‘Formerly all the victims of the Minotaur had been Cretan Bull men, volunteers for death, but now the Cretans had grown reluctant to be chased by him, even for the glory of the Goddess. Minos (as the Priest of Minos was styled for short), condoning this reluctance, ordered the bull’s twenty victims to be supplied yearly by the Cretan colonies, or by tributary cities. This he did in such a way that he seemed to be conferring a great honour on the place selected; for at the same time the Chief Priestess called for the same number of maidens from it to be priestesses to the Minotaur, an office which brought them wealth and distinction. Usually Minos sent to Mycenae or Tiryns or Pylos or Argos or some other of the cities on the mainland of Greece, but occasionally to the Aegean Islands, or to Asia Minor, or to Sicily; once even to far-off Philistia. These victims were unarmed and usually the Minotaur killed them all in one afternoon without difficulty, since they had no hope of escape except by running and leaping. However, if any man of unusual agility and courage avoided death for a certain length of time, which was reckoned by a trickle of sand falling from a pierced pot, then the nymphs of Ariadne, as the priestesses to the Minotaur were named, came leaping over the barriers, naked except for their python-skin loin-straps, and rescued him from the bull’s horns. The Ariadne nymphs had charge of the Minotaur from his calf days and could control him with their voices even when he bellowed and tossed his horns and pawed the sand in a fury. They demonstrated the power of the Triple Goddess by riding on his back, three or four at a time, by turning somersaults over his head, by ringing his horns with garlands as he playfully charged them, by leaping over him with poles, and by many other pleasing tricks. To conclude the Spring Festival, a mystical act of love was celebrated between Pasiphaë the Moon-Cow and Minos the Sun-Bull, which was publicly substantiated, after an intricate ritual dance, by the companying of the Ariadne nymphs with the Bull men, who wore their horned disguises. The Minotaur was then ruthlessly slaughtered by the chief Priestess, and the blood that gushed from his throat was caught in a basin and stored in a two-eared jar, together with the tears that the nymphs shed at the death of their horned playmate. Drops of this blood, well diluted with water, were then sprinkled with the tail-feathers of a cuckoo upon the island’s countless fruit-trees, to make them yield abundantly: a charm of great virtue.
‘Daedalus was remarkable for his ingenuity. Many astonishing inventions are credited to him, including the art of casting statues in solid brass by the lost-wax method. It is even claimed that he made artificial wings which he could flap like a bird’s and so sustain himself in the air. But whatever the truth of that story, he did at least outwit the Minotaur in the bull-ring at Cnossos, even though he had drawn the first lot for entering the ring and was lame besides, and no longer a young man, and though none of the nineteen others who went in after him avoided the curved, searching horns. The Minotaur had learned to treat all men as his enemies, and to respect women only; besides, as he galloped out from the dark stall in which he had been enclosed without food or water, a silver pin was each time thrust into his shoulder from above, to stir his anger. Daedalus did not escape from him, as ill-informed balladists pretend, by flying home to Athens on artificial wings. Nor did he burrow into the sand of the bull-ring and hide himself; for the sand on the stone pavement was strewn only thickly enough to prevent the feet from slipping, and to drink up the spilt blood. He contrived another plan of escape.
‘He was aware that in the sacred paddocks there were herms set up – round-headed white pillars ordained by the Goddess as symbols of fertility to induce vigour in the bulls. The bulls took no heed of these herms, because they were the familiar furniture of their pasture. The device of Daedalus was to simulate a herm. The palace room in which he was confined was walled with white gypsum, a cornice of which he broke off and powdered in his hands to whiten the gay-coloured clothes with which he was supplied. He also whitened his hands and feet and face and hair, and when he was lowered into the ring, just before the Minotaur was let loose, he hobbled to an altar stone at the side, climbed upon it, covered his head with a strip torn from his robe, and stood as still as any herm. The bellowing Minotaur did not notice Daedalus and ran vainly around the ring in search of a weak spot in the barrier. The smell of men enraged him and he longed to deal death among the spectators. When the Ariadne nymphs came running in, as usual, to spurn the corpse with their feet and play their acrobatic tricks, they found Daedalus still alive. He was drawn up into safety by the palace guards.
