As well as a son, Polydorus, the royal couple had four daughters: Semele, who became the mother of Dionysus; Ino, who nursed Dionysus and tried to do away with Phrixus and Helle; Autonoe, mother of the hunter Actaeon whose love Semele spurned; and Agave, who along with Autonoe was driven mad by Dionysus and tore her son Pentheus to shreds with her own hands and teeth. At the ends of their lives, Cadmus and Harmonia became serpents themselves, while their spirits live forever in bliss in the Elysian Fields. But after Polydorus the throne of Thebes passed to Cadmus’ doomed grandson, Pentheus, who, as we have seen, brought about his own destruction by resisting the rites of the twice-born god of liberation.
Dionysus, god of liberation, rides a panther, the symbol of desire.[36]
Oedipus
A terrible plague held the land of Thebes in its deadly grip; the crops were stricken with blight and the people began to die of disease and starvation. For in Greece the line between a good year and a bad one is very fine. As is proper for the king in such times, Oedipus consulted the oracle at Delphi, and was told that Thebes was polluted by the murder of Laius, the previous king, for the murderer was still at large.
And Oedipus swore a terrible oath, that the murderer should be found and punished, whoever he was, with the most terrible punishments. He should be stripped of his family and belongings, flogged, and driven from the land to live out his days as a rootless beggar. No one was to talk to him; no one was to offer him shelter or the warmth of Hestia’s fire; no one was to feed him. If he survived, he would be gnawed forever by guilt and serve as prey to passing brigands. But who was the guilty man?
After the death of Pentheus, the rulership of Thebes had descended into chaos. Eventually Labdacus began a new line, but he too died resisting Dionysus, and the throne passed to his infant son Laius. As often happens, the young king’s regent, a man called Lycus, usurped the throne. Now, Lycus’ niece, Antiope, was loved by Zeus, and gave birth in secret to twin boys. But knowing that Lycus would see them as rivals and kill them, she left the infants at the city gates. They were taken in and brought up by a childless shepherd couple, whom they charmed with their infant smiles and dimples. The happy peasants named them Amphion and Zethus.
Out together one day, the young men met a disheveled and distraught woman, whom at first they took to be a runaway slave. After questioning her, however, and finding out that she was Antiope, they began to suspect the truth about their origins. Both boys looked remarkably like this strange woman. But just then Lycus’ wife Dirce arrived with an armed escort, to haul Antiope back to Thebes, back to the life of constant torment and humiliation to which Dirce subjected her.
Zethus and Amphion questioned the shepherd and his wife, and the truth came out amid many tears. The boys saw it now as their duty to save their true mother from Dirce’s hands. Zethus was in favor of taking immediate and drastic action, but the gentle musician Amphion needed persuading. In the end they avenged their mother’s long years of distress by having Dirce tied to the horns of a bull and dragged to her death; but sweet water sprang from the face of the rock at the place of her death in Thebes, and the spring still bears her name. Lycus received no further punishment beyond banishment. Amphion and Zethus also banished Laius, who was on the threshold of adulthood. They ruled together, but not amicably, and their reign was beset with woes.
Zethus was married to Aedon, and Amphion to Niobe, whose foolish boast led, as we have seen, to the massacre of her children, and endless sorrow. But even earlier her children had been at risk, victims of the jealousy of her sister-in-law. Aedon determined to kill one of Niobe’s children, but mistook the child’s bed at night and killed her own son. When she realized her terrible error, she prayed to be taken from this earth. Her prayer was answered, and she became the first nightingale.
Amphion and Zethus are remembered as secondary founders, after Cadmus, of the seven-gated city of Thebes. They enlarged the city and built its defensive walls. Nor did they just supervise the building, as kings generally do: the massive stones were summoned and leapt into place under the spell of Amphion’s lyre. On their deaths, Laius returned from exile and resumed the throne of Thebes. During his exile, Laius had been taken in and made welcome by Pelops, king of Elis. But when he left he abused the sacred bonds of friendship and hospitality by abducting Pelops’ son Chrysippus, with whom he was in love. But Chrysippus killed himself for shame, and Pelops called down the curses of the gods on Laius and his descendants for the death of his beloved son.
