The trouble was that he was too familiar with the gods. He used to dine with them, he was privy to their counsels, he hobnobbed with them on a daily basis. Familiarity, as we know, breeds contempt, and over time Tantalus got to know the gods so well that he began to doubt their powers. It was said that he stole some nectar and ambrosia from Olympus, the food and drink of the gods, and distributed it among mortals. He gave mortal men a glimpse of heaven, though they called it a dream, a hallucination. He might have been punished for that alone, but his crime was far worse, far more hideous.
The method he chose to test their powers was perverse in the extreme. He invited them all to dinner, all the great Olympians, and served them up a special dish. He had chopped up his own son Pelops and cooked the body parts in a rich sauce. The gods sat down to table and addressed their dinner—but all of them immediately pulled back in horror, proving their powers of discernment. All, that is, except for Demeter, who, distracted and pining for her daughter—it was the time of year when the pale queen was dwelling in the underworld—chewed and swallowed a juicy chunk of the boy’s shoulder before realizing her mistake.
Tantalus hosted a banquet for the gods—with his own son Pelops as the entrée.[39]
Appalled at what Tantalus had done, the gods took pity on the roasted youth, and in a rare show of unity and cooperation, they worked together to restore Pelops to life. The only difficulty was the bit that Demeter had eaten; and so ever after Pelops had an ivory shoulder, the first prosthetic, designed by Hermes and fashioned by Hephaestus. For his abominable meal Tantalus was sent down to Hades, to be denied food and drink forever—and, like Sisyphus, Tityus, and Ixion, to serve as a warning to future criminals.
When Pelops was grown up, he migrated from Asia to the southern part of Greece, the part that still bears his name: the island of Pelops, the Peloponnese. His sister Niobe also left her native land to marry Amphion of Thebes—but she was fated to be carried lamenting back home to Lydia, and to weep cold tears there forever. Pelops came in the first instance to win the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaus, who was a son of Ares and king of Olympia. Now, Oenomaus was known to be an outstanding chariot-racer, and he would give his daughter away only to the man who could beat him in a race all the way across the Peloponnese from Olympia, over some of the most rugged terrain Greece has to offer. Thirteen brave men had already tried, but all had failed, and their heads were fixed above the doors of Oenomaus’ palace. For he loved his daughter himself, and wanted no other man to possess her.
Pelops was beloved of Poseidon, and the earth-shaker supplied the young hero with a magnificent chariot for the race. Even so, Pelops was not at all sure he could win, given that Oenomaus’ horses, as was well known, could outstrip Boreas, the north wind. Oenomaus’ groom was called Myrtilus, and his father was the god Hermes. Oenomaus should have known better than to trust a son of the god of thieves and trickery.
Before the race, Pelops suborned Myrtilus by offering him half the kingdom he would gain by winning. Myrtilus agreed, and sabotaged Oenomaus’ chariot by changing the metal linchpins—the pins that joined the wheel to the axle—for realistic-looking pins of wax. So the day of the race arrived. It was Oenomaus’ practice to give the suitor a head start, and then catch up and kill him. And every suitor carried Hippodamia in his chariot, because the game that Oenomaus liked to play was that his daughter was being abducted, and that he was giving indignant chase. So off set Pelops and Hippodamia, and before long Oenomaus set out after them, with no reason to think that there wouldn’t soon be a fourteenth head adorning his doorway.
No sooner had his godlike horses got up to full speed than the fake linchpins gave way. Oenomaus crashed to the ground amid a jumble of smashed wood and jagged metal, and was dragged by his horses over the rocky ground to a bloody death. Though Hippodamia grieved over the death of her father, she accepted the rules: she was Pelops’ prize.
The end of the chariot race brought Pelops his bride and his kingdom.[40]
Myrtilus met them at the wreckage, to gloat over his success. And he seemed to think that his half of the kingdom included Hippodamia, because he began to molest her. Pelops leapt on the false groom and bound him fast. Myrtilus promised to leave Hippodamia alone, and reminded Pelops that he was owed half the kingdom, but Pelops was in no mood to listen.
