Olympus
Page 21
Is Latinus, who befriends Aeneas, the son of Telemachus and Circe as mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony, or the son of Telemachus and Circe as mentioned in Fabulae? In Roman writings, Latinus is said to be the son of Faunus, the horned god of the woods, the local version of Pan, and Marica, the nymph, who was probably the local version of Artemis.
Livy, who wrote in the time of Augustus Caesar, documented Roman mythology. While Greek mythology focuses on heroes, Roman mythology speaks of chaste wives like Lucretia who kill themselves when raped to protect their husband’s family from shame, and of great heroes like Scoevola who burn their own hand to prove to the enemy, the Etruscans, that even under torture he would never betray Rome.
If the Greeks were associated with contemplation, the Romans were associated with action. If the Greeks were focused on tragedy of the human condition, the Romans spoke of triumph and honour more than anything else. It is in Roman mythology that we see the early traces of the concept of nationalist patriotism, for it is about loyalty to a city state and not to a clan. The latter is expected of women and children.
Remus and Romulus, twins who were suckled by a she-wolf, are the most famous descendants of Aeneas. Their mother was a mortal woman, a Vestal Virgin, and their father was Mars, the Roman god of war. The story goes that Remus saw six eagles and Romulus, soon after, saw twelve. Romulus claimed Zeus favoured him as he had seen more birds, while Remus argued that since he had seen a vision first, he was the favoured one. When Remus jumped over the walls built by Romulus to show how strong and capable he was, Romulus killed Remus, and became king of Rome. Unable to find wives, Romulus and his men were forced to abduct women of the Sabine tribes who eventually learned to love their captors, and had to forcibly stop war between their fathers, brothers and husbands. These Roman tales show the dangers of sibling rivalry and the importance of women as peacemakers and homemakers.
Britain too owes its origin to Troy. Briton, a descendant of Aeneas, was exiled from Italy for accidentally killing his father, and he made his way to the island of Albion that would eventually be called Britain.
Graeco-Roman philosophy played a key role in the founding of the American republic, as we can see in American state architecture and the use of words like ‘senate’ in the political system. But the ‘pagan’ pantheon of Greece and Rome was not embraced; instead, the Christian God prevailed.
House of Aeneas
Aeneas’s Expedition
(Probable route as per Virgil’s Aeneid: representational, not drawn to scale)
Epilogue
The Indian Headshake
As the stories came to an end, the gymnosophist smiled. ‘Such wonderful stories. Of heroes who go on adventures, kill monsters, rescue damsels, and eventually return home, or establish new cities. What about you, Alexander? You have killed monsters and rescued damsels. Do you wish to go home now, or create a new home?’
‘Olympus it shall be for me,’ Alexander replied. ‘Onward I shall go . . . To the edge of the world, where no man has gone before, and there I shall earn the love of the gods. But I fear that my life will end as it did for Theseus and Oedipus and Heracles and Jason and Achilles and Agamemnon—in tragedy.’
‘So it has been before. So it will be again.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Alexander.
‘Every hero thinks his path is unique and original. Tragedy is discovering that all paths have existed before. This land you are about to enter is named after Bharat, a great king, who conquered the world and then climbed the tallest mountain in the world to hoist his flag and declare to the world his great achievement. But on reaching the peak he found there hundreds of flags, of kings before him, each one assuming he had conquered the world.’
‘I have never heard of this Bharat. Are you saying he conquered the world before me? When? Why have I never heard of him? I don’t believe you. I don’t think this Bharat existed,’ Alexander argued, his temper rising.
‘You have never seen Olympus. Yet you believe that Olympus exists. You and I, we believe in different things.’
‘That’s not true. We are not so different. We believe in the same things. Like Olympus, don’t your people also speak of a city of gods where heroes are entertained? And of a place of punishment and suffering, after death, like Tartarus?’