Later, when Laius was king of Thebes, he consulted the oracle at Delphi to learn if his wife Jocasta would bear him any children, and he was told that, if he truly wanted to protect the city, he should avoid having children, and also that, if Jocasta did bear him a son, that son would kill him. And Apollo made it plain that Pelops’ curse was the cause.
But Laius in his folly ignored the oracle, and in due course of time a son was born. In an attempt to avoid the unavoidable, Laius ordered him exposed on a nearby mountain, with an iron pin driven through his ankle. Needless to say—for the curse had long to run yet—the slave who had been given the job of abandoning the baby in the wilderness gave him out of pity to a kindly shepherd. The countryman passed the child on to Polybus, king of Corinth, and Polybus brought him up as his own. The boy’s wound recovered, but ever after he was known as Oedipus, Clubfoot.
Years later, Oedipus began to suspect that he was not the natural son of King Polybus and Queen Merope. He paid a visit to Delphi and asked the oracle who his parents were. The oracle, as often, didn’t reply directly, but told him that he must never set foot on his native soil, since he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Naturally, Oedipus chose never to return to Corinth, which he took to be the country of his birth—and he set out on the road from Delphi that led to Thebes, walking easily, with his long, dark hair tied up with a fillet, and his brow furrowed with concern. It seemed he had a hard road ahead of him.
It’s well known that crossroads and junctions are places of danger and mystery, where ghosts congregate and Hecate rules. Oedipus arrived at such a place just as a chariot came clattering up, the driver and passenger unconcerned for the young wanderer with whom they shared the narrow road. To avoid being crushed, Oedipus leapt aside onto the rough shoulder, but then he sprinted alongside the chariot, shouting angrily and grabbing for the driver. At this, the passenger, an elderly man with cold eyes, struck him hard on the head with a whip. In an instant, quick-tempered Oedipus pulled the man from the back of the chariot and killed him for the insult. It was, of course, his true father, Laius, though Oedipus had no idea that he had just fulfilled the first part of the prophecy. Ironically, Laius had been on his way to Delphi to ask whether the son had survived, whom he had abandoned so long ago.
When Oedipus reached Thebes some time later, he found the city mourning its dead king and afflicted by the Sphinx—a monstrous creature with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. It had blocked the gates to the city and set about terrorizing all who sought exit or entry by demanding the answer to a riddle it had learned from the Muses: “What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at midday, and three legs in the evening?” The beast proceeded to devour all who failed to give the right answer, and the city was soon threatened with losing all of its best and brightest, for many tried but none could find the solution.
Queen Jocasta’s brother Creon was acting as regent since the death of Laius, and was desperate enough to offer the throne of Thebes and his sister’s hand in marriage to anyone who could rid the land of the riddling pest. Oedipus, confident in his wits, boldly confronted the Sphinx at the mouth of its cliff-top cave. “‘Man’ is the answer,” he said. “As an infant, he crawls; as an adult he walks on two legs; and in the evening of his life he supports himself with a cane.” In anguished surprise at the abrupt end to its deadly game, the Sphinx hurled itself with a blood-curdling howl off the precipice. Oedipus gained the throne and married Jocasta. Apollo’s words had c
ome to pass.
“What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at midday, and three legs in the evening?.”[37]
Ignorance can be bliss, and for many years Thebes and Oedipus thrived. He and Jocasta had two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. But then the plague struck, and in his blindness Oedipus cursed the man who had brought pollution down upon his people by murdering King Laius.
At this point, Polybus died, and a messenger arrived from Corinth, offering the now-vacant throne to Oedipus. But Oedipus refused: he was mindful of the prophecy, and still thought that Polybus and Merope were his parents. But when he explained his refusal, the messenger, in all innocence, told him not to worry, because in their childlessness Polybus and Merope had adopted him. “I know they aren’t your true parents,” said the messenger, “because I am the very shepherd who took you in when you had been abandoned as an infant in the hills.”
