nymphs, from whom Perseus had to fetch them; but their whereabouts were known only to the Gorgons’ sisters, the three swan-like Graeae, who had a single eye and tooth among the three of them. Perseus accordingly sought out the Graeae on their thrones at the foot of Mount Atlas. Creeping up behind them, he snatched the eye and tooth, as they were being passed from one sister to another, and would not return either until he had been told where the Stygian Nymphs lived.6

  h. Perseus then collected the sandals, wallet, and helmet from the nymphs, and flew westwards to the Land of the Hyperboreans, where he found the Gorgons asleep, among rain-worn shapes of men and wild beasts pertrified by Medusa. He fixed his eyes on the reflection in the shield, Athene guided his hand, and he cut off Medusa’s head with one stroke of the sickle; whereupon, to his surprise, the winged horse Pegasus, and the warrior Chrysaor grasping a golden falchion, sprang fully-grown from her dead body. Perseus was unaware that these had been begotten on Medusa by Poseidon in one of Athene’s temples, but decided not to antagonize them further. Hurriedly thrusting the head into his wallet, he took flight; and though Stheno and Euryale, awakened by their new nephews, rose to pursue him, the helmet made Perseus invisible, and he escaped safely southward.7

  i. At sunset, Perseus alighted near the palace of the Titan Atlas to whom, as a punishment for his inhospitality, he showed the Gorgon’s head and thus transformed him into a mountain; and on the following day turned eastward and flew across the Libyan desert, Hermes helping him to carry the weighty head. By the way he dropped the Graeae’s eye and tooth into Lake Triton; and some drops of Gorgon blood fell on the desert sand, where they bred a swarm of venomous serpents, one of which later killed Mopsus the Argonaut.8

  j. Perseus paused for refreshment at Chemmis in Egypt, where he is still worshipped, and then flew on. As he rounded the coast of Philistia to the north, he caught sight of a naked woman chained to a sea-cliff, and instantly fell in love with her. This was Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, the Ethiopian King of Joppa, and Cassiopeia.9 Cassiopeia had boasted that both she and her daughter were more beautiful than the Nereids, who complained of this insult to their protector Poseidon. Poseidon sent a flood and a female sea-monster to devastate Philistia; and when Cepheus consulted the
Oracle of Ammon, he was told that his only hope of deliverance lay in sacrificing Andromeda to the monster. His subjects had therefore obliged him to chain her to a rock, naked except for certain jewels, and leave her to be devoured.

  k. As Perseus flew towards Andromeda, he saw Cepheus and Cassiopeia watching anxiously from the shore near by, and alighted beside them for a hurried consultation. On condition that, if he rescued her, she should be his wife and return to Greece with him, Perseus took to the air again, grasped his sickle and, diving murderously from above, beheaded the approaching monster, which was deceived by his shadow on the sea. He had drawn the Gorgon’s head from the wallet, lest the monster might look up, and now laid it face downwards on a bed of leaves and sea-weed (which instantly turned to coral), while he cleansed his hands of blood, raised three altars and sacrified a calf, a cow, and a bull to Hermes, Athene, and Zeus respectively.10

  l. Cepheus and Cassiopeia grudgingly welcomed him as their son-in-law and, on Andromeda’s insistence, the wedding took place at once; but the festivities were rudely interrupted when Agenor, King Belus’s twin brother, entered at the head of an armed party, claiming Andromeda for himself. He was doubtless summoned by Cassiopeia, since she and Cepheus at once broke faith with Perseus, pleading that the promise of Andromeda’s hand had been forced from them by circumstances, and that Agenor’s claim was the prior one.

