Warrior in Bronze

by George Shipway

  ‘These exiled kings,’ Gelon explained, ‘had ruled Egypt from fortresses guarded by monstrous walls and therefore felt uncomfortable without ramparts. The limestone walls which girdle Avaris, their capital in Egypt, soar higher than the tallest in Achaea.’

  From Gortys the aliens, within fifty years, captured neighbouring Phaestos, then Malia and Knossos, overran Crete and established rulers in all the cities.

  ‘Impossible!’ I protested. ‘Cretans can fight if they have to - remember their record at sea.’

  ‘The men from Egypt,’ Gelon said, ‘brought chariots and horses, both unknown to Cretans. Chariots, my lord, were decisive then, and later in Achaea.’

  Towards the end of this period Zeus, grandson of a deposed shepherd king, first saw the light on Mount Dikte where his parents found temporary refuge from a palace uprising in Knossos. (‘In fact his name was User,’ Gelon interpolated, ‘taken from a king in ancient Egypt. Cretan tongues soon twisted the word to Zeus.’) He grew to manhood, peerless in war and cunning in counsel, valiant and wise, a paladin and paragon who held all Crete in fee.

  Then fire fell from heaven.

  An insignificant island called Thera lay a day’s sailing northward from Crete. A volcano humped from the island’s centre; intermittent earthquakes tumbled houses. (Manifestations of dread Ouranos, who lives in the bowels of the earth, whose name nobody speaks. Indeed to think of him invites disaster. I will hurry on.) On a summer’s day three centuries ago an appalling eruption buried Thera under twenty spears’ lengths depth of ashes. Successive shocks carved clefts in the crater’s sides. Sea gushed into the blazing hollow. The entire island exploded.

  The sound stunned people in distant Colchis, desert dwellers in far Sumeria trembled at the thunder. Masses of molten rock, burning ash and debris whirled to the roof of heaven. Ash and vapour blackened the sky and plunged the world in darkness from Thracia to Egypt - one of many plagues afflicting the country around that time. A poisonous blanket fell on Crete and smouldered three feet deep.

  Worst of all were the waves.

  The speediest horse ever foaled can gallop just so fast: the waves came four times faster. Walls of water from sunken Thera battered the Cretan coast. They were fifty feet high, so Gelon averred, and utterly engulfed the towns on the northern shores. Blackened, cracked and cloaked in ash, inland Knossos alone survived.

  I listened enthralled. A memorial of catastrophe in days beyond man’s memory lingered faintly in bardic lays; Gelon told the story as though his eyes had seen it. I said, ‘How can you know of happenings which are so remote in time?’

  ‘My ancestors were there, and wrote it down. We have the records still.’

  ‘Ancestors? Are you then of Egyptian or Cretan blood?’

  Gelon sniffed. ‘Certainly not. Long ago my people, defeated in war and enslaved, were taken into Egypt by the victors. We brought the art of writing, and found employment in the palaces. When the shepherd kings were evicted they carried away their Scribes. Part of my tribe - called Dan in our tongue - arrived in Crete.’

  I glanced at his crow-black hair, nutbrown hook-nosed features, the long grey robe all Scribes affect. Undoubtedly he. and his fellows, both in character and appearance, seemed different as Phoenicians from the fair-skinned men of Achaea.

  ‘Go on. What happened next?’

  King Zeus and his surviving kindred surveyed the ravaged island. A crust of virulent ash blighted the earth. Nothing would grow, the people starved. Zeus decided to cut the ties and begin again in a different country. He salvaged broken ships from the fields where the waves had flung them, scoured the southern harbours which had suffered lesser damage. Embarking all the descendants of those who came from Egypt seventy years before, the Scribes and chariots and horses, he sailed northwards to Achaea.

  Simple rustic husbandmen inhabited the land, peaceable and unwarlike, dwelling in open villages. Zeus and his warriors destroyed them like a holocaust. Thousands died, more became slaves; many fled from the fury and sought shelter in the mountains.

  “Where their children’s children are present-day Goatmen,’ I remarked.

  ‘Even so. Implacable enemies, my lord, ever seeking vengeance for the wrongs their forbears suffered. As you well know.’

  Before Zeus died, Gelon continued, his followers ruled in Pylos, Elis, Argos, Sparta, Mycenae. Arcadia became a no-man’s-land where the old race fought the new. (It remains so in part till now.) They fortified the towns, bred multitudinously over the centuries - ‘Achaean families are always large,’ Gelon commented wryly - and extended their sway to the realms we know today.

