Mythology

by Edith Hamilton

  Ismene weeping came from the palace to stand with her sister. “I helped do it,” she said. But Antigone would not have that. “She had no share in it,” she told Creon. And she bade her sister say no more. “Your choice was to live,” she said, “mine to die.”

  As she was led away to death, she spoke to the by-standers:—

  … Behold me, what I suffer

  Because I have upheld that which is high.

  Ismene disappears. There is no story, no poem, about her. The House of Oedipus, the last of the royal family of Thebes, was known no more.

  THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

  Two great writers told this story. It is the subject of one of Aeschylus’ plays and one of Euripides’. I have chosen Euripides’ version which, as so often with him, reflects remarkably our own point of view. Aeschylus tells the tale splendidly, but in his hands it is a stirring martial poem. Euripides’ play, The Suppliants, shows his modern mind better than any of his other plays.

  Polyneices had been given burial at the price of his sister’s life; his soul was free to be ferried across the river and find a home among the dead. But five of the chieftains who had marched with him to Thebes lay unburied, and according to Creon’s decree would be left so forever.

  Adrastus, the only one alive of the seven who had started the war, came to Theseus, King of Athens, to beseech him to induce the Thebans to allow the bodies to be buried. With him were the mothers and the sons of the dead men. “All we seek,” he told Theseus, “is burial for our dead. We come to you for help, because Athens of all cities is compassionate.”

  “I will not be your ally,” Theseus answered. “You led your people against Thebes. The war was of your doing, not hers.”

  But Aethra, Theseus’ mother, to whom those other sorrowing mothers had first turned, was bold to interrupt the two Kings. “My son,” she said, “may I speak for your honor and for Athens?”

  “Yes, speak,” he answered and listened intently while she told him what was in her mind.

  “You are bound to defend all who are wronged,” she said. “These men of violence who refuse the dead their right of burial, you are bound to compel them to obey the law. It is sacred through all Greece. What holds our states together and all states everywhere, except this, that each one honors the great laws of right?”

  “Mother,” Theseus cried, “these are true words. Yet of myself I cannot decide the matter. For I have made this land a free state with an equal vote for all. If the citizens consent, then I will go to Thebes.”

  The poor women waited, Aethra with them, while he went to summon the assembly which would decide the misery or happiness of their dead children. They prayed: “O city of Athena, help us, so that the laws of justice shall not be defiled and through all lands the helpless and oppressed shall be delivered.” When Theseus returned he brought good news. The assembly had voted to tell the Thebans that Athens wished to be a good neighbor, but that she could not stand by and see a great wrong done. “Yield to our request,” they would ask Thebes. “We want only what is right. But if you will not, then you choose war, for we must fight to defend those who are defenseless.”

  Before he finished speaking a herald entered. He asked “Who is the master here, the lord of Athens? I bring a message to him from the master of Thebes.”

  “You seek one who does not exist,” Theseus answered. “There is no master here. Athens is free. Her people rule.”

  “That is well for Thebes,” the herald cried. “Our city is not governed by a mob which twists this way and that, but by one man. How can the ignorant crowd wisely direct a nation’s course?”

  “We in Athens,” Theseus said, “write our own laws and then are ruled by them. We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands. This great advantage then is ours, that our land rejoices in all her sons who are strong and powerful by reason of their wisdom and just dealing. But to a tyrant such are hateful. He kills them, fearing they will shake his power.

  “Go back to Thebes and tell her we know how much better peace is for men than war. Fools rush on war to make a weaker country their slave. We would not harm your state. We seek the dead only, to return to earth the body, of which no man is the owner, but only for a brief moment the guest. Dust must return to dust again.”

  Creon would not listen to Theseus’ plea, and the Athenians marched against Thebes. They conquered. The panic-stricken people in the town thought only that they would be killed or enslaved and their city ruined. But although the way lay clear to the victorious Athenian Army, Theseus held them back. “We came not to destroy the town,” he said, “but only to reclaim the dead.” “And our King,” said the messenger who brought the news to the anxiously waiting people of Athens, “Theseus himself, made ready for the grave those five poor bodies, washed them and covered them and set them on a bier.”

  Some measure of comfort came to the sorrowful mothers as their sons were laid upon the funeral pyre with all reverence and honor. Adrastus spoke the last words for each: “Capaneus lies here, a mighty man of wealth, yet humble as a poor man always and a true friend to all. He knew no guile; upon his lips were kind words only. Eteocles is next, poor in everything save honor. There he was rich indeed. When men would give him gold he would not take it. He would not be a slave to wealth. Beside him Hippomedon lies. He was a man who suffered hardship gladly, a hunter and a soldier. From boyhood he disdained an easy life. Atalanta’s son is next, Parthenopaeus, of many a man, of many a woman loved, and one who never did a wrong to any man. His joy was in his country’s good, his grief when it went ill with her. The last is Tydeus, a silent man. He could best reason with his sword and shield. His soul was lofty; deeds, not words, revealed how high it soared.”

  As the pyre was kindled, on a rocky height above it a woman appeared. It was Evadne, the wife of Capaneus. She cried,

  I have found the light of your pyre, your tomb.

