Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  Deïaneira screamed as Nessos threw her down on the bank and brutally parted her legs with the intention of raping her. Herakles immediately took an arrow from his quiver, fitted it to his bow-string and with deadly aim shot the centaur, who was crouching with his backside towards Herakles, in his stallion testicles. With a terrible cry Nessos fell over his victim, blood from his wound and sperm from his jutting penis spilling on the ground and on Deïaneira’s shift.

  ‘Forgive me, lady!’ he said, as he lay squirming in agony beside her, ‘I owe you something. My blood and seed have magic power. Keep your shift safe and secret, and if ever Herakles wants to betray you with another woman, make him wear it and he will love you more than ever.’

  By the time Herakles had crossed the river again and reached his wife, she had taken off her shift, rolled it up and concealed it under her cloak. Herakles embraced her tenderly and then turned to finish off Nessos. But he was already dead, and Herakles, pulling the arrow out of his wound, guessed why. This was the second arrow he had once pulled out of the Hydra and, like the one he had shot into Chiron’s knee and which had then pierced Pholos’ foot, was still poisoned. He dug a grave for Nessos and buried the arrow with him so that it could do no further harm, but he didn’t think to tell Deïaneira why the arrow had been so instantly deadly, nor did she tell him about the stain on her shift. When Herakles had carried her over the river and they had repossessed their baggage, she put on a clean shift and hid the soiled one at the bottom of her bag. So it was that by not confiding in each other they stored up future disaster for themselves.

  Or so we would see it, as a human problem, a failure of communication, an unlucky chance. But was it chance or fate that caused this particular arrow to remain so long in Herakles’ quiver amongst the others without ever being used? The gods who know almost everything, except what it is to be mortal, would not have understood the question. Chance plays no part in their immortal lives and time is as visible to them in both directions as space to us. They would have observed, from the moment Herakles retrieved those two arrows steeped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra, that the first was destined to wound Chiron and kill Pholos and the second to kill Nessos and in consequence both Herakles and his beloved wife. But the consequence was also a human problem, since it could not have happened if Deïaneira had not loved Herakles so much or if Herakles had not been attracted to another woman. The gods could see that that would be so and therefore already knew the end of this story and that there could not be a different ending. The oracle at Delphi had even told Herakles himself in its usual cryptic manner: ‘No one alive may kill Herakles; his downfall shall be a dead enemy.’ But if Athene, for instance, had shared her knowledge with Herakles, if she had warned him at the time of his battle with the Hydra not to shoot the monster with his arrows or not to retrieve them if he did, then surely there might have been a different ending? Very likely, but for that very reason she could not share her knowledge with him. Tragedy – the stark ancient Greek version, not our modern loosening of the word to mean any sad event – consists in this relationship between immortals and mortals, which is also, of course, the relationship between the readers or hearers of a classic story and the characters inside the story.

  12. THE SHIFT

  Herakles and Deïaneira were hospitably received in Trachis by its king, Keyx, who willingly performed the purification ceremony required by Herakles’ killing of the boy Eunomos. In fact it suited Keyx very well to have his powerful kinsman at his side. He was on bad terms with Eurytos, the king of the Thessalian city Oechalia. The two cities were some distance apart. Trachis was in the mountains to the west of the pass of Thermopylae, where long afterwards, in the fifth century BC, Leonidas’ 300 Spartans held the vast army of the Persian king Xerxes at bay until a Greek traitor led the Persians over these same mountains to take the Spartans in the rear. Oechalia was in the hills above the Peneios river, sixty miles or so to the north as the crow flies. But both cities laid claim to a fertile stretch of grassland, perfect for breeding fine horses and cattle, which was roughly equidistant between them, and there were frequent clashes as each side tried to drive the other away, with the result that neither got any advantage from the disputed territory.

