Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  ‘My daughters find you fascinating,’ said Minos.

  ‘I am as strange to them, I suppose, as your kingdom is to me. It’s like a dream. I could almost think that I’m already dead and have entered another world reserved for the favourites of the gods.’

  ‘Yet it’s a world that contains the Minotaur.’

  ‘I have to remember that. A world, for me, as brief as a dream.’

  4. THE BULL-JUMPERS

  The next day was given over to public festivities in the great arena in front of the western facade of the palace. These festivities were held every year in honour of the three greatest gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, who ruled the earth and sky, the sea, and the underworld respectively. Zeus was born on the island of Crete and had here fathered Minos on Europa; Poseidon’s good will was essential to a state that depended on the sea for its trade and defence, and he had honoured Minos’ enthronement with the white bull which later fathered the Minotaur; while Minos, after his death, was to become one of the judges in Hades’ kingdom, though whether he already knew that in his lifetime is unclear. Perhaps it was because he honoured Hades equally with his brothers of the upper world that he obtained this privilege, though it’s usually considered to have been in recognition of his own high reputation as a law-giver and just judge on earth.

  Three altars on a raised platform dominated the arena, filled with a huge crowd of Minos’ subjects, who had come from all over the island, and the celebrations began with the sacrifice to Zeus of a 100 goats. Zeus had been suckled on the milk of goats when he was newly born and hidden in a cave below Mount Ida so as to avoid being swallowed by his father Cronos, whom he grew up to castrate and dethrone.

  The priests who were to conduct the sacrifice came out in procession from the palace, and were followed by Minos and his courtiers, with Pasiphaë and her daughters and ladies-in-waiting. Behind them came soldiers leading the fourteen Athenians, including Theseus, chained together by the wrists. Garlanded and dressed in black robes they were paraded as sacrificial victims, although they were not offerings to the gods, but destined to feed the Minotaur, one every other day, for the next month.

  After the initial sacrifices and prayers, dances were performed by groups from the various districts of Crete, and then the roasted and dismembered goats, with wine and bread, were distributed to the crowd. The next part of the celebrations consisted of the Cretan sport of bull-jumping. During his tour of the palace with Daidalos, Theseus had seen a fresco depicting this event and asked Daidalos what it meant. Daidalos replied that he would soon see for himself.

  The crowd fell silent as soldiers, carrying the tall figure-of-eight shields which Theseus had seen on a wall in the palace, formed a palisade in front of the crowd, while a group of young Cretans, both male and female, dressed in gaudy, skintight costumes, marched into the arena. Some carried spears and fanned out to stand at intervals in front of the soldiers guarding the crowd. The rest, unarmed, waited in a line facing the crowd until, driven along a corridor from the enclosure on the south side of the arena where it had been penned, a bull rushed into the arena and paused a moment as it realised that it was still not free but penned in by the crowd. And now the extraordinary spectacle began, as the young Cretans in their tight costumes ran forward to surround it. The bull lowered its head and charged at the nearest, who instead of running away grasped its horns, and, tossed upwards by the bull, somersaulted over its head, landed with his feet in the middle of its back, and somersaulted again over the tail, to be caught by a colleague behind the bull. And this happened again and again, for every time the bull charged, another acrobat performed the same feat, and if the bull thought to change the rules by turning away from them to charge the crowd, the spear-carriers quickly headed him back into the arena. When the bull grew tired and ceased to charge with the same momentum, he was driven out of the arena by the spear-carriers and another bull sent in. This happened two or three times, until the crowd began to be jaded, as people tend to be by seeing something, however skilful and seemingly impossible, repeated so often that it looks easy and ordinary. Now, after the last bull had been expelled from the arena, there was a brief pause. The acrobats again formed a line and the crowd, which knew what to expect, as the Athenian prisoners did not, waited in tense silence.

