Warrior in Bronze

by George Shipway

  Cannibalism has precedents in Achaea. Gelon once informed me that Zeus’ father, in Crete, was partial to human flesh; and people tell dark stories about the Daughters’ sacrifices. The Goatmen’s predecessors, whose remnants live in Arcadia, are said to kill and eat old men in time of dearth; Goatmen themselves are not above suspicion. Yet, as Menelaus observed, tricking a man to eat his son went much beyond the odds.

  The tale resounded through the land and echoed with embellishments from Thessaly to Crete. Even now, years after, nursemaids tame fractious children by the threat ‘Atreus will feed you to Thyestes’ - though both are dead. Bards avoid the subject - it reflects no credit on Heroes.

  Gentlemen in Mycenae walked tiptoe, fearful of offending a king who wreaked such terrible vengeance. In general they opined, in Menelaus’ expressive phrase, that Atreus was off his nut: a belief certainly shared by people near the king, elder Councillors, senior Heroes, Menelaus and me. Atreus wrapped himself in an armour of hard indifference, shielding himself from contact with men who had been his friends. In Council and audience he voiced decrees and decisions without consulting anyone’s advice. Nobody dared to protest.

  Pelopia, after the tragedy, withdrew entirely from society. Before returning to Tiryns I saw her once or twice taking the air on a rampart walk or hurrying across the Court, always surrounded by her ladies. She gave me the impression of walking in her sleep. Menelaus once ventured to approach her. ‘A haunted woman,’ he told me. Terrified. Frightened to death. And no wonder. How would you feel if your father had dined on your brother?’

  Her relations with Atreus did not bear thinking about. It was at this time he and the queen ceased sharing a bedroom.

  Misfortune followed fast. Drought afflicted the land, perennial streams dried up, springs and wells failed. A scourge of ravening insects attacked the corn in ear; famine threatened Heroes and husbandmen alike. Seers and soothsayers cast ineffectual spells, farmers and peasants made offerings to The Lady. Eventually the Daughters in a body sought audience with the king and boldly declared his crimes - Aerope’s and Tantalus’ killings - had offended The Lady Who now imposed Her penalties.

  I have hitherto said little about these women who govern and administer our official religion, or the religion itself, because no man except the king is much concerned. (Until I held the sceptre I never realized how troublesome the Daughters could be.) They are virgins from noble families, dedicated from an early age to The Lady’s service. A ministry of Daughters keeps religious tenets burnished in every Achaean city; the king grants rich demesnes which guarantee them wealth and independence.

  No one willingly offends the Daughters, servants of The Lady Who gives men life and takes away life and calls them back to the earth from which they sprang. At The Lady’s behest burgeon fruit and flowers, trees and herbs, creatures and corn: She gives everything on which mankind exists. All men in a greater or less degree are farmers bound to the soil; so from lordliest Hero to poorest peasant every being - excepting slaves - is dependent for survival on Her benevolence. Therefore men respect The Lady and sacrifice at Her shrines - but the true devotees and worshippers are women.

  Like the majority of Heroes I never, before my accession, attended The Lady’s rites. Daughters conduct the sacraments at hilltop shrines: usually a small courtyard round a tree beneath which stands an altar surmounted by stone doves and horns of consecration. (The latter, I think, a relic brought by Zeus from ancient Crete’s bull worship.) The tree itself embodies The Lady’s presence. Here, at midwinter and early spring, they celebrate The Lady’s principal feasts involving ceremonial dances, prayers and sacrifices and mystic invocations.

  As king I attend these rituals, donate white barley-fed bulls for slaughter in front of the altar, and have learned the Daughters’ fundamental belief: Eileithyia, as She is named on these biennial occasions, gives birth to a son in the spring who dies at the winter solstice.

  The springtime rites are harmless, gay festivities - unless a crisis looms, when sinister things can happen. I, and all other males, invariably quit the winter celebrations at an understood point in the rubric. The women then take charge. I prefer not to speculate on the course of events thereafter but, from the noises I hear while descending the hill, the subsequent sacrifice is not an animal, nor female; and the women’s orgiastic fury transcends Dionysus’ Maenads.