  Herakles himself had an old score to settle with King Eurytos. Immediately after completing his Labours he had travelled to Oechalia to take part in a contest for the hand of the king’s daughter, Iole, intending then as he did later with Deïaneira to embark on a more settled life. Eurytos and his four sons were all expert archers, the king even boasting that he had been taught by Apollo and outclassed his master, and Iole was to be given in marriage to the suitor who could shoot better than any of them. In practice, therefore, as far as Eurytos was concerned, believing himself to be the best archer in the world, that meant nobody. However, after a series of tests of marksmanship – at targets, birds, apples balanced on slaves’ heads, through the shaft holes of twelve axe heads placed in a line – Herakles easily defeated the whole family. But when, having carefully repossessed his arrows (the poisoned one perhaps among them), he walked across the arena to possess his prize, the seductive princess Iole, her father stepped between them.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t possibly compete or compare with me and my sons if you were not using magic arrows. You gave yourself away when you went to so much trouble to retrieve them. That of course is quite unfair, quite outside the rules and I therefore declare the contest void.’

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ said Herakles, keeping his temper with difficulty. ‘There’s nothing magic about my arrows and you’re welcome to try using them yourself, or else to let me use your arrows.’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ said Eurytos, ‘if you imagine that however crafty you are with your bow and arrows, magic or not, that I’d entrust my beloved daughter to a cut-throat like you, murderer of your first wife and children and until now a slave to Eurystheus. Slaves don’t marry princesses, slaves who get above themselves are beaten and driven out of my city.’

  And with that he ordered his guards to expel Herakles, who, already very attracted to Iole and not wishing to kill or injure any of her near relations, simply knocked the guards aside and, still keeping his temper, walked with dignity out of the city. He told himself as he did so that he would be back before long with a sufficient force of armed men to make Eurytos honour his promise.

  But at the same time as Herakles left the territory of Oechalia, a herd of prize cattle was stolen from the king’s fields and Eurytos was convinced that Herakles must have taken them. Three of his sons agreed, but the youngest, Iphitos, who admired Herakles and disliked the way he had been treated, argued that he was not a thief and that it was a wife he wanted, not a herd of cattle.

  ‘Why was he so quiet and easy, then, when we threw him out of the city?’ said Didaion, the eldest brother. ‘That wasn’t like the Herakles we’ve heard about. No, he was already plotting to go away with our best cattle if he couldn’t have our sister.’

  The upshot was that Iphitos offered to go after Herakles and see if he was driving the missing cattle back to Tiryns. And, of course, since Herakles had not taken the cattle and was travelling at his usual rapid pace, Iphitos did not catch up with him until he reached Tiryns itself. Herakles was surprised to see him.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Have you come to apologise for your father’s disgraceful behaviour and tell me your sister is mine after all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Iphitos, who was still very young and naive, ‘we lost a herd of prize cattle just at the time you left Oechalia and my father and brothers thought you might have taken them.’

  If only he had thought to mention that he had come because he disagreed with them, the outcome might have been different. But Herakles, though inside he was seething with fury at this boy’s apparent insolence, remained outwardly as calm and reasonable as he had when leaving Oechalia.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Herakles, ‘you’d like to check whether
I’ve got them here at Tiryns.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Well, yes! Let’s both go up to the top of that tower, then, and you can look around. You’d recognise them, I suppose, if you saw them?’

  ‘Oh, yes, no problem. They’re very special cows and I know them all individually.’

  So they climbed the tower and stood in the baking sun – it was midday and there was no shelter up there – looking over the battlements at the flat fields round Tiryns, where there were many cattle grazing or lying in what shade they could find.

  ‘Do you see your very special cows?’ asked Herakles.

  ‘No,’ said Iphitos, shading his eyes, ‘I really don’t. I’ll go back and tell my father and brothers that they were wrong and you’re quite in the clear.’

