Mythos (2019 Re-Issue)

by Stephen Fry

  “Aphrodite I bless you! Aphrodite greatest of all the gods, I thank you and pledge myself to serve you always!”

  He bends down to meet warm lips that eagerly return his kisses. Soon the pair are in each other’s arms laughing, weeping, sighing, and loving.

  Nine times the moon changes before the union of this happy pair is blessed with the birth of a child, a boy they call PAPHOS, and whose name will be given to the town in which Pygmalion and Galatea live out the remainder of their loving and contented lives.

  Just once or twice in Greek myth mortal lovers are granted a felicitous ending. It is that hope, perhaps, that spurs us on to believe that our quest for happiness will not be futile.191

  HERO AND LEANDER

  The Greek Sea, or “Hellespont,” is called the Dardanelles in our age and is best known as the scene of some of the most furious fighting around Gallipoli during the Great War. As part of the natural boundary that separates Europe and Asia, these straits have always been strategically important for war and trade. Despite the size of the symbolic gap between them, they are in reality narrow enough to be crossed by a strong swimmer.

  LEANDER’s192 home was in Abydos, on the Asian side of the Hellespont, but he was in love with a priestess of Aphrodite called HERO, who lived in a tower in Sestos on the European side. They had met during the yearly festival of Aphrodite. Many youths had been smitten by “the meadow of roses in her limbs”193 and her face as pure as Selene, but it was only the handsome Leander who awoke a like passion in her. In the brief time they had together at the festival they hatched a plan that would allow them to see each other once they were back home and separated by the straits. Each night Hero was to set a lamp in the window of her tower and Leander, eyes fixed on this point of light in the darkness, would breast the currents of the Hellespont, climb up, and be with her.

  As a priestess, Hero was sworn to celibacy, but Leander persuaded her that the physical consummation of their love would be a holy thing, a consecration of which Aphrodite would approve. In fact, he said, it was surely an insult to devote herself to the goddess of love and yet remain a virgin. It would be like worshipping Ares but refusing to fight. This excellent argument won Hero over and each night the lamp was lit, the straits swum, and love made. They were the happiest couple in all the world.

  All summer long this blissful state of affairs prevailed, but summer all too soon turned to autumn and before long the equinoctial gales blew. One night the three winds Boreas, Zephyrus, and Notus—the North, West, and South Winds—howled together, sending blusters and gusts all around, one of which blew out the lamp in Hero’s window. With nothing to guide him across the Hellespont and with the winds stirring up the waves into heaving walls of water, Leander lost his way, got into trouble, and drowned.

  Hero waited up all night for her lover. The next morning, as soon as Eos had cast open the gates of dawn and there was light enough to see, she looked down to see Leander’s broken body spread out over the rocks beneath her tower. In an agony of despair she leapt from her window and dashed herself on those same rocks.194

  Since Leander, many others have swum the Hellespont. None more notably than the poet Byron, who managed it on May 3, 1810—at the second attempt. In his journal he proudly recorded a time of one hour and ten minutes. “Did it with little difficulty,” he noted. “I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical, or rhetorical.”

  Lord Byron swam in the company of one Lieutenant William Ekenhead of the Royal Marines who obtained his own share of immortality with his inclusion in this stanza from Byron’s mock epic masterpiece, Don Juan. Praising his hero’s prowess in swimming across the Guadalquivir in Seville, Byron writes of Juan:

  He could, perhaps, have passed the Hellespont,

  As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided) Leander,

  Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.195

  Shakespeare seems to have been especially fond of the ancient lovers’ story, giving a character in Much Ado About Nothing the name Hero and putting these wonderfully cynical anti-romantic words into the mouth of Rosalind in As You Like It:

  Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun if it had not been for a hot midsummer night, for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

  188. A word that covers moulting, shedding, casting off, and re-evaluating. Slipping out of one thing and popping on another.

