The Greek Myths

by Robert Graves

  b. Abandoning the sacrifice, the terrified Theban women tried to placate Leto with murmured prayers, but it was too late. She had already sent Apollo and Artemis, armed with bows, to punish Niobe’s presumption. Apollo found the boys hunting on Mount Cithaeron and shot them down one by one, sparing only Amyclas, who had wisely offered a propitiatory prayer to Leto. Artemis found the girls spinning in the palace and, with a quiverful of arrows, despatched all of them, except Meliboëa, who had followed Amyclas’s example. These two survivors hastened to build Leto a temple, though Meliboëa had turned so pale with fear that she was still nicknamed Chloris when she married Neleus some years later. But some say that none of Niobe’s children survived, and that her husband Amphion was also killed by Apollo.

  c. For nine days and nine nights Niobe bewailed her dead, and found no one to bury them, because Zeus, taking Leto’s part, had turned all the Thebans into stone. On the tenth day, the Olympians themselves deigned to conduct the funeral. Niobe fled overseas to Mount Sipylus, the home of her father Tantalus, where Zeus, moved by pity, turned her into a statue which can still be seen weeping copiously in the early summer.1

  d. All men mourned for Amphion, deploring the extinction of his race, but none mourned for Niobe, except her equally proud brother Pelops.2

  1. Hyginus: Fabulae 9 and 10; Apollodorus: iii. 5. 6; Homer: Iliad xxiv. 612 ff.; Ovid: Metamorphoses vi. 146–312; Pausanias: v. 16. 3; viii. 2. 5 and i. 21. 5; Sophocles: Electra 150–52.

  2. Ovid: Metamorphoses vi. 401–4.

  1. The number of Niobe’s children is given by Homer as twelve and (according to various scholiasts) by Hesiod as twenty, by Herodotus as four, and by Sappho as eighteen; but the account followed by Euripides and Apollodorus, which makes the best sense, is that she had seven sons and seven daughters. Since Niobe, in the Theban version of the myth, was a grand-daughter of the Titan Atlas, and, in the Argive version, was daughter or mother of Phoroneus (see 57. a), also described as a Titan (Apollodorus: ii. 1. 1 and Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 932), and of Pelasgus; and could claim to be the first mortal woman violated by Zeus (Diodorus Siculus: iv. 9. 14; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: ii. 22. 6), the myth may concern the defeat of the seven Titans and Titanesses by the Olympians. If so, it records the supersession of the calendar system prevailing in Pelasgian Greece, Palestine, Syria, and North-western Europe; which was based on a month divided into four weeks of seven days, each ruled by one of the seven planetary bodies (see 1. 3 and 43. 4). Amphion and his twelve children, in Homer’s version of the myth (Iliad xxiv. 603–17), perhaps stand for the thirteen months of this calendar. Mount Sipylus may have been the last home in Asia Minor of the Titan cult, as Thebes was in Greece. The statue of Niobe is a crag of roughly human shape, which seems to weep when the sun’s arrows strike its winter cap of snow, and the likeness is reinforced by a Hittite Goddess-mother carved in rock on the same mountain and dating from perhaps the late fifteenth century B.C. ‘Niobe’ probably means snowy – the b representing the v in the Latin nivis, or the ph in the Greek nipha. One of her daughters is called Chiade by Hyginus: a word which makes no sense in Greek, unless it be a worn-down form of chionos niphades, ‘snow flakes’.

  2. Parthenius (Love Stories 33) gives a different account of Niobe’s punishment: by Leto’s contrivance, Niobe’s father fell incestuously in love with her and, when she repulsed him, burned her children to death; her husband was then mangled by a wild boar, and she threw herself from a rock. This story, confirmed by the scholiast on Euripides’s Phoenician Women (159), is influenced by the myths of Cinyras, Smyrna and Adonis (see 18. h), and by the custom of burning children to the god Moloch (see 70. 5 and 156. 2).

  78

  CAENIS AND CAENEUS

  POSEIDON once lay with the Nymph Caenis, daughter of Elatus the Magnesian or, some say, of Coronus the Lapith, and asked her to name a love-gift.

  ‘Transform me’, she said, ‘into an invulnerable fighter. I am weary of being a woman.’