  For these and other reasons men are seldom active participants in The Lady’s Mysteries. Yet people cannot live without divine belief, so men for the most part honour dread Ouranos, Destroyer, Thunderer, Earthshaker, Who dwells deep in the centre of the world. You never mention His name, you never openly worship Him, you try to forget He exists, you cower and beg forgiveness when His wrath convulses the firmament. Every living creature is fated to meet Him face to face; for when The Lady recalls you to earth, and flesh has dissolved from bones, your spirit flies to the Shades where dreadful Ouranos rules, never to return to this world. When men die they stay dead. We have no ghosts.

  Dangerous talk, best ended.

  The Daughters gave Atreus an ultimatum: the king must purge his crimes by travelling to Dodona, there to consult the Oracle and seek The Lady’s forgiveness; otherwise the famine would decimate his people. The Daughters, in effect, exacted a penance: Dodona in Epiros lay twenty days’ hard travel from Mycenae through rugged mountainous country and unfriendly tribes. Civilized cities customarily allow safe passage for pilgrims through the territories they control; but some of the folk on the way were far from civilized. Moreover the King of Mycenae’s person might prove an irresistible prize.

  There were no witnesses to the colloquy between Atreus and the Daughters. Though the king, I am told, was icily furious, they held him on a spearpoint, and he could not refuse. The Daughters carried The Lady’s commands: even a king must obey - or face expulsion from his realm. Atreus suggested a nearer Oracle at Delphi where in a subterranean cave The Lady manifested Herself as a python. The Daughters remained adamant: Delphi was an obscure and negligible shrine; only The Lady at Her principal sanctuary might expurgate his offences. Atreus glumly yielded.

  Hearing of his intended journey I suggested he should go by sea rather than risk the perils of overland travel. With favourable winds the passage round Cythera to a landfall at Ithaca where King Laertes ruled would take but half the time. (Laertes’ son Odysseus was later my comrade-in-arms at Troy.) Thence a two-day march brought him to Dodona. Atreus agreed; and appointed me Regent of Mycenae in his absence. I chose our fastest triaconter and put the king, his Heroes, squires and servants aboard at Nauplia.

  I led a tedious existence in Mycenae. Much business had to be postponed until Atreus’ return, for the king alone could take important decisions affecting land tenures and the like. I hunted frequently, spent days inspecting my estates and gloomily examined shrivelled corn, lean herds and arid, powdery soil. Peasants and animals starved, and began to die. I emptied the royal granaries, ransacked store rooms at Tiryns and Nemea, and distributed every grain. Imports from Thebes’ Copaic fields had long since ceased. A corn ship arrived from Egypt quarter laden: the Nile harvest had failed. We received no help from our neighbours: Argos and Sparta were also famine-stricken - and blamed Atreus for incurring The Lady’s wrath. Only in Pylos and Elis, on Achaea’s western coasts, intermittent rainfall nourished a scanty yield; and no inducements of bronze or hides or gold tempted Neleus or Augeas to barter their grain reserves.

  On a sweltering sun-scorched day an exultant message from Nauplia sped my chariot to the port. Four galleys from the Colchis convoys moored at a wharf. A master conducted me aboard; incredulously I beheld the holds awash with wheat.

  ‘A tempest, chance and The Lady’s grace,’ the master explained. ‘Gold ships, returning from Colchis, blown grievously off course made harbour, battered and leaking, at a land they call Krymeia on the northern Euxine coast. The people were friendly, and helped to repair our galleys.’

  The master stooped, seized a handful of grain and tr
ickled it through his fingers. ‘They had this: barley fields and wheat fields stretching far as the eye could see. The captains knew of our famine, bartered a little gold and filled the holds. They transferred cargoes at the Hellespont’s overland portage - and here we are!’

  ‘Miraculous! Enough, if severely rationed, to feed the people for several days. If only you’d brought more!’

  ‘On the way, my lord. Lord Amphiaraus commands at the Hellespont, and has diverted all galleys from the Colchis run to Krymeia. He thinks, in this emergency, grain more essential than gold. Is he right?’

  ‘He surely is. Get your cargoes unloaded fast. I’ll send wagons to bear them away.’

  That night a great wind roared, clouds raced from the west and rainstorms drenched a thirsty land. The tempest blew itself out; rain fell gently for nineteen consecutive days. The crisis passed.

  Atreus’ galley beached at Nauplia a moon and a half after his departure. I feasted him in Tiryns’ Hall, and asked how the expedition went.