  189. For more on this fascinating subject, see David D. Leitao, “The Perils of Leukippos: Initiatory Transvestism and Male Gender Ideology in the Ekdusia at Phaistos,” in Classical Antiquity, vol. 14, no. 1 (1995).

  190. Daphne should not be confused with DAPHNIS, a Sicilian youth of great beauty who was found as a baby under the laurel bush that gave him his name. Both Hermes and Pan fell in love with him, the latter teaching him to play the pipes. He became so proficient that later generations credited him with the invention of pastoral poetry. In the second century A.D. Longus, an author from Lesbos, wrote a romance (like The Golden Ass, a contender for the title First Ever Novel) called Daphnis and Chloë which tells of two bucolic lovers who undergo all kinds of ordeals and adventures to test their love. Offenbach composed an operetta based on this tale. Even better known is the revolutionary 1912 ballet with music by Maurice Ravel, choreographed by Fokine and danced by Nijinsky.

  191. Paphian became a word to describe Aphrodite and the arts of love. George Bernard Shaw chose Pygmalion as the title for his play about a man who tries to turn a cockney girl into a Mayfair lady.

  192. Little is known about Leander. Christopher Marlowe’s poem tells us nothing much more than that he was a youth who met Hero and fell in love. Leigh Hunt wrote another, which is no more informative.

  193. In Marlowe’s poem she wears a veil of flowers so realistically embroidered that she has to swat bees away . . .

  194. Leander’s name lives on in England’s venerable and exclusive rowing club, whose candy-pink socks, tie, and oar-blades are such an alarming feature of the Henley Regatta.

  195. The achievement clearly meant a lot to the club-footed but superbly athletic poet. He wrote this to his friend Henry Drury: “This morning I swam from Sestos to Abydos. The immediate distance is not above a mile, but the current renders it hazardous;—so much so, that I doubt whether Leander’s conjugal affection must not have been a little chilled in his passage to Paradise.”

  Six days after his feat Byron even wrote a mock heroic poem on the subject, “Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos”:

  If, in the month of dark December,

  Leander, who was nightly wont

  (What maid will not the tale remember?)

  To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

  If, when the wintry tempest roared,

  He sped to Hero, nothing loth,

  And thus of old thy current poured,

  Fair Venus! how I pity both!

  For me, degenerate modern wretch,

  Though in the genial month of May,

  My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,

  And think I’ve done a feat to-day.

  But since he crossed the rapid tide,

  According to the doubtful story,

  To woo,—and—Lord knows what beside,

  And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

  ’Twere hard to say who fared the best:

  Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!

  He lost his labor, I my jest:

  For he was drowned, and I’ve the ague.

  A later work of Byron which refers to Leander’s home, although unrelated to the myth, is The Bride of Abydos (1813).

  ARION AND THE DOLPHIN

  The Greeks, like all great civilizations, set a great price on music—placing it so high in the a
rts that it took its name from all nine of the daughters of Memory. Music festivals and music prizes, so ubiquitous a feature of our cultural life today, were quite as important in the Greek world.

  Few earned a finer reputation in their lifetime as singer, minstrel, bard, poet, and musician than ARION, from Methymna on the island of Lesbos.196 He was the son of Poseidon and the nymph ONCAEA, but despite this parentage he chose to devote his musical talent to the celebration and praise of the god Dionysus. His instrument of choice was the kithara, a variation of the lyre.197 He is accepted everywhere as the inventor of the poetic form known as the dithyramb, a wild choral hymn dedicated to wine, carnival, ecstasy, and delight.

  With his dreamy brown eyes, sweet voice, and bewitching ability to cause the toes to tap and hips to rotate, Arion soon became something of an idol around the Mediterranean world. His patron and most enthusiastic supporter was the tyrant of Corinth, PERIANDER198 and it was he who found out about a big music festival being held in Tarentum, a prosperous port city set in the instep of Italy’s heel. Periander gave Arion the money to get himself across the sea and take part in the competitive elements of the festival on the condition that he agreed to split the prize money on his return.