  Suddenly three bulls, one after the other, thundered into the arena. The danger and difficulty for the bull-jumpers now became extreme as they had to concentrate, all of them at every moment, on avoiding the plunges not only of the bull they were leaping over, but of the two being leapt over by their comrades. The speed and intensity of the spectacle, as the three bulls criss-crossed the arena and the young men and women darted round and somersaulted over them, making an almost continuous pattern of bright streaks of colour across the white, brown and black masses of the charging animals, was like a display of lightning over and between mountains. And the thunder of this human and animal storm was supplied by the crowd clapping and shouting and beating their feet on the ground and the bulls bellowing in response. In the midst of the barely controlled mayhem several spear-carriers and two or three acrobats were injured, but swiftly removed from harm’s way by the soldiers forming the second line of defence between the spear-carriers and the crowd. Then first one bull, then the second, then the third was driven up the steps towards the altars on the platform and as they ascended one by one they were met by an enormous man, almost a giant, who felled them in turn with a great double-headed axe, the special symbol, painted on many of the pillars in the palace, of Minos’ kingdom. The young acrobats withdrew and Minos himself, ascending the platform with the priests, led the sacrifice of the three bulls, one on each altar, the brown bull to Zeus, the white bull to Poseidon and the black bull to Hades. After that more bulls were led out and sacrificed and the roasted flesh distributed to the crowd.

  The last part of the celebrations was a wrestling match, in which the strongest men from all over the island competed for a crown of olive leaves. A herald called out the names of the contestants, with the village or town they came from, as each entered the series of knock-out heats. But the match was clearly a foregone conclusion, since one of the competitors was the giant who had felled the bulls, and every time he took part he threw his opponent with contemptuous ease. Theseus, watching him intently, asked the soldier nearest to him who this was and was told it was the king’s chief general, known as Tauros, the very man who had led Minos’ troops in their attack on Athens three years before.

  ‘He looks as if he’d be capable of overpowering the Minotaur,’ said Theseus.

  ‘Very likely,’ said the soldier, ‘since Tauros wins this competition every year. No one can match his skill.’

  Theseus did not consider from his own observation that there was much skill involved, only brute strength, and asked the soldier if he himself could try his skill against Tauros.

  ‘You?’ said the soldier. ‘Tauros will break every bone in your body.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘You’d have to ask the king.’

  ‘Then ask him for me!’

  Minos, from his seat among the nobles and ladies to one side of the platform, looked down dubiously at Theseus as the soldier passed on his request, shrugged his shoulders and nodded. The chain was removed from Theseus’ wrist and the herald was called over to take instructions from Minos and to forewarn Tauros. So when Tauros had disposed of his last opponent and the crowd was beginning to applaud the winner without particular enthusiasm, since this outcome was as usual a foregone conclusion, Tauros himself shook his head and pointed with a sarcastic smile at the group of prisoners, while the herald announced:

  ‘One final challenger for the crown. From the city of Athens, Theseus son of Aegeus.’

  Some of the crowd applauded, others shouted derisively as Theseus threw off his black robe, anointed himself with the oil provided for the contestants and advanced to meet Tauros.

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed that a man from Athens would have had
the courage,’ said Tauros. ‘They shut themselves inside their walls sooner than meet me in battle.’

  ‘I regret that I was not there at the time,’ said Theseus, ‘or I would have led them out and thrown you into the sea.’

  ‘Well, I shall try not throw you down too hard,’ said Tauros, ‘since the Minotaur doesn’t fancy dead meat, but I see that your courage is only insolence and I shall find it difficult to restrain myself.’

  ‘I beg you not to hold back on my account. I would prefer to win against a man who was doing his best.’