  But now, out there in the full sun, where even the stone battlements were almost too hot to touch, Herakles’ fragile hold on his temper gave way and anger enveloped him. His whole body shaking, his eyes wide and staring, his face suffused with blood, he grasped Iphitos by the shoulders and bellowed into his face:

  ‘Yes, you tell them that! You tell them that they are wrong on every count, in every direction, in every part of their ugly hearts and miserable minds, and that if we are talking about thieves, it is your lousy, cheating family that deserves to be hung up with hooks on your city walls and dried in the sun for daylight robbery. And we’ll send you back to tell them all that the shortest way.’

  Then he picked up poor innocent Iphitos with one hand and whirled him over the battlements.

  It was this crime for which he had had to do penance again by becoming the servant of Queen Omphale in Lydia, his wages being forfeit to Eurytos in recompense for the killing of his son. It’s not hard to understand his enthusiasm when his cousin Keyx asked him if he’d help to settle the business of the disputed territory with Eurytos and the Oechalians.

  ‘Most certainly,’ said Herakles. ‘And to make sure that it’s properly settled, I suggest we don’t stop at the disputed territory. I’ll summon all the friends and forces I can and we’ll finish with this shit Eurytos once and for all.’

  Accordingly, having assembled an army of his friends and admirers, with contingents from Arcadia, Laconia, Boeotia, Aitolia, Elis and many other places where he had put cities and peoples in his debt by ridding them of monsters or brigands, Herakles joined forces with the warriors of Trachis and marched through the disputed territory and across the River Peneios. Eurytos and his three remaining sons led the Oechalians out of the city to do battle and were swiftly overwhelmed. Herakles himself had the satisfaction of shooting down the king and his eldest son and the other two were killed by his soldiers. With most of their young men slaughtered in the field, the elders of Oechalia gave up the city, which from that time became a part of Keyx’s much extended kingdom. But Herakles, leaving Keyx to organise the occupation of the city, went straight to Eurytos’ palace to look for Iole. She was still not married, since no other suitors had risked competing with her father and brothers, afraid that even if they had been good enough archers they would incur the anger of Herakles.

  Iole was naturally in a state of utter despair at the loss of her family and her city and she fully expected that, when Herakles burst into the women’s quarters, he would kill her too in revenge for her father’s treachery. She kneeled in front of him and bravely told him that she knew she deserved to die and was ready to, but Herakles had no such thought and raised her up.

  ‘You are my wife, Iole. I won your hand in a fair contest and now I’m here at last to claim you.’

  ‘But you have a wife already. You married Deïaneira. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘That’s true. I won her in another contest, but I won you first.’

  ‘Will you divorce her then?’

  ‘No, I can’t do that. That would not be honourable. Besides, I love her.’

  ‘Then how can I be your wife?’

  ‘I don’t know. I love you too. Very much so, the more I look at you again. It’s a problem and I’ll have to think of some solution.’

  His immediate solution was to take her back to Trachis and ask Deïaneira to look after her. Deïaneira was understandably taken aback.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘Are you asking me to look after your new mistress?’

  ‘She’s not my mistress, she’s my wife – or should be.’

  ‘I thought I was your wife.’

  ‘Of course you are, but so by rights is she. I won her in an archery contest and then I won you in a wrestling contest.’

  ‘You can’t have two wives. People don’t. It seems to me that although you won her before you won me, you never actually married her, whereas you did actually marry me.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. But what am I to do? I owe her this marriage and she owes it to me. It was only her father’s cheating that prevented it.’

  ‘Why do you have to marry her? You can go to bed with her if you want to. I shan’t object and she can’t object – she’s your captive.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be right. I won her as a proud princess, I can’t now treat her as a slave.’

  ‘Well, at present she’s a very unhappy person, having lost everything, and I will look after her and try to comfort her. Perhaps you could marry her to someone else. Your step-brother Iphikles, for instance, or your nephew Iolaos.’

  ‘I think they already have wives.’