‘By his sportiveness and many inventions Daedalus soon earned general regard at the palace, and the favour of the Chief Priestess. He constructed for her, among other strange toys, a lifelike statue of the Goddess for use in the palace shrine, with limbs and eyes that moved, and also a mechanical man called Talus who went through the motions of a soldier on sentry-go.
‘In the course of the ensuing year Minos grew jealous of Daedalus and on some pretext or other unjustly confined him in the palace gaol. However, Daedalus had no difficulty in escaping, with the Chief Priestess’s help, on the evening before the next Spring Festival. At the same time he released a party of twenty dejected Pelasgians, among them his sister’s son Icarus, who were to have been brought into the bull-ring on the following afternoon. He led them out through the labyrinthine corridors of the palace and down to the coast, where, as it happened, a new warship lay ready to be launched at the royal ship-yard. He had fitted it with a device of his own invention – a quick means of hoisting a sail to catch the breeze – but the device had not yet been tried and this was the only ship so rigged. Hitherto, the square Cretan sail had been suspended from a yard permanently fitted to the mast, and sailors had to climb up the mast to unhook the sail whenever the wind was contrary; and when the wind was favourable it had to be hooked up again in the same laborious way. But Daedalus had invented a method – that now in use throughout Greece – by which the yard, with the sail attached, could be hauled up or down the mast by a ring and pulley without any need of climbing, and moreover could be slewed around slightly to take advantage of a side wind. Minos had broken the law in permitting Daedalus to set foot on this ship, though it had not yet been launched; for Daedalus was not a native Cretan.
‘The fugitives found the ship-yard deserted, launched the ship by laying rollers underneath, hoisted the sail quickly and were soon driving out to sea, past the island of Dia. An alarm was raised by the watchmen at the harbour-mouth, and a few hours later Minos started out with his fleet in pursuit, expecting to overtake the Pelasgians as soon as the breeze failed, because they were not accustomed to rowing. But the well-rigged ship was already out of sight, and Minos soon found that Daedalus and his companions, before sailing, had sawn all the Cretan rudders half through, so that they broke off when a strain was put on them. He had to return to port and set the carpenters to work at making new rudders. Minos supposed that the fugitives would not dare to return to Attica, for fear of the anger of Theseus; perhaps they would make for Sicily, and there take refuge in one of the several sanctuary shrines of the Goddess.
‘Daedalus, delayed by head-winds in the Ionian Gulf, sighted his pursuers just as he was approaching Sicily, and eluded them by boldly sailing through the Strait of Messina, between the rock of Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and then making northward instead of southward. He shook off the pursuit and arrived safely at Cumae in Italy, where he scuttled his ship and dedicated the sail and cordage to the Goddess there. But his sister’s son Icarus, the helmsman, had been drowned during the voyage, falling overboard in his sleep one early morning. The sea which engulfed him is since called the Icarian Sea in memory of him. Let no one, from an ignorant misreading of sacred frescoes (such as the one you see before you now), or carved chests, or engraved goblets, believe the foolish fable that Icarus wore wings which Daedalus had attached to his shoulders with wax, and flew too near the Sun so that the wax melted and he was drowned. The wings which they are shown as wearing symbolize the swiftness of their ship; and the melting of th
e wax in the Sardinian rites now enacted in honour of Daedalus refers only to the ingenious method of casting bronze which he invented.
‘From Cumae, Daedalus and his companions travelled on foot through southern Italy and passed over into Sicily. At Agrigentum they were entertained by the Nymph of the shrine of the hero Cocalus, whom Daedalus presented with a small statue of the Goddess, of the same construction as the large one that he had made at Cnossos. She was delighted with the gift and promised him the Goddess’s protection. The Cretan fleet, coasting around Sicily in fruitless search of Daedalus, was wrecked off Agrigentum by snake-tailed winds which the Nymph conjured from the earth against them; only Minos himself with a very few of his sailors escaped by swimming ashore. Finding Daedalus and his companions comfortably settled at the shrine of Cocalus, he grew excessively angry and ordered the Nymph, with threatening and unseemly language, to hand them over to him as fugitive slaves. The Nymph was compelled to avenge her own honour and that of the Goddess: instead of warm water, as Minos sat in the bath-tub, her women poured boiling oil or (some say) pitch over him.
