Mythos (2019 Re-Issue)

by Stephen Fry

  The reputation of Cephalus now grew and grew—tales of his hunting skills were whispered in awe from kingdom to kingdom. News reached the ears of the Theban regent, CREON.173 As so often in its benighted history, Thebes at this time was being laid low by a scourge, in this instance a ferocious fox, called locally the Cadmean Vixen and feared throughout the Greek World as ALOPEX TEUMESIOS, the Teumessian Fox, a marauder whose special gift was that she was divinely ordained never to be caught, no matter how many dogs, horses, or men were on her trail or set in position to trap her. It was thought this vulpine terror was unleashed by Dionysus, still thirsting for revenge upon the city that had shunned and mocked his mother Semele.

  An increasingly desperate Creon, having heard tell of the almost supernatural gifts of Cephalus and his wonderdog, Lailaps, sent word to Athens begging to borrow it. Cephalus was happy enough to lend Creon the marvelous hound, which was soon set on the fox’s trail.

  The ensuing debacle reveals a marvelous quality of the Greek mind: their fascination with paradox. What happens when an uncatchable fox is set upon by an inescapable hound? This is akin to the problem of the irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

  Round and round dashed the Cadmean Vixen, while hot on her tail flew Lailaps, from whom no prey could escape. They would still be caught in that logic loop now I suppose, if Zeus hadn’t done something about it.

  The King of the Gods looked down at the sight and pondered the strange self-contradicting problem that presented such an affront to all proper reason and sense, and so vexingly subverted the notions embodied in that splendid Greek word nous. Zeus’s authority was underwritten by a deep law that said no god had the power to undo the divine enchantments of another. This meant that the dog and the vixen were fated to be locked in this impossible condition forever, making a public mockery of the order of things. Zeus solved the conundrum by turning the fox and the dog to stone. In this way they stayed frozen in time, their perfect possibilities unachieved for eternity, their destinies forever unreconciled. At length, even this locked state seemed to him to challenge common sense, so he catasterized them—removed them to the heavens—where they became the constellations of the Greater and Lesser Dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor.

  Cephalus and Procris, I am sorry to say, did not prosper long. Deprived of Lailaps, but still armed with the enchanted javelin that could never fail to find its target, Cephalus loved nothing better than rambling about the hills and valleys that surrounded Athens, taking what prey he happened on. One fiercely hot afternoon, after three hours of chasing and spearing, tired and drenched in sweat, he lay down to doze. The heat of the day, even in the shade of his favorite great oak, made him uncomfortable.

  “Come Zephyrus,” he called up lazily to the West Wind, “let me feel you on my skin. Embrace me, calm me, ease me, soothe me, play on me . . .”

  By the greatest misfortune, Procris had come out to where Cephalus was, to surprise him with a dish of olives and some wine. Just as she drew near she heard her husband’s last few words, “let me feel you on my skin. Embrace me, ease me, soothe me, play on me . . .” After all that show of possessive rage he was now betraying her? Procris could not believe her ears! The dish and the wineskin fell from her nerveless fingers and she gave an involuntary gasp.

  Cephalus sat up. What was that stumbling in the undergrowth? That snuffle! A pig, by heaven! He reached for his spear and threw it toward the bushes from which the noise had come. He had no need to be careful in his aim. The enchanted javelin would do all the work.

  It did. Procris expired in his grieving arms.

  A charmingly strange and unhappy tale.174 It all came about, we should remind ourselves, merely because Selene had decided to abduct an appetizing mortal.

  Thisbe (Flute): As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.

