The Greek Myths

by Robert Graves

  d. Polyeidus wandered through the labyrinthine palace, until he came upon an owl sitting at the entrance to a cellar, frightening away a swarm of bees, and took this for an omen. Below in the cellar he found a great jar used for the storing of honey, and Glaucus drowned in it, head downwards. Minos, when this discovery was reported to him, consulted with the Curetes, and followed their advice by telling. Polyeidus: ‘Now that you have found my son’s body, you must restore him to life!’ Polyeidus protested that, not being Asclepius, he was incapable of raising the dead. ‘Ah, I know better,’ replied Minos. ‘You will be locked in a tomb with Glaucus’s body and a sword, and there you will remain until my orders have been obeyed!’

  e. When Polyeidus grew accustomed to the darkness of the tomb he saw a serpent approaching the boy’s corpse and, seizing his sword, killed it. Presently another serpent, gliding up, and finding that its mate was dead, retired, but came back shortly with a magic herb in its mouth, which it laid on the dead body. Slowly the serpent came to life again.

  f. Polyeidus was astounded, but had the presence of mind to apply the same herb to the body of Glaucus, and with the same happy result. He and Glaucus then shouted loudly for help, until a passer-by heard them and ran to summon Minos, who was overjoyed when he opened the tomb and found his son alive. He loaded Polyeidus with gifts, but would not let him return to Argos until he had taught Glaucus the art of divination. Polyeidus unwillingly obeyed, and when he was about to sail home, told Glaucus: ‘Boy, spit into my open mouth!’ Glaucus did so, and immediately forgot all that he had learned.5

  g. Later, Glaucus led an expedition westward, and demanded a kingdom from the Italians; but they despised him for failing to be so great a man as his father; however, he introduced the Cretan military girdle and shield into Italy, and thus earned the name Labicus, which means ‘girdled’.6

  h. Androgeus visited Athens, and won every contest in the All-Athenian Games. But King Aegeus knew of his friendship for the fifty rebellious sons of Pallas and fearing that he might persuade his father Minos to support these in an open revolt, conspired with the Megareans to have him ambushed at Oenoë on the way to Thebes, where he was about to compete in certain funeral games. Androgeus defended himself with courage, and a fierce battle ensued in which he was killed.7

  i. News of Androgeus’s death reached Minos while he was sacrificing to the Graces on the island of Paros. He threw down the garlands and commanded the flute-players to cease, but completed the ceremony; to this day they sacrifice to the Graces of Paros without either music or flowers.8

  j. Glaucus son of Minos has sometimes been confused with Anthedonian Glaucus, son of Anthedon, or of Poseidon, who once observed the restorative property of a certain grass, sown by Cronus in the Golden Age, when a dead fish (or, some say, a hare) was laid upon it and came to life again. He tasted the herb and, becoming immortal, leaped into the sea, where he is now a marine god, famous for his amorous adventures. His underwater home lies off the coast of Delos, and every year he visits all the ports and islands of Greece, issuing oracles much prized by sailors and fishermen – Apollo himself is described as Glaucus’s pupil.9

  1. Pausanias: viii. 53. 2; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 60; Apollodorus: iii. 1. 2.

  2. Pausanias: loc. cit.; Plutarch: Agis 9.

  3. Plutarch: Theseus 20; Apoll odorus : iii. 2. 1–2; Euripides: Hippolytus; Pausanias: ii. 7. 7; Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 1493 ff.

  4. Hyginus: Fabula 136; Apollodorus: iii. 3. 1; Pausanias: i. 43. 5.

  5. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: loc. cit.

  6. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vii. 796.

  7. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 60. 4; Apollodorus: iii. 15. 7; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vi. 14; Hyginus: Fabula 41.

  8. Apollodorus: iii. 15. 7.

  9. Athenaeus: vii. 48; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 754; Ovid: Metamorphoses xiii. 924 ff.; Pausanias: ix. 22. 6; Servius on Virgil’s Georgics i. 437.

