Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  The combination of Theseus’ steady infantry and Peirithoös’ enthusiastic horsemen proved an instant success in their first battle, in which Antiope, Hippolyte’s sister and successor as queen, leading a cavalry charge against the Athenian line, was captured. The invaders did not stay to conquer the territory or even risk a second encounter, but, content to have inflicted such a humiliating check to these women’s military pretensions, boarded their ships and returned home with their captive. The Athenian troops sailed straight to Athens with the good news of their victory, but their king stopped off in Thessaly to stay a few months with his friend Peirithoös. Theseus had fallen in love with Antiope and she, as women tended to, with him. By the time they moved on to Athens, Antiope was pregnant.

  Phaedra’s response to this rival for her husband’s love was inwardly volcanic, but outwardly dignified. She was no Medea, who when rejected by Jason murdered her own children and his new wife. Phaedra made no complaint to Theseus. She did not really blame him, whom she still loved, but rather the goddess Aphrodite, and in blaming her was also conscious of her own part in abandoning and displacing Ariadne. Above all, she did not want to be abandoned in her turn and hoped that her displacement would be only temporary. She simply ignored Antiope, as if she had been any ordinary slave girl brought back from a foreign war. Theseus perfectly understood both his wife’s undeclared anger and the royal Cretan pride that made her hide it, and tactfully lodged Antiope in a separate building with her own attendants. Their son was born there, named Hippolytos after Antiope’s elder sister, and brought up quite separately from Akamas and Demophoön, the two sons of Theseus and Phaedra.

  The Amazons, however, led by Antiope’s younger sister Oreithyia, were planning their revenge. First, they enlisted the Scythians as allies. These were wild nomads from the far side of the Black Sea who liked to scalp their enemies and drink out of their skulls and were always game for incursions into more civilised places where valuable plunder was to be had. Riding the long way round the Black Sea, past the land of the Golden Fleece, crossing the iced-over strait called the Cimmerian Bosporos at the entrance to the Maiotis Limne (or Sea of Azov), the Amazons joined forces with a band of Scythians and rode on southwards through Thrace and Macedonia to Thessaly, where they easily defeated the Lapiths and ransacked Peirithoös’ territory. Then they rode on to Athens, where Theseus’ citizen army was beaten and retreated to the Acropolis, while the Amazons occupied the rest of the city and sent a message that if the Athenians surrendered both Theseus and Antiope they would spare the rest of the population and return home.

  Theseus consulted Antiope, who was already expecting their second child.

  ‘Do you want to go home with your sister?’

  ‘And with you?’

  ‘Not with me. I undertook once to be fed to a man-eating monster. I don’t mean to repeat the experience with a nation of man-eating women.’

  ‘Would you let me go alone?’

  ‘If that was your wish.’

  ‘You’ve had enough of me?’

  ‘Never. You are the love of my life, Antiope.’

  ‘But you’re still married to that Cretan woman.’

  ‘Marriage is one thing, love is another.’

  ‘Shouldn’t they go together?’

  ‘Who says so? The gods?’

  ‘Then I will stay here with you, Theseus.’

  ‘And may die with me at the hands of your own people and the wild Scythians.’

  ‘So you do want me to go?’

  ‘Not at all. But they are your own people, led by your own sister, and the choice to go with them or stay with me must be yours.’

  ‘Then you and I will fight them together. And perhaps we shall win.’

  So when the Athenians suddenly broke out of the Acropolis and attacked the adjoining hill where the Amazons were encamped, they were led by both Theseus and Antiope. Perhaps it was the sight of the queen they had come to rescue dealing death to their own ranks or the fiery strength of two such famous warriors in combination that took the heart out of the Amazons. At any rate, by the time one of the Amazon archers had shot down Antiope, they were already losing the battle. Oreithyia tried to rally them, but Theseus, seeing Antiope fall, became like a madman, and seemed to gain her strength as well as his own. Cutting down the woman who had shot her and every Amazon who stood in his way, he made straight for Oreithyia and was followed by close ranks of triumphant Athenians. Oreithyia’s troops broke and scattered in front of Theseus’ fury and Oreithyia herself fled with them.

