The Greek Myths, Volume2

by Robert Graves

  e. In the confusion, Aethra fled with Munitus to the Greek camp, where Acamas and Demophon recognized her as their long-lost grandmother, whom they had sworn either to rescue or to ransom. Demophon at once approached Agamemnon and demanded her repatriation, with that of her fellow-captive, the sister of Peirithous. Menestheus of Athens supported their plea, and since Helen had often shown her dislike of Aethra by setting a foot on her head and tugging at her hair, Agamemnon gave his assent; but obliged Demophon and Acamas to waive their claims to any other Trojan spoil. Unfortunately, when Acamas landed in Thrace on his homeward voyage, Munitus, who was accompanying him, died of a serpent’s bite.10

  f. No sooner had the massacre begun in Troy than Cassandra fled to the temple of Athene and clutched the wooden image which had replaced the stolen Palladium. There Little Ajax found her and tried to drag her away, but she embraced the image so tightly that he had to take it with him when he carried her off into concubinage; which was the common fate of all Trojan women. Agamemnon, however, claimed Cassandra as the particular award of his own valour, and Odysseus obligingly put it about that Ajax had violated Cassandra in the shrine; which was why the image kept its eyes upturned to Heaven, as if horror-stricken.11 Thus Cassandra became Agamemnon’s prize, while Ajax earned the hatred of the whole army; and, when the Greeks were about to sail, Calchas warned the Council that Athene must be placated for the insult offered to her priestess. To gratify Agamemnon, Odysseus then proposed the stoning of Ajax; but he escaped by taking sanctuary at Athene’s altar, where he swore a solemn oath that Odysseus was lying as usual; nor did Cassandra herself support the charge of rape. Nevertheless, Calchas’s prophecy could hardly be disregarded; Ajax therefore expressed sorrow for having forcibly removed the image, and offered to expiate his crime. This he was prevented from doing by death: the ship in which he sailed home to Greece being wrecked on the Gyraean Rocks. When he scrambled ashore, Poseidon split the rocks with his trident and drowned him; or, some say, Athene borrowed Zeus’s thunderbolt and struck him dead. But Thetis buried his body on the island of Myconos; and his fellow-countrymen wore black for a whole year, and now annually launch a black-sailed ship, heaped with gifts, and burn it in his honour.12

  g. Athene’s wrath then fell on the land of Opuntian Locris, and the Delphic Oracle warned Ajax’s former subjects that they would have no relief from famine and pestilence unless they sent two girls to Troy every year for a thousand years. Accordingly, the Hundred Houses of Locris have ever since shouldered this burden in proof of their nobility. They choose the girls by lot, and land them at dead of night on the Rhoetean headland, each time varying the season; with them go kinsmen who know the country and can smuggle them into the sanctuary of Athene. If the Trojans catch these girls, they are stoned to death, burned as a defilement to the land, and their ashes scattered on the sea; but once inside the shrine, they are safe. Their hair is then shorn, they are given the single garment of a slave, and spend their days in menial temple duties until relieved by another pair. It happened many years ago that when the Trarians captured Troy and killed a Locrian priestess in the temple itself, the Locrians decided that their long penance must be over and therefore sent no more girls; but, famine and pestilence supervening, they hastened to resume their ancient custom, the term of which is only now drawing to an end. These girls gain Athene’s sanctuary by way of an underground passage, the secret entrance to which is at some distance from the walls, and which leads to the muddy culvert used by Odysseus and Diomedes when they stole the Palladium. The Trojans have no notion how the girls contrive to enter, and never know on what night the relief is due to arrive, so that they seldom catch them, and then only by accident.13

  h. After the massacre, Agamemnon’s people plundered and burned Troy, divided the spoils, razed the walls, and sacrificed holocausts to their gods. The Council had debated for a while what should be done with Hector’s infant son Astyanax, otherwise called Scamandrius; and when Odysseus recommended the systematic extirpation of Priam’s descendants, Calchas settled the boy’s fate by prophesying that, if allowed to survive, he would avenge his parents and his city. Though all other princes shrank from infanticide, Odysseus willingly hurled Astyanax from the battlements.14 But some say that Neoptolemus, to whom Hector’s widow Andromache had fallen as a prize in the division of spoil, snatched Astyanax from her, in anticipation of the Council’s decree, whirled him around his head by one foot and flung him upon the rocks far below.15 And others say that Astyanax leaped to his death from the wall, while Odysseus was reciting Calchas’s prophecy and invoking the gods to approve the cruel rite.16