  1. Pasiphaë as the Moon (see 51. h) has been credited with numerous sons: Cydon, the eponymous hero of Cydon near Tegea, and of the Cydonian colony on Crete; Glaucus, a Corinthian sea-hero (see 71. 4); Androgeus, in whose honour annual games were celebrated at Ceramicus, and whom the Athenians worshipped as ‘Eurygyes’ (‘broad-circling’), to show that he was a spirit of the solar year (Hesychius sub Androgeus); Ammon, the oracular hero of the Ammon Oasis, later equated with Zeus; and Catreus, whose name seems to be a masculine form of Catarrhoa, the Moon as rain-maker. Her daughters Ariadne and Phaedra are reproductions of herself; Ariadne, though read as ariagne, ‘most pure’, appears to be a Sumerian name, Ar-ri-an-de, ‘high fruitful mother of the barley’, and Phaedra occurs in South Palestinian inscriptions as Pdri.

  2. The myth of Acacallis (‘unwalled’) apparently records the capture, by invading Hellenes from Aegialae, of the West Cretan city of Tarrha which, like other Cretan cities, was unwalled (see 98.1); and the flight of the leading inhabitants to Libya, where they became the rulers of the unwarlike Garamantians.

  3. White, red, and black, the colours of Minos’s heifer, were also those of Io the Moon-cow (see 56. 1); those of Augeias’s sacred bulls (see 127.1); and on a Caeretan vase (Monumenti Inediti vi-vii.p.77) those of the Minos bull which carried off Europe. Moreover, clay or plaster tripods sacred to the Cretan goddess found at Ninou Khani, and a similar tripod found at Mycenae, were painted in white, red, and black and according to Ctesias’s Indica, these were the colours of the unicorn’s horn – the unicorn, as a calendar symbol represented the Moon-goddess’s dominion over the five seasons of the Osirian year, each of which contributed part of an animal to its composition. That Glaucus was chasing a mouse may point to a conflict between the Athenian worshippers of Athene, who had an owl (glaux) for her familiar, and the worshippers of Apollo Smintheus (‘Mouse Apollo’); or the original story may have been that Minos gave him a mouse coated with honey to swallow – a desperate remedy prescribed for sick children in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean. His manner of death may also refer to the use of honey as an embalming fluid – many jar-burials of children occur in Cretan houses – and the owl was a bird of death. The bees are perhaps explained by a misreading of certain cut gems (Weiseler: Denkmale der Alten Kunst ii. 252), which showed Hermes summoning the dead from burial jars, while their souls hovered above in the form of bees (see 39. 8 and 82. 4).

  4. Polyeidus is both the shape-shifting Zagreus (see 30. a) and the demi-god Asclepius, whose regenerative herb seems to have been mistletoe (see 50. 2), or its Eastern-European counterpart, the loranthus. The Babylonian legend of Gilgamesh provides a parallel to the serpent’s revivification. His herb of eternal life is stolen from him by a serpent, which thereupon casts its slough and grows young again; Gilgamesh, unable to recover the herb, resigns himself to death. It is described as resembling buckthorn: a plant which the Greeks took as a purge before performing their Mysteries.

  5. Glaucus’s spitting into the open mouth of Polyeidus recalls a similar action of Apollo when Cassandra failed to pay him for the gift of prophecy; in Cassandra’s case, however, the result was not that she lost the gift, but that no one believed her (see 158. q).

  6. The goddesses to whom Minos sacrificed without the customary flutes or flowers, when he heard that his son had died, were the Pariae, or Ancient Ones (see 89. a), presumably the Three Fates, euphemistically called the ‘Graces’. Myth has here broken down into street-corner anecdote. Androgeus’s death is a device used to account for the Cretan quarrel with Athens (see 98. c), based, perhaps, on some irrelevant tradition of a murder done at Oenoë.