  ENDYMION

  Cephalus was not the only young man to catch the moon goddess’s eye. One night, as Selene sailed her silver chariot across the sky over western Asia Minor, she spotted far below ENDYMION, a young shepherd of great beauty lying naked and fast asleep on the hillside outside a cave on Mount Latmos. The sight of his lovely limbs all silvered by her moonbeams and the enticingly seductive smile that played on his lips as he dreamed so filled Selene with desire that she cried out to Zeus, Endymion’s father, to ensure that he would never change. She wanted to see him in exactly that attitude every night. Zeus granted the wish. Endymion stayed just where he was, locked in eternal slumber. Each new moon, the one day in the lunar month when her chariot could not be seen, Selene would come down and make love to the sleeping boy. This unconventional conjugal practice did not prevent her from bearing fifty daughters by him. I will let you picture the physical practicalities, postures, and positions which allowed that.

  An odd relationship, but one which worked and made Selene happy.175

  167. Sometimes these myths can be regarded as aetiological—in other words, offering explanations for how things got to be the way they are. Arachne could be seen as a story that explains why the spider weaves, Melissa tells us why the bee makes honey, and so on. Sort of “How the Elephant Got Its Trunk” fables. Certainly the names of flowers and animals that relate to many of these types of myth have come down to us in Latinate scientific nomenclature such as “Daphne Laureola” for the spurge laurel, or the common or garden names, Narcissus, Hyacinth, etc.

  168. Attica is the area of Greece that includes Athens. “Attic Greek” is the classical form of the language that comes down to us in the poetry, drama, oratory, and philosophy of the great Athenian writers of the fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. To many Greeks from outside Attica it was perhaps what England is to the other countries of the United Kingdom, the snooty dominant region that outsiders tactlessly and lazily think of when they say “Greece.”

  169. Not to be confused with SCYLLA the cruel sea monster that, with the whirlpool CHARYBDIS, formed such an impassable barrier to sailors in the Straits of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland.

  170. In fact Callisto does double duty in the heavens as she lives on as one of Jupiter’s moons.

  171. The Greeks thought the sound the hoopoe made was pou? pou? which means “where? where?”—perhaps indicating the distraught Tereus calling for his son. Shakespeare called the nightingale “Philomel” in Sonnet CII—“As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing”—but confusingly Philomela’s name is most commonly seen in the scientific name for the song-thrush: Turdus philomelos.

  172. The Greek for “one who shows figs” is sycophant—it seems that either sellers of the fruit in the streets and marketplaces were known for their fawning, flattering attentions, or showing a fig was the equivalent of a phallic gesture (figs have always been considered an erotic fruit after all), or it may have been something to do with the way figs are harvested. Whatever the reason, fig-showing/sycophancy became a word associated in Athenian legal contexts with those who brought frivolous, malicious, or unjustified private prosecutions. Their toadying manner caused the word “sycophancy” to take on its common meaning today.

  173. Creon was that soul of pragmatism and good governance whose tragic family history was the subject of Sophocles’s Theban Cycle of plays, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. I played him when I was sixteen and received reviews. I’ll say no more.

  174. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bottom and his confused friends memorably mangle the names of these doomed lovers in their performance of “Pyramus and Thisbe”: Pyramus (Bottom): Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.

  175. It forms the subject of John Keats’s extended poem Endymion.

  EOS AND TITHONUS

  The love life of Selene’s sister Eos was no less tumultuous. Some time ago the goddess of the dawn had emerged from a dramatically disastrous affair with the god of war. When Aphrodite, Ares’s jealous lover, found out about the liaison she ordained in her heart that Eos would never find joy in the one realm in which Aphrodite was sovereign—love.

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nbsp; Eos was a full-blooded Titaness with all the appetites of that race. Moreover, as bringer of the dawn, she believed in the hope, promise, and opportunity heralded by each new day. And so, over the years, Eos stumbled with tragic optimism from relationship to relationship, each one doomed by Aphrodite’s curse, of which she was blithely unaware.

  The cougarish Eos was especially drawn to young mortal men: Just as Selene had abducted Cephalus, so Eos tried to do the same thing to a youth called CLEITUS. This led to heartbreak, for he was mortal and died in what to her was the twinkling of an eye.

