by Stephen Fry
The world had found a new rhythm.
HERMAPHRODITUS AND SILENUS
As the men and women of the Silver Age became accustomed to the striving and toiling and suffering that seemed now to be their common lot, so the gods continued to breed. Hermes, who had grown swiftly into handsome but eternally youthful manhood, fathered the goat-footed nature god PAN by the nymph DRYOPE.92 Behind the back of Hephaestus and Ares he also coupled with Aphrodite, a union blessed by the birth of a son of quite transcendent loveliness named—in honor of each parent—HERMAPHRODITUS.
This beautiful boy grew up in the shadow of Mount Ida, cared for by naiads.93 When he reached the age of fifteen he left them to wander the world. Traveling in Asia Minor he met one bright afternoon a naiad called SALMACIS who was splashing in the clear waters of a spring near Halicarnassus. Hermaphroditus, who was as shy as he was lovely, became greatly confused and unhappy when this forward creature, stunned by his beauty, tried to seduce him.
Unlike most of her kind—modest, hardworking nymphs who attended with diligence to the maintenance of the streams, pools, and watercourses over which they had charge—Salmacis had a reputation for vanity and indolence. She would rather swim lazily around admiring her own limbs in the water than hunt or exercise with the other naiads. But her peace and self-esteem were shattered by the beauty of this Hermaphroditus, and she exerted herself mightily to win him. The more she tried—revolving naked in the water, winningly rubbing her breasts, blowing coy bubbles under the surface—the less comfortable the boy became, until he shouted at her to leave him alone. She departed in a sulky surge, shocked and humiliated by the new and unwelcome experience of rejection.
It was a fine day, though, and Hermaphroditus, hot and sweaty from the excitement of fighting off this tiresome sprite and thinking she was safely out of the way, stripped off his clothing and plunged into the cool waters of the spring to refresh himself.
Almost immediately Salmacis, who had swum back under the cover of the reeds, leapt on him like a salmon and clung fast to his naked body. Revolted he wiggled and wriggled and jiggled to be set free, while she cried up to the heavens, “O gods above, never let this youth and me part! Let us always be one!”
The gods heard her prayer and answered with the callous literalness that seemed ever to delight them. In an instant Salmacis and Hermaphroditus did indeed become one. The pair fused into a single body. One body, two sexes. No longer the naiad Salmacis and the youth Hermaphroditus, but now intersex, male and female coexisting in one form. Although the Romans were to regard this state of being as a disorder that threatened the strict militaristic norms of their society, the more open-minded Greeks prized, celebrated, and even worshipped the hermaphrodite gender. Statuary and representations on pottery and temple friezes show us that what the Romans feared, the Greeks seemed to find admirable.94
In this new state Hermaphroditus joined the retinue of EROTES whose nature and purpose we will describe very soon.
By an unknown nymph, Hermes95 also fathered the snubnosed, donkey-tailed lecher SILENUS, who grew up to become a bearded, potbellied, pucker-browed old drunk, a popular subject in paintings, sculptures, and carved drinking vessels, and whom we shall also encounter before too long.
As the gods bred, so man bred. But the divine fire that was now as much a part of our nature as the gods meant that we shared with them the capacity not just for lust, copulation, and reproduction, but the capacity for love.
Love, as the Greeks understood, is complicated.
90. She features prominently in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
91. Helios could be as dull and slow in the wits as he was bright and swift in the sun-chariot. How he came to take over these duties from Apollo will be revealed later.
92. Although some say this, I tend to believe that Pan (FAUNUS to the Romans) was older than the Olympians. Perhaps as old as nature itself. We will encounter him from time to time as we move forward.
93. There were two Mount Idas—the Cretan one, Zeus’s birthplace, and another in Phrygia, Asia Minor—today’s Turkish Anatolia. This was the one from which Hermaphroditus hailed.
