"We may need you there to help stabilize a dangerous situation. Of course, we expect you to take back Theban values."
Philip's heart raced. He looked at the general and gave what he thought was a measured response. "My time in Thebes has taught me much, general. If I'm ever allowed to return to Macedonia, my experiences here will go with me." The Macedonian prince abruptly ended his hollow reaction, and then looked quizzically at Epaminondas. He wondered how the great leader had received his self-serving statement. The continued silence of Epaminondas, along with his contemptuous, furrowed brow, told him that he was still just a Macedonian hostage; he was nothing more than a political pawn.
Philip was dismissed by Epaminondas and returned to his unit. As the army continued its withdrawal, Philip digested what he had been told. Events were quickening. He knew his captivity was not over, but its end seemed nearer. Now was a time for caution and steadfastness. He was most disturbed that mighty events were transpiring around him and he was totally ignorant of them. He knew only what Epaminondas wanted him to know. He longed for direct action, which had enabled him to kill two men in battle. But that wasn't possible now.
He remained a hostage and hostages could only wait.
That night, after the Theban army had encamped, Epaminondas recalled his brief conversation with Philip. He was both amused and troubled by the boy’s empty response to the news about his family. He hadn’t expected tears from the lad when he was informed about his sister’s death, but Philip’s iron-willed response was disturbing. He had seen in the boy the same surmounting of one’s emotions that was essential in a great general and national leader. He had expected empty words from his clever hostage, but for the first time, he questioned whether he should be giving military training to a personality as strong as Philip’s. Perhaps Pammenes was right. Yet, he also saw something in the Macedonian that might work to the advantage of Thebes. If his polis was to prevail over a resurgent Athens, then a political counter force to Thebes's north was essential. This boy's brother, influenced by a Theban indoctrinated Philip, just might become his instrument. It was worth the risk, he decided.
CHAPTER 5
Eleven-year-old Myrtle sat alone on a high promontory and peered into the dark gorge. Recently orphaned, she sobbed uncontrollably for her dead father, King Neoptolemus. A muffled, lingering echo resounded through the gorges below her as if to invite the leap that she was considering. She had risen before sunrise to come to this high place. The cold mountain air sent a shiver through her, causing her to pull her blanket more tightly around her small frame.
That action saved her. If I am to end my life here, I must shed this warm blanket and embrace the cold unafraid. Her reasoning was naive, childish, and immature, but it saved her. She imagined her body hurling through the darkness, crashing on the angular rocks below. A princess must not consider this, she reasoned fitfully. The blood of Helen of Troy flowing in her veins, a fact that she had been inculcated with from birth, must not be emptied uselessly into the oblivion. Haughty pride slowly returned, and she withdrew from death's cold arms.
Trembling now to the point of losing her balance, Myrtle crept down from the ledge and started the long walk back to the palace. As she approached its main entrance, a swarm of guards, slaves, and servants ran toward her. Her personal servant swept her up and chided the girl for leaving her bedroom unattended in the middle of the night. She carried Myrtle back to her bed, wrapped her in several heavy blankets, and lay down beside her. Trembling more with anguish than with cold, Myrtle finally fell asleep.
Her dreams were of snakes. Snakes surrounded her. Snakes came from everywhere. Strangely, Myrtle felt no fear. She reached out her hand and they responded to her beckoning. Adults in the dream stood in awe of the phenomenon. Myrtle was dominant in the events flowing through her dream. She controlled the snakes, her servants, and most of the Molossian royal family members. Her feeling of icy coldness started to subside as the snakes surrounded her. Still asleep, she sat up, smiled, and knew that all would be well. Her subconscious mind decided to end the dream. It had served its purpose; deep rest was what she needed.
Young Myrtle often ended her dreams intentionally when they were disturbing or no longer needed. She imagined everyone did.
As she slept, others watched her and whispered that she was a troubled child. “Something must be done to help the sad child,” they said.