  7. Anthedonian Glaucus’s oracular gifts, his name, and his love-affairs, one of which was with Scylla (see 170. t), suggest that he was a personification of Cretan sea-power. Both Minos (who received his oracles from Zeus) and Poseidon, patron of the Cretan confederacy (see 39. 7), had enjoyed Scylla (see 91. 2); and Anthedon (‘rejoicing in flowers’) was apparently a title of the Cretan Springflower hero incarnate in every Late Minoan king (see 85. 2). The King of Cnossus seem
s to have been connected by sacred marriages with all member states of his confederacy (see 89. 1); hence Glaucus’s amatory reputation. It is probable that a representative from Cnossus made an annual progress around the Cretan overseas dependencies in the style of Talos (see 92. 7), giving out the latest oracular edicts. Delos was a Cretan island and perhaps a distribution centre for oracles brought from the Dictaean Cave at Cnossus. But this Glaucus also resembles Proteus, the oracular sea-god of Cretan Pharos (see 169. 6), and Melicertes the sea-god of Corinth, identified with another Glaucus (see 71. 4). Cronus’s grass of the Golden Age may have been the magical herbe d’or of the Druids.

  8. A version of the Glaucus myth is quoted from the Lydian historian Xanthus by Pliny (Natural History xxv. 14) and Nonnus (Dionysiaca xxv. 451–551), and commemorated on a series of coins from Sardis. When the hero Tylon, or Tylus (‘knot’ or ‘phallus’), was fatally bitten in the heel by a poisonous serpent (see 117. 1), his sister Moera (‘fate’) appealed to the giant Damasen (subduer’), who avenged him. Another serpent then fetched ‘the flower of Zeus’ from the woods, and laid it on the lips of its dead mate, which came to life again; Moera followed this example and similarly restored Tylus.

  91

  SCYLLA AND NISUS

  MINOS was the first king to control the Mediterranean Sea, which he cleared of pirates, and in Crete ruled over ninety cities. When the Athenians had murdered his son Androgeus, he decided to take vengeance on them, and sailed around the Aegean collecting ships and armed levies. Some islanders agreed to help him, some refused. Siphnos was yielded to him by the Princess Arne, whom he bribed with gold; but the gods changed her into a jackdaw which loves gold and all things that glitter. He made an alliance with the people of Anaphe, but was rebuffed by King Aeacus of Aegina and departed, swearing revenge; Aeacus then answered an appeal from Cephalus to join the Athenians against Minos.1

  b. Meanwhile, Minos was harrying the Isthmus of Corinth. He laid siege to Nisa, ruled by Nisus the Egyptian, who had a daughter named Scylla. A tower stood in the city, built by Apollo [and Poseidon?], and at its foot lay a musical stone which, if pebbles were dropped upon it from above, rang like a lyre – because Apollo had once rested his lyre there while he was working as a mason. Scylla used to spend much time at the top of the tower, playing tunes on the stone with a lapful of pebbles; and here she climbed daily when the war began, to watch the fighting.

  c. The siege of Nisa was protracted, and Scylla soon came to know the name of every Cretan warrior. Struck by the beauty of Minos, and by his magnificent clothes and white charger, she fell perversely in love with him. Some say that Aphrodite willed it so; others blame Hera.2

  d. One night Scylla crept into her father’s chamber, and cut off the famous bright lock on which his life and throne depended; then, taking from him the keys of the city gate, she opened it, and stole out. She made straight for Minos’s tent, and offered him the lock of hair in exchange for his love. ‘It is a bargain!’ cried Minos; and that same night, having entered the city and sacked it, he duly lay with Scylla; but would not take her to Crete, because he loathed the crime of parricide. Scylla, however, swam after his ship, and clung to the stem until her father Nisus’s soul in the form of a sea-eagle swooped down upon her with talons and hooked beak. The terrified Scylla let go and was drowned; her soul flew off as a ciris-bird, which is well known for its purple breast and red legs.3 But some say that Minos gave orders for Scylla to be drowned; and others that her soul became the fish ciris, not the bird of that name.4