‘Swarga! Naraka! You are right. You have indeed heard much. But not all,’ said the gymnosophist calmly. ‘In Swarga, one’s hunger is indulged. In Naraka, one experiences eternal hunger. But then there is Kailasa, the abode of Shiva, where one outgrows hunger. And finally, there is Vaikuntha, where attention is paid to other people’s hunger. Different heavens for different lives.’
‘Different lives? I don’t understand.’
‘You told of me of the Styx, the river that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. You cross this river just once. There is another river, the Vaitarni, that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. You must cross her many times, so that you live many lives, and experience different destinations. In Swarga and Naraka, one’s stay is temporary. In Kailasa and Vaikuntha, you can live forever.’
‘Great feats grant us a place in Elysium. What takes you to Kailasa and Vaikuntha?’ asked Alexander, curious.
‘Understanding,’ replied the gymnosophist.
The sky turned golden, and a hundred green parrots descended on nearby trees. Alexander did not respond for some time, distressed by what he was hearing. Did achievement not matter at all? The leader of the Greeks finally spoke. ‘Action, I feel, matters more than understanding. I still don’t believe our worlds are as different as you claim they are. Surely Vishnu on his eagle is like Zeus, as is the thunderbolt-wielding Indra, and Shiva who dances wildly is like Bacchus, and Krishna who fights the bulls and lions and multi-headed snakes is Heracles. Surely Kartikeya is your Ares, and Kama your Eros.’
‘You look at the flesh, not beyond, at the literal meaning of the word, not its metaphor.’
‘Don’t you want to change the world—make it a better place?’ asked Alexander.
‘What is better for you may not be better for me. Why do you presume to know my needs? Every plant is different. Every animal is different. Every human being is different. Our worlds are different. You see your world as chaotic and so strive for order. I see my world in a flux, like the sea, changing endlessly, maybe not at my pace, or to my will, but always changing. You wish to control change, because you are convinced you can. I don’t wish to control this changing world, because I know I can’t,’ said the gymnosophist. ‘Who is right? Can’t we both be right?’
‘The point of life is to be remembered for our extraordinary deeds,’ insisted Alexander. ‘The value of our life is the sum total of our achievements.’
‘When you live only once, the denominator of your existence is only one, and so what you say is true. When you live many lives, the denominator of existence is infinite, and achievements have no intrinsic value. Eventually, we will all be forgotten.’
‘I will be remembered forever, till the end of time,’ roared the mighty Greek warrior.
The gymnosophist shook his head this way and that with a smile, annoying Alexander who asked, ‘Why are you bobbing your head that way?’
‘It’s the Indian headshake. It means you are probably right, or probably wrong. Who knows? Varuna has but a thousand eyes, Indra a hundred, you and I only two.’
Alexander, who found comfort in certainty, did not like the answer. He walked away, determined to inspire his army and take them further east.
But Alexander’s men had other plans. They were tired, restless and wanted to go home.
‘Then by a different route! We shall not retrace our steps,’ insisted Alexander, when he finally conceded. And thus the great Greek army sailed down the River Sindhu to the sea and then along the coast back to Babylon, from where they would make the journey to Greece.
As he moved down the river and along the coast, Alexander thought of the Styx and Vaitarni. O
ne which you cross only once, and another which you keep crossing again and again. Was his life predetermined by karma, or by the Fates, or by the gods, or was it a consequence of his own hubris? Would he return again?
As they pressed onwards, Alexander’s beloved friend and companion, Hephastion, died of fever. Alexander wept for days. A huge bonfire was lit to cremate his body. The flames touched the skies. ‘Will I meet him in Elysium? Will I be alone in Olympus? Will we return here again, as birds or kings, always together like Achilles and Patroclus?’ he wondered.
Alone on his throne, surrounded by angry Greeks who refused to bow to him, and confused Persians who wanted to bow to him, the great student of Aristotle felt like the Greek heroes, despondent after an adventure.