A trifling snowball gathers further bulk as it rolls down the mountainside, until it becomes a devastating avalanche; just so, the evidence accumulated, until the truth was unavoidable. Oedipus was himself the cause of his people’s suffering, and he had indeed killed his father and married his mother, as the oracle had foretold. Jocasta hanged herself in horror at her incest, and on discovering her lifeless body, still warm and swaying, Oedipus blinded himself with a brooch torn from her robe. Creon became regent again, and blind Oedipus locked himself away in the recesses of the palace.
But there still remained plenty of energy in Pelops’ curse. Alone in his self-imposed prison, Oedipus’ tortured mind was prey to irrational fears and fantasies. Though he did not forgive himself, he was well looked after by his sons, Eteocles and Polynices.
One day, after making a sacrifice, they brought a special treat for their father. Rather than the usual poor cut of meat, they presented him with a meaty haunch served on a silver plate that had belonged to all the kings of Thebes since the time of Cadmus. But in his madness Oedipus took this as a cruel reminder of his condition, as a king brought low and denied luxury. He shouted for the gods to take note, and over the haunch, now turned sacrificial victim, Oedipus called down Pelops’ curse afresh on the heads of his own sons. He doomed them to divide their kingdom with the sword, and die at each other’s hands.
The Seven against Thebes
So the Theban princes, Eteocles and Polynices, Oedipus’ sons and brothers, came of age. They both wanted the throne of Thebes, and adopted a compromise that was bound to fail, whereby each of them would rule for a year, while the other made himself scarce. Eteocles ruled first, with Polynices spending the year in Argos, at the court of King Adrastus. As insurance, he took with him the family heirloom—the fabulous necklace made for Harmonia by Hephaestus. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, Eteocles refused to give up the throne. Power had gone to his head.
During his year of exile Polynices had married one of Adrastus’ daughters, and the Argive king now promised to help restore him to his throne. After all, there was far more point in having a king as a son-in-law than a homeless exile. Adrastus assembled an army that was led by seven champions: himself, Polynices, Tydeus, Capaneus, Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, and the soothsayer Amphiaraus.
Amphiaraus at first refused to join the expedition; he knew by divination that he would not return from it. He went into hiding, and his absence threatened to abort the effort altogether. But his wife was bribed by Polynices with the cursed necklace of Harmonia. She revealed her husband’s hiding-place, and Amphiaraus bravely accepted his fate. The Seven descended on Thebes as wolves descend from the hills in winter to steal defenseless lambs. They were seven only, but they were a match for seven hundred ordinary men.
Their route took them past Nemea, where they found Hypsipyle, the former queen of Lemnos. A victim of warfare, she was bound in servitude to the local king, Lycurgus, as the nursemaid of his infant son and heir. Adrastus’ troops were short of water, and Hypsipyle offered to show them the way to a spring. She laid the cradle containing her young charge on the ground, but while she was away a serpent came and devoured the child. When the Seven had quenched their thirst, they returned to a scene of bloody horror, with the mangled remains of the baby scattered on the ground or dribbling out of the monster’s mouth. Too late, they killed the serpent. But to honor the baby who died so that they might quench their thirst, they instituted games that are still held today, once every four years, like the games at Olympia.
The heroes found the seven-mouthed city of Thebes well defended; seven warriors had volunteered to hold the gates against the enemy. The Thebans were not defenseless lambs, after all. The Theban seer Teiresias foretold that the city would not fall as long as one of the descendants of the original five Sown Men sacrificed himself. If this happened, said Teiresias, the debt incurred by Cadmus’ killing of Ares’ dragon would finally have been paid off, and the city would survive the assault. Menoeceus willingly sacrificed himself on the very spot where the dragon’s lair had been, but still it seemed that the fate of the city hung in the balance.
The Seven met the seven Theban champions in single combat to decide the war, one at each of the city’s gates. It was an outright victory for the Thebans. Of the attackers, only Capaneus succeeded in scaling the walls. But once he reached the top he crowed that not even the fire of Zeus could stop him—but it did, because dark-browed Zeus struck him with a bolt of lightning for his arrogance. Even Tydeus died, though he was a favorite of Athena. When he was fatally wounded by Melanippus, the goddess flew down from Olympus to administer a potion of immortality to the dying warrior, and transport him afterward to bright Olympus. But Amphiaraus, who hated Tydeus, killed Melanippus and gave Tydeus his brains to eat. “In this way,” he suggested, “you will gain the dead man’s spirit, and live.” Amphiaraus’ grim design was realized: when Athena saw her favorite at his obscene meal, she withdrew in disgust, and Tydeus died a mortal’s death.