  e. Nisa was afterwards called Megara, in honour of Megareus, a son of Oenope by Hippomenes; he had been Nisus’s ally and married his daughter Iphinoë, and is said to have succeeded him on the throne.5

  f. This war dragged on until Minos, finding that he could not subdue Athens, prayed Zeus to avenge Androgeus’s death; and the whole of Greece was consequently afflicted with earthquakes and famine. The kings of the various city states assembled at Delphi to consult the Oracle, and were instructed to make Aeacus offer up prayers on their behalf. When this had been done, the earthquakes everywhere ceased, except in Attica.

  g. The Athenians thereupon sought to redeem themselves from the curse by sacrificing to Persephone the daughters of Hyacinthus, namely Antheis, Aegleis, Lyctaea, and Orthaea, on the grave of the Cyclops Geraestus. These girls had come to Athens from Sparta. Yet the earthquakes continued and, when the Athenians again consulted the Delphic Oracle, they were told to give Minos whatever satisfaction he might ask; which proved to be a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, sent every nine years to Crete as a prey for the Minotaur.6

  h. Minos then returned to Cnossus, where he sacrificed a hecatomb of bulls in gratitude for his success; but his end came in the ninth year.7

  1. Strabo: x. 4. 8 and 15; Ovid: Metamorphoses vii. 480–viii. 6.

  2. Hyginus: Fabula 198; Virgil: Ciris.

  3. Apollodorus: iii. 15. 8; Hyginus: loc. cit.; Ovid: Metamorphoses viii. 6–151; Virgil: loc. cit.; Pausanias: ii. 34. 7.

  4. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: loc. cit.

  5. Pausanias: i. 39. 4–5.

  6. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 61.

  7. Ovid: Metamorphoses viii. 152 ff.; Homer: Odyssey xix. 178.

  1. The historical setting of the Scylla myth is apparently a dispute between the Athenians and their Cretan overlords not long before the sack of Cnossus in 1400 B.C. The myth itself, almost exactly repeated in the Taphian story of Pterelaus and Comaetho, recalls those of Samson and Delilah in Philistia; Curoi, Blathnat, and Cuchulain in Ireland; Llew Llaw, Blodeuwedd, and Gronw in Wales: all variations on a single pattern. It concerns the rivalry between the sacred king and his tanist for the favour of the Moon-goddess who, at midsummer, cuts off the king’s hair and betrays him. The king’s strength resides in his hair, because he represents the Sun; and his long yellow locks are compared to its rays. Delilah shears Samson’s hair before calling in the Philistines; Blathnat ties Curoi’s to a bed-post before summoning her lover Cuchulain to kill him; Blodeuwedd ties Llew Llaw’s to a tree before summoning her lover Gronw. Llew Llaw’s soul takes the form of an eagle, and Blodeuwedd (‘fair flower aspect’), a woman magically made of nine different flowers, is metamorphosed into an owl – as Scylla perhaps also was in the original Greek legend. A collation of these five myths shows that Scylla-Co-maetho-Blodeuwedd-Blathnat-Delilah is the Moon-goddess in her spring and summer aspect as Aphrodite Comaetho (‘bright-haired’); in the autumn she turns into an owl, or a ciris, and becomes the Death-goddess Athene – who had many bird-epiphanies, including the owl (see 97. 4) – or Hera, or Hecate. Her name Scylla indicates that the king was torn to pieces after his head had been shaven. As in the myth of Llew Llaw, the punishment subsequently inflicted on the traitress is a late moral addition.

