“Go!” he cried. “Run to the river as fast as you can. Kiss him once, then jump off the boat. And watch from the shore, for that’s where the action will be.”
She darted off, running so swiftly, so lightly, no blade of grass bent beneath her feet. Charon’s ferry was moored to the near shore. He was on deck, listening to the far-off shouts of the crowd, trying to read their meaning. He saw Persephone flash through the gates, coming so fast that she was on board before he could leap ashore to greet her.
“Just time for one kiss,” she whispered. “Then do what you must.”
She kissed him and jumped lightly off the boat. With a mighty stroke of his oar, Charon sent the ferry to the middle of the river, and waited. He didn’t have long to wait. Hecate was flying directly overhead. From each hand dangled a pair of braided snakes. The river darkened under the shadow of great wings as the Sphinx flew over.
Roaring, claws bared, she came right toward the hovering Hecate—who sank below the Sphinx and flung her snakes. They looped through the air headfirst toward the Sphinx. Four jaws clamped onto one front paw, four onto the other. They whipped their tails, trying to pull her toward the river.
They pulled her down until their tails dangled within reach of Charon. He stretched his arms full length and barely managed to grasp a pair of braided tails in each huge hand. He pulled. The Sphinx beat her wings and kept aloft. Charon pulled; the serpents pulled. The monster was too strong; she would not be pulled down.
Then Hecate, bleeding badly, used the very last of her strength. She forced herself to climb in the air until she was far above the Sphinx, then folded her wings like a stooping falcon and dropped with dead weight, landing on the Sphinx’s broad back, between her wings.
The force of her fall combined with a final mighty yank by Charon and forced the Sphinx down, down. The monster beat her wings furiously; their downdraft capsized the ferry. Charon was thrown into the water. Quick-wittedly, he managed to clamp the ferry’s anchor between his legs so that he would sink faster. Held on to the snakes as he sank, and they gripped the Sphinx. Down, down he sank, growing colder and colder. But he had kissed Persephone, drunk deeply of her springtide—and, warmed by her green fire, remembering Thallo’s words, then, for love and beauty and honor and justice, he kept clenching the heavy fluke between his legs, and was dragged down, farther and farther into the freezing depths, dragging the Sphinx after him.
He felt the living cables that were the braided serpents pull out of his hands, and he knew that the Sphinx must be sinking of her own weight. He turned in the water and began to swim up—and passed the great frozen body as it sank toward the bottom.
When he surfaced, he saw that the river shore was thronged with gods and goddesses, shouting, cheering. He was disappointed. Shuddering with cold, he wanted one more kiss from Persephone to warm him again. But she was standing demurely beside Hades, and he knew that he would have to wait.
That night the guests banqueted in Hades’ palace in Erebus. They reveled until dawn, then departed, thanking him for his hospitality. But the final words of Zeus were, “We’re going to have to compromise, you know. Demeter is withholding her crops, and making too many people suffer, and I am being pestered by their complaints. Your bride will have to spend half a year with her mother. And that’s final.”
Hades had to agree, and was further dismayed when Hecate refused to serve him. She returned to Crete bearing Thallo, who dangled from her claws as they went, scribbling happily.
Nor was the Sphinx left frozen in the depth of the Styx. “Remove her,” said Hades to the Cyclopes. “Take her up to the desert and deposit her in its hottest sands. It will be infernally interesting to see what happens when she thaws out in ten thousand years or so and enters a world that no longer believes in gods or monsters.”
But we can’t be sure that the Sphinx still languishes in the hot sands of the desert, for another legend holds that she was not frozen in the great battle but managed to escape from Tartarus and find employment with Zeus. He used her on special assignments—to punish those mortals who dared imitate the gods.
One such mortal was a young prince named Oedipus, who believed that he was an orphan. He came to Thebes, and in a series of accidents, killed the king—who, unbeknownst to him, happened to be his father—and married the widow—his mother—and took the Theban throne.