  I will end there the grief and the anguish of life.

  Oh, sweet death to die with the dear dead I love.

  She leaped down to the blazing pyre and went with her husband to the world below.

  Peace came to the mothers, with the knowledge that at last their children’s spirits were at rest. Not so to the young sons of the dead men. They vowed as they watched the pyre burn that when they were grown they would take vengeance upon Thebes. “Our fathers sleep in the tomb, but the wrong done to them can never sleep,” they said. Ten years later they marched to Thebes. They were victorious; the conquered Thebans fled and their city was leveled to the ground. Teiresias the prophet perished during the flight. All that was left of the old Thebes was Harmonia’s necklace, which was taken to Delphi and for hundreds of years shown to the pilgrims there. The sons of the seven champions, although they succeeded where their fathers failed, were always called the Epigoni, “the After-Born,” as if they had come into the world too late, after all great deeds had been done. But when Thebes fell, the Greek ships had not yet sailed to the Trojan land; and the son of Tydeus, Diomedes, was to be famed as one of the most glorious of the warriors who fought before the walls of Troy.

  III

  I have taken the Procne and Philomela story from Ovid. He tells it better than anyone else, but even so he is sometimes inconceivably bad. He describes in fifteen long lines (which I omit) exactly how Philomela’s tongue was cut out and what it looked like as it lay “palpitating” on the earth where Tereus had flung it. The Greek poets were not given to such details, but the Latin had no manner of objection to them. I have followed Ovid, too, for the most part in the stories of Procris and Orithyia, taking a few details from Apollodorus. The tale of Creüsa and Ion is the subject of a play of Euripides, one of the many plays in which he tried to show the Athenians what the gods of the myths really were when judged by the ordinary human standards of mercy, honor, self-control. Greek mythology was full of stories such as that of the rape of Europa, in which never a suggestion was allowed that the deity in question had ac
ted somewhat less than divinely. In his version of the story of Creüsa Euripides said to his audience, “Look at your Apollo, the sun-bright Lord of the Lyre, the pure God of Truth. This is what he did. He brutally forced a helpless young girl and then he abandoned her.” The end of Greek mythology was at hand when such plays drew full houses in Athens.

  This family was especially marked, even among the other remarkable mythological families, by the very peculiar happenings which visited its members. There is nothing stranger told in any story than some of the events in their lives.

  CECROPS

  The first King of Attica was named Cecrops. He had no human ancestor and he was himself only half human.

  Cecrops, lord and hero,

  Born of a dragon,

  Dragon-shaped below.

  He was the person usually held to be responsible for Athena’s becoming the protector of Athens. Poseidon, too, wanted the city, and to show how great a benefactor he could be, he struck open the rock of the Acropolis with his trident so that salt water leaped forth from the cleft and subsided into a deep well. But Athena did still better. She made an olive tree grow there, the most prized of all the trees of Greece.

  The gray-gleaming olive

  Athena showed to men,

  The glory of shining Athens,

  Her crown from on high.

  In return for this good gift Cecrops, who had been made arbiter, decided that Athens was hers. Poseidon was greatly angered and punished the people by sending a disastrous flood.

  In one story of this contest between the two deities, woman’s suffrage plays a part. In those early days, we are told, women voted as well as men. All the women voted for the goddess, and all the men for the god. There was one more woman than there were men, so Athena won. But the men, along with Poseidon, were greatly chagrined at this female triumph; and while Poseidon proceeded to flood the land the men decided to take the vote away from the women. Nevertheless, Athena kept Athens.

  Most writers say that these events happened before the Deluge, and that the Cecrops who belonged to the famous Athenian family was not the ancient half-dragon, half-human creature but an ordinary man, important only because of his relatives. He was the son of a distinguished king, a nephew of two well-known mythological heroines, and the brother of three. Above all, he was the great-grandfather of Athens’ hero, Theseus.

  His father, King Erechtheus of Athens, was usually said to be the king in whose reign Demeter came to Eleusis and agriculture began. He had two sisters, Procne and Philomela, noted for their misfortunes. Their story was tragic in the extreme.

  PROCNE AND PHILOMELA

  Procne, the elder of the two, was married to Tereus of Thrace, a son of Ares, who proved to have inherited all his father’s detestable qualities. The two had a son, Itys, and when he was five years old Procne, who had all this while been living in Thrace separated from her family, begged Tereus to let her invite her sister Philomela to visit her. He agreed, and said he would go to Athens himself and escort her. But as soon as he set eyes on the girl he fell in love with her. She was beautiful as a nymph or a naiad. He easily persuaded her father to allow her to go back with him, and she herself was happy beyond words at the prospect. All went well on the voyage, but when they disembarked and started overland for the palace, Tereus told Philomela that he had received news of Procne’s death and he forced her into a pretended marriage. Within a very short time, however, she learned the truth, and she was ill-advised enough to threaten him. She would surely find means to let the world know what he had done, she told him, and he would be an outcast among men. She aroused both his fury and his fear. He seized her and cut out her tongue. Then he left her in a strongly guarded place and went to Procne with a story that Philomela had died on the journey.