‘Daedalus repaired one of the wrecked Cretan vessels and boldly sailed to King Theseus at Athens with the news that Minos was dead, showing the seal-ring from his thumb as evident proof. It was a great red carnelian stone, carved with a seated Minotaur and the double-axe of power. Theseus had visited Cnossos, some years before, and competed in the athletic part of the Festival, winning the boxing contest; he considered Cnossos the most wonderful city in the world. When he handled the ring and drew it experimentally upon his thumb, his heart knocked against his ribs for pride and exultation. Daedalus, observing this, privately undertook that if Theseus spared his life and that of his fellow-fugitives he would lead him to the conquest of Crete. Theseus accepted the offer.
‘Under the direction of Daedalus a fleet of warships was secretly built, far from any public road, which were swifter and more conveniently rigged than those of the Cretans. No Cretans were allowed to hear of this work. When the new Minos, whose name was Deucalion, sent to Theseus demanding the surrender of Daedalus, Theseus replied that his cousin Daedalus, having been spared by the Minotaur, was a free man and had expiated his original crime of homicide: he was guilty of no other misdeed, so far as was known. The Nymph of Cocalus, Theseus said, had killed Minos on her own account, and Daedalus had taken no part in that atrocious act. It would therefore be unjust to surrender his kinsman to Cretan vengeance as if he were a runaway slave; but let Minos bring proof that Daedalus had participated in any other crime and he would then reconsider the matter. Having thus lulled the suspicions of Minos, Theseus gathered his fleet and sailed to Crete by a roundabout westerly route, taking Daedalus with him as his navigator.
‘The Cretans, hitherto the undisputed masters of the seas, had for centuries felt themselves so secure against invasion that even their principal cities remained unwalled. When the watchmen of the coast saw the Greek fleet approaching from the west they concluded that the ships which had sailed to Sicily had not, after all, been sunk, but had been own far out of their course and had now returned, beyond hope. They signalled the news to Cnossos, the populace of which flocked joyfully down to the coast to welcome their comrades; but found themselves deceived. Out from the ships leaped armed Greeks and made a butchery of the holiday crowd, and ran inland to attack the palace. They sacked and burned it, killing Minos and all the principal Bull men. Then they sailed at once to the other harbours of Crete and seized the rest of the island’s warships and sacked the remaining towns. But Theseus did not dare affront the Triple Goddess Pasiphaë, or molest any of her priestesses: he entered into a firm alliance with the Chief Priestess, by which she was confirmed in her government of Crete. Then the office of Minos was abolished and the mastery of the seas, which the Cretans had enjoyed for two thousand years, passed suddenly into the hands of the Greeks and their allies.
‘Such, at least, is the story that has come down to us, from a succession of trustworthy poets.’
Orpheus then put his lyre between his knees and sang, as he played, of Theseus and the princess whom once he courted and deserted upon the island of Naxos:
High on his figured couch beyond the waves
He dreams, in dream recalling her set walk
Down paths of oyster-shell bordered with flowers
And down the shadowy turf beneath the vine.
He sighs: ‘Deep sunk in my erroneous past
She haunts the ruins and the ravaged lawns.’
Yet still unharmed it stands, the regal house
Crooked with age and overtopped by pines
Where first he wearied of her constancy.
And with a surer foot she goes than when
Dread of his hate was thunder in the air,
When the pines agonized with flaws of wind
And flowers glared up at her with frantic eyes.
Of him, now all is done, she never dreams
But calls a living blessing down upon
What he would have mere rubble and rank grass;
Playing the queen to nobler company.
Chapter Twenty-Four
King Phineus and the Harpies
Early on the third day the Argo sailed off to the northward with a favourable breeze. Aboard her were several Mariandynians of rank, rescued from the Bebrycians, and among them the sister of King Lycus, whom Amycus had made his concubine; for Jason had offered to take them home by sea to their city, which lies on the southern coast of the Black Sea.