  ‘Zeus died peacefully in bed, and there he lies: Mycenae’s earliest king, the founder of your line.’ Gelon pointed to the oak-surmounted mound. ‘He and Hera his queen, his sons and other relations. All wear masks of beaten gold, their bodies encased in gold and silver. And nowadays’ - a tinge of contempt - ‘the common people believe him a god.’

  ‘Much to the Daughters’ annoyance.’ I dredged my memory. ‘Haven’t I heard of a brother Poseidon, a famous mariner who founded the House of Perseus?’

  ‘He led Achaea’s navy three hundred years ago. Pylos claims his grave and the royal line his blood. I think they err in both: our records show him lost at sea while fighting Sicilian pirates. None the less the lower orders worship him in Pylos.’

  An ox-cart squealed up the road from the town, laden with jars and hides and cloth - some outlying manor’s tribute. Children played ‘catch-if-you-can’ among the burial ground’s stone mounds, their voices muted by distance like mosquitoes whining at dusk. A peasant trickled a handful of corn in the dust of Zeus’ Tomb, folded his arms in prayer, seated himself with his back to a slab and drowsed in the oak tree’s shade. I said wonderingly, ‘So I’m descended from Egypt’s kings. You’ve certainly opened my eyes to the past! The bards sing none of this.’

  ‘The bards!’ Derision was plain in Gelon’s tone. ‘They come to us for history, then embroider and distort. They sing to flatter their patrons; and only in chanting pedigrees which Heroes know by heart do they tell the approximate truth. Even then they often invent to hide unsavoury gaps. If you’ll forgive me, my lord ...’ Gelon finished in some confusion.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The Scribe hurriedly disclaimed any reflection on my ancestry which, he swore, the documents traced generation by generation through Pelops back to Zeus. But, he added uncomfortably, the Perseid line was not so well attested. Perseus’ mother Danae certainly had no husband: in Argos when her pregnancy grew obvious her angry father, Acrisius, immured her in a watch-tower. Perseus later founded Tiryns and rebuilt Mycenae’s crumbling walls. His descendants asserted their distinguished progenitor could not have been misbegotten; so the bards concocted a story that Zeus’ ghost raped Danae - when it comes to protecting the blood line the bigger the lie the better.

  Gelon quoted similar tales to cover lacunae in noble descents. ‘You see, my lord,’ he ended apologetically, ‘nobody likes bastards dangling like rotten fruit on the family tree.’

  ‘No one does,’ I agreed. ‘In my own genealogy I’ve occasionally doubted the line from Zeus to Tantalus. Some odd names....’

  ‘I promise you, my lord,’ Gelon said earnestly, ‘your line is quite unsullied, each ancestor truly attested. You can see them in our records, if only you could read.’

  (Years afterwards, when Gelon became my trusted Curator and friend, he confessed that my lineage from Tantalus back as almost entirely bogus. I laughed and smacked his back; I’d suspected it all along.)

  ‘Which you refuse to teach me,’ I smiled, ‘because Scribes don’t share their skills.’

  ‘We are forbidden. A short-sighted policy. When we and our writings are gone, what will remain to tell Mycenae’s splendour, the prowess of her warriors, the mightiness of kings? Naught but minstrels’ lying songs handed down by word of mouth, increasingly warped as the centuries roll, perverted and encrusted by unbelievable tales until, in a t
housand years, people might easily doubt the Heroes ever existed.’

  I laughed. ‘As a man who lives in the present, Gelon, you can’t expect me to worry a thousand years ahead. We have idled too long by this sun-warmed wall, and I’d like you to check the stores I am taking to Tiryns.’

  Side by side, grey-robed Scribe and kilted, bare-bodied Hero, we climbed the rubbled path to the palace gate.

  ***

  The citadel of Tiryns stands on a jagged mound in the plain within sight of the sea. Walls of tremendous hewn stone blocks rise from natural rock, the mightiest rampart on earth, fifty feet thick and thirty high. The resonant galleries piercing the walls - where Atreus prisoned the Heraclids - lead to magazines and store rooms which are second in the wealth they hold only to Mycenae. On top of the mount the palace buildings stand three storeys tall, plastered and painted white, a beacon for mariners entering Nauplia’s harbour. Twisting streets and steep stone steps weave between houses and workshops; and a walled enclosure juts from the northern ramparts : a shelter for refugees in times of danger. Around the hillock’s foot homesteads, hovels, shops and byres spread like a mottled apron.