  i. The Council also debated Polyxena’s fate. As he lay dying, Achilles had begged that she should be sacrificed upon his tomb, and more recently had appeared in dreams to Neoptolemus and other chieftains, threatening to keep the fleet windbound at Troy until they fulfilled his demand. A voice was also heard complaining from the tomb: ‘It is unjust that none of the spoil has been awarded to me!’ And a ghost appeared on the Rhoetean headland, clad in golden armour, crying: ‘Whither away, Greeks? Would you leave my tomb un-honoured?’17

  j. Calchas now declared that Polyxena must not be denied to Achilles, who loved her. Agamemnon dissented, arguing that enough blood was already shed, of old men and infants as well as of warriors, to glut Achilles’s vengeance, and that dead men, however famous, enjoyed no rights over live women. But Demophon and Acamas, who had been defrauded of their fair share in the spoils, clamoured that Agamemnon was expressing this view only to please Polyxena’s sister Cassandra and make her submit more readily to his embraces. They asked: ‘Which deserves the greater respect, Achilles’s sword or Cassandra’s bed?’ Feeling ran high and Odysseus, intervening, persuaded Agamemnon to give way.18

  k. The Council then instructed Odysseus to fetch Polyxena, and invited Neoptolemus to officiate as priest. She was sacrificed on Achilles’s tomb, in the sight of the whole army, who hastened to give her honourable burial; whereupon favouring winds sprang up at once.19 But some say that the Greek fleet had already reached Thrace when the ghost of Achilles appeared, threatening them with contrary winds, and that Polyxena was sacrificed there.20 Others record that she went of her own free will to Achilles’s tomb, before Troy fell, and threw herself on the point of a sword, thus expiating the wrong she had done him.21

  l. Though Achilles had killed Polydorus, Priam’s son by Laothoë, the youngest and best-loved of his children, yet another prince of the same name survived. He was Priam’s son by Hecabe and had been sent for safety to the Thracian Chersonese, where his aunt Iliona, wife of King Polymnestor, reared him. Iliona treated Polydorus as though he were a true brother to Deiphilus, whom she had borne to Polymnestor. Agamemnon, pursuing Odysseus’s policy of extirpation, now sent messengers to Polymnestor promising him Electra for a wife and a dowry of gold if he would do away with Polydorus. Polymnestor accepted the bribe, yet could not bring himself to harm a child whom he had sworn to protect, and instead killed his own son Deiphilus in the presence of the messengers, who went back deceived. Polydorus, not knowing the secret of his birth, but realizing that he was the cause of Iliona’s estrangement from Polymnestor, went to Delphi and asked the Pythoness: ‘What ails my parents?’ She answered: ‘Is it a small thing that your city is reduced to ashes, your father butchered and your mother enslaved, that you should come to me with such a question?’ He returned to Thrace in great anxiety, but found nothing changed since his departure. ‘Can Apollo have been mistaken?’ he wondered. Iliona told him the truth and, indignant that Polymnestor should have murdered his only child for gold and the promise of another queen, he first blinded and then stabbed him.22

  m. Others say that Polymnestor was threatened by the Greeks with relentless war unless he would give up Polydorus and that, when he yielded, they brought the boy to their camp and offered to exchange him for Helen. Since Priam declined to discuss the proposal, Agamemnon had Polydorus stoned to death beneath the walls of Troy, afterwards sending his body
to Helen with the message: ‘Show Priam this, and ask him whether he regrets his decision.’ It was an act of wanton spite, because Priam had pledged his word never to surrender Helen while she remained under Aphrodite’s protection, and was ready to ransom Polydorus with the rich city of Antandrus.23

  n. Odysseus won Hecabe as his prize, and took her to the Thracian Chersonese, where she uttered such hideous invectives against him and the other Greeks, for their barbarity and breaches of faith, that they found no alternative but to put her to death. Her spirit took the shape of one of those fearful black bitches that follow Hecate, leaped into the sea and swam away towards the Hellespont; they called the place of her burial ‘The Bitch’s Tomb’.24 Another version of the story is that after the sacrifice of Polyxena, Hecabe found the dead body of Polydorus washed up on the shore, her son-in-law Polymnestor having murdered him for the gold with which Priam was defraying the expenses of his education. She summoned Polymnestor, promising to let him into the secret of a treasure concealed among the ruins of Troy, and when he approached with his two sons, drew a dagger from her bosom, stabbed the boys to death and tore out Polymnestor’s eyes; a display of ill-temper which Agamemnon pardoned because of her age and misfortunes. The Thracian nobles would have taken vengeance on Hecabe with darts and stones, but she transformed herself into a bitch named Maera, and ran around howling dismally, so that they retired in confusion.25

  o. Some say that Antenor founded a new Trojan kingdom upon the ruins of the old one. Others, that Astyanax survived and became King of Troy after the departure of the Greeks; and that, when he was expelled by Antenor and his allies, Aeneas put him back on the throne–to which, however, Aeneas’s son Ascanius eventually succeeded, as had been prophesied. Be that as it may, Troy hasnever since been more than a shadow of its former self.26

  1. Apollodorus: Epitome v. 21; Euripides: Hecabe 23; Virgil: Aeneid ii. 506–57.

  2. Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by Pausanias: x. 27.1; Virgil: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Euripides: Trojan Women 16–17.