Was this it? Yet another frontier, yet another edge of the world, yet another war? Would he, like Icarus and Phaeton and Bellerophon, be cast down to earth for daring to rise up to the sky? Or would he be carried up, with his beloved like the Discouri, or alone like Heracles, Ganymede and Odysseus? Why did he not feel in control?
Slowly, as the sun rose, Alexander realized that no matter how much he wanted to determine the course of his life, the world often took decisions for him. He had conquered the world, almost. And the world had conquered him, almost.
Alexander shook his head this way and that, imitating the gymnosophist, and smiled.
Unlike Greek plays, Sanskrit plays are never tragedies. In fact, in principle, they embrace the idea of sukhant, or happy ending. But the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were composed a few centuries before the first Sanskrit plays, when Indo-Greek influence was widespread in north India. Perhaps that is why, unlike Sanskrit plays, the epics have tragic endings like most Greek epics, with the abandonment of Sita in the Ramayana, and the destruction of the Kuru and the Yadava clans in the Mahabharata.
While the sage Dandamis declined the invitation to travel with Alexander, declaring that he was content with his life in India, the sage Calanus did travel with the king. Sadly, the sage, who enjoyed perfect health in India, fell ill in Persia and finally after much suffering decided to mount a funeral pyre and burn himself to death, an idea that shocked and fascinated the Greeks. Alexander gave him many gifts that, as per Greek tradition, would have been burned on the pyre. But Calanus distributed all these to people around him and without any fear mounted the pyre, singing songs to the gods, and embraced death. Before he died, Calanus predicted the death of Alexander in Babylon.
After the death of Alexander, the Indus valley came to be ruled by his satrap, Seleucus. Legend has it that his daughter, Helen, was given in marriage to Chandragupta Maurya, on the advice of the political strategist Chanakya, who then orchestrated the fall of the Nanda dynasty in Magadha, and eventually established the Mauryan Empire that stretched across much of South Asia. The alliance suited both as Seleucus was more interested in the West than the East.
The Mauryans gave 500 elephants to Seleucus which helped him defeat his rival, Antigonus, at the Battle of Ipsus and establish the Selucid Empire that lasted for nearly 300 years, controlling much of the Middle East.
Megasthenes, the Greek envoy, visited Chandragupta Maurya after the king established Pataliputra as the capital of his vast empire. In his book Indika, Megasthenes noted how the Indian emperor had a contingent of female warriors (Amazons?) as his bodyguards.
Just like Alexander, Chandragupta was strongly influenced by a gymnosophist, the Jain monk Bhadrabahu, and eventually gave up his royal title and became a naked ascetic himself.
The Mauryans introduced many of the empire-management techniques established by Persian emperors, including using the written word to communicate the will of kings to remote corners of the empire. This led to the creation of the indigenous Brahmi script, which enjoyed royal patronage. It was carved in stone during the time of Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta. Until then, Indians avoided writing and preferred transmitting ideas orally.
Roughly 2200 years ago, the Yavana or Gandhara or Indo-Greek Empire was established by Demetrius, stretching from the Indus to the Gangetic plains. But this was not a united empire and was full of many warlords, whose capitals included Taxila, Pushkalavati (Peshawar?) and Sakala (Sialkot?), all currently in Pakistan.
The most famous Indo-Greek ruler was Milinda or Menander, a patron of Buddhism. The Greek geographer Strabo wrote that Menander conquered more tribes than even Alexander the Great. His coins bear images of Athena.
Indo-Greek ideas contributed to many Hindu practices in later times, including giving a human form to the gods. They were the first to create the image of Buddha, as well as those of Shiva and Vishnu, who until then were represented only as symbols— umbrellas or conch shells or wheels—or simply as rocks or mounds.
During Alexander’s time, the earliest versions of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas were probably being orally transmitted. They were written down in the centuries that followed, and they reached the form that we currently receive them in, over 500 years later. How deeply Greek thought impacted the narration remains a matter of speculation.
