Thus another day passed pleasurably for everyone, except Hylas and Iphinoë. It was the day of the barley-field ceremonies, which were merrily performed.
In the evening Meleager and Atalanta returned to Myrine with Orpheus, who, like them, had taken no part in the revels. They had found him in a clearing of the forest where, as he said, he had been teaching weasels to dance to his lyre. Neither Atalanta nor Meleager saw the dance, for they approached just as the music ceased, but a great many small beasts scuttled past them through the undergrowth. Orpheus played so entrancingly that nobody would have wondered if the trees, stones, and rocks had danced too.
It was Orpheus with his lyre who drew the unwilling Argonauts down to the Argo at last, in the early morning of the fourth day. A huge crowd of women accompanied them, and when the ship was afloat in a few feet of water they all tried to clamber over the sides, intending to face the dangers of the voyage at the sides of their lovers. But Hercules, when he had heaved up the anchor-stones, took it upon himself to throw out into the water all the women who had succeeded in getting aboard – twenty or thirty of them, who fought like lynxes.
Iphinoë escaped his notice; she lay under the fold of the sail – for only oars were being used – until the Argo was well on her way and the lamentations from the shore sounded less piercingly in the ears of her crew. Then she accidentally sneezed, which was a lucky omen for all but herself. Hercules shipped his oar and had his hands on her in no time. Overboard she went, like a fish that a fisherman rejects from his net as being of the wrong colour or shape. As she struck out for shore she cried to Hylas: ‘Hylas, sweetheart, remember me!’
Hercules caught up an anchor-stone and poised it to throw at her, but Hylas yelled suddenly in his ear and he laid it down again; so she escaped death. The lyre’s soothing strains carried the ship onwards in rhythmic motion, while the white wake creamed behind her.
Here may be given an account of what happened to the women of Lemnos as a result of the Argo’s visit to their hospitable island. Fifty women bore daughters, and no less than one hundred and fifty bore sons. Of these sons, sixty-nine were of the sturdy frame, quick eye, and uncertain temper which proclaimed them sons of Hercules; fifteen favoured Great Ancaeus, who also begot three daughters; twelve sons and five daughters favoured Idas; and so on in descending order of numerousness to Little Ancaeus, who begot one daughter.
Jason begot twin sons on Hypsipyle, by name Euneus and Nebrophonus, of whom Euneus, being the elder, eventually ruled Lemnos as King and married Lalage, daughter of Little Ancaeus, and was famous for his well-planted vineyards. However, the Argo never again beached at Myrine and Jason forgot Hypsipyle, as afterwards he forgot other women; but Hylas did not forget Iphinoë, being an impressionable boy.
Chapter Sixteen
Orpheus Sings of the Creation
A southerly breeze sprang up. Jason wished to sail along the southern coast of Lemnos and then to steer eastward for the Hellespont, but Tiphys would not risk casting the Argo away on the rocky flank of Cape Irene. For though a sailing-ship may be steered obliquely to the wind, he feared the reefs of a lee shore; besides, most of the crew were befuddled and in no condition to row. Instead, he proposed Samothrace as the next stage of their voyage.
Jason had heard the name Samothrace, but did not know whether it was a city or an island. Argus told him: ‘It is an island, less than half the size of Lemnos, lying at about five hours’ sail to the north-east. The inhabitants, like those of Lemnos, are of Pelasgian stock.’
‘Let us visit it,’ said Jason.
They expected to make Samothrace by the afternoon; but the breeze slackened long before they had lost sight of Lemnos. Mount Scopia was still showing tall on the horizon to the south-west when they were obliged to use their oars. The sun blazed down upon them fiercely and they could put no strength behind their stroke. By evening they had not yet sighted Samothrace, there was a dead calm and they were weary of rowing. A sea-mist gathered and clouded the horizon, obscuring even the acute vision of Lynceus.
The Argonauts ate their meal almost in silence. Most of them were thinking of the women whom they had left behind and reproaching themselves as fools for not having stayed at least a few days longer in that island paradise. Idas, always the first to make an ungracious interruption, suddenly cried out: ‘To the fish with this miserable repast! It is the fault of nobody but Orpheus that we are crouched here on these hard benches, with fog in our throats, instead of reclining at ease on dyed sheepskin rugs before a crackling fire and a row of bubbling black pots. Orpheus tricked us aboard with his music. We were happy as kings in Lemnos. Why did he lead us off again on this impossible and thankless quest?’