  ‘Well enough. A gale off the Thesprotian coast, but Laertes made us welcome in Ithaca and replaced cordage and broken oars. Pigsty of a palace - but I liked his son Odysseus: a crafty rogue if ever I saw one.’

  ‘And Dodona?’

  ‘A marshy, forested place surrounded by mountains. Primitive herdsmen living in huts. The shrine a huge old oak, the priests called Selli. Smelly individuals - sleep on bare earth and never wash their feet.’

  ‘Did the Oracle speak?’

  Atreus grunted. ‘The tree is full of doves which coo and moo. Wind creaks and rustles the branches. Together they form the oak tree’s speech, which the Selli interpret.’

  ‘Favourably?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Had to sacrifice a bull, and donate a flock of sheep -the Selli won’t touch metal. Expensive. Lot of damned nonsense, in my belief.’

  Struck by a curious thought I inquired, ‘On what day exactly did you consult the Oracle?’

  Atreus frowned, and counted on his fingers. ‘Twenty-two days ago. Why?’

  ‘The very day,’ I said, ‘when shiploads of grain reached Nauplia, and the rains began.’

  The king glowered. ‘Coincidence, that’s all.’

  Coincidence or not, I have always since been careful to propitiate The Lady.

  Chapter 7

  For two years after this I lived an uneventful life.

  My experience with Cretan pirates convinced me that Mycenae needed warships. Heavily laden merchantmen depending on rowers for protection could hardly match marauders equipped entirely for fighting. It seemed to me fatuous that, while manoeuvring for position in a battle, half a galley’s motive power should have to quit the benches in order to repel boarders. I therefore picked experienced masters, skilful sailors and sturdy, proficient oarsmen to crew eight triaconters launched recently from the yards. In addition to the normal complement I embarked on every ship a fighting element consisting of ten armoured spearmen and four bowmen, about the maximum a ship could carry without becoming crowded and top-heavy

  I enlisted the archers in Crete. Warriors and crews required both for the battle squadron and an expanding merchant marine were found without much difficulty among the younger sons of freemen who, squeezed out from husbandry when subdivided holdings reached their limits of partition, were glad to find employment in the fleet.

  In fact the fleet had reached its economic ceiling: over two hundred Mycenaean keels furrowed seaways to Krymeia, to Sicily and Egypt, Ionia and Sidonia. I lowered the monthly building rate from seven vessels to two, sufficient to recoup wastage and provide a small reserve. (We lost on average five ships every year. The seas can be dangerous even in summer, lashed by freakish gales; and rash or greedy masters sometimes prolong their voyaging into stormy winter months when every sensible mariner has beached his ship till the spring.) The saving in shipyard manpower provided still more hands for the galleys.

  Gelon mentioned significantly that these discharged shipwrights, sailmakers, caulkers, carpenters and foresters - all freemen - seldom found work on the land where every tillable strip already supported more than the fields could feed. He hinted at over-population leading to unemployment. I brushed his mutterings aside: such questions did not concern the Master of the Ships. The quandary hit me later, and most forcefully, when Mycenae’s economic problems rested on my shoulders.

  I appointed Periphetes son of Copreus - a straightforward, venturesome, energetic Hero of a very different stamp from his crooked, intriguing father - to command the battle squadron and gave him a roving commission. Periphetes had a supernatural nose for pirates. During the navigable summer months he destroyed strongholds, sank a Phoenician flotilla at sea and discouraged Sicilian corsairs from passing east of Cythera. In all this fighting he lost only three galleys.

  I replaced his losses and increased his strength to twelve triaconters. Periphetes relentlessly whittled piratical ships and bases; attacks on coastal towns and merchantmen at sea became remarkably infrequent. The experience he gained provided a foundation for the massive fleet I deployed as king in the nine-year sea war we fought against Troy.

  Meanwhile, with the Krymeian cornlands inviting a permanent solution to Mycenae’s perennial shortages I sent with Atreus’ authority an embassy to King Laomedon of Troy. Menelaus, who led the deputation, sought an increase in our merchantmen stationed within the Hellespont from three to ten, so that trade in grain and gold might continue simultaneously. Supported by Hector, opposed vigorously by Priam, Menelaus after long negotiations agreed to pay higher customs duties and secured the concession. Thereafter for three years until Hercules’ criminal exploit our summertime corn convoys brimmed Mycenae’s granaries and left a useful surplus which we sold to neighbouring cities.