  3. Homer: Odyssey viii. 517–20; Apollodorus: Epitome v. 22; Hyginus: Fabula 240; Pausanias: v 18. 1; Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by scholiast on Aristophanes’s Lysistrata 155; Virgil: Aeneid vi. 494 ff.; Dictys Cretensis: v. 12.

  4. Apollodorus: Epitome v. 21; Homer: Iliad iii. 123; Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by Pausanias: x. 26. 3; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 246; Sophocles: Capture of Troy, quoted by Strabo: xiii. 1. 53.

  5. Pausanias: x. 27. 2; Pindar: Pythian Odes v. 82 ff; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 246; Strabo: xiii. 1. 53.

  6. Livy: i. 1; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 246.

  7. Livy: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: Epitome v. 21; Dionysius of Halicarnassus: i. 48.

  8. Dionysius of Halicarnassus: i. 48, 49, and 64; Aelian: Varia Historia iii. 22; Hyginus: Fabula 254; Strabo: xiii. 608; Pausanias: viii. 12. 5; Virgil: Aeneid, passim; Plutarch: Romulus 3; Livy: 1. 2; Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1268.

  9. Hyginus: Fabula 101; Homer: Iliad iii. 123–4; Tzetzes: OnLycophron 495 ff. and 314; Apollodorus: Epitome v. 23.

  10. Scholiast on Euripides’s Trojan Women 31; Apollodorus: Epitome v. 22; Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by Pausanias: x. 25.3; Hyginus Fabula 243; Pausanias: v. 19. 1; Dio Chrysostom: Orations xi. i. p. 179, ed. Dindorff; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 495; Parthenius: Love Stories 16.

  11. Arctinus of Miletus: Sack of Ilium; Virgil: Aeneid ii. 406; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xiii. 66.

  12. Tzetzes: On Lycophron 365; Apollodorus: Epitome v. 23; Pausanias: x. 31. 1; i. 15. 3 and x. 26. 1; Homer: Odyssey iv. 99.

  13. Hyginus: Fabula 116; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xiii. 66; Lycophron: 1141–73, with Tzetzes’s scholia; Polybius: xii. 5; Plutarch: On the Slowness of Divine Justice xii; Strabo: xiii. 1. 40; Aelian: Varia Historia, Fragment 47; Aeneas Tacticus: xxxi. 24.

  14. Homer: Iliad vi. 402; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Euripides: Trojan Women 719 ff.; Hyginus: Fabula 109; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ii. 457; Tryphiodorus: Sack of Troy 644–6.

  15. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Lesches: Little Iliad, quoted by Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1268; Pausanias: x. 25. 4.

  16. Seneca: Troades 524 ff. and 1063 ff.

  17. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 322; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 323; Quintus Smyrnaeus: Posthomerica xiv. 210–328; Euripides: Hecabe 107 ff.

  18. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid: loc. cit.; Euripides: loc. cit.

  19. Euripides: Hecabe 218 ff. and 521–82.

  20. Ovid: Metamorphoses xiii. 439 ff.; Pausanias: x. 25. 4.

  21. Philostratus: Herioca xix. 11.

  22. Homer: Iliad xxii. 48 and xx. 407 ff.; Hyginus: loc. cit. and 240.

  23. Dictys Cretensis: ii. 18, 22, and 27; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 6.

  24. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 111; Dictys Cretensis: v. 16; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1176.

  25. Euripides: Hecabe; Ovid: Metamorphoses xiii. 536 ff.

  26. Dictys Cretensis: v. 17; Abas, quoted by Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ix. 264; Livy: i. 1.

  1. Odysseus’s considerate treatment of such renegades as Antenor and Calchas is contrasted here with the treachery he showed to his honest comrades Palamedes, Great Ajax, Little Ajax, and Diomedes, and with his savage handling of Astyanax, Polydorus, and Polyxena; but because Julius Caesar and Augustus claimed descent from Aeneas – another traitor spared by Odysseus, and regarded at Rome as a model of piety – the satiric implications are lost on modern readers. It is a pity that the exact terms of Hecabe’s invectives against Odysseus and his comrades in dishonour, which must have expressed Homer’s true feelings, have not survived; but her conversion into the Cretan Hecate, Maera, or Scylla the sea-bitch (see 16. 2; 91. 2; and 170. t), suggests that he regarded the curses as valid – kingdoms founded on barbarity and ill-faith could never prosper. Maera was Scylla’s emblem in heaven, the Lesser Dog-star, and when it rose, human sacrifices were offered at Marathon in Attica: the most famous victim being King Icarius (see 79. 1), whose daughter Odysseus had married and whose fate he will therefore have shared in the original myth (see 159. b).