94. The great museums of the world have hidden away treasures that represent intersex figures like Hermaphroditus. Many of these have only recently come to light, with exhibitions at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and other leading institutions setting a trend for rediscovery of this neglected area. It coincides with a greater, society-wide understanding of the fluidity of gender.
95. Or possibly Pan.
CUPID AND PSYCHE
EROTES
The Greeks untangled love’s complexity by naming each separate strand and providing divinities to represent them. Aphrodite, the supreme goddess of love and of beauty, was attended by a retinue of winged and naked godlings called Erotes. Like many deities (Hades and his underworld cohorts, for example) the Erotes suddenly found themselves with much to do once humanity established itself and began to flourish. Each of the Erotes had a special kind of amatory passion to promulgate and promote.
ANTEROS—the youthful patron of selfless unconditional love.96
EROS—the leader of the Erotes, god of physical love and sexual desire.
HEDYLOGOS—the spirit of the language of love and terms of endearment, who now, one assumes, looks over Valentine cards, love letters, and romantic fiction.
HERMAPHRODITUS—the protector of effeminate males, mannish females, and those of what we would now call a more fluid gender.
HIMEROS—the embodiment of desperate, impetuous love, love that is impatient to be fulfilled and ready to burst.
HYMENAIOS—the guardian of the bridal chamber and wedding music.
POTHOS—the personification of languorous longing, of love for the absent and the departed.
Of these the most influential and devastating was Eros, in his power and his capacity to sow mischief and discord. There are two stories concerning his origin and identity. In one telling of the birth of the cosmos he was hatched from a great egg laid by Nyx and sprang from it to seed all life in the universe. He could therefore be counted amongst the very first of the primordial spirits that kickstarted the cascade of creation. In a view perhaps more commonly held across the classical world, he was the son of Ares and Aphrodite. Under his Roman name of CUPID he is usually represented as a laughing winged child about to shoot an arrow from his silver bow, a very recognizable image to this day, making Eros perhaps the most instantly identifiable of all the gods of classical antiquity.
Cupidity and erotic desire are associated with him, as is the instant and uncontrollable falling in love that results from being pierced by his dart, the arrow that compels its victims to fall for the first person (or even animal) they see after being struck.97 Eros can be as capricious, mischievous, random, and cruel as love itself.
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
The Greeks had at least four words for love:
AGAPE—this was the great and generous kind that we would describe as “charity” and which could refer to any holy kind of love, such as parents for their children or the love of worshippers for their god.98
EROS—the strain of love named after the god, or after whom the god is named.
The kind that gets us into most trouble. So much more than affectionate, so much less than spiritual, eros and the erotic can lead us to glory and to disgrace, to the highest pitch of happiness and the deepest pit of despair.
PHILIA—the form of love applied to friendship, partiality, and fondness. We see its traces in words like “francophile,” “necrophilia,” and “philanthropy.”
STORGE—the love and loyalty someone might have for their country or their sports team could be regarded as storgic.
Eros himself, while later portrayed by Renaissance and Baroque artists in the manner I have described—a giggling, pert, and dimpled cherub (sometimes wearing a blindfold to signify the wayward and arbitrary nature of his marksmanship)—was to the Greeks a fully grown young man of great accomplishment. An artist, an a
thlete (both sexual and sporting), he was regarded as a patron and protector of gay male love as well as a presiding presence in the gymnasium and on the running track. He was associated with dolphins, cockerels, roses, torches, lyres, and, of course, that bow and quiverful of arrows.
Perhaps the best-known myth involving Eros and Psyche—Physical Love and Soul—is almost absurdly ripe for interpretation and explanation. I think, however, that it is best told like all myths, not as an allegory, symbolic fable, or metaphor, but as a story. Just a story. It has many of the rhythms and plot turns we associate with later quest narratives and fairy tales,99 perhaps because it comes down to us from what many regard as the strongest candidate for First Ever Novel: The Golden Ass, by the Roman writer Apuleius.100 The story’s influence on so much Western thought, folk literature, and art—not to mention its charm—justify, I hope, its retelling in long form.