  Philomela’s case looked hopeless. She was shut up; she could not speak; in those days there was no writing. It seemed that Tereus was safe. However, although people then could not write, they could tell a story without speaking because they were marvelous craftsmen, such as have never been known since. A smith could make a shield which showed on its surface a lion-hunt, two lions devouring a bull while herdsmen urged their dogs on to attack them. Or he could depict a harvest scene, a field with reapers and sheaf-binders, and a vineyard teeming with clusters of grapes which youths and maidens gathered into baskets while one of them played on a shepherd’s pipe to cheer their labors. The women were equally remarkable in their kind of work. They could weave, into the lovely stuffs they made, forms so lifelike anyone could see what tale they illustrated. Philomela accordingly turned to her loom. She had a greater motive to make clear the story she wove than any artist ever had. With infinite pains and surpassing skill she produced a wondrous tapestry on which the whole account of her wrongs was unfolded. She gave it to the old woman who attended her and signified that it was for the Queen.

  Proud of bearing so beautiful a gift the aged creature carried it to Procne, who was still wearing deep mourning for her sister and whose spirit was as mournful as her garments. She unrolled the web. There she saw Philomela, her very face and form, and Tereus equally unmistakable. With horror she read what had happened, all as plain to her as if in print. Her deep sense of outrage helped her to self-control. Here was no room for tears or for words, either. She bent her whole mind to delivering her sister and devising a fit punishment for her husband. First, she made her way to Philomela, doubtless through the old woman messenger, and when she had told her, who could not speak in return, that she knew all, she took her back to the palace. There while Philomela wept, Procne thought. “Let us weep hereafter,” she told her sister. “I am prepared for any deed that will make Tereus pay for what he has done to you.” At this moment her little son Itys, ran into the room and suddenly as she looked at him it seemed to her that she hated him. “How like your father you are,” she said slowly, and with the words her plan was clear to her. She killed the child with one stroke of the dagger. She cut the little dead body up, put the limbs in a kettle over the fire, and served them to Tereus that night for supper. She watched him as he ate; then she told him what he had feasted on.

  In his first sickening horror he could not move, and the two sisters were able to flee. Near Daulis, however, he overtook them, and was about to kill them when suddenly the gods turned them into birds, Procne into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow, which, because her tongue was cut out, only twitters and can never sing. Procne,

  The bird with wings of brown,

  Musical nightingale,

  Mourns forever; O Itys, child,

  Lost to me, lost.

  Of all the birds her song is sweetest because it is saddest. She never forgets the son she killed.

  The wretched Tereus, too, was changed into a bird, an ugly bird with a huge beak, said sometimes to be a hawk.

  The Roman writers who told the story somehow got the sisters confused and said that the tongueless Philomela was the nightingale, which was obviously absurd. But so she is always called in English poetry.

  PROCRIS AND CEPHALUS

  The niece of these unfortunate women was Procris, and she was almost as unfortunate as they. She was married very happily to Cephalus, a grandson of the King of the Winds, Aeolus; but they had been married only a few weeks when Cephalus was carried off by no less a personage than Aurora herself, the Goddess of the Dawn. He was a lover of the chase and used to rise early to track the deer. So it happened that many a time as the day broke Dawn saw the young hunter, and finally she fell in love with him. But Cephalus loved Procris. Not even the radiant goddess could make him faithless. Procris alone was in his heart. Enraged at this obstinate devotion which none of her wiles could weaken, Aurora at last dismissed him and told him to go back to his wife, but to make sure that she had been as true to him during his absence as he to her.

  This malicious suggestion drove Cephalus mad with jealousy. He had been so long away and Procris was so beautiful.… He decided that he could never rest satisfied unless he proved to h
imself beyond all doubt that she loved him alone and would not yield to any other lover. Accordingly, he disguised himself. Some say that Aurora helped him, but at all events, the disguise was so good that when he went back to his home no one recognized him. It was comforting to see that the whole household was longing for his return, but his purpose held firm. When he was admitted to Procris’ presence, however, her manifest grief, her sad face and subdued manner, came near to making him give up the test he had planned. He did not do so, however; he could not forget Aurora’s mocking words. He began at once to try to get Procris to fall in love with him, a stranger, as she supposed him to be. He made passionate love to her, always reminding her, too, that her husband had forsaken her. Nevertheless for a long time he could not move her. To all his pleas she made the same answer, “I belong to him. Wherever he is I keep my love for him.”

  But one day when he was pouring out petitions, persuasions, promises, she hesitated. She did not give in; she only did not firmly oppose him, but that was enough for Cephalus. He cried out, “O false and shameless woman, I am your husband. By my own witness you are a traitor.” Procris looked at him. Then she turned and without a word left him and the house, too. Her love for him seemed turned into hate; she loathed the whole race of men and she went to the mountains to live alone. Cephalus, however, had quickly come to his senses and realized the poor part he had played. He searched everywhere for her until he found her. Then he humbly begged her forgiveness.