  2. The well-authenticated case of the Locrian girls is one of the strangest in Greek history, since Little Ajax’s alleged violation of Cassandra was dismissed by reputable mythographers as an Odyssean lie, and it is clear that the Locrian girls gained entry into Troy as a matter of civic pride, not of penance. A genuine attempt was made by the Trojans to keep them out, if we can trust Aeneas Tacticus’s account – he is discussing the danger of building cities with secret entrances – and that they were treated ‘as a defilement of the land’ if caught, and as slaves if they managed to gain entry, is consistent with this view. Little Ajax was the son of Locrian Oïleus; whose name, also borne by a Trojan warrior whom Agamemnon killed (Iliad xi. 9. 3), is an early form of ‘Ilus’; and Priam’s Ilium had, it seems, been partly colonized by Locrians, a pre-Hellenic tribe of Leleges (Aristotle: Fragment 560; Dionysius of Halicarnassus: i. 17; Strabo: xiii. 1. 3 and 3. 3). They gave the name of the Locrian mountain Phricones to what was hitherto called Cyme; and enjoyed a hereditary right to supply Athene with a quota of priestesses (see 158. 8). This right they continued to exercise long after the Trojan War – when the city had lost its political power and became merely a place of sentimental pilgrimage – much to the disgust of the Trojans, who regarded the girls as their natural enemies.

  3. The curse, effective for a thousand years, ended about 264 B.C. – which would correspond with the Delian (and thus the Homeric) dating of the Trojan War, though Eratosthenes reckoned it a hundred years later. Odysseus’s secret conduit has been discovered in the ruins of Troy and is described by Walter Leaf in his Troy: A Study in Homeric Geography (London, 1912, pp. 126–44). But why did Theano turn traitress and surrender the Palladium? Probably because being a Locrian – Theano was also the name of the famous poetess of Epizephyrian Locri – she either disagreed with Priam’s anti-Locrian trade policy, or knew that Troy must fall and w
anted the image removed to safety, rather than captured by Agamemnon. Homer makes her a daughter of Thracian Cisseus, and there was at least one Locrian colony in Thrace, namely Abdera (see 130. c). As a Locrian, however, Theano will have reckoned descent matrilineally (Polybius: xii. 5. 6); and was probably surnamed Cisseis, ‘ivy-woman’, in honour of Athene whose chief festival fell during the ivy-month (see 52. 3).

  4. Sophocles, in the Argument to his Ajax, mentions a quarrel between Odysseus and Ajax over the Palladium after the fall of Troy; but this must have been Little Ajax, since Great Ajax had already killed himself. We may therefore suppose that Little Ajax, rather than Diomedes, led Odysseus up the conduit to fetch away the Palladium with the connivance of his compatriot Theano; that Odysseus accused Little Ajax of laying violent hands on a non-Locrian priestess who clung to the image which Theano was helping him to remove; and that afterwards Ajax, while admitting his error, explained that he had been as gentle as possible in the circumstances. Such an event would have justified the Trojans of later centuries in trying to restrain the Locrian girls from exercising their rights as Trojan priestesses; in representing their continued arrival as a penance due for Ajax’s crime, even though Athene had summarily punished him with a thunderbolt; and in treating them as menials. Odysseus may have insisted upon accompanying Little Ajax into the citadel, on the ground that Zacynthus, eponymous ancestor of his subjects the Zacynthians, figured in a list of early Trojan kings.

  5. This, again, would explain Hecabe’s failure to denounce Odysseus to the Trojans when he entered the city as a spy. She too is described as a ‘daughter of Cisseus’; was she another Locrian from Thrace who connived at Ajax’s removal of the Palladium? Hecabe had no cause to love Odysseus, and her reason for facilitating his escape can only have been to prevent him from denouncing her to the Trojans. Odysseus doubtless slipped out quietly by the culvert and not, as he boasted, by the gate ‘after killing many Trojans’. Presumably he demanded old Hecabe as his share of the spoil because she had been a material witness of the Palladium incident and he wanted to stop her mouth. She seems, however, to have revealed everything before she died.