The highest cliffs he knew were on the east coast of the Peloponnese, and at the earliest possible opportunity he drove over there with his prisoner. He made sure that the man knew what was about to happen, smiled at the dread on his face, and pushed him over the edge. Myrtilus plummeted hundreds of feet to his death, and the sea is named the Myrtoan Sea after him. But all the way down, as Myrtilus fell, he cried out a curse on Pelops and his descendants. And a true curse from the son of a god is always effective.
Atreus and Thyestes
Pelops ruled the kingdom of Olympia for a good many years, until he and his family almost came to believe that Myrtilus’ curse had no power. Now, an oracle had proclaimed that a son of Pelops should be king of Mycenae, but when his two eldest sons, Thyestes and Atreus, went to the golden citadel to claim their inheritance, they fell murderously out with each other. It was Hermes’ doing: angry at the death of Myrtilus, and determined to implement the curse, he sent a shepherd to Mycenae, bearing a golden lamb that had miraculously been born in his flock. The lamb was a clear token of kingship, and Atreus’ claim to the throne was confirmed by the fact that the shepherd gave it to him, not his brother. In fact, the “shepherd” may have been the god Pan in disguise, acting on his father Hermes’ instructions.
Atreus immediately began to prepare for his coronation ceremony, but Thyestes had not given up. He seduced Aerope, his own brother’s wife, and she gave him the fabulous lamb in secret. All the nobles and commons assembled for the glorious ceremony—and it was Thyestes who appeared with the lamb and was crowned king.
But the contest was not over yet. Zeus favored the kingship of Atreus, and he sent Hermes to whisper in Atreus’ mind. Atreus listened, and knew that the words came from a god. He declared to the people of Mycenae that his right to the throne would be heralded by a portent far greater than a mere golden lamb. And Zeus caused all the heavenly bodies to turn back on their paths. Thyestes had no choice but to recognize Atreus’ greater claim.
So Atreus was king of Mycenae, and Thyestes was banished for his crimes. The first thing Atreus did was drown Aerope for her sin, but still he stored the bitter bile of vengeance in his heart. He pretended to forgive his brother, and invited him back to Mycenae for a feast of reconciliation. And for the main dish of the feast, he took and cut up Thyestes’ sons. The heavens darkened and the sun hid its face at the crime, but Thyestes, all unknowing, ate heartily. At the end of the meal, he sat back, satisfied, and asked to see his sons. Then Atreus uncovered a serving-dish that held the boys’ hands and feet and heads, for their father to see. Thyestes leapt to his feet, vomit spewing from his mouth, and kicked over the table, crying out a curse: “May your house fall as surely as this table!”
Once more Thyestes left golden Mycenae, and went to dwell in Sicyon. Still looking for ways to be avenged on his brother, he consulted an oracle, and was told that he would father a child by his own daughter, Pelopia, and that the boy would grow up to be the instrument of his vengeance. Thyestes was appalled—he wanted revenge, but not like that—and he fled back to Sicyon; but on his way he stumbled at night upon Athena’s sanctuary, where an all-female rite was being conducted.
But Athena’s priestess soiled her robe with the blood of the sacrificial victim, and left the sacred precinct to wash it in the nearby stream. She undressed not far from where Thyestes was hiding. There was no moon, but in the starlight he caught glimpses of the swell of a young breast and the shapely curve of a thigh, until he was consumed by lust. He leapt out and raped the young woman in the darkness. It was, of course, Pelopia, his own daughter, though neither of them recognized the other in the dark and the frenzy of the moment.
The years passed, and Atreus’ sons, dour Agamemnon and red-haired Menelaus, grew and flourished. So did their foster brother Aegisthus. But the feuding sons of Pelops continued their bitter rivalry. Once more Atreus pretended to be reconciled with Thyestes, and invited him to his hilltop palace at Mycenae. He had filled the boys’ ears all their lives with tales of the wickedness of Thyestes, and Aegisthus determined to kill the man he took to be his uncle, to repay Atreus for raising him.
They met in a secluded place and Aegisthus drew his sword against his father—the very sword that Pelopia had abandoned in disgust along with her unwanted infant. But as he raised it in the air for the killing thrust, Thyestes cried out: “That sword! It’s mine! I lost it years ago! Where did you find it?”