  2. Ovid (Art of Love i. 331) identifies this Scylla with a namesake whom Aphrodite turned into a dog-monster because Poseidon had seduced her (see 16. 2), and says that she harboured wild dogs in her womb and loins as a punishment for cutting off Nisus’s lock. Ovid is rarely mistaken in his mythology, and he may here be recording a legend that Pasiphaë’s curse upon Minos made him fill Scylla’s womb with puppies, rather than with serpents, scorpions, and millepedes. Pasiphaë and Amphritrite are the same Moon-and-Sea-goddess, and Minos, as the ruler of the Mediterranean, became identified with Poseidon.

  3. The sacrifice of the daughters of Hyacinthus on Geraestus’s tomb may refer to the ‘gardens of Adonis’ planted in honour of the doomed king – being cut flowers, they withered in a few hours. But Geraestus was a pre-Achaean Cyclops (see 3. b), and according to the Etymologicum Magnum (sub Geraestides), his daughters nursed the infant Zeus at Gortyna; moreover, Geraestion was a city in Arcadia where Rhea swaddled Zeus. The Hyacinthides, then, were probably the nurses, not the daughters, of Hyacinthus: priestesses of Artemis who, at Cnidus, bore the title ‘Hyacinthotrophos’ (‘nurse of Hyacinthus’), and identifiable with the Geraestides, since the annually dying Cretan Zeus (see 7. 1) was
indistinguishable from Hyacinthus. Perhaps, therefore, the myth concerns four dolls hung from a blossoming fruit-tree, to face the cardinal points of the compass, in a fructifying ceremony of the ‘Hanged Artemis’ (see 79. 2 and 88. 10).

  4. The seven Athenian youths dedicated to the Minotaur were probably surrogates sacrificed annually in place of the Cnossian king. It will have been found convenient to use foreign victims, rather than native Cretans; as happened with the Canaanite ritual of Crucifixion for which, in the end, captives and criminals sufficed as Tammuz’s surrogates. ‘Every ninth year’ means ‘at the end of every Great Year of one hundred lunations’. After seven boys had been sacrificed for the sacred king, he himself died (see 81. 8). The seven Athenian maidens were not sacrificed; perhaps they became attendants on the Moon-priestess, and performed acrobatic feats at bull-fights, such as are shown in Cretan works of art: a dangerous but not necessarily fatal sport.

  5. A set of musical stones may have existed at Megara on the model of a xylophone; it would not have been difficult to construct. But perhaps there is a recollection here of Memmon’s singing statue in Egypt: hollow, with an orifice at the back of the open mouth, through which the hot air forced itself at dawn when the sun warmed the stone (see 164. 2).

  92

  DAEDALUS AND TALOS

  THE parentage of Daedalus is disputed. His mother is named Alcippe by some; by others, Merope; by still others, Iphinoë; and all give him a different father, though it is generally agreed that he belonged to the royal house of Athens, which claimed descent from Erechtheus. He was a wonderful smith, having been instructed in his art by Athene herself.1

  b. One of his apprentices, Talos the son of his sister Polycaste, or Perdix, had already surpassed him in craftsmanship while only twelve years old. Talos happened one day to pick up the jawbone of a serpent or, some say, a fish’s spine; and, finding that he could use it to cut a stick in half, copied it in iron and thereby invented the saw. This, and other inventions of his – such as the potter’s wheel, and the compass for marking out circles – secured him a great reputation at Athens, and Daedalus, who himself claimed to have forged the first saw, soon grew unbearably jealous.2 Leading Talos up to the roof of Athene’s temple on the Acropolis, he pointed out certain distant sights, and suddenly toppled him over the edge. Yet, for all his jealousy, he would have done Talos no harm had he not suspected him of incestuous relations with his mother Polycaste. Daedalus then hurried down to the foot of the Acropolis, and thrust Talos’s corpse into a bag, proposing to bury it secretly. When challenged by passers-by, he explained that he had piously taken up a dead serpent, as the law required – which was not altogether untrue, Talos being an Erechtheid – but there were bloodstains on the bag, and his crime did not escape detection, whereupon the Areiopagus banished him for murder. According to another account he fled before the trial could take place.3