  Poseidon obligingly changed her sex, and she became Caeneus, waging war with such success that the Lapiths soon elected her their king; and she even begot a son, Coronus, whom Heracles killed many years later while fighting for Aegimius the Dorian. Exalted by this new condition, Caeneus set up a spear in the middle of the market-place, where the people congregated, and made them sacrifice to it as if to a god, and honour no other deity whatsoever.

  b. Zeus, hearing of Caeneus’s presumption, instigated the Centaurs to an act of murder. During the wedding of Peirithous they made a sudden attack on her, but she had no difficulty in killing five or six of them, without incurring the slightest wound, because their weapons rebounded harmlessly from her charmed skin. However, the remaining Centaurs beat her on the head with fir logs, until they had driven her under the earth, and then piled a mound of logs above. So Caeneus smothered and died. Presently out flew a sandy-winged bird, which the seer Mopsus, who was present, recognized as her soul; and when they came to bury her, the corpse was again a woman’s.1

  1. Apollodorus: i. 9. 16; ii. 7. 7 and Epitome i. 22; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 57–64, with scholiast; Hyginus: Fabula 14; Oxyrhynchus Papyri xiii. p. 133 ff.; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vi. 448; Ovid: Metamorphoses xii. 458–531; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad i. 264.

  1. This myth has three distinct strands. First, a custom which still prevails in Albania, of girls joining a war-band and dressing in men’s clothes, so that when they are killed in battle the enemy is surprised to discover their sex. Second, a refusal of the Lapiths to accept Hellenic overlordship; the spear set up for worship is likely to have been a maypole in honour of the New Moon-goddess Caenis, or Elate (‘fir-tree’), to whom the fir was sacred. The Lapiths were then defeated by the Aeolians of Iolcus who, with the help of their allies the Centaurs, subjected them to their god Poseidon, but did not interfere with tribal law. Only, as at Argos, the clan chieftainess will have been obliged to assume an artificial beard to assert her right to act as magistrate and commander: thus Caenis became Caeneus, and Elate became Elatus. A similar change of sex is still announced by the Queen of the South, a joint ruler of the Lozi Kingdom in the Zambesi basin, when she enters the council chamber: ‘I am transformed to a man!’ – but this is because one of her ancestresses usurped a patriarchal throne. Third, the ritual recorded on a black-figured oil jar (see 9. 1), in which naked men, armed with mallets, beat an effigy of Mother Earth on the head, apparently to release Core, the Spirit of the New Year: ‘Caenis’ means ‘new’.

  2. The variety of sandy-winged bird released from the effigy will depend on the season at which the rite was performed. If spring, it may have been a cuckoo (see 12. 1).

  79

  ERIGONE

  ALTHOUGH Oeneus was the first mortal to be given a vine plant by Dionysus, Icarius anticipated him in the making of wine. He offered a sample from his trial jarful to a party of shepherds in the Marathonian woods beneath Mount Pentelicus, who, failing to mix it with water, as Oenopion later advised, grew so drunk that they saw everything double, believed themselves bewitched, and killed Icarius. His hound Maera watched while they buried him under a pine-tree and, afterwards, led his daughter Erigone to the grave by catching at her robe, and then dug up the corpse. In despair, Erigone hanged herself from the pine, praying that the daughters of Athens should suffer the same fate as hers while Icarius remained unavenged. Only the gods heard her, and the shepherds fled overseas, but many Athenian maidens were found hanging from the pine one after another, until the Delphic Oracle explained that it was Erigone who demanded their lives. The guilty shepherds were sought out at once and hanged, and the present Vintage Festival instituted, during which libations are poured to Icarius and Erigone, while girls swing on ropes from the branches of the tree, their feet resting on small platforms; this is how swings were invented. Masks are also hung from the branches, which twist around with the wind.

  b. The image of Maera the hound was set in the sky, and became the Lesser Dog-star; some, therefore, ident
ify Icarius with Boötes and Erigone with the constellation of the Virgin.1

  1. Maera was the name given to Priam’s wife Hecabe, or Hecuba, after her transformation into a dog (see 168. 1), and since Hecuba was really the three-headed Death-goddess Hecate (see 31. 7), the libations poured to Erigone and Icarius were probably meant for her. The valley in which this ceremony took place is now called ‘Dionysus’. Erigone’s pine will have been the tree under which Attis the Phrygian was castrated and bled to death (Ovid: Fasti iv. 221 ff.; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ix. 116), and the explanation of the myth seems to be that when the Lesser Dog-star was in the ascendant, the shepherds of Marathon sacrificed one of their number as an annual victim to the goddess called Erigone.