  Tiryns became my home, and during the next few years I seldom saw Mycenae. The palace Heroes - some twice my age - obediently accepted me as Warden: they recognized in Atreus’ son their future king. Midean cattle raids had ceased on Atreus’ conquest; our friend Adrastus of Argos allowed no dissensions within his realm; so nothing marred the harmony of my peaceful life in Tiryns. I expected some disturbance when Adrastus sent an embassy demanding tribute from Epidauros - an inoffensive city notable only for the medical clinic Aesclapius founded. But Argos and Mycenae had reached an understanding about their respective spheres of influence: Atreus’ eyes henceforth were turned to the north, to command of the Isthmus and dominion along the Corinthian Gulf.

  Epidauros conceded an annual tribute and asked Adrastus in return to sweep the mountains clear of robbers and rustlers who for years had pestered their lands. Which Adrastus did, and so began the extension of Argive influence that Diomedes in years to come so vigorously continued.

  The construction of ships at Nauplia progressed in a desultory way. Twelve lay beached and ready; twenty more were building in the yards. All were triaconters, thirty oars a side, the largest craft afloat. (Because you may be ignorant of maritime affairs I explain that triaconters are longships painted black, shallow-draughted for beaching, brazen beaks for ramming, sternposts carved in outlandish shapes: a lion-head or seahorse. The captain has a cabin in the sternsheets, a flimsy wooden hut whose walls are gaudily painted; amidships rises a mast of fir stepped in a hollow box. To shelter the rowers from sun a collapsible oxhide canopy supported on poles runs fore and aft. Cargo is carried in coffer-like holds between the rowers’ benches.)

  I bought slaves to augment the work force, trebled wagons and woodmen hauling timber from the forests, chased carpenters and shipwrights. I needed seventy galleys to match the Pylian fleet. The yards disgorged triaconters to swell the ranks on the beach; I then faced a shortage of crewmen. While you can teach any idiot to row - except perhaps Hercules - you must have sailors to navigate, steer and handle sails and sheets: the experts who keep a ship afloat when storms and reefs are about. I shipped pressgangs to Crete, whose maritime traditions reach far into antiquity, and obtained the men I wanted. Force was seldom needed; with Cretan overseas trade in the doldrums unemployed sailors were glad to find work.

  I embarked on my maiden voyage in a galley beached at Nauplia. Rowers ran the vessel to the sea, put mast and sail aboard, trimmed the ship, fixed oars in leather slings. The master, a red-haired ruffian, face blackened by sun and salt, straddled a monstrous steering oar and hoarsely bellowed orders. Sixty oars struck the water together, the galley leapt like a startled horse and glided into the bay. The coxswain piped on a flute to mark the rowers’ rhythm.

  In ruffled water outside the bay the crew shipped oars and hoisted sail: layered squares of linen stitched together. The sun dashed sparks from dancing waves, the galley rolled and plunged, spindrift sprayed my beard. The crimson prow climbed high on the combers, pitched in the troughs between. A strange sensation invaded my guts. I clutched the backstay and swallowed. A grin exposed the master’s yellow teeth. ‘Over the lee side, my lord, if you please.’ I knelt at the low beech transom and voided into the waves, the first of many tributes I paid the sea.

  (In all my many voyages I invariably spewed while the ship still sighted harbour, and never felt the smallest qualms thereafter.)

  After wading ashore from this short trip and driving back to Tiryns I met Menelaus in the Hall. I seated myself on Perseus’ marble throne, ordered wine and food - I was ravenously hungry, my breakfast gone to the fishes - and inquired his news. My brother said he brought a message from the king, pointed an elbow at noblemen and ladies who loitered within earshot, and pursed his lips. I stuffed cheese in my mouth, led him to the hearth and mumbled, ‘If you now feel we’re sufficiently private will you kindly tell me what Atreus wants?’

  ‘He is going to kill Aerope.’

  I choked on my mouthful, sprayed crumbs and gulped down wine. ‘How? When? Where? By The Lady, he’s taken long enough to make up his mind!’

  Menelaus said wretchedly, ‘The king has decided on a public execution, and is bringing her to Nauplia to throw her into the sea from the cliff above the harbour. He sent me to bid you choose the place and make arrangements. And other matters.’

  I found, to my annoyance, the wine cup shook in my hand. ‘Why drag her to Nauplia? If he demands that kind of death why not the Chaos Ravine?’

