Sir Arthur Evans had done far more than simply excavate the ruins. He had spent a large part of his great fortune in restoring many of the most interesting chambers. The original frescoes had been moved for preservation to the Museum in Heraklion; but artists had painted exact copies of them on the walls where they had formerly been, and they consisted of colourful representations of birds, beasts, fish and flowers, rendered with a technique far more modern in conception than the art of any other people of the ancient world.
That the Minoan nobility had lived in a state of luxury comparable to modern standards was also evident. Some of the frescoes showed women who had lived nearly four thousand years ago, yet their elaborate coiffeurs, jewels and the richness of their brocade dresses could have rivalled those of twentieth-century Parisians. The Queen’s private bathroom could still be seen and had been better equipped than that of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. By a skilfully devised system of pipes for sewage and steam, the inmates of the palace had enjoyed both modern sanitation and central heating.
For the better part of two hours, Robbie and Stephanie wandered about the endless succession of rooms and staircases; then they lunched at the Tourist Pavilion. Afterwards, they walked right round the ruin to see the theatre and the long, solidly-built sunken road which connected the great palace to a smaller one a quarter of a mile off, on the far side of the highway. By then the sun was blazing down, so they found a shady place in which to sit and Stephanie said:
‘I suppose the famous Labyrinth, in which young men and maidens were sacrificed to the Minotaur each year, lies somewhere below the ruins of the palace. But the Minotaur couldn’t really have been half man, half bull, could it?’
‘It is impossible to say,’ Robbie replied. ‘Modern opinion is that these young captives were just trained as bull-fighters and put into a bull-ring to amuse the Minoans. But there are well-authenticated accounts of some pretty queer creatures that women have given birth to in quite recent times. According to the ancient chronicles, King Minos angered Poseidon, so the god inflicted Minos’s Queen, Pasiphae, with a monstrous passion for a bull. In order to gratify it, she had the great inventor, Daedalus, make for her an imitation cow that she could get inside, and the result of his efforts was so lifelike that the bull took it for a real cow and acted accordingly. The result was that she gave birth to the Minotaur.’
‘It must have been jolly uncomfortable for her,’ Stephanie remarked; then she added hastily: ‘Anyhow, one must give Daedalus full marks for having made a cow good enough to deceive the bull.’
‘Oh, he was a genius. When he got into trouble with Minos and was imprisoned here, he is said to have invented wings by which he and his son, Icarus, escaped. Unfortunately, Icarus flew too high; so the sun melted the wax by which the wings were attached to his shoulders, and he fell in the sea and was drowned. But Daedalus got away safely and later invented all sorts of wonderful things for a new patron, King Cocalus, who reigned over a large part of Sicily. It was through the Minotaur that Daedalus got on the wrong side of king Minos; because it was he who had the bright idea of providing Theseus with the ball of thread that enabled him to find his way out of the Labyrinth after he had killed the monster.’
They were silent for a moment, then Stephanie said: ‘Tell me about Theseus, Robbie.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Somehow, I find it difficult to think about that sort of thing any more.’
‘But you should,’ she urged him. ‘You mustn’t let yourself brood about the trouble you are in, and awful things in the future which may never happen.’
He smiled at her and, after a moment, admitted: ‘I suppose you’re right. Very well, then. Theseus was one of the greatest of the Heroes and came of the royal line of Athens. They were a pretty tough lot and, to start from the beginning, the city was founded by a chap called Cecrops. His grandson, Pandion, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. In those early days, the Athenians still had great difficulty in preventing barbarian invaders from ravaging their country; so Pandion called in a fierce King of Thrace, called Tereus, to give him a hand. When Tereus’s tribesmen had done their stuff, Pandion said he could have whichever he liked of his daughters as a reward.
‘Tereus chose the elder, Procne, married her and took her off to Thrace, where she had a son by him called Itys. But, as the years passed, Procne grew lonely; so she asked her lord and master to let her go on a visit to her old home. He wouldn’t hear of it but, after a while, he agreed to go down to Athens himself and bring back Philomela, so that the sisters could have a few weeks’ get-together.