  The Scythians, encamped on the outskirts of the city, enjoying the plentiful wine and meat they had lifted from the Attic countryside, took no part in the battle, and, seeing that their allies were in flight, gathered up what plunder they could carry and galloped away northwards. Oreithyia took refuge in the small city of Megara along the coast to the west. Some of the Amazons fled north with the Scythians and settled amongst them, some returned to their own country with their lamentable news, many died on the battlefield or during the rout. Not until the Trojan War, many years later, were they once again a military force to be reckoned with, and then, siding with the Trojans, they suffered a further defeat when their new queen Penthesileia was slain by Achilles.

  Achilles mourned the beautiful, brave woman he had killed, just as Theseus mourned her brave, beautiful predecessor, Antiope, who had fought against her own people for his sake, just as Herakles mourned her sister Hippolyte whom he killed without meaning to in the melée near his ship. These successive Amazon queens, dying by or for their hero-lovers, are a recurrent motif in the Greek stories and they pop up again in the Italian Renaissance stories of Ariosto and Tasso as pagans or Saracens fighting and loving Christians, and in the late twentieth century as bold and beautiful foreign vamps loved and destroyed by James Bond. Are they just male fantasies of dangerous temptation, of sweet, soft flesh concealed under armed and booted carapaces? Or the deeper truth of love between the sexes, who are in so many ways opposites and whose mutual attraction is also a battleground?

  9. THE STEPSON

  Theseus buried Antiope and the other dead Amazons with sorrow and ceremony. He even sent a message to Oreithyia inviting her to the funeral of her sister and promising to provide a ship to take her home. But Oreithyia could not forgive Antiope for fighting with the Athenians, nor did she think the Amazons would forgive her for their defeat. She rejected Theseus’ offer, took poison and died. Phaedra behaved with her usual tact, showing neither pleasure nor sorrow in the removal of Antiope, congratulating Theseus on his victory without ever referring to the woman who had helped him win it, but when he suggested that Hippolytos might now be brought up with her own children she vehemently objected. Theseus did not insist; not wanting his son to be brought up in isolation in a household of servants, he sent him to his mother in Troezen, where his grandfather King Pittheus, at the suggestion of Theseus who would otherwise have succeeded him, made Hippolytos his heir. Phaedra, sure now that he would not be a rival to her own sons for the throne of Athens, was pleased.

  She did not even mind when, many years later, Hippolytos returned to Athens as a boy of sixteen so that he could be trained, under his father’s eye, in the military and gymnastic skills which Theseus had made compulsory for all his male subjects. His two stepbrothers were a little older and had already been through this training, but without giving much satisfaction to Theseus. He considered them lazy and lacking in determination or courage, and often told them so brusquely and openly. Now in his middle age, Theseus was becoming something of a despot both to his family and his people. But he very much approved of Hippolytos, an extremely serious boy who was devoted to sport and physical exercise and already an accomplished archer, rider, charioteer and wrestler. Phaedra might easily have been jealous of the constant preference Theseus showed for this half-Amazon bastard over his own legitimate sons, but instead she found herself liking him. He had the striking good looks of his father, the man her mother had likened to Apollo and
whom Phaedra had fallen in love with as soon as she saw him in the palace at Knossos. Hippolytos was particularly deferential to his stepmother, whom he expected to be his enemy, modest about his own abilities and even shy. He had been brought up, after all, mainly by his grandmother, loving but strict, and in common with most such boys was at ease with old women but nervous of younger ones.

  Like all young athletes in those days, Hippolytos competed and exercised naked, and although the palace women were mostly out of sight in their own quarters, they were not confined to them as Muslim women were in much later times, nor, unlike Christian women, were they surprised or shocked by seeing men naked. It was entirely normal and gave them much cause for admiration, mockery and the humorous or wistful comparison of one man with another among themselves. The spectacle of Hippolytos, however, exercising as he often did in a courtyard of the palace, was special and he had a regular audience. They did not, of course, stand or sit around watching him – that would have been coarse and impolite – but they did peep round screens and through doorways or embrasures as well as pass that way much more frequently than when he was not exercising.