  There must have been something in the air of Troy in those days. LAOMEDON, the nephew of Zeus’s beloved cupbearer, Ganymede,176 had a son called TITHONUS, who grew up to be quite his great-uncle’s equal in beauty. Tithonus was perhaps a little slighter, slimmer, and smaller in stature than Ganymede, but this made him no less desirable. He had a laughing sweetness that was entirely his own and made him enchanting and irresistible. You just wanted to put an arm round him and own him forever.

  One afternoon Eos saw this exquisite young man walking on the beach outside the walls of Ilium. All her numberless dalliances, abductions, crushes, and flings, even the affair with Ares . . . all these, she now realized, had been but childish whims, meaningless infatuations. This was the real thing. This was it.

  LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

  As Eos approached along the sand, Tithonus looked up and fell in love with her quite as instantly and entirely as she had fallen in love with him. They held hands straightaway, without even having exchanged a word, and walked up and down on the shoreline as lovers do.

  “What is your name?”

  “Tithonus.”

  “I am Eos, the dawn. Come away with me to the Palace of the Sun. Live with me and be my lover, my husband, my equal, my ruler, my subject, my all.”

  “Eos, I will. I am yours forever.”

  They laughed and made love with the waves crashing around them. Eos’s rosy fingers found ways to drive Tithonus quite mad with joy. For her own part she knew that this time she could make it work.

  Her coral, pearl, agate, marble, and jasper apartments within the Palace of the Sun became their home. Few couples had ever been happier. Their lives were complete. They shared everything. They read poetry to each other, went on long walks, listened to music, danced, rode horses, sat in companionable silence, laughed, and made love. Every morning he watched with pride as she threw open the gates to let Helios and his chariot thunder through.

  THE BOON

  A problem nagged at Eos, however. She knew that one day her beautiful beloved mortal youth must be taken from her, as Cleitus had been. The thought of his death caused her an inner despair that she could not quite conceal.

  “What is it my love?” Tithonus asked one evening, surprising her fair countenance in a frown.

  “You trust me, don’t you, darling boy?”

  “Always and entirely.”

  “I am going away tomorrow afternoon. I shall return as soon as I can. Do not ask me where or why I go.”

  Her destination was Olympus and an audience with Zeus. “Immortal Sky Father, Lord of Olympus, Cloud-Gatherer, Storm-Bringer, King of all the . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes. What do you want?”

  “I crave a boon, great Zeus.”

  “Of course you crave a boon. None of my family visits me for any other reason. It’s always boons. Boons, boons, boons, and nothing but boons. What is it this time? Something to do with that Trojan boy, I suppose?”

  A little flustered by this, Eos pressed on. “Yes, dread lord. You know how it is when we consort with a mortal youth . . .” She allowed herself a look toward Ganymede, who was standing behind Zeus’s throne, ever ready to refill his cup of nectar. At her glance Ganymede smiled and dropped his gaze, blushing prettily.

  “Yes . . . and?” Zeus had started drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne. Never a good sign.

  “One day Thanatos will come for my Prince Tithonus and that I can not bear. I ask that you grant him immortality.”

  “Oh. Do you? Immortality, eh? That’s all? Immortality. Hm. Yes, I don’t see why not. Immunity from death. That really is all you want for him?”

  “Why, yes, lord, that is all.”

  What else could there be? Had she caught him in a good mood? Her heart began to leap with delight.

  “Granted,” said Zeus clapping his hands. “From this moment on, your Tithonus is immortal.”

  Eos sprang from her prostrate position of supplication with a squeal of joy and rushed forward to kiss Zeus’s hand. He seemed mightily pleased too and laughed and smiled as he accepted her thanks.

  “No, no. Such a pleasure. I’m sure you’ll be coming back to thank me soon enough.”

  “Of course, if you would like me to?” It seemed an odd request.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be along before we know it,” said Zeus, still unable to stop himself from grinning. He didn’t know what had planted the imp of mischief in his mind. But we know it was the curse of Aphrodite doing its implacable work. Eos hurried back to the Palace of the Sun where her adored spouse was waiting patiently for her return. When she told him the news he hugged her and hugged her and they danced around the palace making so much noise that Helios banged on the walls and grumbled that some people had to be up before dawn.

