The Greek Myths

by Robert Graves

  1. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 63; Pindar, quoted by Pausanias: i. 18. 5; Pausanias: i. 41. 5.

  2. Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 79; Plutarch: Theseus 31.

  3. Apollodorus: Epitome i. 24; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 143; Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad p. 215; Plutarch: loc. cit.

  4. Hyginus: Fabula 79; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.; Horace: Odes iv. 7. 27; Panyasis, quoted by Pausanias: x. 29. 4; Apollodorus: Epitome i. 24.

  5. Seneca: Hippolytus 835 ff.; Apollodorus: ii. 5. 12; Diodorus Siculus iv.: 26; Euripides: Madness of Heracles 619; Hyginus: loc. cit.

  6. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Suidas sub Lispoi; Scholiast on Aristophancs’s Knights 1368.

  7. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 63; Virgil: Aeneid vi. 601–19; Aclian: Varia Historia iv. 5; Plutarch: Theseus 31.

  1. Leading heroes in several mythologies are said to have harrowed Hell: Theseus, Heracles (see 134. c), Dionysus (see 170. m), and Orpheus (see 28. c) in Greece; Bel and Marduk in Babylonia (see 71. 1); Aeneas in Italy; Cuchulain in Ireland; Arthur, Gwydion, and Amathaon in Britain; Ogier le Danois in Brittany. The origin of the myth seems to be a temporary death which the sacred king pretended to undergo at the close of his normal reign, while a boy interrex took his place for a single day, thus circumventing the law which forbade him to extend his term beyond the thirteen months of a solar year (see 7. 1; 41. 1; 123. 4, etc.).

  2. Bel and his successor Marduk, spent their period of demise in battle with the marine monster Tiamat, an embodiment of the Sea-goddess Ishtar who sent the Deluge (see 73. 7); like ancient Irish kings, who are reported to have gone out to do battle with the Atlantic breakers, they seem to have ceremonially drowned. An Etruscan vase shows the moribund king, whose name is given as Jason (see 148. 4), in the jaws of a sea-monster: an icon from which the moral anecdote of Jonah and the Whale has apparently been deduced, Jonah being Marduk.

  3. Athenian mythographers have succeeded in disguising the bitter rivalry between Theseus and his acting-twin Peirithous (see 95. 2) for the favours of the Goddess of Death-in-Life – who appears in the myth as both Helen (see 62. 3) and Persephone – by presenting them as a devoted royal pair who, like Castor and Polydeuces, made an amatory raid on a neighbouring city (see 74. c), and one of whom was excused death because he could claim divine birth. Idas and Lynceus, a similar pair of twins, have been introduced into the story to emphasize this point. But Peirithous’s name, ‘he who turns about’, suggests that he was a sacred king in his own right, and on vase-paintings from Lower Italy he is shown ascending to the upper air and saying farewell to Theseus, who remains beside the Goddess of Justice, as though Theseus were merely his tanist.

  4. Helen’s abduction during a sacrifice recalls that of Oreithyia by Boreas (see 48. a), and may have been deduced from the same icon showing erotic orgies at the Athenian Thesmophoria. It is possible, of course, that a shrine of the Attic goddess Helen at Aphidnae contained an image or other cult object stolen by the Athenians from her Laconian counterpart – if the visit to Tartarus is a doublet of the story, they may have made a sea-raid on Taenarus – and that this was subsequently recovered by the Spartans.

  5. The four years of Theseus’s stay in Tartarus are the usual period during which a sacred king made room for his tanist; a new sacred king, Theseus redivivus, would then be installed. An attempt was made by the Athenians to raise their national hero to the status of an Olympian god, like Dionysus and Heracles, by asserting that he had escaped from death; but their Peloponnesian enemies successfully opposed this claim. Some insisted that he had never escaped, but was punished eternally for his insolence, like Ixion and Sisyphus. Others rationalized the story by saying that he raided Cichyrus, not Tartarus; and took the trouble to explain that Peirithous had not been mauled by Cerberus, but by Molossian hounds, the largest and fiercest breed in Greece. The most generous concession made to Athenian myth was that Theseus, released on bail after a humiliating session in the Chair of Forgetfulness (see 37. 2), had apologetically transferred most of his temples and sanctuaries to Heracles the Rescuer, whose labours and sufferings he aped.

  6. Yet Theseus was a hero of some importance, and must be given the credit of having harrowed Hell, in the sense that he penetrated to the centre of the Cretan maze, where Death was waiting, and came safely out again. Had the Athenians been as strong on land as they were at sea, he would doubtless have become an Olympian or, at least, a national demi-god. The central source of this hostility towards Theseus is probably Delphi, where Apollo’s Oracles was notoriously subservient to the Spartans in their struggle against Athens.