This angered Zeus, who did not believe in accidents and did not approve of mortals marrying their close relatives. “For,” he stated, “this is a privilege reserved for the gods who must marry within the family. Take me for example: Whom could I have married without lowering myself—only my own sister.”
So Zeus was displeased with Oedipus for breaking this taboo, and sent the Sphinx to kill him. Lurking in ambush beyond the city’s walls, she trapped the king’s chariot in a valley. She snatched up the charioteer and devoured him, armor and all, as Oedipus watched, horrified. He drew his sword to defend himself. But the Sphinx was in no hurry; she wanted to have a little fun before killing him.
“I’ll give you a chance to save your life,” she said. “If you can answer this riddle, which no one has ever been able to guess, I’ll let you go—or at least save you for later.”
“Ask your riddle!” shouted the king.
“Very well.… What has sometimes two legs, sometimes three, sometimes four, and goes least when it has the most?”
“This is the answer,” said Oedipus. “It is man—who walks on two legs in his prime. On three—that is, two legs and a cane—when old. And on four when a babe who can only crawl, and then goes slowest.”
Now, this legend says, the Sphinx was stricken with shame at having her riddle guessed so easily—leaped off the cliff and dashed herself to pieces on the rocks below. Whereupon Zeus, still determined on punishment, sent a plague upon Thebes. And Oedipus, consulting an oracle, was told that he had brought the plague upon the city by killing his father and marrying his mother.
Then, one version of the story says, Oedipus killed himself. Another says he blinded himself. And still another that he went into exile, accompanied by his youngest daughter, who would also have been his half sister.
However, while the other tales of the Sphinx are a matter of solid record, there is very little evidence to support the Oedipus story. The account of the monster killing herself, for example, seems far out of character. Monsters value themselves too highly to commit suicide, especially this monster.
Now, Persephone did spend half of each year with her mother in the Upper World, and that time became spring and summer. Half a year she spent underground as Hades’ queen. And that time, Demeter decreed, was winter, and no crops grew. As for Charon, he served as ferryman while Persephone was underground—and that was the busy season, for more old folk die in winter. And it is said that Hades by then did not care how much time Persephone spent on the ferry. For he had become interested in Menthe.
And when it was time for Persephone to visit her mother, Charon went too. He was not idle in the Upper World; he always found work as a ferryman. That he and Persephone met often then is proved by the way the most beautiful wildflowers grow on riverbanks.
We should be aware that we may not yet be finished with the Sphinx, nor she with us. There are those who say that the figure still crouching in the Egyptian desert—the figure of a monster with a lion’s body, an eagle’s wings, and a woman’s face—is not carved out of stone but is the actual living body of the Sphinx, so deeply frozen that ninety centuries of desert sun have only begun to thaw her out. But the thawing has begun, as Hades predicted; the Sphinx is being unlocked from her frozen sleep, and will wake up hungry.
About the Author
Bernard Evslin (1922–1993) was a bestselling and award-winning author known for his works on Greek and other cultural mythologies. The New York Times called him “one of the most widely published authors of classical mythology in the world.” He was born in New Rochelle, New York, and attended Rutgers University. After several years wo
rking as a playwright, screenwriter, and documentary producer, he began publishing novels and short stories in the late 1960s. During his long career, Evslin published more than seventy books—over thirty of which were for young adults. His bestseller Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths has been translated into ten different languages and has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. He won the National Education Association Award in 1961, and in 1986 his book Hercules received the Washington Irving Children’s Book Choice Award. Evslin died in Kauai, Hawaii, at the age of seventy-seven.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Hydra © 1989, Ladon © 1990, Medusa © 1987, The Minotaur © 1987, The Nemean Lion © 1990, Procrustes © 1987, Scylla and Charybdis © 1989, The Sirens © 1988, The Sphinx © 1991 Copyright by Bernard Evslin
Cover design by Olivera, Omar & Andrea Worthington
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6707-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY BERNARD EVSLIN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Page 46