PSYCHE
Once upon a time, in a land whose name is now lost to us, lived a king and queen and their three beautiful daughters. We will call the king ARISTIDES and the queen DAMARIS. The two eldest girls, CALANTHE and ZONA, were lovely enough to be admired everywhere; but the youngest, whose name was PSYCHE, was so entirely beautiful that many in the kingdom abandoned the cult of Aphrodite and worshipped this young girl in her place. Aphrodite was a jealous and vengeful goddess and could bear no rivalry, least of all from a mortal. She summoned her son Eros.
“I want you to find a pig,” she said to him, “the ugliest and hairiest in all the land. Go to the palace where Psyche lives, shoot your arrow into her, and make sure that the pig is the first thing she sees.”
Used to his mother’s charming ways Eros set off on his errand cheerfully enough. He bought an especially bristly and foul-smelling boar from a swineherd who lived not far from the palace and led it that evening to the window of the room where Psyche slept. More clumsily than you might think of a slim athletic god, he tried to clamber through the window with the pig under his arm without making a noise.
A number of things happened very quickly. Eros landed safely in the moonlit room.
Psyche slumbered peacefully on.
Eros wedged the pig firmly between his legs.
Eros reached behind his shoulder to pluck an arrow from his quiver.
The pig squealed.
A flustered Eros scratched his own arm with the point of his arrow as he drew the bow.
Psyche woke up with a start and lit a candle. Eros saw Psyche and fell deeply in love with her.
What a business. The god of love himself lovestruck. You might imagine that the next thing he would do is fire an arrow at Psyche and that all would end happily. But here Eros comes out of the story rather well. So real, pure, and absolute was his love that he could not think of cheating Psyche out of her own choice. He took one last longing look at her, turned, and leapt out of the window and back into the night.
Psyche saw the pig running round in wild, snuffling circles on her bedroom floor, concluded that she must be dreaming, blew out the candle and went back to sleep.
PROPHECY AND ABANDONMENT
The next morning King Aristides was alarmed to be told by a servant that his youngest daughter seemed to have turned her bedroom into some kind of piggery. He and Queen Damaris had been worried enough already that, unlike her sisters Calanthe and Zona who had allied themselves to rich landowners, Psyche had stubbornly refused to marry. The news that she was now consorting with pigs made up his mind. He traveled to the oracle of Apollo to find out what the girl’s future might be.
After the correct sacrifices and prayers had been offered up, the Sibyl made this answer. “Garland your child with flowers and carry her to a high place. Lay her on a rock. The one that will come to take her for its bride is the most dangerous being of earth, sky, or water. All the gods of Olympus fear its power. So it is ordained, so it must be. Fail in this and the creature will lay waste all your kingdom, and discord and despair shall come in its train. You, Aristides, will be called the destroyer of your people’s happiness.”
Ten days later a strange procession wound its way out of the town. Carried high on a litter, festooned with flowers and dressed in the purest white, sat a gloomy but resigned Psyche. She had been told of the oracle’s pronouncement and had accepted it. Her so-called beauty had always been a source of irritation to her. She hated the fuss and stir it caused, how oddly it made people behave in her presence and how freakish and set apart it made her feel. She had planned never to marry, but if she had to then a rapacious beast would be no worse than a tedious fawning prince with mooncalf eyes. The agony of its attentions would at least be over quickly.
With piteous wails of grief and sorrow the crowd labored up the mountainside until they came to the great basalt rock on which Psyche was to be laid for sacrifice. Her mother Damaris howled, shrieked, and sobbed. King Aristides patted her hand and wished himself elsewhere. Calanthe and Zona, their dull, elderly, but rich husbands at their sides, each tried their best to conceal the deep satisfaction they felt at the knowledge that they were soon to be the unchallenged fairest in the land.
As she was bound to the rock Psyche closed her eyes and breathed deeply, waiting for everyone to have done with indulging in their lamentations and shows of grief. Soon all suffering and pain would be over.
