PERSEUS, THE HERO OF ARGOS
Less than sixty miles in a straight line to the southwest of Athens
there is a barren, swampy plain. It is in the Peloponnesos and is
bounded on all sides by mountains except to the south, where it is
bounded by the sea. In this plain lies the market-town, Argos, at the
foot of a lofty hill, its acropolis, Larisa. There is a citadel on
this acropolis which looks off to a high mountain at the north near
the Isthmus of Corinth, and the white-streaked hills beyond. And
nearer to the citadel, on the north, is a higher mountain, the highest
of the Peloponnesos, where the people used to pray to Zeus and Hera
for rain. To the southeast the Larisa looks over a great prison on a
fortified mountain.
We have said that the Peloponnesos was the shape of a man's hand. The
thumb of this hand is a peninsula pointing toward the east and south.
In more ancient times this thumb was called the peninsula of Argos.
The town, Argos, shares its name with the barren plain in which it is
situated, and in olden times it shared it with the peninsula also. The
peninsula of Argos was quite separate from a larger district, called
Argolis, until the Romans conquered Greece. But now it is one with the
entire district, and Argos the town, and Argos the plain, and Argos
the peninsula, are all in Argolis.
Hera, wife of Zeus and goddess of the heavens, was the patron deity of
Argos. It is said that she had a contest with Poseidon to see which
should name the land, and as she brought the most valuable gift, the
honor fell to her. The river Inachos flows through Argos the plain.
The first king of Argos was a son of the river-god, Inachos, and the
ocean-nymph, Melia, was his mother.
The earliest people of Argos must have worked hard to keep the country
rightly irrigated. They were called Danaæ, doubtless because their
work resembled that of the Danaïds, who were said to be punished in
the lower world by carrying water in pitchers to fill a broken
cistern. As fast as they poured water in the cistern it ran out
through the cracks at the bottom. So, too, the Danaæ carried water to
the sandy soil, but it ran into the earth without doing very much
good.
The Danaæ came from Egypt and were accustomed to farming in the sand.
They knew the unsparing pains that must be taken to conquer it, and
kept at work until the land became fertile enough to repay them. But
in modern times the plain has lost its fertility because the farmers
do not take the same trouble in cultivating the soil.
One of the earliest of the Argive kings, Danaos, sent his daughters
out to search for springs as he would have sent them to bring water
from the Nile if they had remained in Egypt. Poseidon, seeing how
fair one of them was, loved her and caused a spring to flow at Lerna,
and it is called by her own name, Amyone, to the present time. It was
this spring that created the marsh where the terrible Hydra was slain
by Herakles.
Danaos had many descendants, one after another succeeding him as king.
The fifth successor was Akrisios and he had a daughter, Danäe. Some
oracle had told him that he would be slain by a son of Danäe if she
ever had one. This worried the king and he determined that she should
never marry. He built a high tower of brass and shut her up in it so
that no one could get to her.
Danäe grew very lonely, shut up in the tower, and she used to watch
from the window to try to catch a glimpse of the people below. No one
looked up to notice her, but Zeus saw her from his abode in the
heavens and was struck with her beauty and loneliness. He sent a
golden shower of sunbeams to console her in her prison, and a little
babe was born to her, and she called him Perseus, the son of Light.
Akrisios, the king, heard the child's voice and called his daughter to
a holy sanctuary and bade her tell the truth about the babe. This she
did, but the king would not believe her. He put her into a box and
the child with her and cast the box into the sea to sink or float. The
box did float and the kind waves carried it to the island of Seriphos.
A good old fisherman caught it in a net and took it to his own little
hut, and thus Danäe and her babe were saved.
Perseus grew up to be a strong, handsome lad, and was often seen with
his beautiful mother wandering over the island. As Perseus grew older
he became his mother's protector and champion and could never do
enough for her. They continued to live at the cottage of the
fisherman, who had adopted them as members of his own family.
The fisherman had a brother, Polydektes, who was king of the island,
and he was as proud and cruel as the fisherman was simple and kind.
Polydektes saw the beautiful Danäe and resolved to add her to his
possessions and make her subject to his whims. He feared Perseus,
however, and studied how to get him out of the way. So he called his
friends together, among them Perseus, and said that he was looking for
quaint gifts to send to the wedding of Hippodameia, the daughter of
Œnomaos.
All the young men came to the court of the king and listened to his
request, and each one promised to go on some quest and find a present
worthy of the princess. Perseus wanted to outdo all the others, and
said he would bring the head of Medusa if the king desired it.
Polydektes took him at his word and ordered him to go for it at once.