  104

  THE DEATH OF THESEUS

  DURING Theseus’s absence in Tartarus the Dioscuri assembled an army of Laconians and Arcadians, marched against Athens, and demanded the return of Helen. When the Athenians denied that they were sheltering her, or had the least notion where she might be, the Dioscuri proceeded to ravage Attica, until the inhabitants of Deceleia, who disapproved of Theseus’s conduct, guided them to Aphidnae, where they found and rescued their sister. The Dioscuri then razed Aphidnae to the ground; but the Deceleians are still immune from all Spartan taxes and entitled to seats of honour at Spartan festivals – their lands alone were spared in the Peloponnesian War, when the invading Spartans laid Attica waste.1

  b. Others say that the revealer of Helen’s hiding-place was one Academus, or Echedemus, an Arcadian, who had come to Attica on Theseus’s invitation. The Spartans certainly treated him with great honour while he was alive and, in their later invasions, spared his small estate on the river Cephissus, six stadia distant from Athens. This is now called the Academia: a beautiful, well-watered garden, where philosophers meet and express their irreligious views on the nature of the gods.2

  c. Marathus led the Arcadian contingent of the Dioscuri’s army and, in obedience to an oracle, offered himself for sacrifice at the head of his men. Some say that it was he, not Marathon the father of Sicyon and Corinthus, who gave his name to the city of Marathon.3

  d. Now, Peteos son of Orneus and grandson of Erechtheus had been banished by Aegeus, and the Dioscuri, to spite Theseus, brought back his son Menestheus from exile, and made him regent of Athens. This Menestheus was the first demagogue. During Theseus’s absence in Tartarus he ingratiated himself with the people by reminding the nobles of the power which they had forfeited through Federalization, and by telling the poor that they were being robbed of country and religion, and had become subject to an adventurer of obscure origin – who, however, had now vacated the throne and was rumoured dead.4

  e. When Aphidnae fell, and Athens was in danger, Menestheus persuaded the people to welcome the Dioscuri into the city as their benefactors and deliverers. They did indeed behave most correctly, and asked only to be admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries, as Heracles had been. This request was granted, and the Dioscuri became honorary citizens of Athens. Aphidnus was their adoptive father, as Pylius had been Heracles’s on a similar occasion. Divine honours were thereafter paid them at the rising of their constellation, in gratitude for the clemency which they had shown to the common people; and they cheerfully brought Helen back to Sparta, with Theseus’s mother Aethra and a sister of Peirithous as her bond-woman. Some say that they found Helen still a virgin; others, that Theseus had got her with child and that at Argos, on the way home, she gave birth to a girl, Iphigeneia, and dedicated a sanctuary to Artemis in gratitude for her safe delivery.5

  f. Theseus, who returned from Tartarus soon afterwards, at once raised an altar to Heracles the Saviour, and reconsecrated to him all but four of his own temples and groves. However, he had been greatly weakened by his tortures, and found Athens so sadly corrupted by faction and sedition that he was no longer able to maintain order.6 First smuggling his children out of the city to Euboea, where Elpenor son of Chalcodon sheltered them – but some say that they had fled there before his return – and then solemnly cursing the people of Athens from Mount Gargcttus, he sailed for Crete, where Deucalion had promised to shelt
er him.

  g. A storm blew the ship off her course, and his first landfall was the island of Scyros, near Euboea, where King Lycomedes, though a close friend of Menestheus, received him with all the splendour due to his fame and lineage. Theseus, who had inherited an estate on Scyros, asked permission to settle there. But Lycomedes had long regarded this estate as his own and, under the pretence of showing Theseus its boundaries, inveigled him to the top of a high cliff, pushed him over, and then gave out that he had fallen accidentally while taking a drunken, post-prandial stroll.7

  h. Menestheus, now left in undisturbed possession of the throne, was among Helen’s suitors, and led the Athenian forces to Troy, where he won great fame as a strategist but was killed in battle. The sons of Theseus succeeded him.8

  i. Theseus is said to have forcibly abducted Anaxo of Troezen; and to have lain with Iope, daughter of Tirynthian Iphicles. His love-affairs caused the Athenians such frequent embarrassment that they were slow to appreciate his true worth even for several generations after he had died. At the Battle of Marathon, however, his spirit rose from the earth to hearten them, bearing down fully armed upon the Persians; and when victory had been secured, the Delphic Oracle gave orders that his bones should be brought home. The people of Athens had suffered from the Scyrians’ contumely for many years, and the Oracle announced that this would continue so long as they retained the bones.9 But to recover them was a difficult task, because the Scyrians were no less surly than fierce and, when Cimon captured the island, would not reveal the whereabouts of Theseus’s grave. However, Cimon observed a she-eagle on a hill-top, tearing up the soil with her talons. Acclaiming this as a sign from Heaven, he seized a mattock, hastened to the hole made by the eagle, and began to enlarge it. Almost at once the mattock struck a stone coffin, inside which he found a tall skeleton, armed with a bronze lance and a sword; it could only be that of Theseus. The skeleton was reverently brought to Athens, and re-interred amid great ceremony in Theseus’s sanctuary near the Gymnasium.10

  j. Theseus was a skilled lyre-player and has now become joint-patron with Heracles and Hermes of every gymnasium and wrestling school in Greece. His resemblance to Heracles is proverbial. He took part in the Calydonian Hunt; avenged the champions who fell at Thebes; and only failed to be one of the Argonauts through being detained in Tartarus when they sailed for Colchis. The first war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians was caused by his abduction of Helen, and the second by his refusal to surrender Heracles’s sons to King Eurystheus.11

  k. Ill-treated slaves and labourers, whose ancestors looked to him for protection against their oppressors, now seek refuge in his sanctuary, where sacrifices are offered to him on the eighth day of every month. This day may have been chosen because he first arrived at Athens from Troezen on the eighth of Hecatomboeon, and returned from Crete on the eighth day of Pyanepsion. Or perhaps because he was a son of Poseidon: for Poseidon’s feasts are also observed on that day of the month, since eight, being the first cube of an even number, represents Poseidon’s unshakeable power.12