Castor reproved Idas: ‘Consider yourself lucky that Orpheus did so, Idas. You have never shown any moderation since I first knew you as a pugnacious and greedy child. Another few days in Lemnos and you would have been a corpse, overcome by a surfeit of wine, food, and women. For my part, I wish nothing better than to fall again under the compelling charm of that miraculous lyre, listening to which I enjoy greater happiness by far than from a goblet of scented Lemnian wine, from an unbroken chine of tender Lemnian beef, or from the plump white body of a sturdy, love-possessed Lemnian girl.’
Lynceus, twin to Idas, hated Castor and Pollux, whose grandfather Oebalus the Achaean had forcibly married Gorgophone, the Minyan grandmother of Idas and himself, and thus deprived them of a great part of their Messenian inheritance. Gorgophone was the first Greek widow who ever remarried, and this was a lasting shame to their father, Aphareus. Lynceus sneered: ‘Yes, Castor, so you say. But these are the words of satiety. Your appetite was never either large or healthy. Confess, you would have spoken in a very different strain a day or two ago.’
Pollux took up the challenge, saying to Lynceus: ‘My brother at least did not make a beast of himself as yours did.’
Now, all around, voices were raised, some in protest against this quarrel between the pairs of brothers, some in an attempt to embitter it. Then Hercules growled: ‘Had I been in command of this ship I should have begun this morning’s voyage by dosing every man-jack of you with a helmet of sea-water to purge his stomach. But Jason commands, not I.’
Then Idmon the augur said in his high voice: ‘It is not merely the stomach that should have been purged, but the soul. I heartily wish that our next stage were Apollo’s sacred island of Delos, not Pelasgian Samothrace; there would be great work for his priests to perform.’
‘Yes,’ assented Iphitus the Phocian, ‘it would be good indeed if we could land on Delos and there dance the circular dance called The Crane. We would all weave in and out, in and out, for hour after hour, until the monotonous music purged our souls of all desire but to continue dancing in and out, in and out – until we fell fainting.’
‘What a jolly entertainment that would be!’ said Great Ancaeus scornfully. ‘Jump into the water, Iphitus, and show us the steps. Apollo will doubtless bear you up; Apollo can accomplish almost anything.’ This made some men laugh, but others grew angry, and still angrier when Idas said: ‘Idmon, being an Argive Frog, has webbed feet. He wears buskins to conceal them, but can dance better in the water than on dry land, when he has kicked them off.’
‘So holy an island is Delos,’ said Idmon, his shrill voice cutting through the general buzz like a sickle through tall grass, ‘that nobody may either be born or die there. All impending acts of birth and death are performed on the neighbouring islet of Ortygia.’
‘Now I understand,’ said Hylas, ‘why Hercules has never taken me to Delos. He scatters births and deaths so lavishly wherever he goes that Delos would never be Delos again.’
To the relief of everyone, Hercules took this sally in good part, and repeated it with guffaws as though it were his own.
Ascalaphus of Orchomenos seldom spoke, but whenever he did everyone listened, for his voice came creaking out, as from a door with rusty hinges, seldom used. Now he stood upright upon his bench and raised his hand, say
ing: ‘Orpheus, Thracian Orpheus, sing to us of the Creation of all things. We are as children in knowledge beside you, even the wisest of us. Purge our souls, Orpheus, by a song of the Creation.’
There was silence and then a slow murmur of assent. Orpheus tuned his lyre, put it between his knees, and sang softly but clearly as he plucked the strings.