  They stood for a moment looking at each other, Theseus a mere sapling beside Tauros’ mighty trunk, the latter smiling with derision and looking round at the crowd as if asking them to share it, the former with a stern face and eyes only for his opponent. Then Tauros strode forward intending to pick up Theseus in one movement and fling him to the side like a sheaf of corn. Theseus ducked and side-stepped, at the same time seizing Tauros’ left arm and twisting it backwards. Tauros, carried forward by his own momentum and sideways by the pressure on his arm, stumbled and almost fell. Theseus kicked his right leg behind the knee and the giant crumpled on to his hands and knees. The crowd shouted with excitement at seeing the inveterate winner worsted, but then fell silent, unsure whose side they should be on.

  Theseus stood back and waited for Tauros to get up, knowing that if he grappled with the man too soon he could not match his strength. Tauros, flustered and furious as much with himself as his opponent for having been humiliated, ran straight at him, but Theseus zig-zagged backwards just out of his reach, so that Tauros looked more and more like his namesake, a charging bull, and the crowd, seeing him as it were led by the nose, began to laugh. Tauros, more flustered still, took his eye off Theseus for a moment to look angrily at the crowd, when Theseus darted behind him and, seizing one of his huge legs, brought him crashing to the ground. Again Theseus stood back to allow Tauros to get up, but as Tauros stood there dazed and shaken, blood dripping into his eyes from a graze on his forehead, Theseus launched himself head down at Tauros’ stomach, at the same time seizing him round the chest and sliding him head down over his back. Winded by the blow to his stomach and stunned by the impact of the paving stones on his skull, Tauros lay prone. The crowd, shocked and amazed, was silent. Theseus waited, but when Tauros did not move he walked away, bowed to Minos and returned to his place with the Athenian prisoners.

  Attendants came forward and carried Tauros away. The crowd began to shout, some that the Athenian had won the crown, others that his tactics had been cowardly and unfair and that, unlike Tauros, he had not had to come through the heats. Minos rose to his feet and the herald called for silence.

  ‘We are not such a mean-minded people,’ said Minos, ‘that we cannot recognise courage and skill when we see it or give honour to a conquered city that sends us a victorious athlete. My own son Androgeos won the games in Athens and was treacherously murdered by envious Athenians, to their everlasting shame. We are nobler-spirited. The winner of the crown is Theseus son of Aegeus.’ Beckoning Theseus to come on to the platform, he placed the wreath of olive leaves on his head and led the applause.

  ‘Prettily done,’ he said privately to Theseus. ‘I can tell you that I’m not sorry to see Tauros humbled. Kings must always beware of over-mighty subjects.’

  Then, taking Theseus’ arm, he conducted him at the head of the procession of courtiers, ladies of court, priests and Athenian prisoners back into the palace.

  5. THE MINOTAUR

  Minos was surprised and delighted by Theseus’ triumph and realised, as he lay in bed that night, that he had perhaps been given the means to rid himself of several long-standing problems. The worst was the Minotaur, whom he detested – as well he might – his wife’s horrible progeny from a scandalous union which shamed them both in the eyes of the whole world. The most pressing was his elder daughter Ariadne, who should long since have been married but for whom he had so far found no suitable husband. Tauros was very keen to marry her, but Minos did not wish to give him any more power in the kingdom than he already had. Tauros was also a great partisan of the Minotaur, not because he liked him but because he liked his appetite for human victims, whether Cretan criminals or foreign prisoners of war or the miserable annual tally of young Athenians – those especially. It was Tauros who had imposed this penalty on Athens, though Minos, in his anger at the murder of Androgeos, had endorsed the idea. But in practice it sickened him and he would have stopped it after the first year if he had not been afraid that Tauros, who was held in awe if not much liked by his soldiers and the people in general, would have objected and used it as an excuse to seize power from a king going soft in his old age. As for the Minotaur, who though he had a bull’s head was after all his stepson, he could not have him killed for fear of the anger of both Tauros and Pasiphaë.