  Hippolytos himself, intent on fine-tuning his body and improving his skills, seemed hardly to notice them. He was neither homosexual nor a narcissist, he had simply put sex aside for the present in his desire to match up to his father, much as his father at the same age had desired to match up to his cousin Herakles. He was also, of course, the child of an Amazon queen, high priestess of the virgin moon goddess Artemis, and though he could not remember his mother he knew of her heroism (from the Athenian point of view) and venerated her as much as his father. Amazons in general regarded sex only as the necessary prelude to creating more female warriors, and Hippolytos, if anyone had asked him, would probably have had a similar opinon about getting male warriors for Athens and Troezen.

  Phaedra was amused by her attendants’ interest in Hippolytos, which they did not express openly to her, but which she couldn’t help noticing and overhearing. She herself sometimes caught sight of the naked athlete at his regular exercises, alone or with a fellow-athlete – it would have been abnormal to look away – but she did not deliberately spy on him as the other women did. Why should she? He was an unusually handsome youth, of course, but she was married to his still more handsome and very famous father and she did not need anyone else’s love. Besides, Hippolytos was still a boy, younger than her own sons; she could admire his muscular physique and excellent proportions, his long legs and small buttocks, his golden hair, blue eyes and broad, open face, much as one might the painting or sculpture of an idealised god or hero.

  And then one day Hippolytos returned to Troezen. His great-grandfather Pittheus was dying, and he would soon have to take his place as king. The women in the palace missed him badly. A mood between melancholy and irritability settled over the women’s quarters and Phaedra, to her own surprise, found she shared it. It wasn’t that Hippolytos had made any overtures to any of them or even exchanged words, except when directly addressed by his stepmother – he had offered them nothing more than a polite and fleeting smile – but that the courtyard was so abysmally empty. Life had left it, the epitome of life, the man who represented what man at his living best could be, young, strong, lithe, intelligent, idealistic.

  When, not long afterwards, King Pittheus died, Theseus travelled by sea to Troezen for the funeral and much of his court, including Phaedra, went with him. Hippolytos, now king in his great-grandfather’s place, organised the ceremonies and sacrifices and the burial with the same unostentatious efficiency he had brought to his own training. Theseus could only wish that it might be Hippolytus, rather than his eldest son Akamas, who would one day rule Athens. Soon after the funeral, when Theseus and his court were preparing to return to Athens, news came of the death of his friend Peirithoös’ wife and Theseus sent the messenger back to say that he, who had attended their wedding and helped save the bride from the centaurs, would attend her funeral and offer what comfort he could to his grieving friend. Phaedra, however, surprising herself again, said that while he was away she would like to stay in Troezen rather than return to Athens immediately. Theseus too was surprised.

  ‘It’s quite a small town,’ he said. ‘What will you do here?’

  ‘What do I do in Athens?’

  ‘You preside over my court, you help the poor, you receive friends and take part in women’s rites and mysteries – all the things that a queen is expected to do. But here in Troezen …?’

  ‘There is no queen in Troezen, is there? Your son is a man alone. I can perhaps bring a woman’s touch to his palace and court until he finds a suitable wife.’

  ‘My mother is here and will do that for him.’

  ‘Your mother is old and – dare I say? – a little out of date. When you brought me from Crete you also brought much that was new and more civilised to Athens. Troezen strikes me as still quite primitive. A lovely place, yes, and I like its old-fashioned air, but I’m sure your son will want to give it something of the style you and I gave to Athens.’

  ‘Hippolytos is mainly interested in sport and hunting.’