He sang how the Earth, the Sky, and the Sea were once mingled together in the same form, until a compelling music sounded from nowhere and they separated, yet remained one universe still. This mysterious music announced the birth of the soul of Eurynome; for that was the original name of the Great Triple Goddess, whose symbol is the Moon. She was the universal Goddess and she was alone. Being alone, she presently felt lonely, standing between blank earth, empty water, and the accurately circling constellations of Heaven. She rubbed her cold hands together, and when she opened them again, out slid the serpent Ophion, whom from curiosity she admitted to love with her. From the fearful convulsions of this act of love rivers sprang, mountains rose, lakes swelled; it caused all manner of creeping things and fish and beasts to be born and populate the earth. Immediately ashamed of what she had done, Eurynome killed the serpent and sent his ghost underground; but as an act of justice she banished a mulberry-faced shadow of herself to live underground with the ghost. She renamed the serpent ‘Death’, and her shadow she named Hecate. From the scattered teeth of the dead serpent sprang up the Sown race of men, who were shepherds, cowherds, and horseherds, but neither tilled the soil nor engaged in warfare. Their food was milk, honey, nuts, and fruit, and they knew nothing of metallurgy. So ended the first Age, that had been the Age of Stone.
Eurynome continued to live in Earth, Sky, and Sea. Her Earth-self was Rhea, with breath of gorse-flower and amber-coloured eyes. As Rhea one day she went to visit Crete. From Sky to Earth is a great distance, the same distance indeed as divides Earth from the Underworld – the distance that a brazen anvil would fall in nine days and nine nights. In Crete, out of sun and vapour, feeling lonely again, Rhea contrived a man-god named Cronus to be her lover. To satisfy her maternal craving, she then every year bore herself a Sun-Child in the Dictean Cave; but Cronus was jealous of the Sun-Children and killed them, one after the other. Rhea concealed her displeasure. She said smilingly to Cronus one day: ‘Give me, dear one, the thumb and fingers of your left hand. A single hand is enough for such a lazy god as you are. I will make five little gods out of them to obey your instructions while you recline here with me on the flowery bank. They will guard your feet and legs from unnecessary fatigue.’ He accordingly gave her his left thumb and fingers, and out of them she made five little gods called the Dactyls, or Finger Gods, and crowned them with myrtle crowns. They caused him a deal of amusement by their sport and dancing. But Rhea secretly instructed the Dactyls to hide from Cronus the next Sun-Child that she bore. They obeyed her and deceived Cronus, putting an axe-shaped thunder-stone in a sack and pretending that it was Rhea’s child which, as usual, they were throwing into the sea for him. This gave rise to the proverb, that the right hand should always be aware of what the left hand is doing. Rhea could not herself suckle the child, whom she named Zagreus, without rousing the suspicions of Cronus; and therefore the Dactyls brought a fat sow to be his foster-mother – a circumstance of which Zagreus afterwards did not like to be reminded. Later, because they found it inconvenient to drown his infant voice with loud drumming and piping whenever he cried, they weaned him from the sow and took him away from Mount Dicte. They consigned him to the care of certain shepherds who lived far to the West, on Mount Ida, where his fare was sheep’s cheese and honey. So the second Age, that had been the Golden Age, drew to a close.
Rhea hastened on the new Age by fostering agriculture, and by teaching her servant, Prometheus the Cretan, how to make fire artificially with the fylfot fire-wheel. She laughed long to herself when Zagreus castrated and killed his father Cronus with a golden sickle that Prometheus had forged, and still longer when he tried to disguise himself as a starved and bedraggled cuckoo and pleaded to be nursed back to life in her bosom. She pretended to be deceived, and when he resumed his true shape she allowed him to enjoy her. ‘Yes, indeed, my little god,’ she said, ‘you may be my loving servant if you wish.’
But Zagreus was insolent and answered: ‘No, Rhea, I will be your master and instruct you what to do. I am more cunning than you, for I deceived you with my cuckoo disguise. And I am also more reasonable than you. By an act of reason I have just invented Time. Now that Time has begun, with my Advent, we can have dates and history and genealogy instead of timeless, wavering myth. And recorded Time, with its chain of detailed cause and consequence, will be the basis of Logic.’
Rhea was astonished and did not know whether to crush him to atoms with one blow of her sandal or whether to lie back and scream with mirth. In the end she did neither. She said no more than this: ‘O Zagreus, Zagreus, my little Sun-Child, what strange notions you have sucked in from the dugs of your foster-mother, the Sow of Dicte!’
He answered: ‘My name is Zeus, not Zagreus; and I am a Thunder-Child, not a Sun-Child; and I was suckled by the she-goat Amalthea of Ida, not by the Sow of Dicte.’
‘That is a triple lie,’ said Rhea smiling.