Capaneus scaled the walls of Thebes, but Zeus blasted him for arrogance.[38]
Of the Seven, only Adrastus and Amphiaraus survived the failed siege of Thebes. They fled the battlefield. Adrastus made it safely back to Argos, but the earth gaped before Amphiaraus as he was driving his chariot away. Still in a fury at the doomed expedition, he welcomed death at a gallop and kept a firm grip on his bright-maned horses as they plunged into the underworld. Henceforth Amphiaraus is worshipped as a superhuman healer, who visits men and women in their dreams and instructs them in their cures.
As for the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, they traded blows and wounds in a fight that was so close and fierce that in the end they both died. It was as well that their mother was no longer alive to see the pitiful spectacle and their father’s curse fulfilled.
Creon, once again the emergency ruler of Thebes, gave orders that Polynices and the rest of the aggressors from Argos were not to be honored with burial. But Antigone could not abide this sin against her dead brother. Her sister Ismene counseled caution and obedience, but Antigone pushed her aside and defiantly gave Polynices at least the symbolic burial of three handfuls of dust thrown on his corpse. She preferred the unwritten law of the gods to Creon’s edict, and was prepared even to suffer death for it. Creon had her walled up, to starve to death, but Haemon, his son and Antigone’s betrothed, broke in to rescue her. Finding that she had hanged herself with her girdle rather than face a slow and painful death, he slew himself on the spot with his sword. And Creon’s wife did the same when she heard of the death of her son. Creon was well paid for ignoring the gods’ wishes.
But Thebes did fall ten years later, to the sons of the Seven, led by Amphiaraus’ son Alcmaeon. Teiresias saw that this time the destruction of the city was inevitable, and ordered its evacuation, so that at least human lives would be spared. But his daughter Daphne was captured, and sent by Alcmaeon to Delphi, where she became the first of the Sibyls—the first of those who can open themselves up to Apollo and speak for him.
Alcmaeon also paid his mother back for
her treachery by slitting her throat and taking the necklace of Harmonia. As a matricide, the Furies hounded him from place to place, but he gained temporary shelter in Arcadia, where he married the king’s daughter Arsinoe, and gave her the necklace. But he was a murderer, a matricide, and soon a plague descended on Arcadia. Knowing himself to be the cause, he left, seeking purification for his sin.
On the advice of an oracle, he sought a land on which the sun had not shone when he killed his mother. Eventually, he found a place that fitted this description at the mouth of the river Achelous, where silt carried down the river had formed new land, and he married fair-flowing Callirhoe there, the daughter of the river-god.
But Callirhoe had heard of the precious necklace, and insisted that Alcmaeon return to Arcadia and get it back. He did so, pretending that he had to take the necklace to Delphi to complete his purification, but when Arsinoe’s brothers learned of the trick, they killed him and retrieved the accursed bauble. Callirhoe prayed that her young sons might immediately be old enough to take their vengeance, and the gods granted her prayer. The curse of the necklace at last came to an end when the boys, so suddenly elevated to young manhood, gave it to Apollo at Delphi.
Chapter Six
MYCENAE IN THE AGE OF HEROES
The Curse of the House of Atreus
The royal house of Mycenae suffered no less than the Labdacid house of Thebes from the effects of a deadly curse. It all started with Tantalus, son of Zeus and king of Mount Sipylus in Lydia. What everyone knows about Tantalus is that he is “tantalized”: his punishment in Hades is to stand up to his chin in a pool of water, which sinks into the ground every time he tries to drink from it, while above his head a tree laden with all the appetizing fruits of the world raises its branches out of his reach every time he tries to pluck one of the fruits. But what did he do to get there?
The Greek Myths Page 10