  But Theseus was pleased that Phaedra seemed to be so concerned for the welfare of Troezen and its new king, whom she clearly liked now in spite of his unfortunate origin. He said that she could stay in Troezen with two or three of her attendants – more would be too costly and invasive for such a small place – and when he returned from Thessaly he would come to Troezen to fetch her. Then he took affectionate leave of her and his mother and Hippolytos and boarded the ship for Athens with the rest of his court.

  Hippolytos noticed, of course, that his stepmother stayed on after his father and most of the funeral guests had left, but having no notion of women’s activities or what went on in their heads, simply accepted it as a given fact and left it to his grandmother, Aithra, to arrange for Phaedra and her two attendant women’s comfort. He often went hunting, exercised every day in the gymnasium built by his great-grandfather and, apart from his royal duties of arbitrating disputes and judging crimes – of which there were few in Troezen – was busy supervising the building of a new temple to the virgin goddess Artemis, whom he worshipped with particular fervour.

  Phaedra was now beginning to admit to herself, though not yet to her attendants, that she had not stayed in Troezen to help her stepson modernise it so much as simply to be near him. She did not like this realisation, she tried to suppress it and to laugh at herself, but every time she saw him and spoke to him, the dagger, as she thought of it, of her attraction to him sank deeper into her flesh. When she heard her attendants joking together that it was a pity Hippolytos exercised now in the gymnasium instead of his palace courtyard, she asked where the gymnasium was. They told her it was outside the town walls, next to a small house built by Pittheus as a retreat for himself when he wished to be philosopher rather than king. Finding that no one used the house since the old king’s death, Phaedra asked Hippolytos if, now that it was high summer, she and her attendants might move in there, away from the heat inside the town. He agreed at once, only stipulating that, since the house was outside the walls, an armed guard should be posted there at night in case of pirates landing in the bay or robbers coming over the mountain.

  ‘Pirates? Robbers?’ said Phaedra. ‘What have we to fear from them since Theseus was king of Athens and heir to Troezen?’

  ‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Hippolytos, scratching his fair curls, ‘but I should not be able to sleep at night for anxiety if I left you unprotected.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Phaedra. ‘I had no idea you ever troubled your head about the weakness of women.’

  ‘My father would never forgive me.’

  ‘You are a most dutiful son,’ said Phaedra, disappointed that it was not really her he was worried about, but how his father might react.

  Phaedra and her attendants moved into the house and were rewarded almost at once by the sight of Hippolytos and several of his friends at their
exercises. A small window of the house looked straight into the gymnasium’s elegant pillared courtyard. Pittheus had no doubt planned it that way, so that he could keep an eye on the physical progress of his pupils, as he did on their musical studies in the Temple of the Muses, a mile away up the hill. Phaedra sat so often by this window when Hippolytos was in the gymnasium that her attendants could not help noticing and she herself, feeding her addiction to the sight of his naked body, began not to care that they did. Soon she no longer pretended to herself that she was not in love with him and was no longer ashamed to let her eyes fall from his face, red with his exertions, to his sweat-beaded chest and belly and powerful thighs, and allow them to dwell on that small bulging sac at the very centre of his body, and, drooping over it, the soft tube of flesh, like a snake’s head protruding from its nest of fine golden hair.

  Euripides, in his tragedy Hippolytos, makes this lust of Phaedra for her stepson the deliberate revenge of Aphrodite, in order to punish not Phaedra, who is merely her instrument, but Hippolytos for his one-goddess obsession with Artemis and neglect of herself, the goddess of love. Phaedra, however, remembering how her sister had gone ashore on Naxos to make a sacrifice to Aphrodite and how she herself had taken the opportunity of Ariadne’s long absence and Theseus’ delirium to order the ship to sail away without her, believed that Aphrodite was punishing her. That didn’t trouble her at all. The more her addiction to the sight of the naked Hippolytos took hold of her, the more grateful she was to Aphrodite. She had been an inexperienced girl when she fell in love with Theseus, now she was a mature woman who knew the pleasure of lovemaking with a lustful man. She longed to put her hands on this rejuvenated Theseus, to arouse that sleeping snake’s head and give it exercises of its own.