  2. Icarius means ‘from the Icarian Sea’, i.e. from the Cyclades, whence the Attis cult came to Attica. Later, the Dionysus cult was superimposed on it; and the story of the Athenian girls’ suicide may have been told to account for the masks of Dionysus, hung from a pine-tree in the middle of a vineyard, which turned with the wind and were supposed to fructify the vines wherever they looked. Dionysus was usually portrayed as a long-haired, effeminate youth, and his masks would have suggested hanged women. But it is likely that dolls representing the fertility goddess Ariadne or Helen were previously hung from fruit-trees (see 88. 10 and 98. 5). The girls’ swinging at the vintage festival will have been magical in its original intention: perhaps the semi-circular flight of the swing represented the rising and setting of the new moon. This custom may have been brought to Attica from Crete, since a terracotta group found at Hagia Triada shows a girl swinging between two pillars, on each of which a bird is perched.

  3. The name Erigone is explained by the mythographer as ‘child of strife’, because of the trouble she occasioned; but its obvious meaning is ‘plentiful offspring’, a reference to the plentiful crop induced by the dolls.

  80

  THE CALYDONIAN BOAR

  OENEUS, King of Calydon in Aetolia, married Althaea. She first bore him Toxeus, whom Oeneus killed with his own hands for rudely leaping over the fosse which had been dug in defence of the city; and then Meleager, said to have been, in reality, her son by Ares. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates came to Althaea’s bedroom and announced that he could live only so long as a certain brand on the hearth remained unburned. She at once snatched the brand from the fire, extinguishing it with a pitcherful of water, and then hid it in a chest.

  b. Meleager grew up to be a bold and invulnerable fighter, and the best javelin-thrower in Greece, as he proved at Acastus’s funeral games. He might still be alive but for an indiscretion committed by Oeneus who, one summer, forgot to include Artemis in his yearly sacrifices to the twelve gods of Olympus. Artemis, when informed of this neglect by Helius, sent a huge boar to kill Oeneus’s cattle and labourers, and to ravage his crops; but Oeneus despatched heralds, inviting all the bravest fighters of Greece to hunt the boar, and promising that whoever killed it should have its pelt and tusks.

  c. Many answered the call, among them Castor and Polydeuces from Sparta; Idas and Lynceus from Messene; Theseus from Athens and Peirithous from Larissa; Jason from Iolcus and Admetus from Pherae; Nestor from Pylus; Peleus and Eurytion from Phthia; Iphicles from Thebes; Amphiaraus from Argos; Telamon from Salamis; Caeneus from Magnesia; and finally Ancaeus and Cepheus from Arcadia, followed by their compatriot, the chaste, swift-footed Atalanta, only daughter of Iasus and Clymene.1 Iasus had wished for a male heir and Atalanta’s birth disappointed him so cruelly that he exposed her on the Parthenian Hill near Calydon, where she was suckled by a bear which Artemis sent to her aid. Atalanta grew to womanhood among a clan of hunters who found and reared her, but remained a virgin, and always carried arms. On one occasion she came fainting for thirst to Cyphanta and there, calling on Artemis, and striking a rock with the point of her spear, made a spring of water gush out. But she was not yet reconciled to her father.2

  d. Oeneus entertained the huntsmen royally for nine days; and though Ancaeus and Cepheus at first refused to hunt in company with a woman, Meleager declared, on Oeneus’s behalf, that unless they withdrew their objection he would cancel the chase altogether. The truth was that Meleager had married Idas’s daughter Cleopatra, but now felt a sudden love for Atalanta and wished to ingratiate himself with her. His uncles, Althaea’s brothers, took an immediate dislike to the girl, convinced that her presence could lead only to mischief, because he kept sighing deeply and exclaiming: ‘Ah, how happy the man whom she marries!’ Thus the chase began under bad auspices; Artemis herself had seen to this.

  e. Amphiaraus and Atalanta were armed with bows and arrows; others with boar-spears, javelins, or axes, each being so anxious to win the pelt for himself that hunt discipline was neglected. At Meleager’s suggestion, the company advanced in a half-moon, at some paces’ interval, through the forest where the boar had its lair.

  f. The first blood shed was human. When Atalanta posted herself on the extreme right flank at some distance from her fellow-hunters, two Centaurs, Hylaeus and Rhaecus, who had joined the chase, decided to ravish her, each in turn assisting the other. But as soon as they ran towards her, she shot them both down and went to hunt at Meleager’s side.