  ‘It’s the place of execution for common criminals. Aerope is noble, a daughter of Minos’ line.’

  I felt both shattered and numbed. Atreus’ belated vengeance seemed unnecessarily cruel, like a cat that plays with a mouse before the claws unsheathe. (I did not know, nor Menelaus. he had sent searchers after Thyestes, hoping to kill them together - hence the delay.) ‘A public execution. Atreus will bring spectators from Mycenae; Nauplia and Tiryns will gloat upon her dying. I’ll have no hand in this. Tiryns’ gates will be closed, the garrison confined while the procession passes by.’

  Menelaus attentively examined the pleatir.gs of his kilt. ‘I said there were other matters, Agamemnon.’ ‘You did. What do you mean?’

  Menelaus took a breath, and looked me in the eye. ‘Atreus ordered me to watch our mother’s killing. I refused. He then offered me the choice of banishment or death.’

  My mouth sagged open in stunned disbelief. .

  Menelaus said, ‘Yes - I couldn’t believe it either. Since you left Mycenae the king has changed for the worse - solitary, brooding, dangerous. I believe his lust for revenge is driving him demented. Nothing but the deaths of the couple who dishonoured him will purge the venom poisoning his mind.’

  ‘He’s got Aerope. Does he know where Thyestes has gone?’

  ‘Elis. King Augeas gives him sanctuary.’

  I pressed fingers to throbbing temples. Heroes wandered in groups in the Hall, conversed in undertones and sent us speculative glances. My squire Talthybius, flagon in hand, came to fill our cups. I waved him away.

  ‘You agreed to see our mother flung to her death, or you wouldn’t be here. She deserves her fate. How can I blame you for accepting Atreus’ ultimatum?’

  ‘I bring you much the same conditions, Agamemnon.’

  ‘What! The king commands my presence on the cliff?’

  ‘You, and all the noblemen of Tiryns.’

  I hurled my goblet in the fire. ‘No! It’s abominable! I’d rather quit Tiryns, live exiled in Sparta or Pylos and never set eyes on Atreus again. I will leave before night!’

  Menelaus said wearily, ‘I said much the same conditions. Atreus offers you one choice only: obedience or ... death.’

  I supported my shaking frame on a hearthside pillar. ‘The king is undoubtedly mad! And, if I refuse, does he think I shall stay in Tiryns to await his retribution?’<
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  ‘His executioners have travelled in my train. Unless I tell them otherwise they will come for you by sundown.’

  I am ashamed to say I burst into tears. That Atreus, whom I worshipped, was ready to destroy me opened a bottomless void that swallowed my soul. For one dark frantic moment I considered calling on Tiryns’ Heroes, barring the gates and challenging the king. But who would support a youthful Warden against his formidable sovereign?

  Menelaus gripped my hand. ‘Don’t torture yourself, Agamemnon! Aerope is doomed whatever we do - why should we sink in the welter? Remember the scene in that dreadful room! Can you truthfully say she hasn’t earned her punishment?’

  ‘I don’t give a damn for Aerope,’ I gulped. ‘But Atreus....’

  ‘Atreus at the moment is not quite sane. He believes that if Aerope’s sons witness the execution people will think her condemnation justified. He feared you’d disobey him - and he loves you, Agamemnon. He can’t bear the thought of you defying him, turning against him, hating him. He’d rather you were dead.’

  ‘Small comfort for me in that. And you, my brother? Prepared to tell the executioners --’

  ‘Not really.’ Gently, with the back of his hand, Menelaus brushed tears from my cheeks. ‘I reckoned you’d be shrewd enough to see the light. Senseless to sacrifice life and land in the cause of a faithless slut who happens to be our mother.’ He paused. ‘I take it you agree?’

  I nodded miserably.

  ‘Good. Now we both need a drink.’ He signalled Talthybius, who came running. ‘Your oldest vintage, lad, and fill the cups to the brim!’

  ***

  The procession left Mycenae at daybreak. From Argos it collected a rabble of curious spectators - tradesmen, peasants, slaves, women, even children - and reached Tiryns by early afternoon. Spearmen marched in the van, followed by Heroes in chariots. Then a solitary ox-drawn four-wheeled wagon used for carting hides - your nostrils shrank from the stench as it passed. Four strapping Thracian slaves - Atreus’ executioners - walked behind the wagon. The king in a gilded travelling chariot, his palace Heroes, more spearmen in the rear.