‘I know that,’ he answered. ‘But I am big and strong enough now to tell triple lies, or even sevenfold lies, without fear of contradiction. If I am of a bilious temper, that is because the ignorant shepherds of Ida fed me with too much honeycomb. You must beware of my masterful ways, Mother, I warn you, for from now onwards I, not you, am the Sole Sovereign of All Things.’
Rhea sighed and answered happily: ‘Dear Zagreus, or Zeus, or whatever you care to be called, have you indeed guessed how weary I am of the natural order and tidiness of this manifest universe, and of the thankless labour of supervising it? Rule it, Child, rule it by all means! Let me lie back for a while and meditate at my ease. Yes, I will be your wife and daughter and slave; and whatever strife or disorder you bring into my beautiful universe by any act of reason, as you call it, I will forgive you, because you are still very young and cannot be expected to understand things as well as I do. But pray be careful of the Three Furies that have been born from the drops of blood falling from your father’s severed genitals; make much of them or they will one day avenge him. Let us have recorded Time and dates and genealogy and history, by all means; though I foresee that they will cause you far more anxiety and pleasure than they are worth. And by all means use Logic as a crutch for your crippled intelligence and a justification of your absurd errors. However, I must first make a condition: there shall be two islands, one in the Western Sea and one in the Eastern, which I shall retain for my ancient worship. There neither yourself nor any other deity that you may divide yourself into shall have any jurisdiction, but only myself and my serpent Death when I choose to send for him. The western shall be the island of innocence, and the eastern that of illumination; in neither will any record be kept of Time, but every day shall be as a thousand years, and contrariwise.’
Then at once she made the western island rise from the waters, like a garden, at a day’s sail from Spain; and she also cast a cloud about the severed member of Cronus, and the Dactyls conveyed it safely to the eastern island, which was already in existence, where it became their companion, the jolly fish-headed god Priapus.
Then Zeus said: ‘I accept your condition, Wife, if you agree that your other self, Amphitrite, shall surrender the Sea to my shadow brother Poseidon.’
Rhea answered: ‘I agree, Husband, only reserving for my own use the waters that extend for five miles about my two islands; you may also rule in the Sky instead of Eurynome, with possession of all the stars and planets and of the Sun itself; but I reserve the Moon for my own.’
So they clasped hands on the bargain, and to show his power Zeus dealt her a resounding box on the ear, and danced in menace an armed jig, clashing his thunderstone axe against his golden shield, so that the thunder rolled horribly across the vault of H
eaven. Rhea smiled. She had not bargained away her control of three most important things, which Zeus never afterwards succeeded in wresting from her: wind, death, and destiny. This is why she smiled.
Presently Zeus scowled and told her to cease smiling and go roast him an ox, for he was hungry. This was the first order that Rhea had ever received, and she stood irresolute because the idea of eating roast flesh disgusted her. Zeus struck her again and shouted: ‘Hurry, Wife, hurry! Why do you suppose that I invented fire but that you should use it to roast or boil me tasty food?’
Rhea shrugged her shoulders and did as she was told, but he could not persuade her at first to share the feast.
Then Zeus, to show his power, swept away the greater part of mankind with a flood and formed out of mud a new man named Deucalion and a new woman named Pyrrha, and breathed life into them. With their birth the second Age finally ended, and the third Age, that of Bronze, began. In the Bronze Age, Zeus begot numerous sons on Rhea, whom he had renamed Hera, but did not let her keep them long at her side. As soon as ever they were old enough to fend for themselves he sent his chalky-faced priests, the Tutors, to steal them away from her by night; these Tutors disguised the boys with false beards and masculine clothes, initiated them into masculine arts and customs and gave out they were the sons of mortal women. On every occasion the Tutors first pretended to burn the boys to ashes with a thunderbolt supplied by Zeus, so that Hera would not try to win them back. Hera smiled at the drums and bull-roarers with which they simulated thunder, for the deception was a clumsy one, and she did not want her boys back – as yet. Soon the Iron Age would begin, that is beginning now…
The Argonauts listened in wonder to this story, and when Orpheus had ceased all sighed together with a noise like the rustling of reeds. Idas asked in a small voice, unlike the rude, unmannerly voice of Idas: ‘Orpheus, tell us, where does this eastern island lie?’
The Golden Fleece Page 19