Weeks passed, and Myrtle appeared to return to the happy ways of childhood. However, her uncle, Arybbas, who now served as regent after Neoptolemus' death, had made a decision about his young niece. He visited Myrtle one day and told her that she would grieve less for her father if she started to learn more about the gods and religion. He told his niece that a decision had been made that she was to join her mother at the Shrine of Dodona.
The Molossian royal family had formed a dynasty in the hinterland of Epirus. A high-plateaued fortress at Passaron was their capitol. Distant from Passaron, but on the same plateau, was the ancient sacred Shrine of Dodona. The predecessors of the Greeks many hundreds of years ago had established it. When Neoptolemus died, Myrtle's mother had gone into religious seclusion at the Dodona Shrine. She had not wanted her young, headstrong daughter to come with her and felt that she would be best raised under the guidance of Arybbas in the capitol.
Now, that responsibility was being returned to her mother. Myrtle was transported to the House of Widows, near the main entrance of the Dodona shrine, by her uncle's palace guards. When she was reunited with her mother, the girl was strangely quiet. It was her dead father whom she had always loved and enjoyed being around. Now she must reach accommodation with a mother who had rejected her within hours after Neoptolemus's cremation.
"You have been brought to me for raising and religious instruction," her mother began coldly.
"Yes, mother," the girl replied. "Arybbas wants it." Myrtle didn't mention her constant grieving, nor that she had nearly ended her life only weeks before. "He has commanded that I learn all that the oracles at the shrine have to tell us. Many who know me say that there are things about me that only the gods can understand."
Her mother had heard the rumors. She and Neoptolemus had often discussed their distant daughter. Now the rumors had come full-circle. Her mother had been assigned the responsibility of finding out whether Myrtle was something more than a fatherless princess. She turned her back to the girl and walked to a small shrine in the cramped room she occupied. Her daughter followed her.
"I've spent the months since your father's death in this room, Myrtle. Only twice have I gone to the oracle for advice. Now I've been ordered to teach you what I little understand myself. I want you to understand that the messages I received have not helped me. You will learn little about life and religion from me, for I've lost what little faith I had. I'll take you to the shrine and teach you its mysteries, but if you are to realize your mystic potential, it must come from within you. Understand that the men of our family have no use for us. My life as a widow makes me part of the living-dead. Ask any of the other widows around here. They'll tell you, or show you by their actions, that they are also dead. The men of our family, especially your uncle, want you occupied until they can find a suitable political marriage, one that will further their selfish aspirations. Don't expect too much from the life that lies before you. I know where it all ends."
Myrtle listened intently. Although the full implications of what her mother had just said were beyond her understanding, she had intuited part of the desperate message. But on the night she had backed away from the precipice, she had resolved that she was to be different—not only from her mother and other women, but even from most men. Her thinking was social-sexual-sacrilege in primitive Epirus. Even in the more advanced realms of the Greek world, few women and no girls ever acknowledged these thoughts. Nor were they ever discussed in the presence of men. However, having just backed away from death at eleven, Myrtle knew that nothing that lay ahead could be worse than what she had considered a
nd rejected. If her mother had allowed a wretched way of living to be thrust upon her, that was her misfortune. If her uncle wanted her to learn her religious heritage, she would do it. But she would do it for herself. This was to be her weapon. This was to be her defense. In Epirus, women exercised considerable influence in religious matters, and young Myrtle knew it. Death no longer troubled her. She had caressed its face one cold, dark night and had made the decision to go on with her life. Now she was being presented with a strategy to help her achieve the mystic and intellectual potential that everyone said she possessed. Lightning could not be put in a bottle.
Quietly and naively, Myrtle knew that the world that lay beyond the mist-shrouded mountain tops she inhabited would never be the same because of her secret vision.