‘When he collected Philomela he found that, since he had last seen her, she had blossomed out quite a bit. That gave him wicked ideas. In the ship on the way back, he did his best to make a good impression on her by fetching her cushions to sit on, admiring her hair-dos and feeding her lots of Turkish delight. Naturally, she took all this simply as proof of what a charming brother-in-law she had. But, once they got ashore, as the story books say “the villain revealed himself”.
‘ “Be mine,” he said, “and I will make you my Queen in your sister’s place.” “No, no!” she cried. “ ’Twould be a crime in the eyes of gods and men.” “I care not a fig for either,” he stormed. “You shall lie with me, girl, or else—” “Unhand me, wretch,” she sobbed. “I’d rather die first—and anyway, I don’t like men with beards,” or words to that effect.’
Stephanie laughed. ‘That’s better, Robbie. Now you are getting into your old form.’
‘Well, there it was. She was set on death rather than dishonour, and he seems to have got cold feet. He didn’t like to kill her but he became scared that when he got her back to his palace, she would spill the beans to her sister about the pass he had made, and Procne was the sort of wife who might have hit him over the head with a rolling pin. To prevent Philomela telling on him, he did an awful thing. He cut out the poor girl’s tongue.’
‘Oh, Robbie, how ghastly!’
‘Yes, wasn’t it? And not really very clever, either; because he couldn’t take her home with him after that, so he imprisoned her in a house in the woods and gave out that she had died en route. But Philomela still had a kick left in her. After she had been behind bars for some while, she secured permission to pass away the time by doing a bit of tatting. Her gaoler got her some white and purple wool. With that, she wove a tapestry illustrating Tereus’s ungentlemanly behaviour and persuaded her gaoler to take it to the Queen.
‘As soon as old Tereus had gone off to look at the rabbit snares, or whatever he did in the mornings, Procne bustled off into the woods, released Philomela from her prison and took her along to the palace. It so happened that, just as they were crossing the courtyard, Procne’s son, Itys, came along whistling a bit out of tune and swinging his lesson books. It chanced, too, that this unlucky youngster had grown up the “spit ’n’ image” of his father. The sight of this likeness sent Procne right off her rocker. She snatched up a bread knife and jabbed it into her own son’s throat.’
Stephanie closed her eyes. ‘Really, the things these people did.’
‘Oh, that wasn’t all. These two beauties fell on the boy, tore him limb from limb between them and put the bits in a pot. Then, when Tereus came home, his wife served him up their son for lunch. Procne stood by while Tereus had a great “tuck-in”. After he had belched a bit, he asked her: “Was that delicious dish, grouse en casserole or partridge Strogonoff done with truffles?”
‘ “No,” she told him. “It was a hash of Itys.” Then, just so that he should not think that she was joking, Philomela popped out at that moment from behind a curtain and threw his son’s head on the table.
‘Tereus had a very soft spot for his only son; so, naturally, he took umbrage at having been led into eating a good part of him. Snatching up his trusty blade, he chivvied the two women out of the house and into the woods. But evidently the gods felt that he was most to blame for having started the trouble; so they saved Procne and Ph
ilomela by turning them into a swallow and a nightingale.’
‘What a revolting story. And, anyway, what has all this to do with Theseus?’
‘Only that these two charming ladies were his aunts, which goes to show that even the girls in the family he came from were not the type to take things lying down. His father, King Aegeus, didn’t behave exactly according to “Cocker” either. He had been married twice, but he’d had no luck in getting a son by either wife. However, he evidently believed in the old Robert the Bruce stuff of “If at first you don’t succeed …”
‘When on a visit to Pittheus, King of Troezen, his roving eye settled on the King’s daughter, Aethra, who was then a pretty little piece of fifteen. That night, he gumshoed along to her room and told her about the facts of life. He concluded the lesson by saying: “Now, my dear, there’s just a chance that you may have a beautiful little baby all of your own. If it’s a girl you can have her for keeps, and if it’s a weedy, sickly boy I don’t want to be bothered about him either. But, just on the chance that he is worthy to bear my name, I’m going to bury my sword and sandals tomorrow under a heavy rock. If, when he is sixteen, he is strong enough to lift it and bring them to me in Athens, I’ll make him my heir.” Then he patted her on the head and told her not to let on to anyone that kind ‘uncle’ Aegeus had been along to see her and given up most of his night’s sleep to tell her all those interesting things.