Author’s Note
Shadows and Sunlight
Over 2500 years ago, Greek bards narrated ‘mythos’, stories, that sought to make sense of the world. Greek philosophers preferred ‘logos’, reason, to make sense of the world. For the Greek elite, the preference for logos was indicative of education; only ‘barbarians’ preferred mythos. From this ancient divide stems the modern preference for philosophy over mythology, concepts over stories.
This divide, however, is superficial. For both mythology and philosophy present the same idea: the former communicates through a story, along with symbols and rituals, while the latter uses precise language. Mythology creates a more visceral experience, and so appeals to everyone, not just the intellectual.
If Greek bards spoke of heroes who fight chaos and seek cosmos or order, Greek philosophers talked of shadowy caves of ignorance and the sunlit world of wisdom outside. What were shadows to a philosopher was chaos to a bard. What was sunlight to a philosopher was cosmos to a bard.
If there was a difference between the Greek philosopher and the Greek bard, it was this: the former shared what he understood whereas the latter simply transmitted what he received. But neither really abandoned the finite linear structure: from chaos to order, from shadows to sunlight, from here to there.
Greek mythology has always been at loggerheads with Abrahamic mythology, which forms the basis of Judaic, Christian and Islamic faiths. Greek mythology placed greater value on the individual contemplation of nature and culture, while Abrahamic mythology demands submission to a supernatural force.
Yet, the two have much in common: both follow a finite linear structure. Instead of chaos, Abrahamic mythology speaks of the wilderness of false gods, and instead of cosmos, it speaks of the Promised Land of the one true God of Abraham. If Greek mythology is about destination, adventure and discovery, Abrahamic mythology is about frustrated adventurers returning to a lost home.
The struggle between these two finite linear mythologies, Greek and Abrahamic, shapes much of Western thought. Modern secular thought is in fact just another ‘avatar’ of Greek mythology and philosophy, and this becomes evident when we see Western history as a series of attempts to define what constitutes shadows and what constitutes sunlight: many gods, one God, or no God. The West here refers to the worlds that stretch from Persia and Arabia, through Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, to Europe—and now, America.
Ancient Greeks sought ‘theory’, which means to see (orao) the divine (theoin), or the world as it is, which mirrors the Hindu concept of ‘darshan’.
Popular discomfort with mythology is rooted in the Greek disdain for the non-intellectual, and Abrahamic disdain for any alternative narratives, which informs even modern scientific education systems around the world.
Mythology in its most primal form is constituted by rituals, from which symbols and stories emerge. These are different forms of language.
From Greek City States to the Persian Empire
The ancient Greeks believed in ‘polis’, city states, not empires; in democracy, not monarchy; in consensus, not authority; and in heroes who held their own before capricious and whimsical gods, not one all-powerful God-king. For them, the Egyptians and Persians were barbarians because they did not care for reason, and chose instead to follow blindly the words of their God-king.
Greek art was individualistic and realistic, seeking to mimic reality. By contrast, art in ancient Egypt and ancient Persia was more centrally controlled royal propaganda, allowing no room for individual expression. While the human forms in Greek images showed expression and taut musculature, and were presented in action, without a frame or enforced symmetry, Egyptian and Persian images were formal, rigid and stately, and contained within frames. These Egyptian and Persian worldviews would eventually serve as tributaries to Abrahamic monotheism.
About 2300 years ago, Alexander of Macedon, educated in the Greek ways, set out to conquer the world. He seized control of Egypt and overthrew the Persian emperor. Intent on spreading Greek logos, he established cities named Alexandria wherever he went.
But eventually even Alexander succumbed to the idea of a single God-king who would bring different cultures and kingdoms under a single umbrella. He began to see himself as the unifying God-king, and his Egyptian and Persian subjects bowed to him. His own highly independent Greek companions, however, were not amused.