It was indeed the sword he had lost on the night of the rape. The awful truth came out: Thyestes and Aegisthus recognized each other as father and son, and sent for Pelopia to learn the truth. But the news could hardly bring her joy or relief from her long years of guilt and grief; she seized the sword and killed herself with it. Aegisthus took the weapon, streaked black with his sister-mother’s blood, to Atreus and showed it to him as proof that his brother was dead, so that Atreus would lower his guard. And when the king went off alone to perform a thanksgiving sacrifice, Aegisthus killed him and restored his father to the throne of Mycenae. Agamemnon and Menelaus fled.
But even after all this slaughter the curse had not been drained of energy. Some time later, Agamemnon and Menelaus succeeded in expelling Thyestes from Mycenae for the last time, and he passes out of our knowing, for he lived out the rest of his life in exile on the lonely island of Cythera, sacred to Aphrodite. And Agamemnon ruled Mycenae wisely and well, while Menelaus was king of Sparta—until the outbreak of the Trojan War.
The End of the Atreid Curse
The two sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, were central to the Greek war effort against Troy. In a sense, you could say Menelaus caused the war—certainly there was grumbling from both officers and men along those lines—and Agamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces. For ten long years the war was fought, and its outcome was uncertain until the very end. But the Greeks did what they had to do to win, and then they came back home. Back in Mycenae, Agamemnon was greeted by the full force of the family curse, now working out its evil in his generation.
Agamemnon was married to Clytemestra. It was an illustrious union: the king of Mycenae and the daughter of Tyndareos of Sparta and Leda. Her egg-born sister was Helen, sometime wife of Menelaus, and her brothers were Castor and Polydeuces, who would become the Heavenly Twins.
Now, as we shall see, Clytemestra could well claim that Agamemnon was guilty of the death of their own daughter Iphigeneia. For all the years that Agamemnon was away at war, her daughter’s fate poisoned Clytemestra’s mind and heart. She had other children—Orestes, Electra, and Chrysothemis—but even by the end of the war they had not reached maturity. And she took as her lover Aegisthus, son of Thyestes and killer of her father-in-law, Atreus. Aegisthus had long wooed her, but Agamemnon left behind a trusted bard to keep his wife from harm.
When the time came for open rebellion against her husband, she had the bard abducted and abandoned on an empty island, to perish of heat and thirst; and then she went willingly to Aegisthus’ bed. It was a poor exchange, Agamemnon for Aegisthus, but Clytemestra’s father Tyndareos had once forgotten to sacrifice to Aphrodite, and the vengeful goddess filled his daughter’s heart with infatuation. By the time Agamemnon arrived back in golden Mycenae, Aegisthus’ and Clytemestra’s minds were made up. For seven years, they had been living together as man and wife, and as king and queen, and their sinister plans for the rightful king had long been laid. Clytemestra greeted him with apparent affection, as a returning hero, and even though Cassandra foresaw what was going to happen, why should she speak out? No one would believe her. For Agamemnon had brought back, among other rich booty, the Trojan princess, the truth-teller no one believed, now the king’s concubine.
Clytemestra led her husband into the palace, where, as a good wife would, she had prepared a bath for him, to cleanse the dust of travel from his body; and Agamemnon laid aside his weapons. Under the pretense of a romantic reunion she sent the servants away; she would bathe the newly returned king with her own hands.
For a moment she hesitated: he had become so toughened by ten years of warfare that he seemed invulnerable, and somehow magnificent. But she stiffened her resolve, and no sooner had he risen, dripping, from the relaxing warmth of the water than Clytemestra entangled his limbs in a sheet, and trapped him as effectively as a proud stag in a net. Aegisthus emerged from concealment and together they stabbed him to death, rejoicing in the gouts of gore that soiled their clothes and rapidly reddened the sweet water of the bath. And then they slaughtered Cassandra too. Iphigeneia was avenged, and the black cloud of the curse closed in on the palace of Mycenae.