  But now fate had sent him this splendid youth Theseus, who seemed to be the answer to all these problems at once. He had already almost disposed of Tauros, for even if he recovered, his formidable reputation must be severely diminished. And if Theseus could so easily overcome Tauros, he might also overcome the Minotaur. Neither Pasiphaë nor Tauros could hold it against Minos if the Minotaur was killed by one of his victims. And could there be a better husband for Ariadne than Theseus? The marriage and the cancellation of the annual tribute would surely make Athens a friend of Crete instead of a resentful enemy, and when Theseus succeeded his father as king and transformed his city, as he surely would, into a much stronger force in the Greek world, Athens would become a useful ally and trading partner. Minos’ son Deukalion was even now leading an expedition to found a colony in Italy and if the Cretans no longer had to worry about disaffection to the north, they could concentrate all the more intensely on opening up the west to their trade and influence.

  Next morning Minos summoned Ariadne to his study and asked her what she thought of Theseus. She was not afraid to say – she trusted her father and she was a pragmatic, straightforward woman – that she found him attractive, both his looks and his courage.

  ‘And what would you think of being married to him?’

  ‘I would like nothing better. But how will he escape Minotauros?’

  ‘You could help him.’

  ‘How could I help him?’

  ‘In several ways. Think about it!’

  ‘And you would not prevent it?’

  ‘By no means. But I would not wish your mother or anyone else to know that. Your help to him and my help to you, if you need it, must be absolutely secret.’

  ‘And then? If Theseus does escape?’

  ‘You must help him escape not just Minotauros but Crete too.’

  ‘Then how can I be married to him?’

  ‘You can go with him.’

  ‘To Athens? Our enemy?’

  ‘With this marriage, with the return of all our Athenian prisoners, Athens will cease to be our enemy.’

  ‘So the prisoners must escape too?’

  ‘Certainly. Do you think Theseus would be willing to go without them?’

  ‘I would be sorry if he were.’

  ‘Well, you must make careful plans with Theseus himself and then share them with me, so that I can discover any weak points.’

  ‘How shall I be alone and secret with Theseus?’

  ‘I shall summon him here now and leave you to receive him. You needn’t tell him that I am your secret accessory. Of course, he is clever enough to guess that you couldn’t do this on your own, but don’t admit it – not at least until you are safely clear of Crete and any pursuit that I may have to order for appearance’s sake.’

  So Theseus went to Minos’ study and, finding only Ariadne, almost believed that some god must be watching over him, since she was exactly the person – as Daidalos had hinted – whom he hoped to win over to help him. Not knowing that she was already primed to do so, he began by courting her and they were soon exchanging looks and words of love. In between these endearments, Theseus, afraid that her
father might return at any moment, quickly told her how he planned to thread his way out of the labyrinth and what help he needed from her.

  The next day was set for Theseus to be sent into the labyrinth as the Minotaur’s first victim. Minos himself took almost fatherly leave of Theseus inside the palace, grasping him by both hands. He seemed as if he might even embrace him, but Theseus, very conscious that hanging from hooks sewn by Ariadne inside his loose black robe were two balls of thread and a golden hairpin, stepped quickly back.

  ‘Are you fully equipped for your frightful ordeal?’ asked Minos.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘We can postpone it for another day if you prefer.’

  ‘I prefer to get it over with.’

  ‘I wish you well and I’m sorry we shall not meet again.’

  ‘Perhaps in the shades,’ Theseus said with a smile.

  ‘We must all meet there, but not to much purpose, except to flit and gibber.’

  ‘At least I might flit past you and gibber my thanks.’

  ‘Thanks for what?’

  ‘For your generous treatment of me and the inspiring example of your well-regulated kingdom.’

  ‘You are too kind. I am also sending you to the Minotaur.’

  ‘But perhaps you would not be sorry if you were relieved of him?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘In your place I would not keep such a monster even if he were my wife’s child.’

  ‘Can you read my mind?’

  ‘Certainly not. But in some ways I feel that our minds are not dissimilar. That sounds arrogant. I mean that I would like to be like you.’

  ‘Are you hoping to escape by flattery?’

  ‘I am not so afraid of the Minotaur that I would say what was untrue.’