  The outward journey was uneventful. Arion arrived in Tarentum, entered the competitions, and easily won first prize in every category. The judges and members of the public had never heard such thrilling and original music. A treasure chest of silver, gold, ivory, precious stones, and exquisitely wrought musical instruments was his reward. In gratitude for so generous a prize Arion gave a free concert for the townspeople the following day.

  The Tarentum region was famous for the great wolfspiders commonly found in the countryside all around. The locals called them, after their town, “tarantulas.” Arion had heard that tarantula venom could provoke hysterical frenzy and so he improvised for the crowd a variation on his wild dithyrambs that he called a tarantella. The delirious rhythms of this folk dance199 maddened the excitable Tarentines, but toward the end he tamed them with a medley of his softest, most romantic airs. By the early hours he could have had his pick of any girl, boy, man, or woman in southern Italy and it is reported that, like the successful musician he was, he did.

  A large crowd was there to see Arion off the next morning, many of the people blowing kisses and a good few sobbing their hearts out. He and his luggage, including the box of treasure, were rowed out to sea in a tender, where a small but serviceable brig crewed by a sea captain and nine civilian sailors was standing off. Arion was soon comfortably settled aboard. The crew hoisted sail and the captain set a course for Corinth.

  OVERBOARD

  As soon as land was out of sight and they were in the open sea, Arion sensed that something was wrong. He was used to being stared at—he was after all as outrageously beautiful as he was talented—but the looks that were being directed at him by the crew were of a different order. Days passed in this sullen and threatening atmosphere and he grew more and more uncomfortable. There was something in the sailors’ eyes that resembled lust, but suggested a darker purpose. What could be wrong? Then one hot afternoon, the ugliest and meanest looking of the sailors approached him.

  “What you got in that chest you’re sitting on, boy?”

  Of course. Arion’s heart sank. That would account for it. The sailors had heard tell of his treasure. He supposed they wanted some of it, but he was damned if he was going to share his hard-won prize with anyone but Periander. He had earlier planned in his mind to tip the crew generously at the end of the voyage, but now his heart hardened.

  “My musical instruments,” he replied. “I am a kitharode.”

  “You’re a what?”

  Arion shook his head sorrowfully and repeated slowly, as if to a child. “I—play—the—kith—ara.”

  Such a mistake.

  “Oh—do—you? Well—play—us—a—tune—then.”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s going on here?” The captain of the brig approached.

  “Snotty kid says he’s a musician but won’t play. Says he’s got a kithara in that box of his.”

  “Well now, I’m sure you won’t mind showing it to us, will you, young man?”

  The full ship’s complement had circled round him now.

  “I—I’m not feeling well enough to play. Perhaps tonight I’ll be in better shape.”

  “Why don’t you go below and rest in the shade?”

  “N-no, I prefer the fresh air.”

  “Seize him, lads!”

  Rough hands lifted Arion up as easily as if he were a newborn puppy. “Let me go! Leave it alone. That’s not your property!”

  “Where’s the key?”

  “I’ve . . . I’ve lost it.”

  “Find it, boys.”

  “No, no! Please I beg you . . .”

  The key was easily found and wrenched from round Arion’s neck. Low whistles and murmurs arose as the captain loosened the latch and raised the lid. Light from the glitter of gold and flash of gemstones danced on the sailors’ greedy faces. Arion knew he was lost.

  “I am quite p-prepared to sh-share my treasure with you . . .”

  The sailors seemed to find the offer highly amusing and laughed heartily.

  “Kill him,” said the captain, taking out a long rope of pearls and holding it up to the light.

  The ugliest sailor took out a knife and approached Arion with an evil smile.

  “Please, please . . . may I—may I at least sing one last song? My threnody, my own funeral dirge. You owe me that, surely? The gods would punish you if you dared send me to my death without a cathartic obsequy of some kind . . .”