  g. Presently the boar was flushed from a water-course overgrown with willows. It came bounding out, killed two of the hunters, hamstrung another, and drove young Nestor, who afterwards fought at Troy, up a tree. Jason and several others flung ill-aimed javelins at the boar, Iphicles alone contriving to graze its shoulder. Then Telamon and Peleus went in boldly with boar-spears; but Telamon tripped over a tree root and, while Peleus was pulling him to his feet, the boar saw them and charged. Atalanta let fly a timely arrow, which sank in behind the ear, and sent it scurrying off. Ancaeus sneered: ‘That is no way to hunt! Watch me!’ He swung his battle-axe at the boar as it charged, but was not quick enough; the next instant he lay castrated and disembowelled. In his excitement, Peleus killed Eurytion with a javelin aimed at the boar, which Amphiaraus had succeeded in blinding with an arrow. Next, it rushed at Theseus, whose javelin flew wide; but Meleager also flung and transfixed its right flank, and then, as the boar whirled around in pain, trying to dislodge the missile, drove his hunting-spear deep under its left shoulder-blade to the heart.

  The boar fell dead at last.

  At once, Meleager flayed it, and presented the pelt to Atalanta, saying: ‘You drew first blood, and had we left the beast alone, it would soon have succumbed to your arrow.’

  h. His uncles were deeply offended. The eldest, Plexippus, argued that Meleager had won the pelt himself and that, on his refusal, it should have gone to the most honourable person present – namely himself, as Oeneus’s brother-in-law. Plexippus’s younger brother supported him with the contention that Iphicles, not Atalanta, had drawn first blood. Meleager, in a lover’s rage, killed them both.

  i. Althaea, as she watched the dead bodies being carried home, set a curse upon Meleager; which prevented him from defending Calydon when his two surviving uncles declared war on the city and killed many of its defenders. At last his wife Cleopatra persuaded him to take up arms, and he killed both these uncles, despite their support by Apollo; whereupon the Furies instructed Althaea to take the unburned brand from the chest and cast it on the fire. Meleager felt a sudden scorching of his inwards, and the enemy overcame him with ease. Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselvess, and Artemis turned all but two of Meleager’s shrieking sisters into guinea-hens, which she brought to her island of Leros, the home of evil-livers.3

  j. Delighted by Atalanta’s success, Iasus recognized her at last as his daughter; but when she arrived at the palace his first words were: ‘My child, prepare to take a husband!’ – a disagreeable announcement, since the Delphic Oracle had warned her against marriage. She answered: ‘Father, I consent on one condition. Any suitor for my hand must either beat me in a foot race, or else let me kill him.’ ‘So be it,’ said Iasus.

  k. Many unfortunate princes lost their lives in con
sequence, because she was the swiftest mortal alive; but Melanion, a son of Amphidamas the Arcadian, invoked Aphrodite’s assistance. She gave him three golden apples, saying: ‘Delay Atalanta by letting these fall, one after the other, in the course of the race.’ The stratagem was successful. Atalanta stopped to pick up each apple in turn and reached the winning-post just behind Melanion.

  l. The marriage took place, but the Oracle’s warning was justified because, one day, as they passed by a precinct of Zeus, Melanion persuaded Atalanta to come inside and lie with him there. Vexed that his precinct had been defiled, Zeus changed them both into lions; for lions do not mate with lions, but only with leopards, and they were thus prevented from ever again enjoying each other. This was Aphrodite’s punishment first for Atalanta’s obstinacy in remaining a virgin, and then for her lack of gratitude in the matter of the golden apples.4 But some say that before this Atalanta had been untrue to Melanion and borne Meleager a child called Parthenopaeus, whom she exposed on the same hill where the she-bear had suckled her. He too survived and afterwards defeated Idas in Ionia and marched with the Seven Champions against Thebes. According to others, Ares, not Meleager, was Parthenopaeus’s father;5 Atalanta’s husband was not Melanion but Hippomenes; and she was the daughter of Schoeneus, who ruled Boeotian Onchestus. It is added that she and he profaned a sanctuary not of Zeus but of Cybele, who turned them into lions and yoked them to her chariot.6

  1. Aelian: Varia Historia xiii. 1; Callimachus: Hymn to Artemis 216.

  2. Apollodorus: iii. 9. 2.

  3. Homer: Iliad ix. 527–600; Apollodorus: i. 8. 2–3; Hyginus: Fabulae 171, 174, and 273; Ovid: Metamorphoses viii. 270–545; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 48; Pausanias: iv. 2. 5; viii. 4. 7; and x. 31. 2; Callimachus: Hymn to Artemis 220–24; Antoninus Liberalis: 2 Athenaeus: xiv. 71.