Myrtle spent the next year receiving religious instruction from a Dodona priestess. Although her mother had taken responsibility reluctantly for her training, she soon gave the girl again to someone else. Myrtle's tutor was a hag of a woman named Nereid. Nereid held religious training sessions in a small, dank, and foul-smelling temple, just inside the main gates of the Dodona Shrine. Every day Myrtle walked to Nereid's disgusting quarters. It was there that she began to learn what most Greek adults knew. Nereid told her, in sessions that lasted from midday till dusk, how the ancestors of Greeks had originally passed through Epirus and had established the Dodona Shrine. Clear memories of these peoples were lost, but the priestess told Myrtle that they were called Pelasgi, which meant people from the sea.
In the earliest times, Nereid recounted, their ancestors had worshiped Gaea, mother earth itself. Men and women saw the annual regenerative power of the earth repeat itself and they worshiped that process. Since women were the sex that most clearly imitated the life-giving and renewing process, they were most closely identified with Gaea. Women were deemed patient, sexually bountiful, and pregnant with life. Over generations, Gaea was perceived to be female. Gaea's oracles were also women. They interpreted and reported the symbols of nature’s and men's actions.
Then, longer ago than anyone could remember, a warrior tribe had swept into Epirus from the north, Nereid explained. They brought a new and mighty god with them. His name was Zeus. Zeus made himself heard with mighty thunderclaps in the gorges of the Acheron River that flowed through southern Epirus. He and his retinue of fellow gods slowly predominated over the worship of Gaea. Gaea's adjunct chthonian deities were literally forced under the ground in caverns and fissures of the earth. Still, these subterranean gods continued to be worshiped, especially among poor Epirotes. They were deemed the most terrible and fearsome among the gods. Most aristocratic Greeks and Epirotes of the royal Molossian family recognized them only for appeasement and to ensure that their wrath was not visited upon humankind.
Nereid told Myrtle that in present times, Zeus spoke to women oracles at the Shrine of Dodona. The Shrine was one of the three most revered in Hellas. The other two were at Delphi, where Apollo the son of Zeus, spoke to supplicants. Another oracular shrine was in Egypt, at the Siwah oasis—in the great Sahara. There, Zeus-Ammon spoke. She explained that the gods spoke not with language, but with signs, symbols, and subtle innuendos that only women could interpret. These messages were given to priests who related them to supplicating pilgrims, often enriching themselves in the process. Myrtle was promised that she could visit the shrine and be given the chance to speak to Zeus when she had grasped the full implications of what she was being taught.
The young princess spent nearly every evening puzzling over the words that Nereid had spoken to her during the day. Women seemed to have had more of a chance when Gaea was supreme. Now the warrior-god, Zeus, had altered the lives of humans; women were relegated to being the intuitive messengers of his divine intent. She resolved to learn how to read his messages by listening to the rustling leaves of the sacred Dodona oaks and opening herself to the subtle poetry of nature.
Myrtle's first year with Nereid was illuminating but unfulfilling. Not only were most of her most profound questions about life not being answered, she didn't see how she could use her new knowledge to further her aspirations. She nagged Nereid constantly, until finally the soothsayer agreed to take her to the Shrine. On the day of the pilgrimage the old priestess and Myrtle met for the first time at dawn. Nereid performed a ritualistic cleansing ceremony for Myrtle and told her that she must enter the shrine with a pure body and heart. Only then was there any chance that a message would be forthcoming that she could interpret.
"How will Zeus know what I wish to ask?" Myrtle asked.
"When we arrive under the mighty oaks," Nereid said, "you'll see containers holding small fragments of lead. These fragments will receive your message. The message must be short and clear. When you have finished writing your question, fold the lead to hide its contents. This must be done carefully, for if you break it, a terrible fate will befall you. Give the message to one of the three selloi. They are the high oracles of Zeus at the shrine.”
"Will they answer my question?"
"Many times they do, royal one. But the answer may be in a form that isn't clear at first. It is then that you must go within yourself and open your heart to the intent of Zeus. It is then that you'll feel his mighty spirit. He will be heard in the wind moving through the oak leaves. The sacred doves will speak to you in the movement of their wings. Often I've heard him in the babbling of the sacred spring waters."