‘Aethra must have been quite a smart kid because, when people began to notice that her dresses were becoming a bit tight round the middle, she said that Poseidon had been to see her in a dream. Maybe he had, since with his helmet of invisibility he could get up to all sorts of larks without the bother that Zeus had to go to of turning himself into a bull or swan or something. Anyhow, when her baby was born, Poseidon behaved like a good sport and acted as Theseus’s protector all through his life.
‘Theseus, of course, turned out to be a boy wonder and modelled himself on Hercules, who was a friend of the family and came to stay. As a child, Theseus even attacked with his toy sword the skin of the Nemean lion, believing it to be a live animal. Hercules usually wore it, but on this occasion had left it lying about in the garden. Then, when Theseus was sixteen, his mother came clean with him about his birth; so he heaved up the rock, recovered the sword and sandals his father had left there, and went off with them to Athens.
‘On the way, he spoilt the fun of all sorts of people. First he killed Periphetes, a terrible bandit who wielded a club as large as himself. Next he met a character called Sinis, who invented the game that the pirates of the Spanish Main used to play hundreds of years later. It was to bend two pine saplings inward, tie the ankles of a captive to their tops; then, having made a book on which tree would tear off the biggest piece of the victim, let them spring back. Theseus, of course, treated Sinis to his own medicine.
‘A giant named Sceiron was the next unlucky person to fall in with our Hero. He kept an enormous turtle and, instead of buying food for it at the local pet shop, he used to force travellers to wash his feet then, when they knelt down in front of him, he kicked them over a cliff so that they fell into the turtle’s pool. The day he met Theseus, the turtle got an extra large dinner.
‘Soon afterwards, Theseus came upon another giant, one Procrustes, who had a rather warped sense of humour. He invited anyone who came along to spend the night. In his guest room there were two beds, one very long and one very short. If the guest chose the long bed, Procrustes tied his wrists and ankles to cords, then used a rack to stretch him to fit it; if he chose the short one, he cut off the bits that overlapped. Theseus, of course, put paid to him too, then gaily went on his way, killing off all sorts of monsters, until at last he reached Athens.
‘There he found things in a pretty pickle. King Aegeus had gone a bit soft in the head; so he was being pushed around by his two nephews, the Pallantids. Still worse, he had taken as his wife the witch Medea. You’ll remember she was the sweetie-pie that Jason brought back with the Golden Fleece, but who had left him after boiling his uncle in a cauldron under the pretext of giving him a beauty treatment.
‘Being gifted with psychic powers, Medea tumbled to it at once that Theseus was the heir to the throne and would do her no good; so she spun her old man a yarn that her familiar spirit had told her this brash young stranger meant to do him in. Aegeus, being under her thumb, fell for this and agreed that she should give Theseus a cup of poisoned wine. But, just at the moment she was saying to Theseus: “Here you are, Big Boy, knock this back and I’ll get you another,” he produced his father’s sword from out of his hiker’s pack. Recognising it at once, his papa knocked the drink out of his hand and, as usual in such cases, a dog which was handy lapped it up, then threw seven fits and went rigid. Seeing the game was up, Medea gnashed her false teeth in rage, snatched up her broom and flew off out of the window.
‘Theseus sorted out his uppish cousins, the Pallantids, in no time at all and, as his old Pop was more or less gaga, virtually took over the kingdom. But, after a year or two, the Minoan tribute became due. Twenty-nine years earlier King Minos’s son, Androgeos, had been bumped off by some Athenian athletes who were jealous because he had won so many prizes at their Games. Minos then arrived on the scene with his two-Power Navy to avenge his son, and had consented to spare the city only if every nine years the Athenians antied up their seven most likely lads and their seven most come-hither virgins for his Minotaur to chase round the Labyrinth. For the third time, the Minoan galleys turned up to carry this nice little cargo off to Crete.