  1. Apollodorus: Epitome i. 23; Hereas, quoted by Plutarch: Theseus 32; Herodotus: ix. 73.

  2. Dicaearchus, quoted by Plutarch: loc. cit.; Diogenes Laertius: iii. 1. 9; Plutarch: Cimon 13.

  3. Dicaearchus, quoted by Plutarch: Theseus 32; Pausanias: ii. 1. 1.

  4. Pausanias: x. 35. 5; Apollodorus: Epitome i. 23; Plutarch: loc. cit.

  5. Plutarch: Theseus 33; Hyginus: Fabula 79; Pausanias: ii. 22. 7.

  6. Aelian: Varia Historia iv. 5; Philochorus, quoted by Plutarch: Theseus 35; Plutarch: loc. cit.

  7. Pausanias: i. 17. 6; Plutarch: loc. cit.

  8. Plutarch: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: iii. 10. 8.

  9. Plutarch: Theseus 29 and 36; Pausanias: i. 15. 4; and iii. 3. 6.

  10. Pausanias: i. 17. 6; Plutarch: loc. cit.

  11. Pausanias: v. 19. 1; iv. 32. 1 and i. 32. 5; Plutarch: Theseus 29 and 36; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 101.

  12. Plutarch: Theseus 36.

  1. Menestheus the Erechtheid, who is praised in Iliad ii. 552 ff. for his outstanding military skill, and reigned at Athens during Theseus’s four years’ absence in Tartarus, seems to have been his mortal twin and co-king, the Athenian counterpart of Peirithous the Lapith. Here he appears as a prototype of the Athenian demagogues who, throughout the Peloponnesian War, favoured peace with Sparta at any price; but the mythographer, while deploring his tactics, is careful not to offend the Dioscuri, to whom Athenian sailors prayed for succour when overtaken by storms.

  2. The theme of the feathered pharmacos reappears in the names of Menestheus’s father and grandfather, and in the death of Theseus himself. This took place on the island of Scyros (‘stony’), also spelled Sciros; which suggests that, in the icon from which the story has been deduced, the word scir (an abbreviated form of Scirophoria, explaining why the king is being flung from a cliff) has been mistaken for the name of the island. If so, Lycomedes will have been the victim; his was a common Athenian name. Originally, it seems, sacrifices were offered to the Moon-goddess on the eighth day of each lunation, when she entered her second phase, this being the right time of the month for planting; but when Poseidon married her, and appropriated her cult, the month became a solar period, no longer linked with the moon.

  3. The mythic importance of Marathus (‘fennel’) lay in the use made of fennel stalks for carrying the new sacred fire from a central hearth to private ones (see 39.g), after their annual extinction (see 149. 3).

  4. Before closing the story of Theseus, let me here add a further note to the Tragliatella vase (see 98. 3), which shows the sacred king and his tanist escaping from a maze. I have now seen the picture on the other side of this vase, which is of extraordinary interest as the prologue to this escape: a sunwise procession on foot led by the unarmed sacred king. Seven men escort him, each armed with three javelins and a shield with a boar device, the spear-armed tanist bringing up the rear. These seven men evidently represent the seven months ruled by the tanist, which fall between the apple harvest and Easter – the boar being his household badge (see 18. 7). The scene takes place on the day of the king’s ritual death, and the Moon-queen (Pasiphaë – see 88. 7) has come to meet him: a terrible robed figure with one arm threateningly akimbo. With the outstretched other arm she is offering him an apple, which is his passport to Paradise; and the three spears that each man carries spell death. Yet the king is being guided by a small female figure robed like the other – we may call her the princess Ariadne (see 98. k), who helped Theseus to escape from the death-maze at Cnossos. And he is boldly displaying, as a counter-charm to the apple, an Easter-egg, the egg of resurrection. Easter was the season when the Troy-town dances were performed in the turf-cut mazes of Britain, and Etruria too. An Etruscan sacred egg of polished black trachite, found at Perugia, with an arrow in relief running around it, is this same holy egg.

  MAP OF THE GREEK WORLD

  1. See 4; 69; 83; 84; 87; 89; 99; 106; 136; 161; 162–5; 170.

  *Since this was written, history has repeated itself disastrously.

  1. Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xxii. 29; Nonnus: Dionysiaca xlvii. 34–245; Hyginus: Fabula 130 and Poetic Astronomy ii. 4; Apollodorus: i. 8. 1 and iii. 14. 7; Athenaeus: xiv. 10; Festus sub Oscillantes; Statius: Thebaid xi. 644–7; Servius on Virgil’s Georgics ii. 388–9.