  “I’ll stop you spouting those bloody words,” snarled the ugly sailor, drawing closer.

  “No, no,” said the captain. “He does have a point. We’ll let our Cygnus sing his swan song. I suppose you’ll need this lyre.” He fished the kithara from the chest and gave it to Arion who tuned it, closed his eyes, and began to improvise. He dedicated the song to his father Poseidon.

  “Lord of the Oceans,” he sang, “King of Tides, Earth Shaker, beloved father. Often have I neglected you in my prayers and sacrifices, but you, O great one, will not neglect your son. Lord of the Oceans, King of Tides, Earth Shaker, beloved—”

  Without warning, clutching his kithara tightly to him, Arion leapt overboard and dropped into the waves. The last thing he heard was the laughter of the crew and the captain’s dry voice: “That was easy! Now for the spoils.”

  If any of them had bothered to look down, a remarkable sight would have met their eyes. Arion had plunged below the surface and was fully intending to open his mouth and let the seawater in without a struggle. Someone had told him that drowning is a sweet and pleasant death, a slow passing into sleep, as long as you don’t fight it. Choking is a terrible panicky nightmare, but true drowning is a serene and painless release. So he had been told. Despite this comforting knowledge, Arion kept his mouth firmly clamped, and with bulging cheeks he kicked at the water, hugging his kithara.

  And then, just as his lungs were ready to burst, something amazing happened. He felt himself being pushed upward. Pushed hard and fast. He was surging through the water. He had broken the surface! He could breathe! What was going on? It must be a dream. The rush of the water, the bubbles and spray, the tilting, rocking horizon, the booming in his ears, the soaking, the roar, and the dazzle—it all prevented him from understanding what was happening until he dared look down and through stinging eyes saw that . . . that . . . he was on the back of a dolphin! A dolphin! He was riding it over the waves! But its skin was slippery and he began to slide off. The dolphin barreled and twisted, and Arion was somehow righted again. The animal had deliberately maneuvered to keep him safe! Would it mind if he stretched out one hand and held onto the dorsal fin, much as a horseman might grip the horn of a saddle? The dolphin did not mind, indeed it bucked a little, as if in approval, and increased its speed through the w
ater. Arion slowly reached for the strap of his kithara and swung the instrument behind him so that he could enjoy the ride with two hands on the fin.

  The brig was out of sight now. The sun shone down, dolphin and man plowed furrows through the sea, sending up plumes of iridescent spray. Where were they going? Did the dolphin know?

  “Hey, dolphin. Set your course for the Gulf of Corinth. I’ll direct you when we get there.”

  The dolphin gave a series of squeaks and clicks that seemed to indicate understanding and Arion laughed. On and on they went, chasing the nevernearing horizon. Arion, confident of his balance now, pulled his kithara back round and sang the song of Arion and the Dolphin. It is lost to us, but they say it was the most beautiful song ever composed.

  At length they reached the gulf. The dolphin negotiated this busy shipping lane with graceful, zipping ease. Sailors on the busy barques, barges, and small boats turned to stare at the remarkable sight of a young man riding a dolphin. Arion steered on the fins with gentle tugs this way and that and they did not stop until they had reached the royal docks.

  “Send word to King Periander,” he said, stepping from the dolphin onto the quay. “His minstrel is returned. And feed my dolphin.”

  THE MONUMENT

  Periander was overjoyed by the homecoming of the musician he loved. The story of his rescue filled the court with wonder and amazement. They feasted all night and into the morning. It was evening by the time they set out to see, praise, and pet the heroic dolphin. But a sad sight met their eyes. Ignorant dock workers had brought the animal ashore to be fed. It had languished overnight without any water to keep its skin moist and then lay all morning and afternoon on the quayside, surrounded by inquisitive children, the hot sun burning down and drying it up. Arion knelt on the ground and whispered into its ear. The dolphin rippled an affectionate reply, heaved a shuddering sigh, and died.