Singing hymns to Apollo the crowd wound its way down the hill, leaving Psyche alone on the rock. The sun shone down upon her. Larks called in the blue sky. She had pictured boiling clouds, shrieking winds, lashing rain, and dreadful thunder as accompaniments to her violation and death, not this glorious idyll of late-spring sunshine and rippling birdsong.
Who or what could this creature be? If her father had reported the oracle correctly then even the high Olympians feared it. But she had heard of no such terrible monster in all the legends and rumors of legends on which she had been raised. Not even Typhon or Echidna had the power to alarm the mighty gods.
Suddenly a warm breath of wind ruffled her white ceremonial robes. The breath became a gust that pushed a cushion of air between her and the cold basalt on which she lay. To her great surprise Psyche felt herself being lifted up. The wind seemed to be an almost solid thing—it supported her, holding her fast and carrying her up into the air.
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
Psyche was flying high above the ground, safe in the strong but gentle arms of ZEPHYRUS, the West Wind.
“This cannot be the beast we are all meant to fear,” she thought to herself. “This wind must be the beast’s messenger and herald. He is taking me to my doom. Well, at least it’s a comfortable way to travel.”
She looked down on the city in which she had grown up. How small and neat and trim everything looked. So unlike the overgrown, ill-smelling, and ramshackle township she knew and hated. Zephyrus gained speed and height and soon they were swooping over hills and along valleys, soaring over the blue ocean and flashing past islands, until they were in a country she did not recognize. It was fertile and densely wooded, and as they made a gradual descent she saw, set in a clearing, a magnificent palace, cornered by round towers and crowned with turrets. Gently and easily Psyche was lowered, until she landed with a gliding step on the flowered grass in front of a pair of golden gates. With a fizz and a sigh the wind flew away and she found herself alone. She heard no growls, roars, or rapacious snarls, only a distant music floating from the palace’s interior. As she made her tentative approach the gates swung open.
The royal palace in which Psyche grew up was—to the ordinary citizen of her country—ornate, opulent, and overwhelming, but next to the gorgeous and fantastical edifice she was entering it was nothing but a crude hovel. As she made her way inside, her amazed eyes passed over columns of gold, citron-wood, and ivory, silver-relief panels carved with an intricacy and artistry she had never dreamed possible, and marble statues so perfectly rendered that they seemed to move and breathe. The light glittered in the shimmering gold halls and passageways, the floor she stepped over was a dancing mosaic of jew
els, and the mysterious music grew louder and louder as she penetrated deeper inside. She passed fountains where crystal waters played in miraculous arcs, shaping and reshaping and quite defying gravity. She became aware of low female voices. Either she was dreaming or this palace was divine. No mortal, and surely no monster, could have ordained so fabulous a habitation.
She had arrived at a square central room whose painted panels showed scenes of the birth of the gods and the war with the Titans. The air was perfumed with sandalwood, roses, and warm spices.
VOICES, VISIONS, AND A VISITOR
The whispers and music seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, but all at once they ceased. In the loud silence left behind, a quiet voice called to her.
“Psyche, Psyche, don’t be shy. Don’t stare and twitch like a startled faun. Don’t you know that all this is yours? All this beauty, all these gemstones, this grand palace and the lands around it—all yours. Go through that doorway and bathe yourself. The voices you hear are your handmaidens, here to do your bidding. When you are ready a great feast will be laid out. Welcome, beloved Psyche, welcome and enjoy.”
The dazed girl made her way into the next room, a vast chamber hung with tapestries and silks, lit by flaming torches in bronze brackets. At one end was a gleaming copper bathtub and in the center a simply colossal bed whose myrtlewound frame was of polished cypress and whose linen was strewn with rose petals. Psyche was so tired, so befuddled, and so unable to make sense of things that she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, in the confused hope that sleep might wake her up from this wild dream.
But when she awoke she was still inside the dream. She got up from the soft brocaded cushions and saw that there was steam rising from the bath. She stepped from her clothes into the water.