Now, Orestes, the only male child, was away from Mycenae at the time. In fact, it was Clytemestra herself who had sent him away, uncertain whether Aegisthus might not think it in his interest to rid Mycenae of the last male Atreid. When he heard of Aegisthus’ and Clytemestra’s coup, Orestes stayed away, and grew safely to manhood in Phocis. He knew all along that he was bound to avenge the murder of his father, even if that meant killing his mother, and Apollo himself, through his oracle at Delphi, assured him that it was the right thing to do.
Orestes grew to manhood; aided by his sister Electra, he avenged Agamemnon’s murder.[41]
In due course of time, Orestes returned secretly to Mycenae with his friend Pylades, son of the king of Phocis, and, with the help and encouragement of Electra (but to the horror of Chrysothemis), they killed both Clytemestra and Aegisthus, hardening their hearts and calling on the ghost of Agamemnon to witness the piety of their awful deed. And so the dream came true that had appeared to Clytemestra when she was pregnant with Orestes: that she suckled a snake, which drew blood as well as milk from her breast.
But the horrible Furies pursue anyone who commits murder within the family, and they harried Orestes, until the guilt gnawing at his mind drove him quite insane. During one of his lucid moments, he begged Electra to take him to Delphi. Apollo assured him that he would be cured, and sent him for trial at Athens, where Athena herself held court. And the wise goddess freed him of guilt and ordered the Furies to plague Orestes no more. She is a great goddess, whose vision pierces veils, and the power of her word ended the curse that had afflicted the family for four generations and caused the worst crimes known to man.
Chapter Seven
ATHENS IN THE AGE OF HEROES
The First Athenian King
At Athens the bards sing of their first kings, but no one now knows all their names or stories. The earliest kings of whom we know something were these five: Cecrops, Erichthonius, Pandion, Erechtheus, and Aegeus, who was the father of Theseus.
Cecrops is remembered as the original founder of Athens. In his time, a dispute arose between Poseidon and Athena as to which of them should be the guardian of the city. Mighty Poseidon took up the challenge and struck the solid rock of the Acropolis with his trident, and a fresh-water spring burst forth, a great boon for the city. But Athena caused the first olive tree to sprout, and the olive is the foundation of Athenian prosperity. The prize was hers, and in her honor the city came to be called Athens, though the earth-shaker too is held in high esteem there.
Like Cecrops and all the early Athenian kings, Erichthonius was born from the earth and the lower half of his body was serpentine. He was born, as we have seen, when H
ephaestus, lusting after Athena, spilled his seed on the receptive ground. Athena, however, gathered up the strange infant and kept him safe in a chest, and set a guard of two snakes over the baby, which coiled their lengths around his infant limbs. Athena gave the chest to the dew-bright daughters of Cecrops for safekeeping, and warned the young women—Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosus—not to look inside. But curiosity got the better of them, and after one glance they became deranged and threw themselves off the Acropolis to their deaths. After this, Athena brought Erichthonius up herself, until he was ready to take up his kingdom.
The three daughters of Cecrops disobeyed Athena and opened the box containing baby Erichthonius.[42]
Pandion, who succeeded Erichthonius as king, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. Procne was married to Tereus, king of Thrace, and lived there with him, and bore him a son, Itys. But when Philomela, her beloved sister, came to visit, Tereus violated her and, to make sure she wouldn’t tell anyone, cut out her tongue and locked her away in a hovel deep in a gloomy forest, telling Procne that her sister had unexpectedly fled. For it was fated that he should die at the hands of close kin, and Tereus had already killed his brother out of fear. But Philomela was undefeated: she wove the story into a tapestry and, using sign language, told the servant who attended her to take the work to her sister. Procne understood the tale spun by her sister’s loom, but patiently bided her time.
The time came for the women of Thrace to celebrate the mysteries of Dionysus in the countryside, away from the restricting conventions of populated places. Procne seized the opportunity to rescue her sister from the forest, and she brought her back to the palace and hid her in her quarters. The two sisters plotted ghastly revenge: they killed young Itys, cooked him, and gave him to Tereus to eat. Too late Tereus realized what meat had been laid before him, and in a murderous frenzy he chased the women through the palace.
The Greek Myths Page 11