  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

  Eos bore Tithonus two sons: EMATHION, who was to rule Arabia, and MEMNON, who grew up to become one of the greatest and most feared warriors in all the ancient world.

  One evening, Tithonus lay with his head in Eos’s lap while she idly twisted his golden hair around her fingers. She was humming softly but broke off with a sudden hiss of surprise.

  “What is it, my love?” murmured Tithonus.

  “You trust me, don’t you, darling one?”

  “Always and entirely.”

  “I am going away tomorrow afternoon. I shall return as soon as I can. Do not ask me where or why I going.”

  “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

  Her destination was Olympus and another audience with Zeus.

  “Ha! I said you’d be back, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Ganymede? What were my very words to you, Eos?”

  “You said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be coming back to thank me soon enough.’”

  “So I did. What’s this you’re showing me?”

  Eos’s hand was outstretched toward Zeus. She was holding something between trembling rosy forefinger and trembling rosy thumb. It was a single filament of silver.

  “Look!” she said in throbbing accents.

  Zeus peered down. “Looks like a hair.”

  “It is a hair. It came from my Tithonus’s head. It is grey.”

  “And?”

  “My lord! You promised me. You swore that you would grant Tithonus immortality.”

  “And so I did.”

  “Then how do you explain this?”

  “Immortality was the boon you asked for and immortality was the boon I granted. You didn’t say anything about aging. You never requested eternal youth.”

  “I . . . you . . . but . . .” Eos staggered backward, appalled.

  This could not be!

  “‘Immortality’ you said. Isn’t that right, Ganymede?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “But I assumed . . . I mean, isn’t it obvious what I meant?”

  “Sorry, Eos,” said Zeus, rising. “I can’t be expected to interpret everyone’s requests. He won’t die. That’s the thing. You’ll always be together.”

  Eos was left alone, her hair wiping the floor as she wept.

  THE GRASSHOPPER

  The faithful Tithonus and their two bouncing children welcomed Eos back on her return. She did everything she could to hide her woe, but Tithonus sensed something was distressing her. When the boys had been put down to sleep for the night he took her through to the balcony and poured her a cup of wine. They sat and watched the stars for a while before he spoke.

/>   “Eos, my love, my life. I know what it is that you aren’t telling me. I can see it for myself. The looking glass tells me every morning.”

  “Oh Tithonus!” she buried her head against his chest and sobbed her heart out.

  Time passed. Each morning Eos did her duty and opened the doors to a new day. The boys grew up and left home. The years succeeded each other with the remorseless inevitability that even gods cannot alter.

  What scant hair that remained on Tithonus’s head was now white. He had become most dreadfully wrinkled, shrunken, and weak with extreme old age, yet he could not die. His voice, once so mellow and sweet to the ear had become a harsh, dry scrape of a sound. His skin and frame were so shriveled that he could barely walk.

  He followed the beautiful, ever young Eos around as faithfully and lovingly as ever. “Please, pity me,” he would screech in his hoarse, piping tones. “Kill me, crush me, let it all end, I beg.”

  But she could no longer understand him. All she heard were husky cheeps and chirps. Inside, however, she guessed well enough what he was trying to say.

  Eos may not have had the ability to grant immortality or eternal youth, but she was gifted with enough divine power to do something to end her beloved’s misery. One evening, when she felt neither of them could take any more, she closed her eyes, concentrated hard, and watched through hot tears as Tithonus’s poor shrunken body made the very few changes necessary to turn him from a withered, old man into a grasshopper.177

  In this new form Tithonus hopped from the cold marble floor onto the ledge of the balcony before leaping out into the night. She saw him in her sister Selene’s cold moonlight, clinging to a long blade of grass that swayed in the night breeze. His back legs scraped out a sound that might have been a grateful chirrup of loving farewell. Her tears fell and somewhere, far away, Aphrodite laughed.178