  While engaged in these enterprises I received two unexpected visitors. Castor and Polydeuces, twin sons of Sparta’s King Tyndareus and his dotty consort Leda, arrived and asked permission to embark on a ship for the Hellespont and transfer thence on an ‘Argo’ galley for Colchis. You could not tell them apart: tall, exceptionally strong, blue-eyed and fair haired; lively, gay, adventurous young men. Something of a handful to their father, they expended their energies on boxing, wrestling, horses and cattle-raiding - an occupation which accounted for both in the end. They had walked from Sparta with only a squire and servant apiece, camping at night in the open or sleeping in shepherds’ huts, scorning the amenities of baggage carts and chariots.

  I found them an amusing and entertaining couple, and readily granted permission to embark in the next ship leaving for Troy. Meanwhile I took them hunting and was often alarmed by their rash behaviour when confronting angry lions or charging boars. They used short stabbing swords and small round targes, considered spears unsporting and refused to let hounds worry the quarry before going in themselves. Withal, unlike most Heroes, they never bragged, laughing off their dangerous feats as nothing out of the ordinary’.

  I asked them why they wanted to sail to Colchis.

  ‘Boredom. Dull place, Sparta,’ said Castor.

  ‘Never been to sea. New pastures,’ Polydeuces added.

  ‘Done everything else.’

  ‘Might give us a thrill.’

  I refrained from telling them the Colchis passage was now routine, no more risky than any other voyage in well-found ships sailed by experienced crews. I suspect the Argo glamour still exercised attraction. Today there are fifty-odd Heroes swaggering around as ‘Argonauts’, though only a handful can truthfully claim they sailed in Jason’s crew.

  After pressing me to visit Sparta - a city I had never seen - Castor and Polydeuces departed. I relaxed in undisturbed routine. The clamour of war was muted apart from sporadic cattle raids across Arcadia’s borders and counter-attacks which Argos usually mounted. To keep my Heroes busy I sent war-bands to reinforce Tydeus’ expeditions.

  Between whiles I hunted, paraded Tiryns’ garrison, called periodical practice levies of all surrounding landholders, cruised to Lemnos once in Periphetes’ gall
ey and manoeuvred my thirty chariots in a battle-drill I formulated. The Companions soon became proficient, wheeling from line to column, forming line to either flank and holding close formation in the charge. This contingent became the nucleus of Mycenae’s chariot squadron which afterwards sent Priam’s armour reeling.

  Chief among my personal entourage of Companions, squires, chamberlains, stewards, concubines and slaves were Talthybius and Eurymedon, Companion and squire respectively. During these tranquil years at Tiryns they became, and have remained, my closest friends excepting Menelaus. I am not, I suppose, by nature a very amicable man and tend to repel an acquaintance from ripening to intimacy. I afterwards developed a comradeship with Argive Diomedes, but politics and war governed our relations and imposed a guarded restraint. My high rank - I speak of the time before I was king - evoked a wary constraint among the citadel’s Heroes: they were ever aware that as Atreus’ heir my favour would in time become their warrant to hold the demesnes they tilled. Which seldom deterred the bolder spirits from shouting grouses in my face - Heroes are not mice - but wasn’t conducive to close and familiar friendships. Moreover, as Menelaus in a rage once ranted when we quarrelled, my manner is cold and severe, my mien harsh and forbidding as a surly-tempered falcon’s.

  It’s in the blood. Men who are born to sovereignty lack gentle, lamb-like qualities.

  I kept a dozen concubines in the women’s quarters at Tiryns, slaves imported from overseas and bought in Nauplia’s market. None captured my affection; all shone dim as rushlights beside the blazing memory of dead, beloved Clymene. They came and went; when a wench’s expertise became repetitiously familiar and therefore tedious I sold her in the market or bartered her to a Hero who fancied her looks - four oxen was the accepted price for a woman trained in domestic work. The concubines not only preserved my health but also protected me from dangerous liaisons. The palace swarmed with noble wives and daughters who often cast me loving, lingering looks. Some were very beautiful, salaciously provocative; whenever I felt resolution melting I quickly drained desire within some Lemnian or Carian slut.