  ‘Perseus must die!’ cried Cassiopeia fiercely.

  m. In the ensuing fight, Perseus struck down many of his opponents but, being greatly outnumbered, was forced to snatch the Gorgon’s head from its bed of coral and turn the remaining two hundred of them to stone.11

  n. Poseidon set the images of Cepheus and Cassiopeia among the stars – the latter, as a punishment for her treachery, is tied in a market-basket which, at some seasons of the year, turns upside-down, so that she looks ridiculous. But Athene afterwards placed Andromeda’s image in a more honourable constellation, because she had insisted on marrying Perseus, despite her parents’ ill faith. The marks left by her chains are still pointed out on a cliff near Joppa; and the monster’s petrified bones were exhibited in the city itself until Marcus Aemilius Scaurus had them taken to Rome during his aedileship.12

  o. Perseus returned hurriedly to Seriphos, taking Andromeda with him, and found that Danaë and Dictys, threatened by the violence of Polydectes who, of course, never intended to marry Hippodameia, had taken refuge in a temple. He therefore went straight to the palace where Polydectes was banqueting with his companions, and announced that he had brought the promised love-gift. Greeted by a storm of insults, he displayed the Gorgon’s head, averting his own gaze as he did so, and turned them all to stone; the circle of boulders is still shown in Seriphos. He then gave the head to Athene, who fixed it on her aegis; and Hermes returned the sandals, wallet, and helmet to the guardianship of the Stygian nymphs.13

  p. After raising Dictys to the throne of Seriphos, Perseus set sail for Argos, accompanied by his mother, his wife, and a party of Cyclopes. Acrisius, hearing of their approach, fled to Pelasgian Larissa; but Perseus happened to be invited there for the funeral games which King Teutamides was holding in honour of his dead father, and competed in the fivefold contest. When it came to the discus-throw, his discus, carried out of its path by the wind and the will of the Gods, struck Acrisius’s foot and killed him.14

  q. Greatly grieved, Perseus buried his grandfather in the temple of Athene which crowns the local acropolis and then, being ashamed to reign in Argos, went to Tiryns, where Proetus had been succeeded by his son Megapenthes, and arranged to exchange kingdoms with him. So Megapenthes moved to Argos, while Perseus reigned in Tiryns and presently won back the other two parts of Proetus’s original kingdom.

  r. Perseus fortified Midea, and founded Mycenae, so called because, when he was thirsty, a mushroom [mycos] sprang up, and provided him with a stream of water. The Cyclopes built the walls of both cities.15

  s. Others give a very different account of the matter. They say that Polydectes succeeded in marrying Danaë, and reared Perseus in the temple of Athene. Some years later, Acrisius heard of their survival and sailed to Seriphos, resolving this time to kill Perseus with his own hand. Polydectes intervened and made each of them solemnly swear never to attempt the other’s life. However, a storm arose and, while Acrisius’s ship was still hauled up on the beach, weather-bound, Polydectes died. During his funeral games, Perseus threw a discus which accidentally struck Acrisius on the head and killed him. Perseus then sailed to Argos and claimed the throne, but found that Proetus had usurped it, and therefore turned him into stone; thus he now reigned over the whole of Argolis, until Megapenthes avenged his father’s death by murdering him.16

  t. As for the Gorgon Medusa, they say that she was a beautiful daughter of Phorcys, who had offended Athene, and led the Libyans of Lake Tritonis in battle. Perseus, coming from Argos with an army, was helped by Athene to assassinate Medusa. He cut off her head by night, and buried it under a mound of earth in the market place at Argos. This mound lies close to the grave of Perseus’s daughter Gorgophone, notorious as the first widow ever to remarry.17

  1. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 286; Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 965; Apollodorus: ii. 2. 1 and 4. 7.

  2. Homer: Iliad vi. 160; Apollodorus: ii. 2. 1; Pausanias: ii. 16. 2.

  3. Pausanias: ii. 25. 7; Strabo: viii. 6. 11.

  4. Hyginus: Fabula 63; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 1; Horace: Odes iii. 16. 1.

  5. Aollodorus: ii. 4. 2.

  6. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 12.

  7. Pindar: Pythian Odes x. 31; Ovid: Metamorphoses iv. 780; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 3.

  8. Euripides: Electra 459–63; Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 12; Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 1513 ff.

  9. Herodotus: ii. 91; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 836; Strabo: i. 2. 35; Pliny: Natural History vi. 35.

  10 Apollodorus: ii. 4. 3; Hyginus: Fabula 64; Ovid: Metamorphoses iv. 740 ff.

  11. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Ovid: Metamorphoses v. 1–235; Apollodorus: loc. cit.