‘One must hand it to Theseus that he had bags of courage, for he volunteered at once to go as one of the lads. However, no one could say he was a particularly modest type, as he also declared that, after five minutes with him, the Minotaur would wish his mother had never set eyes on a bull. His old Pop implored him to stay put, but he said: “Not to worry, Dad. You go and do a spot of fishing off Sounion Head. You’ll get first sight of my ship from there on her way back, and I’ll hoist a white sail instead of a black to let you know that I’m O.K.’
‘When he reached Crete, he continued to throw his weight about and boast that the Minotaur wouldn’t stand an earthly against him because he was a son of Poseidon. King Minos took him up on that, threw a gold ring into the harbour and said: “If the god’s your father, in you go boy. Ask him to hand that back to you.” Theseus stripped off his clothes, did a jack-knife dive and came up not only with the ring but also a diamond tiara straight out of Cartier’s. This, with a graceful bow, he handed to the King’s daughter, Ariadne, who happened to be looking on.
‘Having had a good look at Theseus while he was still dripping wet, Ariadne felt her heart go pitter-pat; so she sought out Daedalus in his back room and said: “Look, you dear old egg-head. That Athenian diving champ has made me go all groggy at the knees. Please think of a way to save him for me so that he can restore my equilibrium.” Upon this, Daedalus gave her a magic sword and a ball of twine, so that Theseus couldn’t help killing the Minotaur with the one and, by unrolling the other as he went into the Labyrinth, find his way out again by it.
‘That evening, she passed on these useful accessories to her new boy friend. He gave her a pat on the behind and promised her the full treatment later; then went off to do his stuff. She didn’t let the grass grow under her feet, either. She spent the night boring holes with a gimlet in the bottoms of all the ships in her papa’s fleet, so that they sank to the mud of the harbour and could not be used for pursuit. Round about dawn, Theseus kept his date with her at his own ship and, just as a makeweight, brought along her pretty little sister, Phaedra.
‘Theseus’s ship reached the island of Naxos, but accounts differ about what happened there. According to one version, poor Ariadne was so seasick that she had to be put ashore for a bit; then a terrible storm sprang up and drove the ship away from the island before Theseus had a chance of picking her up. In the Aegean, that could easily happen. The other version is that all the Atheni
ans landed and spent several days holding a decidedly hectic party to celebrate their escape from an awful fate in the Labyrinth. That seems the more likely story. It goes on to say that Ariadne, being a daughter of Pasiphae, proved too much for Theseus. He simply could not take it, so he deliberately ditched her.’
‘What a very sad end to the story,’ said Stephanie.
‘Oh, that’s not the end. There’s yards more of it. Theseus’s abandoning of Ariadne turned out to be a stroke of luck for her. Dionysus happened to come along and found her weeping on the beach. Being a god he knew just how to console her, and they found that they were so well suited to one another that they got married.
Theseus, on the other hand, after he’d been a few days at sea, seems to have regretted giving her the brush-off. Anyhow, his thoughts are said to have been so full of her that he forgot to pull down the black sail of his ship and hoist a white one. Poor old Aegeus, up on Sounion Head, naturally took it that his son was a goner; so he threw himself over the cliff to feed the fishes that he had been killing time trying to catch.
‘However, having inherited the kingdom didn’t stop Theseus from taking time off now and then to go adventuring. He went with Hercules on an expedition to beat up the Amazons, captured their Queen, Antiope, and married her. But he soon got tired of her, kicked her out of bed, and installed Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra, as his wife instead. Then, after several years during which he slew many more monsters, he went with a pal of his named Peirithous to Sparta and they abducted that precocious little ten-year-old poppet Helen. When they drew lots for who should have her, Theseus won and, judging by his form with the girls generally, maybe she wasn’t quite as innocent as she looked when she got home again.
‘Peirithous must have been as mad as a March hare. He conceived the fantastic idea of consoling himself for not having got Helen by going down to Hades and carrying Persephone off from Pluto. Theseus could not do less than lend a hand; so off they went and landed themselves literally in the Hell of a mess. Peirithous got stuck there for keeps, and Theseus got away only because the doyen of all the Heroes, tough old Hercules, came down and pulled him out by the coat-tails.
Mayhem in Greece Page 49