  And so they left the subject for the moment, while Herakles crossed over to the nearby island of Euboia to build an altar and make sacrifices as a thank-offering to his father Zeus for the capture of Oechalia. He hoped that perhaps Zeus might help him solve the problem of having, as he saw it, two wives, when custom only allowed him one. But Deïaneira, left behind with Iole in Trachis and noting that Iole was both younger and more beautiful than she was, convinced herself that what Herakles really wanted was to get rid of her and marry Iole. Deïaneira was not the sort of woman to take the easiest and most obvious course, by poisoning Iole’s food or arranging a fatal accident for her, or even by poisoning Iole’s mind against Herakles. On the contrary, she was very kind and gentle to Iole, who responded with love and gratitude. They soon became close friends and Iole often declared that she had no such claim on Herakles as he seemed to believe.

  ‘I’m sure it’s because my father behaved so badly to him and cheated him of his rightful expectations that he’s determined not to do the same to me. But I don’t see it that way. Much as I would like to be his wife, I’m not. You are.’

  As far as she was concerned, that was the end of the matter. She loved Herakles – most women did – but she had missed the chance of marrying him and now it was too late. Deïaneira was the lucky winner of this contest.

  Deïaneira, on the other hand, felt that the contest had only just begun. Not to have something you very much want may be painful, but to be plagued with anxiety about losing something you’ve already got and very much value is worse. She did not worry about Iole’s feelings for Herakles – she was sure that her renunciation of him was sincere – but she did worry wretchedly about his for Iole and whenever she looked in her polished bronze mirror she saw that worry was wearing away her looks and making it even more likely that when Herakles returned he must prefer Iole’s fresh complexion and sparkling black eyes.

  If she had known the story of Herakles’ Choice, which was only added to her husband’s biography much later, in a lecture by the fifth-century sophist Prodikos, she might have been comforted. In that story the young Herakles goes out and sits down at a lonely crossroads in the mountains (much as the young Christ went out into the wilderness in the New Testament story and was offered three choices by Satan) to brood on what he should do with his life. After a while he is accosted by two tall women, one ravishingly beautiful, called Pleasure, and the other, rather plainer, called Virtue. Pleasure offers to lead him on an easy path down the mountain to a life of wine, women and song, while Virtue offers him a hard, relentless struggle to the top of the mo
untain where he will be crowned with glory. Somewhat reluctantly he chooses stern-faced Virtue’s path, with a lingering backward glance at the beauty of gorgeous Pleasure.

  Not knowing this story and only partly knowing her husband – she was aware of his innumerable liaisons with women, but not aware of how seriously he took marriage and how punctilious he was in honouring his commitments, whether to men or women – she remembered the dying words of Nessos. Her shift, stained with the centaur’s blood and semen, still rolled up, was hidden at the bottom of her chest of clothes. She didn’t entirely believe what the centaur had said about its effectiveness as a love potion, but it never occurred to her that it might have any other effect, and she felt that at least it could do no harm and might really turn Herakles’ love back towards her and away from Iole.

  But Nessos had said she must make Herakles wear the shift, and how was she to do that? It was not as if she was another Omphale and could persuade him to wear women’s clothes again. In any case, the shift was far too small for him to wear. She knew, though, that he was superstitious, and when she received a message from Herakles, brought by a young follower of his called Lichas, that he needed a new white robe to wear while he made his sacrifice to Zeus, she saw her opportunity. She and her handmaidens made the robe and then she cut the shift down its length and sewed it sideways inside the robe, an inner layer reaching from the shoulders to the waist. She instructed Lichas to tell Herakles that this inner layer was from an old garment of her own and that the women of her native city had the custom of doing this, whenever their husbands wore a new robe for an important sacrifice. They believed, she said, that it increased their husbands’ love for them, and although there might be nothing in the belief and she had no doubt that Herakles loved her, she was really following the custom just to show how much she loved him. Then she wrapped up the robe and gave it to Lichas to take to Herakles.