They made the mouth of the Bosphorus by noon of the same day; but Argus, Tiphys, and Nauplius, the three most experienced sailors aboard, agreed that the current was dangerously strong. Let the wind blow one day or two longer, they said, and then the passage might be attempted.
Calaïs and Zetes told Jason: ‘If you care, meanwhile, to land on the Thracian shore, we promise you a pleasant reception at the Court of our stepfather, King Phineus of the Thynians, whose name we heard you mention to our late host. He rules the whole hilly region of eastern Thrace as far northward as the foot-hills of the Haemos range.’
Jason gladly accepted their suggestion, unaware of the dangers of the adventure to which he was committing himself. The ship ran westward for a couple of miles to where there is a slight break in the line of hills which enclose the Sea of Marmora on all sides, and where the current from the Bosphorus does not tug at shipping. Anchoring near a red cliff, and leaving a guard aboard consisting chiefly of Greeks from the Peloponnese and from the Islands, Jason went ashore with Calaïs and Zetes, Echion the herald, Orpheus, and all the Thessalians, to whom the Thracian language was intelligible.
‘King Phineus will still be quartered at Bathynios, his winter capital, which lies beside a lake at about an hour’s journey inland from here,’ said Zetes. ‘He is not accustomed to move up to Salmydessos, his summer capital, until the first figs ripen.’ Calaïs and Zetes, who had hitherto disclosed as little as possible about their private affairs, now told Jason, as they went, why they had left Thrace for their recent tour of Greece. It had been partly to learn the arts and customs of their mother’s land – Oreithyia had been an Athenian; partly to enter upon any inheritance that might be due to them by the laws of mother-right which still ruled in Attica – but in this they had been disappointed; partly also to avoid the society of their father’s new wife. For King Phineus, who was blind, had lately married the daughter of his royal neighbour, the Scythian king who had seized the high land on the southern bank of the Lower Danube; she was named Idaea and proved to have none of the racial virtues of those blameless, milk-drinking Scythians. ‘She is, in fact, arrogant, cruel, sly, and lecherous,’ said Zetes.
‘And to deal honestly with you,’ said Calaïs, ‘our stepfather as good as banished us when we reproached her, in his presence, for the shame that she had brought on his house. But he is blind and she has infatuated him by her pretended sweetness. He thinks her the best wife in the world.’
‘She has a son by him,’ add
ed Zetes, ‘if indeed the captain of her Scythian bodyguard is not the father of the brat, on whom she clearly intends to confer the kingdom, though we are the heirs-at-law. Her Scythians terrorize the palace guards and the Thynians in general.’
‘I cannot venture another step forward with you,’ said Jason. ‘Why did you not reveal all these circumstances to me before we started out? Now that we have lost Hercules, we are not strong enough to interfere in the domestic politics of every city or kingdom that lies on our route. The chief and almost the only purpose of our voyage is to recover the Golden Fleece. I refuse to be deflected from it.’
‘You did not lose Hercules,’ said Peleus. ‘You deliberately marooned him.’
Echion intervened. ‘Most noble Jason,’ he said, ‘you must remember that before our departure from Iolcos all we who have the honour to style ourselves Argonauts gave one another solemn assurances of mutual aid. Since Calaïs and Zetes consented at that time to assist you in your hazardous quest of the Fleece – which, after all, was no direct concern of theirs, for they were not Minyans – it is only just that you should now do whatever lies in your power to make peace between their stepfather and them, as it were oiling the hot hub of a chariot wheel where it screams against the unyielding axle-end.’
The others supported Echion, so on they all went. When they had approached to within half a mile of the palace, a cavalcade was seen riding out westwards beyond the lake. Sharp-sighted Lynceus reported that it consisted of about twenty slant-eyed, bald-headed archers, mounted on sturdy ponies, led by a woman in a coarse black smock and trousers with a jewelled belt about her middle and an embroidered scarf about her head. They were going forward at a fast trot, accompanied by a pack of mastiffs.
The Golden Fleece Page 26