Myrtle thought about Nereid's directions. They were clear, but she had a more serious problem. Myrtle could neither read nor write. To be sure, her great-grandfather, Tharyps, had introduced the Greek alphabet and language to the royal Molossian family in Epirus years ago. For this he had been given Athenian citizenship. But neither the women nor the girls of the royal family were ever given instruction in the odd, Attic orthography.
"Nereid, we must leave this place—now!"
"Why, child? You've wanted this visit for nearly a year. What is wrong?"
Myrtle bowed her proud head and said nothing. Finally she whispered to her mentor, "I can neither read nor write."
"I know that, child. Have we not spent a year together? I forced you to tell me of your condition so that your heart would be made humble. A proud and arrogant princess cannot approach Zeus. You must tell me the message and I will write it on the lead fragment. Go now, sit under the largest of the sacred oaks and compose your question."
Myrtle was angry that she had been tricked. She glared at Nereid but followed her directions and walked under the largest oak. Sitting on a large, intricately carved stone bench, she considered her question. She listened to the murmurings of nature that surrounded her. Nothing was happening. Suddenly, a mighty gust of wind swept up the side of the mountain. It brought with it the lovely, pungent smell of mountain pines. The white doves burst into flight, and the oak leaves above her started their dance.
The sounds swept through the princess. In an instant, she formulated her question. Nereid was right: Zeus helped supplicants conceive their questions, providing they were willing to listen to his power. Myrtle returned to her teacher and whispered the question.
Nereid wrote Myrtle's question on a lead fragment, then handed it back.
Myrtle folded the lead gently and walked to a cluster of jars that surrounded the shrine. She placed the lead in a jar, looked to the sky, and returned to Nereid's side.
"We must wait now, child. The time may be short or long, but we must wait. Fill your being with this place; prepare yourself for Zeus' answer."
The wait was a long one. The old tutor and the young princess lingered well past midday without holy response. Then a selloi approached.
"Zeus has heard your question," she said. "It is a profound one. The full answer is already inside you. I heard only six words from the great one; you alone can interpret them. They are: ‘In time, from your own body.’ Remain at this place, Princess Myrtle. Open your heart to the sacred surroundings. They will add meaning to what lies within your heart. You must not come to this place a
gain. An answer as powerful as the one you have been given today is permitted only once in a lifetime. Seek answers to your life-questions in the mysteries, but don't return to this or any other shrine of Zeus. If you do, your life will be subject to the gods’ whims."
The priestess left Myrtle and Nereid. Neither the princess nor the tutor spoke. Finally, without words, Nereid motioned that Myrtle should sit again under the tallest oak. Confused, the girl left her tutor, walked to the stone seat, and sat. She remained there until the sun fell behind the highest western peaks surrounding Dodona. In the gathering twilight, the always-cool mountain air suddenly became colder. It sent a chill through the pondering princess. She rose and returned to Nereid. The two walked silently away from the shrine and returned to Nereid's squalid temple.
Nereid refused to talk about the message that Myrtle had received from Zeus. She explained that only the supplicant could process its meaning and that she would never repeat the question or its answer to anyone. The old priestess commanded Myrtle to return to the House of Widows and stay with her mother for a time.
"I'll contact you when it's time for the next phase of your study," Nereid said.
Myrtle returned to her mother's room in the House of Widows but didn't tell her what had happened at the shrine. Mother and daughter rarely talked to each other for days at a time. Myrtle concerned herself with routine house cleaning, sewing, and cooking, but nothing of a personal nature ever transpired between the two. During this time Myrtle began her monthly period. Her mother instructed her in the proper care and hygiene of a menstruating woman and Myrtle was thankful for that. Myrtle took the event as a further sign from the gods that her destiny would be fulfilled.
After weeks of confinement with her mother and the other wretched widows, Myrtle heard from Nereid. She was to return to Nereid's temple for further instruction in two days. The princess's spirits rose as she both anticipated leaving her mother's depressing room and beginning a new phase of her religious training.
Philip and Olympias: A Novel of Ancient Macedon Page 6