  12. Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 9–10 and 12; Josephus: Jewish Wars iii. 9. 2; Pliny: Natural History ix. 4.

  13. Strabo: x. 5. 10; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 3.

  14. Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 953; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 4.

  15. Clement of Alexandria: Address to the Greeks iii. 45; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 4–5.

  16. Ovid: Metamorphoses v. 236–41; Hyginus: Fabulae 63 and 244.

  17. Pausanias: ii. 21. 6–8.

  1. The myth of Acrisius and Proetus records the foundation of an Argive double-kingdom: instead of the king’s dying every midsummer, and being succeeded by his tanist for the rest of the year, each reigned in turn for forty-nine or fifty months – namely half a Great Year (see 106. 1). This kingdom was later, it seems, divided in halves, with co-kings ruling concurrently for an entire Great Year. The earlier theory, that the bright spirit of the Waxing Year, and his tanist twin, the dark spirit of the Waning Year, stand in endless rivalry pervades Celtic and Palestinian myth, as well as the Greek and Latin.

  2. Two such pairs of twins occur in Genesis: Esau and Jacob (Genesis xxiv. 24–6), Pharez (see 159. 4) and Zarah (Genesis xxxviii. 27–30), both of whom quarrel for precedence in the womb, like Acrisius and Proetus. In the simpler Palestinian myth of Mot and Aleyn, the twins quarrel about a woman, as do Acrisius and Proetus; and as their counterparts do in Celtic myth – for instance, Gwyn and Gwythur, in the Mabinogion, duel every May Eve until the end of the world for the hand of Creiddylad, daughter of Llyr (Cordelia, daughter of King Lear). This woman is, in each case, a Moon-priestess, marriage to whom confers kingship.

  3. The building of Argos and Tiryns by the seven Gasterocheires (‘bellies with hands’), and the death of Acrisius, are apparently deduced from a picture of a walled city: seven sun-disks, each with three limbs but no head (see 23. 2), are placed above it, and the sacred king is being killed by an eighth sun-disk, with wings, which strikes his sacred heel. This woul
d mean that seven yearly surrogates die for the king, who is then himself sacrificed at the priestess’s orders; his successor, Perseus, stands by.

  4. The myth of Danaë, Perseus, and the ark seems related to that of Isis, Osiris, Set, and the Child Horus. In the earliest version, Proetus is Perseus’s father, the Argive Osiris; Danaë is his sister-wife, Isis; Perseus, the Child Horus; and Acrisius, the jealous Set who killed his twin Osiris and was taken vengeance on by Horus. The ark is the acacia-wood boat in which Isis and Horus searched the Delta for Osiris’s body. A similar story occurs in one version of the Semele myth (see 27. 6), and in that of Rhoeo (see 160. 7). But Danaë, imprisoned in the brazen dungeon, where she bears a child, is the subject of a familiar New Year icon (see 43.2); Zeus’s impregnation of Danaë with a shower of gold must refer to the ritual marriage of the Sun and the Moon, from which the New Year king was born. It can also be read as pastoral allegory: ‘water is gold’ for the Greek shepherd, and Zeus sends thunder-showers on the earth – Danaë. The name ‘Deicterion’ means that the Gorgon’s head was shown there to Perseus.

  5. Dynastic disputes at Argos were complicated by the existence of an Argive colony in Caria – as appears both in this myth and in that of Bellerophon (see 75. b); when Cnossus fell about 1400 B.C., the Carian navy was, for a while, one of the strongest in the Mediterranean. The myths of Perseus and Bellerophon are closely related. Perseus killed the monstrous Medusa with the help of winged sandals; Bellerophon used a winged horse, born from the decapitated body of Medusa, to kill the monstrous Chimaera. Both feats record the usurpation by Hellenic invaders of the Moon-goddess’s powers, and are unified in an archaic Boeotian vase-painting of a Gorgon-headed mare. This mare is the Moon-goddess, whose calendar-symbol was the Chimaera (see 75. 2); and the Gorgon-head is a prophylactic mask, worn by her priestesses to scare away the uninitiated (see 33. 3), which the Hellenes stripped from them.